More Thoughts on Speculation

As a follow-up to my post yesterday I am reminded of these statements made by Elder Thomas Mann in his popular sermon published on this blog:

"If an infant is elect of God and dies in infancy, what happens? It goes right to be with God. Could that infant articulate its love for Christ as an infant? Of course not, but the Bible doesn't spend a lot of time on that. And what I want to try to do in the next weeks, if again the Lord leads in this, is to try to stick with the Scriptures. Because I have literally argued till I was blue in the face with, not people in this church, but people across the country who asked me questions about this. And invariably if you get off into speculation, “Well now, what about this, what about that, what about this ramification, what about that implication” it starts getting real foggy, but if you can just keep saying “Well, let's try to come back to what the Scripture says. Let's come back to the Bible on this”. It's amazing how things start to shift and fall into place."

As a former PB elder myself, I know exactly why Mann made this statement.  Obviously he noticed as well that his contemporaries put too much emphasis on speculation (in this case, the salvation of infants) when seeking to undermine the gospel means pattern of salvation in order to build a case for their own novelty.  Mysterious cases, what-about-this, what-about-that, should be given secondary importance, and interpreted in the light of the Bible, where matters are settled by a “thus saith the Lord” authority.

And I would like to add that even if we as Christians were never able to give an answer to such cases, our position is in no wise weakened. We have explicit texts in the Bible which teach gospel means.  And that is where we take our stand!  No amount of speculation will overthrow “Thus saith the Lord”! Indeed, it marked a great turning point in my own life when I began to let the clear teaching of scripture dictate my position on certain doctrinal points, not allowing that which is less clear to have the priority it once did.

So heap together all the speculation in the world you desire to undermine God’s use of means in the salvation of the soul.  I will write the word of God on top of it all:

"How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?  and how they shall believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?  And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!  But they have not all obeyed the gospel.  For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." (Romans 10:14-17)