The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Quote for today

Evangelical Universalism
#1

Dear friends: I am a new kid on the block. There are many wonderful quotes by various writers who stir something within me. Some are believers in the Glorious revelation of our Father’s great plan of Reconciliation of the whole. Many either lean in that direction, or towards that which is beyond the norm. God bless each and every one of you in His exceedingly abundant dimension of His love, grace & glory in Christ Jesus!

The current Evangelical Theology involves in its system belief in the deathlessness of sin, the indestructibility of error, and permanence of evil. That though there was a time in the history of the universe when sin in any shape or form did not exist, when no cry of pain or sense of guilt darkened the all-extensive bliss and holiness of creation, yet since sin has once effected an entrance into such a scene, it has come in never to go out again, indestructible, unconquerable, ineradicable, endless. Absolute happiness and sinlessness have forever vanished like the phantom of a dream. The ‘eternal state’ is a universe endlessly finding room for myriads of souls rolling and writhing in the burning agonies of ceaseless flame, eternally sinful, vile and morally hideous. It pictures the “final perfection” yet to be attained as having room for a vast cesspool of immoral and degraded beings, continually existing in opposition to God. – V. Gelesnoff

(https://www.concordant.org/expositions/faithful-laborers/vladimir-michael-gelesnoff-memorial-part-two/)

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#2

“The popular view is familiar, and most men do not realize its true bearing, or the light in which it really presents the character of God. But consider how this dogma of endless evil must strike an inquirer after God, one outside the pale of Christianity, but sincerely desirous of learning the truth. There are such men -there are many such. You tell this inquirer that God is not Almighty only, but all good; that God is indeed love; that God is his Father. But these terms are words without any justification at all, if they have not their common ordinary sense when applied to God.” ― Thomas Allin -Christ Triumphant:-

#3

“In every Christian’s heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross. If he refuses the cross he remains on the throne. Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among gospel believers today. We want to be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of Mansoul and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar, but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.” -A.W. Tozer-

“In a universe of love there can be no heaven which tolerates a chamber of horrors.” -John Robinson-

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#4

"We IMPART joy, blessing, praise, life, strength, healing and love.

The word “impart” has two main meanings:

  1. to make known or to disclose (e.g., to impart knowledge);

  2. to bestow a measure or quantity of (e.g., to impart happiness)

Both of these can be done by words - either written, or spoken, and both of these forms of using words readily apply to our life with God.

But more than this, we constantly impart who we are to those around us. We impart our moods and feelings; we impart our personality and character.

Of vital consideration is the imparting through our thoughts and prayers.

The most commonly used word for prayer in the Greek NT is “proseuchomai” –

“Eu” means “well, ease, and well-being;” the “chomai” is what makes it a verb. The “pros” is a prefix which basically means “toward.”

So praying is “toward-eu-ing.” It is thinking, speaking or mentally projecting “toward things being well, or toward well-being.”

Through our spirits and our words, we project and thus impart to other people, and to situations, throughout creation, and, to God Himself.

Care should be taken concerning the “words of our mouths, and the meditations of our hearts.”

-Jonathan Mitchell-

#5

“Nothing," says the late General GORDON , "can be more abject and miserable than the usual conception of God *** Imagine to yourself what pleasure it would be to Him to burn us, or to torture us. Can we believe any human being capable of creating us for such a purpose? We credit God with attributes which are utterly hateful to the meanest of men *** I say that Christian Pharisees deny Christ *** A hard, cruel set they are, from high to low. When one thinks of the real agony one has gone through in consequence of false teaching, it makes human nature angry with the teachers who have added to the bitterness of life.” ― Thomas Allin, Christ Triumphant-

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#6

“There is still One whose faith in you has never wavered. And how wonderful it is that that one should be Jesus Christ! It was a wonderful dream God dreamed, Christ says, when He created you; it was a stately being that was in His mind when you were fashioned; and I can make you all He meant that you should be.” -A.J. Gossip-

“Nothing can separate you from His love, absolutely nothing, neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature… We do not need to beg Him to bless us, He simply cannot help it. Therefore God is enough! God is enough for time, God is enough for eternity. God is enough!” -Hannah W. Smith-

#7

“Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. Though we may feel lost and without compass, God’s love encompasses us completely. … He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken.” - Dieter F. Uchtdorf-

#8

“No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have “learned in suffering what they taught in song.” In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim’s Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He put them in the fire.” -George MacDonald-

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.” -Brennan Manning

The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

#9

"Salvation is not getting into a good place, but into a good state. It is not being where you cannot sin, but it is being so you will not sin. Lock a man up in jail and he cannot steal, for there is nothing there to steal. He is where he cannot sin the sin of stealing. God does not propose to save us from sin by locking us up in heaven.

Make a man thoroughly honest and he will not steal, no matter how much there may be to steal. He is saved from the disposition to steal. Salvation, therefore, is such a state of moral perfection as delivers us from all wish or desire to sin. God proposes to save us by so educating our minds and hearts that we will not choose to sin. To the degree, therefore, that we obtain this moral education we are saved, and we are saved to no greater degree." -Unknown-

#10

“What we do in the crisis always depends on whether we see the difficulties in the light of God, or God in the shadow of the difficulties.” -G. Campbell Morgan-

“Jesus died to save us all…We were made by a power of Love. Our lives are meant to be lived in that love—that’s why we are here. Ultimately, the source of love is God himself—the source of all of our lives.” -Bishop Michael Curry -

#11

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.” - Robert F. Capon-

Are our broadest hopes broad enough? Shall there be a nook or abyss, in all the universe of God, finally unlightened by the Cross? Shall there be a sin, or sorrow, or pain unhealed? Is the very universe, is creation in all its extent, a field wide enough for the Son of God?

#12

Thank you SO much for this quote, FineLinen. I have never previously encountered it. It’s right on target!

#13

That sounds suspiciously like something that Wm. Ellery Channing would say; but in fact it was another of those great Unitarians:

Salvation - by Rev. S. Crane
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/unhrld01.html

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#14

Dear Paidion: You are welcome. There are many more to come They must resonate in my old life first. Is your dwelling place remotely close to Ansonville?

#15

Dear DaveB: This is an amazing site. I trust we shall sing to one another in harmonious chords. Thank you for supplying a name to the quote.

"Everything of God finds its proper place in Him. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe - people and things, animals and atoms - get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the Cross."

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#16

DAVE, HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT THAT WAS THE SOURCE!?

Anyway, I am grateful that you knew. I saved the page so that I can share it.

#17

Don - I just googled the first few lines of the text and the first response was the correct one.

edit - I mean I googled the first few words of the text …

#18

“For all its rooted loveliness, the world has no continuing city here; it is an outlandish place, a foreign home, a session in via to a better version of itself-and it is our glory to see it so and to thirst until Jerusalem comes home at last. We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.” - Robert Farrar Capon-

“We can do nothing, we say sometimes, we can only pray. That, we feel, is a terribly precarious second-best. So long as we can fuss and work and rush about, so long as we can lend a hand, we have some hope; but if we have to fall back upon God – ah, then things must be critical indeed!” -A.J Gossip-

#19

My quote for today:

’Love is the ultimate Sacrifice.'

:neutral_face:

#20

“Christianity is NOT a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however - the Good News of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance. It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over - period.” -Robert Farrar Capon-