SATAN REPENTS!

Introduction

Imagine walking out of your front door one morning, picking up your local newspaper, and seeing the headline, “Satan Repents!” on the front in 3-inch letters. The article attached to it has quotes in which God says, “All is Forgiven” and Jesus says, “Welcome home, Brother!”

At this point you’re probably looking around for the Candid Camera or someone to jump out from behind a bush and say, “Gotcha!” But suppose, just suppose, this was real.

Everyone Will be Saved

There is a doctrine out there in the religious world that claims, everyone will go to Heaven and no one will go to Hell. It is called Universalism and here’s the definition from the dictionary:

Universalism—The doctrine of universal salvation. All men everywhere will be saved.  No one will be lost.  End, all mankind will be saved. 

Everyone will be saved and no one will be lost. What a great concept! There are even passages of scripture that are used to support this belief.

1 Timothy 2:5-6, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” (NKJV)



2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish…”

Now let’s look closer at these two passages. In 1 Tim. 2, Paul affirms that Jesus gave himself as a ransom for all. That is true! Jesus died for everyone on the planet; past, present, and future. But if you back up one verse to 4, you’ll see a little something extra; “who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”. This doesn’t say all men WILL be saved but that Jesus WANTS (or desires) all men to be saved. The last part of the verse says, “come to the knowledge of the truth”. This is clear enough to understand that we have to do something to obtain salvation. That means a stipulation is placed on it; not all will be automatically saved.

In the other verse, 2 Pet. 3:9, you will notice 3 dots after the word, “perish”. This is an ellipsis and tells you that there is more to the verse that what you see here. I intentionally stopped after ‘perish’ to show you that there are some who won’t read an entire verse as the remainder of that verse changes the whole view of what they are trying to teach. Let’s look at what the entire verse says (and you should follow in your own bible to make sure I’m not cheating),

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

The missing phrase is “all should come to repentance”. Once again, we are required to do something to obtain salvation. If Universalism is true, then there shouldn’t be a reason to repent. We’ll all be saved anyways, so why bother?

All means All

Now, you have to ask yourself one vital question; “If everyone is saved, then why is there a Hell?” If your answer is: Hell is prepared for the devil and his angels (Mt. 25:41), you are correct, but then Universalism isn’t correct. If ‘all will be saved’ means ALL, then that should include Satan and his angels. If not, then what about Adolf Hitler, Sadam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden? If these men aren’t save based on Universal Salvation, then where does one draw the line to mean; All Men but NOT all men?

Isolation of Scripture

One of the biggest problems in religion today is that people will isolate a verse or passage of scripture to promote whatever they want to believe, and then convince you of this because they are reading it from the bible.

An individual must see what the context is in which the verse is a part of; in other words, reading one verse can mean one thing, but reading it as part of a passage can change the entire dynamic. Let’s look at an example:

John 6:29, Jesus…said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."

This verse is used by those who believe in ‘Faith Only’; that all you have to do is believe in Jesus. It is the work of God, not of man. I’m sure you’re already finding this hard to swallow as I inserted an ellipsis in the verse. Let’s look at the entire verse and we’ll add verse 28 to complete the thought:

John 6:28-29, Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."

You will notice the missing word in verse 29 is ‘answered’. This tells you that someone asked a question and Jesus replied. In verse 28, it opens with the phrase, ‘What shall we do’. This tells you that they know they have to do something to do the ‘works of God’. Verse 29 gives the answer. This makes the entire thought different then what you were previously led to believe.

Conclusion

When someone talks to you about the bible, and starts quoting scripture, make sure you have a bible handy to open it and follow along. Those who have an agenda will tell you what the bible says, but in actuality, they are pushing their owns beliefs. If you don’t read the bible for yourself, you’re allowing someone else to control your soul.

Read it and challenge anyone who might talk to you about it. Demand Book, Chapter, and Verse, then look at the context. Only then, can we understand what God is telling us. Not all are going to Heaven, it’s impossible.