Thread: Carlton Pearson--"Come Sunday" on Netflix

Originally Posted by FaithfulOne

Pente did you watch it? He's maybe hoping it will sway people (conflicted or nominal Christians) into considering inclusion/universalism, perhaps. OTOH, the ending of the movie shows him speaking at what was supposed to be Flunder's church (by they way they appeared- a mix of gay, feminist, other religious backgrounds)--don't want to give too much away.

He believes he is right...and he must believe the movie favors his thinking...so chances are it DOES..by that I mean those you saw at the end are the ones he seeks to sway, the ones most vulnerable, and that is tragically sad...my guess is he views hard core believers like ourselves as unreachable...

Originally Posted by Cardinal TT

I have heard the same voice and it caused me to doubt God's goodness......the voice is the devil
Satan is the master of deception

We don't understand eternal hell in this life but we either TRUST God or we start to believe lies

People who never heard the gospel is a reasonable concern. Going from wondering if some sort of exception should be made for some of those and to embracing Universalism is a huge leap though. Universalism includes the Hitler types, the ones that were thoroughly evil throughout their lives and died cursing the God of the Bible whose message they were well acquainted with.

I know that some of the posters here speculate that every person is convicted by the Spirit at some point during his life, with or without the gospel, and has some sort of chance to repent. I suppose that includes people who died before Jesus was born and who never heard of the existence of the Jewish people or their religion. I don't think there is much evidence of that in the Bible.

The other avenue, which seems more reasonable to me personally is that God will make exceptions in afterlife. According to the Bible he did with the souls that were disobedient to Noah's message. It just doesn't say how far he will go with making exceptions. It doesn't say that they were automatically saved though, only that the gospel was preached to them :

1 Peter 3:19 by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison,
20 who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared

Remember that those people were all dead when that was written so there was noone that could read Peter's letter and demand to be included upon dying. Beyond that group of people we don't know anything about who God would make an exception for or give a second chance in afterlife. Maybe none, maybe some but certainly not all. A precedent for making additional exceptions is there in the scriptures and it's also within the principles of justice for a Judge to do so. Not to make negative exceptions and treat people more harshly than the law institutes but certainly to make positive exceptions.

The law of scripture is simple. If you die outside of the faith you go to hell per default. If you die in the faith you go to heaven per default. God doesn't make any exceptions to the law of the gospel but he can make exceptions to the law of judgment.

Originally Posted by Quest

He believes he is right...and he must believe the movie favors his thinking...so chances are it DOES..by that I mean those you saw at the end are the ones he seeks to sway, the ones most vulnerable, and that is tragically sad...my guess is he views hard core believers like ourselves as unreachable...

The hardcore believed are the ones they argue with, to the point of belittling...including calling our God a "monster"...I'm already seeing it over FB.

..

Originally Posted by FaithfulOne

The hardcore believers are the ones they argue with, to the point of belittling...including calling our God a "monster"...I'm already seeing it over FB.

Perhaps I need to clarify what I mean by 'hardcore'. Word established, Spirit led, Spirit sensitive Christ followers....these will not be swayed by the emotional humanism of universalism...

Originally Posted by Colonel

People who never heard the gospel is a reasonable concern.

We know God is good and just and He will do what's right concerning those. We can speculate, etc, but for the most part we probably won't know until we get to heaven. So in the meantime we reach those we can reach and trust God will do what is right and just for the others. Not change our doctrine because we can't comprehend it and ultimately send others to hell with our wrong doctrine. Like Quest said, "Universalism is an emotional humanistic defining of God".

Originally Posted by fuego

We know God is good and just and He will do what's right concerning those. We can speculate, etc, but for the most part we probably won't know until we get to heaven. So in the meantime we reach those we can reach and trust God will do what is right and just for the others. Not change our doctrine because we can't comprehend it and ultimately send others to hell with our wrong doctrine. Like Quest said, "Universalism is an emotional humanistic defining of God".

There are two important things here. First, we cannot point out a single person or group of people that lives now that will (with certainty) enter heaven without having faith in the risen Jesus in this life. Second, with ourselves and our ministries towards people we can be certain that we will make a positive difference to the outcome by following and obeying God in this. We aren't going to mess up things for people by preaching the gospel to them with clarity instead of not doing so. No speculation that could possibly fit with Biblical doctrine will take us beyond that.

I personally believe that God will never make an exception for someone who has heard the gospel then speculates that God will accept him or her if they disobey the call to believe and do something else instead (whatever that is). God cannot be manipulated.

Originally Posted by FaithfulOne

Just from that short clip, I can tell they were spot on in some details (like the old Higher D in terms of design)

Martin Sheen as Oral--looks like him, also the actor playing Carlton (Chiwetel Ejiofor)

The "Gina" actress is too dark skinned, lol

I think I'll watch it, I had thought I wouldn't, but the trailer looks interesting.

As fuego pointed out, Oral was tall and Martin is short. They should have put him in elevator shoes or cast somebody else in that role. I don't really like Sheen anyway because of his left wing crapola, so I would have preferred most anybody. As for the actress playing the wife, she had the character down pat even if she was too dark, and the guy playing Pearson was great.

I was living in Tulsa when this all happened. I remember driving down the Broken Arrow expressway and seeing Carlton's mug on a billboard when he was running for mayor in 2002. I said to myself at the time "Carlton has lost his mind. He thinks he can run a megachurch and a city of 350,000 people at the same time?" I didn't even know about the universalism stuff at the time. When he lost the primary he blamed it on the fallout over his "epiphany", and that's how I learned about it. Later my pastor said something about it from the pulpit.

I have a lot to say about this, and I'm putting together a YouTube video on it to express my views. Long story short - I have serious doubts that Carlton Pearson was ever born again. I think he may have just been one of those people who was raised in church and it was all he knew, and then as he was approaching middle age he started questioning what he had always been told.

Originally Posted by Jew and Greek

As fuego pointed out, Oral was tall and Martin is short. They should have put him in elevator shoes or cast somebody else in that role. I don't really like Sheen anyway because of his left wing crapola, so I would have preferred most anybody. As for the actress playing the wife, she had the character down pat even if she was too dark, and the guy playing Pearson was great.

I was living in Tulsa when this all happened. I remember driving down the Broken Arrow expressway and seeing Carlton's mug on a billboard when he was running for mayor in 2002. I said to myself at the time "Carlton has lost his mind. He thinks he can run a megachurch and a city of 350,000 people at the same time?" I didn't even know about the universalism stuff at the time. When he lost the primary he blamed it on the fallout over his "epiphany", and that's how I learned about it. Later my pastor said something about it from the pulpit.

I have a lot to say about this, and I'm putting together a YouTube video on it to express my views. Long story short - I have serious doubts that Carlton Pearson was ever born again. I think he may have just been one of those people who was raised in church and it was all he knew, and then as he was approaching middle age he started questioning what he had always been told.

He had an associate minister that was going to actually "pastor" the church, the role Gary McIntosh had until he left to start his own church. (I don't know if you heard of him, but I believe the "Henry" character in the movie was based on him) Carlton was just going come in aand preach every so often.