See With Vision ~ Archie A. Young 6 months agoPrivate The Intenders of the Highest Good; Vision Alignment Project A Vision for Awakening We see a world where we, the people, have awakened from the dream imposed on us by those who came before us; awakened from the dream of suffering and shortage; awakened from the dream of our lesser Selves, and having stepped into the Reality of who we truly are - empowered, unlimited, Spiritual Beings capable of miracles and magnificence. We see a world where the veils have been lifted, the lies revealed, the fears dispelled, and our courage restored so that now we are all unencumbered by illusions that no longer serve us. And in their place, we now see life unfiltered, as it really IS, beautiful beyond description, abundant beyond measure, expanded and exalted beyond anything we have ever imagined. It is in a world filled with awakened, happy people who have rediscovered the wisdom in loving one another that we are thriving and blossoming in complete creative freedom. Infinity and eternity have opened up before us and we have welcomed them with an innocence of mind, an openness of heart, an adventure of Spirit.

I Am That...

You are killing more of each other every day over your quarrels over religion than all other things put together, because you cannot even come to an agreement about what you think God says, or wants for you. On one side of the world God wants something different than the other. On one side of the room, in one side of your mind, God wants something different than on the other. The power is within you. You are extensions of this powerful Source Energy. You are literally God expressing in this physical body. And so, as you are standing in a thought, or in a word, or in an action that feels good to you as you are standing there—then you are fully open and allowing all of that Divine Energy to flow through you. And in that moment you are all that you said you would be when you decided to come forth into this body. You are the extension of pure positive energy. You are in your full creative power. You are thriving. You are clear-minded. You are joyful. You are filled with love. You are who you are—you are allowing that which you really are.

My Dad Archester Young

My father Archester Young was born on 10/10/1913 in a small town called Florence in the state of Mississippi. Born a mere 48 years after Lincoln freed black Americans it was a different time...freedom even then was just a word that had not been defined. As a boy my father grew up with the South's Jim Crow law's that successfully segregated our country and like many black families (and many other nationalities) was impacted by the harshness of discrimination and the bias of the times. My father was an excellent baseball player who played in the Negro Leagues of the south as well as was drafted into the Army. He moved North To New York In the late 1940's my mother and he had already met. I was born in 1954 and life stayed pretty up and down as thing's go.  My point in all this is that I never really quite  understood my Dad until I took the time to spend those last years with him before he died...I always loved my father and because of that I never really had to approve of the choices he made in his life (many I disagreed about.(I understand today it really was none of my business)Today I remember that my father Loved me and not because he gave me stuff...(the most money my dad ever gave me was $20.00)no cars and thing's like that but he gave me his opinions and thoughts, he showed me his hopes and his fears and weather or not I agreed or disagreed he caused me to reflect think and pray. My dad may not have been perfect by many standards but he was perfect for me. For without him there is no me. I know my father Loved me and I know he is always there., even till this day when I need him.   I am blessed to have known him and even more blessed to be a part of him. I Love You Dad.

Jesus, the Only Path ?

Jesus, the Only Path ?

Meaning of Jesus

Jesus said that one can reach His Father through Him only and that He is the only path. Does this not mean that we have to follow only Jesus? In such case how can one accept Universal Spirituality? This is a question posed by several devoted Christians from all over the world.

My answer to these dear devoted holy Christian souls is as follows:

Does Jesus represent a human body? Or a word? Or both? If it represents a particular human body, then such a human body does not exist now. Only a particular human generation and that too, in a particular place was favored by the association of the human body of Jesus. Is it not the partiality of God?

If Jesus represents the word (Message of the Christ), then the previous human generations before the birth of Jesus were not favored with this word and this also leads to the partiality of God. If Jesus represents both the body and the word, then both the above objections will attack together, strengthening the partiality of God.

Impartial God

God is impartial. He created this entire Universe. He should not favor a part of infinite time and a particular piece of the world. Since there is no re-birth of the soul, as you say, all those unlucky souls fell permanently in the hell. Now such souls cannot take human re-birth to pray Jesus for the salvation. If you say that some other prophet by name Moses or some other name, equal to Jesus, existed before the birth of Jesus, then, the Christian belief "Jesus alone is the Saviour" will be wrong. If you say that Mosses was also the same Jesus, then, why not some other person, X or Y or Z, after the birth of Jesus also be Jesus? In such case Jesus exists before and after the birth of Jesus. Then Jesus is omniscient and omni-potent. In such case Jesus in some other human forms by some other names must have existed always. In such case, Jesus can exist in different human forms simultaneously also in different countries during the same human generation to avoid the partiality, because the different countries might not have contact with each other during a particular old human generation. In fact, this was true because the countries were not having any contact with each other, a few centuries ago. God is the Father of all the people in all the countries of this Universe and therefore, He should be impartial to all His children. You have to agree with this point because only one God created this whole Universe. It will be further better to replace the word Jesus by a general word like "Holy Spirit", because the word Jesus signifies a particular human body only according to general sense of the public. The word "Holy Spirit" does not signify any particular human body and therefore it will be reasonable to say that the Holy Spirit is the God and this Holy Spirit existed in all those divine human forms. Infact, the Holy Spirit is the purest power of God that enters a particular chosen deserving human body in every country during the same human generation. By this, every country gets equal benefit. When Jesus existed in a particular place, the other countries were not having any comunication with that Holy place of Jesus. Those human gererations in other countries must have gone to the hell because Jesus was the only saviour. Of-course, some people who were associated with Jesus also went to hell since they disbelieved Him. But those people, atleast, got the chance of association with Holy Jesus because they existed in that place. Had that chance of association been given to the people of other countries also, there might have been a fraction of the people, which, might have believed Jesus and might have been liberated. Such salvation of a fraction of people happened in that Holy place where Jesus lived. This objection will charge Jesus or (and) God with lack of planning and lack of impartiality. To remove this charge, the above Universal Concept has to be accepted by open minds following a logical scientific path of analysis, which is essential in any line of knowledge including the spiritual knowledge.

O great Christians! I appreciate you from the bottom of my heart for your one pointed faith and sinceority towards God. Who can be compared with you, in this world, for your practical sacrifice in the mission of God and for your kindest hearts in the service rendered to the downtrodden people? Fortunately you are also the toppers in Science, which, is the result of most powerful practical analysis of any concept. Thus you are the best cream of this creation in all the aspects. But, why don't you apply a trace of that powerful systematic logical scientific analysis in this spiritual knowledge also? Why should you follow the interpretations of your fellow human beings, who are just equal to you? You can yourselves analyse the divine statements of God Jesus with your own intellectual faculty based on simple logical analysis. Since only one God created this Universe, since only God is the father of all the human beings in this world and since the father must be impartial to all the children, the same God must have written all the Religious Scriptures. These Scriptures cannot and should not contradict each other. If there is any contradiction, that must have been the mis-interpretation of some closed minds.

Before Jesus was born, prophets announced Him as 'Emmanuel', meaning that God was coming in human form to live with the human beings. Whenever the word Jesus comes, it should mean only 'Emmanuel'. When you say that Jesus is the only path, it means that the human form of God is the only path to reach God. Whenever Jesus utters the word 'I', that word 'I' means 'Emmanuel', who is a general human incarnation of God and not a particular human incarnation only. The reason for the emphasis on human form of God is that the human beings can have vision for a long time, can touch Him for a long time, can converse with Him for a long time and can live with Him for a long time when He is in the human body. The Holy Spirit can enter the body of light also, which is called as Angel. Such a body can be seen for a little time only since the light has the nature of propagation in the space. Such angel cannot be touched due to high intensity of radiation. The angel talks briefly for the same reason. The angel cannot live with human beings for a long time. Thus human body is most convenient for the human beings. This soul goes to the upper world by taking a body of light energy. For those souls in the upper world, God also appears with a body of bright light energy. Jesus referred this form of God as the Father of the Heaven. A human being with this materialized body cannot approach the God with that powerful energetic body. The meaning of the statement that a human being can approach God only through Jesus is that a material body can approach God through a material body only. God is one and the same whether He is present in the body of light or in the materialized human body. From the point of God, Jesus and the Father of Heaven are one and the same. The milk present in a golden cup is the same as the milk present in a ceramic cup. "Jesus will come again!" means that God will come again and again in human form for every human generation, to avoid the partiality of the Father to a particular human generation. In this context the word Jesus means "Emmanuel". The statement that Jesus is the light is a concept of Science. The word Jesus indicates the external human body, which is made of the five elements i.e., earth, water, energy, air and space. Space is common for both matter and energy, which is the basis of the concept of volume. Volume is the property of the space. Both matter and energy need space. Earth, water and air constitute matter in solid, liquid and gaseous states. Thus the matter in the human body is another form of energy according to Law of Mass- energy equivalence (E = M x C Square). Thus the human body of Jesus, which is constituted by matter is a form of energy and thus it is equal to the energetic body of the Father of heaven. Thus from the point of external body also, the "Emmanuel" and the Father of Heaven are one and the same. A person present in bright silk cloth or dull cotton cloth is one and same. Such interpretations must be logical and also must be proving the impartial love of God towards all His children on the earth.

What is Saving?

Saving from the troubles and misery is the general sense of the word saving. In spiritual sense saving means cutting all the worldly bonds and establishing real bond with God, Who alone is the truth? God is truth. This means that God is infinite power. The creation is just His imagination and is almost not true. The imagining person is said to be truly existing. The world, which is just His imagination and which is completely not nothing. The world is made of an iota of energy of God. God is like the infinite ocean of energy. Compared to God the world is almost nothing. Thus this entire creation is under the full control of God. Just like the person doing some imagination creates an imaginary world in him, God created this imaginary world in Him. The imagining person can fully control the world. He can transform any item into any other item. He can raise a dead body in His imaginary world. All the miracles of human incarnations can be explained only by this concept. God who is present in the human incarnation does all these miracles only to establish this concept. If the world is equally true, then the world is equally powerful to God. In such case God cannot do whatever He likes. Since the world is least powerful and God is most powerful, God controls the entire world like a very strong person controlling very weak person. Thus the world truth indicates the omni-potent nature of God. When we say that this world is not true, it indicates the negligible power of the world. Suppose a small ant is on your shirt, will you say that yourself and the ant are present in the house? The ant is negligible and is treated as nothing. Therefore, a person who knows this concept surrenders to God and accepts Him as the saviour. In his eyes the entire world looks like an ant before God. You are a tiny particle in this ant-world. You can understand your position by putting a relative scale. Assume that this ant is Infinite Ocean of energy. You are an iota of that ocean. This means your power is negligible before the power of this entire nature. The world is like the ocean and you are like a drop in it. God is like the ocean and the world a drop in God. You must understand this simile not in terms of volume but in terms of the intensity of the power. When we utter the word God, we immediately imagine Him as a very large figure with unlimited boundaries. The space is largest but as no power as it is treated has nothing. The atom bomb is very small but it has enormous power. Therefore, our idea about God should not be in terms of the three-dimensional space. When a person imagines a large city, the city is very huge but the person is very small. But that small person has created, maintains and finally dissolves this huge city. He can do anything in this huge city. In fact He is standing outside this huge city. When He wants to enter into this huge imaginary city, He will imagine a small form and He identifies Himself with that form. That small form represents the outside person. This imagined form, which is identified by the outside person is treated as the outside person directly. This imagined small form is the human incarnation. The outside person is God. The imaginary huge city is this world. Thus God identifies Himself with the human incarnation. From this angle the human incarnation and the God or one and the same. There is another angle in which the human incarnation is not the original God but a part and parcel of God. In this angle God and the human incarnation are treated as father and son. You can experience the Father only through this Son. In the third angle the human incarnation is just sent by God into this world as a messenger with some power. Jesus talked this truth in all the three angles. Jesus can save any human being who has any one of these three angles. Acceptance of Jesus as your saviour is the essential step in the spiritual effort. Here Jesus means the human incarnation in general. Only God is the saviour. But you cannot approach God directly. Only through the human incarnation you can approach God. This means you should accept the human incarnation as that very God. In such case only the human incarnation becomes your saviour. God is like free electrons flowing in the atmosphere. These Electrons are the electricity. Then can you heat water by keeping the vessel containing water in the atmosphere? When these Electrons enter a medium like the metallic wire, you can heat water. If the medium is human form it is most convenient for you to clear your doubts, to love and to serve Him. Therefore, acceptance of Jesus as your Saviour means that you should accept the human incarnation as your saviour. It is told that Jesus will come again. This means that the human incarnation is coming in every human generation. Otherwise, if one generation was only blessed by such fortune, the other generations will charge God as partial and such charge is justified. Therefore, if you think that Jesus means only that particular human incarnation, which came about 2000 years back, you have lost the whole concept. Through a particular example generalization must be made. If you say that sodium atom is indivisible it means the atom of any element is indivisible. If you say that Daniel is born, it means that every human being will be born. If this basic analysis is lost, the entire spiritual castle falls down due to the absence of its foundation.

Does Accepting Jesus Ensure Salvation?

Merely by accepting the human incarnation (Jesus) as Saviour cannot save you. It is told in the Bible that He came to save His people. Who are His people? They are His beloved devotees. They follow His instructions. Jesus did not give attention even to see His mother, when He was with His disciples. When a woman shouted that the Mother of Jesus was blessed, Jesus did not agree and told that blessed are those who followed His instructions. He says that one should leave parents, wife or husband, children and must be prepared even to carry on his own cross for the sake of Jesus. This means that one should be prepared to sacrifice even his life. Therefore, it is a narrow path with thorns. Even to hear this statement your mind is turmoiled with chaotic distrubance. That is the reason why He says that He has come to give peace to you and that He is holding the sword of knowledge in His hand. Therefore, you can be saved only when you reach that state. If you say to the Judge that you accept him as your saviour, will he save you and cancel his judgement? If you say to the jailor that you will accept him as your saviour, will he relieve you from the jail? Therefore, He saves only His dearest devotees. He underwent, the suffering of His people only on the Cross. He did not suffer for the sake of all the people and released all the people from their sins. If such thing is done the justice is destroyed. The administration becomes meaningless. When a devotee leaves everybody and everything for the sake of such human incarnation and participates in His service, such people are called as His people. Such devotees will never agree for the crucification of the Lord for their sake. Therefore, real saving is only at that stage.

Whether, it is Christianity or Hinduism the beginner cannot come forward if the final stage is shown. In Hinduism the saints and in Christianity, the Popes, fathers, brother and sisters who are dedicated to the Mission have left everything and everybody for the sake of God. Actually such Holy saints only can be saved since they stand according to His standards prescribed. But if this fact is revealed no common man will come forward. It is the tradition of the divine preacher to show the final result even in the first step. We say to the schoolboy that if he goes to the school regularly and studies sincerely, he will become the professor. It is only encouragement. Does that mean that the boy will be appointed as professor as soon as he finishes the schooling? He gets encouraged and studies well in the school. Then he will go to college and university and study further, then he will join as a lecturer, become reader and then finally become the professor. Therefore, to attract the beginners such encouraging statements are made, which need not be condemned as lies. When a lie does well, such a lie cannot be the sin. Even if it is truth, if it harms it is a sin. We tell so many lies to our children to encourage them and our aim is only their welfare and not cheating them. Therefore, such statements should be accepted with reference to the level of the devotees.

To recognize God, then to recognize God as the King of this creation and then recognizing His ultimate underlying hidden administration in the entire creation is the essence of spiritual knowledge. We recognize the Government and its administration in this world. It is clear because it is visible to the eyes. But God and His administration are invisible. Invisible dose not mean non-existent. This world is filled with cosmic energy, which is invisible. That does not mean cosmic energy does not exist. You can experience the administration of God in every corner of your life. His administration is applied to both living and non-living beings of the creation. The non-living Sun, wind etc., move constantly following the rules of God only. That invisible God comes as visible human incarnation and proves all this. When Jesus ordered the storm in the sea subsided. The plants, birds and animals and all the human beings are under His control only. When Jesus told a tree to die, the tree died. Jesus was controlling the sheep and thus He controls animals and birds. The human beings are atheists, normal human devotees and real devotees. He also controls the atheists. The disciple of Jesus cut the ear of a soldier who came to arrest. But Jesus attached the ear in the proper place. Thus His enemies are also under His control. The second type, normal devotees worship God for solving their worldly problems. They were also controlled by Him, when He cured their diseases etc., He saved the highest real devotees by sufferring on the Cross. Thus, He proved Himself to be the controller of all the non-living and living beings. This means that He is controller of the entire creation. To recognize such controlling administration in the entire world is recognition of His kingdom. People thought that His kingdom is somewhere in the heaven, which is above the sky. Jesus said that His kingdom is coming to the earth. It means that the human beings on the earth have started recognizing His kingdom on the earth, which is already existing. There is no place, which is not in His kingdom. There is no king except the human incarnation like Jesus. He is the king of kings. Even the Satan is also an employee in His kingdom. This creation is created by Him for His entertainment. In a cinema, not only the hero is remunerated but also the Vilan. Satan is used to test the devotees through his attractions. Thus Satan is required in the spiritual effort of the human being. In answering a multiple choice question, there are three wrong answers alongwith one correct answer. The three wrong answers represent Satan, which appear more correct and attract the mind. The power of discrimination of the student becomes more significant in presence of such wrong answers only. What is the significance of the happiness without misery? Nothing and none can oppose the Lord. Satan is required for His divine game.

Rituals

The rituals are in every religion. Their significance is the effect of external atmosphere. Baptism is a ritual .All the rituals are indicating the super natural power of the unimagined God. Astrologers and Black magic etc., are not good from the point the highest real devotees. But from the point of atheists and scientists, they indicates the super natural element, which Leeds to the existence of the God. Therefore, every thing in the tradition is positive from the point of lowest cadre and symultaniously negative from the point of highest devotees. Even the idol worship is good from the point of lowest devotees. They can not accept the present human incarnation due to their ego and jealousy. They can not see the energetic forms of God by long penance. They can only retain concept of God through idols and photos. Jesus on the cross of the chain present in the neck of every Christian is an idol. Ofcourse, the idol worship is not direct worship of the God, because God does not exist in idols. It is only model or representative of the concept. We use models in teaching. When you teach the generation of the electricity through a model or flow sheet diagram, a diagram or the model is not directly the electric generator. But it represents the concept of production of electricity. The idol worship should be limited up to vision only. Therefore, cleaning the idol by bath and decorating is acceptable. You can offer also the food to the idol and feel that you are eating the remains. But you should not say that you have really scarified to the God. Thus, you can see every thing as positive from the lower level.

Kingdom of God

The kingdom of God is compared to a treasure hidden in the field. This means that God is hidden in the human body of the human incarnation. In Gita the human body was compared with the field (Idam areeram'.).This means the identification of human incarnation. Purchasing the field means serving that human body. If the treasure is announced, the owner will not sell the field. Then it is impossible to purchase the treasure. This means that it is impossible to serve the real form of the God, which is beyond the imagination. The human body is a part of the kingdom of the God. Again the kingdom of the God is compared to a merchant who is in search of pearls. This means that the Lord in human body is in search of real devotees. But only one in millions can be the real devotee as said in Gita (Kaschit maam "). When a merchant found such a pearl, he purchases it by selling all his property. This means that the human incarnation will go to any extent to save that rarest devotee. Again the kingdom of God is compared to a dragnet, by which all categories are captured and from each category good is taken and bad is thrown. This means that God captures all types of devotees. Some devotees use God for their selfish benefits. Even for them, God answers and thus the God captures them. From these devotees, thouse, who are turned in to real devotees are accepted and the others are thrown out. These other type devotees love God as an instrument to solve their problems and that is not a real love.

Matthew 5:3-8 The mercy and purity are praised because such qualities will develop love on God. Then only God blesses them. Simple mercy and purity related to worldly bonds are of no permanent use. Such good qualities without the element of the God lead to temporally heaven, which is not a permanent fruit. Mere love on society leads to temporary heaven only from which one falls to earth, as said in Gita (Ksheenee Punye")

Matthew 11:28-30 The yoke of the Lord is light where as the yoke of human beings is heavy. This means that the work of the Lord will never give misery as there is no selfishness. But the worldly work of the human beings becomes heavy due to selfishness that create anxiety and misery since one is attached to the fruit of the work.

John 18:37-38 God is truth. But every truth is not God. For example, it is true if you say that wind moves. This does not mean that this sentence is God. He said " I am the truth.'' He did not say " Truth is my self''. The people who belong to the truth mean the devotees who belong to the God. Here the word truth represents God only and not every truth in the world.

Matthew 6:8 He said that Father knows things before you ask. This sentence belongs to highest devotees. They do not expect anything in return, even for their practical service but the lower devotees aspire fruits from the God even for their theoratical service like prayers. For such low cadre He said " Ask, that shall be given''. For the high devotees He suffers and cancels their evil effects. For lower devotees it is only postponing the punishment to the another place called hell with increased interest.

Luke 12:51-53 Jesus is evaluating the love towards Him in terms of decrease in the love of the worldly bonds. As the love of a boy on his girl friend increases, the bonds with his parents weaken proportionately. At the final stage he runs away with girl friend totally discarding his parents. Thus, the detachment from the worldly bonds is an indirect measure of the attachment to the God. Without the later, the former is useless. This is explained here. Jesus told that who could not be detached from parents, wife or husband and children and even with the life can not be his follower.

Luke 9: 60-62 Let the dead bury the dead. You preach about God. This means that you need not worry about the dead body or its rituals. The reason is that the inert dead body will decompose in to inert five elements. The decomposition reactions are controlled by inert items like entropy, free energy etc. The inert means dead. Therefore, the inert five elements will decompose the dead body and burly it whether you do the ceremony or not. The Parsy people should be appreciated in this concept because they leave the dead bodies on hills and in forests.

It Really Is Your Choice...Quotes courtsey of NDW withcomments by aay

A person can either do something in order to 'be happy,' or a person can start the day by simply deciding to 'be happy,' and the things that person will do will automatically reflect that. NDW


This reflects the fact that you create your daily life by making choices...aay

Feeling is the language of the soul.
If you want to know what's true for you about something, look to how you're feeling about it. NDW


That feeling in the gut that we often do not listen to is used to make daily choices to create anew Who You Really Are. aay


Feelings are sometimes difficult to discover, and often even more difficult to acknowledge.
Yet hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth. NDW


It is you who are choosing, in any moment, to be happy or chooseing to be sad, or choosing to be angry, or forgiving, or enlightened, or whatever.
You are choosing.  NDW

Look to see what you most desire in your life, then ride that feeling all the way to creation.
NDW

Teach your children that they need nothing exterior to themselves to be happy - no person, place or thing - and that true happiness is found within. NDW

Limitless

Don't think of God in terms of forms, because forms are limited and God is unlimited. – C.S. Lewis

So a God that holds no pre-set limitations imagine that...God has alway's been limitless we just haven't grasped what that means. This is the time to reflect inward to understand the limitless of God and to also see the limitlessness of the soul for it is there that all things are.

Not So Hard

How in a world of illusions how do we get out and face reality?

Why Rick Perry is wrong about Social Security

Why Rick Perry is wrong about Social Security

Read this wonderful article once again pointing out Rick Perry Is An Ass

My Revision Of The 23rd Pslam

The Lord is my best friend, I shall not want for any of my needs.



He makes me lie down in green pastures to picnic in nature and allow us to talk;


he leads me beside still waters and shows me the beauty of his work;


he restores my soul so that it sings with joy.


He leads me in right paths for his name's sake which one he does not mind.


Even though I walk through the darkest valley,


I fear no thing that I can imagine;


for you are with me and I know you are me;


Our rod and your staff--they comfort me.


You prepare a table before me


in the presence of the many who walketh with you;


you anoint my head with oil;


my cup overflows.


Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me


all the days of my life,


and I shall dwell in the Spirit of the Lord


forever.

aay

One Entity

“Consider the lowly caterpillar. It is self-evident that the caterpillar and the butterfly live in entirely different worlds, and no one would say that a caterpillar is a butterfly or that a butterfly is a caterpillar. And yet we know that the caterpillar and the butterfly are simply different levels of expression of one entity. The caterpillar can fly, but not as a caterpillar—only as a butterfly. He has the potential, but something has to happen to him. You can do the things Jesus did, but not as the man you now are. Only when you are ‘born anew’ into a higher state of consciousness.”

Who's in hell? Pastor's book sparks eternal debate

Who's in hell? Pastor's book sparks eternal debate


By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Tom Breen, Associated Press – Thu Mar 24, 6:10 am ET



Associated Press DURHAM, N.C. – When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job.



The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.



Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.



"I think justice comes and judgment will happen, but I don't think that means an eternity of torment," Holtz said. "But I can understand why people in my church aren't ready to leave that behind. It's something I'm still grappling with myself."



The debate over Bell's new book "Love Wins" has quickly spread across the evangelical precincts of the Internet, in part because of an eye-catching promotional video posted on YouTube.



Bell, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., lays out the premise of his book while the video cuts away to an artist's hand mixing oil paints and pastels and applying them to a blank canvas.



He describes going to a Christian art show where one of the pieces featured a quote by Mohandas Gandhi. Someone attached a note saying: "Reality check: He's in hell."



"Gandhi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure?" Bell asks in the video.



In the book, Bell criticizes the belief that a select number of Christians will spend eternity in the bliss of heaven while everyone else is tormented forever in hell.



"This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear," he writes in the book.



For many traditional Christians, though, Bell's new book sounds a lot like the old theological position of universalism — a heresy for many churches, teaching that everyone, regardless of religious belief, will ultimately be saved by God. And that, they argue, dangerously misleads people about the reality of the Christian faith.



"I just felt like on every page he's trying to say 'It's OK,'" said Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler at a forum last week on Bell's book held at the Louisville institution. "And there's a sense in which we desperately want to say that. But the question becomes, on what basis can we say that?"



Bell argues that hell has assumed an outsize importance in Christian teaching, considering the word itself only appears in the New Testament about 12 times, by his count.



"For a 1st-century Jewish rabbi, where you go when you die wasn't the most pressing question," Bell told The Associated Press. "The question was how can you enter into the shalom and peace of God right now, this day."



Bell denies he's a universalist, and his exact beliefs on what happens to people after death are hard to pin down, but he argues that such speculation distracts people from an urgent point. In his telling, hell is something freely chosen that already exists on earth, in everything from war to abusive relationships.



The near-relish with which some Christians stress the torments of hell, Bell argues, keep many believers needlessly afraid of a loving God, and repel potential Christians who might otherwise be curious about the faith's teachings.



"The heart of the Christian story is that God is love," he said. "But when you hear the word 'Christian,' you don't necessarily think 'Oh, sure, those are the people who don't stop talking about God's love.' Some other things would come to mind."



About the only thing everyone agrees on is that this is not a new debate in Christianity. It stretches to antiquity, when Christianity was a persecuted sect in the Roman Empire, and the third century theologian Origen developed a theory that contemporary critics charged would mean that everyone, even the devil himself, would ultimately be saved. Church leaders eventually condemned ideas they attributed to Origen, but he has had a lasting influence across the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions.



Those traditions often disagree, even internally, on what awaits souls after death. The Catholic Church, which has a formal process for identifying souls in heaven through canonization, pointedly refrains from saying that anyone is without a doubt in hell. Protestants reject the concept of purgatory, in which sins can be atoned for after death, but disagree on other questions. The lack of consensus is enabled partly by ambiguities in the Bible.



Evangelical opposition to Bell is exemplified in a succinct tweet from prominent evangelical pastor John Piper: "Farewell, Rob Bell."



Page Brooks, a professor at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, thinks Bell errs in a conception of a loving God that leaves out the divine attributes of justice and holiness.



"It's love, but it's a just love," Brooks said. "God is love, but you have to understand you're a sinner and the only way to get around that is through Christ's sacrifice on the cross."



Making his new belief public is both liberating and a little frightening for Holtz, even though his doubts about traditional doctrines on damnation began long before he heard about Rob Bell's book.



A married Navy veteran with five children, Holtz spent years trying to reconcile his belief that Jesus Christ's death on the cross redeemed the entire world with the idea that millions of people — including millions who had never even heard of Jesus — were suffering forever in hell.



"We do these somersaults to justify the monster god we believe in," he said. "But confronting my own sinfulness, that's when things started to topple for me. Am I really going to be saved just because I believe something, when all these good people in the world aren't?"



Gray Southern, United Methodist district superintendent for the part of North Carolina that includes Henderson, declined to discuss Holtz's departure in detail, but said there was more to it than the online post about Rob Bell's book.



"That's between the church and him," Southern said.



Church members had also been unhappy with Internet posts about subjects like gay marriage and the mix of religion and patriotism, Holtz said, and the hell post was probably the last straw. Holtz and his family plan to move back to Tennessee, where he'll start a job and maybe plant a church.



"So long as we believe there's a dividing point in eternity, we're going to think in terms of us and them," he said. "But when you believe God has saved everyone, the point is, you're saved. Live like it."