Ringing the Bell on Rob Bell

For those that don't know Rob Bell is an emergent pastor from Michigan and some have called him the next Billy Graham. He is respected widely among evangelicals as coming with a "new" twist on an old religion. He is making it "relevant" and "exciting" for a younger hip generation. Anyone who has been on the scene of Christianity for any amount of time has either came across his Nooma videos or his book "Velvet Elvis". The purpose of this blog is to do what so many others have done already. Explain to a younger more impressible group of evangelicals just what the gospel is and identifying bad teaching. I do this with a humble heart knowing I am talking to Pastors, youth pastors, lay leaders, elders and many others. I want to take journey into the teaching of Rob Bell and why it must be rejected by those "Commanded" to protect the sheep.

For a clear gospel link click here.

For the purpose of this blog and detecting heresy we have to start with what the gospel is NOT....

I just want to tackle the BIG baby food, obvious foundations for Christianity. Like Hell, The Bible, Salvation and touch on a few doctrines like the substitutionary atonement of Christ and universalism. These are the issues that those who are in the faith should be able to detect and call out those who deny them.

Lets take a look...

Rob Bell on the need for salvation.

Rob Bell:
“You can’t get enough points to get in with the Big Guy. You can’t do enough good deeds and then God will like you. One of the things the Spirit does is remind us that we belong. Period. Just exactly as we are. You are loved by God.”

Really Rob, how is that the Bible says things like God is angry with the wicked everyday? God will judge the world in righteousness? No murderer or liar or fornicator will enter the kingdom of Heaven. A man MUST be Born again to enter into Heaven. How Rob? If we are all loved by God just the way we are then why send Jesus? This is a flat out heresy line.


Rob Bell on the Bible's accuracy.

Rob Bell:
“The Bible is a collection of stories that teach us about what it looks like when God is at work through actual people. The Bible has the authority it does only because it contains stories about people interacting with the God who has all authority”
-Velvet Elvis, p.65

“…it wasn’t until the 300s that what we know as the sixty-six books of the Bible were actually agreed upon as the ‘Bible’. This is part of the problem with continually insisting that one of the absolutes of the Christian faith must be a belief that “Scripture alone” is our guide. It sounds nice, but it is not true. In reaction to abuses by the church, a group of believers during a time called the Reformation claimed that we only need the authority of the Bible. But the problem is that we got the Bible from the church voting on what the Bible even is. So when I affirm the Bible as God’s word, in the same breath I have to affirm that when those people voted, God was somehow present, guiding them to do what they did. When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true. In affirming the Bible as inspired, I also have to affirm the Spirit who I believe was inspiring those people to choose those books.”
-Velvet Elvis, p.68

[The Bible is a] “human product…rather than the product of divine fiat”

Wow, now the textual criticism and the historic agreement of the Bible is so elementary to any Bible believing seminary. For such a popular speaker to not only be able to actually explain how we Got the Bible we have today and how we can trust it but also to wash it away as just a book...just a human product. Rob, why believe any of it?

Rob Bell on Hell.
Come on this is an easy one.

”When people use the word hell, what do they mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter–they are all hell on earth. Jesus’ desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth. What’s disturbing is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about Hell here and now. As a Christian, I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.”
- Velvet Elvis, p.148

“Heaven is full of forgiven people. Hell is full of forgiven people. Heaven is full of people God loves, whom Jesus died for. Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for. The difference is how we choose to live, which story we choose to live in, which version of reality we trust. Ours or God’s.”
- Velvet Elvis, p.146

On the Fall:

“I can’t find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identify ourselves first and foremost as sinners. Now this doesn’t mean we don’t sin; that’s obvious. In the book of James it’s written like this: ‘We all stumble in many ways.’ Once again, the greatest truth of the story of Adam and Eve isn’t that it happened, but that it happens.”
- Velvet Elvis, p. 139

On “Ultimate Reality”:

“I don’t follow Jesus because I think Christianity is the best religion. I follow Jesus because he leads me into ultimate reality. He teaches me to live in tune with how reality is. When Jesus said, ‘No one comes to the Father except through me’, he was saying that his way, his words, his life is our connection to how things truly are at the deepest levels of existence. For Jesus then, the point of religion is to help us connect with ultimate reality, God.”
- Velvet Elvis p. 83

On the Nature of the Atonement:

“So this reality, this forgiveness, this reconciliation, is true for everybody. Paul insisted that when Jesus died on the cross he was reconciling ‘all things, in heaven and on earth, to God. This reality then isn’t something we make true about ourselves by doing something. It is already true. Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making.”
- Velvet Elvis p. 146

On the Virgin Birth:

“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births?

But what if, as you study the origin of the word “virgin” you discover that the word “virgin” in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word “virgin” could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being “born of a virgin” also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?”
-Velvet Elvis, p. 26

On Faith:

“Who does Peter lose faith in? Not Jesus; he is doing fine. Peter loses faith in himself. Peter loses faith that he can do what his rabbi is doing. If the rabbi calls you to be his disciple, then he believes that you can actually be like him. As we read the stories of Jesus’ life with his talmidim, his disciples, what do we find frustrates him to no end? When his disciples lose faith in themselves….. Notice how many places in the accounts of Jesus’ life he gets frustrated with his disciples. Because they are incapable? No, because of how capable they are. He sees what they could be and could do, and when they fall short it provokes him to no end. It isn’t their failure that’s the problem, it’s their greatness. They don’t realize what they are capable of….God has an amazingly high view of people. God believes that people are capable of amazing things. I’ve been told I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I’m learning is that Jesus believes in me….God has faith in me.”
-Velvet Elvis, pp. 133-134


Let me end with a couple videos that show how heretical Nooma videos are. If you have played them to your church STOP. You are not examining the teaching with the BIBLE.



The Biblical Response


The Gospel...Unkind?




You be the Judge!!!!