Limited Vision

    Since we have come to chapter 10, the conversion of Cornelius, in our Acts study at church, our pastor thought it would be a good time for a Bible wide overview of God's plan for the inclusion of the Gentiles with his chosen people, the Jews. This led to an explanation of reformed theology. In reformed theology, the church has replaced Israel as the recipient of God's promises, therefore the promises regarding land and territory are fulfilled spiritually, not literally. There are many genuine believers who hold this view and I know some of them personally. But I wondered as pastor preached if, since they don't believe God is faithful to his promises to Israel, do they believe he is faithful to his promises to us about salvation? The pastor said reformed theology agrees with eternal security. The problem is, at the time their beliefs were written into their creeds and confessions, Israel was not a nation. The Jews were scattered through many countries. From my research, the middle east at the time of the reformation was divvied up between France and England. Until oil was discovered, that part of the world was largely considered an ungoverned wasteland. Reformed theology was limited in its vision of prophecy by the history of the time in which it developed.

    And in my continued contemplation of the essence of salvation, I realized the same concept of limited vision may apply. We are limited because we only see salvation from human perspective.

If salvation was merely: 

•       a decision to trust Christ, changing our minds would end it
•       a commitment to follow Jesus, we could just stop following
•       a passion for the Lord, those feelings could fade away 

    Both our own salvation and that of our prodigals would be in jeopardy if it depended on those fallible human factors. But salvation from God's perspective is a spiritual reality that He provided, initiated, and completed. We are already citizens of heaven, though our vision is limited to things of the earth. One of the purposes of God giving us prophecy and its behind the scenes glimpses of God's plan, is to lift us from our limited earthly vision to the reality He sees. And if we do not believe that God is faithful to his keep his promises to us about salvation, we are the ones who need to reform our theology.