Do you disagree with this?
Has anyone except Jesus Christ ever lived their entire life sinless?
According to the Bible, no one that has yet to accept the Messiah can enter Heaven. Everyone before that point is not necessarily in Hell (There is another place called Abraham’s Bosom) but they are not in Heaven, yet.
The only alternative (other than 100% sinlessness) is for G-d to incarnate Himself (chas vechalilah!) and vicariously damn Himself in the place of every sinner. In fact (according to this view) the whole point of the Torah was to illustrate that, since no one can live a 100% sinless life, all human obedience to G-d is futile, since it's all-or-nothing.
The only alternative was for G*d to incarnate himself and pay the sin debt for all mankind.
He did not damn himself. He did not “accept” our sins. He paid the price for our sins that we might not have to pay that price ourselves.
The only "salvation" in the TaNa"KH is rescue from a dangerous situation of some kind.
That is exactly the situation all mankind is in.
What could be more dangerous than spending eternity in Hell?
G*d offers us this salvation as a gift. Just like with any other gift we have to decide to accept, or reject, this gift.
In FP thought G-d, being holy and perfect, cannot create anything less holy or perfect than Himself, else He would be implicated in imperfection, which is unthinkable.
G*D, being perfect, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc, can do whatever he desires. Our imperfections do not detract from G*d’s perfection. His plan is perfect, not all his creations are perfect. They couldn’t be unless, like Jesus Christ, they are G*d himself. We were created in G*d’s image, not as G*D himself.
In fact, it was created first (974 generations before Creation according to tradition) and the universe only after.
John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
In Judaism (and consequently Noachism) it is obedience to G-d's laws in this world that is what it is all about. Of course at death the soul reports to G-d for judgement and some sort of assessment is made, but this assessment will be based on our obedience to G-d's commandments (and our repentence for our sins). This is not an all-or-nothing judgement, for the factors of each individual soul, its trials and tribulations, are something only G-d could possibly judge or recompense. And we will not be cast aside because we were not 100% perfect in a way no created thing (not even the sun and the moon) can be (the First Sin was committed, after all, not by a fallen man but the perfect first-created man).
How do we stand before G*d as impure beings? There must be some way for us to be purified. As long as we have a sin debt we cannot be purified. That’s what the blood sacrifice, even from the Old Testament, was, and is, all about. The blood sacrifice for all mankind was paid by the sacrifice of the only person that has EVER lived a perfect sinless life. Salvation from the dangerous situation is offered but must be accepted by the individual.
but I hope I have succeeded in getting sincere chr*stians (especially antinomian FP's who do so much proselytizing and "witnessing") to see that in this worldview the notion that messiah has already come is ludicrous, and that such arguments as the current absence of blood sacrifices simply do not address the underlying issues at all.
You have not succeeded in getting this Christian to see this.
I appreciate the discourse but the idea that we can stand before G*d to be judged on our own account is the worldview that, to me, is ridiculous.
The same way the sun, moon, earth, stars, and angels (none of whom are 100% pure in the sight of G-d) do.
I'm sorry my words were too feeble to make my point, but I stand by my position. G-d never demanded a perfection of which no created thing is even theoretically capable. He demands that we each do our part to perfect the world in the Kingdom of the A-mighty. Every single deed we do in life, good or evil, is judged and somehow recompensed. Life is not about being saved or going to Heaven. It's about obeying G-d down here where our souls were sent from Heaven. The idea that the slightest imperfection calls for either damnation or salvation by the "messiah" is a straw man.
If you were to read a Jewish prayerbook you would not read many prayers asking to be taken to Heaven. You'd read prayers for food to eat, clothes to wear, time to study the mysteries of the Torah, long life to see the Days of Mashiach and the World to Come, the restoration of the Temple Service, the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom, etc.
It is not for you to finish the work, but neither are you free to withdraw from it.
Besides, for fifteen hundred years chr*stianity merely replaced the "works of the law" (from the Bible) with its own "works of the law" adopted from surrounding pagan cultures. That was better . . . how???