[Trapped]

Originally Posted by Awoken

Does this mean that (for instance, since he is the best convenient example at this time) Ravi Zacharias never actually received the cleansing of the blood, regardless of whether he asked for it?

The "hypocrites" in Jesus' day, as He referred to them, were the Pharisees, who did not believe in Him at all. I dunno exactly what "cutting someone to pieces and assigning them a place with hypocrites" will look like but it doesn't sound much like salvation to me.

The thief who died on the cross did indeed go to be with the Lord, but then again, he didn't have an opportunity to live out the rest of his life in obedience/faith. It was appointed to him to die on a cross next to Jesus and at that point, his choices were A) die without believing or B) die believing. One might argue that this means a person can go to heaven without actually walking out their faith, i.e., live a sinful life because they got the "Once Saved Always Saved" ticket punched and even if there is some "dispensational punishment", they'll still end up in eternity with God. I kind of doubt that. I think this picture of the thief should speak more plainly to us that he didn't receive the opportunity to live out the rest of his life in faith, ministering to others and doing the good works to which he otherwise would have been appointed, but he did the one good thing he could do at that point, which was to believe in Jesus and honor Him.

I kinda feel like for the rest of us we should not take that as a license to sin but rather a reason to be thankful that we're not dying on a cross without any opportunity to physically/practically live out our faith. We have received a greater blessing so more will be expected of us.

What do we do with Matthew 20:1-16 where the people who agreed to work at the beginning of the day AND the people who worked starting at "the eleventh hour" both received the exact same wages? How does that fit in?