Regarding this article from CBN (credit CBN.com), they must have been polling "the man on the street", because these results don't sound like many of the church people I know.
By Lee Webb
CBN News AnchorWednesday, March 28, 2007RSSPodcasts
Pope Benedict used a mass in the suburbs of Rome, Sunday, to remind people that hell is a very real place.
"Jesus came to tell us everyone is wanted in paradise, and that hell, about which little gets said today, exists and is eternal for those who shut their hearts to His love," the 79-year old pontiff said.
But the latest research from Barna Associates shows that only 32 percent of adults see hell as, "an actual place of torment and suffering where people's souls go after death."
Why the low number? [Even though many evangelicals consider as one the greatest sermons of all time Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God", in which he proclaims the damnation and torment of souls] Some well-known evangelical leaders agree with the Pope that the Church has been ominously silent about hell.
Stroll the streets of America today and you'll find that eternal destiny is not a subject most people even want to talk about. When they do, their thoughts on the matter are quite diverse.
Question: Do you believe there is a place called Hell?
Response: Yes, sir.
Question: Why do you believe that?
Response: Basically, my belief in Christianity has taught me that.
Question: Do you believe that all people, when they die, would go to heaven?
Response: (pause) Hmmm. Good question. Yes.
Response: I don't know, I think it would have to be something very, very, extremely bad to go to hell."
Response: Honest belief? This is hell. We are in hell now. It has to be better in the next life."
That confusion doesn't surprise the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary Paige Patterson. He lays the blame squarely on the church.
"You can traverse the entire United States on any given Sunday morning, and you very probably will not hear a sermon on the judgment of God or eternal punishment," he said. "Evangelicals have voted by the silence of their voices that they either do not believe in (the doctrine of hell) or else no longer have the courage and conviction to stand and say anything about it."
Author and theologian R.C. Sproul is even more direct.
"I think what we face in the church today is a virtual eclipse of the character of God," he said.
Quote from: jabcat on January 19, 2011, 07:32:41 AM
"I think what we face in the church today is a virtual eclipse of the character of God," he said.
In other words hell is the character of God.