Heretic vs Apostate

Currently, I'm not in a place where I can comment on real life application, though the Biblical implications seem clear to me.

But I wanted to encourage you. From my experience, the toughest topics no one wants to comment on. Evil keeps us from seeking the purest Truths.

Peace to you.

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"Have you heard of pastors praying for the death of apostates? If so, how do you feel about it?"
This is wrong and usually a sign of an aberrant pastor. God does not wish that any would perish but that all would come to repentance.
Even apostates and heretics.
BTW an apostate is someone who abandons the Christian faith for another faith after being a Christian or at the very least having the cultural appearance of Christianity.
A heretic is one who contradicts one of the five fundamental tenets of Christianity. (The additions in parentheses are my clarifications of what each means):
1: The infallibility or at the very least inspiration of the Word of God (the Word of God in this tenet refers to the Bible in general, not only to the KJV. I'm saying this as a preemptive before the KJV onlyists come.)
2: The Deity and Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ.(Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, NOT a purely human man.)
3: The Substitutional Atonement (Jesus died for our sins in our place)
4: The bodily and physical Resurrection of Jesus Christ (He rose from the dead as Himself)
5: The physical and literal Second Coming of Christ.
If someone denies any of these doctrines (the basics of Christianity) then propagates something else in their place, that person is a heretic.
Heretics can come from Christian backgrounds, but the difference is that heretics, unlike apostates, can come from other faiths.
For example a "Christian" heretic that comes to mind is Hannah Hurnard. Her first book "Hinds Feet In High Places" was OK, but then she wandered into new age nonsense and finally all-religion universalism.
An example of a heretic without a Christian background would be the Dalai Lama.

An example of a heretic without a Christian background would be the Dalai Lama.

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Hello Susan,
Main Entry: her·e·tic
1 : a dissenter from established church dogma; especially : a baptized member of the Roman Catholic Church who disavows a revealed truth
2 : one who dissents from an accepted belief or doctrine :

I don't believe the Dalai Lama would qualify as a heretic as Christianity is not part of his world view.
While not a Christian, he is certainly a holy man in the best sense of the word.

Here is a webpage devoted to the Dalai Lama
http://www.tibet.com/DL/

Peace,
Annabel

Main Entry: her·e·tic
1 : a dissenter from established church dogma; especially : a baptized member of the Roman Catholic Church who disavows a revealed truth

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Curious as to your source. While that may be a definition according to Roman Catholicism, it is not the "standard."

Curious as to your source. While that may be a definition according to Roman Catholicism, it is not the "standard."

Just Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. No hidden motives. I never expected that definition to pop up..(sigh)
Does everything have to turn into a Catholic/Non Catholic debate?
Look it up yourself.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

Hey, the DL is not going to Heaven unless he repents and believes in Christ.
Jesus said that He is THE Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that NO MAN comes to the Father, by any other way.
The book of Acts says somewhere that salvation comes through faith in Christ and no other.

To be clear, I was referring to the things which are the essentials.
BTW add the Trinity and of course the existence of God to the essentials.
All errors are not heresies and all persons in error are not heretics.
To be clear the word "heretic" should be reserved for those who teach errors of the gravest sort, IMHO.

Originally posted by Susan
Hey, the DL is not going to Heaven unless he repents and believes in Christ.
Jesus said that He is THE Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that NO MAN comes to the Father, by any other way.
The book of Acts says somewhere that salvation comes through faith in Christ and no other.

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I don't see the Dalai Lama converting to Christianity anytime soon.
I won't make decisions on someone elses salvation either. It's up to God, not me.
By the way, many Christians believe that there is more than one path to God.
The Dalai Lama burning in Hell for all eternity? I don't think so.

The Word of God says that unless he places his faith in Jesus, Gehenna is exactly where he will be!
The meaning of Christian is "one who believes in salvation through faith in Jesus Christ."
what you mentioned is universalism (a heresy BTW), which is not a part of Biblical Christianity.

No offense intended, peace

No offense taken.

A Christian who believes in universalism is wasting their time. If we all get there evenutally, there's no point to following Christ now...Christ said to follow Him is to have trouble...heck, why worship God at all...

Sorry, there is no such thing as a Christian who believes there's more than one way to God...that philosophy misses the entire point of who Christ is.

There are, sadly, too many people who call themselves Christians but are not...the Bible has a thing or two to say about them...check out the book of Jude! Wow...that's authority.

Way to stand up for the Faith Susan! I anyone gets offended by your preaching of sound docrtine then go back to 1 Timothy 4:1-5. It's all you need to remember.

Peace to all who seek it,
<><

Originally posted by Othniel
A Christian who believes in universalism is wasting their time. If we all get there evenutally, there's no point to following Christ now...Christ said to follow Him is to have trouble...heck, why worship God at all...

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That's like saying that a person who believes in forgiveness of sins has no reason not to sin. Sin is wrong in and of itself.

Sorry, there is no such thing as a Christian who believes there's more than one way to God...that philosophy misses the entire point of who Christ is.

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Granting that Christ is the only way to God, it's not clear at all that there's only one way to Christ. If there is, then Heaven will be empty, because we are fallible.

We know He forgives some errors. We don't have any real way of being sure which ones.

We know He forgives some errors

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He forgives ALL our errors, if we will but come to Him and receive Him into our lives.

(We often tend to forget the "receiving" bit)