Elect among the unreached

[Pergamum]

Maybe we should start a new thread about jungle men and their pre-Gospel stories.

In various myths and beliefs around the world are often stories of universal fall and flood and a resurrction or new birth of sorts from a Messenger who would come with Words of Life.

I think these things can be fit into our theological grids without distorting them.

 

[Scott1]

sjonee
Puritanboard Freshman

This belief system isn't the Gospel, however. Christ is the Gospel. So just because a jungle man has a story like this one doesn't mean God reveal the Gospel to him.

Exactly.

There is more to salvation.

God alone can change the constituent nature of a human being so he savingly believes and rests in Christ's righteousness alone for salvation.

When God does that, on the basis of His choice in eternity past (election), he effectually calls the person at the appointed time by regenerating them with the Holy Spirit. This immediately frees the person from the dominant control of sin over their nature and causes saving faith. God justifies that person in His sight at that moment by that faith in Christ's righteousness alone, and adopts Him into the Body of Christ, forever!

This is 100% an act of God (He is sovereign) and there is nothing man could possibly do to change his nature without God acting first. That's why it is truly by God's grace- His unmerited, unearned, undeserved favor.

Over time, this will bear out in the life of a Christian- it will show. Not perfection, that happens in the state of glory only but the person reflects a changed (forever) nature that God made. That's why we can rejoice that we can never lose salvation because it was never ours to give (but that may be a topic for another thread).

 

[toddpedlar]

Isn't the bottom line of being a Christian allegiance to the Creator-God rather than intellectual assent to propositional truth? How much theological understanding did Adam have or Enoch or Rahab? On the other hand theologically-competent Calvinists may still be their own gods, their allegiance to their own agendas rather than the Creator-God. It seems to me that the watershed is one's obedience to the light he has, not the amount of light he has been given. Isn't such obedience evidence of regeneration, even if the amount of light is minimal?

So a good Buddhist, having only the light of Buddhist teaching, is saved?

A good Hindu, the same?

A good animist, the same?

Are you serious, Mary?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Isn't the bottom line of being a Christian allegiance to the Creator-God rather than intellectual assent to propositional truth? How much theological understanding did Adam have or Enoch or Rahab? On the other hand theologically-competent Calvinists may still be their own gods, their allegiance to their own agendas rather than the Creator-God. It seems to me that the watershed is one's obedience to the light he has, not the amount of light he has been given. Isn't such obedience evidence of regeneration, even if the amount of light is minimal?

Is this what you think the Gospel is: obedience to the light we have? This is pelagianism, pure and simple. Do you acknowledge yourself a sinner and incapable of obeying the light you have? Do you understand that Christ is the just and justifier of lost sinners? Do you understand that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God? I fear less for the soul of your friend than for your own understanding of what the Gospel is. Whose obedience to the light are you saved by Leslie?

Further, how am I supposed to interact with your question? Am I supposed to interact with your proposition about the nature of salvation? Truth about God is more than propositions but it is not less. What Paul writes in Romans 1-3 is either true or it is not. Do you believe it? Please pick up your Scriptures and read Romans 1-3 before you respond.

 

[Pergamum]

We are all saved with less than full light and mental assent is not enough but must be joined with obedience, I think (I hope) was Leslie's point.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

We are all saved with less than full light and mental assent is not enough but must be joined with obedience, I think (I hope) was Leslie's point.

No sir. That's not the point. I want Leslie to answer the question. This is serious business. The experience of this friend has become normative for her. She accuses men of having an agenda but she has only provided stories of men and has not supported anything she's arguing for by the Scriptures. Nobody here for a moment has argued for bare mental assent to propositions. The issue is the light that is available to men and what kind of obedience we are speaking of.

I'm quite tired of these cavils where Biblical answers are provided to speculative questions and, because they don't "fit" the experiences of men, they are rejected as somehow being allegiance to some "Calvinistic agenda".

What kind of answer am I supposed to provide? Should I answer with my own experience and how I spoke in tongues as a Roman Catholic at the age of 16? I believed, at that time, I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit on the experience of a wave of emotions. I still have family members convinced they are saved and "in tune with the Spirit" who openly embrace Roman Catholic doctrines and rebuff any explanation of what faith in Christ truly is. Are they going to be saved by the light they have?

Folks, if we're going to have confidence in something let it be the Word. If I have to be accused of having an agenda because I trust the Word and walk by faith in the written Word and not by the sight of hundreds that have religious experiences and tell me they have been saved who, nevertheless, reject Christ as He is revealed then I'll wear that badge proudly. What I will not permit is allowing this board to be a platform for "spirituality" that undermines the Gospel itself by coming just close to it, imitating the terms used, but ultimately stopping short of what the Gospel is and, in the process, destroying its very essence.

Need I remind everybody the countless thousands that look on and read these boards for theological understanding. I will not allow men or women to instruct on the nature of salvation that contradicts the Sciptures themselves knowing full well that others may be led astray who read this.

 

[Grace Alone]

Okay, related question about Jim-Bob. Can't God regenerate him and then send the missionary a few days/months/years later? Or do you believe that regeneration and hearing the gospel occur simultaneously?

I have an opinion about it, but I'd like to hear other answers first.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Okay, related question about Jim-Bob. Can't God regenerate him and then send the missionary a few days/months/years later? Or do you believe that regeneration and hearing the gospel occur simultaneously?

I have an opinion about it, but I'd like to hear other answers first.

What I believe is immaterial. This is the problem with this conversation.

Why do we want to know the mechanism of regeneration? Why do we want to keep trying to conceive/speculate on ways that God might have regenerated a man? John 3 states
[bible]John 3:8[/bible]
If Christ tells me that I don't know when or how this occurs then I believe Him.

 

[Grace Alone]

Okay, Rich. That's fine. That's what I believe, too, about regeneration.

So do I understand you to say that one cannot be saved supernaturally without a human being preaching the gospel to them? And does that apply to infants?

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Okay, Rich. That's fine. That's what I believe, too, about regeneration.

So do I understand you to say that one cannot be saved supernaturally without a human being preaching the gospel to them? And does that apply to infants?

What I'm saying is that the secret things belong to God and the revealed things belong to us and our children.

I let God be God with respect to His counsel.

We know, from the things revealed, that God saves infants and the simple. Everything else, I don't come down hard and say God doesn't work somewhere (unless it contradicts what He says) but neither do I chalk up every tale as authoritative or something that adds to my knowledge of what I know God is doing.

We need to be very humble about the Providence of God. Just like we wouldn't presume to tell people that God caused an earthquake to kill people in a movie theater because He disapproves of R rated movies, we ought not be so presumptuous as connecting all the dots and presuming upon how He works here and there when we have no revelation of His workings.

It is enough for us to know our duty and how to treat people when they cross our path.

 

[Grace Alone]

I totally agree. I do not presume to think I know all the ways in which God works nor do I understand all His purposes. He can do anything he wants.

 

[TheFleshProfitethNothing]

Regeneration IS knowing something...as Paul in Corinthians states, that He hath sent us His Spirit, that we may KNOW...etc.

Understanding of Something comes from the Spirit at that very moment in time...When the Comforter is come, He will not speak of Himself, but will bring all things to your rememberance that I have told you...paraphrase. Why need regeneration days months or years in advance? Just in case someone dies without the Father knowing it? or some other reason? (Not to say that the person asking the question is one that is believing such).

Why do men feel the need to complicate matters so? The gospel is the Power of God unto Salvation, first to the Jew and also the Greek...I don't see the problem here...go into all the world and preach...Why did the Apostles risk life and limb to preach the gospel to the gentiles and scattered Israel if it weren't necessary?

Why were they put to death for preaching? If God COULD save, if it were His means to regenerate apart from the Gospel, why send out His elect children to be beaten, stoned, flogged, crucified, boiled in oil, filleted alive, and fed to lions, beheaded and burned for light for an evil Cesar's garden? Does that make better sense to you? That God can save people apart from the gospel, but hey! Let's send out people to preach it just for the fun of it, so that wicked men who hate Me, can mutilate and kill them.

NO! God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise...and that is where the problem here seems to be. God has simply stated through Christ and the Apostles the means by which HE desired from His eternal decree to save some by the foolishness of preaching...and yet some refuse to see it?

I'm a bit distraught...and concerned for some in here. I will have you in thoughts and prayers.

Grow in His Grace.

 

[satz]

I am happy to say that the bible is silent about the possibility of elect persons who live to adulthood and die without the gospel. But I don’t believe some of the propositions used to rule out the possibility can be proved from the bible.

There bible does not say God cannot, or will not regenerate without the gospel. John 1:12-13 and 3:8, as well as other verses tell us that regeneration not just ordinarily but always takes place independent of the gospel. Even if a man is regenerated in the middle of a gospel sermon, the gospel still had no role at all in his regeneration. The gospel does not bring life to men (in the sense of regeneration). Rather it brings life and immortality to light (2 Tim 1:10). The gospel shows us who is regenerate because the regenerate will believe and respond to it. But the gospel itself does not regenerate.

Because of this, there is no reason that I see to believe Jim-Bob from the OP could not have been regenerated, if indeed he was elect.

Next, I see no indication that God has said in the bible that all the elect will believe the gospel. The use of any verse that says anyone who does not believe is damned will also damn each and every infant, toddler and mentally deficient person. A man who hears the gospel and rejects it gives evidence of still being in his sins (Mark 16:16), but that says nothing about people like Jim Bob who never had the chance to hear.

 

[TheFleshProfitethNothing]

Chance?

 

[Prufrock]

but that says nothing about people like Jim Bob who never had the chance to hear.

I think we're unfortunately letting some of our perspective slip: men are sinners. This is why we are condemned. It's not that we're all neutral, and God has given us a chance for something more. Jim-bob never had a chance? Jim-bob is a condemned sinner, just as you and I are: what is it to me if God has never thrown a lifeline to the already justly condemned.

Let's not lose our perspective in this thread.

But also,

Regeneration IS knowing something

, I'm not so sure that's an entirely true statement.

 

[Prufrock]

Even if a man is regenerated in the middle of a gospel sermon, the gospel still had no role at all in his regeneration. The gospel does not bring life to men (in the sense of regeneration). Rather it brings life and immortality to light (2 Tim 1:10). The gospel shows us who is regenerate because the regenerate will believe and respond to it. But the gospel itself does not regenerate.

Also, just to let you know so you can take it into consideration -- this is a very unReformed, and unConfessional teaching.

 

[Prufrock]

Sorry to put up another post, but there just seems to be a lot of confusion going on about very central Reformed and broadly catholic teachings in this thread. Again, God graciously saves condemned sinners. Why on earth would we want to look at someone and say, "well, he's doing enough, God should save him, too."?

But more importantly, it seems we're replacing our God, YHWH, The LORD, with a vague notion of some creator god. God's people, those whom he saves, are not people who hold some concept of a creator god who is good and who requires obedience; we are not the people of a god, but of YHWH. His people are those who are marked with his name. We cannot substitute the God for "god." It is derogatory to his name to say that someone who worships some concept which could be representative of the gods of almost any religion, culture or people (or of none of them), in doing so, thus fears Him. He is not a concept, but an individual being.

Hopefully, taking these things into consideration can help steer us back on the right track.