About Us: The History of Our Ministry and Its Unique Features

Our History
Grace and Sanity Ministries was founded by Pauline Holmes-Arcel, a clinical psychologist, and her husband, Walter Arcel, a life-long explorer of the unconscious.

EXISTENTIAL GUILT: Long before Walter believed the Bible, he saw something of the utmost importance: humans suffer terrible guilt and it is connected in some way with death and an afterlife. Specifically, humans are aware that their imperfection separates them from God. After all the years Walter spent following gurus of various persuasions, he came to the Bible and found the explanation and remedy for what he had come to see as a desperate plight. Humans sense that they deserve eternal darkness and have to find a way to escape this sentence. This is the goal of all religions, although it is often not explicitly stated.

The Bible tells us that God is holy, pure and undefiled, whereas humans are unholy, impure and defiled. All humans are innately aware that only total sinlessness is acceptable as legal tender. Only if humans were totally pure and without sin could they connect with God through their own devices. Since no human is capable of attaining such perfection, it follows that all are damned, or would be without a God-given remedy of some sort.

The reason we humans are not consciously aware of this situation is that psychological defense mechanisms keep it at a subconscious level. Humans could not function in this world if they walked around knowing that the price or penalty for sin, or imperfection, is spiritual death. This death involves an element of consciousness in a state of isolation and darkness of infinite length.

Walter correctly sensed that he could not attain the essential state of purity through his own efforts; he could not avoid eternal darkness that way. He could not come up with the price, he could not make the essential payment or offering. If the price for sin is death, no human can pay it and live.

After Walter explored many doctrines in a highly experiential way, he finally found the truth. Every single doctrine outside of the Bible demands that humans attain total sinlessness. Only the Bible does not assign this humanly impossible task.

THE LAW GOD GAVE MOSES: What's more, and this may be surprising to many in the church, the Law God gave to Moses is a contract offering humans a viable means of making the payment. The Old Testament is the place where God offers mercy in writing. Thorough reading of the first five books of the Bible showed Walter that this wonderful offer is there. The form of the payment changes with the New Testament, but the written covenant does not.

God was and is willing to accept the death of another in place of the spiritual death of humans. Animal sacrifices were legal tender until the death of Christ. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the substitutionary blood atonement covenant spelled out in the Law. In both Old and New Testaments, God shows humans that he killed Jesus to make the essential and sufficient payment to buy them out of eternal damnation, and that he offers this payment to humans as a complete gift. In other words, God shows us in the Bible that he will accept the death of a substitute for the human sinner as payment of the penalty for human sin, and that the acceptable substitute is the totally sinless Jesus. Just because he loves us, God lets us humans completely off the hook as long as we recognize our inherent depravity and we claim this payment that we are incapable of earning.

The price, penalty or payment for sin, even the slightest deviation or tiniest unloving thought, is eternal separation from God in outer darkness. Perfection from conception to death is the requirement. We humans have to see that we have no hope of ever attaining the standard, even if, as some false religions claim, we had many lifetimes in which to do it. We humans could never erase every trace of corruption.

SPREADING THE GOOD NEWS: It was Walter's conviction and ability to see into the heart of a matter that influenced Pauline to re-consider the Bible she had rejected many years before. It also drove the two of them to want to spread the good news. If you, yourself, an undeserving sinner, can escape eternal damnation, why not others, especially anyone you care about?

When you grasp the truth--the bad news and the good news, you cannot help but be compelled to spread it. It becomes urgent. The essential payment is a gift. A total gift. Without it, a person, no matter how good, will go to hell. To hell, no less. Forever. No way back.

GRACE AND SANITY MINISTRIES: Pauline and Walter never planned to start a ministry per se, especially one on the radio. They began by writing books. However, there was a period of time when they listened extensively to Christian radio, and saw that this intimate medium can reach people when they are in a receptive state. It is a valuable tool when used in the right way: to point people towards the grace of God. Grace is the antidote to guilt. People need to know that the doorway to salvation is wide open to them. Their valid fears concerning their eternal destiny need to be put at rest.

Sadly, what Pauline and Walter heard on so-called Christian radio, with a few notable exceptions, was programming that preaches against sin, and focuses only on this world. This only deepens the guilt and anxiety that people already have, and never addresses the matter of their eternal destiny.

Walter, in particular, saw there was a need for a focus on salvation in a completely Bible-based way. The result was the initiation of the weekly half-hour radio program, “Grace and Sanity,” in 1993 on KFIA, a Sacramento station. Since Walter was further out in the “funny accent” league than Pauline, he did not want to do the talking on the radio. It therefore fell to Pauline to tiptoe out on the air--with trepidation and very much assistance from God. Pauline had published her first book “Hell and Madness; Grace and Sanity” in 1992. It was this work that provided a rich source of material and the theme for the program. The weekly half-hour program (air time is costly) became lecture-format after a brief abortive run as a call-in show, and it has aired continuously ever since.

Grace and Sanity Ministries, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit religious corporation, came into existence in August, 1995, when the radio station then about to broadcast the program, KFAX, had this requirement. It so happened that the process of forming a non-profit corporation prompted Pauline and Walter to get more serious about the ministry, as if it had now taken on a life of its own.

Now there is a large library of 26 minute programs. These can be obtained on CD, and you can find them listed on this website. Several programs are to be found on this website. They can be streamed to your computer if you download Windows Media Player from Microsoft (free). The sound quality of these programs is very high.

“Grace and Sanity” is mostly written and narrated by Pauline, but every-so-often Walter reads excerpts from his own work. Also, Walter and Pauline have published several books through Ransom Press, a division of Grace and Sanity Ministries. You can download some of them in entirety or in excerpt form from this website.

Unique Features
There are a number of features that make “Grace and Sanity” different from much of what is heard on Christian radio or read in Christian books:

A. Our Old Testament focus
Grace and Sanity heavily emphasizes the Old Testament as the foundation for faith in Christ. The point is, Christianity must be grounded in the Law God gave to Moses.

B. Salvation from hell
Another feature is the focus on eternity as all-important. This ministry is a “Johnny one-note,” continually pounding the fact that nothing compares God's gift of a rescue from hell. This contradicts much of the “this lifetime only” teaching that can be heard today.

C. Uses the tool of psychology to demonstrate the relevance of the gospel
Another unique feature is that “Grace and Sanity” approaches the gospel message through evidence in the human psyche, particularly the phenomena of guilt and anxiety. Both Pauline and Walter have spent many years exploring the workings of the human mind at a subconscious level. They find a universal and specific type of guilt in humans, the sense of deserving eternal damnation. Humans are subconsciously aware they are doomed by anything other than perfect adherence to a God-given, inescapable, innate moral code. The only cure for this guilt lies in claiming the death of Christ that paid the penalty on behalf of humans. Therefore mental health depends on internalizing the Law. This breaks through psychological defenses and lifts off the layers of guilt, anger and fear.

D. Of benefit to the psychiatric population and those working with it
In her private practice as a licensed psychologist, Pauline has found this to be true. When people perceive the freely-given mercy in the Law, they start to truly recover from their mental disorders. Even long-term sufferers of the most serious illnesses gain an expanding core of sanity as the grace of God sinks in. Pauline believes that regular listening to the program will foster that process. By the way, one aim of the radio ministry is to provide for shut-ins or people who cannot afford private consultations. We receive many grateful letters from listeners in those situations.

Need for your help
We would love our radio program to spread across the country but the reality is that it is still a struggle to fund one weekly half hour on AM radio. It costs $310 per 26 minute broadcast to buy time on the present station, KCBC AM 770, at 8:00 a.m. on Saturdays (sometimes heard at an additional time when the station has unsold space). Moreover, in 2006, Grace and Sanity began a weekly 30 minute program on WWCR, short-wave 15.825, Wednesdays at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time. The cost is $99 per program.

Since we feel it is important maintain a truly Bible-based message independent of any religious denomination or organization, we have no other donors than you. The rest of the expense comes from our own pockets, including the recent sale of our home. Unfortunately, in 2007 we saw a big drop in funding from the radio audience and others nourished by our ministry, and proceeds of the home sale will last only one more year. This imposes a severe limit on the continuance and propagation of our message. Wider dispersal and, eventually, continuation cannot happen without your help. If you are fed by us, please help if you can. We especially need regular contributors. Please join us in bringing our message to the world. We are one of the relatively few ministries actually telling the gospel.

All contributions above the purchase price of an item are tax-deductible. If you write to us, we will not begin to solicit you regularly, nor give your name to anyone else. We'll just send you a small envelope with our address on it. You can write to us at: Grace and Sanity Ministries, P.O. Box 1172, Crescent City, CA 95531. You can donate to us using a credit card or Paypal via the "donate" button on the "order" page. For complete contact information for us, go to: Contact us.