This entire subject matter is T-I-R-E-S-O-M-E.
I have lived in the South with many incredibly racist people (who have expressed in my lifetime that “Black people” have no souls).
They are very SELF-RIGHTEOUS — not righteous — but they can tell the day and the hour that they were saved and are going to heaven regardless of their actions, because “I was saved through my faith in Jesus Christ.”
A close relative, married for the 4th time now, is one of those “saved people” whose own mother called blacks “cockroaches” until the day she died in her 80’s. She swore she was saved too, took joy in belittling her daughter until her death also. But she was saved, don’t you know? She also didn’t mind criticizing Catholics and the Pope on a daily basis as well.
1 Peter 1:17-19
Beloved: If you invoke as Father him who judges impartially according to each one’s works, conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb.
I think I’ll go with Mother Theresa’s response to “being saved and going to heaven.” She said, “Who am I to judge, particularly concerning myself? I will go to heaven through God’s mercy alone.”
Only HE judges.
So, for all you racists, wife beaters, greedy exploiters — who have been saved through faith — I say this, “REPENT and ask for God’s mercy and quit telling yourself you’ve been saved.”
Acts 7:51
You stiff-necked people, you always resist the Holy Spirit. We, by our own freewill, can resist God and His grace, and turn away from Him.
Again, only God knows and only God can judge you concerning your salvation.
detch:
I have lived among those same people and yes, they argue that Blacks have no souls [many of them did then and do now], and after that, while they acknowledge we Catholics have souls, it most certainly, according to all the Bubba Bob Theologians, is going straight to hell
Detch were you paraphrasing Acts 7:51? Not being a stickler but it says this:
Acts 7:
51 “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did. 52 Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; 53 you who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.”