BRXII Battle talk

[PKevman]

Hey I have lost people that I don't know if they were saved. So I know that pain. All I can do is hope for the best. But I don't blame God if they weren't saved. My aunt committed suicide, but guess what she was raised in a good home with a mom and dad and 12 siblings who loved her. They all loved her. Everyone in the family was torn to pieces when she did it. Torn to pieces. My grandfather was a great preacher who impacted so many lives for Jesus Christ, but he died at a young age of an illness, and many in the family never overcame that, including my aunt. She gave at times evidence of salvation, but then she ended her own life while battling depression in her mid-30's. She left behind 4 children including two young babies. Would a child of God do this? I think not. There is nobody to blame but herself however. She rejected the truth of God's Word that was all around her. She wouldn't talk to the people who loved her. I loved her very much. She could have talked to me, though I was a teenage boy. She didn't. Man that hurt.
I will not pervert God's Word and the gospel of grace and salvation to sugar coat things and believe a lie. I won't.

 

[logos_x]

Stephen did you lose someone? I ask this in all sincerity my friend. I would just like to know. You can PM me your answer if you don't want to say it here.

No...but I now many who have and lost faith because they think that their loved ones were not saved when they died and they just were too disappointed with God to carry on. If I just shrug and say..." oh well...Hell is eternal so sorry there is nothing I can tell you that would change that...they are going to burn forever"...well, let's just say that isn't helpful at all.

 

[PKevman]

Kevin, this analogy is more appropriate. A scientist has a daughter. He tells her that if she misbehaves, he's going to throw her in the furnace out back, which he built for incinerating rodents and such, but which he has decided to use for disobedient children as well. The child eventually does misbehave and her father tosses her into the incinerator. She cries out, "Dad! It's not fair! Why are you doing this?" He says, "Well, it's your fault. I warned you." She responds, "Yes, but you could have come up with any number of punishments, any number of ways to deal with my disobedience, but you chose to use this furnace; you lit the fire; you are throwing me, alive, into it. How could you?"

No that analogy doesn't work because God made the way out Himself by paying the penalty of His own Son's life. Jesus Christ shed His own blood so that nobody has to go there. Hardly a sacrifice to scoff at. And you still did NOT answer the questions I asked. If you won't answer direct questions in a discussion then why have a discussion?

 

[PKevman]

No...but I now many who have and lost faith because they think that their loved ones were not saved when they died and they just were too disappointed with God to carry on. If I just shrug and say..." oh well...Hell is eternal so sorry there is nothing I can tell you that would change that...they are going to burn forever"...well, let's just say that isn't helpful at all.

Please catch up on my posts. Thank you.

 

[logos_x]

I don't know how many times I have said this is the very heart of Universalism right here. Not the Word of God. This.

Well...maybe it is. Is it wrong to re-think things when you are faced with a challenge. It would be a very common one...maybe this is what it takes to wake people up to what the Bible REALLY says.

 

[logos_x]

Please catch up on my posts. Thank you.

Well...if what you are saying is really true...what else can you say?

 

[Kimberlyann]

Pastor Kevin, if God raises the dead and gives them all imperishable bodies, and then sends some of them (lots of them) into a Lake of Fire where they will suffer forever in these imperishable bodies, with no hope of escape, no chance for repentance or reformation once the sentence has been laid down, then it is certainly fair to say that God is doing this to them. There are any number of ways God COULD have done things; he didn't HAVE to give people imperishable bodies that appear to be expressly designed to endure an eternity of torment and punishment. But he did (in your view, and many other Christians' views). That is something you've got to live with.

And I guess it takes having amnesia in heaven to live with it.

Nice post! A Loving Merciful God wouldn't be so cruel to give people imperishable bodies just so he can eternally torture them. That isn't merciful or loving, its Sadistic.

 

[Balder]

Which questions would you like me to answer? I didn't answer the "whose fault is that" question because I thought your analogy was faulty.

We're not dealing with someone who sticks their hand in a fire to see what it's like.

We're dealing with an omnipotent being, who could choose to "settle" things in any number of ways (and I could think of a few, and world religions give examples of other possible ways), but who instead decides to lock a good portion of his creations in conditions of inescapable, conscious torment, in a fiery place of punishment and pain that he himself built. It's not like it's just something naturally occurring there that you warn people about. It's something God himself designed and built, with the intention of throwing sentient beings into it. AFTER giving them bodies which are imperishable, thus ensuring that they will not simply perish or be annihilated, but will instead suffer forever.

That is the picture you are trying to sell me and others like me. The story of a loving sacrifice to deliver people from a very cruel fate which God himself designed, supervises, and perpetually sustains, loses its weight and beauty because of the sadistic horror of the story within which it is set.

 

[PKevman]

No...but I now many who have and lost faith because they think that their loved ones were not saved when they died and they just were too disappointed with God to carry on. If I just shrug and say..." oh well...Hell is eternal so sorry there is nothing I can tell you that would change that...they are going to burn forever"...well, let's just say that isn't helpful at all.

"Oh well hell is eternal so sorry there is nothing I can tell you that would change that...they are going to burn forever" THIS IS NOT THE RESPONSE OF SOMEONE CALLED INTO MINISTRY. This would be the response of an arrogant jerk.

No I would never put it that way to someone. That would be insensitive. I would instead pray for them and encourage them and tell them that God loves them. If in this instance you are talking about someone that clearly was not saved. But that I could not know for sure unless I knew the person. And as I have said so many times before, who's to say the person didn't come to faith some moments before he died? Only God. But if he had come to faith at any time before his final conscious thoughts, then God would have saved him. I know this is not hard to understand. This "message of hoplessness" junk is old brother.

 

[logos_x]

No that analogy doesn't work because God made the way out Himself by paying the penalty of His own Son's life. Jesus Christ shed His own blood so that nobody has to go there. Hardly a sacrifice to scoff at. And you still did NOT answer the questions I asked. If you won't answer direct questions in a discussion then why have a discussion?

Well, yes! He made the sacrifice so no one would have to go there...sure. But, if you go there you have to stay there and the sacrifice no longer works.

That is where the problems arise, Kevin. Why does death stop grace? Why does it no longer save? What is it about death that nullifies Christ's work completely?

 

[PKevman]

Well...maybe it is. Is it wrong to re-think things when you are faced with a challenge. It would be a very common one...maybe this is what it takes to wake people up to what the Bible REALLY says.

No it is what it takes to get people to redefine the Bible to mean what they really want it to mean.........

 

[Balder]

"Oh well hell is eternal so sorry there is nothing I can tell you that would change that...they are going to burn forever" THIS IS NOT THE RESPONSE OF SOMEONE CALLED INTO MINISTRY. This would be the response of an arrogant jerk.

No I would never put it that way to someone. That would be insensitive. I would instead pray for them and encourage them and tell them that God loves them. If in this instance you are talking about someone that clearly was not saved. But that I could not know for sure unless I knew the person. And as I have said so many times before, who's to say the person didn't come to faith some moments before he died? Only God. But if he had come to faith at any time before his final conscious thoughts, then God would have saved him. I know this is not hard to understand. This "message of hoplessness" junk is old brother.

Don't tell them what God might do to their loved one, by all means. That would be insensitive.

 

[logos_x]

"Oh well hell is eternal so sorry there is nothing I can tell you that would change that...they are going to burn forever" THIS IS NOT THE RESPONSE OF SOMEONE CALLED INTO MINISTRY. This would be the response of an arrogant jerk.

No I would never put it that way to someone. That would be insensitive. I would instead pray for them and encourage them and tell them that God loves them. If in this instance you are talking about someone that clearly was not saved. But that I could not know for sure unless I knew the person. And as I have said so many times before, who's to say the person didn't come to faith some moments before he died? Only God. But if he had come to faith at any time before his final conscious thoughts, then God would have saved him. I know this is not hard to understand. This "message of hoplessness" junk is old brother.

Yes..it would be insensitive, wouldn't it! But your doctrine says this, even if you try to be nice and sensitive in your response...doesn't it?

 

[PKevman]

Well, yes! He made the sacrifice so no one would have to go there...sure. But, if you go there you have to stay there and the sacrifice no longer works.

That is where the problems arise, Kevin. Why does death stop grace? Why does it no longer save? What is it about death that nullifies Christ's work completely?

Because it is appointed to men ONCE to die and after this the judgment. Because the Bible says so. The Bible clearly states that some wake to everlasting judgment and some to everlasting life. Clearly.

 

[PKevman]

Yes..it would be insensitive, wouldn't it! But your doctrine says this, even if you try to be nice and sensitive in your response...doesn't it?

Please read my post #1381 before continuing with this line of reasoning. Thank you.

 

[logos_x]

No it is what it takes to get people to redefine the Bible to mean what they really want it to mean.........

Kevin...eternal torment came pretty late in Church history as a systematic belief for you to claim that the Christian Universalists were the ones that redefined things.

 

[logos_x]

Please read my post #1381 before continuing with this line of reasoning. Thank you.

No.

It isn't a line of reasoning. It is what you teach. I don't care how sensitive and nice you want to try to be when you teach it.

 

[PKevman]

Which questions would you like me to answer? I didn't answer the "whose fault is that" question because I thought your analogy was faulty.

We're not dealing with someone who sticks their hand in a fire to see what it's like.

We're dealing with an omnipotent being, who could choose to "settle" things in any number of ways (and I could think of a few, and world religions give examples of other possible ways), but who instead decides to lock a good portion of his creations in conditions of inescapable, conscious torment, in a fiery place of punishment and pain that he himself built. It's not like it's just something naturally occurring there that you warn people about. It's something God himself designed and built, with the intention of throwing sentient beings into it. AFTER giving them bodies which are imperishable, thus ensuring that they will not simply perish or be annihilated, but will instead suffer forever.

That is the picture you are trying to sell me and others like me. The story of a loving sacrifice to deliver people from a very cruel fate which God himself designed, supervises, and perpetually sustains, loses its weight and beauty because of the sadistic horror of the story within which it is set.

But you don't believe the Bible to be God's Word so it is pointless to even discuss the issue with you. This entire debate was again centered around what does the Bible say about whether unbelievers spend eternity in the Lake of Fire or not. My arguments are based purely on what the Bible says.

 

[PKevman]

No.

It isn't a line of reasoning. It is what you teach. I don't care how sensitive and nice you want to try to be when you teach it.

You're right. I teach the Bible. I teach God's Word. That is what I have been called to teach and to defend.

 

[PKevman]

I am honestly so fed up with this garbage. UNIVERSALISM IS GARBAGE.