Your cousin’s premise is so fundamentally absurd, it simply falls apart. There’s no need to get a passage or anything.
If the only way to into heaven is through Jesus, that means Noah, Moses, Sampson, David, Joseph, Cain, Abel, Adam, Eve and everybody else who lived before Jesus is in Hell.
That’s an old one, that is.
So far as I can tell, that only partially solves the problem; these righteous people were still in Hell for some period of time.
They were in Sheol/Hades, which is not quite the same as today’s conception of Hell. There was a more pleasant area for the righteous. They just were outside of direct fellowship with God.
Jesus was before them as He is eternal:
Along with John 1, show that Jesus was always there. Reading the life of King David and I am convinced that he knew Jesus personally, though those around him were blinded to Jesus.
You are right, in that it is a true request of the heart when also your mind allows it. In that respect it’s not easy, as many have built walls around our hearts to protect us from pain in our lives. As such our hearts have become prisoner to our minds (reasoning, denial, etc.). For many it takes a time of total desperation that the mind actually listens to it’s prisoner and takes the advice of the heart.
Our mind have to yield control to our heart, which is also our soul, for this to happen. It is also at this time where our hearts begin to heal.
(Bolding mine: )
Per the OP’s request, can you cite any Biblical support for this view? It has become more widely accepted only in recent Christian traditions and only, as I mentioned before in Post 53, if one takes a handful of passages and draws inferences from them to support this notion of fairness. It has no direct support in Scripture.
I might add that “knowing” is not enough, and neither is belief. There must be a conversion from wickedness.
For one:
Which is repentance, This is the act of God, once someone received the Spirit of God in them, they will not be able to live with themselves in a state of sin, as God and sin can’t co-exist. They will have to admit their mistake and surrender to the Holy Spirit which the Holy Spirit will take control and guide that person out of that sinful tendency.
I do not understand what you mean by occupy it? I meant I did not recall the exact chapter, or verse. What it said was more important to me than what chapter ,author,or verse it was. I just remembered that I had read it in the Bible. Why does that bother you?
You can’t know anything about God until you can prove it, it is just belief and is not in truth to state you know. If a god made you as you are, then of course he wouldn’t punish you for your faults that he created you with,and you would not need his forgivness. Unless of course he would like to play games, create a being that had faults and punish him for having them.
[emphasis mine]
Reality is changeless; that’s how you distiguish it from perception.
“God” is a three letter word , a symbol which stands for a concept (finite by nature and incapable of containing or defining the Infinite) and there are as many of these concepts as there are people no matter what their religious (or non-religious) persuasions. Atheists simply deny the the reasonableness of their culturally derived concepts and with good reason.
My concept (faith/belief) is that God is the All In All, mathematically speaking, the set of all sets and nothing exists outside of Him. Creation is His One Son and each of us irrevocably share in that.
But from our finite human perspective, having a concept of God implies also a concept of a finite self and it’s relationship to God. This “self”, separate from and in competition with “the rest of Creation” is imaginary but because we believe it so it seems quite real. It is from this illusion that Jesus (another concept, of course) came to “save” us.
So, what is my conceptual relationship to God, Jesus and the Universe?
We are each His Son, just like Jesus. The only difference between JC and us is that in Him was developed the ability to forgive unconditionally which is how healing is accomplished. He also assures us in John 14:12
Which means,
The only choice free will offers in human experience is to forgive or not, to recognize our unity or to judge “others” on appearances The only way to recognize that you have forgiveness is to give it. Giving something is the only proof offered that you have received it. And, because God is merciful in that our tolerance for pain is finite, all will eventually come to this realization.
We are all we will ever know of God. Does He forgive? The answer is within.
Such odd effects this would have on pirates and global warming…
Actually it’s completely impossible - I don’t know who this Jesus of yours is, and how he differs from any number of other Jesuses, including any that I may cause to pop into existence by merely believing in them.
It’s something like putting a full-page ad in the paper saying “Mike, I love you!” - which ‘Mike’ is that speaking to? All of them? Any of them? What if I don’t know any Mikes - would I have just committed myself to the first one that wanderered to my door - even if it’s not the same Mike that you found/created?
Of course, it gets even worse when you realize (which you won’t) that as a general rule, no Mikes come at all. And absent a referent to accept, it’s literally impossible to accept anything as your God. You have to know what you’re accepting first, either my meeting it if it’s real, or defining it in your mind if it’s not.
Are you being metaphoric, or do you actually believe that your heart has anything to do with anything other than pumping your blood through your body? All of our emotions and thoughts come from our brains, with occasional help from the various glands, regardless of whether those thoughts are of the warm, tender variety or the cold, logical variety.
Does the soul reside in the bodily organ we call the heart? Could you point one out to me the next time the Learning Channel has an open-heart operation on?
Atheists are as capable of loving other people as anyone else is…how is the fact that they are apparently incapable of forcing themselves to love a being they have no evidence for an indication that their “hearts” aren’t working if they can love another person?
IIRC the Hebrew word for soul is heart, though it may be spirit/heart. Either way I believe our physical heart is just a part, or reflection of our soul. Our soul being spiritual but has a physical manifestation as our physical heart.
As such in coming to Jesus He has shown me that yes we can hear from our soul/heart and connect with others with our hearts. It is extremely awesome, sometimes you can actually be the other person in yourself.
I also believe much of the heart disease today is spiritual, a disconnection of the heart to our minds. Our heart is isolated and eventually dies.
I and many teachers of meditative practices would disagree. Yes we have been given means of physical detection and reactions from our physical minds.
Well there are documented cases of heart transplant patients that recall memories of the donor. The soul AFAIK is our being, which the physical manifestation is the heart, which allows and supplies all the body through it’s physical experience.
IMHO this is two fold:
1 - God has His people in every aspect of life, including Atheism, as John the Baptist was born with the Holy Spirit already upon him, as he was Elijah, there are many who have the Holy Spirit and who are Sheppards of the Lord, who know the Lord but in body don’t. God uses them to steer people to the Lord even if they don’t know it. They have already surrendered their life to God and God decides how to use them.
2 - Many people, including myself, assumed we knew what ‘Love’ is, and was able to express what we thought ‘love’ was to others. We have gone though life having parent/child form of love and g/f b/f marital partner form of love, that we assumes we love that person, which in a way we do. But since knowing the Love of God, I can tell you it is so much more. Love is the union, so much that you can feel your partner inside you at will, with mutual sexual desires, as you 2 are actually one, along with the parent/child bond where you can feel the love of your parent or the need of love of your child as they are also one with you.
Too bad, as since His sacrifice He is you, if you only realize it.
You are correct. And not only is the herart what you say it is, but the kidneys (AKA reins) are the location of the conscience. :rolleyes:
Never mind…not appropriate GD behavior.
Oh, okay, that makes it easy - I can definitely accept me as my god - I, the fat lazy God who looks at porn, doesn’t know hebrew, doesn’t owe alleigence to any other diety, and who thinks you’re wrong about nearly everything you believe in. I am totally your god!
Okay, actually I won’t accept me as a god, because I don’t have quite that large of an ego. But at least I’m capable of doing so, which is a step up from trying to accept or even believe in whatever diety you actually believe in.
Interesting, today I was just reading a book (non-Christian, spiritual), where the emotional center was taken as the general area of the heart and consciousnesses the area of the kidneys (Summer Path by Scott Blum).
One thing I have learned is everything happens for a reason. Are you by any chance one of the shepherds I spoke about? :D:eek:
So you are not a child of God?