So someone with a lively, insightful, active mind and spirit is “dead” in your opinion just because he doesn’t abide by the same doigma as you? Christ never asked us to believe in a dogma. I’m open to being convinced otherwise, but I’ve read the New Testament over and over and don’t see that anywhere.
Re-read that. I never said what you claim. Hitchens IS dead, I don’t pray for those who have already passed on.
So, take you snide little comments elsewhere or learn to read before you attack someone.
And it isn’t my job to convince you of anything, that is the Holy Spirit’s job.
FWIW, I am very anti-dogma, Mormonism cured me of that.
The Bible is so full of very clear statements that Christ is the only way to God and that even Christ Himself posited this as truth, that your comments are, at best, disingenuous, for someone who proclaims to have read the New Testament over and over again.
“I am the way, the truth and the Life, no man cometh to the Father except by Me,” seems like a pretty clear indication of what Christ believed was the way to Heaven. Apprehension of this truth is not something gained by intellectual pursuit, but by a transformative Spirit-generated faith that “sees” God’s truth in His Word. Jesus calls it being “born again” (John chap. 3), and except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Jesus said the consequence of not having that Spirit-generated transformative faith in Him is to remain in your sins, where, ultimately, the person experiences sin’s consequence: death. “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”
The very simple, but life-changing truth is this: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” (from Acts chapter 16). This is pretty specific, don’t you think? All that are His know this, believe this, acknowledge this, profess this. It is the message of joy this holiday season...that one can be born again by receiving Him whose goings forth were foretold from of old.
Many have read these truths over and over again and have missed their import. Grasping the scriptures on an intellectual level is great. I’m sure Mr. Hitchens was quite good at this. But being, instead, grasped by the scriptures and their spiritual truth is another matter entirely. Jesus, when He was talking about His imminent death on the cross to His disciples said, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.” God gives His Spirit so that people can have the scriptures illuminated and made clear. Mr. Hitchens, you, I or anyone else cannot manufacture the kind of illumination (saving faith) that does this. It is God’s spirit which illuminates, which “gives life...the flesh profits nothing,” and His spirit comes to those who are seeking Him.