Welcome to visitors from the evolution site!  Thanks for the link.  Be sure to read all of this.  Deep down you know that you’ll be accountable to your creator for your countless sins.  You can pay for them yourself for eternity or trust in what Jesus did for you on the cross. The evidence is clear: He lived, died and rose again.  Eternity is mighty long time.  Don’t let your foolish pride get in the way.

Also, feel free to view any of the apologetics links to the right.

Be sure to read the commenting policy before commenting.  We have several atheists who comment here regularly and we have friendly discussions.  But I’m not really interested in addressing an endless stream of fallacies from the Big Book of Atheist Sound Bites.  Life’s too short to re-hash those ad nauseum.

And remember, even if your definition of evolution is  true (when you aren’t busy equivocating on the term) it doesn’t prove there is no God.  And even if it is true then evolution is 100% to blame for our concept of Hell, my change from atheism to Christianity, everything I write here, etc.  Where else would it have come from?  So any “pride” you feel is completely irrational, and, ironically enough, your concept of rationality is irrational.  Your worldview provides nothing to ground it.

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See below to see the latest installment of my friend Nicholas’ interview with me about Christianity or click here for the whole thing.

Nicholas wrote: What happens to those who, through no fault of their own, never experience the Gospel of Christ?  Have entire populations been hell-bound from birth having never had a chance to experience the Bible?

That is a difficult and important question that many Christians wrestle with, including me.   I can explain my theological views but still wonder on occasion exactly how it plays out in real life.  I’ll lay out what I see as the Biblical, orthodox case while conceding that some Christians take a different view.  I’ll be wordy, as usual, and come at it from a clinical standpoint then from a couple other angles.

Once I became a Christian I kept thinking about how I had rejected the Gospel for so many years even with all the advantages I had – growing up with Christian parents, going to church, having a Christian wife and living in a country with religious freedom.  (I didn’t commit my life to Christ until my late 20’s).  Why did I get so many chances when others may not hear the Gospel at all?  Then it hit me one day: That’s why it is called grace. I didn’t deserve anything from God, regardless of when and how I came to believe.  No one else deserves it either, though in our human reasoning we may rationalize that we do.  We deserve judgment.  God is merciful in not judging us immediately.  Grace is unmerited favor.

It is important to point out something basic to ground the discussion: A righteous, ethical judge has no moral obligation to pardon a guilty and justly convicted person. God is a perfect and righteous judge.  He is the epitome of love and mercy, but He is also perfectly Holy and He loves justice.  We are all sinners in thoughts, words, actions and lack of good actions.  Just 10 sins per day for 50 years would add up to 182,500 sins.  Now what righteous judge could overlook that?

So how does the Bible address this?  Chapters 1-3 of the book of Romans (as well as the rest of the book) lay out much of the reasoning.  In Romans 1 we see some of the most important “big picture” passages in the Bible, showing how God reveals himself to us in his creation:

Romans 1:18-20 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

So in that passage and others the Bible teaches that God has made his existence plain to us and that we are “without excuse.”  If anyone thinks they’ll stand before God and deny that He revealed himself to them in creation they are mistaken.  So every person in every culture for all time has had the light of creation.  Still, countless people reject the existence of God or make up their own gods.

Continue reading Exploring Christianity – Part 4 – Hell →