No Salvation Apart from Knowledge - Hargrave

Here's Dr. R.A. Hargrave again. I don't want to overdo him at the expense of others (I posted something of his only a week or so ago) but this is relevant to a personal experience I had very recently.

I was at a men's retreat a while ago for a couple of days. There was a lot of good stuff there under the general topic of "Counting the Cost". But I met an old fellow congregant of mine and got embroiled in some heavy conversation about the Word and the Spirit and how they work in both believers and unbelievers.

Part of that conversation was his belief that the Spirit can work quite apart from the Word in unbelievers. He cited Watchman Nee and how he supposedly ran across some people who didn't have Bibles but who were believers anyway. Apparently the Spirit had shown them Jesus without the Word.

A lot of us have heard similar stories - such as the tribe that had no contact with the civilized world, but when a missionary finally arrived the tribesmen announced that they knew the truth about God providing a Savior and had been waiting for someone to arrive and tell them His name.

Is such a thing possible for God? I suppose so, for nothing is impossible with Him. But is it the way we are told that He works? Is that the witness of the Old and New Testaments? Or did God make Himself known by the word preached? Was knowledge necessary for the apprehension of Christ? Knowledge such as Who He was, what He did and why? And does the Spirit work in any way other than to reveal Jesus Christ through the proclamation of His person and work?

Well in this short video Hargrave makes the point that "There is no salvation apart from knowledge." I happen to agree with him. And I think it's very dangerous to go down the road of believing that God saves people absent the means He has appointed to the task.

Hargrave's main thrust isn't exactly the same as mine. He is juxtaposing emotionalism and knowledge, whereas I'm juxtaposing numinous infusion and knowledge. But we're close enough.