Deathbed Salvation

[Le Penseur]

Originally Posted by deacon blues

No I left the conversation b/c they started with the whole, "You have to believe A238 to be on this forum, so unless you're willing to keep your anti-Apostolic views to yourself, you need to do the honorable thing and leave this forum." So since I want to remain on that forum, I told them Id take the conversation here.

You make some interesting points. Ultimately God's mercy is greater than man's. It seems unjust that someone who lived like the devil can slip in the eleventh hour and get saved. But as was mentioned before in Matt 20 God says "what business is it of yours? Its my money and I can pay whatever I want to whomever I want!" I contend that a dying soul can cry out to God and God would respomd with love and mercy. The argument was made on the other forum that Matt 20 wasn't referring to salvation. Of course.

As far as the theif on the cross is concerned, when one makes the argument that he was saved under OT Law, then they're saying that it was easier to acquire grace and mercy in the OT than it is in the NT. Its a nonsense argument. The man could not do anything but exercise faith in Jesus, which he did, and as a result Christ told him he was saved. A perfect picture of grace.

Legalists have to create all sorts of crazy interpretations of scripture because the theology is flawed and inconsistent with the whole of scripture. Cherry pick your favorite passages, only refer to them and then dance around the problematic scriptures with cop outs.

Amen! And thank you!

His expression of faith and trust in Christ led to his salvation, and it's the same for us. I'm in agreement with your statements in the first paragraph - it's not fair - at least not according to our human sense of justice - that the latecomers receive the same reward. But God's sense of justice is so much more righteous than ours we cannot even comprehend it. But our salvation is dependent upon our trusting acceptance of the work that Jesus did for us (because we could not). Any time you add anything to faith (for by grace are ye saved through faith) it becomes works/legalism.

The problem is confounded by dispensationalism, IMO. Nobody was EVER saved under the law. NOBODY! The only way that anyone in all the history of time has ever been saved was through faith in Christ. That's how Abraham was saved - because he had faith concerning God's promises (which all pointed to His promise to provide a Messiah) - and he was counted righteous because of it. When you start breaking up the story into different "dispensations" wherein God saves people in different ways, you end up with the mess we have today. Dispensationalism, IMO, is what props up the OP hermeneutic. But if one can understand that everything before Christ points to Christ, and the new covenant exalts Christ, the scripture record becomes less disjointed and more unified.

Blessings!