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" Is God our friend, our provider, our protector, our father—or is God the kind of judge who may in the end declare that we deserve to spend forever separated from our Father? Is God like the characters in a story Jesus would tell, old ladies who keep searching for the lost coin until they find it, shepherds who don’t rest until that one sheep is back in the fold, fathers who rush out to greet and embrace their returning son, or, in the end, will God give up? "
― Rob Bell , Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
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" Second, Jesus consistently affirmed heaven as a real place, space, and dimension of God’s creation, where God’s will and only God’s will is done. Heaven is that realm where things are as God intends them to be. On earth, lots of wills are done. Yours, mine, and many others. And so, at present, heaven and earth are not one. What Jesus taught, what the prophets taught, what all of Jewish tradition pointed to and what Jesus lived in anticipation of, was the day when earth and heaven would be one. The day when God’s will would be done on earth as it is now done in heaven. The day when earth and heaven will be the same place. This is the story of the Bible. This is the story Jesus lived and told. As it’s written at the end of the Bible in Revelation 21: “God’s dwelling place is now among the people.” Life in the age to come. "
― Rob Bell , Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
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" When people pursue a destructive course of action and they can’t be convinced to change course, we say they’re “hell-bent” on it. Fixed, obsessed, unshakable in their pursuit, unwavering in their commitment to a destructive direction. The stunning twist in all of this is that when God lets the Israelites go the way they’re insisting on heading and when Paul “turns people over,” it’s all for good. The point of this turning loose, this letting go, this punishment, is to allow them to live with the full consequences of their choices, confident that the misery they find themselves in will have a way of getting their attention. "
― Rob Bell , Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived