Why not Universal Reconciliation?

[schoel]

I think anyone and everyone that ultimately spends time in hell will do so because they have willfully rejected God and the gospel. Secondly, I think even those people who enter the Lake of Fire will still have opportunity to be refined by it and, ultimately, respond to God's grace. I reckon that a good percentage, one way or another, will ultimately humble themselves before God. Some might not... and it is those people who would face ultimate extinction.

I do agree with you that it would be a 'hollow victory' if the vast majority of people ended up extinct.
I also think it would be a hollow victory if the vast majority ended up in heaven against their wishes.

I agree that any approach to this subject should retain the idea of free will.

However, I find it hard to believe that anyone can or will outlast God's patience or resourcefulness as He works to bring them to the truth.

[mattrose]

Some might not... and it is those people who would face ultimate extinction.

I agree that any approach to this subject should retain the idea of free will.

However, I find it hard to believe that anyone can or will outlast God's patience or resourcefulness as He works to bring them to the truth.[/quote]

I hope no one does outlast the attempts of grace. But I also refuse to be dogmatic that none will do so. All of our experience tells us that powerful grace can still be rejected.

[Jepne]

Matt Rose said this: '' I believe all such people (At least) will be given a postmortem opportunity to respond to God. I think anyone and everyone that ultimately spends time in hell will do so because they have willfully rejected God and the gospel. ''

It is the 'either or' aspect of these discussions that stump me. I was brought up atheist, and every Christmas and Easter I wished that someone like Jesus had really come to the earth, but, having been taught that it was all a fairy tale, I just felt sad. Then, at ten years of age, coming home from a very Catholic movie about "Our Lady of Fatima", I was walking West into a sunset of the variety seen in the film, with God speaking on the beams of light streaming down. Many things like that happened to me before I finally met Jesus - some I responded to, to the best of my knowledge, and some I ignored, and I think that is the way with many people. There are many 'missionary stories' of people talking to God, then, when they were presented with the Gospel, they recognized the God of the Bible, but how can they know the God of the Bible if he is presented incorrectly, which happens at times?

I think we are accountable only for what we know. I had very little light, so I do not think I could have been held accountable or be accused of willfully rejecting God and the Gospel, even though I was not 'saved', had I died then.

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[TheEditor]

Hi Dizerner,

I, as of right now, do not believe in UR, though I am hopeful that the majority of mankind, given the right opportunity, will respond to the Good News. Having said that, your post seems to be in a "shotgun" fashion; I can't exactly see what you are trying to say. For example, on the one hand you say:

I can't accept universal reconciliation because I think what the Holy Spirit says to me personally through the Bible is clear. Whenever I hear a universal reconciliation interpretation of Scriptures, I feel like the verses have to constantly be explained away, and that's the whole effort is just explaining away. This doesn't give me a good feeling when someone's entire exegesis is explaining away what the text says to me.

But later you state:

The best, most charitable human being on the planet is evil and Satanic in nature without the work of Christ. How can I say that? How can I know? Because that is what the Bible says to me. I can't hide that light under a bushel. It only comes by revelation, not continual fleshly mental analysis of Scripture.

Did you not just say that your analysis of Scripture testifies something else other than UR? How can you then disparage this same analysis when it leads some to conclusions other than your own? This is my point from a previous thread with you. How can we rely on a "personal Revelation"? What if my Revelation from Scripture as God leads me, leads me to vastly different conclusions than your own? What then?

In your post above you seem to affirm "total depravity". Is this what you believe? If so, my Revelation from God says otherwise to me. How can the twain ever meet?

You also seem to be making an argument from emotion--and that's not a bad thing, after all, it takes one to know one. At the same time, aren't some of your pleas; 'Universal reconciliation for me destroys the very foundation of Biblical truth and faith'; 'If people in hell can exercise faith in Christ, why not just wait until then', etc. an argument from fairness? This puts me in mind of a verse:

"For the kingdom of the heavens is like a man, a householder, who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. When he had agreed with the workers for a denar′ius a day, he sent them forth into his vineyard. Going out also about the third hour, he saw others standing unemployed in the marketplace; and to those he said, ‘YOU also, go into the vineyard, and whatever is just I will give YOU.’ So off they went. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour and did likewise. Finally, about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing, and he said to them, ‘Why have YOU been standing here all day unemployed?’ They said to him, ‘Because nobody has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘YOU too go into the vineyard.’ “When it became evening, the master of the vineyard said to his man in charge, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, proceeding from the last to the first.’ When the eleventh-hour men came, they each received a denar′ius. So, when the first came, they concluded they would receive more; but they also received pay at the rate of a denar′ius. On receiving it they began to murmur against the householder and said, ‘These last put in one hour’s work; still you made them equal to us who bore the burden of the day and the burning heat!’ But in reply to one of them he said, ‘Fellow, I do you no wrong. You agreed with me for a denar′ius, did you not? Take what is yours and go. I want to give to this last one the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I want with my own things? Or is your eye wicked because I am good?’ In this way the last ones will be first, and the first ones last."
(Matthew 20:1-16)

In short, if God has something in store for others that I cannot apprehend at this time, this kid ain't gonna complain. (so much for impeccable grammar... )

Regards, Brenden.

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[TheEditor]

Hi Diszerner,

Sometimes I read people's posts and can follow them. Sometimes I can't. Other times, it's somewhere in the middle. Such is the printed word. However, other times there is something in a post that strikes me to be at odds with something I beleive I must have read somewhere else before. So, I decided to reread all of your posts in this forum. It was a pleasant enough task. I also believe I have found what was troubling me. In the last few interchanges we have had, you have stressed what I referred to before as a "Kierkegaardian" posit. I have no problem with existentialism as far as it goes. I am confident that if you were to sit down with me and have a nice long chat, you would wonder if I could be pinned down or painted in any consistant manner whatsoever.

However, your earlier posts all seemd to be arguing from logic, reason and generally the now bemoaned "academic" approach. Did someone throw a switch on? Either we can glean some kind of objective truth from the Scriptures or we can't. If we can, then it seems to me that we can and should have these kinds of rational "non-revelatory" conversations about the things of God. If not, then all bets are off and it's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

By the way, the Bible does not present a "shotgun" approach. It only appears so because it's 66 different rifles going off in the same Volume.

Respectfully submitted, Brenden.

[Jepne]

OK - Here is my take from 60 or so years of contemplating these things:

When I watch Jesus confronting the Pharisees about their not believing him, I see a man who is not full of wrath at men, but a man grieved in his heart about the destruction these men are not only causing others, but headed for in their own lives because of their hardness of heart. He went to the cross for them, too, asking for their forgiveness while he suffered. His grief is as strong as his love.

I have tasted great destruction in the past because of my unbelief - how did I get off so easy because I did not die 'in my sins', but came to salvation and have had the privilege of years of training in righteousness? I certainly was never any better than the Pharisees but probably worse! You might ask yourself the same queston.

Christianity never has anything to do with who deserves what. It runs on agape love. Very different from warm fuzzies, misplaced empathy, and punitive attitudes or “... some kind of reincarnation belief,...''. There is an afterlife. The Bible gives every indication of it being so.

Your post shows that you are not at all familiar with the teachings on the reconciliation of all things but seems to accuse without really saying anything concrete, things which no one I know or read believes, such as: ''the whole idea weakens the power of the new birth''? And 'explaining away scripture'. You don't believe in comparing scriptures and going back to the original Greek to learn why a word is translated differently in different contexts?

We must suffer in this world if we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. The kingdoms must clash if we are doing the Lord's work. What Jesus did for us makes it bearable to pick up our cross and follow him. If we go through our suffering in His way, letting it prepare or work for us an 'eternal weight of glory' we will be overcomers and we will rule and reign with Him (2 Cor 4:16).

If you are considered worthy to rule and reign with him, you will rule over what!?! Clouds and harps? Rule over your little space that you take up around the throne as we sing Hallelujah for trillions of years into the future (By the way, who are those 'under the earth' in Philippians 2 and Revelation 5)?

''If people in hell can exercise faith in Christ, why not just wait until then.''
No one who believed there is a hell would even consider waiting until he arrived there to do something to avoid it. It is a heart attitude that brings us to hell or salvation.

[Homer]

Dizerner wrote:

I can't accept universal reconciliation because I think what the Holy Spirit says to me personally through the Bible is clear. Whenever I hear a universal reconciliation interpretation of Scriptures, I feel like the verses have to constantly be explained away, and that's the whole effort is just explaining away. This doesn't give me a good feeling when someone's entire exegesis is explaining away what the text says to me.

As appealing as universalism is, I have never ceased to have the feeling that their arguments are contrived. Their arguments about Matthew 25:46, for example:

46. And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Such balance and poetic parallelism in Jesus' warning makes the meaning seem so obvious. Before I heard the universalist arguments, I never focused on this verse. My attention was drawn to the meaning of the whole passage, vs. 31-46. Yet for the universalist I have the impression that this simple statement, and overturning what seems to be the obvious, is the greatest task of biblical exegesis. Such enormous effort they have expended. And those arguments are technical in nature and ignore the spirit of the text.

[TheEditor]

Hi Homer,

Of course, this parable is troubling on many levels. Who exactly are "the nations"? Who exactly are "the brothers"? When does this take place? I still cannot come to any firm conviction on this myself.

Regards, Brenden.