Can I assume your (opposed to the Bibles) understanding of "unbelievers" to mean;
someone who has no religious beliefs, or who does not follow a particular religion?
Religious belief is distinct from religious practice and from religious behaviors- with some believers not practicing religion and some practitioners not believing religion.
Does the Bibles definition of 'unbelievers" differ from yours? What is your definition of religion?? Is a person considered an "unbeliever" if they believe in God but not in religion? Can a person believe in God and not religion???
We are never only one thing, even when that thing is religion. Religion is not just a beliefs about Salvation, it is also the everyday habits of discipline and humility those beliefs encouraged.
Finding religion in everyday life means looking wherever and however we find people invoking a sacred presence.
Quote: Jesus
But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear the One who, after you have been killed, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him!…
@Wondergirl:
Quote:
Walter, if you had been born into a Muslim family/society and were a devout Muslim, believing you have God's love, would you switch to being a Christian? END QUOTE.
Probably not.
If I was involved in organized crime, If I was a murderer, if I was a simple Honest good man, if I was a Irish midget monk etc....probably not switch to being a Christian.
Nothing about me ever wanted to have anything to do with God! "Christ-in me" is what Changes me...Never had anything to do with me.
Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
Is it too hard to fathom that every living creature on the face of the earth (past and present) have seen, known the living GOD. Man was created with God in our DNA. Why bother yourselves...who will suffer eternal damnation! I'm not sure what Athos is getting at. 1) Is he trying to say that only those who have knowledge of God, and by rejecting him will be thrown into the lake of fire. 2) is he trying to say that those whom have never known or haven't even had the chance to know God, (aren't classified as unbelievers, being that they had never had a God to believe in in the first place) therefore are exempt from being tossed into Hell. 3) Hell only last till the end of time, nothing eternal about it.
Anybody that has ever lived has the knowledge of Gods existence. Nobody is blameless...nobody escapes Judgment. Your either on the right (life) or the left (Hell) Either eternal Life (in Christ) or eternal Punishment (in sin)
Either way we all enter eternity to be judged, those on his right (those that are in the body of the Christ) will enter into eternal life, those on his left will be cast into eternal (we can say eternal because time has past...been done away with) Hell.
To focus on Hell is to focus on ones flesh...Hell is Gods purpose, not mine.