Universalism and the Bible

Some read many of these passages as Jesus predicting the suffering incurred during the destruction of Jerusalem. It was apparently a big issue in the Jewish community around the time of the writing of the book of Matthew whether this truly horrible and gruesome event was due to the Christians following a false Messiah (as some non-Christians claimed) or rather because the non-Christian Jews had failed to recognize the hour of their visitation (as some Christians held).

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Consider Romans 16:25-26, which, as our translations have it, speaks of "the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed." Here, the Greek that gets translated as "for long ages" includes the very Greek work that is translated as "eternal" or "everlasting" elsewhere, including the "eternal" punishment passages. But in this Romans passage, Paul seems not to mean "eternal" by this word, for he immediately goes on to say the secret "is now disclosed", so of course it wasn't kept secret eternally. That's why our translations don't translate it as "eternally" here.

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