Christian Univeralism, has been around since the beginning of the church.
It is the belief that Jesus indeed died for all mankind, that there is no perpetual torment in hell.
In order to fulfill all righteousness, those who believe are spared condemnation with the earth, and those who do not believe are cast into the Lake of Fire, so that others may be included with the elect and that everything is reconciled and will be restored in Him, just all things were created in Him.
So it is NOT a new way of believing something else in scripture, it is as some historians have noted, been what the original Church believed and was later (400 or so years later) denounced as a heresy by a particular school in a country which was influenced by the Emperor Cult. About that time, Christianity was legalized and all other religions banned, as long as they followed what the Emperor said Christianity was.
Don't believe me? Do some research on it.
I have done my research, and so has HizLamb. You speak as though you have and yet you make errant statements
Universalists should not be recognized as Christians. They do not recognize the entire bible as inspired of God nor to they accept Jesus is God, and there are many other inconsistancies regarding salvation.
A christian, by ancient definition, is one who BELIEVES the word without changing it.
Universalism has NOT been around since the beginning of the church. I would wager you cant even tell me when the church began.
Universalist doctrine began with Origen, a gnostic teacher, and head of the school of philosophy in Alexandria Egypt, who added christianity to his teachings. He REWROTE portions of the bible in order to facillitate his universallist doctrine, and perverted doctrine until he was pronounced a heretic and his writings, heretical.
Out of 5255 ancient manuscripts, 45 are what we call alexandrian, and 5210 make us the textus receptus. The 45 are responsible for the westcott hort translation in greek, westcott hort by the way neither believed that the scriptures are inerrant, and all this mess is responsible for the niv, which not so ironicly allows the universalist doctrine to be set forth.
The 5210 manuscripts making up the textus receptus, and the King Jamers Version, EXCLUDE and ELIMINATE universalist doctrine.
So one can be a universalist, believing pronounced heretics who made changes to the holy scriptures, and believing those who believe the bible contains errors, Or one can be a true believer, believing the 5210 UNCHANGED manuscripts over the 45 changed by pronounced heretics.
Would you like to talk about universalist doctrine and how Origen rewrote holy scriptures to accomodate it?