Quoting Robert Reymond . . .
 | It is difficult to believe that the Triune God intended Christ's death for every man, woman and child, the blessing of which is enjoyed upon condition that they believe in him, when he has not arranged for everyone to hear the gospel. While it is true that Christ has commanded his church to carry the gospel to the nations, it is equally true that many people throughout the course of the centuries have lived and died in spiritual darkness, never having heard the gospel. And the biblical evidence would indicate that God, by determining as he has the recipients of special revelation and by governing the geographic directions of missionary history, determined that some people would not hear the gospel. For example, throughout Israel's history in the Old Testament, God related himself to that nation in a way which he never did to any of the Gentile nations. He left the Gentile nations "alienated from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12). Throughout Old Testament times he "let all the nations go their own way" (Acts 14:16) and "overlooked their ignorance" in the sense that he did nothing directly to overcome it (Acts 17:30). Exclusively to Israel did God entrust the oracles of God (Rom. 3:1-2). And the Psalmist even evokes praise to the Lord because "he has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation; they do not know his laws. Praise the Lord" (Ps. 147:19-20). Furthermore, God adopted only Israel as his son (Rom. 9:4). As God declared to Israel through Amos: "You only have I known ["loved covenantally"], of all the families of the earth" (Amos 3:2). Accordingly, in their midst alone the Shekinah presence of God dwelt. With them he made his covenants, to them he revealed his law, they alone possessed the temple services which instructed them in the salvific ways of God and the promises of God, and theirs were the patriarchs and from them came the Messiah according to the flesh, who is over all, the ever--blessed God (Rom. 9:4-5). During his earthly ministry Christ praised his Father, the Lord of heaven and earth, that he had hidden the gospel mysteries from the wise and learned and had revealed them to "little children" (Matt. 11:25), tracing his Father's actions to his good pleasure (11:26). He also declared that only those to whom he reveals the Father know him (11:27). On his second missionary journey, Paul and his companions "passed through the Phrygian and Galatian region, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia; and when they had come to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them; and passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas" (Acts 16:6-8). As a result the gospel spread westward into Europe and not eastward toward Asia, and many Asians died never having heard of Christ. Clearly, the matter of who hears the gospel is under the providential governance of the sovereign God, and he has so arranged gospel history that many people will never hear about Christ. It is unthinkable to suppose then that God sent his Son to save people who, by the ordering of his own providence, never hear the gospel in order that they may believe and be saved. |  |
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