Hey Dustin! I’d love to hear more about how your acquaintance interacts with Middleton’s reading of the Aqedah

Blessings Helmut - glad you noticed that I stopped saying "okay" all the time! That was a vocal tic I've worked hard on this past year. The whole conclusion to the sermon is about what the filling of the Holy Spirit is in light of the context of Romans 8, hence the title.

That is a great question Kathy! We will put it on the list. Also, my email is [email protected] - if you're in the area, let's connect: we could sit down and talk further about this. Blessings.

Great comment! Within Romans itself, verses like 2:28-29 and 9:6 are some verses we can point to that suggest your first point.

One thing I'd point out: the understanding that "all Israel" in Romans 11:26 means "all Christians" is irreconcilable with verse 26's context in Romans 11. If you keep reading just two verse over (verse 28) "all Israel" is referenced to as "they" in the continuing statement. Consider: if "all Israel" means "all Christians” in this passage, does it make sense that "as far as the gospel is concerned, they (all Christians) are enemies for you sake" and that "they (all Christians) are loved on account of the patriarchs” (Romans 11:2)? If Christians are those who are saved because of the gospel, why would Paul be saying that "all Christians" are enemies as far as the gospel is concerned? Or consider the preceding verse (Romans 11:25). If Israel in this passage means "all Christians" (most of whom are Gentile) - does it make sense that "Israel (all Christians) has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in”? When reading Romans 11 we can’t cherry pick when Paul is talking about literal Israel and when he’s meaning all Christians. In regards to the questions: did God's promises to Israel have a shelf life - verse 29 provides an excellent answer. "God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable (Romans 11:29).” Praise God that his promises and covenants don’t have a shelf life - his unending faithfulness is the assurance of our salvation!

@@mattreimer4287 As I said, it could mean all Christians but I could be wrong. Maybe it means both literal Israel and all Christians since a lot of the old testement was a shadow of things to come under Christ and we have been grafted in after the Jews. We should probably not assume that a single word being utilized in the scriptures must always mean the same thing. For example, the word law is utilized many times in the new testement. Sometimes the writer is talking about the Mosaic law while at other times, about the law of Christ - without expressly saying Mosaic or Christ. Paul makes that distinction between the two in 1 Cor 9:20-21 but it doesn't take a lot of reading of the scriptures to figure out that the word "law" is not always referring to the same thing - even if there is obvious crossover between the two as they both come from the same God. In the case of "Israel", it can mean literal Israel because promises to the Jews would not have expired, or it can mean symbolic Israel because of Christ and non-Jews being grafted in or, I cannot see why it cannot be both sometimes.

Hi Robert, thanks for your comment. We do not take a Universalist position as a church at Crossview - my point in the sermon was simply to say that Universalism has a long Christian history, and that wonderful, intelligent, Jesus-loving Christians have adhered to Universalism since the early Church. Simply quoting a couple of verses does not negate that historical fact, nor does it make Exclusivism true. There are strengths and weaknesses to each of the positions and it's too strong a statement to say that Universalism has no biblical coherance. That would be a debate you would need to have with a Universalist. Blessings!

@@krisduerksen7457 Thank you for your comment Kris. If you note what I said, I did not say that exclusivism is true. I said universalism is biblically incoherent. I don't know what happens to the "good" tribesman in Africa that gets bitten by a snake before hearing the gospel. Romans 2 might address that one. While for the sake of being practical, I provided only several verses that refute universalism in every context imaginable, the entire new testement refutes universalism and one has to throw away a large section of the new testement to support universalism. I understand that your denomination does not take the universalism stance but your denomination did still present it in a positive light with legitimate biblical backing.

Love your passion Robert! A common mistake we human beings (and Christians) sometimes make is to assume that the arguments of those who disagree with us are illegitimate. That's different than just disagreeing with another position. Your statements about Universalism being biblically incoherent is your opinion, not a fact. Many theologians have mounted biblical defenses of Universalism - Thomas Talbott, J.W. Hanson, Hans Urs von Valthasar, Gregory MacDonald, Brad Jersak, Ilaria Ramelli, and others - they would all say they've mounted biblically coherent arguments. I don't take their position personally, but that doesn't mean they haven't mounted biblically coherent arguments. Blessings! @@robertemard9452

@@krisduerksen7457Thank you Kris. We must agree to disagree on this. I don't mind saying that some positions people take that I disagree with have coherent biblical arguments. An example of this is ECT vs Annihilationism. I think that the biblical argument for ECT is clear but I also believe that annihilationism does have coherent biblical arguments. Pre-trib, intra-trib, and post trib are all positions that can have coherent biblical arguments but not all 3 can be right. But positions of "everyone will be saved" is not biblically coherent for 3 reasons: 1) it is refuted by a much of the scriptures in very clear and no uncertain terms, 2) it goes against the very nature of God and his creation of man to have free will, and 3) it is hard to imagine how universalism fits in with Christians who are Christians after making a concious decision to pick up their cross and follow Jesus when they could have refused. God will not force people into heaven against their will and the consequences of choosing to cater to the flesh and allowing sin to mature is destruction (James 1:15), This is why the "everyone will be saved" argument is biblically incoherent. The bible was never meant to be interpreted by a lawyer/theologian but rather, as a disciple of Christ lead by the Holy Spirit.

@@robertemard9452 I respect your passion - I really do! The coherence or incoherence of any said doctrine are by nature based on *personal opinion,* and as you said, we can agree to disagree! Totally fine and fair. Your 3 reasons for finding universalism (hereafter UR) ultimately incoherent are fair - I actually agree with much of it. The doctrine of Freewill is a huge reason why I am not persuaded by the case for Universalism. Most of the UR "go-to" passages are surrounded by the context of human autonomy and freewill, and there is a real tension within scripture (1 Timothy 2 is a case in point) between the heart of God and the freewill of humanity. God desires deeply that all will come to repentance, but he cannot and will not force all. That is a tension we must all wrestle with What Kris tried to convey in his sermon is the heart of God towards humanity, and how that must change our hearts towards each other. The way we think about God ultimately determines, in large part, how we then behave towards others. The heart of God that desires, intensely, for all to come to Him in repentance, must draw all of our hearts to the same desire. And in this way - we ought to have hearts that are "hopeful" for Universalism to be true even though we don't find it biblically "coherent." Whether or not Universalism is Biblically true, is sort of besides the point when we approach the topic from that standpoint. The interpretation of scripture is an inevitable process whether you are a lawyer, theologian or a disciple of Jesus led by the Holy Spirit - the true test is how one holds to a particular interpretation. The question really is: is the interpretation characterized in humility and neighbor-love? Blessings!!

Thank you! We agree! 🙂

To say things differently, despite the truth of relevance theory and divine accommodation (using Hilber's model) I do not see the assertions about the age of the earth as being 'incidental' to the 'message' of the text of Scripture (using Lamarouex's model) Veritably, “bats” are not “birds” (see Lev 11:19) but this is (only) because “we choose to define the category ‘bird’ in a certain way, and the category ‘bat’ in a certain way. We didn’t ‘discover’ that bats aren’t ‘birds’ since Lev. was written, rather we changed the meaning of ‘bird.’ The sentence ‘bats are birds’ does not necessarily assert incorrectly that bats have feathers, if the person stating it intentionally means a different thing by the category ‘bird’ than you do

To further illustrate this point, telling a younger child that they came from their mother’s tummy is equivocal language but saying that the stork brought her is simply a lie To say that the earth is young (cf. Mark 10:6 etc) when it is actually quite old seems at odds to me with John 18:37 Some people seem to confuse God’s need to accommodate to the limitations of human finiteness vs. a divine accommodation to error All that said, though, this is a KZbin comment 🙂

Thank you Dustin for your feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed some of these features/moments in the episode. 🙂

Thank you Dustin! Please feel free to share publicly in your circles and on social media 🙂

Glad you enjoyed it! It's our pleasure to have these conversations and learn and grow together.

Excellent question! It is hard to make a case for postmortem salvation strictly from scripture, but some have made cases for it though theologically and historically. Dr. Jerry Walls is a good example of this (a great Theologian!). Dr. Greg Boyd is another one - but he is not dogmatic on it at all.

​@@chrisloewen9340Thank you for your comment. Do you have a link to both those gentleman? I don't know either of them.

Thanks!! We enjoyed it too! :)

❤

Ha!! We’ll make sure we get him to do that next time we bring him on 😊

Right??😂

Thank you Hendrik!

Great definition of what philosophy is, thanks Hendrik! Kelvin is a wise and wonderful person!

Glad you found it helpful!