For whom did Christ die?

[Katzpur]

This only speaks of the soul's immortality and not necessarily redemption imo. Still, no Christian denies that there will be a judgment according to works and that some are rewarded differently. That doesn't imply that there are different levels of heaven and it certainly doesn't deny the existence of hell.

It might not imply that there are different levels of heaven to you. To me it does. If we are "rewarded differently," what do you think that means? That some get a gold halo, others get a silver halo, and others get a bronze halo? And I agree, it doesn't deny the existence of hell. I do believe in hell, by the way.

 

[Katzpur]

Katzpur,

You must be a Universalist like SJ! Is this official LDS theology?

No, I'm not, although the LDS undoubtedly do have the biggest heaven and the smallest hell of any Christian denomination around.

The question I have for Katzpur: who is the all in the red font?

All people who have ever lived will be resurrected. Read my post #58 for a more complete answer, and if that doesn't tell you what you want, please just ask.

 

[Special Revelation]

1. Matthew 3:7 (Whole Chapter)
   But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
2. Luke 3:7 (Whole Chapter)
   John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
3. Luke 21:23 (Whole Chapter)
   How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people.
4. John 3:36 (Whole Chapter)
   Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." [ Some interpreters end the quotation after verse 30.]
5. Romans 1:18 (Whole Chapter)
   [ God's Wrath Against Mankind ] The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
6. Romans 2:5 (Whole Chapter)
   But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.
7. Romans 2:8 (Whole Chapter)
   But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.
8. Romans 3:5 (Whole Chapter)
   But if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.)
9. Romans 4:15 (Whole Chapter)
   because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.
10. Romans 5:9 (Whole Chapter)
    Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!
11. Romans 9:22 (Whole Chapter)
    What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?
12. Romans 12:19 (Whole Chapter)
    Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," [ Deut. 32:35] says the Lord.
13. Romans 13:4 (Whole Chapter)
    For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
14. Ephesians 2:3 (Whole Chapter)
    All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature [ Or our flesh] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

 

[Special Revelation]

1. Ephesians 5:6 (Whole Chapter)
   Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient.
2. Colossians 3:6 (Whole Chapter)
   Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. [ Some early manuscripts coming on those who are disobedient]
3. 1 Thessalonians 1:10 (Whole Chapter)
   and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
4. 1 Thessalonians 2:16 (Whole Chapter)
   in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last. [ Or them fully]
5. 1 Thessalonians 5:9 (Whole Chapter)
   For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
6. Revelation 6:16 (Whole Chapter)
   They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!
7. Revelation 6:17 (Whole Chapter)
   For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"
8. Revelation 11:18 (Whole Chapter)
   The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great— and for destroying those who destroy the earth."
9. Revelation 14:10 (Whole Chapter)
   he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.
10. Revelation 14:19 (Whole Chapter)
    The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath.
11. Revelation 15:1 (Whole Chapter)
    [ Seven Angels with Seven Plagues ] I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God's wrath is completed.
12. Revelation 15:7 (Whole Chapter)
    Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever.
13. Revelation 16:1 (Whole Chapter)
    [ The Seven Bowls of God's Wrath ] Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, "Go, pour out the seven bowls of God's wrath on the earth."
14. Revelation 16:19 (Whole Chapter)
    The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath.
15. Revelation 19:15 (Whole Chapter)
    Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." [ Psalm 2:9] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.

 

[Special Revelation]

1 John 2:2:
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. - NIV

1 John 2:2:
and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. - NASB

1 John 2:2:
And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. - KJV

The previous two posts are New Testament scriptures for wrath. The Old Testament scripture for wrath should apply too. We first need to define the word atonement or propitiation. Propitiation is appeasing, satisfying , exhausting the wrath of God. Christ exhausted the wrath of God at the cross for whom? In addition, Jesus spoke more of Hell than Heaven. Hell is where divine justice is served and the wrath of God is poured out on unbelievers. Le't define the word all in 1 John 2:2. If you define the word all as all mankind, God would be unjust (evil) to pour out the wrath of God again on unbelievers in Hell.. if Christ already propitiated the wrath of God at Calvary for all mankind. This is a double payment of sin if wrath is poured out twice for the same persons (unbelievers).

The wrath of God against sin is poured out at Calvary for all who believe (in Christ). The wrath of God against sin is poured out in Hell on those who do not believe in Christ (in Adam). For the Universalist, why are there so many New Testament wrath and Hell scriptures? The Bible also speaks about vessels of wrath, and God being glorifed in His wrath against unbelievers.

 

[Special Revelation]

Proof text against Universalism!​

2 Thessalonians 1

All this is evidence that God's judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.

 

[benign6]

Jesus died for nobody's sins: Everybody is responsible for his/her sins.
EZEK 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

 

[kmkemp]

Convenient omission of verses 21-23 and quoting from an OT (before Christ) verse haha.

 

[wizanda]

Mar 10:40
(40) Yet to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; yet it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared.

 

[James the Persian]

I don't think that Christians (at least until the late 4th century, which is my speciality) believed any of these options. The dominant belief among the proto-orthodox Christians who wrote and preserved the New Testament and the writings of the apostolic and church fathers, developed the doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Christ, and produced the earliest and later creeds, was different.

Their belief, as far as it is unified, is that Christ died for everyone and God's salvation was affected according to God's righteous and perfect judgment. God shows no favoritism: the resurrection of Christ is the instrument by which salvation is freely available to all people, and it is made effective by God's choice in the lives of people as they do good works. Everyone - believer and unbeliever - will be judged according to their deeds by God and saved through Christ as God chooses.

It's not universalism, and it's not Calvinism.

And it is believed in the east to this day.

As for semi-Pelagianism, that's just a label invented by the Roman Catholic church to describe the position of those Fathers, notably St. John Cassian, who criticised Bl. Augustine's new teachings of irrisitible grace and the like. These teachings have their origin in Augustine whereas Cassian was expounding on the faith in the same way as all the previous Fathers. In other words Cassian was defending the Tradition and Augustine was distorting it. Pelagianism is a heresy. So-called semi-Pelagianism is actually nothing more than a pejorative applied to the synergism which was the faith of the Fathers.

James

 

[sojourner]

SR made this thread as a direct result of sojourner. Sojourner has since sidestepped the OP, but there are still larger issues to look at.

Whoa back, there, Cochise! In what way have I sidestepped the OP? I have been as straightforward as I can be. ALL. Every human being that has ever lived, or ever will live, has been reconciled to the Divine. Christ's sacrifice was for the expiation of the sins of the whole world. In other words, Christ expiates ALL sin for EVERYONE. Get it?
Sheesh!

 

[sojourner]

You still haven't answered my philosophical question. Do you not find it rather cruel that God would withhold heaven from us and then finally give it to us? Why are we here if we have all inherited heaven?

What about the Great Flood? What about God destroying whole cities? Was all of this also allegory? Did none of it really happen? Do you not think that God has dominion over the whole of His creation? Therefor, everything that happens here could have been stopped by God, no? He allows bad things to happen. Is that not cruel? Why would He do such a thing?

For you to believe the Bible to be inspired by God, you sure have a great problem in the number of times God shows his wrath and speaks of hell. I guess God was just being figurative with all of that though. Your position seems to be that you will just dismiss all mentions of wrath and hell as nothing more than allegory, but yet accept and twist the few passages that you have for universal salvation. Does it not bother you that there are mountains of evidence on one side and a bump in the Earth (that actually isn't even there) on the side that you believe?

Even if you dismiss a large portion of scripture as nothing more than allegory, you are still left with the conundrum that the allegory must actually mean something. What would you liken hell to if not God's wrath? What do you think it means when He talks about throwing Satan into the lake of fire for instance? Does that not, at the very least, show that God has wrath against some of His creation?

No, I don't. God gave us this earth as our island home. It was created good, and it is sufficient for our needs. If we hadn't royally desicrated it by our own sin, we wouldn't need saving from it. What is cruel is a God who creates many, many of us to suffer eternally.

Allegory and the ascription of natural phenomena to "God's wrath." No. Clearly God gave humanity dominion over creation. We are to rule as the kings and queens of creation. Genesis says so. God did that because God loves us.

No. Human beings were writing through the lens of their own understanding. God is unchangeable, but our understanding and perception of God are certainly subject to change. have you actually read the Bible? I mean, in a truly scholarly way? Please don't tell me that you can't see the great undercurrent of mercy and grace throughout the Biblical record. Such mercy and grace that is always with God's people, no matter where they go, that always saves God's people from evil, that is always hospitable.

You're engaging in the same immature tendency as the ancient writers. The tendency to divide humanity into "us" and "them." Luckily, Jesus (as well as Paul) taught that there really is no such concept. (Who was really the neighbor to the man beaten and dying on the road? Who is our neighbor? The clean priest, or the dirty Samaritan? The clean Evangelical, or the dirty homosexual?) We have expanded our consciousness to accept all humanity as part of God's people -- not just a select few.

Of course the allegory means something, or it wouldn't be there. I'm not stupid. The stories were written from the perspective of God's people, for God's people. Now that we've accepted all humanity as God's people, we find that God shows infinite grace and mercy to all humanity -- not just some amorphous elite.

So sue me.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

This idea of universal salvation is nothing less than the work of Satan.

Satan is the Twin of God.

If one is to be saved, then we must all be saved. Our lives are inextricably tied to one another. This is the Spider's Web. The Dreamcatcher.

In the words of Red Green, “Remember, I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together.”

Asserting that exclusivity is the Law of God is putting up armor against Siblings. Too much armor, and one will find oneself alone in a dark, shallow place.

 

[sojourner]

I agree. A Christian camp once taught a lesson to the kids by having them run a race by teams. The first team to cross the line won the prize. Most of the teams had their fastest runners race ahead to cross the line first. But one team had a mild Down's child. When he saw that one runner had fallen behind, he stopped, grabbed the slow one and helped him, so that the the whole team crossed the line together. That team won the prize.

It's about us. Not me. Not you. Us. That's why "we, who are many, are one Body..."

 

[Ringer]

I'll agree with what SR and maybe 1 or 2 others are saying. Yes, I believe God sent his son Jesus to die to save all mankind. What I probably take issues with is some's definition of grace. I think that grace was extended to us but us even having the opportunity to accept the gift of eternal life. However, I don't think it's something that what all have by default. To reach our heavenly home we need to enter into a relationship with God by accepting Jesus as our personal savior. With such a great gift can come a tremendous consequence for not accepting it. People like to think of God as all loving and wanting all of his "children" to be by his side in His glory. That is true to a certain extent but I think they also miss that he deals justice and as it says in the bible, will avenge and deal justice to those that persecuted his followers. To think that everyone regardless of our acceptance of God's gift and our actions here on earth will not affect our eternal status is not biblical in the least.

 

[sojourner]

I'll agree with what SR and maybe 1 or 2 others are saying. Yes, I believe God sent his son Jesus to die to save all mankind. What I probably take issues with is some's definition of grace. I think that grace was extended to us but us even having the opportunity to accept the gift of eternal life. However, I don't think it's something that what all have by default. To reach our heavenly home we need to enter into a relationship with God by accepting Jesus as our personal savior. With such a great gift can come a tremendous consequence for not accepting it. People like to think of God as all loving and wanting all of his "children" to be by his side in His glory. That is true to a certain extent but I think they also miss that he deals justice and as it says in the bible, will avenge and deal justice to those that persecuted his followers. To think that everyone regardless of our acceptance of God's gift and our actions here on earth will not affect our eternal status is not biblical in the least.

And yet, God says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." We have to trust that God will get God's way, in then end. And God's desire is for a relationship with all of us.

 

[wizanda]

And yet, God says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." We have to trust that God will get God's way, in then end. And God's desire is for a relationship with all of us.

1) God does not desire it is a sin!
2) God finds the death of his prophets precious!
3) God does not beget anything it all is God!
4) Pharisee closed up the way
.....let us open it and stop closing it....:shout

 

[sojourner]

"Your Father is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost." Matt. 18:14 Sounds like desire to me.
"This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved..." I Tim. 2:3
Sounds like desire to me.

Sounds to me like God wants all of us to be in relationship with God. And isn't God's will always accomplished?

 

[Special Revelation]

"Your Father is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost." Matt. 18:14 Sounds like desire to me.
"This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved..." I Tim. 2:3
Sounds like desire to me.

Sounds to me like God wants all of us to be in relationship with God. And isn't God's will always accomplished?

Will of desire
Will of decree (His eternal purpose)

Will of desire: This does not mean that God sovereignty wills every human being to be saved. It may refer to God's general benevolence in taking no delight in the death of the wicked, or to God's desire to that all types of people to be saved.

SJ...you are the ultimate cafeteria christian..lol. In a school cafeteria, you can pick and choose whatever foods you want. I think you picked out the bowl of jello and forgot the main dishes.

 

[wizanda]

"Your Father is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost." Matt. 18:14 Sounds like desire to me.
"This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved..." I Tim. 2:3
Sounds like desire to me.

Sounds to me like God wants all of us to be in relationship with God. And isn't God's will always accomplished?

Mat 5:19
(19) Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Deu 5:21 Neither shalt thou desire