Marshall Vian Summers said something that I feel should be shared, on the evening of Day 3 of the Encampment of the New Message from God. The fact that he elaborated on this idea in his remarks on the October 5 webcast demonstrates that he really meant to say this on the evening of October 4. The phrase Marshall used was
“…the correction of hell and damnation…”
The New Message from God categorically rejects the idea of the damnation, or eternal punishment, of sinners. I confess to you that there was a time when I believed such a rejection to not only be wrong, but a hazard to the salvation of sinners. What sinner needs to be saved if the thing they need to be saved from doesn’t exist? Furthermore, the New Message from God rejects the very idea of sinners. I believe the New Message from God characterizes sinners as “erring, suffering, bewildered future saints in need of assistance.”
Step 26, “My errors give birth to my Knowledge” in Steps to Knowledge says a great deal in relatively few words about the nature of error. The word “sinner” is used exactly once in Steps to Knowledge, and the word “sinful” is used exactly once, in this paragraph from Step 241, “My anger is unjustified.”
“Anger, then, is not justified, for it is a misinterpretation of a true communication. Your anger is not justified because anger is born of confusion. Yet, confusion calls for preparation and the true application of Knowledge. Therefore, the sinful are not punished but are attended to. The wicked are not sent to hell but are prepared for Heaven. This is the true nature of God’s purpose in the world. That is why God can never be angry, because God is not offended. God is merely applying God to a situation where God has temporarily been forgotten.”
The 19th-century Irish writer Oscar Wilde wrote “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” One of the turns on the road to that future is the correction of hell and damnation.
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