TILL HE COMES Blog

A while back I read Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus, but Not the Church. I highly recommend this book since it does reflect the thinking of a lot of people in our communities. However, I ran into a whole group of people today who don’t think much about Jesus either. They don’t like Jesus OR the church!

My family and I attended the Scarborough Renaissance Faire today in Waxahachie, TX. We went last year, and loved it so much, we bought a season pass this year. Today was opening day.

One of the things that amazed me last year, and was impressed upon me again today, is the amazing community of this place. I have never, in my entire life, witnessed such a close-knit and fun-loving community as I have seen at this Faire. I ache to find a group of believers that can even come close to such a sense of community as this. They are an odd bunch of people, with strange clothing, behaviours, and language, but they all love each other and welcome everybody, even those who are very different from them with wide open arms. The church has a lot to learn in this area.

Anyway, as we were strolling around, taking it all in, we came upon a certain vendor booth where they were selling those little twirling sticks (I don’t know what else to call them). I have always been amazed by this, so stood there watching. One of the stick twirlers (Lance), came over and offered to teach my whole family how to do it. As we learned, we talked.

He soon found out I was a pastor, and immediately began calling me “Pastor Jeremy.” As we talked, it turned out that he has a pretty pessimistic view of the future of humanity. I said, “I don’t know, I’m pretty hopeful.”

He said, “Why? What is your hope in?”

You can’t ask for a better opening than that, so I said, “My hope is in Jesus.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “Jesus!? Yeshua the Carpenter? That Jesus? You hope in Him? How can a dead guy help us today?”

I decided to not get into the resurrection yet, and so said, “Well, as people believe in Him for eternal life, and live their lives according to His example and teachings, their lives are changed, and whole communities and even countries can be changed for the better.”

He said, “Who sold you that lie? I have never met a single person whose life was significantly changed for the better because they followed the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was a fraud, and so is the Bible, and so are his followers.”

I was astonished. He has been living in the United States his entire life, and has never met anybody who he thought had been positively influenced by Jesus! So I asked him what his hope was in, and we talked for about another 20 minutes or so about his lifelong search for truth which culminated in discovering the Mayan seven-fold spirit agreement and how, like trees, we can dig our spirits deep into the earth, and throw the energy up into the atmosphere. I really didn’t understand most of what he was talking about. He said he learned all this from his spiritual advisor/babysitter named Merril. I also met Merril, who hasn’t cut his hair in 38 years, is missing most of his teeth, and talks a lot about Mayan calendars and spiritual auras.

Lance gave me the name of a free online movie to watch which he said would open my eyes. I have already watched the first 15 minutes and am excited to watch the rest. After I watch it, I’ll make a blog post about it and tell you what what movie it is. I hope that by respecting him and his beliefs, and by watching this movie, he might be open to talking more about Jesus next week when we go back to the Faire.

As I think over my conversation with him today, and after watching only 15 minutes of the movie, I have two questions I want to ask him. First, I want to ask him why he dislikes Jesus. I imagine that the Jesus he dislikes is the Jesus of religion, not Jesus of Scripture. There is a vast difference between the two.

If this turns out to be the case (that he has a skewed view of Jesus), then I want to ask him if, in his lifelong quest for truth, he has ever read about Jesus from Scripture, rather than just hearing about Jesus from others.

Anyway, I hope to build a friendship with him over the next six weeks, which I hope will last for many years, and maybe allow our family to become friends with others at the Faire. These people are some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life! I wonder if they need a Faire Friar…

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I think that one of the best ways to reach people for Jesus today is not to try to persuade or convince them through rational arguments and persuasive reasoning. Certainly, some will respond to this, and so there is a place for it, but the majority of people today are relational in their approach to truth. Most people are not asking, “Do I want to believe like you do?” but instead are asking, “Do I want to live like you do? Do I want to be like you?”

Whether you agree or not, most people today believe that beliefs result in behavior. So if your behavior stinks, they assume your beliefs stink too, without even knowing what it is you believe.  

If you want to convince people of the truths of Christianity, the best way to “argue” it today is not through reason and and rational propositions, but by becoming more and more like Jesus is everything we do. Since Truth is a person (John 14:6), truth is best learned through knowing that person, Jesus Christ, and truth is best shown by living like Him. (And be careful! I am convinced that most of us Christians and many of our churches have a very skewed idea of who Jesus was, so while we think we are living like Jesus, we are actually living like Judas.)

If you want to reach our culture for Jesus, the best (and most biblical) thing you can do is show people Jesus and invite them to follow Jesus with you.

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I remember when I thought that the most important thing about Good Friday is that it actually happened on a Thursday. Yes, I was one of the freaks of Christianity who got his kicks studying, debating, and teaching the finer points of theology that few people even knew existed, and fewer cared about. (For example, did you know Peter actually denied Christ SIX times? I can prove it!)

So I laughed when I recently read in Vince Antonucci’s new book, I Became a Christian, and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt, that one reason he started to investigate Christianity was because of some old guy teaching on television about how research had proven that something actually occurred on Wednesday rather than Tuesday (pp. 11-12). Vince doesn’t remember what the event was, but I bet it had something to do with the Passion week. Scholars are always debating about the order of the events of this week, and what happened on which days. You will even hear some talking about the “missing day” of Jesus’ final week. I used to be one of those people. Of course, I didn’t have a “missing day” in my order of events, because for me, Good Friday happened on Thursday. I think I preached a sermon about this once. These are the things I cared about most.

More than the people in my church. More than my wife or kids.

Recently, I have begun to realize that a change has occurred in me. Much of what I once thought was so important, I now consider to be almost completely irrelevant. I have also found myself crying a lot. Yes, there, I said it. I am a man, and I cry. A lot. Maybe I’m emotionally imbalanced. Maybe I need some testosterone boosters. I don’t know.

These crying bouts have confused and concerned my wife. Three nights ago, as I was crying about something, she tenderly asked, “What is going through your head right now?” Blowing my nose, I sniffled, “I don’t know. This is all so confusing to me as well. I don’t understand it either. I’m not really thinking anything except, ‘Why in the world am I crying?’”

So I started to think more about it, and observed the times when I start to cry, then talk about it with my wife. I noticed I cry when I read or hear stories about people who have experienced great personal pain in life. I cry when I learn about people who lost a loved one, boys who were beaten or neglected by their father, girls who were molested or raped, women who were abandoned by their husband. Last night, when I shared this with Wendy, she said, “I think that while you used to love theology, you now love people.”

I think my wife may be right. I’ve even noticed changes in my reading patterns. It used to be that when I read books, I would underline and scribble all over the theology sections, and skip over or get annoyed at the stories the authors would include as illustrations. I saw such stories as a needless waste of words. Now, as I flip through books I’ve read over the past six months or so, I see that I have underlined and scribbled all over the stories, and left the “theology” portions nearly untouched. I want more stories. I find myself reading and re-reading them. I share them with my wife. I ask myself how I would respond (besides crying) to people who have such pain in their lives. I want to get to know these people whose lives are so full of pain. If possible, I want to soak up some of their pain, and share with them some of the love they so desperately need and which I have been given in abundance.

And I realized today, on Good Friday, that this is why Jesus died. Did He die for the “propitiation for the sins of the world”? Of course. Was it an “unlimited and substitutionary atonement”? Yes. But I believe that more than any of these theological truths, Jesus died to associate with us in our suffering, to understand our loneliness, and to soak up our pain.

His death was not primarily a theological event. It was the greatest act of love that ever occured in the history of the universe. Jesus died because He loves you.  

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I wish I’d had the courage when I was pastor to walk across the street. Oh sure, I walked across it every day back and forth to the church parsonage. But a bit further down the road was an atheist who had never set foot in our church, and probably never would. I wish I had gone over there and asked him out for lunch. It’s one of the great regrets of my years as a pastor. I thought about it every week, but I never had the courage.

Today I started reading Jim & Casper Go To Church. Jim is a Christian who makes a regular habit of befriending atheists. Casper is an atheist. Together, they attend churches and then write about what they heard and experienced. If you want to know what unbelievers think about you and your church, you should go ask them. But if you want to read about it instead (since it’s so much safer and easy), you can be like me and just read Jim and Casper’s book, and others like it (e.g., They Like Jesus, But Not the Church by Dan Kimball).

Jim has a ministry called Off the Map devoted to helping “Christians learn to communicate better with non-Christians, or as some of my more outspoken ‘lost’ friends prefer to put it, Off the Map helps Christians learn how to not be jerks” (p. xxii). It’s true. We can be real jerks. I’m sure it makes Jesus proud.

Anyway, I’m not even to the first chapter yet, but here are a few quotes from Jim with comments by me:

Humanity is divided into two groups: (1) people who follow Jesus, and (2) everybody else. It doesn’t matter to me whether you call yourself a Christian, a Buddhist, a humanist, an agnostic, or an atheist. If you aren’t following Jesus, you’re in group two (p. xxiv).

I could be wrong, but I don’t think he means that there can be Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists who follow Jesus. Sure, some may claim to follow the teachings of Jesus, but they would have to reject some of them. Just like many of us Christians do as well. And that’s his point. Just because you call yourself a Christian doesn’t mean you are following Jesus. I wholeheartedly agree with that. He goes on to say that “some professed Christians are not actually following Jesus but are instead following religion” (p. xxv). So true. I’m one such person in many ways.

He goes on to say that authors of a generation ago (and even many today):

…Provided Christians a way to defend the faith-the expectation being that if we provide a biblical response to the arguments of atheists of doubters and essentially prove them wrong, they will be forced to admit the error of their ways and join us. (Short of that, we will at least experience the pleasure of intellectually humiliating them.) (p. xxxii).

I’ve been in “witnessing” encounters like this. The only results that I could discern were increased blood pressure, as evidenced by red faces and bulging neck veins. Jim says, “Ordinary Christians like me know that when you start defending the faith, you also start losing your friends” (p. xxxiii).

The solution, Jim says, is to actually make friends with non-Christians, and live out the teachings of Jesus among them:

Jesus didn’t just teach principles; he taught practices. He gave people something to do. He didn’t just teach them about forgiveness; he told them to forgive their debtors. He didn’t just talk about love as a concept; he told people to love their enemies. He didn’t just tell people to think about changing their behaviors; he told them to repent. Sure it’s challenging, but it doesn’t take a weekend seminary to understand what he means (p. xxxiii).

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this book.

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A critic paid me quite a compliment today when he accused me of befriending and conversing with atheists and people who use the “F-word.” If only he knew the truth…

…but I’ve got nothing to hide, so I’ll share it: My wife invited a lesbian couple over to dinner a while back. They haven’t accepted yet, but we are hoping they will. Wendy says that if I ever meet some prostitutes or strippers, I can invite them over too. I have not met any yet (and I’m not going to the places they tend to hang out), but maybe one day I will. I gave a $50 Burger King card to a drunk on the street a month ago. If I had the time, I would have gone and eaten with him. I keep looking for him at his corner but haven’t seen him yet. Before coming to seminary, we let an alleged murderer stay in our house for six weeks while he was on house-arrest. All of his friends and family members abandoned him when it looked like he was guilty, so we took him in. It was one of the best six weeks of my life.

So not only am I trying to make friends with Atheists, Agnostics, and people who use rough language, I am also trying to befriend homosexuals, prostitutes, strippers, drunks, and murderers.

And to tell you the truth, I’ve never felt closer to Jesus. I believe that if Jesus were walking the earth today, he would befriend and converse with these people too. Of course, the Pharisees and religious hypocrites would get upset at him today, just as they did 2000 years ago: “Gasp! Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners! Doesn’t he know what they’ve done?” (Read Matt 9:11; 11:19; Mark 2:15-16).

Yes, he does know. That’s why he eats with them. That’s why I eat with them too…. Not because I’m “holy like Jesus,” but because I’m one of those “sinners.” I hope that if Jesus were walking around today, he would come up to me and say, “Hey! I’m having a BBQ over at my place for sinners. Want to come?”

If he were to ask you that question, what would you say?

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I know, I know. Christmas is over. But I have been thinking for a while now that something is not right with all the criticism that Christians give Christmas, but have not been able to really figure out what, until I read a post by Tia Lynn over at her Abandon Image blog. You must go read the rest of her post, but here is some of what she wrote:

Wouldn’t it come as a baffling shock if Christians everywhere put down their picket signs, ceased the boycotts, dropped the Christmas lawsuits, and instead, showered politicians, business owners, and ACLU workers that show disdain for Christmas/Christians with thoughtful gifts, invitations to OUR Christmas celebrations, letters of prayers, (not condemning ones), asking nothing in return? What if Christians took all the money they are spending on lawsuits over Christmas and used it to serve the poor, the marginalized, and sick? What if we stopped courting the approval and recognition of the rich and powerful and focused on the least, the lost, and the last of this world? What if Christians recreated our Christmas celebrations and invited the world, instead of demanding the world get it right and include us? How much harder would it be for the world to label us as judgmental, condemning, intolerant, superficial hypocrites, if we actually lead by example, by service, by radical, ridiculous, unconditional love?

See, Jesus is no naive optimist, He is a genius! By responding to cruelty with kindness, insult with blessing, neglect with service, rejection with embrace, it proves our opponent wrong. It shows their true colors. It halts their accusations. It could inspire a rethinking of their assumptions. It makes us a people separated unto God. It clears the way for reconciliation, healing, renewal, forgiveness, and transformation. When we take the bait and repay evil with evil, eye for eye, dollar for dollar, insult for insult, when we demand our DUE, we not only lose in the end, but we becomeour “enemy,” for we are guilty of the same offenses, tactics, and attitudes. For what good is it if we only show love to those who love us? Do not even non-christians do this? Aren’t we called to a higher standard?

 Thanks Tia for showing us how to be truly “incarnational” during this holiday season.

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I have a friend who looks at all that is wrong with the world, and then looks at the average Christian and as a result, wants nothing to do with Christianity. He says that it appears Christians would rather spend their time arguing and debating theology than helping the poor and homeless, and would rather drive Hummers and build huge church buildings than drill wells in Africa or feed orphans. He doesn’t think that Jesus would be a “Christian” if Jesus were alive today.

The other day, he showed me a YouTube video where a secular rock artist posted his video about this very thing. The artist is very angry. The video and song lyrics show Christians going to church and pastors preaching sermons, all the while ignoring the hungry and needy that are all around them. The basic message of the song is ”Christians need to stop praying and preaching and building huge cathedrals for themselves, and start doing something that actually helps!”

After I watched the video, my friend turned to me and said, “I think there is a special place in hell for Christians.”

Whether you realize it or not, this is the prevalent attitude toward Christianity among those who are ages 18-35. (If you don’t believe this is true, you probably don’t know many non-Christian 18-35 year olds.) How have we as Christians come to this, and what (if anything) can we do about it?

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I was able to attend two panel discussions today at the Free Grace Alliance National Conference. On one of them, I had to be there since I was a panel member.

The panel which I only attended was related to the issues of assurance, eternal security, and justification. The basic question was “Does a person have to know that what they get from Jesus can never be lost in order to receive it?” Of the three panelists, I heard one, Tim Nichols, give a clear answer “Yes” and the other two were a little more evasive. This was not really their fault since many of the questions from the audience were not really on topic. Some questions were related to the death and resurrection of Jesus, or the deity of Jesus, and other things. The last question, however, was very revealing. It was “If you are witnessing to an unsaved person, and you want to tell them how to be saved, what would you say?”

1. Dave Anderson answered first with two words: “Free Grace.” I’m not sure what he meant by that.

2. George Meisinger said that he tells as much of the gospel as he can to the person in the time he has. If it’s on an airplane, he is able to tell them lots more than if he is sharing with someone on their deathbed. I don’t remember quite how he answered the question.

3. Tim Nichols answered similarly to George Meisinger, but emphasized that the message we share with unbelievers must come from the Gospel of John.

The second panel discussion I attended was the one I spoke on. It was was whether a person had to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus in order to be born again. The following are terribly poor summaries of the views presented:

1. Ken Wilson basically said “Yes. We don’t believe in Jesus for everlasting life, but we have to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God who takes away our sins.” I’m not sure who in Christendom (including Catholics) doesn’t believe this, but maybe I misunderstood him.

2. Tim Nichols basically argued that since nobody would ever dream of not presenting the death and resurrection, the question doesn’t really matter. This is true. Sometimes, Satan’s greatest ploy is to get us talking about theology rather than living out the theology we do know.

3. Larry Moyer basically said “Yes, because the death and resurrection is central to the Gospel, and we must always share the Gospel when telling people about Jesus.”

4. Tom Stegall argued similarly to Larry Moyer, but more emphatically.

5. I certainly do believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus are central to the Gospel, and that without the death and resurrection of Jesus, there is no Gospel. All the truths of the Gospel (of which there are dozens-if not hundreds) are for the purpose of getting a person to believe in Jesus and so receive everlasting life. So I always present the death and resurrection of Jesus when I witness to people. So I argued similarly to Tim Nichols–that it’s a mute point.

However, I did point out that we do have examples of people in Scripture who believed in Jesus and received everlasting life, but did not know about the death and resurrection of Jesus, and even when presented with these truths, did not believe them (cf. Matt 16:31-32; Mark 9:31-32; Luke 9:44-45; 18:31-34; 24:19-26; John 20:9, 24-30). There may be some examples from Acts and the Epistles as well, but it’s almost 2 am, and I’m tired. But just one example: One reason Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15 is to persuade and convince the Corinthian believers about the resurrection of Jesus. It sounds like some of them had believed in the resurrection, but had turned away from it, but there apparently were others who had heard about the resurrection, but denied it as fiction. Paul is correcting these believers in Corinth about this.

So apparently, there are people who believe in Jesus, and lots of correct things about Him, but don’t have all their theological ducks in a row, but who are still considered by Biblical authors to be regenerate. I think it is possible there are people in the same category today. I may have talked with one a few weeks ago, which I mentioned in a previous post.

Due to the number of panelists, and the limited time, only one question from the audience was asked, and that one had nothing to do with the questions that I had come up with which I hoped to receive answers to. So I still don’t know how Tom Stegall would answer those questions. I refuse to speculate how he might answer them, because if there is anything more dangerous that theological speculation, it is theological speculation about someone else’s theology.

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I am on a panel discussion tomorrow night at the National Conference of the Free Grace Alliance. The panel discussion is related to the death and resurrection of Jesus, and whether a person needs to know and believe these historical facts in order to be born again.

I am presenting the view that while the death and resurrection of Jesus was necessary for justification to be possible, belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus is not what grants a person eternal life. A person simply needs to believe in Jesus for eternal life to be given it by God. I have written on this in the past. Certainly, the death and resurrection of Jesus are central to the Gospel, but since there is so much Biblical information that is part of the Gospel, one does not have to believe the entire Gospel to be justified. There is a difference between the mechanism of justification (the death and resurrection of Jesus, along with a myriad of other things) and the message of eternal life (believe in Jesus for it). In other words, there is a difference between the Gospel information, and the Gospel invitation.

I agreed to be on this panel for three reasons. First, I want people to be clear in evangelism. If we have a muddled message, all we do is erect barriers which keep people from believing in Jesus for eternal life. The death and resurrection of Jesus are definitely part of what we share in evangelism, but we tell them these things to convince and persuade them to believe in Jesus for eternal life, not because they get eternal life by believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s a nuance, but a very important one. After all, there are many who believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus, but don’t believe in Him for eternal life.

Second, I know there are a lot of people who are trying to understand the various positions, and I hope to let them hear my position from me rather than from those out there who don’t understand my position but continue to write pejorative and negative things about me. It’s always best when researching a matter to go to the source.

Third, I see no logical or Biblical consistency in the view of those who are taking the opposing view. Clearly, they think their view is logical and Biblical or they wouldn’t hold it. I am not exactly trying to persuade them to my view, but I do want to try to understand their view. Toward that end, here are the questions I hope to have answered:

If a person must believe in the death of resurrection of Jesus, is it sufficient to believe in the historical facts of these events, or does a person also have to believe in substitutionary atonement?

If a person believes that Jesus died on the cross for their sins, and rose again from the dead, but don’t believe that by faith in Jesus they have life that can never be lost, are they justified? (E.g., They say things like “Jesus did his 99%, but I must do my 1%” or “I’m saved now, but if I sin later, I won’t be saved any more” or “I accepted the gift of eternal life, but I can give it back if I don’t abide.”)

In all of my study of the other view, I have yet to read an attempt to answer these questions. Others have noticed this same thing, and we receive daily e-mails and phone calls from people saying they are prayerfully supporting Bob Wilkin, myself, and the ministry of Grace Evangelical Society as we continue to present the offer of eternal life to all who believe in Jesus for it.

Here is one such e-mail:

Jeremy,

By way of introduction, we have been with GES almost since its beginning and had been proclaiming the free grace gospel message for 25 years before that. We were instrumental in formatting the first several years of GES Journal articles for the website and have printed and distributed several thousand pages of GES articles to many pastors and Christian leaders in our area. In other words, we support what you are doing.

We have been keeping up with the ongoing issue of what constitutes the gospel message and are grieved about the possible damage to the cause of Christ that might ensue. We also have supported the ministry at Duluth for quite some time and distributed much of their literature.

I believe that your article, “The Gospel Is More Than “Faith Alone In Christ Alone,” was excellent and it even helped me to “connect the dots” in some of my study on the subject. The open letter on the Duluth website refers to, among other things, this article and mentions two points of disagreement. These comments appeared to me to be a bit pejorative as there was no attempt at biblical refutation or even explanation of the context of your statements.

In addition to the significant biblical evidence that you gave for your position (a position which should be either accepted or proved wrong biblically), is one point that has come up in my study and that I have not seen mentioned anywhere. It is as follows: In 1st Corinthians 15, we find the classic definition of the gospel which includes the death, burial, resurrection of Christ, and probably the contents of the next few verses. Per verse 15 we see that the resurrection is necessary for our justification, but does not say that belief in it is necessary. Verse 12 and following shows that some of the Corinthian believers did not believe in the resurrection and reiterates the deleterious ramifications of this error. This epistle is written to the Church at Corinth (1:2; 1:7 et al). Did these believers who already have eternal life then lose their salvation? Did the awareness of their lack then show that they were not true believers in the first place? Or were they eternally saved, carnal believers, who needed to know and apply these resurrection facts so that they may be saved in the sanctification sense and enjoy the resurrection life during their earthly pilgrimage? The first two options are not implied in the context and are disqualified by other scripture. Something similar to the last seems to be more on target.

Unless you are already way ahead of me on this it might be beneficial to also develop this point. No reply to this note is expected as I realize that you have a heavy schedule.

We continue to pray. Keep up the good work (1 Cor. 15:58)

This is an excellent observation by this man, and should be developed further. I also want to point out that Peter and the apostles did not believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus until after He died and rose again (cf. Matt 16:20-23; Mark 9:31-32; Luke 9:44-45; 18:31-34; 24:19-26; John 20:9, 24-30). Does this then mean that they were not justified until they believed in the death and resurrection?

I’ll give an update on how things went after the conference.

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I ran into someone this past week who would post quite the dilemma…for some. It was a woman who called about some questions related to her salvation. As we talked, I asked her some diagnostic questions to help me determine where she was coming from. I asked her that if she were to die tonight, if she were sure she would go to heaven. When she answered, “yes” I asked her why. She said something along the lines that since Jesus died for all of her sins, and has has believed in Him, she gets to go to heaven when she dies. Though she could have been a bit clearer, this was initially satisfactory for me.

But I asked some follow-up questions as well, to see if she was in any way relying on her past, present, or future good works in order to earn, prove, or keep her eternal life. From her answers, she seemed certain that she did nothing to earn her eternal life, and she could do nothing to lose it. Though I am not the judge of her spiritual condition, I was satisfied. To the best of my knowledge, she understood that simply by her faith in Jesus, she had everlasting life which could not be lost.

Then we started to talk about some of her questions, and in the process, she mentioned about how she knows Jesus is going to come again when he rises from the dead. It was an odd way of phrasing it, and so I asked her what she meant. She stated that she knew Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago for her sins, and that He was right now in heaven, and He was coming again in the future. I said, “That’s good, but what was it you said about Him rising from the dead?”

She said, “You know…when He comes again.”

As it turns out, somehow, here in America, she had never been told (or had just never understood) that Jesus had already risen from the dead!!! I didn’t even know this was possible, but I discovered she doesn’t read her Bible, and doesn’t go to a church that teaches the Bible much. I asked her if she saw “The Passion of the Christ,” which she had. I asked, “Didn’t you wonder what was going on at the end of the movie when Jesus rose from the dead?” She said she didn’t think anything about it, because all it shows is Jesus with a glow around Him, and so she thought that was supposed to be Him in heaven, which matched her theology perfectly. (Go look at the end of the movie! She’s right. The ending is very vague.)

After taking her to some passages in the Gospels, and then to 1 Corinthians 15 (which Paul partly wrote to prove the resurrection has taken place), she said she now understood and believed that Jesus had already risen from the dead.

So here is the question. Did she have eternal life prior to understanding and believing that Jesus rose from the dead? I say “Yes.” She was justified the moment she first believed in Jesus for everlasting life. I was able to disciple her some more this week and teach her some things about the Jesus she had believed in that she did not previously know.

However, there is a group who would probably say, ”No.” They might argue that until she believed in the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus she does not have eternal life. Although she believed in her own sinfulness, the deity of Jesus, His death on the cross, and that she had eternal life in Him alone, she was not saved until she believed the whole package. Even though she believed in a future resurrection of Jesus, this is not sufficient. 

To me, this is incredulous. Antonio da Rosa has posed a similar situation as I have encountered here. He stated somewhere (I can’t find it now) that to consign someone like this woman to hell for not knowing all the Biblical facts about Jesus that are on a man-made list is the height of legalism. This woman believed in Jesus for eternal life, and by Jesus’ own promise, whosoever believes in Him, has everlasting life (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47).

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