McSpotlight, If you will post this rebuttal I would appreciate
it. If not, Please post the link to the rebuttal on
the IWW board (thanks for the effort to fix my broken
link on the last post). That text can merely read:
Look for my rebuttal at the IWW board captioned "I'll try".
Stuart Gort
Chris,
Those who study biblical prophecy will generally
conform to a belief of dispensation or
specifically, that God's dealings with man is
broken up into dispensations or ages. It all has
to do with the return of Christ and what the
situation will be at that time. There is to be
a 1000 year physical reign of Christ on earth
immediately commencing with His return. Believers
are promised they will rule and reign with Him at
this time. They will return with Him having been
"raptured" 7 years previous to this. There may be
some argument as to the above details but there
is no argument that Christ will return. This
return of Christ is prophecied by Christ in
Matt. 25. The judgement which follows is the
judgement of the nations which the text clearly
states, "and all the nations will be gathered
before Him." The greek word for nations is
"ethnos" and is used to strongly differentiate
between Israel and the rest of the world. It is
translated as "gentiles" 93 times. "Nation(s)" 68
times. "People" once and "pagans" once. It
highly denotes a group, a whole, a body of people.
This is definately not a judgement of individuals.
The Greek "ethnos" prohibits that idea.
This section of scripture is widley held to be
Christ's judgement of the nations' treatment of
His people, His church, Him. There are four
reasons for this:
First, because He uses Himself in the text, "I
was in prison, I was hungry..." - equating Himself
with some group of people. If the scriptures are
clear about anything it is that Christ identifies
Himself with His church.
Second, because Christ could have referred
directly to the poor to make His point as He did
in the very next chapter when He says "for the
poor you have with you always, but you do not
always have Me". Instead Christ consistently uses
Himself as the empty-handed beneficiary of the
nations.
Third, because He prophecied in private with
only His disciples present (see the beginning of
Chapter 4). When Christ said "to the extent that
you did not do it to the least of these brothers
of Mine, you did not do it to Me." vs.40. The
brothers Christ referred to almost had to be His
followers. Who else was there listening?
Fourth, Christ says in John 24:5 "Truly, truly I
say to you, he who hears My word, and believes
Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not
come in to judgement, but has passed out of death
into eternal life." Now this is a strong
refutation of the idea that eternal life is
awarded on the basis works. In addition, it
entirely dismisses believers as having to stand
in an eternal judgement which the Matthew text is
talking about.
You all know John 3:16, "For God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son that
whosoever should believe on Him, should not
perish, but have eternal life." There are
countless other verses to mention here. It is
bordering on silly to argue that the Bible teaches
a works based salvation.
The last thing I will address is the issue of
James 2:17. "Faith without works is dead." Where
is the argument? If James had said "Faith isn't
worth a hoot. Works is the way", Chris might have
a point. But James never counts works apart from
faith or faith apart from works. He only suggests
that there is no faith if works don't result from
it. James was not suffering any lip service to
Christ.
Chris points to an apparent conflict between
Paulian thought and some other mindset which he
percieves to be implied by James. This primarily
due, no doubt, to the seeming contradiction of
James saying Abraham was justified by works and
Paul saying it was because of faith. On the
surface this is appears as a contradiction. The
problem is the word "justified". The Greek word
"dikaioo" was a legal term that was used
differently by different classes of people. It is
definately found to mean both "proven righteous"
and "declared righteous". Assuming Paul, who was
highly educated used the legal definition (and
there is great reason to assume this) "declared
righteous", Paul's statement would indicate he
was saying Abraham's righteousness was "declared"
by his faith. But declared by whom? By God, of
course, who is the only one capable of judging a
man's heart. In other words, works wouldn't be
necessary for God to justify anyone, because he
can look directly into the heart. Works were
"prepared beforehand, that we might walk in them"
Eph. 2:10.
James, who was a far less erudite fellow, would
have used the non-legal "proven righteous" or
"shown to be righteous" meaning of the word
"dikiaoo". Now, proving righteousness is not
something one has to do for God, only for other
men. If you read James 2 and substitute the
phrase "proven righteous" at every mention of the
word "justified", you can more easily see the
point he was trying to make.
All that was to answer the charges of friction
between Paulian thought and whatever else is
suggested. I will reiterate that James does not
disassociate faith and works at any point. Works
are a natural outcome and manifestation of faith.
On this, Paul and James are in complete agreement.
The focus now changes to Christian works. I
assert that the non-Christians cannot do Christian
works. To understand my intent with that statement
you must know that I differentiate between those
things which please God and those that don't. The
Bible is crystal clear about some things and the
following scripture is one of them: "And without
faith, it is impossible to please God, for he that
comes to God must believe that He is, and that He
is a rewarder of those who seek Him." Heb. 11:6.
The text doesn't say God rewards those who do
nice things for others, just those who seek Him.
Faith comes first, then the "Christian" works
which please God. All other works which people
do with the assumption that they are pleasing God
and earning their salvation are filthy to Him.
Christ called the religious leaders of His day
snakes, vipers, pretty graves filled with dead
men's bones (quite a thing to be called for someone
who went through a several day cleansing period if
they happened to touch a dead body). Those religious
leaders were fully engulfed in a works based
system thinking that heaven was owed them if they
did enough good works. In Matt. 23:13 Christ says
they will not go to heaven and that their philosophy
stops others from going as well.
The last section of Chris's post was a little
malicious. In the interest of peace, I'll say no
more.
Stuart Gort
None.
