Luke 3:4-6 (ESV)
As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
[5] Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall become straight,
and the rough places shall become level ways,
[6] and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."
“And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” Now there is one for the universalist to hang his hat on, if there weren’t so many other verses where weeping and the gnashing of teeth are mentioned. That all flesh shall see salvation does not mean all flesh shall taste it.
However John the Baptist is preparing the way of the Lord, who will usher in the resurrection. He does it by first himself rising from the dead. With that the resurrection has occurred, proleptically as they like to say. The resurrection strictly speaking though is that which we confess in the apostles creed that happens at the end of time. This has occurred in Christ, the eschaton is upon us. This is what the Jewish Christians of the first century realized. The end is at hand. It leaves little room for millennialism. That sort of tripe Chiliasm as the Jewsih myths were called, came later as the eschaton remained aloof. Yet we know it will come, and then the quick and the dead will rise. The quick and the dead. Those who have faith, and those who don’t. Those who trust inour Lord and those who don’t. Finally all will see. Finally all will see Jesus Christ, the salvation of God. All flesh. But only believers will be given eternal life, the rest an eternity that can not be said to be life.
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