I belive that both need to be preached ,

this is my thinking, God is our heavenly Father, a Father show us love, takes cares of our needs, watches over us, and disciplines us when we have done wrong.

I think i saw that movie a longggg time ago,

By the way, Dee, I have the 3rd chapter up of Tribes and will try to get the fourth up before I take off and enter incommunicado land for nine days.

thanks for the visit, and comment

I got some thoughts on this, but right now I got a bad headcold, so if ya let me , i will come back later and give my thoughts on this!

take care
huggs

Welcome to the conversation! I understand exactly what you are saying and agree with you about all you said. I also agree with your thought that “It will be eternal torment to be separated from God! To me, that is what true hell is.”

My point is, and maybe I haven’t stated it very clearly or need to clarify it here, is that condemning people in everything they say and do and for being how they are, which most know all too well, anyway (I think – I certainly don’t need anyone else telling me my own faults because I’m all too aware of them), is NOT the way to “convert” them (and I don’t really care for that description) or to bring them to the point that they want to be safe and loved and redeemed (and baptized) and given life forever as God’s child.

In fact – let me interject this point of view into the discussion. I’ve done a series of posts in the past here on my blog I call “View From the 80′s”, which are all notes and the voice of wisdom from my 85 year old mom (hi, Mom!) who has been a Christian for way more than 60 years.

My mom reads my blog. She read this post this afternoon and called me. She said she had been thinking along the very same lines for the past several days as to what I wrote. My thoughts. In other words, my mom is some 750 miles away in Abilene, Texas and we haven’t talked in four or five days, but what we both have been thinking was the same when it comes to the topic at hand.

She called me because what I wrote stirred her thinking and brought to mind a scripture she thought summed up what I said here today in this post. It is John 3:16 and the very next verse – John 3:17.

Here it is:

“16For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

My point is that we reach others by being positive, not negative and that is where we should concentrate our message.

Pat – With regard to all you say, I think that it is only AFTER we become Christians that we become so sensitive to eternal life as compared to being without God – the life-giver – for even one second.

What we need to be preaching is the GOOD news! If we turn to God, if we put our faith and our trust and hope in Christ Jesus, we will, indeed, have life forever and ever because our Father God is the creator of all that is or will ever be. Without Him we have no hope and that, more than being a condemnation, is a terrible, terrible tragedy that those who turn away will face in the day of judgment.

I urge you all to see the movie Elmer Gantry and think about all that it has to say to all of us about living a Christian life before everyone around us. We see examples of all kinds of Christians with all kinds of shortcomings in the movie and I think we can learn a lot about life and ourselves if we will think about it for a while.

In the end – even in the movie – it is through the good news – through God’s love – and God’s grace that we are saved and not through ourselves or through condemnation.

I also appreciate and agree with this post. However, I think we MUST also teach eternal torment. It will be eternal torment to be separated from God! To me, that is what true hell is. Heaven will be an incomparable blessing simply because we will be united with Him forever. That is the blessing we need to teach.

It does take time once we become His child to “learn to yearn” for what we are missing as sinners, the relationship. We start our Christian walk being grateful for sins forgiven. As we grow in Him, it becomes inconceivable to live eternally without Him.

Blessings,
Pat

I’m just against the Elmer Gantry style lambasting about “eternal hell and torment” and the evils of “booze and women”, etc, and this idea that the worm is going to turn and fires will burn for eternity hereafter if one doesn’t rush to be saved that second.

I think we need to stress the difference between eternal life in God, who gives life to all creation, including satan and all of his angels, as opposed to permanent destruction and death in the absence of life as God gives it. Does that make sense?

In other words, we shouldn’t scare people to death even when we talk about what it means to be God’s child and a Christian. You are right when you say:

“we do need to emphasis God’s love and eternal life, but those things are much more beautiful, powerful, and majestic in light of God’s Holiness and Wrath.” I agree wholeheartedly.

Let me throw out a question for all of you “preacher types!” What is perdition and is that a Biblical term or idea? If so how does it fit in here? If not, what do we make of it?

Cheers! Dee

lots of people get wet and say prayers but are simply trading one philosophy of life for another.

we do need to emphasis God’s love and eternal life, but those things are much more beautiful, powerful, and majestic in light of God’s Holiness and Wrath.

if we get rid of the penny, how can we add our “two cents” worth? that was mine