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The Restitution Of All Things

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MonkeyFire

Well-Known Member
All things requires 3 things; peace of mind, belief, and perfection. In my religion I teach that nothingness isnt part of nature, and will utterly depart, making both nature and all things transient, as suffering, dis-belief, evil, and etcetera are all gone.
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
PastorMark=

A holocaust survivor embraces the Nazi who 70 years ago conducted cruel and demented experiments on her as a child. 1

The wife of a missionary returns to share the gospel with the primitive jungle tribe that brutally murdered her husband who once shared Christ with them. 2

A pastor whose wife and infant daughter were killed by a drunk driver asks for a diminished sentence for the offender and has built a life long friendship with him. 3

A Rwandan woman’s entire family was wiped out during one of the worst genocides in history. She forgave the men who committed the atrocity and wrote a book that has spurred national healing and reconciliation in the aftermath. 3

What do all these scenarios have in common? They are some shining examples of radical forgiveness under circumstances very few of us could manage to bear gracefully let alone survive with our faith intact.

Nazis, warlords, drunk drivers and the like are the poster children of why justice is required of sinners. Their deeds are such that for such things to go unpunished would seem an offense against the very notion of justice itself.

Yet where did these heroic people get the the inner power to extend such radical forgiveness? Who else but God could provide such grace? To befriend the man whose irresponsible drunkenness cost the lives of the two most precious people in your life is almost unthinkable. Yet we who are informed in the heart and mission of the Messiah cannot help but admire it. We know intrinsically this must be the power of Gods love at work in a persons heart.

However have we stopped to consider that this woman who was killed had a mother and father. How do they feel about this forgiveness? Does it represent an affront to their sense of justice for their daughter? Is the daughters life dishonored by her husbands forgiveness of this man?

What about Elizabeth Elliott (in case you had not figured it out) who went back to share Christ with the very tribes that murdered her husband. Where is the justice for that mans mother and father? It’s one thing for Mrs. Elliott to forgive them but what does that say about the damage done to them having lost their son? One could argue that this radical forgiveness dishonored their deserved justice.

And yet still there is the Rwandan genocide. So many countless people died and yet the nation is beginning to heal due to the work of a woman who forgave the men that slaughtered her family.

It is in these astonishing and transformative accounts we begin to see the unfolding of a great human mystery being unlocked by a divine hand. Perhaps the grand secret to saving humanity from its own depravity is not the destruction of evil doers, but the destruction of the the evil that is within in them through love.

As it is written, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Yet the most ardent disciples of Christianity who would celebrate these accounts themselves demand that harsh and interminable justice be done in the afterlife. Sinners must burn in hell forever because anything less is an affront to justice and the ones who suffered because of their depravity. This is a primary argument for why endless punishment is the only possibility for sinners. Yet when we read those stories we applaud these heroes of grace and we pray that somehow our own hearts could become half as strong in grace as theirs: the very ones who set aside justice to forgive the unforgivable, the very ones the entire world would have understood and appreciated if they had asked for death to the offenders. How can we want to be like them and yet want sinners to burn forever? How can we say we don’t want sinners to burn forever and yet insist God does?

Could it be that God was accomplishing something truly rare and precious in their hearts. His will was being done on earth as it is in heaven. Nowhere had his kingdom come more powerfully and present than in the hearts of these who laid down all rights to justice and chose to say “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

So now we must turn the tables on the demand for eternal punishment for sinners. Do we think that God would so dishonor those whose lives had so shined with the grace of Christ in radical forgiveness by sending their offenders to hell forever anyway? How could those forgiven on earth not be forgiven in heaven without dishonoring the love of those on earth who sacrificed so much to forgive them?

Furthermore, how can God not forgive those who were forgiven on earth when it was His own grace and spirit inspiring the forgiveness? Was it not Christ in them performing this forgiveness? Why then would Christ express forgiveness through our hearts on earth only to hold unforgiveness towards the same people in the afterlife?

It is at that point the familiar argument arises, God must judge people forever or else it would be an affront to justice. Well it would seem God has been affronting justice a lot through history by allowing sinners to be transformed by forgiveness.

Forgiveness destroys hate and evil. Was it not Jesus who said that the one who is forgiven much loves much?

So what is Gods goal? Is it to judge the sin and destroy the sinner, or to forgive the sin and change the sinner?

It is difficult to look at the stories of radical forgiveness and conclude these are the working of a God who will send sinners to hell forever. Love does not require justice like we do.

God has every reason to be more hurt and offended than we are yet He moves on hearts to radically forgive. In this life or the next life there is no reason why God would not continue to forgive sinners and liberate them from the evil within them.

Man made artificial deadlines on grace only serve to prop up human ideas and set themselves against the beautiful history of radical forgiveness to likes of Saul of Tarsus, John Newton, Nikki Cruz, and others.

These questions defy the simplistic and defiant assertions that Gods love could be so arbitrary and contradictory to mysteriously close off the sinner when brain waves and heart beats cease.

This leaves us with one great question. Where does Gods love for the sinner go when they die? Traditional Western theology teaches us it was once there but upon death it somehow evaporates.

But the testimonies of such radical, sacrificial, Christlike, cross bearing forgiveness seem to gently insist something else is true besides the contradiction we have held to.

The sinner may die, but mercy will not. For mercy already died for the sinner and mercy will never die again.

As it is written, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His mercies endureth forever.”

footnotes:

  1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...i-guard/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f00b821bcd4f

  2. The Life & Legacy of Elisabeth Elliot | Haven Today

  3. 5 Inspirational Stories of Forgiveness You Won't Forget
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
The Golden Chain

Links In A Golden Chain: C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald and Sadhu Sundar Singh

Sundar Singh eagerly studied holy books, meditated, practiced Yoga, and did good works.

When he was fourteen years old, in 1902, his mother and older brother died. (In 1908, C. S. Lewis's mother, uncle, and grandfather died.) Unlike his mother, Sundar Singh's father thought he was overly religious for his age. Once, the boy's Guru said to his father, "Your son will become either a fool or a great man. "4

Sundar Singh sought God in Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. He was exposed to Christianity for a year in a local school provided by American Presbyterian missionaries, but the more he heard of the New Testament, the more he resented it. He quit the school. When he saw missionaries in public he abused them and ordered his father's servants to do the same. He finally burned a New Testament in public to express his outrage.

Later, Sundar Singh saw that his fanatical opposition to Christianity had disguised a secret attraction to it. His father disapproved of his Bible burning as much as his obsession with proper Indian religions and wondered if his son was losing his sanity. Indeed, on December 17, 1904, fifteen-year-old Sundar Singh told his father goodbye and announced that he would commit suicide before breakfast. He fully planned to lie down on the railroad tracks near his house and be run over by the 5 a.m. express train in order to find God on the other side of death.

At 3 a.m. on December 18, Sundar Singh arose and took a cold bath according to Hindu custom. He begged and begged God to reveal Himself before the train came. Suddenly such a great light appeared in his small room that he looked to make sure the house was not on fire. Then a luminous cloud appeared, and he saw a Man's face in it - radiant with love. The Man spoke in perfect Hindustani, Sundar Singh's mother tongue: "Why do you persecute me? Remember that I gave My life for you upon the Cross." 5

Sundar Singh wrote later, "What I saw was no imagination of my own. Up to that moment I hated Jesus Christ and did not worship Him. If I were talking of Buddha I might have imagined it, for I was in the habit of worshipping him. It was no dream. When you have just had a cold bath you don't dream! It was reality, the Living Christ!" 6

Sundar Singh fell down before Jesus and worshipped him. Peace and joy finally flooded his soul. At breakfast he told his bewildered father, "The old Sundar Singh is dead; I am a new being." 7 His conversion was obviously much like that of the apostle Paul, and he told everyone who would listen.
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
“If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good."-Hosea Ballou

“Universalism is essentially a battle for the freedom of the common person.” Clarence Russell Skinner

“The spirit of Love will be intensified to Godly proportions when reciprocal love exists between the entire human race and each of its individual members. That love must be based upon mutual respect for the differences in color, language and worship, even as we appreciate and accept with gratitude the differences that tend to unite the male and female of all species. We do not find those differences obstacles to love.” George de Benneville

“A candle must give itself away. In the giving, the spending, the spreading, the sending, it finds itself.” John Wood

“Dear Friends, stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important to you as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before you the loftiest ideals, which has comforted you in sorrow, strengthened you for noble duty, and made the world beautiful for you. Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that you are worthy to be entrusted with this great message and that you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost. Go on finding ever new applications of these truths and new enjoyments in their contemplation.” Olympia Brown

“Dead fish float with the tide; live ones swim against it.” Thomas Whittemore

“Universalism is more than cushioned seats and no hell.” -Lyman H. Squires-

“Universalists believe that all of us are going to end up together in heaven, so we might as well learn how to get along with each other now.” -Gordon McKeeman-

“Our work as Universalists is not simply to sow seeds, but to cultivate harvests.” Elbridge Gerry Brooks

“A belief in God's universal love to all his creatures, and that he will finally restore all of them that are miserable to happiness, is a polar truth. . . It establishes the equality of [humanity]. . .” Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence

“We need to understand that religion is not a matter of . . . playthings for the Sabbath. . . It needs to be a power for good, finding daily expression in the lives of those who claim to be the children of God." Ellsworth C. Reamon

“To be able, in any way, to benefit, interest, or even amuse any of the weary beings that toil their way through this ‘vale of tears,’ whether our efforts are known and appreciated or not;. . . to have it in our power to wipe one tear from the cheek of the despondent, to cast one ray of light upon the haggard features of misery. . . The bare idea of its possibility has guilded the dark images of life with a glow which they never wore before.” Julia Kinney Scott

If you combine a carnal view to scripture with fear, blind ego, self-righteous pride, a hidden desire for vengeance and spark the religious engine with a Pharisaical spirit. You get a determined believer of hell. To suppose that God would bring beings into existence for both His purpose and pleasure who He knew in advance without mercy would be infinite losers by that existence, is to charge him a hypocrite with the utmost malignity. So much for Jesus turning the other cheek." -author unknown.-

"The Victorious Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only Gospel that gives our heavenly Father full glory." -Gary Amirault-

You'd have to be a psychopath not to want (universalism) to be true. -Robin Parry-
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
Nerfball, You make the common mistake of building doctrines based on the meaning of English words and the current culturally associated imagery instead of the meanings that were in the mind of the ancient speaker in their original language.

The passage you used is used by many to support annihilationism.

Destroy means gone and utterly nonexistent right? Well it does to some, but to others maybe it means frying in ones own fat for eternity. Because it has to support their theological bias. So people tend to bend words to the meaning they want them to have. Translators have been known to do that too. But then again to Jesus and His listeners it might have meant something quite different.

Here is I Peter 1:7 in Young's literal translation

“that the proof of your faith -- much more precious than of gold that is perishing, and through fire being approved -- may be found to praise, and honour, and glory, in the revelation of Jesus Christ,”

First perishing is the same greek word as destroyed in your quoted passage. But look at the order of events.

The gold is perishing, then through fire being approved. Hmmmm
How can the gold be destroyed and then through fire become approved? Nothing can be approved AFTER it has been destroyed can it? Unless the destruction is something different than our modern image provides. This is the imagery of the ancient people and the words have different imagery to them than to us. Both the rendering “destroy” in your passage and the word “perishing” in the one I quote are apollymi in the Greek.

For that word to be used by Peter to denote a step in the process of purifying gold indicates that the image we have of the word as utterly final and hopeless is misplaced.

Instead of souls being utterly annihilated and having to be replaced, Would it not make sense that God would use the fire of hell to do in the sinner in the after life what he used the fire of trials to do to the saint in this life? The soul is purified by fire as it were a precious metal the Lord desires to separate from the corruption and impurity that has polluted it so that it may be made fitting for his royal abode.

Is that someone you’d like to meet?
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
Our God is a consuming Fire

Fire Is A Beneficent Agent

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-
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
And what does higher mean? Beyond understanding or defying all logic and reason, or better than we could ever imagine? I opt for the second.

As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:9-12

This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.
I Tim 2:3-6

So who would like to explain how God is unable to bring to pass what he desires?

The word in the koine is far stronger than desires or wants! He wills all mankind to be saved. Nerf (as a good Calvinist) may appreciate the language of thelo.

God wills all mankind to be saved.....

Question=

Whose will prevails, broken creatures of despair, or the God of Glory?


 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
Do you know our God is the God of unlimited?

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits— to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water.... for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit."

From Him the all, through Him the all, to Him the all
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
The Father Who Lost Two Sons

This is about what’s normally called The Parable of the Prodigal Son. That's only one of the two sons in the parable, the younger boy. The older boy is the one—the other son—who is lost. And the point about changing the name of the parable is that the parables are almost always misnamed.

The Parable of the Lost Sheep is not about the lost sheep.

All the sheep ever did was get lost. The parable is about the passion of the shepherd who lost the sheep to find the sheep. His passion to find is what drives the parable; and consequently it isn't the Prodigal's lostness, wasting all his money on wine, women and song in the far country; and it isn't the elder brother's grousing and complaining and score keeping that stands against him. What counts in the parable is the father's unceasing desire to find the sons he lost—both of them—and to raise both of them up from the dead.

The story, of course, you know. The story begins with the father having two sons and the youngest son comes to the father and says, "Father, divide the inheritance between me and my brother." What he’s in effect saying is,

"Dear Dad, drop dead now, legally.

Put your will into effect and just retire out of the whole business of being anything to anybody and let us have what is coming to us." So the youngest son gets the money and the older brother gets the farm. And off the younger brother goes. What he does, of course, is he spends it all—blows it all—on wild living. When he finally is in want and working, slopping hogs for a farmer and wishing that he could eat what he’s feeding the pigs, he can't stand it. When he finally comes to himself he says, "You know, I've got to do something. How many hired servants of my father's are there who have bread enough to spare and I'm perishing here with hunger? I know what I'm going to do."

Almost every preacher makes this the boy's repentance. It's not his repentance.

This is just one more dumb plan for his life.

He says, "I will go to my father and I will say, ‘Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you.'" That's true. He got that one right. "And I'm no longer worthy to be called your son." Score two. He gets that one right. But the next thing he says is dead wrong. He says, "Make me one of your hired servants." He knows—he thinks he knows—he can't go back as a dead son, and therefore he says, "I will now go back as somebody who can earn my father's favor again. I will be a good worker or whatever." This is not a real repentance, it's just a plan for a life. What it is, is enough to get him started going home, and consequently when he goes home, what happens next is an absolutely fascinating kind of thing.

What happens next?

What happens next is that the father (you must remember this) is now sitting on the front porch of the farm house. The farm house doesn't belong to him anymore. The front porch doesn't belong to him. He’s sitting in the rocker that belongs to his oldest son who is now, you know, the owner of the farm. He’s sitting there and he sees the Prodigal, the younger boy, coming down the road from far away. He sees him coming. What does he do? He rushes off the porch, runs a half mile down the road, throws his arms around the boy's neck and kisses him.

Now, this is all that Jesus does with this scene. The fascinating thing in this parable is that in the whole parable the father never says one single word to the Prodigal Son. Jesus makes the embrace, the kiss, do the whole story of saying, "I have found my son." The fascinating thing also is that when the father embraces the boy who has come home from wasting his life, the boy never gets his confession out of his mouth until after the kiss, until after the embrace. What this says to you and me who have to live with the business of trying to confess our sins is that confession is not a pre-condition of forgiveness. It’s something that you do after you know you have been forgiven. Confession is not something you do in order to get forgiveness. It’s something you do in order to celebrate the forgiveness you got for nothing. Nobody can earn forgiveness. The Prodigal knows he's a dead son. He can't come home as a son, and yet in his father's arms he rises from the dead and then he is able to come to his father's side.

What happens next is that the father, saying not a word to the Prodigal, turns to the servants and says, "Bring the best robe, bring a ring for his finger and shoes for his feet, kill the fatted calf and let us eat and be merry for this, my son, was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found." Now this is the point in the parable at which everything is going well. The dead son, the no-good Prodigal Son, is home. He has been raised from the dead by his father's embrace. He has done nothing to earn it, but now all that matters is that the father has called for the party to celebrate the finding of the lost and the resurrection of the dead.

It's the party. Every one of Jesus' parables of grace—not every one, but most of them—end with a party.

When the Shepherd finds the lost sheep, he doesn't go back to the 99, he goes home and has a party with his friends in order to celebrate the finding of the lost. The father's will to have a party is what the parable is all about. That's why you must always do, not the human race characters in the parable like the Prodigal and the elder brother, why you must always do the God character first, because it’s the God character who drives the parable.

All right, now, what we've got now is everybody dead in the parable.

The father died at the beginning, the Prodigal died in the far country: he came home dead and the father raises him. Everything is fine. And now what we've got is Jesus' genius as a storyteller. The party is in full swing, so Jesus brings back in the only person in the story left who still has a life of his own: Mr. Responsibility, Mr. Whining, Mr. Elder Brother. He comes up and hears the music and the dancing and he probably sees the waiters scurrying around with roast veal platters and everything else. And he asks one of the servants, "What is this all about? I didn't commission a party." The servant says, "No, no, your brother has come home and your father has killed the fatted calf because he received him safe and sound." And the older brother is angry and he will not go in. He will not go into the house. He is right out there in the midst of the party. He is part of the party but he will not join the party. And the next thing that happens in this: when he comes in with all this bookkeeping he says, "Look," to his father, "all these years I served you and I never broke one of your commandments and you never even gave me a goat that I could make merry with my friends. But when this your son (notice he doesn't say, this my brother) cuts off his relationship, this your son has wasted your substance with riotous living, has wasted your substance with harlots, when this son comes home you kill the fatted calf!"

I think that one of the things you could do with this is make up a speech for the father.

The father goes out in the courtyard to plead with the older son. He goes out there in order to find him as he is and to raise him from the dead. He never gives up on any of them. He says to him, "Look, Arthur (let’s call the older brother Arthur), what do you mean I never gave you a goat for a party? If you wanted to have a great veal dinner for all your friends every week in the year, you had the money and the resources. You owned this place, Arthur. You have the money and the resources to have built 52 stalls and kept the oxen fattening as you wanted them to come along, but you didn't. Why didn't you do that, Arthur? Because you're a bean counter, because you're always keeping track of everybody else. That's your problem, Arthur, and I have one recipe for you." (The father is pleading with this fellow to come out of the death of bookkeeping.) He says, "I have one recipe for you, Arthur. That is, go in, kiss your brother, and have a drink. Just shut up about all this stuff because, Arthur, you came in here already in hell, and I came out here in this courtyard to visit you in the hell in which you were."

This is the wonderful thing about this parable, because it isn't that there was a Prodigal Son who was a bad boy and who, therefore, came home and turned out to be a good boy and had a happy ending. Then the elder brother—you would think Jesus, if he was an ordinary storyteller, would have said, "Let's give the elder brother a rotten ending." He doesn't. He gives the older brother no ending. The parable ends with a freeze frame. It ends like that with just the father, and the sound goes dead—the servants may be moving around with the wine and veal—but the sound goes dead and Jesus shows you only the freeze frame of the father and the elder brother. That's the way the parable has ended for 2,000 years.

My theory about this parable is that if, for 2,000 years, he has never let it end, then you can extend that indefinitely, that this is a signal, an image of the presence of Christ to the damned. When the father goes out into the courtyard, he is an image of Christ descending into hell; and, therefore, the great message in this is the same as Psalm 139, "If I go down to hell, You are there also." God is there with us. There is no point at which the Shepherd who followed the lost sheep will ever stop following all of the damned. He will always seek the lost. He will always raise the dead. Even if the elder brother refused forever to go in and kiss his other brother, the Father would still be there pleading with him. Christ never gives up on anybody. Christ is not the enemy of the damned. He is the finder of the damned. If they don't want to be found, well there is no imagery of hell too strong like fire and brimstone and all that for that kind of stupidity. But nonetheless, the point is that you can never get away from the love that will not let you go and the elder brother standing there in the courtyard in his own hell is never going to get away from the Jesus who seeks him and wills to raise him from the dead.
 
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FineLinen

Well-Known Member
Search= eternal hell

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No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found. -Isaac Watts-

Curse= katanathema=

By metonymy: accursed thing put to the thing announced.

"The leaves of the Tree are for healing the nations. Never again will anything be cursed. The Throne of God and of the Lamb is at the center. His servants will offer God service—worshiping, they’ll look on his face, their foreheads mirroring God. Never again will there be any night. No one will need lamplight or sunlight. The shining of God, the Master, is all the light anyone needs. And they will rule with him age after age after age." -The Message-

There shall be NO MORE curse!
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
The history of universalism

The History of Universalism | Christian Universalist Association


When Jesus spoke of God’s judgment upon the wicked, he did so with words that implied a limited, corrective punishment. Specifically, he referred to divine judgment as aionios kolasis, meaning age-long chastisement. The idea was that a person who turns away from God and lives a life of evil will have to face justice — a purgatorial period in the afterlife — before enjoying eventual harmonious reunion with God.

Jesus explicitly prophesied that after his death on the cross and resurrection, he will “draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32). This hopeful promise was echoed by the teaching of the Apostles who founded the Christian ecclesia (church community). For example, St. Peter taught that Jesus visits sinners in hell to help them become redeemed (1 Pet. 3:18-20, 4:6).
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
"In the first five or six centuries of Christianity there were six known theological schools, of which four (Alexandria… Antioch, Caesarea, and Edessa or Nisibis) were Universalist, one (Ephesus) accepted conditional immortality; one (Carthage or Rome) taught endless punishment of the wicked. Other theological schools are mentioned as founded by Universalists, but their actual doctrine on this subject is unknown.”

Schaff, Phillip, The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge – Vol 12, Baker Book House, 1950

The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol XIII: Index - TOC
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
The punishment of the Father of all fathers is not merely correction: it is correction that improves, changes, transforms for the better.

Our God punishes with an objective in view, not as an end in itself!

There are dual aspects to our Father’s Realm as shown in the following…

Tamiym/ 'ymt means to be consumed, destroyed, exhausted and spent, but also to be finished and made sound.

Kalal has the same meaning, linking destruction, being spent, exhausted, as well as to be finished and made sound.

Tamam, the root word of Tamiym means to be finished, complete, summed up, made whole: linked with to be consumed, exhausted, spent and destroyed.

Shalam/ ~IX, another expression of destruction, has the scope of being finished and ended, made good or whole, & being made sound, coupled with to be restored.

Shebar, rooted in Shabar, means breakout, and being brought to birth; and underlying new birth and breakout? To be crushed and broken. Again there is dual meaning in our Lord’s words of destruction and re-creation.

Chalowph

The destructive Hebrew word Chalowph is rooted in being altered, renewed, changed, and to sprout again. It should also be noted that this is not just change, but change for the better.

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down;… down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. -C.S. Lewis
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
"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." Romans 9:22

Fitted/ Prepared=katartivzw

Katartivzw=

To render or to fit.

To make sound or complete.

To mend what has been broken or rent.

To repair what has been broken or rent.

To put in order.

To arrange. To adjust.

To fit or frame for one’s self.

To strengthen, to perfect, to complete.

To make one what he aught to be.

Dr. Marvin Vincent

Fitted/prepared= kathrtismena=

Literally: adjusted or mended.

“ei de qelwn o qeoV endeixasqai thn orghn kai gnwrisai to dunaton autou hnegken en pollh makroqumia skeuh orghV kathrtismena eiV apwleian”

Romans 9:22 - What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?.

It must be noted that the destruction of Abba is NOT mindless extermination but>>>

1. The means by which our Father arranges and adjusts.

2. His destruction leads to repair and amendment.

3. The final outcome= making one what he aught to be.

Welcome to Katartivzw
 

FineLinen

Well-Known Member
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