palmer@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Grant E. Palmer) (01/16/90)
A friend of mine who is a devout christia, a baptist I think, and I were having a discussion last night on what it takes to be saved. She said that the only requirement is that you ask for forgiveness for your sins and accept Jesus as your savior. There was no time limit on this, in other words you could do this 30 minutes before you died, and it didn't matter what your life had been like before. On the other hand, if you did not do those two things it didn't matter what you were like, you were damned. Is this true? Let me pose an extreme example. Say one person leads a totally corrupt and evil life spreading nothing but hurt and misery. 20 minutes before this person is sent to the electric chair for sexually abusing and murdering children, He or she sincerely asks for forgiveness and accepts Jesus as his savior. Therefore, he is saved. Another person leads a good and wholesome life helping others and spreading love and joy throughout the land. Yet this person never accepts Jesus as his or her savior. Therefore this person is damned to Hell. Is this scenario consistent with Christian beliefs? Is the only criterion for admission to heaven the acceptance of Jesus regardless of anything else you might do. And finally are the millions of muslims, buddhists, whatever who do not accept Jesus automatically damned to Hell making Heaven primarily populated by western souls? grant "no sig line" palmer [That's certainly the classic doctrine. As far as I know, all Christians would agree that a serious conversion is sufficient, no matter what you had done before, even right at the point of death. That view goes back quite directly to Jesus. A lot of his teaching, particularly his parables, calls people to repentance. Take a look for example at Mat 20, a parable that seems to deal with exactly this issue. Jesus deals with it in parables. I suspect many Protestants would tend to answer you in terms of Pauline theology, explaining that people are saved not because of any good works that they do, but by their faith in God. However at that point we are getting into more controversial territory. But as far as I know even those who are uncomfortable with "salvation by faith alone" would still agree that deathbed repentance is sufficient -- so long as it is real repentance, i.e. it would hold even if the person miraculously recovered. The only place you'd be likely to get an argument is on the issue of salvation of non-Christians. Christians generally believe that salvation came through Christ. That's the whole point of Christianity. If people could be good enough to merit salvation, Christ's death wouldn't have been needed in the first place. The problem is that even people who do good deeds are imperfect. No matter how many good things a person does, if you look carefully into their hearts, you'll find that their motives are at best mixed. I don't want to detract from the importance of doing the right thing. But when spiritually discerning people look at themselves carefully, they see how much of what they do is motivated by wanting to look good, etc. In the final judgement, even the best of us would still be condemned. So the only hope is that Christ has taken the condemnation in our place. This is all generic Christian doctrine, which in one form or another I think all types of Christians would agree with. Where things get murky is over what one has to do to take advantage of Christ's salvation. There are some Christians who believe that Christ died even for those who don't know him by name. A typical version of this is that God calls everyone in some form, and judges people based on how they respond to his call. In non-Christian societies his call may come in a non-Christian form. But ultimately people would have to be saved by Christ, even if they didn't realize it. (The Catholic term for such people is "anonymous Christians".) This concept is controversial, though. There are plenty of Christians, probably even a majority, who believe exactly what you said. Certainly the Bible tends to be rather "intolerant". In the OT, God is only interested in true worship. There is no sign of his accepting people who worship other gods as being anonymous forms of him. Similarly, Paul's letters talk a lot about "putting on Christ", etc., and it's rather hard for someone to do all of these things without accepting that Christ is their savior. --clh]
davidbu@tekigm2.men.tek.com (David Buxton) (01/18/90)
I do believe that death bed conversions can indeed be genuine:
* The Thief on the cross.
* The parable of the workers who hired, some early, some at noon
and some very late in the day; and they all received the same wages.
This last Sabbath we had a baptism. The man in question had been living
a drunken rebelious life. Was in the hospital for weeks and finally
prononced ready to die. His brother had been pleading with him to come
to Christ. His liver was about dead with a bilirubin count way above
fatal and certain brain damage. His kidneys quit and his amonia level
was a couple times higher than fatal and certain brain damage. He
did accept Christ and an anointing of oil. Since then he has been a
strong witness for God and his recovery, without any signs of brain
damage, has been remarkable. I happened to be the one who was asked
to assist him getting in and out of the hard to get up to baptistry.
He accepted my help, but it was obvious he really did not need any
help. I was just there as a precaution. This was a little over a
week after the doctors were saying he would soon be dead.
I also believe that those who know not the name of Jesus can be saved.
There is a passage, for example in Romans, that to me makes this clear.
Those who are responsive to the work of the Holy Spirit and keep God's
commandments as best they are revealed by the Holy Spirit can indeed
be saved. And those who say Jesus Jesus (Lord Lord) but don't do
what He would have them to do will not be saved. That text is quite
clear to me. "If you Love me keep my Commandments".
God knows the heart. I believe that Jesus knew the good thief on
the cross was genuinely converted and if he had been delivered from
the cross he would have proclaimed Jesus the rest of his life and
would have been obedient to God the rest of his life. You and I
cannot judge that, but Jesus was able to.
A hospital chaplain once said - "I am astounded there are not
more death bed conversions". He went on to say that those who have
spent a life time cursing God, usually die cursing God. In other
words God does not get many cases where He has to sort out whether
a last minute conversion is genuine. There are those stories of
ships sinking and airplanes about to crash and all the passengers
turn to God but then the plane does not crash or the ship sink; and
limps back to port. And the passengers are back to living life
the way they lived it before the close call. Those who cursed God
are back to cursing God just as they had before. What if the ship sank
or the plane crashed? Would they all have been saved? I leave
that in the hands of God. My bias is that God knows who would have
continued to hold His mighty hand and who would have thrown His
hand down again as soon as life mellowed out again.
Davecredmond@watmath.waterloo.edu (Chris Redmond) (01/18/90)
In article <Jan.16.04.44.19.1990.16134@athos.rutgers.edu> palmer@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Grant E. Palmer) writes: a question about whether "repentance" is sufficient for "salvation", even in the case of someone who has led a hideously vicious life for many years. Our wise moderator adds this comment: >As far as I know, all >Christians would agree that a serious conversion is sufficient, no >matter what you had done before, even right at the point of death. >That view goes back quite directly to Jesus. A lot of his teaching, >particularly his parables, calls people to repentance. Take a look >for example at Mat 20, a parable that seems to deal with exactly this >issue. Jesus deals with it in parables. I suspect many Protestants >would tend to answer you in terms of Pauline theology, explaining that >people are saved not because of any good works that they do, but by >their faith in God. However at that point we are getting into more >controversial territory. But as far as I know even those who are >uncomfortable with "salvation by faith alone" would still agree that >deathbed repentance is sufficient -- so long as it is real repentance, >i.e. it would hold even if the person miraculously recovered. It might be useful to add that "real repentance" -- in human eyes and, I am inclined to think, in God's eyes -- would be likely characterized by two things: -- a sincere effort to live a good life in future -- a sincere effort to correct one's past errors. In the simplest case, that might include returning any property one had stolen, and making other restitution as appropriate. Since many offences are not easily cancelled in this way, it might also include other forms of apology, willingness to accept punishment, and new efforts to assist the causes one had formerly harmed. (An example here is Paul himself, who did what he could to make up for his earlier persecutions of Christians.) Wasn't there a discussion on the net, a year or two ago, about whether Hitler could be forgiven if he had repented on his deathbed, and whether or how he could have made up for his evildoing? CAR credmond@watmath