And old friend of mine, Martin Zender, recently spoke at the Sacramento Concordant Conference and says exactly what I’ve been thinking recently. Just a warning for those who aren’t familiar with Martin’s trademark odd-ball humour, the little introduction he gives at the beginning will seem a little over the top, but his brief presentation is worth…
Just because it's "orthodox" doesn't mean it's true
Category Archives: salvation
Dialogue With an Evangelical: The Movie
Three years ago, I shared a little dialogue between myself and a random evangelical on the subjects of hell and Christian Universalism. For the fun of it, I decided to make up a short video of that discussion using those talking bears I’ve been seeing around the web over the last few months. It seems to…
A New Rule
A little over two years ago I issued my Everlasting Hell Challenge, which asked Protestant Christians who base their theology on the Bible alone to demonstrate convincingly that the traditionalist evangelical view on hell and damnation is a much clearer teaching in Scripture than the idea that hell is not a place of everlasting torment…
The Evangelical Abortion Inconsistency
If you’ve read many of my posts, you know by now that one of the most consistent traits of traditionalist Christians is that they’re not very consistent in their theological thinking. This is possibly no more obvious than in their views on the subject of abortion. Most evangelicals I know of, for instance, are extremely…
Dialogue With an Evangelical – Part 1: Hell
The following is a dialogue between myself and “Bob,” an Evangelical Christian, about the subject of hell: Bob: Hi, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions. Me: Sure, why not? What’s up? Bob: If you were to die today, do you know for sure where you’d end up? Me: Creepy question,…
TULIP
Believe it or not, I find that there is quite a bit in Calvinism to agree with, particularly their take on free will. There are a couple points where we disagree though, what with me being a Christian Universalist and all, so I thought I’d give my Universalist take on TULIP: 1. Total Depravity/Total Grace:…
Let’s See What You’ve Got
In my experience, really thinking over the implications and ramifications of their own doctrines doesn’t seem to be something most Christians do. Likewise, theological consistency doesn’t appear to be a virtue among most Christians either. These observations are probably made the clearest when it comes to the topic of hell. The fact that interpreting the…
Defending Everlasting Torment
The fact that nobody has succeeded in completing my Everlasting Hell Challenge doesn’t necessarily prove that it can’t be done, but I’m not holding my breath that someone will be able to. In the meantime, however, we may as well take a look at the passages in Scripture that are used to back up the…
Salvations?
Lector: In the last post here it was pointed out that if there is anything at all that we have to do to “get right with God,” even if it is simply “trusting Jesus,” then salvation would be by work and not grace as it would be a transaction between us and God. So how…
Christian Magic
Many of the evangelicals I grew up with were horrified at the idea of magic and witchcraft, all the while promoting the biggest magic spell ever, known to many simply as “The Sinner’s Prayer.” This magical incantation, when spoken out loud (and truly believed), is supposed to somehow change the location that we end up…
Universalism vs. Freedom?
Over the years of discussing the topic of Universalism I’ve been told time and again that Universalism takes away our freedom to choose, that if God saves everybody then He’s ignoring our free will. While any Universalist who has studied the topic is quite aware that this isn’t the case I find myself constantly having…
