THE NEGLECTED KERYGMA OF CHRIST
a series of lecture essays on the biblical concept of a universal salvation in Christ
LECTURE NINE
Copyright © BRI/IMCF 2020 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Lecturer (BRI/IMCF)
CAUTION: BRI/IMCF Yeshiva notes are not available to the general public. They are not for distribution. They are not for reproduction. The notes may also bear little or no resemblance to the actual audio or video recorded BRI/IMCF Yeshiva lecture.
“My dear Redeemer, and my God
I stake my soul on Thy free grace;
Take back my interest in Thy blood,
Unless it stream'd for all the race:
I stake my soul on this alone,
THY BLOOD DID ONCE
FOR ALL ATONE.”
- The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley
(London: Wesleyan Methodist Conference Office,
1869, Hymn XIII, lll, 29)
When I was being entertained in the home of an Anglican priest, during my tenure with the world's largest international radio missionary organisation, the rector came to realise that he could share with me some of his very personal apprehensions concerning his theology. He had many questions and seeing my background was synagogue he felt free to enquire a little about the Jewish idea of the Salvific will of God. Many of the texts he expounded regularly in his sermons seemed to bewilder him as they apparently inferred the direct opposite in meaning to other texts – especially concerning the foundations of salvation. After about an hour or so later, as I was leaving, I asked him a simple question. It seemed to choke him because he spluttered out from a strangled throat, “Hadn't thought of it at all that way!”
My question to him – and that momentarily mentally “threw him” – I now share with others: “If all die in Adam, and only a very select few are made alive in the Messiah, how can Grace much more abound (indeed super-abound) than sin as expressed in Romans 5.20?”
Any astute and careful reader of the Word of God will at once realise that contained in Paul's writings there appears an equation impregnated into the text by the Ruach HaKodesh! But most readers of the Word of God are not astute and neither are they careful in their observations. Turn to 1 Corinthians 15.22 and you will see what I mean.
Paul wrote: “As in Adam all die, EVEN SO” – there's the remarkable mathematically convincing precise equation. Make a note of it NOW! – “in Christ shall all be made alive.”
Paul is not stating that “as in Adam all die” therefore all who failed to receive Christ as Saviour at this time “will be made physically alive in a resurrection to judgment in order to be destroyed spirit, soul and body in a future fiery holocaust called Gehenna." That is a misreading of the text... an imposing onto and into the text something that is certainly not implied there. Simply put, the text intends to convey that “as in Adam all die” “IN CHRIST shall all be made alive.”
To establish his new insight Paul then proceeds to give us the very order of God's salvation for humankind. Three orders are mentioned specifically by him (1 Cor 15.23,24). And not only is this the case, he mentions that death itself – THE DEATH STATE – will be completely annulled so that ONLY LIFE will exist in God's Salvific intention (1 Cor 15.25-28). THIS IS THE GREAT NEWS of the Gospel!
There are many ways we can approach the view of an ultimate universal salvation in Christ IF we took the time to really think seriously on the subject.
THE GREAT MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE CHURCH
One of the prime issues in biblical MIS-understanding has been the heretical thought that Satan is a Creator just as God is a Creator. Listen please! The Dark Lord is not a Creator. Only God is the Creator. Satan did not make himself.
WHO created the Devil to be the Devil? Who appointed him to this task? The answer stares us in the face (Isaiah 54.16). As THE Waster, or Destroyer, haSatan is essential to the plan, and the purposes of God. It is God who takes responsibility for the creation of darkness and evil (Hebrew, ra) in Isaiah 45.7. In Judaism the devil plays a very minor role in relation to the God who controls the universe and is the Sovereign Superintendent of everything that exists. God is the Everything of the Everything. In contrast with Judaism, Christendom (Churchianity) over centuries has DEVOLVED into a religion of dualism in which there are two Gods in conflict one with the other. A Gentile Christian may attempt to deny it, but one has only to ask, Who gets the more souls? God or the Devil? Who plays the better songs, with catchier tunes? Who, to the world, appears stronger? Its been 2000 years and the world remains still largely unconverted.
Again, the Christian community has sadly lacked a genuine educational program that instructs believers into the deep depths of the very sacred WORD OF GOD. To be sure, there are pockets of biblical instruction that appear here and there (especially amongst the sectarians of churchianity) but as the term “sectarian” suggests the classrooms are aimed at producing students with only denominationally-closeted viewpoints in pursuit of surface biblical knowledge. And the religious departments of specific universities have their own ongoing prejudicial agendas.
It is Paul who enthusiastically encourages Christians to “study in a personal way [the sacred texts] to show [themselves] approved by God as a diligent worker, not to be ashamed, rightly partitioning, accurately handling, and skilfully teaching the Word of Truth” (2 Tim 2.15 Greek).
THIS is particularly what Romans 12 emphasises: Paul's exhortation for Christians to live out God's desire for each of us – indeed, to aim to persevere in adopting patterns of devout service via a program of biblical nurturing in the daily renewing of our minds by creating new neural pathways in the brain through our behaviour (acting as if) in order to better permit and allow – in our free-will – the HOLY SPIRIT of God greater GRACE-ORIENTED productivity within our personality and natures and accomplishing this precisely through the inculcation of the sacred texts into our very being.
Yes, did you get that? Did you follow that? I am known to ramble a bit too much in verbal self-expression (just as did Paul – with the exception of commas: he never used them) and “asides” but I try to pattern myself after Paul in clarifying MEANING as I travel through the deeper things of God and share what I discover with others through my speech.
SO WHAT IS THE OUTCOME OF INFINITE GRACE?
We have stated explicitly in our lectures (rather than timidly suggest) that the very idea of eternal torment and the existence of everlasting misery is right out of the vitriolic heart of the Dark Lord's sinister and colourfully vile playbook. In our opinion if Satan can make God out to be Grace and love on the one hand and a sadistic, diabolical fiend on the other hand, then he will have achieved a portrait of God made in his own image, both a creature of darkness and “an angel of light.” Our Ancient Foe has virtually succeeded in his aim of destroying the very notion of Grace in the minds of “unbelieving believers” as the fundamental and essential characteristic of God as eternal Love. Most ministers of religion and their mindless mutants (who have willingly surrendered their independent ability to think for themselves) are in wholehearted agreement.
In their theology there is no such thing as unconditional love. It is very much a love toward humanity with strings attached. They believe in a God of love, but tragically only up to a point. Beyond this point God becomes the proverbial Village Idiot burning up his mistakes on the Last Great Bonfire Day. It has been estimated that somewhere between 70 and 140 billion people have lived on this planet since the days of Adam. Considering that only a very limited few have ever heard of that "one name under heaven who can save" them and the vast majority remain ignorant of Our Lord then that is an awful lot of human flesh to ignite with everlasting fire and setting loose disgusting immortal maggots everlastingly feasting on (yet not somehow devouring) deathless and damned souls!
Oh! Won't it be jolly to be sitting around with harps on clouds making music with the angels, knowing all the while that your little son or daughter, or your elderly mother and father are meanwhile screaming in the everlasting dank subterranean dungeons in orgiastic torture prolonged forever without even being mercifully destroyed. These brutal pangs will be the most exquisitely painful tortures ever devised, to endure always and always without end. This is what the vast overwhelming majority of ministers of the Christian church believe and multiple millions of their MINDLESS faithful followers with them.
Now these people are sincere in their belief.
But they are sincerely wrong.
These people are worshippers of the Lord God and the praise of God is on their lips daily. This lecturer does not doubt their sincerity. But worship and praise aside, to believe in such doctrines is to believe in a devilish swan-song of the Pied Piper of Hell, an adherence to a melancholic melody of despair.
Why are people backward, or afraid, to voice the obvious to their pastors, rectors, elders, priests and bishops, especially after they have been exposed to the undeniable TRUTH that I have faithfully detailed in my current series of lectures?
GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE
Certainly the idea of torment is associated with Gehenna (Revelation 20.10). There can be no escaping this conclusion. This is because it is a biblical fact. God's fiery judgments on a base and hostile humankind have not been limited to a prophetic eschatological scenario. In no way! God, said the prophet Jeremiah, would bring utter destruction upon the city of Jerusalem in the form of “unquenchable fire” (Jeremiah 17.27). This was accomplished in a precise way in the 6th century B.C.E. (2 Chronicles 36.19; Jeremiah 52.13). No local Hebrew or Jewish fire-brigade could extinguish these fires of God. They were absolutely unquenchable. They burned ferociously until they had performed their prophesied duty.
There can be no escaping the fact that the Lord has used fire as a judgment often in times past. One has only to ponder briefly the fate of “the cities of the plain” in the story of Lot in Genesis to make the point. And the Scripture tells us explicitly that the Cosmic Lord will again use fire as a judgment upon this earth. Peter tells us that an intensity of fire of some enormous magnitude will finally even melt the very elements of our planet (2 Peter 3.10-12). Today, through amazing technological advancement, we can even view with our own eyes the fiery termination of entire solar systems (no doubt along with unique and amazing civilisations) in our own Milky Way galaxy relayed on television science programs and newscasts, as they erupt in a holocaust of combustible conflagration. We live in times of miracles and wonders. There can be no escaping the fact that all of God's judgments are purely intermediate. For, when those fiery judgments are over there will be “a new heavens [solar system or galaxy] and a new earth.” For it is written, “We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness” (2 Peter 3.13).
The God we serve is a consuming fire. He dealt with Ananias and Sapphira in a fiery way (Acts 5) because they were somewhat economical with the truth. But they were saved people, entirely and utterly. They cannot lose their salvation. But their Christian activities, and their lives, were forfeited. Paul, we ought to recall, was to some extent apprehensive about God deciding to terminate his calling in Messianic ministry due to his own failings (1 Cor 9.27). Yet God's judgments are always remedial, restorative. They are never judgments for condemnation's sake. They are never punitive. They are purely remedial. Even the “rich man” in Sheol was making important changes. In this enlightening parable of Yeshua (and it is only a parable) the rich man is a living miracle and wonder in himself! He calmly communicates with Abraham (who is a great gulf away) when he really ought to be screaming and yelling his pathetic, tormented lungs out.
And what does the “rich man” desire of Abraham? It is not a request to drag him out of the fire to safety! Nor is it a demand for a cold fire-hose or a bucket of cool, clear, thirst-quenching water (let alone a cold Aussie ice beer). No, he simply asks for a DROP of water on his tongue. Wouldn't it evaporate before it splashed on his tongue? And why would he ask Abraham to send it with Lazarus? Apparently the “father of the faithful” wasn't good enough for the task.
Why do we Christians avoid the patently obvious? And why do we ignore the remedial aspect of the Afterlife in Sheol? Why do we only perceive God's judgments as necessarily negative? There is also another aspect to this parable concerning the “water” requested by the man of riches in his intermediate state of existence, which is not within the scope of this present lecture to pursue. But when the truth of this particular matter is made plain God's Grace toward humankind will become at once apparent. The answer to these questions, and others like them, is that for 1700 years the Constantinian church has failed to admit and surrender to the original Jewish thoughtforms that brought us the Bible we claim as our own.
Listen! The parable implies that he who cared only for self-interest and self-satiation, under the heavenly law of karma, has come to the place where he actually cares for others – even if it is his own brothers (Luke 16.27,28).
Even Our Lord himself made it clear that judgment is not to be equated with a never-ending hell fire. For, Yeshua tells us that in the aeon of the Great White Throne Judgment the Queen of Sheba (the Egyptian Hatshepsut) “will rise with this generation in the judgment and will condemn it” for rejecting him (Matthew 12.42). In the same breath he denounced those religious leaders who rejected his Messianic authority and stated that in this same judgmental period the people of Ninevah in Assyria “will rise and condemn” them (Matthew 12.41). There will be varying degrees of judgment and condemnation (Luke 12.47,48) but all of God's decisions are taken with the view of the ultimate salvation of man. God wills that no one will perish eternally (2 Peter 3.9). This is not a mere ethereal “desire” or hopeful “wish” on God's part. Mashiach died during the period of the Fifth Procuratorship of Judaea to save us, indeed to save the whole world (1 Timothy 2.4-6) and ultimately to save the entirety of the universe (Ephesians 1.10; Colossians 1.15-20). And while it is more than possible for the Lord God to destroy man's body and soul in Gehenna (Matthew 10.26) it is written “if any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, BUT HE HIMSELF SHALL BE SAVED, yet so as BY FIRE” (1 Corinthians 3.15).
If there is everlasting fire it is a fire within God himself, a fiery righteousness that will continue to burn beyond space-time as we know it. For only God is truly eternal. And our God is in Himself “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4.24; Hebrews 12.29). Fire is found in every element that exists in creation – indeed, at the centre of the building blocks of the universe, even at the centre of the atom!
Why has it escaped the intelligent assessment of human beings that if “God is a consuming FIRE” and “God is LOVE,” then fire in the biblical revelation is nothing more than AN IMAGE OF GOD'S LOVE.
FIRE PURIFIES AND EVEN WITCHES KNOW IT
In previous lectures we have shown that to properly appreciate our role as Christians in God's redemption of the universe in Mashiach, we must first apprehend God's creation in Mashiach. And secondly, we must come to terms with the fact that in the Jewish thoughtform of the Second Temple period all creation dwelt in the very Mind of God, Infinite Intelligence. We are all merely God's thoughtforms. He is the only Reality there is.
We have argued in many of our past lectures (for those with eyes to see and ears to hear) that our great God is a Trauma, and on innumerable occasions we have emphasised that our God exists as a consuming fire (Hebrews 12.29). The prophet Ezekiel was given a vision of the very essence of God. He saw the heavens opened. He witnessed weird and wonderful four-faced creatures out of the fire. Isaiah, another prophet, enquired “Who amongst us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who amongst us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Isaiah 33.14). He then replies to himself, “He that walks righteously and speaks uprightly... he shall dwell on high” (Isaiah 33.15,16). This prophet's lips were purified with coals of fire (Isaiah 6.5,7). The Spirit of God descended upon the Apostolic company, including Miriam the Mother of Our Lord, as tongues of fire (Acts 1.13-15; 2.3). Fires are depicted in the Bible as having a purifying, purging effect in human beings (1 Peter 1. 7; 1 Corinthians 3.12-15).
To be lost in God's fires is to be lost in God Himself.
Actually, even witches recognised that fire was their only friend. Not believing in the teaching of the resurrection, witches and warlocks preferred cremation. Burning to death chained at the stake, upon their conviction by representatives of the church during the Dark Ages, was demanded by the witches themselves – many of them at their own request were burned in the open air, in the centre of a stone circle (Arnold & Patricia Crowther, The Secrets of Ancient Witchcraft With the Witches Tarot, 1974, 167,168).
The stone circle, like the swastika, was a pertinent symbol of reincarnation. Surprisingly, many Christians are blissfully unaware that in a simple funeral ceremony, they continue to perpetuate the belief in reincarnation each and every time flowers are placed upon a grave site, or on a casket at burial. Flowers presented to the dead are an ancient symbolic gesture to the cycle of life, known in reincarnation circles since the dawn of time, and equally a custom of medieval witchcraft. Even Neanderthals were buried with flowers. As a continuing modern practice of Christians, flowers at funerals is a matter of unquestioning obedience to a custom bequeathed from a dark and sinister past. We are told in the Bible that all who practice witchcraft, or sorcery, shall have their part in the Lake of Fire for purification purposes (Revelation 21.8).
It is this purging, or purification element, that is missing from Protestant theology as far as a proper understanding of the “Lake of Fire” is concerned. Some Protestant churches emphasise the overcoming or purging side of the present Christian life – “in fiery trials” – and this is understood as Orthodox teaching (1 Peter 1.6,7; Revelation 2.7,11,17,26; 3.5,12,18,19,21).
In similar manner Roman Catholics emphasise a fiery purgatorial state after death and can quote from the Scriptures quite adequately to substantiate their position. But once we grasp that ALL creation is to be found IN Messiah (as Messiah is to be found IN God) then we can readily appreciate that there can be nothing APART from the Lord God. God is the Totality of Existence. God is not merely the greatest Being that exists now or can ever exist. God is Being in Itself. Even nature in the first century Jewish thoughtform was not seen apart from God. The Hebrews had no word for nature. There was only God, and everything had its origin and continued existence and finality in him (Romans 11.36 Greek). And finality existed only in a change of form. The basic energy of the material creation would always find its return to the Source of All. Such was the basic premise of the Sh'ma. God was essential, and essentially, Unity and Oneness (Deuteronomy 6.4,5 Hebrew). “I am the Lord, there is none [nothing] else” says God by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 45.5,6,14,18,21,22; 46.9).
Consider! If there was anything apart from God, and if there is anything apart from God, then it had to be in existence without God's creative activity bringing it forth into a materiality. And such a stand goes beyond God's own Word. Clearly out of him and for him and toward him are all things (Romans 11.36 Gk). At least this is the teaching of the Jewish people in the first century of our Common Era. And Paul believed it thoroughly!
It almost goes without saying that if ALL things are IN Christ then hell has to be located IN Christ as well. “In what direction shall I go from your Spirit? or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend up into the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall your hand lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me. Yes, the darkness hides not from you: but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to you” (Psalm 139.7-12).
God's creative act in both creation and redemption cannot be separated. Both were creative acts by God, in Mashiach. If God's satisfaction in judgment for sin was to be found in the crucified Man at Golgoleth then hell cannot be a termination for any who therein enter. Why is this so?
The righteous Yeshua became the world's greatest sinner on the tree for you and for me and for the entire universe. More so, he actually metamorphosed as sin itself. God's wrath was against him as the ultimate Reprobate Man – representing every human being who has ever drawn breath. God's anger at sin was abated in him and in him alone.
Christ therefore, and not hell, is our final and ultimate destiny.
HOW DO YOU READ YOUR BIBLE?
How many times must I repeat what I have written above? So many times “unbelieving believers” question me on these same issues. It's as if they cannot – or better, will not – open their minds to straight-forward, candid, honest appraisals of the revelations that usher forth from the same Bible that my opponents and I both share.
There is one text that is raised repeatedly with me by such folk. It is located in Matthew 25 and while it makes no reference to an eternity of “hell” (in fact Gehenna doesn't come into the equation at all in this section of Scripture) it does speak of a judgment which involves alienation of “goats” (actually “goat nations” - Mt 25.32) from “sheep” (actually “sheep nations” - Mt 25.32) during the initial inauguration of the millennial Messianic Kingdom of Yeshua when the Son of God takes the reins of power to rule this planet for God's intention and design of SALVATION to be both fulfilled and secured.
It is written: the goat nations “shall go away into everlasting punishment” (Mt 25.46).
Again, I repeat, the reference to “everlasting” is from the Greek word aionios which, as we have seen in lecture eight and according to the great Greek authority American theologian Marvin Vincent, means nothing more than “an age,” “a period of time,” “an interval.” In his own words, the word “carries the idea of time, though not of endlessness.” And, as for “punishment” the Greek word is kolasis – correction, rectification, improvement, remedial therapy. Although some “moderns” import the idea of “everlasting negative punishment” the term kolasis is used by ancient Greek secular literature intending “correction.” In fact, biblical scholar William Barclay points out that kolasis was originally a word meaning to prune a tree for greater growth and if “punishment” (as such) is referenced it is always and invariably “remedial punishment.” In his own words, “kolasis is for the sake of the one who suffers it” or (in other words) a necessary correction with a view toward maturity! To be sure, if Christ's words in Matthew 25 were intended to convey a severe punishment that was eternal by nature he would have used another word entirely for “punishment” – the Greek timoria meaning “for the sake of the one who inflicts retribution.”
So how do you read your Bible? If you are coming to a better knowledge of this awesome truth about God's Salvific will, what are YOU doing with it? Are you content only saturating your mind and soulish senses of emotional well-being with this knowledge, or does the holy Spirit urge you, encourage you, motivate you and implore you to SHARE this realisation with others for whom Christ died?
THE DEATH OF DEATH IS TWOFOLD
There is also another wonderful truth that accompanies this understanding of the Word of LIFE. I have already written a great deal about it as a matter of fact.
The vast overwhelming majority of all who have ever lived, since the dawn of time, have never heard of the Messiah and his Father's conciliation. In fact one is tempted to say the main part of those who call themselves (or carry the appellation) “Christian” are equally ignorant of who Yeshua (usually called “Jesus”) really was, not only regarding his self-view as Messiah or God's Son, but in his pre-birth existence as the cosmic Logos – the very thought forms of God. They have never comprehended, nor yet appreciated, the Gospel. Most ignore the Bible and thus the revelation of God. It sits gathering dust on the bookcase, unopened, unexplored, a mere status symbol, and the mysteries within its covers sealed. They see themselves as saved, and they might believe Christ died for them. But they have no pity for their fellow man who has never heard of Christ and his gift of salvation, and for whom the Lord also died. They have never read “the old, old Story” though they may have sung the hymn many times at Sunday School when they were young. The Bible and its message remain a mystery. As a result most ignore the fundamental reality that although, as concerning intent, death is abolished for them (“Death, where is thy sting?”) our world yet lies in death, decay and bondage to despair.... in its own death cycle.
We are told confidently in the so-called “New Testament” that a political Messiah is to rule until he has put all things under his feet. When this is finally accomplished the Lord Yeshua will voluntarily abdicate and all rule, authority and power (and as a direct consequence all the myriad related governmental and judgmental operations of the Messiah) will come to a satisfactorily abrupt conclusion. In simple terms God “will be all and in All” (1 Corinthians 15.24-28).
Now there are believers who perceive that Yeshua accomplished this at the cross. Still other Christians hold that he did this in his resurrection. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthian Messianic Community, sees in this drama a very definite eschatological application of what was gained at the cross and in the resurrection of his Lord Yeshua. This letter, we will recall, was penned years after the cross event. This vision of the abolishment of death is most assuredly an eschatological conquest.
Scholar J. Davis McCaughey says eruditely that 1 Corinthians chapter 15 “provides a time scheme within which the resurrection of Christ and of those who belong to him each has its proper place... the conquest of death belongs to that future: it is the very last event of all, before the Son hands everything to the Father... A careful reading of the passage suggests that what is at stake among the Corinthians is not simply a matter of a correct or incorrect reading of the time-clock of history. Apocalyptic discourse is not being introduced merely in order to correct the calendars” of the converts to Christianity in the city of Corinth in Greece. Rather, the passage in chapter 15 is inserted to reassert the doctrine of the awesome sovereignty of the Hebrew Lord and God. He further notes,
“What is at stake is not simply the anthropological question, the question of the self-understanding of believers, but the Christological (“He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet”) and the theological (“that God may be all in all”)... Christ will deliver the kingdom to the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign till he has put all his enemies under his feet (a citation from Psalm 110.1 but with the adjective inserted by Paul)... The Corinthian Christians who in their enthusiasm claim that already they are filled with the Spirit, already they reign with Christ in heavenly places, are denying the sovereign work of Christ over history, over the contrary forces which beset men, over death itself. Moreover, a too-exclusively risen-Jesus centred experience of the Christian faith, excludes God whose sovereign will and purpose Jesus was appointed to serve.”
“Death” concludes McCaughey, “is the last of the contrary forces to be overcome by the Lord of life. Christ who was raised from the dead will bring meaning to the processes of history and of life” (J. Davis McCaughey, The Death of Death (1 Cor 15.26), in Reconciliation & Hope, 1974, 250,251).
McCaughey grasps adequately that the Messianic reign of the Saviour and the depressive reign of death coexist in the meantime right up to the end of all things. He adds, with a touch of compelling and forthright insight, “Christian faith exists not only as memoria passionis, mortis et resurrectionis Jesu Christi, but also as hope based upon promise, a promise which encompasses the individual believer and the race. Indeed unless Christ's reign is triumphant over the contrary powers on the grand side, including death, it is difficult to see how it can be regarded as totally effective.”
In other words it is not merely my own death that is to be overcome, according to promise, but the death of my world. More's the pity that the depth of spiritual insight that blazons from McCaugheys' pen is not shared more widely among our modern champions of Christian theology.
The death of death is twofold. The death in which our world is immersed must be swallowed up in Christ's resurrection victory. And the destruction (annulment) of death at every level (physical and spiritual) must be eradicated in the perfumed breeze of Grace, in a resurrection to Life of all who have ever lived.
Victory over death in the physical sense is not nearly enough. The precious shed blood of Mashiach must not be seen to be ineffective. Victory over death must also be a conquest over spiritual death. And it must have a universal significance. If one individual persists in perpetual spiritual death at the handing over to God from the Saviour Christ of all reign, authority and power in his total and free abdication to the Father, then we Christians are of all men and women most miserable. Caught in the vortex of an unpleasant cosmic joke we shall have been worshiping hopeless banality (or perhaps better, senility) and most assuredly graduated impotence on a grand, if not monstrous, scale.
Let the modern scribes theologise as to the contradictions in their textbooks concerning the abolishing of all rule, authority and power and their lame, unsuccessful attempts to explain the continued existence and prevalence (and that with eternal dimensions) of a hell populated with spiritual morons, deviants, and enemies of the cross. This defiant mass of incorrigible wills, according to the perpetuation of gross medieval superstition, is the estranged garbage of our world condemned to be forever removed “from the presence of the Lord” who died for them. There, in that place – in a dimension called hell – still remains the subjugation of misery, gloom and a pathetic coexistence of the rule of spiritual death still unconquered and unconquerable by the love of Christ.
Clearly, hell must terminate. For, if nothing more, it remains the unwelcome startling presence of death.
And, in contradistinction to such a view “Our Saviour Yeshua the Messiah... has abolished death and has brought life and incorruption to light through the Gospel” (2 Timothy 1.10).
Do YOU believe it?
THIS CONCLUDES THE CURRENT LECTURE
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