Step Seven: God Knows The Future
Step Seven: God Knows The Future
In conclusion, I want to address those of you who seem so concerned about those who have never heard the Gospel and are going to spend eternity in Hell. Consider the following:
1. You and I are not God; therefore, we do not possess the attributes God possesses. You and I do not possess foreknowledge; i.e., God knows everything. He knows what we are going to think before we ever think it.
Foreknowledge contains only one element; that God knows everything that is going to happen before it happens. He knows the things that would have happened, if the things that did happen, hadn't happened! Since you are not God and do not know all things as God does; then I would suggest that you quit trying to play God, second-guessing God, and questioning God's love for His creation.
2. One must remember that unsaved parents and religion are opposed to the Gospel. This is why generation after generation will spend eternity in Hell. The children believe their unsaved parents; instead of opening the Bible for the truth. Remember, the children grow up; and, as teen-agers, then adults, they have the same enlightenment from God as everyone else does. Recall Romans 1:20,
"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." This is the external cosmology, and that of nature, also. The internal evidence is stated in Romans 1:19, "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them." When God created man's mind with the ability to think and reason; it contained the knowledge that God was the Creator of everything, including themselves as mankind. The God of Creation had His Word written in the Bible, which will always point us to Jesus Christ for salvation. (Acts 4:12). This is Christianity, Christ dying and being resurrected in payment for the sins of the WORLD; therefore, eternal life is available to anyone as a free gift only. (Titus 3:5; Ephesians 2:8-9).
Religion, whether Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Islam, World-Wide Church of God (Armstrongism), Unitarianism, Scientology, etc., is always characterized by man, through his own achievement, trying to reach up to God; or, become his own god.
How often, when witnessing, have you had a Roman Catholic tell you, "I was raised a Catholic and I will die a Catholic!" Their children were taught the same as they were taught; and, on it goes, from generation to generation. You have the same process in tribal peoples, whether in Africa, New Guinea, Ecuador, etc.
I have witnessed to an innumerable amount of Lutherans and Catholics and found families going back to a great-great-great-grandmother, all united in believing that infant baptism provides salvation for their children. This philosophy, or heresy, was passed down to great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, then son or daughter.
I cannot recall how many times I have had a Lutheran or Catholic tell me that his or her mother had them baptized as a baby, and they were "all right!" How sad; but, this is religion and not Christianity. I have related to them that nowhere does the Bible say that babies are to be baptized. Rather, when you reach the age of understanding right from wrong, you must trust Jesus Christ as your own personal Savior. They wanted nothing to do with it at all.
3. Now, the good news! Once in a while, you will find a person who does not bow to family peer pressure and exercises his own thinking. I have led Catholics, Lutherans, Jehovah's Witnesses and others to Jesus Christ because they had a desire to know the truth. Remember this, the same truth (John 14:6) that one member of a family accepted, was available to every member of that family, going back hundreds of years.
Why only one or two who has accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, out of hundreds in their family tree over myriads of years? The answer lies in a person's free will and personal responsibility. May I call your attention again to God's summation of the case in Matthew 13:15, "For this peoples heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed..."
Personally, I would rather deal with someone who has never been to church; than a person raised in a religion which has "brainwashed" them with their philosophical ideologies and traditions, rather than the word of God.
Taking into consideration God's attributes of fore-knowledge, omniscience, omnisapience, and omnipotence, you can rest assured of these two things:
God knows who will accept Jesus Christ as their Savior when they hear the truth, because of His foreknowledge and omniscience. With His attributes of omnisapience and omnipotence, God is able to get the message to the person who has a desire to know the truth, and will accept it when they receive it. "Omnipotence" means that God is all-powerful. "Omnisapience" denotes a practical understanding, a wise knowing that directs the ordering of ends and goals; i.e., getting the message to the person who wants to know it.
There are many generations of people, for hundreds of years, whom God knew would reject Jesus Christ as their Savior, even if they had this truth. They have already rejected the knowledge of God they were born with, along with the external evidence of creation and cosmology. (Romans 1:19-23; Isaiah 45:6). This is evidenced by the Amorites in Canaan who, as God describes in Romans 1:22-23,
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image (Deuteronomy 4:15-19) made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts and creeping things."
Yet, God waited 400 years and not one, except Rahab, had a desire to know the true and living God!.
4. Man's unbelief. I have found that many of those who seem so concerned about people thousands of miles away, do not witness for Christ in their own town. Why? If you are a Christian, explain to me why you are so interested in someone going to Hell ten thousand miles away from you, and not interested in someone going to Hell ten blocks away from you in your own town.
Consider this. You may not be a Christian, just a skeptic trying to blame God, out of your own ignorance for something to justify your own unbelief. Those that blame God for the so-called heathen going to Hell; evidently know nothing of the God and the Christ of the Bible. If you are in this category, this is what you do not believe about God; and why your mind is in the dilemma it is in.
God is love - John 3:16-18; 2 Peter 3:9; Romans 5:1-21; Romans 8:1-39; Romans 9:1-33 God is omniscient (all-knowing) - 1 John 3:20; Psalms 94:11; 1 Kings 8:39; Hebrews 4:13 God is omnisapient (all wisdom) - Romans 11:33; Romans 1:1-32 Corinthians 2:4-7 God is omnipotent (all-powerful) - Revelation 19:6; Matthew 19:26; Genesis 18:14 a God is longsuffering - 2 Peter 3:9; Exodus 34:6; 1 Peter 3:20 God is just - Deuteronomy 32:4; Isaiah 45:21
God is righteous - He will never allow the unbeliever to enter Heaven; nor will He permit the believer to enter Hell - John 3:36; John 5:24 The problem with skeptics and their view of the so-called heathen is, they attempt to reduce the Infinite God to their own finite thinking. Man cannot look into the mind of another man and know what he is thinking now or, what his mind will accept or reject in the future. Only God knows this.
Skeptics need to believe God when He said He loved the world (John 3:16) and is longsuffering and not willing any should perish (2 Peter 3:9). Believe God, that He knows who will believe; and will act upon their desire to know; and get them the truth. Remember the Ethiopian eunuch and Cornelius. Remember, there are hundreds of thousands of people in false religions who will not accept Jesus Christ as their Savior.
I am now talking about America! Go into a small town with one Catholic church, two Lutheran churches, and a Methodist church, and start witnessing. I did this one day and, after talking with about 120 persons, could not find one that knew they had eternal life because of trusting Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. Not one! When you that doubt God start believing God; then, you will have...
"...the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." (Php_4:7)
I was talking to a man, some time back, and he had the same question we have been discussing here. My question to him was, "Since you are so concerned about the tribes in New Guinea; why don't you go to a Bible college; learn the word of God; learn their language; and go there as a missionary?" His mouth dropped down about to his knees! May I say this in closing? Never doubt God's love as He loves His creation more than any human being loves another. It only angers God when someone, because of their own ignorance, accuses Him of being unjust. God warns such persons in Isaiah 45:9 a, "Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker..."
Maybe you have doubts because you are not saved and cannot see things through the eyes of God, as revealed in His word. 1 Corinthians 2:14 lets us know,
"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see..." (John 3:3).
If you are not absolutely sure you are going to Heaven when you die—you probably are not! Right now—put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and have the peace of knowing you have eternal life.
"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." (John 3:36).
Also, 1 John 5:13 assures us,
"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God."