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Almost four thousand
years ago God told Abraham, "In thee shall ALL THE FAMILIES of the
earth be blessed" (Gen 12:3). On other occasions he says that these
blessings will reach "every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and
tribe;" but here he brings it down much closer. Here he says that
every family of the earth will be blessed. Those who boast so much
about their chance system cannot reach every family, but God can.
There are any number of places in the world today where preachers
are no longer allowed to go, but those tyrants who have expelled the
preachers cannot expel God. God will still save his own regardless
of all the objections of the wicked. He could reach right into the
family of Joseph Stalin, and save his little girl, and there is not
a thing her daddy could do to stop him.
Several years ago a woman by the name of Madelyn O'Hare was upset
because of the prayers her little boy was hearing in school. She
sued the school system to stop them from praying. She carried
her case all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and they
ruled in her favor. She was determined to see to it that her little
boy did not have to listen to those prayers. But little boys grow
up. The last I heard, that little boy, whose mother was so
determined that he would not have to listen to other people praying,
was preaching what he understands to be the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
His mother could carry her
case all the way to the Supreme Court, but she could not require God
to submit to their ruling. That Supreme Court ruling was an
invalid ruling in the first place. God is the source of every
valid human law. Any human law that is contrary to God's law is an
invalid law, and we are not required to recognize it. Mrs. O'Hare
managed to get a Supreme Court ruling, but that ruling did not stop
God; he saved the little boy anyway. If salvation was based on
chance that little boy would not have had much of a chance, but
salvation is not based on chance.
If
salvation was limited to the very small number that you and I
can reach, there would be very few people saved. It is no wonder
that so many people believe there will be only a tiny number in
heaven. In the Sermon on the Mount the Lord said, "Enter ye in at
the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that
leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat;
because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. 7:13,14). But
that is not talking about eternal heaven. That is talking about the
strait and narrow pathway of obedience that some few of God's
children find and walk in right here in this life. There are not
many of the children of God who enjoy the benefits they could enjoy
in their service toward God, but that is not to say that there is
only a tiny number that will see heaven.
When John described the family of God he said, "I beheld, and, lo, a
great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and
kindreds, and people, and tongues." The entire family of God is such
a vast host that no man, and no group of men, could count them. They
are as innumerable as the stars of the sky and the sands of the sea.
Years ago, when I was just a boy, I used to attend a Bible camp
every summer. The lady who ran the camp was sent by an organization
in Chicago to evangelize our people there in the mountains of East
Tennessee. One Sunday night she came to the church my family
was attending, and she was allowed to make a little talk. She
explained that "God has no hands, except your hands; he has no feet
except your feet," and so on. I was about eleven years old, and
looked more like I was seven. I was very small for my age. I looked
down at those little tiny hands, and those little tiny feet, and I
thought, "If God does not have any hands except these hands, and no
feet except these feet, he must be a very small god."
I hear people talk about how God is doing the best he can, and he
would do a lot better if he could just get better organized, if he
could get better financed. He would do a lot better, if we would
just help him. If people were not so tight with their money, they
could hire a few more preachers, and send a few more missionaries,
and God would do ever so much more than he is doing now.
Back when the mission program first got started, they used to quote
figures as to how much it cost to keep a missionary on the field
long enough to convert one soul. The first figure I ever heard
quoted came from an old publication which dated almost from the
beginning of that effort. At that time they figured that it cost
just over five dollars. Five dollars was a lot more money then than
it is now. At that time common laborers worked for about fifty cents
a day. You can imagine how that was used to get people to turn loose
of their money in the prospect of saving people from hell.
With inflation the way it is, suppose that in today's money it takes
one thousand dollars to keep a missionary on the field long enough
to save one soul. Let me ask you, if your money (whether it is five
dollars or one thousand dollars) would help to save any person from
eternal damnation, how could you in good conscience spend that money
for anything else? Suppose you spend ten thousand dollars on a car
trade. At today's prices you will probably spend a lot more than
that. But, if you would, you probably could have spent a thousand
dollars on that old jalopy you were driving, and you could have made
it last another year. You could have given that other nine thousand
dollars to the mission program and that would have kept a missionary
on the field long enough to save nine people from eternal damnation.
How could you bear to ride around in that shiny automobile, knowing
that because you spent so much money on a car trade, nine people are
going to burn in the flames of eternal damnation?
But perhaps you did not spend ten thousand dollars. Perhaps
you bought an old, old car and you spent a lot less. The principle
is the same. You could walk, if you had to. It would be better to
walk to work than to spend money on any car trade that would have
saved somebody from eternal hell. It would be better for most of us
if we did more walking. You need your exercise, so you make a point
of walking two miles every day, but then along in the afternoon,
your wife tells you that she needs a loaf of bread, so you get in
the car and drive a quarter of a mile to the grocery store. It does
not make a lot of sense. If giving money is what it takes to save
souls from hell, there are a lot of ways we could save money to give
to the program. But money will not get people into heaven, and it
will not keep them out. I Pet. 1:18,19, "Forasmuch as ye know that
ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold,
from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;
but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot."
How could you
bear to spend money for anything? You spend twenty dollars for a new
shirt. Fifty of those add up to a thousand dollars. Would it not be
better to wear a shirt till it falls apart? If somebody's eternal
destiny depends on your money, should you not give every penny you
can get your hands on to the program. A church spends thousands of
dollars for new pews. For about ten dollars apiece they could have
bought folding chairs. They may spend undreds of thousands of
dollars for a new meeting house. If they were really serious, they
could just rent a meeting hall, and put all of that money into the
program.
Consider some poor ignorant
native in some faraway land. He has never heard the gospel. If
he hears it, he might believe it, and repent, and (according to that
system) be born again. Now consider some miserly, greedy, self-
entered Christian in America, who has the money to give to the
program so that somebody could go over there and preach to that man,
but because the selfish Christian wants a shiny new car, or because
he just wants to increase the balance on his bank statement, he does
not give. If that is the case, it looks to me like the wrong person
got punished. I believe the person who was so tight is the one
who ought to suffer --- if that system is right. Think about it. Is
it fair that one person should burn in the flames of eternal
damnation, because somebody else was stingy with his money.
Years ago I had a conversation with a good brother who believed that
system. He was sure that a person must hear the gospel and respond
to it in order to be born again. I presented some of the challenges
that we have been considering. I asked him about some native in the
jungles of the South Pacific, who had never heard the gospel.
According to that system he has never had a chance to be born again.
What will his destiny be if the preacher never reaches him? The
brother decided that anybody in that condition would live in heaven,
because he did not know any better. He had never had a
chance to be saved, so he would be saved by his ignorance. After
all, how could God send anybody to hell, if he had never had a
chance?
But think about that for a
moment. Here is a poor native who has never heard the gospel. If he
dies in that condition, he will live in heaven, because he never had
a chance. But now, the preacher reaches him. He presents him with
the gospel message. He does not like what he hears, and he
says, "Away with any such message; I don't believe a word of it." He
has had his chance, and missed it. Now if he dies, he will be
forever lost, because he heard the gospel message and rejected it.
He was better off before the preacher talked to him. If that notion
is right, we would do better to call all the missionaries home, and
allow the rest of the world to live and die in their ignorance, and
be saved by their not knowing any better. In fact, if that notion is
right, we would probably do well to close all the churches here in
America, and let our neighbors get to heaven the same way.
"The legs of the lame are not equal." There is no way you can make
sense out of that system. It is too self- contradictory. And
there is no way that you can present it in such a way as to show
that God is in any way fair in his dealings with mankind.
Those who accuse the doctrine of salvation by the sovereign grace of
God with being an unfair system have it all wrong. It is the
contrary system that is unfair.
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