GYM DEBATE: Universalism (Cheetah vs. smaller)

[Amazing Rando]

Gym Debate Notice:

This debate thread is opened to debate the following issue:

Not all people will enter Heaven.

Cheetah will be defending the affirmative and smaller will be defending the negative. This debate will begin as soon as Cheetah makes his first post. The debate will last 5 rounds.

From this point on, the only posts allowed in this thread are to be made by the participants and Moderators. All others will be deleted.

Spectator commentary is welcomed here .

If you are up and unable to meet your deadline please contact a moderator ASAP.
Please do not edit your post after this notice is posted.
If you are not a participant please feel free to participate in the commentary thread noted in the first post of this debate.

[Cheetah]

Thanks Rando (if I can call you that). I'll start today's topic, "Not all people will enter Heaven" by outlining Scripture references which show that salvation is by faith alone. I will then go on to show that the puishment for unbelievers (that is, people who are not Christians) is punishment in hell, thereby proving that not all people will enter Heaven.

1. Salvation is by faith alone.

Matthew 24:10-15

[I]At that time many will turn away from the faith[I] and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.

Note the highlighted parts and how they link together. The verses talk about people leaving the faith, and their faith, and then goes on to say that only those who "stand firm", i.e. who maintain their beliefs and carry on in their faith, "will be saved".

Romans 3:25

God presented [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.

Here we see that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was for atonement of all the sins that people commited - but only those who had faith.

Romans 5:1-2

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

It talks about people being justified by faith (i.e. the removal of sins by faith), it goes on to show that faith gives access to grace - that is the grace given by the Lord Jesus Christ, and grace leads to salvation. A supporting quote:

Ephesians 2:5

it is by grace you have been saved.

Colossians 1:22-23

But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.

Note the added empahsis.

1 Timothy 4:1

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

Hebrews 6:12

those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Hebrews 11:6

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

1 Peter 1:7-9

These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

I believe it's all relevant, but the highlighted part inparticular.

Mark 16:16

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Luke8:12

Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.

Revelation 21:7

He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

I think the implication here is that overcoming (a verb) is an act, something which must be done, not a state which is by default. So an act, which results in the "inheritance".

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:18

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

John 2:36

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him.

John 5:24

I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.

John 6:29

Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

John 6:40

For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

John 6:47

I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.

John 8:24

I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins."

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die

John 11:40

Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

...There are many more, but I think that I've got my point accross that faith = salvation and without it, no one can enter the Kingdom of God.
If all people enter Heaven, as Universalism states, then what is the value of faith, or of the persecution that comes with faith?
What, then, is the purpose of the Bible?
And why did Jesus die?

2. The punishment for unbelievers.
I believe that the Bible makes it quite clear that all people who do not believe will be condemned to hell:

Revelation 21:8

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.

Luke 16:19-28

"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'
"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'
"He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'

The passage makes it quite clear that a man was thrown into hell. All we know about him was that he was rich, dressed in purple fine linen every day and had five brothers who lived in his father's house. But yet, because he did not believe (a sign of this would be that he did not exhibit the fruits of the Spirit, and faith without deeds is dead [James 2:14-26]).

Matthew 5:29

If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

This, too, is clearly talking about people being thrown into hell.

Isaiah 5:14

Therefore the grave enlarges its appetite
and opens its mouth without limit;
into it will descend their nobles and masses
with all their brawlers and revelers.

A verse from Isaiah which talks about the types of people that will enter hell.

Isaiah 28:15

You boast, "We have entered into a covenant with death,
with the grave we have made an agreement.
When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by,
it cannot touch us,
for we have made a lie our refuge
and falsehood our hiding place."

This time, Isaiah is talking about all the liars who are condemned ("entered into a covenant") to hell.

3. Finally
And finally, a warning from the Bible about Universalsim:

23:16-22

This is what the LORD Almighty says:
"Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you;
they fill you with false hopes.
They speak visions from their own minds,
not from the mouth of the LORD.
They keep saying to those who despise me,
'The LORD says: You will have peace.'
And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts
they say, 'No harm will come to you.'
But which of them has stood in the council of the LORD
to see or to hear his word?
Who has listened and heard his word?
See, the storm of the LORD
will burst out in wrath,
a whirlwind swirling down
on the heads of the wicked.
The anger of the LORD will not turn back
until he fully accomplishes
the purposes of his heart.
In days to come
you will understand it clearly.
I did not send these prophets,
yet they have run with their message;
I did not speak to them,
yet they have prophesied.
But if they had stood in my council,
they would have proclaimed my words to my people
and would have turned them from their evil ways
and from their evil deeds.

Here we have a message specifcally warning against people who tel you that everything will be 'okay' and 'nothing's going to happen to you' and you can live the way you want, which is exactly what Universalism teaches.
If everything will be okay to those who despise the LORD, what then is the meaning of this passage?

I from the evidence above, it appears to prove that not all people will enter Heaven.

[All quotes NIV unless otherwise stated.]

[smaller]

Greetings Ben, Mod’s and other readers

I am going to make an appeal in my posts, as I do in all of my posts, and that appeal will be unto LOVE. Is Love an “emotion?” Or is Love an ABSOLUTE? I say Love is an ABSOLUTE and as such when I make my appeals to LOVE I do not make my appeals to you as readers, but as unto my God whom I respectfully ask to show Himself IN YOU. So leaving the debate tactic of “appealing to emotions” I will now appeal to LOVE and hope that you understand the “difference.”

And what does “Jesus Christ/Love” say?

Matthew7:12
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

I consider this very fair and accurate advice from Love. Now my “emotional appeal..;)” is this: Do you “really” want to see some other person burn alive forever in conscious torment for “sins” or “lack of faith?” Would you really want that "done unto you?" Or even more, do you think it anything resembling Love that would advise you one way and not do MORE than the same AS Love Himself???

If your answer is no to burning people alive in conscious torment, then you have a heart for God. If your answer is no, then you are kinder than the God you think does so. Here’s good news for you.

You are NOT nicer than God.

If only life was so simple, that we could look upon another human being and proclaim that person is “just them and only them.” If God was not involved with His creation. If there were no “satan and his messengers.” The eternal condemnation of other people to burn alive forever in conscious torment would be so easy.

Rather than begin citing numerous scriptures that justify “my” position, I would like to make some simple and elementary observations about this general subject, where I stand on some beliefs, and suffice it to say for now that there are scriptures galore to back these simple and elementary positions in every case that has resulted in this brief opening synopsis for the information (insert) “I” believe (or don’t believe) as follows:

-believe that all people are God’s creation and that the scriptures teach that all mankind are God’s children and or offspring without exception regardless of whether they believe in God or not or whether or not they know this scriptural fact.

-believe that there is also a resistor (satan) who has a “family” (children of the devil) and they resist God and God has also made them as resistors to Himself and those resistors have an easily verifiable and certain amount of control over the flesh of mankind, even their ‘minds.’ These are not things that are seen with our “eyes” but their existence is for a fact revealed by The Word in many ways.

-believe the validity of every single eternal torment scripture and that these are all meant entirely for the devil and his messengers who also happen to reside in the flesh of mankind.

-believe that The Law is as valid today as the day it was delivered to Israel and that The Law is against the works of the devil and his messengers, the workers of iniquity in mankind and said Law is not against God’s offspring whom all of mankind are. I also believe that The Law reveals the presence of "sin indwelling" and "evil present" in the flesh of mankind. Paul called that "sin indwelling" no longer I. Paul also openly admitted to having a messenger of satan SENT BY GOD to "torment" his flesh. These statements also show the presence of "other entities" in the flesh of an Apostle.

-do not believe there is any conflict between The Words of Jesus Christ and The Law, nor is there any such conflict with The Law and The Apostles.

-believe in universal and unlimited atonement for mankind by the physical death of Jesus Christ, God Himself in the flesh, and His subsequent resurrection to Eternal Life and that His Life is against all the works and workers of iniquity and sin in the flesh of all mankind and this present working toward separations of sin/devilkind and mankind is for the benefit of all of mankind. He came to save His People from their “sins.”

-believe that no less than a massive amount of scripture is directed toward and speaking to the devil and his messengers in the flesh and minds of men, as the scriptures also clearly show. I believe that it is to these things that are in mankind that The Words of eternal destruction and damnation are directed to just as the Words of Love and Divine Grace and Kindness are directed towards mankind who are made in God’s Image and are His offspring. It is a mistake IMHO to take what is written against those other entities and apply it to God's offspring to their eternal detriment.

-believe that it is purely ignorant and blind to see every Word of God only directed to mankind when the devil and his messengers are also “in play” and that the devil is “in play” in mankind.

Upon these points, and more as the layers of debate become more complex according to the level of understandings that men (or the devils in them) have of the scriptures, I make my claim of the salvation of all mankind by The Saviour of The World, Jesus Christ, and the cutting off of all of the workers of iniquity whom I believe to be the the devil and his messengers who work in and reside in the flesh and minds of all mankind.

Men do not live by bread alone but men WILL LIVE by every Word that utters from the mouth of God. Sometimes you have to just LISTEN to what Jesus did not say openly, but to the hidden man of the heart, that “child” of God who IS THERE in us ALL, particularly in we who supposedly “believe.”

The first witness to this reality of the construction of the flesh of mankind coupled with both an offspring and the workers of iniquity is The Revealer of these things in the flesh of mankind, The Living Word, Jesus Christ. This “revealing” of the devil and his messengers in the flesh of mankind was not understood or even known in Israel prior to this revealing by Jesus Christ. It was a “new thing” that Jesus brought to Israel’s “religious system” and to it’s leaders. Their reaction is no different than the common proclaimation today from believers. “Not me!” “I am not like that!” “I am ONLY righteous!” I also submit that the resistors to this factual information from God’s Word are the very same ones who still deny this reality of our construction TO THIS DAY in men. Yet even in the O.T. we see the validity of “evil spirits” sent by God and given to the “false prophets.” Where then were these “evil spirits?” That’s right! In MEN.

One cannot say that the devil in the flesh of mankind is without scriptural precedent. To overlook this obvious condition is even a part of the blindness that “those things” bring to the eyes of mankind.

I see them as the cause of sin in men and when this separation is made the scriptures just happen to make a LOT more sense to me personally. One can actually love their “unsaved” neighbors as themselves AND retain every eternal judgment and eternal torment scripture. If you thought about this for a moment you would realize that this position fulfills EVERY scripture in YOU!

One does not have to live the life of a self justifying and lying hypocrite to be a “Christian.”

My understanding then in these entire matters is very simple:


--Mankind is not the same as “devilkind.”
--Mankind is made in God’s Image and are His offspring all.
--Devilkind also happens to reside in “the flesh of mankind.”
--Devilkind is a temporal creation of God that will be utterly destroyed.

On this basis of separation, yet CURRENT overlayment in the flesh I understand Christian Universal Salvation of mankind and current universal temporal captivity of the flesh and minds of mankind by the devil and his messengers IN WHOM present day “Christianity” is the greatest witness. Sorry guys. Wherever The Word is handled satan comes immediately to steal same. You are not exempt! Where The Word IS, that place is also satan and his messenger’s PRE-DESIGNATED instant battleground and that battleground is in all of our flesh and MINDS and those “battles” never stop as long as we are in the “flesh” of this present earth.

I wish it were so easy to look upon and man and NOT SEE GOD’S WORKING in the construction of “what” exactly we are or might be made of. I wish it were so easy to look upon a man AND SEE NOTHING ELSE. But of course this is not the case, and therefore IMHO it is purely ignorant discipleship to overlook the CONSTRUCT of the flesh of mankind cognizant of both OUR MAKER and OUR ENEMIES, neither of which can be seen with “human eyes.” It’s a tough deal, I know. I really would not expect any man to see this reality apart from the Revealing of Jesus Christ and if HE speaks to you in these matters, your hearts will listen and understand.

Can this get any easier? Not when the “accuser of other people” comes to play, and that is the exact “activity” of most of what passes for “Christianity” today has eroded into. Nearly a complete blindness to the “cause” coupled with an insatiable desire to see other people burned alive in fire forever. What a pitiful state of affairs.

The duofold problem for any who attempt to see this separation between mankind and devilkind will remain largely upon these scriptural lines.

-“We cannot say we have no sin or we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

-“He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”

Therein LIES the dilemma of mankind in scriptural understandings, and from this reality has sprung the leaking wells of a thousand of confusions and perpetual accusations unto other people and unto everyone EXCEPT the “real cause.” I say let us focus upon our enemies, that we might reveal and destroy them IN LOVE.

Love one another. Love your neighbors. Love your enemies. Love can DO THESE THINGS. Love would not ask you to do any LESS.

Satan and his messengers CANNOT do these things. They resist this message IN YOU. They are really your "exercise" to gain LOVE. This is how your Father has BUILT YOU.

The line in the sand of your body is drawn by the finger of God. On one side there is a "woman forgiven." On the other side is the Command of Love unto the sin indwelling her. "Go and sin no more" which is in accord with The Law.

Luke 11:20
But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.

I pray His Kingdom upon YOU! That Kingdom begins with bowing in acknowlement to The Truth of His Words even if it's not pretty. There is an entire family that you are commanded also to hate, and hate THEM you must and that family even includes "yourself" or more accurately "what is IN you" as well.

enjoy!

smaller

[Cheetah]

Apologies for the delay, my computer broke down (again) so I’ve had to re-type my reply.
First, I would like to respond to Smaller’s paragraph about the question of love and whether real love would burn alive a person forever. I would like to point out that Smaller only addressed one characteristic of God – that of love. He ignored that of justice and of giving to people as “their deeds deserve.” I believe that you cannot ignore one and focus on the other; God will do what is right, always and if that is punishing people as they deserve, then so be it.
He says we cannot be kinder than God. I would like to change that to say we cannot be greater in all the characteristics of God put together than He is, that includes love, balanced with justice, mercy etc. I would also like to add that if it is true that we cannot be nicer than God, then which option would Smaller choose: to let people die, or not?

Smaller then goes on to state that what commits sins is not in fact people, i.e. human beings, but satan and his messengers who live in the flesh of mankind. If this was true then it would mean that everything that we did wrong would not be us committing the wrongs but the ‘temporal’ evil messengers within us. It would mean that everything we did wrong would not be our own decision that we would consciously make. I think human experience tells us that this is simply not the case, and that if we want to do something wrong, we usually make it out of our own free will.

If what Smaller said about the devil and his messengers are indeed the ones committing these sins, it would mean that we as human beings could only do good, which would make the first passage Smaller cited from Matthew 7:12 pointless. If we could only do good, then what is the point in telling us to do that? This reminds me of scene from Fawlty Towers where Basil says “What’s the point in telling me to do what I’m already doing!?”

Smaller also states that he believes every torture and condemnation verse is for the devil. If this is the case, then why does the Bible not explicitly state this, especially in passages where in the previous sentence it was undoubtedly talking about human beings (c.f. Revelation 21)?

Smaller also says he believes that people will live by every Word of God. I agree with this but this presents an apparent contradiction with another part of his argument that all the parts of Scripture that are about torture are directed to the devil. So, man will not live by every word that comes from the mouth of God (as the Bible says), but from every word that doesn’t contain torment information, and the devil will live from the rest, right?

False prophets in the OT contained evil spirits, so he tells me. The problem is that nowhere in the Bible, O or NT, does it say that every person has evil beings inside of them. We have a few examples of people with demons inside of them, but what happened when Jesus drove them out, did they live perfectly forever, never committing another sin? What then was the value of OT sacrifices?

Later on, Smaller quotes two Bible verses. One about people not being able to say they have no sin, and the other saying that anyone who commits sin is a child of the devil. The problem with these two verses is that they can both be interpreted to mean the opposite things that he is presenting them to mean. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the first quote, “We cannot say we have no sin or we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” could mean that we cannot say we have no sin of our own, accredited to us, that is ours. And the second quote to mean that whoever commits sin does not belong to God but to the devil for he is following his ways.

I would also like to ask Smaller, that if the evil spirits committing these sins are in fact not us and it is not us who are committing any wrong, then why does God allow or order the killing of all the evil people who died in the flood in Genesis, or perhaps in Ezekiel 9 for two examples?

I would also like to ask Smaller about Jesus forgiving sins. When, on numerous accounts Jesus forgave the sins of people, according to your beliefs, it is the devil and his messengers committing sins, so Jesus must have forgiven them. If that is the case, then will there be some of the devil’s messengers in heaven with all people, including Adolph Hitler?

[smaller]

Hi Cheetah/Ben and others of course

Apologies for the delay, my computer broke down (again) so I’ve had to re-type my reply.
First, I would like to respond to Smaller’s paragraph about the question of love and whether real love would burn alive a person forever. I would like to point out that Smaller only addressed one characteristic of God – that of love.

The point I addressed was not a point of “what would Love do?”

The point was “would Love ask us to do less than what Love Himself was capable of doing?” And to that I say no. So should you.

Love can and will do far more exceedingly and abundantly of what Love asks and requests of us. Why should I expect the God I worship to be A LESSER PERFORMER than what Love has prescribed for us to do? I certainly would not want to see any person burned alive in fire forever. Heaven forbid, detest, and prohibit such things. Has Christianity become so hardened in this day that we cannot see our way past this inhumane eternal cruelty? Can there be any more vile hatred generated from one person to another person than to promulgate other people to burn alive for all of eternity? I say this is the greatest form of hatred and sin that is available from one person unto another YET this very doctrine is nearly the ONLY THING that present day “Churches” have in common for a doctrine. Their sum commonality is to promote the burning alive in fire of people who do not agree with them. Is this what Love asks of us? Never!

You will have to forgive me for the vile scorn that I have for such ignorant displays of Love. I can see why Jesus drove the money changers and open container carriers from The Temple. What scorn He must have had for that manipulation of His people. Jesus got right to the heart of it. That Temple was controlled by the “children of the devil” who reside in men and this scriptural fact remains a fact in the Churches to this very day.

I have no problem with the temporal devices (satan and his messengers, death, evil etc.) that God Himself has fashioned to use and at some time be tossed into the Lake of Fire. No problem there whatsoever. No different than God burning up an old worn out garden hoe. So what? But God burning people alive forever is simply stomach turning hair raising MANipulation by the preaching class to line their pockets. Sorry, but you fledgling seminarians need to sell better goods if you expect your flocks to flourish in and by THE TRUTH because any common idiot on the street is MORE LOVING than what your doctrines allow.

What a sorry and complete shame!

When your doctrines are against Love they are against God in Jesus Christ.

The “Churches of the damnation of people” deserve to be emptied and stripped clean and passed to the common man on the street who can love his neighbor as himself. And we are seeing that trend in our societies. The damnation of people church is from the dark ages of the manipulation of man and their governments. The Jews did not believe this lie. The early church did not believe this lie. This doctrine is a spawn of the dark ages coupled with doctrines of devils and has attempted to transform the Truth into the most bizarre lie imaginable. Many people who love Jesus are seeing Love much more clearly when they love their fellow man. All of them.

It is not a question of "what would Love/Jesus do?" It's a question of "Love asks you to do X (do unto others) so IS Love then going to do less than X Himeself?"

I pen a firm NO to that question.

He ignored that of justice and of giving to people as “their deeds deserve." I believe that you cannot ignore one and focus on the other.

I call your position in this matter a convenient eisegesis to appropriate Divine mercy for yourself at the expense of other people's eternal and detrimental fate. Romans 2:1 strictly prohibits such practices as "inexcusable." I do not participate in "inexcusable activities" such as you promote. You cannot cry out to God for JUSTICE unto others and then give yourself a free pass and a get off the hook of JUSTICE card.

IF you measured this eternal damnation via conscious torture in fire so easily spewed unto others to yourself you would quickly and rightfully shut your trap and move to the back of the room LEST you fall victim to your own cries for eternal torture. I would be ashamed to stand before God crying JUSTICE and then seeing other people burned alive forever while I, I, I got off the hook for the EXACT SAME THINGS. Now that is NOT justice my good friend Ben. That is just pure hypocritical application of justice and a DOUBLE STANDARD. Sorry. Justice demands that YOU GET what YOU deserve just LIKE THEY DO. So this cry of JUSTICE via ETERNAL TORTURE in fire is not any form of even handed Divine justice. It is just more manipulation of justice in the hands of the preaching class who have both a vested interest with doctrines of devils and cash flow.

My view does no injustice to "Divine justice." You may recall I believe in every eternal damnation and punishment scripture to its fullest extent AND to the proper entities that scripture directs this fate to.

There is also a little used statement in James 2:13 wherein "Mercy triumphs OVER justice," so there is no need to be ensconced into Divine justice for certain people at the expense/eradication of Divine mercy to the same people when mercy is clearly superior over justice, and "all men" will receive said mercy. (Romans 11:32) All men. All.

So my view of your cry of JUSTICE over MERCY is a view of a partialist rendering of same. Partial to yourself with regards to MERCY and partial against your fellow mankind for JUSTICE and this kind of measure is a false measure which of course God hates!

-Notch one more proof for the existence of the devil in men when this type of lopsided logic passes for Divine Truth or the produce of faith!

God will do what is right, always and if that is punishing people as they deserve, then so be it.

It's so so it's so? Is this some kind of a valid scriptural argument?

He says we cannot be kinder than God.

You disagree? heh heh heh

I would like to change that to say we cannot be greater in all the characteristics of God put together than He is, that includes love, balanced with justice, mercy etc. I would also like to add that if it is true that we cannot be nicer than God, then which option would Smaller choose: to let people die, or not?

God has prescribed death to the flesh of all men, to be replaced with an incorruptible body. I have nothing to add to that other than I did not desire to spend eternity bound into a pile of wet dirt NOR do I believe God, my Heavenly Father, desired that for any of His offspring but hey, you gotta start from somewhere eh?

What I do object to with your theological positions and also most of the confusions within Christianity is that you "think" your theological position (amongst thousands of other "christian" contenders) is the sole absolute and definitive arbiter of Truth. I think NOT.

There is a huge excluded middle HOLE in the bucket of Christian doctrinal guesswork that remains to be examined and explored and the exploration of this world is called THEOLOGY.

The rules of that eternal frontier are to match and harmonize EVERY WORD of God to make sound inner sense, and that call is one extremely complex undertaking that deserves a lifetime of attention, an eternity of attention. “If you continue in My Words you are my disciples indeed.” I never expect God to stop leading me in His Word. It is a very deep and complex subject worthy of the utmost respect and heartfelt adoration. That task may be where we reside forever!

What passed for Gospel in the dark ages we now look at as ignorant, brutal nearly Neanderthal people burning each other on stakes and killing each other en masse over their incessant desires to be RIGHT at the expense of OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES. Today we just damn them to fry alive forever someday and spare our expenses of wars and lives. Nothing much has changed other than our own desire for personal conveniences in these matters.

Were it "legal" I like to think most of you would have burned me alive at the stake long ago since that is the "truth" that you are so proud of and walk in everyday. Were it not "illegal" I would expect you to reflect your spiritual belief into the reality that you hold, as was done also THEN. Are you any better off today?

The eternal torture of people is hell on earth in the minds of mankind and most of you are its captives.

Love can free you from this torture. That is His Message for today just as it was so long ago. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto YOU.”

What Grand Advice!

Yet we, the Church supposedly without spot or blemish have failed MISERABLY to live in this Truth unto and amongst ourselves, and even less so to those outside the Church. So very far less so.

Smaller then goes on to state that what commits sins is not in fact people, i.e. human beings, but satan and his messengers who live in the flesh of mankind.

It's nice of you to attempt to speak my position with your words but I have never denied the transpiring of sin as outside the human being. Sin transpires IN PEOPLE.

My claim here under the flag of scripture is that PEOPLE consist of more than what we “see” with our fleshly eyes. When you are ready I can certainly provide HUNDREDS of scriptures just from the Gospels that clearly show the existence of SATAN AND DEMONS in PEOPLE. Now I really should not have to extrapolate that clear scriptural fact, but the fact is that this condition did exist and it was Jesus who revealed this condition and this SHOWS that there is more than ONE ENTITY in MAN.

It is foolish to gloss over this FACT. Jesus spoke to these entities in men. He commanded them in men. He cast them out of men. He clearly showed the existence of satan and demons IN MEN. So you want to look at a man and JUST SEE A MAN. I have no scriptural reason to see in this blinded fashion Ben as your position is BLINDED TO THE OBVIOUS!

-Chalk up one more proof for the existence of satan and demons IN MEN, when men DENY this TRUTH. Denial SHOWS they are THERE!

The bodies of mankind are soiled and defiled within by sin indwelling the flesh, so yes, these sins do emanate from human beings but the "temporal causes" are what you are asking me to overlook and ignore at the expense of your "doctrines." I have no need to see this “your” way when there are so many clear scriptural examples that “your way” is NOT THE CASE.

If this was true then it would mean that everything that we did wrong would not be us committing the wrongs but the ‘temporal’ evil messengers within us.

I have not denied that we are engaged in battles to not sin. I have not denied that there are prices to pay for what is "sown" in our bodies. There are battles within as you should well know, and there are consequences in this life as you should also well know. Your fast forward fault finding with my position and your subsequent "final analysis" as bolded above is simply not true.

Every man bears his own burden of “sins” in this life in his body. This is an undeniable fact. And as such these burdens are yours to carry in this life and yours to bring to your own cross. Those sins will be judged and stopped on your cross and you will go on. Those things in you will not be crossing over to be with The Lord.

It would mean that everything we did wrong would not be our own decision that we would consciously make.

If you commit sin you are A SLAVE of same. You think that the men who murdered Jesus had a choice in the matter? I say no, they did not. Those murderers fulfilled the SCRIPTURES. Where was their “choice?” Yet Jesus even forgave them. Is that forgiveness valid and effective? Will His Forgiveness of them stand forever? Were they actually forgiven? Or did Jesus just make Himself look good until He gets in the judgment seat and then He will rescind that forgiveness and fry those murderer’s alive forever in FIRE??? I say NO to your confusions. Never. Jesus FORGAVE those murderers and if He forgave even His Own murderers He forgave every man.

Your position on the other hand wants to be personally both master and slave, both cause and subservient. Your doctrines want your "bad decisions" to be forgotten and your "good decisions" eternally rewarded all while seeing and doing exactly the opposite for the unsaved neighbors.

I'd consider life under those doctrines a life of hollow self justifications and false hypocritical measures. No offense to you personally in any of these fouls called against your doctrines, but to the "causes" of same using what I see in men coupled with a little sound logic.

I think human experience tells us that this is simply not the case, and that if we want to do something wrong, we usually make it out of our own free will.

All right. You might as well get the "smaller" view of "freewill."

A.) You cannot eliminate God quantifiably from interacting within the wills of His Creation so freewill is just a wild guess at the elimination of God’s Abilities to interact in unseen ways.

B.) Your will is not as free as God's Will and is therefore LIMITED by any simple comparison. A LIMITED WILL cannot be called "free" so I object to the term "free" as the will of men is less free than God’s Will and as such is LIMITED. Limited is not “free.”

C.) You cannot eliminate the possibility of satan and his messengers working in the wills of mankind.

There is more of course, but these are just a few of the problems with "freewill." I have no problem defining the wills of men as subject to greater wills (God and devils/demons) and limited within the contextual definitions of our existence.

If what Smaller said about the devil and his messengers are indeed the ones committing these sins, it would mean that we as human beings could only do good, which would make the first passage Smaller cited from Matthew 7:12 pointless. If we could only do good, then what is the point in telling us to do that? This reminds me of scene from Fawlty Towers where Basil says “What’s the point in telling me to do what I’m already doing!?”

Whoa! These attempts at classifying my positions [bolded above] are really getting off the wall here Ben. I say from each man can flow both good and evil. Both bitter and sweet. Both blessing and cursing. I know what it is in men that does the bitter, the bad, the evil, and the cursing and yes, “you” can certainly have these things come from YOUR BODY. You must battle to do right because YOU HAVE AN ADVERSARY and that adversary is NOT YOU. Sin indwelling is on the doorstep of your body. In your eye gate. In your ear gate. In your mind gate. That is where the enemies of mankind linger.

These things in men are fought with His Word. First revealing, then fighting, then overcoming.

A man apart from The Word is not fit for battle with these things if he cannot see or define what his enemies are or how they work. Even less when the existence of these enemies are denied and replaced with only himself, or more accurately others.

You see Ben you want only "YOU" to be “the friend” of God while you make nearly all other men “the enemies of God.” I say you are just as prone to be an enemy of God as anyone else when you use your double standard of self justifications and then making the eternal condemnation of others for doing the same deeds.

Why always these double standards Ben? Is there some use to those types of tools? In my marketplace people who use double standards of measuring don’t last very long and Rightfully so.

Smaller also states that he believes every torture and condemnation verse is for the devil. If this is the case, then why does the Bible not explicitly state this, especially in passages where in the previous sentence it was undoubtedly talking about human beings (c.f. Revelation 21)?

The point you continually miss here Ben is that IF the devil and his messengers dwell IN MEN then you should not continually see JUST PEOPLE where you are reading these scriptures. You should also see what is IN MEN. Your “measuring device” is sorely absent a very big component here.

Smaller also says he believes that people will live by every Word of God. I agree with this but this presents an apparent contradiction with another part of his argument that all the parts of Scripture that are about torture are directed to the devil. So, man will not live by every word that comes from the mouth of God (as the Bible says), but from every word that doesn’t contain torment information, and the devil will live from the rest, right?

Now that is one twisted bit of logic Ben. Men will not live by bread alone. Men will live by every word of God and the devil will be eternally punished. Not even you will deny that the damnation scriptures are certainly unto the devil and his messengers but you want to throw people into that mix as well.

I have already stated that one problem I have with this position is that it makes God burning His Own offspring. I just can’t buy that because it is not presented anywhere in the scriptures. You on the other hand want to be both “child of God” when you do good and “child of the devil” but let off the hook when you do bad. And you want other people to be nothing but children of the devil when they do good and nothing but children of the devil when they do bad. More double standards Ben.

False prophets in the OT contained evil spirits, so he tells me. The problem is that nowhere in the Bible, O or NT, does it say that every person has evil beings inside of them. We have a few examples of people with demons inside of them, but what happened when Jesus drove them out, did they live perfectly forever, never committing another sin? What then was the value of OT sacrifices?

I delineated this contrast in the prior post, and of course in our other dialogs as well.

All people have “sin.”
All people have “sinned.”
He who sins IS OF THE DEVIL.

Now how would you like to change the math here Ben? If all have “sin” as a present tense condition and all have sinned as a past tense condition and all who have sinned are OF THE DEVIL what are we to conclude from this? You tell me. I think I can see the point here. All have “the devil.” Now Christians don’t really want to hear this, but they certainly show THE DEVIL’S PRESENCE when they HATE their fellow man eh?

HELLo! Satan is up to his elbows IN THE CHURCH! You guys are my best examples of this TRUTH! And the funny part is watching your “denials.”

You will certainly acknowledge that wherever The Word is sown SATAN COMES IMMEDIATELY TO STEAL SAME. So this alone PROVES that SATAN COMES TO YOU!

You think you are immune from this one fact? No. SATAN indeed comes to BEN and to smaller and to everyone else who handles The Word. It’s just a scriptural FACT and I am not about to ignore this fact in favor of blinded men’s doctrines.

IF you cannot deny this one fact THEN you are conceeding to my understanding Ben. That the devil is in people, particularly people who are involved with THE WORD.

Later on, Smaller quotes two Bible verses. One about people not being able to say they have no sin, and the other saying that anyone who commits sin is a child of the devil. The problem with these two verses is that they can both be interpreted to mean the opposite things that he is presenting them to mean. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the first quote, “We cannot say we have no sin or we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” could mean that we cannot say we have no sin of our own, accredited to us, that is ours. And the second quote to mean that whoever commits sin does not belong to God but to the devil for he is following his ways.

Ben, the quote from John is clear enough for me.

“He who sins is of the devil-”

Now when you sin either you and you alone are THE DEVIL or THE DEVIL is intricately INVOLVED in “your sin.”

Which way do you want Ben? Are YOU the devil now? Even if you were to proclaim yourself as the devil to me when you sin I would deny your statement in favor of the reality of THE DEVIL as a separate entity than mankind. And yes, I have had many “Christians” confess that they are the devil when this scripture is put to them. They are so blinded that they will confess that they are the devil before they admit that the devil could be IN THEM!

Who are you when you SIN Ben? Think carefully before you answer...

I would also like to ask Smaller, that if the evil spirits committing these sins are in fact not us and it is not us who are committing any wrong, then why does God allow or order the killing of all the evil people who died in the flood in Genesis, or perhaps in Ezekiel 9 for two examples?

I personally think that God takes great delight in separating His offspring from their flesh seeing as how we ALL die in our flesh. He takes great delight in SEPARATING people from their bodies and the things that are IN these bodies with us.

Those things that are in us however remain here on earth. There is no scriptural record of any devil or demon being “killed.” And of course the devil multiplies (i.e. children) so we have a very interesting buildup of THEM here on earth. The Law was meant to make an increase of "the lawless" until the cup of their Iniquity is FULL TO THE BRIM and THAT WHORE is drunk as a SKUNK on OUR BLOOD. Then that WHORE will be utterly destroyed. That "Mystery Babylon" WHORE who has made market with the souls of mankind will be taking a long awaited GOOD BYE!

The flood then is our ADVANCE PHYSICAL PICTURE of what is going to happen to THEM, those ENTITIES, just as SODOM AND GOMORRAH were physical examples of same. The “water” of God’s Word is going to COVER THE EARTH and KILL THEM on that great day of wrath. The FIRE will come from heaven and UTTERLY DEVOUR those enemies! Enjoy that physical vision given to you in the flesh to understand what is about to happen to those ENTITES called the devil and his messengers The entire Bible is filled with such beautiful examples of our HOPE! Jesus said “as in the days of Noah” many times when referring to “the end” of THEM.

But rather than to see the Overwhelming Victory of God in Jesus Christ over the temporal forces of sin, evil and death, men like you Ben are out there seeing these things as only unto OTHER PEOPLE. I say your view here is just a shame upon the Glory that God will prevail on this earth.

When Jesus said “this generation” and “this wicked and evil age and generation” He is speaking of THEM, the devil and his messengers, the current “gods” of this earth and this is THEIR TEMPORAL LIFE and THEY are being judged on this earth.

We, as God's offspring are along for the ride and we are learning the quality of LONGSUFFERING with our "temporal enemies."

I would also like to ask Smaller about Jesus forgiving sins. When, on numerous accounts Jesus forgave the sins of people, according to your beliefs, it is the devil and his messengers committing sins, so Jesus must have forgiven them. If that is the case, then will there be some of the devil’s messengers in heaven with all people, including Adolph Hitler?

Jesus never forgave sins. He forgave MEN of them. The wages of sin is death and that price will be paid.

If you ever see that what is in Hitler is no different than what is IN Ben you may find mercy for Hitler as well as you have found mercy for yourself. I say what is in Ben puts even Hitler to shame. Hitler killed a few million. Ben wants to see a few BILLION fried alive forever. This view makes even Hitler look saintly by comparison.

Damn those things that were in Hitler and damn them in any man! Mercy to God’s offspring and eventual separations from their bindings with those things!

What we get today is “awareness” of them and their temporal defeating by us IN and BY LOVE, and that victory is IN AND BY GOD’S LOVE in Jesus Christ to ALL MEN.

Why fight Love Ben? Is there some point to that?

We, as God's Children should be promoters of Love, walking IN Love, doing acts of LOVE for PEOPLE and as such we SHOW that we are Children of The Most High God.

Throw the devil and his messengers under the eternal destruction scriptural bus and MOVE ON in the Truth of God's Love for all mankind.

Unfortunately most of you will cling to hell til you're gone. This also serves God's Purposes. Too bad, so sad.

"The only thing that counts is faith which WORKS through LOVE."

And for a final smallerism for this post:

Love is all that has ever mattered. Love is all that matters. Love is all that ever will matter.

God IS Love.

enjoy!

smaller

[Cheetah]

Firstly, I should point out Smaller, that you’ve addressed the wrong post – you were supposed to answer my opening statement at post #1.
I do not believe that God asks us to do more than what He Himself does. After all, He asks us to love our neighbour and it is quite possible to do that and all the other commands in the Bible and still hold onto my view that not all people will enter Heaven. Your view that you do not want to see anyone enter hell and therefore God does not want to see this is bizarre reasoning. You assume that God thinks like you and reasons like you when, in fact, He is eternal, knows everything and is in a perfect position to make judgements upon people because He sees what you can not – the heart of a man.
Smaller then goes on to say that the “children of the devil” were in the money changers at the Temple, but he provides no Scriptural backing for this argument. And is it not a valid argument that the children of the devil were the money changers at the Temple?
Interestingly, Smaller goes on to say how acceptable it is that angels are to be thrown into hell, yet it is so very unacceptable for the same punishment to be handed out to people. Perhaps he could explain why treating angles this way isn’t, “inhumane eternal cruelty”? After all, aren’t they too living, breathing creatures that have thoughts, feelings and emotions just like us?
Smaller then claims that any person on the street is more loving than what is permitted by the doctrines of the Church. But he bases this assumption on the idea that Christians delight in people being condemned to hell. This is a false premise - just because churches teach this doctrine it does not mean that they like it, in fact I hate it and I would love to know that all people would be going to Heaven but I teach what I believe, not just what I like.
He then goes on to say that all churches that teach these doctrines deserve to be destroyed – his foundation for this is the assumption that people who teach this can not love their neighbour as is commanded. However, he fails to understand that one of the reasons that this doctrine is taught is because Christians love other people so much that they want to stop them from going to hell so we try to directed them away from the harsh reality.
The question that Smaller then goes on to ask, is “Love asks you to do X (do unto others) so is Love then going to do less than X Himself?"
To that I answer no, because God is morally perfect. And because God is morally perfect, He exhibits justice as well as love. Does He not ask us to be fair to people? Yes He does, so would He not be fair and just as well? Yes, He would.
The next part of Smaller’s argument has reference to Romans 2:1. This time, Smaller makes the assumption that it is Christians that are passing out the judgement upon other people. Again, he is mistaken because it is not Christians who are making judgement, but rather it is us who are repeating the judgement of God upon the godless and wicked of the world – repeating a verdict does not make us the judge.
Now Smaller asks if I would still teach the same doctrines if I realised I was to be judged also. He claims I would shut up and be silent. I say this is tosh. I recognise that there was a time where I was condemned to hell, where I was in the position that I now oppose, when my sins were unforgiven and when I did need to cry to God for forgiveness. Then he states that I got “let of the hook” while other people got condemned to hell for committing the same sins as me. The problem with this argument is that in the with God, he will never count my sins against me – as it is written, “Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him” (Psalm 32:2). Provided that this offer of forgiveness is available to all, which it is, then there is no injustice or double standards as Smaller falsely claims. And just to answer Smaller’s statement about justice demanding that I get what I deserve – someone has to pay the price, and that person was Jesus.
Smaller then goes on to state that he believes all the condemnation Scriptures in the Bible are for the devil, yet he fails to provide any Scripture references to back this up.
Smaller’s quote from James 2:13 was quite interesting, let’s take that in context:

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

We see that his quote does not mean that there will be no judgement because of mercy, but rather to him who shows mercy (i.e. an implication of the fruits of the Spirit from someone who is a Christian). The previous verse does not support his view either. It clearly talks about judgement being shown to “anyone”, any people, any person and not any devil, any messenger, any demon. Verse 12 talks about judgement upon these people, something which contradicts Smaller’s teachings.
Smaller now questions one of my points. He asks if my argument is Scripturally based. My argument assumes that God, creator of objective moral values, is Himself morally perfect, therefore following His teachings in the Bible about law and morals, I believe it is safe to conclude that God will do what is right, always.
Next, Smaller didn’t directly address my previous point but instead wanted to focus on my question at the end to which he replied that God will give us incorruptible bodies after we die. If we can not be nicer than God, then I ask this, which would Smaller choose: to give people incorruptible bodies now, rather than when we die (which would stop any suffering) or to let people suffer in this life first?
Later on in the discussion, after the rant which had somewhat little to do with the debate, Smaller claims that he can provide hundreds (all in capital letters) of Scripture references which show the existence of satan and demons in people. I would then ask him for two hundred Scripture references which show the devil and his messengers in ALL people as his doctrines claim. Not references which show devils going into people and what not, but clear and plain Scripture quotes which say or somehow demonstrate that the devil and his messengers are inside of all people, right now – as he claims.
Smaller now moves on to claim that the presence of demons in some men equals the presence of demons in all men. This is not necessarily so and it is quite possible to believe that the devil has entered into some men and still hold to the view that not all people will enter Heaven. Therefore, Smaller will need to provide some evidence that satan and his messengers are inside of all men.
Smaller then goes on to say that if we commit sin, we are a slave of sin. I agree, however if we commit sin, we, or someone, ought to be punished for that sin. He then states that the people who killed Jesus had no choice because they were fulfilling Scripture. I say that is not necessarily true, rather their choices were known beforehand by God who then told the prophets about what choices these men would make.
Now to Smaller’s definition of free will. To point “A” I would like to say that I do not deny God from working in unseen ways, I just believe that God does not choose to do this to control our will. To point “B” I would ask Smaller to expand on exactly what ways God’s will is more free than ours and to point “C” I say that I do not eliminate this, I just believe that Satan influences rather than controls our free will.
I’m running out of time now, so I will address the main points and start using the quote feature:

The point you continually miss here Ben is that IF the devil and his messengers dwell IN MEN then you should not continually see JUST PEOPLE where you are reading these scriptures. You should also see what is IN MEN. Your “measuring device” is sorely absent a very big component here.

Smaller, your “if” statement there is the problem. You can not prove your position because Scripture does not actually explicitly state your position as being correct.

I delineated this contrast in the prior post, and of course in our other dialogs as well.

Interestingly enough, he doesn’t address my last question.

You will certainly acknowledge that wherever The Word is sown SATAN COMES IMMEDIATELY TO STEAL SAME. So this alone PROVES that SATAN COMES TO YOU!

It does not, however, prove that satan is in me.

Who are you when you SIN Ben? Think carefully before you answer...

I am me. I am not the devil, nor is the devil in me nor I in the devil or anything else. It is simply this, that I am me, the person committing the sins. Simple.

I personally think that God takes great delight in separating His offspring from their flesh seeing as how we ALL die in our flesh. He takes great delight in SEPARATING people from their bodies and the things that are IN these bodies with us.

Then why doesn’t He do it earlier? After all, if we can’t be nicer than God…

Jesus never forgave sins. He forgave MEN of them.

This makes no sense. If I am not committing sins to be punished, how can I be forgiven of them?

The wages of sin is death and that price will be paid.

The price was paid, 2000 years ago by Jesus Christ so that whoever believes will not perish, but have everlasting life.

Love is all that has ever mattered. Love is all that matters. Love is all that ever will matter.
God IS Love.

God is also completely morally upright and totally just in all things and He will do what is just and fair – always.

[smaller]

Firstly, I should point out Smaller, that you’ve addressed the wrong post – you were supposed to answer my opening statement at post #1.

Your assertion was that faith saves. I don't dispute that premise.

My response (missed by you) was that faith is based upon the Performance of Divine Providence in and for faith and that point was addressed in the first post, that "faith works through Love" and Love says "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I posited that Jesus will accomplish that task and that you are not vital to that equation particularly if you are unable to perform or convey love to others as sufficiently noted. Supplementals to this response that your faith is not a vital consequence to His Love and Performance of better than what we can do are Romans 3:22, Romans 5:18 & Hebrews 12:2 if you need more.

I do not believe that God asks us to do more than what He Himself does. After all, He asks us to love our neighbour and it is quite possible to do that and all the other commands in the Bible and still hold onto my view that not all people will enter Heaven.

Not so.

And as previously noted one cannot claim love and disavow the effective abilities of The Performer of Divine Sovereign Love in the same breath and still call it "loving one's neighbor." Again your view of Divine Love and His Potential is well short of what may be and not vital to what God can do, nor was your form of love a vital portion of any Divine Eternal consequence. I say God can do more than what you are seeing and that you are both ignoring His Abilities and excluding other arguments that enhance scriptural understandings such as mine…;)

Your view that you do not want to see anyone enter hell and therefore God does not want to see this is bizarre reasoning. You assume that God thinks like you and reasons like you when, in fact, He is eternal, knows everything and is in a perfect position to make judgements upon people because He sees what you can not – the heart of a man.

And I believe your argument that Divine Love burns people alive in fire forever is a bizarre reasoning. Much more so in the light of “doing unto others what you would have done unto you.”

You will of course vehemently deny your own eternal burning as you would not want to have this done unto you, but you will quickly convey that position to other people and THAT is to your fault in NOT doing what Jesus says and why your view is FALSE.

And your equation here is this:

Divine Love of God to His Offspring = Eternal Conscious Torture in Fire to most of them.

Perhaps you can remedy that formula? Just to say it’s so doesn’t make it so.

I do not deny the position of eternal torture. I just do not measure it to my unsaved neighbors but to the devil and his messengers who are the only other logical component in these matters and a component that you largely ignore. I have no use for excluding the obvious players in this drama and you don’t see these players so I understand why you do not see my view. I also blame them for your not seeing.

Smaller then goes on to say that the “children of the devil” were in the money changers at the Temple, but he provides no Scriptural backing for this argument. And is it not a valid argument that the children of the devil were the money changers at the Temple?

Noted and re-noted. Anyone who is involved with The Word which presumably included all of Israel will automatically involve attempted theft by satan. You are no exception.

Interestingly, Smaller goes on to say how acceptable it is that angels are to be thrown into hell, yet it is so very unacceptable for the same punishment to be handed out to people.

The term "angel" means merely “messenger” and is applied to men, holy angels, and devils. This status denotes nothing of holiness gone awry. I already gave my position on these particular angel/messengers, that they are no more than temporal tools that God has allowed and will destroy when finished using them.

So now you get another smallerism:

All things serve The Maker of all things because He is exceedingly capable and greater than any “thing.”

As such under the flag of this smallerism (which is a compilation of many scriptures showing God’s exceeding Glory over all things) evil, sin, and death are also GOD’S SERVANTS.

Why? Because He Is Exceedingly Greater. He is so great that He can use these things, eternally discard them in fulfillment of the scriptures and still have mankind come out CLEAN and WHOLE.

Isn't that just Good News?

Perhaps he could explain why treating angles this way isn’t, “inhumane eternal cruelty”? After all, aren’t they too living, breathing creatures that have thoughts, feelings and emotions just like us?

When you can define what "anti-Spirit" is let me know. I think it's OK to presume that it is the opposite of Love which I might also note is eternal conscious torture in fire unto those we are commanded to love. So in your mind you have hell right now.

I have no problem with God’s eternal destruction of “temporal tools.” I ascribe no life to anti-life i.e. “the spirit of the anti-Christ.”

The position of the devil is opposed to everything that Christ is. When Christ said He is The Life, then the devil is anti-Life. When Christ said He is The Truth, then the devil is anti-Truth, etc. etc.

There is nothing worth saving in any of these matters of the devil or his workings.

Smaller then claims that any person on the street is more loving than what is permitted by the doctrines of the Church. But he bases this assumption on the idea that Christians delight in people being condemned to hell.

Your view that you love your unsaved neighbors YET condemn them to fry alive forever just doesn’t work for me. Why this seems to mystify you is beyond me. Love would say I’ll do it for them before Love would ever allow that to happen. Your view then is not Love, and even less so Divine Love.

Whether you delight in this fate unto those you are commanded to love is quite irrelevant to the conversation. What is relevant is that you promote this fate to those who do not "think like you" and you go so far as to claim that what you think about their fate is loving them. Back to your faulty math formula again.

You have a very faulty logical view of Divine Love, and therefore you have a logical fallacy to deal with.

This is a false premise - just because churches teach this doctrine it does not mean that they like it, in fact I hate it and I would love to know that all people would be going to Heaven but I teach what I believe, not just what I like.

Then you hate what your form of Divine Love has prescribed and as such you now have exposed other weaknesses with your positions.

A.) You are nicer than God.

B.) You hate what God has prescribed and as such you are also God's resistor. Do you think you will be able to hide your hatred of God's Sovereign Decree's from Him? Not be able to tell God what you really think, that you HATE His supposed decree?

If you claim you love God then you must promote and proclaim your love for God’s decrees as well and as such you should be a promoter of eternal human torture. You should have that doctrine painted upon everything you present. But of course most Christians like to sweep this under the rug. More dual standards and hiding the truth of what they “really” believe.

If you told any child that God would fry someone alive in fire for all of eternity they would be utterly horrified and traumatized. It’s a form of brainwashing IMHO. Christians can soft soap this eternal human torture in fire but I say drag it out into the open and show your colors.

He then goes on to say that all churches that teach these doctrines deserve to be destroyed – his foundation for this is the assumption that people who teach this can not love their neighbour as is commanded. However, he fails to understand that one of the reasons that this doctrine is taught is because Christians love other people so much that they want to stop them from going to hell so we try to directed them away from the harsh reality.

And your premise once again is that Divine Love can only do what you think. I totally reject your premise as it violates what God has prescribed for us to do and that He will do FAR BETTER..

God in Christ can and will do abundantly and exceedingly better than our form of Love as He Is Love and He will not do LESS than what He has commanded us to do.

The question that Smaller then goes on to ask, is “Love asks you to do X (do unto others) so is Love then going to do less than X Himself?"
To that I answer no, because God is morally perfect.

Then you have conceded that Love will do better than you think seeing as how you have already declared your hatred for the thought of eternal conscious human torture in fire and your expectations are also that God will do better. If however you think that eternal conscious human torture in fire is equal to Love or better than Love you are again back to a very illogical math formula.

And because God is morally perfect, He exhibits justice as well as love. Does He not ask us to be fair to people? Yes He does, so would He not be fair and just as well? Yes, He would.

I did the Divine Justice drill in the last post and stated that you should be under your own cries for Divine Justice even moreso than your unsaved neighbors seeing as how you are supposedly familiar with Divine Love personally.

Your plea here for Divine Justice to other people but not to yourself condemns your position as one of ripe hypocrisy.

You excuse yourself for sins in the name of Jesus and condemn others for their sins.

Jesus hates hypocrites.

The next part of Smaller’s argument has reference to Romans 2:1. This time, Smaller makes the assumption that it is Christians that are passing out the judgement upon other people. Again, he is mistaken because it is not Christians who are making judgement, but rather it is us who are repeating the judgement of God upon the godless and wicked of the world – repeating a verdict does not make us the judge.

You are passing out what you think you see.

What you see is obviously open for debate particularly when the consequence of what you see is in direct violation of Romans 2:1, the Golden Rule, among many other scriptures of the same flavor. You cannot justify what you do if it is in direct violation of Romans 2:1 and this also proves what you see is false.

Now Smaller asks if I would still teach the same doctrines if I realised I was to be judged also. He claims I would shut up and be silent. I say this is tosh. I recognise that there was a time where I was condemned to hell, where I was in the position that I now oppose, when my sins were unforgiven and when I did need to cry to God for forgiveness. Then he states that I got “let of the hook” while other people got condemned to hell for committing the same sins as me. The problem with this argument is that in the with God, he will never count my sins against me – as it is written, “Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him” (Psalm 32:2). Provided that this offer of forgiveness is available to all, which it is, then there is no injustice or double standards as Smaller falsely claims.

Of course your position here is just more double standard. You still sin. You have sin as a present tense condition, yet your sins are all excused in the name of Jesus while nearly everyone else's are not. That is certainly a double standard by anyone's measure.

I can find no justification in the scriptures for sinning and thinking myself forgiven for same via confessions and repentances in the name of Jesus while nearly all other people for their lack of respective performances of sincerity are condemned and subsequently eternally burned alive while conscious. I will chalk it up that most Christians are great actors in the drama of obtaining forgiveness while simultaneously not forgiving other people.

But then I don't blame these false acts on people but that which is in them.

And just to answer Smaller’s statement about justice demanding that I get what I deserve – someone has to pay the price, and that person was Jesus.
Smaller then goes on to state that he believes all the condemnation Scriptures in the Bible are for the devil, yet he fails to provide any Scripture references to back this up.

You will get the measure you use for others. Count on it. If you need The Word on these matters I'll look up the multiple Gospel notations of same, but it's not you as a child of God that is going to get that measure that you measure to your unsaved neighbors. Your temporal controller will get it squarely. Be thankful. It is to those things in “christians” that I have contempt.

As to the devil not getting the fate of the Lake of Fire, just let me know if you disagree. I am sure we'd find agreement, at least on this subject.

Smaller’s quote from James 2:13 was quite interesting, let’s take that in context:

We see that his quote does not mean that there will be no judgement because of mercy, but rather to him who shows mercy (i.e. an implication of the fruits of the Spirit from someone who is a Christian). The previous verse does not support his view either. It clearly talks about judgement being shown to “anyone”, any people, any person and not any devil, any messenger, any demon. Verse 12 talks about judgement upon these people, something which contradicts Smaller’s teachings.

Recall my supplemental to James 2:13 from Romans 11:32, that all men will receive mercy. I do not find mercy triumphing over justice for the devil because of the multitude of explicit scriptural exceptions that take that mercy off the table for the devil and his messengers.

Worn out garden hoes are not in need of Divine Mercy.

Smaller now questions one of my points. He asks if my argument is Scripturally based. My argument assumes that God, creator of objective moral values, is Himself morally perfect, therefore following His teachings in the Bible about law and morals, I believe it is safe to conclude that God will do what is right, always.

Then you should address why it is that you can sin, have sin, do wrong, etc. and be entirely forgiven while others who are most likely even better than you on many measures must burn alive in eternal conscious torment if they do not cotton to what you think the Bible says.

Next, Smaller didn’t directly address my previous point but instead wanted to focus on my question at the end to which he replied that God will give us incorruptible bodies after we die. If we can not be nicer than God, then I ask this, which would Smaller choose: to give people incorruptible bodies now, rather than when we die (which would stop any suffering) or to let people suffer in this life first?

1 Corinthians and other scriptures provide us adequate information about the path that God has for mankind currently i.e. planted in corruption, weakness, decay, darkness, etc. There appears to be a need to make the inheritors of eternity suffer with death, perhaps as a humbling, I do not know, but I suspect that is a part of the process. Humility, weakness, deference, longsuffering, not doing ill, not keeping records of wrongs all seem of some import to eternal habitation and I can certainly understand why from a logical perspective. It is important that we consider others over ourselves in any eternal habitation and that measure first comes to us from God unto ourselves. Do you understand how these principles relate back to my first point of "doing unto others?" We know that to be great in heaven is to be The Servant of All and Jesus IS That Servant. He will perform.

Later on in the discussion, after the rant which had somewhat little to do with the debate, Smaller claims that he can provide hundreds (all in capital letters) of Scripture references which show the existence of satan and demons in people. I would then ask him for two hundred Scripture references which show the devil and his messengers in ALL people as his doctrines claim.

I certainly reject your rant falsely portraying this debate.

There is a need for two or more witnesses from scripture to substantiate a position and these were previously provided. In addition there is a multitude of scriptural evidence that this condition for the devil and demons in mankind exists so it is pointless to deny this position, but of course your denials do run along the lines of denial of the condition for yourself while claiming and clinging it to the unsaved neighbors. Should I be surprised again at the demonstration of double standards? No. And I don't blame it on you. Isn't that nice?

I also asked you who you were if you sinned. Are you going to answer?

Not references which show devils going into people and what not, but clear and plain Scripture quotes which say or somehow demonstrate that the devil and his messengers are inside of all people, right now – as he claims.

All have sin and he who sins is of the devil.

Paul also openly admitted his condition in Romans 7:17 and 20-21 wherein he described the sin indwelling him as "no longer I" and said that evil was present with him whenever he desired to do good.

I doubt very much that you are an exception to this condition Ben in spite of your protests. Then there is the additional fact of attempted theft by satan wherever The Word is sown and since the Gospel is living and active and sown in mankind, then the attempts at theft are also continual in mankind. Your cries for two hundred scriptures are fulfilled every time you see a person being a slave of sin and ALL PEOPLE have sin. If you think yourself exempt you should prove your sinless state.

Smaller now moves on to claim that the presence of demons in some men equals the presence of demons in all men. This is not necessarily so and it is quite possible to believe that the devil has entered into some men and still hold to the view that not all people will enter Heaven. Therefore, Smaller will need to provide some evidence that satan and his messengers are inside of all men.

We have approached this question from a multitude of different directions Ben. If you see yourself as having sin and then he who sins being of the devil you can make all the denials that you want, but it will remain a scriptural fact. He who sins is of the devil. This applies to all mankind.

If a thought of adultery is the same as the sin of adultery I am not aware of anyone that can measure the constant state of your thoughts, but I am willing to speculate that your thoughts are subject to the condition of evil thinking and that is the same as the act, at least in the case of adultery, calling someone a fool, and using double standards...;)

This also proves that the devil and demons are IN mankind. All of them, even Christians. Paul openly admitted that God Himself gave him a particular demon to keep him weak and humble.

Smaller then goes on to say that if we commit sin, we are a slave of sin. I agree, however if we commit sin, we, or someone, ought to be punished for that sin. He then states that the people who killed Jesus had no choice because they were fulfilling Scripture. I say that is not necessarily true, rather their choices were known beforehand by God who then told the prophets about what choices these men would make.

Are you saying that those men who killed Jesus were not slaves of sin when they murdered Jesus and that Jesus may never have been murdered to fulfill the scriptures if men had exercised their freewills i.e. freewill could PREVAIL over fulfillment of the scriptures???

This should be good.

Now to Smaller’s definition of free will. To point “A” I would like to say that I do not deny God from working in unseen ways, I just believe that God does not choose to do this to control our will.

But you see you cannot claim you have “freewill” and still claim that God or the devil can work in your will without your knowledge. Tilt.

To point “B” I would ask Smaller to expand on exactly what ways God’s will is more free than ours

Pass. If you need proof that God’s Will is greater than your will what can I say?

and to point “C” I say that I do not eliminate this, I just believe that Satan influences rather than controls our free will.

Is satan's influence successful in controlling your will? If so, then how can it be free? Sometime free maybe? Sometimes slave? How “free” is that? Partially free…?

A point here Ben is that if you acknowledge that your will can be secretly influences by either God or the devil then your will is not free NOR can these things be quantifiably measured as to just what is going on when within mankind.

I’m running out of time now, so I will address the main points and start using the quote feature:
Smaller, your “if” statement there is the problem. You can not prove your position because Scripture does not actually explicitly state your position as being correct.

Which points? There were many, but of course they all revolve around my opener of "dong unto others."

Interestingly enough, he doesn’t address my last question.

It does not, however, prove that satan is in me.

That's easy!

1 John 3:10
In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

Your position does not love your brother, therefore the children of the devil are expressed in men.

I disclaim your attempt at math making Divine Love of God's Offpsring = Eternal Conscious Torment of same in Fire as no such position exists in the scriptures.

...and all the protests by all the children of the devil from their world will not convince me that Jesus cannot do better than your math formula as that is what He also commands us to do.

If you had everything but had not Love you have nothing.

I am me. I am not the devil, nor is the devil in me nor I in the devil or anything else. It is simply this, that I am me, the person committing the sins. Simple.

I believe I have you on record already for stating that you are a child of the devil when you sin. If this is not the case please let me know who you are when you do sin.

Then why doesn’t He do it earlier? After all, if we can’t be nicer than God…

This makes no sense. If I am not committing sins to be punished, how can I be forgiven of them?

Perhaps we need to hook you up to a Divine Thought Detector? Or can I take your measure unto others that you are commanded to love as proof of your "condition?"

The price was paid, 2000 years ago by Jesus Christ so that whoever believes will not perish, but have everlasting life.
God is also completely morally upright and totally just in all things and He will do what is just and fair – always.

I believe this as well, but of course I still love my unsaved neighbors and do not think that loving them equates to proclaiming their eternal conscious torture in fire if they do not think like YOU, so excuse me.

enjoy!

smaller

[Cheetah]

Unfortunately this will be my last rebuttal and Smaller’s post is so long that I’m not sure I have time to answer it all, but I’ll try.
Firstly, despite failing to address the correct post, Smaller attempts to sum up my opening statement in one sentence. He suggests that faith saves. This is not what my opening post said, but rather one of the points it makes is that faith is necessary for salvation. I also placed four specific questions in it. I would ask that Smaller, rather than rebutting this paragraph, you go back and rebut the appropriate parts of my first post.
Smaller goes on, however, to assert that I am not vital or essential to God to the work in His Kingdom. Christian teaching contradicts this, saying that God has a part for everyone who comes to Him working in His Kingdom, in fact it is our duty as Christians to go out into the world and preach the gospel of Christ. None of the three verses that Smaller quotes actually prove that we are not vital.

Now, Smaller goes on to assume that I call throwing a person into hell, “love”. I do not. Rather, I term such an action just and fairness in repaying a person for their sins. I believe that Smaller then goes on to argue that my position limits God because it does not allow Him to redeem everyone. This is not true because God can, and does, redeem all that He so desires and just because He does not choose to, does not limit His ability to do such.

Smaller’s argument that it is love that is committing people to hell has been answered, but I would like to address his quote at the end of the sentence – that is, do to others as you would have them do to you. I believe that God, had He committed sin, would have accepted the punishment attached to it – this would be just, and we know that God has not committed any sins, therefore He deserves no punishment. There is no inconsistency between my view and that verse.
Smaller then goes on to state that the punishment is for the devil and his messengers, yet provides no Biblical references for this, nor does he reference back to any points in previous posts – he simply asserts his position as being true.

After quoting me, Smaller then tells us he’s “noted and re-noted” my point, yet he still fails to actually provide and direct quotes from the Bible as I pointed out above. He says something which I think is possibly a paraphrase but even if it is, he doesn’t explain how it fits in with his idea that the devil is “in” people.

After he next quotes me, Smaller explains that angel, means messenger. This fails to address my point that they are still beings and they have emotions and thoughts of their own (various Scripture references). Smaller then goes on to suggest that the term ‘messenger’ is applied to men. So the terms angel or messenger can actually mean man. Hmmm, very interesting – so when the devil and his messengers get thrown into hell, these messengers can actually be men, followers of the devil.
Smaller then states that these messengers are no more than ‘temporal tools’ that God will destroy when He’s finished using them. Using them for what? This seems a pretty pointless exercise – is God directing evil? Firstly Smaller tells us that the sin we commit is not us, it is controlled by messengers, and now we have the messengers controlled by God!

Next we have Smaller telling us all things serve God. By default? I can’t say that this statement is true. After all, if we were all serving God, then what would be the point of the Bible telling us to do this? The 1^st and 2^nd commandments would be meaningless if we already did it and could not break them.

Smaller moves on to say that I condemn non-Christians to hell. I would like to correct him to say that I do nothing of the sort, it is God who is proved right when He speaks, and justified when He judges (Paraphrase from Psalm 51). Who am I to condemn?

Smaller’s next point:
A) If I was “nicer” than God, in allowing all people to enter Heaven, then I would be being unjust, because not all people have had their sins forgiven, therefore I would be being less just than God, and God is a morally perfect being, so I would not be able to God. So, in an attempt to be nicer than God, I am actually not able to be God, because God is just too. As I mentioned earlier, you are only looking at one characteristic of God, which is unfair.
B) Smaller claims I “hate” God’s decrees. My point is: so what? If I’m going to Heaven anyway, why should I care?

Then you have conceded that Love will do better than you think seeing as how you have already declared your hatred for the thought of eternal conscious human torture in fire and your expectations are also that God will do better. If however you think that eternal conscious human torture in fire is equal to Love or better than Love you are again back to a very illogical math formula.

I do not believe that love, as a characteristic, is used when condemning people to hell, I believe that God hates all who do wrong (Psalm 5:5 and Psalm 11:5).

Jesus hates hypocrites.

This appears to be a contradiction. How can Love hate me? Surely these are two opposites – if God is entirely love, then how can He hate me?
And one more thing, I do not believe that my position is hypocrisy because I don’t claim to have higher standards than what I practice; and I make it known that forgiveness is available to all people, not just me.

You are passing out what you think you see.

What you see is obviously open for debate particularly when the consequence of what you see is in direct violation of Romans 2:1, the Golden Rule, among many other scriptures of the same flavor. You cannot justify what you do if it is in direct violation of Romans 2:1 and this also proves what you see is false.

Smaller now repeats what he said in his last post about Romans 2:1, yet in my very quote above I deal with that problem and Smaller has failed to prove that “what I see” is wrong. His point that I am in breach of this verse is only correct if his view is correct, but he has not properly proved his view, therefore I am not, at the moment, in breach of this verse.

Of course your position here is just more double standard. You still sin.

I still ask for forgiveness…

You have sin as a present tense condition,

Same with forgiveness…

yet your sins are all excused in the name of Jesus while nearly everyone else's are not.

By their choice…

That is certainly a double standard by anyone's measure.

…Nope. That’s fair.

I can find no justification in the scriptures for sinning and thinking myself forgiven for same via confessions and repentances in the name of Jesus

…or really? Well I sure can - just search for "forgiveness" on Biblegateway.com and you'll get loads of results.
I’m running out of time now, so I’ll just skip the points that I’ve answered earlier in this post.

I certainly reject your rant falsely portraying this debate.

Eh, Smaller, I believe it was you that was ranting on.

There is a need for two or more witnesses from scripture to substantiate a position and these were previously provided.

I don’t remember seeing two hundred Scripture references in any of your posts here. And you claimed that you “can” provide this evidence, not that you have.

In addition there is a multitude of scriptural evidence that this condition for the devil and demons in mankind exists so it is pointless to deny this position

Your doctrines claim that there is a devil or his messenger inside every one of us – that is what I can not find in Scripture and what I am asking you to provide. After all, if there is not a devil or messenger inside every one of us, then we are responsible for our sin. You make this claim that there are all these verses that prove your position, but when I actually ask for them, you fail to provide what I ask for – again.

I also asked you who you were if you sinned. Are you going to answer?

I am me when I sin, no one else nor is anyone else sinning in me. I am entirely responsible for my actions.

Are you saying that those men who killed Jesus were not slaves of sin when they murdered Jesus and that Jesus may never have been murdered to fulfill the scriptures if men had exercised their freewills i.e. freewill could PREVAIL over fulfillment of the scriptures???

Haven’t you read any of my last quote?

But you see you cannot claim you have “freewill” and still claim that God or the devil can work in your will without your knowledge.

That last bit’s what you’re claiming! I have free will and neither God nor the devil has full control over it, they can all tell me information but ultimately it is my decision.
It’s like me telling someone that they’re about to crash their car and they should turn a hard left now. The person then does that. Now, I did not control the person’s will – I simply told them some information which they used to make a decision out of their own free will.

Pass. If you need proof that God’s Will is greater than your will what can I say?

That’s not what I said. I asked you to expand on what ways God’s will is more free than ours, not ‘greater’, and the reason I asked you to do that was so that I could then find out exactly what you were trying to say, rather than building up straw men.

That's easy!

1 John 3:10
In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

Your position does not love your brother, therefore the children of the devil are expressed in men.

Your conclusion is not necessarily true. All the verse shows is that if I, me, the person who is typing this, does not do good and exhibit the fruits of the Spirit then I do not belong to the family of God. It does not show that if I do not do good, then the devil is in me.

I still love my unsaved neighbours

So do I.

[smaller]

Hi Ben and others of course

Unfortunately this will be my last rebuttal and Smaller’s post is so long that I’m not sure I have time to answer it all, but I’ll try.
Firstly, despite failing to address the correct post, Smaller attempts to sum up my opening statement in one sentence. He suggests that faith saves. This is not what my opening post said, but rather one of the points it makes is that faith is necessary for salvation. I also placed four specific questions in it. I would ask that Smaller, rather than rebutting this paragraph, you go back and rebut the appropriate parts of my first post.
Smaller goes on, however, to assert that I am not vital or essential to God to the work in His Kingdom. Christian teaching contradicts this, saying that God has a part for everyone who comes to Him working in His Kingdom, in fact it is our duty as Christians to go out into the world and preach the gospel of Christ. None of the three verses that Smaller quotes actually prove that we are not vital.

We can re-categorize each others positions all day long, but my observation about your position will only hinge around Love which is much more secure.

Without Love a man is as nothing as it is with his doctrinal positions. You can know all things but if your final answer is apart from Love then none of what you have or what you carry is relevant and no, you are not vital without LOVE.

Your math equation that God loves mankind but subsequently tortures them forever in fire simply doesn’t make one whit of logical sense no matter how we spin the doctrinal platters and points.

Now, Smaller goes on to assume that I call throwing a person into hell, “love”. I do not.

So we are now safe to assume that your version of God does indeed have a double standard? Is this a surprise to me? No.

Your version of God says to you, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Yet in the next breath God Himself is not required to love these unsaved neighbors, but rather torture them alive in fire forever.

I think it is very disingenuous to present this type of faulty logic double standard human torture based as anything equivocal to faith working through Love.

Rather, I term such an action just and fairness in repaying a person for their sins.

Then you should fall under your own cries for Divine Justice as well. But again we see nothing more than another double standard making a play for being truthful.

I believe that Smaller then goes on to argue that my position limits God because it does not allow Him to redeem everyone. This is not true because God can, and does, redeem all that He so desires and just because He does not choose to, does not limit His ability to do such.

You will fully admit that God desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of The Truth (1 Tim. 2:4,) that God is The Saviour of all men (multiple citings,) and that God attains all of His Desires (Isaiah 46:10 and others,) yet God nearly completely fails to achieve any of these statements. Just how does that work again?

Your arguments for eternal human torture are only arguments from your pre-disposition of eternal human torture and this position you carry runs exactly counter and is diametrically and logically opposed to so many scriptures it is hard to count them all. Contradictions, double standards, faulty logic all for upholding eternal human torture at are simply too hard for me to justify. You are of course free to use such tools. I just find zero value in them apart from Love. Zero.

Smaller’s argument that it is love that is committing people to hell has been answered,

Your position does not even exist, except by your own exclusion of the obvious solution, that this fate is only for the devil and his messengers.

but I would like to address his quote at the end of the sentence – that is, do to others as you would have them do to you. I believe that God, had He committed sin, would have accepted the punishment attached to it – this would be just, and we know that God has not committed any sins, therefore He deserves no punishment. There is no inconsistency between my view and that verse.

Whew! What does this speculation have to do with anything? That if God sinned He would burn himself alive forever? Is this your justification for the promotion of eternal human torture? Your own idle speculations? Is this what this debate comes down to? Postulations from non-existing positions?

I am thankful that this is your last post in this debate.

Smaller then goes on to state that the punishment is for the devil and his messengers, yet provides no Biblical references for this, nor does he reference back to any points in previous posts – he simply asserts his position as being true.

I said that we agree on this point. If you don’t you needed to let me know. Why debate what we agree on? The devil and his messengers are clearly tossed into The Lake of Fire and are not shown anywhere as coming out so that is the final solution in regards to these “temporal tools.” (too many scriptures to list that any rookie should know)

After quoting me, Smaller then tells us he’s “noted and re-noted” my point, yet he still fails to actually provide and direct quotes from the Bible as I pointed out above. He says something which I think is possibly a paraphrase but even if it is, he doesn’t explain how it fits in with his idea that the devil is “in” people.

Your failure to connect the dots does not constitute a failure on my part to provide them.

Here is the drill again:

All have sin.
All have sinned.
He who sins is of the devil.
The devil steals or attempts tosteal the Word where it is sown which is in people.

It is incumbent upon you to prove you are immune from this scriptural reality which you have utterly failed to prove and of course you cannot prove your immunity anyway so why try?

After he next quotes me, Smaller explains that angel, means messenger. This fails to address my point that they are still beings and they have emotions and thoughts of their own (various Scripture references).

Your inference was that these were somehow “holy angels” gone awry and I said that the term angel implied nothing of holiness. What’s your point? If you are saying that entities with no truth in them are somehow eternally viable life forms I say you are wrong and that non-Truth or opposers to Truth will not eternally exist or prevail and are therefore temporal by both nature and use of same by God who created them.

Smaller then goes on to suggest that the term ‘messenger’ is applied to men. So the terms angel or messenger can actually mean man. Hmmm, very interesting – so when the devil and his messengers get thrown into hell, these messengers can actually be men, followers of the devil.

Again, if you are not familiar with the term angel as being simply messenger and this term being applied to multiple entities you are simply not familiar with the scriptures and I am not your school master. Some things I take for granted when doing debate and one of those things I take for granted is familiarity with basic principles. If you do not have this familiarity as a basic principle I might suggest you forgo debates as it is not beneficial to tangent into elementary school with you, for me anyway. Spend five minutes with an online concordance and you can figure it out all on your own and save us our mutual breath.

Smaller then states that these messengers are no more than ‘temporal tools’ that God will destroy when He’s finished using them. Using them for what? This seems a pretty pointless exercise – is God directing evil? Firstly Smaller tells us that the sin we commit is not us, it is controlled by messengers, and now we have the messengers controlled by God!

And again if you are not familiar with God’s creating and using evil, particularly in a retributive fashion, and that God created and directs the devil we are back to elementary school. Yawn X 100.

Next we have Smaller telling us all things serve God. By default? I can’t say that this statement is true. After all, if we were all serving God, then what would be the point of the Bible telling us to do this? The 1^st and 2^nd commandments would be meaningless if we already did it and could not break them.

Well if we cannot believe simple statements such as these where do you want to go?

Revelation 4:11
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

You say there are exceptions. I say you are wrong. So what else is new?

Your little ditty about the law has nothing to do with the primary observation here Ben.

Smaller moves on to say that I condemn non-Christians to hell. I would like to correct him to say that I do nothing of the sort, it is God who is proved right when He speaks, and justified when He judges (Paraphrase from Psalm 51). Who am I to condemn?

But you see Ben what you are debating here is only what you see and that what you see is right and that it is then God who is speaking and not you and again that is a very false and faulty presentation an argument from presumption from step one, that being that it is GOD who is saying what YOU SEE when it clearly is NOT what God is saying at ALL.

It is in fact only you seeing that conclusion as obviously I find your position quite void of scriptural fact and filled with double standards, faulty logic and contradictions galore as adequately shown.

So no, it is only Ben who sees these things as it is for others who blindly run down this non-existing track in the name of God. What you see and what God says are vastly different IMHO.

Smaller’s next point:
A) If I was “nicer” than God, in allowing all people to enter Heaven, then I would be being unjust, because not all people have had their sins forgiven, therefore I would be being less just than God, and God is a morally perfect being, so I would not be able to God. So, in an attempt to be nicer than God, I am actually not able to be God, because God is just too. As I mentioned earlier, you are only looking at one characteristic of God, which is unfair.

No, you are nicer than your own God Ben if you would not eternally torture people in fire. All the points A-Z will not convince me otherwise. If you would not fry people alive in fire you are in fact nicer than God.

What is even more bizarre is that you think burning people alive in fire is nice to begin with. It’s not. And if you would not do such a thing and find it revolting I think God is just a little better than Ben.

B) Smaller claims I “hate” God’s decrees. My point is: so what? If I’m going to Heaven anyway, why should I care?

I’d say that about sums it up. As long as you are off the hook what do you care what you spew to others? You can use your double standard with immunity. I believe it was Voltaire who said:

"The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning"

[quote]
I do not believe that love, as a characteristic, is used when condemning people to hell, I believe that God hates all who do wrong (Psalm 5:5 and Psalm 11:5).[/quot]

It is not stated anywhere that God is going to eternally torture His offspring. Not a once is such a statement made. So you hang your eternal torment of people hat on nothing. Pardon me for digging deeper on what I call Christian fascism meaning just because a majority think something is true that doesn’t make it so.

This appears to be a contradiction. How can Love hate me? Surely these are two opposites – if God is entirely love, then how can He hate me?

God doesn’t hate you Ben. He does hate in a just manner and that hatred is reserved for the devil and his messengers who also happen to occupy and speak through the flesh of men, particularly so in regards to eternal human torture. In other words you have been duped.

And one more thing, I do not believe that my position is hypocrisy because I don’t claim to have higher standards than what I practice; and I make it known that forgiveness is available to all people, not just me.

And again you appropriate God’s Divine and Sovereign Grace and Forgiveness unto yourself on (who knows what basis) whilst simultaneously eradicating it on (who knows what basis) to others. And all of this judgment is supposedly what Ben? Divine? No. Such a position stems largely from your imagination because when your position is dragged out into the open it really doesn’t make much sense other than it strips God nearly entirely of doing what He says He will do and accomplish. I can call your position nothing more than personal speculation.

Smaller now repeats what he said in his last post about Romans 2:1, yet in my very quote above I deal with that problem and Smaller has failed to prove that “what I see” is wrong. His point that I am in breach of this verse is only correct if his view is correct, but he has not properly proved his view, therefore I am not, at the moment, in breach of this verse.

I don’t have to prove a thing Ben. I can however read and comprehend what this verse says and then compare it to what you in fact do:

Romans 2
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.
You condemn people to be tortured alive forever for sins Ben YET you do the SAME THINGS and as such you show your colors and have been openly exposed as one without any excuses for himself either.
And I also see that it is not you who speaks in this manner, but there are lawless loveless ones IN YOU who is openly exposed when you speak in this manner.

I still ask for forgiveness…

While restricting it for others based on their lack of asking. Again, very convenient and self serving IMHO.

I don’t remember seeing two hundred Scripture references in any of your posts here. And you claimed that you “can” provide this evidence, not that you have.

Your cries for more evidence would not convince you anyway Ben. You are locked into the eternal judgment of other people and as such you are a walking example of hell on earth to other people right now.

Your doctrines claim that there is a devil or his messenger inside every one of us – that is what I can not find in Scripture and what I am asking you to provide.
After all, if there is not a devil or messenger inside every one of us, then we are responsible for our sin. You make this claim that there are all these verses that prove your position, but when I actually ask for them, you fail to provide what I ask for – again.

I am me when I sin, no one else nor is anyone else sinning in me. I am entirely responsible for my actions. Haven’t you read any of my last quote?

Here is your own stated position Ben and I hope you find it rather pitiful and also painful. It was posted on August 10 at 1:46 p.m in our exchange on this subject prior:

“I have a conclusion, that if I sin, I am a child of the devil, and a slave to sin”

Now you say you need proof that the devil is in you when you already claimed it to be so? Why? You have your own answer in front of your face, yet you deny it to your own face. I simply don’t understand your logic here Ben. You keep saying prove it! Prove it! Yet your own words have already proven it. Again, more faulty logic here Ben.

That last bit’s what you’re claiming! I have free will and neither God nor the devil has full control over it, they can all tell me information but ultimately it is my decision.

When subjects of the devil cry out their claims of being free pardon me for expressing the fault of that logic as well. Subjects are not free in any country or in any language. You have already stated that you are a slave of sin when you sin and Lord knows how often your supposed and theoretical freedom then evaporates.

It’s like me telling someone that they’re about to crash their car and they should turn a hard left now. The person then does that. Now, I did not control the person’s will – I simply told them some information which they used to make a decision out of their own free will.

Whatever Ben. When you can prove that either God or the devil may not be involved in this creation THEN you’d have a point but of course that ain’t gonna happen buddy.

That’s not what I said. I asked you to expand on what ways God’s will is more free than ours, not ‘greater’, and the reason I asked you to do that was so that I could then find out exactly what you were trying to say, rather than building up straw men.

And I said I’m not playing ignorant games here Ben and that you should take your own words a little more seriously. I mean really, proving that God is more free than US? Is there supposed to be some intelligence behind that question? I really hope you are older than 13.

Your conclusion is not necessarily true. All the verse shows is that if I, me, the person who is typing this, does not do good and exhibit the fruits of the Spirit then I do not belong to the family of God. It does not show that if I do not do good, then the devil is in me.

Yeah, I already got that Ben.

You know people who admit demonic influences really have no business telling other people that they are going to be eternally tortured in fire, Oh! And thanks for agreeing with me on the subject that all have "the devil" in them when they sin and of course ALL sin.[/b]

You are not the first "christian" I have had tell me they have the devil in them and you won't be the last.

Let’s not resurrect this baloney any further until you get your act together OK?

In the meantime remember, God IS Love, even to your unsaved neighbors and HE will do much better than you!

Later gater and of course!

enjoy!

smaller

[Cheetah]

This is now my closing statement.
This debate was quite interesting, but unfortunately some of my main questions and points were not answered because, despite two requests, Smaller failed to address my opening statement. It would not be unusual for Smaller to dodge some of my points, not answer them properly or build up straw men by presenting a distorted and misrepresented view of my point.
Smaller’s argument, in my opinion, wasn’t very well substantiated. He failed to give reasonable evidence to suggest that there are demons and messengers inside every single one of us who are responsible for our sin. He plays away Jesus’ death as nothing more than a way by which sin was ‘detached’ from our bodies, he claims that the all references to “men” in the Bible are actually meant for the devil, but fails to prove this point, he appears to contradict himself and to explain his points so that they fit with the Biblical text, he uses complicated structures which are far more complex than the truth.
In conclusion the Bible clearly says, in plain words, that not all people will go to Heaven, but only those who fight the good fight and believe the Word of God, and we can know it.

[smaller]

Greetings Ben and others

In summation:

Ben, every point of your's was addressed multiple times in multiple ways.

1.) Your faith and Christ's Faith are different. His Faith (which works through Love) is real and effective for all mankind.
2.) The fate of hell is for unbelievers. We just differ on the identity of same.
3.) Chrisitan Universalism does not preach only "good things" as your false warning claims, but also adheres to eternal torture of the wicked. Again we just see the identity of the wicked differently.

Given the fact of your multiple admissions of the devil dwelling in you, a purported "christian" it is rather disingenuous to think that condition doesn't exist in the "unsaved."

These respective differences in our views produce a very dissimilar outcomes though. Christian Universalism doesn't have to bow it's head in shame on the one vital difference between in our respective positions, and this difference is that we can fulfill in ourselves the command that we have been given, to love others as we love ourselves. To do unto others as we would have done unto us.

Your position flees from having what is rightfully due to you as a sinner using your measure, eternal torture in fire, and vaunts that fate unto others instead and then has the gall to call it love. Such is not the stuff of love or anything even close.

Love dear Ben is not eternal torture in fire.

[Kelp]

Moderated By: Kelp

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