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+Q: What do you think the appeal of universalism or pluralism is for people who profess to be Christians?
+A: The appeal for universalism, that is that everybody who’s good at all is going to go to heaven, the appeal is primarily because it avoids hell. I think the idea that the truth of eternal punishment in hell is emotionally very, very difficult for anybody to understand – and I mean by that, even us, anybody to understand it – and that’s because we don’t understand the justice and holiness and righteousness of God. And I think if people recognize that salvation comes in Christ alone and only by grace alone through faith alone in Christ, that changes their family history, because all of a sudden the people they thought would be in heaven because they were good people are not. So that’s a very, very difficult reality for people to accept. But that is what the Bible says, and that’s what we’re after. So that is the intent to close out in people’s minds anything but the true gospel. That’s the most loving thing you can do is tell them the truth, and that’s basically what Jesus did. I went to that passage and other things that Jesus said to point to the fact that it was Jesus who rejected the good people. It was Jesus who said they were whited sepulchers, they were to be cursed, they were sons of hell producing sons of hell. Jesus said that; and that’s why, as I said this morning, they killed Him because He basically told them they were sinners. John 7, “They hate Me because I say their deeds are evil.” That’s John 7:7. “They hate Me because I say their deeds are evil.” But if they can’t get past that hate, they can’t come to salvation.
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+Q: What is faith?
+A: Faith is believing something is true. Now there is a simple way to illustrate that. Everybody lives by faith, everybody does. You get in your car and you turn on your car, and if it’s got eight cylinders, there are eight explosions going on under your hood repeatedly; but you don’t think your car’s going to blow up. You go to the kitchen, you turn on the faucet, you drink the water; you don’t know what’s playing in the pipes. You go to the doctor, he’s going to do surgery. You say, “Okay, knock me out and do what you want.” You’ve maybe never met the guy, you don’t know anything about him, and you don’t know what he’s doing when you’re knocked out. You go to a restaurant, you don’t know who’s playing in the kitchen, but you eat the food. Why? Because you’ve learned that there are certain things that you can trust. I mean, I guess an extreme illustration would be you bungie jump.