Notable Quotes:
"I will make a statement of our religious principles. That is this, our faith is, that if the church and minister will teach exclusively what the Bible teaches, and practice just precisely what it requires, that all the good results that God intended to accomplish by that means will be brought about." Elder Lemuel Potter
"The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God" (Psalm 10:4).
And thus with one stroke of His mighty pen God destroys the main thrust of popular religion; which is that Christians ought to get the gospel to the wicked so that they may have a chance to be "saved". If it were the primary purpose in a Christian's life to try to get the wicked to seek after God, then such a life would be a waste of time and energy seeing as how the wicked will not seek after Him. Nowhere in the Scriptures can such a thing be found as that it is the responsibility of Christians to get the wicked saved. So far were the apostles from seeking to get the gospel to the wicked that they prayed rather to be delivered from such characters (See Romans 15:31 & II Thess. 3:2).
Not one single epistle was ever written to unregenerate sinners. When Paul wrote "to all that be in Rome" he made it quite clear that the "all" he had under consideration were those who were "beloved of God" and who had been "called to be saints" and whose faith was "spoken of throughout the whole world" (See Romans 1:7,8). And so, likewise, in his other epistles, he addressed "the saints," "the brethren," "the church or churches," "the faithful in Christ Jesus," etc., etc.
Never were the instructions and admonitions of the epistles ever directed to the spiritually unborn. In II Cor. 2:15-16, Paul mentions the saved and the perishing and says, "To the one we are the savour of life unto life, and to the other the savour of death unto death." In other words, the gospel he preached was the savour of life unto life unto those who were spiritually alive, but the savour of death unto those who were spiritually dead. And it is still the same today. "The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God" (I Cor. 1:18). "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Cor. 2:14).
In view of the above, how would you like to have the job of trying to get the wicked to seek God? How thankful we should be that God has not laid such an impossible task upon us! He told John to feed His sheep and lambs (John 21:15-17). Nowhere did He ever tell John or anyone else to feed the goats. The goats (the non-elect) can't eat gospel food anyway!
---Elder Ralph Harris
