To God be the Glory!

      Who or where are the sinners who cannot be sent to hell? Nobody knows. The only time we can truly know we are one of God’s chosen people is when we receive from God a new resurrected soul. When that occurs, we will know it happened only because God had elected us to become saved, and He had completely provided for our salvation. We will know that our salvation is altogether the grace and mercy of God, and that we had nothing at all to do with our becoming saved.

      When God gives a person a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26), God is preparing that person to live eternally with Him. The new heart, or new spirit, which we also call a new resurrected soul, transforms our life so that we have an intense ongoing desire to do the will of God. Moreover, we are deeply troubled when we sin, but it is still possible to sin because we are living in an unsaved body. Therefore, before we become eternal citizens of the new heavens and the new earth, we also will be given a new spiritual, resurrected body. God can give a new soul to anyone whom God had elected, at any time in an elect person’s life. It can be before birth or a minute before death. It is an action entirely programmed by God.

      However, it will take place while that elect person is under the hearing of the Word of God (Romans 10:17). That is why we try to encourage everyone in the world to hear the Bible. In fact, we are commanded by God to send the Word of God into the whole world, so that everyone may be under the hearing of the Bible.

      To place people in the environment of hearing the Word of God is to place them under God’s commands to mankind to obey the Bible. To obey the Bible requires that we read or listen to the Bible. We are commanded to become saved. We are commanded to repent of our sins. We are commanded to pray for God’s mercy. The unsaved person is commanded to strive to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 13:24). The word “strive” is from a Greek word that means to agonize. It is like a runner who agonizes or strives to be the winner of a race.

      This is where the mystery of salvation exists. Because God created man in His image and His likeness, even though man is spiritually dead, he is to attempt with all his strength to follow the commands of God. He therefore carefully listens to the Word of God, trying to be obedient to the commands of God. How God interrelates with this striving is a mystery. Certainly, we must never believe that my striving to enter into the kingdom of God is meritorious in any way. Nor does my striving in any way guarantee that I will become saved.

      It is true that in my striving, I will become better acquainted with God’s law book, the Bible. It is true that in my striving, I will increasingly seek God’s will, rather than my will. It is true that in my striving, I will find myself humbly crying to God for His mercy. It is true that in my striving, I will increasingly realize that I must wait entirely upon the Lord, if indeed it is His plan to save me. It is true that in my striving, I have a great hope that I, too, could possibly be one of God’s elect. It is true that today, God is saving a great multitude, which no man could number, and I, too, might possibly be included in that number.

      It is also true that God rules over the unsaved as well as the saved. That is, ultimately, God can cause an unsaved person to do His will from time to time, even though God has no plan to save that person. Likewise, as an unsaved individual is striving to enter the kingdom of God, anything that he does that is obedient to God may be God working in him, even though he is not one of God’s elect. Or it may be that individual’s own attempt, altogether by his own efforts, to obey God. Or it may be a combination of both God’s action and man’s action. Only God knows precisely what is going on in a person’s life.

      But all of the above is God’s business. The unsaved person does not have to determine whether it is God’s action or his own action that is occurring in his life. All he knows for sure is that if he becomes saved, it will be entirely by the work of Christ. In Joel 2:12-13, we read:

Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

      If an unsaved person finds that, increasingly, he hates sin and is far happier when he is doing the will of God, and that he has an eager, ongoing desire to be obedient to all the commandments of the Bible, it may be that God’s Spirit is witnessing with his spirit that he has become saved.

      We must remember that God has a legal right to command mankind to obey His laws. Because mankind was created in the image and likeness of God, mankind, like God Himself, is completely subject to the law of God, the Bible. If a person lives in this world and has not heard anything from the Bible, God must arrange for that person to come under the hearing of the Bible if the person is one of God’s elect. That can happen at any time in the lifetime of that person.

      However, the Bible is greatly concerned about those who read the Bible, or who hear God’s commands with their physical ears, but are not hearing the Bible. How can that be? In Deuteronomy 28:45 we read:

Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee:

      And in Jeremiah 29:17-19, we read:

Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Behold, I will send upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil. And I will persecute them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be removed to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and an astonishment, and an hissing, and a reproach, among all the nations

whither I have driven them: Because they have not hearkened to my words, saith the LORD, which I sent unto them by my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but ye would not hear, saith the LORD.

      The word “hearken” in these two warnings, which are typical of many similar warnings recorded in the Bible, means to listen and obey. God is teaching that if we hear the words of the Bible with our physical ears, but do not try to obey that which we are hearing, it is equivalent to not hearing the Word of God. Such people have deliberately placed themselves outside of an environment in which God is saving. Their preconceived ideas concerning salvation or any other teaching of the Bible prevent them from humbly listening to, and desiring to obey, the commands and truths of the Bible.

      However, there is hope, wonderful hope, for those who now humbly admit their sins and who turn away from their preconceived ideas, who earnestly strive to be obedient to all of the Bible, and who humbly cry to God for His mercy.

      It is true that the Bible teaches that God’s wrath is now on every one of the churches that are found throughout the world. For 1,955 years, churches had been God’s official external representatives of the kingdom of God. Sadly, in the name of God, and while claiming that the Bible was their authority, they taught, and continue to teach, many doctrines that are contrary to the Bible. Moreover, Satan rather than Christ is now their spiritual ruler. Today, there is no hope for any of the churches that exist throughout the world. Those who remain within them are being prepared for their entrance into judgment day.

      Only by turning away from the condition of spiritually serving Satan, and by fleeing from the local churches, and going with spiritually broken hearts to the God of the Bible, and being under the hearing of the Word of God, is there hope for anyone.