itsnotme4321

I've heard in church before and from the mouths of other Christians that there is such a thing known as the age of accountability which sends all children to heaven. I have a problem though because I don't see this concept anywhere in scripture. Actually, the implications of this doctrine (if it even is one) are really frightening because it would seem to imply that a person has to be able of his/her OWN ability/capability/understanding to be saved.

That would imply that Jesus' death on calvary was not enough - it also takes something else. It makes grace and mercy no longer grace and mercy.

So for those that think that the age of accountability is something other than conception, please show me with scripture where the bible speaks of this special age. I would like to know the age especially.

It usually says something along the lines of "pray and ask Jesus into your heart and you will be saved"

So my question then is, is Jesus some tooth fairy type of diety to you that you can just do something and He must comply.

If one of the 50,000 atheists on this board simply prayed that prayer, you mean to tell me that they would spend eternity in Heaven?

Don't forget that we need to repent and God causes repentance. You would do well to not lie against the Lord and erase that statement from your posts and instead speak the truth and let Gods truth work on them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPI2xYtso-s

i pretty much think this a great mock of youth pastors (and i am one) except the part about family guy. i don't watch that. :)

Dictionary.com defines species as this -

the major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, regarded as the basic category of biological classification, composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species.

So, how have we ever had one species evolve into another? How did the dinosaur evolve into a bird if once a dinosaur became a bird, it could not longer go breed with a dinosaur. Or how could a monkey have evolved into a homosapien in the same scenario? Lets say that by chance, a male an female evolved at the same time. They would have had to have been at the same place and then survive and the offspring would have had to surprise also.

It seems like it takes a lot of faith to believe this. How can evolution happen if this is the case?

"getting what you don't deserve" than how is it that you say you have to accept or choose Christ of your own free will?

Don't get me wrong, I know that a Christian will accept or choose Christ, but in order for grace to be grace, doesn't God have to initiate that thought in the individual first. If not, then doesn't the responsibility for your salvation lay on your ability to make a decision. Wouldn't it provide room for you to boast - as in I was humble or smart enough to accept Christ, but (so and so) wasn't.

Believing isn't a work by any means, it's the evidence that you have been reborn.

Do you believe Mary remained a virgin? If so, do you base this off of scripture or is this something that the Pope said or something like that?

I wonder where Christians get this from. If you consider that Romans 9 says -

13 As it is written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”

14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not!

15 For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.”

16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

Can we come to God on our own. This says no -

6 However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory,

8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

9 But as it is written:

“ Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,

Nor have entered into the heart of man

The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”

10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.

12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

When it comes to faith, people always seem to make the claim that they have faith which saves them and then they attribute it to themselves. But doesn't God give the hearing ear? (Proverbs 20:12)

Romans 10:17 - So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Ephesians 2:8-10 -

8For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,

9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.

10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

If we can come to understand the gospel and love God all on our own, then is it still grace that saves us or is it our own spirituality? Ephesians 2:8-10 plainly says that we are saved by grace through faith, NOT OF OURSELVES lest anyone should boast.

How does free will fit into all this?

I've been seeing some pretty harsh and loveless answers on the board and it needs to stop. For those of you who call your self Christian, why do you feel the need to drag Christ through the mud to make your point? You don't need to call people fools or damn them to hell - that's not your place.

I have an Alaskan Malamute. He is going on 8 months old now and very hyper. Is he old enough to go for a jog with me in the mornings?

Sorry for not know any other way to respond to this but I just saw you post this link in another question. I hope you are still online to view this. here is the challenge -

Mr. Chesterton asks; Can Protestants be taken seriously by the man in the street?

It's really not that long of a quote, take the time to read it and respond in support of Sola-Scriptura if you can;

"To this

I owe the fact that I find it very difficult to take some of the

Protestant propositions even seriously. What is any man who has

been in the real outer world, for instance, to make of the

everlasting cry that Catholic traditions are condemned by the

Bible? It indicates a jumble of topsy-turvy tests and tail-foremost

arguments, of which I never could at any time see the sense. The

ordinary sensible sceptic or pagan is standing in the street (in the

supreme character of the man in the street) and he sees a

procession go by of the priests of some strange cult, carrying their

object of worship under a canopy, some of them wearing high

head-dresses and carrying symbolical staffs, others carrying

scrolls and sacred records, others carrying sacred images and

lighted candles before them, others sacred relics in caskets or

cases, and so on. I can understand the spectator saying, "This is all

hocus-pocus"; I can even understand him, in moments of irritation,

breaking up the procession, throwing down the images, tearing up

the scrolls, dancing on the priests and anything else that might

express that general view. I can understand his saying, "Your

croziers are bosh, your candles are bosh, your statues and scrolls

and relics and all the rest of it are bosh." But in what conceivable

frame of mind does he rush in to select one particular scroll of the

scriptures of this one particular group (a scroll which had always

belonged to them and been a part of their hocus-pocus, if it was

hocus-pocus); why in the world should the man in the street say

that one particular scroll was not bosh, but was the one and only

truth by which all the other things were to be condemned? Why

should it not be as superstitious to worship the scrolls as the

statues, of that one particular procession? Why should it not be as

reasonable to preserve the statues as the scrolls, by the tenets of

that particular creed? To say to the priests, "Your statues and

scrolls are condemned by our common sense," is sensible. To say,

"Your statues are condemned by your scrolls, and we are going to

worship one part of your procession and wreck the rest," is not

sensible from any standpoint, least of all that of the man in the street."

Quoted from GK.Chesterton "The Catholic Church and Conversion"

So, the reason that Christians are adamant about Jesus being the only way is because that is what He claimed. Christianity is exclusive because that is what our Lord said. John 14:6 - "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." The overly taken out of context John 3:16 says "for God so loved the world that whosoever should believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life".

It's "whoever believes in Him", not Allah, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Mohamed or believes in Him and gets baptized, performs vows, pays alms, attends church, does good works, goes to confessional, or whatever.

While those "ors" are good things and evidence that somebody really has been born again, they of themselves do not make a person saved. God saves us by grace alone.

Plus this recent century's Catholic stance of pretty much anything goes is new to them even. They too used to say that Christianity was the only way (albeit theres was perverted) but a clear sign that they are not sticking to the scriptures is that they now support the stance which the Chesterton challenge clearly puts out - anything goes.

They could be divided up into sides by the different elements they represented - fire, water, earth and air. The heat rub would reveal what team they were on