octoberose -
Regarding your concern:
I know someone online who believes in universal reconciliation like we do. He spends his time teaching - it's interesting, sometimes very much so. But now in reading something he wrote I realize that he doesn't feel that God ever told unmarried single people to abstain from sexual relations until they are married. Since the word that most bibles translate as 'sexual immorality' is actually pornia, he says that pornia is referring to prostitutes, mostly the temple prostitutes. I'm more than surprised that someone would believe that and stand by it. We've been going back and forth in e mails. I can't find what Ray said specifically about this- but I don't need to know in order to believe what I believe. That whole marrying instead of burning has no affect on this guy at all. I guess he only burns for prostitutes . Which he says he stays away from. I'm actually kind of mad. I told him he was thinking like a man and he thinks I am putting words in the Word of God. I don't think I am. Do you think I am?
Do these few Scriptures not show how He regards fornication; including the reference to The Old Testament on how He dealt with fornicators?
Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)
1 Corinthians 5:
1 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. 2 And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.
3 For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,
4 in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,
5 to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
8 therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9 I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: 10 yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.
11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?
13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
1 Corinthians 6:13
Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
1 Corinthians 6:18
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
1 Corinthians 7:2
Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.1 Corinthians 10:8
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.Can anyone of us be universally reconciled to Him in error and sin, or only in His Truth and in His Righteousness?
Do our personal opinions matter?
Can this man confirm that the above Scriptures only relate to prostitutes?
Warmest Regards.
George