Rapture? not

Here it is May 22 and we're all still here, awkward. For Harold Camping I mean. Actually, I am probably wrong there. Ol' Harold most likely does it just to gain attention and 50 million dollars every ten years. I think if I were Camping at this point I would just fold up my clothes all nice and hit the road. His little 'rapture prophecies' have ruined many families with divorce, after the women lose respect for their husbands for believing this BS. It has also caused people to lose their faith. But I'm sure that doesn't bother our friend. Na', he'll just keep up his little scam 'til he dies and goes to meet his corrupter. 

His love, mercy, and forgiveness

Everybody likes the New Testament God better. The old God, from the Old Testament, was, to many appearances, mean. He was even seemingly often on bad terms with His own people, and told Moses he would destroy them more than once. In fact, He did destroy them at one point (Noah's Ark), though this was before Moses. The Pharisees often stressed the wrath and punishment of God. Jesus, on the other hand, is almost thought of as God's other side, and not to mention His, from our point of view, better side. In many of our "Christian songs" on the radio, for example, the singer starts out by telling of his evil past life, but then, instead of begging forgiveness, states, as in one popular song, "I'm forgiven!!" While it is true the Pharisees did not speak of God's love and forgiveness to the people near enough, at least it kept them in fear of the Lord, if not love. Today we're basically taught to love God, but not to fear him, for "He loves us so much that hell is extremely rare." So today it's like we're making the same mistake the Israelites did, just turned around. Now we do not stress God's judgement enough, which can, if we are not careful, create, ( it already has) lax Christians. Christians who say, " I don't have to worry about hell, even if I do sin, because God loves me so much." are lax Christians, or Christians who like to make up an excuse so as to keep sinning, and then state that they're "forgiven." So we have taken the most wonderful thing God ever did for us, dying for us, and have twisted its meaning so that we can sin even more. As a demon in C.S.' Lewis' book, The Screwtape Letters, states, "He (Jesus) did not become one of them and die among them by torture-in order to produce candidates for Limbo*; 'failed' humans. He wanted to make saints; gods; things like Himself" God's judgement is just as real as His love, and they both should be equally stressed. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's views on the subject were: "Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." 
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer



   * Limbo is used to mean purgatory, a place where deceased humans go to have their sins purged from them, since they were not good enough for Heaven, but not quite bad enough for hell.