By Bryan Elliott, M46 Ministries
Why I Updated Our Gospel Page
A Three-Part Journey from What I Was Taught to What I Discovered
This is so exciting. So freeing. So beautiful.
I have to tell you what’s happening. My daughter Bryn used to share the gospel occasionally—and sometimes it landed, sometimes it didn’t. But this beautiful gospel? She’s telling everyone. Friends who never responded to the traditional message are lighting up. People who had no interest in Christianity are leaning in, asking questions, wanting more.
I’ve talked with atheists—technical, detail-oriented, sharp minds—who’ve said, “Oh my gosh, this actually makes sense.” Not because we softened anything. Because we went deeper. Because when you strip away the inherited contradictions and return to what Scripture actually says in the original Greek, the gospel becomes intellectually coherent and emotionally overwhelming.
The beautiful gospel arouses the heart because it’s rooted in the infinite love of God. It doesn’t need fear tactics. It doesn’t need guilt manipulation. It simply needs to be told—and something in the human soul recognizes it as true.
- The Bible is God’s inspired Word and our authoritative guide for life
- The Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed—the foundational truths that have anchored Christianity for 1,700 years. We affirm the Trinity: one God in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—co-equal and co-eternal
- Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, risen bodily on the third day, ascended to the Father, and coming again in glory
- Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father, not one option among many
- Salvation requires a conscious response—acknowledging Jesus as Lord and believing God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10:9). The gift is given; it must be received
- Holiness and righteousness are the natural fruit of knowing who we are in Christ
- Sin is serious—it destroys life, wastes purpose, and produces real suffering. Awakening theology takes sin more seriously, not less, because we understand what it costs
- God’s justice is restorative, not retributive—His “wrath” is faithfulness to truth, the principle of sowing and reaping built into reality itself. He corrects to restore, not punishes to destroy
- God’s design for human flourishing, revealed in Scripture, is perfect
Why Three Parts?
Come on a beautiful journey with me.
I’ve broken this into three bite-sized pieces because what I’m about to share deserves space to breathe. This isn’t a quick read—it’s a paradigm shift. Each part builds on the last, and I want you to have time to sit with each revelation before moving to the next.
Part 1: The Questions That Wouldn’t Let Me Go
The scriptures I’d read my whole life but never truly considered. The questions that kept me awake at night. The moment Jesus’ own words about the Kingdom shattered everything I thought I knew.
Part 2: What I Discovered —
What the early Church Fathers actually taught. How we ended up with a Latin-filtered gospel. And the Greek words that changed everything—hiding in plain sight in your English Bible.
Part 3: The Beautiful Gospel
The stunning reality of union, oneness, and new creation. What I’m NOT saying and what I AM saying. And an invitation to wake up to who you’ve always been.
Each part can stand alone—but together, they tell the story of how the gospel became more beautiful than I ever imagined.
What you’re about to read is a snapshot—an introduction to a much deeper journey. My book Awakening: Restorative Metanoia releases in February 2026, and it contains over 1,000 Scripture references, extensive studies of the early Church Fathers, Greek word analyses, and a comprehensive glossary that unlocks what’s been hiding in plain sight in your English Bible. This blog gives you a taste. The book gives you the feast.
Ready? Let’s begin.
PART 1: The Questions That Wouldn’t Let Me Go
I walked away from God at eighteen.
Or so I thought.
For twenty-eight years, I lived convinced I was outside—separated, distant, disconnected from the faith of my childhood. I built a life, a career, a family. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I carried the weight of being “away.”
Then in 2016, at forty-six, I returned.
Or so I thought.
What I discovered in the years that followed shattered everything I believed about leaving and returning, about separation and salvation, about the God I thought I had abandoned. I didn’t find a God who had been waiting for me to come back. I found a God who had never let me go.
I hadn’t been outside His love for twenty-eight years. I had been blind to an embrace that never loosened.
I didn’t return to God. I woke up to where I had always been.
A Word About This Journey
For those of you who know me, you know that writing has become by far the greatest use of my time. When I’m in writing mode, I sometimes wake at 2:30, 3:30, or 4 in the morning—so full of ideas and insight and guidance that I can’t stay in bed. On weekends, when I’m in the flow, it’s often 10 to 12 hours—and when I’m in the flow, I can’t get out of it. It consumes me in the most beautiful way.
This isn’t a lighthearted journey. This is deep immersion into Scripture, into the fascination with heaven and God and oneness, driven by an unquenchable passion for truth and freedom. God has given me certain gifts—an insatiable curiosity, an engineering mind that wants to go back to the source, and above all, a reverence for God and His truth that won’t let me settle for inherited assumptions.
What you’re about to read is the fruit of that pursuit. Not casual theology. Not surface-level inspiration. This is what happens when you take the majesty of God seriously and refuse to stop asking questions.
It Was His Majesty That Undid Me
Let me be clear about what drove this journey: it wasn’t a desire for a softer God. It was the opposite.
The more I studied Scripture, the more I stood in awe of who God actually is. The supremacy of Jesus Christ over all creation. The absolute goodness of the Father. The fear of the Lord—not terror, but the breathtaking wonder of standing before infinite holiness. The staggering reality that the God who spoke galaxies into existence sustains every atom of the universe by His powerful word.
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” — Hebrews 1:3 (NIV)
It was this awe—this holy reverence—that wouldn’t let me settle for a diminished gospel. A God THIS supreme, THIS good, THIS worthy of worship… could His plan really be smaller than I’d been taught?
The fear of the Lord drove me deeper. And what I found took my breath away.
Scriptures I Read But Never Truly Considered
These are verses I’d read my whole life—but never let myself follow to their logical conclusion:
“In him we live and move and have our being… We are his offspring.” — Acts 17:28 (NIV)
Think about that. Every breath you’ve ever taken happened inside God. You don’t journey toward Him—you exist within Him already. The very life sustaining you right now flows from Him. He is as present as you are.
“God is love.” — 1 John 4:8 (NIV)
Not “God has love.” Not “God shows love when we behave.” God IS love. It’s His very nature—the same yesterday, today, and forever. Can infinite love produce infinite torture?
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” — Ephesians 1:4 (NIV)
Before creation. Before you could succeed or fail. Before you were born. Before the fall. You were chosen. You were included. God’s mind was made up about you from eternity.
“In him all things hold together.” — Colossians 1:17 (NIV)
ALL things. Not some things. Not the good people. Everything that exists is held together by Christ right now—including you. His sustaining power keeps every molecule of your being in existence this very second.
“Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God.” — Romans 8:38-39 (NIV)
Nothing. Not sin. Not failure. Not doubt. Not your worst day. Not death itself. If separation is impossible, what were we told we needed to be saved FROM?
“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.” — 2 Corinthians 5:19 (NIV)
Read that again. God WAS reconciling—past tense, accomplished action. The WORLD—not just believers. NOT COUNTING people’s sins against them. This isn’t a future possibility contingent on our decision. This is an announcement of what God already did.
“When he has done this… God will be all in all.” — 1 Corinthians 15:28 (NIV)
The Greek is panta en pasin—ALL in ALL. Not all in some. Not all in the elect. God’s final destination for creation is complete union, total restoration, nothing outside His embrace. This is where history is heading.
The Questions I Couldn’t Escape
Here’s what kept me awake at night—questions born not from doubt, but from taking God’s majesty seriously:
If God is the giver and sustainer of all life—if in Him we live and move and have our being—how could anyone be “born into darkness”? The very breath in your lungs came from Him. The life animating you right now is His gift. Darkness has no creative power.
If God IS love—not just has love, but IS love at His very essence—can infinite love create billions of people knowing most would suffer eternally? Would you call that “good news”?
If God sees the end from the beginning—if He knew before creating humanity exactly how many would be “lost”—did He create knowing most of His children would burn forever? What kind of Father is that?
If the enemy was defeated at the cross—if Jesus declared tetelestai, “it is finished”—why do we still speak as though darkness has power? The enemy’s only remaining weapon is deception. And every time we preach a gospel of fear and separation, we do his work for him.
If nothing can separate us from God’s love—if that’s truly, grammatically, theologically true—then were we ever actually separated? Or were we just blind to an embrace that never loosened?
If we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world—before we could succeed or fail—then isn’t our inclusion God’s idea, not our achievement?
And then this one stopped me cold:
Jesus said “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21)—BEFORE the cross. Before the resurrection. Before Pentecost.
Think about what He was saying. When Jesus announced “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” that word repent is metanoia—change the way you think, transform your perception. And the Kingdom? The Kingdom of God is where God is. It IS God’s presence and reign.
So when Jesus told people “The Kingdom of God is within you”—He was declaring that God was already within them. He was announcing union as already true. Before Calvary. Before the empty tomb.
This perplexed me. It was completely incongruent with everything I’d been taught. If we were “born into darkness,” totally separated from God until we “accepted Jesus”—why was Jesus telling people the Kingdom was already inside them?
And why was nobody talking about this?
The more I sat with it, the more I realized: Jesus didn’t come to CREATE union. He came to AWAKEN us to the union that had always been true. He entered our darkness not to make God love us, but to reveal that God had never stopped.
These questions wouldn’t let me go. And when I started digging into the Greek—and into church history—I found answers that shook everything.
But let me be clear before we go further: what I discovered doesn’t eliminate human response. A gift must be received. Jesus declared “The Kingdom of God is within you”—but He also said “Follow me.” The reality is accomplished; our awakening to it begins when we acknowledge Jesus as Lord. This isn’t universalism. It’s invitation awaiting response.