Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!
… that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. … Yes, and all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days. (Acts 3:20-21, 24)
There are a couple things I glean from the above passage. All the words come from a speech by the Apostle Peter. Peter in the last sentence is telling us what we can learn from the Old Testament prophets, and probably is using the word prophet in the broad sense of those who were “forth telling” of what God is doing in the world – they were not speaking about history and the past but were oriented to the future when God would restore all things. We read the Old Testament not so much to learn history as to become oriented to the fulfillment of the Old Testament in the Christ, and then to the eschatological end of the world of the Fall. “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one” (1 Corinthians 15:28).
The entire Old Testament was geared towards Christ and then towards the coming Kingdom of God (“all the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days“). No matter how else we might read the prophets, St Peter says they all were really speaking about the coming of the Messiah. As for the Law, it was given by God to serve a purpose for a time, but now that the Christ has come, the Law is not our guide in life Christ is. [For example those who think they can justify war, revenge or justice based on the Old Testament’s “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life” (Exodus 21:23-25; Leviticus 24:19-21; Deuteronomy 19:21) ethic need to read Matthew 5:38-48 in which Christ repudiates that thinking and the morality of the Law. For Christians, Christ’s Beatitudes supplants the ethics of the Old Testament Law].
Another idea from Peter’s sermon is his reference to the “restoration of all things” (Greek: apokatastaseos panton). Of course, this refers to that time in which all created things will once again be God’s and all things will be transfigured so that they become ways for us to experience God in everything. It is something to be hoped for and prayed. Many saints taught us that we should hope, pray and work for the salvation of every human being because God Himself works for the salvation of all. God offers salvation to saints and sinners.
Some believers and even some saints also held to an idea that in the end all people would be saved as no one would be able to resist God’s love for ever. This idea, as wonderful as it might be, has never been the official teaching of the Church. The Church hopes for and works for the salvation of everyone, but the Church has also held firm to the idea that each of us has free will, and God will not violate our free will if we decide to reject God and salvation or if we embrace Satan and evil.
Saint Silouan who hoped and prayed for the salvation of everyone, recognized that people have the freedom to reject this salvation. His biographer who finds Silouan’s love for everyone so inspiring, notes that didn’t lead the saint or the Church to conclude that salvation will be embraced by everyone.
It was their recognition of this abyss of freedom which prompted the Fathers of the Church to repudiate the determinist theories of the Origenists. Belief in Apocatastasis, understood as universal salvation predestined in the divine purpose, would certainly rule out the sort of prayer that we see in the Staretz. (Archimandrite Sophrony, THE MONK OF MOUNT ATHOS, p 68)
The church fathers thought that human free will was an undeniable fact of our existence, which even God would not compromise. Faith is a choice. God does not impose on us faith or salvation or damnation. We make our choices. God loves everyone in the world and offers salvation to everyone, but in the end it is our free will choice which decides our eternity. God wishes salvation for everyone in the world, and offers it to all, but imposes it on no one. God loves even the sinner and unbeliever, but respects their choice to reject His love, even for all eternity. In the end, every one of us will be in the God Who is Love’s presence, but what we experience will be for us either heaven or hell.