Author: Eric Stetson

Rebooting this Ministry: New Book Coming Soon and Future Plans

In many ways, 2022 through the spring of 2023 has been a time of transition in my life and my spiritual journey. I haven’t been blogging as much because I’ve been focused on completing two books that will be published later this year.

Eric Stetson
Eric Stetson, founder of Universal Restoration Ministries

One of my new books, which should be out at the end of May, is about religion. The Long Road to Zion: A Journey of Faith Beyond Religious Deconstruction is my spiritual testimony and an in-depth argument for Christianity, especially the theology associated with radical Restorationist traditions such as Latter Rain Pentecostalism and the Latter-day Saint movement. If you’d like to be notified as soon as it’s published, please contact me and I’ll be in touch.

When The Long Road to Zion is published, Universal Restoration Ministries will focus on spreading the word about the book and its ideas. We will also launch an online book club for people who would like to read and discuss it together.

This ministry will not be relaunching an online church. Instead, we are shifting into promoting specific ideas and teachings within Christianity in general. Much of our work will be aimed at expanding awareness of the concept of a “Restoration” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, by highlighting important truths that were mostly lost from mainstream versions of the religion but can be vigorously defended using the Bible.

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The Story of Christian Faith: Summary and Key Verses of the Bible

The Bible is a long and complicated book with many different authors, literary styles, stories and ideas. For many people, reading the Bible from cover to cover may seem daunting, and as a result, they never do. This is unfortunate, because to have a good understanding of the message of Christianity one must have a broad knowledge of the contents and themes of the Old and New Testaments, which comprise the Judeo-Christian scriptures commonly known as “the Bible.”

Psalm 136 in the Old Testament

People who grow up in a church may absorb many Biblical teachings through sermons and Sunday school lessons. But what about the many people who come from a non-religious family and have never decided to read the Bible on their own? And what about the huge percentage of the world’s population who belong to a different religion and are unfamiliar with the scriptures of the Christian faith? For such people, a simple distillation of the Bible could be very helpful — and even for those who grew up with it or are already familiar with it, this could be a useful refresher and study tool.

Below, I have compiled a list of what I see as the most important themes of the Bible, with links to verses that present these stories and teachings. Every student of the Bible will have their own idea about what would be worth including in such a list. This list comes from my own spiritual perspective, which could be described as Restorationist Christian Universalism. Therefore, I tend to emphasize Biblical messages that are hopeful and inclusive. To sum it up, my view of the Christian Gospel — and the overall story of the Bible in general — is of a God who has created and loves human beings with a parental love, and who leads us on a journey from our fall into sin to our redemption and exaltation through the awesome, all-encompassing power of our divine-human brother and perfect exemplar, Jesus Christ.

With that introduction, here is what I would encourage all people to take from the Bible as a starting point, to learn the things that matter most in this great book of Christian teachings.

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Yes, Resurrection: A 21st Century Case for the Miracle of Easter

Throughout history, Christians have taught that the man Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross, buried in a tomb, and rose from the dead — not only spiritually, but in a glorified body that people could see and touch, yet which could defy the laws of physics by appearing and disappearing from this world.

In modern times, this story became embarrassing for many Christians. The advancements of science during the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution gave rise to the concept of the “clockwork universe,” with God as a remote “watchmaker” who set the gears of reality in motion, thereafter letting deterministic physical laws take over in all situations. According to this worldview, the Easter miracle would be impossible.

As a result, many people today shy away from the traditional Christian proclamation of the resurrection of the dead. Instead, growing numbers of Christians interpret the Biblical testimony of the empty tomb and the resurrected Christ as only a metaphor, a beautiful myth intended to teach us that good triumphs over evil and our spirits live on, in some mysterious way, after physical death.

I believe the story of Easter is indeed a powerful metaphor, but I also believe the seemingly supernatural events of Jesus’s resurrection as reported in the Bible could be literally true — and the latest advancements in science and technology make it possible for an intellectually sophisticated person in the 21st century to affirm this.

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Why Christianity Should Not Be Politicized

Would you feel comfortable going to church with somebody from a different political party? In America today, many people wouldn’t — because they feel self-righteous disgust, even hatred toward people on the other side of the political divide.

Polling data reveals a nation of people filled with partisan anger and convinced they are morally superior to those who disagree with them about politics. For example, over 40% of both Democrats and Republicans believe members of the opposing party are “downright evil.” About 20% of people in both parties believe that people in the other party are “like animals” and “lack the traits to be considered fully human.” And perhaps most disturbingly, 20% of Democrats and 15% of Republicans believe “we’d be better off as a country” if most people from the other side “just died.”

These polls were taken before the incredibly divisive year 2021, which has polarized Americans even further. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that seemingly the only thing many people can agree on is that if the wrong party controls the government, it might be appropriate to resort to violence. In early 2022, according to a Washington Post poll, more than one-third of Americans said they believe anti-government violence is sometimes justified — including 40% of Republicans, 41% of independents, and 23% of Democrats.

A second civil war or a Rwanda-style genocide might be in America’s future, if we continue down the path of mutual hatred, dehumanization, and escalation of tensions between opposing political factions. Is there anything Christianity can do to help reverse this terrifying trend?

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New Beginnings: The Future of Christianity and Our Church

A year ago, I started the Universal Church of the Restoration. With the help of my friend and fellow liberal Christian, Colin Mills, we began weekly video services and online small group meetings last January. We continued this for six months, then cut back to once per month. In total, during the year 2021, we produced 28 video services with sermons and stories of spiritual heroes, and we held a similar number of online meetings for prayer, fellowship, and discussion.

Starting a nondenominational church is not easy, even when the leaders do a good job of creating inspiring and meaningful content. Colin and I believe we have done that to the best of our ability. Despite our best efforts, however, the UCR has not attracted an audience as large as we hoped it would during the first year of its existence, and there are few signs of growth or increasing engagement with our church and its message.

After much thought and prayer, we have decided to stop producing videos, which we have learned is an inefficient way to spread our ideas. We have also discontinued the small group meetings for now. We will be continuing the ministry as a blog about religious teachings and issues from the perspective of Restorationist Christian Universalism.

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Overcoming Evil: How to Heal and Break Free

From our service on December 5, 2021, a sermon by Pastor Eric Stetson. Watch video below.


Evil is one of the most important topics addressed by religion. Although it’s not pleasant to talk about, it’s very important that we do, because evil is a pervasive part of our world. So if we aspire to live a good life, we need to learn how to recognize evil and resist it.

In our previous two sermons, we talked about the reality of evil and the mechanism of evil — what evil is, and how it works. To summarize the main points, evil is the rebellion against God’s plan of harmony among all beings, by seeking excessive individual advantage and subjugating or destroying others. Evil gains power over our minds, our lives and society by deceiving us about the meaning of life, distracting us from our true spiritual purpose, getting us addicted to fruitless drama and conflict, and corrupting our good intentions with the idea that the ends justify the means, even if that means doing evil in the hope that it will ultimately lead to a more virtuous or ideal outcome.

In this, the third and final part of our series on evil, we’ll talk about how to overcome it. What does overcoming evil really mean? In a world filled with evil, how can we heal from its damaging influence and break free of the misguided attitudes and addictive behaviors that give evil its seemingly relentless power?

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The Mechanism of Evil: Strategies and Methods of the Dark Side

From our service on November 7, 2021, a sermon by Pastor Eric Stetson. Watch video below.


Last month, we began a three-part series on evil. In the first sermon of the series, I began by discussing the reality of evil: what it is and why it matters. Evil is a very real and significant part of our world. Evil pulls people away from unity and harmony with God and each other, into a mindset of separation, discord, exploitation and destruction. Throughout history, people have been falling into this mindset and living according to the impulses of the flesh, which naturally lead us into evil through the competitive instinct of survival of the fittest.

Today, we continue the series by talking about the mechanism of evil: how evil actually works, to influence our behavior and our world. To a large degree, evil is the natural human condition, because of the wiring of our brains. Evil exploits this, and most humans are easy prey. The exploiters who target us may be negative spiritual beings from beyond this world, or human beings here on earth with a negative agenda.

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The Reality of Evil: What It Is and Why It Matters

From our service on October 3, 2021, a sermon by Pastor Eric Stetson. Watch video below.


In today’s sermon we begin a three-part series about evil. Evil is an important topic for any sincere spiritual seeker, or indeed any thoughtful human being to consider. Today we’ll discuss the question of what is evil? — and perhaps more importantly, why it matters that we discuss it. In fact, why is it so important that I’ve decided to do three sermons on evil instead of just one?

Evil is real, and it’s a major aspect of the human condition. It’s popular nowadays, especially among liberal-thinking people in relatively free, stable, and prosperous countries, to discount the power and pervasiveness of evil and the human tendency to fall prey to it. Many optimistic, I would say naïve people believe that evil is merely the absence of good, and that the average person is essentially good and does not naturally feel any evil impulses that exert a powerful pull on the psyche. I profoundly disagree.

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The Simple Life

From our service on September 5, 2021, a sermon by Pastor Eric Stetson. Watch video below.


Many of us have heard the famous Shaker song, “Simple Gifts.” It begins,

’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be …

And so on, about the importance and joy of turning away from worldly pride and living the simple life.

In the Gospel, Jesus said, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” [Luke 12:15]. This was the preface to an extended soliloquy we heard in our Scripture reading today, on the topic of simple living and relinquishing our anxious grasping for more and more stuff [vss. 16-34]. Jesus made it clear that if we wish to live according to his faith, we should live for God and our fellow man, rather than the things of this world.

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Faith, Doubt, and Spiritual Growth

From our service on August 1, 2021, a sermon by Pastor Eric Stetson. Watch video below.


Imagine that your faith is so strong that you never have any doubt. You know, with absolute certainty, that your religious beliefs are correct. The possibility that you could be wrong, or that some other religion might be true, never crosses your mind.

That’s some mighty strong faith — isn’t it? Actually, no, that’s not faith at all.

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