Kindle Notes & Highlights
shed light on MacDonald’s view of the afterlife, as well as clarify for them the subject of universal reconciliation as a whole.
Raised in the tradition of conservative evangelicalism, for most of my life I haven’t known what to make of universal reconciliation either.
we may TRUST him, and trusting him, may trust him for ALL things, for ALL men, for ALL possibilities. What is in the heart of God the Father to do will be full of love, full of goodness, and full of forgiveness.
essential nature and character
I trust God far more than I trust in my capacity to understand the infinity of his loving purpose.
Being wrong does not frighten me nearly so much as being unable to trust God to do what is right and good, though my fallible human intellect will of a certainty be unable to discern how he will accomplish that in every instance. Having said that, however, obviously I would not make available the result of my own reading and research into this matter, if I did not think the Scriptures pointed to principles which the Spirit of God wants to reveal to his people.
so that we will know who God is and that our capacity deepens to trust him.
I would rather expend my energies seeking more deeply to understand the character of God and obeying him, than attempting to determine rightness or wrongness about every debated issue where the Bible leaves room for varying interpretation.
These are high matters to be discussed with our Father in heaven, to the center of whose heart all questions and controversies and unanswerables must lead in the end.
What follows is a non-exhaustive compilation of quotes and a brief list of scripture verses which indicate a greater reach to God’s salvation than is commonly believed.
constantly stretches his readers in their capacity to trust in the infinite goodness of God’s Fatherhood.
Nor do I think, as F.D. Maurice points out in his essay which follows, that the world has much reason to listen to the gospel until we truly apprehend the character of the God that gospel is purported to be about.
For a reason which has puzzled me as long as I can remember, it seems that the multitude of evangelical Christians don’t want God to be too good. They are inexplicably threatened by the thought that God might be more loving and more forgiving than they are.
If we don’t know whether God’s love and forgiveness are really infinite, what then is the “good news” we proclaim to the world? Merely that he saves us from hell? That with his right hand of love he rescues us from his left hand of vengeance? That the loving Son protects us from the wrathful Father?
divine schizophrenia at the heart of the Godhead
the world isn’t heeding the gospel message. I think it is largely because we are confused about who God is and what is his intrinsic character.
universal reconciliation.
a belief in universal reconciliation is not “heresy.”
Matthew 25:46
Philippians 2:10
must come to this question with an open and prayerful mind.
Much prayer and the illumination of the Holy Spirit are required.
That twisting of a viable scriptural position into a doctrine people are taught to fear has rendered impotent the vital inquiry into the character of God, and thus has seriously weakened evangelicalism itself.
personal hunger and a search for truth lead to wisdom and understanding,
understanding and wisdom come as a result of an intense search for truth with one’s whole heart.
In what follows, therefore, you have to make some determinations concerning the character and spiritual integrity of those whose words you are reading.
William Barclay spent a lifetime of Scriptural study, gradually developing the view of the afterlife that he did not make public until three years before his death.
while prayer enters more into the personal accounts of those seeking for truth no matter where the search might lead.
that “orthodox-tradition” driven studies are more proof-text oriented, while “search-and-prayer” inquiries probe more persistently into the long-range, general, and more overarching purposes of Scripture.
The scholarship of the studies by Jukes, Allin, and Symonds profoundly surpasses anything I have found by the contemporary “theologians” and authors who are writing on these topics.
ask to whom you are listening.
many preachers, teachers, and would-be theologians do not set themselves to prayerfully study the scriptural possibilities concerning the afterlife, so much as they set themselves simply to expound upon what has been expounded by thousands before them.
It is such shallow, populist, pseudo-theology that fills the books and pulpits by which evangelicalism is forming its perspectives.
Our love for one another completely transcends doctrinal issues.
Obsession nearly always leads to imbalance. And imbalance usually tends away from truth.
ISAIAH 1:25 I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove all your impurities. (NIV)
ISAIAH 46:9-10 I am God, there is no other, I am God, and there is no one like me; I reveal the end from the beginning, from ancient times I reveal what is to be: I say, “My purpose shall take effect, I will accomplish all that I please.” (NEB)
ISAIAH 48:10 See, I have refined you . . . I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. (NIV)
ISAIAH 45:22-24 “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth. By myself I have sworn, my mouth has uttered in all integrity a word that will not be revoked: Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear. They will say of me, ‘In the Lord alone are righteousness and strengt...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (NIV)
See what a scorching wind has gone out from the Lord, a sweeping whirlwind. It whirls round the heads of the wicked; the Lord’s anger is not to be turned aside, til he has finished and achieved his heart’s desire. In days to come you will understand. (NEB)
JEREMIAH 31:34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. (NIV)
LAMENTATIONS 3:31-33 For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. (NIV) Though he may punish cruelly, yet he will have compassion in the fullness of his love; he does not willingly afflict or punish any mortal man. (NEB)
EZEKIEL 18:23 Have I any desire, says the Lord God, for the death of a wicked man? Would I not rather that he should mend his ways and live? (NEB)
will go in search of my sheep and rescue them, no matter where they were scattered
EZEKIEL 37:12 I will open your graves and bring you up from them, and restore you to the land of Israel. You shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them, O my people. (NEB)
JOEL 2:28, 3:21 And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people . . . Their bloodguilt which I have not pardoned, I will pardon. (NIV)
MICAH 7:18-20 Who is a god like thee? Thou takest away guilt, thou passest over the sin of the remnant of thy own people, thou dost not let thy anger rage for ever but delightest in love that will not change. Once more thou wilt show us tender affection and wash out our guilt, casting all our sins into the depths of the sea. (NEB)
HABAKKUK 2:14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. (NIV)
MALACHI 3:6-7, 10 “I the Lord do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed . . . Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty . . . “Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.” (NIV)
