What Is Episkopos Really Teaching? Read His Own Words

[Lizbeth]

I agree. Scripture absolutely calls believers to holiness. “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16), and Jesus did say, “Be ye therefore perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

The problem is not the call to holiness. The problem is what happens when holiness is detached from the gospel and turned into another basis of acceptance with God.

Biblical holiness flows from salvation. It does not replace salvation by grace through faith. We are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10), but those good works come after Ephesians 2:8-9, where Paul makes clear that salvation is “not of works.”

I think you are right to question how he presents holiness. A true biblical doctrine can be badly distorted when it is built on a false foundation.

Amen, well said. I agree.

 

[Grailhunter]

Episkopos inspires to be a Christian leader or prophet with his own interpretations of the scriptures.....false interpretations. He is like the sweet smiling communist mayor in New York or Cheshire cat.

I worship with a lot of different denominations but the ones you have to be weary of.....
Jehovah's Witnesses....top of the list
Calvinists or Calvinist like beliefs. There is a reason that there is no official denomination called Calvinists.
Once Saved Always Saved.
Universalism.

 

[ProDeo]

Something else Episkopos is teaching:

"We are ALL bought with a price. Jesus purchased back the WORLD (and the church) with His own blood. That is NOT exclusive to believers.

Jesus paid for those who obey Him whether they know Him or not."

The Book of Remembrance

He also teach :

it means to walk in holiness and a full victory over sin. So much so that people don't even believe it exists anymore.

Cleansing by the Word

Why is it so important to have our consciences cleansed by the word of God? What is the difference between having our consciences cleansed and being washed by the Blood of the Lamb into holiness?

www.christianityboard.com

 

[NayborBear]

The premise you have presented here is grammatically understandable but theologically ambiguous and potentially contradictory to standard or common biblical-centered Christian doctrine regarding sanctification.

Hebrews 6:1

Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection*; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,

*completeness/Spiritual maturity

Unfortunately for all the "milk drinkers" that simply "refuse weaning?"
Y'all are going to see even more people like the one you are unfortunately striving so hard to label.

As the time grows ever so nearer!

(did someone say Niagara Falls? )

(going to be more VERY SURPRISED (ahem) "believers" then they give themselves credit for)

Which begs the question:
Is orthodoxy just another definition of "General Consensus (going along to get along)" or "traditions of MAN?"

You are trying to turn the discussion from your doctrine to my supposed spiritual condition. That is a diversion. If what you teach is true, then establish it from Scripture. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

And be careful with Matthew 6:23. Jesus was not giving you permission to declare everyone who challenges your teaching spiritually blind. The context concerns what a person treasures and whom he serves. Jesus immediately says, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).

You also said these songs are “confessions” revealing my purpose. You do not know the hidden purposes of my heart. God does. Scripture says the Lord “will make manifest the counsels of the hearts” (1 Corinthians 4:5).

So enough with pronouncing darkness on the person questioning you. Deal with the actual issue.

Where have I misrepresented your teaching?

Quote me.

Correct me.

Then open the Bible and show exactly where Scripture teaches what you are claiming.

If you cannot do that, calling your critic “blind” does not strengthen your doctrine. It only avoids having to defend it.

1 Corinthians 2:14
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

 

[Grailhunter]

1 Corinthians 2:14
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

This scripture brings up an interesting topic....
What does it mean? What is the natural man? Well, first off, in the 1st century spiritualism was like believing in ghosts. Christianity was a shock to the culture, even to the Jews. Scholars call Judaism a "this world" religion. The Jews had limited beliefs regarding the spirit world. They had different opinions on Sheol and believed Heaven was the abode of God and Angels only. They did not believe in Hell or the Devil and still do not.

Greco-Roman beliefs had gods and a place where they were.....Mount Olympus and Hades was a god of the underworld called Hades. The Greco-Romans closest thing to a spirit world was what they called the underworlds. The Greco-Romans gods were to themselves and did not have a relationship with the people. The people were subservient to the Greco-Roman gods.

So this verse refers to people that do not have beliefs in the spirit world and so Christianity's belief of having a personal relationship with the Deity seemed very strange to them.

 

[Pierac]

I worship with a lot of different denominations but the ones you have to be weary of.....
Jehovah's Witnesses....top of the list
Calvinists or Calvinist like beliefs. There is a reason that there is no official denomination called Calvinists.
Once Saved Always Saved.
Universalism.

You are not far from the Kingdom of God!

Three Views, Sorted by Level​

It is worth stating plainly what this chapter has and has not done, because here the method of this book meets its hardest question. The Introduction set out four levels: what the text explicitly says, what may reasonably be inferred from it, the systems built by connecting those inferences, and the traditions that have carried those systems forward. The three views of final judgment are all systems. Not one of them is stated as a system by any passage of Scripture. The question is not which view is traditional, but how much textual weight each one carries and at which level its central claims belong.

Three views have divided faithful Christians. The first is eternal conscious torment: the unredeemed exist in punishment forever. The second is conditional immortality, or annihilation: the unredeemed finally cease to exist. The third is universal restoration: judgment is ultimately redemptive, and God’s saving purpose finally embraces all. Each appeals to Scripture. Each assembles its case from passages that, taken singly, stop short of the conclusion drawn from them.

Sorted by level, they do not carry equal textual weight. What follows is that sorting, and the sorting is the argument.

Eternal Conscious Torment​

At the level of the text, eternal conscious torment rests on real passages. Matthew 25:46 sets aionios punishment beside aionios life. Mark 9:48 speaks of a worm that does not die and a fire not quenched. Revelation 14:11 has smoke rising for ages of ages, and Revelation 20:10 assigns torment day and night, for ever and ever in the conventional rendering, to the devil, the beast, and the false prophet. These are not marginal verses, and they are not easily dismissed.

At the level of inference, each requires a further step. Aionios must be shown to fix duration rather than to name the age to which each destiny belongs, which Chapter Seven found the lexicons unable to settle. Mark's line quotes Isaiah 66:24, where the worm and the fire work on corpses. Revelation's smoke image is applied in Isaiah 34:10 to an Edom that is not burning today. And the day-and-night torment of Revelation 20:10 is predicated of the devil, the beast, and the false prophet; when human beings enter the same lake four verses later, the text calls their fate the second death.

At the level of system, two supports carry most of the weight, and Chapter Seven examined both. The first is the natural immortality of the soul, which Chapter Six found to be a Greek philosophical inheritance rather than an explicit Hebrew teaching. The second is Anselm's argument that sin against an infinite God incurs infinite liability, which Scripture nowhere states. Remove those two and the passages above no longer reach the conclusion on their own.

Chapter Seven also traces a textual pressure that runs the other way. If death is the wage of sin (Romans 6:23), and if death is finally destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26; Revelation 20:14), then sin cannot go on being punished somewhere without end. That argument does not decide between the two remaining views, since a sin that is gone because the sinner is gone and a sin that is gone because the sinner has been restored both satisfy it. But it presses hard against this one.

And there is the portrait God gives of Himself: anger for a moment, mercy that endures forever (Psalm 30:5; Isaiah 54:7-8), a heart that recoils from destroying His own people (Hosea 11:8-9). Those are statements at the level of the text, spoken by God about God. Weighing them against the judgment passages is itself an act of inference, and I am not pretending otherwise. But of the three views, this is the one whose distinctive claim depends most heavily on supports the text does not supply.

Conditional Immortality​

At the level of the text, conditional immortality has the plainest vocabulary. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). The second death is called a death (Revelation 20:14). Immortality is something the redeemed put on at the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:53-54), and those who attain that resurrection cannot die anymore (Luke 20:36). Nothing comparable is said of the others, though Daniel 12:2 does speak of shame and everlasting contempt.

At the level of inference, it must argue that death means what it appears to mean rather than unending existence under wrath, and it must account for Matthew 25:46, where the same adjective governs both destinies.

At the level of system, its structure is economical. It requires no natural immortality and no infinite liability. What it does require is that God raise the dead, open the books, judge them, and then finally uncreate them. My difficulty with that sequence is philosophical rather than textual. I cannot see its purpose. That is a limit in me, not a finding about Scripture.

Universal Restoration​

At the level of the text, universal restoration rests on statements of scope. God desires all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). In Christ all will be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22). Through Him all things are reconciled (Colossians 1:20). God has consigned all to disobedience that He may have mercy on all (Romans 11:32). These are as textual as the judgment passages, and this chapter has set them out above.

At the level of inference, the case needs a step Scripture does not take. God desires all to be saved, and God accomplishes His purposes (Isaiah 46:10). The conclusion that all therefore will be saved requires that the saving desire be a decree rather than a longing that can be resisted. No passage makes that connection explicit. For that reason, restoration remains a hope here and not a certainty.

At the level of system, it must also answer Matthew 25:46, where one adjective governs both clauses, and Revelation 21:8 and 27, where the closing vision still names the lake of fire and those absent from the Lamb's book. Chapter Seven examines serious arguments for an age-related sense of aionios, but they are neither simple nor universally persuasive. This remains the strongest challenge to the reading I find most compelling.

A third text belongs beside those two, and it is harder than either. Revelation 20:7-9 narrates a rebellion at the close of the thousand years, drawn from nations that have lived under the visible reign of Christ, numbering like the sand of the sea. No disputed adjective is involved, and no question of translation. It is a narrated outcome, and it shows that sustained exposure to the reign of Christ is not presented as a mechanism that converts all who live under it. Chapter Nine sets out the surrounding difficulties. Here the point is narrower: this is the sharpest textual pressure the restoration reading faces, and a reader should weigh it before accepting the hope this chapter offers.

What the Sorting Shows​

Sorted this way, the picture is not that one view is biblical and two are not. All three are systems, and all three make inferences. What differs is how much each must supply from outside the text to reach its conclusion. Eternal conscious torment needs the most, and two of its load-bearing supports are philosophical inheritances rather than scriptural statements. That is why I do not hold it, and the reason is a matter of levels rather than of temperament.

Between the other two, I do not think the text decides. Conditional immortality is the stronger reading of the vocabulary of judgment. Universal restoration is the stronger reading of Scripture’s overarching hope. I lean toward restoration because it seems most consistent with the character God declares about Himself, and I hold that lean with open hands. Scripture gives me reason to hope, not grounds to insist. A reader who lands on annihilation has not ignored Scripture; they have weighted one set of texts more heavily than I have.

That is not a failure to conclude. It is the method doing what it was built to do. Where the text permits more than one conclusion, I do not believe we are free to pretend it compels only one, and the four levels exist precisely so that a conclusion reached at the third can be recognized for what it is.

Isaiah 54:7-8 (NIV) For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you, says the Lord your Redeemer.

Hosea 11:8-9 (NIV) How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?... My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger... For I am God, and not a man, the Holy One among you.

These are not a prophet’s observations about God’s character. They are God’s own account of the proportion between His anger and His mercy. The anger is a moment, but His compassion is everlasting. The Holy One among you, the wholly other One whose holiness drives Him toward rather than away from His people, is also the one whose heart turns within Him before the judgment is carried out. The clay does not need to understand the potter’s design. But the text does not leave the potter’s character undeclared. The clay rests in the hands of a God whose anger is brief and whose mercy never ends.

Those declarations are not inferences. They are what He said about Himself in the Scriptures above.

Taken from my up and coming book!