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Questions from Box
- Mark 5:17 Why did the demons ask to stay in the land?
- Backdrop: Isaiah 65:1-7. The healing of the demon possessed man and the resultant rejection that the people in the area gave Jesus by asking him to go away, is an illustration of how the Jewish nation rejected Jesus and rejected God and his mercy, and would therefore subsequently be destroyed just as the demons were.
- 2 Peter 2:4; Matthew 12:43-45.
- What happens to people who never had an opportunity to learn about God?
- First, scriptures do not give us a direct answer to this question.
- Deut. 29:29 There are two things we should notice from this text. The first is that in the context, God is, reminding Israel of the importance of obeying, whatever he tells them to do. Secondly, God acknowledges that there are going to be things that he keeps secret; he does not readily tell all that we desire to know. Instead, God desires that we trust him. It is our responsibility to obey whatever God reveals. That is the only thing we are to be concerned about.
- That being said, let’s exam what God does reveal about the salvation of the world.
- Acts 17:29-31 The Athenians are one example of people who were ignorant of Jesus, and of the salvation comes from God. God sent Paul to teach them. And Paul warned that ignorance was not going to be an excuse. God, in fact, clearly points out that the times of ignorance or past. You know expects all people everywhere to respond to the gospel message. Therefore the entire world is responsible for knowing God, knowing Christ and his salvation.
- John 8:24; Acts 4:12 These, and many other texts, remind us that the reason Jesus came, was to save the world. If the world could be saved any other way than through Jesus, and there would be no reason for Christ to have come and to have died on the cross.
- There is another conclusion that we should draw. The world was already lost before Jesus came. John 3:17 “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but an order that the world might be saved through him.”
Jesus did not come to condemn the world because of sin. He came to save the world from sin. It would be like saying malaria would never kill anybody if there hadn’t been a treatment to cure malaria. No malaria is going to kill people whether or not there is a remedy. The need is the remedy. - That being said, the secret things belong to God. God certainly cares more about those people who possibly have never had a chance, then we could ever care about them. We must except and trust that God will do the right thing. We know he will. But it would be foolish for us to think that just because someone was ignorant of the gospel they would be saved anyway. If that were true, then we never would have been given the great commission. We might as well just be quiet and not say anything so that people would then be saved without having to make a choice. But that is not God’s eternal purpose, and not what he has revealed for us in the scripture. As far as we know, no one will be saved without Jesus. All have sinned, and the only remedy for that send is the cross.
Berry Kercheville