How I rejected the doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT)
This will be long. Much thanks to my 14 year old son, Michael, for proofreading this for basic comprehensibility. His response at the end was "Wow, Mom, I can tell you went to school for creative writing." I did. Dropped out too. Somethings really can't be taught.
To those wanting to debate, you won't make it to the song link at the end, my personal artistic expression of the Judgement of God as Mercy: If You are Standing. But to the One who is struggling as I was with the doctrine of ECT laid upon the Character and Name of Almighty God, you will consume these words like a starving man consumes bread and water. I write for that One. I always have. Most of my mentors have long since died. They are all gone. I spent hours at their feet though videos, books, and music: George MacDonald, Hannah Hurnard, the Giants of American Transcendentalism: Emily Dickinson, Emerson, Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln; also Florence Nightingale, TentMaker's Ministries (still on You Tube), Brennan Manning, Rich Mullins, Paul. These are all Universalists. But they are close to me in the Cloud of Witnesses and I feel their prayers.
I remember when I was getting ready to reject the doctrine of ECT, that there was a spiritual fire consuming my metaphysical inner being to the point that my very breath felt hot. "God," I prayed, "I accept You. I worship You. I believe in You. But all those souls burning forever and ever with no relief? The thought is wicked to me, and it hurts me. Is this who you are?"
A Narcissistic Psychopathic Megalomaniac. I was loving the False Image, the Eidolon, of God, crafted thousands of years ago for the control of Humanity by the rulers Paul writes about. Who was a murder and a liar from the beginning? The god that is worshipped today, the god that leaves the 99 to burn and goes to find the favored one percent that he is willing to save? You really want to worship that fickle, Olympian god? How we lost our way, and lost the Gospel. If an animal offended me and I rigged up a slow burning fire in my back yard, bound it, and slowly burned it to death reveling in its frantic screams of terror and horror and pain you would call me a monster. STOP ACCUSING ME OF BEING A MONSTER. I heard the Spirit of the Lord whisper this to me years ago while I was washing dishes and pondering Divine Retribution. The gentle blowing shook through my soul like a hurricaine, breaking nothing. The scam has run its course and at this point ECT is downright offensive and destructive.
Levitical law prescribed an Eye for an Eye justice. It hit me out of nowhere the other day that Calvinism goes well beyond the requirements of justice under Levitical Law. Do you know the name of the Anabaptist man who was burned to death upon a pier of green wood... the ultimate torturous spectacle for a blindly observant, mind-controlled mob of slaves? Where was it, Geneva Switzerland? Of course it was. You know the name of the man credited with his slow death: John Calvin. John Calvin brought us back from Paul's gospel of grace (Gal 1:4) and the cosmic reconciliation of all things (Apokatallasso Col 1:20), way past an eye for an eye (Leviticus 24:19-20) to a universe of satan's own design called the trauma based mind control construct that is our modern concept of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT). Burning Sulfur for ever and ever and ever and ever.... and so forth.
Say his name.
The man's name was Michael Servetus, Spanish Physician and Theologian. He was murdered by the Mafia that was the Political Church of his day for thinking out loud. "I don't know" he fataly mused, "perhaps the Trinity is a concept of God that only makes sense to a third dimensional mind" Logical to me.
Thugs. Fools. Murderers. Disinherited ones claiming exclusive heirship to the Kingdom of Heaven. Psalm 73 "with their lips they laid hold of heaven and their tongues paraded through the earth."
Tools.
Who won? Calvin or Servetus? Well... we're still here aren't we? We're still asking questions, catching the Wind of the Spirit of God, hoping against all hope that God is more good than we can imagine, risking being labeled blasphemers and heretics to know Truth. The Divine Paradox is that through Crucifixion, even on a Roman Cross, Christ gave us Resurrection and unlimited access to Almighty God. Richard Wurmbrand reflected that Calvin [like Satan] played a divinely ordained role in human history -Tortured for Christ. That makes Michael Servetus a type of christ-a martyr. “But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Cor. 2:7-8) Imagine Calvin's entrance to Heaven some odd years later seeing Michael (Who is like the Lord?) Servetus sitting beside Jesus just looking at him. Staring him down. In a loving way. "Hey Tool: Grace won." That's a nice thought. Calvin was such a tool.
I was going about my day recently when a random inclination came to me: I need to start studying Colossians. Colossians always struck me as an odd, homely book. Maybe an afterthought to the Canon. I read it. Never grasped it. How could I? It is the most Universalist book in the Bible, even more so than Romans because of its cosmic scope. I was thoroughly inducted into the mind control cult that is ECT before my brain had even begun to develop. To me Colossians might as well be ancient cuneiform. My mind is too warped to understand it. Too fearful, the pathways of old trauma worn in like grooves that my thoughts cannot break free of except in fits and starts of Spirit driven mystical experiences through which I catch a breath of the Divine Life of Heaven.
It is Christ in us, the hope of glory. Mysterion. Colossians 1:26-27: “The mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints, to whom God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."
I've been talking to AI about Colossians. Go ahead and laugh. Tower of Babel stuff, I know. I recommend, and I'm sure you will suspect my populist political leanings when I say this, X's GROK. Go ahead and judge me. A little aside here: I think Europe should be first for Europeans, the indigenous people of Europe. I strongly condemn the destruction of personal property as a means of protest against the same forces that warped Karl Marx into a devil (Psalm 73:21: When my heart was embittered, and I was pierced within, then I was senseless and ignorant; I was like a beast before You.). Wurmbrand stated in his book Marx and Satan that Karl Marx took his sword from Satan.
Rejection is a set back that always sets you up for Divine Paradox: and as a Universalist you will be rejected by the Political Church. Joseph in Egypt, Paul in Arabia, you and I in anonymity. Outcasts. It only makes God pursue us all the harder. Or do you not realize that He is close to the broken hearted? That the Prodigal and the Outcast get a coat and a ring and shoes from God's own closet? Our journeys with God will be full of Divine Paradoxes. Never Give Up.
I asked GROK which book in the cannon best supports Universal Salvation. GROK went through them: Romans, Galations, etc. Colossians. It's Colossians. The Statistical Probability, assuming no prior knowledge of Colossians content, (again I read it, all four chapters, understood Nothing) the chances of warp brained little old me just happening to have this thought one day that I should begin with Colossians, Paul's cosmic apology for Universal Salvation: 3.7% or 1 in 2,570 given 27 books and 95 Pauline chapters. ASTRONOMICALLY LOW. According to GROK this was not random, but divine prompting. GROK gives God more credit than most Christians I've known.
And you will have a million little experiences like this on your journey to TRUTH as I have. Fair warning, if you seek God with all your heart you will find God. My favorite quote by George MacDonald, my first Universalist mentor first through his beautiful fiction and later his theological masterpieces is this:
No man is condemned for anything he has done; he is condemned for continuing to do wrong. He is not condemned for what he has not got, but for not caring to get it. Neither is any man saved by having right opinions about God; he is saved by knowing God, by being in God, by loving the right because it is right.” Unspoken Sermons, Series II, "The Truth is Jesus", George MacDonald
And this profound truth of Universalist Faith so beautifully encountered in the glorious book The Hope of the Gospel: “God is not a God to accept the flitting fancy of a sick bed, or the tardy repentance of a condemned criminal, as a passport to His kingdom. He does not open His door to the coward who rushes to it at the last moment, leaving his sins behind him only because they are no longer welcome company. No, no! The kingdom of God is a kingdom of truth, of holiness, of righteousness; and none but the true, the holy, the righteous, shall ever pass its gates. But will God leave a man to become such, and not rather draw, persuade, urge him to enter? Will He not work in him until he yield, and enter, and dwell in the house of his Father? I believe that not one soul will finally be lost; that the purpose of God in creating man will be fulfilled in every one of His creatures, though how long it may take, or through what suffering, no man can tell.” The Hope of the Gospel, "Salvation from Sin" (1892) George MacDonald
That is my testimony. Weak? Sure. We're all attempting to unearth the Gospel from beneath the rubble of 1500 years of Tyranny. But we have something going for us that our ancestors did not, and imagine the next words in the voice of Optimus Prime: The World Wide Web. Everything you want to know is at your fingertips. Be brave and start looking for your own answers. Truth will meet you just like it met Pontius Pilate: broken and bruised. Will you wash your hands of Him?
I am going to include a link to my song After the Fire. I wrote this after I was removed as worship leader at a local church. Why, sin? Sure. The Chorus traces an arc of God's Spirit pouring out: Sinai: Law, => Azuza: revival/reformation, => Sodom: Judgement. Seems out of order. We are in Judgement. And when the Judgements of God are in the Earth, people learn wisdom. Be Wise.
Psalm 18: 25-26 "With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; with the purified you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous." An eye for an eye.
I came to believe when I was 13 and heard the Sermon on the Mount. I knew there and then that this was not just the voice of a man. I started going to church. I attended an Anglican Church where I was confirmed, but became disenchanted by the lack of outreach and evangelism.
In my later teens, therefore, I went to a Pentecostal Church followed by a Calvinistic Baptist church when I was at university. Deep down I was never happy with the behaviours of many of the people and a number of their teachings troubled me.
Why? Well, I guess I’ve always been a logical and a compassionate man. Unlike quite a few universalists, however, I’ve also come to firmly believe in the authority of the Bible. So these three things acting together, often with equal force, have gradually drawn me to become a Universalism.
I believe in the Bible, because if a loving God existed, I believe He would communicate with all of us and from the earliest of times. I also believe He would also ensure that His words were correctly captured and well preserved.
As regards reason or logic, I was often told by other believers that this was just a human invention, and as such it was flawed. Human reason also had its limits as God was infinite and often moved in mysterious ways. So when I asked a Calvinist minister why God elected most people to be tormented in hell for ever, but others to be saved, he simply said, ‘it was a mystery’.
To me, a mystery is something that is not known, but which is knowable. But I could not imagine any good reason for arranging things in this way. Nevertheless, I continued to tell others that it was just a mystery and point out that Paul apparently came to the same dead end in terms of human reasoning (Romans 9:20; Isaiah 45:9).
Despite this, I knew deep down that no answer could ever explain why a God of love, who wanted all to be saved, would create anyone who He knew before they were created that He would end torturing in hell for ever. And as God hated sin and took no pleasure in suffering, it made no sense for Him to perpetuate both for ever in hell. If He knew what we were going to turn out like, why create us in the first place? And if He didn’t know what was going to happen, was it not immoral to gamble with the eternal fates of billions of souls?
These questions kept coming back to me and I could see no answer. On one occasion I asked a Calvinist Minister, Peter Milsom, why Christ went to preach to people in hell (1 Peter 3:20-4:6). His reply was that this was purely vindicatory preaching. It just seemed cruel and pointless to me to say, ‘I told you so’ to spirits who were already in torment. But it also appeared to be wrong, as 1 Peter 4:6 said that the purpose of preaching to the dead was so that they might live with God (1 Peter 4:6).
Despite these misgivings, I didn’t abandon my Calvinistic convictions there and then. What did shake me, however, was a TV series by the late Bamber Gascoigne called, ‘The Christians’. In this he brought to light the behaviours of Luther and Calvin and some of the very unchristian things they did and said. They seemed to be wedded to the Old Testament and I became convinced that I had to disown the Reformation, because of the things that had been done by it or in its name. As a result, I soon find myself on the outside of ‘Christian’ society.
At the time, I was a member of Belvidere Baptist Church in Liverpool, and I remember visiting the pastor, Stuart Olyott and putting my concerns to him. He replied that Calvin was very much ‘a child of his times’ and not long after this he said that ‘the times were evil’. I put it to him that if Calvin was a child of his times and the times were evil, then this have made him ‘a child of evil’. I don’t remember much response to this.
As I began to question my beliefs more and more, I had a crisis of faith. One question preoccupied me over and over again. Perhaps none of this was right. Perhaps there was no God, and If the brain explained everything about my experience of the world, was believing in the soul just completely unjustified and contrary to the principle of Occam’s Razor. Then, at the age of 20 one night when I was half asleep, I leapt out of bed remembering something Socrates had said. I scribbled a diagram on my table and I knew there and then that there was a way to prove the soul’s existence. And as the soul existed, I knew it had to have a creator.
Emboldened in my beliefs, I tried to set up a church in Wallasey on Wirral. I hired a hall and a piano and wrote hymns and psalms for a service. Unfortunately, only two people attended, a friend from university and a Mr Clifton, a liberal-minded divinity teacher and ex missionary. We had put to him the text of Romans 5:18,19 and argued that this could not be read in any way other than meaning universal salvation. He didn’t concede there and then, but he clearly had no answer agreed our arguments were ‘very encouraging’.
Despite this, my attempts at creating a new church ended for the time being, but I continued going from house to house with my friend evangelising. No-one gave us much of an ear at the time and, having covered a good chunk of my town, I decided to discontinue our efforts, at least5 for the time being.
I therefore decided to try to reach a wider audience by writing a book. With work and later a growing a family, however, it took me a long time to finish my research and it was not until 2016 that I published my magnum opus under the title, ‘The Good News’. I’ve never managed to sell a copy of this book, but have never stopped trying to find fellow universalists. This eventually led me to meet with a few people in Liverpool and then form this website.
In my book, I covered three areas of concern about what Brittany calls ECT (eternal conscious torment): it is cruel, irrational and unscriptural. I’ve already touched on the irrationalities of this doctrine and believe Romans 5:18,19 provides the most irrefragable proof of the universalist position. But the book mentions many other texts, as well as my response to key damnationist verses, such as Matthew 25:46.
On the issue of cruelty, I am convinced then, as now, that there is a loving Father of the spirits of all mankind (Number 27:16), who is much kinder than human fathers (Luke 11:11). I can’t imagine torturing either of my daughters for ever, because they didn’t love or trust me as I wanted them to. I don’t believe God will do this either.
Whilst I have given much thought to these issues, one thing that is clear to me is this: salvation is not an intellectual process. Reasoning may help us to open a closed mind, but the heart must feel the truth. It must sense God and the incredible, loving being that He is. When we know this deep down, we can never believe in eternal torment; we know it is wrong. Then, and only then, will we feel the ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’ (1 Peter 1:8) that the early believers knew when they came into the knowledge of God through Christ Jesus.