At 10:22 PM 8/10/2006 -0700, Kristyne McDaniel wrote:
Charlie,
> However, the Bible is pretty clear about
> the requirement for Salvation: accepting
> Christ, the Son of God, as your personal
> savior.
There is nothing in the texts about "accepting Christ as your personal
savior". This is a stitched together point of view that is a recent creation
in the 20th century.
Perhaps the phrase "personal saviour" is a recent creation. But that is not
a magic word formula. I used it to be brief. Basically, to me it means you
believe that Christ was God incarnate, that he came to earth to die for our
sins, that he rose from the dead, and believing Christ's sacrifice is the
only thing that can save me personally. Saying 'personal saviour' is a lot
easier. :-) And I believe that 'concept' at least has been around since
Christ's ministry.
If that doesn't clear it up I'll go try to find the verses that refer to this.
I do agree that there is a verse about "no man comes to the Father but by
me", but I disagree that the verse means that we can make up a "magic words"
formula for people to say whereby we can know that they are "coming to the
Father" and we can see them do it.
"Magic Words" are just like works. They can't save you. I hope you don't
think I'm advocating "magic words" as the way to salvation.
How did we get to this point in the thread? We started with the question
about is there fire in Hell. I think you said it was all made up. I
provided a couple examples of where fire and Hell were linked in the Bible.
And we can choose to disagree from there. One thing is for sure, I
certainly do not want to personally find out!
A lot of the recent evangelical stuff came to being entirely so evangelists
...
I submit that we do not know exactly what was meant by the "no man comes to
...
I submit that the very basis for a claim of exclusivity for entry into
heaven by organized Christianity is suspect. We can state how WE believe WE
are to go to heaven, but it is high time we quit making statements about
whether persons believing in other religions will get to heaven. I do not
see how we could possibly know that.
...
I think I can understand why you're critical of organized Christianity. It
seems from your past posts that you may not have, in fact, ever dealt with
a Christian. Or, that perhaps all the Christians you've dealt with were not
actual Christians.
Maybe I've been approaching this the wrong way. I believe a core tenet of
Christianity is to recognize that there is absolutely nothing in the power
of humans which can spiritually save us. Wholely believing that only by
relying on God's Grace, Jesus Christ's sacrifice, gives us salvation. If
any religion teaches man can somehow save himself, then I believe it is
wrong. But like you said, there is no way for me to know what is in
another's heart, nor what God is doing with that individual. All I can do
is just say what I believe and let the chips fall where they may.
-Charlie
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