RE: A while back in the eighties I remember Harold Camping saying that one should not pray for someone’s salvation since the Lord knows who will be saved and who will not.
Well, Jesus instructed believers to pray for the unsaved in this manner: “Ask the Lord of the harvest . . . to send out workers into his harvest field” (Luke 10:2).
This prayer concerns the “harvest field” of evangelism in the world. It is a prayer that people will be saved and God will be glorified.
Why would he do that if He knows who will be saved and who will not?
We should pray for the unsaved because, the truth is, it’s not possible for us mere mortals to know who God’s elect are before they become saved (think of Saul of Tarsus).
Spurgeon once quipped that it would be nice if the elect had a big E stamped on their back, but, of course, they do not.
I was not a Harold Camping fan. I just found some of his later stuff on Family Radio to be a bit “off”. Including that the “Church Age” was over, and there was no further use for evangelization. Everyone retreat to their “spiritual bomb shelter”, as I call it. Definitely out there.