...Christians that smoke? Or drink? Or swear? The reason I am asking this is a tv show that I saw recently called Dog The Bounty Hunter (on A&E;). He professes tp be Christian, and they pray before they go out to do what they do - which is catch people who are into drugs and are out on bail, that type of thing. He seems to be very sincere. He talks to them about their lives, and how they can change, etc. He, his wife and son and another man are involved in this, and they pray before going out, that they will say the right thing, and be able to make an impact. He smokes though. What do you think? Does God accept people who still do things that aren’t the best to do? I know He loves them, but are they saved? I think I know the answer to this, but thought i’d bounce this off of everyone....
Hi Barb, Let me play off your question as well. My daughter came home today upset with her Bible teacher (how is young and new at teaching) because she stated you had to be baptised if you went to heaven. She also insinuated that you had to be an Adventist which of course upset a non-adventist boy in the class. Unfortunately my daughter tried to debate with her but was so emotional that she did not use biblical proof to back herself up. As we drove home from school Darryl and I challenged her to come up with Bible texts to stand behind her belief system. We started her off by the example of the thief on the crossLuke 23: 42-43 “[i][color=blue]Jesus remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” And Jesus replied[/color], ”I assure you today, you will be with me in paradise.”. She is now doing a search to come up with more. Can anyone else come up with biblical evidence to prove if baptism is, or is not a prerequisite to salvation?
1 Peter 3:21 “and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also--not removal of dirt from the body but the pledge.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but save the world through him.
Acts 2:41, Acts 8:35, 38, Acts 10:44-47, are all examples of recieving the message, and than, being baptised.
The great commission is not to go out and baptise it is to go out and give the gosspil. My husband stated it this way. “Who feeds the sheep? The sheep feed them selves. It is the shepards job to lead them the green pastures. It is up to the sheep if they graze or not.”
I’m so glad I don’t have to be perfect in myself to go to heaven!!! I’d never make it. I have faults and issues I deal just like everyone else.
The closer we get to God the more we see our imperfections. We also want to live and be more like Jesus. We’re all at a different place on this journey. The danger is standing still instead of moving forward. Apathy, complasentcy, laziness, distraction...we all experience these and they can halt our progress with God.
So, let’s march together forward. If I start lagging behind help back on the path. If you stop, we can come beside you to help get you going again. The only way this works though is if we truly connect with each other.
In response to Barb Rogers...I think a man who smokes can go to heaven...but when (not if) he feels convicted to quit he ignore it… Well that is when he may begin to run into trouble. If he is strategically ignoreing this he may be doing that with other convictions as well. That as we know is leading him toward the hardening of his heart from hearing the spirit. Now we as humans cannot judge other humans deepest intentions,allegiance, or closeness to God. God can and ultimately he is who makes that choice. This man may not have felt that conviction yet, if he is smoking then I HOPE he hasn’t.
Exodus 8:15
But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said.
2 Chronicles 36:13
He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him take an oath in God’s name. He became stiff-necked and hardened his heart and would not turn to the LORD, the God of Israel.
Daniel 5:20
But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory.
God doesn’t like it when we ignore what he is trying to say to him.
I just listened to a podcast sermon today from one of my favorite preachers. In the sermon he was discussing how we know how to glorify God with our lives. He specifically mentioned the issue of smoking. He told the congregation that smoking is not a sin because it is not listed in the Bible. Quite frankly, I don’t think that I have ever heard of a preacher saying that smoking is not a sin. I think that it is often taken for granted that anything that is harmful to us is a sin. The pastor’s support of this is that the Bible never says that smoking is a sin.
I have seen old skool training videos of clergy members smoking in the church office. It seemed crazy to me.
I know that these thoughts may seem a bit convuluted, so here is my point. The Bible says that “to (the person) who knows to do right and doesn’t do it, to (them) it is a sin.” (James 4:17) This goes along with what Pastor Steve was saying as well.
Hi everyone
Thank you Steve for your perspective.
I was raised a Adventist. My mom was raised an Adventist. Being raised adventist means you hear,read, live the health message. Personally I grew to hate it.
I remember my mother being coerced into every 7 day stop smoking plan that the local church held. When she would fail no one would remind her of Jesus’s great love and forgiveness. She would hear plenty about how she was destroying her temple.
I smoke, I drink beer, I eat pork,I have impure thoughts. I am a SINNER.
I am SAVED.
Shortly after I asked Jesus to come into my heart and have a relationship with me I reached a crisis in my relationship with Him. I knew smoking not in harmony with His plans for me. GUILT GUILT GUILT. I was so distraught, where to turn? I asked Pastor Gary to come to my house to talk. One statement he made rings in my heart to this day. “Let God be God” . This simple phrase meant so much, would I let Satan use smoking to drive a wedge between me and Jesus? NO NO NO.
I, along with all of you will fight the good fight, I will have empathy for every other sinner I meet. I will encourage and not condemn. Not a single one of my sins will go with me to heaven, Praise God. I pray that every sinner in my church family will be with me there.
I ask Jesus to open my heart to help me not to cherish any known sin.
He requires perfect obedience from me.
Jesus said, “Be perfect as your Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5.48) If you are children of God you are partakers of His nature, and you cannot but be like Him. Every child lives by the life of his father. If you are God’s children, begotten by His Spirit, you will live by the life of God. In Christ dwells “all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9): and the life of Jesus is made manifest “in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11).
That life in you WILL PRODUCE the same character and manifest the same works as it did in Him. Thus you will be in harmony with every precept of His Law; for “the law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.” Psalm 19;7. Through love “the righteousness of the law” will be “fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Romans 8:4 ( quote from E.G.White)
What a great way to say what it is you have said. It has become clear to me that Satan works his strategies at every level of humankind. One of the places his work can be most clearly seen is IN churches (oddly). So many people leave church, and come to hate either the people, or the programs, or the pastors, or the experience because of what he does there. Being judged is NOT something we should be experiencing while we live on this earth, its not time for humans to have any part in it, and we all still have free will to choose God or not. Jesus is not even judging us as of June 2007, our day will come with him soon but we certainly should only be getting LOVE from our fellow christians. There are plenty of christians that have done more to push people permanently away from God than many atheists and agnostics.
If we are ignoring God, we have a fear of being judged, and to get that from a church is an attack and wrong on a fundamental level.
Matthew 7:4
How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
James 5:9
Don’t grumble against each other, brothers, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!
Luke 6:37
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Jesus has a role while He is in the most Holy Place. Right now He is our advocate and He is actually seeking to present us pure before God so that we can and will be eventually with Him. Now since we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, Jesus’ work, through the Holy Spirit, is one of reconciliation. That means he is working to bring us from our sinful states whether we smoke, drink, have impure thoughts etc., to that primitive Godliness before Adam and Eve ate that forbidden fruit.
Sampson,David many persons in the bible struggled with wrong choices and sexual perversion but God still extended his mercy towards them in the middle of their mess- WHEN WE AS “CHRISTIANS” WOULD AUTOMATCALLY CONDEMN AND REFUSE TO LEND A HELPING HAND OR UNDERSTAND. Thus we can’t judge people based on what we see. We don’t know how far they have reached in there walk with Christ or how God will use their experience as a testimony to help others.
Yes God calls us to be perfect and I believe that it is possible but not in our own strength, as I discovered!
So we need to constantly be in tune with God and guard the avenues to our souls as we venture towards perfection in Jesus Christ!!!
Well said Jewel! And I am absolutely thankful that God has that kind of understanding for us. I have an opinion about this , but I want to hear others views on the subject...how IS IT, that Satan or one of his minions tempts us? Satan tempted Jesus in a really obvious literal way, but he never submitted, we get a more subtle treatment, what is that like for a hypothetical individual who can see angels and demons just as easy as we can see each other?
Christianity is just a title, and unfortunately, Satan has used it distort the truth. Its sad that people believe that they can call themselves to be Christians, and expect to go to Heaven.
I believe that in order to go to Heaven, you have to believe in salvation of grace. But just because of grace, you can’t just do whatever. You must take what you see of God and to reason with it to realize your faults and failures. And even that won’t get you saved. You need to ask God to help you fix those things. Bad habits are hard to kick, because after doing them, you feel good, and that’s all we want in this world. But God will not fix us unless we are willing. And so I ask people, are you willing to be saved. Are you willing to give up what you love most to be changed for the better, if they are willing and will strive for it, then they will be in Heaven.
To answer Barbs original three questions. Atleast try to. It is a great series of questions
I know there are SDA pastors (Doug Bachelor) who would say “no” to your questions, due to the whole health issue. More indepth, knowing smoking can lead to cancer they might add “ do not put your God to the test”. Basically saying it is testing God when we sin, but I think that doesn’t add up because we are sin. Jesus became sin when he died so we could be presented to God. (Jesus never sinned, but became sin)
As a x-smoker I don’t feel it has anything in it that can keep one from God. To some it might but that might be self-doubt. or it could very well be the spirit. Drinking and cursing however I believe are quite a different story.
Cursing I firmly believe is the marijuana (gateway drug) of sins. It has kept me away from God. Jesus spoke when he created the world. The word is powerful beyond what we know. James spoke of it in great detail.
I hate to measure sins on a scale but I can say this. Who are we to even bat an eyelash at somebody who does any of these things. In John 21:22 Jesus rebukes Peter when he asks of John’s fate. It is an insanely subtle bible verse but it speaks a sermon in itself. What is it to us whether or not people drink smoke or curse. We all fall equally short of Jesus since birth so we must look equal at each other and help and pray for one another reguardless of what the church or people deem unhealthy or unworthy.
To be more direct. Yes you can very easily be in a “saving” relationship with Jesus and still commit those acts. However I hope and pray anybody who is in the relationship with Jesus and they know those acts are keeping him/her away from Him will ask Jesus for help. Remember the bible never refers to a “once saved always saved” walk in life.
I hope I didn’t get too off subject. Like Mr. Gamble I too have intense ADD moments
