God states in His Word that our lifetimes are like a passing moment, a few hours of a morning and then it's done.
No one, to paraphrase Hank, makes it out of this world alive...for now. The oft-noted "Rapture"-the 'catching up' of those whom God will gather to Himself-that will be our vertical exodus, alive and Praising God.
I don't have Scripture at hand to back up this belief, but I think that "THERE" we will remember every blessing we have received during our pilgrimage here...but we will forget every pain and curse as if they had never happened.
No sin in Heaven, which is wherever God is. I believe that includes no memory of sin.
Counterpoint. Those who will be cursed to exist forever apart from God will have no memory of Blessings, good times, joys enjoyed during their lifetime. But every curse, every painful memory they will wear like chains forever.
Please don't think I'm gloating. Hell isn't my destination only through the Grace of God. I will have many friends and family there, and I wish there were no hell...but what I wish doesn't matter.
God saves whom He Will. No one "Decides" to become a Christian. It isn't a matter of our will, and we can't decide to stop being Christians. None of His sheep will run off to other pastures. We wouldn't want to.
So, what is this post about?
Just a reminder, friends, that even though our time on earth is short, we should seek God, seek His forgiveness and Holiness. If you feel that you are destined for hell, but wish that you weren't...God may be drawing you to Himself. He made it fully evident to me where I was heading before He saved me.
May God seek you out and bring you home.
18 comments:
Home. I grew up in the home pictured at the top of this post. It's changed a bit since then.
"God saves whom He Will. No one 'Decides' to become a Christian."
Some highly respected pastors would disagree with you, including the late Adrian Rogers and Charles Stanley.
If you can't "decide" to do anything, why go through the motions of evangelizing and preaching at all? God would just impart His grace and knowledge to whom He will and that would be the end of it.
Easy as sin, James. We 'go through the motions'(your phrase, not mine) because we are commissioned to do so-see Mark 16:15-16
15And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.
16“He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned."
The same God Who gave us this commission told Isaiah to preach repentance to Israel when their hearts were far from God.
Not that they would repent-read this:
Isaiah 6:9-10
9 He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.’
10 “Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed.”
For this same reason Jesus spoke in parables-see Mark where He quotes from Isaiah,stating the same about the people of His day (and ours):
10As soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables.
11And He was saying to them, “To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables,
12so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven.”
We are commissioned to go, knowing that most of the world will not listen. The Gospel is ignored and Christians are mocked and hated.
but there ARE people who accept the free gift of Salvation through hearing the Gospel from Christians who evangelize-I'm one of them.
I don't know Rogers, but I'm certain that Stanley knows that God does the choosing as to who will be saved or not.
I didn't "decide" to be a Christian. It was the last thing I wanted, but God saved me anyway.
Doug, you often use the phrase "rejecting God" to describe non-Christians, but from this post it appears to be the other way around: God rejects most of us.
-Lu
(this new comment system makes me pick one name and stick to it, so I'm using my real name henceforth)
Hi Lu-semantics. Cause and effect are in effect-someone 'rejecting God' will be (is) someone whom God has not accepted. Such a person will not accept God on His terms, which are the only terms that mean anything.
Indeed God rejects most of us. Jesus said that the gate is narrow that leads to salvation, and few will be saved. He also said that the gate is wide that leads to destruction, and many go that way.
You might ask, "Why would God reject most of His creation, why create them simply to be destroyed?"
That is a theological question which I can't answer. This is where faith kicks in. I can't prove to you or anyone else that God exists and has saved me, but I know it. Why He saved me or why He rejects/does not accept others---I have no idea.
Look for a new post soon based in part on a Larry Norman song.
It's not just semantics, though -- if I'm predestined for perdition, then it's churlish of you to berate me for rejecting God. And if it is God doing the rejecting, if as you said in an earlier post God doesn't love all of us, just the elect, and the rest of us can go to Hell as far as God is concerned, then God is a peculiar beast. I've said before that, on known form, God can't be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent: pick at most two. You in effect pick the first two, which makes you more logical than a lot of people.
The standard answer to the who-rejects-whom question as I understand it is that while I have free choice, God, being outside time, sees all the choices I make and knows where I will end up before I begin from my perspective (but not from God's). God does not make me reject God, but sees me do it. That still leaves open your second question, and still leaves God a peculiar beast.
Again I give you the chorus to the song we sing: you can't judge a perfect God by human imperfect standards. Those that belong to Him know that in our deepest, just as you in your deepest think that we are wrong.
No churl, Lu. The very message you reject many others love to hear, as God is indeed loving and caring.
That they need not stand in judgment for their sins is the best news they will ever hear.
Do I berate you for rejecting God, or do I simply state what the Gospel says, and you take it as an offense, as it surely is to those who don't want to hear it?
"Again I give you the chorus to the song we sing: you can't judge a perfect God by human imperfect standards"
If humans are not permitted to form any sort of judgment about God's nature or His decrees, how can us saying that He is "good" have any meaning? It doesn't. The word "good" then just becomes a random, meaningless adjective attributed to God whose meaning we cannot know.
That is: if the Bible said it was "good" to rape and murder, would we be obligated to commit those actions because "good" is defined by the God of that Bible?
"If humans are not permitted to form any sort of judgment about God's nature or His decrees, how can us saying that He is "good" have any meaning? It doesn't."
We can't know anything of God, good or bad...except what He has exhibited to us, shown to us though His Word and throughout our history with Him. That history didn't start the day you were aware of Him. He has revealed Himself to and through His Creation since the beginning.
Remember Job? Old testament guy, had a lot of grief in his life-all of his children killed, all his wealth taken away, sickness and disease ravaged his body...all without Job knowing why God was allowing these terrible things to happen.
Job asked for answers, and God answered him-look at Job 38-41. Put yourself in Job's place, as if God were answering you instead of Job. Wear a helmet.
God is good, and Merciful.
I can't judge Him, but I can agree with what He reveals of Himself.
Mighty cool.
James beat me to it; this is what happens when a virus lays me out flat. (I'm on the mend.)
Job asks "Why me, Lord?" and in Job 38-41 God essentially replies, "You're too young to understand." But as I read the beginning of Job the true answer is, "Because I made a bet with Satan over a game of cosmic ping-pong and, lucky you, you get to be the ball. We can smack you around whenever we feel like it, because we're older and bigger than you."
This is not a parenting model I wish to emulate.
James's question has been around for millennia and is known to Platonists as the Euthyphro dilemma. Knowing that, by your lights at least, God has predestined me along with most of humanity for the Eternal Barbecue, I'm not too keen on your answer.
More later; I have to go.
I've come to believe that there are a great many people tortured by these conflicting concepts Doug expresses. Some people believe in a merciful god and a heaven where their loved ones will be. They also believe god doesn't always love them, or he doesn't exist, and there might not be a heaven. They have the conflicting concepts because their churches beat into them the idea of hell and damnation.
Faith/Hope however is a different concept. You can have a person with conflicting concepts like these still have Faith in a better world to come (for themselves, their family, or maybe even the whole world). They attribute their faith to a god and a heaven, but god and heaven in that sense are just bridges to get them to the real concept.
Doug is trying to explain the conflicting concepts, which could never make logical sense (because they conflict exactly). So he does what he only knows to do 'You can't understand until you are initiated'.
If you want Faith/Hope without the conflict, you can still have it. Just choose a religion that doesn't preach hate - hell, damnation, war, etc.
"in Job 38-41 God essentially replies, "You're too young to understand."
Nope Nope Nope. Not too young. Incapable. Impossible.
We can't as imperfect humans judge a perfect non-human God. God basically told Job, "You're complaining about what I'm doing? Where were you when I created everything? If you could do what I have done, then you'd have the right to open your mouth."
Job's answer:
"You're right, God. I'll shut up."
Moving on to anon's comment:
"a great many people tortured by these conflicting concepts Doug expresses."
No torture, no conflict here. The only ones tortured by conflict are the ones who try to approach God on their terms instead of His.
"So he does what he only knows to do" is a bit condescending.
"If you want Faith/Hope without the conflict, you can still have it. Just choose a religion that doesn't preach hate - hell, damnation, war, etc."
Choose a religion? Really? It's a choice that we make instead of being chosen by God? And your life would be easier, without conflict, if you could design a god without hell?
God help you shed the fearful clinging to the idea of a false god.
"And your life would be easier, without conflict, if you could design a god without hell?"
I'm talking about choosing an activity that is not hell. Yes your life will be easier without hell, so when we choose peace over hate, our outcome will be peace, or that's what we have faith in.
I should clarify I'm using the term 'hell' to describe a real state in the world, Iraq for example, or the state of the jobless worrying if they can keep their house or pay for food. I'm not talking about an underworld place with a creature with pointy horns who tortures people with demons, etc.
During the course of bad events like those of Job, or like those of anyone experiencing hardship, there can be comfort in having faith that the world will become better, that a god is with you all the way through. I understand this firsthand. I know what it means to remember 'the lily in the valley' in an ocean of darkness, as many others do too. But we can't discount real tragedy. Some things just happen and some things can be controlled. I think it's incorrect to say all bad things happen because of that same good force as the 'lily in the valley' willed it to. Like I said, some things just happen, and some things can be controlled. It is our responsibility to control the things we can as we are more capable in controlling them. We advance and have less tragedy because we want a better world. It is a mistake to let the passing of tragedy be an excuse to not do anything.
God is God, friend Anon...and hell is what He determined it to be, not what we want it to be.
"It is our responsibility to control the things we can as we are more capable in controlling them. We advance and have less tragedy because we want a better world. It is a mistake to let the passing of tragedy be an excuse to not do anything."
Humanism. The belief that people are capable of creating/perfecting "their" world, to the exclusion of God.
But this is God's world-we merely exist in it at His whim/pleasure/displeasure.
"4The LORD has made everything for its own purpose,Even the wicked for the day of evil." Proverbs 16:4
Well that is where we differ. You live in a sphere of conflicting ideas, with two differing populations, and you prefer to be the top of the populations.
You believe the world, everyone's home (regardless of there also being members outside your elitist form of Christianity) 'belongs' to your god, specifically a god that only represents a chosen "elect" few, an elite. Since you don't seem to espouse the idea of passivity, i.e. you vote, it only follows that the "elect" are the only ones capable of taking care of your god's world, at least through your deity's direction. But from someone outside this perspective, I don't see this as fair or even moral. Democracy and equality are real terms that don't have anything to do with elitism. Second, should this "elect" gain power, how would it treat the inferior, the divinely "cursed" to the ridiculously said eternal torture - 'consciously forever without joy, with every memory of pain "chained" to their every waking thought'? Well there may be a clue to that. Look at how the elite now, the rich and powerful, treat the general populations today. We have the most powerful military machine the world has ever known robbing countries of their life, wills, and resources. But that's another topic.
Back to the point, the truth is your form of Christianity, if we should even call it Christianity, doesn't have a real connection to an all powerful loving being, not that you seem to claim the loving portion anyway. You pick and choose from verses in the Bible to advance your agendas. Don't want gay's rights? Look at the verses on how we should stone them. Don't like a country's sovereignty or the people inside it? Look at the passages about how Yaweh directed to take the resources of cities, burn them to the ground, kill women and children, etc. However the Bible is a large tome, so while there are some horrible passages, there are good ones that hopeful people turn to for hope and peace. So that's where there is conflict. You may be special in that you have actually written down the theological statements concerning your "religion". But most people don't. While they may go to a church where the leadership regard hell as a cherished belief, most people turn to compassion and hope because that's what they need in an unfair world, and because that's the character of humanity, whether you say we were born in God's image, or that's the way the cookie crumbles, the real character of humanity can be observed, lived, and striven forward.
Anon, when you sober up feel free to come back and try again. What you write makes no sense. If you are indeed sober right now, feel free to ignore my site, as you aren't going to like what you read.
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