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A meeting together with a coincidence of circumstances.
The Father of all fathers is not running a giant heavenly gambling casino! NOT! There is no first chance, no second chance, no chance.
His enterprise is based entirely upon Himself, not on chance.
"...the grace which He, the possessor of all wisdom and understanding, lavished upon us, when He made known to us the secret of His will. And this is in harmony with God's merciful purpose for the government of the world when the times are ripe for it—the purpose which He has cherished in His own mind of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ; yes, things in Heaven and things on earth, to find their one Head in Him. And you...."
Is it not strange the long seasons that can elapse on the back-side of the desert? Year by year falls into the great abyss, and at the juncture where we can no longer speak, and the great struggle to do the will of God vanishes into weakness and death, the Bush appears pulsating with Deity. It is there at the asamuth of death and weakness the Living One speaks.
"Take off your shoes from off your feet"
Holy ground! The place where dust and Divinity meet! It is there in absolute weakness and inability, the Lord manifests Himself as the God who raises the dead. The road into the Tree of Life is by way of the flaming swords swirling in every direction. Those who reach for the Tree will suffer the loss of the hand, the fingers, the grasp of all they are! And as the process of the swirling swords rage upon these ones, great loss is inflicted, for nothing, no one, comes to the other side the same as it enters..NOTHING!...NOTHING!...NOTHING!
The great stages of the Living One's glory must be in degrees of doxa. We are changed from one degree of glory to another and another! It requires a thought beginning in the mind of the caterpillar that ultimately leads to the building of a cocoon from which caterpillars become butterflies, and dust moves from the road of life into the Divine One, described as "the Living", the "I am", not the I was, the I AM.
It is this Heavenly Road that grasps us, the Heavenly One, the Source leading to the Road, the sustaining Guide of the Road, and the Goal of the Road. All things lead to Him, through Him and for Him! And by Him all things consist.
It has taken me over 75 years to go a journey that could be accomplished in 11 days, but dust and Divinity must meet; the goal is not all the story, the path is of equal value in the I AM! Each of us are on different stages of our Father's drawing hand, some so wrapped up in themselves they cannot see the bush that is aflame and is not devoured. It is just a common bush for many, but
"Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; and only he who sees takes off his shoes. -Eliz. Barrett Browning-
"I came not to judge the world, but to save the world" -John 12:47
“When I first began to believe in the reconciliation of the world, I fell on my knees and put my head on the floor and cried tears of joy. The revelation came to me in a flash, like lightning and immediately I received it as truth.
God was in Christ reconciling the WORLD unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. 2 Cor.5:19.
All will be judged then reconciled back to God so that He will be All in all. God is a consuming fire and will burn out all the dross from everyone." -Virgene Andrews-
Are our broadest hopes broad enough? Shall there be a nook or abyss, in all the universe of God, finally unlightened by the Cross? Shall there be a sin, or sorrow, or pain unhealed? Is the very universe, is creation in all its extent, a field wide enough for the Son of God?
(° ͡ ͜ ͡ʖ ͡ °) (ᵔᴥᵔʋ) So would that be a "yes"? Life in heaven is only temporary?
Aionios zoe is defined by St. John not as length, but rather, quality of union and communion.
"This is life aionios, that we may know You, and Jesus Christ whom You did send."
And they [the goats] will go away into lasting correction, but the righteous into lasting life .
Lasting correction is correction which endures. At some point it comes to an end. Lasting life is life which endures. But it just so happens that the lasting life we receive from Christ endures forever. But the idea of “forever” is not inherent in the word “αἰωνιος”.
The true Greek word for “eternal” is “αἰδιος”. That word is found in the following verse:
Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal (αἰδιος) power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. Romans 1:20
A meeting together with a coincidence of circumstances.
The Father of all fathers is not running a giant heavenly gambling casino! NOT! There is no first chance, no second chance, no chance.
His enterprise is based entirely upon Himself, not on chance.
"...the grace which He, the possessor of all wisdom and understanding, lavished upon us, when He made known to us the secret of His will. And this is in harmony with God's merciful purpose for the government of the world when the times are ripe for it—the purpose which He has cherished in His own mind of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ; yes, things in Heaven and things on earth, to find their one Head in Him. And you...."
God does NOT run a heavenly casino of chance!
Chance= sunkuria
Literally a meeting together with, a coincidence of circumstances.
A happening.
The word signifies a concurrence of events rather than chance.
From tunchano= to happen.
“He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.”
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found. -Isaac Watts-
Curse= katanathema=
By metonomy: An accursed thing put to the thing announced
"The leaves of the Tree are for healing the nations. Never again will anything be cursed. The Throne of God and of the Lamb is at the center. His servants will offer God service—worshiping, they’ll look on his face, their foreheads mirroring God. Never again will there be any night. No one will need lamplight or sunlight. The shining of God, the Master, is all the light anyone needs. And they will rule with him age after age after age." -The Message-
"But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool."
Note
It is through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross that all of Christ’s enemies will submit themselves in willing worship and praise to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 10:14-17
"For by one offering He has perfected forever those (His enemies) who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them (with His enemies) after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their (His enemies) hearts, and in their (His enemies) minds I will write them,”
Then He adds, “Their (His enemies) sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
Life is the energy by which the kingdom of God extends itself.
Though God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ over all regardless of their spiritual state, He does, nevertheless, hide His gracious sovereignty from us until the time of His choosing, upon which time, He reveals to the immediately chosen one that Jesus is their Lord and Savior. In spite of how evangelical invitations are worded, that’s what really happens. It’s not that the time has arrived for us to make Christ Lord (as we customarily hear); it’s that Christ has stepped in to exercise His Lordship, and reclaim us as His own—which we always have been. (“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein.”) He does this simply by the infusion of His life, and in the sense described above, God’s kingdom, in the hands of His Son, extends itself. Remember, you were redeemed (bought back) from pretensions to ownership to your real Owner by the shedding of His precious blood, that is, by His life given sacrificially. -John Gavazzoni-
"I believe implicitly in the ultimate and complete triumph of God, the time when all things shall be subject to Him and when God will be everything to everyone (1 Cor 15:24-28). For me, this has certain consequences. If one man remains outside of the love of God at the end of time, it means that one man has defeated the love of God—and that is impossible. Further, there is only one way in which we can think of the triumph of our God. If God was no more than a King or judge, then it would be possible to speak of his triumph, if His enemies were agonizing in hell or were totally and completely obliterated and wiped out. But God is not only king and Judge, God is Father—He is indeed Father more than anything else. No father could be happy while there were members of his family for ever in agony. No father would count it a triumph to obliterate the disobedient members of his family. The only triumph a father can know is to have all of his family back home again." –Dr. William Barclay-
"Thou, O Father, wilt not be angry with thy child because he thought—and tried to bid others to think just and noble things of thee; though, O Savior, wilt not frown at him because he trusted in the infinitude of thy compassion; and thou, O Holy Spirit, whose image is the soft stealing of the dew and the golden hovering of the dove, wilt know that if he erred it was because he fixed his eyes, not on the glaring and baleful meteors of anathematizing orthodoxy, but on the star of Bethlehem and the clouds that began to shine above the coming of the Lord; and that—if perchance he erred—the light which led astray was light from Heaven." –Canon F.W. Farrar-
"The Spirit of the Lord speaks within my soul and says, “Within the breast of every man is the divine image of God (living God), in whose image and likeness he was made, that sin is a perversion and sickness an imposter, and that the grace and power of God through the Holy Ghost delivers man from all bondage and darkness, and man in all his nature rises into union and communion with God and becomes one with Him in the truest sense." –John G. Lake-)
"Give them not hell, but hope and courage. Preach the everlasting love of God."– John Murray-
"The fact remains—we are God’s offspring, created from a foundation of goodness that has gone wrong. History since the Garden is the gradual story of how God is slowly putting that wrongness right...and will continue to do so." –Michael Phillips-
"For myself I can say, that if there is a God, and he is such a being as [the Universalist] describes, I can bow before him and give him all my heart. He says God is love, made the world in love, and in perfect wisdom, and well adapted to serve the divine purpose. He then made a family, all of them have sinned, and some of them have fallen very low, but God is determined, according to [the Universalist], to stand by His family, every one of them, let come what will come, till he makes all of them respectable. This standing by His family, as every true Father ought to do, is what I like in [the Universalist's]idea of God. But if there is a God, and he has created a family and will at last turn against most of them, and in burning wrath cast them into Hell forever, as [traditional Christianity] describe(s), I should hate him—he is not as good as I am, for I propose to stand by my family and every member of it for as long as I live. It is an insult to ask me to love and worship a God who is guilty of doing what we would detest in an earthly father." –Robert Ingersoll
"I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing. [I believe] such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren, rush inside the center of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn. I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of God to redeem his children." - George MacDonald-
Suppose it were offered to the father of three children to take his choice whether two should be received into heaven and one condemned to Hell, or the whole should be annihilated unto death. What would a parent say? Where is the father who would dare secure the bliss of two children at the cost of the endless misery of one? Which of the family would he select as the victim, whose undying pain should secure his brother's joy? Is there any one living who would not suffer himself and his children to sink back again into nothingness, rather than purchase heaven at such a price? --Thomas Allin, Christ Triumphant-
"...Nothing can be lost that is not first owned. Just as a parent is compelled by civil law to be responsible for his family and his property, so the Creator --by His own divine law--in compelled to take care of the children He has created. And that means not only caring for the good children, but for the bad ones and lost ones as well. So the word lost came to be for Mrs. Smith, a term of greatest comfort. If a person is a "lost sinner" it only means that he is temporarily separated from the Good Shepherd who owns him. The Shepherd is bound by all duties of ownership to go after all those who are lost until they are found." -Catherine Marshall (Beyond Ourselves)
"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)-
"It is often remarked by those who oppose the doctrine of universal salvation, that if God is the Savior of all men, then there is no difference between the saint and the sinner, the believer and unbeliever. Those who make this remark, seem to forget, that while God is declared to be the Savior of all men, he is also said to be ESPECIALLY the Savior of the believer. Though it is true, that God is the Savior of all, yet a little more attention would teach you, that all along, in Scripture, there is a salvation held forth as the SPECIAL PROPERTY of the believer, in which the unbeliever can have no part or lot. Though all shall be saved with an everlasting salvation, yet the believer ALONE can enjoy this special salvation." -Rev. I. D. Williamson-
Last edited by Rose2Luv; 06-18-2019 at 03:26 PM..
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