He shall save His people from their sins...
that those who don't believe in Christ will spend all of eternity in Hell. All of eternity....can you imagine that?
try to imagine what happened there. One of the gas chambers was left untouched by the war. A gas chamber for people...Living, breathing, people. Think about that. After being herded in that room, stripped, and degraded, to face what? What could they have been thinking at that time? Then the gas starts......
book, Hope Beyond Hell, has this to say about salvation: We may not know, on this side of eternity, exactly why God allowed us to believe that He had created Hell for most people. We can speculate and probably come pretty close to the truth but what we can do, for now, is take the information that we have been made aware of in the Bible and believe it.
As he saith also in Hosea, I will call that my people, which was not my people; And her beloved, that was not beloved. Ro 9:26 NAS And it shall be, [that] in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, There shall they be called sons of the living God.
I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work. What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them: Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway. I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.
judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.
submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. The wages of sin is death, not eternity in Hell. It seems that the idea of endless Hell came from the translators clumping about four different words meaning four different things, into one intimidating, manipulating, horrifying, word, called Hell. You can read a literal translation of the Bible and find all four words as they were originally inspired by the Holy Spirit. Amazingly enough, none of them indicate endless torture. Regret? Yes Punishment? Yes. Endless? NO! Keep in mind that during this period of time when these words were "blended" into one word, Hell, is the time when Christianity had become organized into the "state" church, It's leaders had become extremely corrupt, to the point of selling "tickets" called indulgences, as best as I understand, to keep one from being punished for sins....
greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?"
puffed up. Those wicked hearts live in every one of us also. Our modern day denominational and inter denominational churches can become controlling as well. Actually, anything that us pitiful humans touch can go awry and probably will unless God, Himself, intervenes....
the Hell that traditional Christianity has taught for years has been understood in light of the original words being mistranslated. Knowing that God is in control and that He has a certain time for certain people or groups of people to come into His kingdom helps us helps clear up the mystery of some people not accepting the message of Christ. It doesn't mean they will always reject it.
teaching of endless Hell really as obvious as we think it has been? Or, have we just blindly accepted it without looking for ourselves?" If such an atrocity were true...why didn't God tell Adam and Eve about it? Not only them but every other person until the time of Christ? Wouldn't He have told His prophets to warn the people? Come on, THINK!!! Ask questions!!!
does that say for Him? If He is all knowing, then He knew who would accept Jesus and who would not. If He is all powerful, then He could have created a different plan. It just does not make sense anyway you look at it. Plus, it is in opposition to many other scriptures. This should challenge us to study and do our best to try to find out where this teaching came from and how it came to be eternal. |
Consider Sodom and Gomorrah. Jude said because of their wickedness they suffered the
vengeance of "eternal" fire. But, in Ezekiel we read of Sodom's "restoration" to her former estate.
Common sense tells you that if Sodom is to be restored, her punishment will not be eternal.
Take the word "everlasting" from the verse above, Matthew 25:46, and the word, "eternal" from
Jude 1:7 concerning Sodom, and let's throw in all those whose names are not written in the book of
life who will be cast into the lake of fire "forever and ever". Now, we have, everlasting, eternal,
forever and ever. All three of these words are translated from that one single Greek word aion.
Here, we only have one example of how something we naturally think is endless is not. But, on the
"Owlam & Aion " page there are more. The aion word means an age, an eon, an indefinite period of
time. There are Greek words that mean endless but the writers of the Bible were evidently not
inspired to use them concerning punishment of God's creation. Now, the translators...that's a
different story altogether. It seems they were inspired, but, who inspired them? The organized
church at that time?
Any relationship works two ways. Be it a husband/wife or a parent/child relationship, there
are two people involved and each have their own specific needs. God, over and over,
equates His relationship with us as that of a father/child and a husband/wife relationship.
I hate to even use the term "true believer"but I am going to because I need it to make my
point. And I know from my own experience that we can be simply caught up in the traditional
church system and NOT be a true believer.
As true believers, we know that we are in right standing with God. We know we can cast our
cares on Him and He will meet our needs. We even come to the place where we know that
everything we want is not a need and we are content with God's judgment and sovereignty
in all areas of our life. We have no doubt that our part of the relationship is taken care of,
explicitly. Agreed? Now, think about this:
What about God's part of the relationship...can He cast His cares on us ?
Do we care about His needs like He cares for ours?
Think it sounds strange to say "God has needs"? That's because we have a one-sided
relationship with Him. It's all about ME! What if your husband or wife lavished gifts on you
constantly and you never returned the gesture? Can you imagine..."Honey, I love you!"
"yeah, thanks." That just ain't right. God's love for us should be reciprocated.
How can we return affection to God? Well, how about the same way we return affection to
anybody? Find out what they like.... I am not just speaking of things like attending church
services or having great worship services, in fact, that is probably on the bottom of the list.
Anybody can say they love God and anybody can get caught up in the energy of awesome
music. And, there is some awesome "worship music" today, which I do enjoy.
I love to worship where people are gathered together who know what God has done for
humanity. But, if we wait from worship service to the next worship service to "worship" God,
I'm afraid we are extremely misguided. To completely worship God, we need to find out what
He loves and needs and do our best to meet that need.
Jesus said, "if you love me, keep my commandments." He also gave us the two
commandments that encompass all the other ones. They are : love God and love people.
Why? Because that's what He loves...people. If we haven't been clued in on the fact that we
are to love people it has to be because we are babes in Christ and are still glorying in our
new relationship with Him, or, it is because we are self-centered, spiritually retarded, carnally
minded, Holy Spirit quenching, people who forget what the Lord went through to redeem us.
I added Holy Spirit quenching because I believe after so long, the Holy Spirit deals with us
about growing in grace and dying to self, which is necessary if we learn to love people.
There is a curious passage of scripture in Hebrews chapter 6 verses 1-3:
In other words, get out of first grade, graduate. There's a world full of people out there who
don't know the basics like we do. They don't know they were made right with God before the
foundation of the world....they probably think they aren't good enough to be accepted by
God. Little do they know that it was for people like them that Jesus died and rose again...they
need to be told! They are perishing and we can rescue them!
Why should we, who have been walking with God for years, still be in first grade? But, if we
graduate, what is the next step up? What do we graduate to?
So, what does all this have to do with Universal Salvation? To understand Universal
Salvation, you have to understand how God feels about His creation. He loved them so
much that He sent His son to take their punishment so they would not be separated from
Him for eternity. This was done, too, before the foundation of the world.
God didn't ask us one thing about Adam saddling us all with the death
sentence. Neither did He ask us if we wanted to be reconciled back to
Him. He just did it! Why? Because we are His and He loves us!
When Adam and Eve found themselves naked, without asking them anything about it, God
killed an innocent animal and covered their shame and nakedness. Notice, He didn't kill the
animal and make the clothes and go to the front of the garden and hold up the clothes and
say, "bow your heads and close your eyes, please. With no one looking, if you would like
these clothes to cover your nakedness, just slip up your hand. Now, leave your shrubs and
walk up here and get your clothes....if you will." Naaaa, it didn't happen like that.
God is not a trickster. Adam and Eve didn't have to ask for the clothes, God saw the need
and met it. A world full of "Adams" is waiting for us who are clothed in the righteousness of
Christ to tell them....God has not forgotten you...you were made right with Him before the
world began. Tell, me, who would not want to hear that?
I believe the apostle Paul graduated. I know in his humility he said he hoped he attained the
"first resurrection" but his actions show that He was definitely moved by a power greater
than Himself. That power was love. Listen to what he says...
vengeance of "eternal" fire. But, in Ezekiel we read of Sodom's "restoration" to her former estate.
Common sense tells you that if Sodom is to be restored, her punishment will not be eternal.
Take the word "everlasting" from the verse above, Matthew 25:46, and the word, "eternal" from
Jude 1:7 concerning Sodom, and let's throw in all those whose names are not written in the book of
life who will be cast into the lake of fire "forever and ever". Now, we have, everlasting, eternal,
forever and ever. All three of these words are translated from that one single Greek word aion.
Here, we only have one example of how something we naturally think is endless is not. But, on the
"Owlam & Aion " page there are more. The aion word means an age, an eon, an indefinite period of
time. There are Greek words that mean endless but the writers of the Bible were evidently not
inspired to use them concerning punishment of God's creation. Now, the translators...that's a
different story altogether. It seems they were inspired, but, who inspired them? The organized
church at that time?
Q: What is the advantage of believing in Universal Salvation?
- A: It changes our focus.
Any relationship works two ways. Be it a husband/wife or a parent/child relationship, there
are two people involved and each have their own specific needs. God, over and over,
equates His relationship with us as that of a father/child and a husband/wife relationship.
I hate to even use the term "true believer"but I am going to because I need it to make my
point. And I know from my own experience that we can be simply caught up in the traditional
church system and NOT be a true believer.
As true believers, we know that we are in right standing with God. We know we can cast our
cares on Him and He will meet our needs. We even come to the place where we know that
everything we want is not a need and we are content with God's judgment and sovereignty
in all areas of our life. We have no doubt that our part of the relationship is taken care of,
explicitly. Agreed? Now, think about this:
What about God's part of the relationship...can He cast His cares on us ?
Do we care about His needs like He cares for ours?
Think it sounds strange to say "God has needs"? That's because we have a one-sided
relationship with Him. It's all about ME! What if your husband or wife lavished gifts on you
constantly and you never returned the gesture? Can you imagine..."Honey, I love you!"
"yeah, thanks." That just ain't right. God's love for us should be reciprocated.
How can we return affection to God? Well, how about the same way we return affection to
anybody? Find out what they like.... I am not just speaking of things like attending church
services or having great worship services, in fact, that is probably on the bottom of the list.
Anybody can say they love God and anybody can get caught up in the energy of awesome
music. And, there is some awesome "worship music" today, which I do enjoy.
I love to worship where people are gathered together who know what God has done for
humanity. But, if we wait from worship service to the next worship service to "worship" God,
I'm afraid we are extremely misguided. To completely worship God, we need to find out what
He loves and needs and do our best to meet that need.
Jesus said, "if you love me, keep my commandments." He also gave us the two
commandments that encompass all the other ones. They are : love God and love people.
Why? Because that's what He loves...people. If we haven't been clued in on the fact that we
are to love people it has to be because we are babes in Christ and are still glorying in our
new relationship with Him, or, it is because we are self-centered, spiritually retarded, carnally
minded, Holy Spirit quenching, people who forget what the Lord went through to redeem us.
I added Holy Spirit quenching because I believe after so long, the Holy Spirit deals with us
about growing in grace and dying to self, which is necessary if we learn to love people.
There is a curious passage of scripture in Hebrews chapter 6 verses 1-3:
" Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto
perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works,
and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of
hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this
will we do, if God permit."
In other words, get out of first grade, graduate. There's a world full of people out there who
don't know the basics like we do. They don't know they were made right with God before the
foundation of the world....they probably think they aren't good enough to be accepted by
God. Little do they know that it was for people like them that Jesus died and rose again...they
need to be told! They are perishing and we can rescue them!
Why should we, who have been walking with God for years, still be in first grade? But, if we
graduate, what is the next step up? What do we graduate to?
What does "go on to perfection" mean?
I believe it means we graduate to God's very heart. We learn to
love.
So, what does all this have to do with Universal Salvation? To understand Universal
Salvation, you have to understand how God feels about His creation. He loved them so
much that He sent His son to take their punishment so they would not be separated from
Him for eternity. This was done, too, before the foundation of the world.
God didn't ask us one thing about Adam saddling us all with the death
sentence. Neither did He ask us if we wanted to be reconciled back to
Him. He just did it! Why? Because we are His and He loves us!
When Adam and Eve found themselves naked, without asking them anything about it, God
killed an innocent animal and covered their shame and nakedness. Notice, He didn't kill the
animal and make the clothes and go to the front of the garden and hold up the clothes and
say, "bow your heads and close your eyes, please. With no one looking, if you would like
these clothes to cover your nakedness, just slip up your hand. Now, leave your shrubs and
walk up here and get your clothes....if you will." Naaaa, it didn't happen like that.
God is not a trickster. Adam and Eve didn't have to ask for the clothes, God saw the need
and met it. A world full of "Adams" is waiting for us who are clothed in the righteousness of
Christ to tell them....God has not forgotten you...you were made right with Him before the
world began. Tell, me, who would not want to hear that?
I believe the apostle Paul graduated. I know in his humility he said he hoped he attained the
"first resurrection" but his actions show that He was definitely moved by a power greater
than Himself. That power was love. Listen to what he says...
- "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all,
then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.
- Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known
Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man
be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are
become new.
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath
given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the
world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto
us the word of reconciliation.
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we
pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for
us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
(KJV 2 Corinthians 5:14-21)"
- Here it is in the "The Message":
- Christ's love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in
everything we do. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be
included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their
own.
Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look.
We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly
don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that
anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new.
The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who
settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our
relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the
Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins.
God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's
representatives.
God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into
God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself
now:
Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you. How? you say. In Christ. God
put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.
everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal Matthew 25:46 (some damned forever) |
| And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die. John 12:32,33 (all drawn to Christ) |
| Do you see the disagreement going on with the two scriptures listed? In thirty years of reading the Bible, I never saw what John 12:32 said. Do you see it? I thought His being lifted up was what we did when we praised him. Well, that's what the hymn said...... John tells plainly that it refers to the cross. |
Forever, How Can All Be Drawn To Christ???? |
According to Wikipedia, this is a picture of an indulgence. Here is what it said: An indulgence granted with the authority of the Pope by Johann Tetzel in 1517. The text reads: "By the authority of all the saints, and in mercy towards you, I absolve you from all sins and misdeeds and remit all punishments for ten days." |
Salvation |
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, |
Jesus
- In order to better understand salvation, we need to get a broad
overview of what Christ came to do for us. He came to:
♦ Give rest (Mt. 11:28).
♦ Heal the brokenhearted, free the captives and oppressed, and
give sight to the blind (Lu. 4:18).
♦ Comfort the mourning, give beauty for ashes, joy for mourning,
and a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness (Is.
61:2, 3).
♦ Save from sin and turn from iniquity (Mic 7:19; Mt. 1:21; Ac.
3:26; Ro. 11:26).
♦ Save from God’s passionate displeasure (wrath) and just
recompense of sinful conduct (Ro. 5:9). (See “God’s Wrath,”
page 71).
♦ Set free from sin (Ro. 6:22).
♦ Rescue from this present evil age (Ga. 1:4 NAS).
♦ Bring hope and God to the hopeless and godless (Ep. 2:12).
♦ Redeem from every lawless deed and purify us
(Tit. 2:11-15 NAS).
♦ Set free those who all their lives were enslaved to the fear of
death (He. 2:14-15).
♦ Redeem from aimless conduct (1Pe. 1:18-19).
♦ Seeing the distressed and dispirited made Him command us
to pray for laborers (Mt. 9:36-38 NAS).
If salvation is deliverance from eternal woe, why the emphasis
on temporal deliverances? These passages speak of deliverance from
being heavy laden, blindness, broken-heartedness, sorrow, mourning,
heaviness of spirit, hopelessness, impurity, fear of death, aimless
conduct, weariness, being distressed and dispirited, lawless deeds
(sin) and their consequences, the present evil age.
How can Scripture emphasize these comparatively insignificant temporal
pains in the
face of infinite pain? For life on earth is but a vapor (Ja. 4:14), and
then we are hurled into eternal woe. How could James say pure
religion is to visit orphans and widows (Ja. 1:27)?
What a waste of time when we could be snatching the masses from hell! Why
does Scripture not place the emphasis where it ought to be? Why the smoke
screens? The only answer making any sense to me is that a flawed
paradigm has veiled the truth of Scripture from us.