A Sign of God's Judgment? Part 3

A Sign of God's Judgment? Part 3
Monday, March 23, 2026 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Apostasy / Contemporary issues / Scripture discussion / Spiritual deception / The church / Thought for Today / Truth telling

Universal salvation is a lie. One can construct a “Christian” version of the concept by taking a few verses of Scripture out of their context, but biblically, the belief does not hold up.

Even worse, a common subsequent step after one comes to accept universal salvation, is to outright deny the Christian faith. After all, if everyone is ultimately saved anyway, why bother being a Christian? Why not have your “fun” now, and repent later? After all, didn’t some influential leaders within the Greek Orthodox Church teach that Hell was redemptive? If God saves everybody in the end, does anything I might do really matter?

Two prominent examples: Rob Bell wrote “Love Wins” in 2011, a best-seller in support of universal salvation. Julie Ferwerda wrote “Raising Hell,” a book that denied biblical Hell, also in 2011, releasing the key paperback edition in 2014. Both claimed to be Christians. At the time, Rob Bell was a celebrity within the (less than truly biblical) emergent church movement. Where are they now? Rob Bell has faded from the scene and privately teaches a progressive inner spirituality, devoid of any biblical references. Julie Ferwerda has embraced the occult kabbala, combining kabbalistic practices with astrology.

When one reads Scripture, and contra Origen, takes it at face value, one finds that Jesus frequently taught about the reality of eternal Hell. That picture is very different from the claims of the universalists.

First, Jesus stated that few would be saved, not the “everyone” the universalists claim. Matthew 7:13–14 (NAU): “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Second, Jesus taught that Hell would be a place of fire, of weeping and gnashing of teeth. The phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” means a combination of incredibly deep sorrow coupled with uncontrolled rage. Matthew 13:49–50 (NAU): “So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Third, Jesus taught that both places, life and punishment, will be eternal. In his teaching about how He will judge the nations, symbolized by the sheep and the goats, the sheep receive eternal life while the goats suffer eternal punishment. The passage concludes, Matthew 25:46 (NAU), referencing the goats first: “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

The Greek word translated eternal is aionios: an indeterminate number of ages, a time span that goes on and on with no definite end, hence eternal. The passage is clear: the duration is the same for both groups.

Scripture states that the lake of fire is the second death, that at the final judgment, all those whose names are not in the book of life, will be cast into that fire.

Revelation 20:12–15 (NAU): “And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

What we see is that Scripture disproves Clement’s and Origen’s teachings about universal salvation. But as we will see in the next post, their teaching on universalism was far from the only problem within the Eastern Church.

Note: for a full discussion on what universalists teach and the biblical refutation of their beliefs, see my book: “Will God Save Everyone? Christian Universalism, Hell, Heaven, and the Scriptures.”

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