What About Those In Non-Christian Lands Who Have Never Heard The Gospel?

Thanks, read the Old Testament twice and the New Testament once. Enough for a lifetime.

 

We don't know WHAT a sovereign god might do.

I clearly stated that you and I can not GUESS what someone might believe under the circumstances specified.

Plus, I don't know anyone who believes that god is playing "what if" with humans and their beliefs.

 

The NT overrode the religion specified in the OT, leaving the OT as not a valid method of achieving objectives such as heaven.

Plus, Jesus is really not like the god of the OT, yet he is THE key to NT salvation.

On top of that, much of the OT has to do with decisions that society made at that time. Leviticus is full of such rules concerning shellfish, what clothes are made of, and other topics which carry the death penalty for mistakes made.

I really believe that any Christian needs to read the NT exclusively, lest they be waylaid by the proclamations in the OT which may be ancient and obviously false views of our universe, may be edicts that government thought were appropriate for society at that time, or whatever.

 

public art from roman/christian times still exists in rome art of mythros, and saturn, early jesus sculpture resembles apollo....mythros and saturn were similar in nature to jesus, and Christianity was equal between the sexes, as the founding christian documents were cobbled together, to me it looks like our version of more modern Christianity adopted patriarchy from the roman emprire and some feature of mythros and saturn as well as jesus, since there exists no direct lineage of written text back before 2-300AD we may never know for certain

 

Some Christians need the OT so they can prove that god hates certain things that Jesus never mentioned. Rather than deal with the inconvenience of that fact, they cherry pick from the OT.

 

Cherry picking indeed. We don't see them praising the drunken sex Lot had with his daughters - that was blessed by god and formed major lines of progeny.

 

That's not defined as a sin if it's for the only purpose of bearing descendant. It is a sin if it's for personal sexual joy. God's is more scientific than you mght think.

 

The analogy is,
Florida relies on CNN's weather broadcast to prepare for the coming of tonardo. A dictator, while supported by people, banned CNN broadcast as a whole. Now your question is, what happens to those who can no longer hear from CNN broadcast. When tonardo struck Florida and brough death to people, who are to blame?

From day 1, Christianity's full effort is to preach the gospel to all the nations on earth, as explicitly commanded by Jesus Himself. Christianity is like the CNN in the above analogy. Now if people don't hear the gospel, who are to blame?

 

God can do anything it wants
God wants all people to be saved
God will save all people.

 

No doubt, George III would have agreed with that sentiment, but the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of Boston refuted that argument in A Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission and Non- Resistance to the Higher Powers: With some Reflflections on the Resistance made to King Charles I. And on the Anniversary of his Death: In which the Mysterious Doctrine of that Prince's Saintship and Martyrdom is Unriddled (1750). In it, Mayhew, dissects Romans XIII 1-8 and points out that Paul was referring exclusively to rulers who governed in a good and just manner that was consistent with the will and ministry of God:

Thus, upon a careful review of the apostle’s reasoning in this passage, it appears that his arguments to enforce submission, are of such a nature, as to conclude only in favour of submission to such rulers as he himself describes ; i. e. such as rule for the good of society, which is the only end of their institution. Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not intitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here laid down by the inspired apostle.

I now add, farther, that the apostle’s argument is so far from proving it to be the duty of people to obey, and submit to, such rulers as act in contradiction to the public good, and so to the design of their office, that it proves the direct contrary. For, please to observe, that if the end of all civil government, be the good of society ; if this be the thing that is aimed at in constituting civil rulers ; and if the motive and argument for submission to government, be taken from the apparent usefulness of civil authority ; it follows, that when no such good end can be answered by submission, there remains no argument or motive to enforce it ; and if instead of this good end’s being brought about by submission, a contrary end is brought about, and the ruin and misery of society effected by it, here is a plain and positive reason against submission in all such cases, should they ever happen. And therefore, in such cases, a regard to the public welfare, ought to make us withhold from our rulers, that obedience and subjection which it would, otherwise, be our duty to render to them. If it be our duty, for example, to obey our king, merely for this reason, that he rules for the public wel-are, (which is the only argument the apostle makes use of) it follows, by a parity of reason, that when he turns tyrant, and makes his subjects his prey to devour and to destroy, instead of his charge to defend and cherish, we are bound to throw off our allegiance to him, and to resist ; and that according to the tenor of the apostle’s argument in this passage. Not to discontinue our allegiance, in this case, would be to join with the sovereign in promoting the slavery and misery of that society, the welfare of which, we ourselves, as well as our sovereign, are indispensably obliged to secure and promote, as far as in us lies. It is true the apostle puts no case of such a tyrannical prince ; but by his grounding his argument for submission wholly upon the good of civil society ; it is plain he implicitly authorises, and even requires us to make resistance, whenever this shall be necessary to the public safety and happiness...

https://lc.org/PDFs/A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers - Jonathan Mayhew - 1750.pdf

pp. 28-30

It's one of the greatest tracts ever written against the Divine Right theory - in many respects it's more of a rationalist critique than a sermon - and what makes Mayhew's dissertation on Romans XIII even more convincing and forceful is that it came from a minister, not a politician or some lay scholar. A historical sub note, Mayhew was a Puritan, and of course he was aware, as was his congregation, that their Puritan forebears in England deposed and executed Charles I on the same grounds outlined in A Discourse - that he was an unjust tyrant who ruled in contravention of God's will and law. Even at that time, the so-called Resistance Theory that the English Puritans acted on was nothing new - it was part of the Reformed tradition going back another century. I believe it was the 16th Century theologian John Knox who stated

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

Thus, if you believe Mayhew, the Founding Fathers weren't sinners, they were good Christians doing God's bidding.

 

The context in which Jesus said what he said was Roman rule.

And, he was not advocating for the happiness of the people or improvement in government.

In fact, our founders followed the best understanding of the relationship of religion and government, which requires religion and government to be separate.

 

Here we go with the religious prohibition of oral and anal sex, masturbation, contraception, sex after menopause, sex when the man had his balls shot off in war, sex after hysterectomy, etc., etc., etc.

How many people do you think really believe that God has directed that personal sexual joy is a sin?

 

Supplement to the article:

What about those in non-Christian lands in say 1600 A.D. who died
having never heard a single world of the gospel message? Is God
good and just to abandon such persons to Gehenna? And does He
actually do that?


It is important to find a reasonable solution to the problems raised
by these three questions because the notion that God consigns to Gehenna
for all eternity all people (past, present, and future) who lived and died
without ever hearing the gospel, characterizes God as unreasonable,
mean-spirited and cruel (which He most certainly is not).
Many who hold the view that God does do exactly that, have not paused
to seriously consider what they so readily believe about the character of
God.


Akua Adisa was born in 1600 A.D. in Africa and he lived to an old age and
died without ever hearing a single word of the gospel.
Are you going to proclaim that God will consign Akua to sternal Hell and
at the same time tell everybody that "God is love?"
Remember, on the traditional view of Hell, when Akua has suffered in agony
in Hell for 999 trillion (to the power of 500) years, he is no nearer to the end
than when he first entered Hell. It is not possible to reconcile such as this
with 1 John 4:8 "God is love."


Thought Experiment:
How long is an Eternity of agony in Hell? Let us say a sparrow is magically
assigned the task of cutting the Earth in half and the sparrow is to fly by
the Earth every 100 years and brush one of its wings against the ground
surface of the Earth. How many years would it take the sparrow to cut the
Earth in half? For argument's sake let us say it took in years 999 trillion to
the power of 999 trillion. So? So Akua Adisa, after being in agony in
Hell for as long as it took that sparrow to cut the Earth in half, would be no
closer to the end of his agony than when he first entered Hell.
Such as this is not possible to reconcile with 1 John 4:8 "God is love"
or with the general character of God as presented in the Bible.
We need a solution to this problem and a good start in finding one is God's
Middle Knowledge as presented in this article.
JAG
[]

 

The Apostle Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans, and while the epistle was written during the heyday of the Roman Empire, the specific context he was writing in has been disputed for centuries.

I guess that would depend on your interpretation of what Paul advocated. Absolute monarchs basing their Divine Right theory on Romans XIII and Reformed theologians based their Resistance Theory on the same passage.

Personally, I think it's pretty clear that Paul was 1) laying out the pecking order of political power, which begins with God and 2) what was expected from rulers and the people they ruled. Rulers were expected to govern in a manner that pleased God and if they ruled in such a manner they could expect the obedience of their subjects. Since the happiness of the people is what pleased God, then I think it could be said that Paul was implicitly advocating the happiness of the people and good governance.

If you read Mayhew's essay it deals primarily with the relationship between government and people and what was expected of both, and he did not confine his discussion to monarchs. He made it explicitly clear in A Discourse that republican forms of government and their officials were expected to rule for the good of society, as well, and if they failed to do so the people were entitled to resist. Had the Jacobins in revolutionary France bothered to read it, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved, including many of their own who were eventually guillotined for their involvement in the Reign of Terror.

 

Paul gets some criticism for his views on tying allegiance to god and allegiance to government.

Your representation of the French revolution is superficial.

 

He was a man of his time. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tied government to religion, as well.

If you'd like to get into an in-depth discussion about that feel free to join me here:

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/the-great-and-not-so-great-revolutions.611058/

As for my comment here, I was criticizing the Jacobins and the disastrous consequences of their "government by Terror". The initial liberal phase of the French Revolution was an amazing thing until the sans-culottes in the Paris Commune strangled it in the crib.

 

The question here isn't so much what the ancient Romans and Greeks did.

It is about what Christianity said about living in various countries under various governments.

I don't see support for Jesus having set up Christianity as being a political movement oriented to subverting governments that Christians don't like.

 

The question I was addressing, which is what Jonathan Mayhew addressed, was whether or not Romans XIII required "unlimited submission" to "higher powers" under any and all circumstances, and the Puritans in America, consistent with the Puritans in England and the Presbyterians in Scotland before them, clearly did not. All three went further to claim that Romans XIII provided an implicit justification for resistance to governments that ruled in a tyrannical and unjust manner.

Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God...

Yes, and what Christianity said about the origin of power and what was expected from rulers/governments and the people subject to their rule/government.

Which is a curious observation given that Jesus was overthrowing the entire Ancient order, and Paul consciously carried on that work. Christianity has always been a subversive movement and it continues to be one today.

 

The 'god' you not only believe in, but seem to like tormenting others with, is a violent psychopath that, even if it was real, I would want nothing to do with it, just like I would have nothing to do with a human who acted similarly.

I have been dead. I'm not talking about in past lives, though that is true as well, I am talking about in this one. I crossed over, met... someone or something, if he/she/it/they identified themselves, I do not remember it, and that is possible, as I know that I don't remember some of what I experienced, indeed I'd go so far as to say I don't remember more than I do, though I'm hoping it will come back to me at some point. What I did learn is that 'god' is not some separate personality, some large man with a beard sitting on a throne handing out eternal torture to those who fail to bend the knee, the divine is in us, indeed it is us, and we are it. Each of use individuals is like a cup of water taken temporarily out of the ocean, that returns to that ocean upon the death of our meat suit, only to do it over and over and over again.

We literally are divine, we are creators, and we have created this place and many, many others. Hell is a manmade invention designed to control people, and probably information about the true nature of reality, both in this place and the 'other side', or whichever term you prefer. Your book was not written by some deity, it was written by men, interpreted by men, changed, added to, and deleted from, all by men to protect their own interests and make sure the serfs and slaves behave themselves. There never was a global flood, indeed there is and has never been enough water on the planet, even if every drop rained out of the sky, and every ounce of ice anywhere melted, it would indeed flood some places, especially around coastal areas, but not everywhere. Not to mention that there were other cultures on the planet at the time of the alleged 'global' flood, including the Egyptians and Chinese among others who seemed to not notice that global event.

Odd, eh?

Do you think maybe that when people attributed diseases to being punishments from your gawd, it was simple ignorance because they couldn't even imagine, much less see or know of the existence of things like viruses and bacteria? Do you think maybe when stories were told about gawd reigning fire and brimstone down on purportedly evil cities (of which there are no records or evidence), it might just be an ancient memory of volcanic activity, perhaps a cometary impact, both, or some other devastating but natural events? Because I sure do.

We know to a scientific certainty that we are not all descended from a single couple, and we know this through the computer code called DNA which programs our bodies, indeed the 'bodies' of all living things, at least on this planet.

If your book was real, if it was accurate, I would not have found myself being taught the secrets of reality by a friendly host, rather I would have been in your 'hell', which does not exist. There are many reasons I could list for that, but I have doubts that your boy JC even existed as an individual human, much less some sort of god-human, I am very into consensual hedonism, I drink, used to smoke, do other mind-altering substances, and yes, I even eat bacon! So do my dogs, and they love it as much as I do. But instead, I was shown images from a prior life or lives, it was explained that reincarnation is like playing a video game over and over and over again, getting better and more skilled the more we do it, which I gathered (or, perhaps was told) was the entire point... To experience... Everything.

Quantum physics is a hobby of mine, as twisted as that sounds, and I think it paints a very conclusive story of our reality not even being real... The very building blocks that make up our universe, and the atoms in our bodies simply exist as mathematical probabilities until such time as a consciousness observes them, directly or indirectly, at which point it snaps into being something we perceive as 'real', but only for as long as it has to. Science has known this for over a century now, but the conclusions they just can't wrap their heads around, at first because they couldn't even imagine the concept... There was no such thing as a 'simulation' at that time, but now that we've managed to invent it, all of a sudden the pieces are coming into place, and the quest for real knowledge, actual experimental and experiential knowledge is on the verge of an absolute explosion, for that hypothesis, the explanation if you will, is becoming more and more accepted amongst bonafide parchment holding physicists the world over.

It's time to grow up and put the children's books down and perhaps learn a little something from some living persons, or even all on your own. When it's said and done, it's not about book learning, or reading books written thousands of years ago by people who herded sheep and believed in talking snakes.

 

If this bullshit were true, I'd get sent straight to hell before I even die!

 

You're quite a guy! Seriously.

No way on earth did you write all than just for me. Writing is self-therapy. Writing is
sometimes a catharsis -- an emotional/intellectual enema, a purgation of sorts, so
to speak.

And writing is sometimes a human effort to further convince the self of a lies that
the mind subconsciously knows is not really true. Romans chapter 1 says clearly that
you KNOW VERY WELL that there is a God that created you, but you choose to
suppress that knowledge.

Bacon is good for you. Ignore the Health Nazis.

My Book, as you call it, says that you cannot possibly be happy. So why are you, in reality,
unhappy? Its because you are not in harmony with your Creator the God of the Bible.

But you can be. You can choose to say goodbye to the intellectualisms and brain-pharting
and you can choose to pray this simple prayer sincerely from your heart:

"Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You
died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into
my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior. In Your Name.
Amen."

Do that and you will be truly happy.

And then focus on being delivered from certain coming Death:

Keep the following close to your mind and heart:

21“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would
not have died. 22But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

24Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me
will live, even though they die;26and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.
Do you believe this?”

27“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who
is to come into the world.”
John 11:21-27

Best.

JAG

[]

 

Thanks, I think.

Apparently you don't know me, because if/when you get to know me and read enough of my posts, you'll learn that I have a habit of writing books on virtually any subject, at least those subjects I care to comment on at all. It doesn't make you special. In fact, the quantum physics aspect to the simulation theory that I mentioned is something I wrote an entire whitepaper on, and that was before I died. Now, it was not just for you, as it was intended for you and anyone else who happens upon it, though you were certainly the catalyst.

See, I despise manmade religions, especially the 'Western' ones based on the Abrahamic faiths. To me, they're cults, and whether it's Catholics, JWs, or even Scientologists, they're all the same cultlike mentality. Follow our rules or you will be punished for all of eternity!! Confess, sinner, for you were a mistake, and you are responsible for the sins of your ancestors... You know, the ones that don't even exist, because we can read and sequence our genome now, and we know for an absolute fact the fable of Adam & Eve was precisely that... A fable. No real story, no garden, no garden, no original sin, ergo it falsifies the entire thing right there in the first page of the first book. But the people who wrote, or more to the point the people who assembled it (the Council of Nicaea) didn't know that one day their story would be revealed to a scientific certainty to be the bullshit they knew it to be, but in their day, people believed it and did as they were told, for the most part, which was the whole point in the first place... So the elite could control the plebs and slaves and not have their authority questioned.

Though I am guilty of liking to write, which is a bit odd because in school I absolutely hated it, and things like a 500-word essay made me piss myself, whereas now I write such things on almost a daily basis and for no extra credit. Odd, no?

Quoting romans to me like it is some sort of authoritative act of a deity is like quoting a Steven King novel and telling me it's the real news. It's bullshit.

Your book is wrong. I am quite happy with just about every aspect of my life, even though by many rights, in light of the fact that I became disabled, disfigured, and unable to even change my own panties without notice, I have a reason (well, reasons really) to not be. It shattered my life, rendered me unemployed, possibly unemployable, ineligible for disability despite having paid into it for decades, unable to stand, walk, or even get dressed without help, and largely bedridden. I probably should be not just unhappy, but angry, and yet I find myself most of the time to be way more chipper than I would have thought had you told me about this before it happened. In fact, in my younger years I often wondered if I might literally kill myself if I were ever like this, and concluded that it was somewhere in between possible and likely, but when it happened IRL, well... I'll pass on that. I'm not afraid to go, especially knowing what I know now (it's not a matter of belief... it's experience), but I'm not yet ready, and I really don't want to leave my wife behind as she's suffered enough through this. I was unconscious, she... was not. And I was expected to die, in fact you could argue that I should have done so several times, and for good, but I pulled through much to her delight.

So, yeah, not leaving her behind, at least not yet.

Of course, that's far, far from the only thing your book was wrong about.

I am not at all convinced he ever existed as a singular human, much less some sort of man-gawd hybrid. Nor, I suspect, if he did exist it was his intent, man-gawd or otherwise, to inspire future humans to worship and bend the knee to him, to the contrary I think he'd be quite distressed by it. I also never have figured out precisely what it is he is supposed to have sacrificed... He starts out as the 2nd in Command, decides to take a little holiday here on Earth (what about the trillions of other worlds out there?), got killed, and then went back to being 2nd in Command, so... In sacrifice, there must be a loss. Yet, in your fable, he lost nothing. His status did not change, if he was a man-gawd hybrid, his death just sent him right back to where he came from, so... Where's the loss??

I have a load more respect for Buddha anyway. So much so that he is tattooed on my arm, opposite the other arm that has Schrodinger's equation, which is a mathematical model of the double-slit experiment which is what set me off on my quest for scientific answers, that ultimately I found.

 

The solution to your problem can be found right here:

There's a whole series of other articles linked to this one discussing how the mistranslations of scripture over the centuries and the assimilation of the personal beliefs of men like Augustine of Hippo corrupted Christian doctrine and everything connected to it. I would agree that this is a problem, and to find the solution a good place to start is with reading those articles and revisiting how the concept of eternal damnation and torment was introduced into Christian scripture and doctrine. I hope you will do just that because I think you will be pleasantly surprised to find the answers to the riddles and contradictions you discussed there, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Before you do, be sure to remember that those articles were written by Christians who are interested in saving everyone and everything surrounding Christianity from that corruption, so keep an open mind.

 

Paul's direction was not towards resistance to Roman law.

He saw rulers as having been chosen by god.

I think it's a more accurate translation of Romans 13 to see Paul as calling for Christians to be good citizens.

 

The bible clearly indicates in both the OT and the NT that not all will be saved.

Jesus even stated that Christians who fail to walk the walk will burn in hell.