Universal Opportunity Before Death: All people are given opportunity to be saved by God sending the gospel or at the moment of death or some middle knowledge.

Inclusivism: The unevangelized (those who do not hear the gospel) may be saved if they respond in faith to God based on the revelation they have.

Divine Perseverance or Postmortem Evangelism: The unevangelized  receive an opportunity to believe in Jesus after death.

Universalisim: All people will in fact be saved by Jesus. No one is damned forever.

There are some here that I will not tackle only because they are far enough off my understanding of Scripture that I will not take the time to include them in the discussion. For example, while “divine perseverance” is part of the discussion in sanctification, the idea here of individuals getting a chance to believe in Jesus after death does not have biblical support, in my thinking. Second, I am not supportive of universalism because I do not believe the Scriptures support this idea at all. Universal opportunity before death is interesting and has some attraction to it but can be folded into the other discussion.

One area of tension between inclusivism and restrictivism is in addressing those who never hear the gospel. This raises all kinds of questions: If getting saved is only for those who place faith in Christ what happens to all those who never hear the gospel?  What about Old Testament saints who have never had a chance to believe in Jesus? What about infants who die? What about those who mental challenges that are unable to process the message?  People write books about this so our space is limited but we will try and address some basic things.

Over the next couple of weeks I will try and give some perspective of how this impacts the way we see our role in God’s economy and or how we share Christ.