As Christians, when do we begin our eternal lives?
Trick Question
- Thread starter BibleLover
- Start date
The very moment we place our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Eternal life is not really associated with "time" at all, as it is independent of time. Eternal life can function outside of and beyond time, as well as within time.
This question reminds me of another that was asked once by a pastor.
At what point is a picked rose dead? The answer I would have originally given is when it turns brown and withers.
The answer that the pastor gave was, the instant it was cut from the vine.
My answer is eternal life begins the moment we are saved.
At what point is a picked rose dead? The answer I would have originally given is when it turns brown and withers.
The answer that the pastor gave was, the instant it was cut from the vine.
My answer is eternal life begins the moment we are saved.
Hello BibleLover;
The very moment we give our lives to Jesus. I incorporate this each day in my prayers as a reminder that by His promise I am included in His eternity.
This is a great question for all who are saved that we should ask ourselves daily as well as others in our witness.
God bless you, BibleLover, for asking.
What is eternal life?
Life without end
W
When it's life without an end I think we get it after death.
We Africans may be we don't understand english because our teaching and understanding is totally different from yours for us we say that we shall get our eternal life after death.
JOHN 17:3 .......
“And this is everlasting life, that they may know You, the only true God, Jesus Christ whom You have sent."
That says that "Knowing" Christ in faith is everlasting life!
Everyone has everlasting life Pastor right now! "Where" we spend it is the question. We must choose to go to heaven and to go to hell we simply have to do nothing.
Christians don't die; when they depart the body, they change form, but they are still alive.
Hello Pastor Mayende;
I understand what you're saying and I receive your explanation, Pastor.
In my experience with Eastern African English, for example, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania English can be complex because of meanings behind the words or a sentence.
American English can be complex because many of our words can have more than one meaning and even more complex in a sentence.
In my talks with African pastors it takes more practice from both sides just by communicating a topic, Scripture, or theology, and may even require repeating what's talked about. But it is achievable.
For sake of this topic I feel we all are on the same page and I agree with BibleLover, Major, In Awe of Him's, and your posts.
Praise God for His eternal promise.
No created being will ever have eternal life.
All the angels and humans will have is everlasting life, not eternal.
Only Yah is eternal since He had no beginning and no end to His life as He is self-existent.
MM
Ephesians 1:4
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,...
If we are 'in Him' and He in us then we are a part of him and therefore we always had eternal life we just come to know it upon the new birth.
As to 'only God' having eternal life - that is true. Therefore hell is not eternal but all those that are in him are, because they are a part if him - were in his thinking.
This also explains the wise and foolish virgins. But that is another thought.
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,...
If we are 'in Him' and He in us then we are a part of him and therefore we always had eternal life we just come to know it upon the new birth.
As to 'only God' having eternal life - that is true. Therefore hell is not eternal but all those that are in him are, because they are a part if him - were in his thinking.
This also explains the wise and foolish virgins. But that is another thought.
I'm not sure the connections you have made are legitimate...in relation to His knowing us from before the foundations of the world, and that making us eternal. That runs very close to what Mormonism teaches its enslaved masses.
So, I'm curious how you arrived at connecting eternity to us from a context dealing with redemption, especially when we did not exist until initial conception between our parents. Christ knowing OF us before the foundations of the world doesn't make us a reality before the earth was.
For example, if I were to design a new car, and have all its attributes and design parameters known to me that would result from the final build, that doesn't make that car a reality before its parts were manufactured, and the entire unit assembled. It was just a concept; a thought if you will.
Am I hitting close to what you were positing?
MM
We did not exist in the way that I might greet you and shake your hand but we were a finished work in the mind of God. If not where did you come from? God is the only creator. He is omniscient and omnipotent. Are your thoughts outside of God's framework?
Nothing can be added or taken away or God is not omniscient. So you always were. Doesn't scripture say that there is nothing new under the sun?
Ok, so I would have to see solid backing from scripture on this. What you are rationalizing here just doesn't align with the idea that, on the basis of God's "foreknowledge," that such constitutes the reality of our existence, and thus translates over into our being eternal as He is eternal. One simply doesn't lend over to the other.
The womb, just as the Lord indicated:
Isaiah 49:5 "And now the LORD says, Who formed Me from the womb [to be] His Servant, To bring Jacob back to Him, So that Israel is gathered to Him (For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the LORD, And My God shall be My strength),
If our reality did not begin in the womb, then this and many, many other verses make no sense. Placing more meaning into God's foreknowledge, and equating that with our actual existence before we were ever in the womb, that's a stretch that I just don't see anywhere in scripthre, not that it is something we can even equivocate from scripture and its key terminology.
I don't see how this is a valid question from what I have been saying.
Oh, wow. You are binding together contexts and verses that are not inter-related so far as I can see. I will need to see quotes from scripture, and how you are expounding upon them to understand if there is any validity in how you are drawing the lines of connection and parallels.
MM
I just want to add, a thought in existence is not the same as a thing in existence. God is eternal and He created the universe, we know the universe had a beginning as did everything in it, this includes all of us. Only the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternal. We will go into life everlasting. This is not the same as eternity as we all have a beginning.