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The Lie That Led To Penal Substitution Theology

The Lie That Led To Penal Substitution Theology

God is the Creator who built all reality—space, time, energy, matter, and life. His laws are the laws that reality is constructed to operate upon; the laws of gravity, physics, thermodynamics, health, and the moral laws. These are fixed principles upon which life is constructed to exist.

Created beings cannot create reality, so we make up rules, call them “laws,” and then inflict punishment when our rules are broken. Christianity replaced the New Testament principle of love and design law, with a human, imposed law construct—the distortion that God’s law functions no differently than that of human law, imposed rules requiring infliction of punishment.. This led to all types of abuses and the world went into an age of darkness. 

Because imperial/imposed-law requires punishment for wrongdoing, the church of the Dark Ages taught that sin must be punished. This led to the doctrine of purgatory, where after death, conscious souls have their sins purged through punishment. In Roman Catholic theology, entrance into heaven requires the “remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven,” for which indulgences may be given which remove “either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin,” such as an “unhealthy attachment” to sin.[1] Those who die in grace, but who have not yet fulfilled the temporal punishment, due to their sin, can do so in purgatory.

One of the major doctrines that the great reformer Martin Luther rejected was the teaching that conscious souls are punished in purgatory. He disagreed with this doctrine in two ways:

  • First, he did not believe in a conscious soul that could experience punishment, and instead taught that the saints sleep peacefully: “It is enough for us to know that souls do not leave their bodies to be threatened by the torments and punishments of hell, but enter a prepared bedchamber in which they sleep in peace.”[2]
  • Second, Luther put forth a new theory designed to free people from both the fear of purgatory and the exploitation of indulgences to buy loved ones their freedom from further punishment in purgatory. He expanded Anselm’s satisfaction theory of atonement by adding inflicted punishment. Luther taught the idea that all sin by all humans from all time were placed on Christ at the cross and punished by God at the cross. Thus, for the saints, there were no unpunished sins remaining to be punished, thus there was no need for purgatory.[3]

Unfortunately, the same root lie underpins both purgatory and Luther’s solution—that God’s law functions like human law and that breaking the law (an act of sin) requires punishment. This is Satan’s lie about God’s law from the beginning.

E.G. White, one of the founders of the SDA church, describing Satan’s opening lies, writes:

In the opening of the great controversy, Satan had declared that the law of God could not be obeyed, that justice was inconsistent with mercy, and that, should the law be broken, it would be impossible for the sinner to be pardoned. Every sin must meet its punishment, urged Satan; and if God should remit the punishment of sin, He would not be a God of truth and justice. (DA 761.4, emphasis supplied)

The completion of the Reformation requires the rejection of this imposed law lie, in order to take the eternal gospel to the world, to prepare the world for Christ’s return. We must return to worship our Creator and Designer and realize His laws are the protocols upon which life is built. We must realize that sin changes the sinner, causing a state of being which is incompatible with life in God’s universe, because the sinner is no longer operating upon the law (protocols) that God constructed life to exist. Thus God, through Christ, has been working to heal and restore sinners back into perfection. This is healing substitution theology, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2Cor 5:21). This is the message of the three angels of Revelation 14. This is the true mission of the church—one that we will only fulfill when we eliminate imposed law, with its penal substitutionary distortion, from our pulpits, books, doctrines, universities, and institutions.


[1]     Catechism of the Catholic Church, “The celebration of the Christian Mystery.” The Holy See. The Catholic Church. Retrieved 14 March 2017. 

[2]     Weimarer Ausgabe, 43, 360, 21–23 (to Genesis 25:7–10); also Exegetica opera latina, Vol 5–6 1833 p. 120 and the English translation: Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols. (St. Louis: CPH), 4:313.

[3]     Paul Althaus, Die Theologie Martin Luthers, 7th ed. (1994), 179, 191-195.

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I am so pleased with the response your message is receiving at my church from the middle-aged to the young adults. I have given out 100 copies of the first two seminars and there are more request every week. One of my [class members] came to me after viewing the series, grateful and impressed with how easy the message was retained. He had been a Seventh-day Adventist in fear all his life, and felt like the scales were removed from his eyes after viewing the seminars. I am so impressed by the change I see in members who have received this message, we are in one accord. However, I am sadden by the negative response of the older people. I am verbally attacked anytime I talk about imposed laws, but I believe my mission is to enlightened everyone I can. I watch your Bible Study Class on YouTube every Friday night and I feel like I am apart of the class. All of you are in one accord and I am so blessed to have found you. I pray that all of you continue to spread this message and I am committed to doing my part.

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Hearing Dr. Jennings’ presentations in person came at a pivotal moment in my spiritual journey that began about nine months ago, when the fault lines inherent in my belief system began to crack under questions that most reasonable people end up asking about God and His nature. These were questions I couldn’t find answers to, and they shook my faith. I was unable let it go any longer and be satisfied. My Christian experience became distant. I was afraid; the fear in me rose like thorns, pushing me away from Jesus. And then someone heard my questions and introduced me to this ministry, and my life has totally changed.

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Testimony 70

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Two years ago I stumbled upon your book, “Could It Be This Simple,” and then found “The God-Shaped Brain” videos on YouTube, your bible study class, and the ‘Come And Reason’ mobile app. I shared your book with a friend and after nine months of showing love, patience, and kindness this person has been changed by the love of God, too. The same love that healed me, I now express to other women in tangible ways, such as to a Baptist woman with high anxiety and childhood trauma. She was extremely happy and relieved when I shared about the so-called “judgment of God” and burning in hell. She had no desire to serve a God that was so harsh. I have repeated the phrase dozens of times to her. “What we believe has power over us, but we have power over what we believe…”

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Testimony 67

I was introduced to Come And Reason by a friend of my mother-in-law, who gave me several CD’s of Dr. Jennings. The clarity of the message and recognition that God’s is a God of love was so clear, advancing beyond Dr. Maxwell’s message. However, grappled with Maxwell saying God used emergency measures for the fallen world. Now after several years of being a regular listener of the Come And Reasoning bible study class and attending Jennings’ meetings in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, things are becoming clearer for me. Design law versus imposed law has added so much to my personal understanding of theology. This message has really impacted my work in counseling so many people miserable because they are searching for and trusting human governments to create order and peace or believing in a God who says love Me or I will kill you. I am grateful that I have an alternative view to offer my clients that makes sense. I teach a bible study class on a semi-regular basis and I value the materials that Come And Reason so freely offers to aid me in presenting this vital message. Thank you for continuing to provide advancement in our very limited understanding of a Infinite God that is rational and believable.

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