Jesus, Paul, John, Peter... they did not teach universalism. We must look elsewhere for its origins. And this particular aberration seems to have been sprinkled throughout history, giving rise to the boldness of modern adherents, as they point to this or that weed-grower and say "Aha! You see, this thing is not new."

Definitely not new. But not old enough to count, either. As early as the second century one will find a mishmash of "utterances" put together in book form and known as the Sibylline Oracles. Some were written by Christians, some by Jews. Some are good, some are simply pagan. They were rejected early on as inspired of God. But they do seem to favor our subject.

Some church fathers of this time seem to have been swayed toward universalism. In studying other cult beliefs I have found that the church fathers, as wonderful as they might have been in much of their teaching and lives, are not reliable sources of truth. They contradict one another and the Scriptures.

From the mid third century on, universalism was picked up by heretic groups such as the Manicheans. These were simply gnostics in Christian form. The gnostic heresy had already been condemned by the apostle John in his first epistle. But some of their teachings hung on.

Manicheans helped give birth to certain Protestant groups before the Protestant Reformation. Some of the following were closer to the Scriptures than others, all had a form of universalism: The Albigenses (who declared false teachings about the nature of Jesus), the Waldenses, the Lollards.

Origen, fourth century, is the most famous adherent of the doctrine of inclusion. You remember Origen? He is the one who proposed that in the great falling away from God, those who fell furthest became the demons and those who fell least became humans. Yes, he said, all of them will be eventually restored to God. How so? Why, even after death, their purification process will continue.

All punishment, he said, is remedial, meant only to reconcile God and man. And even when a man is in eternal hell he can repent and be restored. He never explained why the good who make it to heaven cannot regress.

Origen conformed more to Plato than to Scripture. He and many of his doctrines were condemned by the church in 543 at a Council in Constantinople. Origen is considered by conservative scholars in our own day a truly dangerous teacher who needs to be ignored.

This sprinkling of universalist thought through the centuries finally gave birth to a distinct denomination in 1770 England.

Throughout all this time, in spite of the minimal presence of the teaching, most Christian people believed in an eternal hell. But as the 1800's dawned, this doctrine came to be abandoned by many, or at least changed to annihilation. Liberal scholarship in particular assumed that all would one day be either gone altogether or safe with God.

Enter Charles Darwin. Here in his studies was confirmation that life is in progression, that we are only at a particular stage of growth now. The theologians added that it was to be continued after death. This in opposition to the Biblical account of a final state of mankind, to be determined by events here and now.

In this century the doctrine found a champion in Schleiermacher, and in the next, in Brunner and Barth. In the case of the latter, they were not able to affirm universalism fully, but not able to deny it either.

In the first centuries of this heresy, for heresy it is, a division from the Truth handed down to the Church, Scriptures were twisted and mangled and made to fit. But with Biblical exegesis clearly favoring eternal punishment, the tactic came to be simply to deny the texts that seemed to be out of line. They appealed to the "spirit" of the text, the great love of God, the nature of Jesus. That is, their interpretation and personal feeling about such.

So, when all is said and done, we have a merely human position given to us by, well, merely humans. Some of it is logical enough. It meshes with our own fears and queries at times. But it does not match up to the record given us by foundational apostles.

As with every subject I have investigated, it is this matter only that concerns me. I care not what Origen and Augustine said. I definitely am not worried about Brunner and Barth. I want to know what the hand-picked writers of our New Covenant, those who gave their lives to be witnesses of Jesus, had to say.

I shall pursue this line of thought, the Biblical one, by God's grace, in days to come.