In my earlier blog post, There are Good Unbelievers!, I may have unintentionally come across as downgrading or diminishing the importance of preaching the Gospel message. If so, I apologize.

While the Scriptures appear to show that God and Jesus are more lenient in their judgment of people who have never had a good opportunity to hear the Gospel, and that judgment is based on the light that a person has received, including the God-given conscience each one of us has, the Bible simultaneously declares the preaching work to be of the utmost importance and top priority.

The Apostle Paul seems to have the idea that people may not even be able to be saved without hearing the Gospel message:

Romans 10:13-15, 17 (ESV): For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? … So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Paul’s view seems to be in line with Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, which shows that there are appropriate time periods for different things, and God may handle things differently depending on the time period.

For example, Paul says:

Acts 17:30-31 (ESV): The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Romans 3:25-26 (ESV): whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Paul has the belief that in the past time periods (before Jesus arrived), God overlooked the sins of those ignorant people, but now, God may no longer be overlooking ignorance (at least in the 1st Century A.D. during the age when Jesus appeared and performed miracles, and empowered His Apostles to do signs and wonders).

Since it is up to God alone on determining the different times and seasons (Acts 1:7-8), we should place top priority and urgency upon the preaching of the Gospel, since it may indeed be the only way God is using to save people in certain time periods — maybe even today.

This doesn’t mean everyone has to preach and teach in the same method, manner, or style.

You can preach and teach in-person, by letter, by phone, through the Internet, or even just by how you live your life and shine the light of the love of Christ on your neighbors.