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Sins...
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You know, there is no big a sin that God will not take away!
It is our choice in life to see that we accept and ask God for forgiveness,with true repentance and tears we ask for forgiveness!
God knows what's in our hearts and He will forgive all if only we accept His words and heed His commandments!
A sin that cannot be forgiven is that which we start to think ourseleves godlike and think we are above all people and God.......how can He help us if we do not follow His words and ask His help!
Sin...to miss the mark!
We all miss that 'mark' and God knows that, but the fact remains.''Do we know that"?
helen...
It is our choice in life to see that we accept and ask God for forgiveness,with true repentance and tears we ask for forgiveness!
God knows what's in our hearts and He will forgive all if only we accept His words and heed His commandments!
A sin that cannot be forgiven is that which we start to think ourseleves godlike and think we are above all people and God.......how can He help us if we do not follow His words and ask His help!
Sin...to miss the mark!
We all miss that 'mark' and God knows that, but the fact remains.''Do we know that"?
helen...
Originally posted by helen670
You know, there is no big a sin that God will not take away!
It is our choice in life to see that we accept and ask God for forgiveness,with true repentance and tears we ask for forgiveness!
God knows what's in our hearts and He will forgive all if only we accept His words and heed His commandments!
A sin that cannot be forgiven is that which we start to think ourseleves godlike and think we are above all people and God.......how can He help us if we do not follow His words and ask His help!
Sin...to miss the mark!
We all miss that 'mark' and God knows that, but the fact remains.''Do we know that"?
helen...
that isnt correct. read the NT. jesus himself said it.
Mathew 12
31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
www.carm.org
Originally posted by StationsCreation
Sapphire I found this explanation, I thought it was quite good.
***
21. How can a loving God condemn people to eternal torment in hell for refusing to submit to His authority? That God would punish to such an incredible degree seems utterly contrary to our notion of love.
First, we need to understand that God does not force Himself on anyone. Those individuals who end up in hell are those who clearly and deliberately pushed aside the influence of God's Spirit during their lifetime. Sartre wrote that the gates of hell are locked from the inside. In accord with their persistent choice, God withdrew His Spirit.
I dont believe in Hell nor shall i ever, especially in light of what God has shown me. Putting Eternal Damnation over another human being only damages them, i know. Nothing will ever draw me back into that ungodly idea, sorry, but i have learned much on this topic and where it derived from. God loves us All unconditionally. 1Timothy 4:10 ~ Jesus Christ, The Saviour of ALL Men, Specially those who believe. ~
The prophet Jeremiah warns us that without the restraint of God's Spirit, the human heart will express unimaginable evil. Therefore, to keep the inhabitants of hell from making things even worse there, God imposes torment.
ahh but that is where your incorrect. God does not impose torment, we create our own torment if anything. The world is a complete mess, This is Hell right here.
John, in Revelation, points out that for those who have done much evil on earth and are capable of wreaking more atrocity upon their fellows in hell, God imposes more torment. Upon those who have lived a seemingly decent life, God imposes less torment. God expresses His love to those in hell by giving each one just enough torment to keep hell from becoming a worse place than it must be already, without the presence of Him in whom all goodness and love reside.
God doesn't base his love and acceptance upon us according to how many Brownie Points we have. Hell or Gehenna was Hell outside the City Gates of Jerusalem, Jesus hated it, why? Because people did horrible things there, including the sacrificing of babies. It was a fire pit.
[Taken from Sword & Spirit .com]
***
" If God is giving us the choice for example, to choose him over hell, what kind of choice is that? Im sorry but it sounds more like black mail than Unconditional Love to me. Love has no Conditions." - Sapphire
Say these parents have a rebellous son who constantly disobeys them and is into drugs and crime. The parents love him unconditionaly, and it pains them terribly to see him like this. They love him so much even though he shows them no respect. After many attempts by the parents to steer this young lad in the right direction with love, the young man rejects their guidance and decides to leave home and move in with his criminal friends.
Now this young mans parents tried to give him guidance into life, but he chose to go his way.
If the parents had locked him up in their house so he couldn't go with his criminal friends, they would not be showing love because they are keeping him against his will, even though they know this is better for him.
They loved him unconditionally, so they gave him what he wanted.
There is a Fine Line between giving someone the Choice to Live or Die. It's Permanent, so what your saying is Gods love IS Conditional, and God Didn't really Die for the Sins of the Whole world before they were yet born or even had the chance to sin. Does God's Love Not Endureth Forever?
Peace
[Edited on 9-12-2003 by Sapphire]
John 3:16-18
16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
17 "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
18 "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
(NKJ)
Your belief is known as Universalism. I find that people who hold to this belief are generally very loving, kind and caring people. I��ll assume you fall under this category.
I don��t like the idea of lots of people going to hell any more that you do. But there are many things that are true that I don��t like. I mean, you participated on that holocaust thread, I need not remind you of the evils in this world.
Revelations 20:12-15
12 And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.
13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.
14 Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
(NKJ)
Why would all but one of the Apostles preach the Gospel of Salvation unto a brutal death if everybody would be going to heaven anyway?
I wish you are right, that all will go to heaven. But I don't see it.
16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
17 "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
18 "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
(NKJ)
Your belief is known as Universalism. I find that people who hold to this belief are generally very loving, kind and caring people. I��ll assume you fall under this category.
I don��t like the idea of lots of people going to hell any more that you do. But there are many things that are true that I don��t like. I mean, you participated on that holocaust thread, I need not remind you of the evils in this world.
Revelations 20:12-15
12 And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.
13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.
14 Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
(NKJ)
Why would all but one of the Apostles preach the Gospel of Salvation unto a brutal death if everybody would be going to heaven anyway?
I wish you are right, that all will go to heaven. But I don't see it.
Jesus talks in Mark 3, , about blaspheming the Holy Spirit as being the "Unpardonable Sin." Many people have been worried about committing this sin.
Many preachers have wrestled with this.
So what is this sin?
ricgal.tripod.com...
So what is this sin?
ricgal.tripod.com...
THE SERMON ~ for all you Religious people Enjoy. You'll never view church the same way after reading this.
Imagine yourself sitting in a Church pew one Sunday and the following happens. From what we have seen recently in America, this scene is not as far fetched as we might care to think.
The church service is already in session. The choir is singing one of your favorite hymns. Hearing the slight squeak the double doors behind you make, you turn to see who is coming in late. To your surprise, it�s the local police chief�his picture was on the front page of your local paper only yesterday.
Looking at the big stocky man clothed with a long trench coat you wonder, �What�s he doing here? He�s a Catholic and this is a Pentecostal Church.�
Your mind immediately races back to yesterday�s paper. The police chief made the front page, but unfortunately not because of a big arrest. It seems his son had been �born again� in a Pentecostal church recently. His son was told that one must be born again to escape the flames of Hell and go to heaven. He was told that his whole family would probably burn in Hell forever if they didn�t get saved before they died. The newspaper account said that the son went to his parents to try to get them saved. With tears in his eyes he begged them to accept Jesus or else burn in Hell forever.
The police chief thought that his son had been brainwashed by some fundamentalist cult. He was furious. They had a very loud verbal fight which went from the living room to the front yard. Many of the neighbors heard the fight. After going back and forth for quite some time, the police chief asked, �And according to what you�ve now been brainwashed to believe, where is your grandmother and grandfather? They were good Catholics all their lives. They didn�t have a clue about your �born-again� nonsense? Where are they!!??�
It was reported that the son, in uncontrollable sobs answered back, �I suppose they are in hell, but that doesn�t mean you and mom have to go there.�
At this point the police chief began to beat his son to a pulp. It took several men to restrain him. The chief had lost it, big time. One of the neighbors recalls the police chief saying that perhaps Janet Reno is right about these Bible-toting fundamentalist cults. �They are dangerous. Something ought to be done about them. They�ve destroyed my family,� were some of the kind of statements the neighbor recalled the police chief making.
And now he is in your Pentecostal Church. Why? Had God convicted him? Is he going to get saved this morning? Oh, praise God, that would be wonderful, you thought. His face looked extremely stern and fierce. �Gee, he must really be under conviction,� you thought. �It�s always darkest before the morn.� You couldn�t wait to see how your pastor was going to bring this man to Christ. You were about to experience a miracle and you couldn�t wait. Hallelujah!!
He opened his trench coat. Your heart nearly fell to the floor as he wielded up a huge machine gun. �What on earth is he going to do? Has he gone mad?�
He raised the gun, aimed it towards the choir and said, �You�ve divided and ruined my family. You�ve consigned my whole family and ancestors to eternal flames. The least I can do is return the favor.� A long burst of bullets followed leaving the entire white-robed choir strewn all over the podium drenched with fresh blood.
Everyone immediately scrambled to find refuge behind the pews. The gunman begins to walk up the middle of the church and sprays the aisles with bullets. You are in the second row of pews in the front. Your heart races faster with each burst of bullets knowing he is one pew closer to you.
All of a sudden one of your fellow Church members screams out, �Lord, Save us!!!� The gunner stopped shooting. Looking the screamer straight in the eyes the gunman said, �Do you believe you must be born again to go to heaven?� The person hesitantly responded, �yes.� The gunman answered her with a bullet between the eyes.
The police chief changes his course of action. He comes to one row and demands each person stand up. A burst of bullets over their heads moves them out from their haven under the pews.
Then he asks the first one, �Do you believe all are going to Hell who haven�t been born again?�
�No!!� was the reply of the young teenager who was the first in the row.
�Ok, sit down,� responded the gunman. He asks the same question to the next person, an elderly lady, �Do you believe you must be born again?� In a weak broken voice, the woman responds in a resigned and determine gentle voice, �Yes, young man, I believe in the Word of God and it plainly stated you must be born again to enter the kingdom of God.� The gunman replied with a burst of bullets. He continued this game with the rest of that row. Half lived, half died.
�Everyone, get off the floor and move to the front of the church. NOW!!! As you face the gunman with the rest of the survivors, you look out over your church seeing dead bodies sprawled all over the place. There are groans coming from various pews from the severely wounded. Probably close to 90 percent of the congregation had been shot.
As he looks at the row of people he has gathered in front of the altar, it appears that some reasoning ability is re-entering him.
�Ok, folks. It�s time to put the test to your faith in your �born again� god. Surely most of the world has never been born again let alone even heard of such a thing. And you all say you love and worship this born-again god who is going to fry most of the world including all my family and ancestors in a lake that will burn forever. Ok, if you can love and worship such a fiend who will torture human beings endlessly, then surely you can worship a man like me who isn�t a fraction as cruel as your god. I�ve only killed a few human beings. I�ve sent them off to your born-again God. I�ve put them out of their misery and made the community a better place by getting rid of people who spread such poisonous doctrines that destroy families. Your God, according to your teachings, is going to endlessly torture everyone who doesn�t confess Him as Lord and worship Him from their heart without hypocrisy. If you can love such a beast, then surely you can love and worship me. And if you can�t love and worship me who is not near as cruel as the god you say you believe in, love and worship, then I say you are all evil liars who aren�t worth take up space in this world. Now start showing me how much you love me�worship me! And you had better do it with your heart and not just pretend. If I detect the slightest pretence, I�ll blow you right up to your fiendish god. Now bow down and worship me�.from your heart!!!
Everyone is looking at each other wondering what to do. Your pastor breaks down into uncontrollable sobs. He bends onto one knee with his head bowed down. The gunman approaches him. �Look into my eyes!!� The pastor raises his head still sobbing uncontrollably. The odor of urine comes from his direction. He wet himself.
�Open your eyes, look at me and tell me you love and adore me!!!�
�I�m trying, I�m trying,� faintly squeaks through the pastor�s loud wails. The police chief raises his gun and sprays the pastor and his wife standing next to him from top to bottom.
Everyone remaining is in utter hysteria. �I said worship me or I�ll blow you all to your hell!!
He walks over to the beginning of the assembled row. It�s your mother!! Ma�am, I�m going to prove to you that I am far more worthy of worship than the fiend you folks pretend to worship in this place. I say pretend because I am convinced no human being with their brains in right could possible love the god you claim to love. You say all mankind is condemned to go to hell simply for being born into this rotten world. You say, if a person hasn�t been born again they�re going to Hell. You say the only way a person can be born again is to believe that Jesus died for their personal sins and to ask him to forgive them and to give their lives to Him. You say this must be done from the heart or else it won�t count. That means most of the world goes to hell by default. You say there are none worthy to go to heaven except through being born again through faith in Jesus Christ. I�m going to give YOU a better chance YOUR god supposedly gave to my parents. No one ever told them they had to be �born again.� So according to your theology, my parents are now screaming louder than those screaming from behind your pews. And they are going to scream like that forever without any hope of ever coming out of this place of torment which YOU say YOUR god made to torture all those who would not love and worship Jesus Christ. Billions never heard the name of Jesus and according to your teachings they�re now burning. I�m going to give you more chances than your god has ever given. I demand to be worshipped and loved by you or else I have no other choice but to kill you. Unlike your god, I am going to give you SEVERAL chances to sincerely worship me from your heart. Now worship me!! If you can worship a god who consigns people to be tortured forever simply for being born, then surely you should be able to love and worship me FAR more. Now worship me!�
Your mother, born and raised Pentecostal, stout and strong in the tradition she was raised in says, �I�d rather die than worship you, Mister.� Bang. A bullet pierces her left shoulder making it look like hamburger meat. You immediately go over to help.
�Back off lady! Salvation is a personal decision. This is between me and her. Move away!�
The pressure of the gun barrel against your forehead was enough to move you back. Besides, your young daughter was standing right beside you. What good would you be to her dead?
�Chance number one. Worship me!� Your mother�s mouth has a determined sealed look as if it had made up it�s mind to stay closed forever. Bang! A shot into the other shoulder. The shot knocked your mother off her feet. �One MORE chance, lady. Love and worship me from your heart or die!� Your mother was is such pain and agony she probably didn�t hear a word. A single shot in the heart pulled her last breath out of her.
The gunman turns his attention to a young girl in the row. It�s your daughter. An expression of compassion sweeps across his face.
�Your god kills and then endlessly tortures men, woman and children who do not bow their knees to him. You say everyone is worthy of hell and must be born again and then some of you turn around and say children, Catholic or otherwise, go to heaven because they are innocent, they haven�t reached the �age of accountability.� Hypocrites!! You can�t have it both ways. Either one MUST be born again or not. How can anyone believe you lying conniving snakes. You must have made that age of accountability business up just to make your devilish god sound a little more palatable. You�re all a bunch of lying snakes. I�m going to show the rest of you that I am much more worthy of your love and worship than your lying god. I�m going to spare this child whether she worships me or not.�
All of sudden, your mind is filled with a strange combination of rage and conviction. How dare this man say he is more merciful and loving than the God you have come to know as your personal savior! How dare he say that he is more loving than Jesus. Your mind races through the scriptures which you have combed through countless times. Where are those scriptures which speak of the age of accountability? Surely there must be at least two or three clear Scriptures for every doctrine. At least that is what you were taught. Your mind draws a complete blank. And what about all those who never heard of the name of Jesus, who didn�t confess Him as Lord from their heart? What about those who innocently sat in church pews just following what their preacher told them but never told them to be born again. My God!! Are they all now screaming like my wounded brothers and sisters screaming from behind the pews? And Jesus won�t give them a second chance? Oh, my!! Some of them never had a first chance!! Your mind is racing through the Bible looking for Scriptures which support those little nothings you used to throw out when people began to press you about those you never heard of the name of Jesus. �Oh, God knows them that are his,� or �My God judges after the heart,� or another favorite was, �God will judge you according to the knowledge you have been given.� Your mind races through Genesis to Revelation demanding two or three Scriptures to make your God appear more loving, just and humane than this man but nothing pops up to prop up the image of God you had been taught to believe in. All you can hear is the Scriptures which have been pounded into you week after week, year after year from Sunday School teachers, youth leaders, traveling evangelists, and your pastor. �You MUST be born again. Enter by the narrow gate for broad is the road that leads to destruction. And these shall go to everlasting punishment. And these are reserved to everlasting destruction. And all liars, fornicators, idolaters�shall have their part in the lake of fire.� An image of the lake of fire appears before you. You hear the screams of countless billions of men, women, and yes, infants and children mixed with the screams of your brothers and sisters dying in the pews. You can�t tell which screams are real and which are in your mind.
Your church taught that a person must speak in tongues as a sign of being truly born again. You see millions of Christians who never spoke in tongues burning forever without hope of ever being able to repent. All of a sudden you begin to wonder how many of your own church members who HAVE been born again are in that lake of fire. After all, how many times have you heard the Scripture preached in your church at revival time, �Lord, lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out devils, and do marvelous works in your name?� And Jesus told them, �Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity.� Gosh, these must have been born-again Pentecostals or Charismatics. How many of us are going to be screaming like those groaning in the pews right now? Will backbiting count? Slander? Unforgiveness? Not loving all of my neighbors? Sneaking a drink of alcohol every now and then.
You had talked to enough different Christians from different denominations to know that all of them had different ideas about what might be a sin big enough to go to hell over. If I deny Christ so that I can raise my daughter, will Jesus cast me away forever? �Whosoever shall deny me before men, them will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.� Matt. 10:33 The more Scriptures which have been drilled into you from childhood that come up the more unsure you find yourself concerning your eternal fate should you die that very moment.
The pastor never did spell out very clearly all the sins that could send one to Hell. We were just kind of left with our own imaginations as to what would send someone to Hell. It was always easier to see someone else�s sins worthy of hell than our own.
Your whole life flashes before you, thousands of unconfessed sins pass through your conscience and you become frozen with fear at the magnitude of the sins you back-filed in your subconscious mind. You look out into your church, see the horror of this terrible massacre and realize that it is nothing compared to what you have told people hell was going to be like. You look into the eyes of the police chief and you see that he may indeed be more merciful than the god you have said you believed in. You look at this mad-man who has just killed part of your family and many of your friends and you know that it is impossible for you to truly love and worship him with all of your heart. For the first time in your life you realize that deep down inside, way down in your guts, you really have a deep hatred for a God who would burn or torture endlessly someone for just being born, or not truly worship Him. All of a sudden you realize that anyone who forces people to love them is not really loving themselves. You come to the stark realization that the image of God you have been taught to believe in is indeed worse than this police chief. You could not truly bring yourself to love and worship a god who would burn anyone alive, even a single person. If you actually witnessed such an act, it would utterly repulse you. You see that if you cannot love or worship a human being who forces people to love them or be tortured that you could not possibly love a God who would do such a thing. You could NOT in your heart love a God who would consign your mother, or son, or daughter, or husband to eternal flames without hope, without mercy. Your heart would go out to that person and you would eventually find the God who created such a condition to be repulsive beyond measure. All of a sudden it occurs to you that if God knows the beginning from the end, then He knew that when He created mankind most of them were going to be endlessly tortured. How could he begin such a process with such a rotten end for most of His very own creation? How could he possibly be all-powerful, ever-present, just, wise, ever-merciful whose wrath will one day come to an end according to scripture and whose nature is a love beyond words and end up throwing almost every human being He created into an eternal inferno? How can this be possible? As you heard the screams of your brothers and sisters, your imagination flies over the lake of fire you had always been taught was the final destination of all unbelievers and Christians who did not walk through the �strait gate.� You see billions upon billions of human beings forever screaming in pain without any hope of deliverance. You see friends, neighbors, work associates, and yes, even family members agonizing, begging for help. And then you stand before Jesus and He says, �Love me and worship Me with all your heart, soul, mind and strength or else your lot will be in the lake of fire.�
�OK, lady, it�s your turn!� Your mind had wandered deep into the recesses of your heart. His words startled you back to reality. Or were you in reality for the first time in your life as you truly contemplated the reality of the Hell and the God you had been taught to believe in. You thought about your daughter, who had been spared her life. Your answer would determine whether you would be the one to raise her to maturity or not.
�Bow down and worship me and look me straight in the eyes.� He aimed his gun directly towards your heart. The Scripture �Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord to the Glory of God the Father� races across your mind. �To the Glory of God the Father. How could there be even a trace of glory in billions upon billions of human beings endlessly tortured in a manner that would make this madman�s act seem like child�s play? If I can�t worship and love the madman before me who can only make me suffer for a few moments before he kills me, how can I possible love and worship a God who might endlessly torture any of my children, or family, or friends? You realize for the first time in your life, that your love and worship of your god was just on the surface. When forced to really deeply look at what you had been taught to believe, you actually despised such a fiend more than the man giving you the choice of whether you were going to live or not. You realize for the first time in your life what a horrible monster the god you had been taught to believe in actually was. The cosmetics and false excuses for your god�s intolerance was stripped away. The man before you was only a small semblance of the monster you had told people you loved and worshipped. All of a sudden your hidden, backfiled, rage came to the surface. You actually find yourself utterly despising the God you had pretended to love out of fear. Your pretence was so good you actually fooled yourself. But now the veil was removed forever. For the first time in your life, you actually saw the image of God you have been taught to believe in for what he really was, the most cruel hideous monster the mind could possibly conceive of. The reality of what you saw in your mind was so overwhelming that you passed out under the shock hearing as you went under, �Ok, this is the last warning�love and worship me or die. I�ve given you far more chances than your god has given to most.� And then you pass out.
The scene I have painted above is fiction. But in a spiritual sense, it unveils the dark side of the so-called �good news� and image of God which we, Christians, have expected the world to swallow. We stand in amazement when we present our version of the �good news� to the world and find they don�t think it �good news� at all. They find it grotesque.. We have been so drugged and poisoned by false doctrines that we have become so numb that we cannot comprehend why the world doesn�t want to go to our churches.
For hundreds of years, the Christ that the world became familiar with was the Christ of Roman Catholicism. This system�s priests would go to heathen nations with guns and swords to take their gold and other resources and convert the heathen by the power of the sword. �Bow down and worship this decrepit looking man on a cross on a metal cross or die. This cracker is the real body of Jesus. Believe this or die.� This was the only good news millions of human beings heard for most of the Christian era. Do you REALLY think they bowed down and worshipped this god in full sincerity of the heart? According to the Bible, one must believe IN THE HEART, not just outwardly.
And what is the gospel of Protestantism and its image of God? Well, most sects of Protestantism are Arminian in philosophy as opposed to Calvinistic. They say all of mankind deserves to burn in literal flames forever just for being born. EVERYONE without exception is doomed to automatically go there because we are all born sinners. We deserve to be endlessly tortures they say. But there is an escape hatch. If you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal savior, you will be saved. But you must confess your sins, acknowledge Him as your Lord and believe on Him IN YOUR HEART�then, according to the evangelist, you will be saved.
This is the typical message evangelists like Billy Graham preach. But as we enter the churches these evangelists send their converts to, we discover the evangelist lied. When Billy Graham and other evangelists like him come to town few people realize that Billy Graham is just the front man for the churches in that community. It is the churches who have paid for the crusade and it is the churches who will receive the converts from a Billy Graham crusade. And the gospel the Billy Graham preached to get the converts to go to the various churches who sponsored him is usually quite different from the Gospel preached by Billy Graham and company. Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved is the Billy Graham gospel in a nutshell. But when the converts attend the sponsoring churches who paid Billy Graham to come into town they find there are hundreds of pages of fine print Billy boy didn�t bother mentioning.
In some churches participating in crusades like this, facial hair on a man can send one to hell. Another church which participated in the Crusade will tell you that you must receive water baptism a certain way in order to REALLY be saved. Another Church will tell you that you MUST believe the cracker at Eucharist is REALLY the very body of Jesus Christ in order to continue to stay saved. Each different church which participates in these grand crusades has it�s own set of rules on how to REALLY get saved again and what one must do to keep from being thrown into the eternal sizzling lake of fire which God created to torture most of mankind in endlessly.
Do babies who never heard the name of Jesus and are unable to express faith go to hell? Some churches say yes, some say no. Those who say no have NO Scriptural proof. Do people who never heard the name of Jesus automatically go to Hell? Some churches say yes, some say no. Some teach that God judges the condition of the heart. Some say He will judge a person on the amount of knowledge they were given. Again, there are NO Scriptural proofs for this belief. They just invented this belief to make their image of god look a little better than the one ultra-fundamentalists present to the world.
There are thousands of rules, regulations, and rituals which people must perform in order to �stay saved.� They were told that salvation is a gift by the evangelist, but later found out that it is really their own works that will ultimately save them. And each denomination has its own set of rules. It�s quite possible, that you might be in the wrong denomination following the wrong set of rules and find yourself being endlessly tortured by the �loving� god of Christendom. After all, �many are called and few are chosen,� and �Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, etc�.depart from Me, I never knew you.� You know the Scriptures quoted to try to prove a Christian can lose their salvation.
Considering all the thousands of different denominations of Christendom and the many differing and conflicting ways they portray the God of the Bible, does this sound like a wise, merciful, just and loving God or does this sound like a mass of confusion? Who is the author of confusion?
Comparing the madman in our story to the image of God most of Christendom has presented to the world, the mad gunman is actually a more loving image than the image of Christ which the church presents to the world. Dear reader, please think about this serious!! According to Christianity all the world deserves to burn in Hell forever. Where does this concept come from? Certainly NOT the Bible!
The Bible says �All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is NONE righteous, nay not one,� including babies, infants and children. But the Bible NOWHERE says that because they are not righteous, God has consigned them to burn forever. The Bible says that there is only one name under heaven by which men might be saved--that name is Jesus. How could those born before Christ call upon a man that wasn�t even born yet? How can those born before Jesus receive salvation? Christendom comes up with weak and unscriptural answers to that question. Most of the world has been illiterate. Most countries never had a Bible translation in their own language. In many countries where there was a Bible, it was reserved only for the priesthood. The laity never owned a Bible.
Anyone who has seriously studied Church history throughout the world can plainly see that probably less than 1 percent of the world�s population has ever been truly born again. And according to many Christian denominations, many born again Christians will also find their way into the eternal flames prepared by God.
Tell me, if you owned a baseball team and one of your players could only get one hit out of a hundred times at bat, would you place much confidence in him? Yet this is exactly how Christianity portrays God and expects unbelieving people to place their confidence, their very lives in such an utter failure. Can a person with all his marbles REALLY have confidence, that is, trust, faith in a god with such an awful success rate?
If we see a parent terrible abuse their children, we try to get government officials to take the children away. We do NOT see cruel punishment as a sign of a loving parent. Yet we do not even flinch while presenting to the world a god who is going to endlessly torture men, women, and children forever and ever; a god who demands like the mad gunman in our illustration above to be loved and worshipped from the heart or else receive His wrath forever without any chance to come out of that Hell which HE supposedly created for the very purpose of endlessly punishing them. The image of God most Christians expect unbelievers to have faith in, is a thousand times worse than the gunman in our illustration, and yet they somehow think that they can convince non-believers to worship such a fiend. It�s impossible. And I dare say that most born again Christians warming the pews of the churches of the world, in their heart do NOT truly love and worship the god they have been taught to love and worship�in their hearts they actually despise this fiend--but they are afraid to acknowledge it lest they themselves are cast into the god-created inferno themselves. The typical Christian feigns love for the god they have been convinced by their tradition to worship, but I am 100 percent convinced the heart of man is incapable of truly loving the fiend portrayed by modern Christendom. Not only is a human being incapable of truly loving or worshipping such a fiend, by holding such an image of God in their hearts, they slowly begin to be conformed to that same image. They eventually become hypocritical, double-minded and hating the neighbor they say they love. They become just like their god.
Conforming to YOUR Image of God
Is your image of god one who planned to save all mankind but couldn't? Then you will become like him�an egotist who had big plans he/she couldn't finish! (Luke 14:28-32) (Arminianism, most of Christianity)
Is your god one who planned from the foundation of the world to torture most of mankind with tortures even the cruelest of humans couldn't inflict upon another human being? (Calvinism)
Then you might find yourself one day looking and acting like a horrible monster!
Is your image of god one who will simply annihilate those who don't like him and refuse him? (Conditional Mortality groups)
Then your god is very much like Hitler and other human despots.
Is your God all-powerful, omnipresent, omniscient, merciful, just, whose nature is love-- a love which NEVER fails--a love for Whom nothing is impossible--a Love Who gave His life that He might draw all mankind unto Himself through His Son? (John 12:32)
Then rejoice for you are being conformed into the very image of Jesus Christ, Savior of the world!!
Is The Jesus You Have Been Taught A False Christ/Messiah?
As we gain more understanding of the ancient original languages of the Bible, more Christians are coming to the realization that the Jesus they have been taught is a false Christ, a false Messiah. Their Christian "tradition," they have discovered, was not true to the character, plans, and purposes of the One who walked the streets of Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago. And the image of Jesus they have been taught to believe in, was not even true to the Bible written in its original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. They have discovered that they have been deceived just as badly as the Jews of His day. Jesus told them, "You have made the Word of God of no effect by your tradition�in vain do you worship Me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men." Mat. 15:6-9 Just as the first "chosen people" were led astray by false shepherds, so too, the modern "chosen people," Christians have followed in the footsteps of the ancient Jews.
Jesus and His apostles warned that after their departure, the church would be flooded with wolves in sheep's clothing, false shepherds, false gospels, anti-Christs, and false Jesus's. There are over thirty thousand denominations of christendom to attest to their words. A kingdom divided against itself, Jesus said, cannot stand. Surely God's kingdom is different from the sectarianism we find in the church-at-large.
How can we discern whether we are following the correct message? We do not have time to go through all these various denominations to see which one is correct. How can we know if we are conforming ourselves to the right pattern, the right image of God? The answer is simple.
The True Jesus is NOT a sinner.
You say, MY denomination or movement does not call Jesus a sinner. But the fact of the matter is almost ALL denominations of Christianity have made Jesus a sinner. As a matter of fact, they have made Jesus to be perhaps the world's GREATEST sinner. How so you ask? Well, let us see what the Greek and Hebrew behind our English word "sinner" means:
TO SIN�STRONG�S CONCORDANCE NUMBER 264�GREEK-HAMARTANO-�TO MISS THE MARK (AND SO NOT SHARE IN THE PRIZE), TO ERR.� HEBREW-STRONG�S NUMBER 2398-FROM THE ROOT, �CHATA�TO MISS.�
What was the purpose of Jesus Christ�s death and resurrection?
God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:17)
Who comes down from heaven and gives Life to the world. (John 6:33)
The Son of Man did not come to destroy men�s lives but to save them. (Luke 9:56)
And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself. (John 12:32)
As you have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as you have given Him. (John 17:2)
The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. (John 3:35)
God, Who at various times and in various ways, spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, Whom He has appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds. (Hebrews 1:1,2)
His purpose is very clear: to reconcile all things back to His Father. (Col. 1:16-20)
According to Scripture, Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, created all things, reconciles all things, is Heir of all things, has authority of all things, will have all men to be saved, His grace comes to all men, He takes away the sin of the world, He gives His flesh for the life of the world, He is the propitiation for the sins of the world, whose gifts are irrevocable of which life is one of the gifts, He manifested to put away sin, He preached to the spirits in prison and holds the keys to death and hell, who changes not, He is Lord of both the living and the dead, he will destroy all enemies of God the last one being death, Who made all things alive, Who completes the work the Father gave Him to do, Who restores all things, gave Himself a ransom for all, He takes away the curse and said He came to do the will and work of the Father who wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth so that God, the Father may be all in all! I could lengthen this paragraph considerably, but I think the point has been made.
Jesus said He finished the work and accomplished His purpose which was also the Father's purpose�to be the Savior of the whole world�to reconcile everyone back to His Father and our Father!
According to many Christians, billions of people are going to a place called Hell to be tormented by God for all eternity. Please hear this very carefully. If Jesus loses just one soul, he will become the world�s biggest sinner. How so, you say? Because He will have missed His mark�that is , to reconcile all things back to His Father. If He loses one single soul, he cannot be the true Messiah of Israel. And so the hope of billions of people will come to nothing. Jesus had to fulfill ALL the Scriptures perfectly in order to be the true Messiah.
�For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And he is before all things and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the ecclesia, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.� (Colossians 1:16-20)
Please understand that when the scriptures talk about �things� being reconciled back to God, He is not talking about rocks and trees. It was descendants of Adam who were cast out of the presence of God in the garden of Eden, remember? We need to be restored, reconciled, redeemed and the Scriptures make it abundantly clear that His purpose, goal, will and work was to reconcile all.
These Scriptures make it abundantly clear what the goal, the mark, the target which Jesus was aiming at when He went to the Tree of Crucifixion. The majority of the church says Jesus either will not (Calvinist) or cannot (Arminianist) save all mankind due to Satan and the power of �free-will.� The majority of the church says He will sin, that is, miss the mark.. There has always been a minority in church history, (which used to be the majority before the dark ages) who believe the Scriptures that declare Jesus Christ the actual Savior of the whole world. This minority pays close attention to Scriptures and notices things like that fact that Paul, the apostle to the nations, never preached salvation as deliverance from our modern concept of Hell. As a matter of fact, he never used the word �Hell�! That should make one think. Go to a concordance and see for yourself.
As Bibles get closer to the original languages, Hell and �eternal� punishment passages in Bibles are disappearing. The King James Bible used the word �Hell,� 54 times. The best present-day Bibles such as the NIV, NASB, and NRSB, do not contain the word in the Old Testament at all, and only about a dozen times in the New Testament. Many translations do not contain the words �Hell� nor �eternal punishment.� When one looks at Bible translations such as Young�s Literal Translation by Robert Young, author of the famous Young�s Analytical Concordance, one will find Hell completely gone and the incorrect and very pagan �eternal punishment� replaced with �age-during punishment.� Other translations have �age-abiding correction,� �eonian chastening,� �punishment of the ages,� etc.
This article is much too short to get into the subject, but none of these Hell or �eternal punishment� type of phrases should ever have been brought into English translations. The Roman Catholic Church, with its �convert or die� policies, took almost all of the pagan and idolatrous practices of the countries it forced to convert and �christened� them, that is, incorporated them into the church. That is how thousands of pagan ideas and practices became �christianized.� When one seriously studies the Reformation, we realize that Protestants did not go all the way in cleaning up the �House of the Lord� from all the pagan practices and doctrines which were added to the simplicity found in Christ. They left many false doctrines in tact. One of these false doctrines which came from pagan countries is the idea of a place of eternal punishment called �Hell.� A quick look into an encyclopedia should tell a person this word in its religious form comes from Norse mythology, not from the Greek and Hebrew in the Bible. The whole concept of a place of eternal torment comes from a mistranslation of the Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek words Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus all being translated into the Anglo-Saxon word �Hell.� The Reformation translators often translated from their traditions, rather than from knowledge of Hebrew and Greek. As Bible translations get closer to the original languages, our pagan concept of Hell will fade away.
Paul never preached a place of eternal torment to anyone! That is why he could say in 1 Timothy 4:9-11, �This is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially those who believe.� He could also say and mean, �Love never fails!� (1 Cor. 13:8) John tells us that �God is Love.� (1 John 4:8) Therefore, God never fails! He never misses the mark! We, in our short-sightedness may have brought Him down to our image, that is, a sinner, but He will be vindicated. When He is, will you hang your head in shame? It is not too late to �study to show yourself approved� and see for yourself the glorious Truth that the salvation of the world does not depend upon a hypocritical, lazy, selfish church. No, the world, all of it, is in much better hands�Jesus Christ, the Savior of all mankind, Who gave Himself a ransom for all, including you, whether you presently are aware of it or not.
�It is finished,� He cried from Calvary. Ask the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, Who will lead you into all Truth, to reveal to you the full meaning of those three words.. They declare Jesus hit the mark at which He was aiming. It is important for you to do this. You, also, have a mark set for you. To give God full Glory. Don�t fall short by saying He will fall short in His Word, His promises, His work, His purposes, and His Love and Mercy which never fail nor end. If you do, you can be sure you are following an antichrist, a false shepherd, a wolf, a false gospel, an image of Jesus who is the world greatest sinner. Now stop being a slave to the traditions of men which make the word of God of no effect. Overcome your fear or worship of men and join yourself to the true body of Christ in whom is NO SIN!
Jesus is the Savior of the whole world. It's time the world hears it. Join yourself to His body and walk away from those denominations and sects which dare ascribe sin to the body of Christ.
Web site: www.tentmaker.org...
[Edited on 9-12-2003 by Sapphire]
Imagine yourself sitting in a Church pew one Sunday and the following happens. From what we have seen recently in America, this scene is not as far fetched as we might care to think.
The church service is already in session. The choir is singing one of your favorite hymns. Hearing the slight squeak the double doors behind you make, you turn to see who is coming in late. To your surprise, it�s the local police chief�his picture was on the front page of your local paper only yesterday.
Looking at the big stocky man clothed with a long trench coat you wonder, �What�s he doing here? He�s a Catholic and this is a Pentecostal Church.�
Your mind immediately races back to yesterday�s paper. The police chief made the front page, but unfortunately not because of a big arrest. It seems his son had been �born again� in a Pentecostal church recently. His son was told that one must be born again to escape the flames of Hell and go to heaven. He was told that his whole family would probably burn in Hell forever if they didn�t get saved before they died. The newspaper account said that the son went to his parents to try to get them saved. With tears in his eyes he begged them to accept Jesus or else burn in Hell forever.
The police chief thought that his son had been brainwashed by some fundamentalist cult. He was furious. They had a very loud verbal fight which went from the living room to the front yard. Many of the neighbors heard the fight. After going back and forth for quite some time, the police chief asked, �And according to what you�ve now been brainwashed to believe, where is your grandmother and grandfather? They were good Catholics all their lives. They didn�t have a clue about your �born-again� nonsense? Where are they!!??�
It was reported that the son, in uncontrollable sobs answered back, �I suppose they are in hell, but that doesn�t mean you and mom have to go there.�
At this point the police chief began to beat his son to a pulp. It took several men to restrain him. The chief had lost it, big time. One of the neighbors recalls the police chief saying that perhaps Janet Reno is right about these Bible-toting fundamentalist cults. �They are dangerous. Something ought to be done about them. They�ve destroyed my family,� were some of the kind of statements the neighbor recalled the police chief making.
And now he is in your Pentecostal Church. Why? Had God convicted him? Is he going to get saved this morning? Oh, praise God, that would be wonderful, you thought. His face looked extremely stern and fierce. �Gee, he must really be under conviction,� you thought. �It�s always darkest before the morn.� You couldn�t wait to see how your pastor was going to bring this man to Christ. You were about to experience a miracle and you couldn�t wait. Hallelujah!!
He opened his trench coat. Your heart nearly fell to the floor as he wielded up a huge machine gun. �What on earth is he going to do? Has he gone mad?�
He raised the gun, aimed it towards the choir and said, �You�ve divided and ruined my family. You�ve consigned my whole family and ancestors to eternal flames. The least I can do is return the favor.� A long burst of bullets followed leaving the entire white-robed choir strewn all over the podium drenched with fresh blood.
Everyone immediately scrambled to find refuge behind the pews. The gunman begins to walk up the middle of the church and sprays the aisles with bullets. You are in the second row of pews in the front. Your heart races faster with each burst of bullets knowing he is one pew closer to you.
All of a sudden one of your fellow Church members screams out, �Lord, Save us!!!� The gunner stopped shooting. Looking the screamer straight in the eyes the gunman said, �Do you believe you must be born again to go to heaven?� The person hesitantly responded, �yes.� The gunman answered her with a bullet between the eyes.
The police chief changes his course of action. He comes to one row and demands each person stand up. A burst of bullets over their heads moves them out from their haven under the pews.
Then he asks the first one, �Do you believe all are going to Hell who haven�t been born again?�
�No!!� was the reply of the young teenager who was the first in the row.
�Ok, sit down,� responded the gunman. He asks the same question to the next person, an elderly lady, �Do you believe you must be born again?� In a weak broken voice, the woman responds in a resigned and determine gentle voice, �Yes, young man, I believe in the Word of God and it plainly stated you must be born again to enter the kingdom of God.� The gunman replied with a burst of bullets. He continued this game with the rest of that row. Half lived, half died.
�Everyone, get off the floor and move to the front of the church. NOW!!! As you face the gunman with the rest of the survivors, you look out over your church seeing dead bodies sprawled all over the place. There are groans coming from various pews from the severely wounded. Probably close to 90 percent of the congregation had been shot.
As he looks at the row of people he has gathered in front of the altar, it appears that some reasoning ability is re-entering him.
�Ok, folks. It�s time to put the test to your faith in your �born again� god. Surely most of the world has never been born again let alone even heard of such a thing. And you all say you love and worship this born-again god who is going to fry most of the world including all my family and ancestors in a lake that will burn forever. Ok, if you can love and worship such a fiend who will torture human beings endlessly, then surely you can worship a man like me who isn�t a fraction as cruel as your god. I�ve only killed a few human beings. I�ve sent them off to your born-again God. I�ve put them out of their misery and made the community a better place by getting rid of people who spread such poisonous doctrines that destroy families. Your God, according to your teachings, is going to endlessly torture everyone who doesn�t confess Him as Lord and worship Him from their heart without hypocrisy. If you can love such a beast, then surely you can love and worship me. And if you can�t love and worship me who is not near as cruel as the god you say you believe in, love and worship, then I say you are all evil liars who aren�t worth take up space in this world. Now start showing me how much you love me�worship me! And you had better do it with your heart and not just pretend. If I detect the slightest pretence, I�ll blow you right up to your fiendish god. Now bow down and worship me�.from your heart!!!
Everyone is looking at each other wondering what to do. Your pastor breaks down into uncontrollable sobs. He bends onto one knee with his head bowed down. The gunman approaches him. �Look into my eyes!!� The pastor raises his head still sobbing uncontrollably. The odor of urine comes from his direction. He wet himself.
�Open your eyes, look at me and tell me you love and adore me!!!�
�I�m trying, I�m trying,� faintly squeaks through the pastor�s loud wails. The police chief raises his gun and sprays the pastor and his wife standing next to him from top to bottom.
Everyone remaining is in utter hysteria. �I said worship me or I�ll blow you all to your hell!!
He walks over to the beginning of the assembled row. It�s your mother!! Ma�am, I�m going to prove to you that I am far more worthy of worship than the fiend you folks pretend to worship in this place. I say pretend because I am convinced no human being with their brains in right could possible love the god you claim to love. You say all mankind is condemned to go to hell simply for being born into this rotten world. You say, if a person hasn�t been born again they�re going to Hell. You say the only way a person can be born again is to believe that Jesus died for their personal sins and to ask him to forgive them and to give their lives to Him. You say this must be done from the heart or else it won�t count. That means most of the world goes to hell by default. You say there are none worthy to go to heaven except through being born again through faith in Jesus Christ. I�m going to give YOU a better chance YOUR god supposedly gave to my parents. No one ever told them they had to be �born again.� So according to your theology, my parents are now screaming louder than those screaming from behind your pews. And they are going to scream like that forever without any hope of ever coming out of this place of torment which YOU say YOUR god made to torture all those who would not love and worship Jesus Christ. Billions never heard the name of Jesus and according to your teachings they�re now burning. I�m going to give you more chances than your god has ever given. I demand to be worshipped and loved by you or else I have no other choice but to kill you. Unlike your god, I am going to give you SEVERAL chances to sincerely worship me from your heart. Now worship me!! If you can worship a god who consigns people to be tortured forever simply for being born, then surely you should be able to love and worship me FAR more. Now worship me!�
Your mother, born and raised Pentecostal, stout and strong in the tradition she was raised in says, �I�d rather die than worship you, Mister.� Bang. A bullet pierces her left shoulder making it look like hamburger meat. You immediately go over to help.
�Back off lady! Salvation is a personal decision. This is between me and her. Move away!�
The pressure of the gun barrel against your forehead was enough to move you back. Besides, your young daughter was standing right beside you. What good would you be to her dead?
�Chance number one. Worship me!� Your mother�s mouth has a determined sealed look as if it had made up it�s mind to stay closed forever. Bang! A shot into the other shoulder. The shot knocked your mother off her feet. �One MORE chance, lady. Love and worship me from your heart or die!� Your mother was is such pain and agony she probably didn�t hear a word. A single shot in the heart pulled her last breath out of her.
The gunman turns his attention to a young girl in the row. It�s your daughter. An expression of compassion sweeps across his face.
�Your god kills and then endlessly tortures men, woman and children who do not bow their knees to him. You say everyone is worthy of hell and must be born again and then some of you turn around and say children, Catholic or otherwise, go to heaven because they are innocent, they haven�t reached the �age of accountability.� Hypocrites!! You can�t have it both ways. Either one MUST be born again or not. How can anyone believe you lying conniving snakes. You must have made that age of accountability business up just to make your devilish god sound a little more palatable. You�re all a bunch of lying snakes. I�m going to show the rest of you that I am much more worthy of your love and worship than your lying god. I�m going to spare this child whether she worships me or not.�
All of sudden, your mind is filled with a strange combination of rage and conviction. How dare this man say he is more merciful and loving than the God you have come to know as your personal savior! How dare he say that he is more loving than Jesus. Your mind races through the scriptures which you have combed through countless times. Where are those scriptures which speak of the age of accountability? Surely there must be at least two or three clear Scriptures for every doctrine. At least that is what you were taught. Your mind draws a complete blank. And what about all those who never heard of the name of Jesus, who didn�t confess Him as Lord from their heart? What about those who innocently sat in church pews just following what their preacher told them but never told them to be born again. My God!! Are they all now screaming like my wounded brothers and sisters screaming from behind the pews? And Jesus won�t give them a second chance? Oh, my!! Some of them never had a first chance!! Your mind is racing through the Bible looking for Scriptures which support those little nothings you used to throw out when people began to press you about those you never heard of the name of Jesus. �Oh, God knows them that are his,� or �My God judges after the heart,� or another favorite was, �God will judge you according to the knowledge you have been given.� Your mind races through Genesis to Revelation demanding two or three Scriptures to make your God appear more loving, just and humane than this man but nothing pops up to prop up the image of God you had been taught to believe in. All you can hear is the Scriptures which have been pounded into you week after week, year after year from Sunday School teachers, youth leaders, traveling evangelists, and your pastor. �You MUST be born again. Enter by the narrow gate for broad is the road that leads to destruction. And these shall go to everlasting punishment. And these are reserved to everlasting destruction. And all liars, fornicators, idolaters�shall have their part in the lake of fire.� An image of the lake of fire appears before you. You hear the screams of countless billions of men, women, and yes, infants and children mixed with the screams of your brothers and sisters dying in the pews. You can�t tell which screams are real and which are in your mind.
Your church taught that a person must speak in tongues as a sign of being truly born again. You see millions of Christians who never spoke in tongues burning forever without hope of ever being able to repent. All of a sudden you begin to wonder how many of your own church members who HAVE been born again are in that lake of fire. After all, how many times have you heard the Scripture preached in your church at revival time, �Lord, lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out devils, and do marvelous works in your name?� And Jesus told them, �Depart from Me, you workers of iniquity.� Gosh, these must have been born-again Pentecostals or Charismatics. How many of us are going to be screaming like those groaning in the pews right now? Will backbiting count? Slander? Unforgiveness? Not loving all of my neighbors? Sneaking a drink of alcohol every now and then.
You had talked to enough different Christians from different denominations to know that all of them had different ideas about what might be a sin big enough to go to hell over. If I deny Christ so that I can raise my daughter, will Jesus cast me away forever? �Whosoever shall deny me before men, them will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.� Matt. 10:33 The more Scriptures which have been drilled into you from childhood that come up the more unsure you find yourself concerning your eternal fate should you die that very moment.
The pastor never did spell out very clearly all the sins that could send one to Hell. We were just kind of left with our own imaginations as to what would send someone to Hell. It was always easier to see someone else�s sins worthy of hell than our own.
Your whole life flashes before you, thousands of unconfessed sins pass through your conscience and you become frozen with fear at the magnitude of the sins you back-filed in your subconscious mind. You look out into your church, see the horror of this terrible massacre and realize that it is nothing compared to what you have told people hell was going to be like. You look into the eyes of the police chief and you see that he may indeed be more merciful than the god you have said you believed in. You look at this mad-man who has just killed part of your family and many of your friends and you know that it is impossible for you to truly love and worship him with all of your heart. For the first time in your life you realize that deep down inside, way down in your guts, you really have a deep hatred for a God who would burn or torture endlessly someone for just being born, or not truly worship Him. All of a sudden you realize that anyone who forces people to love them is not really loving themselves. You come to the stark realization that the image of God you have been taught to believe in is indeed worse than this police chief. You could not truly bring yourself to love and worship a god who would burn anyone alive, even a single person. If you actually witnessed such an act, it would utterly repulse you. You see that if you cannot love or worship a human being who forces people to love them or be tortured that you could not possibly love a God who would do such a thing. You could NOT in your heart love a God who would consign your mother, or son, or daughter, or husband to eternal flames without hope, without mercy. Your heart would go out to that person and you would eventually find the God who created such a condition to be repulsive beyond measure. All of a sudden it occurs to you that if God knows the beginning from the end, then He knew that when He created mankind most of them were going to be endlessly tortured. How could he begin such a process with such a rotten end for most of His very own creation? How could he possibly be all-powerful, ever-present, just, wise, ever-merciful whose wrath will one day come to an end according to scripture and whose nature is a love beyond words and end up throwing almost every human being He created into an eternal inferno? How can this be possible? As you heard the screams of your brothers and sisters, your imagination flies over the lake of fire you had always been taught was the final destination of all unbelievers and Christians who did not walk through the �strait gate.� You see billions upon billions of human beings forever screaming in pain without any hope of deliverance. You see friends, neighbors, work associates, and yes, even family members agonizing, begging for help. And then you stand before Jesus and He says, �Love me and worship Me with all your heart, soul, mind and strength or else your lot will be in the lake of fire.�
�OK, lady, it�s your turn!� Your mind had wandered deep into the recesses of your heart. His words startled you back to reality. Or were you in reality for the first time in your life as you truly contemplated the reality of the Hell and the God you had been taught to believe in. You thought about your daughter, who had been spared her life. Your answer would determine whether you would be the one to raise her to maturity or not.
�Bow down and worship me and look me straight in the eyes.� He aimed his gun directly towards your heart. The Scripture �Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord to the Glory of God the Father� races across your mind. �To the Glory of God the Father. How could there be even a trace of glory in billions upon billions of human beings endlessly tortured in a manner that would make this madman�s act seem like child�s play? If I can�t worship and love the madman before me who can only make me suffer for a few moments before he kills me, how can I possible love and worship a God who might endlessly torture any of my children, or family, or friends? You realize for the first time in your life, that your love and worship of your god was just on the surface. When forced to really deeply look at what you had been taught to believe, you actually despised such a fiend more than the man giving you the choice of whether you were going to live or not. You realize for the first time in your life what a horrible monster the god you had been taught to believe in actually was. The cosmetics and false excuses for your god�s intolerance was stripped away. The man before you was only a small semblance of the monster you had told people you loved and worshipped. All of a sudden your hidden, backfiled, rage came to the surface. You actually find yourself utterly despising the God you had pretended to love out of fear. Your pretence was so good you actually fooled yourself. But now the veil was removed forever. For the first time in your life, you actually saw the image of God you have been taught to believe in for what he really was, the most cruel hideous monster the mind could possibly conceive of. The reality of what you saw in your mind was so overwhelming that you passed out under the shock hearing as you went under, �Ok, this is the last warning�love and worship me or die. I�ve given you far more chances than your god has given to most.� And then you pass out.
The scene I have painted above is fiction. But in a spiritual sense, it unveils the dark side of the so-called �good news� and image of God which we, Christians, have expected the world to swallow. We stand in amazement when we present our version of the �good news� to the world and find they don�t think it �good news� at all. They find it grotesque.. We have been so drugged and poisoned by false doctrines that we have become so numb that we cannot comprehend why the world doesn�t want to go to our churches.
For hundreds of years, the Christ that the world became familiar with was the Christ of Roman Catholicism. This system�s priests would go to heathen nations with guns and swords to take their gold and other resources and convert the heathen by the power of the sword. �Bow down and worship this decrepit looking man on a cross on a metal cross or die. This cracker is the real body of Jesus. Believe this or die.� This was the only good news millions of human beings heard for most of the Christian era. Do you REALLY think they bowed down and worshipped this god in full sincerity of the heart? According to the Bible, one must believe IN THE HEART, not just outwardly.
And what is the gospel of Protestantism and its image of God? Well, most sects of Protestantism are Arminian in philosophy as opposed to Calvinistic. They say all of mankind deserves to burn in literal flames forever just for being born. EVERYONE without exception is doomed to automatically go there because we are all born sinners. We deserve to be endlessly tortures they say. But there is an escape hatch. If you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal savior, you will be saved. But you must confess your sins, acknowledge Him as your Lord and believe on Him IN YOUR HEART�then, according to the evangelist, you will be saved.
This is the typical message evangelists like Billy Graham preach. But as we enter the churches these evangelists send their converts to, we discover the evangelist lied. When Billy Graham and other evangelists like him come to town few people realize that Billy Graham is just the front man for the churches in that community. It is the churches who have paid for the crusade and it is the churches who will receive the converts from a Billy Graham crusade. And the gospel the Billy Graham preached to get the converts to go to the various churches who sponsored him is usually quite different from the Gospel preached by Billy Graham and company. Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved is the Billy Graham gospel in a nutshell. But when the converts attend the sponsoring churches who paid Billy Graham to come into town they find there are hundreds of pages of fine print Billy boy didn�t bother mentioning.
In some churches participating in crusades like this, facial hair on a man can send one to hell. Another church which participated in the Crusade will tell you that you must receive water baptism a certain way in order to REALLY be saved. Another Church will tell you that you MUST believe the cracker at Eucharist is REALLY the very body of Jesus Christ in order to continue to stay saved. Each different church which participates in these grand crusades has it�s own set of rules on how to REALLY get saved again and what one must do to keep from being thrown into the eternal sizzling lake of fire which God created to torture most of mankind in endlessly.
Do babies who never heard the name of Jesus and are unable to express faith go to hell? Some churches say yes, some say no. Those who say no have NO Scriptural proof. Do people who never heard the name of Jesus automatically go to Hell? Some churches say yes, some say no. Some teach that God judges the condition of the heart. Some say He will judge a person on the amount of knowledge they were given. Again, there are NO Scriptural proofs for this belief. They just invented this belief to make their image of god look a little better than the one ultra-fundamentalists present to the world.
There are thousands of rules, regulations, and rituals which people must perform in order to �stay saved.� They were told that salvation is a gift by the evangelist, but later found out that it is really their own works that will ultimately save them. And each denomination has its own set of rules. It�s quite possible, that you might be in the wrong denomination following the wrong set of rules and find yourself being endlessly tortured by the �loving� god of Christendom. After all, �many are called and few are chosen,� and �Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, etc�.depart from Me, I never knew you.� You know the Scriptures quoted to try to prove a Christian can lose their salvation.
Considering all the thousands of different denominations of Christendom and the many differing and conflicting ways they portray the God of the Bible, does this sound like a wise, merciful, just and loving God or does this sound like a mass of confusion? Who is the author of confusion?
Comparing the madman in our story to the image of God most of Christendom has presented to the world, the mad gunman is actually a more loving image than the image of Christ which the church presents to the world. Dear reader, please think about this serious!! According to Christianity all the world deserves to burn in Hell forever. Where does this concept come from? Certainly NOT the Bible!
The Bible says �All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is NONE righteous, nay not one,� including babies, infants and children. But the Bible NOWHERE says that because they are not righteous, God has consigned them to burn forever. The Bible says that there is only one name under heaven by which men might be saved--that name is Jesus. How could those born before Christ call upon a man that wasn�t even born yet? How can those born before Jesus receive salvation? Christendom comes up with weak and unscriptural answers to that question. Most of the world has been illiterate. Most countries never had a Bible translation in their own language. In many countries where there was a Bible, it was reserved only for the priesthood. The laity never owned a Bible.
Anyone who has seriously studied Church history throughout the world can plainly see that probably less than 1 percent of the world�s population has ever been truly born again. And according to many Christian denominations, many born again Christians will also find their way into the eternal flames prepared by God.
Tell me, if you owned a baseball team and one of your players could only get one hit out of a hundred times at bat, would you place much confidence in him? Yet this is exactly how Christianity portrays God and expects unbelieving people to place their confidence, their very lives in such an utter failure. Can a person with all his marbles REALLY have confidence, that is, trust, faith in a god with such an awful success rate?
If we see a parent terrible abuse their children, we try to get government officials to take the children away. We do NOT see cruel punishment as a sign of a loving parent. Yet we do not even flinch while presenting to the world a god who is going to endlessly torture men, women, and children forever and ever; a god who demands like the mad gunman in our illustration above to be loved and worshipped from the heart or else receive His wrath forever without any chance to come out of that Hell which HE supposedly created for the very purpose of endlessly punishing them. The image of God most Christians expect unbelievers to have faith in, is a thousand times worse than the gunman in our illustration, and yet they somehow think that they can convince non-believers to worship such a fiend. It�s impossible. And I dare say that most born again Christians warming the pews of the churches of the world, in their heart do NOT truly love and worship the god they have been taught to love and worship�in their hearts they actually despise this fiend--but they are afraid to acknowledge it lest they themselves are cast into the god-created inferno themselves. The typical Christian feigns love for the god they have been convinced by their tradition to worship, but I am 100 percent convinced the heart of man is incapable of truly loving the fiend portrayed by modern Christendom. Not only is a human being incapable of truly loving or worshipping such a fiend, by holding such an image of God in their hearts, they slowly begin to be conformed to that same image. They eventually become hypocritical, double-minded and hating the neighbor they say they love. They become just like their god.
Conforming to YOUR Image of God
Is your image of god one who planned to save all mankind but couldn't? Then you will become like him�an egotist who had big plans he/she couldn't finish! (Luke 14:28-32) (Arminianism, most of Christianity)
Is your god one who planned from the foundation of the world to torture most of mankind with tortures even the cruelest of humans couldn't inflict upon another human being? (Calvinism)
Then you might find yourself one day looking and acting like a horrible monster!
Is your image of god one who will simply annihilate those who don't like him and refuse him? (Conditional Mortality groups)
Then your god is very much like Hitler and other human despots.
Is your God all-powerful, omnipresent, omniscient, merciful, just, whose nature is love-- a love which NEVER fails--a love for Whom nothing is impossible--a Love Who gave His life that He might draw all mankind unto Himself through His Son? (John 12:32)
Then rejoice for you are being conformed into the very image of Jesus Christ, Savior of the world!!
Is The Jesus You Have Been Taught A False Christ/Messiah?
As we gain more understanding of the ancient original languages of the Bible, more Christians are coming to the realization that the Jesus they have been taught is a false Christ, a false Messiah. Their Christian "tradition," they have discovered, was not true to the character, plans, and purposes of the One who walked the streets of Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago. And the image of Jesus they have been taught to believe in, was not even true to the Bible written in its original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. They have discovered that they have been deceived just as badly as the Jews of His day. Jesus told them, "You have made the Word of God of no effect by your tradition�in vain do you worship Me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men." Mat. 15:6-9 Just as the first "chosen people" were led astray by false shepherds, so too, the modern "chosen people," Christians have followed in the footsteps of the ancient Jews.
Jesus and His apostles warned that after their departure, the church would be flooded with wolves in sheep's clothing, false shepherds, false gospels, anti-Christs, and false Jesus's. There are over thirty thousand denominations of christendom to attest to their words. A kingdom divided against itself, Jesus said, cannot stand. Surely God's kingdom is different from the sectarianism we find in the church-at-large.
How can we discern whether we are following the correct message? We do not have time to go through all these various denominations to see which one is correct. How can we know if we are conforming ourselves to the right pattern, the right image of God? The answer is simple.
The True Jesus is NOT a sinner.
You say, MY denomination or movement does not call Jesus a sinner. But the fact of the matter is almost ALL denominations of Christianity have made Jesus a sinner. As a matter of fact, they have made Jesus to be perhaps the world's GREATEST sinner. How so you ask? Well, let us see what the Greek and Hebrew behind our English word "sinner" means:
TO SIN�STRONG�S CONCORDANCE NUMBER 264�GREEK-HAMARTANO-�TO MISS THE MARK (AND SO NOT SHARE IN THE PRIZE), TO ERR.� HEBREW-STRONG�S NUMBER 2398-FROM THE ROOT, �CHATA�TO MISS.�
What was the purpose of Jesus Christ�s death and resurrection?
God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:17)
Who comes down from heaven and gives Life to the world. (John 6:33)
The Son of Man did not come to destroy men�s lives but to save them. (Luke 9:56)
And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself. (John 12:32)
As you have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as you have given Him. (John 17:2)
The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. (John 3:35)
God, Who at various times and in various ways, spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, Whom He has appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds. (Hebrews 1:1,2)
His purpose is very clear: to reconcile all things back to His Father. (Col. 1:16-20)
According to Scripture, Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, created all things, reconciles all things, is Heir of all things, has authority of all things, will have all men to be saved, His grace comes to all men, He takes away the sin of the world, He gives His flesh for the life of the world, He is the propitiation for the sins of the world, whose gifts are irrevocable of which life is one of the gifts, He manifested to put away sin, He preached to the spirits in prison and holds the keys to death and hell, who changes not, He is Lord of both the living and the dead, he will destroy all enemies of God the last one being death, Who made all things alive, Who completes the work the Father gave Him to do, Who restores all things, gave Himself a ransom for all, He takes away the curse and said He came to do the will and work of the Father who wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth so that God, the Father may be all in all! I could lengthen this paragraph considerably, but I think the point has been made.
Jesus said He finished the work and accomplished His purpose which was also the Father's purpose�to be the Savior of the whole world�to reconcile everyone back to His Father and our Father!
According to many Christians, billions of people are going to a place called Hell to be tormented by God for all eternity. Please hear this very carefully. If Jesus loses just one soul, he will become the world�s biggest sinner. How so, you say? Because He will have missed His mark�that is , to reconcile all things back to His Father. If He loses one single soul, he cannot be the true Messiah of Israel. And so the hope of billions of people will come to nothing. Jesus had to fulfill ALL the Scriptures perfectly in order to be the true Messiah.
�For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And he is before all things and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the ecclesia, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.� (Colossians 1:16-20)
Please understand that when the scriptures talk about �things� being reconciled back to God, He is not talking about rocks and trees. It was descendants of Adam who were cast out of the presence of God in the garden of Eden, remember? We need to be restored, reconciled, redeemed and the Scriptures make it abundantly clear that His purpose, goal, will and work was to reconcile all.
These Scriptures make it abundantly clear what the goal, the mark, the target which Jesus was aiming at when He went to the Tree of Crucifixion. The majority of the church says Jesus either will not (Calvinist) or cannot (Arminianist) save all mankind due to Satan and the power of �free-will.� The majority of the church says He will sin, that is, miss the mark.. There has always been a minority in church history, (which used to be the majority before the dark ages) who believe the Scriptures that declare Jesus Christ the actual Savior of the whole world. This minority pays close attention to Scriptures and notices things like that fact that Paul, the apostle to the nations, never preached salvation as deliverance from our modern concept of Hell. As a matter of fact, he never used the word �Hell�! That should make one think. Go to a concordance and see for yourself.
As Bibles get closer to the original languages, Hell and �eternal� punishment passages in Bibles are disappearing. The King James Bible used the word �Hell,� 54 times. The best present-day Bibles such as the NIV, NASB, and NRSB, do not contain the word in the Old Testament at all, and only about a dozen times in the New Testament. Many translations do not contain the words �Hell� nor �eternal punishment.� When one looks at Bible translations such as Young�s Literal Translation by Robert Young, author of the famous Young�s Analytical Concordance, one will find Hell completely gone and the incorrect and very pagan �eternal punishment� replaced with �age-during punishment.� Other translations have �age-abiding correction,� �eonian chastening,� �punishment of the ages,� etc.
This article is much too short to get into the subject, but none of these Hell or �eternal punishment� type of phrases should ever have been brought into English translations. The Roman Catholic Church, with its �convert or die� policies, took almost all of the pagan and idolatrous practices of the countries it forced to convert and �christened� them, that is, incorporated them into the church. That is how thousands of pagan ideas and practices became �christianized.� When one seriously studies the Reformation, we realize that Protestants did not go all the way in cleaning up the �House of the Lord� from all the pagan practices and doctrines which were added to the simplicity found in Christ. They left many false doctrines in tact. One of these false doctrines which came from pagan countries is the idea of a place of eternal punishment called �Hell.� A quick look into an encyclopedia should tell a person this word in its religious form comes from Norse mythology, not from the Greek and Hebrew in the Bible. The whole concept of a place of eternal torment comes from a mistranslation of the Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek words Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus all being translated into the Anglo-Saxon word �Hell.� The Reformation translators often translated from their traditions, rather than from knowledge of Hebrew and Greek. As Bible translations get closer to the original languages, our pagan concept of Hell will fade away.
Paul never preached a place of eternal torment to anyone! That is why he could say in 1 Timothy 4:9-11, �This is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially those who believe.� He could also say and mean, �Love never fails!� (1 Cor. 13:8) John tells us that �God is Love.� (1 John 4:8) Therefore, God never fails! He never misses the mark! We, in our short-sightedness may have brought Him down to our image, that is, a sinner, but He will be vindicated. When He is, will you hang your head in shame? It is not too late to �study to show yourself approved� and see for yourself the glorious Truth that the salvation of the world does not depend upon a hypocritical, lazy, selfish church. No, the world, all of it, is in much better hands�Jesus Christ, the Savior of all mankind, Who gave Himself a ransom for all, including you, whether you presently are aware of it or not.
�It is finished,� He cried from Calvary. Ask the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, Who will lead you into all Truth, to reveal to you the full meaning of those three words.. They declare Jesus hit the mark at which He was aiming. It is important for you to do this. You, also, have a mark set for you. To give God full Glory. Don�t fall short by saying He will fall short in His Word, His promises, His work, His purposes, and His Love and Mercy which never fail nor end. If you do, you can be sure you are following an antichrist, a false shepherd, a wolf, a false gospel, an image of Jesus who is the world greatest sinner. Now stop being a slave to the traditions of men which make the word of God of no effect. Overcome your fear or worship of men and join yourself to the true body of Christ in whom is NO SIN!
Jesus is the Savior of the whole world. It's time the world hears it. Join yourself to His body and walk away from those denominations and sects which dare ascribe sin to the body of Christ.
Web site: www.tentmaker.org...
[Edited on 9-12-2003 by Sapphire]
Sapphire, I must say that would have to be officially the longest post ever.
I did read the whole thing.
The story was nice, and it does bring your point of view across very well. Accept the author has done this by distorting a lot of truths.
When he starts using scripture to back up his view he takes them completely out of context. For example:
This is one verse the author uses to support his view.
God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:17)
This is the verse in its context.
John 3:16-18
16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
17 "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
18 "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
(NKJ)
Look at verse 16 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. This dosn�t say �that everybody shall not perish but have everlasting life�, it specifically says those who believe in Him.
Then in verse 18 it says but he who does not believe is condemned already. This does not sound good. I don�t think it is saying they are condemned to heaven.
Galations 5:19-21
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,
20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies,
21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
(NKJ)
What does it say at the end? �those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God�. Does �not inherit� mean that they do inherit the kingdom of God? It would be silly to think that.
Revelation 20:15
15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
(NKJ)
I apologise if this is starting to sound smug, but those not found in the book of life weren�t cast into heaven.
The meaning of geena from some Greek language dictionaries is as follows:
geenna
Thayer Definition:
1) Hell is the place of the future punishment call �Gehenna� or �Gehenna of fire�. This was originally the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned; a fit symbol of the wicked and their future destruction.
Part of Speech: noun feminine
G1067
γέεννα
geenna
gheh'-en-nah
Of Hebrew origin ([H1516] and [H2011]); valley of (the son of) Hinnom; gehenna (or Ge-Hinnom), a valley of Jerusalem, used (figuratively) as a name for the place (or state) of everlasting punishment: - hell.
-Strongs Greek Dictionary
On the subject of children going to heaven.
Matthew 18:2-3
2 Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them,
3 and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
(NKJ)
The 3rd verse implies that children will enter the kingdom of heaven.
To teach that there is no coming judgement of ones sin, no eternal separation from God(Hell), and that you don�t need to believe in Jesus and ask for forgiveness in order to be saved is to preach another Gospel and teach a different Jesus.
This isn�t a matter of whether I�m right your wrong. I�m just interested in what is the truth. Whether I can stomach it or not.
If you can show me from the bible that I am wrong I will thankyou.
Here is a good article that deals with the errors of Universalism.
Is Punishment Eternal?
I did read the whole thing.
The story was nice, and it does bring your point of view across very well. Accept the author has done this by distorting a lot of truths.
When he starts using scripture to back up his view he takes them completely out of context. For example:
This is one verse the author uses to support his view.
God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:17)
This is the verse in its context.
John 3:16-18
16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
17 "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
18 "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
(NKJ)
Look at verse 16 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. This dosn�t say �that everybody shall not perish but have everlasting life�, it specifically says those who believe in Him.
Then in verse 18 it says but he who does not believe is condemned already. This does not sound good. I don�t think it is saying they are condemned to heaven.
Galations 5:19-21
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness,
20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies,
21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
(NKJ)
What does it say at the end? �those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God�. Does �not inherit� mean that they do inherit the kingdom of God? It would be silly to think that.
Revelation 20:15
15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
(NKJ)
I apologise if this is starting to sound smug, but those not found in the book of life weren�t cast into heaven.
The meaning of geena from some Greek language dictionaries is as follows:
geenna
Thayer Definition:
1) Hell is the place of the future punishment call �Gehenna� or �Gehenna of fire�. This was originally the valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned; a fit symbol of the wicked and their future destruction.
Part of Speech: noun feminine
G1067
γέεννα
geenna
gheh'-en-nah
Of Hebrew origin ([H1516] and [H2011]); valley of (the son of) Hinnom; gehenna (or Ge-Hinnom), a valley of Jerusalem, used (figuratively) as a name for the place (or state) of everlasting punishment: - hell.
-Strongs Greek Dictionary
On the subject of children going to heaven.
Matthew 18:2-3
2 Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them,
3 and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
(NKJ)
The 3rd verse implies that children will enter the kingdom of heaven.
To teach that there is no coming judgement of ones sin, no eternal separation from God(Hell), and that you don�t need to believe in Jesus and ask for forgiveness in order to be saved is to preach another Gospel and teach a different Jesus.
This isn�t a matter of whether I�m right your wrong. I�m just interested in what is the truth. Whether I can stomach it or not.
If you can show me from the bible that I am wrong I will thankyou.
Here is a good article that deals with the errors of Universalism.
Is Punishment Eternal?
Originally posted by StationsCreation
Sapphire, I must say that would have to be officially the longest post ever.
I did read the whole thing.
LoL i may have to agree with you there
The story was nice, and it does bring your point of view across very well. Accept the author has done this by distorting a lot of truths.
To teach that there is no coming judgement of ones sin, no eternal separation from God(Hell), and that you don�t need to believe in Jesus and ask for forgiveness in order to be saved is to preach another Gospel and teach a different Jesus.
This isn�t a matter of whether I�m right your wrong. I�m just interested in what is the truth. Whether I can stomach it or not.
If you can show me from the bible that I am wrong I will thankyou.
Here is a good article that deals with the errors of Universalism.
Is Punishment Eternal?
Ok I will do my best to persuade you Hell is a Myth, maybe we could debate this in the chat room sometime? I love debating "grin". And thankyou for the reply. No your right it doesnt matter who's right or wrong however, i am totally convinced of this due to many truths i've found. Let me know if you want to meet sometime and debate this, i think it would be a good challenge and fun
[Edited on 10-12-2003 by Sapphire]
Sapphire a friendly debate in the chat room sounds like fun. But how could we organize it. Time zones confuse me.
U2U me if you have any idea's
U2U me if you have any idea's
Originally posted by StationsCreation
Sapphire a friendly debate in the chat room sounds like fun. But how could we organize it. Time zones confuse me.
U2U me if you have any idea's
Stations, i'm on PST time aka Pacific Time, let me know what time zone your at and then maybe we can discuss this further.
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