God the Father generally goes unquestioned. But Jesus Christ is often minimized as a great human being and outstanding teacher and strong historical figure--a great guy, but not a divine person or God. But the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is God the Father's only begotten Son. Without question, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is God.
The Holy Spirit is the third person in the Godhead. Like God the Father
and God the Son (Jesus), the God the Holy Spirit is a He and not an it--not a force
of some kind. He is heavily involved in the Christian Church as a
power source and Chief Executive Officer.
At some point, we will experience a resurrection of the body, just as Christ did after He was crucified. This is not a symbolic matter. It is actual. Paul writes that if Christ didn't rise from the dead, we are still lost in our sins, and Christianity would be a joke.
We know, as a historical fact, that Christ rose from the dead, and He stayed on earth another 40 days, making numerous appearances witnessed and reported by hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
Dead believers in Christ who die will be resurrected when Christ returns to rapture--or evacuate--His church. Believers who are alive will be caught up in the air with Christ to be with Him forever.
Therefore, all Christian believers will join Christ, go with him to heaven for seven years, then return with Him for his 1,000 year earthly rule, called the Millenial Reign of Christ.
We will receive a new immortal, glorified body--incapable of sickness and disease, aging, and other mortal limitations. Christ received such a body after his resurrection. Paul compares our present bodies to planting something like an acorn in the ground. What comes up is not an acorn--it's a bigger and better tree.
Non-believers will be raised from the dead after the 1,000 year earthly rule of Christ. The will appear at the Great White Throne Judgment. Since none of their names is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, each will receive the transfer he/she has sought--directly to hell with Satan and his demons.
Belief in resurrection and an afterlife is not a purely Christian thing. For example, The Pharisee sect of the Jews believed in resurrection and afterlife, whereas the Saducees did not believe in life after death.
Believing that Christ was killed and rose from the dead is an essential
core Christian doctrine. There is no room here for an optional views.
The Bible teaches that we cannot even begin to imagine just how nice heaven is--physically beautiful and spiritually blissful. It is God's home. Hell, by contrast, is horrible--it's hot, a fire burns, it's dark and hopeless. As mentioned before, heaven and hell are permanent. You can't put in for a transfer.
Since Jesus was, is and will always be 100% sinless, He was conceived "immaculately" by the Holy Spirit. Seed always produce like fruit, and any human father would have produced a sinful baby with an Adamic nature.
Joseph, Mary's eventual husband, was not the biological father of Jesus. Of course, he took care of his wife and Jesus, serving as a stepfather. Many people agonize over how a virgin birth could be possible. Such intellectual agonizing is unwarranted and outdated in an age in which we perform in vitro fertilizations and grow test tube babies.
Mary is wrongly called the Mother of God. God is eternal and timeless. He has neither a mother nor a father. Much of this Marian enthusiasm is derived from the pagan "Queen of Heaven" belief that heaven just has to have a supermom or female superhero. But the Bible offers no support to that wonderwoman, goddess idea.
Another myth is that--yes, He died. But He never was raised from the dead. His disciples stole his dead body and claimed that He had come back to life.
The Bible teaches that both of these myths are just that. In real life, people crucified on a Roman cross didn't swoon, then bounce back. They died a horrible death. And hundreds of people saw Christ and interacted with Him for 40 days after He was resurrected. All of These people cannot be pathological liars.
Christ had to die to offer complete salvation. In Old Testament days, an animal had to be sacrificied and its blood shed to cover the sins of the people. The Bible says that without the shedding of blood , there is no remission of sin.
Christ's death and shedding of blood covered all of our sins--past, present and future--in one transaction. Therefore, it was no longer necessary to offer animal sacrifices on a continuous basis to temporarily cover on sins. Christ's one-time work on the cross is total and perfect.
It is erroneous and unscientific to say that evolution is fact and creationism is simply religious opinion. Both creationism and evolution, by scientific standards and definitions, are hypotheses--ideas advanced but unproven by scientific or historical principles of proof.
Charles Darwin advanced the Theory of Evolution. He was not a scientist, nor did he have much formal education. He served as a personal assistant to a captain of a British ship. Darwin was a racist, believing that black people were inferior to whites. To postulate that blacks "evolved" from primates gave his racist views the respectable trappings of pseudo-science.
Creationism is advanced by God in the Book of Genesis, written by Moses. God claims that He created the universe, and human beings uniquely. Even Greek pagan philospher and logician Aristotle noted that since everything is in motion, there logically must be a "First Mover." We know that "First Mover" as God.
That thought could be expressed this way. Since all things in existence have a complicated and intelligent design, there must be a "Master Designer." It is too much to believe that complex sub-atomic particles, DNA strands, and genetic code all appeared spontaneously, flowing out of Darwin's evolutionary primordial soup.
Believing Darwinism mocks the laws of statistical probability.
If I have to believe Charles Darwin or God, I go with God and creation.
Learn why salvation is a free gift from God. You can't buy it or earn it. Discover that purgatory is a theological fraud. And learn that once you are saved, nobody can steal it from you.
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