When I say 'unsaved' I mean anyone who has not heard the gospel call to repentance, nor felt the drawing, convicting power of the Holy Spirit, and therefore are in their sins, not knowing salvation.
The gospel call to repentance is for the
regenerates (not yelling, just emphasizing).
We all know that the unregenerate are dead in sins and trespasses, why should God call them to repentance when He knows they can't repent because they are unregenerate.
Now, the elect, for whom Christ died (and they only are the ones for whom Christ died, not the entire mankind), wherever they are, will be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, in His own time, and when He does, then and only then will they respond to the gospel call. Then and only then will they be able to feel the drawing, convicting power of the Holy Spirit, and realize that they are still in their sins, and then turn to God for salvation. NOT eternal salvation, because that is all of the Lord and by the Lord, all of mercy (Titus 3:5), but GOSPEL salvation in response to the GOSPEL call.
I quoted Romans 10 earlier, and you said that I needed to re-read the chapter for context, and, from what I inferred from your post, Paul was not writing to the Romans saying they needed to turn to salvation. Here's the text:
Romans 10: 9-21
Paul DID write the letter to
A congregation in Rome, apparently a mix of both Romans/Greeks and Jews. At this point of the letter, though, chaptered number 10 by those who gave it chapters and verse numbers, he was talking
about the Jews (Israel, see verse 1). Now, again we have to be very careful in dividing the word and seeing from context (who was the writer, what is the writer all about, what salvation should the Jews have, etc) that Paul was not discoursing about the salvation of all the elect wrought by Christ here in time at the cross, but their gospel salvation.
I see in that text a necessity for the preached word to go out as a means of calling the lost unto salvation.
It is, in a way, Paul's exposition on the Great Commission. It tells how, though the word once went only to the Jews, it now goes to everyone, for there is no difference between Jew and Greek. Salvation is attained by calling on God. But how can one call on God unless they hear the word, which tells them how? According to your post, preaching isn't required for salvation, as God has already saved those He would save (see below)
yes, but are these eternally lost ? you see, my whole issue about the gospel being a means of
eternal vs timely salvation is that from the very beginning I have had this question: why would Christ go through all that suffering, being abandoned by His Father, blood, death, and sorrow, AND THEN designate the gospel as the final means by which man may be redeemed so that without hearing the gospel and believing it, none is actually heaven-bound and redeemed.
But that's not what the scripture bears out. There is a detailed record of how people have to hear the word preached, and how they are to account for their own standing by working out their own salvation through fear and trembling.
I have no quarrel with these. My quarrel is when one tries to apply Scripture on those who are obviously unregenerate. Let's look at it, again, this way.
How could, and why should, an Almighty, Omniscient, Absolutely Holy God, who simply by speaking, set the planets and the stars and the galaxies in place with all their chemical and physical and mathematical laws that takes and took finite human minds years even centuries to figure out and develop and define, (this is for emphasis)
send His own Son to die on the cross without actually saving anyone unless they hear the good news or gospel of their salvation, and in your words, account for their own standing and work out their own salvation ?
Obviously, a God who sets laws and principles in place and defies physics by walking on water, is referring to a DIFFERENT concept if not kind of salvation, and it has to be gospel salvation, which is attained only by the elect for whom He already died and redeemed, apart from any means, which gospel salvation is brought to them
through the means of preaching and preachers, instructions and teaching.
That's the only way Mark 16:16 makes sense, with its "shall be saved", and harmonizes with Matthew 28:19-20 which only speaks of teaching and baptizing.
This is where I fall out with Calvinism. The way I see Calvinism, [figuratively speaking] God had a giant assembly line and as every human being rolled off that line He slapped a 'SAVED' or 'DAMNED' sticker on them, like they were passing inspection.
Well, you'll have to take it out with the Calvinists on this board. I am a Primitive Baptist, and as you can see, have been debating with Calvinists here.
Don't get me wrong, I have the highest regard for them, and as they consider us Primitive Baptists brethren, so do we, although both sides of the fence say the other has to mend his fences a bit. lol.
If that is the case, then the last 12 years of my life are pretty much in vain, as I've spent much of the time in prayer and study, preparing to preach the word to the lost, in hopes that they would come to repent and know God.
THAT one you'll have to take up with the Lord Himself. For the record, though, I have little doubt about your relationship with the Lord.
I don't believe Christ fails to save anyone, but your scenario, in essence, assumes God forcibly saves people, without them having a choice in the matter. It seems to pick and choose the ability man has a free moral agent. Salvation is the free gift of God.
That's what I thought too.
Until I studied the Book of Life, read most commentaries about it, and came to this conclusion:
How could God have forced anybody into saving people and overriding their choice, when N
NE HAS BEEN CREATED YET prior to His choosing who were to be those to populate Heaven with Him ?
Then looking back at my own life, I wasn't rich, but youth has a way of making everything pleasurable and exciting.
Would I have turned to the LIVING GOD on my own ?
No way.
I was content to be (1) a Roman Catholic, raised, born, bred, and educated, (2) a gangbanger with all the money, notoriety, "respect", booze, women, and pleasures it brings, and, later in life (3) an atheist.
I'm not equating myself with God, so don't take this the wrong way, but please allow me to propose a scenario:
Say I purchase a gift of great price to myself, and I offer that gift to you. If you, pinoybaptist, turn down the gift I offer you, does that somehow negatively effect the value of the gift? Or does the gift retain its value, even though you are not partaking in it?
Yeah, I've heard that before, and almost every variation. I even had one of my own, when I pastored an Arminian Bible Baptist church in Manila. Mine was: suppose you had a disease, and I had the cure, would your knowing I had the cure help your disease if you don't appropriate the cure ?
But you see, the disease of fallen humanity is SIN. And sin KILLED humanity. And, God, before He hung the first star, saw all these, and so before the disease even hit, He appropriated the cure, in eternity past, to those to whom He sovereignly pleased to appropriate it.
Is He to blame for wanting to save anyone on His own ?
of trying to put God in a box.