Saviour of All Fellowship
April 2001

Dear Friends in Faith,
Tony writes:
    News from the trenches: While dug in deeply in the front line facing enemy fire, I have by all appearances been making very little headway toward advancing the evangel. No, our enemy is not flesh and blood but spiritual forces of wickedness. Nonetheless often these humans are unwitting pawns by these dark forces. Often their logic-bomb explodes with the force of a small fire cracker. Just recently one person said: “Yes God wants all mankind to be saved but we have to choose by our own free wills to want to choose God. God does not always get what He wants.” Now no one in their right mind would say that mankind has no will whatsoever. We see what man wills every day. They will to not seek God and they all will to avoid Him (see Romans 3:11,12). But this begs the question which is: What causes them to will this repulsion away from God? It is not that one human wills not to be repulsed while another wills to be drawn. This will is endemic with all humanity. It is built into our human flesh and blood system (see Rom.8:5-8; 1 Cor.2:14). What about God’s will? Does God’s will take a back seat to man’s? Is it correct to deify man’s will to make it so powerful that even God cannot change it? All humanity are His in the absolute sense of the word. If man would “glorify God as God” they would see that God can do with His what He wants. Eventually all will be changed from being so repulsed to being attracted to Him. One day God will be All in all of humanity.

Dean writes:
    I’m a sucker for books, especially biblical studies centering on the evangel and Paul’s epistles. Generally, however, I am disappointed and sometimes depressed by what they say. (I am usually disappointed also by what I write.) It all goes to prove that there is nothing written that can come close to the Scriptures themselves in benefiting the believer (2 Tim.3:16).
    I recently purchased a copy of a commentary on Paul’s “Pastoral Epistles” by William D. Mounce (Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, 2000; 136 pages of introduction, plus 641 pages of comments and indexes). I have not read it all but have been trying to sort through his comments on the subject of salvation in 1 Timothy. Most of what he says comes pretty near what I term the “depressing” level above. But often what Mounce says is encouraging, if taken apart from contextual qualifications. For instance, regarding 1 Timothy 4:10 he writes: “. . . the message of godliness is the message of the living God, the message that God is the savior of all people” (p.255). “The description of God as the . . . ‘living God’. . . emphasizes the certainty of Paul’s hope: God is living and certainly will accomplish all he has planned to do’ ” (p.256).

    We are looking forward to the April 14th Fellowship in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario, and the April 28th Fellowship here in Almont. Both occasions are scheduled to begin at 11:00 AM and close around 4:00 in the afternoon (with a potluck meal at noon).

Yours in God’s grace and peace,
Dean Hough and Tony Nungesser

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