re: Ex-SBC president allegedly sexually assaulted pastor’s wife, asked for sex 3 times a day

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Why are you focusing on all the people who saw and didn't believe, and ignoring all the people who saw and believe?

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Because your comment about God walking and talking with people to provide an evidence that would convince more people to believe and avoid Hell is based on a faulty presupposition: that all it takes for someone to believe is to be in the presence of God (incredible supernatural evidence). Cain was in the presence of God and yet he is held up as an example of an enemy of God. The people of Israel heard God and saw His power first-hand, and they were still mired in unbelief in His promises. The Pharisees saw the powerful acts of Jesus and still rejected Him as God. Satan and his angels were created by God and saw His glory, and yet they still fell in rebellion. Clearly, seeing is not believing.

So to answer your question about those that did believe: they believed because God opened their spiritual eyes and ears to see and hear the truth and accept it as true. God gave them the faith to receive His promises that they would have otherwise rejected if God did not intervene in that way.

In John 10, Jesus said that His sheep (His chosen people) hear His voice and they follow Him. They are not His sheep because they hear His voice; they hear His voice because they are His sheep. Jesus said to those who didn't believe that their unbelief was due to them not belonging to Him as His sheep. It wasn't that their unbelief caused them to not be His sheep, but that they were not His sheep which resulted in their unbelief.

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No, my analogy addresses our guilt. I said we were created in a pool, drowning (dying of sin) immediately upon our creation. There's no chance to be innocent. There's no chance to be anything other than guilty.

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The reason why I said your analogy assumes we are innocent is because of your complaint. If we are all guilty (we are), then we have no basis to complain about only 1-2% of people being given the flotation device while the rest don't, because not even the 1-2% deserve to be singled out for salvation.

It was once said that we are not sinners because of our sin, but we sin because we are sinners. We are born with a fallen, sinful nature that directs our desires (wills), where we desire to sin and disobey God. We naturally desire to be selfish and to seek to honor ourselves before we honor God (if we desire to honor God at all). And even before we know what we're doing (sin doesn't require full knowledge of what you're doing), we are guilty by our federal head or representative, Adam.

So yes, we are all conceived in guilt and iniquity and no one deserves the flotation device.

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That's my analogy in a nutshell. The difference here is that the pardoning judge is off hiding in some bushes, not stopping in each prison cell explaining everything. All you have to go off of is some writings prison guards wrote thousands of years ago to inform you of this.

Again, it's no wonder this system produces such shitty pardon rates.

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Like I said previously, your presupposition in a free and unhindered will that will always result in saving faith as long as sufficient information is provided is not accurate. The "pardon rates" aren't "bad" because of the method or the inability of God, but because that is how God planned it to be. The rates are low on purpose, because God wanted to show mercy in saving some while glorifying in His justice by not saving the rest. And since no one deserves that salvation in the first place, God is not a monster by choosing to not save someone any more than a king or supreme leader is not a monster by not emptying out the prisons with pardons.

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My description modified creation to be describing our creation here on Earth, guilty of sin. Your spirit could be made in Heaven, and before it gets shoved into a body God could ask you if you really want to run the 98%/2% gauntlet.

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Thank you for the clarification, but that's not theologically sound (we aren't souls created in Heaven or anywhere else, just waiting for our bodies). Even so, I answered your question anyway. That sounds more like Platonism.

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Yep and that's just another problem with your belief system.

You're created without your consent, already being guilty of sin despite not even taking your first breath, and must navigate this insane world, find the right ancient text, trust that it's true, and follow its instructions before you die.

It's almost as if he's trying to make the odds extremely small to get to Heaven.

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Again your presuppositions betray you. You are presupposing that we all have the ability to be saved (to save ourselves, essentially) and therefore God has the obligation to at least offer everyone the chance to be saved. We cannot save ourselves and even our faith is a gift from God, given out of mercy to save some from a punishment that they already deserve.

Yes, the salvation rate is small on purpose. If God wanted it to be high, He could have done that. It's not a matter of odds, though, because that makes it seem like anyone could be saved as long as certain conditions were favorable for them. That's why I pointed out that even under the most ideal situations and conditions to be saved as described in the Bible, there were still many (most, actually) people who were not saved. It isn't a matter of intellectual assent, or evidence-based persuasion, but a moral issue based on our fallen nature and our desire to be gods over our own lives. It is the work of God alone that makes us willing and able to believe His promises of salvation, and since it is God's work in us, His work never fails, and therefore the salvation rate is purposefully low.