This past Sunday, during an episode of Oprah’s “Super Soul Sunday,” Rob Bell, the former head “pastor” of Michigan’s Mars Hill Bible Church and author of “Love Wins,” a book questioning the orthodox Christian view of Hell, told the talk show host that he believes the Church is “moments away” from embracing same-sex “marriage.”

Bell had appeared on the broadcast with his wife Kristen to discuss their book “The Zimzum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage.”

“I think it’s great that you all made a conscious choice to include gay marriage in [the book],” Oprah states following a clip showing Mrs. Bell reading a selection claiming that same-sex nuptials are a gift to the world. “Why [did you do that]?”

“One of the oldest aches in the bones of humanity is loneliness,” Rob Bell replied. “Loneliness is not good for the world. Whoever you are, gay or straight, it is totally normal, natural and healthy to want someone to go through life with. It’s central to our humanity. We want someone to go on the journey with.”

“When is the Church going to get that?” Oprah asked.

“We’re close,” he responded.

“I think it’s evolving,” Bell’s wife interjected.

“Lots of people are already there,” Bell added. “We think it’s inevitable and we’re moments away from the Church accepting it.”

He asserted that the Church will “continue to be even more irrelevant” if it continues to cite the Bible’s prohibitions on homosexual behavior.

“I think culture is already there, and the Church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2,000 years ago as their best defense,” Bell said, “when you have in front of you flesh-and-blood people who are your brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles, and co-workers and neighbors, and they love each other and just want to go through life.”

“There are churches who are moving forward and there are churches who are almost regressing and making it more of a battle,” his wife added.

As previously reported, Bell first publicly came out in support of same-sex “marriage” in 2013.

“I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man,” he said. “I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs—I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

Bell likewise opined that many evangelicals can no longer be classified as conservatives because their beliefs have changed with the times.

“I think we are witnessing the death of a particular subculture that doesn’t work. … You sort of die or you adapt,” he asserted. “And we have supported policies and ways of viewing the world that are actually destructive. And we’ve done it in the name of God and we need to repent.”

In light of his controversial views, some have said that Bell is leading many down a dark and destructive path.

“Plain and simple, Rob Bell’s teachings are not true to the words of Scripture,” Eric Ludy, pastor of Church at Ellerslie and president of Ellerslie Mission Society in Windsor, Colorado, told Christian News Network in 2013. “They are a sly attempt at blending the philosophies of our post-modern age with the vernacular of pop-Christianity. The end product is highly dangerous to the human soul because it is the forging of a golden calf god—a god of our culture’s making—and certainly not the God of the Bible.”

Photo: Oprah Winfrey Network

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