Dear Shrewd Manager,
Thanks for the welcome!
People do call me a universalist sometimes but that really isn't a label that fits me. I know there are universalist denominations out there but I do not associate with any of them nor do I really know much about them. In fact, I do not associate with any church or denomination any longer since I received the Latter Rain in 2005.
I grew up in the Church of Christ and changed to non-denominational churches in my 20's and 30's. Then in my early 40's, my family and I started attending a Oneness Pentecostal church. We started going there for 3 main reasons. We had a close friend who went there, they baptize in the name of Jesus and they supported teachings on End-time prophecy. Other than that, the church was a culture shock for us but we managed stay because of the friendships we developed there. But all that changed for me after about a year and a half of attending there. From out of the blue, Christ came a second time to my wife and I and turned our world upside. With that visitation, Christ healed our spiritual blindness and the scriptures opened up to us. Within just 2 or 3 weeks, nearly everything that we thought we knew as "truth" we realized were actually lies from Satan. Of course, we had to leave the church and we lost all our new friends. I posted my conversion testimony in my personal profile which goes into quite a bit more details of what happened to us at that time.
Up until that time of my conversion, my beliefs were very much like everyone else's. I believed in Free Will, Hell and even taught End-time prophecy. I had truly eaten the leavened bread that everyone who is Called Out eats:
Matt 13:33 Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
After my conversion, I learned that there is no truth at all in ANY of the churches. Once that bread is eaten, it will cause a Called Out believer to "fall away" and spiritually die. Once that happens, we cannot be renewed by repentance.
Heb 6:4-6 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
The "repentance" mentioned here is referring to trying to make ourselves acceptable to God through our own works. Adam started it with His apron of figs leaves and mankind has been doing the same with "religion" (man's attempt to make one's self acceptable to God) ever since. Shortly after I was Called Out, it happened to me, just as it happens to everyone. We cannot deviate from this pathway because it is the pathway laid down by God. Everyone must and will travel it in order to be saved.
Our carnal natures also prefer the Old Wine over the New Wine.
Luke 5:39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.
When one drinks the Old Wine (Old Covenant of Law), it causes us to "fall away" and spiritually die. It is the "sin that leads to death". As I said, it happens to everyone shortly after they are Called Out. We have no say in the matter. When one is spiritually blind and carnal (we still see Jesus in the flesh), Satan comes to us and easily deceives us. He masquerades as an angel of light (Christ). Our carnal nature loves his teachings (like the Doctrine of Free Will and Hell) and hates the true teachings of God.
2Cor 11:14-15 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
Only the Elect (after they receive the Latter Rain) can come out from that powerful deception.
2Thes 2:7-12 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
This experience of evil is all part of the pathway of salvation that is taught in many places in scripture but I have only found very, very few believers who can see it. The reason I mention it here is because I am wanting to know if you and Steve have the same understanding since you can also see that Christ is the Savior of the World. Can you see it too?
Joe
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the testimony and detailed reply. Yes, pardon me, I don't particularly like the label 'universalism' either. We'd been trialing the term 'restorationism' to describe the eschatology (to distinguish from 'damnationism' and 'annihilationism'). Phew, doctrine.
Anyway, there's no shortage of evil to experience in today's world. Jesus and scripture teach that's just how the world is, under the thrall of satan's lie-kill-steal-destroy franchise. I always say to mainstream Christians, 'Do you think the devil cons people that their uncles were monkeys and then rests up?' That devil's ambitious, always mounts a bigger deception than the last, and never takes a sabbath. So all the idols of the physical and biological sciences, history and the rest, yep. And the world keeps drinking his kool-aid, because it just loves its sin.
So to me, the 'hard question' of theodicy (if God is good, why does He permit evil?), is, after God opened my eyes, very easy to answer. I love it when 'protest atheists' (I was one once) who rightly reject the vicious incoherence of satan's false god (ie who sends ppl to hell forever for not loving him back) put that question defiantly. Well, God in Grace lavishes the gift of free choice on man, knowing that it is too great a gift for him to handle. Fast forward, man wakes up in the swine pit with a hunger and thirst or staring into the abyss for the 7th time. And that's when man can start to truly appreciate God, and His Salvation as His mighty right arm.
Come to me all ye who are heavy-laden, ye wicked for whom there is no rest day or night and I will give your tormented soul rest, that ye may be transformed in the love of Christ.
That's the recurrent pattern of God's people and history in general: God gives, man thrives, man forgets/fumbles, God's wrath grows (sends warnings etc), man suffers tribulation and torment, laments, cries out for salvation, God saves, man's heart changes and he repents, wounds are miraculously healed, God is glorified.
That pattern recurs throughout history on an increasing scale, until we find ourselves in a situation the whole lost world needs saving desperately from the pharmakeia of Babylon laboring vainly under the great delusion that more reliance on the priests of Ba'al will save it.
So the Lamb will overcome the dragon (again), and the world be saved, though as through fire, as written in the final chapters of Revelation. The tares grow up with the wheat until harvest time.
Hope this reading makes some sense to you Joe.
Ben