Bible Question:
There is a belief that there will be a point of no return in the end times. A time when those unbelievers will want to come to God and He will harden His heart. I thought this only referred to those took the mark of the beast. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? |
Bible Answer: I don't know that there is any basis for a date or time of no return. So far as I know, the blasphemy against the Spirit is explicitly given as the only example in Scripture of a point of no return. Since this is given as the only unpardonable sin, the most logical connection would probably be a point at which a person's (or a people's) arrogant resistance to God's conviction (or absolute embrace of evil) had become so complete that they were no longer open to God's input in any way. This was apparently the condition of the people in Noah's time (Genesis 6:5-8), as well as that of the nations whom the Israelites expelled. God waited 120 years during the time of Noah (Gen 6:3) and 400 years for the Israelites (Gen 15:13-21) to physically destroy the people around them -- until they had apparently reached a level, en masse, of embracing evil and resistance to God's Spirit that moved them beyond the point that even God's grace was willing to reach. |