[Vigilanteman]

Pretty much confirms my theory that the church which benefits most from the "holier than thou" types is the church of stay at home and skip the whole thing.

Which is tragic, in my opinion, because organized religion can and does do a lot of good by supporting fellow believers.

I can't imagine a just God doing any of the following:

1. Telling Mother Theresa she's going to hell because transubstantiation is only figurative and symbolic and not a literal change of the sacrament to the body of Christ.
   
2. Telling a Mormon, who otherwise lived a righteous life, that they are going to hell, because their concept of Jesus Christ, as the son of God, is different from the mainstream view that he is actually God in a different form.
   
3. Telling a psychopath who murdered, maimed and committed all sorts of other unspeakable acts, that they are going to heaven because they uttered words of confession just before the trap door on the gallows was opened.
   
4. Telling the "heathen" (including my Native American ancestors) that their ancestors were condemned to eternal hell and damnation because they had no opportunity to accept Jesus Christ.

By no means a complete or exhaustive list, but you get the idea. I'll defer the final judgement to the man upstairs.

[Viennacon]

Well, you’re covering a few things there. As to the Native Americans or anyone who was or still is without any knowledge of Christ, their salvation depends on a view of God’s middle-knowledge and molinism.

Dr. Craig, a philosopher and Christian theologian, addresses this concern here.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/molinism-the-unevangelized-and-cultural-chauvinism

Mother Theresa was a Christian and if she truly put her faith in Christ (which I think its safe to say she definitely did) she will be with the Lord. As a Christian I do not claim some denominations go the heaven and some don’t. We have doctrinal differences, but our core faith is the same.

Mormons are more murky territory, because you are dealing with cults there (and I don’t mean that derisively, but that is to say they hold to many of the Christian tenets and have their origin in Christianity, but reject very core principles, much like Jehovah’s Witnesses. )

And finally, murderers and such people, of course if they have true repentance (which does not absolutely follow from a declaration of the mouth), they can be redeemed. If they could not be, then where would we draw the line? Can rapists be redeemed? What about thieves? Remember that although we mostly find it extremely difficult to forgive various criminals, God is infinitely merciful.

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

:: I can’t imagine a just God doing any of the following ::

On the other hand hand, I find it very comforting that God (YHWH) does not need to live up to our human imaginings.

[metmom]

Telling a psychopath who murdered, maimed and committed all sorts of other unspeakable acts, that they are going to heaven because they uttered words of confession just before the trap door on the gallows was opened.

Gee, would that be like the thief on the cross?

Or maybe Ted Kennedy or Chavez who get Catholics funerals because at the last minute they *repented* and asked for the sacraments after a lifetime of murder and destroying this country with their pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marriage; socialistic politics?

[Elsie]

Telling Mother Theresa she's going to hell because...

And yet:

"Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned;

and I will go still further and say, take this revelation, or any other revelation that the Lord has given,

and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that you will be damned.

Brigham Young - JoD 3:266 (July 14, 1855)

[Elsie]

Telling a Mormon, who otherwise lived a righteous life, that they are going to hell...

I just KNOW you are going to comment NOW!

[Elsie]

Telling the "heathen" (including my Native American ancestors)....

Yeah; Native Americans are althroughout the Book of MORMON; too.

 

“I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today ... they are fast becoming a white and delightsome people.... For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised.... The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.

At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl-sixteen-sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents—on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather.... These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness.

One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.

 

(Improvement Era, December 1960, pp.922-23). (p. 209)

 

---

---