Saviour of All Fellowship
January 2000
Dear Friends in Faith,
    Greeting to all of you in the name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ! We begin another year with sincere gratitude to God for what he has done for all mankind and what He will yet do.
    There is a lot of excitement about our calendar change this time, and we can’t help but feel it ourselves even though we know that it is not accurate. But it doesn’t take long before most realize there is nothing really new in the character of our time. There is still not much recognition of the “new creation” Paul spoke of in 2 Corinthians 5:17, and so hardly anyone feels any excitement about the new day and era which has been going on for nearly 2,000 years (2 Cor. 5:17; 6:2). This is understandable because it can only be recognized by faith, and faith is a gift from God that few have yet received.
    Nevertheless, it is surprising how many who have been given a measure of faith have stifled the happiness and assuring peace that characterizes this present acceptable era. There is a lot of doom and gloom out there among our fellow believers. Yet we are rejoicing in this day of salvation, knowing that it is fully harmonious with our God, Who is the living God and the Saviour of all mankind.
    Hence we fear that in this new year many of our brethren will continue to speak of God as the “potential” Saviour of all, meaning by this that He is not actually the Saviour of all and never will be actually the Saviour of all. And others will speak of God as the actual Saviour of all “sorts” of individuals but not of every individual. We will continue to find God’s love and God’s justice being put in opposition to each other by some who have received His grace. We will also hear it explained by some brethren that God’s love and power is limited. We suppose the insane idea of everlasting torment in hell for some of mankind, or the sorrowful concept of hopeless annihilation, will continue to be advocated by the majority of Christians. Yet we are resolved to continue in opposition to such false theories and in support of the faithful and welcome word that God is the Saviour of all mankind, especially of believers.
    It never ceases to amaze us how other brethren perceive God’s plan for all mankind as revealed in the Scriptures. Rather than try to harmonize the obvious scriptures portraying God as the Saviour of all mankind with the scriptures portraying Him as the Judge of all, they tend to let the judgment scriptures take precedence over the former. Of course they are only trying to be faithful to what knowledge they presently have. After all, their bibles do say that people will go into the lake of fire “for ever and ever” which to them means "for eternity." We are interested in how our readers deal with this.
    Our theme for the monthly Fellowships this year will be “New Things for this Old World.” The first meeting we have scheduled will be:
    February 19th in Grand Rapids.

In His Grace and Peace

Dean Hough and Tony Nungesser

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