The other mistake that I noticed with what this person said is:
"To have knowledge you have to eat from the tree of life in order to understand sin and grow as a person."
What a huge error that is in understanding God's Word! The tree of life gives eternal LIFE, doesn't it? It's
"the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. 2:9 and 2:17) that gives
knowledge and
UNDERSTANDING!
All godly wisdom and truth comes only from God.
Bro Parrish, you said "Christ did not need to EXPERIENCE GOD, because HE IS GOD, and HE ALWAYS WAS." and you are absolutely right! Since Christ IS God that ends the fallacy of that argument right there!
And AMEN, to truly understand God we need to be BORN again and Christ needs to be IN us and we need to be IN Him. That means regularly eating of His Word - the "bread of life"! Ohhhh TASTE! How joyous this bread from heaven makes me!!!
Yes, hell is the "grave" in that Scripture and I showed him that with other Scriptures.
peopleoftheway - AMEN! What that person said WAS a copout for living a worldly sinful life. I've made my choice to live in Christ. This person seems back and forth and can't decide. I noticed on another forum, he used the signature:
"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth" which is only the very first portion of Ecclesiastes 11:9. Conveniently, he left off the ending of that Scripture that says,
"...but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Obviously he is living the "pleasure principle" - which seems to be "Sin first, think of salvation and judgment later." Or perhaps it's the latter part of 1 Cor. 15:32 -
"...let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die."
I've dealt so much with nominal Christians like this, trying to show them in the Word what is expected from Christians. Romans 12:1 -
"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."
To me - this is a DELIGHT!! I am so full of JOY in this!! I can't conceive of living any other way now. I do show people from the Scriptures what the Word really says. Some of these nominal Christians have false statements made by their ministers engraved upon their minds - and they think that it's something biblical.
johnlf - Good advice to rebuke this person and stay away from them if they don't repent. I can't force them to see the truth. It's there for their reading and edification and learning, if they will only SEE.
I have been praying for this person and that is what I see as the best course of action. Having show from the Scriptures why that viewpoint is wrong, now the plan is to pray for them.
Jassy