Salvation for Jews in the Holocaust?

PaulCyp1 said:

God judges every individual with love and understanding. It is highly unlikely that He would send to Hell people who lived their entire lives worshipping Him, simply because they never had the opportunity to recognize Jesus as His Son.

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Exactly! God doesn't send anyone to Hell! People who choose to reject Christ and knowingly worship and give power to the enemy are the ones who go there.

I have confidence that, in the words of St. Isaac the Syrian, "God’s mercy is far more extensive than we can conceive, God’s grace is greater than what we ask for."

-CryptoLutheran

Lybrah said:

Do you think Anne Frank and the Jews persecuted in the Holocaust went to heaven? Did God pity them? Did any of them come to Christ during that time?

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Only if they placed their trust in Jesus as Messiah. The Bible is clear.

Acts 4:12
Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Sadly there is not multiple ways to be saved.

nolidad said:

Only if they placed their trust in Jesus as Messiah. The Bible is clear.

Acts 4:12
Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Sadly there is not multiple ways to be saved.

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I think everyone in this thread is in agreement with Jesus being the only way to salvation that the question the OP is asking is is it possible for Jews who don't know about Jesus to become saved or to what extent is the salvation of Christ offered to people.

Rawtheran said:

I think everyone in this thread is in agreement with Jesus being the only way to salvation that the question the OP is asking is is it possible for Jews who don't know about Jesus to become saved or to what extent is the salvation of Christ offered to people.

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Every one has exactly one lifetime to recieve Christ as Savior and trust in HIs death and physical resurrection. If one dies without that- there is no second chance! also there is no other way God saves people. God made that clear. It is a hard saying, but then Jesus was filled with things that are hard to accept by human emotions.

nolidad said:

Every one has exactly one lifetime to recieve Christ as Savior and trust in HIs death and physical resurrection. If one dies without that- there is no second chance! also there is no other way God saves people. God made that clear. It is a hard saying, but then Jesus was filled with things that are hard to accept by human emotions.

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That makes me so happy!

nolidad said:

Every one has exactly one lifetime to recieve Christ as Savior and trust in HIs death and physical resurrection. If one dies without that- there is no second chance! also there is no other way God saves people. God made that clear. It is a hard saying, but then Jesus was filled with things that are hard to accept by human emotions.

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I agree with this but what would you say would happen to someone who has never been convicted of their sins or never heard about Jesus? For example, a Jew or a Muslim or has never truly understood the Gospel and have sincerely with all of their heart tried to have a relationship with the true God?

After reading this thread, I understand why Jesus told us not to judge in this way........a stern command and a warning.

Salvation is a free gift, God saves whom he will, also just as salvation is a choice, so is hell. We damn ourselves, Christ Jesus came to save us from ourselves, not from the loving Father as revealed in Jesus Christ. God does will the salvation, we Christians try to stuff as many people in hell as we can.

If most people are damned as many Christians believe, but all infants are saved, then abortion is something good. This shows how crazy we can get in our religion.

I pray for the salvation of all, many Christians do, I believe this is the Holy Spirit asking us to true members of the Priesthood of the faithful.

Peace
Mark

Rawtheran said:

I agree with this but what would you say would happen to someone who has never been convicted of their sins or never heard about Jesus? For example, a Jew or a Muslim or has never truly understood the Gospel and have sincerely with all of their heart tried to have a relationship with the true God?

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Romans 10 answers that! People HAVE to believe inorder to be saved! And it is the churches job to go out and present that good news of Jesus death and resurrection. If people who live in a place where the gospel was never heard and they could be saved another way- then God does not require faith in christ.

God desires none should perish and those that are truly seeking are known of god and He will send someone to give them the good news. I know! IN 1987 I went on a missionary trip to Beijong. My topur guide peppered me with questions about the faith. A year later she was saved and a shining disciple! I believe th ehwole purpose of my going was to share th egospel with that one girl who was looking for the Truth!

It would seem there are basically two schools of thought:

1) That God wants people to be saved.
2) That God wants to keep as many people from being saved as possible.

Whenever we speak as though salvation is some kind of quiz where we have get all the answers right, or that we have to get all our t's crossed and i's dotted, that's basically saying God is a bouncer trying to keep as many people out of heaven as possible. Only the Very Special Few get to be saved, and everyone else gets eternally screwed over because they didn't happen to believe the right things, or have the right religion, or perform the right set of hand gestures that one really weird summer back in high school.

However, the theme throughout the Bible, and the persistent theme throughout most of the leading theologians and doctors throughout the history of the Christian Church is that God is very much pro-salvation. St. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4:10 that God is the "Savior of all men, especially of those that believe". Salvation isn't some exclusive club that people get to join by knowing the right people, or having been born at the right time or place. Salvation is what God has for the entire world, through Jesus, and it really is for everyone (no exceptions).

Hell is not what happens when people can't pass a theology exam, or because they happen to have been born at the wrong time or place, or something like that.

God doesn't send people to hell. Neither does God sit and twiddle His thumbs waiting for people to come to Him, or else too bad, they get to go to hell. And we all just have to say "Too bad, so sad."

God is pro-active, God is the One who comes down, meets us, encounters us, and is at work in the world to accomplish His gracious work. That's why Christ told His Church to preach the Gospel, and to baptize. Because God is actually at work through Word and Sacrament to take hold of us and bring to us all of these gifts. So what about those who don't hear the word? What about those who weren't baptized? (etc) Well here's the thing, it's not for you, me, anyone to say. We can say, "Yes, God works through these means, He has promised this and we can trust this" But that does not mean that God is somehow constrained, as though His arms are tied behind His back.

In the Lutheran tradition we recognize the Ordered Means (for example, fire burns, it's what it does), and that is what we as the Church preach (that God chooses to work and to save through His Word and Sacraments giving us faith and joining Christ and His work to us). But there is also the Extraordinary, for example we read in the story of Daniel's companions that they were thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to bend the knee to Nebuchadnezzar, and what happens? They don't burn. How can this be? How can fire which by its very ordered means as fire burns not burn these men? Because here, in this extraordinary circumstance, by God's Absolute Power the fire did not burn, and those men came out of the fire unharmed. It is God's prerogative, as God, by His absolute power to do whatever He will do. If He, by His absolute power, has so willed it that ultimately and in the end literally everyone is saved, then glory and thanks be to God. Indeed, this has been the hope and prayer of the Christian Church throughout time.

But as Christians we can't speak about what we do not know, about what God has not said. We have the word, that here through these Means, which God has instituted in His Church, His saving power goes forth throughout the world. That is what we preach. But our preaching is not that God is limited to what He has given and revealed, only that we cannot speak beyond what has been given.

It would therefore be incredibly wrong to claim that those millions who suffered so abhorrently at the hands of tyrants, and who died in those death camps are in hell simply because they never professed the Christian religion. Such judgment belongs to no man.

The honest answer is that we simply cannot know who is and isn't saved. That knowledge does not belong to us, to anyone. Anyone who would claim to know is either arrogant, a liar, or both.

If you want to ask me, personally, what I think? I think that God is good, and I have faith that the One who promises to save me by His mercy is the same One to all those who have suffered and died at the hands of evil tyrants throughout ages, and indeed toward all men. I have confidence that the God who was at work through Abraham, the God of promises, the God who rescued the children of Jacob from Egypt and gave them promises of a land of milk and honey is not a God who would betray Jacob's children in their darkest hour. I have confidence that the God who loves the world, who desires to save the world, is a God who very much is invested in you, me, and everyone else who has ever lived. And I have trust that the God who says He would save me, is quite competent to save anyone and everyone. I put my trust in God's mercy, not just for myself, but for my neighbor, for my friends, my family, and indeed for everyone.

I don't know what everything is going to look like at the end. But I have faith that the good and kind God, that I know through Jesus to be a kind and gentle Father, is not a God who turns His back upon this world which He has made.

-CryptoLutheran

nolidad said:

Only if they placed their trust in Jesus as Messiah. The Bible is clear.

Acts 4:12
Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

Sadly there is not multiple ways to be saved.

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Jesus was the God the Jews already believed in throughout the OT.
Jesus is the Rock that accompanied them when they fled Egypt.

I posted a thread like this one a few months back and in the form of a poll I believe. Sadly, I had few, if any, that voted in favor of the Holocaust bringing salvation for the Jews.

Sketcher said:

Who decides what people deserve?

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God?

solid_core said:

-OR-
C) Denying the eternal Son of God and saying that He was a liar is enough for people to justly deserve the eternal death. (Punishment hypothesis)

-OR-

D) Because the Son of God is the source of life for all people, saying "no" to Him is saying "no" to eternal life. (Willful exclusion from life hypothesis)

"I am... the life"
J 11:25

"I am the bread of life"
J 6:35

"I am the bread of life"
J 6:48

"I am ...the life"
J 14:6

Its logically consistent to accept that when you reject the Lord Jesus Christ you will not have life.

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Sure, there are several scriptures that seem to say that faith in Christ gives eternal life, while sin means eternal death. Death would be the default, so to speak. I'm pointing out the problems of the doctrine that some (or indeed, most) people are given eternal life in hell.

Rawtheran said:

Exactly! God doesn't send anyone to Hell! People who choose to reject Christ and knowingly worship and give power to the enemy are the ones who go there.

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People like Anne Frank, you mean?

Basil the Great said:

I posted a thread like this one a few months back and in the form of a poll I believe. Sadly, I had few, if any, that voted in favor of the Holocaust bringing salvation for the Jews.

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I only shows how little we understand the salvation brought by Jesus Christ. We are still very much in the 'flesh'. It does not matter, God's mercy in infinite, his judgements always true.

We quote scripture that agrees with us but forget one important one, leave the judgment of the soul to God, and respect the mystery of his actions in the soul of each human being.

For the most part, we are not that much different from radical Muslims. True we do not kill anymore, or torture, we leave that up to Jesus. I believe that we for the most part worship Zeus, a god of our own understanding, finite, more human than divine, something we can be comfortable with.

Peace
Mark

Lybrah said:

Do you think Anne Frank and the Jews persecuted in the Holocaust went to heaven? Did God pity them? Did any of them come to Christ during that time?

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Does the way a person dies bring salvation?

Randy777 said:

Does the way a person dies bring salvation?

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We cannot put God in a box and say that He only operates in one way. God can do what He wants and when He wants. If He wishes to work outside the normal box in which He operates, who are we to say otherwise?

Basil the Great said:

We cannot put God in a box and say that He only operates in one way. God can do what He wants and when He wants. If He wishes to work outside the normal box in which He operates, who are we to say otherwise?

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Its a yes or no question. What about others that are murdered? The Gospels and Paul's letters do not hint or teach or suggest salvation other the through faith in Jesus. "Those who hold to the testimony of Jesus and obey His commands"

Jesus himself suffered death at the hands of the wicked He understands suffering.

Those that God calls His children
children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

I agree with your premise only in regard to the young and very young.
For if man who knows evil knows how to judge differently between juvenile's and adults how much more our heavenly Father who knows no evil.

The way a person dies does not bring salvation. Whether murdered or through illness or accidents.

Randy777 said:

Its a yes or no question. What about others that are murdered? The Gospels and Paul's letters do not hint or teach or suggest salvation other the through faith in Jesus. "Those who hold to the testimony of Jesus and obey His commands"

Jesus himself suffered death at the hands of the wicked He understands suffering.

Those that God calls His children
children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

I agree with your premise only in regard to the young and very young.
For if man who knows evil knows how to judge differently between juvenile's and adults how much more our heavenly Father who knows no evil.

The way a person dies does not bring salvation. Whether murdered or through illness or accidents.

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To be blunt it is none of our business. We are called to love God with our whole heart, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus identifies with those who are outcast, it shows in how he related to those he saw every day.

We choose, Jesus came to save us from ourselves, not from the Father. Jesus was sent by the Father to the world to show us this love. When we put ourselves into a position to try to figure out the issue, it is then that we go against the "do not judge" commandment that Jesus so strongly stated.

Jesus, being the Infinite God, the creator of the universe, is, of course, the only source of salvation, how could it be otherwise. As St. Paul had his Damacus Road experience, so I believe will all those who seek truth. For even though St. Paul was doing evil, he thought he was doing God's will, hence his being open to the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Sort of like the Muslims today having dreams about Jesus and become followers.

I do not know; I trust in the total justice of God, which is total truth. We are no way capable of that.

St. Paul says that we will be judged according to our deeds, and our reward or punishment will flow from that.

Romans 2 - NIV Bible - You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass...


Peace
Mark