username_5

While there no direct mention of an "age of accountability", there is scripture that backs up the belief that those who never heard (or cannot mentally comprehend) the Gospel can be allowed into Heaven: Romans 2: 13-15 13(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. 14For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: 15Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) Lord, thank you for BibleGateway.com's Bible word search. Thank you for agreeing there is no scripture directly supporting the idea of an 'age of accountability'. You have attempted to proof quote scripture to support your private view that there is such a thing, but there is not and I will demonstrate, using your quotes that there is not. Your quote is: Romans 2: 13-15 13(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. This says absolutely nothing about an age of accountability. It seems to be the Paul/James controversy between works and faith. 14For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Again, this has nothing at all to do with an age of accountability. This deals with the fact that god's laws are intuitive and everyone regardless of faith or creed simply 'gets' that murder and other bad things are wrong. 15Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) See what I wrote for verse 14. Again, this 'proof text' utterly fails to present any evidence whatsoever that there is any such thing as an age of accountability in the bible. What is in the bible is this: Everyone is born unto sin. There is nothing that any human can do that is good in God's eyes because it is all tainted. Everyone is deserving of eternal damnation. Those who escape damnation do so not because of merit, but grace and mercy. The very idea of an 'age of accountability' is completely foreign to scripture and it is pure nonsense that those who cannot stomach God as he is invent false doctrines to assuage their conscience. Make no mistake it is a 100% invented doctrine and has absolutely zero scripture supporting it. Take God as he is. Love him or hate him, but stop trying to make him out to be more politically correct than he is.

I disagree strongly. Those who are saved have a life long companion: the holy spirit. It is the job of the holy spirit to convict us of sin. If I am exposing myself to something on TV and the holy spirit convicts me that it is sin then I better knock if off. If the holy spirit doesn't convict me that it is sin then for me it is not sin even though for someone else it might be. The scriptures address this very topic. Should a believer eat food sacrificed to idols? The scriptures appear to leave this up to the conscience of the believer. Eating food is no sin certainly so it all boils down to whether the holy spirit is convicting us or not. If you watch a show and experience no conviction of sin then it is not sin for you. If you watch a show and feel conviction of sin and watch it anyway then it is sin for you. Why worry if something is 'right' or 'wrong'? Hasn't God told you that all believers have the holy spirit? Hasn't god told you that one of the jobs of the holy spirit is to convict us regarding sin? If something is wrong the holy spirit will convict us and let's not be judgmental. It is entirely possible for something to be sin for one person and not sin for another. Again scripture makes this clear as it presents the example of eating food sacrificed to idols. On the one hand it is just food and on the other hand it has been sacrificed to idols. The holy spirit will convict accordingly.

I was raised in an Evangelical Free Church. For those who do not know what that means, it doesn't mean 'free from evangelizing ' The word evangelical meant that the church focused on telling others about Jesus' salvation. The word free simply meant the church didn't hold to any particular doctrine that divided other Christians. For example some believe you can't be saved without water baptism. Some believe the baptism should be done when an infant and others believe it's meaningless if the person being baptized can't understand what baptism means. Still others quibble about being baptized in natural body of water, immersion, sprinkling etc. Being a 'free' church simply meant that the church took no official position on such issues and left this up to the conscience of each person. Kind of cool, but the emphasis on evangelism always bothered me. I would listen to the 'testimonials' or salvation stories of others and realize I had nothing to say. One person was a drug addict prostitute who had hit rock bottom and then accepted Jesus and I was just this guy raised from birth to believe what I believed. My story really wasn't very interesting or inspiring compared to the drug addicted prostitutes. I also wondered why evangelism was important in today's world. I mean if you think about it everyone in the US has heard of Jesus haven't they? Statistics say 80-90% of the US population self identifies as Christian. What's the point of evangelism in a nation filled with professing Christians when one really doesn't have a compelling salvation story to tell?

I clicked on the link and do not see any videos. What am I missing? I do see a lot of anti Islamic text, but honestly the criticisms of Islam given are equally applicable to Christianity. Perhaps not modern Christianity, but old testament Christianity. Islam seems an awful lot like Christianity before Christ.

The united states is governed by a secular constitution. References to any kind of deity are being removed to make the actual government better conform to the constitution. It's easy to see 'God' disappear (God meaning the Christian God' because the US is predominantly Christian nation just as it is predominantly white.), but this isn't explicitly anti Christian. I think all of us should reflect on why people fled Europe and came to what is now the US. It was to escape the horrors of government religion. It really doesn't matter if government embraces Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or anything else. Government officially supporting a religion always leads to bad things. The fanatics within the religion use the power of the state to force others to pay respect to religious beliefs under threat of punishment and the state uses religion to control what people think under threat of divine punishment. The separation of church and state is a very good idea for both the state and the church.

There isn't a single sentence in all of scripture than even remotely implies 'an age of accountability'. What the scriptures do say is that all have sinned. It also says that upon birth all have inhereted the sinful nature of Adam and Even even if one is so young (unborn) as to have not been able to sin. There are many who believe in a God who wouldn't dare send anyone to hell for eternity unless that person was given a reasonable chance to accept Jesus. The reality is that this is not supported by scripture. What scripture says is everyone is deserving of hell and the only escape clause is faith in Jesus. Anyone who believes babies or those with mental disabilities will invariably go to heaven are inventing ideas not supported by scripture. The ideas may be true or false, but they are certainly not supported by scripture.