only “love” themselves in a very stupid, short-sighted, carnal and self-destructive way. But they all agree to love that leader, who will be a prototype of Satan indwelling the “beast,” because those gang members can then work together as an army to overcome love, truth, justice, freedom and all that is good in their lands. As these loveless, self-indulgent masses work together, by submitting to the “superior” human gods in the next higher level of the hierarchy, they are able to murder, rape, plunder and enslave other siblings in the family of mankind. So each human monster in the gang can acquire a share of the illicit rewards they have stolen from God. Rome was a good model of this kind of criminal gang with a steep hierarchical system. But the devil has improved on these systems since then. And now we have seen Hitler, Trump and others who have more effective lies, albeit far more stupid lies, for binding their loveless minions together, in more openly demonic ways. And, of course, together with those secular demonic systems, we also have religious humanists supporting those systems. So we will soon see Satan enter a man called the “beast,” and try to rule the world.
But the point is that even Satan and the non-elect spirits of his children know that forgiveness can only be granted by God alone. Yet those spirits never want that forgiveness. For they love only the darkness of their lies and delusions, never the just and loving truths of God. Only the elect desire God’s love. And, since love can only be built upon a foundation of truth and trust, the elect hate the lies and delusions of the non-elect. So the elect choose to expose those lies and delusions in the light of the truth they learn from God. All awakened elect spirits strive to undo all the evil worked through lies and delusions as well. For the elect cannot tolerate the injustice, inequity and psychopathy of the Greco-Roman hierarchical systems of humanism. The elect always desire the humble, flat system of God, where each individual is ultimately ruled by the teaching and training of God’s Spirit. In other words, elect spirits want a biblical freedom of conscience, allowing God to create and shape each spirit’s understanding through predestination. And this necessitates freedom of religion and God’s democratic systems, where people choose the authoritative servants that God has chosen for them.
Yet this means that the non-elect will hate the elect, especially the awakened elect. And the non-elect will try to prevent all the elect, even those who do not yet consciously know their God, from seeking God’s truth and real forgiveness, lest those elect escape their work camps and stop producing goods and services required by their exploiting taskmasters. Now, since non-elect spirits know that God’s forgiveness invariably involves learning God’s truth—so the elect can repent into that truth and restore their right, loving relationships with God, and with other elect spirits—those non-elect will censure, suppress and corrupt the truth, then try to imprison or kill those who speak the truth. And, if some elect spirits wake up and walk in God’s powerful light, so that God’s power begins to cause their good works to be effective and beneficial for the sakes of all His creations, the non-elect will even try to torture them to death, in an attempt to terrorize all the other elect into submission. And, if the elect have allowed a Roman gang to rule their land, those non-elect will be able to do so without much opposition. So it is important for the elect to maintain truly biblical democratic systems, totally free from the humanistic theocracies that the non-elect love. For, if Satan and his children cannot stop the truth, they will no longer be able to pretend to be their own gods, nor will they be able to exploit God’s creations for their own vain carnal pleasures and personal profits. But know this, Satan and his children will work extremely hard to distract the elect from God’s truth. And the devil will send many of his non-elect children into false churches, to teach lies and delusions to the elect, to try to suppress the real truth, then substitute a fake forgiveness and fake gods for the real forgiveness and real God. Nevertheless, God remains among the elect, with all of His real truth and forgiveness.
Now, when those rabbis saw Jesus do a miracle which provided evidence that He was the Messiah and God incarnate, they realized Jesus would continue to lead many of their captive elect to the real Page 599
truth. Then this truth would free their dupes from them, into genuine repentance and God’s complete forgiveness, even into a restored relationship between their spirits and God’s Spirit, in a way where God’s salvation of teaching and training their spirits would begin. So all those prominent humanistic rabbis were forced to “save” their captive flock from that truth, and from the freedoms they could potentially receive through Jesus. Yet they were not able to torture Jesus to death just yet, although they lived within the power of a humanistic Roman criminal gang, who grudgingly helped them physically terrorize their exploited elect slaves into complete compliance. All those fake rabbis could do at that time was use their slanderous lies against Jesus. So they immediately attempted to falsely accuse Jesus of blasphemy. Yes, they accused our God Jesus of lying about God, and did so by lying about God and about God’s words of the Law. For they clearly saw that Jesus gave evidence of His divinity at that time, yet also wanted to appear as though they were the ones defending God and His truth, since they were Satan’s chief servants sent to oppose God and His words. Their father, who is also called by the name of “False Accuser,” loves to do this, and loves when his children do it too.
One of the Satan’s greatest pleasures is to accuse God of committing the sins and crimes which that devil had actually done himself. And all his psychopathic awakened children also love to transfer the blame for their own sins and crimes onto the innocent as well. This kind of evil has always been practised by the devil and his children, and it always will be, until the earth ends. Just like Hitler and Trump blame their honest opponents for the harm caused by their sins and crimes, so will Satan when enters a man called the “beast,” so he can stir up rage against God and against the loving elect.
Yet, if Jesus actually was just another mortal man, the accusation of those rabbis would have been true. If a mortal man ever claimed to forgive a man’s sins, or claimed to cause a man’s sins to be forgiven through one’s own magic sacraments or prayers, in the same way those rabbis often did, this claim would indeed be a very great sin, worthy of death. Then the spirits of those rabbis, through their evil intentions of hatred and jealousy, and with the malicious motives hotly lusting after ever more money and power, also committed yet another great sin. That is, they judged Jesus without the kind of trial that God’s Law commanded them to grant to all the accused. Those rabbis, like all of Satan’s servants, did not allow for any cross-examination by a counsel for the defence in a legitimate court. Thus, they sinned grievously in other ways too, even though their words were based on partial truths, on a somewhat legitimate interpretation of God’s Law. But, of course, a truly wise, just and legitimate court would have found—based on Jesus’ public and private teachings, as well as on an objective examination of His actual deeds—that Jesus was indeed God, and not a mortal man. For this Jesus more rightly interpreted God’s Law than any man who ever lived. And His deeds, all done in His own name, clearly manifested the Creator God’s blessings through love. Thus, a truly honest and just court could only come to one logical conclusion through all this empirical evidence, while they also lacked even one shred of genuine evidence that contradicted the claim that Jesus is the true Messiah, God incarnate. A true court, through inductive reasoning, would be forced to admit that Jesus is indeed Yahweh, the one God. All those rabbis knew this, but cared nothing for the truth, nothing for God and His Law, when they accused Jesus. Those unjust and jealous rabbis only wanted to make their dupes believe Jesus was a mortal man and a blasphemer. They rejected the prophesied Messiah, whom the Scriptures declared to be God incarnate. The only thing those rabbis wanted was to stir up the people against Jesus, enough to murder Jesus, so they could keep their illicit money and power which they had stolen from God. Their spirits wanted to rid the earth of God Himself, so they could replace God, so they themselves could become the gods of the people, so they could rule over the hearts and minds of the people. To usurp God’s role in the people’s lives, they had to kill Jesus.
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The same is true of the false priests and pastors today. In order to remain dictating gods ruling over their dupes in their fake churches, they must destroy their captive elect’s faith in the real Jesus. They must “kill” the real Jesus in the hearts of their people, in the very same way their forefathers tried to spiritually and physically kill Jesus back then, through the deluding power and slandering counsel of Satan. And to do this, they must also get their captive elect to call the devil by the name of “Jesus,”
while they also get them to call the real Jesus a demon and a fake. For they must get their people to worship only Satan, in order to maintain their demonic humanistic hierarchies which exploit them for the sakes of the elite. And, in our day, the fake churches accomplish all this in the same way as those rabbis did back then, by sprinkling a few partial truths and half-right interpretations of God’s Word into their slanderous lies and delusions, so they can trick the people into thinking they are serving their people in the name of God, while they are actually serving the prince of the demonic world order. For, once their infantile and foolish elect captives believe these lies, those deceivers can rule those elect as their unquestioned and unrivalled gods. Then those fakes can become authoritative and unchallenged judges who can pronounce their own blindly accepted verdicts of condemnation against anyone who might dare to utter any truths from God, and against any who truly fulfill God’s just, equitable, loving Law, and especially against the real Jesus dwelling inside any awakened elect souls. Whenever the elect, whether awakened or not, actually speak the truth through the teachings their spirits receive from God, or do any just, beneficial, loving works of God, those fake priests and pastors can raise an alarm causing great fear, then begin to slander, denounce, persecute, dehumanize and even physically murder them. The only ones those fake priests and pastors support are Satan’s other servants, especially the devil’s children with psychopathic and awakened non-elect spirits, such as Hitler, Stalin and Putin’s puppet named Trump. For none but those servants of Satan allow those lying religious fakes to pretend they are gods, so they can freely exploit and abuse God’s property.
But all just and wise authorities demand that those fake religious leaders must be held accountable for their lies and abuses. This is why those religious fakes heartily endorse and promote those vile, criminal, psychopathic, Satanic secular leaders, judges, politicians and dictators, so they can be freed to exploit souls, and even be rewarded with a greater power and authority to unjustly judge as gods.
But look at the blatant hypocrisy of those fake rabbis who accused Jesus of blasphemy, when Jesus performed a miraculous healing as a confirmation, proving that He is able to grant forgiveness. For those fake rabbis were obviously portraying themselves as the judging gods of other men, when they presented themselves as those bearing the authority to make this kind of judgment, even without a fair trial in a legitimate court. By their actions that day, they were claiming that they did not need to obey God’s Law which demanded a fair trial. So their actions meant that they themselves claimed to bear the authority to nullify God’s Law. This was tantamount to claiming that they are gods who possess a greater authority than Yahweh God Himself. Then they distracted the people away from the real evidence, instead of justly and objectively examining the real evidence, as God commanded them to do in His Law. All those rabbis and all the people had plenty of Jesus’ teachings to consider as evidence in a judgment, since Jesus always taught openly and publicly. Then, according to God’s Law, the standard for determining guilt in this kind of blasphemy was: “If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which thou hast not known, and ‘let us serve them;’ Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice, and ye shall serve Him, and cleave unto Him” (Deut.
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13:1-3, KJV). Also, in this Old English translation, notice the difference between all the singular
second person pronouns (“thee,” “thou”) and all the plural pronouns (“you,” “ye,” “your,” and “us”).
Here God said He would “prove” the faith of all the people in His land, that He would test the love of His people for Him and His ways. God would prove which spirits were His elect and which were not His elect, by allowing false prophets (those who falsely claimed to speak in God’s name, which included any false teachers who claimed to instruct and guide the people through God’s authority) to enter His church of Israel. Of course, God Himself would never accept those liars as true members of His priesthood, but would surely let them come into His church and try to deceive His servants.
Also notice here, God did not ever command His priesthood of Israel to judge those outside of His church, but only to judge those who claimed to belong to Israel. For many Gentiles lived in the land of Israel, beside the people in His priesthood of Israel. And these were always allowed to convert, if God had called their spirits to join His priesthood. But most of those Gentiles worshipped pagan gods in their own false religions, which included many pagan priests and pagan prophets. But here God only commanded Israel to judge the false prophets who entered their church, who claimed to be prophets of God, only if there “arise among [you people] a prophet.” And His church was never to judge nor condemn any of the prophets coming from the Kenites, Hittites or other pagans. Then we need to remember how God always let all who claimed to be members of His church of Israel speak to all the other members, and how God here actually even allowed Satan to work miraculous signs and wonders for liars. God granted Satan permission to work miracles for deceivers, and give “thee a sign or a wonder,” that is, to personally grant individuals a miracle to falsely “confirm” a lie. In other words, God permitted the devil to emulate Him, to do miracles in the same way our God gave signs through Moses and the prophets, or the way He confirmed His words and forgiveness to a paralytic.
So why did God let Satan emulate the methods used by Himself, by Jesus. Why would God allow the devil “prove” the words of fake prophets, who falsely claimed to speak in God’s name? Well, God allowed this for a very good reason, to purify and sanctify the elect spirits who loved Him and His truth, who craved justice and God-like love. God let Satan use deceiving miracles to draw out the non-elect from the elect, to separate the spirits who loved truth from those who loved only self-serving lies. God did this so Israel would rid itself of all who desired only carnal power and rewards of the flesh, and cast out all who did not love the truth. Any who panted after the lies of Satan’s false prophets, who sought personal gain through unjust means, must not be allowed to labour beside His servants who clung to Him and His just ways, must not represent His name in His church, lest God’s works to nullify evil and build up His loving, wise and just kingdom might be corrupted. If anyone claimed to serve God, but carnally pursued wealth and power, those worldly motives would be solid evidence proving their unfaithfulness to God, even proving that they hated of God and His just ways.
For greed is idolatry, the love of a false god. Then—after His true elect children determined which of the people actually loved God and His ways, and which did not, after they judged by the “fruits” of the spirit manifested by each one in His priesthood—God’s awakened elect could more effectively undo the unjust words and deeds of Satan’s kingdom, then do God’s His just works and will on earth.
But faithfulness to God is a very personal matter, which is involuntarily and spontaneously worked by God Himself within each individual’s spirit. So each one’s spirit must judge a “sign or wonder”
for oneself, as well as each prophet or teacher claiming to speak in God’s name, that is, according to God’s will and by His commands. Each infantile elect spirit must be awakened and taught enough knowledge and wisdom to decide whether or not the god of a prophet is thee wise, just, loving Creator, whom one’s spirit has heard and known as one’s Father from birth. If the god of a prophet is all about rewarding souls with the devil’s invention of money, or a cruel god that serves only one Page 602
race of people, then it is a fake god. Then each elect spirit must decide whether or not he or she will reject and “not harken to” the words of the prophet. That is, each must be granted complete freedom of conscience and freedom of religion in every land. Otherwise, God cannot work this proof in the hearts of His elect, and cannot purify His church, by casting out all the non-elect pretenders from it.
So God had never commanded Israel to do witch-hunts, never called them to torture and murder the ones who dared to oppose the human gods who were ruling a Satanic, hierarchical theocracy, such as chief rabbis, popes or heads of religious councils. Rather, God has always wanted each individual in His church of Israel and in all His earth to personally serve Him as their only King. As for all the other authoritative positions in any land, only equal brothers were to serve God in those, and always according to His Law. For not one man is above God, nor above God’s Law, nor above any of his other siblings in mankind (e.g., I Sam. 8:4-22; Deut. 17:18-20). Then remember how God always commanded us to judge by the motives and intentions of the spirit, and always did so throughout history. Then God provided a sin sacrifice for those who unintentionally sinned, which included all those who repented out of evil intentions and motives, which made their sins unintentional. Thus, there was no minimum penalty for any kind of unintentional crime or sin, only total forgiveness and atonement for all who sinned in ignorance or else repented into the truth. Consequently, a just court can only award the maximum death penalty to those with the worst and most murderous malicious motives. So a just and biblical court can only stone to death one kind of false prophet, only the kind who has deliberately caused insurrections, only those who intentionally split apart His people for his own political or financial gain, and only if he has caused the unjust deaths of innocents. So the death penalty is only for people like Hitler, Trump and the fake pastors who seek privilege, power and wealth through their lies. God’s death penalty was only for the most evil of the fake churches, such as those who want their secular governments to become theocracies ruled by them instead of God, who refuse to differentiate between church and state, because they want to rule over God and invent their own self-serving laws. The death penalty is for demonic liars who strive to suppress the people by denying them any freedom of conscience or freedom of religion, who are actually striving to eliminate God’s true salvation and judge all by their own unjust laws. It is only for true murderers.
But the rabbis who slandered Jesus that day wanted a theocracy ruled by them alone, so they could forbid God to rule over individual hearts, and prohibit God from speaking to the spirits of His own people. So, yes, those humanistic rabbis were as bad as the humanistic popes of the Roman Catholic church in later years. But God commanded His people to “walk” according to His just and loving ways, to “fear” or respect Him alone, to “keep His commandments” through love for Him, in a way that had to be expressed through each one’s own spirit and soul. In other words, God told His church to let their spirits obey the voice of His Holy Spirit, so all would rightly serve Him, instead of each serving oneself or human lords. God wanted the elect to cling to Him, with all the strength of their spirits and flesh. However, a land must be free for this to happen. A land must allow all its people to either heed or disregard God’s commands, in order for the individuals who refuse to heed God’s commands to be exposed as destroyers and murderers. For, if none possess the freedom to hear and heed God, if all worship human gods instead, then only those who are willing to hear and heed those human gods will have a voice among the people. Then only the destroyers and murders who oppose the human gods will be exposed, and face the penalties of an unjust human law. And, if those human gods become destroyers and murderers themselves, which they inevitably do, their worshippers will keep them in power until the elect in the land begin to hear and heed God once more. Only after God becomes the only King of some elect in a land, will He lend them His power to overcome the unjust killers of the innocent. In the meantime, only those who believe the lies of the human gods will be Page 603
granted favour by those human gods. If a land is a theocracy with a false religion, if human gods rule a land, no false prophet can be exposed by the faithful elect of God. Then only hypocrites, only those who lie to appease the human gods, will gain authority and wealth from those gods who stole the land from the real God and from His people. There must be freedom of conscience, a freedom to choose, before God can grant His proofs of authenticity to His true elect children. Only with freedom can individuals who love God and His just, loving ways reveal themselves to their siblings. Then the false prophets, even all who hate God and His ways, can be exposed by the elect, and rejected by all.
Now look at how these rabbis judged Jesus. Did they judge according to the ways commanded by God in His Law? No! In fact, they ignored all Jesus said and did. For they did not want to look at the evidence required to make a sound judgment. Instead, they simply selected some of Jesus’ words, only the clause, “Your sins are forgiven,” then dismissed all the other evidence, such as how He healed the paralytic for the glory of Yahweh God, through grace alone, with absolutely no strings attached, with no obligations thrust on the man, none whatsoever. Nor did they consider how Jesus always taught God’s intended meaning of His Law, and how Jesus led all souls into a right worship of the one true God of the Bible, a worship from their spirits and in truth. So, by turning their focus solely upon the words of that one clause alone, while ignoring everything else Jesus said and did, those rabbis distracted the people away from the most critical evidence that those people needed to make a right judgment, in accordance with God’s Law. To judge whether or not Jesus was a false prophet who was leading the people to a false god, in the deliberate destructive way that God’s Law forbade with a death penalty, the people had to comprehend the motives and intentions of Jesus first.
And this meant that they had to look at literally everything Jesus said and did both before and after He performed His “sign and wonder” of healing the paralytic. Yet literally everything Jesus taught was a right interpretation of God’s Law and the Prophets. Literally all His words led the people into a more complete, fulfilled alignment of their personal lives with God’s Law and all His Word taught.
Clearly, all the motives and intentions of the Spirit in Jesus, as He performed healing and freeing
“signs and wonders” for the people, were good, right, wise, pure and loving. Nothing in Him was ever greedy, selfish or impure. Every teaching of Jesus promoted a deeper and more full love of the one true God, the very same God whom the Scriptures revealed. All Jesus’ words promoted a far deeper appreciation and respect for the just and loving ways of God. This Messiah taught the people to esteem and serve God directly from their elect spirits in their hearts, to worship God in their spirits and in all the real truth about His just and loving ways. Then the “sign and wonder” Jesus performed for that paralytic—through His own will, power, authority and personal love—also proved that the paralytic was actually and fully forgiven by God, and necessarily proved that the paralytic had also genuinely repented into God’s truth. So where, in all of this evidence, was any hint that Jesus might have been a “false prophet” who blasphemed against God, who led people away from God? Furthermore, it is entirely possible for the whole of God to come to us hidden in a body of human flesh, since God is a Spirit who cannot be limited by His creations of material space, time and energy. Thus, logically, if a human being proved that He was Immanuel, that He was God in a body of human flesh walking among us in same way that God’s prophecies said He would, then we must look at all the evidence to see if that man is telling the truth. But the evidence all proved that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, Immanuel, God among us. And there was never even one little piece of evidence to prove that Jesus had lied about being God. So, logically, we must conclude what all the evidence points to, no matter how jealous the human gods of fake humanistic churches hate this.
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away from the true God, or say that Jesus tried to trick the people into worshipping a false god?
These rabbis were judging Jesus by humanistic standards and by the laws they invented to oppose God’s laws. These rabbis were false judges who broke God’s Law in a manner worthy of a death penalty, by conducting an unjust trial, by dismissing all the critical evidence from all the witnesses, including themselves, and by not allowing their own accusations to be thoroughly cross-examined by the defendant. Since these rabbis ignored the real evidence, and did not conduct a biblical judgment through a fair trial, they were also portraying themselves as human gods with the authority to judge against God’s laws, as gods who were greater than God Himself, who treated God like a mere fool.
Thus, those “shepherds” or pastors were making a deceptive false judgment in unlawful ways, and trying to draw the people of God’s church away from the real God, even trying to get those souls to worship themselves, instead of the real God. That is, these rabbis claimed to be Israel’s teaching elders sent by God. So they were implying, even directly claiming, that they were speaking and judging in God’s name, that is, according to God’s will, command and authority. In fact, if anyone told any of them that they were wrong about their interpretations and applications of God’s Word, those rabbis would be furious. For none were truly humble, before either God or man. In fact, they actually believed themselves to be gods, since they thought they held the authority and right to judge in any way they chose to judge. Now, since a “prophet” is one who claims that his words come directly from God, and claims that his words bear God’s authority, because his words were uttered through God’s commands and according to God’s will, these rabbis were actually claiming to be prophets. For they clearly claimed to command in God’s name. Then those rabbis overtly disobeyed God’s Law, since they judged Jesus in ways that God’s Law forbade. After this, those rabbis tried to stir up the people against Jesus, through their own evil motives and intentions, that is, through their own jealousy and selfish ambitions. And they were trying to get the people to worship them by only hearing and heeding them instead of the God who gave them His Law. So they led to the people into worshipping false gods. They were “false prophets” claiming to be gods, whom the people should worship instead of the real God. They were leading people away from the real God, into sins against God’s Law, while trying to cause the people to esteem and serve them as human gods, against the will of the real God. Now, if they did all this through ignorance, or were deceived in a way that kept their motives and intentions at least partially pure, they might be forgiven some or all these sins. Yet, if some could be accused of intentional “blasphemy” (of slandering God’s name), deserving death penalties as false prophets with unrepentant evil motives and intentions, it would be those rabbis.
Since the apostles died in the first century, both the Old Covenant and New Covenant branches of the church of Israel have been hijacked by blaspheming false prophets just like those rabbis. Still, God has gradually and consistently allowed His justice, equity and love to become known to the world, the kind that is expressed through God’s intended and fulfilled meaning of His Law. In spite of all the opposition by false prophets and their fake churches, even despite all the persecutions by vain, self-serving secular despots from Satan’s world order, God’s immutable created truths have been broadcast throughout the earth. And all the elect can find our God Jesus through those truths.
So now is the time for the elect to start abandoning blind guides, all false prophets who are leading them into the worship of fake human gods. It is time for them to fulfill God’s Law by heeding our God Jesus as their spirits’ only King and Head Teacher. Now they need to sanctify themselves, by separating themselves from all false prophets, in the way Jesus causes them to fulfill all His Law.
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Faith for Forgiveness and Healing
Jesus illustrated a principal teaching about faith through this event of forgiving and healing this paralyzed man in this way. And He did it in this particular way before the whole crowd specifically because there were some pastors who had been teaching false doctrines among them. Jesus caused this incident, with all He said and all He did, because He knew some of their rabbis were leading the people astray, with lies about repentance and God’s forgiveness. So He wanted to give the people a clear example of how God’s love works to help us—not just through miracles, like instantly healing a body, but in every aspect of our lives. Here Jesus emphasized that, first and foremost, God labours for the welfare of each elect child’s spirit, to ensure that each elect spirit will gain enough knowledge and wisdom to repent into the truth about Him and His ways, so each elect spirit learns how to justly and equitably love. Then, once the spiritual restoration and healing occurs—after His child begins to walk according to one’s own spirit, after that spirit learns to love and repents into the just ways that God’s Holy Spirit is teaching to that spirit, and after the heavenly Father’s relationship with His child is firm and brought to fruition—God takes care of the needs of that child’s temporary flesh as well.
Only after an elect spirit has restored the relationship with one’s Father, through repentance into the full forgiveness of one’s Father, will God also make the physical aspects of His child’s life healthier and more sound, so that even one who paralyzed by fears, confusion, frustration and other physical restraints can live and love. First an elect spirit must turn away from all other gods, forsake all its human gods and all that one’s spirit might worship instead of God, including the lying saviour called
“money.” For an elect spirit can only receive genuine truths about life and faith directly from one’s heavenly Father, and from one’s oldest Brother, Jesus—and only if one’s elect spirit the personally trusts one’s God. First an elect soul must allow one’s spirit to hear, heed and look to God as one’s only reliable and right Teacher and as the Lord of one’s life and possessions, even of one’s flesh. A spirit must place confidence in the love, words, power, authority and immutable ways of the only Creator’s Holy Spirit. Then an elect spirit can learn enough truth to repent and walk in it, through a loving esteem of Jesus and one’s Father, in His truth created from the essence of His Being. This saving faith is the New Covenant bond that Jesus’ Holy Spirit came to establish in every elect spirit.
Now this event of forgiving and healing the paralyzed man occurred just after Jesus returned to Capernaum and had been preaching for a time in a crowded house. And He was likely in His own home. For Jesus had previously moved His mother, Mary, and his unmarried siblings there, from Nazareth, sometime after Joseph, His earthly father, had died. And Matthew simply stated that some people brought a paralytic and, “seeing their faith,” Jesus proclaimed that the paralytic’s sins were forgiven. Thus, it was not the faith of the paralytic alone that caused Jesus to forgive the man’s sins and heal him. The plural pronoun, “their,” indicates the Jesus saw the trust and confidence of the group of people with that paralytic. The faith all who came with the paralytic man gave Jesus this opportunity to use His authority as God and forgive this paralytic. Then Jesus provided all of them with a demonstration of the effects saving faith. The the paralytic’s belief in the truth of all Jesus’
teachings, as well as the same faith of those who brought that paralytic to Jesus, worked repentance from sins and allowed Jesus to forgive and heal, without aiding and abetting any sins of that sinner.
That is, we must always remember and keep in the backs of our minds that our utterly holy God cannot oppose Himself by aiding and abetting sins through forgiveness without repentance. It is not possible for our just God to forgive or help sinners until they turn away from sins and repent into the loving and just ways taught by Him. But, because the paralytic, and those who brought him, believed the teachings of Jesus, because they recognized that His words were true and rightly aligned with all of the Law and the Prophets, because their elect spirits trusted that Jesus’ words revealed God’s own Page 606
intended meanings of the Scriptures, we know that this paralytic repented. Obviously, for them to have confidence that God’s presence dwelt in Jesus, both the paralytic and the people who brought him must have heard Jesus’ teachings. Then they must have all agreed that Jesus did indeed teach real truths. And, eventually, this paralytic must have repented into those truths. Also, the paralytic and his friends seemed to realize that this man became a paralytic through some kinds of sins, and needed God’s assurance of forgiveness, even more than a physical healing. So they sought Jesus for both, confident that God in Jesus could do both for their beloved one. Then Jesus forgave him first.
Mark and Luke provide more details, showing the love, determination and strength of their faith. As Jesus was teaching in the house, many came to hear Him. So the house became so packed, so full of people, that the those carrying the bed or stretcher with paralytic could not push through to Jesus.
“And many gathered together, so that [there was] no longer space, not even [to get] things to the door” (Mark 2:2, from: καὶ συνήχθησαν πολλοὶ ὥστε μηκέτι χωρεῖν μηδὲ τὰ πρὸς τὴν θύραν, SBLGNT). Mark also tells us there were four friends or relatives carrying the paralytic (Mark 2:3), so there were five in total. However, the flat-roofed houses normally had one outside wall where a ladder or stairs provided access to the rooftop, since most used the rooftops as patios and could not provide enough space inside their tiny homes to build a stairway to the roof. Thus, the paralytic’s four helpers likely used sashes to tie him onto the back of the strongest man in their group and let him carry their friend up to the roof, while the others carried the stretcher up the ladder. Once there, they would have laid the paralytic on stretcher again, removed the dried clay soil from some of the tiles over the room where Jesus was speaking, tied ropes to the four corners of the stretcher, and lowered that bed down into the room, somewhere near Jesus. The tiles were made of sticks and straw woven together and placed between the roof beams, with clay soil rolled flat and smooth on top. So these were easy to remove, and the cost of repairs would have been nothing, since the old tiles could simply be placed back on the beams, then the old clay, after dampening it again, could have been rolled flat over the tiles once more. And all that the paralytic’s friends would need to do this work would be four ropes about three metres long (about 12 feet). However, in the fishing village of Capernaum, rope of this length or longer would be everywhere, perhaps even on that roof, since the fishermen used many ropes like that, and would have stored them on their roofs. Consequently, it is not too hard to believe that the friends of this paralytic could lower a stretcher, with him on it, down through a hole in the roof and into the crowd sitting in that room while Jesus was teaching there.
The crowd in the room would have mostly consisted of men engaged in a typical Jewish interactive teaching session, where all were seated. Various elders and the other men would have been making comments and asking questions while Jesus was seated on the floor right beside them. It would not have been a Roman-like lecture. So Jesus would not be standing somewhere above and in front of them, in an esteemed position, speaking to a passive audience who did not interact with Him. Rather, most would have come to actively ask questions of Jesus, even to test His doctrines, since so many had taken interest in Him by now, and thousands began to follow His teachings. Luke tells us: “Even Pharisees and teachers of [God’s] Law were sitting [there], who were having come from all kinds of communities, from parts of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem” (Luke 5:17, from: καὶ ἦσαν καθήμενοι
Φαρισαῖοι καὶ νομοδιδάσκαλοι οἳ ἦσαν ἐληλυθότες ἐκ πάσης κώμης τῆς Γαλιλαίας καὶ Ἰουδαίας καὶ
Ἰερουσαλήμ, SBLGNT). Of course, even the youngest men there had been taught the Scriptures since early childhood, and could formulate deep and thoughtful comments or questions. But the Pharisees and teachers of God’s Law spent even more time and effort in searching the Scriptures, pondering its meaning, then discussing how each Scripture applied to their lives and faith. And some Pharisees were truly loving men, humble and earnestly seeking a right understanding of God and His Page 607
words. But others came to test Jesus, to ask Him deceiving questions, wanting to see if they could trick Jesus into saying or doing something that they could use to turn the people against Him, and back into their greedy clutches. Jesus knew this, yet openly proclaimed that paralytic’s forgiveness.
After hearing the kinds of comments and questions some Pharisees and teachers of God’s Law were uttering, Jesus realized that some of them would instantly condemn Him as soon as He proclaimed this man’s forgiveness. Besides, the Spirit in Jesus was the omniscient God, so He could not help but discern the inner intentions and motives of these fake “shepherds” of the people. Before Jesus said a word, He knew those pastors would accuse Him of blasphemy, for claiming to forgive a man, since God alone is able to forgive any sin of anyone. And, even before anyone else could make another comment, Jesus reminded them about how He had been claiming to be God every time He healed anyone. For all these knowledgeable Jews would have also known that God alone held the power to cast out demons, heal the sick and disabled, or perform a miracles. Then all knew that the utterly holy God would never do this for unrepentant sinners, because those sinners would simply continue to sin after they were restored to better health, and would be able to sin even better than they could while they were suffering. Thus, God would not heal and deliver unrepentant sinners lest He could be accused of aiding and abetting in their sins. Still, Jesus did what only God was able to do. And Jesus healed repentant sinners in His own name, through His own authority, power and will. Jesus had been doing just this from the beginning of His ministry, as the Messiah, as Immanuel, as Yahweh God walking among them in a body of human flesh. Therefore, since all those Jews knew all this, Jesus wanted to expose the real reason those hypocritical pastors now accused Him of blasphemy, and why they never made this accusation at the beginning of His ministry. It was all a matter of criminal prudence. While Jesus was less famous, they did not care what He was teaching, nor how He was proving Himself to be the Messiah, God in a body of flesh. But now they had to think of some way to slander Him, since so many of their tithing members forsook them and followed Jesus.
These cunning pastors needed a legal excuse to condemn and kill Jesus, but had none. They wanted to get rid of Jesus, because He turned their most valuable dupes away from them and their false churches, which meant that they lost their incomes derived from those enslaved souls. But, when Jesus was healing people, even from the start of His ministry, as a sign that He was Israel’s new High Priest, it might be reasoned that He implicitly healed them in God’s name, and not through His own will, authority and power—although Jesus clearly healed through His own will and power every time. Because Jesus spoke about God’s Word, as a Teacher, Rabbi and Priest of God, this still could be seen as an implicit claim to have come in God’s name. Yet all the devout Jews in the land knew that Jesus did indeed heal in His own name, by His own love, will, authority and power, as their God in a body of human flesh, as Immanuel, the prophesied Messiah. So now Jesus openly claimed to forgive a man’s sins without first announcing, “Thus saith the Lord God, your sins are forgiven.”
And doing this left no doubt that He claimed to be their Messiah and God. So now they would need to either believe He was the Messiah, their God walking among them, or they would need to reject Him. But those who rejected the prophecies of God’s Word could also use His words to accuse Him of pretending to be the Messiah and God, now that He claimed to personally possess the authority to forgive sins, which only God could do. So Jesus was essentially forcing the people to make a choice: either become His committed disciples, and risk being stoned to death with Him, relying only upon God to save them from His enemies, or else actually become God’s enemies and attempt to kill Him.
Then the very next words of Jesus revealed the inner desires of some of those fake pastors, how they came only to gather convincing convicting evidence against Him. Yet Jesus gave them that evidence.
In the same way that God allowed false prophets to enter Israel with evidence to falsely confirm Page 608
their lies, so God could refine or test the spirits of His people, Jesus let in those fake pastors. Jesus granted those false prophets all they required to more easily deceive the people, the kind of evidence they could use to more effectively slander Him. “And Jesus, knowing their inner passions, said:
‘Why are you people inwardly motivated by evil in your hearts? For what is easier to say, “You are forgiven your sins,” or to say, “Rise up and walk”? But, in order that you people might know and remember that the Son of Mankind has decision-making authority upon the earth to forgive sins’—
then He said to the paralytic—‘After rising up, carry your bed and go into your house’” (Mat. 9:4-6, from: καὶ εἰδὼς ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὰς ἐνθυμήσεις αὐτῶν εἶπεν· Ἱνατί ἐνθυμεῖσθε πονηρὰ ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις
ὑμῶν; τί γάρ ἐστιν εὐκοπώτερον, εἰπεῖν· Ἀφίενταί σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι, ἢ εἰπεῖν· Ἔγειρε καὶ περιπάτει; ἵνα δὲ εἰδῆτε ὅτι ἐξουσίαν ἔχει ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἀφιέναι ἁμαρτίας— τότε λέγει τῷ
παραλυτικῷ· Ἐγερθεὶς ἆρόν σου τὴν κλίνην καὶ ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου, SBLGNT). Then that paralytic was indeed completely healed, immediately took up his bed, then walked home (Mat. 9:7; Mark 2:12; Luke 5:25). Also, the effect of this miracle was that the paralytic was “glorifying God”
(Luke 5:25, from: δοξάζων τὸν θεόν). Then “the crowds ... glorified God” too (Mat. 9:8, from: οἱ
ὄχλοι ... ἐδόξασαν τὸν θεὸν, SBLGNT; cf., Mark 2:12). With this glory or good opinion of God, they also had a good opinion of God’s Word as well, through all they saw and heard from Jesus at that time. Therefore, all the results and effects of Jesus’ words and deeds produced glory for the real God.
But all the results and effects of what those fake pastors said and did, falsely in God’s name, merely produced a hatred of God throughout the world, and caused souls to worship false gods, even human wanna-be gods. So we must examine this critical evidence, of the fruits produced through the actions of both Jesus and those fake pastors, before we make any judgments about who were false prophets.
Of course, when Jesus asked these pastors whether it is easier to forgive sins or to heal a paralyzed man, He was affirming that God alone possesses the authority and power to do both. He was saying that any miraculous healing is granted because of God’s prior forgiveness of the healed person’s sins.
Thus, both healing and forgiveness are one and the same work of God. Thus, since He miraculously healed thousands of people by that time, and did so in His own name, then He had also forgiven the sins of those thousands of healed repentant sinners as well. And Jesus was saying this in a particular context, which everyone there that day recognized as an implication of this doctrine, of the truth that no entity in heaven or on earth, except God Himself, bears the power and authority to miraculously heal and forgive sins. The only way any other entity can perform miracles or forgive sins is if God first commands that one to announce His forgiveness and His healing, where that one must indicate that he or she is simply an instrument used by God to bring that forgiveness and healing to that sinner, confessing that it is done solely through God’s will, authority, power and love for that sinner.
There was no question about these doctrines in the minds of anyone there that day. Both the friends and foes of Jesus all believed these doctrines. Gentiles and apostates who did not believe these doctrines were not there, and were never found anywhere near the Messiah Jesus. Those who placed faith in the humanistic doctrines of modern churches and synagogues would would have never even attempted to come to Jesus on that day, nor any other day. The followers of witchcraft, like those in today’s “Faith Movement” churches hated men like Jesus and His disciples. Those who delved into the Greco-Roman philosophies of “free will” were too busy with their psychopathic works of theft, murder and enslaving to bother with just men of peace like Jesus and His devout Jewish disciples.
All those Jewish people in that house that day knew that God Himself must directly forgive a sinner, and that absolutely no one else possessed any right, authority, power or ability to forgive any sinner of any of his sins. All these Jews knew that no forgiveness is ever possible through any act of one’s own human will. First God must teach truth to a sinner’s spirit. Then God must convince a spirit to Page 609
repent into that truth. Then God, through His own will and His own love, must forgive that sinner and restore His own relationship with that sinner. No human decision could ever force God to do any of this. Nor could any priest or prophet change God’s will and cause God to forgive, although God can use humans as His agents, allow humans to share in His saving works, and may even command a prophet to announce His forgiveness to a sinner. The same is true of every miracle and all the works of miraculous spiritual gifts. All signs and wonders are done by God’s power alone, by His works done through a total communion of His children’s spirits with His omnipotent, omniscient and utterly holy Spirit. Not one human has any right, authority, power or ability to supernaturally heal, prophesy, speak in unknown languages, interpret unknown languages, discern spiritual entities or origins, administer through foreknowledge, nor work any other kind of miracle or supernatural work of God, unless God first wills, allows and commands one to do a miracle or work in His own name.
All will be done through God’s own loving authority and power, or nothing will be done. About the most that any human being is ever able to do is to refrain or refuse to say or do what God commands one to do (e.g., I Cor. 14:31-33), or to refuse to receive miraculous gifts from God, or to refuse to do a work in harmony with the others servants of God (e.g., I Cor. 12:21-26). And God even knows when one will refrain or refuse, long before that human mind decides to refrain or refuse. So even that is predestined by God. Thus, if we consider how every human spirit and body remains utterly incapable of working miracles, and how Jesus worked countless miracles through His own love, will, authority and power, Jesus did indeed claim to be God by doing those miraculous works. He proved that He was actually God Himself, by His ability to do those works through His own will.
We need to realize this. For this is why Mark and Luke also thought it was so critical to record these words of Jesus, as well as tell us how Jesus then healed the paralytic as the proof that He actually does bear the full authority of God Himself. Each paraphrased it a little differently, but reported the same message with the same meaning. Mark wrote that Jesus said: “What things are you people reasoning in your hearts? What is easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say,
‘Rise up and carry your bed and walk’? But, in order that you people might know and remember the Son of Mankind has decision-making authority upon the earth to forgive sins’—He said to the paralytic—‘I say to you, rise up, carry your bed and go into your house’” (Mark 2:8-11, from: Τί
ταῦτα διαλογίζεσθε ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν; τί ἐστιν εὐκοπώτερον, εἰπεῖν τῷ παραλυτικῷ· Ἀφίενταί
σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι, ἢ εἰπεῖν· Ἔγειρε καὶ ἆρον τὸν κράβαττόν σου καὶ περιπάτει; ἵνα δὲ εἰδῆτε ὅτι
ἐξουσίαν ἔχει ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἀφιέναι ἁμαρτίας—λέγει τῷ παραλυτικῷ· Σοὶ λέγω, ἔγειρε ἆρον τὸν κράβαττόν σου καὶ ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου, SBLGNT). Clearly, Mark was telling us that the Messiah’s “decision-making authority upon the earth to forgive sins” proved that He is God.
Then Luke wrote that Jesus said: “What are you people reasoning in your hearts? What is easier, to say, ‘Your sins have been forgiven [and you are now cleansed of sins] for your benefit,’ or to say,
‘Rise up and walk’? But, in order that you people might know and remember that the Son of Mankind has the decision-making authority to forgive sins’—He said to the one having been paralyzed and now remaining so—‘I say to you, rise up and carry your bed. Take a walk into your house” (Luke 5:22-24, from: Τί διαλογίζεσθε ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν; τί ἐστιν εὐκοπώτερον, εἰπεῖν·
Ἀφέωνταί σοι αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σου, ἢ εἰπεῖν· Ἔγειρε καὶ περιπάτει; ἵνα δὲ εἰδῆτε ὅτι ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ
ἀνθρώπου ἐξουσίαν ἔχει ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἀφιέναι ἁμαρτίας—εἶπεν τῷ παραλελυμένῳ· Σοὶ λέγω, ἔγειρε
καὶ ἄρας τὸ κλινίδιόν σου πορεύου εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου, SBLGNT). Again, “the decision-making authority to forgive sins” proved that Jesus is Yahweh God, the one and only Creator of all that exists in heaven and on earth. Therefore, both Mark and Luke clearly portrayed Jesus as God in a body of Page 610
flesh, in a body born of a woman, like all the rest of mankind. For both illustrated how Jesus had truly forgiven sins and proved that He had forgiven sins by healing that paralytic, as only God could.
Jesus told those people that He too was a human being in a body of flesh. For that is what the Greek phrase, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου (“Son of Mankind,” or “Son of Man,” or “Son of a Human Being”), meant to all those Jewish people. At the same time, Jesus also directly claimed to be God “upon the earth” (ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς), that is, in that body of human flesh born of a woman. Jesus claimed to be God because He claimed to have the “decision-making authority to forgive sins” (ἐξουσίαν ... ἀφιέναι
ἁμαρτίας), the kind of authority that only Yahweh, the Creator God Himself, possesses. Absolutely no other entity, neither spiritual nor physical, neither in this material universe nor in heaven above, possesses this authority to forgive any sin of any sinner. Yes, one can delude oneself into thinking one has an authority to forgive sins, like many rabbis, priests and pastors do. Any dupe or fool can lie to oneself about bearing this authority. But a delusion or a lie cannot actually grant God’s true forgiveness, cannot remove the condemnation and consequences of a sin from a sinner. Only God is able to truly forgive and remove all condemnation and all consequences, to restore one’s personal relationship with Him, in a way where even the devil himself can no longer condemn that sinner. All who knew God’s Word knew this teaching. And most of those Jews also knew that the prophesied Messiah would be “God with us,” in a body of flesh. Many Jews now put God in a tiny little box and believe in a fake god, in an invented god who cannot dwell in a body of human flesh. So those Jews blaspheme the real God by calling that fake god the real god. For only their invented false god can be limited by time and space. However, Yahweh, the real Creator God, is a Spirit, the only uncreated Being, and He dwells outside both material and spiritual space, time and energy. So He is ubiquitous throughout all material and spiritual space and time, and His whole Spirit can easily dwell in the body of Jesus, or even in a single atom. God can be and truly is the life-giving Spirit of Christ’s body of flesh. For God can never be limited by His creations, like time and space. Also, if God chose, the whole of Him can exist as any number of Persons at the same time, or as three Persons. Then God also can, and actually must be, everywhere else in every time, all at the same time, to hold together all that exists in both the material and spiritual space-time continua. This is what God’s Word tells us about God, although the Roman humanists in synagogues and churches hate all that God said there.
Jesus proved, before the very eyes of men, that He had the power to forgive a man’s sins, a man who sinned against some person or some thing in a way that those witnesses knew nothing about. For that paralytic was a total stranger to most of those who saw Jesus forgive him, including His own closest disciples. Yet Jesus knew what that man’s sins were. He had to know, in order to forgive those sins.
Still, Jesus never revealed what those sins were, but kept this knowledge to Himself. For that man sinned against God, no matter what his sins were. Thus, that sinner’s forgiveness was also a personal matter between him and God. Therefore, by keeping the paralytic man’s sins private, it was another way that Jesus implied His deity. By indicating that this man’s sins were a private matter between Jesus and that sinner alone, although Jesus must have known what those sins were, as well as how that man’s spirit had fully repented from those sins and into the truth, Jesus portrayed Himself as the God who knew what those sins were and forgave him, privately, for the personal benefit of that man, through His love for him. And this is what God Himself promised to do for us. So Jesus is that God.
Most Jews there would have realized that the paralytic’s sins were not personally against Jesus, that is, not unless Jesus was actually the God who owned all living entities and all other things in heaven and on earth, which would be the only way that stranger’s sins could be against Jesus. For that stranger’s sins obviously were not committed against the body of Jesus, nor His family, nor any of His beloved disciples and friends, nor even against any material thing on Jesus’ property. Thus, to Page 611
most of those witnesses, Jesus possessed no right to forgive any of that man’s sins, even if God had already forgiven that man. For only the people whom that paralytic had actually sinned against held any right to forgive his sins, and only after that paralytic had first received forgiveness from God, through his repentance into the truth. Yet these knowledgeable Jews also realized, through the non-verbal compliance of that paralytic and his four friends, that he had just admitted that he had become paralyzed as a result of his sins. Now we should realize that not all bad things that happen to us are the consequences of our sins, nor do our sins always result in bad physical consequences. In fact, the vast majority of our physical hardships, infirmities and troubles are actually training exercises for our spirits, are God’s gifts granted to us for good reasons, to focus our spirits’ attention on our works for Him, or simply to turn straying hearts back to Him. But this particular man’s paralysis was some kind of punishment for his sins. This was accepted by all the witnesses there that day, and revealed by Jesus’ words, by the words of our God. Therefore, when Jesus forgave that paralytic’s sins, then removed the physically paralyzing consequences of his sins by completely healing him, all this was surely a strong and verifying proof that Jesus is surely the one God, with all His authority and power.
Some may say, “What if that man’s paralysis was only psychosomatic? Then, when he was tricked into thinking his sin was forgiven, he emotionally recovered and walked away.” Well, first of all, this man’s family and friends would have known if his paralysis was psychosomatic or not. For, even though people back then did not have “expert psychologists” or big words like “psychosomatic,”
they were not stupid. Those most familiar with that man could tell the difference between a physical and a mental paralysis. Second, this paralytic was not the only one Jesus miraculously healed. And not all those with clearly visible disabilities, such as missing limbs, could possibly have had mere psychosomatic illnesses. And, if Jesus healed them, why would we even try to dismiss this healing as a fake healing? Surely we can assume that this too was a genuine healing of a physical disorder. And third, neither the paralytic nor his four friends said a word to anyone, nothing to indicate that Jesus was wrong in assuming this man had become a paralytic as God’s punishment for a sin or a number of repeated sins. Yet this paralytic and his four friends had ample opportunity to correct Jesus, even many hours or even years after this event. And many enemies of Jesus were more than willing to hear any derogatory comments about Jesus, even to pay them if they could prove Jesus was wrong.
So why did all five of those people remain silent, and not tell the people that Jesus was wrong? Why did none of them protest the innocence of that paralytic at any time before the account of this event was broadcast everywhere, and written down in the Gospels? The most logical conclusions are: (1) Jesus actually did forgive the sins of that man, sins that caused God to punish him with an affliction of paralysis, and (2) Jesus forgave and healed that man in a way that only God was capable of doing.
From all we read in the Gospels, and from all the historical evidence, we can logically conclude that Jesus actually did proclaim forgiveness to a man who was physically paralyzed because of sins, and that He healed that man to prove his forgiveness. Of course, our conclusions about Jesus being God, through this empirical evidence and inductive logic, might be wrong. For no empirical evidence can ever be entirely verified, to the point where we are totally certain it is true. We can only ever get to the point where it is beyond reasonable doubt. For inductive logic simply gathers verified evidence to build the most plausible explanation and conclusion, while eliminating possibilities, until only the most rational possibility remains. Yet there may be something not seen, which could prove that the healing of the paralytic was a shame. Also, we cannot draw any conclusions whatsoever from a lack of evidence. So, by pointing out that the paralytic and his four friends did not dispute what Jesus said or did, and that none of Jesus’ enemies did so either, we cannot call this “evidence” that the man was paralyzed because of sins, then was personally forgiven those sins and healed by Jesus. However, a Page 612
lack of evidence in a context where such evidence should arise, does indeed have real implications.
Also, Jesus’ enemies did confirm that Jesus performed many hundreds of similar physical healings, solely because they knew they could not dispute this fact, since hundreds of thousands of reputable eye-witnesses personally saw Jesus heal people. Therefore, this lack of disputation against the words of Jesus in this context, and the confessions of His enemies, are actually solid evidence in our favour.
Yes, there is a possibility that Jesus created a giant, nation-wide hoax involving tens of thousands of conspirators, who would have all needed to communicate telepathically with one another to keep their false narratives straight and without irreconcilable contradictions. Or perhaps aliens and their highly advanced technology helped Jesus do all that He did. It is also a possibility that Jesus was actually a great powerful goddess, called “Big Lulu,” who is a giant green hippopotamus wearing a purple bikini with pink polka-dots. It is possible that this goddess deluded the minds of all those masses who followed Jesus, to make them think that she was a man and that she was the prophesied Jewish Messiah. Then it was that goddess in the bikini who actually performed all those miracles and taught Scriptures correctly. The number of possibilities which might explain what “really happened,”
as Jesus seemed to do miracles in front of hundreds of thousands of eye witnesses over a period of three years, is infinite. Through the inductive logic used by science and in all judgments of all courts of law, the number of alternative possibilities are limited only by one’s imagination. And the real empirical evidence can only eliminate a small number of those infinite possibilities. However, if we base our conclusions on what we have collectively proven in the past, and combine that with the testimonies of reliable and honest eye-witnesses, along with any other evidence we have regarding the event or person we are currently judging, we can most often find the truth and believe it beyond reasonable doubt, ignoring the possibilities about bikinied goddesses, aliens and wild conspiracies.
In reality, no one can refuse to make decisions and judgments about events and people because of the infinite number of idle speculations that might be possible, then expect to function effectively in life.
We all need to stick with what we perceive with our physical and spiritual senses. We need to act upon what we can verify and what we can conclude through inductive logic. All our political and justice systems, sciences, religious beliefs and other aspects of life must make judgments based on what our bodies and spirits perceive. For, if we ignore evidence and logic, if we let our imaginations invent “what-ifs” like frauds and conspiracy theorists do, so we can believe the unproven or even disproved world views that stroke our egos, then it will result in chaos, injustice and death. Only when we act upon truly logical explanations of physical realities sensed by our bodies and minds of flesh, as well as moral/spiritual realities understood by the far more honest and rational minds of our elect spirits, will the effects be orderly, just and beneficial for life. For God caused all His creations to function most effectively through the realities perceived by our flesh and spirits, calling it “truth.”
As we interpret the words and deeds of Jesus, and the rest of His Scriptures, we need to apply a rule or principle called “Occam's razor.” In the Oxford English Dictionary, Occam’s razor is defined as:
“for purposes of explanation, things not known to exist should not, unless it is absolutely necessary, be postulated as existing.” Or it might be defined as: “the principle that entities should not be multiplied needlessly; the simplest of two competing theories is to be preferred” ( Wordnet). That is, all effective and just political, judicial, scientific and religious systems must function according to the most reliable evidence that our bodies and spirits gather through our senses, honest eye-witnesses and inductive logic, or we will need to face devastating consequences that God has immutably set into the physical and spiritual laws governing His creations. And many do try to practise this “rule,”
except that there are materialists who ignore the thoughts and senses of their own elect spirits and, thus, make many deadly and unjust errors. Even after experiencing moral and spiritual effects, such Page 613
as love, hate, justice and injustice, many elect are duped into ignoring this real evidence, then make decisions based on the fiction invented by non-elect worshippers of demonic spirits. Those elect will deny the existence of their own spirits so they can make socially acceptable judgments based on the unjust, ruthless lies of loveless devils like Mammon, or according to the whims of wanna-be human gods who worship such demons. But we cannot afford to make such mistakes any longer, for our own sakes and for the sakes of all living entities on earth. Now we need to be careful and use all the real physical and spiritual evidence to make right decisions, especially the clear spiritual/moral facts.
We need to rely on testimonies of reliable witnesses—especially those who willingly suffered poverty, persecution and death rather than deny what their bodies and spirits knew to be true and real. We can usually trust the consistent, proven physical and spiritual/moral truths that such men testified about, with absolutely no ulterior motives nor intentions to lie about what they resolutely affirmed, even while being threatened in ways that gave them strong physical motives to deny it all.
And witnesses like this told us, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus forgave a paralytic’s sins that day, then miraculously removed the physical and incurable consequences of those sins, by miraculously healing that paralytic. And during the lifetimes of those witnesses, as well as throughout all history since that time, literally no verifiable evidence has been found to oppose any of their testimonies.
Only two major kinds of denials exist to oppose what those Gospel testimonies declared: (1) Jesus’
contemporary enemies testified that He did actually perform miracles, but said that He did them through Satan’s power. Yet, since the miracles and teachings of Jesus led souls to “glorify God,” and into a more thorough fulfilling of God’s Law, with a greater and more faithful love for the God of the Bible, this cannot be true. For, if Satan’s power performed miracles through Jesus, that devil would have been stupidly working against himself, by leading souls to God and into God’s just and loving ways. But Satan is not that stupid. So that devil would never work miracles through Jesus, in order to glorify God and destroy his own evil kingdom of the world order. Thus, Jesus definitely did not do miracles through the power of Satan. Rather, logically, Jesus must have worked those miracles with the power of the one and only Creator God inside Him. And those contemporary slanderers of Jesus also had an ulterior motive to lie, since Jesus was turning their tithing members away from their fake churches, which prevented those rabbis from maintaining their personal incomes and power. (2) The materialistic humanists, both back then and to this day, have simply denied that spirits and miracles could exist, while irrationally ignoring all the physical and spiritual evidence to the contrary. So they believe this self-inflicted delusion through their own spirits’ blind faith alone. Then their spirits want to believe there is no spiritual being called God solely because they want to be free to invent their own self-serving spiritual/moral laws and principles, so they can indulge in their unbridled greed and exploitative lusts. Therefore, since both kinds of deniers possess ulterior motives and intentions, are known for their irrational thinking and propensities to lie, and also were not very familiar with Jesus, their reasoning and testimonies cannot be trusted nearly as much as those of Jesus’ closest disciples.
Since materialistic humanists in our day are the principal deniers of Jesus’ miracles and even His existence, let us use inductive logic to further examine their frivolous claims based on a perceived lack of physical evidence. Their spirits like to believe there is no such thing as “sin,” and falsely reason that there is no God to define what is or is not a sin. Yet they rant against what they call “evil”
when it is done to them. Then real empirical evidence always proves that their own sins have very negative consequences, while it also always proves that all biblically defined righteousness is very beneficial to all life on earth. So all the empirical evidence clearly indicates that there are spiritual or moral laws and ways governing the quality and sustainability of all living entities in the universe, a clear order governing all life according to immutable moral/spiritual truths created by God in a way Page 614
that manifests His own nature. Therefore, the spirits of those materialists must trust all this irrational nonsense about them being able to create their own self-serving laws and ways simply through blind faith alone. Their hearts stubbornly insist that it was utterly impossible for Jesus to forgive sins or perform miracles because nothing is a sin, except when a sin personally affects them, and that there is no God, since He does not cater to their own carnal desires, and that there are no miracles, even when they see one with their own eyes. With truncated reasoning and blind faith, they proclaim that they have proved that Jesus was just a mortal man, if He historically existed at all. And they proudly announce that the religion centred around Jesus is all a giant conspiracy and myth. But, of course, this totally irrational circular reasoning, based on blind and unquestioning faith alone, ignores all the real evidence which proves the existence of spirits and spiritual powers, even all the evidence of the very love and hate that surely must originate from within their own spirits. So all of their religious doctrines of materialistic secular humanism are believed by minds of flesh that trust in the lies of their own spirits, solely because their souls want to deny that love, hate, morality, justice and other spiritual things actually exist in ways that limit their carnal desires, simply because the lusts of their flesh do not want them to exist, because they want to gratify their selfish lusts, greed and arrogance.
Thus, we see definite motives and intentions for lying in all of those who irrationally and stubbornly deny this event of the paralytic’s forgiveness and healing. But, in all three synoptic Gospels, the accounts of this event are harmonious, without any irreconcilable contradictions. So these accounts written by Matthew, Mark and Luke seem to be accurate historical records, the testimonies of actual eye witnesses. And none of those who recorded these testimonies, nor the eye witnesses themselves, appeared to have had any motives or intentions to lie, while their cruel persecutors surely gave them a strong motive to deny their testimonies. So who are we to believe? Furthermore, all the elect can test and prove the conclusion that Jesus is indeed the one and only God, who came to live in a body of flesh among us, just as the Old Covenant prophecies declared that He would. For our own spirits can hear and see spiritual voices and beings like Jesus. Therefore, when Jesus claimed to be God, able to truly forgive sins, in a way which removes all consequences and all condemnation, we can go to Him, let Him teach our spirits the truth, then repent into that truth and receive that true forgiveness from Him. And we can also go to Him for a miraculous healing of the consequences of our sins, not just to make our flesh well again, but to restore many ongoing losses caused by our sins, if those losses are not ordained to remain, according to His will. Some of us have done this, even many times in our lives. So we too can testify that Jesus is indeed God, who definitely can forgive sins and heal.
These accounts of what Jesus said and did were not just written for entertainment or as propaganda, like other biographies and historical books. His words and deeds teach us about life and the joy God created for His children. God wants us to truly live. Jesus came so we, the elect, could love straight from our spirits, fully, in a way that knows no fear nor limit, and justly, so we might balance our lives with the highly sensitive equilibrium of His whole creation, especially His spiritual realities.
Each creature and plant has a spirit and loves, where each plays its part in a dance of inner growth throughout the universe, freely expressing love in the wild rhythms of the music God provides, on a dance floor God made to shine for His glory. And, after our spirits part with these earthly vessels, we all shall forever dance in various ways, but in perfect unison, through a better harmony in heaven’s lands. But His human creations sin, disrupt all that is beautiful and good, corrupt the sounds of His skilled musicians and singers. This is the greatest difference between human beings and all other living entities, the human capacity to do evil through impure motives and wrong intentions, through ignorance, delusions and lies fed to our infantile spirits by other malicious spirits. Yet each elect human soul may also repent into just love, away from deceptions. In fact, the elect bear a greater Page 615
ability to love than any other created entities on earth. Yes, all other living beings can either love or hate. But none can change from the inside. None but the elect can become what they once were not.
Only God’s elect children can sin, know what is not of God, then become all that is of God within.
Sin is like the paralysis of the spirit. Through sin, nothing can be felt by any part of the spirit any longer, and no work of love can be done any more. In elect souls, evil thoughts of the amoral flesh, born of the greed, lust and hate that a deceived spirit allows the flesh to pursue, battle against the teachings of God granted to that infantile and ignorant spirit. But once an elect spirits heeds God’s Holy Spirit more than the deceiving spirits, and is born again through love, one is no longer unable to move the limbs of the flesh to serve God. After a paralyzed elect spirit collapses, fully bled dry, exhausted and incapacitated by the ravages of the deceiving spirits it formerly heeded, and drinks the living waters of God into the soul, it begins to heal. The spirit becomes the newly living dead, with strength to get up and walk. It can put its hands to its mouth to feed itself, and drink living waters to quicken itself. Jesus heals the elect spirit with His words, through His unbound authority, with His almighty power filling those elect spirits and souls, through His love for them. By His command, our flesh falls prostrate before Him, afraid and respectful, ready to obey our own spirits, as our spirits heed His teachings and calling. Internal conflicts may arise again and again. But Jesus is always there to confront our flesh and all manipulating demonic or human spirits, on our behalf. We can always rely on Him to overcome all that opposes the inherent desires of our elect spirits. He is trustworthy, able to do what we cannot do ourselves. Jesus can save, though we cannot possibly save ourselves from ourselves. That is what the Gospels proclaim. We are the paralytics. But Jesus can forgive us, make us able to walk, and lead us to our eternal home, as we carry our sick bed to remind us of all we learned from Him while we were paralyzed. This is the message from reliable witnesses.
Mat. 9:9-13,
Jesus Calls and Frees
“As Jesus passed by from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax collection office. He said to him, ‘Follow me.’ He got up and followed Him. As He sat in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and His disciples.
When the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, ‘Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’
“When Jesus heard it, He said to them, ‘Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. But you go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,” for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’” (Mat. 9:9-13, WEB).
Jesus Calls Matthew
Once again, Jesus called a man to become one of His assistant teachers with the command, “Follow as a disciple for My benefit” (Ἀκολούθει μοι). But this man was a tax collector, a Jew who worked for the oppressive pagan Roman government, and was likely collecting customs and duties owed by merchants and travellers arriving from the territory of Iturea, ruled by the tetrarch Philip. For this town, Capernaum of Galilee, ruled by the tetrarch Antipas, was a border-town, overlooking Iturea to the east. Since Jewish tax collectors, like Matthew, usually worked for Gentile contractors who hired them to obtain revenue for the secular Roman authorities of the state, they were seldom trusted the other Jews, especially by the Pharisees. For these Jewish tax collectors not only associated with the Page 616
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Roman oppressors of the Jews, but could even call on Roman soldiers to enforce their decisions. If a tax collector accused anyone of withholding tax money, Roman soldiers would immediately arrest that person, often violently. And this unchecked power gave tax collectors an opportunity to extort money and lie for a profit. A tax collector could demand more tax than the government required, and more than he actually said he collected, then pocket most of the difference, minus a small bribe for the corrupt soldiers who strong-armed his victims into paying. Or he could threaten to accuse one who refused to pay him more than the required amount, and throw that innocent person into prison for tax evasion. Of course, not all tax collectors did such things, and Matthew was probably a very honest tax collector. But the cheaters were difficult to catch and convict. So enough Jewish tax collectors became so ruthlessly dishonest that most of the other Jews believed they were all crooks.
Then many religious leaders refused to teach their people that God’s Law commanded His people to judge each individual separately and justly, and never assume anyone was guilty of sin just because that one was related to or associated with someone who sinned. Rather, many rabbis taught the Jews to unjustly judge whole identifiable groups of people at once, labelling all as evil infidels. And some Pharisees were like that, since they lumped all tax collectors, all Romans and even whole races of people into the same category of worthless sinners. In fact, even some of the most esteemed Jewish Bible teachers encouraged this kind of unjust and prejudiced judgment against identifiable bodies or families of people. Those kinds of religious leaders had a good reason for doing this too, because they wanted the people to judge them as a group as well. They wanted the people to esteem and favour them as an identifiable group, and not judge each of them as individuals. They commanded the people to respect them as an upper class of rabbis, and award them high status and a good reputation based on their class, lest the people judge each individual’s evil heart as being totally unworthy of any personal merit, just because those individuals never personally produced any good fruits, only the worst fruits of loveless lies and cruel injustice. By teaching the people to judge identifiable groups as a whole, and to avoid judging individuals as God commanded, those rabbis could more easily gain illicit favour, and deceive the people into thinking they were much better than other identifiable groups, like tax collectors. Therefore, these false judgments were useful to them.
Now Matthew, who was called Levi at this time, was a tax collector. And, since Jesus asked Matthew to immediately become one of His twelve assistant teachers, even without first apprenticing him, we might also assume that Matthew was already a Bible scholar, with a deep knowledge of God’s truth and wisdom, while he was working as a tax collector. But once a scholar proposes interpretations of the Bible that higher-ranking scholars dislike, it becomes very difficult to find financial support or a good job. So, perhaps Matthew was an unconventional Bible scholar who was blacklisted by some prominent establishment scholars, and this was the reason he became a tax collector. If he could not find a job working for Jewish employers (a job that a sedentary worker like him was able to do), he may have been forced to work for the Gentiles as a tax collector. Possibly Matthew preferred to endure ostracization by the church in order to remain true to God, and worked for Rome rather than gain acceptance in a corrupt church by submitting to the lies of false religious teachers. But Jesus clearly saw something good in Matthew’s faithful spirit, and chose him, above all others, to help Him serve Israel. Most Jewish tax collectors were apostates. But Matthew must have been some kind of kind of deeply faithful and devout Jew who knew the Scriptures extremely well, if Jesus called Matthew to teach His already devout and well-taught Jewish disciples who had been following Him.
Since Jesus called Matthew to immediately assist Him in His teaching of the Scriptures to His less knowledgeable disciples, it is wrong to portray him as a greedy little apostate Jewish tax collector.
For consider how the vast majority of Jews acquired a far better knowledge of the Scriptures than Page 617
most “Christians” do today—since most went to local Jewish schools from early childhood, and all learned even more about the Scriptures throughout their lives, because all the men spent hours hearing and discussing the Scriptures every Sabbath day. Therefore, all whom Jesus chose for His
“inner circle” of the twelve disciples, who all served as His assistant teachers, had to possess a much greater and more in-depth understanding than all of those other already knowledgeable and well-taught Jewish disciples. Since the principal duty of the twelve was to help Jesus teach, all had to be adept Bible scholars. So we can surely conclude that Matthew already knew the Scriptures very well by that time, before Jesus called him. And, since Matthew had chosen the sedentary occupation of tax collecting, but Jesus knew he correctly comprehended the Scriptures, this would suggest that Matthew was a scholar who was cast out of the establishment churches, even driven out of the whole orthodox Jewish community, most likely because his views opposed some of the teachings of the more widely accepted scholars, or because he called them hypocrites. Yet his views pleased Jesus.
When we honestly study God’s words in the Bible, we must admit that there is absolutely nothing in it which requires any of us to please a church rather than God, nor to comply the demands of those claiming to be the human gods of a church, by claiming the sole right to interpret God’s Word. And God certainly did not command us to get good marks in a Bible college or seminary, by parroting whatever its human gods utter. Rather, our whole and sole duty is to search for God’s own intended meaning of His own words. And God Himself said that He would help our elect spirits find that one true meaning. God Himself promised that He would personally teach each one’s own spirit, and called it the promise of His New Covenant salvation in His Messiah. So we know that, even if we may be rejected by churches or even our loved ones, the only way we can please God is by learning and trusting in what He actually meant when He wrote His words down for us through His prophets and apostles, and by applying that truth in the loving and wise ways that His Holy Spirit trains our spirits to apply it. Only this can result in God’s blessings, for us and our lands. However, since our utterly honest and holy God hates the lies and sins of men, we would become the enemies of God, and cause Him to allow our lands to destroy themselves, if we believed those liars instead of Him.
God is forced, by His own holy nature, to remain true to Himself. God cannot bless the lies and sinful ways of fake worshippers, of none who practise lying and sinning by falsely interpreting His words in the Bible. For all that deviates from God’s truth is a lie and results in injustice. He cannot rescue unrepentant deliberate sinners from their own folly and lies; although He is slow to punish them too, since He hopes sinners will repent, and hopes His elect will call upon Him to nullify evil, to build up His just kingdom of responsible love through Him, and grow in a relationship with Him.
God is forced, by His own just and loving nature, to allow unrepentant sinners to destroy themselves.
He cannot save them from themselves. If they worship other gods, those other gods will need to save them, since the real God can only reveal truth and warn their spirits, but cannot force any spirits to worship Him, lest their worship will not be through the love of their spirits. Therefore, if we do not want to labour for the destruction of ourselves, for losses by our loved ones and by our land, through lies and sins, then we must remain true to God, even if no one else does. Even if we need to separate from false churches, and walk alone—so we can do God’s works to sustain ourselves, our families and the land—we cannot partake in lies against God that the false churches follow. And, from the evidence we know about Matthew, it seems that this is exactly what he did. Matthew abandoned the false church, until our God Jesus came to the tax stall and called him to teach God’s Word with Him.
We see that Matthew must have been an honest student of the Scriptures, not only from the fact that Jesus called and chose him to become one of His inner circle of twelve assistant teachers, but also by the fact that Matthew arose and followed Jesus as soon as Jesus commanded him to do so. This also Page 618
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implies that Matthew had heard, understood and agreed with what Jesus preached. Thus, it is not a stretch to imagine that Matthew, before he went to work at the tax stall that day, had first gone to hear Jesus teaching God’s Word in the house where he saw Jesus forgive and heal the paralytic man.
Some might think that, if Matthew was at that house while Jesus was teaching, then why did Jesus wait until he was sitting at the tax stall to call him? There are a number of reasons. First, Jesus likely would have wanted to personally call one who was to become His assistant teacher, not shout to him in a crowd of people while he stood in that house—especially since Matthew, a tax collector, likely would have taken a seat at the very back of the crowd, or listened Jesus through a window, since most of the others there would not have welcomed him. Second, Jesus would have allowed time for the meaning of His words and actions to “sink in,” time for Matthew’s to fully comprehend the fact that this Healer is the true Messiah, Immanuel, Yahweh God who grants forgiveness and who is able to restore all we need in life through our trust in His love, words, power and authority. Jesus knew this Matthew’s spirit wanted and needed to understand all this at that time. Third, Jesus knew that, if He called Matthew privately, while sitting at the tax stall, Matthew might be found there talking to his outcast friends. So Matthew would rejoice greatly when the Messiah called him to be His assistant teacher, and invite Jesus and His other disciples to his house for a celebration banquet, where many of those outcasts might also come to hear Jesus, where Jesus could minister to his friends as well, to the other Jewish tax collectors and sinners who had listened to Matthew speak about God and His Word, but had been marginalized or outright rejected by all the false churches.
Jesus Calls Sinners, Not Deluded Unrepentant Souls
Earlier that day, after Jesus saw how His own house had been so crowded by souls desperate to hear the truth about God and His words that the loved ones of a paralytic had to lower that man through His roof to be forgiven and healed—and also saw even more souls crowd around His house after He forgave and healed the paralytic—Jesus went outside and walked a short distance to the shore of the sea, to give the crowds more room to sit and hear Him. Then Jesus continued to answer questions and respond to comments during the ongoing teaching session (see Mark 2:13). Just before sundown, near suppertime, Jesus and the crowds would have ended this teaching session, which likely began shortly after breakfast and sunrise that morning. So it was about that time, as Jesus and His disciples walked back to His house, with some determined opposing rabbis still following, that He stopped at Matthew’s tax stall, which would have been located beside the main road leading into Capernaum.
At that stall, He saw a man and renamed him, calling him “Matthew” (this name is derived from the Hebrew word, Matityahu, meaning “gift of Yahweh”). This man was the son of Alphaeus (Mark 2:14), who was named Levi (meaning “the joined”) by his father. But it is possible, and even likely, that his father was a devout Jew, since he likely sent Levi to apprentice under some prominent rabbi, which was today’s equivalent of sending a son to study in a university or seminary, and was equally expensive. Yet Matthew somehow ended up becoming a tax collector. Thus, since tax collectors were so reviled by most devout Jews, a devout father would have become very upset about his son leaving the establishment church to join the “infidels” that collected the oppressive Roman tax. So there was probably a deep rift that had developed between Matthew and his father, and his father may have even made a declaration that Matthew was no longer his son, then forbade the rest of his family from ever speaking to Matthew again. In other words, the reason Jesus renamed Levi, and called him by this new name meaning “Gift of Yahweh,” may have been because Jesus wanted this tax collector to lay aside all the pain of his past and begin a new life within His family of disciples, filled with hope.
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Then this obviously well-taught biblical scholar, who seems to have been forced to get a job as a tax collector, yet loved even the “worst of sinners” that he was forced to work among, was overjoyed to finally be able to do all that his heart desired, to minister to people of all kinds in the name of God, to proclaim the truths of God that lead all to a restored right relationship with their loving God. After seeing Jesus forgive and heal that paralytic sinner, this rejected scholar ecstatically embraced that calling of Jesus to become His assistant teacher, and would have given his life for Jesus. “And Levi made a great feast for them in his house. Then there was a crowd sitting [there], many tax collectors and others, those being with them” (Luke 5:29). It seems that this new Matthew, who was formerly a dejected and rejected Levi, had gone to his family and friends much earlier in the day, and asked them to prepare a feast for many people. Matthew must have done this before Jesus came to his tax booth since, in those days, it took a very long time to prepare a feast like that. Thus, Matthew likely began to arrange for this feast just after he saw Jesus forgive and heal the paralytic earlier that day, and wanted to gather his loved ones together because he wanted to proclaim what he saw and heard from Jesus. Therefore, he and his loved ones probably did not expect that the great Teacher, Jesus Himself, would enter his lowly home where he, a great sinner, along with his other lowly family and friends, planned to congregate. Also, since he likely called for this before Jesus called for him to join Him as His assistant teacher, Matthew likely did not expect to announce that he was quitting his job and was now going to serve Jesus. So his joy in all the events of that day would have been glorious.
At this feast, the invitation would have been free and open, much like church potluck suppers used to be in some churches. Many guests would have brought food, to supplement what had been provided by the host. But this was not a requirement for those attending. So the opposing rabbis also attended, probably without bringing anything with them, in order to watch for any kind of evidence they could use against Jesus, any error they could use to poison the minds of their people against Jesus. Now, at that time, eating together at the same table was a sign of peace and harmony between equals, the sharing of life-giving sustenance and the acceptance of one another as siblings in the family of God.
So, when the Bible scholars and Pharisaic elders saw Jesus eating with Matthew and his outcast friends, sharing the same table with those rejected sinners and apostate Jews, they thought they had found something that they could definitely use to condemn Jesus. Then they confronted Jesus and His disciples with an accusation they though would assure the utterly ashamed guilty silence of our God in His body of human flesh. Yet, as usual, those religious leaders craftily disguised their unjust condemnation as a respectful and legitimate question: “According to what [biblical reason or principle] is your Teacher [of Scripture and life principles] eating with tax collectors and sinners?”
(Mat. 9:11, from: Διὰ τί μετὰ τῶν τελωνῶν καὶ ἁμαρτωλῶν ἐσθίει ὁ διδάσκαλος ὑμῶν;, SBLGNT).
However, Jesus did not do what they expected Him to do. They thought our God Jesus would then need to bow His head in abject shame and meekly walk away from the table, just like a rebuked dog caught doing something very bad by its master. Yet, on the contrary, Jesus stood up for God’s truth, then soundly rebuked the evil motives and wicked intentions of those loveless, vain, arrogant rabbis.
Jesus then chastised those fake religious teachers, revealing the sound biblical reason and Scriptural doctrines He had rightly and wisely applied when He, our God, chose to eat at the same table with those tax collectors and sinners. Jesus calmly explained to all there: “The healthy ones are having no need of a physician, but the sick [are] having [need]. Now, after being removed, learn what this is: ‘I am resolved to have mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call righteous ones, but sinful ones” (Mat. 9:12-13, from: Οὐ χρείαν ἔχουσιν οἱ ἰσχύοντες ἰατροῦ ἀλλὰ οἱ κακῶς ἔχοντες.
πορευθέντες δὲ μάθετε τί ἐστιν· Ἔλεος θέλω καὶ οὐ θυσίαν· οὐ γὰρ ἦλθον καλέσαι δικαίους ἀλλὰ
ἁμαρτωλούς, SBLGNT). What Jesus said and commanded here was a rebuke from God Himself.
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Now all Jews knew that the calling of Jesus would necessarily involve repentance into the truth, so they could receive God’s forgiveness, and the atonement which restored their relationship with God.
And they also realized that this repentance is exactly what Jesus alluded to when He quoted that very familiar Scripture. God, through the prophet Hosea, condemned His church’s fake repentance to receive forgiveness and atonement. For they thought the ritual sacrifices commanded in God’s Law were just like the magic pagan rituals designed to appease demonic gods by demonstrating passive submission to them. So they believed that their physical actions during those rituals would be seen by physical eyes of a physical god and recognized as a form of physical obedience, which would then please the god and cause the god to forgive them. But Israel sinned greatly when they did this.
In Hosea’s time, the elite in Israel, even most of God’s priests, mercilessly robbed the people for their own personal gain, even enough to cause their deaths, especially the suffering and deaths of the poor who could not defend themselves against those powerful exploiters. God’s church of Israel became a gang of ruthless murderers, even while it pretended to be devoutly religious, even while it superficially pretended to seek God and His salvation. And this is why, in a prophecy, God told them: “For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings”
(Hosea 6:6, WEB). God wanted His people to change their ways, to repent into the truths He taught, to freely and spontaneously grant loving mercy to all, to justly and equitably serve all in His land.
When Jesus quoted Hosea 6:6 from the Septuagint, the Jews would be reminded about their need for repentance into the truths and just ways of God. For they were all familiar with this Scripture and all that it implied. But Luke was a Gentile convert and wrote to other Gentiles, knowing they were not as familiar with this Scripture as the Jews were. Therefore, Luke did not say that Jesus quoted Hosea 6:6, but simply paraphrased what Jesus said that day, in a way the Gentiles could better understand:
“I did not come and now remain to call righteous people, but sinful people into repentance” (Luke 5:32, from: οὐκ ἐλήλυθα καλέσαι δικαίους ἀλλὰ ἁμαρτωλοὺς εἰς μετάνοιαν, SBLGNT). All Luke had to say was that Jesus called sinners “into repentance,” for that was the sum of what God said through Hosea, when God called for merciful love instead of religious rituals. But think about the implications of this. God was condemning ruthless religious hypocrisy in Hosea 6:6, which is a great sin. Yet it was a sin those sinners refused to recognize as a sin. So they would not repent. Thus, in all three synoptic Gospels, Jesus implied that those whom He called “healthy” and “righteous” were actually unrepentant hypocrites, not spiritually healthy nor genuinely righteous in any way. They were the falsely religious, who deluded themselves into thinking they had a healthy relationship with God. They considered themselves to be good people, but were thoroughly loveless and unjust inside.
The spirits of these “healthy” and “righteous” ones never repented into the real God’s genuine truth.
They were merely like the hypocrites in God’s church of Israel during Hosea’s time. Jesus certainly would never refuse to call an awakened elect soul, anyone who had a truly a “healthy” relationship with God, anyone whose spirit was truly learning to become loving and “righteous,” whose spirit did actually and sincerely love God and His ways. But these fake rabbis were not such souls. And, in reality, there actually has never been anyone living in human flesh on earth whom God would deem to be truly righteous, certainly no one among those religious “leaders.” Jesus knew this, because He is God, the Author of all the Scriptures, including the words of God which declared, in no uncertain terms, that literally all human beings who ever lived or ever will live are wretched, ignorant and often cruel sinners (see Ps. 14:1-3; 53:1-3; Eccl. 7:20; Rom. 3:9-20). For all human beings lack love, understanding and wisdom, throughout their entire lives on earth. Not one is able to work God’s kind of real, equitable, wise and loving justice through their own wills and in their own strength, even if own life depended on it—and one’s own life, as well as the lives of others, does depend upon it. So, Page 621
what Jesus was actually saying was something like this: “You people may think you are healthy and righteous. But all of you are actually sinners playing a religious game, like the church did in Hosea’s day. And you refuse to genuinely repent because you lie to yourselves, because you thoroughly and intentionally delude yourselves into believing God approves of all your ways. With this kind of self-delusion, you do not allow yourself to see your need of repentance into My truth. Therefore, I have not come to call you. Instead, I have come to call those who actually realize they are terrible sinners, only those whose spirits realize that they desperately need to repent into My truth, only those whose hearts long to change their lives and thoughts, so they can live just, wise and loving lives for God.”
The elect souls among the tax collectors and other obvious sinners were never abandoned by God, were never handed over to Satan for the destruction of their flesh, never cast into the dark lies and delusions that the devil invariably pours into the minds of all his minions. Rather, the almighty God guarded the minds of these elect sinners, especially the minds of their spirits. God always kept their spirits grounded in truth, in reality. Each day, as they lay their heads upon pillows, they drifted into sleep which caused them to painfully realize their own failures and sins, stirring up memories of how they refused to do what is wise, right and good, even for their beloved. Every morning they faced the hard truths about their own lack of power and strength to express the just, equitable love they knew they should freely give to others, but were not able to do so, because they were all trapped in an evil system and all enslaved by forbidding taskmasters. So God’s Holy Spirit spent years, even since the days of their births, preparing the hearts of these elect sinners, making their spirits ready to now be taught, trained, guided and empowered by their Father, to serve Him in His just ways of wise love.
Sinners possessing elect spirits that yearned to love in the just, wise ways of God, forever desiring to see God’s earthly kingdom governed in the same pure, peaceful, perfect way His heavenly kingdom functions, but knowing this could only happen through His will and power, these were the only kinds of people Jesus came to save. Jesus came to save those with spirits who knew they were not nearly loving enough, never wise enough, never just enough, never righteous enough to do all that their loved ones needed in their lives. Only sinners like this had the kinds of willing spirits which Jesus was able to teach and train as truly humble and loving citizens of His kingdom on earth, even as the priesthood of His one and only church of Israel called to serve the earth. This was the kind of soul Jesus could cause to repent into His truths revealed on earth, whom He could work beside, to do His merciful deeds through a right, wise application of His truths, the works that all elect spirits desire.
Jesus came to be the King of repentant sinners, of infantile elect spirits seeking to be taught, trained and empowered to do the just and loving works of His kingdom. Jesus came to be the High Priest of the most eager repentant sinners, those whose inexpressible pain stirred the greatest zeal for His truth and justice, until they were able to serve as His priests, able to teach and judge in His name. Jesus came as the Great Prophet for repentant sinners, to counsel their spirits, to enable them to thoroughly
“convict the world about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment” (John 16:8, WEB). But He did not come to save humanistic fake churches who try to save themselves as their own gods. Today, we have seen some of the fruits of Christ’s labours through this kind of elect sinner’s repentance, as imperfect and faulty as it may seem. Jesus has changed the way the world judges right and wrong, how it now condemns sin and evil, and how it now calls loving, equitable, merciful and biblically just ways of God truly righteous and just. Jesus has slowly altered the perceptions of the elect in the entire world, through His Holy Spirit’s works in the hearts of His repentant elect sinners. But none of this came through any of the humanistic churches we see today. In fact, all those churches usually had opposed His works through His repentant elect spirits. They tried to stop them. Those churches not only persecuted and killed those repentant elect sinners, but twisted Scriptures and lied about Page 622
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God’s intended meanings of His words, in order to deceive souls into helping them destroy the true works of God. Their “church leaders” have always been like the rabbis Jesus rebuked on that day long ago, or like the hypocrites in the church of Israel that God rebuked through the prophet Hosea.
Now let the elect realize that some churches say Jesus rejected and rebuked those rabbis simply because they were Jewish, or because they did not endorse the magic “sacraments” of their own fake so-called “Christian” churches, or even because they refused to have anything to do with a carnal, emotional recital of a magic “Sinner’s Prayer,” as is required by their humanistic false churches.
Churches invent all kinds of reasons for Christ’s rejection of those false pastors, since they know that those rabbis were exactly the same as they are now. The vast majority of priests and pastors in all the humanistic, fake, so-called “Christian” churches today utter the same kinds of lies against Jesus, in the same ways those false rabbis did. Of course, not all rabbis back then were children of the devil.
And not all the priests and pastors of fake, humanistic, so-called “Christian” churches are heirs of Satan either. But, if the spirits of rabbis, priests or pastors partake in a wilful condemnation of Jesus, just because Jesus and His chosen servants do the works of God’s Holy Spirit, then the spirits of those who slander His Spirit are surely born of the devil. A spirit that hates any of the loving, just, equitable, redeeming works of the Messiah’s Holy Spirit is a native-born citizen of hell. Any spirit that loves the ruthless darkness of lies and delusions more than God’s loving light is born of Satan.
But elect human spirits can be taken captive by demons, who will thoroughly deceive their minds of flesh for a time, even enough to commit sins like murder. Or, at times, the elect spirit of a sinner can become so weak and silenced that the its meek whispers of protest against its mind of flesh, within the chamber of its soul, will be completely ignored by its mind of flesh. But, if the almighty Holy Spirit of Jesus appears and authoritatively utters His wise counsel to that languishing elect spirit, the eyes of that spirit will open and that spirit will rise up in the strength and power that Jesus provides.
His Holy Spirit quickens elect spirits, makes them boldly take a stand against their own manipulated minds of flesh, focuses their spirit’s attention on Him. On the other hand, if a non-elect human spirit senses Jesus’ Holy Spirit nearby, or sees His Spirit’s works manifested, that lying spirit will rally its mind of flesh to oppose our God Jesus, to slander and denigrate Him and His works. Both kinds of spirits were there that day—when Jesus preached to the tax collectors and sinners, when He ate with them as with His beloved siblings. And everyone there was a horrible sinner. Yes, some defrauded and extorted money. Some even caused innocent souls to be imprisoned or killed. Yet those sinners listened attentively to Jesus, silent, absorbing His every word, as His voice plunged their very spirits into a deep and painful godly sorrow, so they might repent into His truths. Meanwhile, the cold, hating and dead hearts of non-elect rabbis, who falsely claimed to be Israel, diligently searched for any outward appearances of “unchurchy” behaviour, so they could falsely accuse Jesus of sin, so they could then deceive their people into rejecting their saving Messiah and God. And, when they could not find any real sins in Jesus, this did not stop them from falsely condemning Him. Rather, they simply invented lies, and condemned Jesus for forgiving and healing sinners, for committing what God’s Law commanded us to do in His name, the deeds of merciful, forgiving and just love.
All rabbis knew that God’s Law said: “You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor show favoritism to the great; but you shall judge your neighbor in righteousness. You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people. You shall not endanger the life of your neighbor. I am Yahweh. You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh” (Lev. 19:15, WEB). Even regarding the Gentiles among them, God’s Law said: “The stranger who lives as a Page 623
foreigner with you shall be to you as the native-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you lived as foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God” (Lev. 19:34, WEB). Thus, even the Gentile communities existing their land, and immigrants who came to them, were to treated justly and without prejudice, granted freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. Yet these fake rabbis judged their oldest Brother and sinless Jewish Messiah unjustly, slandered Him as often as they had the chance, hated this most adept Teacher of God’s Law, accused Him of sin because He gently and wisely rebuked tax collectors and other sinners, solely to turn them back to the truth and into ways that fulfilled God’s Law. They attacked Jesus more harshly than they attacked their Gentile Roman oppressors, although God’s Law explicitly forbade the way they slandered the Romans too.
These rabbis wanted to endanger the life of Jesus, wanted to slander Him so badly that the people would rise up in an unjust mob and murder Him, without a lawful trial to examine the real spiritual and physical evidence, without allowing His defence to thoroughly cross-examine witnesses or give a rebuttal against their false accusations. Yet all the motives of Jesus were to fulfill God’s very own intentions for His Law, as well as cause His disciples to the same. All Jesus’ inner intentions were to proclaim God’s pure truth, unbridled from all the political and financial motives of false churches.
So all that was in Jesus, and all the external evidence, exonerated and justified Him in everything He said or did. Meanwhile, all that was in those fake religious leaders, and all the external evidence, proved that they were the worst of sinners, and condemned them as worse than murderers. Every duplicitous inner motive, every corrupt intention, every word and deed of those rabbis proved they were guilty of breaking God’s Law, and condemned them in the same way God condemned the false churches in the days of Hosea, or the false churches who supported Hitler and Trump, even as those who intentionally committed sins against the first five orders of God’s Law, sins worse than murder.
Throughout history, fake rabbis, priests and pastors have slandered Jesus in this same way, whenever they slander even the least of His disciples. Recently, we have also seen these kinds of hypocrites zealously support the current humanistic Roman despots, and use them to destroy their adversaries, in exactly the same way those Pharisaic rabbis supported and used ancient Roman despots to murder their adversaries. For those kinds fake religious leaders not only slander God, but also promote the lying, slandering, fraudulent, immoral, self-aggrandizing fascist murderers called Hitler and Trump.
Therefore, fake priests and pastors today commit the same sins which fake rabbis committed back then. And the worst kinds of these sins are: (5) They dishonour the heavenly Father by speaking and acting dishonourably, even by violently warring against truth, justice and all that He calls His elect children to uphold. (4) They break God’s Sabbath laws for His New Covenant priesthood by always working for themselves alone, every hour of every day, to increase their own financial profits and to bolster their own pride and power, without laying aside even a moment to selflessly, honestly, justly and lovingly do the works of God for His creations who are suffering in great need. (3) They love to continuously abuse God’s just and holy name by teaching blatantly false interpretations of His words, so they can pretend that He approves of their lies and sins. Some even misuse God’s name by uttering false prophecies invented by their own imaginations and emotions of the flesh, or endorse other false prophets, so God’s people will believe deceiving words, dreams or visions came directly from God. And some have false signs and wonders which accompany their deceptions. God allows Satan to produce some actual miracles, to turn the non-elect further away from the truth, and so that the true elect will see the devil manifesting himself among the non-elect, and how demonic miracles bind those non-elect in delusions, so the elect can flee from the demonic false churches. (2) Through false teachings and false prophecies, the fakes shape man-made idols in the minds of their captives, then dare to name those false gods “Jesus” and “Yahweh.” With many lies and false signs, they cause Page 624
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the people to fear and bow down before those idols, to esteem and serve them in a perverse kind of unrighteous and loveless worship. And some even call Satan by the name of “Jesus,” then worship him with all their hearts and minds. Yet, at the same time, those fake pastors and priests exalt and esteem themselves far more that the idols they created and named “Jesus” and “Yahweh.” So those blind guides actually cause their enslaved dupes to worship themselves more than their own demonic idols. (1) Last, but definitely not least, those fake pastors and priests make all their decisions and judgments according to their own selfish wills, as their minds are driven from one thought to another by their demonic taskmasters. So each esteems and serves one’s own self far more than God or any other god. The spirits of those fakes never look to the real God, never place His just and loving will first and foremost in all of their most important decision-making processes, never worship the real God above all their other human and demonic gods. Therefore, they break all the first five orders of God’s Law, all God’s just and loving ways summarized by the first five of the Ten Commandments.
Since God summarized all 613 laws of His Old Covenant with Israel in those Ten Commandments, and listed those ten in the order of importance, with the first being most critical and the tenth being the least critical, we are forced to conclude that those fake pastors and priests sin against God in the five worst ways possible. And Jesus came to fulfill God’s Old Covenant Law in us and through us, not to nullify it. Jesus came to teach and train us to love God and all His creations in the most right, wise, effectively beneficial, responsible and loving ways possible, as outlined in His Law. So, if the fake pastors and priests deliberately and frequently ignore or outright oppose the first five orders of God’s Law, then trick their people into doing so, we can logically conclude that they know nothing of Christ’s salvation, do not know the real Creator God, and are not members of God’s true church.
Also, once one is constantly committing the greater spiritual sins of the first five orders, that is, sins related to the first five of the Ten Commandments, this invariably leads to the more physical sins of the last five orders. For, if all the thoughts of one’s spirit and soul practises the expulsion of the real God from all decision-making processes in order to worship human and demonic gods, so the spirit can believe false teachings and prophecies made deceptively in God’s name, then refuses to find spiritually rest in loving and good works for God alone and dishonours the heavenly Father through all one says and does, the spirit will become very stupid and weak. Even a truly elect spirit will lack the counsel and power of God, so that the knowledge of truth in the mind of that spirit, which is the inner conscience, will become inept and easily manipulated. Thus, one’s spirit will not be able to take control over one’s life and one will walk only according to the mind of flesh as the emotions and thoughts of the flesh are being controlled by human deceivers and demons. Thus, even if a true elect spirit goes to a fake church, and learns to always suppress the relationship between one’s own spirit and the Holy Spirit of God, then one will become susceptible to almost every kind physical sin.
The sixth order laws of God’s are physical actions with malicious spiritual intentions and motives, such as murder, manslaughter, wilful negligence causing harm or death through one’s greed or selfish ambitions, unjust wrath against other souls, and many other sins causing suffering or death.
So, of course, those fake rabbis in the days of Jesus, because they committed all the first five orders of spiritual sins, would also commit many sixth-order sins too. But, since their sins against the first five orders of God’s Law caused them and their minions to commit sixth-order sins, we know they had already committed many seventh-, eighth-, ninth- and tenth-order sins as well. For we must realize that their sins against God’s laws of the first five orders were far worse in God’s eyes, worse than murder. And the breaking of God’s laws always begins with the least of sins, like covetousness and lies. So these fakes all began with the lowest orders of sins and worked their way up to murder, then began to commit the sins of the first five orders. And now Jesus was turning the hearts of tax Page 625
collectors and physical sinners away from sins of the last five orders, because those physical sins had not yet led them into those much greater sins. These sinners only committed sins like murder, sexual immorality, theft, lying and covetousness. And God has always been able to forgive repentant spirits of these kinds of sins from the very beginning, and restore His relationship with those elect hearts.
God even did this for Adam and Eve. Yet these rabbis hated this work of Jesus, deluding themselves into thinking they were far more spiritually healthy and righteous than those sinners whom Jesus sought to save, though they were infinitely worse in God’s eyes. The spirits of those fake rabbis were so sick and sinful, so deep into the devil, that they blasphemed God’s Spirit and could not be saved.
None of the elect can ever possibly sin by slandering God’s Holy Spirit, but always retain a yearning in their spirits for the kind of justice and love that God’s immutable nature possesses. So none of the elect have spirits which are capable of forming completely malicious motives and intentions against the real Creator God, although they can truly hate the fake idols worshipped by false churches. Thus, since elect spirits were created in God’s image, and bear the same innate and immutable desires that God does, not one of the elect can ever sin in a way where God can no longer grant them His eternal salvation. Eventually, if not while they live on earth, then during the long day of judgment, literally all the elect will repent into all God’s truth, because their innermost desires cannot form any kind of truly malicious motives and intentions against the real God, and can never commit unforgivable sins.
But this is not true of some pastors, priests and rabbis, since their spirits do utterly reject and hate the real Creator God, who dwelt in Jesus. For instance, the very hearts of many rabbis in Jesus’ day even slandered the works done by God’s Holy Spirit inside Jesus. Those rabbis saw sinners repenting into God’s truths and God’s ways, yet the minds of their spirits actually hated these works of God. This was not the mere jealousy or covetousness of their flesh, not just an impulsive emotional pride that wished they could be the “heroes” who “saved” those lost souls, instead of Jesus. Rather, the whole hearts of some rabbis wanted those sinners to remain in the lowest class of Satan’s hierarchical religious system, so they could use those souls as scapegoats, so they could transfer the blame for all their own sins onto those clearly “unchurched” sinners, so they could have a people to slander and torture for their own psychopathic pleasure. The last thing they wanted was for those sinners to now rise up a notch or two in their hierarchical system, even to the same status as their own supposedly
“righteous” and “devout” minions in their fake churches. Some spirits of those rabbis were furious that Jesus dared to upset the status quo, the artificially developed order of their system, in which they ruled as a blindly esteemed and obeyed elite. This Jesus shamed them, exposed their great hypocrisy, caused their captives to flee into freedom, and threatened both their illicit income and power. Jesus proved that God loved even those obviously sinful souls, and contrasted God’s love with their own complete lack of love for those souls, proving their hatred for both God and God’s creations. Thus, the very spirits of some of these rabbis were actually non-elect haters of God, spirits born of Satan, mere loveless, ruthless, unjust, selfish, arrogant spirits who wanted to be false gods like Satan did.
Yet there seemed to be at least some elect who had been blindly following those fake rabbis. For Jesus spoke to a group standing with those rabbis when He said: “Now, after being removed, you people fully learn what it is: ‘I am resolved to have mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call righteous ones, but sinful ones.” That is, in this context, a teacher and his disciples slandered Jesus and His disciples. So Jesus used a second person plural aorist imperative verb to command that other group to leave, then truly learn, in a complete way, what was meant by those words in Hosea’s prophecy. Since that group was in Matthew’s house at the time, and most others in there were the family and friends of Matthew, the Pharisaic rabbi who thought it was wrong to dine with sinners, and that self-righteous rabbi’s disciples, would have been promptly removed as soon as they insulted Page 626
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Matthew’s people and his beloved guest, Jesus. But, as those hypocrites were leaving, notice how Jesus sincerely commanded at least some of the souls in that false rabbi’s group to “learn” how God, through the prophet Hosea, had rebuked hypocrites in His church of Israel more than 700 years ago.
So Jesus was not giving this command to the non-elect bullies who thought they were superior and much more intelligent than these inferior sinners, and figured that they already knew the full and complete meaning of Hosea’s prophecy. Rather, Jesus gave this command to some of the elect among the disciples of the fake rabbi. Jesus wanted those elect to question the rabbi’s false doctrines, to reevaluate all that he taught, and to more carefully think about how God said that He desired loving “mercy” rather than religious rituals. Our God Jesus wanted those elect to remember that all the rituals God commanded in His Law were merely reminders of God’s just and loving nature, and designed to help them meditate upon God’s just and loving works, so they could emulate them in their own lives. God’s ways and rituals were not to prove one’s own religious status and superiority over other sinners like oneself, nor to indicate that one belonged to and exclusive religious club and gained esteem and a unique identity through them. Rather, literally all God’s ways and commanded ceremonies were teaching tools. Thus, what God actually wanted was for us to learn and do all that they taught, not merely physically perform them with a total spiritual blindness like the humanistic pagan Greeks and Romans did in their rituals for their demonic pagan gods. Then, what Jesus said after that not only applied to the tax collectors and the sinners with them, but also to the hypocrites following those fake rabbis. That is, once the elect disciples of fake rabbis learned the real truths about how God and His Law were all about just, merciful love—and not about remaining ritually pure while proudly dressing up in the clothing of their religious club—then they might heed God’s call to say and do God’s works on earth as they are done in heaven. Like all other sinners, those elect might go to our God Jesus to have the minds of their spirits taught and trained by Him, so their hearts could repent into the real truth learned from Him, and be truly saved into the church of Israel.
Since almost all the religious elect on earth today are the disciples of human beings, these elect are not disciples of Jesus. For one cannot worship human gods and the idols they create with their own imaginations then worship the real Creator God at the same time. Since almost all elect are following fake rabbis, priests and pastors in our day, they cannot serve Jesus at the same time, and the power of our God Jesus will not endorse their works to make them effective, nor even hear their prayers which are actually made to fake god named “Yahweh” or “Jesus.” Therefore, nearly all the elect on earth first need to reject and unlearn the false doctrines taught by their fake religious leaders, then let their spirits start to learn the real truth and wisdom of God from God, so they can repent into all that truth.
And the elect must begin this process soon. For Jesus is about to open the sixth seal (Rev. 6:12-17), with devastating world-wide earthquakes and meteors striking the ground like bombs in very many places. This may occur within a hundred years, or possibly even within twenty. Then God will seal the hearts of most elect in the great revival of Christ’s true church (Rev. 7:1-17), so every spiritual messenger from heaven or hell will know these souls belong to Jesus. After this, all the horrors of the seven trumpets and seven bowls of wrath will occur, within one generation, which likely means that the earth will be completely devastated, and more than two thirds of its entire population wiped out, within a period of about 40 years, although those end times might last as long as 120 years. Thus, all the elect need to start preparing now! Today is the day when all the teachings needed for that revival, all the knowledge and wisdom which leads straight to Jesus and to Him alone, to all God’s real truths, must be freed now into the world. The elect should never have been so dull as to worship human gods, as they have done for millenniums. But they certainly cannot afford to do so now, in these dark and pressing times. The elect desperately need look beyond all the lies that fakes are now Page 627
teaching them, and into God’s light of wisdom. There is no more time for the insane drivel of those fake gods. The true revival will soon cause Jesus to be the one and only Head Teacher of every individual man. So today, if any elect soul follows fake rabbis, priests or pastors, it is time to forsake them, and start learning how God requires just, compassionate, merciful love, not the loveless, unjust and destructive ways of those fools, not the pagan magic sacraments or carnally emotional worship services they provide. Now we all need to start esteeming and serving God in ways that fulfill His laws wisely, through love from our spirits, as Jesus teaches and trains our spirits to truly know Him.
Mat. 9:14-17,
Celebrate God’s Presence
“Then John’s disciples came to him, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples don’t fast?’
“Jesus said to them, ‘Can the friends of the Bridegroom mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the Bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch would tear away from the garment, and a worse hole is made. Neither do people put new wine into old wine skins, or else the skins would burst, and the wine be spilled, and the skins ruined. No, they put new wine into fresh wine skins, and both are preserved’” (Mat. 9:14-17, WEB).
Now most people, when they read about this event (in Mat. 9:14-17; Mark 2:18-22; Luke 5:33-39) have no idea why all the synoptic Gospels recorded a description of it. Clearly, it seemed important to all of these three apostles. But, to most who read it, both the question and Christ’s answer seem obtuse, and of little real value. Because Jesus’ response to John’s disciples was so figurative and obscure, it does not appear to hold much practical value for our everyday lives. Thus, most apply the words of Jesus’ response to John’s disciples in ways that suit their own personal preferences, even in ways that oppose the intended meaning that Jesus’ words bear. Consequently, we need a better and more biblical understanding of what John’s disciples were actually asking Jesus, when they pointed out how His disciples did not fast. Then we can truly grasp the real meaning of Jesus’ words. So let us first examine the kind of biblical fasting John’s disciples referred to, when they questioned Jesus.
Biblical Fasting
Fasting by religious people today, especially those from so-called “Christian” churches, is similar to the ways of fasting condemned by the prophets of the Old Covenant Scriptures, but not much like the fasting done by the disciples of the Old Covenant prophet, John the Baptist. Nor is most fasting today like that of some of the more biblical and devout Pharisees. And today’s pagan-like fasting is clearly not like the fasting done by Jesus’ true disciples after they received His Holy Spirit on the day of the Pentecost. Yes, all fasting abstains from something, such as food or drink, or else denies the flesh some other kind of pleasure or need. But biblical fasting did such things so the flesh would not be strengthened, not allowed to exalt itself against one’s own spirit and one’s own spiritual needs before God. The principal goal of every biblical kind of fast was to focus one’s spirit upon God, and God alone. But, to do this, one first had to bring the unruly mind of flesh into subjection, force the flesh to obey the demands of one’s spirit, and stop the temporary flesh from distracting one’s spirit with its trivial demands, especially with its selfish sinful lusts. The whole purpose of biblical fasting was for each one’s human spirit to become and remain the lord and manager of one’s own flesh. It Page 628
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was to ensure that the mind of the spirit ruled over the mind of flesh within the chamber of one’s soul. Each individual’s spirit was to dictate all the decisions of one’s life, to override the amoral will of the flesh. Then, once a spirit regained full authority over one’s own life, it was to seek the Lord and High King of all spirits. Each spirit had to seek God, for counsel, truth, wisdom and direction.
So, to begin, let us realize that every devout, faithful Jew in the Old Covenant branch of the church, such as John’s disciples, defined and derived all their core principles of fasting from God’s laws for the Day of Atonement. These laws were God’s definition of fasting. All those laws—commanding the animal sacrifices, repentance, forgiveness, atonement and freedom—symbolically delineated the goal and purpose of fasting, and their reasons for fasting. And that Day of Atonement always began when a human high priest, a symbol of the atoning Messiah, made a sacrifice for his own sins, since he was merely a symbol and was not the real future Messiah whom he represented. For even human high priests needed the blood of the Messiah’s sin sacrifice to pay for their lifetimes of sins they had committed through their minds and bodies of flesh. Then the Messiah’s sacrifice was represented by a sinless animal’s death. Through God’s acceptance of this symbolic sacrifice, through God’s totally unmerited and unearned grace alone, the high priest was granted atonement, a restoration of his good relationship with God. Then the high priest made a sacrifice for the sins of all the people too, where the sinless animal’s sacrifice also represented the blood of the coming Messiah for their atonement.
Even the temple for His church of Israel, where God’s presence resided within His priesthood, was required to be cleansed on the Day of Atonement. God commanded that the high priest “shall make atonement for the Holy Place [i.e., the tent, which was later replaced by the temple in Jerusalem], because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel [i.e., His church], and because of their transgressions, even all their sins; and so he shall do for the Tent of Meeting, that dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanness. No one shall be in the Tent of Meeting when he enters to make atonement in the Holy Place, until he comes out, and has made atonement for himself and for his household, and for all the assembly of Israel” (Lev. 16:16-17, WEB). This tent or tabernacle, replaced by a temple of stone, held the very presence of God among the people, like a body of the living Creator God. And each elect spirit’s physical body, soul and spirit is a temple as well, a dwelling place of God among the people of the world, whom Israel was to serve in God’s name. Yet each human temple, each of our whole beings, has been tainted by sin and must be purified. After these symbols of the Messiah’s cleansing forgiveness of sins, with its accompanying atonement of our relationships with God, done on behalf of both the symbolic human high priest and all the individuals in the church of Israel, along with the symbolic restoration of God’s presence in His tent or temple among them all, the human high priest then killed one goat and used its blood to set another goat free into Israel’s land.
God commanded that the high priest “shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them on the head of the goat, and shall send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall carry all their iniquities on himself to a solitary land, and he shall let the goat go in the wilderness” (Lev. 16:21-22, WEB). Now many say the freed goat is a symbol of Satan. But God would never use His humble and sinless creature, born with the ability to love in its own ordained way, to be a symbol of that loveless, ruthless, sinful devil. And God clearly would not portray the devil as one who removes sins from His church, who takes those sins away from them into a “solitary place” of “wilderness,” apart from the permanent homes of His people. Thus, this live goat, and the act of freeing it into the wilderness, symbolizes an entity that belongs to God and serves God, but will not dwell with His truly elect servants of His church and priesthood in their permanent home of the third heaven, even an entity that will bear all of their sins.
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So how may we understand this? To begin with, we must look at all God commanded for this ritual, and both of the two goats used in this ritual. Two goats were to wait at the door of the temple, until the high priest came to “cast lots for the two goats; one lot for Yahweh, and the other lot for the scapegoat” (Lev. 16:8, WEB). Thus, one goat represented Yahweh and the other was to carry away the sins of the people. The body of the goat representing Yahweh was sacrificed as a sin offering for the other goat. So the goat chosen “for Yahweh” represented the Messiah, Jesus. Then the other goat, called the “scapegoat,” received atonement from Yahweh God, from the death of the goat that bore God’s name. So the scapegoat represented all whom the Messiah would die for, all the sinners whom He chose to release from the condemnation and penalties of their sins. Then the atoned scapegoat was set free, after its own relationship with God was restored by the blood of the goat representing Yahweh God. Therefore, goat who bore God’s name, Yahweh, who represented the Messiah, died for the sins of His people, to set them free. And the scapegoat, who bore the sins of God’s priesthood, that is, the sins of His one true and eternal church of Israel, represented the bodies of flesh belonging to His people in that church. The blood shed by the Messiah designated all their sins to their earthly flesh, represented by the freed scapegoat. For the Messiah’s sacrifice on the cross was granted to free their elect spirits from the sins of their flesh, so their flesh would be set free to live, although all would eventually perish in the wilderness of the physical earth. Nevertheless, their spirits, freed from sin, would eternally remain in a close relationship with God as they wandered the earth in their flesh.
Paul, the apostle, most adeptly related what those two goats represented when he penned these words through Christ’s Holy Spirit: “Consequently, now [there is] no longer condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus [Here we see that, first of all, there is a law ‘of’
or within and emanating from God’s Spirit, which is the Spirit of life in Jesus. So the Old Covenant written Law cannot possibly be all of that law in God’s Spirit, but merely a thin shadow of it. In fact, all existence cannot contain all the ways and principles of God, all the ‘laws’ within God, who is a Spirit. Second, we see that Jesus did not have a created human ‘spirit of life’ in Him. For the Creator God was His ‘Spirit of life,’ animating His body of flesh.] set each of you free from the Law of sin and death. [Here Paul was speaking about being freed from God’s Old Covenant Law, which had to be obeyed through each one’s mind of flesh, where the flesh always failed to interpret it rightly, since all laws of God are spiritual, from the core attributes of God, who is a Spirit. Therefore, the flesh always applied all His spiritual laws wrongly, resulting in ‘sin and death.’ But now Jesus causes our very spirits to apply His New Covenant law, which is the reality of His old symbolic laws and a far more complete revelation of His old moral Law, granted to us through His personal and direct teaching and training of our human elect spirits, by His Spirit. Because He teaches and trains our spirits to apply a fuller law, even the very innermost attributes and desires of the Creator’s Spirit, we are now freed from the less effective, more error-prone, very incomplete and redundant Old Covenant Law worked through our minds of flesh.] [It
was] for the inability of the [Old Covenant] Law, in that it was always weak through the flesh, [that] God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. [Here is the reason for God sending His own Son, who is God Himself in a body of human flesh. Jesus came to die on our behalf, then send us His Holy Spirit, because of the ‘inability’ of His Old Covenant Law, because that Law was always weak and ineffective through its interpretations and applications by our human minds of flesh.] And, regarding sin, He condemned sin in the
fl esh , so that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, [in] those not walking according
t o [the mind of] the flesh, but rather according to [ the mind of ] the [human elect] spirit ” (Romans 8:1-4, ALT). So God “condemned sin in the flesh.” God placed the guilt, condemnation and penalty of all our sins upon our flesh which shall die in the wilderness of this physical earth, but set us free to walk on this earth until our flesh dies, just like the second goat in that ritual performed on the Day of Atonement. And all our bodies of flesh shall definitely die, then cease to exist forever, because God Himself will cause all material existence to vanish like a temporary mist into the air on the last day.
So our flesh will receive all the consequences for our lifetime sins through death, and by its eternal separation from all God’s created realities on the day that God withdraws His power from the Page 630
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material universe, causing all of it to vanish. This will free our spirits from all condemnation forever.
Just like the body of the scapegoat freed into the wilderness, away from a home among sinners, God freed our elect spirits in the same way, from our bodies of flesh. This occurred through the bodily sacrifice of God’s own body of flesh for our sins, represented by the other goat which bore the name of Yahweh. And all our freedom is granted solely because our elect spirits will learn to act through just love, expressed in a way that no longer allows our amoral demands from our minds of flesh to rule our lives. All our decisions in life are now beginning to be made through the minds of our elect spirits, as our spirits learn truth and wisdom from our heavenly Father and our oldest Brother, Jesus.
In summary, the Day of Atonement began with the restoration of the relationship between God and the elect spirits in His church of Israel, through animal sacrifices representing the saving works of the Messiah, whom Moses prophesied about (through the laws of sacrifice and by the promise of a Great Prophet who would speak God’s words to Israel, rather than having God speak to them from dark clouds with lightening and thunder, as God did on Mount Sinai). And all those truly belonging to the real church of Israel—which included many Gentiles in the days of Moses, and while Jesus walked among us, and in our day as well—were indeed set free from the guilt and condemnation of their sins when our Messiah came. Just as the scapegoat was set free, through the death of the goat’s flesh which bore God’s name of Yahweh, all God’s true church of Israel, even all the elect who ever lived or ever will live, shall be joined to His true church on the last day and set free into His heaven.
Yet there was one last element of the Day of Atonement that ratified all the forgiveness, atonement and freedom from all personal and corporate sins, a deed enabling the members of God’s true church of Israel to receive all this. For God commanded: “It shall be a statute to you forever: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and shall do no kind of work, the native-born, or the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you: for on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before Yahweh. It is a Sabbath of s olemn rest to you, and you shall afflict your souls . It is a statute forever” (Lev. 16:29-31, WEB).
God’s command, translated as “afflict your souls,” consists of the Hebrew word anah (“look down upon, abase, afflict, humble, weaken”) and the Hebrew word nephesh (used as an ecclesiastical technical term referring to the “soul,” like the Greek word ψυχή). As a part of our being, the soul is like a room or chamber, an interface allowing both the mind of flesh and the mind of the spirit to meet and communicate with each other. But, since the nephesh or soul was the place where all one’s thoughts and decisions were ultimately created, and involved every aspect of one’s life, it was also used as a term referring to the whole of one’s inner life, to the whole of one’s being, the combination of both flesh and spirit. Now, of course, the soul is merely where the spirit comes to meet with the mind of flesh. So the spirit can withdraw from the soul, and must withdraw, if it want to entirely and fully focus upon God, who is also a Spirit, if the human spirit wants to hear God without distractions of the flesh. The “dividing of soul and spirit” (Heb. 4:12) is often necessary, since the mind of flesh cannot possibly comprehend any “words” or concepts exchanged between spirits, and cannot hear or see spiritual entities. So a spirit must leave behind the mind of flesh, part from the soul, so the spirit can engage in purer and deeper conversations with God. And this is why God commanded us to
“afflict our souls,” that is, to look down upon, abase, humble, and weaken the proud minds of flesh in our souls, so our spirits can bow before the Creator’s Spirit and hear Him more clearly. We are to part from all superficial, foolish, self-serving nonsense that our minds of flesh think about, even the demands of the flesh to survive and live. For our spirits need to focus entirely upon our God alone.
To obey this command of God, the Jews, from days of Moses until today, have “afflicted their souls”
by fasting on the Day of Atonement. And they were to do this “afflicting of one’s soul” because it Page 631
was the only thing that would enable them to receive all the forgiveness, atonement and freedom offered to them by God on that day. If anyone did not “afflict one’s own soul,” that one could not be cleansed by God, could not be counted as clean before the eyes of God. In other words, there could be no forgiveness without first “afflicting one’s own soul.” And, without forgiveness, there could be no atonement of one’s relationship with God, nor any kind of freedom from the condemnation of sin.
Now, since God uses this “afflicting of one’s own soul,” this fasting, to grant us all these spiritual gifts, and it is necessary for all that is defined as God’s eternal salvation of one’s spirit, this kind of fasting must be far more complex, deep and spiritual than a mere physical act of routinely punishing the body of flesh in order to look “spiritual” in the eyes of other people. And the physical act of fasting certainly cannot be a way of appeasing the Spirit who created all of the temporary physical existence for one purpose alone, to serve for the fulfilling of His eternal spiritual creations. Nor can physical fasting ever hope to be used to coerce God into obeying the demands of a human will, since that is impossible—since God must always do His own good, wise and loving will, and cannot ever allow Himself to not do exactly what He decided to do and predestined from the beginning of time.
Rather, the one and only reason for commanding us to “afflict our souls” and all godly fasting, is for us to focus all the thoughts of our spirits upon God’s personal counsel granted directly to our spirits by God’s Spirit, while suppresses the distracting demands of the flesh. Then our spirits can hear God’s rebukes and counsel, repent into His truth, and learn to love in the just ways that God Himself loves. Only then can our forgiveness of all our sins, along with the resulting complete atonement of our relationship with God, can be granted by our utterly holy God, that is, in a way where He will not be able to be accused of aiding and abetting any of our sins. Then we can be freed from sin and walk together with God, esteeming and serving Him in genuine worship, through our spirits’ love for Him and in all truth. If we do not realize this, we cannot comprehend what the Jewish disciples of John were actually asking Jesus, nor understand anything about Jesus’ figurative words in His reply.
The Question
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that the disciple of John the Baptizer asked Jesus, “According to what
[principle or reason] do we and the Pharisees fast often, while Your disciples do not fast” (Mat. 9:14, from: Διὰ τί ἡμεῖς καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι νηστεύομεν πολλά, οἱ δὲ μαθηταί σου οὐ νηστεύουσιν;, SBLGNT). John’s disciples believed him when he told them that Jesus was the promised Messiah.
So they deeply revered Jesus. Therefore, this was not a rhetorical question, nor an accusation, nor a snide remark to offend Jesus. Even some Pharisees (who were the evangelicals of the day) highly esteemed Jesus for His words of truth and biblical insights. Furthermore, some Pharisees had not yet been corrupted by the false anthropological doctrines derived from humanistic Greco-Roman views of the body, soul and spirit. That is, those Pharisees who loved Jesus did not define a “spirit” as a
“force,” but realized that spirits are thinking beings made of eternal spiritual substances, as God’s Word said. So, when they asked this question, they were sincerely wondering why Jesus did not require His disciples to “afflict their souls,” that is, to suppress the amoral demands of their flesh by causing their spirits to withdraw from the chambers of their souls, away from their distracting minds of flesh, so their spirits could commune with God and learn truths from Him, then repent into those truths and receive His forgiveness, together with His atonement, so they could find clear direction in life through prayers during their fasting. When Jesus did not ask His own disciples to commune with God though fasting, as the disciples of John and the good Pharisees did, it deeply perplexed them all.
Mark and Luke record the same event in almost the same way, but added a couple details. Mark tells us: “And the disciples of John and the Pharisees were fasting. Then they came and they said to Him: Page 632
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‘According to what [principle or reason] do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but the disciples [serving] for your benefit do not fast?’” (Mark 2:18, from: Καὶ ἦσαν οἱ
μαθηταὶ Ἰωάννου καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι νηστεύοντες. καὶ ἔρχονται καὶ λέγουσιν αὐτῷ· Διὰ τί οἱ μαθηταὶ
Ἰωάννου καὶ οἱ μαθηταὶ τῶν Φαρισαίων νηστεύουσιν, οἱ δὲ σοὶ μαθηταὶ οὐ νηστεύουσιν;, SBLGNT). Luke simply indicated that a group of people asked Jesus this question: “So they said to Him, ‘The disciples of John are frequently fasting and make prayers of petition. Likewise, also, those of the Pharisees [do]. Yet those [serving] for your benefit are eating and drinking’” (Luke 5:33, from: Οἱ δὲ εἶπαν πρὸς αὐτόν· Οἱ μαθηταὶ Ἰωάννου νηστεύουσιν πυκνὰ καὶ δεήσεις ποιοῦνται, ὁμοίως καὶ οἱ τῶν Φαρισαίων, οἱ δὲ σοὶ ἐσθίουσιν καὶ πίνουσιν, SBLGNT). So both Mark and Luke draw a little closer connection between John’s disciples and some Pharisees. And this was natural, since the Pharisees were seen, in general, as those who believed that all Old Covenant Scriptures, all we use today, were dictated by God through the prophets who heard and obeyed God’s command to write down those words. Therefore, they all believed that all the words of the Scriptures were truly and actually God’s own words. Also, the disciples of John, as well as many disciples of the more biblical Pharisees, believed that God’s priesthood of Israel must teach His Word to all the earth, even to all Gentiles, and refused to exclusively teach the Jews alone. Because of these beliefs, and others, both John’s disciples and many Pharisees were basically what we call the evangelical churches of our day. And the honest spirits among these more biblically oriented people loved Jesus because of His accurate exegesis of the Scriptures, because Jesus rightly and wisely taught the words of God.
Now notice how it says that both the disciples of John and the Pharisees fasted often. In those days, many devout Jews fasted every week, mostly because they saw corruption and a lack of biblical truth in the church of Israel. As Luke said, they were “frequently fasting and make prayers of petition” to God. And, of course, most of their prayers of petition involved asking God to fill their hearts, and the hearts of all His people, with His truth, to cause Israel to repent into that truth. Yet they all fasted to allow their spirits to closely commune with God, so they could pray for God’s intervention directly from their spirits, and hear God’s response to their spirits more clearly, hoping that God would also tell them what they could do or say for Him, how they could serve Him. And whenever any kind of trouble occurred within their personal lives—or in their homes, church or land—their first instinct was to fast and pray, to deeply and thoroughly search for any sin or negligence in their own souls, so their spirits could hear their God, then humbly admit their own weakness and ignorance to Him and confess their sins, so they could repent into His counsel. All these kinds of truly devout souls would let their spirits carefully and submissively listen for God’s voice, either His wise and loving counsel or His rebukes. Fervent prayers, with a more intense focus of the spirit through fasting, or by using some other means of silencing the distracting flesh, has always been the natural and innate reaction of all elect souls to dire hardships and troubles of all kinds, ever since the days of Adam and Eve.
Then we should also realize that, when the Gospels spoke about devout Jews fasting often, they surely did mean often. Devout Jews definitely fasted frequently and in many different ways. All Jews, even nominally religious Jews, fasted on the Day of Atonement. Then most also fasted on days set aside to remember great events, such as the beginning of Babylon’s siege of Jerusalem in the tenth month, the first breaching of Jerusalem’s walls in the fourth month, the destruction of the temple in the ninth month, and the murder of Babylon’s appointed “puppet” king of Israel in the seventh month (see Zech. 7:5, 8:19). In addition to all this, some devout Jews fasted on Monday and Thursday every week, begging God to send His prophets and cause the hearts of His people to faithfully serve Him, to make His people more just and loving. Others would fast for two or three consecutive days during the week, although only during daylight hours, or during specific times in Page 633
the day. Some fasted every Sabbath day, from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, and on all the other Sabbaths commanded by God’s Law—although some rabbis forbade fasting on Sabbath days.
Then Jews also fasted in many different ways, and not all involved abstaining from food or drink.
But all forms of fasting involved “afflicting the soul,” freeing the spirit from the distracting demands of the mind of flesh in the chambers of their souls. Some, with or without the eating of food, would dress in cheap, itchy sackcloth and spread ashes on themselves—either to more deeply subdue the demands of their flesh and to truly humble themselves before God, or to proudly show off their carnal spirituality, fake humility and false contrition before the eyes of other religious hypocrites like themselves. Then some employed different methods of silencing their flesh, so their spirits could commune with God without the interruptions of the flesh. For there were times when worshippers had to eat and drink for religious, legal or political purposes. So they developed many alternative methods of fasting, many ways to deny certain cravings of their flesh and to subdue the distracting flesh. For instance, Daniel was forced to eat with Persian officials, lest they might think he felt too good to eat with them, lest they execute him for this offence. So he did eat and drink, but denied himself the most pleasing food and drink at the table, then secretly refused to anoint himself with the expensive perfume that all nobles wore as an indication of their status (Dan. 10:3). So, if someone possessed an impulsive and compulsive mind of flesh, one might eat a little sweet or filling food before praying, to appease and silence their “loud” and persistent flesh, but engage in almost any other kind of behaviour to humble their flesh, so their spirits could then focus on hearing their God.
The point is that the disciples of John, and some of the more honest souls among the Pharisees, truly wanted to know God’s opinion about every matter imaginable. And, since only their spirits were able to hear the concepts spoken by the Spirit who created all existence, they frequently had to find ways of silencing their demanding and distracting minds of flesh, so their spirits could wait upon God, to receive whatever counsel He chose to offer them—whether His words were a stern rebuke, insightful correction, wise teaching, satisfying comfort, blessed encouragement or a command to do His loving works of service for His kingdom. And the spirit’s ability to hear God’s counsel was mostly achieved through various forms of fasting. Yet these men with honest spirits, disciples of John and Pharisees, all saw that Jesus’ disciples definitely did not lack spiritual communion with God. In fact, from the way John’s disciples respectfully questioned Jesus, they seemed to have observed an extremely deep, profound spiritual growth in Jesus’ disciples, even a more spiritually fulfilling communion with God than they had themselves. They saw much understanding, wisdom, humility and love in their spirits.
They realized the spirits of Jesus’ disciples were definitely hearing God, even in a far more deep and fruitful way than they were. Thus, they asked Jesus to reveal the reasons and principles that made it possible for His disciples to gain their deeper communion with God without fasting. They genuinely wanted to know how this was possible, since Jesus’ disciples seldom fasted. John’s disciples and the more loving, just, spiritual Pharisees wanted to know the reason for the excellent spiritual health of Jesus’ disciples, exactly how their humble repentance into the truths of God-like and just love could have occurred in a way they only began to achieve through frequent fasting. They truly desired to know the doctrines Jesus taught His disciples, to gain a better communion with God without fasting.
Once we fully understand what these disciples of John, and the more humble Pharisees, were asking, and why they were asking this question, we can begin to comprehend exactly what Jesus said in His response. If we know what they wanted to know, we can see why all three of the synoptic Gospels thought it was so important to record this event and Jesus’ answer to their question. Of course, most Christians in the true first-century apostolic churches would have fully understood the implications of this question, as well as what Jesus’ response indicated, as recorded in the three Gospels. But, Page 634
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since the second century’s corruption of most teachings of Jesus and His apostles, along with the acceptance of humanistic anthropological doctrines by both the Jews and the so-called “Christians,”
neither this question nor Jesus’ answer have been understood—although a few preachers did seem to grasp some of the meaning of what Jesus taught on that day, albeit with inconsistent comprehension.
The First Answer’s Principles