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 APPENDIX D

“Show Me the Specs:” Sample Questions for Christian Universalists

The book of Hebrews puts forth the intricate “mechanics” that must occur between the blood of Christ and the human soul in order for salvation to occur. (Please review PART 4 § Book of Hebrews: Exacting Specifications of the Atonement Confined to the Terrestrial Human Soul). These mechanics must be fulfilled regardless where in the continuum of one’s existence salvation occurs. Salvation cannot occur without them.

Christian Universalism, to be valid, must account for applying all these mechanics in hell and in the Lake of Fire. Universalists proclaim that the “scriptures declare” in “hundreds of verses” God will eventually save all men and angels out of the corrective Lake of Fire. But how? If this is to be taken as true, since it far exceeds the detailed limitations on the atonement revealed by the apostles, it is mandatory that Universalists show somewhere somehow from scripture the specific revelational mechanics that override the plainly understood apostolically declared limitations.  

If the Holy Spirit required the laser precise elucidation of the terms and conditions of human atonement, how or why could He require less if He truly intended by “higher revelation” to teach beyond the terrestrial conditions He had already explained? When defending the replacement of the Old Covenant with the New Covenant, the New Covenant apostles could not just say, “We see a higher revelation in the Old Covenant.” They had to articulate and defend the spiritual mechanics in detail. (Yet those specifications nowhere close the enmity continuum on the wicked as if to postulate universal reconciliation.)

By the same token, anyone claiming a higher revelation than the “apparent” operations already given us about salvation is utterly obligated to prove the same. Here is a list of just some of the numerous spiritual particulars Victorious Gospel proponents must explain about their gospel:

1.     Where is universal salvation demonstrated in the founding event pattern of Old Covenant salvation, that is, in the events of Passover?  Specifically, what demonstrates that the slaughter of the lambs would ultimately lead to the deliverance of the Egyptians from their own system and would resurrect their dead back to life after the death angel had destroyed them and later their armies at the Red Sea?

2.     Where is the evidence from the Old Covenant pattern that the sanctification of Israel as a people set apart to the Lord for salvation out and away from the universe of men converts to mean the absorption of the universe of men into Israel?

3.     Where is universal salvation demonstrated in the typed destruction of those from within Israel who rebelled against the Lord after the Passover and Red Sea? Where is their eventual reconciliation typified?

4.     Where is the evidence that all terms marking salvation as a separating apart from the whole of mankind (sanctified, chosen, elect, etc.) converts to mean the absorption of the universe of men into salvation? By what mechanism does this happen?

5.     If all men are elect and chosen and sanctified, what is the meaningful point of those terms?

6.     Since all salvation detailed in scripture is preventative of the destructive death group, where is the evidence that all terms related to salvation transmute to mean “salvation” by the agency of the death group once judgment has fallen? How does salvation from damnation become “salvation” by means of damnation? By what specific mechanism does this conversion happen? 

7.     For instance, by what means does sprinkling of the blood of Christ upon the human conscience take place in hell or the Lake of Fire, especially since it was given to prevent entrance to these places?

8.     Since final judgment is with reference to sin, and Christ’s appearing for salvation is without reference to sin, how does judgment give birth to the saving appearing of Christ to or in anybody in the Lake of Fire?

9.     If as Hebrews says salvation has been completely perfected “for all time” (only), and only for the sanctified, and Universalists contend that time must end for the salvation of the damned out of fire to occur, how can completed salvation operate past the end of time to sanctify them?

10. By what mechanism does the law of God become written upon the hearts and minds of those in hell and the Lake of Fire? Is it written on their hearts before they get out of the fire or after? If before, how can it be written on them while they are still being burned alive? If after, how did they get out of the fire first since their hearts hadn’t been converted yet to have God’s law written on it?

11. How can hell and the Lake of Fire become places where sins are no more remembered since those places exist solely to punish sin by evoking its memory “for the ages”?

12. Since according to Hebrews the sins of many who enter hell are past any further sacrifice for redemption, by what other mechanism can they be atoned and redeemed without postulating a second means of salvation?

13. How can the washing of Christ’s pure bodily water from the cross take place upon fleshly bodies that don’t exist in hell, or upon resurrected damned worm-eaten bodies in the Lake of Fire, especially since there is no more sacrifice for sin there?

14. How can the saving water of Christ’s body wash damned worm-eaten resurrection bodies in the Lake of Fire when the water baptism given specifically to signify that washing on earth is no longer possible in hell or the Lake of Fire?

15. Where are the mechanics that explain any procedure for salvation after the day of judgment? For instance, where is the evidence for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in hell or the Lake of Fire to convict of sin? How can anyone plead the blood in hell or the Lake of Fire to be saved from their punishment when they have already closed the door in mortal life on that sacrifice?

16. How does the release ceremony from the Lake of Fire occur? Where is the evidence for such a heavenly welcoming?

17. Why is it fair for people to spend ages in the Lake of Fire for committing sins spanning a few years or decades of mortal life?

18. Since entrance into the Lake of Fire is by judicial decree, how can people be let out of Lake of Fire without a reversal of that decree? If they must have a reversal decree, where is the evidence for any further judgment after the Great White Throne judgment?

19. Since Christ’s defeat of His enemies is an adversarial action against those which Hebrews calls adversaries, where is the evidence for either their conversion to reconciled saving friendship with Christ or for the mechanism of that conversion?

20. Since new birth unto salvation only occurs as a mingling of the seed of the word of God with the ground of a good heart to produce a new creation in Christ, and since the only ground subject to burning is bad fruitless ground, where is there any good ground in hell or the Lake of Fire to plant such a seed? And if there is any, where does it come from?

21. Since Hebrews says that the final judgment to destruction is punitively vindictive without mercy beyond grace, where is there any evidence for grace and mercy to still be found in hell and the Lake of Fire?

22.  Since Christ’s atonement is based in His perfect humanity and His shed blood thereby, how does that atone to reconcile fallen angels whom He specifically “does not help” (Heb. 2:16)? Where is the evidence of atonement for and reconciliation with fallen angels?

23.  If Jesus did not die to help angels but only people, yet the Lake of Fire was only ever prepared for angels (Mt. 25:41), thus without helpful reformative purpose, by what means can the Lake of Fire help "reform" anyone thrown into it? (What makes the Lake of Fire reformative of people when it was specifically not created for any reformative purpose to begin with?)

24.  How does divine terrorization in judgment described in Hebrews equate to love?

The testimonies of Peter and Jude as to the fate of false teachers raise further questions for Universalists. (Please review PART 3 § Salvation Contexted by the Terminal Enmity Continuum: Testimony of Peter and Jude.) Sample questions include:

25. If the wicked identified by Peter and Jude were marked out for condemnation before they were even born, despite having received the provisional covering by the atonement (in which therefore the atonement could not permanently save them), on what basis can they be considered elect, and on what apostolically consonant basis and descriptive evidence is it maintained that such are to be reconciled to God out of the Lake of Fire?

26. If Jude acknowledged that his readers already knew all that there was to know about salvation, and if total reconciliation were true, why did he conclude his description of the fate of apostates in terminally destructive language?

27. Said differently, if Jude claimed to be writing about the extent of the common salvation once delivered to the saints, why did he not teach on the universal reconciliation of all men?

28. If Jude claimed that all that he believed was based in all that the apostles had taught, and Jude did not teach on universal reconciliation, how is it possible to believe that the apostles he taught from did? Was Jude simply ignorant or deceived as to what the apostles believed?

29. If the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were reduced to ashes under age-enduring hellfire and were given as examples of what happens to the ungodly at the final judgment, how is that “corrective” punishment? Where is the evidence for the fruitful correction out of all-consuming destruction?

30. If the fallen angels are kept in eternal bonds, where is the evidence to the contrary that they can and will be released by an assumed “end of all time”? (How does an assumed eventual “end of all time” affect “eternal” bonds?)

31. If the punishment for angels who cohabited with humans is described as eternal, and Jesus describes men as being cast into the same hell with them, why should it be believed that “eternal bonds” is meaningfully different than the age-enduring punishment described for the Sodomite humans who cohabited with the fallen angels?

32. If the answer to the last two questions is to admit that universal reconciliation does not include fallen angels and all hellish creatures, how can the reconciliation or the "restitution of all things" ever be considered to be universal?

33. Does God love fallen angels and all hellish creatures including the worms that eat the damned? If not, how can He be all (non-exceptionally) loving? If so, where is the evidence for His loving universal reconciliation with them?

34. How can men likened to animals born only for the purpose of being killed be considered as “elect” to salvation?

35. How can salvation described as available only once for all be applied to those identified as twice dead?

36. What is redemptive about consignment to black darkness? By what mechanism does ages-long black darkness create new birth unto salvation?

37. If all men are to be eventually reconciled with God, how is it possible for God to say it would be better had some men never been born?

38. If the atonement applied to certain rebels on earth was ineffective to changing their nature, what provides basis to believe it could change their nature in the Lake of Fire, assuming the atonement could operate beyond its stated limits in this life?

Proceed to APPENDIX E