"Turn or Burn" vs The Gospel

The gospel that the evangelists and apostles preached throughout the New Testament, did not appeal to hell as an ultimatum motivator. Hell was simply not the subject to be saved from.

Paul taught that Christ gave Himself to “rescue us from the present wicked age,” (Gal. 1:3-4), or to redeem us from “every lawless deed,” and the "the curse of the law" (Tit. 2:11-15; Gal. 3:13). He never used hell as a threat. The one and only time he mentioned hell, it was to comfort us in proclaiming its defeat: “Oh Hades, where is your victory?” (1 Cor. 15:55). This is the gospel: Jesus' defeat of death, sin, hell and the devil.

Peter preached that we should “be saved from this perverse generation,” (Acts 2:40). And that we were redeemed from our “aimless conduct,” (1 Pet. 1:18-19). He only mentioned Hades in reference to how Jesus was not abandoned there since God put an end to the "agony of death," (Ac. 2:24-31).

Jude never mentioned hell. James mentioned it once in reference to the tongue which is “set on fire by Gehenna,” (Jam. 3:6). John the Revelator is the only one who may have mentioned Hades as a threat when describing how “Death and Hades” were thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:14). But John did not write to unbelievers, he wrote "to the seven churches which are in Asia". John also wrote that Jesus holds “the keys of Hades and of Death,” (Rev. 1:18). The question is: What will Jesus do with those keys?

Hell is a teeny-weeny subject in the Bible. Out of the 770,000+ words in my NKJV Bible, hell is mentioned 32 times. Only 13 times in my NASB, and not once in my YLT.

So are you saying there is no hell, you may ask? What’s even the point of sharing the gospel then? What’s the point of Jesus?

First of all, there is a hell. But I can’t understand how someone who has actually met Jesus would ask that question. Eternal life is about union with God, not the threat of hell. Salvation is not just from something; it’s for Someone.

Even if there was no hell, I could never see how Jesus would be pointless. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us! And knowing Jesus is eternal life now, (John 17:3). If a person accepts Christ as a ‘get out of jail free’ card to a hypothetical eternal Auschwitz, rather than receiving Christ for who He is, then I wonder if that person even knows Him. It’s not a compliment to God that we choose Him over hell.

The gospel is not a ‘fire insurance’ that we must sell. It’s an invitation to a union of Love! We have not been sent to condemn the world. We are not better than Jesus who did not come to condemn the world. When Jesus arrived he found it already in condemnation and in need of grace and life. People have enough problems, and don’t need us to give them more. They need Good News.

But so many Christians don’t even know what the gospel is. Preachers shout behind the pulpit: "I'll preach the gospel even if it empties the church!" And that's the problem! So many Christians have such an unattractive message that it empties their churches. They don't have the message that caused 3000 people to be saved on the Day of Pentecost. The good-news invitation of God’s love revealed in Jesus, has become a bad-news ultimatum, distilled crassly by “turn or burn” evangelists.

The invitation became a demand with the most brutal threats, instead of a message that shows the Father’s concern for his prodigal children’s self-inflicted condition. God has in fact been presented as the threat himself, an angry deity Jesus needed to save us from.

“All have sinned and are come short of the glory of God” is a favorite verse for “turn or burn” preachers. But this is not an accusatory or threatening statement by Paul.

Paul is not saying that we fall short from keeping God’s law, or that sin is defined as not measuring up to the morality code of our religious system. Paul simply pointed out that everybody has sinned.

But the same all are “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ” (Rom 3:24). And this is the gospel. We are come short of “the glory of God”. Thus we are in need of God’s glory and mercy.

Therefore Jesus gave us the glory which the Father gave Him, so that we may be one as He is one with the Father, (John 17:22). We now have God’s glory, and furthermore we behold the glory of the One who is full of grace (John 1:14), and we go “from glory to glory”.