In the past two years I have voiced many things that I know to be true, but without words to explain the truth. That’s a very dangerous thing to do in the religious environment within where we live today. My only salvation (no pun intended) was a loving body, a loyal eldership, and an apostle who stood with me to hold me up. 
One of those things which I released from my digital pen was the tongue-in-cheek statement that God was a sympathetic universalist so how could I not be? Hey, it’s right there in II Peter 3:9 and I Tim. 2:4. But let me elaborate a little more.
There are true definitions of words and then there are “understandings” of the definitions of words. Universalism is one of those hot button words that’s not to far behind homosexual, lesbian, and cult. The most brief definition I can give us that a universalist is one who believes that all religions lead to God.
Now, before you say bravo or right on, let me say that I think it is equally off base to say that any ONE religion leads to God! Say what?
I think it even more difficult to defend to say that members of only one religion can make it into heaven!
I don’t think heaven is going to be filled with any one group of people who crafted a creed they thought best and sure. How can religion, any, pretend to hold the KEYS to the gates of heaven? Didn’t Jesus get those keys? Doesn’t He still have them?
What saith though King James?
Grace says that God finds us, we don’t find God. And I cast a leary eye on those who think they KNOW who is IN and who is OUT: who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. Do you really think a person is going to heaven because they subscribed to a set of doctrinal creeds or church propositions?
I don’t. I can’t.
I believe it was William Barclay that said something akin to this, or maybe I just made it up. Salvation is simply man’s response to God’s love, by loving Him back, and all that He has created!
Quoting Spencer Burke, “All too often our response to God’s loving grace has been religion“.
How tragic!
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