Question: a person lives a life during which he harms no one, is dependent on no one and raises and provides for a family that he raises w/ the same values. That person protects and helps others w/ lesser abilities. That person does not embrace the same belief system as do you. Is that person doomed to a fiery furnace or another form of perdition?
Simple question. What say you?
mike r
I say what the Bible teaches. Good works do not save a person. The Bible teaches salvation is through Christ. It is a free gift, but you must accept Him and worship Him.
I accept and worship Christ with all my heart. I hope you will too.
I find the idea that there is today an integrated Christian " faith and church", which is God's faith and church in the same way there was a true and integrated Christian faith (and church) at the time of Christ, to be quite laughable. At the time of Christ, there was obviously only one church, one faith---one accepted canon of doctrine. Moreover, false doctrines were continually creeping in which the Apostles had to fight against. After the last Apostle died, it all went sideways. In fact, doesn't the Bible teach there will be "prophets and apostles" until we all come to a unity of the faith? Where are the apostles and prophets today when there is such obvious disunity? In fact, almost the whole of Christianity denies even the possibility of revelation post-Bible. There are now over 1500 "Christian churches" and they all teach something different about doctrines allegedly essential for salvation. They actually agree on very little. That emphatically was not the situation at the time of Christ. Moroever, in Christ's time the church had a recognized hierarchy and structure. You didn't get to just go out and start your own religion; you had to be called in the manner Aaron was called. (See Hebrews, I think). Also, where in heck do these modern "Christian" ministers get their authority? From the Bible? That's not how Christ conveyed his authority anciently. For starters, there was no Bible to read! Secondluy, apostles and disciples got their authority by laying on of hands from one who himself had authority received by laying on of hand by another, who had authority. The Catholics have the better of the argument here because they at least claim a direct lineage for authority from Peter. The problem is, their core doctrines are wholly apostate. It seems pretty clear to me that God predicted this (an apostasy, see eg., the Parable of the Son and the Husbandmen). The other thing that is just positively risible (to me at least) is this notion that the "Bible", which was collected and written by Catholic priests with the earliest Greek manuscripts coming into existence hundreds of years after Christ, is somehow the infallible word of God when it is full of contradictions and ambiguities that actually make dissent and divisions likely. You have to be willfully ignorant to believe that. These scrivener priests (who, at the time they collected and transcribed) were themselves members of an arguably apostate church with all kinds of bizarre, non-Biblical doctrines (eg., infant baptism and baptism by "sprinkling") arbitrarily decided which "scriptures" to include in the canon and which not to. Who gave them the authority to do that? Certainly not God. Modern Christianity today has little or no resemblance to its ancient version. The idea that what we see today is a continuation of God's church and doctrine is utterly ridiculous wishful thinking, in my opinion. Yet there is no shortage of bigots who want to denounce Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and JWs, when the claims of the bigots are no more authoritative than those they mock.
