Introduction

This is going to be a long introduction because there is an awful (or should I say awe-full?) lot to say. I believe that this is one of the most serious pieces I have written, involving the very solemn subject of the stealing of souls. This is a work of Apologetics in the spirit of “ἕτοιμοι δὲ ἀεὶ πρὸς ἀπολογίαν παντὶ τῷ αἰτοῦντι ὑμᾶς λόγον περὶ τῆς ἐν ὑμῖν ἐλπίδος” – “hetoimoi de aei pros apologian panti tō aitounti hymas logon peri tēs en hymin elpidos” – “Always be prepared to give a defence [apologia] to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). Peter also adds “in meekness and fear”. I can assure you that I am filled with much trepidation and I do not do this lightly.

Although no one here has asked me the reason for the hope that is in me, I am duty-bound to respond with an ‘apologia’ when someone has referred to that hope as an illusion — especially when they are falsely citing the words of Christ in support. For that hope is an intrinsic part of faith, my faith, which has been on quite a ride over the years. Faith and hope are intimately related and come together in this saying: “Faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). The Greek word translated as “assurance” there is ὑπόστασις, hypostasis, which has these similar meanings: Confidence, essence, reality and, above all, substance. Faith makes hope substantial; it gives it substance, makes it into reality. It makes certain the spiritual elements that we cannot see. Those who do not have such faith will never understand this, which is why they will always seek to tear it down. Bear all this in mind as we navigate this article together today.

The reason I am writing this piece you are now reading is this: Recently, I saw a post on the social media application that I call “Fakebook” (for obvious reasons) which was entitled “14 Ways Christianity Got Jesus Wrong”. Looking through it, I immediately recognised it as being a classic example of how people become sucked into false religious teaching. So I checked out the author of this sneaky piece — a guy called Jim Palmer — and I saw that his big claim is that he used to be an “evangelical megachurch pastor” who became disillusioned with religion and churches so he became a humanist, now teaching that when Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” in John 14:6, what He apparently really meant was this: “No one comes into conscious union with ultimate reality through the paradigm of separation”. What a load of New Age gobbledygook! (I can say this because I was for many years in the New Age scene before coming to Christ in the mid-1980s and had soaked up many such inane sayings that I willingly left behind when I recognised them as the gobbledygook that they are).

In fact this guy was originally a pastor at the vast megachurch called Willow Creek Community Church which was renowned for entertaining the goats rather than feeding the sheep through its “seeker-sensitive” philosophy! Then he went off to start his own megachurch version of Willow Creek in Nashville, based on the same principles as Willow Creek. Six years ago he turned his back on the whole Christian scene, rejected the supernatural. and now runs his own outfit “deconstructing” religion (in particular, Christianity) and promoting a regional “humanist society”. After he left his megachurch in Nashville it then became defunct and no longer exists (because a local church needs to be built by the Holy Spirit rather than being the pet project of an unbeliever with wayward ideas).

Apparently, there were two devastating events in the lives of church members which made him “step back and question everything he taught about God”. The first was “a revelation that a staff member was beating a spouse”. The second was:

“when a mother-to-be, bolstered by his sermons that anything is possible with God if you have enough faith, believed her unborn child with a fatal disorder could survive. The infant died soon after birth, and the mother blamed herself” (https://eu.tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2017/11/30/former-evangelical-pastor-nashville-humanist-group/899723001/ ).

If you are a pastor, there are ways of dealing with the first situation of spousal abuse without packing up your faith altogether! It must therefore have been a flimsy faith (likely none at all) for him to go off the rails just because of that. Professing “Christians” can do bad things. I could share with you a catalogue of them from my own times as a pastor! The couple involved therefore needed some serious counselling, not to mention appropriate police intervention. Regarding the second incident, that pastor was entirely to blame for filling the mother’s head with his evil charismatic teaching. It was his false teaching which led to the mother’s despair. What was necessary was for him to profoundly repent and step down from ministry — at least until he had been straightened out. There was no need to ostensibly abandon the faith because of it and cease to believe in the supernatural. He just needed to become a genuine disciple of Christ (and he still does today).

So what happened was that this guy abandoned the faith which he apparently never had in the first place (because one cannot lose genuine faith) and then (because they always have to continue being a ‘leader’ (even a false one) he simply got involved in a new religion (in which many others participate these days because it’s trendy) called “Religious Deconstruction” — a secular humanist mashup designed to entrap unwary and vulnerable “Christians”. While his stated premise that Jesus did not come to start a religion is true — which resonates with many who have seen through that — to then claim that all Christian teaching is not from Jesus but from Paul and thereby reject it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I put it to you that this whole “Deconstruction” movement — through which the words and teachings of Jesus are twisted and thereby neutralised — is rooted in a shrewd satanic ‘bait and switch’ tactic, in that it attracts disillusioned or thoughtful people with the bait of a few big truths (e.g., Jesus didn’t come to start a religion) but it then blindsides them with a massive plethora of false teachings that undermine everything unique about their faith.

But here’s the thing: You can “deconstruct” religion but you cannot deconstruct Christ, because He and His words are indestructible (Matthew 24:35). That is the beauty of it. You can twist them, misquote them, misapply them, deny them, and wilfully ignore them. But that will come back to bite you in your spiritual butt bigtime. Ultimately, if you persist, it will be your destruction. Being so presumptuous as to attempt to de-construct Christ and His words will de-struct the one doing so (Matthew 21:44b).

The supreme irony is that “Deconstructionism” is itself just another religion. But imagine making a religion out of false claims about what Christ said and didn’t. That is just nuts! Imagine even more being so darned gullible that you actually believe the people who are plying you with all this easily debunked falsehood! False teachers would have no clientele if wilful ignorance was not so widespread. If you expose false teachers, you are far more likely to receive abuse from their prey than from the false teachers. That is precisely how cults sustain themselves. The devotees have so much to lose because you are taking away the false narrative which is propping up their lives and which they have chosen to elevate to the status of truth. If people responded positively to the instruction to “acquire wisdom” because it is the first fruits of everything else (Proverbs 4:7), there would be a lot less baloney in and on the fringes of the Christian scene.

You will see that the claims of the “Deconstructionist” internet teachers, such as the one I am examining today, work rather like the deep-sea Anglerfish (see top image, above) which uses a very visible organ dangling in front of itself as bait in order to attract and mesmerise other fish, which it then gobbles up. Or maybe rat poison would give you an even better image (see bottom image, above). The rice is dusted in a coating of poison because rats would not eat the dust but they will eat the rice which is covered in the dust. The rice is the bait. The dust is the poison. The rats thought they were just eating rice but that was just the beginning of their being deceived. So some few of the claims of the “Deconstructionists” are actually true. But they are just the bait. The sea of claims which come after that are the poison. So if you take the bait, it is already too late.

My thought is that the guy whose claims I am going to be examining below was never really regenerated. He cannot have been, otherwise he would not have fallen away to this terrible degree, for no one can snatch Jesus’ sheep out of His hand (John 10:28). This is a classic case where one can truly say, “He went out from us because he never really was one of us” (1 John 2:19). Now he is trying to pollute and confuse the minds of the gullible. Unregenerated people who are teaching in this vein are clandestinely envious of the true faith of the saints and they do everything that they can to undermine that faith. He especially appeals to those in the Christian scene who are disillusioned with rote religion or a boring, somewhat superficial unspiritual church life, or who have been abused in some way in churches, or who are not good at fitting in. Gradually he convinces them that true Christianity has nothing to do with the supernatural but is all about love and peace and bringing everyone together in a working unity in a Jesus that he has concocted so as to make this world a better place. The juggling of Scripture involved is absolutely phenomenal, as I will show below.

Unsurprisingly, he has 136,000 people following him on Fakebook, 24,000 on Substack and 4,300 on Instagram. However, surprisingly, at least nine of his followers are among my friends on Fakebook and are even subscribers to my website and Diakrisis Fakebook group! I don’t know whether that is because they want to just keep an eye on him because he is a false teacher or if they have been taken in by his spiel and are actually following his phoney teachings. I can see the appeal. The guy places himself as a champion of those who are somewhat disillusioned with organised religion. That does appeal to many — it even has done to me in the past. I’ve been there bigtime.

Around sixteen years ago I wanted to throw in the towel with the whole Christian scene after experiencing through two decades of church life the nastiness and deviousness of many professing “Christians” and discovering countless lies being told about me and others. The cruelty was phenomenal. I began to think that maybe the whole notion of Christianity was just an illusion. I still loved Christ but too many of those who claimed to be His people were nasty, conniving characters with an outward veneer of piety. I still have witnesses to all this among my friends today, who were at the time deeply shocked (and still are) by what I can only call the evil of some professing Christians in leadership roles. However, at the time I failed to realise that all of that experience was likely to have been some kind of satanic attack after writing the first edition of “The Serpent and the Cross” and publicly exposing in a major way the so-called “Toronto Blessing” in the same year of 1994. I only realised this in retrospect many years later. So I disappeared into the music scene in Sweden for seven years as a singer-songwriter before undergoing a renaissance which had me writing the spiritual autobiography, “Narrow Gate – Pathway Strait”.

Fortunately, I did not get sucked into one of the kind of ministries which I am examining here. For these guys pepper their teachings with elements which completely undermine everything that Jesus stood for and came to do. There are quite a few others today who have similar internet ministries who, like him, are drawing people into a faithless abyss with their manipulative words. I guess if one is disillusioned with religion, which is understandable (for religion is not the same as spirituality), one may be attracted to this man’s teachings because of how he positions himself. But he is one of those people who uses elements of truth to take you away with the fairies if you stick with him — and if you do, you will end up in the same secular hole as him.

I don’t normally do this kind of thing — one could call it a “takedown”. If people want to start their own New Age pseudo-christian atheist quasi-Eastern mystical secular outfit, then so be it. There’s enough of them around. It’s super-trendy and there’s loadsamoney in it too because there is no shortage of ignorant people to be suck(er)ed in. I cannot take issue with all of them or it would never stop, and I have far better things to do (e.g., Bible exposition, online counselling, investigative articles, etc)! But when they go out of their way to malign Christ with untruth and Scripture-twisting so as to deceive vulnerable people, a line has been overstepped and I am duty-bound to step in.

I’m ready for hassle now because in the religious scene if you rumble folks they always run a vendetta against you, sticking it to you, throwing shade at you, digging dirt on you, building a cascade of lies — believe me, I know how it goes and I am utterly fed up of it. These people are very immature and easily get bent out of shape. They are very easily triggered because they have never really ‘done the work’ on their own messes. More than a couple of decades ago, I wrote a book review which ruffled the feathers of one of the many self-styled female internet teachers (calling herself a “Watchman”🙄), so the knives came out and she then began a bitter campaign of outrageous lies against me. There is a lot of what I can only call “professional jealousy” in the ‘ministry’ scene. I had never experienced anything so evil before, even in the secular world. So I’ve just had enough of that whole fiasco. It can go to hell, where it belongs.

Anyway, what I am going to do here is take a sample post of this guy and show how sneakily he misrepresents Jesus, for it is an archetype of all the others like him who operate what I call a “ministry of enticement” which tries to sabotage and shipwreck true faith by preying on the disillusioned, the abused, and the questioning mavericks and renegades from the Christian scene. By the way, those are exactly the types of people for whom I created this ministry of Diakrisis some thirty-six years ago, so as to pick them up before they fall and then build them up again in the true faith. It’s in my mission statement.

As a result, for many years I have counselled a large number of confused, hurting and disillusioned people. Not that I think that I’m anything special. It’s just that many need a sympathetic ear from someone who can empathize with their concerns and I have been there — I have “got the T-shirt and made the video”. I love seekers of truth. I especially love damaged seekers of truth, if that doesn’t sound too weird. For when one seeks truth and/or proclaims it, one gets damaged. Mostpeople do not expect that. They think all they have to do is seek out truth and tell everyone and bingo! Utopia! But quite the opposite is true. In fact, all hell is let loose in the demonic counterblast against truth. For this is a world of lies, in which almost everything generated by humans is fake.

I realised that there was a much-needed ministry to disenfranchised disciples of Christ, of which there are a great many today. I am referring to those who do not fit into the standard “Christian” straitjacket — those who aren’t remotely interested in signing on the dotted line for membership in a church (for they know too much to fall into that trap) — those who have been abused in churches because they dared to ask too many questions or because they saw right through the artifice of some of the heavy players — those who are into true spirituality rather than outward religious forms — those who want to be simple disciples of Christ rather than become part of a sect — those who have no interest in signing up to confessions, creeds and catechisms — those who think that megachurches are an abomination — those who have no desire to get involved in any of the nonsensical “Christian” bandwagons (e.g. ‘Rapture’, phony healing, gibberish ‘tongues’, ‘spirit baptism’ antics, etc.) — those who realise that ‘doctrine’ (teaching) is only of any value if it makes you a more loving and compassionate human being who has worked on him/herself and grown out of immature behaviour patterns. In other words, I’m referring to all those who rightly regard the greater part of the visible Church to be a bit of a madhouse and a terrible witness concerning what Christ really represents.

One has to be so careful about getting involved with “Christian” organisations, which range from happy-clappy to rigid fundamentalist, or from wishy-washy evanjellycal to po-faced heavy doctrine freak. I also had a very interesting time working as a pastor for 8+ years in two churches, and experienced first-hand the way that one or two (or even a few) devious people can influence those around them. Most churchgoers are astonishingly naive and can have their minds pulled in any direction by unscrupulous people as easily as leaves blown by the wind. Back in those days, the behaviour of these people had a negative effect on me, as I mentioned above, though I learned a great deal about the quirks and corruptness of human nature. However, now it is all like water off a duck’s back.

My reason for sharing all this with you here is because I want to show that I can empathise with the kind of disillusionment which Mr. Palmer expresses. However, he has used it to position himself as an underminer of the faith of others. My period of disillusionment only ultimately strengthened my faith. That was plainly its purpose: My desert experience. Mr. Palmer often makes blanket statements about Christianity which are only really applicable to phoney “believers” in mainstream denominations or other liberal outfits. That way, he can create a straw man about what genuine disciples believe. My hugely helpful insight was to realise that there are far more “tares” (darnel, Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43) in the visible church than genuine disciples of Christ. I had made the mistake of thinking that the visible church is the suburbs of heaven. But that label only applies to the body of Christ, genuine disciples of His. The bad thinking and behaviour of so many professing Christians is directly attributable to this takeover by so many impostors, which has gone from bad to worse (cf. 2 Timothy 3:13). Mr. Palmer’s disillusionment with Christianity seems to have no awareness of this conflict of incongruity in the visible church. For only a person of faith can perceive that.

In his post entitled “14 Ways Christianity Got Jesus Wrong”, Mr. Palmer makes a series of statements which sum up his anti-Christ philosophy. He also put out another post entitled “10 Things about Christianity that Jesus Would Vehemently Dispute if he Returned”. I have used a few of those too among his other false claims. Where there is duplication between the two posts, I will simply conflate the two statements to give a composite picture, so we understand where this guy is coming from. Each of these seventeen elements of his teachings draws on his exact words. Some of them are true statements which are the bait to draw you in, whereas the remainder are false claims. So I’ve wound up with five Bait Claims and twelve False Claims. So here goes…

Bait Claim #1: “Jesus did not intend to be the founder of Christianity”.

No, He didn’t. And I have no truck whatsoever with the idea of one religion among many known as “Christianity”. I am a disciple of Christ, not a Christian. But this claim (like a few others) acts as the bait to pull people into a massive morass of false claims and teaching. For any genuine disciple of Christ would readily agree with this claim and thereby could assume that “this guy must be okay”. But they have failed to take into account that morass of false claims and teaching which come on the back of this tiny grain of truth.

Bait Claim #2: “Jesus never led others in saying the ‘sinner’s prayer’”.

Yeah, but so what? Neither do genuine disciples of Christ. It’s only in silly easy-believist churches that such a prayer happens. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ in the regeneration of people. A standardised “Sinner’s Prayer” not only does not take into account each individual’s situation but it presents a very superficial idea of regeneration, not to mention presenting unbiblical ideas like “invite Jesus into your heart” (believe me, Jesus needs no such invitation, as if He is dependent on you. If He wants you, He will have you!). Or then there is this: “Just say the prayer and… bang!… you are a Christian”. But it doesn’t work like that and will often give a false sense of security when there has been no real change whatsoever but just an emotional experience.

Let me give a revealing example. A guy came up to Jesus and asked Him what he must do to obtain eternal life (Matthew 19:16). Jesus did not say, “Hey, come here and pray the sinner’s prayer and then everything will be hunky-dory”. Instead, because he was a rich man, Jesus told him to go and sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, at which the guy moped off feeling sad. The “Sinner’s Prayer” type of evangelists would castigate Jesus for missing a golden opportunity! But regeneration is about so much more than reciting a few words. One does have to repent; one does have to ask God for forgiveness with all of one’s heart. But it has to be remembered that it is not the utterance of a few words that saves you but the mighty work of God in the person. The whole “Sinner’s Prayer” mentality is a product of the Pelagian or semi-Pelagian way of thinking that has taken over the Christian scene in that last couple of centuries.

So, yes, Jesus never led others in saying the ‘sinner’s prayer”, but this statement is just bait to get you on his side so that he can ply you with many untruths.

Bait Claim #3: “Jesus never organized his teachings into a belief-system”.

So what? Genuine disciples of Christ don’t have a “belief system”. So this is a Straw Man Bait Claim because it will appeal to those who are disillusioned with the Christian scene so that they then get sucked into the nihilism of the Deconstructionists. Jesus certainly showed that there are a number of things which a person must believe if they are to be His disciples. They do not constitute a “system” as such, but without belief in them one cannot be saved.

First, they must believe in Him in order not to perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Second, they must believe in Him as “the resurrection and the life” so they will live, even though they die. Everyone who lives and believes in Christ will never die (John 11:25-26). They will die in a physical sense (just as Lazarus ultimately had to die physically even though he had been raised from the dead), but they will not undergo the “second death”, which is a kind of spiritual death after physical death.

Third, Jesus said, “Unless you believe that I AM, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24). There is no “He” after “I AM” in the original Greek, even though many Bible versions insert it. Jesus is using the “I AM” name of God which was revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14 to identify Himself, just as He uses it again four verses later in v.28, and then again in v.58 when He says, “Before Abraham was, I AM”. The inescapable meaning from these three texts in that one chapter is that unless you believe that Jesus is Divine — the great “I AM” — then you will die with your sins unforgiven and thus be destined for hell, about which Mr. Palmer denies but which I shall show below that Jesus unequivocally asserts.

Fourth, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not come under judgment. Indeed, he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24; cf. John 12:44). Really hearing (which means also doing) Jesus’ word and believing that He was sent by the Father means one will have eternal life and not come under judgement — the judgement which Mr. Palmer rejects, as we will see below.

Fifth, and of course, according to Jesus, one must “repent and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15) “so that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19) — the Gospel in which Mr. Palmer does not believe and the atonement for those sins which Mr. Palmer also rejects.

All the above have nothing to do with any kind of “belief-system” but one is still to believe them all, nevertheless, because Jesus said so, therefore they must be true. Mr. Palmer is right in saying that Jesus did not “organise his teachings into a belief-system” but He laid out clearly what we have to believe so as to be saved and have one’s sins blotted out — both of which Mr. Palmer rejects. This is another Bait Claim.

Bait Claim #4: “Jesus never demanded blind obedience”.

No genuine disciple of His ever said that He did. So this is another Straw Man Bait Claim. It is not blind obedience which Christ demands but willing obedience which He calls for from His people. “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). It really is that simple. It is not “blind” obedience but willing compliance. Jesus says to the unfaithful, “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46). Jesus also said, “If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love” (John 15:10), followed by, “You are My friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14). Of course Jesus never demanded blind obedience. That is just such a silly thing to say because Christ’s disciples practise obedience consciously and willingly. However, the Gospels are full of the kind of obedience which He does demand, and His disciples love to be obedient. Jesus had explicitly told His Apostles:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you”.

Disciples of Christ are willingly obedient. There is no hardship in that. As He said Himself, “My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). This is another Bait Claim.

Bait Claim #5: “Jesus did not require people to become religious to know God”.

Correct. But what’s your point? Any true disciple of Christ knows that. This has been placed here to imply that Jesus’ people say one must be religious to know God. It is yet another Straw Man Bait Claim. If a person objects to the idea that one must become religious to know God — and there are some religious zealots in the Christian scene — that does not mean that one has to throw out the entire corpus of faith as the Deconstructionists do. One does not have to be religious in order to know God but one has to be deeply spiritual. Besides, Jim Palmer rejects the biblical idea of a God who is other than His creation and instead believes that the divine is an inseparable part of human consciousness and existence, rather than something external to us. This is a Gnostic idea about which I have written extensively in my book, “The Serpent and the Cross” (about which more below).

Now we move from the “Bait Claims” to the “False Claims”.

False Claim #1: “Jesus never taught that people are separate or separated from God”.

What a ridiculous claim! Only someone who has no knowledge of the Scriptures nor real understanding of Jesus’ message could say such a silly thing. The very basis of Jesus’ ministry was that people are separated from God and that He has come to restore that relationship. He specifically said that “separated from Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). He told parables to illustrate this separation. A classic example is the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), in which the son is described as both “dead” and “lost” (how much more separated could that be?!) until He repented to his father (standing for God) and then he was “alive” and “found”, no longer separated. The same is true of the two other parables in that chapter, the lost sheep (Luke 15:1-7) and the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10). They were “lost”. Lost means that they were separated from the sheep owner (God) and the coin owner (God). Their being “found” occurs as a result of their repentance (vv.7 & 10).

Furthermore, Jesus states that light has come into the world, but “people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19-20). Living in darkness and loving it means being blind to God’s truth and presence — that is separation. Jesus came to take away that separation in the penitent but to confirm it in those who are consistently impenitent: “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind may see and those who [think they] see may become blind” (John 9:39). After death, the latter will hear Jesus saying to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!” (Matthew 7:23) — the ultimate in separation.

The whole of the Bible is about the problem of human separation from God and how Jesus was to come and show how that separation can be bridged — ultimately issuing in the new heaven and new earth, the new creation, when a loud voice from the throne of God says, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). Separation healed.

So Jim Palmer’s statement that “Jesus never taught that people are separate or separated from God” is not merely a mis-statement but a devious little lie. Lying about the conditions surrounding salvation is a serious sin verging on blasphemy.

False Claim #2: “Jesus did not die on the cross to fix humankind’s sin problem”.

Another lie. I don’t know which planet this guy is living on but it sure isn’t the same one as me! He is denying the plain evidence of Jesus’ atonement. He does not understand it because he is an unbeliever and always has been. Therefore, he has no real right to make pronouncements about it on a public platform, let alone draw people into a web of unbelief through those pronouncements.

Jesus made it quite plain that He did die on the cross “to fix mankind’s sin problem” (though that is rather a crude way of putting it). Jesus stated that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45). The term “ransom” is the translation of the Greek word λύτρον, lutron, which literally meant the ransom-money (price) to free a slave and is thereby illustrative of liberation from enslavement to sin. Furthermore, during the Last Supper, Jesus passed the cup around and said, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).This directly linked His imminent death to the eradication of, and cleansing from, human sin.

Again, after His resurrection, linking His suffering and death on the cross to the forgiveness of sins, Jesus said to His disciples, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and in His name repentance and forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46-47).

Jesus even referred to an Old Testament event to explain His atoning crucifixion, saying, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). God had told Moses to make a fiery serpent and put it on a pole so that anyone who had been bitten by one of the snakes God had sent in judgement would live (Numbers 21:8-9). Who knew that this obscure event from long ago would serve as a typological allegory about the crucifixion? The whole world has been “bitten by a snake”, as it were, in that they are “under the power of the evil one (Satan, the serpent)” (1 John 5:19). But if they trust in Jesus’ atonement (the Son of Man being “lifted up” on the cross), then they will be healed from the ‘venom’ of that snake bite (which involves enslavement to sin and undergoing the second death).

All the above is Basic Christianity 101, based entirely on Jesus’ own words. But this guy shoots his mouth off against it and thereby shoots himself in both feet!

False Claim #3: “That the religion bearing Christ’s name was conceived by the theories and doctrines of Paul, instead of the truth that Jesus lived and demonstrated”.

The claim is effectively that if Paul said something that Jesus didn’t say then it must be false. But that claim in itself is based on both false logic and a failure to understand the whole movement of soteriological history. I am showing here — and will continue to do so below — how most of these false claims have been posed because the author of them has no understanding of how the knowledge and teaching of the faith has developed over a period of time. Paul and the other Apostles did not create a bogus religion with no relation to the teachings of Jesus but Jesus appointed them to develop those teachings of His. This is what these Deconstructionists just do not understand.

When Jesus was alive, the Apostles were not yet ready to receive Jesus’ deeper teaching. He specifically said so: “I still have much to tell you, but you cannot yet bear to hear it” (John 16:12). There was much more for them to learn, but it could not happen until the Spirit was sent to complete that shortfall of teaching, as He specifically said to them: “All this I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you” (John 14:25-26). This is why the Deconstructionists’ philosophy is so terribly inadequate. They want to limit Jesus’ teaching only to what Jesus explicitly said when He was alive (and even then, they do it in a truncated or twisted manner), thereby presenting an entirely inadequate body of teaching of the faith.

When Jesus died and just after, the Apostles had a very scant understanding of the Atonement. They could identify Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16:16), but they had no understanding about the nuts and bolts of soteriology — how Jesus saves and about the nature of the kingdom of God. Some of that was taught to them by Jesus Himself after His resurrection: “After His suffering, He presented Himself to them with many convincing proofs that He was alive. He appeared to them over a span of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). The rest of what needed to be understood and transmitted abroad, so that even we would become aware of it centuries later, would be developed by the Apostles after the Spirit had come, written into Scripture, preserved through the ages and compiled into the Bible. But this is why the Deconstructionists want to drive a huge wedge between what Jesus explicitly said and what the Apostles (under the Spirit’s guidance) later developed. They want you to believe that the words of the Apostles was them acting off their own bat rather than under spiritual guidance by the Spirit of Christ because the meat of our faith and our understanding of it was developed by those Apostles under Jesus’ direction. If they can block the teaching of the Apostles on the false basis that it does not reflect Jesus’ teaching, then the fullness of the marrow of faith has been removed.

I ask you honestly: In whose interests is that likely to be? These Deconstructionists, most likely unwittingly, are agents of Satan standing between confused “Christians” and the truth of Christ which was developed by the Apostles. This enables the Deconstructionists to confine their followers solely to such things as The Sermon on the Mount and instructions to “love one another”, while neglecting entirely the teachings on “the deep things of God” which were not only encapsulated in other words of Jesus which the Deconstructionists ignore, but were of necessity developed later by the Apostles (though Jesus also said much more than the Deconstructionists would have you believe). This is because the Deconstructionists have no concept of the supernatural, which is what was at work in the development of Christian teaching and a deep understanding of the faith by the Apostles subsequent to the ascension of Jesus and the compilation of all that into the Bible.

This is why the Deconstructionists’ claim that the Christian body of truth “was conceived by the theories and doctrines of Paul, instead of the truth that Jesus lived and demonstrated” is a complete lie. The writings of Paul were a continuation and expansion of what Jesus had taught, lived and demonstrated. This is also why the philosophy of the Deconstructionists is of the ‘spirit of the Antichrist’ rooted in a kind of ‘Jesus cult’ based even on a completely inadequate understanding of the true teachings of Jesus which, as we shall see, are the opposite of the Deconstructionists’ claims.

False Claim #4: “Jesus’ vision for a transformed society, which he called the “kingdom of God”, got twisted into an afterlife fantasy about heaven. But Jesus never taught heaven as an afterlife location”.

Firstly, Jesus never had a “vision for a transformed society” this side of the day of judgement. He did not seek simply to reform earthly society or establish a perfect political utopia here. (That’s what the Zealots wanted to do, but He would have no truck with that lot!). He was not here to transform this world into a paradise. He knew very well that this world is run by evil people and that His real message would only be received by comparatively few. As He said: “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14).

Although He most certainly did want to create a ‘new breed’ of humans who were dedicated to righteousness and true holiness, He also knew very well that this ‘new breed’ would be subject to hatred and persecution and would not be accepted in this evil world (Matthew 10:22; John 15:18-20; 17:14). His mission was first and foremost spiritual, focused on offering personal salvation through reconciliation with God. What Jesus called “the kingdom of God” refers to the reign of God over everything which — while beginning in people’s hearts after their regeneration on this present earth — would find its true fulfilment in the new heaven and new earth, the future new creation.

In human terms, the kingdom of God is the spiritual reign of God over the inward and outward lives of those who willingly submit to the authority of God. Those who do not submit to God’s authority have no part in the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is spiritual. It is not something which one builds on earth through political or social action. That is just a humanistic Social Gospel/Liberation Theology idea. As Jesus said, “The kingdom of God does not come through outward observation” (Luke 17:20). It has nothing to do with a transformed global society. In fact, Jesus clearly stated, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36)!

Therefore what Jesus called “the kingdom of God” had nothing to do with followers of Jesus (or Buddha, in Mr. Palmer’s view) creating a transformed society on this present earth. Mr. Palmer seems to equate Jesus with Buddha, which will be why he can have no real understanding about the spiritual kingdom to which Jesus refers, as there is no room in that kingdom for the followers of the character known as Buddha. According to Mr. Palmer, Jesus and Buddha reached the truth through their life experience:

“One of the reasons I have great respect for Jesus and Buddha is that they came to their truth through their own journey and experiences of living, and followed the truth they found deep within themselves and the world” (https://jimpalmerauthor.substack.com/p/how-free-can-we-be ).

That statement should tell you all you need to know about whether Mr. Palmer is fit to minister to disillusioned Christians who need some input from genuine disciples of Christ rather than humanistic “Christian Atheists” (as Mr. Palmer refers to himself). Jesus did not ‘come to His truth through his own journey and experiences of living’. That is an utterly ridiculous thing to say. Jesus was not gradually coming to a knowledge of the truth through His experiences. Jesus spoke what the Father taught Him (John 8:28). Jesus said, “My teaching is not My own. It comes from Him who sent Me” (John 7:16; cf. 14:24). Jesus did not seek His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him (John 5:30). Jesus did not speak on His own. Instead, it was the Father dwelling in Him, performing His works (John 14:10). The Father and the Son working in tandem.

Jesus clearly said that repentance is necessary to be a part of the kingdom of God (see Matthew 4:17). One can only enter the kingdom of God personally by being “born from above” (the literal Greek in John 3:5–7), an act of God in regenerating the human heart as a result of its repentance. A person cannot even see the kingdom of God unless he or she has been “born from above” (John 3:3). Born again. Rebirthed. Made a new creation.

There is an ‘alreadyness’ and a ‘not-yetness’ to the kingdom of God. It is already here in the hearts of those who have repented and become Jesus’ disciples. But it is not yet here in terms of the new creation, the population of which will be those who have repented and become disciples of Christ in the present creation.

So, Mr. Palmer’s assertion that the kingdom of God “got twisted into an afterlife fantasy about heaven” by the Church and that “Jesus never taught heaven as an afterlife location” is patent nonsense. Jesus says to His disciples, “In My Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2). That is a reference to heaven and the place reserved for the believer in it! It is part of kingdom talk.

According to Mr. Palmer, “Jesus teaches that the ‘kingdom of heaven’ is real and present in potential within every human being, waiting to be realized” (https://jimpalmerauthor.substack.com/p/did-jesus-believe-in-heaven ) and that one realizes the kingdom of God within by awakening to the truth of your own being beneath the illusion of separation, which Mr. Palmer says is non-existent but just needs to be recognised as such. He teaches that the divine is encountered through awakened consciousness and compassion, that there is no ‘God out there’ as that is just a religious delusion. This kind of conclusion is often reached because of the translation of βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐντὸς ὑμῶν (basileia tou Theou entos hymōn) as Jesus saying, “the kingdom of God is within you” in Luke 17:21, when it should be correctly translated as “the kingdom of God is in your midst”, like right there in front of them in the form of Jesus the King, which it was when He spoke those words to the Pharisees! The kingdom of God very plainly was not ‘within’ the Pharisees to whom He was speaking, for they were (to use Jesus’ words) “children of hell” (Matthew 23:15), and “of their father the devil” (John 8:44). But the kingdom of God was right there in their midst in the form of Jesus the Christ, the King who they did not accept.

The bottom line here is that Jesus made it very clear that the kingdom of God is not something within everyone which is just waiting to be “realised” through “awakening your consciousness”. That is just a load of Eastern mystical and New Age spirito-babble. The kingdom is something which all those who are disciples of Christ will fully inherit when the judgement comes and the new heaven and new earth is inaugurated. As Jesus put it in His parable of the sheep and goats: “Then [on the day of judgement] the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’” (Matthew 25:34).

The kingdom of God is not some already built-in element into which anyone can plug through altering their consciousness. It is instead to partake in a spiritual process by which God’s rule in His creation is being restored from the usurpation by Satan in the Fall of angels and subsequent Fall of man. Satan did not accept God’s rule and rebelled, thereby subsequently overturning the state of God’s human creation, His kingdom. But Jesus came as God manifested in the flesh to cast out Satan from being usurper ruler of the world and reestablish His kingdom (see John 12:31). The kingdom of God will eventually outwardly be restored in the new heaven and new earth (because the present creation is unsalvable), though that has inward implications in the present creation for those who are regenerated in Christ and become His disciples. The body of Christ is the ‘new breed’ of human being restored inwardly for the rest of this present creation’s continuance.

False Claim #5: “Jesus never claimed to be divine in a special way that no one else is. He is said [by Christianity] to exclusively be God in the flesh, putting his example out of reach, rather than teaching that we all share in the same spirit that empowered his character and life”.

What this guy is saying here is that the ‘divinity’ which Jesus possessed is actually available for anyone else to attain and be just like Him, but (according to Mr. Palmer) the Church has falsely made it look as if Jesus claimed to be Divine in a unique way which forces it to be out of reach of anyone else.

This False Claim is striking at the heart of Christian truth. God manifesting in the flesh is indeed unique to Jesus the Christ (1 Timothy 3:16). If any fool out there thinks that he or she can be just like Jesus as God manifesting in the flesh, I have a couple of questions for you: 1) Have you ever created a universe just because you can? Pause… waiting… Thought not! Only the One who is uniquely and genuinely God can do that. Jesus was right there at the creation (Psalm 102:25-27; Hebrews 1:10-12), and even personified as wisdom there (Proverbs 8:22-31); 2) Have you ever definitively and objectively forgiven someone’s sins so that before God those sins are as if they never existed? Pause… waiting… Thought not! But Jesus did have that power (Luke 5:24) and it was exclusive to Him because He is God. The Pharisees knew very well that only God can forgive sins, as they explicitly said to Jesus, and it why they took issue with Him, regarding it as blasphemous (Luke 5:17).

You can no more be a god than Satan can! This is the basis of Satan’s Achilles Heel. He can never ‘outgod’ God but he is continually doing his best to do so. His whole thing is to ungod God, and one of the ways he goes about this (just like Mr. Palmer) is in trying to convince humans that God is keeping from them their potential for godhood. This is precisely what Satan did with Eve when he promised her that she would “be like God” but that God was withholding it from her (Genesis 3:5).

I have spent the last thirty-eight years writing about this phenomenon — that Satan’s false promises to Eve in Genesis 3:1-6 were a prototype of what all false religion offers to people: 1) The illusion of personal divinity; 2) The attainment of unconditional eternal life; and 3) The acquisition of forbidden wisdom. This is clearly laid out on pages 52-60 in my 1044-page book, “The Serpent and the Cross: Religious Corruption in an Evil Age”. (For more details see this link: https://diakrisis-project.com/2025/07/04/pre-publication-information-brochure-for-the-serpent-the-cross-now-available-for-distribution/ . NB: This book is a non-profit publication). The thing is that Mr. Palmer’s philosophy is just one more of many manifestations of religious corruption. It is he who is merely religious and, to boot, he tries to take away the unique divinity of Christ. What Christ came to reveal and do involves true spirituality and offers eternal life. All the rest who claim to offer truth are simply religious corruption offering pretended panaceas. Just read my book and I think you will have to agree.

However, disciples of Christ are called on to imitate His character, actions, and love; and though they are adopted into God’s family as “children of God” (Romans 8:15-17), they do not share in His divine essence or divinely creative power. He is uniquely the Saviour, the eternal Son, and the only intermediary between human beings and God.

Mr. Palmer is simply another religious figure proffering the Gnostic myth that we can become Christs ourselves and that Jesus the Christ was not unique. In the Gnostic “Gospel of Philip” (which is no gospel at all!), written AD c.180-250, the author speaks of the need to be “no longer just a Christian, but a Christ” (§67). The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (which is no gospel at all!), written AD c.130-150, states something very similar in words that are disingenuously attributed to Jesus: “Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him” (§108). This is all straight out of Satan’s playbook. Yet it is precisely what Mr. Palmer is pushing in his writings.

False Claim #6: “The idea that humankind stands condemned before God and deserving of God’s wrath and eternal conscious judgement, requiring the death of Jesus to fix it, would be disputed by Jesus if He returned”.

More absolute nonsense! This claim would not be at all disputed by Jesus, for He literally said it! “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). The meaning there is very clear. The wrath of God being spoken as “remaining” on the one who “rejects the Son” (i.e., Christ) more than implies that this wrath was already on him or her. It simply remains there after he or she rejects the Son (Jesus). The indisputable conclusion from these words is that everyone is under the wrath of God and that the only way for this not to be the case would be to “believe in the Son”, the Lord Jesus Christ, otherwise that wrath simply remains on that person. This is logical. The Greek word translated as “remains” there is μένω, menó, which means “to remain, to abide, to stay, to continue, to dwell, to endure” (Strong’s Greek Concordance). In Thayer’s Lexicon, it says “not to depart, not to leave, to continue to be present”. Could it be any clearer? Yet Mr. Palmer claims that Jesus would dispute this if He returned. How could He, when He actually said it during His earthly ministry? Yet another plain old lie.

A very similar concept is said of Jesus by John here: “Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18). To be condemned is to be under the wrath of God. Could it be any clearer?

False Claim #7: “Jesus did not believe in the notion of an eternal hell”.

Another clear lie. Jesus actually said more about hell than anyone else in the Bible! I have written about this many times in articles and books, though I do not take delight in doing so. It is truth, so it simply has to be said. Here is a portion of that which deals with Jesus’ sayings on the matter:

The symbolic “lake of fire” known as the “second death” (clear symbolic references to hell) also has a number of other parallel names which all amount to the same thing. For example, one of those parallel names is “eternal destruction” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). But that does not mean being vaporised into nothingness or completely obliterated, annihilated. For the eternal destruction is qualified there as pertaining to being “separated from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might”. That is a form of destruction. It does not mean obliteration but, rather, a state of permanent devastation, ruination, desolation — the very opposite of what life should mean: A state of eternal death, separated from God, lived consciously and fully experienced to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how life on earth has been lived, for we will be judged according to our works (Matthew 16:27; Romans 2:6; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Revelation 20:12).

To those who stubbornly say that “eternal destruction” really means that one is simply annihilated, then how can it be explained when Christ says: “It is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into Gehenna, ‘where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched’” (Mark 9:47-48). That is not annihilation or vaporization. I take no pleasure in saying this, but it is some kind of neverending desolation or distress because of separation from God. Other parallel images are used to describe the post-death state of those who have refused to submit to God and the authority of Christ and become His disciple. One notable image is when the Christ says that those who are not His true disciples will be “thrown out into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12). The implication is surely that of being eternally lost in “outer darkness”, the equivalent of “destruction” and desolation, where there is a consciousness of that alienation which causes “wailing and gnashing of teeth”. This “gnashing of teeth” carries an image of extreme defiance and rage — an expression of contempt for the Divine, the same contempt which has been bubbling beneath the surface throughout the lives of those who utterly despise the idea of a higher being to whom they are answerable.

That “gnashing of teeth” is the wordless articulation of the words: “No one has the right to rule over me!” Ah, but they do. Your Creator does have that right; and this whole theatre of life on earth down through the ages has been a demonstration of that right of God to rule and of its widespread rejection. What about the wailing? The Greek word translated here as “wailing” actually means:

“A bitter grief that springs from feeling utterly hopeless. This ‘wailing’ is usually accompanied by shrieks, brought on by uncontainable emotional (psychological) pain” (From “Helps Word Studies” on the word κλαυθμός, klauthmós, translated here as “wailing”).

This is serious stuff, my friends. People for centuries have tried to waffle this all away, to dilute it, to melt it down and make it into something more acceptable to the lily-livered liberal “woke” mindset. I have wrestled with it myself over the years, seeking to get to the marrow of truth. Many have similarly wrestled. But I cannot pour cold water on that fire and I cannot put ‘eternal destruction’ in a time machine to make it go away or mean something other than what it plainly means. John the Baptist said of Christ: “His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12). To me, it seems as plain as a pikestaff. It is “inextinguishable fire” in “outer darkness” in which one undergoes “eternal destruction”, ruination, desolation, Divine forsakenness, which is as “lost” as one can be. As I said earlier, ‘destruction’ does not mean utterly obliterated as if there is nothing left. If you are told that your house has been destroyed in a gas explosion, that house still exists but in a state of ruination. So it is with eternal destruction. What that actually involves one can only imagine in this life but never really capture its full significance and awful reality. One can have an inkling of it because Christ underwent that desolation in the place of His people on the cross, as can be seen in His terrible exclamation, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!” (Matthew 27:46). This He did as part of His vicarious experience for all those He would gather to Himself in His Ekklesia, so that they would not be subject to that forsakenness if they unite with Him in His victory over death and Satan. That saying of Jesus was uttered for us, to reveal to us what Jesus underwent in His vicarious experience, when “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Do you see the beautiful exchange? This is the atonement — Jesus vicarious experience of all the pangs of hell — both of which Mr. Palmer so vehemently denies.

To understand the atonement of Christ and what He experienced on the cross is to understand what “hell” is really all about. One usually finds that those who try to undo the poignant horror of “hell” and water it down or negate it entirely have a defective idea of what Jesus’ atonement was all about. Understanding the atonement will enable one to understand “hell” in all its genuine fullness.

So many want to water down everything connected with the afterlife in order to make it palatable to the masses and to themselves; but there is nothing palatable about this subject, and in fact there is not supposed to be. In regard to the outer darkness which seems to confuse so many, we read in context a parable about a wedding party crasher, which finishes like this:

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he spotted a man who was not dressed in wedding clothes. ‘Friend,’ he asked, ‘how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ But the man was speechless. Then the king told the servants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’. For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:11-14).

Now, this is a parable in which the wedding feast refers symbolically to the return of Christ for His people and what will be the lot of those who are not invited. These are the actual words of the same Jesus which Mr. Palmer says, “did not believe in the notion of an eternal hell”. Do they not prove that Mr. Palmer is a liar?

There are those who claim that the “outer darkness” referred to by Christ three times in Matthew’s gospel is simply about the shame and inconvenience of being refused entry to the banquet and having to stand outside the wedding hall at night in the dark. I have never heard such claptrap in my life! Does that honestly sound like the kind of situation being referred to in this parable? Impenitent rebels against God are, as the apostle Peter said, “springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them” (2 Peter 2:17). This is serious stuff, my friends! In another parable plainly designed to picture His return to judge the world, Christ said that the master of the evil servant (the master being symbolic of Christ Himself) “will come on a day the servant does not expect and at an hour he does not anticipate. Then he will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24:50-51).

This is the same weeping and gnashing of teeth which Christ mentioned in relation to the “outer darkness”. Does this really sound like someone who is somewhat miffed to be put out of the wedding feast having to stand outside at night? Of course not!

In another parable, Jesus said: “So will it be at the end of the age: The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous, and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:49-50). The “fiery furnace” here is another parallel idiom along with outer darkness, eternal fire, the lake of fire, eternal destruction, and so on. One cannot escape the fact that a refusal to submit to the Creator of the cosmos and a refusal to unite yourself with Christ and instead being in alignment with the satanic world-system will lead after physical death to an everlasting experience that is unthinkably terrible in all respects. I can only tell it like it is. I am only interested in truth. I would far rather have uncomfortable and unpalatable truth than agreeable and seemingly pleasant lies, though many seem to disagree.

When Jesus says, in His parable of the sheep and goats, “Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matthew 25:41), those many who disagree say that the Greek word translated as “eternal”, αἰώνιος, aiónios, really only means ‘for the length of an age’ because it is derived from αἰών, aión, meaning age, therefore they say it cannot mean everlasting and is just temporary, until they have learned their lesson. But that brings a huge difficulty with it, because of this verse at the end of that parable, which states: “And they [the goats] will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). For if the punishment is not eternal, then neither is the “eternal life” for the righteous, as the same Greek word is used for each. If “eternal life” is not eternal for God’s people, then what happens after it? Do we go back to having an untransformed nature? That whole whitewash is ridiculous. Obviously, from our limited, three-dimensional perspective, we cannot properly perceive what ‘eternal’ really means. But if the same adjective pertains to both sides of the final judgement scenario, then that shows us with what we are dealing: Everlastingness. And that is still the meaning in modern Greek of αἰώνιος, aiónios: eternal or everlasting, as you can see from the Google Translate image below.

The word translated as ‘punishment’ in Matthew 25:46 is κόλασιν, kόlasin, which can also be translated as “torment”, as in the text: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment” (1 John 4:18). It is surely no coincidence that the translation of kόlasin in modern Greek is, in fact, “hell” (see image, below, from Google Translate)! It is also used in Greece today in a colloquial manner, e.g., “ω, κόλαση! Πού θα τελειώσει όλο αυτό?” (“oh, hell—where will this all end?”). It is so obvious that we are dealing with something devastating and neverending.

You may say that the whole of eternity doesn’t leave room for learning the lesson. But the lesson was supposed to be learned now, in this dimension. That is what this life is for! This life of ours is a lesson-life! If the only thing which makes you want to “learn the lesson” (i.e., “Okay, God, I give in”) is discovering first-hand after death how bad the ‘second death’ is, then that is the wrong motivation altogether! The time for choice is now, and not based on fear but on realising the power and glory of God. Once death strikes, the die (pun intended) has been cast and the choice has been made. I am mindful of that fateful saying in Ecclesiastes, “In the place where the tree falls, there it will lie” (Ecclesiastes 11:3).

To try and mitigate these uncomfortable truths is the wrong approach. Instead, we should find a way of penetrating their mysteries and accepting them. In any case, even if the “outer darkness” was only ‘age-long’ (e.g. lasting for some thousands of millennia), it would still be a serious matter! But really, the afterlife will be outside of time as we know it. So even using a word like aiónios doesn’t really carry the full reality. Suffice it to say that it is something utterly dreadful and unthinkable. For those who reject God, there is only outer darkness, eternal destruction, eternal fire, unquenchable fire, the lake of fire, which all signify tormentuous separation from the presence of God forever. The miracle is that in this life, even if one rejects God, one is still privy to His provision and presence in so many ways (cf. Matthew 5:45).

I cannot tell you the precise mechanics of that “destruction” or “separation”. Such knowledge is way above my current pay-grade and yours too. I just cannot soften the blow. One cannot start thinking to oneself, “Well that’s not the way that I would do it!” Personally-speaking, I am just a fool who hardly has a clue. If God is infinitely wise and is the Creator of this whole show, and is righteous and is just and is love, and sees the end from the beginning, then I am very happy to leave all that judgement stuff up to Him! He knows best, and I trust Him completely. Trusting God leads to startlingly wonderful consequences in one’s life. Thinking one knows better than Him provokes a terrible fallout leading to a concatenation of deepening delusion and despair.

I hope that I have proven that for Mr. Palmer to say “Jesus did not believe in the notion of an eternal hell” is simply untrue. I could say more but I will leave it there and move on to the next False Claim.

False Claim #8: “Jesus never claimed his mission was to save the world and end suffering, rather than people taking responsibility for saving the world and solving suffering ourselves”.

Eh? But Jesus said, “I have not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:47). Although He has not come to literally save the planet Earth itself from destruction (as one day He will return to destroy it, Matthew 24:26-31), He came as the Divine Saviour offering salvation to those who will receive it, to save the people of the world, His sheep for whom He laid down His life as the good shepherd (John 10:11). Mr. Palmer put “save the world” and “end suffering” together in his claim. But although He came to save the world and said so (though not yet to judge it because that is reserved for the end of the age on the day of judgement), He nowhere said that He would end suffering. In fact, He said to His disciples, “In the world you will have tribulation (affliction)” (John 16:33), though He did add “but take courage; I have overcome the world!” He also said that there was coming a time of great tribulation on this earth such as has never been known before (Matthew 24:21). That is where this world is heading — not to a global revival or golden age in which all suffering comes to an end but to a climax of evil and suffering so horrendous that Jesus will have to bring it to a premature close for the sake of His chosen ones when He returns to destroy this world and bring in a new one (Matthew 24:22).

This world is a vale of tears and Jesus is our only hope. But because of Mr. Palmer’s former messed-up church life and his disillusionment with all that, He rejects that hope as artificial and goes out of His way to take away everyone else’s hope in Christ, which is not about clinging to a vain hope but a realistic one, a substantial one. This present fallen world is just a brief preface to the world to come. No human can prevent the debacle which will befall it. But the only way to pass through that is to ‘cling onto Jesus’ robe’, so to speak, by becoming His disciple.

False Claim #9: “Jesus never made people feel judged, unloved or unworthy”.

What utter rubbish! I honestly do not know what planet this guy is on. I’m sure that the Pharisees must have felt judged, unloved and unworthy when Jesus called them a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 3:7; 12:34; 23:33), or “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27), or “Hypocrites” (Matthew 23:13-15,25,27), or “Blind guides” (Matthew 23:16,24), or “Children of hell” (Matthew 23:15), or “of their father the devil” (John 8:44)!

But I think that this guy is trying to make out that this is what Christians deliberately do to other people — make them feel judged, unloved or unworthy. But they do not take delight in the fact that people need to realise what they are really like before they would be willing to come to Christ in humility. The genuine Christian message is that we are all by nature deserving of Divine judgement. The resistant egotist rejects that idea but that does not make it untrue. We simply need to undergo that metanoic conversion by which our lives are turned around through Divine intervention and there is a sea change in our lives and we are no longer under that judgement. However, no disciple of Christ that I know deliberately wants to rub anyone’s nose in the dirt. But one does have to realise the true extent of one’s ‘dirt’ before one can recognise the need to be made clean. The refusal of that realisation is one of the main problems in this world.

False Claim #10: “Jesus did not claim to be the only voice of truth”.

Oh yes He did! But Mr. Palmer would not think so because when Jesus makes such a claim he just twists His words to mean something else. For example, the key text where Jesus said that He is the exclusive voice of truth, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), is twisted by Mr. Palmer to mean, “No one comes into conscious union with ultimate reality through the paradigm of separation”. But let me quote him in full so you get the complete perspective:

“‘No one comes to the Father except through me’ does not mean: ‘No one can know God unless they join the Christian religion’. It means: ‘No one comes into conscious union with ultimate reality through the paradigm of separation’” (https://www.facebook.com/Nobody.JimPalmer/photos/what-many-people-struggle-with-when-they-encounter-john-146-is-that-they-have-in/10163038691505592/ ).

Do you see the very shrewd straw man which Mr. Palmer has set up here? No one I know or have ever met during the last forty years of my Christian life has ever claimed that these words in John 14:6 mean, “No one can know God unless they join the Christian religion”. Being a disciple of Christ is not about “joining a religion”. That is just nuts! No disciple of Christ that I know would say that they “joined the Christian religion”. I’m laughing like a drain here at that whole nonsensical thought. Mr. Palmer seems to make no differentiation between casual pew-fillers in a mainstream high street church and real disciples and followers of Christ. That is because Mr. Palmer must never have been among the latter. He clearly, during all his years as a pastor, has never known the powerful soul-conviction which occurs when one has undergone a real metanoic experience and become a serious disciple of Christ. If he had, he would not be setting himself up in opposition to everything that Jesus really stood for.

When Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me”, He was referring to His exclusive role as mediator or intermediary between humans and God. This is why Jesus’ came into incarnation: To be the One through whom one comes into relationship with God. But Mr. Palmer wants us to become little gods ourselves so that there is no need for any intermediary. Only someone who has in reality rejected God would think that there is no need for any intermediary.

There is another place in Jesus words where He said that He is the only voice of truth. The Lord Jesus Christ clearly pronounced that all those with messianic pretensions who came before Him were “thieves and robbers” (John 10:8). Many wish to limit that expression of Jesus as if it merely referred to the Pharisees. But, as the late George Beasley-Murray — former Principal of Spurgeon’s College, London, and later Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary — rightly puts it:

“The saying is directed against those who claim to be mediators of salvation. As such it would embrace false messiahs within Judaism and redeemer gods of the pagan world, and in the present context, perhaps even more obviously, Pharisees who claimed to hold the keys of the kingdom” (G.R. Beasley-Murray, Word Bible Commentary, Vol.36, John, Thomas Nelson, 1999, p.170). [emphasis added]

So those “thieves and robbers” to which the Lord Jesus Christ refers include not only the Pharisees but also all the teachers who offer a pretended ‘enlightenment’ (such as the Buddha who Mr. Palmer so admires), or salvation or, worse still, the dreadful illusory possibility of achieving ‘personal divinity’. False mediators between God and Man, all of them — not just those who came before Christ’s incarnation but also in the two thousand years since (and there have been many!). For there is only “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Always has been — always will be, in this present fallen creation. Jesus DID claim to be the only voice of truth, despite Mr. Palmer’s protestations.

False Claim #11: “People have come to associate Jesus with church, theology, politics and power, rather than courage, justice, humanity, beauty and love”.

No they haven’t. Just because a handful of extremists in the USA are pushing the Seven Mountain Mandate in a political situation does not at all mean that “people” in general have come to associate Jesus with “church, theology, politics and power”. If anyone has come to come to associate Jesus with church, theology, politics and power, then that is because of the poor witness of the abovementioned extremists. Jesus is the light of the world, the bread of life, the shepherd of the sheep, the gate and the door, the resurrection and the life, the way, truth and life, and the true vine. “For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

But people in general find Jesus to be of no interest to them whatsoever, other than possibly being a ‘nice bloke’. But that is essentially because people in general hate Jesus because He stands for all the fullness of truth that they reject when they discover who He really is. As Jesus said to His disciples, “If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first” (John 15:18). That is, unless someone like Mr. Palmer gives them a pseudo-‘Mr. Nice Guy’ false Jesus that they can get behind.

False Claim #12: “Jesus never vilified people’s humanity”.

Depends on what is meant by that. He certainly vilified someone’s humanity if it was deserved. Imagine having Jesus say this about you: “The Son of Man will go just as it is written about Him, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed. It would be better for him if he had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). Is that vilification enough? Or how about this: “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

Jesus certainly vilified the (non-existent) humanity of the Pharisees. He also knew the evil that is in people. When a bunch of people believed in Him because of a miracle that He performed, it is said: “Jesus Himself was not entrusting Himself to them, because of His knowing all, and because He did not need any testimony about mankind, for He knew what was in people” (John 2:25).

But I’m sure that Mr. Palmer was insinuating that Christians go round vilifying people’s “humanity”. Well, the gospel is not about stroking everyone’s ego to make them feel good. The Gospel is not a self-help personal growth technique to boost people’s self-esteem (whereas Mr. Palmer’s ministry is). Disciples of Christ do not set out personally to vilify people. But Jesus’ Gospel cuts people to the quick and it is supposed to, so that they become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), which is not a downtrodden piece of vilified nothingness but a “new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10). If any vilification takes place, it is in the fact that an unclean sinner has to stand before a holy God. That is a vilifying experience but it is just the initial part of a process in which one is completely rebuilt in thought, word, feeling, and action and subsequently enters into glory. No lasting vilification there.

Conclusion

Now you have seen how many false claims have been made above. Judging from the comments I see on Mr. Palmer’s anti-christian pieces (which all cover roughly similar ground), most of his adherents are not very well-versed in Scripture or in what Jesus really said, and are quite confused and insecure, so that makes them even more vulnerable to manipulation. What I want to know is this: How can someone get SO MANY things wrong! One would have to be really stupid, or wilfully ignorant, or downright evil, or just an unregenerate huckster to make so many false claims about the words of Jesus which ultimately end up in the stealing of souls. It is easy for someone who has never really been a genuine disciple of Christ and who has come a cropper in churches to be very critical of what he calls “Christianity”, lumping together in one negative blob everyone who professes faith in Christ. But he seems to have no understanding of the parable of the wheat and darnel in Matthew 13:24-30,36-43, as I mentioned earlier, which show that the visible church is a mixed bag made up of believers and pseudo-believers and will be until Jesus returns and reaps the harvest, separating the wheat from the darnel. One cannot base one’s understanding of the faith on the basis of what false disciples believe and how they behave.

Anyway, I am glad this is over. I always feel somewhat defiled when reading through what such people say who have got a bee in their bonnet against anyone professing to be Christian or to have faith in Christ, especially when they are so adept at Scripture twisting to make their case. Maybe I will now go and listen to some Johann Sebastian Bach and take a cycle-ride through the hills while listening to the skylarks over the fecund fields as I write a sonnet about the relation between beauty and truth.

I bear no personal ill-will towards Mr. Palmer. He has a kind face, and I believe that he has the potential for an influential ministry if his heart was wholly turned and renewed. My hope is that somehow he will be deeply convicted about what he is doing and will come to know the living Christ, who is uniquely God manifested in the flesh, and who is ever-ready and waiting for the lost who He came for to come to Him.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2026
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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