It cannot save them. It would therefore seem that salvation depends on reaching the lost with the gospel. Even if it has been suppressed there is a natural awareness of God, and hence a point of contact between the believer and the nonbeliever, such that Christianity is a live option for the latter. A God is just in condemning those who have never heard the gospel in the full and formal sense. . . . This increases the motivation of missionary endeavor, for no one is innocent.
General revelation serves to explain the worldwide phenomenon of religion.
Its distortion by sin serves to explain the phenomenon of widely disparate religions. A harmony exists between general and special revelation. Because of the presence of general revelation, Christians can allow themselves to be instructed by non-Christians without feeling that they are sacrificing Christian truth.