Dennis d wrote:
As regarding Universalism,as compared to all the other Ism's we should always bear in mind There is an apparent paradox in every biblical doctrine. Every major biblical doctrine. For example, I will ask someone a simple question. Who wrote Romans? Who wrote Romans? Paul? God? Holy Spirit? Who? Did Paul write a verse and then, God write a verse? Then Paul write a verse, then God write a verse? You say, was it all the Holy Spirit? Is every word in Romans from the mind of the Holy Spirit? Yes! Is every word in Romans from the mind of the Apostle Paul in his heart, in his vocabulary? Yes! Who wrote it? Well, it is all God, and it is all Paul. Well, how can it be all God and all Paul? Well, it can't be in our human thinking. That is paradoxical, but it is. Let me ask anyone this: Was Jesus God? or man? Yes! Half God, half man? What is half a man? What is half a god? A nothing! He was 100 percent God, 100 percent man. He can't be that! That is right. It is paradoxical. But, if we try to make it in the middle and mix it and take away a little of His deity and a little of His humanity to come up with a hybrid, what have we just done? We have destroyed the person of Jesus Christ! So, I believe that we leave it alone. And, someone might say,“I can't know that!” "The secret things belong to the LORD." Deuteronomy 29:29. I will not play God and assume that everything has to fit into my computer to be true.
I have often asked people this question. Who lives your Christian life? Who does? Do you? Are you out there saying,“I am going to live my Christian life if it kills me!” You say,“No! It is Christ in me. I do not do anything. I just flop and He does it all.” No! No! No! "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live, yet, not I, but Christ lives in me." It is the same paradox. See, whenever we try to reduce the truth of God down to the human brain, like the Theologians, Church fathers, or the likes of us, we are going to have some stuff left over, and, consequently, we have got to be able to allow for what I call divine tension. Myself, I Just leave it there. The Bible teaches election. The Bible teaches human choice. I Let it teach both. God understands how it all goes together, Brent we dont. We don't. That is a matter of faith, isn’t it?I believe ( my viewpoint) that if we come up with something in the middle, we destroy both. So, people who want to say,“Oh, we cannot believe in election because it messes us up on this end,” are really doing what they have no right to do. They are really saying,“We have got to reduce God to our own thinking processes and assume He is going to do only the things that we can fully understand." I discovered by hard experience The closest thing that will narrow down the truth collectively is the RHEMA.(spoken word)
or the fact of LEARNING FROM GOD ,VIA THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Technically, Tertius wrote Romans; but he was transcribing for Paul. What I do now reject, is using "We just cannot understand God" as an alibi for misrepresenting him as a cruel, deranged, vindictive, and inconsistent fiend; who will punish finite beings, guilty of crimes in finite time - infinitely!

If somebody represented ME like that; rest assured, I would hold them to account! And God will do just that with us, the church! It's true - we cannot understand God. But that is NOT because he is more cruel than US! Nothing could be further from the truth.

In what respect do the Psalms say God's ways are higher than our ways? Check out Psalm 103, and it will tell you that WE are the cruel ones! WE are stray sheep, that have gotten SO LOST, we actually believe God would do something so horrendously cruel, evil, and sadistic, we would NEVER DO IT! Not even to out own worst enemies!

Well! COME ON! WAKE UP! That's OBVIOUSLY WRONG! All I can say is what God says: "RETURN, YE CHILDREN OF MEN!" Psalm 90.