MICHAEL:
Nancy, I'm sure Jerry will respond to this, but the answer is that
as long as they continue their sin all the belief in the world will
not make a difference. If they believe, repent, and are obedient to
the word of Christ (which would include stopping the child molesting
as well as any other sin) and remain faithful to Christ will go to
heaven.
However one that rejects Christ and His words (Jn. 12:48) will be
judged by that word and be lost.
ROBSON:
I understand what you are saying here but there are a lot of bases uncovered.
At what point does this stop ? For example, if someone has been molesting
children or whatever all his life and repents and is obedient for say the
last
ten years of his life, what happens ? Is it possible to repent in the last
half
hour ? the last 5 minutes ? ( I do realise this is an unreasonable request to
define but it's for the purpose of the next bit)
If you think about it any "heaven/hell" split along this line either as to be
(i) subjective judgement ( by God ? ) about your sins while on Earth. Even
if God is just etc. it is still a judgement.
(ii) you take the line that "if you believe and accept Jesus as your saviour
you go to heaven" (at the point of death you must believe presumably) &
sins are irrelevant.
Once you bring sin into it then you have to make judgements about how
much / how bad / how recently to stop it being a nonsense.
I don't have problems with either of these (I thought Christianity preached
(ii))
I regard (i) as more civilised but you can't have both of these being the
deciding factors.
Paul Robson (autismuk@aol.com)