Haven't visited forum for a couple of weeks... sometimes Real Life sucks...
Your replies were alright boof, sounds like you know your stuff.
So i take it you believe in repentance/forgiveness and you get into heaven by being a 'pure spirit' or something like that. Its not a matter of god forgiving you(hes always forgiving is he not?) but a matter of you being able to forgive yourself ? - that sounds sensible.
I suppose you could imagine it like having everything you do in your life recorded, and having that record examined to see if it 'makes the grade' for entry into heaven. To make it in, the record would have to be holy, or perfect. Since no person has a perfect record except Jesus Christ, God offered a way to get into heaven by exchanging our imperfect record for the perfect record of Jesus. To complete the exchange, you have to 'repent', or turn your life from the 'selfish' path (doing what YOU want) and following God's path (doing what God wants). That's it in a nutshell.
Was the church intended as only a place of worship, and not a money making/law enforcing/destructive thing it turned into (thats the biggest problem i have with christianity, creationism is a distant second, and no problem with the concept of god)?
A Church is people coming together to worship (it can be anywhere). People realised it would be easier to organise it... and I guess it just went downhill from there...
I also like what Mr Toots said
and I would like to say that if you had a "personal encounter" with God, you'd know it was God.
I suppose I should add that only God can 'make' somebody a Christian. I or anybody else can do or say anything but that won't make any difference until God steps in.