Now I repeat, God's principal salvation promise was that He would personally teach each spirit of each one of His children.20 To each elect child's heart, He will eventually reveal His very nature, which is defined by the full meaning of all His precepts, laws and ways. He will gradually and progressively open the eyes of each one's spirit to see Him as He truly is, along with all the spiritual truths and realities He created, while He also explains how all these truths should best be applied. As He writes His law upon our hearts, by teaching it to our spirits, He cannot help but reveal who He is, the very essence of His Being, because all these truths originate from His very heart and reveal His very nature. Through all this, each elect person develops a stronger will to do His will on earth as it is done in heaven, and gains the wisdom to live in the most loving, effective, beneficial, just ways.
When we understand that God's main salvation promise is to function as the personal Teacher and Trainer of our spirits, and we place faith in Jesus to do this, as the final authority and Head Teacher of every man, with the final word concerning the correct interpretation of His words regarding all matters of life and faith, we are being saved. We are not saved by our minds of flesh learning to do religious works from men, but by the minds of our spirits learning truths directly from Jesus' Spirit.21
When God came to us in a human body, as Jesus, our Saviour and Messiah, God demonstrated that the appointed time had come to fulfil His salvation promise of teaching and training our spirits in a lifelong discipleship. For Jesus, our Creator God, came to us as a Teacher and said, “The spirit is the life-giver. The flesh profits absolutely nothing. Things I uttered with effect for you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63, ALT). Jesus came to teach the spirit, not the intellect of the flesh, for the mind of flesh cannot be saved. The flesh is appointed to die, to forever be cast aside, to burn with the earth at the end of earth's time. Only our spirits live forever. Therefore, Jesus' main work, while walking on earth, was to utter God's words in effective ways (indicated by the perfect tense). The nouns after the linking verbs in the last clause (“are spirit” and “are life”) delineate qualities. The words uttered by the Teacher bear qualities that effectively benefit the “lives” of elect “spirits,” but not their flesh.
More than anything else, Jesus focused on teaching. And He constantly gathered disciples (students) to teach. He continuously preached the precepts of God, especially about the new, fulfilled way in which God's Spirit is now going to personally teach His precepts directly to each heart—a message we call the Gospel. All His most mature disciples also helped Him teach, as His assistant teachers. But, even the mature men He sent out on missions, as apostles, only taught and did all things in His name—only according to what Jesus taught, only by His commands—never as authoritative teachers themselves. Thus, His mature disciples only ever gathered disciples for Jesus, never for themselves.
So, if we actually believe all that the Bible truly teaches about Jesus' salvation, and harmonize all those teachings with all else taught throughout God's Word, we must conclude these three things:
1. God had a definite purpose in mind when He placed the eternal human spirits of His elect children in temporary and perishable bodies of very limiting flesh upon the temporary earth, where they are exposed to sin and its harmful effects, where this purpose principally involves salvation, the teaching and training of their eternal spirits. Clearly, the earth and all bodies of flesh shall be destroyed in the end, but all eternal spirits will be granted eternal bodies made of a spiritual substance, either for eternal life in heaven or eternal existence in hell.22 Since God's elect children will live in new bodies with their Father in their true home forever, we must ask exactly how this act of God, which placed the spirits of His elect children in temporary bodies on this temporary earth, will accomplish a useful, good purpose for them.
We see, from all the details revealed in God's Word, that God intentionally placed the spirits of His beloved children in fragile and temporary flesh, to feel pain and physical death. But why did He not create their spirits as whole and mature beings in eternal bodies in heaven, so they could live sinless, safe, painless lives from the beginning, and for all eternity? After all, God created the elect angels in this way. All elect angels, as God's servants, were placed in heaven at the moment of their creation, to exist as whole, complete, mature beings who would never know the limitations or pains of flesh, who would never experience the death of fleshy bodies. God never required any elect angels to live on the troubled earth, where there is so much injustice, evil, pain and death. Their bodies never suffer the effects of sin. Since God did this for His elect angels, why did God require His own children, who are even more beloved, to be created and live temporarily on this sinful, dying earth, in pain and suffering? For elect human spirits were not created through His power, like spirits of angels and other creatures. All human elect spirits were born of God's very “breath,” directly from His core Being, as parts of His own personal Spirit, in His image, eternally joined to His very essence. So why does God treat His most beloved children worse than He treats His angelic servants?
Of course, the reason must be that God's beloved children shall somehow benefit greatly from being created as mere infantile, weak spirits who are now limited by fragile, dying, rebellious, unruly, suffering bodies of flesh on this earth. For “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28, ESV). And the benefit must be of far greater value to each child than the sum of all of each one's loss, suffering and death on earth. All this loss, suffering and death must be absolutely necessary to create a much greater good. It must be necessary in order to cause God's children to become greater than the elect angels, yet greater in the ways that God calls “greater,” not in the ways that men call greater. For example, God says that the greatest among us will be the servant of all, just as God serves all His creation, humbly, with greater concern for their welfare than for His own. And now, after our sins, what elect human being would stand proudly and arrogantly before God's holy angels, like a Greek or Roman lord, and demand to be served. No! When we stand before the holy elect angels, we shall humbly bow our heads and ask, “What can we do for you beloved ones?” For this is what our Father does. This is what Jesus does. God loves and serves His good creations. So our pain, cowardliness, failures, sins and lack of faith will cause our greatness to be humble like this.
Our pains, failures and sins during our lives on earth must be absolutely necessary, the one and only way to produce this great benefit for us. Otherwise, we would need to conclude that God uses an end to justify an easier, unnecessary, unethical and unjust means to accomplish it. And this cannot be true, not for a loving, omniscient, omnipotent God. God is too wise and too powerful to ever need to do that. Our God only uses just means to work good, such as His own sacrifice and His teaching to save His children. God never uses unjust means to produce good, such as threats of eternal hell. Thus, clearly, all earthly loss, suffering and death must be a just means of producing good. In fact, it must be the only possible means, the only essential means required to build this greater good. It is not a compromise with evil. This life on earth must provide integral ingredients and catalysts that are absolutely necessary to cause this greater good. They are not unnecessary, nor unjust, nor unethical means to an end. If we did not suffer and die, the greater good would not be possible. So we never try to justify sin and its effects for the losses, sufferings and deaths it causes, for its end results. Yes, we need them, so our spirits might learn to love God and His just, loving ways more than we could otherwise. But we never need to cause them. We let Satan cause such things, in the same way God does. And we, like God, oppose the words and deeds of Satan. We work to “undo” all of Satan's works. For our war against evil and its effects is part of our training for life in heaven.
Since God's teaching and training of elect spirits is the main aspect of salvation, we must conclude that the Father of the elect must use loss, suffering and death on earth to teach and train elect spirits in a far better way than He could possibly do so in heaven. For one thing, we are all called to undo evil works, which teaches us much about good. This actually teaches us to love God’s ways and to hate all ways that are not God’s ways. Therefore, God created the limiting earth and Satan, then allowed Satan, the spirits of Satan's children and sin to enter the earth, so this material world could be used as a training ground to strengthen and mature the spirits of His children, in a very particular way. The way in which bodies of flesh severely limit elect spirits shall also train them to depend on their Father more than otherwise possible. For the elect must go to Him for everything—especially when they face troubles and death, the effects of sin. And this will, in turn, gradually cause them to personally learn to love Him more than anyone or anything else. This also causes them to learn all things more directly from Him, in a much greater, deeper way. Only by this limiting of human flesh on a troubled earth could His children become strong and fit enough to function as His true heirs in heaven, so they might serve the other spiritual creations in heaven together with their Father, for all eternity, through a greater, humbler love and respect they learn on earth. Life on earth clearly causes their spirits to eventually love and trust their Father in a greater way than the angels of heaven can. Life on earth makes God's children more like their Father, and even greater than the angels, who never know the pain of life on earth. As we learn to hate and oppose all that is from Satan, we learn to love and serve God in a much greater way.
2. The omnipotent, omniscient, Creator God cannot fail to save literally everyone He chooses to save—because He cannot fail to accomplish anything He wills to do, since He designed and created all things, then controls all events and all people. God, as He always has, and always will, now limits and maintains complete control over all things, including complete control over salvation. Literally all whom God desires to save will indeed be saved by His omniscient, omnipotent hands.23 It is impossible for the real God to fail to save even one of His beloved children, since He Himself created all their spirits with all the attributes and all the propensities of their spirits' minds and wills, all that makes them all desire God and His heaven. The only human spirits He shall ever send to hell are those not created from His breath, those not made in His image, those who are not one with His personal Spirit, those who will never desire the real heaven where the real God actually resides. Just as Jesus told us, the only human spirits that go to hell are those born of Satan,24 since their home is hell.
Now the apostles said things like this to the elect who were being saved: “And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6, ESV). Why were they so confident that God would complete His works of salvation on the judgement day? It is because God is too wise and too powerful to ever fail to complete any work He wills to complete. It is because Jesus truly declared: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-, ESV). There is one God, and Jesus is that one and only omniscient, omnipotent God, one with the Father, able to cause all His people to hear and follow Him, where no one can ever snatch them from His hand. You cannot even snatch yourself from God's hand, since you cannot change your inner nature and will, or overpower your Creator. We humbly admit who we are and learn what Jesus wants us to know, whenever He wants us to know it. We follow the destinies He builds for us, for the good of all, not destinies of men.
Then we must also realize that heaven and hell are not physical places, but a spiritual places. Since the entire material universe and all physical existence is temporary, destined for destruction before the final judgement day, and we know that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (I Cor. 15:50, ESV), we know that heaven and hell are places consisting of entirely spiritual energy, matter, space and time. In more modern terms, this means the material space-time continuum is entirely separate and distinct from the spiritual space-time continuum, and only the material will cease to exist. Although God, heaven and spiritual things are “near” us, and there can be no physical distance at all between them and our bodies of flesh, nothing material can actually exist within heaven. Yes, the material existence was made to be like a cloak to wrap around a spirit. But the material cannot exist eternally inside heaven, nor inside anything made of a spiritual substance. Neither heaven nor hell can contain anything material, only entities made of a spiritual substance. Each space-time continuum created by God occupies a different space and has a different time, with a different kind of energy and matter in it. So, there can be interfacing between the two, but neither has a substance that can be shared between both.
Therefore, hell's “darkness” is spiritual. And the Bible defines all spiritual darkness as the delusions and lies embraced by spirits, where the principal form of delusion is to believe that one's spirit is one's own god, or even the god of others. Now, all spirits born of Satan are born to love this spiritual darkness, while they inherently hate the spiritual light of God's truth (John 3:18-21), the spiritual truths and realities that fill heaven. So God is merciful to cast these haters of light into hell's darkness. For this kind of spirit would suffer far more if it were forced to go to heaven. Heaven's light of reality, verity and truth would continuously burn away a non-elect one's most cherished delusions and lies, especially the lie that it is its own god. Yet these delusions are the only things this kind of spirit loves and desires. So heaven would cause a spirit born of Satan to feel immeasurably more pain than it would in hell. For, in hell, God allows such a spirit to wallow in its beloved delusions and lies forever.
Nevertheless, since the darkness of their delusions and lies have no substance, they contain not even a speck of reality created by God. So hell's darkness is a totally empty, black, bottomless pit, a vacuous void into which they keep falling into forever. Furthermore, their dark delusions and lies will be the same ones their spirits embraced on earth, those which allowed them to take pleasure in their sins on earth. But, on earth, their flesh could feel some satisfaction through unjust physical acts prompted by their spiritual lies and delusions. Their exploitation of others for money, sex and power all relate to their spirits' delusions of being superior, privileged gods. But in hell, God does not allow any of His reality to exist. So none are ever able to exploit or harm any of God’s creations ever again. God eliminates all things real, all His good spiritual creations. Not even a single grain of physical or spiritual sand exists in hell, absolutely nothing for those wicked spirits to exploit for their own pleasures. And those spirits are not really gods, as they think they are. So they can create nothing for themselves. Thus, they cannot ever gratify any of the wicked desires of their spirits. Thus, their delusions and lies will be eternally and immeasurably frustrated. Their lusts and desires will burn eternally unfulfilled in them, and eat at their hearts like worms that can never die.
On the other hand, because God created all the spirits of His elect children with an inherent propensity to love other beings, especially their Father, and to love all His spiritual light of reality, verity and truth found in heaven—and Jesus possesses infinite wisdom and power to enlighten, correct, teach, train and discipline their spirits on the long judgement day, to eventually make all their spirits fit enough to thrive in heaven's unfiltered light—literally all elect spirits, by the end of the judgement day, will indeed enter heaven, into the very light and solid substance which their spirits were made to crave, with all they love. Since God promised to make all these elect spirits complete and perfect in the end, He definitely will fulfil this promise, for He cannot fail to fulfil any promise He makes, and He cannot lie.
We also know God can never run out of time. It is never too late for God to complete this salvation work in any elect heart. Many say that, if one does not choose Jesus and repent before one dies, one will go to hell. Some even believe that, if one's body of flesh is not baptized with physical water by human hands, then one must go to hell. But God never taught any of this kind of nonsense in His Word. On the contrary, God declared that, in all history, not one of His children has ever been perfect or ready to enter heaven by the time of death. God's Word teaches that Jesus will purify and cleanse all His elect together, all at once, on the judgement day, after their deaths and after all material existence ceases.25 And all this cleansing or purifying must involve repentance. Since literally all children of God sin, all will need to repent of many things after death. Therefore, there will be time to repent in heaven on the judgement day, but only if one was made with an elect spirit, able to repent into the truth.
Consequently, not one of the Father's children can possibly miss being saved, even if they die before repentance or baptism. God foreknew and predestined all the days of each one's life, and He ultimately controls each one's destiny. The conversations of Job were written about the time of Abraham, about 2,000 BC. And even back then, in a prayer, he declared this about all men: “his days are determined, and the number of his months is with You, and You have appointed his limits that he cannot pass” (Job 14:5, ESV). From the very beginning, God's Word declared that God maintains total control over man's destiny, that God determines the number of days a man will live. God sets limits that man cannot go beyond in life on earth.
Church Platonists irrationally believe that a man is able to control his own destiny through a fictitious and impossible “free will.”26 But the Bible teaches us that the almighty Creator initiates our lives by placing a created spirit in us, one that already bears certain propensities and a certain type of will. Solomon acknowledged that our spirits come to us while we are in the womb, though no man can know how God does this or anything else (Eccl. 11:5). Thus, it is clear that God predestines what a spirit will be like and what it will do in life. God creates and builds up each elect spirit's will. For instance, God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5, ESV). God did not choose Jeremiah and the other prophets when they were adults, not because they were willing to serve Him through a “free will.”
Rather, God chose them before birth. He created their spirits with a loving will, then shaped their spirits in a way that caused them to willingly serve Him. While on earth, our Father educates our spirits to shape our wills, as any good father should do for his children. “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13, ESV).
Just as human parents partially predestine the lives of their children through genetics and the way they raise them, so does our Father in heaven—only more completely, perfectly and with greater love. For predestination does not mean a person's will is crushed, or that a person must be an automaton, as some suggest. Rather, it means the opposite. At birth, one's will is basically infantile and easily manipulated, not really much of a will at all. So a parent needs to work to build up the will in a child, to shape the infantile will so it will grow to desire loving, right things. Likewise, a spirit's will grows into maturity by predestination, by the works of our Father in heaven which shape our wills, so we might desire good, not evil. And how can the omniscient, omnipotent Father of our spirit possibly fail to complete this work?
3. The only work remaining for God's children to do, for their own salvation, is to allow their spirits to increase their trust in God. If one does not put faith in a human teacher and trainer, and refuses to believe the words of the teacher and trainer, one will learn very little. The more one places faith in a truly wise and skilful teacher and trainer, the better one can be taught and trained. Likewise, our spirits need to trust the Holy Spirit of Jesus, our God, more than anyone or anything else. The more our spirits place confidence in Him and His words, the better He will teach us His fulfilled ways, and train us to practice the right application of His teachings, so we might grow more wise and loving, better able to do what is right and good for all. Also, in the same way one cannot learn much from a human teacher without asking questions, our Father has opened His very throne room to us at all times, night or day, so we may ask Him whatever we want or need to know. We can even argue with our Father, though He always wins with His superior knowledge. Sometimes He teaches us in stages, one principle at a time, since we often need to know the basics before we can know the more complex answers to our questions. Therefore, our answers may take years to obtain at times. But He always answers, and His answers are always correct and effective when applied. So we can trust in Him. And our spirits can only learn to correctly handle His truth through faith in Him. Eventually, with His inner teaching and training of our spirits in our hearts, we can and will learn to spontaneously do His will, joyfully, straight from our hearts. He will cause us to truly and justly love others, in better and deeper ways each day, in truly God-like ways.