You know we both agree on this! :-)
It would not rock my theology if God allowed Christ to present Himself at the point of death to ‘pickininnies’ in Africa or Observant Jews at their point of death. I wouldn’t make that a doctrine, just a statement of ONE way God could match the above Scripture with NO MAN COMES TO THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH CHRIST.
I believe it was Origen who first theorized about this. It's one of those things we just don't know, but we do know God is just and merciful.
It is not wise to pretend we can package God in tiny tidy little boxes.
I agree.
I was only getting at the distinction between the pre-Trib and Trib periods. Often Dispensationalists are accused of believing there are different paths to salvation running concurrently.
TRUE.
I think Scripture is mostly imprecise on that issue.
We can pontificate quite logically until Jesus Comes—which looks to be not far off.
We know that all the Scriptures about Salvation are absolutely true.
We don’t know well and certainly not precisely how God will balance out HIS Scriptures on predestination and choice.
Thankfully, that’s HIS job.
I think one of my points on such scores is
that . . . finite theologically arrogant humans tend to PRESUME
that their individual understandings of
PRECISELY HOW
God will work out His Scriptural truths on a variety of things
. . . . when throughout Scripture,
God persistently cut cattywumpus across all such sensibilities and STILL fulfilled HIS WORD to the letter.
God is NOT,
NEVER has been,
NEVER will be
limited by our finite understandings of even HIS WORD.
He certainly has plenty of surprises in store for satan in the END TIMES.
And, clearly for Israel and The Church, too.