January 2004

Dear Ministry Partner,

Is God fair to everyone? Does everyone truly have a chance for salvation? What about the "ones who never hear about the Gospel" in remote parts of the earth? And why isn’t there salvation for fallen angels? Can it be understood?

First of all, when Adam and Eve sinned, God did not owe them anything. He had warned them that in the day they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would die. That tree was their only real choice of sin. They owned everything on the earth at that point, so they couldn’t steal, and there was no one else around to covet their possessions, or to lie to. There was no one else to commit adultery with, and they surely had no real temptation to murder — because who else would they marry? So eating of that tree was their only real knowledge of a viable choice between good versus evil (or sin). It could have been called "the tree of conscious choice between obedience and sin." That tree did not impart real knowledge as Satan implied, except for the knowledge of the consequences of sin. You know the story, they yielded to disobedience and ate. They did die that day — a very real spiritual death. Death is separation. And their spirits that day were separated from God — the source of life — and therefore their physical bodies started dying from that point on. Because of their perfect environment, and God’s wonderful design of the human body, it took a long time to finally expire. But no one is self-sufficient and without need for God’s involvement.

At the point Adam and Eve sinned, God could have just ground them back into the dust of the earth from whence they came, and forgotten about the whole human experiment. But God had a purpose for creating mankind. God has always created His beings with a totally free will. If you were God, you would get really bored with created robots after a few hundred years! And if you were as powerful and intelligent as God, you would not feel insecure or threatened by creating beings with a free will. In fact, creating everything with a free will is really the only fair way to run things. And the dynamics of everyone with a free will — as complicated as that is — would be the only challenge of sufficient complexity to truly keep God interested!

God originally created beings we call angels. It appears from scripture that God organized them under three arch-angels — Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. These are the only three angels who are really named in scripture. The rest of the angels appear to have been divided into thirds under these three arch-angels (Rev. 12:4). After all, it was God who inspired 1st Cor. 14:40, "Let all things be done decently and in order." Lucifer appears to have been in charge of the worship of God. He eventually became selfish and prideful, knew he had a free will, and rebelled against God (Ezek. 28:12-19, Isa. 14:12-17). But even worse, he worked to persuade the other angels to rebel also. After a long period of using subtle methods of planting the idea (like Absalom under King David in 2nd Sam. 15:1-6), he knew he had his subordinates (one-third of the angels) under his sway. Lucifer evidently miscalculated that he could get at least one of the other two arch-angels to side with him in the "brave new world" which Lucifer was going to run — where everyone would be unconstrained by obedience to God (sounds close to home doesn’t it?). Thankfully, wisdom and obedience once again prevailed (as they always do in the long run) with Michael and Gabriel refusing to participate in the rebellion. Thus Lucifer and his followers were cast out of Heaven and confined to the earth. Even though these angels had sinned, they had no invisible being to tempt or deceive them. They had lived with God in Heaven, and knew fully what they were doing with an enormous amount of time for mature thinking and fore-thought. So there was no salvation plan provided for them by God. What they sowed, they would reap.

But God is never defeated or at a loss. How would He replace the worshiping angels of Heaven? He could just create an equal number and command them to worship Him — or else they could end up cast out like the last bunch. No, that would be forced worship — hollow and artificial. God could avoid taking a risk at creating more beings with a free will, and create worshiping robots — but that would not be real worship. If God had real faith and ability, He could create a race of beings right on earth in the midst of Lucifer, now called Satan (which means adversary). This race of mankind would be given a totally free will like the other beings, but made even more in God’s image than the angels — someone He could even fellowship with. But with an older and wiser tempter already present on earth, God fore-knew man would disobey and sin. But in His love, grace, and mercy, God would already have a plan in mind to offer redemption, forgiveness, and salvation (Rev. 13:8). It had to be a plan so giving and self-less that Satan would not fully anticipate how it would work and what all it would accomplish (Eph.3:9-11). But by being rescued from the very real Lake of Fire which rebellious mankind deserved, those men and women who did repent of their evil ways and were saved — would truly worship God in Heaven from a heart of eternal gratitude! And given the fullness of time, there would be enough of mankind saved to replenish the ranks of the missing worshiping angels of Heaven. Certainly not all of mankind would repent, perhaps not even a third. But with the passage of time, enough souls would be saved to equal the number of angels who rebelled (perhaps two or three billion?). God would not end up at a loss, and He would not have reacted in fear or anger. His mercy and grace would be apparent to all the other angels, inspiring them to eternal loyalty also.

But what about the sinners who did not repent? God does not owe them anything. It is a testimony to His grace and mercy that He gives sinners even 70 or 80 years on earth to continually reject His offer of forgiveness. God created in every person’s heart the awareness of God, and a conscience to convict them of right and wrong (Rom. 1:18-32). He has plainly warned of His coming judgement in the heart of every person no matter where they live. Every person has had the opportunity to cry out to God in repentance and ask for the forgiveness which He has offered. But statistics show that the vast majority of mankind reject God, ignore conviction, and cling to their unbelief, sin, and carnality. Only a "remnant" repent. Jesus said narrow is the way to life and few who find it, but broad is the way that leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13-14).

However, if a person is repentant and wants to be saved — God can get salvation to a person like that. God certainly prefers to send laborers to share the Good News, because of the many benefits of personal contact and discipleship. But He can work supernaturally also. As an example, I recently received an email from Reza Safa, author of Inside Islam, who is based in Tulsa and ministers to Iranians. His wife Ellie just reported that their phone rang. She answered, and an Iranian man named Firouz in Ahwaz, Iran, was on the phone. He said this number was on his cell phone as a missed call, and he wanted to know who he had just returned the call to. Ellie explained they had not called him, but he had reached a ministry to Iranians based in the USA. Firouz was amazed, and was desperate, and immediately prayed to accept Jesus. Six others in his family got saved over the phone including his mother who said, "We were very poor, we had to move to another town, and we were desperate. I prayed and that night I had a dream of Jesus crucified on the cross. I fell on His feet and cried. The following morning when I got up, inside of me I didn’t feel poor any more and since then our lives are much better!" She also said her brother had several dreams about this Jesus.

The problem on earth is not that there are lots of people who are living right and want to be saved but don’t know how. The problem is there are so many people who are not living right and don’t want to be saved. I remember one time Judi and I were passing out Gospel tracts on a college campus, and I gave a tract to a young man. He looked at it and said, "What’s this?" I said, "It tells you how to get to Heaven!" He looked me right in the eye, said "I don’t want to go to Heaven", then he dropped the tract and walked off. But Judi and I have been responsible for distributing over 40,000 tracts. If we sow enough seed, we can reap a large harvest. People can be persuaded to repent. But we need to do the work of God while it is still day. For "the night cometh when no man can work." (John 9:4).

Working while we can,

Dale & Judi Leander