I can’t speak for Liberal, of course, but I see *his *dialog going something like this:
Hopes and Dreams and Everything Liberal Adores: Heya.
Liberal: God?
Hopes and Dreams and Everything Liberal Adores: Uh, no, I’m just those things you find wonderful about the universe, don’t give me any special significance. I’m not conscious and have no existence beyond the one you gave me.
Liberal: God!
Hopes and Dreams and Everything Liberal Adores: Uh, look if it makes you happier to conflate the positive things in life with a separate thinking entity, then go ahead. But really, I’m just something you convinced yourself is real to make yourself happy. And that’s okay.
Isn’t that more likely than the other one?
Not according to the materialists I’ve talked to. They pretty much all tell me that after death, there is nothing. The conversation you describe would pretty much fly in the face of that.
In fairness, this materialist believes you could hallucinate all kinds of things during brain stem death, including well-reasoned debates with one’s personal image of g/God.
I’m hoping to perform Ain’t Love a Kick In The Head as a duet with Pauly Shore.
God desires none to perish but all to come to repentance. God went so far as to sacrifice His only Son. He has shown He will do whatever is needed, without violating His Word, to save us. We can see this even with the thief on the cross, who at the last moment of life came to repentance (Luke 23:41-43).
There is the issue of salvation, which is irrevocable (John 10:28-29), and heavenly rewards which is dependent on if you overcome (at least for man) (Rev 2:7, 11,17,26).
The only unpardonable sin mentioned is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. With the promise of John 10:28-29 is is clear that the believer can not commit this, it is reserved for the unbeliever. Looking at the thief on the cross, we can see that it was revealed that Jesus was who He said He was, which shows that God is willing to save even the unbeliever if they are open to it.
As for your conversation with God, I suspect it will go:
1 - If you were a follower of Jesus “Well done good and faithful servant”
2 - If you accepted Jesus, such as a deathbed acceptance “enter into my Kingdom”
3 - If you didn’t accept Jesus, even at the last moment of life, perhaps God will have your life flash before your eyes, showing you when He tried to contact you, or how you lived your life and still reject him and blaspheme His Spirit, I suspect "depart into the eternal fire reserved for the devil and his angels.’
Either way I don’t suspect you (or I) will have much to say.
Liberal Woah, what’s that bright light? Who are you?
Huitzilopochtli: I’m the Aztec god of the sun. All that Christianity stuff was bunk. You bet on the wrong horse, dude.
Liberal: I don’t believe you! God is universal love!
Huitzilopochtli: Uh, no. Actually you should have been making daily sacrifices to me all along. Dying in battle would have been a good idea too. Too late now. Enjoy the underworld!
You may have shipwrecked your faith, which you will be saved, but ineffective to God here on earth. IMHO someone anointed by God will hand you over to Satan, which will save you (as salvation is irrevocable)
-or-
You never knew God, but man made rules of religion. Losing faith in this is a step towards knowing the living God.
If God exists, he gave me a brain, and it would be an affront to him not to use it. If God exists, he placed evidence of evolution all around us. Sure, some people wrote a book a long time before we woke up enough to see it, but now we do. Do you think God will be pleased with you for closing your eyes to his work?
The very first story in my very first “history” book in Hebrew school concerned Abram and the idols in Ur. As a young boy, he learned that the idols were supposed to eat the offerings made to them during the night. Since he was a skeptic, he spread flour over the floor of the room with the idols, and found footprints in it the next morning. If he lived by faith alone, the way you recommend, he’d still be worshiping idols, and his mind wouldn’t have been clear for God’s words.
If you think God gave you a brain, I recommend you use it to consider all the evidence and all hypotheses that compete with your blind faith. Are you really positive that God will be happy with you closing your eyes to his work?
Or he might say "you idiot, did you really think that a just and merciful God would sentence any good people to eternal torment? That is the real blasphemy against me. I won’t even sentence you to it, but you go to Monkey Heaven.
Yep, unbelieving. Way worse than child gang rape.
So God demands that we choose to believe, even though that’s one thing we cannot do?
So…let me get it straight. God has left no indisputible evidence of his existence. But he’s kinda contacted us, enough to convince some people.
But at the moment when we die, he then contacts us in a much clearer way, so we can be sure he exists and that we’re not hallucinating.
So we get a last chance to say we believe. Which we all will, obviously, because we’re sure he exists and that we’re not hallucinating.
And we all repent because who’d choose to go to hell?
Placing anything above God is idolatry. We are also instructed to seek first the Kingdom of God. It’s how we use the mind He gives us. He does not want us to place creation above our Creator. The Creator will not take a back seat to His creation, nor does it make any sense to place creation above the Creator. How can anyone justify himself in putting creation above the Creator?
I do remember hearing this story, but AFAIK it is not scriptural and if so one can not place it in the same contest as scriptures.
But I can see something along that happening, there are many gods but one God (1 Cor 8:5), and gods are given powers. Some people did not know God, and have had many gods and I believe those gods did and do express real power.
God is the one who gives faith as He sees fit. Yes He can come to someone, even in person, which no longer puts it in the category of faith, but faith is required to do the Lord’s work.
Not closing my mind, but conforming what I observe to Him, not conforming Him to the world view (which he states is just a shadow of the truth - this is a paraphrase). I used to believe in evolution, big bang, and tried to reconcile creationism to it, stretching out the time line. God has shown me personally that it was the wrong way to go about it, put Him first, believe His Word and (again to me), the illusion of this world was revealed, and I must admit it is a very very good illusion, but I absolutely know with everything in me that it is a illusion.
Yes it is. God can use anything and turn it for the good, even child gang rape. Here are some of the promises from Romans 8:
Believers are God’s adopted children, God’s own sons and daughters, God who is in such total control that whatever we have done will be forgiven eventually forgotten and we will be justified by God Himself and He will arrange that whatever it was it will be for the good.
I’m not saying there are not consequences in this world for actions, but we are all guilty in that respect, some people get caught, some people don’t, in one way or another we all have fallen short. Works is not the way to the Kingdom of God, we simply can’t meet the standard required.
Ask and you shall receive. Is it so hard to ask Jesus to help you believe in Him? It’s the simplest thing that everyone can do - which is part of the beauty of what God has done, making it possible for everyone to come to Him - no schooling required, and if asked truly it will place more of the responsibility on God (though the responsibility has always been His) to lead you to Him.
I would say that everyone knows God at conception, as we learn the ways of the world we forgot about the ways of God. As we come to God again He shows us that there is indisputable evidence all around us of His existence. It is the ways of this world that blinds us.
For some, not all, people I believe this is true
The way I understand it, going to Hell is not so much as a punishment but as a result of one being unwilling to be with God. A condition that one’s heart has been so hardened it can’t accept God anymore.
I’m not quite sure where I fit in here. I am a Creationist in the sense that I believe that God created the Universe. IOW, I don’t think it happened all by itself. Nonetheless, I will be the first to admit that I don’t believe that you can prove the existence of God short of a direct revelation; and, as such, I cannot prove that the universe was created by God. It’s simply my belief.
Secondly, not all Creationists take the Bible ultra-literally or believe in a universe that is only ~6000 years old. There are plenty of us “Old Earth” Creationists out there too. So, in terms of your OP, I’m not quite sure where I fit in.
As for your other questions:
I know that you’re probably addressing this to the Christian majority rather than the Jewish (and even smaller Orthodox Jewish) minority. Since salvation, as termed in your question, is a Christian concept, I can’t answer the question directly. Nonetheless, I can attempt to answer the question of why God chose the Jews to convey His message.
I suppose, ultimately, the reason is known only to Him. No one can know the true reason God does anything. However, [Tevye] as it states in the Good Book[/Tevye], God chose Abraham and his descendants to receive the Torah. Perhaps it’s because Abraham served God when no one else in the world did so.
Well, obviously it doesn’t bother me all that much.
The traditional Jewish answer is that the Pentatuch was dictated from God to Moses. The rest of the Bible was simply inspired by God.
The choice of which works to include in the canon of the Jewish Bible was determined during the Second Temple period. That does mean that there weren’t other works extant or that they didn’t enjoy a degree of popularity among the people. I don’t know what the specific criteria for inclusion were.
Here we kneel out of free will. In front of God it will not be optional, but every knee will bow simply because of who Jesus is. It will not be forced by anything external, but your spirit will kneel, if not fall flat on your face, as it will be the only thing it can do.
That’s mainly how it works, when there is no other option and we as a last resort call out to Him and He answers. Unfortunately this is what it takes for most of us.
