Thursday, January 20, 2011

What must I do to be saved

Every argument has some validity even spurious arguments. It is true that Paul said "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" but to me it is not obvious that ALL shall be saved and it is not obvious to me the salvation is by faith alone in the sense of simply once "saying the magic words" as Charles Stanley's ministry describes it of "inviting Jesus into your life as your savior" and now you have the ETERNAL SECURITY OF SALVATION and no matter what you do (even if you become a serial killer) nothing can rob you of that eternal security of salvation because you "said those magic words."  I don't believe in that sort of theology. Jesus said that the way is NARROW and there are FEW that find it. Jesus did not say that EVERYONE will be saved. When that man came to Jesus and said "Good Master what shall I do to gain eternal life?" do you not find it odd that Jesus does not say "Well, you must confess that I am God, take me as your personal savior and then you shall be saved."  Jesus does say that there is only ONE good and that is God, and then asks the man WHY he calls Jesus good (in other words Jesus does not forbid the man to call him good but intimates that the man is calling Jesus God) but in the very next breath Jesus says "keep the commandments" now... in my mind ... that is WORKS so there is Jesus telling someone that they may be saved by WORKS, now should we suppose that Jesus is LYING.  What is FOOLISH about the five FOOLISH virgins and why are they locked out of the wedding feast. I say that ALL TEN were virgins and possessed purity but the OIL in the Greek language sounds almost like the word for charity/mercy which implies WORKS, and the foolish virgins were foolish because they had not done sufficient good works. Now when God warns Moses that a plague of poisonous serpents is coming and tells Moses to erect the bronze serpent and INVITE everyone to gaze upon that serpent... not EVERYONE exercises their free will and ACTS to participate, and so those who choose NOT to avail themselves are bitten and die. I would suggest to anyone that the get the 5 volumes of Jaroslav Pelikan's History of Christian Doctrine. Pelikan was a Yale Sterling Professor of history and had no particular theological agenda or ax to grind. But if you read those five volumes you will see how Christianity evolved through the centuries. Pelikan himself was raised in some denomination like Congregational (I forget) but as he wrote his books he came to see things personally from the Eastern Orthodox perspective.

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