Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
I opened the Bible and started reading in bed, after working overtime and then traveling to night school, where God arranged for us both to take a Circuits I class in Engineering. I crashed in bed, and literally was reading only minutes. I don't even remember where or what I was reading. I was not repenting. I was not praying. I was not confessing my many sins. I was laying down, not kneeling.
I will admit that my new friend from work also was recently saved. His Catholic wife rejected the gospel, and wanted out, thus creating a fiery trial in his heart. He also went 30 miles out of his way to give me a ride home because my car had died. He was excited about Jesus, and "faith comes by hearing." His gospel did not give me any "how to" instructions about salvation, rather it was a combination of Gospel stories about Jesus that he was reading, and end times events from Hal Lindsay's book that was popular at the time.
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I will believe your story and think you were saved in this way because that is how the sovereign God chose to save you. People have been saved by various unique and sometimes even strange ways, seemingly outside the "pattern" of scripture that so many Christians demand (not referring to you, God saving through reading the Bible is fairly orthodox). Many Christians might say that the simple calling on the Lord 3 times as done in the Recovery is "too easy" and not the "right way" to be saved.
Yet in this case I do not think it was the object that God used to save you that gave you life but was the instrument through which you received
life.
I think doctrinally the statement that we can find life only in Christ remains true. All other means must be ways through which we receive the life, and not the source of the life itself.
No doubt if I go to a Catholic forum and say the Virgin Mary statues cannot save anyone, I will get countless examples of how the Virgin Mary has somehow saved or healed them. I know of Christians who treat the Bible in the same way, in a superstitious way and attribute life to something which God never said or meant to contain life (not talking about yourself at all here, just making the statement).