Tag Archives: Hell

Walking, Talking Christ

Life is hard.

It is hard fighting it.

We seem to be fighting life from the negative side or from the bad side of the equation. We believe that if we fight for a bad cause to make it better, life will get better. But fighting from this angle it can wear us down after time. In fact, our crusade could take us our whole life to conquer it. If even then it would be conquered then. This is just coming from a personal conviction, what about everyone else?

This way of fighting the negative could be considered a social fight to rid the world of the all the ‘so-called’ evil in the world. The effort that ‘our’ mission seems to be to rid the ‘evil’ is misguided in that God has vowed that this is ‘His’ job to fill. Man’s ability to make the ‘social ills’ of society, could be a disaster to all involved by the turmoil of what someone deems to be ‘evil’. We may be seeing this now in our world now.

But more importantly, who is to say ‘What is Evil or bad in one’s society’?

The other side of the coin, could be, no, It ‘is’ the way to attack the world. It is the standing up as a follower of Christ and the ‘identity’ that it upholds as the body of Christ. As was in the old testament the identity of God’s people was their identity of their law, and their own God. God’s change to the new covenant was to write the ‘law’ on the hearts of his people.

Our concept of what our ‘identity’ as a Christ follower has got to coincide with what the foreshadow of the old covenant. We must stand as representative of Christ in our world, such as a High Priest would do in Israel.

I saw an illustration of a small group of people singing carols in a circle, holding candle’s, with one being lit. The key to this illustration is the way that it is the right way to do it. You see, When one has the lit candle in a crowd, showing light in a dark place, all others are wanting to be ‘in’ the light. So there instinct is to ‘go’ to the one that has the light and be ‘like’ or just ‘be’ light.

You started with one candle lit(Christ’s light), with darkness all around him. You then are approached by someone from the darkness asking for to be in the ‘light’ with the touching of candles, to produce a brighter light. Those two lights are approached with another candle wanting to be lit as a light for himself, and for others. It is then seen by someone farther away in the darkness, that sees a light for direction, and goes there to have their candle(life) represented as a light in the world.

It is this model of God’s people coming together as one that will become God’s Kingdom.

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Filed under Kingdom of God, New Perspective, Our walk

Deconstruction

It’s starting over. erasing everything on the paper. tearing your model apart. Start from scratch in the kitchen. breaking your wood project to pieces. clearing your mind.

Re-Reading the Bible from start to finish.

This is actually what is going on in many people minds or philosophies,or even theologies. It seems to be the word in christendom. But I believe that it is almost always done outside of the walls of the church. You see, You might be chastised if you were tell the preacher or an elder that this is not right what we are doing in the church.

It is outside the walls of the church building, that things are being relooked at all levels of christianity. Their has been alot of different avenues of christianity that has been pushed, or thought of as the ‘way’ that the scriptures were pointing us to go. Just in the last 100 yrs their has been 2-3 models that have been instituted thru the name of God, that has never worked out. (this is only for the United States)

Let’s start with the oldest one that started in the 1940-50’s that the small evangelical preacher was supposed to ‘Preach Fire and Brimstone’ upon everyone’s head in those small towns to get them to heaven. This was all the rage. It eventually came to the city, and then was always used in the service to have everybody down at the alter to repent of their sins, and to make sure you would get to heaven, and not hell. People of persuasion were bullying people into Heaven.

Just can’t find this in the scriptures as being used as ‘way’ into Heaven anywhere. (besides being a wrong theology)

The second one is the let’s make a difference thru the church by melding our beliefs into the political arena, so that everyone must conform into it by law or legislation that we pass. This started in the 1980’s and has come crashing down upon us in the last few years. Which we won’t get in to. But it was this thinking that christianity must be inside the government to ‘make’ a difference in the US. This was the way to do it, so they thought.

This again, is nowhere in the scriptures the way that God’s people were to ‘sway’ the gentiles into submission.

Another big thing that was all the rage was the actually BIG CHURCH in the town that ‘everyone’ went to, to emphasized the awesomeness of God in one place by either from the pastor, or from the sheer ‘hugeness’ of the congregation. But this too has died a slow death, once everyone figured out that they felt all ‘alone’ in those 15,000 church’s. Their was no attention to the fellowship of people in the more intimate way of sharing each others lives in a daily basis way.

Again, This is nowhere to be found either in the old testament or new testament!. (Israel’s multitude in the time of the Exile when their people were flourishing, is not an example of this) Especially in the New Testament.

I have said this is many other blogs of mine that we haven’t really focused on the theme of the bible, (or what I call the Eternal Purpose)or the actually Forrest of it, instead of the tree, that we seem to be crazy about.

Why have we not just sat down in our chairs, and just DECONSTRUCT God’s Theology for us. Start at the beginning. After we have destroyed everything that we have used before in our theology. This is a must. No, It is a Command!!

Clear your mind of all previous ways, institutions, traditions, sacraments, or inheritance of beliefs and start from a clean sheet of paper!

Start in reading Genesis, slowly reading everything with the concept of that everything that is going on started with a plan a perfectness of God, it went wrong with the building materials God was using(us), but His plan was to get it back to His original plan. Keep this in mind all the way thru the bible, til the very end, tada, it does!

Start over, Today.

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Filed under Deeper Understanding, Kingdom of God, New Perspective

Update on latest books read

I like to every once in awhile keep people up to date on my studies and books that I have read.

My latest books that I have read are in the same genre in a way, they include things that pertain to the theme of ‘Universalism’. Like “I say to the people that ask me what are you reading now”?, I tell them that I am quite diverse in my book reading or interest in the subjects of the bible. This topic is of a controversial subject that has been in the christian history since the beginning of the New Testament, it has not ever gone away. It seems that in the last 20+ years it has come into the spotlight in alot of different arena’s in the christian realm. This is why I took up the gauntlet to delve into the subject. Here are a few of the books that I come across to educate me.

The first one is by David Bentley Hart-“That All shall be Saved”.

This is probably one of the two books that challenges the concept of ‘Hell’, which is a part of ‘Universalism’.

The second one is by Richard Rohr –“The Universal Christ”.

Addresses the ‘Saving of All’

The third one is by Haley Goranson Jacob –“Conformed to the Image of His Son”.

Very deep material of why man is restored to the image of God.

The Fourth one is by Ilaria L. E. Ramelli –“A Larger Hope”

This book is the going thru the Apostolic fathers that were either hinting of the concept of ‘Universalism’ or was intentionally. This was thru the Middle ages.

The Fifth one is by Robin A Parry –“A Larger Hope”(second volume of first)

This book continues with the prior one thru the 20th Century of Apostolic fathers and others that were instituting the claim of ‘Universalism’.

I would recommend all these books for research and studying for increased knowledge of biblical theology. But I am especially impressed with both authors of the book “A Larger Hope”. They are all very deep and will need prior knowledge of alot of scriptures to use as references. But this is what it is all about in ‘seeing’ the scriptures as they are presented to us as a complete story of God and His Eternal Purpose.

Let me know if you get to read any of these Great books and your opinion of them or any questions on them.

Good Reading!

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Filed under New Perspective

Does Kingdom theology answer the theology of the Jews?

There is a difference of opinion of the jewish world and of the christian world in the eschatology of both. It has a few reasons why the jewish world has denied the christian eschatology, one has been the notion of dieing in this world and proceed to heaven for all the good people, and the bad, well, you know,hell.

The Kingdom of God theology, that is being now preached in various forms of avenues to christians has a different scenario for all of us. It is the storyline of God creating a world, for his creation’s, to work along side of everything He created, with God walking with us. It was when mankind, saw that He could run it by himself, without the creator in any shape or form. It was a ‘make the world and just leave it to us’ kind of scenario for mankind.

But God had a twist to this storyline, He being the God that He was, was not leaving totally to the story, He was to be involved in various things to maybe show the bad, and good things of the ‘mankind experiment’ until God’s involvement in bringing His people back around to Him. Abraham was the beginning of Gods retaking his world from mankind.

God showing the world that his only son, was the model of God’s ‘New World’ of his Kingdom is born when Jesus conquered the ‘Death’ of Mankind, that was holding it back from achieving the ultimate goal of God’s perfect example of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

God’s Kingdom is alive! It is being lived out in yours and my life that is progressing to the ultimate reality that is described in Revelation 20-21 of the New Testament.

Heaven(God’s government) is now with the world of his people, He is now all in all!

This is a very, very short storyline of what I could actually describe to you but if you desire more explained or just a question of something, I will return a answer, I hope.

Something to think about, it does connect some puzzle pieces tho!

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Filed under Kingdom of God