How typically mormon, equating the very foundation of Christianity with works such as tithing!
I nominate Grig for....
Flying Inman Player of the Week!
Well, as I understand your beliefs:
a) if you don’t accept Christ as your Savior you don’t go to heaven
b) if you don’t accept Christ as your Savior you will be damned and burn in hell for all eternity
Do you then accuse God of using extortion then to ‘force’ us to accept Christ?
The choice to accept Christ, or to pay tithing, are all choices based on faith. All choices have consequences, but in this case the consequences are pretty much limited to what comes after this life. Nobody is going to come burn you at the stake unless you accept Christ, and nobody is going to threaten your life or property if you choose to not pay tithing. Your accusation is silly.
If you don’t have faith in Christ, the ‘threat’ of hell and damnation is meaningless, likewise if you don’t believe the claims of my church then why would you care about holding a temple recommend? Conversely, people who have faith in the church will seek on their own volition to obtain the blessing that come from living the gospel, and people who have faith in Christ will on their own volition seek to follow him.
When the end comes, I hope I’ll be Christ-like enough to not gloat as you eat crow over how wrong you are about us.
How typically mormon, equating the very foundation of Christianity with works such as tithing!
I nominate Grig for....
Flying Inman Player of the Week!
#1 Force? Sorry..."no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3)...Sorry, Grig. You or I don't even get the "credit" for accepting Christ.
#2 You "mis-time" the beginning point of God's condemnation. The so-called "threat" of hell that you make it out to be is not some new condemnation introduced. Or have you not read John 3:18...you know, the verse that comes two after John 3:16?
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned ALREADY because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:18)
A weak human analogy would be if once upon a time you were married, and somebody asks you, "What if your spouse threatens to condemn and divorce you?" Well, if you were already divorced because that spouse condemned you, what new "threat" would that be?
#3 Is a judge who has the right to levy jail time "extorting" somebody just convicted of crimes & mayhem? Really? Is that the way you would present the best judge on earth? Is that your portrayal, too, of our Heavenly Father and of His Son as our Judge? Really?
Allow me then to "remind" you of our deserved wrath with a quick tour through the apostle Paul's letter to the Church @ Rome:
* The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness... (Romans 1:18)
* But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed...But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. (Romans 2:5,8)
* But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (Romans 3:5)
* What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? (Romans 9:22)
And then Paul gets to the "Good News" about how God the Judge and Savior has dealt with His wrath:
* Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! (Romans 5:9)
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The choice to accept Christ, or to pay tithing, are all choices based on faith. All choices have consequences, but in this case the consequences are pretty much limited to what comes after this life.
Sorry...but I don't think even the legalistic Pharisees condemned people to no eternal life with the Father if they didn't give alms or tithes!
Nobody is going to come burn you at the stake unless you accept Christ, and nobody is going to threaten your life or property if you choose to not pay tithing. Your accusation is silly.
Strawman. I never talked about the "hear & now" consequences that Mormon leaders threaten their "sheep" with...it's the long-term supposed consequences they dish out...and it's held over the very family relationships they hold most dear...including even an in-the-presence lockout from Heavenly Father threat.
...people who have FAITH IN THE CHURCH will seek on their own volition to obtain the blessing that come from living the gospel, and people who have faith in Christ will on their own volition seek to follow him.
Faith in the church? Are you kidding me? (My faith isn't even in the earthly Body of Christ, His Church!) You're just like First President Marion G. Romney, who in the early 1960s at a General Conference declared that the Mormon church was "the truth, the way, and the life" -- substituting the Mormon church for Jesus Christ in John 14:6 as the object of faith. Sorry, but that's idolatry! Repent!
If one believes kin a FALSE christ; then they get a FALSE heaven for a reward.
Sounds like you are gloating now; over your SUPERIOR choices in life.
I do hope that you are not eating any MEAT in this warm weather period...