Studying God

Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman Jr., in Sense & Nonsense About Heaven and Hell (Zondervan, 2007), plainly confront false teaching as they contrast the doctrinal perspectives of liberal theologians, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses with orthodox biblical revelation about heaven and hell. They provide good perspective while answering tough but common questions such as, What about those who never hear the gospel? Do infants go to heaven? What is the nature of heaven and hell?

Bart Ehrman supplies false teaching in God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer (HarperOne, 2008). He argues along the same stale lines of 19th-century skeptics and claims, despite lack of evidence, to have discovered a Bible full of unknown authors, post-dated books, and errors. He ignores the evidence within the book of Job so as to complain that "Job is never given a chance to get in a word" and "does not repent." Ehrman, unlike Job, does not understand that God's ways are higher than our ways.

-Wayne Southerland is a minister at Southern Illinois University Carbondale