Hell Doesn't Exist
Since his great falling away from the heights of Charismania, Tulsa pastor, "Bishop" Carlton Pearson, has had his publicist working in high gear. Nearly every major news network has featured his story about his great awakening to the truth about Hell, i.e. that Hell doesn't exist.Pearson claims that God revealed to him that the orthodox concept of Hell as a lake of fire of eternal punishment was a myth. He claims he could not reconcile that such a loving God would eternally torture unbelievers in unimaginable horror. And after watching a news program on Rwanda, God spoke to him and told him that Hell was "on earth--it was something man created for himself."
By embracing this concept of hell as a myth, i.e. not literal, Pearson saw the obvious implications. He had to embrace the homosexual. A loving God would not destroy fallible people, and therefore, sin was not what Pearson thought it was. God intended to embrace everyone, and sin is merely a mythological description of human fallibility. Pearson calls his message the "Gospel of Inclusion."
Here's a brief story by ABC on the Pearson phenomenom:
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The analytical thinker should recognize some obvious holes in Pearson's logic. First, if Hell is here on earth, and it's not what ancient tradition claims it to be, then how can he say that everyone will go to heaven? If Hell is mythical, then Heaven is equally mythical. If Hell is what men make it to be on earth, then so is Heaven. It's the height of inconsistency to hold the Bible as reliable in it's propositions concerning Heaven, yet unreliable in it's assertions regarding Hell.
But why stop there? If the Bible is as deviously fallacious as he claims it to be, then why not dump the clerical collar--and earing, for that matter--and simply go Unitarian? If the Bible is unreliable about selective items of your choosing, then it's unreliable in those items NOT of your choosing.
At the end of this clip, the ABC newsperson says that Pearson's view of Hell potentially damages the traditional church because they can't charge people money for keeping them out of Hell. Somebody slap him, please. I can guarantee you that Bishop Pearson is STILL charging his congregants! He ain't got no day job.
Lastly, Pearson certainly hasn't discarded his "God complex." That's the one thing he obviously retained from his Charismatic days--if ain't broke, don't fix it! Just take a look at his web site, and tell me how "humble" his newfound revelation has made him. If that's humility, then I've never seen a man so proud of his own humility!
