Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
I don’t think Jesus ever said the church will never fail. (In fact he said just the opposite in a couple of parts of the bible). What he did say is that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.
So the church is the army of God, and the image is not one of defence, it is one of offence. Christ’s army is attacking the prison/stronghold/gates of hell. The prophecy of God is good news! Hell will be (has been) conquered. There is a victory to both rejoice at right now and also work towards in the future. But there’s nothing to ultimately worry about. There might be a hell, but not in any way or sense which contradicts Gods sovereignty, power, love or goodness. Hell is a prison, and Jesus has just orchestrated the ultimate jailbreak. Not one soul remains left in the grave. All things, all people, become saved and glorified. O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?
That message sounds so much better and so much more “gospel” and so much more “good news” than anything anyone in the catholic church ever told me. Then again no one from any church told me that, I had to work it out myself through prayer and direct mystical insight. The messages of the churches are constantly mixed with this great lie that God isn’t good enough, or god isn’t powerful enough, or even if he IS good and powerful enough we simply don’t know whether he will act on his power and goodness, and therefore some/many/most people would burn in hell forever and ever and the ending of the story would be complete tragedy. No church ever explicitly says any of this, because if they were to do that they would be instantly recognised for the satanic hoax that they are. However pay attention to what they’re telling you and you should be able to discern this fundamental nihilism that permeates it.
Surely we all know on some level that can’t be right. But out of fear and obligation to “the church”(aka the priests, bishops, and other Pharisaical figures), we find ourselves defending this narrative again and again against those who are in the worst and most dire circumstances. Which do you reckon will energise them to fight the most? The idea that they, their friends and family will all probably be damned forever? The idea that God gives them the “opportunity” to be saved and now it’s up to them and their freedom to do the rest (hah! Good luck!)? Or the revolutionary “gospel” idea that because of the cross and resurrection, their eternal future is secure and there is ultimately nothing to be afraid of.
Maybe all of these “churches” are actually the whore of Babylon. The catholic church, the Mormon church, whatever. They are flirting with Satan and misleading people to hell. They keep mixing the “good news” of the gospel with this toxic pessimism and then wrongly invoking the authority of God over the false teaching in order to keep the people in fear and subservient to the prince of darkness himself. People end up blindly defending and serving the very thing that they thought they were fighting against.
Perhaps the solution is to be always listening. Look out for an individual who has a new, energising perspective. A prophet with fresh revelation. For example a Muhammad, or a Joseph Smith. God speaks to individuals well before he speaks to institutions. Listen out for the voice of the living prophets in our age: they may very well be prophesying your own doom and warning you to repent.
Can anything these prophets say actually contradict the truth? Of course not. The “mystical” church is the holy and infallible bride of Christ. But the “institutional” church is the harlot, drunk with the wine of adultery. Regardless of whether your church is called Mormon, Catholic, Anglican, Muslim, Reformed, Adventist or whatever; your church has fundamentally betrayed you. And to go on insisting otherwise is to simply be an agent of evil and to do the devils work for him.
The solution is throw off institutional shackles and human authorities: to pray harder and to seek guidance from God directly into your soul. I’m sure that if you pray about it, God will verify the essence of his Gospel: he sent his son in love, we murdered him in rejection, his son descended to the worst possible depths of hell and damnation, in order to rise again to resurrection and new life, and that this grand gospel narrative is a reassurance of the promise that our final future (heaven) is secure and there’s nothing we need to worry about. If only we would just trust that promise, the joys of heaven would be ours right at this very moment.
The surrounding details are optional: we can come to an agreement on whether the pope is the head of the church or Joseph Smith was a prophet later. What is essential for us to agree on right now is that the gospel really is “good news”: Jesus really has conquered evil, death, hell, sin and the powers of darkness. And until someone hears that message and believes it, they are just yet another soul thrashing about in hell while being under the illusion that they are devoutly serving God.
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
I don’t deny everlasting damnation. I deny irrevocable damnation. The idea that God would not or could not save souls who find themselves in Hell is the most outrageous blasphemy and unholy heresy of our age, regardless of what reasons are invoked to justify it. All those who insist on the irrevocability of damnation are possessed by dark and Satanic powers, and have fallen victim to the great apostasy of the Church, worshipping the god of this world rather than the one true Lord and King of the cosmos.
I will not hear you tell me that God respects a person’s freedom more than he desires the salvation of that person, giving up on trying to save them once they pass the threshold of death; I will not tolerate talk of God torturing a soul forever just so that he can show off his glory and justice; And I will not accept the irrational notion that our sovereign God desires the salvation of all but ultimately fails to achieve it.
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
The fall didn’t happen when Adam ate from the tree; the fall happened when humanity nailed God himself to the cross. Original sin was not something that happened “way back then” in the murky mythologies of before the beginning of history; The original sin was when God offered us life and we chose death; he offered us friendship and we chose brutal murder.
And yet God can forgive even the unforgivable sin: and this he did by his resurrection. He does not “respect” our freedom. If he respected our freedom he would have just stayed dead. No, he conquers our freedom. We always and everywhere choose death: but from this death he draws out life. We constantly choose evil; and from this evil he brings about good. We respond to his friendship with hatred: yet from this hatred he works irresistible love.
He could have “respected” our freedom by staying dead and withdrawing his love. But instead, he insists on continuing to love us and by his victorious resurrection he has revealed that he will never stop loving us until every single one of us loves him back. We will not die: we will rise again. We will not be damned: We have already been saved.
History is the story of us choosing death and God giving us life in spite of that choice. History is the story of Grace: it is not the story of a God who “respects our freedom”. We all without exception have chosen Hell, and so God bestows his mercy on us all.
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
He who understands the gospel will never fall from the state of grace – no matter what sins he commits – because to understand the gospel is to experience perfect contrition, and perfect contrition is the abolition of Hell. If you are unable to detect perfect contrition within yourself, you have not yet understood the gospel. Someone who understands the gospel with their mind, naturally overflows with both Joy and Sorrow in their heart: Joy at the unconditional promise of an eternity spent with God, sorrow at the reality that he daily fails to live up to his destiny.
But even after all this, there is a higher way. Christ was willing to suffer damnation for the sake of the salvation of his enemies. Your love for God and neighbour is not perfect until you find yourself in the position where you are truly willing to do the same. Only when God has promised you eternal bliss, and yet you are willing to sacrifice it for the sake of the salvation of the other, can you truly be said to have achieved union with the divine.
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
“By one man’s act of disobedience all men without exception were made sinners, but by one man’s act of righteousness all men without exception were justified and made alive” (Romans 5 – the scope of salvation is equal to the scope of sin: both are universal)
“God consigned everyone to disobedience, so that he might have mercy upon everyone.” (Romans 11 – we are all simultaneously vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy)
“Every knee shall lovingly bow, and every tongue will freely confess that Christ is Lord” (Phillipians – all men will come to freely and lovingly accept Christ in the eschaton)
“The full totality of the gentiles will be saved, and then the full totality of Israel will be saved too” (Romans 11 – need I say more? Everyone is going to be saved, even though some may be saved “through fire”)
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
A culture that embraces contraception is a culture that cheapens sex by taking the procreative element out of it. All of a sudden sex becomes solely about love and pleasure and has nothing to do with marriage, family and babies; it becomes consequence free; it becomes something to be engaged in as often as possible with as many people as possible.
More often than not, people won’t bother with contraception as they get wrapped up in the heat of the moment. Next thing you know the “unplanned pregnancy” statistics are sky-rocketing, as so many people are having insane amounts of unprotected casual sex.
With so many unplanned pregnancies, many young parents are pressured into seeking abortions. Abortion rates fly through the roof. People start to depend on brutal murder of their unborn baby as a form of last minute contraception.
And apparently the leftie solution to all of this is to deny that a baby is a baby and that murder is murder, while screaming “More condoms! More casual sex! More abortions!”
I have no idea how our culture of death can ever recover from the situation in which it finds itself. Technology only marches forwards, not backwards. Condoms and abortions are something we have to live with now. How can we recover a reverence for life and respect for the procreative, conjugal act under such circumstances?
Pray for all the Holy Innocents throughout history. Memory eternal
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
The Anselmian argument in favour of everlasting punishment is fallacious. Here is a brief summary of the argument:
Every sin against God is an infinite sin because God has infinite dignity and the magnitude of sin is determined by the dignity of the one who is wronged. Infinite sin deserves an infinite punishment, therefore those who sin descend into the torturous flames of Hell and remain there for all eternity
This is unbiblical. The biblical view of retribution is “an eye for an eye”: the harm bestowed in retribution should be equal to the harm caused by the offence. Seeing as it is impossible to harm or offend God (he is immutable), sin simply cannot lead to any sort of divine retribution under this schema.
Instead, sin is it’s own punishment as the primary person who is harmed by sin is the sinner. Someone who hates and curses God does not harm God: they harm themselves. And so God never punishes anyone, he only ever rescues us and liberates us from slavery and bondage to selfishness, death, and pride.
There will indeed be a cosmic equalisation, where the rich will be made poor and the poor will be made rich. Hitler will experience the harm he has caused. Rapists will be made to feel the terror and torment they have inflicted. Justice will be done.
But the ending of the story is reconciliation, forgiveness and joy: Hitler will sing songs with the Jews, rapists and their victims will embrace, broken families will reunite.
At the centre of it all will be pure, triune love. The three divine, perichoretic circles that drive the cosmos to perfection. Love wins, Hell loses, and this is the only eternal reality we need to anticipate.
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
The original Sola Fide rested on the conviction that salvation is a promise, not an offer. If it’s an offer, then it depends on us to accept it. The key phrase there is “it depends on us”; in other words it is a violation of Sola Gratia and Sola Fide. Whereas if salvation is a promise then it depends entirely on God, which is much more in accord with Monergistic Calvinism and Lutheranism, rather than Arminianism. If salvation is a promise, then it doesn’t depend on how much faith we have, or whether we even have any faith at all; instead it depends entirely on God’s love and sovereignty.
The only question left if you’re on board with all of this is “To whom does God speak this promise?” Luther’s answer was “Whoever has been baptised”; he was very sacramental. Whereas Calvin’s answer tended more towards “preaching as sacrament”; that is, whenever the preacher declares his congregation justified in the name of the risen Christ, the unconditional gospel promise has been spoken; the final judgement has taken place; and the congregation is divided into sheep and goats in that very moment; there are those who trust the promise and those who don’t; those who do are saved into the life of the age, while those who do not are condemned.
But the key point here is that the promise has been spoken, and at the end of the day this promise cannot fail, on account of the one who is really speaking it. If God – through me – declares you justified, then that’s damn well how it is, regardless of whether you trust the declaration or not. However, you won’t experience the salvation that Christ has won for you, and that is presently being declared to you, until you place your trust in that declaration.
So yes, if one does not have faith, they are not saved. But you are nevertheless elect, regardless of whether or not you have faith, because God declares that it is so, and the divine declaration of God completely and entirely trumps a person’s lack of faith.
This is what bugs me about typical evangelical distortions of Sola Fide. They get everything totally back to front. They will claim that it’s only after we have faith that God declares us righteous. But this is just silly: How am I supposed to have faith in God’s declaration when God hasn’t even spoken that declaration to me?
This is why Luther put everything on baptism; because his interpretation of the sacraments was that they are the objective, tangible moment when the declaration of justification is made. They therefore give you something to anchor your faith on. Whereas the Evangelical construal requires me to have faith before I even have an object to anchor my faith on in the first place. This distortion of the doctrine of Sola Fide is clearly the work of Satan as he constantly battles and compromises the doctrines of the church.
So according to evangelicalism, I’m required to have faith in the declaration. But how can I place my faith in the declaration if the declaration is not even spoken until I have faith? It’s a chicken and egg impossibility.
Whereas the original Sola Fide went more like this: “Christ died for you, and therefore your future is secure” – None of this pointless speculation about who is elect and who is not. For you can be 100% assured and certain that you are saved by the blood of Christ, and this is not because of anything you’ve done – not even your faith.
Similarly, you can be 100% assured and certain that whoever it is you are talking to is also saved by the blood of Christ. This is because scripture clearly says so, and this therefore gives you the authority to proclaim the divine declaration of justification to that person as an unconditional promise, in the name of Christ and the good God on high.
Eternal damnation is always a completely abstract hypothetical. It’s for people who are not present, and this is why we must evangelise. We need to proclaim the declaration of righteousness to everyone, and help them to believe it. Remember Romans 10: “How can they believe if they have not heard? How can they hear if no one is sent to them?” etc etc
But remember: The moment your gospel preaching gets contaminated with conditions and “ifs”, you’re preaching some other gospel. “If you get circumcised”, “If you get baptised”, “If you go to confession”, “If you die without committing mortal sins”, “If you believe in Jesus” – all of these are false gospels.
The one true gospel goes something more like this: “Christ died for you, and so I confidently promise you that your eternal destiny is secure”, and to go even further you could say “and if by chance you do end up in Hell, I promise you that I will come down there and help you to escape.”
Every false gospel preaches law in the form “If x then y”, whereas the true gospel preaches promise in the form “because a then b”.
Compare “If you believe, Christ will save you”, to “Because Christ has saved you, you may now trust him and rejoice!!!” The first proclamation is law, it generates works or efforts or εργα, and as you know, we are not saved by works or efforts. Whereas the second proclamation is gospel, good news! The first proclamation places a massive burden on the hearer: they must try as hard as they can to fulfil the stated condition. But how on earth does one even begin to believe?
So the first proclamation will either produce despair, or a proud Pharisee: Despair, as the sinner realises he is completely incapable of meeting the required condition. Or a Pharisee, when he fools himself into thinking that he has successfully managed to do it. Whereas the second proclamation is liberating; it confronts the listener so completely that their only response can be a free faith or a heart that yearns to explode into that free faith but is enslaved by questions, objections and doubts – all of which will be dealt with in due time, if only they would be humble and patient.
This is the essence of faith alone: Once the gospel has been correctly spoken, faith is the only possible response. If the gospel is proclaimed and there is no faith, then the person doing the proclaiming simply hasn’t done the proclaiming correctly, and the saving word of the gospel was therefore never actually spoken. In this way, if someone ends up in hell, it’s actually not their fault; it’s my fault, because I wasn’t able to evangelise them effectively.
But thank God for his unconditional promise, and the fact that his word always achieves what it sets out to achieve, and that we are authorised to spread that promise to the entire world, and that it can’t ultimately fail: eventually all will hear it, all will understand it, all will believe it, all will be saved, and God’s final victory will be complete.
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation
I often hear Protestants talk about the cross as if it were a gift which God could just as easily have withheld from us. They talk about Grace and Salvation as if it is all some supererogatory gift on Gods part which he could have just as easily chosen not to bestow upon us. I completely deny this. God is first and foremost the perfect, loving father: it is in God’s nature to save his wayward children, just as it is in the nature of any parent to save their children from irreparable harm. What parent, when confronted with their drowning child, would refuse to dive into the water and rescue the helpless infant? If we broken and imperfect humans are able to act with such decision, then how much more will the God of infinite love and mercy dive into the strangling depths of Hell to rescue us! If God didn’t save us, he would be going against his nature and this is something which he can never do. He is not only a God of Justice, content to punish sin: Before all else he is a God of love, who must save us from that sin.
To say that God will refuse or fail to save someone is a great and abominable blasphemy. Those who speak such horrible words understand neither Grace nor Love, neither Mercy nor Justice. Such people are entirely ignorant of the things of God and are completely unacquainted with the glorious gospel of our Lord’s victory over sin, death, Hell and The demonic powers.
Pray for the salvation of all and eagerly await the advent of the eschaton, wherein all without exception will dance a dance of love around the throne of God, singing praises and hymns to the sovereign, kind and merciful lord of the universe, to the ages of ages, amen.
Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation