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#Post#: 619--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: HappyHeretic Date: January 5, 2015, 10:44 am
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These kinds of questions led me to Evangelical Universalism.
There didn't seem to be justice in your first illustration
according to teh trad. view. And as you say, any loving parent
should execute their children before an age of accountability to
make sure they miss out on the eternal punishment that the trad.
view has.
In fact killing of children for this reason has happemed - at
least there are newspaper reports on it.
Evangelical Universalists do not believe that a person's death
is the point in time that determines their destiny. They
believe that there is opportunity to repent and come to God
after death. Those that need it will be punished (in love with
the intention of correcting behaviour) for as long as is
necessary.
So, the issues you raise become answered issues with EU. God's
justice is satisfied and His love for all remains in tact.
Regards,
Mike HM
#Post#: 621--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: HappyHeretic Date: January 5, 2015, 11:01 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Danger Mouse link=topic=49.msg602#msg602
date=1419683930]
If we believe the other Scriptures which say we will all be
judged by our deeds, we cannot believe babies would be punished
if they never did anything.
[/quote]
Rom 5:18a has a comment on that: "Consequently, just as one
trespass resulted in condemnation for all people ..."
Mike HM
#Post#: 623--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: Kerry Date: January 5, 2015, 2:36 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=HereticMouse link=topic=49.msg621#msg621
date=1420477299]
Rom 5:18a has a comment on that: "Consequently, just as one
trespass resulted in condemnation for all people ..."
Mike HM
[/quote]Paul is writing loosely there. We should remember the
advice given by Peter about jumping to conclusions based on what
Paul writes.
12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all
have sinned:
Did sin enter the world through a man? Did it? Paul says so;
and I find that strange, really, since Eve ate first. Also the
Old Testament never calls what Adam and Eve did "sin."
All that being said, Paul is talking about the injustice of how
this world operates. It is not just that the innocent suffer
for the sins of the guilty; yet that is the way of this world.
It is also the way most people want the world to be. Any time
we disobey the Golden Rule, we are saying we want a world where
we can sin but make someone else pay for it. In that way, if we
are guilty of that, it is just that we are in this world and
just too that we must pay for the "sin" of Adam.
Nevertheless that sort of justice is not God's sort of justice.
We should not interpret "as one trespass resulted in the
condemnation for all people" to mean God wanted all of Adam's
offspring to die because of what Adam did. That is a foolish
idea. The trespass resulting in condemnation for all was the
result of something else, part of the fallen serpent's plan.
God's Justice is perfect. He does not punish the innocent for
the offenses of the guilty. Never. Ezekiel 18 is emphatic about
that. Reconciling man's ideas about justice with God's Justice
is the problem; and Jesus was willing to die himself to help
reconcile them. Jesus came so that the innocent could escape
the injustice of this world.
[quote author=HereticMouse link=topic=49.msg619#msg619
date=1420476265]
These kinds of questions led me to Evangelical Universalism.
There didn't seem to be justice in your first illustration
according to teh trad. view. And as you say, any loving parent
should execute their children before an age of accountability to
make sure they miss out on the eternal punishment that the trad.
view has.
In fact killing of children for this reason has happemed - at
least there are newspaper reports on it.
Evangelical Universalists do not believe that a person's death
is the point in time that determines their destiny. They
believe that there is opportunity to repent and come to God
after death. Those that need it will be punished (in love with
the intention of correcting behaviour) for as long as is
necessary.
So, the issues you raise become answered issues with EU. God's
justice is satisfied and His love for all remains in
tact.[/quote]I've yet to meet a Universalist who could answer
the issues. I believe in reincarnation myself, so it's not a
problem for me; but most Universalists have no explanation for
how things will be corrected. They're vague about things.
I happen to believe that in the bar scenario, the man who became
a Christian would not achieve salvation himself until his victim
also did. If he had to come back in another life to find his
victim to correct the matter, that's what he would do.
As for murdering children, I don't believe they all go
automatically to Heaven. People are born to work out problems;
and killing them before they can work things out is a monstrous
act.
On the other hand, there are the rare situations where parents
are so inept and sinful that their children who are also born
with strong urges to sin could not possibly grow up right. When
things go terribly wrong, each generation can become more sinful
than the previous one. That was true in Sodom -- shown by the
odd phrasing in Genesis that puts "children" before "men." (The
KJV reverses that order for some reason.) The children had
lacked proper discipline and were worse than their parents. If
those children had lived, they had no hope of working things
out. It was an act of Mercy then to wipe them out so they did
not have more crimes to answer for and bigger problems to work
out in future lives.
Jews believe in reincarnation, and I don't know why Christians
stopped believing in it. They did though and then invented this
heaven-hell dichotomy. I don't have much of a choice myself
since I can remember some of my past lives.
Reincarnation explains several dificult problems in the Bible.
Why, for example, did Abraham's children have to go into bondage
in Egypt? Why did they have to make bricks there? The clue
lies back at the Tower of Babel when they wanted to make bricks.
Call it karma, call it debt, call it whatever you like; but it
was just. It was also just that only two men over the age of
twenty made it into the Land of Promise. The others paid their
karma, laying down their lives so their children could enter.
They could have returned to Egypt, you know? But they didn't.
They followed the Pillar for forty years, and their children
entered. Thus Paul was right when he said "all Israel will be
saved." Superficially it may look as if God took them out into
the wilderness to die as they accused and as indeed it happened
in material terms; but I see something wonderful in that story
where parents who knew they wouldn't enter the Land of Promise
nevertheless did not return to Egypt. Those parents learned the
value of love -- and we're back to Adam and Eve. The offense
there was doing something that put the sentence of death on all
their offspring.
#Post#: 624--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: A nonny mouse Date: January 5, 2015, 4:29 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Danger Mouse link=topic=49.msg623#msg623
date=1420490188]
Jews believe in reincarnation, and I don't know why Christians
stopped believing in it. They did though and then invented this
heaven-hell dichotomy. I don't have much of a choice myself
since I can remember some of my past lives.
[/quote]
Hi Danger Mouse,
I can empathise with those who reckon that things went 'wrong'
as the early church gradually developed a 'religion' that was
different from the "faith first delivered to the saints".
Many 'restorationist' denominations spring from such a
conviction but, IMO fail to restore sufficiently far back and
only end up with different versions of the same faulted
'religion'.
I haven't researched when reincarnation originated or when it
got 'eclipsed' mainly because I just can't get my head round the
concept in any case.
Elsewhere you have hinted that my particular 'faith' springs
from a faulted idea that such as myself could expect to perceive
a truth that God had hitherto hidden from my predecessors.
But I don't think that to be the case since I pretty much align
with the original gnostics.
So......you have chosen to align with the early
reincarnationists, and claim actual reincarnation experience,
whereas I align with the early gnostics.
Now......shoot me down if you will by telling me that the early
gnostics believed in reincarnation.....in which case I will just
have to call upon Scottie to 'beam me up'.
PS....oh deary me.....I've just read
HTML http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-gnostic.htm
#Post#: 626--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: Kerry Date: January 5, 2015, 7:14 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=A nonny mouse link=topic=49.msg624#msg624
date=1420496970]
Hi Danger Mouse,
I can empathise with those who reckon that things went 'wrong'
as the early church gradually developed a 'religion' that was
different from the "faith first delivered to the saints".
Many 'restorationist' denominations spring from such a
conviction but, IMO fail to restore sufficiently far back and
only end up with different versions of the same faulted
'religion'.[/quote]On this point, I agree wholeheartedly.
Instead of correcting past errors, most "reforms" only added to
the pile of errors. One can see the thousands of denominations
today and realize something is drastically wrong.
[quote]I haven't researched when reincarnation originated or
when it got 'eclipsed' mainly because I just can't get my head
round the concept in any case.[/quote]It's been around almost
forever. Only Islam and most of Christianity seems to reject
it.
The purpose of reincarnation is not to punish people for their
misdeeds. It's giving them the opportunity to perfect
themselves. There is something restless in man that craves
perfection, and that is a good urge. it becomes corrupted
though if we delude ourselves and fancy we're already perfect
and stop progressing. Beliefs that stifle spiritual progress
are, in my book, wicked. Come up with beliefs you want; but we
should not believe God wants us to stagnate or remain wretches
eternally dependent on His Mercy the way worthless children stay
at home, jobless and sponging off their parents. God wants us
to grow up. Amount to something.
[quote]Elsewhere you have hinted that my particular 'faith'
springs from a faulted idea that such as myself could expect to
perceive a truth that God had hitherto hidden from my
predecessors.
But I don't think that to be the case since I pretty much align
with the original gnostics.
So......you have chosen to align with the early
reincarnationists, and claim actual reincarnation experience,
whereas I align with the early gnostics.
Now......shoot me down if you will by telling me that the early
gnostics believed in reincarnation.....in which case I will just
have to call upon Scottie to 'beam me up'. [/quote]
Get ready to be beamed up. The early Gnostics were an
undisciplined lot and often reached wildly divergent views; but
many of them did believe in reincarnation.
HTML http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=10036
Telling people they would go to hell and burn eternally was a
power play to manipulate people. If you disobeyed your
priests, if you dared to defy them, that meant you would burn in
hell eternally if you didn't repent before you took your last
breath. This terrorized men and women. It was a very
effective scare tactic.
[quote]PS....oh deary me.....I've just read
HTML http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-gnostic.htm[/quote]
Ready to be beamed up?
Here is another passage that's hard to explain without
reincarnation -- if we believe souls did not exist before
conception or birth:
Mark 14:21 The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him:
but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good
were it for that man if he had never been born.
If souls don't exist before conception or birth, how could
anything be better for someone who was never born?
Reincarnation also explains why it was the right thing to wipe
out some people, including children. God was not punishing the
innocent children for the sins of their parents, not at all.
Rather they had been given generations to repent and each
generation got worse and worse. When it reached the point that
things were so corrupt repentance would become impossible, it
was time to wipe them out. The children in Sodom were more
sinful than their parents; and their parents were so
irresponsible, they did nothing to discipline the little
monsters. That city was wiped out -- but the "seed of Sodom"
was preserved though Lot. Both Moab and Ammon then married
into Israel later -- indeed into the Messianic line -- and the
souls of Sodom were thus encourged to incarnate in Israel.
Had Sodom gone on much longer, it posed a threat to all
mankind. Isaac wouldn't have stood a chance of surviving. The
child of promise wouldn't come through the line of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. All mankind hung in the balance.
Thus Sodom was destroyed; but its seed was preserved so the
souls of Sodom could eventually be saved in the proper
soul-lineage. Had Sodom survived and wrecked God's plan, their
sins would have been so great it was more merciful to kill them
before they could do it.
Sometimes it is better to kill someone before he can commit a
dreadful deed. Only a prophet of God would know if this was
true however.
Luke 17:2 It were better for him that a millstone were hanged
about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should
offend one of these little ones.
If you were about to offend a child and throw him off course so
much that he could not complete the goal he had for this life,
you could also be affecting his children's lives and his
grandchildren's too. Someone who could have grown up to be a
saint can be turned into a monster by an adult who offends
thus. It would be better if someone killed that adult before
he could sin in this way. He would find it easier to correct
his mistakes in Gehinnom and in another life that way -- if he
sinned so greatly, it would be much harder for him to correct
his mistakes.
I think I can say that with some confidence since the first two
lives I remembered were when I was the victim of religious
persecution. Two lifetimes of great suffering and sorrow.
When I learned later what I did to deserve that fate, I realized
God is indeed Just. I had nothing to complain about. No, not
even if the Inquisition hounded me and caused me great injury.
I got over my panic at hearing people speak Spanish. In my
youth, just hearing someone speak Spanish would make my heart
beat fast and send me into a panic. That made sense to me later
when I realized I had died twice having priests mumbling into my
ear in Spanish.
Incidentally, the concept of reincarnation also explains
"predestination" in a way that doesn't have God playing
favorites. Once a soul is under the protection of God, we can
say God "knows" that soul. In its next lifetime, surely we
should say God "foreknew" that person and helped put him where
he could benefit the most in that lifetime. His destiny was
planned -- not in way that overrides free will but in a way that
that person also wanted to go.
#Post#: 628--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: Kerry Date: January 5, 2015, 7:49 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Of course, the belief in reincarnation also has its pitfalls if
we forget why we are here. One of the most dismal places
spiritually is India where most people believe in reincarnation.
If they see suffering, they figure the other person "deserved"
it. The caste system encourages this. So we see horrible
abuses like children being forced to work in mines and rich
people "buying" children from poor people to act as servants.
All this gets excused under the pretext that people are getting
what they deserve. Thus the wheel of karma grinds on, trapping
them. The only way to escape the wheel of karma is by having
compassion for others and treating them the way we want to be
treated.
I tell you the people who are rich today will be born again
there in abject poverty; and the poor people will probably have
a chance at being rich too to see if they remember the craving
for justice and compassion they had when they led lives of being
poor themselves. The situation is so bad, I wonder if the whole
country needs to collapse before things can become better. Few
people in India today seem ready to escape the cycle of
suffering. They keep getting born, first as rich then as the
poor, back and forth, back and forth.
#Post#: 629--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: HappyHeretic Date: January 6, 2015, 4:51 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Danger Mouse link=topic=49.msg623#msg623
date=1420490188]
I've yet to meet a Universalist who could answer the issues. I
believe in reincarnation myself, so it's not a problem for me;
but most Universalists have no explanation for how things will
be corrected. They're vague about things.
[/quote]
Yes, that's a fair point - the detail of the punishment and
correction not clear. I don't see much evidence of the detail
in teh Bible. There is fire - and God is a consuming fire and I
believe the badness of humans will be burnt leaving only the
good core. But there are others who think differently to me.
I can see the attraction of reincarnation. Of first importance
to me is that it isn't eternal conscious torment.
How do you handle Hebrews 9:27 : "And just as it is appointed
for man to die once, and after that comes judgement ...." ?
Mike HM
#Post#: 630--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: A nonny mouse Date: January 6, 2015, 6:35 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=HereticMouse link=topic=49.msg629#msg629
date=1420541482]
How do you handle Hebrews 9:27 : "And just as it is appointed
for man to die once, and after that comes judgement ...." ?
[/quote]
One answer (not that I'm promoting it) can be found in
HTML http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-Hebrews9-27.htm
#Post#: 631--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: Kerry Date: January 6, 2015, 6:57 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=HereticMouse link=topic=49.msg629#msg629
date=1420541482]
Yes, that's a fair point - the detail of the punishment and
correction not clear. I don't see much evidence of the detail
in teh Bible. There is fire - and God is a consuming fire and I
believe the badness of humans will be burnt leaving only the
good core. But there are others who think differently to
me.[/quote]To me, it's a firmly established principle in the
Bible that evil gets burned or reduced back to dust and ashes
while God preserves the good. The dust and ashes can be
recycled then.
[quote]I can see the attraction of reincarnation. Of first
importance to me is that it isn't eternal conscious torment.
[/quote]The most important thing, I think, is doing the right
things we know are right now and trust God that His Justice may
be better than we can guess.
[quote]How do you handle Hebrews 9:27 : "And just as it is
appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement
...." ?[/quote]We all do die and then the soul is given a
judgment. That is a preliminary judgment since the fruits of
our works have not all appeared yet. It is not the final
judgment.
Suppose your Mother gave you some sound advice when you were a
child; and years after she died, you remember her words and it
steers you in the right direction. She will be rewarded for
that. There are adjustments to the preliminary judgment.
There is also a way of ameliorating things for others even
though they are dead. Suppose your father beat you as a child
and when you grew up you had that same aggressive tendency since
you learned it from him. If you beat your children and they
beat theirs, it could go on for generations; and your father is
responsible, at least in part, for it all. Everyone who
returned evil for evil is partly responsible. Suppose your wife
said to one day, "You are acting like your father," and her
words startle you into awareness of what you are doing. You
stop beating your children. You have stopped karma in its
tracks by not passing the evil you received onto others. This
benefits your father even though he is dead since at the Final
Judgment, he will have fewer things to answer for.
We all believe Jesus came to correct the errors of Adam; but we
seem not to realize we can also help correct the errors of
others. If they persecute you and you absorb that evil and
refuse to pass it on, you are indeed blessed.
Paul hints this in his seeming paradox:
Galatians 6:2 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the
law of Christ.
Galatians 6:5 For every man shall bear his own burden.
It is the law of Christ since that is what Jesus did. Yet in
the end each person will finally answer for himself.
Love is powerful. If you love people, you identify in part with
them. People may not believe it; but you won't rest totally
yourself until they are all safe in the fold. God can use you
to rescue them in more than one way; but one way is finding them
again when you incarnate and finding the "lost sheep" just as
Jesus did. If you love someone, that is something God sees as
worthwhile; and we can be sure if we would not want to see
someone perish, God has to care about them even more than we do.
Time spent in Paradise or Heaven in between lives can also be
used well. As a child, I could sense my Grandmother watching
over me. I knew she died, but I also knew she was still there;
and that love was like a string or rope pulling me up.
Speaking of judgments, the Jews also say and I agree that there
is also an annual judgment. The angels collect information and
judgment is made about life and death. If someone is not going
to make progress and will suffer needlessly or if he threatens
the welfare of others and would worsen his own fate by
continuing to live, he may be fated to die in the next year.
Heaven is constantly assessing things as we make free will
decisions.
When is the Last Judgment then? In my opinion, it is safe for
a saint to face the Last Judgment only when Heaven knows he will
pass all the tests and be content in Heaven. While this
usually occurs after the death of the physical body, it can
occur while the physical body is still alive. However, the soul
dies and is then resurrected.
One way or another the soul that sins must die. The souls of
the saints are raised in immortality at the Last Judgment. Such
a soul has been born of the Spirit; and Hebrews goes on:
Hebrews 9:26 For then must he often have suffered since the
foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world
hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this
the judgment:
28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto
them that look for him shall he appear the second time without
sin unto salvation.
This sinless state does exist. It's rare but it's possible.
Jesus is there at this Last Judgment. I don't know about you;
but I believe the "saints" that came out of their graves after
the Crucifixion faced the Last Judgment. It was their spiritual
bodies that came out.
The Last Judgment for others is less attractive. Some will not
attain the perfection God would like them to have; and they may
view that as eternal punishment, but I see it more as eternal
regret perhaps. Note that people are thrown into the Lake of
Fire at the end of the Millennium. They are not put there
eternally since we read later they're outside the Holy City.
What was not worth saving was burned away; and what was worth
saving was surely saved.
Your principle is seen to be true. That being said, the Lake of
Fire is not in existence now. Gehnnom is; and you may find it
hard to believe but I have seen souls there. They are not there
eternally. It is for their correction; and in their next
lifetime, they are not hampered by old patterns that had become
habits since those are like dead wood. But the virtues people
acquire in a life are preserved. Thus in the end virtues must
triumph.
It is like the net Jesus talked about. Heaven pulls in the net
and saves what is valuable and tosses the rest back into the sea
-- for recycling. I also like the concept of the pearl. There
the filthy oyster is not saved. But the pearl it made is.
A great deal of worthless spiritual energy was restrained for
recycling in the days of Noah. This freed the human race of a
lot of rubbish. More was restrained in the days of Abraham and
Moses, and David too. And then again in the time of Jesus.
One of the most tragic things was when the children were singing
Hosanna and praising Jesus and the Jewish leaders were offended.
Those children were ready to enter the Kingdom and could have;
but the entrenched leaders were so wicked they wouldn't enter
the Kingdom themselves (and they knew how) and they didn't want
others to. Thus the system was so corrupted, those children
didn't stand a chance. The system had to be taken down. Notice
the timing of the "cursed fig tree" -- it's immediately after
the Jews leaders were offended by the children's praise.
Yet we should not believe those leaders are going to be damned.
Never. We should believe however that Heaven took action to
prevent them from perpetuating their deeds. All Israel will
be saved -- and that includes most of the Jews of that day --
although not some of the priestly class who should not have been
born into Israel since they were not properly part of Israel.
Souls can infiltrate -- and godly souls from Israel sometimes
got born as Gentiles to influence history -- I'd say Cyrus was
one. Wicked souls can also infiltrate and did -- they did it
in the time of Ezra and they did it again in Jesus' day.
Notice too the curious expression in Hebrews 9:26. People read
that casually without wondering how Jesus suffered from the
foundation of the world. I read it to mean he incarnated and
suffered several times. He was not in Heaven doing nothing and
feeling miserable about conditions on the earth.
#Post#: 632--------------------------------------------------
Re: Can this be right?
By: Kerry Date: January 6, 2015, 7:07 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=A nonny mouse link=topic=49.msg630#msg630
date=1420547732]
One answer (not that I'm promoting it) can be found in
HTML http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-Hebrews9-27.htm
[/quote]I think reincarnation can be garnered from the
Scriptures; but I disagree somewhat with that article since I
think the prior verse talking about Jesus often suffering from
the foundation of the world signifies reincarnation.
"Death" is ambiguous in the passage. I agree there are two type
of death and thus two types of judgment; and the most important
kind of death is dying spiritually. Jesus said if we seek to
lose our life, we will find it. Thus the soul which has sinned
should seek to die so it can be raised up in the Resurrection
after the Last Judgment.
What does "so" mean in verse 28?
27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this
the judgment:
28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto
them that look for him shall he appear the second time without
sin unto salvation.
I believe Jesus died to bear the sins of many so they could die
spiritually and still be raised in the Resurrection. Thus Paul
wrote, "I die daily". Jesus talked about the wheat dying in
the soil and about taking up our crosses to follow him. If
we're trying to hang onto life here -- the mortal type of life
with all its perils, problems, sicknesses and so on -- I don't
see how we could be happy in Heaven even if we got there.
Matthew 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also.
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