And for some Humor...
- Thread starter Concordia
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Delance
Victory, you say?
For some Christian denominations, yes. They believe (if I understood correctly) that, since all man are really not good enough to deserve salvation, it doesn't matter if they are evil or good. That is not the only position and other Christians believe in a different interpretation of the Bible.
Some also say that, once you are saved, even if just formally, you cannot lose your salvation, regardless of what evil and sinful acts you commit. Against, this is not the "Christian position". It's the interpretation that some Christians have of the scriptures. As far as I know, it's minoritary, although Preacher thinks its majoritary. I know that some of the major Christians Churches (Roman Catholic, Anglicans, Orthodox) do believe in a different interpretations.
When it comes to exegesis, a serious science, I think the majority of the theologians have the same interpretation I mentioned. That doesn't mean they are automatically right or wrong, just that there are more than one interpretation of the Bible.
As you have noticed, that's what I've been asking here.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Sure, right, whatever. And then Preacher comes up and says something like...
So, Preacher, give me one good reason why I shouldn't close this thread right now. I have warned you before, after all.
You haven't been paying attention when Preacher explained how Christians squirm out of that argument
. You see, apparently, if you're a Christian and do something so bad that you shouldn't go to Heaven, then you were never really a Christian. In other words, if you're a Christian:a) you're automatically saved. Therefore,
b) your actions don't matter. You're saved whatever you do. However,
c) if you do something really, really bad, then clearly, you were never really a Christian. So conditions (a) and (b) are invalidated, and you go to Hell.
You gotta love logic
.
Wedge009
Rogue Leader
No, Christians face judgement from God too, they just have Jesus as their chosen representative/replacement. People who have put their faith in Christ, but then have turned away during their lifetime (and are unrepentant), well, I believe the Bible states they are worse off than before they knew Christ.
Yes, they can be saved too, but they must make their choice before they die, ie before judgement. And yes, there is a point for judgement - Hell is the punishment rendered if found guilty. And beware of the stereotypes of Heaven and Hell. Hell is not where the 'cool' people go, Hell is total separation from God, Hell is eternal pain, eternal loneliness, everything bad we can possibly imagine and worse... for eternity. Separation from God is so bad that even for a short time, Jesus could hardly bare it, crying out "Father, why have you forsaken me?"
The people of the Old Testament time had the Law and the Prophets to live by.
I only say what I have learned from the Bible, and Bible-based teaching.
That's an interesting view, and it would help explain difficult cases like "What happens to unborn children?" I cannot speak for God and how he would choose to be merciful. The central point is that in his sacrifice of Jesus, he committed the ultimate act of justice and the ultimate act of mercy - simultaneously!
Are we talking about grievances between people here? People will always be in conflict, even Christians. Even Paul and Peter (I think that's them) had violent disagreements, but their disagreement meant that there were two evangelistic missions instead of one! Anyway, I think my point is that God will take care of everything in the final day.
I don't know about the "not being Christian anyway if you wind up like Hitler" view, but there are several warnings (like Hebrews 6) against 'falling away'. I agree with the point on "hope until death".
Indeed! I stayed out at first because I thought it might wind up as another thread war (and also because I'm very busy!), but this proves that CIC CZers can be civilised. Sometimes, anyway.
And forget about those "prophets of Doom". "The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night." ie No one will know when the last day will be, but it will surely come!
And there are Christians today who have done some very bad things. One should realise that not all people who label themselves Christians have necessarily committed their lives to Chirst. A true Christian should not commit acts of brutality, but if they have - whether accidentally or deliberate - they should be fully repentant.
The definite thing is that without Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you cannot be assured of salvation. And this goes with the last paragraph too, someone who takes Jesus as their Saviour, but not as their Lord (ie living as he commands) is making a very big mistake.
Yes.
Everything and everyone.
Yes again. And "paradise" is perhaps a misnomer. It will be a perfect world, where people will live as they were always meant to live. To work and play in harmony with each other and with God.
I called Jesus a "Get out of jail free" card as a gross simplification. He still deserves our utmost respect and devotion.
No, no, no. The correct wording is "You shall not murder". Which is a subset of killing. God commanded and guided Israelite armies in war. And the way the world was designed was that people would rule animals while God would rule mankind. Of course we have twisted this original plan and turned it upside down. We try to rule God and in turn, we are ruled by animals, in a sense at least (predators, venomous creatures, etc).
But that's beside the main point. Living solely by the Ten Commandments is a mistake. It's not like you can put a tick next to each Commandment as you go along on and say you're righteous if you can tick all ten. I believe the Commandments are a general guideline. For example, we are to honour our parents, but what happens if we have corrupt and abusive parents? We should live by the God's word (ie the Bible) as a whole.
Also, we do need to confess our sins to God, but not necessarily in a formal way such as the way I believe Catholics do. If it makes you feel better to do it that way, but it's not necessary - we can confess our sins directly to God through Christ.
Not propaganda. Gross simplification.
The key here is that Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship with God. Being a 'member' of Christianity does not make you saved - committing your life to Christ does.
Sorry for the long post, but one more point I should make is that being a Christian (a follower of Christ) is not easy. It is a lifelong commitment, and we are continually persecuted and will face many hardships. But Christians will be rewarded for their perseverance, and never forget that the alternative to following Christ is infinitely worse.
I hope everyone can see that I have tried not to be arrogant, over-bearing, self-righteous, stuck-up or whatever in making these posts, but have tried to inform in a loving and caring manner.
[These posts came up after I posted initially]
What did he do wrong? I thought we were having a good discussion here.
No! This is a wrong view to take. Read what I've said above. Baptism is only a badge, a symbolic gesture to say you commit yourself to Christ. It is not necessary. Neither is Communion. The Lord's Supper is only a practice to remind ourselves of the new covenant God made with humanity through Jesus.
Preacher
Swabbie
Banned
Figure of speech. The lesson to take away here is this: If He so painstakingly set out to make His plan clear, which He did, it only makes sense that any such mercy would be little compared to the mercy He had in setting up such a comprehensive plan in the first place. That's where the vastness of His mercy comes in - in the plan itSELF. If He went and then overrode Himself by showing the blanket mercy that some people seem to think He will, it would violate His character. There can be no mercy without there also being judgement, and many seem to think He's a God of love ONLY - this is just plain stupid and contradictory. Not to mention dangerous for those who fall into such ways of thinking.
"Statistic"?... I gave no such thing - notice I didn't give a number. That was intentional; no one can guess at what the number would be, but Scripture makes it plain that it will be "few" ("narrow is the road, and few there be that find it"). Fact is, Scripture itself doesn't (AFAIK) admit that there'll even be ANY exceptions to "the Plan". I'm just (as Mom said) tryin' to leave some room for the mercy of God.
What's "impossible" is for us to know what small number of exceptions there might be. As to Scripture itself, as I said, it makes room for none, from everything I've read & heard preached over the years, and thus, I'd hafta say that, acc. to the Word, yeah, it'd be "impossible".
OK, I guess I misunderstood your use of the term "formal/formally". Now it appears more clear to me what you meant.
That said, let me address what you say above: Someone "raised like a Christian" don't mean squat. The issue is, IS the person really a Christian?... If so, your argument becomes invalid, in that someone who really IS a Christian will not go out and butcher people, etc., and if they do, yo uhave legitimate cause to question the reality of their "faith" (see my previous posts for the 'why' of this dynamic).
And no, I haven't seen "Dogma"
Right, no matter what he did, so long as he later came to repent of his sins before God while he still was sucking air down here.
I already answered the question about judgment day a post or two ago.
And yes, "if you believe" is the condition. Of course, it needs to be said that 'believing' here means believing not just with your mind (pretty much everyone here in the US can say that much - at least acc. to the polls) but with your HEART!...
Confess yer sins, yes, but to *God*. It's OK if you feel like confessing them to another person (esp. if you've sinned against THEM), or a priest, but most important is to confess them to God. As for the 10 Cs, they also are a good guideline, but living by them *alone*, and a couple of quarters (without faith in Christ), will only buy you a small cup of coffee on the train to hell.
You understand correctly, and no, unfortunately, that's not the only position, but it should be. The Word couldn't possibly make it any clearer, but man is a stubborn, stiff-necked beast, so slow to believe and quick to be decieved. Oh, well...
Methinks you misunderstand the position you are trying to paint (which could also explain why you say "...As far as I know, it's minoritary, although Preacher thinks its majoritary"). Here's the deal: If you truly believe (That is, IN YOUR HEART), you then *have* your salvation and, yes, can never lose it.
It comes down, though, to whether you ever HAD it in the first place. If you "get saved" at 21, and then go on to live a lifestyle of drink, drugs, debauchery, rape, and murder till you die at age 50, your life has shown your faith to be a lie; you have decieved yourself. If, on the other hand, you merely continue to sin, then that is normal, in itself. See, the deal is, we are never fully free from sin while down here. What marks the true Christian (and I said it before, but I'll gladly say it again) is that his life will show a continuous pattern of improvement and maturity as he goes thru those years from 21-50. He will have occasional bouts of sinful behavior from time to time, but the overall pattern of his life is marked by a continuing maturity in behavior, conduct, and thought. If you were to plot it on a graph, you'd see a curve which is overall going "up" over time. Sure, there'd be a few plateus, and even a few dips or downturns, but the overall net vector of the course plotted would be an upward curve. Even Paul himself said that he did not count himself to have "arrived yet" (Meaning even then, towards the end of his life, he realized he still had some maturing to do and had not achieved sinless perfection). It's like the old saying goes "I'm not the Christian person I should be (meaning, "yet"), but thank God I'm not the person I used to be". Boy does that ever apply to me. And to most every Christian friend I've ever had.
See my last coupla posts, dude.
Oh, and btw, there's no "-ary" in those words: it's "majority" and "minority" ...
Preacher
Swabbie
Banned
Aye, and a bloody good one it was at that, laddyOriginally posted by Wedge009
Just want people to know I also made a lengthy contribution just before Preacher's last post.
Seriously, where'd all them posts come from as I was editing mine? Whew!... No, you made some great points there, bro.
As to the asking for forgiveness 3x deal, yeah, I was just addressing the Jewish tradition/belief that Ghost had brought up.
As to the children/babies who die, IIRC that they are in heaven with the Lord. They are one of the few cases I can think of where a person truly never had the chance to make a free will choice to accept Christ. God holds us responsible to the degree of our understanding of/ability to understand Him, and those never even had a chance to understand him.
I speak from a broken heart of experience here, as I lost 2 babies, and about the only thing that got me through it was the knowledge that they had souls, and that they are with the Father now. Best of all, I'll get to be united with them after this veil of tears is concluded... ::sniff::
Wedge009
Rogue Leader
While I can't speak of God's decision regarding unborn children with such confidence, I can certainly understand the feeling. I always used to wonder why there is a relatively large age gap between me and my brother and I found out that I have several siblings who never made it... but I think that miscarriages are supposed to be quite common anyway.
Delance
Victory, you say?
You are a Christian if you are baptized. The first 1st Communion is the fist time a Christians participates in the Holy Eucharist. It's one of the seven sacraments of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and some other Christian churches. Not all Christians Churches have those sacraments and traditions.
Wedge009
Rogue Leader
As I said before, a baptism is meaningless if you have not really committed yourself to Christ. The baptism is just a symbolic gesture, a public declaration. I was previously thinking of adult baptisms, but in a child baptism (where the parents make the declaration), the child still has to make his or her own decision regarding Christ when they grow old enough to take responsibility for him or herself. He or she can make a public declaration if they choose to, called confirmation.
Mmm, that probably why I didn't recognise its supposed significance. I still say Communion is just a practice, not a necessity in being Christian.
Established? Where? The whole idea of "What happens to babies if they die?" falls under the group of difficult questions people throw at Christians (whether innocently or through spite).
Ghost
Emperor
It´s like:
Jesus: '' the are my followers i take care of them'' ?
And what happens to people form othe religions?, God judges them for their actions so he can say if they go to ''heaven'' or ''hell''?
Interesting, for the jews there isn´t a ''material place or state'' called Hell, only a separation from the prescence of God, and that is when you are alive, not dead.
After the Resurrection Day (we don´t have a Judgment Day)
Everyone will be resurrected by God (no matter what religion you follow), that is the reason because the jews can´t be cremated, ''buried in the sea'', or can´t donate organs, so you can be resurrected as you were in your live, also the lower side of the coffin must be opened so you can truly go back to the dust or earth
I believe (after reading some books) that the vision of the ''christian burning hell'' was created to scare people and to gain followers, the original meaning of the hell (Golgota, Gehenna) was a hill near Jerusalem were the people dumped the trash, it was a nasty place with bad odour,wild animals,infestations and some other bad things.
Yes, and before that the virtuous lived by the ''laws'' that God gave to Noah
For judaism the unborn children and babies, they go with God automatically, because they hadn´t the chance to commit transgresions nor the undertanding
Mmhh... i read the same from some Rabbi, Akiva or Rashi, it´s the explanation of a few vers. of the Torah, the Genesis i think.
Yeah, that is why the Torah has 613 precepts, som ''positives'' (things that you can do) and some ''negatives'' (things that you can´t do)
That is good, i like to think about the judasim more like a Way of Life more than a religion.
This of course if you are christian, i dont think that my ''alternative way'' is infinitely worse, nor that i will burn in the ''christian hell''
Ghost
Emperor
Indeed, that is why in the Torah he has many ''other names''
Like ELohim (when he is judging), Adonai (The Lord).
And sometimes he is callled the Lord of the Armies.
That is why i used Torquemada as an example, he clearly thought that he was a good christian, that he did the God´s job and that for those things he was a Just.
But must be a true repent,right?