The Leadership Team answers your questions.

Q1 Part1 (2:15). If Christ is the only ONLY way to the Father- What happened to all of the people in the Old Testament? What if a person says, “They somehow had or will have provision made to accept or reject Christ after they lived on Earth.” Please reference where the Bible says that. Also, if provision is made after life on this Earth, what do you say to non-believers that say, “If God wants me to accept Christ – He’ll lead me to do so after I Die?”

Q1 Part2 (11:00). If our faith in Christ is how we are continuously forgiven for our sins and reconciled …

 

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This is a question recently submitted for Grace Talk:

How can Mark or any of the gospel writers so accurately record what Jesus said? Was someone writing it down as Jesus said it?

Of course, they wrote in the Queen’s English (or should I say King’s?) Just joking…that blog will be for another day. To answer this question, we must look at the evidence.

Today, there are almost five thousand ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament! Consider this, fifteen hundred years after Herodotus wrote his history there was only one copy in the entire world. Twelve hundred years after Plato wrote his classic, there was only one manuscript of it left. Today, there exists but a few …

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Today’s Grace Talk included the following question…

If someone fully believes that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again, yet they are a murderer and kill a ton of people, will they still go to Heaven? Why is there Judgment Day if it is black and white – People who believe in Jesus go to heaven and people who do not go to Hell? What is Judgment Day when we stand before the Lord for then?

Who Goes to Heaven and Why

There is a lot going on in this question. We’ll start by taking a look at the questions raised in the first sentence.

If someone fully believes that Jesus died

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The following was a recent Grace Talk question…

Why are Catholics persecuted when for the most part we believe the same things that any normal protestant church believes?

As I read this question, I have to make a few assumptions.

The alleged persecution is coming from Protestants and or protestant churches like ours.
The persecution is inappropriate and unloving.
This question is directed to the leaders of Grace Fellowship because we have participated in this persecution.

Why Focus on the Differences?
There are clearly differences on topics such as the authority of the church, the nature of justification, the relationship between grace and works, the role of the sacraments, to name a few. The existence of these differences is not disputed by either side. The mere fact …

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We had a recent graceTALK question…

I recently visited another church with a friend who wanted to start going to church again. They (husband and wife) wanted a church that was big so that they could “ease” into the whole church thing. So, I went along to encourage them. We went to a “mega” church in the area and I was blown away. It was like a rock concert! The message was good (in a creative sense) but seemed very shallow. I didn’t even need to use my Bible. So, now I am in a pickle. I want my friend to go to church, but I fear that they will see Christianity is a warped way by going to this …

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This week’s GraceTalk featured the following question…

Why are matters such as leasing\buying a building put to vote by the whole church? Specifically what issues are to be decided by the church members? Why is it biblical?

All of these questions fall under the broad topic of Church Government (or, if you like the technical terms ecclesiastical polity). This is a tough topic because the Bible gives virtually no direct instructions for how local churches should organize themselves. So, we have to look at examples and apply wisdom in how we think we can most faithfully represent what Christ had in in mind for His church. Because of this, we need to recognize

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A recent GraceTalk question reads…

How did people populate with the children of Adam and Eve? Did they marry brother/sister? If so, how is it explained that God would never tolerate inter-family relationships? Also, If God knows everything before it happens, did He not know Adam and Eve were going to sin?

We have two different questions here; so, I will tackle the first one here and the second one in a follow-up post within the next week or two. I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but this question defies a quick, simple answer.

The question starts with a premise that God would never tolerate inter-family relationships [I'll assume that the questioner means "intra-family"]. As we

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Please know I really dislike long blog posts. However, the nature of the question demands a long reply. If you have complaints please post those to Hugh’s blog on this same site since he would have something pithy to say in reply.

In our May GraceTalk session the following question was submitted:
Question

“Do you teach a pre-tribulation rapture view? Allot of the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine confuses me, because it doesn’t Jesus teach the disciples in Matthew 24 to be not deceived and lets us know of the events leading up to his second coming. Also, Paul told us in 2 Corinthians 2:3 that that day (second coming) wouldn’t come until a falling away happened first and the son of perdition be

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