A Second Chance

Will we have a second chance to go to heaven? There are at least three different reasons a question like this gets asked. One is very Catholic, a second very Protestant, and the third ... well ... universal.

The Catholic might best have his question paraphrased as something like “Is there a purgatory, and do we get to go to heaven at the end of it?” The Protestant is really asking “Is this ‘rapture’ thing I’ve heard about really in the Bible, and if I get left behind, do I get another shot?” The universalist is asking some version of “Surely hell cannot last forever, can it?”

A Mark on the Forehead

Three rather obvious lessons from a fairly obscure passage of scripture.

Ezekiel the prophet is sitting at home with a group of Judah’s elders around him when he has one of those very intense visionary experiences that seemed to characterize his relationship with the God of Israel. Some prophets heard voices and others dreamed, but Ezekiel saw overwhelming heavenly splendor — in the middle of his own living room, one assumes.

Scales and Panes

I was chatting with a young man yesterday.

He considers himself a Christian. And maybe he is. I hope he is. But he’s certainly confused about something very basic to salvation; and maybe it will surprise you what it is.

He doesn’t really understand sin.

Now, understanding what it is we are saved from is pretty necessary to salvation, so I’m concerned. I want him to have a correct grasp of how sin relates to the holiness of God. And I’m troubled that his teachers have not taught him this.

So I’m going to try to do a short explanation for you. And I’m going to start with this question:

How bad is sin?

Anonymous Asks (328)

“What does it mean to be baptized for the dead?”

The so-called Latter-day Saints or Mormons practice something they call proxy baptism, literally baptism for the dead. They believe individuals who have not been water baptized cannot enter the kingdom of God — “Even Jesus Christ himself was baptized,” they say — and so, under ecclesiastical supervision, members of their church will baptize a living person on behalf of the unbaptized dead. In doing so, they believe they are putting in place a critical component of God’s salvation requirements for those who can no longer do it for themselves, but would if they could.

The authority they claim for this practice is the apostle Paul and, more importantly in their view, an alleged revelation to the “prophet” Joseph Smith.

Luther and Jezebel

October 31 is Halloween to some. This year, it’ll also be the 507th anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. That’s as good a day as any to celebrate the beginning of Protestantism, though it took another dozen years or so to formally organize the new denomination.

It was not the first major split in church history, nor was it the last, but Catholics and Protestants have been sparring about it verbally (and sometimes physically) ever since.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (23)

The website universalsalvation.org was an outreach of the UK-based Christianworld Church headed by the late Tony Sharpe that published occasional posts promoting the doctrine of Universalism after Sharpe’s death from a failed heart surgery in June 2004 until some time in 2016. The website does not specifically credit the articles there to Sharpe, but they appear to represent his views on scripture.

Like many other defunct websites, we only find Universal Salvation in The Wayback Machine’s archives. I can think of several possible reasons it is no longer active: (1) the church disbanded; (2) the person who maintained the blog died, as will happen to us all at one point, and subsequently discovered his beliefs did not represent reality; or (3) the person who maintained the blog discovered his error in this life and deleted it (we can only hope).

Either way, we don’t need to caution anybody at Universal Salvation about proof-texting. The same cannot be said for its former readers.

Too Hot to Handle: When We ALL Get to Heaven

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

The Huffington Post headline reads “Pope Francis Says Atheists Who Do Good Are Redeemed, Not Just Catholics”.

The Post adds, “Pope Francis rocked some religious and atheist minds today when he declared that everyone was redeemed through Jesus, including atheists. During his homily at Wednesday Mass in Rome, Francis emphasized the importance of ‘doing good’ as a principle that unites all humanity.”

Mining the Minors: Amos (9)

Actions have consequences. Some things follow inevitably from others. In his third chapter, Amos takes a series of illustrations from the natural world and uses them to demonstrate that when presented with the evidence of one’s eyes and ears, certain conclusions ought to be drawn. He does this by asking seven questions to which every answer is an obvious “No” or “Of course not.”

It may be that the content of the questions is less important than the rhetorical flourish they achieve cumulatively; that each statement is intended to build upon the previous one and together reinforce the certainty of the prophet’s concluding statement. However, when we look at the content of each line more closely in the light of other Old Testament scriptures, it does not seem unreasonable to view them as different ways of illustrating the inevitability of Israel’s coming judgment.

Time and Chance (39)

Boy, there is a lot about death in Ecclesiastes.

If you’re counting, the words “dead” and “die” occur six times apiece, “dust” and “death” three times, “one place” (guess where?) twice, and “Sheol”, “burial” and “stillborn” once each.

To top it all off, the infamous chapter 12 contains such an impressive stack of poetic aging-and-death metaphors that the first thing most Christians do upon finishing the book is scramble to the New Testament post-haste in search of something to wash the taste out of their mouths. I find the last nine verses of Romans 8 usually do nicely.

Time and Chance (24)

King Saul had a burial.

When he fell in battle with the Philistines, his enemies decapitated him and fastened his body to the wall of the city of Beth-Shan, publicly degrading him in death. And yet, as willful, proud and chaotic as Saul’s reign over Israel had been, the courageous men of Jabesh-Gilead came, probably at no small risk to themselves, took his body, burned it, buried the bones and fasted seven days in memory of him.

As in most other nations, an ancient Israelite burial was not merely a matter of being dumped into a hole in the ground and covered by dirt. There were people who cared enough about Saul to make it evident to the entire nation — not to mention its enemies — that their king’s life, position and person were worthy of their loyalty and appreciation. So Saul received a proper interment with the customary ritual observances.

Doesn’t Always Mean What We Think It Means (4)

Sometimes Christians make arguments which are broadly correct, but wrong in the specifics. They reach the right conclusions, but do it by wrong reasoning. More often than not, they do this by inadvertently making false claims about the meaning of Greek or Hebrew words, usually for lack of careful research.

Now, it may be argued that perhaps this sort of error is not a big deal, since the listener gets to the correct place in the end regardless of the road used to get him there. Unfortunately, one of two things occurs: (1) the listener cannot navigate to his interpretive destination again without his misguided mentor, or (2) he can, and in doing so he too becomes a proponent of errors in method, if not actual errors in doctrine.

Either outcome is undesirable.

Anonymous Asks (56)

“Will we have a second chance to go to heaven?”

There are at least three different reasons a question like this gets asked. One is very Catholic, a second very Protestant, and the third ... well ... universal.

The Catholic might best have his question paraphrased as something like “Is there a purgatory, and do we get to go to heaven at the end of it?” The Protestant is really asking “Is this ‘rapture’ thing I’ve heard about really in the Bible, and if I get left behind, do I get another shot?” The universalist is asking some version of “Surely hell cannot last forever, can it?”

But if you’re looking for an excuse to put off becoming a Christian so you can do it at a more convenient time, the answer to the question is going to be the same no matter what theological presuppositions underlie it.

Quiet, Not Silent

“For they do not speak peace, but against those who are quiet in the land they devise words of deceit.”

Contentious, evil people always take advantage of those who can’t or won’t fight back. If that’s not a universal truism, it’s as close to one as matters.

Our political, legal and social structures are so constructed as to allow the forceful and aggressive to dominate the peaceful.

Implementing the Peace Principle

Legally speaking, a conflict of interest is a situation in which a person owes a duty to more than one party, the execution of which duties are either incompatible or mutually exclusive. In other words, discharging one’s responsibility to the first party may result in negatively impacting or failing to discharge one’s responsibility to the second.

This is not a situation with which Christians are unfamiliar. Conflicts of interest are part of the package.

Inbox: Message and Motive

“All your goats are belong to us!”

An anonymous reader takes issue with an older post on the error of universalism:

“Why so angry?”

Good question. It was April 2014 when I wrote that one as part of our “Heavenly Myths” series. I’ve lived ten lives since then, it seems to me. I couldn’t remember how I was feeling at the time if my life depended on it. Maybe I was a bit ticked about something.

So I went back and read the post and … nope, not even close.

Ask Not For Whom Rob Bell Tolls

Universalists, as I mentioned in a previous post, are people who wrongly believe everyone, no matter how willfully and determinately wicked, will eventually be saved.

Popular pastor/author Rob Bell has been called a universalist, though I don’t believe he describes himself that way. His book Love Wins is arguably the most well-read recent exploration of the subject, stirring up a fair bit of evangelical dust upon its release in 2011. However, if you want to argue fine points of universalist doctrine (or even broad strokes), Bell’s not your guy. Even his most ardent supporters (like Greg Boyd) admit Bell prefers asking questions to providing stringent proofs, and is more of a “poet/artist/dramatist” with a “fantastic gift for communicating in ways that inspire creativity and provoke thought” than an actual Bible teacher.

Too bad, really. Those of us waiting for a well-reasoned, serious defense of universalism from scripture will continue to keep our eyes peeled.

Forever Doesn’t Mean Forever Anymore

Universalists are a funny bunch. They’d like everyone, no matter how willfully and resolutely horrible, to be saved in the end. Not a bad desire, in one sense. It certainly appears a loving and even-handed approach, provided we don’t apply a microscope to it and examine its implications too carefully.

So universalists read scripture to conform with their fantasy, redefining words as necessary and explaining the meaning of difficult verses in what seem to me to be very unnatural ways.

Thing is, they’re not always wrong.

Universalism = InterpretationFail

It is awfully useful to observe how and where people go wrong in interpreting scripture.

If, say, a Universalist misappropriates a particular text to serve his cause, you can bet Calvinists, Amillennialists, Prosperity Gospel folks or whoever will use a similar bag of tricks to get where they want to go too.

In perusing Universalist websites for a previous post, I noticed many of them have this is common: they are fond of pointing to the word “all”, as though its employment in any context decisively proves their point. I suppose this preoccupation is easily understood, given the nature of their particular doctrinal aberration.

How can we go about making Scripture say whatever we’d like it to?

Debunking Heavenly Mythology VI: Everybody’s Going

For reasons only they fully understand, the Christian Universalist Association would like you to believe the following:

“We believe in universal salvation, the idea that there is no such thing as eternal hell or annihilation because God has planned the universe to produce a positive outcome for all people of all times.”

Under the banner “All God’s Children — No One Left Behind”, clutching tenaciously to their proof text “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” and a bunch of quasi-logical justifications, these folks take the position that it’s all okay: no matter what you do, say, or think in this life, there has to be SOME good in you somewhere, and God’s omnipotence and benevolence will not allow that to be lost for eternity.

So we’re all in. Whew! Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin. Charles Manson. Paul Bernardo. John Lennon and Mark David Chapman.