There is a sentence in the Fourth Gospel that contradicts the argument and multiple statements of the rest of the Gospel, and which I assume was a later and alien addition...
But which (with, perhaps, a terrible and malignant inevitability) became standard orthodox compulsory dogma in many Christian churches (at least among theologians):
John 5: [28] Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, [29] And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
The alien-ness of this passage is that, through the rest of the Gospel, it is evident that resurrection is A Good Thing, Good News, the great gift that Jesus offers to all Men who "follow" Him.
This is the real Christianity: one that recognizes that Jesus offered a great gift...
A gift that any mortal man (whether he be good or bad, as evaluated by This World, and after all we are all "sinners". Sinners both in the primary sense that we all shall die, and the secondary sense that nobody lives in full harmony with divine creation).
Thus, a great gift that all may choose to accept - by following Jesus through death into resurrection and Heaven.
What I regard as True Christianity, takes-up Jesus's many statements in the IV Gospel and its overall argument; that has resurrection linked with Heaven: resurrection is the needful transformation by which we are "born again" in a form suitable for Heaven.
So; salvation properly means saving us from death, and the default fate of becoming ghostly spirits, barely our-selves.
Saving us into an eternal life in Heaven.
Yet here, in the above quoted sentence, there is raised the spectre that Jesus's work was to raise the barely-conscious gibbering ghosts of the underworld Sheol into an everlasting incarnated state in which they would suffer the eternal torment of Hell.
Add to this horror; the statements in some other Books of the New Testament that only few - probably the very few who have "done good" to a sufficient degree, can or shall ever attain the resurrection of life.
And we get that truly horrible depiction of Jesus Christ as cosmic sadist that is so vehemently insisted-up and enforced by so many churches...
I mean the common and horribly inverted picture of a "Jesus" whose "great work" as a "saviour" was to implement a system of alleged-salvation, by which the majority of Men (probably a very large majority) were resurrected from death in order that they could be tortured forever.
By such means, a large number of self-identified Christians - past and present - chose to make themselves into "Universalists".
But not the kind of Universalist who assert that Jesus's work was to compel everybody to resurrect into Heaven; whether they wanted it or not...
Instead the kind of Universalist who believes that Jesus made things so that everybody gets resurrected, everybody gets brought to consciousness forever; and afterwards, for most of them, their eternal life will be one of inescapable and ultimate misery.
Both "universalisms" are wrong: Resurrection is a choice and Heaven too is a choice, therefore neither is for everyone.
Why is that so hard to grasp?
And why are self-identified Christians so stubborn in refusing to grasp the Good News, or (worse) insisting that they do not even want it?
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