The Reason for Quasi-Universalism?

I just recently read Brother Stephen's latest posting, and it made me think about my past experience among the Primitives.  Perhaps he can chime in further as to what brought about this tendency toward quasi-universalism, but this is my quick thought which I discovered by experience.

During the time I was among them I came to attribute their quasi-universalism to sentiments.  Atleast this was the impression I got from amongst those with which I was acquainted.   At one time I myself would not even consider a scheme of salvation which did not yield at least 90% of the human race in heaven.  My wife, originally from Russia, was bewildered by the teachings of this body of professed Christians on this point when we first got married.  I can still recall how she and I would discuss the fate of those who died without knowledge of Christ or having heard the gospel.  She would say "Kevin, they're lost!"

I would not even listen. My ears were completely deaf, and I refused in anger to even countenance such an idea.

There is something I know now from personal experience, and it brings me a lot of sadness.  Without the grace of God, dealing with someone with a cultic mindset is, as one writer stated, an attempt to convince the unconvincible.

I remember the truth that Brother Stephen stated in his video with Bob Ross how there's an apparent beauty in thinking that most everyone is saved.  How true that is! It kind of serves as a salve to our conscience to think that only a few men will be eternally lost. My pastor used to tell the story of a little heathen boy in some foreign country fetching a pail of water from the creek.  Yet before he stooped over, he held up his hands in thanksgiving towards heaven.

How touching! How appealing to our emotions!  How easy it is to be convinced that there are lots and lots of people in the world just like this! People who do not know Jesus Christ, but are saved nevertheless!

That sentiments play a huge role in the quasi-universalism of many PBs is evidenced by the fact that one of the very first responses to the gospel means pattern of salvation is an expressed concern for the fate of the unevangelized.  Instead of a direct appeal to scripture, they resort to speculation.  If I had a nickel for the number of times I was asked upon my exclusion, "What about the American Indians before 1492?"

But the scriptures do not call upon us to speculate, nor to base our soteriology upon our emotions.  Rather, it teaches us to trust in the Almighty God, and to acknowledge that He will do what is right.

"Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not on thy name..." (Jer. 10:25) is true whether I like it or not.

It's my duty as a Christian to accept that, and not devise a soteriological system to avoid it.

To this day I am firmly convinced that most PBs have been taught so much grace over the years with almost a total neglect of man's responsibility and God's holiness and justice, having placed most of it in the category of temporal salvation/damnation that they have an overly sentimental view of God.  It all boils down to the balance of truth of which theologians often speak.  The PBs lost it in the 19th century when they walked away from gospel means, and all the doctrines which such a view entails  They rightly understand there is a wideness to God's mercy, but greatly err when they extend it past the boundary which God himself has established through the inclusion of unbelievers, heathens, and idolaters as part of the regenerated family of God.  They then take this prior conviction that almost everyone is saved and impose it upon those passages which speak of the 'few' versus the 'many' to make it gel with their false soteriology.

I did it for years.