For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build, and was not able to finish.” — Luke 14:28-30
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. — 1 Timothy 2:3-4
Cristian preacher, quoting Paul: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Hell: “Um, I’ve got 99% of people prisoner and suffering without end. Sounds to me like I won quite the victory, honestly.”
Preacher: “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Hell: “Victory? I have 99% of the people Jesus came to save. Where’s his victory?”
Preacher: “Well, he saved me.”
Hell: “Why?”
Preacher: “Because I chose to get saved.”
Hell: “Then it sounds like maybe you won a small victory, in that you managed to get saved from me because of your wise decision. But 99% of humans weren’t made as wise as God made you, so I won a much greater victory than Jesus did, since I get to torment them all in an inescapable prison, and all Jesus can do is watch them all suffer from the sidelines, impotent to do anything to save them from me. And because God didn’t make them wise enough to choose to be saved from me the way he made you, they can’t even save themselves like you did, through a wise decision. So who has the greater victory, the one who gets to keep 99% of humanity in never-ending torment or the one who couldn’t save that 99% from this fate?”
Preacher: “Well, the victory is found in saving those people who choose to get saved by accepting what Jesus did through the cross. He won’t violate our free will, though, and force us to make the right choice.”
Hell: ”So you’re saying that God’s plan for victory was simply to make salvation available to humans through something Jesus did 2,000 years ago, and then for both of them to just sit back and do nothing but rely on those humans to make a good decision, not interfering with their ”free will” at all? Humans that even someone who isn’t an omniscient deity could have told you fail to make good decisions the majority of the time, because they appear to have been designed in such a way that they generally make bad decisions, which is the whole reason they need salvation in the first place? If that’s the case, I’d hate to see what His plan for failure would have been.”
Preacher: ”Well, He didn’t fail, because he saves a few of us.”
Hell: ”Look, I don’t know what you consider an acceptable failure rate to be, but I have to think that if someone fails to accomplish their will for something 99% of the time, they can’t legitimately consider that to be a victory. But hey, if you all want to declare that a victory, far be it from me to rain on your parade. Whatever you call it, I still get 99% of those people God wills to save, so calling obvious failure ‘victory’ doesn’t diminish my own victory in the slightest. They’ll all continue suffering without end, contrary to God’s will, and in spite of what Jesus did, all because God didn’t make them as wise as He made you. So, as eternity goes on, I’ll still remain an eternal reminder to God and the few of you who made the right choice of just how victorious Jesus’ attempt to save all the men God wills to be saved really was.”
Preacher: ”Well, it’s up to us to convince them to make the good choice to believe and get saved.”
Hell: ”So is God’s victory ultimately up to you or up to them, or is it a bit of both? I mean, sure, God did the first step, through what Jesus did on the cross, but in order for God to truly be victorious, you have to make a good choice yourself, and then you have to convince all those other people who aren’t as wise as you are to make the same good choice you made. All this, in spite of the apparent fact that God doesn’t allow anything to thwart anyone’s supposed “free will,” which means that, no matter how convincing an argument you make to them, God’s victory actually seems to be entirely dependent upon all those people happening to be wise enough to make the same good choice you were able to make.”
Now hopefully it’s obvious that this was satire, but this is ultimately what most Christians are teaching, although they sure don’t realize it. If you’d like to learn who the Bible says actually wins the victory, though, please check this out: Actual Good News