Thank you for your prayers, first of all. We leave on Thursday for a month in Australia and New Zealand. The first ten days will be getting Barry's house ready to sell as his sister will not be able to live on her own again. Then a massive speaking schedule, culminated by four days in NZ, the last two of which have us scheduled for three lectures each day. Then home on May 4 with jet lag on top of it. So prayers are VERY appreciated. We're getting too old for this!
Now, to the post.
Yes, it was Bildad, but that makes the quote all the more interesting since he, as possibly unsaved, knows that all know God (or know He is real, if you like) and choose to forget.
Now, they have a choice to forget, or to remember. That interests me. They are presented with acknowledged truth and forget (Job) or suppress (Romans) it. This is not what I hear from Calvinism. What I hear from Calvinists is that all men are born not knowing or acknowledging God. The Bible seems to refute this.
And yes, while it is grace that saves, it saves THROUGH faith, and the first step in faith is intellectual belief in the existence of the one the person has faith in.
This may be splitting hairs, but I do disagree with you that it is faith in the revealed word of God. I do think it is faith in God Himself. It is God who saves.
When you quote 'faith comes by hearing' you are referring to a euphemism which we are only vaguely aware of today, but 'hearing' is a euphemism for 'paying attention.' Just like "do you see?" is a euphemism for understanding -- 'do you understand?'
You can listen to someone and not 'hear' what they are saying -- it doesn't register; you are not paying attention. Just like 'seeing', this symbolism was common in older cultures as well as ours. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" is an example of the use of this.
So it is not physical hearing (or the deaf could never be saved), but a matter of paying attention to the Gospel, however it is presented.
You will notice that Paul states in Romans 10, which is the passage we are referring to here, that
"But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
'Their voice has goine out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.'"
This is a direct reference to Psalm 19:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.'There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
This is not a preacher. This is creation itself declaring the truth.
Is it the revealed word of God? Actually, I believe it is via the Gospel in the Stars, although there are those here who consider me the next best thing to an occultist, new age heretic for thinking that. But I was asked to co-author a paper with Lambert Dolphin, Malcolm Bowden, and Barry (before I had met him) and the result is on Lambert's website, here:
http://www.ldolphin.org/zodiac/index.html
Until I had read some of the other contributions, I was very skeptical of this entire thing. After I read what the men had said, I was happy to add my own small contribution. See what you think.
Men have always known. They have always had access to the revealed word of God in this way, by way of the actual Scriptures, and even via the ancient legends regarding the Creation and Flood. Enough truth has always been there for every man to have a real choice about how to respond to the truth about the God he has always known exists.
If we check Hebrews, we find the reason Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord -- he was a preacher of righteousness.
If we check Paul's explanation of Genesis 15 in Galatians 3, we will find that what Abraham believed was about the Messiah and the Promise of God, as evidenced in the stars themselves (the promise of many offspring comes at two different times, both before this and after.)
David loved the Lord. He chose to be a believer.
As far as Job's reference to an intercessor, I cannot make any claims other than that Job seemed to be aware that there was an intercessor already at work and we know from Hebrews that there is only one intercessor between God and man, and that is Jesus Christ.
I won't even try to go beyond that, except that maybe it is important to remember here that Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8), so if that truth was true from the foundation, and only worked out in time, then there would certainly be reason to believe He had always been our intercessor as well. Job seems to indicate that. He knew that his Redeemer lived -- and that indicates that redemption was already known about, at the least, even if it had not been worked out in time yet.
The knowledge of Romans 1, which you say was enough for condemnation but not for salvation is not a matter of either -- but an explanation of the path which is taken by those who are condemned. But the flip side of it is "seek the Lord", "don't harden your hearts", and "Come, let us reason together." These passages are just as valid! And they indicate that the unsaved man is very capable of choosing to respond positively to God.
That is a major theme of the entire Bible.
