Well most of what you went on to say has little relevance.
And yet you have not even attempted to refute it other than saying it has little relevance. This suggest that you don't care for the truthfulness and authority of scripture as much as your own common sense which is a carnal way of thinking when it comes to spiritual matters.
But if it is your belief that once Christ came that all people who have never even had the opportunity to even hear the name Jesus Christ cannot be saved in spite of what Paul said here and in spite of common sense that God can grant eternal life as He sees fit, based upon His knowledge and His love then what can I say. As J.B.Phillips is famous for saying; "your God is too small".
And yet the bible still teaches that Gods elects who He wills. Now we can argue what is Gods elect, which is another discussion for another time.
But now you say God grants eternal life as He see's fit. Is this what I have been arguing? Yes it is...God
has chosen how He see's fit to save humanity, and it is you who has been arguing the contrary....you what God to save humanity the way
you see fit, that has been your argument all the while, you reject the literal plain reading of scripture that teaches this truth.
Frankly that is what I dislike the most about you fundamentalists. You make God after your own image. You make Jesus who came to save the lost to in effect lose the saved, because before Christ He did not count their sins against them but once Christ came then even those who could never even hear of Christ are condemned to be lost forever.
This is one of the wackiest Ideas I have seen from you RC. You are slipping, and starting to show your hand. You need to think about what you are saying. Sin is much more that a negative responce, and yet people still died because of sin did they not? You sound like you have been reading Jack Sequera, Robert J. Wieland and Donald K. Short of 1888 Message Study Committee and Maxwell and his MIT oh and btw they all loved EGW and her writtings. So in reality, thats just plain old Adventist Doctrine wrapped in anothers clothing.
I suppose this fits into your predestination view however because God knew that all those people would never be saved so He had them be born in China for a couple thousand years where they would never hear about Jesus Christ. The ones He wanted to be saved got to be born in areas where knowledge of Christ was present. Thank God for Constantine since he was the main cause for the knowledge of Christ to be spread so that it would be a little easier for God to have people be born where they had the possibility to hear about Christ.
If this is what you think predestination is all about??? IF you do then you have a lots to learn. Why don't you pick up a bible and learn what the truth is about that doctrine? Oh I briefly forgot....you don't trust the bible, so you make it all up.
Just yesterday I heard one of your clan on a radio talk show saying that if you don't believe in Jesus they are lost because the only way to salvation is believing in Jesus. Probably like AT when reminded that the Old Testament people did not believe in Jesus she would stumble about and claim it is irrelevant or like AT say look at the verb tense as if non sequitors will help them. All those excuses that AT gave us above could be used to argue that Abraham can't be saved also. That is what fundamentalism does. It causes people to stop thinking. They even deny what the Bible does say so that they can make God less then God because that is how their tradition has trained them.
You know RC...You have yet to give a good argument from the bible. All you care about is spreading your immature talk about what others say that you believe is wrong.If you read the bible you would understand the heritage of Gods people passed down through time. If you want to take jabs at me, go ahead, I don't care, but while you are doing it, kindly bring some substance to the forum. Bring a bible study or something we can make a good debate about, rather than these posting that have no substance. I've noticed here alots that Adventist don't like to bring any substance to the table. Its all conjecture and relativism with a jab thrown here and there.
For you other Progressive Adventists out there, note that most of the above kind of thinking comes because these people believe God cannot freely forgive but had to have Christ pay the penalty for sin therefore as they say God saves us through Christ's actions of suffering the penalty of sin and being our substitute. so that unless one believes that one particular atonement theory one cannot be saved. It logically falls apart however when you look at the Old Testament people but they will then say that they saw Christ in the sacrifices, which of course they did not but once given over to fundamentalism reality is the first casualty.
I'm wondering how many people on these boards actually believe what you just said. This quote by you shows a few things about you.
1) You don't trust the bible.
2) You don't trust the God of the bible.
3) You don't think Chirst was the all sufficient atonement for sin, that there is another way to gain heaven.
4)That you don't believe that Christ was humanities substitute for our sin.
5) That there was no legal reason why Christ had to die.
6) That you lack knowledge and are unlearned in old testament studies.
There are a number of other things that could be mentioned of your skills. But for now I will leave it at that so others can see.
AT