The Restoration of All Things: The Old Testament Hope

“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.” — Psalm 22:27

A. The Question on the Table

A seminary student once told me, with real confidence, that the Old Testament knows nothing of universal hope. “The Hebrew Scriptures,” he said, “are about covenant election. God chose Israel and judged the nations. That is the story. Universal salvation is a New Testament idea, and a late one at that.”

I have heard versions of this claim many times. And I understand why people hold it. The Old Testament is full of fire and sword. Sodom burns. Egypt drowns. The Canaanites face destruction. God pours out wrath on Assyria and Babylon. Even Israel itself suffers exile when it breaks the covenant. If you read the Hebrew Scriptures with one eye, you see only judgment, a chosen remnant, and a God who draws hard lines.

What if the same Old Testament that records God’s sternest judgments also contains his widest promises? What if the very prophets who warned of fire also envisioned a day when every nation would turn to the Lord? What if the hope of universal restoration is not a late addition to the Bible but one of its oldest themes?

The critics who deny any universal hope in the Old Testament face a stubborn set of texts. These texts do not whisper. They shout. “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD.” “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.” “In your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The horizon of the Old Testament hope is not a walled garden for the elect. It is as wide as the human race.

The traditional reading must do something with these texts. The usual move is to narrow the “all.” “All the nations worship” becomes “a saved remnant drawn from the nations.” “All the ends of the earth” becomes “the covenant community scattered among the nations.” The universalism is trimmed back until it fits inside the framework of a restricted final salvation.¹

I want to take these texts seriously. I want to let them say what they actually say, in their original language, in their own context. And I want to show that the hope of universal restoration is not a New Testament innovation. It is woven into the oldest promises of Scripture. It begins with Abraham. It grows through the prophets. It is named, by the apostle Peter himself, as “the restoration of all things, which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient time” (Acts 3:21).²

B. The Full Text in Context

We are looking at a cluster of Old Testament passages, not a single proof-text. Each text adds a voice to the chorus. Together they form a pattern too consistent to dismiss as scattered exceptions. Let me lay them out.

The blessing is for Abraham, yes. But its reach is “all the families of the earth.” The Hebrew phrase is kol mishpechot ha’adamah, “all the clans of the ground.” God repeats this promise later with even more force:

The Psalms pick up the same theme. The most striking text is Psalm 22, the psalm Jesus cried from the cross. After its devastating opening, it ends with a vision that reaches past Israel to the whole world:

Notice the verbs. The nations “remember” (Hebrew zakar, “to recall, to bring to mind”). They “turn” (Hebrew shuv, “to turn back, to return”). And they “worship” (Hebrew shachah, “to bow down”). These are not the verbs of forced submission. They are the verbs of willing return.³

Psalm 86 adds another voice: “All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name” (Psalm 86:9). The scope is total. “All the nations you have made.” Not “some.” Not “the elect among the nations.” All.

Then comes Isaiah, the prophet of universal scope. In Isaiah 45, the very text Paul quotes in Philippians 2, God addresses the entire earth:

The bowing here is framed by an invitation: “Turn to me and be saved.” And God backs it with an oath sworn on himself. I will return to this text shortly, because Paul’s use of it in Philippians 2 is a direct line from the Old Testament to the New (see Chapter 6).⁴

This is remarkable. The feast is “for all peoples.” The veil removed is “over all nations.” And death itself is “swallowed up forever.” Paul will quote this very text in 1 Corinthians 15:54 to describe the final victory of Christ over death (see Chapter 5).⁵

And then there is the stunning promise in Ezekiel. God speaks of restoring the fortunes of Sodom:

Finally, Peter himself names the hope in Acts 3:21. Speaking of Jesus, he says that heaven must receive him “until the time for restoring all things” (Greek apokatastasis pantōn, “the restoration of all”), “about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”⁶

Peter is pointing backward. The restoration of all things is not his invention. It is what the prophets taught “long ago.” Now we need to hear what they said.

C. The Heart of the Case

1. The Abrahamic Promise Is Universal from the Start

The foundation of Israel’s faith is a promise God made to one man. But the promise was never only about one man, or one family, or one nation. From the very first words of the covenant, the horizon is the whole world.

“In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). “In your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18). The phrase recurs with force in Genesis 18:18 and 26:4 and 28:14. This is not a footnote to the covenant. It is its stated purpose.

The apostle Paul saw this clearly. In Galatians 3:8 he writes that “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” Paul reads the Abrahamic promise as the gospel preached in advance. The “all the nations” is not decorative. It is the point.⁷

Traditional readings have to decide what to do with this. If the blessing of Abraham reaches “all the families of the earth,” then the scope of God’s saving purpose is universal from the start. The covenant is not a fence keeping the nations out. It is a channel through which God’s blessing flows out to them.

Some scholars limit the “all” to mean “many” or “all kinds.” But the Hebrew is plain. Kol mishpechot ha’adamah means “all the clans of the ground.” If the text meant “some clans,” it would have said mehem (“from among them”). It did not. It said “all.”⁸

Look at the logic of election. God chose Abraham out of a world of nations. Why? Not so those nations would perish while Abraham prospered. God chose Abraham for the nations. Election in the Bible is not selection for exclusive privilege. It is selection for a mission. Israel is the channel through which God’s blessing reaches the world. The covenant people are the instrument, not the limit.

This is confirmed by the way God frames Israel’s calling at Sinai: “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). A priest does not exist for himself. A priest stands between God and the people, bringing God’s blessing down and the people’s worship up. Israel’s priesthood is on behalf of the world. Their election serves the universal purpose planted in the Abrahamic promise from the start.

2. Isaiah’s Vision of the Nations Saved

Isaiah 45 is among the most important texts in the entire universalist case. It is the passage Paul quotes in Philippians 2:10–11 when he writes that “every knee shall bow” and “every tongue confess.” But to understand what Paul meant, we have to look at where those words came from.

In Isaiah 45, God addresses the idol-worshiping nations. He calls them to abandon their lifeless gods and turn to the only God who can save them. “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth!” (Isaiah 45:22). The invitation is open. The scope is total. And the bowing that follows is framed as a response to that invitation, not as a forced surrender.⁹

Look at the sequence in Isaiah 45:22–25. God invites. God swears an oath by himself. Then the people respond: “Only in the LORD are righteousness and strength.” That sounds like a confession of faith, not a sullen whimper from a conquered enemy.¹⁰

David Burnfield makes this point plainly in Patristic Universalism. He notes that the bowing in Isaiah 45 is framed by the invitation “Turn to me and be saved.” If the bowing were forced, God would not ask. He would command. The swearing of an oath in God’s name is something believers do, not defeated enemies. And the people praise God after they bow.¹¹

This matters enormously for the New Testament. When Paul takes this passage and places it on the lips of the risen Christ in Philippians 2, he carries its original meaning with it. The “every knee” of Philippians 2 is quoting an invitation passage, not a conquest passage.

Hunter Coates presses the point further. He argues that the traditional reading of Philippians 2:11 as a forced bow creates at least four tensions in Paul’s own letters. If confessing “Jesus is Lord” can only be done by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3), then the universal confession of Philippians 2 is a Spirit-wrought act of worship. The Old Testament context and the New Testament theology agree: the bowing is salvation.¹²

I treat Paul’s use of Isaiah 45 fully in Chapter 6. My point here is the Old Testament side: Isaiah’s own vision is of nations turning freely to the Lord and being saved. The hope of universal worship is planted right here, in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves.

3. Even Sodom Restored (Ezekiel 16)

If there is one city that represents God’s total, final judgment in the biblical imagination, it is Sodom. Fire from heaven. Total destruction. No survivors. Sodom became a byword for judgment so severe that nothing could undo it.

This text is breathtaking. God is speaking to Jerusalem, telling her that her sins are even worse than Sodom’s. But then he promises to restore all three: Sodom, Samaria, and Jerusalem. The restoration reaches to the most judged city in the entire biblical record.¹³

Some translations once tried to soften this text. The King James Version inserted the word “When” at the start of verses 53 and 55. This made the promise conditional, almost sarcastic: “When I restore the fortunes of Sodom” could be read like saying “When hell freezes over.” But modern translations have corrected this. The Hebrew does not contain a conditional. God says “I will restore.”¹⁴

Burnfield notes that the Dutch Reformed theologian Jan Bonda called attention to this translation issue. Bonda pointed out that the translators, working within a model that could not accept Sodom’s restoration, felt the need to alter the text itself. “This example shows,” Bonda wrote, “that our tradition necessitated a change in the biblical text!”¹⁵

Another objection is that “restoring fortunes” simply means a return from exile, with no spiritual content. But Burnfield answers this cleanly. How can Sodom return from exile? Sodom was not exiled. Sodom was destroyed. There are no survivors whose descendants could come home. The phrase “restore the fortunes” (Hebrew shuv shevut) is an idiom for restoring someone’s good fortune. It means to set things right for them.¹⁶

The great Old Testament commentator Carl Friedrich Keil admitted the force of this passage. He agreed that the punishments of the Old Testament should not be viewed as beyond all reversal. The possibility of future salvation must be left open, even for Sodom. He concluded that the restoration of Sodom “points beyond the present aeon” and “can only take place on the great day of the resurrection of the dead in the persons of the former inhabitants.”¹⁷

That is a stunning concession from a traditional commentator. Keil does not read Ezekiel 16 as metaphor. He reads it as a real promise that reaches past death, past the present age, to a restoration that includes even those destroyed in judgment.

George Sidney Hurd presses the logic further in A Defense of Biblical Universalism. He observes that Ezekiel is referring to the actual people destroyed in Sodom, “since there were no survivors to continue their name.” If the restoration of all includes even Sodom, he asks, then who could be excluded?¹⁸

Andrew Hronich, in Once Loved, Always Loved, presses the same point from a different angle. Some argue that God restored the city of Sodom, not the persons who lived there. But Hronich asks: why does God care about cities in the first place? Not because he values brick and mortar, but because cities are made of persons. If God would restore a city that was the very symbol of judgment, why would he not restore the persons that city was made of? Does God care more for places than people?⁶²

The B. Maarsingh commentary on Ezekiel agrees. He describes the restoration of Sodom, Samaria, and Jerusalem as nothing less than a return to God’s original plan: all three cities restored to their former state, a vision that begins with the most judged city on earth and ends with Eden renewed.⁴⁹

And Sodom is not the only enemy nation God promises to restore. Jeremiah records the same pattern for Moab: “Moab shall be destroyed and be no longer a people” (Jeremiah 48:42). That sounds final. But then verse 47 says, “Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab in the latter days, declares the LORD.” The same pattern holds for Elam: “I will bring disaster upon them, my fierce anger, declares the LORD. I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.” And yet: “But in the latter days I will restore the fortunes of Elam, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 49:37, 39).⁴⁷ Even the nations God uproots receive compassion. The uprooting is not the end. Restoration follows. And the condition for restoration involves genuine change. The restored nations must “really learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name” (Jeremiah 12:16).⁴⁸ This is not cheap grace. It is grace that leads to real transformation.⁵⁶

Perhaps the most stunning example is Isaiah 19. In this passage, God punishes Egypt, Israel’s oldest enemy. He strikes them with plagues. But then the text takes a breathtaking turn. After judgment, Egypt turns to the Lord, and God heals them. Robin Parry calls this “perhaps the most astonishing oracle in the Old Testament about the destiny of the nations.”⁵⁷ Here is how Isaiah describes it:

Read that again. “Blessed be Egypt my people.” Egypt and Assyria, Israel’s most feared enemies, become God’s own people. They worship alongside Israel on equal footing. The striking comes first. Then the healing. Then the blessing. That is the pattern: judgment that leads to restoration, not judgment that ends in ruin.

4. Acts 3:21 Names the Hope

After the healing of the lame man at the temple gate, Peter preaches a sermon to the crowd. In it he speaks about Christ, who is now in heaven,

The phrase translated “restoring all things” is the Greek apokatastasis pantōn. This word became the title the early church gave to the doctrine of universal restoration. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa all used this very word to describe their belief that God would finally restore all things and all people to their original state. They did not invent it. They took it from Peter.¹⁹

Two details in Acts 3:21 deserve close attention. First, Peter says this is what “God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.” The restoration is not a new idea. Peter ties it directly to the prophetic tradition. The Old Testament texts we have been reading are the ones Peter has in mind.²⁰

Second, notice that our English translations insert the word “things.” The Greek text says apokatastasis pantōn, which literally means “the restoration of all.” There is no separate word for “things” in the Greek. The word translated “all” is pantōn, a form of pas, which means “all, every, the whole.” English translations add “things” because the Greek form is neuter. But Greek neuter does not always mean objects. “Holy Spirit” is neuter in Greek. So is “the Lamb.” Both are persons.²¹

George Sidney Hurd makes the point that the early Greek Fathers, who thought and spoke in Greek, did not understand pantōn as referring to inanimate objects. They understood it to include all rational creatures. If the Greek language actually ruled this out, their opponents would have said so.²²

The critic James B. De Young, in Exposing Universalism, dismisses Acts 3:21 in a footnote. He writes that the restoration “probably refers to the restoration of all the conditions in which people live because of sin, not the restoration of every person to fellowship with God.” But this reading conflicts with the very next verses in Peter’s sermon. Peter goes on to say, “You are sons of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed’” (Acts 3:25). Peter’s own example of the prophetic hope is the Abrahamic promise. And the Abrahamic promise is about people, not conditions.²³

Gerry Beauchemin, in Hope Beyond Hell, argues that in every other New Testament passage where “all things” appears in relation to Christ’s work, it includes persons. Paul says “all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas” (1 Corinthians 3:21–22). He says Christ is able “to subdue all things to himself” (Philippians 3:21). He says God desires “to reconcile all things to himself” (Colossians 1:20). In each case, people are included. To exclude people from the “all” of Acts 3:21 requires an argument, not an assumption.²⁴

5. Death Swallowed Up (Isaiah 25)

The vision of Isaiah 25 is among the most sweeping in the entire Old Testament. God prepares a feast “for all peoples.” He tears away the veil “spread over all nations.” And then the climactic promise: “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces” (Isaiah 25:8).

This is not a vision of death confined to one nation or one covenant people. The scope is “all peoples” and “all nations.” And the enemy conquered is death itself.

Paul knew this text. In 1 Corinthians 15:54 he quotes it directly: “Then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’” Paul places Isaiah’s promise at the climax of his argument about the resurrection, the very argument that ends with “God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). The Old Testament hope and the New Testament conclusion meet at the same point: death is defeated, and God rules unchallenged (see Chapter 5).²⁵

If death is swallowed up for all peoples, not just for Israel, then the victory of God extends past every boundary. There is no “for some peoples” in this text. Isaiah says “all.”

Notice too that the image is a feast. God prepares “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine.” This is not a courtroom. It is a banquet. And the guest list is “all peoples.” The vision has a hospitality to it. God is not dragging the nations into his presence for sentencing. He is inviting them to sit down and eat.

The tearing away of the veil “that is spread over all nations” suggests ignorance and blindness lifted. The nations have been covered by something that keeps them from seeing God clearly. At the feast, God removes that covering himself. This is grace in action. God does not wait for the nations to find their own way. He strips away what blinds them and reveals himself.

The Revelation of John draws on this same imagery. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more” (Revelation 21:4). The vision that closes the Bible reaches back to Isaiah 25 and brings it to completion (see Chapter 9).

6. Progressive Revelation: The Hope Widens Across the Canon

One of the most striking patterns in the Old Testament is the way the scope of God’s saving purpose grows wider at each stage.

It begins with a single person: Adam, and the promise that the woman’s seed would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). Then it narrows to a family: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Then it widens to a nation: Israel, called out of Egypt and given the covenant at Sinai. But even as God forms a nation, the purpose reaches beyond it: “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”²⁶

Through the prophets, the horizon expands again. Isaiah sees “all the ends of the earth” turning to God. The Psalms envision “all the nations” worshiping. Zephaniah sees God purifying the speech of “the peoples” so that “all of them” call on the Lord. Ezekiel sees even Sodom restored. The trajectory is always outward.

Think of it as a series of concentric circles, each one larger than the last. The innermost circle is Adam. The next is Abraham’s family. The next is the twelve tribes. The next is the nation of Israel. The next is the remnant of Israel plus the God-fearing Gentiles. And the outermost circle is all the nations of the earth. At each stage, the circle widens. It never shrinks. The direction of the Old Testament is from the particular toward the universal.

This pattern has a name in theology: progressive revelation. God reveals his purposes in stages, each stage wider and clearer than the last. He does not reveal everything at once. He reveals enough for each generation to trust him, and then he reveals more. The Old Testament plants the seeds. The New Testament brings them to full flower.

But we should be honest about what the Old Testament does and does not say. Parry makes an important observation. The Old Testament’s universal hope covers the living, not the dead. Until the very end of the Old Testament period (Daniel 12:2), there is no clear belief in life after death. So the universal salvation the prophets envision extends to the survivors of the nations, those who are alive when God acts. That is why Isaiah 66 can picture a valley of dead bodies next to the salvation of all the living. The hope is real, but it has a ceiling. Only when the New Testament introduces the resurrection of the dead does the hope push past that ceiling. The belief in life after death, Parry writes, “leads to theological moves that drive towards a stronger universalism that embraces all humanity, past, present, and future.”⁵⁹

Jesus himself pointed to this pattern. In Matthew 19:28 he speaks of “the renewal of all things” (Greek palingenesia, “the rebirth, the regeneration”). This word appears only twice in the New Testament. It points to a time when everything will be returned to its original, pre-fall condition. If “all things” are restored to their pre-fall state, that includes people. Before sin entered the world through Adam, everyone stood right before God. There were no unbelievers in Eden.⁵⁰

George Sidney Hurd captures this well in The Triumph of Mercy. He observes that the promise to Abraham was not limited to future families. It was a promise for “all families that have ever existed since the beginning.” Just as the promise to Eve that her seed would defeat the serpent applied to every generation, the promise to Abraham applied to every family on earth.²⁷

The Old Testament hope is not a handful of proof-texts. It is a trajectory. And that trajectory points to one place: the salvation of all.

7. How These Texts Feed the New Testament

The New Testament authors did not write in a vacuum. They were steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And when they made their most sweeping claims about Christ, they reached for the Old Testament texts we have just examined.

Paul’s “every knee shall bow, every tongue confess” in Philippians 2:10–11 is a direct quotation of Isaiah 45:23. His claim that “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22) echoes the universal scope of the Abrahamic blessing. His vision of a time when “God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28) is the New Testament name for the apokatastasis Peter identified in Acts 3:21.²⁸

The connection between Psalm 22 and Philippians 2 is especially important. Psalm 22 begins with the cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and ends with all the ends of the earth turning to the Lord. Jesus cried the opening line from the cross. Paul took the closing vision and applied it to the risen Christ. The psalm that frames Christ’s suffering also frames the hope of universal worship.²⁹

Think about what that means. The psalm Jesus prayed as he died is not a psalm of final judgment. It is a psalm that moves from agony to hope, from abandonment to a world set right. Its ending is not wrath. Its ending is this: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD.” If Jesus had this psalm in his mind on the cross, then the suffering was aimed at restoration, not at the sealing of the lost.

Isaiah 25’s promise that death would be swallowed up appears in 1 Corinthians 15:54. The Abrahamic blessing to “all the families of the earth” appears in Galatians 3:8. Peter’s sermon in Acts 3 ties the apokatastasis directly to the prophets. The New Testament writers are not innovating. They are drawing on a deep well of Old Testament hope.³⁰

Paul’s quotation pattern deserves a closer look. When he quotes Isaiah 45 in Philippians 2, he does not narrow the scope. He expands it. Isaiah says “all the ends of the earth.” Paul says “those in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” The three-domain formula takes the horizontal reach of Isaiah and adds a vertical reach. Everyone, in every realm, bows and confesses. Paul is not just borrowing words. He is scaling them up.⁵³

Romans 11:32–36 is another moment where the Old Testament soil produces a New Testament flower. Paul writes: “For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all” (Romans 11:32). Then he erupts into a doxology: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33). The doxology is prompted by the scope of the mercy. It is the joy of a man who has just seen that God’s plan is wider than he imagined. And the plan he has seen is rooted in the prophets Paul grew up reading (see Chapter 6).⁵⁴

8. The Patristic Use of These Texts

The early church fathers who held the apokatastasis read these Old Testament texts with great care. They saw in them the foundation for their conviction that God would restore all things.

Burnfield traces this connection in Patristic Universalism. He notes that the early Greek Fathers took apokatastasis pantōn from Acts 3:21 as the name for their whole position. They connected Peter’s words to the prophetic texts Peter himself cited. They read Isaiah 45 and Psalm 22 and Genesis 12 and Ezekiel 16 as the biblical roots of the hope they proclaimed.³¹

Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa all believed that there would be a final restoration of all created beings to their original state. At that point, God would be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Their reading of these Old Testament texts was not a stretch. It was the plain meaning of the texts, read in their original language by people who still spoke Greek as their native tongue.³²

I develop the patristic witness fully in Chapter 15. Here, the point is simpler: the hope of universal restoration did not begin with those fathers. It began with the prophets. The fathers saw in the Old Testament the same universal scope we have been tracing. They built on what they found.

D. Engagement with Specific Scholars

The scholarly debate over these Old Testament texts divides along a clear line. On one side stand those who read the universal language at face value. On the other stand those who limit it to a remnant or to a rhetorical flourish.

David Burnfield, in Patristic Universalism, develops the Old Testament case carefully. He treats Psalm 22:27, Isaiah 45:22–25, Ezekiel 16:53–55, and Acts 3:21 as a connected set of texts. He notes that “all” in these passages is repeatedly limited by traditional readers to mean only the elect or only believers. But the texts themselves never make that distinction. As Burnfield observes about Psalm 22:27, nobody reading the verse without a theological filter would conclude that “all nations” means “only the elect among the Gentiles.”³³

He adds a pointed observation about inconsistency. The Calvinist commentator John Gill, for example, defines “all” in Psalm 22:27 as only the elect of God. But in Romans 3:23, where “all have sinned,” Gill defines “all” as every man, woman, and child without exception. Burnfield asks: when “all” refers to sinners it means everyone, but when “all” refers to those who turn to the Lord it means only believers?³⁴

Robin Parry, in The Evangelical Universalist, develops the Old Testament case with careful attention to the Isaiah plotline.³⁵ He traces a pattern in Isaiah 40–66: God calls Israel to be a light to the nations, but Israel herself falls into blindness and exile. God must restore Israel first, through the Servant, and then the nations come streaming to worship. The crucial point is this: the same nations destroyed in the fire of God’s anger are the ones who later flood to Jerusalem to find Yahweh. On Isaiah 45, Parry writes:

Parry also addresses the objection that the “shamed” in Isaiah 45:24 are those excluded from salvation. He argues this misreads the text. The shamed ones are the former idol-worshipers. When they turn from idols to the true God, they are ashamed of their past. Israel, by contrast, is vindicated. The shame is the mark of repentance, not of exclusion. Parry adds that if shame excludes people from salvation, then none of the nations are saved, which contradicts Isaiah’s teaching elsewhere (Isaiah 60; 66:18–23; 2:1–4) and makes the divine oath meaningless.⁵⁸

On the other side, De Young offers the strongest anti-universalist reading of these texts. His approach in Exposing Universalism is to challenge the “all means all” reading at every point. He argues that the universal-scope texts describe God’s offer, not its outcome. The nations are invited to turn, but the turning of any individual is not guaranteed. He treats Acts 3:21 as a restoration of conditions, not of persons.³⁶

De Young summarizes the universalist appeal to Scripture as resting on three pillars: the purpose of God to restore all things to their original state (Acts 3:21), the means of restoration through Christ (Romans 5:18), and the nature of that restoration as the union of every person with God (1 Corinthians 15:24–28). His answer is that the texts which use the word “all” refer only to those who are in Christ by faith, and that this reading is the only one that fits the Bible’s teaching about the different destinies of the righteous and the wicked.⁶³

De Young also reads the “every knee shall bow” of Philippians 2 through the lens of Psalm 110:1, where God promises to make Christ’s enemies “the footstool of your feet.” On this reading, the bowing is the cringing of conquered foes, not the worship of the saved. The enemies are “pacified by conquest,” De Young says, not reconciled by grace.⁶⁴ But this reading faces the same problem that Chapter 7 has been pressing. Isaiah 45 frames the bowing with the invitation “Turn to me and be saved.” You do not ask defeated enemies to turn and be saved. You conquer them. The framing language of Isaiah 45 decides the question. The bowing is salvation, not subjugation. And Paul quotes Isaiah 45, not Psalm 110, when he describes the universal confession in Philippians 2:10–11.

Ilaria Ramelli, the patristic scholar, places these texts in their historical context. She shows that the early Greek-speaking church understood the prophetic “all” as genuinely universal. The Latin West, which had less access to the original languages and a stronger Augustinian framework, was the tradition that narrowed the scope.³⁷

Standard Old Testament commentators often avoid the universalist question altogether. They acknowledge the universal language but interpret it as hyperbolic or as describing the worship of a saved remnant drawn from every nation. This reading is possible but faces a real problem: the texts themselves do not add the qualifier. The Psalmist says “all the families of the nations,” not “a remnant from all the families.” Isaiah says “all the ends of the earth,” not “some from the ends of the earth.” The qualifier is supplied by the interpreter, not by the text.³⁸

George Sidney Hurd, across several works, consistently argues that the universalist reading is the plain reading. In The Triumph of Mercy he traces the Old Testament restoration theme from Genesis to Acts 3 and concludes that the restoration of all, spoken of by the prophets, includes “all the families of the earth” without exception. No individual is excluded. No family could be called blessed if any member were eternally excluded without hope.³⁹

The scholarly divide comes down to a question of hermeneutics. Do we take “all” to mean all unless the context forces us to limit it? Or do we assume the limit and look for confirmation? I believe the first approach is more faithful to the texts. When the Psalmist says “all the nations you have made,” the burden of proof falls on anyone who wants to subtract from that “all.”

George Sidney Hurd, in Extermination or Restoration?, makes a related point from a different angle. He notes that the refining fire of the Old Testament is not destructive but purifying. God says, “I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah 48:10). The fire is real. The affliction is real. But the purpose is to purify, not to destroy. The Psalmist understands this: “You brought us out to rich fulfillment” (Psalm 66:12). The fire leads somewhere. It leads to restoration.⁵⁵

Sharon Baker, in Razing Hell, takes this logic and applies it to Isaiah 45. She notes that the shamed nations in Isaiah 45:24 stand in God’s fiery presence. But the Psalmist prays that the nations will be filled with shame so that they may seek God (Psalm 83:16–18). The shame is not the end. It is the turning point. In God’s purifying presence, the evil is burned away, leaving only the pure behind. Baker sees this as the consistent Old Testament pattern: judgment that leads to restoration, not judgment that leads to ruin.⁶¹

Michael McClymond, in his massive historical study The Devil’s Redemption, offers a different angle. He observes that universalist interpreters have always had a hard time with the Old Testament, which speaks of “fierce judgments and punishments inflicted by God.” Some modern universalists, he notes, are willing to set aside the Old Testament altogether as reflecting a vindictive deity.⁶⁵ McClymond is right that the Old Testament is full of fierce judgment. But that is precisely the point this chapter is making. The same Old Testament that records God’s severest judgments also records his widest promises. The universalist reading defended here does not soften or set aside the judgment. It takes the judgment seriously and then insists that the same texts which describe it also describe the restoration that follows. The God who destroys Sodom also promises to restore Sodom. The God who scatters the nations also promises to gather them. The judgment is real. So is the hope that rises from it.

This is the larger picture the Old Testament paints when you step back far enough to see it. Judgment is everywhere. But behind the judgment, over and over, stands the promise of restoration. God judges Sodom, then promises to restore Sodom. God uproots the nations, then has compassion on them. God sends his people into exile, then brings them home. The pattern is judgment that serves restoration, not judgment that ends in permanent ruin.

E. Counter-Objections

Objection 1: “The Nations Worship” Means a Surviving Remnant

The strongest version of this objection says that Old Testament language about “all the nations” worshiping uses the nations as a corporate category. Individual Egyptians or Moabites will come to faith, and together they represent “all nations” before God’s throne. But the text does not promise that every individual person will be saved.

This reading is possible. But it requires the interpreter to insert a word the text does not contain. Psalm 22:27 does not say “some from all the families of the nations.” Psalm 86:9 does not say “representatives of all nations.” The texts say “all.” And when Paul reads them, he says “every knee” and “every tongue.” The remnant reading works only if we assume the conclusion before we read the text.⁴⁰

Objection 2: Old Testament Hope Is National, Not Universal-Personal

This objection has real weight. The Old Testament thinks in national and corporate terms far more often than the modern Western reader does. When God promises to bless “all the families of the earth,” he may mean the corporate entities, not each individual within them.

I grant the distinction between corporate and individual in the Old Testament worldview. But I do not think it carries the weight the objector needs. The Abrahamic promise is that “all the families of the earth” will be blessed. Can a family be called blessed if some of its members are in eternal torment? The word “blessed” (Hebrew barak) means to be made fortunate and happy under God’s care. That is hard to reconcile with a family whose members are divided between heaven and an endless hell.⁴¹

Parry addresses this objection directly. He acknowledges that the Old Testament texts focus on groups, not individuals. Israel is punished and Israel is restored. Jerusalem is punished and Jerusalem is restored. Egypt is punished and Egypt is restored. Sodom is punished and Sodom is restored. In every case, the object of divine punishment is the object of divine restoration. The pattern holds across every example. Now, the final judgment focuses on individuals, each one giving account before the judgment seat of Christ. Parry argues that the pattern at the group level can be applied at the individual level. The object of divine punishment, whether group or individual, is the object of divine restoration. He is candid that this is not a proof, but “it is no arbitrary leap into the dark.”⁶⁰

George Sidney Hurd puts the point sharply. No family could be called “blessed” if any member were eternally excluded without hope of restoration. A mother whose child is in endless torment is not blessed in any meaningful sense of the word. The Abrahamic promise demands something more complete than a saved remnant from each family.⁵¹

And the New Testament plainly takes the corporate hope and makes it personal. Paul’s “every knee” and “every tongue” applies to three domains: “those in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Philippians 2:10). The language is individual. “Every” does not mean “each nation as a whole.” It means every knee. The corporate seed planted in the Old Testament blooms into individual scope in the New.

Objection 3: “Sodom Restored” Is a Metaphor for Israel’s Humbling

Some interpreters read Ezekiel 16:53–55 as a rhetorical tool. God tells Jerusalem that she is worse than Sodom. Then, to twist the knife, he says even Sodom will be restored before Jerusalem is. The restoration of Sodom is not a real promise. It is a device for shaming Israel.

This reading fails for a simple reason: the text does not stop at shaming. God goes on to promise that he will “remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant” (Ezekiel 16:60). The shame is real. So is the restoration. God is not making an empty threat or an ironic comparison. He is describing a future in which all three cities are restored, and a new covenant is established with Jerusalem that will never end.⁴²

Keil and Delitzsch, the standard conservative Old Testament commentary, take the restoration of Sodom as genuine. Keil writes that the restoration “will not be completely fulfilled till after the perfecting of the kingdom of Christ in glory at the last day.” This is not metaphor. It is eschatology.⁴³

Objection 4: The Old Testament’s Dominant Note Is Judgment

The final objection says that while a few texts speak of universal hope, the dominant note of the Old Testament is judgment, wrath, and the division between the righteous and the wicked. The universal-scope texts are exceptional, not representative.

I accept that judgment is a major Old Testament theme. This book never denies it. God’s judgment is real, just, and severe (see Chapter 12). But the question is not whether judgment is real. The question is whether judgment is the last word. The texts we have examined say it is not.

And these are not minor texts. The Abrahamic covenant is the foundation of the entire biblical story. Isaiah is the most quoted prophet in the New Testament. Psalm 22 frames the crucifixion itself. Acts 3:21 comes from the mouth of an apostle. These texts are not marginal. They are load-bearing pillars of the biblical narrative.⁴⁴

Count the psalms. Psalm 22:27. Psalm 66:4. Psalm 72:11. Psalm 86:9. Psalm 138:4. These are not “a few scattered exceptions.” They are five psalms, each in a different part of the Psalter, each envisioning universal worship. Add Isaiah 2:2–3, where “all nations shall flow” to the mountain of the Lord. Add Isaiah 11:9, where “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” Add Habakkuk 2:14, which repeats the same image. The universal-hope texts are not rare. They form a consistent thread running from Genesis to the Minor Prophets.⁵²

F. Conclusion and Pastoral Application

The hope of universal restoration is not a New Testament invention. It is as old as the promise to Abraham. It grows through the Psalms and the prophets. It is named by Peter on the day he preached at Solomon’s Porch. And it feeds directly into the New Testament’s most sweeping claims about the work of Christ.

“All the families of the earth shall be blessed.” “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD.” “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.” “I will restore the fortunes of Sodom.” “He will swallow up death forever.” “The restoration of all things, which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”

These are not whispers on the margins of the Old Testament. They are woven into its foundation, its songs, its prophecies, and its apostolic interpretation. The trajectory of the Old Testament is not from hope to judgment. It is from judgment to restoration. It is from a single family to all the families of the earth.

If you have been told that the Old Testament offers no ground for the larger hope, I want you to know: the ground is there, and it is solid. God made a promise to Abraham. He swore it by himself. And his word, he says, “shall not return” (Isaiah 45:23).⁴⁵

I think of Marian, the woman from our opening chapter who lost her husband without seeing him come to faith. She might wonder whether the God of Abraham has a place for him. The answer the Old Testament gives is not a shrug. It is a promise: “All the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That promise covers Marian’s family. It covers yours. It covers every family that has ever lived.

Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones. God asked, “Can these bones live?” And the answer was yes. The breath of God entered the dead, and they stood on their feet, a great army (Ezekiel 37:1–10). If God can raise the dead, he can restore the judged. If he promises to restore even Sodom, then no one is beyond his reach.

The God of the Old Testament is not a God who gives up. He is the God who says, “Return, O children of men” (Psalm 90:3, NKJV). He is the God who prepares a feast for all peoples. He is the God who swallows up death forever. He is the God who swears by himself, because there is no one greater to swear by, that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

That is the Old Testament hope. And it belongs to every person who has ever wondered whether God’s love might be as wide as the Bible says it is.

In the chapters that follow, we will see how the Gospel of John takes this hope and carries it to “God so loved the world” (see Chapter 8), and how Revelation closes the Bible with a city whose gates never shut (see Chapter 9). But the foundation was laid here, in the Hebrew Scriptures, centuries before Christ was born. The hope is old. And old hopes, in the Bible, are the ones that hold.

Notes

↑ 1. For the claim that universalism is strictly a New Testament development, see James B. De Young, Exposing Universalism: A Comprehensive Guide to the Faulty Appeals Made by Universalists (Resource Publications, 2018), chs. 9–11, where De Young addresses the “all” and “whole” texts.

↑ 2. Acts 3:21 (ESV). The Greek apokatastasis pantōn is the phrase the early church used to name the hope of universal restoration. See chapter 15 of this book for the patristic witness.

↑ 3. Psalm 22:27–28 (ESV). The Hebrew shuv (Strong’s H7725) means “to turn back, to return.” It is the standard Hebrew word for repentance and conversion. Shachah (H7812) means “to bow down in worship.” Neither verb carries the overtone of forced submission.

↑ 4. Isaiah 45:22–24 (ESV). Paul quotes Isaiah 45:23 in Philippians 2:10–11 and Romans 14:11. Both passages apply Isaiah’s universal scope to the risen Christ.

↑ 5. Isaiah 25:6–8 (ESV). Paul quotes this passage in 1 Corinthians 15:54, placing it at the climax of his resurrection argument. The Septuagint renders “swallowed up death” as katepien ho thanatos (“death is swallowed up”), which Paul follows almost verbatim.

↑ 6. Acts 3:21 (ESV). The Greek apokatastasis (from apokathistēmi, “to restore to a former condition”) appears only here in the New Testament as a noun. BDAG defines it as “restoration, re-establishment.”

↑ 7. Galatians 3:8 (ESV). Paul treats the Abrahamic promise as “the gospel preached beforehand” (proeuēngelisato, “gospeled in advance”). The scope of the gospel, in Paul’s reading, has always been universal.

↑ 8. Kol (H3605) is the standard Hebrew word for “all, every, the whole.” Mishpachah (H4940) means “clan, family.” The phrase is comprehensive: every clan group of the whole earth.

↑ 9. Isaiah 45:22 (ESV). The imperative “turn to me” (penu elai) frames the bowing and swearing of 45:23 as a response to an invitation, not to a command of conquest. See Robin Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, for a full treatment.

↑ 10. Isaiah 45:24 (ESV). The confession “Only in the LORD are righteousness and strength” is language of praise and trust, not of reluctant capitulation.

↑ 11. David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: An Alternative to the Traditional View of Divine Judgment, 2nd ed. (2016), ch. 4.

↑ 12. Hunter Coates, Grace Abounds: A Holistic Case for Universal Salvation (Resource Publications, 2024), ch. 4. Coates identifies four tensions that arise if Philippians 2:11 is read as a forced confession.

↑ 13. Ezekiel 16:53, 55 (ESV). The Hebrew shuv shevut (“restore the fortunes”) is an idiomatic expression meaning to set things right, to restore good fortune. See Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4.

↑ 14. The KJV inserted “When” at Ezekiel 16:53, 55, which could imply the restoration would never happen. Most modern translations (ESV, NIV, NASB updated) have removed this insertion and render the Hebrew straightforwardly as a promise: “I will restore.”

↑ 15. Jan Bonda, cited in Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4. Bonda’s observation is that the translators’ tradition, rather than the Hebrew text, drove the insertion.

↑ 16. Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4. He compares Deuteronomy 30:3, where the same idiom clearly means restoration, not return from exile. The phrase shuv shevut (or shevit) appears across the Old Testament with the consistent meaning of restoring someone’s good fortune. See also HALOT, s.v. shūv.

↑ 17. Carl Friedrich Keil, in C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, on Ezekiel 16:55. Keil concludes that the restoration of Sodom “points beyond the present aeon” and “can only take place on the great day of the resurrection of the dead in the persons of the former inhabitants.” Cited in Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4.

↑ 18. George Sidney Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism: A Biblical Response to James B. De Young’s Book “Exposing Universalism” (2019), ch. 2.

↑ 19. Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4. BDAG defines apokatastasis as “a state of being reconstituted, restoration, re-establishment.” The word was used as a technical term by Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa for the final restoration of all souls.

↑ 20. Acts 3:21 (ESV). Peter immediately connects the apokatastasis to the Abrahamic promise in Acts 3:25, identifying the prophetic foundation of the hope.

↑ 21. The Greek pantōn is the genitive plural of pas, which can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. The neuter form does not inherently exclude persons; Greek uses the neuter for “all things collectively.” To pneuma to hagion (“the Holy Spirit”) and to arnion (“the Lamb”) are both neuter nouns referring to persons. See George Sidney Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy: The Reconciliation of All through Jesus Christ (2014; 2nd ed. 2018), ch. 4.

↑ 22. Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism, ch. 2. Hurd notes that the early Greek Fathers, who spoke Greek natively, understood pantōn in Acts 3:21 to include all rational creatures.

↑ 23. De Young, Exposing Universalism, p. 20, footnote 16. De Young’s own treatment is remarkably brief for a text that names the very doctrine he opposes. Hurd answers this reading in A Defense of Biblical Universalism, ch. 2.

↑ 24. Gerry Beauchemin, Hope Beyond Hell: The Righteous Purpose of God’s Judgment, ch. 2. Beauchemin surveys the “all things” passages and shows that persons are consistently included in the “all.”

↑ 25. 1 Corinthians 15:54 (ESV); see chapter 5 of this book. Paul’s use of Isaiah 25 connects the Old Testament banquet vision to the New Testament resurrection hope.

↑ 26. Genesis 3:15 (the protoevangelium); Genesis 12:1–3 (the Abrahamic covenant); Exodus 19:5–6 (“a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”). Israel’s election is priestly: they are chosen to mediate God’s blessing to the world.

↑ 27. Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, ch. 4. Hurd emphasizes that the Abrahamic promise is retroactive: it covers “all families that have ever existed since the beginning.”

↑ 28. Philippians 2:10–11 (quoting Isaiah 45:23); 1 Corinthians 15:22, 28; Acts 3:21. The New Testament authors consistently use Old Testament universal-scope language to describe the scope of Christ’s victory.

↑ 29. Psalm 22:1 (quoted in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34); Psalm 22:27–28. The psalm moves from desolation to universal worship, a trajectory the Gospels mirror in the crucifixion-to-resurrection arc.

↑ 30. The New Testament quotation of Old Testament universal-scope texts is extensive: Isaiah 45:23 in Philippians 2:10–11 and Romans 14:11; Isaiah 25:8 in 1 Corinthians 15:54; Genesis 12:3 in Galatians 3:8; the apokatastasis concept in Acts 3:21 and Matthew 19:28 (the palingenesia, “the regeneration of all things”).

↑ 31. Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4. Burnfield traces the exegetical connection from the Old Testament texts to Peter’s sermon to the patristic doctrine.

↑ 32. On Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa as proponents of apokatastasis, see Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 6; Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Brill, 2013); and chapter 15 of this book.

↑ 33. Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4. Burnfield’s argument is that no reader approaching Psalm 22:27 without a theological filter would restrict “all nations” to mean “the elect.”

↑ 34. Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4, on John Gill. Gill defines “all” as “all without exception” in Romans 3:23 but as “all the elect” in Psalm 22:27. Burnfield asks: “Who is picking and choosing?”

↑ 35. Robin Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Cascade, 2012), ch. 3. Parry’s Old Testament case is built on the Isaiah plotline: God calls Israel to be a light to the nations, but Israel falls into exile. God restores Israel through the Servant, and then the nations flood to Jerusalem to find Yahweh. The same nations destroyed by God’s anger are the ones who later worship him.

↑ 36. De Young, Exposing Universalism, chs. 9–11.

↑ 37. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (Brill, 2013). Ramelli’s monumental survey documents the early Greek-speaking church’s reading of these texts as genuinely universal. This is represented at naming level; see chapter 15 for fuller treatment.

↑ 38. Standard Old Testament commentaries on the Psalms (e.g., Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1–50, WBC [Word, 1983]; Tremper Longman III, Psalms, TOTC [IVP, 2014]) acknowledge the universal language but tend to interpret it as hyperbolic or as describing the eschatological worship of the redeemed drawn from all nations.

↑ 39. Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, ch. 4.

↑ 40. For the remnant reading, see D. A. Carson, “The Universalism Controversy,” in The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Zondervan, 1996), where the “all” texts are interpreted in light of the “many will not be saved” texts. The universalist reply is that “all” is the stated scope and must be the starting point, not the text to be narrowed.

↑ 41. The Hebrew barak (H1288) means “to bless, to make fortunate, to fill with good.” A family “blessed” in this sense is made whole and happy under God. The term resists a reading in which the blessing leaves some family members under permanent judgment.

↑ 42. Ezekiel 16:60–63 (ESV). The passage moves from shame to restoration to an “everlasting covenant” (berit olam). The rhetoric of shame serves the larger promise of restoration, not the other way around.

↑ 43. Keil, in Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, on Ezekiel 16:55. Cited in Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4.

↑ 44. Isaiah is quoted or alluded to more than any other Old Testament prophet in the New Testament. See R. T. France, Jesus and the Old Testament (Tyndale Press, 1971), appendix on OT quotations in the NT.

↑ 45. Isaiah 45:23 (ESV). God swears by himself because there is none greater to swear by (cf. Hebrews 6:13). The oath is irrevocable.

↑ 46. Zephaniah 3:9 (ESV). The reversal of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) is a common motif in prophetic literature. The scattering of the nations by confusion of language is undone by God’s purifying work. The Pentecost narrative in Acts 2, where the Spirit enables understanding across languages, may be an anticipation of the same reversal.

↑ 47. Jeremiah 12:14–17 (ESV). The promise of compassion toward the uprooted nations mirrors the pattern of Ezekiel 16: judgment followed by restoration. See Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4.

↑ 48. Jeremiah 12:16 (ESV). The condition (“if they will really learn the ways of my people”) shows that restoration involves genuine change, not a blanket pardon. This is consistent with the larger pattern of restorative, rather than merely retributive, judgment.

↑ 49. B. Maarsingh, commentary on Ezekiel 16, cited in Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 4. Maarsingh describes the restoration as a return to God’s original plan for creation.

↑ 50. Matthew 19:28 (ESV). The Greek palingenesia (from palin, “again” + genesis, “birth, origin”) appears only here and in Titus 3:5 in the New Testament. Burnfield notes that this word “means the age when all things are returned to their pristine and pre-fall condition.” See Patristic Universalism, ch. 4.

↑ 51. Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, ch. 4. Hurd argues that no family can be called “blessed” in the Abrahamic sense if any member is eternally excluded without hope.

↑ 52. Isaiah 2:2–3; 11:9; Habakkuk 2:14. The vision of universal knowledge of God (“the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD”) is repeated across the prophets, reinforcing the scope of the hope.

↑ 53. Philippians 2:10 (ESV). Paul’s three-domain formula (epouraniōn kai epigeiōn kai katachthoniōn) extends the horizontal scope of Isaiah 45 (“all the ends of the earth”) to include those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. This is an expansion of the Old Testament universal scope, not a contraction.

↑ 54. Romans 11:32–36 (ESV). The doxology (11:33–36) is structurally prompted by the scope of divine mercy in 11:32. Paul is not praising God for the mystery of selective election; he is praising God for mercy extended to “all” (“that he may have mercy on all”). See chapter 6 for the full treatment.

↑ 55. George Sidney Hurd, Extermination or Restoration? A Restorationist’s Response to Annihilationism (2018), ch. 3. Hurd traces the refining-fire imagery through the Old Testament and argues that it consistently serves a purifying, not destructive, purpose. The texts he cites include Isaiah 48:10; Proverbs 17:3; Psalm 66:10–12; and Ezekiel 22:17–22.

↑ 56. Jeremiah 48:42, 47; 49:37–39 (ESV). Andrew Hronich notes these texts in Once Loved, Always Loved: A Case for Christian Universal Salvation (2024), ch. 7: “Just like with Israel, God’s judgments upon the Gentile nations are meant to heal and restore.” The pattern holds across Moab, Elam, and every nation Jeremiah addresses. The judgment is real. So is the restoration that follows.

↑ 57. Robin Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Cascade, 2012), ch. 3. Parry calls Isaiah 19:18–25 “perhaps the most astonishing oracle in the Old Testament about the destiny of the nations.” Egypt and Assyria, Israel’s archetypal enemies, are struck by God and then healed. They convert to the service of Yahweh and worship him on equal footing with Israel. The titles God gives them are the titles of his own people: “Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork.”

↑ 58. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 3. Parry compares Isaiah 45:16–17 with Ezekiel 16:63, where God redeems Israel from idolatry and they are ashamed. “Being ashamed of past idolatry is not an inappropriate response for those Yahweh redeems from such things.” The shame is the shame of the redeemed, not the mark of the excluded.

↑ 59. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 3. Parry writes: “The reason that I think the Old Testament does not envisage the salvation of all individuals who have ever existed and is thus not universalist in the strong sense of the word is that it has no conception of life after death, at least until the very end of the Old Testament period (Dan 12:2).” The New Testament belief in resurrection extends the hope past this ceiling. See chapter 5 of this book.

↑ 60. Parry, Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed., appendix (response to critics). Parry writes: “The object of divine punishment, whether it be the group or the individual, is the object of divine restoration. The leap from the group to the individual may not be a leap of certainty—I do not offer it as a killer proof—but it is no arbitrary leap into the dark.”

↑ 61. Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment (Westminster John Knox, 2010), ch. 9. Baker treats Isaiah 45:21–25 together with Psalm 83:16–18, where the Psalmist prays that the nations “may seek your name, O LORD” through shame. The shame serves the seeking, not the other way around.

↑ 62. Andrew Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved (2024), ch. 7. Hronich writes: “Does God care more for cities than He does persons? Why is it that God cares for cities in the first place? Not because God values brick and mortar but because cities are comprised of persons! The impelling cause for God to restore a city state is His love for persons.”

↑ 63. De Young, Exposing Universalism, ch. 9 and Introduction. De Young summarizes the universalist scriptural appeal under three heads: (1) the purpose of God to “restore” all things to their original state (Acts 3:21); (2) the means of restoration through Christ (Romans 5:18; Hebrews 2:9); and (3) the nature of restoration as the union of every person with God (1 Corinthians 15:24–28). His answer: the texts which speak about “all” refer not to all but to everyone who is in Christ, and this interpretation is the only one compatible with the Bible’s teaching on the diverse destinies of the righteous and the wicked (Matthew 25:46; Luke 16; John 3:16). The question this chapter presses is whether “all” really can be read as “all who believe” when the texts themselves supply no such qualifier.

↑ 64. De Young, Exposing Universalism, ch. 9. De Young appeals to Psalm 110:1 (“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”), the most frequently cited Old Testament text in the New Testament, as the framework for the bowing of Philippians 2. He reads the Philippians passage alongside 1 Corinthians 15:24–25 (“when he has brought to an end all rule and all authority and power”) and concludes that the final picture is one of conquest, not salvation: the enemies are “pacified by conquest,” not reconciled by grace. This reading has force, but it requires ignoring that Paul in Philippians 2:10–11 quotes Isaiah 45:23, not Psalm 110:1, and Isaiah 45 frames the bowing as a response to the invitation “Turn to me and be saved.” See Chapter 6 for the full treatment.

↑ 65. Michael J. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (Baker Academic, 2018), vol. 2, p. 1053. McClymond observes that “universalist exegetes have always had a hard time with the Old Testament and the book of Revelation, which both speak of fierce judgments and punishments inflicted by God.” He notes that some modern universalists are ready to jettison the Old Testament as reflecting a judgmental deity. The approach of this chapter is the opposite: it reads the Old Testament whole, judgment and restoration together, and finds the universal hope woven into the very fabric of the prophets, not imposed upon them from outside. McClymond’s broader engagement is treated in Chapter 15 and Chapter 22.