If salvation is only through believing in Christ as our savior, it sounds as if salvation after Christ’s resurrection became more limited and less accessible than it was before. Until then the patriarchs who believed in God the Father were saved, but after Jesus came that seems not to be sufficient anymore and believing in God the Father is not enough anymore.
What are your thoughts on that?
Salvation is only through faih in Jesus.
Those saints of the Old Testament put their faih in God, they trusted in him, they kept as well as they could the ceremonial andother laws.
God honours their faithfulness by transferring that faith to Jesus.
I’ve no biblical verses for this other than hebrews 11.
I’m wondering about that because I have friends who believe in God and pray to Him, and they know who Jesus is, but they consider their faith as a relation to God.
You need to ask them questions a out what they believe.
Who do they believe Jesus is?
What is there relationship with Jesus?
Ask them about 2cor 13:5 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test.
Supp,ementary questions.
What do you believe about God?
What is your evidence for your beliefs about God?
Be sure that you too can answer these questions and that the ignorant words, " I just have faith! " are not used by you.
We are to give a Reason for our faith.
Hi,
The patriarchs believed in the Messiah that was promised.
Abraham is used as an example:
Genesis 15:6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. KJV
Romans 4:3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. KJV
The principal is the same in both the Old and New Testament.
It takes faith.
The difference is OT believers looked forward believing in the coming of Messiah.
We believe Jesus is the Messiah based on His actions when He was here.
Blessings
I have no doubt about my faith in Jesus as my savior. 
I’ve had so many experiences with God and Jesus communicating to me in different ways, I’ve received the Holy Spirit and even spoke in tongues once. But as any good Christian should do, I’m asking myself questions about what it means to be saved for other people who says they are Christians. Jesus is the safe door through which we reach salvation, and the other doors (faith in God not realizing completely who Jesus is) might lead to salvation too, but they might not. I choose what is 100% sure.
I see many right-wing evangelicals calling themselves Christians but then praising violence, death penalty (while being against abortion), hating both the sin and the sinners. It’s not enough to say you’re a Christian to be one, as Jesus sais in other terms (Matthew 7:22)
.
Salvation = believing loyalty to the one true God through His Son
Being a Christian doesn’t mean everyone is a republican or democrat, and for many one wonders if they understand what being a Christian means.
There is no foolproof why of telling.
I’ve worked with wonderfully kind and generous atheists and known miserable Christians, we are all different and I thank God that he loves us despite our many failings.
Good answer, thanks!!
I disagree.
First, you can only be saved through Jesus. Because this notion of needing to be saved is uniquely Christian.
The Jewish people were never looking to be saved in the Christian sense. The goal for them is to be right and stay right with God in this moment. Sin is not eternal, inherited, or a driving force. There is no heaven and hell afterlife division. I don’t think they even believe in the idea of fallen man and the new man. What matters is dealing with each sin as it happens and addressing it now. Sin can be both individual or collective. But I am not Jewish so I can’t say any of this for certain.
Each religion is like a board game, with its own ideas of what God is, afterlife, good and evil, and rules to be right with said God. While some ideas might criss cross, the games are all different.
Trying to save someone who is a member of another religion is like invading a game of risk with monopoly pieces, playing by monopoly rules.
I personally do not think we understand our own religion. Most believers and preachers are like cavemen who picked up alien technology, who use a Star Trek phaser to draw cave paintings.
I do not believe in salvation by faith (in believing all the right things.) Any cult leader or dystopian emporer could make up their own rules and say God proclaimed it. It would all be a guessing game.
I think heaven and hell are over simplified and or made up. I think a Christian is actually someone who attempts to follow the teachings of Christ. I think “salvation” is part of the oversimplification to get members into the organized religion.
I think that Buddha and Christ taught almost identitical conceps to completely different cultures at almost the same time. I believe that they appeared when they did because humanity was evolving into a greater capacity of responsibility amd understanding.
I think the goal of Spiritual teachings are to move us up to that higher capacity. It is not enough to live by a law, always skirting the line with what we think we can get away with. The higher expectation can only be reached if you develope the capacity to do so. Operating from a place of connection with the world around you and treating all life as an extension of yourself, not becauae a law told you to do so but because you have made that connection, realization.
Love is eternal, and if we want to taste eternity, we must figure out what love is and allow it to live within us, transforming who we are and what we do. Until love informs our path, we are only obeying and breaking rules.
Everyone who experiences God is transformed by the encounter. And goes on to try to help others find God. Faith helps a person hang on until the day the connection is made. Like a child who hears a fairy tale about unexplainable things. Faith is akin to child like wonder, but the truth is greater than we can imagine. So we hold on to the fairy tale until the Truth is realized.
Lastly, I think anyone who tells you that they have the Answer to the Mystery of God and life is either unstable, misguided, deceived, bedeviled, and/or the devil. And if they go on to explain that Ork the Conquerer (for example) is the seventh son of the god Melmack, and he comes to offer you the corn of Aspiration that will bloom a yield of Yatsy in your soul…RUN.
Fear, control, hoops to jump through, dietery restrictions, seperation from family and friends- this is how cults lure you in. They create a prison around your mind and shrink your capacity to question, to think for yourself, removing all your resources to escape.
Spiritual teachings don’t do that. They often come as parables and riddles that force you to ponder, question, and think for yourself. The Truth is not a script of facts you must memorize and quote. It is something deeper than that. If you don’t play with it, engage it, then you cannot contain it, or inhabit it. And the longer you journey with it, the more freedom you have than when you first started. But also, greater responsibility. You no longer live for just yourself
But I do not know anything for certain. I am just someone that asks a lot of questions. And I tell you what I think.
So you do not believe the bible. John3:16 talks about belief/faith or Romans 3:28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
Again the bible talks about the place of the dead, often called hell, and Jesus’s talked about preparing a place for us in his Fathers house.
[quote=“Tillman, post:10, topic:6036”]
I think that Buddha and Christ taught almost identitical conceps to completely different cultures at almost the same time.
[/quote]Indian philosopher and the founder of Buddhism (623 or 563 BCE – 543 or 483 BCE)
Well the quote abot buddha shows he livedat least 600 years prior to Jesus. Buddha taught about working to earn salvation, something Christianitg does not teach.
Maybe you shouls study what you believe.
Buddhism and Christianity are totally incompatible and they teach opposing concepts.
I disagree. Religious aspects aside, the teachings are parellel. Just dressed differently.
But feel free to pull up a specific Buddhist teaching and a Christian counter point and we can discuss it.
No, I do not. In respect to it being the unerring Word of God. No. Men touched it, so at best it is suspect. Translations and understandings could be wrong from person to person, group to group.
It is a collection of books and letters bound by a small group of men over two thousand years ago as part of a Roman attempt to create a designer religion that they labled as Christian and used to conquer carious nations. Have you never studied Christian history?
But I do believe there is truth in thr Bible. Scattered about
The New Testament references Hades vaguely because it was a Greek/Roman concept of afterlife, not Jewish. The Jewish people do not believe in any form of hell.
The specific details of hell are mythological and made up by people with extensive imaginations who took creative liberties by adding to what the Bible says.
No… It doesn’t. That is completely false. There is no concept of earning or Salvation.
The aim of Buddhist practice is to be rid of the delusion of ego and thus free oneself from the fetters of this mundane world. One who is successful in doing so is said to have overcome the round of rebirths and to have achieved enlightenment. This is the final goal in most Buddhist traditions, though in some cases (particularly though not exclusively in some Pure Land schools in China and Japan) the attainment of an ultimate paradise or a heavenly abode is not clearly distinguished from the attainment of release.from Buddhism - Four Noble Truths, Dharma, Enlightenment | Britannica
Note the first sentance, ’ free oneself ’ that is one does works, good deeds, follows acourse or practise of living.
This is in total contrast to Christianity where one receives the gift of salvation.
Your claims that men have added, corupted the bible, please supp.y your evidence for such a claim.
Can you explain the teachings of Buddha a bit better? I don’t follow what you are saying.
It sounds like Buddha taught us to open our minds, to see past the illusion of mortality in order to eacape it… And find everlasting life. To escape the sin that keeps us trapped in this repeating hell of life and death to achieve eternal life. To become something new. Yeah, that is nothing like what Jesus taught.
I don"t know about “gift.” Seems like a lot of work to me. Funny how your definition of works fails to include hearing the Gospel, believing Christ, or the requirement to ask Jesus for forgiveness or the requirement to accept Jesus into your life in order to be saved, or the requirement to learn and accept the exact dogma that is dictated by your branch of the church? Because as far as work in order to be saved, that definitely sounds like work.
Or is that just the religious component? What did Budha teach? Tell me more.
What I said is historical fact and logic. Any group of men can gather any books and letters together and say God wrote it. It is just a matter of whether or not you believe them. It is a little deceptive to accuse someone of not taking Him at His Word if they don’t believe the Bible is the unerring Word.
In the end though, what I think and what you think does not matter. So why force your view?
The question posed by the post was about what I thought. Did you really want to know what people think, or did you just want to attack anyone who questioned and thought differently from you?
I believe Jesus is God in flesh.
Well, first of all, Jesus is God so … it’s a faulty proposition based on false doctrine that has been spread far and wide. Salvation is through Jesus Christ … who is God.
Yes, and because Jesus outright claimed to be “The Almighty”. He was also called such by Isaiah.
A few things about this post:
The Bible makes clear that God hates sinners. The claim that Christians are sinners is completely unbiblical and very easy to prove with Scripture.
Embracing the death penalty for terrible crimes against God and humanity is not at all the same as “praising violence.” The Old Testament is 100% as significant as the New today and God’s people were commanded to utilize the death penalty in certain cases. God has very important reasons for each and every thing that He does, and commands us to do. He is not bloodthirsty as some claim, and He does not love violence. He knows that certain things must be done in order to protect our Godly ways of life and those we love.
Abortion is murder. Plain and simple. To compare abortion to the death penalty is just nonsense, but I understand that has been put forth by many false Christians and high profile so-called leaders of the Faith. It is just completely inaccurate, not only from a Biblical perspective but also from a position of reason and logic.
God bless.