Souls Brightened By Reading

"I beg and exhort with great humility that whoever receives this little book in his hands should both read it frequently himself and instil it into others, as well as giving it to them to read and transcribe. Thus a man may receive a double reward from the Lord as a result of his own progress and that of others. I mention this fact, because many people, and perhaps pious ones, want to keep their numerous books shining and beautifully bound; they keep them locked up in chests, so that they may not read them themselves or give them to others to read. They do not know that it is of no advantage to have books and not read them because of worldly hindrances. If a book is well covered and shining but not read, it does not make the soul bright; but one which is continually read, and because of the fact that it is often unrolled is not beautiful on the outside, makes a soul beautiful within." (Caesarius of Arles, Mary Magdeleine Mueller, trans., St. Caesarius: Sermons, Volume I [1-80] [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004], Sermon 2, pp. 24-25)

What are you doing with the knowledge you have?

"I hold that it is unworthy of any man who possesses knowledge to keep his knowledge to himself, and rejoice in his own enlightenment, without making any effort to bring others to share in his privileges. Justly did the four lepers at the gate of Samaria feel their conscience smite them: 'We do not well; this is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace.' [2 Kings 7:9] Had those to whom the light of Christianity was first given dealt so with our ancestors, we should still be lying in heathen darkness." (George Salmon, The Infallibility Of The Church [London, England: John Murray, 1914], 7)

Making Excuses For Neglecting Activities Like Evangelism And Apologetics

We often hear comments like the following offered as an alternative to doing something like evangelism or apologetic work:

"Just let Christ's light shine through you."

"Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary."

"People won't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

"You can't argue people into the kingdom."

Greg Koukl and a caller on his podcast recently made some good comments in response to such sentiments. Start listening at 30:12 here.

People aren't always persuaded by means of reason and evidence, but that is one of the means by which people are persuaded, it's a major means, it's superior to other means in some significant ways, and Christians have a standing obligation to frequently make use of it. For further discussion of such issues, see my post here on the significance of apologetics, including in converting people to Christianity. The post also discusses the significance of apologetics in contexts other than conversion. For some examples of the involvement of apologetics in converting people, see here and here.

When I hear the claim that you can't argue people into the kingdom, I respond by citing the example of Paul arguing people into the kingdom in Acts 19:8. The assertion that you can't argue people into the kingdom is ambiguous enough that it can be reconciled with a passage like Acts 19:8, if you interpret the phrase that you can't argue people into the kingdom in a certain way, but how many of the individuals making such comments have that sort of interpretation in mind? In my experience, it's commonplace for individuals who say that you can't argue people into the kingdom to have little or no involvement in the sort of work Paul did in Acts 19 and to show little or no interest in seeing others do that sort of work. If you're just making the point that we're dependent on the Holy Spirit in one or more ways when we try to persuade people, then what's the significance of making that point? How many people in the relevant contexts are unaware of that point or deny it? Jesus said that we can't do anything apart from him (John 15:5), that God provides us with food and clothing (Matthew 6:25-34), etc., but I don't see the people who keep saying that we can't argue anybody into the kingdom giving comparable attention to how we can't do housework without God's empowerment, can't work our jobs without him, can't pay our bills without him, etc. And they surely aren't as negligent about things like housework and paying bills as they are about apologetics. The same people who want to do little or nothing in apologetic contexts, waiting for the Holy Spirit to change people, don't take the same approach in other contexts, like the ones I just mentioned.

Part of what's going on is that people realize how much it will cost them, in terms of time, effort, reputation, relationships, and so forth, to do work like apologetics and evangelism. They don't want to pay that cost. They want a certain social standing, certain relationships, comforts, conveniences, and such that something like apologetics or evangelism would interfere with too much, at least if they did it beyond a low level. So, they're looking for excuses for their negligence. Another factor is a fear many people have of subjecting their beliefs to scrutiny. In some cases, people are dismissive of something like apologetics because of how poorly it's gone for them in the past. Instead of blaming the inadequacy of their past efforts, they act as though the problem is with apologetics in general. There are many Christians (and other people in contexts other than the ones I'm addressing here) who put forward far too little effort to persuade people about an issue, then act as if the problem must be that persuasion is too difficult or impossible. They stop after one or two rounds of a discussion, for example, as if we should expect disputes to easily be resolved after one or two (often token) efforts to resolve the controversy.

May The Lamb That Was Slain Receive The Reward Of His Suffering

"The Moravians were not the only missionaries inspired by Revelation 5, but probably the Moravians gave expression to the beauty of the missionary implications of this text better than anybody. And in the middle of the eighteenth century, they would get on their ships in North Germany to disappear forever out of their families' lives to peoples they had no idea whether they'd eat them or not, and as the ships pulled out from shore, they would lift their hands and say, 'May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of his suffering.' That comes straight out of Revelation 5:9. 'May the Lamb that was slain, in my ministry, receive the reward of his suffering. He was slain for them, and I'm going to go be the means by which he gets his reward for his suffering.' I cannot imagine a vision of life more precious than that. I mean, if you could wake up every morning and preach to yourself, 'I am the instrument in the hands of the grace of God by which the Lamb slain will receive the reward of his suffering.'" (John Piper, at 27:20 in the video here)

Creating A God Who Doesn't Exist

This is a much bigger problem than atheism in modern America, despite all the attention atheism gets among Evangelicals:

"We may be responding not to the real God but to what we wish God and life to be like. Indeed, if left to themselves our hearts will tend to create a God who doesn't exist." (Tim Keller, Prayer [New York, New York: Dutton, 2014], 62)

For some ideas about how to address the problem, see here for a brief summary and here for a lengthier discussion (including in the comments section of the thread). The thread here (again, including the comments section) on whether Christianity is a demonic deception makes some relevant points as well.

To boldly go where no one has gone before

My aim is to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named, so that I will not build on someone else's foundation (Rom 15:20 CSB).

I appreciate the apostle Paul's attitude about his ministry of missions, church-planting, evangelism, apologetics. He wants to go where no one has gone before with the gospel. He wants to go to those people who have never heard the good news. He wants to be the first in a mission field. The first to share the gospel with a people in a place that hasn't heard about Jesus. That's a noble desire.

I think what the apostle Paul said could be taken on as a kind of principle by other Christians too. Let's consider apologetics. Apologetics paving the road for evangelism or used in concert with evangelism. Of course, there are many commonly used arguments in defense of Christianity and/or in order to critique other worldviews. Nothing necessarily wrong with a Christian apologist using these bread and butter arguments.

However, it likewise would be a good idea for Christian apologists to develop novel arguments, develop novel approaches to old arguments, revitalize retired arguments, and so on. For example, Jason Engwer and Steve Hays have done significant apologetic work involving the occult. Another example is Tim and Lydia McGrew have revitalized the argument from undesigned coincidences. These are the sorts of thing I have in mind.

Of course, what those arguments might be could vary depending on where or when one is ministering. The apologist needs to know their audience, as it were. The apologist needs to be like "the Issacharites, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do" (1 Chron 12:32). Arguments involving science and religion might better suit a secular college student on a typical US campus. Arguments involving fulfilled messianic prophecies might better suit an orthodox Jewish friend. Arguments about Jesus' power over evil spirits might better suit Papua New Guineans. Arguments involving the historical Jesus might better suit Muslims. And there's tremendous room for creativity within these classes of arguments.

Point being, I guess I'm not really saying much in my already long-winded post, only that it's good to use commonly used apologetic arguments, but it's also good to push boundaries (within orthodoxy) in developing new arguments, honing old arguments, etc. We can advance the kingdom of God in terms of apologetics too, I think. At least, those promoting other worldivews don't usually stand still, neither should we.

"Is David Wood's mockery Christ-like?"

1. David Wood defends his satire of Muhammad and Islam (it looks like this was filmed before Wood's most recent "mockery" which involved the "desecration" of the Quran):

The above is an excerpt, but the complete video is here:

2. I left my own comments regarding Wood's latest "mockery" in Peter's previous post.

Early Distribution Of The Gospels

When issues surrounding the origins of the gospels are discussed, some important sources are often neglected. Some examples are Quadratus and his colleagues, who are mentioned in section 3:37 of Eusebius' Church History. Here's a portion of the passage, as found in Jeremy Schott's recent translation of Eusebius' work:

For indeed, many of the disciples at that time [late first and early second centuries] had their souls struck by the Divine Logos with a deep desire for philosophy, and first fulfilled the salvific command to distribute their property to the needy, and then went out on journeys to perform the work of evangelists, aspiring to proclaim the report of faith to those everywhere who had not heard it and to provide the written text of the Divine Gospels. Once they had established foundations of the faith in foreign places they appointed shepherds and selected others along with them to help in the husbandry of those who had just been herded together. They then went again to other lands and peoples with the grace and cooperation of God, since many miraculous works of the Divine Spirit were still being done through them at that time, and as a result, upon only an initial hearing whole crowds right down to a man eagerly accepted piety toward the demiurge of the universe into their souls. (The History Of The Church: A New Translation [Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2019], 162-63)

This passage brings up a series of important issues related to the origins of the gospels. I want to highlight some of them.

In a recent post, I discussed some contexts in early church history in which two or more gospels needed to be distinguished from one another, which implies that the purported authors of the documents were being named at that time. You can read the post just linked for further details. Two contexts are often discussed in which there was such a need to distinguish among the gospels by naming their authors. We often hear about the use of gospels in church services and their use in libraries. But the passage from Eusebius quoted above illustrates another context in which there would have been such a need to distinguish among the gospels. Evangelists and others distributing copies of two or more of the gospels would need to be able to distinguish among them (to avoid giving people two copies of the same one, to make it easier for the people receiving the gospels to distinguish among them, etc.).

Secondly, notice that Eusebius refers to this as a widespread practice. It wasn't just done by one or two individuals. And it wasn't just done in one or two places or a small geographical region.

Third, note that the gospels were being distributed somewhat rapidly and in contexts like conversion and the planting of churches. The gospels were being distributed by people who were traveling and had strong motivation to keep traveling further. Eusebius puts a lot of emphasis on how motivated they were, how widely they traveled, and how quickly they often were able to accomplish what they had set out to do (conversions "upon only an initial hearing"). They weren't just giving the gospels to people who had been faithful Christians for a long time, people a church hierarchy could in some relevant way control so as to make sure the gospels and information about them were only given to select individuals, etc. Inevitably, the people who received these gospels would have ranged across a spectrum: people who professed to be Christians, but weren't; people who were Christians, but gave the gospels to non-Christians to read; etc. In other words, this was a situation in which the gospels and information on them were being disseminated widely and without much control from a church hierarchy or some equivalent.

Fourth, the widespread agreement among later sources about matters like the dating, authorship, genre, and historicity of the gospels is all the more impressive in accordance with factors like the ones discussed above.

We don't have much reason I'm aware of to doubt the general historicity of what Eusebius is reporting. And we know he had documents from the relevant timeframe that we don't possess today, including an apology he attributes to a man named Quadratus (Church History, 4:3), regardless of whether he was the same Quadratus discussed above. And what Eusebius tells us meets the criterion of coherence. For example, what he reports helps make sense of why Papias was writing on issues surrounding the origins of the gospels around the time of Quadratus and was citing a man he refers to as "the elder", a first-century figure, discussing those subjects even earlier (Church History, 3:39). See my recent post cited above for more examples of early sources whose comments make more sense in light of what Eusebius tells us. See here regarding how widely the gospel of Matthew had already been disseminated during the relevant timeframe. And so on.

Even if we had some reason to doubt a significant portion of what Eusebius reported in the passage in question, the large majority of what I've said here stands. There would have been many evangelists and other relevant figures traveling in the late first and early second centuries who were doing the sort of work I've outlined above, as reflected in the gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, the Didache, etc. We know that some of the purposes for which the gospels were written were evangelism (John 20:31) and the instruction of Christians in the faith (Luke 1:1-4). (Notice the implications of the opening of Luke for other documents, like Mark, which is widely thought to be one of Luke's sources. Luke refers to the existence of "many" attempts at accounts like his, which makes more sense if there was widespread interest in such accounts rather than only a small amount of interest.) And sources other than Eusebius and Quadratus and his colleagues suggest that the gospels were being distributed widely early on. It's good to be able to fill in some blanks with historical names, like Quadratus, and historical reports, like what Eusebius relays. But even without such specifics, it would still be probable that things like what Eusebius reported were happening.

2020 Strikes Again...

2020 has reached epic meme status in our culture, and it’s affecting not just our secular world but even Christianity itself.  So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me too much that after spending a portion of this evening laying some careful groundwork in evangelizing a friend, that after we were finished with our conversation I would discover that Jerry Falwell, Jr. has taken an indefinite leave of absence from Liberty University. 

That’s not too unusual.  People take leaves of absences all the time and—

Wait, this was actually demanded of him by the board of trustees?  Why would they…. Oh.

Ooooooh.

Falwell posted a picture on his Instagram—a picture that I cannot repost here.  It’s not overly graphic from the world’s standards.  It would barely get a PG rating. But there’s just something distasteful enough about it that I wish I hadn’t seen it.  To provide the bare minimum explanation needed, it involved Falwell with his pants unzipped and open to show his underpants while he is standing next to a woman—who is not his wife—similarly dressed with unzipped pants.

Set aside, for the moment, the strict rules that Liberty University has for their students.  This is something that Falwell decided to publish of his own accord on his own Instagram account, thinking that it would not raise eyebrows that he is taking such a suggestive picture with a woman who, again, is not his wife.  While all of us are sinners and I can easily foresee Christians falling into bad behaviors, I cannot understand how someone of Falwell’s experience with the media could have possibly thought for even a second that this was a good idea.  Someone would almost literally have to be drunk to think tha—

What’s that?  Oh, Falwell called into a radio station and “explained” what the picture was, saying that the woman was pregnant and couldn’t snap her pants, so “in good fun” he decided to join her.  And while providing this explanation, he was slurring his words and speaking with all the mannerisms of someone three sheets to the wind.

So 2020 strikes again.  And this leaves me with the realization that a bunch of the groundwork I just laid in presenting the gospel to a friend may have been obliterated by this news story coming out.  Because one thing I’m sure of is that it will get shared to all the skeptics out there.

Now obviously Christianity is not a religion that is predicated on perfect people never sinning.  I’ve had to go through this in the past with other failures of high profile Christians, and certainly we will all have to do so anew in the future.  For all I know, it might even involve me falling in some future calamity.  There but for the grace of God go I.

But even knowing that intellectually, and knowing that this does provide an opportunity for us to point to Christ as the necessary sinlessly perfect sacrifice, I cannot deny that there is a lot about this that is disheartening.  Not because it involves Liberty University or Jerry Falwell, neither topic of which has much relevance to my own beliefs and, in fact, whom I’ve had many disagreements with before.  But rather it’s the fact of knowing that once again we are going to have to put up with the flaming slings and arrows of people who will be launching this at us again, and a large part of me just wants to throw in the towel and be done with it.  Let the flames cleanse the Earth.

But then I remember my friend.  And the groundwork that has been built.  The hope that Christ will use it to bring another soul to Himself.  And yes, maybe our next conversation is going to be uncomfortable, annoying, aggravating, and completely frustrating because I’m going to have to go through all the reasons why Jerry Falwell isn’t Christianity.  But maybe my friend will be saved because of that conversation.  Only God knows what will happen, and there’s no reason for me to give up when only God knows.

Not even 2020 can disobey the will of God.

Opportunities And Responsibilities In Evangelism

You can't say much about evangelism without discussing a lot of other topics as well. There's a lot of overlap, which is part of what makes addressing evangelism so difficult.

I can't be exhaustive. This is just a post, not a book. And there are some issues I'm undecided on or too hesitant to address here.

One of the factors we should take into account when deciding how to handle matters related to evangelism is the principle Paul discusses in Colossians 4:5. Start where you have the most opportunity, then work out from there. The large majority of professing Christians in places like the United States don't make much use of the opportunities they have, even where the conditions are most favorable.

The State Of The Culture

When we're doing work in apologetics, evangelism, politics, or some other context, it's important to be well informed about the state of the culture we're interacting with. I want to recommend some resources. I can't be exhaustive, and I won't be saying much about these sources. But you can search the Triablogue archives or my posts on Facebook, for example, to find further discussion of the significance of these sources and their findings. I won't always link the latest research. Some of these sources are ones I don't consult every year, and there's only so much that I've read from these sites.

The Pew Research Center publishes a lot of material on relevant subjects. Go here for an article on where Americans find meaning in life, for example. Among other results, they reported, "Overall, 20% of Americans say religion is the most meaningful aspect of their lives, second only to the share who say this about family (40%)."

Around this time every year, the Department of Labor publishes their annual research on how Americans spend their time. See here. I've been following their research for several years, and they've consistently found that the average American spends more than five hours a day on what they call leisure and sports and less than ten minutes a day on religious and spiritual activities. Here's one of many posts over the years in which I've discussed the implications of those findings.

Gallup has a lot of useful information. Here's a collection of resources on moral issues. The page here shows you how Americans' views on moral issues have changed over time. And here's an article that discusses why acceptance of polygamy has been growing.

There's been a major reduction in global poverty in recent decades. See here and here. That has major implications for how concerned we should be about poverty, how much attention we should give it, how much Christians should be focused on poverty in the local church and other contexts (e.g., financial giving), the proper size and role of government programs addressing poverty, etc. In my experience, the vast majority of people seem unaware of statistics like these or haven't thought much about the implications of them.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center does a lot of research on how much Americans know about civics issues. See here, for example. C-SPAN has commissioned polling related to the Supreme Court. Their 2018 poll was done at the time of Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. A majority of Americans couldn't name a single Supreme Court justice.

Some of these sites have a lot of data on religious issues. See, for example, here on Bible reading, here on how Americans view the Bible, and here regarding their views on issues related to Christmas. On global percentages for religious affiliation, see here. One important fact to note from the page I just cited and others at these web sites is that atheists make up such a small percentage of the population. We should keep that in mind when considering issues like how much of our apologetic effort should be directed toward atheism. Barna does a lot of research on Evangelicals in particular. Another site has an article on church attendance numbers.

How To Begin To Argue For Christianity

Christians who are involved in apologetics are often overly defensive and don't go on offense enough. They're familiar with some or all of the broad outlines of the evidence for Christianity, but don't know much about the details or how to prioritize them.

There are a lot of approaches that can be taken. Different ones are better in different circumstances, and we don't have to take only one approach toward a given individual. I want to recommend several approaches, among others that could be used, with links to relevant posts.

Just as there isn't any easy way to answer every objection to Christianity, there isn't any easy way to argue for the religion as a whole. The same is true of other worldviews. There is no easy way to answer every objection or argue for your beliefs as a whole if you're an atheist, Muslim, or Hindu. About a decade ago, this is how I began my contribution to an e-book written by a few of us on the Triablogue staff:

We live in a complicated universe. No worldview has an easy answer for every question. There are advantages to complexity, though. The depth of human relationships makes life more enjoyable in some ways, but more difficult in other ways. The complexities of language are an advantage in some contexts and a disadvantage in others. Life involves a lot of tradeoffs. One thing is gained at the expense of something else. Any belief system can be made to look bad by inordinately focusing on some elements of it while neglecting others. (The Infidel Delusion, 5)

Having said all of that, we need to make decisions about where to begin in a discussion with a non-Christian. I can't cover all of the ground here, but I want to recommend some resources.

If you're interacting with an atheist or agnostic, for example, you could appeal to philosophical and scientific arguments for God's existence. You could also appeal to video evidence for miracles, especially if you're interacting with somebody who claims that there is no such evidence or that such evidence would be significant to him. To make a case more specifically for Christianity, you should familiarize yourself with the reasoning behind the traditional Christian arguments for the religion and be prepared to provide an overview to others. See here. You can appeal to prophecy fulfillment based on common ground with the non-Christian, namely evidence from the modern world and evidence from the ancient world that non-Christians often accept. You can also argue for Jesus' resurrection from non-Christian sources, in the sense of either people who were non-Christians prior to seeing Jesus risen from the dead or people who remained non-Christians, but corroborated the resurrection to some extent.

Those are just several examples. You can find more in our archives. And we have a lot of material that can be used to go beyond the earliest steps in arguing for Christianity. See here, for example, on arguing for the superiority of the Christian system of miracles over competing systems.

A most unlikely revival

The following is from the foreword of Greg Beale's little book Redemptive Reversals and the Ironic Overturning of Human Wisdom:

Life From A Buried Seed

A couple of examples came to mind recently of people who bore unexpected fruit after their death:

"At a conference in Mildway in June 1876, Andrew Bonar met Constance Bullen, with whom [Robert] M'Cheyne had been well acquainted when eighteen years of age. His conversion then made little impression on her and neither did the poem which he dedicated to her at that time. Her attention was focused rather on worldly pleasures, and the sad Robert gave expression to his emotions in a poem: 'She chose the world.' She had preserved a lock of hair together with a verse of poetry that he had written for her. Her heart was touched, however, at the news of his death, and shortly afterwards she decided to follow the narrow way. Her former friend could not witness this experience; she was 'as one born out of due time,' Robert being merely instrumental in leading her to the Lord." (L.J. Van Valen, Constrained By His Love [Scotland: Christian Focus, 2002], 440)

"George Mueller, the British pastor who loved orphans and lived by faith in a most remarkable way, prayed daily for some people for fifty-two years. He never saw their conversion, but his biographer tells us that a couple of them were converted at his funeral…there are examples where prayer worked but the people praying didn't know it." (John Piper)

Think Christianity is dying?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/20/think-christianity-is-dying-no-christianity-is-shifting-dramatically/

3 Reasons Why Muslims Should Seriously Consider Christianity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9pR_BT_iDo

I won!

There's an odd quality to debates with unbelievers. They "succeed" in shielding themselves from Christianity. They put up enough barriers that they "succeed" in walling themselves off from the evidence. They "won". Christians failed to persuade them. 

But it's like someone diagnosed with curable cancer who convinces himself that homeopathic therapy is the way to go. His doctor futilely pleads with him to undergo conventional cancer therapy. But the patient thinks he "won" the argument. 

Yet it's not the doctor who has a personal stake in the outcome. He's not the one with cancer. 

The fate of the unevangelized

An exchange I had on Facebook, slightly edited. 

Hays 

The assumption of Scripture is that human beings are born lost. They come into the world in a lost condition. They don't have to do anything special, anything extra, to be in a lost condition. That's their default situation. The Gospel takes for granted that they are already lost. That's what they need to be rescued from, if they are not be rescued at all.

Caleb 

Sure. But the question is is there the opportunity for them to be rescued, if they've never heard of the solution?

Hays 

If they never hear and believe the Gospel, that's a way of saying the remain in the same condition into which they were born. Nothing changed to shift their original lost condition.

Caleb 

Yes, but should they not at least be given the chance to hear the message that will change their condition?

Hays 

Why? To be spiritually lost is not simply an innocent misfortune, but a preemptive punishment for sin and willful alienation from God? In Scripture, it's not as if they are lost through no fault of their own.

Caleb 

No, but their geographic location (which is relevant to whether or not they may hear the solution to their condition) is through no fault of their own. God decides where and when people are born.

Hays 

1. They're not lost because of their geographical location. Their geographical location simply keeps them in their lost condition. It's like If I'm bitten by a cobra and don't have access to antivenom, so I die. In a roundabout sense you could I died because I didn't receive antivenom, but I wouldn't need it in the first place unless I was dying from snakebite. Lack of antivenom is a secondary cause of death, but the primary cause is snakebite.

2. The fact that some people live and die outside the pale of the Gospel is God's preemptive judgement.

Caleb 

I agree that their geographical location does not condemn them. But a better analogy would be that you for bitten by snake, and God chose whether or not you'd be in a location where there is Anti-Venom. Shouldn't everyone get access to the Anti-Venom, and have it up to the people as to whether or not they will accept or reject that cure?

Hays 

No, because a person's moral condition can be a disqualifying factor. If a serial killer was bitten by a cobra, he's not entitled to antivenom. It's no injustice to let him die. Indeed, it's an injustice to let him live.

Caleb

But wouldn't the sense of humanity mean that everyone is a serial killer in the situation? It seems more plausible to say that either all killer should die, or that all of them should be given mercy. If all of the killer sins are the same, why would some be saved over others?

Hays 

1. If no one deserves to be saved, no one has a right to God's mercy, so it's not unjust for God to discriminate. Discrimination is only wrong in cases where two or more individuals have equal claims.

2. We need to resist the temptation of wanting too hard for something to be true just because we wish it was true, then creating a belief system because we want so hard for that to be the case. Like a teenage boy who's hopelessly in love with a girl who doesn't share his affection. He may convince himself that she's the only girl for him, he won't settle for anyone else, and he passes up realistic opportunities vainly pining for the unattainable.

3. Now, if we wanted to wax speculative, it's possible that God created a multiverse in which the lost/unreached in our world are evangelized/saved in parallel world. But that's just conjecture. Might be true but not something we can bank on.

Caleb 

That multiverse theory is basically Molinism

Hays 

1. Molinism has no monopoly on counterfactuals and possible worlds. Leibniz wasn't a Molinist. Counterfactuals and possible worlds fit into Calvinism, too. Molinism has a theory of middle knowledge, based on God's alleged insight into what nonexistent agents with libertarian freewill would do under various circumstances. The speculative scenario I floated doesn't have or require all those assumptions. It's entirely compatible with predestination.

2. Regarding what happens to the souls of babies:

i) We don't have any definitive revelation on that.

ii) It's possible that God saves everyone who dies below the age of reason. 

iii) That, however, is rather arbitrary. Salvation or damnation through lucky or unlucky timing.

iv) Why would Stalin be saved if he dies at 5 but not at 20–given how he was going to turn out?

What if he dies at 5, passes into the intermediate state, and matures into what he was going to be like at 20 if he hadn't died at 5?

v) I'm sure God saves some dying babies. On a positive note, in Scripture God has a special regard for orphans. And no one is more orphaned than a dying baby.

Slamming the door in the face of the unchurched

With tens of millions of Americans under house arrest, this would be an ideal time for unchurched Americans who are bored out of their wits to check out a church. Unfortunately, most of them will find locked church doors. One of the great, unrepeatable lost opportunities in Christian history to reach out to the unsaved. 

Livestream services are fine as a complement to public worship, but livestream services cater to church members, not the unchurched. 

Christians risked their lives to save others

"How Early Christians Saved Lives and Spread the Gospel During Roman Plagues" (Tyler O'Neil)