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The primary definition of the word 'draw' in Greek "helkuo" is to literally to draw, drag off forcefully, impel, pull with power.
There is something instinctly in all of us that is attracted and drawn to things lovely. Even Hitler a taste for lovely things. Unfortunately the image many have of God is a marred image, passed off on to us as being the true representation of God by those have created God in their own image. It is the day to lift up this lovely image of him who is the exact representation of all that God is to dispel the unlovely one that all 3 major religions have projected and imposed on us.
My wants (or yours) have nothing to do with it. It is what it is, which is what we’re all trying to understand. If I wanted some to perish, I would not share the gospel.
I believe that Jimmie, going by my own experiences with my family, even when they believed in eternal torment, they had a love for others and did not want to see any perish.
People do not care how much we know
until they know how much we care-----unknown
How shallow is the common view of "fire" as only or chiefly a penal agent. Fire, in Scripture, is the element of....
"Life"....Isa. 4:5
"Purification"....Matt. 3:3
"Atonement"....Lev. 16:27
"Transformation".....2 Pet. 3:10
And never ever of preservation alive for purposes of anguish.
And the popular view selects precisely this latter use, never found in Scripture, and represents it as the sole end of God's fiery judgments! If we take either the teaching of Scripture or of nature, we see that the dominant conception of fire is of a beneficent agent. Nature tells us that fire is a necessary condition of life; its mission is to sustain life; and to purify, even when it dissolves.
Extinguish the stores of fire in the universe, and you extinguish all being; universal death reigns. Most strikingly is this connection of fire and life shown in the facts of nutrition. For we actually burn in order to live; our food is the fuel; our bodies are furnaces; our nutrition is a process of combustion; we are, in fact, "aflame to the very tips of our fingers." And so it is that round the fireside of life and work gather: when we think of home we speak of the family hearth.
Fire Is The Sign Of God's Being
And what Nature teaches, Scripture enforces in no doubtful tone. It is significant to find the Great Source of life constantly associated with fire in the Bible.
Fire is the sign, not of God's wrath, but of His being.
When God comes to Ezekiel there is a "fire unfolding itself" (Ezek. 1:4, 27) and "the appearance of fire." (Ezek. 8:2)
Christ's eyes are a flame of "fire" (Rev. 1:14).
The seven lamps of "fire" are the seven Spirits of God (Rev. 4:5). So a fiery stream is said "to go before God," His throne is fiery flame, its wheels are burning fire (Daniel 7:9,10). His eyes are lamps of fire (Dan. 10:6); He is a wall of fire (Zeph. 2:5). At His touch the mountains smoke (Psl. 104:32). And God's ministers are a flame of fire (Psl. 104:4...Heb. 1:7). It is not meant to deny that the Divine Fire chastises and destroys.
Purification, Not Ruin Is The Final Outcome
It is meant that purification, not ruin, is the final outcome of that fire from above, which consumes--call it, if you please, a paradox--in order that it may save. For if God is Love, then by what but by love can His fires be kindled? They are, in fact, the very flame of love; and so we have the key to the words, "Thy God is a consuming Fire," and "Thy God is a merciful God" (Deut. 4:24-31). So God devours the earth with fire, in order that finally all may call upon the name of the Lord (Zeph. 3:8,9)--words full of significance.
So Isaiah tells us of God's cleansing the daughters of Zion by the spirit of burning (Isa. 4:4)--suggestive words. And, so again, "By fire will the Lord plead with all flesh." (Isa. 66:16) And Christ coming to save, comes to purify by "fire." (Mal. 3:2).
Fire A Sign Of Favourable Response?
Let us note, also, how often "fire" is the sign of a favourable answer from God; when God appears to Moses at the Bush it is in "fire:" God answers Gideon by "fire;" and David by "fire." (1 Chron. 21:26) Again, when He answers Elijah on Carmel, it is by "fire;" and in "fire" Elijah himself ascends to God. So God sends to Elisha, for aid, chariots and horses of "fire." So when the Psalmist calls, God answers by "fire." (Psl. 18:6-8)
And by the pillar of "fire" God gave His law. And in "fire" the great gift of the Holy Ghost descends at Pentecost."
Fire Is The Portion Of All
These words bring us to the New Testament. There we find that "fire," like judgment, so far from being the sinner's portion ONLY, is the portion of all. Like God's judgment again, it is not future merely, but present; it is "already kindled," always kindled: its object is not torment, but cleansing. The proof comes from the lips of our Lord Himself. "I am come to send fire on the earth," for it is certain that He came as a Saviour. Thus, coming to save, Christ comes with fire, nay, with fire already kindled. He comes to baptize with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.
Therefore, it is that Christ teaches in solemn passage (usually misunderstood, Mark 9:43) that everyone shall be salted with fire. And so the "fire is to try every man's work." He whose work fails is saved (mark the word saved), not damned "so as by fire," by consuming what is evil, saves and refines.
The antient tradition that represents Christ as saying, "He that is near Me is near fire," expresses a vital truth. So Malachi, describes Christ as being in His saving work "like a refiner's fire." And so, echoing Deut 4:24-31, we are told that "our God is a consuming Fire," i.e., God in His closest relation to us; God is Love; God is Spirit: but "Our God is a consuming Fire"--a consuming Fire, "by which the whole material substance of sin is destroyed."
When, then, we read (Psl. 18:12) that "coals of fire" go before God, we think of the deeds of love which are "coals of fire" to our enemies. (Rom. 12:20) Thus, we who teach hope for all men, do not shrink from but accept, in their fullest meaning, these mysterious "fires" of gehenna, of which Christ speaks (kindled for purification), as in a special sense the sinner's doom in the coming ages. But taught by the clearest statements of Scripture (confirmed as they are by many analogies of Nature), we see in these "fires" not a denial of, but a mode of fulfilling, the promise--
More than a few have charged that universalists operate with an overly sentimental conception of God's love. But no one actually reads the early Christian universalists, such as Origen or St. Gregory of Nyssa, could possibly come away with that conception. If anything, the idea that God will in the end destroy sin altogether rests upon a more rigorous conception of God's holy love than does the idea that He will keep sin alive throughout an eternity of hell. For according to the former idea, God will not permit any us to cling forever to our allusions or to remain forever ignorant of the true nature of our selfish choices. We are free to sin and perhaps even to sin with relative impunity for a while, but in no way are we free to sin with impunity forever.So unless we first repent of our sin and step into the life that Christ brings to us, God will sooner or later--in the next life, if not in this one--permit our illusions to shatter against the hard rock of reality. In that respect, God's holy love is a consuming fire, it will continue to burn us until it finally purges us of all that is false within us. The more we freely rebel against it and try to defeat it, the more deeply and inexorably it will burn, until every conceivable motive for disobedience is consumed and we are finally transformed from the inside out. And so God will eventually destroy sin in the only way short of annihilation: by redeeming the sinners themselves.
Why do you want this to be true, Jimmie? Ask yourself why it should be true that a loving God would allow this, let alone require it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmiej
My wants (or yours) have nothing to do with it. It is what it is, which is what we’re all trying to understand. If I wanted some to perish, I would not share the gospel.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pneuma
I believe that Jimmie, going by my own experiences with my family, even when they believed in eternal torment, they had a love for others and did not want to see any perish.
I, too, believe that Jimmie. I was just trying to spur you to think about the question in bold. Please don't resort to the dogmatic answer about Holiness because God's Holiness resides in the fact that God IS love. There is no Holiness outside of Love. Our human desire for vengeance or what we call justice is the genesis of the corruption of the Holiness in your dogma.
THE question of Universalism is usually argued on a basis altogether misleading, i.e., as though the point involved was chiefly, or wholly, man's endless suffering. Odious and repulsive to every moral instinct, as is that dogma, it is not the turning point of this controversy. The vital question is this, that the popular creed by teaching the perpetuity of evil, points to a victorious devil, and to sin as finally triumphant over God. It makes the corrupt, nay, the bestial in our fallen nature to be eternal. It represents what is foulest and most loathsome in man, i.e., the most obstinate sin as being enduring as God Himself. It confers the dignity of immortal life on what is morally abominable. It teaches perpetual Anarchy, and a final Chaos. It enthrones Pandemonium as an eternal fact side by side with Paradise; and, gazing over its fetid and obscene abysses, is not afraid to call this the triumph of )Jesus Christ, this the realization of the promise that God shall be "All in All" -Thomas Allin- (Christ Triumphant)
"Punish a man for his sins, that is just: punish him for ages...that may be just: but make no end of punishing him for that sin, reduce him from a man to a devil, let him become for ever vile, that is not just. The only justice to a sinner in a case like our human one is mercy, is to make his punishment finite according to his works...and of such a nature as not simply to torment the man, but to drive him back to the way of God." -. T. P. Forsyth M.A.
Robertson Word Pictures Of The New Testament -A. T. Robertson
Philippians 2:10
That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow (ina en twi onomati Ihsou pan gonu kampshi).
First aorist active subjunctive of kamptw, old verb, to bend, to bow, in purpose clause with ina.
Not perfunctory genuflections whenever the name of Jesus is mentioned, but universal acknowledgment of the majesty and power of Jesus who carries his human name and nature to heaven. This universal homage to Jesus is seen in Romans 8:22; Ephesians 1:20-22 and in particular Revelation 5:13.
Under the earth (kataxtoniwn).
Homeric adjective for departed souls, subterranean, simply the dead. Here only in the N.T.
How shallow is the common view of "fire" as only or chiefly a penal agent. Fire, in Scripture, is the element of....
"Life"....Isa. 4:5
"Purification"....Matt. 3:3
"Atonement"....Lev. 16:27
"Transformation".....2 Pet. 3:10
And never ever of preservation alive for purposes of anguish.
And the popular view selects precisely this latter use, never found in Scripture, and represents it as the sole end of God's fiery judgments! If we take either the teaching of Scripture or of nature, we see that the dominant conception of fire is of a beneficent agent. Nature tells us that fire is a necessary condition of life; its mission is to sustain life; and to purify, even when it dissolves.
Extinguish the stores of fire in the universe, and you extinguish all being; universal death reigns. Most strikingly is this connection of fire and life shown in the facts of nutrition. For we actually burn in order to live; our food is the fuel; our bodies are furnaces; our nutrition is a process of combustion; we are, in fact, "aflame to the very tips of our fingers." And so it is that round the fireside of life and work gather: when we think of home we speak of the family hearth.
Fire Is The Sign Of God's Being
And what Nature teaches, Scripture enforces in no doubtful tone. It is significant to find the Great Source of life constantly associated with fire in the Bible.
Fire is the sign, not of God's wrath, but of His being.
When God comes to Ezekiel there is a "fire unfolding itself" (Ezek. 1:4, 27) and "the appearance of fire." (Ezek. 8:2)
Christ's eyes are a flame of "fire" (Rev. 1:14).
The seven lamps of "fire" are the seven Spirits of God (Rev. 4:5). So a fiery stream is said "to go before God," His throne is fiery flame, its wheels are burning fire (Daniel 7:9,10). His eyes are lamps of fire (Dan. 10:6); He is a wall of fire (Zeph. 2:5). At His touch the mountains smoke (Psl. 104:32). And God's ministers are a flame of fire (Psl. 104:4...Heb. 1:7). It is not meant to deny that the Divine Fire chastises and destroys.
Purification, Not Ruin Is The Final Outcome
It is meant that purification, not ruin, is the final outcome of that fire from above, which consumes--call it, if you please, a paradox--in order that it may save. For if God is Love, then by what but by love can His fires be kindled? They are, in fact, the very flame of love; and so we have the key to the words, "Thy God is a consuming Fire," and "Thy God is a merciful God" (Deut. 4:24-31). So God devours the earth with fire, in order that finally all may call upon the name of the Lord (Zeph. 3:8,9)--words full of significance.
So Isaiah tells us of God's cleansing the daughters of Zion by the spirit of burning (Isa. 4:4)--suggestive words. And, so again, "By fire will the Lord plead with all flesh." (Isa. 66:16) And Christ coming to save, comes to purify by "fire." (Mal. 3:2).
Fire A Sign Of Favourable Response?
Let us note, also, how often "fire" is the sign of a favourable answer from God; when God appears to Moses at the Bush it is in "fire:" God answers Gideon by "fire;" and David by "fire." (1 Chron. 21:26) Again, when He answers Elijah on Carmel, it is by "fire;" and in "fire" Elijah himself ascends to God. So God sends to Elisha, for aid, chariots and horses of "fire." So when the Psalmist calls, God answers by "fire." (Psl. 18:6-8)
And by the pillar of "fire" God gave His law. And in "fire" the great gift of the Holy Ghost descends at Pentecost."
Fire Is The Portion Of All
These words bring us to the New Testament. There we find that "fire," like judgment, so far from being the sinner's portion ONLY, is the portion of all. Like God's judgment again, it is not future merely, but present; it is "already kindled," always kindled: its object is not torment, but cleansing. The proof comes from the lips of our Lord Himself. "I am come to send fire on the earth," for it is certain that He came as a Saviour. Thus, coming to save, Christ comes with fire, nay, with fire already kindled. He comes to baptize with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.
Therefore, it is that Christ teaches in solemn passage (usually misunderstood, Mark 9:43) that everyone shall be salted with fire. And so the "fire is to try every man's work." He whose work fails is saved (mark the word saved), not damned "so as by fire," by consuming what is evil, saves and refines.
The antient tradition that represents Christ as saying, "He that is near Me is near fire," expresses a vital truth. So Malachi, describes Christ as being in His saving work "like a refiner's fire." And so, echoing Deut 4:24-31, we are told that "our God is a consuming Fire," i.e., God in His closest relation to us; God is Love; God is Spirit: but "Our God is a consuming Fire"--a consuming Fire, "by which the whole material substance of sin is destroyed."
When, then, we read (Psl. 18:12) that "coals of fire" go before God, we think of the deeds of love which are "coals of fire" to our enemies. (Rom. 12:20) Thus, we who teach hope for all men, do not shrink from but accept, in their fullest meaning, these mysterious "fires" of gehenna, of which Christ speaks (kindled for purification), as in a special sense the sinner's doom in the coming ages. But taught by the clearest statements of Scripture (confirmed as they are by many analogies of Nature), we see in these "fires" not a denial of, but a mode of fulfilling, the promise--
"Behold, I make all things new."
-Christ Triumphant-
Thank-you Pneuma, Thomas Allin's book is one of the finest written on this glorious subject of the Restitution of all things as spoken by the prophets from the earliest ages!
Leading people astray by false teachings is a very serious sin in the eyes of the Lord. I don’t know the mind of God as His ways are higher than our ways. But don’t be fooled. Hell is real.
Don’t let dead people drag you down with them to their destruction. Be strong in the faith and trust in the Lord. The Scripture is your foundation.
Leading people astray by false teachings is a very serious sin in the eyes of the Lord. I don’t know the mind of God as His ways are higher than our ways. But don’t be fooled. Hell is real.
Don’t let dead people drag you down with them to their destruction. Be strong in the faith and trust in the Lord. The Scripture is your foundation.
Yes, the flimsy pages of a mouldy old book form the foundation of fundie faith.
The rest of us poor souls must rely on education, intelligence and rationality.
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fire fire fire
Thomas Allin's book is one of the finest written on this glorious subject of the Restitution of all things as spoken by the prophets from the earliest ages!
