It’s the whole 65 year journey and my particular prewiring for experience Weims. As for all of us. I awoke at age 10 to the nightmares of Auschwitz and Hiroshima by my own curiosity. Not my parents’ or teachers’ fault. That defined the future, I became a child of the bomb. My unguided curiosity, in that vein, with no close adult feedback, led me to The Plain Truth magazine and the end-times cult behind it five years later. The filter for the chosen was their free correspondence course. In all their narrow, legalistic, extreme historical-grammatical heterodoxy, they got one thing ‘right’: a big minded although literal view of the resurrection. At the crescendo of the imminent Apocalypse Christ would return to save humanity from Satan and itself and establish the Millennium for all survivors and with the chosen of the first and better resurrection. Satan would be given one last throw of the dice at the end and then would come the second and general resurrection of all humanity to continue the redemptive work of the Millennium for a century up to the Great White Throne Judgement and third resurrection. The rebels - Gog Magog - from the millennium and the incorrigible of the second resurrection would be snuffed out. I lived with that for 25 years. As a strict Sabbatarian for 19 to boot. Then the cult deconstructed itself and me with it. After 3 years of that - including a detour up the cul-de-sac of the charismatic in parallel - I went nowhere for 7, but always felt the hand of God upon me.
Desperation (marriage, kids, existenz) took me literally to the Anglican church of my infant baptism, via the Alpha Course. Pious evangelicals. I loved it. But the elephant in the room of damnationism was ever present. I’m highly extroverted but old school, so I kept my thoughts to myself. The elephant would come at me personally out of the herd in conversation with individuals. From them, never me. Two guys winkled it out of me. One threatened to report me. A vicar’s son. Another, a geriatrics nurse, was telling me how it saddened him so to see his elderly charges shuffle off to Hell without having said the sinner’s prayer. I shook my head in horror. That’s all I ‘said’. His eyes blazed and he pointed his finger at me like at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and howled ‘Heresy!’. Believe it. Sir John Harrington came to mind, ‘How then doth treason prosper? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.’. And I daren’t. Not then. It took another 5 years of pious evangelical damnationism, after reading, devouring all of Rob Bell (and watching and meeting) and Brian McLaren. That was less than 10 years ago.
Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment had finally caught up with me after five-three hundred years. I finally stopped trying to make any of the Bible literal with the imprimatur of the Holy Spirit guaranteeing that the names of the books were the names of the actual authors. That Adam and Eve segued in to evolution. That process still took effect over the past few years. Deconstruction of all OT prophecy was completed. You know, what the average theology undergrad or high school major knows at 17. Nothing is reconstructable. The onslaught of rationalism - of the fact of the infinite material creation from eternity with no signature of having been created, that there have always been peopled worlds and if there was one incarnation, there have been infinite - continued to date although I have been able to take something back most recently as reported on this site. Re-acceptance of the paradox of the Personal full divinity of fully human Christ, rather than divinity by nature.
Sorry, but you asked for influences!
OK, the towering scriptural evidence, that the hyperbolic hard sayings of Jesus have nothing to do with the resurrection, the sublime, transcendent afterlife, beyond the assurance of paradise given to the penitent thief on the cross (BUT NOT THE OTHER ONE! HE’S DAMNED TO EVERBURNING HELL!!!), is here:
Matthew 10:5-15
The Mission of the Twelve
5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 9 Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, 10 no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. 12 As you enter the house, greet it. 13 If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
Matthew 11:20-24
Woe on Unrepentant Towns
20 Then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. 21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22 But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. 24 But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”
Luke 10:1:12
The Mission of the Seventy
10 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.
Luke 10:13-16
Woes to Unrepentant Cities
13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But at the judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. 16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
Luke 10:17-20
The Return of the Seventy
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Either these are the same event, with different emphases on 12 or 70, or two separate events. Minimally Jesus said twice, may be four times that Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon will have a more bearable judgement than His contemporary Jewish cities, more than implying that they will nonetheless have a nonetheless bearable judgement. Not that they will end up nuked like the mythical S&G (and three other cities by collateral damage…). I thought this before Rob Bell said it and was elated that somebody else thought it.
I’m looking forward to that judgement. No fear.
YMMV.