Theology Dictates How We Search for the Elect among Unbelievers

My obligation is not to the non-elect. They are unbelievers and they will remain so. Yet, we have a call to go make disciples of all nations. What does this look like, or better yet, what do we use to find the elect who will become disciples?

If one approaches the subject with a Pelagian/Semi-Pelagian outlook, then there are a variety of means one might use to find them: general kindness through giving physical resources, emotional stories that heighten their sentimentality toward Christianity, endearing/enticing music, great displays of miracles, a general niceness all around, etc.

The Bible, however, tells us that none of these are effective because fallen humanity is dead in sin. Neither miracles nor niceness is able to wake the sinner from his self-worshiping slumber. Instead, we are told that the Father must draw him to the Son through teaching (John 6), but what is this teaching? We are told that faith comes by means of hearing and that an obedient hearing is given to the elect individual through the message of God, i.e., the gospel.

The gospel and the command to follow Jesus through it is what wakes the dead. To throw physical gifts, smiles, music, stories, etc. at them in the hopes that this will wake them is futile. We are just adorning their graves and making sport of their funeral.

I believe, therefore, that Christians should have a love for the elect, i.e., future Christians, by not concentrating on putting all of that other garbage in the way, and immediately give them what they need to rise from the grave, i.e., the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If it is the gospel that wakes men from the dead and nothing else, then it doesn't need help. Indeed, everything else is just a distraction, and a costly one at that, both in terms of time and money. It's almost the devil's greatest scheme to keep the gospel from clearly being spoken to the world. The church is so concerned about its various methods of converting unbelievers that it runs around trying to make ineffectual means effectual. What it ends up doing, however, is creating false believers, since all of these things do, in fact, attract the dead. They just don't wake the dead to life.

I would argue, therefore, that love demands that we no longer seek to convert the elect unbelievers with any other means but the gospel itself, throwing off all other types of peddling Christianity to people. I don't need a party if I'm dead. I need God's Spirit given to me through the preaching of the good news.