God's Plan for the Lost

Religion
1

What is God’s plan for the lost? Unknown Billions have died without Christ. Estimates of the pre-flood population range from 750 million to four billion. Could be higher. Add the population before Christ. Only in recent centuries did statistics become better than guessing. About 31.5% of the 6 billion people alive now self-identify as Christian, so we can add another four billion or so to the unknown total of those who died unsaved. The best we can state for certain is: “unknown billions have died without Christ–the vast majority of mankind who ever lived. Their total number cannot be known.”

Are they lost forever? What is God’s Plan for them? The answer is hidden in God’s work of predestination, His election of certain individuals to be conformed to the image of His Son Jesus Christ. Evidently, even “dying lost” cannot separate those whom He foreknew in love, from Him:

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38-39 KJV)

While we must infer much from the data of scripture, and some of these inferences are without doubt “speculative”, the elegance manifest by so many “divine paradoxes” of scripture being resolved, logically dictates the following hypothesis is God’s truth:

Before creating the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1) God knew all (Isa. 46:9-10) who would come into existence (Rom. 4:17), both angels and men. In His Omniscient knowledge, a special group rose above the rest like “bolded text” stands out in a paragraph. God foreknew these before all others, experiencing their communion with God in love. Knowing how they loved God after He loved them first (1 John 4:19), He loved them even more.

But God realized the Fall of creation would corrupt many of these He foreknew. A sinful world would cause many to die unsaved rebels against God, or ignorant of the glorious gospel of salvation in His Son Jesus Christ. That was intolerable. Losing even one of these would result in God eternally mourning their absence, their loving fellowship.

God’s solution was elegantly simple, lest any of these God foreknew be lost because of a sinful world, God predestined those He Foreknew be conformed to the image of His Son, even if they must endure hell first whose refining fire removes the dross of sin (Zech. 13:9; 1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Pet. 4:6).

28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Rom. 8:28-32 KJV)

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The question is: when on their death bed or in a fox hole, what percent believe in God and his Son.

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Of course those god killed personally.

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Not so, Christ says most sins can be forgiven. Stumbling a child of God or blaspheming the Holy Spirit can’t be forgiven:

31 "Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men.
32 "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
(Matt. 12:31-32 NKJ)

42 "But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.
43 "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched–
44 "where`Their worm does not die, And the fire is not quenched.’ (Mk. 9:42-44 NKJ)
(Mk. 9:42 NKJ)

For example, suppose a Pedo priest caused a child of God to hate God in this life. He dies cursing Christ. But God, before the foundation of the world, knew this child before He created, and He predestined he would be saved.

So the hater of God who died a sinner, must pay for his sin, and the fire of hell will purge any evil that attached itself to his soul. But he is a child of God, predestined unto salvation meaning God will do whatever it takes to “restore the sinner” back to his real self, whom God loved before the foundation of the world.

13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.
14 Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:13-15 NKJ)

All the elect of God will “come to their senses” in Hades and repent, but the wicked who hated God even before the foundation of the world, will not. They suffer for their sins according to their works, not a bit more or less than they deserve.

5

The OP really brings up the unsustainable question about how late the whole savior of the world is, because it arrives so late, and so many never hear it. And, let’s face it, it’s a flawed message, with flawed messengers.

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You misread the OP, everyone hears the Gospel of Christ, in Hell:

6 For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. (1 Pet. 4:6 NKJ)

Everyone gets a redo, unless they blasphemed the Holy Spirit or were pedophiles. For example, here is one who claimed to be a Christian, but was guilty of a terrible sin. They die but in the Resurrection, the “Day of Christ” they can rise with the righteous, if they repented in hell:

5 deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. (1 Cor. 5:5 NKJ)

7

God kills, but its not morally wrong or unjust. Its relocation. Life is a priviledge, not a right. When God slays the wicked, and relocates them in Hell, where they suffer something like fire to purge the evil out of them, its act of love.

Gehenna is far worse than hell, and if they don’t repent, that is where they will go.

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And who decided this is actually true.

It seems a convenient rationalization.

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Not a rationalization, a synthesis. Until my “hypothesis”, “divine paradoxes” exist in the doctrine of salvation, predestination, etc. My solution is elegant, resolves all of them.

As for who decides, you do for yourself. My authority is holy Scripture, my “thesis” stands or falls on it. I think of it like a “theory of everything”, it ties up all the loose ends and answers every difficult question apologists have grappled with since the beginning.

10

I misread your reply completely, jumped to conclusions. I would guess 100% or very close to it.

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So what did all the plants and animals do against god?

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Plants and animals should live forever? Why. The enjoy a great life and then die, making room for more. What’s wrong with that?

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God flooded the earth to kill all the people, what did the plants and animals do against god?

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Evil men conspired with Satan and his angels and via DNA modification changed the herbivore dinosaurs God created, into the violent monsters we see buried in the fossil record by the Flood.

11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
13 And God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (Gen. 6:11-13 NKJ)

Men wanted a “workaround” for immortality because God denied them the Tree of life. The also had children with these beings hoping they would be immortal:

4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (and also after this) when the sons of God were having sexual relations with the daughters of humankind, who gave birth to their children. They were the mighty heroes of old, the famous men. (Gen. 6:4 NET)

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It seems exactly like.

You said it was ‘’…it ties up all the loose ends and answers every difficult question apologists have grappled with since the beginning.’’

That’s kind of the definition of rationalization.

Plus, what makes Paul a lone expert. These text are controversial and passed down hundreds of years after his death.

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The Bible is authoritative to me and others, not to you. While I might convince them, as you reject “my facts”, I’ll never convince you.

Not a rationalization, its inferential logic. My statements reflect that that, premise with conclusion.

17

Wondering aloud how one manages to believe death is just relocation, life is a privilege not a right, and pro-life nutbaggery all at the same time.

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Easy, the earth and all in it belongs to its Creator, not its creatures.

19

We are created in God’s image, yet we are to do as he says, not as he does. That sum it up?

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Being created in the image doesn’t make us the Creator. So the implied definition of image in your argument doesn’t exist in scripture. Your argument is unsound, without any scriptural—or better, logical foundation.