This thread not the right place to hold this discussion/argument, should go to RWI for that. But anyway, in a nutshell - God's righteousness demands that Sin be punished. By His Love he sent his Son to take our sins and die in our place. Therefore we are able to go to Heaven because our Sin has already been punished on the cross.

I don't think anyone here considers you a troublemaker or felt offended, just that "serious" religious debate supposed to go to RWI as per LYN's ... policies

at it's core, all you need to do is believe, that's it. there is no such thing as you must go church every week, must give 10% as tithes, must do this must do that otherwise you lose your salvation.

none of these are linked to salvation. there are other reasons why we need to tithe, go church, etc, but i do not know of any church that says you must do all these otherwise you lose your salvation and go to hell.

You don't lose your salvation just because you've sinned. If that were true, we would all need to be constantly & continually confessing repentence under our breath every 2 minutes.

I am merely challenging your premise that when you commit suicide you go to hell because you had no chance of repenting of that sin. Tell me this: Let's say you argue with your wife/whatever and got angry and said F*ck off b*tch (i.e. you sinned). That very instant you had a stroke and died. Do you go to heaven or hell?

Why complicate things so? Wouldn't you agree that salvation is nothing more than believing/confessing/etc that Christ came to earth and paid the price for our sin so that we would have everlasting life?

Errr you said "The way to the Kingdom of God is narrow, that will only depend on your relationship with God. That's not for me to decide." And posted a bunch of scripture that seems to imply that one can never be sure of his/her salvation.

The Bible doesn't ask us to do random things just for the sake of doing them. There is a lot of sound reasoning behind that advice - example being if you have children, should they follow the mother's religion or the dad's religion? Are they going to go to a temple and worship multiple gods on Saturdays and then go to church on Sundays? What if the spouse decides to forbid you from bringing your kids to church? etc etc. Rather than "deal with these problems when they arise in the future" wouldn't it be better to avoid them altogether?

Wikipedia says there are about 2.5billion Christians around the world today, surely He can make you meet the one that is right for you.

no need to condemn yourself over committing any sin. important to realize that God knows all your sins even before you commit them, and that Jesus died on the cross for all of these sins. "Repent then only forgive" is not how it works.

Need to be careful on the reason though. If someone asks for forgiveness for a sin thinking that he/she must do so otherwise that sin is not forgiven, that's not the right mentality to have.


Agreed. The key is not to use your own strength, but to rely on God to provide the strength.

Guys, seeking your opinion.

So anyways sometime last year I moved to a new city. And my fiancee moved with me (cos we don't want to LDR). We're renting an apartment, staying in different rooms.

We found a nice local church where we feel at home & registered with them to get married. Thing is that since we have the same address, the church considers us "already living as husband and wife," and that they will only marry us if one of us moves out until after the wedding.

Alternate is that since we are already living as husband and wife, we might as well just go and register a civil marriage with ROM first.

Thoughts?

Hmm well the video talks about "living together" which typically means in the same room. In my case, the house has 3 rooms with me, my fiancee, and a 3rd, unrelated person each occupying one separate room. We don't share the same bed, we don't share the same room, so it's not quite 100% living together. In any case that point is moot because the church policy is same house = no.

So I was asking opinions as to ... would you advise me (or my fiancee) to take the trouble of moving out, searching for a new place to stay, finding a tenant for existing room, etc etc, and get married "properly" in church?

Or would it be more like well you two are in the same house already anyway, might as well just ROM it then you are legally married then just move into the same room.

a very layman's example would be like how an egg has a shell, white and yolk, but you will always refer to the 3 parts together as "one egg."

no offense, but haven't you said in this thread that you are/were a church-goer? would be trivial to open your bible and find that the dude pulling words out of thin air, no?

any sort of vaginal sex between a husband and wife is not a sin. any sort of vaginal sex between unmarried people is a sin. (heck, even thinking about another person who is not your spouse is a sin).

for anal sex i'm not so sure. the bible does speak out strongly against sodomy, but it could be perhaps argued that the context of these was more referring to homosexuality rather than anal. *shrug* i'll let the experts come back on this one.

yeah this is what i meant. bible is clear that men x men or women x women = no. but what about anal sex between married man & married woman? if we read very literally, sodomy is sin. (sodomy also includes anal sex). but the context is sodomy (in the context of a man --> another man). so i'm not sure.

Note that I am not a proponent of anal sex. Nor do I have any intention of performing it cos I think it's disgusting.

But, the word "sodomy" as you have quoted, is "derived from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in chapters 18 and 19 of the Book of Genesis in the Bible." But if you re-read Gen18-19, the bible doesn't actually define "sodomy" in the way that the english language now understands it. Gen 19, in a nutshell, the "male" angels went to visit Lot, and then the men of the city came to Lot's house cos they wanted to screw the angels. Therefore the passage speaks about homosexuality being abhorrent to the Lord.

I did a quick bible search and the word "sodomy" itself does not appear at all in any of the popular translations.

I won't comment on the health part cos that's got nothing to do with scriptures.


Why then does the word sodomy not appear in the Bible if it is condemned/forbidden? There are plenty of verses that condemn homosexuality. But none of these verses are translated using the word "sodomy."


The Bible condemns homosexuality. It doesn't mention anything specific about the act of anal sex itself.

In my view this is similar to the story of Onan. Did God punish the act of masturbation with death? Or did He punish Onan for intentionally avoid producing offspring for his brother as was the law at the time?


My view on this is that if you condemn anal sex as unnatural, then wouldn't oral sex also be unnatural? Since the penis is obviously not meant for the mouth. And the vagina is also obviously not meant for the tongue else it would, you know ... taste good. Furthermore the fingers are not meant for the vagina either. So there can be no foreplay and straight to the act? Doesn't make sense.


i.e. Homosexuality. This verse says man with man = X. It doesn't say Man with Female in the ass = X.


Same as above.

My point for the analogy is such:

What did Onan do? He masturbated on the ground (the act) in order to prevent his brother's wife from having child (the sin).
What does a gay man do? He pokes his penis into another man's anus (the act) in order to lie with another man (the sin).

Led astray? You have failed to show me anywhere in the Bible where sodomy / anal sex is prohibited. All you are saying is that homosexuality is prohibited (agreed), and by extension since in order to be homosexual you have to commit anal sex, therefore by extension it is inferred that anal sex is also prohibited.

We will have to agree to disagree then otherwise we'll end up with 10 pages long arguments like what prophetjul and unknown warrior are doing. All I will say in closing is that if homosexuality is purely about anal sex, then female lesbianism is perfectly acceptable, since no anal sex happens here.