En cours de chargement...
Here are a few excerpts from this 60-page "pamphlet": Hearing that Jesus has already saved all of humanity - past, present, and future - is all that is needed for any human to believe that he or she has already been saved and therefore gratefully acknowledge Jesus as his or her Savior - which eventually, according to the Bible, every rational being will do (Isa. 45:23-24, Phil. 2:10-11). After all, that victorious message "is the power of God for salvation to everyone" (Rom.
1:16). True evangelism, therefore, isn't a matter of getting people saved, but rather letting people know they already are - and that Jesus is their Savior! No human can undo - and, eventually, all humans will freely decide to go along with - what God has already done through Jesus on the cross: "drag everyone to" Himself. Accordingly, any teaching attempting to explain away the universal reconciliation of humanity is an argument against something happening that - in the glorious reality of our timeless God - has already happened. As will become evident in the next few pages to those readers "who love God, " the fact that the Lamb's Book of Life contains "all" of the "things" that "work together for good" (Rom.
8:28) and not merely a list of names is in fact the defining difference between Christian Universalism and Eternal Conscious Torment. On the one side, in agreement with God, we see mercy triumphing over judgment. On the other side, in disagreement with God, judgment is seen as triumphing over mercy. Can you blame God for being so "angry" (anthropomorphically speaking) with those who have so lied about Him as to make Him out to be the kind of schizophrenic torturer that would intentionally allow billions of humans to be tortured forever while saving only a paltry percentage of humanity - especially when His being the very opposite was so manifestly demonstrated by Jesus' so lovingly and selflessly being willing to die for all humanity at the hands of humans?! The apostle Peter makes it plain that non-believers in Christ will be better off than some believers in Christ.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews makes it clear that it is only believers in Christ who can profane the blood of Jesus and insult the Holy Spirit. As already noted, it is the apostle James who provides the insight that these believers are teachers. According to James, teachers whose tongues have not only been set aflame by Gehenna, but who have also - by way of cursing to eternal conscious torment any whom God has created in His image - driven the Church off-course (see James 3:1-12), will themselves need to experience the remediation provided in the Lake of Fire. It is because of Jesus' incarnation - or, as it is sometimes referred to in Eastern Orthodox teaching, inhumanation - that every human is included in His: crucifixion, which permanently wiped everyone's sin-slate clean; and resurrection, which permanently brought everyone into union with His divine life.
Indeed, the permanence of the condition of everyone's sin-slate (wiped clean) and very life (divine) is assured by the permanence of Jesus' priesthood (Heb. 9:11-14.) Whether we actually love and intercede for our neighbor - and our enemy - is often determined by whether we are mindful, at any given moment, that his or her sin-slate has been wiped clean by the crucifixion of Jesus and that he or she has been brought into union with God's divine life through the resurrection of Jesus; in fact, only by keeping this in mind can we ever hope to live the true Christian life and actually practice Christian love.