The following letters address questions posed by two friends regarding the teaching of Christian Universalism, also known as Total Reconciliation or Universal Reconciliation. The points at the heart of these letters as well as many others with expansive discussion are contained in  An Abstract of Bible Cosmology: Providing an Exhaustive Refutation of the Spirit-Doctrine of Christian Universalism.   

Chris Anderson

www.firstloveministry.org

First Discourse

 ------ Original Message ------

From: "littleflock"

To:

Sent: 9/16/2012 4:59:21 PM

Subject: Key Points Rebutting Christian Universalism

Hello Jonathan,

After our talk this morning, I wanted to send this to you. It is taken from another letter I wrote earlier this summer to one of my readers, with some embellishments. It contains the key overarching thoughts that explain why universal reconciliation cannot be true and anyone promoting it is a false teacher. I hope you will find it useful and would be glad to talk with you about it further if you would like to.

Many blessings,

Chris Anderson

Christian Universalism is the belief that ultimately all that has fallen and been corrupted in the universe through sin (i.e., everything) will eventually at some unknown future time be restored to harmonious perfection in Christ. This means that all men will be saved out of hell, and in the inescapably logical extreme that satan himself will be restored to God.  It is not based on an objective view of God as scripturally presented in context of the minds of the first writers, but in a prejudiced view of what God is supposed to be like superimposed on the scriptures, requiring the disregarding of the context of mind of the first writers.

To advance their belief, universalists have to prove something that they cannot, which is that all enmity itself in the universe will be abolished through restoration, not destruction. Complete harmony requires the abolition of all enmity by restoration, not by any concept of final defeat, which is still enmity.

The problem is that from Genesis 3:15 forward to I Corinthians 15:24-26 thence to the last chapter of Revelation (22:15,19), the entirety of scripture and of the plan of salvation is based on the premise and presumption of only a partial restoration/salvation by means of removed enmity (reconciliation), against a remaining irreconcilable enmity that is only defeated by destruction and vanquishment, not reconciled by restoration.

The only way universalists have of overcoming this monumental obstruction to their cosmology is to dishonestly reinterpret the meaning of all words that speak of permanent "destruction" and "perishing" and “defeat” as to somehow mean "restoration." (Black is white and white is black.) Their case rests on linguistic absurdity.

Apart from this, universalists can only make their case by "cherry picking" certain scripture terms like "all" outside context of the complete apostolic mind of those who wrote them to say for example that "all" men will be ultimately saved without exception (rather than without distinction).

They also heavily depend on -- positing that “given enough time” into the "ages of the ages," complete restoration can and will happen. It is a sort of a "theory of evolution" toward the future which has to be read into the scriptures in which judgment somehow eventually mystically spontaneously converts to salvation (just like the theory of evolution backward says non-life spontaneously becomes life).

Thus the process of judgment converting to salvation over enough time becomes the ultimate savior of all men. It is not the death of Christ that ultimately saves men from death. It is their own death through this undefined mystical process that somehow converts judgment to restoration that saves them, outside all rational meaning of Christ’s death on the cross for men. Men are saved by paying for their own sins in hell at least in addition to (if not instead of) whatever Christ may have accomplished on the cross. And this is a false gospel.

For universalism to be true, a dispensation of the scriptures would have to be given to us backed by a hitherto unseen apostolic power and revelation of Christ similar to that at Christ’s first coming that would result in the complete rewriting and restructuring of the biblical concept of enmity. Such has never happened, and the only church fathers Universalists can point to for clearly supporting their position are those like Origen who were not given the apostolic authority to write scripture and establish church doctrine for this age.

Such men came after the founding apostles and without power. So until another surpassing revelation of Christ happens that can rewrite the entire biblical concept of final enmity other and beyond what the first apostles left us, no one has a true basis for asserting a concept of Ultimate Reconciliation. The most that universalists have been able to do to overcome this lack of dispensational change demonstration is to write their own translation of the Bible--as any other cult does. But it doesn't work. Their translation has no power to overcome the concept of remaining irreconcilable defeated enmity in the mainframe scriptures that the Holy Spirit left to the church.

I hope this small discussion will help you understand and be able to cope with anyone who is purveying this teaching. In God's time, the full treatise with all the evidence from scripture and spiritually empowered wisdom will come out.

Many blessings,

Second Discourse

[In response to forwards by a Readers Circle member of articles from a total reconciliation teacher named Ken Visscher.]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 1:18 PM, littleflock wrote:

Dear….,

Following is a quote from [Visscher’s] testimony page at his website:

"My preaching was that of the deranged preachers who teach of a God of everlasting torments for the damned."

(The spirit of this attitude is known to be very strong in Alberta and the NW in general where it has been espoused there since the beginning of the Latter Rain movement.)

Visscher, Herrin and others like them would do well to consult with others like Bill Wiese who have actually been to hell and who can tell us from first hand revelation whether or not there is any way out. (See http://spiritlessons.com/Documents/BillWiese_23MinutesinHell_Text.htm)

Anyway, inasmuch as Visscher considers me a deranged preacher, I have no further need to receive his writings. Please do not send me any more writings from anyone who is promoting “total reconciliation.”

Thanks, and blessings…

Chris A.

PS - For what it is worth, the following is my statement on this topic as it is soon to be posted on a new page on my website called “Distinctive Teachings”

Thanks again.

2. Re: Total Reconciliation / Restoration of the Creation / Christian Universalism

The Gen 3:15 enmity established between the serpent with its seed and the woman with her seed (Christ) is permanent, remaining the unaltered basis for irreconcilable conflict on which the entirety of the Scripture cosmology is woven to the very last chapter of Revelation.

- 2.A. All restoration of Creation through Christ happens inside the unmitigatable enmity between Christ and Lucifer--an enmity born outside of time and which therefore has no end. The Restoration of Creation does not eliminate this enmity. Christ did not die to redeem Lucifer.

- Mankind is of three spiritual classes: Sheep (the reborn elect seed of the Father), Lost Sheep (the hidden elect "planting of the Father" yet unborn within men) and Goats (the non-elect seed of the serpent). The Sheep seed and Goat seed are permanently irreconcilable. 

- 2.B Goats are destined to the Lake of Fire, the Lake of Fire is permanent, both soul and body being destroyed (not "restored") therein.

- 2.C.Total Reconciliation belief is based in offense toward the sovereignty of God and the appeasement of  human rationality rooted in the human concept of fairness derived from the knowledge of good & evil. It is an Adonijah-class deception ultimately designed to secure the receiving back of the rebel Lucifer into the kingdom via the "woman" (the deceivable "passion-dominated" church--the "queen mother"--before the King), and is a manifestation of spiritual treason on the part of anyone who holds to it, however unwittingly.

- 2.D. God bears no more responsibility for the fall of Creation or the deserved eternally destructive destiny of the Goat seed than He bears for the fall of Lucifer, the father of that seed. Yet God receives all credit for His gracious destiny toward the Seed of the Lamb and the establishment of the New Creation that will never fall. 

From:
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 2:02 PM
To: littleflock
Subject: Re: The Fellowship of the Mystery - The Heights

Hi Chris,

God bless you and thanks for the response. I hadn't read that quote from Ken and I certainly don't agree with his position that all preachers that teach eternal torment are deranged. However, I also am not convinced that Scripture teaches that God will torture men for eternity because they sin for 80 years. If God condemns the sin of unjust weights and measures, why would His punishment for sin be so disproportionate? Sin for 80 years, tortured for eternity?

I am still working this subject and have not come to a settled conclusion but I will share this. Most ministers of the established denominations view the Lake of Fire as a place of torture. Those who teach universal reconciliation believe it is the place where God ultimately reconciles man back to Himself, by burning up all that is of the flesh and is anti-Christ. Teachers of eternal hell-fire also tend to gloss over any scriptures that testify differently than they believe, for example, that Christ is the saviour of all men, especially those that believe, and that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. For what purpose? That they might then be tortured in the lake of fire for all eternity? 

I haven't made up my mind on this one, but I won't reject it out of hand just because the majority teach or believe differently. Of course, I will however honor your request and won't forward any more teachings from those who promote universal reconciliation.

Peace, and blessings,

From: littleflock
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 8:14 AM
To:
Subject: RE: The Fellowship of the Mystery - The Heights

Dear ….,

We have the choice to believe what scripture says because it says it as reflected by the clear contextual minds of the writers, or to believe what we think the scripture should say because of what appears “fair” or “right” to our rational mind. Human rationality is not a basis for determining spiritual truth.

The entire case for Total Reconciliation is based on combined human estimation of fairness, human offense at the judgmental nature of God as unequivocally presented throughout scripture, and human desire to assuage the offense of unbelievers over all the same—all repackaged by its teachers as superior “hidden revelation” that only the “truly spiritual” can see.

That’s the bottom line. It’s that simple. Your own response is witness to this, doubly so by the fact that without comment you breezed right past the doctrinal statement I supplied you which already preempted your platform for defending this teaching. (See the first sentence under 2.C. there.)

Total Reconciliation is a prejudiced doctrine in search of support against the overwhelmingly clear grain of the Spirit as expressed through the minds of the writers of scripture. As an illustration, it has to “cherry pick” from a smattering of isolated debatably identifiable “evergreen trees” among a forest of clearly identifiable “deciduous trees” to try to prove that the forest is after all an “evergreen forest.”

A child reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation with an unjaundiced eye can see only one thing—that the mind of every scripture writer is grounded in context of irreconcilable enmity between Christ and Lucifer, and between Christ’s people and Lucifer’s people. Passages cherry picked in isolation that could be made out to “prove” eventual total reconciliation are interpreted against this clear context of mind of all the writers. Nowhere does Paul or John or Peter or James or Jude or the writer of Hebrews or any gospel writer or even the Lord Yeshua Himself paint a context of thought that articulates the universal mitigation of the foundational Gen. 3:15 enmity—not one!

Why is this vital to the case? It’s because Total Reconciliation is not a minor point of debate over an inconsequential issue. Total Reconciliation seeks to alter our entire cosmologic framework of spiritual belief. Since the implications of Total Reconciliation are so utterly fundamental to the perception of ultimate galactic destiny, if it were true, don’t you think that even at least ONE writer of scripture would come right out and explain it???

If the redemption purchased at Calvary somehow embraced the ultimate release of all men, satan and his angels from the Lake of Fire, why wouldn’t Paul—the meticulous “rational” teacher to whom was committed the task of explaining to the entire church age the cosmologic picture of what Calvary obtained—why would he not tell us in bold forefront terms that the ultimate purpose of hell is to “purge” people of all their sins and transform the very nature of satan himself to become reconciled to God??

Are we supposed to believe that to Origen, to other unknown post-apostolic fathers and then to some isolated unknown 18^th / 19^th century American teachers like Andrew Jukes and their Latter Rain seed was committed this “hidden” and “lost” revelation of such counter-grain cosmologic implication???? (Isn’t this the same pattern and platform on which every cult since the first apostles has been formed?) If we want to talk about being rational, why not start here?

Since Total Reconciliation as a cosmologic teaching has no fundamental contextual support from any of the Bible’s writers, its teachers have to resort beyond simple cherry picking of debatably interpretable single word texts (like the meaning of “all” which virtually always has a delimiting conditional application; and “everlasting” [aion] which in so many contexts clearly admits of no end) to the rationally absurd forced redefinition of the entire family of words that describe “punishment, destruction, damnation, torture, perishing, etc.” as if they could in any way be interpreted “redemptively” as synonyms for “discipline.”

Of course, such “tortured” redefinitions (pardon the pun) are really the evidence of “higher revelation” to the “illumined” while the “masses” who simply believe the meanings of words with childlike faith are “deceived.”
[…]  Again, isn’t this the same pattern of thinking as that of all other cults? (True to this pattern, Total Reconciliationists actually have to come up with their own privately interpreted Bible translation to advance their case.)

By contrast, sound spiritual teaching does not have to fight the common grain of word meanings or the apostolic contexts of mind as revealed through the common translations to make its case. Rather, it supports them.

In the end, Total Reconciliation makes an absurdity of Calvary itself. John 3:16 tells us that the purpose of Calvary was to make it so that men “might not perish.” If to perish under the flames of the Lake of Fire is in reality God’s ultimate plan to “save” and restore men through what is but a more severe form of “discipline,” ( a concept Hebrews tells us to welcome), then Calvary was first of all unnecessary, secondly is far reduced in significance and thirdly, it was illogical.

According to Total Reconciliation, Christ really ultimately died to save men from being saved! But that is not all. If the blood spilled at Calvary was to save men from perishing in hell, but hell is also designed to “purge” men of their sins, then it means either that 1) there are two means of salvation, in one of which men themselves have to pay for their own salvation via hell (which Scripture absolutely denies), or 2) the blood supposedly works in hell anyway, which means there is no saving purpose to the fire and also renders meaningless its John 3:16 purpose  to prevent perishing in hell—so back to rational absurdity we go. There is no way out of this for Total Reconciliation.  

Next, what is the fruit of Total Reconciliation? Take a good look at the ministries built on it. They have no meaningful burden for the lost. They don’t want to even talk about saving men from hell (only from “sin”). Why do men need to be saved from something that is going to save them anyway, if only (when weighed in eternal terms) it is a “little more” unpleasant way to go?

Can anyone point to any revival where the conviction of sin, righteousness and judgment was present in which men were being persuaded that they merely needed to avoid hell fire and damnation as a less preferred path to salvation?? No. So instead, what are Total Reconciliationists finally consumed with? They are lost in their ivory towers of “revelation” and consumed with proving their cosmology. That’s all. And that is no fruit at all.

The final nail in the coffin of Total Reconciliation is what it means for the concept of spiritual warfare. Scripture tells us in no uncertain terms that we are at enmity with the devil and his forces. Total Reconciliation dilutes our perception of Lucifer from being our permanently sworn enemy to our eventual “brother” in the celestial by-and-by. One cannot steward psychologically opposing views of satan and long maintain a position of warfare against him.

You can’t kill someone you believe you are to be reconciled with. You are instead emasculated of all real ability to earnestly oppose him. See, the Lord of Hosts would not have told us to war to the death against satan if He knew and wanted us to know that satan was eventually going to be our friend. And if He knew satan was going to eventually become our friend, yet still expected us to war against him now in this life, He would have never told us about this future reconciliation in this age. It would have been strategically counter-productive.

Furthermore, if Total Reconciliation is true, and we are to live by faith, and faith is the active seeing and embracing of future things as realities in our hearts now, then what Total Reconciliation combined with faith ultimately teaches us to do is to embrace Lucifer now by faith. This conclusion is inescapable. And in its inescapability, combined with our knowing our times as the breeding ground for deceptive teachings designed to draw us into embracing the man of sin, this one spiritual truth is all one finally needs to know to understand the true “origin” [again, pardon the pun] of the teaching of Total Reconciliation.

Total Reconciliation is from the war command center of our sworn enemy. It is an Adonijah-class deception perpetrated on a smug revelationist people dominated by their own spiritual passions and offenses in God who think they can see more than they really can and who believe that everyone else outside of this “revelation” is “deranged.” (This teaching will eventually become a major centerpiece in the conflict between the faithful saints and the falling away saints.)

So as I said at the beginning, we have a choice. We can either accept the unbreakable Word of God as it has been written in its offensively plain language, embracing by faith what appears from our limited human vantage as rationally unfair and unjust about our God (yes, there is plenty of Old Testament evidence of the Lord forcing his enemies to worship Him), or we can create and embrace our own irrationality by trying to break the scriptures to suit our “rationality.”

We can either let the scriptures judge us and our perceptions, or we can judge God and the scriptures, and wrest them to our own liking. And in that process, we can spiritually destroy ourselves before our enemy. It is because of the seriousness of these implications (specifically, the unconscious implication of spiritual treason,) that I can have no concourse with any teacher who is promoting Total Reconciliation, however good his revelation may be in other areas.

Let me just close by reminding you of something that I see about you... On one hand you have a wonderfully eager spirit after truth. But on the other hand you seem to have an in-bred “fatal attraction” to counter-orthodox teaching. True revelation is “trans-orthodox,” not “counter-orthodox.” There is no virtue in believing in a doctrine simply because it is opposite to what the majority believe.

It’s important to remember that Jesus Himself was orthodox in His beliefs, siding with the Pharisees in His beliefs about most fundamentals against the Sadducees. However, He was “trans-orthodox.” He saw beyond where the Pharisees could see. But His revelation remained squarely on the foundation of the scriptures before Him. He was not counter-orthodox. He came to “fulfil” the Law, not “destroy” it by His revelation.

True revelation works with the grain of the Scriptures, not against it. Sadly, there are many with revelational gifting who can nevertheless not discern between true revelation and counterfeit revelational spirits of counter-orthodoxy. This is how all cults get started. I see in you a strong attraction to a spirit of counter orthodoxy that you need to recognize and overcome. I see where down the road it will mean the difference between the fulfilling of your destiny as a leading teacher in the body of Christ or the crashing of your destiny on the rocks of some other cult yet to rise.

You said you had things to “settle on” yet. And you are right. But what you really need to settle on is not the points of doctrines under question, but your relationship to your own rationality before the scriptures in coming to your conclusions. You’re going to have to say, “No” to it.

I end here. Hope this small “dissertation” will work to your permanent edification and growth.