And here Jesus specified how short the end times would be. Our God prophesied and commanded that the entire end times would be completed within one generation’s lifespan. And we also know how God caused sinning Israel to “wander back and forth in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation, who had done evil in the sight of Yahweh, was consumed” (Num. 32:13, WEB). Thus, the time for “this generation” of elect who will see Jesus return, will most likely need to endure the great tribulation for forty years. The beast’s kingdom will be doing “evil in the sight of Yahweh” for 40 years, until they are all utterly “consumed.” These 40 years will give the sinning elect the time to repent into the truth, to turn away from the humanism of Satan’s fourth kingdom, and serve our God.
Although we have now lived through about 2,000 years of the troubling injustices prophesied for the eras of the first five seals of the last days, where the vast majority of our worst trials originated from Satan’s fourth kingdom of Rome, the years of the sixth and seventh seals will be very brief. For Jesus said those times will be like “birth pains.” Thus, the seven eras of the last days were destined to increase in intensity and frequency until the “birth” of God’s just kingdom, until our loving God Jesus would return to rule over the entire earth. He will make the unbearably bitter and deadly eras of the sixth and seventh seals (the end times) pass very quickly, in order to preserve all life on earth and “on account of [or ‘for the sake of’] the elect” (διὰ τοὺς ἐκλεκτοὺς, Mat. 24:22). So the sixth seal’s era likely will be only about 20 years or more. Then the seventh seal’s era will even shorter, and begin with seven trumpets announcing seven plagues against the world order. And all seven of these plagues will occur within a span of less than another 20 years. This will include the seven bowls of God’s wrath, which will be poured out on the beast’s kingdom for a few weeks or months during the era of the seventh trumpet. And Jesus will return immediately after an angel pours out the seventh bowl of wrath. And as Jesus descends to the Mount of Olives, He will utterly destroy all of Satan’s fourth kingdom, with all its wicked non-elect citizens. Then the millennial summer will blossom.
Now, throughout these last days, from the moment Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to us at the Pentecost until the day Jesus will return, God has willed to send blessings and curses upon all His elect trapped in lies and sins. In fact, God has done this from the beginning of time, from the days of Adam. The Father of our spirits sends spiritual and physical blessings to clearly demonstrate the goodness of His just and loving ways. But He also sends us physical tribulations to expose the destructiveness of Satan’s unjust and unloving ways. In other words, our heavenly Father has always been, and always will be, trying to cause His sinning elect to reject and turn away from evil, then repent into the truth.
But we now need to realize that this repentance of the sinning elect directly and invariably results in a dichotomization, in a spiritual and often physical separation of the elect from the non-elect. For, as the elect learn truths from Jesus, as His Holy Spirit teaches to their spirits, and all are trained to apply those truths in right ways through the Messiah’s New Covenant salvation, they spiritually mature. So these awakened elect, who are growing wiser, begin to feel inwardly compelled to utterly reject the unjust, inequitable, exploitative, ruthless and destructive ways of Satan’s world order. But the non-elect will never stop loving and defending those ways, especially humanism. And the non-elect are utterly incapable of ever developing any kind of inner desire for the just, equitable and loving ways of God. Yes, many non-elect cling to a fake Christianity or false Judaism, religions that allow them to practice their beloved lies and delusions. Yet literally all the non-elect souls hate true, Page 1631
biblical Christianity and Judaism. For every non-elect spirit was born to love only darkness, to grow and nurture a deep cherishing for a particular sub-set of lies and delusions, which each fervently guards in one’s heart. But their love and dedication to a subset of darkness causes conflict, enmity and separation between the non-elect individual and all who love truth—as well as between each non-elect individual and all the other non-elect souls who cherish different and opposing sub-sets of lies and delusions. And there are infinite lies and delusions, so there have always been an infinite number of factions among the non-elect in Satan’s world order. Nevertheless, literally all of the non-elect hate the awakened elect and, if they cannot enslave the elect, they will try to murder the elect.
It will soon be impossible for the elect and non-elect to dwell together in peace, except in the places where the awakened elect rule, make just laws and suppress the lawless inclinations of the non-elect.
For, as the elect begin to know and accept the truth, no one will be able to convince any of the non-elect to repent into those wise principles of love, justice, equity and guilt-inducing realities. So all the non-elect will clash with that truth, and with the elect who serve that truth. The division between the elect and non-elect will become permanent, irreconcilable and absolute. And wherever the non-elect are able to rule, in their hierarchies which only allow psychopaths to rise into their highest positions of authority, the elect will be left with only two options, to either aid and abet evil as abused slaves, or allow themselves to be murdered. For all the factions of non-elect will unite in their attempts to destroy God by eliminating His elect children along with all His truths. No matter how much their opposing lies and delusions cause them to war against one another, those factious non-elect shall be willing to form alliances to oppress and kill the elect. For it terrifies them when they see the elect unite in any truth, when the elect practise the just and loving ways of God, since truth severely hinders their ability to lie and gain wealth through fraud. So, as elect spirits mature and unite in the truths of God, and expose realities, including the vain delusions of the non-elect, then begin to undo evil and build up God’s just and loving kingdom on earth, inevitable conflicts will arise between the non-elect and the elect, irreconcilable differences leading to outright wars.
Consequently, Jesus warned us that the non-elect, especially the many factions of Satan’s divided fourth Roman kingdom, surely will persecute and war against us, all His awakened elect disciples throughout the last days, and especially during the end times. Daniel also prophesied that the beast of the end times, who is the evil messiah of the devil’s fourth kingdom, will mercilessly war against the true church of Israel, which God revives during the era of the sixth seal. During the last three and a half years of the beast’s life on earth, he “shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High; and he shall think to change the times and the law” (Dan. 7:25, WEB). That is, that beast will try to undo the prophesied end “times.” In his arrogance, he will think he is so great and powerful that he can defeat God Himself. In his delusional mind, he will dream that he can nullify the “times” that God predetermined for his own destruction, even his eternal fate.
And, naturally, that beast will also try to nullify God’s Law, all God’s requirements for equitable justice with mercy and compassion, all that is worked through a God-like love. For, like Satan, the beast will want all to worship him, to esteem and serve only him, and will try to make the masses do this through his typically humanistic laws, by terrorizing them into submission. That beast will even try to return to the pagan humanistic laws of ancient Rome, which have been eroded and even completely nullified through biblical influences prevailing throughout the world during the previous two millenniums. The beast will restore Roman class systems based on the worship of human beings, especially the worship of himself. Then the beast will grant only his citizens, those who blindly worship him and take his mark on their foreheads or hands, the right to exploit, oppress, enslave, imprison and murder non-citizens, with total impunity. The beast’s kingdom will be much Page 1632
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like Hitler’s Germany. Nor will the beast “regard ... the desire of women” (Dan. 11:37), but revive the old Roman laws and traditions which defined women as “non-persons,” as the properties of male citizens, subject to all of the penalties of all laws, but with absolutely no rights granted to “persons.”
As Jesus’ disciples were hearing about all the future persecutions, wars and tribulations coming in the last days, they likely worried that the non-elect would eventually destroy them and every trace of God’s Word in the entire world. For this has always been the ambition of Satan’s humanistic fourth kingdom. After all, their church of Israel saw how Antiochus IV Epiphanes—a prototype of the beast that Daniel prophesied about in 11:20-31, a ruler from Satan’s third humanistic kingdom during the days of Israel’s Maccabaean Revolt—tried to destroy all copies of the Scriptures and completely eliminate the worship of God everywhere in his kingdom. So they knew that Satan’s fourth kingdom of Rome would try to do the same during its entire existence, especially during the seven-year rule of the beast. Therefore, while His disciples were considering all this, Jesus added a remark, likely after a short pause, to comfort and encourage those disciples, and all His future disciples. Jesus basically said the same thing God did through Daniel, that no mater how much the beast will want “to change the times and the law,” he will fail. For God predestined the beast’s judgment and condemnation, set it in stone. God would surely “take away his dominion,” causing the tribulations of the end times “to consume and to destroy it to the end” (Dan. 7:26, WEB). Regarding the fourth humanistic kingdom’s attempt to destroy every trace of God’s Word on earth, and replace it with Roman traditions, Jesus told us: “The sky and the earth will perish, yet My reasoning words most definitely will not perish”
(Mat. 24:35, from: ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ παρελεύσεται, οἱ δὲ λόγοι μου οὐ μὴ παρέλθωσιν, SBLGNT).
Then Jesus also added this explanation: “Now, regarding that day and hour, no one knew it [in the past, with the effect that knowledge of it now remains unknown]. Neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son [knew it], [none,] except the Father only” (Mat. 24:36, from: Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης
καὶ ὥρας οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι τῶν οὐρανῶν οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατὴρ μόνος, SBLGNT).
Here the verb is οἶδεν is always a past form of εἴδω, indicating some kind of knowledge which had been acquired in the past and now remains known. But Jesus used a negative with this perfect tense verb, to indicate that no one ever had any knowledge of the day and hour of His second advent, except His heavenly Father. Of course, the Spirit of God in the body of Jesus is one with the Father, and therefore did know that day and hour. Yet that Spirit in Jesus refused to reveal the day and hour to His own mind of flesh. So His flesh could not reveal it to His disciples. For Jesus knew that it would benefit His disciples more if they did not know this yet. The Holy Spirit of Jesus and the Father had a good reason for not revealing the day and hour, to work an inner blessing for us all.
Now some might say that God revealed the day through Daniel. For God told Daniel that “the end”
of the beast and his fourth kingdom, together with the “fulfillment of wonders” (which would refer to the Messiah returning to rule the earth), would occur 1,290 days after the beast stopped sacrifices in the third temple and committed an abomination there (Dan. 12:11). But, as previously mentioned, this number of Jewish days actually indicated between 1,288 and 1,290 days or 24-hour periods, and could refer to any hour within those three days. Thus, this ambiguous number of days would not allow God’s persecuted, suffering, awakened elect, who had also endured all the days of the end times which occurred before the beast was revealed and began his seven-year reign, to stop fighting against that beast and lay down their arms. They would not be able to enter their eternal Sabbath rest until the very moment their Messiah returned, until they saw Him and believed in Him. So it certainly would have been a help and a comfort to those elect, while enduring the tribulations of the end times, to know the day and hour of Jesus’ second advent. But that would weaken their resolve against the beast. And, after they see the beast rise to power, after he increases the slaughter of elect Page 1633
souls during the last three and a half years of his reign, and especially after that beast commits the abomination causing desolation in the temple, when times are hardest, they will know the week of His return. Then knowing that Jesus will destroy the beast and stop his severe persecution within 1,290 days will be a great comfort. But then the saints will also want to know the precise hour of the Messiah’s return, since a delay of even one hour could mean the deaths of hundreds or thousands of their brothers and sisters. Still, even then, God will not reveal it, since it is better for none to know.
So why exactly did Jesus intentionally state that no one will know the precise day and hour? Well, Jesus was obviously alluding to their need to live by faith. We must learn to trust God, and always remember that our Father alone determines when our flesh will live and die. Our lives and deaths shall not determined by the wills of men, not by the will of the beast, although he will continuously claim that his will decides whether we live or die. In reality, Jesus will come, and we will either live or die, at precisely the right time. And, throughout history, many other criminals have been exactly like that future beast, thinking and saying the same things. So, until Jesus returns, we will continue to see all kinds of human monsters believing they are gods whose wills must be done on the earth.
Nevertheless, in reality, all those wanna-be human gods are merely manipulated puppets of the devil, and the devil is a chained, closely watched prisoner of God, who cannot move a finger without God’s permission. So the precise number of elect who will die before Jesus returns was ordained from the first second of time, from the moment God created the material space-time continuum. And literally all earthly life was appointed for death, because all their spirits reside here temporarily. Then we should also remember that Jesus will return with millions of the elect who were murdered by the beast, all who stood with faith in God and in His Word. All these will stand with Him on the earth when He returns, in restored earthly bodies, then dwell on earth throughout the entire millennium.
So, during the last days, and especially during the end times, God will educate His elect in a more deep and effective way than He did during the Old Covenant times and before that. Each season and each generation in each season, since the day God first created human spirits in His image, has seen an increase in the level of God’s earthly education, but an higher level of culpability for the lies and sins with that knowledge. And the generation of the end times will receive more knowledge about God’s kind of life and faith than any past generation. Not even the apostles received as much as that last generation, the one who lives to see Christ’s second advent, will receive. And everyone living during those end times will go through a “litmus test,” to reveal whether each one has either an elect or non-elect spirit. And those great tribulations will strengthen either good or evil in human spirits.
Those with strong faith will often tremble in the end times, as they war against the ruthless forces of injustice sent by various factions within Satan’s humanistic fourth kingdom. Yet the faith of mature and well-taught elect spirits will never allow themselves to lay down their spiritual weapons of truth and surrender. For elect spirits who know and trust God realize that the cost of losing the ability to practice God’s just and loving ways in their land will result in the destruction of their people and themselves. So they will fight, even to the death, knowing their eternal spirits cannot possibly die.
Yet God’s enemies will never be able to pluck out a hair on the heads of their spirits, nor their Head Teacher, and cast it out of God’s kingdom, nor even move one thing out of place. For all the ordained and appointed times will surely come. And God promised that 100% of all who dwell in flesh on earth will experience suffering and death. There cannot be an exception, since God did not create the earth as an eternal home for any living spirit, not the spirits of plants, animals or humans. Only His spiritual realm was made to be an eternal home for all the spirits He has created since the beginning of time. And literally all spirits know it. All plant spirits, animal spirits, elect angels, elect human spirits, fallen angels and non-elect human spirits know this. Of course, sleeping human spirits, elect Page 1634
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and non-elect, remain too suppressed by their flesh to admit it openly to their minds of flesh. But this does not negate the fact that every spirit knows that it came from and now dwells in a spiritual realm.
One more thing needs to be mentioned about this Scripture. Jesus reminded us of how we look for the budding of trees as a sign of the approaching summer. And He used this as an example to illustrate how He wants us, His future disciples, to look for the signs of His parousia and the approaching summer of Him ruling over the whole earth with His loving justice. Specifically, in Matthew 24:32, His parable (παραβολή, “narrative or saying ... designed to illustrate a truth especially through comparison or simile,” BDAG3) was about a “fig tree” (συκῆ). Jesus told us:
“When its branch already might have become tender and the buds swell, you people are knowing the summer [is] near” (from: ὅταν ἤδη ὁ κλάδος αὐτῆς γένηται ἁπαλὸς καὶ τὰ φύλλα ἐκφύῃ, γινώσκετε
ὅτι ἐγγὺς τὸ θέρος, SBLGNT). Our God Jesus used the way the farmers and gardeners in Israel would watch this particular kind of tree, the fig tree, for signs of summer’s arrival. Jesus used the buds of a fig tree to teach us how to watch for the great tribulation during the end times, so we will be able to prepare for it in our hearts, minds and bodies. A fig tree’s buds will have characteristics resembling events occurring just prior to the terrifying events that shall destroy Satan’s unjust humanistic kingdoms of evil spiritual and physical power, followed by Jesus blessing the earth with His warm, gentle, fruitful, thousand-year-long growing season of His just, loving rule over all lands.
Now there are more than 700 varieties of fig trees and shrubs growing wild, or as some of our hardy and disease-resistant domesticated fruit crops in warmer climates (growing zones 7-10) throughout the world. And the common cultivated varieties, with edible fruits, are usually propagated by merely cutting off a branch while the tree is in a dormant or semi-dormant stage of growth (i.e., while it is still leafless in the early spring), then simply sticking that branch in moist soil wherever one wants a new fig tree to grow. So, since it is so easy to plant fig trees, they were one of the first domesticated crops. In terms of humanistic timelines, some say it was planted as a crop more than 11,400 years ago, almost 2,000 years before humans began to plant grain and vegetable crops. Even the very first conscious worshippers of the Creator God, Adam and Eve, who were farmers growing grain crops and tending sheep, wove a garment of fig leaves to cover their nakedness after they realized their shame (Gen. 3:7). Since this occurred before they were driven out of the Garden of Eden, figs were likely a crop tended by them in that garden. And fig trees have always been an important crop in the land of Israel, before and after the days of the patriarchs. Thus, all Christ’s disciples in the agrarian community of Israel would have known exactly what Jesus implied in His parable about a fig tree.
So what exactly did this parable of Jesus want us to do? Well, first we need to understand the attributes of fig trees in the spring. That is, when fig trees “wake up” from winter dormancy, sap flows in its branches and makes them “tender,” since its leaf buds start to swell with new growth between early and late spring, which makes those juicy buds most susceptible to hungry predators.
But they do not come out of their dormant state until the soil warms to the right temperature. And figs also need to be sufficiently watered by the spring rains (or by human beings) to begin their summer growth. They do not bud until they receive enough moisture in their roots. Yet fig trees do not need all that much moisture, since they are capable of storing water from previous rainfalls in their roots, like many other plants indigenous to arid or semi-arid climates. So the principal factor that stimulate the budding and new growth of fig trees in the spring is the temperature of the soil, when the soil becomes adequately warmed by the sun for at least a certain number of hours per day.
Thus, by the time fig trees wake up, it is during the summer’s peak growing season for most crops.
Other species of trees wake up too early in the spring, long before the last frost, too early before the growing season should actually begin. So other trees are not good at indicating when it is safe to Page 1635
plant or transplant the less cold-hardy crops. And other plants grow in damp areas, or store excessive amounts of moisture in their roots. So those cannot indicate when there is adequate moisture in the ground to plant their crops, nor when there is enough moisture in the ground to cultivate. And it is very difficult to cultivate when the soil is too dry. Some moisture is required in the soil to soften it, or to prevent it the dry dust and organic particles in the soil from blowing away. On the other hand, it is impossible to cultivate when the soil is too wet. But excessive moisture is far easier to visually detect. Thus, to know when the soil is just right, farmers and gardeners often relied on signs from the kinds of perennials which: (1) grew on the cultivated land where their other crops grew; (2) began to wake up after the last frost, when the soil temperature became warm enough to grow their essential food crops; and (3) only woke up when the soil was moist enough to cultivate, yet did not require soaking rains to get enough water. And one of the best kinds of these reliable perennials was the fig tree. Fig trees told the farmers and gardeners when to prepare seed beds and begin to plant. In other words, the fig tree provided the most reliable sign for the preparations required for summer crops.
Consequently, when our God Jesus used the fig tree as an illustration of how He expects us to watch for the signs of the end times and the “summer” of His fruitful kingdom on earth, He was telling us to do two things: Watch the reliable signs and, when we see them, we must then make all necessary
preparations. We will need to know when the great tribulations will soon fall upon us so we can prepare, primarily by repenting into the truths about God and His Word. We will need to stop living wretched little self-indulgent lives which exploit others and God’s natural creations, stop relying on the devil’s invention of money, and start living modest lives that justly and equitably provide for all our people and the needs of nature. During those worst times in earth’s history, we will need Jesus to teach and train our infantile spirits into a high level of true wisdom and maturity. Otherwise, we will not be able to maintain any kind of just and God-like love in our spirits, nor be found worthy to live when He comes to rule the earth. We must be like the diligent farmers who watch the fig tree for signs of tender swelling buds, so they can start to cultivate and sow seeds, but the kind that will also pay very little attention to spring growth in other plants. When we see the “winter” of the last days fading, when the chaotic storms of the end times indicate that the summer of Christ’s rule is drawing near, we must more diligently and correctly watch for the signs that the biblical prophecies have repeatedly declared to be reliable, but ignore all the sensationalist rhetoric which does not actually indicate the best time to start plowing the grounds where the previous season’s crops grew. In other words, throughout this long winter since Christ’s first advent, we gradually prepared for His second advent by cleaning up some weeds, and by covering exposed soils with nutrient rich compost and mulch. But, now that the end times are approaching, we must begin to engage in more radical works.
We must learn to read the signs of the season in a way that truly helps us prepare for and plant the right crops at the right times. Now, in warmer climates like Israel, there are also important winter crops, meaning that we must continuously do the good, just and loving works of our God Jesus at all times in the last days. But the critical summer crops must be planted at the right time or they might fail. If we do not, our failures may result in great loss or even death. And only the rightly interpreted biblical prophecies are reliable signs, while other world events will not be reliable indicators for us.
Since many wise and fruitful works need to be done before the end times begin, even difficult and costly works that tear up the ground where previous crops grew, we must now do a lot of honest soul searching, prayers and Bible studies, where we actually let the real Jesus do His real salvation works of genuinely teaching and training our spirits. And, in order to make any kind of progress in all this, we must also ignore the sensationalistic preaching of fake prophets and Bible scholars who make their money through fear-mongering, by getting dupes to purchase their books and sermons about Page 1636
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irrelevant current events. For their advice on how to prepare for the future is utterly worthless, often extremely harmful nonsense, like telling people to purchase weapons and build fortresses in the wilderness, with hoards of rations—which will simply make those cultic groups into the first and foremost targets of violent, plundering gangs. Instead, let elect spirits learn to receive the concepts that pour into their spirits from Jesus’ Holy Spirit, the truths which He does not “speak” in earthly languages, the truths which our spirits can learn from Him in whole and for eternity. Let the elect learn to see the “big picture,” the building of God’s world-wide kingdom on earth. Let them train to walk according to the counsel of Jesus, which He transfers directly into the minds of their spirits, so they can manage their minds of flesh rightly. Let the elect prepare by repenting into His truths and realities, so all can learn to work together in perfect unity, within His will, wisdom and power. The elect need to build communities with strong democratic governments that realize all human beings are equal sinners, and that Christ alone is the Head of every individual. We must learn to fulfill His just, loving Law to survive, and not let our love evaporate. We seldom need to know how to conduct strategic warfare with weapons of Satan’s world order—although Jesus may tell us when the time for physical warfare might be necessary, since there is a time for all things under the sun. Above all, the elect need to become a wise, strong, free people who stand upright against humanistic world powers.
Mat. 24:37-44,
The Unexpected Time
“As the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship, and they didn’t know until the flood came, and took them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
“Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and one will be left; two women grinding at the mill, one will be taken and one will be left. Watch therefore, for you don’t know in what hour your Lord comes. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched, and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore also be ready, for in an hour that you don’t expect, the Son of Man will come” (Mat. 24:37-44, WEB).
Again, Jesus warned us here. Our God and Messiah wants us to watch for the signs of His parousia, for the eras when He begins His just judgment against the devil’s humanistic fourth kingdom which has corrupted the world, for the days when He will tear it all down, so He might justly rule over all the earth. Then, when we see the end times approaching, we will know that the very last generation to suffer under Satan’s world order is being born, and we need to prepare for His imminent advent.
The consequences of not heeding this warning, the losses that will be incurred through an ignorance of the time, and by not preparing for His arrival, will be dire. Many unaware and unprepared shall die, just like the heedless multitudes during the days of Noah’s flood. Even the few uninformed elect who do survive will suffer greatly, like victims of ruthless robbers who have their personal lives shattered by them. And currently, the humanistic churches, and certainly the secular world, does not know much of anything that the biblical prophecies declare about those end times. But make no mistake, the era of the seventh seal will kill at least two thirds of the entire world’s population before Jesus arrives. Then Jesus will kill about half of the survivors, all the citizens of the humanistic world order. So that surely will be the worst time in earth’s history, worse than most dystopian movies, and without movie-like heroes to save the elect from the psychopathic armies of the beast and his allies.
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Since we see the signs of the fifth seal’s era coming to a close, we can be certain that the abrupt beginning of the end times, with the sixth seal’s world-wide earthquakes and meteors striking the earth, is near. So we can no longer afford to ignore the biblical prophecies, especially about the end times. We must acknowledge that, throughout the history of the world, our Creator progressively revealed truths to humankind, first many truths written in His creations, the the books of the Bible to many successive generations, then more interpretations of both through His Holy Spirit after His first advent of walking in a human body among us. So He even granted end-time prophecies to Adam. God has been constantly warning mankind and always granting prophecies about the tribulations of a future time, about His predestined time of crushing the head of Satan and totally eliminating that devil’s presence on earth, together with all the loveless non-elect born of him. But, above all, from the beginning, our God promised the just, equitable and loving elect spirits living on earth that those horrors would be followed by His own loving, just and peaceful rule over all life.
We know what the end times will be like. It will begin with world-wide earthquakes and meteors striking the earth like bombs. This will cripple all the humanistic financial, political and military systems of Satan’s current world-wide Roman Empire. The result will be chaos, but also a worldwide revival of His true biblical and purely theistic church of awakened elect. After about 20 years of this, many lands will have reorganized, including a Roman kingdom that follows the devil’s purest form of humanism. But there will be other humanistic empires too, as well as some truly Christian nations scattered throughout the world. Once most nations grow stable, a nation located east of the beast’s Roman European empire and Israel will start a massive war. That nation will send out an army of 200 million, riding on figurative “horses,” to slaughter a third of the world’s remaining population. Then more localized and world-wide disasters and plagues will crush millions of other spirits and physical lives. After about 20 years of those seventh seal plagues, which include the tribulations of the seven trumpets and seven bowls of wrath, Jesus will return to restore all the earth.
We know how myopic the eyes of human beings can be, and how small they can make their own worlds, as they insulate their thoughts and self-indulgent lifestyles from realities existing all around them. Most minds of flesh work very hard to shut out all the suffering and death caused by their own pursuit of comfort and pleasures, locking themselves within a cherished delusion, inside an imagined perception of themselves and all the rest of the world, in a safe little dark dungeon of blind ignorance created by the desires of their flesh. But the elect among those fools must repent, and no longer allow their flesh to imprison their spirits. The elect must no longer ignore the anguished screams of their beleaguered siblings in the family of humankind, and stop indirectly or even directly causing the pains and deaths of their family members. At the present time, their flesh oppresses their spirits, and makes their hearts so inactive that their spirits exist in an almost a completely unconscious state.
But their spirits are the only parts of their beings which are capable of love and justice, though they will not let their spirits face the pain of empathizing with their dying brothers, sisters and children.
For their entire focus is upon things of the world which comfort, entertain and give pleasures to their flesh. Since their elect spirits are unconscious, they have no interest in matters of the spirit, and never take the time to learn the deep complexities of true justice and equitable laws. Those elect become utterly incapable of building up inner treasures to take with them to their eternal lives above.
We have all seen how—even in times of the worst crises, like world wars, killing plagues and deadly famines—a huge portion of the people can be found still greedily grasping for personal wealth and power, at a great cost to other human lives. Exploiting the tragedies occurring all around them, and ignoring all the tortuous deaths they cause in their selfish pursuits, many refuse to make any of the necessary sacrifices of time, labour and goods to do any truly just works that could help their Page 1638
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suffering neighbours. Their spirits completely ignore all the personal commands of our Creator God, when He tells their hearts to undo the psychopathic works of the devil, and build up His just, loving kingdom, by doing His will on earth in the same way His merciful and compassionate will is done in heaven. Then all their false humanistic churches, led by Satan’s children, also remain far too busy exploiting and destroying, together with the devil’s secular children, to rebuke injustices. Instead, those fake churches multiply irrational fears, by inventing lies to aid and abet their secular despots, pretending that non-existent threats will surely harm or kill them if their blind dupes refuse to help their self-serving causes. For those fakes also make their biggest profits from the pain and blood of the victims of secular injustices, and all those liars are the only actual threats against all the people.
Most of humanity has always lived like this, in repeated self-destructive and other-destructive cycles throughout history, with only a few brief breaks between the bloodshed and chaos. And most will continue to live like this until Jesus comes, although more of God’s kind of loving justice is shining through in every subsequent generation. And we need to realize this, that only if God awakens elect spirits, can there be any seeing, realistic, empathizing, wise and truly responsible people in times of extreme trouble. The others cannot genuinely help, not while they remain blind, deluded, unloving, selfishly ambitious, foolish and negligent. The main point God proved in days of Noah was that all people begin life as terrible sinners, who walk only according to their flesh and refuse to love God’s truths, so that “every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil” (Gen.
6:5, WEB). And message of that story is definitely true. Whether one believes God flooded the whole world, or just the entire civilization known to Noah, what happened at that time rings true.
Everything that happened during that flood has always been occurring in the same way throughout history, throughout all the other major disasters. Whole nations repeatedly place all their faith in psychopathic liars who exploit them, although the spirits of their “leaders” war against the truths and loving justice of God. Then they kill everyone and everything in their lives, including themselves.
For their “leaders” teach those dupes to suppress all thoughts from the minds of their spirits, and let only their thoughts from their manipulated minds of amoral flesh rule their lives. But soon the days will be far worse than those times of the great flood. So now let elect spirits learn to heed their God.
Most people on earth have always been far more concerned about the pleasures of their daily lives than about the truth which exposes their own beloved lies and sins. Most ignore the evil they allow or directly cause, even as their ignorance and sin is about to destroy them. And most will do this in the end times too. “For, as in the days before the cataclysm [i.e., the great flood], they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving [daughters] in marriage, until Noah entered into the box [Noah’s giant
‘box’ or ‘ark’ was a massive vessel able to remain stable in the flood waters]. So they did not realize [their end had come] until the cataclysm carried away even every one. In this way also will be the parousia of the Son of mankind” (Mat. 24:38-39, from: ὡς γὰρ ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ταῖς πρὸ τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ
τρώγοντες καὶ πίνοντες, γαμοῦντες καὶ γαμίζοντες, ἄχρι ἧς ἡμέρας εἰσῆλθεν Νῶε εἰς τὴν κιβωτόν, καὶ οὐκ ἔγνωσαν ἕως ἦλθεν ὁ κατακλυσμὸς καὶ ἦρεν ἅπαντας, οὕτως ἔσται καὶ ἡ παρουσία τοῦ υἱοῦ
τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, SBLGNT). During the end times, most will not think about the masses dying in the world, nor consider that God’s wrath will soon destroy their unjust humanistic empires, not until the moment Jesus comes to slay their own self-indulgent, greedy and lawless bodies of loveless flesh.
From the beginning to the end of the end times, there will be very friendly and nice non-elect who will confidently assure their dupes that only they can save them from the coming flood, if only their dupes will place more faith in their self-serving evil words than in the words of God. Yet not one of those non-elect ever had spirits which were even remotely capable of hearing the truths which God openly reveals in His creations and in His Word. Not one has ever understood that God has already Page 1639
begun their destruction on the day they were born, and will nullify all the delusions and lies they so diligently create throughout their lives. So all those charming little psychopaths will continue to sacrifice all their strength and intelligence to serve as the exploiting and self-serving human gods of their dupes, until they utterly destroy their dupes and themselves, along with countless innocent human and animal victims. Those non-elect have always served their hellish father, just to gain some meaningless financial and political rewards for themselves. And each non-elect soul dedicates his or her life to the cause of rebuilding Satan’s world order, after each plague of God’s wrath has torn it down. Each zealously strives against God, to uphold what God will soon be casting to the ground, especially their beloved humanistic hierarchies of the devil’s world-wide spiritual fourth kingdom.
On the other hand, God is about to awaken a much larger percentage of the elect, when the end times begin. As soon as the era of the sixth seal indicates the generation that will see Christ’s return, those elect, who have been prepared by the proclaim the true Gospel of Christ’s New Covenant salvation, shall rally to form just, honest, equitable and loving nations. The Holy Spirit of Jesus will awaken huge numbers of elect throughout the earth, so they may teach and judge in service to their God and their people. As Jesus personally teaches and trains their revived spirits, they will form true churches and even some loving Christian democracies in various nations around the world, even in lands like Egypt, bordering Israel. But not all the elect will come to Jesus for His salvation at that time. Many will remain caught up in the lies and sins of Satan’s world order, through false humanistic churches known as the Great Prostitute of Babylon and her daughters. Some deceived elect shall still be too ignorant and brainwashed to repent immediately, nor even as they see the beast begin his seven-year reign, not until mere days before the beast burns the Great Prostitute, just prior to the return of Jesus.
For the prophecies of the Scriptures tell us that, shortly before Jesus returns, He will call out to those still unrepentant elect, commanding: “Come out of her, My people, that you have no participation in her sins, and that you don’t receive of her plagues, for her sins have reached to the sky, and God has remembered her iniquities” (Rev. 18:4-5, WEB). After that, God’s dichotomization will be complete, and Jesus will be ready to return. After He separates the elect from the non-elect, and the religious fourth kingdom, with all its fake churches, has heaped up its sins “to the sky,” that devil’s world order will be permanently destroyed. Jesus will have saved the last of the elect who were appointed for repentance into the truth while in flesh on earth. At that time, after the full number of Gentiles have entered His true church of Israel, Jesus will return to Israel and enter the third temple. There He will rule as the King of Israel and the entire world, where His true priesthood will advise all nations about all the laws of all lands, to build up loving, just, equitable justice and peace over all the earth.
Therefore, throughout the end times, there will be elect and non-elect souls innovating and labouring in desperate attempts to rebuild destroyed buildings and grow crops for food. This means both will be working side by side, even after the complete dichotomization of the elect from the non-elect. For God does not separate physically. Rather, His Holy Spirit separates spirits, one from the other. So the elect spirits will esteem and serve only the real God at that time—the minds of their spirits will worship their spirits’ Father and Jesus in genuine realities revealed by God to their spirits. But the spirits of the non-elect will worship only themselves and other human beings through the delusions and lies which their spirits cherish most. And, since physical tasks will need to be done, the non-elect will will hire or enslave elect workers to labour beside them. Likewise, the elect will tolerate non-elect workers labouring beside them, as long as those non-elect do not commit any major crimes.
This is why Jesus told us that, at the moment He returns, we will see, “At that time, two will be in the farm field. One is being taken into close counsel and one is being forsaken. Two [women] are grinding at the mill. One is being taken into close counsel and one is being forsaken” (Mat. 24:40-Page 1640
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41, from: τότε δύο ἔσονται ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ, εἷς παραλαμβάνεται καὶ εἷς ἀφίεται· δύο ἀλήθουσαι ἐν τῷ
μύλῳ, μία παραλαμβάνεται καὶ μία ἀφίεται, SBLGNT). Here the verb παραλαμβάνω means “to take into close association, take (to oneself), take with/along,” and one would do so for various reasons, including “private instruction” and “with regard to teaching and preaching” (BDAG3). Then, in these two verses, theological passive forms of this verb are used. So they indicate that our God Jesus will be taking some into “close association,” to personally instruct, teach, counsel and advise them.
Just before Jesus arrives, He will instruct and counsel the elect survivors on earth, advising them about what they need to do. As the elect are labouring at their daily tasks with the non-elect, His Holy Spirit will teach, counsel and warn those elect. But Jesus will abandon or forsake the non-elect, leave them in total ignorance about their well-deserved fates. For the non-elect will have become exceedingly cruel and wilful by that time, even psychopathic. And remember the immediate context of these statements (in vv. 40-41). Immediately before this, Jesus said: “So [those who did not heed the preaching and warnings of Noah] did not realize [their end had come] until the cataclysm carried away even every one. In this way also will be the parousia of the Son of mankind” (Mat. 24:39, ALT). So all whose spirits are not brought near to the Holy Spirit of Jesus, who are not counselled by Him, will not know He is coming and will be “carried away” into death, just like everyone who did not heed the counsel of God before the day He killed them all in the flood. That is, all the non-elect are destined to die at Christ’s return. As we see in this entire teaching (Mat. 24:37-44), and in the Revelation (Rev. 19:17-18,21), when Jesus returns, and is still in the sky above Israel, He will kill literally everyone belonging to Satan’s world order, from the least to the greatest. And each non-elect soul will have no idea that his or her death will occur on that day, since not one will have been warned by God’s counsel, and none will dain to heed the warnings of the elect working beside them.
Look at how the Revelation says all the non-elect will die: “The remainder had been killed with the long-sword of the One riding upon the horse, that [long-sword] which departed out of His mouth”
(Rev. 19:21, from: οἱ λοιποὶ ἀπεκτάνθησαν ἐν τῇ ῥομφαίᾳ τοῦ καθημένου ἐπὶ τοῦ ἵππου τῇ
ἐξελθούσῃ ἐκ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ, SBLGNT). Jesus will ride a white horse while He is still in the sky, as He is descending toward the earth. But He dismounts at some point and lands, on foot, upon the Mount of Olives. Therefore, this prophecy is saying that all the non-elect survivors at that time will die before Jesus even sets a foot on the earth. It also states that all will be killed with a “long-sword” (ῥομφαία) departing from His “mouth” (στόμα). This particular kind of long, broad sword was used by Rome’s enemies, not by the Romans themselves. So here Jesus is portrayed as an enemy of the devil’s fourth kingdom of Rome, as an enemy of the spiritual Roman Empire. More importantly, this figurative language means that Jesus will simply command the non-elect to die, with the words of His mouth. Jesus is God, bearing the power and authority to grant life or take it away, the power to put life-giving spirits into bodies of flesh or tear them out. So Jesus will descend and command all non-elect spirits to depart from their bodies of flesh, which will cause their brains and bodies to stop functioning within seconds. All will drop dead where they stand, no matter how healthy their self-indulgent bodies might be. And, since the non-elect shall make up about half of the earth’s population at that time, this means that about half of the people on the earth will drop dead.
Also, in that same verse in Revelation 19:21, it adds that “all the birds had been gorged from their flesh” (from: πάντα τὰ ὄρνεα ἐχορτάσθησαν ἐκ τῶν σαρκῶν αὐτῶν, SBLGNT). Here the apostle John alluded to what he also heard here, when Jesus taught about the last days in this conversation that Matthew wrote about (Mat. 24:4-44). When Jesus told Matthew, John and the other disciples that He would visibly return, He said, “Wherever might be the corpse, there the carrion-eating birds will be gathered together in one place” (Mat. 24:28, ALT). Jesus’ Holy Spirit told both Matthew and Page 1641
John to tell us that, on the day He returns, He Himself will personally command the spirits of life to depart from literally all the living non-elect bodies remaining on earth. Consequently, so many will die that there will be far too many corpses to bury or burn. So the carrion-eating birds will do their God-ordained works, and set out to clean up that rotting filth, by consuming all of that dead flesh.
These eschatological teachings from Jesus also indicate that all the attempts by false humanistic churches to create theocracies ruled by their own fake priests and pastors were actually deeply evil, since all of them tried to usurp the rule of God in the hearts of His people. For our God Jesus, and Him alone, will judge and condemn the non-elect, not humans. There never has been, and never will be, a need for armies of deluded religious zealots to murder and plunder those whom their lying little fake priests and pastors call “infidels.” For literally all humans are intentional sinners with ignorant and infantile spirits and self-seeking, easily manipulated minds of amoral flesh. Thus, no infantile spirit of a human judge will ever be able to determine, without God’s express command, that any other sinner is either a true elect sibling or a non-elect “infidel.” The state of election or non-election shall always remain outside the boundaries of human judgment, and must be left to the only One who is able to judge spirits rightly. We must learn that there is only one Judge of every human being.
So, logically, until Jesus comes to judge against all the non-elect in the world, as well as against all their fake hierarchical humanistic churches and systems, it will never be remotely possible for any human beings to establish a theocracy. God has only appointed certain men to judge the behaviours of other human beings, and humbly, knowing that they could even be wrong about this relatively simple kind of judgment. This is why God has always demanded that His true church of Israel must allow freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, why He commanded us to judge only those who willingly claim to be members of God’s priesthood, and not to judge outsiders. If a member clearly lies or sins, we are to expel that one, possibly hand that one over to Satan for the deluding and destruction of his or her flesh. But, at the same time, we must always remain open to accept that sinner back into our church if he or she repents into the truth and clearly bears fruits of repentance.
If churches want their entire kingdoms to be one big church-ruled theocracy, they will accommodate all the non-elect, by transforming the worship of God into a thoroughly diluted and fake worship, consisting of mere physical ritual that even the worst non-elect psychopaths can perform. They will need to corrupt their churches in a way where none in them genuinely worship the real God in their spirits and in His truths. Instead, those theocracies must worship strictly through the flesh and in lies.
Thus, the true elect will no longer be able to truly worship the real God in those churches. Rather, all the elect will be forced to practise an unjust hypocrisy, where they parrot creeds with their mouths of flesh through fears of the flesh, lest their violent and unjust theocracies might torture them to death as “heretics.” If churches transform God’s laws of spiritual worship into mere physical systems that judge and condemn all who refuse to outwardly comply with their physical traditions, those churches will prove themselves to be false churches and enemies of the real God, no matter how friendly their priests and pastors might outwardly appear to be. So now let all the awakened elect reject any talk about creating unholy theocracies where human heads usurp the headship of Jesus. There must be a separation of the true church and the secular state, where all citizens are judged solely according to a subset of God’s natural laws, regarding murder, violence, rape, incest, theft, fraud, slander and so on.
soon understand that, before we call anyone elect or non-elect, God must first manifest Himself to Let the elect comprehend that one’s own infantile spirit is never able to declare that any particular person is destined for either eternal heaven or everlasting hell. Instead, let our elect spirits learn to hear Christ’s Holy Spirit. For only then will God allow us to fulfill His heavenly judgments on earth.
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After teaching all this, Jesus once more warned us to make our spirits ready for His coming. That is, Jesus wanted all His elect children to repent into the truth, and bear genuine fruits of repentance. He wanted us to let His Holy Spirit teach our elect human spirits about the infinite spiritual and physical realities that He created all around us, then train the minds of our spirits to apply those truths with a truly beneficial wisdom, in His balanced, equitable, just, merciful, compassionate and loving ways.
Jesus wants us to prepare for His advent and His coming kingdom on earth by walking according the counsel that His Holy Spirit grants to our human elect spirits, according to what the minds of our spirits learn from Him, and not according to our minds of flesh. We must be saved by His true New Covenant salvation, before He will allow us to partake in the works of His coming kingdom here on this earth. Before we can take dominion over the living plants and creatures of this planet, and live in peace with our siblings in mankind, we must become those who bear the fruits of His Holy Spirit.
This is why Jesus then commanded His current disciples, as well as all His true and just disciples throughout history: “Therefore, you [disciples] be watchful [with preparedness], because you have never known what hour your Lord is coming. So you [disciples] must understand that, if the home owner might possibly have known which guarded place the thief is entering, he probably would have watched [with preparedness] and likely would not have allowed his home to be broken into. In accordance with this, you also be prepared, because the Son of mankind is coming [at] an hour which you [disciples] never assume [to be the right time]” (Mat. 24:42-44, from: γρηγορεῖτε οὖν, ὅτι
οὐκ οἴδατε ποίᾳ ἡμέρᾳ ὁ κύριος ὑμῶν ἔρχεται. ἐκεῖνο δὲ γινώσκετε ὅτι εἰ ᾔδει ὁ οἰκοδεσπότης ποίᾳ
φυλακῇ ὁ κλέπτης ἔρχεται, ἐγρηγόρησεν ἂν καὶ οὐκ ἂν εἴασεν διορυχθῆναι τὴν οἰκίαν αὐτοῦ. διὰ
τοῦτο καὶ ὑμεῖς γίνεσθε ἕτοιμοι, ὅτι ᾗ οὐ δοκεῖτε ὥρᾳ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔρχεται, SBLGNT).
Here Jesus used a present [durative] imperative form of γρηγορέω to indicate that our souls must continuously remain watchful. This is not like other verbs which also mean “watch,” since this verb bears an implication of being well prepared too. In context, it means being awake, alert, fully clothed in garments of righteousness and ready for spiritual battle, putting on all the armour provided by God and grasping the weapons of truth and wisdom He assigned to each of us. Jesus commanded all His disciples throughout history to be willing, zealous, loving guards whom He appointed to keep safe all who reside with Him in His heavenly and earthly kingdoms, both the awakened and sleeping elect within and outside of His true church. For the times in His earthly kingdom threaten our spirits and flesh, our entire souls, since Satan roams throughout God’s earthly kingdom until Jesus returns.
Jesus wants us to do all we can, in body and spirit, to diligently maintain abundant spiritual life for all, with just, equitable and wise laws and rights for all, to protect all the good in His kingdom from theft and destruction. Yes, He even wants us to guard all physically, to keep His people from being harmed by criminals and liars, especially from the malignant who steal lives into slavery or death.
This is a high calling. Being a true Christian, serving as His priest, as His appointed just and loving representative to all life on His earth, means labouring on behalf of all the earth’s humans, animals and plants, as younger siblings always before our oldest Brother’s understanding and forgiving face.
But this impossible work, which we all fail at, although Jesus continuously improves our abilities, is not odious to us. On the contrary, these tasks gratify and fill our hearts with joy every minute of every day, leaving us no time to bother with selfish pursuits in the darkness of Satan’s world order.
And when our satisfied souls lay on our pillows at night, He grants us sweet rest for our daily Sabbath labours, as a blessed gift that we welcome, to prepare us for the new day’s priestly deeds. So we will not sacrifice our time, efforts and lives to the worshipful service and undeserving esteem of human gods or demons in any of the unjust systems and hierarchies of God’s enemy, because we are granted the privilege of eagerly pursuing Christ’s calling into His abundant life of loving fulfillment.
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Yet, on top of all this, Jesus also gave us another reason to answer His call to be watchful and to prepare for His coming, by nullifying the works of the devil and by building up His kingdom here on earth. Jesus used a negative with the perfect tense form of οἶδα to indicate that we have never known and never will know a certain “hour” (i.e., ὥρα, “an undefined period of time ... a point of time as an occasion for an event, time,” BDAG3). We will never be able to know is when He will be coming or appearing. Whether we enter the timeless time of His spiritual realm through death, and see Him in all His glory, or we live to see His second advent, it is all the same. That will be the greatest reward of all, to be an awakened elect soul who no longer sees Him dimly, hampered by eyes of flesh, but to finally see His embracing presence, to fulfill all these inner joys we have had since we had begun to walk with Him, will find no equal while we dwell in flesh on earth. And never forget this. All whom He taught and trained to love in His just, equitable, wise and beneficial ways will soon be with Him.
Jesus used a present form of ἔρχομαι to indicate His actual, active and on-going coming, with His blessed Authority over all lives, as our κύριος (as the “one who is in charge by virtue of possession, owner,” BDAG3). He will come to restore all, so all the world shall live in peace, though the “hour”
cannot be known. This statement obviously has eschatological connotations, since Jesus spoke it in the context of His sermon about about the last days, with His focus on the end times. While Jesus surely referred to His parousia or second advent, He commanded all His disciples living throughout the millenniums of the last days, to fulfill their priestly calling of watching and guarding, with preparedness for any eventuality. No matter how long He would delay His coming, we were to keep on working. We must never stop undoing the works of Satan, and build up a little more of His just and loving kingdom on earth each day, until we die and see Him, or until He returns to this earth in His glory. And, because of what He said, we know that His second coming will not be “seen” only by official theologians of a fake church, as a figurative and forensic event. Rather, it will be clearly observed by all His disciples, by all true Christians. It will be just as impossible to miss as lightening striking directly above our heads. And none, not even the most esteemed clergymen in the “great”
hierarchies of fake churches, will know about His second advent until all plainly see it. For Jesus plainly told us, “you have never known what hour your Lord is coming.” So, if all His true disciples throughout history will never know the hour of His coming, but many fake clergymen assume that He has already come, and has granted all His power and authority to them so they can establish a self-serving theocracy led by themselves, they have proved themselves to be fake disciples of Jesus.
Also consider this fact; Jesus knew full well that the vast majority of His awakened elect true disciples standing beside Him that day, and most of those whom He would awaken during the next 2,000 years, would die in the flesh long before any could see His physical body descend upon Jerusalem. So why did He tell all these soon-to-be deceased disciples that not knowing the time of His future return would benefit them, would become one of the main reasons for them continuously desiring to fulfill His command to be watchful and fully prepared? How can not knowing what hour our Lord is coming motivate and inspire us to watch and be always prepared to fight spiritual battles for God’s loving kingdom, and possibly even some physical ones? Well, Jesus hinted at the answer in an allegorical statement immediately following His command to be watchful: “So you disciples must understand that, if the home owner might possibly have known which guarded place the thief is entering, he probably would have watched with preparedness and likely would not have allowed his home to be broken into.” Then He added: “In accordance with this, you also be prepared, because the Son of mankind is coming at an hour which you disciples do not assume to be the right time.”
With a little pondering, we realize that, while all is going well, we tend to let down our guard and get careless about spiritual matters of justice, equity and love. So we begin to “understand” the meaning Page 1644
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of this saying. And Jesus commanded us to “understand” it, when He used the imperative form of the word γινώσκω (“relating to familiarity acquired through experience or association with person or thing ... to grasp the significance or meaning of something,” BDAG3). But Jesus was not talking solely about being watchful and prepared for His physical second advent, but also about His Holy Spirit coming to our spirits at unexpected times, when our flesh is to busy for Him, and He finds us stupid, hurtful, unjust and unloving. Then He will turn our elect spirits toward repentance into the truth, so we may serve His loving justice to the world. And, as Jesus said, through us, His Spirit “will convict the world about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment; about sin, because they don’t believe in Me; about righteousness, because I am going to My Father, and you won’t see Me any more; about judgment, because the prince of this world has been judged” (John 16:8-11, WEB).
With His Holy Spirit’s reproof, exhortation, counsel, teaching, commands, comfort, encouragement and conviction granted to our elect spirits, we will do His just and loving works on earth. Through experience as serving priests of our Lord Jesus, we also realize that not knowing when His Holy Spirit will come to our spirits causes us to follow Him more carefully and serve Him more faithfully, to prepare for the labours of our God each day—even for the smaller works of serving little animals, but especially for the greater works of serving His heirs of heaven. His Spirit comes to our spirits, to protest lies and sins in the chambers of our souls, whenever our flesh drags them into it. And we must be ready for that, so we do not waste time by arguing with Him about how our flesh needs to do those evils for practical purposes like getting better incomes for our self-indulgence. Since we always lose those arguments with God, the inconvenient visits of His Spirit make us more readily and quickly repent into the truth and right actions. Then, in the end times, we will not only watch for the unexpected comings of His Spirit to our hearts, but desperately long for His physical appearance over Jerusalem. And, even in those end times, not knowing the moment His Spirit will enter us, as He does every day and often, is a valuable gift. For we are constantly assaulted by thieves trying steal and destroy our love, joy and peace. So our spirits seek His Spirit’s wise and helpful counsel more often, to overcome the dehumanization of our enemies. All these gifts of His Spirit are granted by our Creator, the Father of our spirits, and belong to Him, so His beloved heirs receive them freely.
Yet demons and their human slave children are constantly entering our lives in stealth, hiding behind the darkness of their lies and delusions, so they can steal or vandalize all we receive from God. They come to lure us into their darkness, so we too might walk entirely by our minds of flesh, as they do.
For, when we walk only according to the thoughts of our flesh, they can more easily ambush us, and rob us of all the beauty of serving God in justice and love, as His beloved children. Their truncated and false reasoning about our “needs” of the flesh can stop us from walking according to the minds of our spirits, from becoming one with Him, one with the Creator who dwells beside all life on earth and in heaven. But when those plunderers come, Jesus also comes, unexpectedly, to quicken our spirits. Unfortunately, we do not always listen to Him. So we often get plundered and injured. Then He will come again, while we are not expecting Him, while we are still moaning in self-pity. And He tells us how to recover all those thieves stole from us, and how our wounds may be healed. So, even if our minds of flesh are permanently damaged, but we still possess earthly life, Jesus will help us use our gifts from Him effectively for the building of His earthly kingdom. For Jesus is omniscient, and knows exactly how to employ what remains in our hearts and minds. And He is omnipotent, with the power to recover and restore all we lost, as well as heal us. Thus, we welcome His coming.
In the Gospels of Mark and Luke, we more clearly see how Jesus meant this command to be fulfilled by each individual disciple, and by all His true disciples throughout history, as a daily and personal calling. Jesus not only wanted us to be ready at His second coming, and when we face our judgment Page 1645
after the death of our flesh, but He also wanted all of us to be always watchful and prepared, because we do not know when He will personally come to each of us. Look at how Luke wrote this teaching of Jesus, as he heard it from an eye witness: “So be careful, or your hearts will be loaded down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day will come on you suddenly. For it will come like a snare on all those who dwell on the surface of all the earth. Therefore be watchful all the time, praying that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will happen, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:34-36, WEB). We must not let pleasures, distractions or “the cares of this life” prevent us from being ready to greet and learn from Jesus at any time of any day.
Now this eye-witness, whom Luke recorded, likely heard Jesus say this on that same day, although it seems different than that which Matthew heard and recorded as the words of Jesus on that day. Yet both eye-witnesses were likely repeating almost the exact words of Jesus, using the same nouns with the same forms of the same Greek verbs, along with some same phrases and other parts of the same sentences Jesus used. For, in those days, disciples became very skilled at memorizing their rabbi’s words verbatim. But there is a good reason each disciple seems to have memorized different sayings.
That reason is because each actually did hear different teachings. For the teaching times of rabbis in those days were interactive. Disciples asked questions and the teaching Elder, Jesus, would answer.
So, on that day, Jesus was not simply providing one long lecture, as it seems to be in Matthew 24:5
to 25:46. Rather, Jesus would have been responding to many different questions asked by different disciples over a lengthy period of time. Then each would have memorized as many of those answers as he could. But each could only memorize a limited number at a time, where some had the ability to memorize more than others. Thus, when each disciple repeated those teachings to others, or wrote them down, each would string together several related teachings from the different answers that Jesus gave during His teaching times, and compress them all into one teaching. Yet they seldom memorized the questions uttered during the teaching times, the questions which prompted the responses, since only the teachings were important to them, not the questions. Therefore, we cannot make the assumption that the eye-witnesses contradicted one another, that one or the other got the words wrong, or that they were simply paraphrasing what Jesus actually said in the Greek language on that day. And even when they did paraphrase the words Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and translated the words into Greek, we must remember that they did so with a thorough understanding of what Jesus actually taught, especially after decades of practising those teachings. And the Holy Spirit of Jesus did “edit” their paraphrases and translations, causing their spirits to employ the right words.
Now, in the words of the eye-witness that Luke recorded, Jesus commanded us to be “watchful” in different way, by using the present (durative) imperative form of a different verb, ἀγρυπνέω (“to be vigilant in awareness of threatening peril, be alert, keep watch over something, be on guard ... be alertly concerned about, look after, care for,” BDAG3). And Jesus assuredly did make this command using this verb because, during the teaching time on that day, a witness testified that He used this verb. And we cannot say He did not use it because Matthew used a different verb (γρηγορέω), since Jesus taught many things that Matthew did not record. But Luke’s eye-witness remembered how Jesus used this verb at one time during that teaching time, and how it implied a threat, and how Jesus used that verb to obligate the spirits of all His disciples to remain awake and alert, so all might carefully guard the well-being of all others. Each must never be trapped in the “snare” that so many worldly souls fall into, bound by the strong cords of carnal pleasures, deluding substances or worries about money and the flesh. Instead, our elect spirits must remain awake and vigilant, always going to the Holy Spirit of Jesus in prayer, so we “may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will happen, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Our personal daily lives must be spent serving Jesus.
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Mat. 24:37-44, The Unexpected Time
Then an eye-witness told Mark that Jesus, on that day, taught: “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Watch, keep alert, and pray; for you don’t know when the time is. It is like a man, travelling to another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants, and to each one his work, and also commanded the doorkeeper to keep watch. Watch therefore, for you don’t know when the Lord of the house [i.e., here the ‘house’ is the church, the family of God] is coming, whether at evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning; lest coming suddenly He might find you sleeping. What I tell you, I tell all: Watch” (Mark 13:32-37, WEB). Here, the first word translated as His command to “watch”
is a present (durative) form of the common verb βλέπω, the most basic kind of watching for any kind of thing. But it is immediately followed by another command using the present (durative) imperative form of ἀγρυπνέω, the same verb that Luke’s eye-witness told him that Jesus said. And, at the end of verse 34, at the beginning of verse 35 and at the end of verse 37, Mark’s eye-witness said the Jesus used forms of the verb γρηγορέω, with present (durative) imperative forms in both verse 35 and 37.
And in verse 37, Jesus said, “So what I reason with you [disciples] I reason with all, be watchful with preparedness” (from: ὃ δὲ ὑμῖν λέγω πᾶσιν λέγω· γρηγορεῖτε, SBLGNT). Thus, we know this is a command for all His disciples everywhere and in all time, to this very day. Then we also see here that this watchfulness involves doing works according to Christ’s will and commands, as well as in His authority, both as guards and overseers of His “house,” the true church of Israel. And our spirits must go to Him in prayer, lest He comes unexpectedly in the day or night, finding our spirits asleep.
So Christ’s calling and command is to be awake and watchful with preparedness, since this will prevent ruthless thieves from stealing into our lives, to rob and vandalize. For Jesus will tell us how, when and where they will try to break in, so we might better guard all our people, all His army of priests, and His Holy Spirit will arm them all with the weapons of knowledge and wisdom for this task. If we pray and study His Word, letting Him teach us how and where the devil and his minions deceived and stole into dwellings of other human spirits, we will be prepared when liars and frauds come to us in stealth and darkness. Then our well armoured souls will use our swords of truth and wisdom to prevent their thefts from our souls, and possibly take them captive, or make them flee in fear. If we do this, we will incur far less loss of His good gifts of loving justice. And, during the end times, this kind of preparedness with diligent watchfulness will be more critical than any other time.
Since we never know “what hour our Lord is coming,” our flesh also fears and grows less rebellious against our elect spirits. But, if we knew His Holy Spirit shall supposedly come only at a certain hour on a certain day, once a week, at an hour that we “assume to be the right time,” such as at that hour when a church or synagogue service takes place every Sunday or Saturday, then our elect spirits will ignore Him during most of our waking hours. Then our flesh will not fear Him when He comes unexpected to our spirits at any time. Instead—although the minds of our flesh know they should obey the minds of our elect spirits as their lords and owners, as the providers of their very ability to live—our flesh will only seeks its own survival, ease, comfort and pleasures, even in ways that our elect spirits forbid. And, since flesh is utterly incapable of either love or hate, and cares nothing for morals or laws (since all these are spiritual), our flesh will always be perfectly willing to gain all it desires for itself at any cost to our family of humankind and to all other living creations around us.
Our flesh is not evil, but neither is it ever concerned about the spiritual matters of love, wisdom and justice. Only our elect spirits, through the teaching and training of Jesus, can become loving, wise and just. So, if our flesh is given the opportunity to ignore God’s visitations to our elect spirits, it will seize that chance to rule over our thoughts in the chambers of our souls. And, when flesh rules over the thoughts emanating from our souls, we live extremely stupid, self-centred, carnal lives which Page 1647
readily exploit our people and God’s creations. Yet, whenever our God Jesus enters the chambers of our hearts and souls, our flesh trembles, knowing that He gave both our elect spirits and our flesh life, and He can easily take away that life. Therefore, since the truly awakened and “born again”
elect become fully aware of the visitations of His Holy Spirit, but never know “what hour our Lord Jesus is coming,” our minds of flesh grudgingly drop whatever lies or sins they are greedily grasping at, whenever His Holy Spirit command our spirits to do so. For our flesh soon learns that Jesus can surely cause the flesh much pain, if it rebels against His commands and the wills of our elect spirits.
And, for that generation living in the end times, the flesh will also have an added threat, that Jesus will physically appear and slaughter all who serve the devil’s beast. Thus, their flesh will obey their awakened, watchful, well taught and trained elect spirits with even greater fear. This fear of the flesh is critical to our realization of the effects of Christ’s promised salvation through His New Covenant.
For, until we walk according to His counsel for the minds and wills of our spirits, which prevents us from walking according to the minds of our flesh, we cannot serve as the holy priesthood of Jesus.
So there are two beings who can unexpectedly enter our inner beings. One is the devil, who easily climbs over the walls of both our outer or inner consciences, then breaks through any unguarded door, window or hole in our hearts and souls. The other is our almighty God Jesus, who can enter whenever He desires, even when we least expect Him, and often does so quietly like a thief in the night, but always walks boldly right through the front gate and the only doors to our hearts and souls, since He owns the keys to them. Then both God and Satan also own slaves who can do the same, through the commands and powers of their owners. So Satan will most often enter our inner beings through the agency of countless demonic or human spirits. However, Jesus owns multiple times more agents than the devil, myriads of angelic and elect human spirits who obey His commands and bear His power to speak and act in His name. So Jesus will occasionally send one of these to walk straight into our hearts and souls. And there is a greater difference between these two. With the help of the armour and weapons of truth and wisdom that Jesus grants us, we can guard against and prevent Satan himself, as well as any of his slaves, from entering our hearts and souls. However, literally all of these effective gifts of armour and weapons are made of heaven’s spiritual substances, so they all obey our God, Jesus, and shall only do our will if and when our will is Christ’s will. They will never turn against Him. There is no truth or reality, nor any wisdom that applies truth, which can ever be used to stop Jesus from entering into our hearts and souls. Our armour flees from our spirits and our weapons of truth and wisdom turn against us if we attempt to stop Jesus from sitting on the thrones of our hearts and souls. And this is also something which all awakened elect should know.
In Matthew’s Gospel, in the place where He commanded us to be prepared and to watch as His priestly overseers and guards in His just, equitable and loving earthly kingdom, Jesus twice warned us that we will not know the hour of His coming. First He said we “have never known what hour
[He] is coming.” Then He repeated this declaration in a slightly different way, saying: “the Son of mankind is coming at an hour which you disciples never assume to be the right time” (Mat. 24:44, from: ᾗ οὐ δοκεῖτε ὥρᾳ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔρχεται, SBLGNT). The second is almost humorous.
In verse 44, Jesus used a negative with a present (durative) form of δοκέω (“to consider as probable, think, believe, suppose, consider, transitive, of subjective opinion” BDAG3). So, in the second warning, Jesus was actually saying that we will continuously not think, believe, suppose or consider, as a subjective opinion, some kind of implied thought about the hour of His coming. In context, the implied thought would be that the hour was not the right time, not the time in which we thought He should come, according to our own subjective opinions. The way Jesus used the durative form of the Page 1648
Mat. 24:37-44, The Unexpected Time
verb here, He was saying that, whenever we see His Holy Spirit enter us, both the minds of our spirits and our minds of flesh in our souls will very often be thinking, “Oh no! Here comes Jesus!”
So what exactly did Jesus expect His disciples to be thinking or doing at the hour of His coming, if He prophesied that they will be assuming that it is not the right time, if their subjective opinions wished He would have come at some other time? Well, Jesus knew His disciples would be thinking and doing the same things employees think or do when they see their boss coming, then say to themselves, “Oh no! Here comes the boss!” Employees only think this if they are neglecting their duties or are even doing something prohibited. Likewise, there are times when Jesus unexpectedly enters our hearts and souls and we have the same reaction. As soon as His Holy Spirit shows His face to our elect spirits, we remember all our duties and obligations to Him, and realize how much we have failed to fulfill them. And the same will happen when Jesus physically comes to all the elect of the world at His second advent. All the elect will remember, grieve and repent into the real truth.
Mat. 24:45-51,
Live Rightly by Faith
“Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord has set over His household, to give them their food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his Lord finds doing so when He comes. Most certainly I tell you that He will set him over all that He has. But if that evil servant should say in his heart, ‘My Lord is delaying His coming,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with the drunkards, the Lord of that servant will come in a day when he doesn’t expect it, and in an hour when he doesn’t know it, and will cut him in pieces, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. There is where the weeping and grinding of teeth will be” (Mat. 24:45-51, WEB).
To begin with, although Jesus here referred to the “Lord” of these people in the third person, He was obviously referring to Himself. For Jesus was speaking about Himself coming on a day and at an hour which no one on earth would be able to predict. And He wanted all of us to know what would happen when He comes, either in the present times or end times. For He will indeed judge us,and He will either reward or punish us in whatever way it is necessary to invoke repentance, in the ways He indicated above. And we have seen examples of His judgments upon both individuals and whole nations throughout the entire history of the world, where He has assigned those who do not love His just and loving truths to delusions, which cause the destruction of flesh, with “weeping and grinding of the teeth,” but abundant loving lives for elect spirits who eagerly seek His truths. For He comes to all while their spirits dwell in flesh, here on earth, and at the most unexpected times in their lives, to judge them. And, whenever He enters a personal life, He will seek the repentance of that one’s spirit into the truth, into the realities upon which all just and God-like love is built. Then, if He sees a spirit’s true repentance, and real fruits of repentance, our almighty Judge will grant the wage of His righteousness in love, peace and joy. But, if a spirit does not repent into the truth, darkness follows.
Those whose spirits choose the truth, so they might build up just and God-like love in their elect spirits and lives, even all whose spirits truly want to walk according to ways of Jesus and do all that He commands their spirits to do for their brothers and sisters on earth, will gain inner rewards, both on earth and after the death of their flesh. But those whose spirits remain unwilling to do anything for others, who take advantage of others for their own carnal gain, will receive dark delusions and destruction on earth, with an eternity of the same after the last day. Literally all humans in the entire history of earth have faced His judgments, and not one loving elect soul had a life without rewards, Page 1649
while not even one non-elect soul has ever escaped His just punishment of a life in utter darkness and the frustrations of ungratified desires. Yes, the evil may gain some empty, superficial goods and services as they live in flesh. But their spirits and lives are filled with dark delusions and lies, and all completely lack any semblance of real joy or peace, nor any ability to actually trust and love anyone.
There is no possible way to break God’s immutable spiritual laws of just love, not without falling into vain delusions which inevitably cause death and destruction, both to others and to oneself. It is an immutable law in all His creations: life will perish when lies and delusions, which Satan forms in a loveless one’s self-preserving, self-indulgent and selfish flesh, shall govern the behaviours of all intentional sinners. From the beginning to the end, God created all life to survive and thrive solely through the principles which His Word and His creations reveal—the ways of His written Law when it is rightly interpreted and applied according to His will and His intended meanings. And all written in His laws of the Bible has also been manifested in His physical and spiritual creations too. Thus, not one deliberate liar and sinner stands before Him with ignorance as an excuse. Any deviance from these fully revealed precepts, which tell us how to survive and thrive, works against our thriving and our survival. Therefore, all the lawless, all who cast aside God’s ways written in His Word and in all His creations, all who invent new laws to benefit only themselves at the expense of others, are fully intentional destroyers of God’s creations, totally unjustified murderers of others who have earned the death penalty. And the only justification they can receive is through the spirit’s repentance into truth.
Now some say that those who exploit, abuse and even murder their siblings in the family of mankind are “brutes,” acting like animals. Yet others make excuses for them, because they are also lying and deluded reprobates who cherish their own similar lies and sins. And, yes, there are surely some valid and legitimate excuses for some sins, which both God and man can accept for their forgiveness. But remember, no animals have ever acted like loveless, ruthless human psychopaths. Even if an animal is driven insane with disease, parasites, hunger, pain or abuse, only its mind of flesh acts irrationally.
Yet, even then, the mind of that animal’s spirit remains intact, and will not cease from doing all that God ordained it to do. That animal’s spirit will still faithfully loves all whom God called it to love, and always remains loyal to beloved ones and to God, which is its unwavering obedience to all the spiritual laws of God that its heart grasps. However, this certainly is not true regarding the infantile spirits of the human elect, nor has a drop of this faithfulness ever been found in any non-elect spirit.
So let us learn to recognize the thoughts and actions of the flesh, and differentiate them from the thoughts and actions of the spirit. Every time we obey our Creator Jesus, by rightly judging others according to His diligently crafted inner motives and intentions (John 7:24, cf. Mark 7:15,18-20), in the same way Jesus expressed the will of the heavenly Father through His words and deeds of His flesh (John 5:36; 8:15-16), we discern between the motives originating from our flesh and the motives originating from our well-taught and well-trained spirits. For Jesus commanded us to judge according to the moral principles that He has taught us, and He has affirmed in His Word and in His creations. And those principles always involve motives and intentions of a spirit. For literally all His laws, as well as all laws of men, are essentially spiritual. All good laws must be created to fulfill God-like love for our siblings in humankind and for His other creations, although some of man’s laws are bad laws, and were created to disregard or disobey God’s laws. Since we must judge only according to God’s spiritual laws, never according to laws invented by loveless minds of human flesh, we must learn to recognize the spiritual motives and intentions all laws of men. Then we must differentiate good laws from the bad laws made through the volatile, irrational and selfish motives and intentions of the flesh. In every judgment, we must apply what God Himself writes on our inner consciences, all the just precepts He teaches to the minds of our elect spirits. What God taught must Page 1650
Mat. 24:45-51, Live Rightly by Faith
always take precedence over anything that humans have taught to outer consciences of our minds of flesh. For only the inner consciences formed in elect spirits can make right judgments. So, when we judge the theft of a loaf of bread by a hungry parent to feed one’s child, we differentiate between that and the theft of a wealthy man through his crimes of usury and exploitation, done through his spirit’s loveless, lawless desire to become a human god ruling over God’s creations. Then we dismiss the charges against the impoverished parent, and help both that family live a fruitful life. But we toss the unrepentant rich man into prison and reclaim all the wealth he stole, so we can return it to his victims and to deserving souls, while demanding his repentance and not allowing him to sin like that again.
Look at what Jesus said to explain why we cannot know the hour He will come: “As a consequence, who is the faithful slave, even rational one, whom the Lord appointed over His household slaves for the purpose of giving food to them in the appointed time? That slave, whom his Lord, having come, will find doing this, [is] blessed. Surely, I reason with you [disciples] that He will appoint him over all kinds of His existing things. Yet, if the evil slave might say this in his heart, ‘My Lord is delaying
[His arrival],’ and w
anted to rule ove
r his fellow slaves , in order to repeatedly beat [them], so he
might be eating and drinking among drunkards, the Lord of that slave will arrive in a day which he is not expecting and in an hour which he is not knowing. Then He will separate him [from the other slaves] and H
e will assign his portion among the hypocrites . There will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (Mat. 24:45-51, from: Τίς ἄρα ἐστὶν ὁ πιστὸς δοῦλος καὶ φρόνιμος ὃν κατέστησεν
ὁ κύριος ἐπὶ τῆς οἰκετείας αὐτοῦ τοῦ δοῦναι αὐτοῖς τὴν τροφὴν ἐν καιρῷ; μακάριος ὁ δοῦλος ἐκεῖνος
ὃν ἐλθὼν ὁ κύριος αὐτοῦ εὑρήσει οὕτως ποιοῦντα· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐπὶ πᾶσιν τοῖς ὑπάρχουσιν
αὐτοῦ καταστήσει αὐτόν. ἐὰν δὲ εἴπῃ ὁ κακὸς δοῦλος ἐκεῖνος ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ· Χρονίζει μου ὁ
κύριος, καὶ ἄρξηται τύπτειν τοὺς συνδούλους αὐτοῦ, ἐσθίῃ δὲ καὶ πίνῃ μετὰ τῶν μεθυόντων, ἥξει ὁ
κύριος τοῦ δούλου ἐκείνου ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ᾗ οὐ προσδοκᾷ καὶ ἐν ὥρᾳ ᾗ οὐ γινώσκει, καὶ διχοτομήσει
αὐτὸν καὶ τὸ μέρος αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν θήσει· ἐκεῖ ἔσται ὁ κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν
ὀδόντων, SBLGNT). So, not knowing when Jesus will come, either as His Holy Spirit to personally judge us or in His flesh to destroy Satan’s world order and rule the earth, produces two different effects in two kinds of people, in the elect and the non-elect. The elect serve until He comes. But the non-elect take advantage of His delay, by usurping the rule of their caring Owner over His beloved wards. The non-elect exploit for personal gain. By His delay, both kinds of spirits reveal their true attributes, to themselves and others, by either loving or loathing His sudden arrivals and judgments.
Since traditional interpretations of this passage (Mat. 24:45-51) often do not seem adequate, it may be good to review a few details. It begins with the particle ἄρα (“marker of an inference made on the basis of what precedes ... consequently ... frequently in questions which draw an inference from what precedes,” BDAG3). Also, this passage refers to the Lord coming “in a day which [the evil slave] is not expecting and in an hour which he is not knowing.” So we can definitely conclude that this passage is clearly and definitely an explanation about the consequences or results of us not being allowed to know the day or hour that our God Jesus will come, either to each of us personally or to the entire world. And, as we see here, our Lord Jesus will question each individual. He will judge each one personally. Furthermore, Jesus only defines two basic kinds of people here; (1) a “faithful”
slave, who is also “rational,” and (2) an “evil” slave, who wants to rule over the other equal slaves.
So, in the eyes of our God and Creator Jesus, there are actually only two kinds of people on earth, both defined solely by the way their spirits will either try to fulfill or oppose God’s spiritual laws.
Another thing we should realize is that Jesus is talking about “slaves,” about people owned by Him, our God, and how we are all therefore obligated to serve Him. Here Jesus referred to literally all human beings on earth as His “household slaves” (οἰκετεία, “complement of slave members of a Page 1651
household, household slaves,” BDAG3). He was talking about all human beings residing in His own estate, where He rules as their Owner, King and High Priest. And that estate is His earth. Jesus called both the “faithful” kind of individual and the “evil” kind of individual His “slaves,” since He clearly referred to both using the above noun (οἰκετεία) and the noun δοῦλος (“male slave as an entity in socioeconomic context, slave,” BDAG3). The latter noun is often translated as “servant” because Romans, and Roman cultures throughout history, always dehumanized and abused slaves. Thus, most translations made by Roman humanists try to avoid words indicating slavery. But God owns all His beloved creations He made, including all humans. All living spirits are His property and all are, therefore, His “slaves.” Yet God loves all His elect slaves, provides eternal joy and abundant life for all. And, after all elect human spirits finish learning all His truths and wisdom at the gates of heaven, they all will be “adopted” as His heirs, as His children who will labour beside Him, to serve all the other living spirits in His homeland of heaven, through the same kind of love that He bears for all.
So here Jesus said the first slave was “faithful” (πιστός, “pertaining to being worthy of belief or trust, trustworthy, faithful, dependable, inspiring trust/faith, passive aspect of πιστεύω,” BDAG3).
Then He further described this slave by using the adjective φρόνιμος (“pertaining to understanding associated with insight and wisdom, sensible, thoughtful, prudent, wise,” BDAG3), where this particular adjective primarily indicates an ability to be prudent and rational. And this slave had been
“appointed” (καθίστημι, literally meaning “placed down,” and in this context, it means that Jesus will “assign someone a position of authority, appoint, put in charge,” BDAG3). So the “faithful” and wise slaves were granted some authority over some other slaves of God. And Jesus told us the reason for giving these slaves that authority in the phrase, δοῦναι αὐτοῖς τὴν τροφὴν ἐν καιρῷ (“for the purpose of giving food to them in the appointed time”). In this phrase, the infinitive form (δοῦναι) indicates purpose and its aorist tense implies the completion or fulfilling of that purpose. Then the noun object of the preposition is a dative form of καιρός, which indicates that those slaves did their appointed tasks in the correct, proper or appointed times. So the reason those slaves were appointed to positions of authority were the same reasons God will ever allow anyone to take up any position of authority. All duty of all authorities is to serve others, such as by providing all the food others need to be healthy and satisfied. But feeding them is just a symbolic way of saying all are to provide for all the needs of all the other slaves, not just food. And, when our Lord Jesus came to these slaves, He found them doing so. Those slaves diligently served their fellow slaves, providing for all their needs. No human slaves would have been perfect. But those did try to do what is right for all their fellow slaves, treating all equitably and justly. A “faithful” slave serves another slave in the way he would want the other to serve him, if the Lord had appointed the other to provide for his daily needs.
Then Jesus used the adjective μακάριος to describe this faithful slave, who was rational enough to know that equitably and justly providing for all the needs of everyone would boost morale, would make everyone happier, more content, more cooperative, better able to do what needed to be done, and easier to live with. Every good authority or manager knows that he must instill trust and total openness among all those whom he serves, so he will receive the opinions of all and the judgments of those opinions from all, so he can rightly, justly and equitably care for all through many carefully assessed inputs from all. Then the way Jesus used this adjective (μακάριος), bears an ecclesiastical and biblical meaning. Here it indicates the well-being and joy of a human spirit, where the spirit bears a right relationship with God, because God can teach, train, counsel and help that spirit in all the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical matters of life. Whenever Jesus comes to us, during our prayers or while we are doing anything else, as well as at His parousia, we are blessed in this way.
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Mat. 24:45-51, Live Rightly by Faith
After this, Jesus used a phrase that He repeated often, ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν. The particle ἀμήν suggested firmness and resolve. It indicated that His teaching was important, trustworthy and certain. With this particle, we also see the verb λέγω, which indicated that He was uttering words which He carefully arranged in an orderly way, to provide His disciples with a well-reasoned and rational message. So Jesus began this message by stating, “Surely, I reason with you disciples.” Then He declared that, whenever He found His beloved human slave diligently and justly doing what He appointed him to do, “He will appoint him over all His existing things.” Here Jesus used the verb καθίστημι again, to indicate that He will “appoint” that one to a position of decision-making authority. Then Jesus told us what He would grant this kind of slave authority over, in the phrase, ἐπὶ πᾶσιν τοῖς ὑπάρχουσιν
αὐτοῦ. The preposition ἐπί means “over.” Then its object is a substantified dative present participle form of the verb ὑπάρχω, modified by a form of the adjective πᾶς (“all” or “all kinds of”), then the genitive pronoun αὐτοῦ. So Jesus would grant a “faithful” and “rational” slave, one who prudently fulfilled His spiritual desires, some kind of authority over “all kinds of His property that exists or is at His disposal.” And, since Jesus is God, who owns literally all existing spiritual and physical entities, this means Jesus will “appoint every faithful slave over all kinds of His existing heavenly and earthly things.” Of course, none of the elect will have exclusive or autocratic authority over any person or thing. But it does mean that all the elect will be granted the power to serve others in whatever ways their spirits were created to serve, and to fulfill all their hearts’ desires. In other words, Jesus’ statement here means that we will become heirs of the Creator God, who will bear the authority and power to do all that God does on earth and in heaven, as His children who serve in His name. But this power will not granted in full until we complete our education on the judgment day, when He will complete and perfect us all, after He makes all of us fit to rightly handle that kind of authority and power, so we might correctly serve all the other spirits in heaven through just love.
Now look at the slave whom Jesus called “evil” (κακός, “pertaining to being socially or morally reprehensible, bad, evil ... pertaining to being harmful or injurious, evil, injurious, dangerous, pernicious,” BDGAG3). That slave was also appointed to a position of authority, and for the same purpose, to provide for all the needs of the others. Yet the evil slave realized that his Lord and Owner had not come to check his work, to ensure that he was actually doing what he was supposed to do.
That slave represented those who do not pray, whose spirits have never opened their ears to the voice of their Lord’s correction and counsel. Here Jesus said the spirit “in his heart” told himself, “My Lord is delaying.” This “evil” slave was like all who pretend that God is not going to come to them, to judge them. For they want to be free to do whatever self-indulgent evil they desire. Yet notice how that slave, representing all the non-elect, called Jesus “my Lord.” For the non-elect, just like their hellish father, know that Jesus is indeed their almighty Creator God who owns them. Some work very hard at constantly telling themselves that there is no God, no one who will judge them. Some of their spirits will even tell themselves that their own spirits do not exist, to delude themselves into believing there will be no eternity where nothing they exploit on earth will ever again be granted to them. Yet literally all of them know God exists and will judge them, then send them to eternal hell.
Then look at what those “evil” ones do with whatever authority they receive. Here Jesus described how the evil slave abused his authority: ἄρξηται τύπτειν τοὺς συνδούλους αὐτοῦ. In the context of this slave having been appointed to a position of authority, the aorist subjunctive form of the verb ἄρχω implied a subjective desire and resolved will “to rule or govern with implication of special status” (BDAG3). For, like their hellish father, the non-elect love hierarchies where humans can pretend to be pagan gods with a “special status,” where they can delude themselves into thinking they have a right command others to blindly obey their whims. Thus, the goal of this “evil” slave’s Page 1653
rule was indicted by the present (durative) infinitive form of τύπτω. That is, he wanted to be able “to repeatedly beat” them, to bully them, to subjugate them through violent terrorism, by unjustly judging and punishing them in order to terrify them into a complete and blind subjection to himself.
In other words, this evil slave wanted to entirely usurp the authority of God, his Owner and Lord.
This man wanted to rule over all the others in a different way than His Lord did. This slave wanted power over them through violence, but His Lord ruled by providing all their inner and outer needs.
Then look at what Jesus called the people whom this little dictator wanted to rule over, through his power to terrorize them. Jesus called them τοὺς συνδούλους αὐτοῦ (“his fellow slaves”). That is, in God’s opinion, all of that evil little dictator’s subjugated victims bore exactly the same equal status as a slaves, together with him. Jesus did not differentiate between that authority and all the others in His estate if the entire earth. Only this deluded equal slave thought the others were “inferiors,” then took advantage of his equals. It was the “evil” one who forced them to obey him, by beating and terrorizing them. But, in God’s eyes, each and every slave on this planet has unique attributes and skills that He gave to them, so each could contribute to all the other slaves. Yet that “evil” one felt that he could use all their strengths and abilities to serve himself alone, at the expense of all others.
And why did he commit such a disgusting crime? Jesus told us why. Jesus used present (durative) subjunctives to indicate that it was “so he might be eating and drinking among drunkards.” The present tense implies that he did this often, on a continuous and ongoing basis. He frequently was exploiting his equals, causing them to suffer greatly, for one reason, so he could indulge in the pleasures of his own flesh more often, together with the others who committed the same crimes.
However, that evil slave—just like all the other despots and exploiters on this earth—forgot that there actually is a real God who owns him, and all other human beings, a very powerful Judge who
“will arrive in a day which he is not expecting and in an hour which he is not knowing.” A just and fitting punishment comes to all who are like him, within their lives on earth, as well as after their selfish and self-indulgent flesh inevitably dies. And exactly what punishment would Jesus give to that criminal? Jesus told us that this ruthless slave would be “dichotomized” (διχοτομέω, “cut in two,” BDAG3). But here Jesus obviously did not mean that his body would be “cut in two,” since Jesus also said that, after dichotomizing him, “He will assign [this same evil slave’s] portion among the hypocrites.” So he will still be alive when “his portion” or lot in life is assigned to be among the hypocrites. Thus, Jesus was going to dichotomize him socially. It meant that this evil slave would now be recognized as the abusive and worthless criminal he actually was, which would divide all the people he associated with. It would cause the faithful ones to avoid him like a plague, although the other criminals like him would dain to be with him. The English verb “dichotomize” originated from this Greek verb (διχοτομέω), and this Greek verb meant the same in this context (“divide into two parts or sections; especially in reference to classification,” Oxford). The way Jesus used the verb here seems to mean that He will separates the wicked and selfishly ambitious from His loving and faithful slaves, and implied this will be both on earth and in His spiritual realm forever after that.
But what exactly does this dichotomization of the “faithful” and the “evil” actually entail? How does God separate His elect and non-elect human properties, in a way where the “evil” receive nothing but “weeping and the gnashing of teeth”? If you ever had to live with a psychopath or narcissistic little dictator, you know what this means, and how this separation begins on earth. The “evil” live in small, dark, superficial, self-centred and delusional worlds, separated from the realities that the elect live in. And the non-elect become so short-sighted that, if they are ever allowed to do whatever they want, they will intentionally and invariably destroy everything and everyone around them, until they destroy themselves. At the same time, they are always desperately trying to save and please their Page 1654
Mat. 24:45-51, Live Rightly by Faith
own flesh, even if it means harming or killing others. The “evil” only desire self-indulgent things of the flesh, all kinds of toys and treats for themselves, as well as total security for their bodies of flesh.
Thus, they hate the loving and just laws and ways of God, because those truths limit the things which can be obtained by the flesh, for both spiritual and physical reasons, for the long-term good of all God’s creations. This separates them from the elect, who love God’s effective wisdom and rejoice in the good it produces. Likewise, many “evil” ones also love to party, in superficial, carnal ways that allow them to esteem and brag about themselves, especially if they can be the centres of attention.
And some can be extremely charming in social situations. When they walk into a room, they greet all with a smile and flattering words to win approval. Yet, not a drop of genuine, God-like love exists in any of them, not for any they party with, nor even for their own families. And none ever want to learn to love either. But learning to love in the just, beneficial way that God does, is all that the elect ever desire. So the superficial attractiveness of the non-elect actually repulses the elect. God causes the the spirits of the elect to separate themselves from the non-elect, dichotomizes these two kinds.
Then Jesus described the “evil” kind of slaves, who are all owned and judged by God, but are also slaves of their chain-bound hellish father, as “drinking among drunkards.” For the non-elect often love self-deluding substances such as alcohol or drugs, and even like to get the elect hooked on those substances as well, in order to more easily delude and control their lives. But Jesus was not solely talking about alcohol. Rather, He was referring to just about anything that enhances a self-centred person’s delusions about themselves. For some avoid physically deluding substances, since they fear that such things will make them to temporarily lose control over everyone and everything “owned”
by them, or make them accidentally forget to keep up the public image they so carefully crafted for themselves. Of course, the self-perception of those blind slaves being able to control all people and all things, as well as their public images, are also delusions. And the power they feel when they think they are controlling or manipulating other people is just another form of mind-altering drink for their souls, like alcohol or drugs. And literally all the non-elect crave delusion-aiding things, since none can tolerate truths or realities which expose their self-delusions or stop them from ignoring realities.
But all elect spirits will eventually mature, and begin to highly value truths and realities, since they are able to build up God-like love upon such things. And the more those elect love, the more they are able to produce long-term good for all God’s creations. So these opposing aptitudes of the non-elect and the elect, especially regarding truths and realities, naturally polarizes one kind from the other.
For one kind of spirit is repelled by the other. Thus, the elect and non-elect eventually part ways, and their families, communities and nations become divided and dichotomized. And all humans are social creatures. So the “evil” slaves need to drink in their delusions with other “drunkards” who share similar arrays of delusions. They only like to remain with those holding to the same general subsets of delusions. Thus, the “evil” slaves form artificial hierarchies, where groups with the most guns and terrorizing weapons of Satan’s world order rule over the rest. Yet the elect are also humans, and crave fellowship. So they choose to fellowship only with those who learn to accept truths and realities, who want to truly love others. And this means that the elect can no longer sit with the souls of the non-elect, or vice versa. Yet, when the non-elect are left to themselves, the become even more willing to sacrifice the elect and one another for personal gain, since they feed on the delusions of one another until their delusions become so powerful that they rule every little aspect of their lives.
When the non-elect only seek only the company of other non-elect, their societies become dark hells of destruction and death, filled with loss and frustration, places of “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Meanwhile, the elect build justice, equity, love and fruitfulness together, a truly abundant life in God.
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What Jesus said here has always held true throughout history, and dichotomization processes have been accelerating since the days of His first advent, two thousand years ago. Jesus has been coming to all personal lives in all time, to judge each one’s works done through the motives and intentions of one’s spirit. And, “as a consequence” of the evil found in the spirits of the non-elect, our God has been punishing those wanna-be gods by handing them over to Satan, the great deluder and false accuser. Then, “as a consequence” of just a little faithful love and sound reasoning based on truth found in all the elect, our God Jesus has indeed rewarded each individual elect spirit with “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3, WEB), though many of them have not realized it, and many who do realize it have not known the name of the High Priest who granted it.
In these ways, Jesus has been causing divisions among all people throughout all history. He has been dichotomizing whole nations, dividing the evil from the faithful. And every generation has nurtured and grown a little larger garden of love’s foundational truths and immutable ways of justice. All this has been happening all around the world from the beginning, but especially since our God’s first arrival in flesh walking among us. And that process has been increasing in speed and power within every generation’s life span. Meanwhile, the non-elect have become even more self-indulgent, more addicted to delusions, more violent and more frustrated, resulting in more “weeping and gnashing of the teeth” than ever before. And soon Jesus will cast His final dichotomizing events upon the earth, just before His second advent casts all the non-elect out of the material universe, leaving all the earth to be inherited by the mild and gentle elect, and to them alone. Then He will rule His faithful slaves wisely, to prepare them for their adoption into His eternal family, as each learns about abundant life.
Mat. 25:1-13,
Churches at His Return
“Then the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins, who took their lamps, and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. Those who were foolish, when they took their lamps, took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. Now while the bridegroom delayed, they all slumbered and slept.
But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Behold! The bridegroom is coming! Come out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise,
‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying,
‘What if there isn’t enough for us and you? You go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’ While they went away to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins also came, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Most certainly I tell you, I don’t know you.’ Watch therefore, for you don’t know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming” (Mat. 25:1-13, WEB).
First notice how Jesus called exactly half of the “virgins,” who are all to young to have been taken into a husband’s home, into either heaven or hell, “foolish.” Then He called exactly half “wise.” So this is yet another indication that our God sowed the field of the earth with His elect seeds, then let the devil sow an equal amount with his non-elect seeds. Now, during His last few days of His earthly ministry, as He was walking in Jerusalem before His death and resurrection, Jesus spent much time granting His final teachings to His core disciples. Then those disciples reiterated what He had taught them previously. And, at that time, Jesus focused more upon what would happen throughout the last days, all that His people would endure after He ascended and sent His Holy Spirit to teach, train and counsel them. Yet Jesus often used parables to teach them, because there were “spies” infiltrating Page 1656
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their ranks, as well as in the crowds gathered around them, men sent by the enemies of God, and from evangelicals in particular. He had to employ parables to hide His truths from false churches who used His words to attack Him and His true disciples. So Jesus made His parables entirely understandable to the spirits taught by Him, but incomprehensible to the humanists the false churches, knowing those fakes could only interpret them within the framework of their self-serving delusions and lies. Because false churches knew absolutely nothing about human spirits or spiritual matters, they would always find it impossible to comprehend what Jesus taught in His parables, for humanists can only focus upon what their flesh can do to save their flesh, and suppress truths about what the Spirit of God can do to save human spirits. So now, after telling His disciples to keep their spirits awake, alert and watchful, as individuals, He provided a parable about local and regional churches needing to be watchful in the end times. For many churches will be rejected at His return.
Why do I say that this parable about the ten virgins was about churches or gatherings of those who claim to be His disciples? Well, first we should understand what the term “virgin” (παρθένος) would symbolize. Literally, a “virgin” was an unmarried daughter still living in her parents’ house. And, in Jewish traditions of that time, women generally remained virgins, living in their parents’ homes, even for some time after they were married, since marriages were through covenants or contracts. A woman did not cease to be a “virgin” until her husband took her into his home. This is one reason why God was called the Husband of the elect, because He would take them into His heavenly home after their spirits departed from the earth and their earthly flesh, from the home they were born into.
Likewise, Satan was the husband of the non-elect, since he would take the non-elect spirits into his home of hell after their flesh died. So, in this parable, a “virgin” figuratively indicated a person who is still living in flesh on earth, where the “foolish” represented the non-elect who lived only for the needs and pleasures of their flesh, while the “wise” were the elect who lived for the love in their spirits. But this parable also referred to “ten virgins” who “went out to meet the bridegroom.” And this is significant. Then we must also consider how the topic of meeting the “bridegroom,” as well as the context of the previous teaching Jesus gave, clearly suggest that He was talking about the end times, just before His second advent. All this implies that Jesus was speaking about churches, and specifically the kind of church that would wait for His return, the kind we call evangelical churches.
Look at how Jesus deliberately used the number ten. Of course, this was nice round number that one could count on one’s fingers and easily divide by two, into a dichotomy of five on the right hand and five on the left, which itself implied a King’s judgment for five and against five. Then, to the Jews of that day, the number ten also reminded them of how God took a tithe (one tenth) of their income for the Levitical priests, who were to use it to take care of the needy. But there was also another very common association of those Jews with the number ten. That is, all knew that, to form a synagogue, it required a minimum of ten adult males who were all spiritual “virgins,” who all walked in faith, believing that God was their Husband who would take them home after death. Thus, did Jesus use the ten “virgins,” who were all waiting to greet the “bridegroom,” as a representation of churches?
Since Jesus was talking about a group of ten “virgins” waiting for His own arrival, then specified what portion would be prepared for His return, and what portion would not, I find it hard to interpret this parable in any other way. It seems clear that here Jesus figuratively referred to the one universal
church existing on earth during the end times, just before His second advent. A portion of five out of ten would be ready, but five would not. Naturally, in the one universal church, there would be many local churches and individuals claiming to belong to His one true and universal priesthood of true disciples. And some local churches would be almost entirely filled with the elect, while others would be totally controlled by and filled with the non-elect. But only about half of the local churches and Page 1657
individuals claiming to be members of God’s true universal church would be His true disciples and the other half would be fakes, about the same proportion of elect to non-elect in the secular world.
Some might interpret this parable differently, as I previously did, before thinking and praying about its interpretation a little more deeply. I used to think these virgins only represented individuals, and that Jesus could have used any random number divisible by two. Yes, obviously, these ten virgins were figurative, symbolizing some kind of entity or entities which were called “virgins” by the Jews of the first century. But were these “ten virgins” representing one kind of body of people or merely a randomly chosen number of individuals. Perhaps it was a custom for brides to choose ten of their virgin friends to welcome her and her husband into the banqueting hall. But that could not be true, since the parable specifies that the bridegroom did not consider it unusual to find only five of them there to greed him, then rejected the other five who came late. So, if he expected ten, because it was some kind of custom to have ten, he would have greeted the late virgins with a comment something like, “Where have you been? We have been waiting for you to show up!” Besides this, we know that wedding feasts were only conducted for the marriages of wealthy couples and, each wedding feast was only as large as the couple could afford it to be. So how many could afford to pay for the costs of ten friends of the bride, all of whom were unknown by the groom? Logically, we are forced to conclude that there could not have been a custom of always inviting ten virgins to a wedding feast.
Also, if Jesus was simply talking about a random number of individual virgins, why did He not simply say that a group of virgins had been waiting for the arrival of the groom, and that half were prepared but half were not? Why did He deliberately specify “ten,” then repeated specify “five” of one kind and “five” of another? It would have been easier to say “half” were of one kind and “half”
were the other kind (by using the Greek word ἡμίσεια)? And even if He used the number “ten”
randomly, why not then say “half” were of one kind and the other “half” were of another kind. Why keep specifying that there were “five” of each kind, which kept drawing our attention back to the original number of “ten”? Clearly, Jesus wanted us to take note of the numbers He used in this parable, especially the number “ten.” So what was so significant about that number? Why did Jesus want us to focus on the number “ten”? To interpret the meaning of this parable correctly, we must first find out what His very deliberate focus on the number “ten” symbolized. Otherwise, we will not really comprehend what He was teaching us. And we must interpret that number of “ten” in the way Jesus meant His Jewish disciples to interpret it in the first century, not in the way Satan’s religion of Roman humanism would interpret it hundreds of years later. But, since half of those ten were “wise”
and accepted by Jesus at His second advent, but half were “foolish” and cast out into the darkness, that number of “ten,” the symbolism of “ten” had something to do with people, not systems nor things. It was a number of harmony, of both God’s hands, with all ten of His fingers working together to produce a balance of good and evil on earth. Specifically, in terms of ten people who are waiting to greet the Messiah at His coming, it represent the one universal church God created, but where half in it would not be those whom God had called, and only half were His chosen people.
It seems obvious to me that Jesus was not talking about a randomly picked number of five “wise”
and five “foolish” individuals, then likened them all to “virgins.” After all, as individuals judged by their personal words and deeds, His married disciples, who were sanctified and awakened elect, would have identified themselves as “virgins,” either spiritually or physically. But, as members of God’s universal church of His “chosen ones” waiting for His second coming, they were all “virgins”
waiting for their eternal “Bridegroom.” And Jesus used these “ten virgins” as entities whom all His disciples would readily and personally identify with, in some major aspect of their lives. And these Jews only called their local churches and their members “virgins,” never all the people of the world.
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Mat. 25:1-13, Churches at His Return
Jesus often used biblical Jewish symbols in His parables, but only symbols that His faithful disciples could interpret easily and rightly. And all of His Jewish disciples knew God’s Word. Thus, most of the symbols in Christ’s parables came from the Scriptures. Now, in His Word, God called Jerusalem (Zion) a virgin (II Kings 19:21; Is. 37:22; Lam. 2:13). And Jerusalem, figuratively called a virgin, was just one local church in the priesthood of the universal church of Israel, albeit the central local church, the one where God resided in its temple. Likewise, Judah, a regional church in Israel, was also called a virgin (Lam. 1:15). And the Scriptures even called other local or regional churches in other lands, even the gatherings of Jews in places like Babylon, virgins too. Later, we also saw how the Jewish apostle, Paul, used a plural pronoun to call all the people in the local church of Corinth a
“virgin,” when wrote about how he was determined to present that church to Christ as uncorrupted by humanistic Roman influences (II Cor. 11:2). So, considering how the Jews referred to local and regional churches as virgins back then, it is logical to assume that the figurative ten virgins in Jesus’
parable can refer to the sum of all churches claiming to believe God’s Word, or rather, to all of the churches and individuals that claim to be members of God’s one and only universal church of Israel.
Of course, some might then point out that the whole universal church of Israel was itself called a virgin (Jer. 18:13; 31:4,21; Amos 5:2). So they might then say that the universal church could only be represented by one virgin, not by the ten virgins Jesus spoke about in this parable. However, as indicated above, local and regional churches, mere parts of the universal church, were called virgins as well. And the number ten was used by Jesus to indicate the “complete” number of parts in the whole. All the parts, all local churches and individuals from both of Israel’s Old and New Covenant branches, all who wear the righteousness of God on their spirits, are the virgin bride of Yahweh, the bride of our God Jesus (e.g., Rev. 19:7-8). To these very biblically grounded disciples of Jesus, the universal church of Israel was the eternal heavenly bride in this parable, while the ten virgins would be the church on earth, virgins coming to her wedding feast, although half were not the true earthly church. The logical conclusion is that these ten virgins represented all local churches and professing believers on earth, all who believe the prophecies of the Messiah’s advent and are waiting for it.
Then Jesus revealed the portion of the kinds of churches and individuals who will be wise and truly prepared for His second advent, when He seals His marriage covenant with His universal church at His second advent, and how those will enter into His wedding feast. And His wedding feast is the millennium of His rule on earth, with the judgment day. Then He will take His bride home after that.
Most local and regional churches of the world claim to wait for or teach about Jesus’ marriage to the universal church of Israel at His second advent. Of course, some false churches who pontificate upon the prophesied signs of that marriage, claim that His second coming and His marriage have already occurred. But here Jesus is talking about churches that claim to believe the Scriptures. And only five out of every ten, or 50 percent of all those local and regional churches, will be prudent enough to prepare for His arrival in the end times. Only half will actually be taught and learn biblical truths that will enable them to become spiritually prepared for His coming. The other half will not, and will not be welcomed into His wedding feast. Yet half is a large number of churches. In our day, likely less than 1% actually teach and learn enough truth to be prepared. Therefore, Jesus was implying that a true revival will occur before He returns. For, not only today, but also throughout history, only a tiny fraction of the local and regional evangelical churches have ever been even remotely close to being fully prepared for His second advent, definitely not half of them. Consequently, there would need to be a very powerful and massive world-wide revival before a half of Bible-based churches on earth will be made ready by His Holy Spirit, able to wisely serve Him through love, before His return.
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So now let me provide an alternative literal translation of this parable and examine some of the details regarding what Jesus said here about the state of Bible-believing churches in the end times:
“The kingdom of the heavens will be like ten virgins. The same took their own lamps [and]
went out for the meeting of the Bridegroom. Now five of them were foolish and heedless, and five [were] rational and prudent. For the foolish and heedless, having taken their lamps, did not take olive oil with themselves [as was expected]. Yet the rational and prudent took olive oil in the vessels with their own lamps. During the delay of the Bridegroom, they all became drowsy and slept. Yet a cry from the midst of the night occurred, with the effect of saying, ‘Look, the Bridegroom! Go out for the meeting of Him!’ At that time all those virgins woke and trimmed their own lamps. But the foolish and heedless said to the rational and prudent ones, ‘Give some of your oil to us, because our lamps are being extinguished!’ Yet the rational and prudent were responding, reasoning, ‘Never! It definitely is not enough for us and for you. Instead, go to the merchants and buy [some] for yourselves.’ So, during their departing to buy [oil], the bridegroom came and the prepared ones entered with him into the wedding [hall for the celebration]. Then the door was shut. But later the remaining virgins also came, saying, “Lord! Lord! Open for us!’ Yet the one having responded said, ‘With all certainty, I reason with you, I did not know you [and do not want to know you].’ Therefore, be watchful and alert, because you people do not know the day nor the hour” (Mat. 25:1-13, from: Τότε ὁμοιωθήσεται ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν δέκα παρθένοις, αἵτινες λαβοῦσαι τὰς
λαμπάδας ἑαυτῶν ἐξῆλθον εἰς ὑπάντησιν τοῦ νυμφίου. πέντε δὲ ἐξ αὐτῶν ἦσαν μωραὶ καὶ
πέντε φρόνιμοι. αἱ γὰρ μωραὶ λαβοῦσαι τὰς λαμπάδας αὐτῶν οὐκ ἔλαβον μεθʼ ἑαυτῶν
ἔλαιον· αἱ δὲ φρόνιμοι ἔλαβον ἔλαιον ἐν τοῖς ἀγγείοις μετὰ τῶν λαμπάδων ἑαυτῶν.
χρονίζοντος δὲ τοῦ νυμφίου ἐνύσταξαν πᾶσαι καὶ ἐκάθευδον. μέσης δὲ νυκτὸς κραυγὴ
γέγονεν· Ἰδοὺ ὁ νυμφίος, ἐξέρχεσθε εἰς ἀπάντησιν αὐτοῦ. τότε ἠγέρθησαν πᾶσαι αἱ παρθένοι
ἐκεῖναι καὶ ἐκόσμησαν τὰς λαμπάδας ἑαυτῶν. αἱ δὲ μωραὶ ταῖς φρονίμοις εἶπαν· Δότε ἡμῖν
ἐκ τοῦ ἐλαίου ὑμῶν, ὅτι αἱ λαμπάδες ἡμῶν σβέννυνται. ἀπεκρίθησαν δὲ αἱ φρόνιμοι
λέγουσαι· Μήποτε οὐ μὴ ἀ
⸃ ρκέσῃ ἡμῖν καὶ ὑμῖν· πορεύεσθε μᾶλλον πρὸς τοὺς πωλοῦντας
καὶ ἀγοράσατε ἑαυταῖς. ἀπερχομένων δὲ αὐτῶν ἀγοράσαι ἦλθεν ὁ νυμφίος, καὶ αἱ ἕτοιμοι
εἰσῆλθον μετʼ αὐτοῦ εἰς τοὺς γάμους, καὶ ἐκλείσθη ἡ θύρα. ὕστερον δὲ ἔρχονται καὶ αἱ
λοιπαὶ παρθένοι λέγουσαι· Κύριε κύριε, ἄνοιξον ἡμῖν· ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν· Ἀμὴν λέγω
ὑμῖν, οὐκ οἶδα ὑμᾶς. γρηγορεῖτε οὖν, ὅτι οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν ἡμέραν οὐδὲ τὴν ὥραν, SBLGNT).
First notice that Jesus is again speaking about the kingdom of the plural “heavens” in this parable, meaning both God’s kingdom on earth and in the spiritual realm above. This is important to know, since it means that the bride of Bridegroom would be the deceased elect in the spiritual heaven above and the ten virgins would be the living souls in the church on earth. He was telling us about what it would be like for all the churches and individuals on earth who claim to be a part of His kingdom when He returns to the earth. Some will be His real people and some will not. And Jesus does not want us to attend foolish, heedless churches, who will cause both earthly and eternal loss.
Rather, He wants us in prudent, rational churches who help us gain both earthly and eternal wisdom.
We also know that Jesus was here talking about what this kingdom “will be like” in the future since, in the first sentence, He used the verb ὁμοιωθήσεται, a future passive form of ὁμοιόω. And, since He is the Messiah who will return in the end times, as the Husband of the world-wide church of Israel, this parable is clearly about His second advent in the future. As discussed above, we have already concluded from biblical and Jewish sources that these ten virgins indicated the portions of all Bible-based local and regional churches that He will accept at His coming, and the portion that will not be.
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And Jesus used the adjective μωρός to describe the five rejected virgins, the same Greek word that our English word “moron” comes from. The Greek adjective means: “foolish, stupid ... sometimes also with the connotation of an obstinate, godless person” (BDAG3). In this context, it is describing the “foolish and heedless” churches, which pay no attention to the clearly intended meanings of Jesus’ words. Then Jesus used the adjective φρόνιμος to describe the kind of Bible-based churches whom He will welcome into His wedding feast. This adjective means: “pertaining to understanding associated with insight and wisdom, sensible, thoughtful, prudent, wise” (BDAG3), and is primarily about being “rational and prudent,” having a practical kind of “wisdom” that makes daily decisions based on true information, and is not pertaining to the spiritual kind of wisdom which the Scriptures often refer to. So φρόνιμος implies that these churches did good, beneficial, practical works of God.
Now we need to figure out what the figurative lamp (λαμπάς) represented in this parable, since it is central to our understanding. Then we need to define the “olive oil” (ἔλαιον), used as fuel for the lamps. We need to know how each local and regional church will bear its own light, as it waits to meet Jesus at His second coming. Here we must realize that a figurative oil lamp gives only a little light, much like good and loving works only provide a little understanding of Jesus, infinitely less than His Word interpreted by His Holy Spirit does. Yet the love expressed by those little good works, usually done without thanks and without any glory, is very important to our God Jesus, and that love will make a great difference to our earthly and eternal lives. But now we must ask how, during the end times, will the lamp-like light of a church need fuel? What does the olive oil symbolize? What do the churches need in order to keep their small light of loving good works burning? This also must be a kind of thing that can be stored in a vessel (ἀγγεῖον) which a church should prudently bring with it as it waits to see Jesus. And how can that figurative olive oil be purchased (as indicted by a form of ἀγοράζω) from a “the ones selling” (τοὺς πωλοῦντας)? And who are those sellers? We need to know all this to interpret what Jesus what Jesus said about these virgins, to truly understand Him.
Well, we know a lamp produces light, and we know that light was most often associated with the truths of God found in the Bible. So, in terms of local earthly churches represented by the ten churches, all those ten parts of the universal earthly church would quote some Scriptures, at the very least. Jesus was saying that Bible-proclaiming churches will bring biblical truths with them, as they wait in the darkness of the world’s greatest tribulations during the end times. All will counsel, guide, comfort, encourage and guard its people with some truths, and some good works, as the effects of that truth. But a lamp needs fuel to keep burning. If that truth is not fuelled by the oil of Scriptures interpreted by the Holy Spirit, it will eventually fade until it extinguishes. And an oil of gladness is formed by good, prudent and truly loving personal works through love, which God’s Spirit also works in us. If churches simply doing good works through pride, and in competitions to win more tithing souls for themselves, some will fall and the others will continue to the pretense solely through their own egos, not through love. If churches merely manipulate their people into doing good works, through rhetoric that stirs up the emotions of the flesh, or fears of the flesh, none of the Holy Spirit’s truth and love can be worked through them, nor will there be any true joy of God in their spirits. So the oil of His Holy Spirit, the fuel of inner gladness, must be kept in the vessels of their hearts, so the truth of God may be kept shining, the kind of truth that love is built upon. God keeps lamps burning.
Simply uttering and writing biblical truths, along with many lies, but without receiving His Spirit’s personal counselling, correcting and guiding, or the truths He personally teaches to each individual, makes those biblical truths trite, hollow, weak, loveless and ignored. Then those biblical truths can also be easily replaced by useless lies from the devil’s fake preachers. So churches that only want their people know, profess and adhere to the doctrines or a creeds of their organizations ruled solely Page 1661
by sinners, are worthless and useless, no matter how biblical their teachings and creeds might be. For they need the fuel of the Holy Spirit’s teachings and training in the vessels of their hearts. And the work of a church is to let Jesus, our God, work in and through every individual elect spirit in the church, not just to demand words or actions from minds and bodies of flesh. So, if the true elect souls in a church understand and apply merely a few truths of God, but our God Jesus is directly and personally teaching their spirits in their hearts, then it is a true church. No matter how slowly they are learning and how few truly good, just, loving works of God they are doing, at least they are learning directly from Jesus. And that is what matters. For, when a big crunch comes, when all falls apart and a church desperately needs each member to work effectively, just to survive, those who learned truths in their hearts from Jesus will be the only ones who can do all that is truly required.
Also, during the black night of the great tribulation, true churches will need to store up more inner joy from the source, from Jesus’ Holy Spirit, which He produces through applications of His truths, by training us to do His just, loving good works. To keep church lamps burning brightly, until Jesus comes to gather us into the bright environment of His wedding feast, all in true churches must have spirits that will not give up, spirits that bear hope upon a rock-solid goal shared by everyone else in that church, with spirits that absolutely refuse to surrender to the lying enemy, because of their own personal knowledge of what they hope to achieve. So a true church that places all their faith in Jesus to work inside His people, may have less short-term progress in terms of what the world can see, since they do not focus on advertising through the physical appearances of their churches. And the humanistic churches, who use carnally efficient methods to cause their people’s minds and bodies flesh to learn and parrot doctrines, then do good works as bribed or terrorized slaves of the human gods at the heads of their churches, will have far more outwardly visible short-term effects. But the long-term effects of the more slowly growing true churches, who rely solely upon Jesus, will be far greater and exponentially more powerful in the end, even magnificent. A people filled with abundant life burning inexhaustible fuel from His Holy Spirit, working through love, can find no comparison.
But the humanistic churches will become darkened, panicking entities by the time Jesus comes, with lamps that run totally out of oil. And the true churches will not be able to share His Holy Spirit in their hearts, for Jesus is a personal Teacher of individuals, not a thing that can be split among all.