This sheepishness of God’s elect has always made them very vulnerable to destruction by wolves and other predators, who have scattered them to the ends of the earth. And now those lost sheep need to be led back to the spiritually safe lands and flocks of their gentle, just, wise and loving Shepherd.
Otherwise, they cannot be sustainably fed, healed and freed from the burdens they grow on their own backs, but will die in the wilderness, each alone and in fear. Here Jesus implied that predators had already done their malignant works against the Father’s elect children, long before He had sent His twelve servants to help them. For the perfect participle form of ἀπόλλυμι indicates that the “house of Israel” was already destroyed, with ongoing and current effects keeping them broken or ruined, after being crushed in the past. So Jesus was not talking about going out on a mission to serve nice, Page 706
middle-class, comfortable church goers. Rather, Jesus sent His disciples to serve broken elect lives, those requiring redemption from a past destruction, a deliverance from current, ongoing bad effects.
Now, when Jesus commanded His disciples to go the “house of Israel,” He also forbade them to serve the Gentiles or Samaritans while on this mission. And all the instructions for these twelve at this time were actually the same instructions He reiterated to many other apostles or “servants sent out on a mission” in the future. In fact, these are the same commands He gives to all He will ever send out in all history. For example, Jesus sent out seventy apostles later, with the same instructions, but He also expounded on what He told the twelve (see Luke 10:1-17). Thus, we know that some of His exhortations given to the twelve—including His command to serve only the “house of Israel”
and not the Gentiles or Samaritans—needs to be taken as universal commands for all the missions of all whom He will ever send out on a mission, throughout all time on earth. When Jesus gave these twelve this mission statement, it was for all of His mature and true disciples whom He will ever call and send out, until the earth ends. Of course, as we realize this, we must also see how Jesus was not being racist or xenophobic here, since we know He had often ministered to Gentiles and Samaritans.
After observing and understanding the motives and intentions of Jesus—such as with a Samaritan woman at a well, then with her entire village, or His miracles for Gentiles in Galilee—we are forced to conclude that Jesus’ prohibition against serving Gentiles and Samaritans was not through any kind of bias against other races, cultures or religions. Rather, in the light of all Scriptures, we see how He forbade the twelve, and all His future missionaries, from wasting their time and energy on the kinds of souls who are not ready to be served or who hate God’s works. This was a kind of prophecy. In it, Jesus implied that all the elect will eventually be gathered into His New Covenant church of Israel, but not all elect on earth are now ready to hear the truth, and the non-elect will never be ready. So we must focus our time and effort on proclaiming truths to the elect whom our heavenly Father already has drawn toward His family or house of Israel, the elect whose spirits recognize the wise, just love that His sent-out ones work in His name. Of course, for a time, those twelve disciples would have ministered only to professing devout Jews and Gentile converts to Judaism, until Jesus later revealed what He meant by the term “house of Israel (e.g., Acts 11:1-18). For our immutable God Jesus did not later change His mind about forbidding us to serve Gentiles and Samaritans, that is, when He later called His apostles to also serve them. Rather, throughout time, He has forbidden us to serve those who lack any inward inclinations to love in God’s wise and just ways, including all those whose spirits zealously worship false gods in pagan and fake Judaeo-Christian religions. But He has never forbidden us to serve awakening elect spirits trapped in Gentile and Samaritan-like religions.
For the “house of Israel” indicates all the elect on earth, but we are only able to serve the elect whose spirits have been granted “ears to hear” the truth. All the elect belong to His eternal Israel, but not all are ready to hear and be healed. And accusing Jesus of xenophobia is just a sly justification for the racism of fake churches. Jesus has never denied Gentiles or Samaritans the right to hear the Gospel.
In reality, Jesus clearly gave this as a universal and eternal prohibition for all the missions of all His true servants whom He would ever send out throughout earth’s history. Jesus still wants us to go only to the “house of Israel,” and still forbids us to serve Gentiles or Samaritans. For look at how Jesus carefully worded this instruction. He did not say we should only go to the Jews, only go to one race of people. Nor did He say we should only serve His church of Israel, only the Jews and the Gentiles He brings into His Old and New Covenant branches of His church. Rather, Jesus specifically used the term “house of Israel,” an ecclesiastical term referring to God’s eternal “house,” to a spiritual family, to all of the current and all future generations of elect children whom our heavenly Father will bring into His eternal home. This “house of Israel” included all living elect Jews and Gentiles Page 707
already brought into the church or “house” of Israel, as well as all elect Jews and Gentiles whom He would gather into His eternal New Covenant priesthood of Israel at the start of the judgment day.
So Jesus was obviously forbidding His current or future disciples from ministering in His name to the spiritual Gentiles, that is to the non-elect haters of God and His ways. And He was forbidding them from ministering to any spiritual Samaritans, that is, to the same kind of non-elect who pretend to esteem and serve God in false churches. The way Jesus worded this instruction, in the context of His mission which was already serving believing Gentiles and believing Samaritans, clearly implies that He intended the words “Gentiles” and “Samaritans” to be defined in spiritual ways. And all twelve of His disciples later realized this, that His prohibition surely was not racist nor xenophobic.
Jesus specifically told us all, “You people should never depart into the way of the Gentiles and s hould never enter into the cit y of t
he Samaritans ” (Mat. 10:5b, from: Εἰς ὁδὸν ἐθνῶν μὴ ἀπέλθητε
καὶ εἰς πόλιν Σαμαριτῶν μὴ εἰσέλθητε, SBLGNT). When Jesus used these negatives with these aorist subjunctives, He was forbidding or prohibiting even one instance of the actions of those verbs. So, first of all, Jesus did not want His disciples to ever depart “into the way of the Gentiles” (εἰς ὁδὸν
ἐθνῶν μὴ ἀπέλθητε). Thus, this was obviously a spiritual or figurative command, since Jesus and His disciples commonly ministered to Gentiles, from the beginning of His ministry to the end, but only to Gentiles possessing an inner desire for God and His ways. They served Gentiles in many spiritual and physical “missions,” but only elect Gentiles whose spirits loved and heeded Jesus and the truth.
Therefore, Jesus’ prohibition against departing into the “way” (ὁδὸν, singular) of the Gentiles meant that His disciples must never behave in the “way” that the Gentiles did when they were sent out on similar missions, that is, not in the way that the disciples of itinerant Gentile teachers or philosophers did when their masters sent them out to convert others to their humanistic Greco-Roman cults. For those Gentiles taught little to nothing of any real or intrinsic value regarding any critical matters of life and faith. Those Gentiles sought only personal power, status, money and vain accolades from all those whom they deigned to serve. Therefore, the disciples whom Jesus sent to serve the elect in His name, who spoke and worked for the good of His people through His authority and power, were not to be like those Gentile disciples of humanistic masters. Jesus’ apostles were to teach His effective truths and wisdom only to the broken elect, then expect only His spiritual rewards for their works.
And notice how Jesus also prohibited His disciples from entering “into the cit y of t
he Samaritans ”
(εἰς πόλιν Σαμαριτῶν), as well as how Jesus also never entered the “city of the Samaritans” Himself.
For instance, Jesus did not enter the city where the woman at the well lived, because its residents came out to meet Him (John 4:30). So Jesus and His disciples willingly spoke with Samaritans, and Jesus also taught a parable where He used a generous and loving Samaritan as an example of a man who fulfilled God’s Law, that is, God’s command to love one’s neighbour (Luke 10:25-37). And this command was seen as a summary of all of the last six of the Ten Commandments, most of the 613
laws of God found in the books of Moses. Therefore, Jesus’ prohibition against entering “the city of Samaritans” was not a command to exclude Samaritans from hearing the Gospel of His salvation, or from being healed through His power. Rather, it was obviously a spiritual or figurative prohibition.
The first thing we must consider, when we interpret this prohibition against entering a Samaritan city, is how every denomination of Jews universally recognized the Samaritans as a false church, since the Samaritans blatantly syncretized pagan traditions with Judaism, in order to form their own hybrid religion, even while insisting that they were true worshippers of God. In other words, they committed exactly the same sin that Israel did in the eighth and sixth centuries BC, just before God sent them into their Assyrian and Babylonian exiles. And this is why Jews figuratively called the Page 708
heretics in their own churches “Samaritans.” For instance, they called Jesus a “Samaritan” (see John 8:48), yet clearly did not mean that He was born of Samaritan parents. They were calling Him a
“Samaritan” because they were falsely accusing Him of teaching heresies, false doctrines which were based on traditions of men and not solely upon biblical teachings. More specifically, they were falsely accusing Jesus of syncretizing pagan religious teachings with biblical teachings—although, we should realize that, as those slanderers falsely accused Jesus of this, those accusers had actually been doing the same thing themselves. For all sects of Jews in those days had syncretized countless Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman teachings with the teachings of the Bible, to form a hybrid religion which was not much better than the Samaritan churches. And the only reason those Jews accused Jesus of committing this sin was because Jesus was truly and rightly exegeting Scriptures.
Therefore, when Jesus prohibited His twelve disciples, and any of us, from ever entering a “city”
(πόλιν, singular) of Samaritans, He meant we must never enter into a false religion’s walled, fortified and guarded religious institution (i.e., a πόλις was generally a walled town or city). We are not to engage in formal discussions and arguments with leaders and apologists of a false religion, to debate the central tenets of their faith. For that would become an contest to determine who can produce the most emotionally appealing rhetoric, who can be the best persuader of irrational minds of flesh. And it would not actually impart truth to elect spirits, since that must be done personally, through love. So we should never attempt to convert a “city” or religious institution as a whole. Nor should we ever strive to steal groups of members from false churches through trickery and eloquence. Rather, like Jesus, we are to personally minister to awakening individual elect spirits, and only through our own personal love for each and every one of them. As for false religious organizations or institutions, all are merely delusions and distractions, attempts to transform human souls into insignificant slaves of human gods. But those human gods, who dream that they are valuable heads of expendable slaves, are actually the most expendable and useless of all in their religious kingdoms, since their spirits are always slavishly serving their father Satan, as his self-centred, lying psychopaths appointed for hell.
Jesus never sends out His disciples to win over those who build and maintain the walls of a religious
“city” or kingdom designed to trap human slaves inside. We should never attempt to convert a whole false church, hoping they will all repent into God’s truth. For their religious leaders are the human gods of those kingdoms, and they only allow others to enter discussions with them if they are able to cunningly slander our truths, as well as our Source of that truth. And they hope to take those debaters captive, or at least vilify their truth and those messengers. False religious leaders want to remain the gods of the souls they think they own, and they shall never willingly or actually hear and weigh any outsider’s words, nor acknowledge the veracity of any real evidence which exposes their lies. Thus, rather than engage in endless futile debates with those blind and vain egos who seek only enslaving power, worthless accolades of men and evermore personal profit, we must simply shun them all.
What Jesus calls us to do is utter the truths we received from Him, and to do so through motives and intentions formed through our just, wise and God-like love. For the Spirit of our God Jesus directly teaches individual spirits, and only grants each of us the truths that we are able to hear, whenever He has made our elect spirits willing and ready to hear them. Likewise, when He sends us out to serve other elect individuals, we wait upon Him to turn one elect spirit at a time toward the truth, to make one ready to hear and receive what we offer in His name. We serve each elect soul only if and when He has chosen to awaken that one’s spirit. All true disciples of Jesus soon learn to avoid entering any
“city” of a false religion, and usually refuse attack their core false doctrines while they are standing within their walls. For we use Jesus as our example, and Jesus never did that. Yes, Jesus did enter some local orthodox Jewish synagogues, but only those whose main body of members respected Page 709
Him and His words, and He only entered for the purpose of speaking to the trusting elect individuals there. Then Jesus left those synagogues, and never returned, whenever its leaders confronted Him.
Jesus never intentionally entered a false church to confront the leaders of that institution, never willingly entered a “city of Samaritans” such as the Sanhedrin or the council of chief priests. Jesus never attempted to convert the entire institutions of false religion, and never demanded that the human gods that owned those little subject kingdoms within Satan’s world order should repent into the truth. Yes, Jesus often defended His people against their attacks, when they entered the “city” or kingdom of God, where He was ministering to the awakened elect. For Jesus did not fear a fight to the death with the Pharisaic and Sadducean scholars who attacked Him. But He never went to them, looking for a fight. Jesus never attacked nor entered their cities, but let the human gods of those cities destroy themselves and their own cities. Likewise, we should never try to “save” whole false religious institutions, but stay within the “city” of God’s kingdom, to build it up and defend it well.
The one true church of Israel, the “city” or kingdom of God, is not an institution or organization ruled by human gods, like the false churches. All in the true church of Israel are personally chosen and called by Jesus, who remains the one and only Head of each individual. And Jesus ordained that false churches would rise up, in order to teach His elect siblings that spiritual and moral truths are extremely important regarding all matters of life and faith, so we do not ignore, nullify or distort any of those truths, lest we destroy ourselves and our loved ones. But, since Jesus willed false churches to exist for a time on this temporary earth, it is utterly impossible for Him to save the false churches while He is willing them to exist. Since He gave those false churches over to Satan, to be that devil’s property, because its people did not love the truth, He is not going to go back on His word and steal those fake churches back from Satan. Rather, He is going to let those false churches partake in the fate of Satan’s entire world order, and fall to complete and utter annihilation on the day of His return.
Jesus stands by His words. So fake churches will always remain the property of Satan and the world order, to be deluded by that devil forever in hell. Jesus is only willing to save one elect individual at a time from those cults, is only willing to free one enslaved elect soul at a time from those deceivers.
And Jesus will never save an entire false church through the influence of its “leaders.” Thus, we trust Jesus’ Holy Spirit to awaken individual elect spirits and make His truths effectual in saving them.
Then we also trust Him to make us and our works sufficient, so we might do His works in His name, for all those broken souls whom He brings into our lives, whom He also calls us to personally love.
His Universal Mission Statement
Jesus defined the works He requires for our missions, the duties of all His faithful spiritually mature disciples whom He chooses to send out: “Now, while walking about, you people continuously make public announcements saying that the kingdom of the heavens has already approached and is currently producing ongoing effects. Heal the infirmed. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. Cast out demonic spirits. You people freely obtained. Freely give!” (Mat. 10:7-8, from: πορευόμενοι δὲ
κηρύσσετε λέγοντες ὅτι Ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. ἀσθενοῦντας θεραπεύετε, νεκροὺς
ἐγείρετε, λεπροὺς καθαρίζετε, δαιμόνια ἐκβάλλετε· δωρεὰν ἐλάβετε, δωρεὰν δότε, SBLGNT).
Here we see how most versions of the Bible translate ἤγγικεν, which is a perfect indicative form of ἐγγίζω (“approach, draw near, be at hand”), as though it were in the present tense (“is at hand”). And they do this for two reasons: (1) This verb was in a command given to His twelve assistant teachers at the time He sent them out to publicly herald the message of His salvation. It was made at the time they were to proclaim the Gospel about the Messiah’s arrival, as He was establishing and ratifying Page 710
His New Covenant relationship with His church of Israel. And, since this New Covenant salvation had not yet been ratified by the Messiah’s blood on the cross at this time, most translators think He must have meant that it “is at hand.” (2) The other reason for the present-tense translation is that English translators find it difficult to interpret the Greek language in ways that clearly distinguish between (a) past actions with unspecified effects or results, which the Greek aorist tense indicates, (b) past actions with unspecified current actions continuing, being repeated or beginning, which its imperfect tense indicates, and (c) past completed actions with specific current and ongoing effects or results, that are specified by the context or in the clause, which the Greek perfect tense indicates. So, in their confusion, English interpreters will often ignore the implications of the Greek perfect tense.
But, in this mission statement, which Jesus forever defined for His New Covenant priesthood of Israel, He intentionally used a perfect tense in order to indicate the way in which we are to publicly proclaim, herald or announce His salvation message. And that perfect-tense verb’s meaning was more like this: “The kingdom of the heavens has already approached and is c urrently producing ongoing effects [of God’s salvation according to His New Covenant promises for Israel].” Here Jesus intentionally used the perfect tense form of ἐγγίζω to indicate that a past event was now producing ongoing effects or results. Also, Jesus here referred to the kingdom of the “heavens” (plural), not to the kingdom of “heaven” (singular). That is, Jesus referred to the whole of God’s kingdom—all His power and authority over the entire earth, throughout the entire universe, and throughout His eternal, holy, spiritual space-time continuum. All His kingdom had already approached Israel. All of it was standing by and would remain ready to do God’s saving works for His priesthood until the earth ended. That is, those current ongoing effects remain to this day, but His kingdom was already busy producing effects even then. God had already worked His spiritual and physical salvation for His elect children on earth, and was now causing His earth, His material universe and His heaven above to serve them in ways that were saving their souls from a forced slavery to lies, delusions and sins.
When we look at all God had done from the day He created an elect human spirit in Adam, all His works leading up to His fulfillment of His New Covenant promise to personally teach and train His elect until they too could do His works on earth, we simply need to interpret this perfect-tense verb in this way. Jesus was not really saying that His kingdom was about to approach or draw near to His church. He was actually saying that He, their High King. High Priest, Messiah and God had already come to them, that He was now walking among them, and that He was already working to establish His New Covenant relationship with Israel. Therefore, even as His people were hearing this message about His kingdom, they would also be seeing current and ongoing good effects and results of His New Covenant kingdom having drawn near in the past. On earth, they would now see the physical, emotional and spiritual healings of broken souls, even the raising of the dead in body and spirit. And now the material universe itself (the sun, moon and stars) would not fail to do the works commanded in the Messiah’s name (through His will, commands and authority). Then these twelve elect, called to serve as His priesthood upon the earth, would also see the entire eternal spiritual realm of heaven respond to their words and deeds, as it was predestined from the beginning of time. All that existed was near their hearts and hands, waiting and ready to serve their Owner for the sakes of His servants.
Now this is the highest priority of the New Covenant branch of the church of Israel, set forever in this mission statement declared by our High Priest, King and Great Prophet, who is the Head of all, our final authority in all matters of life and faith. The promised Messiah, the Saviour of all the elect who have ever lived on earth and all who ever will live on earth, commanded us to “continuously make public announcements saying that the kingdom of the heavens has already approached and is currently producing ongoing effects.” And now His kingdom not only has arrived, but also has been Page 711
ratified in full, by His own body’s blood. So now we remember that the New Covenant was God’s promise to personally cause us to effectively fulfill all His symbolic and moral laws that He wrote to reveal His loving ways to His priesthood established through Abraham, all He wrote during His Old Covenant relationship with Israel. Then, fulfilling His Law in us will also enable us to fulfill these commands too: “Heal the infirmed. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. Cast out demonic spirits.”
When we go out in His name, to speak and do works according to His will, and with His power working through us, we can accomplish all this. Naturally, He does not always want us to do all our works through miracles. Most often He commands us to do our works the hard way, through difficult physical care and long personal conversations, since those kinds of works build our relationships and teach our spirits to be more like Him. He calls some to be physicians, nurses and caregivers, who will heal in His name. Or He calls some to be other kinds of servants, who take the time to listen and understand those whom He wants them to love and heal inwardly. In fact, Jesus calls His people to do every kind of lawful work for the benefit of others, and every good occupation can be the calling of God. But make no mistake, Jesus also bears the authority to do miracles through each and every true church member as well, no matter how common or lowly that one may be in the eyes of Satan’s world order. And, above all, our God Jesus wants us to utter whatever He commands our spirits to say. That is, He urgently calls us to prophesy, to reveal the truths that He commands our spirits to utter in His name, truths that evaporate delusions and expose lies, both for individuals and for groups of His elect children—to rend their hearts, to direct and inform their spirits through a full disclosure of obscured or hidden realities they desperately need to know. Yet all the other works, whether they are miracles worked by His power or simply good works of our own hands, are desperately needed by His people on earth at all times as well. So it would be criminal negligence to not do those works.
Jesus’ mission statement forever defined the ultimate goals of the true New Covenant branch of His church. Consequently, if any body of people might claim to be a “Christian” church, but they do not place their entire focus on fulfilling this mission statement, which was established for all time by the one and only Head of the true New Covenant branch of Israel, then that body is making a false claim and is clearly a false church. If a church teaches doctrines such as cessationism, and they think that God no longer needs to work miracles for His people, because those miracles were nothing but His loveless and impersonal magic tricks, then also declares that He no longer grants soul-rendering and saving prophecies either, they directly oppose this eternal mission statement which Jesus gave to His church. Worse yet, some suppress the good works that Jesus commanded His church to do, and are actually working for Satan, not God. If a church prevents the infirmed from being healed by either human hands or God’s miracles, if they destroy human lives instead of raising them up into spiritual and physical life, and if they promote hierarchies which designate some of their own brothers and sisters in His human family to be “unclean,” instead of cleansing those they deem to be lepers, they are definitely a false church and do not know the real Jesus. They are not in the true Israel of Christ.
Furthermore, all governments also must fulfill the physical works of this mission statement, since God’s Word states “they are ministering servants of God” (λειτουργοὶ ... θεοῦ εἰσιν, Rom. 13:6), just like the members of His true church of Israel. Thus, they too are obligated to do good works within His property of this entire planet, for the good of all in the family of humankind (see Rom. 13:1-7).
God gave us many teachings about governments, and many examples of what He condones or else condemns in governments. So God clearly expects every government to be His appointed servants, to become a blessing for His faithful elect and a curse to lawless ones—although only regarding matters pertaining to His “natural laws,” that is, regarding the physical responsibilities that their people bear for one another and for God’s natural creations. Then His Law commanded the people of Page 712
every land to choose all of their own decision-making authorities in their land, and to elect only the ones whom God has chosen to serve them. Thus, just like His true church, a faithful government of a land must serve the needy and do good works. It must even “heal the infirmed,” such as by providing health care for all. God fully obligated all governments to do just, wise and beneficial works for their people, just as His true church does, although He only holds His governments responsible for the physical aspects of those works, with a separation of spiritual works by His church and physical works by His governments. Governments only need to fulfill and enforce God’s natural laws (that is, those represented by the last six of the archetypal Ten Commandments), and are not required to proclaim the Gospel or to do miracles in His name. His Law only lets His priesthood exegete and enforce spiritual laws of worship and proclaim the Gospel of His spiritual salvation in Jesus Christ.
Then there was that last part of His mission statement, the part which most clearly delineates a true church from a false church. Using an imperative mode of the verb, Jesus commanded: “Freely give.”
And, just before commanding this, He also gave us the reason for doing so. That is, He said that we must “freely give” all things, to all whom He calls us to serve, because we have all “freely obtained”
literally everything. Thus, all we possess and all we know must be held in stewardship for Him and for His purposes alone. Our very existence is a free gift from Him. Our flesh, souls and spirits are His creations and belong to Him. Everything we know or will learn is a result of Him allowing us to live and experience life. Therefore, since our God Jesus allows our spirits to love and live in bodies of flesh, which He owns and will soon take away from us, we freely apply our spirits’ love through the use of our souls and flesh. For we owe Him all we can possibly produce throughout our lives.
Although God gave all this to us through pure grace alone, without expecting any kind of payment or obligation in return, our true just love for the One who freely gave all still wants to reciprocate those unearned and unmerited gifts through our own love for His other children and His other creations.
As surely as Satanic hate seeks revenge against any perceived offender, godly love seeks benefits for anyone who can potentially do good in service to God’s kingdom, including repentant criminals who have stolen the property over which God had granted us stewardship. Literally all elect inherently possess an ability to love in a God-like, just way. So all the elect can only find the full gratification of their spirits’ innate love if they faithfully and freely give to the One who freely gave them life and all else. And, since God Himself only ever desires to lovingly serve His creations, especially His beloved elect children, and He never selfishly serves Himself, our love, in this same way, freely gives His free gifts that He selflessly gave us through His love for us. We must do nothing for our own personal gain, nothing for money, but freely serve His creations through love, just as He does.
This is an eternal command for His church, to “freely give.” We must give through the grace of just and God-like love, to those who do not merit nor earn those gifts. In the way God gives, we all must give. Now God also takes away, both possessions and life, sometimes because of sins, but also in order to teach and train spirits to love unconditionally. So this means that we must also freely do the works of nullifying the works of the devil and his offspring, for the sakes of the innocent, both for His human and animal creations. For His kind of love works His kind of equitable justice as well, so the people will love responsibly, and not promote sin. But, in all that we freely provide for all, there is no hint of an elite using money to enslave and control the behaviours of the people for their own benefit, so those elite can pretend to be pagan-like gods whose whims are served by all. Rather, in God’s religious, political and economic system, there actually is no need for money at all, since the distribution of goods and services must be based on the needs of individual entities, not upon the whims of an elite. For, according to Jesus, all church and government systems must freely give all.
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So, if we own a tiny patch of ground, while God owns our bodies, souls and spirits, then it is really God who owns that ground, not us. For God created that ground and us, then gave us the opportunity and circumstance to be recognized as the stewards of that patch of ground. Also, God grants us all of our governing bodies, whom He also owns, and commanded them to serve us, and to protect our rights to responsible stewardship. Thus, God also grants His governing bodies a right to take away our stewardship from us, at any time, if they need to do so for the good of all, and if they also ensure that this right is exercised justly, with care for those whom they remove that stewardship. For they serve a just and loving God, and certainly God, who owns all, has the final and indisputable right to take away our stewardship at any time, even the right to remove our lives from our bodies, if it is done to serve God and His equitable, just and loving purposes. In fact, God assured each and every one of us that He only granted us a temporary stewardship of our bodies, which also means that we can only receive a temporary stewardship of any earthly things that our temporary flesh might claim to own. For the dead cannot own anything. Rather, God’s earth reclaims the bodies of the dead, and transforms those bodies back into dust. Thus, it is only through grace that God and His servants in governing bodies allow things like the rights of dependants to inherit some or all of the property of the dead. Yet we must still remember that all of that property actually belongs to God alone, and our dependants have no more right to that property than anyone else. So, if that property was acquired through any means that God calls immoral or illicit, such as through usury, a government can seize it from the inheritors. For all the rights that anyone claims must come through the just, responsible love and will of God. We must account for this in all we say and do, and freely give to all real needs.
We must understand life, both the spiritual and physical realities surrounding us. In reality, all energy and every atom is God’s power transformed, in order to temporarily produce it at a subatomic level.
And all life is activated and maintained by spirits made by God. Every blade of grass lives by God’s will and continuous power maintaining that life through some kind of spirit or spirits. Every ant or elephant, cat or dog, chicken or cow, minnow or whale, humming bird or ostrich lives according to God-given attributes of flesh and through a life-giving spirit which God has created and owns. So absolutely nothing can actually be owned, with any absolute control over its fate, by any human being, nor by any other entity. Only pagan religions, such as Greco-Roman humanism and other ancient enslaving cults, believe in private ownership. Only Satan’s offspring dare to exalt human beings to the status of gods, where their human authorities grant an elite few the right to do whatever they want with their siblings and God’s other creations. However, in this created reality that we exist within and die within, it is evident that every human being bears a duty to use all for the express will of one’s own Creator and Owner, and has absolutely no right to use anything for one’s own purposes.
God laid out the entire earth before human beings. So He has provided for all of us, and for all His other creations. It is only the sins of men which cause inequities, as well as punishments from God Himself. But, God still faithfully and freely gives all to all, regardless of merit, whether or not any human recipients of His grace might inwardly choose to delude themselves into believing they have earned all that they steal from God and from His other creations. Therefore, since God freely gave us all, His true priesthood freely gives all too, through grace for those who do not merit nor earn their gifts. Then those who are aware of these realities also remember that God ordained that His future wrath will fall upon the whole earth, against all the humanistic concepts of class, elitism, privilege, god-like ownership, racism and bigotry, against any discrimination according to superficial cultural criteria, against all dehumanization and denigration through slander, bullying or exploitation, against all the delusional demands which the thieves of life make, in order to be esteemed above all others.
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Therefore, all true disciples of Jesus also war against all such concepts, and give all humbly and freely to all. For we know literally all human beings, including ourselves, have only ever earned the sentence of eternal hell. All of us are merely wretched, pathetic, selfish, loveless fools. So the most that anyone can boast about is one’s hope in God to teach and train one’s elect spirit to be more like Jesus. Consequently, if God freely grants abundance to sinners like us, even with the inner joy of being able love and be loved, then we too must freely provide for other sinners who lack necessities, and always strive to give personally, through our own loving, godly wisdom and grace. For we know we can own absolutely nothing. So we cannot demand repayment from one who cannot pay, and cannot inflict any physical or spiritual obligations for merely receiving Christ’s property through us.
Every true church freely gives its God-given gifts to all, although God sets priorities on what each gives and to whom each gives it—since He wants us to give wisely, according to His will. You will never see any true Christian church ever charge money or obligate souls to work for any service or gift they offer. A true church freely gives all kinds of knowledge and wisdom needed for life and faith, including Bibles, biblical teachings at every level, training for all kinds of lawful and godly occupations in their schools, colleges, seminaries or universities, as well as reference books. A true church also freely provides housing, food, drink, clothing, tools and other physical needs for anyone who needs them, without placing any of the recipients under any kind of obligation, except to respect the rights and needs of other souls too. You will never see a true church charge for a church service, fellowship meal or seminar. For Jesus teaches all true churches to freely offer every service or gift whenever He calls them to offer it, since He has granted them all the people, skills, equipment and resources needed to freely offer that service or gift. So every true church either works collectively to obtain necessary logistics, or receives them as free gifts from members who have been granted more than they need for their own godly, modest lives. This also means that true churches never require its people to tithe. It only accepts what is freely given, and teaches each to give according to one’s own ability. Then a true church never highly esteems nor gives special treatment to members who donate more money or material gifts than others. For money is a Satanic invention used to manipulate souls in Satan’s world order, and can only be used by a true believer when he or she needs to interface with the captives of that devil’s kingdom. Thus, giving money to the church is the least of all gifts.
But, as we freely do good works for others and give free gifts, the Holy Spirit of Jesus always sets the order of priority regarding whom the church should focus upon serving. And God has always commanded this priority throughout history. First He wants us to provide for the needs of our own families, yet only their real needs, that is, only what they require for a modest life of serving God and His creations through a spiritually and physically healthy existence. So each must freely give, to the best of his or her ability, the food, clothing, housing and all that one’s spouse and children need for their lives and works on earth. Next, the family of the church must provide for the needs of all in their extended family, including all the awakened elect siblings in His true worldwide church family.
After this, to the best of our ability, we must provide for the needs of all the unawakened elect now held captive in false religions, all who remain able to justly and responsibly love their siblings in the family of humankind. Then, lastly, we must even provide for the needs of God’s enemies, for all the lawless elect and loveless non-elect. For, in God’s economy, literally all creatures have a right to the life He granted them. Then the method in which God maintains this orderly distribution of free gifts is personal. That is, the Holy Spirit of Jesus calls each individual elect spirit to focus a little more on one particular kind of need, and to work in ways which provide for that need. Each is granted one’s own unique ministry and calling. Then, collectively, the priesthood of His church, by each member of His priesthood freely offering an individual array of skills, abilities, propensities and spiritual gifts Page 715
of service, so each might serve Him in the kinds of works that He predestined each to perform in heaven above, all will be served equitably and justly. For God Himself balances the kinds of works that each individual spirit longs to do and joyfully does through love. Thus, individual works put together serve God’s creations according to the same priorities that He set for the collective giving of free gifts. That is, God’s ministerial gifts are divinely prioritized works of service, which will first provide for the spiritual needs of His true church, then for their physical needs, then for the needs of the unawakened elect, and lastly for the needs of the lawless non-elect. Now humanists like to claim that all this must be accomplished through a hierarchy of esteemed authorities in His church. But, actually, the opposite is true. For those with the “greater” gifts behave like slaves serving the others.
Paul, an elect believer to whom granted the gift of true prophecy and an ability to rightly know and teach God’s Word, once told us, through the Holy Spirit of Jesus: “Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. G
od has set some in the assembly : first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracle workers, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, and various kinds of languages” (I Cor. 12:27-28, WEB). Clearly, this list of ministries, which God’s servants were to freely provide for all, are listed here in the order of God’s priorities, to provide for the needs of all His people and all His other creations. And God’s most urgent work was to teach the truth, genuine knowledge and wisdom coming from His own Holy Spirit. So the first and foremost free gifts that He grants His priesthood of His church are His truths. And His church receives this truth through God’s appointed teachers of right and biblically sound doctrines, and through the words which He commands the spirits of His prophets to utter according to His will. For all the other works of the church depend upon this truth and this wisdom from God. If the church does not receive this truth and wisdom from God, they cannot grow in that truth, to do right works for God, with the wisdom to apply His truths in right ways for the right people at the right times. Then Satan would confuse them and cause them to do wrong works for the wrong people at the wrong times, causing them to serve him instead of God, and become false churches belonging to that devil’s evil and unjust world order.
After this, God’s elect desperately need miracles worked through His almighty power, for a complete redemption of their broken lives. For none of the infantile spirits of God’s elect children are ever capable of protecting themselves from the destruction of demonic spirits and Satan’s children. Nor do His children possess the power required to entirely restore and rebuild what has been wilfully damaged by the devil and his minions. So God’s authority and power is needed to defeat evil and to redeem all that might be lost. Then one of the most commonly needed kinds of miracles involves the healing of broken bodies and minds. But even with miracles, a church must do good physical works that “help” other souls, that provide needs of the flesh, while teaching those spirits to love in wise and effective ways. Doing daily physical tasks of teaching and helping others are the most fruitful in terms of His teaching and training of His servants’ spirits, which is why He wants them to do them.
If we want to learn to love Jesus and His creations, if we want to build mature elect spirits—so our spirits can truly comprehend the genuine teachings and prophecies from God—we will also need to partake in His training exercises, by doing good works through the use of our bodies and minds of flesh. And these physical works also must be physically organized and supplied with the necessary physical equipment and resources. So these physical works need workers who are gifted, educated and trained to provide them, as well as wise and loving organizational and management services.
And, since they are physical works done through the love of elect spirits, God will provide our spirits with the required education and training to love in His just and wise ways, but He will also send human beings to provide the education and training of our bodies and minds of flesh, adept instructors with knowledge and wisdom acquired through their own education and vast experience.
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Thus, God calls His some of His humble, honest, wise and loving older children to sacrificially serve Him by labouring in education, training, administration and “government.” And notice how this Scripture lists these particular servants near the end, how it mentions the ministry of “governments”
(κυβερνήσεις) after the ministry of “helps” (ἀντιλήμψεις). For all the organizers and managers are to humbly serve the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of those who do the actual helping through the sacrifice of their time and pains of their labours. God’s calling to govern, administer or manage is actually a more lowly task, not a more highly esteemed position, because a greater skill in both love and the technical requirements of each physical task are required by those actually performing them.
So a truly godly governing, managing and organizing person is the servant of those workers being organized, and must make even greater sacrifices for them, with more patience through love, just as Jesus did for His disciples. And the one serving in the ministry of “governments” can never be the
“head” of those whom God calls to actually do the works. For Jesus always remains the Head of all.
Then the very last kind of worker in a church is one to whom God grants the ability to spontaneously speak in tongues, in a foreign and unknown language. For the main reason God causes a spirit to speak in an unknown language, through one’s mind and body of flesh, is so that one’s spirit can hide the meaning of the words it is uttering through that unknown language. God lets a spirit more freely express itself through the flesh, even when one’s mind of flesh is too weak and too brainwashed by the world order to accept the truths spoken by its spirit. This gift is for the elect when their flesh habitually opposes what their spirits want to say. Of course, every elect soul has a mind of flesh that fears some truths that one’s spirit wants to utter to God or to His people. But the more an elect spirit matures in Christ Jesus, the more control that spirit gains over its own flesh. So, as elect spirits will mature, they speak in tongues less often. However, a mind of flesh still finds it to be very difficult to utter the complex spiritual concepts and questions of its spirit to God, then struggles to honestly and accurately express them in one’s own native language. Also, the mind of flesh often becomes totally distracted while it is trying to find the right words. So, even as a very mature elect spirit is praying to God, it may speak in tongues, so the spirit can speak without any interference from its mind of flesh.
Thus, a true church consists of many very different kinds of people with very different callings into very different kinds of ministries. And each individual’s kind of work for God truly fulfills what is lacking in the lives of his or her siblings in the church. So each one’s works enable other elect spirits to do what each truly longs to do, allowing each to fulfill one’s own God-given destiny in pure joy.
Yet all members remain equal before God, and are constantly humbled by God, where Jesus causes each to remain dependent on Him and one another. For each one’s calling, abilities and resources all come from Him and through His various kinds of servants, leaving none with anything to truly boast about, since nothing anyone ever possesses is acquired through their own wills, works or wisdom.
All of our own spirits, souls, bodies, wills, strength, knowledge, wisdom, skills and resources have originated from God, and all of the circumstances that allow us to do all we do are freely granted by God, either directly or through His other servants. It was even God who created each spirit with an innate desire to fulfill one’s own particular calling, to work for Him in a certain way during one’s life on earth. Then God freely gives each one a particular calling, along with all the necessary aptitudes, desires, teachings, training and resources to fulfill that calling. Through God’s direct and personal teaching and training of each individual elect spirit, as well as through His power over all time and space in a way that controls and directs all the works of His other children, He provides all we need, so we can do all that we do. And God freely gives all this to His children, with the express purpose of teaching and training their spirits to become ever more like His Spirit. And, as His children become more like Jesus, they too will freely give all that He calls them to give. Since God uses us, all of His Page 717
elect children whom He is teaching and training to give His free gifts to His other elect children, we are not like the people of Satan’s world order, and do not give with strings attached, do not expect to receive anything in return for God’s property that we give to others. For, logically, God cannot give His free, unmerited, unearned gifts through His servants unless He commands His servants to give all He calls them to give freely as well. It is impossible for God to do His works through His elect children if they demand payment for their works, since God does all His works freely through grace.
Then some false Christians have asked: “How can God’s servants survive if they are not paid with Satan’s invention of money?” And some elect actually believe this distracting false reasoning. Yet it is a misleading and cunningly presumptuous question. For, to even ask this question, one must first assume that God’s people must live by the ways of Satan’s world order, not by the ways of God’s own holy and just kingdom. It assumes that Satan’s invention of money is the primary consideration in all our decisions and works. However, the only reason the devil created money was to maintain his hierarchical class systems, so that his elite could control the lives of oppressed souls. Now let us remember that no money existed on the day God breathed a spirit into Adam and into Eve, when God created the first spirits on earth that were formed from His essence and made in His image. And, from that day on, there have always been elect souls who formed societies and cultures without any form of currency, equitable and just places that forbade slavery. Yet Satan’s children came to enslave their siblings in mankind, to unjustly rule their people through terrorism for their own personal gain.
And it was those slave societies who created currencies and financial systems, not God. And the war between these two kinds of societies has been raging for millenniums, for thousands of years before Jesus brought us His New Covenant salvation. Let us understand this, that neither God’s kingdom on earth nor His kingdom in heaven have ever functioned through the tyranny of money. Nor has God ever bowed to the demon Mammon, who administers the distribution of all things for his lord, Satan.
When God created the earth and all that is upon it, He provided completely free access to all that was upon it. All human beings and all His other creations could roam wherever they willed and take any food they desired from God’s land. God’s only requirement was that each creature must take only what was personally needed and desired, then leave the rest for all the others. Then some creatures specialized in certain kinds of works, where each of those works provided something of value for the earth and for other creatures, some service producing some product which could be freely shared with all. Humans planted crops or fruit trees in the places they frequented, which other creatures also benefited from. Birds dropped seeds to sow good crops far and wide. Grazing animals trampled the dead grass into matting which held in the moisture and rotted into fertilizer for the next year’s crop of grass, then further fertilized the fields with their excrements and nitrogen-rich urine, so the land would not dry out, grow infertile and become a desert. And, even to this day, the whole of God’s natural creation still functions according to these principles established by God, where each and every creation supports, restores and benefits all His life in His kingdom. Only corrupted humans do not do works according to God’s principles, then confound and corrupt the balance of the natural world that God wisely created. Only human sinners, eager for money, destroy this planet’s balance.
Therefore, when our God Jesus established His New Covenant priesthood, to minister to the whole earth in His name, He forbade the practice of the economic systems devised by Satan’s world order, and reestablished the principles of the distribution of all resources through His true church according to the principles He created in the beginning, and has always maintained since then. He commanded His priesthood of the true church to forever “freely give” all things to all. Each priest is to freely give according to one’s own personal God-given abilities. Each must freely give whatever God calls one to produce through the free gifts He has provided for that one, freely sharing all that one does not Page 718
personally need with all in the church and all in the world. Each individual’s excess also must be governed or administered according to God’s priorities, according to His wise will, through those He calls to manage each of those critical resources. Therefore, every true church functions in this way:
“For if the readiness is there, [a gift] is acceptable according to what you have, not according to what you don’t have. For this is not that others may be eased and you distressed, but for
equality. Your abundance at this present time supplies their lack, that their abundance also may become a supply for your lack; that there may be equality” (II Cor. 8:12-14, WEB).
Every apostolic true church, established by Jesus through His Holy Spirit after the Pentecost, was operating under these principles. So did His first church in Jerusalem: “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and prayer. Fear came on every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together, and had all things in common. They sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them to all, according as anyone had need. Day by day, continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. The Lord added to the assembly day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47, WEB). This way of life was natural, ordained by God from the very beginning of time. And, because it was based on the teachings of God’s Word for His priesthood of His true church, it was not an economic system centred solely on the controlling power of money, nothing like the Satanic system of communism. Rather, all was worked by the love of elect spirits.
After a deep respect for God entered every soul, which is called “the fear of God,” not only did God work “many wonders and signs” for them, through the servants He sent to them, but they also “had all things in common,” so that none lacked any necessities. To accomplish all this, we are told, in the rest of the Book of Acts, that many sold superfluous possessions and goods, then distributed what they received from those sales “to all, according as anyone had need.” This distribution was adeptly managed through deacons, to whom God gave the gift of “government” or “administration,” and all was freely given to both church members and non-believers, to “anyone” in need. Then many souls were called to “help” the needy, to do the actual work of distributing resources through wise and just love for the people. Also, some houses, lands and goods were not sold, but given to the church and used to provide housing, places for meeting and teaching, gardens to grow food and so on. This kind of life, where all had all they needed, brought all “gladness and singleness of heart,” where every elect spirit praised God every day. For those whose spirits longed to do good works for others now had the time and resources to do those good works, and there is nothing in life which brings joy to an elect heart than one’s own satisfying, good, effective works for God and for loved ones. Then, since they obeyed God, by freely giving all their teachings, goods or services, God, not cunning devices of men, added true elect souls to their true church every day. However, all this love, joy and peace with God was lost after those churches syncretized the doctrines of humanism with the teachings of the apostles. After Greco-Roman humanism, which included the adoption of hierarchical and financial systems, corrupted the church, and human gods usurped the rule of Christ, none remained truly free.
Now the time of God’s wrath against all the injustice, lies and arrogance of Satan’s world order, and all the sinful human gods within it, is about to be released everywhere on earth. But first God will also revive His true church once again, even in a way that will outshine those apostolic churches of the first century. Then we shall once more heed Christ’s urgent exhortation to “freely give” all to all.
And this revived church will not give their goods and services in the ways of Satan’s world order. It will not force giving and coerce sacrifices from enslaved minions, as the humanistic systems do when they try to practice “sharing all things in common,” in systems such as Communism and other Page 719
exploitative cults that worship human gods. For the devil’s subject kingdoms of sinners in his world order only share lies and give away physical necessities with strings attached, while seeking to gain more power and control over enslaved lives, striving to profit from every crumb of stale bread they
“freely” give. For all servants of the devil want to be gods ruling over victims, and never desire real equality. Thus, all the “good works” done through their evil systems are actually done for the benefit of those elite human gods, where only unwanted scraps are thrown to the minions who do the actual works. But God commands the opposite in every true local church. Literally all goods and services, including all available knowledge and wisdom, must be shared in common with all, and for the good of all, equally. And this means that the “greatest” within the church must sacrificially give and serve more than all the others, even if they need to live humbly upon mere scraps rejected by all the others.
God’s command to freely share literally “all things” has never been an “economic system,” since His way of life has nothing to do with money, except when money is necessary to interface with Satan’s world order, to peacefully transfer physical property, goods and services out from the world order and back into God’s kingdom, where it belongs. Rather, God’s loving system of sharing all things in common entirely revolves around a just and equitable distribution of physical and spiritual goods and services, all freely given by God, granted directly by His Holy Spirit or indirectly through His natural creations. And all honest, humble, wise and loving souls whom God calls and equips to distribute all His tangibles and intangibles, for the particular and unique needs of all (that is, those elect whom He appoints to govern or administer this distribution), can do all this without the use of money, just as they have done throughout most of the earth’s history. In reality, we need no money to distribute what is needed, except when we must interface with Satan’s world order. There is nothing in God’s creation that prevents a free distribution of goods and services, and every obstacle to a just and equitable distribution of necessary goods and services comes only from Satan and his children.
Unless members of a true church first “freely obtain” all the knowledge, wisdom, skills, equipment and resources they need to do the works that Jesus calls each of them to do, that church cannot truly serve Jesus as His living body on earth. So let every true church obey their Owner’s command to
“freely give,” since their entire mission is impossible to achieve unless their church “freely gives” all that is necessary to fulfill His mission statement. God and His servants begin to fulfill their mission for His eternal church by “freely giving” each member whatever each needs for life and work, before their church can effectively complete all of the other aspects of God’s mission according to His will.
Now, if His priesthood does not “freely give” biblically true teachings, then who will “continuously make public announcements saying that the kingdom of the heavens has already approached and is currently producing ongoing effects”? If the people do not possess a true knowledge about Jesus, none will rightly pray to the real Jesus. And, if none rightly pray, directly from their spirits to Jesus, none of their spirits will recognize His voice when He speaks. So Jesus, our God, will not be able to teach and train their spirits, and His power will not do His works through their uncooperative spirits.
Thus, He will not be able to do what He promised in His New Covenant, to save them by personally teaching their spirits, nor work through them to “heal the infirmed, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, or cast out demonic spirits.” Consequently, it is essential for us all to “freely give” all to all others.
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Mat. 10:9-15, Live as a Priest
Mat. 10:9-15,
Live as a Priest
“Don’t take any gold, nor silver, nor brass in your money belts. Take no bag for your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staff: for the laborer is worthy of his food. Into whatever city or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy; and stay there until you go on.
“As you enter into the household, greet it. If the household is worthy, let your peace come on it, but if it isn’t worthy, let your peace return to you. Whoever doesn’t receive you, nor hear your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake off the dust from your feet. Most certainly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city” (Mat. 10:9-15, WEB).
We Serve Jesus as His Priesthood
By telling His twelve disciples to rely on God’s providence granted through His church of Israel, Jesus obviously wanted them to follow the Old Covenant laws governing the Levitical priesthood.
Of course, from the beginning, God intended Israel to be His priesthood serving the whole world in His name, “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation,” His “own possession from among all peoples”
upon His blue planet (Ex. 19:5-6). And He established the Levitical priesthood within His priesthood of Israel as a sort of prophecy about His New Covenant branch of Israel, about the days when He would fulfill His Law in and through Israel, so all would then live within His Sabbath rest, even all seven days of the week, throughout their lives on earth. So these twelve had to be like the Levitical priests who served His priesthood of Israel, since Jesus was now establishing a new branch of Israel.
Jesus was now sending these twelve teaching assistants as elders of His New Covenant church, to teach and judge the rest of His priesthood, to help His eternal church serve the rest of the world in God’s just and loving way, to do His works in His name for all His living creations upon His earth.
Thus, like the Levitical priests, they too had to rely on God for all their needs, on the compassion which He would stir up in His people. These twelve had to fulfill the laws governing the Levitical priesthood. All His other disciples, as members of His New Covenant sect of Israel, had to provide for the needs of these apostles, because He sent them out on His missions, just as He commanded all the people in His Old Covenant priesthood of Israel to provide for the needs of the Levites. And His New Covenant branch of Israel was to provide them spontaneously, straight from the love that God put in their hearts, as He taught them to fulfill His Law. Thus, nothing in the New or Old Covenant Scriptures has ever nullified God’s command to care for the needs of true priests who faithfully and spontaneously serve God, as these twelve did, without any letters of ordination from any governing authorities in Israel—although many deceivers try to nullify Jesus’ command, and twist its meaning, by telling us that a church must only support officials chosen by human authorities, and not by God.
In Old Covenant times, God appointed the Levites to directly and personally serve Him, to spend their entire lives labouring as His hands and mouth for His priesthood of Israel. So the Levites were chosen by God, the good ones for His faithful Israel and the bad ones for unfaithful Israelites. Only by birth through God’s will, not by the election of men, these Levites were chosen. Then God’s Law for the Levites demanded that none must ever be distracted by being forced to labour for their own bread, nor by building up and maintaining an inheritance for their children. Instead, all Levites were to spend all the days of their lives devoted exclusively to the works of their Lord and God. All had to serve God’s creation in God’s name, every day of the week, in the same way that the rest of Israel had to serve God alone during His designated Sabbath days. Therefore, Old Covenant Levites, and Page 721
God’s laws pertaining to them, taught the way in which these twelve teaching disciples were to live while they personally and directly served Jesus, who is Yahweh God. Like the Levites, these twelve were sent out to do the works of building up, maintaining, cleaning, managing, guarding, beautifying and generally enhancing the lives of God’s people, sharing the wisdom and gifts of God with the rest of the priesthood of Israel. And they were to do all this as God’s body, as God’s hands and mouth on earth. Jesus, God’s body, was figuratively represented in Old Covenant times by God’s temple. So the Levites were the hands and mouth of that body, who served Israel and the entire world from the physical temple in Jerusalem was the central base of operations for all the Levites. So, from that temple. For the Levites uplifted, edified, taught, trained, counselled, rebuked, judged, protected and served the rest of God’s body, the priesthood of Israel, and the whole earth. But now God came in a body of flesh to Israel, to bring the reality of these Old Covenant symbols created for His church of Israel. Now our God Jesus sent out His twelve assistant teachers as the fulfilled Levitical priesthood.
Remember what God told us about the tribe of Levi: “At that time Yahweh set apart the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, to stand before Yahweh to minister to Him, and to bless in His name, to this day. Therefore Levi has no portion nor inheritance with his brothers; Yahweh is
his inheritance, according as Yahweh your God spoke to him” (Deut. 10:8-9, WEB). Technically, all the land of Israel and the entire planet belonged to God. Therefore, no one could own even a square inch of land, nor anything else upon the earth, not even one’s own body of flesh. However, God did grant most individuals a right to become personal stewards or managers of a piece of land, a place to call their home while living on earth. Then God also granted each the right to pass on that home to one’s children, and anything else that one held in stewardship for God. Yet God did not grant any Levite these rights. His inner priesthood of Levites, the symbols of His fulfilled New Covenant church, were forbidden to be personal stewards of any land or anything else of value, nothing they could leave as an inheritance to their children. Rather, the tribe of Levi had to work together, as one unit, for God alone, throughout their lives. They were to be the servants of all, just as God is the servant of all. Levites were to fulfill God’s Law, and become more like God Himself. Then God also appointed certain lands and cities to be used by all of Israel, to be shared in common by all, where this land could provide for the needs of the Levites, the poor and the destitute immigrants. And not even a square inch of these lands could ever be owned, managed or controlled by any individual. All these lands were to be what today’s churches would call “Satanic Communist” lands. For our holy, just and equitable God commanded His inner priesthood of faithful Levites to collectively work that land for the good of all, as responsible stewards over His lands and cities of loving, equitable justice.
The tribe of Levites, as God’s servants, as the mouth and hands of God’s body, were to collectively manage all of God’s common property, to farm and to build there, but only for the purposes of God, for the purpose of serving all the rest of Israel and God’s earth. Each Levite would have a home there, but not a home which was personally owned, for none possessed any right to personally manage any real estate or any other kind of property through selfish ambition or personal gain. A Levite had no home inherited from a human parent, no home he could personally pass on as an inheritance for his children. Yet all Levites always received a perfectly adequate and private home for themselves and their families, with uninterrupted food security and all the resources each could possibly need for whatever works God called each to do. Collectively, they ensured that none lacked anything. So they were to live in a democracy governed entirely by God alone, according to His will and His fulfilled, just, equitable Law, all interpreted through the spirit’s well-taught love for Him and for His people. Then all the decision-making authorities they chose had to be those whom God chose for them, where no one flawed by loveless evil and lawlessness could ever be allowed to remain Page 722
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among them. For all had to be of one mind and one purpose in God, all striving together as the one body of God, so that each individual could accomplish far more than one could in any other system.
But, since God allowed others in Israel to build up a personal estate, as a comfort for one’s family and as an inheritance for one’s children, all those others in the general priesthood of Israel had to provide for the Levites and for the works of the Levites. After all, God chose the Levites to care for them and their needy siblings, to guide and care for Israel in the name of their heavenly Father. The Levites were responsible for teaching and judging Israel, even its secular government, for ensuring that all the rulers and managers in the land maintained their social responsibilities, that all did just and loving works which maintained order and gave the people meaningful purpose and balance in their lives, so all might dwell in peace with God. This is why God commanded all the other tribes of Israel this law: “You shall not forsake the Levite who is within your gates, for he has no portion nor inheritance with you. At the end of every three years you shall bring all the tithe of your increase in the same year, and shall store it within your gates. The Levite, because he has no portion nor inheritance with you, and the foreigner living among you, and the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do” (Deut. 14:27-29, WEB). So the rest of Israel was to give more than a tenth of their total income to support the Levites and their ministry. And this gift, over and above the required tithe, came with an infallible promise of God, that God would bless the hands of those who gave it. But those who did not give this extra gift to the Levites, to the priesthood who cared for the needy, would not see the works of their hands blessed by God. Instead, those greedy souls, through all their “austerity measures,” would end up labouring for futility and never satisfied.
Levites were to use all tithes (a kind of tax) and gifts, along with whatever excess they had produced on their common lands, and use it for God’s just and loving works of compassion. This appointed inner priesthood of the general priesthood of Israel was to provide justice and physical needs for the widows, orphans and other needy souls within Israel, as well as for runaway slaves and refugees who fled to Israel without any means of support for themselves. Levites counselled, protected, defended, housed, fed, educated and loved the needy, became the surrogate parents of orphans and all the other children who lacked adequate care. And the Hebrew word for “widows” included all women who lacked a husband or father to provide for them and their children, all abandoned, divorced or single women, not just married women with deceased husbands. For, in those days, like today, women could seldom earn enough to provide for themselves, especially if they had children. Also, single parents could seldom cope with the stress of caring for their children and going to work all day, not without the support of the female and male Levites, who not only “babysat” and educated their children, but also kept them safe, since Levitical guards, functioned as a police force and Levitical judges administered justice according to the principles taught by God. Then many Levites were craftsmen who built the necessary housing and infrastructures, or were farmers who grew food for all, or were musicians and singers who inspired all. The Levites were all things for the good of all.
So God created the Levites to provide an example of loving care, without discrimination against the Gentile “strangers” or any other needy souls, an example which all the governments of all the lands on this earth were to follow. And their just, equitable, loving system of care, commanded by God’s Old Covenant Law, was never nullified. On the contrary, it was to be fulfilled and further expounded upon by the New Covenant church which our God Jesus formed, by His new “laws” and ways of life. That is, the Levitical teachers and guides of the lawmakers in the secular government of Israel, who set the standards for all the highest executive offices of their land, who ensured that God’s just, equitable and loving ways would provide justice and responsible freedoms for all, even for the many Page 723
Gentile “strangers” in their land, symbolized the true New Covenant branch of Israel whom God would send out into all the world. And this New Covenant church had to fulfill these same kinds of works in every land on earth. God commanded the Levites to teach even the highest ruler of their land about His ways, and had to use a method which required each ruler to write down God’s words with his own hand (Deut. 17:18-20). Levites dictated and explained God’s words to each ruler whom God chose for Israel. Therefore, Levites also judged every ruler’s ways, as well as the ways of all the other authorities under him. The Levitical teaching elders, and God’s prophets, were a check and balance for all powers and authorities in their land. Their councils functioned as the highest appeal court in the land, for all who were not satisfied with the judgments of lower courts. Levites were the internal affairs authority and ethics committee who investigated and corrected any abuses of power.
Then, since God alone was the High King and the only authoritative High Priest, all Levites could appeal to His authority. So the Levites not only “policed” their own internal authorities, but all authorities, even the secular authorities, through an equitable and loving application of God’s Law.
Thus, a ruler of Israel might bear a title like “king,” but could never be like any of the despotic kings in pagan lands. In Israel, Levites ensured that the word of a king could never become the “law” of the land. Rather, a king was to be a selfless servant of God and God’s people, what we might now call a prime minister or president who organized and managed secular affairs, including the Gentile tribes in God’s land of Israel (and, by the way, Israel’s kings were to provide complete freedom of religion and freedom of conscience for pagan Gentiles living in Israel, such as for the Hittites, who worshipped thousands of gods and practised sexual immorality of all kinds). And none of Israel’s kings were to think too highly of themselves, nor use their office for personal gain. For only the Levitical teaching elders and judges collectively remained the final human authority of the land, since they were God’s selfless mouth and hands, since they were never able to work for any kind of selfish ambition and always remained subject to the rule of God alone. Then God commanded His people to choose or elect secular authorities from those whom God had chosen for them, either from those whom God explicitly chose through prophecy, or from those who manifested clear evidence of being taught and trained by God to love in a just, equitable and truly biblical way. So Israel was to be what we would call a democracy, but where the Levites formed the highest judging authorities and maintained veto rights over all Israel’s other authorities, including their secular rulers. Thus, they were to be nation ruled by God’s rightly interpreted, just, equitable Law, not by men. And even their secular king possessed no right to interfere with God’s administration. A king did not even have the right to step beyond the public boundaries in God’s temple, since that temple was the heart of the Levitical priesthood’s administration. None had the right to interfere with the works of the Levites.
So there was to be a separation between the church and the secular state. Then, if the secular government became corrupt, God’s priesthood could replace it, through the application of God’s just, equitable will and Law. Likewise, if the priesthood became corrupt, the secular government could remove the corrupt from that priesthood, by imprisonment or even execution, because that secular government was granted the right to bear the sword of God, but by applying God’s natural laws. For the judges in the “Supreme Court” of Levites (especially the Aaronic priests who had proved to be the most adept teaching elders), could judge the secular authorities and other Levites, according to God’s Law, and punish anyone proving to be heretical or corrupt. Yet this “Supreme Court” could be judged by any faithful soul in God’s land of Israel, even by a little child, but most especially by God’s true prophets, if that common person could prove that a certain judge was not serving God faithfully, according to His Law and His teachings in the Bible. So a court of priests held the highest authority in the land, with the right to judge the entire secular government, including the king, to Page 724
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ensure they did all the necessary good works that God desired. However, each and every individual in the land ruled over the Supreme Court, and thus the king and all authorities in the land, through God’s Law and teachings. Of course, there were various kinds of teaching judges or authorities whom God allowed in Israel, consisting of both non-Levitical and Levitical teachers of His Word.
However, God commanded that every judge in their “Supreme Court” must be chosen from the most knowledgeable, wise, just and loving elders among the Levitical priests (Deut. 17:8-11), and serve Him alone, as one never allowed to possess an inheritance for himself or his children. Therefore, God’s Law also allowed any common person in Israel to unseat a judge from this “Supreme Court,”
by simply providing any kind of substantiated evidence that he had broken God’s Law in any way.
This is the system that Jesus came to initiate upon the earth, and He will complete the establishment of this New Covenant priesthood and system upon His return. This is what Jesus began when He was sending out these twelve disciples, and commanded them to function in their mission according to the ways of the Levites. For Jesus forbade these twelve from taking anything with them for their own providence, and forced them to rely upon the charity of others in God’s church of Israel, for literally all their needs, just as the Levites did. Then the twelve were to do God’s works, to teach the people and judge who was worthy, like the Levites did. So this means that Jesus was here indicating that His twelve disciples were to serve as priests for His eternal New Covenant priesthood of Israel, just as Levites served as priests for His Old Covenant priesthood of Israel. He called the twelve to serve Him by fulfilling His mission statement, just as Yahweh called the Levites to serve Him by fulfilling His sane mission for His church. Then almost all the disciples whom Jesus sent out did fulfill His command to live like the Levites, relying solely upon the providence of God, granted through His people. That is, all did so except Judas Iscariot, the “accountant” of Christ’s church at that time. For Judas Iscariot stole from the church funds, through greed and selfish ambition, to provide for his wants or needs (John 12:4-6). None but Judas lacked faith in our God Jesus and in His words. Only Jesus acted like so-called “Christians” do today. So only that one man was not a genuine disciple of Jesus, not a true member of His inner priesthood, because he did not give his life to serve God alone.
Of course, when Jesus later sent out His disciples on missions to foreign lands, where there were no true members of His church, they would take supplies, equipment, adequate clothing, money and whatever else they needed for their mission. But their home church provided those needs for those whom God sent out on foreign missions, just as the Levites did for their priests who had to travel to places outside of Israel. For, since those whom they served in Gentile lands did not yet belong to the church of Israel, those Gentiles felt no obligation to share anything with His priesthood. Still, even when Jesus sent some of disciples to serve in unbelieving lands, He and His faithful priesthood of His true church always provided all the money, food, clothing and equipment for those disciples.
To fully understand what Jesus was commanding here, and why He commanded it, we must realize that the Levites within the Old Covenant church of Israel, and the Aaronic priesthood in particular, symbolically represented what those twelve sent-out assistant teachers of Jesus were. Those twelve missionaries or “apostles” would become elders in the New Covenant priesthood, when their God, the Messiah, fulfilled His New Covenant promises for His church of Israel. In the days of Moses and God’s temporary Old Covenant with Israel, God called the Levites to be priests serving the greater priesthood of Israel. Then God called the descendants of one Levite, the heirs of a man named Aaron, to serve as His assistant teachers for the Levites, to help the Levites minister to the rest of Israel, regarding their more spiritual, educational and judicial needs. Therefore, among Christ’s priesthood of all His disciples, He also created a core priesthood of elder disciples who ministered to their more spiritual needs, an inner group of teaching and judging elders (called the apostles and Page 725
prophets), just like the Aaronic priests served the Old Covenant Levites and all Israel. But God created that symbolic old priesthoods through a temporary covenant, and never meant for it to exist forever. Only His new priesthood, which the old priesthood symbolized, is His eternal priesthood.
Four thousand years ago, God forever established the priesthood of Israel through a covenant, and began to fulfill those covenant promises through the three solitary priests named Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But God did not complete the spiritual promises of that eternal Abrahamic Covenant at that time, nor through the temporary Old Covenant, which He later made with Israel through Moses. As for that Old Covenant priesthood and its Law, God was simply revealing what He would write inside the spirits of His priesthood in the future, and how He would fulfill His spiritual promises. In the Old Covenant, God provided symbolic representations of His future intentions for Israel. For He wanted to fulfill His spiritual promises of the Abrahamic Covenant personally, and only after He Himself came to Israel in a body of human flesh, as a man called the Messiah (or “Anointed One”). Then, once the Creator’s Spirit came to His priesthood, He Himself would fulfill His spiritual promises of His eternal Abrahamic Covenant, that is, through His New Covenant works of His own body. For only a new eternal covenant could possibly fulfill the spiritual promises of His eternal Abrahamic Covenant, and only God Himself possessed enough power to cause all the true Israel to worship Him in their spirits and in truth, so He could then justly serve them as their God. And God’s temporary Old Covenant priesthoods and laws could never teach and empower human spirits enough to do that, although it did reveal the future realities of His New Covenant priesthood, and all the laws which His Holy Spirit would write upon the hearts of His true and eternal Israel. Therefore, through Moses, God told us what His eternal works of salvation, for the spirits of His priesthood, would look like, when He fulfilled His promises to Abraham. And, because of this, His New Covenant also fulfilled all God’s Old Covenant laws, as God ushered in the realities represented by the signs and symbols He gave us in His temporary Old Covenant. Thus, the symbolic Levitical and Aaronic priesthoods, and the laws regarding them, are now realities, as the Messiah is fulfilling His Abrahamic promises.
Now, in the days of Moses, Israel consisted of both the physical descendants of Abraham and many Gentile slaves who left Egypt with them, slaves originating from Africa and Canaan. For God chose to gather many Gentiles, even whole tribes of people who were not descended from Abraham, into Israel during the Exodus (see Ex. 12:38). This is confirmed when we see how Moses later married a black woman from Cush/Ethiopia (Num. 12:1); how Caleb, his father and possibly his whole tribe of Kenezites all seem to have become prominent members of the tribe Judah in Israel (Num. 32:12), or how God also brought other Gentiles into Israel along the way (e.g., Josh. 6:25). Then, during the entire Old Covenant times, God also called many more Gentiles into Israel. So, by the time the Messiah Jesus came, Israel had become a thoroughly mixed race, although it almost entirely consisted of Middle Eastern and African races, and had extremely few “white” people from the far north in it. Thus, in God’s eyes, His true priesthood of Israel represented elect spirits throughout the entire world, all the elect Jews and Gentiles whose spirits could be awakened by Him in order to fulfill the New Covenant. And God never intended Israel to simply be a sanctified race of people.
Our God Jesus came to teach and train the Father’s chosen spiritual children for their salvation, both elect Jews and elect Gentiles, and gather them all into His New Covenant church of Israel, to serve the world in His name and to build His kingdom on earth. Then, in Old Covenant times, the Levites served God as a symbol of those whom Jesus would call to become teaching elders in His local New Covenant churches, as well as the other men and women who would dedicate their entire lives to serving only Him in His New Covenant church. For Jesus wanted new patriarchs to build up spiritual and moral frameworks for His family of the church, as well as new matriarchs who would bind His Page 726
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people together through loving works of their hands. Within this body of faithful souls, serving Jesus alone, would be certain men who possessed particularly strong predestined attributes of the spirit, especially the ability to learn a more perfect understanding of God’s Word. These men were the ones whom Jesus would call, teach and train as His assistant teachers and judges, as teaching elders, as Levitical-like priests dedicated to serving all the other workers in His New Covenant church. And many of these elders and workers would come from the undiscovered or sleeping Gentile and Jewish elect scattered throughout the world. Furthermore, Jesus created different kinds of teaching elders, and granted some of them a greater degree of knowledge and wisdom, so they could serve as His apostles, teaching prophets and evangelists, like the Aaronic priesthood in the Levitical priesthood.
So, within the body of actively serving awakened elect priesthood of the New Covenant church, Jesus has always raised up various kinds of teaching elders to exegete His Word and make just judgments, regarding all matters of life and faith. And some elders were represented by the Aaronic priests during the Old Covenant times. Also, in the same way that God raised up a symbolic high priest over the Aaronic priests during Old Covenant times, who would be the head teacher of all the Levites and all others in Israel, God did so during the New Covenant times. But His Old Covenant Law only allowed one high priest to teach and judge all, one man who served in this role for his entire life, until the day he died. In this way, God indicated that, when the reality of Israel’s fulfilled New Covenant relationship arrived, He Himself would serve as Israel’s High Priest for as long as He lived. And, since God cannot die, He, Jesus, would serve as the sole High Priest for His spiritually fulfilled priesthood of Israel forever. Not only would Jesus serve as the High Priest of God’s eternal church—as the Head Teacher, Judge and spiritual Guide His New Covenant priesthood—but also as their King, ruling over all the secular affairs of their lives. And, since His church of Israel eventually would serve God’s entire earth one day, Jesus would also serve as the King of the entire world too.
Even the weak and mortal apostles need a High Priest to uplift them when they are overburdened by life, to do for them what they were called to do for the other teaching elders, as they fulfill all that the Aaronic priests were to supposed to do for the other Levites, and for the rest of Israel. Then Jesus, their true High Priest, will never be too overburdened nor too weak to strengthen them. At a predestined time, Jesus will even rescue all the elect on earth from their hardships, from injustice and the burdens cast on them by Satan’s world order. Through His love and power, all governments and authorities, all who make any decisions which might affect other lives, shall know and do His will on earth just as it is done in heaven. Jesus’ power will oversee all physical aspects of life. Furthermore, the prophecies of Moses told us that Jesus would be our greatest Prophet. Because the Spirit of Jesus is the Creator God, every word He speaks through His Spirit is a word directly originating from God, and is, therefore, a prophecy. So, as long as Jesus lives, there will be prophecies, and none in His true church will lack knowledge about God’s will or ways. However, Jesus has been taking a long time to fulfill all these spiritual promises, and we see very few true prophecies in our day. For Daniel said the “Anointed One” would be “cut off,” then grow His New Covenant priesthood and kingdom gradually throughout the earth, until an appointed time, until He returned to His priesthood. So we must be patient and work with what He has given us today, always looking ahead to the fulfillment.
The Worthy Servants of Jesus
In this exhortation (Mat. 10:9-11), Jesus clearly sent out His twelve disciples as teaching elders to serve His New Covenant church of Israel, to become the reality He promised through His symbolic Old Covenant priesthood, even like the Aaronic priesthood among the Levitical priesthood. And, because these twelve common men had become the reality of the Aaronic priesthood, those twelve Page 727
actually began to fulfill all the laws pertaining to that priesthood. This is why Jesus told those twelve to trust in Him for all their daily needs: “You must not acquire gold nor silver nor copper for your money bags, no packed food for the road, not two garments nor [extra] footwear. For the worker [is]
worthy of his sustenance. After you people might enter into whatever city or town, investigate who is worthy in it. You people dwell there until you might possibly depart” (Mat. 10:9-11, from: μὴ
κτήσησθε χρυσὸν μηδὲ ἄργυρον μηδὲ χαλκὸν εἰς τὰς ζώνας ὑμῶν, μὴ πήραν εἰς ὁδὸν μηδὲ δύο
χιτῶνας μηδὲ ὑποδήματα μηδὲ ῥάβδον· ἄξιος γὰρ ὁ ἐργάτης τῆς τροφῆς αὐτοῦ. εἰς ἣν δʼ ἂν πόλιν ἢ
κώμην εἰσέλθητε, ἐξετάσατε τίς ἐν αὐτῇ ἄξιός ἐστιν· κἀκεῖ μείνατε ἕως ἂν ἐξέλθητε, SBLGNT).
This command is fulfilled in two ways. First, Jesus endorsed a general maxim when He stated, “The worker is worthy of his sustenance,” referring to every kind of worker. Jesus implied that we must provide for everyone who does good works of all kinds. A worker of either good spiritual or physical works is worthy of all that he or she needs. Also, this “sustenance” clearly included all that Jesus mentioned just before He recited this maxim, and more. That is, a church must provide every true servant of God with the food, clothing, money and everything else he or she needs. In context, Israel, the priesthood of God, was implicitly and ultimately obligated to provide all of each worker’s needs.
Israel was to give all this either through its local bodies and individuals, or its national governing bodies. And God’s Law was to be respected within all the nation’s laws, so an equitable distribution of necessities would occur in God’s land, so none would suffer or die through deprivation. Then we need to realize that every nation on earth, whether it admits it or not, is owned by the Creator God.
So every nation, through its laws and social contracts with its people, is obligated to provide for all who do good spiritual or physical works. Even if an animal, like a pet cat or dog, provides a spiritual work of a companion, or a physical work like reducing rodents in the house or merely entertaining us, we must provide for all its spiritual and physical needs. Consequently, how much more are we obligated to provide for other human beings who do good works? Every nation must ensure that all its workers are equitably provided for, given all they need to maintain healthy spiritual, emotional and physical life. It is a sin against God to rob anyone of any necessities or to endanger their lives.
Second, here Jesus also implied that a good worker should never labour for selfish ambition or the self-indulgent luxuries of Satan’s world order, since all the devil’s rewards are stolen from God’s creation, and usually from our other siblings in the family of mankind. Therefore, we are not to work for riches, the best of foods, fine and abundant clothing, nor anything else that is sought through the pride and avarice of the flesh. We are to strive for the good of all instead. In context, this holds especially true for men directly serving God as His full-time workers, called to teach His Word in His churches, trusted to judge in wise ways, obligated to provide for the needy, care for orphans and do all that their people need to live and remain loving. Furthermore, all who perform legislative or executive tasks within a nation’s government were called God’s priestly servants as well. And God’s Law does not allow greed to corrupt the decision-making processes of any of His priestly servants, neither those in His church nor in His secular governing bodies. For covetousness turns thoughts away from His kind of true and loving justice. Thus, all who serve God in His true churches, or in any governments granted the responsibility to care for any of His own lands, must be satisfied with a modest income and lifestyle, so they might focus all their attention on works of just love. For there is no greater reward in life than the fulfilling satisfaction of justice through love, and overcoming the plots of the devil, bringing God’s joy to the spirits in our siblings’ hearts. This is His Spirit’s reward, His approval in His communion with our spirits, added to our valuable communion with our loving brothers and sisters, with all whom we work beside. Let all servants of God know there is nothing worth gaining in life except these inner rewards ordained for His elect. All else is merely a delusion.
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But remember that Jesus also told us: “After you [disciples] might enter into whatever city or town, investigate who is worthy in it. You dwell there until you might possibly depart.” So we are to make informed and wise judgments about people, after we get to know them. Then we are to choose which loving elect souls we shall dwell with, as well as the fitting helpers for all our works of God. And all this requires investigation, a thorough and careful search for reliable information. That is, the Greek verb translated as “investigate” is an aorist imperative form of ἐξετάζω. So this command of Jesus meant, “try to find out by use of careful methods, which may include personal inquiry, scrutinize, examine, inquire” (BDAG3). And the goal of this investigation was to find helpers whom one had judged to be “worthy” (ἄξιος, “pertaining to being correspondingly fitting or appropriate, worthy, fit, deserving ... in a good sense,” BDAG3). Thus, Jesus was commanding us to judge the spiritual and moral characters of those we met during our missions, then chose who we will work with. Jesus wanted us to determine whether or not the people we met truly loved God and His people more than they loved money and the rewards of the world order. For we can only work with those who truly love God, who are firmly grounded in reality and truth, who have not been handed over to delusions.
Whenever we do the Lord’s true works, we will need the help of God and His people. And our help must actually be helpful, must not ultimately sabotage our works for God. Now, since the principal work of these disciples was to teach about God’s Word, to explain God’s intended meaning of His Scriptures, especially regarding the arrival of the Messiah and His New Covenant kingdom, the only kind of helper that each of the twelve could call “worthy” was one whose spirit was willing to hear and believe the teachings of Jesus and His prophets, who did not allow their own dishonest flesh to corrupt those words. A “worthy” one not only had to know what God’s Word said, but had to seek out and trust in God’s intended meaning of His own words. It was never enough to accurately recite God’s words and publicly acknowledge that those words were true, since even Satan and his demons could do that much. To do God’s works, the disciples needed to find coworkers whose spirits could place confidence in God’s words, who begged God for enough wisdom to rightly apply those truths through right motives and intentions of their hearts. For, even if someone knows what God’s words mean, but applies His words through wrong motives and impure intentions, all that one will prove is one’s own intentional rebellion against God and His kingdom. Through a right knowledge of God’s teachings, that one reveals one’s own lack of saving faith, and proves that he or she actually hates God. And faithless rebels like that is never worthy of sharing in God’s good works, since they will always hinder and sabotage all works of truly just love. So, yes, we tolerate much ignorance and many mistakes from our coworkers, all whose spirits are being taught and trained by God. However, we do not form alliances with fake Jews and false Christians, with those who slander God’s name by quoting His words in ways that promote injustice, for the sakes of their own greed and personal gain.
To get the help we need, Jesus commanded us to seek it from those who are capable of faithfully serving Him together with us. We primarily need cooperating elect siblings from God’s family for support in all our works of love for our shared Father, for our oldest Brother Jesus, and for one another. Jesus commanded each of His twelve assistant teachers to seek coworkers whose spirits possessed a deep respect for the heavenly Father and His entire family, for both the revealed and hidden elect. And, in the Greek New Testament, this kind of worker was called a λειτουργός. That is, the ecclesiastical definition of a λειτουργός is one whom God has called to do His public good works, those who serve His kingdom in His name. So a λειτουργός would include Jesus Himself (Heb. 8:2), the apostles He sent out on public missions (Rom. 15:16), government workers labouring for the public in His lands (Rom. 13:6), and others He has called to do His public works. A Levitical priest was a λειτουργός too. So here Jesus commanded His apostles (i.e., His disciples sent out to do Page 729
public works in His name) to look for others who would serve His kingdom with them in the same way, also as dedicated, honest and faithful workers who do not serve through selfish ambition or for personal gain. Only these could labour for His kingdom on earth, in His true church or within His just governments. Of course, God also provides for our needs through other means as well. At times, God may even provide for His children through the wicked. He may tear His stolen property out of the hands of Satan and his brood, so He can give it to us. For “the wealth of the sinner is stored for the righteous” (Prov. 13:22b, WEB, where a “sinner” in this context is one who intentionally and continuously practises sin, while the “righteous” continually practises to do good, though the
“righteous” invariably sin at times as well). Jesus wants us to find every worthy λειτουργός we can, everyone whose spirit drives them toward a just and loving life. For these elect, whether hidden or not, are the only ones we can work together with, so He can grow and strengthen love between us.
Judge Against the Unworthy
Now, as mentioned, finding these “worthy” ones with just and loving elect spirits involves judging others. But, of course, we are not to go around judging everyone, to determine whether or not each is
“worthy” of our company. For each elect soul has an appointed time of awakening, and will remain hidden among the non-elect until that time. So we must not judge against anyone, not until Jesus has judged them on the final day. Jesus did not want us to be arrogant, strutting around like human gods.
Jesus forbade hasty and superficial judgments. He prohibited us from assessing anyone according to cultural and other meaningless external criteria. We must never deem anyone to be unworthy due to their failure to gain approval in Satan’s world order: “Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with whatever judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you” (Mat. 7:1-2, WEB). If we judge others according to worldly and superficial standards, such as their clothing, race, economic position, social status, eduction and so on, then we too will be judged by those worthless standards, and we also will be found to be worthless by our Great Judge and God. Our God has never granted anyone the right to judge others according to the standards of Satan’s world order, through one’s own will or by own delusions. On the contrary, He told us to avoid judging others, whenever possible, since we definitely do not have either the time or skill to thoroughly investigate the intentions and motives of all human spirits. Thus, we are to simply live and let live, that is, most of the time. Only if we need to judge should we judge, and then do so diligently, in the ways God told us to judge, with a thorough investigation and with right judgments.
On the other hand, almost every work that Jesus will ever call any of us to do will require judgments.
If we need the help of someone else, or from multiple servants of God, we need to judge them first, to determine if they are “worthy,” that is, whether or not their spirits will strive to do good together with us, through the love of their spirits, with right motives of the heart. In fact, I cannot think of any works of God that we can accomplish strictly alone. We cannot even personally pray in our private closets without the help of Jesus, or His disciples whom He sends to teach our spirits how to pray in truth, according to His will. For God has created our lives to need His help and the help of our elect siblings in His family. God made our spirits with an inherent necessity to seek out Him and others, so we might develop loving relationships with Him and others, and primarily through the works we do together. However, as we do God’s works together, it is certain that Satan and his children will oppose those works, and many of these enemies will be disguised as His workers, masquerading as good Christians or as outwardly nice “servants of righteousness” (II Cor. 11:14-15). Many will seek to sabotage, delay, sidetrack or corrupt our works. So we must learn to judge which ones possess spirits with the intentions and motives to do such things, so we may avoid them and truly serve God.
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Therefore, Jesus’ Holy Spirit teaches all His disciples to judge rightly and wisely—lest we might be tricked into serving His enemies, which we will do if we do not rightly judge the motives and intentions of the fake servants of God, then end up working against God. For we are all too weak and too ignorant to defend ourselves against those attacks of God’s enemies. None of us, without the help of God’s teaching, training and inside information, can ever become good judges of character. So, if we do not heed Jesus, we will end up serving the nations of Satan’s world order, who constantly war against one another. For that devil’s children are extremely skilled in lies and deceptions, and will always gather many duped elect souls to themselves, to help them hinder, corrupt, stop or destroy God’s works. And those enemies know that God will not let us harm even His most unfaithful elect children among them. So Satan’s workers of darkness love to ensnare and enslave elect minions, so they can use them as a shield against the almighty sword of God. Thus, those duped elect greatly complicate our warfare against the injustice of the devil’s kingdom, because we cannot destroy the elect slaves of that kingdom along with the intentional sinners who have taken them captive, along with the criminals who place their elect slaves on the front lines to shield themselves from our truth.
So, as we do God’s works for His kingdom, we need to make well-informed and wise judgments regarding all the labourers we choose to work together with, especially in our works of warfare. And we need to be absolutely right in all our judgments, or the consequences could potentially destroy not only our works, but the lives of many elect siblings who are duped into warring against us. Also, if we end up doing this kind of unjust evil, we will destroy our own lives as well. Thus, Jesus commanded us to diligently investigate who is “worthy” to do His works with us, and also to judge against some unworthy souls. Then, at the same time, we should notice that Jesus never told us to punish unworthy souls. Rather, He told us to leave their punishment to Him and to the agents whom He sends to do this kind of work, in a just way, through fair trials and such. Furthermore, we need to realize that, with every command our Teacher gives to His apprentices or disciples, He will stand beside us, to personally correct our errors in judgment. Jesus will cause us to make right judgments in His name, whether or not we initially judge wrongly. And He will redeem our failures in the end.
Now look at what Jesus commanded to those He sends out on these kinds of mission, to do any kinds of good works in His name: “Then, while entering into the household [that provides for your needs], greet it. And, on the one hand, if the household might be worthy, your peace is commanded to come upon it. On the other hand, if [the household] might not be worthy, your peace is commanded to be returned to you. Also—[regarding] whoever might not receive you people or might not hear your reasoning—while departing out of the household or the community of that [household], you people shake off the dust from your feet. Surely I reason with you people, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than [it will be] for that community” (Mat. 10:12-15, from: εἰσερχόμενοι δὲ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν ἀσπάσασθε αὐτήν· καὶ ἐὰν μὲν ᾖ ἡ οἰκία ἀξία, ἐλθάτω ἡ εἰρήνη
ὑμῶν ἐπʼ αὐτήν· ἐὰν δὲ μὴ ᾖ ἀξία, ἡ εἰρήνη ὑμῶν πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἐπιστραφήτω. καὶ ὃς ἂν μὴ δέξηται
ὑμᾶς μηδὲ ἀκούσῃ τοὺς λόγους ὑμῶν, ἐξερχόμενοι ἔξω τῆς οἰκίας ἢ τῆς πόλεως ἐκτινάξατε τὸν
κονιορτὸν τῶν ποδῶν ὑμῶν. ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀνεκτότερον ἔσται γῇ Σοδόμων καὶ Γομόρρων ἐν
ἡμέρᾳ κρίσεως ἢ τῇ πόλει ἐκείνῃ, SBLGNT). Here the οἰκία (“household, family”) represented and implicated itself, as well as its local church or an entire community. That is, Jesus (in verse 14) commanded us to shake the dust off of our feet as a sign for either “the household or city/community of that household” (τῆς οἰκίας ἢ τῆς πόλεως ἐκείνης). This implies that no family is unto itself alone.
Since a household’s church and community partake in shaping its dynamics and state of existence, then the church and community will also share in the blessings or curses God grants to each family.
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Then we should realize that, when He told His disciples to greet a household (ἀσπάζομαι, “to engage in hospitable recognition of another ... through word or gesture or both: of those entering a house,”
BDAG3), the traditional greeting which Jesus referred to was obviously shalom aleikhem (“peace be upon you”). That is, this greeting was actually a prayer that God would make peace with the person or people being addressed. Then take note the imperatives here: “your peace is commanded to come upon it” and “your peace is commanded to be returned to you.” These imperatives meant that God Himself would command His peace to rest upon the worthy or depart from the unworthy. Our God Jesus promised that He Himself would grant “peace” to a worthy household, but would return it to His disciples if they had to suffer the company of an unworthy one. Therefore, the disciples were not to take revenge on those who caused them trouble, but were simply to warn those unjust rebels about God’s disapproval of their actions, by shaking the dust from their feet against them. Then, if they did not repent within God’s appointed time, His wrath would strike them, even their whole community.
Now look at these words of Jesus within the global context of the whole Bible, especially regarding God’s Levitical priesthood, whom He dedicated to His works, whom He sent out on His mission to serve His church of Israel and the suffering world. If we understand this, we can begin to see the real reasons for His words. Jesus told His twelve that, after investigating and judging a household to be
“worthy” of sharing in the works that must be done in His name, they should “greet” that family as they entered their door. That is, like the Levites, they were to bless God’s people in God’s name, in the name of Jesus, who is God. However, Jesus wanted His disciples to be careful about whom they blessed, since they had to first investigate and find those “worthy” of being blessed. However, after they judged one to be “worthy,” they were not to be paranoid and anxious about having made a bad judgment, not to keep on being suspicious and watchful. Instead, they were to bless the one offering hospitality, then trust that one, without further investigations into the one they found to be “worthy.”
Jesus commanded them to greet and bless the household chosen after their careful investigation and judgment was completed. Then He Himself would judge whether that household was truly worthy.
Then, if they made a mistake in their judgment, God would handle all the negative consequences.
After completing an adequate investigation, and finding those “worthy” of partaking in their works for our God Jesus, the first priority was to fulfill the mission He called them to complete. So their focus was primarily turned toward their good works for Him. They were not to dwell on the task of judging others, but were to press on with their works of proclaiming Gospel teachings and lovingly redeeming the lives of the Father’s elect children. His disciples were not to continuously investigate and search for “worthy” and unworthy souls. Jesus’ mission was never about judging, then punishing those who “might not be worthy.” For God never thinks in those terms. God knows that literally all His elect sin, repeatedly. So His first priority is to teach and train their spirits to love in a truly just and equitable way, not to always make them feel condemned and guilty. So these disciples were only to rebuke those who put on a false show of religion once, then walk away. They were to avoid those with a fake interest in the God of Israel, who “might not receive” God’s true servants, nor offer them hospitality. His mission was not about continuously warring against those who “might not hear their reasoning,” since that would merely waste their time in futile efforts to convince lovers of darkness that they should repent into the light. So we should remember how Jesus sent His assistant teachers to find and serve the elect whom He made ready to hear the truth, so these could repent into the joy of abundant life. This was the first and foremost goal of the mission He sent them to do in His name, not to hound the elect whom He had not yet made ready, nor the non-elect who will never hear nor repent into the truth. All God’s works are like this. All His missions are characterized by the ultimate goal of building up elect lives, while nullifying works of Satan are relatively minor considerations.
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Furthermore, His disciples were never able to reward the “worthy” either, not according to their own wills. Only Jesus, our God, could reward those who heard His truths from His true servants, from those who served in His name, according to His will and bearing His authority. Yes, our God Jesus often made the true words of His disciples active and alive in the spirits of the elect they taught in His name. Then His power often healed and worked miracles through the hands of those faithful and loving disciples. Jesus fulfilled the requests of their prayers to Him, and granted their innermost desires. Even the common Jewish greeting of “Peace be with you,” which Jesus commanded His disciples to give each host’s household, that prayer which most say without even realizing how they are asking their Creator to grant His peace and a right relationship with Him, would be honoured by our God Jesus. That greeting was a brief version of, “May God grant peace between you and Him.”
So Jesus used a Greek third-person aorist imperative form of the verb ἔρχομαι to indicate that He would use His own power and will to cause peace to “come” to that household. And its aorist tense suggested that He would grant this peace as a fully completed act. Jesus told them, “If the household might be worthy, your peace is commanded to come upon it.” Thus, Jesus Himself would bless the spirits of a “worthy” household with peace, that is, with a restored right relationship with their God.
Then Jesus once more used a third-person aorist imperative to indicate that any disciple’s greeting (the prayer for God to grant peace to his host) would “be returned” to that disciple, if his host proved unworthy to receive that peace. Jesus said, “If [the household] might not be worthy, your peace is commanded to be returned to you.” So the power and authority of Jesus would refuse to fulfill His own disciple’s prayer for Him to grant peace to a host, if Jesus found that the host’s household was unworthy of a restored right relationship with Him. After judging those liars to be unworthy of this blessing, Jesus would instead grant even more peace to His disciple who made that petitionary prayer in error, and grant them a blessing as a fully completed action because they unintentionally made a mistake. Think about the implications of this: (1) God decides who is worthy and who is not worthy to receive whatever we request from Him in our prayers, not us; (2) God will never grant anything we pray for unless it is according to His will; (3) God judges all aspects our prayers, not just whether or not we are praying according to His will, but also whether or not the motives and intentions of our spirits are truly desiring His just and loving will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; (4) God does not punish our mistakes, but rather blesses and rewards us whenever we pray with good motives and intentions of our spirits, even if we pray for something that is not according to His will and He cannot justly grant what we request, but must correct the thoughts of our spirits.
Then Jesus also told His disciples to do this: “While departing out of the [unworthy] household or that [unworthy] community, you people shake off the dust from your feet. Surely I reason with you people, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than [it will be] for that community.” So His disciples were not to seek revenge, nor even engage in polemical debates with their opponents. They were simply to judge against those who refused to see the evidence or hear the truth. For there are many flatterers who gather dupes around them, many religious and political “leaders” who tickle vain ears, to hypnotize them en masse, with a false promise that those fools will be able to greedily amass rewards of the flesh for themselves, through the abuse of their own equal siblings in mankind. So all these dupes worship their human gods, never the real God.
Thus, there is nothing we can possibly do about this, since we have no power to oppose the will of God, and we know that God is punishing those lovers of darkness, by handing their souls over Satan for the deluding of their minds. Consequently, once the true disciples of our God Jesus realize that a person’s spirit, or the spirits of a group of people, are opposed to Jesus and His truths, Jesus simply commanded those disciples to indicate that they will have nothing to do with those enemies of God, Page 733
that is, unless those dupes genuinely repent into God’s truth. For this is what that custom of shaking the dust off one’s sandals in front of a person or a group of people meant. If one shook the dust off one’s sandal, it symbolized a judgment and rejection of the addressed person or group. And shaking off the dust is also a biblical sign of God’s disapproval of the person or group (such as in Deut. 25:6-10, where it is shaken off at a greedy brother-in-law of a childless and destitute widow, who refuses to marry or care for her, since he wants to steal his brother’s inheritance from her future children).
So here Jesus was clearly stating that He Himself, as our God, would punish those sins of false and self-serving religion, for the sin of their spirits in rejecting His truth, for despising His just, loving ways and works. And His greatest punishment will be handed out on the final judgment day, after the death of their flesh, although He may also begin to reveal His wrath against those sinners during their lives on earth. Also, if He will punish those sins of false religion, then His churches, whom He appoints as His ministers of spiritual matters, and His governments, whom He appoints as ministers of corporeal matters, should not punish them for those religious sins. Churches can expel hypocrites, and governments can punish crimes against natural laws. Yet none but God can punish souls for their rejection of His spiritual truths, or for any other sins involving a spirit’s religious beliefs, since only God can cause a human spirit to repent into a knowledge of His truth and love Him. Because no man bears the power or ability to affect the thoughts and choices of other spirits, our duty is simply to do the works of proclaiming God’s truth and serving Him through our own spirits’ love. And, when we must judge others, we must do so in ways that protect those we are called to justly love, and provide for all their needs. Then we warn sinners about God’s coming wrath, so the elect among them may hear and possibly repent, according to the degree that Jesus’ Holy Spirit has convicted their spirits.
Implications of His Command
So Jesus sent His most spiritually mature disciples, His assistant teachers, to proclaim the doctrines of His eternal New Covenant salvation, since He was the prophesied Messiah and God who now had come to ratify it. In addition to this, Jesus called these twelve to serve both the spiritual and physical needs of His beloved elect in His eternal priesthood of Israel, so those souls could do their own good works in His name. Then the ubiquitous Holy Spirit of God in Jesus, the Spirit granting life to all living creatures in the universe, would personally go with each and every one of those common men, into every household they entered. Jesus Himself would stand with each disciple He sent out, to cause their greetings and words to take effect. Jesus would ensure that every family or community who faithfully served His creations, who laboured together with His disciples, knew peace with Him and the Heavenly Father. But this peace would return to His disciples from those who deceived them, even in a magnified and multiplied way. If any family or community rejected His truth and His healing works done through His grace and power, if any spirits proved unworthy haters of God who despised His free, unearned and unmerited gifts granted through His disciples, God would war against them. So the Holy Spirit of Jesus came to teach and train the infantile spirits of all the elect whom the Father chose to awaken, all whom He caused to hear and receive the Gospel proclaimed by His disciples, with repentance into the truth, out from their pagan Roman worship of human gods.
Therefore, these twelve mature human spirits were sent to do the will of our God Jesus, not to do the wills of other men, nor to gratify the wills of their own flesh. They were to do all in His name, that is, through His authority, will, power and personal love for each beloved elect soul whom He called them to serve. Furthermore, the Spirit of God in Jesus went with them, everywhere, quickening every word they spoke in His name, performing every miracle they commanded to be done in His name. So Jesus did all, and these twelve common men, who are no different than any other men we Page 734
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see today, actually did nothing to warrant esteem as human gods, in the way so many false Christians venerate them today. For it is the devil’s religion of humanism which worships human beings as gods. It is Satan’s fake “Christian” sects in his demonic religion of theistic humanism which teach their dupes to worship men, even the true elect who do not want to be worshipped, like those twelve infantile, weak, mortal disciples whom our God Jesus sent out on that day. But the pure and biblical New Covenant Christianity, revealed in the words and deeds of Jesus and His disciples—the only religion proclaiming the true Gospel of the Messiah Jesus—never worships any man. Rather, this true religion teaches just and equitable love, denounces hierarchies that esteem some human beings above others, and emphatically forbids the worship of any human being except Jesus. And we only esteem and serve the Spirit of Jesus, not His earthly flesh, since only His Spirit is the Creator God.
In reality, those twelve disciples were all extremely flawed men with infantile spirits, exactly like all of us. Yes, Jesus chose them to do these “greater” works of teaching Gospel doctrines and working miracles. But they were chosen for those works because their bodies and spirits were created with the propensity to desire this predestined and satisfying destiny of being called to do those kinds of works according to God’s will. God gave them all the attributes which enabled their infantile spirits to trust and comprehend the truths spoken by Jesus. Then it was God who shaped those attributes and fed those desires of their spirits, through their life experiences which He predestined for them from the moment of their births, and through His teaching and training after they became His faithful disciples. In all their words and works, it was always Jesus Himself who made each and every one of those words or works effective in blessing the lives of those whom they served. And we must always remember this, whenever Jesus also sends us out to do His loving works for His kingdom on earth.
We must no longer practise the religion of humanism, which seeks and follows human gods that falsely call themselves “Christian leaders.” For our elect spirits never need to be led by any human beings, but only need to be led by Jesus. Now the spirits in our hearts must only follow Jesus, as His disciples, and we must never become the disciples of human beings. For Jesus rose from the dead.
He remains fully alive, to stand beside each and every one of our spirits, as we serve Him throughout our lives. Jesus lives to teach and train each spirit, if one’s flesh lets one’s spirit heed His Holy Spirit, instead letting one’s mind of flesh silence one’s spirit, so one might then bow before human gods.
There was nothing special about those twelve. They were highly flawed sinners, just like literally all other men. Yes, their calling of God was unique, just as every calling of our God Jesus is personally suited to the way God made and shaped each one’s body, soul and spirit. Certainly, all their spiritual gifts, literally all of them, were worked entirely by the authority, will, power and love of Jesus alone.
Therefore, they rested their lives on a bed of secure faith in our God Jesus, and in Him alone. All these apostles, except Judas Iscariot, dwelt in the eternal Sabbath of God, like the Levitical priests were supposed to do. None worked to build a personal estate through greed and selfish ambition.
None worked for oneself, but did only God’s works, as was commanded for the Sabbath, and just as the Levitical priests were to do seven days per week, all their lives. For these disciples knew that only Jesus could teach and train their spirits, and all other elect spirits, so all could then make just and loving judgments based solely on their Father’s created realities and truths. None but their God could open the eyes and ears of elect spirits to the truth. Only in Jesus could cause the mind of the spirit to overcome the mind of flesh, so their souls could make loving, wise, right, timely decisions, and even be used to announce His miraculous works in His name. No one except Jesus is able to correct the thoughts of our spirits, in His powerful way, causing those spirits to repent into physical and spiritual truths, into the realities that He maintains upon this earth. Then it is also Jesus, and no other, who casts the unworthy souls into ever deeper and darker delusions and lies, as a punishment Page 735
for their spirits’ hatred of His rational, just, wise and loving truths. Then some even reject the fact that only our God Jesus can redeem their souls from that blinding darkness, into the humbling light of His wisdom and truth. Therefore, those lovers of darkness will remain within it forever. So, yes, our God punishes some spirits, but always justly, since their spirits despise His totally unmerited, unearned grace for His utterly sinful and rebellious elect siblings, since their hearts only desire the lies which appeal to their egos of flesh, and seek only empty lives for their flesh, never abundant life, never the power of our God Jesus to wash away their crimes and failures, so they can begin to love.
Now, when Jesus sent out the twelve, Matthew was one of them. And Matthew, as well as all devout Jews who thoroughly knew the Old Covenant Scriptures, clearly saw what Jesus was doing. For Yahweh God had done the same kind of thing at other times in the history of Israel. For instance, the way in which Jesus sent out these twelve was obviously like the time Yahweh sent out twelve men to assess the promised land during the time of Moses, after the church of Israel had been wandering in the wilderness without a clearly revealed purpose. Yet those twelve failed, since all but two of those twelve scouts for God’s kingdom betrayed God, as well as His kingdom and His priesthood. For God, at that time, was indicating that His priesthood should not be seeking a physical kingdom, and not by the might of men with swords. Rather, His real kingdom consists of elect spirits joined by the love, teaching and training of God. And, since Joshua and Caleb were the only two who realized this truth, the only ones who trusted in the power of God rather than the might of men, these two were the only ones whom God spared and sent into the promised land. All the other ten, out of the twelve sent-out “apostles,” died homeless in the wilderness. However, when Jesus sent out these twelve disciples, to represent His new priesthood of Israel, and to assess His spiritual kingdom on earth, the opposite occurred. This time only one of the twelve betrayed God, while the other eleven remained faithful, just and loving until the day they died. Only one did not understand that God’s kingdom was spiritual, consisting of elect spirits united in Yahweh Jesus. Only one sought a physical kingdom gained through human power and the sword. So eleven of these twelve disciples of Jesus entered the promised land, the Kingdom of God on earth, and only one died homeless in the spiritual wilderness of Satan’s world order. And now we can go with those eleven. For, whenever we allow our God, the Creator of our spirits, to teach and train our spirits, even until our flesh serves under the guidance of our spirits, there is victory over the egos of God’s enemies, and the true promised land is our reward.
Then, in the words Jesus spoke to His twelve disciples, as He sent the twelve out on this mission, He obviously alluded to His establishment of the priesthood of Israel through Abraham. All twelve of those disciples would have realized that Jesus was, at that time, beginning to fulfill the promises of His covenant with Abraham. All were very familiar with the way God began to fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant, by granting Jacob twelve sons. Jacob was the only grandson of Abraham whom God had chosen to become the heir of His Abrahamic Covenant. And, in that covenant, God promised that He would establish a people who would worship Him in a right way, so that He could serve them as their God. Yet Abraham, his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob were all solitary priests, where each one inherited the calling and covenant of God alone, just as God, since the days of Adam and his son Seth, had granted only one sone from each generation the right to serve as His priest. But God chose all twelve of Jacob’s sons to serve as His priests, then all the sons of those twelve, and all their sons in every generation forever. So those twelve sons of Jacob were the first of a nation-priesthood sent by God to minister to the whole world as His priests. Those twelve sons began to fulfill the promise of God’s Abrahamic Covenant to establish a people to serve Him, to reveal His name in all the earth.
In the eyes of the twelve Jewish apostles, Jesus was doing the same work that He began through Jacob’s twelve sons about two thousands years before their time. Jesus was now about to fulfill His Page 736
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greatest promises to Abraham. This was the day when God was beginning to build His true eternal priesthood of Israel, the New Covenant branch of Israel that would fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant.
For all devout Jews remembered how God told Abraham: “Get out of your country, and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bl
ess you, and I will curse him who curses you. All of the families of the earth will be blessed in
you” (Gen. 12:1-3, WEB). From the words of this promise, we know that God separated Abraham unto Himself for the purpose of establishing His true priesthood on earth, a priesthood to serve all the people of the world in His name, to represent Him before them and to pray for them before His face. Yahweh God sent Abraham out of “all the the families of the earth,” to serve Him as His priestly apostle, to bless the world as His sanctified teacher and judge. God intended that Abraham, one of His solitary priests descended from Seth, to become a nation of priests, blessing all the people on earth who had elect spirits, who had an inherent ability to love God and His ways. At the same time, this priesthood of God would also be a “curse” to those who who hated God, to all who did not love the spiritual and physical realities that God created and maintained all around them, who cursed the loving, wise and just ways that God had been teaching to the spirits in His true priesthood. That is, God would suppress and nullify evil through His true church of Israel. But these heirs of Abraham could only fulfill Yahweh’s mission of blessing and cursing the people of the world through their promised Messiah and God, when He fulfilled the Abrahamic Covenant through His New Covenant.
All whom God would bring into His priesthood of Israel were to serve the entire world. All were to become His priests, His representatives to all people. All were to serve God by willingly allowing Him to reveal His truths and do His works through them, to become a blessing to the elect of the world in His name, but also a curse to all loveless God haters. All the ways God taught to His just, wise and loving priests since the days of Adam would be ministered through them. So this was also the mission that Jesus began to fulfill when He sent out the twelve to bless the elect of Israel in His name, to begin to build up His true New Covenant church, who would serve the world in His name.
Since God promised Abraham that He would bless those who blessed His true eternal church of Israel, but curse those who cursed it, that promise also applied to the New Covenant branch of that same church, to the new branch that fulfilled the Abrahamic Covenant. Of course, God still does this blessing and cursing regarding His Old Covenant branch of Israel too, since both the old and new are the same Israel that He created through Abraham. And this is why Jesus repeated the same promise to His twelve disciples. Jesus told those twelve that He would bless those who blessed them, but curse those who cursed them. Likewise, all twelve disciples were separated or sanctified unto God, set aside to do God’s works, just as Abraham was, and in the same way that all Abraham’s children of Israel were. However, Jesus sent the twelve to teach the biblical doctrines of His New Covenant salvation, His promise granted to Israel through the Messiah Jesus to fulfill His previous Abrahamic Covenant. Thus, these twelve were like the Levitical priests within the priesthood of Israel, and sent to do same works done by their teaching and judging elders, to exegete the Scriptures and apply those truths in order to maintain justice and equity for God’s people. So these twelve were not like other disciples. But neither were they better than the others, since all they did originated from God.
Yahweh, the one God, only allowed Isaac to inherit His promises of the Abrahamic Covenant. God chose only one of Abraham’s many sons to become the symbolic father of all the awakened elect in the priesthood of His church, and God chose him even before he was born. For God told Abraham,
“No, but Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. You shall call his name Isaac. I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him” (Gen. 17:19). So God chose Page 737
Isaac due to the kind of elect spirit that He Himself would create in him. Then God confirmed His election of Isaac by telling him: “I will be with you, and will bless you” (Gen. 26:3). So Isaac, and all the elect of Israel after him, received blessings from God, because our personal God, the Creator of the universe, chose to be with them. Then God told Isaac’s son, Jacob, the very same thing: “I will be with you” (Gen. 31:3). God chose to be with all future generations of Abraham born through his son and grandson, to bless them with a knowledge of Himself and all truth. Then God later renamed Jacob, calling him Israel (“one who wrestles with God”), because he was the last solitary priest from the line of Seth, and God would establish His church through all of his twelve sons, even an eternal priesthood which would forever struggle with God throughout their lives in bodies of flesh on earth.
Then, much later in history, God told an old, very common descendant of Isaac and Jacob, a nobody from the tribe of Levi, a foolish old shepherd standing among his sheep on a bleak mountain in a forsaken desert, “Certainly I will be with you. This will be the token to you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain” (Ex. 3:12, WEB). And this was a wondrous sign. The plainness of the day on that barren slope, with demanding dependent sheep all around him, would be repeated, with God speaking to him once more. But the next time, this old man would be standing with God’s whole demanding dependent church of Israel gathered around him, with the priestly nation God had promised to Abraham. So God chose to bring his church to an insignificant hill in a forgotten land guided by a humble Levite, by an old man who was honest enough to admit that he was totally inept and incapable of doing anything of real value for God, that is, through his own will, thoughts or strength. For this man knew he was simply a slow, stammering, eighty-year-old who was now incapable of any job other than shepherding sheep, which was the most lowly occupation in his community, done by women, small children and very old men.
Yet, of all the people in His church of Israel at that time, this man, named Moses, was the only one to whom God would speak to candidly, the only one whom God could personally teach, face to face.
And God did not allow even one of the others to draw near to Him. None but Moses had an elect spirit which was willing to love in a just way and do God’s will, without letting cultural biases and other matters of the flesh interfere with the words of God spoken to his spirit. Moses was the one man God chose to become His apostle, to send out on the mission to serve His church and kingdom.
Through this old shepherd, Moses, and him alone, the Creator of the universe and infinite heavenly realms chose to reveal the summary of His ways in the Old Covenant Law. And these ways were the very same spiritual principles that God would eventually write upon each and every elect heart in His entire true priesthood of Israel, by the works of His Messiah’s Holy Spirit, to fulfill His promises to Abraham through His New Covenant. The Spirit of the Holy Creator would personally teach each priest in His church about His intended meaning of every word in His Law, then train each spirit to rightly and effectively apply those laws, to free all the earth from Satan and his lying pagan despots.
Also, the younger brother of Moses, Aaron, the father of the entire innermost priesthood of Israel, was not a better man either. Yet God told Moses and Aaron: “I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak ... I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach [both of]
you what you shall do.” (Ex. 4:12,15, WEB). So God did not choose Aaron and Moses because they were educated, rich, powerful and eloquent “influencers,” but because they listened to Him, because He had awakened their spirits and made those spirits able to be personally taught by Him. And this was what Jesus also promised to His disciples, many times and in many ways. We will ultimately overcome all powers opposing Him and us, if our elect spirits remain awake enough to be personally taught by the Spirit of our Creator God (e.g., Luke 12:11-12), but never by our own human powers.
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Mat. 10:9-15, Live as a Priest
So Jesus, our God, has now established and ratified His New Covenant branch of Israel, the true priesthood that He sends out to bless the entire world, just as He promised to Abraham. And this promised church or “royal priesthood” was symbolized by the Aaronic priesthood, which He set up through His apostle Moses. Therefore, just as our God sent out Moses, our God Jesus first sent out His twelve teaching assistants in the same way—promising that He would be with each of them as they served Him, teaching each one all that they must say and do, blessing all whom they served in His name through their mouths and hands. And, just as God commanded the Aaronic and even entire Levitical priesthood to bless in His name, our God Jesus also commanded the twelve to do the same.
These twelve were to be true teachers and judges in His fulfilled priesthood of Israel, all sent out to bless the world’s elect in His name, but as His real priests this time. These true apostles were not mere symbols like the Aaronic and Levitical priesthoods, for these had truly humbled and teachable spirits whom God could speak to directly, face to face, just as He did with that old shepherd, Moses.
Mat. 10:16-27,
His Mission’s Strategy
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you. Yes, and you will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations. But when they deliver you up, don’t be anxious how or what you will say, for it will be given you in that hour what you will say.
For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
“Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child. Children will rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all men for My name’s sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee into the next, for most certainly I tell you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel, until the Son of Man has come.
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be like his teacher, and the servant like his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household! Therefore don’t be afraid of them, for there is nothing covered that will not be revealed; and hidden that will not be known.
What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in the ear, proclaim on the housetops” (Mat. 10:16-27, WEB).
Here Jesus provided some final instructions and information for the twelve disciples He was sending out. And, from these instructions, we can clearly see that Jesus was referring to whom He would send out in the future, to all His future missionaries or apostles in all time, until the earth ends. These words He spoke to the twelve, and His teachings for the 70 apostles whom He later sent out on a similar mission, applied to all whom He would ever call, teach, train and appoint to do His works for His earthly kingdom in the future. For, at that time, none of these twelve, nor the 70, would not even begin to experience any of the events Jesus spoke about here. None were in any danger of being delivered up to religious councils and being scourged in local churches (synagogues) while they were out for a few days, apart from Jesus, ministering to Israel. Certainly none would be brought before governors and kings for His sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations of those foreign rulers, not while Jesus was physically with them. Rather, all these kinds of events were to occur in the future, to those whom Jesus would send out to all the nations of the earth in the future. All these Page 739
kinds of dangers would be experience by His true servants until the day of His return. Therefore, as we study this counsel of our God Jesus to these twelve apostles, when He sent them out, we need to apply it to all the elect whom He now sends out on missions, to all who faithfully serve Him today.
All these words were recorded by Matthew, who was one of the twelve. And he implied that these words of Jesus were also provided for all missions of all other disciples whom Jesus would send out throughout all history. Here Jesus gave them a general strategy, telling them how to survive as they performed the tasks of His mission, while God’s enemies would be opposing them. For all whom God prepares and sends out to do His works need to know how to succeed, how to expose the truth without becoming discouraged by the incessant opposition, and the chaos worked by Satan’s world order against God’s just wisdom. Jesus also included, in verses 28 to 42, the reason why they must not fear His enemies. These words tell us how to live in a way that will fulfill our missions, since all of us are granted life-long missions. God will be with us always, as we labour to nullify the works of the devil with Him, so we can build up His wise, just, loving kingdom on earth. Jesus will be with us, even to the end of the judgment day and into all eternity. And the beneficial effects of His missions, including our eternal rewards, surely will be granted to all who love and serve Him. So we need not become anxious and overwhelmed by the enmity of the devil and his minions. For our God Jesus will surely and inevitably be victorious. His kingdom shall cast out Satan’s temporary kingdom of the world order in the end. Then Jesus will finally rule the entire earth. But the only way His just and loving kingdom will ever conquer evil and advance is through His own just and loving strategy.
We Must be Wise and Harmless
Literally all true servants of Jesus must act through God’s kind of wisdom, which causes no harm to any of the Father’s elect children, nor to any of His other good creations. In other words, we must be the kind of people whom others implicitly trust to do what is right, compassionate, equitable and just. And this means we must all take the time to learn God’s ways directly from God Himself. Our spirits must be thoroughly taught, trained and empowered by the Holy Spirit in Jesus before we can be sent out on a mission to do God’s works on earth. For, as we have witnessed from the days of Job and Abraham until now, all genuine wisdom and all the knowledge of real truths originates from God alone. There is absolutely no other source of just, loving wisdom or knowledge except Yahweh, who is a Spirit, the creating Spirit who is the Father of our spirits, the life-giving Spirit dwelling in Jesus.
So, to gain any truly useful knowledge, along with the wisdom to rightly apply it, we have only one option. We must needs go to God, then wait for Him to freely grant these gifts to us, through His grace alone, by His personal teaching and training of our spirits. Furthermore, absolutely nothing but His wisdom and knowledge can make make us able to successfully complete His missions, to save and free all who love Him and His ways. And we can do nothing of any value for God without His gifts of truth, wisdom and power. Then, as we face thoroughly unjust and cruel opposition, although the wrath of our flesh will always steer us toward ruthless acts of revenge, God’s wisdom shall turn us away from that rage, so we can think rationally and from the heart, so we will not cause unjust harm, so we will continue to implicitly trust us to do what is right, and so they will also trust God to do what is right, so we do not slander God’s good name and so they will not lose faith in God. For, even though God’s wisdom inevitably destroys the works of the devil, and may also kills the flesh of those unrepentant and wilful sons of the devil, God only does this if it will reduce or eliminate some future harm that would have been done by those evil works or ruthless souls. For God thinks through all He does, and refuses to cause collateral damage to His elect while He administers justice. Thus, the net effect of even His most destructive works is less harm, and His wisdom is harmless. But God Page 740
Mat. 10:16-27, His Mission’s Strategy
is a Spirit, and only gives His true, just, loving wisdom and knowledge to spirits, not to minds of flesh. Then His wisdom primarily focuses upon the spiritual welfare of all because, if their spirits are right with God, their flesh will be as good as it can be as well. Therefore, His wisdom can only be learned and applied by spirits, although spirits will use their minds and bodies of flesh to express it.
Jesus began to teach His disciples this general strategy by saying: “Look, I am sending you people out on a mission as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore, you people must become wise, like the serpents, and harmlessly pure [in your motives], like the doves” (Mat. 10:16, from: Ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ
ἀποστέλλω ὑμᾶς ὡς πρόβατα ἐν μέσῳ λύκων· γίνεσθε οὖν φρόνιμοι ὡς οἱ ὄφεις καὶ ἀκέραιοι ὡς αἱ
περιστεραί, SBLGNT). So all workers sent by God are to become wise in the same way that He is wise, even more wise than Solomon and the other Old Covenant servants of God. That is, we must open up our hearts to our heavenly Father and beg for wisdom, with spirits that are willing to learn truths and wisdom from Him. We are to pray as Solomon did, who was called the wisest of all men:
“Now give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people; for who can judge this your people, that is so great” (II Chron. 1:10, WEB). The reason Solomon wanted wisdom and knowledge was so that he might be able to “go out and come in before” God’s people, as their teacher, counsellor and judge, as one who worked God’s good for them. Notice his motives here, as he prayed for wisdom. He desired it for the sakes of the people he served, so he could teach and judge them rightly. Thus, God granted Solomon’s request, because he asked according to God’s will. And, after making this prayer, “God said to Solomon, ‘ Because this was in your heart, and you have not asked riches, wealth, or honour, nor the life of those who hate you, neither yet have asked long life; but have asked wisdom and knowledge for yourself, that you may judge My people, over whom I have made you king: wisdom and knowledge is granted to you’” (II Chron. 1:11-12a, WEB).
This wisdom from God enabled Solomon to do God’s works of justice in Israel, while he kept them safe from enemies and provided for all their needs. But, of course, not even with this wisdom, could Solomon keep himself pure and faithful. So Solomon failed in this mission, in extremely harmful and evil ways. Thus, we require an even better wisdom, along with the editing power of our God Jesus to guard us from our own evil thoughts. And this kind of wisdom resembles some wise ways of the serpents. For serpents studiously avoid enemies whenever they can, but are also capable of very effectively defending themselves if they feel threatened, although they have no clawed limbs to use as weapons against their attackers. Serpents are very quiet and unobtrusive, as they help us eliminate pests like rodents. Yet they are extremely dangerous when threatened, so deadly that most simply leave them alone. In other words, the serpents’ worst enemy, humankind, usually tries to keep peace with them, and usually refuse to hunt and kill them, since those serpents seldom harm us and usually benefit us by reducing the number of our most destructive pests. This is also the strategy Solomon practised, in God’s wisdom. So Jesus wanted His disciples, including us, to do the same. Only when God’s elect are attacked by the wilfully wicked, through their lies and covetous aggression, should we war against them. And, even then, we do not use the same weapons. The only weapon we need for self-defence is the potent truth in our mouths, which is venomous poison to Satan and his slaves.
But God’s wisdom is also ἀκέραιος (“literally ‘unmixed’ ... pure, innocent,” BDAG3). This kind of wisdom is never duplicitous, never mixed with selfish or impure motives. Rather, God’s wisdom always develops pure and innocent motives and intentions in our spirits. God never trains the spirits of His elect children to lie or deceive for malicious and self-serving reasons, for political or financial purposes. Rather, He trains us to openly practice just love, letting all our elect brothers and sisters know exactly what we are doing and why we are doing it. For God’s wisdom is always a teacher.
And, as a good teacher of life principles, it logically cannot hide the truth and wisdom from those it Page 741