Could Satan be Saved?

This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon. 

There doesn’t appear to be any scriptural support for a reversal of fortune in hell. Once there, Satan, demons, and the unrepentant wicked spend eternity without a chance for redemption. Nevertheless, some in the early church took a different view. 

Clement of Alexandria, for example, thought there was hope for the devil based on God’s limitless mercy. Clement’s pupil, Origen, took it a step further. He argued for apocatastasis, or the idea that all things made by God return to him. He once wrote, “We believe that the goodness of God through Christ will restore his entire creation to one end, even his enemies being conquered and subdued.” 

In Origen’s view, everyone – including Satan, evil spirits, and the most wicked humans – ultimately submit to God’s sovereignty and are saved. Thus, Satan ceases to be evil, and his angelic nature is restored. 

Origen’s view never gained much traction. Jerome and Augustine countered it. And the Council of Constantinople II in A.D. 553 anathematized the idea that the demonic could revert to the angelic in nature. In Against the Darkness, Graham Cole summarizes, “The darkness won’t extinguish the light. The destiny of the darkness is its destruction. Fallen angels will experience the eternal fire. The devil may be the prince of this world. Be that as it may, in the next he has no kingdom.” 

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Written from the Foundation of the World (Part 3)

This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 4: Written from the Foundation of the World.

Before closing this three-part study on the phrase, “written from the foundation of the world,” we still need to understand two prepositions: “from” and “before.” One or the other appears in each of the ten Scripture references to “the foundation of the world.” And the placement of the prepositions is key. (Read Part 1 and Part 2.)

From and before

As we’ve seen, the word “foundation” (katabole) appears ten times in the New Testament in the phrase, “the foundation of the world.” When the preposition “from” (apo) appears before “foundation,” it normally signifies something that occurs across time, and thus unfolds throughout human history. And when the preposition “before” (pro) precedes “foundation,” it depicts something that occurs before the creation of the world.

For example, Jesus speaks of truths hidden from the foundation of the world – that is, since the beginning of human history – but now revealed through his parables (Matt. 13:35). He tells the religious leaders of his generation they are to be held responsible for the blood of the prophets shed from the foundation of the world – that is, since the time the first prophets appeared (Luke 11:50).

And, in teaching about a future judgment day, Jesus tells the sheep at his right hand he has prepared a kingdom for them from the foundation of the world, a kingdom in which the intersection of heaven and earth, which sin destroyed, is restored, and from which the wicked are banished forever (Matt. 25:34; cf. vv. 41, 46).

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Written from the Foundation of the World (Part 2)

This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 4: Written from the Foundation of the World.

In the previous post, we explored the meaning of the Greek word translated “foundation.” Now, as we continue to discover when the book of life was written, we examine one of several Greek words rendered “world.”

Kosmos

Four different Greek words are translated “world” in the New Testament, but Jesus and the New Testament writers only use one word, kosmos, when employing the phrase, “the foundation of the world.”

Kosmos means “that which is ordered or arranged.” It’s where we get the English term “cosmetics.” It’s related to a verb that means “to set in order,” or “to adorn, decorate.” As William Mounce explains, “In classical Greek and the LXX [Septuagint, or the Greek translation of the Old Testament], kosmos communicated the idea of order and adornment, and from this it developed into the basic term for the cosmos or the universe.”

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Written from the Foundation of the World (Part 1)

This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 4: Written from the Foundation of the World.

Two key statements in the book of Revelation tell us the book of life was written “from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8; 17:8). What does that mean? Is John saying the  book of life was written before the creation of the cosmos, or perhaps as part of God’s ex nihilo work of calling everything into existence? Was it written some time after creation, perhaps associated with the Fall? Or is there another explanation?

In this post, and posts to follow, we begin to address this thorny question by exploring the words “foundation” and “world,” and distinguishing between the use of “before” and “from” in relation to the biblical phrase, “the foundation of the world.” Later, we unpack Revelation 13:8 and 17:8. Then, we consider God’s saving work in eternity past – that is, outside of time – through foreknowledge, election, and predestination, for these terms relate to the book of life. 

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Why Is It the Lamb’s Book?

This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 3: the Lamb’s Book.

Why is the book of life also called the Lamb’s book? When we think of Jesus as the Lamb of God, and we see Scripture identify the book of life as belonging to the Lamb, we should note that lambs play a key role in redemption.

The Passover lamb is the means by which obedient Israelites are spared the wrath of the angel of death, who comes to claim the firstborn in Egypt (Exod. 11 – 13). This lamb must be young, spotless, and precious. Brought into the house for several days to be examined, he becomes a familiar and beloved member of the family who must then die, and whose blood, sprinkled on the doorposts, is a sign to the destroyer to pass over the house.

Other Old Testament passages depict the Passover lamb as a type of Christ. Isaiah 53, for example, tells us of the coming Messiah being led like a lamb to the slaughter:

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth. He was taken away because of oppression and judgment, and who considered his fate? For he was cut off from the land of the living; he was struck because of my people’s rebellion. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, but he was with a rich man at his death, because he had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully (Isa. 53:7-9).

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