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Studying this stupid stuff. Can't make heads or tails of it and neither can the "Christian" ministers I'm reading who are trying to explain it. Just my two cents.
Studying this stupid stuff. Can't make heads or tails of it and neither can the "Christian" ministers I'm reading who are trying to explain it. Just my two cents.
Perhaps this will help since it is probably going to be deleted as OT in the Galatians 5 thread: Christ is our spiritual "designated hitter." We were not able to achieve the level of pure agape love for all . . . that God IS. Jesus as His only begotten Son had the advantage of the Father's guidance directly teaching Him . . . as He told us. That is how He was able to succeed and make up for our continually "missing the mark" (Sinning). He became our connection to God.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mszlady
Oh, okay Mystic. You don't believe the descriptions in the OT. So you don't believe the entire bible to be factual, just the NT. Am I correct? So what does Jesus blood represent? I'm gathering that his blood really doesn't mean anything...? If we were in debt before Christ died, how is his death not payment?
Thanks for asking and not just assuming, mzlady. We both love Christ and (I assume )try to follow His instructions to His disciples to "love God and each other" daily and repent when we don't. The OT tells us about Christ. It tells us how to identify Him, It tells us what His status is. It tells us how to validate him through prophesy well past His death and into the modern day. It is very USEFUL (profitable) for instruction . . . but the descriptions of the nature of God and His motives were simply wrong. They are the result of our long and savage history of belief that everything is done by God (even what we do), a fear of God and attempts to appease Him by blood sacrifices, etc. Christ came to correct those errors caused by our savage ignorance.
We were trained during the schoolmaster stage to tame our savagery with self-control over our baser instincts using fear of God. By the time of Christ we had succeeded in producing people who had achieved self-control over our baser drives. Christ referred to it as the "fields are ripe for the harvest" . . . meaning we could be taught to use our self-control for agape love (mercy not sacrifice). His message of God's love and proof of His authority as the Son of God was rejected by the religious leaders who needed the fear of God to maintain their positions of authority and power. So Christ was killed.
When He died His human consciousness (Holy Spirit) was "born again" as Spirit within the collective human consciousness That is how He abides with us and became available to us ALL in our consciousness as the Comforter. None of us could have achieved the pure agape love that Jesus did. THAT was the failing of our species . . . our "missing the mark" (Sins) As the only begotten Son of God He was taught directly by the Holy Spirit of God the Father . . . as He told us. His success in bringing God's Holy Spirit to His human consciousness permanently connected all human consciousness with God. That is how He is the Way to God. Now that He abides with us as the Living Word of God as the Comforter within our consciousness . . . we have the same kind of guidance in developing our Spirit as He did.
If we follow that guidance and follow His instructions to "love God and each other" daily and repent when we don't . . . we will resonate with His pure agape love for us all and attain the cover of His perfection before God when we are "born again" as Spirit upon our physical death. If we do not . . . we will reap what we sow (but no more than we sow) in the consuming fire of God's pure love. All the non-love and unrepentant sin will be refined out as dross . . . but we are "saved as by fire."
Here's how I figure it: all these NDE's where even atheists are welcomed with love by Jesus prove to me that Jesus' death paid for everybody's sin without conditions. What Jesus' death accomplished was to open wide the gates of heaven, which is why everyone regardless of their beliefs are brought into the kingdom. That makes penal substitution a load of malarkey. The ransom was paid without any actions that need to be taken on our part.
Here's how I figure it: all these NDE's where even atheists are welcomed with love by Jesus prove to me that Jesus' death paid for everybody's sin without conditions. What Jesus' death accomplished was to open wide the gates of heaven, which is why everyone regardless of their beliefs are brought into the kingdom. That makes penal substitution a load of malarkey. The ransom was paid without any actions that need to be taken on our part.
We are all saved, as you said . . . but not because a ransom was paid nor because a punishment was inflicted. It is because a human consciousness achieved God's consciousness (Holy Spirit) . . . something none of us could remotely achieve. But Jesus as the only begotten Son of God had direct guidance from the Father's Holy Spirit and achieved it for us all. The baptism in the river was God's symbolic acknowledgment that He had indeed achieved the Holy Spirit within His human consciousness. It was His "graduation."
Studying this stupid stuff. Can't make heads or tails of it and neither can the "Christian" ministers I'm reading who are trying to explain it. Just my two cents.
Don't listen to any one but your good Ol buddy Azrael, After All I am the fallen Angel of Death, what could be cooler. LoL
We are not saved by a Ransom,
Nor are we saved by Belief alone,
We are not saved by trying to avoid punishment,
We are not saved by attempting to get rewarded,
We are saved based upon our deeds and our intentions behind those deeds.
We must do good works solely for the purpose of doing good and no other reason.
Jesus Christ our King and Messiah taught us that Love is important.
Love is the greatest good work for when we chose to love it changes us.
If we love all others, love your-self, and Love God then we will not want to harm any one.
Sins are actions which cause harm.
Therefore if we allow love to enter our lives and work in it we will naturally be sanctified by God and God will allow us into Paradise, we are saved from Continuous Reincarnation.
If one Continues to Reincarnate for too long each time rejecting love and instead choosing selfishness then they will eventually become too full of Sin and God will have no choice but to hurl their soul into the Void, and endless chasm of Darkness from which no light can escape and within it they shall cease to exists.
God is most merciful and will forgive the Repentant if they do their best to improve for the better.
If you fall down, remember that you have legs, get up and use them.
Don't listen to any one but your good Ol buddy Azrael, After All I am the fallen Angel of Death, what could be cooler. LoL
We are not saved by a Ransom,
Nor are we saved by Belief alone,
We are not saved by trying to avoid punishment,
We are not saved by attempting to get rewarded,
We are saved based upon our deeds and our intentions behind those deeds.
We must do good works solely for the purpose of doing good and no other reason.
Jesus Christ our King and Messiah taught us that Love is important.
Love is the greatest good work for when we chose to love it changes us.
If we love all others, love your-self, and Love God then we will not want to harm any one.
Sins are actions which cause harm.
Therefore if we allow love to enter our lives and work in it we will naturally be sanctified by God and God will allow us into Paradise, we are saved from Continuous Reincarnation.
If one Continues to Reincarnate for too long each time rejecting love and instead choosing selfishness then they will eventually become too full of Sin and God will have no choice but to hurl their soul into the Void, and endless chasm of Darkness from which no light can escape and within it they shall cease to exists.
God is most merciful and will forgive the Repentant if they do their best to improve for the better.
If you fall down, remember that you have legs, get up and use them.
Yes, I can go with much of that. Jesus taught a works-based gospel; Paul taught a faith-based gospel. That's another debate, but to just address it for a second, Jesus was preaching to a solely Jewish crowd under the law of Moses; Paul was preaching to a Gentile crowd solely under the law of grace. I'm sure these facts figure into the two distinctly different gospels preached by each man but I am not drunk enough yet to figure out how.
The point I do want to make is that the idea of God loving us and hating us at the same time makes God into a schizophrenic (note I didn't say He WAS one, I said the man-made concept of God being a God of love/wrath MAKES Him into one) The idea that God loves us, but that His wrath is upon us because of our sin nature (which He gave us) and that the ONLY way His wrath/demand for justice can be satisfied is to pour out His wrath on Jesus and therefore one must "accept" Jesus or His payment for our sin debt is reinstated against us and we are condemned to eternity in hell--this theory is so convoluted, so ridiculous it really doesn't need to be refuted because it is refutable on its face by virtue of its ridiculousness, though I could easily list a dozen reasons why it is ridiculous right here on the spot were I called upon to do so.
The truth--the one borne out by a true reading and understanding of the scriptures--is that Jesus died to pay our sin debt unconditionally and now the gates of heaven have been opened to every single human who has ever lived. Period. End of story. This concept is much simpler and much more in keeping with this picture of Jesus as the Shepherd of all His lost sheep.
The truth--the one borne out by a true reading and understanding of the scriptures--is that Jesus died to pay our sin debt unconditionally and now the gates of heaven have been opened to every single human who has ever lived. Period. End of story. This concept is much simpler and much more in keeping with this picture of Jesus as the Shepherd of all His lost sheep.
Consider the idea that Jesus' sacrifice invalidated Law as the basis for judgement, leaving love and mercy a free hand to bring everyone to a relationship with God and man based on that love.
Yes, I can go with much of that. Jesus taught a works-based gospel; Paul taught a faith-based gospel. That's another debate, but to just address it for a second, Jesus was preaching to a solely Jewish crowd under the law of Moses; Paul was preaching to a Gentile crowd solely under the law of grace. I'm sure these facts figure into the two distinctly different gospels preached by each man but I am not drunk enough yet to figure out how.
The point I do want to make is that the idea of God loving us and hating us at the same time makes God into a schizophrenic (note I didn't say He WAS one, I said the man-made concept of God being a God of love/wrath MAKES Him into one) The idea that God loves us, but that His wrath is upon us because of our sin nature (which He gave us) and that the ONLY way His wrath/demand for justice can be satisfied is to pour out His wrath on Jesus and therefore one must "accept" Jesus or His payment for our sin debt is reinstated against us and we are condemned to eternity in hell--this theory is so convoluted, so ridiculous it really doesn't need to be refuted because it is refutable on its face by virtue of its ridiculousness, though I could easily list a dozen reasons why it is ridiculous right here on the spot were I called upon to do so.
The truth--the one borne out by a true reading and understanding of the scriptures--is that Jesus died to pay our sin debt unconditionally and now the gates of heaven have been opened to every single human who has ever lived. Period. End of story. This concept is much simpler and much more in keeping with this picture of Jesus as the Shepherd of all His lost sheep.
I'm curious, Thrill ... to whom do you believe this "sin debt" was "paid"?
I'm curious, Thrill ... to whom do you believe this "sin debt" was "paid"?
Here's how I have come to understand it, Pleroo:
If one wants to go with the "wrath" model--that God had all this pent-up wrath for mans' sins boiling up inside Him turning Him red with rage and He had to take it out on someone or else He would explode--if one wants to go with this model, then yes, God poured out His wrath on Jesus at the cross. But this would still not invalidate the fact that all of man's sins, even rejection of Jesus, was paid for on some temporary level and that nothing more was owing to God from this life to right after their death. So when we look at "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man comes to the Father but my Me" Jesus is saying "It was My death that made it possible for you to come into the presence of the Father." He did not say in that verse, "No man comes to the Father but by accepting Me as their Lord and Savior".
Now there is the matter of John, "He that believes on the Son has life: he that believes not on the Son...the wrath of God is upon Him" but this does not say the Father's wrath remains on them for eternity. That is the eternal punishment construct invented by man during the Dark Ages and refined during the succeeding 1000 years. It is not Biblical; it's just become the most popular interpretation of some very misunderstood scriptures.
But, and here's the crux of your question: before the advent of NDE's all this was theory and conjecture i.e. matters of faith. There existed no way to prove which of these myriad theories of salvation (universalism, eternal torment, annihilation, penal substitution, satisfactory substitution, atonement, TULIP, the elect, the non-elect, Calvinism, Arminianism, free will, non-free will, and on and on) was correct. Near-death experiences put us right on the cusp of having solid concrete answers.
How? Millions of people of all beliefs and faiths have had NDE's and not one person who had an experience that occurred under close medically-supervised circumstances claims to have ever saw the devil, demons, or a fiery hell. Many claim to have seen disembodied "souls" that were earthbound and in torment of a psychological nature i.e. still bound by their earthly desires but not able to satisfy them. But not one paints a picture anywhere near the Medieval picture of torments painted by Dante's Divine Comedy. So there IS a state of "hell" but it is NOT a place; it is a state of mind more than anything.
These people who have had these medically-observed experiences talk of going directly into a state of perfect bliss, unimaginable love and a beautiful place beyond earthly description. Not one claims to have been judged by God or Jesus; all who felt a sense of judgement say that they were judging themselves, in the sense that God was showing them their deeds and they were feeling a sense of guilt and coming to the realization of the hurt they had done to others. Now if we were following the Fundamentalist model these people should have immediately gone before the throne of God where sentence would be pronounced and they would either be immediately thrown into a fiery pit or admitted through a gate into heaven. Interestingly, it was the atheists/agnostics who reported the greatest number of pleasurable experiences and the hardcore Christians who reported the greatest number of unpleasant ones. All this tells me that God is loving and forgiving to all His children, but that we must learn His ways at various levels of the afterlife, including acknowledging the work His Son did for us. This is why I am a universalist. The NDE's prove this theory.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 08-27-2013 at 09:12 AM..
You might want to consider that the word tetelestai can mean: Finished, completed, accomplished, fulfilled, or to bring to an End.
Not that of an accounting term called paid in full.
The contextual translation is: It is finished, accomplished, completed, or bringing it to an end.
[It] makes absolutely no sense to take a detour from that which was accomplished, completed and finished, putting an end to sacrificing, 'For I desire mercy, not Sacrifice.' Unless of course, you have a desire to add in a Substitution theory:A contrivance of legalism.
"People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste unless it serves them."
Last edited by Jerwade; 08-27-2013 at 09:30 AM..
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