winstonjen

For a start, some people live longer than others, so they get more of a chance to think it over and decide what to do.

Radorth

If you haven't figured it out after 50 years of bouncing off your own walls, I doubt you ever will. Besides that Jesus apparently takes in those who merely "will to do his will." But I don't suppose you read that either while searching for "contradictions" and other excuses to ignore God.

Rad

Opera Nut

Re real Christians from the Jews for Judaism website, by an ex-Pentecostal minister:

"Try this: Ask any fundamentalist Christian why his/her spiritual forebears launched the Inquisition, the Crusades, or the Holocaust. 10 out of 10 will retort, "Those weren't real Christians. Real Christians love the Jews and wouldn't do that." So, what then, do "real Christians" believe about Jews?

"As a former fundamentalist minister, I know the answers intimately. I spent years living by one imperative: Preach the Gospel (personal salvation through faith in Christ) to the ends of the earth (to all people everywhere), as outlined in Matthew 28:18. Through this enterprise, I believed that Christians would eventually trigger the second coming of Christ, who could not return to earth till all had heard the Gospel, till the last home and hamlet had been reached. This is the ultimate responsibility of all real Christians (Matthew 24:14). Ask them. They will tell you. Otherwise, they are not truly "Bible believing."

"Real Christians affirm that all non-believers are lost. Each must repent or reject in response to hearing the Good News. Paul of Tarsus, who wrote at least 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament, refined the focus, saying "the gospel . . . is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." (Romans 1:16)"
....

"Real Christians believe they have replaced the Jews as the chosen people. Peter, one of Jesus' closest disciples, wrote "you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God" (I Peter 2:9). All of these terms were used exclusively of ancient Israel. Look at Exodus 19:5, 6. The borrowing, the redefining, and the conclusions are obvious -- and ominous, as we shall see.

"Real Christians believe the Torah is null: "Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, now that he has died to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant" (Hebrews 9:15) Real Christians regard observance of the Torah as an impossibly futile exercise. The only value of the Torah is to teach us all that we couldn't keep God's standard and thus needed a savior to rescue us from the penalty of falling short of it.

"Lest you think these are harmless theological sound bites, consider the applications of these views. To real Christians, the Jews are currently in a state of spiritual blindness and rebellion and subject to the wrath of God. (An unfortunate percentage believe the Holocaust was a payback for the Jews' role in the crucifixion.) Jews do have value as the former harbingers of God's justice and righteousness, but today they must be absorbed into Christendom to find their real identity. Star Trek fans will discern a Borg-like parallelism in this. (I shudder to think how I contributed to it.) "
.....

"Today's Jews are a spiritual anachronism for real Christians. The fundamentalist theo-political agenda has no room for pluralism or tolerant co-existence with people of divergent views. You are in or out, saved or lost, redeemed or damned. All non-Christians are in darkness and need a savior. All non-Christians must hear the message of salvation. Belief in that imperative keeps the money flowing to fulfill the Great Commission to reach all the world. This is a passionate point of no compromise for all real Christians, who claim to be 40+ million strong in America. When seen for what it is, however, their zeal includes the spiritual extinction of today's Jews.

"How is that any different than the evils done 50, 500, or 1,000 years ago? As one who engaged in it in this generation, I soberly submit, it's not. Perhaps the real Christians could love us a little less and pursue justice a little more? "


----------

Mark Sanders is a former Pentecostal, fundamentalist minister who engaged in missionary activity in Israel, working in kibbutzim and the Israeli public school system. In the process of mastering Hebrew, he began to see many serious inconsistencies and errors in the Christian Bible. His studies of Tanakh persuaded him to rethink & eventually resign from his Christian views of the Bible. Now an observant Jew, Mark is the Outreach Director of the Los Angeles office of Jews for Judaism."

Rad's statements are so routine and memorized that we can predict exactly what he will say. Not interesting at all. Those people are soooo predictable!

Jamie_L

If the dead get to hear the gospel of Jesus after they are dead, then their opportunity is clearly different from ours.

In fact, now the tables are turned: those who do not hear the gospel during their lives are much more likely to be saved. Why?

Because if you die, and then hear the gospel directly from Jesus, you're pretty darn well going to believe it's true. No faith required: look here, I'm Jesus and you're dead. No soul searching, struggling with an observable world that seems completely absent of supernatural influence. Just hard-core proof of the supernatural.

Why do those of us that hear the gospel while alive get held to such a higher standard of faith?

Clearly, this means if you want the whole world to be saved, your best tactic is to deny the gospel to as many people as you can. That way, they get to hear it directly from Jesus, and they stand a much better chance of being saved.

Jamie

Bumble Bee Tuna

Rad- I'm not arguing about fairness. I'm arguing with your statement that "everyone gets to hear the Gospel". There are whole tribes of people who haven't even seen civilization before. I'm sure they haven't heard the Gospel. There isn't any biblical support for the idea of people getting to hear the gospel and change their minds once they are in Hell, so your assertion that everyone gets to hear the gospel is extrabiblical and doesn't make sense. I think it sounds like something a loving god would do, but I don't think it sounds like something the god in the Bible would do, so it doesn't even seem like a logical inferrance to make from the Bible.

But, if you're right with your extrabiblical theory of salvation, I think Jamie_L's post does a good job showing where the unfairness is.

-B

Shake

This typical canned response as usual ignores cases of infants who die too young to comprehend language, never mind understand the Gospel message. It also ignores peoples in remote areas, who are relatively left alone by modern civilizations. Of course, they are usually written off (cruelly, I might add) as heathens. Finally, my newest favorite (can't remember where I heard though), is what about all the people who lived before the Gospel was told? All of them are going to hell because they had the misfortune to live too early? Seems like more evidence of a cruel creator (not that I believe in one, mind you).

Rhea

That's RIGHT. I mean, look, it took the Shrub 40 years to get on the sober track. 40 years. But it would have been his own fault if he had died of cancer at 25 instead of living through his drunk. It's not unfair at all that he was afforded 40 years to come to Jesus. It's just... er... what is it again? Oh yeah, Rad gave 50 years to figure it out. Whew.

(Wait, what about those dying 39-year olds? Well, they got all the same chances as the Shrub. Honest.)

7thangel

When God brings rain as a blessing, it benefits the just and the unjust. So also when God brings flood both the unjust and just suffer. It also unfair for someone to forgive after suffering a traumatic experience from an enemy. And in an organization, it is unfair that the president exercise a power higher than other who are of like capabilities. But do we measure unfairness in our personal perpectives? No, rather fairness is weighed in a cummulative reason. Same as our body, the head is not greater than any other part of the body. Rather, all parts works for the whole body, not for their specific part of the body, nor for itself as part of the body.

Bumble Bee Tuna

Uh, Radorth's response isn't the "typical canned" response. He's saying that the people before Jesus were preached to while Jesus was dead, so they could be saved. I don't hear that from a lot of fundies, even though it's apparently a story in the Bible.

The idea that Radorth's repsonse doesn't deal with those who died before Jesus' time is an invalid point, Shake, and knowing Radorth he'll pounce on it while ignoring the valid ones.

-B

Ice

The Bible also says that only those who have accepted Christ as their savior will be saved. It also goes on to say people will be saved by their works. Which should I do - hold to my beliefs, become Christian, or do good deeds?