Constitutional History of the Western World

Some say Christianity is whatever the Roman Catholic Church says it is. If Rome is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, Matthew 16. 13-19, then you will go to Heaven if you never rebel against Rome.

But if Rome is a false church, if Rome is lost in heresy, if Rome leads people to perdition...

You can't get anywhere in Christianity if you can't find the True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock. The True Church is a collection of saints who lead people to Heaven.  Every church claims it leads people to Heaven. But if a church is lost in heresy then it is a false church, and false churches lead people to perdition.

Revelation 20. 12-15 says that if your name is found written in the Book of Life you go to Heaven.  If your name is not written in the Book of Life then you get tossed into the lake of fire.  Matters are left ambiguous whether the damned are eventually taken out of the fire and moved to more comfortable places in eternal perdition. Since God is merciful you tend to think they are, but it gets rather speculative.

John 6. 53-55 says in so many words you must celebrate Holy Communion in order to attain Heaven and escape perdition.  1 Corinthians 11. 27-29 says you drink damnation into your soul if you celebrate Holy Communion in an unworthy manner.  What's an unworthy manner and what isn't?

Lord Acton told us in his essay `Human Sacrifice,'

'And yet, long after the last victim had fallen in honour of the sun-god of the Aztecs, the civilised nations of Christian Europe continued to wage wholesale destruction...Protestants and Catholics, clergy and laity, vied with each other for two hundred years to provide victims, and every refinement of legal ingenuity and torture was used in order to increase their number. In 1591, at Nördligen, a girl was tortured twenty-three times before she confessed...Three years later, in the same town, a woman suffered torture fifty-six times without confessing she was a witch...In the north of Italy, the great jurist Alciatus saw 100 witches burnt on one day...In England alone, under the Tudors and the Stuarts, the victims of this superstition amounted to 30,000..."

Therefore, though you might not be a cruel judge or an evil executioner, if you share the bread and the wine with people who make no secret that they promote Anti-Christian things, then, recalling 1 Corinthians 11. 27-29, it stands to reason you drink damnation into your soul.

Suppose you are a Christian politician in the USA.  Suppose you are quite able to follow the logic:  1) Jesus is God - John 1. 1-14, 1 Tim 3. 16 etc., 2) You can trust what God / Jesus says in Matthew 16. 13-19: there is a True Church: 3) If you persist in rebelling against God and God's True Church then you can plan on going to eternal perdition, 4) If your name is not written in the Book of Life then you get tossed into the Lake of Fire.

Suppose you are a Christian politician in the USA, but suppose you are not quite ready to launch a rebellion to overthrow The United States of America, not quite ready to install a Christian Theocracy.  Suppose you're not quite ready to make the Roman Catholic Church the New Government of what used to be the USA, not quite ready to pledge your allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church, not ready to declare the Episcopalian Church to be God's True Church, not ready to make the Presbyterians your masters, not ready to...

So, if Revelation 20. 12-15 is true...if you are not in the True Church, if your name is not written in the Book of Life, you get cast into the lake of fire.