Universalism and the Gospel

[CosmicDestiny]

Hello friends.

I'm new to this forum, but I have lurked for a while and have been thoroughly impressed by the religion section.  In particular, one user, True Federalist, offers some very satisfying morsels about the Gospel. 

As a Christian, the issue of salvation is vexing.  Many people I know believe that only Christians can enter heaven as everyone has sinned, the wages of sin are death, and Christ is the only way that one can achieve salvation.  For instance, Matthew 10:32-33 seems very explicit toward those who reject Christ(though I could see this just applying to people who are vocally anti-Christian). 
Matthew 7:13-14 says that the road to heaven is narrow and the road to hell/destruction is wide, so it seems hard for universalism to coexist with this scripture, regardless of how it addresses people of different faiths.  John 14:6 says that one can only enter the kingdom of heaven through Jesus. 

On the other hand, John 3:16 says that Jesus came to save the world.  If the majority of people really were going to hell, as written in Matthew 7:13-14, is that truly saving the world? 

I personally would like universalism to be true, but certain parts of the Gospel definitely seem to contradict that.  I assume there are likely universalists here, so I want to ask them a question:  How do universalists explain the preceding verses and others like it in the context of universalism? 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume these things have something to do with some of these things(though I may be way off the mark, so I apologize in advance):
1. When Jesus died, he asked God to forgive the Romans because they "didn't know what they were doing".  So when Jesus died, he widened the gates to heaven?
2. Hell is temporary; thus, even though it's in scripture, it's merely a temporary phase which leads to salvation(kind of like Purgatory?) 
3.  Jesus is the way to heaven, but he can allow people to accept him after death when they see him, thus ensuring salvation. 

I'm really curious about this perspective as it seems more consistent with God's love than eternal hellfire, but the scriptural evidence seems iffy.  Could someone help me sort this out?

Thanks

[Blue3]

Hell being temporary, I think the original translation in Greek for eternal (aionian?) actually means for eons... a long time, but not forever.

Jesus is the way, but how do you follow Jesus? You don't follow Jesus by believing he's the divine Messiah... you follow Jesus by following his message, which is to love and forgive one another. Anybody who loves is following Jesus, for Jesus is God, and God is love.

[Del Tachi]

I guess one would say that I believed in "delayed universalism" in that I think that God and man will be entirely reconciled sometime after the "creation of a new heaven and a new earth" as described in Revelations.  

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I consider myself a Universalist, albeit not in the classical Universalist tradition.

God does not need our worship.  The purpose of worship is therefore not to help God, but to help Man. Much as Hezekiah did away with the Nehushtan of Moses because people had become fixated upon the forms of worship rather than the way that they were intended to illustrate, so too did Jesus emphasize the Way rather than a particular form of worship.

As for Matthew 7:13-14, the traditional translation is not particularly good.  A most literal translation would not be that broad is the path that leads to destruction, but that broad is the path that leads to being cut-off.  Allegorically the Garden of Eden symbolizes that Man has been cut-off from God ever since he realized his own imperfection and thus doubted that he was worth being loved.  As a Universalist, I see the ministry of Jesus as being intended to point out yet once again to us stiff-necked humans that God loves us all and that we should act upon that love by personifying God's love of all of us by similarly loving all mankind. But that narrow path Jesus spoke of is one Man seldom chooses on his own, thus the need for him to reattach us to the God we have cut ourselves off from. We refuse to believe achieving God's way could be that simple and easy. We cut ourselves off from God when we see ourselves as being unworthy of God and thus unlovable by God. Yet God is patient and eternal. So whatever it takes to save us, he will do, no matter if it take but an instant or many eons for us to realize in our heart of hearts that God loves us all.

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

One of the strongest arguments I've read against the existence of Hell, quite ironically, is from the official website of the Westboro Baptist Church.  The one thing that distinguishes the WBC from other contemporary "Christian" churches more than anything else is not its extreme rhetoric on homosexuality, but its affirmation and embrace of an unloving God.  The church even went out of its way to publish a lengthy document, arguing in depth using a very literal (and selective) understanding of the Bible, that the last thing God is, or should be construed as, is loving.  (If you didn't know any better, you'd say this was some frustrated teenage atheist's blog.  It's not.)  One page of the site challenges those who disagree to consider the following: Does God love someone in Hell?  And indeed, if God is all-loving, why are people burning in Hell?

Therefore, only one of these statements can be logically correct: either God is all-loving and, as Ernest said, has patience for all Man, or Hell is a real, physical place where God sends the damned, a place that embodies the complete opposite of everything God is.  I can't tell you anything about the afterlife or how God punishes sin (which I'm not arguing He doesn't), but given a choice between the two, I'll take the former.  It's far more in tune with basic Christian teachings.

[Zioneer]

Mormons actually have a unique doctrine that is a bit like universalism, but it's about 1 AM over here and I'm too tired to respond immediately, so I'm posting this to remind me that I need to post the full point in this thread. I'll have a full post up tomorrow.

[bore]

I've read, and I'm not sure how true this is, that Paul himself did not believe in a literal hell, and was a sort of annihilationist. There are also some other fairly prominent early outright universalists, like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa (Also basically the first person to argue against slavery- and the last for about 1000 years ). So not believing in hell is certainly not an obvious heresy in the same way that, say, disbelieving the resurrection is.