The reason I fell away from the Roman Catholic Church when I was in my teens was not because I did not believe in Jesus. Believing the story about Jesus being the Savior of mankind seemed like the only possibility to me for as long as I can remember. I fell away from the Roman Catholic Church because I did not believe in their requirements for salvation.

In any honest analysis, the Catholics teach salvation through your own efforts and obedience to their church along with your own perseverance in their teachings until the end. How Catholics are to do that is fully laid out in their church catechism. Getting to salvation in Roman Catholicism is a convoluted self effort and the Bible does not support their claims. Most Catholics do not see any conflict because most of them never read the Bible. It seems to me that the fear of hell keeps more Catholics in their church than any love for Jesus.

I believed in Jesus as a young boy, but I also believed in Santa Claus because lying adults influenced my thinking. Young minds have to grow and learn to distinguish truth from fantasy. For that reason, I do not believe that early childhood conversions are valid. These false conversions are the reason that most children of Christians reject their faith before they are twenty.

I have heard some early childhood converts as adults say they never doubted what they were taught, but after listening to the denominational dogma they spout, I wondered if they would today believe in Islam had they grown up in it. It is almost as if keeping the dictates of their denomination is what makes them a Christian. Many of these think their salvation comes from being true to the denomination or church that they identify with. Do they have anything more than religion?

The gospel (good news) most clearly taught by John and Paul, is that Jesus paid the full price for the sinful fallen nature of Adam’s descendants through His sacrifice on the cross. Anyone believing in God’s righteousness to redeem mankind through Jesus will be saved.

The gospel of John is clear about the way of salvation. You need hunt nowhere else to get the message that salvation comes by believing Jesus. Those pointing to obscure passages elsewhere to try to refute this truth, do so because they never learned understanding. They often cannot discern the difference between receiving salvation and how saved people should strive to live afterward.

In the gospel of John Chapter 3, Jesus sets the proper order for salvation by telling Nicodemus that nobody enters the Kingdom of God unless they are born of the Spirit. Jesus compares the Holy Spirit to wind. It invisibly goes wherever it pleases. God apparently only saves those created to be saved. These people will hear the Gospel and believe.

In Chapter 3 verse 18 of John Jesus said, “he that does not believe is condemned already“. Only believers will be saved out of this fallen world. The verses that follow are saying that evil people will not come to the light and be saved because they love darkness. They are of their father the Devil. The darkness in the world is why the world is condemned already. Those that love the fallen world will never be receptive to the gospel because they are of the evil one.

John 5:24 says, those that hear the words of Jesus and believe in God has everlasting life. You cannot lose the life given to you by something you later do or don’t do.

5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

Notice the passage says that those hearing the words of Jesus and believing God are already given eternal life. It does not say they get that life after baptism, or after doing whatever your religion says you must do to obtain eternal life. Those adding anything further to salvation are contradicting the very words of Jesus. The Temple veil was ripped in two after Jesus paid the price for sin showing that the way to God was no longer veiled. The way to the Father is through Jesus (Mt 27:51).

The 3,000 souls added to the Church on Pentecost because they heard the gospel and believed, did not later lose their salvation because they were not living out a lordship salvation lifestyle. There are many examples in the book of Acts that make it clear that people were saved when they heard the Gospel and believed. There is no suggestion in Acts that any of those that heard and believed were false converts. The false converts came in later when worldly people joined with established churches for their own worldly reasons.

John 6:37 clearly says that all the Father gives to Jesus will come to Jesus and He will not cast any of them out. Jesus also makes it clear that some are not of the Father. Obviously the Father is not giving everyone on earth to Jesus. If the people were of the Father, they would hear and trust in Jesus. The fact that many people do not believe Jesus proves that all people are not of God.

One of the great errors some Christians are teaching is that all humans are made in the image of God, and all can be saved, if the gospel is just somehow adequately explained to each of them. The wording in Genesis actually suggests that man was created to be imagers of God. Once Adam and Eve fell into sin and knew evil they could no longer be the imagers of God that He created them to be.

Jesus is the very image of God (2 Co 4:4). Jesus came to redeem what was lost in His creation. He took on a human body, paid the price for sin, and then rose His human body from the dead as the image of God. Descendants of Adam must become one with Him to be risen imagers of God. This is the way we get back to our created role. The Bible talks about there being wheat and tares on the earth. The tares are the sons of the evil one. They are Satanic plants. The tares will never come to God to be saved.

Parsing the difference between wheat and tares on earth is difficult, but here is my take on the analogy. I think wheat are the people created by God to become the sons of the light. The wheat also can be called sheep or lost sheep. All of them will come to hear and believe the voice of the One who planted them. Some wheat will grow strong and add to the harvest and other wheat will not grow much and will add little. The tares on the other hand, look like the wheat God planted, but they are satanic counterfeits.The tares also are called goats. Tares are satanic plants only fit to be gathered and burned. The tares can imitate what God planted in most every way except tares thrive in darkness. They hate the light. They are ever learning but never able to come to the truth.

One of the reasons unbelieving friends and family members may not come to mind in eternity is that we will learn that they were never part of God’s plan. They grew among us and just acted out a role programed by the Devil. It’s like an alien human race was planted among what God planted. The big question is how can you tell the difference? The wheat will receive the Light, but the tares want darkness. Given enough room the tares will grow and try to block out all light coming from God. The tares have an alternate demonic reality and they will not receive the truth. Just look at the Satanic world system that we are living in.

Wheat can be choked out where tares flourish. As tares take over the field they show their true colors. The prime example of that happening in the fallen world in these last days is every facet of leftism. Many Christians teach we should not be involved in the political affairs of the world, but any true Christian should know that tares will continue to grow and try to choke out the wheat until the harvest at the end of the age. It is the leftists in these last days that are trying to get authoritarian control over the whole world, and it is the leftists that are warring against God’s people. We should not be giving up ground so tares can grow.

In support of what I am saying, Jesus said to those that would not believe. He who is of God hears God’s words, therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God (John 8:47). In this passage and many others, Jesus was clearly saying that many of the religious leaders are sons of he Devil.

I hate to break the news to western churches, but many of their leaders are tares brought in as hirelings. Where in the Bible does it even suggest that churches should take in hirelings right out of Bible colleges and instantly make them pastors and elders? Many believers in the West do not go to church or participate in church programs because churches have become unbiblical worldly institutions. Many “church leaders” are worldly people and not even a member of the true Church.

Jesus presented Himself to the religious leaders of His nation but they rejected Him. And it is the religious leaders of the past and of our time that reject the simple gospel of salvation. They pose as great spiritual figures and experts of theology, but they reject what Jesus actually taught in the Bible about how people are saved. Many religious leaders just want to put others under their bondage. The vast majority of Christendom is now under the control of those peddling considerable false theology. I came out of the false theology of Roman Catholicism to see false theology come to dominate Protestantism and now even many of those calling themselves Evangelicals or Pentecostals.

John 6:36 could not be any clearer. Jesus said, “all that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” He also says in verse 39 and 40.

This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

What is it about this passage that religious leaders fail to understand? God draws people to Jesus and Jesus saves all the Father gives Him. It is clear from this passage and many others, that there is no way the saved can be lost, and there is no way anyone can be saved through any effort of their own.

In John 6:47 Jesus says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.” This life already is given to those that believe in Jesus. It is not something you get from obedience or persevering until the end like many are teaching. Everlasting life comes to those that believes in Jesus, period. Those without understanding often misapply passages confusing sanctification with salvation.

John 10: 26-27 But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.

How than can religious leaders say Jesus will tell Christians to depart from Him and that He never knew them because they were not doing enough good works (Matt 7)? In context this judgment is not talking about the judgment of Christians. It is talking about about the judgment of Pharisaical leaders expecting to get in through doing the law, keeping traditions and good works. Theologians believing in Dominion Theology and Replacement Theology often take prophetic passages like these out of context because they have no understanding of the prophetic scriptures. They most often also do not believe that believers have eternal security.

The truth is that all that the Father draws come to Jesus and they receive eternal life. However, not all saved will live lives on earth pleasing to Jesus. Many build on the house of God with straw. Their works will be burned up but they will be saved. The saved should strive to build with something valuable because such works determine eternal rewards and eternal positions of authority. Nevertheless, those given eternal life have that life regardless of the material they build with. Being disciplined by God and appearing before the judgment seat of the saved for what they did in their bodies, should be what keeps believers up at night, not whether or not they are saved.

Theologians and Christian leaders need to stick with scriptures understood in proper context. They should not be twisting scripture to make it conform to theology taught to them. The way of salvation is clearly taught well over a hundred times in scripture. We are saved by belief (trusting faith) in Jesus period. Read the gospel of John without the distortion of preconceived theology, and nothing could be clearer. Believers persevere because they are saved, not because aberrant teachers say perseverance is required to be saved.