To those who are without hope..............
Guilt will burden you.
Threats will frighten you.
The GOOD NEWS will save you!! (bring you spiritual health)
Christ took on the world's sins and took away the shame and nakedness from you (spiritual nakedness occurred after "eating the apple") so you would no longer feel spiritual separation and emptiness.
Hope..........
Many have no hope and they walk in destructive ways.
Hope is what happens to us when we are
given faith (faith is a gift)........
The faith grows when we start trusting in God's GOODNESS!!!
Perfect love CASTS OUT fear.
Coming out of religious and political systems that corrupt us and make us feel empty can be very scary. We'd rather sit and be told what to do and how to feel.
That is dangerous ground.
Do not EVER let fear steer you. You will be perfect fodder for the political/religious machine.
Many brave Christians, who were also Universalists, died when the Protestant Reformation started. They were killed for being heretics who believed that God's love is all that matters. They would not support wars, and they would not yield to the religious machine. Those who followed Luther and Calvin ended up doing terrible things, or at least supported those who did terrible things.
WHY?
Fear, admiration for those "reformers" who fought the Catholics, stubborness, laziness, political gain, family ties, tradition, reading from Bibles tainted with King's and politician's words added to them, too much time spent threatened with hell (archaic English meaning for "hell" just means unseen, or basically, grave) by preachers and teachers of the "Good News," and on and on.
Many of those people had no understanding of the Hebrews scriptures and did not understand God's purpose. They only knew wars, plauges, and violence, and had just come out of the Dark Ages. They had no idea so much paganism and platonic thought had crept into the "church." If God was angry and waging war, so were they.
How did the yoke of religion reappear?
What happened to the GOOD NEWS?
God is AGAPE love! Does this mean anything?
The Jews knew their scriptures.
Did they KNOW agape love?
Do Christians?
Does anybody?
Romans 11:32. For God has
imprisoned everyone in disobedience so he could have mercy on everyone.
I Timothy 4:10. He is the SAVIOR OF ALL men, especially (but, NOT ONLY) of those who believe.
Colossians 1:20. God reconciled
everything to himself. He
made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ's blood on the cross.
Revelation 5:13. Then I heard
every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!"
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