Oh, I see now. God really was out to call, to redeem and to save all the children in the world. But He needed a people to be His messengers, His witnesses. God would display Himself through His people as protector, deliverer, healer, provider and as a Father full of love, power, peace and kindness.

However, for God to display all of His blessings He would need a people willing to believe and obey Him. Otherwise there was no landing place for His extreme and benevolent provisions.
Seeing God via the faculty of faith, God required a people who would believe enough that He who is invisible, could save them from their visible threats and supply their tangible needs. They needed to taste, feel and experience realities beyond what their natural senses could detect, in order to accept what they could not see.

If they treated the True God in the manner that other men acted toward their gods, (the gods of their own imaginations formed by their perverted and self-centered desires) they could not possibly know Him or receive the benefits He offered.

The same issue remains today. God desires that men believe Him; as stated in Heb 11:6, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek him.

Our witness to the world has little to do with how much of the Bible we can preach. It has at its heart the demand and the invitation to believe the word and the character of the Father of life. With that as our principal truth His benefits will be our possessions and the sons and daughters of the earth will run to us crying, what must I do to be saved? Acts 16:30

How attractive is the man whose distinction is the fearless display of the big promises of the God he serves. How repulsive is one whose only distinction is his claim to know about a God who makes big promises.

A witness is one whose words and actions are indistinguishable.

O Lord, it was always Your intent for dominion in the earth to be the birthright and assignment of Your own sons and daughters. That they who bear Your image, carry Your glory and wear Your Name would propagate and permeate - overwhelmingly influence - the earth with the power of Your life. However, Your sons and daughters can only communicate Your presence to the degree in which they experience and carry it . . . the degree to which they bear Your image. Cause a ravenous hunger to know You as You are, to well up inside us.

'Till then, we're dabbling with tiddlywinks, parsing words and building temples. It yet remains true that unbelief is the one and sole reason we have so little apprehended or experienced the promises of God. Content with collecting sea shells on the shore, we've forfeited the vast ocean of His inheritance for us.

Could we but take the time we've spent studying, conferencing, meeting and talking to spend in whole-hearted pursuit of God's heart, should we absorb His word and ways and happily obey them, we'd surely be the living, breathing testaments to the unseen, extravagantly good God.