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I was brought up without religion and spent much of my youth searching for something to believe in beyond the ordinary things of this world. After experimenting with different religions and philosophies, including one non-Christian cult I was involved with in college, I finally accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord at the age of 23, in the summer of 2002. I accepted Christ because I knew I needed forgiveness for my sins, some of which were major. I felt a unique spiritual power in the story of Jesus in the Gospels, and I decided I believed in his divinity, his sacrifice on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead. I resolved to join the Christian faith. I was fortunate enough not to have been taught to fear the sadistic God of fundamentalism when I was a child. So the damage to my heart was not done at an early age, when it can be seared into a person in a way that is much harder to heal. For me, the hell-shaped hole in my heart was burned in later, after I converted to Christianity. It came when unfortunate events in my life caused me to begin losing faith in God and Christ, and I started meditating on who the God of Christianity really is, and how He works in this world and the worlds of the afterlife. As an intellectual and a compulsive seeker of truth, I could not help but try to find a resolution to my religious doubts and fears. My Descent into Religious Despair At first, my conversion to Christianity made me feel relieved that I was not going to be condemned by God because of my past mistakes, false beliefs, and imperfections. I was full of zeal and attended an evangelical church, and was looking forward to a new life of ever-increasing blessings, church participation, and everything I thought the Christian life was supposed to be. I wanted to be as Christian as possible, and I assumed this to mean that I should be "fundamentalist" in my beliefs and practices. Over time, however, I became disturbed by certain questions, especially the issue of hell. Could a God of love, the God revealed by Jesus Christ, really condemn people to a lake of molten fire where they will suffer agonizing torments forever and ever, with no hope of relief? Are all non-Christians going there? What about people calling themselves Christian, but perhaps not "truly" saved? I began to wonder if even I might be doomed to hell, because I never felt good enough to be saved. God had not dramatically changed my life after I became a Christian, the way some people experience. God did not answer most of my prayers. I did not gain gifts of the Holy Spirit like tongues and visions and healings. So I wondered if this could mean that I might be among the unsaved and damned to hell. For me, the main problem was that my life was going downhill fast, despite my conversion to Christianity, and this made me doubt my salvation. Around the same time as my initial acceptance of Jesus, I was developing a chronic illness of the nervous system which would become a disabling, life-altering condition. I developed severe chronic fatigue syndrome and neurological problems that made it increasingly difficult for me to work. At times, my health was so bad I thought I was dying -- and despite several abnormal test results, doctors could not discover the root cause of my medical problems. Eventually I lost my job, was no longer able to have a social life, and ended up spending most of my time in bed, too sick to participate in society except through the internet. Neither my baptism nor my repeated prayers for healing, nor going down for an altar call in a charismatic evangelical church I was attending, did anything to make me feel better. Rather than regaining the vigor of youth, I felt like a sick and tired 90-year-old man who was on his death bed, while still in my early 20's and not knowing why this was happening to me. I did not feel I had been born again, except that I believed in Jesus Christ. But where were the outward signs of my spiritual transformation? Fundamentalist Christianity would have us believe that if we are truly saved, good things will start happening in our life. Instead, my life was going to hell. Was it possible that I never was really saved? Was it possible that I was still going to hell, not only on earth but also in the life hereafter, unless somehow I managed to convince God to fill me with the Holy Spirit I presumably had not yet received? Did God hate me? Why was it that so many people become Christians and begin an upward arc of improving health, wealth, success, and happiness -- overcoming alcoholism, getting up out of their wheelchair or being cured of cancer, and all the other wonderful things they like to talk about in fundamentalist Christian churches -- yet for some strange reason, God was not doing things like this for me? I could only wonder whether it was possible that I was doomed to hell forever. If God wasn't saving me now, then how could I expect Him ever to save me? Perhaps the Calvinists were right, and I had been predestined from birth for damnation. The fires of my illness were only the first sign of the fires of hell that would one day consume my body and soul, tormenting me with an agony that would never end. To add to my woes in the flesh, I began to suffer from troubles of the mind. A mild depression I had suffered periodically since adolescence escalated into major depressive disorder. The mild tendencies toward anxiety I had felt for years became a profound, gnawing unease within me that would never go away, punctuated by occasional panic attacks that would leave me sapped of all emotional energy and begging on my knees for the Lord to intervene and change my life. My prayers to God became increasingly plaintive, moaning lamentations, filled with weeping and shaking, prostrations to the floor and pounding fists of anger at the wrath that had been poured out upon me. Like Job, I was filled with an acute sense of injustice -- yet to make matters worse, I knew that I was a sinner, not a righteous man who was a model of faithfulness. According to the Christian creed, I was deserving of divine punishment. But I didn't understand why my decision to accept Jesus was not enough to spare me from further wrath. Hadn't God forgiven me of my sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ I had accepted? Why wasn't God willing to work miracles in my life? Did God even hear my prayers? In the depths of despair, I began to fear that no matter what I did, no matter how many times I went to church or how fervent and frequent my prayers, God simply didn't care about me. I was already one of the lost; my supposed salvation must have been bogus. Being born again was for other people, who were more fortunate to be part of God's glorious plan as victorious Christians who would enjoy blessings in this life and paradise in the next. But for me, there was only a life of continued illness and misery to look forward to, ending in the likelihood of spending eternity in hell. After all, if God didn't hear my plea for a better life on earth, why would He grant my request to be admitted into heaven? As I read the verses in the Bible about hell, I began to be filled with a terror unlike anything I had ever felt before. A place of darkness, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, worms that never die, a fire that is never quenched, burning and burning with no rest for its inhabitants day or night -- for ever and ever and ever. Could this really be part of God's plan? Could it be the part that was meant for people like me? Oh, the horror of it all! And the anger. The burning anger, bubbling up into a volcanic rage, at the way God treats His children. Why had I even bothered to convert to Christianity? Why did God lead me to this religion if He wasn't going to fill me with the Holy Spirit and enable me to be saved? Just so that I could know ahead of time what was awaiting me in hell, so that God could make me suffer the loss of hope and the anguish and terror, before I even get there? My Rebirth into the Knowledge of God's Love In my darkest hour, God led me to a deeper understanding of Him and His plan -- a plan that does not include eternal damnation for any being, but unfailing love and hope for all souls. The God I have come to know is not the God of fundamentalist Christianity, but the God of Jesus and the Apostles, a God we can worship in joyful adoration, unburdened by our fears of unworthiness. The true Christian God is a God of whom it can truly be said, "in Him there is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5). The way up from the depression and terror into which I had descended was gradual. For several months, I went through a process of taking two steps forward and one step back. The first thing I decided was that I couldn't believe in the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment. Instead, I adopted the increasingly popular Annihilationist view, that God simply destroys the unsaved rather than roasting them in a painful fire for eternity. I based this on the interpretation of the word "Gehenna" in the Gospels to mean a fire that consumes the wicked until they are burned up and annihilated, not that tortures them on and on without relief. For a while I was satisfied with this viewpoint. But after a short time, I again began to wonder if perhaps I might be destined for damnation. I yearned to experience eternal life with Jesus, but I feared that perhaps I wasn't good enough to avoid the sad fate of eternal death. I started thinking that it must be very, very difficult to gain eternal life and that I must work extremely hard to convince God that I was worthy of this gift rather than being fit for the fire of Gehenna and permanent annihilation of body and soul. I thought of all the people out there who will be destroyed by God, perhaps 99.99% of the human race. I hoped that I might be lucky enough to end up one of the elect few to escape the second death and keep life eternal. However, I still feared that God could never love me enough to allow me to live forever with Him. Though the prospect of annihilation was much better than eternal torment, it still was based on the idea of a God who will give up on the majority of people He has created, consigning them to oblivion rather than helping them to overcome their sins and eventually enter heaven. Desperate for a more hopeful view of God, I began to research the scriptures again. This time, I read hundreds of articles on the subject of salvation and the afterlife and how the Bible should be interpreted. After a great deal of study as well as a lot of thinking, I started opening my mind to the possibility of universal salvation through the power of Jesus Christ. I gradually came to be convinced that Christian Universalism is the truth, and that fundamentalist, fire-and-brimstone Christianity is a perverted lie. Had I not discovered this, I probably could not have continued as a Christian -- and perhaps I could not have even sustained the will to live at all. When I first accepted Christ I would have considered the universalist interpretation of the Bible to be total heresy. But I was led to embrace it and believe it. I felt the stirring of the Holy Spirit in my heart, giving me glimmers of hope, peace, and joy that I had never felt since I joined the Christian religion. I was moved so deeply that I wished to share what I had learned from reading dozens of websites about Christian Universalism and many hundreds of articles, by creating a website and ministry of my own. In early 2005 -- struggling through continued fatigue and depression -- I did so with God's help, and Christian-Universalism.com was born. I resolved to spend my savings to advertise this positive message that all souls will someday be redeemed and reconciled with their Creator. As I did everything I could to help others gain relief from their fear of hell, my own fears of a fiery torment melted away in the fire of God's love. As I shared the true Gospel of universal hope through Christ, I began to feel this hope and inner peace replacing the pessimistic and exclusivistic religious attitude that had corrupted my heart and my mind. My Hope for All People Yes, I am happy to say that I have become a Christian Universalist. I do not believe God will give up on anyone, not a single soul He ever created, not even someone as evil as Hitler or Stalin. I believe God's will is to save all people, and His will cannot be thwarted. Some souls may resist God and rebel against Him for ages, but ultimately, like the Prodigal Son, they will return home to the Father in humble repentance, begging for mercy -- and mercy will be granted! The reason is that God is good! The God revealed to us by Jesus Christ is a God of infinite goodness, mercy, and love. He loves every single one of us, so much that He could never bear to lose us forever. God will keep calling out to us with a message of hope and reconciliation, and no soul will ever have the power to make God into a cruel beast; God will always remain loving and compassionate, infinitely patient with us sinners until we come crying back to our Father and He will finally embrace us in His arms. Like the Lost Sheep, not a single one of us will ever be forgotten. Through the power of Jesus Christ, God will continue to look for us until we are found, and saved, and returned to the fold in heaven. No, God will never give up on any one of us -- no matter what! I look back on my former views and shudder at the thought that I once believed blasphemies about God. I believed God is a torturer, a sadistic monster who will inflict the most cruel and brutal punishments on sinners and people who don't accept the correct religion during their life on earth. I believed in a literal hell of liquid fire that will burn people so ferociously that they will be constantly screaming in agony, for thousands of years, millions of years, for an infinite duration of never-ending torture. I believed in the god of Fundamentalist Christianity. But now I choose to believe in the God of Jesus Christ, a totally different God, a God who is 100% good and would never hurt a single soul after they have learned their lesson and repented and paid the price for their sins and sought communion with God. I believe that God sent Jesus into this world to share with us the truth of this wonderful God, a God who will not condemn a woman caught in adultery but who says "let him who is without sin cast the first stone," a God who forgives the very men who pounded nails into his hands, a God who instantly forgives a thief on the cross and says "this day you will be with me in paradise," a God who is willing to suffer and die for us so that we can know with certainty that He really loves us and is willing to do whatever it takes so that we can be saved. Jesus's message was revolutionary. He taught perfect love. He lived it, too. And he died to testify that God is love. Would God stoop down to the form of human flesh -- flesh that was whipped with a Roman flagrum until his entire body was covered with wounds, flesh that was nailed to a Roman cross and left to die in excruciating pain and humiliation while everyone was mocking him and even his own followers abandoned him? YES! God did all of this for us! Not so that we can believe that most people we know will burn in hell, but so that we can know that we and they will all be forgiven and redeemed and that we must only look within for the divine light of the Holy Spirit that resides in every one of us. So that we can believe that we are children of God, who can be part of the Father's household. So that we can understand that God is our Abba (Daddy), not some tyrant with an unquenchable appetite for inflicting pain on misguided souls. That's what Jesus lived and died to show us. He wants us to know that we are loved by God and that God will do anything necessary to bring us back to Him. Can I prove that there is no burning hell and that God doesn't damn people for all eternity? No. But I believe correct Bible exegesis supports universalism, and I believe in my heart that the only God that could possibly exist is a God who created us for union with Him, not for eternal separation and misery. Would a gospel that preaches that most human beings end up in hell or destroyed by God really be "Good News"? I don't think so. The Apostle Paul, for one, never even mentioned hell, and he warned about Christians who come preaching a different gospel. Having believed in all three positions about salvation and damnation -- eternal hell, annihilation, and universalism -- and considered questions such as whether non-Christians can be saved and whether some Christians can be unsaved or lose their salvation -- I can understand all the different viewpoints that are out there within today's Christianity. I almost lost my faith over issues like this. I hate to think that some Christians out there DO turn their back on God and Christ because they cannot bear the thought of people going to hell or being destroyed by God. But they do. And it's very sad, and in my opinion it doesn't need to happen. There is a better way. It is my hope that all Christians may learn about the God I have discovered, the God of a more joyful Christianity than the bad-news gospel that passes for the Good News of Christ in the minds of many souls. So many Christians are laboring and languishing in fear, their heart strangely empty because they have never felt real joy when they contemplate their God and their faith. The fire of hell has burned into the core of their being, leaving them scarred and scared. Legalistic efforts to please God through our works, as though we must earn His love in order to avoid condemnation, are the result of this erroneous creed -- a creed that is responsible for much needless suffering and conflict, which deprives us of true peace within ourselves and in society. Through my online ministry at Christian-Universalism.com, I am bringing the Gospel of hope and glad tidings of joy to hundreds of people every day, many of whom are struggling to understand how the God of Jesus Christ could possibly maintain a burning hell for eternity as they have been taught in church. I am so happy to be able to share with the world that the church is wrong! -- because Jesus, the Apostles, and the Bible are right: God is saving all souls in due time, and there is no eternal hell where some people will be condemned to suffer forever. It is my privilege and joy to be blessed with the opportunity to teach this message to as many as are willing to listen. May God shower the light of truth upon us all, with the unbridled power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let it be so! Indeed, we know that in the end, it shall be so, for God is almighty and will surely accomplish His purposes without fail. Praise Jesus that we can love God with all our heart and all our mind and all our strength, fearing no imaginary damnation, but secure in the knowledge of universal salvation! Let us trust in God, and all things will be made right according to His benevolent and glorious plan. God promises to "draw all men to Myself." (John 12:32). Truly, He won't stop until He finishes the job. God drew me until I escaped the hell of my fears and entered into the heaven of understanding. I was saved from the darkness, the mental torment of fundamentalism. I pray that all who are trapped in the hell I was in will feel the power of the Spirit drawing them into the Light, and will be reunited with the God who created them in Perfect Love -- and right now, in this life, will feel a peace that knows neither beginning nor end. -- Eric Stetson is the founder of Hope Through Christ Ministries and creator of Christian-Universalism.com
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Christian Universalist Testimonies -- Christians Transformed "From Hell to Hope"
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Heavenly Father, please bless this ministry, lead multitudes to this website, and help them see the truth of Your love and forgiveness for all people through the power of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the whole world. Open their eyes to Your true nature, take away their fears, and fill their hearts with the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. |