The Last Rebel Turtle Standing

[Holy-Fool-P-Zombie]

Love Wins presentation

When my mom passed away on October 4, 2013, I attended grief groups at Lutheran and Methodist churches. Once I attended at discussion group at the Methodist Church. There was a retired clergy member there. The discussion topic was the philosophical theology reflections of Rob Bell in the book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived at Love Wins. He asks questions in the way of Plato’s Socrates.

Then the moderator asked this question: what do you do about the last rebel standing, who refuses to change?

I would guess that most folks in this forum would say hell would be a redeeming factor, that would eventually purify people – akin to the Roman Catholic purgatory. Most Protestant and the Roman Catholic Church say folks in hell are eternally separated from God. The Eastern Orthodox view of hell as a state and not a place: being eternally shut off from the presence of God. But if hell were experienced as flames, they would say that the same flame of God’s love drawing us toward him, is consuming those who rebel against him.

There is a Stephen Hawking’s 1988 book entitled A Brief History of Time, which starts:

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Turtles are slow to change – they move very slow. Now we can either have turtles all the way down or rebels all the way down – standing on each others’ back. But somewhere, we have the last turtle – or last rebel – refusing to budge. And God can’t finish Apocatastasis, until the last rebel budges. How is this handled?

One answer

This one I actually like. Has anyone every read the play No Exit, which is an existentialist French play by Jean-Paul Sartre at Last Exit. In it,

“The play is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity.”

That’s enough to get anyone to change.

Or perhaps we can have a variation of the Twilight Zone episode entitled The Mind and the Matter at Twilight Zone. In it, the character Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, presents an excellent solution.

“After trying to create diversions such as an earthquake or electrical storm, Beechcroft goes home for the night, where he gets a visit from his conscience. Instead of learning from his mistake, Beechcroft comes away with the idea of repopulating the world in his image. This proves to be an even bigger mistake, since everybody else ends up being as anti-social, rude and cranky as Beechcroft. The people even look and sound like him.”

This would certainly cause the last rebel standing to choose God’s plan.

Another answer

One answer to the infinite rebel is Annihilationism. I’ve seen this presented in two positions:

In the Near Death Experiences and insights of Tiffany Snow from Armageddon – Who What Where When Why How at Armageddon. She says in it,

“For those who do not choose love, they and the unHoly Angels have the same outcome – their spirit will be physically changed. What does this mean? The spirit is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, but it can be changed between two things: wave and particle. So these waves now become particle, and become part of the earth itself, thereby physically adding to something they were once bent on destroying. It is possible that none or very few humans will choose this; but the unHoly Angels have already made their choice, because the time for them to make new choices and come back to God had already expired when Armageddon began. “

Then we have an interesting piece from the Continuing Church of God entitled Universal Salvation? Bible Supports Apocatastasis at Apocatastasis by Dr. Bob Thiel at Dr Who? , although it outlines how they believe it will unfold. In it, he mentions a second gospel being preached to all people. He has a section entitled: IX. Some Few Will Willfully Reject God’s Generous Offer But Their End Will Be Swift.

So in response to the infinite rebel, both Tiffany Snow and Dr. Bot Thiel propose Annihilationism. But Tiffany’s view is not really Annihilationism. It’s more like being a Q on Star Trek and having your essence and consciousness merge into the Q Continuum. It’s probably some kind of Cosmic Consciousness of Richard Maurice Bucke, M.D., who authored the book over a hundred years ago.

But both Tiffany Snow and Dr. Bob Thiel say few – if any – humans will reject God’s plan.

My answer

Now I don’t have an answer to the infinite rebel, who will fight forever to resist the way things are or are unfolding. So in terms of Universal reconciliation, I don’t attempt to explain things. I just refer to two elements:

The saying,

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”

, which Catholic mystic Julian of Norwich claimed to be said to her by God himself
The explanation of many theological events from Eastern Orthodoxy: How this is so remains a divine mystery.

What do you say about the last rebel standing?

But I have given my views, which is leave it up to God to unfold how everything will be restored. But for those holding definite views on how things will unfold, what will you do will the last rebel standing?

[Cindy_Skillman]

I guess I’m with Tom Talbot on this one, Randy.

First, In order to make a free choice one must have a sufficiency of:

]Information/:m]
]Sanity/:m]
]Time/:m]

For information, I would consider that the person must know his options and must know precisely (so far as it’s possible) what each option entails and have the mental capacity to understand these things.

Regarding sanity, I’d include the basic human instinct to seek out that which is best for the self. A person who repeatedly wrongs and hurts himself and understands that it is he, doing this to himself, and doesn’t wish to experience the pain it causes – yet continues in the behavior compulsively, is certainly insane.

God has all the time He needs (even if we’re using “time” in a metaphorical sense.)

The tug of war seems to me to be involved with a person’s desire to continue in his sin, and his desire to experience all the joys of fellowship with God and with his/her fellow human beings, etc. One sin I could see getting in the way would be pride. Ultimately though, I find it deeply incoherent to imagine a person given full disclosure, complete sanity, and the time he needs to make a decision (however long that may be) could go on resisting the joy in favor of the pain forever.