you think it would be hard to find evangelicals who have his view of hell? I do, many I know do, greg boyd does, we are all just too scared to say on sunday.

An important step in clarifying your beliefs is to talk about and even defend them. So the fact that the publicity campaign for Rob Bell’s book has provided an impetus for Christians to actually do theology (to figure out what they think about God) is a positive thing. Even if you disagree with Bell, it’s important for Christians to wrestle with what they believe. Another great resource on heaven, what it's like and who will be there is “Heaven Revealed” by Dr. Paul Enns, released this week by Moody Publishers. I recommend it. Here’s the amazon page: http://dld.bz/P8sz

Universal Salvation is NOT a new idea. Everyone seems to be commenting on this like it's brand new but it's been a major controversy in the Christian Church since its earliest days. Around 215 in Alexander, Origen argued that since the first fall (of Adam) was universal, so all, including Satan himself, have the chance to work back towards God's original purpose. All will be saved, since all come from God. Although the Church in both East and West turned its back on Origen's vision of a universal salvation (universalism), that was hardly the end of it. Evagrius Ponticus (435-499), a leading monk in the Nile Delta, who influenced generations of monks to come, echoed Origen's universalism and repeatedly asserted that even those suffering in Hell kept those imperishable seeds of virtue. No wonder that his Church decided he was dangerous. But the idea lived on. Isaac, a seventh century monk from Qatar who was briefly the Bishop of Nineveh, took up the notion of Origen and Evagrius that in the end all will be saved. He wrote, "It is not [the way of] the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction."
While the Catholic Church rejected the idea of universalism, it did have a certain comforting appeal and, in fact, was reborn around 950 as the idea of a middle state between heaven and hell called Purgatory, a concept found nowhere in any Bible. As MacCulloch says in his monumental book, Christianity: The First 3,000 Years, "Few people can regard their drearily unspectacular sins as justifying hellfire, but most would agree with the Alexandrians that life on earth provides hardly enough time to remedy even those sins and enter Heaven without further purgation. Penance could be done in this middle-state, which was time-limited, and which moreover had only one exit, not to Hell but to Paradise."
Universalism without Purgatory continued to be put forth over the centuries so it should be no surprise that a populist preacher raises it again today. Yes, Bell says, "Love Wins" is not universalism per se, but I'm reminded that "a rose by any other name..." The big question in my mind is: How do you deal with it? The answer: Read and study the Bible.
--Dave Ahl, www.BibleStudyMen.com

I’d actually say that Love Wins is somewhat of a Rorschach Test (http://prophets-priests-poets.info/2011/03/25/love-wins-rorschach-in-a-binder/): If you can’t stand Bell, or have always questioned what he had to say, you will read the book through that lens and find what you’re looking for. If you’ve been on the fence about him, you’ll still be there. If you’ve read him charitably in the past and found that, even when you disagree, he is still within the stream of orthodox Christianity, you will still find that he’s there. One of his stated purposes in the book is to get folks to study what is actually in Scripture, and to ask the tough questions – and accept fuzzy answers and to be charitable to others who do, as well. For example, here is an examination ( http://prophets-priests-poets.info/2011/03/27/what-the-hell/ )of what the Scriptures actually say about hell, and it is possible to take them seriously, yet come up with a different answer than eternal, conscious torture.