Auburn University UR Exploration Site

[joyful1]

I found the "time line" at the bottom of this page, along with the extensive list of historic documents on Universal Reconciliation interesting as well.  :hiya:

http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/univart.html
Joyce :)

[WhiteWings]

Enough articles to keep me reading for a while

[joyful1]

:icon_flower: I understand completely, Wabbit!

just one tid-bit though...
one of the articles listed was by a man who was stopped in the summer of 1940 in the doorway to his study by the thought of  passage: "the last enemy to be destroyed is death!"

He would use a Scofield Reference Bible "in which the notes were bitterly opposed to the idea." (of UR/US) to explore the 3 possible outcomes of sinners.

Under the subtitle: The Judgement, he shows that there were many "judgements" in the past, one judgement that is ongoing, and one judgement in the future....and relates this to the three judgements of the individual:

we are judged as sinners
we are judged as sons
we are judged as servants

The man's name was Dr. Loyal Hurley and this was his article entitled: The Outcome of Infinite Grace
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/outcome.html

The entire site, with so many historical UR/US documents, is,
IMO, a good reference for all the questions that we are asking here and now on this forum and many like it.

[WhiteWings]

I've already ripped the whole UR part of the site to my HD.
That way I have much quicker access to the articles and I can search them easily with http://www.x1.com/
That program acts a bit like Google for your HD.

[WhiteWings]

I found the "time line" at the bottom of this page

That timeline gives a whole new perspective to "for ever and ever"....

[martincisneros]

I am sooooo glad (genuinely grateful!!) that this Chart got brought up because the Lord's been telling me for months to spend an hour or two Biblically reviewing it so that I can better share UR with premillenial dispensationalists.

It's a good time line for demonstrating UR for Christians that are premillenial dispensationalists.  Even though I'm no longer a premillenial dispensationalist, I have absolutely no hesitation about giving copies of that time line from the Concordant Publishing Concern to people that are premillenial dispensationalists.  A lot of UR folks tend to be [deliberately] self defeating in that they're trying to win every single theological battle at once with their religious Pharisaism which just exchanges one brand of Pharisaism with another one.  (i.e. Anytime there's the "separatist" mentality.)

What's important is that mainstream Christians see UR, and not that we necessarily win every single eschatological debate on a million things in the book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, Matthew 24, or St. Paul's Thessalonian letters that aren't related to a clear understanding of the ultimate, final recovery of all life everywhere.  I can get just as weird as J. Preston Eby or anybody else when it comes to areas of prophetic teaching that are probably best kept among those that God has genuinely and unmistakably called out of the traditional views.  What do we really gain when we get off on a million other tangents?

We have to come to terms with the FACT that most Christians aren't ever going to study their Bibles deeply enough to agree with most of us on most things.  Come to terms with that.  Get counseling, tranquilizers, etc., if necessary.  It's an important FACT to come to terms with that should have been explained to you in detail at the same time that the birds and bees were explained to you!

The problems with the traditional views of Hell are the purpose, duration, nature, and timing of "Hell."  What does it matter if I had to become all things to all men, that I might by any means save some?  That doesn't just apply to the drug addict, the homeless victim of capitalism on the street, and the atheist or occultist down the street from you.  That applies to these meat heads in the Church as well.  What I mean by premillenial dispensationalism is the Hal Lindsey approach to "end-times" = sudden rapture of Christians + 7 year tribulation + God and devil being in agreement on their wrath upon all remaining earthlings 'cause they're both fed up and in total agreement for the first time in eons + 7 year peace treaty with Israel during which they can rebuild their ancient Temple and begin animal sacrifices that God will accept + AntiChrist breaking treaty midway through Tribulation + literal armies of AntiChrist gathered to make war against Jesus in the valley of Megiddo + Christ's Bodily return pre-millenially so that He's Physically here during the thousand years and doing what He vainly told the Church to do 'cause He never believed we'd disciple the nations to start with because the "inheritance" was Israel's all of this time instead of the Church's and the Jeremiah 31 land grant meant something literal rather than how the book of Hebrews describes it as synonymous with Christians sitting in heavenly places with Christ whose heavenly city isn't made with hands.

I dare say that most UR folks that don't believe in premillenial dispensationalism criticize it in generalizations about it, and aren't sufficiently versed in it to be able to teach it.  It's not important to build a ministry teaching things you don't believe in.  But since it's a predominant view in mainstream Christianity it ought to be the ambition of all UR folks to be sufficiently versed in it to be able to converse in a nonconfrontational way about it (i.e. being all things to all men that by any means you might save some) to where you could explain UR to folks on their level of understanding of the Scriptures without requiring them to come up to your level before you'll have anything to do with them in sharing with them the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

I personally believe that if a Christian Universalist believes that something is wrong, then they ought to know why it's wrong and to be able to patiently, coherently, and nonconfrontationally express it, point by point, Scripture by Scripture.  Otherwise, they have nothing to say to mainstream Christians if they can't explain or be genuinely understanding of where the errors are at, what the truth is, and how to "inch by inch" lead them out of their error up to the point that the mainstream Christians under consideration are open to looking at a different perspective, and no further than they're able to consider a Biblically different idea.  If I could completely clarify to a Church the Universal Restoration and have them walk out of the Church that day no longer believing in an eternal Hell, then I wouldn't care if I had to passionately preach the sudden and unexpected rapture of all living Christians, a 7 year tribulation, 7 heads and ten horns literal AntiChrist system, mark of the beast literally being implanted in the hand or forehead by the AntiChrist system during the tribulation, the Cosmic Rambo interpretation of Revelation 19, etc.  It's genuinely laughable how little I'd genuinely care if I had to work with the myths of modern Christendom in order to be able to win points on the more important truths and bottomlines of Scripture.

(So, I'm personally starting to watch the television programs of some of the leaders of the premillenial dispensationalist paradigm.  For me, that's easier than trying to read their books or online articles at present.  We're generally talking short 30 minute increments on those television programs where I've just got to avoid screaming at the television and turning into this psychotic preaching monster in front of the television!  My point in watching their programs isn't to believe or refute, but to know Scripture by Scripture where they're coming from.  And since their television programs are generally only 30 minutes in duration, there's usually time to get to the bathroom afterwards or during the DVD offer of the week if any sudden bowel movements are fast approaching from anything that I'm hearing on the programs in question.)

I can work with a myth if it's a necessary parable or a necessary evil or a necessary platform to be able to share the Universal Restoration or...any other truth that I esteem as particularly important to be shared at the time. 

I guess my post here is sorta a long-winded appeal to Christian Universalists that'll see this thread and roll their eyes at the Concordant Publishing Concern's Premillenial Dispensational chart that expresses the eons of redemption in a way that many UR folks would find to be gross oversimplifications.

No offense intended, but as I said a minute ago about understanding and being able to work with and within what you might consider the enemy's paradigm for the purpose of doing some good and actually getting people to see with their own eyes rather than your own where the Universal Restoration is found in the Scriptures, I genuinely don't believe that many UR folks that discount and dismiss Premillenial Dispensationalism understand it enough to know why they're dismissing it.  Many UR folks are rejecting it in terms of their generalizations and caricatures of it, and because it doesn't agree with their views and/or because they experienced spiritual and emotional abuse in their earlier days by people who said they believed that. 

I've talked with too many UR folks via email, PM, phone, and in person that genuinely can't express why certain things are wrong so that they simply convey themselves to the mainstream Church as "unreasoning animals meant to be caught and destroyed" in St. Peter's way of describing apostates and hypocrites.  I don't view them that way by any stretch, but that's how they come across to mainstream Christians by being that uninformed about their views and yet launching full attacks on their views which only come across as slander and demonization to the mainstream mindset because we're coming across as speaking total gibberish or worse and don't even realize that the problem is with ourselves and not with the mainstream Christians that we're trying to evangelize to the UR message. 

Many UR folks aren't as effective as they could be in sharing things that they believe and they simply roll their eyes and blow it off as the apostacy of the age rather than taking an honest, critical look at their presentation style, their own diligence to being Biblically logical and systematic about it, and their understanding of the facts about what mainstream Christians believe.  Most people that have believed in UR for a number of years are COMPLETELY OUT OF TOUCH with what mainstream Christians believe UNLESS they make a conscious effort to stay informed as to what's going on in the heads/churches of their mainstream brothers and sisters.

If I said to write me a list of 25 things that mainstream Christians believe, many seasoned UR folks would write slander, vague generalizations, and would be twice the sons of Hell in expressing what other Christians believe while they themselves often have an emotionally victimized mindset about the treatment that they've received and how they've been so misunderstood by mainstream Christians.  It astonishes me day after day the number of times that I see it, where neither side of the issue knows what the other side is genuinely saying, but simply has an emotional reaction and the latest slanderous quip about the other perspective. 

The problem is a communication barrier and most UR folks seem totally unwilling to bridge that gap without a ton of obscenities and stereotypes about the motives and doctrines of those that don't agree with them.  Whatever a Christian Universalist can't dissect and explain, they should sincerely have no right to criticize because they don't have any more of an idea of what they're talking about than the Christian that they're mocking that still believes in Eternal Hell.  We should all strive for being "apt to teach" even if we don't hold an Ephesians 4 and 1Corinthians 12 Office of a New Covenant Anointed Teacher.

And if anybody reads this that's thinking, "Martin, I'd sincerely take a larger caliber gun and blow my brains out if I had to sit down with 'Late Great Planet Earth' and other similar books by Hal Lindsey, Grant Jeffrey, Jack Van Impe, Hilton Sutton, Charles Capps, etc. in order to outline them and get a better grasp of where they're coming from in their end-times views so that I can better know what I'm talking about in contrasting their views with my own!"  At least spend 45 minutes to an hour with the chart at the link given above and understand that presentation style of UR.  It's a premillenial dispensationalist presentation of UR, and even if you can't agree with that chart at gunpoint, the little extra effort to study a premillenial dispensationalist model could be invaluable in helping you to systematize your own beliefs into a step by step presentation.  You could always redraw the chart with your own views along the way.  Plus, if you don't understand that Chart, then you're not going to understand much of what you might read from Martin Zender, the Concordant Publishing Concern's website, the Saviour of all Fellowship's website, Tony N. when he's around here sometimes, many of the older books on UR, etc.  Just consider it a mission of love to understand fellow UR folks and where they're coming from if you've just honestly totally abandoned your nonUR believing brethren as kat-anathema.

[Paul Hazelwood]

We have to come to terms with the FACT that most Christians aren't ever going to study their Bibles deeply enough to agree with most of us on most things.  Come to terms with that.  Get counseling, tranquilizers, etc., if necessary.  It's an important FACT to come to terms with that should have been explained to you in detail at the same time that the birds and bees were explained to you!

Just in the few months that I have quit attending church, I have had a few occasions to talk with those that still remain.  Those few people I see recognize a few key verses that seem to put a wrench in their theology, but the hindrance is the fear of eternal damnation.  They see the verses, but they have been told over and over that if they stray from what they have been taught God will punish them without mercy.

It is this fear that is the problem in many cases.  In other cases it is just easier to have fire insurance.   Go to church, put some time in (pay the premium) and go on till the next premium is due.

Skip a premium and pay a penalty (feel some guilt) (make a promise to God) (read your bible a few extra times). Then when the guilt feeling is gone, you know your caught up.

I'm sure there are many reasons for the lack of in depth study, but in my observance, those are a couple of them.

[martincisneros]

One of the things that totally frightens me at this point is that I'd slip into what many Christians do with "proof texting" my way around the Bible on various doctrines without staying sharp on the context of each passage and staying in a place where the Holy Spirit has more than just a few verses to talk to me from.  When I totally gorged myself on the book of Revelation last year and was totally stunned by how premillenialism and quite a few other beliefs that are popular are "proof texting" their way around the Bible, there's a certain level on which that totally freaked me out.  "Proof texting" doesn't mean that you're adhering to the plain and obvious sense of Scripture.  It means you've made up your mind and you don't want to be confused by the facts!  I've been asking our Lord ever since to remind me if there's anything left in my beliefs where as I've read through the Bible over the years I've "explained away" contradictions to "my beliefs," 'cause I genuinely believe that I'm ready to re-evaluate anything/everything. 

In some ways, the transition from premillenialism to postmillenialism that I experienced a year ago was a much more violent transition for me than the transition from ET to UR.  Because "I knew," or thought that I knew that the Bible taught the rapture, a 7 year trib, the various details of the 7 year trib that I briefly/crudely mentioned in my previous post to this thread, etc., etc.  But UR for me was based on much simpler translation/context issues and clear promises of the Scriptures that I'd honestly always overlooked previously because of the ET paradigm that didn't allow me to even notice even the tiniest hints to the contrary in Scripture.

Some of this comes from "memory verses" where you think that you remember what the Bible says rather than spending quality time with more than just keywords regarding beliefs that you already have.  But we need to be actually looking at what the Bible has to say, instead of remembering where it says this or that.  I thought I'd genuinely learned in my Word of Faith days to avoid "proof texting," but to read aloud and read aloud and read aloud each entire book of the Bible until I had what the Holy Spirit was telling me from each of the Apostles and Prophets.  But "proof texting" slips in sooo subtley.  It's the stupid serpent in our garden that forever deceives us and gets us banished from paradise at each step along the way, and on each level, that we fall prey to it's deceptions.

It's dangerous to have a Christian life based on proof texting, where your beliefs are exclusively based on individual verses that you skip read across the Bible for while ignoring the rest.  You need to be able to do that for teaching, sharing, asking questions, renewing and transforming your mind and lifestyle, etc.  But man lives on each Word that proceeds from the Mouth of God.  Probably the reason that it slips in as deeply as it does and limits our beliefs, our thinking, our theology, and our vision is because the Bible isn't a book of theology, but if you want to get a sense for it's perspective on individual subjects, then you do have to invest a certain amount of time into compiling your verses that have a similar theme.  But none of us are smart enough to ask and to research every single question that could possibly ever come up about any subject that you can think of. 

You need the context to be fresh in your heart for those moment by moment issues that come up where questions arise that are outside of the realm of the "proof texts" that you already know and aren't aware of the fact that they don't answer the particular new question that's come up as adequately as one might think if one has slipped into a dogma beyond the point of rational thought and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit for clarification of new issues as they arise.  Familiarity breeds unbelief.  And unbelief is believing anything other than what the Bible is saying about the subject under consideration, even if you're throwing a thousand irrelevant verses at it. 

Some people would try to side-step this by saying that this would only be important to the Biblical literalist, but the Bible is the point where you come into agreement with God.  Allegorizations and dismissing of passages of Scripture as irrelevant to particular Scriptural and life issues can get one into as much trouble if one's blindness to the meaning of a particular passage puts one at odds with what God is saying through that passage.  It might seem like a contradiction, but the nonliteralist is in greater danger of "proof texting" than the literalist because if you have any claims at all to a Biblical Christian faith, it's got to be based upon something.  And you can slip into "proof texting" your alternative interpretations as badly as any fundamentalist can.  We've got to look at what the Scriptures meant to the generation that they were written, what they've been saying to us up until now, and what they're saying to us right now as new issues and questions from different perspectives and motives are presenting themselves to us on a daily basis through the media and new experiences with religious people.

I'm really nervous about believing anything where there's been an unwarranted cookie-cutting of Scripture to suit an agenda, fitting in, what's reasonable to my mind that doesn't know enough yet, my flesh's interpretation of the day and hour that I'm in, any attempts from my mind to pass itself off as spirit through a vain imagination hinging itself on a Scripture not being held in it's proper light, etc.  As always and as with every other care, I'm right now casting the care of this upon the Lord.  But as I'm getting older and a little smug that I'm finally understanding a few basic, elementary [preschool] things, I'm feeling the growing need that whenever I actually am in the Scriptures that I need to approach them as if I'd never seen them before and to avoid the trap of [innocently] testing the Scriptures by a doctrine and to make sure that when I'm with the Scriptures that absolutely all of my beliefs are on the chopping block and ready to be revised on a moment's notice anytime that I'm becoming aware of something in the Bible that's properly translated, rightly divided, and Holy Spirit revealed to me.

Where this fits in with my previous post is that we need to be able to work with everybody else's proof texting in a conciliatory, healing, and wise way where we keep it in perspective that not every religious battle needs to be won or fought up front in trying to bring others into an understanding of the Bible's promises of the Universal Restoration.  But we ourselves need to personally shun the hidden traps, there will be along the way, of basing our own beliefs upon an entirely different proof texting system.

[WhiteWings]

I am sooooo glad (genuinely grateful!!) that this Chart got brought up

I find it a bit confusing with what I've learned sofar.

Revelation 20:10

.... and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
The fire is the 'red and'
I don't think the ET followers will be convinced by that.

What's important is that mainstream Christians see UR, and not that we necessarily win every single eschatological debate on a million things in the book of Revelation,

As a noob I would say you only need to win 2 battles. Aion and All. An even the All battle will do.
Everything automaticly unfolds from that word. Or not?

We have to come to terms with the FACT that most Christians aren't ever going to study their Bibles deeply enough to agree with most of us on most things.

Or can't. The effect my be the same but there is a diffrence. Some people have to work 12 hours a day to make ends meet.
Not everybody has seen Uni from on the inside. So those people only learn what's thought in chuch.
For my parents it was even forbidden to read a Bible. Bibles are for those bleep bleep protestants. (not mine or their view btw)

What I mean by premillenial dispensationalism is the Hal Lindsey approach to "end-times" = sudden rapture of Christians

Last week I found a verse/commentary quoting God or Jesus saying something like:
"my people/israel would enter heaven after

all others

have entered it"
As I see it it would debunk rapure. Unfortunately I can't find it anymore  :sigh:
Is there such a verse?
Or was it just a plesant dream :laughing7:



 

[martincisneros]

Last week I found a verse/commentary quoting God or Jesus saying something like:
"my people/israel would enter heaven after all others have entered it"
As I see it it would debunk rapure. Unfortunately I can't find it anymore  :sigh:
Is there such a verse?
Or was it just a plesant dream :laughing7:

If I've totally blanked out the passage, I've slept maybe a dozen hours over the last six or eight days with so much going on.  But the only passage that I can think of (without more sleep) that says something along those lines is Romans 11.

[WhiteWings]

Thanks Martin. Not sure it was teh verse I was looking for (thought it was somewhere in Revelation) but it looks similar.


Romans 11

The Mystery of Israel's Salvation
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: [4] a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,


Is the above refuting rapture?

[albertx46]

thanks for posting!

God bless!

[joyful1]

Wabbit-- I get where you are coming from on the time line...it is a bit confusing....but, like Martin said, you can always redraw one that better fits your ideas, but keep that one handy in order to be able to converse with others about UR/US.

Albertx--are you in some way connected to Auburn University? Or was there a particular part that you found helpful?

Joyce :)

[WhiteWings]

In my own timeline I would be in drinkingcontest with Jesus right now :laughing7:

I came to this site to learn whats true. :thumbsup:

[DeeDee]

I came to this site to learn whats true.

And I came to this site to affirm if what I have always felt in my heart could possibly be true. :thumbsup:

[Doc]

Well, I have to agree that familiarizing yourself (or re-familiarizing yourself) with the Premil Dispensationalist viewpoint is helpful when talking with those folks. Even for those like myself who were raised in it, but have gotten away from it in the last few years.

My dad actually went to Dallas Theo. Seminary WITH Hal Lindsey, so you can imagine just how difficult it was for me to even come to the UR position.

[WhiteWings]

Hal Lindsey.... shouldn't we all raptured by now?
I guess in every new edition of his books he shifts the rapture date some years into the future  :laughing7:

[Doc]

Hal Lindsey.... shouldn't we all raptured by now?
I guess in every new edition of his books he shifts the rapture date some years into the future  :laughing7:

Right...LOL.

[martincisneros]

My dad actually went to Dallas Theo. Seminary WITH Hal Lindsey, so you can imagine just how difficult it was for me to even come to the UR position.

I love Hal Lindsey as a brother in Christ, but geez... I don't think that there's a more pessimistic program on Christian Television.  Even Jack Van Impe at least tries to close his program with exhuberance over believing that Christ could come back at any second.  But watching Hal Lindsey's program is nearly always like watching an episode of "Law and Order."  You knew the ending would suck and you watched it anyway! :faint: :Chinscratch: :bdh:

[fullarmor2]

    Before finding out about the Victorious Gospel (I love saying that!)  I was always a premillennialist .  I remember looking at Hal Lindsey books.   I was drawn to his books also because of all the drama.
  But there came a time when certain things did not make sense to me. For example,   all those poor Chinese soldiers getting burned to death and vaporized at the second coming, then thrown into Heaven's torture chamber on top of it.  According to the premillennial viewpoint.   
        There has got to be a better way of understanding the scripture than that.

[IceMan84]

I came to this site to learn whats true.

And I came to this site to affirm if what I have always felt in my heart could possibly be true. :thumbsup:

Same here. I just always had trouble accepting the fact that God is all-loving, yet he sends his children to burn in everlasting hell. I knew that it couldn't be this black and white of an issue....each person either spends eternity in paradise or they spend eternity suffering in hell. For example, you could have two people who lived very similar lives yet God decides that one of them just barely meets the "cutoff" and qualifies to get into heaven. However, the other person, while still not a bad person by any means, just didn't quite make it and therefore has to go spend eternity in hell! If you think about it like that, it just doesn't make sense. The things I have learned from site are really what I had felt in my heart for a while now. This helped to reassure me that I was not alone.

[alihaymeg]

In my own timeline I would be in drinkingcontest with Jesus right now

I came to this site to learn whats true.

At least you wouldn't have to wory about running out of wine. Bottoms up! :happygrin:

[Pierac]

The only question about the chart on this link is the first part of the time line. It's apears to be a period or age before Adam existed and then uses Hebrews 1:1-2 to confirm? What???
:dontknow:
Paul

[YoungYuni]

Hiya!

Great site!

Thanks!

:icon_joker: :icon_jokercolor: