Kosh

Better yet....

the doctor goes into one of the side rooms where just a few kids are, and tells them about. While the door is locked.

ISVfan

Ok sorry I wasn't on the same page. Romans 1 tells us people have natural revelation. Or God's creation. But he left the job of spreading the Gospel to us. Matthew 28:19 "Go and teach the gospel to all nations" So he told us to. It's like a Doctor that knows the children need the flu vaccination and tells nurses to take the vaccine and go inocculate everyone that needs it.

Again he left that for us to do. Look how could God have given the Gospel to the English we weren't exactly around at that time. See God knew everything would change and left it for us to do. I hope everyone here realizes that almost 3 out of 5 languages have a Bible so I think it's clear that we are doing a good job.

Kosh

So if he knew (he's omniscient, right?) that after 2000 years, only 3/5 of the languages would be there (and of course you're not counting those languages and cultures that have gone extinct - hundreds in just North America alone), he must not have cared about it getting to EVERYONE.

Why not just a big teleconference project in the sky. Everybody at once. And a weekly status meeting to keep everyone remembering.

Terrible Heresy

Bullshit.

Don't just parrot dogma at me like it's some kind of answer. I hate these canned theist responses that don't even answer the question

The question is not what you beleive, it's about why God would do it.

Also, your counterexample is woefully pathetic. As has been pointed out, God could have given everyone the innoculation, so there is no need for messengers. The most fitting analogy is that all 20 children in the room are all the children that need that vaccination, because to God, all of humankind is in that room, and within his grasp to innoculate.

You're basically saying instead of giving the innoculation as he could have, the doctor would give it to others, let them do a half assed job of it(comparitively) and let children die of the flu that he could have saved.

To deny that God could have done so himself if he wished is to severely cutoff his ability as a deity.

If the Gospels is so important for everyone to hear, why have so many not heard it?

By human standards, I suppose it's a pretty good job. By a all powerful deity, it's been a piss poor job of spreading the word that he apparently thinks is so important.

WILLOWTREE

The verse and its fulfillment will happen in the millenium AFTER Christ returns.

Those who died without hearing the gospel are judged by their compliance to the General Revelation of Observed Creation (Romans 1:20). Compliance is two-fold: recognition of God AS Creator/thankfulness of that fact (Romans 1:21).

The reason why the gospel message is so important is because the gospel is the (N.T.) way of faith apart from Mosaic law to relate to God. IOW, it is attainable unlike the Old Covenant and it is only possible because Christ paid for sins.

Ray M.

Helpmabob

1. Personally, I feel that nothing will stop the gospel stops being preached. If it did, then the end may as well come, because there will be little hope for those that remain.

2. Hebrews 11 talks much about faith being credited as righteousness. By believing and trusting in Jesus, christians are promised to be clothed in Christ’s righteousness. It is this thirst for righteousness that is the enduring theme.

How God actually plans to do it is alluded to in the final two verses: These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. [Hebrews 11:39,40] Christians are one body in Christ, and this is true irrespective of birth date.

David Vestal

Or better yet, if the gospel is so important for us to hear, why was its dissemination arranged by god in a way that guaranteed that hundreds of millions of people couldn't possibly ever hear it?

"They had natural revelation" isn't a solution to this problem, because if just seeing creation were sufficient exposure to the gospel, then Jesus's words become meaningless. It's meaningless to say that something will happen at a future time (i.e., exposure to the gospel) which had already happened and would forever continue to happen (i.e., natural revelation).

JPD

What an appallingly arrogant and ignorant assertion. What you are saying is that those who do not engage now are somehow doomed in your warped little worldview which you cannot substantiate and "just know is right because it feels nice". Actually that's fine because it is all in your mind. You just haven't realised it yet.


And we all know what happens when people are righteous. World leaders go all funny in the head too. Poor, sad, sick little George.


Yep, I'll leave it to you in the overpopulated sweat-box that will be Jesus's crotch when doomsday comes and you are swept up into his loving arms.

CJD

There are not multiple ways to view this pericope. There is one. And it is clearly referring to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. "In all the world" (�ν ὅλῃ τῇ οἰκουμένῃ) is not a reference to geographical location so much as it is a reference to the fact that "all the nations (i.e., the Gentiles of the known world), that is, those outside of the Jewish community, will hear the good news of the kingdom."

Matthew 24:14 cannot be used as the impetus for this question. Try again.

CJD

lpetrich

But that alleged "natural revelation" is NOT as clear as Paul seemed to think it is. And waving the Bible WON'T change that.

Simply look at the track record of what people have believed when they have never heard of Xianity -- and sometimes when they have. Most of the older religions feature lots and lots of deities and lots of what the Bible's writers called idolatry.

And look at what pagan Greek and Roman philosophers had believed. Modern science has much more in common with them than with anything in the Bible.

Us sin-contaminated weaklings Who have been more than happy to teach all sorts of heresies in the name of Xianity. Consider that Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and some other sects are full of quasi-polytheist and quasi-idolatrous practices, just for starters. And after the first few centuries and before the Protestant Reformation, all of Xianity featured this sort of thing.

We all know the old saying that if you want something done right, then do it yourself. A deity unwilling to do that is not worthy of respect.

Because that doctor is not omnipotent and not capable of genetically engineering everybody so that they will be immune to that flu, or else instantly zapping every flu virus in the world to Kingdom Come.

Pure hooey. There were people in the British Isles before the Angles and Saxons and Jutes arrived in southwestern Great Britain. And why not bring The Message to them also while they were still living in their original Holland-Germany-Denmark homeland?

What a lazy bum of a being that god allegedly is.

As of 2005

And if a "general revelation" is allegedly sufficient, then what do we need a Bible for?