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Howdy folks,In Gen. 1:26 God declares his purpose for humanity in the very beginning: "Let Us make mankind in Our Image, according to Our likeness." That purpose has not changed with the fall of Adam and all of his progeny. God forsaw that tragedy and the Lamb was slain from before the foundation of the world. (Rev. 5:13, 13:8) In Revelation 4:11 that ALL things were created for his desire. Therefore, ALL things is an expression meaning ALL creation. Christ said that He has come to do his Father's will, that His Father has given him ALL creation and that he would lose nothing of All God has given him. Furthermore, he has come (for the purpose) to seek and save THAT (not SOME OF THAT) which was lost. So, as the Firstfruits "Seed" of Abraham, He assures us that he will fall into the ground and die (by crucifixion) and thus draw all mankind to himself. For if the Firstfruit is holy, so is the lump. For he clearly tells us his purpose in coming is to save the WORLD.
(Luke 19:10, 10:22, John 3:35, 6:37-39, 12:23-32, 47)
Paul bears this out in Ephesians 1:9-11: "...having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to His good pleasure which he PURPOSED in himself that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one ALL creation in Christ both which are in heaven and are on earth---in Him... who works ALL creation according to the counsel of his desire."
So there it is---God's purpose for ALL of us.
Once His Spirit saturated my despairing and religion-abused heart with deepest assurance of that truth, I was instantly healed from chronic manic depression, suicidal tendencies, alcoholism, and a load of other garbage. I fell in love with my Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I realized for the first time in my life that I had a good purpose for being. My purpose was not up for grabs based on my performance nor was my identity as a son of God any longer held in question. Once I knew WHO'S I was, I discovered WHO I was and am! As a result, mind-binding and agonising confusion that had entered my life when I was molested at age twelve disappeared. Not only did I receive a new life, I was given back my wife and I had a new marriage. Actually, a real marriage for the first time in my life!
Again, what made all of this possible was the revelation of God's GOOD purpose for all of us. I then understood that even if I wound up falling short of fulfilling my "election" as a firstborn/co-laborer with Christ, I was still his in the end. Whether I succeeded in being "first," or whether I fouled up and landed among the "last," I was still God's child. And "last" DOES NOT MEAN "NEVER".
Many argue that embracing God's purpose to unite all in Christ will result in a loose attitude toward sin and a loss of incentive to serve the Lord. Not so in my experience! Knowing that God is totally committed has increased my love for him a hundred fold. Furthermore, the love He has given me for Himself *ENERGIZES* me to trust and obey Him with a joy and endurance I have never known before.
I maintain that those who say "If there is no endless hell, what's the point in serving Christ?" all will come to know Him someday. However, they don't know Him now, or they would blush in shame at the thought of asking such a question. I say this compassionately, because I know that such ones have been cruelly programmed with performance-based religiosity, and my hope is they will bail out of that bondage and go back to the world until such time as the Lord woos them to Himself by His love.
I also maintain that it is impossible to have a solid sense of possessing a good purpose for being---a solid sense of IDENTITY---apart from knowing God will unite all in Christ. People who appear to have these things apart from that knowledge maintain that appearance because---
(a) their hearts do have that assurance by miracle of God, despite misinformation mostly backfiled in their heads,
(b) they're able to maintain that appearance for a season because their ultimate trust is in their own ability to perform successfully, which thus far to their own eyes appears fairly trustworthy.
For this latter group, the Hope of Universal Reconciliation is unnecessary. They feel (at present) that their performance is a good indicator (as Calvinists) that they will prove to be in the elect or (as free-willists) that they have a good shot at making it to heaven. And in their present illusion of having strength, many of them are not prone to agonise much about the fate of their loved ones and friends who apparently are weaker. After all, these beloved pagans COULD get straightened out if only they would! For the self-righteous person reasons I did it, didn't I?
However, there are those who have no illusions that their will is reliable enough to love God with stronger commitment than He offers them. There are a good number of people who have no confidence in their ability to make sufficiently wise and timely choices so as to make it through the pearly gates. For these people only the knowledge of God's good purpose for ALL HIS CREATION can offer any real hope that engenders true healing.
And that is what this post is about.
Many Christians wrestle with mind-binding despair and emotional, physical, and chemical addictions BECAUSE the church (so-called) has indoctrinated them so that they have no solid sense of identity. No solid sense of a good purpose!
How has that happened?
Much of organized/agonised Christianity would have us to believe that Infinite Holy Love's ultimate purpose (or the one He will "allow" to prevail) is to have a sentient (perceived) creation forever divided between winners and losers. And the vast majority of them will be losers.
For example, free-willists import that grim ideology into Christ's words. They assure us that the way is narrow that leads to life and few "EVER WILL" find it, and the way is broad that leads to destruction and many will take it "FOREVER." (Matt. 7:13)
Calvinists add their ideology to Christ's words by telling us that "Many are called, but few "ARE EVER" chosen. (Matt. 20:16)
So?
Our Lord's call to self-giving and cross-bearing discipleship of a "kind of firstfruits" company (Jas. 1:18) of co-laborers and co-heirs has been muddled up with His ultimate purpose to draw all mankind to Himself.
(Jn.3:17;35; 6:37-39; 12:23-32,47; Eph.1:9-11; Col.1:15-20)
And the result?
Much of the church percieves this call as an ultimatum to choose between heaven and an endless hell.
A MAD RAT RACE IS NOW ON. WE MUST SCRAMBLE TO WIND UP AMONG THE FEW WINNERS SO AS TO AVOID LANDING AMONG THE MAJORITY---DESTINED TO BECOME EVERLASTING LOSERS. AND WHY?
THE GLAD TIDINGS IS ALL ABOUT THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
So naturally, as the church goes, so goes the world, as the saying goes.
The church has a cruel and horrifying ideology of the survival of the fittest. However, the children of this world are wiser than the children of light--what else is new? Thus they have concocted the same belief system based on Darwinism, but at least a more merciful one. For, thankfully, as sad as it is, materialism's universal nightmare finally---ENDS.
(Not with a bang, but with a whimper?)
Could that be because we presently have a "called out church" that is rife with religiosity, legalism, and hypocrisy that has promoted the survival of the fittest philosophy in the name of "God" and of "Love" and of "holiness"?
It is obvious to all of us that a heartbreaking number of Christians are not happy people. Nor are they any kinder or any more loving than many human beings who do not even embrace Christianity. Could it be that vast numbers of Christians exhibit a double-walk that comes from believing and promoting double-talk about God who is Unfailing Holy Love?
It isn't judgmental to merely state the obvious observation that many Christians talk "love" while they live pride, exclusivism, paranoia, and hatred. Many of them live, not in hope, but in prideful or frantic self-effort on one day and despair and self-loathing the next.
And why?
Their *perception* of God's *purpose* (LOVE'S PURPOSE) is a hideous and double-minded one.
As a man thinks in his heart, so is he, according to Proverbs. So to believe that Holy Love Who is God is mostly hatred personified (alias:"holiness") and only a little love personified and therefore has planned to bless a few and to torture many forever---IS---the ultimate madness. It is the most tragic sort of double-mindness---spiritual schizophrenia! And it is lethal to sanity and life. How? Whatever we human beings believe about our Creator is also what we will believe about *ourselves*, His offspring.
It cannot be helped. We simply become like the God we worship.
(That is, our PERCEPTION of the God we worship.)
The larger group of Christians that are free-willists believe that the whole reason God created human beings was so they could each "choose" to respond to the (unbiblical!) question, "Where will you spend eternity?" Thus God's ultimate purpose is to have (or to "allow") a creation that is forever divided between a few winners and and mostly losers.
Calvinists believe also that this is Unfailing Holy Love's ultimate purpose: an eternal nightmare of a creation that is forever divided between a few blissful saints playing harps in heaven while their loved ones and friends burn forever and ever.
However, Calvinists take us a step farther into despair by telling us that our Creator's "holiness" demands that He lock most of his own offspring into UNHOLINESS and pain for eternity. Then they tell us that this is what Unfailing Holy Love has planned from eternity past--- PREDESTINED for his "glory" and for the everlasting joy of an elect few.
And then, they try to salve the deep wound which that diabolical lie inflicts on the human conscience by assurring Christians that once *you* are saved *you* are always saved. However, by their constant and living example and implication they would urge you to try not to worry overly much about anyone else! Just rejoice that *you* are one of the lucky ones because there is something intrinsically superior in yourself that God has foreseen!
(Thus you are "saved" because of *your* intrinsic and foreseen righteouness! For Christ cannot save the worst of sinners. So he has come to heal the well and not the sick.)
Yet here's the problem with once saved always saved. As much as they hate to admit it (except when they're trying to intimidate and control their fellow Calvinists who are misbehaving) the doctrine of "once saved always saved" packs a big---*IF.*
And that big "if" looms very large for all who take their own wretchedness and eternal hell-fire doctrine SERIOUSLY---on a daily basis.
The fact is that once saved always saved applies *ONLY TO THOSE* who turn out to have made their "calling and election sure" in the end. For there will be many who have *thought* for decades they were truly saved who will find out eventually that they were not. Mind you, this is according to the teachings of John Calvin himself! For the heart is desperately wicked and only God can know it. Furthermore, only a fool trusts in his own heart, according to Scripture. (Jer.17:9; Pro.28:26)
Boy! Do the Calvinists (who are self-righteous and "at ease in Zion") ever become EXCEEDING WROTH when this truth is brought up---especially when it is not *their* idea to bring it from the mental backfiles into the front ones! Why is this? Calvinism's survival depends on correctly manipulating its despair-inducing data that is in the back and front files of consciousness. That is, when a Calvinist is arguing with a free-willist, his hope is that the data of making one's "calling and election sure" remains in the backfilies while "kept by the power of God" remains in the frontfiles of consciousness.
However, when a Calvinist is dealing with another Calvinist who is living "loosely" he then chooses to backfile "kept by the power of God" and haul to the frontfile "Many will say to Me, Lord did we not do many wonderful deeds in your name? " and His reply, "Depart from Me (forever! According to Calvinism) I never knew you."
SO I KNOW---BY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE---THAT CALVINISM ONLY MAINTAINS THE *APPEARANCE* OF BEING MORE GRACE-ORIENTED THAN FREE-WILLISM BY THIS MENTAL GAME PLAYING.
But when *all* the data is brought into the front files for plain view, what happens? It is then that Calvinists have been known to begin arguing for "free will" ! I recently saw a post where a Calvinist brother hauled out Heb.6:4-6 that says it is "impossible" to renew to repentance those who fall away as his argument against universal reconciliation! It never dawned on him how that very Scripture *totally unravels his Calvinism* and is one that Free-willist use to disprove his theology! For if Calvinism is correct there can be no sense in talking of *renewing* someone to repentance who has never 'truly' repented in the first place!
But apparently even a good ole' Calvinist will opt for any port in a storm...
Amazing, isn't it?
And what happens when free-willists are shown the bankruptcy of their ideology by being silenced by such questions as, "How did you manage to keep your heart beating in your mother's womb and then immediately embark on following the inner light of your conscience when you were born?"?
Here's what happens---
They often take a pendulum swing over to Calvinism and begin protesting in favor of "God's sovereignty."
What causes all of this irrational double-mindedness?
Again, the culprit is the double-minded perception of God and His purpose---pure and simple.
An endless hell lurks at the bottom of each of these belief paradigms, and the only way to defend it is to keep oscillating from mentally backfiled data to frontfiled. Their advocates must desperately argue from the traditional spectrum of "free will", and when that fizzles they find themselves forced to swap sides suddenly and begin arguing from the standpoint of "sovereignty."
Or vice versa!
Calvinists and Free-willists are literally "locked in" to these alternatives. For their insistance on retaining their eternal hell and winners and losers scenario of God's ultimate purpose leaves them no other options.
Yet they hold to this untenable position *despite* God's promise to restore Ammon and Egypt and Elam and Israel and Sodom and other cultures upon whom he had pronounced "forever" judgments---which were written for our examples, upon whom the PURPOSES of the *ages* have come. (I Cor.10:11)
For God turns men to *destruction* and says "Return, O you children of men." (Ps.90:2) For he does not cast off forever, because of the multitude of His compassions which fail not. Nor does he retain his anger forever, for the souls he has made would fail before him if he did. (Isa. 57:16)
And we must bear in mind that Christ came to FULFILL the words of these prophets, not to destroy them or contradict them!
(Matt. 5:17-18; Lam. 3:31-33; Zeph.2:9; Jer.25:27; 49:6; Isa.32:13-15; Rom.11:10-11; Jude 7; Ezk. 16:55.)
I can furnish more of such examples if you're interested.
However these instances that crop up in Scripture totally pull the plug on the dogma of never-ending punishment. For they were written for the examples of the "called out elect"---Christ's co-heirs and co-laborers---in his WORLD HARVEST FIELD. It is upon these co-labororers that the PURPOSES of the ages have come. God has made us stewards over his secrets (Eph. 3) and anointed us to co-labor with Christ who will not fail or give up until he has established salvation in the EARTH. And all of it is his in all of its fulness, including THOSE who dwell in it.
(Matt. 12:18-21; Isa. 42:1-4; Ps. 24:1; Rom.8:16)
Therefore, those who have read these promises and the examples of God's "forever" judgments in the O.T. and their promised reversals---and yet insist on promoting that cruel ideology---have NO BASIS OF SUPPORT from the Bible. For our God changes not, and our Anointed Deliverer, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for all ages in which an Anointed Deliverer is needed. (Heb. 13:8)
If you're tired of being locked into abuse that calls itself love and hatred that calls itself holiness and religiosity that calls itself grace, turn to---
God bless you!!
Charlie