The Gospel of The Restoration of All Things. Tim Hodge

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the work of Adam.

      3.He says that all of creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption.

      4.He says that death does not cut man off from the love of God.

      5.He says all Israel will be saved and the fullness of the Gentiles will come in.

      6.He says that God has committed all to disobedience that he might have mercy on all.

      7.He says that ultimately all will end in Christ.

      8.He says that all will hear the Gospel and understand it.

      9.He says that Jesus will be Lord of the dead and the living.

      10.He says that all people who are not yet his people will one day be his people.

      11.He says that all who die in Adam will one day be made alive in Christ.

      12.He says that one day God will be all in all.

      13.He says that although the wages of sin is death, one day death will be destroyed!

      14.He says that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and that he’s not counting men’s sins against them.

      15.He says that all things will be gathered into Christ in the fullness of time.

      16.That Christ has reconciled all things unto himself.

      17.He says that one day everyone will be presented perfect in Christ.

      18.That it’s God’s will that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

      19.That Christ is a ransom for all.

      20.That Jesus is the saviour of all men, not just of those who believe.

      21.That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and if they confess Jesus is Lord and believe in their hearts God raised him from the dead they will be saved.

      I think from his own testimony and his writings that Paul was a Universalist and believed in the gospel of the restoration of all things.

      We now come on to the book of Hebrews, in chapter 1 the writer says:

       ‘He (Jesus), by the grace of God might taste death for everyone.’

      (Heb 1 v 9)

      Why would Jesus taste death for everyone if not everyone gets saved?

      He then says:

       ‘By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’

      (Heb 10 v 10)

      Many times in the book of Hebrews, it says that Christ died ‘once for all’, and all means ‘all’ (all without exception).

      To show that others apart from the members of the church will be in heaven, the writer lists who will be in the heavenly Jerusalem.

       ‘But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels to the general assembly and Church of the first born who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and to blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel’.

      (Heb 12 v 22-24)

      So here we have six groups and individuals mentioned in the heavenly Jerusalem:

      1.An innumerable company of angels

      2.The general assembly (the Old Testament saints)

      3.The Church of the first born

      4.God, the judge of all

      5.The spirits of just men made perfect

      6.Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant

      Most would believe that the general assembly and Church of the firstborn will be in heaven, but who is meant by ‘the spirits of just men made perfect’ who are listed separately from the general assembly and Church of the firstborn? These, I would argue, are the rest of mankind who will be gathered into Christ in the fullness of time, who are not yet believers but will one day bow the knee and confess Jesus is Lord.

      Notice they are ‘spirits’ and ‘just men’. A just man is one who is justified by faith and they have been ‘made perfect’, which means that God has baptised them in the lake of fire in order to purify them, but they are clearly not part of the church.

      We’ve seen already that the apostle Peter believed in the restoration of all things as he proclaimed in Acts 3 v 21, but in his first epistle he gives an amazing revelation, which is that there is an opportunity for salvation after the death of the body. In 1 Peter Chapter 3, he writes:

       ‘For Christ also suffered once for all sins, the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the spirit by which he went and preached to the spirits in prison who formerly were disobedient when once the divine long suffering waited in the days of Noah while the Ark was being prepared, in which, a few, that is eight souls were saved through water.’

      (1 Peter 3 v 18-20)

      Here we see that human beings while alive on earth are called ‘souls’, yet after the death of the body are called ‘Spirits’, and Peter calls them ‘the spirits in prison’.

      I will be going into this in much more detail in another chapter, but Jesus describes Sheol/Hades, the place that unbelievers go after they’ve died, as a prison (Math 5 v 25) and it says here that Jesus goes and preaches to them, so what does he preach?

      The answer is found in the next chapter:

       ‘For this reason the Gospel was preached also to those who are dead that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.’

      (1 Peter 4 v 6)

      To show that these people were actually dead when they had the Gospel preached to them, I quote the Living Bible version of this verse:

       ‘That is why the good news was preached even to those who were dead, killed by the flood, so that although their bodies were punished with death they could still live in their spirits as God lives.’

      (1 Peter 4 v 6, Living Bible)

      Notice these are human beings killed by the flood who are called ‘spirits’ after they died and could still live as God lives as a spirit.

      Please do not let anyone tell you that the Bible never calls humans ‘spirits’. As we saw in Hebrews 12, humans in heaven are called:

       ‘The spirits of just men made perfect’

      (Heb 12 v 33)

      And God is described СКАЧАТЬ