Click on the title above to read the review of Rob Bell's book found on the Baptist Press website.
If you were to look at the posts on the site, you can tell I have been in blogosphere slumber for a while. School and a trip to China to get our daughter will change your priorities. However, Bell's book has awakened me from my hibernation because of the grave danger it poses to orthodox Christians.
Bell is like most of the emergent church leadership today. They use many of the same terms that we use to discuss their faith, but they define their terms differently. For example, Bell defines hell as the vast suffering due to evil that occurs here on earth (not exactly his words, but a generalization), while traditional Christian faith calls hell a literal place that will be a place of eternal torment (again, a generalization.) What makes this dangerous is the following Bell and other leaders have gained among evangelicals, especially younger evangelicals, and influence that he carries.
I do not agree 100% with every pastor or leader that I follow, read, or listen to. However, we do agree on the essentials of the faith. Any major deviation from issues like salvation, nature of God, work of the Cross, or nature of Christ are reasons to no longer allow that person to teach me about spiritual truth. Or, at the very least, to highly filter what they are teaching to be sure it is biblical. So many have placed their trust in the teaching of Bell, that they may not realize how severe his deviation is from biblical truth.
My word to you is to be cautious about Bell and his teaching, and advise those who are in your circle of influence to be cautious as well.
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