I’ll be teaching a class this next month. I’m deep in the middle of research for it now.
Believe or Not?
Do you believe everything you read…or not? When it comes to the claims of the Bible you have to ask yourself if you believe it…or not? Can you believe what the Bible says about the creation of the universe, heaven, hell and angels? This four part series seeks the answers to these difficult questions.
- Creation…Myth or Fact?
- How Reliable is the Bible?
- Is There Really a Heaven or Hell?
- Do Angels Exist?
I’m working on the “Heaven or Hell” topic. To my surprise, there’s a lot more debate going on about Hell than I ever suspected.
[tags]BlogRodent, Heaven, Hell, belief, religion, christianity, death, afterlife, paradise, gehenna, eternity[/tags]
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One of the strongest biblical proof texts in favor of some sort of universal salvation through Jesus is the verse I Corinthians 15:28 .
I Corinthians 15:28 ascribes the following to God ,
‘And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also be subject unto him that God might be all in all ‘ (King James version)
The efforts by those who are against Christian universalism to explain away the universalist ramifications of the verse are NOT very plausible.
It has been affirmed that word in the orignial Greek of I Corinthians 15:28 that Paul uses that is translated ’subdued’ is the same Greek word as Paul attributes to the Son being subdued to Father . If it is indeed the same word being used both times in the original Greek for ’subdued’ and ’subject’ then that would indicate that the way that all things in creation are subject to Jesus is the SAME way that the Son will be subject to the Father ! Otherwise there would be an equivocation in terms.
To give Paul the benefit of the doubt, that he is *not* equivocating with the words translated ’subdued’ and ’subject’ , would involve the notion that Paul is claiming that all things will be subjected to the Son (Jesus) *in the same way* that the Son himself is subjected to God the Father .
To claim , as some Fundamentalists might, that the way in which all things are subdued by Jesus , involves the Non-christian / Non-believers being eventualy conquered and defeated by Jesus in some sort of Divine Retribution —is a claim that just doesn’t hold up . For if one takes the interpretation that the verse means that Jesus will defeat all the unbelievers as somehow being the way that those persons who have died NON-believers will be subdued by Jesus , then how could they truly be subdued by Jesus if they still have sin in their souls and that sin goes on lasting forever in some sort of hell ????
Sin , is an offense to God, and so IF the non-believing members of the group that Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:28 calls ‘all things†were to go on forever without sin having been erased from their souls , then God would not succeed in getting rid of that which is an offense to him . If all beings did not at sometime have sin totally erased from their souls , then there would be some section of creation —a section of creation in “hell†but a section of creation , still nonetheless that would still have that which has that which is offensive to God going on forever.
If God hates sin ,( and it is wise to think that He does) , then it makes no sense to think that God would allow a Place where sin goes on endlessly and is never erased from the souls of the sinners.
If God hates sin than it would follow that God would seek to erase/ destroy sin till finally there is no place left ; no place anywhere where even the inclination to sin would be any more !
Some fundamentalists might wish to counter that thesis by quoting Revelation 22:11 which states ,
‘he that is filthy let him be filthy still .’
Yet though the verse in the book of Revelation states ‘ he that is filthy let him be filthy still .’, it does NOT state “he that is filthy let him be filthy forever â€
If Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and the work of the devil (in the realm of created beings) is the inclination to sin , then if the inclination to sin continues forever, then one work of the devil : the inclination to sin would not be destroyed .
Shouldn’t we think that Jesus will one day be succesful in totally destroying all the works of the devil , including totally the inclination to sin –by somehow erasing it from every soul that has ever been created ?
To claim that God’s will could one day be made supreme by merely banishing those who have refused His offer of life , doesn’t solve the problem of sin for if the inclination for sin were to still go on in the place where the sinful souls have been banished to , then the goal of God that there be NO inclination to sin would not be achieved.
Given the premises then God would NOT want the inclination to sin to continue anywhere for an endless period , and God has the ability to erase sin from the souls of people that died sinful or non-believing– then somehow the inclination to sin would have to, at some period yet to come, be erased from all the souls of the people in history that have ever had an inclination to sin !
Most likely every person –even those who have died and experienced judgement for their sins — coming to earnestly believe in Jesus as Redeemer / Savior of Mankind —would be a necessary part of that process– since God desires all to honor the Son even as they honor the Father .
The statement of Jesus , ‘that no one cometh to the Father except by me’
could be more plausibly interpeted to mean that sooner or later everyone must go through Jesus on the way to the father ,instead of interpeting it that there will be people who do not come to the Father through Jesus .
So if I Corinthians 15:28 is indeed a sound anticipation of what at some period yet to come will happen , then either there must be a universal salvation of the maximal sense OR there must be some quote exotic state of affairs such as some sort of ontological cloning of the souls of the people in “hell” –where new copies souls are somehow reproduced *without* sin from their component parts and the original sinning souls destroyed or allowed to fade into less and less existence . That second sort of scenario would NOT be annihilationism in the strict sense , neither would it be universalism in the maximal sense either .