Saviour of All Fellowship
February 2002

Dear Friends in Faith,
    Often, when the quiet of the night has come I drift into quiet contemplation. It is during this time that thoughts like phantoms intrude and am reminded of my sins. For a while my heart is very heavy as I shake my head in sadness. And yet it is in this darkness that a most wonderful ray of light shines so brilliantly. Christ came into the world to save sinners. He did not bear just one or some of my sins but all of them. This alone would have been enough to crush Him. But then I think of the teeming masses of billions and billions of restless, dying, sinning humans, and how that He bore all of their sins that this thought is so overwhelming. One of the outcomes of this sacrifice is that God is the happy God and that Christ is the happy Potentate. Why so happy? Because of the outcome of God’s unconditional love commended in the death of His Son for sinners--Because what this love has done will cause all, even the most vile sinner to come running to God in loving adoration to be embraced by Him as their Father. It is during these dark times when I feel the ache so strongly that the burden of my sins is lifted by this divine happiness, knowing that the outcome is bright and happy for all of humanity! To God be the glory for the eons of the eons! Amen!

    To be able to see something of God’s happiness, as Tony does above, is to be happy. Despite our frustrations and failures and times of depression we are aware that God wills that all mankind be saved and come into a realization of the truth, and that God is operating all things in accord with the counsel of His will. A friend sent me an article written by Mart De Haan of the RBC Ministries in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in response to the question, “Does the Bible offer any comfort when we’re afraid someone we love has died without Christ?” De Haan gropes for some comfort in certain aspects of judgment: “. . . it is none other than Jesus who will judge all of the earth (John 5:26,27) . . . . The God whom Christ personified is not cruel. He will not add unnecessary pain to the fate of those who died rejecting Him . . . . What we do know is that God will be fair, and good, and right in judgment.” But De Haan still sees the judgment as “final and irreversible.” He was not able to speak of Christ Jesus coming into the world to save sinners, or of God being the Saviour of all mankind, even though those are the essential elements of the evangel of the glory of the happy God (1 Tim.1:11,15; 4:10). De Haan’s apparent lack of assurance in the value of the cross for all (Col.1:20) depresses me. But the evangel is still true!

    A thought to ponder from a reader in California: “Probably the lustiest voices acclaiming God and loving Him in the great ultimate consummation will be those who experienced judgment and the second death!”

    We have not yet prepared a schedule for monthly Fellowships this year.

    For the month of February we are offering a new packet of small, out-of-print publications (not in mint condition) on scriptural topics. There is no charge. Ask for “The Good Reading Packet.”

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

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