Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bnr-fos!bnr-public!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: thoughts on the recent exchange Message-ID: Date: 4 Aug 89 02:04:59 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 99 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article fibercom!lab@uunet.uu.net (Lance Beckner) writes: >But you don't think there will be people who have TRULY accepted Christ as >their Savior turned away, do you? No, I am not saying that I believe that someone who has truly accepted Christ as his saviour will be turned away. Jesus is telling us that there will be many who think they have even though they haven't. I can only truly accept Jesus as my saviour if I have truly faced exactly what I need to be saved from and why. If, for example, God says that I deserve to suffer eternally in hell for my sins and that that is what I need to be saved from, yet I deny the existence of hell and thereby deny the fact that I deserve to suffer it, then I have not really accepted Him as my saviour. If God teaches that Jesus is God Himself become a man to personally endure the penalty for my sins, yet I do not believe that Jesus is God, then I have not truly accepted Him as my saviour because I have not accepted Him for who He really is. One of the major trends these days, a time when the Scriptures teach that more and more congregations will become apostate, is to concentrate on the love of God, to minimize, if not ignore, the wrath of God, and to start philosophizzing that a loving God would not really sentence people to eternal damnation in a place as horrifying as hell. There are even some religious organizations which teach that the only penalty for sin is permanent non-existence, i.e. I would merely become "unconscious" and not know or feel anything, much like before I was conceived. This sort of teaching would lead me to believe that God isn't really that upset with me, and if eternal life really were not that precious a concept to me then I could sin all I want because I would just cease to exist when it was all over. This kind of teaching does such an injustice to God's hatred of sin that those who believe it cannot possibly be viewed by God as having truly accepted Jesus as their saviour. There are all sorts of people who profess Christianity, and there is no reason to believe that they do not believe that they really are Christians, yet they still openly commit such sins as living with a mate and enjoying the pleasures of sexual relations without being actually married, even though the Scriptures very clearly teach "flee fornication". How could a person who believes that Jesus suffered hell for him want to place this kind of self interest above a total respect and admiration for what Jesus did, and the accompanying desire to remove as much sin from his life as possible rather than taking his forgiveness for granted in such a hidious way? If anyone can find it in his heart to willingly sin just because he believes that it has been forgiven then I would strongly suggest that he have serious doubts regarding whether he had really and truly accepted Christ as his saviour. My mention of the sin of fornication in the preceding paragraph has reminded me of something else that I feel needs to be said and stems from the kind of thing that happens when we deny the reality of the inevitability of God's wrath toward unforgiven sin. Why would a true Christian ever have sexual relations with someone outside the confines of marriage? This can in no way be an expression of true love for his mate. He is asking her, or she him, to commit a sin worthy of hell. Love is defined by God as being totally interested in the well-being of the other person and not in any way interested in one's self. Asking someone I know to engage in a sin worthy of hell just so that I can experience a few short-term pleasures is extremely selfish and uncaring, and is in no way acting in the best interests of the other person. The Scriptures teach that it is God who does the saving and that all we are to do is both pray and give our best Christian witness. We are not to decide ourselves on the best way to witness, but we should rather use the approach that God wants us to use, and leave the inclining of people's hearts up to Him. God very clearly teaches that we should witness of judgement and not of His presumed love of sinners. I would suggest reading Ezekiel 33:1-10 very carefully. I would also suggest reading the book of Jonah very carefully. Perhaps the greatest revival of all time, the saving of thousands and thousands of people in Neneveh in a matter of days from the king on down to the most lowly person has been documented for us in the Scriptures and was accomplished by a direct command of God to preach impending judgement. As you are probably aware from other postings, I have come to realize that God actually hates those whom He has not elected to save. You may find this controvercial and difficult to believe, but I urge you to research it carefully, looking at the Scriptures that I have quoted in those other postings. If I am right and God really does hate those whom He has not elected to salvation, then if any of us arbitrarily walks up to someone and says "God loves you" then he has potentially told no less than a lie. There may be readers of this newsgroup who have felt that I was raising the topics of God's hatred for those who are not His elect and the reality of hell just because I feel they are fascinating theological discussions. This is not true. The real reason is because it disturbs me that many of us Christians are, perhaps inadvertently, spreading lies throughout the unsaved world, and that we are witnessing in a style that is in direct rebellion to the way in which God would have us do it. Well, I think I digressed a little from the original topic. I hope I have dealt with it sufficiently before digressing. The additional stuff does need to be said, however, and for that reason I shall leave it in. Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3