Well, to be historically fair, 17 years is a drop in the bucket. We’ll see how the movement progresses after your leader dies, which is usually when these things fall apart (unless legal actions force it to happen earlier).
Thank you for sharing your interpretation of the particular verses you have quoted. Obviously, I’d have to disagree with them.
I find it interesting that as “Christians” we must abandon what Christ gave us.
Another question, if I may;
Is your group’s leader really, that is “exclusively”, Jesus Christ? Or is that teaching based upon the premise that all who follow Christ’s Gospel are themselves Christ? Are you, now or expecting to become, Jesus Christ?
IF he is claiming to the the exclusive Jesus Christ, why did he not return as the scriptures tell us he will, and why is he not, genetically rather than ritually, a Jew, as the actual Jesus was? According to the scriptures, Jesus will return to us in the same manner as he left, not “reborn” into new flesh.
Finally, how can Sin actually be non-existant, when yourself claims to have made “mistakes” which would otherwise be called sin, were you not automatically refusing to do so. Because of the historical singularity of the Crucifiction, is all murder that occurred after it no longer sinful? Basically, by removing the morality of it due to rejection of its “sinful” nature, nothing more than a selffish inconveinience to others? Why did Jesus, as recorded in scripture, bother trying to set everyone straight about the nature of Sin, the Law, and any doctrine at all regardless, if he was just going to eliminate the entire subject in a couple years at his death? Why are we expected to throw out God’s teachings for those of one of his followers?
I know the scriptural references you are using to make your position, yet it is becoming clear that they are not being used in their actual context, either within their immediate discourse, or within relation to the entirety of scripture.
Perhaps if you inderstood the Catholic position, you would see how it incorporates al these things into a unified, consistent, single teaching. For example, yes, Christ atoned for all sin in the singular act of his Passion, however, that does not mean we cannot sin, or that sin is now eliminated from the equasion. Otherwise, there would be no need for faith at all in Christ! We need to have faith in Christ now, not because it gives us a surety that we are safe because there is no “sin”, but precisely because we still do sin, and need continual recourse to His mercy.
As you have so far explained it, we cannot sin! We can make mistakes, which have the ususal social-ethical consequences, but we don’t really have to worry about that, because there is no Sin; we cannot spiritually screw up.
Again, I can see the basic appeal to this idea, as well as why living by it would make one seem to be happy. But such an edenic state of existence cannot occur under the circumstances we know are needed for it to, nor will adoption of this belief actually solve the evils found in the world today in a manner that will create it without them.