I would be surprised if anyone got any other impression from Homer and JR's post on this subject.God is soft
God is taken advantage of by ungrateful people
Justice is not accomplished
Unbelievers get away with a life of sin
Believers are not rewarded enough for the sacrifice of following Jesus
Now these specific words may not have been used but it is the impression i get.
Homer, you wrote:
I don't know why you would attack them, but then, I have never understood why you would attack people here. I asked the question (at the beginning of this thread) to discover whether if you were comparing apples with apples, or apples with oranges. You said they treat you better at the other forum, and I had to wonder whether you treat them better there, and whether that might explain an otherwise mysterious phenomenon. This does not mean that people here should be unkind to you, no matter how many times you misrepresent, mock or rudely ignore their statements, but there is at least provocation in one case, where there is not in the other.Why would I attack them? Please define an attack. Do you mean personal attack, (thinly veiled in your question) which you practice, or attacking a position in a discussion?
I do not accept this characterization of the restorationist doctrine, as I have come to understand it. If I were to embrace it, I could not find anything in it that would encourage me to continue in sin. However, if you are correct about this, then (as I have earlier pointed out) the teaching that sinners may have the opportunity for a deathbed repentance (in the age since Pentecost**) does exactly the same thing. Yet, you do not oppose that doctrine.Universalism provides an additional rationale for continuing in sin. Just as "once saved, always saved" can. And if that doctrine was advocated here I would oppose it.
When I mentioned this previously, you denied that the possibility of deathbed repentance has this same effect on unbelievers, but I have personally met sinners who told me that they were counting on a deathbed repentance. I have never met sinners who said they were counting on a post-mortem repentance. Have you?
My statement is demonstrably correct about the doctrine of deathbed repentance encouraging someone to continue in sin. Actual cases are known. I do not know whether your similar statement about universal reconciliation is true or not. If it is, though, you have not explained why you oppose the one doctrine and not the other. If you say that, though they both may have this effect on the unbeliever, yet you oppose the one and not the other because one of them is a true doctrine and the other a false doctrine, then:
a) you have thereby abandoned the argument of opposing it because of its danger of encouraging sinner to keep sinning; and
b) you are affirming one doctrine to be false "because scripture is silent" about it, while holding another (very similar) doctrine to be true, though scripture is also silent about it;
c) there would seem to be no reason for you to do this, except that you personally have probably always held to the one doctrine and have always opposed the other. However, this is not a good reason for applying such disparate standards in judging doctrines.
You have not demonstrated that this claim makes any sense.Being saved by faith, as you and I have been, will not be possible; their knowledge will be apodictic.
You have previously said (as you do again here) that those who have seen Christ with their eyes will no longer be able to be saved by faith.
I and others have replied that the apostles (and more than 500 brethren) saw Christ after His resurrection, but still seemed capable of being saved by faith.
Your reply was that they were special.
However, your original assertion seemed to be that there is something essential to being "saved by faith" which, by definition, is rendered impossible in the case of one having seen Jesus (If this is not your argument, then your actual argument cannot be discerned in your post). If such is the case, by definition, then it is hard to see how there can be any exceptions. And if there could be, how do you know that those who saw Christ after His resurrection, and were nonetheless able to be saved "by faith" were that exceptional? Maybe they are typical of a much larger group. How can you rule this out? Maybe the possibility of being "saved by faith" does not hang on the question of whether none has seen Christ or not.
It must be a blind spot for you, but you don't seem to realize that no one here more relentlessly, unkindly and unfairly, attacks others' viewpoints at this forum than do you and JR. Maybe some others do not see it this way, but I am pretty sure it would be widely agreed upon. It has certainly been my perception over a lengthy period of watching and participating in this discussion.We should be focused on how we treat one another, which was the purpose of the OP.
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**As you surely must know, there are actually people who think that the salvation of the thief on the cross without water baptism would not be possible in the present dispensation, so this is not a red herring.