Now a more hardhearted man, who selfishly considered only his own pride and reputation, may have sought to make a public example of his wife, if he believed she became pregnant by another man.
And he would not have even tried to hear what she had to say about it. Even if she could talk to him, he would not believe any nonsense about her conceiving the child through an act of creation by God’s Holy Spirit. An unjust man might even go to court of elders and publicly demand that she must be stoned to death, not merely shunned and cast out of the community. Yet Joseph believed that Mary had a good heart, and he clearly did love her. Obviously, by the time Joseph was considering a divorce, he also must have heard her claim that she did not have any sexual relations with any man, but saw an angel who announced that she would become pregnant through a miraculous conception.
Most likely, Joseph simply was not able to believe this. Yet it seems that Joseph must have believed that some unavoidable cause of her pregnancy must have occurred, something which made her fall into a delusion about angels and a miraculous conception. Joseph may have even thought Mary could have been raped, and her mind could not cope with it, so her mind transformed the event into this wild delusion. For such things did happen in his day, as they have throughout history. So, since he did not know what really happened, and wanted to be just, he acted towards his beloved wife in a Page 69
way that would cause the least amount of harm to her. He wanted her to continue to be respected in her community, even if it meant that he himself might be ostracized for frivolously divorcing her.
The people of the town would naturally assume that the child in Mary’s womb was Joseph’s child, if he divorced her. For, I repeat, Mary and Joseph were legally married, and a wife often conceived before she actually began to live together with her husband. Thus, if Joseph divorced Mary privately, meaning that he would not publicly tell anyone his reason for divorcing her, the people would have treated Mary and her child respectfully, like the many other divorced or widowed women and their children. For, in those days, Jewish men could divorce a wife for any reason whatsoever, even for having breasts that were too small for his liking, or due to any other superficial personal preference.
Thus, private divorces, without announcing the reason for the divorce, were relatively common. And no one would begin to think that the divorce was because of adultery. Mary and her child would simply become one of the χῆραι (“women without a husband,” which included divorced wives and abandoned women, as well as widows). As such, Mary could have even remained in her parent’s home. In addition to this, Mary would have been eligible to receive help and certain rights from the synagogue and community. Yet Joseph would have been treated as one of the disgraceful, shallow men who took no responsibility for the welfare of a good wife. Joseph would have been shunned by many devout people, especially by the women in his community. Still, Joseph was willing to suffer that disgrace, since he believed Mary was a good woman, worth this sacrifice, and he truly loved her.
However, before Joseph could actually divorce Mary, God intervened. Matthew wrote: “But [while considering] these matters of his own indignation, an angel from the Lord, according to a dream having been manifested to him, [was] saying: ‘Joseph, son of David, you should not be afraid to receive with full acceptance your wife Mary. For the Child having been conceived in her is originating from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a Son and you will declare His name [to be]
Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins’” (Mat. 1:20-21, ταῦτα δὲ αὐτοῦ ἐνθυμηθέντος
ἰδοὺ ἄγγελος κυρίου κατʼ ὄναρ ἐφάνη αὐτῷ λέγων· Ἰωσὴφ υἱὸς Δαυίδ, μὴ φοβηθῇς παραλαβεῖν
Μαρίαν τὴν γυναῖκά σου, τὸ γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ γεννηθὲν ἐκ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἁγίου· τέξεται δὲ υἱὸν καὶ
καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν, αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν, SBLGNT). And this dream was not the kind of dream one could easily dismiss, or soon forget.
Before Joseph could divorce Mary, while planning the actions he would take to deal with the indignation he would soon face after divorcing her, such as moving out of Nazareth into some other town, a messenger from the Lord entered his dreams and confirmed the story which Mary had likely already told him. But notice how this did not occur until after Joseph had already decided to do the right and loving thing, to get a private divorce, for the sake of Mary. Considering the vividness of the dream, and the information in it—the kind of knowledge which could only come from God—Joseph fully believed that this was indeed a true message, from God, spoken by an angel sent from God.
Joseph now knew the child in Mary’s womb did indeed originate from God, from God’s Holy Spirit.
This angel also commanded Joseph to put away his fears and “to receive with full acceptance your wife Mary.” In the phrase, μὴ φοβηθῇς παραλαβεῖν Μαρίαν τὴν γυναῖκά σου, the aorist subjunctive form of φοβέομαι, with the negative, was one of the stronger forms of prohibition in the Greek language, and forbade the action from ever being done, not even once in the future. Then the aorist infinitive form of παραλαμβάνω indicated a completed and resolute action: “to take into close association ... into one’s home ... the emphasis lies not so much on receiving or taking over, as on the fact that the word implies agreement or approval, accept” (BDAG3). It indicated that Joseph was never to be afraid to fully receive Mary as his wife, with full acceptance. After this was commanded, also notice how the angle called Joseph the “son of David” (υἱὸς Δαυίδ), which suggests that both the Page 70
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angel and Joseph himself recognized that he was the legitimate heir to the throne of David. But, if this is true, then the Son in Mary’s womb, as Joseph’s first-born and oldest Son, would be the next heir to that throne. Jesus would even be thee eternal Heir to David’s throne, the Messiah. For this new Heir would “save” Israel. Joseph’s Son would sit on David’s throne and actually rule Israel.
Now, in those days, a Jewish father always chose the names of his children, with advise from his wife and extended family. For the naming of the child indicated two things: (1) that the father was accepting responsibility for the actions of that child throughout that child’s life, and, therefore, also bore the responsibility of teaching and training that child to do what was right; and (2) that this child was an heir to the father’s property and resources, and, therefore, had the right to receive all his bodily needs from the property and resources of the father. But the angel, speaking in the name of God, commanded Joseph to declare the name of his Son to be “Jesus” (i.e., “Yeshua” or “Yehoshua,”
or “Joshua” in English), which meant “Yahweh Saves” or “God Saves.” So Jesus was named by His heavenly Father, by God Himself, not by any human father. And, to the Jews at the time, the one who named the child made that child an heir to all of one’s own property, as well as to all the chief aspects of one’s life. The child inherited the father’s role in life. A given name signified the whole of what one was, one’s status, authority and reputation, one’s mission in life and position in the world, all that one inherited from a father who gave that name and all one made for oneself. So Jesus was not only the Heir to David’s throne through his earthly father Joseph, but the Heir of God’s throne.
At the same time, to explain why God chose this name of Yeshua for this Child, the angel explicitly stated: αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν. In Greek, this placed an emphasis on the subject, by using the redundant personal pronoun referring to the Child. So it meant: “For HE
will save His people from their sins.” So, clearly, this Child was emphasized and special. He was to be the greatest High Priest and King that ever existed, one who could accomplish spiritual works that no mortal being could ever do. For none but God bears the decision-making authority to judge the rightness of anyone’s repentance into His truth. And it is necessary for God to judge repentance to be sincerely from the spirit and correctly made towards real truth, before He is able to justly grant the forgiveness of one’s sins, for the salvation of one’s soul. In addition to this, the angel actually said this Child would save “His people.” Because this statement involved an act of power and judgment upon the eternal spirits of these people, it was indicating that all of these people being saved actually belonged to this Child in Mary’s womb, that this Child owned their bodies, souls and spirits, in a way not humanly possible. For the earth, and all the souls upon it, belong to God and to God alone.
Thus, in the light of all clear biblical teachings, and in the eyes of truly devout Jews, this statement was tantamount to proclaiming that this Son was not only to be the ruling King of Israel, but was to be Yahweh Himself, the God of Israel and the Creator of all existence. This was an earth-shattering statement! Still, Joseph believed it. For Joseph, as the legitimate heir to the throne of David, knew the Messiah was to be born through him, or through one of his descendants. And Scriptures said the Messiah would be the eternal King of Israel, even though all biblical devout Jews also knew that God alone is, and always will be, the one and only eternal King of Israel. Thus, as confirmed in other prophecies, the Messiah’s Spirit, in a body born of human kings, would need to be God Himself; since prophecies declared that the Messiah, coming in a body of flesh, will be Israel’s eternal King.
Joseph trusted the words of the Scriptures, believing that God proclaimed those words through the agency of His prophets. Likewise, he also believed the angel in his dream. We know Joseph trusted that the angel’s words came from God because he immediately and decisively acted upon those words. Joseph did not divorce Mary, but took her home, as his wife. Then Joseph actually did name his Son Yeshua (which is “Jesus” in Greek). And, because Joseph believed the biblical concepts Page 71
indicated by the angel’s words, we know that He truly believed the Scriptures, the writings of Moses and the prophets. Joseph trusted that God commanded the spirits of His servants, the prophets, to write down the concepts which God put into the minds of their human spirits. Joseph had faith in God and in God’s Word, confidence that those prophets faithfully submitted to God’s will, using their bodies and minds of flesh to record concepts which God had directly granted to their spirits.
Since Joseph had faith in God and His words, he would have respected God’s words as the most important words ever uttered on earth, as truths originating from within the Creator God, who knew all things and made all according to His wisdom. So Joseph would often think about the meaning of God’s words, and seek to learn from God’s words about the spiritual reasons for every significant event in his life. So it seems that the first Scripture which came to Joseph’s mind, after he heard the angel speak to him in that dream, may have been a Messianic prophecy of Isaiah (i.e., Is. 7:14). And Matthew most likely recorded this prophecy for us because Mary told him that Joseph was reminded about this prophecy after he received that dream. On the other hand, Matthew did not explicitly tell us that Joseph was pondering how Mary’s virgin birth would fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy. So it may have been Matthew himself who remembered this prophecy after he wrote about the dream. Regardless, although the context implies that Joseph remembered Isaiah’s prophecy after his dream, whiles still laying on his bed, Matthew wrote: “Now this whole incident happened in order that the words uttered by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, [the words] saying: ‘Behold, the virgin will have [a child] in the womb and give birth to a Son, and they will call His name Emmanuel, which, being translated, is “God with us”’” (Mat. 1:22-23, τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ
ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος· Ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, καὶ
καλέσουσιν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουήλ· ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον Μεθʼ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός, SBLGNT).
The name Emmanuel (or “Immanuel”) refers to God incarnate. God—the Spirit who created all that is seen and unseen, all material existence and all spiritual realities—chose to dwell in a physical human body among us, here on this earth. God creates all the spirits in all human bodies of flesh (Is.
42:5; Zech. 12:1). And all those spirits will return to God’s spiritual realm after their flesh perishes (eg., Eccl. 12:7). Of course, all human spirits are infantile, are “babes” in God, requiring much teaching and training. So their ignorant and unskilled spirits always allow their flesh to fall into deceptions and sins. But God did not create a human spirit in the body of the Messiah, not in the One called Emmanuel. Rather, the Spirit of the Creator God Himself entered that body of flesh, as the life-giving spirit of the Messiah. And, throughout all history, no other human body of flesh ever had the uncreated Spirit of God in it, instead of a created human spirit. For the human body of God who walked with Adam and with Abraham was the body of Jesus, the Messiah. Thus, only the Messiah’s Spirit, whom we call the almighty God, was able to cause the Messiah’s body and brain of flesh to remain utterly sinless and without fault, even from conception. Literally every other human being is a lying sinner to some extent. Only Jesus remained sinless. So, because His flesh was sinless, Jesus alone was able to sacrifice His sinless body, upon the cross, to pay all that Satan demanded for the sins of all God’s elect children, for their entire lifetimes of transgressions committed in their flesh.
It is important to understand how Matthew and all the prophets recognized Jesus as Emmanuel, as the utterly holy and entirely sinless God walking among us in a body of human flesh. And Jesus was nothing like any of the wanna-be human gods we have had to endure since ancient times, with their manicured bodies, costly garments, marbled mansions and so on. Rather, Jesus was the real God, walking on dirty roads in common garments and living in peasant houses, or sleeping in the grass beside the road. And our God in a body of flesh did not take, but gave, even for our healing and our joy in life. Jesus was not grasping and exploiting, but good and sacrificial to the point of giving His Page 72
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bodily life up in a tortuous death for our sakes. Jesus was righteous, just, wise, kind, strong and good in every way, even the only sinless human being who ever walked and suffered among the rest of us.
We need to comprehend how this Jesus alone was able to pay for our sins. Jesus justly and willingly paid the penalty for all the sins of all whom He chose to name, so that Satan and all other accusers could never again demand another payment for our sins, throughout our lives. And the holy Spirit of our God Jesus named all the elect who ever lived or ever will live on His cross. So literally all the elect have already received the unearned and unmerited payment for their sins. And, if the complete penalty for our sins had not been fully paid by the flesh of Jesus, God’s Spirit could not enter even one elect soul, and could not make any elect fit to enter heaven. This man Jesus was the only real human God, and proved it by His perfect ability to remain loving, just, wise and good even while He lived as a common working man, in lowly ways, among us until the day that He died on that cross.
On the other hand, we also need to know that Jesus did not die for those whom He did not name on the cross. Jesus did not die to pay for the sins of the loveless and ruthless devil, nor any of the fallen angels with that fiend, nor for any of that demon’s loveless and totally unrepentant children. If Jesus died for anyone or everyone, so that His salvation could be chosen through a mythical “free will,” as many churches like to say, then heaven would fill with evil. Even those who never repent into the truth, who never turn away from lies and sins, could claim His death on the cross for forgiveness and gain the right to enter heaven. Then they would darken and destroy heaven with their lies and sins.
Then God, who is always true to His words, would need to open the gates of heaven, even to Satan.
If God actually proclaimed that anyone is able to accept Jesus’ payment for sins on the cross, and if God did not declare that the purpose of forgiveness was to enter hearts for the teaching and training of spirits in matters of just love, to prepare them for heaven, then all is fake and all is lost. Or, conversely, if God did not require any just payment for sins, and let His elect children into heaven without Jesus first paying the full and just penalty for their sins, even the demons and the non-elect, the spirits who love darkness rather than light, could freely enter heaven too. But, no matter how sincerely those false churches ignorantly preach that nonsense, it is not true. What is true, and what some in those false churches actually find out, is that Jesus now lives, to teach and train their spirits about a righteous, good, just, equitable kind of love. And, yes, God’s Word does indeed state that the wages of sin must be paid, and that the payment for sin is separation from God and from all of His good creations. In other words, the payment for sin is death. The just payment for spurning God’s wise and effective principles which maintain all life, is to have one’s life removed from all other life.
I am sorry for going off on this tangent, but it is critical to realize how Matthew and the prophets portrayed Jesus as the one Creator God walking among us in a body of flesh, even from birth. And this power of the almighty Spirit called God made it impossible for Jesus to ever sin, even from birth. We need to know that a sinless sacrifice was made to fully pay for our entire lifetimes of sin, to fulfill all just demands against our sins. If a just payment was not paid for the sins of God’s elect children, and God allowed His sinful children to enter their predestined home of heaven without any payment for their sins, then our just God would be forced, through His own just will, to allow even Satan, with all the utter darkness of his loveless lies and delusions, into heaven. And, if Satan entered heaven, he would quickly pollute it, making it darker every moment, until the light of truth could no longer be seen. Thus, God was forced, by His own just heart, to either pay for all the sins of all His elect children, or else cast all His children into hell, together with Satan. Either the sins of His elect children would be paid with the sacrificial death of His own sinless flesh, or all His children would go to a second death in hell after the judgment day, to be forever separated as sinners from God and Page 73
God’s utterly holy, just, loving, eternal lands of heaven. And the latter option, to cast His children into hell, was unthinkable for our just and loving Father in heaven. Thus, God came to save us all.
Fortunately, God designed life in the flesh on earth. God’s wisdom made our earthly lives for our infantile spirits in a way where our bodies of flesh kept us humble, so we would forgive and love one another. For pride cannot forgive and love. And all pride is a lie. So, if anyone does have pride, we know that one is a fake, pretending to be self-sufficient, independent, powerful, wise and god-like, while they are actually inept, totally dependent on others, weak, stupid and demonic. There was only one who was ever god-like, because He was God, yet He was humble among us. That is the reality.
And, when Jesus sacrificed His body for our sakes, we need to realize the fact of God’s design for human life, that a human body can only die once for any number of sins it committed. Flesh can only be separated once from God and from His good living creations once, not matter how sinful it had been throughout life. Therefore, the sinless body of our God and Messiah had to die only once, as an utterly sinless substitute for all our bodies of flesh. His one death paid for all the sins of all the elect, all the entire lifetimes of sins committed by all the countless elect souls existing throughout history.
The cross of Jesus paid the entire just penalty, all that Satan or any other accuser could ever justly demand for all the sins of all the elect who ever lived or ever will live (Heb. 7:27; 9:23-28). Since the Messiah’s flesh was utterly sinless, and did not need to pay for a single sin of His own flesh, the Messiah’s Spirit could voluntarily lay down His body in death as a substitute for as many sins of as many sinners as chose. And He only needed to die once for all. Jesus’ body could pay for an infinite number of the worst of repented sins, for literally all the past, present and future repented sins of all His chosen people. That is the immutable law of the material creation He designed and established.
Of course, there is that other snag to forgiveness. Not only does a payment need to be made for sin, but the sinner needs to stop sinning before being able to draw near the utterly holy God and enter His utterly holy home of heaven. For it does no good to have the penalty of sins paid if one is going to keep sinning, and God cannot draw near a loveless, unjust, evil spirit, nor allow it into His home. By the eternal spiritual laws of God, it is utterly impossible for our just and utterly holy God to forgive any kind of sin unless the sinner’s spirit turns away from that sin, and into the reality of God’s truth, in a way where that sinner then practises God’s kind of wise, just love. There can be no forgiveness of any sin unless the sinner’s spirit repents into the truth, away from that sin. For the flesh of Jesus paid the penalty for the sins of our flesh, but sin is spiritual, built on spiritual lies. So sins must be removed before a spirit can enter the spiritual realm of heaven, since that spiritual place is itself utterly holy, bears only whole truth, and never tolerates unjust sins. Hence, the very first words of the Messiah’s ministry on earth were, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” (Mat. 3:2, WEB). And Jesus continued to proclaim a need for repentance throughout His ministry (Mat. 4:17).
Therefore, we must not only fully comprehend how the flesh of Jesus was utterly sinless, but also how the Spirit of the one God in Jesus, as God incarnate, our Emmanuel, is also wise and fully able to teach our spirits about the truth, so our spirits can then repent away from lies into that truth, then bear the fruits of repentance. That is, Jesus must teach and train our elect spirits until we are all able to speak the truth and act upon the truth. If a spirit learns the truth, and believes the truth enough to fully repent into the truth, then one will bear fruits of repentance. And, before any sinner can enter heaven, that sinner’s spirit must be able to infallibly traverse the paths of loving righteousness, must grow completely adept at living in truth. And, to learn truth perfectly, God must first draw very near to one’s spirit. The Spirit who Created all and knows all must enter into the chamber of one’s heart, where one’s spirit dwells, as well as the chamber of one’s soul, where the mind of one’s spirit and the mind of one’s flesh meet to make all critical decisions in life. God must dwell inside, so He may Page 74
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teach, train and counsel one’s spirit. Yet, before God can draw near, God must pay the cost of all of one’s deliberate or intentional sins, as well as the price of one’s unintentional sins committed through an ignorance of the truth. So He did that on the cross. Then God, standing outside, calling to one’s wakened elect spirit, must ask one to repent into the truth, so He can forgive one’s paid sins and enter inside. For, before God can justly forgive sins, one must repent. Yet, before one can repent into the truth, one must know the truth. But all elect do know the truth, since God is always standing outside the door of each heart and soul, knocking, calling out the truth, even from birth. Then, if one does repent, our God Jesus will enter in, to teach and train one’s spirit personally and in depth about all the truth, making one’s spirit into His disciple. And He will never leave. If one stubbornly sins, He may step outside again, for a time. But He will still knock and call to one’s spirit. And, as soon as one’s spirit repents again, Jesus’ Holy Spirit will enter once more into that elect one’s heart and soul.
So the process of salvation is circular, with no entry point created by human beings. Rather, it begins at the creation of each and every elect spirit, and all is worked by the interventions of God. First, He reveals His presence and some of His truths to an elect spirit. Then He asks for repentance into that truth He reveals, in order to build an understanding of freedom from sin and a restored relationship between Him and one’s human elect spirit, which He earned through His work on cross. But the level of an elect spirit’s understanding iteratively grows according to the rate God chooses for the individual, and some will gain a greater understanding of love built upon His just, equitable truth during life on earth, while other elect will learn less. However, literally all the elect will possess a completed and perfected understanding of all truth, so that all will be able to love purely and fully like God Himself, by the end of the last day at the gates of heaven. For our God Jesus will perfectly complete the teaching and training of all elect spirits by the last hour of the very long judgment day.
This cyclical learning experience is repeated countless times on earth for all the elect spirits on the way to heaven, so that each elect soul may serve as a unique kind of priest for God within the eternal home of our Father, which is the goal of our salvation process. And heaven is the only truly real existence, while life on earth, within this material time, energy and space, is far less real. For our spirits and bodies on earth touch genuine material realities, also made of God’s spiritual power. But these physical things are not actually what they seem to be. Earthly time never moves, and no human nor living creation actually dies. Rather, all the past and future of time in this material universe exists all at once, as one moment in heaven, as one created entity in the spiritual realm. So, within the now existing past and already existing future, our spirits experience present times, a sequential series of
“nows.” Although none of us are actually in the same “now,” some of us in the past and some of us in the future meet to create “nows.” But earthly time itself is not moving. Rather, our spirits and our awareness of this real material existence, created and maintained by God as one time, move in it all.
Thus, life in flesh is for spiritual reasons alone, as a training exercise for our eternal spirits. Its sole purpose is to make us able to serve heavenly creatures, together with our God, in His spiritual place and throughout a non-sequential eternity, as His family of priests, as God’s assistant teaching and decision-making judges working beside Him. So this also means that Christ’s death on the cross for all elect sinners who existed before the day of His crucifixion already had the full penalty for their sins paid, since the future already existed while they lived in the past. Before an elect sinner can receive Christ’s payment for all one’s sins on His cross, and before that sinner’s spirit can enter the utterly holy and sinless heaven, Jesus must initiate a cycle of events. And the second element of our salvation, after His work on the cross, is our wise God obligating Himself to rebuke and discipline our spirits, by causing troubles for our flesh, so He can teach our infantile and ignorant elect spirits about His ways, so we might learn to disdain and reject sins, so we might fully repent into every Page 75
truth taught by His Spirit, every truth that He also wove into the fabric of all His creations. Only after all the repenting of our eternal spirits, into all the reality of the ways that God has caused all creation to function most effectively, can we enter His holy heaven, as sanctified, mature spirits. Yet this entire cycle of salvation was fully available to all elect from the beginning. For earthly time is not sequential, not what it appears to be, not what our spirits experience through our bodies of flesh.
In our day, many proofs of this biblical teaching have been seen, ever since Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity. Now we know, with all certainty, that God’s Word was right, that all things of the future existed from the beginning, and God has predestined all things. So this means that only God remains in control of all on earth, including our salvation. Then this means our minds of flesh are not able to learn God’s spiritual ways, because it is not our flesh which experiences time, but only our spirits that feel time and learn. None are able to gain an understanding of God’s truth and loving ways through the eyes and ears of our flesh, by physically reading His written Law, not unless we allow our minds of flesh to be guided by our spirits. However, even our elect spirits are totally ignorant and infantile. Consequently, we have no hope of ever being able to learn God’s ways independently, on our own. Even our spirits cannot possibly learn enough real truth to repent into His ways. Then we also know that our self-seeking flesh is strong and often rebels against our spirits.
The flesh often refuses to comprehend or admit the the fullness of God’s truth, the rightness of His ways revealed in His Law. So, even when the weak mind of each infantile elect human spirit meets with the mind of its flesh in the chamber of the soul, not much good is ever accomplished by the individual alone. What every elect soul truly needs is the direct teaching and training by our God’s truly loving, wise, powerful and authoritative Spirit, where that training includes His rebukes and even His discipline for our unruly flesh. All elect spirits desperately need our fully qualified and capable Teacher who knows how to grab the attention of our spirits and teach them. Only after our qualified Teacher causes our spirits to consult His Textbook, the Bible, can we possible learn the spiritual truth in that book, to gain a solid background of knowledge and wisdom from the Author.
“For weakness of the Law, in that it was being weakened through the flesh, God—sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and concerning sin—completed the judgment against the sin in the flesh, so that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, those not conducting our lives according to the flesh, but according to the [human] spirit. For the ones being according to the flesh, set their thoughts on things of the flesh, but the ones
[being] according to the spirit, [set their thoughts on] things of the spirit” (Rom. 8:3-5, ALT).
We have a qualified Teacher who can prepare us for heaven. The Messiah is Emmanuel, God in a human body, whose death freed us from sin and whose resurrected life can prepare our spirits for eternal life in our heavenly home. Jesus Christ’s teaching and training of our spirits can and will cause all the elect to always act in God’s just, equitable ways, spontaneously, through a pure and just kind of God-like love expressed rightly, directly from the minds of our spirits. His work for all the elect definitely will be completed to perfection by the end of the last day. The spirits of literally all God’s elect children begin to receive this teaching and training from birth, while living in flesh on earth. Then this education continues, with His very personal and intimate counselling of our spirits throughout our lives. Finally, He shall complete it after the death of our flesh, during the judgment day at the gates of heaven. For the primary goal of every biblical kind of judgment—God’s kind of judging, the kind which will take place on that last day—is to teach truth for repentance, whenever possible. Punishment is reserved only for the spirits who have no love and, therefore, have no ability to truly repent. Yet literally all elect spirits are made from God’s “breath,” and originate from God’s own Spirit. Therefore, through teaching and training from God’s loving Spirit, literally all elect Page 76
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human spirits inherited the aptitude and potential ability to love in a just and pure way, just as God loves, no matter how sinful and loveless they have been taught to be by Satan and his children. So literally all elect spirits can and eventually will repent into His truth, if not now, then on that last day.
Because Jesus is the one Creator God, the repentance of all elect spirits into loving and just maturity, into an infallible practise of all the wise and righteous ways created by God, is inherently inevitable.
And let no one deny that there will be much repentance for the elect on that final day. Let no one say that, if all one’s repentance had not been completed while living on the earth, then one will go to hell. This is a horrible lie, based on an abominable delusion about earthly time. For our spirits dwell outside of earthly time, and earthly time actually does not pass. Therefore, all repentance is actually during that last day of real time at the gates of heaven. And not one will ever go to the judgment in a state of being utterly holy and wise, perfect in all one’s ways, through a completed repentance. And the judgment day is a day in the spiritual realm together with our God. So a day with God in heaven is like a thousand years on earth. Thus, on that last day, there will be more than enough time for any and every elect spirit to learn all God’s ways, repent into all truth and heal, without distractions of earthly flesh. Our temporary flesh was granted so our spirits might see and learn the great distinction between truth and lies, between God’s created realities and delusions. An all these earthly lessons were granted to be remembered on the last day, for each one’s completion and perfection through repentance. Earthly life is not a just a “chance” to find and steal salvation for oneself, as devils like to say. Rather, life on earth is the beginning of God’s process of salvation for literally all the elect, and all on earth works for the good of all the elect. Then all the elect will share what they learned in earthly life, to help one another on that final day, so all can more greatly cherish and praise their unity in their common Father and Brother, so all might love and appreciate Him more through all.
Because Jesus is the whole of the one God, who exists outside of both earthly and heavenly time, all the elect will indeed learn to love their heavenly Father and Jesus. Their love for God will be even greater than the love that the elect angels have for Him, and angels love Him more than life itself.
For the elect heavenly angels were not born in flesh, with infantile spirits that suffer the pains of lies and delusions, as we have. By sinning and being sinned against, we gain a knowledge of what is good and what is evil, a stronger discernment of what originates directly from God and what does not. We develop an ability to recognize the whole and pure truth, and can differentiate between it and anything which even slightly not quite that whole truth. By experiencing sins, we become more like God Himself (Gen. 3:22). The minds of our spirits see and discern what is holy, what is set apart for God’s eternity, and what is not. In fact, even the spirits of animals and plants, who were created by God’s power like the heavenly angels, who were not “breathed” from God’s Spirit, will gain some advantage by having dwelt on earth—since they too endured beleaguered flesh here (albeit without sin, since animals and plants cannot sin, because they cannot discern between good and evil, so their spirits cannot form intentions or motives which choose evil over good, in order to commit real sins).
Then, because our God’s body of flesh rose from the dead again, the Spirit of Jesus can now enter into our forgiven flesh, and commune with our sanctified elect spirits. So Jesus still walks among us while we live in these bodies of flesh, which He forgave, and thus separated unto Himself, through His bodily sacrifice on the cross. Jesus now lives to teach and train our elect spirits, so our spirits can begin to walk with Him into repentance, so our lives on earth may be spent in love, through the truth, becoming mature in Him. His Salvation, and our redemption, is a process where Jesus teaches and trains our spirits to know and do what is loving, in a truly wise and just way, in a way that rejoices in the truth, as we reject all lies and delusions from men and devils. God may have once seemed far off and impersonal. But, in Jesus, in the sphere of our God dwelling among our human spirits, we can Page 77
converse with the Spirit of our God, in an extremely personal way. And, through the work of Jesus on that cross, atonement has been paid to restore our relationship with the Father of our spirits. Now the utterly holy God can relate to us, in a way were He does not aid and abet our sins, since all of our sins were justly paid in full. So now we have a child’s right to access heaven’s throne at any time, where our Father, the High King, is seated. Our human spirits cannot even relate to other human spirits, nor to any other kinds of spirits, in the same close way we can relate to our Father of our spirits, in Jesus, in our Creator God who came to us and sent His Holy Spirit to counsel our spirits.
Jesus is Emmanuel, our God who stands directly before the faces of our spirits, among us, to be the Mediator between us and our almighty Father. And Jesus is the perfect Mediator, since Jesus is fully the one God, with exactly the same mind and intentions of the heart. Because the Creator of the first day, the Maker of all time and space, cannot be bound by time nor space, He is able to relate to us as any number of Persons, all at the same time. In fact, for any kind of space-time continuum to exist, the Creator God also has to be ubiquitous and omnipresent within it, to maintain the energy, space and time within it. God must be present everywhere, and present in all times all at once, because the Spirit of God alone is able to define all time and space through His will and power. Then all energy and matter is actually His spiritual power transformed, all working according to His personal will.
Inwardly, we all know there must be a Designer, Source and Maintainer for everything to exist. The complex material space-time continuum, whose forces are balanced within a fraction so small that we cannot fathom it, could not have come from nothing by accident. So there must be a God who always remains outside of space and time, causing space and time, which are then “defined” by the energy consisting of His power working according to His will. And, since all is being worked directly by His power, according to His will, this Creator and Maintainer of all must be a very personal God, very interested in what He created, and must have created all for a personal reason.
Then, because this all must come from a Creator, this God can enter His created space and time anywhere and at any time, whenever and however He wills, and in as many Persons as He wants to be, as Persons who relate to His living and sentient creations, especially their spirits—since He must be a Spirit, a Being existing in a realm outside of His created material space-time continuum. God, and God alone, is not bound to only one time in one space. So the whole of God can be in the Father residing in heaven, while the whole of Him also stands in countless Christs before the faces of the whole number of elect. The entirety of the one God can be the same Holy Spirit inside multitudes of elect human hearts, all at the same time. Yet there can be only one God, whose thoughts are utterly consistent and immutable throughout all places, times and hearts, so all existence can hold together.
Therefore, the Spirit of Jesus, who is the whole of God, can perfectly mediate between us and the Spirit of our Father. For Jesus is one with the heavenly Father. And our spirits can be taught and trained by the whole of God standing before our faces, as Jesus, and dwelling within us, as the Holy Spirit. All three Spirits, which we call the Persons of God or the Trinity, are actually one and the same uncreated Spirit dwelling outside of created time and space, without division, where all three manifest to our spirits from one Source dwelling outside of His two created space-time continua, from outside the material universe and outside the spiritual realm consisting of heaven and hell. The Father of our spirits, His “uniquely begotten Son” (which also indicating “God incarnate”), and the Holy Spirit, relate to our spirits as three Persons, but are indeed one God beyond all time and space.
Countless clues within the Bible testify to these realities. God’s Word consistently teaches about Him relating to us as three Persons, as well as the existence of two separate, distinct realms—which are called, in modern terms, space-time continua. Logically and scientifically, we are forced to conclude: Page 78
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1. God must exist because every kind of reality, each space-time continuum, requires design, creating power and maintenance to such an exacting and harmonious degree that it is utterly impossible for anything to be created and continue to exist for even a moment without Him.
2. The Creator must be a Spirit, since the Creator of the material existence cannot be confined to the limitations of His own created material time, energy and space. God is like the entities in the spiritual realm, who are also not confined to those limitations. Spiritual entities have no end, since the spiritual space-time continuum is not subject to the laws of entropy. Time and distance mean nothing to spirits. And material energy and power can have absolutely no effect upon spirits. Yet God alone is a Spirit with no beginning in time, since He created all other spirits. God lives in an “eternal now,” and relatively “defines” all time, in both of His created realms. The uncreated God also exists beyond and outside of the spiritual realm too.
3. God definitely can and does initiate and maintain a personal relationship with other spirits, and can do so at any time, and in any way He chooses. God can “hide” His presence from human spirits, or decide to reveal Himself to them, as much or as little as He wills. And, since He exists outside of all material and spiritual time, He can save anyone at any time.
4. The living and thinking God has chosen to communicate with living and thinking elect human spirits, even while He temporarily confines those spirits to the limits of bodies made of earthly flesh. But the material time in which God confined those spirits is actually one time, where the past and future exist simultaneously, as one block of time, but where spirits can meet with Him and one another in a series of “nows” that God Himself defines for them.
5. This God, who exists outside of and beyond the time and space of both created space-time continua, both earth and heaven, can reveal past, present and future events to us, and speak as though He has personally witnessed every minute detail of those events in real time. God even speaks about the future as though it were the present, because He is actually witnessing those future events right now, in the real time He created for His own purposes, even while He is causing all the past, present and future events to occur in the real time of His “now.”
6. The Spirit of this personal God can dwell in the physical body of any human being, even in the same way our spirits can dwell in our physical bodies. And spirits have no such thing as a material size, power and time, nothing that can be limited in any way by anything material.
7. God actually did come to dwell among us in the physical body of Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah.
The utterly irrational biases taught and instilled by the blind religion of humanism may deny that any of this is possible. But none of this can be rationally denied, not through any inductive or deductive logic based on true assumptions, nor by any genuine science nor by rational thinking. So I, and many other elect souls, rationally believe what that angel clearly declared (in 1:23). Jesus is God incarnate.
His Spirit is God, who dwelt in a human body of flesh. God walked among us, upon this physical earth. And soon, in the not-so-distant future, God will walk among us in a body of flesh again. Jesus will return, then rule the earth from a physical throne in Jerusalem, with power over all His creation.
Yes, that was a lengthy tangent, but it is important to realize that Matthew was not writing a mere fairy tale, such as those we find in other religious texts. Matthew was trying to tell us about realities He actually experienced in His life as one of the twelve apostles who lived and served a real man Jesus, for three years. Matthew was testifying that this man was indeed God in a body of human flesh. So now let me continue to exegete these words of this eye-witness, Matthew. Matthew said that, after his dream, Joseph took Mary to live with him, in his home, in the village of Nazareth.
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Because Joseph did this, he acted upon faith. Joseph did this through confidence in the words God spoken through the angel. Therefore, we know Joseph had a somewhat awakened elect spirit. For the actions of his faith were deeds of trusting love, the result of his love for God and his love for God’s faithful servant, Mary. And only those with awakened elect spirits can act on faith and love like this.
Matthew declared: “Then Joseph rose up from the sleep, doing as the angel from the Lord commanded him, and received his wife with full acceptance. Yet he never knew her until the [time]
she gave birth to a Son. Then he called His name Jesus” (Mat. 1:24-25, ἐγερθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰωσὴφ ἀπὸ τοῦ
ὕπνου ἐποίησεν ὡς προσέταξεν αὐτῷ ὁ ἄγγελος κυρίου καὶ παρέλαβεν τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ· καὶ οὐκ
ἐγίνωσκεν αὐτὴν ἕως οὗ ἔτεκεν υἱόν· καὶ ἐκάλεσεν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν, SBLGNT). Joseph willingly and immediately obeyed the words of God spoken through the angel, without hesitation. In this context, the verb παραλαμβάνω means “take or receive near to oneself,” and does not merely imply receiving, with physical nearness. It implies that he took Mary home, with a full inner loving acceptance and approval. This verb, and other texts, indicate that Joseph truly and deeply loved Mary, and he rejoiced in God’s explanation of what had occurred, that Mary has a miraculous conception. Then Joseph was eager and glad to fulfill the obligations assigned to him by the authoritative words of God spoken through the angelic messenger. His love and faith worked together in him, as though his love and faith were one and the same attribute within his elect spirit.
Then, when Mary gave birth to a Son, Joseph obeyed God’s words again. For he named that Son Jesus. So Joseph did not act upon an emotional high. His love and faith were not merely psyched out feelings in his mind of flesh. Rather, Joseph’s very spirit possessed an informed, consistent, strong and steadfast faith in God and His words, with an eternal love for God. And the reason Joseph was afraid of offending God was because he did not want to hinder his cherished relationship with his beloved Father. Joseph did not fear God through superstitions worked by a deluded mind of flesh, not because he feared some kind of punishment in an imagined kind of physical hell. And this is also why Joseph remained celibate while this unique Saviour Child remained in Mary’s womb, whom the utterly holy Spirit of God miraculously formed in Mary’s womb. Joseph only had normal marital relations with Mary after the birth of Jesus, and after the forty days of her ritual purification had been completed, and after making the customary sacrifice at the end of those forty days (Lev. 12:1-8). But Joseph did indeed have a normal marital relationship with Mary after all that, in subsequent years. For we are clearly told that Mary also gave birth to other sons and daughters. We must not believe the lies of false humanistic churches, who say that Marry remained a virgin forever. For those churches lie, because they want us to believe that sex in marriage is somehow evil, although God Himself created sex, for the purpose of drawing the souls of a husband and wife into a more intimate relationship, where both could serve Him as one flesh. If a husband and wife serve Him as one flesh, God may or may not also grant them children through that sex, whom they can serve in His name. However, humanists hate this teaching of God, because they want to make an artificial distinction between blatantly fleshy thoughts and the more evil figurative thoughts of their flesh, but never want to acknowledge the mind of the spirit at all, and often even deny the existence of spirits.
At any rate, Jesus grew up in a large, loving and typical Jewish family, in the village of Nazareth.
God provided the body of the infant Jesus with two elect, loving, faithful human parents, who served Jesus in the same way they served all their other children. So Jesus grew up as the oldest brother of younger brothers and younger sisters. Then the most ancient of all spirits in Jesus, the Spirit of God, also served Mary and Joseph as their oldest Brother. As Emmanuel, Jesus came to be our oldest and wisest Brother, and began His life in a family, serving them as their Brother. And Jesus continues to serve all the elect souls on earth as their oldest Brother to this day, as the one we go to without fear, Page 80
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because our spirits were made in His image, even as our bodies of flesh were. Jesus did not begin to serve as the King of Israel until He was about thirty years old, with judgments fitting a true King, biblical kinds of judgments which primarily involved teachings for repentance into the truth. And His ministry as our King lasted only three years. Thus, Jesus served us as our Brother for ten times as long as He served as our King. Remember this. Jesus, our God, is first and foremost our Brother.
Mat. 2:1-23,
Magi From the East
“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is He who is born King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east, and have come to worship Him.’
“When King Herod heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he asked them where the Christ would be born. They said to him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is written through the prophet, “You Bethlehem, land of Judah, are in no way least among the princes of Judah: for out of you shall come a Governor, who shall shepherd My people, Israel.”’
“Then Herod secretly called the wise men, and learned from them exactly what time the star appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem, and said, ‘Go and search diligently for the young Child. When you have found Him, bring me word, so that I also may come and worship Him.’ They, having heard the king, went their way; and behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, until it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.
“They came into the house and saw the young child with Mary, His mother, and they fell down and worshipped Him. Opening their treasures, they offered to Him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Being warned in a dream that they shouldn’t return to Herod, they went back to their own country another way.
“Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Arise and take the young Child and His mother, and flee into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.’ He arose and took the young Child and His mother by night, and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’
“Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked by the wise men, was exceedingly angry, and sent out, and killed all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding countryside, from two years old and under, according to the exact time which he had learned from the wise men. Then that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; she wouldn’t be comforted, because they are no more.’
“But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Arise and take the young Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel, for those who sought the young Child’s life are dead.’ He arose and took the young Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Page 81
Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there. Being warned in a dream, he withdrew into the region of Galilee, and came and lived in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets: ‘He will be called a Nazarene’” (Mat. 2:1-23, WEB).
The “Wise Men” Were Magi
The next event recorded in Matthew’s Gospel seemed to be about a wicked king raised up by the devil’s world order, an illegitimate king of Israel named Herod. And that worthless man did play the role of an antagonist throughout the events recorded here by Matthew. Yet Matthew’s intent, when he told his Jewish audience about the arrival of these “wise men” from a Gentile land east of Israel, was to illustrate how they had faith just like devout Jews, such as Joseph. Then Matthew also pointed out how God spoke to them in dreams, in order to rescue them from harm, in exactly the same way God spoke to a truly devout Jew, like Joseph. God even led their spirits in their hearts to the Saviour God of all the elect, to Jesus, the eternal High Priest and King of Israel. However, these Gentiles were not even proselytes (i.e., they were not Gentiles who converted to Judaism). For the word translated above as “wise men” is the plural form of the noun μάγος. So these “wise men” were actually Magi, Persian “priests” who were practising the thoroughly pagan religion of Zoroastrianism. Nevertheless, God obviously did count those pagan Magi among His beloved elect children, and guarded both their spirits and flesh from deceptions and harm, in the same way God did for the elect belonging to His priesthood of Israel. And God Himself, not any human being, also caused their spirits to believe the biblical prophecies about the Messiah, that He would be the King and Saviour of the entire world.
The Magi seemed to be a cult who studied and practised eastern philosophy, astrology, homeopathic medicine and an early form of science. As scholars, the more advanced Magi became royal advisers and influential. Yet, from this account, we see how Matthew accepted these Gentile men of another religion as his elect brothers in the Lord. For Matthew, a devout New Covenant Jew, carefully described their loving, difficult and sacrificial deeds worked according to the wills of their spirits.
Then Matthew told us how God Himself personally watched over them and cared for their welfare.
That is, God Himself sent a message to these Gentiles, a warning them about Herod. And these Magi faithfully heeded God’s message too. So, since they obeyed the one true God, their spirits must have been open to His counsel. Thus, they were surely God’s elect. For God Himself even protected them from the unfaithful false church which ruthlessly served that lying, Roman-appointed king, Herod.
Matthew likely heard this account of the wise men from Mary, the mother of Jesus, whom he would have gotten to know quite well during the three years he followed Jesus, as one of His twelve core disciples who served as assistant teachers with Him. It is less likely that Matthew heard these Magi from any other witness. But, regardless of whom the source was, Matthew was honest and wise. So he would have taken due diligence to ensure the information about the Magi was true, and would have only recorded the confirmed and most relevant facts, since brevity was required in written works back then, due to the high cost of paper. Matthew began by telling us: “Now Jesus, after having been born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, understand that Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying: ‘Where is the one having been born King of the Jews? For we carefully examined His star in the east and came to worship Him’” (Mat. 2:1-2, Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ
γεννηθέντος ἐν Βηθλέεμ τῆς Ἰουδαίας ἐν ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου τοῦ βασιλέως, ἰδοὺ μάγοι ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν
παρεγένοντο εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα λέγοντες· Ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ τεχθεὶς βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων; εἴδομεν γὰρ
αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν προσκυνῆσαι αὐτῷ SBLGNT). Here Matthew drew attention to this little-know fact about the Magi coming to see Jesus after His birth, by using the Page 82
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common explicative ἰδού, a particle meaning “look!” or “behold!”, signalling that he was about to explain something he wanted his Jewish readers to understand about these Gentile cult members.
Now, as far as we know, Matthew wrote this Gospel after Mark and Luke wrote their Gospels for their Gentile readers. And Matthew wrote this specifically for Jews the Messiah’s New Covenant branch of the church of Israel. So, chronologically, Mark wrote the first historical record of Jesus’
ministry, the first Gospel, as a Gentile believer for Gentile believers. Then Luke, a somewhat more trusted and adept scholar and historian, wrote the second history, the second Gospel, as another Gentile believer for Gentile believers. And Matthew had definitely read both of those Gospels before he wrote his Gospel. And, since Mark and Luke were not Jesus’ disciples, not eye-witnesses of Jesus’
ministry, nor Jewish, Matthew felt obligated to confirm and expound upon the Gospels of Mark and Luke, since he was a respected Jewish teacher in the New Covenant branch of the church and one of the original twelve apostles appointed by Jesus. And, right from the start of his Gospel, Matthew felt obligated to point out, subtly, but also emphatically and firmly, that our God Jesus came to save both Gentiles and Jews. Matthew wanted his Jewish readers to understand that God loves elect Gentiles as much as He loves elect Jews, revealing Himself to both equitably, without discrimination. The main reason Matthew so carefully recorded this account of the Magi was to eliminate class distinctions in the church of our God and Messiah, Jesus. Jewish believers were not a “higher” class of Christians.
Of course, some would define a Magus as a “wise man and priest, who was expert in astrology, interpretation of dreams and various other occult arts” (BDAG3). And Matthew tells us that an unspecified number of “Magi from the east” came to Jerusalem, most likely all the ways from Persia (Parthia/Mesopotamia), an area now occupied by Iraq and Iran. Of course, a large population of Jewish people, with some excellent rabbis, also lived in Persia back then. For Jewish people had been dwelling there for hundreds of years, since the Babylonian captivity. However, these Magi must have been Gentiles, Persians, since Matthew would have never referred to Jews with a descriptor like “Magi,” and Jews would have referred to Jesus as “our King,” not as the “King of the Jews.”
These Gentile scholars, priests of a pagan cult, set out on a long and perilous expedition to follow a star, in search of some kind of heaven-sent foreign king. So they must have been very devout and dedicated men. Also, there are some very good reasons for believing that they belonged to a large, official, religious organization with access to considerable wealth. First, we should realize that their homeland, Persia, did not have a warm relationship with Rome. Although Persia was Hellenized for a few centuries (since the days of Alexander the Great, from about 334 BC), and many spoke fluent Greek, just like the Jews and Romans of Judea, a great cultural divide existed between them and Rome. And each clung to long-standing, bitter grudges against the other. Thus, since these Magi had planned to enter Roman lands, they would have first ensured that they had received some kind of official letter from their rulers, indicating their high status and that they came in peace. They would need some kind of authoritative government endorsement to present to the Roman authorities they met along the way, to indicate that any harm that Rome might do to them would result in retribution.
For Roman authorities were more than willing to imprison, plunder or even kill wealthy foreigners, if they could do so with impunity. But these Magi seemed official enough to make Roman authorities refrain from doing any harm to them. So they must have had some kind of authorization that caused even Roman kings, like Herod, to respect them. So, if the Romans arrested, imprisoned, plundered, enslaved or killed these Persians, those Romans would need to have good reason and a high rank in the Roman Empire, possibly even a direct authority from Caesar. Otherwise, Romans who harmed the Magi could expect Persian officials to contact high-ranking Roman officials, demanding a severe punishment for the perpetrators. Any attack on this official-looking Persian group of Magi would Page 83
bring big trouble to the attackers, from Roman officials whom the Persians would threaten or bribe.
Thus, these wealthy Magi likely had a few official-looking Persian soldiers and servants with them, and they were likely high-ranking governing authorities from Persia themselves, probably carrying official Persian banners or emblems prominently displayed by the soldier in their caravan as well.
On top of this, we must realize that many ruthless bandits watched the roads from Persia to Jerusalem, hoping to rob any travellers who seemed vulnerable. And these Magi were obviously very wealthy, considering the extremely costly gifts these Magi gave to Jesus, as well as all the money they must have carried to provide for the needs and pay of their support staff and soldiers.
They and many others would have to purchase provisions for the whole company throughout the very long journey, even for the valuable pack animals which carried their water and supplies. So this group would have been an extremely attractive target for large bands of thieves. Thus, these Magi must have travelled with quite a large and well-armed group. Since this trip likely took about a year each way, the cost for such a large, well-armed group must have been enormous. So we are not talking about three men travelling alone on camels through the desert. Actually, we are talking about a group of very wealthy and official-looking Magi, of an unspecified number, in a large caravan.
Also, with the stress of such a lengthy, costly, tedious and dangerous expedition that employed numerous men (possibly a couple hundred), we must conclude that this was a disciplined, well-organized, adeptly administered group. It must have consisted of many soldiers and many workers, possibly some travelling with wives and children. And all these people would need to be properly guided and governed by these esteemed Magi, who would be only a small minority within the group.
So this large troop of dignified, official-looking foreigners, led by Magi, certainly would have been imposing enough to draw the attention of Roman authorities, and most of the other people in all the places they passed through. This group was so prestigious that even Herod, the Roman king of the region, wanted to see these Magi who were leading the caravan. And the words of these Magi held enough sway to trouble even the jealous king of Judah, Herod, and the chief priests of the only Jewish temple in the world, as well as the best Bible scholars in the world, all residing in Jerusalem.
So, when we picture the Magi travelling to Jerusalem, we should not imagine three lonely men romantically riding their tired camels over the desert sands in the sunset. Rather, this was surely a very large, prosperous, official-looking parade of up to a couple hundred dignified Persians, most likely with many uniformed Persian soldiers among them, in a train of hundreds of animals, both horses and camels. For they had been a well-planned expedition, intending to travel a thousand miles (1,600 kilometres) or more, along a dangerous trade route west to the Mediterranean coast, then south through the lush, green parts of Syria (now Lebanon) and Judea. And they knew they would only average about five or ten miles per day, or possibly less. For they had to set up large camps, cook meals and secure the area every day before dark. Then they had to cook meals and take down the camp every day after sunrise. And they were not a military campaign, who would do all this quickly. Rather, they had old Persian officials with them, and could only travel as fast and far as the other civilians with them could walk on foot. Then, even if they did make ten or fifteen miles on some days, they would also lose time when they had to wait for inclement weather to pass, or the Magi wanted to stay for some days to discuss certain things with scholars they met along the way, or whenever they were required to stay in certain towns to restock supplies, repair equipment and so on.
So this journey would have been planned for about 200 days each way, possibly a year there and a year back. Furthermore, there were most likely more than three Magi who would have wanted to go on this grand adventure. An expedition like this would probably include a few esteemed and older Magi, who were eagerly anticipating a great king associated with the new star they saw in the sky. A Page 84
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few academic heads from at least one large government sanctioned Persian religious and educational institution would have come. But these heads would have also taken several adept junior scholars with them, to assist them. It is highly unlikely that this kind of extremely costly expedition would have been established for the personal interests of only three insignificant scholars, three old Magi who decided to travel alone through dangerous, bandit-filled territories alone, while wearing their expensive garments and carrying chests of priceless treasures for the foreign king they sought. The expedition would have been authorized on the words of few major Persian scholars. But these few would have taken other less experienced scholars with them. For it surely would have required the planning, decisions, power and funding of a very substantial and government-backed institution, or possibly multiple institutions, or by the secular governing authorities of Persia, or all of the above.
Clearly, these Magi would have been very adept and devout scholars, but also humble men, since the goal of their expedition was to bow before a spiritually significant foreign Child destined to be some kind of God-ordained, soul-saving King—since that seems to be what they interpreted that new star in the sky as signifying. These obviously were not politically savvy, ruthless, cunning, worldly, status-seeking, greedy heads of self-serving institutions. These were spiritually aware men, who dedicated their lives to the acquisition of inner, spiritual wealth, to the pursuit of wisdom and truth.
For these Magi risked their lives based on the mere knowledge of a bright travelling star suddenly appearing in the sky, and because that star indicated the birth of a foreign priestly King. Yet carnal, ambitious religious leaders are seldom willing to abandon their back-stabbing pursuit of power and money at home, for two whole years, just to gain information about a foreign priestly King. For such information has no financial value to that kind of man, nor any political usefulness. If anything, a foreign King might be a threat to their own money and power. So, if that kind of person went to visit an infant who would become a great king, they would view Him with suspicion, and likely come so they could assassinate that child, just like Herod did. They would not seek Him so they could bow before Him. Even so, superficial political kinds of men would only send professional assassins on a two-year, life-threatening mission like that. They would never go themselves, not without an ability to communicate with their subordinates, lest others might steal their money and lucrative positions of power while they were gone. Greedy, religious or political leaders would seldom be willing to make the kind of long, dangerous trip that these Magi did, although some empty, carnal souls would be willing to pay for such an expedition, in order to look good in the eyes of their people. So some of the Magi’s funding may have come from them. Yet the Magi themselves seemed to be wise, devout, humble and honest men who came to investigate the birth of a great priestly King born in Israel.
The details of this story construct a mental picture of a large, prestigious, official-looking group of Persians under the command of some humble, spiritual, loving, respectable scholars from one or more official foreign educational or religious institutions in Persia. A long parade of these scholars, soldiers, workers and pack animals, with many signs of wealth and status, entered Jerusalem that day. And, on the narrow roads of that city, this parade would have stretched out for hundreds of yards (or meters). So their entry into Jerusalem, a city with a permanent population of only about thirty thousand, was a significant event. Also, to the parents of that recently born “King of the Jews,” to whom they gave very costly gifts, this also would have been a very memorable event, not something they would ever forget. Thus, when Mary, the mother of Jesus’ body, told Matthew about the visit of these Magi, and Matthew realized that Gentile pagan priests, from a cult that Jews considered to be demonic, came to bow before Jesus, he also included this story in his account of the Messiah, Jesus.
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The Miraculous Star
After interviewing Mary, and possibly other eye-witnesses, Matthew wrote this: “Now, after hearing
[about the Magi and what they were asking], King Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
Then, after gathering together all the chief priests and scholars apart from the people, he attempted to learn from them where the Messiah was being born. So they said to him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea.
For, in this manner, it was infallibly written through the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For, originating from you, will proceed He who is governing [with authority], the very one who will shepherd My people, Israel [cf. Micah 5:2].”’
Then Herod, after calling the Magi [to meet] privately, carefully extracted from them the time of the manifesting of the star. And, after sending them into Bethlehem, he told them: ‘After departing, diligently inquire about the Child. Then, as soon as you might find Him, report to me, so that even I, having come, might have worshipped Him.’ So, after hearing the king, they departed. And, behold, the star, which they saw in the east, was travelling before them until, having arrived, it was standing above [the place] where the child was. Now, after seeing the star, they were glad with exceedingly great joy. Then they went into the house. They saw the child with Mary, His mother, and, after prostrating themselves, they worshipped Him. Also, after opening up their treasure chests, they brought out gifts for Him, gold and frankincense and myrrh” (Mat. 2:3-11, ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς
Ἡρῴδης ἐταράχθη καὶ πᾶσα Ἱεροσόλυμα μετ’ αὐτοῦ, καὶ συναγαγὼν πάντας τοὺς ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ
γραμματεῖς τοῦ λαοῦ ἐπυνθάνετο παρ’ αὐτῶν ποῦ ὁ χριστὸς γεννᾶται. οἱ δὲ εἶπαν αὐτῷ· Ἐν Βηθλέεμ
τῆς Ἰουδαίας· οὕτως γὰρ γέγραπται διὰ τοῦ προφήτου· Καὶ σύ, Βηθλέεμ γῆ Ἰούδα, οὐδαμῶς
ἐλαχίστη εἶ ἐν τοῖς ἡγεμόσιν Ἰούδα· ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ ἐξελεύσεται ἡγούμενος, ὅστις ποιμανεῖ τὸν λαόν
μου τὸν Ἰσραήλ. Τότε Ἡρῴδης λάθρᾳ καλέσας τοὺς μάγους ἠκρίβωσεν παρ’ αὐτῶν τὸν χρόνον τοῦ
φαινομένου ἀστέρος, καὶ πέμψας αὐτοὺς εἰς Βηθλέεμ εἶπεν· Πορευθέντες ἐξετάσατε ἀκριβῶς περὶ
τοῦ παιδίου· ἐπὰν δὲ εὕρητε, ἀπαγγείλατέ μοι, ὅπως κἀγὼ ἐλθὼν προσκυνήσω αὐτῷ. οἱ δὲ
ἀκούσαντες τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπορεύθησαν, καὶ ἰδοὺ ὁ ἀστὴρ ὃν εἶδον ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ προῆγεν αὐτούς, ἕως ἐλθὼν ἐστάθη ἐπάνω οὗ ἦν τὸ παιδίον. ἰδόντες δὲ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐχάρησαν χαρὰν μεγάλην σφόδρα.
καὶ ἐλθόντες εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν εἶδον τὸ παιδίον μετὰ Μαρίας τῆς μητρὸς αὐτοῦ, καὶ πεσόντες
προσεκύνησαν αὐτῷ, καὶ ἀνοίξαντες τοὺς θησαυροὺς αὐτῶν προσήνεγκαν αὐτῷ δῶρα, χρυσὸν καὶ
λίβανον καὶ σμύρναν, SBLGNT). And this account is so full of harmonious details that it reads like a historical account of a series of events, nothing like a mere story invented by amateur tale-bearers.
Some like to believe that this account of the Magi is a fictitious story invented to impress the gullible. And they think this solely because of the miraculous events in it, especially the star that travelled through the sky, likely over a period of about a year, a star which then rested above one specific house in small village. Since no one has ever seen anything like this occurring in nature, they assume this story must have been invented by Matthew or someone else. However, it was written as a factual account, and the evidence supports its verity. I personally have seen a few miracles, events without any natural, scientific causes, things done by spirits. So I cannot dismiss a story simply because a miracle occurred. One can only dismiss a story about a miracle if the miracle clearly is fake, if it does not accomplish purposes of God’s will in a way that is not manifest to those who experience the miracle. If a miracle is done for the pride, financial gain or glory of someone, it is almost always fake, simply a manufactured trick worked by by human hands. But real miracles do occur, and are either worked by God or by demons (if God grants demons permission to do them).
So real miracles either bless and enlighten human spirits, or curse and delude them, and are never done according to human wills. Yet this star blessed, enlightened and fulfilled the hopes that God put in the spirits of these Magi. Also, nothing in this story was for the glory or profit of any human Page 86
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beings. All that occurred here was clearly and strictly done for the sakes of God’s elect and glorified only God. Therefore, as one who has witnessed at least two genuine miracles, I believe that literally everything in this account of the Magi and the shepherds truly happened. There is no logical reason to doubt that everything here actually occurred, except through the irrational biases of humanism.
Also look at the external evidence, such as the good reputation of the redactor of this report about the Magi. Consider how Matthew, who received this account from a trusted witness and faithfully recorded it for us, was a devout Jew who worshipped Jesus in his spirit and in truth. Matthew had been taught from birth to value and speak only the truth, to objectively portray the realities created and caused by God all around Him. Above all, God taught him to be honest to himself about what he saw and heard. Then, after becoming a disciple of Jesus, this commitment to the truth grew even stronger within him. Matthew was also one of those filled with the Holy Spirit of God on the day of the Pentecost, the Spirit who counselled his spirit throughout his life, and guided him as he judged the eye-witnesses of this even, and as he penned this Gospel. So Matthew would not have been fooled by Mary, or the shepherds who still lived and testified about this event, if they were lying.
And Matthew certainly would not have lied himself, would not have invented a story just to “sell”
his religion to dupes. Matthew was nothing like the self-aggrandizing, big-name preachers today.
Likewise, all the witnesses whom Matthew consulted and trusted held the same inner commitment to the truth. And an older, wise, faithful disciple of Jesus, like Matthew, would have been skilled at discerning between a liar and one who was telling the truth. For, I repeat, Matthew was not like the easily conned evangelicals we see today, nor were any of his reliable witnesses like that either. Not one of the witnesses he consulted would dare to invent a tall tale and present it as though it were a true story. Since Matthew definitely recorded their words as a factual account about real people who were seen and heard by real people, and about a real star followed by the Magi, there is no genuinely logical nor truly scientific reason to doubt anything in this account about those Magi. Doubters can never logically argue that, because they personally have never seen a miracle, all who say they have seen a miracle must be liars. For one can never rationally argue from a lack of evidence, except to nullify empty and slanderous accusations. If we consider the integrity of Matthew and the witnesses he relied upon, we are forced to logically conclude that some people must have seen real Magi who made a real journey to worship Jesus, and that these Magi must have found Jesus by following a physically manifested star which eventually pointed directly to the very house in which Jesus lived.
Since miracles do exist, there is no logical reason to try and explain this star as some kind of natural phenomenon either. Clearly, no comet, nor any other natural phenomenon, could possibly do what that star did. Of course, the ancients called almost any kind of bright, shining light in the sky a “star”
(ἀστήρ), even meteors and comets. Thus, there is no need to believe that whatever the Magi saw was literally what we now scientifically classify as a star. Rather, that star was obviously a bright object floating very low in the night sky, only a few hundred feet above the ground. For the Magi were able to follow it as it moved in the sky above them, in a way which led them all the way to Jerusalem, then to Bethlehem, and eventually to one particular house. Since the Magi were able to specifically determine which house this star hovered over, it had to be a bright light floating less than a few hundred feet above the ground, even lower than aircraft normally fly. And there is absolutely no kind of natural light in the sky which could ever do that for almost a year! Thus, it was a miraculous light.
From all we can logically deduce, no matter how improbable it might seem, a miraculous star did indeed appear in the sky at that time. And, in fact, it was precisely due to the star’s miraculous nature that these professional astrologers, the Magi, decided to follow it, and were able to convince the rich and powerful to provide all the necessary financial backing required by them to follow it. And, if Page 87
anyone would know the difference between a natural star and a miraculous star, it would be the professional astrologers like the Magi. The mere fact that the Magi followed this star is another proof that it was a miraculous star. And only fools who do not believe the testimonies of honest souls about the existence of oceans and whales, because they have never seen them, cannot believe this account.
When the Magi Arrived
Now, getting back to the account written by Matthew, let me first point out that these Magi did not see Jesus in the stable where He was born. Rather, they saw Him in a house (οἰκία). And, as we saw in the first verse of this chapter, the Magi came to Jesus “having been born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king” (γεννηθέντος ἐν Βηθλέεμ τῆς Ἰουδαίας ἐν ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου τοῦ
βασιλέως, 2:1, SBLGNT). Here the Greek aorist participle does not indicate nor suggest that the Magi came immediately after the birth of Jesus. Rather, it does not imply any specific amount of time at all. So the Magi arrived at an undetermined amount of time after Jesus was born, but only after the family had moved out of the stable where Mary gave birth to Jesus on the night she arrived in Bethlehem, and had, by now, moved into a house. Then the details of Matthew’s account, and those found in other Gospels, clearly indicate that the Magi actually arrived about a year after Jesus was born. So the star seemed to have appeared to the Magi on the very day that Jesus was born.
Look at all we know from the Gospels. To begin with, we know from Luke that the home of Joseph and Mary was located in Nazareth at that time, since Joseph had to go to his home town to register for an official census. And Joseph was born to the “House of David” (Luke 1:26-27), whose hometown would be inside the borders of Judah, in Bethlehem. So Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem from Nazareth, likely on foot for weeks. And, after going back to Joseph’s hometown, they would visit relatives for a long time. In fact, if it was now safe for Joseph to remain in his own hometown, they may have even been thinking about remaining in Bethlehem, and not ever returning to Nazareth. Next, consider how a devout Jewish woman had to wait for some time after giving birth before she could travel again. After giving birth to Jesus, Mary would have had to stay in Bethlehem until the ritual time, required by God’s Law, had been completed, and until the required sacrifices and ceremonies were fulfilled. Besides, she physically needed to heal enough to take a long journey back to Nazareth, on foot, if they did decide to return. Then Mary would also demand that her baby would be old enough to cope with the rigours of such a long journey as well. Mary probably wanted to wait until Jesus was weaned, which often took about a year in those days. Possibly, she wanted to also wait until her baby could walk fairly well too, so they would not need to carry Him at all times.
Therefore, after that first night in barn, when Mary had to give birth in an emergency situation, it is certain that Joseph would have had to find a house for his family to live in until they could travel. Of course, the night Joseph and Mary first arrived in Bethlehem, the only available place they could find was a barn, when they arrived after dark and Mary began to give birth. For there was no time for Joseph to find any other place, since Mary likely broke water and began to feel the birth pangs even before they entered the town. Joseph simply could not take a few hours to go knocking on doors, engage in friendly conversations, and casually look for a better place to stay. Thus, the very first bed our God Jesus lay upon was an animal’s feeding trough. But that barn was simply a temporary and necessary place under the circumstances, certainly not acceptable for a lengthy stay in Bethlehem.
So Joseph would have gone out to find a house for his family the very next day. He probably began to search for a suitable home early, the very next morning. And, since Bethlehem was his hometown, it was likely not too difficult for him to acquire a house while he was in Bethlehem, even without much money. For he was a respectable, devout Jew with a royal lineage. Then consider that the only Page 88
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reason he went to Bethlehem was to be counted in the census of Augustus (Luke 2:1-5), which would have counted only local landowners from outside of town. Thus, Joseph may have already owned a house and land in Bethlehem. At the very least, he likely had many relatives and friends living there, and one of them may have provided him with a house. Joseph had fled his home in Bethlehem, likely in fear of Herod’s desire to murder anyone who might be a rival to his illegitimate throne in Israel. However, devout Jews often refused to sell their land and houses, since they were God-ordained inheritances and God’s Law did not allow them to permanently sell them, although some might “lease” or “rent” them out until the day of Jubilee (Lev. 25). Consequently, Joseph most likely did already own a house and land in Bethlehem, although that may not be where they stayed.
Nevertheless, Joseph would not have been able to go directly to his own house after he arrived in Bethlehem that first night, not with a wife going into labour. After all, his house and land would not have been simply abandoned when he left it. Joseph would not have allowed his house to remain vacant for a very long time, slowly deteriorating and becoming infested with vermin until it was totally destroyed. Nor would he have left his land to go to weeds. During the years he lived in Nazareth, Joseph would have ensured that someone lived in his house and tended his land. So, the first night he arrived, he could not go directly to his home in the night, unannounced, with his wife having labour pains. Rather, Joseph was forced to find the nearest available shelter. Then, the very next day, Joseph would have gone to his old house in Bethlehem, to see if there was some way his family could live there. Or, if the lease on his house could not be terminated, he would have looked for some other house to live in. However it happened, we know that Joseph, Mary and the Child were indeed living in a house by the time the Magi arrived—although the shepherds, living in the fields with the sacrificial sheep, likely did come to see Jesus on the night He was born in the barn.
After Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph had to wait until the eighth day before their Son could be circumcised (Luke 2:21). Then they had to arrange for a rabbi to perform this operation. Also, Mary had to wait an additional 33 days, until her ritual purification was completed. After this, a devout Jewish family made a sin sacrifice of a lamb, although an impoverished family could sacrifice two turtle doves instead (see Lev. 12:2-8). Joseph and Mary, like every other devout Jewish couple that had a baby, made a sacrifice, but gave two doves. And this means that they were poor at the time. It means that, more than 40 days after Jesus’ birth, they did not have the valuable gifts of the Magi, or they definitely would have purchased a lamb instead of the two doves. We should realize that all such sacrifices were made at the Jewish temple as well, that is, at the temple in Jerusalem. So, since Joseph and Mary were devout Jews, they sacrificed the doves in Jerusalem (Luke 2:21-38), which is only six miles (10 kilometres) from Bethlehem. So we know they stayed in Bethlehem for at least forty days. Therefore, since Matthew told us that the family fled into Egypt immediately after the Magi visited (2:13-14), Joseph and Mary definitely did not wait for forty days after the visit of the Magi, go to Jerusalem to make their sacrifice, where Herod was residing and looking to kill them, after the Magi visited and immediately flesh from Herod themselves. We can be absolutely certain that, before the Magi appeared at their doorstep, Mary had already completed the forty days of ritual purification, and had remained in Bethlehem for some time after making their sacrifice in Jerusalem.
Next, consider how Herod “carefully extracted from [the Magi] the time of the manifesting of the star.” After doing this, Herod clearly assumed that this star began to shine on the day the Magi left to follow that star, about a year before he met those Magi, and assumed that star appeared on the day Jesus was born. For Herod, after learning that the Magi did not return to him with a report about the new-born King, ordered the execution of every child in the region around Bethlehem. And the wording of his command to do this indicated that he wanted to kill a one-year-old child. For Herod Page 89
ordered them to slaughter every child “from two years and under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the Magi” (2:16). Now, since a soldier might think a thriving one-year-old was about two years old, or that a small one-year-old was recently born and only a few months old, Herod obviously allowed for this margin of error. Herod was hoping to murder the one-year-old heir to the throne of David at that time, when he ordered his soldiers to kill all the children “from two years and under.” Thus, the Magi must have told Herod that the star appeared about one year before they arrived in Jerusalem, and Herod assumed those Magi saw the star on the day Jesus was born.
Thus, a period of about one year had passed after the birth of Jesus, before the Magi arrived in Jerusalem. This is also likely because it would have taken the Magi about a year to plan and make the long trip from Persia to Jerusalem, on an indirect route of about 1500 to 2500 kilometres (or 1,000 to 1,500 mi.) of dangerous roads. And it only seems logical that God would have caused the star to shine on the very day Jesus was born. Then, after leaving Jerusalem, it would have taken the Magi only one day to get to Bethlehem, since it was only about six miles (ten kilometres) south of Jerusalem. Since we know the Magi definitely arrived in Bethlehem at an unspecified time after the forty days of Mary’s ritual purification, it is not unlikely that they arrived long after that 40 days, and likely a full year after Jesus was born. For Joseph and Mary surely wanted to wait until Jesus was old enough to be weaned and able to walk before they took Him on a lengthy journey, lasting weeks or months, if they did want to go back to Nazareth. We can easily see how Joseph and his family may have remained in Bethlehem until Jesus was a year old, until the Magi visited them just a day or two before those Magi fled from Herod back to Persia, and Joseph’s own family had to flee into Egypt.
Herod’s Plotting
Now we need to understand why everyone in Jerusalem was so alarmed when the Magi arrived and openly proclaimed that they were looking for the new-born “King of the Jews.” Everyone must have frozen in their tracks and dropped their jaws when the Magi said this. For all were terrified of the paranoid, psychopathic, Roman-appointed king of the Jews in Jerusalem, Herod. After all, Herod was willing to kill anyone, even his own children, if he heard even the most unlikely rumour about anyone who might threaten or challenge his throne, even in the slightest way, even in a spiritual way.
Also consider how this visit of the Magi occurred near the end of Herod’s reign, when he was about 68 years old, less than a year before he died. Thus, the Magi would have come when Herod was old, sick, nearing death, miserable and far more paranoid than he ever was before. Yet, throughout his reign, Herod had been murdering potential threats to his throne, especially heirs of the previous ruling royal Hasmonaean dynasty. Long before this, Herod married Mariamne, the daughter of a former Hasmonaean High Priest, to legitimize his throne in the eyes of those who saw him as a Roman usurper of that throne. Yet Herod eventually murdered her too, as well as his own two sons born from her, Alexander and Aristobulus. Then, since Herod never showed any remorse for this, nor any of his other sins, the Jewish people refused to forgive him. Although Herod built many costly projects for the Jews, including an expensive refurbishing of their temple in Jerusalem, devout Jews hated him and never trusted him, nor the sons born of his other two wives. Even after he died, the Jewish people remembered only his paranoia, murderous rage and psychopathy, never his extensive administrative works and building projects. Yet few dared to displease this powerful king either, since he ruthlessly snuffed out their revolts and effectively maintained Roman control in the land.
So all of Jerusalem would have been trembling after the Magi mentioned that they came to see a newly born “King of Israel.” Yet crafty Herod remained calm as he plotted to find and assassinate this infant King. The first step was to find out where that baby King lived. Since Herod knew that Page 90
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this title, the “King of the Jews,” referred to the Messiah, whom God promised for the salvation of Israel, he realized that the biblical scholars would know if any Scriptures indicated where He was to be born. So he privately called those scholars and asked them. And, sure enough, the prophecies proclaimed that this Messiah King would be born in Bethlehem of Judea. Of course, Herod wanted Rome to rule instead of God. And Herod definitely did not place any faith in the God of Israel, nor in any of God’s words from the Scriptures. Herod loved only the carnal and demonic gods of Rome.
And many of the most influential Jews in Jerusalem were like Herod. Those Romanized Jewish authorities and priests also did want God to rule in Israel either, although most of the Jewish people did trust in God and believe the verity of God’s words in the Bible. And those devout Jews were Herod’s worst enemies. So Herod thought he could crush the God of Israel, and all his devout religious opponents, by murdering their promised Messiah, by murdering this promised Child King.
Naturally, Herod did not believe that this God of Israel—by manipulating circumstances, even the minds of rulers in the Roman Empire, all with perfect timing—could effectively save the Messiah King born in Bethlehem. He did not believe that God caused him to trust the Magi and wait a few more days for their message. For Herod would have assumed that the God of Israel was just like the Roman gods, just another fallible and weak being who deceived his faithful worshippers through malignant motives. So, like those who plotted against the Roman gods in the past, Herod would now plot against his rival king sent by Israel’s God, for his own glory, as well as for the glory of Rome and their psychopathic gods. On the other hand, paranoid Herod may have wanted to murder Jesus based on a wild conspiracy theory dreamed up in his own deluded mind. Perhaps he convinced himself that his religious rivals were plotting against him, by causing a young couple with a noble lineage to move to Bethlehem and give birth to a son there, even though there was no guarantee they would have a son instead of a daughter, or that they would have any child at all. Then his religious opponents could deceive the masses into accepting that son as their prophesied Messiah and King, by spreading propaganda, until hordes of devout Jews rebelled to make this baby their prophesied Messiah, King and Saviour. This sounds insane to honest people, but all psychopaths think like this.
After Herod found out where the Scriptures prophesied that the Messiah King would be born, he had to find the parents and baby involved in his imagined plot. And, since the Magi were going to visit that baby and his parents, they could lead him straight to that family, possibly within hours. So, hoping on this, Herod immediately arranged a private meeting with the Magi. Herod put on his most pious-looking face, to trick them into trusting him. And the Magi fell for it, since high-functioning and practised psychopaths can be very charming and pious-looking when they want to be. So the Magi willingly agreed to send Herod all the information he required about the baby and his parents.
Herod asked the Magi to report back to him, and give him their names as soon as they found the infant, so he too wanted to humbly worship that new-born King. Thus, just like Trump and other psychopaths, Herod lied about his reason for wanting to find this Child. To honest souls who knew Herod, this reasoning was utterly laughable. The last thing that a murderous, arrogant, paranoid and psychopathic man like Herod would ever do is bow before the future rival to his throne. Now, since the Magi would have had soldiers and servants, they could easily send a message back to Herod in Jerusalem. It was not a big favour to ask. On horseback, a messenger could get a message back to Herod within a few hours after those Magi found the King of the Jews. So, after the Magi left, Herod hurriedly gathered a squad of ruthless assassins, willing to kill even innocent little children. Yet he could not dispatch them until he could identify the parents and the Child. And not even those Magi knew their names, since they would only find out who He was after the star led them to the Child.
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Now the Magi actually would have sent a messenger to Herod. But they only started out on their trip to Bethlehem after dark, after about 6:00 pm, so they could see and follow the star in the night sky.
Then they would not have found the baby Jesus until after eight or nine o’clock. And while they went to visit Jesus, the Magi probably told their people to set up camp nearby, since they would have intended to stay a few days. And, since they felt no urgency about sending a message to Herod, and because they did not want to send a messenger by night, in a dangerous foreign land, they decided to send the message in the morning. Yet, that very night, God warned the Magi in a dream, telling them to flee from Herod. So the messenger never arrived at Herod’s palace. Of course, Herod was totally confident that he had fooled those Magi, and he actually did. So he was sure the Magi would soon send a message to him. But, after a day or two, Herod would have realized something was wrong.
Then Herod would have sent a trusted officer to check out the situation in Bethlehem, discovering that the Magi’s caravan had already left Bethlehem a day or two before then. So the Magi were likely in another Roman ruler’s territory by now, and could not be easily dragged back into Herod’s jurisdiction. Thus, Herod went to “Plan B,” and murdered all infants that could be a one-year-old.
Some might ask why old Herod would be so worried about an infant’s future claim to his throne, since he was old, sick and his own rule could not be threatened by that future King, who would not come of age until he was long dead. Well, for one thing, psychopaths like Herod actually think they are gods who will never die. They never have a realistic grasp of the reality that they are mortal, and will soon pass away. I saw a psychopath, after all the doctors warned him that he could die at any moment, make long-term plans to exact revenge on his perceived enemies, on ordinary people who ignored him and simply lived their own good lives, on people who were not his enemies at all. But that psychopath naturally died before his plots could be carried out and the evidence of his plots were found in his dresser drawer after he died. Psychopaths do not seem to comprehend that they are not the gods of their own lives, nor are they gods with a right to rule the lives others. And Herod was one of these. He was likely was plotting to hold onto his reign for another two or three decades, even though everyone else knew he would die within weeks or months. Then there was also the fact that adults could use a child heir to the throne as a pawn, and stir up a rebellion to overthrow Herod while he was still alive. For it was quite common for guardians of an infant king to rule until the child came of age. Yet, if sickly, old, dying Herod was sane, he would not worry about that either.
True Servants of God
In contrast to Herod, the Magi came to worship the new-born King as their own Saviour and Healer, as the High King of all nations, but as a Lord who would rule over the very spirits of His people. So they were humble, which made them honest of heart. And inwardly honest men see through spiritual devices of the wicked. So these Magi likely would have been suspicious of Herod’s motives from the start, but did not say anything impulsively, lest it stir up needless trouble for their people and for the new-born King. Then, after meeting with Herod, and after God confirmed their suspicions about Herod in a dream, the Magi simply and silently left, and went home by another route. That is, they likely crossed the Jordan River and headed straight for the Decapolis, outside the region ruled by Herod. So God remained faithful to these Magi, by keeping the miraculous star moving before them and showing them the way, until it led them to one specific house in Bethlehem, where the new-born Messiah lay beside His royal parents. And God also rescued them from Herod, even giving them enough of a head start to flee out of Herod’s jurisdiction, into lands where he could not touch them.
Now, when that star finally rested over one particular house in or near Bethlehem, the Magi rejoiced.
The younger Magi may have simply looked in awe, knowing something great had occurred there.
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But the older Magi would have thought: “At last! Here He is, the hope of all the wretched, of all the world’s souls who seek merciful justice and the gratification of their good desires through His grace, the Saviour of all the spirits whose love is frustrated by the brutal hands of vain despots and greedy enslavers. Finally, our almighty King has come to burn the ruthless lies of men and demons! Now my soul can rest in peace, knowing that each of God’s children will soon see their God face to face, guiding each one’s spirit into freeing truth and effective wisdom. Now all the elect on earth will be able to know this loving King’s assurance flowing gently, like a deep clear river, into their hearts.”
Also, in the Gospel of Luke, we also saw how God called others to see the new-born Messiah, before those Gentile pagans came to see Him. But the first were not the most highly respected biblical scholars claiming to serve His priesthood of Israel. Actually, God totally ignored those chief priests and renowned Bible scholars. God did not lead even one of them to the house of their long-awaited Messiah. Many of these “great leaders” of His world-wide church lived in Jerusalem, only a day’s journey from Bethlehem. Yet God did not call a single one of them to witness the birth of Messiah, whom God had been promising to send to Israel and the world since the days of Adam. Rather, the very first people God summoned to see their new-born King of Israel were some shepherds tending the temple’s sacrificial sheep in the fields near Bethlehem, men whom Jews considered to be in one of the lowest of all possible occupations. In those days, shepherds stank so much that they were not allowed to associate with polite company. They existed at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Yet God honoured these shepherds more than all other Jews, because God announced the arrival of His incarnate body to them first, even with accompanying angels and much glory. So we should not think God preferred Gentiles over Israelites. God’s priesthood of Israel is indeed important and beloved to Him. However, those whom God ordained as His true priests of Israel were not the same ones whom human beings in Rome and Israel deemed to be priests. God only called those lowly shepherds of the sacrificial sheep for the temple as His priests of Israel, as the representatives of all His priesthood of Israel. Then, after the shepherds, God led elect pagan Gentiles to witness the advent of God in human flesh, leading them there with a miraculous star, even while all the chief priests and the most authoritative scholars of the church were left behind in Jerusalem, with Herod.
By doing this, God was firmly rebuking His church of Israel. And perhaps it is also time for the current church to learn a lesson from the way God called shepherds and these pagan Magi, but not the human heads of the false church, not the men chosen by men to rule over their man-made church.
We all need to ask, does God’s true church really need more Roman-like “leaders” to bear autocratic authority over God’s people, to force them to obey men? Can any group calling themselves a church be led by human gods, who seek titles of esteem so they can be raised up above the common people, to be more faithfully served than Jesus Himself? Should God’s people ever worship human beings more than Jesus, in the way that every parent teaches their children to worship the lying pastors and priests of their churches? Or, rather than heed the words of such pastors and priests, should a true church heed the words of Jesus? For, as Matthew later tells us, Jesus said: “But don’t you be called
‘Rabbi’ [i.e., a title of respect exactly like the title ‘pastor’], for one is your Teacher, the Christ, and all of you are brothers. Call no man on the earth your father [i.e., as a title of respect, in the same way Jews would call a rabbi, ‘father’], for one is your Father, He who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for one is your Master, the Christ. But he who is greatest among you will be your servant” (Mat. 23:8-11, WEB). Vain pastors and priests love to explain away and nullify this command of our God. Yet, it is a clearly worded. explicit, eternal command of God, designed to make His people effective in Jesus.
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people, to be their Teacher, High Priest and judging King. So few have believed the authoritative teachings of God spoken through Jesus and the apostles He sent to us, when they said “the Head of every man is the Messiah” (I Cor. 11:3). All in all the churches are like Israel in the days of Samuel.
All reject God as their only King, and demand a human god to rule over them, just like the despots whom the unjust pagans choose to rule over them (I Sam. 8:4-20). All the people desire the rules and laws of men, who judge them according to their own personal delusions, by their own prejudices and biases. For they do not want God’s rule, to be judged justly with mercy for the repentant, all based on genuine truth. Few ever want to learn to love one another in a wise, honest, God-like way. Jesus taught His true disciples how to “speak truth in love,” so all “might grow up in all things into Him, who is the Head, Christ” (Eph. 4:15, WEB). But, after those true Christians died off, new churches with human heads rose up to replace the churches established by the apostles. Then the new church suppressed the true churches who worshipped Jesus as their only Head. For the new humanistic churches never loved the truths of God. So God has been handing them over to delusions ever since.
Now I hope some will understand the significance of how these pagan Gentile Magi “rejoiced with exceedingly great joy” when they finally found the Messiah, even while God never even bothered to call the rest of the church, including its “great leaders” and human “heads,” to look upon their truly great Messiah from a distance. In fact, the rest of the church remained busy in a worshipful service of a psychopathic despot, Herod, as well as their other human gods. God abandoned the rest of the church of Israel to the same state of ignorance they clung to all their lives, where they allowed ruthless liars to steal their lives from them, to mercilessly enslave and exploit those foolish dupes.
Meanwhile, their human heads focused on rituals of the flesh, stripped of all true, original, spiritual meaning. Their human gods killed good and innocent souls for ridiculous infractions of their unjust man-made traditions, like lighting a fire to warm their families on a cold Sabbath day. The elite of Israel spat in God’s face when they did such things, yet the people bowed to those merciless human gods. Though no elect were fooled by the feigned an externally devout appearances of those fake priests and elders, with their superficial deeds and carnally appealing religious words, not even those elect dared to say or do anything to silence them and nullify their evil works. None were emboldened by true faith in God to wisely work against those exploiters, through a love for God and His people.
Do we understand how God lovingly led these pagan Gentile Magi to their eternal Saviour with a miraculous star, and raised up their rejoicing, worshipful, elect spirits within their hearts when they saw Him? Do we see how God did not do this for the chief priests, elders and most honoured heads of the church in that day? If so, perhaps it is time to abandon all the “church leadership” classes and seminars, to stop following blind, vain men who want to establish lucrative church kingdoms for themselves. Now we need to stop trying to build up new, humanly headed churches, with more appealing carnal doctrines, for ourselves. Now let us let Jesus be the only Head of each and every man in the church, let Him teach the spirits of the Father’s elect children. Let Jesus build His true church, where His loving, just, equatable will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then each of us will simply do what Jesus calls us to do, individually, in service to Him and His creation. Then Jesus Himself will gather us together, as a people with one mind and one purpose in Him, all taught and trained by the same Lord. Then His power will make our works for Him effective, through love.
Remember our God’s work of salvation. “He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does Yahweh require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”
(Micah 6:8, WEB). But how is it humble to usurp the rule of our King, Jesus, to replace His words with words of self-serving men? What justice can come through the vain heads of false churches?
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How can we walk with our God while we walk submissively behind God’s enemies, who try to overthrow the governance of our one true King? Tell me, whom God has cast into dark delusions?
The Gifts and the Expected Time
Look at how these pagan Gentile Magi remained humble, and walked with God, sacrificially serving Him in any way they could. “They came into the house and saw the young Child with Mary, His mother, and they fell down and worshipped Him. Opening their treasures, they offered to Him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (Mat. 2:11, WEB). To the ancients, these three gifts held spiritual significance, as well as material value. For gold was associated with royalty, frankincense with worship, and myrrh with burial in death. So these gifts from the Magi indicated that they knew the prophecies of Scripture, that this Messiah was to be: (1) King of Israel and their own King too, both the King of Israel and the King of all Gentile nations in the world, (2) the incarnate God in a body of human flesh, whom all should worship in their spirits and in all truth, as well as (3) a living sinless sacrifice for the sins of all God’s people upon the earth, through the death of His flesh (Is. 53:10-12).
The Magi’s humble service to God was a great and necessary blessing, delivered with perfect timing.
And God called these Magi as representatives of all the elect souls scattered among Gentile nations, cultures and religions throughout the world. However, we also need to realize that, whether or not these Gentile Magi faithfully obeyed God’s calling to follow that star, Jesus would have still come to save the Gentile elect. Likewise, whether or not the Jewish shepherds came to see Jesus, Jesus would have still come to save elect Jews as well. However, God knows the spirits of all His elect. Thus, God created, prepared, taught and trained the spirits of those Jewish shepherds and those Gentile Magi in such a way, throughout their lives, that they would be willing to come and see the birth of their Saviour, Jesus. God also arranged and predestined all the circumstances of their lives so that they would have the opportunity to come and see their new-born King as well. Therefore, it is rather pointless to specular about what might have occurred if they did not come. Rather, we should look at how God revealed the advent of Messiah, King of the world, first to the humblest of the true Jews in Israel, then to the most spiritually awake and humblest of the true elect pagan Gentiles in the world.
Now, before the Magi came, rumours would have been circulating throughout Jerusalem about the birth of the Messiah. After all, the shepherds had already seen Jesus. However, both Herod and the elite religious leaders would have identified the source of this rumour, and would not have believed it, because it originated from lowly, impoverished, stinking shepherds. Still, by the time the Magi came, many Jews would be talking about what those shepherds saw and heard, since a Messianic fever had overtaken Israel for about a decade before then, since the time prophesied by Daniel was drawing near. Many devout Jews were expecting the Messiah to be born about that time. Daniel prophesied: “Know therefore and discern, that from the going out of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem to the Anointed One [i.e., the word ‘Messiah’ is the Hebrew word meaning ‘Anointed One,’ so this prophecy is about Him], the [Ruler], shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks ... After the sixty-two weeks the Anointed One shall be cut off [i.e., killed], and shall have nothing: and the people of the prince who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary [i.e., destroy the city of Jerusalem, and the sanctuary is Jerusalem’s temple, where the ‘prince’ who destroys them is the ruler of Daniel’s prophesied fourth kingdom, Rome]” (Dan. 9:25,26, WEB). Here Daniel referred to Jewish Sabbaths (sevens) of years (e.g., Lev. 25:8; Deut. 15:1), not Sabbaths of days. So the Hebrew word should not be translated as
“weeks” here. Also, since Jewish scholars of that time were not involved in the politics of opposing Christian beliefs, they too would have interpreted this in context, as 69 Sabbaths (sevens) of years.
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So Jewish scholars of that time remembered the decree of Artaxerxes, when the Jews were not only granted money for the temple and sacrifices, but also allowed to do whatever else seemed good to them with the king’s funds, even the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem (see Ezra 7:18). And this decree was issued in about 458 BC. So, when these Jewish scholars added seven Sabbaths of years to 62 Sabbaths of years, for a total of 483 years, they expected the Messiah to begin His rule in about AD 25. But, before the Messiah could rule as the King, his father, the previous king, would first need to die or pass on the throne to Him. And, before that happened, the Messiah would need to be born and grow up, for anything from twenty to forty years. Thus, primarily due to Daniel’s prophecy, a Messianic fever started to burn in the hearts of devout Jews about the time that Jesus was born, that is, an expectation of the Messiah’s birth before He would come to rule as their teaching and judging Messiah, High Priest and King in AD 25. Many devout Jews not only expected the Messiah to be born about that time, but also knew He would be born in Bethlehem. And all Daniel prophesied came true. For Jesus became the hereditary King of Israel after Joseph died, then began His three-year ministry, in AD 25. After this, Jesus was “cut off” in AD 28, rose from the dead, became the eternal King, and saw Rome destroy Jerusalem in AD 70, along with the Jewish temple in that city.
Apparently, the Jews were not the only ones who knew these prophecies, however. The Magi knew them too, which is why they specifically chose their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, with the symbolic inferences they bore. Yet there was also a practical purpose to these symbolic gifts to the parents of Jesus. Joseph and Mary did not know it at the time, but those expensive gifts would be needed to pay for their costly trip to Egypt. Joseph and his heir to his throne of Israel had to flee into Egypt from Herod, then wait for that old, insane psychopath to die. They could not simply travel through Judea and Samaria, back to their home in Nazareth of Galilee. For now Herod seemed to be obsessed with finding and killing them, and he ruled over all of Judea, Samaria and Galilee, so his reach extended all the way to Nazareth. Knowing the paranoid tenacity of Herod, and that he would not stop searching for them, Joseph had to take his family to the closest Jewish community outside of Herod’s territory. So he went to Egypt, likely to the large Jewish population in Alexandria. And the family had to remain there, in Egypt, for a lengthy period of time, possibly a year or more, until Herod died. For Herod would not abandon his search until he died. Yet Joseph was not wealthy, and would need food, housing and clothing for his family throughout that time. Of course, as a skilled carpenter, he could earn some money, at times. But there were no trees in Egypt, and would not be much work for carpenters. So they would need to live off the sale of the Magi’s gifts while they hid in Egypt. And the Egyptian Jewish community would also help Joseph feed his young Jewish family.
After Herod died, Galilee was ruled by one of the sons of Herod the Great, by Herod Antipater (Antipas). And Antipas did not have any paranoid anxiety about an infant King of Israel. Besides, Rome decided that the region would be split up and no longer ruled by a subject king. Rather, it would become more like a province in the Roman Empire, more directly ruled by Rome. So Joseph and Mary returned to Nazareth, when Antipas began to rule in Galilee, in about 4 BC or 3 BC. And, by this time, Jesus was about two or three years old, and possibly had a brother or sister in His family as well. Once they were in Nazareth, Jesus would have been safe, until He began to preach.
The Problem of Evil
But look at how God entered the dreams of the Magi and Joseph, with strong and effective warnings to flee from Herod. These dreams demonstrated God’s love for them and for those who depended on their decisions. Then God’s power to shape their dreams also means that God is able to influence the thoughts of human beings in any way He chooses, even our innermost and unconscious thoughts. Yet Page 96
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also notice how these warnings from God were granted only to these few select people. So it leaves us asking why God did not stop Herod from thinking and doing evil, both then and throughout his life. Why didn’t God “cure” the psychopathy of Herod, or kill Herod to rescue thousands of people from his tyranny? When Herod found out that someone dared to oppose his evil will, he reacted like most paranoid, psychopathic, wanna-be gods would have reacted. Herod sent his soldiers into the region of Bethlehem to murder about 20 to 30 perfectly innocent children who were two years old and under. And their murders must have devastated the lives of the parents and the extended families of those babies. Since God is almighty, and can alter the decisions of even the most hardened men, God definitely could have stopped Herod from perpetrating such a heinous crime. So why didn’t He?
Well, first of all, God has always been doing things to stop evil, and has limited the power of evil from the beginning of time on earth. God has always used His own personal power against evil, but does not always stop evil with His own hands. Rather, the heavenly Father prefers to use His elect children to undo the works of the devil and his children, as well as to build His loving, just kingdom here on this earth. Likewise, Satan uses his children to do evil and build up his kingdom of the world order upon earth. Therefore, it is not helpful to place our entire focus on trying to understand why the omnipotent and omniscient God would allow the presence of evil on earth. This narrow focus on God and Satan alone can never actually explain the reasons for God not stopping the fallen angels and their human children from doing evil. Rather, we need to broaden our focus, and also look at the reasons for God creating infantile elect spirits in human beings, as well as in all plant and animal life, in this material realm, where God chose not to divide this temporary space-time continuum into two distinct parts, one part where only the holy can exist and one part where only defective spirits can exist, where only the spirits created without the attribute of love can exist. The spiritual realm has heaven and hell. But this temporary material realm allows both good and evil to mingle together.
Yes, God can work miracles. In fact, the earth and the entire universe is an extraordinary miracle, an impossible act of God continuously unfolding before our eyes. All physical existence is God’s power defining and maintaining all this temporary space, time and energy for His eternal purposes. Yet God’s purpose for the earth is to teach and train the spirits of His elect children. So God causes most good on the earth to occur through His children, while God allows Satan to cause most evil through his own brood. All true good and real evil occurs through human beings, not through nature. Only a sort of indirect evil can be caused through nature, that is, by natural disasters, plagues, wild animals and so on. But all that can be considered “evil” from nature is actually because God did not intend eternal spirits of humans and other creatures to live on earth forever. And sometimes God will even disasters to fall upon human beings due to their spiritual negligence or due to the great evil in them.
Now I know that the spirits of humanists like to think in two ways: (1) Their spirits tell themselves that spirits do not exist, so their spirits can believe they are gods ruling their own destinies, even as their spirits recognize all purely spiritual concepts such as evil and good, hate and love, wrong and right; (2) Their infantile spirits tell themselves that human spirits are huge, powerful, omniscient beings with totally free wills that can never be manipulated, ignorant or enslaved, and can create themselves into any kind of spirit they want to become, yet were created by a tiny, whimpering little spirit called god, whose slavish will can easily be manipulated by them at any time, through rituals and magic prayers. Because humanists like to think in these ways, they will not allow anyone to see the problem of why evil exists to include their magnificent, god-like selves, and focus solely upon how the Creator God must be partly evil if he allows evil to co-exist with good on this dying planet.
However, once we step out of the dark delusions of humanism, into reality, we can begin to see that God did actually create the earth and the entire temporary material universe for a good reason, and Page 97
that reason involves the teaching and training of eternal spirits for their permanent home in heaven.
This place, where both good and evil co-exist, was made so that God’s elect spirits in the physical bodies of plants and animals, and especially the spirits of His elect human children, might learn to more greatly love His Spirit, in a more experiential manner, and more deeply cherish the wise and effective principles that govern His heaven, which we call His truths. And humans are the only creatures on the earth that are granted an ability to discern between good and evil. So only humans can actually sin against the spiritual principles God created to make all life function effectively, or can do good to overcome evil. So this is why God almost always involves His elect children in the war against evil, to teach and train their spirits in their hearts. This is why God will seldom directly strike down evil with His miraculous power, unless His miracles can consciously bless His children.
We have all been the victims of crimes. And some of us have actually seen beautiful, innocent loved ones killed in an unjust way, by either the deliberate malice or the wilful ignorance and criminal negligence of ruthless souls, perhaps even by psychopaths, by the awakened children of Satan. Some know what it is like to be a victim of some kind of Herod, Hitler, Stalin, Trump or Putin. And, at first, it may not seem to be enough to simply say that God allowed that kind of extreme evil on this earth for a very good reason, so that it will eternally benefit His children. It may not help at all when we are told that God, on the final day, will provide a hundred-fold reward for all the losses that His loving elect children experienced through the lawless hands of the wicked, while those loveless and deliberately wicked souls shall be eternally silenced and suffer the unending torment of their own self-made darkness. However, if our spirits live long enough and learn enough while we dwell in these bodies on earth, we begin to see how it is not so much the psychopaths who cause evil as it is the negligence of elect humans who allow evil to gain power and control over elect lives. Then, by the judgment day, all the elect humans who ever lived will clearly see this truth, and their repentance into that truth will be enough to comfort them. On that last day, after we have all shed our temporary earthly flesh, we will find that our deaths in the flesh were not such a big deal, and that God ordained literally all life on earth, even all inorganic substances in the material universe, to end at a specific appointed time. But while elect souls dwell on earth, we are to carry on our spiritual warfare against evil, for the teaching and training of our eternal spirits. And, if we are to undo evil so we can build up the kingdom of God on earth, if we are to tend the garden of the earth and take responsibility for all living creatures here, we will need to repent into real truths, and wasy from our own participation in the sins of the wicked, and also repent from our criminal negligence through our spiritual apathy.
I too have prematurely lost the lives of cherished elect souls to the unjust. The wicked have killed those whom I loved with all my heart. And those losses were basically murder, by the hands of self-centred egos, where authorities would not heed our pleas to save our beloved ones. In fact, the authorities were often conned, and sided with the murderers. In the end, the deaths of our loved ones proved that we were right and those authorities were wrong, although this proof came too late to save our beloved ones, nor did those deaths cause those foolish and self-serving authorities to repent into the truth. Then again, I too have been stupidly duped into siding with liars and the unjust. The only difference is that those deceptions, which caused my sins, led to a deep rending of the very core of my being, a crushing of my spirits, once my eyes were opened and I begin to see. Jesus spoke to my spirit and caused this in me. So I eventually repented into the truth, although not without a very heavy godly sorrow burdening my heart. And, even now, my sins cause me to wince in the searing pain of unbearable humiliation, whenever I am reminded of how loveless I actually was. Still, in all of this, I also see how evil was allowed its free reign by the negligence of the elect. So, a little of that evil could indeed have been thwarted by my own faithfulness to God and His truths, if I personally Page 98
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had been more spiritually responsible. However, literally all that evil could have been totally stopped and completed prevented if all the elect had learned to become truly faithful to God and His loving, wise, effective truths, if they had not chased after self-esteeming delusions and sins offered by the devil. For, if all the elect will learn to love God and one another, God’s power working through them will always make them invincible, as His priesthood and as His body serving His creations on earth.
Now I know there are extremely shallow-thinking souls who say that, if there was a God, He must be evil, because He allows evil. Or some may say God must be very weak, unable to stop evil. But this irrational, illogical and severely truncated thinking by wanna-be gods, thoughts rising from the lusts of their flesh. And it often originates from their totally blind faith in their religion of materialistic humanism. If we examine the spiritual and physical realities around us, we see through false logic. I personally find only the evidence of an omnipotent and omniscient God, utterly holy, with a core attribute of a just, pure kind of love. I can also testify that His will to allow the presence of evil on this temporary earth is clearly for extremely good eternal purposes. And, in my own experience, I know that, by allowing evil on earth, God grows much deeper roots of truth within my soul, allowing my spirit’s love to stretch out very strong branches that bear abundant fruit for Him and His people.
Some irrational souls also say the story about Herod’s murder of the babies is not true, because the
“just Roman Empire” would never allow such a crime. Yet history proves that Romans frequently committed crimes like this, and far worse than this. Also, Romans did not even consider infants to be legally “human” either. So the murdering of innocent babies was the same to them as the slaughter of chickens to feed their ruthless troops. This great esteem for the thoroughly unjust and psychopathic Roman Empire comes from their completely blind faith in the religion of humanism. And it is their materialistic perception, a delusion of all things being of their god-like flesh, which causes them to always focus solely upon the superficial elements of that vile, oppressive, corrupting, thoroughly evil slave society, which still exists today. Yet no real justice ever existed in the Roman Empire. And all Rome did to the inner parts of human beings will never be forgiven by our just, holy, loving God.
Looking at this hideous slaughter of innocent babes, we can clearly see that it was not caused by God, nor even directly by Satan. Rather, it was done by one little old weak and dying psychopath and all the duped thugs who obeyed his will. Yet that illegitimate king and his thugs were vastly outnumbered by those who hated them. And Herod’s own kingdom was fragile and fragmented, with no genuine bonds of love shared by any of the dupes who supported him and his kingdom. Yet, at the very same time, and throughout history, the true elect in Israel were able to form extremely strong and even unbreakable bonds of love with one another, able to work together in unity, as in one mind, all with the same purpose to uphold the loving, just truths of God. And the same held true for ancient Rome. It too was always a weak and fragmented kingdom, with plenty of elect souls in it, more than enough to unite through solid bonds of love, to undo the works of Satan and bring loving justice into the Empire. Likewise, the same holds true in every evil and unjust kingdom that has ever existed or will exist. So it is never God’s fault, nor even Satan’s fault, that evil remains in the world. In the very end, God has indeed granted the elect of the world the ability to overcome evil with good, and God’s own power will support the elect whenever they learn from Him to love one another in communion.
Then let us also realize that the one child God spared from the slaughter of that day, the infant Jesus, later grew up to be ruthlessly hounded, slandered and persecuted by many soul brothers of Herod, by many other children of Satan. Then Jesus, our God in a body of flesh, willingly gave His perfectly sinless body of flesh to be brutally tortured to death by that very same spawn of the devil. Thus, not even one of the children living in Bethlehem that day, not even the Child whose Spirit was the holy God Himself, were spared from unjust murder by the hands of Satan’s offspring. In the end, God Page 99
actually allowed Herod’s psychopathic brothers and sisters, all those born of the devil, to complete the evil objective of Herod’s heart on that day long ago. So we can also be certain that our God in the flesh, Jesus, not only suffered the very same kind of unjust deeds that we and our loved ones do while we live on this earth, but that Jesus’ more loving and just Spirit also felt the heart-breaking pains of injustice against His beloved ones far more than we do, although with a far greater insight into the reasons for that suffering, and with a much fuller and more informed hope in the afterlife.
Now some may say this proves that the devil always wins, and God always loses. But is that true?
No! Actually, the big picture proves that the opposite true, if we look beyond the superficial, into the spiritual realm. Look at how the principles of justice and truth have evolved in this world throughout history, how perceptions, ways of thinking, laws and the definitions of good and evil have been altered in ways that increasingly conform to God’s created precepts for the effective functioning of life. That is, every century since the time of Jesus, the ways in which the world perceives justice have changed to more closely follows biblical truths and laws. Of course, there have always been huge and violent attempts to suppress those biblical truths, a resistance which tries to return to the
“good old” demonic ways, based on the wills of human gods alone, motivated solely through their slanderous lies working hatred and murder. Yet, over and over, those institutions of the devil, those fragments of Satan’s world order practising his vile religion of humanism, fall and collapse. Then this causes the truths of God to be more solidly proved and accepted by the elect, every time those demonic powers crush themselves through their own folly and infighting. So godly progress is continuous. And, since God works all these changes through His elect children, in response to the unjust works of Satan’s children, God is clearly overcoming evil with good. God keeps winning.
Also remember that Herod died, and so did all the other children of Satan who have opposed God and His people in the past. For God eventually removes His property of human bodies from literally all spirits on earth. Not one spirit is granted much time to live in the flesh. Life on this earth is only a brief moment in our eternal lives, where nothing but the spiritual treasures we gain can be taken with us into our eternal homes. The elect can only take love and foundational truths with them into their permanent home, into heaven. Then Satan’s children can only take the spiritual darkness of their lies and delusions with them into their permanent home of hell. Since Satan’s children seek only spiritual darkness while living on earth, as well as the temporary pleasures of their egos and the lusts of their flesh, but every last one of them will eventually forfeit their earthly flesh, and go home to hell, they can never gain anything of any real value through all their so-called “victories” on this earth. They are winners of nothing. Yes, while they live on earth, their lies may be able to manufacture more lies to convince their spirits to believe their lies. However, the more lies they falsely affirm on earth, the more they will suffer from the frustration of never being able to gratify the lusts of those lies in hell.
So the more evil they can work on earth, the more they will suffer in hell. Then, even before this earth ends, Satan and his army of chained, imprisoned, fallen angels will be cast into hell. In addition to this, all the bodies of that devil’s human children will perish, forcing their spirits to await their day of judgment. So how can anyone say those devils and Satan’s brood win? What do they ever win? At most, if the living elect do not heed God, but let Satan do his will among them, non-elect spirits may gain some brief, empty gratification, to satisfy the lies and delusions of their flesh and spirits. Yet, no matter what those non-elect gain on earth, all are predestined for the worst possible kind of loss. So all those loveless spirits always have been, are now, and always will be the worst losers of all time.
Consider this: The only real reason the children of Satan get away with so much injustice is because the elect children of God allow them to get away with it. For, in Christ, the elect are able to stop them, although never in the ways that false humanistic churches say they can. First, look at the core Page 100
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reason for this demonic opposition to God. Satan’s children are all the same, with an identical prime motivating drive. That is, all the devil’s human children, as well as all demons and Satan himself, want to be their own gods. All want to create their own worlds, through their own preferred lies and delusions. And, along with this infinite variety of self-contradictory and irrational worlds they create in their own minds, where each one’s own inconsistent little world view opposes the other, they also invent their own governing principles, which each wants to administer oneself in one’s own ways, in ways that serve and esteem only oneself. Non-elect want to live only by ever-shifting and changing lies and delusions which they imagine for themselves. So, the most beloved and cherished of all the elements of darkness each will ever cling to, is the lie about being the god of one’s own unique life.
Yet this desire to be one’s own god, who rules one’s own destiny, is also their greatest weakness. For each individual non-elect is invariably selfish and unwilling to conform one’s own lies and delusions to those of any other non-elect spirit. So the all the non-elect not only remain divided, but covertly and continuously war against one another, as each tries to convince or coerce others into conforming to one’s own will, and to fight for one’s own delusions and lies. Furthermore, all the elements of their beloved darkness, consisting of all their most cherished spiritual lies and delusions, can easily be penetrated and destroyed by God’s spiritual light. And, when His light destroys a core delusion of a human god, that one’s non-elect spirit loses all of its core strength. All of that one’s other elements of darkness, all one’s peripheral lies and delusions, will also either vaporize or become severely disabled. And this is why the non-elect hate God’s kind of light, because it does this to them. The truths about God’s existence and attributes are the greatest threat to them, since these truths prove they are not their own gods. Likewise, truths about His creation and the ways He made all existing entities to function most effectively, all God’s principles of loving justice, are also a great threat to them, since those truths also expose and burn away their core delusions about being their own gods.
The non-elect will either fight against or flee in terror from God’s light. Yet all the elect inherently possess a love of this kind of light in them, as a core attribute that can never be destroyed or snuffed out. For darkness never possesses even the slightest power to penetrate or destroy any light which God causes it to grow in His elect. And God cannot be turned away from His resolve to grow light in them. Also, the light granted to God’s elect is reality, a genuine spiritual substance, made from God’s energy and power. But the darkness of the non-elect is simply a lack of this reality, a lack of spiritual substance, a void without any energy or power. Thus, our light from God always shines into and displaces their empty darkness, and our realities always displace their unreal voids. So the only way the non-elect can fight against this light and real substance, is to prevent it from shining and growing in the elect. That is, the non-elect try to suppress all spiritual and moral truths from God. And they do this by keeping the elect distracted, looking away from God, so busy learning matters of the flesh that they have no time for things of real value for their spirits. Ultimately, Satan’s children try to get the elect to stop believing that they even have living spirits inside themselves, and that a Spirit of God does not exist. Or they trick the elect into thinking that God is a carnal being created in the image of men. And, of course, the religion most perfectly suited for this task of distracting and corrupting the elect with these kinds of deceptions is the religion of humanism, which Satan invented for the beast and his four kingdoms. Humanism has always been the most effective of all the secular cults opposed to the real Jesus, and the most distracting religion of false churches. So, once the elect reject Satan’s religion of humanism, especially the delusion that we are our own gods controlling our own eternal destinies, those elect often find God’s willingly granted light, then His power, which can overcome literally any and all darkness that the demons and his children might cling to and defend.
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If elect spirits learn to heed Jesus and His words, as His faithful disciples, and sit at His feet to be taught and trained in His ways, then Jesus Himself will enable them, even through every step of their lives. And Jesus is the almighty God, who never fails to accomplish whatever He wills to do. Only let their spirits actually listen for His Holy Spirit, and not to the words of deceived or deceiving human beings. And, as we suffer from the opposition of the devil’s world order, remember how the death of Jesus’ flesh, at the hands of Satan’s servants, was actually the greatest victory over Satan’s kingdom that has ever been accomplished on this earth. Likewise, in Jesus, the elect can also win every battle against Satan’s kingdom, though sometimes through their deaths too. When God brings together the very souls of the elect, from every race on earth, their ability to provide peace, stability, physical good and the growth of just love also convinces many non-elect to abandon their evil ways too. For each non-elect one is for oneself, and Satan’s kingdom is not tightly bound together by bonds of love. Rather, each one seeks to build one’s own kingdom, as one’s own god. And, since God’s ways also provide the demon Mammon with an opportunity to build some economic stability and opportunities, many of the non-elect who worship the demon Mammon will ignore the lies of the other demons and accept God’s ways, which allow their most beloved demon god, Mammon, to reward them. Many non-elect turn against their lord Satan for economic reasons. Because of these divisions in the devil’s fragile factious kingdom, the elect—who are the more economically and politically disadvantaged half of the population—always end up with the majority helping their side.
So we should always remember that God’s truth, as well as death, will eventually stop the people from worshipping the loveless non-elect as gods and nullify their rule over human lives. No matter how much the non-elect try to convince themselves and others that they are gods, the elect can stop them from being esteemed and served by the people, simply by living the truth, and by proclaiming that truth through loving actions and words. Then, after those wanna-be gods fail, the only things their names will be used for is as curse words. But all the awakened elect, even those who died by unjust hands, will still seen by the elect who remain on earth. For these deceased elect are standing behind Jesus, at the gates of heaven, a short distance from our spirits in our bodies of flesh. Thus, the elect spirits still on earth can look at Jesus, who stands immediately in front of them, and also see the spirits of many deceased elect, who remain awake and alive, joyfully laughing in abundant life with Him. To those whose eyes of the spirit are able to see, this is very comforting. Now let us expose the lies used to justify evil, and shout truth from the rooftops, openly and for all to hear, so the non-elect, especially the psychopaths, become shamed and powerless, confounded in all of their wicked works.
Let the elect repent from their own deceptions and sins, into God’s truth, so they can build a new life in Jesus. “Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, [we] press on toward the goal, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil.
3:13-14, WEB). And what is this “high calling of God in Messiah Jesus”? When Jesus lived in a violent, exploitative Roman empire on earth, or even while He now lives in a heavenly body above, injustice never stopped Him from engaging in spiritual warfare against the devil’s kingdom. Jesus continuously battled injustice, lies and delusions. “To this end the Son of God was revealed, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (I John 3:8, WEB). So we also share this “high calling of God in Jesus Messiah.” We march with our King as He engages in warfare, knowing that He guarantees a final victory, and that every battle till the earth ends will be a spiritual victory for Him. Literally all the elect, without one exception, are called to do this work of Jesus, to “destroy the works of the devil.” And all “works of the devil” begin as spiritual lies and delusions. Satan’s chief work is to spread spiritual darkness, which we destroy by building up and shining God’s light at those works.
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In Jesus Christ’s spiritual Kingdom on earth, His people need to do many kinds of works that shine His light of just love. And all these different kinds of works will ultimately heap destruction on the devil’s spiritual kingdom. But God’s works are seldom glorious in any worldly way. In fact, those who do the purest works of God are either ignored or punished by Satan’s world order, while the works of the devil are either publicly extolled or rewarded. For instance, some elect do the simple task of sweeping and cleaning, removing dirt blowing into God’s kingdom on earth from Satan’s realm, to stop the enemy from polluting and weakening their people. So the enemy loses time, effort and resources by raising up that dust into the winds, and the elect gain a small victory over him by doing these simple works daily. But this ends up becoming a huge victory. For Satan has only a limited supply of dirt in his kingdom. So, if much of his dirt is wasted on futile efforts to corrupt God’s kingdom, while God’s kingdom sweeps it up and uses it to fertilize its own crops, the devil’s crops lose fertility in his bleak kingdom until his people starve. In other words, God calls some elect to sweep away the constant slandering lies of Satan and his children, while composting those lies in more accurately and carefully proclaimed genuine truths about matters of justice, world events and genuine science. And, at first, these simple facts and their honest explanations of physical realities may not seem like much, or not as important as the deeper and more profound truths about God, but they lead into a deeper familiarity with God and His ways. Thus, by defending and proclaiming even the most basic truths greatly serves the Kingdom of God and severely weakens Satan’s kingdom, since the devil soon runs out of little lies, and cannot grow his bigger lies without those little lies.
The greatest, living and most nourishing truths for the soul are grown upon countless “little” truths producing effective justice, experience in godly works based on right, compassionate understanding of spiritual and physical needs in the world, and other useful knowledge based on careful honest observations of God’s creations, all harmoniously assimilated in the mind of the spirit as God’s Spirit teaches His Word. Likewise, the worst, most murderous and poisonous lies, which kill souls, are grown upon many “little” deceptions and the suppression of basic truths to produce ignorance, that then produces injustice, a dangerously warped misunderstanding of life that is transformed into destructive delusions, with the abuse of science in false assumptions, fake religion and the rejection of God, in order to create hell on earth. If the elect continuously sweep away those “little” lies, with brooms made by binding together straws of “little” truths, then dump those lies in piles labelled with the names of the liars, then everyone will know who lied and how they lied. Then this will definitely cause much damage to Satan’s kingdom. Then Satan and his children will lose all of their power to deceive their dupes, and more of their lies will be recognized each day, eventually resulting in their total inability to grow any poisonous produce, until they are starving and are forced to eat the truth.