As most of us are probably aware, there are very, very few “Unitarian Christians” in the world; i.e., Christians who recognize that Almighty God is only one person - our heavenly Father, Yahweh. In fact, the only belief that almost all mainstream churches agree on is that God is not one person, but rather that He is “three persons in one Godhead”.
As a result, the number of Unitarian Christians around the world is extremely limited - Unitarians presumably account for (much) less than 1% of all Christians. Therefore, in my opinion, it is very important for Unitarians to be able to fellowship with each other; even if we have disagreements about other issues.
In the last post, I mentioned that the following items appear to be true:
- In order for an individual to be saved, God needs to explicitly “call” that individual;
- God is not calling everyone.
Assuming that the above items are true, that leads us to another question:
Question 5: Why is God only calling certain people? In other words, why doesn’t God just call everyone, so that everyone has the opportunity to be saved?
As mentioned above, people cannot be saved, unless God explicitly calls them. Also, God is not calling everyone. As a result, the people who have not been called by God cannot be saved. So, that raises an obvious question – why isn’t God calling everyone? Why doesn’t He just call everyone – so that everyone can be saved?
Many mainstream denominations believe that all human beings have complete control over their salvation. Basically, the belief is as follows: Every single human being can just decide to follow Jesus – and can therefore be saved – without God getting involved at all.
Overall, the belief is that God is not part of the salvation process at all. In other words, the belief is that every single human being can just “decide” to be saved – completely on his own.
Is the above idea true? Is it true that everyone can just decide to follow Jesus – and be saved – without God being involved in the salvation process at all? This post, and the one next week, will explore that topic, with a series of “questions” and “answers”.
From my experience, many churches tend to “downplay” the Old Testament. In other words, many churches do not “pay much attention” to the Old Testament – instead, they focus almost exclusively on the New Testament.
There are many reasons why churches do this; but one of the common reasons is that churches believe the following idea:
“Everything that Jesus taught us was brand new. In other words, all of the statements that Jesus made cannot be found anywhere in the Old Testament. Therefore, Christians should not really “pay attention” to the Old Testament – because all of the information there is obsolete.”
After we die, will we ever come back to life?
From the information in the last post, we can see that when people die, they are no longer alive at all – that is, death is the complete absence of life. In addition, death is described as “sleep” – which implies that death may be a “temporary” state. Finally, we know that when people die, they do not go to heaven (or anywhere else). Instead, dead people are simply “sleeping in the grave”, completely unconscious.
So, now we reach the final question – after a person dies, is there any way that he can ever live again? If so, how can that person come back to life? Let’s see what Scripture has to say:
Are dead people conscious of anything?
As noted in the introduction, the mainstream doctrine states that people remain conscious after they die – by virtue of the fact that people have “immortal souls”. However, my belief is that souls are mortal – and as a result, when we die, we are not conscious any longer. So, let’s take a look in scripture, to determine if people are still conscious after they die or not:
Ecclesiastes 9:5
5For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
Ecclesiastes 9:10
Are souls immortal?
As noted in the introduction, most churches believe that the soul is immortal – i.e., that the soul cannot die. However, the phrase “immortal soul” does not appear anywhere in Scripture. So, let’s see what Scripture does say about the soul.
First, we know from Genesis 2:7 that a “soul” – i.e., a conscious being – comes into existence, when the breath of life (or spirit) is added to a person’s physical body. In other words, when the breath of life starts animating a person’s body, that person becomes conscious.
Similarly, as soon as the breath of life stops animating a person’s physical body, the soul in question ceases to exist. In other words, when the breath of life stops animating a person’s body, that person becomes completely unconscious – i.e., the soul in question dies.
Hi All,
In this series of posts, I would like to give my understanding of the overall subject of “life after death”. This information comes from a document that I wrote a few months ago - and as it turns out, I actually had that document “peer reviewed”! (Angela was nice enough to go over the doc for me.) Please let me know if you have any comments or questions!
Introduction
One of the most important questions, that all religions try to answer, is the question of: “What happens when we die?” In particular, most religions attempt to explain if human beings have any hope of living again, after our bodies die.
It may be that some of you are still not convinced that people will live on the earth, during the kingdom of God. If so, that is not very surprising – because after all, 99% of Christian churches believe that people go to heaven when they die. So, there is one final thought that I would like to share with you, about where people will live during the kingdom. In order to discuss that item, we need to go back to the very beginning of the Bible – to the creation of Adam and Eve. Here are three questions, about Adam and Eve – along with the answers to those questions:
Question: Where were Adam and Eve created?
As I have mentioned previously, the kingdom of God is the primary message of the Christian gospel. As a result, you may be wondering: why isn’t the kingdom discussed more often? (From what I have seen, most Christian churches do not discuss the kingdom at all.) Jesus gave us an indication about why the kingdom of God is not preached more frequently, in one of his parables – the parable of the sower. That parable is listed in both Matthew 13, and in Luke 8.
Luke 8:5-8 (ESV):