can see it in His eyes and in every move He makes. We know His love and faithfulness through our experiences with Him, as an indisputable fact. As for our flesh, it is utterly incapable of recognizing anything like true love or faithfulness. So it would be completely irrational to allow our minds of flesh rule over our lives, so our flesh could try to force God to prove His love and faithfulness. And real love in an awakened elect spirit will never try to prove the love of the one it loves, since true and God-like love grows wise, is able to rightly judge the subtle expressions of love from other spirits.
We need to always remember that real, just, pure, God-like love grows when a spirit unconditionally commits to actively sharing its eternal life with another spirit, when a loving spirit irrevocably binds itself into a covenant with another spirit for all eternity. Because spirits are not volatile like the flesh, and all that a spirit learns and does is forever, consistent for all eternity, its love does not wax and wane like the emotions of the flesh. Thus, the only way this bond of real love can ever be broken is when there is an inequality between the spirit who loves and the spirit being loved. If a loving elect spirit is so immature and asleep that it forms a covenant of love with a non-elect spirit, with one who is not capable of loving anyone, that covenant can be broken, and inevitably will be broken. But only God Himself is able to break it, albeit through an inner pain and loss which tears the loving spirit apart, leaving a wound that only He can heal. And there are also times when God tears the life of another elect soul out of another elect soul’s life on earth, for the good of both, when one or both are so immature that they are destroying one another. This too is painful and wounding in way that only He can heal, but is not a permanent break, since the covenant of love will be revived after both are perfected on the last day. But, since all this is true, we can rest assured that all love--either God’s love for us, our love for God, or our love for other elect spirits—can never be conditional, not ever based on whether or not our loved one passes a “test.” Rather, God’s kind of love, from a spirit, is always completely unconditional in every way. All covenants of love are eternal and unconditional.
Only loveless living beings put others to a “test” and tempt them. And those loveless beings include all minds and bodies of flesh, which are earthly substances and not spirits. Unfortunately, this class of loveless beings also includes all the non-elect human spirits, the demonic spirits of all the fallen angels, and Satan himself. These loveless beings will tempt and test others. The flesh of the elect will tempt and test loved ones and God whenever it feels a little insecure, afraid, unsure or has any kind of negative emotions stirred up within it, and always through ignorance for selfish reasons. But loveless spirits tempt and test others for much worse reasons, through malicious motives and with very evil intentions, such as to weaken the other so one might gain control over the other’s life.
A psychopath or some other loveless spirit tempts or tests others so it might know how much another can be manipulated and deceived. The psychopath wants the others to become his or her slaves, to blindly serve all that psychopaths whims and needs, although sometimes just for fun of enslaving that other person. A loveless spirit tests and tempts others to feed its own arrogance, since the sole pleasure of loveless spirits is to become the gods and owners of other people and things belonging to God. So non-elect spirits will continuously test the “loyalty” of a soul they have enslaved. Then they punish that slave severely if it fails that test, but does not reward it if it succeeds, since a slave must live only for the good of its owner. So the main purpose of their tests is to terrorize their human property into blind, unthinking obedience. For those loveless spirits need to ensure that they have thoroughly brainwashed and duped their slaves, lest their slave might begin to think for themselves and stop serving them. This might be called “conditional love,” but it is actually not any kind of love at all. In the Bible, this kind of behaviour toward another soul is called “hate,” the opposite of love.
That is, the biblical definition of hate indicates of a whole range of “feelings,” from a dispassionate disregard for the welfare of another to an active desire to hurt or kill another. Thus, all that we might Page 216
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call “conditional love” is actually what the Bible defines as “hate” and, since the main attribute of the real Creator God is the biblical kind of love, God never has any “conditional love” for anyone.
When Jesus quoted God’s Word: “You will not force the Lord God to prove Himself by subjecting Him to a test,” He was quoting this both to the devil and to His own loveless body of temporary human flesh. For He was commanding His own mind of flesh to be silent and submit to the life-giving Spirit of God inside that body. And Jesus used the negative statement here because loveless flesh only responds to commands that forbid it to do unloving and sinful things. For the loveless flesh is incapable of heeding any command to actually love. The flesh is not spirit, just a thing used by a spirit. So the flesh itself cannot love nor hate. Only elect spirits are capable of loving, including the spirits of plants and animals. All spirits that will enter heaven are capable of truly loving God, in an unconditional way that will never “test” nor “tempt” Him. So, once our human elect spirits take control of our flesh, and begin to manage all aspects of our lives, we learn to love our God, Jesus and the Father of our spirits. Yet we will not do this through the conditional and temporary Old Covenant worked through our minds and bodies of flesh, through symbolic deeds of the flesh. Rather, we will learn to love our God through God’s works in and upon our elect spirits, through the unconditional Abrahamic Covenant which God fulfills through the Messiah’s unconditional New Covenant for our eternal salvation. For these are both God’s covenants of His unconditional kind of love for His elect.
Now, when our minds of flesh are tempted by demons or by the human servants of Satan, and we are told to suppress our elect spirits so those fake gods can rule over our lives, as the gods who even claim to be able to manipulate and control the will of the real God, let us remember what Jesus said here. When a church, or anyone else, tells our mind of flesh to “take a leap of faith,” just to get something our flesh needs or desires, remember that our God owns the earth and all that is upon it, including you, all other human beings, all demons and all else. So only our Creator God can grant anything our flesh needs or desires, and has been doing so all our lives, directly or indirectly. Thus, if our minds of flesh think they can obtain anything from God by letting its fictitious “free will” decide to “take a leap of faith” to test God’s loyalty to the flesh, it will result in a disaster. For God is not a loyal slave of the loveless flesh, but the ruling Father, authoritative Teacher and unconditionally loving Counsellor of our spirits. And God’s only promise to our earthly flesh is that He will someday kill it. So any attempt to force God to prove His loyalty to one’s flesh, by commanding God to obey the will of one’s flesh, will fail. Only if God hands one over to Satan, for the deluding of one’s mind of flesh so one can become a slave of that devil, will one ever receive what the flesh desired, but at a terrible cost! Just remember, no mind of flesh is able to command the almighty, omniscient God to grant anything to any body or mind of flesh. So forbid your own flesh from doing such a thing, just as Jesus did. And rightly handle the Scriptures which forbid such things, as Jesus did. Then let the spirit in your heart seek Jesus, your God, so your spirit may be taught the real truth by Him, so Jesus can train your spirit to rightly interpret God’s Word in the way God intended it to be interpreted. If you let your spirit go to Jesus, He will grant you all this. You will learn to activate the genuine kind of love that your elect spirit inherently longs to grow inside you, because our God is indeed faithful.
Christ’s Third Temptation
For the third temptation, Satan chose to tempt with a common kind of desire in the mind of flesh, the lust of the eyes for the shiny things in his cruel world order. First, he took the body of Jesus up to a high place, to the top of a prominent hill overlooking much of the land God gave to His priesthood of Israel, to the people He sent to proclaim His truths of justice, peace and God-like love to literally all their brothers and sisters in the family of all mankind. And that devil wanted the eternal High Page 217
Priest of His peace-bearers to let the eyes of His flesh look down upon all, to see His people in all the earth as small and lowly things. Satan tried to create a feeling of great superiority in Jesus’ flesh.
But Jesus never saw anything in terms of hierarchies, only in terms of cooperating and mutually beneficial works of individuals creating systems for all life to thrive. So the devil gave Jesus’ mind of flesh many visions, “all kinds of kingdoms of the world order and the good opinion of them.”
Satan made all look “pleasant to the eyes,” just as he once made the forbidden fruit pleasing to Eve’s eyes. But Satan did not mention what Jesus saw beneath the gleaming veneer of outer appearances.
For, what our God Jesus saw in all those kingdoms was a cold, hard oppression of countless precious lives. Jesus has been seeing how the deluded brood of Satan refused to let His children live quietly in small communities that provided safety, justice, necessities and love for one another. Instead, those human images of the devil let their selfish ambitions murder, plunder and enslave their siblings, then brutally forced the innocent to build and maintain their own prisons beneath the gleaming glory of high and majestic palaces of monsters who called themselves the elite. The devil held back these little details, never mentioned how all his enslaved despots of his world order had to maintain their power by terrorizing the citizens, or how they murdered, tortured and plundered innocent souls to obtain their unlawful wealth. For salesmen in Satan’s kingdom do not simply help individuals find the right things they need for their works and lives, but deceive, in order to keep his invention of money ruling every aspect of the people’s lives. And that devil is always the salesman of the month in his own kingdom, the best of all the deceiving salesmen in his world order. So, with all underlying injustice and evil perfectly photo-shopped out of the visions, Satan offered it to Jesus: “I will give all these things to You if, falling down, You might bow to me” (Mat. 4:9, ALT). And Satan actually was granted the power and the right to give away every institution and nation in his hellish kingdom to whomever he chose. For God had granted Satan a throne, to rule over a kingdom of wilful sinners.
But, of course, notice that tiny caveat, in small print. For Satan never gives anything away freely, since he is nothing like God. So there was just this little matter of having to bow before that devil, to acknowledge Satan’s will in all one’s decisions. If one did not worship Him, then he would not grant one any power in his hellish kingdom. Only his filial sycophants received his power to oppress and enslave with his invention of money, or the power to terrorize siblings into blind obedience. First, one’s very spirit in the soul must swear an oath of blind loyalty to this chief demon, then one would receive self-destructive wealth and power in his kingdom. For Satan’s kingdom was established and patterned after God’s kingdom, but as a mockery and blasphemy of it. The devil’s world order is similar to the order God created for the earth, but opposite. For, when God grants life and a place in His kingdom, either in heaven or on earth, God also requires one to bow before Him. One’s spirit must make an eternal covenant to always respect His will in all one’s decisions. However, that is where all similarities end. After all, God wills for us to rightly tend His garden of the earth, so it will be forever fruitful, then name all His creatures in it, and take full responsibility for their welfare.
And, above all, God’s immutable will is for all His people to serve all their siblings in mankind, in a just, equitable loving way, to preserve peace and beneficial harmony among all. Yet Satan removed all justice, equity and love from his kingdom, promoted only factions and wars throughout, exploited the garden of earth until they became barren and all starved, then sent his chosen elite out on hunting expeditions for entertainment, to torture and slaughter both the creatures and humans in all his lands.
Now this offer from Satan may be a strong temptation for shallow and loveless of souls, who walk only according to their easily duped and deluded minds of flesh. But is a weak temptation for those with awakened elect spirits, for any who care enough to carefully examine that product the devil is selling. And all awakened elect have experienced what goes on behind the doors of the palaces in Page 218
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that demon’s “glorious” kingdom of the world order. Then many of these awakened elect have also survived the dehumanizing life and labours of the slaves in those palaces, being forced to walk in chains to serve the tables of the devil’s chosen ones. They also know too well that many elect still remain enslaved in that world order, held fast by bonds ignorance and fleshy fears. So the love that Jesus grows in their spirits, built on the foundation of His teaching and training to see the realities of all existence, makes them thoroughly repulsed by literally every little lying, hypocritical and foolish element of that devil’s self-destructive world order. So, whenever the devil offers the “opportunity”
to become even one of his greater elite slaves in the steep hierarchy of his dying kingdom, they flee to Jesus and beg Him to keep that demon’s deluding power away from them. None of the awakened elect want anything to do with the wealth, power and status of Satan’s filthy, murdering hell on earth.
As Jesus opens the eyes of elect spirits, they begin to see the pure evil in the eyes of that “glorious”
kingdom’s pretty face. And very many of them have been cast into the back rooms, where the abused slaves are beaten until they obey. Many have felt those blows as slaves, and many have even been forced to shovel God’s living creations into the grinding bins of the devil’s machinery, where they are crushed and pressed into moulds, to produce the world order’s shiny bobbles. And all this began to horrify their elect spirits, as they awoke, as they learned truth and how to love in a just and Godlike way. So now the elect spirits in their hearts want no part of that vile kingdom. Now Christ speaks to our spirits: “You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience; among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest” (Eph. 2:1-3, WEB). Now our spirits rage against ourselves for having once enabled those lies and crimes, as we flee to our God Jesus, so we might work with Him to nullify all works of Satan, and build up our Lord’s loving, equitable, just kingdom on earth for the good of all.
But if our spirits have seen the dark heart of Satan’s kingdom of the world order, yet despised it, and fled from it into God’s kingdom on earth, it is only because the Holy Spirit of God in Jesus woke our elect spirits, then showed us what we can produce by serving His just, loving kingdom. The Spirit of God in Jesus is the only reason our spirits are now able to see and choose His kingdom, instead of the devil’s kingdom. God’s Spirit in Jesus was very awake, alive and powerfully managing His own body of flesh on that day when Satan tempted the lusts in His eyes of flesh. It was only His Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God in Jesus, who calmly and powerfully reigned in His mind and body of flesh, who commanded His flesh to look behind the false “glory” of Satan’s kingdom, into the broken, collapsing infrastructure of that devil’s kingdom, until even His limited mind of earthly flesh could understand that Satan was selling useless, damaged, crumbling, toxic goods that would surely kill that flesh in the end. Therefore, since Jesus alone, not anyone else who has ever walked in a body of flesh, clearly saw all the filth behind the “glorious” facade of Satan’s kingdom, then we must go to Him to overcome this kind of temptation. And we should also remember how the devil also implied that—with the status, influence and power he would grant in his world order—Jesus could then more easily accomplish God’s works on earth. But the Spirit of God in Jesus was wise enough to know this was a total lie too. For it is never the elite in Satan’s world order who do God’s just and loving works on earth. God’s works are only hindered by the carnal status, influence and power found in Satan’s kingdom of the world order, never helped. So not even that false promise could tempt Jesus.
The devil’s final resort, his last desperate effort to thwart the ministry and works of God among us on this earth, was to offer the flesh of Jesus a position of great esteem, with unrivalled military power and the very highest artificial status among sinners of the world order. By offering this, Satan Page 219
clearly suggested that the use of this fame, authority and influence could help Jesus’ flesh do all His works for God more effectively, through terrorism, coercion, bribery, blackmail and all the other demonic ways of cheating people into slavery. Satan was implying that Jesus could worship and serve God, while worshipping and serving him, the devil at the same time. If His flesh bowed before Satan, and served him obediently, then He would have more power to do God’s works. Good could be done easier, faster and more efficiently, albeit through the sacrifice of many innocent lives, as well as the wasting of God’s other good natural creations. For masses of souls would hang on his every word, through fear, and the power of His sword could force His good works to get done, while He mercilessly destroyed all who opposed Him, even many of His own Father’s deceived children.
Then His high status could manipulate or coerce every other ruler of every other subject kingdom in Satan’s world order to do the same kinds of good. That chief salesman was telling Jesus: “Say yes!
For it will be a win-win situation!” Yet the wise Spirit of God in Jesus knew all these implications were total lies. Esteem, power and status in Satan’s world order can never accomplish any genuine, just, equitable and truly loving good. Worldly wealth, power and status is always a lose-lose fantasy.
In reality, since one must worship and serve Satan as one’s highest god, in order to receive a position of status, power and wealth in his kingdom, and because Satan is merely a bitter, irrational, loveless destroyer, then his chosen elite in his kingdom are only capable of working psychopathic, senseless, vengeful destruction. If one becomes an elite slave of Satan, it is impossible to truly serve God. For all who truly serve the will of the real God oppose every inclination of Satan’s will, and every aspect of his world order. Then Satan invariably tries to destroy all who oppose him. And the only reason the devil has been unable to destroy all his opponents is because not all belong to his kingdom of sinners. For the unconquerable God redeemed some, through a full payment of all that devil’s unjust demands, and has gathered them into His kingdom on earth. So Satan is only able to destroy those who oppose him from within his filthy kingdom, can only murder his own rebelling properties. And there are many awakened elect who stand behind the impenetrable walls of the Temple of God on this earth, within the protecting will of Jesus, in the safety of His almighty power. So all who dwell in Satan’s kingdom, especially the elite of his world order, fearfully bow before Him, and can never truly do God’s will on earth. But all who truly do God’s will on earth have declared war on Satan’s world order, and will not rest until it is utterly destroyed. Furthermore, their eternal souls are safely kept alive forever by their almighty God, and their God also fights with them to nullify the works of that devil, then labours with them to build up His kingdom on earth. So Satan and all in his filthy little kingdom have much to worry about, regarding the opposition they face. And they must feel especially doomed as they also consider that, even without any opposition, they would destroy their own kingdom themselves, due to the self-destructive ways of their high god, Satan. Their demonic ambitions and aspirations are all destined for ruin and failure in eternal deaths. And the only things that keep them going are the dark delusions and lies they love to love, because they are loveless.
Throughout history, all the devil’s most faithful and elite servants have always lived by leaching off of God’s elect children and God’s creation, but have never accomplished any real good. However, they have always thought of themselves as the most essential to the survival of all, while they have treated the truly essential people as the least valuable in their despotic kingdom. And, although this seems like one of the most foolish mistakes a kingdom could ever make, because it assures the certain and inevitable destruction of itself, it remains the sole practise of every institution and nation within the devil’s world order. For Satan insists upon very steep hierarchies in every little house, field or camp within his kingdom, with as many levels as possible. For the devil, the most useless parasite of all, must be at the very top, then look down upon level upon level, to degrade each level Page 220
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more than the one above it, until those who cannot help but do good and useful things for their siblings in mankind are cast to the bottom level, and treated as the scum of his “glorious” kingdom.
So the selfishly ambitious elite in Satan’s kingdom will toss a few crumbs, pilfered from their dying victims, down to their lowly, dehumanized elect slaves, to those who actually do God works by effectively serving His creations through love. But the only reason they sometimes throw them a few scraps is to falsely advertise themselves as good and useful souls who are concerned about the welfare of those inferior masses. They simply spend a little to buy huge quantities of good will from the masses, so they can dupe them more easily. And, since all their dupes have been handed over to Satan for their destruction of their flesh through his deluding power, they will actually believe that those psychopathic parasites are their most beneficial, worthy saviours, the great heroes of their land.
Nevertheless, since all God’s works must be done through His just and loving will and power alone, He only calls the awakened and loving elect to consciously share in His works for His kingdom. So none of the faithful servants of Satan’s world order can ever consciously share in any of God’s true works. Nor do any non-elect children of Satan ever want to do God’s real works of compassionate justice—the kind which mercifully drops penalties for repentant sinners, firmly binds or eliminates psychopathy, and rebuilds all damages done by sin. For all God’s works require loving personal interactions between equal souls, where none are cast into the outer margins of Satan’s world order.
But Satan’s elite guard the narrow confines of their own appointed level of the hierarchy, and never allow any blurring of their artificial and irrational boundaries they make for their little hierarchical institutions and kingdoms. In Satan’s world order, an elite upper class must have complete control over all the people, by maintaining the power to manipulate all essential goods and services, through their rule over all money, authority, information, religion and relationships. So none are willing to relate with the lower classes on equal terms, as siblings in the family of mankind. Therefore, they completely disqualify themselves from ever partaking in any of God’s truly just and loving works.
In God’s kingdom, there can never be any hierarchies with superior and inferior classes. For God has never created any living entities to be served and worshipped at the expense of the worshippers. And God will never ever create such a thing as superiors causing inferiors to labour for their own vain and selfish pleasures because: (1) all of the greatest decision-making authorities created for God’s kingdom are beings whom God created to serve for the good of all others, through love, at great cost to themselves, in exactly the same way He Himself serves all His creations through love, at great cost to Himself; and (2) our sacrificial, loving God, the essence and representation of all truth, wisdom, justice and love, commands that literally all entities in His kingdom must worship and serve Him alone, making it impossible for anyone else to ever bear any decision-making authority over another. So the just kingdom of God is a dictatorship with only two classes: (1) an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God and (2) literally all other entities firmly and eternally established as His property below Him, where not one of these other entities has ever been granted any authority to practise any kind of injustice against any other, and can never claim any kind of superiority over any other, since literally all anyone has is given by God and can be removed by God. This makes literally all living plants, animals, angels and humans in God’s kingdom equal. And, if equal, then honesty and love can be shared among all, as all serve for the good of all. Then God Himself chose to relate to His human spirits, created in His image, as their familiar and easily accessed Father, as their own beloved oldest Brother, and as their closest Companion Spirit and Counsellor in their hearts. So God Himself never reigns as a superior who demands to be pleased at the expense of all His subjects, but rather as the greatest Servant of all, as the one striving to benefit literally all living beings in His kingdom. For those who love and do no evil, God becomes a Friend who closer than anyone else.
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God only ever recognizes the different attributes that He Himself granted to His children, but never recognizes any superiority or inferiority in any, since He never appointed any class or rank to any living beings. Rather, God created all so that each living entity simply does the kinds of works which each was designed to do, the kinds of works in each one’s spirit is also the most motivated to do, since each was designed to find the most joy and satisfaction in those particular kinds of works. And, since God very wisely and carefully designed and created all living entities needed to complete all the different kinds of works required for the survival and abundant lives of all, nothing is left undone or lacking; that is, as long as lies and sins do not interfere with all. And, in His heavenly kingdom, there is nothing to interfere with the ecosystems God created there, so heaven always possesses a perfect balance and beauty, with an abundant life for all. But, here on earth, where spirits are granted temporary flesh for their inner education and the growth of mature love, there are many loveless spirits who are always interfering with everything. So here the elect human spirits led by the Spirit of God, and countless other spirits of living creations, all long for their heavenly home, together, as one kingdom in perfect solidarity (Rom. 8:14-22). Yet we know we must all complete our education first.
To fulfill our purposes of having our spirits taught and trained here on earth, all living creatures must simply do what God calls their spirits to do. And, for the human elect, with spirits created in the very image of our God Jesus, this training involves undoing the works of devil even as we also build up God’s kingdom on earth. And we pattern God’s kingdom on earth after His kingdom in heaven. That is, we strive to make His earthly kingdom just as equitable, balanced, harmonious, just and loving as His heavenly kingdom, as much as He enables us through our weak and unruly flesh. In other words, the elect seek and pray to do God’s will on earth in exactly the same way His will is done in heaven.
This is why, throughout history, the awakened elect have been striving for more just and loving laws in their lands. This is also why they have been forming biblical democracies, where His people choose their own rulers from their brothers whom God has manifested as His choices, then grant those equal brother only enough decision-making authority to selflessly serve the people and the lands belonging to God (Deut. 17:15). For, in His kingdom, there can be no attempt to maintains any frivolous, useless hierarchical positions. And the real God never allows any of His truly loving and faithful offspring to join the world order’s elite in any of their lies and folly. None of the awakened elect can become popular, wealthy and highly esteemed in the devil’s kingdom of the world order.
As a church of God’s priests, we do not place the same kinds of spiritual and moral restrictions upon outsiders that we place upon ourselves, but we do not join them in their self-destructive murders and lies either. For His Spirit always teaches the spirits of the loving elect to always question and oppose the cruel injustice of Satan’s kingdom. And no true servant of God tries to serve God’s kingdom on earth through any authority, high status or influence that is granted by Satan through his hierarchical, political, economic world order. The Head of every elect man must be Jesus alone, and every elect spirit must manage one’s own mind and body of flesh in a way that serves only Jesus as one’s Lord.
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other” (Mat. 6:24, WEB). Notice this is about love or hate, for either the Spirit of God or for the spirit of Satan. So it is about spontaneous inner choices made by minds of human spirits, not about the choices of the flesh. For all types of love originate from the spirit, never from the flesh. Likewise, so do all types of hate. And a spirit cannot love, and therefore serve, both God and Satan. It is only capable of loving one for all eternity, while it forever hates the other (i.e., the biblical or ecclesiastical meaning of “hate” is “to disregard or ignore or dislike or despise”).
Each spirit will either love or hate God. For the elect, our God Jesus is the Teacher of love and trains elect spirits to practise love wisely. And every human spirit will either love or hate Satan, the utterly Page 222
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loveless dictator ruthlessly rules over demons and non-elect human spirits in his thoroughly unjust and steeply hierarchical world order. So an elect spirit in a human heart must not ever bow before any of Satan’s enslaved demons, like Mammon, the demon of money and exploitative commerce, then also bow before God at the same time. Every human spirit must choose one or the other, since it is impossible to choose both. And God’s eternal wrath will surely find a spirit who manipulates others through Satan’s invention of money, especially through a fake religion which abuses His good name to deceive souls. Nor can a spirit love and serve any of Satan’s favoured human children, like Hitler and Trump, then also love and serve God. If a spirit commits this kind of idolatry, God has already handed that one over to Satan, who fills that one’s soul with dark delusions. And those lies will surely lead to the death of much flesh, even one’s own body. Because every spirit is born with the inherent attributes of its father, all the spirits created by Satan want to serve Satan’s world order, but all the spirits born of God find their greatest inner satisfaction when they serve God’s kingdom.
Still, the strong desires behind eyes of flesh, for the things in Satan’s world order, usually lead souls into the lesser sins of the flesh. Mere carnal sins—murder, exploitative sexual immorality, theft, lies and covetousness—are the most common kinds of sins committed by Satan’s citizens in their pursuit of material gain, or as they strive to keep material possessions for the pleasures of their flesh. So the kinds of sins committed by those who fall to temptations involving the eyes of flesh are not usually as bad as the sins of those tempted by the pride of life, which more often leads to a far more direct and overt hatred of God, with greater spiritual sins involving first-order sins of evil motives and intentions, or second-order sins of idolatry, or third-order sins of abusing the holy name of God.
Nevertheless, whether the lusts of the eyes for the pleasures of Satan’s world order cause lesser or greater sins, the wages of all those sins is death. For life was created to function most effectively and survive according to the designed laws and ways of God, never according to the injustice of demonic ways. Consequently, those sins not only harm and kill the victims of those sinners, but eventually will destroy the sinners themselves as well. And everyone knows this, or should know this, since all history and all our experiences in our own lives, prove this to be true, every day and in every way.
Therefore, some might begin to wonder why sinners insist on building up Satan’s unjust kingdom of the world order? Why would they fight and die to build up their empires which not only destroy the lives of people and other creatures, but even destroy themselves? Surely it is obvious to them that their dictatorships, oligarchies and oppressive terrorist systems can never succeed in accomplishing anything worthwhile and truly beneficial for anyone or anything! So why do the eyes of flesh lust for those things of the devil’s world order? What is the appeal of Satan’s useless, destructive, enslaving rewards of his kingdom, and why do eyes flesh find his money, power and status to be so pleasing?
It is simply a fact that there is nothing intrinsically pleasing about anything in Satan’s world order.
So, if elect spirits focus their eyes of flesh on the physical and spiritual realities and truths existing all around them, their flesh will actually become extremely repulsed by things in the devil’s world order, since their flesh will see all the injustice, pain, loss and death caused by those things. All the lusts of the eyes for the things of Satan’s kingdom are merely delusions. When minds of flesh find such things to be highly pleasing, those minds are being manipulated, artificially caused to strongly desire those parasitic, destructive, toxic and deadly things. For Satan is able to easily and continually delude all the sinners whom God has granted him, as the property of his world order. So the devil will make their minds of flesh believe that they can actually possess land, animals, people and things, even though all obviously belongs to God. Satan causes their flesh to covet and murder for those possessions, which never truly belong to their flesh. And this delusion is so strong their flesh still tries to cling to those possessions, as well as to its own imagined power and status, even when Page 223
its destined time elapses and it must die. Those hapless sinners still think they are gods, with the power and right to possess and rule according to their own desires, even after God takes his gift of life from them. Of course, they are all actually manipulated little slaves owned by Satan, and the most foolish, pathetic, lowly, destructive entities upon the earth, with only a negative net worth and nothing positive in their lives. However, Satan deludes them into somehow believing they are the most valuable, most essential and most wise entities on earth and in heaven, worthy of all praise, all glory, all power, all authority and all worshipful service by all grateful, esteeming, adoring inferiors.
Lest we fall to these delusions, and are tempted into sins through the lusts of our eyes of flesh, we must free our elect spirits from the control of our easily deluded minds of flesh. We must allow our spirits to be taught and trained by the Holy Spirit of Jesus, so our spirits can then firmly focus our eyes of flesh upon the realities and truths that God created and now maintains upon this earth. We need to realize that human beings can only ever become temporary stewards of anything on earth, even our own bodies. For God is the only One who truly owns all spiritual and physical existence, even our bodies and the flesh of all other human beings, as well as the souls of all living creatures and all plants growing on His lands. And we must learn to rely upon the strength of our God’s Spirit, not upon our own weak and infantile spirits, and certainly not upon any kind of fictional “free will”
worked by our irrational and amoral minds of flesh. For only God bears to power to prevent us from being deluded by demons and their human children. And, since our minds of flesh can only remain weak if our elect spirits remain asleep and ignore our God, we need to avoid false churches, secular leaders and all others who try to keep our minds of flesh so preoccupied, wilful and afraid that our flesh begins to suppress and take our spirits captive. We must studiously ignore the tempting “great”
church leaders and mighty kings in Satan’s world order. For all these “great ones” are manipulated little toadies of the devil, who are also easily manipulated by other fools. These high and mighty con men, who sell their souls to the highest bidder, are the easiest marks for con men like themselves.
So, if we have anything to do with those human puppets of demons, it will be only to expose their lies and to limit the evil they are able to do, then undo whatever sinful works they might manage to accomplish outside of our supervision. Then some of God’s servants may also be called to toss a few well-chosen words into their midst, pointing out the effective ways of God, since some of them may be elect captives of the world order, and His truths may cause them to repent. Still, even if they are non-elect souls, God’s truth may cause them to fear and panic in ways that destroy them. For, as they cling to their delusions of power and wisdom, they actually make themselves into the world’s most vulnerable, weak and foolish souls. And, although some appear to command mighty armies that can murder and destroy thousands, it is never their own human power ruling over those armies. Rather, it is Satan’s power ruling over each of their soldiers individually. And that devil can instantly make any enslaved individuals much stronger than one’s human owner, because the only ones with any real power in those little human empires is Satan, while all others are manipulated fools. And Satan is extremely fickle. So he often seizes power or even life from one of his preferred elites, so he might pass it on to another. And, with a weak ruler of the entire world order like Satan, every institution and subject kingdom in it also becomes weak. Furthermore, even the entire world-wide kingdom of Satan, including all his fallen angels and all his human children, is itself merely a subject kingdom, completely ruled by and totally terrified of the King of kings. Thus, God Himself will destroy large segments of Satan’s kingdom, whenever He finds enough faithful elect souls willing to build up His kingdom over the ruins of those spiritual or physical locations. In reality, Satan’s kingdom is stupid, inept, powerless, factious, self-destructive and worthless. So we should not covet it, nor fear it, but simply learn to be loving and wise servants of God whom He calls to build His kingdom in its place.
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Surely this third temptation of Jesus was a poorly planned and feebly executed last-ditch effort by Satan. For the devil knew God’s Spirit inside Jesus managed His flesh so well that even his first temptation, which tested Jesus’ dying flesh, utterly failed. Then God’s Spirit in Jesus also managed to humble His flesh, so His flesh refused to test the Father in the second temptation. Consequently, there was obviously absolutely no chance that Jesus would fall to this third temptation. After that devil’s most powerful and carefully planned second temptation, the devil was thoroughly shaken and almost ready to give up. Yet there is one thing we can say about Satan, he is very persistent, since he is compulsively evil in the core of his loveless spirit. So Satan gave one last try before our God Jesus commanded him to leave. Then the devil fled in terror. For that dark spirit of Satan was trembling the whole time he was attempting to lure the flesh of Jesus into sin, because he knew that Jesus was thee one and only Son of God, one God with the heavenly Father (James 2:19). Yet this victory by our conquering Lord Jesus had left His flesh starving to the point of death. So the heavenly Father, and Jesus Himself, called heavenly angels to minister to His flesh, to feed and shelter it for a time.
When Jesus sent the devil away, He said: “Depart, Satan. For it has been irrevocably written, ‘You will bow to the Lord, your God, and you will spiritually serve Him alone’” (Mat. 4:10, ALT). Here He used a form of the Greek verb λατρεύω, the same form of that verb found in Deuteronomy 10:20
and 16:13 of the Septuagint. And this verb carried an ecclesiastical meaning, one that was instantly recognized by all devout Jews and all mature Gentile proselytes. To them, this verb referred to the kind of religious service which the priests and all devout worshippers performed for God every day, throughout their lives. It referred to the kind of service that their spirit gave to God through a love and respect for God. But neither of those two verses (neither Deut. 16:13 nor 10:20) actually said we should “bow” or “fall prostrate” or “worship” God, as Jesus said here (Κύριον τὸν θεόν σου
προσκυνήσεις, meaning, “Each of your will bow/fall prostrate before your Lord God”). Neither was like the way Jesus paraphrased them. Rather, both verses from Deuteronomy, in the Septuagint as well as in the original Hebrew language, told us to greatly “respect” or “fear” our God. Yet Satan had just finished asking Jesus to “bow” (προσκυνέω) before him. And we only bow before someone if we either greatly respect or fear that one. So Jesus used the devil’s own word here, to point out that bowing to the authority of Satan, so one can gain the things of his world order from him, is the same as greatly respecting and fearing him. We need to remember that. For those who live in great fear of the devil and his minions is actually worshipping Satan. And, if anyone fears Satan more than God, then that one is worshipping Satan more than God. We cannot do that. Rather, we must learn to greatly respect and fear God, and Him alone, even in the way we fear to lose the love of our most dear loved ones. Satan, and all his minions, need not be feared if we are one with God. And only a human spirit’s fear and respect for one or the other is possible, never for both at once. So, if one greatly fears the devil, one has no respect for God. But, if one respects God, one does not fear Satan.
Whenever a spirit tempts our flesh with fame, power and esteem in his world order, we must remember that this always involves bowing before Satan, submitting to his lying words and vile manipulations through a fear of him, through the anxiety of possibly losing all he gave us. The devil traps us through deluding fleshy desires for worldly fame, power and esteem. But all those things of Satan’s world order are empty nothings. None are real. In this God-created reality of earth, all are merely wretched sinners unable to think straight, true, wise thoughts if their lives depended on it. So all fame and adulation from other wretched sinners means absolutely nothing, and it is not worth the effort to bow a finger before those wretches to get it. Then money is just a tool used to provide for an exchange of goods and services between people. But that exchange is entirely possible without any money at all, if all equitably share all produced through love in Jesus. And that is life in Jesus Christ.
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Let me repeat, it was actually Satan who invented money, through his most evil children, so they could steal a much larger portion of goods and services for themselves, by paying their workers an unjust and inequitable wage, or by plundering the people through usury, price gouging and fraud.
Satan taught his most evil children to control the lives of others by threatening to withhold money from them, if those others did not obey the unjust demands of his wicked children. It was all a ruse, a deceiving delusion. Then the devil’s children used that money to hire strong men as mercenaries, and created gangs of armed robbers who would threaten to kill, torture and imprison any who did not obey their boss who paid them. All this was a huge lie, created by the devil through his psychopathic children. So none of this is worth anything, and all of it should be opposed by all who worship God.
All we need for an abundant life are the realities created by God, including the real truths God made to work most efficiently for our good, along with the wisdom to apply those truths rightly. So, to get this truth and wisdom, we need our trustworthy Teacher, Jesus, who alone is qualified to teach and train our spirits, and is willing to teach our spirits at all times, day and night. As for our flesh, all it needs is to submit to the counsel of our spirits, as our spirits heed the counsel of God. Then God will provide every body with a little healthy food, which it can share with good and loving company, as well as a warm, dry bed to sleep in when it grows tired, and even education to develop its ordained skills. Then God will add to all this whatever is required for our daily works, transportation to loved ones or to our places of work, plenty for celebrations with loved ones, and all else that is necessary.
For Jesus trains our spirits love as we work together with all the others—as long as we do not allow any with selfish ambitions, greed and other exploitative behaviours to work with us. And our works become our joy, as our love for one another and for Jesus grows. Then our heavenly Father will bless all we do in Christ’s one mind, for His purposes of love, causing all to receive their hearts’ desires.
This is not rocket science. This is just the plain reality, truths practised by many ancient tribes and cultures since the beginning of time. Even animals accept and live in this way. Even the most simple of human beings can silence their foolish minds of flesh and let their spirits serve God alone. Of course, animals do not possess any practical knowledge of good and evil, so they are incapable of discerning and judging motives and intentions for either good or evil. And they simply do what God ordained them to do, which is to illustrate principles of good and evil for humans. Then all their spirits will go directly to heaven after death. None will go to hell. But all spirits of human beings can discern between good and evil, real good and real evil. Then all elect spirits also possess an ability to learn from their heavenly Father, so they can judge what is or is not of His attributes nor of His will.
The elect can learn this from Jesus through their spirits trust Him. And Jesus is faithful. He will teach each elect spirit, freely and without condemnation, since He already paid for this freedom. Then, as our elect spirits learn His teachings, they become the inner consciences of our elect spirits. All the elect grow an inner conscience, in the minds of their spirits. Thus, none of the elect ever need to rely on the outer conscience, which other human beings and often demons shaped in their minds of flesh.
Our knowledge of good and evil never needs to consist of emotions, delusions and superstitions put into our minds of flesh by anyone. Rather, the minds of our elect spirits can learns the real difference between true good and true evil. Then the inherent attraction that each elect or non-elect spirit has toward either good or evil will draw it into its eternal home after the flesh dies, either heaven or hell.
So every elect spirit will surely ascend into the unremitting light of God’s truth and wisdom in His eternal heaven. But a non-elect spirit, who has no inner conscience granted by the Teacher, will still knows it is evil, and will forever fall deeper into the hellish darkness of its own beloved delusions.
Therefore, let each spirit make up its mind, and decide whether it loves the light of God’s loving truth and wisdom, or the darkness of Satan’s foolish and deadly lies and delusions. Then let each Page 226
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elect spirit choose whether it will serve as an heir of the holy and loving God of light, or bow as a stupid slave to a terrorizing, loveless, temporary ruler of the dark, deluded world order. And a spirit must not let its mind of flesh make this decision for it. The spirit in the heart must manage its flesh and make its own decisions, even if it means that some good opinions from deluded slaves in Satan’s world order turn bad. For, if the wise God’s bad opinion of an elect spirit becomes good, when one’s spirit chooses rightly, what is lost? Or, if an elect soul casts aside the delusions of wealth and power in the devil’s kingdom, and no longer pretends to rule one’s own life or other lives as a fake god, as a slave of Satan, yet gains the wealth of love, wisdom and truth from the real God, making one’s life far more effective and one’s spirit truly satisfied in the heart, then one did not lose any real wealth nor real power. For losing lies and delusions is a good thing, if it means gaining His fruitful realities.
But to gain all that Jesus offers to elect spirits, each spirit must go directly to Jesus, and serve Him, our God, alone. The only Head and only Lord of every individual man must be Jesus, our God. Only Jesus—not any human being, nor any other entity—has any full and real ability to perfectly teach each elect human spirit about the genuine truths found in God’s Word and in God’s natural creation.
Then it must be Jesus alone—not any human being, nor any other entity—who trains one’s spirit, by calling one to do His works, and by working beside that spirit in all failures and successes. Our elect spirits must be very careful about who we bow before. We must have no god before the real Creator God, which means we must base all our decisions in life upon what His Spirit tells our spirits, not on any of the lies of Satan and the wanna-be human gods he enslaved in his kingdom. We serve God and Him only. And we should be aware that Satan has many fake churches and devious slaves who want to trap us in their dark kingdoms. So always remember what Jesus told us through His apostle:
“Satan masquerades as an angel of light. It is no great thing therefore if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.” (II Cor. 11:14-15, WEB).
Never accept the words and concepts of human sources without question. Always seek a trustworthy confirmation from at least two or three reliable testimonies or pieces of evidence, an only if these have been honestly and fully cross examined through many questions and observations, both by the opposition and by those whom God has chosen to grant His sign of His honest, loving presence in their hearts. Then our spirits ask God Himself for confirmation. For He will surely point the mind of each spirit to the real truth, and cause it to be known even in one’s mind of flesh. All this is required by God’s Law (e.g., Deut. 19:16-19), the same Law that Jesus fulfills in us and through us. But one who blindly follows a human god as that one’s slave is also a slave of Satan, who fully owns every wanna-be god. We must follow the real God and live in His light, which He freely reveals to all His people , which He shouts from the roof tops for all to hear. For His truth frees us from slavery. And God is rational, the Creator of all the rational and balanced principles holding together all spiritual and material realms. Thus, let no elect soul believe the irrational conspiracy theories and delusions of men, which divide and incite violent hatred through insane lies. Now let us walk according to our spirits, as our spirits heed the Holy Spirit of Jesus. Let us now serve Jesus, our God, and Him alone.
The Teachings of Jesus
So the Jewish apostle, Matthew, began His history of the Messiah’s first advent with an account of His arrival among us. First he affirmed Jesus’ human lineage as the heir to the throne of David and the world. Then he described Jesus’ mikveh and His temptations in the wilderness, both of which qualified Him as our new, final and eternally serving High Priest. In all this, Matthew implied that Jesus was thee Prophet, the one whom Moses spoke about, that is, thee voice of God speaking to us, Page 227
with the words we needed for our survival. For all God’s prophecies teach the spirits of His people how to live according to His created ways. Yes, some prophecies foretell the future, and others reveal beginnings and foundations. Yet, even these are teachings for our spirits, so we can either prepare our hearts to face all that is coming or else understand why the present now exists. All His words are essentially teachings, and all true prophets of God serve as His assistant teachers. Thus, it was time for Matthew to summarize the core teachings of our God and Messiah Jesus, in these next chapters.
Of course, Matthew wrote this Gospel for other Jewish disciples of Jesus, for those who heard the books of Moses read to them every year, as well as all the rest of the Old Covenant Scriptures every two years. Then, after the Law and the other Scriptures were read to them every Saturday of their lives, these men would spend hours discussing the meanings of those words. And all these devout readers believed that Moses, together with his assistants, like Joshua, had not merely redacted the previous oral and written works collected by Israel, into the first five books of the Bible. They were not simply scholars who organized and recorded all of those past teachings. Rather, his readers also believed that the spirits of Moses and his assistants had received concepts of truth, and some editing instructions, directly from the Creator’s Spirit. They believed that Moses and his helpers were true prophets who let their spirits hear and translate concepts from God into the human language of Hebrew, then wrote down those words according to God’s will. So they believed the books of Moses were quintessentially the words of the living God, Yahweh. Therefore, since Jesus was that same Yahweh walking among us in a body of human flesh, Matthew and his readers fully expected the prophetic teachings of Jesus to perfectly align with all the teachings of the Mosaic Law too. That is, Matthew and all his readers interpreted Jesus’ teachings in the light of the Old Covenant teachings.
Now this is also what we must do. For all of Jesus’ teachings can only be understood with reference to all that is taught the rest of God’s Word. All Jesus said rests in perfect harmony with all that our God Yahweh previously revealed through His true prophets since times before Abraham, without any conflicts or contradictions in any of those truths. And the first five books of our Bibles, often called the Law, are the core standards God set for all time, the truths by which we must judge all teachings of all human beings for all time. So we must first learn about God Law, or we will not be able to comprehend what Jesus taught, nor be able to discern between the true and false teachings entering our homes and churches. And, in fact, most today actually do know far more about God’s Law than they think they do, since all of the teachings in the Old and New Covenant Scriptures have been circulating, with ever-increasing influence, throughout the world since the days of Adam, but most especially during the last two thousand years, since the first advent of our Messiah. So, as we read the next four chapters, where Matthew summarized Jesus’ teachings, let us remember, just as his Jewish readers did, that these words tell us how to fulfill God’s Law and all prophecies of Scripture.
After summarizing Jesus’ teachings for us, Matthew then went on to show us how Jesus fulfilled His own teachings through His works. The Holy Spirit of God in Jesus performed mighty deeds, both miracles and plain righteousness through powerful inner love, so we could have examples to follow, when our own spirits begin to heed His commands, as we begin to speak and do works in His name.
Then Matthew revealed how Jesus declared war against Satan’s unjust world order and established His mission for all of His disciples existing throughout eternity. And, as a consequence, inevitable conflicts arose, because Satan will never surrender and peacefully hand over his despotic kingdom to the rightful King of kings. Then, before Jesus’ body of flesh left the earth, He taught His assistants how they should teach and judge within His New Covenant church of Israel, within His priesthood of servants whom He left behind for the benefit of all the world. Lastly, Matthew ended his Gospel by explaining how Jesus won the most critical victory over evil that has ever been accomplished, or Page 228
ever could be won throughout eternity. For Jesus completed the act of saving our souls from lies and sins, with perfection and for eternity, to earn our places in heaven for us. Yet none of these things in the rest of Matthew’s Gospel can be rightly understood either, until we first comprehend God’s Law and the rest of His Word. So keep this in mind as we study these teachings and seek understanding.
Mat. 4:12-17,
Christ’s First Teaching
“Now when Jesus heard that John was delivered up, He withdrew into Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, He came and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying,
‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness saw a great light, to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, to them light has dawned.’ From that time, Jesus began to preach, and to say, ‘Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’” (Mat. 4:12-17, WEB).
After John the Baptizer accompanied Jesus to His baptism as our eternal new High Priest, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. And during those forty days, John had been arrested by a jealous son of Herod the Great. So, after hearing about this, Jesus returned to the region of Galilee, where He grew up and would also establish His base of operations. This would have been in about AD 25 (not in AD 27 or 28, as many say). Now Jesus began to fulfill the mission of His first advent, which was primarily to proclaim teachings about God and His ways. He also healed many bodies of flesh then. But His principal focus was to teach. There would also be some resistance to His works, even in these early days, such as when He was rejected at Nazareth as He taught in their synagogue. However, we must realize that, to our God Jesus, the most critical works of His mission were to proclaim doctrines to His eternal church of Israel, truths for abundant life.
Even before Jesus began His ministry as Israel’s High Priest of the New Covenant, John was arrested by Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. And, while in prison, John sent His disciples to Jesus.
During this initial period of time, Jesus also chose twelve men as His “faculty assistants,” to help Him teach the growing number of disciples who began to follow Him and heed His teachings. Later, He sent eleven of them into the entire Gentile world. These eleven were called the apostles, since the Greek word ἀπόστολος (apostle) means “one sent out on a mission,” and Jesus had sent them on His mission to teach the doctrines that He had taught to them. Then Jesus later called and sent out many other apostles, such a Paul, Mark, Luke, Barnabas and so on. And He will continue to send out this kind of teacher until the earth ends. But, getting back to Matthew’s account of these initial events, we need to realize a few other relevant facts. First of all, when Jesus returned to Galilee, He did not go back to Nazareth, where He grew up. Rather, before Jesus began His ministry, He had moved His mother and younger siblings to a new home in the town of Capernaum. And this is where He had established His “base of operations.” That new house likely would have been a little bigger than the homes of most common Jews in the land, since Galilee was a prosperous, middle-class region, and because Jesus would need a larger home to serve as a synagogue for His disciples. So His new home in Capernaum likely would have had a fairly large room or walled courtyard where many people could meet, hear the Scriptures being read, and listen as Jesus and other men exegeted God’s Word.
Many of these mentioned events and Jesus’ teachings are also recorded in the other Gospels, where the two other synoptic Gospels (Mark and Luke) were probably written before Matthew wrote his Gospel, and John wrote his long after. But, keep in mind that Matthew and John were eye-witnesses Page 229
of Jesus’ ministry, while Mark and Luke were not, and simply interviewed eye-witnesses. Also, Mark and Luke wrote for Gentile audiences, but Matthew wrote for devout Jews who able to better understand the implications of what Matthew wrote, especially about the teachings of Jesus. So, in his Gospel, Matthew was correcting the order of events and other misunderstandings inherent to the third-hand information from Mark and Luke, as well as presenting essential biblical Jewish teachings of their Messiah that others has neglected, largely due to a lack of doctrinal and cultural experience.
So Matthew first explained that Jesus was Israel’s true King, thee Great Prophet, and the eternal, sinless, entirely empathetic High Priest of God’s New Covenant priesthood of Israel, so his Jewish readers would trust Jesus as their true Messiah, and heed His teachings. Yet Matthew’s very highest priority in all that was to actually provide a summary of Jesus’ core teachings. For our salvation from lies and sins come through our spirits’ discipleship to Jesus. Unless our elect spirits sit at the feet of our oldest Brother Jesus, to learn His teachings, then complete our training by doing His appointed works according to His commands, there could be no salvation. Every Jew knew that. And Matthew was not merely a disciple of Jesus during those three years He walked in flesh on earth. Rather, he had always remained a true and faithful disciple of Jesus, and would continue to be His actively learning disciple throughout his entire life, engaging in the process of being saved. So now Matthew strongly desired that his Jewish brothers would join him, within the family of siblings learning to serve as heirs to the heavenly Father. For, if they too became disciples of Jesus, then these Jewish elect could help their Gentile elect siblings draw much further and deeper into God’s family as well.
With a right biblical understanding of Jesus’ teachings, the people in God’s New Covenant branch of the priesthood of Israel could begin to fulfill God’s Law and the Prophets. And learning to fulfill the loving justice of God upon this earth was not only the physical salvation of this earth, but also the training to serve as God’s crowned children for all eternity in heaven. For those same skills of wisely and effectively building up God’s earthly kingdom, through true and godly teachings and judgments, were directly transferable to the tasks they would be doing in heaven. After all, God designed life on this earth to be the perfect the perfect training for all elect spirits. Earth was made to be a training ground that would prepare His children to become more like Himself, so they could labour beside Him and rightly accomplish His works in heaven. Whatever our spirits learn on earth will not only teach and train us to tend the gardens of heaven, but also take responsibility for myriads of creatures in very complex ecosystems up there. This is why Matthew so desperately wanted us to know and fully comprehend all that Jesus taught, after our spirits learned to trust Him as our Messiah and God.
But first, we need to examine the details of what Matthew revealed here. So, when Matthew stated that Jesus “withdrew into Galilee,” after hearing that John was arrested by Herod Antipas, then
“came and lived in Capernaum,” he was simply providing a brief summary of a long period of time, perhaps half of an extremely eventful year, or more. But one thing we can learn from this is that Jesus did not move His mother, and the siblings remaining under His care, to Capernaum, before John had been arrested. And this also means that Joseph, the father of Jesus, must have died just before Jesus went to John’s baptism, since Jesus had now become the Head of His household, as the oldest male in the family. For Jesus could not make the decision to move His mother and family to Capernaum unless He had first become the new Head of the family. If Jesus had taken responsibility for the spiritual and physical well-being of all remaining in the household, then His father had surely died and He was the only remaining Patriarch of the family. And all family members younger than Him, even those who married and had left the household, were now looking to Him to provide the structure and order required to hold the entire extended family together in peace and harmony. In biblical terms, Jesus had to ensure that all could fulfill their God-given destinies and please God.
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Jesus was now making the final decisions in all important family matters, after diligently inquiring about the needs and inner desires of His family. And Jesus did this as the next heir to the throne of David, since He was the oldest Son of Joseph, who was the last heir to that throne. Of course, Rome did not allow the rightful heirs to the throne to be the kings of Israel. Yet, what Rome wanted did not matter to devout Jews, because God Himself ordained that an heir of David’s throne would be the King of His priesthood of Israel forever. Consequently, to devout Jews, that little family of Joseph and Jesus, that peasant family of common labourers, was the most beloved and highly esteemed of all the families in the entire world. Yet this new Head of that family, Israel’s true King, chose the Gentile town of Capernaum to be where the family would live. For the prophecies of God’s Word specifically stated that the Messiah would begin to bring the light of God’s saving truths to that very region, to that particular area. Jesus had to gather His disciples and begin His teaching there. Yet it is doubtful that His family would fully comprehend this, although His mother, Mary, who experienced His miraculous birth, would have been the first to submit to that decision, and help Him convince and prepare His family to move there, in a way which provided for all their needs and godly desires.
So those two verses (Mat. 4:12-13) covered many unmentioned events in the life and ministry of Jesus. And the only real detail Matthew gave about all those events was how they fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy (Mat. 4:14-16, cf., Is. 9:1-2). Thus, it seems clear as to what Matthew’s heart was most concerned about, above all else. What Matthew most wanted His Jewish brothers and sisters in the Lord to know, and what he most desired to know himself, were God’s words. To Matthew, the teachings and revelations of the Creator were critical to every aspect of life. Of course, this did not mean that the other matters of life were trivial and meaningless. For Matthew realized that God primarily teaches and trains the thinking of our eternal elect spirits through the mundane daily grind of life, and that even the smallest, seemingly insignificant matters of life can either turn the entire soul to God or to the devil. So it would be arrogant to set oneself above those “little things.” Every Jews knew this. Every Jew realized that he or she must also concern oneself with the common tasks of providing food, clothing, shelter and all other needs of one’s people, and each had to learn some kind of trade which would provide those things for all. So Matthew was not an arrogant, ivory-tower intellectual with a dull and suppressed spirit, not an academic who deluded himself into thinking he had elevated his thoughts above all earthly matters of the flesh. Rather, Matthew’s hands knew hard work, to keep his elect spirit awake and active. For Jesus had taught and trained his loving, just and wise spirit to do so. But now Matthew wanted us to clearly see how God had predestined the life of Jesus, and had prophesied events of His life even seven hundred years before those events occurred.
When Matthew wrote down those two verses from Isaiah, He was not quoting nor paraphrasing the Septuagint this time. Rather, he translated certain parts of these two verses from the original Hebrew text. So, although Matthew frequently read and used the Septuagint for his Bible studies, just as most Jews did in that day, it seems that he also learned Hebrew as well, so he could study the Bible in its original language. Yet he did not quote all the words from those two verses, only the parts which were relevant to the topic at hand. And he did this in the same way Jesus sometimes applied the Scriptures. So his actions teaches us: (1) Not everyone needs to learn the original languages of the Scriptures, since the Holy Spirit of Jesus is able to teach us God’s intended meaning of His words directly to our spirits. We know this because both Matthew and Jesus quoted or paraphrased texts from the very imperfect, faulty Greek translation of the Bible called the Septuagint. (2) Nonetheless, it is better and very helpful to learn to read God’s Word in its original languages, since there are serious faults in our human translations. When Matthew and Jesus chose to refer back to the original texts of the Bible, in their original languages, it meant that they were acknowledging that the Bible Page 231
in its original languages is the only truly God-authorized version of God’s Word. (3) When we quote proof texts, we do not always need to tediously quote entire verses, as some superstitious people insist upon doing. All we need to quote are the parts which are relevant to prove our point, provided we quote them according to their God-intended meaning found in the original context, and without leaving out any relevant words (unlike the devil when he tried to deceive Jesus by quoting only parts of Bible verses he could interpret falsely, contrary to their God-intended meaning in their context).
The two verses Matthew paraphrased from the original Hebrew text were, in English: “But there shall be no more gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time, He brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; but in the latter time He has made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations [i.e., this actually refers to “Galilee of the Gentiles,” because the Gentile Assyrians had conquered that land and it remained in the hands of subsequent Gentile empires until God gave much of it back to Israel in our times]. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in the land of the shadow of death, on them the light has shined” (Is.
9:1-2, WEB). In the days of Isaiah, God decided that He had put up with the hypocrisy and greed of the northern tribes of Israel long enough. The time had come for His wrath to fall heavily upon His unfaithful, cruel, unjust people in that region. And God was especially angry with the rulers and the upper classes among them, since the wealthy claimed to worship God even as they trampled over the poor. The wealthy and powerful treated the poor unjustly, stealing what God had ordained for them and denying them a voice which could plead for justice. And it was precisely because they claimed to be His chosen people and His priesthood of Israel, because they chose to bear His name as they committed their crimes through lies, that His wrath against them was so harsh, so tortuous and deadly. For their false claims had slandered His good name, had associated God’s name with all their ruthless sins. Some even claimed to be esteemed teachers of God’s ways, yet taught the people to lie and sin, in service to esteemed criminals and liars. Then all refused to heed the true prophets sent to them by God Himself, who would have told those fake shepherds of the people: “Let not many of you be teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive heavier judgment” (James 3:1, WEB).
Consequently, the judgment in God’s “contempt” for this part of Israel was horrifying, especially for the upper classes. The Assyrians show no mercy, but slaughtered most upper-class souls and took the rest captive, away from their self-indulgent homes and lives. The Assyrians apparently left only the most meek, downtrodden and poor folk behind, to till the lands which those Gentiles now claimed for themselves. These included all the lands God had allotted to the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, west of the Sea of Galilee (also called Sea of Chinnereth in the Old Testament, later called Lake Tiberias, now called Lake of Gennesaret or Lake Kinneret). So the Jewish people remaining there were still hungry and impoverished, still lacking just rights or protections, and now oppressed by a new gang of elitists, but this time by ruthless Gentiles who did not claim to bear God’s name, who did not blaspheme God’s name by committing their sins in His name. Thus there was indeed much
“gloom” and “anguish” among the Israelites in those days, after the Assyrian invasion. And this darkness in their hearts would last throughout the Gentile oppression of the subsequent Babylonian, Persian and Greek empires, then well into the final and longest oppression of the Roman Empire. It was prophesied to endure until just before the end times, when their Messiah would come to conquer the entire world and rule the earth as its just King. But, during the Messiah’s first advent, that very land would see the initiation of the “last days,” the very beginning of God’s kingdom on earth, which would culminate in the end of Satan’s world order. The Messiah would surely make the “latter time ... glorious.” However, the Messiah would begin this long process by first granting the bright light of His saving truth to elect spirits upon the earth. And the fires of this light would be lit in Galilee. The pure flames of His warm light start burning there, and would not be snuffed out, until Page 232
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the flames spread throughout the entire world. His burning words would chase away the darkness of gloom in Galilee, give the elect there a renewed hope in their God. Since they were the first to feel God’s wrath for their sins, they would also be the first to receive the freeing light of their Messiah.
But notice, after quoting that Messianic prophecy from Isaiah—not just for the benefit of Galilean Jews, but for all the Jews living under the oppression of the prophesied beast’s fourth kingdom of Rome—Matthew then quoted only one short statement from their Messiah. The sentence Matthew quoted was this command from Jesus: “You people continuously repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has arrived, to produce ongoing effects” (Mat. 4:17, from: Μετανοεῖτε, ἤγγικεν γὰρ ἡ
βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν, SBLGNT). Here, the present (durative) imperative second person plural form of μετανοέω indicates that Jesus wanted His people to “continuously repent.” And He spoke this as an authoritative word, as their Lord. For He was indeed their Lord. He was their God. Then the perfect tense of ἐγγίζω turns our focus away from the mere fact that His kingdom had already arrived, and towards the resulting ongoing effects. So Jesus declared that He and His kingdom had not only already come, but much would now and in the future occur because of its arrival. Soon a purifying separation and destruction of the wicked would begin, leaving only the awakened elect in His kingdom. Then notice how Jesus called it “the kingdom of the heavens” (i.e., “heavens” is plural). For His is a kingdom of the “first heaven” (of the atmosphere above the earth, signifying His rule over the earth and all that is upon it) as well as a kingdom of the “third heaven” (signifying His rule over the eternal, holy, spiritual realm above, which is the home of God and His elect children).
So why did Matthew choose this command as the very first words of the Messiah, as Jesus very first light broadcast during His entire ministry of teaching and judging upon the earth? Matthew chose this one statement because it summed up all Jesus ever would preach during His first advent, and even throughout all time. For the reason Jesus came to teach His people the truth was because true biblical repentance cannot begin until spirits know the truth. For one cannot repent into the truth until one first knows the truth. So this one word, Μετανοεῖτε (“continuously repent”) was the first command of our Lord, indicating that Jesus is our Messiah and God who came to teach and train our spirits about God’s ways, so we can repent into His ways, just as God’s New Covenant promise had declared. Then this repentance must be done by our spirits every day, as our spirits learn more and more about Him and His ways. This true repentance needs to be a consistent, ongoing turning away from false teachings, lies and delusions, into the real spiritual truths created by God in the beginning, into the principles and ways which God will always uphold, for all eternity. For spirits are eternal, and all the spiritual gain they acquire is also eternal, never forgotten. So repentance saves eternally.
Then Jesus also gave us the urgent reason for our need to repent into the truth. He told us it was because God’s kingdom, both on earth and in heaven, has already arrived, with present ongoing effects. That is, God has already begun to judge the earth, and we do not want to be found among those who will experience His wrath. God’s kingdom began to grow on the earth as soon as Jesus planted His seeds of truth and wisdom into the hearts of God’s elect children. And His words of right teachings will produce sanctifying effects. That is, they will begin to draw out and separate one’s whole life from the world, so that one’s life shall be set aside and reserved for God’s purposes alone.
Thus, from the very first day Jesus began His ministry, He began to form a dichotomy among the people of Israel, and even among the people of the entire earth. His truths divided the elect from the non-elect, separated all whose spirits are able and willing to hear His words of truth, from those whose spirits are neither able nor willing to hear Him. Then, at the beginning of the end times, as the last days near completion, Jesus will also cause a great revival, which will finalize the separation of the elect from the non-elect, through a process that will unfold during the worst trials that mankind Page 233
has ever experienced. And, once Satan gathers all the non-elect together under the banner of his world ruler, the beast, all those non-elect will be slain at once, while Jesus descends to the earth. So the only human survivors upon the earth will be the repentant elect, sanctified for God’s purposes.
To the devout Jews and to the devout Gentile proselytes who knew God’s Word well, all of these implications were packed into that one sentence of Jesus. These first words of Jesus summarized His entire ministry during His first advent. Jesus was saying that He came to teach and train God’s elect, so they could continuously repent into the truth. Now Jesus has been doing this since His ministry began on this earth. To this day, His Holy Spirit has been causing our spirits to repent into the truth.
Mat. 4:18-22,
Jesus Calls Assistants
“Walking by the sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers: Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. He said to them,
‘Come after Me, and I will make you fishers for men.’ They immediately left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them. They immediately left the boat and their father, and followed Him” (Mat. 4:18-22, WEB).
First, we should realize that this occurred after Jesus had moved to Capernaum, and some time after He began to publicly preach there. Capernaum possibly had one or two thousand residents and rests on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee. So commercial fishing would have been the occupation of many inhabitants. And fish brought a good price, since Roman fish sauce was always extremely popular and shipped throughout the empire. So this town was relatively prosperous, with many Jews who tithed and otherwise supported the ministries of teaching and judging rabbis like Jesus. Now Jesus had been proclaiming a true and accurate body of teachings about God’s Word to very many souls there, for at least a few months. Yet Jesus spoke in certain and sure terms, as an authoritative voice about the true meaning of God’s words, unlike most other rabbis. Then Jesus backed up this consistent, harmonious, biblical truth with loving works, not just wise acts of giving, but also many miracles which healed their bodies, minds, hearts and relationships. Thus many in that town and in its surrounding area began to follow Him. Many had chosen Jesus to be their spiritual teacher and guide, that is, their Rabbi. And all these souls would have been called His disciples, all His male and female followers. But Jesus was far better than the other rabbis trying to do this here and elsewhere.
Still, not all of a rabbi’s disciples would follow him and learned from him all day and every day. And not all had the time nor natural aptitude to became educated enough to actually help their rabbi teach the other disciples as the rabbi’s assistant teachers. And, in fact, not all rabbis even wanted to take on full-time disciples, since most were part-time rabbis, who worked long hours in full-time jobs to make a living for their families. Then even the full-time rabbis worked at some kind of trade as well, and had other duties as teaching and judging elders. So even they did not all want to take on very many full-time disciples, if any. It was mostly the very popular rabbis, who received enough support, who took on some full-time disciples, whom they taught and trained to help them teach and train the large number of other disciples. So the only reason these popular rabbis took on some full-time and personally trained disciples was to basically “hire” them as assistant rabbis, like faculty assistants.
But very few rabbis gained enough support to call and support full-time disciples, especially the kind of disciples who themselves were supported by their rabbi, and could dedicate their entire workdays Page 234
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to helping their rabbi, without needing to work at full-time or even part-time jobs. Most rabbis had no paid, full-time, “faculty assistants” to help them serve their people. Yet Jesus had become an extremely popular and sought-after full-time Teacher of God’s Word and ways in this region, with enough support to even gather twelve men to serve as His assistants. And Jesus even received this kind of support while He severely criticized and rebuked the wealthy. Most other rabbis who had that kind of support had to pander to the rich, and compromise their teachings to make the rich feel good about themselves. Yet Jesus almost exclusively served the common folk, who could only toss a few pennies in the synagogue’s collection box on a Saturday night, after the Sabbath ended. Yet there were so many poorer disciples following Jesus that He had enough for all His bodily needs, and to provide a modest life for not only His family, but also for the families of twelve assistant teachers.
So this gives us a good idea of how popular Jesus was in Galilee, even a popularity which He gained after only a few months of preaching there. Jesus now had so many disciples that He now also required some committed and devout full-time disciples, men He could teach and train personally, to help Him teach and serve all His other disciples. And, together with them, thousands were blessed.
So Jesus would have been watching the hearts and minds of the masses following Him, looking for some men whom the heavenly Father had chosen to serve Him. As soon as He started preaching, He would have been searching for some men with awakened elect spirits, who asked many questions and understood the principles He taught, due to the zeal of their hearts for the real God. Then, when He saw that these men were ready, He called them as His full-time disciples, to serve as His “faculty assistants,” to help Him teach, counsel, comfort and serve His many other disciples. But most of His disciples would not be qualified to serve in this way, and many who might be qualified would not be willing to risk losing their jobs and family businesses to follow Jesus full-time. Yet Jesus did need some men to help Him answer questions for the masses attending His weekday Bible studies and coming to hear His Sabbath exegesis of the Scriptures. Then the masses of His disciples also needed advise and empathy too, when tragedies struck their lives, or when they had to make very important and complex decisions. The people would often go to their Rabbi for all this and much more, and they would come at all hours of the day and night, seeking His words about God’s wise ways. So the time came when Jesus, confined to a human body of flesh, required at least some full-time assistants.
So the day came when Jesus walked to shore of the Sea of Galilee and called these four men to become His full-time disciples, to serve as His assistants, to help Him teach and serve His other disciples. And, since they were already His part-time disciples, all Jesus had to tell them was, “Come behind Me! And I will make you fishers of men” (Mat. 4:19, ALT, from: Δεῦτε ὀπίσω μου, καὶ
ποιήσω ὑμᾶς ἁλιεῖς ἀνθρώπων, SBLGNT). They would have instantly known what Jesus meant. To walk behind Jesus meant to be with Him and learn God’s ways of life from Him, all day and every day, as His full-time assistants. For, to become “fishers of men,” it meant that they too would gather elect souls out of the “waters.” To the Jews, the “waters” represented the masses of souls who would flow in every direction that the false doctrines of Satan’s world order took them. So now they would help Jesus lift elect souls out from those dark waters, into the safety of God’s vessel in the sunlight, and onto His high ground. Then all these “fish” from the waters of the world order would die to their old lives and begin new lives as dwellers in the light. And Jesus would have already known that all four of these men longed to walk behind Him, as His full-time disciples. Jesus would have already seen how all their spirits in their hearts longed for this occupation. Jesus would have detected this shortly after they had begun to hear Him preach, not long after they began to follow Him as His part-time disciples. Thus, the moment they heard Jesus say these words, “They immediately left their nets and followed Him” (Mat. 4:20, WEB). All were eager to serve as blessed full-time disciples of Jesus.
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Now some may wonder how Jesus called these four men as they were fishing in the Sea of Galilee, since they would have immediately sailed their boats far out into the lake to find a good fishing spot, then continued trolling the lake with their nets, a lake which is 21 kilometres (13 miles) long and has an area of 166 square kilometres (64 square miles). Actually, Matthew greatly simplified this account of their calling by Jesus. Luke provided a more detailed account. Yes, the four were fishing, but near the shore where Jesus had been preaching, and they were fishing because Jesus asked them to fish:
“Now while the multitude pressed on [Jesus] and heard the Word of God, He was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret [i.e., this is what we sometimes call the Sea of Galilee]. He saw two boats standing by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them, and were washing their nets.
He entered into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch.’
Simon answered Him, ‘Master, we worked all night, and took nothing; but at your word I will let down the net.’ When they had done this, they caught a great multitude of fish, and their net was breaking. They beckoned to their partners in the other boat, that they should come and help them. They came, and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But Simon Peter, when he saw it, fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord.’ For he was amazed, and all who were with him, at the catch of fish which they had caught; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Jesus said to Simon, ‘Don’t be afraid. From now on you will be catching people alive.’ When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything, and followed Him”
(Luke 5:1-11, WEB).
Actually, Jesus’ words to Peter, after he caught the fish, might be better translated as this: “Be not afraid! From now [on], you will captivate people.” Jesus was telling Peter that, just as he caught a multitude of fish in his net, pulling them up from the watery depths into the boats, his preaching would gather many elect souls into God’s kingdom of light, into abundant lives freed from the depth of the dark world order’s lies and delusions. So Luke’s account of Jesus’ words here were almost the same as those recorded by Matthew. But they do differ. So consider how Jesus applied Jewish idioms and figures of speech in succinct ways which His devout Jewish hearers would fully understand, but how these words are difficult for others to comprehend, especially Gentiles not familiar with the ancient Jewish forms and figures of speech. Thus, we can safely conclude that the words of Jesus which Luke, a former Gentile writing to Gentiles, were likely not the precise words of Jesus. When Luke told us that Jesus said, “you [singular, addressing Peter alone] will captivate people,” he was likely paraphrasing what Jesus actually said, to clarify the meaning to his Gentile readers. But the words recorded by Matthew (“I will make you [plural, that is, He was addressing all four of the men in those boats]
fishers of men”) would have been the actual words Jesus literally spoke. And, to the Jews, those words implied a blessed occupation of serving God. But, to Gentiles, who looked down on labouring jobs like fishing and took offence at being referred to as mindless creatures like fish, who knew nothing about the symbolism of being raised from an old life in the darkness the world’s waters into the light of God upon His lands, these words of Jesus would have seemed strange, even disgusting.
As we see in Luke’s account, which was either taken from a witness of the event or actually seen by Luke himself, Jesus did not wander along the shores of the Sea of Galilee (i.e., Lake of Gennesaret) looking for these four fishermen. Rather, Jesus simply went to the shoreline somewhere near His home in Capernaum, just after dawn on a weekday (i.e., Jewish men did not fish on a Sabbath), and began to preach. And so many people wanted hear His words of truth that He could no longer preach Page 236
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to all of them from the room or courtyard in His home. So Jesus went outdoors, to find places that could serve as amphitheatres. And the shore was ideal, since the land gently sloped upwards from the lake. When the people sat on the slopes of the land, it allowed them all to see and hear Jesus, as He spoke below them from a small boat, just a few feet from the shore. As for the fishermen, they would have been sailing their boats out onto the lake during the night, so they could cast their nets in the darkness, with a torch or lamp shining over their nets, since that light would attract the fish to it. So, now that it was dawn, they had already returned to their home in Capernaum, and pulled the bows of their small ships onto the shore and tied them to a stake, to prevent the boat from drifting away. At that time of day, many other fishermen and their families would have gathered there. And Jesus would have known they would do this. So He specifically chose the shore where these fishermen had grounded their boats because the people wanted to hear Him, and because they would have the time to hear His preaching while the fishermen and their families did their works of cleaning nets, sorting the catch and gutting the fish. Jesus also would have known that these four had been following Him, and would want to hear His sermon, as they washed the seaweed and mud from their throw-nets that morning. And, knowing that these four were ready to follow Him as His assistants, He called them.
The two boats of these four men would have been side by side in the same place they always were every morning, because the four were partners. However, Jesus chose the boat that Peter and Andrew used, likely a little newer and bigger boat, since Peter was the oldest and probably the owner of this fishing business. But Jesus did not chose Peter’s boat because it was a better boat. Actually, Jesus chose that boat because Peter and Andrew would be the ones willing to take their boat out into the lake again, with Him in it. For Peter was obviously their boss and had the authority to make this decision. And Jesus also wanted to talk to Peter since He wanted Peter to become the organizer who took responsibility for the orderly management of His other full-time assistants. Peter, as the head of the fishing crew, would be brave and responsible, a man with much experience in keeping the others safe on the dangerous and volatile waters of that lake. God’s Law placed this duty on him, to ensure that no one was hurt or killed through any kind of negligence. And Peter obviously performed this duty through a heart that loved his brother working with him, and even treated the other two men as his little brothers too. This would be why Jesus chose Peter, and those other three men who loved this just, compassionate man, Peter. And this Peter kept loving them, until he gave his life for God.
After Jesus quoted the Scriptures and explained God’s intended meaning of those words, He asked Peter and Andrew to take the boat into the deeper waters and cast out their nets. Of course, without a light to attract a significant amount of fish to the net, their chance of catching even one fish was negligible. So Peter likely thought that Jesus knew nothing about fishing, then tried to explain that they had been out all night and had caught nothing. But Jesus knew this, and also knew that Peter, and the men with him, often lived hand to mouth, since what they caught each day was what they lived on for that day, without much of anything extra to provide for tomorrow’s needs. Jesus knew those men did not want to face their hopeful loved ones at home with nothing in their pockets, nor face tax and debt collectors who threatened to take their few belongings and necessities if they did not pay them with what they did not have. So Jesus planned to show Peter, and all these men, that God provides all that is needed for all, from His creation, and that money saves no one. Soon Peter, without faith or hope in God, simply stopped resisting. Purely out of respect for this wondrous Teacher of God’s Word, Peter said: “But at your word I will let down the net” (Luke 5:5b, WEB).
So Peter and Andrew cast out the net, let it sink, then began to pull it up, expecting nothing. Yet there were indeed fish in it, and not just a few. This was nothing like the kind of catch they would usually pull in during the night. Instead, the net was so full of fish that it was almost breaking. This had Page 237
never happened in their lifetimes, nor in any other fisherman’s lifetime. There were so many fish that they could not lift the net onto the boat, but had to tie the net onto the side of the boat, then start lifting the fish into the boat by hand, one or two at a time. Even then, there were so many that they signalled for their partners, James and John, to bring their boat along side, so they could help load the fish, by hand, into their other boat as well. But the fish kept coming. Soon they filled both boats until the weight of the fish sank their shallow hulls almost down to the gunnels. Plain and simple, this was a miracle, and a sign of God’s providence. And it would be a sign to these men three years later, after Jesus died and rose again, when He came back and called to their anxious souls fishing in the same boats from the same shores. God multiplies His creation for the sakes of His elect children.
It was then that Peter, in the midst of his frantic efforts to do his job for his men and his loved ones, woke up to the fact that this experience was far from normal. It was supernatural, an act of God. And the One who commanded those fish, His creations, to do this was actually that Teacher of God’s Word sitting in his boat. Now Peter had called Jesus an ἐπιστάτης (“master,” a title used by Greek-speaking Jewish disciples referring to their teacher, see Luke 5:5), while trying to explain to Jesus why it would be foolish to fish in the daylight. So Peter had been respectful, but was not treating Jesus as an extraordinary rabbi. Yet, after seeing what Jesus had done with God’s creations, causing multitudes of fish to leap into his net, Peter grew very afraid. For, as a devout and well-taught Jew, it dawned on him that this Jesus must have the one God inside Him. For Jesus had not prayed to God for this miracle, like a devout human rabbi might. Nor did Jesus do this in God’s name, as a human prophet of God might, according to the commands God gave to a prophet’s spirit. Rather, Jesus had caused this to happen, directly, wordlessly, through His own will, authority and power. And Peter knew that is something that only God Himself could do. So, logically, this man sitting beside him must have had Yahweh God inside Him. Then this epiphany reminded Peter about all the failures and sins he committed, even against his loved ones. Consequently, standing before this Teacher, a Rabbi with God Himself inside Him, Peter froze. He stopped all he was doing, fell on his knees before the this God-inhabited Rabbi, and declared this truth about the sin in him, a truth that all men should actually confess for their own good: “Go away from me Lord, because I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8, from: Ἔξελθε ἀπʼ ἐμοῦ, ὅτι ἀνὴρ ἁμαρτωλός εἰμι, κύριε, SBLGNT). Notice how Peter now called Jesus his “Lord” (κύριος, “owner,” “supreme master,” a title of God). Yet Jesus came to save sinners from sin. Jesus came to teach and train the spirits of His elect children so they could leave all their sins behind in repentance, so they could begin to walk in God’s light of truth and wisdom. Jesus was not going to go away, but had come to call Peter and the others to now train to be His assistants.
The next thing we should realize that full-time disciples were often chosen by a rabbi so they could someday replace him, and become rabbis themselves, in the future. But that title of rabbi would only be given to his full-time disciples after many years. For a rabbi had to be a mature man who had demonstrated that He was chosen by God. So a rabbi usually had to be forty years of age or older, and the minimum age was thirty. Then the only way a man could become a rabbi is if he proved to be abundantly blessed with knowledge and wisdom received directly from God, through God’s Word. A true biblical rabbi, a teaching and judging elder, had to demonstrate that he was chosen by God before the people could choose him as their rabbi. This meant that evidence of God teaching his spirit much true knowledge and wisdom from His Word had to be clearly seen by the people, as well as the gift of God’s power to live in a way that truly pleased their loving and just God. So God’s standard for a teacher of His Word was extremely high, unachievable by most men. And that standard needed remain very high, since all teachers of God’s Word also had to judges His people in just and equitable ways. That is, all had to labour in the biblical kinds of judgments, which involved Page 238
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teaching sinners to repent into the truth and bear fruits of repentance. Each had to warn the people about the destructive consequences of sin and the benefits of living in the just, loving ways of God.
Or, if anyone possessed an unrepentant spirit with evil motives and intentions, that one had to be cast out of the family of God’s people, abandoned to the delusions of Satan’s world order. So a rabbi, also called a teaching elder, was a critical servant of God and His people, one of God’s chief guards of a just and loving life among the children of His family. But these high standards were not placed upon the disciples of a true rabbi. A disciple could be any age, male or female, a Jew or a Gentile, start serving as a disciple with absolutely no knowledge of God and His ways, be a terrible sinner, and so on. For it ws the responsibility of the rabbi to transform that disciple into a faithful servant of God.
Still, among a rabbi’s disciples, there were usually a few men predestined by God to become rabbis or teaching elders themselves. A few would have awake elect spirits that were willing to serve God and His creation for low pay, in a very modest lifestyle, while always striving to help and teach others, so those others could live more abundant, more just and more loving lives in God. These were men whose spirits did not fear the injustices of Satan’s world order, but were willing to speak the truth, then face the threats and taunts of the godless who opposed them. At the same time, these men had spirits which greatly feared the weaknesses of their own flesh, and how it could so easily fall into sin. For their spirits loved and respected their holy, just, loving God so much that they hated their own sins, and continuously sought to repent into God’s truths. Due to this, they became like
“slaves” of God, bound to God with chains of love and deep respect. And, as His slaves, they were also slaves of God’s creation too, especially God’s elect children, always eager to see God’s ways lovingly applied in all lives. Thus, they were humble too, since they constantly remained terrified of their own fleshy weaknesses and propensities to sin, as well as their own inadequacies in counselling and guiding their people into a good relationship with God. The men Jesus chose that day were such.
We also should remember that Jesus chose these four men through a right judgment. That is, Jesus did not choose them because they were popular, smooth talkers, handsome, fashionable dressers and admired by many worldly souls. For those are the reasons Isaac chose Esau, rather than Jacob. But God rejected Esau, and condemned Isaac’s judgment of his sons. Jacob was Isaac’s only son chosen by God to inherit the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant, to be the father of God’s priestly family.
Isaac’s judgment of his two sons was entirely wrong. For Isaac judged his sons through his feelings in his mind of flesh, not through the knowledge and wisdom granted by God to the mind of his spirit.
Naturally, feelings and emotions in the mind of flesh will come and go, and mostly depend upon the external circumstances of the body, but sometimes even rise and fall according to some thoughts in the mind of the spirit. And the emotions of the flesh are tricked into good and bad feelings by lying, fleeting and transitory things. Yet a human spirit, especially an elect spirit created in God’s image, has a mind that never forgets anything it has ever received into itself, thinks far deeper and more rational thoughts, is never affected by ups and downs of the body’s senses and chemistry, and can receive and communicate concepts with God’s Spirit or other spirits more accurately and at a rate thousands of times faster. So a mind of the spirit remains much more stable than the mind of flesh.
Therefore, when the mind of an elect spirit receives truth, and gains the ability to rightly apply that truth, all that spirit’s loving, just judgments, based on real knowledge and wisdom, will produce a good effect or result, possibly a fruit that will provide benefits for all eternity. And God will never deem those just, right and loving decisions of the elect spirit to be wrong. Now, when Jesus called His full-time disciples, He made that choice with the very mind of God’s Spirit in Him. So it was based upon right judgments, using perfect information, the most rational of logic and the wisest application of knowledge possible. So, although we see how very flawed and error-prone all those Page 239
disciples were, even making some mistakes that some of us would not make in the same situations, we should realize that our God Jesus did not make wrong judgments in His choices. For Jesus did not choose those men because they were so perfect as human beings, but rather because He saw all that was in their elect hearts and chose to perfect them through His training exercises on earth, by calling them to do the same kinds of works on earth that He had designed their spirits to do in heaven above. He was going to train them to become teaching elders—that is, all except the traitor Judas, whom Jesus chose merely to help fulfill the prophecies about His death on the cross. So the spirits of these full-time disciples were fully seen and rightly judged by the omniscient Spirit of God in Jesus. And our God Jesus did not see “as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart” (I Sam. 16:7, WEB). And now Jesus chooses all of us in this way as well.
We need to remember this fact, that those apostles were no more “holy” and spiritually mature than we are. And not one was any more spiritually or physically gifted than any of us can be, by God. So none of them are to ever be esteemed above any other elect brothers or sisters. And now Jesus also commands us to judge in the same way. We must never choose our teaching and judging elders from those who seem to be demigods of a higher class in a Roman hierarchy, nor grant them any unique titles of esteem to set them apart from the rest of us, to ensure that we all will bow to them and not forget our more lowly status. For there simply are no hierarchies nor classes in God’s kingdom. And literally all of us are sinners without any “greatness” in us, except the Holy Spirit of Jesus, if He has indeed chosen to dwell in our hearts. Can we push that truth through into our feeble brains of flesh?
Can the minds of our spirits move on to realizing how all those common men were simply granted exactly the same spiritual and physical qualities and gifts which God can and does grant us today, right now? God never called any of the elect into His service because they were uniquely qualified and gifted, but rather uniquely qualifies and gifts very fallible, sinful elect souls with His power and truth, as He trains each immature elect spirit to become all that He created that one to be in heaven.
And Jesus trains each for works of loving, humble service in heaven, not to sit idly on some kind of throne, lording it over others as some kind of elite moron. Each was created for sacrificial works, to labour beside our God Jesus in our homeland, for the good of all the wondrous living creations there.
Eventually, Jesus chose twelve male disciples as His full-time assistants. These four that Matthew mentioned (in 4:18-22) were the first, and two are very familiar to us, Simon and John. Simon, later called Peter, was the oldest, a married man who was likely in his mid-thirties when Jesus called him.
Clearly, this man, Simon or Peter, had seen some suffering and loss in his life, which made him a little insecure, but also caused his spirit to more fervently seek and heed God. Yet he always seemed to remain impetuous, too easily led astray by the eloquent and confident words of the liars falsely appearing to be authoritative personalities. And this seems to be why Jesus renamed him Peter, “little rock,” or “the solid, immovable, steadfast one.” Now remember, in those days, when a lord renamed a subject, it meant the lord took responsibility for the teaching, training and actions of that subject.
So, when Jesus renamed Simon, and specifically called that insecure and unstable man by the name of a secure and stable “little rock,” it meant that Jesus accepted the responsibility of teaching and training that man to become “the solid, immovable, steadfast one.” And Jesus lives today. Jesus is still calling us, the extremely fallible elect, into His service. But He is not calling us because we are better than others. Rather, our calling is to be taught and trained by Him, throughout our entire lives, then further taught and trained during the judgment day in heaven, until we are ready for eternal life.
Nevertheless, Peter’s elect spirit was created to be inwardly solid as a rock, steadfast in his love for God and God’s people. So Jesus chose him to be the one who would keep order and help the other full-time disciples after His body of flesh left us. Then John was the youngest disciple, who possibly Page 240
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was twelve years of age at that time, since that is likely the earliest age which devout Jews would send their boy to be taught by and live with a trusted rabbi. Since John leaned on the chest of Jesus during the Last Supper (John 21:20), about three years later, like a precocious schoolboy trying to provoke his Teacher into revealing a secret, he must have been still a boy even then, perhaps only fourteen or fifteen years old. Still, this mere boy was loving and inwardly intelligent. The eyes of his elect spirit already heard and heeded more truth from God’s Spirit than most mature men ever will.
Now also notice how Jesus chose these assistants in pairs. Rabbis seldom sent out a faculty assistant on a mission alone. For important matters, they sent out their assistants in groups or, at the very least, in pairs. Thus, rabbis also often chose their assistants in pairs. They needed pairs of disciples to work together in a symbiotic relationship, where each challenged the other’s words and actions, in a way that drove the other deeper into the real meanings and applications of the truths. So a good rabbi wanted pairs of men who were willing to correct each other, to be equals who would question the teachings and actions of one another, yet still able to come to a wise conclusion through discussions, then work together to fulfill whatever they were called to do. Thus, brothers were ideal for this, since brothers naturally challenge one another, yet still love and respect each other, and will come to an agreement based on the teachings of their common rabbi. Thus, Jesus chose both Simon and his younger brother, Andrew, both with good and honest hearts, with zealous spirits for God. Then Jesus chose both John and his older brother, James, so the loving older brother could care for that cheeky younger brother. And all four of these men had already been working together as brothers as well.
Mat. 4:23-25,
Jesus in Galilee
“Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people. The report about Him went out into all Syria. They brought to Him all who were sick, afflicted with various diseases and torments, possessed with demons, epileptics, and paralytics; and He healed them. Great multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordan followed Him” (Mat. 4:23-25, WEB).
Jesus began His work as thee High Priest of the New Covenant branch of Israel in the region of Galilee. Now God’s Law commanded the sick ones of Israel to go to the Aaronic priests after they were healed, and to take a sin sacrifice with them. For none but God could ultimately grant life and the healing of life to any person. God alone judged for the healing of one’s body or soul, whether the healing was done naturally or miraculously. And those priests were to tell the sick about the beauty and glory of God, so they could give an informed and heart-felt thanksgiving to Him, and so they could live abundantly loving and fulfilled lives after being healed. They also had to know that, if God wanted one to suffer or die, no human being, nor even an angel from heaven, could stop that suffering or death. Also, they were to know that literally every human being who ever lived or ever will live is a real sinner, worthy of hell. So a sin sacrifice was to be a reminder of this. For one had to always seek God’s grace, counsel and help to be more just and loving each day. Still, suffering did not always come because of one’s own sin, nor another person’s sin. Yes, at times, God ordained His own elect children’ flesh to suffer discipline for sin, but simply to train one’s spirit at other times, so one might walk more closely with God and love His creations, especially His people, in His truth.
However, although many of God’s people went to the Aaronic priests after being healed, not one of those priests, not even any of the high priests, ever miraculously healed any body or soul through his Page 241
own will, authority and power. Yes, God would hear the prayers of some loving priests or prophets.
But it was God Himself who healed, in His own name, through His own will, authority and power, in order to preserve the holiness of His name—so none of the human priests would slander His name by performing self-serving miracles to make themselves famous or rich at the expense of His truth.
And God has never allowed any human being, in all history, not in that day nor any time since then, to miraculously heal anyone in his or her own name. Only Jesus, in His own name, miraculously healed all whose spirits trusted His words as certain truth and placed their confidence in His name.
Thus, Jesus proved Himself to be God when He healed in His own name, through His own will and by His own power. He was a Priest indeed, even thee promised High Priest and Messiah, Immanuel, God in the flesh. Jesus did all that God commanded a High Priest to do, but in a much more real and profoundly more perfect way. Now the foremost command of God for all His priests was: “You are t o teach the children of Israel ” (Lev. 10:11, WEB, the Hebrew word yara means: “to cast; to guide, direct or instruct in a right way or course of action,” Wilson, Old Testament Word Studies). So Jesus taught. Moses also prayed to God that the Levitical priests “shall teach Jacob Your ordinances, and Israel Your Law” (Deut. 33:10, WEB). Then God commanded His people, “You shall come to the priests ... You shall do according to the decisions of the verdict which they shall give you from that place which Yahweh chooses [i.e., “that place” is the temple in Jerusalem]. You shall observe to do a ccording to all that th
ey shall teach you : according to the decisions of the Law which they shall te
ach you , and according to the judgment which they shall tell you ...” (Deut. 17:9-11, WEB). So the teachers of God’s Law and ways also were to judge His people, to lead as many of God elect as they could toward repentance into the truths they taught. And many elect would listen and repent, since Yahweh God said, “I w
ill make them hear M y words , that they may learn to fear Me all the days that
they live on the earth” (Deut. 4:10, WEB). Then the elect spirits He caused to hear and believe His wise words from the priests had to teach what they learned to their children as well, and hand His truths down to the next generation. Jesus fulfilled these laws of God as a true High Priest. Jesus was all that those human priests represented, even all that the Jerusalem temple signified. Jesus was thee Teacher, who alone rightly handled all God’s truths, who judged their sins through His teachings and led the elect to repentance, into truth, in order to heal the bodies, souls and spirits of His elect family.
So the first thing Matthew mentioned, the highest priority of Jesus’ service to His people, was to be
“teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom.” From the very beginning of His ministry, walking among us on earth, even to the end, Jesus went about telling all the called elect spirits in His church of Israel that their God was about to begin a new relationship with them.
God was about to establish His promised New Covenant with the church of Israel, through their Messiah. God, who is a Spirit, would now personally teach and train their spirits in the just, loving ways of His Law. Then each called elect spirit would be granted the ability to repent into that truth, so each would find a full forgiveness of their life-time of sins from Him. For God proclaimed: “I will put My Law in their inward parts, and i n their heart will I write it ; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people: and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know Yahweh; for they shall all know Me, from their least to their greatest, says Yahweh: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more” (Jer. 31:33-34, WEB). So God Himself promised to personally teach our spirits. We would no longer be taught by our neighbours and brothers, no longer by Levitical priests and rabbis. Rather, God promised that, in New Covenant times, He Himself would personally teach each individual man and woman in the priesthood of Israel. Then, after true repentance into His truths, and His forgiveness, He could draw Page 242
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near to us, even send Himself, His Holy Spirit, to dwell with our spirits in our hearts. This was the Gospel or “Good News” Jesus proclaimed, to all the elect whom God sent to their Teacher, to Jesus.
Consequently, it was because God made the spirits of those people hear and believe these teaching of Jesus, their God and true High Priest, that made Jesus also go about “healing every disease and every sickness among” those people. First Jesus proclaimed the real truth. Then He saw them repent into that truth, for the forgiveness of their sins, so their holy God Himself could then draw near to their sanctified spirits as their personal Teacher. After all this, Jesus healed them. Our God Jesus healed them because He forgave their sins through His love for them, because their elect spirits were now being personally taught and trained by their God, and because their utterly holy God could only draw near to them after they had been sanctified through repentance. Jesus healed their bodies, souls and spirits so they could live abundant, just, loving lives which served God and His creations, especially His other elect souls brought into the spheres of their lives. Yes, many were attracted to the teachings of Jesus by miracles. But Jesus did not do these miracles of healing and casting out demons to draw them to Him. Jesus was not a salesman attracting dupes to a car lot with brightly coloured flags and balloons. Rather, Jesus first taught the truths of God. Then He healed those who trusted His words of life as truths—although He also healed some who had not yet heard His teachings, those who had elect spirits bearing the potential to fully trust His words later, since Jesus could see their spirits in their hearts, and knew who would believe. Thus, Jesus healed because of the faith and potential faith in elect spirits, but it was the power of our God Jesus that did the healing, never a “power of faith.”
Jesus fully knew the spirits of God’s elect children, all their potential, but also all their sins. Jesus knew their spirits better than any of them knew their own spirits. For the Spirit of God in Jesus had created their spirits, each with a mind predestined to fulfill and crave a loving, just destiny in God’s service. And the Spirit in Jesus could see every moment of their lives instantly, because He could see all the past and all the future at once, as the Creator God who stood outside of all time, and because He could also read the minds of spirits, which remember literally everything, far more and more accurately than our mind of flesh ever can. Since Jesus could read all that was in the minds of their spirits, and because the Spirit of God in Jesus actually permeates all His creations at all times, Jesus knew all they had done in the past, and even all they would do in the future. Therefore, Jesus did not need to sell His teachings with miracles, as some seem to think. Rather, Jesus simply spoke the real truth, with the power to cut deeply into their hearts, all the way to the minds of their human spirits.
All the words of Jesus were “living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and ... able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12, WEB). Of course, the mind of a human spirit interfaces with the mind of flesh in the chamber of the soul, and figuratively dwells in the blood circulating through every part of the body, since the spirit is the life of the body. Thus, the home of the spirit is said to be the home of the blood, which is the heart. But a spirit is not a material thing. A spirit is not a part of the blood, or even of this material realm. The spirit is made of a spiritual substances belonging to the spiritual realm, where heaven and hell exist. And the words of Jesus spoke directly to the spirit, in a way that can even bypass the soul. The mind of the spirit receives and ponders His concepts about spiritual laws and ways, even as the mind of flesh is thinking about other things. So His words can cause one’s spirit to pull back, out from the chamber of the soul, into its own godly sorrow leading to full repentance into the truth. His spiritual words work “even to the dividing of the soul and spirit.”
Because God’s Spirit in Jesus has this ability to speak words which pierce the soul—reaching to the very spirit, causing the spirit withdraw from the soul and think thoughts that the mind of flesh is not allowed to hear, so the spirit might repent into the truth—Jesus had no need to sell His words with Page 243
flashy miracles. Jesus did not heal on a stage simply to impress people. Rather, Jesus personally spoke to all whom He healed, individually, to each elect soul in the fields, on the streets, on the floors of church buildings and in private homes. Then He personally healed them, wherever they were, whether alone or among others. For all His healings were done through His Spirit’s personal love for each one of them, even an eternal love for their very spirits, as an oldest Brother’s love for His cherished siblings. Absolutely nothing Jesus did was through the kinds of selfish ambition and greed we now see in churches today. Rather, Jesus selflessly served the elect spirits of His beloved brothers and sisters, and first with His words. Then He also served the needs of their suffering flesh.
That is the order in which the Messiah performed His works back then. And it is the very same immutable order in which His Holy Spirit performs His works upon our spirits and flesh today. First there is the awakening of an elect spirit to God and His teachings, then the other works. So there are no true healings or true miracles done through the words and hands of false Christians today, since all their healings and miracles lead to false teachings. To be a true miracle, it must lead to truth. Nor is there any “victory” over sin and evil coming from those preachers of false doctrines, since they do not lead their people to repent into the truth. In fact, they lead their people into the worship of false gods, into idolatry. For worship is esteem and service, and they take all esteem and all service for themselves, including the hard-earned money of the people. Then some even cause their people to worship the demonic spirits whom God sometimes allows to perform real signs and wonders, to draw away the spirits of the non-elect from His true churches. Those fake healers are actually doing none of their works according God’s truth and ways, and lie as they claim to come in Christ’s name, but actually teach and do all in their own names. And our God, Jesus, will never save nor heal any elect soul in their self-serving names, for the glory of their egos and deceiving words. Jesus will only glorify, will only grant His good opinion, to His real truths, to His own intended meanings of His own words, to all that He Himself causes reach our elect spirits, so our spirits can truly repent into those truths. Jesus only brings repentance into His real truth, to restore a spirit’s relationship with Him, our God. He only ever glorifies His own holy, just, pure, wise, loving name through His power to work wonders, so only His real truth and wisdom may be respected, completely free from any and all impurities, void of the vile fallacies of men and demons. We must be sure to never forget this!
False churches somehow think they can command or manipulate God into giving them a “victory”
over their perceived enemies, though many are not really their enemies at all. They want God’s power to be worked according to the sinful, fleshy lusts and wills of their flesh. Then they will even enable and empower psychopaths, like Hitler or Trump, so the power of their swords can be used to force their carnal wills upon those less evil than themselves. Above all, they intimidate outsiders like abortionists or homosexuals, and people of other races, creeds or political parties, all through their own carnal, wilful, godless power, since they are all puppets of Satan in his dark world order. In all this, they prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they actually hate the real Jesus, that they despise the real God, and that they have absolutely no saving faith in the words of Yahweh’s truth. None have ever allowed Jesus’ Holy Spirit to teach and train their spirits, not for a moment of their lives.
Against all this, and throughout all history, God has constantly reminded us, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit” shall evil be overcome (Zech. 4:6, WEB). Every time God has worked His just and loving power to perform miracles and wonders, it has always been to confirm His truth in a demonstration of His Spirit’s revealed loving will. It has never been to placate a fictional “free will”
in anyone’s mind of flesh. And our calling is to serve our God, not our flesh. Our goal is to have our own elect spirits taught and trained by the Messiah’s Holy Spirit, by God Himself, so we can then
“overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21). And that “good,” which overcomes evil, is the truth taught Page 244
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by our God. Then, only after He has taught and trained our spirits well, in His truth and wisdom, we might be sent out to do His works. But only a few will be sent to assist Him with His foremost works, which are the works of teaching God’s own interpretation of God’s own Word. And, if God calls some to teach His truth, He will also tell them what, when, where, how and to whom He sends them to teach. For all must speak the very words God commands the heart to teach and to those whom God has chosen to personally awaken and make able to hear His teachings, or else the words will not take effect. But, if His elect speak His commanded truth through love, His own power will confound the wicked and build truth as a solid foundation for loving justice in our lands. For God promised that His truth, sent through His chosen teachers, “shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing I sent it to do” (Is. 55:11, WEB).
Therefore, our very spirits look to our God when troubles come, and wait for His counsel. Then our spirits manage our lives according to God’s loving, just, wise counsel, while ignoring the violent and fascist human wills of flesh that place their hope in psychopaths. From Jesus’ counsel, we know that God’s elect can be found among people of every race, creed or political affiliation. Then we seek those elect, so we may reason together with them—while also realizing that the non-elect, especially psychopaths, can only be constrained by the force of the law, and that even some elect, those whose minds of flesh have cast their spirits into a wilful and self-induced captivity, must also feel the wrath of the law’s force, to free their spirits from their deluded flesh. Once God has taught and trained our spirits, we will also put the ones God has chosen into highest positions of service for our people, to manage the affairs of our states and communities. And we will know who God has chosen by the good and loving fruits of their elect spirits, by the way God has manifested His truth and ways in and through their lives for a lengthy period of time, in a way which makes them loving servants of all, in a way that has humbled their hearts. Thus, we will not seek power to intimidate anyone, but only the power to serve all wisely, where the greatest among us is God’s most just, wise, loving servant of all.
Everything in life depends on the real truths revealed by God, through His Word and His creation, through the teachings of His Holy Spirit granted directly to our spirits, which even includes all His revelations through truly scientific observations of His creations. Aside from these truths, there is no room in our lives for any human opinions from any minds of flesh. If there is any information or truth that God has not chosen to grant, we simply acknowledge our ignorance and carry on with the most loving, wise and just works we know how to do. Life always functions most effectively, freely and joyfully according to God’s omniscient revelations about the ways that He created all spiritual and physical realities to fulfill all His own good purposes. We need all these real facts and truths to even survive, much less to truly thrive in a full, abundant, gratifying, just and loving life. Delusions and lies can only weaken and destroy life. The arrogant opinions of men are just that, merely unreal delusions and lies, not the realities God created. So, above all, we need the genuine teachings of our eternal, holy High Priest, Jesus. His miracles will follow, not precede, that truth. Right now we need, more than anything else, the Holy Spirit of our God, Jesus, to teach and train our spirits in His ways.
It is the Messiah’s teachings of pure, just, loving truth for our spirits that will save us into eternal heaven, not the healing of our bodies of flesh, nor any kind of power to forcibly subdue terrorized masses, to make souls bow to some psychopathic human god’s will and lusts of the flesh. The true Gospel of Jesus the Christ is about the salvation of God promised in His New Covenant with Israel, with the Jews. And the principal promise of that covenant was that God Himself would personally teach and train our spirits to fulfill or rightly practise His intended applications of every aspect of His Law, that is, to write all His Law upon our spirits in our hearts, upon the minds of our spirits. So any institution or individual claiming to be a Christian, but failing to turn hearts directly to God, but Page 245
not seeking God alone for the saving works of His people, is a fake who works for the devil’s dark kingdom of the world order. And every one of us must obey Jesus, who commanded us, through His apostles: “Beloved, don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets [and false teachers claiming that their lies originate from God’s Word] have gone out into the world” (I John 4:1, WEB). All we say and do is ultimately allowed or even originates from our own spirits, through the beliefs or doubts of our spirits. Then those beliefs or doubts are instilled in us by other spirits, by either human or non-human spirits. Thus, all that is in the minds of our spirits originally came from either God or the devil. Consequently, we need to test everything in the minds of our spirits, to see which spirit created those concepts, especially the prophecies or teachings we act upon in our lives. Do those concepts originate from the imaginations of human minds of flesh, possibly from human minds controlled by Satan and his dark world order? Or did an elect human spirit, commanded by God, teach us those things? And, if concepts did come from an elect soul, then Jesus’ living Holy Spirit can confirm whether or not those concepts are true, since His Holy Spirit is always pouring concepts and confirmations into the minds of our elect spirits. And letting our elect spirits go directly to Jesus for this confirmation is the way Jesus commanded us to “test the spirits.”
This command to “test the spirits” comes from God’s Law, from the same Law which Jesus fulfills in and through all His elect. And that Law says that, even if a prophet or teacher gives us “a sign or wonder” (i.e., a proof of supernatural power or miracle), and even if that “sign or wonder comes to pass,” and is real, we are never to automatically believe the one who works those signs or wonders.
Rather, if that miracle worker is giving prophecies or teaching anything which does not align with the truths from God’s Word, we are to assign that one a place among the hypocrites, deceivers and servants of Satan. For that one is leading souls into the worship of another god, a false god, not the real God. After all, every attribute and facet of God’s character is known to us through His laws, prophecies, teachings and works. Therefore, if someone’s prophecies, teaches and does works in ways that are not like God’s ways, then that one is actually defining a god who is not God. That one is presenting a new and false god to us. Or, if God allows Satan to work miracles through that false prophet or false teacher, then the real god of that miracle-worker is actually Satan. And God actually does sometimes allow Satan to do actual miracles, to lead the non-elect away from His elect. For spirits born of Satan recognize their evil father in false prophets or false teachers, then endorse and enable their lies and delusions. But the elect soon catch on and utterly reject false prophets or false teachers, as well as their false gods, then either chase away or flee from those liars. Thus, God uses the devil to give “signs and wonders” for a good reason, to separate His elect children from the non-elect. “Yahweh your God is testing you, to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 13:3, WEB). God “tests” us as we test metal, to remove all the impurities. God allows Satan to deceive some souls, to draw non-elect souls out of His true church.
We need to know and remember this. For there are countless false prophets and false teachers in our churches today, but almost no real ones. We know this because they all contradict God’s laws and the harmonious, logical and utterly consistent teachings of His Word. Then each one will frequently contradict oneself, and each certainly contradicts teachings and prophecies from others in one’s own church, as well as those from other so-called “Christian” churches. Since we know that the one and only omniscient, omnipotent God cannot possibly contradict Himself, then we also know that all who contradict God’s laws and God’s Word, which both define God, neither knows the real God nor His Word, and are fakes, not sent by God. Most are not a true Christians at all, clearly not prophets or teachers whose elect spirits have been awakened, taught, trained and sent by God Himself. Thus, we should show no respect for them, except the common respect we give to all life. And, if they will Page 246
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not respond to the truth and repent, we must either send them away from us or leave them, as Jesus commanded: “Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind” (Mat. 15:14, WEB). Now let the spirits of all the elect first go to Jesus, and remain with Jesus all their lives. All the elect must now let the Holy Spirit of Jesus teach and train their spirits, write His Law upon their hearts. For the days are growing very dark and the time of the great dichotomizing of the world is fast approaching.
Now, aside from the true teaching and preaching of Jesus, Matthew tells us that He also went about
“healing every disease and every sickness among the people ... all who were sick, afflicted with various diseases and torments, possessed with demons, epileptics, and paralytics.” Likewise, even the most common members of the true church established by the apostles, before it was corrupted by the teachings of Middle Platonism, did the same kinds of miracles in Jesus’ name, that is, through the command, will, authority and power of Jesus, and through the same kind of loving compassion for each and every suffering individual being healed. Countless true Christians did such miracles in the name of Jesus, as a natural and spontaneous result of their spirits being personally taught and trained by the Holy Spirit of Jesus. They loved, they saw a great need, they prayed, and Jesus told the spirits in their hearts to command the miracles in His name. So they did, and they saw His power work in a way that did not surprise nor frighten them, but simply fulfilled their love for God and for the ones who received the benefits of those miracles. All was from their love for God and His love in them.
Then we must also consider all the miracles done in the Old Covenant times, and throughout all history, by God’s power working through elect human beings. So, long before and long after Jesus did those miracles in Galilee, myriads of miracles were done by God for untold numbers of human beings, and all to fulfill the loving desires of His elect, even some loving elect spirits whose minds of flesh were still pagan in thought and religion. And miracles will be done by God until the earth will end. For the end-time prophecies are about events which have not yet occurred, but will occur until the earth ends. And those prophecies say that that even the greatest miracles of prophecies will be worked by God, through His people, during the seasons before and forever after Jesus returns (e.g., Joel 2:27-29). On top of this, God commands: “Follow after love, and earnestly desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy” (I Cor. 14:1, WEB). Those “spiritual gifts” include prophecy, miraculous healings and all that Jesus did, for we will do His works as His body in His name. Now, since this command stands for all time, and because the love and power with which God performs these miracles has never diminished, and never will, miracles can still be worked through His people today. Yet those miracles must be done through the kind of just, pure love which fulfills and practises all God’s intentions of His laws and ways, the kind of love that can only be taught by Jesus’ Holy Spirit directly to elect human spirits. But now churches reject Jesus for human gods. Thus, not one learns this kind of love and there are no miracles. Until Jesus Himself once more teaches and trains each individual elect believer’s spirit again, so each learns to walk in His name again—not in one’s own name, nor in the name of a human god or institution—God will not grant any “spiritual gifts.”
Now consider how not one of Jesus’ contemporary enemies—none of those children of Satan who hated Jesus and were always willing to lie like their hellish father—ever dared to deny the claim that Jesus went about healing “all who were sick, afflicted with various diseases and torments, possessed with demons, epileptics, and paralytics.” Yet, if there were only a few people healed in Israel during that time, those fake gods of false churches surely would have fervently denied that Jesus healed them. They would have lied about Him healing people, even if they were eye-witnesses and had tangible evidence of those healings. For Jesus’ enemies from the fake churches always lied, were always trying to slander anyone who opposed them, since they only mutually glorified themselves.
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Therefore, the only possible reason that the vast majority of Christ’s worst contemporary enemies did not deny that He performed all those miracles would have been because there were so many, with so many eye-witnesses and so much evidence, that His enemies could not lie about them. If more than half the population of Israel personally experienced genuine healings and other miracles among their families and friends, and there were far too many respectable and honest people who could testify about those miracles, His enemies would look like fools if they denied the existence of those signs and wonders. So they took a different approach. They admitted that Jesus performed many powerful miracles, but slandered Him and the Holy Spirit in Him, by saying God’s power that worked those loving, compassionate miracles was not God’s power. They claimed that it was Satan in Jesus that worked those miracles, solely for the purpose of leading the people away from God.
Those religious liars from those fake churches blasphemed God in Jesus, by declaring that the loving, compassionate, healing power inside Jesus was demonic. But it was Satan himself, who was a psychopathic, lying and murdering spirit from the beginning, who had crawled into those religious liars and convinced their minds of flesh that only demons were gods, and the real God in Jesus was a demon. Of course, to get the people to also believe this lie, they then had to get Satan himself to also delude those people. For only powerful demonic delusions could cause the people to believe that the just, loving teachings of Jesus were Satanic, compared to their own unjust, exploitative, ruthless, irrational, arrogant teachings in their own fake churches. They needed the devil himself to prove that the honest God in Jesus was actually the lying devil. So, from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, until the day they finally succeeded in murdering His body, their mission was to simply repeat their lies over and over again, to stir up negative emotions in the carnal minds of their people, which would make them more vulnerable to the spirits of demons. They opened the doors for deluding spirits to enter the minds of flesh belonging to their people. And this has been the standard method used by Satan’s children ever since, to “prove” that Jesus taught false doctrines which led the people astray, away from the worship of the true God. Of course, those religious liars were experts in teaching false doctrines causing the people to commit idolatry, since they had been doing just that all their lives.
Yet it remained somewhat difficult to prove that our God Jesus, whose perfectly honest, balanced, harmonious and correct exegesis of His own words in the Scriptures, was a heretic promoting the worship of demonic pagan gods. But they tried, and their fake church offspring are still trying today.
Nevertheless, logically, their utter silence regarding the frequent claims that Jesus performed many thousands of miraculous works is telling. It may not be concrete evidence that Jesus did indeed work those miracles. However, it does indicate their lack of ability to disprove His miracles, in spite of their malicious motives and intentions against Him. So, in judgments of motives and intentions, that silence can be considered to be genuine evidence that they did indeed acknowledge the reality of those miracles performed by Jesus. And the fact that they actually made a false statement about Jesus performing some miracles through the power of Satan (e.g., Mat. 12:24; Mark 3:22; Luke 11:15), is further proof that Jesus’ enemies acknowledged that Jesus performed miracles. So we can conclude that those miracles, recording in all the Gospels, were indeed real historical facts. No matter how much our irrational and self-serving brains of flesh hate the fact that the almighty ruling God works among us here on earth, and interferes with our carnal desires, all the empirical evidence points to the fact that Jesus did actually perform countless miracles in those days. One would have to be a biased, irrational fool to deny it. For many honest, sane, rational, intelligent eye-witnesses from those ancient times wrote testimonies about Jesus performing those miracles, and even the dishonest witnesses were not able to deny those testimonies. All rational, honest, sane souls believe Jesus did perform thousands of powerful miracles, even in His own name, through His own power as our God.
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And people of that day, just like people today, knew the difference between fake and real healings.
Like us, they had con artists who pretended to heal, but simply psyched up the minds of flesh in the sick, until their bodies released certain chemicals which caused their minds to disregard the pain and other symptoms of their illnesses. Yet, as soon as those sick ones returned to a normal mental state, they would realize that they had not been truly healed at all. And this is how so many fake healers get the falsely healed to constantly return to them, to hear to their lies, or to listen to them on various forms of electronic media in our day. For those con artists must keep up the “hype,” to make their dupes “feel” the false healing again. Everyone knew about these kinds of scams in the days of Jesus as well. Yet Jesus truly healed thousands of souls from Galilee, and all the surrounding regions. For no one ever accused Him of falsely, temporarily or conditionally healing anyone. Rather, all told of real, genuine, permanent, unconditional healings of the “sick,” of those “afflicted with various diseases and torments,” and the physically disabled. Jesus truly restored their flesh to good health.
Back in that day, Matthew also differentiated between epilepsy (σεληνιάζομαι, “moon-struck,” a loss of control over the mind of flesh) and “demon possession” (δαιμονίζομαι, a demonic spirit ruling over one’s thoughts and life). For epilepsy was obviously purely physical, and did not cause sins, while demonic control was purely spiritual and drove souls to commit all kinds of sins through dark delusions and lies. Thus, most souls feared demonic control over their lives far more than epilepsy, or any other kind of physical problems with the mind of flesh. For most were far more intellectually advanced than we are now, in our primitive, barbaric, ignorant societies of shallow, pagan, irrational religion founded upon the worship of genitals and carnal desires. So, in their higher state of far more rational thinking, they were able to discern between the physical and spiritual, whereas most are far too irrational to be able to do so today. Of course, the ignorant humanists of that day considered both epilepsy and other physical problems in the brain of flesh to be forms of demon possession, while the primitive humanists of our day consider demonic control to be a physical problem with the brain of flesh. So there is a difference between the primitive, ignorant souls of our day and the ignorant, untaught souls back then. Ours are far more primitive and ignorant than the shallow souls back then.
Yet demonic control is still very real, and a big problem, one that cannot be healed by human power.
The fact is that demonic control is nothing like we see in the movies made by humanists. Nor do spirits, neither the Holy Spirit nor demonic spirits, ever “enter” and control a person through the release of body chemicals which affect the brain of flesh. Forms of active meditation, like jumping and dancing to the strong beat of some kind of music, may cause very strong feeling in the mind of flesh, and may even make one think that one is being overtaken by a “spirit.” But “spirits” cannot be manufactured by the brain of flesh. Rather, demonic spirits delude minds of flesh, by constantly bombarding the physical brain with lies, and often assisted by human liars. Then demons reinforce their lies by raising up irrational fears in minds minds of flesh, and usually seek the assistance of their human dupes to do this as well. Demonic control, sometimes leading to demon possession of a mind of flesh (where the possessed one’s spirit no longer can exert any control over the mind of flesh in the chamber of the soul), is all about delusions, specifically the kinds of delusions which either cause self-destruction or the destruction of other innocent souls. But other ways of psyching out the mind of flesh, such as forms of meditation, fasting, drugs and so on, either cause very little harm to anyone, or does so incidentally, without malicious motives or intentions of that person’s own spirit.
To be able to recognize a demonic spirit and its control over a person, one first needs to know at least a little about God and His spiritual truths, about how God and elect spirits truly and justly love. Once one can recognize these realities, one can begin to recognize how demonic spirits take control of the thoughts and lives of some people, to varying degrees. Demonic control first manifests with a higher Page 249
awareness of spiritual thoughts, motives and forces in others, and works to oppose, slander, confuse or obfuscate spiritual truths about God, or God’s words, or God’s works, or God’s servants. Usually, the spirit of a demon, as it controls a person’s thoughts and life, will instantly recognize when God, or even another competing demon, dwells in a total stranger’s heart. This is an amazing ability, fascinating to see. Two total strangers will enter a room and one will immediately identify the other as a sworn enemy, as one whom he or she hates with a passion that normally takes years to build up.
A demon will cause its dupe to attack a stranger with venomous rage, totally without any physical provocation at all, before even being introduced to that stranger, even a stranger who outwardly dresses and looks like the person being demonically controlled. Demonically controlled souls will lock eyes with true Christian stranger, then either fearfully flee or attempt to somehow destroy that believer if it feels trapped. Or a far-right demonically controlled person will detect a far-left stranger in the room, and both will claim that territory for themselves, then fight to possess the place, verbally or even through physical violence. And the normal people in the room are left wondering how the bitter quarrel started, and how those two demon-controlled strangers managed to despise one another so instantaneously, with such extreme inner spiritual power, though neither one ever knew the other.
Some spirits, without the help of a body’s eyes, can see other spirits. God’s spirit, the spirits of elect angels and the spirits of demons are all capable of seeing through the veils of material substances like our bodies of flesh. Thus, when a person’s mind of flesh is demonically controlled, that person often has an uncanny ability to see and acknowledge spirits in others, or acquire other kinds of real information that does not come from any physical sources. And the demonic spirit always causes the person it controls to speak destructive words, as well as commit devious sins, through dark delusions and lies. For Satan emulates God, but in an opposite way. For, when the Holy Spirit of God enters our hearts, He never “takes control” like demonic spirits do. Rather, God enters our hearts as our personal, compassionate, caring Teacher and Counsellor, to guide our spirits into maturity and wise thinking through love. Jesus never enters us in a way where our elect human spirits lose control. And God’s Spirit in us will cause us to speak wise, effective words that build up loving justice and help others for their good, as well as stir us to do beneficial works based upon the reality of His truths.
But demonic spirits only cause their victims to spew out slanderous lies and to crush all the good and beneficial works and words from God. Then, at times, you might see a total possession of a soul by a demon, where both the victim’s mind of flesh and mind of the spirit are completely unable to think or do anything on their own. An example of this might be Kenneth Copeland, who is now so evil that there is almost no input from either his spirit or brain of flesh in his life. But those cases are rare.
So let us not be superstitious nor arrogant about these demons. Some think they cast demons out by reading or quoting the Bible, or even by showing them this physical book, the paper and ink on which words from God are written. And that is nonsense! For all demonic spirits have read and memorized all versions of the Bible, and can quote anything in it, albeit in ways that totally distort the real meanings. Demons can quote the Bible far better than any human preachers can. So they welcome ridiculous attempts to cast them out by such means. Absolutely no physical object—like a Bible, a cross, a so-called “holy” object, or anything else—ever scares a demon, not in the least. All those things do is provide a means for those demons to further delude the ones who superstitiously think they can defeat demon spirits with physical items. Then there are those who think they can overcome demons with the fictitious power of their own “free will” in their god-like minds of flesh.
And that is laugh, since it is demonic spirits themselves who cause human dupes to believe that stupid delusion. In reality, human wills are completely powerless before demons. If God allows it, a demon can manipulate a mind of flesh just like our hands can manipulate and shape soft clay into Page 250
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anything we want. Then, if an infantile mind of a human spirit attempts to defeat a demon, it is like a naked and unarmed baby trying to attack an extremely fit, strong and perfectly trained nine-foot-tall soldier dressed in full armour and carrying the most deadly weapons known to mankind. A human spirit can never overpower nor control a demon. Only our God Himself can make a demon tremble.
So, when we need to confront demons or the demonically controlled, we need our God to be inside us and ruling over our lives, as our Father and our Oldest Brother. For only God can protect us and defend us from demons. Satan and his demons fear God, never us. We need Jesus as our personal Lord, as the only Teacher of our spirits, as our King, Prophet and loving High Priest. We need Jesus to send His Holy Spirit into our hearts, to teach and train our infantile human spirits, and to prevent demons from deluding our souls. For we are all extremely foolish, infantile, weak, little children.
Then, when we face demonically controlled souls, we must realize that the human spirits inside them are all very foolish little children as well. And some demonically controlled souls are God’s elect, with spirits born of God, in His image, as His eternal children, as our own siblings in God’s family.
In fact, Satan strives to take control of elect minds of flesh more than non-elect minds of flesh, since the non-elect are already like him and are already willing to do his bidding. Yes, some demonically controlled souls have non-elect spirits born of Satan. But all Satan’s children are already inherently obedient to his lying, murdering spirit. So demons do not need to deceive and control their thoughts much at all, unless they want to do extraordinary evil works through them. Rather, the greatest and most coveted victims of demons are the elect. There is nothing a demon loves more than to take over an elect person’s mind of flesh, while suppressing and darkening that ones infantile spirit, virtually imprisoning that one’s elect spirit and forbidding it to utter a single word in the chamber of the soul.
Thus, since many demonically controlled or possessed souls are God’s elect, we must try to avoid fighting them with weapons of the world, in ways that kill or harm them. For we do not need to overcome their flesh, just the demonic spirits that have taken their flesh captive. But only God can drive out those demonic spirits from them. But God will only do that if the spirits of those elect are willing to heed and accept His Holy Spirit through faith. God will only cast out demons if those elect spirits trust Him and His words, so His Holy Spirit can enter their hearts and souls to protect them from those demons. Otherwise, if God cast out the demons, and those elect continued to life carnal, selfish, loveless, sinful lives, then God would soon need to hand them over to the demons again, for the deluding of their minds and the destruction of their flesh. Consequently, our first priority is to pray for our God to allow the dissemination of His real biblical truths in our lands. Then as the oppressed spirits of the demonically controlled and possessed elect hear and respond to those truths, God will cast the demons out of them. So the work of true Christians is to allow our spirits to listen to Christ’s Holy Spirit, to heed His true teachings and do His works of training. Then His power will overcome demons. And we can sometimes participate in these works of our God, for our training. So we can also be those “throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (II Cor.
10:5, WEB). When the elect abide in Christ—when elect spirits quiet their minds of flesh in the chambers of their souls, and humbly seek Jesus, as little children looking to their Teacher—our one God will warn our spirits about demons and demonically controlled people, then possibly command our spirits to warn or cast out those demonic spirits. But only Jesus can nullify the power demons use against us. Never be so arrogant as to think humans can conquer demons with their “free will.”
We must remember that demons are spirits, just as God is a Spirit. There is nothing physical about either God or demons. So physical things, words or rituals cannot affect either God or demons. Yet the main interest of demonic spirits is to be gods who suppress or completely oppress elect human Page 251
spirits, by controlling their minds of flesh and their entire lives. For, because demons were created without the attribute of love, their lovelessness always translates into lawless attempts to become gods ruling over their own existences and over God’s creations. Controlling like gods is the passion of demons, which also involves the god-like feeling of being able to destroy God’s creations through their own power, according to their own wills. And, in all this, those loveless demons will never consider the needs or desires of anyone else. In other words, they are the extreme opposite of the real Creator God, since God’s principal attribute is love. Because God loves, He is very much concerned about the needs and desires of all His creations—as is evidenced by the way He designed, created and makes effective all the principles governing both physical and spiritual life, always for our good.
Thus, all we can do is live through faith, through the trust of our elect human spirits in the love, words and power of God’s Spirit. All the physical things, like good translations of Bibles and rituals performed by robed men, are totally worthless. What God wants us to do is to quiet our mind of flesh, such as by entering our rooms and shutting the door, so we can allow our spirits to open up to the input of God’s Holy Spirit, to let His Spirit pour concepts into the minds of our spirits. And, if our spirits are disquieted, we allow our spirits to pour their troubled thoughts into His Spirit, with wordless concepts that communicate much more than we ever could in words of human languages.
Then God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, will respond, pouring His answers back into our spirits, with complete concepts explaining all, making sense of all. And we will take His written Word into that room as well, begging Him to help our understanding of those words. If we do this, He will not disappoint, but will reveal much, and more as we become ready to receive more. For this is the whole purpose of granting us life on earth. The Spirit of our Father sent us here so our elect spirits could be taught and trained until we know and rightly apply His laws and principles, so we can learn to effectively love others, since we were born with His same inherent attribute of love in our spirits.
This teaching and training in the school of the earth, with all its predestined events, is designed to prepare us for the day when we shall all be set free in our homeland of heaven. Our heavenly Father is causing our infantile spirits to learn His ways and become more like Him, educating our spirits until we can spontaneously speak and work beside Him in heaven, and lovingly serve multitudes of other creatures there. Thus, as our spirits mature here on earth, we also granted some aspects of that freedom we shall have in heaven. As our spirits learn to make right decisions, through wise love, God hears our prayers and grants us our requests, more and more throughout our lives on earth. For, the more our decisions become just, equitable and wisely loving, the more those decisions conform to God’s will and build up His kingdom on earth. And God has predestined a huge number of our right prayers to be granted, according to His will. God has even predestined the granting of very many miracles that we request from Him through the freed wills of our spirits. If our spirits mature enough, God will command our spirits to prophecy, heal and do impossible things in His name. But it is for freedom that God teaches and trains our spirits, so we will say and do all from our hearts in a truly just, wise and loving way, for the good of all. God only controls until He can set free, until we can be trusted to say and do what is good, until all is spontaneously said and done through our love.
Therefore, demons are not just interested in causing physical destruction, not solely the pains and deaths of flesh, although those are always side effects of their spiritual works. Still, the principal interest of all demons is to suppress and oppress the spirits of God’s elect children, to become the lords of their lives, which they do by influencing or controlling thoughts and beliefs in their minds of flesh. Likewise, this is the same ultimate goal of the non-elect, Satan’s children. All they truly want is to gain enough power to become lords of their own lives, and lords of all the people and things in their lives. Society and realities, and ultimately God Himself, will always limit the selfish ambitions Page 252
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of the non-elect. And God definitely limits works of Satan and the demons. Yet all want to be gods, ruling over their own lives and all else, none have any justice, wisdom or love in them to limit their own desires with tempering compassion or a concern for the future welfare of all existence. None possess an inner conscience of the spirit. Therefore, without God and His elect placing responsible limitations on them, and threatening them with consequences for their ruthless actions, the non-elect and demons would destroy the world and themselves as well. This is why the elect must learn to heed their Creator God, take responsibility, nullify the works of demons, and build God’s kingdom.
The elect children of God must always interfere with the desires of the non-elect. For allowing any human being to become a god will always result in unjust, inequitable, selfish, ruthless effects and destruction. Now, all the spirits of the elect inherently oppose all this. But, if the elect spirits are suppressed and silent, allowing themselves to walk according to their minds of flesh, they will partake in all that evil effects and destruction by default, because their minds of flesh are amoral and foolish. And this is why demons and their non-elect children are always turning the focus of the elect upon physical, carnal things in fake religion, upon things like sacraments, rituals, active and passive meditation, church buildings, human heads of churches, dietary laws, art, music, discipline of the body, and so on. For demons and the non-elect must keep elect spirits dulled and deaf to God and the concepts of truth that His Spirit teaches to all elect spirits. For demons and the non-elect want all to live only for the purpose of saying and doing whatever they desire as gods in control of all, no matter how much their rule as false gods will harm or kill all. So let the elect be aware of this. Yes, there is nothing wrong with food, clothing, physical buildings, art, music or anything physical. However, all must be limited and controlled for the benefit of all, through God’s wise, just, loving laws and ways.
Then, as soon as elect spirits begin to wake and hear the Spirit of their Creator God, demons and their human brood will strive to suppress and oppress those elect, or drive them away, and will surely try to kill their physical bodies if they are able. For the non-elect will not tolerate any elect who do not remain slaves of fleshy desires, who do not allow their minds of flesh to be the lords of their lives. They will even “befriend” the elect who live in lies and sins as they do, with the enslaved
“freedom” of doing whatever the flesh desires. Of course, this friendship is highly conditional and is not real love. But, if this fake friendship is all that the elect can find in life, they will cling to it, and give the non-elect an opportunity to place the chains of that fake friendship around their necks, to enslave them, to get those elect to esteem and serve them. As for the elect who are not their slaves, those non-elect, thinking they are gods with the “right” dictate laws, will try to terrorize them into obedience. This inner spiritual darkness, this delusion of “owning” and “controlling” other human siblings and God’s creations, is the most cherished and highly valued aspect of the non-elect. So they will kill and die to preserve that delusion, although it is unreal and always end up destroying even themselves. So all physical tragedies perpetrated upon others and themselves through all the deeds of the demons and non-elect upon the earth are effects of spiritual desires to be gods. The troubles and suffering on this earth are not the causes of themselves. Therefore, to stop that evil on earth, we must not war against the effects, while leaving the causes to cause ever more evil effects. Rather, we need to limit and control the causes, so those causes can stop causing those evil effects. The foremost works of the elect must be to shine the light of truth which exposes and dissolves the delusions and lies of wicked spirits, to crush all that promotes god-like “rights” to false authority, fake ownership and lawlessness. We must replace the works of demons with the works of Jesus. God’s Word tells us:
“To this end the Son of God was revealed, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (I John 3:8, WEB). So His purpose is also our purpose, in Him. And the principal works of Satan strive to take authority and control away from God and His servants. So, to undo or destroy those works of the Page 253
devil, we do the opposite. That is, our purpose is to place all authority and control back into the hands of God, who does His works through His humbled servants that will obey His just, equitable, loving commands. At times, this might involve some physically fighting against evil effects and the ones who cause them. However, our main goal is to eliminate spiritual causes, to submit to our God Jesus, so He can empower us to cast out and bind demonic influences upon all thoughts and desires.
We gain the victory of freedom in Christ through the just love that He teaches directly to our spirits, as we practise that love wisely, in the way His Holy Spirit trains us to apply it. Therefore, above all, our spirits seek Jesus, our God. And the main motive of our spirits in seeking Jesus is to learn to love Him, all people and His creations. We eagerly and zealously desire to love. And, first and foremost, we want to love our God, our Father, Jesus and His Holy Spirit, who are all one. For our love for Him grows into our love for His creations, especially our elect brothers and sisters. Then, as we learn to love, we also want Him to work acts of love though us, for the sakes of our loved ones. So we also want His spiritual gifts to be freely given to us, to work through us, especially His grace in granting us His words of prophecies, which reveals the thoughts of human spirits, so we might free those spirits through His truths, in ways that will eliminate the control of demonic lies over their lives and cause them to speak and work for God and His creations, together with us in this family of our God.
So we do not imagine how wonderful it would be to impress crowds from a stage set above that common rabble, if we could only magically perform physical miracles of healing and other powerful miracles. For all such things are abominations in the eyes of God, and work only deceptions, lies, delusions and sins in the name of demons who control the vain souls that do such things. Rather, our goal is to have our elect spirits so well-taught and well-trained by Jesus that we can truly love in a thoroughly wise, just, effective way, so we can serve the kingdom of the heavens ruled by our God, Jesus. As we learn to serve, if it is the will of our Lord Jesus, we will also work His power. Jesus will work through us, for the sakes of our suffering brothers and sisters, through His love for them and through our love for them. Predestined miracles will happen, as we stand by and work together in Him. We will go to one another personally, lift our elect spirits up to our God Jesus, and see Him make us holy, set apart for His good and loving purposes, through His healings and other miracles.
All these spiritual gifts from God must be worked personally for the individuals we love in Him, and only as an effect of the power worked in His name (i.e., by His will, authority, power and command).