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Matthew 16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
What does Jesus mean by this, that we are to take up our own crosses, and follow Him? What did it mean for Jesus to take up His cross ? What was the motivating power behind Jesus life and death?
Love. What is the essential and intrinsic nature and characteristic of love? The world today is immensely confused over the meaning of love. That half the marriages celebrated today (including within the church) end up in divorce bears testimony to this confusion. The fact that an institution supposedly based on love has a 50% chance of ending up in acrimony, bitterness and estrangement shows clearly that the ‘love’ for a great many of those marrying couples was temporary, conditional, and limited in it’s enduring quality and considering the glittering career today of marriage counselors I would suggest the quality of marriage leaves much to be desired also. Is that real love? Something that is temporary? Something dependent on circumstances? Is love ‘true’ when times are good but fades away like a fleeting shadow at the first sign of trouble?
Even in the spiritual world of Christianity, there is a great misapprehension of the nature of love. A great variety and confusion exists in doctrinal belief because so many do not understand the true nature of God, Who the scriptures tell us, is Love.
A correct understanding of the nature of God would afford us a correct understanding of the nature of love. (And vice-versa). So let us look to the scriptures, and in particular Jesus, to find out what God is like.
As I said earlier, God is Love. (1 Jn 4:8) Coll. 1:19 tells us that “it pleased the Father that in Him (Jesus) should all fullness dwell”. Later in Coll. 2:9 it says “in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”. Jesus said Himself to Phillip, “Have I been so long with you Phillip, and yet thou hast not known Me? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father…” (Jn 14:9) And again in Collosians, it says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. (1:15)
So if we desire to know what true love is, because God is love and Jesus is the image of God, then all we need do is look to see how Jesus loved. A great place to start I think is Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Chapter 2 begins with Paul exhorting his readers to be united in their walk of discipleship, and that the prime factor that unites them is love. He then exhorts us to all that we ought to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, and proceeds to to give us a brilliantly simple summary of the gospel (Phil.2:1-11) in which he explains that the mind of love that belongs to God was expressed through His Son by an act of self sacrificial humility culminating in His death. In fact, Paul says that God loves us so much that as far as Jesus was concerned, being in the form of God was not worthwhile so long as we were lost!! He laid aside His omnipotence for us, yet we with-hold our means to help one another! Jesus laid aside His omnipresence for us yet we baulk at walking over the road to help our neighbour! Jesus laid aside His omniscience yet we are reluctant to share with those who don’t know Him how He has saved us! Reputation and honour are relegated to the bottom of the ladder and serving others raised to the top of those virtues best cherished. And man instituted slavery! Man’s natural inclination is not to love, but to serve self.
To achieve His aim of saving us, Jesus stepped down from His throne of honour glory majesty and power where He rightly received the due worship and adoration from countless numbers of heavenly creatures to become a helpless baby in the womb of an unmarried teen-ager in an occupied country where He was completely dependant upon the whims , fancies, loves, hates, and the myriad of emotions, dreams, ambitions, hopes, and all the hang-ups of human sin and degeneracy, in order to live out His mission. His purpose was so steadfast, His faithfulness so enduring, His grace and love so sure, that He endured everything that degeneracy could throw at Him. Insult, hatred, antipathy, disbelief, persecution, mocking, torture and finally death.
My friends, that is Love. That is real Love. It is the very same love in fact , and no lesser version of it, that Paul exhorts us to emulate when he says “Let this mind be in you which also was in Christ Jesus”. It is the very same love that Paul extols in Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it”. It is the very same love that is listed in the fruit of the Spirit. Selfless, sacrificial, benevolent, kind-hearted, gentle and truthful. A far cry from the emotional counterfeit that the world offers and so many practice. The love that God offers you through Jesus is the real thing. And He would have us share that very same love with others. Our wives, our children, our brothers and sisters and our neighbours.It is the love that world, now dying in sin and despair, needs so desperately.
It is a love that endures hardship, spurns hatred, and overcomes unbelief. It never fails, never gives up, never lets go, yet allows the freedom for those to whom it is directed to choose whether to accept and return it, or reject it and resist it. Amazing love!!! Yet we persecute those who disagree with us over doctrine and use the name of God to pronounce them heretics and then kill them! A writer of the late 18th century had these wise words to say regarding freedom.” There can be no more conclusive evidence that we possess the spirit of Satan (as opposed to the Spirit of God’s love) than the disposition to hurt and destroy those who do not appreciate our work, or who act contrary to our ideas.”
Can we love like that? Can man, or woman, love so selflessly that he/she would give hi life for his enemy? Ordinarily, the answer would have to be no. Man is not capable of such love. While on rare occasions we may see and witness wonderful expressions of self sacrificial heroism for strangers by people in emergency situations like firemen etc., but is it love that motivates such acts, or is it duty or patriotism or something else? Sin and the human condition caused by 1000’s of years of moral compromise and degeneracy and selfish gratification has distorted man’s moral reasoning to such an extent that even our prayers need ‘cleaning up’ by our Mediator in heaven.
Yet Jesus Himself, when challenged with the question “What is the greatest commandment”? replied “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind and soul. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. (Math 22:34-40). Elsewhere He gave as the 11th commandment: “A new commandment I give unto you, ‘that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another’. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples.”
Though in and of ourselves we are incapable of such love, God does not command us to do anything without also giving us the means by which to obey. It is up to us whether we desire to love as He loves and surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit that He may empower us. Thus the degree of love He calls us to transcends any emotional level and becomes a matter of choice. We choose to obey, He empowers us. We choose to love, He fills us with His Spirit and we become partakers of His divine nature. And the world is fed by the food we share. Prisoners are visited. Our homes become sanctuaries. We clothe and shelter those who are cold, homeless, poor and in need.
As the world witnesses and benefits from our love, two things happen. First and foremost, the world, perhaps for the first time, sees God. We, through our love, destroy Satan’s sophistries and lies regarding the nature and character of God. Much of the world believe God to be capricious, judgemental, cruel, despotic, legalistic, demanding and spiteful. But through love, not only do you prove Satan a liar, and lead people to the truth, but you also vindicate the true nature and character of God to the universe and when this age closes, all will agree and testify with you, throughout the ceaseless ages, that God is love.
The second thing that happens as we express the love of God for humanity, is that by so doing we secure our salvation, for when Jesus comes He will say to you, “Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…for inasmuch as ye have (loved) one of these the least of My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
Matthew 25:31-46.
This is what it means by taking up our cross and following Jesus. It means sacrificing self for others. It means surrendering ones life for the betterment of his neighbour. It means self must die daily that Christ may live His life through us by His Spirit that we may play our part in lifting mankind up to a position where he can have express faith in a God who in the words of Jeremiah, Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an end and a hope.
Matthew 16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
What does Jesus mean by this, that we are to take up our own crosses, and follow Him? What did it mean for Jesus to take up His cross ? What was the motivating power behind Jesus life and death?
Love. What is the essential and intrinsic nature and characteristic of love? The world today is immensely confused over the meaning of love. That half the marriages celebrated today (including within the church) end up in divorce bears testimony to this confusion. The fact that an institution supposedly based on love has a 50% chance of ending up in acrimony, bitterness and estrangement shows clearly that the ‘love’ for a great many of those marrying couples was temporary, conditional, and limited in it’s enduring quality and considering the glittering career today of marriage counselors I would suggest the quality of marriage leaves much to be desired also. Is that real love? Something that is temporary? Something dependent on circumstances? Is love ‘true’ when times are good but fades away like a fleeting shadow at the first sign of trouble?
Even in the spiritual world of Christianity, there is a great misapprehension of the nature of love. A great variety and confusion exists in doctrinal belief because so many do not understand the true nature of God, Who the scriptures tell us, is Love.
A correct understanding of the nature of God would afford us a correct understanding of the nature of love. (And vice-versa). So let us look to the scriptures, and in particular Jesus, to find out what God is like.
As I said earlier, God is Love. (1 Jn 4:8) Coll. 1:19 tells us that “it pleased the Father that in Him (Jesus) should all fullness dwell”. Later in Coll. 2:9 it says “in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”. Jesus said Himself to Phillip, “Have I been so long with you Phillip, and yet thou hast not known Me? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father…” (Jn 14:9) And again in Collosians, it says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. (1:15)
So if we desire to know what true love is, because God is love and Jesus is the image of God, then all we need do is look to see how Jesus loved. A great place to start I think is Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Chapter 2 begins with Paul exhorting his readers to be united in their walk of discipleship, and that the prime factor that unites them is love. He then exhorts us to all that we ought to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, and proceeds to to give us a brilliantly simple summary of the gospel (Phil.2:1-11) in which he explains that the mind of love that belongs to God was expressed through His Son by an act of self sacrificial humility culminating in His death. In fact, Paul says that God loves us so much that as far as Jesus was concerned, being in the form of God was not worthwhile so long as we were lost!! He laid aside His omnipotence for us, yet we with-hold our means to help one another! Jesus laid aside His omnipresence for us yet we baulk at walking over the road to help our neighbour! Jesus laid aside His omniscience yet we are reluctant to share with those who don’t know Him how He has saved us! Reputation and honour are relegated to the bottom of the ladder and serving others raised to the top of those virtues best cherished. And man instituted slavery! Man’s natural inclination is not to love, but to serve self.
To achieve His aim of saving us, Jesus stepped down from His throne of honour glory majesty and power where He rightly received the due worship and adoration from countless numbers of heavenly creatures to become a helpless baby in the womb of an unmarried teen-ager in an occupied country where He was completely dependant upon the whims , fancies, loves, hates, and the myriad of emotions, dreams, ambitions, hopes, and all the hang-ups of human sin and degeneracy, in order to live out His mission. His purpose was so steadfast, His faithfulness so enduring, His grace and love so sure, that He endured everything that degeneracy could throw at Him. Insult, hatred, antipathy, disbelief, persecution, mocking, torture and finally death.
My friends, that is Love. That is real Love. It is the very same love in fact , and no lesser version of it, that Paul exhorts us to emulate when he says “Let this mind be in you which also was in Christ Jesus”. It is the very same love that Paul extols in Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it”. It is the very same love that is listed in the fruit of the Spirit. Selfless, sacrificial, benevolent, kind-hearted, gentle and truthful. A far cry from the emotional counterfeit that the world offers and so many practice. The love that God offers you through Jesus is the real thing. And He would have us share that very same love with others. Our wives, our children, our brothers and sisters and our neighbours.It is the love that world, now dying in sin and despair, needs so desperately.
It is a love that endures hardship, spurns hatred, and overcomes unbelief. It never fails, never gives up, never lets go, yet allows the freedom for those to whom it is directed to choose whether to accept and return it, or reject it and resist it. Amazing love!!! Yet we persecute those who disagree with us over doctrine and use the name of God to pronounce them heretics and then kill them! A writer of the late 18th century had these wise words to say regarding freedom.” There can be no more conclusive evidence that we possess the spirit of Satan (as opposed to the Spirit of God’s love) than the disposition to hurt and destroy those who do not appreciate our work, or who act contrary to our ideas.”
Can we love like that? Can man, or woman, love so selflessly that he/she would give hi life for his enemy? Ordinarily, the answer would have to be no. Man is not capable of such love. While on rare occasions we may see and witness wonderful expressions of self sacrificial heroism for strangers by people in emergency situations like firemen etc., but is it love that motivates such acts, or is it duty or patriotism or something else? Sin and the human condition caused by 1000’s of years of moral compromise and degeneracy and selfish gratification has distorted man’s moral reasoning to such an extent that even our prayers need ‘cleaning up’ by our Mediator in heaven.
Yet Jesus Himself, when challenged with the question “What is the greatest commandment”? replied “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind and soul. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. (Math 22:34-40). Elsewhere He gave as the 11th commandment: “A new commandment I give unto you, ‘that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another’. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples.”
Though in and of ourselves we are incapable of such love, God does not command us to do anything without also giving us the means by which to obey. It is up to us whether we desire to love as He loves and surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit that He may empower us. Thus the degree of love He calls us to transcends any emotional level and becomes a matter of choice. We choose to obey, He empowers us. We choose to love, He fills us with His Spirit and we become partakers of His divine nature. And the world is fed by the food we share. Prisoners are visited. Our homes become sanctuaries. We clothe and shelter those who are cold, homeless, poor and in need.
As the world witnesses and benefits from our love, two things happen. First and foremost, the world, perhaps for the first time, sees God. We, through our love, destroy Satan’s sophistries and lies regarding the nature and character of God. Much of the world believe God to be capricious, judgemental, cruel, despotic, legalistic, demanding and spiteful. But through love, not only do you prove Satan a liar, and lead people to the truth, but you also vindicate the true nature and character of God to the universe and when this age closes, all will agree and testify with you, throughout the ceaseless ages, that God is love.
The second thing that happens as we express the love of God for humanity, is that by so doing we secure our salvation, for when Jesus comes He will say to you, “Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…for inasmuch as ye have (loved) one of these the least of My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Matthew 25:31-46.
This is what it means by taking up our cross and following Jesus. It means sacrificing self for others. It means surrendering ones life for the betterment of his neighbour. It means self must die daily that Christ may live His life through us by His Spirit that we may play our part in lifting mankind up to a position where he can have express faith in a God who in the words of Jeremiah, Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an end and a hope.
Matthew 16:24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
What does Jesus mean by this, that we are to take up our own crosses, and follow Him? What did it mean for Jesus to take up His cross ? What was the motivating power behind Jesus life and death?
Love. What is the essential and intrinsic nature and characteristic of love? The world today is immensely confused over the meaning of love. That half the marriages celebrated today (including within the church) end up in divorce bears testimony to this confusion. The fact that an institution supposedly based on love has a 50% chance of ending up in acrimony, bitterness and estrangement shows clearly that the ‘love’ for a great many of those marrying couples was temporary, conditional, and limited in it’s enduring quality and considering the glittering career today of marriage counselors I would suggest the quality of marriage leaves much to be desired also. Is that real love? Something that is temporary? Something dependent on circumstances? Is love ‘true’ when times are good but fades away like a fleeting shadow at the first sign of trouble?
Even in the spiritual world of Christianity, there is a great misapprehension of the nature of love. A great variety and confusion exists in doctrinal belief because so many do not understand the true nature of God, Who the scriptures tell us, is Love. A correct understanding of the nature of God would afford us a correct understanding of the nature of love. (And vice-versa). So let us look to the scriptures, and in particular Jesus, to find out what God is like.
As I said earlier, God is Love. (1 Jn 4:8) Coll. 1:19 tells us that “it pleased the Father that in Him (Jesus) should all fullness dwell”. Later in Coll. 2:9 it says “in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”. Jesus said Himself to Phillip, “Have I been so long with you Phillip, and yet thou hast not known Me? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father…” (Jn 14:9) And again in Collosians, it says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. (1:15) So if we desire to know what true love is, because God is love and Jesus is the image of God, then all we need do is look to see how Jesus loved. A great place to start I think is Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Chapter 2 begins with Paul exhorting his readers to be united in their walk of discipleship, and that the prime factor that unites them is love. He then exhorts us to all that we ought to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, and proceeds to to give us a brilliantly simple summary of the gospel (Phil.2:1-11) in which he explains that the mind of love that belongs to God was expressed through His Son by an act of self sacrificial humility culminating in His death. In fact, Paul says that God loves us so much that as far as Jesus was concerned, being in the form of God was not worthwhile so long as we were lost!! He laid aside His omnipotence for us, yet we with-hold our means to help one another! Jesus laid aside His omnipresence for us yet we baulk at walking over the road to help our neighbour! Jesus laid aside His omniscience yet we are reluctant to share with those who don’t know Him how He has saved us! Reputation and honour are relegated to the bottom of the ladder and serving others raised to the top of those virtues best cherished. And man instituted slavery! Man’s natural inclination is not to love, but to serve self.
To achieve His aim of saving us, Jesus stepped down from His throne of honour glory majesty and power where He rightly received the due worship and adoration from countless numbers of heavenly creatures to become a helpless baby in the womb of an unmarried teen-ager in an occupied country where He was completely dependant upon the whims , fancies, loves, hates, and the myriad of emotions, dreams, ambitions, hopes, and all the hang-ups of human sin and degeneracy, in order to live out His mission. His purpose was so steadfast, His faithfulness so enduring, His grace and love so sure, that He endured everything that degeneracy could throw at Him. Insult, hatred, antipathy, disbelief, persecution, mocking, torture and finally death.
My friends, that is Love. That is real Love. It is the very same love in fact , and no lesser version of it, that Paul exhorts us to emulate when he says “Let this mind be in you which also was in Christ Jesus”. It is the very same love that Paul extols in Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it”. It is the very same love that is listed in the fruit of the Spirit. Selfless, sacrificial, benevolent, kind-hearted, gentle and truthful. A far cry from the emotional counterfeit that the world offers and so many practice. The love that God offers you through Jesus is the real thing. And He would have us share that very same love with others. Our wives, our children, our brothers and sisters and our neighbours.It is the love that world, now dying in sin and despair, needs so desperately.
It is a love that endures hardship, spurns hatred, and overcomes unbelief. It never fails, never gives up, never lets go, yet allows the freedom for those to whom it is directed to choose whether to accept and return it, or reject it and resist it. Amazing love!!!
Absolutely nothing to disagree with here for any UR.
Quote:
Yet we persecute those who disagree with us over doctrine and use the name of God to pronounce them heretics
You have done this to me repeatedly. Oh the irony!
Quote:
and then kill them! A writer of the late 18th century had these wise words to say regarding freedom.” There can be no more conclusive evidence that we possess the spirit of Satan (as opposed to the Spirit of God’s love) than the disposition to hurt and destroy those who do not appreciate our work, or who act contrary to our ideas.”
Can we love like that? Can man, or woman, love so selflessly that he/she would give hi life for his enemy? Ordinarily, the answer would have to be no. Man is not capable of such love. While on rare occasions we may see and witness wonderful expressions of self sacrificial heroism for strangers by people in emergency situations like firemen etc., but is it love that motivates such acts, or is it duty or patriotism or something else? Sin and the human condition caused by 1000’s of years of moral compromise and degeneracy and selfish gratification has distorted man’s moral reasoning to such an extent that even our prayers need ‘cleaning up’ by our Mediator in heaven.
Yet Jesus Himself, when challenged with the question “What is the greatest commandment”? replied “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind and soul. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. (Math 22:34-40). Elsewhere He gave as the 11th commandment: “A new commandment I give unto you, ‘that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another’. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples.”
Though in and of ourselves we are incapable of such love, God does not command us to do anything without also giving us the means by which to obey. It is up to us whether we desire to love as He loves and surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit that He may empower us. Thus the degree of love He calls us to transcends any emotional level and becomes a matter of choice. We choose to obey, He empowers us. We choose to love, He fills us with His Spirit and we become partakers of His divine nature. And the world is fed by the food we share. Prisoners are visited. Our homes become sanctuaries. We clothe and shelter those who are cold, homeless, poor and in need.
As the world witnesses and benefits from our love, two things happen. First and foremost, the world, perhaps for the first time, sees God.
Absolutely nothing to disagree with here . . sparrow or Pleroo or Kat, or Iron could have written it.
Quote:
We, through our love, destroy Satan’s sophistries and lies regarding the nature and character of God. Much of the world believe God to be capricious, judgemental, cruel, despotic, legalistic, demanding and spiteful.
Oh the irony again!!! The reason they believe those things is BECAUSE that is HOW the mainstream fundy churches have presented Him through what they believe about Him in their dogma.
Quote:
But through love, not only do you prove Satan a liar, and lead people to the truth, but you also vindicate the true nature and character of God to the universe and when this age closes, all will agree and testify with you, throughout the ceaseless ages, that God is love.
This post IS the UR Message!!!!
Quote:
The second thing that happens as we express the love of God for humanity, is that by so doing we secure our salvation, for when Jesus comes He will say to you, “Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…for inasmuch as ye have (loved) one of these the least of My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
Matthew 25:31-46.
This is what it means by taking up our cross and following Jesus. It means sacrificing self for others. It means surrendering ones life for the betterment of his neighbour. It means self must die daily that Christ may live His life through us by His Spirit that we may play our part in lifting mankind up to a position where he can have express faith in a God who in the words of Jeremiah, Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an end and a hope.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lee9786
It's so sad that posts like this have such few views. I guess it shows the spirit that is dominating this "Christian" forum.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Finn_Jarber
Well said.
Oh the irony!!!
Last edited by MysticPhD; 07-06-2011 at 10:37 PM..
You have done this to me repeatedly. Oh the irony!
You cut my sentence in half; the crime is not in exposing error and heresy...... (Eph 5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.....Isa 58:1 ¶ Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.)
.....the crime is forbidding anyone to follow their own conscience through persecution. This isn't uniquely a RCC problem either. (Although they are the only ones today who still officially believe it is right to do so). The real irony was that the early American pioneers who settled there to escape the persecutions of European Catholicism continued the practice by persecuting one another when they got here, apart from of course the dude (can't remember his name) who set up Rhode Is. (I think...hey I'm an NZer what do I know of US history? ) It took a long time for the reformation to cotton on to true religious freedom.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Oh the irony again!!! The reason they believe those things is BECAUSE that is HOW the mainstream fundy churches have presented Him through what they believe about Him in their dogma.
And they inherited that dogma from Catholicism, who before them inherited it from Greek pagan philosophy. The only reason eternal torment was invented was to find a place for the wicked to go because of the widespread acceptance of the natural immortality of the human soul or spirit. And UR was invented because eternal torment was unacceptable. True that both paradigms can be supported from scripture, but both do untold violence to the texts that categorically state that Ps 6:5 For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks? And neither faction take cognisance of the fact that the resurrectionto eternal life for the righteous is the reward for them, and it only comes once at the second coming. Theonlyresurrection after that is at the end of the 1000 years and as I have pointed out elsewhere, they all face destruction. And before you claim that this clashes with God's love, I would like to to suggest that even this act of God's, though certainly a 'strange act' (Isa. 28:21) it can still be done with love. Those who in their lifetime opposed and rejected anything and everything to do with godliness, righteousness and holiness, would be in agony in heaven; they would hate it. Because there is nowhere else for them to go because God desires a clean universe, in destroying the wicked He is doing them, and everyone else, a favour. Much like a farmer putting down a rabid dog. The dog may have been a faithful companion for years and the farmer loves him still, but shooting it is the only solution, and it would be done with as much love and painlessness as possible. As far as God is concerned, we can be assured that the punishment the wicked do go through in the lake of fire is entirely just and commensurate with their sin.
Like I've said before. The very first sermon ever preached on the state of the dead came from Satan himself, (ye shall not surely die) and this lie has been repeated from nearly every pulpit, both Catholic and protestant, since. The death that results from sin is eternal. There is no such thing, nor will there ever be, an immortal sinner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
This post IS the UR Message!!!!
Well, I have never claimed that URs have everything wrong.
Absolutely nothing to disagree with here for any UR. You have done this to me repeatedly. Oh the irony! Absolutely nothing to disagree with here . . sparrow or Pleroo or Kat, or Iron could have written it. Oh the irony again!!! The reason they believe those things is BECAUSE that is HOW the mainstream fundy churches have presented Him through what they believe about Him in their dogma. This post IS the UR Message!!!!
Oh the irony!!!
It is funny how a post like that brings out the fighting spirit in you.
Jesus said ...` If any man will come after me , let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me``........Means the Baptism of water and then the Holy Spirit through Lord Jesus Christ will bring this ..... See believer need to deny himself of the sin of the Flesh which The Lord has No authority to hold up..... then He needs to take up the cross of Christ By the Blood of Jesus Christ and be clean of all dark spirits were alien to the Lord , and Jesus Spirit will rip out all and continue to keep clean of these manipulation dark spirit is the taking up the Cross which the Lord does good in the face of an evil thing is power In Christ , and follow the Lord through the lead in the Holy Spirit ....... Jesus disciples were taught to bind up demons and set people free through Jesus anointing from Heaven
If any man will come after me , let him deny himself. We are who we think we are(As a man thinks in his heart so is he). When Jesus said deny yourself, all he was saying was deny who you think you are and believe who i say you are . We have to come in agreement with who God says we are,then we will walk as He walked ............Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so? Amos3:3
"And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me" (Luke 9:23)
It is about becoming a disciple, and becoming a disciple is not something people grow into. It is something people need to decide to do, and that decision can be done the same moment as when someone is born again, but in some cases the decision is made years after rebirth, but in most cases it is never made. Many people are just fine and happy with being saved, and they never seek to elevate themselves to discipleship. Not becoming a disciple does not deprive a person of their salvation, but it is something Christ desires from each believer. He wants us to be disciples.
"And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me" (Luke 9:23)
It is about becoming a disciple, and becoming a disciple is not something people grow into. It is something people need to decide to do, and that decision can be done the same moment as when someone is born again, but in some cases the decision is made years after rebirth, but in most cases it is never made. Many people are just fine and happy with being saved, and they never seek to elevate themselves to discipleship. Not becoming a disciple does not deprive a person of their salvation, but it is something Christ desires from each believer. He wants us to be disciples.
Amen.
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) It took a long time for the reformation to cotton on to true religious freedom.
