“You (God) turn man to destruction, and (later) say, ‘Return (from the dead) you children of men’” (See Psalm 90:3). And the very next verse shows God’s summons to these dead to live again may not come for thousands of years,for the 4th verse says, “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night (the passing of but a few hours).” And then verse 5, “You carry them away as with a flood; they are as asleep. In the morning (resurrection morn) they are like grass which grows up!” Did you ever notice how quickly the grass on your lawn grows back up after you mow your lawn? And with their resurrection comes ENLIGHTENMENT – not hell! How absurd to even think so! (Read Ezekiel 16 and Ezekiel 37).
Think for a minute: “By what means did God seek to save the world prior to Christ’s coming to earth?” I have always been a history buff and studied history at the University of Minnesota, my alma mater. The earth, the entire globe for the most part, was inhabited with hundreds of millions of human beings at the time of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem of Judea. Had you been born an ignorant peasant in Persia or an equally ignorant South American Indian tribesman at that point in time, how could you have taken advantage of the offer of eternal life in Christ Jesus??? In fact, what would possibly cause you to even think eternal life was a possibility for members of the human family? Even if creation were to have prompted you to think, “Do you suppose an intelligent Creator brought all this into being?” What on earth would then prompt you to think: “I’ll bet He (she, or it – you wouldn’t know, remember) desires a relationship with me??” And, let’s say by some miracle that thought popped into your head, how would you discern what steps must be taken to establish a relationship with your Creator? Do you sacrifice your firstborn? Do you bow before the sun each morning as it rises?
Jesus Christ did not appear on the scene until 4,000 years after Adam! If God has been trying to convert the world, what means did He use during that 4,000 year yawning expanse of time? What means did He use for centuries AFTER Christ when South America, China, Korea and Japan (as well as a host of other lands and countries) had not received their first missionary???
Few realize that God is bringing the offer of eternal life to the inhabitants of this planet in successive stages. He has a time-table for this great gargantuan work. The brevity of human life does not complicate or interfere with His plan in the least, for God has the mind-boggling power to resurrect the dead regardless of how long they have been dead. Why is it so hard for many to believe that God is going to give everyone who has ever drawn breath the greatest of opportunities to join the great spiritual family of God? Does anyone with reasoning powers really think that those ancient Chinese peasants and slaves who helped construct the Great Wall of China have already had their fair shot at inheriting eternal life? Many living today honestly don’t know who or what to believe! God knows how Satan deceives mankind, preventing them from seeing the marvelous truth in these matters. Many “preachers” and Bible teachers are themselves deceived in these matters.
The average gang member in South Central L.A. has no religious beliefs. Many can’t read beyond a 3rd or 4th grade level. Many die as teenagers! Do they, that is their “souls”, then descend into a fiery lake to be tortured for trillions of ages raised to the trillionth power?? Is THAT a loving Creator’s plan of the ages for the vast majority of mankind??? Do you see what I mean when I say that Satan is a master deceiver and portrays God as a fiendish monster?! (Satan’s distortion of Luke 16 – The Rich Man and Lazarus – is mind-boggling!)
It is a sad fact of human nature that most cannot change religious beliefs deeply entrenched in their minds, generally from childhood forward. A Lutheran child has about a 99% chance of becoming and remaining a Lutheran adult. Ditto for the Baptist youth, the Roman Catholic teen, the Mormon young person. Of course, the same holds true for their pastors and ministers. Rarely does a minister of one denominational persuasion abandon that particular denomination and become a minister of an entirely different denomination. Such are engulfed in their denominational beliefs as surely as the Buddhist is engulfed in his, or her, errors.
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley