An MSNBC reporter’s interview with well-known pastor Rob Bell has gone viral in the evangelical Internet realm, no doubt because the interviewer – Martin Bashir – asks Bell a series of tough questions that many orthodox Christians believe have been unanswered.
“What you’ve done is you’re amending the Gospel – the Christian message – so that it’s palatable to contemporary people who find, for example, the idea of hell and heaven very difficult to stomach… That’s why you’ve done, isn’t it,” Bashir asks Bell at one point.
At another point, Bashir asks Bell if it is ‘irrelevant’ for someone to follow Christ in this life if – as Bell argues – non-Christians will be saved anyway.
The YouTube video has been viewed more than 35,000 times in the wake of the March 15 release of Bell’s book, ‘Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived’.
In the book, which many Christians believe to be ‘heretic’, Bell denies a literal hell and argues that people who have never professed Christ will unconsciously be saved through Christ.
Bell’s evasive answers to questions have frustrated Christian leaders. Even in the interview, he denies he is a universalist, and then proceeds to make universalistic arguments.
The video can be viewed here.
