"Edgar" wrote...
Well, that does not seem to be a very good deal. You mean that if you spend
your life loving your neighbour and turning the other cheek etc. you are
still only on a par with omeone who has spent his life raping, pillaging and
coveting his neighbours wife etc.? Where is the incentive?

Incentive? Don't you understand no matter how well you live your life or try to live
your life it doesn't matter as far as your salvation's concerned. You can be a regular
Mother Teresa and still not have everlasting life if you deny Jesus. Good works can't
save your soul. Only Jesus can.
It's not the sinning God determines your fate by. It's the repentance and the acceptance
of Jesus. God expects people to sin. Nobody is sin-free. Degrees of sin aren't something
that matters to God. Slapping your wife and murdering your wife are both equal sins in
God's eyes.
It's God's loving and generous offer of salvation rejected that ****es him off enough to
say, "To hell with you!" (literally). Remember one thing then things will make better sense.
God created us in his own image. We are Gods ourselves, then. The difference is while
existing in the flesh we have a decision to make. That decision for those born after
Jesus died is to believe or not to believe Jesus (God). If we don't believe we're
denied the tree of life. Jesus is the new the tree of life denied everybody after
Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and got their fig leave
covered butts kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Cheers,
Ellen

"Ellen MacArthur" wrote in message
reenews.net...
Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and got
their fig leave
covered butts kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

So they were a bit slow on the draw, repentancewise?

"Edgar" wrote
So they were a bit slow on the draw, repentancewise?

It was too early for repentance then. God told them they couldn't do something but
they went ahead and did it. God punished them. From then on everybody was punished.
But later on God had mercy and went himself in the form of Jesus to do something so
sins could be forgiven. Jesus takes away the sins of mankind. But he only takes them away
from people who ask that he do so and believe he will do so.
Remember there was another tree in the garden that Adam and Eve were free to eat
from. It was the tree of life. But they were stupid and didn't eat from it right away. Instead
they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. So they got kicked out and never again
got a chance to eat from the tree of life. That is until Jesus came along and offered the very
same thing.
Don't be stupid like Adam and Eve. You've got a chance again to eat from the tree of life. Get
on with it before it's too late.

Cheers,
Ellen