I need help with my sermon tomorrow.
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He never said anything about his political affiliations or beliefs. Being "conservative" or "liberal" doesn't keep you from going to heaven. The only thing that gets you into heaven is having a relationship with God.
To truly answer this for yourself, picture yourself in a hospital bed dying of cancer or whatever. You know you've got less than a week left. What do you believe then? Believe me, that day is coming.
Everyone semi-kinda thinks they are bullet proof from the instant deaths (car wreck, accidents, heart attacks, murder, etc.) so they rationalize not thinking about death, especially in the US, while they are younger than say, 40. After that, it does begin to enter your mind.
Everyone semi-kinda thinks they are bullet proof from the instant deaths (car wreck, accidents, heart attacks, murder, etc.) so they rationalize not thinking about death, especially in the US, while they are younger than say, 40. After that, it does begin to enter your mind.
Well, that sounds way too Biblical for this forum, let's continue the politicized views, please.***
If it was left up to humans, noone would ever make it to heaven. Unless the Holy Spirit draws someone, they won't be saved. Jesus compared someone born of the Spirit to the wind in John 3.
8 The wind[e] blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
i'm so glad i let all this go 25 years or so ago. after years of studying, useless prayers, and consultations, I'm convinced that christianity is nothing more than the bastard offshoot of Judaism, stolen by a bunch of greeks and italians with an obsession with death and pedophilia, who appropriated most of the tenets of judaism, invented its own messiah, and then bullied its way on pain of torture or death across continents for 2000 years. It's passed time for this cult to go the way of the dinosaur.
Can you advise on why, in a thread about heaven, that you are worshipping conservatism?
This could be a big mirror moment for you to consider how much your worship politics vs God. Only you will know how much time you spend consuming political idolatry vs Biblical wisdom. I have no idea. Heck, I might've caused you to stop a Bible study just to answer this. If so, I apologize.
It's what I know about the compilation of the Bible. Has nothing to do with what I believe. Belief isn't something I have a choice about. Try believing 2+2=5. I don't think I said anything about authenticity. That's somewhat of a relative term anyway. Is it a book written by religious people and used by a religion as it's holy scripture? Yes. So I guess it's authentic in that sense. Accurate? One doesn't even have to go outside the Bible itself to see that it's not accurate as it has its own internal inconsistencies of accuracy. This thread makes the same point I make about the Bible. 15 people over a couple of days reading the same book saying it means 15 different things. Now imagine a compilation of writings on a general topic (the first 3/4 of it not even on the same topic as the last 1/4) written over about a thousand years by about 75 different people then translated, mistranslated, edited, changed, and interpreted for another couple of thousand years and here we are.
That was before I was converted to liberal. Thanks for those books on tape!***
Being a much less than perfect follower of Jesus, it pains me to read of your experience in churches. We have a number of families at our church with children on the spectrum and they are welcomed and loved, however I do notice the parents are bothered when they think their children are causing a disturbance. It is noticeable, but it is not something that the people of our church get worked up over. We just try to do our best to love them like Jesus does. I'm sure we make mistakes with that or say something wrong from time to time (we are, after all, sinful hypocrites in recovery who unfortunately tend to backslide from time to time), but they know that they are genuinely loved and wanted to be there. These families have commented to me on numerous occasions how welcome we make them feel compared to other churches they have attended.Well said.
Being on the spectrum & having horrible experiences with ignorant churchgoers who’ve driven me away, I consider myself unwelcome in churches.
I also think that many churches and churchgoers are not friendly towards people on the spectrum as well as other folks who are special needs.
Consequently, I rarely think about the concept of heaven.
For additional background, please refer to my comments in this thread:
Prayers for University of Virginia
Active Shooter. Reports are he is a former UVA football player.www.on3.com
It does take a little more work and planning to help meet the needs of people with special needs and on the spectrum, but that is what the church of Jesus Christ should be all about.
I just hope people know that the followers of Christ, even the very best, are not completely representative of Jesus.
Maroon Eagle, may God bless you and others like you who feel that the church has let you down or been hurtful to you.
No offense man, but the way someone looks, the name used for the messiah, really doesn't matter in the grand scheme.
I seriously do not believe, nor can anyone ever make me believe that God would forsake billions of people just because they were born in areas of the planet that does not believe in some dude named Jesus. What sense does that make? God knows all, right? So are you telling me, everyone that was alive at the moment Jesus was crucified, including millions of native americans, went to hell? Not to mention the millions of people that lived more than 200 miles away. Word of Christianity didn't make it to the new world until 1492 or there about. No way in God's plan does that make sense at all. And if that is the way it is, well that is BS.
As I get older the more and more I hate the idea of heaven and hell or Messiah's and God. It is all make believe, to teach morals and ethics. Because without stories that are easy to hand down verbally, society in 1st century would have been crazier than it actually was.
So how do you get to heaven, if it exists...... Look after your fellow man, try to have empathy for those less fortunate, help when you see a need.
The bible is a collection of made up stories, written down hundreds of years after the fact. Hell we can't even get people to agree what started the civil war in this country, and we had newspapers documenting it daily over a period of 40 years leading up to it.
Don't quote the Bible, when making an argument for the Bible. Please use another example.
So if the Holy Spirit doesn’t choose me, I am going to hell? If I am not chosen, why I would I worship?
I'm just curious as to why you are the way you are.
Questions i'll ask God one day.
Obviously I can’t and won’t even begin to answer on behalf of the families in question in your church. With that stated…
My experiences date back from the times before ASD became something much more commonly diagnosed and I was officially diagnosed as an adult less than 10 years ago.
Many people consider me to be mildly on the spectrum but that’s not really true.
People on it as well as their family members know there’s no such thing as mild spectrum: folks like me react to different things differently.
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like being in really loud places where people are talking over others since I get sensory overload headaches— people talking over others in noise. Loud music on the other hand is melodic.
Two more of my common bugaboos are inferred and indirect communication: people who talk in that manner slip things by me all the time or give me headaches when they backtrack all over the place.
I prefer people to be direct. But they want to be nice and indirect — which to me isn’t nice at all.
I see many of my childhood friends — a lot of whom think of themselves as Moral Majority style Christians — post things on social media about nitpicky people and making fun on them and I’m sickened when they do that because one of the many tendencies of folks on the spectrum is a much higher likelihood of nitpickiness.
Instead of praying for me, pray for your fellow churchgoers so that they learn to accept others and not drive them away.
I didn't say anything about hell. And you worship because of what Christ did to give you hope of eternal salvation.. If what Christ did means nothing to you then you obviously are not saved and there is no need to worship
Where else do I find examples of what it takes to be saved? The Bible is where those answers are.
It seems to me that you think God is unfair and you don’t understand his ways, and therefore you decided it was not real. That is certainly your choice but I’m curious if you feel that way about everything? If you don’t understand something fully or feel something is not fair, do you just dismiss it?
Truth is… no matter if you are a believer or a non believer, no one can prove their position. We are all taking a leap of faith. Some, including myself, choose to have faith that God is real. Some, like you, choose to have faith God is not real. And again that is fine, it just seems odd to me that you pick life not being fair as what seems to be your main reason for not believing. As kids, we are all taught from a young age that life is not fair.
I sincerely pray that all of you SPSers get to experience the afterlife according to the spiritual/religious beliefs you may hold to.
Personally, I'd be just as tickled resting in the bosom of Abraham as I would being attended by 72 virgins or eating 72 raisins.
Perhaps eternally connected souls exists. But even if they do, your particular you-ness: memories, consciousness, and your belief system - that all dies with your brain. It's not housed in a cloud somewhere.
So don't count on being able to say "I told you so" or "WTF!" if you should wake up in the great beyond.
Personally, I'd be just as tickled resting in the bosom of Abraham as I would being attended by 72 virgins or eating 72 raisins.
Perhaps eternally connected souls exists. But even if they do, your particular you-ness: memories, consciousness, and your belief system - that all dies with your brain. It's not housed in a cloud somewhere.
So don't count on being able to say "I told you so" or "WTF!" if you should wake up in the great beyond.
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