The Evangelical Universalist Forum

John 11:23-26?

Cindy said:

In all respect Cindy, how the hell can you make that statement.

There are infants and mentally challenged and people who will never because of their birth or upbringing who will NEVER know Christ.

How dare you say they will not be saved… Christ saved all.

You being an admin better maybe look at the alternatives. The lost and the infants and the unknowing all need an advocate. By gosh you should well be one.

Your statement is absolute Calvinist.

God I wonder why you said that.

The animus towards Cindy’s post is undeserved.

The (to me at least) very strange world of the preterists seems to inspire sweeping statements that are imo unjustified because, frankly, the CASE IS NOT CLOSED.
Yes, prets can give a story that explains much of the biblical data. That does not equate to telling the true story. There are other justifiable ways to explain the data that lead to very different resultant world-views and hopes.

The preterist story is a mixture of insight, truth, and, I believe, error. (other stories get the same criticism) - as well as a truncated view of scripture - a view that is chosen by its adherents - and the fact that it is a choice should give one pause before jumping on others who have chosen differently.

There is a similar smugness among some trinitarians - I am not referring to JP - that the case is closed, we’ve got the truth and the rest of you don’t. It’s a close-mindedness that tends to strike out at or belittle others.

So please - you’ve made a choice you feel is correct - good for you. So have the rest of us - good for us. Let’s love one another and God and our neighbor get on with following Christ. We will all stand before Him for correction. (Yeah that’s my belief :slight_smile:)

IF one follows the universalist penchant for placing the entirety of humanity squarely “in Christ” as per 1Cor 15:22, then what does logic thereby dictate accordingly here, QED…

…who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Holy Spirit.

In trying to understand this statement, Cindy, I would like to ask a question. I am not arguing against your statement—just trying to understand it. If when you believe or trust, you are saved, just what is that from which you have been saved?

I was waiting for it… :laughing:

So IF you’re going to be consistent Dave… there IS indeed condemnation for believers who do not… “walk according to the Holy Spirit” but rather “according to the flesh” — which is what consistency dictates.

Of COURSE you were waiting for it, just as I was waiting for the retort. Isn’t this fun??
And we both know what I will say, and you will say…two different stories, and we have chosen for ourselves.

:laughing: Don’t forget Dave, I prefaced all that I said with… “IF one follows the universalist penchant…:wink:

In my frenzy to answer :laughing: I may have not given that word sufficient weight.
IOW, yep I got it now…

For some here, the problem stems around the view that Pantelists view.

Unlike the Calvinist 5 points. It is a system that needs no creeds or rules. It simply looks at history and the words of scripture as they are written. The Calvinist, for example uses the old creeds to box or shoehorns the would be believer into a fixed set of bouundries, and if you do not believe or adhere, you are out or ‘not orthodox’. All the while leaving quite unsettled matters about scripture.

Pantelism has no system, no groups to speak of.

In my personal view I came to believe two things. That the cross was actual, not possible. And I believed that God loved everyone, and everyone was part of his creation.

Finding Pantelism dotted the 'i’s and crossed the 't’s for me. It is simply a view of God that creates a viable view of God as I had thought it was.

I have no animosity for Cindy’s belief but was and am astounded at the statement.

In my opinion, there is no condemnation for anyone who does not believe, does not know, does not follow Jesus. The variables are to many and to easily manipulated.

But. There is an understanding of love and an open door to service for those who DO understand who Christ was and was about in our time. In other words, Jesus’ condemning words were to a group of folks in that day at that time. For a specific reason.

The condemnation verses that Jesus spoke, were not to be construed as ongoing ‘laws’ (which is exactly what most evangelicals have looked at them as) but as a historical happening at a certain time for a certain reason.

Our lack of belief or following Christ today simply puts us in a state of not experiencing all that we can become. It is not condemnation in my opinion.

Much of evangelical universalism, is no better than the plane Jane evangelicals. You are not saved until you believe or repent or do something. For some EU’s, hell is simply the separation from God until you see it his way. And I understand, I was there. But I will continue to voice an opposition to such thinking and expound to the fact that God is Love.

There is very, very little about the afterlife in scriptures. All evangelicals think saved = afterlife or going to heaven to be with Jesus. :frowning:

I see Gods love as radical GRACE. A grace that transcends anything we have done or have to do. Fulfilled. Done. Accomplished. It is finished. It is about the here and now. Loving God and our neighbor. Not trying to get somewhere after we die.

I’ve been doing some thinking and perhaps Jesus meant that anyone who did not believe was condemned WITHIN THEMSELVES since unbelieving mean they did not truly know God, love, or mercy. So it was a state of misery and spiritual self-condemnation to refuse the Holy Spirit.

Hi OL, this is exactly what my post above brings out. Jesus was a Messiah to the Jewish nation, a Messiah that was ridiculed and crucified by his own people. Yes technically the Romans did the deed but the very spurn of the Jews was that they hated him and it could be said had him crucified. But the problem was with what Jesus knew was coming down the road.

Matt. 23:37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

So Jesus is talking about His bro’s from Israel. :wink:

The writer of Hebrews goes on…

Heb 8:6 But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.
Heb 8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.
Heb 8:8 For finding fault with them, He says, "BEHOLD, DAYS ARE COMING, SAYS THE LORD, WHEN I WILL EFFECT A NEW COVENANT WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL AND WITH THE HOUSE OF JUDAH;
Heb 8:9 NOT LIKE THE COVENANT WHICH I MADE WITH THEIR FATHERS ON THE DAY WHEN I TOOK THEM BY THE HAND TO LEAD THEM OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT; FOR THEY DID NOT CONTINUE IN MY COVENANT, AND I DID NOT CARE FOR THEM, SAYS THE LORD.
Heb 8:10 "FOR THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR MINDS, AND I WILL WRITE THEM ON THEIR HEARTS. AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.
Heb 8:11 "AND THEY SHALL NOT TEACH EVERYONE HIS FELLOW CITIZEN, AND EVERYONE HIS BROTHER, SAYING, ‘KNOW THE LORD,’ FOR ALL WILL KNOW ME, FROM THE LEAST TO THE GREATEST OF THEM.
Heb 8:12 “FOR I WILL BE MERCIFUL TO THEIR INIQUITIES, AND I WILL REMEMBER THEIR SINS NO MORE.”
Heb 8:13 When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

The Pantelist view of the story of Christ is a story of a covenant relationship with God and how God through His son, reconciled the nations to himself. But the rub of the story is about Christ and Israel. :smiley:

An interesting point to consider is :

Heb 8:11 "AND THEY SHALL NOT TEACH EVERYONE HIS FELLOW CITIZEN, AND EVERYONE HIS BROTHER, SAYING, ‘KNOW THE LORD,’ FOR ALL WILL KNOW ME, FROM THE LEAST TO THE GREATEST OF THEM.
Heb 8:12 “FOR I WILL BE MERCIFUL TO THEIR INIQUITIES, AND I WILL REMEMBER THEIR SINS NO MORE.”

Yepper that is my motto. We will all know from the least to the greatest of them. Lets cut each other some slack. Be merciful.

It seems to me that this correlates with Jesus’ command to Judge not… Just a thought.

Exactly… it is primarily about the here and now as the there and then has ALREADY been taken care of. :sunglasses:

Perhaps so. Although there appears to be the aspect of God’s wrath as well:

Jn.3:36 he who is believing in the Son, hath life age-during; and he who is not believing the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God doth remain upon him.’ YLT

I visited a Preterist site and the way they would look at this is that the Jews who did not give up Mosaic Law for the New Covenant were going to have God’s wrath in terms of being destroyed (By Rome in 70 AD) so that Christianity could spread. It is an interesting viewpoint.

I did very specifically account for that in what you quoted me. In fact, I added more detail from the verses than you did.

I was quoting (with some logical piecing together of the quotes) what Jesus says in John 5, including what Jesus says about the the goal/result of being raised to judgment, and what Jesus says about the results of that goal involve.

You’re welcome to point out where Jesus doesn’t say those things (in John’s report); but since you didn’t notice that I had accounted for Jesus saying what you quoted against me as though Jesus didn’t say what I referenced Him saying at all, then you’ll have to be more accurate.

I’m including way more detail than you did of what Jesus is reported saying in John 5, not less or other than you did.

I’m not allowed to make a contextual argument, though, even on immediate context, then we’re going to just be prooftexting snippets against each other. Which is not objective learning. (And also not something I care much about doing.)

That’s one way of looking at John 3:36. Another would be in light of the yet future resurrection of Daniel 12:2.

Chad, you’ve read my comments here for some time and you know me better than that (or you ought to). I’m a partial pretarist (insofar as I understand what that even is) but I’m not a pantelist. Sorry if you find that offensive. This is what I mean (and I speak of adults because that is who this passage is written to. The next verse to that is ([tag]qaz[/tag] are you listening? Because this bit is the answer to your question, too.)

Since this was written in Greek, it’s important to understand the Greek first (I hope I"m understanding it correctly, Paidion, Jason) According to the expanded versions, believe conveys the sense of “believe in, rely on, trust in, cling to”… so it’s not a matter of mental assent. And I do think people can do this who haven’t heard the name of Jesus although, just perusing history, not many of the “mighty ones” who get reported on in history books look like they’ve done anything like that. I suspect that the minions by and large haven’t, either, nor would have had they become mighty ones.

Now let’s talk about condemnation. When you stand before a judge, guilty of, let’s say… oh, not paying your parking tickets and owing the city a gazillion dollars… for the fifteenth time… what do you think the condemnation will be? Maybe to not do that any more? Maybe to pay up? Maybe even some jail time? I’m guessing the condemnation is NOT going to have anything to do with caning or flogging with a cat’o’nine. It’s going to be somewhere south of that by a lot. The focus of this condemnation is to teach you to obey the parking laws.

In your view (which makes NO sense to me, but that’s okay… I do not condemn you, even if I had the right/authority to do that, which I do not have; please return the favor) there is maybe no punishment/chastisement/remedial counselling/whatever for any reason whatsoever. I don’t know. Pantelism seems to have different meanings depending on who one talks to. Maybe you’re just kind of automatically made into a good loving person with no personal participation in that at all. Okay. I’m okay with you believing that. I believe that we, having free will (or at least the potential for having free will), NEED the Father to gently conform us to the image of Christ because if He doesn’t do that, we won’t be fit company for the rest of the sibs. I believe that we are becoming and will become GOOD as a result of what God does in parenting us and what we do in cooperating with His parenting. I believe that even as we rebel against Him, He knows how to gather us in to Himself and eventually train us up in the image of Christ. That’s what I believe. If you want to condemn me for that, well, okay.

Paidion, Gabriel told Joseph, “You shall call His name Jesus for He shall save His people from their sins.” That’s what Jesus saves us from.

Cindy, to be honest, if I had to make that post again today, I would have made it different. Though my belief is the same, I would have qualified it in a different way, I apologize for the way I reacted. Please accept my apology.

I really do not want to talk about condemnation or preterist or anything else, with you at this time.

The way I said what I said was out of line.

I was in a particular interesting moment in my personal life when I happened upon your post. I had no right.

All I can ask is that you can forgive me…

So if we can move on, I would appreciate it.

No problem, Chad. Forget about it.