smokeyparkin wrote:Hmmm. ok maybe I’m getting a little over excited here. But isn't the get out of hell free card only through the path of Jesus? -- Accept Jesus and you will be forgiven? The idea of hell as punishment is fine, but the get out of hell I find a little strange.
So you'd rather have no chance? See, the reality is that a person cannot live a sin-free life.
Some guy rapes and kills some people -- when he gets to the gates of hell Jesus says 'accept me and I will forgive you of your sin and you can go and join your victims in heaven and everything will be fine.'
I had a hard time once understanding and even accepting this is the case. Until I heard Dawn Smith Jordan speak. Back in the 1980s, Dawn's sister, Shari, was brutally raped and murdered by Larry Gene Bell. Now the state of South Carolina convicted him and sentenced him to death for the murders of Shari, a 9 year old child, and at least one other person. Before his execution, he wrote Dawn a letter and shared with her that he had come to Christ and was sorry for what he had done, especially for the trauma he put her family through. Dawn's position was that she herself had forgiven him, and that it was not for her to decide whether or not Bell would be in heaven. But if he was truly sorry and repented, she would see him there. I think, however, that the words of the old hymn that says, "the things of this world will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace," are appropriate here. In fact, I think that there is no sin we are inacapable of being forgiven of, and that the life in the world will be forgotten in heaven, and our actions on earth will be forgotten. Even the worst, horrific sins we committed there.
It all sounds too made up and designed with the highlight of potential members in-mind. As before stated, during a time where the outer boundaries of the Roman Empire saw a "craze" of start-up religions, something like a get out a hell free card would be a huge deciding factor when Mr Peasant is picking whom to give his coins to!
Know what I mean?
No, I don't know what you mean. There were a great deal of religions that dealt with the fact that you did on earth what made you feel good. You forget the fact that before Constantine, there were hundreds of years of martyrdom and persecution for Christians. How does a religion survive that given your logic?
