If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person

I have already come to a point in my life where I dismissed tired church doctrine of manmade origins such as the trinity, blood sacrifice, once saved always saved, eternal damnation, virgin birth and all other such paganism repackaged as "Christianity". I no longer celebrate Christmas and Easter. I have been ridiculed by family and my old pastor and dismissed by friends but I have stuck to my guns. Having an open mind while reading this book was EASY for me. But for those of you still holding on to the blended religion of Christianity and paganism, which comprises most if not all denominations today-you will have a hard time accepting the ideas presented in this book.I had already deduced a long time ago that my own experience with God was far more important than reading a book by someone who has translated the Dead Sea Scrolls backwards and forwards or someone who has rigidly and scholastically combed over the Scriptures with a fine tooth comb and can be considered an "expert" on the word of God. But are those people more of an expert than God himself? Can they give you forgiveness in your darkest hour? Will they stand face to face with you when your life is over? I already know that reading the word of God, or reading interpretations of this verse or that verse- is in addition to my personal walk with God-and does not replace it or even come close.If you walk away with one thing from this book let it be the belief that God is not found in the Scriptures alone, nor is he found in a church pulpit or pew, nor is he found in a book. He talks to you when you listen, he walks with you when you invite him and he hears you when you call out to him, even if it is in just your darkest hour. He never abandons you. If you have ever called out to God in your darkest hour of pain and self loathing, after you had done something so hideous and despicable or someone has done similar to you, and felt him embrace your very soul and scoop you up in his arms and take over the burden of your pain and help you to move forward-then you know that of which I speak and you ought to know those moments shape your faith more than any translation of the bible, any single verse, any sermon, any doctrine or any book chalk full of so called exegesis.Who are we to limit his love for ALL humanity? Who are we to dictate to him who he will save? Who are we to demand or even suggest that some of his own children suffer eternal damnation? Would you allow someone to tell you how to punish your child? Would you allow someone to tell you to murder your own child and leave them to suffer in a firey pit of hell for all eternity?I find it increasingly arrogant that so many so called Christians think they can speak for God day in and day out and use Scripture to support this behavior. I really don't care how many verses in the bible contradict eachother and how many support your view or the author's view or a combination of both. I'm tired of the verse gymnastics so many Christians feel compelled to thrust at you everytime you have a differing theological opinion from them. All that time arguing and bickering and shoving your nose in some self righteous book put together through "scholarly exegesis" would be better spent in quiet reflection with God and "listening" to Him and loving him with all your heart as a child would-with an open mind, open heart and no preconceived notions and hang ups and personal biblical translations. God is not the bible and the bible is not God.In summation this book is an excellent reminder to those of us that cherish our personal experience of God in our lives more than we do alleged biblical inerrancy or the supposed divinity of Christ, fear of hell or even the enticing though that our enemies will suffer one day. It is a reminder that only God has the power to forgive and give his grace and nothing we can do will ever cause us to lose that grace. Our relationship with God is one of mutual and unconditional love, not based on fear of eternal damnation or rejection. True obedience to God and faithfullness to him is born of the love you feel from him, not from the threat of a buring fire pit and eternal suffering. God does not coerce you to come to him, but once you come out of love you are less likely to stray than one who comes from fear of the unknown. We no longer fear God and because of that we can open our hearts more deeply to him and accept his grace, even if we have trouble reconciling it with how evil the world is today. Enjoy the book for what it is-an affirmation of God's limitless love, forgiveness and grace. Like the author's say, you will not be punished for overestimating God's love!

I believe that the original word of God is inspired (i.e. the Hebrew and Greek) - but I now believe that the translations of the bible are of the flesh and some are more "flesh" than others. It took me 20 years to figure this out though.Back when I believed the King James was "THE" translation I was a young dumb Christian and kind of liked the idea that "spiritual losers" would burn in "hell". I was smart and read the bible, why should cult members and losers get into heaven anyway? They were self made men so to speak - they brought it on themselves I'd reason.Then as I grew older problems crept into my theology by the truckload. I will say this - I wanted to know "the truth". So I was and am always willing to revise my beliefs as I learn and mature. Being a computer programmer I started dabbling in making my own versions of the bible (with software of course). And one program I wrote was to make my own concordance. So I mapped out every Greek and Hebrew word to every English word in the King James bible (back then that was the version you could get in ASCII) and lo and behold the King James translated many different Greek and Hebrew words into the same English words! And many of those words weren't even related. Hell was a good example but there are many others. (look up Gehenna, Hades, and Tarturus).Then I learned about something called the law of Jubilee which means that at some point Jesus (our Kinsmen redeemer) will redeem all his near relatives and buy them back from the devil. That's why Jesus became a man. So at some point in time everything Adam lost (us) comes back to God (See Creations Jubilee by Stephen Jones). Another fun trick I taught my family was whenever you meet a hell fire preacher ask them about the law of Jubilee. No one who believes in an eternal hell will ever know about the law of Jubilee. They CAN'T! You're tank can only be full of love or hate. Not both. My wife and daughter went to a street fair last week. My daughter is twelve and she saw a hell fire preacher with the megaphone haranguing the people at the fair. My daughter went up to him and asked him about the law of Jubilee. The people who took her aren't Christian and told her not to go. They were afraid. Very afraid. But she knew where he was coming from. He had no clue about the law of Jubilee. then my daughter told him about it. I understand he actually "listened" to her. Conversion through fear of Hell is just fire insurance. God wants a loving relationship with us. "God is love" is a common theme in the bible. God is holy is where the "refiners fire" comes in. If you mix love and fire you get a purified human race EVENTUALLY! And that's what I believe the bible teaches. Then ALL the verses in the bible Harmonize. Try that experiment though. Ask any hell fire preacher you meet about the law of Jubilee (you should learn it yourself of course) and they'll say the Jubilee? Not really. Because I've never heard a sermon about this yet in 20 years. Then again I've never seen a blind person healed either or a whithered arm restored either.Eternal Hell comes from lame translations of the bible. Anyone who puts their trust in a translation of the bible will run into trouble. It's no different than a Jew trusting the Talmud or a Catholic trusting the Catechism, or a Jehovoah's Witness trusting the New World Translation. If you don't read Hebrew and Greek (which I don't) get a good Interlinear bible and show yourself well approved unto God (2 Ti 2:15). You can only blame the powers that be at your church for so long. Eventually you need to take responsibility for your own spiritual growth.Hellfire teaching depends on having certain translations of the bible to support your views (the King James being the main target). But redemption of all mankind by a kinsmen redeemer is in the law in Lev 25 and it's really simple. Rich relatives must buy back poor relatives from bondage. That's why Jesus is called a redeemer. And what's more it's not even by choice of either relative. The rich relative MUST do it. So there's really not much freewill involved for either party. Ask Paul. A strange thing happened to him on the way to Damascus. Jesus didn't say "Paul, by your own freewill would you like to be my apostle to the Gentiles..." Jesus said, "Guess what Paul you've been fighting me and now you're my apostle to the gentiles. You'll be blind for 3 days then you'll get to work for me. Have a nice day." So Jesus just needs to repeat this process a few billion times and voila! I'm being facetious but you get the point. The Greek word Helkuo used in John 6:44 means that God will "drag" us all to himself like Paul. And like a fish on a line you can put up a fight but the fisherman is Christ and you won't get away.Also 1 Timothy 4:10 where it says that God will save ALL men ESPECIALLY those that believe. How could that be true? Hell will be empty then! No!!!!Seriously -- this book's author went through the same cognitive dissonance that I had. God is love but he roasts the spiritually retarded eternally. Or God is "Just" so for 100 years of sin he'll repay you with an ETERNITY of damnation in a burning fire. How is that fair anyway?It doesn't add up. I told my pastor that I thought all mankind will be saved EVENTUALLY! And now he thinks I said that all men go to heaven as soon as they die no matter what. That's not it though. The key word is Eventually. We have various judgments and resurrections going on and the Feast of Tabernacles is all about restoring the knowledge of God's word. That feast will come during the millennium or feast era. It's not here yet that's why there's such much spiritual darkness and tradition still taught.The only thing in the book that I didn't agree with was where the author doesn't think that God will injure people then heal them. Because then he would be like a parent with Munchausen's syndrome. I didn't agree because I think there is a Godly purpose to the suffering God inflicts unlike the Munchausen's parent. The Author uses the example of the Jews asking whose sin caused the blind man to be blind. Then Jesus says it's for the glory of God. The author says God doesn't just injure to heal to get credit for healing like a Munchausen's parent. I understand (from the scriptures) that God's "refining fire" is suffering. And he uses tribulation to "burn off" our flesh nature. So the suffering, which God allows (or is responsible for), is, in the long run, to bring Glory to God through a mankind with a Godly character. That's why the Kingdom has 12 gates made of 1 giant pearl each. The pearls are symbolic of suffering because they are produced in an ugly shell and over a lifetime produce something beautiful and precious inside. So the "pearly gates" represent entrance into God's Kingdom through a lifetime of quiet suffering under water. So there is a purpose to God's inflicting wounds on us (or at least allowing them be afflicted) and it's not for God to get attention when he heals us but to produce Godly character in us.But the spiritual metamorphosis this Author goes through in this book from spiritual pride and arrogance to that of Godly love flowing through him into world will happen to all Christians eventually as they leave spiritual infancy and move into spiritual maturity.Awesome book!

The authors totally blew me away with their straightforward logic, while weaving in lots of stories and examples which made the book come alive. I'm not sure I could have totally accepted their premise that God will save every person a few years back. I was steeped in fundamentalist Christianity, and believed that one had to strictly tow the line in their beliefs and lifestyle, and of course had to have first accepted Jesus as their savior to be saved. Fortunately the Lord has led me from one author to another over these last few years and slowly made me realize my God was MUCH too small. As many do, I had limited His power to save. Poor God was bound by the legal justice model of atonement, and was powerless to do what He might actually want to do. Even if He wanted to save more than a select, small group, He just couldn't do it.This book vastly expands God's power to save. It reveals that God's whole character is love (as shown by Jesus), rather than being an angry, judgmental being. Gully & Mulholland show that love is the WHOLE gospel, and that's it's not all about saying a "magic prayer" and believing the right things. They show that if God's love can't overpower evil, He's not nearly strong enough to be God. And if we can't be certain He can and will save every person, then none of us can ever be totally sure we're saved.I highly recommend this book, especially for all who have been beaten up by religion in the past. God just wants to love you.

Recomendo este livro a todos aqueles que desejam compreender a graça de Deus de uma maneira mais profunda e pregar um evangelho mais autêntico, que não exclua ninguém da salvação.

In my experience, the vast majority - 99% plus - of Christians who reject the possibility that God may not only desire all people to be healed and reconciled to Him, but is actually destined to achieve His divine will, have spent little or no effort in exploring it as a possibility. If fact, many find this idea far more obnoxious & react more violently to it, than questions about Jesus Christ's virgin birth or divinity.If one is going to proclaim a loving God that will one day condemn millions or billions of souls to destruction or eternal, never-ceasing torment for not loving Him or accepting Jesus as their own personal saviour, then one had better sure as hell make sure that one has fully examined the biblical case presented by those who proclaim that when Jesus said,"If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto Me", he actually meant ALL.This book does not claim to be the definitive theological "proof" of universal restoration. For a more thorough "theological" approach, one should also read "The Inescapable Love of God" by Thomas Talbott, amongst others, as well as familiarise yourself with the resources available at tentmaker dot org.More and more christians are expressing an increasing sense of dis-ease & cognitive dissonance around the concept of a supposedly loving Father God condemning so many of his children - who inherited a flawed nature, not of their making - to hell. For anyone wanting to give the teaching of "universal restoration" a fair and intelligent hearing, this book has much to offer, as part of a wider exploration of the gospel of Grace.

This book is easy to read, and heart warming.It is interesting that it is co-authored by two pastors, and is written from a pastoral viewpoint.I fully agree with the authors that GOD IS LOVE; that He loves every person he has created, and that it is His purpose to save every individual.I was interested in the authors' testimony about how they moved from a fundamentalist Christian point of view, with a strong belief in hell to a position where they believe that God will certainly save every single person.I wish I could agree with them, but I cannot fully endorse their position for three reasons:1/ They jettison much of scripture2/ They do not believe that Jesus was divine, nor that the crucifixion was part of God's plan3/ Though I believe that God longs to save everybody, and that it is His will to do so, and that God will continue to reach out to people beyond the grave, I also believe that it may perhaps be possible to contine to reject God's love for ever.