Thanks for this instructive and helpful post, Cindy. I will try to check this book out; I had never heard of it as part of the Universalist prescribed books. Is Jan Bonda a Universalist and an Annihilationist? (or infernalist?) One review said of the book: “and that no one (or almost no one) will suffer the eternal torment of Hell that Christianity often warns of to non-believers.” Who are the ones that are labelled “almost”, and what is their destiny in Jan’s model?
This explanation of Paul touches on my comments about genocide and “God on trial” in another thread you and I discussed. Paul suggests that the wickedness (and destruction) of certain groups should be understood from the PoV of God’s endurance and patience. These destroyed ones, like Pharaoh and the Egyptians, were destroyed with the same foreknowledge that God has governing the selection of the elect. Such “vessels of dishonor” are often tolerated by God “with much patience”, while they are foreknown to be “ready for destruction.” These very same one are used by God as a learning instrument to benefit all of mankind; hence they reduce their judgment by becoming a sacrificial goat. As you stated: “God has formed some for the purpose of, if you will, an object lesson.”
Notice that Paul says that Sodom and Gomorrah are also used as an object lesson. If Paul is WRONG!, as others have recently argued, then the scriptures relating to the object lessons, such as: Sodom and Gomorrah, or Adam and Eve, or Noah, or the Exodus, are actually myths that have no greater value than Roman myths or Babylonian myths. Paul says elsewhere of “myths”, “This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths…” Paul was completely against the “myth” teachings. In comparison, the “testimony [of scripture] is true.”
As I have suggested elsewhere, these hard sayings in scripture were carefully placed there as “a rock to trip over”. It sorts out those who live by faith and those who stumble over the “stone in Zion”. The gentiles who are grafted in are not hardened over the offense of Zion. Any who do stumble actually fall prey to the same offense that made the Jews disown their creator. It is our turn now to show what type of vessel we are.