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.
