Maytoday

Thinking about it for the past few hours its quite a bit simpler than i had thought. God wanted to give us free will, because if you force someone to worship you, that would probably not be a good God, so that was his plan...to give us free will...if that makes sense.

No problem for the delay:) Well in my opinion its not, because it didn't fail. Its essentially his plan which i can explain if you'd like.

I was asking about young earth or day-age theory

Follow up: I believe we are looking at this in different ways...essentially I believe that things are possible that you don't... I now understand the "conundrum" I had (my teacher is brilliant), but I'm not sure how to explain it, so if you'd like to to ill give it a go but otherwise...well I'm watching studio c right now. Best Show Ever. Indeed. Meaning it really all comes down to what you are willing to believe. Out of curiosity @prisonchaplain, which creation idea do you believe in? I don't know about pentecostals.

Not really sure what this means... and as for this: I technically understand what these words mean but I'm having trouble putting them together in my head so I will mull over this until I can figure it out.

I don't understand this. Are our character traits(uniqueness), based on our will? I thought will was like, the amount of self control to resist temptation and such. I feel like we have different definitions of will which is causing confusion. What does will mean to you? This is a fair point. But in that logic, because God knows that someone will murder yet he doesn't stop it, wouldn't that make him a bad God? And well, since he's not a bad God, I don't know what to think of that.

Yes writing that I realized it was flawed. I believe the key difference in our logic is you are saying that the bad choices we make would be part of God's creation and therefore under his responsibility, bad choices would be his responsibility. I would say that evil-bad choices-were not created. Only choices, meaning it wouldn't be under his responsibility. Evil is the lack of good. Cold does not really exist, it is just the absence of heat. In the same way evil is the absence of God. Why should he be responsible for that? If I know that my sister will steal my money does she not still have the choice to steal or not steal it? Same for you. This is pretty interesting for me to hear and explore, hope I'm doing alright. Also, sometimes when I make a quote I accidentally delete the line below and then have to requote...is there a way to add a blank line under a quote?

Your will is only limited by the limitations you set upon it. Just because someone does something does not mean that they were created with less free will to choose good, simply that they choose to sin. God does not create some with better choices, he just created us with free will. The choice is to follow God or follow the world. Is God responsible for the person that chose the wrong thing? Love the person, hate the sin. He is not responsible for the choice. God did not create a person with free will that chose poorly. That would be predestination. God created humans in his image with free will, and we chose poorly.

Yes, I do. But my point was...God could. So are we really waving a magic wand to say he did?

Alright that's probably true...I do think it depends on the motive. A lot of the time people are just wanting to pass judgement on others, and push themselves up. And certainly you can't tell if someone's a Christian, that's between them and God. However, you can tell if a doctrine is Christian. Doctrine doesn't save people, but it expresses their faith. And I'm not saying that it needs the be the same doctrine as mine. For all I care, you could believe the sun is a fireball from giants playing catch and still be Christian. Its not my job to tell you whether you are Christian, I understand that, but here is my motive for asking: Look at the world, it's crumbling. Do you know how often I lie awake at night in sorrow for all my friends, family, the whole world that is going to eternal sin because they aren't Christian? I'm not asking to tell you if you're Christian, or judge you for being or not being Christian. That's between you and God. But if I can convince myself you are, it means that there are 17 million more people that I'm not laying awake for, that my heart doesn't have to break for. I try to lie to myself a lot, make as many people Christian in my mind as I can. In reality, I know From an outside viewpoint, doesn't the entirety of the Gospel sound outrageous? When all the world tells you that the only thing there is is the physical world, wouldn't an omnipotent God sound outrageous? When you give it a chance its clear its real, but we're also too impatient to give it a chance. I knew a kid that isn't Christian today because when his parents gave him a Bible, he said it was boring. As a member of multiple of your outrageous church teachings... But really, I've never met a person who has left the Church because of Pre-Trib. I'm sure some have. I'm sure some have also left because in their minds this guy came back from the dead. It's another way of seeing the afterlife. Most ways sound outrageous. Salvation and choice based ones, like Calvinism would indeed pull people away from the Church. If I was taught Calvinism I probably would have left. But to blame other doctrines and theories for people leaving the church, it seems like a stretch to me. Way more people leave because of controversy and politics, like abortion or homosexuality, wanting to follow the world. He's God. He could. Whether he does or doesn't is the question.

I memorize Pi. I'm not really sure why. I also rollerblade, even in the winter. That's it, and writing that I feel like I spend entirely too much time on youtube.

It does make things clearer thank you!

Well yeah essentially.

In which case the religion gets the blame when they turn out to be monsters.

Oh, so like our Baptism...it's not required to be saved, but we do it because Jesus tells us too?

I was just reading this: "Zacharias warned the woman—a fellow believer—if she ever spoke out against him, she would be responsible for millions of souls lost when his reputation was damaged." He knew!!! He used the fact that people would be hurt by it and try to blame them!!! WHAT????

I have a friend who worked for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and after this, it really hurt him, and he ended up quitting and trying to start his own sort of thing.

...I don't really understand what this means. He does, yes...It's always been crazy for me to think that there are people who believe in Jesus and yet don't turn their lives to him. And yet then I get caught up in my own sin and make excuses for it. So yes, those who believe in him would repent...if we weren't such awful sinners and had temptation. But wait...what do you believe about this? I feel like your point is that we need to repent to be saved but you said you don't so I must be misunderstanding something. Indeed. I have so many links and resources and such now. This one is probably the most helpful.

I misunderstood that. Well no. Of course they are not minor. I'm not saying I'm going to invite LDS (Or Pentecostal) to speak at my Church. I would be hesitant to invite even Catholics or Lutherans. and yet that's not the point of Christianity.

I have thought about this. Well, not the second part exactly it's pretty specific and not really something that would exactly cross my mind but why God would create us just to worship him. Seems pretty arrogant, but he did create everything I suppose he deserves it. I don't understand where you're getting the vengeful from? Maybe a have a wrong definition of vengeful? A premortal family existence? What about divorces, step siblings, that one annoying aunt/sibling, death and remarriage? Also, why couldn't he have just created us already grown and learned? Ohhh. sorry. Noted. Hopefully I wasn't too awful. But also, I'm pretty sure LDS is Christian. I'm not sure why everyone has decided that if you don't believe exactly what they believe you're absolutely wrong about everything and condemned by God.

Well, yes, I was under that impression. Lake of Fire? I'd have to look back at the original manuscript language for that one. I always have believed that the those who follow God's word will be rewarded in Heaven. But more of a Heaven's just a bit better for them than for others. Like a front row seat versus the top seats at athletic events. Oh, this is a difference between Catholicism and Protestantism, for us, you don't have to go to confession for everything. We're sinners, we're never able to be perfect, never be able to repent from all sin. It's human nature. That's what Jesus paid for. So if there's exactly one sin, well its a sin which means hell, but if you believe in Jesus you are forgiven:) If one isn't enough, how many are? None. Nothing. Works get you rewards in Heaven but not to Heaven. You can be an almost perfect person yet you'd still sin. It's alright I know it's got to be written somewhere I'm not going to say it's not just because you can't find it. Out of 20,000 manuscripts none of them had any of this? Wouldn't Paul have at least written about it once? Even like, casually while talking about something else? In conclusion.. I'm still not sure about the whole Spirit world thing, but like I said before, non-salvation. It's not going to make or break salvation so is it really important? It seems like the main basis of this is similar to my faith, just with a lot more details. (And obviously an different afterlife.)

Oh sorry about that.

Got it. Oh yeah I get it now. It's cause and effect.

Oh. That's good to know. Well thanks, you just put into words my unspoken thoughts about works, they do do that don't they? I'm not sure how they can help to avoid certain circumstances though. My coach is the greatest person ever and his life circumstances used to be really bad.

This all seems very complicated. Like most afterlife ideologies, I of course have my beliefs, but I've always found it to be non-salvation, or not such a big deal it could prevent you from Heaven. However, I am confused on this. In John it says: "16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." And in Romans it says: "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." So if all have sinned and are condemned, how do the "good" nonbelievers get a kingdom?