Posted on 07/22/2015 6:13:14 AM PDT by knarf
Romans 10:13King James Version (KJV)
13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
If I do not realize how hopeless is my state before a righteous God, because the laws of sin and death have convicted me of my helplessness, I will 'say the sinners prayer' without true repentance. Without real repentance I do have the broken and contrite spirit which God is seeking like a Physician seeking deadly diseases for which only He has the cure. The evidence of this shallow action is that I will be drawn right back into the world from which I tried by my own power to escape, for a season. If I am not convicted that my 'want to' is utterly condemned, I will hold on to the pride which tells me I'm doing pretty good at being good enough. There is no such thing as the flesh being good enough. No faithfulness to institutional rituals is good enough, no isolation from the world the flesh and the devil is good enough. I have nothing that cures the disease of sin I inherited from Adam.
Until I am totally convicted of my bankruptcy I will keep trying to write checks on my works, one way or another. BUT when I am convicted of my bankruptcy THEN the wealth of God's Grace is mine to hold to . And then, THEN I can say with all confidence that I have believed God and He has counted it for me righteousness. And the life lived thereafter will be a reflection of the life that God puts into the broken and contrite spirit who calls upon Him, "Lord, save me, I'm lost.
When we see people striving to be faithful to rituals and incantations and sacraments, trusting that faithfulness will eventually result in God gracing them with eternal life, we know such are still bankrupt without eternal life in them. The scene on the Day of Pentecost and in the House of Cornelius prove when the Holy Spirit comes into the believers, the broken spirits trusting in the Promise of God. Eternal life starts in the now, not at some ill defined future reckoning. Until the sinner (and we all are don'tchaknow) realizes the utter impossibility of working to achieve the necessary righteousness for eternal life, they cannot receive it. It is by Grace through faithing in Jesus Christ that we sinners receibe His Lifei n us.
Thank you, brother
I understand brother, I also have found out what God says in His Promise that once we are born from above, we cannot fall far enough for Him to not be able to reach us. I’m the prodigal son ...
I’m sure we’ll all have wonderful voices in heaven.
And it we don’t, then nobody will care.
My first wife could not carry a tune in a bucket, but when our son was a wee one she would sing to him as she rocked him. It was some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard ...
/8^)
I had an opportunity to be prodigal for my mother, but my father died the year I was saved ... which, btw, had a part in my getting saved
OK ... more to the story
(I told you I had synopsized greatly)
My father died in '81 and it was at his wake that I sat and asked, staring at the casket ... "Where did you go?"
I'd always been a little more cerebral than my brothers
Having been raised Catholic, I "knew" there was a 33% chance he was in heaven but a 66% chance he wasn't ... which I thought was lousy odds
After the burial, I returned to where I was living and vacilated between staying drunk, getting high and finding loose women
Some time previously I had struck up a relationship with "Jude", one of those hip priests that 'pastored' a "Newman Center" in a college town
One night we were discussing stuff (he was Jesuit, so an educated and intellectual guy ... I liked him .... ) and I asked about my father
I don't remember the exact flow of the conversation, but it was enjoyable, and I came away with, "Well, I don't know and nobody CAN know because no one's ever come back from the dead to tell us" ....
which I bought
After all ... he was Jude ... a cool priest
Acouple of months later I was at a party and righteously stoned ... no lady seemed to be interested in me, so I started my crash ... losing consciousness on a couch .......
When it hit me
Jude didn't know where my father was ..
I didn't know where my father was ..
He was no closer to God than ME ....
WHAT in the WORLD was I going to HIM for?
At the moment, Catholicism ceased to be a religion and a politic and I went searching ....
NOW I commit felonies, and pick up in the aforementioned section
Critical amusement regarding my testimony ... I was 33 when my father died
Jesus was 33 when the Son died
I've preached that a couple of times, but it gets too twisty for the average listener.
I’m more of a Noachide. But I sure do get into the symbolism and theater of the church wherein I sing in choir every Sunday. Once at the communion rail it actually brought tears to my eyes. It’s Anglican-Catholic, and I love the music and the drama. Though still I have doubts.
Israel means to struggle with God. And I struggle too with this triune sense as opposed to the monotheistic aspect which I can’t seem to help but feel more comfortable in.
But God must know how much I fear Him. I don’t believe He’d forget me, nor those I love and pray for constantly.
"For whosoever"
(that's you and me and the guy behind the tree)
"shall"
good legal word
"call upon the NAME of the Lord"
(It ain't Ralph, nor Francis nor faddah)
"SHALL BE SAVED."
The sentence ends in a period ...end of thought .... complete
The KJV translators knew Greek and Aramaic and Latin and Chaldean and
wait for it ...
in 1611 England ....
ENGLISH !!
I know .... whoda'thunk, right ?
The KJV is grammatically correct, you can trust it as it reads
Father, doug is seeking you ...
ping and # 110 too
Surely you've read there are no tears in heaven. Either your voice will be sanctified, which is likely, our ears will, or else we won't care. Sing away!
Hey bro, I can relate. I took out fire insurance in 1970, about 6 months before I shipped out for Vietnam. If someone were to ask me, did I take out fire insurance, just to escape Hell, I would say yes, do you have a problem with that? I don't care what motivates you, me, or anyone, as long as we come to Christ. You were thinking 33% or 66% or whatever. I was worried that I had about a 99% chance of going to hell. I figured, with those odds, I gave up trying to play the game. If I only had a 1% chance of Heaven, I was going to eat, drink and be merry. As you say, fire insurance first, I learned the rest later. 😆😀😂
USAF, retired
magungdung buntag, bro
LOL
You never know. God might have a sense of humor. : )
Where you are, it is magandang gabi. Here, it is still magandang umaga. 😂😇😎 One of these days, I may learn to speak Tagalog, or not. 🙊🙉🙈 We had a good Bible study here yesterday. 😇
**For example, the word “Trinity” appears nowhere in the Bible, yet it is clearly taught in many places.**
Really?......You do realize that neither Jesus Christ, nor the apostles and writers of the NT...EVER...used the phrase ‘God the Son’, or ‘God the Holy Ghost’ (Spirit). They knew, as Christ so taught, that the Son and the Holy Ghost both proceed from the same source: the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, God the Father. Every single divine attribute is traced back to the Father.
Jesus Christ (the image that dwells in the Father, and the Father in him) makes that very clear in John chapter 14, and in many other places as well. Man-made tradition has muddied the water.
Jesus Christ EXPECTS people to hear his, and his apostles words, and be born again. This rebirth is clearly taught in Acts 2:38. But, many are not taught those words. Instead, just as I was never instructed in that teaching until the age of 28, many are not shown that truth, and follow a man-made conversion plan (don’t lift a finger, just believe!)that claims faith in Christ, but ignores being faithful to his conversion instructions.
Many point to Abraham’s faith. How that Abraham believed God, and it was counted as righteousness to him. That declaration by God was made looooonnnng after Abraham had obeyed God, and left Haran, traveled hundreds of miles the hard way, with a big company of people and possessions. Even after moving around in the promised land, building three altars, and chasing bad guys almost to Damascus to retrieve Lot and the spoil, returning (an over 400 mile round trip) to be blessed by Mechizedek.
THEN God’s testimony of Abraham is spoken (Gen. 15:6)
ping to #118
I appreciate your dogged determination to get scriptural answers.
With your permission I would like to address this very pertinent question. Okay? ...
Jesus speaking with a sincere man named Nicodemus said to Nic, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."John 3:14&15 Then Jesus went on to make it personal: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God didn't send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged."
Note please that Jesus went from 'the world' to the singular pronoun 'he', making it personal to Nicodemus right then and there.
At a well called 'Jacob's Well' over in Samaritan territory where Jews had no dealings with Samaritans, Jesus asked for a drink of water from a Samaritan woman drawing water up from the deep well. The woman was astonished that Jesus would even speak to her, He being a Jew by His clothing and look. As their conversation unfolded, the woman was told that if she knew Who was asking for the water she would ask of Him living water that she would never thirst. She questioned Him, perhaps sarcastically, 'are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well?' (John 4:12) Jesus proved to her that He indeed was greater than Jacob by proving He knew all about her number of men.
In another instance of Him proving He is Whom He claimed to be, He forgave a woman taken in adultery (John 8), when 'righteous' Jews were about to stone her and she fell at His feet. When her accusers slinked away because none was without sin so they could cast the first stone, Jesus forgave her personally of her sins and instructed her to go and sin no more. That's pretty personal by my calculus. How about yours? While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's personal IF you will admit that you are hopelessly condemned without His work on the Cross for you, personally. If you want to be weighed based upon how good or bad you live, God allows it. But His verdict is already posted for violating any of the Ten Commandments. Damnation is personal, as in yours or mine. It is not a collective verdict, it is for individual violators of His Righteousness.
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