The Good News Group

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April 21, 2026

Geoffrey Chaucer

I’ve started reading, 'The Parliament of the Fowls' and was interested to read the following in relation to the dream of Scipio the Younger:

But breakers of the law, to tell the truth, and lecherous people, after they die, will whirl about the earth, always in pain, till many a world passes away, no doubt, and then, forgiven their wicked deeds, they will come into this blissful state for which God sends his grace for them to come.

It is interesting to see how universalist ideas have always found the way down the centuries. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the true Church of God!

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rjwagener

April 14, 2026

What does the Bible say about Itself?

Old Testament

A large part of the Bible contains prophecy. And 2 Peter 1:20 says that ‘no prophecy of scripture came about by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.’ All prophecies made by scripture are therefore the words of God, not men.

In keeping with this, Old Testament prophets are consistently portrayed as being the mouthpieces of God, proclaiming His very words (Exodus 4:10-17; 1 Kings 22:8-16; 2 Samuel 23:2; Isaiah 59:21; Jeremiah 1:9; 25:1-13; 31; Ezekiel 23:26,27). And looking back over Israel’s history, Zechariah blames the nation for ‘refusing to hear the words which the Lord had cried by the former prophets’ (Zechariah 7:7,12). Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that the phrase, ‘thus saith the Lord’ appears more than 2,600 times in the Old Testament!

Elsewhere in the Old Testament, we are also told that…

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rjwagener

Apr 19

The 'filtered through human beings' raises some interesting questions. Man is sinful, changeable and error prone. So is it inevitable that the pure water of God's word would be contaminated beyond recognition if it were filtered through human beings? And if that is the case, why would God choose to do this?

Jesus said that heaven and earth would pass away, but His words never would. If filtering these words through sinful human beings always distorts God's words, then Jesus's words would never have left the 1st century AD.

rjwagener

March 30, 2026

Free Will

This issue has been raised by all of the authors we've reviewed to date as a major potential stumbling block to universalism, the argument being that there is no guarantee people will choose to be saved or perhaps remain so. Here are some thoughts on this issue.

Traditional View

‘Free will’ is defined by the dictionary as ‘the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate’. ‘Fate’ is defined as, ‘the development of events outside a person’s control, regarded as predetermined by a supernatural power’.

The traditional view is that, as God is entirely without sin, He cannot be the cause of sin. As a result, it is impossible for there to be any cause-and-effect relationship between God and mankind’s sins. Although God created us and could foresee how we were going to misuse our free wills, He did not, and never has, caused us to sin: we…

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rjwagener

March 15, 2026

Are the Scriptures the Word of God?

One issue that has emerged from book reviews to date is that quite a few universalists do not appear to believe that the scriptures are the word of God. There are some who believe that parts of the Bible are from God, but who conclude it is impossible to determine which have a divine origin and which do not. There are others who argue that as all biblical teaching came through fallible men, none of it can be inerrant. Finally, there are probably others who believe that the scriptures may have been originally divine and inerrant, but who think that these texts have been irretrievably lost to the mists of time.

There appear to be two main reasons for these conclusions. The first are the contradictions they allege are contained in the Bible. These may take the form of internal inconsistencies, but might also include statements that are contradicted by…

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rjwagener

Mar 27

One example that is offered as a clear contradiction is given as follows.

…did Jesus say, ‘those who are not with me are against me’ or ‘those who are not against me are for me’? Either one of the evangelists is in error or Jesus said both and so contradicted himself’. (Hell to Pay, page 339).

The facts are that Jesus said, ‘those who are not with me are against me’ in Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23. He said this in response to challenges from the pharisees that He cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub. Jesus replied that a kingdom that is divided cannot stand. He then added the above words, which are identical in Matthew and Luke. Jesus was making the point here that, in relation to Him, there is no divided house or half-way house. People are in either one of two mutually exclusive houses: (A) with Him or (B) against Him.

Jesus did not quite say, ‘those who are not against me, are for me?’ What He actually said in Mark 9:40 was, ‘who is not against us, is for us’., and in Luke 9:50 He said, ‘he is not against you, is for you’. In the first version Jesus used the word, ‘us’ and in the second He used the pronoun, ‘you’. However, this is not a contradiction. Jesus may have simply reinforced this message by repeating the point, something He often did, in this case to make it clear to the disciples that this principle applied as much to them as group as it did to Him personally.

In this second passage, Jesus spoke these words to His disciples in relation to a man who was casting out demons in Jesus’s name, but who decided not to join the disciples at that time. Making the point He made to the pharisees in Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23, Jesus said that there were only two camps: (A) with Him or (B) against Him. There was no mixing of this position, no divided houses and nothing outside of (A) and (B).

Even if Jesus had said exactly what was quoted above, therefore, no contradiction would arise. If there are only two groups (A) and (B), saying that you are not in (B) must mean you are in (A) and vice versa. Far from being a contradiction, this is actually a logical necessity.

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