I believe this post. UR is impossible according to the truth that has been established in this post. 
How so? I don’t understand what you just said. Paul commanded you to be an Ambassador of Reconciliation. But that takes credentials. How long are you going to dink around with this or that before you accept the responsibility? Take your time. It’s the step from milk to meat, as Paul said. Are you ready?
You could be a great voice for the Gospel. (That’s an appeal to your ego and a cheap shot - forget I said that.) You could come to the truth and be set free, truly free, from ‘religion.’ Which has you in its grips. You could die there and never know you’re dying.
He was saying that God owes us redemption because of the faith we present him that is of ourselves. Utterly repugnant. I don’t see how anyone could admit to such a belief and be happy with that.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” That’s not some instruction for faking humility.
But that’s not what 17.8 says; rather it says that the names are written in the book of life from the foundation of the world. You know, the problem with using prophetic metaphorical language to establish doctrine is it leaves itself open to a wide variety of interpretation. Even scripture notes that we “prophecy in part”. In fact, Revelation is interpreted at least in 4 significantly different ways: 1) Preterist, 2) Historically, 3) Metaphorically, and 4) Futuristically. And those who interpret it Futuristically, interpret it in many different ways amoung theirselves. I believe it is much better to establish doctrine scripture which is more didactic in nature, and hold one’s interpretation of prophetic metaphorical material very lightly.
See what I mean, in a matter of just a few days, you’ve made major changes in your beliefs and interpretation of the metaphorical language of Revelation. In a few days, I suppose you could change again. One must also take into consideration that many people interpret Revelation as a series of different visions that are saying the same thing but from a different perspective, mixing and overlapping metaphors - making it all the more challenging to understand.
“I still believe”, ok, maybe you’ll change your understanding of it tomorrow.
Well, that’s one interpretation “IF” one interprets Revelation Futuristically, AND “IF” one interprets is from a Pre-Trib position. But of course, many believers, my self included, do not interpret these passages based on those assumptions, and thus dismiss your conclusions founded upon these assumptions.
To go into the remainder of your post point by point would be useless because we disagree upon your basic assumptions.
Oh well,
Blessings,
Sherman
Aaron37, I don’t see Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur and the days of Awe revealing the ultimate purpose of the Tribulation Period. Did God lead you to write this post? Do you believe that your view of this is an infallible interpretation?
Just because you don’t see it… does not make it anyless true. 
What are your reasons not seeing it based on my post? I believe they are a foreshadow of the rapture of the church, the ultimate purpose of the Tribulation period, and the final judgment in Rev 20:11-15. Jim, research the OT feasts of Trumpets, The Atonement, and the days of Awe for yourself. God has established the pattern of these feasts in his word. There are many types and shadows throughout the OT. 
Will you answer my questions?
Did God lead you to write this post?
Do you believe that your view of this is an infallible interpretation?
Let it go, brother…I did…Let it be a lesson not to stamp your future writings with the Holy Spirit when they are your interpretations.( your not the first and won’t be the last)
I’m sorry if you answered my question and I missed it. I still don’t understand your answer or the implication of your answer. For example, do you claim that God never led you to write a single word?
And do you believe that God will one day lead you to write a word?
I assume that since you claim to be a Pentecostal that you believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as knowledge, wisdom, and prophecy continue to this day. Is that correct?
And are you suggesting that Pentecostals or charismatics may never say that God has led them in preaching, written or oral?
If I claimed to be an infallible messenger, then I would have a lesson to learn from this.
I’m not a Pentecostal, but I do believe that the gifts of the Spirit are in operation today as in the book of Acts.The gifts of the Holy Spirit such as the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom, and prophecy are not used to inspire you to write commentaries, brother. They are used to advance the kingdom of God on this earth.
Brother Jim, it is possible to receive infallible knowledge from the Holy Spirit and to be able to deliver it accurately…
I agree that the gifts of the Holy Spirit “are used to advance the kingdom of God on this earth.” And I believe that I minister the gifts of the Holt Spirit to advance the Kingdom of God on earth.
Anyway, diligent prayer and Bible study helped me to see that the judgment of the final tribulation is subject to conditions as all other prophetic judgments are subject to judgments:
theoperspectives.blogspot.com/2009/02/conditional-apocalypse-king.html
theoperspectives.blogspot.com/2009/05/nebuchadnezzar-kings-revelation.html
Perhaps in many ways I might not agree with your interpretation of the tribulation.
By the way, since I misunderstood you church affiliation, may I ask, what type of church do you attend?
(Note: for anyone coming in late, A37 is talking about an argument, and subsequent defense of his argument on his part, that he made in this thread: UR's..When was our names written in the book of of life?)
If you’re being truly self-critical and humble, then you also owe an apology of reconciliation to those who were trying to explain to you that you had made an error there (and why), insofar as you now agree with their assessment; especially when you charged them, while you were defending the view you now accept as erroneous, with critiquing you on this point out of sheer convenience, twisting scripture around, not paying attention to scripture, not understanding omniscience as well as you (as it turns out erroneously) did, etc.
I appreciate you acknowledging and adjusting (or trying to adjust) for your mistakes. But it looks less humble when you carefully avoid mentioning certain facts. 
Like James, I am also curious, though in an incidental way, whether you consider this new position to be (as you declared to us you would deliver) inerrantly inspired by God. No, we probably won’t accept your authority on that due to your self-attesting effectively anonymous say-so; but again, for purposes of self-criticism, it would be good for you to state clearly your stance on this.
Most of your post is a repeat of an article you copy-pasted in another thread; to which I’ve already appended some critiques in that other thread. But I’ll be glad to reiterate them here (seeing as so far you have neglected to address them there). 
First, though, a few comments on the new material for this original post:
This could stand to be put more clearly. For example, in my (still vastly more detailed) analysis of your argument, I presented this as meaning by context ‘from the foundation of the world Himself’, i.e. from Christ Who not only is the foundation of the world but Who is slain from the foundation of the world. Are you saying you are in agreement with me on this now?
Which most of us (Ran being maybe the lone exception, for his own reasons) were and still are entirely in agreement with. We even provided some explicit scriptural testimony on that topic. I mention that mainly because you might care to mention it yourself.
Actually, you don’t explain why you no longer believe this–although it might be inferred you no longer believe this because in your previous argument you explicitly believed this already, and indeed insisted upon it from explicit testimony in RevJohn! Except when it was inconvenient for you to believe it, in order to believe something RevJohn doesn’t in fact say at all.
And then, when we pointed this out to you (at length, numerous times), you laughingly dismissed us for doing so. Your hubristic opposition at the time was wrong, and we were right. Fine, you’ve corrected yourself on this point now–but your attitude in delivering your new proclamation still remains as hubristically oppositional as ever. We must be only desperately twisting things to oppose the clear Biblical truth you are preaching etc.
Had we not hammered your error relentlessly last time, you would have gone on believing it and looking down on us poor benighted sin-entrapped false teachers from the heights of your Godly self-assurance. But it turns out we were right and you were wrong, and we were right for basically the same reasons you now acknowledge. Yet you go right back to behaving the very same way, in regard to yourself, over anyone dissenting from your belief.
All you’ve done is learn a new fact. You haven’t learned anything more important than that from your experience. Not yet anyway.
True, although you still haven’t explained why you think this counts as receiving salvation during the millennial reign. Rev 6:9-11 is testimony to them being saved during the tribulation. (That’s why they’re tribulational saints and martyrs. )
I’m not disagreeing with you; obviously I would agree that the gospel of the grace of God will be available to accept through the millennial reign–whatever that may mean in the timing of RevJohn’s narration. Which I’m pretty flexible about. I tend to lean toward the understanding of it typified by Hal Lindsey among many other Protestant authors and scholars, for what it’s worth: a reign of Christ on earth for approximately 1000 years before a final military rebellion. (As far as I can tell you go the same way.) This period is actually quite important in the exegetics of some universalists!–I’m rather less convinced (at this time) that it fits together in the fashion they promote, but I can see where they’re coming from with it.
No problems there with most of us either.
On those three points, then (apart from some particular details of eschatological timing, which some of us can and do easily agree with you on also), you are actually now in agreement with most of us: the book of life does not, in itself, represent God’s omniscient final knowledge of the fate of sinners; God can take out those written in; and God can put in those who weren’t in.
I go a bit farther than that, in following St. Paul on God being able to write out those He writes in and being able to write back in those whom He writes out. (Though Paul uses a different metaphorical figure to talk about it.) I can’t tell yet if you agree with that, too. I recommend doing so, though.
It’s abundantly clear, however, that acknowledging these points does NOT necessarily arrive at the hopelessness of the lake of fire judgment. So, since you can’t get that out of your material, you have to recourse back to an appeal to OT typology based on the Jewish Feast cycle.
I’ve critted this appeal (which you present in a bit more detail in a prior thread) already; but I’ll reproduce those critiques as far as I can recall them here:
1.) You (or rather your also-effectively-anonymous source; and so forth afterward) have neglected to include the Jubilee protocols, and their typological meaning. This makes a huge difference in the reckoning of the typological meaning of the Feasts in regard to salvation–as several universalist scholars are well aware! Until you account for the Jubilee protocols, your typology appeal attempt cannot possibly be successful (however much that might otherwise be. Or not.)
2.) Your typological appeal is far from something spelled out in the OT, much less in the NT. It is completely dependent on accepting several highly questionable and unspoken premises.
2.1.) Not only isn’t it spelled out in either place, it isn’t implicitly used by any OT or NT author as a method of interpretation. In other words, St. Paul (for example) doesn’t appeal to the system of feasts as a typological scheme for any purpose, including to provide a purpose of the eschatological process. Nor does any other NT author. Nor does Jesus by report. Nor does any OT author (nor any OT prophet by report). At least, if any of them do this, you have absolutely not provided references for it. Consequently, those of us who have been studying scripture for decades longer than you have, and who have found no such application anywhere in scripture so far, are surely under no obligation to agree with you that this is a scripturally testified interpretation.
(This is aside from the question of how much logical validity your attempt has; which I haven’t tried to assess yet.)
This, by the way, is one key reason I’m not overly fond of universalistic appeals to Feast typologies either. But they do at least have the advantage of accounting for Jubilee protocols!
The closest any author comes to appealing to Feast typology (so far as I’m currently aware) is the Hebraist; but he doesn’t appeal to a sequence as being indicative of eschatological salvation history, much less reach conclusions of the sort you’re reaching for from his use of Day of Atonement references. Besides which, if you appeal to the Hebraist at all, you had better do your research on our site and be prepared to wrestle with my extensive analysis of that author’s work (including in regard to OT refs he uses). Because a couple of quick and sloppy quote refs from him isn’t going to cut the mustard here.
2.2.) Your scattered OT and NT quotes do not in the least demonstrate those authors making use of the typological scheme you’re appealing to (much less arriving at the same results you putatively do). This is aside from assessing what they do actually testify to.
3.) My commentary on what Zephaniah actually says can be found elsewhere in that other thread you posted (with the somewhat longer version of your anonymously authored article), and I would rather not summarize it here. Go study.
4.) Trying to appeal to 2 Peter as a hopeless result, by reference to the unmaking of the heavens and the earth by fire, only works if you are denying the creation of a new heavens and a new earth (as in, for example, RevJohn after the lake of fire judgment!) No universalist denies this new creation, that I am aware of. How about you?
If there is a new heaven and new earth after the old one passes away, which amounts to a resurrection and remaking of the old one, then in effect the “hell” of the situation described by St. Peter shall be healed and transformed. It shall not continue forever, and it shall not be simply annihilated out of existence. Thus also, by parallel, those who are being punished by the fiery dissolution: a salvation echoed in other places scripturally, including (once again) in RevJohn itself.
In other words, a revelation of what happens at point X does not involve the falsity of a revelation of what happens after point X. (Nor vice versa, for that matter.) You haven’t gone far enough if you simply stop at 2:12. Literally not far enough!–since there in the next verse, 13, Peter avows that, according to the promises of the Lord we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which fair-togetherness dwells. What happens during that time? The end of RevJohn tells us: which you again continue to skip over reference to (though I have certainly not done so!)
5.) I am a bit amused that in your abbreviation of this article for this thread, you omitted the words that your author asks us to think on “how [they] apply to us personally”. What were those words again?–do you remember? I assure you (as I assured you back in that other thread with the longer version of your cut-n-paste anonymous article), we universalists definitely remember those words and keep them in mind!
“Forgive us our trespasses against You, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Kind of hard to keep those words in mind and then to preach final hopelessness from God to some sinners, hm?
6.) Furthermore, your typological timing, if applied to RevJohn, looks to be one or two very important steps off:
The problem with this is that the first Trumpets are supposed to typologically refer to the trumpeting of the Day of the Lord itself. (As apparently the second trumpeting.) In RevJohn terms, this would apply in the first case to the second coming of Christ (as portrayed in Rev 19); thus in the second case to the announcement of judgment after the 1000 year reign.
Not that RevJohn actually uses this reference, of course!–but then, neither does it do the other.
So, to apply in RevJohn terms: the Day of the coming of the Lord is announced by trumpets, and the Lord judges His enemies. A 1000 year period is given afterward for rebels to come to repentance, but some do not and must be thrown down again. Their names are not found in the Book of Life (not surprisingly), and so they are given a second period of time for repentance, the punishment now being much more severe (i.e. the lake of fire judgment). This could be considered their “last chance” for repentance; but as it happens, in RevJohn this “last chance” is extended indefinitely with no threat of it ending. And portions of RevJohn indicate that the evangelism of this second day of judgment will be ultimately and entirely successful. (As described in much detail in my own notes–which you have chosen not to deal with.)
I understand the desire to push back the first day of judgment to before the tribulation and the rapture; and the second day to during the tribulation–since if you tried to synch it up with the actual reference to checking the Book for judgment in RevJohn, you would at least have to allow the hope of salvation of sinners during the millennial kingdom. But also afterward, since the typological math adds up that way. Which would kind of ruin your attempt to make this typology appeal come out to hopelessly final judgment against some sinners.
However, you haven’t bothered to ground why your typology scheme should be timed out that way (even assuming we should use this typology scheme at all–which you still haven’t bothered to solidly ground.) Whereas, I just bothered to synch up the details myself. Oh, hey, look, when I do so it fits the Jubilee protocols, too! (Which you ignored or omitted.)
True, I didn’t account for the Book of Death. But then…
7.) You yourself didn’t bother to do anything other than assert a Book of Death, following non-Christian Jewish tradition (and possibly post-canonical tradition at that!) You didn’t reference it in the OT, and you sure didn’t get it from RevJohn.
So, since RevJohn itself doesn’t feature anyone being written into some Book of Death, I’m not in much of a hurry to try to account for its supposed inclusion in the scheme of things.
This shouldn’t be remotely surprising, since after all…
8.) As other people have already pointed out, the notion of atonement (i.e. reconciliation) having anything to do with hopeless doom, is utterly and completely foreign to the New Testament. (I strongly suspect it’s totally foreign to the OT, too.) Again, if you think otherwise, all I can say is that you haven’t done the research. (Including on this forum. Where I have handily reported on and summarized all references to the term, and its variants, in the NT.)
Quoting a non-Christian rabbi from the Talmud on this topic (It is said that, “man is judged on Trumpets and his doom is sealed on the Day of Atonement.”) isn’t going to impress anyone who knows their New Testament.
9.) What should have immediately thrown you a clue on the result of all this, had you read more closely (and/or bothered to pay attention to things we’ve been telling you), is this statement from your own article’s author (who himself should have realized the implications of what he was saying.)
Well, what does RevJohn itself say on this topic? It says (along with Isaiah 60, by the way!) that the gates to the New Jerusalem shall never be closed at night; and that there shall be no night there. Thus, they shall never be closed.
So, do you accept what it says on this topic, or not?!
If you do, and if you accept what your author says as quoted above, then you have an absolute logical necessity to reject what he says next:
Why can’t anyone’s name be written in? Because the gates of heaven are closed forever now, right? Or closed at all, right?
Not according to RevJohn!
Your own (anonymous) author ends up directly affirming, without realizing it, exactly what I argued by putting together details from RevJohn: at worst there is only a hopeful intermediate state, with continual evangelism. (And successful evangelism, too!)
Your author has left you in the lurch, because he glaringly did not account for enough of the data.
An objection that has already been dealt with very extensively; not least by your own change of belief on the topic. All people don’t have to be found in the Book of Life at the lake of fire judgment, because the contents of that book are not intrinsically final.
Whereas we have shown from various scriptures (including from reference to RevJohn itself) that God shall eventually bring everyone into the New Jerusalem, and into loyal relationship with Himself; and so, by implication, into the Book of Life. Other imagery is used for this than the Book of Life per se, but that is not significantly important.
I’m putting the scriptures into far more context than you are (as well as the OT Feast typology, for however much that may be worth), and coming up with a drastically different answer.
We’ll be waiting for you to do that.
Amazing post, Jason. Probably the best I’ve seen by you so far (I actually had the patience to read several long paragraphs in one sitting! 
).
However, I think that, sadly enough, it’ll be lost on him since he doesn’t seem to enjoy reading more than a couple of short paragraphs of emotionally written prose, presumably especially if it proves anything he’s said wrong. He doesn’t even seem to address quick yet accurate points made most of the time, or if he does, to do so without twisting the argument somehow into one he can easily defeat.
So I fear he will simply dismiss it as too long and never see that it destroys his entire point from the ground up and demonstrates that his very own arguments imply universalism anyway. That last one I’m particularly grieved over.
But at least you can be assured of one thing: your post isn’t lost on us! It was extremely edifying, Jason; thank you very much indeed. I’d like to think that the Spirit does speak, through you.
Your something else, Justin.
Not much different from you, Aaron. Nor you from I.
There’s some value there - but not much - Christianity is not Judaism redone but something new and universally appealing by redefining atonement in every culture around the world. In that regard, one could study and appreciate Aztec sacrificial typology as pointing to Christ as well. But to what point? Building them up? No.
The church, like Paul, has generally (and historically) focused on the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and not typologies of other religions to justify it’s central message of hope.
The call for blood sacrifice seems universally answered by Christ - the last sacrifice. So as Aaron asks us to respect another set of traditions - why not respect them all? But for what? Shortsightedness? Ignorance? Stubbornness? Nostalgia?
Jason
I have moved this post to the biblical theology section under “Jesus is the fulfillment of the Believers Jubilee”…
Yes, and isn’t it glorious?
Sorry Aaron,
You still can’t deal with the fact that even if a man didn’t avail himself of a redeemer during the inter-jubilee time period (the ages if you will), he still went free at the Jubilee and joined all his redeemed brethren in their inheritance. The only difference was he had to tread the harder path (the wide path of destruction).