Thursday, December 15, 2011

The Elect who DO hear. Receive or Reject?

I wish to provide a simple addendum to a point which is currently being debated between Brothers Stephen and Jason. I do not think it can be argued that the prevailing opinion of Primitive Baptist elders is that the majority of God’s elect will never be exposed to the gospel in time. The question which has surfaced, however, is whether it is the consensus view that those of the elect who DO hear it will receive it, and not reject it.

Consider the below statement by Elder Tom Hagler Jr.:

"Jesus has power over all flesh, so He could save everyone. However, this verse says Jesus limits eternal salvation to those the Father gave Him to save. This happens to be a very large number, as given in Revelation 5:9 and 7:9. Those Jesus saves include those who die as infants (it is the position of the writer that the non-elect do not die young…see more on this below), or those elect who have a mental deficiency, or the elect who live in a remote place and never hear the gospel preached. It also includes those of the elect of God who hear the gospel preached, but reject it for one reason or another."

http://www.basicbibledoctrines.com/downloads/Born_Again.pdf

This quotation was taken from Hagler's book Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, of which I own a copy. I can specifically recall this book being on sale at the Smoky Mountain meeting in Pigeon Forge I attended years ago. It sat there on a long table along with other books being promoted by Elder Harold Hunt. If this is not the majority view, then it certainly is not wise propagating such a work at this yearly pilgrimage for many of the people.

In addition to this, I can specifically name respected elders who view Heb. 6:4-6 as describing truly regenerate children of God that reject the gospel of Christ.

Consisting with their denial of perseverance, many claim as well that 1 John 2:19 speaks of “regenerated antichrists” who eventually rejected the gospel.

I have also heard some claim that King Agrippa (Acts 26) was himself regenerate but rejected gospel conversion.

Furthermore, if this were truly the recognized position in this matter, Primitive Baptists would have to say that the "unconverted regenerate" only consists of those who never hear the gospel preached. There could no be such character amongst those elect who are exposed to biblical revelation. It would mean that all the elect who did hear the gospel would, without a doubt, get their time salvation. I don't think that the majority would affirm this.

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