I wrote down the title to purchase it later on. My Mom passed in 2016. One of my sisters died st age 45. If you knew my family, you'd know they were not going to beg for salvation in the end. I don't think they even believed in heaven or hell.
Thankfully it isn't what we do, now or in the end, but what God does in us.
My father was raised as a Presbyterian. I have no way of knowing what was taught as he set in the pews, but I do know what was going on in many churches atthat time (he was born in 1906). Fundamentalism was valiantly attempting to restore the church from the growing wave of abandoning sound doctrine and letting in all sorts of false teachers and false teachings. In the process, many of them became intensely legalistic and the focus came to be on outward behaviors, gone way beyond the commands of God, (just like the Pharisees) instead of on the person and work of Jesus. This may have been the case in my father's situation.
He passed in 1966 and some time later I was reading some things he had written, that indicated that is what made him abandon all religion until he became a Christian Scientist. He knew of election, but what he said was, "He guessed he was just not one of the elect." This indicates to me that he got the idea that election was proven by behaviors, not by what one believed. He was a young man, and likely doing the things young men do, some of which legalists say are sins. He smoked. Other things I was never made privy to. And one of the things that CS teaches is that there is no such thing as sin, just wrong thinking.
This I do know. That God was the very center of his life as an adult and husband and father. He raised us to be morally upright and to honor God. He had an excellent character himself. He taught his family the value of integrity and strength under pressure. I was not a Christian when he died, but his loss was devastating to me. When I became a Christian the grief that he might be in hell was even worse.
But I have hope, which is all I can have, and if I find out when I go "home" that he is not there, the Bible promises that there will be no more sorrow. But the hope is in this: He was sick with cancer and in a great deal of pain, and trying to get healing through CS methods. It is clear that he was then having his doubts about Christian Science, because one night he was reading from Science and Health the CS handbook, and through it across the room. And he was not a violent man. He shouted, "God knows if this is true or not. Let him tell me!"
CS does not teach that God is a personal being. He is Divine Mind. But of course, all Christian religions and the Bible itself, teach that God is a personal being and he relates and acts in is creation. Even as a child, having never been taught any of that, when I thought of God, which was daily and often, he was personal to me. And he still was to my father in that statement. He was in a coma for three days before he died. But he was not alone, as none of us ever are. He was familiar with the person and work of Jesus from his youth. Who knows what God may have reminded him of and what he may have come to believe.
It was not until the late 70's that my brother was the first to be rescued from the kingdom of darkness. Seven years later, me. A few years later my older sister, then my mother, then my youngest sister. All brought into God's kingdom. I never underestimate the power of God and his mercy.
Sorry. I had to laugh at that. God is a dictator. Do you think under his rule this is a democracy or republic? (Possibly you do I guess, since you insist that we get to make the deciding vote on our salvation.)Not all dictators are bad. Kings are dictators. Israel was full of kings. Jesus is THE King of all kings.
