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emeraldisle
Guest
You can’t do enough to know that you’ll be on the good side of Gods judgement and thats why we need the Lord Jesus, He is good enough and He can save us from Gods righteous judgement.
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expectthebest
Guest
Do you know that you are saved?
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expectthebest
Guest
Because if you take it literally, I means we have a pour chance of being saved. That mean you and I and everybody else. If we really have a poor chance of being saved, we’d better all join monisteries and pray every waking minute for the rest of our lives. We’d better start living in fear. That’s why it’s important.
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emeraldisle
Guest
Do I believe that the Lord Jesus has saved me? YES
Can the Lord Jesus save anyone? YES
One of the titles the Lord Jesus has is “Saviour”!
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
**There is no such thing as “doing enough” - He is the only Saviour, man is not; because man can no more save himself from sin than he can raise himself from death. Man-centred salvation, is not salvation at all. **
**If we could save ourselves, the Death of Christ for our salvation would have been a pointless waste of time. That He suffered such great & terrible things to atone for our sins & expiate our guilt & gain foir us a perfect & eternal salvation proves that we are utterly unable to help ourselves. **To save ourselves, we would have to be Christ Himself.
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expectthebest
Guest
Ok. You are right. We can’t save ourselves. How do we ever know if we are saved or not? If I’m not mistaken, the Church teaches that we don’t ever really know. Protestestants believe they are saved. Boy, that sure would be nice.
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Jerry-Jet
Guest
So let me get this straight: are you saying that we shouldn’t believe Jesus when Jesus says “Few” because that is a truth we wouldn’t want to hear?
What sense does that make?
The proper response to “Few” taught byJesus may not be to join a monastery but maybe just maybe do you think it might be to obey St. Paul when he says in scripture “to WORK out you salvation with FEAR and trembling”?
Seems like a plan to me–seems like it corroborates Jesus saying “Few”.
If Jesus says “Few” the “Few” must be true because Jesus does not lie!
This isn’t rocket science folks.
The awful truth that most people won’t accept is that salvation is forfeited by many saved people who die in a state of mortal sin and since they die in that state LOSE their salvation and yes do go to Hell!
The truth of Jesus’ teaching is not dependent upon whether we like it or not!
What sense does that make?
The proper response to “Few” taught byJesus may not be to join a monastery but maybe just maybe do you think it might be to obey St. Paul when he says in scripture “to WORK out you salvation with FEAR and trembling”?
Seems like a plan to me–seems like it corroborates Jesus saying “Few”.
If Jesus says “Few” the “Few” must be true because Jesus does not lie!
This isn’t rocket science folks.
The awful truth that most people won’t accept is that salvation is forfeited by many saved people who die in a state of mortal sin and since they die in that state LOSE their salvation and yes do go to Hell!
The truth of Jesus’ teaching is not dependent upon whether we like it or not!
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Lief_Erikson
Guest
Not really. The general doctrine only comes from God’s foreknowledge of what people’s individual judgments will be, not from predestination.
In the final analysis, it is. For the person prefers to do whatever he’s being forced to do than experience more torture. That is the decision of the will. There is a choice between two options and the will chooses the less painful one, under duress, but still it is the will that makes the final decision on the matter. No torturer can just decide for the victim that the person will give in. The victim always makes the final choice, even though that choice is sometimes under massive pressure.
The Church does teach that people are less guilty if they do something bad under duress than they are if they do it on a lark. But the Early Church saints repeatedly endured torture for an hour or two before their deaths rather than experience torture for eternity, according to the writings of the Early Church Fathers. So there is a free will judgment in there.
You’re not responding to the case scenario I presented: Would you abolish free will to prevent a car theft?
Well, everyone who goes to hell will disagree with you. They will choose Hell rather than Heaven of their own volition, separating themselves from God purely of their own desires and wills and thus creating all their tortures themselves. They’ll be doing very much the same thing the angels did that fell from heaven. They had tasted of the glory and goodness of God and knew what they were rejecting, but they rejected it anyway of their own choice because they wanted the alternative more, even if that alternative is horrible suffering. It’s rather like a sexually promiscuous person who gets STDs from his behavior and yet insists upon pursuing it in spite of his torment. That’s a little sample of hell. There are lots of those kinds of pieces of hell on Earth, just as there are pieces of heaven here too.
Well, if you were to end up in Hell, you wouldn’t feel that way because you’d have chosen to go there yourself. Hell is separation from God. People make that choice on Earth a lot, and suffer for it, but persist in spite of that suffering and the evil that results from their conduct. Their actions reveal a preference for Hell over Heaven.
We sinned with Adam. His sin is our sin, as he was our leader, the head and firstborn of humanity.
We couldn’t do anything good without free will, and we couldn’t have free will without the possibility of choosing hell. If we couldn’t do anything good, we’d have no real connection with heaven, because heaven involves unity with God, and unity with God involves good deeds. Therefore we could not exist as intelligent life forms without the possibility of hell.
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JReducation
Guest
I’m very confused about one thing on this thread. This whole thread started with a sermon by the Franciscan St. Leonard.
But it has derailed into who goes to heaven and hell. St. Leonard did not preach is sermon with that intent. We have to put St. Leonard in his proper context.
St. Leonard was a Friar Minor. The mission entrusted to the Friars Minor was to preach conversion. In his sermon Leonard shows us why people go to hell and how much God loves us.
I have not seen in this thread any of St. Leonard’s words. If we examine his words, we see that he lays out a plan of faithful living in response to God’s love.
He’s not encouraging his audience to spend their time figuring out who is going to hell and why. To do that would have been a direct disobedience to the rule of the Friars Minor which prohibits such kind of preaching. The rule explicitly tells the friars to preach conversion and to preach the love of God.
St. Leonard mentions all the things that man must convert from. But why are none of these things mentioned here? St. Leonard also mentions why God must be loved. Why isn’t that cited here and discussed?
It seems that there is a derailment based on the title of the sermon. Put another way, there is too much focus on the title of the sermon and not enough on the content. The meat of the sermon is in the content, not the title.
St. Leonard outlines the common sins that man commits and outlines the extremes that God goes through to save man. In the end, he uses Franciscan spirituality to call men and women to conversion.
Why aren’t we talking about conversion and about the sins that Leonard teaches must be avoided?
JR
But it has derailed into who goes to heaven and hell. St. Leonard did not preach is sermon with that intent. We have to put St. Leonard in his proper context.
St. Leonard was a Friar Minor. The mission entrusted to the Friars Minor was to preach conversion. In his sermon Leonard shows us why people go to hell and how much God loves us.
I have not seen in this thread any of St. Leonard’s words. If we examine his words, we see that he lays out a plan of faithful living in response to God’s love.
He’s not encouraging his audience to spend their time figuring out who is going to hell and why. To do that would have been a direct disobedience to the rule of the Friars Minor which prohibits such kind of preaching. The rule explicitly tells the friars to preach conversion and to preach the love of God.
St. Leonard mentions all the things that man must convert from. But why are none of these things mentioned here? St. Leonard also mentions why God must be loved. Why isn’t that cited here and discussed?
It seems that there is a derailment based on the title of the sermon. Put another way, there is too much focus on the title of the sermon and not enough on the content. The meat of the sermon is in the content, not the title.
St. Leonard outlines the common sins that man commits and outlines the extremes that God goes through to save man. In the end, he uses Franciscan spirituality to call men and women to conversion.
Why aren’t we talking about conversion and about the sins that Leonard teaches must be avoided?
JR
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summasix
Guest
What I am saying is that he doesn’t use dire adjectives. Note that he says MANY, a relative adjective, instead of MOST, an absolute adjective. Jesus clearly was trying to motivate his disciples for the reasons you mentioned. However, when Jesus says it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, does that mean Bill Gates is automatically damned? I think not.
Saying this does not necessarily encourage laxness. Even if a majority of people entered heaven, that doesn’t automatically mean it is easy to do. Getting into heaven isn’t a contest against other people, it’s a contest against yourself.
Just because I hold that this passage of Scripture does not necessarily declare a majority of souls are in Hell (the Church does not hold this belief either) does not mean I hold the contrary to be true. You have fallaciously assumed I am taking the opposite side of you, when I am merely saying this knowledge has not been revealed to us. However, you do present a convincing case that most people will go to Hell, of which I have formed no definitive opinion on.
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expectthebest
Guest
So much of Scripture depends on the interpretation. The Church won’t take a definate stance on this so it must not be as clear as you think.
Now, according to what you said, should all of humanity be living in accute fear? Should we bath ourselves in the love of Jesus or the fear of God?
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expectthebest
Guest
What is the teaching of the Church on this? I didn’t think it offered a teaching, one way or the other.
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expectthebest
Guest
I learned that in order to be “free” will, one would have to do it without the pressure of torture. Otherwise, it is not really “free”.
Are you telling me that those in hell are happy they are there and would not choose Heaven if given the opportuntity?
God can make things any way that he wants too. He could have made us with an entirely different reallity of thought. Something in another demension. Anything. To say that we could not exist otherwise is really limiting what God could do.
God still created us the way that we are. He created Adam with the ability to choose. Now, we have all inherited the fallout from Adam’s poor decision. This has never really made sense to me in that we suffer for the sin of our father. That used to be the legal system in the old times. If a father died without paying his debt, the sons could be placed in jail until that debt was paid. This is the same reasoning behind us inheriting the punishment from Adam’s sin. In the advancement of social justice, the Church would fight against this kind of inherited guilt here on earth. Therefore, is there a lack of social justice on the spiritual side? Or should we follow the example of God’s justice and hold a father’s son responsable for the debts of the father?
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bilop
Guest
Quite frankly, I don’t understand what difference it makes.
If there are 5000 in Heaven and billions in Hell, and you are one of the 5000, you will see the Mercy and Justice of God and rejoices.
If there are 5000 in Hell and billions in Heaven, and you are, again one of the 5000, will your torment be lessened?
The answer for us in the same either way. Life life like Jesus taught, and “work out our salavtion with fear and trembling”.
Looking at the world around us, with so much sin (and not just sin, but sin being called virtue), I can’t help but believe that many will go to Hell and few to Heaven, but only God knows.
God Bless
If there are 5000 in Heaven and billions in Hell, and you are one of the 5000, you will see the Mercy and Justice of God and rejoices.
If there are 5000 in Hell and billions in Heaven, and you are, again one of the 5000, will your torment be lessened?
The answer for us in the same either way. Life life like Jesus taught, and “work out our salavtion with fear and trembling”.
Looking at the world around us, with so much sin (and not just sin, but sin being called virtue), I can’t help but believe that many will go to Hell and few to Heaven, but only God knows.
God Bless
C
captaincoog
Guest
Matthew 7:13-14 says clearly:
"Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat.
How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!"
This is God Himself speaking.
Don’t be deceived by a comfortable life!
Don’t be lead off the narrow way by the opinions of your peers, other liberal-minded parishioners, the TV, or posters on this thread who say anything to the contrary.
“Forever, O Lord, thy Word is settled in Heaven”
"Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat.
How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!"
This is God Himself speaking.
Don’t be deceived by a comfortable life!
Don’t be lead off the narrow way by the opinions of your peers, other liberal-minded parishioners, the TV, or posters on this thread who say anything to the contrary.
“Forever, O Lord, thy Word is settled in Heaven”
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Nickkname
Guest
You need to read up on hell. Here’s a good article on the eternal flames: newadvent.org/cathen/07207a.htm
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Jerry-Jet
Guest
Was Jesus telling the truth when He said “few”?
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Lief_Erikson
Guest
The saints of the first centuries wouldn’t have agreed with that. The Church does teach that people who do bad things while tortured are less to blame, but they don’t say that there is zero blame, to my knowledge.
A theologian friend of mine has told me that according to his training, not even demons can end the freedom of a human’s will, when they possess the person. No one can, according to him, and he knows the Church’s teaching better than I do (don’t know about you). I can ask him for his sources, if you like.
I know that there is a modern interpretation of free will circulating in many parts that anything anyone “forces” someone else to do doesn’t count as being done of the person’s own free will. That is obviously untrue, though, for we know that if I point a gun at your face and tell you to help me rob a bank, and you do it, you had a choice. People have been shot resisting in such circumstances, which proves that free will remains. There is pressure on the person’s will, but pressure and force are two different things. Pressure can never completely neutralize a free will- we have the ultimate choice.
Choosing to do something we don’t want to do doesn’t make it a non-free will decision.
They aren’t happy they’re there, but no, they wouldn’t choose heaven because there is nothing good left in them. They purposefully rejected it all when they rejected God, the source of all goodness, and it takes something good in a person to desire what is good. And heaven is good. They chose their separation, and though they hate their pain and all the consequences of their separation, they do not desire unity with God.
That’s like saying, “if one of us played chess with God and he allowed us to get him into checkmate, because God is omniscient, he could find a move that would get him out of the checkmate if he wanted to, without breaking the rules.”
God’s ways correspond to reason. That is the teaching of the Church, that God makes sense. We might not always understand the reasons he does things, but what he does makes logical sense.
You can’t say that we can have free will while simultaneously having no possibility of choosing evil. That’s a logical contradiction. Now, if we have no choice but to do good, then we are robots and our actions are without value. Robots are not intelligent life forms. Therefore we could not be intelligent life forms without the possibility of hell.
Look at the other creatures of creation. Everything human or higher (the various kinds of spirit being, like angels, cherubim or seraphim, or archangels, etc.), everything that has reason, has the ability to sin. We know that because of Satan’s fall, and he was one of the very highest angels.
Everything that God made, which has reason, can sin if it wants to, because they have Free Will. This is the rule of the created order.
Everything lower than humans does not have reason, and consequently has no eternal fate or value. None of them will be judged with hell since they have no capability of choosing it.
Anyway, we can see the logic of this played out in God’s created order, and it makes sense the way he made it.
You’re stumbling over a concept that is clearly Biblical, but which is hard for us to understand in our modern era of individualism. That is the principle of headship. I know I don’t understand it perfectly myself. I’ll have a go at explaining what I do understand of it, though.
I’ll do so in the next post. There isn’t enough room in this one.
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Lief_Erikson
Guest
You know, when a child is born, his father is to a large extent like God to him. He believes whatever his father teaches him. This continues until his adult life, and most of the time, even when he’s an adult, he still adheres to his father’s teachings most of the way. The father is the “head” of his household, the one in charge. The child is to a certain extent like an organic part of his body, as it follows the direction of the head and approves of the actions of the head, almost no matter what they are. The father can train his child to be evil or to be righteous. Thus Joshua could justly say, in scripture, “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.” And when Paul and Silas converted their jailer, him and his entire family were baptized. And as Ruth said to her husband, her chosen head, “Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Of course, in a Christian household, God himself is a higher head to a wife than her husband is, yet the headship principle still remains, for Paul teaches “wives, submit to your husbands.”
To a large extent, this happens naturally. I’ve seen this very, very frequently in marriages I’ve observed, women submitting to their husbands’ will and fulfilling their roles as helpmates entirely naturally and spontaneously, never even thinking about it, and both them and their husbands have loved one another deeply and had excellent relationships. It’s not like the husband leaves the wife with all the work or anything- they work together as a team, but the wife tends to look up to and submit to the husband automatically.
As regards children and their living head, their father, we ought at this point to remember how a father with anger problems can pass those on to his child, or if he has great respect for other humans, he can pass that on to his child. Children mirror their parents’ ideologies, behaviors or mannerisms, and their moral codes, a great deal, and the father especially tends to usually be the head in a family. This also is part of the reason why children in the Bible are sometimes judged with their parents. They are connected to their parents’ sins automatically, because their father is their absolute leader and they applaud whatever bad or good things he does, as he teaches them to.
I don’t know if this concept is clear enough, or makes enough sense to you. It certainly runs counter to the individualism of today, but it tends to ring true from a sociological standpoint. Everyone is responsible for his own sins, yet everyone automatically sins with his father because he upholds the same principles from the moment he understands his father’s beliefs. He will remain guilty of willingly embracing his father’s sins until he breaks from his father’s path. And in Ezekiel, God says that such a person who abandons his father’s sins will not be judged for them. Until he does that, though, he is guilty of those sins. This headship principle appears many times in the Bible, New Testament as well as Old.
Concluded in the next post . . .
To a large extent, this happens naturally. I’ve seen this very, very frequently in marriages I’ve observed, women submitting to their husbands’ will and fulfilling their roles as helpmates entirely naturally and spontaneously, never even thinking about it, and both them and their husbands have loved one another deeply and had excellent relationships. It’s not like the husband leaves the wife with all the work or anything- they work together as a team, but the wife tends to look up to and submit to the husband automatically.
As regards children and their living head, their father, we ought at this point to remember how a father with anger problems can pass those on to his child, or if he has great respect for other humans, he can pass that on to his child. Children mirror their parents’ ideologies, behaviors or mannerisms, and their moral codes, a great deal, and the father especially tends to usually be the head in a family. This also is part of the reason why children in the Bible are sometimes judged with their parents. They are connected to their parents’ sins automatically, because their father is their absolute leader and they applaud whatever bad or good things he does, as he teaches them to.
I don’t know if this concept is clear enough, or makes enough sense to you. It certainly runs counter to the individualism of today, but it tends to ring true from a sociological standpoint. Everyone is responsible for his own sins, yet everyone automatically sins with his father because he upholds the same principles from the moment he understands his father’s beliefs. He will remain guilty of willingly embracing his father’s sins until he breaks from his father’s path. And in Ezekiel, God says that such a person who abandons his father’s sins will not be judged for them. Until he does that, though, he is guilty of those sins. This headship principle appears many times in the Bible, New Testament as well as Old.
Concluded in the next post . . .
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Lief_Erikson
Guest
Now, this also rings true from a national standpoint. Just as a father is the head of his children, a king is often the head of his nation. The king’s subjects serve the king, so they become, to a certain extent, appendages of his person. When he sins in his use of them, they sin in their obedience to him, for they should never transgress God’s Law for the will of their king. Thus when he is judged, these his appendages are often guilty of the same crimes and so are judged with him.
Also, in a monarchical system, there tends to be a lot of unity around the leader. This is partly because there isn’t a free press, so whatever the king believes is true and releases for public knowledge, his subjects also believe is true. Sometimes the king has more information than his subjects, though, so he is more responsible than they are. But you see, I hope, how subjects are often justly judged with their king because they become unified with his sins in their service to him, or in their righteous acts that he commands them to do and that they obey. They are responsible for both. So the people are often judged with their ruler, as families are often judged with their parents, both with blessings or with curses, unless the children or wife break from their normal head.
One can see this principle also in the child who witnesses his mother collapse into alcohol addiction and his father become an angry and cruel crack addict. His siblings follow in their parents’ footsteps, as they’ve been brought up to do, but he is determined to make something better of himself, so he works very hard, gets cleaned up, escapes from street life and manages to get a college education and a job, and begins to live a civilized life. He has broken from the destructive cycle of his parents, has broken from the headship principle by rejecting their sins and refusing to pursue them himself. So he is blessed, whereas they and their children and their children’s children will inherit the same curses unless their children can escape from them.
Then, the man who got cleaned up, a job and an education raises his children. They will grow up in his household, and inherit what he teaches them about life. They will grow up in a better environment and will probably become better people than the ruthless addicts who were their grandparents. They have inherited the blessing of their father.
Blessings and curses both travel down family lines. We inherited Adam’s curse, because he was the head of all humanity, and he passed his wicked ways down to his children, and they to their children, and so on until Christ. Now, we reject Adam as our head in order to embrace Christ as our head, so just as in Adam, all were slain, in Christ, all are made alive. Because we now inherit the blessings of our new head, our new father, just as Adam’s children continue to receive the curses of their father.
You see, there is responsibility in the children who inherit the sins of their fathers. They are responsible for the fact that they follow in their fathers’ footsteps. And subjects are responsible for the fact that they obey their monarch. And we are responsible for the fact that we obey Adam. We inherit his sins and make them our own, like a kid born of an alcoholic Mom might grow up with a propensity to alcohol addiction. But Christ has saved us from this cycle of death.
Also, in a monarchical system, there tends to be a lot of unity around the leader. This is partly because there isn’t a free press, so whatever the king believes is true and releases for public knowledge, his subjects also believe is true. Sometimes the king has more information than his subjects, though, so he is more responsible than they are. But you see, I hope, how subjects are often justly judged with their king because they become unified with his sins in their service to him, or in their righteous acts that he commands them to do and that they obey. They are responsible for both. So the people are often judged with their ruler, as families are often judged with their parents, both with blessings or with curses, unless the children or wife break from their normal head.
One can see this principle also in the child who witnesses his mother collapse into alcohol addiction and his father become an angry and cruel crack addict. His siblings follow in their parents’ footsteps, as they’ve been brought up to do, but he is determined to make something better of himself, so he works very hard, gets cleaned up, escapes from street life and manages to get a college education and a job, and begins to live a civilized life. He has broken from the destructive cycle of his parents, has broken from the headship principle by rejecting their sins and refusing to pursue them himself. So he is blessed, whereas they and their children and their children’s children will inherit the same curses unless their children can escape from them.
Then, the man who got cleaned up, a job and an education raises his children. They will grow up in his household, and inherit what he teaches them about life. They will grow up in a better environment and will probably become better people than the ruthless addicts who were their grandparents. They have inherited the blessing of their father.
Blessings and curses both travel down family lines. We inherited Adam’s curse, because he was the head of all humanity, and he passed his wicked ways down to his children, and they to their children, and so on until Christ. Now, we reject Adam as our head in order to embrace Christ as our head, so just as in Adam, all were slain, in Christ, all are made alive. Because we now inherit the blessings of our new head, our new father, just as Adam’s children continue to receive the curses of their father.
You see, there is responsibility in the children who inherit the sins of their fathers. They are responsible for the fact that they follow in their fathers’ footsteps. And subjects are responsible for the fact that they obey their monarch. And we are responsible for the fact that we obey Adam. We inherit his sins and make them our own, like a kid born of an alcoholic Mom might grow up with a propensity to alcohol addiction. But Christ has saved us from this cycle of death.
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