For All...

With Resurrection Sunday soon upon us, the ads have begun to grow more frequent. Churches are setting out to fill the pews with those who rarely frequent their doors. sad to say, but it is sort of a religious "sweeps week" for many.

Don't misunderstand me: there is nothing wrong with radio ads for churches. In this fast-paced society, you have to take whatever means necessary to announce your existence to world. I'm just tired of  the silliness that is overtaking many of our churches. One such ad caused me to look the place up. They claimed to be a place that "actually does what it says it believes." After hearing them spend the totality of the ad praising themselves, I had to look them up.

Reformed.

Oh boy... 

On this Good Friday, I want us to remember that Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice for ALL people - rather than for the select few that many have been duped into believing about.

It still bothers me that so many churches can have the audacity to preach and teach the despicable notion that God plays favorites. The doctrine of election states that God, before the foundation of the world, predestined those whom He would allow to share in the gift of grace, while subsequently condemning others to an eternal damnation in Hell. It was His choice. It was His Sovereign Will. It cannot be changed.

And it was all done before time began.

Think about that for a moment: before time ever began, God determined who would have the opportunity to go to Heaven and who was destined for Hell. Before the foundations of the world. That means that eternal damnation was God's Will before He ever created this place. How can that be so? The only way for that line of thinking to be possible is for Lucifer's deception in Eden to also be the perfect Will of God. He would have had to intentionally set Lucifer on the Garden, because He needed an antagonist to tempt humanity into the Fall, so that those whom He predestined for Hell would have a means of getting there. It is absurd.

I read on this churches statement of faith (where they were pounded the election doctrine home with gusto) that people dying and going to Hell is proof that God's Will is does not include salvation for all.

Ludicrous.

God's Sovereignty does not stretch so far as to declare that everything that happens in this earth is His Will. a lot of things happen in this earth that are not the Will of God. If they were, that would again lead us to the conclusion that God's perfect Will for this earth was The Fall. He would have had to author the deception of Eden. That would ultimately make Him the devil. Disease, poverty, rape, murder, depression, civil wars, calamities and atrocities of all kinds - these are a direct result of the Fall of humanity. They are not the perfect Will of God for any of us. Likewise, the death and subsequent eternal damnation of any human being is also not the Will of God.

Every Scripture that people twist and manipulate to support the election myth (see what I did there??) can be seen properly through one simple Bible verse. 

[God] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

~1Timothy 2:4

All simply means all. This is not all of the "elect," but every human spirit who ever enters this earth. Jesus paid an enormous price for our redemption and salvation. It not simply "going to Heaven," either, but a complete freeing from all the Curse that came upon this earth at Eden. 

His blood redeemed us. His stripes healed us. His punishment gave us peace. It has all been done. It is finished. We don't have to beg; we need only believe. Churches need to preach this without fear and without disclaimers. God's perfect Will for all people, for all time, is perfect healing, provision, peace, and love. His perfect Will is that everyone be saved from both the Curse and eternal damnation. And just because that doesn't manifest itself to every human being who walked this earth does not change God's Will or His Word. 

I will leave you with the most cliche Bible verse imaginable. But I ask you to stop and read it very slowly, very carefully. Let it's truth wash over you this Resurrection Sunday.

For God SO LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOEVER believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that THE WORLD through Him might be saved.

~John 3:16-17 (all caps mine)