Hello there,
I’m wondering how Christian Universalists interpret the following verses in Revelation:
Revelation 20:10-15, 21:8 and 27.
I would greatly appreciate a response from someone who believes God will ‘save’ those who do not trust in Christ, whether they heard the Good News or rejected it.
Thanks for your time.
I’m working through these issues… just like the rest of us.
Without going into the exegetics of those passages (and there are a number of posts here on them)…
…of course none of us start out trusting Christ; God leads us to that (even dragging us to it), and He doesn’t wait for us to go groping for Christ before He therefore decides to lead us to Christ.
And many people indisputably reject Christ, sometimes very hard, sometimes for a very long time, before finally coming to trust in Christ as their Lord and Savior – and yet are saved by God, leading them to accept and trust in Christ, after all. One such person wrote at least a quarter of the wordcount of the canonical New Testament! 
(And more than another quarter was written by disciples of his.)
So, in principle, that isn’t really the problem. The problem is whether such passages exclude God from saving those particular people who aren’t trusting Christ and who reject the Gospel.
And while some of us have rather different interpretations of what’s happening at the end of RevJohn, we all pretty much agree that what’s happening isn’t preventing the greatest human enemies (at least) of RevJohn, the kings of the earth, from following Christ at last into the New Jerusalem (despite being slain by Christ as rebels against Him, back at the end of chp 19, whatever that’s supposed to mean); and it isn’t preventing the Spirit and the Bride (i.e. the Church) going out from the New Jerusalem to exhort those still fondling their sins impenitently outside (apparently in the lake of fire, whatever that means), to slake their thirst and wash their robes in the freely given water of life flowing out of the city (apparently through the never-closed gate) and so obtain permission to enter and eat of the log of life (a symbol for the cross combined with the tree of life from Gen 3 – but in Greek it’s “log” or “pole” not “tree”) and be healed by the leaves of the log.
There are some curious things being said earlier in RevJohn, too, sometimes in passages that sound hopelessly punitive. Jesus Himself explains in one of the mini-epistles to various churches in the prologue to the scroll, that He is exposing those He loves so that they’ll repent and be healed. And not only is that in a warning that parallels hopeless-sounding punishment, but the Greek term there (for exposing) is used elsewhere in the NT as a punishment term, sometimes in close connection to things that at first glance sound hellishly hopeless.
Thanks for explaining that.
I’m interested to read about those ‘curious things’.
I’ll have to have a look and see what’s going on there.
Cheers.
I learned something new from Jason’s post.
Previously I wasn’t aware of the various ways in which the Greek noun “ξυλον” (xulon or xylon) was used in the New Testament:
Clubs
Matt 26:14,55; Mark 14:43, 48; Luke 22:15
Wood
Luke 28:31, 1 Cor 3:12, Rev 18:12
Stocks
Acts 16:24
I often wondered why our New Testaments refer to Jesus hanging on a tree. A cross is not a tree.
But the word can mean “an upright pole or stake.” According to lexicons even the word “σταυρος,” usually translated as “cross” can simply mean an upright stake or pole. Now I better understand why the New World Translation of Jehovah’s Witnesses renders this word as “torture stake.”
However, Jason, surely the word has to be translated as “tree” in “tree of life” in Rev 22:2, since John saw in his vision a ξυλον which bore 12 fruits. An upright pole or log doesn’t bear fruit.
So I suspect it should be translated as “tree of life” in the other three instances also: Rev 2:7, 22:14, and 22:19.
By the way, all known Greek manuscripts of Revelation 22:19 read “tree (ξυλον) of life” instead of “book of life” as in the textus receptus (from which the King James was translated). Where did the reading “book of life” come from? When Erasmus was compiling his text, he had access to only one manuscript of Revelation, and it lacked the last six verses, so he took the Latin Vulgate and back‑translated from Latin to Greek. Unfortunately, the copy of the Vulgate he used read “book of life,” unlike any Greek manuscript of the passage, and so Erasmus introduced a unique Greek reading into his text. Since the first and only “source” for this reading in Greek is the printed text of Erasmus, any Greek New Testament that agrees with Erasmus here must have been simply copied from his text. The fact that all textus receptus editions of Stephanus, Beza, et al. read with Erasmus shows that their texts were more or less slavish reprints of Erasmus’ text and not independently compiled editions, for had they been edited independently of Erasmus, they would surely have followed the Greek manuscripts here and read “tree of life.”
Erasmus can be excused since he had no Greek manuscript of the last six verses of Revelation. But translators of recent or relatively recent versions who had the Greek manuscripts, such as the translators of the New King James Version, Revised Webster, and Young’s Literal Translation, cannot be excused.
Actually for all intents and purposes it is. <ξύλον> xulon basically means tree… timber… wood… and thus any of the implements you referred to. Paul’s reference “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (from Deut 21:22-23) is just that “a tree” (as it is in Gen 1-3 and Rev 22). Paul’s use being indicative of the cursedness Christ bore on that torturous stake i.e., the cross; thus “tree” is often used in terms of poetic prose.
Interesting to note… IMO Deut 21:22-23 is the seed-bed of 1Jn 5:16’s “sin unto death” i.e., it was any “sin” considered to be a “capital offence” –– simply put… it had an outcome prescribed by law (as it then stood) that was to be adhered to.
If I were to choose a single word to translate “ξυλον” I would choose “wood” since wood is the material that forms every object that has been represented by the word “ξυλον”.
I did a search of the word in the Septuagint, and it is frequently used of trees. But the word is also used to represent wood, timber, staff, and gallows. Perhaps many other articles made of wood, too. I checked only a few.
In the case of Christ hanging on a “tree”, the writers used “ξυλον” and it should have been translated as “stake” or perhaps “pole.” I think the translators who rendered it as “tree” did not do so in terms of poetic prose, but because they thought it to be the most “literal” translation since the word was used of trees so often in the Old Testament.
Most likely… but I was not referring the translators. Paul who knew the Scriptures alludes to Deut 21:22-23 where an offender being summarily executed was THEN hung on a tree, cursed… no doubt as a visual aid, i.e., a warning.