Bible Answers

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Answer:

The most important thing is to believe in Jesus Christ as your only hope of redemption before God. We cannot do anything to save ourselves. How many times have you heard people say “I’m not so bad” and then go on to explain to you how they believe God will only send people like Stalin and Hitler to Hell. Others say “well, I go to Church” or “my uncle is a pastor” or any number of things. It makes me shudder to think of the ignorance about the most important thing of all in relation to Christianity.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say to “be good”, “go to Church” or “have a relative that is a pastor” and you will be saved.

See:

John 5:24 (New International Version)

 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 6:47 (New International Version)

⁴⁷I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.

John 10:9 (New International Version)

⁹I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.^[a] He will come in and go out, and find pasture.

John 14:6
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:5-7 (in Context) John 14 (Whole Chapter)

Acts 2:21 (New International Version)

 ²¹And everyone who calls
      on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

Romans 10:9 (New International Version)

⁹That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

 2 Timothy 1 (New International Version)

⁸So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, ⁹who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, ¹⁰but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

2 Peter 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.

I recently received a follow up comment on Atheism. The main point of a discussion with Atheists, Agnostics and people of various beliefs and sects is for us all to agree we share one thing in common and that is faith. Now, all intelligent people of various beliefs and denominations will agree that they all have faith in their particular system. The one’s that usually give you a hard time are Atheists and Agnostics. They will claim they do not have faith or that their belief system is devoid of faith. That is totally absurd. They may not have faith in a thing called God or gods but they do have faith.

The faith they have is the faith that there is no God or that nobody can know if there is a God or gods. Since they cannot disprove that a God or gods exist and we cannot prove that God or gods exist then we are both left with faith. However, things go a bit further in this discussion when you think about it logically.

The next step is to ask a different question since we all share faith equally. That question is which group, believers or nonbelievers have precedent on their side. We are not talking about the idea that some new theory has come against the original theory. A theory only loses its standing when it is disproved not simply attacked.

We should also not make other common mistakes as people of faith. For example, I would never argue that since the majority of the people in the world believe in God or gods then God or gods must exist. Majority views do not have any standing when you need to decide truth. This method may be used by our courts but American courts are not always correct. Another way to look at the majority view is to understand there once was a time when the majority of the people of the world believed it to be flat. Simple majorities do not dictate truth or prove something correct.

However, someone had to prove the world was not flat before the majority view could be discarded. All we can really say at this point is the majority view is that there is a God and it has been that way for all of recorded history. The faith of the Atheist and Agnostic is on very shakey ground. After all, it has been thousands of years and the theory that there is a God has not been shaken.

I might go one step further and say the fact that we can even have this discussion lends itself to the theory that there is a God. After all, as far as we can tell, the rest of creation does not seem to struggle with this idea at all. That makes me, and I am sure others, wonder who gave us the ability to question not only our own existence but the existence of our creator. It does not seem to be a product of the theory of natural selection.