Don't those sound like important questions? They certainly would be if a person believed in God and they must please Him with their works. Should they sell their homes and move to Africa? Should they work in the hospitals or care for the infirm? The fact is no one cannot please God with anything they do. They can only be submissive to His will and allow Him to work through them. And even if they rebel like Jonah, God promises to bring us back.
I am sorry but we are not saved by our works. We are saved by grace through faith. This faith is a gift from God. Our works are a manifestation of Christ working through us and for most Christians they may not even recognize how God is working in their lives. Abraham was saved by faith and seventeen years later illustrated this faith by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. The sheep and the goats were sorted on the right and the left before the judgment ever came.
As far as "winning" the everlasting lottery, everyone will be placed in heaven or hell exactly as they were designed to be. God loved Jacob and hated Esau. There are some who would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
No, but we won't hold it against you.
The Marcionite heresy found a safe and secure home in the Reformation, didn’t it. You gave him Gospels and he gave you Paul back as well. He didn’t even consider the Gospels worthy of considering, except for possibly Luke.
You guys have been skating around the examples I’ve kept on posting. Would you do me the favour and answer if the examples that I have posted from Numbers or Genesis are as important as the Sermon on the Mount?
This discussion is going nowhere fast because you guys keep diverting from my main point.
I will answer once again that good works alone do not get you into Heaven. The Lord knows that I keep repeating this and I guess that I will have to keep on repeating it. God’s grace is required to get into Heaven, yet, if man rejects God’s grace, then he will not.
You guys don’t seem to understand the mathematical concept of ‘and’. You point to a verse, sometimes in context and sometimes not, and say ‘this means this’ and absolutely ignore anything else in the Bible except other cherry picked verses that can also be interpreted as ‘this.’ Whereas in truth, when looking for the entrance requirements to Heaven, one must read the entire Bible and put it all together.
Let’s face it: you guys attack the Church for pointing out what the path to salvation is as told to us all by Jesus Christ. Instead, you have a revived heresy imported from the second century and fine tuned to the point where you have come up with the concept of the wrathful and sullen OT God who delights in condemning portions of His creation to hell simply because he can. The only people touting this are the ones convinced that they are of the elect. Gnosis provides the convincing. You guys accuse the Church of snobbish elitism. It isn’t the Church that condemns anyone to hell; your philosophy has artificially created the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ and blamed God for them.
And, like Marcion, you point mainly to Paul for support. And, like Marcion, you get it wrong.