Joe Woodard's Reviews > Erasing Hell: What God Said About Eternity, and the Things We've Made Up

The voice that stick out in Chan's books consistently is a voice of humility. Chan writes from a humble perspective recognizing that he is not going to have all the answers. He also hands this response to Bell (though Chan wouldn't call it that) very carefully. He starts off the book talking about the many people involved in editing and correcting the theology of the book. Chan's most poignant refutation against Bell is when he pointed out that a historical "fact" that Bell used was misdated about a few hundred years. This fact was regarding Gehenna and it being a location for the city dump. Chan pointed out that this was not known as a dump until a few hundred years after Jesus walked the earth. This puts a whole in Bell's argument because Bell used this information to show that Hell may be what we experience here on earth, in the "Hells" we create for ourselves.
Chan also pointed out the importance of getting Hell right. If it is only temporal, and everyone will end up in eternity with God given enough opportunities to repent, then we do not need to worry too much about warning people about this place. If Hell doesn't even exist, then we will be preaching an unnecessary stumbling block if we talk about the existence of Hell. If Hell does exist, and we don't teach about it, then we will be doing a disservice to those who are destined to perish without repentance and faith in the gospel.