From an interview with Rev. Carlton Pearson:
Pearson: I was angry that people go to hell.
In fact, for Carlton, it was personal. His own grandparents had been preachers once. But then they “backslid,” as Carlton puts it... had committed adultery, had learned to love booze and must therefore be in hell. So he was mad at them. But also...
Pearson: I was resentful of God. See, if you fear God the way we’re taught to fear Him, you’ll serve Him, you’ll believe in Him, you’ll worship Him—but you probably will never really love Him.
And then one day, it happened. Bishop Carlton Pearson was sitting in the living room of his big house in Tulsa having his dinner in front of the TV set.
There was a news story on about the refugee crisis in Rwanda.
Pearson: And you saw these African people—mostly women and children walking slowly back trying to come home. There was no light or life in their eyes. It was a horrible thing for me to see. Swollen bellies and skeletal bodies, emaciated... and then the babies looking at the mom and the mama looking out in space. It was sad. And I’m sitting there with my little fat-cheeked baby and my plateful of food, watching my big screen TV. A man of God, a preacher of the Gospel, and Evangelist, and I’m looking at those people assuming that they’re probably Muslim and going to Hell. “’Cause God wouldn’t do that to Christians,” I’m thinking...
Morrison: They deserve hell.
Pearson: They deserved hell.
And then, right at that moment, Carlton had his revelation.
Pearson: And I said, “God I don’t know how you’re gonna call yourself a loving God and allow those people to suffer so much and then just suck them into hell.” And I believe it was the Spirit of God in me saying, “Is that what you think we’re doing?”
Morrison: You heard this voice.
Pearson: Yes, sir. And I said, “That’s what I’ve been taught”
He talked back, he says, at that voice in his head.
Pearson: “God, I can’t I can’t save the whole world.” And that’s when I heard that voice say, “Precisely. That’s what we did. And if you’d tell them that they are redeemed, you wouldn’t create those kinds of problems. Can’t you see they’re already in Hell?”
Clear as a bell, says Carlton, he heard god telling him to preach this new message that hell is a place in life, and that after death. Everybody is redeemed. Everybody.
Pearson: I immediately started thinking about my grandparents. “Well, maybe they’re not in Hell. Maybe if they’re already saved, if the cross and Christ and all that stuff really happened and is really spiritual—which I believe it is—then—if He came to save the world, then the world is saved unless he’s a failure.”
This was powerful stuff. Though dangerous too.
Morrison: You mean Hitler’s in heaven?
Pearson: You think Hitler’s more powerful than the blood of Jesus? I mean, I got a hell to put a lot of people in. I’d sent Hitler and every slave trader straight to hell and a few deacons in my church if you wanna know the truth—I’d send people to hell, but I’m not God. He’s the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not ours only, but the sins of the whole world.
Then Carlton started preaching what he’d come to call “The Gospel of Inclusion.” He told his big congregation that Hell doesn’t exist in the way the church has taught and that all people will eventually be reunited with god.
Pearson: For the first time in all my life as a Christian, I really not only loved God, I started liking God...
To hell and back - Dateline NBC - MSNBC.com
06-07-2008, 05:50 PM
Revelation: experience of God
Linear Mode
