Kristyne McDaniel wrote:
Charlie,
However, the Bible is pretty clear about
the requirement for Salvation: accepting
Christ, the Son of God, as your personal
savior.
There is nothing in the texts about "accepting Christ as your personal
savior". This is a stitched together point of view that is a recent creation
in the 20th century.
I do agree that there is a verse about "no man comes to the Father but by
me", but I disagree that the verse means that we can make up a "magic words"
formula for people to say whereby we can know that they are "coming to the
Father" and we can see them do it.
A lot of the recent evangelical stuff came to being entirely so evangelists
and missionaries could have an official head count to present to their
backers for how many conversions they were getting. Since belief is
internal, they came up with a way of making the conversion into an external
event that they could track, and that's where the "magic words" stuff popped
up.
I submit that we do not know exactly what was meant by the "no man comes to
the Father but by me" statement.
You're right on here Kristyne. Based on the trinity, God can have at
least three forms. The trinity teaches God in the form of; "Jesus
Christ, the Son of God" ; "God in his natural state of The Father", and
God in the spiritual state; "The Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit". Although
the trinity teaches three different forms, they are all the same thing;
"God". Therefore to say that on one come to the father except though
the son is the same thing as saying no one enters the kingdom, except he
is granted entry by God. One of the things that Christians have the
most trouble understanding is "The Trinity", which is understandable,
because it seem so unnatural to humans, but I believe even humans have a
eternal soul (e.g. a spirit).
http://everystudent.com/forum/trinity.html
Regards,
LelandJ
When you pair that up with the "other sheep
have I which are not of this flock", which was said to a Hebrew audience,
and add to that the fact that Jesus was known to have visited other
countries during the "missing" years, we honestly have no idea what the
purpose was in all of that.
I submit that the very basis for a claim of exclusivity for entry into
heaven by organized Christianity is suspect. We can state how WE believe WE
are to go to heaven, but it is high time we quit making statements about
whether persons believing in other religions will get to heaven. I do not
see how we could possibly know that.
There is (1) our business, (2) other peoples business, and (3) God's
business... And this issue is clearly in category #3.
So lets all put that in our pipes and smoke it for a while...
- Kris
www.shamrocktrails.com, www.mcstyles, www.emryldlife.com
[excessive quoting removed by server]
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