by nicolaou 64 Replies latest watchtower bible
When the Bible quotes Jesus as saying I am the way, no one gets to the father except through me? We take that to mean that eventually, God will say, "Okay, it's time, go save everybody, it's time for death, destruction and sorrow to come to an end." Believing in God or Jesus isn't necessary. As if God can't understand your doubts. God's love is bigger than your doubts.
Here is an excellent articleon Universalim in the early church and link to the book it's based on:
Universalisim has meant many things through out the years.
The term catholic means universal.
The bible teaches that ALL are God's children, in potential if not in actuallity, but it also makes clear that there are some that are elected, since the dawn of time.
Some view this as ONLY the elected are God's children and scirpture can be viewed as saying such, but then we have John 3:16 and Timothy to deal with.
The bible tells us that ALL that come to God, through Christ, as sealed by the HS, but it also says that does that do have been preordained to do so.
It seems very condtridictory at times, but only if we choose to take passages and paly them against each other, instead of bleinding them into ONW message and ONE gospel.
The scriptures were present. The Bible canonization is political to me. A group gaining power and the want to say this is sacred and this is not. The representatives were fully aware that the four gospels have discrepancies and a different tone. They debated merged them into one gospel and using that as their official document. Others believed the four gospels we have now revealed deeper truths in the aggregate. The Four Gospel crowd won. It could have gone the other way.
They had more writings than we have access to now. From my research, there is more certainty concerning Jesus' sayings than the narratives that contain them. Different churches prob. used different scriptures. I am sure the Eucharist and other rituals also varied.
BOR, have you read this book?
When it boils down to it, even children can figure out that the fundamentalist, exclusive approach to God and salvation is cruel and doesn't take realistically into account the many, varied circumstances of individual human beings. If we can figure out that it's an extremely unfair approach, how much more so can God? No, atheists and Eastern philosphers do not have the market cornered on how little sense the Bible makes if it is taken to be literal. Lots of us Christians do, those that are also Universalists. There are also those who come somewhere on the spectrum in between eclusive and universal.
