Dear Friends in Faith,
    Often, on the internet message boards well-meaning Christians who want to set me straight quote 1 Corinthians 6:9,10 which is: “Be not deceived. Neither paramours, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor catamites, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards; no revilers, no extortioners shall be enjoying an allotment of God’s kingdom.” But does this passage preclude such people from God’s work of saving sinners? It is one thing to be denied an allotment of God’s kingdom and quite another for fleshly sins to be the cause of thwarting God in His purposes in the death of Christ. Often I tell these people that while it is true that such sinners will not enjoy the allotment, it is also true that this proves that they must be changed. The good news is that they will be changed! Romans 5:18 and 19 show all mankind having their lives justified and being constituted just. Colossians 1:20 shows us that sinners will not always be at enmity with God. 1 Corinthians 15:22-28 show all being subjected to Christ after being vivified, and then God will be All in all, including those Paul spoke of earlier in chapter 6. Paul tells the Corinthian believers: “And some of you were these . . .” (1 Cor.6:11). In the future, it will be said of all those involved in such problems of the flesh “And some of you were these.”
    Anyone who wants to harmonize 1 Timothy 2:4 with the doctrine of eternal damnation needs to be careful not to comment too much about what the text says concerning God. If you draw attention to God’s loving desire to save, and you believe some sinners will never be saved, then the problem of God’s ability to save keeps cropping up. If you want to stress the power and reliability of God’s will to save, and you suppose some will be lost for all eternity, then questions about His love will keep wanting to intrude. Ajith Fernando tries the first course in his book A Universal Homecoming? and concludes that God “cannot save those who reject salvation” (p.100). And he says this despite the testimony of a former rejector of Christ in 1 Timothy 1:12-16. John Owen takes the second course in his weighty treatise, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (The Works of Owen, vol.10). In restricting God’s will to save only to the elect, Owen concludes that God “hath determined not to bestow effectual grace that they might believe” on the rest (p.329). And this is said despite Paul’s word of praise in 1 Timothy 1:17.
    What a grace it is to rely on God as the living God Who is the Saviour of all mankind, and to be able to rejoice fully in His glory as Saviour as it is presented here and everywhere in the Scriptures!

    Don’t forget the Baldwin Fellowship on August 18th.
    God gave us good and edifying fellowship in Grand Rapids on July 14, with talks on Allotment, The Deity of God, and Unfeigned Love.
    We are all saddened to hear of the death of Rosemary Lounsbury of Wiarton, Ontario, on July 22. From early days of childhood she heard and soon came firmly to believe the evangel of the happy God Who is the Saviour of all mankind. We pray that the consolation of this evangel will be a real blessing to her family and friends.

Yours in His Grace and Peace,
Dean Hough and Tony Nungesser