Does god know now if you are saved, will be saved, will lose faith? Can you be saved now and then at judgement be found unworthy?
Christian afterlife
- Thread starter Lohrenswald
- Start date
Among other problems (due to inherent complexity), there is also the inability to establish if what is answering you is actually not a part of you (by which I don't mean god being a part of the human).Yes this is a good answer!
Don't trust what I or anyone else is saying. Instead do your own research and cry out to God and ask Him to help you answer the questions. If you believe, He will answer you.
It's an issue with all non-formal language systems; they cannot have axioms because they cannot be deliberately restricted. So we end up with a discourse where everyone means (and experiences) things in their own way, and actual communication is partly self-projection.
Moff Jerjerrod
Deity
This is a very good question. I will try to answer as best as I understand how it works. God operates under these conditions:
1. He does not want any of us to perish
2. He loves us all
3. He knows our hearts, whether we are good or bad
4. He gave us free will so that we can decide for ourselves if we want to believe or not
As for the day of judgement. If you are a believer you will not be at the day of judgement. Because you have believed, God will not punish you. But if you did not believe in Jesus you will be at the day of judgement.
Meaning once you believe, you are saved and won't be judged unworthy later on.
Moff Jerjerrod
Deity
This is so true with many religions out there including the different branches of christianity. But when you discover the true gospel you share the same experiences as other true believers. This is because we have all become part of one body and the body does not contradict itself.
I'm sure if there are any others here who believe the gospel they can attest to what I am saying?
I find it impossible to square the idea of a loving god who doesn't want us to perish with that same god who killed all life on Earth that wasn't in an Ark (would love an explanation of how all the animals who didn't make it could exist now), or who decided that all the first-born of Egypt should die (including those who had zip-all to do with Pharaoh's refusal to let the Hebrews go), or who set down a whole laundry list of circumstances where people should be killed for various "offenses" that make no sense - that include killing children, babies, and animals who could not possibly have formed any intention to break whatever laws or customs that were broken, or who had the misfortune to be among the people who were considered enemies, and so on and on and on.
With a strong warning that you might answer yourself! I will point out again to the certainty some people have that it's the final days. No one will know, so if people think they know, it's hubris
Farm Boy
they're all reactions
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2010
- Messages
- 27,951
There is more than one way to the River.
Thinking about that good old way. It's the river either way. It gets more and more similar as you go along.
Joij21
🔥Deny, Defend, Depose!🔥
I'm pretty sure you could with all those crosses which have Jesus clearly slumped over nailed to them. Being lazy if you ask me.
There are all sorts of carved things people have created. Is that evidence by itself that people believed in whatever the image is? And crucifixion is an execution method used long before 1st-century Rome. I mean, Spartacus was crucified, so do people worship Spartacus?I'm pretty sure you could with all those crosses which have Jesus clearly slumped over nailed to them. Being lazy if you ask me.
Speaking of crucifixes... 22 years ago the theatre company I worked with decided to do a remake of a show we did back in 1981: Jesus Christ Superstar. I was one of the small handful of people who had worked on the 1981 production who came back for this one.
However, this was at a time when my health was really bad, and not that many months before I ended up in the hospital for an extended time. I overestimated my strength, so wasn't able to continue as an active member of the props crew.
However, the crew head was unfamiliar with the show and completely unfamiliar with the stuff people used in the 1st-century Roman Empire. She had to take on part of the set dressing as well, so she was more than a bit panicked.
It was decided that I would stay on the crew as a consultant. We went to Walmart on a scouting/shopping trip, and I steered her to the craft department.
We found a bunch of useful stuff that could easily be altered (easy for me as I didn't have to do any of it; sometimes it's really handy to be allergic to things like paint). I kept up a stream of explanations for how this-that-the-other was used back then plus an explanation of which languages were on the sign over the cross (she asked in a separate phone call). These were met with "How do you KNOW this?"
Answer: "I read history."
Anyway, the cross... a friend was at loose ends and looking for something to do. She could sew, and they needed people for the costume crew. I suggested she join, so she did.
Next thing I knew, I got a panicked phone call: "They want me to make Jesus' loincloth, and I don't know what it's supposed to look like, what do I do?!"
My reaction:
My answer: "_______, you go to church 3 times per week. You see more crucifixes in a month than I see in years. How can you not know what they look like?"
Turns out she had only considered the two-dimensional aspect, and not the 3-D, practical aspects of how this garment would actually be made and worn. So I mentally flipped through the styles of loincloths I'd read about (there are several distinct styles), and explained it to her. Then I said she should ask the actor to come in for a discussion and fitting, as he would naturally have his own ideas about what he wanted to wear and how. I warned her that a fitting would necessitate that he remove his pants (trousers). I told her he'd worked on the first production 20 years earlier, as one of the apostles, and would treat her with courtesy and professionalism. He was very serious about getting into the proper mindframe for the characters he played, and costuming was part of that.
Everything went well. Of course I'm partial to the first show - different cast, different mix of people, different director's vision. The main thing is that the audience liked it.
Joij21
🔥Deny, Defend, Depose!🔥
I'm not demanding he believes because I don't believe either.
Rather I'm testing his mental prowess because he thinks he's better than me! I must prove my intellectual superiority over him, as that is what bickering/debating on the internet was made for.
OK, that makes sense.
With salvation, no, for Paul it is always something in the future. Other authors may use the term differently, but not Paul.
What you're suggesting here is the Calvinist doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The best commentary on this I know of is James Hogg's Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, which parodies the doctrine by taking it to its logical conclusion.
I don't know, this sounds to me rather close to the Messalian heresy (which is the claim that you can distinguish between those who have the Holy Spirit and those who don't because those who do can feel him in themselves). Different parts of the body can have different experiences - my hand cannot see, and my eye cannot smell - so I don't see why different members of Christ's body couldn't do so too. If you read a range of Christian mystical literature - from Gregory of Nyssa to John of the Cross to Ignatius Loyola to Charles Wesley - you find many recurring themes and ideas, but you also find very different ones too.
Edmund Ironside
White Rabbit Object
This sounds like 2 bald men fighting over a comb!
The nature of gods
Thanks for that. In doing some research it seems that there are at least as many links refuting the doctrine as supporting it. Biblical scripture, in and out of context, is used both to support and deny the truth of it.
Perseverance of the Saints - is it biblical? | GotQuestions.org
Perseverance of the Saints - is it biblical? Can a Christian lose the salvation that God has purchased?
www.gotquestions.org
Last edited:
Not to mention leaving the fish bleeding and injured, thus either dying of its injury or attracting predators that would be happy to torment it some more before catching and eating it.
My view of fishing is that if you don't want to harm anything, don't put a hook on your line. If you do put a hook on, have the decency to eat what you catch (as long as it's a fish; my grandmother accidentally caught a turtle one time when fishing off the pier at the cabin we had on Okanagan Lake in BC).
Moff Jerjerrod
Deity
The thing is man has an insatiable desire to judge others and label one as 'has faith but no good works as evidence of true faith'.
Stupid men forget that it is God who knows our hearts. He can tell if one is sincere or not. It really is that simple.
Stupid men forget that it is God who knows our hearts. He can tell if one is sincere or not. It really is that simple.
There are problems arising from both cases:
1) If god cannot change anything (if once saved at some moment of your life, it is perpetual and regardless of what you then do or think), once god sent the holy spirit, it is either some type of machine which can be duped, or at any rate not involved at all and like a physical phenomenon which can't alter its effects.
2) if god can remove salvation, salvation itself isn't distinct from a continuous testing by god, thus purely academic if it exists or not prior to the end of the person's life.
Once again, though, these logical problems are only the very tip of a massive iceberg. When you have no ability to define in any stable way by means of proof, what a god is, you are essentially playing with plasticine in a room in your mind.
1) If god cannot change anything (if once saved at some moment of your life, it is perpetual and regardless of what you then do or think), once god sent the holy spirit, it is either some type of machine which can be duped, or at any rate not involved at all and like a physical phenomenon which can't alter its effects.
2) if god can remove salvation, salvation itself isn't distinct from a continuous testing by god, thus purely academic if it exists or not prior to the end of the person's life.
Once again, though, these logical problems are only the very tip of a massive iceberg. When you have no ability to define in any stable way by means of proof, what a god is, you are essentially playing with plasticine in a room in your mind.
