For God so loveth the world...

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

And given there is eternal life for those who believe, wouldn't that mean that the serpent was right afterall . . .

It isn't believing that they have eternal life, otherwise all those other places you mentioned could serve the same purpose.
Being in the kingdom is spiritual, meaning that if you are in it, truly, then you have a spirit of life in you that comes from God that is holy, so you are not doing the things that lead to death.

a reply to: jmdewey60

Sounds complicated. Sure it's not simply that death is a natural thing that happens sometimes. Like a disease or a defence mechanism against pathogens and other ailments. If you can believe it most people don't even notice when they die, they just live on in another carnation in another universe.

originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
Reply to: Agree2Disagree

So if a war criminal is standing trial in Haag for a handful genocides, and he delivers a speech about love and forgiveness, the tribunal should immediately set him free since he has obviously changed into a better man? Help me here.

ETA: Updated correct post reference

How did you come to this conclusion from anything I posted...or anything in biblical text for that matter....?

Sin follows Newton's third law(even though it's a law describing motion in particular...it still demonstrates my point)...
"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"...
Basically, sin comes with consequences...even for believers. Biblical texts make this much apparent....

Believing that Christ came as God incarnate, Son of God and Son of Man, to die and rise again, conquering the ULTIMATE consequence of sin(eternal death) does not eliminate the other temporary consequences of sin...(separation, tension, spiritual decline, etc etc.)

2 Samuel 11-24 is a great account that describes what happened when David sinned against God....There were indeed consequences to be paid....and there are many more....In fact, biblical text is littered with passages concerning the consequences of sin...for believers and nonbelievers alike....This is why WE ALL need a savior...because we're all SINNERS and all would have to pay the consequences associated with sin....

A2D

a reply to: Agree2Disagree

...because we're all SINNERS and all would have to pay the consequences associated with sin....

That all sounds very dreary and enough to get depressed about.

We don't have much of a savior in your hypothetical scenario.
A proper "savior" according to the use of the word when the New Testament was written, would be a description of a role that was fulfilled in the present tense.
I think the meaning has been shifted in Christianity (because of futuristic doctrines) to make "savior" just someone who does something in the afterlife.

We are all not necessarily "sinners" as you say.
We are human beings who inherit the consequences of sin.
Jesus was a human being who had the same sort of humanity that we have, the flesh, but was vindicated in the judgment of God in being resurrected from the grave.
There is no law of action and opposite reaction, unless the opposite action was the work of God in sending His son to rescue us, as a reaction to the sin that had overcome us as a group.
There is no opposite action of payment being demanded of us.
That was a philosophy of Augustine, that all sin had to somehow be punished as if there was a an overriding power, even over God Himself, restraining Him from forgiving sins.
We don't have to resign ourselves to the inevitability of "separation, tension, spiritual decline, etc etc".

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

. . . live on in another carnation in another universe.

No, I don't accept that.
Hypothetically there might be other universes but that throws away the very definition of the word, universe, to me.
I think that no matter where you go, you cannot escape the basic system of existence that the universe is.
I also do not believe in some sort of automatic and instantaneous reincarnation.

a reply to: jmdewey60

If you deny the fundamental truth that all people are sinners...then I really have nothing else to even begin to speak about...

We don't inherit the consequences of sin....we "earn" them...because sin is an ACT of disobedience

"The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment of the father's iniquity; nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be on himself."

"Therefore, I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct"

"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap."

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us."

A2D

a reply to: Agree2Disagree

If you deny the fundamental truth that all people are sinners...then I really have nothing else to even begin to speak about...

If all people were sinners, then what would be the point of calling someone a "sinner"?
Luke 15:10
In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
(2011 NIV)

We don't inherit the consequences of sin....we "earn" them...because sin is an ACT of disobedience

The fact that someone sins or not wouldn't matter in whether that person dies or not.
I seriously doubt that Mary, Jesus' mother, ever sinned, yet I would say that eventually, when she got old, she died like everyone else.
That would be the result of the simple fact of being human.
The idea of "earning" death comes from people not appreciating that the "wages of sin" clause by Paul was just part of an analogy, and that he wasn't saying it to be understood literally.

"The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment of the father's iniquity; nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be on himself."

This just means that you don't punish one person for something that someone else did.
It doesn't establish as true the principle that people die because they "earned" it.

"Therefore, I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct"

That's just normal jurisprudence.

"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap."

This actually goes against your argument that people can only do bad.

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us."

That was probably a warning against accepting false doctrines that some people taught that what you do has nothing to do with your future afterlife, that your actions have no consequences.
The writer goes on to say that not all sins are "unto death".

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Text How can you be so certain and know exactly what other people, or yet even more rediculous, God and his Begotten-- know or intend to do without standing in their place? Or do you have a copy of God's Plan?

I do not know what other people intend to do nor have I ever inferred that I do know what other people intend to do., but I do know what the KJV bible has written concerning our subject which you have averted. If you would try to concentrate a little more you might understand what my posts have said and realize that it is not me that claims but the authors of which you should be trying to understand have written.

Instead of re posting what I have said you should re read my posts, in context, and perhaps you will understand how ignorant you truly seem to be in this subject matter. That entails a little more effort than what you have shown but instead of taking literature out of context and trying to twist it into your own thoughts, you should learn the basic rules of honest debate and be forthright instead of your vulgar intended wit.

This is your thread and I have challenged your intent with honest and truthful dialogue. If you cannot stay on your own subject matter then that does show that you do have a problem. Show your point of your own thread instead of your stupid wit.

a reply to: Seede

That entails a little more effort than what you have shown but instead of taking literature out of context and trying to twist it into your own thoughts, you should learn the basic rules of honest debate and be forthright instead of your vulgar intended wit.

I doubt that it is the result of intentionally "trying".
I think that some people are just naturally that way, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are a bad person.
I'm sure that you must have known people in your long life that no matter how you explain something to them, they give you back something else from what you just said.
But I doubt that you thought they were doing something other than what was just natural for them and how their mind works.

a reply to: Agree2Disagree

The 'war criminal' is the Bible, his past is OT, his defence speech is NT, the tribunal is us. Parable kindof. You know, what Jesus did like all the time when explaining scripture....

a reply to: jmdewey60

Feel free to believe what you want, but it's basically how it happens. Each person has an unlimited number of carnations in an unlimited amount of multiverses. Job actually got his old family back after Satan left, the dead bodies were just that, old skins left behind since they got to bruised or damaged. The souls or nouses of these people simply moved to other parallel worlds existing in more or less the exact same spot where idle spirit-driven bodies were waiting. Upgrades even. And they were allowed to enter back into their old world. I don't cry in funerals any more. It's just their bodies that die. The spirit leaves the body, and the soul passes to a new host.

It's like.... sometimes they come back....

needs a little depth of thought.

Jesus said that the law can be summarized as love thy neighbor as you love yourself. (because when you love someone you will not do evil to them or try to disappoint them. )

likewise when you love someone and profess to follow them you will do thier works. if you love God and love Jesus you will do thier works. otherwise you will do the devils work.

he said this when his accusers claimed to be descended of abraham after he said they were of their father the devil.

also

His only begotten son was in fact Himself. so when God sent Jesus to be sacrificed He sacrificed Himself, suffered death Himself, went to the grave Himself. God lived as he commanded we do in the law because Jesus fullfilled the law, and he paid the price for sin himself so his children would not have to. Jesus said no greater love hath a man than this; that he lay down his life for his friends.

Jesus said if you had seen (jesus) you have seen the Father. His Name (more a title or office) was God with us or Emmanuel)

When you believe in Jesus and God you will try to do them no harm. thus if you believe you will also do what jesus and his father taught and commanded as a positive expression of that love. so Faith is followed by works or it is not long lived. The word says we are to study it to show ourselves approved by God as a workman of the word. that means that as our understanding of the word improves more is expected of us than just saying we believe. you start out as an infant and as you understanding increases you become an adult in understanding the word. in fact the bible was written at three levels simultaneously. a straightforward literal sense, an adult understanding of nuance, and a level where the mysteries hidden in the word are revealed. most never leave the infant stage though most are able to if they worked at it. it is at these stages that you either are a fundamentalist or become an atheist. when you have that basic level and yet feel incomplete or confused but you do not take the next step into spiritual adulthood you can go astray easily it's easy to say God is a monster and his followers are deluded psychopaths. or lock on to seeming contradictions and dismiss the whole thing. or on the fundamentalist side to take a faulty understanding and fall into an absurd tradition of man disguised as the true faith. but if you still seek wisdom in the bible eventually a deeper level of understanding comes to you and the "contradictions" disappear and you See God is not an Evil monster and so on.

you cannot say you are a christian and be saved and yet continue to be so worldly that you support the murder of millions of babies as one example. Gods word say that John (6 months in the womb) lept with joy when he detected the presence of Jesus (who at the time was a not more than 48 hour old hollow ball of cells.) elsewhere are other biblical witnesses to the fact of doctrine that the soul is present in a baby before it has even a brain. God's calling of the prophets, "hating" Essau and so forth.

a reply to: stormbringer1701

Now that you have all managed to spit at gays and acted all devilish already and are in the mood, why not turn this thread into a pro-life campaign or something else which is completely OFF-TOPIC?!?!

originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
a reply to: stormbringer1701

Now that you have all managed to spit at gays and acted all devilish already and are in the mood, why not turn this thread into a pro-life campaign or something else which is completely OFF-TOPIC?!?!

Eh; i just used it as an example. as to gays; yeah it's a capital sin. so is jay walking. there is no one so able to follow the law that they escape the death sentence on thier own merits. that's kind of the point of the law. and since we are all condemned to death by the law i fail to see why gays who understand that are anymore put off by the law than the rest of us. at the same time; the cult kooks like those westboro baptist church goons aren't getting to escape the death sentence on thier own "holier than thou-ness" either. they are violating several capital offense biblical laws on thier own by doing what they are doing.

a reply to: stormbringer1701

Well, gays, abortion, jay walking and your continuing your deliberate derailing campaign is OFF-TOPIC. Feel free to live with your precepts, but watch your steps, there are quite a few ways to stumble and fall when messing with the Torah. Can't you hear the thundering of all the gavels that fall because of unjust folly like that you just preached? Some 'turning back the battle at the gate', hah?

Isaiah 28:11ff [ESV]
For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue the LORD will speak to this people, to whom he has said, “This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose”; yet they would not hear. And the word of the LORD will be to them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little, that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Job actually got his old family back after Satan left, the dead bodies were just that, old skins left behind since they got to bruised or damaged.

It doesn't say that the same people came back.
The idea of the story is that what Job had at the beginning, seven sons and three daughters, he ended up with.
I think that the whole story is a sort of parable of how Israel got ruined by the Assyrians and Babylonians but were restored under the Persians.

originally posted by: jmdewey60
a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Job actually got his old family back after Satan left, the dead bodies were just that, old skins left behind since they got to bruised or damaged.

It doesn't say that the same people came back.
The idea of the story is that what Job had at the beginning, seven sons and three daughters, he ended up with.
I think that the whole story is a sort of parable of how Israel got ruined by the Assyrians and Babylonians but were restored under the Persians.

Again, believe what you want, but the truth is that we don't really die when we die. We move on somewhere else, and mostly people are unaware they died if they did. Awareness comes with age and experience I suppose, but still but few know much about life, believing death is the end. Our souls are like trees or branches on even bigger trees, and our carnations are like seeds and leaves, like shavings of bark or endless root hubs' withering ends.

originally posted by: AfterInfinity

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest

originally posted by: AfterInfinity

originally posted by: BELIEVERpriest
a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Are you worthy of eternal life? If so, how can you be so sure?

That's not even the most important question.

Then what is? Please, enlighten all of us.

What do you do when your will to exist runs out before your immortality does?

I think that is the point when you have finally understood God's omnipotent practical joke on man's behalf, and decide to go back to earth to turn water into wine and wine into blood and have your arse crucified for blasphemy and grand theft donkey followed by a riot ending with break in and entry.... I'm not sure, but hey, it kindof makes sense in a way.

And if you think it's impossible to run out of things to live for, then you have no idea what you're talking about. It's easy to discuss skydiving with both feet planted firmly on the ground.

Sometimes life and living can be far more of a hassle than being dead or facing death. To "pick up your cross" has become something trivial, something of cheap country music and the universal fakers' alibi. And they don't even get it. They're all utterly sorry for those who go to hell and at the same time irrationally blissful for the future of the chosen.

Satan doesnot intimidate them. No sir! They are disgusted by his presence, and wilfully and "all-knowing" they blame him for all the evil he has been designed to destroy. It is just natural that they hate him and accuse him before his brethren day and night.

Afterall they are the ones who run the world and they all hail to a sacrificial beast in man's shape, who died to wipe their sins away. But they misread the passage for it actually says he was killed for their evil, it was because of them, not for them. Besides he didn't really die, the richest man in the world and his physician saved him. Thankfully he survived the crucifixion so he could bless his healers with the cleanest spirits and awesome new headlamps.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

they all hail to a sacrificial beast in man's shape, who died to wipe their sins away. But they misread the passage for it actually says he was killed for their evil, it was because of them, not for them.

Romans 4:25
He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
(2011 NIV)

I don't think this verse means that Jesus was raised "because" of our justification.

originally posted by: jmdewey60
a reply to: Utnapisjtim

they all hail to a sacrificial beast in man's shape, who died to wipe their sins away. But they misread the passage for it actually says he was killed for their evil, it was because of them, not for them.

Romans 4:25
He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
(2011 NIV)

I don't think this verse means that Jesus was raised "because" of our justification.

Isaiah 53:5 [ESV]
"[...]he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities[...]"

Paul, well, he shows his true face and displays his murderous nature when he says:

Romans 4:24-25 [ESV]
"[...]It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification."

Just who raised from the dead Jesus? Ever though about that? Paul is actually boasting and taking the credits for the resurrection. Isn't that quite ironic?