Just for the “fun” of it, I decided to figure how long it would take to point to 3 billion people. Never mind actually saying the words, “One thousand one; one thousand two, etc.” Just pointing fingers at the 3 billion people. I figured:

There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year

So there are 315,360,000 seconds in ten years

So it would take one hundred years to count 3,153,600,000 people. Wowza!

Also, the groups that want to think they are one of the 144,000 people mentioned in Revelation should read that passage carefully. They all have to be male virgins!

I know there are passages in the Gospels where Jesus says “few are those that find life” and “many are those on the path to destruction.” Perhaps Jesus is referring to people as they live on earth. Few of us find our way to fully living the life that God has offered to us and many of us are on the path to destruction, both on this earth and in the “afterlife.” Because even though a multitude of us will be with God in heaven and in the new earth, there will still be multitudes who rejected God’s love and who persecuted those people who loved God and who attempted to walk in his light. It is hard for me to imagine how any of this would really “work” and I look forward to the day when all our questions will be answered. That will certainly be an amazing theological lesson!

May we all walk in His light, at all times….

Joanie D.

In reading the Book of Revelation, it seems the Apostle John had a vision of heaven with numbers of people in it so numerous that no human could ever count the number. Here is a section of Chapter 7, verses 9-17:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”

All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:
“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”

Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”
I answered, “Sir, you know.”

And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore,
they are before the throne of God
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.
Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat upon them,
nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd;
he will lead them to springs of living water.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Joanie D.

Natural Revelation can condem because man had all this awesome display of God and his power and they did not seek him. They instead chose to exchange the Creator for the thing created. But It can not save.

God’s word will give an explanation that can cover all things. Natural Revelation only deals with God’s existance and hm being creator. It can not explain what He wants or how we can be saved.

In order to be saved we need God’s word.

As Saint and Sinner said or rather implied, after sin we lost all direct communication with God.

The height of God’s revelation is Christ and His Cross.

You can look at nature and become a theist but it will not make you a Christian. I experience that when from atheism, I turn to being a theists. In fact when I became a theist it only made my situation a lot more fearful, for I knew there was a God but I also knew, I was detached/disconnected from him. I was lost as a goose. Natural revelation will do that to you. It will give you the Law but not the Gospel.

Kurt

Bruce A. Ware has some interesting thoughts on restrictivism in his essay “How Shall We Think About the Trinity?” in God Under Fire, (Zondervan, 2002), 253-277.

He said:

. . . Jesus never anywhere suggests that somehow, apart from the proclamation of the gospel, people will know about God’s free offer of salvation as the Spirit brings God’s saving truth and grace into the cultures and religions of the peoples of the world independent of the knowledge of Christ and the need to believe in Christ to be saved. Never! Instead, Jesus’ only instruction and mandate is to take the gospel to the world in the power of the Spirit. Spirit and gospel truth are inextricably linked by Jesus, as they are likewise inextricably linked in the apostolic mission of the early church. Apart from the gospel of Christ, people are without hope. [p. 262]

And again:

What of the notion that the Spirit is present in the non-Christian cultures of the world, already having brought them saving grace apart from knowledge of Christ? Jesus’ own commission and the record of the book of Acts present exactly the contrary evidence. Consider Jesus’ own final commission as recorded in Luke 24:46-49:

He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Notice four items. (1) Those to whom he sends his disciples are “all nations.” This leaves no one out! Every country, culture, language group, and religion is included in the scope of those to whom Jesus commissions his disciples to go.
(2) The current salvific status of these “nations” (i.e., all people everywhere) is indicated when Jesus implies that they require “repentance and forgiveness of sins.” That is, all nations inclusively are currently in sin and in need of forgiveness of their sin. There is no indication that somehow, apart from the witness the disciples are to bring, these nations already have access to saving grace. All are in sin, all need to repent, all must be reached.
(3) This repentance and forgiveness of the sins of the nations will occur as their message is “preached in his name to all nations.” The name of Christ is central to the gospel of the saving grace of God. Yes, salvation is to be broadcast universally, but only as the name of Christ is proclaimed universally. There is no universal Spirit presence of saving grace devoid of the gospel of God’s grace in Christ.
(4) The implied reference to Spirit-empowerment energizes this gospel proclamation. Jesus tells the disciples they are witnesses, but they are not alone! They are to “stay in the city” and wait to receive “what my Father has promised,” by which they will be “clothed with power from on high.” As we know from Acts 1 and 2, Luke unmistakably intends his readers to connect this with the outpouring of the Spirit by which the disciples were empowered to bear witness of Jesus, “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). [p. 263-64]

He also said in a foot note:

Appeals by inclusivists to salvation in the Old Testament where, presumably, knowledge of the Christ to come is minimal at best, miss the radical redemptive, historical significance of the coming of the long-awaited Messiah. Now that the Savior has come, all New Testament evidence points to the fact that the gospel is the gospel of Christ died and risen; by faith in Christ one may be saved. As one clear evidence of this, consider the logic of Gal. 3:23-26, where Paul actually speaks of the period of the law as a time “before faith” had come (3:23). It is clear, as one continues reading, that he means specifically “before faith in Christ” had come, since the law was our tutor to lead us to Christ(3:24), and that by “faith in Christ Jesus” we might be made sons of God. [p. 263, n. 23]

And I sincerely apologize for veering off topic into restrictivism/inclusivism — but you guys started it!

There’s a couple of ways you can get Greek into the post. The easiest way would be to go to MS Word ans just use the Unicode (UTF-8) Greek font and cut and paste it into the comments box. But you can also learn the Number Codes for Greek characters.

For example, the term that I used (hē ktisis) would be written as:

&.#951; &.#954.; &.#964; &.#953; &.#963; &.#953; &.#962;

You wouldn’t use the periods though. I just included those to show how the code looks — if I didn’t include them it would have appeared as the Greek characters (obviously).

So it is & + Number + semi-colon. For single words do not place spaces between each letter.

But for my money your best bet is just going into MS Word, clicking “insert”, then clicking “symbol”, then going down to the “basic Greek”, and choose your characters that way.

I hope I wasn’t too confusing.

I often wondered what the ancient ones thought of when they looked up into the night (pollution free sky) time sky, having know written words of God, just peaceful bliss and an awe of something bigger than themselves. Do we still hold the same feeling today, I wonder

I must say I’m amazed, if not surprised, that everyone is trying to discuss this without any reference to Karl Barth, the greatest theologian of the 20th century, one of the greatest (top 5?) in all of church history, who is perhaps most famous for his emphatic, “No!” to this question. (For a moment, this is making me sympathetic to the catholic caricature of evangelicalism as everyone just running around with his or her Bible making pronouncements. Never mind, though; I’m sure that feeling will pass. Still, it’s good to be familiar with the top authorities on certain issues.)

Basically, Barth started with the fact> that God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ; that has to be the beginning point of Christian theology. Christ is God’s plan and the one he sovereignly works through. It follows that Barth rejected natural theology as a human effort to come to God on human terms, apart from Christ. His argument was that if natural theology (reason and philosophy meditating on general revelation) cannot lead us to true knowledge of God as revealed in his Word, then it leads to a false god. Barth is a big part of the reason why protestants do less with natural theology than catholics, though that is changing in some areas.

Nick, how did you get Greek into your post?

In reality, Calvinists don’t necessarily have a position about the destiny of the unevangelized. Ultimately, the Calvinist can say that God can save anyone since people are regenerated by a sovereign act of God before they can even exercise faith.

Yet the point is not one of Calvinism and Arminianism. When I said, “Arminians will usually approach all of these issue with the opportunity for salvation as the primary issue, while the Reformed will normally have the justice of God as the primary issues” I meant it to demonstrate the normal starting point of each. Arminians are also concerned with the justice of God and Calvinists are concerned about opportunities for salvation.

What it comes down to is whether or not you believe that people must hear the Gospel to be saved (restritivism) or whether God will save people without the Gospel (inclusivism). You can be a Calvinist or Arminian and hold to either.

Keep in mind that we are talking about the vast majority of humans who have ever lived on this planet, none of whom ever heard of the Gospel, or even lived before there WAS any Gospel. Is the Calvinist position really that only that tiny percentage of those people who have lived in very recent times, and primarily in the West, ever had any chance to be called of God? Sounds like a doctrine developed by someone who lived very recently in the West.
Setting aside the concept of a just God, that seems like a pretty tiny and exclusive sample, and that in the New Heaven and New Earth, humans will be pretty thin on the ground, while Hell will be overflowing.

Makes the Vatican II position seem downright “universalist” by comparison!

In reality, doesn’t the noetic effects of sin have to do with us and our mind? (taken from the Gk for noos for “mind.”) Sin has effected our mind to the degree that we can misinterpret any of God’s revelation, whether natural or special.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Of course, I have to be the one to disagree. Your leaving out the noetic effects of sin. Read 1 Corinthians 1-2 and tell me if that teaches “the God of the philosophers”.

If one is to read one book on this subject from those who would disagree, it would be “Revelation and Reason” by Oliphint and Tipton.

http://www.amazon.com/Revelation-Reason-Essays-Reformed-Apologetics/dp/0875525962/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-9945172-2093417?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189212496&sr=8-1

Arminians will usually approach all of these issue with the opportunity for salvation as the primary issue, while the Reformed will normally have the justice of God as the primary issues.

In this case, I would say that Paul’s only purpose in Romans 1-3 is to get people condemned so that they see their need for salvation. But we must not mistake the idea of a need for salvation with the idea of a right to salvation. God is not obligated to save anyone. These people are without excuse because they knew of God and His requirements and went against them, not because they rejected the Gospel.

Or is that just the Arminian in me coming out?

You said:
“I’d have to say that Scripture is the more important (or authoritative) of the two — after all, without reading Romans 1 and Psalm 19 would you have come to the same conclusion about nature being just as much God’s word? In other words, did it take the special revelation to give you knowledge concerning the general revelation?”

I don’t think this is correct sense Romans 1 is speaking about those who do not have the Scripture, only natural revelation. They are “without excuse” and they don’t need to have read Romans one. In other words, they cannot say to God, “But I never read Romans 1.” Therefore, we don’t need Scripture to tell us about the authority of natural revelation, even though it does confirm it.

Thanks Nick.