I’ll likely be pretty busy over the weekend, so if I don’t get back to you, well James is here and has many good things to day as do the others.
As George MacDonald said, “No one ever GOT home without GOING home.” You can’t enjoy the benefits of salvation until you accept salvation – even though salvation has been bought for you and all mankind. So you are sitting in the prison with the door wide open until you get up and walk out into the moonlight. Why repent and believe? Why walk out the door of the prison house?
But aside from that, who, having seen the SON, could NOT love Him? Why repent and believe? Really? I know you don’t think it’s better in the charnel house. Why repent and believe? Who could resist, who knew?
I’m going to put together that list for you tonight, or at least get a start on it, Robert:
ALL will honor the Son – not some or even most – ALL.
Is God capable of accomplishing His will?
How many things will be restored?
No qualifier here. Just plain ALL.
Pretty amazing. All (things) of the earth and All (things) of the heavens. (things is not in the original text. He just reconciles ALL, period, according to the Greek.
This is the election of the church – as first fruits. First fruits imply later fruits to come. The whole harvest belongs to the Lord.
So does this really mean that all men who sinned were made sinners and all men who received righteousness were made righteous? Is the “many” in the first clause not the same as the “many” in the predicate? That’s not a relaxed reading imo. That’s not what it looks like it means at all.
(Tell me again how we are saved?) —>>
Is He the savior of all men, or just of a few who happened to hear and/or happened to hear in a way they could understand and believe? Can you really be the savior of, say, New York, if you only save Harlem because none of the other areas heard about and/or accepted your offer of salvation? Wouldn’t you then just be the savior of Harlem? How can Jesus be the Savior of all men if He doesn’t save all men? He could be the savior of the church, I guess, but not all men.
(Does Father receive false worship?) —>>
God does not accept false worship. It doesn’t honor or please Him. Why then, would He coerce (against their “free” will) the ungodly to feign worship toward Him? Feigned worship doesn’t please Him.
Are all imprisoned in disobedience? Does that mean He really will have mercy on ALL who have been imprisoned in disobedience? I think that might apply to pretty much everyone.
But of course Paul didn’t really mean ALL – just all who are made alive. Of course it doesn’t include those who aren’t made alive.
In punishment until the day of judgment? Hmm . . .
This doesn’t look good . . .
No . . . not good at all. Especially if one or more of them are your own children or mother or brother . . .
Wait a minute. Kings of the earth in Revelation are always the bad guys. What are they doing here? What glory and honor? What people? These are kings and people of the earth who are outside the holy city, coming in through the gates, through which nothing that defiles nor works abominations and lies and only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life can pass.
I always used to wonder about this one. Why do the people (usually translated “nations”) need healing? I thought once we “got to heaven” nothing could hurt us? Who is it that needs the leaves for healing?
To whom are the Spirit and the bride offering water of life? Whoever drinks of it will never thirst again, so they must be offering this water to those who have not yet drunk of it. Hmm.
There are a lot more, but these are the ones I already had in a verse list so I could find them more easily.
There are evidently different interpretations within universalism. I don’t believe that God is going to burn anyone - or at least not in the sense that you are implying. Fire, in the bible, can have a different meaning to the literal that you are here suggesting; otherwise there are worms especially designed for this fire, and worms especially designed for immortality. The worm is figurative, the fire is figurative, the punishment is figurative. That seems (to me) to be the only disconnect - when you try to read literal into the figurative.
We are spoken of as going through a fire now (baptism of fire), and yet there are no literal flames, and there is no literal place. This fire baptism is figurative of the purging process that we go through, if we allow God, and this process is spoken of for the unbelievers too. There is a distinct advantage between choosing God as a repentant sinner now, and denying God and needing to be purged through the reality of God. They do not receive the same kind of reward (body).
Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o’er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.
And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper into the dim distance.
Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.
Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear;
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.
— Angel to Gerontius, “The Dream of Gerontius” by Cardinal John Henry Newman (1903)
“Repent for the kingdom of heaven (God) is at hand (within reach).” That was the message of John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles; I think that’s a pretty good reason. Why love God? Because He first loved us. Why not continue in sin? Because we have been set free from sin, set free to love God and one another. Sin brings death and destruction to all whom/that we love; so why stop sinning - to stop propogating death and destruction. Just because I believe the lifegaurd will save everone does not mean that we should not participate in saving those who are now drowning. In this present evil age people are bound by, slaves to evil from within and without, personal, spiritual, and systemic evil. Jesus came to set us free from this present evil age and translate us into His glorious kingdom. Having faith in Jesus to save everyone, to make all things right, to overcome all evil, fills me with faith to love the hell out of everyone. Our prayer is “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” In heaven all are saved, so we pray for and seek the salvation of all on earth. In heaven all love one another, so we pray for and seek the reconciliation of all to one another today. It’s not about getting into heaven someday, but getting heaven into us today. Why repent and believe? Because we’ve had a revelation of the love of God for us.
Robert, you’re right to observe that literal and symbolic language are mixed in many places. Just as we speak to one another in either more or less literal/symbolic language every day. I might say to you, “I think if you try to hang that sheetrock/wallboard right now, you’ll be putting the cart before the horse because the wiring isn’t quite finished yet.” Which part is literal and which is symbolic? What on earth do I mean by this “cart before horse”? You see that I even have to give you two words for plaster board (and now I’m giving you a third) because I don’t know which country you live in and what you might call the sort of board that’s manufactured as a sandwich of paper – plaster – paper (and now I’ve given you a third, plus the metaphor of a sandwich) that is so commonly used to construct the interior walls of houses and other structures.
The fact is that ALL of our language is, to a greater or lesser degree, symbolic and/or metaphorical. The words I type to you are each of them symbolic of various ideas. To complicate things, some words are symbolic of ideas which are themselves symbolic, which may contain symbolism of other ideas. It’s a wonder we manage to communicate at all! What if my symbols (somewhere in this construct) don’t call up the same images in your mind as they do in mine?
In the gospels, I believe we have been given constructed documents put together by the writers from various sources, some years after the crucifixion – some later, some earlier. We’ve all heard that Matthew was written to the Jews and Luke to the Gentiles. Mark focuses on Jesus as human while John focuses on His divinity (unless you’re not Trinitarian). These aren’t the sort of biographies we write today, but more on the lines of poetical stories intended to emphasize a specific aspect of Jesus and His ministry. The order of events is only chronological inasmuch as that suits the purpose of the writer. Jesus’ words may have been “refined” to improve the poetry (and there is a great deal of poetry here, though we don’t see it unless we read the literary scholars who’ve studied that aspect – poetry is an important necessity in a largely oral society). The gospels are inspired accounts of who Jesus was in the eyes of the writers and/or their sources, and like our modern-day literature they are interspersed liberally with metaphor and simile, hyperbole and figure of speech, as well as more “literal” language.
That said, in books such as the Revelation, one should expect practically every single word to be cloaked in symbolism and metaphor. It is an apocalypse (which is a concept I’m sure isn’t lost on you) and while we in the last hundred years or so have tried hard to take it literally, it simply does not work when taken that way. As to the symbolism itself, we can understand some of it based on what we know of symbolism in the Old Testament. We speculate it was written in this way as a sort of secret code to get it past the Romans and to the churches, who would presumably have the proper frame of reference with which to interpret it. Much of Revelation is sort of an “inside joke” and we are not on the inside. It had to be obscure to the Romans, and therefore it wasn’t part of the Roman (or possibly even the Greek) culture. It had to be part of the culture of those churches to whom John sent it and possibly to the church as a whole, but we have lost much of that.
I have to go or I’d probably go on and write you another book. But what do you make of the scriptures I’ve sent you? Someone – [tag]Sherman[/tag], I believe, has a thread somewhere referencing scriptures that specifically point to judgment of the unsaved as having a purgatorial intent. Do you know, Sherman? Was that you?
You can pick up good clean used copies on Amazon and elsewhere for a few bucks. I had many ‘aha!’ moments as I studied the book, and certain knotty problems suddenly relaxed and got…unknotted.
Especially if one or more of them are your own children or mother or brother . . .