With the Whole Creation

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And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven (Colossians 1:20).

If by that Cross all things in the heavens are to be reconciled, and infinite peace is to follow, I dare trust it, notwithstanding all my sin and all my weakness. By the way of that Cross I am reconciled to God, and through it I find rest, infinite, eternal, undying. At last my rest shall be rest with the WHOLE CREATION, for the cosmic order will be restored through the mystery of God’s suffering as revealed in the Cross.

G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945)
The Cross and the Ages to Come
The Presbyterian (June, 1932)
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Christ Jesus Came into the World to Save Sinners

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If I receive forgiveness, and peace, and a new mind, and the glory to come, wholly as a free gift of God, how can I possibly doubt that God will do the same thing for all fellow sinners that He is doing for me?

I have found that there lurks in many Christians, who refuse to entertain this larger hope, some self-righteousness, some such conceit as that after all they are finally saved by some merit of theirs, which the others do not possess, and on account of which God does not and cannot save those others.

I once asked one of whom I thought a great deal, but who protested indignantly against my faith in this hope, “Brother, do you expect to be saved?” He answered: “I surely do.” “Well, if God saves you, why should He not save all of your brother humans? Are they harder to save than you? Are they so hard to save that God is not able to do it? Or does He not love them as much as He does you? Tell me, why should He make such a frightful difference between you and the others who are no greater sinners than you are?”

After some hesitancy, he said what nearly all who hold this same attitude would have said, namely, that the others are not saved because they refuse to be saved. But I showed him that he also refused to be saved up to a certain time, that all refuse to be saved until the right hour has come, and that the willingness to be saved, according to the teaching of the Gospel, also comes from God’s grace.

It became plain that in this man’s thinking there still lurked a piece of that Phariseeism which thanks God that one is not as bad as the other sinners, and that one still has some merits by which one’s salvation is made possible for God, while He must utterly abandon those others, who do not possess this merit, to endless torment.

Gustavus Hiller (1852-1939)
The Great Question: Will God Redeem His Own Creation?
Reprinted as a part of the Facsimile Project
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God Is Love

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God is love (I John 4:16).

God has revealed to us that the most important principle is LOVE. All commandments are summed up in love. God is love.

Because we have been led astray by “the Church” and by incorrect Bible translations, we know that God is love but we are forced to reconcile this with the “fact” that many will be condemned to hell forever. We teach that, while God is love, it is necessary that some are condemned to hell forever because God is holy and cannot bear the presence of sin.

So God must be portrayed in these two ways … as a God of love, and as a God of justice and holiness. God loves like a father, but He is OK with placing many of His creation into hell forever if they choose to reject Him in this short lifetime.

My point in this entire book has been to show you that this is not the case. God is love, God is holy and God is righteous and interested in justice. But as I have attempted to show in this work, all of these characteristics work together to accomplish God’s ultimate purpose; the salvation of all mankind.

To proclaim that God is quite willing to cast many into an eternal torment is teaching something that is totally inconsistent with God’s character.

Bob Evely
At the End of the Ages: The Abolition of Hell
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The Orthodoxy of Hell

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“Orthodoxy,” having been sealed in the 5^th century, teaches (among other things) that those who die without believing upon Jesus Christ will spend eternity in hell. This would mean, of course, that those of other world religions will enter the inescapable tortures of hell when this life is concluded.

Most teach (supposedly from the Bible) that God is love but that God is also willing to torment “forever and ever” those who do not believe because He has no recourse. Since He is just and cannot bear the presence of sin, He has no alternative but to contain the stubborn unbelievers in hell eternally.

But this is not what the Bible teaches. This is what most churches will tell you that the Bible teaches, but this is because church leaders have been “indoctrinated” into the common beliefs of “the church.” Most English versions of the Bible today are infected with the biases of the translators. Most church interpretations today are infected with the bias of the “traditions of men” which, as in Jesus’ day, are held in higher esteem than the very words of God.

Did you know that a single word in the original Bible languages is translated by two drastically different words, because the translation is shaped by biased thinking? Sheôl (Hebrew) and hadēs (Greek) are translated as “grave” if the person spoken of is righteous, but it is translated as “hell” if the person is unrighteous. So our modern Bibles are not truly translations, they are interpretations.

The Bible teaches that ALL mankind will be saved, and ALL will be restored and reconciled unto God. So those of other religions are on a different path and do not yet recognize the importance of Jesus Christ; but one day they will, and they, too, will be saved.

Salvation is indeed the gracious gift of God for ALL mankind (not just some), provided by the grace of God through the faith and accomplishments of Christ. This is not my own wishful thinking. This is what the Bible teaches. If the reader will carefully study, casting aside the indoctrinations provided by “the church of man” (i.e., those visible churches of our day, of all flavors), it is plain to see.

Bob Evely
Grace Evangel
Author of At the End of the Ages: The Abolition of Hell
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Reconciliation of the World: This Is the Gospel!

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To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the Word of reconciliation (II Corinthians 5:19).

The failure or refusal to discern the Pauline Gospel as a separate and new revelation and not a “development from Judaism,” accounts for two-thirds of the confusion in many people’s minds today as regards just what the Gospel is. Paul’s Gospel will suffer no admixture with works on the one hand or religious pretensions and performances on the other. It is as simple and clear as the sunlight from heaven. The end of man is where God begins in Romans 3, at what might be called the opening of the Pauline Revelation. Most unsaved people today believe in their hearts that the reason they are not saved is because of something they have not yet done, some step that remains for them to take before God will accept them. But this is absolutely untrue. When Christ said, “It is finished,” He meant that He had, then and there, paid the debt for the whole human race. “He gave Himself a ransom for all” (I Timothy 2:6).

Now, Paul, in his wonderful revelation declares that God hath reconciled the world to Himself; that “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself” (II Corinthians 5:19). Men do not know this, but they conceive that something stands between them and God, before God will accept or forgive them. If you tell a man that God is demanding no good works of him whatsoever, no religious observance or church ordinances, that God is not asking him to undertake any duties at all, but that God invites him to believe a glad message that his sins have already been dealt with at the Cross, and that God expects him to believe it – if you tell an unsaved man such a story as this, he is astonished and overwhelmed – yet this is the Gospel!

William R. Newell (1868-1956)
Professor, Moody Bible Institute
Paul’s Gospel
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God’s Wrath Is the Operation of His Love

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God’s wrath is indeed “revealed from heaven” against the wickedness of men, and our inner instinct approves of it, because it must be so. But since God is love, and can never change His nature, His wrath must also be a manifestation of His love, just as a genuine human father shows his love just as much toward his wayward son, when he chastises him, as when he, at other times, gives him good gifts. God’s wrath simply manifests the eagerness of His love, which desires the salvation of His human children, and therefore is bent on overcoming and abolishing all obstacles that hinder His gracious purpose. So His indignation is altogether holy, and His wrath is His love in operation, to bring about the salvation of mankind. This idea of love manifesting itself in wrath is admirably expressed in the Song of Songs 8:6-7 where we read,

… For love is strong as death, its jealousy hard as the unseen, its burning coals as burning coals of fire, the blaze of Yah. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can streams overwhelm it. …

Gustavus Hiller (1852-1939)
The Great Question
Reprinted as a part of the Facsimile Project
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Not Even Our Trials Can Separate Us From God’s Love

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The trials and tribulations we endure are not tokens of His displeasure. They are all tempered by His loving heart. A sense of His love hovering over us in the midst of our distresses is the most blessed of all balms and will enable us not only to endure them, but to enjoy them. Here all the great forces of the universe are arrayed, and none of them, no, nor all of them together, can come between us and the unconquerable love of our God as displayed in Christ Jesus.

Death will be swallowed up by life. Life may lead us far from Him, but not beyond the reach of His love. The present perplexes us, the future fills us with fear, but only when we lose the sense of His love. Powers, celestial or terrestrial, are subject to His sway. Nothing above or beneath, nothing at all has the power to break the bond that binds the humblest and most unworthy saint to the throbbing breast of our great and glorious God. This is more than salvation from sin!

This is reconciliation!

A.E. Knoch (1874-1965)
Concordant Commentary, page 239
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