“He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. [The only reason the elect were chosen for salvation by God, even before He created anything that exists, is so their eternal, elect spirits might become forever holy and blameless, together with Him, in heaven. This implies, of course, that our temporary lives of our flesh on earth must have been created for the training of the eternal lives of our spirits, to help make us ready for that task, and that our readiness must be perfected and completed in a higher school, on the judgment day. Earth is a training ground for elect or chosen spirits, a place designed to educate elect spirits, particularly the spirits of God’s children, so all can become truly holy and blameless. All the elect begin their lives on earth as infantile, unholy and sinful beings, with infantile spirits in weak flesh, where all these spirits were destined to go through a process of learning to be set aside for God’s purposes and always choose just love over loveless sin, a process that will use our experiences on earth now and during the final judgment day, when the elect will be completed and perfected. And God ‘chose us in Him,” that is, in Jesus. Jesus, our one and only God, came to us in the flesh, to walk among us and teach us, to facilitate this process. Our spirits are taught, trained and shaped in the sphere of Jesus Christ’s love, power and influence. Also, because God chose all those whom He would save ‘before the foundation of the world’ (which was before He even began to create the material universe), we did not first choose God. It is not through a supposed, so-called ‘free will’ that we caused God to save us. We are not granted salvation according to our choices. Consequently, all who think they are ‘saved’ because they chose God through their own wills and physical actions—like partaking in magic ‘sacraments’ performed by the dirty hands of sinful men, or by reciting a ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ through ‘sincere’ emotions of their flesh—are deluded and wrong. Yes, some of those deluded souls in false churches do have elect spirits that actually choose the real God, and choose to heed Christ’s Holy Spirit, rather than the human lords and gods of those false churches. But this is only because Jesus has begun to awaken their spirits. Some souls in those false churches are actually God’s true elect children and are indeed being saved, since they have spirits being taught and trained by the Holy Spirit of Jesus, and are indeed learning to become truly ‘holy and blameless’ through a wise, just, God-like love. But those false churches actually hinder the learning of their spirits, and those elect only begin to know and love the real God, who is a Spirit, and only because the real God first chose and first loved their spirits. Those elect are being saved only because God, Jesus and their Father, chose to love and save them, long before they existed. And many other elect are now being saved throughout the world, elect souls who also have minds of flesh being deceived by the delusions and lies of other false religions. Regardless of whether an elect soul is trapped in the lies of fake Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, atheistic secular humanism or any other false religion, that one’s elect spirit will eventually be saved by the will, resolve, omnipotent power, omniscient wisdom and irrevocable love of Jesus. Naturally, they will not be entirely perfected while living on this earth. For their salvation must be completed on the judgment day. But it is the inescapable destiny of every elect soul to become utterly ‘holy and blameless’ in the eyes of God. This also implies that there is only one way we can actually detect those who are truly God’s elect. We can only distinguish elect souls from the non-elect souls through a wise and correct analysis of the spontaneous fruits of their spirits. The elect are those who spontaneously do at least a few deeds which are entirely ‘holy and blameless’—who spontaneously do at least some God-like, just, wise and loving works through absolutely pure motives and intentions of the heart. For the elect are the only ones whose spirits inherently long to become ‘holy and blameless’ in the eyes of their heavenly Father, perfect in His just, pure kind of love, even if all mankind rejects them for this desire and those works. All elect are like this because Jesus created their spirits to be this way and is now working upon their spirits in their hearts, shaping the wills of their spirits to desire more holy, just love. Since literally all Jesus’ works are effective, at least some blameless holiness will manifest through the love Jesus produces in all elect spirits. God only grants this kind of holy, just love to His elect children. Thus, if we are confident that we see a spirit who has been learning this kind of just, pure, God-like love, we can also be confident that this person must be one of our elect brothers or sisters. Since Christ’s teaching of a right understanding of His intent for the application of His Law helps us to correctly identify, analyze and prove the verity of that kind of love, it can help us identify those who are truly our elect brothers and sisters, those with spirits born in the image of God.] “In love He predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved. [God, our heavenly Father, created and predestined literally all the elect for ‘adoption’ as His children, where the Greek word translated as ‘adoption’ (υἱοθεσία) indicates that we are adopted as heirs (i.e., as ‘sons’ who inherit, but where ‘sons’ is used as a gender indefinite term). At the present time, elect human beings have spirits born of God, breathed directly from His Spirit, created in His image. So all elect spirits are already His children. But the elect on earth also have unruly bodies of flesh. And their flesh is not eternal. So flesh is not heavenly, not a child of God. The flesh is merely a temporary instrument used for the training of our spirits. Not until all elect human beings have been granted new, spiritual, eternal bodies that are fit for all of heaven’s rigours, will the whole of their beings be fully God’s children. So this granting of spiritual bodies, along with the perfecting works of Christ on the judgment day, will be the ‘adoption’ of the elect as God’s children. These words from God (vv. 4b-5), in their original language, begin with an aorist participle form of the word προορίζω. This word indicates an act of effectively fencing in, to limit and direct the movement and actions, that is, to ‘predestine’ lives. Its aorist participle form also indicates a fully completed act of predestining. So this is not talking about foreknowing the events of lives. Besides, the only reason God can possibly foreknow the events of lives, even all lives in all history, is because He also predestined literally all the events in all lives that have ever existed or ever will exist on the face of this earth. In today’s terminology, we would say that, at the beginning of all things, God created a segment of space-time consisting of all history, from the first moment to the last moment of the existence of the material universe. Every cause and effect in all material time was created at once. Even the first six days of the material creation’s time, while God created life and spread out the stars, were created and fully predestined in the time before the time of the material space-time continuum began. So God predestined all that occurs in our lives, even all His own actions within this space-time continuum, so those events will collectively work together according to the will of His Holy Spirit, who enters this material space-time continuum, in order to do the teaching and training for our eternal salvation. We must understand that God, who still exists in an ‘eternal now’ outside of His creation of time, could never really foreknow any specific event unless He predestined that specific event to occur. Yes, with enough knowledge, even an intelligent human being can guess what generally and approximately might happen, and may be somewhat right at times. But, if there were any chance of any change caused by the wills of any other beings, even an absolutely perfect intelligence could never predict or foreknow any events far into the future, and definitely would not be able to know any details about those distant future events. Even a perfect intelligence would only be able to base his or her predictions on a knowledge of past and present information alone. But one tiny change could cause a series of effects which could radically alter the entire future. Thus, even a total knowledge of the past and present, together with an ability to instantly process rational conclusions, is not enough to reliably and accurately predict specific details of events far into the future, or even whether or not any kind of events will occur, not if even one or two small things were left to chance at the present time. All predictions would be wrong about some details, and most would be wrong about the occurrence of the general types of events themselves. Yet all of God’s prophecies about future events, the ones that have since come to pass hundreds of years after those prophecies were given, even prophecies containing many specific details about events occurred hundreds of years after those prophecies were given, have all proven to be entirely correct in every detail, without any errors at all. For instance, God granted Daniel a prophecy at the beginning of the sixth century BC, where God revealed over a hundred relevant details about the Ptolemaic and Seleucid wars. Then those wars, and all the details of that prophecy, occurred in the middle of the second century BC, just as God said it would. Every detail proved true, which is utterly impossible, if anything at any time was left to chance or could be changed by the wills of men or other beings. Thus, since God has this kind of accurate foreknowledge, we must conclude that God predestined all things. A completely omniscient, omnipotent Creator of all things could not help but predestine literally all things and, thus, foreknow literally all the details of all the events of the entire history of the earth, from its beginning to its end. Since God has unlimited intelligence and power, He did not have the power to stop Himself from creating all material things to act and react in precisely the way He willed all things to act and react. God could not stop Himself from predestining all that would occur in the material universe from its beginning to its end, or God would need to oppose Himself, which is impossible for God to do. For, to oppose oneself, one must not know something and correct oneself, whether or not one actually does not know that thing or is just pretending not to know that thing. And God cannot be ignorant about anything, nor lie about being ignorant about anything, since God is totally honest and omniscient. Now consider how God ‘predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ.’ Is this kind of predestination remotely any of the Greco-Roman philosophies regarding determinism or myths about fate? No! Biblical predestination is totally different, a completely unique way of seeing existence. For biblical predestination states that all the elect spirits, even plant and animal spirits, are all born ignorant and infantile, then shaped and developed into maturity through their predestined experiences of life on earth. And only human spirits are prone to sin, because of a body of amoral flesh and due to a knowledge that is able to discern between basic good and basic evil. Of course, all spirits bound to earthly flesh are only allowed to be conscious of directional space-time in the material universe. But all will be granted new ‘bodies’ in heaven, bodies made of a new, freeing, spiritual substance once they get to heaven, where time in heaven is not actually predestined, but builds up, by placing event upon event, like placing one brick upon another. Heaven unleashes the minds of our eternal spirits, so our spirits can more easily manage and use our new spiritual bodies for God’s purposes. All elect human spirits, in the very end, will live in heaven, where no sin is permitted. So all elect human spirits from earth must first become perfectly knowledgeable, wise, holy and blameless before they can enter heaven. And this is exactly what the judgment day will accomplish. On that day, Jesus will judge all the elect, by teaching and training them to be completely righteous, to love in a perfectly pure, God-like way. On that day, which may be equivalent to about a thousand earthly years, or more, all elect human spirits will repent into all the truth that Jesus teaches them, and will mature into the holy and blameless children of God. All will become holy and blameless enough to be worthy heirs of their Father’s eternal kingdom in heaven, so all can joyfully work alongside Jesus and the Father to fulfill their eternal destinies in ways that truly gratify their hearts, so they can judge (teach, train, correct, straighten, counsel and comfort) the heavenly angels, as well as all the other creatures in heaven. For here the Word of God declares, in no uncertain terms, that these eternal lives in heaven are ‘predestined,’ and will exist ‘according to the purpose of His will,’ according to the will of God who cannot be hindered or stopped in anything He resolves or promises to do. Therefore, absolutely nothing regarding our own salvation is left to be determined according to the purpose of any human will. And the process of our sanctifying salvation can only be for ‘the praise of His glorious grace.’ Thus, there is nothing left for the praise of any human evangelist or church headed by human lords, nor for any other entity. There is not one thing that we might gain which is not entirely from God, our Father. All we receive is ultimately related to God’s purpose of saving us into His heaven, since all is predestined. Absolutely everything we have in life is through the unearned, unmerited grace of God. And our heavenly Father predestined literally all earthly things for a very good reason, for the same reason that all truly loving earthly parents strive to predestine, as much as they are able, the lives of their own beloved children. The kind of predestination that the Bible teaches is not about a god playing with living toys for its entertainment, as the Greeks and Romans teach, since they worship impassive gods or psychopathic human gods. Rather, biblical predestination is about our Father lovingly teaching and training His children, the spirits born of His very Spirit, for their own benefit, so His children might grow up to become loving and joyful like Him. This is indeed a ‘glorious grace,’ of which we have a very good opinion. This salvation into a sinless, eternally holy life in heaven is only through His grace alone, His predestined heavenly blessings within the sphere of all Jesus says and does for all of us.]
“... In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. [Here Paul writes to the elect who are still living on this earth. Yet he uses an aorist passive form of the verb κληρόω here. In other words, he is saying that the elect already have inherited our salvation into heaven, as a completed action in the past. He then repeats that this salvation, which involves being made holy and blameless, was ‘predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.’ Clearly, if God ‘works all things according to the counsel of His will,’ and the purpose of our lives is to have our spirits taught and trained until our spirits become holy and fit for heaven, then absolutely no deed is left to be worked by our own wills for ourselves, nor by the will of anyone else. Absolutely nothing can be done for our salvation by ourselves, by any other human being, by any church or by any angels, since we have all been predestined for salvation by God, according to His purpose which He willed from the beginning. No man’s will is able to save himself or anyone else. Thus, man’s will is not ‘free’ and autonomous, not able to make himself into whatever he wants to be. Rather, his will is merely created and shaped to think exactly what he thinks at all times, according to the will of His Creator, God. Literally all a person’s knowledge or ignorance, rationality or irrationality, as well as every desire and all else involved with decision-making of one’s mind and will, comes from others. So others bind and control literally all one’s decisions, directly or indirectly, causing one’s own will to be a ‘slave’ to them. Then the wills of all those others are themselves bound and controlled by others, where literally all wills are ultimately bound and controlled by God Himself. Yet, for the elect spirits breathed and born from the very Spirit of God, their Father, there is a very good ‘purpose’ for all this. This life on earth is granted to the elect by the grace of the Father of our spirits, so He can shape the wills of our spirits until we become the worthy and fit heirs of His kingdom in heaven, so His children might learn to serve the creatures of heaven through love, in the same way He does. For God’s will is to justly and equitably serve all His creations through His just, pure love. Consequently, like any good human father, God predestined the education and training of the lives of His children. God created the school of the earth for them, designed the curriculum that each individual needs for the full and plenary development of his or her unique spirit’s destiny, and is preparing each for a specific kind of eternal work in heaven, building up joy and great satisfaction in each, because He created each with attributes that strongly desire to do the unique kinds of works each was predestined to do. This teaching and training will not be completed until the end of the judgment day, but is all totally predestined and cannot possibly be stolen from any of the elect. And take note of how Paul speaks about these elect souls in Ephesus as ‘the first to hope in Christ,’ and said their hope was ‘to the praise of His glory.’ Paul knew that most of elect on earth, throughout the past and in the future, would never, through their minds of flesh, consciously know Jesus as their personal Saviour. But the true elect of the apostolic churches of the first century, existing for a brief time in history, were the ‘first’ to know about this salvation consciously, in their minds of flesh. The knowledge of the true Gospel had been revealed through Jesus the Christ, both to the minds of their spirits and to their minds of their flesh. They were the first to know and live within the revelation of the genuine, real Gospel of salvation. But possessing this conscious knowledge about how Jesus saves did not cause Jesus to save them. Their knowledge of this salvation was not given to them because they called upon God to give it to them, since they did not even know any of this truth about God and His salvation before they willingly accepted it, and their will to accept this truth was in them already, before they willed to accept it. Someone had shaped the wills of their spirits and made them willing to accept it before they did so. God did. God created their spirits with attributes that inherently desired truth, then shaped the wills of their spirits until they gladly heard and accepted that Gospel. Thus, Jesus shall save literally all the elect spirits existing throughout the earth’s history, from its beginning to its end, and cannot fail to do so. For He saves whomever the Father predestined to save. And, since Jesus saves, and man does not save, salvation clearly is not accomplished simply through a knowledge of how Jesus works it. Yes, this knowledge brings a hope that we would not otherwise have. And this knowledge, with its motivating hope, also spurs on our process of salvation, making it more effective during our time on earth. This knowledge causes the minds of our spirits to become eager to heed the Holy Spirit of Jesus, and more aware of the need for our spirits to wrest the control of our lives away from the minds of our flesh. Nevertheless, this gift of hope, through God’s loving grace, was also predestined for the elect who receive it. Yet the Person of Jesus has always saved and will continue to save all the elect, even those who do not yet have this hope, who do not even know the name ‘Jesus.’ For it is the power and authority of His name which saves us (Acts 4:12), not a magic use of the word ‘Jesus.’ Even the scattered elect who do have never heard a single word about ‘Jesus,’ or have heard only lies about Jesus, do have the real Spirit of Jesus teaching the minds of their spirits about His loving ways, creating an inner conscience for each of them. With or without the Bible, Jesus will save literally all the elect. But God Himself did give us this gift of His Law, His teachings and His wisdom, complete with examples of how He applies His teachings. God directed the writings of those who consciously knew Him, who also knew how He saves. God dictated His truths to their spirits. God gave us this Bible ‘to the praise of His glory’ or ‘praise of His good will toward us,’ so some elect might recognize all that He is doing within their hearts and joyfully hope in this truth.]
“In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory [As our spirits hear the word or reasoning of truth with understanding, we know we are standing within Christ’s presence, power and love. It is His Holy Spirit in us. And our spirits begin to place trust and confidence in Him. We begin to realize all He doing inside our hearts, and know He cannot fail to complete those works. And, when we consciously realize that this process has begun to occur inside us, we also see that we have been permanently ‘sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,’ marked as citizens of God’s kingdom, though we are very dull, foolish, ignorant and poor disciples, even loveless in our flesh. How often do we fall back into the darkness of lies and delusions. Yet the moments of utter peace, reality, hope and clarity tell us that this is what we will soon inherit and possess uninterrupted for all eternity, during and after that final day at the gates of heaven. It also becomes clear to us that the deluded, manipulated, natural citizens of the kingdom of Satan’s world order, including those found in the false churches, are not truly like us. The core desires of their non-elect spirits seek what we hate, and hate what we seek. So they can never be real citizens of God’s kingdom, even though God’s kingdom encompasses and rules over literally all other kingdoms, and calls all those other kingdoms subject kingdoms, answerable to the High King, to our Father and our oldest Brother. And our Father entirely limits the actions of that temporary and subject kingdom of Satan’s world order. So, when we become aware that the Spirit of Jesus is directly teaching and training our spirits on behalf of our Father, the High King of all, we know we belong to a far better kingdom, where our citizenship grants us far more rights and freedoms, than those who are solely citizens of the world order, no matter how rich and powerful some of Satan’s favoured citizens might be while they live on earth. Yes, the elect remain in bodies of flesh on earth. But the elect never truly belong to Satan’s kingdom of the world order. For the elect belong only to God. So Satan is not going to bestow much of his invention of ruthless, life-controlling money to the elect, nor any of his other rewards, not unless the devil is using money to hinder an elect one’s salvation, or unless God commands that demon to do so for His good but minor purposes (and God’s most important works are never worked through money). All of the awakened elect remain directly under Christ’s greater authority, which has power over Satan’s subject kingdom of the world order. So we are not answerable to the dictates of Satan’s subject kingdom. The commands of God to our hearts override any demands from the non-elect human beings and demons ruling over the world order. Thus, we must often make demands upon them, or undo and nullify their works, through the wise, just, loving power of Jesus. We often need to change the parts of the world where we live, transforming them into the likeness of heaven’s just lands. Because we are answerable only to the High King God, there is nothing that He will command us to say or do that Satan’s subject kingdom has any right or power to effectively oppose. Then, in lands made just by Jesus, there is no command from Him which will oppose the just laws and ways of that restored land, since those laws and ways came from Him. But, in an unjust land, ruled by the non-elect children of Satan, who are treated like his slaves, there are many commands of God, worked by God’s elect children, which shall oppose and overrule many of that land’s laws and ways. For God’s awakened elect are called to rise up together and oppose that evil land’s injustice, yet only according to His will, as God’s love and God’s wise, just Law commands, and not with the weapons of Satan’s world order. For Jesus is our Lord and High King, the King of kings. And His Holy Spirit will instruct our spirits in the right ways to correct an unjust land. We are not to murder and destroy, but are to overcome evil with good. God’s power will do the rest, through limitations that His power and His laws place upon Satan’s temporary subject kingdom. God, the Holy Spirit of Jesus, governs our lives directly. So He will eventually make us far more holy and blameless as we do His difficult and sacrificial works to restore a land. And let us keep in mind that the omniscient wisdom and omnipotent power of Jesus Christ’s Holy Spirit is the absolute, unbreakable and irrevocable ‘guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.’ If Jesus is now teaching our spirits for our salvation, and training us to do His kinds of works wisely, we know, with all certainty, that we shall be completed and perfected on the judgment day, so we might enter heaven. Because the will of our God, Christ’s Holy Spirit, can never be hindered or stopped, Jesus will not fail to complete this work to perfection. We will indeed inherit our homes and our unique ministries waiting for us in heaven. No entity has the power to oppose God’s will in this. None can snatch us out of Christ’s hand, nor out of the hand of our heavenly Father. Now, since our salvation is entirely God’s work, all His works of teaching and training our spirits, for our sanctification, must be ‘to the praise of His goodwill,’ with no praise left for any men.]” (Eph. 1:4-6,11-14, ESV). “For by grace you have been saved through faith. [After Jesus works so effectively upon our spirits, we learn to place our faith in Him. And the more we trust and put our confidence in His love, power and words, the more effective His works become. But all this is His doing, not our doing. He first chose us and first loved us. Then He taught us to choose, trust and love Him. So our salvation is entirely by His unmerited, unearned grace alone.] And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship , created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them [When it declares that ‘this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God,’ the antecedent of the demonstrative (‘this’) is, indirectly, the whole process of salvation. But this demonstrative specifically points to our ‘faith.’ For, in context, the author, Paul, just finished telling us that we are ‘saved through faith,’ through our trust in our Teacher, Jesus. The Greek clause is: τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι διὰ πίστεως· καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον. The conjunction and neuter demonstrative (καὶ τοῦτο, ‘and this’) follows immediately after the prepositional phrase (διὰ πίστεως, ‘through faith’). Therefore, it would be natural for a Greek reader to assume that this demonstrative points to the word ‘faith.’ And absolutely nothing in the context or grammatical construction even suggests that the demonstrative does not point to the noun ‘faith.’ Surely, if Paul used this demonstrative to point to something else, he would have made that clear. But he did not. Thus, its antecedent must be ‘faith’ and, by extension, within this context, the antecedent is indirectly the whole process of salvation, since it is worked by Jesus through faith. Although the demonstrative, τοῦτο, is neuter, and the Greek word for ‘faith’ (πίστις) is a grammatically feminine word, ‘faith’ is an attribute of the spirit, and attributes are things (i.e., gramatically neuter). Also, the neuter may imply the faith of the spirit, which is a neuter word (πνεῦμα) in Greek. In addition to this, the whole process or work of saving us is a thing. Thus, the demonstrative is grammatically neuter. Then the prepositional phrase beginning with a form of ἐκ (ἐξ ὑμῶν) was frequently used to indicate a source or origin. Or, with a negative, it refers to that which is not the source or origen. And here Paul clearly proclaims that ‘this’ salvation through faith is ‘not originating from you’ (οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν). Rather, it is ‘the gift originating from God’ (i.e., ‘θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον’ is placed in apposition to the previous prepositional phrase, to indicate that θεοῦ is also a genitive of origin, like the previous genitive ὑμῶν). With the perfect passive participle indicating a past, completed action’s result or effect in context, which would here be the effect of permanence, the above clause literally means: ‘For you are having been permanently saved in the past by grace [i.e. in an unmerited, unearned way, where the verb possibly implies, in context, that there are also other ongoing effects now being experienced, aside from permanence]. And this [faith is] not originating from you people. [It is] the gift originating from God’ (ALT). After stating this, Paul also declared that this salvation, through faith, is ‘not originating from works,’ not through anything done by those having been saved. And Paul also provided a conclusion which we can all draw. Since neither our salvation, nor the faith through which our salvation is worked, originates from us, not one of us can boast that we did anything to acquire our own salvation. We did not merit or earn it by faithfully submitting to the magic ‘sacraments’ offered by a pagan-like priest. Nor did we merit or earn it by reciting a ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ through ‘sincere’ emotions artificially excited in the minds of our flesh through professional music and the stirring rhetoric of an esteemed deceiver. We are not our own ‘workmanship’ or ‘p