heartache and hope

You may have noticed that my efforts to communicate my views on here are - sporadic. That is because I don't feel inclined to write unless I think I have something useful to say. This last six-month pause though, has been for quite a different reason. I believe I have something very useful to say now, but to get to that conclusion I have to go back to February of this year, 2008... I hope you have the patience to stay with me. The end is better than the beginning.

Some who read this blog may not be what is somewhat mushily described as an ‘animal lover’. This should not mean that such folk view cruelty to animals as acceptable. Any form of intended cruelty toward any living creature (which of course includes us two-legs) is biblically and morally wrong. There are no degrees or exceptions. I would recommend that the God-fearing, God-honouring person who thinks this is not so should read ‘Planetwise’ by Arocha’s UK Director David Bookless.

In February of this year I discovered a form of cruelty that is going on in this world which so horrified me that I could not get on with my life. I had ‘sort of’ known about it since the late seventies, but not realized its extent or detail.

It is not my purpose here to torture your sensitivities and go into graphic descriptions of what ‘they’ do to (for instance) cats and dogs in the meat-markets of the East. Such practices are equally as horrific, the only compensation being that the animals do not survive for long and their suffering is soon over.

This wasn’t about cats and dogs, it was about bears, and their suffering goes on in one unending hellish existence for maybe as long as fifteen years - though most don’t survive beyond ten - and there are no ‘good bits’ to compensate.

My best-beloved is very fond of hedgehogs, and quite likes badgers, so when he sees the road-kill remains of one of these creatures, he mourns for it. He might not feel quite so sad if he saw the mutilated corpse of a rat however. He doesn’t like rats. That is an inconsistency of values in my view; while we may empathise with the sufferings of dogs or cats because they are companion animals, the idea of a BEAR being cruelly treated might not seem to matter so much to some of us, but suffering is suffering, whatever experiences it. Cruelty is cruelty wherever it is found.

If you want to find out about the bears and what is happening to them in various countries, there is no better place to go than

http://www.animalsasia.org/

which is the main page for Jill Robinson’s wonderful AAF rescue and sanctuary, and then navigate to the tabs you are interested in – but if you just Google ‘bear bile’ you will very soon get the salient details and sooner or later come across the first heart-rending experience of JR when she ‘accidentally’ opened a closed door on a bear-breeding farm in China, and had her life forever changed by the actions of a single suffering bear.

Well, back to me, back to February. I could not cope with the awfulness of the bears suffering, and the fact that there was no end to it, ever, until they died a miserable death. There wasn’t anything about the situation that could soften the pain in any way for them, or for me. They were tormented and I was tormented right along with them. I would get up in the morning from a comfortable bed and think of some bear forced to lie flat in the same position in a crush cage for fifteen years. I would drink a cup of coffee and be reminded that the bears were habitually given minimal amounts of water and food with no adjustment for the heat of the summer. I would go out into the garden and be aware that none of them had ever felt the grass beneath their feet.. all they ever know is pain and fear and a desperate need to not be where they are.

It was difficult for me to maintain a normal appearance and go about daily life in the usual manner so that my dear hubs would not be upset. As it was, he knew something was wrong. I would often be overcome with anguish and have to hide in the bathroom until I had control again and could tidy myself up enough so that he would not know I had been crying. Of course I used these private moments to call out to the Lord.

And the Lord answered me.

The very first response I got from the Lord was in my daily message on the computer. It was

Psa 145:17-19

The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. The LORD is near unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that fear him: He also will hear their cry, and will save them.

Coincidence, you might say, but for me these words had a stabilising effect and I thanked Him and felt strengthened.

Only it didn’t last.

Before too long I was back on the floor again, struggling to cope with the knowledge that such dreadful things were happening, and had been happening for over twenty years. How could the Lord allow such a thing?

Back to the bathroom, back to the Lord.

I got another message on the computer. This one said

Psa 62:8

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us.

Again I was strengthened. Again it didn’t last and I soon became overwhelmed and had to send up another S.O.S.

This time I got

Psa 34:15-17

The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. The righteous cry and the LORD hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles.

I could go on, and show you message-by-message how the Lord spoke to me as the days went by, but that would take up a lot of space and your time as I have got pages and pages of these responses here on the computer. The point is, each time I needed to hear from the Lord, the message I got was exactly what I needed, to encourage or strengthen me, and on those times when my need was not so great, the daily messages became random scripture quotes again.

Of course I want the whole horrible bear-business to end, and so I started to pray intensively for that to happen and for bears to be released. As it happened, on the 31^st March, 28 sick and dying bears WERE released to the Chengdu Sanctuary run by JR and her team, but what influence my small prayers had on that is debatable. What I soon realised though was that for this vile industry to be brought to a full end, and soon, a ‘miracle’ was needed, and that if the Lord’s promise that He would hear and respond to my prayer was to be trusted, there was only one Person who could really do the job..

That got me thinking about the second coming, and about the dreadful state this planet is in, with widespread suffering and cruelty being the lot of millions of people, never mind the animals – surely it must be time for Him to return, to deal with those who are destroying the earth ( Rev 11:18)

I was lying in bed one night, settling down, when my drifting mind was suddenly given three pictures. The first was of three crowns tumbling down to some white fluffy stuff, which I took to be clouds. The second was of a giant weighing machine, which I understood was to weigh the earth, the third was of an unfinished circle drawn on the ground.

I debated on these pictures and concluded the Lord was saying that the Kingdom IS coming, and that the earth is to be weighed ( meaning judgement or evaluation on our actions in respect of the Lord’s creation I suppose), but that the process is not yet completed, the unfinished circle.

I pondered this and got the idea ( from my own thinking, not from the Lord), that the Lord would be returning very soon – maybe on Psalm Sunday, maybe at Easter, and that kept me going. It didn’t happen then of course, nor on the later Eastern Orthodox Easter date either (I was grasping at straws now), and I went right down to rock-bottom again when that hope finally expired.

Back to the Lord.

It was May, and China was much in my thoughts, particularly Chengdu and the sanctuary and Jills Blog was daily read for information on the bears that had been rescued. I knew by now, that however low I got, the Lord is always there – He never leaves us nor forsakes us and remains faithful even when we do not - and that He would lift my head up again with encouragement and hope, and that my prayer will be answered.

Then came the earthquake.

I have mixed feelings on the Chengdu earthquake. So many innocent people perished; school-kids, babies, decent men and women, and, of course many animals, including bears. A tragedy for everyone. Why Lord? Yet I could not dismiss the fact that it was a significant event mainly affecting that region of China where my thoughts and prayers had been focussed. Quite what the connection might be I could not say; maybe just a sad ‘coincidence’.

I cried out again to the Lord, because if my prayer for the bears was to be answered, it had to be within a reasonable time (recalling Abraham’s ten year wait for HIS promise from the Lord to be fulfilled), and now my prayer was actually a request that the Lord Jesus should return, not just for the bears, for only He can clean up this earth and end the cruelty and injustice forever. I reasoned that He would not return simply because this particular speck of dust (or any other come to that) was asking, but it might be that the Lord God had laid this burden for the bears upon me at that time in the world’s history which would indeed see His return.

One of the scriptures the Lord kept giving me was

Php 1:6 ..he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

Good work? Me? Perhaps He means the caring for the bears.

I needed to know WHEN the Lord was returning, for though I was trusting that it must be soon, ‘soon’ could be anything from ‘almost straight away’ to ‘months or years from now’ if scripture was to be the guide. As one who views the present situation as in urgent need of remedy, I did not think I had the resources to go on waiting and waiting and still maintain an expectant hope…, so, not the hour or the day, but maybe the month Lord?

Well… a day or so after I had pleaded with the Lord about this, I was lying in bed, again, but this time it was morning, and I suddenly got two more pictures, just out of the blue. The first one I could not comprehend. There was a thick black line at the top, then there was a round black filled in circle some way below it and just to one side of that a semicircle of black shapes that looked like the spines on a dinosaurs back. ‘Eh? Wassat?’ I thought.

The next picture followed immediately after, and it was a crown, just like the crowns I had seen previously, but this time just the one. I was perplexed. What WAS the Lord saying to me?

Then I got another picture, or, rather, a word. It was written in thick black lines, much as you might see in a Chinese ideogram or a Chinese painting of bamboo leaves. Happily for me though, it was written in English. The word was ‘Eclipse’. Wow. I immediately understood the first picture was a stylized depiction of the sun being eclipsed by the moon. Still a bit slow on the uptake, I surmised that I must look for a coming solar eclipse, either over China or over Jerusalem. Sure enough, when I got on the computer, I found that there was indeed a solar eclipse due, over China coming up. The date was August 1^st.

Why, I wondered was the Lord telling me this, and why only one crown in the picture that followed? Then I got it! The eclipse was just a marker. The message was ‘First the Eclipse, then the King’. Wow again.

I went back into silly mode after that and started setting a date. I knew it was ‘only me’ working this out, but it seemed to me that either the Lord would return immediately the Eclipse finished, or He would come on an appointed day, and the only soon-day I could think of was the 8^th day of the 8^th month of the 8^th year of this millennium. 888; the number of the Saviour’s name. It didn’t happen of course, and if I had my thinking head on I would not have ever thought it might.

In Genesis 1:14 we are told that the moon, sun and other stars, the ‘lights’ are to be for ‘signs and seasons’. The Hebrew for ‘signs’ can be understood to mean ‘signal that something is coming’; a flag, a beacon, a mark, a token, so says Strong. You get the idea. See a SIGN and you know that it indicates that something is going to occur in relation to it – like a red sky at night ( Matt 16:3) – and when the Lord has given that sign in the lights of heaven, you can be sure it will be something you need to take notice of. There ARE signs, which I will not go into now, that we are at the beginning of a seven year period.

The Hebrew word for seasons is not to do with winter, spring, summer etc, but the ‘appointed times’ of the Lord. It is especially relevant to the timing of those feasts of Israel ordained by the Lord, because, in the ancient times the beginning of a month was set by the appearance of the new moon (Ps 104:19). I am not sure it is the practice now.

Of the seven feasts ordained by the Lord, the first three happen in Nisan, the first month of the Jewish Sacred year. They are; Passover Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits. Then comes what we call Pentecost, fifty days later in Sivan. These four feasts are called the Spring feasts, and they are a memorial to the great works of the Lord in the history of His people.

In the autumn you have the other three feasts, also gathered together very tightly, beginning with Trumpets, which is held on the first day of the month ( as decided not by set calendar but by the appearance of a new moon). This month, Tishri (or Ethanim), is the first of the Jewish Civil new year, but the seventh month of the sacred calendar. These feasts, Trumpets, Atonement and Booths are ‘shadows of things to come’, looking ahead to God’s promises. The one I want to mostly draw to your attention though is the first day of the month, Trumpets, held on Rosh Hashana, which means ‘head of the year’. There is something very special about this day, and a divine and world-shaking event is keenly anticipated to occur in some future Feast of Trumpets. It doesn’t get much more ‘key’ than the second coming of the Lord. When He comes, this will be the day.

So.. if the Lord is telling me the King will come after the eclipse of 2008, which was on August 1^st there is only ONE day on which that event will take place, and that is the first day of Tishri, somewhere between our Sept 29^th and October 1^st depending on when the new moon is seen. But what about ‘watch for you do not know when your Lord will appear’ – isn’t it written that no man nor angel knows the day or the hour, only the Lord God?. Indeed, and we don’t know what hour or day in advance of the new moon, but I have discovered something else as well. It is not for dead certain sure that Tishri actually IS September-October 2008. According to this website

http://avoiceinthewilderness.org/study/fall_feasts/tasoy.html

Trumpets rightly belongs to the first week of September and not October, due to a slippage in the more popular calendar calculations. I do not have sufficient information to comment about that, but it does suggest that we do not know for sure the day or the hour.

Well, we shall see. If I am mistaken I shall have to deal with it and go on, but if not, then the glory of the Lord will soon be upon us. Maranatha Lord, Amen

Is that what it REALLY says??

H’okay, I am back after a long period with nothing useful to say - and I got a rant. I have held it close to my bosom for many years. Most folk who innocently get me started on it, turn away with a starey look in their eyes when they realise where I am heading. They do not want to know. So I mostly keep it to myself, and when it has occasion to surface I content myself with a muttering under the breath and directing fiery thoughts at long-dead people.

It is to do with Scripture, the Holy Bible, God’s Word (this is where the starey look begins).

Halloo-oo, are you still there?

Good!

See, in most of our English translations of the Protestant Bible ( I can’t speak for any other and this is not about Textus Receptus versus Alexandrian etc), there are words which have not been closely translated from the Hebrew and the Greek in relation to what the original text intended to convey.

Let us be clear here. Whenever text is translated from one language to another, something is going to be ‘lost’, because the finer shades and nuances, or the ‘moods’ or the emphasis, whatever, cannot be precisely carried over from the original. In these situations it is right and proper that the translator should seek to convey the intent by whatever means are at his disposal in the language he is translating to. That is legit, and I have no problem with that at all.

There are also words that are untranslatable; such as the Hebrew ‘eth’ for example. ‘Eth’ acts as a device of singular emphasis for pointing at ‘that object itself’, a bit like the reflexive pronoun in Greek perhaps.

Whatever the language you start with, there are limitations in translating, and that means you are never going to get a complete ‘match’ from one language to another. I understand that. Not a problem. That is not where my point of difficulty lies.

What upsets me is the DELIBERATE changing of the meaning in a word, or the particular ‘slant’ given to a passage, not because it conveys what it is says in the original more accurately, but because THAT is what the translator(s) THINK it SHOULD mean, according to THEIR understanding - and also, SLOPPY TEACHING because too many people think they understand a passage, so seldom bother to actually check it out from the original language.

This is GOD’S Word, not ours. If He got men to write through the influence of His Holy Spirit (2Tim 3:16), who among men has the authority to change what has been written into something more accommodating to their own understanding?

When translators and teachers do this they are leading the people away from the truths God wants us to know. They are misleading thousands – millions – of people into believing that Scripture is describing a particular viewpoint that is not there at all. This would not matter so much if we all took it upon ourselves to check the scriptures in the original languages, to see if these things are so - but mostly we don't, because we trust that we have been taught the truth of what is there by our leaders and so don't need to explore it for ourselves. Or, in another word - laziness

Are you still here?

Do you want some examples?

OK. I will use the KJV as that appears to be the most widespread, and perhaps the most popular and I have it to hand...

1. We are taught that Genesis 1:16 says that the sun, moon and stars were made, in the sense of 'created' on the fourth day – right?

That word ‘made’ (asah) is never used to mean 'created' (that word is bara) . This is about sloppy teaching rather than inaccurate translation. The sun, moon and stars are not said to have been created on the fourth day. What that verse is actually saying is that they have been ordained to rule. The word for ‘made’ has many applications, and ‘ordained’ is one of them.

Psa 136:7 To him that made great lights:

Psa 136:8 The sun to rule by day:

Psa 136:9 The moon and stars to rule by night:

Psa 8:3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

Jer 31:35 Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name:

all these highlighted words refer to something appointed, set in place, given to rule over. none imply 'created' as in the sense of them suddenly popping into our reality on the fourth day. So you know it is not just me making this claim, here is what the JFB commentary says in reference to the sun and moon.

Both these lights may be said to be "made" on the fourth day--not created, indeed, for it is a different word that is here used, but constituted, appointed to the important and necessary office of serving as luminaries to the world, and regulating by their motions and their influence the progress and divisions of time.

and Fausset on the difference between bara ( to create), and asah (to make) says –

‘Everywhere else God "makes" ('asah), as from an already created material, the firmament, sun and stars, and the brute…’

when you understand that the sun and moon and stars are already in place in Genesis 1, you do not have to tie yourself in knots trying to explain how we got light before we had a sun, or why the good Lord mucked around with His own laws of physics and created the earth before it had a star to orbit - etc etc.That is not to say that the sun moon and stars were not created - Psalm 148:5 confirms that they were - but not on the fourth day.

There WAS a time of creation, there was a time BEFORE creation, but that is not what Genesis 1 is about - and therein is the clue to yet another example of mistranslation - but best left for another time methinks


2. Scripture teaches that man has a soul and in this he is above the animals, for they do not have a soul – right?

That is NOT what Scripture teaches.

In almost every example where the word ‘soul’ appears in the English text, it is to do with a person – there are a couple of places where the phrase ‘every living soul’ could include everything that breathes. Animals are never described as ‘living souls’ in our English translation. Because of this we naturally assume that the soul is something men have and animals do not.

The words for ‘living soul’ are ‘chay nephesh’ in Hebrew and describe a ‘living breathing creature’ and it includes the essence of that being, all that it is, not just its physical aliveness. If man is called chay nephesh, and that is translated as ‘living soul’ what then is the Hebrew for an animal? It is also ‘chay nephesh’ - exactly the same words, only our translators never say an animal is a living soul. They prefer ‘living CREATURE. A false distinction is therefore made, and we assume that WE have (immortal) souls, but that the animals do not. There is more to say about this, because the idea of the soul as a separate part of us which survives death is not taught in Protestant Scripture either – but that is another issue and not one to lay at the door of the translator.

3. Hell is taught throughout Scripture – right?

Our concept of ‘hell’ is NOT reflected in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the Greek the text has been ‘manipulated’.

‘Hell’ is a word that occurs a lot throughout our (KJV) translation of Scripture, and the images called to mind when this word appears send a chill through the heart. In the Hebrew there is nothing about Hell and hellfire, as we understand it today. The proper Hebrew word the translators have replaced is ‘Sheol’, which refers to the abode of the dead as a deep pit or a grave. To equate Sheol with the idea of ‘hell’ we are taught to fear is, to say the least, misleading. When Jesus warned his disciples about 'Hell' in Matthew 5, they would have been thinking about Gehenna, which was the rubbish dump outside the city, and understanding that he was quoting from Isaiah 66:24 to indicate that those who did not have the right attitudes would not be raised to enter into his coming kingdom here on earth.

It would take too long to go into the treatment of ‘Hell’ in the Greek, but that too is worth checking out if you have access to a Greek New Testament – or a good commentary.The parable of Lazarus and the rich man seems to loosely fit with our understanding of 'hell' - but does it? This website might give food for thought

http://bible-truths.com/lazarus.html.

4. It seems to make sense, but…

Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

That word – worlds. It isn’t ‘worlds’ (Gk kosmos), but age ( Gk aion).

The chapter is to do with faith and the fact that people kept faithful even when the promised things they looked for hoped for throughout their time on earth remained unseen.What I am protesting about here is the fact that, with the exception of a few, all translators choose to say ‘worlds’ when they KNOW the word that is nearest in meaning is AGE. They decide that ‘worlds’ fits ‘better’ for what they assume the scripture is trying to say, so they throw out the word that they should be translating from and supplant it with another of their own choice. That is wrong!

These are four small examples of how our understanding of Scripture is influenced by what our translations say, because the translators are NOT sticking as closely to the Scriptures as they ought to do, and our teachers are 'going with the flow'of traditional understandings rather than seeking to communicate what scripture actually says.

It is important that we understand what Scripture is saying to us – and when you look into these things for yourself, it can change your understanding and strengthen your faith – and, the Truth will set you (and me) free.

Seeds of Change

We begin with a parable (I haven't done parables before, so don't chide me if it is rubbish).

There was this man see, a ruler, who owned vast estates and property and several wives, from whom he had a multitude of children (he had quite a lot of spare time too). He did not often get close-up with his children and so remained a somewhat remote figure to many of them, but he kept tabs on each one and nothing happened that he was not made aware of, however trivial the event might be. Whatever they did, he seldom interfered, and they were not constrained from enjoying the liberties and luxuries of the world they had been born into, allowed to go where ever they wanted and do what ever they pleased within the boundaries of the estate they lived in.

Other people considered him to be a just man, and he gave himself the title of a loving father (you can see where this is going can't you), which his wives would not have disputed, except for the one rule that he imposed upon his children's lives, which was this. When each of his offspring reached the age of twenty years, they were to come before him to receive an inheritance from him, to take immediate effect, and the child upon whom the inheritance was bestowed would then be escorted to one of two gates, from which there was no way back in, to begin their new life.

The young man, or young woman, would stand before him, waiting to hear what their lot was to be. Their father would look down upon the bowed head and then declare his decision. If they had fair hair, he would send them to another part of his kingdom where they would enjoy every blessing that life could bestow upon them - beautiful grounds, every need met, a fulfilled and happy life - and they could praise their loving father forever. All those with dark hair however, would be sent to the deepest mines known to man, from whence they would never return to the light of day, and never know anything but unremitting toil and despair - and they too could praise their loving father for ever, if they had a mind.

End of parable

Would you call that man a loving father? No, neither would I.

Insert the word 'predestination' in there somewhere and you will perhaps see the point I am trying to make.

I come from an evangelical background, and in all my years of church going, I do not recall ever hearing a preach on the subject of predestination. It is an embarrassment, a sweep-it-under-the-carpet job that people do not really want to have to think about, Calvinists excepted, because most of us can see the unfairness of bringing people into this world with it already decided who would inherit salvation, and the rest being condemned to some sort of punishment simply because they had not been ‘chosen’.

But is that really the only conclusion that we can draw – that God has arbitrarily chosen who will be His children and who will not, even before the world was made? Is that really what scripture is saying? No. It can’t be. That flies in the face of what scripture promises, and of all that we know of God as desiring all of His children to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4).We must look again.

Here is another ‘parable’.

Once upon a time (Well - Why not?) there was a large flat field hemmed in by rocky ground. The farmer who owned the land had first planted tender green plants in this field, but something nasty had quickly come in and smothered them, so now, all that grew in this field was a thick blanket of weeds, insidiously poisonous and of no use to man or beast. These weeds lay low in the heat of the day but opened their dark little flowers at dusk and spread their seeds in the cool of the night.

The weeds were vigorous, having root systems that traveled deep and wide, searching out every drop of moisture the good Lord sent, with wiry tendrils above ground that clung to and dragged down any plants weaker than themselves, and seedy heads that detached like barbed thistledown, floating off in the gentlest of the night breezes, to lodge and prosper in any dark niche or crevice they fell into. The field belonged to the weeds.

One day, the farmer who owned the field passed by, and seeing the state the field had come to said ‘Hmmm, the crop I first planted in this field has been changed to a blanket of weeds and the field is unproductive, I must do something about that.’

A certain time later, the farmer came back in the early part of the day, holding a small bag of grain in his hands – certainly not enough to broadcast over even half the field, not even a quarter of the field. Nor did the farmer seek to burn the field, plough it and start again with new seed, knowing that the weed-seeds in the soil would soon enough germinate and start the cycle all over again.

The Farmer had a better plan.

Painstakingly he walked over every part of the field, for the whole of each day it took to complete the task, until the light was almost gone. At certain places the farmer would stoop down and carefully clear the weed around him in a circle of half an arm’s length, and then he would take a handful of ground- sweetening salts from out of one of his many pockets, and dig that into the soil, for the weed preferred sour soil and would be slowed in its attempts to reclaim the sweetened ground.

Then he would plant a single grain of seed – a very special seed. These seed had come from one Plant. The fruits of that Plant held all the potency and goodness stored up in its thirty-odd year season of earthy growth, and each of these seeds, come direct from the first fruits of the harvest, had a special quality; they each shone with an inner light. The darker their surrounds, the brighter they shone, and the weed, being sensitive in all its parts to the proximity of light, would be damaged and inhibited in its growth. Moreover this property of light was transmitted to every cell of every leaf that the seedling thrust out, and as the plant grew it would reclaim more and more of the space around it as the weed recoiled from the shining-gold of its stalks and tendrils, flowers and leaves.

But this was not all, nor would it be enough. The weed vastly outnumbered these special seeds, so that only here and there, in isolated spots, could the glowing tips of new clean growth be seen in the light of each new day, and where their tendrils had not reached, the weed prospered and spread as it always had. And, even though the glowing seeds were effective as soon as they were sown, some were sown much later than others, so that their greatest time of effectiveness was never going to be in union with each other, but rather just a few at a time were in the same stage of their growth, though the first ones to be planted, being quite close, certainly did make an early difference.

So that was how the farmer left the field – still with the weeds in place, but here and there, cleared places, where a shining plant would eventually rise over the tops of the cringing withering weed that surrounded it still.

So how could the war against the weed be won?

Something wonderful.

One at a time, the shining plants matured and died, and where they had stood and dropped their grain, other glowing plantlets began to grow in the widening circle of soil that had been kept clear by the shining of the parent plants. Now it is true to say that these newly born ‘sons-of-shining’ did not have quite the same powers of light that the first-fruits seed possessed, but the weeds of darkness draw back from any source of the special light, and these little plants, as they grew, also had power to clear the ground about them, though in smaller measure and when THEY died and their seed fell to the ground, yet more ground was conquered, so the ranks of the golden ones were growing with every plant that died, having done its work.

When the farmer came to harvest that field after some considerable time, the all-encompassing blanket of darkness was reduced to isolated patches. He found in its place a sea of golden grain waving in the breeze.

OK – I enjoy weaving little stories and this might not be my greatest yet, but here it is explained in plain.

The blanketing weed is everything which separates us from God, blinds us to the light and kills our spiritual growth.

The first-fruit seeds from the Plant (who is Jesus) are individual people that God foreknew, and sent into the world to fulfill His purposes – predestined them for a particular role in life, equipped them so that they would be able to make a difference to their surroundings – setting people free from the things that ensnare them and spreading the light of the Gospel all around.

The sons-of-shining are their fruit – us ordinary Christians, not predestined, not elected, not chosen for a particular task, but able to spread our own light to the people in the world around us, so that they too can begin shining out their portion of light as they receive new life and are born again as the seeds of our fruit.

Still in plain, I am saying that the predestined were (and are) certain people, individuals that God somehow foreknew, just as He foreknew Jesus, from before the foundation of the world and whom he has called at particular times throughout history for His purpose into this world, and given them a particular job to do. These are the first-fruits of Jesus.

We ‘ordinary Christians’ are the fruit of THEIR labours – not necessarily directly, but because of the life-changing effects their ministry brought or brings to the world. And, as we spread our light, others too can be brought into the kingdom.

However, those who are not changed, who prefer to stay under the weed, they will die unsaved and have to stand before the judgment seat and perhaps, if their names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, will have to face the remedial effect of the Lake of Fire.

If that is NOT how it is, then I have to ask, how is the Universalist idea of predestination much better than the Calvinists view, since the Universalist view, as I understand it, requires us to believe that everyone who comes to Christ now is one of the chosen, predestined, elected people, and every one who is NOT predestined to be a follower of Christ in this age will, by default, end up in the Lake of Fire simply because they were not chosen.

How fair is THAT?

My little story has its faults– I accept that. I can see ‘yes-but’s’ - it isn’t a perfect answer, but at least it describes a level playing field where everyone has the chance to decide for themselves and so, if they end up in the L of F, it is a consequence of their own making rather than one which has been thrust upon them..

It would be wonderful if someone with the wisdom that comes from above, could reveal something that fits better with all that scripture says, and that is equally as fair and respective of a loving Father who does not treat His children in an arbitrary fashion. Until then, for me, this will have to do.

beyond the bookends

Symmetry appeals to us, it has a certain finished beauty and harmony, it looks ‘right’ – wouldn’t you say?

That is what I like about bookends. They nearly always match, and they do the same job at opposite ends, no matter what the size, shape or thickness of the books you poke in-between.

Life seems to have a certain book-endishness about it; you are born, and you die, and everything else comes in-between.

So when I see this verse in my bible

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22)

it just makes me want to say ‘Yes Lord!’ because I see in that statement the symmetry of a wonderful truth.

But that only works if you actually believe what it says in every part...

This Universalist That verse means exactly what it says, that just as every one dies because of Adam(‘s sin), everyone will live because of Christ(‘s sinlessness). The ‘all’ of the first part encompasses the same group of people as the ‘all’ of the second part –everyone.

Traditionalist 1 Ah, no, everybody dies because of Adam’s sin, that is true, but only those who accept Jesus as their Saviour will live, so it doesn’t actually mean what it seems to be saying…

Traditionalist 2 Well, yes, everyone will live. Everyone will come out of the grave, but only those who have done good will continue into Life, the rest who have done evil will be condemned, to ah, death again.

Traditionalist 1 (warming to theme) you see, we are all in Adam in the sense that he began the human race, so his sin has been passed on to every one of us who are his children – the whole of mankind. You can’t make something perfect out of something imperfect you see. Then, when you choose to accept Christ as your Saviour, you are born again, from heaven rather than from earth, so then you are in Christ – children of God rather than children of Adam. No-one can be saved unless they first come into a relationship with God through accepting Christ’s sacrifice for sin.

This Universalist I agree, absolutely.

Traditionalist 1 EH?

Traditionalist 2 Pardon?

This Universalist I agree. About Jesus being the only way, and that no-one can come into a relationship with God unless they accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord. We are singing from the same hymn sheet here bro.

Both Traditionalist’s You DO? We are?

The problem arises (this is me talking to you again now) because in the traditional understanding, if you don’t find Jesus in the 80ish years you are allotted for kicking around in the dirt, that is it – you don’t got no further chances. Unless you have gladly bowed the knee and confessed with your tongue that Jesus is Lord and given your heart to Him and been born-again by the time you breathe your last – you have lost it, forever.

Universalists don’t see it that way. We think there is life, not death, beyond the bookends, because Jesus really does have victory over sin and death, not for some, but for all, for He is the Savior of the World (1Jn 4:14). God’s love and patience and mercy are unfailing - they don't stop at the grave.

Yes there is judgment, yes there is punishment – but, as with Israel, a remedial punishment, to turn the rebellious children back to the One who made them.

Isaiah tells us that God commands that all of the ends of the earth look to Him and be saved and that God has sworn by His own name that the time will come when every knee shall bow (in homage and adoration), and every tongue swear, (oath of allegiance to God as King) Isa 45:22-3.

It means that God desires that ALL men on earth should be saved, and that He will not rest until that goal is accomplished. The words of Almighty God do not return to Him empty(Isa 55:11).

This is an earthly setting, yet future for us, a time beyond our bookends perhaps, maybe referring to the consummation of the ages, when Jesus has handed over the kingdom to the Father, having conquered even death, which is the last enemy, leaving only Life eternal, so that God is All in all, meaning there is no part of God’s Creation that has not been reconciled to Him – not even ‘hell’. 1 Cor 15: 22-28

Well how about that; we finish where we started – symmetry.

Hell Bent

The 'traditional' Christian quickly dismisses any consideration of Universal Salvation as a believable alternative to Hell, because it clearly seems to go against Jesus own teaching. Maybe if Jesus was a bit 'fuzzy' about what happens to the wicked, or not so graphic in his illustrations of end-time scenarios then they could play around with the idea and think, maybe…, but as it stands, there seems to be no arguing with what the eyes see plainly written in the gospels as the very words of our Saviour.

I could spend the rest of this squeak showing how the word ‘hell’ does not appear even once in the original languages, and what the various words translated as hell in some of our bibles are really referring to, but I think that it would be more useful to think about what the people listening to Jesus might have understood him to be referring to.

First, who was Jesus talking to? - his countrymen, the Jews, all those who came to listen to Him as he preached the sermon on the mount. Some were his disciples of course, but many were not. However, the majority would have been Jewish. Jesus didn’t deliberately preach to the Gentiles. Paul did that – and do you know how many times Paul mentioned Hell?? Not even once.

Second what was Jesus talking about? - The long- promised Kingdom that would be set up here on earth – not in heaven. The people of Israel were longing for the Messiah to come and deliver them from Rome and into the glorious liberty of the kingdom which God would set up on earth, as described by the Prophets and Daniel. If they died before that happened, and if they had lived godly lives, they expected to be raised back to life when that day dawned.

In Matthew 5:3-11 Jesus identifies what sort of people will be able to claim entry into this kingdom, but in verse 13 there is a warning, that if there were those who lost their good attributes, their ‘saltiness’ then becomes worthless and all that remains for them is that they should be cast out, meaning cast out of the kingdom, and in verse 20 he warns that if people are not a lot more righteous than the Pharisees ( meaning righteousness displayed not by outward show, but sincerely from the heart), they would not become part of this kingdom anyway.

Then Jesus goes into the bit about the judgments and the comparison of how it will be in the kingdom. This is the first time the ‘hell’ word is used, and as far as is known, this would be the first time his hearers had ever heard it used in this context. Jesus reminds them that under the ancient Law, a man would be judged at the gate and by the local judiciary for murder, but, says Jesus, in his kingdom, even being angry with your brother without cause would bring you into judgment, and if you should speak contemptuously toward another, with no love in your heart, you would be in danger of --- Gehenna fire.

What sense could his listeners have made of this? To them, Gehenna fire meant the place outside Jerusalem where the dead bodies of criminals and animals and all the filth of the city was thrown, to be consumed by the maggots and burned by the ever-feeding fires. If a man’s body was condemned to that place, it meant he was an outcast and, even in death, rejected, outside the walls of the city and accursed. No rising into the new kingdom from this place

Whatever thoughts these folk were pondering upon hearing the Lord’s words, it wasn’t anything to do with the ‘hell’ we think of when we read that passage in our bibles, nor would it make sense for us either, for Jesus would be saying that we are saved, not by Grace, but by our own righteousness, and that if, in the kingdom we suddenly lost that righteousness that had earned us the place, we could be thrown out, like worthless salt.

This is just one example of how our scriptures have been twisted by men who translated not what they SAW the word to mean but what they thought it OUGHT to mean, according to their own understanding. They had no right or God-given authority to write the word ‘hell’ anywhere in scripture, for every one of those places where ‘hell’ is written has another word which describes it properly, and without any of the ‘hellish’ connotations we have had imposed upon us to the greatest harm. I hope this gives someone food for thought.

ponders

A bit of a wander off-topic today. Not that I am ‘done’ with Universal Salvation; far from, but there is time for ‘this’ as well as ‘that’, God willing.

I was sitting in church last Sunday, quietly minding my own business, as much as you can when there are 80 plus other people sitting all about you, busily minding theirs, and out of nowhere came the sudden realisation that Self holds each of us in an iron but invisible grip. We are talking ‘Christian’ here. Perhaps that statement is not true of every Christian, but it seems it is true of me, and I do not think I am alone.

I sat there, isolated in a bubble of alarm, acknowledging that this thought was true and wondering how I could break this iron grip that most of the time I am not even aware of. You get glimpses of it don’t you. There you are, singing away, supposedly giving praise to the Lord, and you might just catch the tail-end of a little thought that scurries across at the back of your mind; I wonder if the person in front can hear me singing in tune. Or it might be that you have to do a bible study, or a talk. You work long on it and you end up pleased with it, and then what happens? You go through the scenario in your mind of how well received it is and how highly people will think of you and your abilities – you want the glory!

OK, these are ‘little’ things, but, the point is, they are all about serving self, and we as Christians are supposed to be done with that – aren’t we?

Some years back I attended the same church as a guy called Jeremy. He used to give occasional sermons which were rambling, unfinished and incoherent to my way of thinking, and whatever the topic of that day, he always managed to mention the verse from John 7:38 where it talks of living water flowing out from a believers ‘belly’, meaning the inmost parts of the self. He was nothing special to look at; a bit scruffy, lanky, drab. Almost invisible really, until you got up close and looked into his eyes. Then you saw deep kindness, gentleness and humility. You saw Jesus.

Jeremy was a do-er, not a talker, which is why his sermons were so ragged. Jeremy spent his days doing things for other folk. He would mow the lawns of old ladies who couldn’t manage it themselves. He would mend things for husbandless housewives. He would regularly visit men in prison and people in hospital. He lived each day for the Lord, the way we all should.

Don’t get me wrong! I am NOT saying we should all give up doing ‘serious’ jobs – the gears of commerce and industry and the world we all live in needs you to keep going for all our sakes.

Nor am I saying that doing good for its own sake is the right or only way to please the Lord (though it helps). It isn’t the ‘doing’ but the WHO we are doing it for that makes the difference.

I sat there in my chair trying to puzzle out what this sudden thought was saying to me. Is ‘self’ a bad thing then? I thought of Adam and Eve and their situation. They had ‘selves’, they had ‘needs’ which catered to the self. She was made for him and from him because the Lord saw that Adam needed a companion, and the whole human race is here because of the God-given appetites the self needs to be satisfied. What is wrong with being a ME? Well, nothing. The wrong comes, as it did in the garden, when you put ME first. Is this too simple a view? Disobedience, rebellion, separation. The self goes it’s own way, pleases itself and says ‘stuff you, I am going to do what I want to do'. Sin results and wickedness is made strong.

It says in Romans that in the flesh dwells no good thing, so that made me think of another aspect. Is the self a fleshly self or a spiritual self? Bullinger would have it that there are two natures in the child of God. Perhaps he is right. As people who have accepted the Lord as our Saviour, we have been given new hearts and new spirits – but does that mean new ‘selves’? The old man is of the flesh and the new man is of the spirit. One of us has got to die, shriveling like an under-watered plant, but which one does the ‘self’ live in?

Well, I could go no further in this deepening speculation. I am a bear of very little brain. My solution to the awareness I have suddenly been confronted with is simply to try to give back to Jesus each moment that I become aware is being held by Self. It doesn’t involve anything grand, and I don’t expect that the Lord will take those retrieved moments and produce even a drop of something shiny out of them, but just to quietly ‘let go’ , release the self’s hold ( now with a small ‘s’) and give that moment into His hands. For me, for now, that is enough.

second squeak

Well, here I am again, and after spending quite a chunk of prime snooze time pondering how to start, I think I will begin at... the beginning.

Hanson does it better than me, but takes rather longer.

Ok Here we go.

Universal Salvation is the belief that, sooner or later, everyone who has ever lived will come to acknowledge that Jesus (or Yeshua, or Messiah if you prefer) is their Lord and Saviour and as a result of that acknowledgement will be reconciled to Almighty God.

There are other names for this belief. The latest is 'Doctrine of Inclusion', but 'Universalism', 'Restitution of All Things', 'Universal Redemption', 'Universal Reconciliation', 'Universal Salvation' and 'Christian Universalism' ( to distinguish it from Unitarian universalism, which is not the same thing), are all alternative names for the same core belief - and there may be other titles I don't know about, but you get the picture I expect :) .

This belief is based on

a) what the original scriptures teach
b) the character of God as revealed in scripture
c) the declared will and purposes of God as plainly written in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures.

Before I became a Universalist, and on the rare occasions that the subject came up, I would hear other Christians say 'well, if we are all going to be saved anyway, why did Jesus have to come and die for us?' Nobody would answer this query, nobody was expected to. We would all sort of nod our heads slightly in agreement or say 'mmm' wisely, dismiss the idea of universal salvation as a nice thought but unscriptural, and go on about our business.

Was it a fair question? Was it a logical conclusion that we all came to? No. If Jesus hadn't come and died on that cross, NO-ONE would have been saved, but He did, and because of that EVERYONE will be saved, for the Father sent Him to be the Saviour of the World,( 1 Jn 4:14) and nothing less will meet that blessed description.

The belief in Universal Salvation is not a new idea. For most of the first five hundred years of church history it appears to have been the prevailing doctrine. It was actively taught in the Didascalia at Alexandria probably by its first head, Pantaenus, certainly by Clement who succeeded him around AD 190 and then by Origen. Eusebius, in his history of the Church says that the Apostle Mark founded this school when he came to Egypt preaching the gospel around 41-44A.D.

Enough