Carl Douglas had a hit in 1974 called Kung Fu Fighting, and the whole song rests on one claim, that everybody, every single person in that room, was doing martial arts. Everybody. Not most people. Not the ones near the front. Now, I have been to a lot of gatherings in my life, and I have never once seen a whole crowd throw kicks in unison, but if I applied the rule some of my brothers apply to the Bible, I would have to believe it. Everybody means everybody. The song said so. Who am I to add context?
That is the whole argument, by the way. I have watched it for years now. A man reads "all" in a verse, slaps the table, and says "all means all," as if he has just ended the discussion and possibly the Reformation. And I understand the appeal. It feels like the plain reading. It feels like you are defending God's love from people who want to shrink it. I sat under that kind of preaching for years in India, where every "all" and every "world" was swung like a hammer at anyone who talked about election, and I know how sincere the men swinging it are. So I am not laughing at strangers here. I am laughing at a habit I watched up close, and I want to show why it cannot hold.
Here is my problem. The people who say "all means all" do not actually believe it. Not for one page. They only believe it in about six verses, and they quietly drop the rule everywhere else because the rule does not survive the rest of the Bible.
Try it. "Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth" (Luke 2:1). All the inhabited earth. So my ancestors in Tamil country lined up to be counted by Rome, and the tribes of the Amazon too, and somebody in China filled in a form for a Caesar he had never heard of. Nobody told them. All means all, so the Roman tax office must have had a very good postal system.
Keep going. "And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins" (Mark 1:5). All the people of Jerusalem. Every one. Herod came down and confessed his sins. Caiaphas was in the queue. Pilate got wet. The whole city was empty and somebody must have stayed behind to feed the goats, but Mark says all, and all means all, so the goats went hungry.
The Pharisees themselves used the word this way. "Look, the world has gone after Him" (John 12:19). The world. So the Greeks in Athens and the fishermen in Britain had all gone after Jesus by the time of the triumphal entry, and the Pharisees, men who could count the tassels on a prayer shawl, somehow could not count the people who stayed at home that day. Paul says the gospel "was proclaimed in all creation under heaven" (Colossians 1:23), and he wrote that before anybody in my part of the world had heard the name of Christ. Either Paul was lying, or "all" is doing what "all" normally does in every language on earth, which is to describe a scope from within a context.
Now, I will be fair, because the other side is not stupid. Sometimes "all" does mean every single person. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23) means every human being who ever drew breath, with one exception, and He is the point of the whole Bible. Nobody is arguing that "all" never means everyone. I am arguing something much simpler and much more annoying. The word "all" does not tell you its own scope. The context does. And the man who shouts "all means all" has not read the context. He has read the word and stopped.
So let us go to the verses they actually care about, and apply their rule.
Start with the big one. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). World means every individual, they say. Then open the same apostle's letter. "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15). So God loves every individual, and if you love every individual the love of the Father is not in you. Same writer, same word, and the rule produces a contradiction inside one man's pen. John is a Jew telling Jews that God's love did not stop at the border of Israel. It reached the world, the nations, Greeks and Romans and Tamils and Africans. That is the shock of the verse. As for "whoever," the Greek does not say "whoever can" or "whoever wants to." It says "everyone believing." It describes who gets eternal life, not who has the power to produce faith. Jesus explains that in the same chapter, "unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3), and again in the same Gospel, "no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father" (John 6:65). The "whoever" is real. The question is where the believing comes from, and Jesus answered it before anybody asked.
Stay in John for one more. "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). If world means every individual, then the sin of every individual has been taken away. Not offered to be taken away. Taken. And a man whose sin has been taken away cannot be condemned for it, so hell is empty and Jesus lied about the outer darkness. Either that, or "world" in John's mouth means what it has meant every other time, the nations and not just the Jews.
"So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men" (Romans 5:18). All men. If the second "all" is every human being who ever lived, then every human being who ever lived has justification of life. Congratulations, you have just become a universalist. Judas is justified. Pharaoh is justified. The man who beat his wife last night and died drunk is justified. "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22). All means all? Then hell is empty again and Jesus was wasting His breath when He talked about it. You cannot have the "all" of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 mean every individual and still believe anybody is lost. The rule eats itself.
"And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself" (John 12:32). All men, they say. Every individual is drawn. Fine. But the same Jesus, in the same Gospel, said "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:44). Read the second half. The one who is drawn is the one who is raised. The pronoun does not change in the middle of the sentence. So if all men without exception are drawn, then all men without exception are raised to life on the last day, and you are a universalist again. Or you can do what the context has been begging you to do since verse 20 of that chapter, where the Greeks come looking for Jesus, and see that "all men" means Jews and Gentiles, all kinds of men, not every man. Which is exactly what Revelation says He bought with His blood, "men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9). From every tribe. Not every man in every tribe.
Now the "all men" verses in the pastoral letters, which get quoted as if Paul wrote them with a highlighter. "First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority" (1 Timothy 2:1-2). Paul tells you what he means by "all men" in the very next breath. Kings. Rulers. The people a persecuted church would be tempted to leave out of its prayers. Then he says God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4). Same "all men," same paragraph, and it means what it meant two verses earlier, all sorts of men, including the emperor who wanted your head. Two verses later Christ "gave Himself as a ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:6), and Jesus Himself said He came "to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). Same ransom, same Bible, "all" in one place and "many" in the other, and if all means every individual then Jesus undersold His own death. The same thing happens in Titus. Paul addresses old men, old women, young women, young men and slaves, and then says "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men" (Titus 2:11). All kinds of men, which is the whole point of the chapter. Nobody is too old, too young, or too enslaved. And while we are in the same letter to Timothy, Paul calls God "the Savior of all men, especially of believers" (1 Timothy 4:10). Especially. He preserves all men in His providence, He feeds His enemies and gives them rain, and He saves believers in a way He does not save the rest. The word "especially" is sitting there for a reason.
"The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). All means all, they say. But Peter tells you who "all" is in the same verse. He is patient toward you. Who is you? The letter is addressed "to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours" (2 Peter 1:1). The "all" is the "you." Peter is not describing a God wringing His hands over the whole planet. He is telling the church why Christ has not come back yet. He is gathering the last of His own.
"He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). Whole world means every individual, they say. Then read the same author a few pages later. "The whole world lies in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19). Same writer, same phrase. So if "whole world" means every human being in both places, then the very people Christ has propitiated for are lying in the power of the devil. God's wrath is satisfied toward them and they are still Satan's. Both verses, same rule, and you get nonsense. Or you can notice that John was a Jew writing to a church that had been told for two thousand years that God's people were one nation, and he is telling them that the sacrifice reaches beyond Israel to the whole world of nations. Which is what the whole New Testament is shouting.
And here is the one that should settle it. "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). Us all. If that "all" is every human being, then every human being freely receives all things. And Paul tells you what all things are in the next verses. No charge against them. No condemnation. Nothing separating them from the love of God in Christ. All means all, remember? So either the "all" of Romans 8:32 is the "us" of Romans 8, the called, the justified, the glorified, or you have just handed heaven to every person who ever cursed the name of Jesus.
Now let me be fair and let them answer, because they do have answers, and I would rather meet them than pretend they are not there.
The first thing they will say is this. "You keep saying all means all kinds. Show me the word kinds. It is not in the text. You are adding a word to protect your system." I take the point, and I have an answer. I am not adding a word. I am reading the sentence the word sits in, which is what every reader does with every "all" in every language, including the man making the objection. When Luke says all the inhabited earth was taxed, nobody adds the word "Roman" to the text, but everybody reads it, because the sentence is about a Roman census. When Paul says "God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all" (Romans 11:32), the whole of Romans 11 has been about Jews and Gentiles, so "all" there is Jew and Gentile alike, and if it were every individual then every individual receives mercy and we are back at universalism. The scope is always supplied by the context. I do not own a special Calvinist dictionary. I own a Bible with more than one verse in it, and I read the verses next to the one being shouted.
The second thing they will say cuts deeper, and I respect it. "If God desires all men to be saved, and then chooses only some, He is not sincere. He says one thing and does another." Here is my answer. The Bible itself shows God wanting something in one sense and ordaining something else in another sense, and it does this without embarrassment. "As I live!" declares the Lord GOD, "I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11). And yet the same God says "My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure" (Isaiah 46:10), and He has ordained that many wicked will die in their sin. The cross is the clearest case. God commanded "You shall not murder," and the men who murdered His Son did it "by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23). God's command said no. God's decree said yes. Was He insincere at Calvary? Or does Scripture simply refuse to flatten the will of God into one thing so our small minds can carry it? "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us" (Deuteronomy 29:29). What He commands is revealed, repent and believe, all of you. Whom He has decreed to save is secret until He saves them. Holding both is not dishonesty. It is what the Bible does on every page from Joseph's brothers to Pilate's judgment hall.
The third thing they will say is to bring two verses I have not yet touched. "Christ tasted death for everyone" and "one died for all." Let us read them. "So that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone" (Hebrews 2:9). Now read the next verses. He is "bringing many sons to glory" (Hebrews 2:10). He says "Behold, I and the children whom God has given Me" (Hebrews 2:13). He "gives help to the descendant of Abraham" (Hebrews 2:16). The "everyone" of verse 9 is explained by the chapter as the sons, the children given, the seed of Abraham. And Paul, "one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf" (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). Read the whole sentence. The all He died for are the all who died with Him, and the ones who died with Him are the ones who now live for Him. Is that every individual? Does the man in the bar tonight live for Christ? Then he is not in that "all," and the verse just told you so.
The fourth thing they will bring is Jesus weeping over the city. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling" (Matthew 23:37). See, they say, He wanted and they refused, so the human will beats the divine will. Read it slowly. Whom did He want to gather? Your children. Who was unwilling? You. He is speaking to the scribes and Pharisees, the whole chapter is addressed to them, and He says He wanted to gather their children, the ordinary people of the city, and the leaders stood in the way. Two groups, not one. And then read what happened seven weeks later. The Holy Spirit fell, Peter preached in that same city, and "there were added that day about three thousand souls" (Acts 2:41). He gathered the children anyway. The unwilling leaders did not stop Him. They never do.
Do you see what has happened? "All means all" is not a high view of Scripture. It is a refusal to read it. It sounds humble and it is actually lazy. It takes the one word a child can understand and skips the sentence a man has to think about. And it only ever gets applied to the verses that seem to help free will. Nobody in that camp says the goats of Jerusalem starved because all means all. They know how language works. They just forget it the moment John 6 comes up.
I am not saying this to win a point. I am saying it because the God of the Bible is bigger and more particular than the slogan. "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out" (John 6:37). All means all there too. Every one the Father gives, comes. Not most of them. Not the ones who cooperate. All. "I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours" (John 17:9). The night before He died, Jesus drew a line with His own mouth between the world and the ones given to Him, and prayed only for one side of it. If your rule cannot handle that verse, your rule is wrong, not the verse.
So here is my appeal, and I mean it. Stop reading the Bible like a man holding a magnifying glass over one word. Read the sentence. Read the chapter. Ask who is being spoken to and why. Let the same rule apply in John 6 that you apply in Luke 2. If you do that, you will not find a smaller God. You will find a God who does not merely make salvation possible for everybody in general and certain for nobody in particular, but who set His love on people by name before the world began, sent His Son to actually save them, and will lose not one. "He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Not offer. Save. That is a God worth trusting with your soul, and He does not need our slogans to protect Him.
To Him alone be the glory.
He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.
