Christians look forward to a future which has not been verified, ever, by those who have lived in the past and experienced the future.

I can dream of a future where I will be singing in front of 1 million screaming fans, but I prefer to dream of more realistic scenarios.

(September 29, 2013 at 7:48 am)Airyaman Wrote: Christians look forward to a future which has not been verified, ever, by those who have lived in the past and experienced the future.

I can dream of a future where I will be singing in front of 1 million screaming fans, but I prefer to dream of more realistic scenarios.

Christians do have quite a bit of assurance that everlasting life exists.

The Bible as a book proves itself to be true.

A saved person has God the Holy Spirit within them which bears witness.

(September 29, 2013 at 7:53 am)SavedByGraceThruFaith Wrote: A saved person has God the Holy Spirit within them which bears witness.

Is there any way to demonstrate this? There must be, you are saying that god himself dwells within those who are saved and bears witness. Or does he only demonstrate this to the person in question?

(September 29, 2013 at 8:05 am)Tonus Wrote:

(September 29, 2013 at 7:53 am)SavedByGraceThruFaith Wrote: A saved person has God the Holy Spirit within them which bears witness.

Is there any way to demonstrate this? There must be, you are saying that god himself dwells within those who are saved and bears witness. Or does he only demonstrate this to the person in question?

The Bible says that God does indeed dwell within the saved person. It would be hard to demonstrate that because God does not in this age of grace work by signs. Although many of the saved do indeed show such a changed life, it may indeed give external evidence.

However, the inner experience cannot be shown.

I will give you an analogy.
Say there is a hot stove.
You can tell a child that the stove is hot and to not touch the stove or they will be burned.
Now the child must believe what was told to them on faith.
They cannot know that it is hot unless they touch the stove.

If they do touch the stove, then they will now know.

I can tell you that a saved person does have the witness of God within them. You can choose to believe or disbelieve what I just said.

The only way to know what that experience is like is to actually get saved, and then you will know.

So the short answer is that we can't know, we simply have to take your word for it. I will choose to disbelieve, then.

So we can't actually know unless we believe, and we can't believe unless we know and we can't know unless.............

(September 29, 2013 at 8:22 am)Darwinian Wrote: So we can't actually know unless we believe, and we can't believe unless we know and we can't know unless.............

You will never know the inner witness until you believe in Jesus Christ as Saviour.

It only takes simple faith in Jesus Christ to be saved.

Apart from the fact that a lot of people here are former xtians, muslims etc, your hot stove analogy fails to encompass the situation.

Unless it's a particularly dense or sheltered child, s/he is going to have a working knowledge of what "hot" means by the age at which verbal cautions are meaningful. Also by that age, they are likely to have developed a trust in their parents, not merely because of their authority but because what they will have said in the past has been reliable. So an injunction against touching a hot surface isn't necessarily the conflict between innocence, experience and authority that you purport.

However, if the child is as blank a slate as the one in your example, s/he will undoubtedly pick up on the concern in their parent's voice and be wary even when they do put their hand on the hot surface. But then, they will feel the heat well before they can burn themselves. In other words, unlike the example you chose to illustrate the choice between accepting authority and knowing what the alternative feels like, we have no way of knowing in reality if this authority of yours has our best interests at heart, if the things this authority wants us not to do are as harmful as its mouthpieces claim, or even if this authority is actually there at all.

A more accurate analogy would be along the lines of a child being told not to do something for no real reason other than arbitrary ones and if they still do the thing, or even think about doing it, Mummy is going to throw them into the hot stove and keep them burning in there forever.

(September 29, 2013 at 8:24 am)SavedByGraceThruFaith Wrote:

(September 29, 2013 at 8:22 am)Darwinian Wrote: So we can't actually know unless we believe, and we can't believe unless we know and we can't know unless.............

You will never know the inner witness until you believe in Jesus Christ as Saviour.

It only takes simple faith in Jesus Christ to be saved.

Just want to inform you, you might as well be speaking Wiccan phrases (whatever they may be) and casting spells at us if you post as you have the last few. None of this stuff means anything to us, you're not going to evangelize us with your "Witnessing 101" handbook. We've gone through all of this silliness well before you arrived and have long since brushed it away as not worth our time.

Hoping to save you (and us) some time...

Christian rhetoric? "All you need is faith." Well, all you need, sir, is to show yourself to the door. I will not take such a dishonest position as faith to hope for something that cannot first be verified.