The Fundamentals - 1917: Vol.3

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The Fundamentals (1 Cor. 15:28) and that it was God’s purpose in the fulness of the times “to gather all things into one in Christ” (Eph. 1:10) . But these statements do not necessarily demand the inference that all will surrender in willing subjection to Christ. Subject to Him must every power and authority be, human and angelic, hostile and friendly, believing and unbelieving. “He must reign till all His enemies have been placed beneath His feet”—not taken to His heart, received into His love and employed in His service. This does not look like universal salvation and the complete extinction of moral evil or sin in the universe. Solemn and sad as the thought is that sin should remain, if not in many, yet in some of God’s creatures, it is the teaching of Scripture. In the resurrection at the last day, it is written, {¿‘All who are in their graves shall come forth, they that havedone good unto the resurrection of lifej and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damna­ tion,” or “judgment” (R. V.) (John 5:29) . A dark and insoluble mystery was the coming of sin into God’s universe at the first : as dark a mystery is its remaining in a race that was from eternity the object of God’s love and in time was redeemed by the blood of God’s Son, and graciously acted on by God’s Spirit. Happily we are not required to understand all mysteries: we can leave this one confidently in ■the Divine Father’s hand.

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