The Superiority of ECT over Universalism

[St_Michael]

1). God says “Vengeance is mine I will repay. Rather love and forgive your enemy” Those who have faith in God are more forgiving and loving of enemies.

2). The fear of the eternal consequences of evil behavior motivates obedience.

Dawn To Day

I think of the eternal fire
That purifies all lustful desire
Remembering the lovely and true
As my faith and hope are in You
For the pure in heart see your face
Washed in the beauty of Your grace
As Satan is defeated and cast away
Darkness goes from dawn to day

3). Someone once told me that suicides go to hell. I don’t know if that’s true or not and I’m not going to try it and find out but you can see how a mentally ill person would commit suicide if they could only just end their suffering and live forever in eternal bliss.

[St_Michael]

In short ~~ A Holy God produces a holy creature. Holiness being understood in the sense of free from sin. God’s holiness separates Him from us. There are Creator creature distinctions. There are ways we are to be like God and ways we are not. Trusting and relying on God the way Jesus did.

[St_Michael]

Two Wings

Reveal Your beauty to me
It’s Your face that I want to see
Shining down from the sky
From the moon, the stars up high

Reveal Your glory to my heart
Give my life a glowing new start
Cleansing me from all black sin
Letting me fly around once again

Heaven holds my hope and love
Hell my fear, making me a dove
With these two wings I can soar
And dance along life’s tender shore

Reveal Your splendor through my eyes
As I sing along love’s golden skies
Lovely, soft tunes of wonder and joy
Bringing me back to when I was a boy

Protect Your own with tender care
In the New Creation You are there
Keeping me safe under two wings
Evil is kept out as heaven sings

With love and hate I’m forever new
In Holy beauty, in love with You
Glory shines forever on Your child
Love flows strong, meek and mild

Loving all good and hating all evil
With a special love for Your people
Forever protected under two wings
Inside Your light, ecstasy it brings

Two wings to soar and fly up higher
Holy passion is my only desire
In heaven’s glory there is a fire
Cleansed and refined we go up higher

[St_Michael]

When we mess up and slip eternal consequences also leads one to repent, confess, and ask for forgiveness.

[St_Michael]

Hell demonstrates God’s perfect love and perfect justice. The Bible tells us that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. Darkness is corruption and evil. So, light refers to God’s beautiful holiness. God is light tells us that holiness is God’s essence. It’s who He is. So, while God is love it’s a holy love. His justice is a holy justice. That is to say, God’s love and justice are perfect. Of course we don’t live in the state of perfect love and justice at the moment. For creation was subjected to futility and corruption by God in hope. But when God reconciles the present heaven and earth there will be a new creation as God’s children enter into the state of perfect love and perfect justice. It’s the nature of perfect love and perfect justice to protect against evils harm. So, when we enter into the state of perfect love and perfect justice we will be protected from evil forever and ever. One of the ways God will show His tender love to His children in the new creation is by protecting them from evil. As the Bible tells us in Revelation:

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”

Of course God is across time and has always been in a state of perfect love and perfect justice. He’s the beginning and the end. All past, present, and future events are “present” to God in His “now”. An example of this from the Bible is how Christ was slain some 2000 years ago yet the Bible says He was slain from the foundation of the world.

[ChrisB]

A hymn by Father Frederick William Faber 1862

Souls of men, why will ye scatter
like a crowd of frightened sheep?
Foolish hearts, why will ye wander
from a love so true and deep?
Was there ever kindest shepherd
half so gentle, half so sweet,
as the Saviour who would have us
come and gather round his feet?

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea;
there’s a kindness in his justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows
are more felt than up in heaven;
there is no place where earth’s failings
have such kindly judgement given.

There is welcome for the sinner,
and more graces for the good;
there is mercy with the Saviour;
there is healing in his blood.
There is plentiful redemption
in the blood that has been shed;
there is joy for all the members
in the sorrows of the Head.

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man’s mind.
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
But we make his love too narrow
by false limits of our own;
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal he will not own.

Pining souls, come nearer Jesus,
and O come not doubting thus,
but with faith that trusts more bravely
his great tenderness for us.
If our love were but more simple,
we should take him at his word:
and our lives would be all sunshine
in the sweetness of our Lord.

It may seem odd that I should call up this hymn particularly when you learn that it was written by a Catholic priest and member of the Congregation of Mary who had previously been an Anglican minister. He was the senior man at The Brompton Oratory Church just opposite what is now Harrods Department Store on Brompton High St, West London. Interestingly just next door is Holy Trinity Brompton Anglican Church from which originated the now famous Alpha Course.
Not all Catholics are supporters of ECT. I read Jesus of Nazareth by Ratzinger earlier this year and while it was a hard read because of all the ecclesiastical overburden underneath was clearly universalistic grace. Just sayin!

[Paidion]

God is light tells us that holiness is God’s essence.

The apostle John tells us that LOVE is God’s essence.

1 John 4:8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

[Eaglesway]

The question is not whether God is just, or whether as Creator He is different than His creatures. The question is why He created them, and what is His ultimate intention for them.

The doctrine of ultimat unversal reconciliation, as I see it, does not teach that everyone will enter heavenly bliss upon dying, whether by suicide or whatever. My belief is that everyone will receive what is needed to restore there souls, and whther they face the fire of His presence(Rev 14:10) to be disciplined for wickedness or not, His purpose for Hs creatures is ultimately to restore them to sanity and love.

19 For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. Romans 8

The futility has a terminus. The glorious liberty of the sons of God does not. It will eventually consume all creation.

“Evry knee shall bow, whether in heaven or on earth or under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” Phil 2

5 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, **that God may be all in all.
**

I do not disagree that there will be recompense to the wcked. I see that in the scriptures, but every adversary will be subjected eventually, and reconciled. God will become all in all.

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be the glory forever.” Rom 11

"For so it pleased the Father to make all fulness dwell in Him and thru Him to reconcile all things to Himself by the blood of Hos cross, whether things in heaven or things in earth. Col 1

“In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.” Eph 1

His ultimate intention is kindness. His ultimate purpose is the restoration of all creation through Jesus Christ…

“…whom the heavens must receive until the period of the restoration of all things spoken of by all the prophets since ancient times” Acts 3

“Behold, I am making all things new! Write down these words for they are faithful and true.” Rev 21:5

“If I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto me” John 12:32

[Eaglesway]

At first I heard “bad people go to hell”.

Then I heard everyone who rejected Jesus would go to hell forever.

Then I heard that everyone who never heard of Him would join the bad people and the rebelious in hell.

Then I heard that every body who doesnt believe everything thing a certain way would go to hell too.

Then I heard everyone who didnt follow Him in perfection would also go to hell.

Then I said.

“God loses and the saints lose too. Because we are here to be ministers of reconciliation- but even some of us may go to hell, so it looks to me like the gates of hell will prevail against us, and Jesus was wrong. Sure am glad I have all these holy people to straighten me out about God’s impotence and His Son’s naivete.”

;o)

[davo]

“The Superiority of ECT…”

Well universalism per sé aside, I don’t think so. Paul is extremly clear… “The wages of sin is DEATH” — he did NOT say the wages of sin is eternal conscious torment. He also said… “he who has died has been freed from sin” — in both cases Paul is quite emphatic! Now one might say his second statement applies only to believers… I would counter by saying there are no non-believers once one transitions through death’s doorway — ALL then believe in God.

[anon47460357]

[T]here are no non-believers once one transitions through death’s doorway — ALL then believe in God.

And that’s putting it mildly. One in the immediate presence of the enthroned Christ could sooner doubt his own existence than have the slightest doubt of God.

[St_Michael]

Davo,

Death is separation from the life of God:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved

Eaglesway,

There’s nothing unjust in God protecting His children from evil’s harm by punishing the wicked. Those in hell have all mercy removed from their hearts. As a result the longer one is in hell the harder their hearts become. Those in hell do not want God. They hate Him. In the new creation Christ is all in all. In the new creation where there will be perfect love and justice “All Things” are made new. “All things” is a reference to the heavens and earth. After all that’s what the merism “heavens and earth” means. The lake of fire isn’t included in the “all things” made new

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

The Lake of Fire is SEPRATE. In the new heaven and earth Christ is “all in all” All flesh will worship Christ there. Those that are in heaven and earth and those saints that are resurrected from under the earth. All flesh. These are God’s children. But not those who are in the lake of fire:

“As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the Lord, “so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another,** all mankind** will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord. “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.” - Isaiah 66

As we can see, those in the Lake of fire aren’t included in “all mankind” or the new heavens and earth.

Paidion,

The Bible says God is love

It also says

God is light (holiness).

So, God’s essence is holy love. That is to say His love is perfect. The Bible also says that perfect agape always protects. When we reach the state of perfection in the new creation God’s perfect love will protect His children forever and ever against the evil in hell.

[davo]

Davo,

Death is separation from the life of God:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved

Michael… while I agree 100% with your sentiment regarding the spiritual nature of death, i.e., it being the “separation from the life of God” aka EXILE, there isn’t one “evangelical” alive that doesn’t understand the death of Rom 6:23 apart from the physical death of Gen 2:17… to which my point was made.

As a post-evangelical I view “the death” of the Genesis account in according as you’ve further quoted Paul, BUT my post was about challenging the furphy of “the Superiority of ECT…” — hence the texts as I gave them.

[St_Michael]

davo,

Genesis says in the day you eat you will die. They died that day. It’s obviously spiritual death or death through sin. This is separation. While we all die physically because of the corruption that creation is subjected to this isn’t the second death which is separation from the life of God in the lake of fire. Those in the lake of fire have their hearts separated from all mercy. As a result it grows harder the longer one is in hell. Therefore, those in the lake of fire don’t want God. They hate Him. The longer in hell the more evil they become having their hearts separated from all mercy.

The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life.

Moreover, it’s been the tradition of the church through the centuries that hell is eternal separation from the life of God.

[davo]

Moreover, it’s been the tradition of the church through the centuries that hell is eternal separation from the life of God.

That’s the most accurate thing you’ve just said… UNFORTUNATELY the traditions of men have nullified much truth. Catholicism’s “Hell” which Protestantism has run with is of much older pagan origins… and all false.

[St_Michael]

It’s not just Catholicism but the Orthodox of the western rite do as well. I just talked to the priest at the Orthodox church here and he confirmed it. The Orthodox church believes in eternal torment. At least those of the western rite do.

So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us ~~ 2Thess. 2:15

[Eaglesway]

God will not have to protect His children from eternal evil in hell. He has overcome death, and the grave. He has overcome evil with good. Death will be the last adversary destroyed, and He will be all in all, as the scriptures say. Death and the grave will be destroyed. Then there will only be life. \o/

Death where is your sting? Death will be swallowed up by immortality!

[St_Michael]

It seems like this is your latest dogmatic statement of the fortnight. Where does the Bible say this?

It’s all in the Bible that God’s mercy softens the heart. God hardens a heart by withholding mercy. Pharaoh is a good example. God has mercy on whom He pleases and he hardens whom He pleases (Romans). Without mercy you don’t get better you get worse.

You’ve repeated this so many times. Are you a bot?

No but when you keep using the same proof texts I must put them in context.

Just because “all mankind” doesn’t literally mean all mankind in one verse, doesn’t mean “all mankind” doesn’t literally mean all mankind in other verses – verses in which context makes it clear that “all mankind” literally means “all mankind”.

I agree. Lets look at the context of all things made new in the new heaven and earth:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

Clearly those in the lake of fire aren’t included in “all things”. Moreover, all people can and often does mean all peoples in the sense of all nationalities, races, genders, classes etc - the whole world. Not every individual. Here’s a couple of examples:

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, ~~ Rev. 5:9

One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You’re not considering that it is to your advantage that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to unite the scattered children of God. ~~ John 11:49-52

Either way your interpretation is wrong. Revelation explicitly tells us that those in the lake of fire are not God’s children. They are not part of the all things made new. God gathers His children from every tribe, nation and language as it tells us in the scriptures I provided.

[St_Michael]

Death where is your sting? Death will be swallowed up by immortality!

This is true only for those in the new heaven and earth where all things are made new:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

[anon12438761]

Michael, you are kinda rowing against the tide here, right? It’s a Evangelical Universalist website 'fer the love of St. Peter.

People who have been terrorized by hell - notwithstanding the good Dr. Pascal whom you quote - are now giving praise to a loving heavenly Father - they are not here to be re-terrorized! For many, the faith is weak, and reading your defense of hell may be shaking them.

Just sayin’ - to be compassionate, maybe don’t keep banging this drum? Please?