My religious faith summarized

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How I became a Christian

Christian beliefs

I believe every human being has sin, the inherent and practically unavoidable inability to please and obey God 100%

I believe every human being has sinned at least once

I believe, without the salvation of Jesus Christ that sin must be paid for, by death

This is a terrible thing to say, but I believe it. It means that relatively good but non-Christian human beings like my liberal non-Christian friends, my mother, and my brother are sentenced to spiritual death in Hell... unless they accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour at some point in their lives.

I believe that faith in Jesus Christ, who had no sin but paid for our sin, is sufficient to save one from the penalty of sin

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The Christian objectives, then, are

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Why do I believe the end is near?

Why do I feel the Holy Spirit is urging me, when I watch some programs or read some books, to struggle to help unsaved people find Jesus now? Because I can sense that time is running out for an imperfect world!

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Rapture?

I have been reading Joe Crews' The Secret Rapture?. The only questions I can think of is Revelations 2 "all the nations of the earth will mourn". Will those include Christians too?

I can't reconcile the theories of Tim LaHaye or Hal Lindsey. One should read The Secret Rapture? with the Bible present. I think we could learn something.

On the other hand, I believe that a dependence on Saturday worship as a requisite for salvation is dangerous. Galations 3:10, dependence on the Law means one must not fail even once. It is better to trust in Jesus and not on the Sabbath: indeed, even Jesus worked on the Saturday Sabbath.

I also think the mark of the beast will probably be a literal bar code. That is, if the Apostle John actually saw things he had no words for, such as possibly describing an Apache helicopter gunship as a ferocious insect.

But if the Soviet Union had invaded Israel during or shortly after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when President Nixon ordered the worldwide U.S. military alert, would it describe Ezekiel's writings (chapter 38)? Read Ezekiel in the Old Testament (also refer to Doomsday On The Brink part 2 (see reference list if you can)). TOC

Conclusion

This is a crazy mixed-up world, and I believe God is going to destroy it and the countries we have built, without God, on this world. I believe there is no Christian country, other than the Vatican, on Earth. America is NOT a Christian country if, for example, it is dominated by the love of money (the love of money is not only the root of all kinds of evil, it is also the tree trunk of capitalism, and inevitably, people come second to profits- the recent GM strike in Michigan was motivated by job security issues). There are too few Christians in America, or at least too few Christians talking and walking. In any case, the American culture is not acceptable to God. Our system, although based on justice, law and order, democracy, and constitutionality, is used every day in ways God hates: for example, God calls on people to forgive their debtors, but there seem to be no shortage of people wishing to use the courts to sue their debtors.

God is merciful. He is allowing our system to continue, because maybe you will be saved right now. God didn't start the Rapture in 1992 so I could be saved in 1993. But mercy has limits, and then comes judgment.

Before I was a Christian, I was a liberal humanist, and I believed people could save the world, without God.

Now I am a Christian, and I believe the world, and America, cannot be saved. What is made by human beings is imperfect to God. God will roll up and throw away what humans have made in their arrogance without God. (Humanity is a 6, God is a perfect 7.) Your close friends and family might not even be saved. Mine might not be. You can only save yourself- with Jesus! I have! Do it today if you haven't done it already!

Don't wait until you are dead to save your soul.

And if you are saved, get busy spreading the word to others!

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My recommended reading and viewing list

I have read most of these. TOC

Non-fiction books

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Fiction books

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Magazine articles

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Television specials

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Television movies, including televised cinema features

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On video:

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Last updated: October 8, 2001 Return to main page

Email: chris.marsh@excite.com