Jesus Christ is the only name under heaven whereby people can be saved, yet there are some who never hear the gospel message. In fact, hundreds of millions of people in India and China have died never hearing about the Truth. Not only did they never know it, but they had no realistic chance of hearing it before they died. And we don’t have to go that far from home. Look at the people around us who never hear the Truth proclaimed. How can we be so sure that people must understand the first principles to be saved? Why can’t other sincere beliefs draw a person to God? Who is to say that others in remote places on earth don’t have enough true worship to be acceptable?
Working with everyone
Doesn’t God want everyone to be saved? We assume He would like that and suppose He should, therefore, be revealing His truth to everyone in the world so that more could respond.
Did you know that one time He did exactly that? For 2,000 years God worked with creation as a whole and the results were disastrous. After 1,500 years, the race was nearly obliterated by the flood for its utter depravity. “The wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).
Yet, starting with Noah, God again tried to work with everybody. Within a few hundred years, disaster occurred at Babel. Once more, the created turned against the Creator and would have justified total devastation. They had been instructed to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Gen. 9:1). But they refused to do so. Defying God, they conspired, “Let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:4).
Facing such abstinence, why should God pursue an approach that was failing? Why should He continue working with the race as a whole?
A select nation
Accordingly, He followed a different method. He chose a faithful man and commenced to work especially with Abraham and his seed. Here was an identifiable national group whose history God was going to control and in whose affairs the divine hand would be openly evident. Here was to be a showpiece for all the world to observe the power of God; they would see the blessings showered upon obedience and the awful judgments invited by sin.
Even if others would not learn from Israel’s experience, one would think that surely the select nation itself would heed and respond.
What happened? The perversity of human beings was such that, after 1,400 years of divine perseverance, a stiff-necked and rebellious nation was overthrown and scattered by Nebuchadnezzar. “And the LORD God of their fathers sent to (Israel) by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place: but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against his people, till there was no remedy” (2 Chr. 36:15,16).
God tried again with Israel, bringing some back to their land under Zerubbabel and giving them an opportunity to renew their covenant. Nearly 600 years later this effort ended as His only begotten Son hung dead upon a cross, slain by the select nation his Father had chosen, blessed and forgiven so many times before. “Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of life…” (Acts 3:14,15).
A third approach
What was God to do? Was He to take another nation and try this technique again? Instead, He pursued a third method. Rather than working with all people, or selecting one nation, He selected individuals out of all nations to be a special community devoted to Him and dedicated to spreading the light of His truth throughout the world.
For nearly 2,000 years God has pursued this approach. The results have been the same. Within 100 years of Christ’s death, His elect community was riddled with heresy. Within 400 years, the major body had turned to persecuting those in its midst who still worshiped God correctly. The light of Truth was nearly extinguished.
As this era draws to a close and God’s final judgments draw near, we need only look about us to see the failure of the select-people method in bringing about a world devoted to God. Even in supposedly Christian countries, moral decadence, violence and greed are pervasive. Conditions are approaching what they were in the days of Noah.
We see the failure
The assessment is true: “Jews and Gentiles are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable…there is no fear of God before their eyes…that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Rom. 3:919).
Man has had his chance. It is evident he cannot rule himself and conform his ways to God. The Almighty is beyond reproof. He has tried three completely different ways to deal with His creation and all have ended disastrously. The problem is not God, it is man.
The overview
When the overall working of God with His creation is considered in this way, a remarkable picture unfolds. We see man without excuse; God beyond reproach.
We stand awed by the patience and perseverance of God. Further, we better understand why everyone in our era is not acquainted with the gospel.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One