Accepting God?

[willow314159]

Okay so the last thread I started helped to answer a lot of things for me, but it also left me with more questions. That thread was temporarily closed down for God knows why (I thought we had a very insightful dialogue going on). Anyways, I don't mind, since I that last thread was getting messy, and it will be good to get a fresh start with a new question.

So one of the views I got out of the last thread was that Hell is reserved for people who do not accept God into their lives, and that murderers and such can make it into Heaven if they accept God and let their sins be forgiven. But here's my problem: I don't have any reason to accept God into my life because I simply don't see any reason to believe he exists in the first place. It's not like I know he exists and choose to turn away from him. But why do we have to accept God before we die if our souls are everlasting? If I were to die and find out, whoops, I was wrong, God really does exist... then I would turn to him and ask him to forgive my sins and all that good stuff. I don't have a problem with a God who wants you to accept him before you enter Heaven, but I do have a problem with a God who says you have to accept him before you die or else you're never given another chance to accept him and enter heaven.

Could you help me understand why it seems that death is the cutoff point for accepting God when our souls are eternal?

 

[Jayangel81]

Thing is willow is after we die we get judged. after we die we have two places we can go to, to be with God (Heaven) or go to prison (Hell) Your actually going to Hell for your Sins, thing is your not taking salvation which is by Faith in God, understand?

Why was this all decided in this manner? It was just Gods descision

We have plenty of time to accept salvation, but we shouldnt be waiting either.

God has no problem making Himself known to us, what He wants is for us to be obedient, and to turn away from our Sins. Thing is people dont really want to find God, they say they do but many in truth dont search with all of their hearts. They are too busy trying to prove God wrong or they are testing Him. Not to say this is your case but with alot it is the case.

 

[unkern]

I do like how you at least question things before jumping into them. You do have a large period of time to ask for this forgiveness, when we do sin we lead others astray as well so this is why it is so important to do it before we die. As far as why it is that way just like jayangel said its because that was his time limit.

As for his existence I cant really go to into depth because I would be on here forever, I did put some videos up on the last posts, but ill summarize: basically God is everything you encounter animals, air, etc. If you put everything under a microscope and just continued to split atoms you would find some very odd things for instance there is a subatomic atom that can be in two places at once in the body (the same subatom). There are also other very interesting things like how light always stays at the same speed even if you are running lets say a million miles per hour, light would still be at the same speed as if you were running at 10 mph.

Now alot of scientists try to push unexplainable evolution here are some of the problems: There are only fossils of simple or complex organisms nothing inbetween, If the universe were to slowly create everything would have imploded so it had to be a big bang, but the adjustments are so precise that you would have a better chance of a tornado putting together a fully functional 747 from a pile of junk than this being chance or natural selection. In fact scientists ran some carbon tests on some old dinosaur bones and came up with it being only a couple thousand years old. They didnt like that data.

if you are unable to view my videos then heres a book you can check out
"Case for faith"
there are many other books
God be with you

 

[Lotuspetal_uk]

......
Could you help me understand why it seems that death is the cutoff point for accepting God when our souls are eternal?

Lets consider the life of a butterfly,

As a caterpillar it only has a certain amount of time in its current physical state, in order to collect, build up, store up, what it needs before it becomes a butterfly.

Once it's transformed into a butterfly it cannot do the things it use to do as a caterpillar.

Death is not a cutoff point but a change in state for us. As such, one needs to be aware that some of the things we're able to do in this physical state, we will not be able to do when we leave this physical state.

Before our souls leave our bodies we have a whole lifetime to seek God, if we so choose. For some people (like my Dad) it's 70+ years, so that is essentially a lifetime to ask questions and form opinions - to reject or accept God. The evidence never changes, only our opinions or points of view, whilst in this state.

But the mercy of God is that He does not allow us to play 'Sherlock Holmes' on our own, he gives us "a trail of bread crumbs" to follow - be it a compulsion to establish questions against our better judgement, an emotion that we can't shake, or an inexplicable internal thirst to find out about Him when we have no logical intention or desire to do so.

It's so cool to see you asking the questions you do and weighing them up. I did the same 13 years ago when as an atheist I'd challenged God to prove to me He existed. I was totally floored to find that my challenge was met.

 

[brinny]

I'm sorry that thread closed too....

actually the above answer Lotuspetal gave, using the comparison of a butterfly, is better than i could've explained....i would've used the bluntness of the closing of the door to Noah's ark.

So glad you started another thread