HOME

ABOUT BVMC

Who We Are
Ministry
History
Organizations
Vocations
Our Patron
Weekly Bulletin
Solomons Wish

PARISH INFO

Photos
Join our Mail List
Bingo
Hall Rental
Links
Directions
Contact Us
Children's Coloring Pages

Final Salvation

Our church believes in the possibility of final salvation for all as expressed in the following biblical texts:

"Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." John 12:31-32 (NIV)

"And all mankind will see God's salvation." Luke 3:6 (NIV)

"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." Titus 2:11 (NIV)

"He [Jesus] must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets." Acts 3:21 (NIV)

"For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he "has put everything under his feet." Now when it says that "everything" has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all." 1 Corinthians 15:22-28 (NIV)

We Reject the notion of Eternal Hell

When we can accept that the human moral condition is relative (dependent upon individual circumstance) and not universal (an inherited, natural, original sin), then our interpretation of salvation is also changed and affected.

We have long accepted that notions such as devils and demons are more the mind-set of a pre-scientific society than they are descriptions of actual supernatural beings whose sole purpose is to counteract the will of God.  Even Jesus spoke in the language of His day and cannot be expected to express psychological or medical prognoses of abnormal behavior.

We believe that salvation is dependant primarily upon one factor: the love of God. Whether saint or sinner, the gates of heaven open only because of the love of God as manifested in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Our personal moral response to that love is what will lead us toward those gates or away from them.

Our Church does not deny the teaching of punishment after death, but we do not accept that this punishment is eternal. The justice of God demands recompense, but the love of God forbids the motive of revenge. God punishes to correct, not to destroy. Therefore, eternal punishment would serve no corrective purpose, but instead, it would be God's revenge for a sinful life. This our Church does not accept.

Heaven’s gates do not open automatically.

A person becomes morally worthy of passing through these gates when he or she accepts the need for the love of God, whether in this life or after a period of spiritual awakening in the next. We believe that the Savior, who accepted the cross on Golgotha for sinners would never say, "You’re too late." Ours is not a universal salvation upon demand, but a potential for all to be saved since we are all dependent upon the unfathomable love of God!

The Question of Eternal Punishment

by Bishop Francis Hodur

We cannot conceive that God created man out of sheer caprice, nor selfishness, (as various theological systems, drawn up according to the model of present day political and social relations, interpret the matter) nor for the purpose of delivering him to the devils for them to abuse and treat him cruelly by physical and spiritual torment and torture; nor would He destroy, bring to naught and erase His own work, the child of His mind, love and power, but He created man that he should live his own life according to his Creator's image. Therefore man thinks and acts, yearns to possess more and more of the sum total of light, truth, love, creative energy and happiness. To attain these Divine purposes man had been given the capacity, the means and a period of time sufficiently long for him to reach the appointed goal. In the aim of this endeavor, the Lord God leaves man with a free will so that his acts may have a moral value, that he may of his own self, think, feel, act, save himself.

[Editor's Note: The passage above "...that he may of his own self, think, feel, act, save himself." does not mean to imply that man saves himself.  Man is saved by the grace of God through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Man must however cooperate in that he must make a free choice, accepting God's grace and salvation by choosing to come into a relationship with God.  Bishop Hodur's treatise on Spiritual Rebirth explores this concept more fully.  See "Our Way of Life"]

God did not create man perfect, but relatively weak; yet He infused man's being with a spark of longing for perfection; a sort of germ of eternal life, impulse, creative power; which brings it to pass that man goes on through the centuries, from stage to stage, continually climbing higher, developing and approaching perfection both as an individual and as the human species. Since man is not omniscient nor all powerful and does not know fully the laws that govern his physical and spiritual nature, he often deviates from the sure path of life; he goes astray, struggles, falls then rises with sorrow, relives the whole immensity of his physical, moral and spiritual experiences, until cleansed through these sufferings and struggles, through these creative thoughts, through toil and yearning, he enters upon the way of partial liberation and then in due time, that of a freer, more perfected existence, until at last he becomes united with the goal of his life — God.

Some people attain this goal sooner, even in this temporal life, others later; some in a higher others in a lower degree, depending on the manner in which they make use of the Divine gifts of will, intellect, inspiration and of the meditations of Jesus Christ and His Church.

In Holy Scripture and especially in the Books of the New Testament, we find numerous accounts which confirm the above optimistic view concerning the gradual development and final salvation of individual man and of the whole human race.

Expressions such as: eternal fire, undying worm, fiery place, depths of hell, place of torment, outer darkness where there shall be wailing and the gnashing of teeth, a lake burning with fire full of brimstone and pitch and similar phrases, are expressive illustrations, having the purpose of depicting the greatness of guilt and punishment for sinners; but were not meant to indicate hell in the Roman Catholic sense of the term. Such an eternal hell as taught by the Roman Catholic Church was not known either by the Pagan people, the Jewish synagogue nor the Christians of the first centuries and it was not until the Fourth General Lateran Council held in the year 1215 AD that it was finally decided that "the wicked receive with the devil eternal punishment; and the good with Christ, eternal glory.

Christ our Lord, speaking to the Jewish people, made use of their language, employing phrases and illustrations familiar to them that He might appeal to their imagination, understanding and feelings. Thus, in order to point out to these people the greatness of sin and its punishment, by choosing an example of this sort. He compares that punishment to Gehenna, that is, that place on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where in former times sacrifices had been made to the Syrian god Moloch; it was later used for burning the city refuse, so that over it rose continually black clouds of smoke mingled with fiery red flames and from it issued fetid and suffocating fumes; so that it was a place of horror and oppressiveness.

The Greek adjective “aionios” used by the Evangelists with the word Gehenna, does not mean everlasting, but long lasting, i.e., lasting through a certain time, through a future age, a future time. So when the Lord Jesus presented the consequences of transgressions, He did not say that they would be everlasting for ages and ages; but He wished to emphasize that those consequences would undoubtedly befall sinners in the future and that they would be of a severe and grave nature.