Can God, Would God, Will God Save Without One Knowing Christ?
"Here is another thing that used to puzzle me. Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know him can be saved through Him. But in the meantime, if you are worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is remain outside yourself. Christians are Christ's body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to the body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them." C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.
"For he that illuminates inwardly by giving men the Holy Spirit, the same one, by way of commandment, said unto his disciples, 'Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to the whole creation' (Mark 16:15). And so in Philippi, Paul preached the Word outwardly to Lydia, a seller of purple goods; but the Lord inwardly opened the woman's heart (Acts 16:14). And the same Paul, after a beautiful development of his thought, in Rom. 10:17 at length comes to the conclusion, 'So faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of God by the preaching of Christ'.
"At the same time we recognize that God can illuminate who and when he will, even without the external ministry, for that is in his power: but we speak of the usual way of instructing men, delivered unto us from God, both by commandment and examples." The Second Helvetic Confession, secs. 5.006 and 5.007.
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