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The Gift of Prophecy (The Role of Ellen White in God’s Remnant Church) - Contents
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    God’s justice

    Some will object to this teaching and argue that God’s justice requires that every person receive an opportunity for salvation. While this seems perfectly logical, it is nevertheless unscriptural. Ezekiel 3:18 and 33:8 teach that the watchman is to warn the wicked so he can mend his ways. If he is not warned, God says, he will die in his sins, but the watchman is held responsible. Similarly, Romans 10 teaches that it is the responsibility of those who know the gospel to pass it on, and if this is not done, people will be lost.GP 19.4

    It is sad but not unjust that sinners will perish. If they are lost, they are lost because they are sinners, not because they have not had the opportunity to be saved.GP 20.1

    What will happen to those who have never had an opportunity to hear the gospel? Abraham said, ” ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ ” (Genesis 18:25). That Judge certainly will. Of some of the slaves in colonial America, Ellen White wrote,GP 20.2

    I saw that the slave master will have to answer for the soul of his slave whom he has kept in ignorance; and the sins of the slave will be visited upon the master. God cannot take to heaven the slave who has been kept in ignorance and degradation, knowing nothing of God or the Bible, fearing nothing but his master’s lash, and holding a lower position than the brutes. But He does the best thing for him that a compassionate God can do. He permits him to be as if he had not been, while the master must endure the seven last plagues and then come up in the second resurrection and suffer the second, most awful death. Then the justice of God will be satisfied (EW 276).GP 20.3

    What happens to those slaves may well happen to “millions of human beings . . . bound down under false religions, in the bondage of slavish fear, of stolid indifference, toiling like beasts of burden, bereft of hope or joy or aspiration here, and with only a dull fear of the hereafter” (DA 478), who have never had an opportunity to accept salvation.GP 20.4

    So, Scripture and the Spirit of Prophecy teach that there is only one name under heaven whereby we can be saved (see Acts 4:12). While in general God saves the heathen through the preaching of the gospel, sometimes bringing them in contact with missionaries, there are occasions when He intervenes directly—through the Holy Spirit touching the hearts of people to bring salvation to them without any human agent. Why He does so in some cases and not in others only He knows. However, knowing that billions of people have never even heard the name of Jesus should motivate every Christian to do all he or she can to spread the good news worldwide.GP 20.5

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