Part IX: Conclusion

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

The attainment system and the sovereign grace system cannot both be true, because they locate the decisive act of salvation in different wills. The attainment system, for all its language of grace, finally rests eternity, and especially its gradations, on the performance of the creature within the boundaries of one organization. The sovereign grace believer rests eternity on the eternal covenant purpose of God the Father, the finished blood-work of God the Son, and the unassisted quickening power of God the Holy Spirit.

From that foundation flows the doctrine this document was written to substantiate: because the Spirit needs no visa, no printing press, no mission budget, and no denomination, the elect of God are found, and infallibly saved, among every people on earth, including, we have substantial reason to hope, some who lived and died outwardly within other religions, never hearing the name of the Redeemer who bought them, yet bearing in their hearts the marks of His inward work. Their number is known to God alone; this study has argued the reality of the class, not its census. They were not saved by those religions, nor by their sincerity, nor by general revelation, but by the same sovereign grace that saves an infant, a thief on a cross, and every reader of this page who has been given eyes to see. Not one of them will be missing when the great multitude which no man can number stands before the throne.

That is not a smaller gospel than the attainment system's. It is a far larger one. Larger in its reach, stricter in its ground, humbler in its posture, and impossible to franchise. "Salvation is of the LORD" (Jonah 2:9), a confession made, fittingly, by a runaway preacher who had just learned that God's mercy on Nineveh did not depend on the willingness of His messenger.