- 12 - Peter’s belief in Christ as the Divinely sent Messiah is the eternal, everlasting rock against which hell cannot prevail, not the person of Peter, who very soon afterwards was vanquished by hell when he denied his Master three times under oath. • He thus showed how little God can depend upon humans, and that no Plan of Salvation can rest upon them. That would be building on sand! One thing only is immutable: • The truth, and the faith in the truth conveyed by the spirits of God. Peter, too, had received the truth – that Christ was the Messiah – from messengers of God, for as Christ said: ‘Flesh and blood has not revealed that unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.’ It was because Peter had received this revelation from spirits of God that he believed it. And in this belief he stood upon unyielding rock. For the spirit world of God does not lie. Whoever does as Peter did stands on the same rock upon which Peter rested his faith. • Whoever is ready to receive God’s truth from the hands of God’s messengers of truth and to believe in it belongs to the Church of Christ. It is therefore a Church of the spirit. • It recognizes no external membership in the form of membership in an earthly organized religion. • It recognizes no bishops and priests with the broad powers assumed by the clergy of the Catholic Church. • It recognizes no infallible Pope. • Christ has no deputy on earth. • People of every religion in the world belong to the church of Christ. This spiritual Church of Christ can never be overcome by Evil, for it is the source of the truth, and truth is unconquerable. Its messengers of truth are not people – not popes, bishops or priests – but spirits of God. • The ‘keys to the kingdom of Heaven’, which Christ promised to give to Peter because of his faith, are God’s truths. By means of them he was ‘to bind and to lose’ by passing the keys on to those who lay bound in the chains of error.
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