This is what our Father teaches and trains our spirits to overcome. He makes our elect spirits able to manage this resistance of our flesh. Jesus came to save us from being captive to the demands of our easily duped flesh, to rescue us from our minds of flesh, which are deceived and imprisoned in the delusions and lies of the evil one. Jesus came to demolish those wicked lies and grind them into dust, to replace them with abundant life, to make our flesh into temples of God, used by our spirits and built according to the blueprints of His loving ways that Jesus teaches and trains us know and apply.
Then Jesus addressed the kind of false compassion that so impressed the disciple who asked Him a question. That disciple had been fooled by the impressive “good works” of rich psychopaths and the rabbis who lied about them. And he was not the only one they deceived. For most of the other elect also were not able to discern between the holy and unholy, between true and false love. So Jesus told them: “Therefore, whenever each of you are expressing compassion, do not sound a blast of the trumpet before your face, just as the hypocrites are doing in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they might be gloried by the people. Surely, I reason with you, they are receiving their reward. But, for each of you expressing compassion, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so the compassion from you might be in the hidden place. And the Father of each of you, the One seeing in the hidden place, will deliver [His compassion] to you” (Mat. 6:2-4, from: Ὅταν οὖν ποιῇς
ἐλεημοσύνην, μὴ σαλπίσῃς ἔμπροσθέν σου, ὥσπερ οἱ ὑποκριταὶ ποιοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς καὶ ἐν
ταῖς ῥύμαις, ὅπως δοξασθῶσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀπέχουσιν τὸν μισθὸν αὐτῶν.
σοῦ δὲ ποιοῦντος ἐλεημοσύνην μὴ γνώτω ἡ ἀριστερά σου τί ποιεῖ ἡ δεξιά σου, ὅπως ᾖ σου ἡ
ἐλεημοσύνη ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ· καὶ ὁ πατήρ σου ὁ βλέπων ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ ἀποδώσει σοι, SBLGNT).
Here the combination of a form of the verb ποιέω (“do, make, perform”) with the noun ἐλεημοσύνη
(“compassion, beneficence”) means “expressing compassion” or “performing acts of compassion.”
So it definitely can refer to giving money to the poor, but not exclusively. Rather, it would include any expressions of compassion. It could be words of compassion, to uplift the soul of one who is defeated, downtrodden or depressed. It could be caring about a family cruelly evicted from their home, helping their anxious hearts find a new home, and giving them a hand to move there. It could be inviting a lonely soul to dinner. It could be fighting political battles, to win decent wages and health care for those without a strong voice. It could be standing up for minorities against those who discriminate against them. It could be providing physical care and protections for the less harmful sinners, who do not know their right hand from their left, without any ability to repent and overcome their sins, just like us and everyone else. Or it could be speaking real truth when lies rule over all.
Many spirits born of Satan like to get involved in these expressions of compassion, but only to gain some praise, glory and goodwill for themselves, only to profit themselves in some way. And none of those non-elect ever do compassionate acts through God-like love in their spirits, since their spirits do not have any love. But Jesus wants the heavenly Father’s heirs to express compassion directly and very personally from the love in their spirits, and to do everything in communion with the brothers and sisters they are helping, according to the will of Jesus’ loving Holy Spirit in their hearts—in the Page 392
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“hidden place” of their souls, as He helps the mind of one’s spirit manage one’s mind of flesh, to do all deeds of the body. This means that each soul must sometimes not allow the mind of flesh to know what the spirit is doing, so the flesh will not interfere and reason away what the spirit in the heart compels the flesh to do. At times, as the flesh protests, our spirits must tell our flesh, “Just do it!”
Also, it may mean that we will not or cannot explain to the other members of our church why we are doing some good works. A more wisely loving soul in a family or church might secretly anoint some person with an expensive ointment purchased privately by one’s own soul, without letting some of the less wise souls in the family or church know about one’s expression of compassion. And this is basically what Jesus meant when He said the “right hand” should not let the “left hand” know what it is doing. For the members of a family or church were often called “right hands” or “left hands,” that is, depending on how wise and useful they were to the people. A “left hand” might foolishly think the anointing was a waste and claim: “This ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor” (Mat. 26:9, WEB). But what is most needed now, revealed through God’s wisdom, is not always what the foolish recognize as most urgent, though they think they are wise and pragmatic.
Of course, the logistics involved in operating most public charities in such a way usually proves to be utterly impossible. For how can large charities maintain order, accountability and control if each individual worker only does whatever God commands his or her own heart to do, and if each one expresses compassion secretly from the hidden place? Or how can charities raise operating funds if they do not brag about the good works their benefactors have done, and essentially advertise for the rich and their businesses who give them money? And how can large charities get funding, if they do not advertise how effectively they are at doing their good works? Most of their chief donors demand publicity, and most also want a say in how the charity functions too, as perks to pay for their gifts.
Most public charities are forced to glorify their donors, organization and workers, all against God’s will. Thus, this teaching of Jesus effectively denies most public charities any right to exist, at least not in the way our secular societies, who serve only the elite and oppress the common folk, function.
For the glory they seek corrupts their works and hearts, and they are not able to serve only for God’s glory, that is, for God’s good opinion. This teaching actually demands a complete restructuring of our nations, into democracies where all workers serving in our governments, businesses and even charitable organizations are chosen by God, where we choose them according to their manifested traits and gifts given to them by God. Only then will all they do be done through wise, godly love.
Since God defined all governments of all nations, states and cities on earth as His servants appointed to do His works, to provide all that the people physically need, then all governing bodies are actually charitable organizations. And, of course, all true churches are charitable organizations too, consisting of His chosen priests appointed to do both His spiritual and physical good works. Then this teaching of Jesus refers to compassionate works primarily done through good governments and true churches.
Therefore, Jesus is commanding that everyone serving in churches and in a wisely established true governments must function in a way where the individuals in it do not strive for, nor receive, glory or other self-centred benefits. That is, all true churches and all God-ordained legitimate governments must simply receive private and undisclosed gifts and taxes from the people. Then God expects all true churches and all government authorities and workers to do all kinds of good works, but strictly for the benefit of the people and through love for the people. God expects all to be His own just, equitable, priest-like servants, doing compassionate deeds according to His wise will and directly under His authority, so God can endorse those good works and bless them, even multiply their efficacy through His power. On the other hand, this also means that God will also punish the false servants more severely for their injustice, for the corporate or individual sins committed while Page 393
performing their appointed duties for God’s people in God’s lands on God’s earth. So it is not by increasing the number of laws and protocols created by human beings that make a church or a government more responsible and responsive to the needs of the people. Rather, only by a right choice of the individuals whom God Himself has chosen for each position of stewardship in each church and governing body can we possibly meet the spiritual and physical needs of all His people.
In every good government, everyone serves the same Head and Owner as workers the priesthood of Christ’s true local church. For the Scriptures also call all government workers His priestly servants, like church elders and heavenly angels (see λειτουργοὶ γὰρ θεοῦ in Rom. 13:6, and compare Rom.
15:16 and Heb. 1:7). In His church and in every governing body, each member is expected to say and do everything according to the calling and commands of Jesus. The only difference is that God’s servants in a government do not need to be church members, and must administer compassion in a way makes allowances for spiritual ignorance and less-harmful sins, since God commands them to serve secular souls through a subset of His natural laws, and provide freedom of conscience. But a true church only consists of awake, maturing, active, elect disciples of Jesus. And true churches must expel members who oppose the teachings and will of Jesus, if those members do not repent into the truth. For all members of a church must be of one mind in Christ, and those who will not heed Jesus will not be able to work alongside the other members who do His spiritual works in one mind and with one purpose (although expelled ones can talk with other members, and members may provide for their physical needs, if their sins are not too spiritually, emotionally or physically dangerous).
So legitimate governments and true churches must have workers who are able to personally act with compassion from within “the hidden place,” and do so in the name of God, according to the will of God as God’s appointed servants, but without seeking glory for oneself personally, nor for any other entity. And both kinds of charitable organizations must let workers perform personal acts of compassion, both with personal and organizational time and resources, as long as it is without conflict of interest or for personal gain. But it is virtually impossible to allow any of this through most public charitable organizations functioning through humanistic hierarchical systems which serve elite human gods—not through fake churches or evil governments, nor through any other godless charities for that matter. For all the faithful, honest souls will always oppose vain egos and the influences of moneyed parties, causing chaos in the organizations. So, since it is impossible to form any kind of just theocracies until our God Jesus returns to rule all Himself, what can we do?
What we can do is strive to build up godly, just, honest, equitable and egoless churches, with Jesus as our only Head, and where only the awakened faithful elect serve as its members, doing all of its spiritual and physical good works, according to Christ’s commands and will, in His name. Then a few of our called members can serve in democratic governments, to serve all the needs of the people in Christ’s name, through courageous, compassionate, unbiased works—even for the welfare of the sinners, since we are all sinners. Then those elect servants of God can influence the government, to lead it towards compassionate works at home and in foreign lands as well, for all the people in this world are members of one family. God expects His servants to do just, equitable works for all human beings, whenever they are able. Good governments must maintain order and provide necessities for literally all individuals and all organizations of men, to ensure a just and equitable distribution of all goods and services required by all, striving to eliminate poverty, injustice, inequity, persecution and exploitation from their land and from the entire world. Then true churches must do more, not less.
For we are a shining light of our God Jesus, examples for both governments and the people. We are to clearly teach and demonstrate God’s loving, just and equitable ways, as priests for all in all lands.
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If God sees elect spirits rightly and wisely handling His truths through the love in their spirits, He will grant His compassion and power to them. Of course, as Jesus previously taught, God always and unconditionally grants mercy to both the evil and to the beautifully good, both to the just and unjust.
Whether or not we are faithful to what He teaches our spirits, He will remain faithful to the promises He made to all the world. The sun will rise in the mourning and rain will fall at its appointed times, that is, until there is no longer even a remnant of faithful elect left in a land. However, God will not partake in evil, nor lend His power to the unjust. God will not aid and abet sin. So God will let an evil land destroy itself, but cause His faithful to nourish, heal and restore. If we do works according to His will, from the love He grows in our spirits, He will see it in our hearts and grant His power and compassion to us, to magnify our compassion and multiply our effectiveness many times over.
In the very end, His power will always cause true good to overcomes evil, because God has already bound the devil and His minions in chains on earth, long ago, at the very beginning, rendering them powerless, assigning them all to inevitable loss. Remember this. In the end, His will shall be done.
If there was ever a time in history when the elect should most carefully be striving to hear the words of our God Jesus—so they might rightly comprehend His intended meaning of His words, according to the counsel of His Holy Spirit to their spirits, so they might wisely and powerfully do His healing and building works on earth as they are done in heaven—that time is now. For even Satan knows the days of God’s wrath are coming upon him and his servants soon. The end time plagues will fall upon the earth within the next few generations. Therefore, the elect must no longer put up with the overt hypocrisy of churches and governments. Rather, we need to do the good works of God with fervour, from our hearts, and rightly, through the effective wisdom and love of God. This means that all of that humanistic nonsense about glorifying human beings as gods, and worshipping them through esteem and service, must end. Now is the time when we all must work solely for the good opinion of our Father in the heavens, by humbly serving His beloved creations without egos, for joy in our love.
Mat. 6:5-15,
How to Pray
“When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Most certainly, I tell you, they have received their reward. But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
“In praying, don’t use vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking. Therefore don’t be like them, for your Father knows what things you need, before you ask Him. Pray like this:
“Our Father in heaven, may Your name be kept holy. Let Your Kingdom come. Let Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
(Mat. 6:5-15, WEB).
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After hearing Jesus teach about compassion, a disciple likely made a comment that went something like this: “You are right to teach that we must express compassion to all souls, and do this from the hidden place in our hearts, where only our heavenly Father can see it. And You are right to expose the hypocrisy of those who do their good deeds for glory from men. For they actually worship men, not God. And they want to be worshipped by men, and do not want men to worship God. To them, the Law says: ‘Is this the way you repay Yahweh, foolish and unwise people? Isn’t He your Father who has bought you? He has made you and established you’ [Deut. 32:6, WEB]. But now, how do we express our spirits’ desires to the One we are to love with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength?
For there is nothing we can do to help He who needs nothing, and our hands or mouths can neither do nor say anything anything He cannot do or knows Himself. But we can express our love for our God through prayer. Then we can pray for His help to express our compassion for others. He sees it as a fragrant offering to Him, in which He joins His compassion to ours. So our first duty is to pray.”
Jesus’ First Warning and Command About Prayer
Jesus seemed to be pleased with a comment that some disciple made, and saw a right spirit in the man who made it. So Jesus then provided him (and the rest of us) with a template for all his prayers, the framework we now call The Lord’s Prayer. And the first thing Jesus taught us to do was to call on God. More specifically, we were to beg for His audience by addressing Him with the title “our Father,” that is, with a title no other kind of spirit may use to call upon Him. Consequently, when our God Jesus taught us to call out to “our Father,” He was proclaiming the unique and exalted kind of relationship that elect human beings have with the Creator God. Also, Jesus was teaching us about how our prayers had to be made directly from our spirits, only from the only parts of our beings that are able to call God, “our Father.” Since our prayers are aspects of our worship, we must worship our God from within the spheres of our spirits. After all, our minds of our flesh cannot possibly call God their “Father,” since God is not the Father of the minds and bodies of our flesh, only their Creator, and also the One who will soon take away our flesh, then forever eliminate it when He burns all of the material existence. Nothing but our elect human spirits were born of God and forever remain the children of His family, the privileged few who can call on their “Father” any time they feel the need.
So, by teaching elect spirits to call upon their Father and reveal their innermost thoughts to Him, Jesus was implying that God created His human children for a specific purpose, when He put their infantile spirits in bodies of flesh within this material universe. But, since Jesus also taught that our omniscient God already knew all that was in the minds of our spirits, even all that would ever exist in our future hearts and souls (because He predestined all things), this leaves us to ponder what the whole purpose of our prayers might be. For we cannot pray to tell God what He does not know (since He already knows all), nor to get what we want in the predestined future (since He gave us all we might ask for, according to His will, from the beginning). Therefore, when Jesus was teaching us how to pray here, according to this template, the real reason was so that all of us, all the elect, would develop a fully conscious awareness of both our Father and ourselves, to grow in our relationships.
All spirits in all living entities, except the demons and their children, know of God, love Him and fear Him. But none of these elect spirits have plenary access to God, to His very heart at all times, except the spirits of His elect human children. Only we, elect humans, can open our mouths at any time and pray, “Our Father, who is in heaven,” in a way where He immediately grants us His full attention. For we have the only spirits born to love through a consciousness of ourselves, in the same way God loves all spirits through a consciousness of Himself. That is, elect humans were given the ability to gain a knowledge of good and evil, so they could discern and judge between the holy and Page 396
the common, or the outright evil. We can understand the principles God designed for the effective functioning of His creations, and how deviations from those principles will surely cause destruction and death. And, if anyone or anything rebels against those principles God irreversibly wrote into all His creations, the elect can pray for His counsel and power to rebuild all they destroyed, and for the healing of all they had injured or even killed, administering repentance and forgiveness to carry on.
Now, when God created Adam and Eve, they were much like the animals, yet He granted their spirits a greater potential for love, inherently written in their infantile hearts. The two of them may have even been two weak naked ape bodies, also with unconscious and ignorant spirits, but with a new kind of spirits, unlike the different kinds of animal spirits. For human spirits were drawn out from God’s Spirit and fashioned in His image. And only those human spirits possessed the innate potential to become more like God than the other spirits, albeit with only a very limited quantity of His kind of power, knowledge and wisdom. For their spiritual potential was suppressed and held captive by their flesh. This spiritual potential was meant to grow and develop over time, since God wanted His infantile children to be personally taught and trained by Him over time, so their spirits would walk beside His Spirit and build a strong eternal bond with Him during each one’s appointed time on earth. Thus, God walked with Adam and Eve daily, in a body of flesh like their own bodies, just as He did with other human beings, again and again throughout history, and as He even came at one time to walk among all of us in flesh born of a woman, so He could be murdered by the non-elect, in a way that would gather elect human spirits into heaven. So, in the beginning, He lovingly taught and trained Adam and Eve as His disciples, behaving like an older, wiser Brother. For God desired a close and deeply bonded family to serve beside Him in His homeland, in a place not far from earth.
Soon a day came when the spirits of Adam and Eve were ready to receive consciousness, to become more like their heavenly Father. And this kind of day has been experienced by many of His elect throughout history, to this very day. In fact, some elect found such an awareness of God and of their own selves, they they no longer prayed for things from their Father. Instead, they realized their own callings from God and prayed to know the predestined future, and how they would work miracles of God in it, for the benefit of His elect children. Now, up to that moment, God kept Adam and Eve in a garden where there was no death nor loss, although all plant and animal spirits outside that garden lived and died, since all were born in flesh that was destined to die, so their spirits could go home to heaven after their lessons learned on earth. Yet God kept Adam and Eve from seeing the reality of death. For God put these first two human children in this nursery, protected from all threats, pains and labours, so that they would not be distracted by such things. For our God among them needed them to focus on the lessons He was teaching them, to make their spirits ready for this special day.
Then God sent the devil into the garden, the defective spirit whom He created with a total lack of love, designed to teach His children that they must value love above all else. That demon, named Satan, had been chained and limited in every way, but was now permitted to create a physical body for himself. So that devil chose to approach God’s children in a body like a serpent, since he could use that creature’s bright colours and body language to best tempt God’s children, to trick them into disobeying a simple command of God. And Satan was successful in this, since God predestined that he would succeed. So Eve, then Adam, betrayed the trust of God, just as God knew they would. Both ate of a fruit He had forbidden them to eat. This was merely a tiny sin, nothing of any consequence, physically. Yet, after eating it, when they heard God’s body of flesh walking toward them through the garden, they hid. For, after that small dirty deed, they now knew that their spirits were naked, exposed and without dignity, shameful in the eyes of their holy and wise Brother God. They were aware that they had broken trust with Him, and thus aware of the relationship of love they had been Page 397
developing with their God. For the first time in their short lives, their spirits now recognized a great and insurmountable divide between the holy and the unholy, between that which is spiritually set aside for purposes of the Creator Spirit and that which is against His will. Both became conscious of all they were and all that God was, in a way that no other spirits could ever know. And it was good.
At that moment, both Adam and his companion, who shared one life on earth with him, saw that humans were able to be separated from the life-giving Spirit of God, in the kind of death that no plant or animal’s spirit would ever experience. This was the kind of inner death that even made a human being able to kill one’s own brother or sister. The first man and first woman were now aware of the kinds of choices their spirits could make. Thus, God declared them to be like Him (Gen. 3:22), able to know, recognize and discern between both good and evil, as conscious beings like their God Himself. And now Immanuel, the God who walked among them in a body of human flesh, would teach and train them to serve His beloved but “unconscious” living creations, to watch over all the eternal spirits who were only capable of loving in the ways each had been created to love, without any real awareness of how good or bad their choices were, without any ability to judge choices in a right way. After His children became like Him, God could now prepare them to take responsibility for their conscious choices, and work for the good of all, through the kind of love that is aware of all, in the same way He was serving all His creations on the earth and in His spiritual realm of heaven.
However, in the very next generation, one of their sons killed their other son, his own brother. The moment of inner death that Adam and Eve experienced and repented from, with fruits of repentance, had been embraced by one of their own children through unrepentant sin, in carnal jealousy, without any love for his brother in his spirit. Cain slew Abel, without repentance, with lies to God, revealing that Cain did not know God, because Cain did not realize that God saw all and knew all. So God then separated their other children from their murdering brother for a time. And most of the other children of Adam and Eve lived truly civilized lives, in democratic families who chose their family priests only from the men whom God chose to guide them, just as God had once chosen Abel as the priest of the second generation. Then, since Abel was gone, God chose their brother Seth to be the priest of that second generation, and one offspring of Seth for every subsequent generation of the family of mankind. So these children of Adam and Eve dwelt in simple homes, never taking more than they needed, but always taking time to love God and their families. Their balanced and natural lives were one with God’s creation, destroying nothing in it, but tending the wild plants they ate and looking out for the animals’ welfare, even for the creatures they took for nourishment. But some took the way of death and followed the ways of Cain, the murderer. These became like Satan, worse than any creatures on the earth, worse than parasites. For they built cities that plundered and destroyed all nature around them. Then they slaughtered and plundered their peaceful siblings for their own carnal gain, and enslaved others, forcing them to build their vile cities, so those wicked children of the devil could live in luxury and ease. And populations of both the elect and non-elect humans slowly grew.
In time, the uncivilized non-elect became so violent that they destroyed all civilizations, and built up huge parasitic, psychopathic empires for the devil and the devil’s children. For millenniums, there were still places where some extended elect families could hide from them, to live natural lives. But then God allowed Satan to create the most brutal and uncivilized nations in history, called Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. And these set out to destroy all true civilizations of the world, to transform all the earth into hell. But, just as Satan’s final uncivilized kingdom of Rome had formed, God came to us once more, so His elect might learn to fulfill His laws through their knowledge of good and evil, to nullify the works of the devil, then build up His civilized kingdom in its place. Once again, His chosen humans, with spirits created in His image, would take the time to know Him and one Page 398
another. They would learn to love Him and one another, to tend His garden and take responsibility for His animals, to live simple and godly lives again, just as their ancestors did. And, in time, God would remove all the destructive and uncivilized Romans from earth, as well as their demonic ruler and all his chief advisors who fell from heaven. Then He would restore the earth and walk among His children, just as He did in the garden with Adam and Eve. Then true civilization would exist, where each soul had the time to pray, to find God’s will, to love and be loved in a fullness of joy.
With this in mind, let us now return to the exegesis of Jesus’ teachings about prayer. Before He gave the template of The Lord’s Prayer, He taught us a few preliminary things about praying. One was this first warning and command: “Also, when you people might be offering prayers of petition, you will not be as the hypocrites, because they cherish [being remembered for] having stood up to offer prayers of petition in the local churches and in the corners of broad places, in a way where they were shining before the people. Surely I reason with you people, they are receiving their reward. But, when each of you might offer a prayer of petition, fully enter your private chamber and close the door. Each of you offer prayers of petition to the Father [who is] in the hidden place. And your Father, the One seeing in the hidden place, will deliver [a response to the prayer] for you” (Mat. 6:5-6, from: Καὶ ὅταν προσεύχησθε, οὐκ ἔσεσθε ὡς οἱ ὑποκριταί· ὅτι φιλοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς καὶ ἐν
ταῖς γωνίαις τῶν πλατειῶν ἑστῶτες προσεύχεσθαι, ὅπως φανῶσιν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀπέχουσι τὸν μισθὸν αὐτῶν. σὺ δὲ ὅταν προσεύχῃ, εἴσελθε εἰς τὸ ταμεῖόν σου καὶ κλείσας τὴν θύραν
σου πρόσευξαι τῷ πατρί σου τῷ ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ· καὶ ὁ πατήρ σου ὁ βλέπων ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ ἀποδώσει
σοι, SBLGNT, Note: ἑστῶτες is a perfect participle which emphasizes the effects or results of “having stood up” in the past and, in this context, would imply “being remembered for” doing so). So even our public prayers, shared with a gathering of like-minded elect, who are one mind in Christ, must be private, from our spirits.
Notice how Jesus told us that our heavenly Father is not only continuously looking into each one’s
“hidden place” (κρυπτός) of the heart, but is also in the “hidden place” Himself. The Creator’s Spirit meets with our elect human spirits in the chambers of each one’s own personal heart or soul. Thus, all genuine prayers are personal, voiced solely by each one’s own spirit, spoken directly to the Spirit of God. For every true prayer is a dialogue between one elect spirit and the Father of that spirit, where the Father is infinitely more knowledgeable and wise than His infantile human child. Thus, a little child, in ignorance and much foolishness, can indeed make all kinds of requests to his or her patient Father, and He will always listen carefully, through His love for each child. However, our heavenly Father will also always personally respond to each individual child as well. So He might tell one to pray or prophesy some words before the rest, or another to share something God has taught him or her, or something pressing on one’s hearts. But, in all our prayers, we should know that that wills of our infantile spirits are not always our Father’s will, so He sometimes denies our requests. Yet, when God does not grant us what we want, if we continue to listen to Him, He will explains His reasons, and tell us what we must pray for instead. If our spirits are willing to hear Him, and our spirits have previously heard His teachings enough to gain the necessary knowledge and wisdom required to comprehend His reasons, we can receive something better than what we prayed for. Furthermore, our oldest Brother in the flesh, Jesus, helps us acquire this knowledge and wisdom we need for this endeavour. Jesus also enters us, to teach our infantile spirits, even at any time, night or day. And, when we are mature enough to know what we should ask of our Father, He grants it.
Consequently, since literally all genuine prayers are very personal dialogues between one elect spirit and the Spirit of God, there simply cannot be any such thing as a genuine prayer made in public for the sole purposes of the one who is praying, to get God to do his or her will. No matter how “great”
the people might erroneously think a certain “prayer warrior” may be, absolutely no one can ever Page 399
alter God’s will. Not one can persuade or coerce God into doing their own human will. No human being is able to “lead” the people in prayer either, since we are all supposed to pray from within the
“hidden place” of our hearts, from the spirits in our souls, where the Spirit of our Father and Brother personally and directly leads our spirits into His will, to know and request what is best for each and all of us, according to His will. All true prayers are private, between an individual elect spirit and the Spirit of God, although all who are of one mind in God can pray as individuals together. Then, since all must pray from the spirit, either with or without voicing our prayers through our mouths of flesh, the flesh must be free from all distractions, if we are to pray effectively. And public speakers cannot do this easily. For one who speaks publicly is worried about how to effectively arrange his spoken words from a language known by minds of flesh, and even how to adjust his body language for the most clear and correct message that will be received by the ears and minds of flesh he is addressing, so their flesh can bring those concepts to their spirits within their chambers of their souls. But, when we shut the door to our own homes of flesh, so our spirits enter the familiar and uninterrupted place of our hearts and souls to pray, we cannot think about such matters. A teacher of God’s Word must, and can often pray intermittently while he is teaching, polling from the inner to the outer tasks, back and forth. But he cannot speak publicly and pray at the same time. For, when the flesh is distracted, the flesh interrupts and distracts the spirit, since the mind of the flesh and the mind of the spirit are always together in the chamber of soul. So, if our minds of flesh are engaged in either uttering or listening to a public prayer, our spirits cannot fully pay attention to our Father in heaven. For the noise entering the chambers of our souls from our minds of flesh is automatically repeated to the minds of our spirits, and distracts our spirits, so our spirits cannot pray as Jesus commands us here.
Furthermore, a public prayer will often stir up the emotions of the flesh, and possibly cause a kind of
“sincere” agreement with that prayer, but only from the mind of flesh. And that is utterly worthless.
There is only one way we can effectively pray together, when our elect souls meet together in our familiar local church or another safe place. (For wherever our church family might be, is our family home.) Among our church family, we all share our whole lives, all aspects of our lives, though we never share all the thoughts of our spirits with all the other elect, only with our common Head and Lord. We sometimes only share some aspects with a few brothers or sisters, and those usually only with those of the same sex, and only with those who share similar lives, only with those who truly understand what we are going through. But, in the end, our needs can be presented before all, albeit often without names being mentioned. Or a member can ask for the prayers of the other awakened elect in the church, before or after the teaching time. But this will be to obtain the counsel of God from the siblings whom Jesus chooses to speak through. Then a whole church can take a moment, in silence, to each personally pray about the matter. Of course, those most familiar with the matter will pray most fervently. And, after the prayer, those whom Jesus calls and raises up to say or do what must be said or done, will rise up and either say or do it, according to God’s will, through their love for their sibling. Likewise, a whole true church also takes the time to let the people privately utter prayers of thanksgiving and praise to God, when good or bad news is announced during the service.
But we must reject the complete and utter nonsense of pagan traditions, such as when a robed and titled priest, whom mortal sinners appointed and esteemed above all the other “common” people, leads the masses in “prayers” to benefit that institution of men and its fake gods. Now do not get me wrong. Yes, there are many truly loving and sincere men and women in those false churches who are actually trying to serve God and His people, in the best way they know how. So we cannot condemn those elect souls, striving to be priests, pastors, nuns and church servants. However, their churches are fake, and those elect have been thoroughly duped by humanistic propaganda. Consequently, Page 400
those elect actually accomplish some good through the love of their spirits, but not any more good than the secular, lost, undiscovered elect of the world in other false religions, because their elect spirits are just as lost, ignorant and unconscious as those secular, undiscovered elect. So now let us and those lost elect priests and pastors learn to pray from their spirits in the real truth, as members of the genuine New Covenant church of Jesus Christ, so they will effectively build up God’s kingdom.
Most public prayers in the vast majority of churches are pure vanity. Therefore, the real and only Creator God never hears those prayers, unless there is an elect spirit among them, one who actually attempts to pray those prayers in the private “hidden place” of his or her heart and soul. Yet, even then, that elect one’s Father will often answer with a firm “No!” But those elect spirits have not been trained to keep on listening to His Spirit, to hear that “No,” as their Father and Brother explains what He wants those elect to say or do instead. And every elect one must be willing to hear Him, so each might comprehend why He has refused to give them what they prayed for, or to tell them that they must learn something first, before He grants their request, if it is for something good and according to His will. For, when an elect spirit is immature, the Father’s explanation will be something like: “I will not give you what you request, lest you think you can manipulate Me and My power, or believe that you are a god with your own “faith power,” in the same way the deluded sons of Satan do, lest you somehow think I approve of their wicked ways. Now flee that fake church! Come to Me, and I will give you living water to fully quench the thirst of your spirit. Let Me teach you how to pray.”
The only reason many churches pray publicly is because they learned to do so from the pagan priests of ancient Greece and Rome, from elite manipulators who thought they had exclusive access to their demonic gods. The pagans believed that all the “common” people had to depend on them to make all effective prayers, since their prayers were always accompanied by rituals designed to appease the swollen egos of the demonic spirits they worshipped. This was especially true among the powerful, wealthy, elite pagan Roman humanists, who believed they were human gods possessing an ability to manipulate the spirits of their greater immortal gods, through their magic rituals and magic words, and through sacrifices which might appease those gods, or through coercive acts to force binding contracts upon those gods. And they were right. Their gods did heed their prayers, since their gods were actually demonic spirits whom God had bound and cast down to the earth, deceiving spirits who loved to lend their power to their priestly puppets, to confuse and take captive the souls of the people, whenever God handed sinners over to them. However, God forbids this in all His churches.
Every individual man in every true local church, and in the whole true universal church, is to directly pray to only one Head, our God, Jesus. And those prayers will tell each individual man exactly how he is to personally serve that one Head. No other entity in heaven or on earth is to be a head of any individual elect man, much less an esteemed human sinner who is deluded by demons so much that he thinks he is the god of God. Each elect man must esteem and serve Jesus alone, as his only High Priest, Master, Lord, Owner and Head Teacher. And a woman’s spirit is exactly like a man’s spirit, although every female mind of flesh interprets and applies spiritual and moral thoughts in a more people-oriented way. Still, every elect woman’s spirit must pray directly to her spirit’s heavenly Father, so her spirit may be personally taught and trained by Him alone. Jesus taught this many times in many ways, including here (Mat. 6:5-15). We can never accept any other intercessor between any individual elect spirit and the Father of that one’s spirit, not a mortal man nor heavenly angel, no one except Jesus. The human spirit of every elect man or woman must pray directly to one’s own Father.
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Jesus’ Second Warning and Command About Prayer
There was second troubling aspect about the prayers Jesus heard from His disciples, the thought that they could get what they prayed for if they would be “persistent” and “faithful” by repeating the prayer until God finally granted their request. Of course, we should be truly faithful and persistent, where your spirit is frequently stopping to hear God and learn from Him, until you or those you are praying for become ready to receive what you ask from God. But, if a stubborn, demanding child does let one’s spirit actually listen to the Father’s response as one’s prays, not even to find out if He is willing to grant what one’s request, that is a different matter. One must never treat God like some kind of inanimate vending machine. Churches should never tell their people to keep putting in the
“coins” of prayer until God drops your requested item into your lap. We need to consider that our Father might choose to deny our prayer requests, or want us to learn something before He grants them. Then there are churches that teach “the power of positive thinking” or “faith power.” All these teachings raise human beings above the god they worship, as though they possess the power to control the will, thoughts and power of that god. But the real Creator God must maintain both His predestined material universe and His spiritual realm in real time, and can never allow His mind to be manipulated or controlled by any contradicting, loveless, self-centred, stubborn, sinful, incredibly stupid and foolish human beings. And those people only think they are the gods of God because God has handed those sinners over to Satan, for the deluding of their minds, until they either repent from their arrogance or destroy their own flesh. So, yes, God even allows that devil to give some of these captives some of the selfish things they pray for, in order to keep them deluded and under Satan’s power of deception, so they can be manipulated into self-destruction. But there is no way we can ever call that demonic control over them a form of Christianity, since they worship self, not God.
As Jesus is saving us, by teaching, training and growing our relationship with Him, our spirits need to wait upon Him, let Him explain why He refuses to grant our prayer requests. For this is part of the training process for our spirits, how we learn His ways. And, when we listen to Him, He will tell us what we should actually pray for at that time, and whether or not the Father will grant us what we think we want. Some never imagine that God would not want to grant them what they want at the exact time or in the precise way they want Him to grant it. They never even began to realize that they need to listen to their infinitely wiser and more knowledgeable Father, to learn how, when, where, why and through whom He might chose to give them their request, if at all. Rather, they silence their spirits, and only allow their minds of flesh to choose what to ask in their prayers. They are just like spoiled children, who continue to ask for something they want even if their parents say they cannot have that adult thing yet, or say it would be dangerous for either them or other souls. But spirits who humbly worship our loving Father and oldest Brother learn to trust in their wisdom and knowledge, because that is what “saving faith” is. We need to remember that we are the little children, who need to be taught and trained until we are able to make our own right decisions, according to God’s will.
When we were young, and our parents tried to explain why they would not let us have something, we would sometimes shut our ears and demand it all the more. Since we learned that this technique eventually wore out our parents, and our parents might eventually give in to our demands, at times, we grew up feeling entitled, able to get whatever we wanted. Thus, when we pray to the Father of our spirits, we act the same way toward Him. We shut the ears and eyes of our spirits and let our flesh keep on demanding whatever our flesh desires, without letting our spirits hear a single word of reasoning from our Father and oldest Brother. And, if we do not get exactly what our flesh demands, we often spurn God, refuse to talk to Him, or even deny that He exists, in the same way we once turned our stubborn faces away from our earthly parents when we did not get our wishes. But our Page 402
heavenly Father never gets worn out, like our parents sometimes did. And, like our parents would often roll their eyes and laugh when we said we did not love them any more, or when we told them that we did not acknowledge them as our parents any longer, so does our heavenly Father. If our spirits stomp off into the rooms of our souls and hearts, our heavenly Father does not stop being our one true parent. He does not abandon us, like we abandon Him. Rather, He continues to work for our good and waits until we are ready to talk to Him again. Or, if we are especially stubborn and do very bad things, He will discipline us. But nothing we can break our parent-child relationship with Him.
Of course, many churches, led by spoiled children who grew up justifying their own selfish ways in their own minds, teach their equally spoiled people to keep repeating their prayers of petition, but never teach their spirits to listen to their heavenly Father. And they somehow think this is a good thing. For they emulate their most admired, conquering, arrogant pagans—whom God sent into their land as a punishment for the ruthless souls living there, to express His wrath against them. Churches watch the way that those pagans practise a stubbornly incessant repetition of irrational, destructive and often almost incoherent demands of their flesh, as a form of “prayers” to their human gods, in a vain hope that this will wear them out so they can get what they want. Then they stand on the street chanting their demands, and shouting, “When do we want it? Now!” So they act like spoiled little children, never bothering to actually do the work of wisely undoing the works of Satan so they can diligently build up God’s just, loving kingdom on earth. They will not turn to God for His counsel and power to overcome evil with good, to say and do what their Father will tell them to say and do.
And, when a spoiled child chants, “I want this,” over and over and over again, it is actually a form of meditation. But this kind of meditation never helps them think. Rather, it does the opposite. This kind of “meditation” releases mind-altering chemicals from the glands into their bodies, which produces a euphoria and washes all useful thoughts from their minds of flesh, even as their minds of flesh simultaneously suppress the minds of their spirits. And they escape from reality, flee from any negative words and feelings, as they do it. They do not strive to think with their more rational spirits and hear the wisdom of God, so they can face and overcome evil, to provide effective solutions to all that is causing harm and death. Those who do those things become totally thoughtless and loveless, but feel good, for a moment or two. So why would any church emulate that kind of foolishness?
Yet churches teach their people to do this kind of chanting and the endless repetition of petitionary prayers. This spoiled child technique is highly regarded by their fake human gods, and by the demon gods of those human gods. They love to see the spirits and souls of their dupes emptied of all light and truth, totally unable to think rightly and clearly enough to ever learn any real truth. Now it seems that all the churches emulate these pagans, and teach that an endless chanting of form prayers, just like the Roman Catholic humanists have done since the beginning. They all chant the words of their prayers in ways that have lost all meaning, in repetitive mindless utterances, thinking this is a noble and good thing; and that forever repeating the same requests to their fake gods, without ever letting their spirits listen to the real God, is a form of “persistence” and “faithfulness.” They all refuse to admit that these kinds of repeated prayers are merely stupid tantrums of rotten children, attempts to make the mind of flesh feel good, while their minds of flesh oppress the minds of their own spirits.
So Jesus warned them about all this, and commanded their spirits to pray through real faith, trusting God in a way that heeds Him. Jesus told them: “Now, those uttering prayers of supplication must not repeat words without thinking about what they actually mean, even as the Gentiles. For they are thinking that they will be heard by their many words. Therefore, you people must not be like them, since your Father understood you people have a need of things before [the time] you people [were]
to have asked Him” (Mat. 6:7-8, from: Προσευχόμενοι δὲ μὴ βατταλογήσητε ὥσπερ οἱ ἐθνικοί, Page 403
δοκοῦσιν γὰρ ὅτι ἐν τῇ πολυλογίᾳ αὐτῶν εἰσακουσθήσονται· μὴ οὖν ὁμοιωθῆτε αὐτοῖς, οἶδεν γὰρ ὁ
πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὧν χρείαν ἔχετε πρὸ τοῦ ὑμᾶς αἰτῆσαι αὐτόν, SBLGNT). The verb βαττολογέω means:
“to speak in a way that images the kind of speech pattern of one who stammers, use the same words again and again, speak without thinking” (BDAG3). So the second person plural aorist subjunctive form with the negative (μὴ βατταλογήσητε) prohibits repeating words without thinking about what those words actually mean. And Jesus prohibited this for all the spirits born of the heavenly Father.
So Jesus told us not to allow our flesh to repeat any words without the minds of our spirits fully comprehending, intending and commanding our flesh to utter those words, while our spirits listen to God’s response to our words. We are not to mindlessly repeat prayers, neither petitionary prayer nor form prayers. Prayers must never become chants that do not fully engage the thoughts of our spirits, but must be two-way conversations with our heavenly Father and with our oldest Brother. We must never utter mindless words before God, especially solely from the minds of our flesh. The minds of our spirits must be freed to form every concept of our prayer, and hear God; since the Father of our spirits fully understands all the real needs of our spirits and flesh, then sees through every foolish or sinful desire too, before we ever begin to pray. Our loving Father in heaven wants our spirits to allow our flesh to speak only the words we utter through our spirits’ love for Him, while listening to His Spirit’s wise counsel for our good and for the good of all His creations. Our hearts need to listen, learn, think and respond to His guidance, making all our requests according to His will, through love for Him and His creations, seeking all that we truly need for the spiritual and physical benefit of all.
There is one more very important fact evident in His teaching, one which many false churches now deny. Here Jesus indicated that God alone chooses whether or not to grant requests of our prayers.
God alone rules over every action and reaction in the universe. Only God’s power, which is worked according to His will alone, can cause anything to happen. Without God’s will and power, nothing can possibly exist or occur. But “Word of Faith” churches practise a kind of ancient witchcraft that believes in “the power of faith,” by which they mean the power of the wills of their minds of flesh to cause events or make things exist. In other words, they think, if they physically utter words through their mouths of flesh, they can will this into existence. They believe that whatever they will to occur, in their minds of flesh, shall always occur because their carnal wills physically utter their desires. So they think they are gods, equal to or even greater than the Creator, that they can cause things to be created out of nothing or to occur just as much as God can, or more than God can. And, since they do not believe that God’s power, worked solely through His own personal will, has created and rules all, they do not worship God. Rather, they worship a fake secondary god invented in their own minds, a god called “faith,” an inanimate, impersonal and easily manipulated power. Then these vain ones see themselves as the lords of that “faith” god they invented, as the gods of that thing which created all existence. Thus, most worship themselves as their highest, greatest god, as their only saviour and lord, and as their only teacher. Nonetheless, these warlocks and witches call themselves “Christians.”
There are now so many demonic religions, every possible kind of cult that can be imagined. Yet all these cults have one thing in common, their fake prayers from their minds of flesh. All have twisted teachings about prayers, and most of their prayers are designed to suppress any input God might grant to an elect spirit. That is, they all strive to take elect spirits captive, so they can enslave the elect, make the potentially loving elect serve only their evil purposes. For they are all subject kingdoms in Satan’s world order, parts of the devil’s empire. And the very last thing Satan wants any elect soul to do is to truly pray, to engage their spirits in a genuine two-way dialogue with the real God, lest those spirits wake up and grow mature, by learning God’s truth and wisdom directly from His Spirit. For, once the elect do that, God has freed them from Satan’s slavery to lies and delusions, Page 404
and they no longer provide for that devil’s kingdom of darkness. To prevent the elect from severely weakening Satan’s evil kingdom by undoing his works, and to stop the elect from building up God’s loving, just and wise kingdom on earth, that devil needs to transform the prayers of the elect in mere mindless and carnal words, into fake prayers. As long as the elect pray only from their minds of flesh, so their flesh ignores, silences and oppresses the minds of their spirits within the chambers of their souls, those elect will remain slaves in the devil’s kingdom of sinners. But, if Jesus wakes elect spirits, so their spirits begin to hear and heed Him, so His Holy Spirit can directly those spirits, His power will grant their requests, when they pray for freedom from Satan’s chains, when they pray for the nullifying of Satan’s power, and when they pray for His power to build up His kingdom on earth.
The Framework of the Lord’s Prayer
After telling His disciples to pray privately, from the spirit in the heart, and not to repeat the words of prayers without thinking about exactly what those words mean, Jesus gave us an example of a prayer, where each line illustrates the right attitude of a spirit in prayer, and the kinds of requests we should ask from our heavenly Father. So it is good to memorize this prayer, but only so we may ponder the meaning of each word and phrase, so our prayers will be like it, so we pray in the godly way taught by Him. We need to let our spirits thoroughly analyze it and remember His intended purpose for providing this template for our prayers, use this prayer as a blueprint for all our prayers, so our spirits might practise what His Holy Spirit teaches us about prayer through this example. But we are not to do what most churches do. Even knowing the context of this prayer—that Jesus firmly exhorted us to pray privately and prohibited us from mindlessly repeating prayers—a Roman type of orator in those churches, while standing on a pulpit to be esteemed above the others, will tell the people to bow their heads and publicly repeat this prayer, word for word, in the same mindless way they have always repeated it, time after time, without any real understanding of its meaning. Thus, all those churches publicly disobey the commands of our God Jesus and cause all their people to sin.
This is often called The Lord’s Prayer. This means it is God’s prayer. But how is it His prayer? It is obviously not a prayer that God prays to Himself. Thus, in context, it is a prayer that belongs to God because it belongs to His teachings. It is His prayer because He taught us to pray in this way. It is His blueprint or example of how we must pray. And, since churches frequently use it in a way that is the complete opposite of the way that Jesus taught us to use it, we must ignore them, so the minds of our spirits might truly and honestly learn exactly what Jesus actually taught. For Jesus began this prayer with these words: “Therefore, you people continuously pray prayers of supplication in this manner” (Mat. 6:9a, from: Οὕτως οὖν προσεύχεσθε ὑμεῖς, SBLGNT). Here Jesus emphasized the subject by the redundant use of the pronoun (ὑμεῖς). So Jesus emphasized that He was addressing only His true disciples, who must never be like the Gentiles that mindlessly repeat prayers. Then a present (durative) imperative form of the verb προσεύχομαι commanded us to “continuously pray prayers of supplication.” So, rather than mindlessly repeating The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus was actually telling our spirits to frequently and spontaneously utter all kinds of prayers to our heavenly Father, where all contain elements like those in The Lord’s Prayer, but only because our spirits know and apply the principles taught by those elements contained in The Lord’s Prayer. For the adverb at the very beginning of this clause is οὕτως, a form of οὕτω, but the form used in front of word that begins with a vowel. This adverb “pertains to what follows in discourse material, in this way, as follows”
(BDAG3). So, in this command, Jesus was clearly giving us an example to follow in all our many different supplications to God, in all prayers throughout our lives. Jesus was wanting us to pray continuously and frequently, in this way. It is not a form prayer to be mindlessly repeated in public.
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Therefore, every word, phrase and concept in this sample prayer, in this Lord’s Prayer, is a didactic saying given by the one and only Head Teacher of every individual in every true church. He gave this prayer to teach us some principles that our spirits need to thoroughly understand, in order to make right prayers to our living God. Jesus was commanding us to use The Lord’s Prayer as a teaching tool, as a kind of blueprint for all our prayers, to remind us about God’s attributes and our own attributes, so we would know how our spirits should relate to the loving Father of our spirits. It contained the kinds of things our spirits should think about and consider when we pray to our God.
How to Pray From Our Spirits
Jesus began this brief template for all our prayers with the phrase, “Our Father, in the heavens,”
(Mat. 6:9b, from: Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, SBLGNT). Again, “heavens” (οὐρανοῖς) is plural here, indicating that the Father of our spirits exists in all three heavens which He delineated in His Word: (1) in the atmosphere above the earth, where He rules over all the earth; (2) in outer space, where He governs the entire material space-time continuum; and (3) in the eternal spiritual space-time continuum, in His home and the home of all His elect creations, whom He created to receive His love and service, especially us, His heirs. In other words, the Father of our spirits is with us now, on earth, and will be with us no matter where we go, even to the ends of the universe, or into the eternal spiritual realm after we depart from these bodies of flesh. So we can always talk with Him.
These first words teach us the most important doctrine revealed in this prayer. We are to begin all our prayers, every kind of prayer we pray, with the attitude that we are speaking to “our Father.” This is the first and foremost principal to remember. It is the essence of all true prayers. We must remember that we have a loving, wise and all-powerful Father beside us, who continuously serves us for our eternal good. Now, of course, even the mouths of the non-elect can physically utter these very words, although their father is the devil. But we need to realize exactly what Jesus implied here. When Jesus taught all His disciples to address God as “our Father” in all prayers, He obviously wanted them to do so honestly, with right motives and good intentions. For dishonesty, and everything done through malicious motives with evil intentions, is a sin, and Jesus never ever taught anyone to sin. Thus, here Jesus here indicated that He was only teaching the elect. Only the true elect can ever pray a true prayer, like this example of a true prayer He gave them. With these first words, Jesus proclaimed that none but the Father’s true elect children are be able to truly pray, to speak to and hear from the real God as they pray. Then, by using that word, “Father,” Jesus also taught the elect something else too.
As I have often mentioned, Jesus did not teach the pagan Greco-Roman anthropological doctrines.
Instead, Jesus taught the biblical anthropological doctrines, that each human being possesses a will and mind of flesh as well as a will and mind of a spirit, and that both minds meet in the chamber of the soul, to make all the choices of our lives. This doctrine is also affirmed by these first words, as well as everywhere else in His Word. This is critical to understand, or we will never be able to truly pray in our spirits and in truth. We must begin with this truth. We all see that God is the Originator of our flesh, which He assembled in and through our human parents. But God is a Spirit, and material existence is His temporary creation, simply His power transformed. Thus, God is not the Father of our flesh. All flesh, like all material existence, is merely a very temporary and partial manifestation of His spiritual power, where all this is predestined and governed in real time by His will, and all is destined to perish on the last day. In contrast, God created our elect spirits directly from His Spirit, as eternal lives fashioned in His likeness, so He could be the Father of our spirits forever. Thus, there is only one possible way to actually address God with the words, “our Father.” The one and only way we can ever truly and actually pray the words “our Father,” is if our elect spirits do the actual Page 406
praying. For it is utterly impossible for our minds of flesh to pray in this way. If we do not fully comprehend this, it is impossible to utter a single word of true prayer. Worse yet, without any understanding of this, our spirits will not be able to hear even a single word from our spirits’ Father.
“God is a Spirit, and it is necessary for the ones who are worshipping Him to worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24, from: πνεῦμα ὁ θεός, καὶ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας αὐτὸν ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ δεῖ
προσκυνεῖν, SBLGNT). Here the verb δεῖ means: “to be under necessity of happening, it is necessary, one must, one has to” (BDAG3). Since God is a Spirit and not flesh, not subject to the laws of nature that He created and maintains, we simply are not able to see or hear Him through our flesh—that is, unless God chooses to utter words in a way our ears of flesh can hear. For flesh can only hear from flesh. Since God is a Spirit, and our spirits can only hear words from other spirits, it is our spirits that must worship our God. And our spirits must do so honestly, in the absolute truth about ourselves, as well as the truths about all His other spiritual and physical creations, even about the ways in which He created all to exist and function most effectively. These principles of spirit and flesh were not always known by the elect. However, all the elect are now able to know them through Jesus. For Jesus prophesied this: “But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be His worshipers” (John 4:23, WEB). Since the first day His Holy Spirit sealed the New Covenant in His blood, we have known this, that our elect spirits can speak directly with the one Creator God and He will teach us the truth.
But, since only spirits are able to pray to their heavenly Father, then we also know that God will not heed our prayers if we pray solely through our minds of flesh. Yes, our elect spirits can command our flesh to utter words of prayer. But, if our spirits are not doing this—if our spirits are not engaged in forming all the words of all our prayers, if our minds of flesh are mindlessly uttering memorized words or simply repeating the words of a man on a pulpit—then we are not truly praying at all. For, if the elect let their minds of flesh pray, then their flesh has obviously silenced their elect spirits in them, and may have even bound and taken captive their spirits, so their flesh governs every aspect of their lives. If an elect one prays through the mind of flesh, one’s spirit might dwell in a heart that has been transformed into a dungeon, where one’s elect spirit is languishing and will never speak to the Spirit of God. Therefore, if nothing but an elect one’s flesh is uttering the words “our Father,” then that flesh is lying, because God is not the father of one’s flesh. So that flesh clearly is not praying “in truth.” Since God is only the Father of one’s elect spirit, then it must be one’s spirit who prays “our Father.” Furthermore, if the flesh prays to its non-biological “father,” as to a god it imagines to be its
“father,” then that flesh is actually praying to an idol, to a thing imagined in that mind of flesh, to a carnal and fictitious concept of a god. Thus, a prayer from the mind of flesh is a second-order sin, a sin that God deems to be worse than murder. So, if one walks according to the mind of flesh, one commits a great sin, worse than sins against “natural laws” like murder. And it is one’s spirit that is indirectly committing this sin through negligence, by not rising up to speak directly to one’s Father.
Clearly, if Jesus commands us to literally always begin all our prayers by addressing “our Father in the heavens,” then our elect spirits must formulate every concept or word of our prayers. Yes, we can also pray out loud, or even publicly at times, if our spirits are actually doing that praying, if our elect spirits are simply commanding our flesh to utter the words of a human language which represent the concepts that our spirits choose to relate through physical sounds from the flesh. But only our elect spirits must actually pray directly to the Father of our spirits. For, when Jesus gave this prayer as an example or template or blueprint for all our prayers, He was teaching us how to pray, how to ask our Father for His gifts and His counsel. And His teaching directly indicated that literally all our prayers must follow the principles taught in this sample prayer. Thus, if we do not pray directly from our Page 407
spirits, we are not praying a real prayer at all, and God may even consider that prayer from the flesh to be one of the worst sins that we can possibly commit—albeit, if an infantile and ignorant elect spirit has been taught to pray in this way, that sin is not intentional, nor with malicious motives from the spirit, and God will forgive that sin on the last day, when all elect spirits will repent into the truth.
Jesus also taught another principle in these first words as well, a doctrine that is critical for all true prayers. In most teachings, Jesus would employ a singular pronoun, since most teachings were about actions that each individual must do personally. That is, God used singular personal pronouns for most His teachings and commands because most were about each individual’s personal relationship with their heavenly Father. For example, Jesus began one of His didactic sayings with these words: σὺ δὲ ὅταν προσεύχῃ (SBLGNT, “but when each of you prays”). For He was commanding each individual (σὺ) in the crowd to pray, alone, in one’s private, uninterrupted heart. But here He used a plural pronoun, “our” (ἡμῶν), because He was addressing the whole crowd of His true disciples. He was telling all current and future true disciples what to pray in our private prayers, and how to pray true prayers. Therefore, Jesus was teaching a universal public principle that His entire church could observe in others, then maintain and enforce among themselves. Jesus wanted all of us to be aware of all the Father’s other elect children who pray, all souls in the family of His church, particularly those observed in the family of one’s local church. And He did not want us to pray only for our own needs and our own welfare. He wanted us to love others also, to see their spiritual, emotional and physical needs as well, then bring all their needs before the Father in our prayers, to speak and act according to the calling and commands which our Father spoke to our spirits as we prayed. The plural pronoun indicates that His true elect disciples must guard and serve the whole family of God.
Pray for All to Revere All that is in God
The next clause of The Lord’s Prayer was: “Please cause Your name to be completely set apart as holy, consecrated and revered” (Mat. 6:9c, from: ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου, SBLGNT). The first word (ἁγιασθήτω) is an aorist passive imperative form of the verb ἁγιάζω, which means: “set aside something, or make it suitable for ritual purposes, consecrate, dedicate of things ... include a person in the inner circle of what is holy, in both cultic and moral associations of the word, consecrate, dedicate, sanctify ... to treat as holy, reverence of persons ... to eliminate that which is incompatible with holiness, purify” (BDAG3). So this verb had a fairly broad area of meaning regarding a thing like the name of the Person of God. Now an imperative form of a verb was used in prayers to beg or entreat God, to politely ask Him to please do something or cause something to be done to or for the person who is praying. Then the passive form here indicted that the action was to be received by the subject, by the person praying. So this is asking God to cause the sanctifying (setting apart for His own purposes) of His name. And the aorist tense indicated a completed action. Also, the lexical form of this verb ends with ζω, a suffix added to the root of a cognate noun, ἅγιος (“holy, set apart for God’s purposes alone”) to form this verb, and ζω also implies a complete or fulfilled action as well.
Now the subject of this clause is “Your name,” that is, the name of our spirits’ heavenly Father. And, in the eyes of Jesus—as well as in the estimation of all the prophets, apostles, and devout Jews who were not corrupted by the religion of humanism—the “name” of God was not merely a spoken or written title or label assigned to Him. In this context, His “name” referred to the way that people perceived His entire Being, especially His essence. The noun ὄνομα (“name”) referred to how the people on earth saw God, what they thought about His inherent nature. His “name” particularly referred to how His worshipping elect children interpreted His characteristics, His inner attributes, His thoughts, the meanings of all His teachings in Scriptures, His actions throughout history, and all Page 408
else, in their own minds. So here Jesus wanted us to ask our heavenly Father to alter perceptions of Himself, that is, to pray something like this: “Please cause a full understanding of Your Being in all Your elect heirs and in all others on earth. Make the perception of You entirely purified, so they will set apart all they say and do in your name for Your loving and holy purposes alone. Let all souls on earth now see that You are utterly holy, so all might totally respect, revere and magnify You always.”
Unpacking all the grammatical nuances, historical context and ecclesiastical implications of this short Greek clause is difficult, and it is impossible to translate it into brief and idiomatic English. So our English versions of the Bible usually interpret it something like, “may Your name be kept holy,”
or, “Hallowed be Thy name.” But, for the attentive Jewish disciples of Jesus living in Israel at that time, who spoke Koine (Hellenistic) Greek as their native language and had been steeped in biblical teachings since early childhood, this clause basically implied all that I wrote above. That is, Jesus wanted us to pray for God to purify and refine our perceptions of Himself, so all could comprehend His holy, just and loving character and attributes, then walk according to His ways, as His children created in His image. Also, all His true disciples knew that non-elect spirits could never develop any kind of truly “holy” perception of God, although non-elect humans and the demons are able to see that God is holy, and dread that holiness. Thus, all His elect disciples knew this request was made primarily for their sakes, and for the undiscovered elect of the world. In other words, this part of the prayer also begs God to awaken the sleeping elect everywhere on the earth, so their souls might now fully know and love the Father of their spirits, so He could teach and train them to be like Himself.
Jesus wants us to respectfully entreat our Father to cause all that pertains to Himself to become fully known, respected and revered by all elect spirits, so all might clearly perceive Him as their utterly holy, completely pure Father, without attributing even a hint of anything banal, unholy or sinful to Him. It is a prayer for a completely right and true understanding of God’s inner being. And it is a prayer for God Himself to cause this in all of us. Therefore, Jesus was not saying that we ourselves should try to use our own words and power of influence to cause any kind of emotional, deluded or coerced acknowledgement of God’s holy nature. Only humanistic churches try to cause a type of artificial perception of God, through contrived words accompanied by emotional music, or through threats of violence or eternal damnation. In reality, Jesus wanted us to pray that God Himself would change the perceptions of the people regarding Himself. In other words, we pray for God Himself to teach elect spirits about His inherent nature, about all that is in Himself. For our mouths of flesh, speaking to ears of flesh, cannot possibly do any such thing. Yes, we can testify about His teachings that He gave directly to our spirits. He even calls some of us to become His assistant teachers, to use our mouths of flesh to utter some of the truths He taught to our spirits. But only partake in the works of His Holy Spirit, as aspects of our training. And only He Himself can make those words alive in the elect spirits of others. No human can change anyone’s perception of God. So Jesus commanded us to beg God to open the eyes of other elect spirits, so they could actually see the utter holiness of their God, in a way that would perfectly and completely purify all their thoughts about their Father.
Pray for God’s Ultimate Goal, for His Will to be Done
The next part of The Lord’s Prayer seems strange, since we are to pray: “Please let Your kingdom come. Please cause Your will to be done, as in heaven, even upon earth” (Mat. 6:10, from: ἐλθέτω ἡ
βασιλεία σου, γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς, SBLGNT). Now Jesus knew, and all His true disciples knew, that God is almighty and knows all things. So not even all His creations put together could possibly stop Him from causing His kingdom to fill the earth, nor stop His will from being done in any other way. Thus, when He gave us this template for all our prayers, and told Page 409
us to include this request in all of them, we must ask why? Since God is already aware of what He will do in the future, and has predestined that His kingdom will come to us on earth, so His will shall be done on earth, just as it is done in heaven, this aspect of all our prayers actually is commanding all His elect children to be always aware of these facts. Here Jesus is telling us to always be fully conscious of the goal of our salvation and our lives on earth. Jesus wants all our prayers to remind us about the purpose for our existence on earth, which is to do His will and build up His kingdom here.
When Jesus told us to pray this, He assumed we knew God’s prophecies about the last days. Now, in our day, those eschatological doctrines, especially the prophecies about the end times, are not even read or discussed in many churches. On the other hand, they are completely abused in many other churches, in those who try to make souls fear God’s judgment and coming wrath, that is, just afraid enough to become tithing members of their churches. So churches and synagogues transform God’s harmonious, consistent eschatological teachings into a befuddling mystery, and keep their people in the dark, totally ignorant about those teachings. And they do this for a purpose, either to ensure the comfort and complacency of their members, or else to make a financial profit for the church or for the authors of sensationalistic literature about the end times. But none bother to teach the real truth.
Yet, when Jesus taught this prayer, there were many devout Jewish disciples who carefully studied the prophecies about the last days and the end times, about the Messiah’s kingdom, the coming of the Messiah to rule over all the earth. Literally all His long-term Jewish disciples, the vast majority of people in the crowd, knew the Messiah would someday come to establish their heavenly Father’s just kingdom on the earth. For there were very many last-days prophecies scattered throughout the Old Covenant Scriptures. So most knew that God’s earthly kingdom would become “visible,” would exist in the sight of all humankind, and no longer remain hidden, like it was at that time. God would begin to wake the elect spirits of His children, cause all to faithfully serve Him in a new priesthood, in His fulfilled church, in a kingdom that spiritually opposed and nullified the works of Satan’s evil world order. This new kingdom of God would start small, but grow, until the Messiah finally crushed Satan’s kingdom to dust and entirely eliminated it from the earth (Dan. 3:44). Then only God’s just, loving kingdom would remain on earth. Therefore, in the end, only God’s will would be done on the earth, in the same way that His loving will is always done in His eternal home, in the third heaven.
Here Jesus commanded us to politely beg our Father to send His New Covenant kingdom, so His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. In all our prayers, we are to ask our Father to rule over the entire earth, to establish His kingdom as the one and only kingdom on earth. But Jesus was not telling us to pray for our Father’s third heaven to come down to us from above, since heaven is an entirely spiritual realm and never went anywhere, not from the moment of its creation, and can never go anywhere else. The spiritual space-time continuum cannot “come” or “go,” since it is everywhere, and this small, temporary material space-time continuum exists as a tiny fragment within it. Yet we also know that God’s kingdom on earth, God’s sole rule over all the earth, did “go away,” in one sense. For the day after Adam sinned, God let the bound and limited angels who fell from heaven, including their head, Satan, possess a subject kingdom of lies and delusions on this earth. God made Satan’s world order upon the earth, then let that devil fill it with citizens, with all the human souls that demon created upon the earth and with all the elect sinners he could take captive. Then this dark subject kingdom, limited by God’s power, began to grow. Eventually, that empire of Satan exerted its spiritual and physical power over all the earth—although God has always upheld His hidden spiritual kingdom on earth, where the Spirit of the almighty High King kept on teaching and training some of His elect brothers and sisters, teaching them about love and justice. For He could never be defeated.
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When the devil began to plant spirits in human bodies of flesh, as heirs of his dark kingdom on earth, he predestined all these to uselessness and to his eternal home of hell. But these became as numerous as God’s elect children. And Satan commanded his non-elect children to use whatever carnal means God allowed, to physically bully, overpower, subjugate, persecute and kill God’s elect, so the fake gods of that devil’s kingdom, who were demonic spirits fallen from heaven with him, could rule the earth. Then those demons put thoughts into the minds of flesh belonging to God’s elect, to keep their spirits from awakening and hearing God. Satan distracted the elect with lies, to cause the elect to fear even the most ridiculous and most trivial losses for their flesh. So the minds of flesh belonging to those elect then panicked, and suppressed the rational counterpoints made by the minds of their spirits. And their flesh took their spirits captive and locked their spirits away, to silence their spirits within the chambers of their hearts and souls. So, in time, the devil held all corporeal power on earth.
Nevertheless, God was omnipotent and omniscient, able to counter the chained and severely limited demons in that subject kingdom whenever He desired. So God always continued to maintain His own earthly kingdom, which consisted of His inwardly just and loving elect children. But, although God allowed the devil’s subject kingdom grow until it could rule the earth through physical power and deceptions, God did not allow His own children to expand His kingdom in that way. Rather, His children had to remain just and loving, as He is just and loving. So, of course, this meant that His true children had a huge disadvantage, because it is far easier to make up lies than it is to diligently search for the truth, as well as far easier to force compliance with physical threats than it is to try and convince souls to believe the truth and willingly serve God without any coercion. Difficult research, allowing God to teach one’s spirit, educating souls, attempting to build and rebuild all that the lies and sins tore down, and working for the good of all through love, was not able to compete with the easy and immediately effective evil ways of Satan’s children. But God also handed Satan’s citizens over to their own lies and delusions. So this severely divided them, in ways where they often warred against one another and ended up destroying themselves. And that was a major disadvantage which that devil’s empire had to contend with. Also, without God’s elect children doing good works within the evil world order, the useless non-elect bullies would have no one to build their homes, make their pretentious clothing or grow their crops. Without the elect, they would starve and die naked in the cold. So they could not destroy all of God’s elect, only enslave and oppress them. Satan’s kingdom could never totally eliminate God’s kingdom from the earth, but had to allow it to exist within it as it warred against other factions within it, as it was destroying itself. So this was its greatest weakness!
About all that Satan and his demons could do is slow down the growth of God’s just and loving kingdom on earth. And, even then, the demons and their human children were limited, because God also often intervened, and would not allow them to lift a hand against His elect children. God did let the devil’s world order do much evil, because God wanted the flesh of His elect to experience what would happen when they abandoned Him and His ways. God wanted His infantile offspring to know how the rule of lies, ignorance and evil caused only destruction and death, to realize that the only wages of lies and sins are death. And, as those elect spirits experienced life in the world order, they definitely did find out how bad life could become if they ignored God’s wise, just and loving ways.
Throughout history, God has caused His children to hate all that is not of Him, all lies, delusions and unloving deeds done solely for bodily profit and pleasure. At the same time, God also instilled an even greater love of all His loving, just ways in His elect, whenever they experienced life together with those whose spirits heard and heeded God’s Spirit. For there were always pockets of awakened or partially awakened elect hiding in the ghettos of the world order, and even some groups who fled to places where they could live together in just, loving, democratic communities for a time, until Page 411
Satan’s armies came to destroy them. Nevertheless, God’s kingdom has always existed, with all of its infantile and very imperfect elect children continuously growing in knowledge, wisdom and power throughout the millennia, through the many visitations and interventions of God, especially at the time Satan’s kingdom entered its final stages. At that time, God came in the body of Jesus, to vastly accelerate the process of teaching and training His elect. Then, when this process of education was completed, and His earthly kingdom was ready, God promised to come again, to wipe out Satan’s kingdom and cast all the demonic and human gods of his world order into hell. Then nothing but God’s kingdom would exist on the earth. Then His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Thus, in all our prayers, Jesus exhorted us to keep this “big picture” of all earthly time within our hearts and minds. Throughout all our trials, and as we die in the flesh, we need to remember that our Father’s loving and just kingdom will surely “come.” Though we see the wicked “win” over and over again, they also destroy themselves over and over again. Now let us remind ourselves that they have not ever eliminated either us or God, and all God’s truths continue to grow stronger throughout the entire borderless kingdom of God on earth. God cannot lose. It is impossible for God’s kingdom to be eradicated anywhere in all of His creations, even if literally all He created could somehow turn against Him. Furthermore, it is impossible for all His creations to turn against Him, since God has created the inherent attributes of all life-giving spirits in all, and God only created a very small number of spirits to be loveless, only a third of the angels in heaven, and only the humans He has allowed to be created on earth by them. So those ruthless and evil spirits can cheat, can lie and use violence, in ways that seem to “win” much for them. Yet those lies and sins are also their undoing, their punishments from God, their wages of their own destruction and death. So they gain nothing!
In this Lord’s Prayer, in this example of all the prayers that our spirits should ever utter during our lives on earth, Jesus indicated that the Father’s kingdom is not yet the only kingdom on the earth, that the Messiah has not yet seated Himself upon His throne as King over all lands and nations, and has not yet totally eliminated Satan’s kingdom. Therefore, we need to be patient and endure the lies, delusions and sins of the world order for a time. But the days when the Father’s will shall be done on earth, as in heaven, will soon arrive. The last days began when God came to us in the sacrificial body of Jesus. But the predestined end times, when God’s wrath pours out upon the whole earth, is almost here. His rule over all was to come at an indeterminate future time. But God revealed signs of its advent in His Word, and world events are now fulfilling many of those signs. So we must get ready, and pray this part of the prayer more fervently than ever before. And, since the intent of this part of The Lord’s Prayer was to remind us to build up God’s kingdom on earth, which also involves the nullifying of Satan’s works, then we need to do that more than ever before. All the elect on earth need to hear and heed Jesus’ Holy Spirit more accurately and diligently than ever before, need to be taught and trained to say and do God’s wise, just and loving will on earth better than ever before.
Right now is the time to realize that our heavenly Father did not grant us prophecies about the end times so we could ignore them, so we could pursue only the comfort and complacency of our flesh.
Rather, growing a God-like, just and eternal kind of love in our core beings, in our spirits, is our Father’s goal for each elect child He put on this earth. And that kind of love is a difficult, messy kind of work, very hard on the mind and body of flesh at times. To grow this love, we also need real truth.
So the Father of our spirits never wants us to twist and distort any of words in the Scriptures, no any of His private words spoken directly to our spirits. We must not abuse those truths, never transform those words into a fear-mongering tool, to terrorize souls into greedy little fake churches that belong to Satan’s world order, into exploiting institutions that make their biggest liars wealthy by deceiving souls into becoming tithing members. It seems hard for most churches to believe this, but the real Page 412
reason God revealed so much about the last days and end times was because He wanted us to seek the goal of our Father’s New Covenant promises. Jesus wants us to hope for the fulfilling of all His words, to pray for all He revealed about those final days of the earth, to pray for His just, loving kingdom to come. God gave us those prophecies so we would not lose hope, to assure us that He will rule the entire earth soon, and accomplish all His purposes, once we are mature enough and ready for Him. Each is to continuously work toward this goal of our spirits’ Father, to pray for His revealed will to be done on earth, in the same way His loving, just and merciful will is always done in heaven above. He dedicated a tithe of His biblical teachings to tell us about the last days. So let us spend that tithe wisely, through love from our spirits, to purchase ever more for His earthly kingdom each day.
Jesus, the prophets and the apostles all taught about the last days, about how God’s kingdom on earth will be manifested for the redeemed, cleansed, renewed elect spirits brought into His New Covenant church of Israel. God was to establish His New Covenant kingdom during the Messiah’s first advent, through His bodily sacrifice for our sins, and by personally teaching our spirits with His Holy Spirit, just as Isaiah, Jeremiah and David prophesied. God did this, just as He promised in those prophecies about the last days. So we have been living in the last days for about 2,000 years now, and have been fulfilling His prophecies during that time. Then His prophesied end-time judgments of the earth are to come, followed by a thousand years where the same Messiah, Immanuel, God in a man, rules the earth while walking among us in a body of flesh again, after His power utterly destroys literally all of Satan’s kingdom on earth. Yes, many of our bodies of flesh have died during those last days, and many more elect bodies of flesh will perish during the end times. But the death of the flesh is not the end of the elect, only the beginning of a long judgment day that is equivalent to a thousand years of earthly time. And in that day, we will be completed and perfected more than we could ever be upon this earth. Then our spirits and new bodies, made of an imperishable spiritual substance, will all descend into our eternal homes, to be with our Father and oldest Brother forever. Thus, we actually have nothing to fear, and are left with only hope. As a result, this is what we work for and pray for.
God gave each of us, each individual elect soul, a unique part in His plan to build up His just, loving kingdom on earth. Each elect spirit is called to achieve a small part of that ultimate goal, granted a destiny, purpose and goal in life, a hope to be satisfied in God-like love. Then all elect souls in each local church will collectively work, as with one mind for one purpose in Jesus, toward that ultimate goal. And the entire universal true church will do so as well. All the elect in history were destined, individually and collectively, to achieve this goal, and Jesus cannot fail to accomplish it. Nor did the Father of our spirits leave us ignorant about this predestined goal and purpose, for He fully revealed both this purpose and this goal in the prophecies He granted to us. Since the last days began, when Jesus first taught us to pray this prayer, all the awakened elect in His true New Covenant church have been striving to fulfill it, to love and be loved. Each day, we seek to change the world a little more, to draw closer to this goal, our greatest hope. But only His power can do it in us. So we pray:
“Please let Your kingdom come. Please cause Your will to be done, as in heaven, even upon earth.”
Pray for Our Physical Needs
Because our spirits express its just, equitable, God-like love through our bodies of flesh while we live on earth, Jesus also taught us to pray: “Please give us this day our bread necessary for existence”
(Mat. 6:11, from: τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον, SBLGNT). Here, the verb (δὸς) is an aorist imperative, indicating a polite entreaty uttered to our heavenly Father. We are to ask Him to give us basic “bread” (ἄρτος), the necessary sustenance for our flesh. Of course, Jesus was not saying we should pray for bread made of flour alone. Rather, the word “bread” was often used by the Page 413
Jews, and others, as a figurative term, representing all the kinds of nourishment and other things our bodies need to live. Then Jesus reinforced this concept, of bread representing all basic necessities, by modifying the noun “bread” with the adjective ἐπιούσιος, literally meaning “necessary for existence”
(BDAG3). Thus, it is clear that Jesus definitely was not telling us to pray for self-indulgent luxuries or carnal pleasures of any kind whatsoever, but only for what we truly needed to fulfill our calling and purposes in life on earth. This phrase (τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον) held a very well-defined and particular meaning in the minds of His devout Jewish disciples. Jesus was telling them to ask their heavenly Father to provide that which their rabbis defined as lawful necessities, the kinds of needs that were never to be be denied to their people by creditors or rulers, according to God’s Law.
For instance, remember how God’s Law gave every Jew the right to demand an interest-free loan from the wealthy, so each individual and family in need could purchase whatever the rabbis deemed to be a lawful necessities. Of course, this included all the kinds of food they required to be healthy.
But one could also borrow money to feed one’s guests as well, or the wine and food needed for each feast commanded in God’s Law, such as the Passover Seder. On top of this, one could borrow from the rich for other basic necessities, such as adequate clothing in the cold season, descent shelter, proper equipment to do the work for one’s occupation, seed for one’s crops and anything else needed to provide a modest lifestyle, comparable to the lives of other common folk in the community. Then that debt had to be completely wiped out and forgiven every Sabbath year, even if that seventh year was about to begin the very next day. However, even if one borrowed money for lawful necessities during the first weeks of the Sabbath year, and could not repay it, the rich were not allowed to take any lawful necessities back from them. They could confiscate luxuries to pay for the loan they gave to the poor, but never any lawful necessities or sacred items. For the entire earth belonged to God alone, and God provided enough for all His people. So the rich, whom God owned, had no right to deny anyone else any basic necessities that God also owned. The only property rights anyone had in God’s land were rights to receive literally all they needed to live modest lives and to do their works.
Then Jesus also added an adverb at the very end of this clause, σήμερον (“this day”), after the verb it modified. Therefore, we are to ask our Father to give us our bread “this day.” We are to ask Him for our necessities to be granted on the day that it is needed. In other words, our God Jesus wanted us to ask for His providence as soon as we needed something. And this also relates to God’s lending laws, since the wealthy were legally required to provide for a poor person’s needs immediately, as soon as that rich person was asked for the money or for the goods they required, if that rich person had excess and was able to give it. Yet, Jesus was not implying that we should be impatient with our heavenly Father. Rather, this statement suggested that, if we live together as a collective body of God’s priesthood that does our Father’s will on earth, in the same way His will is done in heaven, we will be able to provide all the necessities for everyone “this day,” on the very day each needs it.
Also, these words seem to indicate that we should not try to provide all necessities for ourselves, at least not as our first or major priority in life, while ignoring our real highest priorities in life. For our real first priority is to love and serve our God. Then this leads into our second greatest priority, to love and serve God’s creations, especially His elect children. So we must not work to horde up enough wealth and property, and delude ourselves into thinking we can ensure a comfortable life for ourselves, with all we will ever need, and ignore our duty to love and be loved as we do so. For all can be taken away from us in a moment, even life itself. One theft or one natural disaster can take away decades of stored up money, property or goods. And remember the parable of the man who did this kind of thing. After years of hard labour, he told himself, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.” But, on the day he said this to himself, Jesus Page 414
told us, “God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:19-21, WEB). Therefore, when Jesus told us that all our prayers should include words similar to, “Please give us this day our bread necessary for existence,” He was clearly implying this same thing, that saving faith relies on God and not upon ourselves, certainly not upon the providence that our own amoral and very foolish flesh can provide for us. Rather, God placed our eternal spirits into temporary bodies of flesh for His spiritual purposes, to be taught and trained to love and be loved. Therefore, these spiritual purposes must always remain our highest priorities.
On the other hand, since our God Jesus wanted all our prayers to ask for our bodily needs “this day,”
He obviously did not want us to wait until we had the time to pray, or to pray only when we were alone in our homes, or only when we could go to a supposedly “holy” place like a church. We are not to delay our prayers to God, but should allow our spirits to pray at any time, silently and privately with our Father. For our spirits do not need physical privacy, nor do our spirits need to utter words out loud through a mouth of flesh. In fact, our spirits can pour out concepts to God, and the Holy Spirit of God can pour even complex concepts into our spirits, without our brains of flesh even being aware of it. We can perform the simple act of allowing one’s spirit to engage in deep communion with the Father at any time, no matter what our minds and bodies of flesh might be doing at the time, or wherever our flesh may be located. So, the very moment we find ourselves incapable of obtaining what we need, we should pray for it and heed all that God tells our spirits to do about that need. For our God will answer the prayers of our elect spirits. Our Father will tell our spirits what we should or should not do, in order to get all that we need. Thus, one of our highest priorities in life is to keep the ears of our elect spirits open, to hear and heed His counsel, then do whatever He tells us to do. If we live the kinds of lives that Jesus teaches and trains us to live, we will never need to desperately bow before the demon Mammon, and obey his sinful commands, to get what we need. Rather, if we ask our heavenly Father first, then follow His counsel as individuals and collectively as a true church, He will provide all our needs, before our fears transform us into lost wretches enslaved by Satan.
Now, since Jesus commanded us to pray for the granting of our bread “this day” (σήμερον) many will translate the adjective (ἐπιούσιος) as “daily, for the current day, for today.” So the translation for the verse is usually something like this: “Give us this day our daily bread.” And it is seldom like this:
“Please give us this day our bread necessary for existence.” But the usual translation is a mere guess.
In reality, this rare adjective (ἐπιούσιος) is only found twice in the New Covenant Scriptures, and only in this statement found in the two versions of this prayer (Mat. 6:11, Luke 11:3). Furthermore, it is not found in the Septuagint at all, nor in many secular writings before Christ. Thus, there has been much speculation about its meaning, including definitions like this: “that [which] belongs to [this day], which comes upon [this day], for tomorrow, for the future” (see BDAG3). Yet the fact remains that ἐπιούσιος is actually a compound word consisting of the preposition ἐπί (“upon, toward, a basis for, for”) and the noun οὐσία (“that which exists ...,” BDAG3, or “estate,” etc.). So, in its local context (and global context of all God’s Word), ἐπιούσιος would refer to “a basis for that which exists” or “what is necessary for existence.” Only this definition makes sense, since it is likely a part of a phrase coined by Greek-speaking Jewish rabbis, used as an ecclesiastical phrase they created with reference to an aspect of God’s Law. The phrase, τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον, probably referred to what rabbis deemed to be necessities because, as judges, they had to define necessities.
Since God’s Law required every wealthy Jew to provide an interest-free loan to any poorer Jew who asked for money to purchase lawful necessities, those rabbinical judges had to clearly define all that could be called lawful necessities, just as our legal experts do the same today. Our courts carefully Page 415
determine what can be called a necessity, so governments will provide all that is needed by the destitute, and also to prevent lenders from confiscating a person’s necessities to recover funds from a defaulted loan. God commanded the rich: “You shall surely open your hand to [a needy man], and shall surely lend him sufficient for his need, which he lacks” (Deut. 15:8, WEB). Since the rabbis judged what was considered to be a real need, they had to give the wealthy a detailed description of what they were required to lend money for. Rabbis had to delineate between “needs” and mere luxuries, whenever they ordered the rich to lend money to provide for the needs of the poor. For the judges had to prevent the dishonest poor from borrowing money for mere luxuries, especially just days before the Sabbath year began, when all loans had to be forgiven and borrowers did not have to repay those loans. Otherwise, the dishonest poor would bleed the rich dry, and there would be no more money left to lend to the truly needy souls. Now, since we know the rabbis had to do this, like we do today, then those rabbis would have developed legal and ecclesiastical terms and phrases that both the poor and the rich would soon learn and become very familiar with. So the phrase Jesus used in this prayer, which employed the term ἐπιούσιος, likely related to that ecclesiastical terminology.
When we define any word or phrase in the Scriptures, we must take into account the purest and most logically consistent biblical teachings of the devout and biblically oriented Jews. We need to take a look at their doctrines, those which most harmoniously fit together to produce a clear and consistent understanding of the entire Old Covenant Scriptures. For we know our God Jesus did this. We do this because: (1) Jesus always communicated with His devout Jewish disciples under the assumption that God had already revealed much to them through His Word and their rabbis; (2) We ourselves find that God did indeed reveal much to Israel through the prophets and rabbis by that time, and had obviously caused many elect Jews to rightly interpret His words; And (3) all teachings of Scriptures must be harmonious, where none ever contradict in principle, since all Scriptures originated from God and it is impossible for the omniscient, almighty God to contradict principles in His own words.
Now, to confirm this translation of Matthew 6:11 as “Please give us this day our bread necessary for existence,” we should look a Luke’s slight variation of this clause. Luke also told us that Jesus had wanted us to pray for all our necessities, so we would not need to go through the stressful and very demeaning exercise of begging the rich for a loan. For Luke used the adjective ἐπιούσιος just as Matthew did, and gave us this version of that clause: “Please continuously give us, throughout the day, our bread necessary for existence” (Luke 11:3, from: τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δίδου ἡμῖν
τὸ καθʼ ἡμέραν, SBLGNT). Here a present (durative) imperative verb indicates an entreaty to our heavenly Father. It is Christ’s command to ask the Father of our spirits to continuously grant us what the noun phrase specifies. Then a substantivized prepositional phrase (τὸ καθʼ ἡμέραν) follows the verb and pronoun. So we interpret this prepositional phrase as a noun indicating the time of granting, which is “down through [or throughout] the day.” Then Luke uses that rare adjective (ἐπιούσιον) to modify the noun “bread” (ἄρτον), that is, “our” (ἡμῶν) bread, the bread that God grants us the right to receive every day, to sustain our lives throughout the day. So, just as it was in this same line of the Lord’s Prayer found in Matthew’s Gospel, Luke also referred to the bread “necessary for existence.”
Matthew was a Jew who would have used Jewish ecclesiastical terms. Then Luke was an adept Gentile scholar who tended to use more secular terms, but would have also been very familiar with Jewish ecclesiastical terms. So Luke’s phrase, τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον, would be familiar to devout, Greek-speaking Jews of that day too, as a colloquial expression used by rabbis, and most likely was a phrase referring to what rabbis deemed to be lawful necessities, to what they legally required the wealthy Jews to lend to the poorer Jews, so the Jews with financial hardships could purchase basic needs on the very day those things were needed. Thus, both versions are similar.
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Now, at this point, I should engage in a little polemics, to defend my analysis of The Lord’s Prayer.
For some might argue against me, and point to the differences between these two versions of this prayer, saying my analysis is mere speculation because the apostles simply invented all they wrote, then copied one another’s works to make their new religion look more consistent. Some may declare that, according to Matthew, Jesus used an aorist imperative form of δίδωμι, implying that we should ask for a completed granting of our request, or all of what we prayed for. So Matthew said Jesus told us to pray: “Please give us this day [all] our bread necessary for existence.” But, according to Luke, Jesus used a present imperative form of δίδωμι, implying that we should ask in a continuous, ongoing, constant or frequent manner. Luke said Jesus told us to pray: “Please continuously give us, throughout the day, our bread necessary for existence.” Of course, these two phrases have no logical contradictions, but there are differences. So some conclude that we cannot trust what either of the disciples wrote, and that one just paraphrased what the other wrote, or, a most, both paraphrased the teachings of Jesus. Consequently, we cannot and should not analyze the words too deeply, since we cannot know the exact words of Jesus. So they argue that everything I am doing in this commentary is an exercise in futility, because no one is able to come to any right conclusions. Instead, they say that each individual should simply glean whatever one desires from each text and ignore the rest.
Each should derive one’s own desired interpretation, through what is called existential hermeneutics.
In response, we need to remember that The Lord’s Prayer, and all the other teachings of Jesus, are didactic sayings, which He would have repeated many times and in many ways, with a different emphasis during different occasions and under different circumstances. These were sayings meant to teach and remind His disciples about the exact meanings of related Scriptures. Then Jesus would have asked them questions, to test their understanding, and would have corrected even the slightest misconceptions anyone had about anything He taught. Thus, after three years of being with Jesus for about 16 hours a day, seven days a week, each disciple would have developed an extremely thorough understanding of exactly and precisely all that our God Jesus taught. Then each disciple would have very diligently, studiously and carefully written down those teachings, using Jesus’ own words to convey precisely what He taught. Consequently, in reality, the reasoning of those who refuse to do a detailed analysis of Jesus’ words is backwards. Considering just the physical time the disciples spent with Jesus, not to mention the reminding and editing that His Holy Spirit provided to their spirits as they wrote the Scriptures, it would be utterly irrational to think that they did not provide us with the precise and correct teachings of Jesus. It is actually be far more likely that Jesus’ full-time apostles, such as Matthew and John, or the apostolic and devout eye-witnesses interviewed by Luke and Mark, provided us with His exact words. Yes, they sometimes wrote down different versions that Jesus spoke on different occasions. But, logically, we can trust and analyze every word of the Bible.
Matthew’s version of The Lord’s Prayer emphasized prayers for complete fulfillment, whenever one fell into a time of great need, while Luke’s version emphasized a continuous fulfillment. And, like every good rabbi, Jesus would often reiterate this teaching about praying, would repeat this sample prayer many times in many different circumstances. Then, like every good rabbi, Jesus surely would alter the words slightly at times, to emphasize different aspects of His teaching. Thus, Luke’s eyewitnesses and Matthew, who all followed Jesus throughout His ministry on earth, definitely heard several slightly different variations of The Lord’s Prayer, and both versions can be analyzed in great detail for use as blueprints for all of our prayers. Matthew simply chose to provide one version while Luke chose to provide another slight variation. And we should learn from both, since both would be what Jesus taught. And, above all, let us recognize that, in both versions, we see how Jesus wanted each individual to privately pray for “our” needs, that is, for the necessities required by all of us Page 417
collectively. Each was to pray for the needs of His church—then hear and heed God’s response, and do whatever God called one to do. Each is to do his or her part, all He calls one to do for His people.
Pray for Our Forgiveness
The next line of prayer reminded us to pray for the healing of our relationships, both with God and the others in our churches and communities. This too has two slightly different versions, one given by Matthew and another by Luke. Matthew give us this version: “And please entirely forgive our debts for our benefit, as even we have entirely forgiven for the benefit of our debtors” (Mat. 6:12, from: καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν, ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν, SBLGNT).
Then Luke wrote down this subtly varied but illuminating version: “And please entirely forgive our sins for our benefit, for even we ourselves continue to forgive all those owing to us” (Luke 11:4a, from: καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν, καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀφίομεν παντὶ ὀφείλοντι ἡμῖν, SBLGNT).
First notice how Matthew’s next line of this template prayer, which follows immediately after the clause asking God to “give us this day our bread necessary for existence,” also relates to “debts” and
“forgiveness.” Therefore, this next supplication also alludes to God’s laws about to lending to the needy (Deut. 15:1-11), to the laws God established so there would be “no poor among you.” In this line of the prayer, we see how Jesus also assumed that all His disciples would actually fulfill those laws, by lending and entirely forgiving all the debts owed to them, just as God commanded in His Law. Yet it is clear that this line of the prayer was not just about mere financial debts, or goods and services owed to us. Rather, these “debts” included offences, sins and failures committed by others against us, as individuals or as a church, or as a community of His people. For Jesus commanded us to ask God for the same kind of forgiveness that we give to our debtors, although we never borrow any earthly money, goods or services from God. The only kind of “debt” we build up with God is through our theft of life, liberty, peace and hope from His creations, through our sins against His properties, which are actually sins directly against Him. Luke even clarifies this by using the word
“sins” instead of “debts.” So this is another example of how the principles of God’s laws about physical requirements and sins are actually spiritual principles, to be applied in both spiritual and physical life. Just as He commanded us to forgive material debts, we are to forgive spiritual debts.
The verb ἄφες is the aorist imperative form of ἀφίημι, indicating an entirely completed action. So, by using this aorist form, Jesus implied that He wanted us to politely beg our heavenly Father to entirely forgive us, not merely for one particular sin committed at one time, but in a completed way, with a full and total forgiveness of all our sins for all time. Then the dative pronoun (ἡμῖν) suggests that this plea for forgiveness is for our benefit. Our elect spirits need this kind of complete and whole forgiveness, for all the sins of our entire lives (past, present and future), in order to restore a right relationship with the utterly holy Father of our spirits. After all, this was the goal and purpose of our oldest Brother, for our salvation. This was why He sacrificed His body on the cross for all our sins.
Jesus created Adam and walked on earth beside Him, as the Spirit of the Creator in a body of human flesh, in order to establish a loving relationship with him. And, at first, Adam had a good relationship with our God Jesus, because Adam walked in absolute sinlessness. But Adam’s relationship with Jesus was hindered after after Adam gained an experiential knowledge which was able to discern between good and evil, by his sin. Since our God Jesus remained sinless, holiness can never relate to sin, never reconcile differences. So the only way to restore that relationship would be for Adam to repent into the holiness of His God, and away from sin. But, even then, Satan had the contractual right to take every sinner as his property, as a citizen of his kingdom. Thus, the devil could demand a ransom for a sinner, the price of a life for a life, if God wanted that sinner back. So Jesus paid that Page 418
price, with His own life. Yes, Jesus waited thousands of years to do this, and did not physical die until the first century AD. But, since earthly time is one time, the future death of Jesus on the cross even paid for the sins of Adam, in the beginning. Thus, our God Jesus was able to grant Satan the full price of the ransom he demanded for Adam and Eve, and forgive their entire lifetimes of sin in the flesh, so He could restore His relationship with them forever. So, when Jesus told us to pray for our heavenly Father’s forgiveness here, in this template prayer, He was saying that our repentance could also receive the same complete forgiveness and a total restoration of the relationship with Him, both before and after His death on the cross. Today, even until the end of earthly time, all the elect need this kind of plenary forgiveness, so the utterly holy Father of our spirits, through the Holy Spirit of Jesus, can draw near to our spirits, although we all have sinned and all will surely sin again.
I repeat, God cannot allow Himself to approach our spirits unless the justly demanded penalty for our lifetime of sins, even our future sins, has been paid in full. And the only way this could ever be paid is with the life of a sinless body, a life that has no need to pay for any of its own sins. Since all who sin automatically belong to Satan, nothing but an entirely sinless body of flesh is able to pay the price which buys the sinner back, so the sinner can be a citizen of God’s Kingdom. And that full price has indeed been paid in full, for all whom Jesus named on the cross, for all those whom Jesus chose to die for. And, on that day, Jesus named all the elect who ever lived or ever would live on earth. Thus, literally all the elect in all history have already been purchased for God’s kingdom, and are full citizens forever. Some elect may not yet be conscious of this plenary forgiveness, may not yet know they have been bought with a high price, and no longer need to serve in Satan’s world order. And some may never know, until their flesh dies and they realize this on the judgment day.
Nevertheless, their entire lifetimes of sin are forgiven and God can now enter their hearts and souls, to completely restore His relationship with each and every one of them, in perfect fullness of love.
Our utterly holy God can justly enter the chambers of our souls, to save us in a way will allow none to accuse Him of aiding and abetting the sins of sinners. God has a human body, and sacrificed that sinless body in death for us. Therefore, it is as though our own bodies died, because He died in our place. Thus, God has the right to save us, and can fulfill His desire to teach and train our elect spirits, until we learn all His ways directly from Him, until we became like Him. He can make us fit to enter heaven, able to be with Him forever. Through God’s works to make us fit to enter heaven, He has fully justified us, justly judged us to be worthy of receiving eternal life. Although God cannot justly allow sin and sinners to harm anyone or anything in His holy heaven, He will cause us to be totally harmless and helpful, utterly holy and sinless. And we are this now, since He cannot fail in any task He chooses to undertake. Literally everyone He chooses to save will be entirely holy and able to live in heaven, without sin, by the end of the judgment day. But, without plenary forgiveness, the Father and Brother of our spirits would always need to remain at a distance, and could not even begin this work of purifying and sanctifying us for heaven. He would need to condemn us on the last day, as wilful sinners, since the Holy cannot be joined to sinners without being condemned Himself. Only if the just penalty is fully paid for our lifetimes of sins in the flesh, can our utterly holy Creator teach our spirits into repentance, causing our spirits to embrace all truths for the full forgiveness of all our sins. And only His teaching and training of our spirits is able to fully justify our welcome into His utterly holy heaven, by making us as holy as He is Himself. Every aspect of salvation is His work.
Then Matthew told us how Jesus wanted us to pray for God’s forgiveness “as even we have entirely forgiven for the benefit of our debtors.” In this second clause, Matthew used an aorist imperative form of the verb. Since Matthew wrote his Gospel after Luke wrote his Gospel, and he had almost certainly already read Luke’s Gospel, it seems that Matthew deliberately contrasted this aorist form Page 419
of the verb (ἀφήκαμεν) with Luke’s present form of the verb (ἀφίομεν). Remember, Luke’s variation of this second clause was: “for even we ourselves continue to forgive all those owing to us.” Yet both used an aorist form (ἄφες) regarding our prayers for our own forgiveness from God, where Jesus was telling us to pray for a completed act of forgiveness from the Father of our elect spirits, for a one-time and forever forgiveness, in a way where we would never need to be forgiven again as long as we lived—although we would all need to repent from many sins in life, as part of the teaching and training of our Father. So, in this second clause, Matthew implied that we should have confidence that God will entirely forgive our lifetime of sins because we, as awakened infantile elect sinners saved by being gradually transformed into the image of our God Jesus, “have entirely forgiven for the benefit of our debtors.” But Luke implied that should have this confidence because we, the elect whom Jesus is saving, will “continue to forgive all those owing to us.” Luke said we should be confident in God’s plenary forgiveness because of what we will continue to do for others in the future, but Matthew gave our past actions as the reason for this confidence. Of course, both are right.
However, Matthew focused on how we cannot know the future, not even whether or not we will live another minute and be able to forgive anyone. But Luke emphasized the hope that we will live, love and continue to restore relationships with others, by forgiving their sins. Still, this attitude of always looking forward, pressing on toward our goal of salvation, must be counterbalanced by a realization that we must not live for our earthly existence, that our ultimate purpose is to get ready for heaven.
To Greek-speaking Jewish disciples, both versions would have seemed a little strange, starting with the first clause, “please entirely forgive our debts for our benefit.” After all, each time they sinned, God’s Law instructed them to repent, pray for forgiveness, go to the mikveh as a sign of accepting His forgiveness and His renewal into a new life without sin, then go to the temple to make a sin sacrifice and bear the fruits of repentance after that. Thus, in their minds, Jesus should have should have specified that they must pray for God’s forgiveness anew, and begin a new life in forgiveness without guilt after each sin. But Jesus had already made the real and final sin sacrifice in earthly time, in the one earthly time that includes all the past and all the future at once. And Jesus already washed their sins away with the blood He shed on the cross, so all could begin a new life of full forgiveness, without guilt before God. Therefore, the symbolic rituals of the sin sacrifice and the mikveh were redundant. The reality of those physical symbols had arrived. Now, when we pray, we are to simply remind ourselves of this fact, that the plenary forgiveness of our entire lifetimes of sin were already purchased on that cross. Now we are to pray with verbs indicating a past completed act of God’s forgiveness, then repent into the truth, regarding our sins of that day, then bear fruits of repentance, as the teaching and training exercises Jesus grants us, to make us entirely fit for eternity.
Also, when Jesus compared God’s forgiveness to the kind of forgiveness devout Jews gave to others, it would have seemed somewhat blasphemous to them as well. For how could the totally unmerited and unearned grace which their utterly holy God gave to wretched human sinners ever be compared to the forgiveness they gave others. After all, they forgave others simply because they realized how easily they themselves were tempted into sin, but God knew nothing of the messy human emotions they experienced while living in bodies of flesh. Or did He? God created His elect children in His own image. And, yes, God also walked in a body of weak and amoral flesh. So God did experience the very same temptations that their infantile spirits did, although His mature and wise Spirit never allowed His body to succumb to temptations, and never sinned. And, in the same way the Jewish parents overlooked a multitude of sins committed by their beloved children, so did their heavenly Father also overlook a multitude of sins committed by the infantile spirits of His children. But, if their children bullied their siblings, and refused to forgive their siblings of the same sins that they Page 420
themselves were always committing, Jewish parents would step in and reprimand those stubborn children. And so does God, our Father. God does not tolerate bullying, but keeps all the relationships of siblings just and balanced, by reminding us that we need to forgive, tolerate and work with one another. For we need one another to survive our physical, emotional and spiritual training on earth.
Jesus told these devout Jewish disciples to pray for a complete forgiveness from their spirits’ Father, as though this was all the forgiveness they would ever need from Him. Then Jesus told them to trust in their heavenly Father’s forgiveness, because His people, created in His image, also freely forgave others, especially their beloved children and siblings. They should never fear that their heavenly Father would hold a grudge and refuse to forgive them. For God was nothing like their psychopathic rulers, and never sought revenge like those self-indulgent, ruthless despots did, whenever anyone offended them in any way. For the unforgiving spirits of those wretches were born of Satan, created in that devil’s image. On the contrary, the Spirit of their heavenly Father was far more like their own spirits, like the hearts of those common, loving elect folk, like the awakened ones in His invisible and true church of Israel, whom He created in His image. Their Father forgave sins, abandoned all thoughts of wrath and revenge—for the benefit of all the spirits He compelled to follow our God Jesus out into the wilderness, for all who depended on one another and forgave the failures and sins of their deeply flawed loved ones. God knew they were extremely weak, and came to them so He could make them strong. So He was just as willing to forgive them as they were with their children.
Here Jesus implies that God’s forgiveness of our sins is granted in the same way “we have entirely forgiven for the benefit of our debtors,” or in the same way “we ourselves continue to forgive all those owing to us.” And ἀφίημι indicated a total forgiveness, a complete forsaking and abandoning of all intentions to collect the debts owed by another, a total acceptance of the loss, accompanied by unmerited and unearned grace for the debtor (it means: “to release from legal or moral obligation or consequence, cancel, remit, pardon,” BDAG3). And, by the implication of all the other Scriptures, this forgiveness could only be justly granted to those with right motives and intentions, or to those who no longer had evil motives or intentions, that is, to the repentant who manifested a change in motives and intentions for the good. After all, if we forgive those with evil motives and intentions, we are actually condoning and partaking in their sins. Forgiving the unrepentant is a form of aiding and abetting their sins. So this kind of deluded forgiveness, which is usually the result of arrogant humanistic self-worship, is a sin. Thus, neither God’s forgiveness nor ours is without repentance.
Now, regarding this true kind of forgiveness for all repentant and good-hearted souls, Luke’s version of this prayer was written for Gentiles, who were not as familiar with God’s Law. So, in his version, he contrasted the aorist form of ἀφίημι, referring to God’s forgiveness, to a present form of the same verb when he referred to human forgiveness. Thus, Luke seemed to compare God’s one-time plenary forgiveness with our continuous ongoing need to repeatedly forgive others, through an unconditional covenant of love, with a plenary forgiveness of all the obligations that others might owe us. And we see how Matthew did something similar. But Matthew compared God’s plenary forgiveness to the way all truly elect and worshipping Jews, at the beginning of a Sabbath year, entirely forgive all financial, emotional and spiritual debts, to fulfill what God’s Law had legally bound them to do.
As mentioned, the previous verse (Mat. 6:11, Luke 11:3) also alluded to God’s laws regarding the forgiveness of debts on the Sabbath year (i.e., in Deut. 15:1-11). And devout Jews were not only taught to forgive all financial debts forever, but also to forgive sins and other offences against them in the same way as financial debts. They were to forget that anything was ever owed to them, so they could begin a renewed relationship with those who owed them something. They were to begin again, on a totally equal footing, with all their debtors. They had to forgive without asking for any thanks or Page 421
praise, without holding anyone to any kind of obligation. So, here, Jesus clearly used this particular verb (ἀφίημι), together with the noun ὀφειλήματα (“debts”) in Matthew’s version, or with the noun ἁμαρτίας (“sins”) in Luke’s version, to remind His disciples of this very familiar law of God. For Jesus came to fulfill (not to nullify) those laws which He, our God, gave to His eternal priesthood of Israel. And Jesus knew that all those inwardly awakened devout Jews would associate His phrases with that passage from Deuteronomy, especially the way it was written in their Greek version of the Bible, the Septuagint—although the Septuagint used this verb’s noun cognate, ἄφεσις (“forgiveness, pardon, liberty,” in that Greek version of Deut. 15:1,2,9). For this law of God was especially loved by the poor, and the vast majority of Jesus’ disciples were poor, just as Jesus’ and His family were.
Now some might still doubt that Jesus was alluding to God’s law about cancelling all debts at the beginning of each Sabbath year. But I repeat, Jesus was speaking to Jews who knew God’s Law very well. All those Jews had gone to a synagogue every Sabbath day all their lives, where they heard this law read aloud to them at least once a year throughout their lives, usually accompanied by a lengthy discussion about the meaning of this law. Wherever ten or more Jews lived near one another in those days, they also established a school, to teach their children about God and His laws. They created a school before building a synagogue, since teaching God’s Word was their foremost priority. Thus, to assume that Jesus was not alluding to God’s principal law regarding the forgiveness of debts, when He gave His disciples this template prayer, would be more presumptuous and irrational than it would be to assume He was alluding to it. For Deuteronomy 15 would always be on the minds of the poor.
Although He used the verb ἀφίημι (“forgive”), with ὀφείλημα (“debts”) as the object of that verb, and did not precisely quote the Septuagint, His reference to Deuteronomy 15 is obvious. And, as was affirmed by Luke’s less figurative version for the Gentiles, Jews definitely considered all their sins to be “debts” owed to God, as well as to the victims of their sins. Luke replaced Matthew’s phrase “our debts” (τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν) with the phrase “our sins” (τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν). So Matthew likely quoted Jesus’ original version of this prayer, which He taught to His Jewish disciples. Then Luke likely paraphrased that version, and replaced the word “debts” with the word “sins,” so the Gentiles would understand what Jesus was implying to the more knowledgeable Jews, who realized that the word “debts” included “sins.” So, yes, Jesus telling us that we are to pray for God’s complete, once-and-for-all-time forgiveness in the same way we are to completely wipe out all the debts owing to us every Sabbath year, just as God’s Law commanded. And we are also to forgive all the sins against us in the same way (i.e., if we see right motives and intentions in our debtors). Yet this was not exactly how God’s Law taught Israel to seek His forgiveness, except in Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah.
For God’s Law taught them the rituals of the mikvehs, sin sacrifices and so on. However, Isaiah had prophesied that, at an appointed future time, the Messiah would do a great work for their healing and forgiveness, so He could gather them into a state of peace with Himself, healed of their lawlessness:
“But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on Him; and by His wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.... Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise Him. He has caused Him to suffer. When You make His soul an offering for sin ... and He will bear their iniquities ... He poured out His soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Is. 53:5-6,10,11,12, WEB).
This well-known and often memorized Messianic prophecy through Isaiah was taken together with the promise of Moses, that God would “circumcise” our hearts (Deut. 30:6), that is, God would bind our spirits to Himself through an inward sign of His Spirit’s permanent covenant commitment to us, Page 422
and would cause our spirits to more fully love Him, with all our “hearts.” God would do this through His bodily death, by making “His soul and offering for sin.” After the Messiah “poured out His soul to death,” in our stead, our souls would die with Him, and free us from Satan’s claim of ownership.
For the devil cannot own dead sinners. And notice that Isaiah used the term “soul” in the biblical sense of the word, not in the way Platonic churches use it. That is, Platonists claim that the words
“soul” and “spirit” are synonyms. So they somehow think the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Messiah Jesus, died. But God is a Spirit and, if His Spirit died, all existence that He maintains in real time, both the entire spiritual realm of heaven and the material universe, would instantly end, because God would end, forever, and would not be alive to recreate His living Self. So, as we read this passage, we must be careful to define our terms biblically, and understand that “souls” are the places where the minds of our spirits communicate with our minds of flesh. Thus, when Jesus poured out His soul as a sin offering on our behalf, it means that He poured His mind of flesh out from the chamber of His soul. That is, His mind and body of flesh died, although His Spirit, like our spirits, cannot perish.
Then Jesus and biblical rabbis also joined these two prophecies, from Isaiah and Moses, to many other Messianic prophecies. And, in most of those, God repeated His promise to cleanse us and create a new heart in us. That is, by purifying and sanctifying our elect spirits, through His personal teaching and training of our spirits, our spirits would renovate their homes in our bodies, to be more conducive to the loving, just, equitable and holy kinds of lives our spirits would then seek. And the homes of our spirits are the hearts in our bodies of flesh. Thus, after our God’s Spirit entered our hearts and souls, we would cast off our old lives of lies, delusions and sins, to live new lives, with new hearts. Therefore, all these Messianic prophecies together indicated a time when God would forgive all the sins of all the elect in His church of Israel, even all sins of all the elect in the world, both in the past and in all the future, once and for all time. Through the death of God’s flesh, all His children would begin to be taught and trained by Him, in a New Covenant relationship with them.
So, when Jesus taught His Jewish disciples to pray in this way, by using The Lord’s Prayer as a template for all their prayers, Jesus was actually claiming that their Messiah had now arrived. Today was finally the day to pray for the plenary forgiveness of our whole lifetimes of sins, for a permanent washing away of all our past, present and future sins, so we could begin to love God and enter a new relationship with Him. Now we could start learning to love our God with all of our hearts and with all of our souls, so we may live (see Deut. 30:6). This is what Jesus was implying, in a succinct way.
And notice how Jesus commanded each disciple to pray, in a private place, for even the plenary and permanent forgiveness of all His true disciples, collectively. For He told each to use a plural pronoun as one prays, “entirely forgive our debts for our benefit.” Each was to pray for the forgiveness of all the elect on earth, which means all awakened elect were to pray for the awakening of all other elect spirits, so all could comprehend their forgiveness and everything it meant to them, so all could begin new lives in the Messiah Jesus. For the only possible biblical goal of such a prayer would be so that the spirits of all the elect could be personally taught and trained by the Holy Spirit of God, so all would begin to fulfill all God’s Law spontaneously, directly through the just love, knowledge and wisdom that God would write upon their renewed hearts. Consequently, Jesus was telling those Jewish and Gentile disciples to pray for the ratification of God’s New Covenant with His church of Israel, through His blood shed on the cross for their plenary and eternal forgiveness of their lifetimes of sins. And, now this relationship of the New Covenant was being ratified, now all was made ready for them to enter it. Now He would send His Holy Spirit into our hearts. So each of us must pray that the Father of our elect spirits will now gather more elect into cognizance of that relationship, into Page 423
His true church of Israel, so all begin to serve Him through love and in holiness. Each of us must pray for true revival, for the awakening and awareness of all the elect, so all may begin new lives.
Pray for Our Rescue from the Wicked
In His template prayer, Jesus also wanted all our prayers to humbly ask this of our heavenly Father:
“And might You not lead us into temptation, but please rescue us from the wicked” (Mat. 6:13, from: καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ, SBLGNT). Of course, the principal “wicked” ones, from whom we need rescuing most, are ourselves. For we so often allow ourselves to become distracted by petty things of this world, and it is always easy for spirits of demons and their deluded human slaves to turn us away from God, to drain all God-like love out from our souls, through even the most irrational and obvious kinds of lies that we all know we should not believe. Yet we believe them, to gratify the vanities of our flesh. Throughout history, fake religious and secular “leaders,” who do not fear nor seek His opinions and right interpretations of His Word have also made us fear through the stupidest lies imaginable, so we will turn to them for salvation from what does not exist. They dupe and tempt us into ever greater sins, even dehumanize and murder our innocent siblings, until all of us dwell in a demonic darkness of terrorized futility.
But Jesus wants us to pray for our freedom from lies and sins, through faith in Him, trusting His opinions and His own interpretations of His Word, hearing what He calls our spirits to do. Our hearts are to press on, doing in His wise works of love, justice and peace according to His counsel, with a courage that only His awakened elect can know. For Satan’s have no real courage, only an inner fear of God and one another, because that devil’s entire world order is ruled by irrational fears. So, when the wicked see a kitten, they run, lock the doors, and collapse in terror, screaming, “There is a lion in the streets who will kill us all!” For their demonic fear-mongers have convinced them that everyone and everything is out to get them, even children’s toys like Mr. Potatohead. There is absolutely nothing which is too small and insignificant to terrorize their darkned souls. For they believe any and every lie which feeds their arrogance or gratifies the filthy lusts of their flesh, and hate every truth that is contrary to their delusions. They are only willing to cling to their ego-boosting lies, so they deny truths, incite insurrections, slander the good, protest against justice with violence, and labour diligently for all that will cause even the suffering and deaths of their own children. But we are not like those slaves of Satan, bound in chains of ignorance. We know “the work of righteousness will be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever” (Is. 32:17, WEB). So we do not fear truths like the “critical race theory,” and do not believe lies about such things. Rather, we embrace the exposure of our sins and the sins of our fathers, so we can confess and repent away from all such wickedness, as God commands (Lev. 26:40-42); so we can enter His eternal covenant which He made with Abraham, the covenant relationship with Himself that He has fulfilled through Jesus.
And we know why the wicked live in such darkness and fear, never coming to a knowledge of the truth and never able to wisely and effectively overcome any real threats against them. It is because, in our humanistic world, all are told that we must strive to be gods who control our own destinies, that we must psyche ourselves up until our gullible minds of flesh grow a fake self-confidence and self-esteem that trusts in ourselves as gods. Of course, all that is such a stupid delusion that rational and sane souls laugh at it. True sane Christians cannot see how anyone, except the institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals, could ever believe these things. Yet the majority of people on earth surely do believe these lies. For propagandists create media which tells them how individuals, through expert human training or some kind of magic, became gods who could successfully defeat multitudes of armed enemies alone, with their bare hands. Naturally, most understand that all this is fiction. Yet Page 424
this kind of fiction still makes them believe the delusion that they too are capable of accomplishing all they will to do, if only they learn more, train better and work harder. Still, the fact remains that they all actually remain nothing but mindless little puppets enslaved in demonic and inequitable economic systems and ruled by their worshipped elite human gods, while those elite gods are merely more mindless and much weaker puppets enslaved by Satan, compelled to rule over his demonic world order through delusions which he injects into their minds of flesh. So any confidence and faith they have in themselves, as gods ruling over their own destinies, is clearly and empirically proven to be delusional. And, since God’s created reality is constantly proving that no soul can ever possibly trust in human wisdom or strength for salvation, nor have any reason to be esteemed, they all live in fear of death and literally every little thing the devil tells them to fear, in terror of all God’s truths. So they transform that overwhelming fear into a blind rage, then commit crimes of Satanic violence.
However, our God Jesus taught us how to escape those delusions, which cause us to become slaves of Satan. We can walk out of a meaningless life, and leave the futile drudgery in the devil’s unjust kingdom behind. Jesus explained how to be free, how to enter an abundant life of loving and being loved. Our infantile and incapable elect spirits must ask our Father to “not lead us into temptation,”
and be humble enough to admit that we are not cunning and powerful enough to overcome deluding demonic spirits by ourselves. Then He will not hand us over to Satan for the deluding of our spirits.
Then our Father will save us from ourselves. And our almighty wise God will also “rescue us from the other wicked ones,” no matter how high their IQs might be, and no matter how powerful and plentiful their physical weapons of worldly warfare might be. In fact, throughout history, God has always confounded the “wisdom” of the worldly wise, in the most awesome and brilliant ways imaginable, and has always caused them to destroy themselves. At times, God also turned the huge and deadly armies of the most powerful demonic kingdoms on earth against themselves, so not even one of His people needed to lift so much as a butter knife to defend oneself against them. If we rely on our omniscient and omnipotent God, if our spirits heed the words of His Spirit, He will prevent us from falling into the delusions of Satan’s citizens, and deliver us from the power of our enemies.
This verse in The Lord’s Prayer (Mat. 6:13) harmoniously aligns with the thought from the previous verse of this prayer. For the previous verse spoke about praying for our Father’s forgiveness, as we repent from the harm and loss we caused in His earthly kingdom, through the sins we committed by the pride, lusts and cravings of our flesh. But how are we to repent, to receive His forgiveness, if He abandons us to the very delusions and lies which tempt us, which cause us to wilfully sin and also cause us to refuse to repent into the truth? And make no mistake. God will abandon us to the devil, to be deluded, if our spirits do not love the truth. God will lead us into temptation, by leading us to the devil, and handing us over to him, so we can become citizens of that demon’s carnal kingdom that our flesh loves so much. If we allow our flesh to take our elect spirits captive; if we choose to walk only according to our minds of flesh; if we ignore the realities He created, especially the needs of our siblings in mankind; if we do not heed the words that His Spirit speaks to our spirits; if we refuse to wisely work at building up His loving, just, equitable kingdom on earth, and refuse to nullify the works of Satan, then God will discipline our flesh. He will surely lead us into temptation, by leading us to that devil, for the destruction of our flesh. And the only way we will be able to escape this kind of destruction is if our spirits wake up, take charge of our lives, hear the voice of God’s Spirit, and pray that He will “not lead us into temptation” any longer. Then our delusions will fall away, one by one, as the Holy Spirit of Jesus teaches and trains our spirits. Then we will repent into the truth and receive His plenary forgiveness, so we might live an abundant life of just love, serving Him alone.
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When the Messiah’s work on the cross granted all His elect the forgiveness of our whole lifetimes of sin, our heavenly Father’s purpose, in freeing us from all our sins, was so that our spirits could learn His just and loving laws and ways, as well as how to wisely apply them, spontaneously, straight from our hearts. We were freed from the chains of Satan’s world order so we could learn to rightly serve our just God, who has lovingly served all His spiritual and material creations from the beginning, and will continue to do so forever. God releases us from slavery in a figurative Egypt, so we may go out into His vast expanses to worship Him. And worship always entails serving the object of one’s worship. He rescued us from the lies and sins of Satan’s world order so we might truly worship Him, in our spirits and in all truth. For the foremost promise of God’s New Covenant, which the blood of Jesus ratified with us, was that His Spirit shall personally write His Law and ways upon our hearts and in our minds. That is, our God Himself, who is a Spirit, promised to teach and train our spirits to love in His just and equitable ways. And this is the only kind of salvation He promised. Then with it, He also promised: “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more” (Jer. 31:33b, WEB). But it was necessary for our utterly holy God to first fully pay for our sins, by a sin sacrifice of His sinless body of human flesh, before He could justly forgive us and work inside us, before He could justly fulfill His foremost promise of personally writing His truths in the minds of our spirits.
Now this verse, “and You might not lead us into temptation” (Mat. 6:13), clearly implies an attitude of humility and reliance upon the Father of our elect spirits. It amounts to an honest confession of our own weaknesses, admitting that we are always being tempted, and that we do indeed fall into sin through those temptations. Yet, in our prayers, we should never unjustly blame God for this. For, although He created us with weak and infantile spirits, and with bodies of flesh that have temporary, amoral and extremely gullible minds that easily succumb to temptations, we must remember that He is always near us. The Father of our elect spirits is never out of reach, always able to speak to our elect spirits at any time and anywhere we might be. So His power and wisdom are available to our spirits at all times, and our spirits have no excuse for not calling upon Him. Thus, only the worst of self-worshipping fools would slander Him by transferring their own blame for their own failures to Him. And they do this in the same way they also routinely transfer their own blame to completely innocent human souls. But it is not God who tempts anyone into sin. “Let no man say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God,’ for God can’t be tempted by evil, and He Himself tempts no one”
(James 1:13, WEB). And it is not really other human souls who tempt us either. In the end, demonic spirits are the only entities that can enter our minds of flesh, fill them with delusions, and tempt us.
It is our weak and amoral minds of flesh that fall to the temptations of demons, and believe all the lies and delusions of Satan’s world order. The devil almost always tempts us through the weakest point of access to the chambers of our souls, that is, by tempting our minds of flesh. Demons appeal to the strong desires of our flesh, to carnal cravings for gratification, covetousness and pride, to any pleasure that an amoral mind of flesh is willing to allow for its body. But our ignorant and infantile elect spirits inherently hate lies, delusions and the sins they lead into. Consequently, since our elect spirits have no power to resist the mind of flesh, they flee from the chambers of our souls, away from their stubborn and excited minds of flesh, because our flesh insists that it will indeed obtain the false promises of demons. So our elect spirits then hide in the chambers of our hearts and lock the doors. Cowering in the dark, our spirits shut down, cover their mouths, eyes and ears, lest they anger their flesh. Instead of confronting its flesh, and seeking God’s counsel and power to overcome and take control of the flesh, or to wisely manage the strong desires of the flesh, our elect spirits allow our flesh to fall for stupid temptations invented by malicious demonic and human spirits. Then, when our flesh suffers the bad consequences of its own destructive actions, it usually wants to transfer the Page 426
blame for those ill effects away from itself. So our flesh blames God or some other innocent entity.
Thus, as we pray from our spirits, we should remind ourselves that it is not God who has tempted us.
At the same time, we must understand that the flesh is far too stupid to realize that it is extremely stupid and gullible. Our flesh will confidently and frequently proclaim its own great righteousness, intelligence and wisdom, then demand that it should be put in charge of our lives, with unquestioned authority over every decision made within our souls. Although our foolish and inept flesh is not able to make any kind of truly effective and beneficial judgment, even if its life depended on it (and its life often does depend on it), that flesh wants to remain in charge of our lives, and insists on making all our choices or judgments in our lives. Yet, although the minds of our elect spirits are far more rational and infinitely more able to learn truly effective and beneficial wisdom from God, even they are not capable of ruling over our own lives, that is, not until Jesus has completed and perfected the education of our infantile elect spirits on the final judgment day. So the only way we can possibly live a joyful and fruitful life, full of love and productive wisdom, is if our elect spirits take control of our minds of flesh in the chambers of our souls, and firmly manage our flesh, lawfully satisfying its needs but reigning in its stupidity and lusts, while our spirits also carefully heed the words of God.
“Therefore let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall. No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry” (I Cor. 10:12-14, WEB). And especially flee from the kind of idolatry which worships self, from the humanistic concept that we are gods who can control our own destines. And how are we to be careful that we do not fall? The answer is simple.
Our elect spirits must turn to Jesus, must look to Him and let His Holy Spirit teach us His wise ways, so we can learn to manage our flesh, so our spirits can make all the decisions and judgments in our souls according to His Spirit’s counsel. For our infantile spirits do not have enough knowledge, wisdom or power to rightly manage our lives. The most we can ever do is humbly submit to what our God Jesus tells our spirits to say and do, in all our decisions and judgments, those affecting us personally and those affecting others. Even if Jesus calls into positions of influence and power, we need to serve Him, according to His counsel, and not rely on ourselves, certainly not on our flesh.
So we need to utterly and completely reject the Roman Empire’s religion of humanism, which has now spread throughout the entire world. Nothing but death and destruction has resulted from the worship of self and other human beings as principal gods—especially when humanists allow filthy dictators to rule over thousands or even millions of lives through petty, proud, lusting minds of flesh, with impunity. That one religion of humanism, by itself alone, is responsible for more injustice, pain and death than any other religion on earth. For it teaches all to trust in the saving power and wisdom of oneself and other human beings, though none have any spiritual or moral wisdom or strength. So humanistic salvation is always through inept but stupidly confident flesh, which strives to exalt only itself. So their salvation is always ineffective or outright destructive, then turns to greater violence in futile attempts to make it work better. Yet reality proves that no salvation is possible through works of human beings, neither physically or spiritually. The only real salvation possible must be worked by the Creator God. And the only Head, King and Owner of every individual in existence is Jesus.
Absolutely no one but “the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment” (II Pet. 2:9, WEB). So we go to Jesus for salvation, and let Him teach and train us for life and love, to say and do all according to His counsel.
After reminding ourselves that we are wretched sinners, and that it is our own fault that we succumb to temptations, and that it is definitely is not the fault of our loving and utterly holy Father in heaven, Page 427
we then need to politely beg our Father to deliver us from the traps and snares we have already fallen into and from those that might take us captive in the future. We need His counsel to know what we should do and what we should not do to remain free. We frequently need to pray, “but rescue us from the wicked,” because we will never be able to keep ourselves free, not even with the help of all the most intelligent or powerful good human souls on earth. None are able to loosen those snares or traps and drag us to safety, then heal the resulting internal wounds that will kill us even if we have been released. The only power that can break open the restraining mechanisms of the devil, and drive away his spiritual forces of oppression, to rescue us into freedom, is God Himself. Then we require His medication of genuine truth and effective wisdom to be poured directly into the minds of our spirits. We need the kinds of forgiveness that can only come through the authority of our just and merciful Owner, from the Creator whom we sinned against. After this, we all need His counsel and unfailing abilities to restore and rebuild all the losses and damage our sins caused. And humans can do none of this. For literally all human beings, even the most spiritually mature elect, are merely inept, foolish sinners. “There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not so much as one” (Rom. 3:11-12, WEB). We cannot rely on human help for an effective rescue.
In Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:4), some Greek texts not include the clause, “but rescue us from the wicked.” Only Matthew included this clause (i.e., the clause: ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς
ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ). However, this plea should be always on our minds. We need our God to rescue us from the entire body of wicked souls on earth, from those who loyally serve Satan’s kingdom, and especially from the most devout humanists in his kingdom. We should never even begin to think that we do not need His rescuing, that we can make ourselves safe and will not lacking anything, or that we plan and implement our own security, in full, down to the last detail. For, if we do this, we are acting just like the humanists, trusting in ourselves as our own gods. But we will simply be armature practitioners of that evil religion, not professionals guided by Satan. Thus, Satan’s highly trained humanistic slaves will find us, undo our works and destroy us. Thus, we need to rely on God alone.
It is truly amazing how we can become so stupid and blindly complacent that we will fall into even the most obvious and deadly traps of Satan’s world order. And this always happens when we start trusting in ourselves, when begin to think we have become spiritually wise and good enough to please our holy God. So, to prove that our spirits remain infantile and in desperate need of our wise Father, Jesus lets us fall into those traps. For the elect, for their own welfare and for the good of all God’s creations, have a great need for humility in prayer and in life. We must all learn that we are all sinners who have hurt and damaged the lives others, even those we love the most. We all must learn to keep the focus of our elect spirits upon our Father and oldest Brother, so He might counsel and guide us into the most loving, wise, just, equitable and effective works possible, where we all work as one heart and one mind in Him. For, if we think we are physically secure, and have planned for the lasting comfort for our flesh, even in a way that cannot be stolen, we are deluding ourselves.
Of course, God does allow the non-elect to sometimes succeed in this kind of self-worshipping planning for their own carnal benefit, because the non-elect are not His children. However, God will always discipline His elect, whenever they think like humanists, whenever they stop trusting in Him and only trust in themselves. For the Father of our spirits wants our spirits to draw close to Him, to rely on Him, to talk with Him often, to get to know Him well, to learn from Him, and to become more like Him every day. God wants us to constantly seek His counsel, to keep on learning and growing. Thus, in no time at all, He will unravel all the carnal plans of His children. Even our backup plans, insurance, savings, equity and alternative sources of income will fail. All our efforts, Page 428
skills and ingenuity will accomplish nothing, no matter how intelligent and healthy we might be. All our trusted human saviours will be powerless to save us as well. Then we will inevitably lose both our intelligence and health, and die. We must humbly realize that we can easily lose all in a moment, leaving us no recourse but to turn back to our God, and serve only Him. Furthermore, as God’s elect children, born to serve His creations through love, destined for a deep and close relationship with our heavenly Father, the devil’s world order will never allow us to truly succeed at anything, unless that success empties our souls of all love and joy. So, if we chose that devil as our saviour, our Father will hand us over to him, temporarily, until we repent into the realities and truths He created. Make no mistake. Even if we spend our entire lives seeking Satan’s salvation, the Father of our elect spirits will allow that devil to enslave us all that time, until our spirits finally learn to love His truths again.
Now some might accuse God of being a careless and unloving Father, simply because He will temporarily hand over His own children to the devil for the deluding of their minds of flesh, and even allow that demon to destroy their flesh in death, if they remain stubborn. But those who slander God like this forget that they themselves allow their own children to do risky things that might hurt them a little, if those parents can stand by and rescue their children when they cause too much harm or trouble. Yet this is exactly what our heavenly Father does as well. However, God is the Father of our eternal elect spirits, not the Father of our flesh. Therefore, our heavenly Father stands by only to ensure that our spirits learn and grow through our risky experiences, to guard our spirits from harm.
And He also cares for the flesh belonging to our spirits. But the loss of our bodies of flesh will not cause any kind of harm to our spirits. Besides, God can heal our flesh, raise the dead or take us to heaven where He will grant us permanent bodies made of spiritual substances. Furthermore, God has appointed a judgment day for all His elect children, a time of teaching and training at the gates of heaven, equivalent to about a thousand earthly years. And our heavenly Father designated that His children will be completed and perfected only on this day and in this place, not during life on earth.
So, yes, our infantile elect spirits will succumb to many temptations and sin often, solely because our spirits will not always seek the education and counsel we need before we launch into foolish words and deeds. Then our flesh will inevitably suffer for a time. However, our spirits will learn and grow through all of that, and become the humble, serving kinds of spirits that are needed to serve heavenly creations for eternity. So our job is to turn to our Father in prayer, ask for His forgiveness and the restoration of our loving relationship with Him, seek His counsel, teaching and training to deliver us from the wicked, then press on toward the goal of our salvation—which is to wisely love as He does.
This reminds me, once again, about that time the apostle, Paul, suffered extreme hardships while travelling in Anatolia (in modern Turkey). As he prayed for our Father’s rescue from the wicked, he received God’s wise counsel, instructing his spirit into salvation and maturity. So, through his trials, he was also able to pass on that counsel to other elect spirits, even to us in our day, through his writings. Just as Jesus taught him through his suffering, he could teach others, thus strengthening the bonds of love between all the elect and their heavenly Father. Paul wrote: “For as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, even so our [counsel] also abounds through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your [counsel] and salvation. If we are [counselled], it is for your [counsel], which produces in you the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. Our hope for you is steadfast, knowing that, since you are partakers of the sufferings, so also are you of the [counsel]. For we don’t desire to have you uninformed, brothers, concerning our affliction which happened to us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, so much that we despaired even of life. Yes, w
e ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust i n ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us out of so great a death, and does Page 429
deliver; on whom we have set our hope that He will also still deliver us; you also helping together on our behalf by your supplication; that, for the gift bestowed on us by means of many, thanks may be given by many persons on your behalf” (II Cor. 1:5-11, WEB, where παράκλησις means “counsel”).
So our heavenly Father is always telling our spirits to pray, “rescue us from the wicked.” He is not really telling each individual to pray, “rescue me from the wicked,” because any loss or harm to one member of a body affects all the members of the body. That is, if the tip of one finger is cut or cut off, the pain is felt in the head and the entire body reacts to it, seeking to provide all that is needed to guard and heal that one little part. Thus, our God Jesus told each of us to pray for His rescue of all His awakened elect, together, since we all suffer together whenever the wicked harms one of us.