Featured How did you come to believe?

Well, you will just have to doubt. and that's OK because I don't depend on you, or any other person, to get into Heaven. There was never a time in my memory that I didn't believe in Jesus. I remember well the night I made a public profession of something I had always believed, but that was not a turning point. It was exciting and meaningful but I didn't take on any new beliefs or behavior.

Taking your model of salvation to its logical conclusion, there would be a time in everyone’s life when he would go to hell if he died. Young children are innocent and we believe God takes care of them in death. However, as soon as that innocence passes and they can make rational decisions they are lost. And this is something that happens in an instant. We don’t know when it happens but God does. Today you have an innocent child. Tomorrow you have a child who is capable of making rational decisions (age of accountability) and he is lost. That child had better get saved fast because if he dies tomorrow night without being saved he will go to hell. This is the absurd result of saying everyone must have knowledge of the time he got saved.

"Getting saved" is an expression that is largely unheard of in the Christian traditions that have a confirmation process for young believers. This would include Methodist, Anglican, Lutheran and Catholic. They bring them in, have them recite the Apostles Creed or some variation of it, lay hands on them, and then they are full fledged members of the church. There is no conversion experience because there is nothing to convert. They are already believers and have been their entire lives.

 

Yes Yes Yes & "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / the soul from purgatory springs". :laugh:

Side note: Wonderful theology!!! Sending people to hell!

 

WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

 

I was raised on a once a week trip to ss to a Methodist church on and off up to about the age of twelve or thirteen. From what I recall, I don't remember any urgency for anyone to get saved. I do recall once or twice they announced a week or two in advance that on a certain Sunday morning there was going to be a call to the alter for anyone who wanted to come forward and give their life to Christ, so we were to mark our calenders and prepare ourselves, I guess.

 

Zenas:

Yes, I would always doubt.
The Bible says and commands: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."
It speaks of repentance. I small child cannot believe and repent. They don't have the mental capacity to understand the gospel, the atonement of Christ, the deity of Christ, etc., that would enable them to be saved. There is no such thing as "being saved for all your life."
Jesus himself condemned that idea when the rich young ruler replied to him: "Master all these things have I done from my youth up."
Just as you can't keep the law from your youth up; neither can you believe from your youth up. There must be a point when you start believing.

Except it be for the grace of God, that is true.

No child is innocent. We are born in sin. We all have: "original sin," "a sin nature," "a depraved nature," etc. I believe in the depravity of man. It is passed down from one generation to another and has been ever since the Fall of Adam. This whole world is under a curse, because of Adam's sin. No man is innocent, and no person is born innocent. Such a doctrine is heresy.

And who makes that random decision? You? Do you dare to put yourself in the place of God and can tell when a person passes a place of innocence to rational decision. That is a terrible burden to have to hold the eternal destiny of people in your hands.

You hold to a strange doctrine. All of us are born sinners. No one is born a saint (or innocent). When they reach an age of accountability they must make a decision of whether they will trust Christ or reject Christ. It is that simple.
You have confused and compounded the simple gospel message.
The fact that you cannot remember a time when you either received or rejected the gospel message is a cause for concern.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
The knowledge of the gospel is that which gives you the faith to believe the gospel. Knowledge comes first. Faith comes after knowledge. Then one puts faith in the person (Christ), and the knowledge they have learned about him--that he can (and will) save, according to the promises of God (His Word)--the knowledge that you have previously learned.

I am not concerned with traditions or denominations.
I base my beliefs on the Bible.
"Being saved" is Biblical terminology.
Unless you BE saved
Romans 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Believe and BE saved. Be Saved. It is about "being saved." That is what salvation is all about. And that is an event that happens in a person's life--when they WERE saved.

If they think they are Christians and never consider them as lost sinners, then they will never come to Christ. That is sad. Until a person sees himself as lost, that person cannot be saved.

 

DHK, do you believe that young children who did before reaching the age of accountability go to hell? Why or why not?

Do you believe that young children who die after reaching the age of accountability and before "being saved" go to hell? Why or why not?

 

Since we are waiting on our honorable Moderator to provide his answer, I was wondering how you would answer the same two questions Zenas....so would you please be so kind?

Also what do you consider the age of accountability?

 

Tell me....are you a Roman Catholic? :BangHead:

 

So did Anglicans, Episcopals, United Methodists, Lutherans ....all Sacramental churches in fact held onto certain catholic dogma. Even more than Reformed Churches.

 

Oh, no!!! Not another ex-Baptist Cat'lic on this Forum. Oh, the horror of it all!!! :laugh:

After I joined this forum, I became a Catholic Christian after years of following the exchanges between evangelicals and Catholics (long before I joined as a Baptist and the Catholics were banned as "proselytes") on this board. Eventually, after much study of the Early Church and the Catechism I became convinced the Catholic Church WAS biblical Christianity. Zenas shared that he/she had been on the same path but was still involved in a Baptist church.

I'm pretty sure Zenas shared his/her conversion story of being a Baptist and finding Christ's Holy Catholic Church not that long ago here.

 

Yes indeed, it is a horrible backward regression theologically but sometimes (Unbelievable as it may seem) it does happen.

Funnier still (and I'm sure you missed it) some clown today had the unmitigated gall to suggest that I was still a Catholic---using the ignorant commentary that, "once a catholic always a catholic" or some such rubbish. Funny stuff Right! :laugh:

 

Right! Bless you my son.

 

When David's infant child was about to die, David wept, fasted and prayed that God would spare the infant's life. When he discerned from the tone of his servants that the child had died he inquired if it was so. When his servants confirmed that to him, he arose, washed himself, changed his garments and assumed his kingly duties. His servants, astonished, asked why he mourned before the child died and not after.
--David replied: Why should I mourn now. "I shall go to him; he shall not come to me."
--David was sure that he would see his child in paradise.

David trusted in the mercy of God.
I trust in the mercy of God.
"It is of the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed; his compassion fails not. Great is His faithfulness."

All of that does not change what the Bible teaches. We are all born in sin.
Baptists teach the depravity of man.
Catholics teach the depravity of man.
Augustine taught the depravity of man.

What is your problem in not believing this very essential truth of the Bible.

 

I'm rather uncertain on exactly when I was saved, having prayed many times but I believe that I am now

 

I came to believe through the wittnness of born again christians.

I became intriged by them. How could they be so happy and peacefull, when they were not doing the things that WE thought bought happiness. Reefer, drugs, etc.

I finally broke and came to Christ.

What a change from then on!!! Praise God!!

 

I found Christ while in the Marine Corpse. No man had the power to get me through what I went through but Jesus Christ gave me the strength. I've done alot of backsliding since then and veered from the narrow road but am back on track again. I put Christ on the back burner for awhile but he never gave up on me. :godisgood: