Now look at how the devil came to sow darnel “in the time while the people slept” (ἐν τῷ καθεύδειν
τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, i.e., the dative present infinitive takes the plural articular accusative as its subject and, after the preposition ἐν, thus indicates the “time” of the action of sleeping, “when/while the people slept” ). Also, after sowing the darnel, the devil departed, presumably while the people were still sleeping. This has interesting connotations, when viewed in the global context of Jesus’ other teachings and the rest of the Bible.
First consider the fact that spirits never need sleep. God only created bodies of flesh with a need to sleep, to restore strength and the functioning of their physical brains, as well as other body parts. In the kingdoms of God, the eternal bodies of angels, made of spiritual substances, never require sleep, and certainly the heavenly body of our God Jesus does not either. God created our body’s need for sleep to limit our amoral flesh, to prevent the non-spiritual, self-seeking flesh from becoming the dominant voice in a human soul, never allowing the spirit to rest and grow. For God did not want us to live amoral lives, solely for the needs and desires of our flesh, since it is our spirits which keep us alive and provide all necessary motives and intentions for life. But, if only the flesh sleeps, and our spirits never sleep, then how could the elect human spirits on earth, who are the beautifully good spiritual seeds sown by the Spirit of God, be “the people” who slept while the spirit of Satan sowed his own human spiritual darnel seeds on the earth? Surely this parable of the field is talking about spirits sleeping while the devil sowed his spiritual seeds of life in human bodies. It is not talking about the flesh of angels, humans or animals sleeping while the spirit of Satan did his dirty works.
Elect spirits seem to be “the people” whom Jesus referred to in this parable. But elect human spirits never need to sleep. And certainly “the people” did not include the Creator God, the Sower of the seeds, since we can be certain that He never sleeps. Nor could “the people” refer to the spirits of God’s elect heavenly angels, since they never require sleep either. Rather, the phrase Jesus used in this parable, “the people” (τοὺς ἀνθρώπους) who slept, almost always referred to human beings and, in this context, must have been spirits who slept while spiritual deeds were done. Since neither God nor His angels ever sleep, the people who slept must be the spirits He created on earth. Yet how did elect spirits, planted in bodies of flesh, sleep in a way that enabled Satan to secretly sow his darnel seeds among them? Exactly what kind of figurative spiritual sleep did Jesus refer to in this parable?
Page 957
Also, if the devil had to wait until the spirits of “the people” slept before he could do the spiritual deed of sowing his evil spiritual seeds, then that demonic spirit must have feared “the people.” So these must have been a “people” who were strong enough to protect the “field” and its “beautifully good seeds” from Satan’s sabotage. “The people” must have been somewhat capable guardians of God’s field, powerful enough to stop Satan from corrupting God’s field, or at least influential enough to implore God for the protection of His own field. Otherwise, why would Jesus tell us that the spirit of the devil did his spiritually evil deed while “the people” slept? For it would make no difference as to whether or not “the people” slept if those people had no power to stop that devil, and that devil could sow his darnel seeds at any time. And Scriptures say that some human elect spirits are indeed able to guard against the devil, that is, those who are awake with the almighty God in their hearts.
So why and when were elect spirits asleep, allowing the devil to sow the darnel seeds of his loveless spirit-children among them? Well, we know that this spiritual event involved placing the spirits of devil’s children in human bodies, in bodies born of human flesh. And it occurred very early in the history of the earth, likely during the time of Adam and Eve. Yet these first humans did not give birth to any children until some time after they sinned, after they were already driven out of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:24 to 4:1). So, the first births of human elect or non-elect children happened long after Satan and his demons had already been cast down from heaven, into the temporary creation of the earth and the material universe. For the devil was already on the earth when he tempted Adam and Eve into sin. Then, after humans fell into sin, God granted Satan a limited power and authority over the world order, as the “prince” of the air. And this is when the devil received his permission from God to do this deed of sowing spirits born of his spirit into human children. So the night when “the people” slept occurred after Adam and Eve sinned, after Satan became the ruler of the world order.
And, in fact, that night when “the people” slept occurred just before the first child of Eve and Adam was conceived. Their first child was Cain, who murdered his brother through delusions of selfish ambition. Yet God also allowed Cain to live after he committed that murder, and even let Cain prosper in many material ways, although Cain’s spirit never actually repented into the truth. Thus, Cain surely must have been the very first “darnel seed,” the first human born with a non-elect spirit, the first evil seed that Satan sowed on the earth. And Satan logically must have sowed Cain’s non-elect spirit during “the time while the people slept.” This suggests that Adam and Eve had fallen into a spiritual kind of sleep at one point in time after they left the garden, in a way we should explore.
So the time when “the people” slept and the devil sowed his darnel seeds can be identified as the period between the day Adam and Eve were forced to leave the garden and the day that Cain was conceived. In context, and based on the Scriptures alone, this was the only “time” when Satan could spiritually sow his spirit-children. Also, in this parable of the field, we see that God had previously sown all His elect spirits at once, even all who would ever exist throughout all earthly time. Thus, Satan must have sown all his non-elect spirit children that would ever exist in earthly time all at once at that time as well. And this was what actually happened then. For we must remember that spiritual time is measured in spiritual experiences, and not linearly. Then all earthly time is just an aspect of spiritual time, regulated solely by God’s power over spirits dwelling on earth. Thus, God created all earthly time at once, where both the past and the future are one “now,” and where all lives in all earthly time are predestined. So now we can see who “the people” were. Those who slept while the devil sowed non-elect spirits into bodies of flesh were Adam and Eve, but also all the elect spirits who would ever dwell on earth in all earthly time, up to the end of earth’s existence. And the way in which the elect spirits of Adam and Eve slept is also the way in which all elect spirits have also slept Page 958
Mat. 13:24-30 & 36-43, Two Human Seeds
throughout history. That kind of spiritual sleep is not only what allows Satan to place non-elect spirits among the elect, but also allows those non-elect to prosper and even rule over the elect.
Now, by the time “the people” woke up, Satan had already fled and the damage was done. But there is only one way Satan was able to come and then depart (ἀπῆλθεν), which was “while the people slept.” Thus, since Satan is a spirit, then we know “the people” who slept must have been the kind of people who were capable of stopping him from sabotaging God’s field. “The people” must have been spirits who were figuratively sleeping, but otherwise able to stop that demonic spirit from doing his spiritual deeds. After the devil sowed his non-elect spirits into human bodies, he departed, as though he feared the power of “the people.” Therefore, we can conclude that, when elect spirits are awake, when they speak and act in the name of God, God endorses and empowers them. And God’s power working in and through those elect spirits must transform them into very effective guardians of His earthly kingdom. Awake elect spirits must be well-armed, powerful adversaries of the devil.
But now we must define this figurative kind of sleep that elect human spirits somehow fall into. In God’s Word, we find a good number of references to this parable’s kind of spiritual sleep. But this kind of sleep can only be experienced by human spirits, although their spirits never require sleep for any reason whatsoever. In the Bible, we find out that human spirits never need sleep, but God forces worldly human spirits into a state of “sleep.” Then many human spirits, if not the vast majority of them, remain in the state of “sleep” after they die. And God causes those sleeping spirits to drift in the sky above heaven’s lands from the time of their death until the final judgment day. Both worldly elect and non-elect spirits will exist in an unconscious state after death, presumably with their flesh transfigured into bodies made of spiritual substances, until the angels gather them down to the gates of heaven for the judgment day. Only the human elect spirits whom God wakes while they lived on earth, who lived loving spiritual lives on earth, will remain awake after their earthly flesh dies. All the other elect will experience the kind of sleep which, while they lived on earth, allowed the devil to do his works among them and through them. But once elect spirits are awakened by God, once God works in and through them, the devil will depart from them, will flee from God dwelling in them.
Here is one Scripture that describes this figurative kind of spiritual sleep, which all elect inevitably fall into at some time during their lives on earth: “Love doesn’t harm a neighbor. Love therefore is the fulfillment of the Law. Do this, knowing the time, that it is already time for you to awaken out
of sleep, for salvation is now nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is far gone, and the day is near. Let’s therefore throw off the works of darkness, and let’s put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and lustful acts, and not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts” (Rom. 13:10-14, WEB). So this figurative spiritual sleep relates to a carnal life, but waking relates to a just, loving life which harms no one, after putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.
This figurative sleeping must refer to certain seasons in the lives of the elect on earth, to the times when they are walking according to their minds of flesh, and not according to the far more rational and loving minds of their spirits. Elect spirits sleep while their souls think only about the needs and desires of their flesh, but ignore their spirits’ needs and desires to be taught and trained by the Holy Spirit of their God Jesus. In God’s Word, the repentance of an elect spirit into the truth taught to it by God occurs when that spirit wakes from a “sleep” and heeds the call of our Saviour. But the elect spirit’s sleep is characterized by loveless works of darkness produced through the strong desires of the flesh (e.g., Is. 51:16-17; 52:1-2; Rom. 13:10-14; I Cor. 15:34; Eph. 5:14-16; I Thes. 5:5-8; Rev.
3:2-3). God’s elect human children often fall into this kind of “sleep,” and have done so since the days of Adam and Eve. Also, God’s human children, with their infantile spirits made in His image, Page 959
are the only earthly spirits that are able to fall into this kind of sleep. For God’s other earthly spirits, the spirits of animals and plants, who are all destined for a home in heaven, can never fall into this kind of sleep. Those other spirits dwelling in earthly bodies of flesh continuously do all that God created them to do, without ceasing. And they always shall, throughout eternity. Only the infantile elect spirits of human beings, fashioned from God’s Spirit, bear the ability to experience both good and evil, and discern between them, even in a way that no other spirit possibly can. Only elect human spirits are able to bear the motives and intentions to sin, and thus experience evil. And only elect human spirits, not the non-elect human or demonic spirits, are able to repent, so they can be forgiven after sinning, into a restored relationship with God. And God Himself causes human elect spirits to “sleep” in the dark night of sin, then awake, so all might learn to forever hate sin, but also to love the just, holy, loving attributes of their heavenly Father much more than the angels or any other created spirits. Yes, this sleep in sin is also when God allows Satan to do his works, even to create human spirits in his own image, in bodies of human flesh—the spirits that know only evil and cannot choose to do good through love, the spirits that cannot grow love from the truths they clearly see everywhere in God’s creations. Still, from interactions with these non-elect children of the devil, the elect learn to more highly value truth, love and God Himself, then guard all with all their souls.
If we consider all the Scriptures in our exegesis of this parable, we see how it implies that this kind of “sleep” is the only time when the devil can do his evil works against God’s kingdom. Yet that devil must “depart” if elect spirits wake up and call on their mighty heavenly Father. Surely the
“sleep” that Jesus was figuratively referring to in this parable, and the only kind of “sleep” that the devout Jews of that day would recognize as fitting and appropriate for the comprehension of this parable, was the kind where elect spirits allowed themselves to live carnal and loveless lives. Thus, in this parable, Jesus seems to have been declaring that Satan will sow “darnel” seeds (will put the non-elect spirits of his own loveless children in human bodies on earth) while the heavenly Father’s elect human children sleep in unrepentant sin. Therefore, if this is correct, we should be able to see an unusually high number of non-elect born in places where the majority of elect souls sleep in their apostasy and sin. And, generally, this seems to be true. Now I know all this may seem too complex and convoluted. But all spiritual and moral judgments and considerations are complex. All require the rational mind of one’s spirit, with the help of God’s Spirit, to delve deeply into many seemingly contradictory facts and principles, to sort out which are applicable, and in what particular ways, until God brings the spirit’s mind to the only possible harmonious, consistent, understanding of real truth.
So, in this parable, we need to consider these facts: (1) the “field” is the world order, the society of all human beings; (2) the “beautiful seed” are the elect human beings God created on the earth, those Jesus called “the heirs of the kingdom”; (3) the “darnel” are the non-elect human beings in the world order, whom Jesus called “the heirs of the evil one”; (4) the “evil one” is the enemy of Jesus, the one whom Jesus identified as “the devil” or ὁ διάβολος; (5) the only ones that could be called the people or ἀνθρώπους—the only ones who could possibly be sleeping while the devil placed his children into the world order—were the elect human beings or the “beautifully good seed” whom Jesus, our God, had sown on earth; (6) the only kind of “sleep” that allows the devil to work among the elect occurs when the elect do not practise the kind of love described in a right interpretation of God’s Law, when they walk according to lusts of the flesh and sin, much like Paul, the apostle, described in Romans 13:10-14; (7) the non-elect children of the devil will exist in the world order, able to grow and freely prosper until the end of time on earth, until the judgment day, when angels will separate them from God’s elect children and cast those non-elect, together with their father, into hell forever.
Page 960
Mat. 13:24-30 & 36-43, Two Human Seeds
So, on that day of heavenly time, the day Jesus’ Spirit created all earthly time at once, the day He sowed all of His beautiful seeds throughout history, Jesus remained awake. But many elect slept in the darkness of sin. While they slept, Jesus let the devil sow his non-elect among them. And all this was for a good reason. Jesus allowed this so that the heavenly Father’s elect children could fully experience evil worked by those non-elect. For the temporary earth was to be a training ground for human elect spirits, so they could forever learn to fully appreciate the loving attributes and ways of their heavenly Father, and eternally hate all sinful, unjust deviations from His attributes and ways.
Also, we know all this information about the elect and the non-elect is very important for us to know, because Jesus declared: “The one having ears is being commanded to hear! ” (ὁ ἔχων ὦτα ἀκουέτω, where the present imperative form of ἀκούω indicates a command that we must continuously heed).
After explaining His intended meaning of this parable, Jesus commanded the awakened elect to use this information which He revealed in this parable, implying that this information was essential for our understanding of His Word and for the right application of all that His Holy Spirit teaches to our elect spirits. His teachings were not merely academic exercises. Rather, this knowledge was granted to shape our most critical judgments and ethical decisions throughout life. After all, our saving faith is not simply believing that Jesus is God, since even the devil believes that much. Rather, our saving faith is our trust and confidence in the love, power and words of Jesus, a confidence that all He says is true and granted to us for our benefit. In this kind of true saving faith, we are able to love others and see beauty, to hold it in our hearts, with Jesus there, beside our spirits. For all beauty is spiritual, and cannot even be perceived without a knowledge of spiritual realities, including the realities of the suffering in this world, a real pain brought by mankind’s loveless greed and lusts. When our spirits know, and are always aware of the fear and anger caused by human injustice, initiated by lying and deluded spirits of demons and their loveless children, then our elect spirits, in Jesus, will war against this and strive to build His loving, just kingdom, awake and labouring night and day, all our lives.
Then the beauty of life will be ours. In Jesus, we will gain the origins of all beauty, even in heaven.
So, when Jesus commands us to hear and, therefore, to heed the message of this parable, we know its truth is essential for our well-being. For elect spirits whom He has awakened, whom He has granted eyes to see and ears to hear, it becomes obvious that this kind of knowledge definitely makes us far more effective in our works for God. When we realize that the spirits of some people were sown by Satan, and were created in his image to be liars and murderers, in the same way he has always been from the beginning, we can then proceed with caution, regarding all the pretenses and lies of the world order. We become far more careful, and seek the counsel of Jesus far more frequently, to confirm all the information we choose to act upon, in all our works. For we must not be deceived by the loveless and ruthless children of the devil, who blindly follow the ways of their hellish father.
Although we cannot see the spirits of other people, we must be aware that not all are able to be convinced by the truth. Some may be the elect, who will repent into the truth later, and definitely by the end of the judgment day. But some are the non-elect, who love only the darkness of their own preferred lies and delusions, who hate the truth and can never repent into it. Thus, we cannot trust nor help all people. For some will never will embrace the truth, nor build any real love upon the truth. And even souls with elect spirits in them cannot receive the truth until Jesus Himself wakes their spirits, then plows and prepares the grounds of their hearts, so He can sow the seeds of truth in them. Knowing all this allows us to work for the sakes of all the deceived and deluded elect souls, and for each one personally, in a patient way that waits upon our God, without judging them before their time on the final day, without trying to force their compliance to the truth through threats of punishment. Yes, we can only do God’s works together with His awakened elect, but we will do His Page 961
works for the benefit of all His creations, not just for those we deem to be the elect. This uncertainty about who might be the elect and who might be the non-elect will temper our souls, calm our wrath, force us to punish evil only when absolutely necessary, only if we need to limit the ruthless deeds of the lawless who will not stop causing unjust harm or death. Yet, as much as we are able, we must also grant freedom to all, so Jesus can do His works upon elect spirits without hindrance from our ignorant and stubborn demands upon them. We need to know that some sinners and criminals might be our elect siblings hidden among Satan’s children, the kind of elect who will not be healed and revealed until the very last day. For then we will respect literally all human beings equally and justly.
Now we must realize that there is no such thing as human behaviours or choices made through the fictitious Roman Platonic concept of a “free will.” Rather, all moral decisions originate from the intentions and motives of spirits, and all conscious decisions are ultimately moral. Then literally all spirits were created with immutable inherent desires, with a propensity to form either good or evil intentions and motives. Thus, all people make their conscious choices according to the propensities programmed into their spirits by the fathers of their spirits, as well as by external circumstances ruled by spiritual powers that are all far beyond any human power to control. Yes, the spirits inside humans are the real managers of their brains and bodies of flesh. The spirit of any earthly creature is so powerful that it can stop the mind of flesh from allowing its heart to beat, and kill its flesh. Many physicians see this; how some choose to die even with less serious medical problems that those who choose to live. Even a spirit that is almost totally asleep can exert this power over the flesh. Yet that choice of the spirit is based on the drive that the spirit’s father has placed in it. An elect spirit that is granted a good purpose from God, or a non-elect spirit that is granted an evil purpose from Satan, will choose to live even its flesh was more badly injured than the one who died from lesser injuries.
Through either the inherent nature of non-elect spirits or the delusions the elect endure until Jesus awakens their spirits, literally all humans sin. Only when the elect gain some knowledge of God’s sovereignty over all existence can they become free to seek other awakened, humbled and healing elect souls, then begin to nullify Satan’s works and build God’s just and loving kingdom on earth. An elect spirit needs to be awake and know God before one can be able to love in a just and beneficial way, according to one’s own unique capacity and destiny granted by God. And the various capacities and destinies of all are equal in God’s sight, because their is nothing clean about wearing expensive clothing on a washed body in an office with a wrap-around rosewood desk, nor anything unclean about working in the mud with bloodied hands and a sweating body of flesh. Then, as the awakened elect work together in one mind and for one purpose, Jesus will cause their labours to become far more effective, beautiful and fruitful. That is His immutable promise, and I declare it to be true. So, knowing the Messiah’s intended meaning of these parables based on all the Scriptures is important and grows faith in God, forbids us to place any faith in humans, undoes countless works of the devil through his lying and loveless human offspring, builds up God’s just and loving kingdom on earth, and feeds our spirits to the full. For Jesus constructs all His teachings only upon foundational truths.
Do not sleep! Yes, it is easier said than done. Actually, it is impossible to keep your spirit awake, so you can properly manage all the words and deeds of your flesh. Only the will and power of Jesus living in your heart, beside your spirit, can keep you awake, seeing, hearing and understanding, able to love with godly sorrow and joy. Even then, an infantile elect spirit tends to be easily distracted and drift into a dark spiritual dreamland. Then the flesh instantly “takes captive” the spirit, shuts the door of spirit’s dwelling place in the heart, and will not allow the spirit to speak within the soul. Then the spirit will not intercede with the decisions of the flesh. Then the flesh can make all the decisions of one’s life, based on its own strong and amoral desires. But the weak and totally unspiritual mind of Page 962
Mat. 13:24-30 & 36-43, Two Human Seeds
flesh believes lies that promise to benefit it, to give it pleasure or fulfill its lusts. The flesh will trust any kind of delusion that appeals to it. No matter how contradictory and irrational the devil’s lies and delusions might be, a mind of flesh is more than willing to justify, defend and follow that emptiness.
It does not take much for lies and delusions to overwhelm an elect life ruled by the mind of flesh.
And it only takes a moment for the flesh to trap a sleeping spirit, then rebel against that spirit and against God, to take control of an elect one’s entire life. A few days of comfort, unmonitored by an elect spirit, is enough to cause a bad decision which can alter the course of one’s entire life, hurling it toward ruin and destruction. The “little” matter of an elect spirit not remaining awake and loving, then neglecting the needs and joys of other souls on earth, so that the flesh can indulge in its own ungodly pleasures, will harden and callous the heart more each day. Instead of enjoying the grace of God in “little” daily spiritual joys with other elect souls throughout life, while working to build the just kingdom of our loving God and undoing works of the devil, the mind of flesh begins to think it has earned and deserved its own destructive, amoral “little” pleasures. For flesh is always ungrateful and self-absorbed. But flesh can never be satisfied, since it is stupid and cannot even understand what it is doing to itself, much less what it is doing to others. So the flesh will demand ever more for itself, while the silenced elect spirit falls into a catatonic state, into a sleep which ignores God and all other spirits. So the trap is shut, without escape. And one’s life soon grows empty and meaningless.
Once the elect learn to walk according to the wills of their minds of flesh, their spirits weaken, and soon lack the strength or wisdom to free themselves from bondage to their flesh. Their spirits cannot open the doors of their hearts, cannot enter the chambers of their souls. And, if elect spirits cannot voice any just and loving commands from the control rooms of their souls, their spirits cannot fully manage and control their lives. So their lives will become amoral, void of all spiritual considerations regarding the words and deeds of their lives. Since flesh is not a spirit and not spiritual, it cannot love, nor make just and moral decisions. Flesh is merely a temporary material entity, with no real purpose, other than our heavenly Father’s application for the teaching and training of our spirits. So, while minds of flesh remain in control of elect lives, their lives remain amoral. And amoral lives cannot love, for true love can only originate from a spirit, not from the flesh. Genuine love is just, equitable and moral because it is spiritual. Only when God’s kind of pure love is expressed by elect spirits, can that love fulfill God’s Law, and just laws of mankind formed in the image of God’s Law.
Thus, if elect souls fall into the trap of letting their minds of flesh rule over their lives, their lives will invariably become empty, amoral, meaningless, vain, futile and loveless. Then spirits of demons and the spirits of the lying, loveless, non-elect human gods, can easily deceive, manipulate and enslave those elect, forcing those elect to serve Satan’s world order through ruthless sins and crimes. And, since the doors of their hearts are locked from the outside, elect spirits cannot escape. So elect hearts become prisons of their spirits, and cannot be remodelled into warm and welcome homes shared with their beloved oldest Brother and Friend, unless that Brother chooses to break down that door.
The only way to escape a carnal prison is to have Jesus free one’s elect spirit. And the elect spirit itself, not emotions in the mind of flesh, must call out for the help of our God Jesus. But, to do that, the elect spirit must first be awakened by Jesus, made aware of His presence. While that elect spirit is sleeping, Jesus must knock loudly on the door of the heart, enough to shake the flesh and cause that flesh to suffer great fear. Jesus must shine the unrelenting bright light of truth through that door, enough for the flesh to recoil in terror. Then Jesus must warn that elect spirit, break down the door of that one’s heart, then begin a life-long apprenticeship of gently explaining all it needs to know for an abundant life of loving and being loved. Because every elect spirit was created in a way that is able to accept truth, and grow truth into love, His Holy Spirit's truth will take root in that heart, will grow Page 963
love from it, the kind of love that trusts in Jesus and in His words, with a saving faith which shall effectively prepare one’s weak and infantile spirit for heaven. Yet, before truth can grow, Jesus must prepare the soil of one’s heart, by plowing, removing stones, and killing weeds of lies and delusions.
To gain all this, let every elect spirit call on Jesus to open the doors of their hearts, to set their spirits free. For even the tiny speck of faith required to do this much, a faith smaller than a mustard seed, can bring great riches of spiritual treasures into one’s life. For Jesus can open any door He chooses, with or without the permission of the people He created and owns. He fashioned all doors and has the master key to all. None can keep His infinite power out of anywhere. Then, if Jesus enters an elect heart, which He will do at His own appointed time, to renovate it and dwell with one’s spirit, then that elect spirit will also grow healthy and strong, and will soon be able to enter the chamber of the soul. Then that elect spirit will begin to authoritatively manage its mind of the flesh, in ways where Jesus endorses the decisions of one’s spirit and makes one’s works effective. For the flesh fears Jesus, and dares not rebel against His will. So the flesh will surely do all that an elect spirit demands according to the will of Jesus. And Jesus’ power will cause all those works to bear fruit.
Then we find eschatological teachings at the end of this parable. Jesus’ explanation of the end times and heaven began with Him portraying how He “is revealing His thoughts” to His angels, who love to serve Him as beloved, willing and faithful slaves (δοῦλοι). Jesus did not say that He is answering the angels’ question, which He would indicate by using a form of ἀποκρίνομαι. Nor did say that He is speaking words of reasoning to them, by using a form of λέγω. Nor did He say that He is simply uttering these words, by using a form of λαλέω. Instead, in this parable, Jesus used a present form of φημί, a cognate of φῶς (“light”) and φαίνω (“shine”). And φημί implies a revealing of thoughts, usually to affirm or explain something. Then His use of the present tense form of φημί indicated an ongoing process of revealing, one that is occurring now as well as during the last day, a revelation He actually began to give to those angels in the beginning, when He created this material space-time continuum. It is a literary device used to bring the listeners into to the time of the parable’s action, but also to remind us that He is still speaking to the angels in real time, in a higher spiritual realm.
Now, since He began revealing His thoughts to the angels in the beginning, we must conclude that He had a plan for the earth and all its inhabitants back then. That plan was set in His mind from the beginning. In other words, He predestined all time on earth, which He created all at one time. This predestination is also suggested by the phrase, “in the appointed time of the harvest” (ἐν καιρῷ τοῦ
θερισμοῦ), where καιρός, in context, indicates a set or predetermined time. So now we can look at His predestined plan of letting all live together until the harvest on the last day. And note how Jesus used aorists in His commands at the harvest. The three aorist imperatives and a participle indicated thoroughly and fully completed acts. On the judgment day, Jesus will first command His angels to
“completely gather up the darnel plants and fully bind them into bundles, in order to thoroughly burn them.” Then He will command them to “complete a full assembly of all the wheat for My grain bin.”
Yet Jesus began this eschatological description of events during the judgment day by answering the question that His angels asked Him. They wanted to know if they should “completely gather up” the darnel plants while those noxious weeds were growing in the field, while those loveless non-elect were still dwelling upon the earth. And our Lord’s reply was an emphatic “No!” (indicated by the double negatives, Οὔ, μήποτε, “No! Not ever [lest] ...”). Jesus emphatically did not want His angels to to kill all the non-elect upon the earth. And, if Jesus is now continuously demanding that His angels leave the non-elect alive and well upon the earth—the ones His awake and alert Spirit saw the devil plant on earth, without stopping him—then Jesus certainly must not want His immature elect brothers and sisters on the earth to destroy them either! And Jesus gave a good reason for letting Page 964
Mat. 13:24-30 & 36-43, Two Human Seeds
them live, “lest, while gathering up the darnel, you might uproot the wheat with them at the same time.” For Jesus intended to teach His elect to manage those troublesome weeds, not destroy them.
So let us carefully consider this reasoning of our Lord. For, whenever we wage war against the non-elect, for right or wrong reasons, many innocent lives are harmed or lost as collateral damage. Thus, when we face problems caused by the non-elect, we must suppress any unjust, humanistic impulse for revenge. For that kind of revenge is the will of Satan, and is always accompanied by slaughter, rape and the enslavement of enemies, all for carnal satisfaction and financial gain. Instead, we must do what Jesus wants, what He emphatically commanded His angels to do. We must “leave both [i.e., both Satan’s children and God’s elect children] to be growing together until the time of the harvest.” In other words, our elect spirits should try to find and apply methods of limiting the evil behaviours of the non-elect, and eliminating all their harmful and murderous deceptions. We must work to prevent non-elect seeds, the spirits born in Satan’s image, from bearing the deadly fruits of their hellish father, so elect seeds, born in Christ’s image, can utilize His resources of sunlight, rain and land to bear more good fruit for Him. We work to prevent evil and criminal deeds from occurring. And this involve providing all flesh with all their needs, lawful desires and harmless freedoms, so the non-elect will become content enough to avoid the risk of losing all this. Then, if some still cling to their psychopathic ambitions of becoming gods who own God’s property, if some insist on doing evil and committing crimes, we must undo their works of the devil—by burning away their lies with the dissolving light of truth, by replacing their injustice with justice, by repairing or rebuilding what they destroy, by restoring any losses incurred by their victims, by incarcerating those who refuse to stop causing harm, by removing freedoms from actively ruthless psychopaths who abuse godly freedoms, by executing the few determined psychopaths who will not stop killing, and by building God’s wise, sound, well-guarded kingdom of loving, compassionate, merciful truth which provides for a spirit’s repentance in our lands. And we can only do all this through the wise counsel of Jesus’ Holy Spirit.
So, after the elect learn to apply just love on earth for all God’s creations, including the non-elect souls living on earth, then “the appointed time of the harvest” will occur. That is, the judgment day will only come: (1) after this age of the elect and non-elect dwelling together on earth, (2) after Jesus returns to cast out Satan and all his non-elect children from the earth for a millennium, and (3) after Jesus frees Satan again, at the end of the millennium, allowing him to seed the earth with non-elect souls dwelling beside the elect once more, so the elect can rescue all their siblings from their lies and allow Jesus to destroy those non-elect during the rebellion of Gog and Magog. The judgment day at heaven’s gate will only occur after Jesus provides the final lessons of faith for all the elect on earth.
During each of these three seasons of earthly time, the Holy Spirit of Jesus and our heavenly Father will teach a predestined and appointed number of His elect precisely what He wanted each of them to learn before He takes them into heaven. Each individual elect spirit, dwelling in the exact time that was appointed for that one, will learn all which one must know for one’s appointed and desired destiny in heaven. And the elect living in the first and second seasons, as well as those living at the end of the third season, will be taught much for eternal life through interactions with the non-elect.
Now look at what Jesus will command a certain tribe of powerful angels on that judgment day. His very first command to these angels will be to dispose of the non-elect. For the casting out of all deceivers and abusers must be completed before the elect can be judged, before His still-infantile and sinful elect spirits can be taught, trained, led to repentance, completely perfected and gathered into heaven. At the start of the judgment day, angels will “completely gather up” all non-elect souls, all whose spirits originated from the devil. Then those angels will “fully bind them into bundles.” In other texts, those lawless and, therefore, loveless ones will be gathered like herd of goats. And goats Page 965
gather into different families. So do the non-elect. They form groups of ruthless exploiters or gangs of criminals. Many like-minded evil souls become bound together by one particular kind of delusion or another. But all lying destroyers will be brought together on that last day, so they can all be driven through the gates of hell, into the bottomless pit. Likewise, as we see in this parable of the field, the non-elect will be tied together in bundles, in bunches of vile souls who shared common and similar evil intentions and motives of their non-elect spirits, including “all those causing sin and practising lawlessness.” All these bundles will be cast into one “furnace,” which is, of course, the eternal hell.
And this hell will be “filled with fire,” where there will be an endless “weeping and the gnashing of the teeth.” However, nothing will exist any longer in the material universe by the time that final day begins. Therefore, this “fire” will be a spiritual kind of fire, and they will gnash the everlasting teeth of bodies made of eternal spiritual substances. Since their loveless spirits will forever desire to be their own gods, God will grant them the fulfilling of this desire. God will give all the non-elect the ability to freely pursue all the desires of their own selfish wills forever, without limit, without ever requiring them to show any regard for the welfare and benefit of any other spirit or thing. In other words, hell will be totally lawless, a place designed for their kind of spirits. Yet, in hell, God will not grant them any of His creations to abuse for their own pleasures. Literally all God’s good creations, all spirits of living creatures created for heaven, and elect humans, will be kept in heaven. Not one real or good thing will exist in hell, not even a grain of useful sand. No solid ground will provide a place to stand in hell, because the non-elect stood on nothing true or real throughout life on earth.
Hell will not even possess one tiny ray of God’s light of truth and power, and will forever remain utterly dark. Even the eternal burning of their loveless lies and ruthless ambitions will not produce any light, since those elements burn with invisible flames. Absolutely nothing that the non-elect may unjustly abuse for their pleasures will exist in hell. Then, since these wanna-be gods possess no power to create anything real for themselves, only the unreal lies and delusions of their own dark spirits, they will have absolutely nothing real and substantial to rule over, except themselves. They will have nothing to manipulate, nothing to deceive for their own benefit, except one another. And, since all of them will long to be the high god ruling over all, but none will be able to threaten any other indestructible spiritual body with pain or death, and will not be able to terrorize one another into submission, no one will be able to rule over anyone else. All each will possess is one’s own self, one’s own empty darkness. Therefore, all of these wanna-be gods, all completely freed into the total lawlessness they desired, will be forever deprived of the pleasures they stole from God on earth, but deeply longing to have things to exploit, to feel like esteemed, powerful gods again. Yet these desires will be eternally frustrated, leaving them to endlessly weep and gnash their teeth in wild hating rage.
Now, if the non-elect will be cast into hell on the judgment day, but not before then, then we know that the judgment day will occur at a location which exists outside of hell. Likewise, if all the elect must go through the judgment before they will be eternally gathered into their personal homes built in God’s infinitely expansive and beautiful homeland of heaven, then we are also forced to conclude that the judgment day will occur at a place located outside of heaven as well. For the “grain bin” in this parable of the field obviously represents God’s original and eternal city of Jerusalem in heaven, where the homes of the elect have been waiting for them since the beginning of time. As Jesus has also taught us: “In My Father’s home there are many houses” (John 14:2, from: ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τοῦ
πατρός μου μοναὶ πολλαί εἰσιν, SBLGNT). And Jesus stated this in the present tense. So the houses of all the elect already existed back then, and were created at the beginning of time for them, even the houses for the elect who will exist at the end of earthly time. And Jesus is now preparing each Page 966
Mat. 13:24-30 & 36-43, Two Human Seeds
elect soul’s home to meet each one’s own personal needs, to bring each joy when they enter it and begin to fulfill their destiny in heaven, to serve all heaven’s creations in an abundant, eternal life.
Later, we are also told that all those eternal homes of the elect will be in the heavenly city called Jerusalem. The elect will become the new inhabitants of that ancient capital city, where Jesus also dwells, and descend upon it after the judgment day, as its citizens. And, since they are its citizens, they are that city, and will be called by that city’s name, the “New Jerusalem” (see Rev. 21:2-3 & 9-27). Of course, many awakened elect spirits have already seen that heavenly Jerusalem while on the earth, before they will be judged and enter it. For it exists now, and their homes in it were created before the material universe existed. Yet the elect were born on earth, and some became members of the earthly church, the earthly priesthood of God, citizens of God’s earthly capital of Jerusalem, where He placed His throne and His presence on earth. Therefore, although the earthly Jerusalem was built a very long time after the heavenly Jerusalem, we experience it as the “Old Jerusalem” and see the original heavenly Jerusalem as “New.” So all the events of the final day will occur in a place outside of the heavenly “New Jerusalem,” although directly above it, since we all will descent into the new Jerusalem after the last day ends. So the judgment day will occur in a high place, which Jesus figuratively called the “threshing floor.” Since judgments in biblical time took place at the city gates, the final judgment will occur at the “gate of heaven,” above the new Jerusalem, in the sky, in vast living lands floating far above heaven’s mainland. Then, after the judgment day, after a long period of time which completes the love of elect spirits to perfection, literally all elect humans who have ever touched the earth, will descend upon that city, as heirs of the many homes in Jerusalem.
Once the non-elect are all gone, after the brief moment when Jesus condemns “all those causing sin and practising lawlessness,” after He casts them into hell, His angels will “completely assemble” all the elect. Literally all human spirits created by the heavenly Father in His own image, all He sowed on earth, so they might learn to lovingly fulfill His Law, will be brought together in a bright and glorious place above their New Jerusalem. Our God Jesus declared that these were sown by Him as good seed. In other words, these were predestined for His “grain bin,” that is for their own homes in heaven’s capital city of New Jerusalem. But, just as kernels of grain must be separated from the straw and chaff before descending into the grain bin, Jesus will remove all sins and worldly lies from all elect souls before they enter heaven. So the elect will require some difficult teaching and training on that long judgment day, to perfect and complete them. Some will need less and others will need more. And those who need less will help Jesus feed truth to the elect possessing little. So, by the end of that day, literally all will be ready for their homes. All will be just and loving heirs of God, fit for the rigours of heaven, able to labour beside Jesus for His kingdom. “Then these just ones will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” And to this day, Jesus works for us to become ripe and easily perfected wheat for that harvest, the joyful ones. This is why He said, “The one having ears is being commanded to hear!” Let all awakened elect spirits hear, and may He awaken all elect spirits.
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53,
Kingdom Parables
“He set another parable before them, saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field; which indeed is smaller than all seeds. But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches.’
Page 967
“He spoke another parable to them. ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, until it was all leavened.’ Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the multitudes; and without a parable, he didn’t speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, ‘I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world....’” (Mat. 13:31-35, WEB).
“‘Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and hid. In his joy, he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field.
“‘Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who is a merchant seeking fine pearls, who having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
“‘Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a dragnet, that was cast into the sea, and gathered some fish of every kind, which, when it was filled, they drew up on the beach. They sat down, and gathered the good into containers, but the bad they threw away. So will it be in the end of the world. The angels will come and separate the wicked from among the righteous, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.’
“Jesus said to them, ‘Have you understood all these things?’ They answered him, ‘Yes, Lord.’
He said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been made a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who is a householder, who brings out of his treasure new and old things.’ When Jesus had finished these parables, he departed from there” (Mat. 13:44-53, WEB).
Here we see Jesus affirming that God’s truths, as well as His warnings against evil, are revealed everywhere on earth, in all of nature and in every aspect of life; in seeds, yeast, hidden treasures, pearls and even the occupations practised by His disciples, like the fishing business of most of His assistant teachers. The parable of a farmer’s field also taught about God’s kingdom of the heavens, like these did, but with a slight difference. The parable of the wheat and darnel was an overview from God’s perspective, explaining how He sowed the spirits of His children upon His temporary earth, to prepare them for life in their eternal homes; and how He allowed His bound and captive prisoner, Satan, to seed his non-elect children on the temporary earth too. Yet these last five parables taught us how God reveals His attributes and aspects of His kingdom through our daily experiences and how He is influencing our spirits. Here God’s kingdom is being discovered and viewed from our own personal perspective. Here Jesus is telling us how we can find Him and His ways in our lives.
These five are about how God’s kingdom will personally affect the beloved children of God who will inherit it. Jesus gave the first two kingdom parables (vv. 31-35) to all the elect in the crowd. The first parable was relatable to most elect males and the second was relatable to most elect women, so all His brothers and sisters might find His kingdom’s love and truth, then let it personally grow inside each of them. But Jesus gave the last three parables only to the disciples who gathered in His house (v. 36), and most of these were fishermen, hence, the parable about fishing. Those who heard these last three included only the twelve, and possibly the other selected apostles. So the last three were for His “scribes” or scholars (v. 52), for His assistant teachers whom He was teaching and training to become elders. The last three illustrated how His true teaching elders would experience the effective power of His kingdom working in and through them, even how much they would value the truths of His wisdom and knowledge, and how they would learn to make right judgments for His true church.
Page 968
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
The Kingdom Parables Given to the Crowd
Jesus gave the first personally applicable kingdom parable to all the elect in the crowd, and to all the elect who would ever live on earth. It drew a vivid picture of how the Holy Spirit grants a seed of God-like love to a person’s elect spirit, the kind of just love one builds solely upon truth. Since that kind of love is innately and highly cherished by all elect spirits, any elect spirit who might receive it will surely plant that valued seed in one’s heart, and grow it into fullness. So Jesus “laid out before them another parable, reasoning: ‘The kingdom of the heavens is like a mustard seed which, after receiving [it], a person sowed [it] in his field. This is indeed the least of all seeds. Yet, when it may have been grown, it is the greater of the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the sky come and rest in its branches” (Mat. 13:31-32, from: Ἄλλην παραβολὴν παρέθηκεν αὐτοῖς λέγων· Ὁμοία
ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν κόκκῳ σινάπεως, ὃν λαβὼν ἄνθρωπος ἔσπειρεν ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ αὐτοῦ· ὃ
μικρότερον μέν ἐστιν πάντων τῶν σπερμάτων, ὅταν δὲ αὐξηθῇ μεῖζον τῶν λαχάνων ἐστὶν καὶ γίνεται
δένδρον, ὥστε ἐλθεῖν τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ κατασκηνοῦν ἐν τοῖς κλάδοις αὐτοῦ, SBLGNT).
How do we know that Jesus was actually comparing a mustard seed to His kind of love? Well, first look at how Jesus was comparing the whole of God’s kingdom to the receiving, sowing and maturity of the mustard seed. Jesus said “the kingdom of the heavens is like” all these things ( Ὁμοία ἐστὶν ἡ
βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ...), where the plural form of “heavens” once more indicated both His earthly kingdom and His kingdom of the spiritual realm. Since it is about His whole kingdom, we are forced to make two logical conclusions: (1) the receiving, planting and maturity of the mustard seed must represent something that not only exists in the elect spirits He sowed on the temporary earth, but which will also exist within elect spirits after they enter His eternal, spiritual kingdom of the third heaven, since this is something meant for both kinds of “heavens”; and (2) the mustard seed was received from an unspecified source, but a source representing someone from both the earthly and heavenly realms of God’s kingdom, meaning it was either directly or indirectly received from God, since literally all gifts originating from His kingdom are granted according to His will alone. So what do we receive from God on earth, which we can also take with us into the third heaven? There is nothing but the love He grants to our spirits, the kind of love which must be built upon His truth, that an elect spirits can receive from God on earth and take into heaven after death. So the mustard seed is truth that grows into love for Jesus and all our elect siblings, for God and all His creations.
Now, to understand this parable, we first need to know the attributes of a mustard seed and the plant it grows. For Jesus likened the mustard seed and its plant to His gift of pure, just and God-like love, the kind of love that every elect spirit receives from His kingdom to ratify the citizenship of one’s spirit in His kingdom. According to Britannica.com, the diameter of an average mustard seed is a tenth of an inch (2.5 mm). And the kind of mustard Jesus spoke about, the black mustard, has a dark coloured seed like some canola seeds. But it is about two and a half times larger than average canola seeds. And there are also other garden or crop seeds which are as small or smaller than the mustard seed. Thus, as most people in the agrarian community of ancient Israel would tell you, the mustard is not “the least of all seeds” solely because it is so small. Yes, it is small. But most gardeners and farmers of the day would not have deemed it to be “the least” for other reasons, primarily because: (1) it took up so much room in their limited and valuable garden, then also shaded and caused less growth in other plants, since it grew into a bush about four feet (1.2 m) tall; (2) its seeds tended to spread prolifically throughout the garden, like an invasive weed, was very difficult to control; and (3) mustard was not an essential food, and was merely a flavouring for other foods, where its leaves were pickled in vinegar and used as a condiment, but its seeds were not even used for the kind of mustard we have today. Since those who wanted to pickle mustard leaves could get plenty of those Page 969
leaves from wild plants growing in the fields, or from the few gardeners who dared to grow them, since every gardener who grew mustard would have plenty of leaves to spare, most did not highly value mustard seeds, nor want to plant them in their own small, extremely labour-intensive gardens.
So why did Jesus choose the often rejected and seemingly worthless mustard plant for this parable, in a place where almost all the people in the crowd would have grown gardens and would know all this about the mustard plant? And why would anyone, “after receiving” a mustard seed, even want to plant it in one’s own little garden? Well, first of all, mustard was a herb valued for its flavour. And, as any real gardener will tell you, certain individual herb plants will produce a better flavour than all the others, though all are of exactly the same variety. So a gardener will strive to keep the seeds of a particularly superior plant, with the hope of producing more plants offering that superior flavour. All gardeners back them practised a selective breeding of plants just as they do now. Since the gardener in this parable received a mustard seed, it implies that some other highly respected gardener, who grew the best flavoured mustard plant, gave this gardener that seed. And the one who received that seed must have loved the strong flavour of pickled mustard leaves. So this gardener wanted to grow that precious, beautifully flavoured plant in his own garden too, so he or she could produce a more convenient or plentiful supply of leaves for oneself. Then that gardener could collect the seeds each year from the best plants, sow them during the next season, and possibly perfect the flavour (i.e., mustard is an annual, not a perennial). That gardener might even start a business of pickling those delicious mustard leaves, and sell them for a good price, since the product would be in high demand.
Since this mustard seed represented a high-quality kind of love and truth, the one who received it valued it highly, in spite of its drawbacks. Although love and truth are very difficult to maintain in the garden of the heart, the gardener in this parable was very happy to receive it. And here Jesus also implied that the gardener received this seed from God, so that gardener could trust that this seed was of the best quality possible. Then, since Jesus was teaching this parable to His elect siblings, we can also assume that all these elect possessed an innately strong preference for the flavour of this kind of herb, although it certainly was not valued much by Satan’s world order. Finally, once this superior kind of plant grew within the hearts of the elect, some might reproduce so many good products from that first little seed that they might “sell” it for free, as elders proclaiming the love and truths of God.
Elect spirits possess a sense of taste which greatly differs from that of non-elect spirits, and also recognize their need for certain spiritual nutrients, which the self-destructive non-elect refuse to consume. The non-elect despise the taste of love, truth, honesty, justice and sacrifice. None of the non-elect like any of the aspects of God-like love and truth, because they are so bothersome and so hard to maintain. A just and equitable kind of love which bases all on truth is repulsive and utterly useless to the hierarchies of Satan’s world order. In fact, the non-elect will spit love out and want to eradicate all sources of such things. But, to God’s elect children, the flavour of God-like love and truth is more delicious than anything else in the world, and they all know it is essential for the health of their personal lives, even for all souls in their land. So, when their Father, the Gardener of perfect love and truth, gives them a seed of His kind of love and truth, the elect run to diligently sow it in the fertile ground of their hearts. With much care and strenuous labour, they water, weed and grow it, as the most highly valued plant in their entire garden. It soon becomes their most precious treasure. And its seed may have a dark exterior, since it brings many woes to the flesh. Yet that seed has a bright yellow interior, the colour of the sun, the colour that represented truth to the Jews. Then its tasty leaves brought much satisfaction, as well as the essential fibre, vitamins and minerals they lacked.
Because of the perceived value of this seed received from the heavenly Father, this good selectively bred mustard seed becomes “the greater” of all the plants in the garden of his heart. And, after it Page 970
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
grows to its full height, when it “becomes a tree” or bush (δένδρον), the elect will even see “the birds of the sky come and rest in its branches.” Now remember, in Jewish ecclesiastical literature, the “birds of the sky” were figurative representations of spirits, either demonic or angelic spirits.
And, in this parable, Jesus was obviously implying that His elect heavenly angels would come to rest in the branches of God-like love growing in one’s heart. Jesus was saying that angels would come to see one’s love. A love for God, for a spouse, for children, for friends and for all others is guarded by the elect angels of heaven, and even becomes the home or “nest” of those pure spirits. For all the heavenly angels “desire to look into” this saving love within God’s children on earth (I Pet. 1:12).
One other thing should be mentioned about mustard in the garden: Mustard is often used as a cover crop, to prepare garden beds for future crops. After it grows a little, but before it goes to seed, the farmer or gardener will plow it under. Then the chemical properties of the fresh, green mustard will
“fumigate” the soil, killing harmful pests and diseases, while promoting the growth of beneficial soil organisms at the same time. In other words, incorporating love and truth in the soil of the heart will help to keep the spirit healthy and productive. Also, growing mustard near other garden crops will attract beneficial insects and birds, which destroy aphids and harmful insects. These beneficial creatures can be compared to the angelic spirits sent by God to destroy the spirits who harm the gardens of elect hearts. Also, since mustard grows so large, garden pests often choose to attack it instead of the smaller and less visible garden plants. Yet those pests often cannot do too much damage to the mustard plant, since it is so large. And this can be compared to the sacrificial lives of deeply loving elect souls, who are willing to become targets to divert attacks upon their people, but whose spirits love enough to withstand the damage done to them. Due to this, some gardeners like to plant mustard at the edge of their garden, in a place where it will not shade the other garden plants (i.e., on the north side of their garden, if it is in the northern hemisphere, or on the south side if it is in the southern hemisphere). Likewise, Satan’s world order, even the lands ruled by his non-elect exploiters, like some loving elect souls planted in them, although they often marginalize them.
Finally, there is also the obvious benefit of harvesting mustard seeds and leaves. So, along with all else that God’s just love does, it also provides healthy nourishment with a savoury and enjoyable flavour, not only for the elect, but for God Himself, His angels and every human society on earth.
Then Jesus “uttered another parable to them: ‘The kingdom of the heavens is like yeast, which a woman, after receiving [it], incorporated within three measures of flour until it leavened the whole’”
(Mat. 13:33, from: Ἄλλην παραβολὴν ἐλάλησεν αὐτοῖς· Ὁμοία ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ζύμῃ, ἣν λαβοῦσα γυνὴ ἐνέκρυψεν εἰς ἀλεύρου σάτα τρία ἕως οὗ ἐζυμώθη ὅλον, SBLGNT). As mustard plants are to gardeners, yeast is to bakers. That is, Jews stigmatize yeast to some degree, and used it in all kinds of negative figurative ways. Even Jesus did so. And this was partly because God forbade yeast in their homes during the Passover week (Ex. 13:3-9, that is, 7 days for homes in Israel but 8
days for homes in the Diaspora). God also commanded that only unleavened bread must be used for the wave offerings burned on the alter, as a sacrifice during a mikveh (baptism), a consecration and anointing of His priesthood, or whenever priests entered the Holy Place of the temple to serve God and make atonement for the people (Ex. 29:2,23-25; Lev. 6:16). All Jewish people of that time, while the temple still existed, would have know this. And Jews also would have known that most offerings made of flour, which they brought to the temple grounds, had to be unleavened (Lev. 2:4-5: Num.
6:15,17), although there were a few which could be leavened (Lev. 7:12-13). Then they also knew that even Yahweh and His two angels ate unleavened bread when they took on human bodies and came to visit Abraham (Gen. 19:3). So a bias against yeast (or any other kind of leaven, even baking Page 971
soda) existed among the Jews back then, and persists to this day. Yet Jesus deliberately chose to use tboth the stigmatized mustard seed and yeast in His illustrations of God’s holy, loving, just kingdom.
So why did Jesus use, of all things, the often maligned mustard plant and yeast as illustrations? Was it for the same reason that He told a parable where a Samaritan was the hero and the most respected Jewish leaders in the land were villains, although most Jews believed the Samaritans were grossly inferior heretical enemies and Jewish leaders were almost worshipped as their gods? That is, did Jesus use the disrespected and even hated things as images of God and His holy kingdom because Jesus wanted His disciples to stop judging through lies and by external appearances alone? Well, yes, this does seem to be what our God Jesus was implying by teaching us that God’s’ kingdom is like these stigmatized, avoided things which most religious people perceived as profane or even as evil.
It is especially puzzling when we realize that Jesus was not only comparing yeast and mustard to God’s earthly kingdom, but also to His utterly holy kingdom above (i.e., to God’s eternal home in the third heaven). Jesus likened the yeast and the mustard to “the kingdom of the heavens/skies”
(translated from, ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν, where οὐρανῶν is plural, indicating all three heavens, including His sky ruling over all the earth, all outer space in the material universe, and His eternal spiritual realms). And we should remember that Jesus was speaking to an audience of elect who had been trained from birth to think only with their minds of flesh, to make all matters of religion into physical rituals and deeds, without paying any attention to the spiritual reminders inherent to those rituals or any consideration for the spirit’s loving motives and intentions while doing good deeds.
Since the vast majority of His disciples saw religion only in carnal terms, and their spirits were so numb and lethargic that they could not conceive of anything beyond the immediate needs of their flesh, Jesus likened His true spiritual kingdom to things their flesh had been trained to look down upon, or even abhor. Their priests and rabbis had trained them to nullify God’s intended purposes for His ceremonial laws and to do good deeds through a carnal greed for status and a bigger mansion in heaven. Originally, all physical sacrifices, ceremonies and appointed holy days were designed to remind the people of Israel about the teachings and works of God, so they might meditate upon the attributes and desires of God, so they might emulate His just and loving ways. But their priests and rabbis transformed God’s laws into an endless repetition of meaningless words and actions, based on man-made rule upon man-made rule, or invented precept upon invented precept. And, with this focus solely upon required or forbidden physical words and deeds, the people soon developed superstitious fears about the neutral useful creations of God. So yeast was no longer a good creation of God, that God sometimes used to represent puffed-up pride in self-righteous souls, but was otherwise useful for many good purposes. Yeast was no longer seen as forbidden by God in breads symbolizing the humbling and nourishing truth and wisdom of God. Rather, avoiding yeast was now a matter of puffed-up pride, the very kind of arrogance, ignorance and superstition which God’s symbol of the unleavened bread was warning them to avoid. Now physical yeast itself was somehow perceived as being evil. They could no longer distinguish between the physical and the spiritual, the holy and the common, the unclean and the clean (Lev. 10:10-11), since their teachers knew nothing of God’s Law.
Similarly, consuming mustard was was simply a matter of taste and, although growing mustard was inconvenient, there certainly was nothing morally or spiritually wrong about growing it in one’s own garden. Yet an influential religious leaders actually became experts in vilifying literally any physical entities or actions, since they strove to keep the focus of the people on physical matters alone, and distracted them away from the realities of their spiritual responsibilities to God and to one another.
Thus, an esteemed religious authority could even deem the consumption and growing of mustard to be evil, merely because he did not like its taste, or more likely because he wanted to cause divisions Page 972
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
in the church, to politically separate his loyal worshippers from the rest of the church. Since the people artificially worshipped their spiritual guides as their saviour gods, a religious teacher who did not personally like mustard could cause his dupes to think there was something inherently evil about mustard or anything else, although mustard was just a plant which the real Creator God provided for our nourishment, for our medical benefits and for the pleasure of our flesh. Since the people actually worshipped those lying humans far more than they worshipped the real God, those highly esteemed religious authorities were able to manipulate and delude the people into serving their own personal financial, political and religious ambitions. The people did not serve God’s kingdom, but a kingdom of liars belonging to Satan’s world order. And, since their human gods hated the real God Jesus, who was working to undo the evil works of those deceivers, their duped puppets saw this hatred in their human gods and became suspicious of Jesus. They thought Jesus must be evil simply because their lying human gods hated Him, although the Spirit of life in Jesus actually was their utterly holy God.
Remember, the people in that crowd had just witnessed the family of Jesus coming to betray Him, to have Jesus executed as a reprobate. Jesus’ mother and brothers had been convinced by the religious leaders that He was teaching heresies. And, after the crowd saw how their esteemed and literally worshipped religious guides were able to convince Jesus’ own family that He was so evil that they felt obligated to have Him stoned to death, some disciples stopped following Him. Yes, many still followed Him, because Jesus was a fascinating Preacher who performed miracles. Yet most of these remained suspicious of Him. Only a small minority even attempted to judge the actual words and deeds of Jesus, to weigh them in an unbiased way against God’s Word. Rather, most judged Jesus entirely according to man-made traditions of their human gods, according to the physical rules and precepts invented by the carnal minds of their foolish spiritual guides. The falsely judging masses were infantile spirits who esteemed, followed and worshipped liars. And they they followed those human gods simply because those deceivers flattered their carnal egos, then impressed them with eloquent words and accolades awarded by other vain men like themselves, or with outwardly pious appearances like clerical clothing, or with devout-looking theatrical props used to dramatize their well-rehearsed monologues. Therefore, since it is impossible to teach these superstitious worshippers of human gods, Jesus spoke in parables, and often used the “least of all” things, like mustard seeds and yeast, to illustrate the greatest of all things, in parables about God’s infinitely just and loving kingdom growing in the elect spirits He had awakened. These parables puzzled them, and were not be understood immediately. But they would be easily remembered when the heavenly Father chose to awaken their elect spirits. Therefore, Jesus did not stop teaching those carnally minded elect who still followed Him, and did not give up hope for them. He merely taught them in parables, for now.
This is why Matthew told us: “Jesus uttered all these in parables to the masses and, apart from parables, He uttered nothing to them. In this way, He would have fulfilled the written word through the prophet, saying, ‘I will open My mouth in parables. I will speak out that which was hidden and has been remaining undiscovered from the foundation [of the world]’” (Mat. 13:34-35, from: Ταῦτα
πάντα ἐλάλησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν παραβολαῖς τοῖς ὄχλοις, καὶ χωρὶς παραβολῆς οὐδὲν ἐλάλει αὐτοῖς·
ὅπως πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος· Ἀνοίξω ἐν παραβολαῖς τὸ στόμα μου, ἐρεύξομαι κεκρυμμένα ἀπὸ καταβολῆς, SBLGNT). Here the quote from the prophet was Psalm 78:2, a psalm which has Messianic implications, since it ends with a word about God appointing David as the shepherd and saviour of God’s rebellious people of Israel, in a way that seems far more fitting for the descendant of David, for the Messiah, than for David himself. And, by quoting this verse, with its perfect passive participle form of κρύπτω, Matthew suggested that Jesus was revealing truths which had been hidden for a very long time, and remained undiscovered ever since then. These were truths Page 973
known by generations at the foundation of the world, by Adam and Eve, and likely by the line of the solitary priests descended from them, right up to the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For we have biblical evidence that Abraham knew God’s name, Yahweh, and its meaning. But Moses and Israel forgot His name after the world order had enslaved them, and had to be told it again (Ex. 3:13-15).
Yet it was not just the physical name of God which had become hidden from the priesthood of Israel.
It was the meaning of God’s name which had been lost to them. For now God’s people began to rely on the words and deeds of their flesh, because they were not spiritually awake. They could no longer see the heart of God, not even His most prominent attribute of just love, though God hid this truth out in the open, where any casual observer could find it. All this truth was written in all His creations from the beginning. Yet His church of Israel, while claiming to worship Yahweh, He who is literally all that physically and spiritually exists, could not even begin to comprehend His name. They were now blind to the spiritual realities of God and His love existing in them and all around them, as well as the realization that He had created all time in the material universe in a moment of spiritual time, for the education of their own eternal spirits. God made His most critical attributes, as our Creator, Owner and loving Father, clearly evident for the edification of His children. Yet Jesus was forced to utter revelations about these very characteristics of God in semi-opaque parables, as to little children, because most elect spirits were not yet ready to learn those truths directly, through the plain language of factual teachings. For their spirits had been taken captive by their flesh. The minds of their flesh were duped by liars, keeping them trapped in dark religious subject kingdoms within Satan’s world order. Now they were far more concerned about how to tie the knots on their phylacteries than they were about serving God rightly and wisely through their spiritual love built upon His genuine truths.
So exactly how did Jesus liken God’s temporary earthly kingdom, together with His utterly holy and eternal third heaven, to a little bit of yeast received from an unspecified source, to a speck of yeast incorporated into a huge amount of flour, until the entire batch was leavened? What hidden truth was Jesus revealing in this parable? All He said was this one sentence: “The kingdom of the heavens is like yeast, which a woman, after receiving it, incorporated within three measures of flour until it leavened the whole.” Well, first look at how much flour Jesus specified (i.e., 3 measures = about 39
dry litres or 35 dry quarts, or about 17.5 kg. or 38.5 lbs., enough flour for about 370 to 430 loaves of soft flat bread, depending on the size of the loaves). He must have mentioned this particular amount for some good reason. Here He was talking about leavening enough flour to make at least one loaf of sweet, soft, leavened, flat bread for every day of the year, even for the longest year in the Jewish calendar (i.e., the Jewish year varied in length, and the longest was about 385 days). Most Jewish women would have understood that three measures of flour would be enough to make a year’s worth of flat bread for one adult, since most had to carefully budget for the purchase of flour for each person they fed in their household. So this amount is the first clue to the meaning of this parable.
Second, we know this parable of the yeast was meant to inform His people about how His earthly kingdom, as well as His heavenly kingdom, could grow internally, inside each individual heart and soul, as well as in each local church or tribe. And, since He said that a woman did this, this parable was intentionally directed towards the elect women in that Roman and highly misogynistic culture that those Jews had adopted. Here Jesus was reminding those men that male and female bodies of flesh hold asexual spirits of life, that the spirits of elect women are equal to the spirits of elect men.
So women were an equal and essential part of the internal growth of God’s kingdom in individuals, in churches and in societies. Women had different physical minds, but the same kinds of spiritual minds. Therefore, the physical and spiritual minds of women were critical to the understanding and application of the truths that God had been teaching His people since the foundation of the world.
Page 974
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
Jesus was saying that even an elect woman on earth could work true justice through God-like love, if God’s kingdom worked in her heart and soul daily, like yeast consuming and transforming all her internal truths into wise and God-like love. Furthermore, we should realize that leavened flour created the soft, sweet and nourishing bread that a woman baked for God as a “sacrifice of peace offerings for thanksgiving” (Lev. 7:13), as well her unleavened bread offerings. For these kinds of offerings from the people, which God used for the purpose of feeding feeding His inner priesthood of the Levites, were baked by women. Then a woman gave leavened bread to her family in the same way as well, as a sacrifice to her God. Jesus would have had this in mind as He spoke to His Jewish audience, consisting of both men and women. But, above all, Jesus was telling each of us about how His kingdom can be thoroughly incorporated into all elect hearts and souls. Jesus was teaching us how truth can grow, blossom and bear the fruits of responsible, wise and God-like love—which is the only kind of earth-made treasure that each man’s spirit and each woman’s spirit is able to take with them to their predestined eternal homes waiting in heaven above, in its city of New Jerusalem.
Also, we should consider how literally all leaven had to be removed from every Jewish home at least once a year, just before the Passover. Thus, Jewish women would gather up and “sell” all of their leavened flour to their Gentile friends just before the Passover, so they could then “purchase” it back again after the Passover ended. So this was primarily how they “received” their leaven from an outside source. And this is what most Jews would have mentally pictured when Jesus said that the woman mixed her leaven with her flour “after receiving it.” But here Jesus implied that we receive this leaven from God, into each one’s heart, and that even the smallest amount of His leaven worked into enough flour of truth, which He also put into a soul, to make enough bread to feed one’s spirit every day of the year. His leaven produced enough love for the daily needs of God’s beloved elect, and was their only inheritance from their heavenly Father, while dwelling in flesh on earth. So, to the Jews, Jesus here implied that God Himself is a “Gentile” Friend. For God was not born of Abraham.
God was not born at all, but exists outside of all the times He created. To Jewish minds, this parable did indeed imply that God is the “Gentile” Friend from whom they receive the leaven. Therefore, it seems that our God Jesus was reminding His Jewish priesthood, descended from Abraham’s body, that He had created them to serve all of His creations, even His Gentile people, not just Israel itself.
The Kingdom Parables Given to His Teaching Elders
As mentioned, Jesus gave the last three kingdom parables to the chosen disciples whom He invited into His home that evening. These were granted only to His assistant teachers, those whom He sent out on missions (i.e., the apostles), who would soon become teaching and judging elders in His true New Covenant church of Israel. And Jesus uttered these parables mere hours after some Evangelical leaders had deceived His family so badly that they had actually agreed to betray Him to death by stoning. But Jesus clearly had opened the eyes and healed the sickened thoughts of His mother and brothers by this time, although normal souls like us often fail in that kind of reconciliation even after working on it for a lifetime. And Jesus obviously was not bitter or even upset about those failures of His family members, nor about the superstitions and foolishness of the crowds. For He continued to lovingly teach the crowds in whatever capacity He could, through parables, and also went straight home to His family after dismissing the crowds. For He knew how easily their spirits were deceived.
Because Jesus was God, He knew that He had limited literally all the infantile elect spirits born in flesh on earth. He created each to learn a particular spiritual trade while they dwelt in the material realm, a kind of work which they could then rightly and wisely labour at once each went home to heaven. Each would specialize in one kind of service within the body of His church, some in more Page 975
narrow works of building up specific aspects of love in His kingdom, as well as some lesser souls who would develop a broader view of all the parts, who would comprehend all how all fit together.
And the greater scope of works done by those lesser souls, by the teaching and judging elders, raised them to an equal status among the rest of the elect. Yet, on earth, the vast majority of the elect were so busy in their apprenticeships, each learning one’s own specific destiny, that their very limited waking hours in earthly bodies prevented them from taking the time to learn about how all of their highly varied specialties functioned for the good of all in God’s kingdom. Very few of their spirits took the time to see the big picture, to understand how much they all needed God and one another.
Then the demonic spirits came to their minds of flesh and distorted the purposes of all their earthly experiences. So the elect began to emphasize the physical over the spiritual, and the thoughts of their souls grew utterly foolish, destroying one another and themselves. Since Satan taught them to silence and suppress the thoughts of their own spirits, and ignore the counsel of God’s Holy Spirit, all of them became insane. All neglected God’s earthly kingdom, preferring to serve the unjust and self-destructive kingdom of the devil instead. For instance, if a lawyer or a carpenter worked honestly and loved the people, serving for their good at all times, as a valuable builder of God’s earthly kingdom, he was left in poverty, marginalized and treated like a second-class citizen. But if a lawyer or carpenter lied, robbed the people and exploited others without mercy, that leach on society was treated with the highest respect, granted huge sums of Satan’s invention of money, and was even allowed to take positions of governing authority through his use of his money, so he could further exploit the people for his own self-indulgent purposes, so he could become even more wealthy and powerful. The non-elect who loved no one, not even their own families, ruled over everyone else, while God ruled over none. In the beginning, when the elect recognized God as the only true Head of every man, lies and evil were cast out from the people. But, as the non-elect rose to power through a love for the things of Satan’s hierarchical world order, through threats of physical violence and much deceiving rhetoric, truth and good were cast out. Then all exploited one another, even murdered one another for a chance to gain a grain of rice. Everything was backwards, self-destructive and insane.
Our God Jesus saw all this. And that is why He came in a body of flesh to them; to save them from that insanity, to open their dark and deluded eyes and ears, to awaken, teach and train their spirits to fulfill the loving justice of His Law, to walk according to the effective guiding spiritual principles that He created and has upheld since the beginning of time. Jesus did not come to punish the foolish, but to build up His true kingdom on earth, a people who equitably provided for the eternal heavenly destinies of all His creations. In the meantime, if He saw them fall to the lies and sins of the devil’s minions, He did not condemn them. Rather, He simply did His works of turning those deceived elect away from those lies and sins. He taught them the truth, so they could repent into it, so they could put to death their old deluded lives of darkness, so they could rise into new and abundant lives full of love for God and His creations, with a completely restored relationship between their spirits and the utterly holy Spirit of their heavenly Father. This is the work Jesus did that day, in the hearts of His biological mother and brothers and in His disciples. He did not judge against them, but saved them.
Jesus withdrew to His house with His twelve apostles, and possibly with some of the seventy other apostles whom He later sent out on His missions. But all these men would have been the souls He sent out on missions to proclaim the Gospel of salvation through His Spirit, whom He was teaching to make right and just judgments, whom He also empowered to heal the sick, cast out demons and do other good works for the welfare of God’s people. That is, all would have been men whom He was training to become the teaching and judging elders of His New Covenant branch of Israel. Then, after explaining the parable of the field—how He sowed His beautifully good seed on earth, and how Page 976
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
Satan also sowed his darnel seed among them—Jesus gave these men three more kingdom parables.
Still, after explaining the parable of field and providing three more parables, Jesus asked His chosen teaching assistants: “Do you thoroughly grasp the reasoning behind all these things [i.e. where the verb implies that He wanted them to understand these parables in a way which would connect the figurative elements of the parables to the realities of their own experiences]?” (Mat. 13:51, from: Συνήκατε ταῦτα πάντα;, SBLGNT).
The apostles responded by saying “Yes” (ναί). And Jesus knew they did comprehend, to a certain degree, that is, all of them except Judas Iscariot, who was a darnel seed that Jesus allowed the devil to plant among them for the Father’s own good purposes. Jesus knew their spirits well, even all the thoughts of those infantile spirits, as well as the fears and doubts in their minds of flesh. So He also realized that their understanding, at that time, was extremely limited. Thus, Jesus longed for the day when He would send His Holy Spirit to dwell in their hearts, next to their willing young elect spirits.
With the wise and rational counsel of God always within them, their spirits would soundly mature and more fully grasp the meaning of His words each day. But the gift of His Holy Spirit would first require ratification in His blood, and His departing from the earth, to enable our God Jesus to make disciples of all the elect existing on earth, all at once. But, in the meantime, Jesus gave them yet one more parable, after the three previous ones. And this was not a parable about the kingdom of God.
Rather, this final parable was about how these apostles, His infantile teaching assistants among the rest of His infantile and weak disciples, would soon become teaching elders in the New Covenant branch of His church of Israel, after He sent His Holy Spirit to continuously counsel their spirits throughout the remainder of their lives. Since we need to realize that Jesus wanted to those men in His home to become the teaching and judging elders of His church, let me exegete that parable first.
His last parable of the day revealed why He called these men into His home. He did so because He was preparing them to be “scribes” or “scholars,” that is, teaching elders. They were being discipled by Him so they would learn how to feed the people of His kingdom with the nourishing truth and wisdom of God. And soon, on the day of the Pentecost, all would be taught and trained by His Holy Spirit for this same purpose as well. These men were shown the deeper truths of God so they could proclaim His Gospel of salvation to other elect souls, to preach His truths which could lead all the elect into abundant lives of love and just judgments, for the peace and welfare of all in His kingdom.
His final parable was: “Because of this, every scholar having been discipled by the kingdom of the heavens is like a certain person who continuously brings out of his treasured goods, old things and new things, for benefit of the Head of the household” (Mat. 13:52, from: Διὰ τοῦτο πᾶς γραμματεὺς
μαθητευθεὶς τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν ὅμοιός ἐστιν ἀνθρώπῳ οἰκοδεσπότῃ ὅστις ἐκβάλλει ἐκ τοῦ
θησαυροῦ αὐτοῦ καινὰ καὶ παλαιά, SBLGNT). Here Jesus tells us that a man brings out his treasures for the benefit of someone, for a person described by the noun οἰκοδεσπότῃ. The dative form of this noun (i.e., of οἰκοδεσπότης) indicates that the action of bringing out the treasures is “for the benefit of the Head of the household.” And Jesus, our God, is the Head of the household of Israel. So the
“scholar” who brings out these treasures is not the owner of those treasures, but a servant working for the Head, and the Head is the one who actually owns those treasures. Jesus was saying that He chooses and appoints each true teaching elder or “scholar” (γραμματεύς) in His household or family.
And He not only teaches and trains His younger brother daily, to prepare him for this mission, but He will even continue to apprentice him in this skill of bringing out treasures until the end of his last day at the gates of heaven. Then each scholar will continue to serve in this role throughout eternity.
True teaching elders do all kinds of works for brothers and sisters in their family, all in the name of Jesus. These men spend all their treasured goods, accumulated over their lifetimes, on their other Page 977
family members, striving to improve their lives, to prevent them from suffering as they did. For the teaching elders began life as foolish infants, and suffered much in their ignorance. But, as Jesus’
chosen religious scholars, their most valued goods are the realities learned from their oldest Brother, Jesus, who has temporarily gone away, but still daily communicates with their immature and needy spirits. Because Jesus speaks to their spirits every day, their hearts’ desires compel them to give His received counsel to every other beloved sibling in their family. Each appointed “scholar” or elder will continuously bring out his old and new treasures of valued knowledge and wisdom stored in his heart. And each truth is rich with fulfilled meanings of God’s Old Covenant Scriptures, and growing more full and valuable each day, with an ever increasing comprehension of New Covenant teachings.
For each elder’s spirit receives warm new spiritual gold, silver and precious jewels from Jesus’ Spirit every day. So, in this last parable, Jesus was illustrating how these chosen teaching assistants will experience a continuous growth of knowledge and wisdom throughout their lives. His Spirit will add epiphanies to their previous revelations throughout their lives, and they will carefully store all this in their hearts, in the minds of their spirits, where it can never be forgotten. Then they bring out these truths as gifts to all the others in God’s household, so all the children in His family can shine with gold, for the glory of their oldest Brother Jesus and their heavenly Father. So, even to this day, our resurrected and living Lord Jesus has continue to disciple elders and apostles sent out on missions to teach His Word. He has done so throughout history, and will send out His best during the end times.
He will always raise up teaching elders to serve His family in His name, to enrich all elect spirits.
After we realize that Jesus was teaching these few chosen men to become “scholars” and serve as teaching elders in His New Covenant family of Israel, we can better understand the meaning of the three kingdom parables He taught in His home that day. Furthermore, we will be able to recognize those men whom Jesus chooses to become elders in His church. For these three kingdom parables describe what the hearts of His chosen elders are like. So, if a man’s spirit is not described by these three parables, he is not a true elder sent by Jesus. The first parable is: “The kingdom of the heavens is like a treasure having been hidden and remaining undiscovered in a certain field, which a person, having found, kept hidden. Then, because of his joy, he departs and sells all, as much as he possesses, and purchases that field” (Mat. 13:44, from: Ὁμοία ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν
θησαυρῷ κεκρυμμένῳ ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ, ὃν εὑρὼν ἄνθρωπος ἔκρυψεν, καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς χαρᾶς αὐτοῦ ὑπάγει
καὶ πωλεῖ πάντα ὅσα ἔχει καὶ ἀγοράζει τὸν ἀγρὸν ἐκεῖνον, SBLGNT). First understand that the Jews had a right to take shortcuts across the fields owned by others. Because God owns all the earth, and all lands upon it, no one under heaven had any right to forbid anyone from trespassing on the land that God had granted in temporary stewardship, to use for a short time in their short lives on earth.
As God’s appointed steward, each land owner had to use his land for the good of all in the kingdom.
So, regarding this parable, we can dismiss the thoughts of Roman-like humanists, who might say that Jesus was teaching a nefarious principle involving illegal trespassing and cunning plots of greed.
Rather, Jesus was simply implying that, in the same way His Law expected all to acknowledge God’s ownership of all lands, every teaching elder was also expected to acknowledge that all his treasures of valuable knowledge and wisdom on the earth also originated from God, and that those truths were also granted by God to other stewards before they received them. All belongs to God alone, who designed and created all realities, then gives some the stewardship of some. But there are times when a steward of God’s intellectual properties, like knowledge and wisdom, is neither faithful nor diligent, and does not use God’s property for the good of all. There are many whose elect spirits had once received real truths from the Holy Spirit of Jesus, but hid those truths in chests and buried them in the field of their hearts so they would not be persecuted, so they could reap the rewards of Page 978
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
Satan’s world order, so they could live in pride and wealth as human gods. The became like all the other self-serving pastors, priests and elders appointed by Satan in the fake churches belonging to his unjust and lying world order. If that kind of steward ever dug up that truth, he would only use it for his own selfish purposes, not for God’s just kingdom. Therefore, God deludes that man who did not love His truth, so that man will always keep those truths hidden, until that man even forgets that he hid it, or dies. Then Jesus will send another man who will discover that most valuable treasure in that field, and is willing to give up all he owns to obtain it. But this man wants to spend all of that pure spiritual gold for the benefit of God’s just, loving kingdom. This faithful elder “continuously brings out of his treasured goods, old things and new things, for benefit of the Head of the household.”
Here Jesus was likening a teaching elder to a man wandering through a field and discovering a great treasure hidden there, a vast hoard which remained undiscovered by everyone else (i.e., which is indicted by the perfect tense of κρύπτω). And, actually, there are very many of these treasures hidden in the fields of past writers, who hid them, abandoned them, then died. But now notice how Jesus used four present (durative) verbs in the second sentence. Those last four present active indicatives indicated that the one finding the treasure would—in the future, after finding the treasure—would go through a continuous and ongoing process to gain that treasure. He would repeatedly visit and depart from the treasure’s location, then spend many days selling as much as he possessed or could obtain, and constantly do all that was necessary for the purchase of the field. And, in fact, every teaching elder truly sent by Jesus strives his entire life to buy the field of great hidden treasure. And, if any elder does not possess the zeal to endlessly seek to gain it, that man is not a true elder sent by Jesus.
So, from whom does a true teaching elder really buy the field? Well, the parable’s context suggests that true teaching elders ultimately gain that field and its treasures from God. After all, Jesus said it was about God’s kingdoms. But, for various purposes, as a blessing or to heap on condemnation, God grants the stewardship of His properties to both the good and the evil. So there are times when an elder receives either the resources to help him buy that field, or the field itself, from other true elders who have passed on and require a new generation to carry their torch. Yet there are also times when the true elder gains resources or whole fields from false churches and the pretenders in them, from those sent by the devil to steal from God’s kingdom, or take over good fields by illicit means.
Although this parable does not describe who the treasure-finder had to by that field from, Jesus seemed to suggest that His disciples should not always trust the stewards of fields with treasures in them. Yes, a field may hold tremendous wealth. But the steward is not always willing to serve God with those treasures. The spirit of a steward may not heed the Holy Spirit of God, might seek to use the discovered gold, silver and gems for his own selfish purposes. A steward may not want to bring out those old and new items in the way our High Priest and Head Teacher implied, “for benefit of the Head of the household.” Therefore, Jesus requires the one who discovers those treasures, His chosen and true teaching and judging elder, to keep that hidden treasure a secret and remain silent, until those treasures can be reclaimed by His faithful ones, then used to serve Him and His family, to bless His household. Jesus was telling His apostles that they cannot trust all who claim to be members of God’s household on earth. The parable’s field first needed to be purchased from the unfaithful and unworthy steward who ruled over it, in a legal and orderly way. For the field likely represented a false church. Many fake religious institutions possesses truths found in God’s Word or revealed in God’s natural creations, and actually have some good teachings and other spiritual treasures hidden in the ways and means they conduct their lives. But the people are ruled by pretenders who use that truth for selfish gain. Nevertheless, that field, those people and the resources held by those fakes will need to be removed from them, and transferred to the stewards whom the Head and Owner appoints, Page 979
in a peaceful and right manner, lest the people and resources in it might be harmed by intrigue, lies, violence and warfare. This is what Jesus was trying to teach His assistant teachers who were seated in His house that day, because they would soon be sent out to do this kind of mission for their Lord.
So this parable suggests that God hides His most valuable treasures of spiritual truths from greedy, self-serving stewards ruling over the fields belonging to Him alone. And those cheats never actually look for those spiritual items of gold, silver and rare gems, since the only thing their carnal souls can only see the living creations and dirt in the field, the people and things they can exploit for their own self-indulgent profit, pride and pleasures. But the true scholars, those chosen, taught and trained by our God Jesus, soon realize that many great spiritual principles are hidden in the field. So they are willing to work at any honest job and sacrifice anything they have, to gain that field and the treasure in it. They will do anything they can, all according to the laws of both God and of men, to gain that treasure, so it might be used for the benefit of the Head of the household, and all dwelling in New Jerusalem. All the men who are called and sent by our Lord Jesus are called to work diligently, and wisely forsake all they possess, to purchase this field from its thief. This is the only way to regain the right to those treasures of knowledge and wisdom in the field, to the spiritual gold, silver and gems of God’s truth, so all of it may then be used for all the just and loving purposes of God’s kingdom.
In context, this parable of a man finding a great treasure in another man’s field is about how a true disciple of Jesus is to become a faithful teaching and judging elder who will rightly serve God, who will learn to bring out the extremely valuable spiritual treasures of God for God, for the benefit of his Head of his household of Israel, and for the benefit of all dwelling with that Head in His church family. This parable told His assistant teachers how He called each of them to labour for the truth and wisdom of God,\ how he is to conduct his life and ministry. In youth, he may wander through many fields of knowledge, in the same way all the elect men. But most fields are used only for the purpose of earning worldly rewards for its steward. In fact, he also notices how many stewards will falsely claim to be gods who outright own those fields and all God’s living creations upon them. A few even dare to claim that they own human souls as well, and force God’s children to labour for their own selfish profit and pleasures, caring nothing for the welfare of those slaves, who are actually their siblings stolen from the heavenly Father. Seeing all this, the elect youth tries to avoid those wicked stewards and travels on the lesser paths, not on the main roads. But those less-trodden trails lead by the hiding places of God. For God is wise and does not hide the truth on Satan’s highways.
So God will, at His own appointed times, turn the eyes of a chosen elect young man towards a sign of His hidden place in a field. He opens that man’s eyes so that he sees a spiritual treasure which the blind wanna-be gods have never found in their stolen fields, and the mind of that man’s spirit soon realizes that something valuable is buried there. Of course, the Head and true Owner employs guards who ensure that His treasure is not discovered by the unfaithful and illicit steward of the field. He sends His angels to distract and turn the eyes of the worthless steward away from those sacred spots.
So they are never seen by them, since those blind, dishonest souls would only abuse or destroy those treasures, if they did find them. But the Head allows the young man to discover those treasures, since that chosen man is wise enough to know that he should keep the location a secret. The young man has experienced enough to know that, if he revealed this great treasure to the current steward, those bullying and oppressive thieves would never allow those valuables to be used for the benefit of the true Owner, nor for the good of anyone else. So the man keeps his mouth shut and departs, leaving the beautiful treasure hidden where he found it, until he is able to become the steward of that field, able to bring out those treasures for the benefit of the Owner and family. Furthermore, his loving elect spirit feels so compelled to gain that gleaming golden and silver truth, with its bright gems of Page 980
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
wisdom, that he dedicates his entire life to becoming the steward whom his Head will grant the right to use it for the benefit of His entire family, for the good all life within his loving Owner’s kingdom.
Forever after finding the treasure, this young man’s spirit is driven by the sole purpose of obtaining that invaluable truth, through a heavenly covetousness which longs to free it, to provide unrestricted access to it all, for the good of his brothers and sisters in his beloved family. And the joy of this good purpose satisfies his heart and fills his life with joy, lifts his head up high, spurs him on through any obstacle and hardship he might face. This noble cause, labouring for the justice and welfare of his entire family of humankind, is worked by every ounce of love his spirit possesses, and continuously grows within his spirit. The greatness of that discovered treasure devalues all his other possessions, causing all else to feel like useless burdens weighing down his soul. So he gladly sacrifices all he owns for his obsession. With the proceeds from his wise sale of his worldly goods, together with all he can earn, he purchases the stewardship of that field, and the right to the beautiful treasure in it. At first, he only obtains enough to put a small deposit down on the field, but enough to make a contract ensuring that no one else will purchase it without his permission. Then he continues to make all the required payments for many years. And the Owner, the heavenly Father of that elect young man, not only witnesses this contract, but also ratifies it and promises that the contract will be fulfilled. Since his Father is the final authority, with infinite power and resources, the contract can never be broken.
In time, the man matures, and eventually becomes the steward. The previous steward leaves and he moves into the house on the field. So now this older man bears the right to make the decisions and judgments regarding the field and all that is upon it or in it, but for the benefit of the Head. After many years of being taught and trained by the Owner, this man is able to act with far more wisdom and compassion than the previous steward. Then he digs up the hidden treasure and brings it out for the benefit of the Head, for all life in the Owner’s household. He will give some to his family, some to improve the lot of hired servants, and some for the animals and other living creations belonging to the Head. Still, he will not spend all the treasure, not all at once, since His wise Father has forbidden him to do so. Thus, he will always have enough for each season, even in times of drought or flood.
Likewise, this good and faithful steward will realize that his oldest Brother has gone away for time, but He will return to receive His inheritance from His Father, both this field and all the other fields in the vast estates of the Father. So this older man now lovingly and sacrificially governs the field for the benefit of his oldest Brother as well. Still, when his Brother returns, He will remain the steward of that field, whether he is remains on earth by that time, or has been transferred up to his Father’s spiritual realm. The field will eternally remain under his loving stewardship and he will forever work for his Father and his oldest Brother. This steward will never again need to give that field, nor any share of its treasure, to the previous greedy, abusive, exploitative steward. Finally he and his family will live in a comfortable, joyful spiritual wealth upon that field, together with freed creatures in it.
Then Jesus gave a second kingdom parable to the scholars who served as His teaching assistants, to the future teaching and judging elders of His New Covenant branch of Israel, to those who would be called apostles because He would send them out on His missions. Our God taught these chosen men:
“Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a person, [who is] a merchant, searching for beautiful pearls. So, after finding one pearl of extreme value, [and] after departing, he returned after travelling around, selling as much as he was able to obtain. Then he purchased it” (Mat. 13:45-46, from: Πάλιν
ὁμοία ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ἀνθρώπῳ ἐμπόρῳ ζητοῦντι καλοὺς μαργαρίτας· εὑρὼν δὲ ἕνα
πολύτιμον μαργαρίτην ἀπελθὼν πέπρακεν πάντα ὅσα εἶχεν καὶ ἠγόρασεν αὐτόν, SBLGNT). Here we see that the kind of teaching and judging elder whom Jesus appoints is a man who is constantly searching for beautiful pearls. His spirit is irresistibly drawn to truths from God, and it is his innate Page 981
nature to seek them. So he does so from birth. Then πέπρακεν is the perfect tense form of the verb πιπράσκω. So it indicates the result or effect of a past action involving travelling about selling things. In context, it therefore means, “he returned after travelling around selling. ” And the phrase, ὅσα εἶχεν, with an imperfect form of ἔχω suggests an incomplete past action and, in this context, it would mean that this merchant sold “as much as he was able to obtain for sale,” that is, all that he owned himself, and possibly whatever he could convince others to give him to sell on commission.
This is similar to the first parable, but illustrates a more personal way that God’s kingdom affects the spirits of teaching elders, according to the inherent attributes of their spirits. The spirits of all true elders appointed by our God Jesus possess an innate desire for the spiritually beautiful truths and wisdom of God, even from birth. Some do not find many pearls, neither in youth nor throughout their entire lives. But their spirits strongly desire those precious realities revealed by the Holy Spirit of their heavenly Father. So they travel through the lives of various families and cultures, even down dangerous paths in dark canyons, searching for the pearls others might have found and kept, because they too loved those orbs created by inwardly soft sedentary creatures wearing strong armour above and below. All the elect love the pearls of oysters, who dwell in large communities, fused together as one strong entity, silently content in warm, inviting, salty, coastal waters near lands of God’s people.
Here we notice two things. First, the “scholars” or teaching assistants whom Jesus invited into His home, were primarily buyers of pearls, not sellers. The only reason they also sold the lesser pearls they had purchased from other elect souls was to raise enough capital to purchase the one pearl of extreme value. Second, we see how Jesus portrayed both God’s earthly kingdom and His third heaven as that most beautiful pearl of extreme value. Therefore, the men He chose to teach and train to become teaching elders were compared to merchants always seeking beautiful pearls because they loved pearls, not to get rich. They became merchants of pearls through necessity alone, so they could pursue their passion, not for personal gain. They were always on the lookout for manifestations of just, wise, God-like love in other people, for these pearls of God. Their spirits longed to see and hold those spiritual realities, to meditate upon their beauty and the miracles the Creator did to make them.
Notice how Jesus placed the noun “merchant” (ἔμπορος) in apposition to the other noun “person”
(ἄνθρωπος). So He was not saying that each scholar was “like a merchant,” but “like a person [who is] a merchant.” This implied that each scholar was a person who became a merchant, but was not a seller of goods by nature. The character or essence of each was not that of a stereotypical merchant.
Only the occupation was like that of a merchant, and even implied that this is by compulsion, out of necessity, not really by choice. A teaching elder is not a naturally a merchant, who is only interested in making money. On the contrary, the scholar represented in this parable was willing to sell all he owned, and probably also do the hard work of selling the property of others on commission, just so he could purchase the pearl of the greatest value for himself. So, even if he had to live in relative poverty, this scholar would be content, as long as his spirit possessed God’s beautiful, just, equitable and loving kingdom in his heart. And every genuine pearl, even one of inestimable value, is merely a humble creature’s deposits of crystallized minerals around a speck of sand, created over a period of several years. And those creatures are so lowly that they live below ground level, under the shores at the periphery of mankind’s habitations. The most humble of all lives on earth laboured to build up those truths about love around the common and worthless irritants which God deposited within their soft bodies guarded by hard shells. Yet those lowly ones formed wondrously translucent orbs full of mysterious beauty. And this is why those pearls fascinate the scholars chosen by Jesus to become His assistant teachers, those men who become true elders in His real church on earth. Money does not appeal to them, although the Owner of the most valuable pearl demanded a very high price for it.
Page 982
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
In this parable of the extremely valuable peal, Jesus portrayed the merchant as an aesthetic, longing to hold that smooth translucent sphere in his own hands, to ponder its softly reflected light from heaven, and how it also absorbed the light from all around it, in its cloudy, unfathomable and hidden depths, as though its interior was a universe of infinite size. He wanted to feel its coolness which slowly warmed, by gathering in the heat of his living being. This tiny globe made him feel as though it collected, held and remembered all the light, spiritual joys and sorrows he accumulated throughout life, as well as the essence of all who handled it before him. Yet this pure white realm stole nothing.
It merely recorded every radiating kind of energy existing around it, all the good from human hearts, then sorted them out and presented them with evidence and understanding to anyone who took the time to ponder what it stored in its placid infinity, whenever a thumb and a finger might effortlessly lift it to a focused eye. To this merchant, a pearl was not an possession which could be easily sold for a profit. To him, every pearl was utterly valueless, because it was invaluable, far more precious than any amount of Satan’s invention called money. For each pearl was the spiritual art of God. And the pearl he found in the end was perfect, a holy abstract revelation of all in God’s wondrous kingdom!
So the previous kingdom parable figuratively portrayed the immense value of truth and wisdom in God’s kingdom, which is the treasure of teaching elders, that which no faithful servant of God can possibly ignore, since it is able to save his entire beloved family. But this parable illustrated how each seeing heart among His elect scholars will be irresistibly drawn to the intrinsic beauty of God’s kingdom, and how each inherently becomes obsessed with it. For His kingdom is all that their spirits long for, day and night, while dwelling upon this troubled physical manifestation of His spiritual realm, while enduring dying bodies of flesh upon this temporary similitude of both heaven and hell.
All truly chosen and called teaching elders, the scholarly disciples whom Jesus teaches and trains to assist Him in His ministry for the welfare of all their siblings in humankind, are or become fairly financially challenged. For Satan’s world order views them as its enemies, then tries to keep them in as much suffering and poverty as possible, so it can continue to exploit the people and steal as much as possible for its own psychopathic elite in its hierarchies. Thus, it is often necessary for God’s true servants to sell their personal possessions because they and their families need to eat, and merchants want money for the physical foods they sell. And some elders even become honest merchants, to earn enough to live. But, since a teaching elder spends so much his time and energy seeking truth, the only thing some can sell is that truth, to keep the flesh of his family and himself alive. So some elders must sell their teachings to those who will pay him. Some will sell their written materials or other forms of their teachings for a living. Yet this kind of man is always far more enamoured with the pure beauty of God’s truth and its good effects than its financial value. Thus, you will always see a true teaching freely give his teachings to as many people as possible and only require payment from those who can afford it. On top of this, Satan’s world order suppresses the real truth as much as God and the elect allow it to do so. Thus, you will never see the world order enthusiastically promote a true elder’s works, even the best works of the most faithful elders, over the works of the non-elect destroyers of life and faith. That is, you will almost never see a true elder receive wealth and power.
If possible, every truly elect scholar longs to freely give away all his pearls of truth, because God freely gave them all to him. Since all is freely received, God commands that all should be freely given (Mat. 10:8). God is the ultimate provider of all upon the earth, and causes the earth to produce all we eat. God does this for all through grace alone, since literally all are sinners who cannot repay Him for even one thing they receive from him, not even the very temporary life He gave their flesh, much less the eternal life He gave their spirits. So, while dwelling under the destroying influences of Page 983
Satan’s world order, a scholar may sometimes need to sell his truth for an honest price, but only to souls who can afford to pay a price, but will freely give it to those who cannot afford to pay for it.
This necessary compromise might provides a modest living for a true elder’s family and himself, enough to meet basic needs. But, by selling only to those who can pay, and for an honest price, it will allow his spirit to remain relatively free from the enslaving bonds of the demon Mammon, who promotes and justifies self-indulgent greed and a lust for power over the lives of one’s siblings in mankind. However, if an elect scholar someday overhears a mercenary merchant brag about his acquisition of an extremely expensive pearl of truth that someone stole from what that merchant calls a foreign king, and that king turns out to be Jesus, the true scholar will want to see it. If it turns out to be genuine, even the most perfect, deep, rich pearl of wisdom he has ever seen, his spirit will immediately recognize its value. For true scholars of God’s Word are experts at evaluating pearls of truth. Knowing that the mercenary merchant is a citizen of Satan’s world order, the scholar will also realize that the merchant will be willing to sell that stolen property. And I have even found the most famous stolen pearl of all, a pearl named “The True Salvation of Jesus,” which reveals the light of the world, and is a living representation of all the Creator’s transcendent glory and mystery, a pearl the High King freely granted to all the people of His kingdom, through His loving grace. This was not a pearl meant to make a profit for a petty thief. So a true scholar sells all to obtain it. All his heart had ever desired rests in the vast realms of that pearl’s interior. Thus, he will work any job, forsake all personal ambitions, sell everything he does not need for his family’s life and faith, labouring through many long and tedious hours, just to obtain the purifying warm light of that invaluable pearl.
Here Jesus identified the kind of longing inherent to the spirits of all true teaching elders in His real church of Israel. None are greedy, grasping, arrogant scholars with selfish ambitions. None seek any kind of worldly status, esteem, fame and financial gain through dishonest claims and presumptuous conclusions. None create fake pearls to impress dupes who will buy them at high prices. Those kinds of mercenary pearl merchants are too blind to see the intrinsic value of genuine pearls. And they sell delusions for the same price as realities, because their self-serving hearts only seek a profit, and they cannot even begin to properly evaluate life’s greatest treasures. But Jesus’ Holy Spirit teaches all true elect scholars to distinguish between real and fake pearls. So true scholars disdain and will not buy fake accolades of men and fake titles of esteem from institutions of Satan’s world order. They know that such things are worthless, useless and meaningless. Yet the valuable, effective and meaningful pearls cost them much, even the complete surrender of their spirits to the Creator of all free truth and wisdom. So true scholars soon part ways with enslaved scholars who serve the devil’s world order.
All the hearts of true teaching elders cannot help but search for beautiful pearls of truth, without any consideration of the cost to their own flesh and its vain desires. For God created their spirits with this compelling desire. It is written in their eternal genes. Above all, the heavenly Father of their spirits put in them an innate and irresistible longing for that “one pearl of extreme value,” called “Jesus, the light of the world, the Saviour of His people.” Their souls knows this pearl holds all realities within it, and shines all right and just applications of truth whenever the elect touch it, even the wisdom to feed the hungry and heal the wounded with eternal foods and everlasting medicinal balms. To gain this effective usefulness and beauty of those genuine pearls is the spiritual ambition of every chosen, discipled, called and sent scholar who is chosen, called, taught, trained and appointed by Jesus. It is their life’s greatest quest, and eventually becomes their only goal, worthy of all necessary sacrifices.
After the parable of the extremely valuable pearl, Jesus gave a third kingdom parable to the disciples He chose as His teaching assistants: “Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a dragnet cast into the sea. And, out of every kind having been gathered together, when this [dragnet] had been filled, Page 984
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
after hauling it near the shore and settling it down, they gathered the good [fish] into containers [of water] then threw out the worthless [fish]. It will be likewise at the completion of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil ones out from the midst of the just ones, then will throw them into the furnace of fire. The weeping and the gnashing of teeth will be there” (Mat. 13:47-50, from: Πάλιν ὁμοία ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν σαγήνῃ βληθείσῃ εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ ἐκ παντὸς
γένους συναγαγούσῃ· ἣν ὅτε ἐπληρώθη ἀναβιβάσαντες ἐπὶ τὸν αἰγιαλὸν καὶ καθίσαντες συνέλεξαν
τὰ καλὰ εἰς ἄγγη, τὰ δὲ σαπρὰ ἔξω ἔβαλον. οὕτως ἔσται ἐν τῇ συντελείᾳ τοῦ αἰῶνος· ἐξελεύσονται
οἱ ἄγγελοι καὶ ἀφοριοῦσιν τοὺς πονηροὺς ἐκ μέσου τῶν δικαίων καὶ βαλοῦσιν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὴν
κάμινον τοῦ πυρός· ἐκεῖ ἔσται ὁ κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων, SBLGNT). Of course, most of the chosen scholars in Jesus’ home that day were fishermen, and could perfectly visualize exactly what Jesus was implying here. But most of us know nothing about this kind of fishing, and need to learn how Jesus was comparing fishing with nets to the role of church elders and the judgment day.
Jesus knew what fishermen went through during their long nights of fishing, how they went out in their small and dangerous boats to search for the places where fish gathered to feed. This was an art as much as a skill. And, if they did not do it right, they would catch nothing, have nothing to sell, and would have no money to bring home, no food or the other necessities their families required. But, if they applied their craft correctly, they would cast out their dragnet and enough fish would be caught to make a good living. In a good location, they could draw the fish towards their boat with the light of a lamp, then cast the net upon them. The weights around the circumference of the net would sink faster than the centre of the net and scare the fish towards the centre. Then they would pull in a line that was threaded around the circumference to close the net and trap the fish. And, as they pulled in that line, the bottom of the net would be drawn toward the boat. If there were only a few fish in the net, they could pull the whole net into the boat. But, if there were many fish in the net, it would be too heavy to do this, and they would not be able to open the net while it sat in the water, and try to scoop out the fish, since that would enable a large number of the fish, possibly most of the fish, to escape. So, in this circumstance, they would need to leave the closed net in the water and haul it to the shore. But they could not drag it all the way onto the shore, since the fish would die there, and the fishermen wanted to keep the fish alive as long as possible. For they had to kill and process the fish only just before selling them, to keep them fresh and desirable for their customers in the market.
Thus, after dragging the net near the shore, they would settle the net down, with the closed opening facing upwards. Once it rested in that position, they loosened the lines that closed the net, but only enough to reach in and grab one fish at a time. And they definitely did not sort the fish “after sitting themselves down.” Rather, they would have sorted the fish “after settling down” (καθίσαντες) the net in an upright position. Then they would pull fish after fish out of the net, and out of buckets of water in their boat, throwing the unsaleable fish onto the shore to die, so those fish would not breed and eat the good kinds of fish, nor compete against the good fish for the lake’s resources. But they would leave the healthy, useful, saleable kinds of fish in the net, or put them into containers of water, to keep them alive, until they could process them. They probably did not in baskets while they were sorting the fish, where those fish would soon die. But they would put the good fish into baskets after they processed them in the morning, after gutting and scaling them, just before they took them to the marketplace. And that processing was the hardest part of their job. Yet it was done in the morning light, after they had little sleep and had been rowing, casting, pulling and labouring for many hours.
Even today, if a fisherman cannot immediately take his catch home and does not have an ice chest with him, he will keep it alive in a bucket of water, or tie a line through its gills, throw it back in the water, and fasten the end of the line to his boat or to a tree. For a dead fish will quickly begin to rot Page 985
and smell very unpleasant. And commercial fishermen can now keep their fish fresh in refrigerated containers. But, back then, fishermen had to keep their catch fresh without refrigeration, and were not able to get their fish to the market for hours after their catch. So they had to keep their catch alive, in vessels of water, until then. And they likely only tossed the “bad” fish onto the shore, to die, to prevent them from reproducing. For some of the “bad” fish ate the good fish, while others simply competed for the same food that the good fish required. Thus, they wanted to reduce the number of
“bad” fish in the same proportion as the good fish they captured, so the number of good fish would remain stable. Otherwise, if they only took the good fish to eat, and threw back all the “bad” fish, the
“bad” would soon outnumber the good. However, they could not leave all those stinking dead “bad”
fish on the shore, near their town. Thus, they would have sorted the fish somewhere quite far from the town. Then after they cleaned the boat and mended the nets, they would gather firewood, throw the dead “bad” fish on top, and start burning them to ashes. For they would not want to leave them there, since dangerous predators might come to eat them, and would soon make a habit of searching the shore for dead fish and possibly for tasty live fishermen. After the fire was burning, they would begin to kill and process the good fish, throwing their guts onto the fire as well, then go to market, Considering the archaeological finds of some ancient fishing boats in the Sea of Galilee, dating back to Roman times, we know that the larger ones had tanks of water continuously refreshed through pipes running from the bow into the tank and out the stern. So we can assume that fishermen back then strove to keep their catch of good fish alive until they could process them just an hour or so before bringing them to the market. And this would have been the kind of boat used by professional fishermen like the apostles. This is also implied in this third parable that Jesus gave to His future elders of His church, since He used the accusative plural form of the noun ἄγγος in that parable, and this word which usually refers to a container made to hold water or other fluids. Since fishermen put the fish into the ἄγγη, and not into a basket, it suggests they were trying to keep those fish alive. Yet they would not place the bad fish in with the good fish, wasting the precious space in their limited little water tanks. And, if they kept a full net in the water, then they clearly would not drag their extremely heavy nets right up onto the dry shore either, before they sat down and casually sorted the fish while they were dying. So, to translate this parable correctly, we need to consider this relevant information. Then we can better understand all that Jesus was implying to the elders of His church.
In this parable (13:47-50), Jesus likened the dragnet “the kingdom of the heavens,” and said it was cast into the sea of the earth. Then He drew a picture of fishermen dragging this net, filled with fish, near the shore. For, as His chosen disciples proclaimed truths from God, which exposed physical and spiritual sins, it would be like casting a net that caught both their elect siblings and their non-elect enemies. These disciples would soon preach the same truths that Jesus and John the Baptist did, who both gathered large followings of the elect, but also drew the attention of Satan’s non-elect children who violently opposed them. And Jesus also confirmed that this was the destiny of those disciples, that their lives would be just as He taught them in this parable, that their nets of truth would be “full of great fish” (μεστὸν ἰχθύων μεγάλων, see John 21:2-11). Soon many sinners would caught with the net of God’s created realities closing in around their lives. Then these future teaching and judging elders would drag that net near the shores, closer to the ends of those earthly lives whose motives and intentions had been exposed by their truths. So a sorting of the elect from the non-elect would begin. After docking near the shore, they would put the good fish in vessels of water to keep them alive. Their teachings in the Scriptures would justify the innocent and proclaim forgiveness for elect sinners bearing fruits of true repentance. The elect would remain in life-sustaining truths from God taught in their local churches, in God’s true priesthood of Israel, which preserved lives. But these Page 986
Mat. 13:31-35 & 44-53, Kingdom Parables
fishermen would cast out the “bad” fish, leaving them to die on dry land in the hot sun. These true teaching elders would expel the unrepentant non-elect from their churches, abandoning them to Satan’s deluded and self-destructive world order. But their task was not yet completed and help would need to be sent in order to finish this task, to do for all what they could not do themselves.
Jesus then spoke about the end of His earthly kingdom, and the tasks of His angels at the gates of His third heaven during the judgment day, “at the completion of the age.” And those works will be much like the tasks that His true teaching elders did in His name while they dwelt on earth. For the last day will also keep the repentant elect sinners alive, but expel the unrepentant evil-doers from His heavenly kingdom. On the last day, Jesus and His angels “will come out” of God’s home to “separate the evil ones out from the midst of the just ones.” Jesus and those angels will expel the unrepentant non-elect forever, into fire. Just as His earthly fishermen let the “bad” fish die on dry land, then burned their carcasses, the angels will cast the non-elect into hell, into “the furnace of fire.” In the same way the “bad” fish suffered on the beach, so too will those loveless spirits of the demons and their children endure “the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” in hell. But the good fish must also lose all the sins and lies from their earthly lives, and must be cleaned, so their new heavenly bodies will be fit for heaven. The earthly flesh of the elect will die, will be gutted of all inner lies and scaled of all earthly vanities. But their new eternal bodies will keep all the spiritual substances they grew inside during their lives on earth. They shall live forever, swimming in heaven’s clean living waters.
So this last kingdom parable differed from the other two parables Jesus gave to His disciples whom He chose to serve as His teaching assistants, who He was training to become teaching elders in His New Covenant branch of His church. His first parable for His elders was about how they will need to sacrifice all to gain the truths that build eternal God-like love, to obtain the treasure hidden in the field of the earth, for the inner wealth which will save themselves and their people. The second parable illustrated how much they would personally desire Jesus, as the most beautifully good pearl they could ever find, and value Him more than anything else existing in this world. Then this third parable prophesied that they would effectively do His works for His kingdom on earth, gathering the elect together into His local churches, since He would cause them to teach and judge in ways that kept His churches pure, free from the non-elect who destroyed God’s elect by either consuming all their food or by killing and eating them directly. So these three kingdom parables taught that all of His true teaching elders, all who would ever serve Him throughout history, would be the kind of men who will: (1) find, recognize, and labour incessantly for the precious treasure of truths hidden in God’s earthly kingdom; (2) possess an innate desire for the beauty of God and find Jesus to be so valuable that He is the only pearl they covet above all others, and (3) their works of teaching and judging on earth will be the same works that Jesus and His angels shall do on the last day in heaven.
With these three parables, Jesus set the course of their lives, since our God Jesus Himself willed their destinies, and His infinite power would not allow their futures to be altered. The fulfillment of their innermost desires and loving works were assured by His almighty hand, written upon indestructible stone tablets. For Jesus created their spirits with an inherent desire for His treasures of knowledge and wisdom, all that would greatly enhance the lives of their beloved siblings. Upon each elect heart, before it began to beat, Jesus had already permanently etched an inner longing for Him, the pearl of infinite value. Then He and His utterly holy Spirit could never be hindered or stopped from working through them, to teach and judge in His true New Covenant church of Israel. And His works in and through them would initiate the very works He will do on the judgment day, at the gates of heaven.
Page 987
Mat. 13:54-58,
God is Not Flesh
“Coming into His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom, and these mighty works? Isn’t this the carpenter’s Son? Isn’t His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? Aren’t all of His sisters with us? Where then did this man get all of these things?’ They were offended by Him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and in his own house.’ He didn’t do many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Mat. 13:54-58, WEB).
The day after Jesus’ family had been coerced into betraying Him to the Evangelicals, to His enemies who wanted to kill Him, He left Capernaum. He took His core disciples to Nazareth, which Matthew called “His own country,” since He grew up there. For Jesus likely wanted to give His mother and brothers, as well as the doubting masses in Capernaum, a little time to sort through their feelings and all that He told them the previous day. The distance travelled by Jesus and His disciples would have been only about 50 kilometres (30 miles), but it would have taken them two or three days to get there, depending on the weather and many other factors. And, on the next Saturday, Jesus taught in their synagogue, probably the one He attended with His family since He was an infant, until two or three years ago, when He moved His family to Capernaum. But He was still only about 32 or 33
years old. So the people in Nazareth obviously knew Him and His family very well, and probably saw Jesus as a bright young man who was intensely interested in the Scriptures. Yet they were now amazed by the depth of His understanding and the authority in which He presented His teachings.
Their astonishment regarding Jesus’ words during the men’s interactive teaching time implies that He must have been very quiet during the Sabbaths while He lived with them, just a few years ago.
But that was while His father, Joseph, the descendant of David and the true heir to Israel’s throne, was likely still alive. And Jesus would not have been willing to voice His opinions in the synagogue, nor anywhere else in that community, while the true king lived. But now Jesus was the true King of Israel. So He spoke without reserve, and did not hold back His judgments regarding the words and deeds of any man. Of course, by this time, the people in Nazareth had heard all the stories about Him performing miracles, but they assumed those stories were merely fanciful exaggerations. For most in Nazareth seemed to be “zealots,” persecuted souls hiding from establishment hierarchies. So they likely considered themselves to be “realists,” that is, those who thought they were able to identify and expose all the corruption and depravity of the world, since they alone were strong, wise and independent, incapable of being duped like the rest. But, in reality, such people are merely deluded fools who do not possess enough truth or wisdom to do anything effective against any true evils in this world, and most often will call the powerful, effective, real truths of God “useless nonsense.”
However, Jesus knew the sad spiritual state of the people in Nazareth. And He knew there were many elect trapped among them. Therefore, now was the heavenly Father’s appointed time to start shaking up and waking the spirits in those elect, by challenging the status quo of that place. For He had already begun His ministry as their New Covenant King, High Priest and Prophet, and He would soon return to heaven for a very long season. Therefore, Jesus openly proclaimed God’s words of exposing truth, realizing that this would lead to great divisions among the people there, and draw the loving, just elect out from the non-elect who held them captive. Soon this dichotomization would also cause His execution by the false Jewish cult rulers and their brothers, the pagan Romans. And some of those murderers dwelt there too, in Nazareth. Then, just as He suspected from the earliest Page 988
Mat. 13:54-58, God is Not Flesh
days of His childhood, these carnally minded souls, who thought they were extremely devout and spiritual, turned against Him. For, no matter how familiar the non-elect are with others, and no matter how much those others helped them in the past, the loveless non-elect will betray any of those others who offend them, even unto death, especially if those others expose them as useless sinners.
Why did these people condemn Jesus? They revealed their false reasoning in what they said: “From where [did] this wisdom and the miracles [come] to this one? Is this not the Son of the carpenter?
[Is] His mother not called Mary. And [are not] His brothers James [Jacobus] and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not His sisters all before us? Therefore, from where [did] all these things [come]
to this one?” (Mat. 13:54b-56, from: Πόθεν τούτῳ ἡ σοφία αὕτη καὶ αἱ δυνάμεις; οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ
τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός; οὐχ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ λέγεται Μαριὰμ καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ αὐτοῦ Ἰάκωβος καὶ Ἰωσὴφ
καὶ Σίμων καὶ Ἰούδας; καὶ αἱ ἀδελφαὶ αὐτοῦ οὐχὶ πᾶσαι πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἰσιν; πόθεν οὖν τούτῳ ταῦτα
πάντα;, SBLGNT). Now notice how they twice asked “from where?” (πόθεν). And they obviously assumed that wisdom and the power to perform miracles must originate from a lineage of the flesh, that such gifts were somehow inherited from great and wise men, from the human gods they were worshipping as good humanists in Satan’s world order. They believed that God would naturally glorify great inheritors of such gifts with titles of honour and esteem from birth, just as the myths they heard explained how all the great men they knew were always gifted from birth. Then God would endow such men with worldly riches and power, as the worshipped elite in Satan’s unjust and exploitative hierarchies. Thus, the wealthiest, most esteemed and most powerful must be the most godly, no matter how evil and psychopathic their words and deeds might be. But poor men were all like them, sinful wretches whose lot in life was to bow before those “God-ordained” Satanic elite.
Most humanists want a human god, not the real Creator God. Even elect humanists think they need human gods more than the real God, since their minds of flesh have been trained to bully and silence the minds of their elect spirits within their souls. Most dwelling in these current Roman times, which had begun about a century before Jesus walked on earth, feel that it is important to worship a human god, in order to maintain order and oppress those who rightly or wrongly disturb status quo. Since they make all decisions through their minds of flesh, they think they need a saviour who judges all matters of life and faith though his or her mind of flesh too, who cares for nothing but the things of Satan’s world order, no matter how evil and destructive that human god and his agenda might be. So most gravitate towards powerful psychopaths who promises rewards for their flesh. Since they have always walked only according to their minds of flesh, and made all their decisions based on needs and desires of their flesh, this seems right and necessary to them. Therefore, these carnally minded souls never want thee God, a Spirit with spiritual priorities and values. Even their Creator God does comes to them in a body of flesh, but primarily concerns Himself with the welfare of their spirits, they want nothing to do with Him. So, since the Messiah Jesus gave them teachings and judgments based on spiritual and moral considerations, the humanistic zealots in Nazareth utterly rejected Him.
Jesus accepted or rejected prayers based on how much those requests would benefit the eternal spirits of His elect, as well as how much His fulfilling of those supplications would bless the spirits of His non-human living creations, since they were made for heaven too. Because our God Jesus walked according to the mind of His Spirit, and His primary focus was fixed on providing for the eternal spiritual well-being and joy of His just, loving kingdom—both on earth and in heaven above, but with a far greater priority on serving eternity above—carnal souls despised Him. For they desired absolutely nothing to feed their spirits, and were happy to let their spirits remain starved, stunted and stupid, locked in the chambers of their hearts. Each was content to keep his spirit as infantile as it was at the moment it was created, always failing to thrive in the fleshy environment they provided Page 989
for it. No man seem to mind that his life-giving spirit languished in a semi-conscious stupor, locked in a prison, unable to lift its voice in protest against the self-destructive folly of his mind of flesh.
Naturally, one expects this kind of ignorance and myopic behaviour from the non-elect. For all that a loveless non-elect spirit will ever be able to gain throughout eternity is the appeasement of its dark delusions and self-esteeming lies while it lives in flesh on earth. Only the illusion of becoming gods, who can force God’s good creations on earth to serve their flesh, gratifies such spirits. And this is why the non-elect try to suppress the voices of elect spirits in the chambers of their elect souls, while also trying to keep their flesh either bribed or coerced into submission. The non-elect prefer to keep elect spirits locked and silenced in their hearts, and are able to do so, that is until the truth or a great loss for their flesh causes elect spirits to awaken and rebel against the commands of Satan’s brood.
Elect spirits all realize that the ruthless commands of the devil’s world order will always hasten the destruction of their flesh. But, while their flesh is comfortable, they suppress that knowledge of their spirits. Meanwhile, demonic spirits send the non-elect to war, to blindly attack justice and love, in an endless and futile attempt to harm God’s kingdom on earth. Yet all those attacks always end in the suffering and deaths of their own flesh too. So the loveless spirits of the non-elect are also aware that their father willingly leads them all to their own deaths for his own base pleasure. They know that Satan has already been chained, cast out of heaven and doomed to eternal death. Thus, that devil also wants his children to share in his pain, which he caused for himself. Yet Satan still craves revenge, and wants to damage to God’s kingdom while he is able, while he is imprisoned in this material universe. The demon’s only hope and reason to exist is to sabotage and harm God’s kingdom on earth, though they can only do so when God allows them to do so, and God only allows them to do so when their crimes will work a greater good for the spirits of His elect children. Yet nothing but the justice and love worked by the elect in God’s kingdom is able to keep the earth alive. So all the elect in His earthly kingdom can never be destroyed, since only they bear the power of God Himself to keep the earth alive. Thus, whenever the non-elect attack God’s kingdom, and the elect within it, they are actually destroying themselves too. For killing the real love, truth and justice they hate so much will kill their precious flesh as well, and their only pleasures in all eternity will be those of their flesh. Consequently, if the non-elect allow their spirits to awaken, their father certainly will enlist those non-elect and command them to throw themselves against the consuming, impenetrable walls of God’s fiery wrath, until their flesh painfully perishes from excruciatingly agonizing wounds.
So this is why we seldom see non-elect souls who are spiritually awake, who have spirits which rule over their minds of flesh. For, if their non-elect spirits wake, those spirits will begin to dwell in hell even while dwelling in bodies of flesh on earth. Yet, if elect spirits wake, they begin to live in heaven above even while dwelling in bodies of flesh on earth. Therefore, we do not expect the elect to live only for the flesh, to let their minds of flesh lock their spirits in the chambers of their hearts, so the counsel of their spirits cannot be heard in their souls, so the Spirit of their Father cannot command their spirits to pursue justice, equity and love. However, most elect do just that, sleep in their flesh.
And Matthew, who was in the synagogue at Nazareth that day, described how the elect there were still carnally minded and humanistic. Jesus preached truth for the elect. Yet all fell for the lies that distracted their minds of flesh, turning their attention solely upon the flesh of Jesus, toward the family and traits of His flesh. All began their carnal reasoning by asking a question which only has one answer: “From where did this wisdom and the miracles come to this one?” According to God’s Word, and all they had ever witnessed throughout life, the only possible source of true wisdom and good miracles is the Creator’s Spirit. True wisdom rightly applies truth to produce the best possible effects. But God predestined all effects. Thus, all wisdom ultimately comes from God, and all is a Page 990
Mat. 13:54-58, God is Not Flesh
gift from God alone. Absolutely no genuine wisdom can come from any other source, because God designed and created all physical and spiritual existence to function according to His thoughts and His attributes alone. Only God created each and every entity to function most effectively in the ways He designed each to function, in a harmonious relationship with all His other creations. Thus, if any wisdom exists, it can only be found in the mind of the Designer and Creator of all existence. Then all truly loving and just miracles—all supernatural events which are worked by God’s power and do not break any of His spiritual laws, but supersede His natural laws according to His will, and with even greater manifestations of His justice, love and wisdom—must originate from God’s Spirit as well.
For all these kinds of miracles surpass the ways God designed for His physical creation, and make His laws of nature on this earth subordinate to His more holy, just, loving and wise spiritual laws.
Nevertheless, the elect in that synagogue had been taught to blindly partake in biblical rituals and ceremonies, in entirely physical deeds which they were told was the only way to worship God. None knew that the genuine worship of God must come from their spirits and must acknowledge only the real truth. So they believed liars who distracted them from the true purposes of God’s rituals, which God designed to remind them of His attributes and works. Humanists had taught them to interpret God’s Word solely through their minds of flesh, had conditioned them to obey God’s spiritual laws solely through the actions of their flesh; tricked them into judging all matters of life and faith according to superficial appearances of the flesh; and strictly disciplined them until they feared and rejected all God’s counsel and exhortations regarding equitable justice. Thus, it was now impossible for those elect to build up any semblance of God-like love in their spirits. Their spiritual shepherds had sabotaged them well! Even the elect in Nazareth were so terrorized by corrupted teachings that they locked their spirits in their hearts. Their whole community refused to hear the heavenly Father speak through Jesus, and none rose up to work for His kingdom. None of the elect let their spirits enter their souls and rebuke their minds of flesh. All trusted the unjust and self-serving delusions and lies of their religious guides. For, if any of elect allowed their spirits to awaken, they would incur the wrath of Satan and his children, who ruled over their synagogue. Then their flesh would lose all it strove to gain through a lifetime of compromising corruption in their fake church of pretend religion.
To remind the captive elect that they must maintain their entire focus upon the flesh, the non-elect heads of that church in Nazareth declared: “Is this not the Son of the carpenter? Is His mother not called Mary. And are not His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not His sisters all before us?” Now, they could have simply said, “Isn’t this the same Jesus who once lived here with His family?” But, instead, they intentionally expanded a simple question into a very long, convoluted, detailed description of His father and His father’s common job, the name of His mother and His four brothers, as well as mentioning how his sisters were common wives in Nazareth. For the more they physical fact they mentioned, the more they could convince the people to focus on things of the flesh, and turn their attention away from the spiritual truths which Jesus had taught.
Then, to deceive the elect further, the non-elect asked a rhetorical question which precluded a true and honest answer: “Therefore, from where did all these things come to this one?” Since they used the word “therefore” (οὖν), they were intentionally misdirecting the attention of their dupes towards a false conclusion. They were implying that, because these facts of Jesus’ family in the flesh existed, then the obvious answer to this question had to be that Jesus did not possess the spiritual attributes of wisdom and miracle working. These deceivers wanted their dupes to assume that all such spiritual gifts must be inherited from physically superior genes in one’s family. They were falsely indicating that it was impossible for anyone to possess wisdom or the power to perform miracles unless that one’s parents and other family members also possessed the same wisdom and the same power to Page 991
work miracles through physical genetics. In other words, their misleading questions and conclusion created a lie, and was their way of telling their people to believe that their false doctrines were true.
The men who formulated these misleading questions and its false conclusion also deliberately lied in their capacity as teaching elders. So they were lying in God’s name. These men opposed clear truths that were written in God’s Word, then implied that God wanted them to teach those lies. These men deceived the people under the pretense of serving God, and tricked the people into thinking they were “protecting” God’s people from Jesus, although Jesus is God. They led the people toward the humanistic doctrine that wisdom comes through good breeding and education, while God’s Word clearly declares that all wisdom comes directly from God, as a gift to the mind of one’s spirit, in a way that has nothing to do with the flesh. The Scriptures also proclaim that God judges, chooses, blesses and works for His people according to His own Spirit’s thoughts and reasons, according to the spiritual needs of elect lives. Thus, God has never, and never will, judge, choose, bless and work for anyone according to the attributes of their own flesh or the flesh of their parents. In fact, God’s Law explicitly commands that a child must never be judged or condemned for the sins of a parent, nor a parent for the sins of a child. God insisted that His priests must justly judge each individual’s own behaviour. This principle clearly forces us to conclude that each individual spirit’s justification or condemnation, as well as its good or bad attributes, bear no relationship to one’s flesh, and that no moral or spiritual qualities can possibly be inherited through one’s flesh. Since God Himself directly creates all spirits and a physical body cannot choose which spirit will be in it; since all good and evil relate solely to the motives and intentions of one’s spirit and God grants gifts to each spirit according to His own will, then spiritual gifts like wisdom and the working of miracles have nothing to do with one’s body flesh, nothing to do with genetics or family. And God will never allow us to judge anyone according to the flesh, only according to the motives and intentions of individual spirits. Yet the way those men asked questions and drew a conclusion had categorically denied these teachings of God.
It seems that the majority of elect in that local church that day were deceived by the false reasoning and cunning misdirection worked by their religious leaders. And we see exactly the same kinds of deceptions in churches throughout history, up to this day. The entirely humanistic and carnal Roman Catholic church, from its beginning, used these very same tactics to ensnare and enslave the elect.
They still use exactly the same reasoning as that church in Nazareth, but with their own Platonic twist. For Catholics also like to imply that wisdom and the power to work miracles is inherited or taught by other human beings, is gained through breeding and education, through the will and hard labours of the flesh, and always aided by beneficence of esteemed, wealthy and therefore blessed physical members of an elite class. Thus, since the parents of Jesus’ body, and His siblings, were all ordinary, the Catholics need to invent “spiritual” qualifications for them. So Catholics conclude that Jesus’ mother was always a virgin and declare that Jesus had no biological brothers or sisters. In this way, they confirm that they condone the kind of lie that the church in Nazareth told. And they are also saying that Matthew’s words here, which his humble and honest spirit wrote according to the counsel and editing of God’s Holy Spirit, is false. So Catholics declare both Matthew and God to be liars, while they claim themselves to be honest as they lie. But it is obvious that Catholics, like most Protestants, want to keep their people entirely focused on the flesh, so their people will ignore the counsel of God’s Spirit to their spirits, so they can keep their elect dupes enslaved. Yet those liars still want to outwardly appear to be “spiritual,” even far more than those Jews in Nazareth, since they are bigots who want to lie about Jews, and everyone else who is not like them in the flesh. They need to incite their dupes to hate and even kill all the “others” who do not have the same attributes of the flesh, so their “holy” church can plunder the goods and lives of those “others” to make a profit.
Page 992
Mat. 13:54-58, God is Not Flesh
Likewise, that church in Nazareth engaged in what God’s Word defines as spiritual prostitution. For they sold the body of their church, and their own personal lives, to psychopathic liars and rulers who promised them power and other benefits for their flesh. Then those psychopaths, who were siblings of those church rulers, born of the same father from hell, bore children, that is, new fake churches that were as evil as they were themselves. For that church in Nazareth obviously loved their unjust, ruthless religious and secular rulers, since they believed in and trusted the same false doctrines and lies invented by the same devil, their common father. Likewise, the Catholic church and its similar Protestant daughters, born of an unholy union with the secular humanists of Rome, believe in and trust exactly the same kinds of false doctrines and lies. Now Evangelicals—who falsely claim that God’s Word is the final authority in all matters of life and faith, just like the Pharisees did—serve as the devil’s loudest advocates, and promote the most ruthless, cruel, ungodly, unjust, demonic laws and ways on the face of the earth. Now all churches commit spiritual prostitution with secular despots, with every awakened child of Satan they can find, with every Hitler or Trump on earth.
Here Matthew said that the duped elect, whom the non-elect elite in that Nazareth church had taken captive to serve as their slaves, “were being caused to continuously commit sin and apostasy” (Mat.
13:57a, from: ἐσκανδαλίζοντο ἐν αὐτῷ, SBLGNT, which uses the imperfect (durative) passive form of σκανδαλίζω). The passive indicated that the elect were being “caused” to commit sin and apostasy while the imperfect tense indicated a process which began in the past and is ongoing. Because of this process, because of the continuous barrage of lies from their fake shepherds, the elect in that church were no longer able to discern between spiritual and physical truths and lies. Yet God’s Law clearly commands all true teaching elders to teach and train the people to discern between such things. So the ignorance forced upon all these elect by both their religious and secular leaders had effectively trapped them. Those elect became prisoners in the dark, terrifying, incomprehensible, fake, unstable, cruel, unjust and loveless church, coerced into believing their totally carnal humanistic world view.
Most in that church obviously believed that human beings possess only one mind, which the Greek and Roman humanists carefully defined as the same thing as that which the Bible calls the mind of flesh. Most Jews there seemed to believe that wisdom must be inherited through the flesh, such as from an esteemed human god whom the masses worshipped and lied about. Yet the mind of flesh can only inherit attributes from other minds of flesh, and no mind of flesh is ever truly wise—since the Word of God has always illustrated and defined true wisdom as the effective application of moral and therefore spiritual principles which consistently prove to be freeing and inwardly beneficial to the inner lives of individuals and to whole societies that practise it. Consequently, there is absolutely no thought nor desire which can arise from any mind of flesh, without the managing input of an elect spirit, that can ever be called truly wise in any possible way. Thus, we know these elect in that church trusted elders who lied, elders who had been teaching them pagan Platonic doctrines. And one such Platonic doctrine claims that that “spirits” are forces that direct the mind toward either good or bad thoughts, and the will of a mind to follow a leading force/spirit caused a person to either obey or disobey God’s Law. Since that Platonic doctrine defined an individual’s mind in a way that the Scriptures define as the mind of flesh, those Platonists believed that the will of the flesh should determine whether or not one should obey God, and also chose how to obey God. Thus, those fake humanistic churches eliminated the wills and thoughts of human spirits from their religion, along with the counsel, will and teachings of God’s Holy Spirit to human spirits. In other words, humanism caused the church to follow an entirely carnal religion and carnal law, although God is a Spirit and His Law in completely and entirely spiritual. So those fake pastors created a new humanistic and utterly false religion which opposed and attacked God, but then claimed that they were serving God.
Page 993
After being brainwashed with false religious teachings for many years, and after being coerced into practising carnal humanistic rituals, the elect in Nazareth could no longer detect anything spiritual and true anywhere in the world, nor even in their own lives. Their suppressed spirits became dull, lethargic and blind. Their hearts and souls were no longer able to recognize God’s own Holy Spirit dwelling in Jesus. In fact, most of these elect were unable to hear a single word uttered by their own spirits within the chambers of their souls. That ability had been lost since early childhood, and now some no longer believed that their own spirits even existed. Thus, they became utterly incapable of judging the spiritually based wisdom and spiritually worked miracles of Jesus. All the criteria they used in all their judgments was superficial and physical, and most consisted of lies and delusions, not genuine physical and scientific facts. This is why they rejected the wise teachings of Jesus, because looked only at the physical attributes of His flesh and the flesh of His family. Then, due to their carnal humanistic beliefs, they also and did not allow Jesus to heal or work any miracles for them.
But realities remain. There is a living, thinking eternal human spirit in every person. And the effects of awakened human spirits, while active in the chamber of one’s soul, can be clearly and empirically observed. For awakened spirits frequently oppose the thoughts and will of the mind of flesh, often in ways which overcome the flesh so radically that those spirits can sacrifice its flesh in death. Choices made by the mind of the spirit against the mind flesh—through its love or hate, or by its covenant to uphold either a truth or a lie, or by its physical sacrifices based on its moral or immoral desires, or by its commitment to either justice or injustice, and in other spiritual matters—is solid and irrefutable proof that interdependently thinking spirits exist, apart from our minds of flesh. This also proves that the minds of our spirits are able to communicate with and control the thoughts of our minds of flesh.
Although all spirits are born infantile and ignorant, and may remain silenced and infantile in some throughout life, spirits definitely exist, nonetheless. Millions of awakened human spirits prove this.
Now the elect need to learn that the minds of their spirits are able to grow infinitely more intelligent, rational and wise than their minds of flesh. Furthermore, minds of spirits cannot ever forget anything they receive through their minds of flesh, when spirits peer into the physical world through the eyes of flesh, and as they read the thoughts in their minds of flesh. All spirits meet with their minds of flesh in the chamber of the soul, and all spirits are able to see everything in their minds of flesh, and are able to perceive all that their minds of flesh perceive through the senses of its body. Yet the mind of a spirit cannot forget anything, while the mind of flesh not only forgets, but also corrupts and distorts its memories. Certainly, the mind of an elect spirit can never forget any of the knowledge or wisdom it receives directly from God’s Holy Spirit, although the mind of flesh deliberately tries to forget those moral and spiritual truths. Yet elect spirits possess an unlimited capacity to store all kinds of memories. Then every elect spirit is capable of logically processing all that information, and is able to draw truly rational conclusions from it, although God limits all thoughts, and the mind of flesh often distracts and interferes with the spirit’s thinking process. Nevertheless, every elect spirit was made in the image of God’s Spirit, in the likeness of the Designer of all reality. So every elect spirit is able to think like the Creator and comprehend literally all rational principles. Every mind of every elect spirit can comprehend the Author of all truth, and how He made all truths harmonize with one another. Therefore, whenever awakened elect spirits hear the wisdom of Jesus, and see His miraculous works, they can instantly recognize that all this comes from His Spirit, and that His Spirit is indeed the Creator’s Spirit, since Jesus’ Spirit is pure, wise, powerful and loving beyond measure, with a capacity that transcends all the good they have ever seen in any infantile elect human spirit.