SONG OF GOD. Lecture Six: The Burning Heart of God

[Rebbe]

The Song of God

A Fresh Appraisal of the Christian Doctrine of the Ultimate Destiny of Humankind:
IMCF Lectures on God's Universal Salvation

by

Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Rebbe



Copyright © BRI, 1996
Lecture Format © 2016
All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Originally Produced as a BRI Study Manual




LECTURE SIX

THE BURNING HEART OF GOD

"Our Saviour Yeshua the Messiah, who has abolished [the state of] death and has brought life and incorruption to light through the Gospel" (2 Timothy 1.10).

Yeshua the Messiah died on the bloodied tree of Golgoleth for the sins of the world. Through his resurrection he revealed to the entire world that he is more than a conqueror over the grave, and over death. The Messiah has not abolished death for Christians, and not death for the world. It is the actual state of death that Mashiach overcame and conquered. Any other doctrine concerning spiritual death is inconsistent with biblical revelation and is an insult to the Grace of God as openly demonstrated in the cross. That hades (a term which includes the grave) and death (the death state) are swallowed up in victory is the signal hallelujah chorus of John's Apocalypse (Revelation 20.14). They are both "consumed" in the "lake of fire." And wrote a confidant Paul, "O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?" (1 Corinthians 15.55).  

Clearly John, and Paul particularly, couldn't write such things as this if words still mean anything and if they did not believe in an ultimate universal reconciliation leading to a universal salvation, through Yeshua the Messiah, to the Father (Ephesians 1.8-11; Philippians 2.8-11; Colossians 1.18-21). After all, any one of us can take time out to visit the local cemetery and see for ourselves that the effects of the reign of sin and death are still very much a pain, not only to the eyesight, but also to the heart. Paul viewed the destruction of death as an eschatological event. John the apostle saw the event in the very same way. The rule, reign and control of its multitudinous victims by the death state must culminate in a broad, all encompassing vivification. Teeming billions saved by Grace, in God's way -- the cross. In God's special time -- "strategic seasons [in the future] having a unique character of their own" (1 Timothy 2.6 Kenneth Wuest Expanded Greek Translation).

But religious man will not have it so. Some because they do not want it so. And others because they will not surrender their traditions. There does seem, happily, to be another group who are more honest, and reject the truth for what they believe are the facts that stare them in the face. One major denomination has released an official publication explaining why their membership does not accept that an "Atonement" was made on the cross.  

It reads, in part:

"Some people inconsiderately accuse us of rejecting the atonement of Christ entirely because we dissent from the view that the atonement was made upon the cross as is generally held, but we do nothing of the kind -- we object to the view that the atonement was made upon the cross -- because it inevitably leads to one of two great errors, thus, Christ on the cross bore the sins of all the world. John said, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away (margin "beareth") the sin of the world" (Jn 1.29). Peter tells us how he thus bore the sins of the world. "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Pet 2.24). Paul says that, "He died for all"(2 Cor 5.14,15). That which Christ did on the cross, therefore, was done indiscriminately and unconditionally for all the world, and if this was the atonement, then all the sins of the world have been atoned for and all will be saved "but all men will not be saved; hence the sins of all were not atoned for upon the cross."  

Full points for an honest and sincere evaluation, and for the process of logical thought. Not all denominations and churches would be so forthright in their doctrinal position on the "Atonement." The author of this official statement recognises that if the common understanding of the cross of Christ is accepted, then all humankind will be saved. For this reason his denomination rejects outright the Christian doctrine of the Atonement. But Isaiah, an "old covenant" prophet saw vividly that an atonement was to be made on the cross: "All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53.6). The Jewish author of the circular letter to his Hebrew brethren articulates that Yeshua "by the Grace of God should taste death [on the cross] for every man" (Hebrews 2.9). The apostle John agreed, calling Yeshua the kapparah [atonement] "for our sins and... for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2.2; 4.10). Paul articulated that "God put Yeshua forward as the kapparah [atonement] for sin through his faithfulness in respect to his bloody sacrificial death" (Romans 3.25 Greek to Hebrew and then to English).

The same position was held by the perceptive and furrow-browed scholar John Owen, who in his 1647 polemical work The Death of Death in the Death of Christ argued for a Calvinistic (and Augustinian) position of a limited atonement based almost entirely on the fact of the absence of a universal salvation during our present era. If Christ died for all, and made an effectual, vicarious atonement for all then why do we not see all presently saved? Dr J.I. Packer, powerful and influential Anglican theologian, has argued that Owen's work "is a constructive, broad based biblical analysis of the heart of the gospel, and must be taken seriously as such. Nobody has a right," insists Packer, "to dismiss the doctrine of the limitedness of the atonement as a monstrosity of Calvinistic logic until he has refuted Owen's proof that it is part of the uniform biblical presentation of redemption... and nobody has done that yet."

This monumental tome of 312 pages (and readily available through the publishers Banner of Truth Trust) should be required reading by all Christians, whether they be Calvinists, Arminians or Universalists (if we are compelled to utilise such terminology). Owen forcibly thrusts his Calvinist sword at the target over and over again. Christ was a Satisfied Saviour in his atonement on the cross and it is effective. Therefore if the world is not evidently saved right now -- if the whole world has not accepted Christ now -- then the atonement must only cover those who have accepted the Saviour at this time. Basically this is its theme. But theologians often get the cart before the horse. It is our view that unless or until we gain a proper perspective of who or what God is and unless or until we gain an appropriate appreciation of the outworking of his sovereign will in the seeming catastrophe of the Edenic drama we can never accurately grasp the Gospel of God's Grace.

Grace! But what of those who do not accept Yeshua the Messiah during this current aeon? If they are dead in sins (and they are) how can they accept him? Remember salvation is all of God, and none of us. Salvation is a free gift, salvation is of Grace. It is not in man's ordinary nature, which is hostile and antagonistic toward God, to choose to follow Yeshua (John 15.16). You cannot get life out of a cadaver, out of a corpse (and that is what we were before we became, by a miracle, Christians. See Ephesians 2.1). The Scriptures clearly reveal that humankind in general will be resurrected and judged during an aeon referred to as the Great White Throne Judgment (Revelation 20.11-15) which follows (it seems) straight after the Millennial period of Mashiach's reign over the Earth.

Because theologians early rejected the Gospel of God's Grace making salvation contingent on man's supposed free will this Judgment has been consistently viewed in a troubled and negative light. This Judgment has been looked on as altogether sober, disconsolate, despondent, a time period of desperate hopelessness. Yet if we have the courage to read it afresh and anew, and realise that God does not change, alter or improve his loving nature and Salvific character, and therefore humbly acknowledge that these teeming billions can only be judged in the same identical way and in the same identical manner that we as Christians ("firstfruits") have been, then the astonishing secret of this mysterious Judgment will become self-evident.

For these billions to be judged according to their works (v.12) it is imperative that they must, like us, be given a time period (a "strategic season having a unique character of its own" as Paul put it in 1 Timothy 2.6 Greek) during which aeon their own salvation, like ours, is to be worked out effectively (Philippians 2.12,13; 1 Peter 4.17,18). God, after all, says he is decidedly not a respecter of persons. Thus, as far as salvation is concerned, He treats all men and women in an identical manner (2 Chronicles 19.7; Romans 2.11) albeit according to a variety of "Administrations." God is not going to judge these people according to the manner ("according to their works") in which they lived out their previous lives prior to their death. They will be "judged according" to the manner in which they live out their lives under God's Righteous Administration during the era or aeon of "The Great White Throne." If this is not the case, and belligerence has its converts, then we believers are guilty of thumbing our righteous noses at the Eternal One whose very SALVIFIC Word is both spiritual and sacred. We cannot have it both ways. God is either CONSTANT everlasting Love, and such LOVE is everlastingly outgoing and outflowing, as well as UNCONDITIONAL, or he is not CONSTANT everlasting love (though some would seek to qualify both motivations).

Is God inconsistent? Ask yourself the question! Frankly, you cannot endlessly torment others and still call yourself "everlasting love." To be constant in LOVE one must be relentless, undeviating, continuous, perpetual, unending, ceaseless, incessant, unremitting and altogether pursuant in open display of such CONSTANT LOVE -- Protestant sentimental and argumentative slobberdrool and pseudo-spiritual thought-bubbles to the contrary notwithstanding. God is either authentic love or God is a liar. Such is the bottom line. "Let God be true, but every man (including this author) a liar" (Romans 3.4).

The good news is that during this Great White Throne Judgment, among the "scrolls" that are "opened" (whatever they may be) there is also opened "the Scroll (Book) of Life." Those who, subsequent to their period of testing and for whatever cause, do not finally find their names written therein are said to enter the "second death" (Revelation 20.15). Now this may sound like a note of finality. This is not, however, their final end, for they must be made alive at the conclusion of all of God's Salvific aeons. Paul makes this issue abundantly clear in his vision of Mashiach's rule over all his enemies, including the state of death (whether the "first" death which we all must ultimately face, or the "second" death in separation from God).

We arrive at such conclusions, and thus happily deviate from the prime teachings of the afterlife held for the last 1700 years by the various divisions of the Constantinian Church, due to the fact that we staunchly believe in God's Grace. All the knowledge of God's holy Word, all the doctrines of God bequeathed to his ekklesia of "Firstfruits," all must be subjected to that which God reveals He is. And God is, if He is anything, always and eternally Graciously Loving and Salvific. God's justice is ever and always rooted in His divine nature. His holy nature is One. He is Loving, and therefore is eternally Loving. He is Gracious, and therefore is eternally Gracious. He is Salvific, and therefore is eternally Salvific. He is Just, and therefore is eternally Just. Even God's punishments, though sometimes in varying degrees of severity, are therefore never negatively punitive but rather remedial, corrective, emendatory, restorative, curative, therapeutic, healing and always with a view to conciliation. God is always a God of PURPOSE in intention and in intention's outworking (they are one and the same in reality). This is what the very term "salvation" meant in the original Jewish thoughtform in ancient times -- "total health."

There has been, according to popular western theological tradition, a great conflict or controversy going on between Yeshua the Messiah and Satan the Dark Lord over the salvation of souls. This war we are told began in the Garden of Eden and has continued down over the centuries to our present day and age. Yeshua was sent by God as a contingency plan to salvage whatever he could from the cosmic wreckage that was the inevitable outcome of the havoc wreaked by the Devil. Yeshua had to die on the cross as a means of saving those who would, of their own free will, accept his love and his Gracious offer of salvation toward them.

Frankly, if this distortion of the sacred Word of God is accepted even at face value, then we must be entirely honest and admit that it looks as if the cross was wasted effort on his part. It looks, from all accounts, that Satan is winning in this war over lost souls. After all, the vast majority of the world's population has shown utter disinterest in the offer of "accepting Christ." In fact there are a number of scholars and others who would perceive that as far as this present century is concerned, the world has become even more steeped in degeneracy and outright decadence than at any time in the history of our planet, or at the least since the period that witnessed Noah's Flood. Mashiach has most certainly not sold too many of our intelligent species of homo sapiens sapiens [sic] on the vital importance of "being saved" from sin. He appears quite powerless to save the multitudes who have deferred their "decision for Christ" but on the other hand we are reliably informed by theologians of all Christian persuasions that he possesses powerful potency (and is vindictive enough) to relentlessly pursue sinners in order to judge the unrighteous and then to sentence them (the entire global population along with the Adversary who has deceived them into delaying a salvation decision) to eternal damnation. Their end will be entirely horrendous because they will not have "an end." They will all be cast alive into an eternally burning inferno stinking of the stench of sulphur. "The Bog of Eternal Stench." This is what the churches have told us. This is what has been painted by misguided ministers who have made God in their own image. But these views are inconsistent with the biblical revelation.

What fate awaits the non-Christian masses in the lofty opinions of our great "men of God"? Consider these sentiments of ministerial "love and affection"!

"Those wicked men who died many years ago, their souls went to hell... those who went to hell in former ages of the world have been kept in hell ever since, all the while suffering torment... they are kept in being for no other purpose."

"The damned shall be packed like brick in a kiln, and be so bound that they cannot move a limb, nor even an eyelid; and so while thus fixed, the Almighty shall blow the fires of hell through them forever."

"The bodies of the damned will be salted with fire, so tempered and prepared to burn the more fiercely, and yet never consume."

"Only conceive the poor wretch in the flames. See how his tongue hangs from between his blistered lips! How it excoriates and burns the roof of his mouth, as if it were a firebrand! Behold him crying for a drop of water. I will not picture the scene... When the damned jingle the burning irons of their torments, they will say -- "Forever."

"Think now, O sinner, what shall be thy reward when thou shalt meet thy Judge?... The drunkard shall have plenty of his cups, when scalding lead shall be poured down his throat, and his breath draw flames of fire instead of air... The wicked shall be crowded together like bricks in a furnace of fire... What wailing, weeping, roaring, yelling, filling both heaven, earth and hell!"

"The smoke of their torment shall ascend in the sight of the blessed forever and serve as a most clear glass always before their eyes to give them a constant, bright and most affecting view... This display of the divine character and glory will be in favour of the redeemed, and most entertaining, and give the highest pleasure to those who love God, and raise their happiness to ineffable heights... Should this eternal punishment and this fire be extinguished, it would in a great measure obscure the light of heaven, and put an end to a great part of the happiness and glory of the blessed."

"Think of a coffin, not made of wood, but of fire... You see a pit, almost bottomless pit. Look down it and you will see... a coffin -- a red hot coffin of fire. A certain man is lying, fastened in the inside of that coffin of fire... that coffin made of solid fire cannot be burst open... that man... will lie forever in the fiery coffin. It burns him from beneath. The sides of it scorch him. The heavy burning lid on the top presses down close upon him. The horrible heat in the inside chokes him. He pants for breath; he cannot breathe; he cannot bear it; he gets furious. He gathers up his knees and pushes out his hands against the top of the coffin to burst it open. His knees and hands are fearfully burnt by the red hot lid... He has no strength remaining. He... sinks down again. Again the terrible choking. Again he tries; again he sinks down; so he will go on forever and ever. This man was very rich! Instead of worshiping God he worshiped his money..."

Grace? Or the horrors of theology's eternal Christless Night? These notable quotes from respected post-Reformation theologians and ministers of the western Protestant Church reflect a gross, crude ignorance of the Scriptural record, the Jewish thoughtforms that brought us the Book in the first place, and the holy, Salvific character of Everlasting, Unconditional Love and Compassion which we call inadequately by the Name of "God."

Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Isaac Ambrose, Whitaker, Erskine -- these men were all extolled for their Christian virtues. Their prolific writings have been feasted upon with religious relish by multiple millions of their beloved disciples. Yet their "devotionals" are revolting, pornographic, misguided ravings out of the depths, not of God's Holy Spirit of a sound mind, but out of the swill and perversion of the carnal, human mind. According to such theology Mashiach's Grace is left in tattered shreds and the potent Salvific sovereignty of the Father is drastically reduced to the ludicrous and amusing caricature of fickleness, as well as vindictiveness, of an Old Man who has lost the plot altogether and has no recourse open to him but to wipe away in one fell swoop the tragedy of a plan then went horribly awry.  

God has become the fast fading smile of the proverbial cosmic Cheshire cat.  

He cannot convert, only condemn. Billions have no hope of a Salvific future. They can only look with terror to an eternity of separation from a God of conditional love. An eternity in the furnaces of fury.

Charles Finney, one of the "great" evangelists of the past was unable to refute the logic of a universal salvation so he resorted to ridicule. But his particular belief system leaves his precious Jesus as the "Lord" of a minority. In contrast to the egocentric Finney, the God-fearing George MacDonald argued that a righteous God would not be just to us if He did not love us. For, MacDonald insisted, God IS love. God's very character is love. Therefore God's punishments "without love" are unjust. MacDonald also recognised that the few New Testament references to "everlasting punishment" were based on a complete lack of appreciation by scholars of the Greek term "aeonian" and that "the New Testament usage of this word [referred] to quality rather than to length of time" (Kathy Triggs, George MacDonald: The Seeking Heart, 1984, 19).

Christians possess a Gospel of Grace. Christians possess a Gospel of Unconditional love. While we believe in a doctrine of hell, we believe equally in the power of redemption. We can say with German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834), "Through the power of Redemption there will result in the future a general restoration of all human souls" (F. Schleiermacher, Der Christl.Glaube, ii, 506). He recognised that "if the whole family of God were not restored, it would be a defeat of the divine purpose" (H. Buis, The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment, 1957, 94). The German Mediating School has also questioned the doctrine of eternal hell and has postulated whether salvation after death is in keeping with the Divine Nature and the Salvific Graciousness as reflected in the redemptive power of the cross (Buis, ibid).

But there is a question which most students of the biblical revelation avoid, and we feel ought to be asked. So we ask it now.

Just where is the location of "hell"?

This is not, in the opinion of this Messianic lecturer, an unreasonable question. But most Christians are satisfied with their "daily bread" devotionals that avoid the paramount issues of doctrine and testy considerations which lead to an appropriate understanding of the Nature of Deity. Most seek almost any opportunity not to use their minds nor to expend any effort in the pursuit of the gold mine of rich, rewarding biblical study. It appears that some believers do not know what a concordance is, let alone own one.

I met a lady once after a church service who considered herself a "good Bible student." I know that this is what she personally believed about herself because she told me so. She introduced herself to me after I had preached in her church one Sunday morning and she said, "Hello Brother Gosling, I am a good Bible student." She then asked me a "touchy" question about a point I had raised in the sermon, and I suggested she look up the answer in the concordance at the back of her Bible. She seemed confused because she thought that her Bible only had a dictionary at the end of the book of Revelation. I assured her that the Bible she loved to read also had a small concordance there. I happened to be quite familiar with the Bible she owned and which she was waving about with a sense of spiritual superiority over the heads of her friends standing nearby. I have met such people like this lady in a variety of churches and denominations in my 40-year ministry. They are not the minority by any means. In fact, I will venture to suggest they are the majority. When I talk majority, I mean majority. And I have found to my astonishment that most are self-satisfied, preoccupied with their own salvation, and really couldn't care less about "the other fellow" for whom "Jesus Christ" may have died. But this issue over the location of "hell" is a veritable Pandora's Box as we shall soon see.

Kenneth Kantzer in an article entitled "Troublesome Questions" which appeared in the fine magazine Christianity Today back in 1987 had the courage to ask, "How can I be happy in heaven if I know some dark corner of the universe contains living human beings who are consciously suffering eternal torment?... My emotions shout, "No, it can't be!" -- Kantzer then reflects, "It is not surprising that mankind is repulsed by the thought [of an eternal hell]... God himself, in the depths of his being, wishes that no one should ever perish, but that all might come to repentance, faith and the good life of heaven. It is natural to wish salvation for everyone... But all... this wishful speculation... is surely not decisive. The structure of reality cannot be clawed out of the web of human wishes."

Listen! To properly understand God's redemption in the Messiah, we must first understand God's creation in the Messiah. For, as the patriarch Job rightly considered so many thousands of years ago, the Lord of all "will have a desire to the work of [his] hands" (Job 14.15). And, as Paul articulated, "We are God's workmanship created in Messiah Yeshua unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2.10). It is repeated for emphasis by Rav Shaul that "All things are of God" (Romans 11.36; 1 Corinthians 8.6; 2 Corinthians 5.18; Ephesians 1.11 etc). All creation originates and exists in Yeshua the Messiah. This is ever and always what Catholic teaching has sought to explain. The rebel Hans Kung takes pains to emphasise the orthodoxy and complete Catholicity of this truth.

"It is impossible to overstate the importance of this "everything"... the world of angels, men and matter, in its being and in its history, the original just man and the sinful man, the justified man and the beatified man -- absolutely everything has its continued existence in Him... Even the damned sinner will have a continued existence in Jesus Christ" (Hans Kung, Justification, [1957], 1964, 136,137,159).

Everything, in Messiah. Everything! "Even the damned sinner will have a continued existence in Jesus Christ."

Everything! Creation, creatio ("in him all things were created" - Colossians 1.16); preservation in existence, conservatio in esse ("in him all things hold together" - Colossians 1.17; Hebrews 1.3). "All things were made by him," writes John, "and without him was not even one thing made that was made" (John 1.3). All the passages concerning creation in Yeshua the Messiah (and/or in the logos) are inevitably located in the context of redemption. This is why we are told precisely "we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins" explicitly and only in Mashiach "in whom... all things were created" (see Colossians 1.14ff). And this happens to be the reason why the Messiah "as the head of the Body, the Church" is he within whom "all things hold together" (Colossians 1.17ff). It is IN the creative Word (Mashiach) "who made the universe and all things therein... Lord of the heavens and the earth... [who] gives to ALL life, and breath" (Acts 17.24,25) that "we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17.28). All humankind, according to Paul, has its past, present, and continued existence in Mashiach. The apostle then quotes from Aratus, a pagan poet, "For we are also his [Jove's] offspring." According to Paul, the pagan, fallen, sin-filled world is in Mashiach. Therefore, if the entire creation is in Mashiach -- the entire creation, visible and invisible -- then where is hell? For "hell," we are reliably informed, was created by an eternally loving God in the first place. If it was created by a God WHO IS THE EMBODIMENT OF AN OUTGOING AND OUTFLOWING LOVE then it MUST possess a PURPOSE. For, God IS purpose in Him-HerSelf. But, theologians tell us, hell is actually PURPOSELESS.

And they are right.  

Augustine was commissioned by the power of Rome to dissociate the Church from anything and everything "Jewish." His City of God remains to this day a silent tribute to his devilish success. In one fell swoop the new and radical views of Augustine eclipsed three whole centuries of Jewish-Christian thought. This "Saint" of Hippo divorced the material creation from God and his eternally creative nature. Creation was to Augustine a unique, exclusive event. The doctrine of "creatio ex nihilo" -- creation out of nothing, an utterly absurd concept -- really began with Augustine and is unbiblical in its denial of the eternality of God's creative activities. Augustine's followers believe that God is only interested in planet Earth and for all eternity has done nothing else but think about the human race. With the introduction of such nonsensical teaching Augustine "neatly avoided the problem of what God was doing before the creation" (Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning, 1992, 42).

Again, Augustine could only conceive of God as being essentially concerned eternally only with planet Earth. The universe was created to house the Earth: the original teaching that all came forth from God's pre-existing energy was utterly rejected and yet it has been seen clearly from Paul's writings, and Kung's admissions, that all came forth from a pre-existing Mashiach and is held together in an ever-living Mashiach. Rav Shaul in Romans 11.36 reflects first century Jewish thoughtform in his pontification that all creation came forth out of God, and is toward God, and is ultimately for God (the universe will ultimately return to God in redemption) -- Jewish thoughtform, not Greek, that reveals the origin and the ultimate destiny of the entire creation. Jewish scholarship has in recent time made a valiant attempt to restore the ancient value of the original Self-revelation of Deity. In 1955 the Jewish Publication Society of America appointed a committee of seven scholars to prepare a brand new English language translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. In 1962 the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) was released with a surprising alteration in the wording of the first two verses of Genesis. It reads,

"1. When God began to create the heaven and the earth " 2. the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water "3. God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light."

Other translations and versions of Genesis had seen through the overt influence of Augustine and had translated the first two and three verses of Genesis similarly, but now the adjustment had official sanction. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo, for the first time since the fourth century, had been overthrown. For, clearly these Scriptures now taught the preexistence of matter, if not more than a hint of an eternality of matter! These statements of Scripture indicate that God's nature is creative, eternally creative, if not cyclic -- in contrast to the idea of "Creator" which ties the Lord to a "one-off" creation event. This teaching would then accord with the internal evidence of Solomon's wisdom, particularly as seen in the pages of Ecclesiastes, the cyclic Nature of nature and of SpaceTime. The Psalmist mused that there was nothing outside of God, absolutely nothing. God was the totality of all existence. God was the All. There was nowhere, according to the Psalmist, where the Eternal by his Holy Spirit could not be located (Psalm 139.7-12). Obviously, if there was something outside of, and apart from, God then God would not be God. Even the Sh'ma of Israel makes that point!

"Hear O Israel! The LORD our God the Lord is ONE. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6.4,5).

God is ONE. God is UNITY. The LORD God is Triunity in Unity. What is the ultimate Reality? Since God is ONE, His will must also be ONE. Therefore, there is only ONE plan, purpose, intent, design, will, and ultimate predestination. If God is ONE, then His nature is ONE UNIFIED TOTALITY of infinite Love, infinite Grace and infinite Justice. Indeed, in Jewish thoughtform, the Justice of God is equated with SALVATION itself. If God is ONE, and his nature is Salvific, then there can only be ONE outcome of the ultimate predestination of all things in subordination to His ONE will -- and that is redemption, reconciliation, universal (ONE) salvation. It is true, as Kantzer asserts, that the structure of reality cannot be clawed out of the web of human "wishes."

What then is Ultimate Reality? It is the ONENESS of God. Contends brilliant mathematician, Rudy Rucker, "Reality is ONE" (R. Rucker, Infinity and the Mind, 1982, 47). It is not a universal salvation "clawed out of human wishes." It is rather a universal salvation as a consequence, and natural outcome, of the imposing, subjecting SALVIFIC WILL OF GOD -- a God who works (creatio) all things according to the counsel and design of his own indomitable will (Ephesians 1.11) and a God who is able to readily subdue all things to himself (Philippians 3.21).

The God of the New Testament is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12.29). This God is the same God as disclosed in the Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy 4.24). The prophet Ezekiel was given a vision of the essence of God. He saw the heavens opened. He witnessed weird four-faced creatures out of the fire. Isaiah, another prophet, enquired, "Who amongst us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among 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 white-hot coals of fire (Isaiah 6.5,7). The holy Spirit of God descended upon the Apostolic company, both men and women including the Mother of Our Lord, as tongues of fire (Acts 1.13-15; 2.3). Fires are depicted in the Scriptures as having a purifying influence in relation to 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. As a Christian, such is my goal. To be lost in My Lord Yeshua, the Son of God, lost in his infinite Grace, lost in his infinite love, lost in his infinite Salvific will -- THIS is my overreaching desire. For those who will be found outside the centre of the sphere of His Grace, at the end of our solar time (fire spacetime) at the conclusion of the last aeon prior to Yeshua the Mashiach's abdication of rulership to God the Father, the fires of vivification will consume the death that persists in their nature.

It is not "original sin" in the nature of rebellion and hostility that will be of necessity consumed. Rather, in the so-called incorrigibles it is mortality and death that must be consumed. For it is mortality and death that breeds immorality and sin. "Sin has reigned in death" (Romans 5.21 Greek). For,

"As in Adam all die,
         Even so IN Messiah,
                  Shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15.22)    

Messiah is the first Order to be vivified spiritually in a resurrection. Christians converted from Pentecost to his second Advent are the second Order to be vivified spiritually in a resurrection. The rest constitute the third Order ("the last" "the end" "the final or finality") to be vivified spiritually in a resurrection. They will of necessity rise from their graves "when he shall have annulled all rule and all authority and power." Just prior to this, or in conjunction with it, death and the grave are cast into "the Lake of Fire" which act neutralises and abolishes (one might say, in a homoeopathic healing manner) the poison that was released on humankind in the Garden of Eden at the primeval dawn of Time. It is at this stage that God will be all in all, not all in some (1 Corinthians 15.28).

"Wherefore God also has highly exalted him, and given him the name which is above every name: that in the name of Yeshua every knee should bow [Greek, kampto: involving free will on the part of the one doing the bowing], of things in the heavens, and things in the earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should freely confess [Greek, exomologeo] that Yeshua the Messiah is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2.9-11).

There is no real lasting glory for the Father -- who set the entire plan of redemption, reconciliation and salvation into operation according to his own purpose, design, pleasure, and Gracious Salvific will -- if this adoration described by Paul has to be wrenched out of stubborn hostility. The word translated into English as "bow" is kampto, found in the Scriptures only in the writings of Paul. It literally means "bow" in "religious veneration." "For this cause I bow my knees [freely in worship] unto the Father," writes Rav Shaul (Ephesians 3.14). In contrast, Paul uses sunkampto (Romans 11.10) signifying "to bend down by compulsory force." "Confess" is exomologeo, to praise or acclaim "from the heart, freely, or... openly." This same word is used by both Matthew and Luke to express the glad spirit of Yeshua when he said, "I thank thee Father, Lord of heaven and earth" (Matthew 11.25; Luke 10.21).

As we have now seen here, according again to Paul (who realised our true liberty or freedom can only be authentically expressed within the will of God), the entire universe shall bow the knee in worship and praise to the Lord in the same humility that exemplified the character of Paul himself and that witnessed to the very Nature of Yeshua as the Son of God. This worship and praise, this bowing of the knee and open, free acclaim is to be the ONE perfect utterance that will fill the universe as it is swallowed up completely in the musical harmony that is the UNITY that is GOD.

It used to be said by some theologians that Satan had become an acute embarrassment to modern Christian views of the Bible. It has also been said, again by theologians, that no one today even wants to know about a devil. The tables appear to have been turned. It would now appear that God has become more of an embarrassment (or, perhaps bewilderment) than Satan ever was. Christians have gone out of their way to divorce God from any sense of responsibility in the existence of sin and evil that is so obviously prevalent in our surrounding world. Augustine tried to solve the problem by his doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. The world is made out of nothing, and the Man, Adam, was then made out of nothing's nothing: dust. Man twice removed from the presence of God in creation, thrice removed by sin.

But we have overlooked that when the Lord God had made the Man which he had formed, he then breathed anthropomorphically into Man's lungs the breath (ru'ach) of life -- the spirit of God.  

When Adam opened his eyes the Lord was gazing back at himself.

Will He then, on the final Great Day of Judgment, deny the Man created in His divine image? Will He deny Himself? Will He be faithless to Himself?

Yeshua, the Last Adam, in expiring on the bloodied torture tree of Golgoleth, breathed out his Spirit upon the world. Thus intimacy in reconciliation is the heart and core of the Gospel of God's Grace.

Would to God more people at this time, especially those who say they "trust in Jesus as their Lord," would believe it.

QUESTIONS & ANALYSIS OF LECTURE SIX

The Messianic Rebbe wrote: "But there is a question which most students of the biblical revelation avoid, and we feel ought to be asked. So we ask it now. Just where is the location of "hell"? This is not, in the opinion of this Messianic lecturer, an unreasonable question. But most Christians are satisfied with their "daily bread" devotionals that avoid the paramount issues of doctrine and testy considerations which lead to an appropriate understanding of the Nature of Deity."

While I cannot give an assent to certain technical considerations shared with the thinking public by French philosopher Jacques Ellul in relation to an exposition of specific biblical difficulties that exist in Scripture, I have pleasure in sharing the following thoughts which will better articulate the above sentiments which I have expressed here in this section of Q&A. The excerpt below is taken from What I Believe (Eerdmans, 1989, 188-192) by the late French theologian, Jacques Ellul.


"I am taking up here a basic theme that I have dealt with elsewhere but which is so essential that I have no hesitation in repeating myself. It is the recognition that all people from the beginning of time are saved by God in Jesus Christ, that they have all been recipients of his grace no matter what they have done.

"This is a scandalous proposition. It shocks our spontaneous sense of justice. The guilty ought to be punished. How can Hitler and Stalin be among the saved? The just ought to be recognized as such and the wicked condemned.  

"But in my view this is purely human logic which simply shows that there is no understanding of salvation by grace or of the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ. The proposition also runs counter to the almost unanimous view of theology. Some early theologians proclaimed universal salvation [Ante-Nicene Fathers] but almost all the rest [many Post-Nicene Fathers] finally rejected it. Great debates have taken place about foreknowledge and predestination, but in all of them it has been taken for granted that reprobation is normal.

"A third and the most serious objection to the thesis is posed by the biblical texts themselves. Many of these talk about condemnation, hell, banishment into outer darkness, and the punishment of robbers, fornicators, idolaters, etc. As we proceed we must overcome these obstacles and examine the theological reasons which lead me to believe in universal salvation, the texts that seem to be against it, and a possible solution.  

"But I want to stress that I am speaking about belief in universal salvation. This is for me a matter of faith. I am not making a dogma or a principle of it. I can say only what I believe, not pretending to teach it doctrinally as the truth.  

"1. God Is love My first simple thesis is that if God is God, the Almighty, the Creator of all things, the Omnipresent, then we can think of no place or being whatever outside him. If there were a place outside him, God would not be all in all, the Creator of all things. How can we think of him creating a place or being where he is not present? What, then, about hell? Either it is in God, in which case he is not universally good, or it is outside him, hell having often been defined as the place where God is not. But the latter is completely unthinkable. One might simply say that hell is merely nothingness. The damned are those who are annihilated. But there is a difficulty here too. Nothingness does not exist in the Bible. It is a philosophical and mathematical concept. We can represent it only by a mathematical sign. God did not create ex nihilo, out of nothing. Genesis 1:2 speaks of tohu wabohu ("desert and wasteland" RSV "formless and void") or of tehom ("the deep"). This is not nothing.

"Furthermore, the closest thing to nothingness seems to be death. But the Bible speaks about enemies, that is, the great serpent, death, and the abyss, which are aggressors against God's creation and are seeking to destroy it. These are enemies against which God protects his creation. He cannot allow that which he has created and called good to be destroyed, disorganized, swallowed up, and slain. This creation of God cannot revert to nothing. Death cannot issue in nothingness. This would be a negation of God himself, and this is why the first aspect seems to me to be decisive. Creation is under constant threat and is constantly upheld.  

"How could God himself surrender to nothingness and to the enemy that which he upholds in face and in spite of everything? How could he allow a power of destruction and annihilation in his creation? If he cannot withstand the force of nothingness, then we have to resort to dualism (a good God and a bad God in conflict and equal), to Zoroastrianism. Many are tempted to dualism today. But if God is unique, if he alone has life in himself, he cannot permit this threat to the object of his love.  

"But it is necessary that 'the times be accomplished,' the times when we are driven into a corner and have to serve either the impotence of the God of love or the power of the forces of destruction and annihilation. We have to wait until humanity has completed its history and creation, and every possibility has been explored. This does not merely imply, however, that at the end of time the powers of destruction, death, the great serpent, Satan, the devil, will be annihilated, but much more. How can we talk about nothingness when we receive the revelation of this God who will be all in all? When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). If God is, he is all in all. There is no more place for nothingness. The word is an empty one. For Christians it is just as empty as what it is supposed to denote. Philosophers speak in vain about something that they can only imagine or use as a building block, but which has no reality of any kind. (1)  

"The second and equally essential factor is that after Jesus Christ we know that God is love. This is the central revelation. How can we conceive of him who is love ceasing to love one of his creatures? How can we think that God can cease to love the creation that he has made in his own image? This would be a contradiction in terms. God cannot cease to be love.

"If we combine the two theses we see at once that nothing can exist outside God's love, for God is all in all. It is unthinkable that there should exist a place of suffering, of torment, of the domination of evil, of beings that merely hate since their only function is to torture. It is astounding that Christian theology should not have seen at a glance how impossible this idea is. Being love, God cannot send to hell the creation which he so loved that he gave his only Son for it. He cannot reject it because it is his creation. This would be to cut off himself.  

"A whole theological trend advances the convenient solution that God is love but also justice. He saves the elect to manifest his love and condemns the reprobate to manifest his justice. My immediate fear is that this solution does not even correspond to our idea of justice and that we are merely satisfying our desire that people we regard as terrible should be punished in the next world. This view is part of the mistaken theology which declares that the good are unhappy on earth but will be happy in heaven, whereas the wicked are successful on earth but will be punished in the next world. Unbelievers have every reason to denounce this explanation as a subterfuge designed to make people accept what happens on earth. The kingdom of God is not compensation for this world.  

"Another difficulty is that we are asked to see God with two faces as though he were a kind of Janus facing two ways. Such a God could not be the God of Jesus Christ, who has only one face. Crucial texts strongly condemn two-faced people who go two different ways. These are the ones that Jesus Christ calls hypocrites. If God is double-minded, there is duplicity in him. He is a hypocrite. We have to choose: He is either love or he is justice. He is not both. If he is the just judge, the pitiless Justiciar, he is not the God that Jesus Christ has taught us to love. Furthermore, this conception is a pure and simple denial of Jesus Christ. For the doctrine is firm that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died and was willing to die for human sin to redeem us all: I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself (John 12:32), satisfying divine justice. All the evil done on earth from Adam's break with God undoubtedly has to be judged and punished. But all our teaching about Jesus is there to remind us that the wrath of God fell entirely on him, on God in the person of the Son. God directs his justice upon himself; he has taken upon himself the condemnation of our wickedness.

"What would be the point, then, of a second condemnation of individuals? Was the judgment passed on Jesus insufficient? Was the price that was paid -- the punishment of the Son of God -- too low to meet the demands of God's justice? This justice is satisfied in God and by God for us. From this point on, then, we know only the face of the love of God.

"This love is not sentimental acquiescence. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:31). God's love is demanding, 'jealous,' total, and indivisible. Love has a stern face, not a soft one. Nevertheless, it is love. And in any case this love excludes double predestination, some to salvation and others to perdition. It is inconceivable that the God of Jesus Christ, who gives himself in his Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation.

"There is indeed a predestination, but it can be only the one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. We have often said that God wants free people. He undoubtedly does, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned. To say that God presents us with the good news of the gospel and then leaves the final issue to our free choice either to accept it and be saved or to reject it and be lost is foolish. To take this point of view is to make us arbiters of the situation. In this case it is we who finally decide our own salvation.

"This view reverses a well-known thesis and would have it that God proposes and man disposes. Without question we all know of innumerable cases in which people reject revelation. Swarms are doing so today. But have they any real knowledge of revelation? If I look at countless presentations of the Word of God by the churches, I can say that the churches have presented many ideas and commandments that have nothing whatever to do with God's revelation. Rejecting these things, human commandments, is not the same as rejecting the truth. And even if the declaration or proclamation of the gospel is faithful, it does not itself force a choice upon us.

"If people are to recognize the truth, they must also have the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. These two things are indispensable, the faithful declaration of the gospel, the good news, by a human being and the inner witness in the hearer of the Holy Spirit, who conveys the assurance that it is the truth of God. The one does not suffice without the other. Thus when those who hear refuse our message, we can never say that they have chosen to disobey God.

"The human and divine acts are one and the same only in the Word of Jesus. When he told his hearers not to be unbelieving but to believe, if they refused then they were rejected. In our case, however, we cannot say that there is an act of the Holy Spirit simultaneously with our proclamation. This may well be the point of the well-known text about the one sin that cannot be pardoned, the sin against the Holy Spirit (cf. Matt. 12:31-32). But we can never know whether anyone has committed it. However that may be, it is certain that being saved or lost does not depend on our own free decision.

"I believe that all people are included in the grace of God. I believe that all the theologies that have made a large place for damnation and hell are unfaithful to a theology of grace. For if there is predestination to perdition, there is no salvation by grace. Salvation by grace is granted precisely to those who without grace would have been lost. Jesus did not come to seek the righteous and the saints, but sinners. He came to seek those who in strict justice ought to have been condemned.

"A theology of grace implies universal salvation. What could grace mean if it were granted only to some sinners and not to others according to an arbitrary decree that is totally contrary to the nature of our God? If grace is granted according to the greater or lesser number of sins, it is no longer grace -- it is just the opposite because of this accountancy. Paul is the very one who reminds us that the enormity of the sin is no obstacle to grace: Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (Rom. 5:20). This is the key statement. The greater the sin, the more God's love reveals itself to be far beyond any judgment or evaluation of ours. This grace covers all things. It is thus effectively universal.  

"I do not think that in regard to this grace we can make the Scholastic distinctions between prevenient grace, expectant grace, conditional grace, etc. Such adjectives weaken the thrust of the free grace of the absolute sovereign, and they result only from our great difficulty in believing that God has done everything. But this means that nothing in his creation is excluded or lost."  

(1) This is why books like Satre's Being and Nothingness and H. Carre's Point d'appui pris sur le neant are so feeble.

THUS CONCLUDES LECTURE SIX