And right before the “I never knew ye”, he also mentions that they didn’t feed him when he was hungry, give him shelter he was cold, visit him when he was lonely, etc.
His4Ever , yes I have accepted Jesus’ death for my sins for salvation.
Sometimes, and all christians must feel unworthy.
Thanks, Lib.
Yes indeed, vanilla, I feel unworthy but very thankful Jesus came and paid the price that I might have eternal life. He loves us very much to have went through such agony to redeem us. Praise His wonderful name! I’m very glad you’ve accepted Him, vanilla!
OK, a whole bunch of questions for His4Ever and those with similar beliefs:
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What reason do you have to believe that everything in the Bible is literally true? I have never gotten a satisfactory answer to this one. And yet, if God Himself were to come down from heaven and make a pronouncement, I suspect that some Literalists would screech and howl and call Him an evil tool of the devil if He said anything that clearly contradicts something in the Bible. Never mind the Bible’s internal contradictions. (To be fair, it may be possible to reconcile all apparent contradictions in the Bible. But that still wouldn’t mean it must be true.)
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How do you know that Christianity is not one of the devil’s evil deceptions?
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I am incapable of unquestioningly embracing Christ, because I have no control over my own beliefs. In the same manner, I am incapable of believing that my computer is an elephant, even if someone offers me a million dollars to do it. Do I deserve to go to Hell for something I have no control over?
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Why is it just for God to judge people by faith and not by works?
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Do unbaptized infants go to hell? If so, in your opinion, do they deserve it? If not, why?
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Presumably, sinners normally go to hell because heaven is so good that no one who is not perfectly good deserves it. But by the same token, is hell not so bad that only totally evil people deserve it?
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Why did Christ have to suffer and die for our sins? I can understand the belief that God would demand suffering as a punishment for sin, but it makes no sense to me that the wicked could be freed from suffering through the suffering of the innocent. Evidently, when someone pisses Him off, God wants to take it out on someone, but He doesn’t care who. So to mercifully spare humanity His wrath, He takes it out on Himself! WTF? How about just not being so friggin’ vengeful in the first place, huh? What we have here is an extremely bizarre plot driven by a demented individual. Not that I would rule out the possibility that we have such a God. It would explain a lot.
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Why doesn’t God reveal His truth to everyone, if He wishes for everyone to be saved? There are many people who die without ever having heard of the Bible. Surely an omnipotent deity could find some way of communicating His will to them. And why doesn’t God reveal all false religions for what they really are?
Let me give you a little scenario. It’s not my own invention, but I don’t remember where I originally saw it. I’ve changed some of it, anyway.
On a far distant world, all of the inhabitants lived underground. For some reason, the color of the sky was the most important thing one could know on this world. Scholars debated its exact hue. Wars were fought over the color of the sky. Individuals who claimed to have actually seen the sky, and managed to convince others, were the most important and influential people in this world, and their impact was felt long after their death.
Eventually, after centuries of fruitless fighting and bickering, someone said, “There is no one true color of the sky. It is just a matter of personal opinion.” And much of the populace was so tired of the constant violence and arguing that they pretended to agree. Soon, those who were truly passionate about the sky’s color couldn’t get armies behind them anymore. They were left to bicker among themselves.
None of this meant, however, that the sky did not have one real true color. And yet, those who believed the sky to be blue, or whatever color it happened to be on that world, were not really any better than the others. They weren’t any smarter. They weren’t more moral. They were just lucky. Only those who had seen the sky knew its true color firsthand. The others were forced to choose from conflicting accounts. None of these accounts contained hard evidence that they were true, so people just had to decide as best they could. They tried to make intelligent, informed choices. But really, since what evidence there was to go off of led in different directions, it was no better than a wild guess! Some of them had been deceived, but they had no way of knowing it. In truth, most simply accepted their parents’ color, which was drilled into them almost from birth.
Many people engaged in horrific, terrible acts to force their color on others. Yet I would go so far to say that those who did so were no better if they were right, and no worse if they were wrong. Those who were incorrect were simply misinformed. Those who were right were simply lucky. While their actions were good or bad depending on their side, their motives were the same.
So if someday these people should open the earth above them and finally gaze upon the sky itself, should this be a time of violence, of terror and persecution of those who were wrong? Nay, I say. Instead, this should be a time of great rejoicing. For those who had believed wrongly will see the error in their ways, and what once divided brother against brother should at last unite one and all. Let us hope that those lucky enough to know the sky’s true color shall show mercy upon those who were wrong, and who now offer their sincere repentance. And let us hope, indeed, that any God would behave similarly.
Furthermore, any God complicit in actually creating this dastardly situation in the first place should be taken out into the street and shot.
lekatt, are you saying you actually had a near-death experience? (If so, cool! What was it like?)
His4Ever, if you define death as being permanent, then of course no one can come back from the dead. But then neither was Lazarus raised from the dead. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s any evidence that NDE people were brain dead at the time. We could reasonably call that “death”, as I don’t think anyone has ever recovered from brain death (someone correct me if I’m wrong). Nonetheless, your ability to trust in words written on ancient parchment over the accounts of living people worries me. Not so much because of anything that you might do, but because such blind faith is such an aid to things like the Crusades and the Inquisition and the bombing of the World Trade Center. You yourself are quite nonviolent and nice, I hope.
amazonian: so words don’t mean what the dictionary says they mean, nor what they’re commonly used to mean, but whatever you say they mean? 
Hm. Your control of the language reminds me of some theists’ belief in God’s control over morality – that whatever He decrees is right, simply because He decrees it. But that’s something else again.
What is your definition of “religion”, then?
Dictionaries often don’t get the definitions right (or complete) on technical and specialized terms, including those used in theology, biology, and other philosophical disciplines:
Evolution’s natual selection, for example, is NOT survival of the fittest no matter what the dictionary says.
Yes, I actually had a near death experience. There is considerable evidence that many were brain dead at the time of their NDE.
The most famous was Pam Reynolds, brain dead for approximately two hours during brain surgery.
http://ndeweb.com/wildcard
Very interesting experience. There are dozens of others that were attached to EEG’s showing flatlines. You will just have to read about them. Most people never heard anything about NDEs outside of the sceptical media coverage. If you want to know read the experiences directly from the experiencers. There are many NDE sites and more under construction. NDEs will not be purposely ignored forever.
Will I really go to hell?
Nope. Not to worry. There is no hell. 
A very important point to note.
His4Ever, I’m going to outline a couple situations, and then ask you a question regarding them. If you’re on your toes, you’ll notice a strong Biblical allusion.
=== Scenario #1 ===
Frank is walking down the street. It is Sunday, and he’s on his way to church. He has accepted Jesus into his heart, and has a strong personal relationship with Him. He has faith.
But lo! Frank suddenly sees a man lying in the street. He is bleeding profusely. It is apparent that he has been brutally assaulted - a knife is sticking out of his belly. It is obvious that without medical attention, this man will die. The victim sees Frank and begs for his help.
Frank, however, will be late for church if he stops to help. He would feel guilty, but he remembers that his pastor tells him he does not need works, and whether he helps this man or not will have no bearing on his salvation. Since he has his faith, which is all he needs, he happily skips off to church, guilt free. The man dies in agony.
=== Scenario #2 ===
John was raised a Christian, but after much research and thought has lapsed in his faith and is more or less an agnostic at this point in his life. He is walking down the street, on Sunday, not intending to enter any church.
But lo! John suddenly sees another man lying in the street (this place must have a terrible crime rate). He is bleeding profusely. It is apparent that he has been brutally assaulted - a knife is sticking out of his belly. It is obvious that without medical attention, this man will die. The victim sees John and begs for his help.
John immediately rushes to the man’s side. He treats the wound, stops the bleeding, calls an ambulance, and keeps the man covered from the cold and the elements while he waits for trained medical personnel to arrive. The man’s life is saved. John is late for the appointments he had made for the day, and has to throw out his bloodied clothes.
Somewhere, Frank is singing praises to the Lord.
======
Frank has accepted Christ, but let a man die a horrible death.
John has not accepted Christ, but saved a man from a horrible death.
His4Ever - Who do you honestly think has a better chance of getting into heaven?
I don’t know how I should answer this scenario you made up. If I say the one who’s accepted Christ will go to heaven but the one who hasn’t won’t, I’m going to sound like an idiot according to your little story (which I know parallels the story of the good Samaritan). So what am I supposed to say? I find it very difficult to believe that someone who truly knows Jesus could pass up a person in this situation. I wouldn’t.
I’m just going to let you decide for yourself. All I can do is continue to say what the word of God says on the subject of salvation. I’ve already done that many times over and everyone is tired of hearing it. These made up skits serve no purpose other than to try and make me look stupid.
Oh, certainly. But it seemed to me that any definition of “religion” that excludes Christianity would be incorrect by any reasonable standard; such a definition conflicts with what I, and I suspect almost everyone else, take the word to mean. Still, I’d be interested in hearing what amazonian’s definition of “religion” is, and where (s)he got it from. I imagine (s)he probably simply pulled it out of… um, the air. But I could be wrong.
Hm, and here I had the impression that brain death was irreversible. I learn something new every day. Of course, just because people who had NDEs experienced brain death doesn’t mean that the NDEs occurred while they were brain dead. If one could prove that, it would indeed constitute strong evidence for an afterlife, for obvious reasons, but I can’t think of any way of proving it. On the other hand, if it were disproven, I don’t think we could rule out the possibility that we begin to experience the afterlife before the brain ceases functioning.
I’ll have to read more personal accounts of NDEs some time. I have read about them before, and I once read one woman’s book recounting her own experience; I think it was called Embraced by the Light. I would also be interested in hearing more about your own experience. Do you talk about it in another thread? If so, could you direct me to it?
Near-death experiences are so interesting because so many people recount experiencing basically the same thing, and it’s not something I would expect to simply come from within the brains of so many people. (I think the same thing about alien abductions, ghosts, and lots of other “weird” phenomena.) It seems unlikely that enough people have been near enough to death for this to have evolved naturally. One could suppose that as we die we are in a state where we see what we expect to see, but then why would so many people, without apparent contact with one another, report seeing the same things that none of them had expected, things not specifically taught by any religion? One can explain the correspondence of these experiences with religious beliefs by supposing that the first religions were founded by people who had these experiences, but that doesn’t explain where the experiences came from in the first place. One might suppose that the brain naturally creates these experiences that coincidentally resemble our idea of an afterlife, but that’s one hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? The most obvious, and I think the most plausible, explanation, is that NDEs are exactly what they appear to be.
Thus, NDEs are about the best thing we have on which to build some sort of scientific understanding of the afterlife. I think that threatens a lot of people because it might discount their beliefs. Sure, anything that conflicts with what you believe could be a deception of Satan. But so, theoretically, could Christianity, or almost anything else for that matter. Isn’t it a little convenient to have a devil to blame for any counterevidence to your claims? Especially since God is supposedly much stronger than the devil, and thus should be able to promote the truth much more easily than he can promote his lies?
It’s not a matter of stubbornness that people don’t all believe every word written in the Bible. It’s not even a matter of whether we want to believe it; as I explained, beliefs are not consciously chosen. Even if something is true, that doesn’t make people magically aware that it is. They have to base their beliefs on the evidence they have available, and their own good sense. Since different people have access to different evidence (and varying levels of good sense), they inevitably reach different conclusions. That doesn’t mean that anyone deliberately disbelieves something they know to be true; indeed, it should be clear that that would be a contradiction.
So, if God wants me to believe in the Bible, why doesn’t He make its truth very evident to me? Surely that is within His power? It wouldn’t be a violation of my autonomy; I want to believe in the Bible, if it’s true. I just don’t know that it is. I still haven’t even seen any evidence that it is, in the literal sense. And more generally, if God wants us to follow a certain code of conduct, why doesn’t He just tell us? And I don’t mean telling a small group of people who will pass His message down to compete with other, conflicting messages. I mean personally speaking to everyone who He wants to follow His commandments. I mean, if He doesn’t make clear what He wants us to do, He can hardly accuse us of being disobedient, can He?
In fact, if God wants us to believe something, why didn’t He just create us with that knowledge built into our minds?
Punishing people for doing something wrong is a different matter, if we assume that something is wrong whether God says so or not. I certainly would think so, if I was convinced that morality is objective. I don’t think that not accepting Christ, for example, is immoral, but torturing someone, for example, is (barring extenuating circumstances). And I think that we should be punished or rewarded based on whether we choose to be good or bad, if anything. This would not entail sending everyone to hell, since hell is described as being so bad that almost no one is wicked enough to really deserve it.
But, as I’ve said, I don’t think that punishing the wicked is in itself good.
As I see it, either it’s good for a sinner to suffer, or it isn’t. I don’t see how a person’s faith in Christ changes that. The “Christianity” presented by some folks is kind of like having a deranged God that is bent on punishing everyone who doesn’t say the right incantation. In no way is this “just”, in the sense of being equitable.
Some people say that people send themselves to hell by sinning. That sounds like a load of crap to me. Certainly most people don’t want to go to a place of eternal suffering, and don’t deliberately send themselves there. Sure, maybe there are some sort of celestial mechanics that automatically send sinners to hell without any decision on God’s part. But if there are, who set them up? The Creator would seem to be the obvious answer. To then say that God is not responsible for sinners going to hell is like saying that if I set up a boobytrap in a house that flings a hundred knives at you if you open the door, it’s your fault if you’re killed, because you’re the one who chose to open the door. And even if He didn’t set the system up (which of course rules Him out as the Creator of everything), He would still be able to change them (if He is indeed omnipotent).
amazonian, I think, mentioned the concept of “free will” somewhere. I would be interested to know if anyone can give me a meaningful and consistent definition of the term. But that’s getting off track. So… if you believe in free will, is it possible for someone to go through life without ever committing a sin? If so, is that person still going to hell if she didn’t believe in Christ? (The second question here is basically the same as the one about unbaptized infants, who are presumably sinless.)
My questions, and my objections, by the way, are not raised rhetorically. I really would like to know what answers and refutations people have, if any. Come on, you fundamentalists (and amazonian, who possibly has a bizarre definition of “fundamentalist” that specifically excludes anyone like him/her), give me what you’ve got! Try to prove me wrong! Bring it!
Arg. His4Ever, our point is that the Bible is not the infallible Word of God, it is the fallible words of men. Do you not get that? Well, now that I’ve made explicit our claim, hopefully you understand. So, once again, is there any actual evidence you have to support the claim that everything written in the Bible is literally true? And if not, why should anyone, including you, believe it?
That’s just the point! You’d sound like an idiot if you said that because it would be idiotic!. I’m trying, in every way, to somehow get you to realize that the most important thing isn’t to have accepted Jesus into your heart, but to live as Jesus taught us to live! When Christ told the story of the Good Samaritan, he confirmed the fact that it was the Samaritan who had loved his neighbor. The Samaritans were heretical in the eyes of the Orthodox Jews of the day, yet Christ gave the thumbs up to a Samaritan! Why? Because he did the right thing! His beliefs might have been off, but that didn’t matter because he did the right thing! His actions, his works were what mattered! AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!
panting
I’m not trying to make you look stupid, H4E. Please know that. But if you’ll acknowledge Christ’s story of the Good Samaritan, you’ll acknowledge my point.
Pam was brain dead for about two hours. When she was brought back to life, she accurately and in detail explained how the operation went and the tools used, the doctor had used a new tool for the first time and was impressed with her description of it. She had never seen it before or after the operation. So, yes, the NDE happens during brain death in a lot of instances. It is also true that NDEs happen without brain death.
Science will never explain NDEs, they haven’t the tools to study spiritual experiences.
Love
Woah there. Just because we’re not currently capable of scientifically explaining NDEs and other “spiritual experiences” (and I’m not even convinced that that’s the case) doesn’t mean we never will be able to. And I don’t mean we’ll explain them away as some sort of bizarre biological process, I mean that we may one day be capable of understanding the supernatural the same way we can understand the physical world now.
“Never” is a very strong word. Humanity, or whatever replaces us, will be a lot more advanced in one million years (of course, that’s barring the end of the world, the destructive extinction of homo sapiens, etc.).
In the story of the bleeding men above, the man who helped him was the “christian”.
In Hebrews somewhere , it says, “I will show you my faith By My Works.”
So when people do good, that shows outwardly that they have the Holy Spirit.
So the first man in the scenario was not really a christian, was he?
BTW, the sky is blue.
I can’t swear to Hebrews, but here’s James 2:14-17:
Hmmm. Come to think of that, I’ve got to use that last line in Monty’s thread about prayer vs. action.
CJ
Excuse me. That was Mangetout, and the debate’s moved beyond that point. I’m afraid I’m still catching up.
CJ
How did you arrive at the conclusion that the Bible is the final authority as to what is true and what isn’t, if not by feelings and experiences?
And with the greatest of respect, H4E please stand back and look at the self-consistency of what you’re saying;
You’ve said that you won’t assume anything that the Bible doesn’t explicitly state and yet in other threads you’ve said that you believe that hell won’t be as bad for some people (people who ended up pthere because they never heard the Gospel IIRC) as it will be for others - where is this explicitly stated in the Bible?
Over and over you keep pushing the idea that the only way is some sort of Standard Conversion Process and yet there are parts of the Bible that appear to cast doubt on this (For example the sheep and the goats - it definitely implies that individuals can be saved and serving God without consciously having been through a formal process of conversion) - you can’t assert that the Bible is the infallible Word of God and then cherry-pick the verses that suit your preconcieved views.
Can’t you see that you must address the parts that appear to conflict with your views? - not just dismiss them with a wave of the hand and retreat back to where you were.
Thanks, His4Ever , for your congrats on my salvation, but it actually happened 24 years ago!
and, BTW, no one ever witnessed to me. It was something that I read in a book!(The Late Great planet Earth).
Oh, I’ve read that book too! Been quite awhile. By Hal Lindsey.
I’ve been saved for appox. 27 yrs. Glad to have you as a sister vanilla!