Whosoever Believes is a Free Grace theology site devoted to the biblical teaching that eternal life is received by faith alone in Christ alone.
The History Behind the Website
I enjoy writing and always have. It's an effective way to express and settle my thoughts on an issue. I was the dweeb in middle school that participated in the creative writing fair. In college I looked forward to my history papers more than written exams.
When I decided to go back to school again for ministry — naturally choosing GES's program — I was excited to once more begin write more professionally. I had to refresh myself on style formatting and get acquainted with Logos. I have found myself often in the debate forums of the internet, constantly writing out the same kind of replies to different passages of Scripture. I started to draft out templates under the allowed word count for most websites.
I had lost some papers in my emails and a mess of folders on my computer. I figured I should create more of a living place for some of my best papers. Thus, the primary reason for this website is to keep my life organized. I am forced to plan each post carefully so I don't break the website.
I had a job about five years back as a content writer for a digital marketing firm, so I had some experience with basic HTML and CSS. I mostly wrote or edited blogs and dumped them into a WordPress template. It was interesting to see what catches on in SEO, though it involved some guesswork and trial and error. But now we have AI to do most of the tedious stuff — I created a skeleton of this site with AI and learned more than ever just by peeking at what it did and asking for the logic behind it.
All that to say, I also decided to create this website because the coding tools available today make it surprisingly simple. So why not? It's turning out to be fun to reformat my material across different platforms.
Over the years I developed good friends in the Discord Christian community. Sometimes we would debate each other in good spirits, but mostly pray and do Bible studies over voice chat. For people who lack a healthy church near them, the luxury of the internet connecting people is a blessing. I hope to use Whosoever Believes as a platform to help bring believers together around sound biblical teaching.
I am studying to become a pastor. I am not sure what God has in store for me when I finish my program, but I know I need to maximize my time now. As long as it is called "today" I have the obligation to encourage others to remain strong in the faith (Hebrews 3:13). Plus, if God really does provide me a ministry opportunity beyond a home Bible study, I'll have a nice collection of pages to convert for different purposes. Good to be ahead of the game, right?
The Story Behind the Name
As for the name of the website, I wanted to include part of a verse in the title to help with searches. A lot of good domains like that were taken, and I didn't want too long a title either. I settled on limiting myself to John 3:16. Every word of that verse is honestly vital to the gospel message — God, who so loved the world, gave His Son that we should believe in Him and not perish but live eternally.
Of course, the verse is not without contention among theologians. Is the "world" really everyone who has ever lived and ever will? I am a believer in Free Grace theology — a completely non-Calvinist position. The world is the world. Everyone is invited to respond to the offer of eternal life because Jesus removed the sin problem for everyone. Their debt is paid and now they need God's life.
But really, I'd say the more theologically significant part of John 3:16 is the Greek phrase πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων — translated either as "everyone who believes" or "whoever believes." It is a present articular participle construction functioning as a substantive noun.
Many Reformed teachers argue it always means "the one acting continuously in belief." That error is known as an overprecision in tense. Present tense in Greek, much like in English or any language, has a range of meanings. In the evangelistic verses of John's Gospel, this construction is chosen specifically as a gnomic — a timeless, categorical — truth.
You might render it literally as "the ones who have entered the class of the believing one." All, whosoever, who have ever become believers are recipients of eternal life. That is good news. I want this website to fuel a passion for the freeness of God's grace. Everyone who ever becomes a believer is forever God's child. I pray everyone reading comes to understand this truth.
As a side note — I realized that "Whosoever Believes" as a phrase is not strictly found in any major translation. The "whosoever" is from the old KJV and ASV, while "believes" is the modernized wording. Oopsie! The truth is all the same. Whoever — that is, anyone at all — is able to believe in Christ for eternal life.
What issues prevent you from believing the gospel? Is there a passage that seems to contradict faith alone? Let me know — it will give me more to write about for everyone to learn.