So I began asking tough questions, just as you who are reading my posts will do. There are some really important questions that will naturally come up regarding specific scriptures (like "Didn't Jesus mention hell... A LOT?", and "What about what Jesus said about the sheep and the goats?", and "what about Lazarus and the rich man?"), and I want to encourage each of you to follow these great questions wherever they lead you, because the answers may surprise you, and you may even experience a paradigm shift like I, and thousands of Christ-followers all over the world have.
As it turns out, the mystery of Jesus' good news has been right in front of us all along, hidden in plain sight; we just weren't asking the right questions, and we also assumed that, since folks have believed certain things for so long, they must be correct, which was a mistake.
MYTHS
There are several myths regarding Universal Reconciliation that I would like to address here.
MYTH #1: "Christian Universalists say that everybody gets to go to heaven no matter what they believe."
This is probably the most common myth that abounds today concerning Christian Universalism, but it is simply not true. On the contrary, we believe that what Paul said in Romans 10:9 is true-- that if you confess with your mouth that "Jesus is Lord", and if you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you WILL BE SAVED. However, we also believe that what Paul said in Phil 2:10 is true-- that every knee will bow in worship to God, and every tongue will confess that He is Lord, and that this is all for God's glory. Now, if you put those two truths together, they do not contradict at all in light of the wonderful news of God's universal salvation. So, it's not that "everyone gets in, no matter what they believe"; it's that one day everyone will believe, and will want to worship God for what He has accomplished through His eternally potent life and work. What an important distinction!
MYTH #2: "Christian Universalism is heresy / doctrine of demons."
Paul often warned about guarding against false teachers, and false doctrines, using the term "doctrine of demons" to describe anti-Christian teachings that were going around at the time. Today, all believers in Christ's victorious gospel should take Paul's warnings seriously, and guard against anyone who might seek to add or subtract anything from Christ's completed work. But, let me ask you this: Why would Satan want to concoct a doctrine where the good news becomes even better, more potent, and more transformative than before, and where Christ is ever more glorious than before? When Jesus came and started "fulfilling the law" as He came to do, the religious leaders of His day accused Him of having a demon. But Jesus replied that "A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand", which was an appeal to common sense. And it makes no more sense today that Satan would write an alternative Gospel where he is utterly defeated, not even being able to pervert a handful of God's beloved children, and where people have even more of a reason to praise God. It's just not reasonable to call a belief in Christ as the savior of the world a heresy, or a doctrine of demons. Not only did Paul and the other writers of the NT believe in Universal Reconciliation, it was the prevailing belief of the Church for the first four hundred years of Christianity. For proof of this, spend some time reading the resources at Tentmaker.org.
MYTH #3: "Christian Universalists Don't Believe In Divine Judgment."
One of the most startling discoveries on my journey has been that eternal-conscious-torment is not a biblical teaching. For proof of this, you can go to Tentmaker.org, what-the-hell-is-hell.com or just do a google search for "hell myth", and you will be confronted with the real history of this actual doctrine of demons. However, once people are confronted with the truth about the hell-myth, they often assume that there must not be any judgment for sin, but this is absolutely false. In fact, the opening line of many Universal Evangelical doctrinal statements is that "We welcome the coming judgement of God", because they know that it is good, right, fair, and deserved. The problem here has to do with the way people process information. Anyone who grew up within an earshot of institutionalized Christianity is virtually incapable of imagining God judging the world without the pagan concept of hell.
Likewise, a prevailing myth concerning the Universalist view of God's judgment is that universalists are ignoring certain Scriptures, but this is not true either. Israel did not believe in hell, and the OT never mentions hell (Sheol in the ancient Hebrew was a vague word that referred to the place of the dead [underground abyss]). Hell is never mentioned in any of the Gospel-presentations/sermons in the NT, nor was it mentioned in any of the early Church creeds. For more on the hell-myth, go to the aforementioned links I have provided. And ask yourself, why is there an absence of the teaching about eternal-conscious-torment in early church history? How must these early Christ-followers have understood Jesus' words about the words usually translated as hell (Gk: gehenna)? The answers will again surprise you.
So, now to address myth #3... What does God's judgment look like without the pagan concept of eternal-conscious-torment? God's turns out to be exactly who the OT/Torah revealed Him to be-- a God of both justice, and mercy. This is really something that I would love to write in length about, however, this post is not the place to do so, as I am merely trying to quickly address each myth, and "point" you in the direction of further study. More to come on why Christian Universalists welcome God's coming judgment, and how God's justice is balanced perfectly with God's mercy. Suffice to say, here, that God never punishes for punishment's sake, but rather, God's discipline always serves a restorative purpose-- no different than a good, human father's discipline. Hell isn't forever, as a quick word study into the word translated "eternal" in both Greek and Hebrew will show. For more on what God's judgment might look like in light of the hell-myth, read Love Wins, by Rob Bell. He provides this simple word study I have mentioned here, and you can check it out for yourself. It's totally straightforward, and impossible to deny-- that is IF you are willing to be wrong.
MYTH #4: "Jesus, and the Apostles Believed In and Taught Hell."
Hell is not mentioned anywhere in the bible. I know, at first this is very difficult to swallow, as it was for me too. All the questions that come to mind regarding Jesus' parables, for example, are very important, and are addressed by every single Christian that I have found who's ministry it is to dismantle the hell-myth. Now, since I am a student, not a teacher, I am going to leave the scholarly work to the actual scholars. If you are really interested in learning the truth, you will figure out how to work "the Google" as many-a-grandparent has called it, and seek out the truth for yourself. I have already provided two tremendous resources that, if you're hungry for truth, will take you several months to even scratch the surface, much less properly exhaust.
MYTH #5: "Universalists are pluralists."
When most people hear the word "universalist", what comes to mind are usually not the "biblical universalists" like Gary Amirault at Tentmaker.org, or the Christian Universalist Association. No, what immediately comes to mind for many people is pluralism. Pluralism is the belief that "it doesn't matter what you believe, because all religions are equally valid." This couldn't be further from Christian Universalism, but nonetheless, people still get the two confused almost constantly. Whereas pluralists do not believe that Jesus is the only savior, believers in Christ's Universal Reconciliation believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one can come to the Father except by Him.
However, instead of sharing the Gospel as "what you must do to be saved", we share the Gospel the way it is always shared in the bible-- as events that forever changed the course of history-- namely that Jesus, the Eternal Son, was incarnated, lived the perfect life we could not live, died the death we should have died, and then rose from the dead, conquering Sin and Death once and for all. Instead of saying "Repeat this prayer after me...", we say "Hey, do you know what God has done for YOU?" And this Gospel demands a response of nothing less than obedience, and worship! The good news is what God has already accomplished, which is what Jesus meant when He uttered those final words on the cross ("It is finished.") So, whereas the "religion" of Christianity seeks to tell others what they must do (and how they must believe) in order to convince their Maker not send them to a horrible place of eternal-conscious-torment, we believe that our Father is a God of both Justice, and Mercy, and that His patience will never run out. This should be no surprise, since it is exactly in line with what Scripture has always taught.
So, Christian Universalists are not pluralists, since they believe that Jesus is even GREATER than Constantine's institutionalized Christianity, because He is actually victorious in the end.CONSEQUENCES
What are the consequences of believing in Universal Reconciliation (UR)?
CONSEQUENCE #1: "The 'good news' of Christianity is better."
The only thing that happens when a typical evangelical begins to believe in Universal Reconciliation is that His view of God is more glorious. Jesus is still the only way of salvation, but now he/she realizes that the end isn't as bleak as he/she once thought. The good news just got better. Of course, many evangelicals who oppose UR seem to be convinced that "if Jesus has already saved everybody, then nobody would ever want to share the gospel", but this is such a joke! Just think for a second if today, you suddenly learned that Jesus actually succeeded in rescuing the entire world when he entered the human race and died for the sins of mankind. Can you imagine how excited you would be if this were true?! After all, we know from Scripture that God "is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that ALL would come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). And if we know that this is God's deepest desire, and that He came to earth to save humanity from their sins, WHY shouldn't we be rooting for planet earth too? It makes sense that we should, at the very least, want all to be saved, and be praying for the salvation of all. Do you have enough faith to believe that God could be this wonderful? If not, ask Him, and He will increase your faith.
CONSEQUENCE #2: "Christ is even more glorious than before."
In the traditional view of salvation, we thought that after Jesus gave His life, He only succeeded in saving a handful of sinners. But in the biblical, victorious Gospel now before us, we can now see Christ in all His radiance-- as the shimmering hope for the entire world. The early Church believed that God wasn't just saving a few good men, but that He was renewing the entire cosmos {Gk: apocatastasis}. The richness of this word comes from the first garden in Genesis where God initially placed man. He called it "good", which is not to say "perfect." The idea of perfection comes from Greek philosophy (Plato), and the Jews would have had no such category. But they did have a better one: good. In Genesis 1, God creates the cosmos, and calls it "good." Then, he creates all kinds of creatures, calling them "good." Finally, He creates man in His likeness, and calls him "very good." Good is not perfect. Perfect means that there is no need for growth, but that is not at all what God implied, having given Adam and Eve specific work to do. There was dirt that needed rain, and would need to be tilled. These first humans had the God-given mandate to build cities, and create culture. In the same way, when God's kingdom breaks in during "the age to come" (which is right now!), there is dirt. It's this idea that there is work to be done. The Kingdom of Heaven is not perfect, but it is good. And God is good too. Think of the Hebrew word, Shalome, which refers to wholeness, completeness, and compare that to the English word "Peace", which often merely refers to the absence of war. In the old, incomplete version, Death had the last word, mocking God for all eternity while His children burned in eternal-conscious-torment; and God gave all of us lobotomies so that Isaiah's prophecy about us having "no more tears" (Isa 25:8), and "no more war" (Isa 2:4) could come true. However, in Christ's glorious, victorious Gospel, Christ has the last word, not Death. In God's version, He actually WINS. Every knee bows. Every tongue confesses that Jesus is LORD. And God doesn't have to force them to do so. I believe that this is because their hearts are finally converted, which is far more reasonable than God forcing them down on their knees for one last "worship service", and then throwing His children into some lake of fire. But don't take my word for it. You need to study this for yourself. If hell is really an evil, pagan slander against Jehovah's name, wouldn't you want to stop believing it? Click on the resources I have provided, and check out the evidence for yourself.
CONSEQUENCE #3: "You'll probably lose friends."
Nobody would choose to be a minority, since our very nature prefers inclusion, conformity, and affinity. Yet, by following Jesus we have chosen a life where we're not the majority. However, in light of God's universal salvation, we have become the true majority: saved sinners. And yet, by waving banners such as "Christian Universalist", we quickly find ourselves in the same predicament that first century Christians did. The Romans believed that Christ-followers were a destructive "sect" that could be intimidated and crushed. However, it was no arbitrary "sect"-- it was Ultimate Reality, the Kingdom of Heaven breaking in, and it couldn't be stopped. In response to the Jewish Sanhedrin's worries about Jesus' teachings picking up speed, one of the members of the council (who was really a secret follower of Jesus) cleverly comforted them by saying that "if Jesus is not really the Messiah, then his revolution will dissolve just as all the others previously have, but if Jesus really is from God, then we won't be able to stop Him!"
Although there are Christians all over the world who believe in Christ's universal salvation, many are afraid to come out of the closet so to speak, and for good reason. Just think for a minute if you were to announce this Sunday at your local church that you were a universalist. What kind of reaction to you think you would receive?
So, losing friends is my third and final consequence, and I think you should consider it before moving forward. Are you prepared for some of your closest, Christian friends and/or family to call you a heretic? I think it's a real possibility at this point in time. However, if it is true, they won't be able to stop it. God is, and has always been sovereign over Earth. He is the King of this kingdom that is breaking in, and we are His beloved children whom He willingly died to rescue for Himself. He's a good dad, and He won't let even one of His children experience eternal death.
And, this, my friends, is good news. In fact, try and think of better news. Try and imagine a better outcome than God saving ALL of His children. You CAN'T! There is no better ending than Christ's glorious Gospel. The only question that remains is: Is it too good to be true? (Or, as I prefer to ask it: Is our God not powerful enough to accomplish ultimate reconciliation for all mankind?)
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