JimFoxvog wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:22 am
Ernie wrote: ↑Tue Nov 14, 2023 8:37 am
I heard yesterday that in at least some BMA churches, ordained persons are being asked what their doctrinal position is on Eternal Conscious Torment vs. Conditional Immortality. If an ordained person makes any room for CI, his credentials are withdrawn. Even if he believes in ETC, but acknowledges that there are some verses that could use further discussion, his credentials are withdrawn. He is required to state that the New Testament only teaches ETC and that the NT does not make any room for CI.
Wow! Do they have to avoid John 3.16?
Yes, I agree. John 3:16 does not say 'should go on perishing forever and ever'.
What I find to be so hypocritical is that one can say they believe in ECT and go about their lives with little to no real concern to try to rescue everyone from such a never ending state of conscious torment. Is that what God's love is about in our attitude toward the unsaved ?
My father was an ECT street preacher and lived out his belief to be a constant daily witness. But what I see in the vast majority of ECT believers is a 'too bad for them, I got mine' way of living out this belief.
One of my considerations to ECT is that we don't find it in the NT that it was used as a tool to persuade others to be saved. Salvation was not presented by the apostles as an escape from ECT. Salvation was most often presented as the solution to our current sinning problem that keeps us from enjoying a full life now and being with the Lord after we are resurrected from this life and put on immortality. What Jesus said about hell needs careful study and consideration to what one believes about God's love and punishing. I have read some pretty shocking ways of viewing God by those who preached ECT such as a Charles Finney. I don't see that the Gospel of good news to be an escape from ECT and I don't see where the early church preached ECT either.
I would challenge those who hold to ECT as to whether or not this is a heart belief that changes how you respond to such a belief. Can one really believe ECT and just 'shrug their shoulders' when it comes to being a fervent evangelist ? And one could say something similar to me in my attitude for others to have life after death in heaven as Jesus describes it. But, to me, it is one thing to believe people will be judged and some will go on to an immortal life with Christ while others to an immortal ECT as described as hell. And quite another to believe in a judgment for all but those who have not believed will be destroyed.
Anyway, my father accepted the Pentecostal teaching on ECT and acted accordingly, imo. My involvements in evangelism where initially with tracts with an ECT message but changed as I studied this further. I believe the Gospel message is about our current sinning and what Jesus has done for us to make heaven possible. If the early church, as seen in the NT, was one that preached being saved from ECT, I would have to think differently about this but it was not a 'hell fire' message they preached and they were Spirit lead.