How Many Are Saved

God, goodness itself, is the reward of heaven, how many will accept God?

God rains on all like those stranded on the salty sea

rain doesn’t make drink.

turn up open mouth, .. crazy as it is, how many will not?

How many reject goodness itself for lesser ?

how many open their mouth?

Gospel Today, Jesus says path narrow, not wide and broad.

Like receiving the water before mingles with salt, it has to go thru the narrow path of your mouth

so many other ways fall.

So many ways act besides turning to heaven with your mouth open.

Matt 7:17 "few find it.”

Matt 22:14 “Many are invited (it rains on all), few are chosen (few open their mouth to water)”

Jesus not shy about talking of hell

Yet also “he will draw all men to himself”…in the fulness of time unite all things in himself

talks much about life and heaven and seems to do so more.

How interpret?

great multitude of a relative few who find salvation or is it many?

Saints and Church Fathers both sides. Scripture, Church teaching, reality of hell little about just who

says much about who is in heaven.

How many? How many drink in God.

to start answer must understand rain, and how diff it is from receiving

pours rain on salvation on everyone

from north south

Isaiah priests from the Gentiles/whole world

figuratively and literally calls all (symbolize Israel to whole)

falls on all, like truth (who is God) governs all.

God wills all to be saved 1 Tim 2:4

we must WANT all to be saved

God is absolute Benevolance

God wants salvation more fully than you could

Do you have agony over a child who departed from the faith, God wills it even more than you could.

just bc wants all saved doesnt mean they will

Its one thing to be rained on w/ salvation, another to accept it

many (all) are called few chosen.

Distinction between who calls and who accepts.

doesn’t force people to be saved but doesnt fail to invite.

if some not chosen, wrong to say its God to blame, for wills all

question of hell is how many willingly reject him, not how many he fails to reach (for he’ll reach all).

How many reject him?

An objective look at real life gives a grim answer

God is truth

don’t make Truth, only accept Truth

just like rain in the desert, the bone dry dehydrated cannot make rain, they can only receive it.

Do people drink in the truth or something else?

infinite ways go wrong

many and wide are the ways of error, few (indeed only 1) are the ways of truth

1+1=2

all places all time, only way change is change the meaning of those words (which doesnt really mean 1+1=2).

infinite ways to get 1+1 wrong only 1 way to get it right

Goes with all things

sure, we try our best when we don’t know, but the very point ‘trying best’ implies we think there is a best (that is correct) way and so we try to get as close to hitting that bullseye as possible.

Sin, after all, means missing the mark.

Sin after all, is an act against reason (not aiming at truth).

This goes with everything in life, so why would we suddenly think the moral or religious life any different?

If God is truth, infinite ways to get him wrong, only 1 way to get Him right.

not visual membership w/ Church

degrees of acceptance

about accepting what you know and seeking to know.

but not much water if only provides a trickle of the full truth

error more common than truth?

Does the world accept 1 set of morals, religion, goal in life

seem more interested something other than truth ‘makes me feel good’

we interested in dialogue to find truth?

even our sciences are only our best guesses based on study, and even there we are inclined to manipulate science if it doesn’t say what we want.

By appearance, this is the verdict, the Truth rained upon this world but most prefer something else to Truth.

Reality scarily implies, then, very few are saved,

or does it?

Conclusion

If one dies rejecting truth, mortal sin, one is doomed

but how much really is mortal sin/ deliberate rejection?

how much is us really not choosing to open our mouth

One hope is God went THIS far for those don’t know what they do

God can make the choice more obvious perhaps at death

but no room for presumption

dying of thirst at sea, don’t skip just b/c might get it later.

One thing sure: from the Lord’s constant and repeated statements: wants take danger seriously, but first and foremost would have us love Goodness (that is God) for goodness sake who is the reward of heaven.

Good itself, the True itself, the Beautiful itself (God) rains on us all in this salty ocean.

do not know how long it will. Weary and worn down though we might be, what is the madness that causes US not to lift up our mouth to drink?