Neglected Kerygma of Christ - Lecture 8

[Rebbe]

THE NEGLECTED KERYGMA OF CHRIST
a series of lecture essays on the biblical concept of a universal salvation in Christ

LECTURE EIGHT

Copyright © BRI/IMCF 2020 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Lecturer (BRI/IMCF)

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Audio Lecture is now available for members: THE NEGLECTED KERYGMA OF CHRIST [8]: Lecture Eight
http://www.bripodcasts.com/KerygmaLectures/KerygmaLectures8.MP3

It is the rare honest person who can readily admit that he or she has been in the past indoctrinated, brainwashed, and prejudiced in at least some of their theological attitudes and biblical viewpoints. Nobody can argue that the religion of churchianity has promulgated a false gospel which proclaims that God the Father is the Saviour of only a minority of humankind and that the Dark Lord has managed to destroy the vast overwhelming majority of humanity. The false gospel sees God has having “the last laugh” in this matter by burning up all who have fallen as victims of the Devil's lies and seductions and these immortal souls will burn mercilessly for all eternity. Yep, it sucks! This false gospel finally took root circa 330 CE and it became extremely popular among newly converted pagans to the Roman brand of Christianity.

I have shown clearly that there is another GOSPEL – a GENUINE and HONEST and FAITHFUL Gospel – which is really very good news. In fact, I am underestimating it. The Gospel is not just “good” news but GREAT NEWS indeed. The true Gospel is not just “great” either – it's LIBERATING to captives previously held in abject terror of not merely the Dark Lord but of the Creator God who is and remains LOVE (1 Jn 4.7,8,16). What is love? It is briefly defined as outgoing, outflowing concern for others. It is not filled with any sense of revenge or animosity (1 Cor 13) but love always works in the interest of “the other” –  invariably when it comes to God the Father. I will have much more to share on this aspect of Godly character in a future Kerygma lecture.

Suffice to say we have recently considered the arrogance of W.E. Vine and the admissions of more educated academics who correctly recognise that our words “eternity,” “eternal,” “everlasting” and “forever” are NOT appropriate designations attending the Greek terms “aion” and “aionios.” They are based on the Hebrew ol'm which intended an age, an eon, a period of time, an interval having a beginning and a conclusion. Remember that the land of Canaan was given to Israel for an everlasting possession, an uninterrupted “forever” (ol'm) – but it wasn't until 1948 that the Jews regained it in perpetuity after a miraculous “birth in one day” (Isa 66.8-10; Ezek 37.21,22). Recall too, that the Bible speaks of the “everlasting” (ol'm) mountains and hills – but we know that mountains are not everlastingly stable and can with the stress and strain of earth forces become a “plain” just as Christ predicted. Jonah the prophet spent “forever” in the gut of a great fish, but he was spewed out onto the coasts of Assyria after only three days and three nights. We have found in our studies that the Greek aion expresses a lengthy but indefinite duration of time. The biblical revelation confirms this fact (Rom 16.26; 2 Tim 1.9; Philemon 15).

So now, for the purposes of evangelism in spiritual warfare – and no disciple of Christ can find themselves to be other than evangelistic and weaponless – toward those unhappy souls who are gripped with an addiction to the belief in endless misery (which sentiment accords with their own personal inner yetzer hara death cycle). These miserable unbelieving believers are a dime a dozen. They have read Vine and have consumed his rotten fruit.

The Bitter Fruit of [the] Vine
At Bristol in England, in 1740, John Wesley preached a very provocative sermon entitled “Free Grace.”  I uncovered Wesley's forgotten sermon decades ago in my research activities at the Public Library of NSW and brought it to the attention of the authorities at the Methodist Mission in Sydney, Australia – and they admitted that they had never heard of it. It was certainly missing from Wesley's official collected sermons. Since then I have published it on the web and many of universalist faith and opinion have run with it. You can access it at www.biblicalresearchinstitute.com/imcforum/index.php?topic=2065.0

In this sermon he clearly outlined the NT position on universal salvation, denouncing the popular Calvinist concept of double predestination, prevalent at that time. Wesley claimed in this remarkable sermon that the doctrine of election is “a plain proof that the doctrine of predestination [to hell] is not a doctrine of God.” Rather, he considered that double predestination (as a doctrine) “tended to destroy the comfort of religion, the happiness of Christianity.” Those who believed in it were often to experience “a return of doubts and fears” concerning their inner struggle with the downward pulls of human nature. He readily acknowledged that those who were really converted, and had sincerely repented of sin, and who had accepted the Messiah as their Personal Saviour (looking with eagerness to the time when He would “make them alive” in the first resurrection) were indeed “elect according to the foreknowledge of God” – a view which gave “the strongest encouragement to abound in all good works, and in all holiness.” In contradistinction, the belief in predestination tended “to destroy your zeal for good works” and in particular “the greatest of all, the saving of souls from death” – the Lake of Fire.

It must be said that it was of unfortunate concern to Wesley that ministers of the day who accepted various forms of universalism “held that God would save all sinners in their sins without first requiring them to achieve holiness” (Bernard Semmel, The Methodist Revolution, 1973, 46). He wrote that they were “absolute avowed enemies to the law of God” who “termed all legalists” who went and preached obedience to that same law. It distressed Wesley that these wolves “would 'preach Christ,' as they called it, but without one word either of holiness or good works” (John Wesley, A Short History of Methodism, Works, VIII, 1764[?] 349-351. Also Wesley, Journal, IV, July 25, 1756, 178. See also Southey, Life, 1, 314-316).  

William Cudworth and James Relly carried on Wesley's work during the years of the Methodist reform movement and spread the word that the Christians of their day were also “believers in election” who held “the elect to be merely the first fruits, for Christ had died so all men would be saved” (Semmel, op.cit., 45; Section II. The Battle Against 'Speculative' Antinomianism).

The conclusion must be drawn that the early Wesley had studied under the inspiration of the holy Spirit to arrive at the conclusions that he did. We can draw from this reference to the “firstfruits” that he realised the Messiah was not feverishly attempting to save the entire world at this time, but that Messiah's salvation would be received in later intervals, by the world at large, in the purposes of God's election.

Certainly, scholars of the nineteenth century admit that America received the message of universal salvation from the person of John Murray, a “high Calvinist” and convert to James Relly, in 1770. Both Relly and Murray extended the logic of Wesley's “grace to all” to mean that the sacrifice of the Messiah was not meant as a mere Substitute for the elect, but for all humankind.

Such knowledge, then, took the New World by storm. Churches were established in a number of states beginning in Massachusetts in 1779. But the year 1770 as the proposed date for the doctrine of universal salvation's reception on American shores is far too late. As early as 1710 there were individuals in New England who preached “grace for all” and who were, incidentally, non-Trinitarian. We would respectfully suggest that these same colonists were also seventh day Sabbath-observant. After all, there were a number of sabbatarian converts settling in Rhode Island and New England between the years 1664 and 1800, who claimed descent from the persecuted European Waldenses (and other related sabbatarians) that had espoused an anti-Romanist doctrine of universal salvation. These believers were immigrants who had fled persecution in England and constituted “a Church of God that was sabbatarian” (Mead, Religious Denominations) and not Sunday-observant.

Vine or Vincent?
Marvin R. Vincent, arguably our greatest Greek scholar, penned the following quotations. Take note carefully of each and every word Vincent pens because he – unlike Vine and his associates – is the Greek scholar par excellence (“without equal”).

“Aion, transliterated aeon, is a period of longer or shorter duration, HAVING A BEGINNING AND AN END, AND COMPLETE IN ITSELF. Aristotle... says, 'The period which includes the whole time of one's life is called the aeon of each one.' Hence it often means the life of a man, as in Homer, where one's life (aion) is said to leave him or to consume away... It is not, however, limited to human life; it signifies any period in the course of events, as the period or age before Christ; the period of the millennium; the mythological period before the beginnings of history. The word has not 'a stationary and mechanical value' (De Quincey). It does not mean a period of a fixed length for all cases. There are as many aeons as entities, the respective durations of which are fixed by the normal conditions of the several entities. There is one aeon of a human life, another of the life of a nation, another of a crow's life, another of an oak's life. The length of the aeon depends on the subject to which it is attached.

“It is sometimes translated world; world represents a period or a series of periods of time. See Matthew 12:32, 13:40,49; Luke 1:70; 1 Cor 1:20, 2:6; Eph 1:21. Similarly oi aiones, the worlds, the universe, the aggregate of the ages or periods, and their contents which are included in the duration of the world. 1 Cor 2:7, 10:11; Hebrews 1:2, 9:26, 11:3. THE WORD ALWAYS CARRIES THE NOTION OF TIME, AND NOT OF ETERNITY. IT ALWAYS MEANS A PERIOD OF TIME. Otherwise it would be impossible to account for the plural, or for such qualifying expressions as this age, or the age to come. IT DOES NOT MEAN SOMETHING ENDLESS OR EVERLASTING. To deduce that meaning from its relation to aei is absurd; for, apart from the fact that the meaning of a word is not definitely fixed by its derivation, aei does not signify endless duration. When the writer of the Pastoral Epistles quotes the saying that the Cretans are always (aei) liars (Titus 1:2), he surely does not mean that the Cretans will go on lying to all eternity. See also Acts 7:51; 2 Cor 4:11, 6:10; Hebrews 3:10; 1 Peter 3:15. Aei means habitually or continually within the limit of the subjects life. In our colloquial dialect everlastingly is used in the same way. “The boy is everlastingly tormenting me to buy him a drum.”

“IN THE NEW TESTAMENT THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD IS CONCEIVED AS DEVELOPED THROUGH A SUCCESSION OF AEONS. A series of such aeons precedes the introduction of a new series inaugurated by the Christian dispensation, and the end of the world and until the second coming of Christ are to mark the beginning of another series. 1 Cor 10:11; Eph 1:21, 2:7, 3:9,21; compare Hebrews 9:26. He includes the series of aeons in one great aeon, 'o aion ton aionon, the aeon of the aeons (Eph 3:21); and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes the throne of God as enduring unto the aeon of the aeons (Hebrews 1:8]. The plural is also used, aeons of the aeons, signifying all the successive periods which make up the sum total of the ages collectively. Romans 16:27; Gal 1:5; Philip 4:20, etc. This plural phrase is applied by Paul to God only.

“THE ADJECTIVE AIONIOS IN LIKE MANNER CARRIES THE IDEA OF TIME. NEITHER THE NOUN NOR THE ADJECTIVE, IN THEMSELVES, CARRY THE SENSE OF ENDLESS OR EVERLASTING. They may acquire that sense by their connotation, as, on the other hand, aidios, which means everlasting, has its meaning limited to a given point of time in Jude 6. Aionios means enduring through or pertaining to a period of time. Both the noun and the adjective are applied to limited periods[/b]. Thus the phrase eis ton aiona, habitually rendered forever, is often used of duration which is limited in the very nature of the case. See, for a few out of many instances, LXX, Exodus 21:6, 29:9, 32:13; Leviticus 25:46; Deuteronomy 15:17; Joshua 14:9; 1 Samuel 8:13; 1 Chronicles 28:4; See also Matthew 21:19; John 13:8; 1 Cor 8:13. The same is true of aionios. Out of 150 instances in LXX, four-fifths imply limited duration. For a few instances see Genesis 48:4; Numbers 10:8, 15:15; Proverbs 22:28; Isaiah 61:17; Jonah 2:6; Hab 3:6.

“Words which are habitually applied to things temporal or material cannot carry in themselves the sense of endlessness. Even when applied to God, we are not forced to render aionios everlasting. Of course the life of God is endless; but the question is whether, in describing God as aionios, it was intended to describe the duration of his being, or whether some different and larger idea was not contemplated. That God lives longer than men, and lives on everlastingly, and has lived everlastingly, are, no doubt, great and significant facts; yet they are not the dominant or the most impressive facts in God's relation to time. God's eternity does not stand merely or chiefly for a scale of length. It is not primarily a mathematical but a moral fact. The relations of God to time include and imply far more than the bare fact of endless continuance. They carry with them the fact that God transcends time; works on different principles and on a vaster scale than the wisdom of time provides; oversteps the conditions and the motives of time; marshals the successive aeons from a point outside of time, on lines which run out into his own measureless cycles, and for moral ends which the creature of three-score and ten years cannot grasp and does not even suspect.

“There is a word for everlasting if that idea is demanded. That aiodios occurs rarely in the New Testament and in LXX does not prove that its place was taken by aionios. It rather goes to show that less importance was attached to the bare idea of everlastingness than later theological thought has given it. Paul uses the word once, in Romans 1:20, where he speaks of “the everlasting power and divinity of God.” In Romans 16:26 he speaks of the eternal God (tou aioniou theou); but that he does not mean the everlasting God is perfectly clear from the context. He has said that “the mystery” has been kept in silence in times eternal (chronois aioniois), by which he does not mean everlasting times, but the successive aeons which elapsed before Christ was proclaimed. God therefore is described as the God of the aeons, the God who pervaded and controlled those periods before the incarnation. To the same effect is the title 'o basileus ton aionon, the king of the aeons, applied to God in 1 Tim 1:17; Rev 15:3; compare Tob 13:6,10. The phrase pro chronon aionion, before eternal times (2 Tim 1:9; Tit 1:2), cannot mean before everlasting times. To say that God bestowed grace on men, or promised them eternal life before endless times, would be absurd. The meaning is of old, as Luke 1:70. The grace and the promise were given in time, but far back in the ages, before the times of reckoning the aeons.

“Zoe aionios eternal life, which occurs 42 times in NT but not in LXX, is not endless life, but life pertaining to a certain age or aeon, or continuing during that aeon. I repeat, life may be endless. The life in union with Christ is endless, but the fact is not expressed by aionios. Kolasis aionios, rendered everlasting punishment (Matthew 25:46), is the punishment peculiar to an aeon other than that in which Christ is speaking. In some cases zoe aionios does not refer specifically to the life beyond time, but rather to the aeon or dispensation of Messiah which succeeds the legal dispensation. John says that zoe aionios is the present possession of those who believe on the Son of God (John 3:36, 5:24, 6:47,54). The Father's commandment is zoe aionios, John 12:50; to know the only true God and Yeshua the Messiah is zoe aionios. John 17:3... while AIONIOS CARRIES THE IDEA OF TIME, THOUGH NOT OF ENDLESSNESS, there belongs to it also, more or less, a sense of quality. Its character is ethical rather than mathematical. The deepest significance of the life beyond time lies, not in endlessness, but in the moral quality of the aeon into which the life passes. It is comparatively unimportant whether or not the rich fool, when his soul was required of him (Luke 12:20), entered upon a state that was endless. The principal, the tremendous fact, as Christ unmistakably puts it, was that, in the new aeon, the motives, the aims, the conditions, the successes and awards of time counted for nothing. In time, his barns and their contents were everything; the soul was nothing. In the new life the soul was first and everything, and the barns and storehouses nothing. The bliss of the sanctified does not consist primarily in its endlessness, but in the nobler moral conditions of the new aeon – the years of the holy and eternal God. Duration is a secondary idea. When it enters it enters as an accompaniment and outgrowth of moral conditions.

“In the present passage it is urged that olethron destruction points to an unchangeable, irremediable, and endless condition. If this be true, if olethros is extinction, then the passage teaches the annihilation of the wicked, in which case the adjective aionios is superfluous, since extinction is final, and excludes the idea of duration. But olethros does not always mean destruction or extinction. Take the kindred verb apollumi to destroy, put an end to, or in the middle voice, to be lost, to perish. Peter says, “the world being deluged with water, perished” (apoleto, 2 Pet 3:6); but the world did not become extinct, it was renewed. In Hebrews 1:11-12 quoted from Psalm 102, we read concerning the heavens and the earth as compared with the eternity of God, “they shall perish” (apolountai). But the perishing is only preparatory to change and renewal. “They shall be changed” (allagesontai). Compare Isaiah 51:6,16, 65:22; 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1. Similarly, “the Son of man came to save that which was lost” (apololos), Luke 19:10. Yeshua charged his apostles to go to the lost (apololota) sheep of the house of Israel, Matthew 10:6, compare 15:24, “He that shall lose (apolese) his life for my sake shall find it” Matthew 16:25. Compare Luke 15:6,9,32.

“In this passage, the word destruction is qualified. It is “destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power,” at his second coming, in the new aeon. In other words, it is the severance, at a given point of time, of those who obey not the gospel from the presence and the glory of Christ. Aionios may therefore describe this severance as continuing during the millennial aeon between Messiah's coming and the final judgment, as being for the wicked prolonged throughout that aeon and characteristic of it, or it may describe the severance as characteristic or enduring through a period or aeon succeeding the final judgment, the extent of which period is not defined. In neither case is aionios to be interpreted as everlasting or endless” (Marvin Vincent, additional note on 2 Thes 1.9 “olethron aionion” in Vol. IV, Word Studies in the New Testament, 1887, 58-62 Emphasis mine).

So which Greek “authority” would you prefer to be your particular “benchmark” for further study –  Vine or Vincent?

Despite our faulty theologies, God has pronounced that he “will have all men to be saved [recovered out of the death cycle and the death state and imbued with Messiah's holy Spirit] and to come to an accurate knowledge of the truth that there is One God, and One mediator between God and men; namely, the Man Messiah Yeshua, who gave himself a ransom [corresponding price] for all, to be testified in [future] strategic seasons having a unique character of their own” (1 Tim 2.4-6 Gk).

F.D. Maurice was resolute in his stand as we found to be the case in our recent seventh lecture in this series. He suffered alienation and rejection at the hands of his “Christian” peers. He was not alone in the world's rejection. He was not alone then, and he is not alone today. The BRI/IMCF has been faithfully announcing the full Gospel since its inception in 1981, and teaching the entirety of God's Word publicly in speaking engagements (and in printed format) utilising the restored Jewish thoughtform in which the Scriptures were originally conceived.

Mashiach is not now feverishly attempting to save all of lost humanity. It's not their time. There is, however, in this present evil Age (aeon) a special class being especially blessed with the revelation of God's Grace: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.”

Are YOUR eyes and ears open to God's truth? Have YOU found God's Word palatable, enjoyable, rich and granting a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction?

Can you say unequivocally that YOU trust the Word of God, the Word of LIFE? Can YOU say that YOU accept what the WORD OF THE SPIRIT states in the book we call “The Holy Bible”?

Do YOU acknowledge that God “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2.4)? Again, do YOU attest that God “is the Saviour of all men especially of them that believe” (1 Tim 4.10)? Why do some pastors believe it and yet fail to teach this awesome truth? (See 1 Tim 4.11)!!!! Are YOU exhilarated by the very thought that “as in Adam all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor 15.22)? Do YOU appreciate that God the Father “has shut [or, concluded] them all up in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all” (Rom 11.32)? Have YOU come to grasp the fact that God “works all things after the counsel of His own will” (Eph 1.11; Heb 1.3)? Moreover, didn't Christ himself promise “If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all unto me” (Jn 12.32 Greek)?

Doesn't the true Gospel include the belief that God, “having made peace through the blood of Christ's cross, by him... to reconcile all things unto himself... whether...on earth or... in the heavens” (Col 1.20)? Was Paul in grave error when he wrote “that in the dispensation of the fullness of time He might gather together in one all in Christ, both which are in the heavens and which are on earth; even in Him” (Eph 1.10)?

Finally, are YOU convinced that “at the Name of Yeshua [=Yehovah Saviour] every knee should bow... in the heavens, and... in the earth, and... under the earth” (Phil 2.10; Rom 14.11)? After all, it is definitely articulated in God's own Holy Word that “every tongue shall confess that Yeshua is LORD to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2.11). The word “confess” is rendered in Mt 11.25 and in Lk 10.21 as “THANKS.” Listen! No forced, disinclined, unwilling, reluctant and hesitant confession could ever glorify God as “Father.”

Can we accept these biblical statements about God's purpose, design, intention, will, blueprint, arrangement, and goal or do we want to blindly, mindlessly trot along behind the uninspired views of some mere nuckle-dragging mortals who have been acclaimed by the world as “scholars” of Greek? They will one day stand before God and be asked to explain their reasons for “exchanging the truth of God for a lie” (Rom 1.25).

Tragically, many believers have feasted on W.E. Vine to enable them in personal Bible study to gain a better grasp of God's plan for the Messianic Community and the world. Vine's fruit tastes OK to start with, but when it begins to internally digest it turns to poison leading to a death of the understanding of God's GRACIOUS intent and purpose for humankind – indeed for all the universe.

It's high time for all honest theologians and eager, sincere Bible students to return to the faith that was once for all time delivered to the saints and to reject outright the false apostles who have exchanged the true vine for the false.

Let's get back to the authentic old time religion!

May God richly bless YOU in YOUR endeavours.

Would to God more people would believe the Gospel – the Great News – of God's Salvific Grace.

THIS CONCLUDES THE CURRENT LECTURE