I’m not asking for argument nor do I wish to give argument. I just want to know why you think it is possible that Satan does not exist. Is it simply a personal belief? Or do you find something in the Bible that seems to indicate his non-existence?
Have not we been through this before? Search me and Satan and you’ll get my position.
If you want to just declare that Satan may not exist without stating any reason for it, I’m okay with that. It’s just that I like to know not only what people think, but why they so think. But if you want to keep the reason secret—okay. I don’t have to know. 
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Apart from the more standard fare…“Satan” or “the devil” can be understood as euphemisms indicative of actions or purposes diametrically opposed to the will and workings of God, cf. Mt 16:22-23; Lk 22:3-4; Jn 13:2, 27.
And to Don, O.K. I’ll go there. You must have some time on your hands to bait me like that.
In my view, (once again) satan is the adversary. What God wants from humanity is clear but the insistence of humanities ‘free will’ is for the most part to try to put themselves in God’s place. This is our biggest obstacle. Satan is our wanting to be God… We as a human race have wanted that forever.
But I think there are chinks in that armor, people are waking up to the view that denominational Christianity, as great as it has been, is a delapitaded hoarse.
We are looking at a new spiritual realization. It is tough to agree with but the stage is kind of set.
Christian Universalism by Jurgen Moltmann
“Because the judgment serves the new creation of all things, its justice is a healing creative justice according to the future, not a retaliatory justice referring to the past. Separating people into believers and unbelievers is wrong because it is godless. God is not the enemy of unbelievers or the executioner of the godless… God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong…”
What is the goal of Christ’s judgment?
THE GOSPEL OF THE JUDGMENT AND NEW CREATION OF ALL THINGS
The goal of helping victims and rectifying culprits is the triumph of God’s creative justice over everything godless in heaven, earth and below the earth, not the great reckoning with wages and punishments. This victory of divine justice leads to God’s great day of reconciliation on this earth, not to division of humankind into blessed and damned and the end of the world. On Judgment Day, “all tears will be wiped away from their eyes,” the tears of suffering and the tears of repentance. “There will be no mourning, crying or pain” (Rev 21,4).
Thus the Last Judgment is penultimate, not ultimate and is not the end of God’s works. It is only a first step in a transition or transformation from transitoriness to intransitoriness. The new eternal creation created on the foundation of justice is definitive. Because the judgment serves this new creation of all things, its justice is a healing, creative justice reestablishing life according to this future, not a retaliatory justice referring to the past. The judgment serves the new creation, not sin and death as the great reckoning. It was the error of the Christian tradition in picture and idea, piety and teaching to see only judgment on the past and not God’s new world beyond the judgment and thus not believing the new beginning in the end.
The practice and endurance of evil are not always apportioned to different persons and groups of persons. Victims can also be perpetrators. In many persons, the perpetrator side and the victim side of evil are inseparably connected. The knowledge that the coming judge will judge us as perpetrators and as victims, reject the Pharisee in us and accept the sinner in us and reconcile us with ourselves. Judging victims and perpetrators is always a social judging. We do not stand isolated and dependent on ourselves before the judge as in human criminal courts or in nightly pangs of conscience. The perpetrators stand together with their victims, Cain with Abel, the powerful with the powerless, the murderers with the murdered. Humanity’s story of woe is inseparably joined with the collective history of culpability.
Continued below
The New Testament offers staring-points. The New Testament understands Judgment Day as the “day of the Son of man” on which the crucified and resurrected Christ will be revealed and all the world before him.
Both will appear out of their concealment in the light of truth, the Christ now hidden in God and the person hidden from him/herself. The eternal light will be revealed to them. What is now hidden in nature will be transparent because persons are physical and natural beings connected with the nature of the earth. We cannot be separated from the nature of the earth, neither in the resurrection nor in the end-time judgment.
Christ will be revealed as the crucified and resurrected victor over sin, death and hell, not as the avenger or retaliator.
Christ will be revealed as the Everlasting One and leader of life. He will judge according to the justice he proclaimed and practiced through his community with sinners and tax collectors. Otherwise no one could recognize him.
God’s justice is a creative justice.
The victims of sin and violence are supported, healed and brought to life by God’s righteousness. The perpetrators of sin and violence will experience a rectifying transformative justice. They will change by being redeemed together with their victims. The crucified Christ who encounters them together with their victims will save them. They will “die off” in their atrocities to be “reborn “ to a new life.
Helping and supporting the victims and straightening the perpetrators as the victory of God’s creative justice over everything godless, not the great reckoning with rewards and punishments. This victory of divine justice leads to God’s great day of reconciliation on this earth, not to the division into blessed and damned.
Seen this way, the Last Judgment is not the end of God’s works. It is only the first step of a transformation out of transitoriness into intransitoriness. The new eternal creation will be created on the foundation of justice. Because the judgment serves this new creation of all things, its future-oriented justice is creative and not only a requiting justice referring to the past. It was the mistake of Christian tradition in picture and concept, piety and teaching to only see the judgment over the past of this world and not God’s new world through the judgment.
“The times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets…”
And He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto You: Whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21).
Peter’s statement speaks clearly of the times of the restitution of all things. Restitution, according to the best English usage, means the act of restoring something that has been taken away or lost; the act of making good or rendering an equivalent as for loss or injury. (Funk and Wagnall’s Dictionary)
This is in exact harmony with the Greek work temuriak which means restoration.
Some will no doubt reply to this by stating, as many do, that Peter was not promising that God would restore everything but only those things of which the prophets had spoken. I wish, however, to show as clearly as possible that the grammatical construction of this sentence declares the exact opposite to be the truth. I mean that Peter was actually saying that all the prophets from the beginning of the world had prophesied that there would be a restoration of all things and that the restoration would indeed be universal and would include all things.
You will notice that in the scripture quoted (Acts 3:21, King James Version) there is a comma after the word things. This comma indicates that the clause following : “which God hath spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets since the world began” – is what is known as a non-restrictive clause. A non-restrictive clause is one which can be omitted without changing or destroying the meaning of the principal clause or main statement. (See Mastering Effective English by Tressler-Lewis, Revised Edition, Pages 545-546.) It simply adds further information.
Now read the scripture, omitting the clause in question, and you will find the meaning is clearly stated and nothing of the sense is destroyed. If this clause were modifying the word things, it would be restrictive and no comma would be used. -George Hawtin-
The Offer
Imagine this scenario. An automobile manufacturer builds a vehicle model which it hopes will become a great success. During testing, however, it becomes apparent that the car suffers from a severe design flaw and would pose an imminent danger to the public were it released for sale. Instead of correcting the flaw, the manufacturer decides it has a better idea; it mentions the flaw on page 122 of the owner’s manual and explains there how the owner can have the defect corrected at the nearest dealership “free of charge”.
Does it appear rather lopsided that the vehicle is sold to unsuspecting customers with little if any mention of the design defect? Does it appear rather absurd that the responsibility for discovering the dangerous defect and having it corrected falls upon the buyer, when the builder could have fixed the problem before taking the car to market?
Imagine this scenario.
Because of the sin of our forefather, Adam, we all inherit sin and mortality. None of us are tested as he was, in order to see if we will be a righteous person or a sinner; we are all given mortality. Our choices have nothing to do with our present condition as sinners; we are born that way.
As for salvation from sin and death, that will depend on finding the proper message and acting on it in an effective manner; otherwise the condition we inherit at birth will be our everlasting downfall.
Does it appear rather lopsided that the condemnation is universal and our choice has nothing to do with it, but our salvation from that condemnation requires our active participation? Does it appear rather absurd that the responsibility for obtaining salvation depends, in the final analysis, upon each individual, while we re in no way responsible for our needing that salvation in the first place? Doesn’t
it seem strange that perdition is an inherited condition, while salvation is only an “offer” made to those fortunate enough to stumble upon it?
Fact is, salvation is not an offer we happen upon; it’s a gift.
And a Savior is One Who saves. In 1 Timothy 4:9-11, we read, “Faithful is the saying and worthy of all welcome (for for this are we toiling and being reproached), that we rely on the living God, Who is the Saviour of all mankind, especially of believers. These things be charging and teaching.” God is the Savior of all mankind, for salvation is the destiny of all. 1 Cor. 15:20-28; 1 Tim. 4:10; Jn. 12:32; Col. 1:20; Eph. 1:10; Rom. 5:18, 19; Phil. 2:9-11.
God is the Savior of believers especially because He prefers some from the beginning for salvation now and during the eons of the eons (2 Thes. 2:13; Rev. 20:4, 5). Others are vessels of indignation, as indicated in Romans 9, and will not be saved until the consummation mentioned in 1 Cor. 15:24.
Salvation is not an “offer”; God enlightens all, at the time He chooses. John 1:9-13. – Kenneth Larsen-
THE question of Universalism is usually argued on a basis altogether misleading, i.e., as though the point involved was chiefly, or wholly, man’s endless suffering. Odious and repulsive to every moral instinct, as is that dogma, it is not the turning point of this controversy. The vital question is this, that the popular creed by teaching the perpetuity of evil, points to a victorious devil, and to sin as finally triumphant over God. It makes the corrupt, nay, the bestial in our fallen nature to be eternal. It represents what is foulest and most loathsome in man, i.e., the most obstinate sin as being enduring as God Himself. It confers the dignity of immortal life on what is morally abominable. It teaches perpetual Anarchy, and a final Chaos. It enthrones Pandemonium as an eternal fact side by side with Paradise; and, gazing over its fetid and obscene abysses, is not afraid to call this the triumph of Jesus Christ, this the realization of the promise that God shall be “All in All” -Thomas Allin- (Christ Triumphant)
“Punish a man for his sins, that is just: punish him for ages…that may be just: but make no end of punishing him for that sin, reduce him from a man to a devil, let him become for ever vile, that is not just. The only justice to a sinner in a case like our human one is mercy, is to make his punishment finite according to his works…and of such a nature as not simply to torment the man, but to drive him back to the way of God.” -. T. P. Forsyth M.A.
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Restoration (The Feast of Tabernacles)
“The feast of tabernacles means the feast of in-gathering. It takes an eight day period to bring in the fullness of the in-gathering. Eight is the number of new beginnings in scripture or full restoration
1 Corinthians 15 is the last chapter in the Bible. The fifteenth chapter clearly shows how great the totality of the feast of tabernacles will be.
‘As in Adam all die (every preacher will agree that all people are in Adam but few believe that the word all mean all in the second part of the verse) so in Christ all shall be made alive.’ Jesus is going to gather all together in Himself.
He will have everyone in His nature.
Everything that occurs, occurs in the plan and order of God. In 1 Corinthians 15 God shows that there are different orders. The highest order is Jesus Christ.
Everything will, in time, be brought into Jesus Christ. All shall be gathered into Him. When this is done then Jesus, the Son, will turn all over to the Father. It is then we find that time ends, for God becomes All in all (verse 28). -Chas. Weller-
God All & in all
What did he mean by “It is then we find that time ends”?
I don’t find anything about time ending in 1 Cor 15.
Time is a measurement of the passing of events, is it not? Time coming to an “end” would imply that there would then be no events. Is that what Weller believed?
Dear Paidion: The chapter under consideration is not so much about time ending, but an entire new dimension of zao life beginning in the Son as death is swallowed up in one gigantic gulp of triumph.
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1-Corinthians-Chapter-15/
1 Cor. 15:24, 28
24 “Then THE END will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.”
Some selected quotes on the distinction between time and eternity, from Charles H. Pridgeon’s, Is Hell Eternal or Will God’s Plan Fail? (1920):
All time will one day be converted into eternity. Time is allied to motion; eternity to rest. Time is made up of successive moments. The quality of eternity is its simultaneousness.
Eternity is the opposite of time. It signifies a new state of things, a different condition; it denotes timelessness, that is, the absence of time.
Many think that the past is irrevocable. It is to us, but not to our God. There is no such thing as time succession to Him. He can deal with our past or our future as easily as our present, for it is all alike present to Him. He means to teach us that since He calls Himself the “I AM,” He dwells in an eternal now, although this may be difficult for us to apprehend. There is enough of the ruins of our original state left in us to get some light from this astounding fact of God’s eternity. This is what He means to tell us when the Word says that “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow which is caused by turning” (James 1:17, literal rendering). There is no temporal movement in God, no transitoriness, no shadows. He is a glorious, bright, unchanging Reality.
The verse in 2 Peter 3:8 is meant to teach us the same truth: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” It takes just such a temporal expression to convey the idea to us that time conditions do not prevail in God’s absolute domain.
It is clearly taught in the Scriptures that the ages have not only a beginning but also an end. We have already shown even if the ages or time continued forever that that would not be eternity. The use of the plural “ages” shows that some end before another or others begin.
If one has seen the absolute difference between time and eternity, he will understand that making time endless, we do not get eternity, for eternity means the absence of time, viz., timelessness. Eternity in its absolute sense only obtains when time ceases. An old writer puts the matter clearly:
“Whatever suffers the condition of time, even tho it never began to be, and
should never cease to be, yet it can not be called eternal. For it does not
comprehend and the embrace whole at once; it has lost yesterday, and has
not yet gained tomorrow.”There is no word in the Bible, nor in the nature of the case can there be, for a “forever” or an “eternity” of time, because time ends when God becomes “all in all” and then only is there the full eternity.
The scientific world has been somewhat startled by the theory of relativity which Dr. Einstein has recently promulgated. It is largely acknowledged that by this theory alone can many of the new problems of light and electro-dynamics find solution. Without making any pronouncement on this subject, the author may be permitted to point out an analogy which may apply to his own field. He is convinced that the consistent recognition of the difference between time and eternity will accomplish for Biblical problems all that the new theory promises to do for natural science.
“The term relativity refers to time and space; according to Galileo and Newton, time and space were absolute entities and the moving systems of the universe were dependent on this absolute time and space. On this conception was built the science of mechanics. The resulting formulas sufficed for all motions of a slow nature; it was found, however, that they would not conform to the rapid notions apparent in electro-dynamics.”
…We also know from Heb. 1:8, in the original, of the close connection of “the age of the ages” and the Millennium. It reads in the literal Greek, ''But to the Son (He says) Thy throne O God, (is) for the Age of theAge." In this verse it implies that the grandest age of all springs forth from the millennial age, which is often spoken of as the age for Israel as a nation. Hence we think of these two ages and only two as the supreme ages in God’s economy. As far as God’s revelation of the ages is concerned these two ages are The Ages par excellence that lie in the future. Eternity in its absolute sense does not emerge till after these two ages are ended. This idiomatic use of two ages being called supreme, by styling them "the ages of the ages,” is paralleled in more than one place in Scripture.
…A similar construction is found in Lev. 21:22. With this key the two future ages are found to be the most glorious ages of all. The theory of “ages tumbling on ages” or an infinite series of ages is purely imaginary. These are the two definite, final ages and always have the definite article before them. Time comes to an end when the ages end and eternity, with God “all in all,” becomes an accomplished reality.
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What do you mean by “in the original”? No original manuscript of any part of the New Testament, exists.
It reads in the literal Greek, ''But to the Son (He says) Thy throne O God, (is) for the Age of theAge."
Which literal Greek? Papyrus 114 that dates previous to A.D. 300, has only “Your thone, O God (is)” [or it might be better translated “God (is) your throne”] “into the age”.
There is one other manuscript dated in the same century that does have "into the age of the age."
Who can say which of the two was actually written by the author of Hebrews?
There are over 6,000 early manuscript copies or portions of the Greek New Testament in existence today. When we include the Latin Vulgate and other early versions, we have over 24,000 early copies or portions of the New Testament (twice that many when including quotes by early church fathers). Some of these date only twenty to thirty years from the original autographs. By comparison, of works by Plato and Aristotle very few copies exist at all, and those were written 1,200 to 1,400 years after the autographs. 14 According to a former director of the British Museum,
The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established. 15
The Chester Beatty Papyrus II is the earliest piece of the New Testament known to exist. This contains most of Paul’s letters copied circa AD 100.
The John Rylands Manuscript contains part of the Gospel of John copied in AD 130. It can be found in the John Rylands Library of Manchester, England.
The Codex Vaticanus is a Greek copy of the entire Old Testament and most of the New Testament. Copied between the years 325 and 350 16 , the Codex Vaticanus has resided in the Vatican’s library since 1481 as one of the most trustworthy witnesses to the New Testament text. 17
The Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in the Mt. Sinai Monastery in 1859 by Dr. Constantin Von Tischendorf. It was penned circa AD 375-400 and contains all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament. It was presented to the Russian Czar and in 1933 was bought by England. Today, it is in the British Museum in London.
The Codex Washingtonianus may be found in the Smithsonian Institution, having been written about AD 450. It contains the complete four Gospels.
The Bodmer Papyri and Bodmer Papyri II are manuscripts dating from AD 150 to 200. These various parts of the New Testament, discovered in Egypt, now exist in the Bodmer Library of World Literature. Other significant collections include the Codex Alexandrinus which is an Egyptian text circa AD 450, the Codex Ephraemi , and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri .
Notable Latin versions of scripture include the Itala Version completed around AD 200 in the North Africa region, the Wurzburg Palimpsest Codex circa AD 450, and the Lyons Codex from about AD 650. The most famous Latin version is Jerome’s Vulgate from AD 390-404.
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God is love: The Case for Biblical Universalism
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It doesn’t matter how many manuscript copies of the Greek NT there are. Most of them are incorrect in many verses. It is much more likely that the manuscripts copied prior to A.D. 300 coincide with what the NT writers actually wrote.
I am blessed to possess a book which contains copies of ALL extant Greek manuscripts of the NT which were copied prior to A.D. 300. It is one of my most treasured books. I consult it whenever there is a question about what was actually written.
So do you think that director was correct in that assessment?
Consider 1 John 5:7 as found in the AV:
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
This verse is not found in ANY Greek manuscript dating prior to A.D 1600. It was doubtless added by someone who wanted to get Trinitarianism into the New Testament. Yet it is found in Textus Receptus from which the King James Bible was translated.
FL, we HAVE TO discern what was truly written by the NT authors, and not presume that all Greek manuscripts are so close to one another, that any one of them is valid.