[aron]

Originally Posted by Cassidy

I saw this in the Baptist church too. Assured of eternal salvation many I knew lived like the Devil. I wasn't regenerated at the time but knew that something was not right about that..

I remember going to a Baptist meeting and the sermon was on "The wages of sin is death", and I had the realization that they preached some variation of this sermon every Sunday. Although as an evangelical Protestant fundamentalist the message seemed right and true to me, it also seemed static. But they had to keep coming back to it, week after week, to keep the faithful from "living like the Devil", as you put it. Every week you are fixated on Square One. The gospel consists of "Repent and be saved". The rest of the journey isn't shown very well, if at all. No wonder the children leave! The world and the flesh are calling, and the mind only has "See Spot run" to work with, and the heart is bored. So they leave.

After regeneration I gravitated to the Arminian persuasion where one could lose their eternal salvation if they lived liked the Devil. Depends on what condition they were in at the moment they died (i.e. did they die in an automobile because they were drunk at the wheel). But that seemed to oppose scripture which assured salvation based on faith and belief. Whenever I sinned my belief in Jesus did not change, so that did not feel right either...

The assurance comes from God's work, not from ours. I also recognized the uncertainty of the Arminian position. But I could not deny that the level of "the living testimony", on the whole, was better than most everywhere else. It seems that fear is a good motivator. "Fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom."

When I first heard the teaching on the kingdom I started realizing the synchronization of the scriptures for the first time based on these two views having lived in both camps. I had an epiphany at some point when everything fell in place and I could see both viewpoints had part of the truth but not enough to explain the other side... I knew that the kingdom was not just a doctrine, that reconciled these major viewpoints, but a reality to be lived out...

Yes; for that I am grateful for that attempt at reconciliation, and harmonization. My complaint(s) for the LSM's version of "the kingdom" is that it is so insufficient. The idea is important; the Epistle to the Hebrews' lengthy reference to Exodus makes that clear.

Youth is wasted on the young so they say. I wish I had the revelation of the kingdom as a teen but I might not have the appreciation for it that I do now if I had heard about it all my life.

My sample size is small, since I only visited one local church; therefore my observations may not have broad applicability. But while there I was struck by the dearth of all the children whom I'd known ten years earlier. Where were all the young adults? And I have also noted this trend elsewhere in the Protestant fold. The young people get a message that may have had some resonance in the 19th century or even into the 1960s, but its drawing power, and importantly it's holding power, has diminished exponentially over time. They get an antiquated, static, museum-style message which can't overcome the barrage of stimuli from the world they live in.

In order to "overcome" they try what the Catholics did, which was become priests and monks and nuns. Only today they call them "campus workers" and "serving ones" and "full-timers". By an abundance of work you might cross some invisible line, be pleasing to God, and be an "overcomer".

Of course they won't say this: they'll say that you need a relationship with Jesus Christ, etc etc. But when I don't see any young people there, only hear of a few who are "serving the ministry" abroad, it makes me feel that this message of the kingdom is not working at all.