Christians, how many of you agree with the following statement?

Question

The following is an answer from a believer to my last question. I am not going to put their name. I really think this is a great perspective and I am happy to hear it coming out of the mouth of a Christian. Do any of you agree or find it interesting?

"The one thing that would make me stop worshiping God is if i learned that there was another way to get to heaven than the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I could not worship the Father who let His Son die IF it was meaningless. If you could earn passage into heaven by a matter of doing good deeds, then I would be appalled."

Hey timbers, watch it, I'm from West Virginia, lol.

Answer 1

Eh, kinda. It makes a lot of sense. But we don't get to heaven by only doing good deeds.

Answer 2

Wow, I think it's great that they can think about such things, but if they were to study Judaism they would either have to stop worshipping God or accept the fact that the God of Judaism had other ways to get to Heaven long before Jesus came around. Don't tell him/her about the Universal Laws and righteous Gentiles. That is, unless you think they're ready for it. Good deeds and being a good person is all that the Jewish God required of Gentiles. He didn't even demand that they worship him.

Answer 3

That doesn't make any sense. Other means of getting to heaven has absolutely nothing to do with Christ's sacrifice. In fact, I believe there are MANY ways to gain salvation, but I am still a Christian. If some guy in India accesses God through Hindu spiritualism or a woman in Iraq finds her salvation through Islam, that does not diminish one single bit what Christ did for ME or millions of people like myself. What other people do is irrelevant to my own personal religious experience. If God sacrificed his son for SOME people and not ALL people, and provided another appropriate way for someone else, that does not change the fact that Christ died for some people's sins. That "some people" happens to be over a billion people! How, then, do other paths to God change that fact? It doesn't. God created a diverse population of people with different cultures and different needs. It only makes sense that he would provide those people with a diverse array of ways to have a relationship with him. I think that person's statement is theologically pointless.

Answer 4

I agree with that perspective. If after God gave Moses the Ten Commandments he than gave the Ten Ways to Heaven and Jesus chose option 10, murder of a heavenly being by a band of religious extremists, then his death would have seemed more like a senseless suicide and I would not want to follow him or his father who would have him do that.

Answer 5

A lot of people in the Old Testament times went to heaven even before the ministry of Christ during the New Testament era.

Answer 6

Tactfully, I would say my relationship with Christ is different than this person's -- although this view reflects what a lot of Christians believe.

I don't focus on Jesus' death, as much as many Christians do. I focus on his resurrection. Anyone can die, and everyone will.

But only Jesus died, and was resurrected, and returned to earth, and was seen by hundreds of people.

I don't believe Jesus' "Sacrifice" is what gets us to heaven -- it's Jesus' life, and belief in God that gets us to heaven. And by knowing and understanding Jesus, can we know and understand God.

Here's the fact - Jesus, a man, was executed by the Romans. The Roman Historian Josephus said so. The followers of Jesus are also mentioned several other times in Roman history. The Romans executed more people than the state of Texas, and Jesus was one of those criminals killed by the government.

For 30 years after his death, people walked around the Roman empire and the rest of the ancient world saying they knew Jesus, or they saw the resurrected spirit of Jesus, the Christ. Many of these people were executed, burned, crucified, eaten by lions, or died in some nasty way.

These people were organizing house churches, they didn't write anything down, because they'd personally witnessed God on earth -- who would bother to write that down?

The first few generations of Jesus followers had no recognition from the government. They weren’t Jews, who were recognized, and they refused to worship the Roman gods. They refused to go along with the government and instead they were willing to be executed for worshiping the only God they believed in.

Why? Why were they willing to die, rather than even pretend to worship Roman gods?

Roman coliseums under the Emperor Nero were filled with dead followers of Jesus, BEFORE the Bible was written and within enough time for their grandfathers and great grandfathers to have heard Jesus or his apostles and disciples first, second, or third hand.

No amount of torture, no painful death we can’t begin to imagine, would make them renounce their belief. If they had denied Christ 1,955 years ago, then the Jesus-cult would have simply died off, like nearly every other religion of the region. If they had denied their story about the so-called-Christ, then their fantasy would have died with them. But they didn’t deny Christ. They suffered and died, rather than deny Christ. And so the story grew.

The indisputable fact from Roman history has nothing at all to do with the Bible – followers of Jesus were executed by the government.

This all happened before the Bible was written down, but while the stories of the Bible were being transmitted orally.

What was "wrong" with these people, that they claimed they met a man who performed miracles in the name of his father, God?

What was wrong with the hundreds of people who claim they saw the risen Christ?

When you look at history, ALL of the history of Christianity and the time it was born, it comes down to the people, the eye-witnesses of Christ, who are the very foundation of Christianity. Their faith was strong enough to convince others, because they knew Jesus the man, and Christ the resurrected God. They told people, who told people, who told people, who told people. Zack Finch told me, and I’m telling you. The Bible has nothing to do with it. Christ lived. Christ died. Christ was resurrected. Christ will come again.

The tradition goes back to the day the resurrected Christ ascended into heaven, because it’s true.

Godspeed.

Answer 7

I think it's apples and oranges. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ was to show us, not God, that it's not just about good deeds, it's good deeds done in love. THAT is the perfection of the law that He came to show us.

If you already know that and follow it your entire life, you've already seen God, for "blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" ... Jesus didn't come for people such as that, He came for the rest of us miserably selfish-hearted people, me included.

Good deeds wasn't the issue in His sacrifice. Love was.

Answer 8

I totally agree with it.
As a Christian, our faith is based on the fact that Jesus died for our sins, the ultimate sacrifice. If there is another way, then he wouldn't have had to go through all the suffering that he did.

Answer 9

I understand what they were saying about God letting Jesus die and it was meaningless.
However, that is why Jesus said "I am the way and the truth and the life, the only way to the Father is through Me."
Because His death on the cross was not meaningless.
There is no other way to heaven.

Answer 10

Too bad Heaven doesn't exist. Christianity, like all other religions, is just superstition. When you die, you're just dead.

I notice that the person did not say he would stop worshipping God if he realized God didn't exist. That's because he (or she) is too emotionally attached to the idea of getting a post-mortem reward of Heaven.

Also note that the person doesn't think much of doing good deeds. That belies an underlying belief that man is basically bad. This is a belief I don't hold. People are generally decent, and to think otherwise is unduly negative.