CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

There are many wonderful truths of the Bible explained in God’s Plan for All, and we are confident that its contents are one hundred percent in line with the Word of God. This book will challenge you to examine some widely held beliefs of traditional Christianity. We hope that it will also inspire and bless you with overflowing gladness in your heart to know the true God of the Bible as the Saviour of the world.

John 4:42

Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world”.

We recommend that you read God’s Plan for All in the order listed under the ‘Contents’ page. This will help you to better understand and appreciate the main points of the arguments as they are developed in our book. We will start with a short introduction.

We are born to live, and then to die. However, we do not have any choice in being born, so why are we here? Are we here only to live and die and that’s the end of it?

Most religious people believe in some form of life after death. Many people believe we go to heaven if we are good, but we go to hell if we are bad. Traditional Christianity also believes in heaven and hell. Throughout history, Christians have believed that our goodness alone is not sufficient to enable us to go to heaven, but a belief in Jesus Christ is necessary. Also, a very important aspect of traditional Christian belief is that this life gives us our only opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord. It preaches that if we do not believe in Jesus Christ during this life, then we will be judged by God to go to hell forever.

Hell is described as a horrific place of conscious pain and torture that never ends. A level of torture, impossible for us to even imagine, worse than any person could ever inflict upon another person, even trillions of times worse than the torture inflicted in Adolph Hitler’s concentration camps.

The traditional Christian understanding of hell throws up massive contradictions to the sovereignty of God, His character, His attributes and His justice as stated in the Bible. For example:

• The Bible says that God is love, He is an all-powerful God, and He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Does it make sense to believe that a loving and all-powerful God casts the vast majority of mankind into hell to be tortured forever? (1 John 4:8, Hebrews 13:8)

• God of the Bible claims that He carries out all of His will and no one can prevent His will from being achieved. Also, the Bible says that God wills all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Does it make sense to believe that Satan or man’s freewill can frustrate God’s sovereign will, as this is exactly what the doctrine of hell teaches? (1 Timothy 2:3-6, Isaiah 46:10, Daniel 4:35)

• The Bible says that God will reconcile all things in heaven and all things on earth to Himself, having made peace through the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross. How could hell, which is described as a place of endless torture for the vast majority of people, ever in the remotest way be considered as the reconciliation of all things, and a means of bringing peace between God and His created people? (Colossians 1:20)

Traditional Christianity argues that it is God’s justice, which causes Him to throw multiple billions of people into a hell of eternal torture. If this were true, then it would be the strangest and cruellest type of justice one could ever imagine. What type of justice would it be for an all-knowing, all-loving God who knows the end from the beginning, and foreknew that man would sin, then proceed to create multiple billions of people in His own image, who would end up being punished by Him eternally for their sins committed in the few years of their temporary existence in this life?

Thankfully, the true God of the Bible is an absolutely just God, whose just plan will ensure that ultimately all people will be reconciled to Himself because of the loving sacrifice of Jesus Christ who died on the cross, not only for the sins of believers, but also for the sins of the whole world.  (1 John 2:2)

Hell believing preachers further argue that Jesus Christ Himself preached more about hell than any other person in the Bible. What Jesus actually spoke about was gehenna and not hell. The Greek word gehenna has been mistranslated as ‘hell’ in most, but not all, versions of the Bible. Jesus never spoke about a hell of endless torture. Our Lord and the Bible do not support the traditional Christian teaching of hell. Traditional Christianity has not understood the fullness of God’s Plan to eventually bring all people into the Kingdom of God. In this book, we shall fully discuss God’s Plan of salvation for all people, which He is working out in seven biblical ages.

The traditional Christian view of hell is such an uncomfortable, illogical and contradictory teaching, that increasingly many Christians now believe that, on the Day of Judgement, God will destroy or annihilate all those who have not believed in Jesus Christ during their earthly lives. In other words, they believe that there is no conscious endless suffering in hell, but total destruction of unbelievers meaning that they will cease to exist.

We can empathise with some Christians who cannot accept that God would torture unbelievers forever, and thus have opted to believe in annihilism. However, we also reject this view as unbiblical. What a massive defeat the belief in annihilism represents to God, His purpose, and His love for all people, whom He created in His own image, and for whom Jesus Christ died, if He were to end up destroying the vast majority of them out of existence.

We have written this book because we strongly believe and know that the true biblical teaching is neither the traditional Christian view of hell nor the view of annihilism. Our great God is neither a great tormentor nor a great annihilator, but He is the great Saviour.

There is not one single scripture in the whole of the Bible, including those spoken by Jesus Christ Himself, which contradicts the most glorious truth of the Bible that God is indeed the Saviour of the whole world. The Bible as written in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts does not contradict itself. All contradictions found in the Bible are due to man’s translation and interpretation errors. The truth of the Bible that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world and the doctrine of hell cannot both be true at the same time.

The doctrine of hell throws up massive contradictions to what the Word of God says about the Sovereignty of God, His attributes, His love, forgiveness and justice. Most Christians are unaware of the fact that the doctrine of hell is due to mistranslations of important Hebrew and Greek words. This book gives complete and comprehensive answers to why, when and how the doctrine of hell crept into Christianity.

God has a great Plan to save all of humanity, which is being worked out by and through Jesus Christ, in God’s order and time extending beyond this present age. The whole of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation becomes wonderfully and powerfully alive, without any contradictions, once you understand the Plan of God to save all people. This is the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yet to be believed and understood by most Christians.

God is not desperately trying to save the whole world during this life, and Satan is not winning hands down by taking multiple thousands of unbelievers to hell every day. During this life, God’s purpose is to save only the few called and chosen, His Elect Bride, the Firstfruits, before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The glorious purpose of God’s Elect is that God will use them in the evangelising work of salvation to yield the Great Harvest of the rest of humanity in the ages to come, as we explain in detail in this book.

We will give you full details of how God is working out His Plan of the Ages, in seven biblical ages, for the Universal Reconciliation of all things. God’s Plan includes both separation and reconciliation.

Separation - because of one man, Adam, through his disobedience, sin spread to all men. Reconciliation - because of One Man, Jesus Christ, through His obedience, all people will be made righteous but in God’s time and order extending beyond this age. Ultimately, all people will repent and all of them will be given the gift of saving faith to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of the whole world. (Romans 5:18, 1 Corinthians 15:22-23)

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