What’s our motivation for getting the message out? If we’re universalists, then obviously it’s not primarily about saving others from hell.
About, oh, six or seven years ago, I was having a discussion with my best friend on universalism, and he asked me point-blank what the importance of the issue is if it concerns the distant future. I replied that it could affect the way I evangelize and how panicked I get about the issue.
Now that we believe everyone will eventually be sovereignly saved by the Lord, what’s our rationale? Well I’d hope that it’d be that none of us want to see anyone else under the tyrannical slavery of self and sin one day longer than they need to be.
But what gives us the motivation? Not panicked feelings of desperation, but the beautiful Spirit within. As Oswald Chambers said (the famed and beloved teacher who also seemed universalist in belief) said, the motivation is behind, not before.
A couple of quotes from him before I walk in the door at work:
The key to the missionary’s work is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the need of the lost. We are inclined to look on our Lord as one who assists us in our endeavors for God. Yet our Lord place Himself as the absolute sovereign and supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say that the lost will never be saved if we don’t go— He simply says,“Go therefore and make disciples of al the nations . . . .” He says, “Go on the basis of the revealed truth of My sovereignty, teaching and preaching o of your living experience of Me.” – Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
“A man’s obedience is to what he sees to be a need Our Lord’s obedience was to the will of His Father. The cry to-day is - “We must get some work to do; the heathen are dying without God; we must go and tell them of Him.” We have to see first of all that God’s needs in us personally are being met. “Tarry ye until. . . .” The purpose of this College is to get us rightly related to the needs of God. When God’s needs in us have been met, then He will open the way for us to realize His needs elsewhere.”
I wouldn’t put it like that. We humans are really good at making this life a living hell for the poor and powerless. The rich and powerful faithless will pay for their misdeeds a hundred times over. Call that what you will. Justice will be done.
God is love and is just. Warnings are every part of our message.
…even the poor and powerless need to be rid of sin, something very personal between us and God which idolizes ourselves and makes it impossible for us to love Him. Yes, even oppressed people can have that. We generally all do.
For our relationship with him to be fulfilling and satisfying, for us to submit to his holy love, for us to share deep intimacy with him along with his own wants, needs and purposes. To have a similar relationship with Him that His Son Jesus did and does.
Yes, God needs that. No, He doesn’t need that in order to exist or remain holy. But yes, He does ache for us and will continue running after us until that need (a desire that is an essential part of one) is fulfilled.
You are leaving out some major information on our part to have a relationship with the Father as Jesus did. It just does not happen because we want it to. We must totally submit every part of our lives to Him.We must die to ourselves and live for Him. We must be obedient to the Word of God. We must submit ourselves to the teaching of the Holy Spirit. How does one do all of that? Romans 12:1-2 ; 8:26. Praying in tongues, meditating/confessing the Word, private worship, and fasting. Do all of these things consistently and you will accelerate your spiritual maturity and relationship with the Father.
The sad thing is… most Christians will not die to themselves to have this relationship with the Father.
You’re right Aaron, but with all due respect, I was not giving methods on how, just priorities. If I were giving a methodology I would’ve placed this in the Christian Living forum.
Also, do you think it’s wise to go talking loudly about dying to yourself, when you consistently dog on other people here or criticize their beliefs without taking time to understand them? Is this what a person will be like once they “die to self”? I’ve found it’s far too easy to feel like one has “died to self” after hearing a few good lessons on the matter and then praying and experiencing a slight twinge of pain at their sense of self, pray to God to take it from them, only to immediately run and leap on the streets crying in delight over what a glorious life it is to be completely submitted to God.
That is not dying to self in the least. There are a myriad of traps that Satan, the flesh and the world lay out that end up serving as stopping points for the great majority of people who go seeking to die to themselves.
The trick is to be more dedicated to God’s ways than your own sanctification. At first it may seem like you’re focused on sanctification a great deal, but as you go on you realize the cost is much deeper than you imagined, and you truly lose yourself in the process, in the deep shadowy darkness of the soul. You’ll forget all about personal purification once you see the real depths of what it costs God to obtain our redemption, and find your own thoughts drowned out by his cries for the return of humankind to his own heart.
Have you heard these cries, Aaron…? The ones that never stop, night or day, that won’t leave you alone, until there’s no going back, and you can’t ever possibly hope to become a normal, mundane sort of person completely ignorant of His ways? The ones that send you reeling over the edge, praying for every single lost soul to return to Him…?
My guess is, based on your behavior, your fruit, that you haven’t… but that’s just my guess.
And if you have, then I know and you know that you will not be offended by me venturing such a guess. Because what God wants is much more all-encompassing than our meager, pathetic wants and desires.
It is the love of God and love of others that compells us to share with them the good news of salvation in Christ. People openly share about what and whom they passionately love. And those who have been forgiven most, love most. Love compells us to share of the love, forgiveness, healing, deliverance of God found in Christ!
Many years ago I regularly prayed for God to give me a revelation of the truth of Hell so as to make me more passionate about sharing the Gospel. I had no inkling that in answering that prayer that God would show me through scripture that there is no Hell, and that the Gospel is really the Good News, better than what I ever heard, that God does not hold our sins against us but has in Christ reconciled all of humanity to Himself! You are forgiven. And you are loved!
May God bless you too Aaron. And yes, I’ve read those passages and the many others that speak of judgement and punishment in the afterlife. The predominant metaphor Jesus used to speak of such was Gehenna, which to the 1st Century Jew was a metaphor of remedial judgment in the afterlife and would best be interpretted either literally as “the city trash dump” or theologically as “Purgatory.” And of course, the Lake of fire and brimstone also speaks metaphorically of remedial judgment; but I’ll share more on that tomorrow if you’re interested.
How does this line up with the Word of God? Please show me in the Word of God where Hell fire is said to be corrective? Just give me one verse where it says this.
Btw, purgatory is a man made doctrine that is not supported by the Word of God.
Actually, Hell is the man-made doctrine that is not supported by the Word of God. Not one word in the Hebrew or Greek text of scripture is correctly interpreted as “Hell”. The Hebrew word Sheol, though errantly translated as Hell sometimes in the KJV, only means grave or realm of the dead. Everyone goes to Sheol. The corresponding Greek word used to translate Sheol in the LXX is Hades which also means “realm of the dead”, not “Hell”. In Greek mythology everyone goes to Hades. And within Hades are three different realms - the Elysium Fields which were kinda heavenly, the Asphodel meadows which were not torturous and not especially pleasureful either, and Tartaroo which was toturous.
Speaking of Tartaroo, the torturous realm in Hades, if the writers of the NT had intended to communicate a place of unending torment, Tartaroo is the word that they would have likely used. But it is significant to note that Tartaroo is only used once in Scripture in 2 Peter, where Peter notes that the sinning angels are held there in judgment. Tartaroo is not used in relation to humans, and it is not even stated to be endless for the sinning angels that are held there until judgment.
The other word errantly translated as Hell is Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom, Jerusalem’s trash dump where there was a continuous fire fueled by sulfur (brimstone) and never a shortage of maggots (worm dies not) eating the decaying discarded flesh. I suppose IF one reads the passages on Gehenna seperate from their cultural context, it would be easy to read INTO them concepts of Hell. But if one does a little research into the Jewish Rabbinical usage of the word Gehenna, one quickly finds that such is not the case, that Hell is not a good interpretation of Gehenna.
Jewish Rabbis warned of Gehenna as a place of Remedial judgment/punishment for most people. They taught that most people, Jew and Gentile alike, descended to Gehenna upon death for up to 12 months depending on how much purification they needed, after which they rose to Ga Eden (Paradise). The Rabbis differed over what they believed happened to especially wicked people. Some taught that no one could survive more than 12 months in Gehenna and thus especially evil people were burnt up, consumed, annihilated after suffering for their sins. Others taught that some continued to suffer indefinitely long, as long as the Lord saw fit. But for most people, Gehenna was a place of Remedial judgment/punishment.
In fact, the Jewish traditions of mourning are based on the belief that most people rose from Gehenna to Ga Eden surely within 11 months after their death. And thus to mourn a loved one more than 11 months was to imply that you believed they were especially evil. This is also related to the then common Jewish practices of prayers and offerings on behalf of the dead. And of course, Paul even mentions in an affirmative manor the practice of baptisms on behalf of the dead.
As to what Jesus said concerning Gehenna, note that the worst thing He mentions is the possibility of God destroying the soul in Gehenna. If not for the many statements in scripture that speak of the salvation of all humanity, I’d believe that annihilation was the ultimate end of the especially wicked. But of course, Jesus only notes that we should fear God and not men because man can only destroy the body, whereas God can destroy the soul. He does not say that God will actually destroy anyone, only warns that God could do so.
Another passage that is significant in understanding Jesus’ use of Gehenna is Mark 9:42-49 where Jesus warns of anyone offending “little ones” and how terrible it will be for them in Gehenna. And after warning of how terrible it will be for them, He notes that really “Everyone will be salted by fire” (vs. 49) implying not only that Gehenna is related to purification and preservation, but that we shall all need to face the fire of truth that will especially deliver us from the evil of self-deception. We shall all face the fire of judgment. In fact, judgment begins with us believers, and scripture does not say in vain that God will dry every tear for there shall be plenty of tears of repentance from us all as we face the unveiled Truth of the sacrifice of Christ, the love of God, the benevolent provision of God, how little good we’ve done with all the blessings of God, and how much evil we’ve done due to our selfishness.
Anyhow, in short, the Jewish audience to which Jesus spoke of Gehenna would have understood that Jesus was speaking of Remedial judgment/punishment in the afterlife, in the realm beyond site, the eternal realm. And thus, if Gehenna was interpretted today using theological words, it would best be interpretted as Purgatory. And if it was interpretted litterally, it would best be interpretted as “the valley of Hinnom (Jerusalem’s trash dump) where there is a continuous fire and never a shortage of maggots”!
Translating metaphors and idioms from one language to another, from one culture to another, is especially difficult; it is one of the most challenging elements of the work of translation. Often when metaphors are translated literally, the meaning of the metaphor is either clouded or lost. And even worse, people often read into those metaphorse things that the original author never intended and the original audience would have never interpreted it to mean. Gehenna is one such example. The lake of fire and brimstone is another.
