If we look at Mark’s version of the second question that Jesus asked His disciples, we find that the emphasis is a little different: “[Do you say,] ‘You neglect to first satisfy the children, for it is not good to take the bread of the children and to cast it to the dogs’?” (Mark 7:27, from: Ἄφες πρῶτον
χορτασθῆναι τὰ τέκνα, οὐ γάρ καλόν ἐστιν λαβεῖν τὸν ἄρτον τῶν τέκνων καὶ τοῖς κυναρίοις βαλεῖν, SBLGNT). Using a second person singular imperative (Ἄφες), Jesus was not uttering a command to Himself, and saying, “You first satisfy the children [of Israel],” as though someone else had been speaking to Him. Rather, Jesus was verbalizing the thoughts of His disciples, and voicing out loud what they wanted to say to Him. Jesus said what His disciples were thinking and quietly muttering to themselves. And they had been taught to think like this by the Evangelicals. His disciples expected Jesus to minister exclusively to devout Jews, and primarily to the men, while the women might be allowed to listen from the sidelines. And this is why Jesus allowed this situation with this annoying Gentile woman to occur, as well as other similar circumstances involving Gentiles or women or both. Jesus knew that His disciple were thinking something like this: “You leave behind the church of Israel and wander off into Gentile lands for days at a time! Now You let this Gentile woman, this female dog, bark at us incessantly. You do whatever You jolly well please and don’t care about us at all! But You are our Teacher, and You are abandoning your duty to first satisfy us, the children of Israel.” This is why Jesus essentially asked them if their heavenly Father is so limited and narrow, so poor and weak, that He is incapable of feeding both His Jewish elect children and His Gentile elect children at the same time, and also whether the Father calls His Gentile elect children mere “dogs.”
Throughout history, God has always proved that: “Wrath and indignation [is] for those both wilfully disbelieving the truth out of contentious intrigue and also being persuaded by injustice. Tribulation and distress [is] upon every spirit of a person striving to work evil, even [the spirit] of a Jew first, as well as [the spirit] of a Gentile. Yet [God’s] good opinion and dignity, even peace [with God], [is] for Page 1068
Mat. 15:21-28, Serving Gentiles
all those working usefully good [tasks], for a Jew first, as well as for a Gentile. For partiality is not existing near to God” (Rom. 2:8-11, ALT). So, yes, God ministers first to the elect in His priesthood of Israel. But this is not because He loves them more. For, in the same way God rewards the priests serving Him in His church, when they do good, He also rewards Gentiles if they do good, although His internal rewards for the spirit are often appreciated more by His awakened elect in His church.
Yet God also punishes first and most harshly anyone claiming to be a member of His church, anyone with access to the words He revealed in His Scriptures, even if that one sins no worse than a person who does not claim to be either a Jew or a Christian. God does not exclusively serve the members of His priesthood, whom He sends out to serve the whole world. For God is the Creator and Owner of the entire earth, and has served all His creations from the beginning. Thus, God never shows any partiality, neither toward His elect priests of Israel nor His elect Gentile children, although He first and foremost teaches, rewards and disciplines His priests, so they can better serve His other children, so His priests can fulfill their God-given calling and duty to serve all of His creations in His name.
Next, notice that Jesus’ disciples did not answer His questions, but remained totally silent. For they realized that, in His first question, Jesus used a perfect participle to describe the church or “house of Israel” as sheep “having been destroyed in the past with the effect of remaining devastated to the present day” (i.e., see ἀπολωλότα in Mat. 15:24). That did not sound good. And, in context, Jesus said this with reference to the Evangelicals who drove them out of Israel into these Gentile lands, who also taught that God would send the Messiah to Israel alone, not to the Gentiles. In fact, many of those self-serving Evangelicals even believed that the only Gentiles whom their conquering Messiah would spare would be the Gentiles who submitted to being their abused slaves. And none of those Evangelicals considered themselves to be a broken, destroyed and devastated people. No! They saw themselves as a self-healed people, bearing all the authority and power of God to become victorious over the despised Gentiles. Furthermore, Jesus’ first question reminded them that most biblical prophecies said that their Messiah would rule all the Gentiles of the world too, through His loving justice. Thus, God surely must have sent their Messiah, Jesus, to the Gentiles too, not just to Israel. Then Jesus’ second question inferred two things: (1) Evangelicals thought the power and resources of God were somehow limited, since they did not believe God could provide enough to provide for both Israel and His Gentile children at the same time; and (2) Evangelicals dehumanized elect Gentile siblings by referring to them with the derogatory colloquial term “dogs.” So the way Jesus worded both of these questions, He was obviously mocking and exposing the false teachings of Evangelicals, because His disciples still partially believed those lies. And His questions would have made them feel guilty for believing those lies, and for spurning a Gentile mother in her hour of great need. Thus, like children lacking any excuse for their bad behaviour, the disciples stood in silence.
That pause must have been quite long, because the woman then spoke up. And, back then, women seldom answered theological questions asked by elders, not unless they received the full attention of the elder, and not until all the men had finished giving their answers. In an informal situation like this, the oldest males would be given the first chance to speak, then the younger men, then the women, in that order. But, obviously, enough time had elapsed for that woman to respond, and Jesus must have been looking directly at her, expecting her to answer. But, after experiencing the bigotry of other Jews for many years, especially the Evangelicals, this Gentile woman humbly replied: “Yes, Lord, for even dogs eat from the morsels falling from the table of their master” (Mat. 15:27, ALT).
This was actually a profound answer, because it was spoken from this loving mother’s elect spirit, not from her mind of flesh. First, this Gentile woman understood that God is powerful enough to provide abundant spiritual food for His children in the priesthood of Israel, plus plenty to cast off the Page 1069
table for the complete filling of all His hungry “dogs.” God is so mighty that He can provide for any and all Gentiles coming to be healed by His wise counsel. All elect Gentile spirits of the world are drawn to the real Creator God and His truths. Then God grants all His blessings, even membership in His priestly family of Israel. His house is large and His resources gratify all needs of all who enter it.
Second, this woman portrayed the Jews as those who eat at the table of their “Master,” who is also the “Master” of the “dogs.” God owns both and it is God, not those belonging to Him, who decide which ones shall eat at or below His table, and even where each shall be seated. But the Jews had long forgotten this. So they all assumed they would eat there, then fought among one another for the right to sit closer to their Lord. Yet all their strife and striving was in vain. For God is the Teacher and the Judge of all, not any of them. This is a truth every priest in the true church of Israel should have known. God who created all the earth, and all upon it. From the beginning, many Gentile slaves left Egypt with Moses, and God called all of them His priesthood of Israel. For Yahweh is also the Lord of the Gentiles, not just Lord of the Israelites. And sons of Abraham are not of the flesh, like Ishmael, but born of God’s promise and power, like Isaac, to whom God chose to reveal Himself.
Third, this humble woman did not care if the Jews called her a “dog,” since that kind of bigotry shamed them in the eyes of God, never her. So she gladly included herself among all the Gentiles whom Evangelicals derided with the title of “dogs.” By taking pride in that unjust and unwarranted persecution, she was effectively praying an accusation against those arrogant religious zealots in the listening ears of God Himself. For dehumanizing whole groups in the family of humankind, and not being willing to welcome any elect individuals into the priestly family of God, whenever God has chosen to raise one up out of those groups, is an act of false judgment and slander, even blasphemy against God. It is a great injustice and wilful negligence regarding the duty of a priest to serve the Gentile elect. For the only reason God created His church of Israel was so that they would serve all the people in all families, tribes and nations of the world. Thus, Jesus did indeed hear that mother’s just accusations! Not only did Jesus rebuke His disciples into true repentance, but we are also sure that He will hand over many fake pastors and members of false churches over to Satan for eternity.
Therefore, this proved to be quite a response, revealing the faith of that loving Gentile mother. She clearly trusted, with all her heart, in God and in God’s words of the Scriptures. So, when the woman began to speak, Jesus turned His piercing eyes away from the downcast faces of His now ashamed disciples and gave that pleading mother His undivided attention. For our God Jesus was very pleased with her answer. Thus, Jesus answered her prayer to Him, saying, “O woman, your faith [is] great.
Let it be done for you as you will” (Mat. 15:28, from: Ὦ γύναι, μεγάλη σου ἡ πίστις· γενηθήτω σοι
ὡς θέλεις, SBLGNT). And Matthew informed us that “her daughter had been healed from that hour.”
Therefore, when our God Jesus said this to that Gentile woman, He answered the two questions that He had asked His disciples. In front of His disciples, Jesus proved that His heavenly Father had also sent Him to save Gentiles, not just His church of Israel. Then Jesus also proved that males are not the only servants of God. Females also serve God. Yes, the spirits of God’s mature male servants can sometimes receive and give light directly from God, while His female servants receive the light of God from other human beings, and pass that light onto other human beings whom God brings into the spheres of their lives. But this fact never implies anything like the superiority of males. Rather, the sexes are simply a matter of His design for the efficient functioning of families and tribes, where the dependant cooperation of both sexes fulfills all the needs of all. And the elect spirits in the very temporary bodies of both sexes have no gender, but are all similar and equal. Then both kinds of bodies belong to God alone, who provides each sex with different skills required for different and equally critical tasks in His earthly kingdom. So, if God chooses to grant light directly to the spirits Page 1070
Mat. 15:21-28, Serving Gentiles
of mature males, this merely means that God is requiring those mature male servants to minister to His female servants too, so those women can fulfill the God’s works in His kingdom, even the works that produce loving unity and warmth among the citizens of His just and equitable earthly kingdom.
Clearly, Jesus arranged this incident so that His disciples would learn to minister to the “hidden”
elect among within other religions, races, cultures and lands, to the “Gentiles.” Jesus was saying that true “Christians” will not exclusively serve professing members of their own churches, but serve all of God’s creation. Yes, Jesus commands a stronger preference for awakened elect souls. But many other elect spirits bear a potential to love in a just and pure way, like God does. And most are not professing members of churches. In fact, most churches are not God’s true churches, and most have very few or else no awakened elect souls among their members. Now we know that the elect are scattered among all the nations of the earth, and the vast majority have never realized their spirits’
potential to learn and express God-like love. Therefore, these elect are sinners like everyone else in humankind, and outwardly look just like the non-elect. So these are extremely difficult to recognize as our brothers and sisters who will eternally serve beside us with our heavenly Father. Yet we must search for these brothers and sisters in every place on earth, regardless. For we, all of the awakened elect in God’s New Covenant church of Israel, are duty-bound to serve all our siblings in His family.
Mat. 15:29-39,
Manna for Gentiles
“Jesus departed there, and came near to the sea of Galilee; and He went up into the mountain, and sat there. Great multitudes came to Him, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others, and they put them down at His feet. He healed them, so that the multitude wondered when they saw the mute speaking, injured whole, lame walking, and blind seeing—and they glorified the God of Israel.
“Jesus summoned his disciples and said, ‘I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with Me now three days and have nothing to eat. I don’t want to send them away fasting, or they might faint on the way.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Where should we get so many loaves in a deserted place as to satisfy so great a multitude?’ Jesus said to them, ‘How many loaves do you have?’ They said, ‘Seven, and a few small fish.’
“He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground; and He took the seven loaves and the fish. He gave thanks and broke them, and gave to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitudes. They all ate, and were filled. They took up seven baskets full of the broken pieces that were left over. Those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children.
Then he sent away the multitudes, got into the boat, and came into the borders of Magdala”
(Mat. 15:29-39, WEB).
Mark more specifically tells us where Jesus went after leaving the region of Tyre and Sidon. He took His disciples along the east side of the Sea of Galilee, through a Gentile region called the Decapolis (Mark 7:31). Therefore, when He went “unto to a mountain,” likely near the southeastern shore, and sat down to preach, the large crowd of more than four thousand souls would have been Gentiles. The Gentiles had seen the miraculous healing of the Gentile woman’s daughter, who lived in their region of Tyre and Sidon. So the Gentiles came to see the Man who did this, then followed Jesus through the Gentile lands for three days, all the way to the south-east side of the lake. And this is why Matthew declared that “they glorified the God of Israel” (ἐδόξασαν τὸν θεὸν Ἰσραήλ), after they saw Jesus heal many of their own suffering family members. For, if this large crowd consisted of Jews, Page 1071
Matthew would have simply said, “they glorified God,” as he did at other times, whenever Jesus performed miracles among the Jews. But here Matthew specified that these people were from other religions and worshipped other pagan gods, yet now developed a good opinion of the God of Israel.
So this crowd consisted of about four thousand Gentile men, as well as some Gentile women and Gentile children. Almost everyone in that crowd were “unchurched,” and had never converted to Judaism. In fact, the vast majority likely were not proselytes either, meaning they had never studied the Bible. Most would have never heard much of anything from the Scriptures, nor had ever set foot in a church/synagogue. And Mark told us why so many were following Jesus that day. He said that Jesus healed one of their people who was deaf and could not speak normally (Mark 7:31-37). So some may have begun to follow Jesus after seeing what He did for the woman’s daughter in the region of Tyre and Sidon. But, after Jesus began to heal other Gentiles, even larger crowds of Gentiles followed Him. Now, since that healed man was deaf, Jesus used his miraculous healing as a sort of “sign language,” indicating that the power to heal this man personally came from the God of Israel who dwelt within Himself. For Jesus had first put His fingers in the man’s ears. Then He spat on His finger and touched the man’s tongue with it, indicating that His power to heal came from within Him, that is, from His Spirit. Lastly, Jesus looked up to heaven, declaring that His power originated from God above, and said, “Ephphatha,” which is Aramaic, and it means, “Be opened!”
At the moment Jesus said, “Ephphatha,” the deaf Gentile began to hear, and he was hearing Jesus speak in his own native tongue. Then this man also found that he also could speak plainly. This either meant that Jesus healed physical problems causing his speech impediment, or else Jesus may have “rewired” the man’s brain to some extent, and instantly taught his mind to correctly enunciate words. Either way, this miracle astounded those Gentiles. So they told everyone they met about this Jewish Rabbi who could heal the disabled and the sick—although Jesus commanded them to tell no one, since He was trying to avoid publicity and remain anonymous, so He would remain hidden from His enemies. Nevertheless, because of the reports of eye witnesses, thousands of Gentiles came flocking to Jesus. And they were seeking His healing. Matthew tells us: “Even many crowds came to Him, having among themselves deaf people, blind people, physically disabled people, injured people and many others. And they cast them near His feet. So He healed them” (Mat. 15:30, ALT). Then all these other miraculous healings filled those Gentile crowds with awe. Thus, those Gentiles, who were idol-worshipping Hellenists, “highly esteemed the God of Israel” (Mat. 15:31, from: ἐδόξασαν
τὸν θεὸν Ἰσραήλ). So those miracles made them ready to hear Jesus teach the truths their elect spirits needed to hear. But it was not the miracles which caused the elect spirits of those Gentiles to trust in the God of Israel for their salvation, and abandon their pagan gods. Rather, it was the teachings of Jesus which fed their spirits that caused those elect to trust in Jesus and in His words of life. This is why the New Covenant church grew so rapidly in that region just after Jesus ascended into heaven.
While Jesus was teaching these Gentiles about God, life and faith, He seated Himself at the base of a hill, below them, and used it as a natural amphitheatre. After feeding their spirits, Jesus decided to feed their hungry flesh as well, even in the same way He had fed more than five thousand Jews just a short time before this. He would grant Gentiles a symbolic manna from heaven too, just as He gave it to His priesthood of Israel. So He called the disciples to Himself and told them: “I feel compassion upon the crowd because, [for] three days already, they have been remaining with Me. And they do not have anything they might eat. So I am not willing to release them [while they are] fasting, lest they might be overcome by exhaustion in the road” (Mat. 15:32, ALT). Then, with the hope of seeing another miraculous feeding of the crowds, the disciples prompted Jesus with the same kind of question they had asked before He fed more than five thousand Jews: “Where in the wilderness [is]
Page 1072
Mat. 15:29-39, Manna for Gentiles
so much bread for us, so as to satisfy a crowd such as this?” (Mat. 15:33, ALT). Then, just as He did previously with the Jews, Jesus asked what they had with them, what God had already provided. But this time, without mentioning money and without any doubts, His disciples simply declared that they had seven loaves and some small fish. This time they expected Jesus to multiply the food and feed the entire crowd, with enough left-overs for themselves, although it was not enough for seven men.
So Jesus once again told the multitudes to sit on the grass for their meal. And, just as He had done for more than five thousand Jewish followers before this, Jesus once more took the seven loaves, gave thanks to the heavenly Father, and broke the bread, as a prophecy indicating how His body also would be broken for the salvation of these elect Gentile souls. Then Jesus blessed the fishes too, and sent His disciples out with baskets of food, to serve the Gentiles. And we also know that almost all of these men and their families would have been elect souls, since any non-elect in the crowds would have long-since stopped following Jesus during the three-day trek into the wilderness without food.
Once His disciples gathered the Gentiles into “synagogues” of fifty or a hundred, they could more easily count them. Now, of course, devout Jews, like Jesus’ disciples, were not superstitious and were not into numerology. However, they did see how God sometimes communicated implications through numbers. God often used the number seven to suggest completion and perfection. Then He defined four directions and four corners for every property, even for the whole earth. And a thousand frequently indicated His divine power and influence. So, when His disciples realized that there were about four thousand Gentile men in the temporary synagogues formed on the hill, and the Gentiles were fed by seven loaves of bread, they may have wondered if God had prearranged the occurrence of those numbers for a reason. And it is likely that Matthew wrote down those numbers to imply that God, through His divine power, would someday perfectly complete the feeding of the spirits of all the elect from all four corners of the earth. In other words, to Matthew, this feeding of four thousand Gentiles seemed to indicate that our God Jesus would eventually save all the elect Gentiles on earth.
By now, the disciples were realizing that Israel’s Messiah was not sent only to the Jews, but to all the world. They began to see that elect Gentiles existed everywhere, people who feared for the lives of their families and friends, with an ability to acknowledge the justice and love in strangers like Jesus, and with a willingness to carry their beloved ones to the ends of the earth in the hope of seeing them healed. Yes, some Gentiles were ruthless psychopaths, just like some of their own Jewish people. But some Gentiles possessed exactly the same kinds of spirits and hearts as their most beloved Jewish brothers and sisters. And those kinds of elect Gentiles also suffered the same kinds of hunger, thirst, sicknesses, abuses, injuries and disabilities that their Jewish people did. Their blood spilled as red as their own, and their faith in the loving, just power of the Jewish Messiah God was the same, from the same kind of spirit. They now knew why God created Israel to serve Him as His loving priesthood for the entire world. It was not because they were superior in any way, and God definitely did not create Israel to serve only itself. God chose to awaken some elect souls, to serve in His priesthood because they were ordinary, perhaps less than average, but could empathize with the weaknesses, failures and losses of other elect in this world, and serve them for their benefit, through their love for them, especially by leading them to their Creator and Healer. So many rabbis had been wrong! God chose a lesser people to serve as His priests, so they might experience the pains of life for the sakes of all His creations, even Gentiles, then walk in God’s loving power. Their mission was to nullify the works of the devil, so they could build up God’s kingdom over the ruins of Satan’s world order. And the only way they could possibly fulfill this calling was in Jesus’ name, through the love He grew in their hearts, and by His own power working according to His own will, not by their power and wills.
Page 1073
That day, the disciples witnessed the salvation of their Messiah Jesus for four thousand Gentile men, as well as many Gentile women and children. Just as the five thousand Jews ate Christ’s manna some days before, all those spirits in Gentile bodies also ate their fill that day. Now they knew the reason for God rescuing the militarily weak slaves of Egypt, and why He lent them His power to destroy the kingdoms who had ignored His call for repentance, although God sent His prophets to warn a full ten generations of them. God delivered Israel from bondage so they could serve Him while He provided His inner salvation for elect Gentiles such as these. Israel’s long-awaited Messiah did not come to make His priests into stronger and more violent warriors, so they would be able to crush the power of Gentiles, so they could rule and be ruled according to the unjust laws of Satan’s exploitative world order. Rather, their Messiah came to build up love and determined compassion in the spirits of His true priests, so His power could work through them to nullify the spiritual lies and sins of Satan, so they could build a just, equitable, loving kingdom of God over the ruins of the devil’s world order.
Then their God Jesus sent those disciples to gather up the left-over pieces of blessed bread, the manna for the Gentile elect, who were also fleeing from the bondage of Satan’s world order, who also were partaking in the same exodus as the Jews, through a wilderness into the freedom of God’s kingdom. So His twelve Jewish disciples “took up seven baskets full of the left-over fragments,”
enough to feed Jesus and themselves for days, because that amount was complete and perfect, if it was equitably shared between them all. Now, as often mentioned, the number seven represented completion and perfection. And both Matthew and Mark said the disciples gave seven loaves, then gathered seven baskets full of left-overs. So both Matthew and Mark implied that Jesus provides the perfect amount of spiritual food, enough to complete His works among the Gentile elect, so all His elect will have enough truth and providence to entirely satisfy their souls, even with enough left over to abundantly provide for His priesthood of Israel. But Matthew wrote about this incident to remind believing Jews about their obligation to serve the elect Gentiles, like Jesus did, while Mark wrote about this event to remind the believing elect Gentiles that Jesus also came to save them into Israel.
Either way, Jesus was intentionally wandering through the Gentile lands. And He did not go to those Gentiles merely to protect His disciples from the ruthless Evangelicals who wanted to murder them.
For our God Jesus predestines all things for a reason. So Jesus took His disciples to the Gentiles for another reason as well, to also demonstrate that He had come to gather elect Gentiles into Israel, to also awaken Gentile elect spirits and gather them into His New Covenant branch of Israel. Here our God Jesus demonstrated that He would also write God’s Law upon Gentile hearts and minds, in the same way He promised to write it upon Jewish hearts and minds. Jesus also came to teach elect Gentile spirits to fulfill all the laws of God rightly and wisely, in the same way He would teach elect Jewish spirits to do so. And the manna God gave to His rescued Jewish people during their exodus, was also granted to all the Gentile slaves fleeing from Egypt’s world order together with them. So this manna actually represented the teachings from God’s utterly holy Spirit, for the salvation of all Jewish and Gentile elect spirits. Before Jesus would ascend into heaven, after the appointed time of His first advent, He wanted to ensure that His New Covenant church knew that elect Jews and elect Gentiles were to become the one church of Israel in Him, just as the Gentile slaves who fled with Abraham’s descendants during the exodus in Moses’ day became one priesthood of Israel in the eyes of God. Jesus wanted His disciples to comprehend this equity of God before He physically left them.
Then Jesus sent the crowds away, gathered His disciples into a boat, and returned to the Jewish regions. They sailed along the shores to Magdala, which was between his home of Capernaum and Herod’s city of Tiberias. By now the violently burning wrath of the Evangelicals would have settled down into a smouldering resentment, and He could begin to teach the people again, without their Page 1074
Mat. 15:29-39, Manna for Gentiles
mindless, frenzied, demonically inspired calls to murder Him. They would cause Him trouble, but at least He could lead more elect toward repentance into the truth and freedom of God’s abundant life.
Mat. 16:1-12,
Bread of Doctrine
“The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing him, asked him to show them a sign from heaven. But he answered them, ‘When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.” In the morning, “It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.”
Hypocrites! You know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but you can’t discern the signs of the times! An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and there will be no sign given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah.’ He left them, and departed.
“The disciples came to the other side and had forgotten to take bread. Jesus said to them,
‘Take heed and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’ They reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘We brought no bread.’
“Jesus, perceiving it, said, ‘Why do you reason among yourselves, you of little faith,
“because you have brought no bread?” Don’t you yet perceive, neither remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you took up? Nor the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you took up? How is it that you don’t perceive that I didn’t speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’ Then they understood that He didn’t tell them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Mat. 16:1-12, WEB).
The Sign of the Messiah’s Salvation
As soon as Jesus returned to the Jewish regions, Evangelical (Pharisaic) rabbis and “leaders,” as well as self-exalting “servants of God” from other churches, pounced. These bullying little religious thugs came to assess the Jesus threat to their power and income. So, of course, they also came to condemn Him for the heresy of telling the truth, to judge and sentence Him through their jealous biases against Him. For they longed to publicly prove they were superior to our God Jesus, far more wise in all of their unjust, irrational ways, and had nicer clerical robes too. Thus, the people should worship only them, not Jesus nor the heavenly Father. They came to conclusively demonstrate that their God Jesus was clearly an inferior and ignorant God, who did not comprehend their Roman-like politics worked by the superior classes within the factious little hierarchical kingdoms they formed throughout Israel.
Confidently strutting with pretended authority, those religious elites came to tempt their God, to force their God to admit that He was wrong and they were right. They wanted God to publicly confess that He is an incapable Ruler who should always follow the flesh-oriented ways of His superiors and submit to all their demands. Those pastors came to do what the pastors did in the days of Moses, when they refused to humbly pray for water. Instead, they demanded that God give them water, as though God was inferior to them, even a slave whom they owned. They treated God as though He existed only to serve their carnal wills and whims (see Exodus 17). Those pastors led their people into rebellion against God by pretending to be the teachers and judges of God, with a right to slap God in the face for not showing His superiors enough respect. For they thought they were the ones who should tell God what to do, and that it should never be the other way around.
So the pastors in Jesus’ day came to “test” God in the same way that the elders did in the days of Moses. Just as a rabbi might test the metal of his students, by issuing a command which the student Page 1075
must obey to prove his faith and loyalty, the elders in Moses’ day commanded God to give them water and meat. They required God to do their own human wills on earth, and were attempting to force God to submit His will to them. And now the rabbis were doing the same kind of thing with their God, the Messiah. For those pastors commanded Immanuel to give them a “sign,” which was virtually the same thing and commanding Jesus to prove His loyalty to them. And they did not accept the signs of His just and loving miracles, which healed and fed His people, but wanted the kind of sign which proved how He would destroy and enslave Gentiles, how He would force Gentiles to submissively serve “good” Jewish men like themselves, so they could live in self-indulgent opulence and carnal luxury from that day on. These pastors wanted a blatant demonstration of violent power.
Yet Jesus had already granted them the greatest “sign originating from heaven” (σημεῖον ἐκ τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ). And God had commanded His people to seek this greatest sign, instead of following those who tickled their ears, or whomever might impress their eyes of flesh by performing mere signs and wonders. God told His people to judge all leaders, even those coming with signs and wonders, by their words. If a man’s proclamations aligned with God’s truths in His Word and those written in His creations, in a way which caused human spirits to honestly worship Yahweh with growing love, then, whether or not he worked signs and wonders, he had been sent by God. But, if anyone’s teachings opposed God’s Word, and led minds of flesh to worship foreign gods or a false image of Yahweh, then that one was sent by Satan and might be worthy of a death sentence, regardless of how many signs and wonders the devil might work through that one. So the greatest sign indicating when a man is chosen by God to rule as one of our teaching and judging elders, the greatest sign indicating the man whom the people are obligated to choose as their religious or secular authority, the sign of a man whom God sent to administer His loving and equitable justice as our equal brother, is the truth and God-given efficacy of the man’s words. And literally all words of Jesus were perfect and true.
Literally all of Jesus’ harmonizing explanations of God’s laws and teachings caused the people who believed those words to praise Yahweh, to love and serve God more fervently through their spirits, with a love built only on a foundation of physical and spiritual truths. By this time in Jesus’ ministry, since the day the prophet John had baptized Him as Israel’s eternal High Priest, and since the day He walked out of forty days of temptation in the wilderness as Israel’s eternal King, Jesus had already accurately taught the Jews and Gentiles enough effective truths from God to be judged rightly, as to whether or not He was the promised Messiah, Immanuel, God walking among us. Jesus surely had fully, rationally, wisely and harmoniously revealed the opinions, judgments and will of the Creator God, not only in His words, but in all His loving miracles done to rescue His people from starvation, disease, injuries, ignorance and death. Jesus had been fulfilling God’s intended purposes of His just and loving Law in and through elect hearts throughout Israel and beyond, just as Yahweh promised through His prophets. Jesus personally worked His New Covenant salvation in His church of Israel.
Let me repeat for the elect living in these times of Roman rule throughout the entire world: To judge whether a prophet or teacher has been sent by God, God told us to judge his words and honestly determine whether or not his words truly and fully align with the just, loving words and laws of God.
There can never be a greater “sign” of a true servant of God than this. For God’s Law commanded His priesthood of Israel to watch for this kind of faithfulness to Him and His truths, whenever they judged whether or not He had sent a teacher or a prophet to them. God prohibited His people from trusting anyone who claimed God-given authority over them, even a worker of miracles, if that one’s doctrines led them away from Him or His truths (e.g., Deut. 13:1-4). All judgments from every kind of teaching and judging elder were to be solely “according to the decisions of [God’s] Law which
[priests/judges] shall teach you” (Deut. 17:11). Every judgment was to be just, equitable and given Page 1076
Mat. 16:1-12, Bread of Doctrine
through love for God and His creations, because all judgments belongs to God alone (Deut. 1:17), and must always align with God’s will. All false judgments are either harmful or outright deadly, and slander God’s name, because God owns all judges and their judgments. Thus, those who make any kind of judgment in any capacity, if it is against God’s will, shall have hell to pay. So, since these fake elders judged falsely, it was now time for Jesus to judge them, which was His right, both as a just man and as their living God. Thus, to judge biblically, He first taught truth to both the accusers and the accused. For all true judgments begin with right and wise teachings to set straight the paths of the people, if possible. Since God taught Moses to teach truth and wisdom whenever he judged anyone (Ex. 18:16), this set the precedent for all just and loving judgments. Therefore, our God Jesus opened His mouth to teach the truth to those deceiving Evangelicals, and to other church “leaders.”
What our God Jesus taught them was how they had been only looking for self-serving “signs,” only for the words they wanted to hear about God, only teachings that materially benefited themselves. So they totally distracted themselves with their own lies, and could not perceive the clear signs of their promised Messiah, nor the signs of their Father’s New Covenant salvation, which Jesus had been granting to them since the day John baptized Him as their eternal High Priest. Jesus said: “When it becomes evening, you people reason, ‘Good weather, for the sky reddens.’ And, in the morning, [you reason], ‘A day of bad weather, for the sky reddens because of cloudiness.’ On the one hand, you people know [how to] judge the face of the sky. On the other hand, you people are unable [to judge]
the signs of the appointed times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and a sign will not be granted to it, except the sign of Jonah” (Mat. 16:2-4, from: Ὀψίας γενομένης λέγετε· Εὐδία, πυρράζει γὰρ ὁ οὐρανός· καὶ πρωΐ· Σήμερον χειμών, πυρράζει γὰρ στυγνάζων ὁ οὐρανός. τὸ μὲν
πρόσωπον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ γινώσκετε διακρίνειν, τὰ δὲ σημεῖα τῶν καιρῶν οὐ δύνασθε. Γενεὰ πονηρὰ
καὶ μοιχαλὶς σημεῖον ἐπιζητεῖ, καὶ σημεῖον οὐ δοθήσεται αὐτῇ εἰ μὴ τὸ σημεῖον Ἰωνᾶ, SBLGNT).
In other words, those church “leaders” read the literal and plain meaning of what God wrote upon the sky, since it affected them physically. And everyone could plainly and immediately determine their ability to judge this somewhat well. But, when they read the Messianic prophecies, which God Himself wrote in His Word, those elders twisted, contorted, distorted and nullified every plain and literal syllable of it, to suit their own agendas and selfish purposes, knowing the people were unable to judge whether or not they judged and interpreted those words correctly. Because those prophecies were ancient and scattered within His Book, most found it difficult to harmonize and comprehend His truths. So false teachers took advantage of this fact that the people lacked the time and skill to rightly judge what they falsely judged. So they could lie to the people without ever getting caught.
Yet, because those exploiting pastors spent so much time searching for new ways to deceive their people, through their cunning false interpretations of God’s Word, they had no time left to learn any of God’s intended meanings of His words in the Bible. So they were utterly incapable of recognizing the clearly prophesied signs of the Messiah, when God finally did actually come to them in the body of a human man, to fulfill His New Covenant promises of salvation, by fulfilling His Law in them.
In addition to this, Jesus pointed out how a “wicked and [spiritually] adulterous generation” will continuously and habitually seek for the kinds of signs that impresses their minds of flesh, the kinds of self-serving and materially beneficial signs that these fake religious “leaders” wanted Jesus to perform according to their commands. Spiteful, vengeful, hurtful, hating people have always falsely claimed to be members of churches, and thought of themselves as the righteous bride of God. But they delude themselves, and simply join churches to look respectable. Yet their spirits will eagerly commit adultery by cheating on the Bridegroom of the church, by seeking the favours of demons and human frauds who promise them rewards of the flesh. It is these who constantly look for signs, who Page 1077
peak into every crevice and overturn every rock, searching for a sign to justify their sinful thoughts, words and deeds. They want signs to stir up carnal lusts of their flesh, signs to feed their pride and covetousness for wealth and power, signs to help them choose the psychopathic human gods who rule over them, those who will appease ruthless and vain desires. Each scans the distant horizon and digs deep holes in their back yards, looking for signs to feed the ego and guide their devious plots against the innocent souls, for anything that excites with lies or criminal actions. Lying signs are the core sustenance of fake religions, and taste as sweet as honey to them. But, naturally, these religious hypocrites will also ignore any truths they might accidentally find during their exhaustive search for their intentionally misleading signs. In fact, even if a truth slapped them in their faces and stood in their way, they would simply shove that truth aside and keep on walking toward their own demise.
Of course, our holy, just and loving God refuses to give wicked and spiritually adulterous souls any of the kinds of signs they seek. For God never leads anyone into sin, and all they really want are the kinds of signs which will lead them further into their desired lies and sins. However, Jesus promised to give them one sign, “the sign of Jonah” (τὸ σημεῖον Ἰωνᾶ), a sign with two aspects: (1) Jonah was swallowed by a huge fish and remained there for “three days and three nights,” which refers to any parts of three Jewish days, either parts of daylight hours or parts of night hours. So it can refer to a period lasting a little more than 24 hours, or up to a full 72 hours. (2) God also caused the fish to spit Jonah out on the shore, so he could prophesy and preach salvation for Gentile sinners in Nineveh.
Jesus fulfilled the first aspect of this “sign of Jonah” after He completed the ministry of His first advent, after proclaiming that the Creator God’s New Covenant salvation was about to enter this world. Then He died on a cross, to put to death our lives of sin caused by walking on earth in bodies of flesh. Jesus fully accomplished this by willingly sacrificing His own sinless body of flesh on our behalf. And, to complete this task, He caused the common masses, both the Jews and Gentiles, to murder Him. Then loving awakened elect women wrapped His corpse and placed it in a tomb. So we see how the ocean waters which buried Jonah in the tomb of the fish within the ocean of the earth’s entire population symbolized Jesus’ burial. Jesus was placed in an underground cave below the Jews and Gentiles of the earth, was figuratively “swallowed” by the depths like Jonah. Then Jesus’ body stayed in the tomb for “three days and three nights.” That is, since a 24-hour Jewish day begins at sunset, and ends at sunset on the next day, Jesus’ body was in the tomb during the last few daylight hours of the first Jewish day (Friday, before sunset), the whole of the second Jewish day (from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday), and during the first hours of the third day (during the night beginning at sunset on Saturday). So Jesus was in that tomb for a total of approximately 36 hours.
Thus, when Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, He began to fulfill the second aspect of “the sign of Jonah.” After Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, He sent His Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God the Father, to His elect scattered throughout the earth. His Holy Spirit woke elect human spirits and whispered the very words of God directly into their ears. And this is prophecy, since prophesying is, by definition, speaking words from God. Just as Jonah prophesied and preached salvation for God’s people, even for the murdering Gentile elect enemies of Israel found in Nineveh, so too did Jesus begin to prophecy and preach to the elect of the world after His body had left the tomb. And, like the truth from Jonah, the truth from Jesus’ Holy Spirit has been causing elect sinners to repent ever since that third day. Now Jesus’ Holy Spirit still prophesies and preaches to the elect of the world after His ascent into heaven, for their eternal salvation, and will continue to teach and train elect spirits after His second advent. Eventually, Jesus will physically return to rule the earth in glory and power, after the repentance of everyone who is able to repent has been completed.
Page 1078
Mat. 16:1-12, Bread of Doctrine
Of course, the false pastors and most of the rest of that “wicked and adulterous” generation in those days understood much about the sign of Jonah. For that understanding was reserved for honest elect spirits, but the adultery of those spirits made them willing to receive only the most distorted, unjust, oppressive and completely false interpretations of God’s Law and teachings. Nevertheless, all those self-deluding souls still knew that Jesus died on the cross and was buried in the tomb. So, when they heard that the body of Jesus left the tomb on the third day, they should have realized Jesus granted them “the sign of Jonah,” which He commanded them to heed, as their Messiah and God while He walked among them. Yet very few of those self-esteeming pillars of the community even bothered to investigate the matter. Instead, they immediately invented a lie to deceive themselves, to convince themselves that Jesus did not give them the “sign of Jonah.” Although their lie was not plausible, they intentionally ignored the empirical evidence and logical conclusions so they could continue to believe their beloved dark and cruel delusions, and keep on striving for power and profit. But that lie claimed that the soldiers fell asleep while guarding the tomb. Yet it was not possible for all to sleep while thieves supposedly rolled away the ton of circular stone slab. since that stone would make very loud noises as it scraped against its track and the stone wall. And, if multiple guards were put on duty by the Roman commander and the high priest, they would have been severely punished for letting thieves steal His heavy body of Jesus and walk right past them. Yet none were punished. All the guards there that night were seen among the temple guard after this, and were even rewarded.
Later, after more than 500 honest and reliable devout Jewish men testified that they saw Jesus alive, those psychopathic religious “leaders” simply doubled down on their lie so they could get their people to murder the New Covenant branch of Israel. And they did this so they could keep their power and income—just like Trump repeatedly lied about the 2020 election for years, so he might destroy democracy and enslave his fellow citizens, or like Putin incessantly repeated his lies about Ukraine so he could invade it for his own personal gain. Yet the second aspect of “the sign of Jonah”
came and could not be stopped. Jesus’ Holy Spirit filled His disciples, empowering them to prophesy and effectively teach the truth to the spirits of countless elect Jews and Gentiles. That initiation of the New Covenant Israel also witnessed myriads of miracles done in the name of their resurrected Messiah Jesus. The teaching and judging elders of that early New Covenant branch began to speak so soundly and rationally about God’s Word, and did so many miracles, that none from the “wicked and adulterous generation” could refute their words, nor deny that their miracles actually occurred.
So those God-haters did the only thing they knew how to do. They did what their father, who was a liar and murderer from the beginning, did. They lied more than ever, once again declaring that Satan was empowering Jesus’ disciples to do their just, loving miracles for the benefit of awakened elect souls who trusted in God and His words. Those deceivers claimed that the devil helped honest and loving disciples speak the truth and heal the suffering souls who had been struck down by Satan’s world order. Naturally, such lies did not make any sense. Still, the disciples of God-haters believed those irrational lies, in the same way they the same lies about the loving, just, equitable and utterly sinless Jesus, and killed their own Messiah and God, then also lied about Him rising from the dead.
Thus, just as we have always seen throughout history, the non-elect cling to even the most stupid and irrational lies, and use those lies to murder for profit and power. In fact, they love their self-justifying lies and delusions so much that literally no amount of proof can ever convince them to believe the truth. And we can also see how the awakened non-elect spirits of psychopaths love to make the claim that they are religious leaders appointed by God to save the people, even though they have come only to destroy and exploit those people. Yet it is obvious that the real Creator God of all reason and truth, of all love and justice, did not send them, and has never endorsed nor empowered any of those Page 1079
self-contradicting, ruthless, thieving liars and murderers who were made in the image of Satan. So we do not judge men, nor choose leaders, based on their “courage” to murder the innocent without flinching. We do not choose our leaders like the Romans and other members of Satan’s chief religion of humanism do, and pick only the most daring psychopaths. Rather, we judge by the fruits of their spirits, and choose men who seek and speak the truth, whose loving and just works prove that they are born in the image of God. Obviously, God has abandoned men like those fake Evangelical elders, and has handed them over to lies and delusions. But God works through common men like Jesus’
disciples, by making their honest teachings effective in causing elect Jews and Gentiles to repent, while also granting them His just, loving miracles for the benefit of the downtrodden and oppressed.
Now the “the sign of Jonah” is still being granted to this world. For we read that, as the resurrected Jonah prophesied and preached to Nineveh, many elect spirits repented into God’s truths proclaimed by his mouth. God made Jonah’s words so effective in those spirits that God not only saved the elect from His destroying wrath, but also the non-elect. That is, when those elect repented into the loving and just truths from God, they became proactive enough to nullify the works of the devil and begin to build up God’s kingdom in that part of the world. Yet, after about forty years, the elect souls who heard the truth that Jonah preached in about 760 BC, had died. Then the very next generations of elect became distracted and deluded by Satan’s world order. So, by the 720’s BC, Nineveh’s elect had prostituted themselves to the non-elect psychopaths ruling the devil’s world order (Nahum 3:4).
This resulted in God completing His destroying wrath, which Jonah warned them about. And God also warned them again before He sent His wrath (see the book of Nahum). Yet they did not repent a second time and were utterly destroyed. Nevertheless, elements of truth seemed to remain among them for centuries, until Jesus came. A seed had sprouted that would never entirely die in that land.
The same is true of the apostolic church, which also lasted only until the last of the true teaching and judging elders sent by Jesus had cast aside their earthly temples. God had made their preaching of His truths effective in elect spirits throughout the known world. But almost all of the next generation after them once more prostituted themselves to the psychopaths whom Satan raised up within His ultimate humanistic world order, to the heads of the religious kingdom which that devil constructed from the most demonic elements of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. Regardless, the greatest of all seeds of truth sprouted and spread throughout the entire earth at that time, and God continued to awaken and raise up elect members of His true New Covenant branch of Israel. To this day, there are the κυριακόι of Jesus still nullifying works of the devil and building up God’s kingdom on earth. The second aspect of the “sign of Jonah” is still being witnessed throughout the earth, testifying about the resurrection of Jesus on the third day and His preaching of salvation for His elect from God’s wrath.
Just before Jesus returns, the preaching of truth and the repentance of elect spirits will happen again, like it did in Nineveh, causing that generation of elect to rule with loving justice. But, at that time, the revival shall occur throughout the entire earth. The last generation of elect souls born during the rule of Satan’s world, those destined witness Jesus’ second advent, shall repent into the truth during a great revival in the sixth seal’s era, and will complete the “sign of Jonah.” Jesus’ Holy Spirit will personally teach their spirits for their salvation, so they too will be spared from God’s destroying wrath. But the entire unrepentant, stubborn, fake church will be burned and slaughtered when God hands them over to Satan and his evil messiah, to the eloquent and popular “beast.” All false priests and pastors, with all their fake churches, will be destroyed just a few weeks before Jesus physically descends from the sky. Then, before Jesus sets His feet upon the Mount of Olives, all the rest of the unrepentant non-elect on earth will perish, all who worshipped the beast, all the non-elect who loved only the darkness of their own lies and delusions. So let the generation living today and in the near Page 1080
Mat. 16:1-12, Bread of Doctrine
future think hard and carefully about what their souls choose to believe. And they better make sure they are thinking with the minds of their spirits, while also rightly managing their minds of flesh. For the elect cannot afford to let their minds of flesh distract them and turn them away from the truth, toward self-gratifying lies and delusions proclaimed by false teachers and prophets sent by Satan.
As we steadfastly draw closer to the destruction of Satan’s world order, and the beginning of Christ’s physical rule over all the earth, errors about what we believe will cause increasing amounts of harm, pain and death. Since the appointed day of Jesus’ return will not be delayed, and each new day shall surely cause a more painful and deadly punishment for the unrepentant, the elect need to hear and heed Christ’s call to repent into His truth, even with more urgency each day. We need to remember that God’s punishment always involves, at the very least, being handed over to Satan for the utter deluding and destroying of one’s flesh. God will allow the devil to destroy souls with a stronger and more destructive delusion each day that our earthly time draws nearer to Christ’s return. For God will make the delusions of the non-elect more obvious and odious to the elect so that He can draw His children away from them. God intends to separate His elect from Satan’s non-elect, to pull one further from the other, until a clear dichotomy exists. For the vast majority of His elect children must become pure and full of truth before Jesus can come to effectively rule over them through just love.
Then, when Jesus returns to complete “the sign of Jonah,” there will be no non-elect soul left alive, no one to lie, denounce and distract elect souls from His truths, no one to return the next generation to Satan’s unjust, exploiting, murdering kingdom. All the world shall plainly see Jesus coming in the sky, and none will be able to believe any kind of lie about it. As all the unrepentant non-elect die on that day, every elect soul in the “wicked and adulterous generation” will cast out all the malicious lies about Jesus, and Satan’s dead elite in his kingdom will no longer exist to hinder the Messiah’s effective salvation for His elect. All past lies will pass away. Jesus will mute every denial that the death of His body has utterly killed the entire lifetimes of sins in the flesh of the elect. All who say that Jesus did not rise from the dead to teach and train elect spirits will be either ashamed or dead.
All who confidently claimed that Jesus shall not physically return, or that He is not the Creator God dwelling in a body of flesh, will be silenced, as our own eyes see how His commands physically restore the natural beauty of this entire planet, and eliminates devouring hunger within it. Of course, Jesus proves and affirms these truths now, in our day too. But all will believe all in full on that day.
Guarding the Teachings of Jesus
Since the false churches once more tried to kill Jesus, He and His disciples again fled into the Gentile lands, where the Evangelicals would not follow them. They began to head north, to Caesarea Philippi, near Mount Hermon. And, after their boat reached the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, likely near the place where Jesus had previously fed more than five thousand elect Jewish souls, Jesus addressed the spirits of His disciples: “Clearly perceive and pay attention [to keep yourselves]
from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Mat. 16:6, ALT). Now, Jesus uttered this command without providing any context at all, nothing to indicate exactly what He meant. So the disciples did not understand what Jesus was asking them to do. Yet Jesus just sat there, silently, waiting to see how they would interpret His command, without providing any further clarification of the meaning.
For Jesus wanted to see if they could figure out what the “sign of Jonah” implied, since they had all read how the very next generation of elect souls in Nineveh returned to serve the devil’s world order.
Thus, after discussing Jesus’ statement among themselves, some concluded that Jesus wanted them to go to a nearby town, like Bethsaida, to buy Kosher unleavened bread. For they had no bread with them and they were getting hungry. So surely this was what Jesus meant. And, after witnessing many Page 1081
dirty tricks and traps of false churches, who were always attempting to slander them, they assumed that Jesus was warning them about what might happen when they went to town to buy bread. Jesus was likely telling them to take care, lest Evangelicals (Pharisees) or other church members might try to trick them into buying leavened bread instead of unleavened bread. Of course, this interpretation did not sit well, or seem right. From the start, they would have known it was a wrong interpretation.
But they went with it, since it was best interpretation their tired minds could come up with at that time, while pressed by these physical realities, and as current spiritual realities also threatened them.
Because the disciples would be getting a little paranoid by now, and they were more worried about the survival of their own flesh than the destruction of Israel and the world, they did not think it was worth their time and effort to carefully guard the thoughts of their spirits from the spiritual lies and delusions originating from the false churches. Thus, they interpreted the words of Jesus in this fleshy way. They could not think outside the box of their immediate desires of their flesh. So, since their flesh was hungry, their thoughts automatically centred around food, while ignoring the obvious long-term dangers of false doctrines taught by fake churches, which would inevitably and invariably lead to centuries of horrifying murders and almost to the destruction of the entire world. Those lies and false doctrines would cause massive wars, the brutal executions of countless innocent souls, and the ravaging of every good and wholesome creature or thing on the earth. It began when Jews murdered Gentiles. Then the Gentiles retaliated with an unending and unforgiving vengeance, and murdered the vast majority of Jews from those fake churches, together with their trusting little children. In AD
66, as the Romans surrounded Jerusalem, all those dupes still trusted in those liars and their false doctrines, while they painfully starved to death. Factions who worshipped different rabbis continued to war against one another, murdering other Jews who did not believe the same lies or did not bow to the same deceiving human gods. These are the fruits of those false elders and all their fake churches.
Then, by AD 135, after Rome had either corrupted or murdered all of the members of the true New Covenant branch of Israel, many Old Covenant Jews became dehumanized slaves in Rome, although their rabbis had been teaching false eschatological doctrines which claimed they would soon make all Romans into their slaves. Then the rest of the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem, even though their fake teachers taught that God would make Jerusalem the capital of the world, with all the Jews of the diaspora able to freely come to Jerusalem’s appointed feasts whenever they desired. So all the false doctrines of false rabbis and fake churches not only caused their spiritual separation from God, and caused God to cast them into Satan’s delusions, but those religious lies and delusions resulted in the utter destruction of their little religious kingdoms based on thoughts from minds of flesh. And, in all the other supposedly New Covenant churches throughout history, the same things happened. Yet, in spite of all that this history taught the elect about lying to themselves and to God, almost all churches have insisted on interpreting God’s Word through their minds of flesh, and for the benefits of their flesh, just like the fake churches did back then. All those people want from religion is to appease their flesh. So the pastors sell false doctrines to their people, destroy relationships with God, lead all into delusions, and destroy their own flesh. Repeatedly, all have caused wars and their own deaths.
Or, if anyone wants a good example of how false doctrines destroy fake churches in our day, look at the vile dupes in the American Evangelical churches. Many of those fake churches are now ramming an incredible array of lies and false doctrines—along with the secular teachings of Trump’s demonic, murdering fascism—down the throats of their dupes. In fact, each day they incite even more violent and self-destructive opposition to Jesus and His truths. Yet, throughout history, those false doctrines and fascism have always proved to be utterly destructive, both to themselves and everyone else. For, in reality, they are trying to give Satan absolute authority and complete control over themselves and Page 1082
Mat. 16:1-12, Bread of Doctrine
everyone else. And, although they like to call Satan by the name of Jesus, the real Jesus is indeed coming to destroy those who prostitute themselves to those wanna-be human gods and demons. As our God Jesus once annihilated the apostate second generation of Nineveh, He will destroy them too.
Satan always rules through his weakest and most mindless puppets, though those whom he can most easily manipulate and control. For that devil is no different from the worst of criminal mob bosses, since he is the father of those psychopaths. Thus, the human gods preaching in his fake churches, and the human gods of fascism, are all weak, mindless, demonic psychopaths manipulated by the spirit of Satan. That devil is always hiding behind a black curtain situated directly above his puppets, pulling their strings unseen, yet remaining sovereign over them, voicing every word and performing every action of those puppets, as those puppets rule the lives of all the dupes they deceive. And, through his puppets, Satan can even get his fake churches to call him by the names of the real God.
So Satan-worshipping churches call that devil by the name of “Jesus,” in order to make themselves outwardly seem more respectable in the public eye. But make no mistake, they are just as evil as any of the overtly demonic souls on earth. Do not every think those fakes actually worship the real Jesus in their church services, prayers and songs. For they deliberately lie, and murder countless innocent souls through wilful ignorance and criminal negligence. By their fruits they prove that they worship the one who was a liar and murderer from the beginning, he whom God’s Word identifies as Satan.
Those fake churches totally distract the people from the truths revealed by the real God, and from the real Jesus. If they can, they completely blind their people, make them totally unable to see the dire spiritual threats against their lives, while they also cause them to blindly believe and fear the lies and delusions taught in the name of Satan. In fact, the devil’s pastors have so effectively deluded some souls that those dupes willingly risk their lives in raging battles against biblical truths, or against just, democratic, biblical laws and forms of government. And, when Jesus sends His true servants to save those servile dupes from Satan’s delusions and lies, the fake churches cause their moronic dupes to viciously attack those servants of God, and to distract from any spiritual truths and physical realities which those servants of God proclaim to save their lives. Those dupes are so fanatical and stupid that they will not even allow anyone to offer any truth, bread, housing, medications, vaccines, equipment or other things that might save their own children from a horrible and painful death. Those dupes will fight with all the violent might of their deluded souls to force themselves and their own innocent children to die a tortuous death for the glory of Satan and, of course, for the financial profit and self-indulgence of their demonic human gods. Now it even seems that the churches today are stubbornly demanding that devils, plagues and lies, even all that painfully tortures them and their children to death, must be grasped for the glory of God, although first and foremost for the glory of their vile, demonic, lying human gods who rule their lives in Satan’s name. Therefore, by calling Satan by the names of God during their service and worship of that devil, they slander the real, just, loving God.
Meanwhile, back on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee on that day long ago, Jesus sat down as He listened to the conversation which His beloved disciples were having about the statement He made.
As Jesus was rescuing them from the lies and delusions of Satan and the world order, those disciples were talking how they would prevent themselves from being deceived by any false church leaders who might try to sell them leavened bread, instead of unleavened bread. Yes, they would indeed beware of the the leaven of fake pastors, just as Jesus commanded! Jesus watched as their thoughts became locked in the tiny dark box of their perceived immediate needs and desires of the flesh, how they were thinking just like the people in the false Evangelical and mainline churches. Their minds of flesh focused upon physical things alone. In this instance, they were extremely worried about how Page 1083
they must be sure to get some truly unleavened physical bread. And they still did not allow the minds of their spirits to focus on the spiritual realities that those physical things symbolized in God’s Word.
So Jesus commanded His disciples then and now: “Clearly perceive and pay attention, to keep yourselves from the leaven of the Evangelical and Mainline churches.” And we should try to realize why Jesus made this statement to His disciples, and why He did so without providing any context, then silently waited for them to invent their own theories about what He meant. For Jesus’ Holy Spirit does the same to our spirits today. His Spirit warns our spirits about false churches, but waits for us to figure out why He is disturbing our hearts with this kind of apprehension. Then we usually assume the kinds of things that the apostles did. We think His Holy Spirit warns us about those false churches they might steal our money or cause some kind of physical problems for our flesh. And it is true that false churches sometimes cause problems for our flesh, eventually. But that clearly is not why Jesus’ Spirit is warning our spirits about those fake churches. God’s primary concern about the false churches is their false teachings, lies and delusions which corrupt whole souls, which destroy the potential or actual relationships between our Creator God and His children, which hinder, stop or even reverse His salvation of eternal spirits, which make it impossible for our spirits to be taught and trained by Jesus Himself. Our Brother and Father want our spirits to mature. Then our spirits will be able to provide all that is needed for our flesh, by justly gleaning the good from God’s green earth.
We need not worry so much about physical deeds done directly against our flesh, and we should especially ensure that we do not live to guard the devil’s invention of money, nor the demon god who rules over it. The false spiritual and moral perceptions from fake religions have always been the root causes of all damage done to human lives and to the rest of God’s creations. The fruits of their lying mouths and their murdering hands are merely the byproducts. All those evils sprout from the poisoned seeds of their most cherished lies and delusions, especially from the humanistic religions, from the ontological, economic and political beliefs of wanna-be human gods. Jesus wants us to recognize this fact, and see how our own minds of flesh have been trained by those false churches to instinctively turn our focus away from the spiritual root causes of all that plagues mankind, and how those deceivers wants us to think only with our minds of flesh, so we will be distracted by a falsely perceived need to keep picking up poisoned fruits that have fallen to the ground, in a futile and desperate attempt to prevent our loved ones from touching them and dying. But Jesus wants us to cut down and burn the trees that produce poisoned fruits in the first place. He wants us to confront, tear down and burn away the false teachings so that the fruits of their lies and delusions will not poison the innocent any longer. Jesus wants us to eliminate the causes of bad symptoms, not just vainly run around frantically trying to overcome the thousands of deadly symptoms after they have fallen to the ground and have begun to poison our loved ones, while allowing the causes to continue unhindered.
Yes, Jesus sometimes lets us delve into our carnal thinking for a time, before His Holy Spirit speaks to our spirits and lifts us up to a high place, so our hearts can look down and see the big picture. He will have us understand that there is more going on than we can possibly imagine, and that none of the evil or good actually originates from or is controlled by the infantile spirits of human beings. The evil on earth is never really a conspiracy of men. All evil on earth—all that causes wars, bigotry, persecutions, poverty, famines and every other form of injustice—originate from lies and delusions of powerful non-human spirits, who inject false teachings into weak and easily manipulated spirits of puppet human beings. And those puppets of Satan are all stupid little myopic fools who cannot see beyond the end of their noses, who strive, fight and murder one another as much as anyone else. So they are not the power behind all evil, just the pathetic fruits of trees which have fallen to the ground. On the other hand, we need to realize how weak and foolish we truly are as well. The elect Page 1084
Mat. 16:1-12, Bread of Doctrine
need to see that all realities and the wisdom to apply them originate from our Creator God, from Jesus, who walked among us and still remains resurrected among our spirits. And this God Jesus is very willing to teach and train our spirits, if our spirits will look to Him and hear Him. If our spirits trust Him and His words, He will lend us His power, which easily overcomes the power of demons.
All the disciples who landed on the north shore of Galilee that day seemed incapable of seeing the
“big picture.” Although they were Jews, and all practised the remembrance of God’s miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt’s part of Satan’s world order, none seemed to see how they needed this same deliverance that day. None saw how the unleavened bread which Jesus mentions was a symbol of humble faith, of a spirit’s trust in God and His pure truth, untainted by a fleshy ego. And Jesus let them think foolish thoughts about needing to buy unleavened bread, and being careful about being tricked into buying leavened bread instead. For Jesus wanted them to see how much they needed His counsel and power. But, if those disciples ignored the very limited vision of their flesh, and let the minds of their spirits actually perceive the root causes of the threats against them and against the entire true church of Israel, even against the whole world, they may not have interpreted Jesus’ words as they did. If their spirits saw how the false teachings of fake pastors resembled those of all the fakes in the world and throughout history, because all were mere puppets of the very same demons who have been manipulating the same kinds of weak men all over the world and throughout history, they may have come to a different conclusion. If those disciples actually comprehended this, their spirits might have fled to their God Jesus, so His power would work through them to nullify the deceiving works of Satan and his minions, so they could then actually build up the just, equitable kingdom of God on earth. In Jesus, they could tear down the trees and roots of all false teachings, leaving nothing to grow any more of the fruits of murderous anger directed against God and them.
After Jesus heard enough of their conversation to expose their tired, discouraged and fleshy way of thinking, He began to teach and train their spirits again. He reiterated what He so often counselled their spirits to do, that is, to focus upon the core spiritual causes of all things: “What are you disciples reasoning within yourselves? Men of little faith, [is it] because you did not take bread? Do you not yet consider nor remember the five loaves for the five thousand and how many baskets [of bread] you received; nor the seven loaves for the four thousand and how many woven baskets [of bread] you received? How are you not considering that [it is] not about bread [that] I said to you,
‘Now pay attention, [to keep yourselves] from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees’” (Mat.
16:8-11, from: Τί διαλογίζεσθε ἐν ἑαυτοῖς, ὀλιγόπιστοι, ὅτι ἄρτους οὐκ ἐλάβετε; οὔπω νοεῖτε, οὐδὲ
μνημονεύετε τοὺς πέντε ἄρτους τῶν πεντακισχιλίων καὶ πόσους κοφίνους ἐλάβετε; οὐδὲ τοὺς ἑπτὰ
ἄρτους τῶν τετρακισχιλίων καὶ πόσας σπυρίδας ἐλάβετε; πῶς οὐ νοεῖτε ὅτι οὐ περὶ ἄρτων εἶπον
ὑμῖν; προσέχετε δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς ζύμης τῶν Φαρισαίων καὶ Σαδδουκαίων, SBLGNT). Then, because Jesus stirred the minds of their spirits into activity again, to think and judge matters more rationally and realistically, they were able comprehend that Jesus was not talking about the minds of their flesh paying attention, to keep themselves from eating leavened loaves of bread. Rather, Jesus wanted the minds of their spirits to pay attention, to prevent themselves from trusting the false doctrines of the Evangelicals and other false churches (Mat. 16:12). For the false teachings about life and faith were symbolic leaven corrupting God’s Law, filling the bread for their spirits with useless emptiness, the futile, fleshy traditions invented by arrogant men to trick cruel souls into thinking they were godly.
The disciples grew weary of running from religious zealots, like the Evangelicals. So Jesus was reminding them that they must remain steadfast, with awake spirits focused on the truth, guarding it against the destructive delusions and lies of false religion, because all love and abundant life on earth depended on that truth. Likewise, in His Law, God reminded His priesthood of Israel that, even after Page 1085
they strayed from Him, He would never abandon them. Rather, God promised every elect soul who repented: “Yahweh will return to rejoice over you for your good ... as you will hear your God’s voice, t o guard His authoritative precepts and His statutes t hat are written in this book of the Law ; as you return to Yahweh your God [repent] with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 30:9b,10, ALT).
Now most translations of Deut. 30:10 begin this clause with the conditional particle, “if,” as though God was placing these conditions upon His acceptance of a repentant elect soul. However, in context and in reality, God was not making conditions. Rather, He was stating what He would do in them as their God. That is, just prior to this, God Himself declared: “Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, to love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you may live” (Deut. 30:6, WEB). God promised to cause them to love Him. Therefore, in Deut. 30:10, God was telling His elect that they will begin to hear His words and repent because of His own personal works in them, that He will cause their spirits to guard His truths and apply them according to His own will. God Himself would cut away the fleshy thoughts which led them into darkness and loss. Then their spirits would remember their God and His truths. All that God would personally teach their spirits would cause them to repent. God Himself would cause His elect to love Him with all their hearts and souls. God would save them and lead them into a loving abundant life.
This is what our God Jesus was doing for His disciples from the moment He first called them out of the false churches. Jesus was fulfilling God’s Law in their hearts and souls, accomplishing all that God promised to do in Deut. 30:6 and in Deut. 30:10. Jesus was causing them to hear His voice and repent into the truths He taught. And, since God is a Spirit, this meant that He would primarily work upon their spirits, that He would awaken their spirits, grant their spirits ears to hear Him. Then, once their spirits heard His voice, they would learn about His Law directly from Him, from the Author of that Law, from the King who dictated that spiritual Law in the very beginning, when He gathered His priesthood out of Egypt. They would learn His own right interpretation of His Law, and how He wanted them to apply it. Then, after they understood His Law, He would cause their hearts to
“guard” it, to keep His Law safe from the corruptions of false teachings. And, once they repented into God’s right interpretation of His Law and kept it safe, they would then rightly apply His Law.
In Deut. 30:10, God used the Hebrew word shamar, which primarily indicated the act of guarding the security, safety, wholeness and general well-being of a person or thing. But God was not talking about physically guarding His truth. He was not telling the repentant elect to post guards around the copies of His written Book of the Law, lest unclean hands might touch them. For there is absolutely nothing holy about paper and ink. And we cannot guard paper and ink against decay or nature, nor from being seen by “unclean” beings. In fact, we know that even the devil himself saw, read and memorized those written words, then quoted them verbatim, but with false interpretations, to Jesus and to others whom he tempted. And God certainly was not telling us to torture and kill anyone who dared to contradict the interpretations of pompous men, who may think they alone bear the authority to determine the meaning of God’s Law, as though they are gods who have usurped God’s authority over God’s people. Rather, God told the lost elect souls, “Return to Me, even with all your heart and with all your soul.” So we are not to forbid sinners from seeing or hearing God’s Law and teachings, but rather must expose them to His words. Then God’s power and His own personal teaching of their spirits shall effectively cause their repentant return to Him. Likewise, God will cause the minds of their spirits to also zealously and carefully guard the purity, wholeness and true meaning of His Law in their hearts, that is, within the minds of their spirits dwelling in their hearts. God Himself will cause those repentant elect to carefully ensure that whatever He might teach to their spirits will be diligently protected from ever being tainted, corrupted, damaged or nullified by anyone or anything.
Page 1086
Mat. 16:1-12, Bread of Doctrine
This is what Jesus reminded the spirits of His disciples to do, to guard His teachings from becoming corrupted by the false teachings from fake churches. For, by that time, their weary bodies and minds of flesh were almost ready to give up. As they were once more fleeing into foreign Gentile lands, far from their families and homes, where nothing seemed comfortable or familiar, their flesh began to surrender to the pervasive power of those liars. For the flesh is always willing to accept the empty traditions that will feed its pride, and lie to avoid hardships. But Jesus knew exactly where the false doctrines of those fake church elders would lead. Jesus saw how those wanna-be gods were eagerly striving to obtain false esteem, so they could gain the power to influence those who falsely esteemed them, and steal a good wage from them at the same time. But they gained all this at the high cost of blindly leading themselves and their people into a demonic trap, where all would be slaughtered like rats. In fact, anyone who knew the Bible and history could see that those false teachers were leading their people toward death, into the destruction of their priestly nation. And they did indeed do this!
Jesus saw how the minds of flesh in His disciples were beginning to suppress the thoughts of their spirits, starting to lull their spirits into lethargy, into a dull focus on the immediate needs of their tired and hungry flesh. And the distracting influence of their flesh would soon lead to their blind acceptance of carnally gratifying doctrines offered by fake religious teachers. Therefore, Jesus took preventative action. He woke their spirits with His words, caused their spirits to once again take control of the thoughts within the chambers of their souls. Jesus silenced the thoughts of their flesh by waking their spirits in their hearts and souls. He turned the focus of their spirits to the truth which was needed to prevent them from being inwardly destroyed, so they would not be handed over to Satan’s delusions for the destruction of their flesh. What Jesus did for them may seem like a simple thing. But, in reality, what Jesus said and did on that shore involved a great depth of understanding, wise foresight, and His great power to quicken their elect spirits, further proving that He is our God.
Mat. 16:13-20,
God is Our Teacher
“Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked his disciples, saying,
‘Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?’ They said, ‘Some say John the Baptizer, some, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the living God.’
“Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give to you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven; and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven.’
Then He commanded the disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ
[Messiah]” (Mat. 16:13-20, WEB).
Jesus and the disciples travelled north again, up the Jordan valley to Caesarea Philippi, which was sitting below the source of the Jordan River, which is Mount Hermon. This was where Herod the Great built a town with a temple dedicated to the Roman emperor Augustus. And his son, Philip the tetrarch, later renamed the town Caesarea, to honour Augustus. Yet, to distinguish it from the other city of Caesarea, located on the Mediterranean coast (between Mount Carmel and Joppa), this town below Mount Hermon became known as Caesarea Philippi (meaning “Caesarea of Philip”), because Philip finished its construction. So Gentiles worshipped a human Roman emperor here, a virtual Page 1087
criminal as one of their many demonic gods. Also, for a few hundred years previously, the Greeks worshipped Pan (their god of the wilderness, nature, flocks and shepherds) at a shrine located here.
Then the Romans of that day also worshipped that same pagan god too, at the same shrine, although they called Pan by the name of Faunus. So, near the site where the Gentiles worshipped a man and a pagan god, the Jewish disciples of Jesus must have felt uncomfortable, surrounded by all those very deluded Gentiles. And some likely feared attacks from both those Gentiles and the demonic spirits of those demon gods. But Jesus is the almighty God, to whom all men and demons must bow. So, to calm paranoia and superstitions, Jesus reminded them that, with Him there, they had nothing to fear.
But Jesus did so indirectly, by asking this question: “Whom do the people rationalize the Son of man to be?” (Mat. 16:13, from: Τίνα λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου;, SBLGNT).
And the disciples had heard all kinds of wild theories. So they answered: “On the one hand, they
[reason that You are] John the Baptizer. On the other hand, others [conclude that You are] Elijah.
Still others [think You are] Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Mat. 16:14, ALT). So, by asking this question, Jesus got them to think about how people could rationalize almost any false belief. Yet they were clearly wrong about Jesus, even though most would justify their false beliefs by confidently asserting all kinds of false reasoning based upon false interpretations of Scriptures and many other fake “proofs.” And, just like those superstitious and willingly deceived Jews, the superstitious and willingly deceived Gentiles also falsely justified their faith in a sinful human emperor and other pagan gods, extolling their virtues as their saviours. Or they might proudly brag about their trust in that weak demonic spirit of the woodlands and pastures, testifying how that deceiving spirit provided for all their bodily lusts. But they never attributed anything good or needful to the true Creator and Owner of all the earth, who fed them. Nor did they admit that nature has never obeyed nor catered to the desires of any man or spirit, except God. So this meant that they should worship the Creator, not created spirits and things. And it also proved that Pan was completely bound and severely limited by the authority and power of the real God. Thus, as those disciples answered this question and thought about how so many Jews did not know Jesus was their Messiah and God, they would have realized that the Gentiles were also deluded in exactly the same way, as they worshipped a man and demons.
So both the Jews and the Gentiles were equally handed over to delusions, because both refused to love the truth. Both were being equally punished by God for this sin, and there was no reason to fear deluded Gentiles than there was to fear their own deluded Jewish brothers. In fact, Jews threatened Jesus and those disciples more often and with greater venom than any of these hippy-like Gentiles.
After Jesus let them think a little while about how both Jews and Gentiles believe all kinds of false rationalizations, He asked them to consider the spiritual and physical reality of who He was. And, again, He did this indirectly, by asking them: “Now whom to you [disciples] rationalize Me to be?”
(Mat. 16:15, ALT). Then Peter, the eldest disciple, had the first opportunity to speak. Representing all the disciples, Peter stated: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mat. 16:16, ALT).
Of course, when Peter called Jesus the “Messiah,” he was referring to the “anointed One” (Χριστός) prophesied in God’s Word, the Immanuel, whose name was to be “Yahweh Our Righteousness” (Jer.
23:6). And, when Peter called Jesus “the Son of the living God,” he meant it in a biblical Jewish way, referring to a human man with the actively personal Spirit of God as His life-giving Spirit. Now Peter spoke from his heart, from the knowledge the mind of his spirit had acquired. And, because the spirit’s understanding of this kind of truth must originate from God Himself, like all saving truths, Jesus declared: “You are blessed, Simon, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not unveil [this]
to you. Rather My Father in the heavens [did]” (Mat. 16:17, from: Μακάριος εἶ, Σίμων Βαριωνᾶ, ὅτι
σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα οὐκ ἀπεκάλυψέν σοι ἀλλʼ ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, SBLGNT). No human Page 1088
Mat. 16:13-20, God is Our Teacher
education nor indoctrination, no works of flesh, nor works of an infantile human spirit dwelling in earthly blood, can possibly cause another infantile human spirit to actually know and trust in this kind of truth, to truly believe Jesus is God dwelling in a human body of flesh. An ignorant human spirit can only learn this saving truth from the Spirit of God Himself. God must write this kind of realization upon one’s heart, teach one’s elect spirit how and why He came to walk among us in the flesh. God must train one’s spirit to place confidence in the words, power and love of Jesus our God.
As Peter voiced this proclamation of the Messiah’s deity, which his spirit learned from God—even as God in Jesus had miraculously healed multitudes of His citizens in Israel, calmed nature’s winds to keep them safe, and fed thousands in the wilderness, in real ways that worshippers of Caesar and Pan would never expect their fake gods to do for them—all the disciples would have instantly and thoroughly forgotten their fear of the demonic spirits hiding behind those pagan idols. Realizing that Jesus was “God with them,” Immanuel, would have chased all their superstitions and anxieties away.
Then Jesus added this comment: “So I reason with you that you are ‘A Piece of Rock,’ and upon this same entire mass of Rock I will build up My world-wide church. Even gates of hell will not prevail against it [when it attacks those gates]. I will give to you [Peter] the keys of the kingdom of the heavens. Then whomever you might bind upon the earth, it will be the effect of having been bound in the heavens. And whomever you might free upon the earth, it will be the effect of having been freed in the heavens” (Mat. 16:18, from: κἀγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ
οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς· δώσω σοι τὰς κλεῖδας τῆς
βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν
λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, SBLGNT). Now, since these words have been so often mistranslated and misinterpreted by so many, they will require the careful definitions of the words, an explanation of the grammar, and a thorough examination of the local and global context.
To begin with, Jesus called this disciple a πέτρος, which is a “stone” (BDAG3), a piece of rock which is small enough to be picked up by human hands. So it can also refer to a “piece of rock” or a part of a larger rock, even a stone which is in a pile of stones, or on a stone mountain. And, in this context, Jesus was saying that this disciple, this Simon, was a small piece of what Jesus called the πέτρᾳ. And a πέτρᾳ is a “massive stone ... bedrock or massive rock formation” (BDAG3). Here Jesus was obviously referencing Daniel’s well-known description of the massive Rock in His prophecy, the Rock representing the Messiah and His coming New Covenant kingdom. This Rock was to be formed and established by God’s hands alone, not by human hands, not through human efforts. And God would create this Rock during the days of the devil’s fourth kingdom. Of course, that fourth kingdom is the Roman Empire and, more specifically, the religious or philosophical precepts of that devil’s fourth kingdom which opposed God’s truths. God’s Rock, the Messiah, would eventually grow so huge that He would crush all Satan’s four kingdoms into dust (Dan. 2:34-35,44-45). Thus, God’s massive Messianic kingdom would attack “the gates of hell,” and the defensive works of Satan’s kingdoms would not prevail against the attempts of the Messiah’s people to overcome and conquer that devil. All Satan’s four kingdoms would fall completely, with such great devastation that nothing would be left of them. Then the Messiah’s kingdom would fill the earth and rule over it all.
Also consider: (1) how the universal or world-wide church of Israel (which the Jews referred to as the ἐκκλησία), had existed since the days of Abraham; (2) how Jesus was not a new Gentile god, but the very same God of Israel who created the original priesthood of Israel through Abraham; and (3) how God promised to make the Messiah’s New Covenant with the same church of Israel that He had previously bound under His Old Covenant. Therefore, in Mat. 16:18, Jesus was proclaiming that He would “build up” His already existing world-wide church of Israel. Jesus clearly and definitely was Page 1089
not declaring that He would “build” a new church, one erected entirely upon a foundation of pagan doctrines formed by Satan in his four evil kingdoms. Jesus was not creating a new Roman Gentile church for the devil’s messiah, for the beast, for the Gentile kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, who were all warring against God. Jesus was not saying He would trash God’s laws and the wise teachings of His Old Covenant, to form a new church which followed unjust Roman laws, a Roman church that committed spiritual prostitution with the subject kings in the devil’s world order and bowed before Satan’s ultimate lawmaker, the lawless beast. Jesus did not come to build a new ruthless church that unjustly tortured, murdered, enslaved and exploited Jews, as well as countless other innocent souls, all falsely in God’s name, thus slandering the name of God while they strove to nullify His Law, even the very same Law which God had promised to fulfill in His people of Israel.
When Jesus spoke about His future New Covenant priesthood of Israel, He used the Greek verb οἰκοδομέω. And, in this context, that verb meant, “to help improve ability to function in living responsibly and effectively, strengthen, build up, make more able ... edify.” Both the local and global context forbid this verb to be interpreted in the way where poisoned minds think Jesus was somehow saying: “I will build a new church [to persecute the old church which I now hate through My fickle and unstable mind].” Our God Jesus never thought like that and never will think like that. Although most church scholars throughout history have interpreted it in this venomous way, Jesus clearly did not say anything like that. Most churches throughout history have violently clung to their egocentric doctrines of replacement theology, and have loved to portray God as a bitter, vindictive, petty fool, that is, as a vile vengeful bigot like themselves. Yet the real Jesus definitely was nothing like any of them. And Jesus never said He would build a new humanistic and Roman-like church through one very fallible human disciple whom He renamed “Peter,” and through him alone. Rather, Jesus clearly stated that He would build up His church of Israel, that is, by ratifying His New Covenant with His old church, by writing His just, loving Law within each heart. For absolutely nothing in either the Old or New Covenant Scriptures ever said that a human being will build a new church for God, or that Gentile disciples of a fallible Jewish sinner like Peter would become the new church of Israel.
God Himself declared that He would personally create His entire New Covenant church, and that He would build it up from the people of His Old Covenant church, not through an entirely fake lineage of Gentiles who falsely claimed to be Peter’s disciples. All the Messianic biblical prophecies said that God Himself would create and grow the massive Rock, which is His Messianic New Covenant branch of Israel, and this Rock was not to be created nor grown by human minds and hands. Besides, history conclusively proves that the lists of Peter’s disciples, such as the list invented by the Roman Catholics, are complete fakes. Both biblical and historical evidence proves that neither Peter, nor any of the other disciples, ever took disciples for themselves. None of the apostles ever called themselves
“rabbis” or “teachers,” because their Lord and God, Jesus, authoritatively prohibited literally all New Covenant teaching and judging elders from ever taking any titles of esteem or authority (Mat. 23:8-10). Such commands of Jesus mean none of us can take disciples of any kind. We can mentor, tutor or even apprentice others, but only as equal siblings or caring parents to our young. Yet God forbids any of us to become authoritative guides, teachers or lords to anyone, never in any way Romans and humanistic Jews became to their disciples. Not even our God Jesus allowed His disciples to call Him
“Rabbi,” not in the way the humanistic rabbis of that day took that title. Rather, Jesus behaved more like their oldest Brother, although He was the Messiah God, their High King and eternal High Priest.
As long as Jesus remains resurrected and alive, and as long as Jesus has more to teach the infantile spirits of the heavenly Father’s elect children, none of His disciples will ever be able to become the rabbis of other elect souls, and never be able to take disciples for themselves. Yet Jesus still lives and Page 1090
Mat. 16:13-20, God is Our Teacher
shall never die. And the Spirit of life in Jesus is the Spirit who is called the omniscient God, whose infinite wisdom shall be taught to His children for all eternity. This is why all the true apostles and all the people in the true apostolic church understood that Jesus would always be the one and only Head Teacher of every man in His earthly church of Israel (I Cor. 11:3), and the only Head of all in His eternal heavenly priesthood. All the true apostles and all the true Christians, throughout their entire lives, considered themselves to be perpetual disciples of their resurrected Teacher and Lord, Jesus. Thus, in the New Covenant Scriptures, we never see any apostle ever dare to call himself by an esteeming title like “Teacher,” “Rabbi,” “Lord,” “Father,” “Shepherd/Pastor” or anything else.
And, when the people of the true New Covenant church addressed the teaching and judging elders, those whom Jesus appointed as His assistants (such as Peter, John and Paul), those people always used the title “brother.” No church member, male or female, called any of them by a title like “rabbi”
or “lord,” nor ever considered themselves to be disciples of a mortal man. All were equal brothers or sisters of those common sinners whom their God Jesus chose to serve as His assistant teachers. For only Jesus was able to build up their their church through His personal teaching of individual spirits.
Furthermore, look at the two future perfect passive periphrastic constructions in Matthew 16:19, where Jesus tells Peter how to bind or free souls. These are the very same future perfect passive periphrastic constructions found later in this same Gospel, in Matthew 18:18, where Jesus said that literally all the members of His New Covenant branch of His church of Israel will bind or free souls.
Thus, when Jesus gave Peter “the keys of the kingdom of the heavens” (τὰς κλεῖδας τῆς βασιλείας
τῶν οὐρανῶν), “keys” which bound or freed souls, Jesus also gave those very same “keys” to each and every member of the New Covenant branch of His church. And there is another very obvious and serious problem with the Roman Catholic and traditional interpretations of the grammatical constructions in both verses (i.e., in 16:19 and 18:18), deliberate errors which imply that a fallible human disciple, and even all the infantile spirits who are members of Christ’s body, can bind or free souls through their own wills. Yet the original Greek texts definitely and clearly indicate that this binding and loosing can only be done according to God’s will, that God Himself will bind or loose a soul through them, that they will be agents or instruments of God, not the lords and commanders of God, as the deluded humanists like to think. Look at the English translations of these verses and you will find that most intentionally misinterpret those periphrastic constructions as simple future tense verbs. Most will alter the meaning of those verses to remove the reference to God’s will causing His people to think and act in the ways He commands, so they fulfill His own good purposes on earth.
In Matthew 16:19 and 18:18, Jesus was obviously speaking in Greek to His disciples, since Matthew was reiterating His teachings in a way that could not be a translation of the Aramaic language. And most people in the region of Galilee, as well in the Gentile lands where Jesus was standing while He spoke these words, used Greek as their native language. So these Greek statements by Jesus do not require any attempts to clarify Aramaic grammar or Aramaic words with different areas of meaning, and there are no Aramaic phrases with language-specific implications. There is nothing in either the Greek or in Aramaic to suggest that Jesus was simply issuing a command in the simple future tense.
In Greek, especially in its ecclesiastical doctrinal usage, a periphrastic construction was primarily employed for one purpose only, to emphasize the aspect and implications of the main verb. Thus, in Matthew 16:19 and 18:18, Jesus was intentionally emphasizing the perfective aspect and the passive voice of the main verbs in these future perfect passive periphrastic constructions. And a perfective aspect emphasizes the effects or results of an action, over and against the action indicated by the main verb itself. Then the passive voice would definitely be a theological passive in this context, indicating that God Himself will perform the actual action of the main verb. Jesus said: ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς
Page 1091
ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς
οὐρανοῖς (SBLGNT). So the future tense of the linking verb (ἔσται) indicates that the actions of
“whomever you might bind upon the earth” and “whomever you might free upon the earth” will occur in the future, but will only occur in the future after God performs the action of the passive perfect tense main verbs. So these periphrastic constructions mean that future actions of human beings will be the effect or result of what God has already done “in the heavens.” I know this is difficult for English-speaking people to follow, since English uses very different constructions to indicate information like this. But we must translate the Greek correctly, not in ways that gratify humanistic notions of how the wills of human gods can control the Creator God. And also note that the word “heavens” is plural again, indicating that God’s actions will not only be in the third heaven, but in the first heaven as well (i.e., not only in His eternal spiritual realm “above,” but on earth too).
Consequently, a correct and literal translation of what Jesus told that disciple in Matthew 16:18
would need to be something like this: “Whomever you might bind upon the earth, will be the effect of having [already] been bound [in the past and by God Himself] in the heavens. And whomever you might free upon the earth, will be the effect of having [already] been freed [in the past and by God Himself] in the heavens.” Jesus was clearly telling this disciple that God would bind or free the spirits of sinners on earth and in the spiritual realm as well, perhaps even in parts of the second heaven, that is, in outer space (in the entire material universe). Of course, God will do this from His throne in the third heaven, that is, while in His eternal spiritual realm. But God also exists on earth too, since God is not bound by His creation of time and space, but is ubiquitous, omnipresent. So God Himself will be on earth to bind or free souls on earth, usually by binding some in the hellish darkness of their own delusions, or by freeing others into the heavenly light of His truths, thus enabling their spirits to love.
Jesus was telling us that we would only be able to bind or free the souls of sinners dwelling upon the earth after God has done that binding or freeing of those souls. Our heavenly Father Himself would cause Peter—and every other true disciple of Jesus, every human being with an elect spirit that He has awakened and gathered into His New Covenant branch of Israel—to bind or free other human souls on earth. That is, God will effectively work on earth through the people in His church. The New Covenant priesthood of Israel will serve as the body of our God Jesus on earth. In the war against “the gates of hell,” against the unjust and demonic kingdom of Satan’s world order, God will bind sinners by causing us to bind them, in His name, that is, through His will, commands, authority and power. In this way, His disciple will conquer the enemies of love and justice. The spirits of the sinners who refuse to repent will be bound in the delusions and lies that the devil will fasten to their souls, for the destruction of their flesh. On the other hand, the elect spirits of sinners who have been taken captive by the lies and sins of Satan’s world order will be freed by God through us. God’s own power will make our words and deeds effective. God will personally teach elect spirits so they can repent into the truth and be gathered into the Messiah’s just, loving New Covenant branch of Israel, into freedom from the tyranny of Satan and his dark world order, and we will all share in this work.
Jesus was telling Peter that he would experience God’s works through him, the works of heaven upon the earth. That disciple would see God’s will done through him, on the earth, in the same way God’s good, just, loving will is done in heaven above. And all the other true disciples of Jesus will also experience and partake in the same works of God’s heavenly will. For Jesus said the same thing to all His faithful disciples later on: “As many as you people might bind upon the earth will be the effects of having [already] been bound [in the past and by God Himself] in heaven. And as many as you people might free upon the earth, will be the effects of having [already] been freed [in the past and by God Himself] in heaven” (Mat. 18:18, from: ὅσα ἐὰν δήσητε ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένα ἐν οὐρανῷ
Page 1092
Mat. 16:13-20, God is Our Teacher
καὶ ὅσα ἐὰν λύσητε ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένα ἐν οὐρανῷ, SBLGNT). The only two differences between what Jesus said to Simon Peter and all the rest of His true disciples in all history are: (1) the main verbs in the periphrastic constructions of Matthew 18:18 are perfect passive plural participles, since the objects of the verbs are plural, whereas the main verbs in 16:18 are singular, because the objects of those verbs are singular; and (2) the word “heaven” is singular in Matthew 18:18, but only in some versions of some ancient Greek texts (in the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Majority text, the original text of the fifth century Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, et al.), although it is plural in other versions (such as versions of the Codex Sinaiticus, the second correction of the Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, et al.). So J
esus grants all true Christians exactly what He granted to Simon Peter .
Therefore, Jesus granted exactly the same “keys” to all true members of His New Covenant church, with His identical promise. That is, all shall also bind and free sinners on earth. And, although the singular word “heaven” in Matthew 18:18 may imply that God’s prior action of binding or freeing occurs solely upon His throne in the third heaven, it amounts to precisely the same thing. Any elect members of the Messiah’s New Covenant branch of His true church of Israel will do the works of their heavenly Father on earth, after God chooses to do those works. Everyone in His true church will be able to bind or free spirits of sinners during their physical lives on earth, after God in heaven above has done His internal and eternal works of binding or freeing those spirits. That is, all will be victorious, able to overcome Satan and his puppets in this unjust world order, able to either bind the unrepentant in self-destructive delusions and lies, or free the repentant sinners into the truth and life.
Then, since Jesus is talking about how God in Him will be causing them to do His just and loving will on earth in the same way His will is done in heaven, and implying that they will do so all their lives on earth, then we must also conclude that all true Christians will remain the disciples of Jesus throughout their entire lives on earth. All will see Jesus as their resurrected and living Head Teacher and Lord, their final authority in all matters of life and faith, until the day their infantile human spirits are taken away from their temporary bodies of flesh. Then, after the death of their flesh, their spirits will be placed in new and eternal bodies, in bodies made of incorruptible and spiritually compatible substances. Then all will forever live together with Jesus and the Father of their spirits.
Their oldest Brother will utterly purge and purify all, gather all the sanctified unto their Father, into their real homes, into each one’s most familiar and joyous place which He prepared for each in the beginning. So, in both Matthew 16:18 and 18:18, Jesus was actually telling all His disciples, not just Simon Peter, that they will all begin to build earthly facsimiles of their spirits’ heavenly homes, even while they live in bodies of flesh. Through their heavenly Father’s will and power, through the love of Jesus for them, and because of His own works through His priesthood of Israel, many souls in the devil’s hellish world order will be overcome and bound, so that elect souls might be freed into parts of the earth which have been transformed into places resembling their just, loving heavenly homes in heaven. Through the heavenly Father’s works in their hearts and in all existing around them, the gates of Satan’s kingdom will not prevail against their advancing love, truth and empowered justice.
But the effective power of heaven will never allow the Messiah’s true New Covenant churches to ever even attempt to bind or free sinners through lies, slander, deceit, dirty tricks, threats of violence, cheating, the suppression of freedoms, the oppression of siblings, the exploitation of innocent dupes for self-indulgent power and money, sabotage, terrorism, murder, rebellions, wars or any of the other methods or weapons of Satan’s world order. None of these things, which churches have practised on a regular basis in support of little antichrists like Hitler and Trump, have ever been completed in heaven before being caused to be done on earth. For it is not God who is causing those churches to do those things. Rather, Satan causes his own fake churches to do such things, and those liars will be Page 1093
bound on earth like the rest of that devil’s minions. Although we have seen almost every church in history use those demonic ways and devices to build up the devil’s hellish kingdoms on earth, not one of them shall ever be employed by any true disciples of Jesus, nor by any true Jews remaining in the Old Covenant branch of His church of Israel. None of God’s true elect spirits are ever allowed to willingly do anything like the Roman Catholic church has always done, nor anything like the vast majority of Protestant churches have always done. The flesh of the sleeping elect may be duped into doing such things for a time. But their elect spirits will vehemently object to all such things. The true elect will never willingly strive to be like the Evangelicals are today, but will seek to bind the vile, unloving, unjust, deluded, lying, self-absorbed, wilfully ignorant, stupidly bullying, criminally negligent, cruel, ruthless and utterly Satanic disciples of humanistic fascists like Hitler and Trump.
We need to fully understand what Jesus was actually saying in these passages (Mat. 16:18 and 18:18). We need to let the minds of our spirits meditate on what He declared. We need to know that this is our calling and destiny on earth. It is the manifestation of our salvation which He brought to us through His bodily torture and death, but primarily through His resurrection and ascension to His heavenly throne, from where He binds or frees all sinners, because He is one with the Father of all our elect spirits. The effects of His salvation will cause our earthly lives to conquer Satan’s world order, to nullify that devil’s works on earth, to even overcome all that originates from the gates of hell. “To this end the Son of God was revealed, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (I John 3:8, WEB). Jesus will do these works through us, so we can build up His priesthood on earth, as well as His just, equitable and loving kingdom wherever we walk on earth. Jesus will do all this through all His true disciples, all who trust fully in Him and His words, all who look to Him and trust Him as their final authority in all matters of life and faith. Our Creator, the Spirit of Jesus, as He teaches and trains our spirits, will cause us to do His effective works on earth just as we will do them in heaven.
In God’s Old Covenant relationship with the frail and faulty sinners of His priesthood of Israel, His elect could only hope in Him. But none received a full reconciliation of their relationship with God through the cross and resurrection of Jesus. Thus, the utterly holy God could not allow Himself to enter into the unwashed hearts and souls of those sinners, and could not work directly through them, to bind and free the souls He had bound and freed through His authority on His heavenly throne. So, since all remained sinners, and all lacked God’s sanctification through His personal teaching and training of their spirits, the power of the Satan and his children ruled the world, although God often intervened as the Owner of all existence. Thus, at that time, Satan only allowed the chiefest of psychopathic sinners to rule over the hierarchical systems he established everywhere on earth. While that kingdom of sinners held sway over elect lives, they were bullied and trampled. But, in His New Covenant relationship with His priests of His church of Israel, with elect spirits of frail and faulty sinners now called, awakened, taught and trained directly by the Holy Spirit of God, with elect now being sanctified into the wise, just and loving ways of our eternal High Priest and God, the balance of power on earth has shifted. God in elect human beings can do incredibly effective works against Satan. As we directly learn about our God Jesus and His ways, from His Holy Spirit now dwelling in our hearts, and He personally counsels each of our spirits, the rule and stewardship of God’s earthly kingdom has passed from Satan to Jesus. And we, Jesus’ body, can say and do powerful works on earth, to make parts of this earth into heaven-like places. Now God has come to us! Now it is time for His true New Covenant priesthood to trust Jesus, to stand, to march, to bind the unrepentant, to free repentant sinners into the truth that our Head Teacher is writing upon the minds of their spirits.
Every awakened elect soul whom the love, power and authority of our Lord Jesus has gathered into the New Covenant branch of His church of Israel, each and every true Christian, has become a piece Page 1094
Mat. 16:13-20, God is Our Teacher
of the Rock who will crush Satan’s world order into dust, who will entirely eliminate every trace of that devil’s coming beast and the kingdom built upon his demonic religion. For the Holy Spirit of Jesus has proclaimed to every individual piece of that one great Rock, to every stone in His gleaming mountain: “I will build up My world-wide church. Even gates of hell will not prevail against it [when My New Covenant church attacks those gates of hell]. I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of the heavens. Then whomever you might bind upon the earth, it will be the effect of having been bound in the heavens. And whomever you might free upon the earth, it will be the effect of having been freed in the heavens.” Because our omnipotent God shall cause our actions of binding and freeing, no entity or army of entities, on earth or from the spiritual realms, will bear the power to stop us.
Do we understand this? Our God Jesus, who created, owns and rules over all existence, has told us that He will cause us to bind unrepentant evil on earth, but also cause us to free repentant elect here on earth as well. The almighty will actually and truly work in us and through us to fulfill His just and loving ways in our families, communities and lands, as we allow our spirits to hear and heed His just, loving and holy Spirit. That is, in the end, we will not be overcome by evil, but will indeed overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21), with the patient, persistent, loving actions that God’s just and equitable Holy Spirit causes us to do. As our spirits mature in our discipleship with Jesus, we shall bind and free more and more each day. And this binding and freeing will be completed in the end times, which are almost upon us. The current world order, with Satan’s fake churches, are about to fail. Jesus is building up His true church on earth more rapidly each year, and none can stop His hands from fulfilling all He promised. After Jesus binds unrepentant sinners in chains of delusions and lies, only He and His disciples will hold the keys to the locks on those chains, and to the dark prisons they are cast into. And we will not release any until our Lord sees their spirits truly repent.
Jesus will command us to release those in whom His omniscient eyes perceive a full and faithful repentance into the truth. He will send us to speak truths in conversations caused by Him, naturally arising between us and them, to turn their hearts toward repentance. And He will also cause us to confront the binding lies and delusions propagated by illicit authorities, to overcome the powerful wanna-be gods who work evil instead of good, who are unfaithful in the stewardship God gave them over His creations, who are not just and equitable with their own siblings in humankind. But only the spirits He granted, at the moment of their creation, an innate love of the truth will be able to repent into it. Only the elect can be freed, and literally all the elect will repent into the truth by the end of the last day. But, for now, while we live on earth, let us also realize that, no matter how much the devil tries to suppress, chain and lock elect souls in his dark dungeons of delusions and lies, he carries no real authority nor power to do so, and cannot keep them there. Satan can only succeed in binding some elect temporarily. For Jesus has never granted Satan, nor any of his minions, any keys.
Rather, none but our God Jesus bears authority and power over literally all keys, and His security over those keys is infallible. Nothing in heaven nor on earth can steal even one key from Him. And Jesus did indeed place the keys to many chains and prison cells in the hands of His awakened elect disciples, then guards them and their keys with His invincible power. So, if Jesus commands our spirits to free an elect brother or sister, we will do it, because our God Jesus will cause us to do it through all His wisdom, authority and power, and absolutely nothing will ever be able to stop us.
For nearly two millenniums, deceiving false doctrines from fake churches, who all belong to Satan’s world order, have managed to distract the true elect from this calling and mission, from growing into the real and full salvation of Jesus Christ. They have kept true elect children of God from pursuing their ordained purposes in this life on earth. The most that those fake churches have ever allowed some of their elect captives to do are a few just and loving physical works, and solely for their own Page 1095
advertising purposes, so the human gods of those churches and their institutions would be able to sell themselves as agents and instruments of God, although they worship only the devil. Other than this, those false churches have wanted all their dupes to focus entirely upon their false teachings alone.
Furthermore, false churches have trained their members to lure, trap and bind other souls into their lies and sins, to steal and sell their siblings as slaves of Satan’s world order. But God wants all elect spirits to be taught and trained solely by the Holy Spirit of Jesus, so we might bind those unrepentant deceivers, and free the lives of our brothers and sisters. Jesus called His awakened elect to storm and overcome even the gates of hell itself, to conquer and nullify all spiritual powers that war against God’s love, truth, justice and equity, to break the devil’s strongholds into dust, so we can build up God’s just and loving kingdom over their ashes, establishing communities resembling heaven’s New Jerusalem. And, yes, we can do all this through the power of our Lord and God, Jesus. The new priesthood of the Creator God, the people who are one with Jesus, are predestined to “undo” or destroy the works of the devil. His admiring and faithful disciples, like trusting little children who know they are not wise nor strong enough to do anything of real value without Him, will surely do all of this in Him. And, through the true elect, much progress has been made against Satan, against his fourth kingdom of humanistic Rome. Yet, during the last two millenniums, humanists have either tried to suppress the evidence of this progress or have stolen the credit for the spiritual and moral progress they could not oppress. But make no mistake, all the justice and truth grown in the world from the beginning has been seeded, watered and weeded by God and His elect. And fake churches, who support and partake in the devil’s works, have never partaken in any of these good works at all.
You might ask then why Jesus let all the past churches do evil, and let us fail so badly, throughout the past two thousand years? One reason is that neither the world nor His elect on earth were ready to hear and apply God’s kind of wise, just, equitable, loving justice. For the handling of His truth is complex, requiring many specialized kinds of elect spirits to fully cooperate with the Holy Spirit of Jesus, then work together as one mind in Him, for His purposes alone. And this kind of complexity and unity functions through the kind of communication and education that His elect have not yet ever possessed. But times are changing. All this is rapidly becoming possible. As Daniel prophesied, knowledge has been increasing, growing exponentially, and is now making us ready for the end times (Dan. 12:4). Yet the fake churches are not being taught or led by Jesus, and their fellowships were not created by Him for real Christians. Those fake churches came from the devil and always have served him. Still, while those fake churches existed, the true elect, the loving and just souls whom humanistic histories have almost always ignored, who have been suppressed, oppressed and marginalized by humanistic governments, also existed everywhere on earth. And those true elect, who will all belong to Christ’s heavenly New Covenant church in the very end, have not failed in their missions throughout the last two millenniums. In fact, the truths Jesus taught their spirits have actually been effectively proclaimed and acted upon, more and more throughout the past centuries.
At the beginning of the first century, when Jesus came, the entire world, outside of Israel, held a totally pagan view of spirituality, that is, a morality based on the lies that most benefited the worst psychopathic exploiters. This culminated in the purely demonic Greco-Roman religious philosophies of humanism. And Satan’s fourth kingdom of Rome forcefully and violently spread their demonic human-worshipping religion, which produced only unjust, oppressive, hierarchical slave societies, throughout the world. But, at the same time, the truths that Jesus’ Holy Spirit was teaching to His chosen spirits also spread. Jesus was forming inner consciences in many minds of elect spirits, and causing them to rightly judge the motives and intentions of other human spirits. Thus, we have seen many of Christ’s teachings break through the gates of hell and nullify the lies, delusions and works Page 1096
Mat. 16:13-20, God is Our Teacher
of Roman humanism. Instead of upper class rulers bullying and terrorizing an artificially created lower class, the elect in some lands began to talk about choosing their own governing officials, from among those whom God had chosen for them. They demanded rulers who called for, taught and enforced just, equitable laws through the love which God built inside their spirits. And those rulers knew they were infantile sinners like the rest. So they laboured together with their siblings to do what was good for all, as brothers of all, subject to the same laws as all—not as psychopathic human gods who exempted themselves from the demands they placed on a lower class. In other words, the world began to see a fulfilling of God’s laws about teaching and judging elders. The elect began to see what God’s Spirit was telling them about governing authorities, justice and their responsibilities to their siblings in mankind, as well as to all of God’s other creations. God was teaching their spirits His own interpretations of His Law, such as the meaning of Deut. 17:14-20, which was about how teaching and judging elders are to live and administer authoritative decisions, as well as how the people are to choose or elect their elders in both the secular and religious institutions, even in social and business systems. For God has never endorsed any of the illicit “kings” in humanistic systems.
The elect began to see how God commanded them to choose only the rulers, elders and judges that He had already chosen for them, that is, only those whom God had caused to be just, honest and loving. Then we began to see just sentencing by just laws, laws following the true intent of God’s laws, where the weight of the punishment would never exceed the weight of the crime, and did not gratify the vengeance of either the judges or the victims. For God only allows an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Later, those judgments also began to consider a sinner’s motives and intentions, in the way God’s Law told us to judge. Thus, judges would no longer hand out the same punishment to everyone who committed the same crime. Instead, they would give lighter sentences to those with less evil motives, and no punishments for those who accidentally caused harm, for those who had no bad motives or intentions towards the victim. And victims were not allowed to take revenge against those who caused harm through innocent intentions, without evil motives, or those who caused harm due to matters beyond their control. Later, there could no longer be a minimum penalty either, while a maximum penalty was strictly reserved for only those who deliberately broke a law through unjust motives and with purely evil intentions. Later, some increasingly biblical democracies started to account for repentance as well, and created parole systems, half-way houses and other institutions which helped repentant sinners and criminals build up more loving and just lives. Countless biblical principles and truths have permeated the spiritual and moral perceptions of the world during the last two millenniums, saving millions of souls and overcoming the gates of hell, especially the unjust gates of Roman humanism, the religious kingdom of Satan’s beast. Although the devil’s resistance also increased, in opposition to Christ’s works through His true elect, our Lord’s labours of love, wisdom and justice have not been overcome. Jesus is still winning against Satan, through His elect.
Of course, through his false churches and secular institutions, Satan loves to send lies and delusions into this world, countless false accusations and lying testimonies against God’s servants, and much false reasoning to slander the loving truth and justice from God. Then the evil one adds many false predictions of how God’s ways shall fail, lies designed to cause fear and anxiety. Yet all Satan’s ways inevitably lead to hopelessness, depression, lawlessness, chaos and death. Within this mix, the devil also distracts the people away from the saving truth, toward self-destructive lies. And, in the place of an equitable, just land of equally infantile souls learning to love one another through often messy trials and errors, Satan provides a gleaming Utopian hope to his dupes. All the wanna-be human gods in his dark world order are taught to dream about a glorious hierarchy ruled by one vastly superior psychopath, where all his worshippers will be able to gratify all their carnal desires—if they will Page 1097
grant absolute power to that one ultimate human god, and if they will help him murder and oppress everyone who opposes him, if they will war against God and sacrifice their lives for his own glory and profit. Every capitalist, communist, fascist, white supremacist, religious fanatic, cult member, conspiracy theorist, fraud, liar, criminal and self-indulgent fool trusts in these delusions and lies of the devil, and fights for his kingdom of hell on earth, against Jesus and His truth, against the true Creator’s immutable ways established from the beginning of time. But their rebellion against God is futile. For Jesus has been winning, is now winning, and will always win in the future. Yes, the non-elect shall soon fulfill their dream of a psychopathic human god to rule them all. But God will only allow that beast to rule for seven years. Then Jesus will destroy them and return to rule the earth. So all whom the Messiah gathers into His true church shall win with Him, both on earth and in heaven.
Then there is one last thing we should notice here, which is how Jesus “commanded the disciples, so they might tell no one that He is the Messiah” (Mat. 16:20). Here we see how Jesus assumed that all His disciples believed He was the Messiah, in the same way Simon Peter did—although we see how Judas Iscariot wanted the kind of Messiah that Evangelicals desired, not the real Messiah. Still, the Spirit of God in Jesus assumed this correctly, since He saw their hearts and minds clearly. But, since we know that all the disciples believed what Peter did, we must conclude that Jesus’ words to Peter also applied to all those other disciples too. Thus, all those other disciples, with the exception of the unrepentant Judas Iscariot, were also granted the “keys,” and would also bind or free sinners when God commanded them to do so. Furthermore, this statement also implies that Jesus did not want His disciples to engage in apologetics with the false churches, did not want them argue in defence of His authority as Israel’s Messiah and God. Rather, Jesus wanted the effects of His New Covenant saving works in elect spirits, the expression of His works in their daily lives, to prove He was their Messiah.
Mat. 16:21-28,
God’s Grace
“From that time, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up. Peter took him aside, and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord!
This will never be done to you.’ But He turned, and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men.’
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will render to everyone according to his deeds. Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste of death, until they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom.’”
(Mat. 16:21-28, WEB).
Choosing Grace or Severity
Jesus and His disciples were spending more and more time trying to avoid the physical attacks of the zealous Evangelicals (Pharisees), who wanted to murder them. For those Evangelicals hated God in Page 1098
His body of human flesh, because Jesus exposed their self-serving false teachings and hypocrisy. All were jealous of the unconditional love that so many elect gave to Jesus, and enraged because He had
“stolen” those sheep out of their duped flock, which they butchered for their own profit. But those sheep flocked to Jesus simply because Jesus taught genuine truths, the kind that their pastors refused to utter, since those truths healed the tormenting, disabling infirmities of the spirit and freed them from slavery to the devil’s minions. Since those fake pastors of duped sheep could not compete with the honesty and wisdom of Jesus, and since God refused to hear the prayers of those arrogant wanna-be gods, those exploiting shepherds grew frustrated and were plotting to murder their God in Jesus.
False churches were growing desperate, and felt that they had to do whatever was necessary to keep their unjust, biased, exploitative system from being overcome by Jesus. So they followed the lead of their father, who was a liar and murderer from the beginning. They used every slanderous lie, false testimony, blasphemy, dirty trick, threat and violently bullying tactic they could devise, in order to save their careers, undeserved titles of esteem and hierarchical systems of exploitation. The demonic spirits ruling the spirits of those pastors compelled them to rescue their unholy churches for the sake of Satan’s world order. After all, the devil himself falsely sanctified those churches and the human gods heading them, so those pastors had to obey him. Their hellish owner had commanded them to commit the sin of pretending to be set apart for God’s own purposes, so they might deceive and enslave even the elect for the sake of Satan’s kingdom. And now Jesus had come with God genuine sanctification of the elect, the kind which none but God Himself had the sovereign right to provide for them. And, through their sin of pretending to serve God, those fake pastors had now been openly exposed as the chiefest of Satan’s servants on earth. Thus, their lord Satan now demanded that they must rescue his unholy churches from the holy God, and from all truth, so his churches of his world order might continue to slander God’s name upon all the earth, and keep the people enslaved by him.
The deadly opposition of those Evangelicals and the other false churches forced Jesus and His disciples to flee again, into the Gentile lands, where those fakes held no power and their voice was not heard. Here, in the Gentile region beside Mount Hermon, our God Jesus began to more clearly explain His main reasons for coming to His true church of Israel in a body of human flesh. Our God had to walk among us, as one of us, in flesh that was just as weak, fallible, amoral and subject to temptations as our own flesh, so He could use His flesh to pay for all our sins. Because the almighty Spirit of God in Jesus always ruled over His own flesh, and prevented it from sinning since the first moment His own Holy Spirit formed His flesh in Mary’s womb, He was able to sacrifice His utterly sinless body as a perfectly acceptable substitute for our flesh. Jesus had to do this because God could not justly silence the factually correct accusations of the demons, when they demanded a just penalty for the very real sins which the spirits of God’s elect children allowed their flesh to commit. Thus, a just penalty for those sins simply had to be paid. For, if God did not provide the full payment for the sins of His own children, then He could not justly demand a full payment for the sins of Satan’s children either. And the payment for sins of the flesh was to have that sinful flesh separated from God’s earthly kingdom through death. So Jesus paid that penalty through the death of His own flesh, since a sinless body could be substituted for a sinful body, or even for as many sinful bodies as the Donor of the sinless body named, since one death pays for any number of sins. Then, if God did not teach and train the infantile spirits of His children to become righteous by the time they came of age to be made culpable for their own actions, then His elect would also need to be separated from God’s eternal kingdom of heaven. For how could a just God justify sending the spirits of demons and their children to a second death in eternal hell if the elect spirits of His own children remained sinful when He gathered them into the homes He prepared for them in New Jerusalem? Thus, God had to begin Page 1099
the work of sanctifying the spirits of His children on earth, by sending His Holy Spirit to teach and train those spirits. Then He had to complete this work to perfection on the final judgment day. If He did not do all this, then every sin of every demon and every human child of Satan would need to be allowed. Then even the worst of Satan’s psychopathic children would not die on earth and even the demons would need to be gathered into heaven, in a way that would destroy the earth and even the eternal spiritual kingdom of God. This is what Jesus briefly explained that day, why He came to us in a body of flesh, to die for our lifetimes of sins in our flesh, and why He came as our Teacher, who rose from the dead, to teach and train our infantile spirits until we matured enough to enter heaven.
God ordained universal and immutable realities in the beginning, when He created the heavens and the earth. And one law on earth allowed a body of human flesh to be responsible for an indefinite number of sins. God set no limit, no maximum number of sins that the body can commit on earth.
Whether a body committed one or a million sins within its appointed time on earth, the same death penalty was to be granted to that body. And the devil gladly agreed with all this, for he did not want any limit on the number of crimes and sins that his own loveless human children would be allowed to commit. Yet that spiritual law, placed upon all flesh on earth, also backfired on that devil. For it meant that God’s sinless body of flesh could actually pay the due penalty for an indefinite number of sins belonging to as many elect sinners as He named, even all the elect named in the very beginning, before any were created upon the earth. Jesus’ one sinless body could die for all the elect in all history, and pay the full price of the just penalty for the bodies of all, for their entire lifetimes of sin.
At this time, as opposition increased and Jesus was nearing the day of His sacrificial death, He began to teach His disciples about how He would atone for all the sins they committed through their flesh, in order to restore their relationship with Him and their heavenly Father. Jesus’ flesh would take every blow that every individual elect sinner deserved. Jesus’ body would justly pay all that the great accuser, Satan, justly demanded for all the loveless, ruthless, exploitative, unjust words and deeds that each and every elect soul allowed its flesh to perform, for all the evil each did through one’s own flesh during one’s entire lifetime on earth. And the vicarious punishment, which Jesus took for our sakes, would end in the mandatory separation of the utterly holy God from His sinning children, because their flesh would be justified by the full payment for all its sins during its entire appointed time on earth. Thus, with that restoration of the relationship between God and His children, God could also begin to teach and train their spirits, to prepare them for their judgment on the final day.
For, once their infantile spirits matured, those spirits had to prove to be fit to enter heaven. If they were not fit, then those spirits could not enter heaven, and would need to be cast into hell with all the others who loved darkness rather than light. However, God created all His elect children with innate propensities and abilities to become fit for heaven, through the right teaching and training, which He will provide for them all on the very long last day. Therefore, our God Jesus came to work genuine justice for the sakes of all the heavenly Father’s elect children. Jesus came to proclaim and enforce all of God’s harmonious and wise precepts, to restore rightness where wrongs were practised, to fulfill all that had existed in the heart and mind of God from the beginning, to build up God’s loving kingdom and all that His love longed to resurrect within the dying lives and souls of His children.
In other words, Jesus had to offer up His flesh in death, as a full and complete propitiation regarding all our sins throughout all our lives. Of course, the life-giving Spirit in Jesus is God. So He separated His body of flesh from God’s property of the earth in death, when His Spirit abandoned His body until the third day, and fully paid for all our sins in the flesh. Then His Spirit returned to His body, and He will live forever after His resurrection, to save our spirits from hell through His Spirit’s own personal teaching and training of our inherently repentant spirits. Furthermore, although Jesus has Page 1100
appointed the material realm for complete annihilation at a predestined time, He will remain in His resurrected and living body for all eternity. But He can also transfigure His earthly flesh into a body made of spiritual substances, whenever He dwells in heaven, then transfigure His heavenly body back into and earthly body when He returns to the earth. Our God Jesus will also grant all human spirits the same kind of spiritual body too, and even transfigure some human bodies of flesh into spiritual bodies just before He “burns” material existence. For all material existence is merely His spiritual power transformed into material energy which forms material substances and defines this material space. So transfiguring from the spiritual to the material, or vice versa, is not a problem for God. Then consider how Jesus, our God, also created hell, and keeps it existing in the spiritual realm. Thus, if He created and maintains hell with His power and will, then His omnipresent Self must also exist in hell at all times, together with His will and power. The vacuum of hell is set apart from all of God’s good and holy creations, but nothing created can be set apart from God Himself.
So our God Jesus is able to hear, limit and rule over all He will ever cast into hell. Therefore, even if an elect spirit could somehow slip into hell, Jesus could hear that one’s prayers of repentance and free that one from hell. The point is that Jesus will indeed save literally all the elect, and not one will be lost to eternal hell, since Jesus fulfilled all the requirements of sin’s penalty for all of His elect.
But, if Jesus did not pay the fully just penalty of sin, Satan could accuse our utterly holy God of a sin, the sin of being biased, unjust and inequitable in His judgments. For, if God began to do His works of teaching and training our spirits without first paying for our sins—that is, if God chose to prepare our infantile spirits for our eternal heavenly home until our spirits came of age to be judged, and thus justified our spirits’ right to enter heaven, but did this for our spirits although the earthly bodies of our spirits had been equally bound in lies and sins as the bodies of Satan’s children—then Satan could rightly accuse God of aiding and abetting sinners. If God ignored the earthly sins of His elect children, and did not justly pay for our sins, then God could never justly punish the deliberate sins of psychopaths or Satan himself, none of the sins of Satan’s children or the demons. In fact, if God did not administer equitable justice for literally all His creations, then God would become a sinner, and literally all sinners must be handed over to Satan by God’s law. In justice, God agreed that all sinners must be enslaved by Satan, under his command, and sent to hell with that devil.
However, if Satan ruled over all, even the third heaven, all intentional sinners and their sins would be gain free reign everywhere, not just in hell. And the plenary rule of Satan would end in the utter annihilation of all physical and spiritual existence. Thus, God could not aid and abet the sins of elect sinners. God could not even perform His inner saving works for His elect children while literally all of them remained in guilt and sin. And, without any knowledge of truth, elect spirits could never truly repent. Until our God Jesus made the full and just payment for our sins, He could not work in our hearts and souls to save our spirits from hell. For, if He taught and trained elect spirits before they repented, to cause them to repent, but ignored their sins of the flesh, He would be unjust. By ignoring their sins, He would actually participate in those sins, since His silence would be equivalent to His approval of those sins. For we know that one confirms a liar’s lie by ignoring it when it is uttered before one’s face, and one’s silence can make one as much of a liar as the one who originally told the lie. But God is incapable of telling a lie. Nor can He commit any other sin. For such would contradict His inner nature of love in pure truth. And such conflicts within the almighty Creator would cause Him to war against and destroy Himself, with all His spiritual and physical creations.
So, before His final teaching and training of our spirits for repentance, before the completion and perfection of our salvation on the judgment day, the sinless flesh of Jesus had to suffer and die on our behalf, as the payment for our lifetimes of sins through our flesh. Furthermore, all earthly time, Page 1101
from the first day He created the material universe until the day it “burns” into non-existence, is one event or moment in God’s mind, and in His spiritual realm. It is a moment that has already occurred.
So all that previously occurred and all that ever will occur in the future of the material universe is just one moment of “now” in spiritual time. Thus, all has been predestined from the beginning, and is already a past memory in the mind of God. Therefore, in the real reality of our omnipotent God, He has already accomplished the salvation of all His elect. He saved all the elect at the very moment all were born on the earth, and even before then, even from the moment God’s mind planned to create that moment of material time and chose to send the infantile spirits of His children into that material existence, to learn about what is and what is not His essence. Since all spiritual time flows relative to the thoughts of God, and material time is within and a part of spiritual time, all must be predestined by God. All God did for us in Jesus’ flesh upon that cross was done before any of us began to exist. The elect who lived before Jesus were in linear earthly time. Yet all were already saved by His death on the cross, and by His resurrection, when He reclaimed His own body for us.
We must realize that our God Jesus, and His salvation, have never been limited by His own creation of either earthly or spiritual time, because all time is relative to the will and thoughts of God. Yet, because God cannot lie nor change His mind about anything He wills or promises, He not only had to restore His favour toward us, by His earthly body’s death on the cross, but He also had to justify His right to work inside us for our salvation, both while we live in these bodies of flesh on earth and after we leave these sinning bodies to stand at the gates of heaven for judgment. Thus, Jesus not only was forced by Himself to die in the flesh, to pay the just penalty of our sins, but was also forced by Himself to raise His dead flesh from the grave, so He could work upon our spirits to prepare them for life in heaven, to fully justify the rights of our spirits to enter His home in heaven. And our God Jesus did all this for all of us existing in earthly time from its beginning to its end. For the whole of God, who is a Spirit, exists outside of earthly time, and even outside of the more real spiritual time.
Consequently, God is not subject to constraints of any time, though He temporarily locked the spirits of His own children in earthly time, until our infant elect spirits mature into His image. We are now only able to experience linear time one earth, through flesh, as a mode in which God teaches and trains our spirits, to prepare us for our works in heaven. So, on earth, we temporarily perceive all God’s works in this time, not in the “real” non-linear time of the spiritual realm (although our spirits are able to perceive and experience both kinds of time, earth’s linear and heaven’s non-linear time).
Then, at that time, Jesus began to explain the reason for His death and resurrection to the apostles.
“From then [on], Jesus began to reason and present evidence to His disciples, that it is necessary for Him to depart for Jerusalem and to suffer many thing from the elders and chief priests and [Bible]
scholars, even to be put to death and to be awakened on the third day” (Mat. 16:21, from: Ἀπὸ τότε
ἤρξατο ὁ Ἰησοῦς δεικνύειν τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ ὅτι δεῖ αὐτὸν εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα ἀπελθεῖν καὶ πολλὰ
παθεῖν ἀπὸ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καὶ ἀρχιερέων καὶ γραμματέων καὶ ἀποκτανθῆναι καὶ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ