Gaining acceptance into the Christian faith takes nothing more than accepting Christ as God in the flesh, his crucifixion as surrogate penance for your sins, and his resurrection as proof of one’s faith in his having risen above his persecutors. They key to becoming a Christian is repentance. Does that mean someone like Hitler could have a death bed conversion, repent, accept Christ, and die a good Christian? Or me for that matter?
Matthew 5:20
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 10:38
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
Whatever criteria humans come up with is irrelevant.
I look at repentance as a process that doesn’t happen overnight nor is it valid merely by making a statement or claim. There is only one judge of how genuine it is because that judge is the only one who can see into the deepest depths of a person’s heart. If it’s genuine it doesn’t matter where the person is in the stages of life.
That being said, whether or not a person repents doesn’t effect acceptibility because all are accepted. It is a matter of the individual’s evolutionary status.
c
Why would Hitler have to repent? Wasn’t he taking vengance on the people who killed the Son of God? He should be at the front of the line. Uh…right?
Did Hitler say that was what he thought was doing? Hitler was more than a little crazy wasn’t he? The people who killed Jesus died 2000 years ago and they were Romans. Uh… right?
I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
I am challenging the implicit assumptions of your ironic provocation. Hitler could not kill the Romans who killed Jesus, because they already died 2000 years ago. Even if he could have killed them, why do you think that taking revenge on them would be a good thing? And why do you suggest that heaven would agree?
Well, the Bible says that we’re made in God’s image. I take that to mean that he must think like we do. I saw The Passion of The Christ, and it looked to me like Mel Gibson was saying that the Bible was saying that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’s death. If I was God, I’d take vengance. Maybe that’s why he sent Hitler. I don’t know though… I could be way off here…
Well lets’ see, you begin with a spurious idiosyncratic Bible interpretation. You cite an anti-Semitic, unstable actor/movie mogul for support. You project your own feelings regarding vengence on to God. Way off? What would make you think that?
Scott is right when he says that it was basically the jews who were responsible for Jesus’ death in the story, the Romans were merely the executioners. But why would you blame someone for what their grandfather did.
Jesus was born and died a jew anyway, araic translations in the Bible prove Christianity a grave lie, Jesus called himself the ‘son of man’, he was a mere jewish revolutionary who believed the world would turn on its head to topple the Roman oppression in his region, so when he came to be executed he actually shouted ‘Abba Abba why have you forsaken me’ which means that he had lost his belief in the revolution and his respect for a God that never turned up.
As for Hitler’s involvement in the holocaust, he murdered more than just jews (eg. homosexuals, gypsies, the disabled), but he didn’t honestly believe that the jews were responsible for the collapse of Germany, he was just taking advantage of the anti-semitic public spite at a time when Germany was suffering from extreme poverty by using them as a ‘scapegoat’ if you know what that means. It’s not as if there was anything special about his views, the whole of Europe was largely anti-semitic and racist at the time. His exploitative abuses of eugenics, desire to rule the world and pleasure in committing mass murder were nothing more than twisted psychological and sexual perversions.
I’m not blaming anyone for what their grandfathers did. I’m saying that some might think that God is.
What do we know? We know that a deathbed confession can’t be a bad thing. We know that God can discern sincerity from insincerity. We know that He applies Justice and Mercy. We know that nobody everybody who says “Lord, Lord” will get the enternity they were expecting.
Beyond that, it’s not our business to declare on the eternal judgement of anyone, including Hitler.
I heard that a few of the Nazis at Nurenberg converted to Christianity prior to execution but that may be just an Christian Ghetto Urban Legend.
But I don’t have any problem with the notion, whether it’s true or false.
Jesus predicted some of the greatest musicians ever . . . and thought that they abandoned him at his execution? I’m confused.
And given Hitler’s suicide note, I would argue that he did indeed sincerely believe that Jews were responsible for all the evil in the world:
The Jewish. its like saying Jewish is a seperate species. I can only say that I have yet to meet a Jewish person that I did not like. Not a darn one had horns or a tail. If a person hates a group then that person must have a pathetic reason or valid reason. What valid reason to hate an entire belief because of a handful of people in that belief. Did all Jewish people gather together in one spot and say let the thief go, kill that dude Jesus. Hardly.
Would the Jewish people all condone that killing? Nope. So blaming an entire religion for the acts of a few is pathetic. That is like saying all Christians killed people during the Spanish Inquisition or burned witches at Salem or that all Islamics are going to blow everyone up, Or that all whites hate blacks. Come on! justifying hate is easy and pathetic. All groups have things in common but, all groups are made of individuals that don’t agree with the actions of a few in their group. Should they rise against the few? Yes. but, if it was done before their time how can they?
Kris,
Stop chewing that Jimson weed! Of course we lump the group into the actions of a few. If we didn’t, we couldn’t maintain us-them, and we’d actually have to accomodate other points of view. We can’t be self-righteous unless there is a “them” to look down upon. What ARE you thinking?
Deathbed repentence: Only one thing counts. Heart sincerity, and the only person who knows is the one in the deathbed.
You can’t repent what is ingrained you can only regret. If you have hated all your life a group. you can’t truly repent it only regret it. Repent is not regret.
hey that weed is better than chaw. 
True where would we be without self righteousness. Um Nirvana perhaps?
I heartily agree with you Kristwest. In his book Who Killed Jesus John Dominic Crossan goes even further and calls the New Testament Gospels’ account of the Jewish responsibility for Jesus’ death Christianity’s “longest lie.” Those passages in the gospels have been used as a rationale for persecuting the Jews ever since Rome became “Christian.”
If I am on my deathbed, and still do not “believe” in the Christian God, I do not have the option to repent (as God will know I don’t believe). Moreover, how do I know what level of conviction suffices for a genuine repentence?
So for me whether you explicitly repent or not is unimportant.
Isn’t God supposed to know us through-and-through and, in which case, some sort of repentence on a deathbed seems little more then a fake formality.
Any explicit “dialogue” with God seems pointless, as he is supposed to know our inner-most thoughts, frame of mind, etc, all the time. So why bother?
Whatever I say to Him, He would presumably bypass and go straight the underpinning motives and “genuine” feelings, and then judge accordingly.
By anyway, how the hell do I know what He wants of me, so why bother to attempt to win him over by such fake acts of repentence, as such selfish lies are only likely to enrage Him further. But then again, He could favour the selfish and dishonest!
I guess it’s a gamble, so why stress over what numbers you pick?
I think you are misunderstanding the word “believe”. If a dying man is sufficiently convinced to simply confess sin and vocalize his trust in Jesus, then by all biblical definitions he is a believer. If he does NOT act in this manner then he is not a believer. It’s as simple as that. The level of conviction is simply determined by one’s willingness to ACT upon the issue, or not.
I think you are over-complicating a relatively simple issue.
Whatever it “seems” to you is completely irrelevant. Christians believe that God has demanded that human beings repent and place their trust in Jesus. Whether you think it silly or not does not change the fact that it is demanded and obedience to this demand can be determined by action or the absence of action.
On that we agree.
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