Ted Oplinger Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Hmmm....hard to mesh that with the biblical testimony, but accurately describes the popular view of salvation as something not yours until you do something about it - even within the SDA church. In all seriousness on an otherwise light-hearted thread...the Bible, though, is quite the opposite in testimony, though. It testifies salvation as belonging to all people, unless they fight God on the issue. The vicarious atonement through Christ's blood already covers the whole of the human race, from Eden to the end of time. It is a done deal for humanity, not just for "believers". Christ rising from the dead means every person of the human race will live again - period. The Cross and the Resurrection are that universal in scope and power. It is Christ's resurrection which makes not only the resurrection of the righteous possible - it also makes the resurrection of the wicked possible. ALL will live again. The difference is - does a person trust His drawing them to Himself, or fight with Him on the issue? Those who want to be with God, will be there with Him. Those who don't want God as He is to rule over them, will always fight with Him - and won't be there with Him. Intriguing thought - what IF it is all backwards from what we understand. I would counter, though, with this thought: would a God of agape selfless love, who set our example for us, ask us to deceive ourselves? I have historically thought self-deception to be the first and foremost root of sin. God..... commanding us to sin? As for people fooled into thinking they know something when they know nothing.....well, I see that everywhere I go every day...and sometimes in the mirror Quote "As iron sharpens iron, so also does one man sharpen another" - Proverbs 27:17 "The offense of the cross is that the cross is a confession of human frailty and sin and of inability to do any good thing. To take the cross of Christ means to depend solely on Him for everything, and this is the abasement of all human pride. Men love to fancy themselves independent. But let the cross be preached, let it be made known that in man dwells no good thing and that all must be received as a gift, and straightway someone is offended." Ellet J. Waggoner, The Glad Tidings "Courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyway" - John Wayne "The person who pays an ounce of principle for a pound of popularity gets badly cheated" - Ronald Reagan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Textus Receptus Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 Wow?!? Ever heard of faith in an awesome most powerful God. God has always had a remnant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeMo Posted February 8, 2013 Share Posted February 8, 2013 fccool, This probably sounds weird, too - why is it selfish to accept a gift that is freely given? To me it is presumptuous to even imagine that you could somehow even partially repay someone for giving their very life for you. If you think you must do something to "deserve" such a gift, it ceases to be a gift - it becomes a wage. In your scenario, the gift-giver is pemanently dead. In the case of Christ, He is not permanently dead; He;s the opposite - He's permanently alive! I'm greatful to a living Redeemer; not a dead one. I'm OK with accepting the gift. If that makes me selfish - so be it. My Redeemer died to atone for the sin of selfishness as well. Was it selfish on Christ's part to offer Himself up in order to be King of the Universe? Deb, I agree that every choice we make between good and evilis a test. Furthermore, the test is not whether or not you "chose well". The test is; were you doing it out of selfish interest(including trying to earn a piece of your salvation); or did you do it out of love for God or your fellow man? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 8, 2013 Members Share Posted February 8, 2013 Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 8, 2013 Members Share Posted February 8, 2013 Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fccool Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 That's not the issue. You can accept the "gift", the question is what kind of gift it is. When someone buys you a car... is very different than someone volunteers to be hung instead of you. The morality of the giver is not in question in that context. It's the morality of the receiver. I think it's a false equivalence to wrap it in the language of a "free gift". At center of Christian theology is sunstitutionary execution of a human being. You did not really answer the question that was asked. If you were a death row inmate, and you were offered to live because some guy volunteered to die instead of you... could you be morally upright by making such decision to accept "the gift"? It's really a question of your integrity. It's not an issue of "deserving". Not what I'm addressing at all. Was he tortured? Was he killed? How does it diminish the fact that you accept a human sacrifice as a way to "reconcile with God"? That's the issue. If your life of selflessness has to be initiated through one of the most selfish acts on the planet, then how do you reconcile the "moral uprightness" that's to follow? It just does not compute... Do you believe that Christ offered himself so he could be the King of the Universe? If so, then it seems pretty selfish to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 9, 2013 Members Share Posted February 9, 2013 Not at all! He offered himself to reconcile us to his Father. He was already the King of the Universe. Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fccool Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 Did the Father require that offering? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Tom Wetmore Posted February 9, 2013 Administrators Share Posted February 9, 2013 I think we are drifting off topic. Let's see if we can steer it back on course... Quote "Absurdity reigns and confusion makes it look good." "Sinless perfection is such a shallow goal." "I love God only as much as the person I love the least." *Forgiveness is always good news. And that is the gospel truth. (And finally, the ideas expressed above are solely my person views and not that of any organization with which I am associated.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardw Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 We do live in a matrix. What we see is photons reflecting off mostly empty space. If we were to enlarge a hydrogen atom to the size of the earth, the nucleus of that atom would be the size of a softball and the single electron at the surface would be the size of a grain of sand. All the rest would be empty space. What we perceive as solid is mostly energy with large amounts of empty space. Quote Rich http://tiny.cc/CM2j8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardw Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 The knowledge we do have only works within a limited set of circumstances. The explanations we have are as much fairy tales as any story because we are basically study a black box. We put stuff in the black box and see what comes out. We don't know why many things happen. We only observe a certain consistency in cause and effect. This is much like when my 3 year old son observed that driving a car involved turning a steering wheel and pushing a couple different pedals. When he tried what he thought he was observing he couldn't really drive his brother's electric toy car because he was simply randomly turning the wheel and pushing the gas and brake back and forth. When his older brother tried to inform him that turning the wheel to the right would make the car go right and turning left would make it go left my younger son triumphantly announced that he observed me turning the wheel back and forth in the big car and that was how it worked. This reminds me of Christianity throughout the ages triumphantly announcing that the world has to be flat because the Bible says so or that evolution can't be true because the Bible says the world was created in 6 days. This authoritarian "faith" in the Bible resisted science at every stage because Christianity claimed to know. Even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence Christianity has resisted taking an honest look at the Bible and to this day continues to claim that it is right. It's interesting that a serious Flat Earth Society existed until the 1980s claiming that the moon landing and other astrological sciences were Satan's plot to deceive us into believing that the earth was round. This claim to know because the Bible says so has proven to be unreliable over and over again and yet we still use the Bible to claim to know when in reality it is quite the opposite. So to answer the question, "Are we wrong." In the context of the vast knowledge of the universe my answer would be yes we are wrong. We are still essentially describing the universe in the same manner as my 3 year old son described driving. We have more complicated observations and a set of rules that has proven to be rather predictive of how things move at a certain scale, but are certainly not universal. And the claim of knowledge by Christians because they read it in the bible is even farther from any kind of true knowledge. Quote Rich http://tiny.cc/CM2j8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobRyan Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 It is interesting that in 1Cor 15 Paul asks the question "what if we are wrong" about the resurrection of the dead - and then shows how christianity would be pointless and so also this life. in Christ, Bob Quote John 8:32 - The Truth will make you free“The righteousness of Christ will not cover one cherished sin." COL 316. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phkrause Posted February 9, 2013 Members Share Posted February 9, 2013 Quote phkrause By the decree enforcing the institution of the papacy in violation of the law of God, our nation will disconnect herself fully from righteousness. When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near. {5T 451.1} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ted Oplinger Posted February 10, 2013 Share Posted February 10, 2013 I do believe that's why Paul's thrust is that we really can't be wrong about it. Blessings! Quote "As iron sharpens iron, so also does one man sharpen another" - Proverbs 27:17 "The offense of the cross is that the cross is a confession of human frailty and sin and of inability to do any good thing. To take the cross of Christ means to depend solely on Him for everything, and this is the abasement of all human pride. Men love to fancy themselves independent. But let the cross be preached, let it be made known that in man dwells no good thing and that all must be received as a gift, and straightway someone is offended." Ellet J. Waggoner, The Glad Tidings "Courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyway" - John Wayne "The person who pays an ounce of principle for a pound of popularity gets badly cheated" - Ronald Reagan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tobiwan Posted February 13, 2013 Share Posted February 13, 2013 How about this. there is going to be a new pope in the near future and suppose on the last day in charge he leaks to wickki-leaks that in his research of the vatican library he discovered a manuscript claimed to be from John and Thomas stating a conversation with Jesus reveled that it was all made up. But, to be continued to be offered and presented to control he masses with the idea of future hope and glory. Would you change how you live the rest of your life ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators debbym Posted February 13, 2013 Administrators Share Posted February 13, 2013 There are already claims made, like the "angel" that spoke to Joesph Smith. There is a scripture that says something like, even if an angel comes and tells you something other then what we have told you, do not believe it. I don't think anything can over turn faith that is Maintained by the Holy Spirit, Rooted in Love to God, that is founded on faith in the sacrifice of Christ. debbym Quote deb Love awakens love. Let God be true and every man a liar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoAspen Posted February 13, 2013 Share Posted February 13, 2013 What if... The Mars Rover is crawling down into a deep crater and comes across unmistakeable proof of life......that is millions of years older than life on earth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M. T. Cross Posted February 13, 2013 Share Posted February 13, 2013 What, you don't think Satan could plant stuff on Mars? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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