Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
The aim of redemption is to let Christ have the pre-eminence in all things. In order to have this first place in all things, Christ must first have the pre-eminence in us. And why? Because we are the firstfruits of all creation. After we are in subjection to Christ, all other things will follow in subjection.
Watchman Nee (1903-1972)
God’s Plan and the Overcomers
Daily Email Goodies
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
Does God not love His enemies, even as He has taught us to love ours? If He fails to reconcile even one, must it not be due to a lack of love, or of power? These qualities find their source in Him! So of a certainty He shall bring circumstances to bear which shall ultimately cause all to know, with understanding, His great love manifested in the gift of His Son, and this in turn shall fill each heart with adoration and love, and praise to God.
When God’s plans for the ages of time (eonian times) have been accomplished, every experience of man will, under the guidance of His wisdom, work together with every other experience for man’s highest ultimate good, and thus redound to God’s honor and glory.
W. (Walter) F. Salter
(Former General Manager of the I.B.S.A. for Canada and Newfoundland; associate of A.E. Knoch)
Truth as I See It (1944)
Daily Email Goodies
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
I, for one, freely confess that, without a knowledge of the consummation, when God will reconcile all and become “All in all,” I could not have confidence in a deity who allowed the world to work itself into such a mess, and who can do little more for most men than to sweep them into destruction, extinction or torment.
But now, how can I distrust God? Mankind is just where He has brought it. The effect of all of the present evil and distress will be salutary. God will get glory out of it, and men will be prepared by it to appreciate the gifts He has in store for them all.
A.E. Knoch (1874-1965)
The Problem of Evil and The Judgments of God
Daily Email Goodies
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
Nothing can be lost that is not first owned. Just as a parent is compelled by civil law to be responsible for his family and his property, so the Creator – by His own divine law – is compelled to take care of the children He has created. And that means not only caring for the good children, but for the bad ones and lost ones as well. So the word “lost” came to be for Mrs. [Hannah Whitall] Smith a term of greatest comfort. If a person is a “lost sinner” it means only that he is temporarily separated from the Good Shepherd Who owns him. The Shepherd is bound by all duties of ownership to go after all those who are lost until they are found.
Catherine Marshall (1915-1983)
Beyond Ourselves
Daily Email Goodies
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
Inclusion is the first component of the good news …
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (I Corinthians 15:22). …
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).
This is the good news that will overcome evil. This is the truth that empowers me to love my neighbor and my enemies. This is the message that releases from judging and excluding others. With this powerful word settled in my heart I can trust God in every circumstance. I can believe the best for everybody. I don’t have to hide from God anymore. …
As we realize how simple and fulfilling it is to experience the good news in our own lives, it will greatly alter our motivations for relating to others. We can love and accept people for who they are free of a pressure-producing agenda to get them to convert to our way of thinking and adopt our ways. God loved and gave. That’s the only motive we are to have – love and give ourselves to others. …
It is time for us to be mature enough to give up unsecure worries that God might abandon and leave some of us behind. Let’s appreciate as never before all that Christ accomplished via His life, crucifixion and resurrection. Let’s believe Jesus’ assurances that He came to seek and save what was lost – all of it! Let’s believe that God’s heart for us is conciliatory, not retributional. Because of His indescribable and unsurpassed love, God has no need to deal with us from a human perspective, as our sins deserve. He has too grand a vision of redeemed humanity to get sidetracked into petty, punitive vengeance. His love will not fail.
Steven L. Rogers
Quit “Going” to Church … and Other Musings of a Former Institutional Man, pages 146-150
Daily Email Goodies
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
I came to appreciate that God created all humans in His image, with the destiny of being united to Him. God commits Himself to bring the cosmos to the destiny for which He created it. Thus, although we all have sinned … He loves us and desires to save us from sin and its consequences. Indeed, in Christ God has done precisely that. … In his death and resurrection, the salvation of all humanity is achieved. … God is now at work drawing people into the salvation already accomplished in Christ.
Robin Parry
Author of The Evangelical Universalist, under the pseudonym Gregory MacDonald
(In an interview with Tony Golsby-Smith)
Daily Email Goodies
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
Did you know that God created Satan as an evil creature? Christianity’s teaching of the so-called “fall” of “Lucifer” is not to be found anywhere in the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures.
From the beginning is the Adversary sinning (I John 3:8).
His hand formed the crooked serpent (Job 26:13).
I create evil (Isaiah 45:7).
I have created the waster to destroy (Isaiah 54:16).
God is absolutely in charge of His universe – including evil – even Satan. In fact, Satan is one of God’s great servants in this “evil age.” Thus, God always has been in charge; He always will be in charge.
One day, God will – through Christ – “reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in Earth, or things in Heaven” (Colossians 1:20). This reconciliation of God’s Universe to Himself certainly includes this creature who is now employed as the Adversary.
That in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in Heaven, and which are on Earth; even in Him (Ephesians 1:10).
For further study on this subject consider the following books:
The Creation of Evil, Sin and Satan
The Problem of Evil and The Judgments of God
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
… The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice (John 5:28).
Read the above words again, and then stop a minute and answer the question, “Who are in the graves?”
According to the common teaching, there are no people in the graves. They are either alive in heaven or in hell. If people are there already, what need is there for a resurrection, or a judging?
Something doesn’t fit here; and it is not God’s Word, it is man’s teaching that doesn’t fit. The problem is that people deny the fact of death. One cannot read the Hebrew Scriptures without running into verses that tell the state of the dead.
The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence (Psalm 115:17).
For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing … (Ecclesiastes 9:5).
Those who have died are still in the graves. There has to be a resurrection to make them alive, and this is not immediately when one dies. Paul tells Timothy of some who,
… concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some (II Timothy 2:18).
The fact is that the resurrection has not occurred yet … Those who died are still in the graves until the Lord gives the shout for them to rise. All, yes, all who are in the graves will hear His voice. That includes even the unbeliever.
Faith Fellowship, Vol. 59 No. 1
Daily Email Goodies
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
Love lacks a foil for its display in a perfect environment. … Above all other things there was need of sin, which would produce suffering and misery, so that there would be the need and the desire for a Savior; as well as estrangement and enmity in human hearts, so that there could be reconciliation, and humanity could be drawn closer to the heart of God than any others of His creatures. This demands an imperfect environment to produce it.
A.E. Knoch (1874-1965)
Creation and Disruption
Unsearchable Riches, Volume 48
Daily Email Goodies
Listen to Today’s Audio Goodie
(Let Clyde read the Goodie for you!)
Comfort yourself, with this thought, with this truth, that no matter how black things may look at present, however much evil and sin seem to triumph, however much sickness and disease may wreck this mortal frame, we have a Savior Who is Lord of all, One Who is fully capable of grappling with our unsolved problems, however formidable they might be, and solving them so marvelously that He will be universally acclaimed Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Let no one, therefore, deceive you into thinking that this will never come to pass, will never be true, that it is only a pipe dream, that all will not eventually be saved, that some will be (as they express it) “eternally lost.” Those who speak thus evidently don’t know the God Whom they profess to love and worship; don’t know the Scriptures they profess to believe; don’t know the Savior and the true value of His death for them, and for all. For He said,
And I, if I should be exalted out of the earth, shall be drawing all to Myself (John 12:32).
Leon Albert Bynoe (1895-1983)
The Divine Reconciliation of the Universe
Daily Email Goodies
salvationofall.wordpress.com 