I want to expand a little bit in today’s lesson on the previous lesson where we asked the question, what about people who have never heard the Gospel? Of course, we clearly showed from Scripture that God is speaking to everybody, not necessarily through the Gospel. He’s speaking to them, however, through Creation and through their conscience and, sometimes, through calamities. He expects people to seek Him.

Jesus’ promise is that if you seek, you will find (Matthew 7:7). God is not hiding from anybody. In fact, He’s all but shouting at the top of His lungs at everybody, every day, to try to get their attention! But people just stubbornly, blatantly, go on in their sin and rebellion. People are dying by the thousands all around the world and people are living as if it’s never going to happen to them, not contemplating what’s going to happen to them after they die. Are they going to have to give an account for the life that God has given them?

All right. So Scripture says people love darkness. That’s why they don’t come to the light, but the devil can’t stop anybody who starts seeking God sincerely. God’s proven over and over again that He’s there with outstretched arms, just waiting, waiting patiently for people to come to their senses.

There are a number of Scriptures to prove this. One that really comes to mind right off the bat is the story in the Book of Acts about the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:25-40). You might recall that story. He came all the way, apparently from Ethiopia in Africa up into the Middle East, into Jerusalem, because he was interested in seeking God. He had enough money that, while he was there, he purchased a copy of the Book of Isaiah, at least, and he’s reading that in his chariot on his way back to Ethiopia. So here’s a seeker. Here’s a man who’s looking for the truth and just happens to be reading what we would call the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, perhaps the most Messianic prophecy in the entire Old Testament! A prophecy about Jesus, the lamb of God, who would be bruised for our iniquities and crushed for our sins.

God sends Philip, an evangelist, to go join his chariot, and the Ethiopian eunuch asked the question, “Who is the prophet, Isaiah, writing about? Himself or somebody else?” So here’s a seeker and God keeps his promise, I’m going to send someone to tell you the truth. That’s what God expects everyone to be doing. Everybody ought to be seeking for the truth. That’s the least that they should be doing. I can assure you that anyone who sincerely seeks after the Lord, God’s going to make sure that person finds.

Maybe the greatest example of this, although some folks would, perhaps, disagree with me, would be Saul of Tarsus who was out persecuting the Church, but doing it totally in sincerity, thinking that he was serving God. “Seek and ye shall find.” I mean, God is so gracious and so merciful, Paul said, “I’m the chief of sinners, that’s why God showed me mercy, so He could use me as an example for how gracious and merciful He is” (1 Timothy 1:15-16). God met him on the road to Damascus and knocked him down, blinded him, and sent, then, Ananias to go lay hands upon him. Pual received his sight again and received the Holy Spirit.

All right. So there’s another example, and other examples in Scripture could be cited.

We hear these days about people, particularly people in Muslim countries, closed Muslim countries, where it’s very difficult for the Church to exist and evangelists and Church planters to go. Where the Church that does exist is, for the most part, secretive and underground. We hear of many stories of Muslims who are having dreams and visions of Jesus Christ. Quite often, we hear them report that Jesus says to them, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Well, that’s straight out of Scripture, straight out of the Gospel of John. That’s entirely Scriptural!

Now, I have been in the Middle East, quite often, and I know quite a few Christian leaders in the Middle East. I’ve asked numbers of them this question: why does Jesus appear, do you think, to some, but not all? They always retort and they’ll say, “Well, first of all, you don’t know that he’s not appearing to all because you only hear about the ones who repent. Could he be appearing in dreams to people who, ultimately, don’t repent?” I said, “Well, that’s an interesting thought. That’s a very interesting thought.” So don’t make any assumptions that he’s only appearing to a limited number.

Then, they say, “But here’s our observation. The people, the Muslim people, to whom Jesus is most likely to appear are people that are sincere seekers.” I took note of that. I said, “Wow. That’s really cool, because Jesus promised ‘seek and ye shall find’.” Even if you’re in a closed country or you’re on some remote island somewhere, if you start seeking, do you think that God knows about it? He’s got a million angels, always looking down and seeing everything. The God who knows everything; do you think that the God who knows everything knows who is seeking Him? Sure He knows who’s seeking Him. So He can respond. So no matter where you are, you can’t run from the Holy Spirit. You can’t get away or go somewhere where you can hide from God. And God’s not trying to hide from anybody Himself. He wants everyone to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him and to share eternity with Him in His wonderful kingdom, ruled by Jesus Christ.

If that hasn’t happened to you yet, well, maybe that’s one reason you’re reading this short article right now. This is one more attempt; the Lord’s trying to reach you. Repent and start following Jesus because you believe that He is the Son of God, before whom you will stand one day!

Thanks so much for joining me. God bless!

The post What About People Who Have Never Heard About Jesus? Part 2 appeared first on David Servant.

Today’s question is a great one. What about people who have never heard The Gospel, never heard about Jesus? What’s going to happen when they stand before God? How could it be fair of God to judge them about believing in Jesus or not if they’ve never heard about Him, if they’ve never heard The Gospel?

Of course, God is just and God is fair, and God is not going to judge people who have never heard about Jesus on the basis of, “Have you believed in Jesus?” Again, that just goes without saying, or else God would be unjust. But here’s a fact we need to consider: there’s no person who’s ever lived who hasn’t received revelation from God and about God. In fact, God is speaking to people, everybody, every single day of their lives, calling out to them, and they are ignoring Him.

Paul wrote in Romans 1:19, “because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen,” now listen to this, “being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” So God’s speaking to everyone through the creation and He’s saying to them, “Seek Me, I’m here.”

In fact, God’s not only speaking to people through Creation, but Paul goes on to talk about how God speaks to people through their conscience as well. Because Gentiles who don’t have the law of Moses instinctively sometimes do the things that are written in the Law of Moses (Romans 2:14), this shows that they’ve got a God-given conscience that’s convicting them and condemning them all the time for their wrongdoing. So there’s a second way that God is speaking to people all of their lives, every waking moment. He’s convicting them when they don’t do unto others as they would have others do unto them. That’s The Golden Rule.

God also speaks to people through calamities. You know, when some natural disaster strikes, or some horrible thing, or the sorrows that everybody faces, or the death of a loved one, or various tragedies and so on, those are times when God is speaking to people, trying to get them to question, “What happens after I die? Is God upset over something?” He’s trying to get people to examine themselves. So God is speaking through Creation, conscience and calamity. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is really just the icing on the cake. All right?

So when you ask the question, “What’s going to happen to people who have never heard?”, the basis of your question is wrong. Everyone has heard revelation from God. They’ve already received probably 95% of the revelation that God’s ever going to reveal to them in this lifetime. There’s only 5% left, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If they’re ignoring the 95%, why should He waste His time and send a preacher to tell them the 5% when, for sure, they’re going to ignore that as well?

Okay, Paul asked this very question later on in Romans 10:17 as he talks about the fact that whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved, Jew or Gentiles. He said that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. Then he asked this kind of rhetorical question, “But I say, surely they have never heard, have they?” He responds, “Indeed they have.” He quotes from one little section of Psalm 19. Paul quotes in Romans 10:18, “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” Now, most of his readers would be familiar with the context, and they would have known exactly the passage of scripture he’s quoting from, Psalm 19.

Psalm 19 says, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech; And night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words.” Now here’s what Paul quoted in Romans 10: “Their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their utterances to the end of the world.” Then he talks specifically about the sun. Well, the sun and the stars are just one really small aspect of God’s greater Creation. God’s speaking to people every day through the tweeting of birds, and the crawling of caterpillars, and everything that they see with their eyes, every thought they have, every aroma that they smell, every food that they taste. There’s a magic show going on day and night all around us, and through that, God is trying to get our attention, but people just ignore Him and they don’t seek Him.

That’s what God wants. He doesn’t want robots, He wants people who are interested. Now, let’s just say that you woke up one morning in your bedroom and there were 50 gifts— presents—wrapped up in nice boxes and wrapping paper all around your bed. Wouldn’t you wonder, first of all, what are these presents doing here? Then, secondly, who put these presents here? You’d want to seek to find out who gave you these gifts. Well, multiply that by 10 million, because that represents the life of every human being. Millions of miracles going on around us every day. People say silly things like, “Oh, I don’t believe in the virgin birth because that’s a birth without a conception.” Let me tell you, there’s bazillions of miracles that surround every normal birth. For God to pull off a virgin birth was nothing. He’s proven that by every other birth and all the miracles that accompany every birth. Right? Right.

Okay, so God’s expecting people to seek Him. Paul preached in Athens in Acts 17, saying of God, “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:26-27). So you see, God expects people to seek Him. So that’s what people are going to be judged by who have never heard the Gospel, who have never heard about Jesus. They’re going to be judged on the basis of, “Did you seek for the Creator? Did you seek for the One who spoke in your conscience? Did you seek the One who sometimes allowed you to experience calamities to get you to think?” They’ll be condemned for their rejection of God and His attempts to reach them.

Okay? This could be expanded much further, but these are just the basics, a simple quick answer to a much bigger question. I’ve written a book called God’s Tests, which you can read for free here. It goes into some of these principles in more detail, if you’re interested.

We’ll go into more detail in our next Little Lesson. God bless you. Thanks for joining me!

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