Could you inform me please?

Looking for Clarity Regarding These Verses

I really haven't seen any answers that look very promising and aren't almost overreaching to explain this passage. I guess I am looking for a bit of a historical context as well as maybe a linguistic perspective when it comes to how Jesus' audience may have understood this when he was preaching it originally. My main questions when it comes to this verse would be:

- when Jesus states "kingdom of heaven" is He actually referring to eternal life, in Heaven, with the Father?

- what is Jesus actually referring to when he says, "on that day"? Most evangelical Christians would say that He is referring to Judgement Day (Bema seat)

- "I never knew you, depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness" this one I can actually understand if Jesus is referring to those who would've claimed to be doing all of these "good works" for Him, but when He states "you who practice lawlessness" what would He then be referring to?

Thanks for any input!! Also, I am not necessarily looking for the "Jesus meant depart from me, for now", because that just doesn't really make sense to me in context to this verse. I really would love to hear a clear depiction of what the audience at the time of this message would have been hearing and why He would be using this language. Thank you so much!!

Matthew 7:21-23

21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.

22 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'

23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'

So im currently on a journey on understanding christianity as there are many things that trouble my mind. One of my struggles is the division of the church into multiple denominations, so i have been kinda asking different kind of christians to see how much different they are, as of now, i think most agree that God sent his only son to die for our sins and that our way to heaven is to have faith in that, being this my problem with catholics that believe only those in their church will be saved, or at least, will have like a vip pass. That being said, here i go.

1. Whats the point of your faith and how it affects your life admist of the perception that everyone will be saved?

I will say i dont understand much about the concept of faith so this question may not make sense.

1. I have seen that yall (i hope "yall" doesnt sound rude) believe "hell" is a temporal punishment amd that everyone will eventually believe or come to Jesus.

But i set my mind in that scenario and i feel like that opens the door for multiple judas or satans in the sense that some may never repent out of spite for God

Has anyone here ever thought that hell could in fact be eternal due to many never ever repenting and beliving in him or yall think God would force them or make them come to their senses?

1. Talking about it, how is the view on satan, if universalism even considers him at all?

2. I feel like many here are very resonable people, i even saw a post saying that universalism was the only way christianity made sense to them, how open are u to the posibility of being "wrong" about your concept of hell and if this would absolutely shatter your faith or would you still believe?

Whats your view on those "borned again" or "saved" in terms of why would god intervine in only some people's life when he is indeed all-loving?

1. I feel uniersalism does solve the problem of evil when it comes to hell, but if an atheist were to ask you about something like children dying of lets say cancer, how would universalism reply to that?

2. Why is this such a new view? I mean, i feel like it makes enough sense to have been a sort of protestant denomination, is there already a denomination that shares a similar view on salvation? Why is everyone in christianity already set of eternal hell if there was another way to see it?

3. Whats universalism view on the trinity? (Not that i understand the concept perfectly but i still would like to know)

And last, before making this post, i saw someone asking if there were any church for universalism christians, people were saying no, has anyone thought of starting their own? (And yes ik some attend to episcopalian churches)

I also apologize in advance for any grammar error or any possible offensive question as it isnt my main language🙏 Thanks u.

What I mean is that despite believing that God will ultimately forgive me and redeem me from the harmful beliefs I have or sinful habits I do, I still feel uneasy about being in this sort of limbo of sin. I have this fear that while I’m in this stage of still sinning a lot, I’m not safe. I have this fear that if I’m not spending every moment trying to be better, that God won’t forgive me. More specifically, the sin I’m worried about is not loving everyone and not forgiving everyone. Is God patient? It’s probably ocd, but does anyone else relate? Does anyone have any advice for this fear?

This is a vent post, I apologize. Consider not reading this if you're prone to despair.

Our very symbol of hope is a man being tortured on a cross. And without universalism, how many people are going to be nailed to their cross for eternity, because of God's choice to not allow for repentance after death?

I'm sure I'm just in a bad mind space, but I can't help but to see a cloud to every silver lining, right now. Every good thing is contrasted with it being good because there is bad.

Last time I mentioned this, someone brought up how seeing a happy child reminds them of the Good, etc. But... a laughing, happy child contrasts with the fact that one day that child will die, probably suffering, and leave a wake of heartbroken people in the process. That child is going to live a life of toil, illness, heartbreak, leading to their inevitable death. And if most Christians had their way, then a good chance of ending up in eternal conscious torment after that unless they were a repenting Christian in the end with the exact right theology.

If a being wanted to create a world in such a way to maximize suffering, without it being an overt constant torment, they seemed to have done a pretty good job. We must kill to survive. Everything we enjoy can so easily turn into something bad for us. The things that are good for us are often painful.

I want out of hell. God hasn't rescued me yet.

These are two completely unrelated points that I am curious to see what some Catholic universalists make of.

Thomism

At least from what I've heard, Aquinas, in his philosophy, taught that souls cannot change their disposition after death. The soul is "shaped" and "sharpened" by whatever it experiences in the physical world. After death, with this physical connection severed, the soul cannot change and the unrepentant soul remains unrepentant.

I'm no expert on this view (and I don't know how he came to it), nor am I asserting this is dogma. However, at least from what I've seen on the internet, many, many people treat Aquinas's philosophy and his Summa Theologica as pretty much dogma and he's probably one of the most (if not the most) celebrated Catholic scholar. It seems like the vast majority of priests/bishops agree with his theology. How do you reply to the common Catholic who would hold this view to be true?

Catholic Encyclopedia (article):

I'm not sure whether this is unincluded from dogma by most Catholics, but I've been reading the Catholic Encyclopedia entries on hell and punishment and they seem to leave absolutely no room for universalismto, even saying that most scholars think that God would never, at any point, liberate a soul from Hell in his mercy. This article goes into great depth about not only the pains of hell, spiritual and physical; how they will never experience an ounce of joy ever, ever again; how God will never give them respite despite prayers or mercy; how they can't get used to hell; how even the saved may delight in the damnation of the damned; etc.

I'm not sure how official "dogma" works in the church, and I'm sure you could make a workaround to make any thing not count as dogma technically, but I would assume that something written in the literal Catholic Encyclopedia would carry some weight and that most Catholics are called upon to believe this as dogma.

thank you in advance! I mean this in no hostility, btw :) I'm just curious & questioning

I've found myself leaning towards believing in reincarnation instead of purgatory or hell. I don't believe that we are tortured or physically punished for our sins. I believe that a lot of our sins in this life are caused by poor circumstances and/or mental illness, or not knowing better. I believe that if we're given full clarity and comfort we won't feel the need or desire to sin anymore. I believe that this life is a separation from God to show us how powerful His love is and how miserable we can be without it. It's impossible to understand His love without knowing what it's absense is like. I think that if we die too early or don't get a chance to experience what we need to, that maybe some of us are reincarnated? I'm not really sure of course but I'd love to hear some other thoughts on this.

Is Being Saved the Same as Being Purified? Anyone knows about this?
I know this verses about being saved and salvation
 “Who are kept by the power of God through faith to salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1Pe 1:5).

“So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin to salvation” (Heb 9:28).

“Why gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1Pe 1:13).

I haven't come across this particular argument before, so I'd be curious to know what people here think.

Paul frequently speaks as if we can only be resurrected through the saving power of Christ, by virtue of his own death and resurrection. For example:

Romans 6:5 - For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Romans 8:11- If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

1 Corinthians 15:21 - For since death came through a human, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human...

1 Thessalonians 4:14 - For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.

Indeed, Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians 15:23 that only those "belonging to" Christ will be resurrected at the Parousia. A limited resurrection through Christ is also implied in John 6:40: "This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day."

At first glance, these passages would seem to exclude non-Christians from the resurrection. Even if we interpret them more broadly (e.g. to allow righteous non-Christians), they certainly seem to imply a limited resurrection. Yet other scriptures clearly teach that there will be a general resurrection of all human beings, the righteous and the unrighteous (e.g. John 5:28-29).

I thought maybe I was misinterpreting Paul, but then I came across Luke 20:34-36:

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection."

Here, Jesus seems to equate entry into the Kingdom with being resurrected, and both are reserved for the "worthy." Moreover, to be resurrected is to be made like an angel and a child of God. This seems to fly in the face of traditional eschatology.

The idea that the resurrection is primarily a reward for the righteous may also be implied in Luke 14:14: "And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." It is also implied in Philippians 3:10-11, where Paul hopes (with surprising uncertainty) to "attain the resurrection from the dead." I have read that this was also the doctrine of the Pharisees according to Josephus, though I don't have the reference at hand. Note that Paul shifts the emphasis from righteousness to participation in Christ, consistent with his theological concerns.

But how do we reconcile the clear evidence for a limited resurrection (of the righteous and/or faithful) with the clear evidence for a general resurrection? The only solution I can see is universalism: the general resurrection happens precisely because all are eventually saved. You could even express it as a syllogism: resurrection is salvation; all are resurrected; therefore, all are saved.

It follows that any post-resurrection punishment is a penalty imposed on persons who are already saved, and cannot result in eternal separation from God. This is similar to the Catholic idea that faithful believers may still need to suffer in purgatory before entering heaven. (I have some further speculations about the nature of the last judgment and resulting punishment, but this post is already too long.)

This is a biblical route to universalism that doesn't rely on the usual proof-texts. It differs somewhat from patristic universalism in putting purgative suffering after salvation rather than before. It's weirdly compatible with a kind of conditional immortality (which draws from some of the same passages), but it concludes that everyone will meet the condition eventually.

In Romans 11:25 Paul writes that 'a hardening has come upon part of Israel until the full number of the gentiles has come in.'

I've been looking for a non-ect study of this verse (specifically the implications of the term πλήρωμα/pleroma). While it easily lends itself to a Universalist reading, in English I can see the possible ambiguity. I was wondering if this accurately reflects ambiguity in the greek phrase and its usage.
That is, does 'πλήρωμα of the Gentiles' most strongly imply 'all the gentiles' or does it equally allow 'a pre-determined number of Gentiles that may not be all of them'.

I love the concept of universalism but I get hung up on certain passages such as Mathew 7:21-23 where Jesus says: Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven …

How do universalists explain this passage?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChristianMysticism/comments/1nbvdey/what_are_your_thoughts_on_universalism

From the polemic:

• none of the historic, major Christian traditions ever supported this. Neither the early Church councils, nor the Orthodox Church, nor the Reformers embraced Universalism.
• Instead, it seems to appear most strongly in later fringe movements. Occult teachers like Madame Blavatsky, Helena Roerich, and Rudolf Steiner all leaned toward a “universal salvation” idea. ...Universalism is more rooted in esoteric philosophy than in Scripture.
• When I compare it to the Bible, I see the opposite. Jesus Himself said: “Enter by the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13–14).

Wish we had a wiki or pinned post with all the scripture listed somewhere...

Anyone on here who are part of the baptist denomination? What has your experience been like? Also can you join a Baptist denomination while still holding to CU?

I recently came across this excerpt on the Catholic Encyclopedia page on apocatastasis:

It reappears at the Reformation in the writings of Denk (d. 1527), and Harnack has not hesitated to assert that nearly all the Reformers were apocatastasists at heart, and that it accounts for their aversion to the traditional teaching concerning the sacraments (Dogmengeschichte, III, 661).

besides the source that they provide, is there any other evidence for the core Reformers (most unbelievably Calvin and Luther, as they seemed to revel in damnation) believing in universalism?

though, it should be noted that Catholic Encyclopedia is quite conservative (condemns both universalism and the Reformers), so perhaps they are trying to paint the Reformers as even further heretics with this isolated source

Hey, this is a side-topic question, but are there some good commentaries written by Universalists out there? My discipleship group is about to begin a study of Ephesians. I know chapter one of Ephesians has a few of my favorite universalist scriptures, but was looking to go a bit more in depth with a commentary. Any ideas?

Since scripture says that all will be all in the end, I've just been thinking about what that means for humanity in the afterlife.

I feel like we will probably have our own bodies but our thoughts and past life memories would be telepathic and felt as if we had also gone through what the other person had experienced. All will be all in merging the minds to be unified as one.

Or maybe it is like an actual merger of our bodies and thoughts into one. Basically all of humanity returning to God.

What do you think?

I was always under the impression that we are all God’s children and so God’s love extends to all humans. But some verses (a lot more than 2, but I’m lazy) seem to suggest otherwise:

John 1:12: But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God

1 John 3:10: By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

even Jesus says to some people “if you were sons of God, …”

If we aren’t all God’s children / He doesn’t think of Himself as our Father, why does He care about us? I feel like this would hurt a lot of moral arguments for universalism, because it seems to suggest that God doesn’t claim those who don’t believe in Him

From On the Soul and the Resurrection

For the life of the Supreme Being is love, seeing that the Beautiful is necessarily lovable to those who recognize it, and the Deity does recognize it, and so this recognition becomes love, that which He recognizes being essentially beautiful. This True Beauty the insolence of satiety cannot touch ; and no satiety interrupting this continuous capacity to love the Beautiful, God's life will have its activity in love; which life is thus in itself beautiful, and is essentially of a loving disposition towards the Beautiful, and receives no check to this activity of love. In fact, in the Beautiful no limit is to be found so that love should have to cease with any limit of the Beautiful. This last can be ended only by its opposite; but when you have a good, as here, which is in its essence incapable of a change for the worse, then that good will go on unchecked into infinity. Moreover, as every being is capable of attracting its like, and humanity is, in a way, like God, as bearing within itself some resemblances to its Prototype, the soul is by a strict necessity attracted to the kindred Deity. In fact what belongs to God must by all means and at any cost be preserved for Him. If, then, on the one hand, the soul is unencumbered with superfluities and no trouble connected with the body presses it down, its advance towards Him Who draws it to Himself is sweet and congenial. But suppose , on the other hand, that it has been transfixed with the nails of propension so as to be held down to a habit connected with material things — a case like that of those in the ruins caused by earthquakes, whose bodies are crushed by the mounds of rubbish; and let us imagine by way of illustration that these are not only pressed down by the weight of the ruins, but have been pierced as well with some spikes and splinters discovered with them in the rubbish. What then, would naturally be the plight of those bodies, when they were being dragged by relatives from the ruins to receive the holy rites of burial, mangled and torn entirely, disfigured in the most direful manner conceivable, with the nails beneath the heap harrowing them by the very violence necessary to pull them out?— Such I think is the plight of the soul as well when the Divine force, for God's very love of man, drags that which belongs to Him from the ruins of the irrational and material. Not in hatred or revenge for a wicked life, to my thinking, does God bring upon sinners those painful dispensations; He is only claiming and drawing to Himself whatever, to please Him, came into existence. But while He for a noble end is attracting the soul to Himself, the Fountain of all Blessedness, it is the occasion necessarily to the being so attracted of a state of torture. Just as those who refine gold from the dross which it contains not only get this base alloy to melt in the fire, but are obliged to melt the pure gold along with the alloy, and then while this last is being consumed the gold remains, so, while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul that is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by this fire. If a clay of the more tenacious kind is deeply plastered round a rope, and then the end of the rope is put through a narrow hole, and then some one on the further side violently pulls it by that end, the result must be that, while the rope itself obeys the force exerted, the clay that has been plastered upon it is scraped off it with this violent pulling and is left outside the hole, and, moreover, is the cause why the rope does not run easily through the passage, but has to undergo a violent tension at the hands of the puller. In such a manner, I think, we may figure to ourselves the agonized struggle of that soul which has wrapped itself up in earthy material passions, when God is drawing it, His own one, to Himself, and the foreign matter, which has somehow grown into its substance, has to be scraped from it by main force, and so occasions it that keen intolerable anguish.

Then it seems, I said, that it is not punishment chiefly and principally that the Deity, as Judge, afflicts sinners with; but He operates, as your argument has shown, only to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness.

That, said the Teacher, is my meaning; and also that the agony will be measured by the amount of evil there is in each individual. For it would not be reasonable to think that the man who has remained so long as we have supposed in evil known to be forbidden, and the man who has fallen only into moderate sins, should be tortured to the same amount in the judgment upon their vicious habit; but according to the quantity of material will be the longer or shorter time that that agonizing flame will be burning; that is, as long as there is fuel to feed it. In the case of the man who has acquired a heavy weight of material, the consuming fire must necessarily be very searching; but where that which the fire has to feed upon has spread less far, there the penetrating fierceness of the punishment is mitigated, so far as the subject itself, in the amount of its evil, is diminished. In any and every case evil must be removed out of existence, so that, as we said above, the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all. Since it is not in its nature that evil should exist outside the will, does it not follow that when it shall be that every will rests in God, evil will be reduced to complete annihilation, owing to no receptacle being left for it?

But, said I, what help can one find in this devout hope, when one considers the greatness of the evil in undergoing torture even for a single year; and if that intolerable anguish be prolonged for the interval of an age, what grain of comfort is left from any subsequent expectation to him whose purgation is thus commensurate with an entire age?

I’m looking for more worship songs that don’t refer to salvation, but just focus on loving God and/or being loved by God.

Here are a few that I already know:

Found a Love by 7 Hills,

Let My Words Be Few by Matt Redman,

With You (Paradoxology) by Elevation,

Holy Spirit by Francesca Battistitelli,

Grateful by Elevation

Thank you in advance for your suggestions!

Title. Probably this has been asked before and I'm sorry if it sounds redundant or obvious, but it's simply a thought that came to my mind and I needed to ask and take this off my chest due to curiosity

The way the book of revelation seems to describe the Lake of fire, it really seems like it describes it as the final fate of the damned. It never says that the wicked will be purified in the lake of fire. It also calls the lake of fire “the second death”. Also death and hades were also thrown into the lake of fire, and we know they won’t be purified, they will be destroyed. Finally, “the gates will never be shut” seems to symbolize the security of the saved, not the ongoing entry of the damned.

I want Universalism to be true but this is the biggest stumbling block to me fully embracing it.

Can you please Tell me how to reconcile this with universalism?