COGR – Access Through The Apostles
January 23, 2024
Good day! I am writing a series of short reviews of abbreviated COGR video clips. I am looking for input and comments. If it makes it easier, I will be glad to supply a Word document so comments can be put in the document, and we can communicate directly. My email address is lattema@icloud.com. I hope you find these reviews helpful.
Transcript:
“Allow me to say a few more things about where John is going. John is going up to heaven by a single access. And the reason why John is going up to heaven is because everybody can’t go where he’s going. Very important. I have access to heaven. I have access, as a child of God, to all that heaven has. No, you don’t, not just, not just like that. You do have access through John. I said, through him. Do you mean to tell me, I have to go through John? Well, don’t look now, but you are going through John now—you’re going through him. You don’t understand this. We’re going through John’s understanding because he’s the only one that can go up there and show you what he saw. You couldn’t go up there by yourself. So we depend on John’s understanding. And we bless God for the gifting of the apostle.” Stephen Hargrave
Commentary:
The passage begins at Revelation 4:1, and Stephens’s comments have a couple of Biblical inaccuracies as well as some theological errors. We begin with Stephen telling us that there is a single access to heaven and implying that there is no other access. In reality, this is a vision, and John is using a rhetorical device to set the stage. The door itself is not the focus. Stephen tells us that this is a single door, but that itself is inaccurate. The text tells us only that there is a door. Stephen then builds a strawman, a person who seeks to go to heaven and believes that he, as a child of God, has access. Stephen quickly says this is not the case. He needs to go through John. So it appears that Stephen is saying that we must come into the kingdom through one of the apostles. This is clearly an error. Scripture tells us that we enter heaven through Jesus. (John 14:6, Acts 4:12, John 3:16, Romans 10:9, Ephesians 2:8-9) Stephen’s reply might be that it is the apostles who give us the information about Jesus, but in those cases, the apostles are not acting on their own but are relaying the means of salvation from the source of salvation. The word “through” also has many nuances, and it may be that Stephen is committing the fallacy of equivocation. Be that as it may, Stephen’s claim that there is only a single exit falls short, as does his claim that we are saved through John. Stephen is setting the stage to have the end-time apostles considered the access point for salvation, granting them power over their congregants. The original 12 apostles pointed people to Jesus. There is certainly no evidence that there are 12 end-time apostles currently ministering in the COGR. That is delusional.
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