Second General Pastor

…Cohesive Force---Not Religion but Salvation

1951

            The Full Salvation Union is not like the various religious sects and denominations in Christendom.  We are just what our name implies, a Full Salvation Union.  Our foundation is not religion but Salvation.  Salvation is an experience in inward conscious realization.  Religion is a theoretical conception of the mind.

            We do not insist that anyone must believe or accept certain religious theories, doctrines or ideas.  We do not care what a man’s religion might be.  We know that regardless of his religious faith or practice he needs salvation.

            There is no element of division in salvation.  Such experience is just the same the world over.  It has always been the same and always will be.  It is just like Jesus Christ—the same yesterday, today and forever.  It is so simple that a way-faring man though a fool shall not err therein.  It is life and health and joy and peace.  Even a child knows when he is saved from hatred or malice.  If he has a quarrel and gets mad at his little playmate he knows what it means to be filled with such conscious realization.  If some peace-maker patches up the quarrel so that a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation takes the place of that sense of anger the child is soon again heard to shout for joy in his play because of the changed realization within himself.  He has been saved from a bad state of mind.

            God’s desire is to save us from everything that is bad to everything that is good.  His thoughts today as he thinks of you are thoughts of kindness and mercy.  He wants to save you fully.  No matter what your condition or state of mind may be God has something far better for you.  It is your inheritance.  It is your birth-right.  He has a peace and a rest and a joy which he desires to give to you.

            Think of God.  There is nothing that disturbs him.  He has no fear.  Nothing ever causes Him one anxious moment.  He is all powerful.  Everything is under His control.  He is filled with perfect peace and rest and joy.  And He desires to give you that same rest—His rest; that same peace—His peace; that same joy—His joy.

            Oh, it is so wonderful to be lifted by the grace of God in the consciousness that fills you, up above this world of turmoil and sin and misery and doubt and fear and woe.  To be saved in the understanding within you, from everything that is wrong, from sin and condemnation and darkness and blackness, from fear and want; from selfishness and greed, from lust and passion, from hatred and suspicion, from despair!  Oh, it is wonderful beyond the power of words to express.  The only way anyone knows about it is to experience such a heavenly state.

            Religion has never saved anyone.  It often causes its possessor more distress than he had before he got it.  That is the reason we do not emphasize religion in the Full Salvation Union.  We know that it does not help anyone.  And our desire is to help everyone.  We do not want to lay on anyone a burden we cannot even carry ourselves.  We want freedom in God’s Holy Spirit.  We want help.  We want salvation.

            Salvation unites.  It is love.  It is God.  It is Christ.  There is no element of division in it.  If you do not have a feeling sense of love toward all, you are not really at rest and you need to be lifted by God’s grace into this great Full Salvation Union.

            Religion has divided God’s people.  It has caused the bloodiest wars in the history of the world.  It has been the instigator of the greatest crimes against humanity.  Read your church history.  Turn its bloody pages.  Hear again the cries of the millions who have been tortured and murdered in the name of religion.  Why right here in America just a relatively short time ago, it hung pert little Mary Dyer by the neck on Boston Common until she was dead.  Think of it!  Our Puritan fathers came to this country seeking a place where they could worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience.  And yet simply because little Mary Dyer did not have the same religion that they did, they hung her up by the neck as a flag of warning, so they said, to others.

            And that same religious spirit still lives today.  It consigns millions of innocent little babies who do not know their right hand from their left hand to endless suffering and torment.  It frowns upon all who do not bow down before its gods of words and phrases and delivers them up to everlasting burnings.  It pulls its righteous robes together and thinks it does God’s service when it kills you.

            Oh, my heart goes out to the multiplied millions of deluded souls who today are burning right here in this world in the religious hells of their own making.  How foolish it is.  Oh how foolish it is when there is such a wonderful heaven of love and rest from every care so near.  How I thank God that He has lifted me out of such miry clay and guided me into this glorious Full Salvation Union.

            Many religious zealots today are filled with the same spirit that possessed Jonah.  They think as he did that just because God has blessed and honored many people who have subscribed to their peculiar religious views that means that they are absolutely right.  It is a source of great discomfort to them when God blesses someone who does not have their kind of religion.  They go away and pout about it or else attribute it as did the Pharisees to the devil.

            If ever anyone had a right to be dogmatic, Jonah did.  His inspiration from the Almighty was good but his religion was bad.  It caused him to go out under a juniper tree and pout instead of rejoicing over the salvation that had come to that great city of Nineveh.  And men are still just like that.  If God blesses someone who believes in a different system of religion than that to which they subscribe most people are not pleased.  THEY WOULD RATHER HAVE THEIR RELIGION STAND AND ALL THE WORLD GO DOWN TO HELL THAN TO HAVE THEIR RELIGION FALL AND THE WORLD TO BE SAVED.

            The Full Salvation Union is not like that.  We believe in Salvation.  We want more and more of it.  That is what the world needs.  We do not need to worry about our religion.  God has an eternity to get us all straightened out as to our theories.  But today is the day of Salvation!  If ye hear his voice, harden not your hearts.  The door is always open.  There is plenty of room in this glorious Full Salvation Union.