Tell Him Jesus Sent You

I was waiting for the bus to arrive after class today, when a man approached me wanting to ask me a few questions. He warned that they might be deep, but sensing he was a Christian, I was all for it .He proceeded to ask me some basic questions about my upbringing and my current beliefs. Then, he told me one last thing, right as my bus was coming: If you die today, and are in front of God, all you have to say is "Jesus Christ."So, I was wondering what other Christians here thought of that. To me, it seems as though with a belief such as that in place, one may permit one's self to do as much wrong as desired, and later it all be washed clean by those two magic words.J0N

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

i agree. however, the churches obviously don't support such. in order to get into heaven, you have to do good works, be repentent, and other such stuff. or, if you're calvinist (puritan), you're automatically chosen from birth.i never really got it either. To me, this makes the whole sacrifice of Christ pointless, because even those who don't deserve heaven, so long as they believed in christ, get in. what about the hindu (well, colbert did say that hinduism was but a path to accepting christ as your savior, so I guess that solves the dilemma )?any of you who actually get this care to chime in?

Given my beliefs if I find myself in front of God after death I think I would be very inclined to exclaim: "Jesus Christ!"

Classic Copout.If you die today, and are in front of God, all you have to say is "Hi."

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

You can see why they'd think that

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Romans 10:13:
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

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Acts 2:21:
And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved..

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Joel 2:32
Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.

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Simple...unless you look for other verses that indicate there's a lot more to it.

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Matthew 7:21:
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

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Micah 3:4
Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time.

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"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

with a lisp like mr slave?

Dear Jon,The normal Christian belief is, if you die and are in front of God, it is too late to say anything. I can not tell you exactly what this man meant; maybe he meant BEFORE you die, when you are aware that you are going to die. He may also be one of a sect that believes knowledge and recognition of Jesus is required for entrance to Heaven.But, to answer your question; The moral of the story is that it is never too late to repent. Maybe, that there should be no fear that you need to go through years and years of training, be baptized, go to church, etc, for you to reach heaven. If I give this man the benefit of the doubt, he is trying to give hope.In the Catholic church, the idea that we can do whatever we want and still be forgiven is called 'The Sin of Pressumption'. We are taught to live every day as if it were our last, because we have no idea if we will ever get a chance to repent. It is hard to live life perfectly every day, for sure, but we must at least try. When we have knowledge of God, there is no room for doing whatever we want and waiting till later. On the other hand, we have the Sin of Despair; which is, believing that God will not forgive us because we have been too bad. I think the message of this man is just 'don't despair' it is never too late. It should not be thought of as an excuse for believers to do whatever, but as something for a non-believer to remember if he ever has a sudden change of heart.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Maybe what this guy was trying to was just plant a seed in you, and bring about an awreness of Jesus. Or that is what he really believed, who knows. You kind of answer your own question there. If you are doing what you know to be wrong, do think you should go to heaven?

If God looks like this, though, think it over a bit first.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

One may permit oneself to do anything, but it will take a bit of sincerity behind those magic words.Perhaps Jar is right---we only need say Hi, and hope that the Deity is in a forgiving mood! Edited by Phat, : correcticus spellingicus

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If you die today, and are in front of God, all you have to say is "Jesus Christ."

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Strictly speaking all one has to do is believe in the Lord Jesus, believe in His atoning sacrifice, believe He was read from the dead, believe He has the power to overcome death in the flesh, etc, and anyone, regardless of their past offenses can be saved. That's the promise.However, judging by your testimony of what this guy said, he claims that once you die and have the opportunity to accept Jesus, after the fact, that you can still be saved. I don't agree with that from a hermeneutic point of view. The Scriptures seem quite clear that once you die, you have reached the point of no return. Either you were saved or you weren't.Unless I'm misinterpreting your explanation, it sounds as if he is incorrect, again, speaking strictly from an analytical approach to the Scriptures.

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"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." -C.S. Lewis

To me, too. I went through several evangelism courses a couple decades ago, including the wildly popular "Evangelism Explosion" by Dr. D. James Kennedy. It always seemed to me that these courses taught salvation by magic words, too.It still seems that way. In fact, we still refer to mainline, Reformation-based, "Sola gratia, sola fide, sola Scriptura" Christianity as "the kingdom of words."

Ah, the memories!I once lived in a US neighborhood that was being evangelistically exploded. It was an Amway premise. Your network/church can grow exponentially forever, in complete defiance of the laws of economics/reality, because you have a product/answer everybody wants. Just hire our consultant, who will train members of your laity to become evangelistically exploding cobalt bombs. After that just keep up the hustle.When the cobalt bombs came to my door to do their exploding, the pitch opened with a question. 'If you died and met God today, and God asked you why he should let you into heaven, what would you say?'Jon's bus evangelist (OP) struck me as a grad of such a program who misfired when he tried to explode. He has been drilled in the pitch but the gunpowder is old. He garbled the presentation and blew up his own theology. Post-mortem conversions, as our colleagues attest, are not a feature of Christian orthodoxy.Evangelistic explosions malfunction like any other. When the fireworks are cheap and the weather is damp, you see a lot of duds.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : messing around.Edited by Archer Opterix, : still messing around.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

hehe I was thinking the same thing when I read the OP. I would exclaim: "Jesus Christ! I'm dead already? What the..."
And of course I'd get into heaven having said the magic words eh? I hope you answered him with at least a standard "If you're God then you already know." Or some such. I'd like to hear what your response was.Edited by Calypso, : No reason given.Edited by Calypso, : We need a quote button!