03.01 God Will Have All Men Be Saved

3 - God Will Have All Men Be Saved; Section 1 The Savior of the World Series by J. Preston Eby 3. GOD WILL HAVE ALL MEN BE SAVED GOD WILL HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED On this earth there are more than four and a half billion people! The most populous lands are China, India, and other parts of Asia, and in spite of missionaries from the West, actually more than half of all people on the earth have never so much asheard the ONLY NAME BY WHICH MEN MAY BE SAVED - the name of JESUS CHRIST! For your Bible says, "there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). This means that billions of people here on this earth have lived, and died, without having known anything about God’s provision of salvation - without saving knowledge - neither having heard the only name by which men may be saved! Now think what that means. If all unsaved are eternally lost, then more than HALF the people who have ever lived on this earth have been consigned to eternal hell without ever having been given so much as a chance to escape it!

What about the millions of people living now in Communist Russia and Red China where the Gospel is suppressed? Those people did not choose to be born into these godless nations. Are they lost forever because they never heard the true message of God’s love in Christ? Is this their only day of salvation? Are they eternally doomed when they die? Will a just God and Saviour condemn to eternal damnation those people who died before the true Gospel was ever brought to them? Is God about to "shut the door" of mercy in their face?

We hear much today about evangelizing and saving the world in one generation. The preachers tell us this mission must be accomplished before Christ can return, and it must be done in this generation. We hear of glorious revival at home and abroad, of fresh missionary efforts in various directions, of great Crusades attended by tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of radio and television beamed by satellite to all the nations of earth, and of large sums being devoted to these endeavors: and we get the idea that adequate efforts are being made for the evangelization of the nations of the earth. It is estimated today that the world’s population is over four and a half billion, and it is a fact that considerably more than one-half - nearly two-thirds - are still TOTALLY HEATHEN, and the remainder are mostly either followers of Mohammed or members of those great apostate Churches whose religion is practically a Christianized idolatry, and who can scarcely be said to hold or teach the Gospel of Christ. And what about the multiplied billions who have gone before and never had any contact with the living Christ? Even if all the people of this one generation could be saved, it would be only an infinitesimal fraction of the people who have ever lived, and there would be no victory for God, for the devil would still possess the vast majority of mankind. It is estimated that about one hundred and sixty billions of human beings have lived on the earth in the six thousand years since Adam’s creation. Of these, the very broadest estimate that could be made with reason would be that less than three billion were truly saints of God. This broad estimate would leave the immense aggregate of one hundred and fifty seven billions (157,000,000,000) who went to their graves without faith and hope in the only name given under heaven or among men whereby we must be saved. Indeed, the vast majority of these never knew or heard the name of Jesus, and could not believe in Him of whom they had not heard. What, I ask, has become of this vast multitude, of which figures give a wholly inadequate idea? What is, and is to be, their condition? Did God make no provision for these, whose condition and circumstances He must have foreseen? Or did He, from the foundation of the world, make a wretched and merciless provision for their hopeless, eternal torment, as many of His children claim? Can you really believe that is the plan by which the all-wise, all-merciful, loving God is working out His purpose here on earth? WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

Paul, in 1 Timothy 2:1-6, gives the answer! "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for ALL MEN ... for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who WILL HAVE A-L-L M-E-N TO BE SAVED, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 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." This text is one of rare beauty. It is indeed like a precious diamond, the effulgence of whose radiance dazzles the mind. It is a drop of pure distilled essence, whose fragrance fills the rooms of the heart. It is a joy forevermore and a challenge to everyone who reads it with an understanding heart. It should be engraved upon the heart of every saint of God. There is so much depth to that text that I am afraid that we often do not even perceive it. It is like a beautiful sky of deep rich blue and one cannot even begin to grasp the vast depth above us. So it is with this passage! The few laws that Scripture contains are rays of light revealing only small portions of God’s will, much as the words I write are parts of the thought I wish to express. He who would know the complete will of God must look for the larger concept, discover the real objective. One main objective is given us in our text for this study: "I exhort therefore, that ... supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for ALL MEN ... for ... God our Saviour ... WILL HAVE A-L-L M-E-N TO BE SAVED, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." The will of God is so far beyond our usual thoughts that we simply cannot understand it unless the Spirit enlightens us. The eternal God WILL have all men to be saved! We need to ask God to fill our minds with this great truth, by the Holy Spirit. The light of God and His power always go hand in hand. If I try to understand the will of God with my limited and darkened mind, I have only my limited and feeble strength with which to participate in it. But when I wait upon God so that through the Holy Spirit His will shines within me like a heavenly light and I am "filled with all knowledge and spiritual understanding," the Spirit will with the light also give power. Note well, the most complete knowledge of God’s will, if it is acquired only by the natural mind, fails to give me the strength to see it fulfilled. On the other hand, every revelation concerning God’s will that comes to me through the Holy Spirit strengthens me with heavenly power. So I must fervently pray, "Lord, help me to understand how earnestly God WILLS THE SALVATION OF ALL MEN!" May everyone who sincerely prays, "Your will be done!" receive into his own heart this wonderful and loving will of God. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that the will of God in salvation is just for a "little flock" that is to be saved and evacuated off to heaven. His will is far more glorious than that! It is the very nature of God, the revelation of His divine perfection, the expression of His limitless and unfailing love. How foolish even to think of doing His will unless I have something of this great love in my heart! Therefore, we must open our hearts and allow the love of God for all men to be poured in by the Holy Spirit. When we think of and seek the will of God we should not limit ourselves to concern about our individual lives and needs, but rather learn His will for all men and use this as a guideline for our behavior and feelings toward them. Reread 1 Timothy 2:1-4 and note what we are taught - He wills "all men to be saved." He wills "that all men should come to the knowledge of the truth." What effect should this will of God have on us? And how must we become participators with Him in the fulfilling of His will? First, accept what His Word teaches; believe in His love; and leave it to God to someday fulfill all that He means. Your task is to prayerfully accept God’s will and to receive it into your heart. Believe what is written: GOD WILLS that all men be saved. Let faith in those beautiful words take possession of your heart; allow God’s will to BECOME YOUR WILL and inspire your life. If we accept this will of God, taking it into our hearts and making it truly ours, how will our lives be affected? The first result will be just what Paul commands -- prayers and intercessions FOR ALL MEN. We will learn to see each man in the proper light, not the light of who he is, what he does, or what he deserves, but in the light of God’s love and God’s will for him. If God so loved miserable and unworthy creatures and so desired to help them that He sent His Son to die for them, and if our will is one with His, we will be inspired to love them and pray earnestly for them.

I have met a few people who argued that when Paul states that "God will have all men to be saved" he means that God "wishes" or "would like" for all men to be saved, and then, of course, these folk are always quite certain that what God "wishes" or "would like" to be really stands very little chance of ever being fulfilled. How foolish! Oh, that God’s will for the salvation of all men might be found in each one of us! The glory of God is nothing less than this: His unfathomable love for all who are lost and miserable, His will that they should be saved. When will Christians learn that this is their glory, their likeness to God, to allow themselves to be filled with the loving will of God, to let it possess them, devour them? Obedience to all the individual commandments of God, which are expressions of His will, is merely a first step on the path to this higher oneness with the will of God that purposes to bless and save and lift the whole creation! In December, 1981, I sent out an article in which I set forth the wonderful truth of the ultimate salvation of all men. Soon thereafter I received a letter from some precious folk who were deeply distressed by this teaching. They raised several objections, the first of which was stated thus: If we believe the way you are teaching, it will mean we no longer need to prayfor the salvation of our loved ones as they will be saved in the end regardless of their standing. On top of that, all our past prayers have been in vain as the Lord will save them in the end anyhow. On the surface that may seem to be a plausible argument; but what makes such faulty reasoning so pathetic and tragic is that it openly contradicts the Word of God! Let me quote again what the Lord says about this in 1 Timothy 2:1-6 : "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, SUPPLICATIONS, PRAYERS, INTERCESSIONS, AND GIVING OF THANKS be made for A-L-L M-E-N ... for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who WILL HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus; Who gave Himself a RANSOM FOR A-L-L, to be testified (proven, demonstrated, fulfilled) IN DUE TIME."

You will note that the command to pray for all men is rooted in the fact that God WILL HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED. We must ever distinguish between the fact of the salvation of all and the manner in which God brings it to pass. He condescends to work through human instrumentality. Since God purposes to save all men, He has a PLAN, a PROCESS, and an INSTRUMENTALITY by which to accomplish this! Part of the process is THE INTERCESSORY PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS. The men who are to be saved are held under the power of the devil. The saints are called as God’s INSTRUMENT OF SALVATION, on behalf of lost men they engage in spiritual warfare, claiming these men for God, binding the enemy who enslaves them, bringing deliverance to the captives. That all men be saved is God’s purpose. Intercessory prayer is part of the process. To say that since God will save all men we need not pray for them, is to say that God has a purpose to save them, but NO MEANS BY WHICH TO ACCOMPLISH IT. That would be like saying that a contractor is going to build a skyscraper and, since he is going to build it, there is no need for nails, hammers, saws, heavy equipment, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. How ridiculous! All those things are the necessary instruments and means of ACCOMPLISHING HIS WILL AND PLANS! The prayers of the saints! Prayer is not a useless exercise, it is part of God’s cosmic purpose. I don’t pretend to understand it, but when Jesus was going away He said, "Up until now you have asked nothing in My name, from now on you will ask the Father in My name, and whatever you ask the Father I will do it." Ah, we have missed the importance of prayer in the redemptive and reconstructive and restorational purposes of God! Our prayers ARE important! Don’t ask me to explain the mystery of the apparatus, but they are important. You’ll find yourself praying, you’ll find yourself desiring to pray, and that’s the Holy Spirit urging you to do what is necessary to enable things to happen the way they are supposed to happen. There is a relationship between the decrees of God and the response of God’s people! God created all things by a Word. God SAID, "Let there be ... and it was so." That’s a CREATIVE WORD! Prayer is a participation in the creative Word of God, speaking the new creation into existence. It’s a mystery I don’t fully understand, but there are times when I have to pray, there are times when the altar of my soul is full of clouds of holy incense as I send up to God petitions, as I decree a Word, not for myself, but for others, and when I can’t articulate them in English I send them up in an unknown tongue. And there is that deep inner consciousness that somehow I am participating in a great tableau and drama of history.

Through many years the spirit of intercessory prayer has stirred within my spirit and I have been compelled to pray for some of the most wicked, unbelieving, and treacherous men and women upon the face of God’s earth. I speak not of an occasional weak, insipid little table prayer, but of deep travail and intense spiritual warfare on behalf of the souls of these individuals. Among those for whom I have been moved to intercede have been world leaders such as Golda Meir, Nikita Khrushev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Fidel Castro. Must I now believe that my prayers shall never be answered, and that the Omniscient and omnipotent Holy Spirit who wrought so mightily in these supplications, failed? My heart is emboldened by the testimony of that great man of God, George Muller. George Muller was literally the "man God made," and whom God used to house, feed, clothe, educate and save thousands of orphans in England. The key to George Muller’s triumphs of faith is to be found in the fact that George in his youth opened all avenues of his being to the divine infilling. Henceforth he was a man who lived with eternity in view. He looked, after the shadow of God’s glory rested upon him, beyond time and limitation and saw God. From that time forward he was never again to ask man for body or soul needs. He realized that God alone was able, and in that realization the puny supplies of man dwarfed beside the reservoirs of God’s grace which he tapped by faith. He learned the secret of getting things from God, the simple expedient of boldly coming to the throne to receive. He practiced this daily for seventy-three years, and in coming he never found the throne vacant nor the supplies exhausted. He learned not to bind God by the limits of his own faith. He asked, knowing that God, Who heard, was able.

Muller has been called "the apostle of faith." When there was a vision to be fulfilled never once did he announce his plans in advance, nor even once did he appeal to men for help. He shut himself up in solitude and prayed to his Father Who saw and heard in secret. George Muller’s faith was grandly rewarded, for God furnished in response to his prayers approximately seven and a half million dollars. From a most insignificant beginning the work grew until it became the leading supporter of missions, distributor of Bibles and religious literature, as well as the outstanding "father of the orphans." When George Muller arrived at the twilight of his life God, he estimated, had answered over fifty thousand of his prayers, many thousands of which were answered on the day he made them and often before he arose from his knees. Some of his petitions, however, lingered across the decades. Here is a sample of such asking: "In November, 1844, I began to pray for the conversion of five individuals. I prayed every day without a single intermission, whether sick or in health, on the land or on the sea, and whatever the pressure of my engagements might be. Eighteen months elapsed before the first of the five was converted. I thanked God and prayed on for the others. Five years elapsed, and then the second was converted. I thanked God for the second, and prayed on for the other three. Day by day I continued to pray for them, and six years passed before the third was converted. I thanked God for the three, and went on praying for the other two. These two remain unconverted. The man to whom God in the riches of His grace has given tens of thousands of answers to prayer in the self-same hour of the day in which they were offered has been praying day by day for nearly thirty-six years for the conversion of these individuals, and yet they remain unconverted. But I hope in God, I pray on, and look yet for the answer. They are not converted yet, butthey will be." - end quote. This was the faith that carried him through every straitened place. He met emergencies by asking and in due time God supplied whatever the need might be. Those prayers? you ask. In 1897, those two men, sons of a friend of Mr. Muller’s youth, were not converted, after he had entreated God on their behalf for fifty-two years daily. But after hisdeath God brought them into the fold! Such was this man’s triumphant faith, whatever the difficulty. And I would add would God that he might have prayed for the salvation of ALL MEN! He prayed for five - and they were all saved. Praise God for that! But we are commanded to pray, supplicate, intercede, and give thanks for all men, "for God will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." "Whatsoever you ask in My name, I will do it." What awesome power! Ah, we know it works for needs, money, jobs, healing, problems, -- carnal things. But does it work for the SOULS OF MEN? Dare we ask for the salvation of men with the same confidence that God will grant our request as when we ask for a new pair of shoes? The Holy Spirit answers, "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for ALL MEN ... for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who WILL HAVE ALL MEN TO BE SAVED ..."

Those foolish people who in their willful and petulant ignorance dare to say, "If God is going to save everyone, why need I bother?" really do not deserve either recognition or an answer. Since my eyes have caught a vision of the supernal glory of the will of God to save all men, and my ears have heard the Word of the Spirit saying, "I exhort THEREFORE, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made FOR ALL MEN," my heart responds with the greatest eagerness, for the greatness of His infinite love and purpose for every man who has ever lived, sets aflame the love of God in my heart until every breath I breathe is a fervent prayer, "YOUR WILL BE DONE! YOUR WILL BE DONE!" This is the hope that consumes my life and all my waking hours, and beside it all else is the grossest and lowest vanity. Stir yourself in repentance and in prayer and in consecration, you carnal minded, blessing-seeking souls who think you shall enjoy the glories of heaven while billions for whom the Christ died writhe in the tormenting flames of hell, possessed by the devil forever. How narrow our prayers sometimes can be. We pray so often for ourselves: me and my wife, my son John, we three, no more. How broad our intercession should be! When we come before the throne of the God whose Kingdom we represent, there must be a catholicity, a universality, about our prayers. And to any who still think our prayers are wasted if God will save all men in the end anyway, I now say - In my mind there could be nothing so frustrating, vain, meaningless, vexing, and futile as to be given a ministry of intercessory prayer on behalf of God’s creation knowing that for the most part my time, effort, energy, and ministry would end in failure as most of those I pray for will never be saved anyhow! To be commanded to pray for all men, intercede for all men, when only a few, a mere handful would ever be affected by that prayer could represent either utter foolishness or absolute impotence on God’s part, for the devil would win out in the end anyway (em. web ed.), possessing for ever the souls of those on behalf of whom we had done battle! Ah, dear ones, the salvation of all men in no measure diminishes our responsibility to the lost; it INCREASES IT A HUNDRED AND SIXTY BILLION FOLD! Previously I felt responsible to pray for the few I hoped could be rescued through my effort in God; now I am responsible to pray and pray and pray, and battle and battle and battle for the souls of all men until the battle is won and the enemy has not even one left! It is those who believe MOST MEN WILL BE ETERNALLY LOST who should give up their praying - not we, who have the assurance that our prayers actually CAN and WILL be answered!