διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν. ὁ δυνάμενος χωρεῖν χωρείτω, SBLGNT). Since the disciples said it was better to remain unmarried, Jesus made a very serious, spiritual remark about such a teaching, to turn their joking minds of flesh back to the spiritual implications and teachings about being celibate.
Of course, these disciples may have wanted to say, “We did not really mean that we actually wanted to remain celibate. We were joking! We love our wives!” But Jesus spoke so long and so seriously that they did not have a chance to say this. After all that Jesus said here, He basically forced them to realize that He did not appreciate any jokes about the critical relationships between husbands and wives, since godly and wise marriage relationships were absolutely essential to the very survival of every family and nation on earth, as well as critical for the preservation of freedoms and rights for both male and female individuals everywhere. And the disciples saw how, in the humanistic Roman Empire of that day, which is the same religious empire that has been corrupting the world to this day, the perversion of marriage relationships caused the hellish destruction of uncountable innocent lives.
So now the disciples would return to sober thoughts from the minds of their spirits, and take the teachings of Jesus more seriously. They would realize that marriage involves the making of inner covenants by two equal human spirits in the presence of God Himself. Each spouse had to commit to a life-long promise of being a faithful companion who shares all matters of the flesh with the other spouse. And this covenant of love could not be made by the flesh, only by the spirit of the man and by the spirit of the woman. For, if it was not made by their spirits, then God, who is a Spirit, would Page 1243
not testify to that covenant, as its only authoritative witness, nor bless it with good fruits. Yet, in His response to the carnal “joke” made by His disciples, Jesus also acknowledged that God does not call everyone to serve Him as a couple joined into “one flesh,” through marriage. Jesus reminded the disciples, most of whom were married or would marry later in life, that He calls some to be celibate.
In the Jewish communities of that day, and even today, the people assumed that everyone should get married. For they read, in God’s Word, about how most of the patriarchs, prophets and priests were married, and how God greatly blessed His people of Israel when He granted each a spouse. But these Jewish people had forgotten that the kingdom of God is very large and complex, with many different roles and jobs that must be worked within it, for its growth and spiritual prosperity. And not all these roles and jobs could be filled by married people. Therefore, God chose to make some of His servants completely content to serve Him independently, without a companion to share in the works of the flesh, and with no desire to find a spouse. So, in this teaching (Mat. 19:11-12), Jesus used the ecclesiastical Greek term which referred to a permanently unmarried person, to one who had little or no sexual desire and remained celibate throughout one’s remaining life. That term was εὐνοῦχος.
The εὐνοῦχοι were not all eunuchs, not all castrated men. In fact, almost no Jewish εὐνοῦχοι were castrated, and not all were males. Eunuchs were mostly found in pagan royal palaces or priesthoods, not among the Jewish people. So, when we translate this teaching, the word “eunuch” should not be used as an English translation of εὐνοῦχος. Jesus spoke about those whom God made to be celibate.
Then notice how Jesus used a present (durative) form of χωρέω here, to indicate the current and ongoing “advance in movement” or “progress” (BDAG3) that some were making in the “reasoning”
(λόγος) of the disciples, that is, regarding how those disciples declared, “it is not good to marry.” By using this verb in this way, Jesus implied that celibacy is something learned, something developed by training and practice, something in which one might continuously “make progress,” as one gains knowledge, skill and wisdom through the experiences of life. Then Jesus used a perfect passive form of δίδωμι to indicate that this progress in celibacy comes “to those it has been granted with effect.”
Again, this is obviously a theological passive. So Jesus was saying that God grants the celibacy. And the perfect tense emphasizes that God also causes the effects of the celibacy, presumably referring to one’s more effective service of God through celibacy. Thus, the gift of celibacy that the apostle Paul received from God (see I Cor. 7:6-9) is not an instantaneous loss of sexual desire, as some seem to think. Rather, this gift of celibacy is an ability to focus entirely on the works of God, without being distracted by the common needs or desires of the flesh. As Paul said: “He who is unmarried is concerned for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord” (I Cor. 7:32, WEB). And this celibacy requires an elect spirit to gain a thorough knowledge of God and His Word, through years of experience and education, always tuning the ears of one’s spirit to the counsel of Christ’s Spirit, not only to be taught and trained, but also to cope with loneliness and the difficult trials of the flesh.
Now look at how Jesus described three kinds of εὐνοῦχοι: (1) Those born with very little or no sexual desire, whom we might call “impotent,” but are more accurately those lacking inherent or natural desires for sex or marriage; (2) Those caused to remain unmarried by the people, either by a prohibition of marriage due to a false doctrine or by physical castration, by a lengthy military service in the field, by some other occupation which does not provide accommodations for family life, by a loss of members of the other sex through war or some other disaster, by an artificially developed misogyny or misandry which inhibits or prevents one from marrying, or by some other act of people; (3) Those elect spirits who dedicate themselves to a certain kind of work appointed by God, after God awakens them, after He makes them aware of a dire and dangerous spiritual and moral situation Page 1244
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of their people. These εὐνοῦχοι may be young or old, may be virgin youths, middle-aged or elderly, may be those who remained unmarried or became single through divorce or the death of a spouse.
But notice, none of the three kinds of celibate people listed here (in Mat. 19:12), remained celibate by opposing a call of God to marry a spouse. Clearly, the one born “impotent” did not cause himself or herself to lack sexual desires. God gave that one an ability to live without a spouse. And the one whom the people forced to remain celibate had no choice either. Then the last kind, those who received God’s calling to do some kind of work for His kingdoms, in some unique way which does not allow for marriage, is the same as the celibate one whom the people forced to remain celibate, except that God takes away that one’s desire to marry and replaces it with a burning desire to save His people from their destruction through ignorance and sin. Neither John the Baptist nor Jesus married, but not because their minds of flesh uttered vows of celibacy. Both remained celibate because they both focused every aspect of their lives upon serving God. When Jesus spoke about the last two kinds of celibate people, He used the verb εὐνουχίζω. In the secular culture, this verb meant:
“to cause someone to be a eunuch, castrate, emasculate, make a eunuch of” (BDAG3). But here, in its ecclesiastical usage, this verb indicated that some entity caused a person to remain celibate and unmarried through other means as well. Then Jesus said that the last kind caused oneself to remain celibate, which could not be through castration or emasculation, since God’s laws forbade any kind of self-mutilation. And the one causing oneself to remain celibate did so “because of the kingdom of the heavens” (διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν). But the only way one can work for God’s kingdom on earth and in heaven is through the explicit and personal calling, teaching and training of one’s spirit by God Himself. Therefore, if God gave one a personal calling, together with His teaching and training of one’s spirit, then God Himself would also be the the one who removed the desire of one’s spirit for a companion in marriage, so that desire would be replaced by the spirit’s consuming and overcoming desire to complete some kind mission for God’s kingdom. And that overwhelming spiritual desire would usually occur in an elder, after years of being taught and trained by God.
In the end, one must never remain celibate or become castrated through one’s own so-called “free will.” God must be the only cause of celibacy. Only God may choose to: (1) cause a natural celibacy in the body of flesh; (2) allow the people to sin by causing an unnatural celibacy; or (3) alter desires in a spirit to cause one to choose celibacy. But, most often, God will cause an elect spirit to desire a close companion, where one’s flesh will share a family life in the flesh with that companion. And we must allow God to choose our companions. If God brings together a male and female, and causes the female’s spirit to look upon that male in the same way Eve looked upon sleeping Adam, then He will also wake the spirit of the male to look upon the female in the same way Adam looked upon Eve. It is God who will cause the spirits of both to make a marriage covenant with one another. Thus, the two are being caused by God to be one flesh with each other throughout life. So let no person, not even the male or female whom God is calling into marriage, hinder or stop the marriage. And no one can know whether or not God will cause oneself to marry, except the one who was born “impotent.”
In all that Jesus said here, if we interpret it in the global context of all else God taught in His Word, as well as in the context of all God causes the spirits and flesh of His elect to learn and experience in their own personal lives, we find absolutely no room for the pagan doctrines of making eunuchs or coercing “vows” of celibacy in unnatural and ungodly ways through human wills, solely for the illicit power of religious frauds. Pagans castrated men to serve the human gods of their cults, or even demonic false gods. Yet neither of those kinds of gods should have ever been worshipped. Then the false Roman church carried on those pagan traditions. But true Christians are the New Covenant priesthood of God, whose elect spirits dwell in the spiritual household of God, to serve His kingdom Page 1245
according to His will. So no elect soul, whose spirit speaks and acts in Christ’s name, has anything to do with any of those pagan traditions. Whether or not anyone remains celebrate is ultimately God’s choice, not a choice made by humans, because God creates the spirit and the flesh of each person.
Some elect are virgins and some are not. Some are unmarried and some have found a companion in marriage. But none of this makes any difference to God, because service to God does not depend on the marital or sexual status of the flesh. Neither does it depend on whether or not an elect soul is a trapped slave in an exploitative system, has a traumatic past, was formerly a criminal, is cognitively or physically disabled, lacks education or is just plain inept. For, in reality, literally all humans are totally unqualified to help God in even the most insignificant ways. Everyone, without exception, is an utterly useless sinner. “There is no one who understands.There is no one who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside.They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not so much as one” (Rom. 3:11-12, WEB). Thus, it is “not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God” (II Cor. 3:5, WEB). Since all humans are deluded sinners, anyone who is able to serve God in a right way does so by God’s grace.
Yet even the very least of the elect can do God’s works to build up His just kingdom on earth, and overcome evil with good, if God Himself decides to work through that one. If an elect soul heeds the counsel of Christ’s Holy Spirit, as He speaks directly to one’s own spirit, that one will do what he or she is incapable of doing. Any elect soul can do God’s will and God’s works through the gifts and the power of Jesus. Only let us not try to gratify our own wills, nor attempt to manipulate God through what liars call a “free will.” Rather, we acknowledge the weak wills of our infantile spirits, and the weaker wills of our flesh. We ask for His quickening and strengthening of our wills, to raise us up from our lethargy and the distractions of this world, so we focus on His will and His works.
“For it is God who works in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13, WEB).
Mat. 19:13-26,
Money is a Delusion
“Then little children were brought to Him, that He should lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, ‘Allow the little children, and don’t forbid them to come to Me; for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to ones like these.’ He laid His hands on them, and departed from there.
“Behold, one came to Him and said, ‘Good teacher, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.’
“He said to Him, ‘Which ones?’ Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not offer false testimony. Honor your father and mother. And, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
The young man said to him, ‘All these things I have observed from my youth. What do I still lack?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.’ But when the young man heard the saying, he went away sad, for he was one who had great possessions.
Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Most certainly I say to you, a rich man will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven with difficulty. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard Page 1246
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it, they were exceedingly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Looking at them, Jesus said, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’” (Mat. 19:13-26, WEB).
It is no coincidence that Matthew paired the Lord’s teaching about becoming as a little child with the teachings that called a rich man to sell all his excess to follow Him, then stated that the vast majority of wealthy souls will not enter heaven, meaning they will go to hell. And, when that rich man called Jesus “good,” Jesus knew this wealthy youth knew absolutely nothing about true goodness, and also saw how this foolish one did recognize Him as his utterly sinless and holy Messiah and God. It is, unfortunately, the same with the vast majority of the self-indulgent, entitled elite in the hierarchies of Satan’s world order. Their shallow, carnal, deluded minds cannot perceive God nor the goodness of God, whenever He or His loving justice manifests on earth. For all those self-esteeming wanna-be human gods see are the lies they have been told from birth. Thus, most infants see more reality in a single day than those wretches see from day they come of age to the day their flesh meets its death.
Here Jesus continued to teach and train His disciples for their future roles as teaching elders. For these men had to learn to be just and loving, to teach and judge well, according to God’s will, never allowing themselves to be deluded by those who uphold Satan’s world order. Many souls working for the devil’s kingdom think they are wise and right in all they say and do. Some even imagine they are serving God while they exploit their brothers and sisters in the family of humankind, while they steal from God Himself. And they justify their thefts with doctrines taught by demons like Mammon.
They convince themselves that, if they obey the laws of demons, who command them to pursue only power and wealth, God will bless their sins against Him and His creations. Then, since whole nations bow before demons like Mammon, none are left to expose their delusions about money and status.
When psychopathic nations legislate and enforce laws dictated by Mammon and other devils, all learn to esteem and praise the most faithful demon worshippers, even the most dishonest and ruthless slaves of money, those who arrogantly corrupt and oppress others through their financial power. So, as the people accept and blindly obey those kinds of unjust laws, they actually begin to believe that God will never hold those servants of devils accountable for their crimes and sins, as their land falls into chaos and death. Therefore, those kinds of demonic lies, told to oneself and the people of one’s national family, must be purged at all cost. Let all elect spirits vomit out all those self-deceiving lies.
An Illustration of True Elders
First look at how Matthew brilliantly introduced these teachings of our God Jesus, the doctrines that so thoroughly denounced and condemned the delusions taught by the demon Mammon. Before Jesus spoke these teachings against the self-indulgent delusions of wealth, Matthew tells us that the people brought little children to Jesus. Now these immature disciples were proud of their status as men of God, how they were learning to be rabbis from this great Teacher, Jesus. So they exerted what little authority they possessed, the authority they thought they had earned, by commanding some of the
“lowly women” to remove their innocent and uncorrupted children. For they felt that those women and children were a nuisance, and the “big men” must get on with their “important” work. But all that pride in the disciples certainly did not come from their Lord Jesus. Rather, that pride was simply some dried and hardened excrement rolling down the steep slopes of the insanely cruel world order’s tall hierarchy, from the leaches at the top, into their hearts. Consequently, Jesus had to rebuke them.
Jesus commanded those future teaching elders of the New Covenant branch of His church: “You disciples must let the little children go and must never forbid them to come to Me. For the kingdom of the heavens is for the purpose of such as these” (Mat. 19:14, from: Ἄφετε τὰ παιδία καὶ μὴ
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κωλύετε αὐτὰ ἐλθεῖν πρός με, τῶν γὰρ τοιούτων ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν, SBLGNT). The first verb (Ἄφετε) here is an aorist (punctiliar) imperative, a prohibition commanding the disciples to stop harassing the little children immediately, so the hearts of the children could do what they naturally do—which was to question this Teacher they “found,” with the help of their mothers. Those infants wanted to learn from Him. Then the second verb (κωλύετε) is a present (durative) imperative with a negative particle modifying it, commanding them to never again forbid little children from coming to Him. No one was to ever again forbid little ones from coming to Jesus for His blessings of wise teachings, which children under four or six years of age usually absorb like a sponge, and are often influenced by those teachings for their entire lives. Jesus always allowed those little ones to candidly question Him. All children can treat God like a loving older brother, or come to Him for healing and the waking of their spirits. After all, literally all human beings are children with infantile spirits, and all must go to Jesus in exactly the same way for the same reasons these little children came to Him.
In reality, little children possess the same spirits as everyone else in God’s kingdom of the heavens (note again, “heavens” is plural, which includes His just, loving kingdom on earth, His outer space and His eternal spiritual realm). No one in God’s true kingdom is an “authority of God” because he wears a clerical robe and demands to be called by a title of esteem like “pastor” or “father.” Nor does God’s kingdom ever include the self-indulgent rich, the exploiting lords from institutions that serve Satan’s world order. Literally all the elect in God’s true kingdom are humbled like the little children.
These little children were a perfect illustration of all Jesus wanted us, His disciples, to become. And Matthew’s example of these little ones also more fully exposed the worldly delusions and wrong thinking of the rich man, whom he wrote about immediately after Jesus accepted these little children.
For these infants had not yet been deluded by the lies of the world order, like most adults are, or like that rich man was. Babies take what they see at face value. So they loved Jesus because Jesus was a loving man. But they ran away from the rich and powerful, because they saw that they were evil. For little children have not yet been taught to worship those fake human gods. Nor do infants possess any respect for money, since money is actually nothing. Yes, a child may be attracted to a shiny coin, but not as much as to a shiny toy which moves and makes sounds. Since money has no actual or real intrinsic value, small children see it for what it is, merely a piece of paper, or a small metal disc, or a meaningless digit on an equally meaningless ledger or computer record. But small children see that real food, clothing, shelter and people exist, that God’s creation caused them to exist, and that all should be shared according to each one’s needs. They have no delusions about wealth, no concept of any kind of artificial superiority and privilege claimed by the rich, who forcefully coerce others to obey them through a delusion that they can exert control over good and services with their unreal money, by their threats to withhold necessities of life from others. Little children do not recognize that the demon Mammon bears any authority to grant anyone the power of abusive control over others. Infants ignore the lies about Satan’s invention of money. They only see and accept realities.
The Religious Rich Hate God
Throughout history, the entitled wealthy of all religions have always hated the real Creator God. But, in our day, even most of the middle class and poor also hate God, and try to usurp God’s authority by attempting to gain power over others through the delusion of money. So both the rich and the poor worship money together. Of course, this situation exists because the real Gospel of Jesus Christ’s New Covenant salvation—the message of how the Messiah’s Holy Spirit has come to teach and train our elect spirits so we might serve Him and His creations in His just and loving ways—is so seldom preached. Thus, very few elect ever learn how to truly love in a wise and just way, and even fewer Page 1248
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learn to love the real God. Yes, religion pops up everywhere. Now we have even more brand-name religions than ever before. But all are tainted by Satan’s religion of humanism and materialism. So none practise any kind of faith or trust from their spirits, only a mess of contradicting emotional convictions within their minds of flesh. We now have nothing but shallow religions, and all are practised by minds of flesh. All involve the selfish acceptance of selected inspirational words personally interpreted by individuals in ways that maintain each one’s own self-serving beliefs in one’s own preferred delusions. Only a few elect spirits—primarily from the poor and lower middle classes, those who have suffered great hardships and enjoyed some of God’s interventions—have begun to learn God’s just, wise love for their salvation. And this remnant of loving elect will seldom call themselves Christians or Jews. Most associate themselves with other religions, since the fake Christians and false Jews have slandered the name of God so badly on earth that they do not want to be associated with Him. Yet the spirits of those elect are being taught and trained by the real Holy Spirit of our God Jesus for their salvation, and they are actually starting to practise real, biblical Christianity. Therefore, all will enter our Messiah’s New Covenant church during the great revival or on the judgment day. Those scattered true elect, whose spirits are being awakened and saved by our God Jesus, are seldom found in visible churches at this time. But they will be, within a few decades.
So now let us carefully examine this conversation between Jesus and that superficially religious rich man, because its implications apply to almost everyone on earth today, from the super rich to the most impoverished. For, in our day, all trust in the same demonic lies which that rich man’s soul so firmly embraced back then. And while we study the spiritual implications here, we must remember that, although Jesus saw the filthy corruption of this rich man’s soul, Jesus also loved this rich man
(see Mark 10:21). So this corrupted rich man must have had an elect spirit, which Jesus would save, either during life on earth or after that, at heaven’s gates on the last day. Thus, the point of learning all Jesus taught us here is not so we can allow our egos of the flesh to delude ourselves into thinking we are so much better than those blind souls whom demons, like Mammon, have taken captive. For remember, it is literally impossible for anyone to save one’s own mind and heart from being twisted, deluded and enslaved by demons. Only God Himself is able to save us from that! Thus, the point is for us to learn to rely on our God Jesus. For only He can free us from demonic delusions. Here He was teaching us to beg Him, in contrite prayers of petition, for His deliverance from all worldly lies.
The first major teaching emphasized here, and in the other two synoptic Gospels, was Jesus’ firm rebuke of the humanistic doctrines believed by this rich man. The rich man approached Jesus and asked: “Teacher [of life and faith], what useful good might I accomplish so that I might have eternal life?” (Mat. 19:16, from: Διδάσκαλε, τί ἀγαθὸν ποιήσω ἵνα σχῶ ζωὴν αἰώνιον;, SBLGNT). Consider how this rich man believed he could save himself through his own human will and works. He wanted Jesus to give him a motivational speech to inspire him do enough good works, of the right kind, so he might earn eternal salvation for himself. He was obviously thinking that he had plenty of money to hire men and women, to cause them to do certain good works in his name. But, like all the rich, he did not seem to want to get his own hands dirty. He would never stoop so low as to express any personal love for the souls to whom he gave his charitable works. For, to the rich, charity is just an expense to earn goodwill from the people and to gain salvation from God. It is the cost of doing their business, to pay for their sins of exploiting and abusing their equal siblings in humankind for their own profit. So this rich man only wanted to cause good works to be done for strangers, for those he did not know nor want to know. And, to him, salvation was earned through physical acts, by doing good works—not by God’s teaching and training of one’s spirit to express wise, just, God-like love through one’s body and mind of the flesh. In his eyes, God was an impersonal counter of negative Page 1249
and positive points, who created a balance sheet which determined which ones accumulated so many liabilities that they must be cast into the prison of hell, and which ones stole enough credits to buy real estate in heaven. This fool thought God judged in the same way Satan does in his unjust world order, that is, through the manipulations of his invention of money. So he thought that big acts of public charity could earn far more points than minor acts of compassion through the spirit’s love, just like big financial investments in copper mines (which worked slaves to death) earned far more than mom-and-pop businesses (who served customers in the same way they served their families).
But, in reality, God is love, and He is a very personal God. Thus, even if a rich man’s good deed fed a million hungry and impoverished souls for a hundred years, but his spirit personally loved no one, his good deed would mean absolutely nothing on the judgment day. For it would actually be the rich man’s empty, hollow attempt to justify his multitudes of thefts, all the love, time, joy and life he stole from countless other souls. For, in reality, the only way to get rich is by stealing. The rich steal the wages from workers. Then they steals from customers, by charging artificially inflated prices for the goods and services produced by others. And the rich also steal through sins of usury and fraud. So, because all they sell belongs to God, along with all the resources they use to make a profit and gain self-indulgent pleasures, as well as all the victims of their thefts, the rich ultimately steal all their unearned wealth from God, by stealing what God provides for all His creation. Yes, honest business men provide a service for the people, if they diligently and fairly distribute goods and services. But no honest business men ever become obscenely wealthy, because they take responsibility for the welfare of their people and even for the well-being of all God’s other creations. The rich do not!
Thus, since the rich steal from God, in order to gain enough wealth to do acts of charity (then use acts of charity as advertisements for their businesses, to buy goodwill which helps them steal even more from God), the self-indulgent rich are actually servants of the devil. And literally all of the very rich cause millions of their victims to become impoverished and needy. If all the goods and services that God provides and enables were wisely, justly and lovingly distributed according to His will, not one human being in any land would suffer from extreme poverty and deprivation. Therefore, our just God cannot bless the rich, but must count even their loveless good deeds, done with a small fraction of what they have stolen from Him, to be sins. And, even if God were an accountant who determined eternal salvation through a balance of debits and credits, the good deeds of the rich, when weighed against their loveless sins and crimes, would leave them all severely lacking and assure them all a place in darkest parts of hell. Even though churches and the masses highly esteem and praise the rich for their philanthropy, their biggest and most costly good deeds shall only earn them eternity in hell.
Then there was another implication in what that rich man asked Jesus. He was clearly implying that there are good people and there are bad people. He was not saying that there are elect and non-elect, where literally all are sinful, ignorant people. Rather, this rich man was a humanist who believed that he was good and others were bad. All humanists, and all rich people, think in a way that classifies all souls into categories and into classes within a hierarchical system, where the good among the richest people belong to the most elite class. And they think God recognizes them as the elite. Yet, at the same time, they also deem the bad rich to be an elite class too, and say that the lower classes must worship those bad rich people too, with high esteem and through an unquestioning service to them.
Thus, those “good rich” partake in the sins of the “bad rich,” and do not acknowledge those whom God has chosen to serve His own people as their authoritative teaching and judging elders. Lastly, the rich judge the common folk by how well they serve as faithful minions of the rich, not by how well they serve God. Lastly, they assign all who do not serve the rich to the lowest classes, and do not even count them as fellow human beings. To the rich, they all live meaningless lives, simply Page 1250
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because they do not serve the purposes of the wealthy human gods. These views allow the rich and powerful to make simplistic decisions which prioritize their own lusts and desires, although those choices are irrational and ruthless, causing harm and death among the majority. And this rich man seemed to be just like all the rest. For we can see this by the lies he believed, namely that all worthy people make themselves good through their own human wills, by “pulling themselves up by their own boot straps.” Clearly, this demonic doctrine logically implies that the unworthy are worthless because they are too inferior, stupid, lazy or evil to “pull themselves up by their own boot straps,”
although the rich actively prevent anyone who threatens their illicit income or power from doing so.
Also, the rich man’s high esteem for himself exposed his false assumption that God blessed “good people,” like himself, with Satan’s invention of money, and God cursed all “bad people” by causing them to become financially poor. But this rich man definitely did not learn this lie from God. God does prosper a loving people who share His gifts equitably and live a modest physical life. But the kind of prosperity that God provides never allows anyone to become personally wealthy, to take far more than what one personally needs. God never allows anyone to use money for power, to suppress and oppress others for one’s own personal gain. And God grants prosperity to just, loving bodies of people through His natural and spiritual gifts, never through Satan’s invention of money. For God only grants the kind of prosperity which provides for all the physical needs of the people, so they can, in turn, be freed from physical desperation, so they can practise works of love from their spirits.
So the rich man learned this doctrine of financial “prosperity” for the “good” from the devil’s world order. It is Satan, not God, who teaches that the parasites who murder and lie for the devil should be worshipped as the elite, solely because they were granted the power to abuse and oppress their equal siblings through Satan’s invention of money. And that devil has taught this lie for millennia, even in the very first of his demonic, unjust subject kingdoms on earth. Demons want their dupes to worship the wealthy, to esteem and serve those who are most deluded by false perceptions of grandeur. So it is no wonder that the devil incorporated this prosperity doctrine into his ultimate evil religion of humanism, which he invented for his demonic messiah, the beast, so his people would worship that beast through the precepts of this lie. In the end times, all the non-elect will worship the beast because he will control the distribution of all goods and services through money. For humanism falsely promises to make gods of men, as it enslaves them in sins through its lies. It allows his shackled minions to take credit for their “successes,” which are, in reality, the most destructive of failures. And it works this arrogance of human beings through a dark delusion of financial “self-sufficiency,” in a pseudo-meritocracy which turns all eyes away from the God who provides all things for all. Furthermore, it enables humanists to transfer blame for all the hell they themselves cause through their unjust oppression enabled by the use of money. For humanism convinces its dupes to believe lies about their siblings, to call the poor sub-human and not worthy of the right to live, although the rich caused those siblings to lack money. So, by worshipping the rich to gain a little money, it causes a soul to worship oneself as one’s own chief god, while also allowing one to forfeit one’s own responsibility for the effects of all one’s own sins against others. This lie allows humanists to continuously, vehemently and falsely accuse the innocent victims of their financial and political manipulations, to condemn the innocent for the very sins they themselves committed. Then demons stir up their dupes and enrage their souls, causing them to suppress or obscure real truths which prove themselves to be guilty of their own crimes and sins, and force the elect to hide within a nightmarish stupor which they dare not oppose. And, since these are core doctrines of humanism, we see why history’s most oppressive, ruthless, unjust nations have all been humanistic slave societies.
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We also see these implications in what Mark and Luke wrote about this rich man. Mark said the rich man came running up to Jesus and knelt before Him, as though he was very eager to hear what Jesus might say. Perhaps someone told him that Jesus had been performing miracles and was, therefore, sent by God Himself, as a true teacher of God’s Word. So this rich man, who was very proud of his own righteousness, thought Jesus might confirm his goodness to himself, since his own honest elect spirit had always made him feel dirty and inadequate. So he rushed to see Jesus and asked: “Usefully good Teacher [of life and faith], what might I accomplish so that I might inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17, from: Διδάσκαλε ἀγαθέ, τί ποιήσω ἵνα ζωὴν αἰώνιον κληρονομήσω;, SBLGNT). These words that Mark recorded were not quite like Matthew’s. For Mark said that, when the rich man addressed Jesus, as a complete stranger, he called Jesus a “usefully good Teacher of biblical doctrines.” And this revealed his humanistic biases. For he seemed to be thinking that some men become good by doing good works through their own wills, and assumed that Jesus used His human will to become so good that He could now even perform real miracles. Then Luke recorded the rich man’s words to Jesus in another slightly different way. Luke called the rich man a “ruler” (ἄρχων) of some kind, and reported that this rich ruler said, “Usefully good Teacher [of life and faith], [by] doing what will I inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18, from: Διδάσκαλε ἀγαθέ, τί ποιήσας ζωὴν αἰώνιον κληρονομήσω;, SBLGNT). Thus, Luke also implied that this rich man was thinking like a humanist, and thought he could earn an esteemed place in God’s true church, even in heaven. Thus, he was not a true believer.
Of course, since Jesus is God, He instantly recognized the humanistic beliefs of this rich man, and knew that this rich man’s spirit possessed no genuine faith in God, since this rich man obviously did not believe or trust in God’s clear teachings of the Scriptures. For even the Old Covenant Scriptures plainly taught that literally all human beings are sinners. Thus, one cannot put faith in oneself, nor in any other human being. Not one who believes God and His words in the Bible can possibly believe that humans are their own chief gods and able to control their own earthly and even eternal destinies, as humanists believe. Then, at the same time, theistic humanists might also believe that there is an almighty Creator’s Spirit, but think that this God does not control the destinies of all living creatures.
Yet the Bible categorically states that God controls every detail of everyone’s earthly and eternal destiny, in a way that cannot be manipulated or altered in any way. Thus, since it is impossible to have faith in oneself and in the biblical kind of God at the same time, then it is also impossible for one to be a humanist and also a true Jew or a true Christian at the same time. And the only ones whom God will gathers into true His priesthood, into His true church of Israel, are His wakened elect whose spirits trust in Him and in His words, who personally trust in Him to control every aspect of their own earthly and eternal destinies. All true priests in God’s true church believe this, since they also believe all His harmonious, just, loving teachings and truths found in the Scriptures He gave us.
So Jesus began to rebuke the humanistic views of that rich man, and began with these words, which struck at the very core of that man’s false beliefs: “Why ask Me about the useful good? The usefully good is One. Yet, if you are willing to enter into life, guard the authoritative words” (Mat. 19:17, from: Τί με ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ; εἷς ἐστιν ὁ ἀγαθός· εἰ δὲ θέλεις εἰς τὴν ζωὴν εἰσελθεῖν, τήρησον τὰς ἐντολάς, SBLGNT). This rich man wanted to know what “useful good” (ἀγαθὸν) he
“might accomplish” (i.e., ποιήσω is the aorist subjunctive form of ποιέω, and indicates a completed or accomplished doing of “useful good”). But literally no human being on earth is able to actually and fully accomplish any useful good. A truly wise, beneficial and useful good work can only ever be accomplished if God intervenes and does that “useful good” with His own hands, although God might choose to do so through the agency of an elect child. Thus, “the usefully good is One,” who is God, including Jesus Himself, who is God in a human body. This one little teaching, that God alone Page 1252
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is “usefully good,” crushes the foundation of religious humanists. For they build their entire structure of esteemed human gods, in hierarchies, upon the lie that some are more “usefully good” than others.
Yet all who understand either the Old or New Covenant Scriptures, or both, know this foundational fact: “There is no one who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become
unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not so much as one” (Rom. 3:11b-12, WEB).
Also, everyone who comprehends God’s Word also realizes this: “The usefully good is One,” who is God. But a humanist is not able to fully grasp these truths, since all humanists want themselves to be esteemed, and some even want to be worshipped as gods. So a deluded humanist seldom admits to oneself that he or she is just a wretched, ignorant, infantile sinner who totally relies on God to save oneself from slavery to delusions and sins. So only a humanist will ask Jesus a question like: “What useful good might I accomplish?” by his own will and through his own strength for his own eternal salvation. Thus, this rich man was clearly a humanist who did not believe that he needed God to work anything that was truly “useful good,” either in him or through him. In context, the only reason he asked Jesus, our God, that question was to earn his own salvation. And, in reality, this rich ruler did not truly want “eternal life” (ζωὴν αἰώνιον). Rather, he wanted others to think he was a good man, to whom God would surely grant eternal life. Like most humanists, he appeared to be far more concerned about his public image than he was about the humiliating truths of life. And he obviously did not show any real interest in being taught and trained to forever work beside Jesus, to eternally serve God’s heavenly creations together with God’s family. What his vain mind of flesh was actually desiring was a public perception of him as a heaven-deserving man, even as his suppressed elect spirit was always telling him that he was sinning, that is, whenever he allowed his spirit to utter a word or two within his soul. His mind of flesh craved the worship and blind service of others, in the way that humanists had trained his mind of flesh to desire this. So the real reason he asked Jesus this question was to learn the best way to become more admired, esteemed and worshipped by the others.
Then Jesus responded with this question: “Why ask Me about the useful good?” Then Jesus affirmed that “The usefully good is One.” These responses should have reminded this rich man about all the Scriptures telling him, in no uncertain terms, that he was indeed a sinner to the core, and God is the only usefully good Entity in all existence. Naturally, since the rich man was thinking solely through his mind of flesh at the time, he did not seem to understand what Jesus was implying. However, since he was one of God’s elect children, he would truly and fully understand these truths at some time in the future, hopefully before he lost too much of his earthly life to loveless, delusional futility.
Still, Jesus did not give up on His elect little brother. Jesus kept on speaking, and taught him how to obtain eternal life, the kind where one’s elect spirit awakes to hear God’s Spirit, then learns, directly from God, how to wisely and justly express the spirit’s love through one’s mind and body of flesh.
Jesus patiently told this rich man that God grants salvation and life if one’s spirit will “guard the authoritative words.” Here, in context, the noun, ἐντολάς (“authoritative words”) was a Jewish way of referring to God’s laws. But devout Jews called them God’s “words” or “authoritative words,” not
“laws,” “commands” or “commandments.” Then Jesus used an aorist imperative form of τηρέω to command the rich man to complete the task of personally guarding those “authoritative words,” in a way where his spirit kept them safe and sound. So, if his spirit diligently and carefully listened to all the teachings of God’s Spirit, as God taught His own interpretations of His own words in the Bible, and that man’s spirit kept those words of God pure and uncorrupted in his heart, God would save him from slavery to delusions and sins. For God would teach his spirit how to love in a just way, and also rebuke his spirit if it began to believe a lie, or warn his spirit if it was beginning to let his flesh Page 1253
sin. If his spirit guarded God’s Word, God would often call his spirit to do good works through love.
And God would use His power to grant him His resources, so that truly good works could be done.
On the other hand, God more often allows or even causes us to fail in certain aspects of our good works. For God does not call us to do good works because He needs our help. Rather, God calls us to do good works in order to train our spirits to love rightly and wisely. So, God may call one to try to do a good work, yet may not let one fully accomplish it. And this is normal, because it teaches one’s spirit a lesson, usually about gaining enough humility to acknowledge our critical duty of respecting Him and His people, by asking for their help and sharing one’s works with them, in ways that will increase our bonds of love with one another. And, after one is called to do that kind of work many times, and learns to do it rightly through much practise, God will lend His power and resources to complete the good work rightly, wisely and lovingly, so it is truly useful to His earthly kingdom in the long term, with no unintended bad effects. But, if God alone enables good works, it also means that God never judges anyone by the quantity, sizes and financial costs of good works. It means that God judge us by adding up points for good works and subtracting points for bad works. Rather, God judges us according to how much our spirits willingly learn to love through our attempts to do the good works that He calls us to do, then completes our education on the long last day, and rewards us with an abundant and eternal life of love after we have graduated from the school of this earth. That is, God judges our hearts. He judges our works according to the motives of our spirits in doing them.
So we all must “guard the authoritative words” of God in our hearts, to gain true life and escape inner death, to free our own spirits and the spirits of others who are all imprisoned in the darkness of lies and delusions. Our spirits must learn to guard the truths that His Spirit continuously reveals and teaches to our spirits, lest anyone or anything damages or nullifies those truth through deceptions, lies and nefarious acts of malicious inner desires. All claims against God’s words must be rationally weighed, assessed for any verities, filtered to remove all impurities, then carefully cleansed. We must work all due diligence as concerned, faithful, loving guards of the truth. This is especially the duty of all mature men whom God calls to do this physical and spiritual work. But all men need the help of the women whom God calls to labour beside them. For truth is never for oneself alone, but for all.
If our spirits guard His truth, God will cause us to build wise, just, freeing moral structures for our families, churches, states and nations, for all the corporate bodies we need, for the mutual benefit of all our people. All elect souls, from every race, religion and culture on earth, are inherently attracted to His truths. Thus, the proclamation and effective application of His truths cause the weak and lost elect, whom the devil has captured through devious means and has scattered within his hellish world order, to be gathered together with the elect whom God gathers unto Himself. Truth calls the elect to join one another, in loving, wise, just, safe and free communities. All nuclear and extended families, which include all states and nations, can only be free if all their precepts align with God’s immutable truths, with the intended meanings of God’s just, loving laws and ways. If our families apply His truths in exactly the same way that God Himself justly and equitably applies His own authoritative words, with great mercy for repentant motives and intensions in spirits of sinners, it sets us all free.
So all mature men in a body of people must diligently guard all physical and spiritual truths with their lives. Responsible, just, loving men of God must ensure that they build an honest, just, loving framework of concepts for their nuclear and extended families, so the houses they construct for their family members will remain strong and upright, standing throughout all the inevitable future storms.
And those spiritual and moral structures can only weather all storms, without collapsing, if they are built on a foundation of pure, unadulterated, rock-solid truths. For a foundation built on the shifting sands of lies, or built on small stones of truth embedded in those sands, will be washed away by the Page 1254
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violent storms of precipitating lies raining down upon them. And both Satan and his brood are ever ready and waiting for a chance to condense the dampness in an atmosphere with a low pressure of truth, in any situation conducive to the production of their violent, destructive, psychopathic storms.
Furthermore, if women in a corporate body have no solid structural framework, they cannot work together to fill and cover the walls of a house’s framework with the insulating fibres and the sealing plaster of fulfilling social connections and draft-free walls. Then, without this work of the women, the cold and heat of the outside world, as well as human insects and other pests, will soon make the all of those structures unlivable. Therefore, women need responsible, just, loving men to build a very solid structure of equity, freedom and justice, with firm load-bearing beams of love. But men need the women to complete those structures, to turn them into livable homes, so all can remain healthy enough to do God’s works. And our houses, our temples of God, must welcome all children and all the old, all the weak and infirmed, all the homeless strangers and immigrants to His kingdom, all whom God calls us to bring into them. Yes, no individual home in God’s kingdom will need to face this hardship or danger alone, because all will labour together in these good works. Yet all such good works must be done for the training of our salvation. For Jesus proclaimed that salvation into eternal life comes through the spirit’s willingness to “guard God’s authoritative words,” and stated that this is not only critical for one’s own personal salvation, but for everyone touched by each one’s life. So, just as one’s own personal sins harm others, so too do one’s acts of loving justice benefit all others.
Thus, remember, God not only requires individuals to guard the truth, but also requires all families on earth to guard His created truths as well. All corporate bodies of every kind must select teaching and judging elders who can administer compassionate justice for the body, and choose these from the individuals whom God Himself has chosen withing that body. That is, each body must carefully vet, train and monitor the faithfulness and purity of its guarding elders, ensuring that they all are and remain loyal servants of God, that they are all men whom God has raised up and is continuously training for those critical tasks, so our entire corporate bodies will effectively guard His truths in the same way that each individuals must. If corporate bodies fail to guard God’s created immutable truths, they will make and enforce unjust laws, causing the innocent to become victims of sins and crimes. And, since it is not the poor and voiceless who make and enforce unjust laws, but actually the rich and ruthless who make and enforce unjust laws, to serve only themselves, our bodies need to eliminate all the kinds of the steep hierarchies found in the unjust corporate bodies belonging to Satan’s kingdom. Whenever we see injustice in a hierarchical family, church, organization, business, state or nation which claims to be serving God, we must not make the mistake of believing that they are practising that injustice in God’s name. No matter how much an unjust hierarchical body tries to convince us that it belong to God’s kingdom, it does not. Every corporate body consists of sinners, and will have some sins committed within it. But every corporate body established by God actively, continuously and equitably seeks the truth, wisdom, justice and love of God’s authoritative words.
All families, churches or states which refuse to guard God’s words, and especially those which clearly war against God and His truths, are indisputably the properties of Satan’s kingdom. And, in all unjust corporate bodies, the devil creates steep hierarchies. Then he assigns his most evil and psychopathic children to the highest classes in each hierarchy, making them rich and powerful. And it is those rich and powerful elite, those heirs of the devil, who create and enforce unjust laws to benefit only themselves, to gratify their carnal desires. Meanwhile, all others will suffer under their exploiting, enslaving, ruthless, self-serving authority. Therefore, God never allows us to create any kind of hierarchy or class system, but requires literally everyone in every kind of corporate body to be subject to exactly the same kinds of laws and precepts as everyone else. Even the teaching and Page 1255
judging elders who serve the people in the most authoritative works possible remain subject to the judgments of other elders, if any break the laws of the land and harm the body. God offers no room for carnal pride, no place for human gods. For, only when God humbles literally all men and women enough for them to recognize themselves as equal sinners requiring His grace, can just, forgiving and compassionate laws and judgments keep all free and safe. His ways must be guarded with our very lives, for the good of all—to grant all the right to freely and responsibly love in a full, abundant life.
But the wealthy young ruler whom Jesus spoke to that day did not seem to comprehend this, that absolutely no man or woman in Israel was above the laws of God. That rich man understood nothing about Jesus words exhorting us to “guard the authoritative words” of God. And this seems to be because young ruler was a humanist, who believed that good works, done through his human will, would be able to earn him a place in heaven with eternal life. Consequently, as a humanist, he may have thought Jesus wanted him to “personally guard” the words or concepts of the Platonic high god worshipped by pagan Romans, which he erroneously equated with the biblical and true God. But, to a humanist, the “words” or concepts of that pagan high god are transcendent, impossible to describe in a human language. Then, to humanists, any kind of “personal guarding” implied what they would describe as a human mind and will being drawn toward a figurative moral direction by a mysterious intangible force. So, to a Roman humanist of that era, if one’s human mind is drawn toward spiritual or figurative concepts dwelling in the static mind of their pagan high god, it would involve a human mind and will freeing itself from all forms of thought, causing itself to be immutable and static, since they believed that everyone possessed only one mind, that is a mind of flesh. For, to humanists, it was impossible to possess a mind of a spirit, since a spirit was a force not a thinking entity. So only a mind of flesh could guard itself, and only by not thinking thoughts. A humanist believed that his mind must stop guarding all words, to be freed from all that kept his thoughts in the material world.
Since a humanist thought his mind must not guard any laws, words, concepts or precepts, in order to free itself from corruptions and transcend beyond material existence, into the mind of the high god, this wealthy and supposedly “enlightened” Jewish humanist was likely very disappointed by what Jesus said. For he would have realized that Jesus’ words reflected the teachings of the old-fashioned, biblical, “unenlightened” Jewish rabbis. And Jesus actually did refer to the biblical doctrines which require the minds of our spirits to “personally guard” God’s revealed words in the Scriptures. For the Old Testament Scriptures often exhorted our spirits to “guard” God’s words That is, the Hebrew word “shawmar” means “guard,” although it is most often translated as “keep” or “obey” in English and other humanistic translations of the Old Testament. For instance, Deuteronomy 30:10 actually states that God will rejoice over you and bless you “if you [ guard] His [authoritative words] and his statutes which are written in this book of the Law; if you turn to Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,” WEB). And here the word “heart” referred to the whole of one’s spirit which dwells in it, while the term “soul” referred to the chamber where both the mind of the spirit and mind of flesh communicated with one another. So Jesus, who came to fulfill all God’s Law in us and through us, obviously wanted our human spirits to guard all the words originating from God’s Spirit, that is, in our “hearts” and in our “souls,” in a way that a temporary, amoral mind of flesh could never guard them. But this biblical kind of guarding by the mind of a spirit totally crushed this rich humanist’s expectations of being able to earn salvation through physical good works done by the mind of flesh which had trained itself to stop thinking altogether. The last thing that wealthy humanist wanted to be told was that his spirit must “guard” truths that he no longer believed. Since an “enlightened” humanist did not believe that he had a human spirit in the heart, certainly not the Page 1256
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kind with a mind and will of its own, how could he “personally guard” God’s “authoritative words.”
For all contemporary humanists believed that a “spirit” had no will, and could not “guard” anything.
Again, according to the Platonic anthropological doctrines of Greco-Roman humanism in his day, a spirit was merely a force, not an entity with a mind and a will of its own. That form of humanism believed that human beings had only one mind. Thus, each man also had only one will. And this was not the mind and will of a human spirit. Rather, that Platonic kind of mind was what the Bible called
“the mind of the flesh.” Then humanists also believed in forces working internally upon this mind, nebulous forces which they called “spirits,” like mindless, inanimate winds which supposedly blew the one mind either toward or away from the words, concepts or rational principles of the high god.
So, to a humanist, a “spirit” was nothing like the biblical concept of a spirit. Nevertheless, the Jewish humanists allegorically associated the spirits which the Bible called God, angels, demons, human spirits, animal spirits and plant spirits with these static, impersonal, impassive kinds of forces, which possessed no minds and, therefore, no wills of their own. Also, humanists thought the ultimate and unwilling or will-less source of all existence was the high god, but that their high god was just an unthinking and will-less mind drifting above the stars in the sky, a vast storage bank of concepts existing beyond all material existence. In other words, humanists created a purely figurative and unthinking database as their heavenly high god, and a god made in their own image. So, to them, this high god was an impassive, unfeeling, impersonal body of concepts existing beyond all physical reality. To them, the high god was an unconscious, psychopathic mind, like that of their elite rulers.
And, since every kind of loving, just, equitable and deeply personal kind of biblical truth was odious to them, humanists were repulsed by those kinds of truths and realities which were expressed by the spirit through the flesh in physical actions. For they taught that all physical realities remained totally separated from the static, immutable, lifeless mind in the sky which they called the high god. Yet Jewish humanists somehow began to believe that the Platonic, cold, dead high god was one and the same as the God who created the priesthood of Israel and revealed His thoughts to man in the Bible.
In the first century, many Jews, especially the rich who maintained their wealth through friendly relations with their Greco-Roman invaders, began to learn about and follow Platonic teachings. But, although they still considered themselves to be good Jews, they actually abandoned the God of the Bible, and everything else that even resembled biblical teachings. Instead, they sought, in various ways, to attain oneness with that high god’s dead mind in the sky. Then, in pursuit of this oneness, those humanistic Jews thought, if they did good works and denied the lusts of physical flesh—in the same way pagan Stoic humanists did, but with a little more influence from the supposedly purely
“allegorical” laws of the Bible—they could escape the trap of the material world and draw closer to that impassive mind in the sky. Consequently, since Jesus taught that a biblical kind of human spirit, a living entity with its own mind and will, must guard the authoritative words of a very personal God, who deeply loves each of His children, this rich humanist seemed to have been disappointed in Jesus, after finding out that Jesus was so “backwards” and “unenlightened” by Plato, so much like the old fashioned, non-Hellenized Jews. To the rich man, enlightened souls should know that there was no way to guard the “authoritative words” or concepts of an impassive, immutable mind in the sky. Yes, one could torture and murder those who did not agree with one’s own words and concepts.
And, to humanist, this was a form of “guarding” their invented “truths” about the one high god. In this way, one could thoroughly delude oneself into thinking one’s own words were guarded, even the concepts of the high god, as well as the words of other human gods who would insist that their own self-serving laws and ways were true. Yet one could never “personally guard” words of the high god.
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Thus, the rich man asked Jesus, “Which ones?” (Mat. 19:18, WEB). The man wanted to know which
“authoritative words” Jesus was telling him to guard. And, since he was likely a humanist, he may have also thought Jesus wanted him to guard certain philosophies through the mind and will of his flesh, that is, in a way which involved torturing or murdering anyone who dared to disrespect or oppose those words. For that wealthy man had likely never been taught anything about how God’s spiritual and physical truths could set souls free from a bondage caused by lies and delusions, such as the lies and delusions of the humanistic philosophies which he believed, and even from all of the societal traditions of the apostate Jews, which he fervently upheld. Nor would he have understood how the true teachings of God could be the effective “weapons of our warfare ... mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (II Cor. 10:4-5, WEB). That is, as a humanist, this rich man would not have understood how the truth could actually conquer hearts and minds, without requiring the use of physical threats and horrific physical punishments to terrorize the people, so they would submit to the wills of the elite.
When the rich man asked Jesus this question, it became obvious to everyone that this rich man did not possess a genuine understanding of God’s spiritual laws. For, biblically, all God’s laws are one Law. To the awakened spirits in the true priesthood of Israel, all 613 laws of God were harmonious and interconnected expressions of God’s one heart, mind and will. So all laws were an immutable and carefully crafted projection of the one God’s one and only personal desire of love. All His laws seamlessly functioned together for the good of all His creations, but especially for His human spirits created in His own image. And, since all God’s laws must be guarded and applied through exactly the same God-like-kind of just love worked through our human spirits, even by our love for God, the inner guarding of His Law by our spirits will always translate into a love for all living creations of God. Therefore, when the rich man asked which of God’s words or laws he was obligated to guard, this rich man exposed his belief in the utterly irrational humanistic concepts of an impassive and unthinking Platonic mind in the sky. Thus, instead of arguing with the rich man about the Platonic philosophies, or about most critical and most spiritual laws of the first four orders, or about the more abstract tenth order laws, Jesus chose to list the laws which bore the most physical, obvious effects.
Why did Jesus choose these “natural” laws, the laws which regulated the physical actions of human bodies of flesh in their physical relationships with one another? The reason is that these “natural”
laws (i.e., the last six orders of God’s laws, as outlined by the last six of the Ten Commandments) were those which most offended the Roman humanists. These kinds of laws most directly confronted a humanist’s belief that the flesh of “inferior” classes did not matter, that the “enlightened” elite had a right to torture and kill inferiors according to the wills or whims of their minds of flesh, according to whatever methods the spiritual “winds” or “forces” caused them to act upon. For those Platonic elite believed that all physical things, including human bodies of flesh, were meaningless, mostly unreal and totally irrelevant to their high god. Therefore, the laws that humanists had the greatest philosophical and logical problems with, in terms of reconciling them to their own anthropological and theological doctrines, were the “natural” laws of God, those regulating actions of the flesh. That is, Jesus deliberately chose to speak about the sixth-order to ninth-order laws, the laws which the sixth to ninth archetypal Ten Commandments summarized. Then Jesus added the fifth-order laws (those pertaining to the honouring of parents, with a humble kind of love for both the heavenly Father of one’s spirit and for the parents of one’s flesh). Lastly, near the end, Jesus summarized the five archetypal commandments with one law of God: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
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Jesus responded to the rich man in this way: “The [answer is this]: Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give a false testimony, honour the father and the mother, and love the one near you in the same way as [you love] yourself” (Mat. 19:18-19, from: Τὸ Οὐ φονεύσεις, Οὐ
μοιχεύσεις, Οὐ κλέψεις, Οὐ ψευδομαρτυρήσεις, Τίμα τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὴν μητέρα, καὶ Ἀγαπήσεις τὸν
πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν, SBLGNT, where τὸν πλησίον σου refers to anyone affected by anything one says or does). Here Jesus listed five of the Ten Commandments, and began the list with a neuter accusative singular article (Τὸ). This article indicated that the list would answer that man’s question (“Which ones?”). And it was used as a substantiver, to indicate that all the following “authoritative words” of God must be guarded, while also implying that all were singular, one unit, only one Law.
Of course, every honest biblical teaching elder or “rabbi” will tell you that no mortal human being has ever “obeyed” or fulfilled even one of the six orders of laws that Jesus cited in this list, much less all six archetypal laws. For all the laws of God are spiritual. Consequently, to fulfill them, one’s spirit must first somehow refrain from all the negative motives and intentions they forbid, then also spontaneously practise all the positive motives and and intentions which the contrapositions of those prohibitions suggest. God’s 613 laws in the Torah not only forbid an internal will to do evil, but also require the spirit to positively resolve to serve God, by doing what He deems to be right and loving.
Thus, for example, to truly fulfill God’s prohibition against murder, one begins by refraining from carnal anger and spiritual hatred, which cause one’s heart to slander and dehumanize one’s siblings, because it allows one to cause various kinds of injustice through one’s apathy and negligence, and may even cause one to actively engage in violence and physical murder. But that suppression of negative desires in the spirit simply cannot be maintained, and will fail. For the only way to actually eliminate the negative desires of the spirit is to replace all those negatives with positive motives and intentions in the mind of the spirit. So, to cease from all forms of murder, a spirit must will to do only good, such as restoring all losses and repairing all damages caused by sin, as well as building up the lives of all God’s people and His other creations. All God’s prohibitions indicate minimum negative requirements, a narrow array of spiritual limitations, but also imply the growth of the spirit into an infinitely broad spectrum of positive motives and intentions which express just love. So the six orders of laws Jesus listed indicate that God calls His elect to: (1) build up life, (2) faithfully complete the promises of covenants, (3) equitably share whatever stewardship God grants, (4) diligently seek out and proclaim the truth, (5) always act in a ways that honour the heavenly Father, and (6) love all whom God gathers into the sphere of one’s life. But the infantile elect on earth are all only beginning to learn to do all this, and none will be able to do all this until the end of the last day.
We must think about these these things, and not remain so ignorant as to somehow believe that we are not horrible sinners like some of our siblings in humankind. We must realize that, when Jesus spoke to that rich man, this wealthy young ruler clearly believed that he had never murdered anyone in his life although, in God’s objective and honest eyes, that man had indeed murdered hundreds of innocent souls, possibly thousands. For, even if he did somehow prevent himself from physically executing or killing an innocent man, his spirit’s negative spiritual motives and intentions would have caused him to wilfully practise negligence towards others, or to remain ignorant of the truth required to make right judgments that would spare others from much suffering or death. Then that rich ruler would still be obligated to fulfill the positive implications of God’s six-order laws as well.
For God will never grant eternal and abundant life to those who simply do not do what He prohibits.
G
od only grants the eternal life of heaven to those who learn to fulfill all the positive implications of His laws, because those positive implications are His definitions of a spirit’s abundant and eternal Page 1259
life. The elect spirit’s ability to do all the positive aspects of what His prohibitions imply are the very minimum requirements of the loving holiness God demands before He allows one into His heaven.
So, yes, God’s sixth-order laws prohibit physical murder, as well as all related acts of the spirit, such as allowing dehumanizing thoughts of slander and wrath into one’s heart. Yet that rich man’s spirit did not guard his heart from murderous motives and intentions. So he did not even fulfill any of the negative requirements of this law. Nevertheless, that ignorant rich ruler somehow believed that he had never murdered anyone, and somehow thought he was “righteous” in the eyes of God. Naturally, he had never committed murder in a physical way which mortal elders could prove by empirical evidence and eye-witnesses. But a lack of proof is not a proof of innocence. And his reliance on the lack of condemnation from infantile sinners like himself did not exonerate him in God’s omniscient eyes. And he was surely guilty of allowing his heart to nurture what God prohibited from his heart.
Worse yet, he did not actively practise any of the positive implications of God’s sixth-order laws, or he would have humbly admitted that had never fulfilled God’s law by building up life in others, not in a way that actually pleased God— since those sixth order laws clearly require us to continuously and diligently build up life, in ourselves and in others. To truly fulfill the sixth-order laws, God wants us to serve Him by doing His works of causing other to become truly just and loving. Yet no human who ever lived on earth, except Jesus, has ever consistently accomplished this throughout one’s entire life, even in a way which never allowed one’s spirit to engage in any negative motives and intentions. None have ever truly fulfilled all the sixth-order laws represented by the archetypal command, “You shall not murder.” Only Jesus has fulfilled the sixth-order laws, by building up eternal life in countless inwardly dead hearts and souls. Jesus even fulfilled it in physical ways, by healing broken bodies and minds of flesh, even by raising the physically dead to life again. But, clearly, no one else who has ever lived on this earth in all history has ever actually fulfilled this law.
Nor has anyone in history ever fulfilled any of the other archetypal laws in this list, not even a single one of them. For God did not write these laws so we would fulfill them through a fictitious kind of human “free will,” through a stubborn, self-exalting delusion of the mind of flesh, which lies when it claims that we are able to fulfill them. For, even when God revealed those laws through His servant Moses, He knew that none of us are what humanists falsely claim that we are. And, when God gave us the Ten Commandments and the rest of His 613 laws (which, by the way, God did in the 15th century BC, not in the 13th century BC, as some say), the religion of humanism did even exist. The devil’s ultimate evil religion of humanism began to develop in the 6th century BC, then matured into its completed form in the first century BC. So absolutely nothing was known about the false doctrine of “free will” when God revealed His Law through Moses. And the real reason that the heavenly Father of our elect spirits gave us His Law was so that our spirits could begin to comprehend and guard His laws, so we would comprehend our own sinfulness, then turn to Him in prayers directly from our spirits, desperately seeking His help to fulfill those principles of loving justice. For He had promised to personally teach and train our spirits to love in the same way He loves, when He came to us as the Messiah. And His temporary Old Covenant laws revealed the shape of all His pure, just, loving core attributes which His New Covenant promised to fulfill in us and through us. So all His Old Covenant prohibitions were mere shadows revealing the general shape and configuration of His nature, while their positive implications remained in the actual body of the One making the shadow.
So let us now look again at the other archetypal laws Jesus listed here. The seventh-order laws forbid adultery and all exploitative sexual sins with evil motives and intentions, such casual sex, seduction, some acts of homosexuality, rape, incest, paedophilia, bestiality and so on. And, if one commits a sexual act through an extreme spiritual, moral or emotional disregard for another soul’s well-being, Page 1260
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that is, through entirely selfish and immoral intentions and motives of one’s spirit, it can earn one a death penalty. Then God may also condemn that sinner to eternal hell. After all, some kinds of sexual immorality are actually forms of murder, since they dehumanize and, therefore, kill the heart, mind or soul of a victim. Thus, an equitable penalty, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, requires that an unrepentant sexual predator should pay for a soul-killing crime with one’s life. But most sexual sins do not call for the maximum death penalty, since most are done through the mutual consent of shallow, selfish, self-indulgent, carnal, stupid individuals. Most sexual sins do not require any kind of punishment at all. If a sexually immoral person belongs to a true church, yet wilfully practises sexual sins or, worse yet, even lures others into committing sexual sins, then that one might need to be expelled from the church. But even that is not always necessary. Then all outsiders must be left alone and not punished for sexual immorality, if their spirits possess no murderous motives and intentions, if they simply practise sexual immorality through impulses of their flesh (and this clearly includes the vast majority of souls in the LGBTQ+ community). Certainly ocular adultery (secretly looking at another body with lust) does not require the death penalty, nor any other kind of penalty, even if one intentionally commits ocular adultery, or causes thoughts of sexual immorality through the way one speaks, dresses or acts. For this seventh order sin cannot be justly judged and punished by human beings, since no one is able to prove evil spiritual intentions and motives, or prove that the sinner did not act in ignorance or through the coercion caused by one’s own mind of flesh. But, if we must leave this kind of sexual sin to God’s judgment, then we must also leave other kinds of sexual sins to His judgment as well, whenever ignorance or the coercion of the mind of flesh are involved.
However, we need to realize that literally all sexual sins steal abundant and loving life from one’s own soul, as well as from the souls of others, even in acts of mutually consented sex. And sexual sins against an unwilling victim do indeed dehumanize that one, robbing the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual life from the soul of that equal sibling in family of humankind. Still, God does not allow us to punish any outsiders who commit sexual sins through mutual consent, nor even the members of church who are unwillingly and accidentally caused to lust after the bodies of other people, if there is repentance and no unwilling victim who is actually harmed by those sins. So the solution for sexual sins must never involve unjust punishments and terrorism. Nor can the solution involve anything like forced castrations, chemical treatments to destroy sexual desire, threats of violence, psychological conditioning to “retrain” the mind of flesh, and other physical acts. Rather, the only way to eliminate sexual immorality among the elect is by providing them with the means to fulfill God’s seventh-order laws, while some equitable punishments are used to deter the non-elect.
So how can we provide other elect souls with an opportunity to fulfill God’s laws and achieve sexual
“cleanliness” for their minds and bodies of flesh? How can we help others refrain from the sexual sins God prohibited and stop exploiting one another, so their spirits can fulfill the promises of their marriage covenants made before God, so their spirits can grow and mature enough to manage their own minds and bodies of flesh? Well, human spirits are not able to do much for other human spirits, except make the others aware of the salvation which Jesus is able to work within them. We can assure others that Jesus will teach their spirits to turn away from temptations, or even physically flee from them. But, aside from that, we can also provide elect souls with the kind of environment that helps their spirits to grow and develop. As we mature in Christ, we can create a just, free and loving place, where all our spirits can mature as we all learn to manage our flesh. An elect soul needs a people and a place where his or her spirit is exposed to enough spiritual knowledge and wisdom that one’s infantile spirit might grow loving enough to overcome lovelessness. But spiritual maturity develops slowly. It takes decades before a spirit becomes strong enough to handle one’s own flesh Page 1261
adequately, and begin to fulfill God’s sexual laws. For an individual’s spirit must learn to remain focused on God, dedicated to serving His creations through His just and loving ways, so that God becomes that spirit’s Husband (the only one who provides a spiritual structure in one’s life). It will require years of candid and intimate conversations with God, in a relationship with God that could be compared to the close relationship of a truly loving married couple who have become one flesh.
Then most of God’s people, during their lives on earth, will want to make a true marriage covenant of faithful love with a human companion too—and I mean, with a spouse whose body is of the opposite sex. For God only recognizes marriages of males with females, since God created male and female minds of flesh and bodies of flesh to live in pairs, to become “one flesh.” Yes, two males or two females can be very close companions. But it is merely the confusion caused by materialism which causes two males or two females to desire the binding of that union with sexual intimacy, or a marriage covenant. As we see in Romans 1:20-28, it was because tribes and nations worshipped the created things, including other human beings, that God handed some over to homosexuality and lesbianism. Because the people of a community did not esteem and serve their Creator, whose attributes and ways were evident in all His creations, God did this, as a punishment to those lands.
So the prime observations we should take from this Scripture is that it was clearly God Himself who causes homosexuality and lesbianism in a community, and that He does this because a community esteems and serves created beings like themselves or other human beings, because the people of a land are materialists. But, if God causes homosexuality and lesbianism, then it is not homosexuals or lesbians who cause it in themselves. Therefore, homosexuals and lesbians remain innocent regarding those sexual sins. And those sexual sins were caused to punish the community, by causing them to lose the blessings of children, because God considers children to be one of His greatest blessings to a land, since He provides the community with an opportunity to love those children unconditionally and sacrificially in the same way He loves. So, in Satan’s extremely materialistic world order, there will be many homosexuals and lesbians. But those homosexuals and lesbians will be the ones who might have been the best of parents, since they are the ones whom God denied parentage to them in order to punish the materialism of the land. So homosexuals and lesbians are seldom what they are due to their own evil motives and intentions. God simply makes parts of their brains of flesh become addicted to that kind of sex, in ways that they cannot control or eliminate themselves. Therefore, we should never try to terrorize them into stopping themselves from being what God caused them to be, since they cannot oppose the will of God Himself who caused them to be that. And we cannot punish them for being what God caused them to be, since God does not punish those individuals for being that, because God is actually punishing the entire community for their corporate sins by making them into what they are, by reducing the number of children He allows in a land. Furthermore, all homosexuals and lesbians are our brothers and sisters in the family of humankind, and many possess elect spirits that are capable of learning to love in truly God-like ways. So we simply need to tolerate their ways, no matter how repulsive they may seem to some. We are to focus on their spirits, not on their flesh, and love them, because we are all sinners too, each with our own equally repulsive sins.
And, if our community punishes homosexuals and lesbians, then that community proves itself to be extremely materialistic, since it worships only created things, as evidenced by the way it judges only according to physical attributes, not by spiritual motives and intentions. A land that persecutes and stigmatizes homosexuality and lesbianism does not worship God, because it does not judge rightly.
If God has not caused individuals to become addicted to certain kinds of sexual sins in a community, that is a blessing, but nothing to brag about. For God did that work in them, and they did not do it in themselves. If God allowed you to remain heterosexual, or has removed habitual sexual thoughts of Page 1262
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homosexuality or lesbianism from the base of your brain so that you become heterosexual, that is good, but it does not make you any more righteous than any other sinner. If you are celibate or do not cheat on your spouse, that is simply a small attribute of your temporary flesh, and is not any kind of true righteousness. It does not indicate much spiritual growth from God. Yes, faithfulness in a marriage will allow your spirit to maintain and further develop a true marriage covenant with a companion of the opposite sex. And the spirit’s covenant is spiritual. But even non-elect psychopaths can physically refrain from fornication and adultery, although for materialistic reasons, such as to maintain wealth or power. So God does not merely require celibacy and physical marital faithfulness from us, but calls our spirits to become loving and faithful enough to produce those physical effects.
So the kind of righteousness that God writes within us, for our salvation, will cause a male to build up and guard the spiritual and moral atmosphere of a family and community, keeping everyone in it focused upon the real God Jesus, so all will be just, equitable and loving towards one another. Then He causes a female to enhance and beautify that spiritual structure, as she absorbs spiritual truths and ways from her husband and others in the family and community, where male and female pairs work together as one flesh. For God made male and female brains and bodies of flesh compatible. So one gender’s differences in the brain and body of flesh might complete what may be lacking in the other gender’s brain and body of flesh. After all, when an average male and average female think together as one flesh, their capacity for problem solving is far greater than that of two average males or two average females. Then, obviously, only a male and a female can bear children, never two males or two females. Also, when a good loving father and a good loving mother raise a child, it is the most psychologically, emotionally and spiritually beneficial upbringing that child could possibly receive, with no equal found among parents of a single sex. The point is that God created our sexual desires to be directed by our mature spirits, and primarily in a marriage of a loving elect male and a loving elect female. Any other kind of marriage and family is inferior. However, loving parents of any kind are superior to unloving parents. So two loving homosexuals or two loving lesbians can actually provide a better home for a child than two unloving heterosexuals. Then God can cause a shallow, materialistic, selfish, unloving elect soul to become a deep, spirit-managed soul, whose life focuses on serving Him and His creations, in a way where sexual purity becomes a way of life, as God works upon that one’s spirit. For I have seen God cause many elect no longer exploit others to gratify the lusts of their own flesh, but see realities, and realize that sex is an very insignificant aspect of life.
Then the eighth-order laws against theft are similar to both the seventh-order laws against sexual immorality, as well as the six-order laws against dehumanizing and murder. For God’s prohibitions against theft include all kinds of theft, not just the theft of property which God gave another person the right to hold in stewardship for His purposes. In reality, all the eighth-order laws forbid the theft of anyone or anything that is owned directly by Him, which includes all that human beings hold in stewardship for Him, but also all that which is not (or cannot) be held in stewardship by anyone. And this eighth-order law overlaps God’s laws against murder and adultery. For He forbids us to steal physical, emotional, mental or spiritual life from any creation. But murder and enslavement does steal life, from both the murdered or enslaved person, and from God, who owns all life. Also, exploitative sexual immorality steals physical, emotional, mental or spiritual aspects of life from others. Then, naturally, any other unlawful confiscation of property, reputation or anything else is theft as well. And every kind of theft also steals trust from the people in the community where the theft occurs. Thefts cause souls to distrust one another, and may even cause some to distrust God Himself, once they learn the habit of distrust. Then, once trust is gone, the foundation upon which Page 1263
love can be built is gone too. And, without a trusting, just, equitable love, none of God’s laws can be fulfilled. So thefts of all kinds breed more sin, and poisons a land, until all will destroy one another.
Furthermore, since all lives are owned by God, each one’s own body, soul and spirit are also owned by God, and each one is responsible to God for the stewardship of one’s own body, soul and spirit.
Therefore, if one uses one’s own body, soul and spirit for any purpose that is not God’s revealed will and purpose, then one is stealing from God. One’s words or deeds must never cause any loss to God, nor a loss to any part of His earthly kingdoms. Consequently, the only logical way to truly fulfill the negative prohibitions of the eighth-order laws against theft, is to use every moment of one’s life to serve God and His just, loving kingdom, in a way that will add loving trust and spiritual value to it.
The next law in Jesus’ list was the archetypal ninth commandment prohibiting slander, forbidding us to bear false testimony about anyone else, including God Himself. And this law prohibits all forms of lying, any invented communication which intentionally alters anyone’s perception of reality. Any lie which others might falsely believe to be true, including that which deliberately corrupts real truth or distracts from those realities, destroys trust and love. God even prohibits us from either implying or directly conveying false information about what we assume we heard or saw, if we did not actually hear or see all we profess to have heard or seen. And, if one adopts the evil spiritual motives and intentions of someone who lied, and did not even check to see if that liar had genuine evidence to support those false assumptions made with evil motives and intentions, then one becomes just as guilty before God as that liar. And those kinds of lies are the essence of violent or oppressive racism and injustice. Yet even those who always try to tell the truth commit sins against God’s ninth-order laws, even in ways that unjustly harm or even utterly destroy the lives of innocent souls. Then we not only commit this kind of dehumanizing sin against others, but also against God Himself. Even esteemed pastors boldly and forcefully proclaim that God said this or that, although God definitely did not say what they say He said. In fact, God is often completely opposed to what pastors have been teaching in His name. Most pastors are falsely testifying about God, and are slandering His holy, loving name. Then some whole families, churches and nations build their whole foundation of life and laws on false testimonies, on lies of humanism, racism, greed and so on. Yet they all know that the fulfillment of God’s ninth-order laws requires us to speak unfiltered, unflattering truth, and nothing but that truth, even always through the love of one’s spirit for God, for God’s people and for the rest of His creations. For we all know that just, God-like love can only be built on genuine truth.
After Jesus asked the rich man if he had fulfilled the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth archetypal commandments that God’s own voice proclaimed from the heights of Mount Sinai (see Ex. 20:13-16), Jesus reminded him about the fifth of God’s ten “authoritative words.” For, if one fulfills the fifth-order laws of God—those which require us to honour our parents by honouring the heavenly Father of our spirits, by doing what is honourable before God—then one will also fulfill all God’s other “second table” laws, that is, all God’s sixth- to tenth-order laws. If one honours the heavenly Father, then one will not murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness nor covet. And also notice that this fifth commandment is not a prohibition. Rather, it is an exhortation to do what God desires, and it even held a promise. For in the fifth of the Ten Commandments, God promised that, if one honoured one’s heavenly Father in a way that honoured one’s earthly parents, then one’s “days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you” (Ex. 20:12, WEB). And the land which God gave in stewardship to His priesthood of Israel until the earth ends, is an earthly representation of their eternal homeland in the spiritual realm above, a training ground for His heavenly priesthood.
So the promise for all the “second table” archetypal commandments listed by Jesus is that we will
“live,” and even live “long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.” Then the implication of Page 1264
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this promise in God’s fifth-order laws is that He shall fulfill His promise by granting us eternal life in heaven above, which He, as our Father, grants as our inheritance. To begin with, His one true church of elect souls will inherit His earthly kingdom of righteousness worked through love, an abundant life here on earth. Then, after being completed and perfected on the last day, the spirits of His elect will no longer be infants. So they will be ready to inherit the eternal “land” which their heavenly Father has prepared for them. God’s promise in His fifth-order laws is actually the eternal life which this rich ruler’s elect spirit was seeking. This is why Jesus put this fifth commandment after the rest.
Now you can begin to see why Jesus waited until He listed the sixth to ninth archetypal laws before He mentioned the fifth-order laws. For Jesus knew that this rich man would be reminded of God’s promise when he heard that summarized fifth-order law, since all Jews frequently discussed the implications of that promise, almost daily. And, through the fifth-order laws, which are of a higher priority in the Ten Commandments than the sixth-order laws, and more critical than all the other laws listed below it, this man should have realized that he is indeed a sinner. Then the fact that Jesus noticeably neglected to mention the sixth-order laws against coveting was another clue, since literally all wealthy people continuously commit the sin of greed and striving for selfish gain. Yet that rich young man did not admit that he was wretched and trapped in sin, that he was enslaved by the devil, that he did not keep God’s prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft and bearing false testimony, that he definitely did not honour his parents by honouring the Father of his eternal spirit.
If that rich man could see how he most definitely did not even begin to fulfill any of God’s negative prohibitions, and certainly did not do what they positively implied, then his spirit and soul might begin to seek a real freedom and an abundant life from God. For this Jewish man knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he certainly did not honour the heavenly Father of his elect spirit. For every devout Jew, even the humanistic kinds, knew that honouring the heavenly Father meant taking full responsibility for the welfare of His people and His creations, by living modestly and using all of the resources God had granted in stewardship for God’s good purposes. Thus, if he did not honour his spirit’s Father, then he did not honour the parents of his flesh either, since the only way to truly and spiritually honour one’s earthly parents is by honouring his heavenly Father, since God is also the Father of his parents. By breaking the fifth-order laws, he would have also realized that, according to the teachings of God’s Word, and the doctrines of most honest teaching elders, he was also breaking all the laws God listed below the fifth commandment. When he broke the fifth commandment, he also became subject to the penalty for breaking this fifth-order law: “a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother,” especially not the voice of his heavenly Father, may be stoned to death (Deut. 21:18-21, WEB)—that is, after a fair trial, and only if the trial proves him to be unrepentant, if it proves that he will continue to do the same evil actions through malicious motives and intentions. Thus, Jesus thoroughly drove home the point that “eternal life,” the just and abundant life that God grants to a truly loving elect spirit, had not yet been attained by this rich man. And, since that man studied God’s Law, he would have clearly understood all this.
But Jesus was not finished with this elect rich man, whom He loved. Jesus added one more law of God to this list. Jesus ended His list with the law that God used to summarize all His “second-table”
laws. That is, the last law on this list tells us how to fulfill all God’s laws pertaining to our behaviour towards our fellow human beings. It is the summary law which encompasses all the last six of the Ten Commandments, as well as all their related laws in the Torah, all the fifth-order to tenth-order laws. All these laws are fulfilled by God’s positive command to love the person He places nearby, to love anyone whom our words or actions (or our lack of responsible actions) might affect in any way.
Not only this, but He commanded us to love them, even the strangers and enemies touched by our Page 1265
lives, in the same way we love ourselves. So, if we love ourselves enough to ensure that we always have all we need, then God has commanded us to also love others in that same way too, and ensure they always have all they need too. But, if we fail to fulfill this summary law of God, then we are also committing the sins covered by the fifth-order to tenth-order laws. If we do not love others, then are indeed committing sins like murder, adultery, theft, false testimony and covetousness, sins which dishonour our heavenly Father and our earthly parents. Yet, clearly, loving others in the same way as one loves oneself is not something that any rich people do. A self-indulgent rich man, who does not live modestly and does not give all his excess profits to the needs of God’s people, nor to any of the creations they live beside, definitely is not fulfilling God’s command to the love his nearby siblings.
So this was Jesus’ list of God’s “authoritative words,” which our spirits must guard in our hearts, to build up an abundant life of love, which is the kind of “eternal life” that this rich man’s elect spirit was actually seeking. It was the kind of life that his elect spirit wanted, but could not find, since his mind of flesh silenced and suppressed his elect spirit’s desires, since his flesh loved its wealth. Yet notice here how Jesus also did not even mention the first-order, second-order, third-order or fourth-order laws of God. For, if one’s spirit is not even capable of fulfilling God’s laws relating to the love of one’s own siblings in the family of humankind, then one’s spirit obviously cannot possibly ever comprehend the first four orders of God’s Law. For God teaches us to love Him by first teaching us to love our elect siblings, as well as His other creations. And the first four orders of His Law are internally fulfilled by one’s spirit, and seldom expressed by the actions of the flesh. Only breaking those first four orders of God’s Law can be clearly expressed by the words and deeds of the flesh.
Likewise, Jesus did not mention the tenth-order laws, those prohibiting covetousness, for the same reason, since coveting spiritual treasures, instead of carnal rewards from Satan, can only be fulfilled internally as well, by a grateful and content spirit. But this rich man’s spirit seemed totally ignorant.
Nevertheless, since this rich man zealously sought help from Jesus, and had likely gone to many others seeking the same kind of help, he must have been experiencing inner turmoil. There seems to have been some kind of unresolved conflict in the chamber of his soul. In there, his mind of flesh was despotically insisting that he must follow the self-indulgent ways of the wealthy elite in Satan’s world order. Meanwhile, his elect spirit was shouting out, from behind the locked door of his heart, demanding the food of God’s Word and the living waters of God’s Spirit that it needed for its own survival. So Jesus spoke to the rich man, reminding his spirit about the abundantly loving life he could attain, if his spirit awakened and had its managerial authority over his flesh restored. Then his flesh would soon need to give in and submit to his spirit, since the flesh is weak and cannot remain alive without the life granted by the spirit. For now, the man’s flesh remained in control, and could oppress his spirit with lies that made him terrified of losing his wealth and status, by warning him to trust only the ruthless demon Mammon, which meant that his spirit was totally unable to place any faith in the real Creator God, since one cannot serve both Mammon and God at the same time. Thus, this rich man was actually a slave of that demon, meaning he was also a slave of that demon’s owner, who is Satan. And only our God Jesus possessed enough power to free that poor enslaved rich man.
One of the main lies that this rich man’s flesh told to maintain its control over that rich man’s spirit was a false justification of its own righteousness. By denying its obvious sinfulness, that flesh was able to convince its spirit that it already had a good relationship with God. By twisting of God’s own intended meanings of His “second table” commands, the flesh was able to make the rich man’s spirit believe that he did not murder, did not commit adultery, did not steal, did not lie and did honour his parents, even while committing literally all those sins. But Jesus knew how a rich person’s mind of flesh likes to think it does not sin, and pretends to not murder, even as it commits murders through Page 1266
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wilful negligence. In fact, a rich man even thinks he does not even covet, since his flesh can buy everything it covets, and seldom covets anything that it does not already possess. Yet, in reality, the single greatest driving force in the lives of the wealthy is their slavery to covetousness. For the only reason they do not pay their workers a fair share of the profits, and the reason they do not give away all their excess profits, is because they covet the money which rightfully belongs to those other people. So they steal from their workers, and from their siblings suffering in great need, as well as plunder God’s other creations to gratify their own covetous and self-indulgent desires. As they do this, demonic spirits tell them covetous lies to justify those thefts, saying, “That money is rightfully yours, not God’s. So keep it for yourself.” Thus, they steal from God and from their siblings through their desire for money, since they covet the power and pleasures money can buy. Then they murder through that same kind of covetousness too, or commit adultery by coveting flesh meant for others.
Covetousness causes most sins of the rich. Even after their greedy hands grasp far more than a soul could possibly require to build the home of one’s soul, they somehow want more, and remain compulsively enslaved to a dark desire demanding ever more. They gain so much that they can no longer find new things to covet, and make themselves into futile, hollow husks of dissatisfied and cynical flesh, without a spark of life left in their hearts. There is not one aspect of their lives which remains free from the despotic, ruthless dictates of covetousness. Its lies and delusions enslave them.
The only acknowledged saviour, prophet, high priest and king of a rich man’s world is the demon Mammon. But, like all demons, Mammon lies incessantly, so he might keep his enslaved elect in such confusion of the spirit that they can only think with their easily deluded minds of flesh. Jesus saw that this is what Mammon was doing to the soul of this elect rich man. This is why Jesus, after He saw a spark of God still glowing in His rich little brother’s heart, told that man’s impoverished and enslaved spirit to zealously guard the “authoritative words” of his loving heavenly Father. For, if this barely alive rich man began to do this, the little remaining inside would grow. The Holy Spirit of his heavenly Father would fan that spark into a flame, which would consume all Mammon’s wood, hay and straw filling his soul, to then reveal the hidden gold, silver and precious gems of pure truth.
However, there are many lies to burn away, lies that a rich man’s mind of flesh uses to justify his sins, all of which were addressed by Jesus’ short list of “second table” laws, the laws pertaining to sins of the flesh. And Jesus obviously cited only those laws since almost all the lies used by the mind of flesh pertain to sins of the flesh, because the only reason a mind of flesh suppresses its elect spirit is so it might gratify its fleshy desires. So now let us look at how Jesus presented that list. When Matthew wrote down Jesus’ list, he told us that Jesus first recited four laws which strictly pertained to human relationships, and Jesus gave them in the same prioritized order which God did on Mount Sinai—that is, starting with the sixth-order laws and listing down to the ninth-order laws. Then Matthew said that Jesus added the fifth-order laws after them, but ended with God’s summary law, with the law recorded in Leviticus 19:17-18, which commands us to love and be honest with those whom He places within the spheres of our lives (so Jesus’ order was: 6+7+8+9+5+summary law).
However, Luke told us that Jesus listed those first four laws out of sequence (Luke 18:19-20). Luke said Jesus began His list with the seventh-order laws prohibiting adultery. Then Jesus followed that with the three other archetypal laws Matthew listed, yet without the summary law (7+6+8+9+5). So Luke seemed to imply that Jesus emphasized the seventh-order laws, by listing them first. And, back then, the rich did commit sexual sins far more than the poor. For they often erroneously thought God did not forbid them to have sex with slaves, and also often entered into illegitimate marriages for political or financial reasons, where one or both spouses did not make true marriage covenants of the spirit. But those kinds of false marriages are indeed forbidden by God’s seventh-order laws, since Page 1267
they are forms of adultery and prostitution. Thus, if a rich man’s mind of flesh attempted to justify these sexual sins to himself and others, he was also committing the ninth-order sin of lying. And when the rich deprived others of necessities, this was not only the eighth-order sin of theft, but also caused deaths, so they committed the sixth-order sin of murder. And all these sins would dishonour their parents too, because all those kinds of sins dishonoured and even slandered God, their Father.
Then Mark’s version of Jesus’ list was a little different from Matthew’s in another way. After listing the same four archetypal commandments, Mark told us that Jesus added this law of God: “Do not defraud” (Mark 10:19, from: Μὴ ἀποστερήσῃς, SBLGNT). This was most likely Jesus’ own Greek interpretation of the following law: “You shall not oppress [i.e., defraud] your neighbor, nor rob him.
The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning” (Lev. 19:13, WEB). By citing this law, Jesus would have been alluding to how the rich often defrauded their own employees, by not paying them a fair wage and by withholding the payment of wages as long as they possibly could, although God required all employers to pay their employees as soon as the work day ended. Other than this, Mark’s order was the same as Matthew’s (6+7+8+9+Lev19:13+5). So Mark was implying that this rich man’s mind of flesh was lying, trying to justify his fraudulent practices and other sins against his own employees, who were actually his brothers, his equals. However, both Mark and Luke neglected to add the summary law (“love your neighbour”). Perhaps they thought it was redundant. But Matthew rightly included it, as a thread binding all these laws together into one.
Of course, every honest teaching elder (rabbi) would have expounded on all these laws of God in very much the same ways I did above. And every Jewish man, including this rich ruler, would have heard very similar teachings every week in the synagogue he attended. So, after hearing this list, one would expect the rich man to take a very lengthy pause, with deep introspection, then very contritely engage in a serious conversation with Jesus, with this renowned Teacher of life and faith who was clearly endorsed by God through miracles. And one would expect that conversation to end with the deep contrition and repentance of the rich man. But no! Instead, this rich ruler actually responded by saying, “I guarded all these. What am I still lacking?” (Mat. 19:20, from: Πάντα ταῦτα ἐφύλαξα· τί
ἔτι ὑστερῶ;, SBLGNT). His mind of flesh did not even pause the lying justification of its many sins, not for a moment. And the rich man’s elect spirit was still far too weak to stop his mind of flesh from committing that ruthless sin of lying. Still, the man’s elect spirit heard the words of Jesus, and could never again cause itself to unhear those truths. Also, his elect spirit was incapable of denying that truth it heard. Only his deluded mind of flesh was able to lie about fulfilling all those authoritative words of God, even as all honest true Jews who read the Scriptures told him that he surely did not.
And notice how this rich ruler used a different verb to imply a different kind of guarding. Jesus used an aorist imperative form of the verb τηρέω, when He commanded this man to complete the action of guarding God’s authoritative words or laws. So Jesus was talking about a lifetime of his spirit’s activity, where his spirit would personally and zealously “guard ... cause a state, condition, or activity to continue ... unharmed or undisturbed ... being protective” (BDAG3). Jesus was implying that the spirits of His people must forever guard God’s fulfilled laws in their hearts. But the rich man responded with the verb φυλάσσω, indicating a more detached and less personal kind of guarding.
The rich man indicated that his mind of flesh laboured “to c arry out sentin e l functions , watch, guard ... protect by taking careful measures ... be on one’s guard against ... continue to keep a law or commandment from being broken” (BDAG3). The rich man thought Jesus meant that he should watch others to ensure that they did not sin outwardly, while Jesus was telling him to guard God’s laws and ways in his own heart, to keep them from being corrupted by false teachings, so that man could fulfill the positive implications of those laws. So it was clear that this rich man thought God’s Page 1268
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laws were mere words, easily manipulated statements telling the mind and body of flesh to perform physical actions to appease God. This man did not seem to comprehend that literally all laws are spiritual, or that all God’s laws can only be truly understood and fulfilled by the mind of the spirit.
God’s laws were not something to guard by watching over them, but something to love and protect in the heart. And manipulating God’s intended meaning of His own laws never fulfills those laws.
Although Jesus realized this rich man had an elect spirit, and He loved him, that spirit had been thoroughly taken captive by his deluded mind of flesh. Satan’s world order had done its job well.
Now his elect spirit was firmly locked up in the chamber of his heart, not allowed to contribute any loving or true thoughts to his soul. The devil’s rewards, of tempting ease in wealth, pleased his mind of flesh so much that his flesh became terrified of losing them, although he knew those rewards were payments for his sins. So his flesh never allowed his spirit to protest against any of his sins worked through his idolatry of greed. His flesh so greatly feared the forsaking of the demon Mammon’s favour that it dug itself deep into the bowels of delusions and blocked the entrance of his soul, to keep out all spiritual truth, all the realities of inequity, injustice and suffering caused to his siblings.
At this point, the rich man’s spirit was far too ignorant, weak and immature to handle even the least of all God’s appointed ministries. And that least ministry is the administration of God’s resources or wealth in a just, equitable way, where the administrator lives a very modest physical life and ensures that all excess profits are returned to the Owner, to his God, after fair wages are given to all workers and after all customers receive a good product at a fair price. God will call some elect to handle vast sums of money, but only as stewards of His own properties, only for the wise, just, loving purposes of Himself. But this man was not even ready for that least of all ministries. So, when this rich man asked Jesus what he was still lacking, Jesus responded by telling him to do the only thing he could do to restore life in himself: “If you are willing to be complete, go sell the things being disposable for you and give to the financially needy, so you will have a treasure in the heavens. Then come, follow [as a disciple] for Me” (Mat. 19:21, from: Εἰ θέλεις τέλειος εἶναι, ὕπαγε πώλησόν σου τὰ
ὑπάρχοντα καὶ δὸς πτωχοῖς, καὶ ἕξεις θησαυρὸν ἐν οὐρανοῖς, καὶ δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι, SBLGNT). If this man sold “the things being disposable” (that is, all excess things in his life, all that was not necessary for his own basic needs and not required for the maintenance of his business, to keep his workers fed and housed), then gave that money to the needy in wise ways, he would only be doing what Jesus expects from all His disciples (i.e., this is exactly what Jesus meant in Luke 14:33). But, for abundant life, what this man needed was to actually become a true disciple of God’s Messiah.
No elect soul can ever become “complete,” and find an abundant life filled with love, unless that elect person’s spirit becomes a true disciple of the real Jesus. And, if an elect soul has been entirely deadened by the delusions of Satan’s world order, one’s discipleship with Jesus must become one’s full-time job for a lengthy period of time, before one can even step back out into the other duties and responsibilities of life on earth. For the Holy Spirit of Jesus is the only Counsellor who can actually teach and train a spirit in a way where one begins to truly fulfill God’s just laws of love, in effective, equitable and wise ways. Because our salvation into eternal, abundant life cannot begin until we start to fulfill God’s laws according to His will, and only our God Jesus is able to write His laws upon our hearts through His teaching and training, all of us desperately need to follow Jesus as His disciples.
So Jesus, knowing exactly what the elect spirit of this rich man truly needed, called him to become His disciple, called him to begin an inwardly educational journey into abundant life. And, since this rich man rejected that call at that time, the Holy Spirit of Jesus would soon call him again. No matter how often an elect soul rejects Christ’s call, Christ’s Spirit will continue to call that one, once Jesus has initiated a relationship with that one’s elect spirit. So, although this rich man’s flesh was very Page 1269
stubborn, Jesus likely called him very many times during his life on earth. Then, if that elect man died without ever responding to Christ’s call, that inwardly deadened man’s spirit would “sleep” in an empty void for a time, until the judgment day. Since he did not find life on earth, his spirit would not possess enough life in it to remain awake and conscious after death. So his spirit would need to
“sleep,” until Jesus woke him on the final day. Then, on that bright judgment day, Jesus shall wake and call him one last time, but with His compelling power of the almighty Judge, not merely with a Saviour’s gentle offer of life. So, on that day, his elect spirit will indeed step forward, standing in his new spiritual body before this Judge. Then Jesus will teach the truth to his elect spirit, but with fiery rebukes that burn away all delusions and lies still corrupting his soul. After that, since he is one of God’s elect children, his spirit will surely repent into the truth from Jesus. For all elect spirits have an inherent desire and ability to repent into the truth. Yet, if he had remained self-indulgent and unrepentant during his entire life on earth, he will repent on that last day with much godly sorrow, regretting all his wasted days on earth, grieving over all the time he spent chasing vain delusions, while he could have been building up precious eternal realities of God in himself and all around him.
So he will finally understand what earthly life really is. That rich man, at last, will see how his own physical existence on earth was granted so his elect spirit could be taught and trained, until his spirit became one with God, and one with all his human siblings, even one with the entirety of all God’s creations in this universe and in heaven above. He will know that material existence was energy, was actually his loving Father’s transformed spiritual power inventing all time and space according to His desire. Thus, since his spirit is a child of God, his spirit’s energy could have been one with all.
In deep regret, an elect soul who had never repented to Jesus during one’s life on earth, will begin to painfully study one’s past, as soon as Jesus wakes that one. And all that past shall stand manifested before one’s eyes. So one will see how often the opportunity to build up God’s kingdom on earth, in joy, was offered. And that elect spirit will know exactly how often and how stupidly one did not heed the Messiah’s call. Yet, even if the rich man refused to follow Jesus all his life, his elect spirit will be welcomed, fed and taught at the gates of heaven on the judgment day. He will not only be embraced by Jesus, but also by many other elect souls dwelling there. And many elect who greet and serve him will be those who did not waste all their time on earth, but eagerly followed the call of Jesus, the kinds of elect spirits who woke when they heard His voice on earth, then remained fully awake after their bodies of flesh had died. And not only did these elect spirits gain many treasures on earth, to make their spirits shine with the light of love in truth, but they will have received even more gifts at heaven’s gate, while they remained awake after death. For they did not sleep after death, but began to be completed by Jesus. So, by the time the sleeping reprobate elect spirits wake on that day, the faithful elect will have grown so bright that the elect reprobates will scarcely be able to look upon their gleaming faces. In the short time since death, the true disciples of Jesus will have become almost as radiant as Jesus Himself. And, seeing this, the waken elect reprobates will not only regret the loss of wasted time on earth, but also their loss of time sleeping in a void until the judgment day.
But this particular rich ruler was young, and his infantile spirit did not yet know the value of just love, since his soul had not yet been wounded by swords of injustice, lies and hate. Thus, Matthew tells us: “So the young man, having heard the reasoning, departed, being caused to grieve. For he was one having many possessions” (Mat. 19:22, from: ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ νεανίσκος τὸν λόγον ἀπῆλθεν
λυπούμενος, ἦν γὰρ ἔχων κτήματα πολλά, SBLGNT, cf., Mark 10:22, Luke 18:23). We are not told this rich young ruler’s name, or whether he later repented and became a true disciple of Jesus. We were only told that his elect spirit did not heed Jesus’ call at that time. However, we do know his reason for his soul’s rejection of the truth from God. For all three synoptic Gospels tell us that he did Page 1270
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not follow Jesus because he was very wealthy and did not want to give up all his excess, because he loved the rewards of Satan’s world order too much to go out and live a modest, godly, loving life. In his lusty youth, he valued the self-indulgence that his money afforded him too much. A simple life of God did not appeal to him. Yet, hopefully, his spirit matured in time, and many wounds caused him to repent into the truth and follow Jesus. If not, Jesus will do the impossible on the judgment day, to save him from his deadly delusions. For we know Jesus truly “loved him” (ἠγάπησεν αὐτὸν, Mark 10:21), in a God-like way. So this rich man was an elect child of God, whom Jesus cannot forsake.
Nevertheless, by walking away from Jesus, this young man lost that precious day he had been given, and spent it on some worthless exercise in futility, rather than on the peaceful labour of acquiring valuable and indestructible treasures for his eternal heart. And, since we are granted so few days on earth, the loss of just one day is a great loss. Then, if this youth lost more than one day to a life apart from His God, it would be a horrible tragedy. Or, if he spent the rest of his life in spiritual ignorance, causing his infantile spirit to fail to thrive until the day of his death, he would not possess enough inner strength to remain awake after his flesh died. So his spirit would drift in a void until the final judgment day, alongside the spirits of the non-elect dead, since empty spirits cannot help but sleep in unconsciousness until they can be made ready for their eternal homes, either in heaven or in hell.
Therefore, if this rich man chose to live his entire earthly life in spiritual poverty, this would have been such a great loss that no adjective in any earthly language could ever adequately describe it.
But Jesus expected this rich man’s negative response, since He knew how the devil and his minions are able to powerfully delude minds of flesh. And the demon Mammon’s lying sales pitch, extolling the arrogant glories of his unreal money, can lure almost any fool into his kind of inwardly dead life.
Jesus realized that no infantile human spirit on earth was able to resist and overcome that deluding power, once He allowed the dark spirits to take a loveless soul captive. Even a deeply religious elect soul can become a slave to Satan’s lies in the unjust kingdom of the world order. Yet we must also remember that our God bears infinitely more power than Satan. Jesus can utter a single word to absolutely terrify Satan’s entire kingdom of darkness, causing its citizens to tear themselves apart.
Thus, when Jesus called this elect rich young ruler to follow Him as His disciple, His patient power would eventually take effect within the soul, gradually destroying Satan’s delusions in him, one by one. Then our Lord would calmly lead that man’s spirit into His faithful priesthood, into the true church of Israel. For God will gather literally all His elect children into His true church, each at the appointed time, although many will only enter the verities of that true priesthood after the flesh dies.
And this rich man did seem to be one of God’s elect children. For his immediate inner turmoil and grief was evidence of his election, as well as the fact that Jesus loved him. But, to interpret this evidence rightly, we first need to know some biblical anthropological doctrines. So let me remind you about these teachings. To begin with, we need to know that a living being basically consists of three parts: (1) a temporary physical body, where the mind of flesh dwells; (2) a “chamber” called the soul, made of an eternal spiritual substance, which has one “door” allowing for the input and output of the brain of flesh and one “door” allowing input and output from the mind of the spirit; and (3) another chamber made of an eternal spiritual substance, figuratively called the “heart,” where the where the everlasting spirit and essence of life dwells. Now, when the rich man’s flesh heard the truth from Jesus, so did his spirit, since all input from all bodily senses enter the soul. So whatever the flesh hears, so does the spirit. But an elect spirit inherently loves and embraces the truth, while the flesh frequently resists the truth, because the more solid spiritual realities often frighten the flesh.
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So, when Jesus spoke the truth to this rich man, and called him to abandon his self-indulgent life for his flesh, so he could live a modest life of just love for his people, an internal conflict erupted in that man’s soul. The two minds in the soul clashed and quarrelled about those truths which made his flesh feel so uncomfortable. But the mind of flesh is a just a labourer, a temporary servant whose work is to make all the mechanical parts of the body function. Yet the spirit depends on the mind of flesh to carry out its desires through the body, since a spirit cannot exert any direct control over the body. Thus, during our lives on earth, where our weak and infantile spirits must express themselves through the flesh, the mind of flesh bears the advantage of controlling our initial reactions to God, to other human beings and to God’s creations. And the mind of flesh, whenever it wants to do so, can ignore the desires of the spirit, or even completely silence the spirit. The flesh can even take the spirit captive, and lock up the spirit in the chamber of the heart, allowing it to have no influence upon the thoughts in the soul. The flesh can often inhibit and suppress the “words” of the spirit. Still, the spirit is the God-authorized steward and manager of the flesh, and flesh cannot remain alive without the spirit’s consent. Thus, an awakened spirit is able to exert its God-given authority over the flesh when it resolves to do so. Also, God’s Spirit is easily able to enter any soul and heart, whenever He chooses. And God bears the power and authority to do literally anything He desires, both to the flesh and to the spirit. So, if a conflict between an elect spirit and its flesh occurs in the soul, and God wants the spirit to win that argument, God will help a trusting spirit overcome its own flesh.
Thus, we are saved through our trust in God, that is, through our spirit’s faith in His love, power and truth. But God cannot work in us if we do not trust in Him. He cannot do the work of our Father if we do not trust in His love for us, if we do not have faith in His intent to do us good, if we do not believe that He never cause our eternal spirits any harm. Nor can God serve as our saving oldest Brother, if we do not trust in His ability to teach the truth, train our spirits to love in His just ways, and undo all the sins and lies which dark powers have poured into us. For no teacher can teach and train those who do not trust anything he says or does. And God’s loving, fatherly, brotherly kinds of works, by His own definition, are not able to force His will upon either our spirits or our minds of flesh, because love does not teach and train through acts of terrorism and violence. Although God is well-able to completely overpower us, whenever He acts as our Judge, whenever He is not working in us as our Father and Brother, He patiently refrains from this through His love for us. Since God possesses nothing but the desire to cause the spirits of His beloved elect children to willingly learn the truth, so they can willingly apply the truth through the wise love of their spirits, God will seldom break down the doors of our souls to force our spirits and our flesh to do His will. Yes, God can do that, and does do that at times. Yet He definitely prefers to help our elect spirits gain managerial control over our flesh through His teaching and training. For He is not a despot, but a loving Father who educates our elect spirits. Thus, we can only be saved is through faith alone, by trusting in Him.
This also means that God seldom causes an instantaneous salvation for elect souls, of the kind that many false so-called “Christians” boast about. Rather, the Holy Spirit of Jesus grants many life-altering epiphanies to His elect children, which make our spirits aware of Him and His realities, like He did for that rich young ruler. Then, throughout our daily lives, our salvation is worked through a slow, constant process of learning to love Him and His creations in His pure, just ways. We are born with infantile spirits, with certain attributes and propensities, but with very little knowledge and no real wisdom. Then we slowly gain a knowledge of both physical and spiritual truths, until we are able to discern between good and evil. And our experiences in life train us to apply that knowledge more skilfully and wisely each day. In time, if our spirits will trust the whisperings of God in our Page 1272
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hearts and souls, we actually become somewhat wise and just in the expressions of our love. And this also causes our love for God to grow, as He effectively teaches and trains our trusting spirits.
But, in the beginning, when our spirits are young and infantile, the humiliating truth will often cause tremendous inner conflicts. Just like an infant throws tantrums when he or she is corrected, or when the child’s little carnal desires need to be suppressed, elect with extremely immature spirits do the same, like the elect spirit of that rich young ruler did. That man’s flesh remained strong and was maintaining complete control over his entire life, since his weak little spirit could not lift its voice in protest. But Jesus spoke truth to his spirit, telling him what he needed to know: “Go sell the things being disposable for you, and give to the financially needy, so you will have a treasure in the heavens. Then come, follow as a disciple for Me.” And the power of God in Jesus would not permit either his flesh or his elect spirit to ever forget or lay aside those words. Now, if that rich man was one of the non-elect, he would be able to go his way, without being deeply troubled in the mind of his spirit, without any conflict in his soul. Yet we are told that Jesus instigated and firmly established a deep inner conflict within the chamber of his soul, a war between his flesh and his spirit. So he had an elect spirit. And the inherent nature of every elect spirit is to cherish the truth. Therefore, his soul simply had to reassess and reevaluate every little word and deed of his past, then grow strong enough to fulfill the truth which Jesus uttered. And Jesus would help his spirit perform all that he had to do.
So Jesus’ words began to work in this elect man’s heart almost immediately. We know this because all three synoptic Gospels testify that this man was “caused to become emotionally distressed”
(λυπούμενος, Mat. 19:22, Mark 10:22) or “deeply grieved” (περίλυπος, Luke 18:23). This man seemed to be the rare kind of rich person who possessed an elect spirit, whom God made able to grow an inner conscience—whose mind of his spirit was able to hear God’s words and store them in its eternal memory, with an uncompromising acknowledgement of that truth. Jesus’ words about fulfilling God’s Law, through His command to “go sell the things being disposable for you and give to the financially needy,” as he faithfully followed as a disciple of his God and Teacher, did indeed produce a holy and sweet godly sorrow in his soul. His spirit broke free from its confinement and stepped into his soul, rebuking his self-serving mind of flesh, and began to set his life straight. Of course, the change in his life was not instantaneous nor completed in that moment. For Jesus did not choose to do that. Rather, like most works of God in the hearts of His infantile children, His work was simply a beginning, just as the teaching and training of our infant children is gradual, over time.
But, at first, the disciples currently following Jesus did not seem to see how Jesus had effectively sown a seed of faith into that rich man’s heart, the beginnings of his spirit’s trust in truth and God.
Nor did they see how hot that seed was, like a white hot ember which would soon set that man’s entire soul aflame, causing his spirit to forever increasingly doubt the lying words from devils and their duped minions. In the writings by one of those disciples, Matthew, we discover an implication that they later realized how Jesus’ words took effect. So, eventually, they did seem to see how the teachings and Spirit of Jesus began the labour of God’s salvation within that rich man. Still, at that moment, before they had time to more carefully evaluate what they observed, they were likely thinking how spiritually and morally stupid all rich people seem to be, but also how nice it would be to get that rich man to make a big donation, to help with their ministry. And they also may have been a little upset with Jesus for not flattering that rich man’s ego, like most rabbis do, to harvest a few coins with the sickle of lying words. After all, they too were men with easily tempted minds of flesh, who often made the mistake of thinking the ends justify the means. But Jesus is God. He owns all the people and all the services that their hands might provide, as well as all that is on the earth. He not only owned but maintained absolute authority and power over all that all were able to provide.
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So Jesus had no interest in lying to get some of the devil’s invention of money from the rich man.
Jesus’ only desire was to save this deluded rich man’s beloved elect spirit from his slavery to lies.
Then, while His disciples were still stumbling in the fog of limited understanding, Jesus proclaimed this truth: “Most certainly I reason with you people that a rich person will enter into the kingdom of the heavens with great difficulty. Again, I reason with you people, it is easier [for] a camel to go through an eye of a needle [than] the rich person to enter into the kingdom of God” (Mat. 19:23-24, from: Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πλούσιος δυσκόλως εἰσελεύσεται εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν· πάλιν
δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν, εὐκοπώτερόν ἐστιν κάμηλον διὰ τρυπήματος ῥαφίδος εἰσελθεῖν ἢ πλούσιον εἰς τὴν
βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ, SBLGNT). This statement would nullify any ideas His disciples might have about flattering a rich man to get a donation. For now they understood that the rich, even those who claim to believe in God and obey His laws, definitely are not citizens of either God’s kingdom on earth or His kingdom in heaven. For Jesus used the plural word “heavens” (οὐρανῶν) here. And, if they are not citizens of God’s kingdoms, then they are not building up nor serving His kingdoms.
In reality, the rich are citizens of Satan’s world order, and use Satan’s invention of money to control, suppress and oppress others for the benefit of that devil’s kingdom. Therefore, if an elect soul is handed over to Satan, and the devil keeps him or her captive through the trap of wealth, that rich one will find that it is very painful and difficult to find the way back to God’s kingdom. It will be very hard to enter God’s earthly kingdom while one lives in a body of flesh. And, although the heavenly Father will surely save literally all His elect children from hell, a rich elect soul who does not repent until the flesh dies, will suffer much pain and loss on the judgment day, far more than the poor who did not repent until after death. For the white-hot rebukes of Jesus will burn away far more and far bigger delusions and lies in the souls of the rich. So the unrepentant rich elect will surely suffer a much greater pain than the unrepentant poor elect, before they can enter the third heaven, since the spirits of the rich elect remain so much more infantile, weak, malnourished and small on earth, and more sensitive to the searing heat from their wider, higher pile of burning delusions, lies and sins.
So now let me refute those who try to dilute these words of Jesus. When Jesus spoke these words, there definitely was no place in Jerusalem, nor anywhere else, called “The Eye of the Needle.” Jesus was not referring to a gate or natural rock archway which was difficult for a camel to pass through, but still feasible for a brave and skilled camel rider. The myth about Jesus referring to a physical location called “The Eye of a Needle,” as an illustration of how the rich must use their “free wills” to skilfully and bravely save themselves, is just another fiction invented by the religious rich and their sycophants. For they like to imagine that, if a rich person manages to obey God’s Law in the same way this particular rich young ruler also thought he was obeying God’s Law, and if those rich people give a few token donations to worthy charities, they will earn a home in heaven. And many lying flatterers are more than willing to affirm this dark delusion to the rich, and tell them that they are indeed “good” people. For those fake pastors and rabbis hope to receive a little pay for their lies. Yet Jesus clearly indicated that this zealously religious rich man was found lacking. And, no, this rich man did not actually fulfill any of the laws Jesus listed here. That rich man, in reality, broke all those laws, just as all humans do. So Jesus was not saying, “O good rich man, your life is more than good enough to earn you a place in heaven. God is very pleased with you. But if you want to be even better, give a little more to the poor and follow as My disciple.” No! Jesus definitely did not say that!
Rather, Jesus was talking about a literal needle’s eye here, the tiny opening at the blunt end of a sewing needle, the aperture where a thread is pulled through. And I am not saying this because there is absolutely no evidence of any place called the “Eye of the Needle” anywhere at that time. I am saying this because the phrase, “it is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle” was a fairly Page 1274
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well-known colloquial expression of the day. And there is proof of this. There are actually other ancient writings which use expressions just like this. Also, in context, this kind of expression was always used to indicate the impossibility of a certain kind of action. In those ancient writings, a rabbi might declare that an attempt to do a certain task, one that could never be done by anyone, was like trying to lead a large animal—such as an elephant, camel or cow—through the tiny opening in a sewing needle. So here Jesus applied a familiar Jewish expression, a colloquial phrase, to indicate the total impossibility of a rich man entering into either God’s kingdom on earth (the true church of Israel) or God’s kingdom above (the eternal home of God and His true children). Jesus wanted us to picture how utterly impossible it is for a camel to go through an eye of a sewing needle, to realize that the only way one could do this is if God chose to miraculously shrink the camel to a size smaller than a grain of sand. In other words, before a rich man could enter God’s kingdoms, he or she had to realize how insignificant they actually were, and stop accepting the false praises of those who were obligated to give them. Jesus wanted us to understand that it was far easier for God to save the poor than it was to allow a rich person, who is rewarded for sins that serve only Satan, into His kingdom.
In the texts of all three synoptic Gospels, we see that all Christ’s disciples understood this saying of Jesus in this way. All realized that Jesus, when He told them that it was easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a sewing needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, He was actually telling them that it was completely impossible for a rich man to gain eternal life through his own will and works.
Yet they all thought that the rich could obey God’s laws, and earn salvation, much easier than the poor could. For only the wealthy could afford to pay a full tithe, while the poor needed to cheat for their families survival. Only the rich could keep all God’s Sabbath and ceremonial laws with ease, since they could hire Gentiles and others to light fires on cold days, light candles when it was dark, and do all that the poor had to do without, in order to keep those laws. All the poor were forced to suffer, or else disobey God’s ceremonial and symbolic laws for the sakes of their family members and livestock. And only the wealthy were never tempted to lie, steal or compromise regarding any of God’s laws, just to get a little bread for one’s own starving wife and children. Then only the rich had enough to purchase sheep and cattle to be sacrificed at the temple, for the forgiveness of their sins.
So, if “good works” could earn eternal life, most thought the wealthy had a definite advantage. Thus, if the devout rich could not earn membership in God’s true church on earth, nor earn an eternal home in heaven above, then who could? If salvation is earned, the rich could gain it far easier than them!
We know that this is what the disciples and most other devout Jews were thinking since Matthew’s Gospel testifies: “So, after hearing [this saying], the disciples were becoming exceedingly astonished, saying, ‘Based on this, who is able to be saved?’” (Mat. 19:25, from: ἀκούσαντες δὲ οἱ
μαθηταὶ ἐξεπλήσσοντο σφόδρα λέγοντες· Τίς ἄρα δύναται σωθῆναι;, SBLGNT). Clearly they knew exactly what Jesus meant here, that it was not merely difficult for a rich person to save oneself, but utterly impossible. This is why they “were becoming exceedingly astonished” and wondered, out loud, about His logical, consequential implications, that literally no one can ever save themselves.
Likewise, when Mark interviewed eye witnesses, he received the same testimony and wrote their words down: “So they were becoming excessively astonished, saying to themselves, ‘Is even anyone able to be saved?’” (Mark 10:26, from: οἱ δὲ περισσῶς ἐξεπλήσσοντο λέγοντες πρὸς ἑαυτούς· Καὶ
τίς δύναται σωθῆναι;, SBLGNT). Then Luke also recorded a similar testimony from his own eye witnesses: “So those who heard [this saying] said, ‘Is even anyone able to be saved?’” (Luke 18:26, from: Εἶπαν δὲ οἱ ἀκούσαντες· Καὶ τίς δύναται σωθῆναι;, SBLGNT). With all these witnesses, we are certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that Jesus actually declared that it was impossible for a rich man, or anyone else, to save oneself through one’s own will and works. Yes, Jesus really did say it Page 1275
was harder for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom, either on earth or in heaven above, than it was for a real, living camel to pass through the tiny little hole at the blunt end of an ordinary sewing needle.
Then Jesus Himself confirmed that this is exactly what He meant, since He answered this question from His incredulous disciples by proclaiming: “With human beings, this [salvation] is impossible.
But, with God, all [is] possible” (Mat. 19:26, from: Παρὰ ἀνθρώποις τοῦτο ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν, παρὰ δὲ
θεῷ πάντα δυνατά, SBLGNT). Mark’s Gospel also testifies that Jesus stated this: “With human beings, [salvation is] impossible. But not with God. For all things are possible with [the one] God”
(Mark 10:27, from: Παρὰ ἀνθρώποις ἀδύνατον ἀλλ’ οὐ παρὰ θεῷ, πάντα γὰρ δυνατὰ παρὰ τῷ θεῷ, SBLGNT). Luke’s Gospel testifies the same: “Things impossible with human beings are possible with [the one] God” (Luke 18:27, from: Τὰ ἀδύνατα παρὰ ἀνθρώποις δυνατὰ παρὰ τῷ θεῷ ἐστιν, SBLGNT). So, yes, it definitely is utterly impossible for human beings, either as individuals or as corporate bodies, to save themselves. There is no existing “free will,” nor any other kind of human will, that can ever cause oneself to do enough good works, nor receive enough magic sacraments, nor say enough sincere “Sinner’s prayers,” to ever save oneself, nor anyone else, into God’s true church on earth. And there certainly can never be enough to earn an eternal home in God’s land of heaven. Yet, although it is impossible for human beings to save anyone, God can easily save us all.
Therefore, we must not seek human gods, saviours and heroes. And no amount of the devil’s own invention of money can help anyone be saved. For neither money nor man can ever help anyone become fit for God’s true church on earth. Only the personal teaching and training of one’s elect spirit to love in a just and equitable way can every save anyone. And this kind of New Covenant salvation can only be done by the Holy Spirit of our God Jesus. Only Jesus can possibly make one able to serve in His priesthood, the church. And absolutely nothing on earth can possibly ever help us become citizens of God’s eternal homeland above. For all this, we need to go directly to God Himself, and heed His Holy Spirit, doing whatever He will tell our human spirits to do, so His Spirit can teach and train our spirits for our salvation. Only He can make us fit to serve His kingdom on earth, to do His will on earth as it is done in heaven. Then, on that last day at the gates of heaven, only our God Jesus is able to further teach and train our spirits during His judgment, into completed perfection, so we can serve in our eternal home. This is not merely implied by Jesus. Rather, this is the only conclusion that any honest soul can possibly derive from Jesus’ clear, incorruptible words.
Mat. 19:27 to 20:16,
The First and the Last
“Then Peter answered, ‘Behold, we have left everything, and followed you. What then will we have?’
“Jesus said to them, ‘Most certainly I tell you that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on the throne of His glory, you also will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My name’s sake, will receive one hundred times, and will inherit eternal life. But many will be last who are first; and first who are last.
“‘For the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who was the master of a household, who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. He went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace. To them he said, “You also go into the Page 1276
Mat. 19:27 to 20:16, The First and the Last
vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.” So they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise. About the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle. He said to them, “Why do you stand here all day idle?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You also go into the vineyard, and you will receive whatever is right.”
“‘When evening had come, the lord of the vineyard said to his manager, “Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning from the last to the first.” When those who were hired at about the eleventh hour came, they each received a denarius. When the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise each received a denarius. When they received it, they murmured against the master of the household, saying, “These last have spent one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat!”
“‘But he answered one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Didn’t you agree with me for a denarius? Take that which is yours, and go your way. It is my desire to give to this last just as much as to you. Isn’t it lawful for me to do what I want to with what I own? Or is your eye evil, because I am good?” So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few are chosen’” (Mat. 19:27 to 20:16, WEB).
Many who read these teachings of Jesus like to assume false precepts which are more comfortable to their flesh than to the elect spirits who actually build up great treasures on earth through their long and faithful service to our Lord and God. For instance, some love to point out how the figurative owner of the field, who represents God, said, “Isn’t it lawful for me to do what I want to with what I own?” Then they illogically and erroneously conclude that God does not grant them stewardship over their bodies of flesh and the property that Satan’s world order has granted to their flesh, that God does not require them to do His will on earth with their bodies and with their property. For they abuse these words of our God Jesus, to claim that God here confirms that He granted us a complete and god-like ownership of our bodies and property, that God no longer owns us or our property, that God allows us to do whatever our amoral brains and lusts of flesh desire to do with our bodies and our property. And that is all they want these words to mean, nothing more. But our God Jesus did not imply any such thing, and we actually need to comprehend all the truths He did teach in these words.
Who is First and Who is Last
To understand this parable, we need to take it in context. Before Jesus gave us this parable, an elect rich man asked Jesus how he might obtain eternal life. So Jesus told him that eternal life is reached by personally guarding God’s authoritative words, in the heart. Then Jesus recited some authoritative words of God, the Ten Commandments and other Old Covenant laws, all that pertained to how God expects us to justly love everyone whom our lives might touch. In response, the rich man lied, saying he had indeed guarded all these laws of God. But, obviously, he had not guarded any of them with his spirit, not in the least. Then that man went on to ask what he still lacked, since it seems that his elect spirit still felt hungry and thirsty, as though it were dying in his heart. So Jesus said, “If you are willing to be complete, go sell the things being disposable for you and give to the financially needy, so you will have a treasure in the heavens. Then come, follow as a disciple for Me” (Mat. 19:21, ALT). After this, Jesus explained that it was utterly impossible for a rich man, or anyone else, to earn salvation, with its eternal, abundant life, by obeying God’s laws through the human will and one’s own strength of resolve. Yet God can do the impossible. Thus, salvation is only possible through the works of God within the heart. To be saved into true life, a spirit must trust in the words and inner Page 1277
works of God’s Spirit. Salvation cannot be earned by not committing sins, only by God’s own inner works causing us to do just, equitable, wise and loving works that truly fulfill all God desires for us.
But Jesus’ devout Jewish disciples still maintained some of the carnal traditions which many Jews held, regarding the Old Covenant laws. That is, they still thought that they must blindly obey God’s moral and ceremonial laws in order to earn God’s favour and eternal life. Like many others, they did not truly comprehend how Abraham and Job, long before God gave Israel the Law, received eternal life within themselves, together with assured certainty that their spirits could never die. So, logically, this meant, if one can be saved into eternal life through a resolve to not break any of the prohibitions in God’s Law, but Abraham and Job walked according to what the Holy Spirit of their Creator spoke to their spirits in their hearts, then Abraham and Job were fools. However, God Himself proved that Abraham and Job were far wiser than their adversaries who walked according to traditions or laws through the thoughts of their minds of flesh. Our Creator’s Spirit proved His approval of them, and that they were saved, by abundantly blessing the words and deeds that their spirits performed in His name, all that they said and did through their love for their fellow human beings, as both guarded the just and untainted words that God Himself spoke within their hearts. Both Abraham and Job had defended, protected and kept safe those teachings of God, as their spirits desired to work true justice and do good for their siblings in God’s family of humankind, as though those holy inclinations of their hearts were God’s Law. And that truth in them was God’s Law! So God called them righteous, those who truly fulfilled His Law, although neither read a single word of God’s Old Covenant Law.
With a traditional and carnal mindset, the disciples could not yet fully grasp salvation into eternal life, nor understand that it was impossible for any human soul to achieve it through a human will and strength. They could not yet comprehend that salvation is only possible through God’s works inside them. Yet Jesus was always telling them to go to God, so His personal counsel could build up eternal life in them, through His teaching and training of their spirits. And Jesus revealed that He is their Messiah, God in human flesh, who came to fulfill the promises of His New Covenant, especially His salvation promise to write His Law upon their hearts. Since our God Jesus loved His disciples, He would surely save them. He would fulfill His Law within their hearts, in exactly the same way He personally taught and trained the spirits of Abraham and Job. But, for now, those disciples did not realize what the promise of salvation into eternal life involved. And they did not understand that Jesus came to bring that covenant to His church of Israel as a replacement for the Old Covenant which He made with His church on Mount Sinai. So, when they heard Jesus declare that salvation could never be earned by obeying the Old Covenant Law, they thought their whole lives had been lived in vain, that all their efforts to follow God’s Law were worthless. Yet their spirits’ meditations upon God’s Law had been useful, caused and guided by God Himself, in the same way God caused and guided the spirits of Abraham and Job two thousand years before they were born. They did not understand that it was God who was answering the questions of their spirits about life, who moulded the shapes of their spirits’ minds, just as God did for Adam and Eve. They forgot how their spirits filled with joy, when their love produced good fruits of justice and equity that fulfilled God’s Law.
Thus, God’s Spirit had indeed been using the written words of His Old Covenant Law to personally teach and train their spirits for their salvation into eternal life. His Holy Spirit had been explaining that Law to their spirits and applying it in their lives, for the training of their spirits. Nevertheless, after hearing all Jesus said to the rich man, and all Jesus explained to them after the rich man left, Peter’s anxious mind of flesh asked Jesus: “You see how we forsook all things and followed as disciples for You. Consequently, what will be for us?” (Mat. 19:27, from: Ἰδοὺ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν
πάντα καὶ ἠκολουθήσαμέν σοι· τί ἄρα ἔσται ἡμῖν;, SBLGNT). To them, all their sacrifices and all Page 1278
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their efforts to do good works in obedience to God’s Law must be worth something. Yet, in their very limited understanding, it seemed as though Jesus was telling them it was all utterly worthless.
But Jesus did not actually say what they thought He was saying! And, if they understood what Jesus did proclaim, they would have rejoiced. For He granted them the blessing and opportunity to endure great hardships while labouring in God’s service. Then the love they expressed through those works for Him was their greatest reward, the joys of abundant spiritual life in their souls. The final goal of salvation is to possess that reward in full, after passing through the education of the judgment day into the third heaven. But how much better it was for them to receive a part of this reward on earth, while living in flesh? Who would want to remain in the state of the lost elect, with empty, anxious, hopeless, frustrated, angry, confused hearts, forced to suffer in ignorance together with souls bound by chains of lies and delusions? For many elect remain in that condition all their lives. Many will not be wakened, purified, corrected, enlightened by truth, healed and saved into abundant life, into a loving service of God, not until the judgment day. So, is it not far better to begin receiving some of that brightening, inwardly gratifying, abundant life of love now, while our elect spirits live in flesh on earth? Why would any elect spirit choose to starve and go thirsty while living in flesh on earth, if that spirit was able to go to God and learn to serve Him here on earth, even in the same way that spirit will eternally serve Him in heaven? Today these disciples could receive the same joy here that they will cherish in heaven. And this is why He pays the same denarius of love to the elect who have laboured for Him all their lives as He pays to the elect who served Him for only one hour on earth.
So Jesus explained that learning to fulfill God’s Law in His New Covenant way, as He personally teaches and trains one’s spirit to wisely and justly do His works of love, has its own rewards. He then said this about the sacrificial training works that His elect disciples practised on earth through this love: “I most surely reason with you [disciples], the ones having followed as disciples for Me, you also will sit upon twelve chairs [as teaching elders] governing the twelve tribes of Israel, in the rebirth [i.e., this ‘rebirth” occurs when He grants us a new eternal body made of a spiritual substance], when the Son of mankind might have sat upon the throne of His glory. Then all, as many as forsook houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for the sake of My name, will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life” (Mat. 19:28-29, from: Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν
ὅτι ὑμεῖς οἱ ἀκολουθήσαντές μοι ἐν τῇ παλιγγενεσίᾳ, ὅταν καθίσῃ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐπὶ θρόνου
δόξης αὐτοῦ, καθήσεσθε καὶ ὑμεῖς ἐπὶ δώδεκα θρόνους κρίνοντες τὰς δώδεκα φυλὰς τοῦ Ἰσραήλ.
καὶ πᾶς ὅστις ἀφῆκεν οἰκίας ἢ ἀδελφοὺς ἢ ἀδελφὰς ἢ πατέρα ἢ μητέρα ἢ γυναῖκα ἢ τέκνα ἢ ἀγροὺς
ἕνεκεν τοῦ ὀνόματός μου, ἑκατονταπλασίονα λήμψεται καὶ ζωὴν αἰώνιον κληρονομήσει, SBLGNT).
After the elect cast off their bodies of flesh and receive the counsel of our Judge on the judgment day, after their regeneration is completed, all their earthly losses will become great heavenly gain.
On earth, we do lose much throughout our lives. Then we eventually leave our body of flesh to burn with the earth on the last day. Some of our losses are physical and therefore small, such as the loss of our stewardship over a tiny piece of God’s property. Other losses are greater, such as no longer being able to enjoy the presence of dearly loved ones, either because they died or abandoned us. And some losses exist only within the mind of flesh, as we experience disgrace, slander, abuse or emotionally damaging situations, possibly in ways that might even cause physical damage to the brain, if they involve an extreme or prolonged trauma. But our worst losses are spiritual, the losses of an elect spirit wasting away in a loveless and futile life, causing that spirit to fall into an unconscious state.
And all those greatest losses are due to a lack of spiritual sustenance. The elect inwardly suffer from incessant pain and complete lethargy if they cannot or do not eat the food of truth, or stop feeding on Page 1279
their loving works for the heavenly Father. And elect spirits collapse if they do not quench their thirst daily with the living waters of God’s Holy Spirit, with the truths that His hands pour into our hearts.
But here, when Jesus spoke about those who “forsook” people and things, He was only referring to losses made willingly, all that we forsake in His “name.” If Jesus commands, wills, authorizes and uses His power to cause losses in our physical lives, He will pay us back for those losses later, in heaven, with great spiritual rewards that are worth far more than a hundred times what we lost on earth for the sake of His name. Even the loss of physical life will receive a new and eternal body in heaven, one that assists our spirits instead of resisting our spirits. But Jesus certainly was not talking about paying back a hundredfold to our temporary flesh on earth, certainly not for donating money to a fake church, especially not to any of the greedy “Churchian” preachers striving to become wealthy and powerful in Satan’s world order. And Jesus definitely does not reward us for physical losses caused by foolishness, or our losses for sins like giving financial support to lying politicians.