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10.25.2005

Three classes of people


There are three categories people reside in regarding salvation:

1. Some people are hardened, reprobate, willfully and joyously hellbound. They want to be in hell.

2. Some people have experienced regeneration by the Word and the Spirit and know which way is up. They are heaven-bound, despite themselves.

3. Some people live in a nebulous in between realm with varying degrees of allegiance to and valuation for the things that pertain to God and the things that pertain to this world. These people may be religious and may self-identify as Christian or they may not, but... They are still in the Kingdom of Satan.

Only the regenerate people are in the Kingdom of God.

So we in the regenerate group, who value the Word of God as authority and value the things that pertain to God more than the things that pertain to this world have to get the message to the rest of you (both to the seeming reprobates, because even a seeming reprobate can be regenerated by God, we can't see if they are truly reprobate; as-well-as to the people who live in the nebulous realm).

The people who live in the nebulous in between realm are interesting in that they are the ones most people wonder about regarding hell. The Bible is not clear (and hence is intentionally not clear) on what happens to the unregenerate when they die. They go to Hades, yet hell is something one is judged to after the Second Coming of Jesus, so... Prior to that, the nebulous folks are even in a - to us who take the Bible as authority - nebulous state regarding heaven and hell. They may recur. Not reincarnate, but be still dead in sin in their time until God regenerates them, if He chooses to.

Whatever the case, they need to be given the message as well. Calvinists evangelize the most confidently because we know we don't have to beg anybody to come to God, we just have to give them the hardcore truth and if God makes that seed grow then so be it. We can't make the seed grow.

Note: unregenerate at death doesn't necessarily equal reprobate at death. Since the Bible is intentionally unclear on what happens to the unregenerate when they die we don't have to conclude that since they don't go to heaven they must go to hell. Reprobation is a doctrine that is in the Bible. Those who say it isn't are wrong. Yet what those who say that reprobation isn't in the Bible are usually getting at is the mystery of this nebulous state of the unregenerate at death that the Bible is intentionally not clear about. A reprobate will be judged to hell at the great white throne judgment after the Second Coming of Christ. Prior to that event (which is the end of time, i.e. the harvest, the end of the world, so to speak), again, prior to that event what happens to unregenerate souls as they descend into Hades the Bible just doesn't make clear. It can be speculated that there are aspects of time that human beings can't perceive and that these come into play regarding the dead unregenerate. From God's perspective - from the perspective of eternity - the linear, birth-to-death, time of a human being may be a sort of continually living time (alive in all its moments) where God can effect a person at any point of their time. So death to us seems the end, yet to God it's more an interval in a circle of living time. The main point here is: the hardcore orthodox Calvinist will say "it is given man once to die" and "the unregenerated go to hell upon death because the Bible speaks of two destinations - heaven and hell - and speaks of none other", but this is true -- in stages. The hell Jesus speaks of is the hell one is judged to by Jesus Himself after His Second Coming. What occurs to an unregenerated person at death prior to the Second Coming can only be a matter of speculation. A reprobate will find his way to hell no matter what. A regenerated being will enter heaven upon death. For those yet to be regenerated by God, though, their life doesn't necessarily end as we perceive the 'end' defined by physical death. That is a matter for God and His view from eternity. What seems impossible to man is possible with God. Human beings are essentially different in terms of development of level of being, and this difference in development occurs somewhere, sometime.

To make this clear: some Reformed consider the doctrine of reprobation to not be in the Bible. They're wrong. Some Reformed confuse the state of being unregenerate at death with being default reprobate. They too are wrong. Reprobates exists, and they go to hell, and they want to be in hell. But the physical death of an unregenerate human being doesn't define them by default as reprobate; and what happens to those who die unregenerate and who are not reprobates the Bible is intentionally not clear on. They cycle down to Hades, and may recur back into their own time (not reincarnate, but recur into the same time, same being, more or less). The Myth of Er, which is a description of Hades by Plato, describes this cycling in and out of Hades, but puts it as reincarnation (sort of). The Bible keeps this subject in mystery, but an orthodox Christian with sanctified common-sense and a real appreciation for the doctrine of hell and reprobation that the Bible is crystal clear on can see enough in the mystery not to despair too much for the fate of people who seem to die unregenerate but which one is not eager to assume reprobation regarding.

Nevertheless evangelize now, boldly, effectively, with no shame regarding the name and Gospel of Jesus Christ.

1 Comments:

Blogger c.t. said...

One thing I want to clarify: when I said 'circle' in terms of recurrence, that is just a way to put it because our mind can't conceive it any other way. We think in terms of revolution, a circle; yet really it is living time. Higher aspects or dimensions of time are being spoken of. When we are regenerated by the Word and the Spirit and then physically die we go to be with God in heaven. To those who know us here, under the sun, on earth, we are just gone. They don't remember us (except maybe only vaguely). If you want to find a 'rapture' this is it.

I.e. you're in a family now, with siblings, then you are regenerated and then you physically die. You are now no longer in that family because you've gone to be with God in heaven, yet the family still exists. Dead in their sin, in their living time. You 'disappeared' from their time.

The subject here is 'recurrence.' Not reincarnation. Recurrence. You can learn about it only in the last chapter of Ouspensky's Fourth Way. All the theories man has developed over time about death are contained in - and only in - the theory of recurrence. And it is only a theory because nobody can know what happens at death. We can specualate, and recurrence makes sense and explains many things, yet it is only theory, or speculation.

The so-called 'intermediate state' that Reformed theologians (the most biblical of theologians) speak of to explain where the unregenerate go at death is ad hoc doctrine. It is not biblical any more than the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory is biblical.

There is room in the Bible for recurrence; and without it being seen as 'second chanceism' or 'universalism' or what have you. The Westminster Confession of Faith even speaks of the Holy Spirit working when and where He will, regarding regenerating people, i.e. meaning He operates from eternity, or above man's linear birth-to-death perception of time.

April 22, 2017 at 3:20 AM  

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