Doug Cutting

“God is not angry with you and never has been. He loves you with an everlasting love. Salvation is not a question of “turn or burn.” We’re burning already, but we don’t have to be! Redemption! The life and death of Christ showed us how far God would go to extend forgiveness and invitation. His resurrection marked the death of death and the evacuation of Hades. My hope is in Christ, who rightfully earned his judgment seat and whose verdict is restorative justice, that is to say, mercy. Hope. That is my bias, and I believe that Scripture, tradition, and experience confirm it. I”
― Bradley Jersak, Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem

“The Book of Revelation is the only possible conclusion to the story the Bible tells, if the story is to be beautiful. John’s vision as the apocalyptic finale of Scripture gives the Bible the beauty of symmetry and resolution. The garden lost in Genesis becomes the garden recovered in Revelation. Babylon as the ultimate city of Cain is finally overcome by the New Jerusalem as the promised city of the Lamb. The monstrous beasts that come up from the earth, from the sea, and from the pit are comically defeated by a little lamb—a slaughtered lamb that lives again! The wicked are outside the city and are not permitted to enter so as to disrupt the peace of the longed for New Jerusalem. But those outside the city are invited to repent, wash their robes, and enter the city by the gates—for its gates will never be shut and the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” (See Revelation 21; 22.) This is the mission of the church: to call humanity to forsake the burned-out and violent cities of Cain, come by faith and repentance, and at last enter the peaceable city of the Lamb. Yes, the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”
― Brian Zahnd, Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity

“Tikkun olam. Repairing the world. Healing wastelands. Laboring to make a dying world livable again. This is the vision of the apostles and prophets. This is the prophetic paradigm the people of God are to coordinate their theology and lives with. We are not to be macabre Christians lusting for destruction and rejoicing at the latest rumor of war. It’s high time that a morbid fascination with a supposed unalterable script of God-sanctioned–end-time–hyperviolence be once and for all left behind. A secret (or not-so-secret) longing for the world’s violent destruction is grossly unbecoming to the followers of the Lamb. We are not hoping for Armageddon; we are helping build New Jerusalem. We will not complete it without the return of the King, but we will move in that direction all the same. We refuse to conspire with the beasts of empire who keep the world confined to the death culture of Babylon. There’s always another Armageddon looming on the horizon, threatening to perpetuate the bloody ways of Cain and throw more Abels in a mass grave. But we are not to cooperate with that vision. We are to resist it. We are to anticipate a future created by the Prince of Peace through the very lives we live. We are to work in concert with Jesus Christ”
― Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

“In our present attitude the natural world remains a commodity to be bought and sold, not a sacred reality to be venerated.”
― Thomas Merton, When the Trees Say Nothing: Writings on Nature