They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my
holy mountain, saith Jehovah,"+ and in Isa. 32:15, we are told that
+"until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness
become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a
forest."+ It is to this restoration of the physical universe, here
plainly predicted in Rom. 8:19-21 and these Old Testament prophecies,
that the "restoration of all things" spoken of in Acts 3:21 refers.
There is not a hint, not the slightest suggestion, of a restoration of
impenitent sinners.
4. Still another passage that is urged is Eph. 1:9, 10, where we read:
+"Having made known unto us the mystery of His will according to
His good pleasure which He purposed in Him unto a dispensation of
the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things
in the heavens, and the things upon the earth."+ Here it is urged
that things in heaven and things in earth are to be summed up in
Christ. This is true, but it should be noticed that the Holy Spirit
has specifically omitted here the phrase that is found in Phil. 2:10,
the "_things under the earth_," that is the abode of the lost, so this
passage, so far from suggesting that the lost ones in hell will be
restored, suggests exactly the opposite thing. There is then certainly
nothing in this passage to militate even inferentially against the
plain statements we have been studying.
5. One more passage that is urged against the doctrine we have been
studying remains to be considered, that is 1 Cor. 15:22. Here we read,
+"For as in Adam all died, so also in Christ shall all be made
alive."+ It is urged in connection with this passage that we are
distinctly told here that all who die in Adam, that is every human
being, shall be made alive in Christ, and that "made alive" means
"obtain eternal life," or "be saved." For years I thought that this
was the true interpretation of this passage, and for that reason in
part, I held and preached at that time that all men ultimately, some
time, somewhere, somehow, would be brought to accept Jesus Christ and
be saved; but when I came to study the passage more carefully I saw
that this was a misinterpretation of the passage. Every passage in
the Bible, or in any other book, must be interpreted in its context.
The whole subject that Paul is talking about in this chapter is not
eternal life, not the immortality of the soul, but _the resurrection of
the body_, and all this passage declares is that as all lose physical
life in Adam, so also all will obtain a resurrection of the body in
Christ. Whether that resurrection of the body is a resurrection to
everlasting life or a resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt
(Dan. 12:2) depends entirely upon what men do with the Christ in whom
they get it. There is absolutely nothing here to teach universal
salvation. It only teaches a universal resurrection, resurrection of
the wicked as well as of the righteous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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