Only By Grace !!!

Only By Grace !!!

What Is Grace ???

Shouldn't The Question Be WHO Is Grace !!!

Let us really and truly strip grace down to its basic premise; to its bare bones.

So Jesus + nothing

Jesus then + something = Another gospel !!!

And thus Works:

Not Faith Alone !!!

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:”

Ephesians 2:8 KJV

http://bible.com/1/eph.2.8.kjv

( Independent of and from the gospel preached, heard and received.)

1. The Gospel of Ignorance = Works

2. All men responsible for their own response to God's individual revealing to them personally, by the Holy Spirit = Works

3. Innocency = Works

This plan is all of God.

It all began in Him and will assuredly end in Him !!!

He is the Captain of our ship !!!

HOW MEN ARE SAVED

It is estimated that about one hundred and sixty billions of human beings have lived on the earth in the six thousand years since Adam departed from Eden. Of these, the very broadest estimate that could be made with reason would be that less than five billion were saints of God. This broad estimate would leave the immense aggregate of one hundred and fifty-five billions (155,000,000,000) who went down into death without faith and hope in the only name given under heaven or among men whereby we must be saved. Indeed, the vast majority of these never knew or heard of Jesus, and could not believe in Him of whom they had not heard. What, I ask, has become of this vast multitude, of which figures give a wholly inadequate idea? What is, and is to be, their condition? Did God make no provision for these, whose condition and circumstances He must have foreseen? Or did He, from the foundation of the world, make a wretched and merciless provision for their hopeless, eternal torment, as many of His children claim? To these questions, which every thinking Christian asks himself, and yearns to see answered truthfully, and in harmony with the character of God, comes a variety of answers:-

CALVINISM ANSWERS: God is all-wise; He knew the end from the beginning; and as all His purposes shall be accomplished, He never could have intended to save any but a few, the Church. These He elected and fore-ordained to be eternally saved; all others were equally fore-ordained and elected to be lost - to go to eternal torment; and they are there now, writhing in indescribable agony, where they will ever remain, without hope.

ARMINIANISM ANSWERS: Yes, God is love; and in bringing humanity into the world He meant them no harm - only good. But Satan succeeded in tempting the first pair, and thus sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And ever since, God has been doing all He can to deliver man from his enemy, even to the giving of His Son. And though now, six thousand years after, the Gospel has reached only a very small proportion of mankind, yet we do hope and trust that within six thousand years more, through the energy and liberality of the Church, God will so far have remedied the evil introduced by Satan that all then living may at least know of His love, and have an opportunity to believe and be saved. We believe that God excuses many of them on account of ignorance. Those who did the best they knew how will be sure of being a part of the saved, even though they never heard of Jesus.

FUNDAMENTALISM ANSWERS: Only those who here and now, during the fleeting years of this life, truly repent and receive the Lord Jesus as Saviour are saved. All others have been and are and shall be eternally lost without retrieve and go to a merciless, hopeless, hell-fire and damnation.

There is one beautiful and undeniable truth in the Word of God. The Scriptures clearly show that there is only one ground of salvation and that is FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST as our Redeemer and Lord. "By grace are you saved, through faith " (Eph. 2:8). Justification by faith is the underlying principle of the whole system of New Testament revelation. When asked, "What must I do to be saved?" the apostles answered, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved" (Acts 16:31). "There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13).

The apostle Paul warned of those who would depart from the utter simplicity of this truth to preach ANOTHER WAY, and ANOTHER GOSPEL. "I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that comes preaching ANOTHER Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if yea receive ANOTHER Spirit, which yea have not received, or ANOTHER Gospel, which yea have not accepted, yea might well bear with him" (11 OCR. 11:3-4). ANOTHER JESUS, ANOTHER SPIRIT, ANOTHER GOSPEL - ANOTHER WAY!

Many today who claim to be "Bible believing," "Evangelical" or "Fundamental" preach ANOTHER GOSPEL and ANOTHER WAY OF SALVATION. There are some who feel the burden of the awful doctrine of eternal torture which they embrace, and unconsciously their souls revolt at the ghastly conclusions to which it leads. Such ones have resorted to various makeshifts to escape the inevitable conclusions. I will mention two or three of these. It is said that although it is true that the great mass of the race have thus far died in their sins, yet it does not follow that they have been lost; for if those who are unavoidably ignorant live up to the light they have, they will be saved . These claim that Paul teaches that IGNORANCE will save men, when he says that "The Gentiles, which have not the law, are a law unto themselves" (Rom. 2:14). They gather from this that the law which their conscience furnishes is sufficient to justify them. 

But such persons misunderstand Paul. His argument is that the whole world is guilty before God (Rom. 3:19); that the Gentiles, who had not the written law, were condemned, not justified, by the light of conscience, which, whether it excused them or accused them proved that they were unworthy sinners and thus estranged from the life of God, even as Israel who had the written law were condemned by it; "For by the law is the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20). The law given to the Israelite revealed his weakness, and was intended to show him that he was unable to justify himself before God; for "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight." The written law condemned the Israelite, and the Gentiles had light enough in their conscience to condemn them; and thus every mouth is stopped from claiming any inherent life, and all the world stands guilty before God.

Remembering the statement of James (2:10), that whosoever shall keep the whole law, except to offend in one point, is guilty of all, and cannot claim any blessing promised by the Law Covenant, we realize that indeed "there is none righteous; no, not one" (Rom. 3:10). And thus the Scriptures close every door of hope save one, showing that not one of the condemned is able to secure eternal life by meritorious works, and that it is equally useless to plead ignorance as a ground of salvation. Ignorance cannot entitle anyone to the REWARD of faith and obedience! Salvation by IGNORANCE! Indeed! ANOTHER GOSPEL! ANOTHER WAY! "For there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved!" (Acts 4:12).

Many Christians, unwilling to believe that so many billions of ignorant heathen will be eternally lost (which they have been taught means to be sent to a place of eternal and hopeless torment), insist, notwithstanding these Bible statements, that God will not condemn the ignorant. I admire their liberality of heart and their appreciation of God's goodness, but urge them not to be too hasty about discarding or ignoring the words of Scripture. God has a blessing for all, in a better way than through ignorance!

But do these erring ones act in accordance with their stated belief? NO! Though they profess to believe that the ignorant will be saved on account of their ignorance, they continue to send missionaries to the heathen at the cost of thousands of valuable lives and untold millions of dollars. If they all, or even half of them, would be saved through ignorance, it is doing them a positive injury to send missionaries to teach them of Christ; for only about one in a thousand believes when the missionaries go to them. If this idea be correct, it would be much better to let them remain in ignorance; for then a much larger proportion would be saved. Continuing the same line of argument, might we not reason that if God had left ALL MEN in ignorance, ALL would have been saved? If so, the coming and death of Jesus were useless, the preaching and suffering of apostles and saints were vain, and the so-called Gospel, instead of being good news, is very bad news. Leave the heathen alone in their darkness and ignorance and the majority will be saved by living up to the light they have. Send them the Gospel and we know from past experience that the majority of them will reject it and be lost. These conclusions are inevitable. You cannot escape them while you entertain the notion of the majority of the heathen being saved by living up to the light they have. Such reasoning is a hideous affront to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, and a wicked blasphemy against God and His plan of redemption. ANOTHER GOSPEL! ANOTHER WAY!

Others, craftily seeking to evade these conclusions, invent the silly myth that in some unexplained way all men have been dealt with by God. These conniving souls presume that in some mysterious way God reveals Himself to each and every son of Adam sometime during his life. Perhaps through the conscience - or one dark night while the heathen is standing under the canopy of the heavens observing the majesty of the star-studded sky - there suddenly comes that burst of inner revelation there is a God! And if, in that instant, we are told, that man will seek after God he will find Him. To which I answer: -Tommyrot! Rubbish! ANOTHER GOSPEL! ANOTHER WAY! And those who teach the lie are deceivers. Why, bless your heart, if God habitually and consistently reveals Himself sovereignly and independently to every man who lives upon this earth, then what need is there to print Bibles, or send missionaries, or intercede in prayer, or preach the Gospel? You will have to tear the Bible all to pieces if you teach such nonsense. It is blasphemy.

The Word of God asks the burning question: "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe on Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent?" (Rom. 10: 14-15). And these poor deluded souls pretend to answer all these "how shalls " of Scripture by creating a method by which it can be done! They have invented a system by which men can believe without hearing and hear without a preacher, and under this system no preacher need be sent.

But, I ask, how are the heathen, or any lost men, to be justified by faith by this method since "faith comes BY HEARING and hearing by the Word of God," and "it pleased God BY THE FOOLISHNESS OF PREACHING to save them that believe" (Rom. 10: 17; 1 Cor. 1:21). Nowhere in all the pages of God's blessed Book does it state that God sometime, somewhere, somehow, reveals himself to every man during his brief life in the flesh. Show me! Here is God's estimation of the condition of the heathen: "Wherefore remember, that you being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time you were without Christ , being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having NO HOPE, and without God in the world..." (Eph. 2:11-12).

If God independently and sovereignly reveals Himself to every man then the "Great Commission" is a monstrous farce and should be torn out of the Bible and deposited on the garbage heap. No need to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel to EVERY CREATURE" if the Spirit deals with EVERY MAN sometime, somewhere, somehow during his life apart from the ministry of the Body of Christ. Ah! The argument is really the great "cop out," a silly invention of conniving deceivers who are unwilling to face the fact that God would permit billions of men to pass through this life without any chance of salvation, and equally unwilling to concede that God has any plan for the salvation of those billions in the future. So - in order to consign them an to eternal damnation they concoct this outrageous lie that God really DID give these billions a chance, apart from the preaching of the Gospel of God's grace in Jesus Christ, that these rejected His dealing, and have of their own free wills been damned. Such a teaching contradicts the Word of God, making a travesty of the fact that "God has committed unto US the word of reconciliation" and has "given to US the ministry of reconciliation" (II Cor. 5:18-19). 

The fundamental flaw in the theory is that even if a heathen looked up at the stars one beautiful night and became deeply impressed that there must be a great God out there somewhere, such understanding in no way reveals to his darkened heart the wonderful truth that this God has a Son, that His Son's name is Jesus, that Jesus died for His sins, and that only by faith in Jessu Christ can a man be saved. I challenge anyone to prove that the vast multitudes of heathen die having rejected Jesus Christ who died for them who was revealed to their hearts by the Holy Spirit apart from the preaching of the Gospel. How foolish can men be! Let someone answer - if they can! Ah, it is but ANOTHER GOSPEL! ANOTHER WAY!

Another makeshift theory is the theory of salvation by innocence. Most Christians today, including the so-called "Fundamentalists" who claim to believe the whole unadulterated Word of God, believe this lie. They tell us that a baby that dies in infancy, or a small child that dies before reaching the "age of accountability," whatever that is, is alright, automatically covered by the blood of Jesus-SAVED! This evidently becomes a SECOND WAY to salvation, since it is apart from FAITH in Jesus Christ. "Oh," they glibly recite, "the little child is INNOCENT, and therefore free from the guilt of any sin." Is that so! The Scripture says otherwise. "Behold, I was shaped in iniquity , and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 51:5). In this verse David was not attempting to prove that his mother was having an adulterous affair at the time of his conception, but states the true inner condition of his own nature from his mother's womb. 

Again, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon ALL MEN, for that ALL HAVE SINNED" (Rom. 5:12). 

"For ALL have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). 

"For God has concluded them ALL in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all" (Rom. 11:32).

If even one infant is saved without personally believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, then there is indeed another way! "He that believes shall be saved" is the unceasing and unalterable testimony of God's Word. Some of the basic ingredients in salvation are repentance, faith, and confession. No infant can do any of these things! "Ah," you say, then you believe that all the little babies that have died are burning in hell!" What I am saying is what the Bible says, that all men are born sinners, and that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation. "As many as recieved Him, to them gave He authority to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name" (Jn 1:12). The child who dies goes into the loving hands of God who watches over the souls of all men, who is the Saviour of all, and who deals with all out of His heart of infinite love, drawing each in the perfect timing ordained by His wisdom and omniscience. We can trust Him with the fate and destiny of our little ones, for the Judge of all the earth shall do right, but He does not cancel His redemptive process for any offspring of Adam, all must come the same route, the infant included.

The truth is, we who believe in the faithful dealings of God after death are the only ones who have the answer to the problem of the child that dies in innocence and ignorance of God and salvation. We are the only ones who correctly harmonize the whole plan of God and the processes of redemption. The rest contradict their own teaching that all men are born sinners, arguing rather that all men are born saved and afterwards become sinners, when, reaching the so-called "age of accountability," they become guilty before God. These offer us a salvation by innocence. It would be much better to die as infants, if such were the case! What an act of mercy the wicked old king Herod performed when in Bethlehem he sent thousands of babies into eternal heaven by the swish of the sword! Why should he be judged for his crime when in fact he saved more people from a life of sin, and sent more souls to heaven in a few days than many preachers are able to show for a lifetime of ministry! Think of how many hundreds of millions of souls we could secure for heaven and eternal life simply by killing all the little children! Chances are, if we let them live they will live in sin and end in hell. But, again, how foolish our reasoning! It would be very profitable to meditate deeply upon these things. There is but one way for all, rich and poor, male and female, bond and free, Israelite and Gentile, old and young, and a personal encounter with Jesus Christ most surely IS THAT WAY ... now and forevermore!

Savior of the World Series by J. Preston Eby