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I showed you in Romans 5 that all who were condemned in Adam will be made righteous in Christ. That means salvation even for those who have already died.
For the upteenth time, read Romans 5, without the blinders.
I am sorry, but it does not prove it. You only assume it does, but it says nothing about the salvation process of the dead.
We are to revere God not a set of books written by men . . . inspired or not. The ONLY God's words we know of are those spoken by Christ who IS the Word of God, period. Inspired scripture is just that . . . inspired NOT dictated. That means it is interpreted using the existing knowledge and understanding of the primitives who received the inspirations. This is in direct contradiction of Christ's word to us that we "need not any man teach us" and that the Spirit will teach us all we need to know. Christ abides with us and His Holy Spirit within guides us to what God has "written in our hearts."
IF you ignore 2000 years of knowledge and understanding to retain the ancient ignorance of our ancestors as the only standard of truth . . . you stagnate in the ignorance and understand nothing.
You choose to say/believe that the Bible is a set of books written by men. I believe the Bible is the Word of God. There is no problem regarding interpretation on the part of those whom God used to write the Bible.
Let's remember 2 Peter 1:20-21:
20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
We, however, will often struggle with interpretation. This is why God wants us to study (or, "divide") diligently. We will want to search the Scriptures in order to make certain that our conclusions harmonize with everything else the Bible teaches.
Again, if we name the name of Christ and claim to be followers of Him, let us not make light of the Scriptures, for in them is where the only reliable information about God, Christ, the Gospel....... can be found. If we speak of an inner witness of some kind, that's fine. But let's also remember that this, too, is documented and declared in the Bible.
We were talking about salvation after death - both you and Finn and others have made the claim that you must accept Christ before death in this life, no one can be saved after they have died. If that is true, then all babies, toddlers, children, mentally handicapped who die without understanding God and/or salvation from Christ, are lost forever.
However if you conceed that babies can be saved after death, then you open the door to a possibility. That possibility is God's mercy, and the revelation of truth and understanding that God can give to the hardest of hearts.
Hi, legoman
Babies have not been the issue in these discussions. But if we speak of their salvation, it is not a matter of whether they are saved after death.
God still saves a remnant from within this mass of humanity for His own purpose and good pleasure. This is where election comes in. Those who are saved are chosen in Christ "before the foundation of the world".
Believers are elect, regenerated, and converted. It is our conversion that is manifested in our confession of faith in Christ as our only hope for salvation, where we abandon any thoughts of self-righteousness, humble oursleves, and embrace Christ, praising God for His wonderful salvation.
Babies cannot make this confession of faith (though very small children can, and have).
But if someone openly rejects the Gospel and considers it a lot of nonsense, and dies in that unbelief, there is nothing in the Bible that says he will still have a chance to be saved.
And it does...that is why we are to be LEAD BY THE SPIRIT THAT DWELLS WITHIN US...THE SPIRIT THAT GUIDES US INTO ALL TRUTH. And...if one refuses to get their head out of the sand by disregarding all the factual evidence that the bible is written by fallible men and has been heavily edited by men with a clear agenda...one will stagnate, living in fear and condemnation, and will never experience the TRUE LIVING GOD.
The Holy Spirit does indwell the believer. And He does guide us into all truth.
But we cannot separate this reality from the Bible. We have numerous examples where the Scriptures are held in high regard for the prupose of establishing and determining truth. Kindly note:
John 19:33-37
33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. 35 And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. 36 For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, "Not one of His bones shall be broken." 37 And again another Scripture says, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced."
Gal 3:7-9 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, "In you all the nations shall be blessed."
John 7:42 42 Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?"
I will stop with these examples. But let us be careful not to trivialize the Bible as if it were some unreliable work of man.
Let us conclude with 1 Thess 2:13:
13 For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.
You choose to say/believe that the Bible is a set of books written by men. I believe the Bible is the Word of God. There is no problem regarding interpretation on the part of those whom God used to write the Bible.
You've already said this and responded to this post. Why have you ignored my subsequent post clarifying this for you. Your views are Biblean . . . NOT Christian.
Quote:
We, however, will often struggle with interpretation. This is why God wants us to study (or, "divide") diligently. We will want to search the Scriptures in order to make certain that our conclusions harmonize with everything else the Bible teaches.
You fail to divide the scriptures properly and ignore what Christ teaches in favor of what your revered Bible teaches. That is idolatry and rejection of Christ.
Quote:
Again, if we name the name of Christ and claim to be followers of Him, let us not make light of the Scriptures, for in them is where the only reliable information about God, Christ, the Gospel....... can be found. If we speak of an inner witness of some kind, that's fine. But let's also remember that this, too, is documented and declared in the Bible.
The ONLY reliable information about God is Christ, period! The ONLY reliable information about what God expects from us is Christ, period. All else is human vanity and hubris founded in ancient ignorance and superstition.
When god is condemning the very writers whose words you read... Do you still consider that a teaching from god? For example, the bible teaches to sacrifice animals yet god rebukes them for useless sacrifices.. Demanding mercy and love of one another instead. The writers of the bible were also called, by Christ..ye of little faith, Satan, foolish, blind.... Can you then say that what they wrote is a teaching of THEIR understanding (flawed) or God's very words?
God and Jesus did rebuke individuals. We're not saying they are perfect and without sin. No one is. But this does not impact on the writing of the Bible. These words were God-breathed. God made sure that His Word would prevail, as we would need it to know about our sin, our guilt, and the salvation that God so lovingly provided.
Nothing that we understand about these matters can be in conflict with the teachings ofthe Bible. If they are, then they cannot be trusted.
God and Jesus did rebuke individuals. We're not saying they are perfect and without sin. No one is. But this does not impact on the writing of the Bible. These words were God-breathed. God made sure that His Word would prevail, as we would need it to know about our sin, our guilt, and the salvation that God so lovingly provided.
Nothing that we understand about these matters can be in conflict with the teachings ofthe Bible. If they are, then they cannot be trusted.
Your intransigence and rote repetition of dogma without thought makes what you say useless to any who would follow Christ. The Bible teaches genocide, rape, pillage, slaughter, stonings, etc. . . as I asked you before is that included in your uncontradictory God-breathed truth?
Again...claiming that the book IS ALL THE KNOWLEDGE THERE IS...is ludicrous given that there were HUNDREDS of gospels circulating at the time the bible we now have was put together...the four gospels we do have were anonymous and were assigned authors....you do KNOW this don't you???????
Yes, but God did still sovereignly governed the transmission of the Bible as we have it today. This was His sovereign purpose. He even spoke of having His words written down. I mentioned Isaiah 30:8 in a previous post (along with some other verses):
"Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever:
Actually, how can we even discuss God, Christ, salvation, etc. If we didn't first have the Bible we would know nothing about these things. They didn't just come to us by chance. We first learned of these things through teachings from the Bible. If we now turn around and discredit the Bible and think that we have some consciousness that overrides or supercedes the Bible we are looking for serious trouble.
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