Accountable;786196 wrote: No physical behavior will get you into heaven. The only baptism that matters is the spiritual cleansing. No ritual will pay your admission, nor will it keep you out.
ETA: Btw, Southern Baptist raised, with a bit o' United Methodist mixed in just before adulthood.
Ted;788525 wrote: Acc:-6
I have to disagree with you. You are speaking of things beyond the understanding of man. God will be merciful to whom He/She will be merciful. We are not permitted to judge nor are we capable of telling God what to do.
Shalom
Ted:-6
I'm paraphrasing what I recall about being saved. Something about there bing nothing within a person's power to get himself into heaven. Are you saying that there is a ritual that will get you into heaven, regardless if you believe or not? Spitting 3 times into the wind perhaps? That last was a joke, of course, but my point is that physical baptism is a great feeling ritual, but holds no real power and is not a prerequisite to heavenly admission.
I can agree that there is no ritual that will get one into heaven. On the other hand since God judges the heart and man's motivation I think we'd best leave that up to God.
I am saying that the only language we have to discuss or define the divine, by whatever name, is metaphor.
Anything that I say about God is by its very nature metaphor. We can and do see God's activity in the world but we do not see the essence of God. God's activity shows us that He/She is with us and supports us. We can say that God is the One in whom we live and move and have our being. These describe His/Her activities but not the essence of God.
Jester;788590 wrote: Ted you are so blami'n foolish.
Lets break it down...
God made man, in him when he created each man he dropped in an innate wonderment that he was created by God. And all was well till man strayed, and now each man worships in many ways because he worships in his own way, God was specific from the beginning.
The entire bible is a road map to how man mostly rejected God and how God kept reaching out to pull him back in to the right way.
Sorry to be so doggeon dissgreeable with you but it dont get no plainer my friend.
You are part of the problem, you represent a pluralism, God said seperate, when you seperate and cleave, we seperate from the wrong way and cleave unto the right way... Gods Way!
The fact that you reject punishment, or correction or any sort of 'hell' is your wild imagination of addition. I'm not adding a thing...
You have implied and, in places, stated this opinion several times - that because God gave the Word to Adam and Eve in the beginning, anyone who now fails to believe in the God of the bible is damn'd as having turned away from God.
How many times in the Bible does it say that the sins of the father will be carried down to the sons unto the seventh generation?
Even accepting your six and a half thousand years since Adam and Eve, the seventh generation has past and gone many times since the ancestors of the Buddhists and the Aborigines and the Muslims and the Hindus "strayed".
Those that do not worship according to your rules are not sinful - they do so with equal sincerity and belief. God accepts and understands many ways and many worldviews - he has many prophets who teach his word and does not condemn those who have not been taught as you have been taught.
According to some I see that now I am not only a liar but I am foolish as well! LOL Now I'm not only making up stories but I'm drooling and dribbling with my mouth and making strange noises. I new there was something wrong with me. I especially like it when I flip my fingers over my lips while making strange noises. LOL I just couldn't resist that. It was too good and opening.
Clint;790239 wrote: IMO it is cleansing in preparation for service and it reminds us of death, burial and resurrection.
It is also something we do, not something done to us.
lol ya'll get to complicated... i was baptized twice... once with my old family and the second was when i was adopted into my new family!
Jester;790216 wrote: Excuse me, but the sins being carreid down are perpetual, and added to, unless one eventually renews himself with God and by the power of the Holy Spirit changes his ways so that he can pass less sin unto his sons.
For instance, lets say a man has a sexual sin problem, he allows it to consume himself, as he raises his child some of that propensity is learned by the child, thats one way in which sin is passed down, the propensity for the same type of sin is learned by our chidlren.
Original sin does not fall that way, original sin was declared by God, in the fall of Adam, 'dying we shall die', its both physical and spiritual death... prior to Adam's sin he wasnt goign to die like we do today. We are all under a death sentence, we age, the body is slowly destroyed and we die, we are also born seperated from god. Thats original sin, seperation form God and physical death, and we are all still under that sin.
Where do you get that from? Certainly Exodus 20:5, Numbers 14:16 and Deuteronomy 5:9 appear to limit it to the third or fourth generation whilst Deuteronomy 24:16 says that you should not kill the sons for the sins of the father.
We are not talking original sin here - we are talking, as several times before, of people who do not know, and have never been taught, Christianity. Are they to be condemned to eternal hell because their forefathers innumerable generations before, in your description, turned away from God?
If so, your God is a harsh God, not a God of justice and love. He is not a God I have ever met nor would ever want to.
Jester;791233 wrote: Ah I see now, it’s 'my God'. Let me do the best I can to explain it here I may add more to clarify later when I can get to some of my handwritten notes.
These statements are true:
God is just God, not as man determines justice but as He determines justice, perfect justice. God is also a loving God, perfect love, again not as man loves but as God loves. Both are true and both are balanced perfectly by God.
I know that God desires all to come to him to worship and he insets in us a natural inclination that he is God. At the same time man has a propensity to stray from God, the best comparison is that men are like sheep from the shepherd to use a familiar analogy.
Since God is a loving and Just God and he is not willing that any should go astray I believe that he will make provision for anyone who listens to that still small voice that God set in them and seek Him then a way will be made for them to understand God. That action by God hasn’t changed since creation, God is still seeking, man has to be willing, if man is found willing God reveals himself to them more and more until they have salvation through Christ Jesus. It does not mean they need formal training as in a ‘western based fundamental method’, it means Sprit to spirit God reveals His way of salvation and that man understands at the level of his own spirit. The broad method God uses to reach the multitudes is through evangelical Christianity, but God always makes provision for those who do not hear.
Original sin is as I said before, death in the form of separation until God justifies someone by the method He uses to declare them free from the power of sin, and allows the sacrifice of Christ to cover them, thereby justifying them into union again with God. The consequence of our original sin is still there, (we each die in the flesh) but our souls are saved and we live eternally in fellowship.
As for Deuteronomy 24:16 that word ‘sin’ there refers to guiltiness of breaking the law and the civil punishment for doing so, the context of that passage refers to relationships of mankind, not a sin against God.
Over all I would say to you that yes, God does indeed turn away men based on the calamity they allow in their lives and certainly just as in real life a decision made in one mans life reflects greatly on the subsequent children. A choice made on where to immigrate to after a war can be just as life devastating for the children as it can be a great thing. One of my grandfathers chose to immigrate to the US, he was a soldier who came to the US after a war in Europe. I am his son from 7 generations past. Would I be who I am and where I am if he did not make the choice to do what he did? So if America turned out to be a cesspool in 2008, I’d be living in it. All our choices impact the subsequent generation, all my good teaching and all my bad teachings are passed on to my children in one degree or another, and in turn unless its not trained out by the grace of god it will grow perpetually worse.
Sin is sin and God does not tolerate it, if that is harsh to you then you must choose.
Yes, it is your God - it is God as you have defined Him.
As you have defined Him, He is not just - justice is an abstract concept and you definition of God's justice does not meet those standards.
You say I must chose - fine, I chose not to accept the God you describe for His is not a way I could follow.
Once again you tell me it is the wrong interpretation of scripture. Fortunately that is your opinion which is not supported by everyone.
I have to agree with Bryn Mawr when he says "your God". You have created in your mind the kind of God you think S/He should be. You are placing on God what you want. You have indeed created your God in your image.
The problem is that many folks have made God into some kind of ancient Greek type of mythical monster; the cyclops or a minotaur. "Either you do as I say or you gonna burn baby" is neither a just or compassionate approach. It is not found in the life or teachings of one Jesus of Nazareth.
You speak of sin as breaking the law but that is precisely what Jesus came to tell us. He broke the "law" many times. It is the legalism that Jesus was opposed to. This is part of the old holiness code which Jesus came to dispel. He healed on the sabbath. He picked grain on the Sabbath. He traveled on the sabbath. The best summation of his message is to be found in the parable of the "Good Samaritan". He clearly said the kingdom of God is like . . .
I think we'd best leave the judging up to God. To do otherwise is blasphemy. It is to place ones self in God's role. It is time to let God decide what is and is not sin.
I know I do not have all the right answers and neither do you. To think otherwise is to live in a delusion.
I could write the same thing about myself because that is exactly how I feel. As I see it there is only one absolute in the universe and that is God. The difference here between you and myself is that I do not feel that I can see the true essence of God. What I see is the activity of God in the world.
I choose not to try to describe or define what I feel is beyond our capability. That you feel you can is fine for you but it does not fit with how I see God. Personally I don't think God gives a hoot about either as long as we follow His will. Now that is where we tend to disagree.
What I do think is important is that all people in the world learn to love and respect all others regardless of race or creed. God does work in mysterious ways and I fully believe that he has spoken to all folks in the best way they could grasp what they could of the divine and that includes us.
An example is the Buddhist. Some would say they don't believe in the divine. This is, however, not true. They talk of a return to the source or a return to nothingness. However, westerners do not understand what is meant by that. This nothingness comes from the fact that Buddhists believe that any attempt to describe or define God is pure blasphemy. Nothingness=no thing that I can grasp or understand. This is not a denial of the reality of the Source. They refuse to give any words to the divine. Nirvana is their concept of 'heaven' which in many ways is not unlike our concept of heaven. Even here they realize they are using metaphor.
This is quite consistent with "good tidings which shall be to all people." or "He is not willing that any shall perish." God's will, will be done regardless of what you or I or anyone else thinks.
Jester;792421 wrote: I'm 42 years old and have been following the God of the bible all my life with few exceptions, Ive never been blessed more than when I obeyed it following common usage of the words, and a bit of connecting back to the original greek and hebrew, the rest has been left to the Holy Spirit.
What Im telling you is what it says under those conditions, if you have another interpretation you and Bryn or whoever else agrees with you should follow it, but as for me and my house we will follow God as laid out as I read Him in the bible.
Thats all I need.
Your God is not "The" God of the Bible, it is the God that you see in the Bible. It is not the God that I see in the Bible and it is not the God seen in the Bible by any Church I've ever attended.
In you house you are fully entitled to follow any God you wish but please, do not put Him forward as "The" Christian God - He is far too intolerant and lacking humanity and justice to be the God of Jesus.
It seems to me that life itself is full of uncertainty. Of course one defends oneself as best as one can. I would suggest that given time such would not be the case. We need to work at building up trust.
There is only one God. What we have are various concepts of that one God. Who has the right concept? I would suggest that, like the Buddhists, we ought to be very careful about how we try to define and describe that God. In fact I would suggest that we ought not to make such an effort at all.
To say that Bryn is worshiping a different God is a very subjective, personal opinion that is not shared by all.
It seems to me that life itself is full of uncertainty. Of course one defends oneself as best as one can. I would suggest that given time such would not be the case. We need to work at building up trust.
There is only one God. What we have are various concepts of that one God. Who has the right concept? I would suggest that, like the Buddhists, we ought to be very careful about how we try to define and describe that God. In fact I would suggest that we ought not to make such an effort at all.
To say that Bryn is worshiping a different God is a very subjective, personal opinion that is not shared by all.
Shalom
Ted:-6
'Tis true - Jester is worshipping a different God to me - and I cannot see his God being the God of Jesus.
Again, I think it is one's concept that others do not find adequate for many reasons. I too do not agree with that concept of God. You are correct that is not the God I see manifest in Jesus of Nazareth.
Clint;437081 wrote: Baptism must have been discussed before but I don't recall it.
I was sprinkled when I was 8 years old, emersed when I was 32 and I was baptized in the Jordan River in Israel when I was over 50. What if I want to do it again? Did one of them save me? They were all done by clergy, what if they hadn't been? Could I baptize myself?
Only the Holy Spirit can baptise to save, and He can do that only when a person commits his life to God and is then justified by faith in the perfect righteousness of Christ to save him/her. Water baptism does not save.
