Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. (Thomas Jefferson).

Jesus says his sheep know his voice and follow him: “They will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers” (John 10:4-5). 

The voice of Paul is the voice of a stranger.  But don’t just take my word for it.  Listen to these eminent bible scholars.  Surely, they are not all as ignorant and unspiritual as I am.

In the book “Christ or Paul?” the Rev. V.A. Holmes-Gore writes: “Let the reader contrast the true Christian standard with that of Paul and he will see the terrible betrayal of all that the Master taught.  For the surest way to betray a great Teacher is to misrepresent his message.  That is what Paul and his followers did, and because the Church has followed Paul in his error it has failed lamentably to redeem the world.  The teachings given by the blessed Master Christ, which the disciples John and Peter and James, the brother of the Master, tried in vain to defend and preserve intact were as utterly opposed to the Pauline Gospel as the light is opposed to the darkness.” “If we apply to Paul the test ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’ it is abundantly clear that he was a false prophet.”

Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, observes in “The Journals:” “In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ the Atoner. What Martin Luther, in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ. Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down; making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ.”

Ernest Renan, French theologian and expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, writes in his book, “Saint Paul:” “It is vain for Paul to talk. He is inferior to the other apostles. He has not seen Jesus. He has not heard his word. The divine logia and the parables are scarcely known to him. The Christ who gives him personal revelations is his own phantom. It is himself he hears, while thinking he hears Jesus.” “True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ, not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock; the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology. Paul is the father of the subtle Augustine, of the unfruitful Thomas Aquinas, of the gloomy Calvinist, of the peevish Jansenist, of the fierce theology which damns and predestinates to damnation. Jesus is the father of all those who seek repose for their souls in dreams of the ideal. What makes Christianity live, is the little that we know of the word and person of Jesus. The ideal man; the divine poet; the great artist; alone defy time and revolutions. They alone are seated at the right hand of God the Father for ever more.”

Leo Tolstoy, a devout Christian and probably the greatest Russian writer ever, writes in “My Religion:” “The separation between the doctrine of life and the explanation of life began with the preaching of Paul who knew not the ethical teachings set forth in the Gospel of Matthew, and who preached a metaphisico-cabalistic theory entirely foreign to Christ; and this separation was perfected in the time of Constantine, when it was found possible to clothe the whole pagan organization of life in a Christian dress, and without changing it to call it Christianity.”

The American philosopher, Will Durant; in his “Caesar and Christ,” writes: “Paul created a theology of which none but the vaguest warrants can be found in the words of Christ.  Through these interpretations Paul could neglect the actual life and sayings of Jesus, which he had not directly known.  Paul replaced conduct with creed as the test of virtue.  It was a tragic change.”

Robert Frost, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943, in his “A Masque of Mercy,” writes: “Paul, he’s in the Bible too. He is the fellow who theologized Christ almost out of Christianity. Look out for him.”

Gerald Friedlander, Jewish Minister of the West London Synagogue, writes in “The Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount:” “Paul has surely nothing to do with the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon says: ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves’ (Matt.vii.15). This is generally understood as a warning against untrustworthy leaders in religion. Does the verse express the experience of the primitive Church? Might it not be a warning against Paul and his followers?”

Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, writes in “Two Types of Faith:” “The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount is completely opposed to Paul.”

H.G. Wells, famous English science-fiction writer, observes in “The Outline of History:” “It is equally a fact in history that St. Paul and his successors added to or completed or imposed upon or substituted another doctrine for- as you may prefer to think-  the plain and profoundly revolutionary teachings of Jesus by expounding a subtle and complex theory of salvation, a salvation which could be attained very largely by belief and formalities, without any serious disturbance of the believer’s ordinary habits and occupations.”

Frederick Watson, a notable Christian scholar, writes in “Inspiration:” “In particular, in the case of St. Paul’s Epistles, we can also see that they all arose out of historical events which can never occur again. We observe in them not only his circumstances and the circumstances of the Church to which he was writing, but also himself- his personal feelings, human passions, zeal, indignation, love, sorrow, and the like. These are not always of the highest morality.”

The famous mystic, poet and author, Kahil Gibran, declares in “Jesus the Son of Man:” “This Paul is indeed a strange man. His soul is not the soul of a free man. He speaks not of Jesus nor does he repeat His Words. He would strike with his own hammer upon the anvil in the Name of One whom he does not know.”

The famous theologian, Helmut Koester, declares in his “The Theological Aspects of Primitive Christian Heresy:” “Paul himself stands in the twilight zone of heresy. In reading Paul, one immediately encounters a major difficulty. Whatever Jesus had preached did not become the content of the missionary proclamation of Paul.  Sayings of Jesus do not play a role in Paul’s understanding of the event of salvation.  Paul did not care at all what Jesus had said.  Had Paul been completely successful very little of the sayings of Jesus would have survived.”

Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence; writes in his “Letter to William Short:” “Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.”

The renowned English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, in his “Not Paul but Jesus,” declares: “It rests with every professor of the religion of Jesus to settle within himself to which of the two religions, that of Jesus or that of Paul he will adhere.”  “By the two persons in question, as represented in the two sources of information- the Gospels and Paul’s Epistles- two quite different, if not opposite, religions are inculcated: and that, in the religion of Jesus may be found all the good that has ever been the result of the compound so incongruously and unhappily made,- in the religion of Paul, all the mischief, which, in such disastrous abundance, has so indisputably flowed from it.”

The eminent theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur, in his “Church History of the First Three Centuries,” writes: “What kind of authority can there be for an ‘apostle’ who, unlike the other apostles, had never been prepared for the apostolic office in Jesus’ own school but had only later dared to claim the apostolic office on the basis on his own authority? The only question comes to be how the apostle Paul appears in his Epistles to be so indifferent to the historical facts of the life of Jesus.  He bears himself but little like a disciple who has received the doctrines and the principles which he preaches from the Master whose name he bears.”

The renowned Mahatma Gandhi, the prophet of nonviolence who won freedom from England for India, in an essay titled “Discussion on Fellowship,” writes: “I draw a great distinction between the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus and the Letters of Paul. Paul’s Letters are a graft on Christ’s teachings, Paul’s own gloss apart from Christ’s own experience.”

Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, wrote in his essay “A Psychological Approach to Dogma:” “Saul’s (Paul’s name before his conversion) fanatical resistance to Christianity was never entirely overcome. It is frankly disappointing to see how Paul hardly ever allows the real Jesus of Nazareth to get a word in.”

George Bernard Shaw, a devout Christian and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, observes in his “Androcles and the Lion:” “There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus.  There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of Paul’s soul upon the soul of Jesus.  It is now easy to understand how the Christianity of Jesus was suppressed by the police and the Church, while Paulinism overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith.”  “The conversion of Paul was no conversion at all: it was Paul who converted the religion that has raised one man above sin and death into a religion that delivered millions of men so completely into their dominion that their own common nature became a horror to them, and the religious life became a denial of life.” “No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.”

Albert Schweitzer, winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, writes in his “The Quest for the Historical Jesus” and “Mysticism of Paul:” “Paul did not desire to know Christ.  Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly life of Jesus was regarded.  What is the significance for our faith and for our religious life, the fact that the Gospel of Paul is different from the Gospel of Jesus?  The attitude which Paul himself takes up towards the Gospel of Jesus is that he does not repeat it in the words of Jesus, and does not appeal to its authority.  The fateful thing is that the Greek, the Catholic, and the Protestant theologies all contain the Gospel of Paul in a form which does not continue the Gospel of Jesus, but displaces it.”

Bishop John S. Spong, Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, USA, writes in his book, “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism:” “Paul’s words are not the Words of God. They are the words of Paul- a vast difference.”

William Wrede, famous German Lutheran theologist, observes in his book “Paul:” “The oblivious contradictions in the three accounts given by Paul in regard to his conversion are enough to arouse distrust.  The moral majesty of Jesus, his purity and piety, his ministry among his people, his manner as a prophet, the whole concrete ethical-religious content of his earthly life, signifies for Paul’s Christology nothing whatever.  The name ‘disciple of Jesus’ has little applicability to Paul.  Jesus or Paul: this alternative characterizes, at least in part, the religious and theological warfare of the present day.”

Rudolf Bultman, a theologian, writes in his “Significance of the Historical Jesus for the Theology of Paul:” “It is most obvious that Paul does not appeal to the words of the Lord in support of his views.  When the essentially Pauline conceptions are considered, it is clear that Paul is not dependent on Jesus.  Jesus’ teaching is- to all intents and purposes- irrelevant for Paul.”

Walter Bauer, an eminent German theologian and scholar of the development of the early Christian churches, writes in his “Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity:” “If one may be allowed to speak rather pointedly the Apostle Paul was the only Arch-Heretic known to the apostolic age.” “We must look to the circle of the twelve apostles to find the guardians of the most primitive information about the life and preaching of the Lord. This treasure lies hidden in the synoptic gospels.”

Michael Baigent, author and speculative theorist; and Richard Leigh, best-selling novelist and short-story writer, declare in “The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception:” “Paul is in effect the first Christian heretic, and his teachings, which become the foundation of later Christianity, are a flagrant deviation from the ‘Original’ or ‘pure’ form extolled by the leadership. Whether James, the ‘Lord’s brother,’ was literally Jesus’ blood kin or not (and everything suggests he was), it is clear that he knew Jesus personally. So did most of the other members of the community or ‘early Church,’ in Jerusalem, including of course, Peter. When they spoke, they did so with first hand authority. Paul had never had such personal acquaintance with the figure he’d begun to regard as his ‘Savior.’ He had only his quasi-mystical experience in the desert and the sound of a disembodied voice. For him to arrogate authority to himself on this basis is, to say the least, presumptuous. It also leads him to distort Jesus’ teachings beyond recognition, to formulate, in fact, his own highly individual and idiosyncratic theology, and then to legitimize it by spuriously ascribing it to Jesus. Paul knows full well what he is doing.  He understands the techniques of religious propaganda.”

Gene Savoy, American theologian and clergyman, declares in his “The Essaei Document:” “Paul’s Christianity is another matter. He taught a different kind of theology than that shared by the original disciples who were schooled under Jesus.  Moreover, James, Peter and the disciples were members of the Essaei community, which Paul most assuredly was not.  We see, then, that Paul was the father of Pagan Christianity; a movement based on a concept completely foreign to Jesus, James, Peter and the Essaei community.  The teachings of Jesus the Messiah were overshadowed by the teachings of Paul.”

Bart Ehrman, American New Testament scholar and Professor of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, writes in “The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture:” “What did the historical Jesus teach in comparison with what the historical Paul taught? Jesus taught that to escape judgment a person must keep the central teachings of the Jewish Law as he, Jesus himself, interpreted them. Paul, interestingly enough, never mentions Jesus’ interpretation of the (Mosaic) Law, and Paul was quite insistent that keeping the Law would never bring Salvation. The only way to be saved, for Paul, was to trust Jesus’ death and resurrection. Paul transformed the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus.”

Thomas Cosette, a Christian scholar, writes in “Hebrew Prophecies of the Coming of Paul:” “This man Paul hijacked what is called the church. But he can only keep those who do not love the truth. Those who still have conscience and will compare his teaching and his testimony to Y’shva’s and the prophets without granting Paul’s testimony (is) the Word of God but (is) just another man’s testimony in light of Jesus’ teachings. Then they will discover that Paul usurps the truth.”

Herbert J. Muller, Americn historian and academic, writes in “Uses of the Past:” “Saul of Tarsus, who became St. Paul, knew Jesus only by hearsay, and rarely referred to his human life. Paul preached a gospel about Jesus that was not taught by the Jesus of the synoptic Gospels. Setting himself against (the) other disciples, he was largely responsible for the violent break with Judaism. He contributed a radical dualism of flesh and spirit unwarranted by the teachings of Jesus.”

H.L. Mencken, regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century, writes in his “Notes on Democracy:” “Is it argued by any rational man that the debased Christianity cherished by the mob in all the Christian countries of today, has any colourable likeness to the body of ideas preached by Christ? The plain fact is that this bogus Christianity has no more relation to the system of Christ than it has to Aristotle. It is the invention of Paul and his attendant rabble-rousers- a body of men exactly comparable to the corps of evangelical pastors of today, which is to say, a body devoid of sense and lamentably indifferent to common honesty. The mob, having heard Christ, turned against Him. His theological ideas were too logical and plausible for it, and His ethical ideas were enormously too austere. What it yearned for was the old comfortable balderdash under a new and gaudy name, and that is prescisely what Paul offered it. He borrowed from all the wandering dervishes and body-snatchers of Asia Minor, and flavoured the stew with remnants of Greek demonology. The result was a code of doctrines so discordant and so nonsensical that no two men since, examining it at length, have ever agreed upon its prescise meaning. Paul remains the arch theologian of the mob. His turgid and witless metaphysics make Christianity bearable to men who would otherwise be repelled by Christ’s simple and magnificent reduction of the duties of man to the duties of a gentle-man.”

Carl Sagan, American author, astronomer and cosmologist, observes in “Letter to Ken Schei:” “My long-time view about Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly immiscible parts- the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Thomas Jefferson attempted to excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament. There wasn’t much left when he was done, but it was an inspiring document.”

American writer, Robert Carroll, writes in “Wolf in the Sheepfold: The Bible as a Problem for Christianity:” “When Paul is not talking about himself he is usually issuing orders about how everybody should behave.”

Graham Shaw, Chaplain of Exeter College, Oxford, writes in “The Cost of Authority Manipulation and Freedom in the New Testament:” “Paul’s letters provide the starting point. He cannot resist manipulating his audience. He resorts to devious strategies of control. Yet the same man speaks of love and freedom.”  “All the grand christological claims of (Paul) release and reconciliation end in practice by reconciling slaves to their lot and conniving at their exploitation.”

Robert Funk, American bible scholar and founder of the Jesus Seminar; and Roy Hoover, Professor of Biblical Literature and Professor of Religion Emeritus at Whitman College, Washington, U.S.A. write in “The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus:” “The gospels may be understood as corrections of this creedal imbalance, which was undoubtedly derived from the view espoused by the apostle Paul, who did not know the historical Jesus. For Paul, the Christ was to be understood as a dying/rising lord, symbolized in baptism (buried with him, raised with him), of the type he knew from the Hellenistic mystery religions. In Paul’s theological scheme, Jesus the man played no essential role.”

John Locke, English philosopher, widely regarded as the father of liberalism, writes in “The Reasonableness of Christianity:” “It is not in the epistles we are to learn what are the fundamental articles of faith, where they are promiscuously and without distinction mixed with other truths. We shall find and discern those great and necessary points best in the preaching of our Savior and the apostles.”

 

Peter Annet, English deist and freethinker, writes in “Critical Examination of the Life of St. Paul:” “We should never finish, were we to relate all the contradictions which are to be found in the writings attributed to St. Paul. Generally speaking it is St. Paul that ought to be regarded as the true founder of Christian theology which from its foundation has been incessantly agitated by quarrels (and) divisions.”

 

Thomas Morgan, writes in “The Moral Philosopher:” “St. Paul then, it seems, preach’d another and quite different Gospel from what was preach’d by Peter and the other Apostles.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a German philosopher, writes in “Characteristics of the Present Age:” “(The) Christian System (is) a degenerate form of Christianity, and the authorship of which (must be) ascribed to the Apostle Paul.”

Adolf von Harnack, German theologian and prominent church historian, writes in “History of Dogma, I:” “The Pauline Gospel is not identical with the original Gospel. The empty grave on the third day is directly excluded by the way in which Paul has portrayed the resurrection (1 Cor. XV). Paul knows nothing of an Ascension. Every tendency which courageously disregards spurious traditions is compelled to turn to the Pauline Epistles- which, on the one hand, present such a profound type of Christianity, and on the other, darken and narrow the judgment about the preaching of Christ himself.”

Frederick Engels, German philosopher and father of Marxist theory, writes in “On the History of Early Christianity:” “Attempts have been made to conceive all the messages of John’s Revelation/Apocalypse as directed against Paul, the false Apostle. The so-called Epistles of Paul are not only extremely doubtful but also totally contradictory.”

Mark Twain, widely regarded as the father of American literature and a great humorist, writes in “Letters from the Earth:” “Paul advised against sexual intercourse altogether. A great change from the divine view.” “If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be- a Christian.”

Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish essayist, novelist and playwright, writes in “The Tragic Sense of Life:” “Paul had not personally known Jesus, and hence he discovered him as Christ. The important thing for him was that Christ became man and died and was resurrected, and not what he did in his life- not his ethical work as a teacher. In “The Agony of Christianity,” he observes: “During Christ’s lifetime, Paul would never have followed (Jesus).”

Lawrence Durrell, expatriate British novelist, poet and dramatist, writes in “Clea:” “For a brief moment freedom looked possible, but St. Paul restored the iron handcuffs.”

Günther Bornkamm, German New Testament scholar and Professor of New Testament at University of Heidelberg, writes in “Paul:” “Above all there results the chasm which separates Jesus from Paul and the conclusion that more than the historical Jesus it is Paul who really founded Christianity. Already during his lifetime Paul was considered an illegitimate Apostle and a falsifier of the Christian message. For a long time, Judeo-Christianity rejected him completely, as a rival to Peter and James, the brother of the Lord. Paul does not connect immediately with (the) words of the earthly Jesus. Everything seems to indicate that he didn’t even know them.”

Paul Johnson, English journalist, historian and author. Recipient of American Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President George W. Bush, writes in “A History of Christianity:” “The Christ of Paul was not affirmed by the historical Jesus of the Jerusalem Church. Writings by Christian Jews of the decade of the 50’s AD present Paul as the Antichrist and the prime heretic. The Christology of Paul, which later became the substance of the universal Christian faith, was predicated by an external personage whom many members of the Jerusalem Church absolutely did not recognize as an Apostle.”

Patrick Henry writes in “New Directions in New Testament Study:” “There remains in the popular mind a strong suspicion that Paul corrupted Christianity (or even founded a different religion). Jesus (was) a teacher in the mainstream of Jewish prophetic piety, while Paul takes the irrevocable step away from Judaism of rejecting the (Mosaic) law. Paul imported into the Christian community a form of religion characteristic of the ‘mysteries’ religious movements of initiation into secret rites and esoteric knowledge.”

Gerald Messadié, French scientific journalist, historian and essayist, writes in “Saul the Incendiary:” “Saul does not really know the teaching of Jesus. In the Epistles there are no traces of the parables (or) of the expressions and attitudes of Jesus. The transformation, the essential metanoia of the believer by ethical meditation, has almost no place in his writings. Saul quickly arrogates to himself, and it seems incredible, the privilege of the truth. He, who only glimpsed Jesus, with unparalleled arrogance claims to be the only one who possesses the truth of the teaching of the Messiah- against those who, for their part, knew Jesus personally, against the first disciples. The Epistles make absolutely no mention of the life of Jesus. It is the ethical teaching of Saul himself which dominates, as if to replace that of Jesus in Jesus’ own name. (He) does not mention a single miracle of Jesus. From a strictly Scriptural point of view, the teaching of Saul diverges, in many fundamental points, from that transmitted by the direct witnesses of Jesus.”

Stephen Mitchell, world renowned translator of sacred texts, writes in “The Gospel according to Jesus:” “Paul of Tarsus (was) the most misleading of the earliest Christian writers, (and) a particularly difficult character: arrogant, self-righteous, filled with murderous hatred of his opponents, terrified of God, oppressed by what he felt as the burden of the (Mosaic) Law, overwhelmed by his sense of sin. He didn’t understand Jesus at all. He wasn’t even interested in Jesus; just in his own idea of the Christ.”

Holger Kersten & Elmar Gruber, writers who maintain Jesus preached in India, write in “The Jesus Conspiracy:” “Paul makes the whole purpose of Jesus’ activity rest exclusively in this dying on the Cross. Here he has little interest in the words and teachings of Jesus, but he makes everything depend on his own teaching: the salvation from sins by the vicarious sacrificial death of Jesus. Does it not seem most strange that Jesus himself did not give the slightest hint that he intended to save the entire faithful section of humanity by his death? Although there are several most delightful passages in the texts of Paul, Christianity has his narrow-minded fanaticism to thank for numerous detrimental developments, which are diametrically opposed to the spirit of Jesus: the intolerance towards those of different views, the marked hostility to the body and the consequently low view of woman, and especially the fatally flawed attitude towards Nature. He turns Jesus’ teaching of Salvation upside down, and opposes his reforming ideas; instead of the original joyous tidings, the Pauline message of threats was developed.”

Xavier Zubiri, Spanish philosopher, writes in “The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions:” There is absolutely no doubt that much of St. Paul’s terminology derives from the Mystery Religions.”

Ian Wilson, prolific English author of religious and scientific books, writes in “Jesus: The Evidence:” “(The) interest (in Paul’s letters) lies in their apparent ignorance of any details of Jesus’ earthly life. (Paul) reflected the attitudes of contemporary society towards women rather than what we may now believe to have been Jesus’ own ideas. We seem to be faced with a straight, first-century clash of theologies: Paul’s on the one hand, based on his other-worldly (Damascus Road) experience; and James’ (in his epistle), based on his fraternal knowledge of the human Jesus. And, despite the authority which should be due to the latter, it would seem to be Paul’s that has been allowed to come down to us. Particularly significant is (James’) gentle but firm stance on the importance of Jesus’ teaching on communal living.”

The last word belongs to Thomas Paine, one of the founding fathers of the United States.  He writes in “The Age of Reason:” “That manufacturer of quibbles, St. Paul, wrote a collection of letters under the name of epistles.  Out of the matters contained in those books, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue, in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.”  “Paul’s writing is no better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told.” 

The biggest enemy of Paul is Paul himself.  He says: “Test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).  When we do this, we end up by rejecting much of what he says in the bible.  Paul also says: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).  When we study Paul’s epistles and compare them with the word of Jesus, we immediately discover that Paul is not even a disciple of Christ.  He is completely unfamiliar with the doctrine of Christ.  He just makes up his own doctrine and attributes it to Christ.

Don’t just take Paul’s authenticity for granted because he happens to be in the bible.  Find out the truth for yourself.  Your salvation depends on it.