Will SheltieDad go to hell for not pretending to believe ultra-con standards?

[RevDWW]

Originally Posted by Timmy

BZZZZT! Sorry. No, you need a preacher in your life, to tell you what to believe. To save you! An Apostolic Oneness Ultraconservative Holiness Pentecostal preacher, of course. Didn't you see this thread?

Well we do need preacher's as well as seeking out the truth for our selves. The Ethiopian eunuch was studying the scripture for himself when Philip show up to help him understand it enough for him to see his need to be baptized.

If I don't make it to heaven I will not have the option of blaming it on a preacher cause I have the Book and I do know how to read and pray. Nor will the devil take the blame. My salvation was paid for by Him, but finding and following is our personal responsibility. .

[CC1]

Originally Posted by Sheltiedad

What say ye?

Yes.

[Rico]

Originally Posted by Sheltiedad

Pentecostal Grace just seems so conditional... one slip-up or bad thought and BAM!

I had to have a Baptist person explain grace to me in a way that actually made it seem like something special... and no I am not Baptist or considering becoming one.

And I can't just apply regular grace in the Pentecostal church because of issues like pants on women... while this seems like a trivial issue, when I see people so adamant that the bible says something that simply is NOT in there, how can I trust their judgement on anything else, especially when it is regarding my eternal salvation.

On a higher level, religion just doesn't make sense to me... God made hell and then he made the rules to save us from something which he himself made... and the rules are to restrict the desires that he himself gave us.

On an abstract level, if "the Good News" is supposed to be something so simple a child can understand, why does it even matter which version of esc-whatever-ology you believe, or what words you use to describe the diety/oneness of God? If it takes 17 lexicons to derive the original meaning, and an average person could not even read until a few centuries ago, what does that say about the fairness of salvation?

Throughout history, religion has always been there to explain things that could not be explained through science, and then once science HAS sufficiently explained things, and the people have had time to digest it, those religions disappear and new ones take their place that try to answer questions for which there are no answers.

When I watch religious people talk, they seem so miserable here, that they would welcome the entire world blowing up just so they could leave... I am sorry that I am not so unhappy with my life that I need to hope for armageddon to have something to look forward to.

I'm supposed to serve God because I love him and not because of the gnawing little fact that if I don't serve him he will send me to an eternal torment.

People claim that it is about relationship not religion, and that prayer is a literal two-way conversation with God, yet all of these people who pray (claiming regular two-way conversations with God) cannot agree on some of the most minute details of how we should dress and behave... and each side says the other side has not prayed enough and that is the reason why their answer is different).

I see no evidence of an infallible Bible, or even that we have the exact right books in the canon... if a group of men sat around with stacks of text and these men decided what went into the compilation of books that we now call the bible, and 1700 years later we accept that it came directly from God? Aren't we forgetting that the bible did NOT just fall out of the sky, it is just a copy of a copy of texts and letters translated from translations from translations and there is not even an original ANYWHERE... even the originals had multiple copies which were sent out across the land... and then compound that with the fact that groups of men several centuries later would decide what should actually go into the Bible. Religion itself is like the ultimate "telephone/gossip" game... you send something out and there is no telling what it will be 15 minutes later. Christianity and Islam are a perfect example of this... it is just a centuries old family squabble.

You say that God has "preserved his word" and that is evident because your specific school of thought has existed since the beginning? Every other flavor makes the exact same claim... am I saying that they are right and you are wrong? Not at all, just that EVERY hard question comes back with the answer that you need to have faith. Just because I was born into something doesn't mean I should accept it and not question... if I was born a Muslim or a Jew, I would be expected to question things and eventually become a Pentecostal, but if I was born a Pentecostal, I should just accept things and have faith... I would have a better chance of being saved if I was mentally handicapped (as long as I was lucky enough to be born Pentecostal) because then I would just accept whatever people told me.

Everyone believes that they have the truth and that everyone else is wrong... this happens within the Apostolic ranks, and also within Christianity as a whole, and also within religion as a whole... everyone believes that God has spoke to themselves, yet they are not on the same page... we are told to just have faith and believe... believe in what? it's like being presented with a grocery store aisle of ice cream that stretches on for infinity and being told that you have to choose not only one brand but one specific flavor and then have faith that you have made the right decision and your entire eternity is based on that one decision. Even within Pentecost you have people saying that you can't be baptised in the name of Jesus, because Jesus is an improper translation of the original name which we now call Jesus.

I do believe in God (intelligent design of the universe), but see no concrete way to clear up any of the confusion that religion has created short of God himself appearing on my doorstep and straightening it all out. This is why I don't take any of this stuff seriously anymore... picking the right school of thought to have faith in is like winning the lottery... unless God is really bigger than all of the petty squabbling, which I sincerely hope.

Got one question for you. Can you point out any contradictions in the Bible as we know it? You say it was just men gathering around a table to decide what is and what isn't, so there has to be at least one mistake or contradiction in it, correct? It seems to me, based on what I've read from you, that what you are really dealing with is a crisis of faith. On one hand I believe that you have faith in God but, on the other hand, you have no faith in God's choice to put things into the the hands of men He trusts.

Originally Posted by Rico

Got one question for you. Can you point out any contradictions in the Bible as we know it? You say it was just men gathering around a table to decide what is and what isn't, so there has to be at least one mistake or contradiction in it, correct? It seems to me, based on what I've read from you, that what you are really dealing with is a crisis of faith. On one hand I believe that you have faith in God but, on the other hand, you have no faith in God's choice to put things into the the hands of men He trusts.

Nope, I haven't discovered any contradictions in it other than the slightly changed sequences of events when the same story is told by different people... I'm not really looking for any though... my larger concern is the same one Michlow raised... that two different people can look at the exact same scripture and see two different meanings and they both claim that they have prayed about it.

I think you are right about the crisis of faith thing... I hadn't thought of describing my views that way.

[Rico]

Originally Posted by Sheltiedad

Nope, I haven't discovered any contradictions in it other than the slightly changed sequences of events when the same story is told by different people... I'm not really looking for any though... my larger concern is the same one Michlow raised... that two different people can look at the exact same scripture and see two different meanings and they both claim that they have prayed about it.

I think you are right about the crisis of faith thing... I hadn't thought of describing my views that way.

I sort of have the same problem. Never once have I doubted God, but when I look at His church......................well, that's a different story. So many different ideas, all presented as being truth.......God's way. Everybody can't be right and how do you choose who is and who isn't? I know enough to know God didn't set this thing up for us to be islands unto ourselves but what happens when God leads in a different direction than those around you? My confidence in man is set at zero.

For BOOOM... I answered my own question...

Any God that expects someone to pretend to believe something that he doesn't isn't really God... therefore my answer is, No.