Lethal Religion and SBC

[T. D. Webb]

[Gene Scarborough]

Same Grace and Peace to you!

However you have not answered the real question above!

[T. D. Webb]

[Gene Scarborough]

T.D.--That still does not answer my basic question: What happens to those who have never had a chance to hear the Gospel message through no fault of their own?

The Scripture you quote is assuming a Judeo-Christian viewpoint and almost implies that God is a given. If you are going to condemn one to hell who has never heard nor had a chance to reaspond, it does not make sense to me.

[T. D. Webb]

[Gene Scarborough]

Good try, but woefully short!!!

The scriptures you cite deal with a day and time when no one knew of a Eastern Hemisphere devoid of any witness about Christ. Nor did they care what happened to those outside the immediate influence of the Apostles and Paul.

Sure, they were convinced that Jesus was The Christ. They presented him as such and called on people to accept their witness. What they shared had no other sharing beyond what a man traveling by foot or boat could do. It also got corrupted as with the first debate of whether a believer must first be Jewish in order to be a Christian going to heaven.

SO-----what of those who never heard in that day / those so far way from the Holy Land they never heard / those who had nothing to do with the Greco-Roman-Egyptian kingdoms of the day?????

They believed and were certain about it---my English ancestors never heard from being so far away = WHAT ABOUT THEM???

[T. D. Webb]

[Sandy]

[Gene Scarborough]

Sandy-- By what you contend, the Great White Father of Native American concept must be God. The Budda is capable of being a part of salvation as is Jesus. Every culture has a spiritual dimension, but if we are to require them to conform to our heritage based on Middle Eastern concepts, then either we are in that mode or we are going to Hell.

T.D.--You speak constantly of "Scripture" which is "graphe" which includes both the documents accepted into the Canon as well as other "writings" circulating side-by-side among the First Christians. If you can't have identical consistency between the 4 Gospels, how do you go about elevating them to stuff I must accept to the word????

I certainly place my faith and trust in the Bible. I have no problems simply saying, "Those things which don't make perfect sense, I am glad to accept by faith." Just don't ask me to deny that the writers of the Bible were convinced the earth was flat and floated between the heavens and the waters. If you went too far away from land, you would fall off the 4 corners. Capernicus and Galileo were threatened with their life when the Church insisted on the biblical view and they were theorizing that the earth circled the sun and rotated on its axis and that it was round. Now, either you accept the Bible and its world view and refuse ever to fly across the waters of take a ship, or you acknowledge their world view affected their sense of the "ends of the earth."

[Dr. James Willingham]

[/b] Hey, Gene: Evidently you never studied theology or missiology or tried to learn the facts about Messianic expectations among the nations. In A.H. Strong's Systematic Theology, he tells of the conversion of a Hindu or Buddhist, I forget which, that occurred before the missionaries ever came with the Gospel. He also tells of the conversion of a tribe of Africans who were converted a generation of two before the Gospel came. The acknowledgement of both the fellow from India and the tribe of Africans was this: That (Jesus) is who we believe in. We did not know His name." The same thing happened here in the United States, when the Great Spirit dealt with an Indian in Indiana before the preachers ever came. He felt the great burden of his sins under the work of the Great Spirit, and He cried for forgivnness and it came to him. When the ministers came preaching the Gospel, he said, "That's what and Jesus is who I believe." He became the pastor of the First Primitive Baptist Church of Wabash, Indiana and served it for 40 years. Cf. Stanley Phillips, The Primitive Baptists of Indiana (I think that is the title), Master's thesis. Ball State University. Dr. Stanley (Ed.D) was the only speaker at the celebration of the service of Dr. Gordon Clark, the noted philosopher and theologian of the Presbyterians at Butler University....back in the 60s. Gene...a poisonous snake is still a poisonous snake, regardless of how much you commisserate with it's condition, and it will bite you. Even little copperheads put a man in the hospital near my first church. He thought they were fishing worms. Your sympathy for lost souls is commendable, but they are still deadly vipers even as we were and still are - though we have a new nature to go along with the old poisonous nature which makes for interesting living. God grant you, dear brother, the grace to see the truth about man's sinfulness, original sin, total depravity and disability, which Jesus clearly taught. The approach to scripture of the so-called Enlightenment and rationalism is really old French Infidelity changed into criticism by the German theologues of the 1800s and sanctified by British and American Scholars as Higher Criticism. It is silly to let God's enemies set the standards by which you approach the Bible. Jesus thought so much of the Bible that He said, " Have you not read that which was spoken to you by God."(Mt.22:31) He was talking of the statement made perhaps 1500 years before to Moses as being the very words God was actually speaking to the Sadduccees of His day and the same words are spoken to you and me today.

[T. D. Webb]

[Gene Scarborough]

It's FAITH, brother, FAITH!!!

I have read and studied all the distractions trying to cast doubt and demean those of us with both brains and faith---you don't have to take out your brain to be a believer!!!

The Timothy passage use of "Scripture being inspired" is referring to ALL WRITINGS in circulation as Paul wrote Timothy. Many of these were not included in our Canon---and that's the facts Jack!!!

[Sandy]

[T. D. Webb]

[Jim]

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

Think long and hard on this mantra:

The opposite of faith is not doubt----
The opposite of faith is ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY!

[Jim]

[Stephen Fox]

Original post did not focus on Faith and Works, but as this discussion has evolved maybe Colin Harris can inflect Jim and Scarborough:

http://www.ethicsdaily.com/do-christian ... -cms-17956

[Jim]

[Gene Scarborough]

I think you are being way too picky on this one, Jim.

Frankly, I find the statement inspiring for us to get busy with ministry which draws people to Christ and fellow Christians as well as other people of a religious zeal.

[Stephen Fox]

http://lp.wileypub.com/Kimball/questions.html

[Gene Scarborough]

So what's comment, Stephen?????

[Stephen Fox]

[Ed Pettibone]