What Does "Salvation" Really Mean?

I like your analogy, and it is often necessary to use a hypothetical to make your point clear.

Good job.

Remaining within the same, I would like to offer my thoughts.

In the burning building, some people will be closer to the door than others and less likely to have a problem hearing a warning (Second Advent and first resurrection). They take care to be closest to the door.

Some farther away from the door will not hear the voice on the other side of the door, but they are close enough to the door that when the One warning opens the door, they will hear it (Millennial Reign and second resurrection).

People far away from the door should be listening to the people in between the door and their position because they are too far away for the One warning to reach them (Judgment and Lake of Fire).


There is a very small group of People in the first resurrection, all with faith through the Spirit. That is promised in the sealing of the 144,000 and 7000 who’ve never bowed a knee to Ba’al, maybe the two witness are additional. In a world with a current population of *6,896,465,222, that’s not very good odds.

Many will be saved in the second resurrection because they will be able to actually see His Second Advent and have a thousand years to be taught by Him. This helps me to be a little more relaxed in how I approach people.

Originally posted by this_is_who_we_are
Some say salvation comes only through "believing on The Lord Jesus Christ".
But what does this mean exactly?

You are not saved unless you are born again. Have you gone through a Spiritual Death?

For Christ also said, 'Unless you are born again, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven' [John 3:3]"

Salvation is Death. It is not about belief. It is about the death of the Ego.

Originally posted by IAMIAM
Love is much more than work my friend. Like God, it cannot be defined, only felt.

What are talking about? Both love and God can and have been defined. I suggest you attempt to define the very word "define" before erroneously labeling the definable as the indefinable.

reply to post by rexusdiablos


I think the important thing to take away from what IAMIAM said there is that Love is much more than work. Love is not just the doing of good deeds, but to see all others as yourself, yourself as others. To recognize all selves as the same self, and act accordingly with compassion.

Originally posted by rexusdiablos
Surely you're capable of looking beyond your own belief system

I am capable of looking beyond my belief system. I have throughout my life enjoyed reading a wide variety of literature on comparative religion, metaphysics, philosophy, popular physics, epistemology and the like.

I can relate wholeheartedly to such ideas as

"There is no way out, round or through" put forth by the French Existentialists,
"Man is not a means to an end but rather an end in himself" put forth by Ayn Rand,
or "Are You Living in A Computer Simulation" put forth by Nick Bostrom

I can not, however, look beyond the "system" in which I exist as I've explained previously. Can you? If so then tell me where the exit is because I'm ready to go...

reply to post by Soke33


Thank you for your post. It makes sense to me.

Originally posted by rexusdiablos
What are talking about? Both love and God can and have been defined. I suggest you attempt to define the very word "define" before erroneously labeling the definable as the indefinable.

I suppose you could offer a text book definition for love and for God my friend. I do not believe any definition of either would fit my own understanding of the two. To define is to limit, and there are no limits to love or to God.

I suppose what I am struggling to say is something which I cannot share, it must be experienced.

"It is like a treasure hidden in a field that when found, one would sell all that he owned to buy that field." - JC

With Love,

Your Brother

reply to post by IAMIAM


I understand your thoughts on this and agree that the most important thing we can do while on this Earth is to love one another and to love God. No arguement on that point from me.

Peace to you friend.

Originally posted by this_is_who_we_are
reply to post by IAMIAM

 

It is not through works that we are saved, but only by the grace of God. The only requirement is that we freely accept the gift.

I have to disagree, I am convinced that it's unconditionally loving and all-inclusive and non-coersive. The gift cannot be useful to a person until they accept it however, so while they ARE forgiven by the work of the cross, by being oblivious to it, they will simply go on and on incurring the consequences of karmic law until they do get it, and eventually the whole world will come to understand, and is already as we can see from these discussions. If only more and more of us would allow Christ to wash our feet and wash one another's feet, meaning to be cleansed of karmic debt (forgiven) to walk free, liberated for the sake of freedom to freely love as we are loved.

reply to post by this_is_who_we_are

I am glad that you didn't add an "or else" there, that was nice, gracious and kind, open, and inviting.

it is frustrating to see religious logic. So would a savior knowingly put people into a building, then burn it? The foreknowledge thing is what always trips me up when examining religion. Why would any being with knowledge of the future create this world? Unless this world is hell.

Your analogy doesnt mention that the same "savior" started the fire, or at least allowed it to start. All the while knowing that this meant certain death and torment for the majority of the people.

Originally posted by eugenius
it is frustrating to see religious logic. So would a savior knowingly put people into a building, then burn it? The foreknowledge thing is what always trips me up when examining religion. Why would any being with knowledge of the future create this world? Unless this world is hell.

Your analogy doesnt mention that the same "savior" started the fire, or at least allowed it to start. All the while knowing that this meant certain death and torment for the majority of the people.

I think NewAgeMan may be onto something. His recent post regarding Karmic debt may answer your question. Don't confuse me with certain people or groups who seem to be in a state of glee when presented with the prospect of the suffering of others.

Originally posted by eugenius
it is frustrating to see religious logic. So would a savior knowingly put people into a building, then burn it? The foreknowledge thing is what always trips me up when examining religion. Why would any being with knowledge of the future create this world? Unless this world is hell.

Your analogy doesnt mention that the same "savior" started the fire, or at least allowed it to start. All the while knowing that this meant certain death and torment for the majority of the people.

So many assumptions. I guess you don't believe in free will. You imagine the only good God would be the one who treated us like babies for eternity and protected us from ourselves? In life, growing up, means taking responsibility for our acts, not blaming God or Satan. If you believe in neither than it shouldn't be a big jump to think that ALL of our problems are our fault.

Originally posted by AQuestion

Originally posted by eugenius
it is frustrating to see religious logic. So would a savior knowingly put people into a building, then burn it? The foreknowledge thing is what always trips me up when examining religion. Why would any being with knowledge of the future create this world? Unless this world is hell.

Your analogy doesnt mention that the same "savior" started the fire, or at least allowed it to start. All the while knowing that this meant certain death and torment for the majority of the people.

So many assumptions. I guess you don't believe in free will. You imagine the only good God would be the one who treated us like babies for eternity and protected us from ourselves? In life, growing up, means taking responsibility for our acts, not blaming God or Satan. If you believe in neither than it shouldn't be a big jump to think that ALL of our problems are our fault.

....good God?.....did i miss something? Is there more than one God? i was under the assumption there was just one, the alpha and the Omega, the creator and knowing of all....I dont see where he blamed anyone in his opinion.......just sayin

Originally posted by this_is_who_we_are

He will then remove us from the burning building.

Remember the scene in The Watchmen, where the Owl guy and his Lady swoop down in the Owl-ship and rescue the people in the burning building? I like that analogy because it illustrates the union of male and female. They worked as a team, as a unit. Redeemer and co-redemptrix. Heiros gamos. The union of pairs of opposites - a vital component of salvation imho. Coincidentia oppositorum.

reply to post by this_is_who_we_are


Yes. To remain functional, and above all else, helpful, "Christianity" must change, and get into a new "business", from the business of "salvation" by "saving" people from condemnation - to that of simply sharing good news with them about the new spiritual condition of man, no longer separated from God simply as a result of the Great Work or Magnum Opus of Jesus of Nazareth aka Jesus Christ, whereby the "Christ-mind" is the eternal "spotless" mind of Christ that is capable of something called an intercessory grace, but not as a "should or shouldn't" on anyone's part, but simply as a result of what God has already done, for once and for all time, whether we believe in him, or not! This both takes the pressure off Christianity, which would have the audacity to think that everyone "else" is going to hell, whyen in truth, Christianity is about a love which stretches across the entire width and breadth of the whole of creation via the living spirit of the eternal Godhead, which never changes, and is fully informed then now and forever (he who was, is and is to come), unendingly relentless in it's mission, and purpose. To think we thought that to do Jesus work, we ourselves needed to "save" our fellow man! How repulsive! How un-inviting, how unloving, how unkind, to use Jesus in this manner. We f'd up! We were ignorant and blind even in our own faith, because we failed to try to REALLY understand Jesus and what he was about, in sympathetic harmonious mutuality and mutual understanding, and he apparently really did WANT to be understood, but then we were like "duh" and we've been like that ever since in many ways, with the exception of a few Christian mystics along the way, like Augustein or Eckhart, the few who grokked, while the many "traversed the seas proseletizing, only to make their converts twice as fit for hell as they were"!
How quickly does the devil slide in to the gap of "should and should" and make of Christ and his love and absolute mokery, in the affairs of the human being and in God's heavenly family..?!!! Think about it..

We, Christians of all people, have KEPT Christ on that cross, unneccessarily, and we forgot to share in kononia or in intimate loving participation, the love of Christ which informed his Great Work of all ages, his triumph in the face of all our sin and evil and sorrow and strife. How foolish we've been all along.

We did it again.

Does this not make you WEEP as a Christian?

It does me.

Our work now, is to re-evaluate and re-integrate Christ AGAIN, as if for the first time, and re-present him (represent) as the all-inclusive, non-localized, universal spirit of the love of God as rendered in human form, perhaps God's greatest creative achievements (as least in potentia) and this is what and WHO we see in Jesus, and it only makes sense when you look at his words and teachings, his understanding, his love and willingness, to remain unblemished, such that in his sacrifice, the veil of separation with God, might be removed.

Our job was so easily, and we failed the assignment.

But the TRUTH remains, like a prescious pearl or a hidden gem, buried, the eternal seed, still there, awaiting it's eventual germination in a new age, appropriately recieved and "grokked" most fully of

This is the re-union them of Jesus Christ with man, as wholly good news, ALL GOOD as they say, no worries.

We, in and through Christ are the end of evil, the end of time in so many ways, the end of the FALSE world of a FALSE egoicically structured PSYCHE of the human being.

So if I might, I would like to declare the 21st century as the century, NOT of the self, but of the HUMAN BEING, recognized in God, not by illumination or any complex formula of gnostism and not by any word on our part whatsoever, because we couldn't do that part either!

It was done FOR us all, and we ALL dropped the ball, by failing to simply give the meaning inherent in it, it's due consideration.

So let's not make the same mistake again, let us not be fooled by the devil himself into believing anything less than precisely what Jesus intended.

This is not faith but simple common sense, in the face of a love the depths of which we cannot fathom or even begin to fathom, but, fortunately, there's still plenty of time in eternity, and there again, no worries, we can RELAX!


"Our liberation is God's compulsion."
~ C.S. Lewis

reply to post by rinowilli


Only one God that I know of. I am not sure where the confusion is. Perhaps I misworded something but I don't know what.

Originally posted by eugenius
it is frustrating to see religious logic. So would a savior knowingly put people into a building, then burn it? The foreknowledge thing is what always trips me up when examining religion. Why would any being with knowledge of the future create this world? Unless this world is hell.

Your analogy doesnt mention that the same "savior" started the fire, or at least allowed it to start. All the while knowing that this meant certain death and torment for the majority of the people.

I can only give my view, as a Christian.


Why do people put their precious metals in fire?

Purification.

The word Day, like in Genesis 1.5 (the creation account), comes from an unused root in the ancient Hebrew language that means to be hot (Strong's H3117).

The impurities will burn up in the purification. If a spirit is mostly contaminated...

Don't you prefer 24k gold?

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Eckhart echo's my statement concerning one not being able to see the system for what it is while trapped within the system. One must look for truth somewhere else, for the definitive true nature of the system emanates from with-out, and not from within.

Nothing hinders the soul so much in attaining to the knowledge of God as time and place. Therefore, if the soul is to know God, it must know Him outside time and place, since God is neither in this or that, but One and above them. If the soul is to see God, it must look at nothing in time; for while the soul is occupied with time or place or any image of the kind, it cannot recognize God.
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by this_is_who_we_are


Yep, and all are saved whether they realize it or not. In time the love of Christ will penetrate the most hardened unrepentent heart, and some of us will learn the easy and the fun way, and others, the hard way. Some people are just bent on unneccesary suffering, the kind of suffering made no longer neccessary by the work of Christ, by that love which knows no bounds in time or space (place).

But woe to those who would place stumbling blocks before God's children, and I mean here the PTB, the advertisers, the mainstream media, the movie people, all who try to make use of a satanic bent to keep people enslaved to a satanic system with all manner of overt and covert manipulation designed with one thing in mind, to dumb people down as much as possible and enslave and imprison them in a material world (and a dead "Civilization"), now that's sick sick stuff, and we see it all the time all around us. Let our awareness then, of all these manipulations and manipulators increase until they and their machinations will no longer have any effect on the increasingly God-realized or God-conscious mind of man. I mean like how much death and destruction do we "need" to be engaged in a just and noble historical pursuit?, how much murder and mayham, to be "entertained"..? it's ridiculous and absurd, and very very hurtful and unhelpful, as are the preachers of the "word" of Jesus Christ, who would THREATEN people, that if they do not accept with blind faith, whatever the preacher is dishing out, whatever formula or doctrine for "salvation", while placing conditions upon it, and shoulds and shouldn'ts and a strandard of perfection, as a "work" by which to somehow achieve salvation - they will then be eternally condemned by a loving God. There is simply no love in that at all, no love extended, or even made available as a possible response by the recipient which is not forced and therefore inauthentic, and as such not spiritually true. That's FAKE Christianity, and the churches, especially in American Evangelical and Fundamentalist Literalist Christianity (what I've heard called "Churchianity"), are filled with it, it's almost like the devil, has taken over and it setting the whole thing up as some sort of straw man God who cannot be accepted by any rational person, nor recieved even by the sincere and kind hearted. This alone, is an absolute outrage, imho.

How sad is that?

If they'd just stick to the non-dual nature of the all good news of Christ (as tree of life in eternity), then maybe we could move back into a harmonious relationship with God where the motive to sin simply no longer exists!

"Love, and do as you will."
~ Augustine