Honoring Martin Frank Jones - His Christianity Continued

I am breaking up his long post. This is a continuation from yesterday.

Christianity Here to Stay – Martin Jones

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Martin Jones

It is impossible for me to understand just what happened during the three days Christ’s body lay in the grave, but I have put my faith and trust Christ’s ability to defeat natural death, eternal death, the devil, hell, and arise in victory so that I may have the same victory of eternal life in Heaven. Another thing that is beyond my understanding is the fact that Christ paid even for the sins of those who do not accept him as their savior. For me to pay for my sins on my own, would require me to spend an eternity in hell, and Christ suffered and paid for that penalty for not only me but for everyone who has ever lived. I do not understand it but I believe it and have placed my faith in Christ as the Son of God and believe that all things are possible for Him.

The New Testament tells us that God has always had a plan for mankind even before ha created the earth. Christ stood as a lamb slain before the foundation of the earth. We learn in Genesis that God created man in his own image. That means that we have a soul, which means that we are like God in that our spirit will never die. He allowed Adam to choose his own destiny. Adam could choose to serve God and not sin or listen to the devil and disobey God and be cast from the Garden of Eden. God’s penalty for sinning has always been an eternity in hell. But again Gods plan for man has always been for man to have forgiveness for his sin by believing in Jesus. Again we see this in God’s plan in a nut shell, so to speak, which is “FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM SHALL NOT PERISH BUT HAVE ETERNAL LIFE. I believe that there comes a time in an individual's life called the age of accountability when he must decide to either accept Jesus as his savior or not.

When Adam sinned, it is clear to me that the bible teaches that he became dead in his sins. It also meant that the human side of Adam must die. We know this is true because we all at some time will die physically. And to overcome the spiritual death we must be born again. By some mysterious way God causes that to happen when we accept Jesus as our savior.

We know from the bible that sometime after God created man that mankind had become so involved in sin that God even wished that he had not even created man. This happened in the time of Noah. I have no idea of how long it was form Adam to Noah. But God decided to save a remnant and he instructed Noah to build an ark in which Noah and his family were saved from the flood that God sent upon the world and destroyed all except those on the ark. A remnant was saved and God again started over to save Himself a Kingdom. I have no idea how many were saved before God started over again with Abraham. I understand more about God’s plan after Abraham because of stories in the Old Testament. God promised Abraham descendants comparable of the grains of sand. That’s a lot. We are still in that era of time.

Abraham and his wife Sara were promised a son. In their old age they still did not have a son, so they decided to help God along and they arranged for Abraham to have a son by Sara’s maid Hagar. That son was named Ishmael. God rejected that son and Sara conceived at an old age and had a son named Isaac.