There I stood, on a mountain top, high above a lake in a state park. From the distance, on this clear day, the city of New York could be seen far over a mountain top, as a gray silhouette in color. The wind blew a warm soft breeze across my body. I lay there with my shirt and shoes off, three books spread around me. Reading and meditating that would be interrupted every 10 minutes as people would appear.

As I would start to read and meditate almost in a planned timing, a person would appear, hiking up the mountain. Each person would ask me questions and start talking to me, somehow the subject of God would appear in question, finally resulting in three other people visiting me up there on the mountain. It was now that I became the subject to be witnessed to, as one of these persons was a Baptist fundamentalist missionary.

Are you saved? asked the woman. Silence on my part, then, I cringe everytime I hear that question, especially when it's with a southern accent. "I think I'm saved. That is I'm in a saved condition." Years of the Watchtower and other fundamentalist Christian teachings would not allow me the confidence, nor the conviction to say in utter assurance otherwise. After all I believed God was a King living in the sky separate from myself, in addition believing any person can sin regardless of being Christian. I only knew fundamental literalism as this person did, but a different version. What is usually quoted, are St. John's words that no one can not sin if they are "saved."

"If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives." 1 John 1:10

Apostle Paul said:

"If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" 1 Corinthians 10:12

The writer of Hebrews relates:

"If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there is no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God." Hebrews 10:26

The conditioning of Paul's teaching is that man is separate from God, only to be reconciled with Christ. In this literal context of Apostle Paul and the additional words of Hebrews, it is conveyed that anyone born with God's Spirit in their faith in Christ, has the capability to fall under condemnation but only with the lack of true repentance. It is only with the lack of true repentance and true sorrow for wrong acts that will put people into condemnation, for with repentance comes forgiveness. All believers in Christ can realize that they are "here and now" forgiven, preachers such as Watchman Nee were known to emphasize such points. This goes much further. All of mankind has supposedly been forgiven of all past, present and future sins the very day God's Son, The blood of Christ, poured out, giving his body and life as a sacrifice for us as sinners (are we sinners?-are are we all one?) and forgiving us for our sins. His blood forgave all our sins we have previously done and continue to still do, while His death on the cross has forgiven us as sinners, the offspring of Adam, a man who choose sin and dependence apart from God. Jesus Christ has already paid the price for us, we who both sin and exist as sinners. All of this happened the very day Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice, paying a ransom, the price of sin, as we are held in the bondage of sin from Adam. Jesus Christ became the last Adam and the second man. So it goes according to the traditional Christian literal rendering.

Luke's account in Acts, describes shortly thereafter, 120 deciples of Jesus sat in an upper room as God poured his Spirit out to All of mankind on the face of the earth, fulfilling prophecy of Joel chapter 2. However it was only those who put faith in the name and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as God's Son, who died for mankind and was resurrected three days later, appointed to the superior position of God, sitting at his right hand of the Father, given all authority on heaven and on earth, it was only these persons, who had this faith, that were given direct access to this Spirit of God that was poured out to All of mankind and "dwells within," as tongues of fire giving many the gift of tongues in many languages, accommodating the many visiting Jews coming to Israel for the day of Pentecost and receiving now the witness of Jesus. It was only those who called on the name of Jesus that were saved. Only these people were able to have access to God's Spirit that was poured out on ALL of mankind, as they applied Jesus blood sacrifice and death on the cross for their sins and being sinners.

"In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on ALL people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

Notice that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord - Jesus - will be saved." As,

"Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." Acts 4:13

"Seek Jehovah, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps (probably) you will be sheltered on the day of the Jehovah's anger." Zephaniah 2:3

To quote Zephaniah 2:3 and apply it to those putting faith in the "rock," the "chief corner stone," Jesus Christ, is to misapply scripture and prevent persons from gaining true faith in Christ, which is having complete confidence in His both forgiving us and saving us, "here and now."

Instead, in the Watchtower Society, Jehovah's Witnesses, as part of a non-Spirit class of Christians, are forever dependent on the "anointed" "slave class," always unsure of their salvation.

St. Paul writes in Romans that everyone who calls on the name of Jesus is saved. As we sin and repent we remain in His forgiveness. We are not in a saved condition that calls for effort and good works, but the day Jesus died, in 33 CE, all of mankind was forgiven and given His Spirit. The day that God makes the first move in drawing us to Him, His Spirit reveals itself to us the true revelation of Jesus Christ. In turn we put faith in God's Son, Jesus and apply the sacrifice of His blood and death and become saved. This is the essence of the literal text of Paul's words.

As I was reading Watchman Nee's book, The Normal Christian life and came to this awareness, a dream occurred containing an illustration, only to be found in Nee's book in my continued reading. My dream consisted of two men. They were wrestling in a body of water. One of the men started to drown, while the other just stood there and watched. The bubbles were getting weaker as the man under water was drowning. The other man just watched and simply did not lift a finger to help. Finally, when the bubbles almost completely stopped and you could tell the man under the water was just about dead, ceasing all effort to save himself, the other man lifted him out of the water and saved him. The saved man then looked at the other with a very sad face and said, "Why didn't you save me sooner? Why did you wait so long and let me suffer?

As Watchman Nee relates his meaning to this illustration, One man is drowning, the other is a good swimmer. The good swimmer did not help the drowning man earlier and states,

"Had I gone earlier, he would have clutched me so fast that both us would have gone under. A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself. When we give up our case then God will take it up. We must abandon all of our fleshly efforts to please God."

This same teaching can be found in the following Buddhist account:

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"How, dear sir, did you cross the flood?" "By not halting friend, and by not straining I crossed the flood." "But how is it, dear sir, that by not halting and by not straining you crossed the flood?" "When I came to a standstill, friend, then I sank; but when I struggled, then I got swept away. It is in this way, friend, that by not halting and by not straining I crossed the flood." -Buddha, "The Connected Discourses of the Buddha"

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." John 10:9

Reflecting on this interpretation, it can be seen a step further. As we live our lives drowning in our efforts of living in a saved condition, refusing to accept that we are already saved, saved completely, we act as though we need to tread the waters of life and we do just that. We kick and we scream and refuse to admit to ourselves that we need not our efforts. We feel that we are not fully and totally saved, that we need to watch ourselves to be forgiven. God watches us, as we drown in our own efforts to save ourselves, fighting, kicking and wrestling to please Him but continue drowning just the same. Until we can fight no more, when we finally give up and cease to use our efforts, our abilities, our good works, it is only then, that we turn our human spirits over as slaves of God's Spirit, and rely on His Spirit alone to forgive us, to save us. We then allow God to save our lives as He did with the drowning man, saving him out of the water and let God say to us, "you are saved." But why, we ask, did you wait so long? "Because you were saved from the beginning of your swim, you just had to let go and stop the fight and give in to my Spirit and cease your efforts, then you would know that you are saved."

Or maybe this dream relates to no real teaching at all but simply the fact that struggling for anything: power, control, money, knowledge or objective truth acts as a catch 22. Just as swimmers sink because they struggle too hard, things only harmonize when they try letting go and easing up on the fight, that is when they move forward in gradual patience, relying on the Grace, such as in the predestination teaching of Calivinism, or on the other side of the spectrum, the laws of the universe (karma) that will ulitmately allow the universe to work, ceasing to sink but swimming safely to shore. Sounds alot like Zen, the enlightened way that has no doctrinal or methodical teaching one can hold on to for safety, as a swimmer formulates strokes, but instead the patience of grace.

One month later, on a whim, visiting a church on a Sunday morning hearing the pastor read 1 John 5:13, like the grand finale of a home run hit in a baseball game, the game ended with the result of the basic foundation and fundamental teaching that is so taught throughout Christendom. In line with Watchman Nee's interpretation, and that of St. Paul: to know Christ is to know we have, "here and now," eternal life, that we may know that we are saved, that we may know we are forgiven and can pray in full confidence that no matter what we ask God for, according to His will, he hears us. So be it, that is essense of Christianty, one version of it, but nevertheless, the ideas conveyed by the writers in their literal sense.

"I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." 1 John 5:13 "I have written like this to you who already believe in the name of God's Son so that you may be quite sure that, here and now, you possess eternal life." 1 John 5:13 Phillips Modern Translation "But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved." Hebrews 10:39

From the biblical literalist viewpoint, to be saved is to be separate from an external God, in need a of divine human (the Christ) sacrifice to be accepted. Are we ever separate from what we perceive to be God, or are we One with all Being? As close as the very breath. not in ego, but in the living life force of life in our silent interior, in the intuitive wisdom that embraces us with a prescnce and knowing, of Being.