everyone has an equal opportunity to salvation.
But of course, they don't. Reality shows us that that poor old Bushman we keep trotting out will live and die without hearing the name of "Jesus."
JOHN 6:44 - No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Life isn't fair, from our perspective.
From God's perspective, it is all as He wishes it to be.
There was a great old MGM movie called "My Brother Talks to Horses." In it, Spring Byington, the grandmother, consoles Butch Jenkins, the young boy, by assurring him, "Everything is happening just the way it's supposed to happen."
I love that line. All glory to God.
John Chapter 6 is one of the most interesting chapters in the Bible. It starts with Jesus attracting a crowd of 5,000 men (which he all fed) and ends with just twelve disciples. What happened? Wasn't Jesus "seeker sensitive" like so many politically correct churches of today? Didn't he meet the "felt needs" of his audience? Surely his preaching was peerless. Then why didn't he have a larger harvest?
Perhaps because "No one can come to [him] unless it is granted by the Father." [Romans 6:65] Perhaps because all the seekers there were seeking something (such as entertainment, and Jesus declined to build a church gym) besides the Kingdom of God. So when they heard the "hard saying[s]; who can listen to [them]?" [6:60], they "grumbled" and turned away.
In the end, when the people were faced with the fullness of Christ's doctrine (not just the more comfortable, easy-to-accept teachings), every man dead in sin chose to turn away. Only the Twelve remained. And they remained not because they were wiser than their peers in recognizing and believing that Jesus "ha[s] the words of eternal life." [6:68] but because, as Jesus gently corrected, he had first chosen them: "Did I not choose you, the Twelve?" [6:70]
That Jesus added, "And yet one of you is a devil," is clear expression of God's sovereign election: He chooses some to be saved and some to be damned. This is a "hard saying," of course, but some truths are supposed to be hard, in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, to purify the church
Too bad so few pastors today realize that a handful of faithful disciples is much to be preferred over thousands of marginal believers who will just move on to the next church when the going gets tough.
[BTW, eternal thanks to Bob Godfrey for teaching me about John 6. However, any errors in the above explanation are completely my own.]
"But of course, they don't. Reality shows us that that poor old Bushman we keep trotting out will live and die without hearing the name of "Jesus."
I'm just speculating, but I fear that the wealth in the United States may be a greater stumblingblock than the ignorance of the Bushman.
Esth 4:13-14 Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.
God will take care of the Bushman too. Can you imagine someone missing out on salvation because of our failure?