>I would say yes. The difference though is that this 'belief' says you don't have all the
>answers. "Faith" on the other hand says that you have answers to things you can't
>possible know.

There is a component to man that was lost in the garden. It is the spiritual component. Man died that day when disobeying God, when he at the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good evil, the one God told him not to eat from. When he did that, sin entered in to the world. And with sin ... death.

What Jesus did on the cross was put sin away in His body. He took on the sin of all the people past, present, and future, and He died and became sin for us. Now, because He has done this, those who accept His free offer of salvation are no longer dead in the Spirit. They are now alive, being born again (the first time was of the flesh, the second time is of the Spirit).

So these things that man knows before being born again are limited to the natural senses we possess. But after being born again, God is then able to give knowledge of spiritual things (which are things that the natural man cannot know, because they are not discerned in the natural mind, but are part of the spiritual man).

So ... what you say is correct, that through "faith" we come to be born again, and therefore are able to discern things of the Spirit. Some also have spiritual gifts, just as some people have natural gifts in music, or art, or math, or software development, or whatever it might be.

God is not inept. He is not minor league. He is not incapable. He is the author of the universe, and the things He offers to man, through His Son's death on the cross, are nothing short of everything any person would ever aspire to. But the only way to overcome that barrier between death and life ... is to accept Jesus Christ as your savior.

We learn from the history of Israel that there used to be a daily sacrifice -- an animal sacrifice made daily, a temporary covering for the sins of the people. But when Jesus died on the cross, He did not make a temporary sacrifice of Himself. He is eternal. He had the power to lay down His life voluntarily, and to raise it up again. And when He did this, He ascended into Heaven and, using His *OWN* blood, which is eternal blood, He paid the price for sin, and covered it by His own death, His own blood.

This eternal payment is sufficient to free men from the eternal consequences of Adam's sin, and the sin all of us bear because of Adam (for through Adam sin entered into the world, and through Jesus sin was put away).

In Jesus we are saved in eternity. No one can enter Heaven unless they be born again (of the Spirit). When we accept Christ, on that very day, in that very hour, in that very minute, we are forever alive. We still continue here upon this Earth, but we are changed in an instant. We are no longer the natural-man-only that we were before. We have now been born again and are three-fold, as is God: Soul, Body, Spirit.

Jesus is the only one in history with the ability, power, and authority to save man from Hell. This is why He has been targeted continually by the dark forces which exist in this world. These are evil spirits, invisible to our natural eyes, but all around us, teaching us falsely, making us feel things which are augmented, not our own feelings alone, but through sin we hear those draws and pulls upon our flesh, and we fall into sin continually. We believe lies, we engage in harmful activities toward each other.

Only Jesus frees men from that bondage. And only Jesus can set men back on the path to eternity and a right relationship with God, and with our fellow man.

What Jesus did is the most amazing thing ever. He saved man from eternal death.

Until a person begins to seek the truth, to ask the questions and to really want to know the answers ... the blindness remains. The deafness remains. The inability to know the truth remains. But once a person is open to knowing the truth, it is God who sees through straight to the heart and knows that's what you are doing ... then He begins to draw you to His Son.

No one can come to know God unless the Father in Heaven draws Him to His Son. And those the Son sets free are free indeed.

It is not the United States military, or our distance from other hostile nations which makes us free. We are not free if we live in this country and do not know Christ. We are *ONLY* free if we know Jesus, and walk with Him, and listen to Him, and are obedient to His call upon our lives, being servants, priests, and ambassadors upon this Earth, of His Kingdom. A person can be that servant in a war-riddled country. They can be that person when they cannot leave their house for fear of being killed by neighbors, or people from other religions.

Jesus sets men free eternally, spiritually, and from the inside out. That process is called "justification". But there's another process which is ongoing until He calls us Home ... called "sanctification." A believer can now hear the voice of God, the knowledge of God, His Holy Spirit guiding and directing in His life ... but he still has the entirety of his former natural life's inertia working again him. The process of sanctification is ongoing, but it is something God does for all who come to Him. God prepares them for eternity.

Jesus is the reason for hope in the world. He is the source of love. He is the source of morality. Of ethics. Of everything that is good, honest, pure, and true. It all goes back to Him whether people recognize that or not -- because it came from Him in the first place. Even the natural man knows these things of God because Jesus wrote it upon everyone's heart. It is our conscience. It is the sense that tells you the basis of right and wrong. And it is only sin, and the fact that we ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that we are able to hear the false voices and their draws, pulls, away from God, to damnation.

Jesus restores men's souls. He sets them back up as they were created to be -- without sin, without an eternal death sentence hanging over a man's head (for the "wages" of sin are death, meaning if you sin, what you will receive ... is eternal death). Jesus saves men.

Jesus saves.

Before coming to faith I had many of the same arguments I hear portrayed in these threads. I had a natural mind and I was a good debater, and I would enjoy picking apart the arguments of Christians who were, in my mind, so incredibly blind. But it is this spiritual awakening that happens when you are born again which lets you see how wrong you were, how blind you were, how deaf you were, how pitiful and wretched and horrid you were ... which is what happened to me. I saw the truth, because Jesus is real and He showed it to me.

Jesus stands at the door of each of our hearts and knocks. He is there continually in all of us. He never goes away until such time as a person has demonstrated repeatedly, with God seeing through to the heart knowing the true nature of the man's desires, that He will give them over to what they want: sin.

But Jesus is able to save to the uttermost. There are no sins too heavy for His cross. No matter what a man has done, Jesus will take on that sin and make that man whiter than snow, without any blemish or defect, in eternity ... His free gift for all who will receive it.

Jesus is love.
Love conquers all.
Jesus is truth.
Truth conquers all.
Jesus is coming soon.
He has conquered all, and when He returns ... He is coming to damn. Until He returns, His arms are out continually, He knocks without ceasing, His blood willingly handed over for your sins.

There are no misplaced ideas in man's history. There are no gaps in the information God has revealed to us that we need to know to be saved. The things we don't know in this world He has promised to tell us in eternity. We were made in His image, in His likeness, and when we see Him, we will be like Him.

Jesus has done all that can be done to restore what was lost by sin through Adam in the garden of Eden. It is done. Jesus did it all. And the door is open to everyone who will come.

It will be without excuse, without any lack of knowledge, without any missing information about God, that a person enters into Hell. All people will go to Hell knowing truly in their heart their state, who they have denied, what they have embraced. And there will be weeping, and gnashing of teeth on that great and fearful day.

Jesus will still receive everyone who comes to Him until the day of His return. On that day ... it's over. Forever.