It's interesting when someone asks a simple Bible question, and the answer can be so involved. How about this one; "Is everyone 'drawn' by the Holy Spirit, or only some?" You can't shoehorn God and all that He is into a box to satisfy what you expect of him. That's how some cults have gotten started. There's an element of mystery about God, and you have to accept that when you believe in Him. All of our questions aren't going to be answered this side of eternity. Okay I'll get back to the question.

The issue here is the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. God is sovereign, no ifs and or buts. Man has responsibilities. Man is obligated to have a response to God, whether man wishes to acknowledge that fact or not. Hell wasn't created for God's "rejects." Hell is the place made for demons, but those who reject God's offer of salvation in Jesus Christ, those who've rebelled against Him, will go there too.

There are those people who say that God has foreknowledge and that He knows who will choose Him and who won't. They say that God peered down through the corridors of time and saw who would trust Him, and then selected those people for salvation. That minimizes God's sovereignty. It would mean that man was the first cause of salvation, not God, and that just doesn't jibe with Scripture. The Bible says in Romans 3:11 "There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God."

If God looked down the corridors of time in light of that verse, He would see no one seeking Him. God would only choose those who first chose Him, and that wouldn't be happening without Him. We're told that we love because He first loved us in John 4:19, and I think that's true of faith too. We have faith because He gives it to us.

God is the first cause of our salvation. That is an inescapably wonderful premise that should blast us with waves of comfort and hope, and I believe the message of the gospel is offered to everyone. Nobody is left out, and the gospel message is simple. Jesus died for our sins on the Cross. He rose from the dead and if we believe in Him we can have eternal life. If you're telling a gospel message that a child can't understand, you're giving a false gospel. If you're giving a gospel that a mentally retarded person can't understand, you're giving a false gospel.

The gospel is for everybody. It is simple. People who've never read the Bible get saved. People sho've never heard of God see what He has made and make a connection with Him. His hand is at work in all of this. The choice to accept Him and love Him in return or not is up to the individual.