2.
Concerning the gifts, in 1 Cor. 13:8, Paul says that prophecies will be discarded, as well as "tongues." This will happen (verse10) "whenever maturity may be coming." I believe in the gifts, I just think that they are a sign of immaturity. Some people believe, for instance, that unless a person speaks in tongues, that person is not spiritual. But in truth, the spiritual person has moved on from tongues (if that person ever had the gift in the first place) into a more spiritual walk that does not require signs and wonders. There is a mature walk where you don't need to see or experience a healing in order to love God. In fact, early in his ministry, Paul healed people. But you will notice that as his ministry matured, he did not heal. He left Trophimus sick in Miletus, and for Timothy's stomach ailment he recommended wine. There is something greater than the gifts, and that is love (verse nine on). That is, we love God no matter if He decides to heal or not. We don't have to see or experience some "wonder" in order to believe.  
 

3.
Dear God,

I am absolutely, thoroughly convinced that I am not and never could be 100% right on everything. Thank you for checking up on me, and for loving me in spite of my flaws.

Your faithful screw-up,

Martin

4.
I don't think you should just sit around and do nothing. Just because God is in control, doesn't mean you give in. Example: God sends the rain, but I still use my windshield wipers. Lesson: Just because something is of God doesn't mean we have to let it be. Still, I would not do anything rash. As you say, there are many good things happening with your daughter. Have you suggested that she read my book? That may be a start. Make sure she knows what you believe, and why. I wouldn't bug her (it will make matters worse), but let her know what you think. At age 16, it would be counterproductive to forbid her to go to church activities. Up to about age twelve, this is always my recommendation, however, to keep the kids out. It's our responsibility as parents to keep kids from organized religion, just as it is our responsibility to keep them from playing in traffic. But at a certain age, I wonder if this works. She almost needs to find out for herself. However, she DOES need to know that there is an alternative. Give her my book. Maybe better, just sit her down and have a nice calm conversation. Let her know there are options. Other than that, I don't know what to do. Ultimately, yes, God is behind this and will work it out for good. But again, that doesn't mean we don't get our hands in there and try to do it "ourselves." God's will is worked THROUGH our actions (or inactions) not in spite of them. We are to live in the relative (live as if it's all up to us), but believe in the absolute (that nothing can happen apart from God.) I hope this makes sense to you. We are not fatalists.

5.
People tend to read things into the word "condemned." They assume Jesus is talking about an eternity of fiery torment. But there are no flames in the premises of the context. The word "condemn" is from the Greek word katakrino. This is a two-part Greek word. Kata="down" and krino="judged." The literal meaning of this word, then, is "down judge." It is an adverse judgment. For example, a bank robber is condemned to ten years in prison (a "down-judgment") as opposed to being made president of the bank, which would be a favorable judgment. (What happens to him after his condemnation? After ten years in jail, he gets out.The word condemnation itself carries no suggestion of eternal consequence.) My book on hell will cause you to see that, while on Earth, Jesus proclaimed the thousand-year kingdom, in which Israel would rule the world. He Himself claimed again and again that He came proclaiming this Kingdom. Whoever believed His message and were baptized into it, would be saved and enter into the kingdom. Entrance into the kingdom is the salvation of the context. Nothing is said here of eternal life or eternal condemnation. Conversely, whoever rejected the message would be condemned (katakrino, "down-judged"), and the condemnation of the context--while not explicitly stated in this context--is refused entry into the kingdom. The question you need to ask, and the question that will be answered plainly and simply for you in my upcoming book, is: What happens to the people who are refused entrance into the thousand-year kingdom? Are they banished forever from the presence of God? I'll give you a sneak preview of the answer: "No!"

6.
The reason you're confused now is not because the truth is confusing. The truth is simple. The confusion comes because of the conflict between truth and what you once believed. Your discontentment with the church is evidence of the spirit of God moving within you. How can God be contained within four walls? Who dares to limit God and the work of Christ? You have known this--it's a spiritual sensitivity--and it's why you seem to be marching to the beat of a different drummer. But you're not. This is the true beat. Those who have grown comfortable with institutional religion are the ones out-of-step. They are the ones needing reprogramming.
This is all about looking and searching and finding answers. Why is it that the institution becomes nervous when you begin to seek--to really seek? Because they're afraid of what you might find. But I encourage everyone I know to study like crazy, to ask questions, to probe. Along that line, my website has a link to the Concordant Publishing Concern, where you can order a Concordant Literal New Testament. Read all you can from my web-site. I'm certainly not the end-all of knowledge and would never claim to be, but I have learned a lot from studying on my own, as well as reading a lot of different things from others. I have kept the good stuff and thrown out the bad. I have tested it all against scripture. I have not believed anything that cannot be backed up in scripture and easily demonstrated to someone else, anyone who has an open mind. 

I am glad you can't stop thinking about the things you have read. The spirit of God is working in you. Keep pressing.

Another good passage for you is 1 Timothy 2:6, which speaks of Christ giving Himself a Ransom for all, the testimony in its own eras—the important phrase for you being "in its own eras." Everyone comes, just not at once.

You’re not confused about what I said about hell, but about what you’ve heard about hell (the fiction) which clashes with what I said about it (the facts). The hell of Christian tradition is totally false. Hell is in the Bible, but it is not the fiery torture chamber Christianity makes it to be. Jesus spoke of the judgment of Gehenna (translated "hell" in the KJV and elsewhere), which will be a fiery repository for the corpses of criminals during the millennium (corpses, not screaming mummies). Peter speaks of tartarus (translated "hell" in the KJV and elsewhere), which is a temporary jail for sinning angels, not humans. And finally, hades (translated "hell" in the KJV and elsewhere) is simply the state of invisibility, often used figuratively for the grave. It has nothing to do with flames or torture or eternity. The concept of eternity itself is unscriptural, as the word aion (from which our common translations get "forever" and "eternity") has totally to do with time. Please see my articles concerning the eons on my website, martinzender.com

It will be helpful if you can log onto that website and read some of my stuff. Everything will make sense!

Thanks for reading. I’m glad you liked the book. Look up all my verses in the last part of Chapter 6. Thank God, you’re on the right track.

8.
The "Great Commission," as it is called, is a message for Israel for the thousand-year kingdom. At the end of Matthew, Jesus told His disciples to make disciples of all the nations. They never did it. Either he misjudged their ability, or this charge was meant to be fulfilled at a later time. It’s for a later time, namely, the millennium. Jesus said, "I will be with you always, to the end of the eon." He immediately left, leaving me certain that the disciples were not meant to accomplish the commission then, but later, when Jesus returns. Israel will be head of the nations then.

Which doesn’t really answer your question as to why we must still preach the gospel today, if everyone is going to be saved. Here’s the simple answer: that everyone is going to be saved is the gospel. You are confused by the traditional gospel, the wrong one, the gospel that says, "hurry up and believe or God is going to torment you for eternity," which is not a gospel at all. That "gospel" would be inconsistent with the truth of Jesus’s work on the behalf of humanity (that He saves them all—1 Tim. 4:10). The true gospel is the announcement that God is conciliated (at peace) with the world through the work of Christ. 2 Cor. 5:18-19. The fact that all mankind will be saved is consistent with this gospel. More than that, it's the logical conclusion of it.

9.
Remember from the book that the definition of the word church is: called out. A church is nothing more than a called out body of people. With this definition in mind, I do belong to a church; I meet at someone’s home with other believers twice a month. If you get a true, godly blessing out of your denominational church, then great. The holy spirit can work everywhere, even in a religious institution. But this happens in spite of the institution, not because of it.

What is the source of your satisfaction with this church? Is it the music? The fellowship? I guarantee it’s not the doctrine, because the standard "evangelical" doctrine at your church (human free will, eternal torment, the whole "hurry up and believe or be damned" thing) could in no way bless you. The best denominational churches today are the ones that rarely mention the contradictory, damn-full things they believe. Frankly, many denominations are deep down embarrassed (or at least puzzled) about their own hypocritical teachings, and I do give them credit for that. I have a pointed question for you now: Are you seeking to know Christ at this church, or are you looking for personal fulfillment, a thing that many people mistakenly refer to as "being blessed"?

10.
Whether you realize it or not (apparently you don’t), you, too, are concerned about doctrine. That Jesus Christ is the Son of God is doctrine. That Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead is doctrine. That Jesus Christ took away the sin of the world is doctrine. Doctrine is just a compact term for teachings about God. Doctrine is not what you want to avoid; it’s bad doctrine that you want to steer clear of.

That you never argue about doctrine tells me that your church is not much into knowing Christ. The orthodox, traditional teachings concerning Christ in most Christian churches are all wrong. This claim sounds fantastic, but I back it up in my book; I ask you to look again at page 108 in How to Quit Church Without Quitting God. The most God-defiling doctrine ever devised by Satan is the doctrine of eternal torment. It is a false doctrine, to be sure. Why am I so concerned about it? Because this doctrine has turned millions and millions of people from ever wanting to know God. In the middle ages, this doctrine inspired the wholesale slaughter of thousands of so-called heathen by the Roman Catholic Church, all in the name of God.

Human free will is another erroneous traditional teaching that gives man, rather than Christ, the ultimate power of salvation. In essence, free will states: You are saved by the exercise of your will power. Salvation by will power. Hmm. Do you see anything wrong with that? Martin do.

So tell me, instead of arguing about these vital themes connected with God’s nature and power, just what do you do at your church? Pray for each other? Sing songs? Read poetry? Hug? Dance? I hope you’re happy. In the meantime, the world curses God because of what your happy little club stands for ("Join us or perish.") Sorry if I sound so upset, but I am upset. You are like the Pharisees who wanted to preserve the system ("togetherness") at all cost, even at the cost of truth.

I’m confused. First you say in your book that you believe God is the savior of all mankind. Then you say you’re not a Universalist. But isn’t a Universalist one who believes that everyone is saved?

Perhaps the term Universalist used to describe, in a vague kind of way, a person who believed that Jesus Christ will reconcile the universe to God through the blood of His cross (Colossians 1:20). But today it describes a person who belongs to the Universalist-Unitarian religion. Ugh. Just the name of it gives me the creeps. Universalist-Unitarians may believe that everyone returns to God some day, but it’s how they arrive at their conclusion that is revolting to me.

Members of this religion, as far as I’ve been able to discover, do not believe in judgment. I, on the other hand, believe in all the judgments in scripture—the judgment of Gehenna, the judgment of the sheep and the goat nations in Matthew, chapter 25, the great white throne judgment, the lake of fire. But I believe what God has to say about these judgments (I pay attention to every detail of the accounts concerning them), not to what tradition has led us to believe He is saying.

Secondly, Universalist-Unitarians do not see the necessity of the cross. As far as I’ve been able to discern, they believe that man is too good to be damned. They do not see the need for the sacrifice of a representative Man (Jesus Christ) for the sin of the world, therefore they do not base their beliefs on the blood shed for the world at Calvary.

Thirdly, Universalist-Unitarians do not revere the Word of God. They treat Scripture as just another source of information in one’s quest for truth. Since you have read my book, you certainly know how important the Word of God is to me. I study God’s Word reverently, in minute detail. It is the spirit of God that causes me to believe what I read there.

And so, needless to say, I do all I can to distance myself from the Universalist-Unitarian church, a strange and unholy conglomerate if ever there was one.

11.
Hold on there, Pilgrim. You’re way ahead of the game. You already know that church is a body of people. That’s great, but look—you’re in the minority. Most people think that church is something you "go to" every Sunday. The title of my book uses the word church as it is commonly perceived, that is, a building, an institution, an official organization recognized by man. It is this that I want people to quit, not the body of Christ. Now do you like the title of my book?

12.
No. They wouldn’t have me if I wanted to. You may be surprised to hear that I am generally opposed to the home-church movement.

I have looked into some of the writings of Gene Edwards, who is supposed to be one of the fathers of this movement. (In fact, Gene Edwards called my publisher requesting a copy of my book. It was after this that I started investigating the matter. What Gene thinks of my book, I don’t know. I wrote him over a month ago, but he hasn’t answered).

The home-church movement is good in that it has recognized the stifling nature of institutional religion, and the nasty habit of institutional pastors to horde power and control people. The problem is that this movement has overhauled only the outward form of the Christian religion; it sees nothing wrong with the religion itself. But as you learned in my book, the Christian religion is in full apostasy mode, its teachings infested with hypocrisy.

Back to the home-church movement: Instead of carrying on the apostasy in a church building, this movement is carrying it on in people’s houses. In other words, they’ve dragged the corpse to a new location. Oh, boy. And they call this a revolution? It’s the same hypocritical mess under a new roof.

This movement is heavy on "feel good" worship, light on doctrine. Logic is presented as a scourge to be avoided. (It is mistakenly assumed in this camp that logical is the opposite of spiritual, when in reality soulish is the opposite of spiritual. The opposite of logical is illogical. Anybody want to be illogical? If not, then logical is your only alternative.) Gene Edwards writes, "I did not depart evangelical theology. The historical doctrines of the Protestant faith are mine for as long as I live. What I left was the practice of evangelical Protestantism." I wrote Gene and said:

"But what if the historical doctrines of the Protestant faith are just as wrong as the historical pews and pastors? The Christian church is in apostasy, and this includes its teachings (its doctrines) as well as its ceremonies.

"If nothing else, please read Chapter 5 of How to Quit Church Without Quitting God. Gene, if you truly do still hold to evangelical theology, then the world will still account you as a hypocrite (see page 108), right along with the pew-bound evangelicals. Location is not everything. It looks to me like you have transferred the apostasy from church to home. You have dragged the skeleton to a new address."

As I said, Gene hasn’t written me back. I still hope to hear from him.

13.
My goal was to write an honest book. And honestly, when my emotions run high or I’m hot on a particular subject, certain of these words come easily to mind. This is probably because I used to cuss like crazy when I was a teenager. In my opinion, there are still instances in life when there’s just no worthy substitute for a good (bad) four-letter word. (Banging one’s head on a tree limb is such an instance. Writing about religion is another.) God and I have an understanding about this flaw of mine, so it’s no big deal between Him and me. As the saying goes: God isn’t finished with me yet.

In writing, as well as in speaking, it’s the sparing use of these words that give them their impact. Not that I think ahead of time, "I want to make an impact here." I never think that way. None of the "questionable" words in my book are premeditated. In writing, the idea is to let your mind loose and let your emotions pour out, then go back later and edit. You don’t want to edit in the creative mode. You need to let yourself be free. So I’ll let something rip in the heat of writing and think, I’ll delete that later, probably. Then comes the editing process, and most of the rougher stuff does come out. I often wrestle with myself over many a passage: to edit or not to edit—that’s the question. To delete the strong word sometimes weakens the sentence, devitalizes it, makes it less honest than it was when I originally wrote it. If a word survives eleven or twelve edits (and Melody), it usually stays in. (Okay, I sometimes overrule Melody. Sorry!)

14.
I can’t. It’s a miracle.

15.
First of all, most of my observations in the book come from knowledge of the basic tenets of the Christian religion, three of which are "you have to go to church," "you are free to choose Christ," and "you will be damned if you are not wise enough to choose Christ." These things are common to the Catholic and Protestant "faiths." Like it or not, a person is instantly stereotyped when answering "yes" to the question, "Are you a Christian?" And like it or not, Christianity is a single, organized religion. In Daniel, chapter nine, the four major religions on earth are pictured by four beasts that rise from the sea. The fourth beast, the monstress, is Christianity. As the monstress is its own entity, so is Christianity. Will you tell me that the monstress is not a single beast?

16.
I don’t know. What the hell is it?

17.
Sure. The first step is to believe at face value what Paul is plainly saying in Romans 9, namely, that God makes both vessels of honor and dishonor, for His glory. God is the Potter, human beings are the clay. This is very easy to understand. Potter and clay, what a simple picture. A child says, "Yep, got it." This only becomes difficult when we attempt to fit our square-pegged theology into Paul’s round-hole revelation.

Now, your protest is: Why does God judge vessels that He, Himself, makes dishonorable? You may be amazed to learn that Paul anticipated your protest two thousand years ago. Read Romans 9: "You will be protesting to me, then: Why is God still judging?"

Before we read Paul’s answer, please understand something. This protest would not even have arisen had not the protestor understood Paul’s revelation. Paul had just made God responsible for creating bad people. Paul’s specific example was the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Paul quotes God as saying, "I harden Pharaoh’s heart." If Paul had said, "God judges Pharaoh because Pharaoh was a self-made jerk," the protest would never have arisen. Well? Would it have? The potential-protestor would have said, "Well, that makes sense. Pharaoh brought it upon himself." But alas, Paul says that Pharaoh’s hardness isn’t Pharaoh’s fault, and so the protest arises, not because Paul is not believed, but because Paul is believed. It’s just that the revelation doesn’t seem fair to the protestor.

I’m bringing this up because this proves that the protestor at least acknowledges Paul’s revelation. This is more than we can say for most Christians. (Most Christians I know can’t stand the thought of being clay. They would certainly rather think of themselves as the shapers of their own destinies.) They don’t even believe Paul’s revelation, let alone have honest problems with it. And so acknowledging the revelation is one thing, understanding why God does it that way is another.

Paul’s answer to the protestor? "O man! who are you, to be sure, who are answering again to God? That which is molded will not protest to the molder, ‘Why do you make me thus?’ Or has not the potter the right over the clay, out of the same kneading to make one vessel, indeed, for honor, yet one for dishonor?"

So Paul doesn’t really answer the protest. He just says, "How dare you protest in the first place?" We must look to other portions of Scripture to understand that God’s judgments are always righteous.

As soon as we hear the word judge, as in God judging Pharaoh, most of us think, "unfair!" Our bias is showing. We assume that judging is bad. But all of God’s judging is good. It may be rough, but it is done for the sake of the one being judged, for that one’s education. It is remedial, not punitive. Pharaoh will learn something of God when he is judged at the great white throne. Is Pharaoh damned to hell for eternity? No. Otherwise, God would be responsible for it, as it was God Who hardened his heart in the first place.

No, but Pharaoh does go to the lake of fire, which is the second death. He is dead, unconscious, asleep here, not tormented in flames. (Only the beast, the Adversary and the false prophet are consciously tormented here for—as the Greek says—"the eons of the eons.") But, praise God, death will be abolished (1 Corinthians 15:26), and God will become all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28). This "all in all" includes Pharaoh. (If it includes me, then it must include Pharaoh.)

The truth is that God needs both vessels of honor and dishonor to reveal His purposes. As we come to realize this, it slowly dawns on us that we are no different than Pharaoh. It slowly dawns on us that God chose us to believe. He did not choose us because our clay was any different than Pharaoh’s. He did it solely because He favors us. This is an utterly shocking revelation, when finally it hits.

Is it fair that we come to believe now, while Pharaoh doesn’t come until later? I don’t know if it’s fair, but everything God does is right. Pharaoh will have no objections when he comes to life at the consummation (1 Corinthians 15:24), finally realizing the salvation won for him by Christ. And since the scriptural principle is "He who has been forgiven much, loves much," I think that Pharaoh will be praising God louder for eternity than either of us. This is a sound I am most anxious to hear.