Not for works which are wrought in righteousness which we do, but according to His mercy, He saves us, through the bath of renascence and renewal of the holy spirit, which He pours out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior
Titus 3: 5-6, Concordant New Testament
One of the greatest scams in history has been perpetrated by those in the mainstream church. It is within these walls that many a church leader has professed the theology that man is either saved or condemned. Growing up, I recall the sermons based on the fear that if I didn't know God, that a lake of fire and torment awaited me upon my death. This was enough to convince me to proclaim that I was a believer. I didn't want to burn for eternity. So, if my only option to avoid such a fate was to profess God, then I would be the first in line to do so! Sadly, this continues to be the scam spoken by the mainstream church even today. There is good and evil, good is rewarded and evil is punished. The first time that I realized that there might be something more to this was when I was reading through the writings of the Author J Preston Eby. In his Kingdom series, Eby poses the question if God simply has power over our lives, or if He also, as being all in all, has power over our afterlife as well. We speak too often of God banishing those who do wickedness into hell. Yet what we should be preaching is that it is the Father who desires that ALL will be saved {Johns Account 3:16-17}. If we believe that the Father is all in all, then we must also believe that He has NO limitations. Therefore, if God desires the wicked among us to be saved after their demise, then it is within His power to do so. But will He? I have done some deep pondering on the concept of good and evil and I've come away with the opinion that evil is simply our own misunderstanding of who it is that we truly are. That's right, wickedness is a mental issue and not a spiritual condition. Did men like Adolf Hitler know who they were in the Father? Probably not. Therefore, they acted out of the belief that they themselves controlled their lives. This is the false narrative spoken by the deceiver unto Adam and Eve in the garden {Genesis 3:1-7}. It is Satan who put forth the false idea that we were our own separate individuals, separate from God. It is the mainstream church which has taken that thinking and ran with it.
Religion has actually convinced people that there is a invisible man living in the sky watching everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever until the end of time! But he loves you. He loves you, and he needs money. He always needs money. He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow he just can't handle money.
George Carlin
Knowing what I know of the Father now, I will never believe that His arms are so short that He cannot reach beyond the bonds of life as we know it in order to save one of His children. In the film Come Sunday, the preacher Carlton Pearson is ostracized from the church he has been leading for refusing to acknowledge that there is indeed a hell. Pearson got it! In one of the scenes of the film, he inquires of those assembled to decide his fate, "If you could save your own father from hell, wouldn't you?" I tend to look upon this issue from the Fathers perspective. Is it not God who has created us in his likeness {Genesis 1:27}? Has He not breathed into ALL men His breath of life{Genesis 2:7}? Why, then, is it spoken to millions of believers that God would forsake them when we die? Is the Fathers love that conditional? I would say no. As my mother lay in the hospital in the final days of her life, I spent many hours with her reading scriptures and singing hymns with her. In my own heart, I knew that she loved the Lord, but I was hedging my bets that God would remember her when she passed. This was how I was taught things were! I did not want anything to get in the way of her salvation. The truth is, her name was already written in the book of the lamb. God had already secured for her a place in His presence. I did not realize this truth until after she had passed. The love of the Father does not deal with fear. It is His desire that all of His children come to know Him. His love is deep enough that He will save all of His creation.
~Scott~
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