Just curious
What was it that really started your journey to search into the possibility of the reconciliation of all things to God?
dunno if this has already been asked. But i always enjoy hearing peoples stories.
I hear ya man! I dont believe in free will personally but I love Gary and the way he teaches. I mourn with him over the loss of his wife and hope he is doing well and eventually comes back to posting videos.
I also agree when I first began to believe in God I was wracked with fear. Because if i believed in God i must believe what ive primarily heard from the only people who talked about God in my life. And they all taught e.t. I lost sleep, i lost weight, i lost peace of mind, it was almost as if I had wished never to have started believing in God at all because ignorance was bliss. It assuredly was “the fear of God was [only the] beginning of my wisdom.”
So from there i started looking into soteriology and all the verses referring to punishment, judgement, etc. At first, admittedly, I saw only that it spoke of destruction. And thus I became a annihilationist for a short time. It gave me some peace of mind, but not much. And still didnt make a lot of sense in many ways. Why would God create things in vein? To be thrown away? But i didnt question those things for more than a few moments. I wrote a short “essay” if you will about my findings. In one part i likened being in hell as a child calling out to there mother to make the pain stop and proposed the thought “would the mother really let them suffer if they could stop it”. I shared the essay with my mother and she said “I wouldnt leave you in there, Id go in after you, not let the fire kill you” or something along those lines. That really struck me. Could she be more compassionate as a parent then God?
Thats when i really started searching. Found out the translation errors in hell and aion etc. Thats when i realized HOW destruction fits into the plan and that it is NOT the end. And really started seeing verses that talked about the salvation of all for what they were. Thats when i matured in wisdom and “perfect love cast out all fear”.