Posted on 09/30/2016 11:36:30 AM PDT by Gamecock
Do you realize the blood is not the life, the Life is carried by the blood. You inherited this blood-born spirit deadness characteristic from Adam.
'Adam's soul died the day he defied GOD. This deadness state of the soul is due to a dead spirit in the active soul. Jesus showed this reality when he told His disciples to let the dead go bury the dead ... let the young man with a dead spirit go bury his dead in body father.
You and I have inherited a sin nature from Adam. We carry his 'dead spirit' behavior mechanism (the soul) as we maneuver through life. Even those born from above still have the life of Adam, a dead-in-spirit in the active soul Life in their blood. That is why only LIFE in the blood of Jesus can cancel the sin nature deadness.
The LIFE is in the blood. The LIFE in the blood of Jesus was never dead-in-spirit. GOD life was in the blood of Jesus, HIS seed remained within HIM through His life. The blood of Jesus was not from Adam, it was from GOD. HIS sinless blood is THE ONLY means to have GOD life in you.
HIS sinless blood brings Life into your dead spirit. That's why you cannot eat His Life into you, it is a spiritual transaction to bring Life to a dead spirit.
Spiritual deadness is our natural state, inherited from Adam. This doesn't mean the human spirit is dead like a dead body. It means the inherited spirit discerns right and wrong and directs the behavior mechanism (the soul) to do the wrong. By doing the wrong the body, soul, AND spirit are now banished from the presence of LIFE. By faith, God can restore LIFE to your spirit portion. In a Christian life, this new birth of GOD Life in the human spirit will show up as the human behavior mechanism changes in 'want to'.
At death or the Rapture, which ever comes first, the life inherited from Adam ends and incorruptible life takes over forever more, sourced in the alive spirit, made alive by faith in Jesus as the One Whom GOD swent for your salvation.
If you want an astonishing example of this TRUTH, read what Jesus told Nicodemus, in John chapter three, regarding the brass snake in the wilderness. The sin nature is poison. By believing in Whom God has sent for cure to this poison, death does not rule your eternity. You body exists in 3D/4D spacetime, but your spirit does not, nor does your soul, your behavior mechanism.
So was that it??? Is that all it took??? If you believe in God and believe Jesus is God in the flesh are you saved??? Thankfully the Bible gives us that answer...
Jas_2:19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
Why do the devils tremble??? And why don't we believers tremble like the devils...
The difference is: while the jailer and the devils believe in God, it was the jailer who wanted to be saved...The devils don't want it...
So that was the beginning...
Act 16:32 And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house.
This guy had just witnessed some pretty strange things with these two Jesus freaks so he was all ears...And they preached...They preached the Gospel and other things that Jesus taught them...And no doubt at the end of the conversation Paul asked this man, 'do you believe the words that I told you??? And do you want to be a follower of Jesus as we are'??? And the guy may have said a simple 'yes'...
'That' is a sinner's prayer...
What some people don't understand is that when a Baptist preacher call sinners out of their seats and to walk the isle to ultimately participate in a sinners prayer the sinner is already walking down the isle hand in hand with Jesus...
Once you make that decision to get out of your seat, and many don't get out of their seat, Jesus knows what's in your heart and he's already standing at your side the millisecond you make that decision...
The sinner's prayer down there in front of everyone doesn't do anything except give the person saying it confidence and acknowledment to him/herself that he/she had made Jesus his/her Savior...And I con't care how much you believe in Jesus, if you don't accept him as your Savior, you ain't a Christian...
What really happens in those situations is the person under conviction heads to the front...The pastor or deacon or maybe another Christian will again go over the Gospel with you...No one else hears the conversation...The person will then ask you if you believe the Gospel...He will then ask if you want to be a Christian...And like I said,, at that point it's a done deal...Then the person will lead you in a prayer because Christians pray, and a new convert doesn't know what to pray...
Although a person is saved before a sinners prayer is started, the prayer certainly doesn't hurt anything...And it IS biblical...
But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:8-10)
Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God. (Luke 12:8,9)
Revelation is not ALL metaphor. There is quite a bit of “doctrine” that it teaches.
Let me ask you, if you deny that eternal torment in hell is a reality for the lost, then how are they present at the Great White Throne Judgment? This is when ALL the lost are judged for what they did or didn’t do when they were here on earth. Some of these souls have been LONG dead and whatever physical body they had is dust scattered in the wind, yet they face their judge and experience torment. With what kind of form do they do this?
Dumb analogy. The smoke goes up forever, and their torment is eternal, going on "day and night for ever."
As discussed above, the imagery of eternal torment
The imagery is in the phrase: 'The smoke of their torment shall rise forever and ever.' Obviously torment is not combustible. The symbolism is that they will suffer eternally. The next phrases, in both verses, confirm it, as there is no symbology in the plain statement that they will suffer for all time. A 10 headed beast is a symbol for real things, perhaps 10 nations. The smoke of torment eternally rising is symbolic of torment, not non-existence.
If it were not for this passage and perhaps one other in Revelation (Rev: 14:9-11), what is now the traditional view of hell may never have developed.
Christ's discourses on hell also well establish its eternal nature, as he speaks of their "worms" never dying, but forever suffering in torment, and then confirms the interpretation by using the story of the rich man waking up in hell, burning in torments.
Agreed and He is our authority, while God the Father is His.
"By this I take it you've never shared the Gospel with someone."
You take my comments out of context and miss my meaning and intent completely.
Try again.
Revelation 20:15
And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire
Do you do understand just how holy God really is?
In Jeremiah 3:8 The Heavenly Father divorced the House of Israel. When do you think that wedding took place? Now remember according to Peter, Those three days and nights in the tomb, Christ went to all, souls/spirit intellects, back to the time of Noah and offered them salvation, those whom accepted would be called Christians... regardless of ethnicity.
The bride is not just those still in a flesh body.
They are ONE.
I doubt there's a person on the planet who has *FULLY * surrendered EVERYTHING.
If that were the case, then nobody would be saved. You set up criteria that God did not establish for salvation.
He requires that we turn to Him and if we are still under conviction of sin, then we deal with that as He reveals it to us but that doesn't mean we are not saved.
What you've presented is a works based salvation where were surrender and surrender and surrender yet again and at some point you will have surrendered enough and then become saved.
God meets us where we are, in our sinful state (While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us) and saves us and then the transformation begins. And never ends.
Many people go through several cycles of praying but still "under conviction" because they don't understand their salvation and their security in it. The enemy is loading guilt on them and they don't see the difference between guilt from the enemy and the lies he tells us about our standing before God, and the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
I watched some nut-job on youtube who doesn't believe in a sinner's prayer and when confronted with these scriptures claim that Romans 8,9, and 10 were 'parenthetical' and don't apply to the church...And of course he is wrong but I wanted to avoid that argument here...But since you brought it up, of course we have to call on Jesus and confess him for our salvation to be real...
Being still in the body, with the dead spirit life in our blood inherited from Adam, we cannot of our own be righteous. If we do good deeds without HIS Life in us, in our spirit, our human pride soils the deeds such that the deeds are not 'good' in GOD's sight. Jesus declared judgment upon such 'works' in Matthew &:21-23.
BUT, for those born from above, having thus had GOD put the earnest of our inheritance in our human spirit, the spark of GOD-life in our previously dead human spirit, when HIS SPIRIT causes us to do good deeds, we can check it by discerning if our pride has kicked in. IF our pride kicked in, we have soiled the deeds and they are not of righteousness. As af_vet_1981 rightly pointed out on another thread, we have been commanded to walk in good works that have their origin in HIS presence in us. Jesus told His listeners that He has come so that we may have LIFE in our dead spirit, and have it more abundantly because it is sourced in HIM and does not spark our human pride.
If works / deeds / acts of charity and kindness are not sourced in the LIFE HE puts into the born from above, they are not 'righteousness'. BUT, when we are known of Him, He is due the glory because it is HE WHO is source of righteousness in our deeds / works / acts of charity and kindness.
In living the born again experience, some stumble along, some stand still, some hop along, some run along, and some soar to a beautiful closeness with Him. As Jesus showed it, some take the coin and hide it, some put the coin to use and get more coins, and some do a fantastic job of investing HIS COIN to find great return of HIS coin.
Meant to ping yuou to the previous, having cited your offering from another thread.
You wrote.....”Comparing the Gospel to a ‘wedding PROPOSAL’ is not Biblical. Jesus did, however, compare it to a ‘wedding INVITATION’.... There is a big difference between the two.”
Yes....
“In Jeremiah 3:8 The Heavenly Father divorced the House of Israel. When do you think that wedding took place?”
God compared the Mosaic covenant to a wedding covenant. Israel voluntarily entered into it and pledged to keep it. They did not keep it though. So the “wedding”, if you can call it that, would be analogous to their pledge to keep it:
Exodus 19:7-8
So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him. Then all the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” So Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord.
“according to Peter, Those three days and nights in the tomb, Christ went to all, souls/spirit intellects, back to the time of Noah and offered them salvation, those whom accepted would be called Christians....”
That is not what Peter said.
1 Peter 3:18-20
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.
The “when” in this passage refers to the time the spirits were disobedient, not when Jesus went and preached. Nothing in this passage implies time travel.
Further, the spirits here are not human spirits. We can determine this from other similar passages:
2 Peter 2:4-5
For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly.
Jude 6
And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.
During the time of Noah, there was a group of rebel angels that produced offspring through women. These offspring were called Nephilim. They were destroyed with all of the other humans and land animals that were not in the ark during the flood.
According to Peter and Jude, these particular angels were placed in a “prison” of sorts. Particularly, they were locked in the abyss or bottomless pit, to await the day of judgement. In this context, it is important to understand that the so-called “fallen angels” have not yet been permanently cast out of Heaven. This will happen briefly before judgement day, when Michael the archangel wages war on Satan.
The passage you cited refers to Christ “preaching”, but it does not say that He preached the Gospel to these spirits.
In terms of Old Testament saints being called “Christian”, that term is only used three times in the Bible. It was originally used to mock followers of Christ. Since the Bible teaches that Christ was the visible presence of God in the Old Testament, it is true that those who believed in Him during that time were “Christian”, i.e. followers of Christ. Here is what it says about that generation of Israel that promised to keep the covenant:
1 Corinthians 10:2-4
All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.
They did not know that the visible and audible manifestation of God was actually Christ. But that is revealed to us now in the New Testament.
“Christ... offered them salvation... regardless of ethnicity”
There were people of many ethnicities who received salvation during the times of the Old Testament. However, there is nothing in the passage you cited to indicate some sort of retractive offer of salvation to those already dead. The spirits there were not human spirits, but angelic ones. And angels that sinned did not partake of the redemption of mankind by Christ’s substitutionary death. (Christ became a man, but He never became an angel.)
During the current dispensation of God’s superabounding grace, all nations, ethnicities, and speakers of every language have access to forgiveness of sins by God through the Gospel. The Gospel is that Christ died for our sins, His death was done in fulfillment of hundreds of Old Testament prophecies in a precise way prescribed by God, He was buried, He rose again on the third day, and He was seen by many witnesses who could attest to His resurrection. (This group of witnesses includes all of the apostles, through which we have the writings of the New Testament.) This message is preached for salvation to ALL (including from every ethnicity, nationality, and language) who believe on Him.
Yes, but remember, Our Lord Christ Jesus only performed the Will of the Father, not His own.
As an overt evangelical myself--actually a daily active public confessor of personal blood-bought relationship to the Father through the work of Jesus The Christ, and guided by the Holy Spirit--I have observed over the years the remarkable lack of sincere disciples coming from the pray-the-sinners-prayer approach which tries to convey an assurance of salvation.
Actually, the subtle purpose of counting the respondents to this "prayer" mechanism in a "revival" campaign is to obtain a handle on the persuasiveness of the evangelist, and therefore a testimony as to his effectiveness in getting public professions; hence to convince an ad hoc council of evangelical leaders in another area to get him to come to their geographical area and fund his "crusade" there.
The problem with this approach is that it is not up to the evangelist to provide such assurance to the individuals. Assurance of salvation only comes to the individual when he/she knows that a total change of mind toward God has occurred, which change becomes evident in one's practice of sinful habits through the power from Above exercised by control of the Holy Spirit, and not alone through one's determined willpower.
That effect comes from a very personal interaction between the human and the saving God, the validity of which is not immediately accessible to the people involved in the "crusade." Neither they nor the preaching evangelist ought to be pretending to confirm such an assurance. God is the Judge of all, not they themselves. And the public confession is that of personal behavior, not merely saying "the sinner's prayer," or attending subsequent church meetings.
The true attitude of a faithful evangelist is, that if he preaches the unvarnished Word consisting of the basic Articles of The Faith, committed trust in The Christ as Master will ensue, and changed lives that go on to spiritual maturity will be seen. He can be confident that God will support his Gospel-preaching ministry, send him to areas to which he has not even been invited or wanted, and see to support of his ministry and his needs.
The response of a Spirit-born and Spirit-supervised individual will be to seek a qualified discipler in a Bible-preaching and teaching local assembly of Christians that can show him/her how to live the abundant life in Christ. He/she might stumble in finding a true church, but God will guide in that, also, to where Christ is preeminent.
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