Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian
From: bnr-fos!bnr-public!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: thoughts on the recent exchange
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Date: 14 Aug 89 04:12:49 GMT
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In article  jamesa@amadeus.la.tek.com (James Akiyama) writes:
>The problem I have here is what about those who died not fully knowing
>Christ?  What happens if they wanted to follow Christ but had not yet fully
>grasped His glory?  I believe (this is really starting to become opinionated)
>that you are only accountable for what you know.  Adam had not sinned from
>his nakedness until he ate of the fruit and noticed he was naked.  He was
>always naked; but did not become afraid until after eating from the tree of
>knowledge.
You have raised a fair question to which I shall give a quick answer. I
am assuming that you have read other postings of mine and that I won't
have to go into too much detail. If I'm wrong then please let me know.
 
I am a firm believer in predestination as described in, among other
places, Ephesians 1:11. God, through His foreknowledge, tells us that
no one of us would ever want to seek Him on His own terms; this can be
seen in Scriptures like Psalm 53:1-5 and Romans 3:10-18. God teaches,
in Scriptures like John 6:44, that the only way that someone will begin
seeking Him on His own terms is if He intervenes to cause such a desire
to exist in that person. There are numerous Scriptures that teach that
God always accomplishes exactly what He sets out to do, e.g. Isaiah
55:10-11 and Numbers 23:19. He also makes this claim explicitly with
respect to salvation in Scriptures like Romans 9:15. My basic answer to
your question is that if someone has died without truly having accepted
Christ as his saviour then that person was not elected to salvation by
God.
 
Please permit me one more comment with respect to this paragraph of
yours. Even after his fall, Adam's nakedness was not a sin. The
Scriptures do not describe nakedness in and of itself to be a sin
anywhere. God uses physical nakedness as a symbol of spiritual
nakedness, i.e. as a symbol of the fact that we stand completely
exposed before Him. God had not given man an inherrent fear of being
publically naked until the fall as a way of illustrating to us that we
had nothing to fear from Him before the fall and plenty to fear from
Him afterward.
 
    Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014
    856 Grenon Avenue
    Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
    K2B 6G3