Thread: Outer Darkness?
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Old 08-03-2018, 08:05 PM   #87
Trapped
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Join Date: Mar 2018
Posts: 1,523
Default Re: Outer Darkness?

My response is just going to be about my personal experience in the LC on this topic.... but not so much about the accuracy thereof.

Basically:

1. Believers who are overcomers are rewarded with the millennial kingdom. Somewhere along the way I picked up the thought that this involves being friends with lions and having the ability to walk through walls. Even to travel to other planets. Funny to type that out actually.....must be things I heard as a young kid maybe? Cool if true and backed up Biblically though.
2. Believers who are not overcomers are sent to outer darkness for 1,000 years to experience discipline and learn to gain the Lord since they did not do that sufficiently on earth. The gnashing of teeth indicates the regret they feel.
3. After 1,000 years the non-overcomers will now be fully transformed and all believers will enter the New Jerusalem together.

I do not recall ever hearing in trainings and conferences the explicit thought that only those in the LC will be overcomers and those not in the LC will not be overcomers. However, it was definitely said that, essentially, your best hope to be an overcomer was to remain in the LC's (the fear-based thing that keeps you in), which is more than enough to heavily imply without stating it explicitly that if you leave the LCs you will end up in outer darkness. So I certainly see how many could get the thought that LC = kingdom, and denominations = outer darkness.

I was pretty clear, though, that you could be in the LCs and still have a straight shot to outer darkness. That would be those who backslide or are closed to the Lord or do not allow Him to break them down enough, etc. I know this for sure because that described me and I knew for years that based on that I had no hope to make it into the kingdom. In other words, those who have enough oil "make it", and those who did not give themselves to "gain the oil" do not "make it". However, for something with as gigantic consequences as 1,000 years of fun or pain, the fact that there were no parameters given for me to know whether I had enough oil at any given point or would have enough oil at the end of my life, this did inject a fair amount of stress into me. It also gave me very little incentive to "gain the oil" since there was simply no way to gauge the result of my efforts until after it was too late to adjust them! Especially if you throw in the assurance of eternal salvation, it seemed to me that once you were saved, your time on earth then just became "kingdom or outer darkness". I.e. once salvation was under your belt, the WHOLE POINT of your life then became "kingdom or outer darkness". (okay, besides preaching the gospel and bringing others into the full knowledge of the truth). For something so consequential I couldn't understand why there was not some kind of gauge on my arm that showed my current level of oil so I could gas or throttle my openness as needed!

Throw in the "lighthearted" sessions at the trainings where the co-workers would joke by saying, "If you think you are in your spirit, you probably are not! And if you don't think you are in your spirit, you probably are! So best not to think about it at all!" (obviously "in your spirit" = "gaining the oil"). What is anyone supposed to do with that circus merry-go-round of "the Lord's present speaking" rattling around between their ears? The best way for the most important determining factor in my life to be carried out is not to think about it at all? AHHHH!!!
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