Since I realized on March 18, 2013 that E. F. Ströter was teaching universal reconciliation, the question of this has never left me. Today’s internal lot in Psalm 30: 4a) reminded me that I am a reincarnated person (November 7, 2012):

יהוה העלית מן-שאול נפשי חייתני מיורדי

“JAHWEH, you brought my soul up from the realm of the dead. You gave me life instead of my descent. ”

Just as reincarnation is rejected by most Christians, so too is universal reconciliation unthinkable for most Christians. In letters to the preachers Modersohn and Nagel, E. F. Ströter questioned their subjective beliefs and made God’s all-encompassing plan of salvation credible with God’s word. Most of all, Ezekiel 16: 53-55 and 61 convinced me of the glorious fact that God will bring everything back in His time; that in His time He will convert the devil and restore Paradise. I quote from a letter from 1921 to preacher Gustav F. Nagel:

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“But now for more than 2500 years the following has been written on the pages of the firm prophetic word, in the book of the prophet Ezekiel:” I want to turn the captivity of Sodom and her daughters (cities), the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, including them I will turn the captivity of your prisoners among them, so that you may bear your shame and be ashamed of all that you have done in which you served them as consolation. So your Sodom sisters and their daughters will return to their previous status, and you and your daughters should also return to your previous status ”(Ezek. 16: 53-55). The word of the Lord goes even further and higher, v. 61: “Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you will take your bigger and smaller sisters (Samaria and Sodom) to you, whom I want to give you as daughters , but not because of your behavior in the league. And I want to establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am Jehovah, so that you may remember it and be ashamed and not open your mouth for shame when I will forgive you for everything you have done. ”

That Sodom and Gomorrah cannot be an example of the eternal torment or judgment of the eternal fire for all later wicked, that they have to go through the same material, real hell of fire and sulfur as that one, is absolutely clear from the two parallels, Jerusalem and Samaria, whose imprisonment was a completely different one, namely a political exile. That may not be the point of comparison. The exemplary can only lie in the fact that on the one hand all wicked people are certain of their hell, no matter in what form and shape, with infallible certainty, but on the other hand this judgment or hell or prison will just as infallibly be turned and they will be restored from it as they were before, for that is obviously the main point of the whole prophetic account in this chapter.

Whoever wants to deny that Sodom and Gomorrah are restored from their “eternal” judgment of fire to their previous state can just as well deny that Jerusalem and Samaria, i.e. H. all of Israel will ever experience a restoration on all sides, political and religious. That means, he can then take the side of the deniers of the Old Testament prophecy, who shred the whole Old Testament, the only Bible of our Lord Jesus and his apostles before our eyes and, like King Jehoiakim, toss into the fire.

Let us not dwell long on the question of what will become of the judged Sodomites after the Lord has turned their prison. The statement of Jehovah is completely sufficient: “I want to give them to you as daughters in my covenant.” Here it is merely a matter of the supposedly so solid castle of the representatives of the endless punishment or torment, who utterly refuse to admit that it is there could ever be an escape or dismissal from it. This strong castle is, to speak in modern language of war, camouflage, i. H. painted horror!
Whoever does not necessarily bow to this clear, very unambiguous testimony of Scripture or deny it, may do so. But he should stop believing himself in the Bible or pretending to be a believer in the Bible – he disbelieves! “