The 'fullness of times'

--- xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx wrote:

> Speaking of recurrence, its a strange thing when
> Christians get asked this
> common question (I heard it again the other day) -
> "where do all the non
> Christians go when they die? I mean the people who
> are good honest citizens,
> but non Christian?"
>
> You see the Christians struggle to answer this, and
> the best they came up
> with this time was "Im sure God has a plan for them"
>
> Yes he does. Recurrence. In such cases you just want
> to shout it out, but
> you know that this knowledge would be recieved on
> totally deaf ears, or even
> as blasphemy or nonsense. But actually its the
> answer. It explains
> everything.
>
> x
>
> PS - I've started reading Berkhofs Manual of
> Christian Doctrine again, just
> one chapter per night.
>

That's really too just another way of saying where do all the unregenerated who die go?

The Bible is clear where the regenerated go (to be with God). Hell is where reprobates (the willfully rebellious to the end) go to at the final judgment. But in orthodox doctrine there is alot of fuzzy doctrine on the 'intermediate state' to explain where the unregenerate are after death and before the Second Coming and final judgment. This is where recurrence explains things.

And do a search on 'Hades' in the dictionaries on e-sword and see it contains the meaning of a sort of interval where death resides. In recurrence though that interval is even a living now. Though one *can* see two unusual shocks called birth and physical death and they involve a real interval that is not what we perceive in the here and now. But Plato's Myth of Er you can see gets at the cycling in and out of Hades aspect of recurrence.

I also use this as a sort of proof: if Christians *really* believed that when an unsaved person dies they went to eternal hell fire they'd be out evangelizing with desperation every available minute of their days. But nobody does this. It's because we know instinctively that isn't how it works. My dad very well may end up in hell, but prior to the final judgment I can see he is in a process of recurrence. He is in his living time. I don't see him right now in hell fire for eternity. Dead in sin still, maybe (a biblical definition of recurrence), but not eternal hell fire.

Also, the biblical phrase the 'fullness of times' is very evocative of recurrence, or living time. Living time develops and becomes full. I.e. it ripens. In the biblical usage the iniquity of the people developed and developed and ripened in all their living time. Or, in the plan of God the fullness of time needed to be reached before the Saviour was to appear. In an individual life the 'fullness of time' means a persons development in their living time in recurrence. Maybe the result is a fullness of hardening. Or it can be a fullness of awakening to the point of regeneration, then escape from recurrence.

Regarding non-Christians in history though the fullness of times has also to do with the Word as a kind of leaven. Just as the Israelites were a kind of leaven in the world human population. The influence of the Word works in the fullness of time throughout all the world.

Also on that subject: the book of Romans says non-Christians have the truth of the law of God in their hearts so they are not innocent (just as an aside). They have enough so that when they encounter special revelation they by their conscience recognize it. It either hardens them or awakens them. In the fullness of their living time. - C.