82nd Live Stream with Carlton Pearson - Hell

About this sermon

When you believe in hell as both real and reliable, you tend to depend on its essence and ultimacy as a pillar of faith and piety in your life. Belief in hell as an "article of faith" competes with and compares to faith in God and Jesus as a requirement for salvation. It shades and jades your consciousness consistently and completely. Belief in eternal damnation (hell) is foreboding and intimidating, causing deep-seated fear and anger and causes subconscious distrust of a God who sponsors such hideous hatred, suffering and unending judgmentalism. It subtly implies that God's mercy actually doesn't endure forever, but that torment and agony does, for presumably billions of non-Christians, as well as possibly millions of disobedient, weak or irresponsible confessing Christians. The absurdity and obscenity of that kind of trained or learned thinking and the sense of vengeance that accompanies it is erosive and mentally corrosive. In many ways, it is a form of insanity. I lived it for nearly 50 years. Some of the sweetest people on earth do as well, but that doesn't mean or make it right or helpful in the long term, if not the short. The fear and paranoia around the subject of eternal doom and damnation that lives within people who call themselves servants and followers of the "Prince of Peace" produces the exact opposite inwardly, and the anxiety is disguised as safety and security through religious piety and biblically-prescribed "righteousness." Through these prescriptions, the difficult God is pleased and the angry one appeased and so goes institutional evangelical fundamentalism, called and considered by some, faith. Can you imagine faith beyond that particular image of God? Are you willing to even try? Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail.

Topics

• Hell & Judgment