- 13 - Whoever rejected those keys by opposing truth with unbelief would be bound closer than ever to his error, but the bonds of those who eagerly accepted the proffered key would be loosed. The binding and loosing applied to terrestrial existence as well as especially to life in the Beyond. The same metaphor of the ‘keys to the kingdom of heaven’ is used by Christ in speaking to the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people of his day. With the false doctrines that they preached, they had given the Jewish people the wrong key, a key with which the doors of the kingdom of heaven could not be opened. The right key, which was offered by John the Baptist and by Christ himself and which the people were ready to receive, was torn from their hands by the Jewish clergy. That is why Christ exclaimed: Matthew 23: 13: ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are! You close the kingdom of heaven to mankind. You yourselves do not enter, and you will not let those enter who would like to.’ The words: ‘Feed my lambs, feed my sheep’, which Christ after his Resurrection addressed to Peter, are also interpreted by you as indicative of a favouring of Peter. This is not the case. Peter had publicly denied his Master three times under oath, and according to all human standards it was to be expected that Christ would dismiss the unfaithful disciple from his service and relieve him of his apostolic office. Peter himself fully expected this, remembering Christ’s words: Matthew 10, 33: ‘Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father, who is in heaven.’ This the course you humans would have taken under the circumstances. but Christ had mercy on the repentant Peter. He restored him to his apostleship and also conferred the duties of a shepherd upon him. Peter was allowed, in spite of his breach of faith, to lead his fellowmen to the pastures of truth on an equal footing with the other Apostles. Christ’s question to Peter, ‘Do you love me?’, repeated three times, was intended to remind Peter of his thrice-repeated denial, and to bring home to him God’s great goodness towards him in retaining him as an evangelist of the kingdom of God and as an instrument of God’s spirits despite all that had happened. You see how mistaken the interpretations are that your [Catholic] church gives for the passages in question and that these cannot be construed to support a preferred status for Peter or the doctrine of papal infallibility. Hell has long since conquered that church, and Evil is also the author of the doctrine of papal infallibility. Inasmuch as most of the doctrines of that church are wholly erroneous, hell is intent upon perpetuating them among mankind as long as possible. This end is best achieved by means of the coercive measure of infallibility, for the church, having taught its errors under the sanction of infallibility, cannot now retract them. To surrender them would be to commit self-destruction. Your papal doctrine piles untruth upon untruth. • Thus, it is historically untrue that the Bishop of Rome is the direct successor to Peter in the Apostolic office, for the bishops of the first Christian congregations were neither elected as such by their fellowmen, nor appointed by the Apostles, but were appointed exclusively by the manifesting spirits of God.
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