The Evangelical Universalist Forum

John Dickson posts on FaceBook about Hell!

Alex, I have been trying unsuccessfully to view this Facebook thread. When I click on your link I keep receiving the following notice.

Do you know if this means I have to be his Facebook “friend” to view the thread?

Yeah, sorry I didn’t real he’d only shared it with his friends :blush:

Peace and grace,

Thank you for the reply. I wonder if this debut travel the ocean, here in Europe? Is any news for interest? Exist here in Romania a learned brother, a teacher, from the Pentecostal church, who is in agreement with bro. Edward.

Have a blessed day,
John

Don’t know if the film has gone to Romania yet – the book is available through Amazon of course, and even Kindle (that’s where I got my copy so I can work on commenting on it – a project for later this year).

Yes, Assembly of God churches and other pentacostal communions tend to be anni. They’re ahead of us in that respect! – we don’t have any large Protestant congregations anymore who are universalistic (or not and also theologically conservative), and ancient non-American congregations like the Ethiopian Orthodox don’t even show up on the radar here. :unamused:

Peace and grace,

Thank you. Not all. An american lady sent me a link with an american universalist group who were “charismatics”. Amazingly we have some in common, we reject the so called parable that Lord Jesus never told (The rich man and the beggar Lazarus).

In North American theological language, “charismatic” and “Pentacostal” aren’t totally identical: “Pentacostal” is a particular kind of “charismatic”.

“Charismatic” groups emphasize the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and can be denominations or can be organizations within a larger communion – there are several charismatic Roman Catholic groups for example, and a Southern Baptist congregation might or might not be charismatic. By the last estimate I’ve seen, up to 1/4 of Christians in the world are charismatic. It isn’t surprising to find some universalists in there, too. Some of the famous Tennessee snake handler Baptists are universalistic, but all snake handling churches are charismatic churches (though not all charismatic churches go for snake handling, to say the least! Nor all Baptists, or my Mom would be Catholic I expect. :laughing: )

“Pentacostal” groups have strong agreements with each other on more particular ways and doctrines concerning charismatic activity, the Assembly of God being one such group (and maybe the largest). Last I heard there are a little more than 4% of Pentacostal Christians.

A quick example of distinction is: a charismatic church or group might or might not think speaking in tongues is a gift given to all Christians as a sign that someone truly has been baptized by the Holy Spirit and so is truly a Christian; but a Pentacostal (so far as I know) definitely believes this (although they might disagree among each other about how it applies or works). That’s why they have the description “pentacostal” because they’re referring to the first Christian Pentacost when the Spirit descended on all the Christians gathered with the apostles and they all started speaking tongues for evangelizing the people in Jerusalem.

And now you know more than you ever wanted to know about charismatic and pentacostal groups. :wink:

Thank you. I agree.