Posted on 10/28/2007 5:11:19 PM PDT by pinochet
The Hindus note that you could end up getting bumped DOWN the ladder and end up as an insect. Buddhist beliefs are a tad more sophisticated, but they have the same idea of advancing through various Hells and Heavens until finally you achieve "release".
I think you want a hard and fast answer, and if so, check out any guru. He'll tell you what you want to hear.
Christian belief says that a "Man dies but once" ~ and there's a Resurrection (or maybe 2)". This creates the dilemma for a life devoted to sin, and then God's loving grace, and then sin again, and maybe back to God, then back to sin, and so forth. Just how do you deal with this if you have to wait for the Final Judgment?
The Scriptures suggest the "dead in Christ" simply wait, rising up every now and then asking "How much longer Lord". And that vision suggests that there may be many more "little short term resurrections" for all those dead folk rising up to ask questions.
Once you've pursued every possible avenue through all the major world religions to assist yourself in arriving at an answer to the question, I would suggest that no one knows (except Jesus).
So, there you have your answer ~ Be patient.
>>>Once a person is “saved” they are no longer a “sinner”. Although they may do things which are considered sinful or against God. In their renewed state of grace they can REPENT and be forgiven of any new sins.<<<<
What if you die before you have repented of the new sins?
Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. ..But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Hebrews 9:25-26.
Christians can live with every expectation that Christ's sacrifice is better than the Old Testament, that they belong to Christ, and "no one shall snatch them out of his hand." (John 10:28.) In the faithful Christian this does not produce laziness or license, but rather joy and determination to live a life worthy of the calling. Of course we live with our own sin on a daily basis, but go forward in the knowledge that God has forgiven us already.
“The non-repentant evil person” was never truly saved in the first place then! Jesus is not going to lose his ‘sheep’ or his ‘gold coins’ (see Matthew 18:12-14 and Luke 15:1-10); He loves us all so much that He died for us. He also gave us free will—we can accept Him or deny Him. He doesn’t force us to do anything.
They are in/on Earth when they do that.
So, how long a break from the grave do they get and what do they do for a living until they go back in the grave?
BTW, isn't it more a question of being Ressurected into a situation with a New Heaven and New Earth? Then the Judgment. Then all the good guys abide with Jesus for eternity?
I think another way to look at what I was trying to say is this:
A Christian who understands his condition and believes the Gospel, knows he cannot instantly stop sinning, but will want to start living the way God wants him to.
God states He wants us to live a perfect life. Now, what makes up ‘living a perfect, sinless life?” we look to the one man, the God-man, Jesus Christ, the only man to have lived a perfect, sinless life.
What did Christ do? He followed the law perfectly. The law still has purpose for us as Christians. It helps us to know how to live a more pleasing life to God. But now we can do this without fear of sinning and being condemned because we have faith that because Jesus who lived the perfect life paid our sin debts in full that we won’t risk losing salvation if we fall short of living a perfect life.
How do you go about living the way God wants him to? you try to live more like Christ, the one who lived a perfect life by floowing God’s law perfectly.
This is why protestants do not believe that we can do anything we want if we ‘just believe’. If we believe, we will be trying to live more like Christ, which means we will be striving to obey God. When we fail (and we will, every day, in one or more ways), we can have confidence that we haven’t lost our salvation, we can ask for forgiveness and continue to try to do better. We rest our confidence in this because of God’s promises to save us based on what Christ did for us once and for all.
Covered, if you are a true believer. :-)
If you are saved, and truly repentant, and some big temptation comes along and you fall for it, and suddenly a bus comes out of nowhere and kills you—then you stand before Jesus (”No one comes to the Father but through me”). He will either recognize you as one of His own, or not. If you are truly saved, He will enfold you in His loving arms, and rejoice, just like the father in the story of the Prodigal Son. :*)
Jesus is Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent—he already *knows* your heart before you say a word. If you are truly saved, you *are* forgiven. :*)
BTW, concerning the “New Heaven and New Earth” doctrine, did you notice that the planet Saturn seems to have a “reset button”? Check: http://cybercide.us/images/saturn_hexagon.jpg
This younger man believed in Christ, but as he became more mature and found spiritual nourishment in alcohol, marijuana, criminality and meth, he became quite the demon.
Can a person like that eventually redeem himself with a real reaffirmation of his faith? Sure.
Is someone like that equally as secure with their place in heaven as they were when younger after all their criminality without genuine repentance? That is up to God, but I do not think there will be some completely free pass unless the sinner themselves make steps in the right direction that are sincere.
So I'll answer it. What if Haggard was engaging in a homosexual act at the time of death would he go to heaven?
Engaging in sin of any kind at the time of death is not what will send you to hell. Not having repented and accepted Jesus as Savior at the time of death is what will send you to hell.
So if Haggard was a Christian, and he fell to temptation and happened to die while committing the act, Jesus act on the cross would still cover the sin, and he would still go to heaven. However, scripture also says...
19Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
What does that mean? It can't mean that any one of these acts bans you from heaven, because every person listed in the New Testament hall of faith had committed one of these sins, and usually long after their relationship with God had been in place. Noah got drunk, Abraham fornicated, David committed adultery and murder, etc...
But it is a call to examine your faith. Just like James calls people who have no works, no evidence of the fruit of the spirit in their lives, to examine their faith to see if it's real, so too people who make these things a way of life may not really have faith in Jesus. But only God knows for sure.
Proxy_user took a lot of heat for saying that Christians don't feel like sinning. I agree with the others, that's not exactly true. But a Christian should have internal conflict. Over time, that internal conflict should drive the Christian away from such sins. Even as the fruit of the Spirit in his life should draw him to good works.
But that growth doesn't always happen and the scripture does describe a carnal Christian as the seed that grew up but was choked by the cares of this world and produced no fruit and as one whose "works are burned, yet he is saved, although as a man running from a house on fire"
SF
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
Public Domain
9Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
10Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
11And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
At the point in your life when you look at God, place faith alone in Christ alone, God is free to regenerate your human spirit. Immediately, you then have a body, a soul, and human spirit which is also sealed by the Holy Spirit.
No matter what you do from then on out, you cannot lose your eternal life, because God foreknew you.
In regards to forgiveness of sin, all your pre-salvation sins are all forgiven at the moment of salvation. Post salvation sin is forgiven at the moment of turning back to God, and confessing known and unknown sins to Him via 1st John 1:9.
With respect to God, Christ paid for all sins, past, present, and future while He was on the Cross.
Our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus agreed in eternity past to perform 4 things at the Cross.
1) Unlimited substitutionary atonement for all sin throughout all of humanity.
2) Propitiation of sin, where His work towards sin resulted in all sin being covered by His blood, the perfect sacrifice, thereby covering all wrath of God in His perfect righteousness which demanded perfect justice upon all sin.
3) Redemption, or buying the debt all man owed God for having broken a relationship with God in the Garden of Eden and for all sin in the future generically, which was no fault of God.
4) Reconciliation of Man to God. God is never reconciled to man, rather man who is the creature and who sinned in the Garden of Eden produced actions which effected a barrier between God in His Perfect Righteousness and man who had missed the mark and had disobeyed God, thereby becoming unrighteous. That barrier was removed by Christ on the cross in His love for all mankind and God’s perfect Judgment of all sin in Him, in His body.
At the Cross, Christ in his humanity, empowered by God the Holy Spirit, remained in faith with Him in all things,...again in his humanity (see doctrines of kenosis)
After having all of mankind’s sins imputed upon him, past, present and future sin, our Lord and Savior was Judged on the Cross.
The Gospels well record the events, especially in Luke 23:44. The forgiveness of Christ to those who crucified Him, was a prayer to God the Father to Forgive them as a personal request for what they did to his body personally, not to be confused with the forgiveness of all personal sin of all humanity.
After three hours of judgment from about 3pm to 6pm, with an earthquake, our Lord and Savior cried out, Eli, Eli, lama sabachathani, (My God, My God, Why have You Foresaken Me!)(Mark 15:34) This well reflects a spiritual death of the human Jesus on the Cross. The penalty of sin is death. Adam and the second Adam had life in body, soul, and spirit. Death is a state of existence involving separation. At this point our Lord had been separated from God the Father in His humanity, it was a spiritual death. This was indubitably the most violent of all events in human history. Violent in that it crossed the willpower and volition of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus. He did not want to be separated from the Father, but in his human spirit, took on all the sins of the world, past present and future, thereby being judged by God the Father for us because of His love for us. At this point in time he still had a living soul, he also had a living body, albeit battered and in stress physically.
When some heard his comment, they confused it for the Prophecy by Elijah, and mistook him for quotng Elijah. Please note, our Lord has primacy in this Prophecy, not Elijah. Some around him ran to get him something to drink. A sour wine or vinegar which had a narcotic effect on the body which was commonly used as a cheap drug for those being crucified.
At this point our Lord and Savior had soul and body, but had suffered spiritual death.
Matthew and Mark then records our Lord let out a shout then gave up the Ghost, with the veil in the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place being rent in two.
John records the shout as “It Is Finished! (a tense in the Greek language which means a sense of completeness, finished and forever accomplished).
It might also be noted that as our Lord thrust his head out after he gave up his last breath, the action took volition as the body tends to hang the head to one side or another in the state of crucifixion. The result of this physical position as studied by some medical practitioners results in the blood of the body accumulating in the lower cavities and after death, the blood begins to separate into serum and white blood cells. The appearance of this mixture when released from the body is as red blood and water. Had his head drooped to the side, the blood would have dropped more to the lower extremities of the body. When our Lord’s side was pierced by the guard to affrim his death, blood and water is recorded as being released.
What happened from this point was that the Lord’s human spirit as a man was released to God the Father. The body was later taken to the rich man’s tomb with a large stone rolled in front of it sealing it and guarded by Roman soldiers. The soul of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus then descended to Hades, specifically to Paradise as documented on the Cross when our Lord told the believing thief He would see him in Paradise , also known as Abraham’s Bosom.
He is also recorded as witnessing to the spirits in prison in 1stPeter 3:18 and in Acts 2:31 we are told His soul was not left in Hades, nor his flesh see corruption.
Hades has four compartments, Paradise or Abraham’s Bosom, separated from the rest by a great gulf transfixed, then the Torments (where souls of the unbelieving reside until Judgment Day), Tartarus (Where fallen angels and some creatures mentioned in Genesis 6, 1stPeter 3:19 and Jude 6, and the Abyss (where Abaddon resides until the middle of the Great Tribulation).
Our Lord though had the power and authority to receive his life again. God the Father in His omnipotence gave the human spirit back to our Lord Christ Jesus and God the Holy Spirit returned the soul to his body, which was a ressurection body incorruptible, the first fruits.
Three days later, our Lord rose again in his body, with soul and spirit in his humanity. Also, at his time at least 40 other saints were ressurrected and he sojourned here on Earth until the Ascension, some forty days later.
Today, God is now free to forgive us our sins when we turn to Him. When he finds something righteous in us, He is free to bestow a regenerated life in us. Rom 3:20-24 indicates the righteousness of God is in and of Christ, indicating when we ourselves exercise faith alone in Christ alone, we also have something He has already recognized as righteous, namely faith in Christ.
So again, forgiveness occurs upon saving faith for pre-salvation sin and at repentance and confession of sin for postsalvation sin per 1st John 1:9.
We need to send Al Gore there to check that one out.
Oh, absolutely. You panicked me for a moment there; I thought I might have posted something wrong. Whew!
Engaging in sin of any kind at the time of death is not what will send you to hell. Not having repented and accepted Jesus as Savior at the time of death is what will send you to hell.
Agreed.
I agree with you, but there are people that were saved, go bad, don't repent again ever and turn their back to God.
Can't say that is a road to heaven by any means.
I think people can turn their back to God and lose their salvation, kind of like Cain with Able.
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