RE: On the subject of Hell and Salvation
January 22, 2019 at 3:32 pm
(This post was last modified: January 22, 2019 at 3:37 pm by Fake Messiah.)
Christians may claim that God’s love is available to everyone who inhabits this planet and God gives everyone the opportunity to experience eternal life in heaven.
This however is a completely false assumption as this promise of eternal life is totally conditional:
1. Belief that Jesus is the son of God is an absolute requirement.
2. The ability to hear or receive knowledge of this promise by God is itself conditional.
According to the Bible, salvation is completely dependent on whether you have been fortunate enough to actually hear about Jesus and have then believed in him as the son of God.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
Matthew 28:19
Based on the requirement of belief in Jesus as the son of God (John 3:16) God’s love/ salvation has never been available to everyone as only a very small number of human beings living on the planet 2,000+ years ago would have had the opportunity to experience the life and ministry of Jesus. He reputedly preached only for between 1-3 years at most and only traveled to cities within 170 km of Jerusalem. There were at the time millions of people living on all the continents of the world including India, China, the Americas and the rest of Europe and Asia. There was no satellite television to carry the news and message to the ends of the earth as we have today. The plan failed miserably to achieve great success during or immediately following the alleged lifetime of Jesus.
Even today 70% of human beings have not been convinced.
If the promise of eternal life can only be obtained by hearing and accepting the Gospel then clearly God has missed reaching - the world - the vast majority of mankind from day one. We can also question the fairness and justice of such a plan. His love or plan of salvation has always been very selective, firstly, only for the Jewish nation and then only for those who have the opportunity to hear and hopefully believe the message of the gospel.
And also if you're a Christian you're not "safe" for different denomination have conditions for salvation. For many Christians, a pure life is required and salvation apparently can be lost if the rules of the church are disobeyed. A divorce, an abortion, sex outside marriage, failure to attend mass and other misdemeanors are generally counted as sins for Roman Catholics and must be confessed to, and absolved by, a priest. For others there is a requirement to be ‘born again,’ accepting that Jesus died for the sins of humankind. Another group requires the believers to ‘speak in tongues’ by being baptized with the Holy Spirit in order to be saved. Others require Baptism in water by total immersion for adults. Some Christian groups or sects require their members to be in ‘submission’ to the leadership or elders.
This however is a completely false assumption as this promise of eternal life is totally conditional:
1. Belief that Jesus is the son of God is an absolute requirement.
2. The ability to hear or receive knowledge of this promise by God is itself conditional.
According to the Bible, salvation is completely dependent on whether you have been fortunate enough to actually hear about Jesus and have then believed in him as the son of God.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
Matthew 28:19
Based on the requirement of belief in Jesus as the son of God (John 3:16) God’s love/ salvation has never been available to everyone as only a very small number of human beings living on the planet 2,000+ years ago would have had the opportunity to experience the life and ministry of Jesus. He reputedly preached only for between 1-3 years at most and only traveled to cities within 170 km of Jerusalem. There were at the time millions of people living on all the continents of the world including India, China, the Americas and the rest of Europe and Asia. There was no satellite television to carry the news and message to the ends of the earth as we have today. The plan failed miserably to achieve great success during or immediately following the alleged lifetime of Jesus.
Even today 70% of human beings have not been convinced.
If the promise of eternal life can only be obtained by hearing and accepting the Gospel then clearly God has missed reaching - the world - the vast majority of mankind from day one. We can also question the fairness and justice of such a plan. His love or plan of salvation has always been very selective, firstly, only for the Jewish nation and then only for those who have the opportunity to hear and hopefully believe the message of the gospel.
And also if you're a Christian you're not "safe" for different denomination have conditions for salvation. For many Christians, a pure life is required and salvation apparently can be lost if the rules of the church are disobeyed. A divorce, an abortion, sex outside marriage, failure to attend mass and other misdemeanors are generally counted as sins for Roman Catholics and must be confessed to, and absolved by, a priest. For others there is a requirement to be ‘born again,’ accepting that Jesus died for the sins of humankind. Another group requires the believers to ‘speak in tongues’ by being baptized with the Holy Spirit in order to be saved. Others require Baptism in water by total immersion for adults. Some Christian groups or sects require their members to be in ‘submission’ to the leadership or elders.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
