Discourse 137 – The Biblical‒Christian faith.

The Biblical-Christian faith.

The alternative for the decision.

The eternal existence of every human being.

The battle in heaven.

Biblical Christianity and its claim to sole representation.

The Biblical-Christian faith.

It is a sad fact that nowadays Christianity is always and everywhere confused with the Catholic church. Worshiping the creation instead of the Creator (cf. Rom 1:25), i.e. the sun and moon, the ancestors, the cult of the dead (praying to the deceased Catholic "saints") and indeed the Catholic "Mary" – today hardly any of these things are ever called in question.

So too the Marian apparitions in Medjugorje promulgated the well known message in a series of public pronouncements from 1981 into the 1990s:

"I am the mediatrix between you and God" [1]

And if anyone is asked today – on being admitted to hospital, for instance – what religion they belong to, and they say they are Christian, they generally get the answer, "OK, Catholic". I am well aware that your average hospital nurse is not going to have any idea about Methodist, Mennonite or free church denominations being Christian churches. But the fact that you don’t even get "Protestant" offered as an alternative shows that the Catholic church is omnipresent in our country today.

Even in some Evangelical churches and congregations, where you would expect people to be aware of the uniqueness of the biblica- Christian faith, they bend over backwards to regard other religions – like Catholicism indeed, not to mention Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism and I don’t know what else – as being "of equal value".

This is by no means the case! And it is just this kind of attitude that discourages far too many people from reflecting on their faith, finding out about the correct Biblical-Christian faith and finally deciding for it – as we hope to demonstrate in what follows.

But perhaps it is as well to start by asking a fundamental question. If there is a God – and for sure there is a God – where does he actually live? – Well, God lives in his dimension out of time and space, which is somehow interwoven with our space-time universe. Just how this works is something that scientists have been researching into for some considerable time (c.f. the theory of multiverses).

So God is beyond space and time. Just what does that actually mean? God is timeless – not in the colloquial sense, but actually "without time". We can best compare this with a film from the old days – perhaps of a vacation, a birthday party with the children or some other significant event from the past.

When we sit down and watch this film – probably for the umpteenth time – we know exactly what is coming in the next scene. And if we want to see the end of it, we can simply fast forward and watch the end. And it’s like that with the timelessness of God’s dimension. God has the entire time of this universe before his eyes – from the Big Bang right through to the end. And just as we can fast forward or rewind the film, so God can at any time view everything that is going on in our universe.

This, incidentally, is the reason why so many people get the wrong end of the stick. For example, a young woman on the website of the Archbishop of Cologne writes as follows:

(Texts in a black frame are quotations from visitors to this site or from other authors.)

This young woman asks the question here, "This world we live in, is it the way God wanted it?" – and the answer is No, of course it isn’t. This world is the way human beings wanted it! God handed over this world to human beings, so they could shape it to their will – their own human will. And that’s just how it has turned out – the way human beings wanted it to be.

And because human beings are making a train wreck of this world, that is the reason, for this young woman, why she can’t believe in God. This is rather the same as if I were to drive my car into a brick wall, through my own fault, and then blame the automotive manufacturer for causing the accident.

She also refers to the "good and omniscient God" and to God’s love. And here she is just parroting what some preachers say, when they keep going on about the "infinite and unconditional love of God".

But finally this girl admits: "I just can’t believe that God wanted it to be like this, and so for me the most logical explanation is that he doesn’t exist." And this brings us back to the timelessness of God’s dimension, mentioned earlier – something that is also often referred to as "omniscience".

God knows, of course, whether this young woman, by the end of her life, is going to decide for him or not. – He only needs to "take a look" in the future to see their decision.

For those whom He  has previously recognized, He also predestined , and these whom He predestined, He also called;

Rom 8,29 For those whom He  has previously recognized (proegno), He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; 8,30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. Rom 8,29-30;

If she is not going to decide for him, then she has taken herself "out of the game". But if she at some point in her life is going to decide for God, God also knows whether she will be able to cope with her present situation or not.

If she can manage to do that on her own resources, nothing will happen. If not, then God is not going to intervene directly (miracles don’t any longer happen today), but he will arrange to have obstacles removed from her path – without this having any kind of effect on the course of history. It’s a case of the "prime directive", as it were.

And that brings us to spacelessness. Whereas we don’t as yet have any examples of timelessness in our dimension, when it is a matter of spacelessness we are already able to refer to one event – an event that occurs in the Bible. When Jesus appeared, after his Resurrection, to the eleven disciples, he came through closed doors and disappeared through the walls of the room (Jn 20:19-26). That is spacelessness for you.

And seeing that the Bible says that Jesus was the "first fruits" (1Cor 15:23-24) and that we will follow him, it also becomes clear that the inhabitants of that dimension "beyond" – which means all human beings after they are resurrected, the good and the bad alike – have the same properties of being beyond space and time. For them, neither rooms nor spatial partitions exist. They can pass "through the walls", so to speak.

And this also involves the mutual presence of consciousness among all these spiritual beings (1Cor 15:44). Like God Himself (Jn 4:24), everyone sees in the spirit what each of the others is thinking. This is particularly interesting in view of the fact that we can also view all events in the course of the temporal dimension, and so see in a moment, in the spirit, every single one of our own actions. So at the Last Judgment no human being can deny any of their actions, whether good or evil, because all other individuals can see exactly the same thing as they do.

This, incidentally, is something that many Christian preachers overlook, when they dispute the fact that the godless too will be resurrected and will have eternal life. How could all these unbelievers be brought to the bar of the Last Judgment, if they do not rise from the dead but are simply "blotted out"? And how could they suffer the "eternal damnation" they are promised, if they did not have an eternal existence?

The eternal existence of every human being.

So much for "beyond time and space". And we can take note of the fact that in this dimension there are no longer any secrets. Everything is revealed – for everybody simultaneously. What a miracle that the Creator of this limitless openness is himself absolutely just, is justice "in person" so to speak.

In this dimension beyond space and time there is no lying or deceit. Indeed such things cannot possibly exist, just because this dimension is timeless and space less. Just as in our present dimension we can’t travel into the past or the future, so in that dimension of the beyond you can’t lie or cheat.

Now although these are properties of another dimension, in the light of the absolute justice of God they also have important implications for the present dimension which we inhabit. The Bible tells us that our God is an absolutely just God – and people do read it and take note – but there are very few readers of the Bible who are clear about what it really means.

On the one hand it means that we can put our trust in God. We can believe that what he says is true and correct. On the other, it also means that with God there is no way of fiddling the books (in accordance with worldly maxims like "One hand washes the other" or "I’ll just turn a blind eye").

Justice must be fulfilled. If God allows it, then it can be fulfilled in a different way, but fulfilled it must be. We can see an example of this in God’s commandments. To begin with, God decreed that non-observance of his commandments would entail the death of the human perpetrator.

When God saw that the people he had chosen to be his own – the Israelites – were so sinful that they would have been exterminated by this commandment, he allowed them to substitute an animal sacrifice for the death of a human being. But then it became apparent that all the bulls and sheep of this world would not suffice to blot out the sins of the Jews.

And so God fathered his Son, the promised Messiah, to bring Israel back to its God. But the Israelites rejected the Son of God. Even worse – they had him put to death by the Romans. This death of his Son was then used by God, on the one hand as a way of punishing the Israelites, and on the other so as to give all human beings the possibility of confessing him.

Please note that the Israelites are not excepted from this offer of salvation. Any one of them who converts to Jesus Christ as his Savior can be saved – along with any other members of the human race. But this is something very few of them have done. For two thousand years and up to the present day, they are still calling the Son of God an impostor and blasphemer because he said that he was the Son of God (Mt 26:63-64).

When his commandments are broken, then, God no longer calls for the death of the soul, either the human or the animal soul – instead he calls for faith. Faith, that is to say, that Jesus is the Son of God and died for all our sins as an atonement pleasing to God. That is the euangelion, the Good News.

Of course not in the way in which the Catholic church "christianized" the Indios of South America, by threatening them with burning at the stake if they did not convert. That circumstance – and in our own day, the multiple rapes of children by Catholic priests with a duty of care – shows sufficiently that this church cannot on any account be called Christian.

In this connection the Son of God gave us a useful rule of thumb. He compares institutions like this with a "tree" and the people such institutions bring forth as the "fruits".

You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?

Mt 7,15 "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 7,16 "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 7,17 "So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 7,18 "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. 7,19 "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 7,20 "So then, you will know them by their fruits. 7,21 "Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.

7,22 "Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 7,23 "And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.’ Mt 7,15-23;

Based on that, the Catholic church condemns itself through these revolting actions by its priests. But it’s even worse than that – because Jesus also says here, "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit".

Translating that, it means that a church (tree) which produces such criminal priests (bad fruit) is a criminal church (bad tree). And a criminal church cannot possibly produce good and honest (or in a word, Christian) priests.

But since these "fruits" must be understood to refer to all members of the institution, not just to the priests, it follows that all Catholics have to be seen as "bad fruit", and anyone who is not, or who doesn’t want to be bad fruit should exit from this nest of vipers as quickly as possible.

And here we now come up against the million dollar question: if God is an absolutely just God, how is it that he permits evil? How can he allow a church to lead people astray, and even to present itself as the "representative body of Christianity" and its Pope to claim to be the "Vicar of Christ"?

But after all the things we have explained above, the answer is really not hard to find. This world is not in God’s hand, because in accordance with God’s absolute justice, it cannot be in his hand! If human beings are to have freedom of choice, they must have at least one alternative to God, or there would be no choice at all.

The alternative for the decision.

As we have known since the Garden of Eden, the alternative to God is Satan. And there, in the Garden of Eden, human beings chose Satan as the alternative. God rules in heaven, and if human beings had decided for him, heaven would have prevailed on earth. But since this was what human beings wanted in the Garden of Eden, God has given Satan dominion over all the kingdoms of this world.

Now here of course the legitimate argument might be advanced that back then human beings could have had no idea of the disastrous consequences this decision would entail. But here again the answer is clear – at that time it was not a matter of knowledge, but of faith. Adam and Eve just had to decide what they chose to BELIEVE – what God told them, or what Satan told them. And that is how things have gone on right up to the present day.

Since the devil was thrown out of heaven two thousand years ago after his defeat in the fight against the angels of God (see below), he has ruled the world empires as "prince of the power of the air", as Paul also did in Eph 2,2 called "from the air", somewhere in the atmosphere together with his demonic angels.

And seeing that humanity decided to believe him, ever since then Satan has been ruling this world – from heaven first of all. (Jesus does call him "the ruler of this world" in Jn 12,31 and 14,30 below). Then ever since the devil was thrown out of heaven two thousand years ago, after his defeat in the fight against the angels of God (see further down), he has been ruling the kingdoms of the world as the "prince of the power of the air", as Paul calls him in Eph 2:2, and doing so in fact "from the air", hanging out somewhere in the atmosphere together with his demonic angels.

And that now gives us the answer to the question asked by this young woman above – and not just by her alone!! – "I keep on asking myself – This world we live in, is it the way God wanted it? Did he plan it like this? Is it supposed to be good?" – No, it certainly is not good, and it isn’t the way God wanted it either.

But God is just, and human beings must have freedom of decision – so that later on they will have no excuse at the Last Judgment. So it isn’t God who has given humanity no free option of choice – it is human beings who, when faced with the choice between good and evil, opted for the wrong side. If they had chosen the right side, we would be living in a paradise today.

And although it is plain when we look around in nature, when we see the abundance of flora and fauna all over the world, that the Creator of these miracles only wanted good things for humanity, human beings preferred until today to listen to Satan, deny God and lie to themselves and to the world in saying that there is no Creator. This explains the fact that science too – in spite of massive evidence to the contrary – denies the existence of a Creator.

But since all these statements look to be completely off track in our modern world of today, where "Satan" is rather an unmentionable and people are so oblivious of his existence that they do not even have to ignore it, I would like to provide chapter and verse at this point to back up my arguments, and explain how I was able to arrive at these conclusions.

So here below I am reproducing all the relevant biblical passages, each of which can serve as a part of the explanation – and the reader is requested to read them attentively, for they are not just the basis for my above arguments and those that follow, they also constitute, as we will see shortly, an explanation of the entire further course of our real world history.

To begin with we have the following biblical passage, which reports that Jesus fasted for forty days in the wilderness, and then the devil carried him off in the spirit and wanted to seduce him – and that really gave me something to think about. That was what prompted me to finally analyze all these implications in detail and check to see whether they really made sense.

I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.

Lk 4,5 And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 4,6 And the devil said to Him, "I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. 4,7 "Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours." 4,8 Jesus answered him, "It is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your GOD and serve Him only.’" Lk 4, 5- 8;

My first reaction here was to say, Oh well, that’s just coming from Satan and Satan is the "father of lies", so what does it matter. But then I took a closer look at the context, and came to the following conclusion – in this encounter between the Son of God and Satan, the devil tempted him a total of three times.

The first temptation was:

And the devil said unto Him,

"If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."

And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written,
"man shall not live on bread alone."

(Lk 4,3-4)
 

Here Jesus does not in any way dispute the truth of what Satan says. On the contrary, he answers him by referring to one of God’s commandments. We will deal with the second temptation below. Here is

The third temptation was:

 And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him,

"If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning you to guard you,’ and,

‘on their hands they will beare you up, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’"

And Jesus answered and said to him, "It is said,

‘You shall not put the LORD your God to the test.’
 (Lk 4,9-12)

Here again the Lord casts no doubt on Satan’s statement – which actually relies on words from Scripture. And Jesus answers him likewise by quoting the word of God from the Bible.

And now we come to this surprising second statement of Satan’s:

The second temptation was:

And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him,
"I will give You all this domain and its glory;

for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.

Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours."

Jesus answered him, "It is written,

«OU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD AND SERVE HIM ONLY.»"
(Lk 4,5-8)

Here once again Jesus casts no doubt at all on this statement of the devil’s, and answers him with a biblical quotation (the text in its entirety may be found in Lk 4:1-14). As we may be sure that the Son of God would have recognized a lie on the devil’s part and would have contradicted it at once, we can assume that the substance of this statement amounts to the truth.

And if that is really the case, there just have to be equivalent passages in the other books of the Bible – and we need to start looking for the origin and implications of this biblical fact. So here are the results:

The battle in heaven.

And Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

Rev 12,7 And there was battle in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, 12,8 and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. 12,9 And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Rev 12, 7- 9;

And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

Rev 12,3 Then another sign appeared at the sky: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. 12,4 And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. Rev 12, 3- 4;

Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out (from heaven).

Jn 12,28 "Father, glorify Your name." Then a voice came out of heaven: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." 12,29 So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, "An angel has spoken to Him." 12,30 Jesus answered and said, "This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes. 12,31 "Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out (from heaven). Jn 12,28-31;

I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming.

Jn 14,28 "You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. 14,29 "Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. 14,30 "I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; 14,31 but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here. Jn 14.28-31;

And He said to them, "I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning".

Lk 10,17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name." 17,18 And He said to them, "I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Lk 10,17-18;

Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath.

Rev 12,12 "For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time." Rev 12,12;

How you are fallen from heaven, O Star of the morning.

Isa 14,12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Star of the morning, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the earth, you who weakened the nations! 14,13 You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far north; Isa 14,12-13;

(See also discourse 1042: "Are all governments of the world ordained by God?")

So, there was a battle in heaven. Satan tried to tempt his fellow angels in heaven as well, and something like a third of the angels of God apostatized from God and joined forces with the devil. If we reflect that the number of the angels of God is often stated by the Bible to be "myriads", that could be a pretty big number.

And then Satan, with the backing of this third of the angelic world, tried to defeat the other two thirds of the angels of God under the leadership of Archangel Michael. He failed in this attempt, and was banished from the dimension of God – he and his angels were cast down from heaven to the earth (Rev 12,3-4: 7-9).

In the above biblical passages we can see that this drama happened at the time when Jesus was living on earth. He himself says to the 70 disciples, "I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning" (Lk 10,18); and before that, he informs them in Jh 14,30: "I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me."

In Jh 12,28-31 we actually find a record of the very moment when Jesus registered this expulsion of the devil from heaven: "Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.".

And even after that, the Son of God refers to this fact one more time. So we find in Rev 12,12: "Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time." In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul in his turn points to the same concatenation of circumstances.

The prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Eph 2,1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2,2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Eph 2,1-2;

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.

2Cor 4,3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 4,4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. 2Cor 4,3-4

The world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the places under the sky.

Eph 6,12 For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the places under the sky. Eph 6,12;

If the head of the house (Satan) had known at what time of the night the thief (Jesus) was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house (the world) to be broken into.

Mt 24,42 "Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. 24,43 "But be sure of this, that if the head of the house (Satan) had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house (the world) to be broken into. 24,44 "For this reason you also must be eady; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will. Mt 24,42-44;

And finally, the Lord also confirms to us in the Lord’s Prayer, in the "Our Father", that Satan is no longer in heaven, but on earth, by telling us to pray: "Your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth". So, unlike the situation on earth, in heaven at this point the Father’s will is already happening because Satan has been thrown out with his angels.

Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.

Mt 6,9 Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. 6,10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. 6,11 ‘Give us this day our daily bread. 6,12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 6,13 And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ Mt 6,9-13;

But also the last part of the above Bible text: "deliver us from evil" contains implicit important information. If God may save us from Satan, then this means once that Satan is with us here on earth. But it also confirms that God can deliver us from him at any time, but it is his will not to do so yet.

And this is obviously because Satan still has a certain task to fulfill on God’s behalf. He is appointed by God to test the people on earth – as before also the angels in heaven – whether they want to adhere to God or cling to the devil. This is Satan’s task since Adam and Eve and he has to carry it out until his end.

So the devil, the ruler of the world and his angels have been thrown out of heaven, and ever since have ruled on earth, "in the air" (Eph 2:2), for the last two thousand years or so. We know that God is spirit. It follows that Satan and his angels, as former inhabitants of God’s dimension, must also be seen as spirits (though now demons).

They have no physical bodies and probably spend their existence in the upper reaches of the earth’s atmosphere (in the "air"). The American astronaut John Glenn once filmed from his space capsule (John Glenn: "myriads of stars" / Italian version), as he rapturously exclaimed – which would be a close approximation to the above definition.

And now we come back to the fact that according to Scripture God has given power and dominion over all the kingdoms of this world, as we have seen above, to Satan. It started in the Garden of Eden. That was when human beings decided for Satan, and that was where Satan first established his power.

But God had chosen for himself a unique people out of the whole of humanity – Israel. This was the people of God, and to this people God promised a Savior who would save them from the influence of the devil. And this Messiah was to come and become the world ruler as the supreme head of Israel.

But even after a thousand years (as it was back then), the Israelites still did not know their God. For when Jesus came and told them that he was the Messiah, they thought he had come to fight the Romans and lead them to victory. But that is not the way God works.

In his creation, God also works in ways involving the creation – with earthquakes, storms, floods, pestilences, droughts, famines and so on, as well as getting the godless to kill one another off, as with the second horseman in Revelation (Rev 6:3-4).

As we can see here, it is also the "four living creatures" – the representatives of creation before the throne of God – who command the four apocalyptic riders, invoking each with a ‘Come’ (Rev 6,1.3.5.7). What is more, the bowls of the wrath of God are given by these same four beings to the angels of destruction (Rev 16,1-21). So at this time of the Great Tribulation on earth it is first and foremost the creation itself – or nature – that strikes back.

(See also discourse 136: "The message of God – the four living creatures."

Only after that, in the second part, on the "Day of the Lord", does humanity – together with Satan and his Antichrist – have to expect the punishment of God, with the worldwide plagues of the judgments of the trumpets and the bowls.

So, as Jesus did not start a war against the Romans, the Israelites thought he was a false Messiah and handed him over to the Romans to be crucified. God then took this as the occasion for giving the whole of humanity the possibility of being saved, by accepting the death of his Son as the redeeming sacrifice for the sins of all human beings. This is the "good news".

It is the "good" news for us human beings, because it’s all the news there is. There is only this one God of the Bible, and Jesus Christ, his Son, is the sole mediator between God and humanity (cf. 1Tim 2:5-6). Every other kind of religion which does not have Jesus Christ at the center (and that includes the Mosaic religion of the Jews) is a false religion and does NOT lead to the redemption of the individual human being!

Faith in Jesus Christ – the fixed point in the universe. "Give me a fixed point in the universe and I will lift the world off its hinges." The Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC) was the first to discover the principle of the lever, and came to this remarkable theoretical conclusion. In the reality of this world, faith in Jesus Christ is the thing that really lifts the world off its hinges. When the Son of God says: I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies. – he abrogates all the biological and physical laws of our world of space and time. The power whereby a human beings can realize this miracle is called faith. Faith is a power in human beings, as also are love, hatred, jealousy and so on. But whereas love, hatred and jealousy in most cases "break out" involuntarily, human beings can themselves activate the power of faith. In the Christian faith, what they have to do for this is place their trust in God and t he Son of God. Trust – just that is what the Bible means by "faith". In the miracles that the Lord worked on earth, he always says, "Your faith (your trust in me) has helped you." Mt 9,22 Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well. Mk 10,52 Go; your faith has made you well. Lk 7,50 Your faith has saved you; go in peace. Lk 17,19 Stand up and go; your faith has made you well. Mt 15,28 O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish. And this trust, this faith, then gives birth to a conviction. This is the faith of a correctly believing Christian: conviction. He who believes in Him (Jesus Christ) is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already. Jn 3,17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 3,18 He who believes in Him (Ps 118:22-23) is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Jn 3,17-18; He who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. Jn 6,35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst." Jn 6,35; He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’ Jn 7,38 "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’" 7,39 But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Jn 7,38-39; I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies. Jn 11,25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, 11,26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?" Jn 11,25-26; He who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do. Jn 14,12 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father." Jn 14,12; Then a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My Son, My Chosen One; listen to Him!" Lk 9,35 Then a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My Son, My Chosen One; listen to Him!" 9,36 And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent, and reported to no one in those days any of the things which they had seen. Lk 9,35-36; I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. !!! (Jn 14,6) The faith of the true Christian is his or her conviction that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of this world. Any religion which does not place Jesus Christ, as the Son of God and sole mediator between God and human beings, at the center of its faith is a false religion. (Jn 3:35-36; Jn 5:22-23; Jn 14:6; Mt 11:27; Mt 28:18; 1Tim 2:5).

If at present there are very few people promulgating this view of things, there will soon be a whole lot more of them – though they will be coming from the wrong place. At the beginning of the Last Days, in the Great Tribulation, Satan will send his Antichrist, and he will proclaim this very same message. He will confirm all that has been stated above. But he will refer it to himself and will claim that he himself is the Christ, and that he has now come to fetch the Christian congregation "home".

Unfortunately a great many people will fall for this ruse – above all from the Catholic church – and will receive him with acclamation as the "Second Coming of the Lord". Because for more than a hundred years, thousands of preachers from all Christian denominations have denied that the true rapture will come in midst and not before the Great Tribulation and the reign of this Antichrist.

This is the biggest trick of the devil, but at the same time it is his last. Genuine Christians will be persecuted and put to death, as the enemies of religion, so that finally there will only be godless people living on earth, who hail the Antichrist as their "Messiah" and Satan as their "God".

And because God is an absolutely just God, it is also the case that no human being can be compelled to believe in him. So the attempt to "bring" anyone to Christian belief is doomed to failure from the start. In conformity with God’s justice, human beings must make this decision out of free will and without any kind of compulsion.

All kinds of assistance may be offered. But the decision to accept or not is always going to be down to the individual. And suddenly we see that it’s all just the way it was back then in the Garden of Eden. Nothing has changed. The world, and humanity, have become a few thousand years older. But when it comes down to the fundamental question, for humanity there has been no change. It remains a choice between

God or Satan.

Biblical Christianity and its claim to sole representation.

[1] "Erscheinungen und Botschaften der Gottesmutter Maria – Vollständige Dokumentation durch zwei Jahrtausende"["Apparitions and Messages of Mary the Mother of God – Complete Documentation over Two Millennia"], by G. Hierzenberger and O. Nedomansky. Aschaffenburg: Pattloch/1993 – page 464.