Resurrection has two sides. For some, the resurrection will be one of “life,” but to others it will be one of “condemnation” (John 5:28,29). Human beings have eternal souls — souls that will spend eternity, if not with God, then away from Him.
Universalism is fueled not by biblical exegesis but by emotional preferences. Hell is simply incongruent with the way people want to feel about God. “The issue of the new universalism is no longer ‘God hath spoken’ but ‘Man hath reasoned’.”
Jesus was never more revolutionary than in His practice of love. If we take all that He did (and not just our favorite parts), even our most “advanced” ideas about love will be disrupted. It will be a disturbing, and truly liberating, experience.
Writing to Timothy, Paul left no doubt about the object of Jesus’ work: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). This echoes Jesus’ own words, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
Jesus is described as “the faithful witness” (Revelation 1:5), which means He told the truth in everything He reported to mankind about God. He claimed He came from God, had direct knowledge of Him, and bore accurate testimony about Him.
I’m mighty glad that God’s love is steadfast. Were it not for His lovingkindness, this weak child of His would have been disinherited long, long ago. And, in Christ, I yearn for the sweet day when I shall be able to thank Him more properly.
If we reject “organized” religion, where does that leave the Lord’s Supper? Are we really “Christians” today if we don’t take seriously an observance that, in the New Testament, was so extremely important to Christians in the New Testament period?
Creating beings with a free will is exactly what God did when He created us. And the result is that those who accept Him, whether many or few, do so freely and lovingly — rather than under the compulsion of any “irresistible” programming by God.
It was surely God who chose whom He would save, but what He chose was a class of people defined by a criterion: the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5). This group is open to all who will obey. No one is barred by an eternal, unchangeable edict of God.
To say, as Calvinism does, that even as infants we are guilty of Adam’s sin — and are in a lost spiritual condition because of what Adam did — is to make a cruel joke out of Ezekiel’s statement, “The wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”
