Who's Calling, Please?

treeplanter

treeplanter

Well-known member

Supposedly, Jesus came to die for our sins
Per the Christian narrative, Jesus came to save us

This, if true, is absolutely an act of love!

Is it still an act of love, though, when He removes us from His protection for the so-called 'crime' of not recognizing Him within the arbitrarily allotted amount of time - i.e. up to the very moment before we die?

Witness the clip supplied above:

In this Twilight Zone episode titled: Night Call - our protagonist, Ms. Elva Keene, finds herself being contacted, via telephone, by a spooky voice - one that she, innocently enough, fails to discern as belonging to her long lost love - Brian, the man to whom she was to have been married to decades prior to his untimely death

And the deceased Brian's reaction to Elva's failure to recognize him?
To abandon her!
To cruelly and viciously rip away the solution {himself} to her longstanding loneliness

And why?
All because she didn't recognize him prior to her outburst of: "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

This hardly seems loving to me...
 
treeplanter said:

Supposedly, Jesus came to die for our sins
Per the Christian narrative, Jesus came to save us

This, if true, is absolutely an act of love!

Is it still an act of love, though, when He removes us from His protection for the so-called 'crime' of not recognizing Him within the arbitrarily allotted amount of time - i.e. up to the very moment before we die?

Witness the clip supplied above:

In this Twilight Zone episode titled: Night Call - our protagonist, Ms. Elva Keene, finds herself being contacted, via telephone, by a spooky voice - one that she, innocently enough, fails to discern as belonging to her long lost love - Brian, the man to whom she was to have been married to decades prior to his untimely death

And the deceased Brian's reaction to Elva's failure to recognize him?
To abandon her!
To cruelly and viciously rip away the solution {himself} to her longstanding loneliness

And why?
All because she didn't recognize him prior to her outburst of: "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

This hardly seems loving to me...
Click to expand...
All you have to do is ask, "Who are you? ". God wouldn't put a person through all that foolishness.
 
This post of yours is a rerun. Even your rerun of the Twilight Zone rerun. You've just flat out run out of any new ways to whine about the character of the God you don't believe exists, haven't you?

But your reran post puts you into a bit of a quandary, doesn't it?

If your whiny objection to the way God is going to handle your eternal soul is that you deserve some slack for not recognizing Him, then you implicitly admit you don't recognize Him, thereby further implicitly admitting that you could be all wrong in characterizing Him as someone who will abandon you for not recognizing Him.

You went to all that trouble rerunning your Twilight Zone episode, and didn't bother to think through the fundamental flaw of your post.
 
stiggy wiggy said:
This post of yours is a rerun. Even your rerun of the Twilight Zone rerun. You've just flat out run out of any new ways to whine about the character of the God you don't believe exists, haven't you?
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Sure thing, Mr. Let's Rewrite Christmas Songs as Atheist Paeans Again and Again

Hypocrisy much?

*Not to mention that I just want to introduce others to The Twilight Zone...

stiggy wiggy said:
But your reran post puts you into a bit of a quandary, doesn't it?
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Nope, not at all - as we're about to see
{to borrow a tired line from you}

stiggy wiggy said:
If your whiny objection to the way God is going to handle your eternal soul is that you deserve some slack for not recognizing Him, then you implicitly admit you don't recognize Him, thereby further implicitly admitting that you could be all wrong in characterizing Him as someone who will abandon you for not recognizing Him.
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I recognize God

And then I choose to reject Him

Why?

Because He chooses to reject those that do not recognize Him

Why is this such a hard concept for you people to process?
My animosity towards God is due His animosity towards those who sincerely seek the one true god and innocently get it wrong
 
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Caroljeen said:
All you have to do is ask, "Who are you? ". God wouldn't put a person through all that foolishness.
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Do you hold it against the terrified and vulnerable old lady for not thinking to ask this question?

By this same token, is it fair of God to hold it against someone who fails to ask of Him this question when he/she is already convinced {i.e. deceived into thinking} that he/she has found the one true god elsewhere?
 
treeplanter said:
Sure thing, Mr. Let's Rewrite Christmas Songs as Atheist Paeans Again and Again
Click to expand...

Christmas comes but once a year. Your whining goes on forever.

Hypocrisy much?
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No, not much.

Nope, not at all - as we're about to see
{to borrow a tired line from you}
Click to expand...

Time to return it.

I recognize God
Click to expand...

Unlike the woman in your episode. So the episode was without relevance to theology. You screwed up.
 
stiggy wiggy said:
Unlike the woman in your episode. So the episode was without relevance to theology. You screwed up.
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Screwed up?
Without relevance?

No, not at all

I recognize that Brian is a jerk because he abandons Elva for the 'crime' of not recognizing him
Does that sound like something that anyone else does?

Hmm...I think it does
 
treeplanter said:
Screwed up?
Without relevance?
Click to expand...

Correct.

I recognize that Brian is a jerk because he abandons Elva for the 'crime' of not recognizing him.
Click to expand...

But you claim to recognize God. So Brian is not a God analogue and Elva is not a Treeplanter analogue in your stupid attempt at a Twilight Zone analogy.

If you don't agree with the vast, overwhelming majority of Christians claiming that one who dies apart from Christ is condemned ...........
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One who has never heard the gospel is not condemned. You, however are.
 
treeplanter said:

Supposedly, Jesus came to die for our sins
Per the Christian narrative, Jesus came to save us

This, if true, is absolutely an act of love!

Is it still an act of love, though, when He removes us from His protection for the so-called 'crime' of not recognizing Him within the arbitrarily allotted amount of time - i.e. up to the very moment before we die?

Witness the clip supplied above:

In this Twilight Zone episode titled: Night Call - our protagonist, Ms. Elva Keene, finds herself being contacted, via telephone, by a spooky voice - one that she, innocently enough, fails to discern as belonging to her long lost love - Brian, the man to whom she was to have been married to decades prior to his untimely death

And the deceased Brian's reaction to Elva's failure to recognize him?
To abandon her!
To cruelly and viciously rip away the solution {himself} to her longstanding loneliness

And why?
All because she didn't recognize him prior to her outburst of: "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

This hardly seems loving to me...
Click to expand...

Well, that isn't how it went.

God sent Jesus to have mercy on the human race, but ultimately sacrifice was unavoidable. To be clear, God never really liked the sacrifices to begin with, but tolerated them anyway because people are people and would rather kill someone or something than accept mercy.

In Hebrews 10, the author quotes Psalm 40:6-8:

8In the passage above He says, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not desire, nor did You delight in them” (although they are offered according to the law).

But that's what Jesus did. He came to give mercy to people, at times even forgiving peoples' sins, with just a spoken word, no sacrifice required:

Matthew 9
2Just then some men brought to Him a paralytic lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven.”

Mark 2
5When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Guess what? People detested this so much and inevitably ended up martyring him over it. So we're left with a sacrifice of God's Son. Another thing, God didn't have to allow that, but it was an act of great mercy to make it possible to save people from their sins and the consequences of the coming judgement.

So let me ask you a question. If you met someone and he said to you, "Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven." Would you happily accept it if this individual was gaining prominence, followers, and power in your local area? So much to the point that people wanted to make him king and possibly overthrow the government?
 
Caroljeen said:
The old lady DID ask who was calling and didn't get an answer. (Yes, I watched the video ) God will answer when you ask, Who is it?.
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Quibbling aside, the point is this:

There are, across the earth, billions of sincere believers

Only a certain percentage of which who have ascertained the correct god
{correct according to Christians, that is}

God, according to Christian teaching, abandons those who die without having recognized Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior

My question to you is this:
How is it good and just to abandon to Hell those who die having been deceived, in life, into believing in false gods?
 
stiggy wiggy said:
Elva is not a Treeplanter analogue
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I didn't say that Elva is a treeplanter analogue

I simply pointed out that Brian is a jerk for having abandoned Elva on the basis of her not recognizing him

I'll leave it to you to decipher the analogue to this situation because I'll be banned, yet again, if I explicitly state it myself
{Hell, dollars to donuts I'll be banned anyway!}
 
treeplanter said:
My question to you is this:
How is it good and just to abandon to Hell those who die having been deceived, in life, into believing in false gods?
Click to expand...
It's God's will that every single person be saved. He draws every single person to himself. I can only attest to how he drew me. I was an atheist and I wasn't looking for him at all, yet He had mercy on me. God is good and just to give everyone a chance to come to him.
 
Runningman said:
Well, that isn't how it went.

God sent Jesus to have mercy on the human race, but ultimately sacrifice was unavoidable.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'll just stop you right here...

Who, or what, dictated to God, Almighty, that sacrifice was unavoidable???

Does not God, Himself, make the rules???
 
treeplanter said:
Yeah, I'll just stop you right here...

Who, or what, dictated to God, Almighty, that sacrifice was unavoidable???

Does not God, Himself, make the rules???
Click to expand...

I don't think human sacrifice was the plan at first. The Bible says, in a spiritual sense, Jesus had already been slain, identified as "The lamb slain from the foundation of the world." So Jesus went about his business for 30 years or so and began a ministry preaching the gospel. When it finally came to being arrested and crucified, Jesus' Father, God, allowed it.

Ultimately, it's what couldn't be avoided because of the hardness of peoples' hearts; the same reason God tolerated animal sacrifices in the first place.

People weren't accepting mercy, but Jesus' death isn't the end of the story. Now his sin sacrifice remains available to all who will accept it in faith.
 
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