Then notice how this process of alienation takes place. Jesus divides children from their “fathers,”
not only from their biological fathers, but also from their spiritual or emotional fathers, such as pastors, priests, uncles and other older men who serve as their mentors and provide traditions or behavioural structures for their lives. Of course, in all these examples Jesus gave, He did not tell us which ones were His elect servants and which ones were the slaves of Satan. He intentionally made His examples of these divisions ambiguous, since He is the Lord bearing the ultimate control and Page 775
authority over both kinds of people. So sometimes He will turn an elect disciple against a crooked, lying and unjust relative, and stir the heart of that disciple to do the works of nullifying the evil done by that relative. But, most of the time, He will cause the devil’s non-elect children to hate the truth and love which He works in the spirits of His disciples. Either way, Jesus will initiate war, will cause His disciples to battle against the evil of even their closest family members, while Satan will cause his unloved children to self-destruct, to violently rebel against God’s just, equitable, beneficial ways.
Jesus is completely capable of manipulating either the minds of His elect or the minds of the non-elect. In the elect, He can and will accomplish His loving purpose of teaching and training each spirit born of the Father for each one’s eternal good. Then His works of truth in elect spirits shall alienate them from those who love darkness rather than light. And deluded and lying “fathers,” who work to uphold Satan’s world order, will hate them. For, at the same time Jesus works truth, wisdom and love in the spirits of all His elect, He also allows the devil to cause his own deluded and lying children to betray and war against the elect, even against their own children. Likewise, elect “fathers,” any who faithfully serve Jesus, oppose and nullify the evil works of their own children. However, elect family members do not hate their enemies, certainly not the members of their own families. Rather, the elect do what is just and right for them, but often need to remain distanced from evil family members, so they can do the Lord’s works without hindrances and sabotage from those who serve Satan. And there is always a hope in elect hearts that their deluded family members may have elect spirits, and will repent into the truth some day. So only evil family members try to destroy their own sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers who have been redeemed and are following Jesus.
And not all family members are biologically related. In the days when Jesus walked among us, all who were emotionally and spiritually connected through life-altering or life-developing experiences were called family members, such as brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers. Today, some children are taught to call friends of their parents by titles like “uncle” or “aunt.” But, back then, they called such friends, “father” and “mother.” A father was any older, wiser man who would teach, train, defend and structure the life of a younger person. A mother was an older woman who cared for a younger man, or mentored and provided support for a younger woman. Then the older ones would call the children of friends and biological or chosen siblings their “sons” and “daughters,” and treat them as such. Close ties, such as a shared belief in the same religious teachings, following the same cultural practises, fighting together in the same wars, and so on, made people into families. But, whether they were biological family members or not, each could become irreparably divided from another through the effective salvation works of teaching and training elect spirits. Fathers and sons might begin to war against one another. Mothers might see some of the young women, whom they worked so hard to incorporate into the spheres of their lives, turn against them. Nuclear and extended families, as well as local churches and other emotionally bound families, could split up into warring enemies.
When these divisions occurred, there were some who clung to the unjust but familiar ways of Satan’s world order, stupidly insisting that those “old” ways were best. These dupes were told, and somehow believed, that the wretched lives they lived under the influence of devil’s oppressive lies, when they had to always fear that the whims of psychopathic human gods would destroy them, were the “good old days.” And, to the non-elect, those were good days, when they could steal, exploit and even murder with impunity, as long as they appeased Satan’s servants ruling over them. Therefore, when these deluded souls, especially the non-elect, suddenly had to contend with the truth, justice and God-like love of their awakened elect siblings being redeemed by God, who were exposing all their
“good old days” as evil, those dupes naturally reacted bitterly. And, with the devil ruling over their hearts, those dupes set out to violently suppress or even kill the elect being saved by Christ. The non-Page 776
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elect ones also spontaneously hated the elect, and tried to force all just and honest souls to conform to their delusional ways, often by employing physical violence. So, if the elect did not partake in their delusions, lies, injustice and arrogance, those non-elect would slander and destroy them. But the mature among the elect never took up their violent and physical ways, did not act like their delusional siblings did. Rather, the elect tried to reason with their duped siblings, which saved some from the devil’s grasp. And the elect remained hopeful, praying for the repentance of their enemy family members, into justice and truth, then continued to do God’s work of nullifying Satan’s works.
Now, of course, during this dichotomizing process, Satan’s children try every trick in the book, every kind of demonic deception, to trick God’s elect into remaining faithful to that devil’s self-destructive world order, and to the worshipped human gods he raises up within it. Then, although the non-elect are highly selfish, and their selfish ambitions constantly produce factions within their ranks, they all agree that Satan’s unjust will must be done on earth, and that his personally chosen psychopathic human gods must be esteemed and served through loyal worship. So they will often unite in various works of deception. Now, since Satan’s spirit is the ultimate psychopath, his most cherished children often become psychopaths too, and will unite under the psychopaths he chooses for them. They they use the devil’s psychopathic methods of deception and slander for personal gain. Above all, they practise the art of repeating and justifying lies, while suppressing truth through terrorism and censorship, until some will finally believe them. For they know that, if they tell a lie often and
“sincerely” enough, dupes will believe that lie. And they must lie, since all their works are built upon lies. Of course, people seldom believe a rude and offensive liar. So most of the devil’s brood also pretend to be very nice and charming, while they lie, although they are hate-filled destroyers inside.
And they also sometimes act good so that others will believe that those destroyers are standing up for everything right and noble, for order and liberty, so the people will think they are absolutely necessary for their survival and well-being. Nevertheless, in reality, these chosen ones of Satan do nothing of any real value for anyone or anything. They merely lie, cheat, steal, exploit, harm or even kill others for personal gain, esteem and status. Yet, since many souls, even many elect, cannot see beyond superficial appearances, many believe those worthless destroyers, and trust them with their lives, calling them their saviours, contrary to all the realities seen everywhere around them, as their lives, and the lives of their neighbours, fall deeper into a painful, empty, dark abyss of hopelessness.
The devil’s most cherished slaves, even the most stupid among them, are often extremely skilled experts at deceiving. And this is because their cunning is ultimately spiritual. Since the minds of all spirits possess much greater abilities than their minds of flesh, and deception comes from the minds of their spirits, it is very effective. Then their spirits receive much counsel from their father, Satan.
And that demonic spirit also lends them his power, to make their deceptions more effective. Thus, these psychopaths can commit terribly vile sins, yet actually make the victims of their sins think their suffering from those sins was actually their own faults. For all psychopaths practise the art of gaslighting. All are able to make even the most intelligent, stable souls completely doubt their own reasoning, senses, feelings and sanity, until their victims only trust in the psychopath, and whatever he tells them to believe. Once this process is complete, his victims will ignore any and all genuine empirical evidence which proves that their human god, the psychopath, is actually lying to them.
Therefore, the worst of the non-elect, with spirits awakened by Satan, always try to make the elect feel guilty about any divisions in their families, churches and other groups, especially those that occur when the elect stand up for justice, and act through wise, Christ-like love. The non-elect will trick the elect into thinking they sinned by doing what was just, wise and loving, and that they have caused divisions through ineptitude, foolishness and evil, that they are even guilty for all losses and Page 777
suffering which had been caused by those non-elect souls themselves. A psychopathic father will tell his children that God wants them to honour him by condoning all he does, even his sins—though this is actually honouring Satan instead, and the only real way to honour parents by honouring God and confessing our father’s sins, as God commanded. Then a selfish, loveless father will tell his children that he was forced to commit his cruel, unjust sins for their sakes, to feed them, so they could live in the house that he alone earned, possesses and rules in his unjust way. Also, a wicked father tell a child who criticizes him, that he or she must be utterly rejected and destroyed, for the sake of that one’s cruel and selfish father, whom they are to worship as their benevolent god and owner, since all the world should revolve around that father alone. Now most think these obvious lies could never be believed. Yet they are! Almost all abused elect spouses and children firmly cling to their abuser, and instinctively defend their own destroyer at any cost to themselves. This includes the children in all demonic cult families. But, in the very end, the elect come to their senses, begin to admit realities and start the process of repenting into the truth. For all elect have only one heavenly Father, and only one Lord, their oldest Brother. Only the non-elect will always remain deluded enough to worship a father figure as their god, and serve in that psychopath’s selfish works to build up Satan’s kingdom.
Of course, when I refer to psychopathic fathers, it includes the fathers of cults, other false religious organizations, states and nations. For literally all organizations, all religious and secular groups, as well as all governments, are built upon the model of the nuclear family. So, if the people want to live in the ruthless Roman hierarchical model of the nuclear family unit, the kind designed by Satan, they will also desire a despotic government. But if the people want to live in an equitable, just, honest and truly loving family unit, they will also desire the same kind of government, one where brothers and sisters serve each other as equals in a biblical democracy, just as God commanded. We find that this principle has been verified throughout history, everywhere in the world. For instance, Hitler’s cultic followers all built their family units on the Satanic Roman model, then worshipped Hitler as their father and guide (Fuhrer). Likewise, members of all demonic cults and states worship a psychopathic parental figure in a steep and rigid hierarchical Roman family structure, where the head is actually worshipped (i.e., esteemed and served) as their god. There the chief parent, the parent of parents, the parent of the largest recognized extended family unit that the people will embrace as their own, who is worshipped as their chief god, is the one through whom they perceive all existence, even if that chief human god is a deluded wretch and abject liar who is utterly incapable of perceiving reality.
Therefore, the elect need our good, just, equitable, humble and loving heavenly Father to be over all fathers, because He alone is honest, wise and sees all precisely as it truly is. Then our Father of all fathers will teach reality to His chosen children, and we will be able to understand that truth, since truth, no matter how complex, can be understood by all our elect spirits, especially if it is learned step by step, in a logical and well-proven, well-illustrated manner. For the truth is always complex, but it is never as ambiguous, fragmented, confusing, contradicting and irrational as lies. And, after teaching us the truth, our heavenly Father also trains us to wisely apply those facts and principles in effective ways, since He created all realities and truths to function effectively. Only delusions and lies are never able to produce beneficial and effective results. God ordained that only realities and truths can produce the best effects and results. Thus, as the elect learn the truth from God, their spirits naturally begin to esteem and serve their Father, with a right kind of worship, through love and respect from their spirits, through a genuine trust in His words. And, since this worship is in spirit and in truth, it is not blind and ignorant, like the worship of human gods. Rather, this worship is never afraid to be blatantly honest with their Father, even in one’s own foolish and infantile human anger. For our wise Father is unconditionally loving and compassionate. So He never seeks revenge Page 778
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against His children when they insult Him, but patiently waits for their anger to subside. Then He lovingly serves for the good of His children, speaking the truth within the boundaries of His love, to correct erroneous thinking and false perceptions for our own good, and for the good of our siblings.
He may discipline our flesh, when absolutely necessary, but only if it will be effective in causing our spirits to repent into His truth and wisdom. Thus, our worship of our Father is well-earned by Him.
This is the ultimate goal of all in the genuine church, in both the New Covenant and Old Covenant branches. You will see that literally all true teaching elders, those whom the real God raises up for His people, are older men who know they are inadequate and insufficient to teach truth and wisdom to God’s elect children. They know they fail daily in all matters of love and godly wisdom, though their spirits go to our God in prayer many times a day, though they strive to do what is just, right, true and desperately needed for their loved ones at all times. They know that, no matter how broadly experienced and aged they might be, no matter how many battles they have fought, no matter how many times they have seen the horrors of Satan’s works, or the radiant truth worked by the love of the Creator’s Holy Spirit, their own spirits still remain quite weak and infantile. Even those old men, chosen by God to teach and judge, remain unable to avoid distractions from their minds of flesh. You will see these wrinkled, old, humbled and humiliated men everywhere on earth, begging their people to do what is right, to believe the realities and truths which God made evident in all His creations, to turn their hearts to God, and to God alone. These are the men whom Jesus, our God who has walked among us on this beleaguered earth, in pain and loss, is raising up as His teaching elders, as the men whom He calling to assist Him in His mission to teach the real truth and to judge in genuine wisdom.
Soon, when the promised great revival arrives, and countless elect are marked with the seal of the Creator’s Holy Spirit, very many teaching elders of this kind will begin to consciously and faithfully serve the real Jesus. Jesus will send these elders out to His people, to all who were born to belong to His true church. And all those men will teach true doctrines, guiding all into real repentance through Christ’s genuine wisdom. Then, of course, none of them will be turning the eyes of the people upon themselves. For all these true teaching elders will have spirits that recoil in disgust at the thought of sinners worshipping other sinners like themselves. And none of these true elders will ever think of stealing from God, will never take disciples for themselves, because all must be disciples of Jesus.
Nor will they take the people’s gifts for their own personal gain, or for the profit of any Roman-like fake church belonging to Satan’s world order. Naturally, priests and pastors of fake churches will still do all that, even until the last day before Jesus returns. So there will still be many places for false “Christians” to worship. However, the foolish, infantile, elect sinners of this world will finally be granted some human fathers during that great revival preceding the end times, fathers who will call them to stand before the face of their heavenly Father, who will lead them to worship and serve their oldest Brother, Jesus, whose body formed the heavens and the earth, whose body lives now.
Soon there will be true teaching elders sent to a true and visible church on earth, even while they and that church will be heavily slandered and severely persecuted by Satan’s dying world order. Then all those true teaching elders will proclaim from the rooftops: “Stop worshipping human sinners like yourselves. Now esteem and serve only your heavenly Father, who lives in Jesus, our God. For He alone is wise. He alone is able to deliver you and your loved ones from slavery to sin and the coming destruction. If you do not repent into His truth, you will be handed over to the delusions of Satan and self-destruction. For this will happen to you, if you do not love the truth He created and reveals for your benefit. And that darkness is the worst of punishments. Stand beside Jesus at any cost. Anyone cherishing a father or mother above Jesus is not worthy of Him. Anyone cherishing a son or daughter Page 779
above Jesus is not worthy of Him. And those not following Jesus as His disciples, to receive a cross of hatred and persecution from God haters in Satan’s world order, as He did, is not worthy of Him.”
In the last days, Satan’s evil messiah, called the beast, will rise up to rule over that devil’s fading and chaotic world order, in a violent and vain attempt to rescue his kingdom from destruction. And he will conquer all the warring factions of that devil’s kingdom, to unite them against Jesus and against His people. But, of course, the beast will not be able to become the head of all the nations in the world. Rather, he will merely form an alliance of ten nations, which become the dominant economic and military world power. And nine of those ten will have once belonged to the ancient Roman Empire, to the original formation of his fourth kingdom, to the lands that finally established Satan’s prime religion of humanism in the world. Satanic spiritual principles, the doctrines of humanism that Persia, Greece and Rome had been perfecting since the days of King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, will be the guiding darkness of that beast’s kingdom. Now, as often mentioned, the heart of that demonic religion, both in its secular and theistic sects, is the belief that one should worship oneself as one’s own god, as the ruler of one’s own destiny. Then, aside from oneself, one may also worship other human gods, those who might “save” oneself from physical or economic destruction, and even any who promise to grant one all the material rewards that one’s lusts and pride of one’s very unjust and selfish flesh could desire. Since Satan in his beast will falsely claim that he will save all of his worshippers from destruction, as well as provide for all the vile lusts and pride of their flesh, then will forbid any in his kingdom to buy or sell if they do not acknowledge his ownership of them with his mark on their hands or foreheads, all the non-elect, and some sleeping elect, will bow before him.
So let us understand the essence of the demonic religion of humanism. And we will also need to comprehend the biblical anthropological doctrines declaring that the soul is an impassive part of a human being, where the mind of the spirit and the mind of the flesh meet to make all our conscious moral and critical decisions. Then we will know what Jesus meant when He said: “The one having found one’s soul will fail to keep it from being lost, and the one having not kept one’s soul from being lost, for My sake, will find it.” A humanist is “one having found one’s soul.” That is, the Greek expression, ὁ εὑρὼν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ, uses an articular aorist participle form of εὑρίσκω, a gender-indefinite term indicating one who has, in the past, completed the act of having “come upon something either through purposeful search or accidentally; discover[ed] intellectually through reflection, observation, examination, or investigation; attain[ed] a state or condition” (BDAG3).
Thus, one who accidentally or purposefully “finds” one’s decision-making soul, then trusts that he or she is one’s own god and thinks one can decide one’s own destiny—often a life free from all moral, physical and spiritual responsibilities to others—is a humanist. A humanist “discovers” that he or she is not obligated to God’s moral restrictions against selfish exploitation, and decides this through self-deluding reflection, observation, examination or investigation, by studying the self-serving lies of other humanists. Then those practising the religion of humanism most often brag about how great a god they have become, after discovering this state of self-esteem and self-worship, how they have
“found” the only right way of thinking—both morally, with the minds of their non-elect spirits, and in matters of daily life, with their minds of flesh. In other words, they claim to have “found” their souls, through a vain pride which does not acknowledge that their souls were shaped by parents and by spiritual/moral powers beyond their own control. So now they feel free to fulfill the lusts of their flesh. Yet these humanists always end up destroying themselves and everyone around them with their self-indulgent arrogance, exploitation, oppression and crimes. Meanwhile, although the elect may be overwhelmed by a continuous proclamation of these doctrines of self-esteem and self-worship, their Page 780
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spirits in their hearts can never fully believe them, since they are indeed lies. So the elect end up being the exploited and enslaved ones whom the self-worshipping non-elect trample under their feet.
It is an indisputable fact that theistic humanists (such as Roman Catholics, most Protestants and Muslims), and especially secular humanists (such as the Roman-like hierarchical and despotic nations of fascists, capitalists and communists) have been responsible for most of history’s worst wars, racial violence, psychopathic slavery, severe oppression, denials of basic freedoms, deadly pseudo-scientific eugenics programs, murderous religious persecutions, totally unjust laws and many other manifestations of man’s inhumanity to man. And, while doing all this, they not only destroyed countless lives of innocent people, but even their own lives. For, as each uses vain lies and delusions to work ruthless spiritual, emotional and physical destruction for others, members of their own sects also do the same to one another, and work destruction within their humanistic cults. So humanistic cults must always contend with harmful or even deadly rivalries and rebellions, as the ego of each human god strives to destroy one’s own father or mother, brother or sister, son or daughter, in order to steal god-like status, wealth or possessions for oneself. So, both externally and internally, all of the humanistic societies are basically loveless, because love cannot be built where no one can trust anyone else. And, wherever there is no love, hate and destruction rule supreme, like they do in hell.
So, although we have heard the incessant loud boasts of humanists, proclaiming that they have all
“found their souls,” and can save all mankind, then demand that we too must also “find our souls”
and become self-esteeming gods like them, to save ourselves or else suffer their violent wrath, we do not follow them. We not only forsake their false churches and the secular leaders which those fakes worship like the beast, but we also work together with Jesus to nullify their evil works. For we have seen how all those humanists are exactly the same, and how they all end up becoming increasingly deluded, until they destroy themselves, taking down many innocent lives with them. They all have lost the minds of their spirits and the minds of their flesh to self-destructive delusions, even to outright insanity. Every humanist who does not repent has truly lost any ability to make any right, rational and moral decisions in one’s own soul. So they have, in effect, lost their own souls. And there is absolutely no chance that any of those humanists will ever be able to keep their souls from being lost, until they repent into the humbling and often humiliating truths about themselves and about all the lies they believed. Then, of course, this loss of one’s own soul not only results in the destruction one’s own physical life, but also one’s eternal life to hell. So, while they live for their flesh-gratifying delusions, while they are receiving Satan’s carnal rewards, they may gloat about how they are gods, able to destroy the souls of Christ’s true disciples. But all they gain is a loss.
Therefore, Jesus also declared: ὁ ἀπολέσας τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ εὑρήσει αὐτήν. Here He once more used an articular aorist participle, but this time the participle was a form of ἀπόλλυμι. So here He was telling us: “The one not having caused one’s soul to be kept safe from losing all, from being destroyed or ruined, and lets this to happen to oneself for My sake, will find one’s soul” (Mat.
10:29, ALT). So the “soul” here is one’s life on earth. For one’s mind of the flesh labours with one’s mind of flesh in the soul to do works for the sake of Jesus. And anyone who does not join with the humanists to gain status, wealth and self-esteeming self-worship, as human gods, will be persecuted by those humanists. Those humanists will oppress, plunder and even kill God’s servants. But, no matter how many possessions we lose, even the physical bodies of our loved ones and ourselves, we will discover that we have gained sound minds in our honest spirits, firmly grounded on truth, able to practise wisdom through real love. And these minds of our spirits will also be able to better manage and control the minds of our flesh. So we will cast out all lies and delusions, will be able to see reality as it truly exists. Even a speck of dust will be amazing to us, real and full of wonder. And Page 781
a blade of grass will seem awesome, with its spirit maintaining its life. Though we know that flesh can kill flesh, we will also know, with certainty in our hearts, that flesh can never kill a spirit. Not one existing entity in either the material or spiritual realms, except God Himself, bears the power to kill a spirit, to make it cease to exist. And no existing entity, except God alone, bears the authority to cast any soul into the second death, into hell’s utter darkness of one’s own lies and delusions forever.
God’s kind of love, either latent or developing, is in every elect spirit, since each directly originated from the Creator’s own Spirit, and was not merely created by His power. And every awakened elect spirit’s mind not only continuously strives to give and receive love, but also seeks the source of that love, searches for the Father of one’s elect spirit. Furthermore, the mind of an elect spirit is nothing like the mind of flesh, because every elect spirit’s mind is incredibly rational, intelligent and entirely capable of learning the truth which leads to wisdom. Then each elect spirit is also able to keep all this in a perfect memory that can never forget. Yet a mind of flesh is merely a shadowy, temporary facsimile of the mind of the spirit, although the brute earthly power of ignorant flesh can suppress or oppress the mind of the spirit within the chamber of the soul, whenever decisions are made regarding things of this earth. Of course, when Satan created the non-elect, he put a mind of a spirit in each of their souls as well, as God allowed a woman to create a body in a womb. However, the minds of those non-elect spirits are not much better than their minds of flesh, since their loveless father has no desire nor ability to grant their spirits a good, rational, honest mind which remembers and learns from their failures and sins. Actually, the deluded devil keeps all his children under his control at all times, and never lets them use genuine reasoning, intelligence or wisdom of any kind, then causes their spirits to forget how his conditional, unjust and cruel favours and rewards have harmed them throughout their lives. The only thing Satan never lets his non-elect spirits forget is how someone
“wronged” them in some way, and even those memories are usually based on false perceptions and delusions. Meanwhile, the Father of the elect is sacrificial, generous, kind, compassionate, wise, just and truly loving. He unconditionally loves and cares for our elect spirits at all times, and will always do so in the future, throughout eternity. Our Father grants our spirits His unfathomable knowledge, commits Himself to teaching and training the minds of our spirits, permeates our spirits with a deep understanding and wisdom which no other entity can ever corrupt or steal, so that our spirits will grow and mature, so He can lend us His power to use rightly against the evils of Satan’s kingdom.
Consequently, when our elect spirits begin to awaken and think, our spirits also begin to frequently tell our ignorant, foolish, impulsive, greedy, selfishly ambitious, self-gratifying minds of flesh to shut up and listen to the counsel our spirits, to the wisdom we received from Jesus. Of course, when Satan’s world order offers us some vile “opportunity” to steal a portion of God’s creation from those who should rightfully receive a share of it, our amoral flesh may still want to say “yes” to that devil and his minions. Yet our elect spirits learn from Jesus, and speak up in our souls, commanding our flesh to say “no.” When Satan’s lying and murdering servants call us to join in their plundering of the innocent, so we can become a member of their exclusive and “superior” ranks, our flesh may also want to become highly esteemed souls in their deluded eyes. But our elect spirits see their unjust ways clearly, and are filled with the same vexation over their evil that is in God’s heart. Our spirits fill with a desire to wage war against their injustice and delusions, to speak the truth in love, and will use even deadly force to stop their crimes, even if it puts our own lives in danger, even if it might also risk the lives of our loved ones, whose spirits of life cannot die. For the wisdom that our God puts in our spirits knows that their lies and sins will inevitably produce loss, destruction and death, if left unchecked. We realize that we must undo those works of Satan, as Jesus does, in order to be able to build up the just, equitable and loving kingdom of God in the places which that enemy occupies.
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The awakened elect forfeit countless “opportunities” to gain the financial rewards, gratified lusts, power and vain accolades which Satan’s corrupt and destructive world order offers them. And we do this because we know the blind minions of the devil offer such things only to tempt our flesh into becoming their fettered slaves. If we succumb to those temptations, we will waste years of our lives on earth, or our whole lives, labouring night and day for the devil’s kingdom, for corporations who destroy lives and God’s creations for profit, even though they know that the digits of their money are a delusion designed to suppress and oppress life. They force us ignore our loved ones, so we can labour seven days a week, producing that which saps good from our lands, or, worse yet, to build up their lies which destroy life. And all we ever get from that slavish labour might be a bigger empty house which wastes the precious resources of the earth that God meant for all to share, or a more esteemed title which God and all His loving children disdain, then perhaps a more impressive looking gravestone than the other dead souls gathered around us and a lifetime of painful regret. But, they say, if our service to the devil is remarkable in any way, we may earn a word or two in Satan’s own secular history, written by his lying, ruthless children, and become immortalized. So that would supposedly make all the loss and destruction we caused worth it. However, no matter how much fame one might win from the devil, God will not name that one, and that one will enter into eternity forgotten by all who ever truly lived and loved on earth. So, considering all these rewards of Satan’s world order, our awakened elect spirits realize that all that great loss for ourselves and for others is not worth anything Satan can grant to our flesh. Therefore, our elect spirits counsel our flesh to cast aside all temptations of the devil, and even to zealously war against his kingdom of deluded slaves.
Because we reject Satan’s world order and its temptations to be his slaves, and especially because we war against his kingdom, we realize that the devil and his children will slander us, and might even physically attack us. They will portray us as subhuman vermin, not worthy of their ruthless esteem and highly conditional “love.” Many will try to kill us, they burn or plunder our modest homes and goods, in their attempts to destroy the inner freedom, truth and love we build on earth. But soon we will stand in an eternal victory with our Creator God, with Jesus. Each of us will sit on natural and spiritually warm thrones, constructed of the love and abundant life we built on earth. Each of us will be dressed in rich, comfortable and gleaming garments, which cannot be soiled as we labour for the good of all life in His kingdom. And none of us will hunger or thirst, nor suffer the terrorism of any despots on that day of His return. Then all of the minds of our spirits will be able to think clearly, to study and thoroughly apply the truths of God effectively, while we expose the loveless, ruthless motives and intentions of the non-elect and cleanse their evil from the earth. Yes, we may weep as some non-elect are cast into eternal separation from literally all of God’s good creations. However, the joy of finding new siblings in the family of God, and actually seeing the spirits of His living creations everywhere in heaven and on earth, shall wipe away every tear from every elect one’s eye.
In the end, all our hands will hold a spiritual wealth of incalculable value. And, for some elect, this will include massive eternal treasures which they accumulated on earth, huge quantities of the heart’s gold, silver and precious stones. Then what will Satan and his minions say, after they have already lost all their carnal treasures, which lasted only for their short times in flesh on earth. What will they answer when they die and lose their wealth that never satisfied their greed, their status which never gave them any real self-worth, and their fame which has left them to be forgotten forever? Well, we already know what how they will respond, as their spiritual bodies, dressed in filthy rags, begin to fall into the bottomless abyss, in utter disgrace before the throne of the almighty King, clutching nothing but their dark and vaporous lies and delusions. All will be raging about how Page 783
superior they are, and how Jesus has no right to eternally deprive them of opportunities to abuse His creations. For they will still cherish and stubbornly grasp their lies, as hell swallows their screams.
Life in a body of flesh on earth is very short, and time on this earth is not actually real time at all, just a learning experience for our spirits. Also, these bodies of flesh are not our real bodies. Our real bodies or “mansions” already exist in heaven, even at the “same time” we are on earth. For the brief time granted to the material space-time continuum coexists with time in the eternal, spiritual space-time continuum. And all time on earth, from the moment of its beginning to the moment of its end, exists now in heaven, and always will exist now in heaven. This is difficult for minds of flesh to comprehend. But what it means is that awakened elect spirits must strive to use the short time on this earth to be taught and trained in truth and wisdom for the purposes of love, as much as God’s allows.
We have absolutely nothing to gain on this training ground of the earth, except to learn responsible and just love based upon a knowledge of the truths which exist in our Father’s Spirit, the same truths which He also wove into both His spiritual and physical creations. While living in our flesh, the only things worth gaining are truths and the ability to effectively use them in building and expressing just, pure, God-like love. Once this truth and wisdom begins to fill the minds of our spirits, and our spirits begin to rightly manage our minds of flesh, then we have truly found our souls. But we can only gain this truth and wisdom for love if we also forfeit the conditional rewards offered by Satan’s world order, because the only reason the loveless devil offers them to us is to distract us and turn us away from God and the gift of love which He works inside our spirits. If we do not focus our hearts and minds on the pursuit of wealth through selfish ambition, if we do not become chained, imprisoned slaves of the devil, then our free elect spirits can focus on all that truly matters, on learning to love.
As our spirits begin to receive Christ’s truth and wisdom, so we can learn to love, our spirits will not fail to defend God’s kingdom, and will surely march against Satan’s kingdom. For love will never allow us to idly stand by while the unjust destroy our family members and God’s other creations. So the awake and loving elect zealously run to enlist in God’s army. This is why Satan’s army tries to destroy any elect spirits they find awake, honest, alive and loving in Christ’s name, and why they create fake churches to distract the sleeping elect away from the awake elect who proclaim the truth.
Yet none of the elect will ever be safe from losing their own bodies of flesh, nor the more valued flesh of their loved ones, as well as all their fleeting earthly possessions. For God has unalterably decreed that all flesh shall die, and will never change His mind about the appointed destiny of all.
Nor will any of the elect ever be able to prevent their earthly lives from being destroyed or ruined by the slander and violence of the devil’s minions, not until Jesus returns to remove Satan and his brood from the earth. Yes, Jesus may choose to keep one’s earthly life safe until one’s appointed time. But those with awakened elect spirits are given only one feasible option in this earthly life, to stand by Jesus in His battle against the lies, injustice and destruction of Satan’s world order. All else is vanity.
Identifying the Elect
One thing has been hindering the process of dichotomization that Jesus has been working in these last days, since His first advent in the body of Jesus. The division of the elect from the non-elect has been significantly slowed by the failure of the elect to identify other elect souls. For Satan and his false churches have always tried to cloud and confuse the judgments of the elect, by coming to them disguised as messengers of light. They have been continuously lying to the elect about other elect souls, telling us that our elect siblings, who are all capable of love and repentance into the truth, are our enemies. Then they also convince many elect to serve Christ’s worst enemies, to worship their Page 784
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psychopathic human gods, to accept Satan’s brood as their closest allies. Consequently, many elect have kept themselves very busy in slavish labours for the devil, continuously striving to aid and abet the crimes of Satan’s world order against their own brothers and sisters. And they have done this for centuries. Thus, at the same time, they have been warring against their own heavenly Father in Jesus.
But Jesus told us how we can identify our elect brothers and sisters, those whom He sends out on missions in the same way He sends us out on missions. Of course, He did not tell us how to identify the non-elect, because the way to identify them is by their lack of God-like attributes, namely love.
Also, Jesus did not want us to go around labelling souls as “non-elect” children of Satan, damned to eternal hell. For He taught us that many elect will outwardly appear to be exactly the same as the non-elect, that they will be duped into joining Satan’s war against God. In fact, the only difference between the two is often so deeply internalized and well-hidden that it is impossible for us to judge rightly, while our spirits are confined to these bodies of flesh. Yet we can identify some elect by the positive attributes that absolutely none of the non-elect can ever possibly possess. So, we cannot identify the non-elect through a lack of empirical evidence which manifests just, loving attributes, since a lack of evidence is not real evidences. But we can identify the elect through the empirical evidence of some just, honest, pure, God-like love worked by their spirits, since all of this simply must come from God, and all of these kinds of things are gifts of His Holy Spirit to the elect alone.
So, yes, only the elect possess an innate propensity, desire and ability to love in a just, God-like way, which includes a strong desire for the truth. And a spirit’s desire for truth is a desire for Jesus, with a faith in Jesus, because Christ only has truth in Him, and no lies, and all true love must be built upon a foundation of pure truth. Then these attributes also make every elect spirit able to repent into the truth as well, through love. However, an elect spirit’s longing for love and truth can be thoroughly suppressed and oppressed by one’s mind of flesh, if one’s mind of flesh is completely deceived and deluded by the servants of the devil, and through the assistance of his kingdom and his powers. So the most we are able to do is sometimes suspect that one might have an elect soul, when we observe what appears to be at least one spontaneous act of a spirit’s love, the kind that is built on the spirit’s repentance into the real truth. And the more we see of this kind of honest love in a person’s life, especially in the small daily matters of one’s life, the more we can be sure that one has an elect spirit.
On the other hand, we can cautiously assume that one might have a non-elect spirit, born of Satan’s spirit, if we always see a complete lack of God-like, just love in that one’s life, if all one’s words and deeds are always ruthless and one’s very spirit hates the truth. We cannot be absolutely certain about anyone having a non-elect spirit, or resolutely conclude that one is destined for hell, since we also know that some elect walk only according to their minds of flesh. So, since the flesh is incapable of God-like love, even some elect always appear to be unloving. Thus, we cannot let ourselves become bitter and hate anyone, but always must leave everyone’s eternal judgment in the hands of the Judge, who is able to see if some good may be found in their spirits. Still, Jesus called us to judge others by their fruits, by empirical observations of their words and deeds, which we assess according to truths granted by God in His Word, and as His Holy Spirit confirms those judgments to our spirits. Thus, we must never shy away from making these judgments, since many lives, including our own, depend on us making these judgments. Jesus outright commanded us to make such judgments so we might survive and thrive, so we would be able to undo the works of the devil and build up His kingdom.
They are absolutely necessary to do the works of His mission, together with all His other disciples.
Jesus Christ’s process of dichotomization, His separation of the elect from the non-elect, also must be completed shortly before He returns. And this process will require us to identify our elect brothers and sisters, all the spirits who were born of our Father. So this was another reason for Jesus telling Page 785
the disciples He sent out on this mission, as well as all the other true disciples He will ever send out on any other missions: “The one always welcoming you [with accepting approval] always welcomes Me. And the one always welcoming Me always welcomes the one having been sent out on a mission by Me. The one always welcoming a prophet, because that one is a [true] prophet, will obtain the reward of a prophet. And the one always welcoming a just person, because that one is a just person, will obtain the reward of a just person. Then, whoever might only give a cup of a cold drink to one of the least of these [disciples], because that one [actually] is [My true] disciple, assuredly I reason with you people, there is no possibility that [the one giving the drink] might ever lose one’s reward”
(Mat. 10:40-42, from: Ὁ δεχόμενος ὑμᾶς ἐμὲ δέχεται, καὶ ὁ ἐμὲ δεχόμενος δέχεται τὸν ἀποστείλαντά
με. ὁ δεχόμενος προφήτην εἰς ὄνομα προφήτου μισθὸν προφήτου λήμψεται, καὶ ὁ δεχόμενος δίκαιον
εἰς ὄνομα δικαίου μισθὸν δικαίου λήμψεται. καὶ ὃς ἂν ποτίσῃ ἕνα τῶν μικρῶν τούτων ποτήριον
ψυχροῦ μόνον εἰς ὄνομα μαθητοῦ, ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, οὐ μὴ ἀπολέσῃ τὸν μισθὸν αὐτοῦ, SBLGNT).
Notice here, in Mat. 10:40-41, how often Jesus used the present tense of δέχομαι (“to be receptive of someone, receive, welcome ... to indicate approval or conviction by accepting, be receptive of, be open to, approve, accept,” BDAG3). So these verbs bear a durative aspect, implying repeated, continuous, ongoing acts of spontaneously welcoming and receiving with approving acceptance.
Then the three prepositional phrases beginning with εἰς ὄνομα bear “a Semitic meaning, ‘because he is ...” (R&R2). That is, in verses 41 and 42 above, εἰς ὄνομα refers to “the classification under which one belongs ... in your capacity as ... [or] recognition accorded a person on the basis of performance”
(BDAG3). So, εἰς ὄνομα προφήτου would mean “because that one is a [true] prophet” or “in recognition of being a [true] prophet.” Then εἰς ὄνομα δικαίου would mean “because that one is a just person” or “in recognition of being a just person.” And εἰς ὄνομα μαθητοῦ would mean “because that one [actually] is [My true] disciple” or “in recognition of that one being [My genuine] disciple.”
Jesus gave these instructions immediately after telling the twelve that even their own family and closest friends would betray them and become their enemies. So, in these verses (10:40-42), Jesus knew that He must also tell them how to find those who would not be their enemies, who would not willingly betray them. Jesus was telling them how to identify the true elect, the real children of the heavenly Father. And the way to do that was to look for those whose spirits possessed an innate propensity to love in a just and God-like way, with a strong desire for the truth, so they could build their true love upon that foundation of truth. Those with spirits like this would be drawn to other elect spirits, would have a strong inner inclination to warmly welcome other elect souls with totally accepting approval. Naturally, Satan and his lying children shall try to poison the minds of the elect against one another, and their slander will sometimes be effective, for a time. But, once the truth comes out, and each elect soul is known for the real motives and intentions of each one’s spirit, the elect will always prefer close fellowship with one another, and will keep their distance from the non-elect, as well as their demon owners. For each elect spirit will recognize one’s own Father in the attributes of every other elect spirit, the attributes of the Creator’s Spirit that dwelt in Jesus Christ.
In essence, we need to seek out those with consistent, spontaneous, accepting and welcoming love for Christ’s true disciples, who warmly receive those disciples, just because they see how all those disciples know, trust and speak Christ’s intended meanings of His teachings. We look for those who love true prophets, simply because those prophets speak the very words of God. We want to find those who love workers of equitable, honest and compassionate justice, solely because they realize that those workers are willing to sacrifice so much for justice. Our true brothers and sisters in the family of God are those who love all who show kindness to the souls whom the cruel world order has labelled as worthless and cast out. The people who warmly welcome those with pure, just, honest Page 786
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and God-like love have that same kind of love in their own spirits, because their spirits were born of the same Father. So these are the ones we want to find—not the titled and entitled human gods who gain a good profit and much worldly esteem through their slander and lies, through their twisting of God’s Word in ways that appeal to the greed, arrogance and other base desires of the selfish flesh.
Now, naturally, none of the elect will be perfect. But Jesus was not talking about perfection. Rather, He was talking about welcoming, receiving and accepting His other true disciples who were sent out to do good deeds, even the smallest kinds of loving works, like giving a cup of water to a thirsty soul. And we can only welcome those truly loving elect after we see their spirits, after we we know the other in truth, including truths about the weaknesses, flaws and sins of one another. Therefore, Jesus was talking about judging others favourably according to what they reveal about their spirits, through their small and seemingly insignificant words and deeds each day, such as when a brother or sister in God’s family has enough mercy and compassion to provide a cold drink, even an alcoholic drink, to a needy soul of low esteem in Satan’s world order. Not one of the elect, while they live in flesh on earth, will bear the perfect and complete kind of love that Jesus Himself possessed, not at all times. Jesus was utterly beautiful to observe and study. But not one of the elect has ever been nearly so beautiful. Yet spontaneous words and deeds of love straight from the heart are signs of an elect spirit, though they may be worked in extremely faulty and fumbling ways through their unwilling but submitting flesh. That love is beautiful to us, to all the elect, because those little words and deeds reflect something of our Father who dwells in Jesus. Thus, we also readily accept their appeals for forgiveness when they sin against us, because we sense the godly sorrow in their spirits. And we ignore many of their lesser sins done in ignorance as well, especially the sins committed through the cultural lies and brainwashing of Satan’s world order, through the false doctrines they might believe.
However, we also reason with one another about the causes of our sins, striving to understand the genuine truth, which Jesus will use to effectively set our spirits free from all slavery to lies and sins.
The elect are the only ones we can live and work together with in the true church, in the sphere of all Jesus builds within our spirits, in the close family of our Father. No matter how “lowly” those elect souls may be in the eyes of the devil’s world order, they alone can share in the High King’s works for His just and noble kingdom. All His works must be done through His “royal priesthood.” No matter how high Satan raises and esteems someone in his religious kingdom of humanism, no matter how much the devil steals from God’s creation to reward that one, no matter what status a human god may be granted in Satan’s hierarchy, a non-elect soul is totally unfit and incapable of any useful work in our High Priest’s church. Every one of those non-elect will only hinder, corrupt, sabotage or destroy the works of God. Even most deceived and deluded elect, those not yet willing to repent from destructive lies and delusions, must not be allowed to partake in the least of His priesthood’s labours, though they surely will possess some love and some truth in their spirits. The people we desperately need to find are the elect with awakened spirits, whose spirits are willing to trust the teaching and training of Jesus, who have begun to see how wise applications of God’s truths are desperately needed by this world, who desire His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, who zealously strive to build up His true kingdom on earth. And we can find these awakened elect everywhere on earth. Some may still remain captive to false religions, to various cultures and sects of Satan’s world order, to institutions of arrogance, to the demon Mammon, to sexual delusions and to various families or households headed by minions of the devil. However, once Jesus awakens their spirits, they will long for truths and love of Jesus, and will soon repent out of their bondage.
After God inevitably casts them into soul-dividing conflicts with the non-elect who have taken them captive, they will serve Christ. Those awakened elect will spontaneously and warmly welcome all Page 787
who truly serve the real Jesus, once they get to know them. For their spirits will recognize their own siblings, by the unmistakable attributes they have all inherited from their common heavenly Father.
So this is how Jesus told us to build up His church and kingdom. It is not to be built through sales techniques and deceptions, through the trickery of emotionally charged motivational rhetoric aided by professional music designed to trigger falsely “sincere” reactions in minds of flesh. Nor did He tell us to appeal to carnal pride, by producing an outward appearance of respectability and even carnal glory, by offering physical works of so-called “sacraments,” which enable the loveless to become members of their exclusive club, which is actually a cult that bestows esteemed titles upon their most loyal fake human gods. We cannot accomplish any of God’s works by labouring together with those who magnify themselves, who raise themselves up on podiums in magnificent buildings and flaunt the wealth the stole from God, who promise health and wealth in Satan’s world order as though it were a sign of God’s blessing, rather than the curse it truly is. Fake churches, who assure a place in heaven to ruthless exploiters of their siblings for personal gain, are never able to do any real works of God. At times, God may use some of their own words against them, to save an elect soul seated among them. But that kind of work is actually done by God, and they can take no credit for it.
The only way Jesus will allow us to build up His kingdom, and the priesthood which serves it, is by seeking and finding other elect souls to populate it. And we can only recognize them by their very simple daily acts of pure, just and God-like love. Thus, we do not preach to coerce them into making a hypocritical profession of Jesus as Lord, nor make our acceptance of them conditional upon it. For Christ’s love in us is always unconditional. Only Satan’s fake “love” is conditional like that. Rather, we are to find them, openly share all that Jesus gives us or teaches to us, then wait for Jesus to call their spirits to repentance, since He is the only entity in all existence who is able to call their spirits.
The plain and obvious fact is that Jesus told us to seek those who accept and warmly welcome the elect, simply because they reflect the love and truth granted to them from Him. And these are the only ones who also accept and warmly welcome Him, the only ones who are being saved by their spirit’s faith in our God Jesus, through genuine faith in His words of truth. We do not join with those who merely say they are Christians, who say they have “accepted Jesus” into their hearts. Rather, we only join our lives with those whose spirits actually reveal themselves to be God’s true elect, who actually do the just and loving works of God in their real lives. Only these awakened elect spirits, whether or not they have consciously accepted Jesus as their Lord, in their minds of flesh, do truly serve and esteem the real Creator of all existence, and actually worship Him in their spirits and in truth. Only the spirits that bear the fruits of Christ’s Holy Spirit, especially His God-like love, have proved that they are born from the Spirit of the one Creator God. As for those who utter emotional words as they try to look outwardly sincere while “professing Christ,” they prove nothing to us.
So we are not to look for people to save, but to search for those whom Jesus has already elected to save, even from the beginning of time. We are looking for brothers and sisters in the true family of God, those whose oldest Brother is Jesus. And the reason we are looking for them is so that they may labour with us in God’s works, through the teaching and training Jesus provides for all His elect, so His teaching and training may be enhanced in us by their participation. For, when Jesus sends us out on a training mission, certain aspects of that mission cannot be done well by some elect souls, while those same aspects can be done very well by the others. That is, we cannot adequately apprentice, as disciples of Jesus, unless we do so as a family, where each one does his or her part, since every work of Jesus requires many different kinds of tasks to be done for the completion of His mission. And the building up of His kingdom on earth, through His missions, needs many different kinds of workers.
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Jesus also told us: “Whoever has welcomed [with accepting approval] this little child, [and did this]
upon the influence of My attributes, always welcomes Me. And whoever has welcomed Me always welcomes the One having sent Me on a mission. For the least among all of you people, always beginning [to welcome others] under this [assumption], is great” (Luke 9:48, from: Ὃς ἂν δέξηται
τοῦτο τὸ παιδίον ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματί μου ἐμὲ δέχεται, καὶ ὃς ἂν ἐμὲ δέξηται δέχεται τὸν ἀποστείλαντά
με· ὁ γὰρ μικρότερος ἐν πᾶσιν ὑμῖν ὑπάρχων οὗτός ἐστιν μέγας, SBLGNT). Many elect are now existing in a state of muddled, self-contradictory lies. And every elect spirit, while existing during this extremely brief moment in the flesh, is an infantile, little child (παιδίον). All our spirits begin life on earth in this condition, as a little, untaught, foolish and very spiritually ignorant infants. So even one whom Jesus calls to be a teaching elder, who may even be more than a hundred years old, has lived only a short and immeasurably tiny portion of eternity, where that one’s earthly moment has been spent in a distracting, unruly and often rebellious body of flesh. Thus, even if such a man has spent all of his hundred years diligently studying God’s Word and the ways of God written in His creation, through the guidance of Christ’s Holy Spirit, and possesses great gifts of understanding and intelligence, he has not even begun to know much truth at all, and has acquired even less wisdom to rightly apply that truth. Consequently, when we look for God’s true elect scattered throughout the world, we should not expect much from them. And we should never have much faith in any of them.
For we place all our faith in our God Jesus, in the only wise Teacher of each individual elect spirit among us. Thus, we can never place any faith in any wanna-be human god. Only Jesus can provide all we need, individually and as a family, through different elect souls, gifting each one as is needed by all. Alone, not one of us is anything. But as the family of our Father, endowed with His approval and accompanying power worked through Jesus, we become a formidably great force in this world.
Basically, all the elect are put on earth to experience this process of teaching and training, but as a family dwelling and working together for the good of all God’s creation. Yes, Jesus apprentices each one individually too, but all at the same time, so we all might all learn to work together, even in the same way we will all labour together with Him in heaven, forever expanding His just and loving kingdom. Jesus is teaching us so we might learn to share all our successes and failures together, so we might all celebrate our victories as one, or else grieve and learn from our mistakes as one, so we might grow in love for one another, and for our God who makes us one. Thus, our Teacher wants us to learn to identify one another, so we can find each other and work together, where each one uses his or her own unique God-given skills with the rest of His children. And this means that we must also learn to identify those whose hearts are inherently set on hindering or destroying our works for Jesus, those who corrupt, sabotage, slander and murder our family members. For we must avoid them, and even labour with Jesus in the task of nullifying their evil works, even by putting some in prisons, and sometimes by killing the most dangerous psychopaths. Yet we must be very careful in our judgments, since there are many liars and slanderers who can make us believe they are the elect of God, who are highly skilled at making us think the truth-tellers and the elect are liars and demons.
Then there are many elect who remain in delusions, lies and sins as well. So Jesus wants us, all His infantile and gullible disciples, to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to wrath. For we must take the time to make right judgments, and even our omniscient God Himself practises these ways.
Jesus gradually made me into a teaching elder, to engage in a mission of teaching His words. And, as imperfect as I am, I labour with hope and zeal in this mission, frequently stumbling in this path He has steered me onto, failing far too often to be called adequate. Still, I do not despair or give up. For I am not alone. Jesus picks me up, sets me straight and continuously counsels me, with reminders, visions of corporeal and eternal futures, as well as some very candid and humbling rebukes. Then He Page 789
has also sent out countless other teaching elders, other disciples of Jesus who do the same work, or else to perform other related tasks for Him. And all of us are hidden in unnoticed shacks within the shanty towns on the outskirts of Satan’s world order, because we have been rejected, despised and marginalized by the churches within that devil’s kingdom. Nevertheless, we prefer to live like this.
Why do we love this kind of life, as cast outs, without accolades of men and lacking any status in Satan’s world order? Because we have all of the most valuable treasures that life on this earth can possibly offer to anyone, together with inner joy, all that comes with the stewardship we receive by taking responsibility for God’s eternal gold, silver and heaps of precious gems. It is because we learn to truly love, and are loved in return, by God and by His elect children. Then we have been granted the prophets and apostles as our living brothers, and help them build up the truth and wisdom He gave to them. For Jesus reveals, even to various infantile and imperfect servants like us, to the elect living today and throughout the ages, ever more details regarding those first truths He revealed to Adam, to Abraham, to Moses and to all His other currently living servants of the past. Yes, our words contain more errors than the prophets and apostles had in their writings, since we are not prophesying, but merely teaching. Still, Jesus causes us to find more about the infallible truths He awarded to prophets and apostles, teaching and training each of us a little greater fulfillment of His wisdom in our appointed times. Then His Holy Spirit confirms those truths—often through some very humiliating and painful experiences He put us through, where His Spirit focuses the attention of our spirits upon those truths and rebukes the lies we once believed, in a way we could not resist. And whenever His Spirit points to His Word, or confirms some truths from other imperfect teaching elders, He compels our spirits to repent into them. Jesus washes us, and saves us from errors and lies.
During this process, we also learn, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we possess many inherent and critical faults, flaws, weaknesses and disabilities, which can all easily bring us down into sin and destruction. So we remain utterly dependent on our God Jesus, and upon all whom He sends to help us in our utter and total incapacity to help ourselves. “For none of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord. Or if we die, we die to the Lord. If therefore we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:7-8, WEB). Then we find out that, to find God’s people, the true elect, we must never believe what people say they are. So we seldom ask if one is an Evangelical or any other kind of Christian, since most elect do not even know enough to rightly judge whether or not anyone has an elect soul, and few can rightly judge themselves. Therefore, we do what Jesus commanded. We judge each by one’s own fruits, by one’s own words and deeds from the heart. Then those we gather around us are those who possess the attributes of just love, the kind whish is built on a foundation of truth. These lovers of God and His truths are our local church, regardless of what Satan’s world order calls them, even if they have been taught to call themselves atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Roman Catholics or anything else. And none of these call any of us by a title like
“pastor,” since Jesus forever forbade such a practise. Instead, all simply address the elders by their first names, in the same way all addressed the teaching elders in the true apostolic church by their given names, or called them by the common title of “brother.” Furthermore, most who fellowship with us do not call themselves “Christians” yet, and do not even realize that they are God’s elect. For most are not yet called to serve in the priesthood of His true church. As for us, we simply speak the truth from God, whenever we are made able, in our imperfect and stumbling ways, often without much outward effect. Yet they do hear and take God’s truths to heart. So we know Jesus often uses our words to turn their spirits toward Him, and to question the lies taught by false pastors or priests.
This is our mission, to serve Jesus and to wait upon Him to do His works in His elect and at His own appointed times. We simply find the elect, because He commands and helps our spirits to find them.
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And He leads us to those with spirits able to love in a just way, built on a foundation of truth. Then we merely speak whatever Jesus grants to our spirits, and commands our spirits to utter. We all bear this easy yoke “in His name,” that is, according to His will, commands, power, authority and, above all, love. We trust in Him, with saving faith, with the same faith He will teach and train the spirits of our loved ones and all the elect on earth to possess for themselves. We have confidence in Jesus, to cause His true elect, from all cultures, religions, nations and races in the world, to warmly welcome Him and one another into their lives, with accepting approval, with us among them. For we trust that Jesus is the Lord of all existence, and is well-able to do this. We teach nothing to a soul except faith in Jesus, a trust in His teaching and training of their spirits for their salvation into truth and love. No other creed, especially one uttered through “sincere” emotions of the unreliable and fickle mind of flesh, can ever be sufficient for salvation. For we are saved solely by faith in Jesus and His words.
Conflicts of the Kingdoms
Mat. 11:2-19,
Valiant John, the Baptizer
“Now when John heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and
[through them] said to Him, ‘Are you He who comes, or should we look for another?’
“Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. Blessed is he who finds no occasion for stumbling in Me.’
“As these went their way, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John, ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in king’s houses. But why did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and much more than a prophet.
“‘For this is he, of whom it is written, “Behold, I send My messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.” Most certainly I tell you, among those who are born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptizer; yet he who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.
“‘From the days of John the Baptizer until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John. If you are willing to receive it, this is Elijah, who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
“‘But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces, who call to their companions and say, “We played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance. We mourned for you, and you didn’t lament.” For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon.” The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say,
“Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” But wisdom is justified by her children’” (Mat. 11:2-19, WEB).
Why did this prophet, John, come baptizing? This baptism or immersion ritual of John involved seven biblical steps practised by the priesthood of Israel: (1) hearing the truths of God proclaimed by the prophet; (2) accepting those truths in heart, with the mind of one’s spirit; (3) confessing one’s Page 791
sins of rebellion against those truths, as one’s spirit stood before the face of God; (4) repenting into those truths; (5) acknowledging and accepting God’s forgiveness; (6) going to the ritual bath of the mikveh to offer a prayer of thanksgiving, then dipping one’s body under living water, in order to remind oneself of God’s forgiveness and cleansing from all sins, and to remember that His gracious power will allow one to begin life anew, in a fully restored relationship with Him; and (7) diligently learning more truth throughout one’s life, so one could abide in truth and walk in God-like love, to maintain one’s good relationship with God. And this is where Jesus came in. For John worried that his people would not be able to complete the seventh step, if they did not know their Messiah, the Teacher and High Priest of God’s true church of Israel. Thus, Jesus affirmed the faith of John, and told him: “Blessed is he who finds no occasion for stumbling in Me.” Here Jesus was telling John that all who heard His teachings, and took them to heart, all who walked according to all their elect spirits learned from Him, would keep themselves from sins and crimes against God and against their siblings in mankind. If they trusted in the power and authority of Jesus, as their God, their spirits and souls would be saved and eternally safe. In Jesus, there would be no occasions where they would stumble into lies, injustice and evil, like they did through the false doctrines of lying fake shepherds.
Matthew knew that Jesus, our God, had appointed John the Baptizer as the last true high priest for the Old Covenant branch of His church of Israel, just as He had appointed Aaron as the first. And this John was the high priest destined to usher in Israel’s true and eternal High Priest, the Messiah Jesus. John had already publicly testified to this Messiah’s attributes and the Holy Spirit of God in Him, and endorsed Jesus before the eyes of His priesthood. For Jesus alone was to be their Head Teacher and Judge. Jesus, as God in human flesh, always was their final authority, the Head of every elect spirit in Israel and the world, since the creation of Adam. Now our real High Priest, symbolized by the temporary and shadowy outline of His loving and truly just ways written in His Law, would reveal and ratify His New Covenant salvation for His elect, both in His priesthood of Israel and among the Gentiles, for all the elect who ever lived or would live in the future. And, although John was an ordinary man like us, with an infantile human spirit, God’s Holy Spirit had formed, taught, trained and ruled over his spirit in a very unique way, to prepare him for this mission. For God had caused the spirit of John to dwell on earth at a heaven’s moment before this day, in the body of Elijah (875-848 BC). So God taught and trained John’s spirit in a previous lifetime too. And God gave Elijah’s last day on earth as a sign that his spirit would return, since He took Elijah’s flesh up to heaven on a chariot, not allowing his body to experience death, until his spirit returned in the body of John. So John’s weak, fallible human spirit was a special work of God, designed and predestined for very unique works, to call the elect to repentance and “make ready the way of the Lord” (Mat. 3:3, e.g. of John’s works: Mat. 14:1-12; Mark 6:17-29; Luke 7:17-35; 9:7-9; John 3:22-36; 4:2; 5:33-38).
John’s Hope and Anxiety
Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, became angry with John the Baptizer, because Israel revered and trusted John far more than him, or their Roman-appointed high priests, and saw John as a true prophet that always taught the genuine and God-intended meaning of God’s Word.
And truth has always been a dangerous enemy of psychopathic, lying dictators, like Herod, since it exposes them as liars and causes their duped victims to rebel against them. Also, it did not help that John openly criticized Herod Antipas for committing adultery with Herodias, whom he called his wife, although she was actually the wife of his brother, Herod Philip, whom he forced to divorce her (see Mat. 14:3). So Herod threw John in prison, yet dared not execute him, due to a superstitious belief that executing a man of God would curse his works of greed and his attempts to maintain his Page 792
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illicit power over the suffering masses, and also because he knew that, if he killed John, those who loved John might rise up against him, and would forever see Antipas as the unjust, jealous and petty thug he actually was. Thus, Herod kept John alive in prison, to suffer in a his body, soul and spirit.
Now that prison would be depressing, and his silencing idleness would stir up many thoughts in his mind of flesh, which would then nag at his spirit, causing his spirit to seek consolation. A constant doubting from the mind of flesh in his soul would wear out his spirit, to the point where even his spirit would begin to feel anxious and need reassurance. And John could not ignore the fact that wicked souls were still persecuting and overcoming the true servants of God, and that those unjust and dishonest souls were still enjoying their self indulgent opulence, still able to steal an unlawful share of the people’s labours, as well an inordinate portion of God’s creations for their own selfish gain, even though the promised King and Messiah had already arrived. So John would have longed to hear a progress report from Jesus. Now Herod allowed John to have visitors. This was common in those days, but not through the compassion of those despots. Rather, it was because it allowed rulers to save money. By allowing visitors, they reduced their own expense of needing to provide food, clothing, blankets and other necessities for their prisoners, since they let the inmates’ families and friends provide all this for the inmates during their visits. And, since male and female followers of John, who served him as his disciples, were a family, and saw John as their teaching and judging father, they frequently visited John. Then, one day, the troubled John asked two of them to go and seek reassurance from the Messiah, to encourage his own spirit and to comfort their spirits as well.
So these two disciples went to Jesus, to spend some time hearing His teachings and watching Him do His works of healing and casting out demons. “Now John, after hearing [about] the works of the Messiah [while] in prison, said to Him, [in a message] sent through his disciples: ‘Are you the coming One or are we hoping for another?’ And having responded, Jesus said to them: ‘After having left, give a message from [Me] to John, what you people hear and see; blind recover sight and the physically disabled walk about, lepers are cleansed and the deaf are hearing, even the dead are being raised and the needy are having the Gospel preached [to them]. And blessed is whoever might not be offended [enough to lose trust] in Me” (Mat. 11:2-6, from: Ὁ δὲ Ἰωάννης ἀκούσας ἐν τῷ
δεσμωτηρίῳ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ χριστοῦ πέμψας διὰ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Σὺ εἶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἢ
ἕτερον προσδοκῶμεν; καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· Πορευθέντες ἀπαγγείλατε Ἰωάννῃ ἃ
ἀκούετε καὶ βλέπετε· τυφλοὶ ἀναβλέπουσιν καὶ χωλοὶ περιπατοῦσιν, λεπροὶ καθαρίζονται καὶ κωφοὶ
ἀκούουσιν, καὶ νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται καὶ πτωχοὶ εὐαγγελίζονται· καὶ μακάριός ἐστιν ὃς ἐὰν μὴ
σκανδαλισθῇ ἐν ἐμοί, SBLGNT). So John did not receive assurance that Jesus would crush all the wicked oppressors, as the prophecies said He would. For this was not the appointed time for that. It was not the Messiah’s purpose to bring judgment against the wicked, and restore the earth to a right state of physical existence, not during His first advent. Jesus only came at this time to restore a right relationship between the elect and their Creator. However, at least, John would now realize that Jesus was indeed doing the first works appointed for the Messiah, the kinds of deeds that were prophesied regarding His first coming. So John should not lose trust in Him, while imprisoned by Satan’s brood.
The extremely popular Messianic prophecies of Isaiah were the most comforting to the suffering elect in Israel, and memorized by many of them. And Isaiah had been granted words from God about a time when the kingdom of God would expand and increase. This time is now called the last days, the period between the first and second advents of the Messiah. Through Isaiah, God said this time would occur shortly after Israel “draws near with their mouth and with their lips to honour Me, bu
t
they have removed their heart far from Me, and their fear of Me is a commandment of men which has been taught” (Is. 29:13, WEB). This perfectly described Israel in the days of John and when the Page 793
Messiah came to us the first time. False teachers of Israel were to arrive first, to corrupt God’s Law of love. They would nullify God’s equitable justice by transforming it into “a commandment of men.” The intended justice of God, with its emphasis on teaching sinners for a possible repentance, had become a twisted, cold, ruthless and unjustly condemning body of man-made traditions. The priests and rabbis of Israel fulfilled this prophecy: “Yahweh’s Word will be to them precept on precept, precept on precept; line on line, line on line; here a little, there a little; that they [both the false teachers and their followers] may go, fall backward, be broken, be snared, and be taken” (Is. 28:13, WEB). Thus, our God Jesus came in response to this greatest of all sins, which portrayed those men as gods above God, since they claimed the right to edit God’s Word to suit their own preferences, then made the people fearfully heed and revere them, even far more than their Creator and Father Himself. They made Israel worship men in a way that slandered God’s good name in all the earth.
Through Isaiah, God said, “Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the understanding of their prudent men will be hidden” (Is. 29:14, WEB). God would do a work of causing the false wisdom of fake religious teachers to perish and revered understanding of their supposedly “prudent” counsellors to hide in shame, because the Messiah’s genuine wisdom and true understanding would come to outshine them all. So this referred to the first time Jesus came to Israel, and to the last days, when His Holy Spirit would gradually fill the elect with a knowledge of God’s justice worked through God-like love. Yet only the lowest class of Israelites, and a few Jewish Shepherds, together with a small number of Gentiles from distant lands, would receive this—God’s welcome invitation to embrace His arrival, to trust God’s Spirit born into the flesh of a human man.
On the day that God, who is a Spirit, came to dwell in a human body born of a woman, He caused the baby’s body to be born in a barn. God allowed Satan’s world order to make no room for His body to be born in the comfortable inn, where the stolen money of the wealthy purchased their eternal reward of hell. And, on the night of His birth, God only called a few local shepherds to witness this greatest of all events in history. Meanwhile, Israel’s most esteemed and revered priests and biblical scholars were pleasantly dwelling, with their doting servants, less than six miles away, in the city of Jerusalem, near the place God chose to build His temple and maintain His presence forever. Literally all these greatest of supposed “religious leaders” in God’s priesthood of Israel were shunned by God, because they had perverted God’s Word and God’s intent for His people. Then God also had to stop Israel’s demonic king, Herod “the Great,” from finding His infant body of flesh, lest that despot murder it. So surely this birth of God’s body of flesh in a barn was truly a “marvellous work and a wonder” which began to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy. From that moment on, we saw how “the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the understanding of their prudent men will be hidden.” And this prophecy was especially fulfilled during the Messiah’s revealing and His ministry of His first advent.
For Jesus continued to confound and refute the fake and destructive “wisdom” and “understanding”
of all those human gods worshipped by Israel, even until the very end of His first advent as Israel’s Messianic King, High Priest and Great Prophet. And His Holy Spirit has been fulfilling it ever since.
From the hour of this Messiah’s first coming, until the hour of His second advent, when He will destroy Satan’s kingdom of the world order, His truths have continued to attack and nullify the lies and delusions of false religious teachers, and to gradually grow the kingdom of God upon earth. In this period of time, during these last days, we have all seen and can testify that Jesus has fulfilled this prophecy: “the deaf will hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind will see out of obscurity and out of darkness. The humble also will increase their joy in Yahweh, and the poor among men will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.... Jacob shall no longer be ashamed, neither shall Page 794
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his face grow pale. But when he sees his children, the work of My hands, in the midst of him, they will sanctify My name. Yes, they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob, and will stand in awe of the God of Israel. They also who err in spirit will come to understanding, and those who grumble will receive instruction” (Is. 29:18-19,22b-24, WEB). This is also what John’s disciples heard and saw when they came to Jesus. And this is what Jesus told those disciples to testify before John’s spirit.
After alluding to all these prophecies in Isaiah, Jesus also proclaimed, “And blessed is whoever might not be offended [enough to lose trust] in Me.” This directed John’s attention to a Messianic Psalm that John and his disciples would have known very well. For it declared: “Give sincere homage to the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish on the way, for His wrath will soon be kindled.
Blessed are all those who take refuge in Him” (Ps. 2:12, WEB). Here Jesus was telling John that the appointed time for His wrath upon the earth had not yet arrived, but would surely come on a future day. Therefore, until that day, John was to uphold his faith in Him and in His works of great power.
Jesus did not come the first time to remove Satan’s world order and his minions from the earth. For the elect were not yet ready to be removed from the devil’s unjust kingdom, since they had not yet learned to reject those lies and love only the ways of God. Almost all the elect still approved of the devil’s ancient hierarchical system of exploiting others, and accepted this unjust exploitation as a legitimate right of the human gods whom Satan raised up in his kingdom. In fact, the ignorance and foolishness of the elect was even worse than it is today, since most of God’s teachings about equity and justice had been entirely washed away by their fake rabbis and false prophets, and the words of their Messiah had not yet shone into that darkness. However, in our day, we now have at least some teachings about the equality of all human beings, and their common humility in their sins, as well as the exposing of crimes by the wanna-be human gods. And each generations finds more of this truth.
God has been reviving and expounding upon His doctrines of justice and love for many centuries now, and at an ever increasing pace. Based on the laws of Moses, and upon the teachings of Jesus through His apostles, God has showed us how to build democracies, begin our judgments based on a presumption of innocence for the accused, ensure just trials that require cross-examined evidence to prove an accused person’s malicious motive and intent, refrain from condemnation for those without evil motives and intentions, forgive and grant parole to the truly repentant, hand out punishments that never exceed the crime, establish progressive tax systems based on each citizen’s ability to give, create social safety nets for the well-being of those falling into hardships, and so on. But most of these just biblical doctrines were revived after the 16th century Reformation, and even more during the 18th century revival. Yet now, centuries later, the vast majority of elect are still not ready for the second advent of the Messiah. To this day, most elect are still trapped in the same lies and delusions which existed back in the first century. Yes, John and His disciples may have been ready for the total annihilation of Satan’s kingdom, so the Messiah could then rule over all the earth. And so were many of Jesus’ disciples ready back then. But the world’s elect were not. First the true Gospel had to reach the elect scattered throughout the world, so most elect spirits would trust in His Spirit’s teaching and training, so they too could become mature enough to repent into the truth. Then Jesus will return.
Then He will destroy the murderers, slanderers, oppressors and exploiters who serve the world order.
Not only did Jesus send John’s disciples back to tell him about the Messianic works they had seen and heard with their own eyes and ears, but Jesus would soon send His Holy Spirit to teach their spirits about the difference between His first and second coming. Then John would understand why he remained captive to a self-serving despot, why the almighty hand of Jesus would not yet free him from Herod Antipas, a servant of Satan. Yes, Jesus could have easily opened the cell door and let John out (e.g., Acts 5:19), or temporarily disabled the guards so John could walk out in the midst of Page 795
them (e.g. Luke 4:29-30). But it was now time for John to go home. So God would allow the devil to cause his child, Herod Antipas, to execute John’s body. God let this happen because John was His child, who could not die. So John accepted his destiny. And he also inwardly knew that God would bring him back to life on earth again, a third time, in the future, just before Jesus returned in victory.
True Greatness is From God
John’s disciples likely remained puzzled and heartbroken about John’s imprisonment and impending execution, even after seeing the miracles of Jesus and hearing His response to John’s question. Still, they carried on with their lives in the flesh, knowing that the pure joy of the just love in their spirits would always be tempered by tragedies of the flesh during this brief stay on earth. Our flesh is being continuously frustrated and suffers much pain in the process of discovering spiritual treasures. So the disciples of John could not stop seeking those unequalled, invaluable, divinely crafted hordes of hidden gems, golden vessels and silver platters of the heart, which all endure forever and can never be lost, nor stolen from their spirits. These were always worth the risk of another dangerous day on earth, in an unquenchable hope that God may grant the spirit one more shekel of eternal joy in love.
So John’s disciples left Jesus with understanding in their hearts, to comfort and serve their prophet and teacher, John, knowing they would soon return to this Messiah, whom he had testified about.
“Then, while these were walking away, Jesus began to reason with the crowds regarding John, ‘What did you people go out into the wilderness to examine for yourselves? A reed being swayed under the wind? Rather, what did you people go out to see? A person having been clothed in finery that would display impressive effects? Look, those wearing the fine garments are in the dwellings of rulers. But why did you people go out? To see a prophet? I reason with you, [the answer is] “Yes!” And far more than a prophet. This is the one regarding whom it was infallibly written: “Behold, I send out, on a mission, My messenger before Your face, who will thoroughly prepare Your way before You.” Most assuredly, I reason with you people, one has not been effectively raised among those born of women greater than John the baptizer. Yet the least in the kingdom of the heavens is greater than him’” (Mat.
11:7-11, from: Τούτων δὲ πορευομένων ἤρξατο ὁ Ἰησοῦς λέγειν τοῖς ὄχλοις περὶ Ἰωάννου· Τί
ἐξήλθατε εἰς τὴν ἔρημον θεάσασθαι; κάλαμον ὑπὸ ἀνέμου σαλευόμενον; ἀλλὰ τί ἐξήλθατε ἰδεῖν; ἄνθρωπον ἐν μαλακοῖς ἠμφιεσμένον; ἰδοὺ οἱ τὰ μαλακὰ φοροῦντες ἐν τοῖς οἴκοις τῶν βασιλέων
εἰσίν. ἀλλὰ τί ἐξήλθατε; προφήτην ἰδεῖν; ναί, λέγω ὑμῖν, καὶ περισσότερον προφήτου. οὗτός ἐστιν
περὶ οὗ γέγραπται· Ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἀποστέλλω τὸν ἄγγελόν μου πρὸ προσώπου σου, ὃς κατασκευάσει τὴν
ὁδόν σου ἔμπροσθέν σου. ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, οὐκ ἐγήγερται ἐν γεννητοῖς γυναικῶν μείζων Ἰωάννου
τοῦ βαπτιστοῦ· ὁ δὲ μικρότερος ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν μείζων αὐτοῦ ἐστιν, SBLGNT).
Here Jesus was trying to the focus of His disciples back towards the reason they had gone out to see John in the first place. For now that Herod had removed God’s prophet from their hearing, their complacent flesh had already begun to erase its memories of their spirit’s intense motivation for seeking him. By now, they were more physically secure, with satisfied and healthy flesh, intent on rejoicing in the miracles and good things of the flesh that Jesus was granting to them. Yes, John had led their hearts through godly sorrow and into their repentance, where their spirits acknowledged the truths of God. But now Jesus wanted peace for them, and rejoiced to see them happier. He partook in their joy. But past lessons for the spirit must be remembered too. And only a couple of years before this, they had risked everything, even the wrath of a murderous despot, to seek John. They even did this when John was preaching and baptizing in the most difficult of places to reach, along the Jordan River valley. To find him, they had to trek long distances, enduring heat, cold, wind and weather, stumbling along thin, winding and difficult dirt trails, while braving wild predators and bandits. Yet Page 796
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they sought him, regardless. For God’s Holy Spirit prompted their spirits to heed every true word of that ordinary man dressed like a beggar in the cheapest clothing possible. And they knew God had commanded John to utter every word. So they heeded every syllable, and trusted every phrase from his mouth, although almost everything he said sternly rebuked them and deeply insulted their flesh.
God caused their beleaguered spirits to drive their bodies out into the wilderness, just for a chance to briefly see and hear John. For John’s words actually fed their starving souls, gave clean and living water to their parched spirits. Meanwhile, the words of their rabbis, with their petty and scant dishes decorated with the clay traditions of men, merely made their souls suffer an increasing hunger for the real treasures of God. Their rabbis’ food fed pride in the flesh, but kept their spirits empty, unloved and unloving, longing for the foundation of genuine truth and justice, which they truly needed to build up God-like love. All the pagan-like inequality of their humanistic rabbinical religion served only to steal the bread of heaven from their hearts, making their elect spirits yearn even more for the genuine, personal, caring and life-altering power of their heavenly Father, who alone could work His kind of just love in and among them. Now Jesus reminded them of the inward motives they once felt as they compelled their flesh to find John, their willingness to risk everything for the words of a true prophet sent by God. For, inwardly, they all knew John was not an ordinary prophet. Rather, all Israel had heard that John came to announce the Messiah’s advent. John was the messenger Malachi had prophesied about, for whom they set out a cup of welcoming wine after every Passover Seder.
Malachi’s prophecy stated: “Behold, I send My messenger, and He will prepare the way before Me; and the Lord [i.e., the Messiah], whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, behold, he comes!” says Yahweh of Armies” (Mal. 3:1, WEB).
Notice here that Yahweh, the almighty Creator God, spoke about the Messiah as though He and the Messiah were one and the same Person. This was common in Messianic prophecies, and is also why we, just like many Jewish rabbis in the days of John and Jesus, testify that the Messiah has God’s Spirit in the body of a man. Then God sent His human messenger, a prophet, to prepare the way before His own arrival. For the Messiah, coming with God’s New Covenant of salvation for Israel and all His elect upon the earth, had to be God Himself, since this covenant could not be ratified by anyone other than Yahweh God. At the same time, this Messiah also had to be a mortal man, in a body of flesh physically descended from Abraham, as well as God’s appointed king, David. Thus, God declared that He, Yahweh, is the Messiah, and the Messiah is Him. Both are one and the same.
Later, God also identified the messenger as Elijah: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of Yahweh comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (Mal. 4:5-6, WEB). Now Malachi gave these prophecies, these words which God commanded him to utter and write down, more than three and a half centuries after Elijah was lifted up into heaven. And Malachi was prophesying about a day that would come in the distant future. For the “day of Yahweh” actually refers to the day of the Messiah’s second advent, when our God Jesus would return after His first advent. And two advents were needed. For the first advent of the Messiah was necessary to prepare for His second and victorious arrival, when the Messiah God would rule over all the earth. That is, the elect of His kingdom on earth had to be brought into a knowledge of Him and His truths first.
Throughout the earth, all the elect had to know what the just, equitable and God-like love, which Jesus taught, would look like, and choose that truth and their God, before the Messiah God came for His second and final advent, when He would judge the earth. So the Messiah had to be Yahweh, the incarnate God of Israel. And very many in Israel at that time also knew that John the Baptizer was the messenger sent to prepare the way for the Messiah, whom God equated with Elijah. Then Jesus Page 797
confirmed that John was this messenger. For Jesus quoted Malachi 3:1 as though He were the voice of God speaking to Himself: “Behold, I send out on a mission My messenger, before Your face, who will thoroughly prepare Your way before You.” When Jesus paraphrased these words of Yahweh, uttered through the prophet Malachi, He used singular second person pronouns (“You,” “Your”), instead of the singular first person pronoun (“Me”). So the antecedent of the pronoun “You” was the one whom the messenger was sent to announce. These pronouns refer to the Messiah, who is Yahweh God. And John had fully committed to his proclamation that Jesus was the Messiah, who came to initiate and ratify Israel’s New Covenant relationship with their Creator. So the “You” Jesus substituted for “Me,” referring to Yahweh, was Him. Thus, Jesus here claimed to be Yahweh, God.
Since many devout Jews had memorized this prophecy of Malachi, and refreshed it in their memory every year during the Passover Seder, they would have instantly realized that Jesus was pointing out how John was actually testifying that He was Yahweh, their God. Here Jesus was claiming that the very Spirit of the Creator God, Yahweh, was the life-giving Spirit dwelling in His body of flesh. So, therefore, John also claimed that Jesus is God, Yahweh incarnate. And John the Baptizer was indeed a great prophet, the only one who ever prophesied as a reincarnated prophet, put into a second body on earth, specifically for the purpose of announcing the Messiah’s arrival, the advent of Yahweh incarnate, who would establish His New Covenant relationship with Israel and all the elect on earth.
Thus, which previous prophet could possibly be greater than John the Baptist? Perhaps Moses? God raised up Moses to speak and write a temporary outline of His thoughts and ways, to record the Law that forever revealed the heart of the Creator. But that temporary Law could only be fulfilled in us and through us by the actively working power of God, as God Himself personally taught, trained and enabled our spirits to overcome the impulses of our rebellious flesh, since our minds of flesh always tend toward self-gratification and bear a propensity to ignore spiritual matters of just, true love. So the temporary Old Covenant, which summarized God’s just and loving attributes, was not nearly as valuable to God’s true Israel, nor to all the other elect on earth, as the fulfilling of it by His eternal New Covenant relationship, by the covenant established and ratified by our God, the Messiah Jesus.
Therefore, although Moses was a great prophet, perhaps equal to Abraham, his mission was not as great as the service which God required from the resurrected prophet Elijah, who spent time in heaven with God, until God made him ready to serve Him as John the baptizer. God formed His priesthood of Israel through Abraham. But it could be argued that Moses served a greater purpose than Abraham, since Abraham merely spoke the words God commanded regarding His future nation of priests, while God commanded Moses to reveal the very heart and mind of Himself. Yet God only allowed Moses to reveal a very shadowy outline of His attributes in the Old Covenant Law. Then Yahweh God would send John to announce His very presence on earth, in the body of a human man, so that Israel and all the elect on earth could study Him and His ways, so all could personally know Him. Elijah, reincarnated, introduced God’s priesthood of Israel, and the elect of the entire world, to the corporeal manifestation of the Creator of all existence, to Yahweh Himself. Furthermore, that second human body, the flesh of John the baptizer with Elijah’s human spirit dwelling in it, came to prepare the priesthood of Israel, and all the other elect who would be brought into it, for their new relationship with God, with their true High Priest. John was “the messenger of the covenant” worked by the Messiah, by God incarnate, for Israel and all the elect who ever lived or would live on earth.
So let us understand what this New Covenant actually does for us, how it creates a new relationship between us and our Creator. It is an unconditional covenant, worked entirely by the omnipotent and omniscient God Himself. So it is an unbreakable covenant, lasting forever, even after the death of each elect individual’s body of flesh. But the Old Covenant, granted through Moses, was highly Page 798
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conditional, worked by the wills of infantile human spirits and flesh, and was, therefore, a totally ineffective and temporary covenant. For literally all within Israel, and in the entire world, broke that covenant daily. Even Moses broke it. Thus, although Moses and John the Baptizer were both mere mortal men, both weak sinners whose spirits succumbed to God’s power and authority, who did nothing more than utter words which God commanded them to reiterate, it is obvious that God used John the Baptizer, with the reincarnated spirit of Elijah, to announce a far better covenant than the covenant Moses brought to us. Thus, John was “greater” than Moses, the “greatest” of all prophets.
Yes, even John was a common sinner, an average elect human being whose spirit heard the Holy Spirit of God, then merely opened his mouth to proclaim those concepts, the truths which God told him to repeat in the ears of His people. Yet God allowed him to perform the greatest of all missions up to that time. And now other common sinners, other elect humans, are called to serve God in even greater missions than that which John performed in His name. For now the elect do the works of our manifested God Jesus in His New Covenant times. God promised all the priesthood of Israel that He would replace His temporary Old Covenant with a New Covenant, that He would create a new kind of relationship with them. Yahweh clearly stated that He would personally work in the hearts of all His true Israel, in a way that was “not according to the [Old] Covenant that I made with their fathers” (Jer. 31:32, WEB). Regarding this new relationship, Yahweh declared: “I will put My Law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (Jer. 31:33, WEB). So this New Covenant relationship with God is entirely His own work.
Then the effect of this work of God in each individual’s spirit would be: “They shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know Yahweh; for they shall all know Me, from their least to their greatest” (Jer. 31:34, WEB). Priests and rabbis in the Old Covenant times were all common sinners, the neighbours and brothers of all whom they taught. But a new method of teaching about God and His ways came through the Messiah’s New Covenant. The Spirit who created all three heavens would personally work His Law into each one’s inward parts, meaning He would personally teach and train the spirit in each elect soul about Himself, His ways and His purposes. And this was surely a far better way to learn all His laws which He dictated to Moses. And God also told us what will make it possible for Him, our utterly holy God, to enter sinners like us, to help us without partaking in our sins. He said: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more” (Jer. 31:34, WEB). God cannot enter the chamber of a human soul, to help that sinner, not unless that sinner was cleansed of his or her sins. The only way God can enter, to teach and train the elect spirit in a sinner’s soul, yet not oppose His own holiness at the same time, is if He first paid the full price of justice required for that soul’s entire lifetime of iniquity, then also could guarantee that His almighty power will thoroughly purify that one. To accomplish this, the Spirit who created all existence came to His chosen elect in a body of flesh, kept His flesh sinless from birth, then sacrificed His sinless body for all the iniquities of all the elect who had ever existed and ever will exist. In this way, God is able to justly forgive all, and work inside all, to totally cleanse all.
God predestined and sent John the Baptizer to proclaim this eternal, unconditional New Covenant, which is worked entirely by the utterly Holy Spirit of the Creator God, by the Spirit dwelling in Jesus. And John was also to prepare God’s priesthood of Israel for this New Covenant, and for the arrival of their God, Jesus, who would do all the works found in that covenant, to fulfill all of their God’s promises by writing His ways of just, equitable love their hearts. Consequently, to prepare God’s priests for Jesus and His New Covenant relationship, John exhorted their spirits to repent into an acceptance and agreement with the actual truths that God revealed in His Word. For there can be no forgiveness unless there is also repentance into the principles and ways of God, since God is not Page 799
able to forgive the intentional sins of deliberately malicious and evil spirits, since they will continue to embrace lies and delusions, and that inner darkness will makes them guilty in every just judgment.
Therefore, John never rebuked souls for merely breaking the technical and symbolic aspects of God’s Law. And He certainly never condemned anyone for not following traditions invented by men.
For John was nothing like most rabbis, because he realized that they imagined themselves to be gods, bearing some kind of hypocritical right to create new laws of God and add to the laws God revealed to Moses, while also exercising a decision-making authority to nullify whatever laws of God they desired, they judged the people according to their own man-made traditions to uphold their own biases in support of their own humanistic hierarchical system that provided them with god-like status and a good personal profit. So those rabbis judged according to their own corrupt, self-serving and wicked wills, but refused to judge according to God’s will and in God’s just ways. John was the opposite. John feared God, and knew that only God’s ways effective in maintaining peace with God, joy and satisfaction in life and the bodily welfare of all, so that the people could freely pursue love in a just and responsible manner. So John applied the truths of God’s Law carefully and diligently, judged strictly by the motives and intentions of the spirit, then confronted sins by honestly teaching the accused for their repentance, if this was possible. And God’s gift of prophecy was used by John to speak to each individual, to expose the thoughts of one’s heart and correct one’s thinking, to teach and train each elect spirit until it turned away from lies and sins, until each spirit repented into truth.
In reality, most rabbis in the days of John and Jesus actually did not like God’s laws, nor the way God applied His own laws, whenever God judged His people. Those rabbis taught that God alone could judge in His own ways, but they must judge stupidly and harshly, because they were not God, and must not even attempt to emulate God’s just and loving ways, since that would be blasphemy!
And they did not believe God’s Word, when He commanded them to do all things in His name, and be like Him, using Him as their ultimate example regarding all matters of life and faith. Instead, to prevent themselves from blaspheming, they decided to be human gods ruling over God, and edit His Word according to the desires of their flesh. This is why John fled from them, out into the wilderness and away from their fake church, so he could truly serve God, without their corrupting interference.
John only ever reproved the elect of Israel regarding their actual sins, for the ways that their spirits were ignoring and truly offending God. John judged the inner motives and intentions of the people, according God’s will, according to God’s intended meanings of His laws. Thus, John told those with an excess of food, clothing and other things in God’s earthly kingdom, which they all were to hold in responsible stewardship for God, to share all these excesses with God’s people and creations who lacked them (Luke 3:11). John told government and church officials to stop using their authority for Satan’s kingdom, by taking advantage of others, by greedily stealing from the people for their own selfish purposes, because their duty was to serve all, to be just and equitable toward all, and to do God’s just and loving works for all (Luke 11:13). Then he told the police to stop intimidating and falsely accusing people for the sake of selfish ambitions, but to be content with their lot in life, to do their duty in serving God and His people, and protect the weak from the ruthless (Luke 3:14). John, in his “baptism of repentance,” brought the elect to the mikveh, where they could bury their dead lives of sin and rise up again, into a new life with God. Yet, through all his prophecies and works of godly love, John also had to be honest. Therefore, whenever John had to confront the fake rabbis and religious teachers, he called them a “brood of vipers,” then drove them away from God’s people, so he could lead the elect back to God, to Jesus, to the New Covenant salvation worked by God alone.
Jesus also revealed the principal purpose John the Baptizer’s mission when He said: “I, from Myself
[i.e., through His flesh], am not able to do anything at all. Just as I am hearing [i.e., as His mind of flesh is Page 800
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hearing from His Spirit, which is God’s Spirit] I am judging. And My judgments are just, because I am not seeking My will [i.e., of His flesh] but rather the will of the One having sent Me. If I testify regarding Myself, My testimony is not verification. The testimony regarding Me is another [i.e., meaning John the baptizer’s testimony]. And I have known and still believe that the testimony, which the witness [gave]
about Me is true. You people journeyed out on a mission to John [the baptizer] and now remain affected by this. Thus, he effectively testified the truth. Yet the testimony I Myself am receiving [is]
not from human beings. Rather, I lay out these things in an orderly way so that you people might be saved. That one [i.e., John the baptizer] was the burning and shining light. So you people were willing to rejoice for an hour in his light. Yet I Myself have a testimony greater than that of John. For the works which the Father gave to Me, so that I might complete them, the same works I am doing, are testifying regarding Me, that the Father effectively sent Me out on a mission” (John 5:30-36, ALT).
So, in the above Scripture, Jesus declared that John was a “burning and shining light,” because John taught the people about God’s loving, just and equitable Law. And John’s testimony about Him was needed to turn the hearts of the people away from the false teachings of the fake church, back to God, so they would be prepared to accept their Messiah, who is God, who came to fulfill His Law in them and through them. Then John identified Jesus as the Messiah, and gave witness about Him, in a way where John’s true testimony was exactly the same as the testimony of our heavenly Father, who told us that Jesus was His “Son,” that is, His body of flesh walking upon this earth, and that He was pleased with Jesus. Then, by using the perfect tense of the verb ἀποστέλλω, Jesus indicated that the people journeyed out to see and hear John, in a way where their mission produced ongoing effects or results in their lives. After this, by using the perfect tense of the verb μαρτυρέω, Jesus concluded that John “effectively testified the truth” about Him. Jesus also pointed out how John testified about Him so the people might be saved by Him. This is why He called John “the burning and shining light,”
who caused the elect to rejoice. For when the elect, even sinners like the tax collectors, went out to hear John’s teachings and testimony, they were baptized into a new life with God, after repentance, and all “declared God to be just,” although there was absolutely nothing just about the way the fake church had driven them away and condemned them. Thus, if God is just, and the Messiah is God, then the Messiah Jesus is just The salvation of Jesus is just, because He forgives all sins with a full payment for those sins, then works God’s loving righteousness in all, through His infallible works.
So, what exactly was John the baptizer’s testimony about Jesus? John the apostle most clearly reveals how much John the baptizer’s spirit knew about Jesus and His mission as the Messiah. Now, before John the baptizer was put in prison, he was told how the disciples of Jesus were also baptizing the repentant, and that more of the people were going to Jesus. But John was not jealous in any way.
Instead, John rejoiced and told his disciples: “A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given him from heaven. You yourselves testify that I said, ‘I am not the [Messiah],’ but, ‘I have been sent before Him.’ He who has the bride [i.e., the bride is the priesthood of Israel] is the Bridegroom [i.e., prophets called God the “Husband” or “Bridegroom” of Israel, e.g., Is. 54:5]; but the friend of the Bridegroom [i.e., John], who stands and hears Him, rejoices greatly because of the Bridegroom’s voice. This, my joy, therefore is made full. He must increase, but I must decrease. He who comes from above is above all
[So John the baptizer saw Jesus as the ‘Bridegroom’ or ‘Husband’ of Israel, as the God of Israel, and believed that the Spirit in Jesus is the Creator’s uncreated Spirit, the Spirit of God who came from heaven, not a human spirit created in flesh on earth.]. He who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies; and no one receives His witness. He who has received His witness has set His seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for God gives the Spirit without measure [or, ‘for [His] Spirit does not give [to spirits that hear Jesus] by a limited portion,’ οὐ γὰρ ἐκ μέτρου δίδωσιν τὸ πνεῦμα]. The Father loves Page 801
the Son, and has given all things into His hand. One who believes in the Son has eternal life, but one who disobeys the Son won’t see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:27-36, WEB).
So John the baptizer, much like the elect disciples called and awakened by the Holy Spirit of the Creator who followed Jesus, loved Jesus and heard His words, with understanding granted by that Spirit of God in Jesus. Then John also applied those truths from God to his own life. John’s spirit rejoiced in Jesus and in His counsel from above, in the voice of his God incarnate. So the only thing John the baptizer hoped for in his heart, above all else, was for Jesus to increase in His influence over all the elect on earth. But, if Jesus and His New Covenant salvation increased, it meant that his own influence, as an Old Covenant prophet and rabbi, must decrease. For all elect spirits must learn to go directly to the Holy Spirit of Jesus, to be led by Jesus alone, to have their spirits taught and trained for abundant life on earth, then forever in heaven above. For all that Jesus said and did came directly from God, from heaven. Jesus was testifying about the spiritual and physical realities that He Himself created, the real, pure, whole truths that absolutely no one else on earth or in heaven could ever know. None but Jesus was the one God who created all things according to His own will.
Jesus is fully one with the heavenly Father of all elect spirits, the one God who exists outside of time and space, the ubiquitous God existing both in heaven and in a body of flesh at the same time. And the Father above gave all power and authority to Him alone, to make judgments, because only He knows all the truth, upon which all right judgments must be made. None but Jesus always spoke the very words of God Himself, and did the deeds of God Himself. John the baptizer fully received the truth and wisdom from Jesus, and sealed a covenant of love in his heart with Jesus, because he knew Jesus is God Himself. And John also testified that the Holy Spirit, who is God, does not give the ability to know such truth by a limited portion. For the works of Jesus allowed God to enter the chambers of our souls, and God is unlimited. So, when He reveals the truth within Himself to us, there is no limit to that truth. Our spirits can learn about all things, even in the spiritual realm beyond this earth. In fact, He lets our spirits see, hear, touch and taste the truth, so we can be certain about it.
Thus, our spirits build confidence in Jesus words, authority, power and love, as He builds faith in us.
Because John the baptizer saw and worshipped Jesus as Yahweh God, Jesus called him the “greatest”
(μείζων) of all the previous prophets. However, immediately after declaring this about John, Jesus then stated: “Yet the least in the kingdom of the heavens is greater than him.” If we think about this, and understand that “the kingdom of the heavens” (plural) includes God’s kingdom on earth, as well as His kingdom of the eternal spiritual realm, we begin to see what this really means. For we know that all elect spirits passing into heaven, out of life on earth, are stripped of all delusions put in them by Satan’s world order. So, since their spirits can see more clearly there, they are greater than John was while he still lived in the flesh on earth. Then we also know that all the deceased loving elect have always remained awake at the gates of heaven, with Jesus, where He has been teaching them for their judgment. So these elect are definitely greater than John was, while he was still alive on earth, while he suffered the continuous burden of earthly flesh. However, here Jesus also indicated that everyone in His New Covenant branch of His church of Israel, that is, in His kingdom on earth, even “the least” of them, was “greater” than John. For the spirits of these elect on earth would begin to be taught and trained directly by God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in them. But His Holy Spirit merely revealed truths to John’s spirit, while “standing outside” of John’s soul. Thus, even the least of the elect whom Jesus brought into a New Covenant relationship with Himself, through His works on the cross and His works upon their spirits within their hearts, were all greater than John was back then.
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after He sent His Holy Spirit to dwell with their spirits in their hearts. For these elect spirits would be actively contributing citizens in His kingdom, His real priests who consciously served Him and His kingdom. Every last one of these true Christians would be greater than John, down to the “least” of them. Naturally, in our day, it is difficult for most to understand what Jesus said here, since we now see mostly fake “Christians,” and perhaps a few very immature and partly awakened elect who avoid all churches. Yet, the real Jesus and His real Holy Spirit actually completed all His promised New Covenant works in some first-century elect souls. And those souls were indeed greater than John.
For Jesus’ Spirit lived beside their spirits in their hearts. Thee “Great Prophet,” the Messiah, God incarnate, who once dwelt within a body “born of women” also dwelt in them. And, if Jesus’ true disciples were greater than John himself, then they would all be greater than John’s disciples. And, if John was the greatest of all the previous prophets, even Moses, then John’s disciples were greater than all the disciples of all other Old Covenant rabbis, both then and to this day. And the one God only established one priesthood on earth for all mankind. So all the teachers and disciples of all other religions are less than even Old Covenant rabbis. So true disciples of Jesus are actually the greatest of all God’s people on earth. For the Creator’s Spirit Himself personally teaches and trains the elect human spirits of Jesus’ true disciples, even in a better way than He taught and trained John’s spirit in the days before the New Covenant was ratified. But God is servant of all, who incessantly labours to physically and spiritually provide all needs for all. So this is what He also teaches His disciples.
Thus, these greatest ones learn to be the most self-sacrificing, just and loving souls on earth, and there are not many mature disciples of Jesus on the earth today. For that true New Covenant branch of Israel shrank like the sprouted seed they were. And His tree of truth has had to slowly grow for many centuries before it could bear the fruit of just love again. Still, soon, after the great revival of the end times, we will see many true Christians again, who will all be greater than John was himself.
Soon we will see fully awakened elect spirits, greater than John the baptizer. Then we will stand with Jesus and hear Him, rejoicing in the voice of His Holy Spirit speaking to our spirits. And the more mature spirits of the teaching elders will not try to be the heads of churches, will no longer strive to be human gods who want to be worshipped and served by the people. Instead, they will do as John did, turn all toward Jesus Himself, lead all to Him, so Jesus will increase His influence over their spirits, and so that all human influence will decrease. Those teaching elders will know they are truly sinners, that they have nothing of real value to offer, except a knowledge of Jesus as each one’s only Head Teacher and Lord. For Jesus alone can grant an abundantly just, loving life to anyone, even an eternal life of loving service, working beside Him and the Father of their spirits. All those teaching elders will tell their people that Jesus’ Spirit will give them all truth without limit, if their spirits will hear Him, if their spirits let His Spirit teach and train them. Then they will become greater than John the baptizer, who addressed the motives and intentions of human hearts until they repented to Jesus.
The War Against Jesus and His Elect
The Old Covenant prophets wrote about a long period of time in which the Messiah would gradually build up God’s kingdom on earth. Only after many generations would the Messiah, our God, return to destroy Satan and his kingdom of the world order. During the end times, one generation would see most of the world devastated and about 60% of the earth’s people die. But this generation would also see the Messiah return to rule over all the earth, restoring the damage and bringing equitable justice to all. This is what God commanded the spirits of many prophets to write about, so we might grasp the intensity, scope and consequences of Satan’s war against God. Our heaven Father wanted us to know about these horrifying battles, so we could be spiritually prepared for them, and so we would Page 803
maintain hope when the times grow very dark. This war of the last days began in earnest when Jesus ascended into heaven, and will soon become the worst times this world has ever experienced. But Jesus shall keep that intolerable period short, confined to only one generation, which probably means 40 years, although it could be up to 120 years long. Jesus will end it, by coming to save all the elect, will even bring many deceased elect souls back with Him, especially those who died during the end times. All these prophecies can be trusted. All are infallible, unable to be altered in any way. For God has known the future with all certainty from the beginning, because He created the end at the same
“time” that He created the “beginning.” God has always seen every tiny detail of every moment that has ever occurred or ever will occur on earth, from the first to the last second of all our earthly time.
A prophecy which reveals how God chose to establish and gradually grow the Messiah’s kingdom is found in Daniel’s book, in the part where he interpreted a prophetic dream which God granted to the vain king, Nebuchadnezzar. The dream began with an overview of Satan’s religious kingdom, and told us how it would be formed by four beasts, that is, by four empires (Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome). This evil kingdom would continuously war against God, and fill the earth with its demonic power and corrupting influence, until the Messiah came to establish His covenant with the people of His kingdom on earth. After the Messiah came, Satan would seem to have some victories, and even “cut off” the Messiah in death. But those victories would actually be losses, and that devil would not win his war against God. For, in that dream, God revealed that, after the arrival of the fourth beast (i.e., the religion of Rome), the Messiah’s kingdom would permanently crush all four of Satan’s empires of humanism into dust. Daniel proclaimed this prophecy to Nebuchadnezzar:
“[Note: Daniel began by telling Nebuchadnezzar what he saw in his dream:] You saw until a stone was cut out without hands [Nebuchadnezzar saw a statue made of four parts in the image of a worshipped man, representing Satan’s future world-wide religion. Then a ‘stone’ was cut out, which refers to the Messiah and His future religious kingdom, which is the New Covenant church of Israel, which is not made by human hands since God created it through the Messiah’s Spirit.], w
hich struck the image on
its feet that were of iron
and clay [i.e., the legs and feet are Rome, the fourth kingdom of Satan’s religion, and this would be a factious empire, signified by pieces of iron (representing strong core doctrines and ruthless leaders adhering to them) bonded together with malleable and fragile clay (i.e., their laws and the common people).], a nd broke them
in pieces. T hen was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold [i.e., all four builders of Satan’s religious kingdom], broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that no place was found for them: and the stone that struck the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth [So the stone, God’s just, holy and loving spiritual, moral or religious kingdom would grow over time and break the feet of Satan’s unjust, evil and loveless kingdom, beginning with the fourth part, which is Rome. Then, for an indeterminate amount of time after this, God’s kingdom would continue to grow and Jesus eventually would totally destroy all four aspects of Satan’s kingdom.].... [Next, Daniel provided God’s interpretation:] In the days of those kings [This would occur after the days when all four parts of the beast’s religious kingdom were established, meaning after the religion and power of Rome was established.] shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people [This refers to the establishment of the New Covenant church of Israel, the priesthood saved in the blood of Jesus.]; but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Because you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold [This refers to all four parts of Satan’s religious kingdom, consisting of the doctrines of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome.]; the great God has made known to the king what shall happen hereafter: and the dream is certain, and its interpretation sure [i.e., this prophecy cannot be altered by mankind]” (Dan. 2:34-35,44-45, WEB).
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To understand this prophecy, we must not make the same mistake that most theologians do. That is, most seem to think that a kingdom is a physical entity. But, although some kingdoms might have a few physically identifiable members and properties at times, every kingdom is an entirely spiritual entity consisting of spiritual/moral teachings and beliefs that are shared by its citizens, whether or not they share any common physical characteristics or dwell in the same geographical area. So a Roman citizen remained a Roman even when he travelled outside of the lands falsely claimed and very ruthlessly colonized by Roman empire. And all the lands on earth remain the property of God alone. So any kingdom which defines itself as a land behind man-made borders is simply lying, and its real kingdom is actually a group of people whose spirits cling to an array of shared beliefs, most often false beliefs. This is how the Jews, like Daniel, defined kingdoms, by their religious, moral and therefore spiritual doctrines and practices. And, to comprehend what he prophesied here, we also must do so. We must see how God revealed that His spiritual, moral and religious kingdom, which would be ratified, fulfilled, inculcated and gradually grown to maturity, was being opposed by the devil’s spiritual, moral and religious kingdom of humanism, which he created through four empires.
So the order of events was: (1) Satan would establish his religious kingdom through the religious philosophies and teachings of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, in an attempt to destroy God’s church and kingdom on earth; (2) The Messiah God would set up His New Covenant priesthood of Israel, His indestructible spiritual kingdom on earth; (3) God’s new kingdom would be a rock that would begin to break Satan’s four kingdoms of the beast, beginning with the fourth Roman religious part, represented by the legs and feet of Satan’s kingdom; (4) God’s New Covenant kingdom would grow, over time, until it filled the entire earth; (5) The Messiah would return and then utterly crush all four parts of Satan’s kingdom into dust, and blow them away from the face of the earth forever.
The order of these events are confirmed by many other prophecies about the last days. Consequently, Jesus began His dialogue about this prophesied war, which Satan started, by saying: “So, from the days of John the baptizer until now, the kingdom of the heavens is being attacked, and violent attackers seize her. For all the prophets and the Law, until John, prophesied [this]. And, if you people are willing to receive [it], he is Elijah, the one being ready to come. Let the one having ears hear!”
(Mat. 11:12-15, from: ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν ἡμερῶν Ἰωάννου τοῦ βαπτιστοῦ ἕως ἄρτι ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν
βιάζεται, καὶ βιασταὶ ἁρπάζουσιν αὐτήν. πάντες γὰρ οἱ προφῆται καὶ ὁ νόμος ἕως Ἰωάννου
ἐπροφήτευσαν· καὶ εἰ θέλετε δέξασθαι, αὐτός ἐστιν Ἠλίας ὁ μέλλων ἔρχεσθαι. ὁ ἔχων ὦτα ἀκουέτω, SBLGNT). So Jesus spoke about a war against God’s kingdom of the heavens (i.e., heavens is plural, referring to both His kingdom on earth and His kingdom in the spiritual realm). Satan began this war against God’s religious kingdom, against the priesthood of Israel, many centuries before Jesus’ first advent, and had never stopped his attacks at any time, not for a moment. It has been a continuous warfare, a constant effort to sabotage, corrupt, weaken and destroy God’s earthly kingdom. Thus, it definitely was being fought “from the days of John.” And, since John is Elijah, and Elijah lived from about 875 to 848 BC, the planning stages of this war actually began during that time. For, in Elijah’s day, Babylon existed in the womb of Assyria. But Assyria had no power to promote the humanistic worship of man, since Assyria did not possess enough spiritual, moral and religious influence until Babylon was born from it, and Nebuchadnezzar became the philosopher king of all the civilizations in that area. So, yes, Satan was plotting against God’s earthly kingdom since the eighth century BC.
And Satan’s war against God’s kingdom in the last days, during the time stretching between the Messiah’s first and second advents, is what all the prophets and the Law had prophesied about. Satan created the religious kingdom of humanism through four nations (Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome), designed solely to destroy the church of Israel, the priesthood of God’s earthly kingdom.
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Jesus clearly wanted to remind us of this war and other related prophecies of the last days. He knew it was important for His disciples to remember those prophecies, since He commanded every spirit with opened ears to hear His words about those last days. So Jesus told everyone with an awake spirit, all whom God granted His own right interpretation of His Word and the ability to comprehend it, to pay close attention to “all [that] the prophets and the Law ... prophesied,” regarding how “the kingdom of the heavens is being attacked, and violent attackers seize her.” For this war is dangerous, so we need to keep our eyes and ears open, and the armour of God nearby. We must fight back, to nullify the works of the devil, to prevent Satan’s fake churches from “seizing” the elect, and the rest of the world order from causing spiritual, emotional and physical causalities. The more those God-given prophecies are ignored or abused for the profit of frauds, the more casualties the evil ones will be able to cause. Many will be killed inwardly, then in their flesh. Many will be crippled for life. The religious kingdom of Satan’s beast, bound together by the lies of theistic and secular humanism, is the worst and, by far, the most destructive enemy of God on this earth. And that devil’s war against justice, equity, love and the true worship of God will only end when Jesus returns to destroy that demonic kingdom, all of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman aspects of the beast’s religion.
Now, regarding the end of that evil religious kingdom, notice how Jesus also told us that John the baptizer, with the resurrected spirit of Elijah in his body, was “the one being ready to come,” that is, in the future. As Malachi prophesied, Elijah would come again just before Jesus returned the second time, to prepare God’s people before Jesus arrived to destroy Satan’s kingdom of the beast and rule the earth. So it seems that the human spirit of Elijah will be resurrected a third time, likely born in yet another body, a third body. And, again, he will lead the elect back to the real Messiah Jesus, into the kind of righteous, equitable, just love which originates from God, so the elect might labour in proclaiming, explaining, justifying and defending the loving truths they receive from Jesus, while doing the deeds which Christ’s Holy Spirit teaches and trains their spirits to wisely perform in their daily lives. Elijah will return a third time to prepare the spirits of God’s elect for the great revival.
The times of revealing God’s truths began long ago. You could say it began when God promised to prepare a priesthood for the world through Abraham. Or you might say it began when God revealed His inner nature through a right interpretation of His Law through through Moses and the prophets, as well as through the examples of His own judgments upon individuals and nations. Yet it began in earnest when God Himself came to us in the body of a man like us. Although humanists love to take credit for these revelations, then twist those truths to their lying own advantage, everything good in this world has originated from God and has been revealed through His elect. And, if we honestly examine history, we can see that literally all the concepts of justice and love which are now held dear by the good-hearted, had been revealed through God’s Word and God’s people centuries before those humanists falsely claimed to invent them. And today, we are nearing the days of the great revival, which will be followed by God’s judgment of the earth during the end times. So Satan’s religion of the beast’s fascist humanism is taking his last stand, warring against God more fervently than ever before. And this war is only going to intensify during the coming decades, until life on earth grows intolerable, with unjust persecutions, wars, man-made famines and slaughter, followed by God’s judgments against the non-elect. All this will dichotomize the populations of this earth, will divide those with just, loving elect spirits from those with self-serving, loveless, bullying non-elect spirits.
Even now we see how Jesus is busy separating His children from the children of the devil. No, Jesus is not separating the good churches from the bad ones, since His one true church has always existed since the days of Abraham, but most often as a hidden people within Satan’s world order. So He will have no need to separate the good churches from the bad, since literally all the other churches served Page 806
Mat. 11:2-19, Valiant John, the Baptizer
the devil’s kingdom and will need to be destroyed. Therefore, Jesus will not separate one church from the other, the good from the bad, but one individual from the other, and pull each just, loving elect soul away from each unjust, unloving non-elect soul. Jesus will tear apart the elect from the non-elect in every family on earth, in every religiously, culturally and politically bonded family in every square foot of every land. And His elect will no longer be taken captive by the dark religions of theistic and secular humanism. In all false humanistic churches, Jesus is causing the true elect to witness and abhor their deadly, ruthless injustice, which is primarily caused by their core humanistic teachings inciting the base desires of their flesh. At the same time, the pleasant, friendly mask of their demonic secular humanism is cracking and falling apart, exposing the true psychopathic nature of their souls, their tendencies to lie, slander, manipulate, defraud, steal, sexually exploit, enslave, murder and commit every other kind of vile crime, all to make a greater profit or to vainly esteem themselves above others in their ridiculous hierarchies, all to ultimately gratify the covetousness, lusts and pride of their flesh. When the elect see all this, some may strive to justify some evils for a time, since their minds of flesh are the same as those of the non-elect, and like the benefits received from servants of Satan. But their elect spirits simply will not be able to bear the loveless, ruthless negativity and injustice of non-elect for very long. So, in time, literally all the elect on earth will abandon all false churches, as well as all the other psychopathic institutions of Satan’s world order.
After leaving the false churches, the elect may be lonely and confused for a time. But they will soon find one another, because their just and loving spirits will recognize one another, especially as the devil’s kingdom grows more unjust and loveless every day. Then the elect will work together in a synergistic manner, where the product of their labours shall be greater than the sum. Then the great revival will reveal them as the true church, the genuine priesthood of God, as they support each other and form more just, equitable and loving bodies of God’s servants, including good governments in some lands, whenever they are able. Very soon, Jesus will bring all the separated and scattered elect together and sanctify them for His purposes alone. For the biblical prophecies indicate that there will be whole nations praising and serving Jesus, our God, during the end times, just before He returns, although this will begin during great hardships and after countless deaths. Some whole nations will no longer worship and serve Satan’s beast. Instead, they will expunge humanism from their lands.
Within one generation after the great revival, after God’s priesthood of Israel visibly rises in the world, Jesus will return to utterly destroy the devil’s religions, every aspect of Satan’s world order.
So now, until the day Jesus returns, we will witness an attack on “the kingdom of the heavens,” and the demonic slander of God Himself, where “violent attackers seize” His awakened, faithful elect as well. “For all the prophets and the Law,” including the apostles sent out in New Covenant times, have all confirmed that this kind of spiritual warfare will continue to the end, until the day that Jesus returns. Virtual psychopaths, the most deceptive and evil servants of Satan, have always risen up to hurl arrows at God and His people, and will not stop this unjust violence until Jesus removes them from the earth. Then many sons of Satan have also formed and ruled fake churches in the world, to poison and enslave God’s loving elect, and to assist the attempts of the devil’s secular children to usurp God’s authority in all the secular institutions and governments of the world. But God has also sent out His faithful elect, to labour beside Him as He nullifies those works of the devil, and to build up His loving kingdom. Now Jesus handing over this mission to us. “Let the one having ears hear!”
Satanic Negativity and Fear-Mongering
So, throughout history, psychopaths, and all the other non-elect souls serving the devil, have always used the same old tricks and techniques. These methodologies may employ slightly different words Page 807
or actions in different scenarios and with different kinds of people. But the principles involved have never changed since Satan first tempted Adam and Eve. And they never will, because Satan is not a creator nor creative. That devil forces the spirits of his children to work in a factory of malice, where all repeatedly perform identical tasks, since the devil only ever makes one product, destruction. So literally all his children have performed the same task in the same way for this same purpose since the beginning. Only God’s elect possess a true diversity of spirit—since they must design, plan, build and manage an infinite number of extremely different useful projects requiring countless different skills and aptitudes, where each has different strengths and desires required for each personal calling in each aspect of God’s multifarious, continuous productions of goods and services, then need to freely distribute them with equitable justice. To do God’s works, it requires much time to teach and train each worker of every kind, even to perfection, so none will cause any harm in any way at all.
Meanwhile, Satan’s works of destruction are the most basic kinds possible, and never require any to learn any safety, environmental or moral considerations. For he always hopes for more death and worse destruction resulting from his works. His dangerous and careless works of harm always will build hierarchies that place his most psychopathic children in the top tiers, will always make his most wealthy lovers of his invention of manipulating money crave and steal more from the poor, will always murder for personal gain and the lusts of the flesh, and will always destroy through their own pursuits of delusions and with bitter vengeance against all who cross them. And the only thing this kind of evil takes is a lack of the spirit’s conscience and a willingness to move the parts of the body.
For it does not require much conscientiousness to lie. Rather, one can invent an infinite number of lies for every single truth that exists, although some lies may be crafted a little better than others.
And anyone who can lift a stone one can destroy just about anything or anyone far easier than one build something of quality or raise someone to maturity. Therefore, the works of the devil and his children can be done by even the most foolish and ignorant of souls. Even the most stupid of his children can murder good people or break good things. Thus, Satan keeps the teaching and training of his brood brief and very simple, although he may need to provide a little more in-depth kind of tutoring for those who do the more difficult works of deceiving the elect. Still, the devil never needs to expend very much time or effort to provide even the most complex forms of education for his unloved children, since he has used the same simple methods to train his clones from the beginning.
Since elect spirits are placed into the same kinds of flesh as the non-elect, and all flesh is very stupid and very easy to tempt, it is not too difficult for the devil and his little human images of himself to turn many elect away from God, and cause them to forfeit God’s abundant, whole, just and loving kind of life on earth, so the elect will not work for God against their demonic world order. Getting the elect to become carnal—to walk according to their minds of flesh, instead of according to what God teaches to the minds of their spirits—is an important work and goal of Satan and of all his non-elect children. They constantly try to sabotage God’s teachings for the spirits of His elect children, to keep the elect stupid, flesh-oriented and self-destructive. For the non-elect know the elect can easily and quickly become much stronger and wiser than anyone in their dark, little kingdom, if those elect begin to let their spirits hear and heed the Holy Spirit of God. So, if the devil’s kingdom can weaken elect souls, by strengthening the desires of their flesh, until their flesh ignores the input of their own spirits, so that their soul’s entire focus is turned completely away from their heavenly Father and oldest Brother, those malicious servants of the devil surely will do so. Thus, they tell the elect that they are cowards if they bravely stand up for the truth, or that they are dishonest if they allow God to teach the truth to their spirits, or that they are slaves if they walk in the freedom of Christ and do not Page 808
Mat. 11:2-19, Valiant John, the Baptizer
let themselves become enslaved by lies and sins. And these common, routine, predictable tactics of Satan and his brood often work. They are effective, because the mind of flesh is stupid and weak.
On the other hand, Jesus is not idle while the devil and his minions are doing their evil works. For Jesus is constantly calling out to elect spirits, in ways they cannot possibly ignore. His Holy Spirit is continuously waking up, rebuking, exhorting, teaching, reminding and training their spirits, through events and circumstances which silence the selfish arrogance of their flesh, which cast their usurping minds of flesh, or demons, off the thrones in the chambers of their souls, so Jesus can sit there. And soon Jesus will free all elect sinners, liars and destroyers from slavery to lies and sins, by exposing truths. Then the now weak elect will speak truth boldly, and His Spirit will empower them to lift up justice in their lands. The chains of Satan’s powerful delusions will not bind the elect forever. The non-elect will continue to believe they are great, successful and powerful, as they use their physical weapons to destroy whomever and whatever they desire, as they plunder innocent victims for their own personal profit, and as they force the enslaved elect to bow before their feet and labour in their service. However, God invariably ordained that literally all the works of the non-elect will backfire on them, so they must live in constant fear of God’s wrath in His judgment, and must even fear one another’s backstabbing selfishness. For the non-elect inevitably destroy one another, not just their innocent victims. And, the more the non-elect are able to get their own way, the more their spirits crave the empty rewards of wickedness, and the more they enhance their own tortuous darkness in their souls, which shall make their eternity in hell far more painful. Thus, the non-elect labour to make their own eternal punishment worse for themselves. And this is why, while on earth, they are always trying to deny that all these spiritual realities, all that is from hell and heaven, exist all around them. Nevertheless, literally everyone inwardly knows these realities. And all must admit that, when the elect truly serve God, then everyone, even the non-elect, live better lives. For, in Christ, the wiser, more just and more loving elect humbly bow before their God Jesus, work His effective laws and ways, bear much good fruit, and even allow a limited, harmless freedom for all the non-elect.
Considering all this, look carefully at the words of Jesus: “Now, to what will I liken the generation such as this? It is like children sitting in the marketplace, who are summoning the others, saying,
‘We played the flute for you and you did not dance. We mourned and you did not display grief [for us].’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and you are saying, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of humankind came eating and drinking, and you are saying, ‘See, a gluttonous individual and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ Still, wisdom has been proven to be equitable and just by her works” (Mat. 11:16-19, from: Τίνι δὲ ὁμοιώσω τὴν γενεὰν ταύτην; ὁμοία ἐστὶν παιδίοις καθημένοις
ἐν ταῖς ἀγοραῖς ἃ προσφωνοῦντα τοῖς ἑτέροις λέγουσιν· Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε·
ἐθρηνήσαμεν καὶ οὐκ ἐκόψασθε· ἦλθεν γὰρ Ἰωάννης μήτε ἐσθίων μήτε πίνων, καὶ λέγουσιν·
Δαιμόνιον ἔχει· ἦλθεν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐσθίων καὶ πίνων, καὶ λέγουσιν· Ἰδοὺ ἄνθρωπος φάγος
καὶ οἰνοπότης, τελωνῶν φίλος καὶ ἁμαρτωλῶν. καὶ ἐδικαιώθη ἡ σοφία ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων αὐτῆς, SBLGNT). Note the attitudes of the different kinds of “children” in this “generation,” and also how some souls strive to build peace, while the others provoke war against the welcoming peacemakers.
But first we need to understand what “generation” Jesus was talking about. He is obviously using the term “generation” (γενεά) as an eschatological term, referring all who live in the last days, that is, all those who will live on the earth after He, the Messiah, saves the world’s captive elect, by ratifying His New Covenant with their priesthood of Israel. After Jesus has revealed Himself as the High King of earth and heaven above, and as Israel’s new High Priest, a new “generation” would begin. For the Greek noun γενεά did not usually imply people born to the parents of a previous generation, like our English word “generation” most often does. This Greek noun (γενεά) must be interpreted in context, Page 809
and bears a broader area of meaning, especially in an ecclesiastical application. The definition of γενεά is: “those exhibiting common characteristics or interests, race, kind ... the sum total of those born at the same time, expanded to include all those living at a given time and frequently defined in terms of specific characteristics, generation, contemporaries ... the time of a generation, age”
(BDAG3). Now the local context connects His words to what He said about John, to the resurrected prophet Elijah, whom God sent to prepare His church of Israel for their Messiah. Thus, when Jesus referred to τὴν γενεὰν ταύτην (“the generation such as this”), He was clearly indicating all who were alive after John performed his mission, and after John baptized Him as the Messiah and High Priest of Israel. In other words, “the generation such as this” included all who lived at that time, as well as all who would live during the last days, until Elijah returned to prepare the church of Israel for the second coming of their Messiah, until Jesus returned to destroy Satan’s kingdom of the world order, so He could rule over all the earth in an equitable, just and loving way. The “generation” Jesus was talking about here includes us and our children, all who will live until the day Jesus returns to earth.
Now notice how some “children” of this “generation” were “summoning” other “children,” asking them to join them. The present participle form of προσφωνέω, in the phrase προσφωνοῦντα τοῖς
ἑτέροις, also suggests a continuous, ongoing summoning of the others. And these “summoning”
kinds of children were “sitting in the marketplace” (καθημένοις ἐν ταῖς ἀγοραῖς), that is, in the most public place of the ancient communities, in what is sometimes called “the town square” (not just a market, but the place where neighbours met to eat, drink, fellowship, hear news, exchange ideas, celebrate or mourn). So these “summoning” children were very open, accepting souls. So Jesus was implying that they were the elect, especially His disciples. And these true disciples of Jesus would be the opposite of an exclusive club or cult that shunned outsiders, that artificially invented differences between themselves and their siblings in mankind. The elect are not the kind who condemn all who do not belong to their inner circle. Rather, true Christians are the kind who invite others to partake in their fellowship. They do not falsely judge the others, but welcome others. The elect are a loving, open, accepting, forgiving, united, empathetic people. So they rejoice together, then call others to freely partake in their music, dance and celebrations. Or, if tragedy strikes, they mourn together, comfort one another, help each other, and work through problems together. They want all others to repent and share in their fullness, in their union of hearts, in their warm, just love for one another.
But most of the people that His disciples continuously summoned were very different. Most of them remained cold, towards both the joys and sorrows of Jesus and His true disciples. Then they even slandered and dehumanized the elect, like a cult bound together by bonds of a common hatred based on lies and delusions. In other words, the others shared the attributes of psychopaths. The dative pronoun in the phrase ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν suggests that God’s people played the flute for the benefit of those others. The elect saw that those others were miserable, so they wanted to cheer them up. But the others rejected the efforts of the elect. Then a time came when God’s people mourned, due to some kind of great loss, perhaps even the deaths of dearly loved ones. Yet the others did not so much as tap their chest (κόπτω) in recognition of their sorrow, displayed no empathy toward them, though they were all siblings in the same community and needed one another for survival. So, in this parable or analogy, Jesus described two different kinds of people with two basic kinds of spirits, and wanted us to see the world as a dichotomy consisting of the loving and the loveless, the elect and non-elect.
After describing all this, Jesus provided a more specific delineation between the elect and the non-elect, gave us specific and real examples of what the non-elect actually said about the elect, and about God Himself. Those others in the public marketplace, where both kinds of people interacted, were summoned to join the Messiah’s loving and accepting disciples. Yet those others did nothing Page 810