Literary Discussions

Let us look at some righteous men of the Old Testament: Abraham, Enoch and Lot, Elijah (Elias) and Elisha (Elisaeus) . If there was no "born again" experience then whence their righteousness and rest assured that it was the righteousness that they wrought in their lives by exercise of their own free will which attracted God's attention to them. Enoch and Elijah were SO righteous that they never died but were stimply taken to heaven. If one counts Jesus' live ascent into heaven that makes three. It is believe that Enoch and Elijah will return at the end and will lie dead, martyred in the streets of Jerusalem. Where was Esther's born again experience. Her uncle, Mordecai, wrote to her saying "You have it within your choice to help your people survive the plots of Haman. If you chose NOT to then God will arrange for the help to come from elsewhere but you will have no share in the reward."  In the Book of Ezra where was the born again experience of Kin Darius, BELOVED OF GOD, who chose to help the Jews rebuild their temple.  I am a stupid old man dizzy with prescription pain medication at 2 a.m. and with a failing short term memory and I can still remember and paraphrase all this stuff as fast as I can type. It is not rocket science. It is all right under your noses but you are in denial. You want to be like the wealthy many with all his silos full who said to his soul "eat drink and be merry" but little did he know that the very night his soul would be required of him. You are lulled into complacency by the false security that you feel your cherry-picked verses offer you. Look at 19th century America and the two great awakenings and that most famous of sermons "How Fearful to fall into the hands of an angry God" .... surely you must realize that in the 19th century Protestant piety bore no resemblance to the feel good ministries of Joel Osteen and others. Otherwise, instead of long fire and brimstone sermons they would have just coaxed people to say "the magic words" - "Lord Jesus, I invite you into my life... etc..." and bingo, an instant "get out of hell free card."