This one minute clip comes from our full length videos called "Citywide Call-in Bible Answers" series found on our playlist called "End Times, Supernatural Prophecies, Tough Bible Questions" with 88 videos at    • End Times, Supernatural Prophecies, T...   . The "In Defense of the Faith" crew featuring Larry Wessels & David Krill was a special live telecast (at the time it was recorded). The broadcast aired for 15 years on public access television in Austin, Texas to over 300,000 households. The premise for the show was very simple, to answer people's questions & arguments (Jude 3) concerning the Bible & to consistently present the Gospel of Jesus Christ. See our main YouTube channel CAnswersTV (which stands for Christian Answers Television) at    / @canswerstv   . See "Dealing With Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Idolatry & the Virgin Mary" at    • Dealing With Roman Catholicism, Easte...   . See also our playlist "Dealing with Hell, Lake of Fire, Unpopular Bible Doctrines" at    • Dealing with Hell, Lake of Fire, Unpo...   with 75 videos.

What about family members who are burning in hell? Will A Loving God Really Condemn People to Hell? The problem of individual human destiny has always pressed hard upon thoughtful Christians who take the Bible seriously, for Scripture affirms these three things:

(1) The reality of hell as a state of eternal, destructive punishment, in which God’s judgment for sin is directly experienced;

(2) The certainty of hell for all who choose it by rejecting Jesus Christ and his offer of eternal life; and

(3) The justice of hell as an appropriate divine judgment upon humanity for our lawless and cruel deeds.

It was, to be sure, hell-deserving sinners whom Jesus came to save. All who put their trust in him may know themselves forgiven, justified, and accepted forever—and thus delivered from the wrath to come. But what of those who lack this living faith—those who are hypocrites in the church; or “good pagans” who lived before Christ’s birth; or those who, through no fault of their own, never heard the Christian message, or who met it only in an incomplete and distorted form? Or what of those who lived in places where Christianity was a capital offense? Are they all necessarily lost?

The universalistic idea that all people will eventually be saved by grace is a comforting belief. It relieves anxiety about the destiny of pagans, atheists, devotees of non-Christian religions, victims of post-Christian secularity—the millions of adults who never hear the gospel and millions of children who die before they can understand it. All sensitive Christians would like to embrace universalism. It would get us off a very painful hook.

However, no biblical passage unambiguously asserts universal final salvation, and some speak very explicitly about the lostness of the lost. Universalism is a theological speculation that discounts the meaning of these New Testament passages in favor of what Universalists claim to be thrust of New Testament thinking: that is, that God’s retributive justice toward humanity is always a disciplinary expression of love that ultimately wins them salvation.

It would be nice to believe that, but Scripture nowhere suggests it when speaking of judgment, and the counterarguments seem overwhelmingly cogent. Universalism ignores the constant biblical stress on the decisiveness and finality of this life’s decisions for determining eternal destiny.

“God ‘will give to each person according to what he has done.’ To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil…but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good…For God does not show favoritism” (Romans 2:6-11). This is Paul affirming God’s justice according to the classic definition of justice, as giving everyone his or her due. All Scripture speaks this way.

Universalism condemns Christ himself, who warned people to flee hell at all costs. If it were true that all humanity will ultimately be saved from hell, he would have to have been either incompetent (ignorant that all were going to be saved) or immoral (knowing, but concealing it, so as to bluff people into the kingdom through fear).

The Universalist idea of sovereign grace saving all non-believers after death raises new problems.

If God has the ability to bring all to faith eventually, why would he not do it in this life in every case where the gospel is known?

If it is beyond God’s power to convert all who know the gospel here, on what grounds can we be sure that he will be able to do it hereafter?

The Universalist’s doctrine of God cannot be made fully coherent. “I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks…to preach the gospel,” wrote Paul.