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Evangelicals have used the argument so many times, that God will not go against the free will of man. I say to that he doesn’t have to, who is offended or rejecting of love made manifest?. Love does not have to prove itself anymore than a beautiful sunset or sunrise, a beautiful ocean view or a breathe taking view in a high place. What’s being rejected is what’s being conveyed to be God and his good news by the evangelicals, the love of God is most certainly not being rejected, and contrary to the teachings of the evangelicals, all God is asking from us is to give up, by becoming a little child again, from our false beliefs about him. Jesus was a preacher of love, joy, peace, mercy and forgiveness because he discovered that is the true nature and character of God.
Dear pcamps: I am of the strong persuasion the Will of all wills prevails. Our wee wills will ultimately yield by being overwhelmed by the glory of His Presence.
“We will get good out of evil.
Our gracious Educator does evolve for us out of corruption, temptation and sin, new purposes, new skills, new triumphs.
Beyond the overruling of intermediate evil into subserviency to a higher good, what has been super induced as a transition state of things is therefore seen to be necessary only for a time. It will pass away with the functions which it is made to fulfill. It will at last be superseded by the highest good for everyone.” - Thomas Griffith-
“That Christ should have descended to assume the nature of all men, only to cast them away as refuse to be burned, does so contradict His revelation that it is no wonder that the idea of everlasting damnation should have destroyed men’s belief.
No, the earthly dead will move on, a mighty stream to mingle in the ocean of the righteousness of God, on that far off but certain day when God will be All in all.” -Stopford A. Brooke
Saved & reconciled & made righteous
“Given a hell of torment and despair for millions of our friends and fellow men, can the good enjoy heaven except by becoming bad, – miraculously changed and changed deplorably for the worst. In a word, putting on, along with the white garments of the redeemed, a coldness and hardness of heart? Does not this simple reflection suffice to disperse into thin air the current notions of a world of everlasting pain?” -W.R. Greg-
No more pain, no more sorrow, the radical ALL made new
I WAS educated in the strictest So-called "orthodox faith." When I was from ten to fourteen years of age, I attended prayer meetings where I could almost feel the burning waves and smell the sulphurous fumes. I remember the shrieks and groans of suffering children and parents and even aged grandparents. I would return to my home and with the utmost sincerity ask God to take me out of the world if He would only Save me from hell. I professed to love God, Said I hoped I loved Him as I heard my elders do. Necessarily before this seething sulphurous sea of flame my love must have been similar to the love a woman would feel to a tyrant who with a loaded pistol pointed at her heart bade her love him or die. I grew to know that true love cannot be forced. We cannot love the unlovely. "We love Him because He first loved us."
In speaking of my Universalist faith I shall not stop to defend those basal beliefs on which it rests in common with all other Christian doctrines. I shall assume, without giving my reasons, the being of God, the authority of Jesus, the truth of the trend of Scripture, and the immortality of all Souls. I shall speak chiefly on only those points which differentiate mine from other Christian sects. I can make no argument for a universe finally obedient which will have any force to one who denies the being of God. An argument for endless discord can be made which all atheists would accept : indeed, all modern arguments for that idea play into the hands of atheists.
These arguments assert a God who either cannot, or will not, bring the creation of His hands to order; hence he is not God -not infinite. His name should begin with a small letter. The atheist accepts the argument, and if there is an arch-fiend he certainly laughs. No argument for a finally harmonious universe can be made save on the basis of Christian theism. I do not, indeed, insist that a man must accept my definition or conception of Deity; but some conception which does not rob Him of the necessary attributes of His being. He may say with Arnold, " A power not ourselves which makes for righteousness." Very well; if only Arnold's God continues to make for righteousness, Universalism is assured. If, however, one is able to say with Jesus, "Our Father who art in heaven," the argument is still stronger. To him who believes neither of these ideas of God nor their equivalent, I can make no argument which will avail.
God must be accomplishing a design invariable and without the shadow of turning, the design to save every one of us everlastingly. –Florence Nightingale
God will seek us -- how long? Until he finds us. And when he's found the last little shriveling rebellious soul and has depopulated hell, then death will be swallowed up in victory, and Christ will turn over all things to the Father that he may be all and in all. Then every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. --Clarence Jordan - (founder of Koinonia Community, author of “Cotton Patch Gospel”)
I trust that in Jesus Christ shall “all the families of the earth be blessed,” by being yet connected together in a better world, where every tie that bound heart to heart in this state of existence shall be far beyond our present conception, more enduring. –Robert Burns, 1789
“The restoration of the whole human race to purity and happiness.”
This benevolent doctrine—which not only goes far as to solve the great problem of moral and physical evil, but which would, if received more generally, tend to soften the spirit of uncharitableness, so fatally prevalent among Christian sects—was maintained by that great light of the early church, Origen, and has not wanted supporters among more modern theologians. –Thomas Moore 1779-1852
The Holy Spirit establishes the righteousness of heaven in the midst of the unrighteousness of earth, and will not stop or stay until all that is dead has been brought back to life and a new world has come into being.--Karl Barth
If you want the full and eternal truth, you have to go back to foundational beginnings. Are hell and sin and God’s judgments anywhere in Genesis 1 or 2? No. They aren’t there. God did not intend for them to be there. His intent was perfection. Thus I believe that such a foundation leads to the inescapable conclusion that perfection will again reign throughout the universe, and that sin (and hell) will ultimately be defeated. How else will God’s original intent ultimately be accomplished? –Michael Phillips
In each dispensation, God has a definite and different immediate purpose, all working toward the ultimate purpose of ridding the universe of all rebellion, so that all free moral agents will be willingly and eternally subject to God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost, as originally planned, with God all in all forever. --Finis Dake, "Notes on Genesis" in Dake's Bible
Apokatastasis (the restoration of all things) represents an ultimate consequence of doctrine of the aeons, and as such a theological necessity. –Walter Kunneth
This sublime revelation of the extent of redemption as commensurate with the whole creation is brought out especially in...Philippians 2:9-10, Colossians 1:20-21. The solitary prisoner, Paul, could see farthest into the glory of the Divine Counsels. --B.F. Westcott, of Westcott and Hort
The Spirit of the Lord says within my soul, that the kingly nature of the Son of God is purposed to be revealed in the nature of every man, that Christ’s kingliness may be prevalent in all the world and govern the heart of every man, even as it governs the heart of those who know Him and have entered. –John G. Lake
The aim of redemption is to let Christ have the pre-eminence in all things. In order to have this first place in all things, Christ must first have the pre-eminence in us. And why? Because we are the firstfruits of all creation (James 1:18). After we are in subjection to Christ, all other things will follow in subjection... --Watchman Nee-
In the perspective of the future we have stopped short of the far-off goal, and explained the finale of God's purposes by the episode or process on the way thereto. --A.E. Saxby
Why good men should be so averse to admit it, I know not; - into their own hearts at least, however they might object to its promulgation among the bulk of mankind. But perhaps the world is not ripe for it yet. I have frequently thought that since it has pleased God to leave it in darkness so long respecting this particular truth, and often to use 'such doubtful language as to admit of such a general misconception thereupon, he must have some good reason for it. We see how liable men are to yield to the temptations of the passing hour; how little the dread of future punishment - how still less the promise of future reward can avail to make them forbear and wait; and if so many thousands rush into destruction with (as they suppose) the prospect of Eternal Death before their eyes, - what might not the consequence be, if that prospect were changed for one of a limited season of punishment, far distant and unseen, - however protracted and terrible it might be? I thankfully cherish this belief; I honour those who hold it; and I would that all men had the same view of man's hopes and God's unbounded goodness as he has given to us, if it might be had with safety…. Only let our zeal be tempered with discretion, and while we labour, let us humbly look to God who is able and certain to bring his great work to perfection in his own good time and manner. –Anne Bronte-
Greek scholar William Barclay wrote concerning kolasis aionion (age-during corrective chastisement) in Matthew 25:46
"The Greek word for punishment is kolasis, which was not originally an ethical word at all. It originally meant the pruning of trees to make them grow better. There is no instance in Greek secular literature where kolasis does not mean remedial punishment. It is a simple fact that in Greek kolasis always means remedial punishment. God's punishment is always for man's cure."
"What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath–prepared for destruction." Romans 9:22
Fitted=katartivzw
Katartivzw=
To render or to fit.
To make sound or complete.
To mend what has been broken or rent.
To repair what has been broken or rent.
“And this brings us face to face with a blunder of our traditional creed, which is radical. It talks of God's love as though that stood merely on a par with His justice though it were something belonging to Him which He puts on or off. It is hardly possible to open a religious book in which this fatal error is not found; fatal, because it virtually strikes out of the Gospel its fundamental truth, that GOD IS LOVE. The terms are equivalent. They can be interchanged. God is not anger though He can be angry, God is not vengeance though He does avenge. These are attributes, love is essence. Therefore, God is unchangeably love. Therefore, in judgment He is love, in wrath He is love, in vengeance He is love-" love first, and last, and midst, and without end.” -Christ Triumphant-
“We all must die and are like water spilled on the ground that cannot be gathered up again, but the Lord does not take away life, instead He devises ways for the banished to be restored.”
The risen Christ preaches to the dead
“Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison; which once were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was in preparation, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water… for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.”
"Who shall render an account unto him who is holding in readiness to judge living and dead; for, unto this end, even unto the dead, was the glad-message delivered,—in order that they might be judged, indeed, according to men in flesh, but might live according to God in spirit." -Rotherham Emphasized-
“We all must die and are like water spilled on the ground that cannot be gathered up again, but the Lord does not take away life, instead He devises ways for the banished to be restored.”
The risen Christ preaches to the dead
“Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison; which once were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was in preparation, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water… for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.”
"Who shall render an account unto him who is holding in readiness to judge living and dead; for, unto this end, even unto the dead, was the glad-message delivered,—in order that they might be judged, indeed, according to men in flesh, but might live according to God in spirit." -Rotherham Emphasized-
Dead=
nekros= a corpse (from nekus)=
Breathed his last/ lifeless.
Deceased/ departed.
Destitute of life/ without life.
Inanimate.
Disobedient= apeitheo=
Not to allow one’s self to be persuaded.
To refuse or withhold belief & obedience.
To refuse belief and obedience.
Not to comply with.
Question:
Why did the risen Christ preach to the dead?
My dear friend, clear your mind of can’t. -Samuel Johnson-
“Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: by which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison; which once were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was in preparation, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved through water… for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit."
"Who shall render an account unto him who is holding in readiness to judge living and dead; for, unto this end, even unto the dead, was the glad-message delivered,—in order that they might be judged, indeed, according to men in flesh, but might live according to God in spirit." -Rotherham Emphasized-
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