by James Banks (10v24.net)
I read a book about 11 years ago that affected me deeply, called New Wine for the End Times (written by Philip Brown). It is about 600 pages long and goes into all the verses in the Bible that justify the author's belief in what he calls the New Wine System.
I went on to think about and write about the New Wine System. I made my own system of philosophy to justify belief in the New Wine System and to show implications of that belief. But then I re-read New Wine for the End Times recently (2023) and saw that my interpretation of it was not the same as the author's. The philosophy that I had developed said something somewhat different. But between both the New Wine System and my philosophy, there were some things in common. The most basic being the following beliefs:
1. Everyone must become completely holy in order to live with God forever. 2. Because we have free will, there is a risk of us not choosing to finish this process. 3. There is a long but finite time in which to complete the process of becoming holy. (The Millennium is a long but finite time in the Bible which Philip Brown sees as being for becoming holy.)
So, there is a "voluntary" (free will) aspect to this, a "millennial" aspect, and a "holiness" aspect: "voluntary millennial holiness" (VMH).
Rather than Philip Brown's book, or my system of philosophy, which are both long and complicated, this booklet presents a simplified VMH doctrine which does not justify itself using the Bible, but does require a belief in a certain kind of God, who may be familiar to Christians and perhaps others. Then I try to talk about the implications of VMH.
After that, I present a few other ideas, which I think are important to share, but which perhaps are not essential to VMH. This booklet is intended first to be a way for me to share what is most important to me, but is also useful for those who want to know more about voluntary millennial holiness.
This booklet is condensed and perhaps requires some thought on the reader's part to fully understand it.
What kind of God is this book about?
He never sins, he loves, he is the creator and sustainer. He is generally all-powerful -- exceptions include things that follow from him not sinning, from him loving, from him being a personal being, and from him obeying logic or perhaps certain other laws that follow from his nature and will. (These limitations allow us to trust him.) He knows everything that can be known.
Sin is that which is unacceptable to God. God accepts it for now, otherwise it would not exist. Can God accept sin forever? Then he accepts it permanently, and it is not sin.
(Sin is that which is unbearable to God. God bears it for now, otherwise it would not exist. If something is at all unbearable, eventually it has to stop being experienced.)
Our real sins are our real choices, the things we can stop doing or being. Repentance is always something you're capable of doing.
Our sinful behaviors, habits, and drives are things that can be taken away from us by God, but our hearts are up to us.
We can identify ourselves with sin, be on the side of it. If we do this temporarily, then God patiently gives us the chance to stop identifying with sin and stop being on the side of it. But he can't do this forever, or else he would have to accept sin. (He can't do this forever, because he can't bear sin forever.) So we have a limited amount of time to turn away from all sin.
There is not enough time to do this in our lives on earth, so God gives us a longer period of time after this life in which to fully turn against sin and fully distance ourselves from it so that it is no longer part of who we are, no longer part of what we choose and prefer.
After we have fully turned against sin, we can live with God forever.
The worst sin is to fail to love God with all of our beings. Or maybe that's the only sin (all the rest follow from it). This love can also be viewed as a good thing in itself. Repentance is from sin and to 100% love of God. Loving God involves being aligned with God's values, sharing his heart. And also loving God as a person, whom you get to know.
Voluntary millennial holiness implies that there is always something to do in your spiritual / religious / moral life, until you have reached the point of 100% repentance. (You can't easily know that you have reached that point and to think you've made it before you really have is dangerous.)
You can't be complacent or take your salvation completely for granted. You can have some assurance that you are on the right path, but you must keep going down that path. Procrastinating on repenting gets some grace, but not infinite grace, so you have to stop procrastinating in order to make it to the final place of rest. You have a long way to go, and you have to travel the way yourself, so you might as well start now.
Don't let things grow in you that could harden you against repentance.
It's dangerous to give up on yourself.
God speaks to you through the truth. Don't stop seeing what you really see, and cultivate honesty with yourself and others.
There are people for you to help along the way. They have to repent, themselves (they need to turn to God and away from sin themselves). It's their decision. You can help them by choosing to repent, yourself. And by helping them find God desirable. These things are "anti-temptations". (There can be other things that you do, but I want to emphasize these, because perhaps they are the most trustworthy.)
What should we do, and what must we not do, specifically? There is some time to sort this out in the next life (the one between this life and the final place of rest), although it is worth trying to figure out in this one, if it can help us live better.
Can we know which God is the real God? The things that we think about God can be inadequate and inaccurate, even if we are his friends, just as our ideas of our human friends can be inadequate and inaccurate. Having a wrong conception of God is likely, and sometimes being wrong about God now has negative consequences. It is also true that the question can be cleared up by God later, if we can be open-minded.
These are some other thoughts that I think are important, that I want to add.
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We can distress God. We can harm God, at least temporarily.
If we reject God permanently, then he loses us.
God experiences exactly what we experience. He experiences firsthand what we experience firsthand. He experiences more than what we experience but not less.
We should love God, and orient everything around loving God. We should love people, and ourselves, because we love God. For God's sake, we should love people, because he loves them. God is the center.
My website (10v24.net) and blog (see website for link) contain much more related to voluntary millennial holiness. I mostly approach things from a philosophical perspective that can connect to the Bible, but which does not require belief in the Bible.
Philip Brown (newwine.org) has written New Wine for the End Times, the comprehensive Biblical justification of the New Wine System that I read, and also Romans Under New Light, a shorter book introducing the New Wine System.
This booklet is version 1.1, released 29 May 2024. I may want to revise it in the future. If you have feedback, that may help me in that.
My email can be found at my website (10v24.net).
© 2024 by James Banks, licensed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. You may make and distribute copies of this work, without modification, for non-commercial purposes. For full terms of license, see creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/