What Is Wrong With This Picture?

[AnotherTraveler]

Poindexter, I'm old and kinda slow , so could you tell me what is the exact purpose of this thread?

Like Redwing said! Or is there a point?

[Mom2Many]

Is David saved? Abraham? Noah? they never "knew" Christ. They never had that word preached. Where is the dividing line?

Hebrews 11

7 By faith Noah, having been warned by God of things not yet seen, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out into a place which he was afterward going to receive for an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he went.

9 By faith he lived in the land of promise as a stranger, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs of the same promise with him.

10 For he looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

They knew to look to God for their salvation. They knew to expect the Messiah. By faith they were saved.

This is exactly what I was thinking!

[sweetycakes]

Two good old boys get in a fight. Neither one is a Christian. A knife is drawn and the one kills the other. Now the murderer goes to jail and when in jail there is a prison ministry and he gets saved. So now the murderer is heaven bound. But the guy who was murdered had no such last minute chance. He got killed and is now in hell. It does not seem like God to me.

I think that this hypothetical situation of yours pre-supposes too much, Poindexter.

It pre-supposes that the 'saved' man was necessarily the bad guy in this scenario, because he ended up being the murderer.

But maybe he wasn't the one who started the fight. Maybe they both had knives, and the saved man managed to draw his first. Maybe the one who died had been victimizing the saved man for a long time, and the saved man had taken to carrying a knife as a last resort.....and maybe this was the first occasion that he carried one.

In any case, even if this was a real scenario, who are we to judge the heart of each of these men before God? Only God can do that.

I think Ayin Jade gave a good answer, btw

[sheya joie]

Just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, as Abraham was begging the LORD to not destroy the cities if 50 righteous lived there... 45 righteous... 40 righteous, etc - Abraham said this:

Gen 18:25b Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

Well, yes, the Judge of all the earth shall do right; what is just and proper judgement for each man's life, the Judge, the LORD, who alone knows the hearts of all, shall mete out.

[LadyRaven]

Two good old boys get in a fight. Neither one is a Christian. A knife is drawn and the one kills the other. Now the murderer goes to jail and when in jail there is a prison ministry and he gets saved. So now the murderer is heaven bound. But the guy who was murdered had no such last minute chance. He got killed and is now in hell. It does not seem like God to me.

First off, one cannot presume that the murdered man had no last second chance, as we cannot see behind his eyes and say for certain that Jesus did not come and call him to repentance right that second. Nor can we presume, until we are in heaven, that the murderer is actually saved. All who are truly saved will persevere to the end, that is how we know for sure. Everything else is an educated guess.

Second, when something does not seem like God to us, it's not necessarily that our beliefs are correct. God commanded the deaths of many pagans in the OT by war of complete annihilation. When I look at that through my own human eyes, which were trained by the military to minimize "collateral damage" (ie, unnecessary destruction of property or killing of non combatants) it makes me angry because *I* personally do not like the idea of such perceived overkill. However, if a just God said to do it, and He cannot sin, then what He commands cannot be sin. Therefore it must be just. My reaction is erroneous and thus sinful (rebellion).

So, you have to start with right beliefs, right theology and draw conclusions from that, not start from philosophical hard questions with the possibility of the correct answer not pleasing us. If the correct answer does not please us, it is not God's fault it is the fault of sinful man's nature controlling our emotions and thoughts. God is good and righteous, totally Holy.

God is just. He doesn't just display justice, He defines it. Justice carries an Earned, Chosen OR Pre-determined consequence. If you dont go to work, you dont get paid. If you jump from a plane two miles above the earth with no parachute, you fall down and die. When you get justice, you get what you deserve. The wages of sin is death Rm.6:23. All are guilty of sin, there are no exceptions Gal3:22. We all deserve death and hell.

However, God is not a one dimensional being, He is also Grace and Mercy. He is the very definition of these things as well. Since he was merciful, he provided a sacrifice, and thus fulfilled justice for all who would accept that sacrifice. Those who do, instead of justice receive Grace. Every day and every second thereof is an opportunity to accept that grace. When a man dies without having done so, He simply gets what he deserves at death.

In the above example, When the murdered man got justice, it is right and good. The other man, though, received grace, which is also right and good. Justice and Grace are not opposites, they do not make God's character contradictory. They are both pieces of the complex nature of a Holy God, and both are right and holy because they are part of that character.

[Xan]

Doesn't sound like God to me either. It sounds like sin, operating in both the fighters, and it costs one his life, and the other his freedom. Then, in captivity, the remainiing sinner repents and gets saved. God did not cause the fight, the sin, nor pull the knife, but He provided salvation to the whosoever will, and as long as we have breath, we have a potential opportunity to come to God.

On the cross, both thieves mocked Jesus, at first, but one repented, and the other didn't (or at least there is no record of his doing so), and so one went to paradise, and the other didn't. Mercy was available to both, however.

The "sounds like God" thing I am getting at is our interpretation of destiny. You go to hell as a victim while a perpetrator gets saved.

The victim is also a perpetrator. "There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, not even one."

[Poindexter]

Two good old boys get in a fight. Neither one is a Christian. A knife is drawn and the one kills the other. Now the murderer goes to jail and when in jail there is a prison ministry and he gets saved. So now the murderer is heaven bound. But the guy who was murdered had no such last minute chance. He got killed and is now in hell. It does not seem like God to me.

First off, one cannot presume that the murdered man had no last second chance, as we cannot see behind his eyes and say for certain that Jesus did not come and call him to repentance right that second. Nor can we presume, until we are in heaven, that the murderer is actually saved. All who are truly saved will persevere to the end, that is how we know for sure. Everything else is an educated guess.

Second, when something does not seem like God to us, it's not necessarily that our beliefs are correct. God commanded the deaths of many pagans in the OT by war of complete annihilation. When I look at that through my own human eyes, which were trained by the military to minimize "collateral damage" (ie, unnecessary destruction of property or killing of non combatants) it makes me angry because *I* personally do not like the idea of such perceived overkill. However, if a just God said to do it, and He cannot sin, then what He commands cannot be sin. Therefore it must be just. My reaction is erroneous and thus sinful (rebellion).

So, you have to start with right beliefs, right theology and draw conclusions from that, not start from philosophical hard questions with the possibility of the correct answer not pleasing us. If the correct answer does not please us, it is not God's fault it is the fault of sinful man's nature controlling our emotions and thoughts. God is good and righteous, totally Holy.

God is just. He doesn't just display justice, He defines it. Justice carries an Earned, Chosen OR Pre-determined consequence. If you dont go to work, you dont get paid. If you jump from a plane two miles above the earth with no parachute, you fall down and die. When you get justice, you get what you deserve. The wages of sin is death Rm.6:23. All are guilty of sin, there are no exceptions Gal3:22. We all deserve death and hell.

However, God is not a one dimensional being, He is also Grace and Mercy. He is the very definition of these things as well. Since he was merciful, he provided a sacrifice, and thus fulfilled justice for all who would accept that sacrifice. Those who do, instead of justice receive Grace. Every day and every second thereof is an opportunity to accept that grace. When a man dies without having done so, He simply gets what he deserves at death.

In the above example, When the murdered man got justice, it is right and good. The other man, though, received grace, which is also right and good. Justice and Grace are not opposites, they do not make God's character contradictory. They are both pieces of the complex nature of a Holy God, and both are right and holy because they are part of that character.

Upstream someone doggedly determined to ask, "What is the purpose of this thread? That seemed a little imperial to me, given the obvious thought is based around the dynamics of what we believe salvation and the requirements of salvation to be in the common faith. All I know is that I was a real wise old owl when I was born again and I knew everything about God. I wondered how come no one else could see the truth. But then I read all of the hard line views and principals of others who were not of such a ready acceptance of the common theology. The issues are many. Tithing, and rapture theories would be a couple. Suddenly I realized that my infrastructure of belief was not all that secure. For every case of belief comes a set of scriptures that at least "seem to hold weight." And the subjects are big enough that one does not have the "sticktoitiveness" to go on and on in an exhaustive comprehension. Or (as in my case) the mind is small enough to get entangled in too much detail over too broad a base of information. So it is with salvation. For we preach on one hand, a God of "all grace" and on the other a God who exacts terminal vengeance. We see a black and white in salvation...and it is very much an "either/or" arrangement. Christ is to be believed and accepted. I rally around that flag and I subscribe to the cross also. But there is a vast spectrum of "seemings" that get ignored. Those from the OT times had heard a theme from Moses that One was to come who was a great prophet and deliverer. But they never heard his name nor they never sat under a pastor who preached his salvation. But Christ led that captivity out of hell when He ascended on high and gave gifts unto men. I suspect that somewhere in the infrastructure of the common belief the God of all grace is going to save a lot more people than this elect little group (Christianity as a whole) who storm the world with vague innuendo of what the plan of God is. And when you see the various belief sets based on the same scripture blocks, it is hard to call it unified belief. I am not saying I have an answer. Just a suspicion. I am not saying I am going to run amok and be a loose cannon of some alleged diabolical attack to the nuances of Kingdom living. As much as anything, this thread was designed to make people think about a basic concept and to initiate a response from the heart. As would be expected, there have been many pronouncements and judgments and questionings of the validity of one who would dare conjecture such an approach as to infer something may be wrong with the tenets and beliefs of what we may dogmatically assume to be the plan of God to save souls. It is both simple and deep. And the folks who have opined have done so categorically for the most part, as I have said, with the purpose of castigating the incumbent (me) of this post. That is the way that people work. For it makes them feel superior in mind will and emotion and even intellect. Yet they come away looking to me like someone who they met on the street and disdained for being down and out and a bother. But Lady Raven here, mentioned not a word that implies some unseemliness on my part and for that reason I have chosen her reply to offer one last assessment of my whys and wherefores. Lady Raven, you are to be congratulated as a deep and categorical witness and truth seeker and for your due benevolence. This was not meant to be an argument or a debate. Just another inference of thought. And the wisdom of men has been offeset by the wisdom of the Spirit in very few.

Edited October 26, 2008 by Poindexter

[LadyRaven]

Upstream someone doggedly determined to ask, "What is the purpose of this thread? That seemed a little imperial to me, given the obvious thought is based around the dynamics of what we believe salvation and the requirements of salvation to be in the common faith. All I know is that I was a real wise old owl when I was born again and I knew everything about God. I wondered how come no one else could see the truth.

Lady Raven asks in a spirit of both fun and philosophical posturing "Well what good is an opinion or belief it is not the right one?"

I rally around that flag and I subscribe to the cross also. But there is a vast spectrum of "seemings" that get ignored. Those from the OT times had heard a theme from Moses that One was to come who was a great prophet and deliverer. But they never heard his name nor they never sat under a pastor who preached his salvation. But Christ led that captivity out of hell when He ascended on high and gave gifts unto men. I suspect that somewhere in the infrastructure of the common belief the God of all grace is going to save a lot more people than this elect little group (Christianity as a whole) who storm the world with vague innuendo of what the plan of God is. And when you see the various belief sets based on the same scripture blocks, it is hard to call it unified belief.

That is the problem with everything really. And I dont mean this flippantly.

God is infinite. Scripture is TRUE, ultimate truth. And on one level we can read and know what is true and right. But what is true enough for a child to grasp keeps theological types with big egghead brains entertained for an entire lifetime of spiritual paintball. And yet we still see through the glass darkly after their battles are stood down for a time. I cant remember the verse, but it is in there somewhere. The reason is that God crammed as much of His infinity as He thought was good for us to know in Scripture. But it is still divine baby talk after a fashion. We will not know as God knows and never can.

The other reason is that well, we're all human and thus flawed. And our flawed thinking leads to flawed doctrine. Someone has to determine develops that flawed doctrine and what that is, but in truth, that someone is evaluating all that stuff is human too. This does not mean, from my perspective, that it is all useless (though it might be in the sense that we'd all like to know exactly who is wrong before we get to the end of things and we wont). The journey, the desire for truth, the growth are all valuable in their own right. We run the race not just to get to the end. God could have just deigned that the second we were saved we'd be perfected. The end is the final goal, but the race is part of the thing too.

There is a reason that God has decided not to come down to earth (YET AGAIN) to set things straight and proclaim that exactly 9 angels can dance on the head of a pin because, if there were 8, it would be the wrong number for some reason and ten would just be overkill...or that of course the relationship between man's will and God's will runs exactly thus and so. I do not know what that reason is, just that He must have one or why else would He allow division and thus obviously error (I mean either the Sabbath is Saturday or Sunday, it cant be both as they exclude each other)?

I am not saying I have an answer. Just a suspicion. I am not saying I am going to run amok and be a loose cannon of some alleged diabolical attack to the nuances of Kingdom living. As much as anything, this thread was designed to make people think about a basic concept and to initiate a response from the heart.

Do not look too closely into the heart of man without a facemask...

As would be expected, there have been many pronouncements and judgments and questionings of the validity of one who would dare conjecture such an approach as to infer something may be wrong with the tenets and beliefs of what we assume to be a dogmatic plan of God to save souls.

I never took it as such. See, there are many things that I believe to be true that just do not sit comfortably with my human sensibilities. The fact that I want and appreciate grace does not always stop me from feeling it's unfair that someone else gets grace too. I mean, how would Hebraic Christians feel if Hitler or Himmler or Goering had made a deathbed confession on international tv? And more personally, the idea that my ex husband who cheated on me and ruined what I thought was my dream at the time could just repent and be accepted into fellowship with his new wife (the other woman) just barely stopped getting stuck in some place that really caused my spirit to itch. I mean I'd done it right, he'd done it wrong, shouldn't he pay?

I also posit that just because I know that sometimes God does something and I dont like it but it's still right does not mean that every doctrine I find repugnant is right because it is repugnant to me. It's too easy to go that way too. It's just that we have to be careful and not let our humanity become too involved. When we are made uncomfortable, it is cause to be careful, yes, but you dont always have to become dogmatic. Only when the dogma is called for. Unfortunately though, we might disagree as honest believers, as to when those times are. So I set that principle out there in a given context and not to make it a litmus test for spirituality.

Thank you Poindexter, for your original question and also for this response. You are a thinker, and I pray that God uses your gift for something really 'cool.'

[Floatingaxe]

Thank you Poindexter, for your original question and also for this response. You are a thinker, and I pray that God uses your gift for something really 'cool.'

I second that...

[yesult]

The traditional view of hell is simplistic and unbiblical anyway. Any christian who doesn't settle that thing out with God is going to run into problems at some stage in their walk regardless.

I did a post on this a little while ago in more detail. Anyone is welcome to search my posts to find it if they're interested.