All Shall Be Saved – It’s in the Book

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In my work as a hospice chaplain I have discovered that virtually all Texans of a certain age can quote John 3:16 from memory (invariably from the King James Version):

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Few, however, have memorized the verse that follows:

For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world, through Him, might be saved.

In I Timothy the writer celebrates

God our Savior, Who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one Mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, Himself human, Who gave Himself a ransom for all (2:3-5).

And there’s I Corinthians 15:22,

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

The clearest enunciation of this teaching comes in the second chapter of Philippians where Paul … hails that great gettin’ up morning when,

at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on Earth and under the Earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (:10).

All shall be saved. It’s in the book.

Alan Bean
Heaven-or-Hell Theology May be Simple, but it is Neither Biblical nor Morally Defensible
Baptist News Global (Opinion), March 5, 2020
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The God Who Loves Sinners

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He has a single, relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods – the gods of human understanding – despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept. Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: through no merit of ours, but by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of Grace.

Brennan Manning (1934-2013)
The Ragamuffin Gospel, p. 18
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My Conviction of the Salvation of All Men

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My conviction of the truth of this doctrine was derived from reading the works of Stonehouse, Seigvolk, White, Chauncey and Winchester, and afterwards from an attentive perusal of the Scriptures.

Benjamin Rush (1746–1813)
Founding Father, signer of the Declaration of Independence, founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA
Travels through Life (reprinted in Memoirs of the Spirit: American Religious Autobiography from Jonathan Edwards to Maya Angleou, ed. by E.S. Gaustad, p.38)
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I Receive Gladly That God is Love

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I received gladly, both with feeling and understanding, the doctrine that God is love. Everything which opposes this – a burning hell, therefore, whose fire endures forever – I could not recognize.

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875)
The True Story of My Life, p. 77
Translated by Mary Howitt (1847)
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Incompatible with His Holy Nature

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In my survey and meditation on the theory of hellfire and damnation, or a living, conscious, Eternal punishment after death, for any of the creatures of His Powerful Hand, I find that it is not compatible with the Holy Nature of the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity. And if true, would bar, and exclude Him from the Divine Attributes of Love, Justice and Mercy with which He is so magnanimously endowed. God is Love. We cannot conceive of Him violating the holy faculties of his Person by consigning any part of his helpless creation to interminable torture.

Charles F. Nickles (1881-1949)
Primitive “No-Heller” Baptist
Scott County, Virginia
Cited by Howard Dorgan
In the Hands of a Happy God: The “No-Hellers” of Central Appalachia
University of Tennessee Press/Knoxville 1997, p.88
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Guaranteed Success

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This is our guarantee for the success of His plan for all of humanity – even all creation. According to the pleasure of His will and the counsel of God from eons past, He will “gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in Heaven and which are on Earth – in Him” (Ephesians 1:10).

Ernest Ferdinand Stroeter (1846-1922)
The Gospel of God’s Reconciliation of All in Christ
Translated by J.H. Tonn (pp. 236-7)
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All Will Be Redeemed

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All will be redeemed in God’s fullness of time – all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.

Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007)
A Stone for a Pillow: Journeys with Jacob, p. x
Author of A Wrinkle in Time
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