(By Bert Farias) Charisma magazine writes, “At one point, Bishop Carlton Pearson pastored Higher Dimensions Family Church, a Pentecostal megachurch of over 5,000 people in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was mentored by Oral Roberts and served on the board at Oral Roberts University. Then Pearson declared that he no longer believed in hell and preached what he called the ‘gospel of inclusion.’ As a result, he was forced to resign from ORU’s board of regents and was deemed a heretic by his former peers. He traded his Pentecostal ministry for universalism. “Pearson’s story is now the subject of a new Hollywood film, Come Sunday, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.”
I’m very familiar with this tragic story. When I attended Bible school in Tulsa in the early to mid-1980s, I’d periodically visit Pearson’s church because I enjoyed his dynamic preaching. It shocked me to hear of how he’d become a universalist. In a movie clip, Pearson played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, asks one of the religious clerics in a courtroom-like scene, “If you could get your daddy out of hell, would you?” And then, “Are we more merciful than God?” implying that God’s love and mercy will not allow anyone to go, or at least remain, in hell. READ MORE
I GUESS HE DID NOT READ THIS IN Isaiah 14:9 – Hell from beneath is moved for you to meet you at your coming: it stirs up the dead for you, even all the chief ones of the earth; it has raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.
I agree with Bishop Pearson. The two words Jesus used regarding hell are. 1) Gehenna, the local trash dump in the valley of Himmon. Where sacrifices were offered to the pagan god Baal. Fires were always burning so as to consume the trash. Worms or maggots feasted on the flesh of animals and criminals thrown there. 2) Hades, the common grave, the unseen place. No suffering is mention in either place. The only other place mentioned once in 2 Peter 2:4 is Tartarus. Mentioned in mythology, created for the most evil angels, not for humans! It was below so called hell. In perpetual darkness. No suffering intended or implied.