Eternally Saved (New Revelation)

Eternally Saved (New Revelation) is the Church of the New Revelation’s claimed status for members regarded as permanently saved, beyond sin, and assured of their place in Heaven. More than a promise of life after death, it defines a boundary within the church: ordinary members may enjoy its public fellowship, but only the innermost committed are admitted to its mysteries and considered candidates for direct entry into Heaven. The distinction links spiritual certainty to membership, discipline, and controlled access.

Status and Church Structure

The Church of the New Revelation is organized in layers. Its outer church welcomes anyone and allows a seeker to remain for years while receiving some of the church’s benefits. The publicly visible middle church consists of the happy saved: members who pay tithes, participate in the church’s expanding business ties, and are encouraged to remain happy, support the organization, treat fellow Fosterites honestly, and condemn sinners. The doctrine grants them forgiveness for past sins while leaving comparatively little conduct sinful so long as these expectations are met.

Eternally Saved status belongs to a narrower inner group, the Inner Church, which is never publicly named as such. Its members make up the priesthood, lay leadership, keepers of keys and records, and makers of policy. Described as reborn and beyond sin, they alone participate in the inner mysteries and are candidates for direct admission to Heaven. The status therefore separates public belonging from privileged religious authority: being saved in the middle church does not itself confer access to the innermost rites.

Selection and Discipline

Foster personally selected inner members until the organization became too large for him to do so alone. He sought men resembling himself and women resembling his priestesses: dynamic, strongly convinced, and capable of overcoming jealousy. The inner circle’s communal sexual ethic depended on that selection, not simply on the general promise of salvation. When a candidate was married, both spouses had to qualify. An unmarried candidate was expected to be sexually attractive and assertive, and priests were instructed to maintain at least as many men as women.

These restrictions reflect an effort to prevent the jealousy and violence that Foster associated with the failure of comparable groups. He did not reserve any woman exclusively for himself, including women he legally married, and he did not try to enlarge the inner group too quickly. Public revivals could yield no couples considered capable of Heavenly Marriage, or only a small number; Foster accepted that limitation while leaving the middle church to serve the broader membership. Eternal salvation thus functions in the account not as an indiscriminate reward, but as a status administered through selective admission and a particular communal discipline.

Signs, Meetings, and Verification

A tattoo called Foster’s kiss marks a church member as saved. Patricia Paiwonski explains that it is placed over the heart and can be incorporated into a larger tattoo so that it is not recognizable unless disclosed. Her husband, George, designed the image, and Foster himself applied the mark. Patricia regards it as a sign of her own permanent salvation, but makes clear that a tattoo alone cannot establish admission to an Inner Temple Happiness meeting: the mark could be faked.

Members visiting another congregation can instead be identified through records. Patricia sends her fingerprints to local churches for comparison with the master file of the eternally saved at the Archangel Foster Tabernacle, and supplies an address in care of Billboard. When she arrives, she is positively identified before attending. The procedure shows how an intimate sacred claim is backed by institutional verification, while the visible tattoo offers a more personal and portable sign.

Happiness meetings also differ according to membership level. Meetings for ordinary saved members are described as lively gatherings, but conduct remains subject to limits intended to prevent dissension. At meetings for the eternally saved, the participants are considered incapable of sinning, so drinking, prayer, singing, or dancing can all be interpreted as God’s will. The status reshapes the meaning of conduct: what might be improper in the wider church is treated within the inner gathering as permissible because its members are understood to be beyond sin.

Encounters with Mike’s Community

The novel places this Fosterite status beside the developing community around Mike, whose practices are distinct even when members have connections to Fosterism. Patricia’s account of the eternally saved helps explain why she sees a resemblance between a church gathering and sharing water, but Mike and Jill do not claim membership in her church. When they offer Patricia water, Jill explains that the rite establishes trust and permanent partnership, and warns that accepting it must not conflict with Patricia’s faith. Mike likewise stresses that she should refuse if her religion or her own feelings give her any reason not to accept.

Patricia chooses to join them, and the water-sharing ceremony makes her their partner under the terms Jill has described. That acceptance does not erase the difference between the communities: the couple identifies themselves only as seekers, and Patricia’s Fosterite status remains her own. Later, at Mike’s Nest, Patricia is ordained and teaches beginners’ Martian classes, while working with Dawn to show Fosterites that joining the Church of All Worlds need not conflict with their faith. She presents Foster’s kiss alongside a miraculous mark associated with Mike, using her established religious standing to help interested Fosterites consider the new church’s training and higher circles.

The contrast is not simply between belief and disbelief. Both communities use staged admission, teaching, ritual, and signs of commitment, but their claims and structures are not interchangeable. Patricia describes the Fosterite Inner Church as a status already certified by its master file and reserved for the reborn. Mike’s community, by contrast, develops through circles of learning and discipline, with admission and water-sharing marking changes in relationship and belonging. The story lets Patricia move between these religious worlds without treating her earlier status as identical to the new one.

Narrative Significance

Eternally Saved status binds an inward promise of security to a public organization’s methods of selection, recordkeeping, and social control. Its assurance of forgiveness and Heaven is inseparable from the rules that define who may enter the inner church, who may participate in its private meetings, and what behavior counts as sinful. The sacred tattoo makes belonging visible when its wearer chooses to disclose it; fingerprint checks protect the boundary when appearance alone is insufficient.

The account also complicates the appeal of religious certainty. The middle church offers a broad community organized around happiness, while the Inner Church promises a more absolute rebirth and a place beyond ordinary sin. Patricia’s participation in Mike’s water rite shows that such certainty does not prevent new commitments, but the scene preserves the importance of informed choice: she is explicitly told she may decline. Through her, the status becomes not only a doctrine about salvation but a lived identity that can coexist, uneasily and selectively, with another community’s practices.