MK forum

That is one of the most bizarre evangelism strategies I've heard of yet!

"Go to your room, young man, and stay there, until you decide you DO believe in Jesus!"

I shake my head in utter amazement at the lunacy.

On that one Raz....I spent a lot of time in my room. Ours was "Go to your room and read 1 Cor 13 and Don't come out until you've changed your attitude.

And the closets that need to be opened were certainly not in YOUR room.
We need to find those rooms
And open ALL THE CLOSETS!

Roll up the rugs first.
There is no room to dive under there with the rest of the dirt.
But you never know.

Since leaving NTM in 2010 I have been on a theological journey that has ended in me embracing Christian Universalism. Here is an argument (from Thomas Talbott) that is very helpful to me. On face value, the Bible seems to support 3 ideas which logically can’t all be true:
1-God’s loves everyone and desires to save everyone.
2-God is sovereign and accomplishes everything he desires.
3-Some people are going to hell.

Arminian (free will) Christians would accept 1 and 3. NTM and many Baptists fall into this category. Calvinist (predestination) Christians accept 2 and 3. Presbyterians and Reformed Christians fall into this category. Christian Universalists accept 1 and 2, but are called heretics for rejecting 3.

No matter which group you put yourself in, you end up rejecting something that the Bible seems to teach on face value. For me, it is unacceptable to reject the idea that God loves us all and desires to save us and it is unacceptable to put the responsibility for salvation on anyone other than God. But I am quite happy to reject the idea of eternal conscious torment, which is a belief that has resulted in terrible, terrible consequences down through the centuries and of course in NTM too.

You may wonder why I don’t reject the Bible completely since I point out that it seems to teach three things which can’t all be true. I don’t know where I stand on that yet. I am just trying to point out (as Talbott does) that Christian Universalism isn’t any more heretical than the other two options, which require one to reject a major teaching of the Bible as well.

My bottom line is that I just want to believe something good and hopeful. Life can be awful enough as it is, without adding to it the belief that God is consigning the majority of humanity to eternal conscious torment!

"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." This is my take on it. It has never fit and when it did fit, it was for a very short time till I grow out of it and it no longer fit.

I sometimes think that with all of our "education" and analysis of the Bible, we may have completely missed the real message that God intended for us.