Eschatological Universalism

[AntiFederalist13]

Greetings!

I was wonder what your thoughts were on eschatological universalism, meaning the postmillennial view that before Christ returns EVERY living soul will be converted (as opposed to just a majority being converted). I was told this was Warfield's view, but I haven't come across it often and haven't studied it all. Is this plausible? Does anyone have any resources supporting the view that would be worth checking out?

Thanks!

P.S. I did a quick preliminary search of the PB to see if there were any threads on this topic and didn't come across one, but if I did miss a thread please send me the link

 

[TylerRay]

I don't know that that is a correct understanding of Warfield's position. Here is the quote from which the phrase is taken:

If you wish, as you lift your eyes to the far horizon of the future, to see looming on the edge of time the glory of a saved world...and that in His own good time and way [God] will bring the world in its entirety to the feet of Him whom He has not hesitated to present to our adoring love not merely as the Saviour of our own souls but as the Saviour of the world....The scriptures teach an eschatological universalism, not an each and every universalism. When the Scriptures say that Christ came to save the world, that He does save the world, and that the world shall be saved by Him....They mean that He came to save and does save the human race; and that the human race is being led by God into a racial salvation: that in the age-long development of the race of men, it will attain at last unto a complete salvation, and our eyes will be greeted with the glorious spectacle of a saved world.

While the quote can be read in a way that teaches a head-for-head salvation before Christ returns, I don't think it has to be.

In fact, it's difficult to imagine that he held such a view in light of his view of the loosing of Satan, which occurs throughout the interadvential age:

The chaining of Satan is not in the event a preliminary transaction, on which the security of the saints follows: nor is the loosing of Satan a subsequent transaction, on which the security of the saints ceases. The saints rather escape entirely beyond the reach of Satan when they ascend to their Lord and take their seats on His throne by His side, and there they abide nevermore subject to his assaults. This is indeed suggested in the issue (verse 9b), where the destruction of Satan is compassed by a fire from heaven and not through the medium of a battle with the saints. But while the saints abide in their security Satan, though thus "bound" relatively to them, is loosed relatively to the world - and that is what is meant by the statement in verse 3c that "he must be loosed for a little time" - which is the symbol of the inter-adventual period, in the world; and not less in verses 7-10. We must here look on the time-element, we repeat, as belonging wholly to the symbol and read in the interpretation space-elements in its place. The intermediate state is in one word conceived of not out of relation to the "world," but as, so to speak, a safe haven of retreat in the midst of the world: the world is around it, and there Satan still works and deceives, but he who escapes through the one door of "beheading" for Christ's sake, rises not only to security but to a kingdom.

 

[Kurt Steele]

I am a newbie on this topic, but my understanding is not necessarily universalism but a huge majority based on Isaiah 2!! "and all nations will stream to it." Is this your understanding?

 

[Ed Walsh]

The Marishes Shall Not be Healed

my understanding is not necessarily universalism but a huge majority based on Isaiah 2!!

In this great chapter on the progress of the gospel, all creation is coming to life. Universalism seems to be clearly taught in this chapter:

Ezekiel 47:9 (see the whole beautiful chapter)
And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.

Then there is verse 11...

Ezekiel 47:11
But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt.