Objection 4

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

If people can be saved without hearing, evangelism is pointless and the Great Commission is nonsense. Your doctrine kills missions.

Answer. This objection assumes the only reason to preach is to rescue souls from a hell they will otherwise enter by default. But Scripture gives richer motives: obedience to Christ's command; the feeding of His sheep; the comfort of His people (Isaiah 40:1); the gathering of the regenerate into churches; the honor of proclaiming the King. A doctor is not "pointless" because he does not create life; he nourishes it. Notice too the pastoral fruit of each system. The conditionalist missionary carries an impossible burden, every soul he fails to reach is, on his theology, damned partly by his failure, a crushing weight Scripture never lays on any man, and one that historically produced the money-driven machinery, and the abuses that have periodically accompanied it, which grace-centered churches have historically protested. The sovereign grace believer preaches in liberty, knowing "the Lord knoweth them that are his" (2 Timothy 2:19) and that not one elect vessel will be lost to a missed boat or an underfunded budget. God sent Philip to a eunuch already seeking; He sent Peter to a Cornelius already praying; He will infallibly bring word and Spirit together wherever He pleases, and where He does not send the word, His Spirit is not thereby unemployed.