“meet ... happen” (BDAG3). He said a person would “meet” Peter and John in the city, in Jerusalem.
This person, who is identified as a male by the pronouns used here, would approach them and then initiate the conversation. And Jesus told them this would occur in the future, once they arrived in the city. They would not need to search for this person. And, in Matthew, we are told that this person would be a “stranger” (δεῖνα). So Jesus implied that this person would be a stranger looking around for some people who needed a place to celebrate the Passover, likely because he had a fully prepared a place, but those for whom it was prepared cancelled their reservation, and it was now mere hours before sunset, when the feast had to be eaten. Then, as this man was carrying water back to his residence, he saw the two disciples looking around. So he thought they might be looking for a place to celebrate the Passover and approached them. Just as Jesus prophesied, the stranger went to “meet”
them, asking if they were looking for a place. Jesus, our God, knew this would happen. And Jesus told Peter and John that they would easily recognize the man whom they should trust to provide a large enough place, since that person would be a man carrying water (i.e., Jesus used a masculine pronoun referring to this person), although it was unusual for men to be carrying water in those days.
Jesus also prophesied that the stranger who would approach and meet them would not be the head or owner of the house where the room was located, and the place would be an ἀνάγαιον (“something raised from the ground, a room upstairs,” BDAG3). So the two disciples were to accompany the man carrying the jar of water, so they could speak to the head of the house. Then they were to tell that head of house, “The doctrinal Teacher of life and faith is reasoning, ‘Where is the guestroom where I might eat the Passover with My disciples?’” So, by instructing Peter and John to mention that their doctrinal Teacher of life and faith (διδάσκαλος) required a guestroom, it seems to imply that the head of the house would recognize these two now-famous disciples, and would be happy to have Jesus and the twelve as the guests in the upper room, so they could eat all the food he prepared for the Passover Seder. At the very least, it implies that the head of the house would be a devout man who greatly respected all rabbis. But, since Jesus did not want Peter and John to mention His name, it implies that the household had some people in it who would oppose having Jesus and His disciples eat the Passover meal in their home. Either way, Jesus knew beforehand that the head of the house would comply with their request once he heard that a Jewish “Teacher” of doctrine needed the room.
All this occurred just as Jesus had prophesied, since Luke told us, “So, after going out, they found it just as He had told them, and prepared the Passover.” But Matthew, an eye-witness of the words that Jesus had prophesied on that day, was a little more explicit about what Jesus told Peter and John to say to the head of that household. Matthew told us that Jesus told His disciples to tell this man, “The Page 1727
doctrinal Teacher of life and faith says, ‘ My appointed time is near. I am making the Passover with My disciples up to you,’” as his responsibility. This implies that the head of that house was actually a secret disciple of Jesus, a man who knew Jesus had been teaching that He would soon be seized and killed. But, if he was a secret disciple, there must have been a reason for him keeping his faith in Jesus hidden. And that reason must have been because other residents of the house opposed Jesus.
Therefore, the Spirit of our God Jesus knew beforehand, and ordained, that a stranger, the head of a large house with a room on the second floor, a man who seemed to know Him and His teachings, would take up the responsibility of completing all the preparations of the Passover Seder for Him and His twelve disciples. The head of that house must have been a devout man, a Jewish man who was capable of correctly preparing for a Passover Seder, who also knew about Jesus’ “appointed time” of death. And all assumed His death would be caused by the chief priests and evangelicals who opposed Him. Then all knew that anyone who helped Jesus would also incur the wrath of those fake priests and false rabbis. So this head of that house was willing to take a great risk by doing all this.
Also, we can assume the house must have been large, since normal houses did not have an “upper room.” And all large houses had many people living in them, especially in Jerusalem at that time of the year, since all the Jews of the world were obligated to take at least one Passover there, and all the houses there felt obligated to take guests in for the Passover. And also notice that a man brought the water into this house, although all the other houses had wives, daughters, female servants or female slaves who always performed that task. For all of the wells where the household water came from were the meeting places of the women, and men seldom ventured there. Also, the Passover Seder was, and still is, a celebration for families, where the women and children are central to the meaning and purposes which God had ordained for it. Yet a man carried in the needed water for the residents of this household. So Jesus celebrated the Passover, and the day of His bodily death, in a household which seemed to consist exclusively of men. Therefore, this must have been one of the households belonging to an all-male religious order, one of many existing in Jerusalem back then. Jesus ate the
“Last Supper” with His family of male disciples in a religious order’s hall consisting of men only, whose head was a His committed faithful disciple, willing to risk his position there for Jesus’ sake.
Now think about this. Jesus prophesied that this would be an all-adult-male Passover Seder, and thus predestined this to be the eternal memorial of His death. Yet Jesus came to fulfill His Law in us and through us. And, as our God, His Law created this same Passover celebration, in its original form, as a memorial which the entire family had to celebrate, where His intended meaning of this law made women and children a central part of this feast. Not one in the family was to ever forget that God alone makes all free. All future generations of the children born of the women who cooked this feast for their families were to celebrate it in remembrance of how God frees them from slavery to the lies and sins of Satan’s world order. His Law made the Passover a memorial because it was an important biblical prophecy about the works of the Messiah, which would free all the Jewish and Gentile elect in His priesthood of Israel, males and females, young and old, from any slavery to the taskmasters of lies and their bondage in sin. And this particular Passover would fulfill God’s old Passover laws, to become the memorial of God’s deliverance from slavery, remembered by our children forevermore.
Yet God’s Law only ever spoke about males being obliged to go to war, never women. And, when His Law also stipulated that a recently married man could not be sent to war until a year after his marriage (Deut. 24:5), it meant that only men could go to war. For all wars involve moral judgments, and is therefore a spiritual labour. Consequently, God only allows men to fight wars seeking to save the elect standing on both sides of the battlefield, from the lies and tyranny of the wicked. In God’s eyes, war is never merely an attempt to conquer or destroy an opponent. Rather, God has always Page 1728
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required all the soldiers from His priesthood of Israel to judge the spirits of all human beings, all who fight on both sides, and they must never judge by external appearances alone, but by discerning the intentions and motives of their hearts, as manifested in their words and deeds. And God only ever allows awakened elect men chosen by Him to make those kinds of judgments. For He only gives elect male minds of flesh the ability to make such judgments, after He has taught their elect spirits knowledge and wisdom, and after He trains their spirits to rightly manage their flesh. For God made elect female minds of flesh with a stronger desire and a greater ability to judge and fulfill physical needs and desires of the people within the spheres of their lives, to care for their families, friends and communities, which women must often do through compromises for their sakes. And, since God made the minds of women more willing to make necessary compromises, but made male minds of flesh better able to clearly discern and harmonize principles of justice without compromises, even if it entails suffering or death, God only allows males to authoritative judgments, such as in warfare.
Now, on this particular Passover day, the most important Passover day in all history, Jesus wanted only mature males present, and mostly the awakened elect kind whom God’s Law appointed as His teaching and judging authorities and as soldiers. So the way this Passover was celebrated by Jesus seemed to indicate that Jesus was assembling a biblical kind of army on this day, and that He was intending to sent His army out to war on that very same day, the day that He knew He was going to be crucified for their sins, to restore their relationships with their Creator God. For look at the facts.
When have we ever seen Jews celebrate the Passover without their wives and children? Well, there had been many wars in Israel’s history, and those wars were the only times when all-male families of soldiers celebrated the Passover. If at all possible, Jewish men always celebrate God’s Passover with their wives and children, except during a time of war. Consequently, the place Jesus caused this Passover to be celebrated, and the way He chose to celebrate it solely with other men, suggested that Jesus had begun a war on that very day, a war that would last for millenniums. Jesus only involved males in every aspect of the Last Supper, only trained soldiers of God’s Israel, but included one known spy, to set the events of this war in motion. This Passover memorialized the deliverance of Israel from slavery, the salvation Jesus would begin with His work on the cross that very day. Then it would take more that 2,000 years to end this incessant warfare between His citizens and the citizens of the world order, with its works of nullifying the devil’s works and building up His just kingdom.
So we can speculate why Jesus specifically instructed Peter and John to give that cryptic message to the head of that house. Clearly, Jesus did not want them to mention His name because Jesus knew that His opponents lived in that house. So the war Jesus initiated against Satan’s world order that day would begin in that house, moments after He arrived. For, once Jesus and His apostles walked through their door, all the members of the order would recognize Him. And there were surely evangelicals (Pharisees) in this kind of religious order, some for and some against Jesus. God’s enemies were everywhere. So a battle between the head of that religious order and some other members would have begun immediately. Even while Jesus was eating that meal, the members of the order would be zealously discussing doctrines, striking one another with the swords of their words.
From that day on, there would be no peace between God’s people and Satan’s people, no way to continue in cooperative fellowship with one another based on compromises. For compromising with the devil means giving in to lies and deadly sins which utterly destroy lives. All this would manifest through the way Satan’s Jewish and Roman citizens would unjustly crucify the sinless body of Jesus on the cross that day. This was the day Jesus would take peace from the earth and divide brother against brother, until the entire earth dichotomized into two opposing sides, the elect and non-elect.
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Jesus Initiates the Spy’s Betrayal
So Jesus and His twelve assistant teachers set out from Bethany in the afternoon of the 13th of Nisan, likely about three or four o’clock, and entered Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast. Making their way through the narrow streets, they arrived at the large residence with the upper room arriving just before the sun set at about six o’clock, since they had to be in the room before the Sabbath Passover day, the 14th of Nisan, began at sunset. They would have arrived after the Passover lamb had been butchered within the gates of the house and while it was roasting on the spit. Introductions would have been made and, after reclining on couches in the upper room, Jesus and the twelve began to eat the meal, while reading the Scriptures and saying the Passover prayers of the Seder. Jesus would take the lead as the Head of their family, and the young disciple John would play the role of the child of the family. Then, after the meal and most of the Seder ritual, which involved an hour or more of discussions, prayers, eating symbolic foods and drinking the first two cups of wine—but before they poured the third cup of wine, then ate the afikomen (the middle loaf in a stack of three flat loaves of unleavened bread) and drank that third cup so they could say the “grace,” a prayer of thanksgiving—Jesus suddenly and unexpectedly declared that one of the twelve would betray Him.
Now, earlier in the Seder, Jesus and the twelve had dipped bitter herbs into a dish of salt water, which symbolized Israel’s bitter slavery in Egypt and tears of bondage—so each could remember the slavery of lies and sins in each one’s own life, and how God delivers each from them. Likewise, each had also dipped their hands in water for a “baptism” or ceremonial washing, to sanctify themselves after reciting the Scriptures about the Passover, and so all could say a blessing to bond the family together with everyone else in the church of Israel. So, when Jesus chose to reveal the betrayer, He deliberately referred to him as one of the disciples who partook in one or both of these symbolic rituals. In other words, Jesus was pointing out how the betrayer made these professions of the heart during the Passover, how that betrayer declared faith in God to deliver him from sins as he was about to commit that sin of betraying God, and how the betrayer betrayed his sanctified union with Israel.
Since almost everything said or done by our extremely intelligent God Jesus bears some kind of hidden deeper meaning, along with an explicit meaning, we can assume that, when Jesus revealed His betrayer, by pointing to one or both of these traditions done during the Passover Seder, it was intentional and designed to point out the magnitude of evil in that betrayer’s heart. As usual, Jesus waited until the timing was perfect before making this announcement, so He might cause us to think about the implications He was suggesting. So we need to use our imaginations to determine what hidden meaning He was implying, yet do so with informed assumptions, based on the knowledge and wisdom He provides, without letting our thoughts run wild into totally baseless speculations that appeal to our carnal desires. Thus, let us search out more hidden meanings, by examining the details.
“Now, while they were eating, He said, ‘Assuredly I reason with you [disciples] that one out of you will betray Me.’ And they were greatly disturbed. Each one was the first to reason with Him, ‘That one is not I, Lord!’ So, having responded, He said, ‘The one having dipped the hand in the bowl with Me, this one will betray Me. On the one hand, the Son of mankind departs just as it was effectively written regarding Him. On the other hand, woe to the person that, through you, the Son of mankind is being betrayed. It was beautiful for him, [but better] if that person had not been born.’ So, having responded, Judas, the one betraying Him, said, ‘That one is not I, Rabbi!’ He reasoned with him,
‘You yourself said [this]?’” (Mat. 20:21-25, from: καὶ ἐσθιόντων αὐτῶν εἶπεν· Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι
εἷς ἐξ ὑμῶν παραδώσει με. καὶ λυπούμενοι σφόδρα ἤρξαντο λέγειν αὐτῷ εἷς ἕκαστος· Μήτι ἐγώ εἰμι, κύριε; ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν· Ὁ ἐμβάψας μετʼ ἐμοῦ τὴν χεῖρα ἐν τῷ τρυβλίῳ οὗτός με παραδώσει· ὁ
μὲν υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ὑπάγει καθὼς γέγραπται περὶ αὐτοῦ, οὐαὶ δὲ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐκείνῳ διʼ οὗ ὁ
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υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου παραδίδοται· καλὸν ἦν αὐτῷ εἰ οὐκ ἐγεννήθη ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖνος. ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ
Ἰούδας ὁ παραδιδοὺς αὐτὸν εἶπεν· Μήτι ἐγώ εἰμι, ῥαββί; λέγει αὐτῷ· Σὺ εἶπας, SBLGNT). This is packed with inferences, starting with the implication of the timing of this announcement. Jesus chose to tell His twelve that one of them would betray Him, even into a tortuous death, after most of the symbolic Passover Seder was completed, just before they were to end the meal with one final ritual.
So, after the announcement, all the disciples asked if that betrayer might be them. All said basically the same thing Judas did. And Judas was simply emulating their words and behaviours, although he knew that he had already made arrangements to betray Jesus a couple of nights before this. For that is what psychopaths do, to dupe others into accepting them as a friend who is just like them. But the others were insecure, knowing they were often foolish, frequently doing stupid things or saying the wrong things. So the other eleven were sincerely worried about somehow inadvertently betraying Jesus in some terrible way. Yet Jesus never worried about accidental betrayals, and quickly forgave such things, since Jesus judged by the motives and intentions of the heart, making concessions and intercessions for their unintentional sins, although He did rebuke such errors and teach them God’s right ways when they did them. No, Jesus was talking about a deliberate betrayal, made through an arrogant soul’s bitterness over losing what he hoped to gain through selfish ambitions. Then Jesus looked Judas in the eye and identified him as His betrayer, right to his face. Of course, with the confusion going on over this alarming declaration by Jesus, it seems that only a couple of the other eleven disciples even heard Jesus identify Judas as His betrayer. Still, Judas was now fully exposed.
Now we might search for more information about that night, and more hidden meanings. Mark, who was not at that meal, essentially gleaned the same information from other eye-witnesses (Mark 14:17-21), the same that Matthew revealed. And Luke did so as well, and only briefly mentioned this announcement by Jesus (Luke 22:21-23). Then John, another eye-witness of this event, provided much more information about that night. For that day of Christ’s crucifixion, starting with Passover Seder in the evening, seemed to make a very strong impression upon his adolescent mind, and affected every thought and decision of his life from then on, until the day he died of old age. First John told us how Jesus was preaching about His coming death at the Passover. Then John said Jesus wanted to go to that painful death to complete His mission, and claimed: “But rather, I entered into this hour because of this” (John 12:27, ALT). Jesus also implied that He would rise up after His death on the Roman instrument of torture: “Now this world order is justly condemned. Now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And if I might be lifted up out of the earth, I will compel all kinds of people toward Myself” (John 12:31-32, ALT). Here, the Greek clause, ὑψωθῶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς, can be interpreted as either “I am lifted up out of [or ‘ up from’] the earth,” where “up out of” can refer to His resurrection up out of the grave, while “up from” would likely refer to being lifted up on a cross.
Then John claimed, “So He declared this, indicating the type of death He was about to die” (12:33).
That is, by saying He would be lifted “up from the earth,” it implied that He would die on a cross, since that is what the Romans did, raise up their tortured victims “up from the earth,” along well-travelled roads for all to see, so all would be terrorized by the horror of it and fearfully submit to any kind of bullying or unjust exploitation those Romans chose to commit. But Jesus had also been teaching His disciples that He would rise “up out of” the grave. He would be “lifted up out of the earth,” out of tomb where His body would be buried. And the way Jesus worded this declaration (in 12:32), He could have also been referring to that resurrection at the same time. For the power of His Holy Spirit, after His resurrection, would indeed draw all the elect toward Him, into a relationship with Him, especially on the judgment day. Then all will be lifted up from the earth to heaven’s gates, both the elect and the non-elect, willingly or unwillingly, just as we pull water in a bucket up from Page 1731
the dark depths of a well. This is what Jesus was going to accomplish by dying on the cross, and by rising from the dead again, to live as each one’s personal Teacher, with all His forgiving authority.
So Jesus knew He was going to die and had clearly prophesied that He would die on the day of the Passover. Therefore, all His disciples also knew Jesus was going to intentionally die at some time during that Passover day. However, John never mentioned anything about the traditional meal and ceremony which initiated that day. And this was the major focus of that day for most Jews. Nor did John talk about how Jesus identified Judas during the last part of that Passover Seder. Instead, this eye-witness, John, simply stated that Jesus completed the Seder, then described only one event that had occurred during the meal: “And, while the supper was occurring, [the counsel] of the devil [had been] already effectively cast into the heart, so that Judas, [son] of Simon the Iscariotes, might have betrayed Him” (John 13:2, from: καὶ δείπνου γινομένου, τοῦ διαβόλου ἤδη βεβληκότος εἰς τὴν
καρδίαν ἵνα παραδοῖ αὐτὸν Ἰούδας Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτου, SBLGNT). After this, John went on to describe how Jesus had washed the feet of His disciples, but said nothing more about the Seder.
Now John, at that time, was a trusting, gullible teenager, likely between 14 and 17 years old. And John had travelled, worked, eaten and suffered beside Judas and the others for the past three years, thinking Judas was one of his close brothers, one of the twelve. Also, as the youngest of these twelve brothers, John would have looked up to and respected Judas as his older brother. Yet, during that meal, Jesus exposed Judas as a traitor, in a way which implied that Judas had only pretended to be united with them, that he faked his sanctification with them. Judas had never really been one of the twelve, merely a very good pretender who fooled all of them, except Jesus Himself. For all the other disciples knew Judas had his faults. But so did they. So they had fully accepting him without ever taking the time to more thoroughly examine the motive and intentions of Judas’ spirit. But now John witnessed how the countenance of Judas suddenly transformed from a loving brother into a selfishly ambitious, cunning, plotting enemy. So this unmasking would have traumatized his young mind.
This bad memory may be why John did not write very much about that meal, why John did not even mention how Jesus had ended the Seder, after exposing Judas as His betrayer, by commanding all His future disciples to celebrate the Passover as a memorial of His deliverance from slavery to sin.
From John’s comment about the devil casting something into Judas during the Seder (John 13:2), we can assume that John saw an instantaneous transformation of his trusted older brother Judas into a ruthless betrayer of his beloved Teacher, even into a monster who was also willing to risk having their enemies also execute him and the other ten disciples as well. And John might have even heard Judas utter something horrifying to him. When Jesus revealed to Judas that He knew he would betray Him, this would have been the moment that the devil cast his counsel, will, intentions and hatred into Judas. Satan would have spoke to Judas’ spirit, to coach and incite his wicked child into action, as soon as Jesus exposed him. Remember, first Judas said, much like the other eleven disciples, “That
[betrayer] is not I, Rabbi!” And, immediately after that, our God Jesus responded with His candid affirmation, “You yourself said this.” The Spirit of God in Jesus saw how Judas, just two day before that night, had secretly sold Him to His enemies for a mere 30 pieces of silver. Jesus could also see the spirit of Judas as he sold Him, knowing full well that those false priests would then murder Him.
Yet Judas dared to call Jesus his “Rabbi,” as he lied about not being the one who had betrayed Him.
And the term “Rabbi” was a more affectionate and respectful term than “Lord” (κύριε). The other eleven called Jesus “Lord” as they wondered if they were the betrayers (compare Mat. 26:22 to Mat.
26:25). So, by calling Jesus his “Rabbi,” Judas tried to look like the most honourable and respectful of all the twelve, like the most dedicated of all, while he lied. Judas carefully chose his words so he could deceive, to look like the most innocent of the bunch, though he was the only guilty one there.
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Yet, also notice how Judas not only refused to call Jesus his own personal “Lord” of his life, Judas also seemed to be simply addressing Jesus as “a rabbi,” as one of many rabbis, as he was falsely implying that Jesus was his personal, beloved, highly respected rabbi. For Judas appeared to address Jesus with the term “Rabbi” like stranger might, and did not use the phrase, “My Rabbi.” So Judas was actually being secretly honest while he was lying, while he was trying to deceive Jesus. And psychopaths often slightly adjust their wording in their conversations, so they can be secretly honest while they are giving a dishonest impression of themselves, while they are lying through their teeth.
And they do this as a private joke which only they know about, to amuse themselves. It makes them feel superior to the dupes they are manipulating with their lies. It is much like saying to themselves:
“Look at how smart I am! I can tell the truth right to the face of this dupe, and he will never realize it. Look at how stupid this fool is, unable to see through any of my cunning, brilliant, mocking lies.”
However, Jesus did see through his lie. And the time had now come to use that child of the devil for the purposes that God had predestined him to fulfill. So our God Jesus looked Judas in the eye, and spoke directly to his soul. Jesus then mocked that deceiver by declaring, “You yourself said this.” At that moment, Judas seems to have realized that Jesus knew that he had betrayed Him, knew that he sold His life to His enemies for a few coins. The way Jesus looked at him and responded to his denial even made Judas realize that Jesus had never been fooled by any of his charades. Now it had suddenly dawned on Judas that Jesus always knew he was pretending to be a faithful disciple, and that he was actually a pragmatist who did not believe a single word Jesus taught about anything.
Now Judas saw that Jesus had always known he was actually a psychopath, whose sole interest in life was to gain a lucrative, highly esteemed position of authority and power from Jesus, whom he thought would be a Roman-like Messiah, a carnal despot whom all Israel would blindly follow and obey. At that moment, it dawned on Judas that Jesus was not a manipulated fool. Rather, Judas himself turned out to be the manipulated one, used by this Jesus to obtain His goal of providing a spiritual salvation Israel through His death. Of course, Judas did not believe in that kind of inner salvation worked by the Messiah’s death. But, if that was what Jesus wanted, Judas would surely give it to Him. Now that Jesus revealed to Judas that He knew Judas would betray Him, Judas seemed to let his mask fall to the ground and stopped pretending. And now that Judas found out that Jesus was not the kind of Messiah he wanted, that Jesus fully intended to die, in order to provide a spiritual salvation for Israel, there was no need to appease Jesus. To gain the physical power Judas craved, he had to go elsewhere to get it. But first, he would get revenge. For now Judas hated Jesus, because Jesus kept quiet, even though Jesus knew he had become disillusioned about not being able to fulfill his selfish ambitions by serving the great Messiah. In his mind, Jesus had deceived him.
Just after the Passover meal, Judas realized that “the gig was up.” So, now that he found out that Jesus knew who and what he actually was, Judas began to wear his true face, in front of all. And this is likely what traumatized young John. When John testified that something “of the devil had been already cast into the heart and resulted in effects” [which seems to be indicated by a genitive of production, τοῦ
διαβόλου, and by the perfect participle form of βάλλω], John may have seen the behaviour of Judas instantly change towards him. Judas would have suddenly become cold and ruthless, sneering at John and the other disciples, mocking and insulting them, as though they were all worthless inferiors. Since young John had never seen Judas behave like this, it would shock and traumatize him. John’s perception of Judas, developed throughout a full three years of his short life, shattered in those brief moments. So this would have been an extremely dark and disturbing time for John, an experience that John never wanted to remember, discuss or write about ever again. But Judas left very soon after he had been exposed, as soon he recovered from the shock and his father from hell helped him devise a nice little Page 1733
vengeful plot against Jesus. For, in the eyes of a psychopath, the way Jesus saw through his crafty deception, and the way Jesus “managed” him for so long, was an unforgivable sin worthy of death.
Judas now saw that Jesus had adeptly manipulated and managed his behaviours for three years, with a full knowledge of his ulterior motives. And conning a psychopathic con man is the worst offence anyone could ever commit against that psychopath. For every psychopath sees himself as the god who owns and manipulates his dupes, and even all existence. And a psychopath does actually create all he perceives as existing, all of the tiny, dark, delusional universe he has formed in his own mind.
Yet psychopaths lack any ability whatsoever to see, hear, feel, smell or taste truly existing physical or spiritual realities. Still, their delusions make them think that, since they are superior manipulating gods who own inferior dupes, they are entirely justified and even duty-bound to painfully punish or murder inferiors who dares to manipulate and deceive them instead. To psychopaths, revenge for the sin of irreverently blaspheming their status as gods, by doing to them what they do to others, is a matter of justice. Vengeance, preferably with extreme pain ending in a humiliating death, is the only
“just” remedy for such an offence, in the eyes of a psychopath. For the only way psychopaths can maintain their delusions of god-like status is by terrorizing inferiors into submission. For they are all worthless, useless parasites who can never be respected for anything like their love, wisdom, true justice or anything good. All those pathetic little psychopaths have is their ability to ruthlessly terrorize through their inability to perceive realities. And, since all believe they are gods, all must maintain order in their own delusional universes. More than just about anything else, a psychopathic human god must never allow any of his dupes to outwit him, which is why you so often see how the less intelligent psychopaths always seek even more stupid dupes to build their kingdom. Since a psychopath’s entire delusional universe revolves around himself alone, no one he draws into his dark little imagined world must ever be superior to him. If his brilliant, well-plotted, god-like deception, created in his own superior mind is discovered by a more intelligent dupe, then that dupe must die.
Thus, John told us that, before Judas left them—as he was brooding and pondering what he might do to Jesus and the other eleven disciples after Jesus exposed him during the Passover Seder—the devil was helping his wicked spirit plot revenge. And the Spirit of Jesus would have easily detected all this, since even John’s spirit saw this occurring. Yet Jesus did nothing to stop Satan from counselling Judas and casting him even further into dark delusions, which is actually the only kind of “joy” that psychopaths feel. For Jesus knew He had to die that day. So, instead, Jesus did the opposite. Jesus spoke again to prompt Judas into action. After washing the feet of all twelve, including the angry Judas, Jesus declared: “For I gave an example to you [disciples], so that, even as I did for you, you
[disciples] also might be doing.... If you [disciples] know these things, you are blessed if you might be doing them. I do not reason [this] regarding all of you. I Myself know whom I chose. But, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled, the one eating the bread from Me, lifted up his heel against Me”
(John 13:15,17-18, ALT). So Jesus calmly washed Judas’ feet, looking him in the eye, illustrating how He had always served His people, humbly and wisely. And this would heap burning coals on the heart of Judas, proving that his feelings of revenge were utterly unjustified and wrong. Then Jesus, in front of everyone, accused Judas of betraying Him after eating the bread of heaven which had come from Him. Of course, Judas cared nothing for bread of God’s Word. Yet Jesus only ever claimed to be a Teacher of that Word. Therefore, if Judas followed Jesus as His disciple, what more could Judas have justly received from Jesus? And, if Judas was now bitterly against Jesus because he wanted more than that, Judas was the unjust one. All this would enrage Judas, since he and Satan in him felt so justified in plotting their “just” revenge. So, yes, Jesus really knew how to provoke a psychopath!
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Thus, John wrote: “After saying these things, Jesus had been troubled in the Spirit. Then He testified and said, ‘Assuredly I reason with you [disciples] that one out of you will betray Me.’ The disciples were looking into one another, being frustrated about how He spoke. One of His disciples, whom Jesus had been spiritually loving, was reclining on the chest of Jesus. Therefore, Simon Peter nodded to this one, to inquire about whom He spoke, who it might possibly be. So that one, after leaning back upon the chest of Jesus, said to Him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ Jesus responds, ‘He is that one for whom I Myself dip the morsel and give [it] to him.’ Thus, after dipping the morsel, He gives [it] to Judas, [son of] Simon the Iscariotes. And, after the morsel, Satan then entered into that one.
Therefore, Jesus reasoned with him, ‘What you are doing, do it quickly.’ But no one, from those reclining [at the table], knew this, for what purpose He spoke to him. For some had been thinking, since Judas was holding the [money] bag, that Jesus was telling him, ‘Purchase [the things] of which we have a need for the feast,’ or so that he might give something to the needy. Therefore, after receiving the morsel, that one immediately departed, though it was night” (John 13:21-30, ALT).
So Judas had been hanging around after the meal, even though Jesus had already privately told Judas that He knew he was the betrayer. This is something that psychopaths will often do when they are exposed, partly in order to intimidate their opponent, and partly because they are too stupid to realize that they are in deep trouble, since they think they are gods who can work their way out of any dire situation they might encounter. Of course, Judas could not intimidate our omniscient God Jesus, and Jesus could easily counter any of that fool’s remarks or actions. However, the Spirit of God in Jesus was troubled by the negative influence that Judas was inflicting on His other disciples, especially upon young John. For Judas most likely making cynical remarks by this time, as he plotted revenge against Jesus, and inventing disturbing lies, feeding them to the weakest of His disciples, in order to cause conflict and chaos. So Jesus distracted Judas by repeating that one of them was about to betray Him. This would worry Judas, since Jesus had not yet let any of the other disciples know that he was the betrayer. Thus, Judas would have turned all his attention toward Jesus. And this would stop Judas from carrying out a plot that would have most likely involved telling a slanderous lie about Jesus to the other disciples, and probably to John, the youngest and most gullible. In this way, when Jesus repeated that announcement, Jesus likely temporarily prevented something more evil from occurring.
Then Jesus took a morsel of leftover food, probably a piece of the same bread He used to represent His body, the afikoman, which He had previously broken when He said the “grace” and drank the third cup of wine. Jesus dipped it in something, possibly the charoset, representing the mortar which Israel made for their taskmasters in Egypt, a symbol of the works of God’s priests in Israel while they were slaves in Satan’s kingdom. So this could have represented how He would take the sinful works of His people upon Himself when He died through the sinful works of Judas. Then Jesus gave this dipped morsel to Judas, and let young John discover the identity of the betrayer. Now, since John was the most likely target of Judas’ attacks, the one Judas probably hoped to confuse and corrupt with lies, in order to sabotage unity in the brotherhood of disciples, allowing John to identify Judas as the betrayer was yet another instance of Jesus outsmarting Judas. So this too would have greatly angered Judas, and also enraged the father of Judas’ spirit, Satan. And that was when Judas chose to give his entire heart to that devil, who promptly entered Judas, to take over the control of his words and deeds. So Jesus sent Judas and Satan away, commanding, “What you are doing, do it quickly.”
Now our God Jesus compelled Judas and his hellish father to flee into their beloved darkness of the night, to do their works against Him outside the priesthood of His true church gathered in that room.
And, of course, Satan chose to do his evil religious works through his servants in his false church.
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Still, at this point in time, all the other disciples, except John, did not know the betrayer was Judas.
So none of them knew how Jesus had kept them safe from the divisive, corrupting influence of Judas for three years, nor how Jesus had been distracting and manipulating that plotting, high-functioning psychopath that evening, to keep Judas from being negatively influencing them after He exposed that self-serving spy as a faithful puppet of Satan. Then also notice how Jesus waited until Judas fled into the night, so that only His true disciples remained with Him, so He could assure His true church that He would be glorified through His death and resurrection. His betrayal was not shameful in any way. Rather, He would be glorified, in a way where all elect would have a good opinion of Him. God would be glorified in the way He sacrificed His body on a criminal’s cross for the crimes of the elect.
Since this was true, God in Jesus would glorify Himself again, by raising His dead body back to life.
Now that the devil and his vile child fled from the true church, now that Jesus would be glorified by His death and resurrection, God gave us a new teaching. By it, we would begin to fulfill all God’s Law, especially after Jesus returned to serve as the King of the world, then even more throughout all eternity in heaven. Once Judas was expelled from the church, Jesus declared: “I give you [disciples]
a new authoritative word, that you might spiritually love one another, just as I spiritually loved you, in order that you might love one another. In this, if you have spiritual love in one another, all will recognize that you are My disciples” (John 13:34-35, from: ἐντολὴν καινὴν δίδωμι ὑμῖν ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε
ἀλλήλους, καθὼς ἠγάπησα ὑμᾶς ἵνα καὶ ὑμεῖς ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους. ἐν τούτῳ γνώσονται πάντες ὅτι
ἐμοὶ μαθηταί ἐστε, ἐὰν ἀγάπην ἔχητε ἐν ἀλλήλοις, SBLGNT). Jesus loved us for a purpose, so His love for us might teach our spirits to love one another, in the same just, equitable, honest way, based upon the realities of what we are, and what we are not. This love can only originate in the minds of our eternal spirits, never through our minds of temporary and dying flesh. So this love is eternal like our spirits. And this kind of Christ-like love spontaneously arising from our spirits is the attribute which we can use to identify other elect children of God. It is the mark of all who will be saved through Jesus’ death and resurrection, the only sign that tells us which souls are His true disciples.
As for Judas Iscariot, he was obviously a typical, common child of the devil, whom Satan awakened and completely overtook, whose soul was forced to become his enslaved little psychopath. Thus, he lived a wretched, small, empty, dark, pathetic, weak, deluded, self-centred life, always needing to be careful to not reveal his true self, always hoping for rewards that were themselves mere delusions, always expending the precious hours and energy of his life for meaningless wealth and power in Satan’s crumbling and soon to be destroyed world order. So we cannot hate such a worthless and insignificant soul, although we look upon him, his thoughts and his actions with disgust, and know there is only one place a spirit like his can ever call his eternal home, only one place he can forever hide within his own beloved dark delusions. Woe to the one who cherishes such an unreal spiritual existence, totally void of love, mercy, compassion, truth or justice. Woe to him who would hate, betray and seek deadly revenge against our God Jesus, solely because his selfish ambitions for riches and power proved to be unfounded. Hell is the only place that his kind of spirit would desire, never heaven, never a place where the light of truth would continuously expose his delusional ambitions.
But, looking at Judas, at how he thought and behaved, gives some elect a chance to pause and reflect upon the lies now fed to them by Satan’s world order. And Jesus had this purpose in mind as well, when He allowed Judas to tag along during the entire three years of His ministry as the High Priest and King of the earth. If we examine how Judas was given every chance to learn and embrace the truth, even history’s most favourable opportunity to build love upon a mountain of realities revealed by God Himself, yet remained entirely committed to his deluded selfish ambitions for wealth and power the whole time, we realize that there is no such thing as “free will.” If God Himself could not Page 1736
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convince Judas to seek salvation, then no human preacher who ever lived or ever will live cannot do so either. The non-elect will always be the non-elect, and no one can transform them into the elect.
At the same time, this also means the elect will always be the elect, and no one can ever transform any of them into the non-elect. And, by the inherent nature of their spirits, all the elect will desire and fully enjoy the light of truth and life of love in heaven, although heaven’s gates will prove that all of them were foolish sinners here on earth, and that much of what they believed was completely false. For the kind of love that is built on a rock-solid foundation of truth is desired by all our elect spirits, together with our candid, caring, loving God Jesus. While on earth, Jesus reveals to us that the spirits of life in all creatures here are larger than the entire material universe, and the spirits of God’s elect children extend far beyond theirs. So, when we realize this, and understand that the spiritual realm of heaven dwarfs the spirits we find here, our only “selfish ambition” is for heaven.
Consequently, to prevent us from mourning in ignorance for Judas, from thinking that he could have been “saved,” if only his supposed “free will” had chosen Jesus, Matthew made sure to inform us about how Jesus said this about Judas: “Woe to the person that, through you, the Son of mankind is being betrayed. It was beautiful for him, but better if that person had not been born” (Mat. 26:24b, ALT). So that phrase, “It was beautiful for him” (καλὸν ἦν αὐτῷ), implied that a psychopath like Judas would enjoy his delusion of getting revenge against our God Jesus. And, yes, it was truly beautiful for Judas, but the death of Jesus on a criminal’s cross was also beautiful for all the other disciples. For, while Judas saw his bitter vengeance fulfilled when he saw Jesus being beaten, then tortured on the cross, all the other saw a payment for their sins and their eternal salvation through it.
All twelve disciples, including Judas, were granted the same great privilege of learning about life and faith directly from the Creator God, Jesus, as He walked beside them in the flesh. Then the eleven, without Judas, were granted an even greater gift, which we all can now receive, the Holy Spirit of Jesus dwelling in their hearts, the Creator’s Spirit personally counselling, teaching and training their infantile human spirits, even as those elect spirits dwelt in bodies of flesh on this earth.
God awarded the spirits of all twelve, including Judas, a time to experience the deepest kind of love, built on more clearly exposed realities and wiser insights than anyone could ever hope to gain on earth. Their spirits were allowed to feel the kind of joy that the vast majority of elect will never be able to know, not until their spirits escape their flesh and meet Jesus at heaven’s gates. So, yes, this too was an extremely beautiful gift for Judas, while he walked with Jesus, although he possessed a deluded spirit that was unable to recognize it. But Judas did receive this massive gift, nonetheless.
But gifts of light and truth, of love and abundant life, mean nothing to the non-elect. It is not a matter of any kind of “free will” that they reject salvation, but a matter of inherent preferences put in them by their hellish father. From my own experience, I know that, no matter how much truth a non-elect spirit receives, that blind spirit will neither see nor want it. A non-elect spirit only perceives and desires lies and delusions fed directly into it by demonic spirits, and loves absolutely nothing else.
As a result, we can say of every non-elect soul, whom Satan intentionally created for hell, that it would be better “if that person had not been born.” Satan was cruel to have created them in his own image, cruel to both them and to their victims. Conversely, no matter how difficult and painful life on earth may be for any of the elect, we must say it is good each one to be born. For, no matter how much Satan’s world order might brain-wash an elect soul, the elect spirit in one’s soul will be able to love, will be able to see the beauty of spiritual realities God created, even how His physical realities radiate His spiritual beauty, even as they suffer in the empty darkness of the demons dwelling here.
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The Passover’s True Memorial
God’s authoritative words of life to Israel stated this about the Passover: “This day shall be to you for a memorial, and you shall keep it a feast to Yahweh: throughout your generations you shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever” (Ex. 12:14, WEB). God wanted His priesthood of Israel to write this day of deliverance from slavery to Satan’s world order on their hearts and in their minds, as an everlasting “memorial” (Hebrew zikrone, “a thing to remember”). They were to forever celebrate it with feasting, thanking Yahweh for His salvation from an empty, meaningless life in Egypt. So, after eating the Passover feast, a “grace” or thanksgiving to God is given, to complete the order (Seder) of this ceremonial memorial commanded by God in His Word. And that prayer of “grace,” the reciting of prayers and Psalms, was an important aspect of remembering all God did for His church of Israel, when He freed them from dehumanization by the Egyptians, yet left the Egyptians as slaves of Satan serving that devil’s world order. The souls of all true priests of God were to spontaneously and joyfully give thanks to the good heavenly Father of their spirits, just as Abraham, and all elect spirits like his, have done from the beginning. For giving Him thanks brings the spirits of His people closer to Him on His throne in heaven, where He reminds siblings in His priesthood that He granted them freedom for a purpose, so they would do His works for all life on earth, in His name, by His counsel and through His power—His works to build up His loving, just, equitable kingdom on earth, as they also undo and dismantle the devil’s works. For labouring in these works of God binds them together.
As the Jews give thanks after the Passover feast, they consume a small piece of the pure, undefiled, humble, unleavened bread together, as one family under God. This bread had been hidden, and is now found, by a child born to God’s family of freed souls. Each piece for each individual came from the middle bread of three stacked loaves. And these three loaves, for the hungry and enslaved, can represent many things to the Jews. But the middle bread can symbolize life on earth, their reality between heaven and hell. It can also remind them of the Messiah, whom the Scriptures identify as God dwelling in a body of human flesh, the King of all the earth, who shall rule all at the appointed time. As each one’s piece of bread was consumed and became one with his or her body, all became one with the Creator’s body, partaking in God’s maintenance of all life and all else. Then they drank the third cup of wine, permeated with its perspective-changing “spirit,” which we call alcohol. And this “spirit” represented God, who consists entirely of eternal spiritual substance, without beginning and without end, an utterly holy Spirit whose power created and maintains all. For, if their flesh is to be one with God’s body, and do His works on earth, their spirits must be one with His Spirit as well.
“So, while they were eating [the meal], after Jesus received the bread [i.e., afikoman] and after saying the blessing, He broke [it]. Then, after giving [the pieces] to the disciples, He said, ‘Take. Eat. This is My body.’ And, after receiving [wine in] the cup [i.e., poured in His cup by one reclining next to Him] and after giving thanks, He gave [it] to them, declaring, ‘All drink from it. For this is My blood of the
[New] Covenant, which is being poured out on behalf of many, for the forgiveness of sins. I reason with you, I surely will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on, until that day when I drink this new with you in the kingdom of My Father [i.e., this “you” is plural and not only refers to the disciples with Him at the time, but clearly to all future disciples as well].’ And, after singing, they went to the Mount of Olives” (Mat. 26:26-30, from: Ἐσθιόντων δὲ αὐτῶν λαβὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἄρτον καὶ εὐλογήσας ἔκλασεν
καὶ δοὺς τοῖς μαθηταῖς εἶπεν· Λάβετε φάγετε, τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ σῶμά μου. καὶ λαβὼν ποτήριον καὶ
εὐχαριστήσας ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς λέγων· Πίετε ἐξ αὐτοῦ πάντες, τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν τὸ αἷμά μου τῆς
διαθήκης τὸ περὶ πολλῶν ἐκχυννόμενον εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν· λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν, οὐ μὴ πίω ἀπʼ ἄρτι ἐκ
τούτου τοῦ γενήματος τῆς ἀμπέλου ἕως τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης ὅταν αὐτὸ πίνω μεθʼ ὑμῶν καινὸν ἐν τῇ
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βασιλείᾳ τοῦ πατρός μου. καὶ ὑμνήσαντες ἐξῆλθον εἰς τὸ Ὄρος τῶν Ἐλαιῶν, SBLGNT). So this refers to the part of the Passover Seder when they eat the afikoman and drink the third cup of wine.
Now, before the Passover meal, the stack of three flat loaves of unleavened bread are set on the table.
As mentioned, the middle loaf symbolizes many things to the Jews, but is usually associated with life on earth before we go to heaven, and is also frequently identified with the sacrificial Passover Lamb, their saving Messiah, whose blood on the doorposts of their hearts rescues them from God’s wrath. Then, during the early part of the meal, the head of the table takes that middle loaf and breaks it into two pieces. The larger piece, called the afikoman, is then placed in a clean cloth and hidden somewhere in the house, where it sits until the children finish eating the meal. But, before the family says the “grace” and drinks the third cup of wine, the family sends the children out to find it and bring it back to them. This is because they cannot drink that third cup until all that God breaks for their freedom and redemption is received, and the cup represents redemption, the same kind received when God slew the pursuing soldiers trying to slaughter them as they fled Egypt. It signifies their ultimate goal, which is the safety, freedom and future of God’s family. So, after eating the meal, the children rush out to search for the hidden piece of bread, and it is important for the future generation to find it, because the future depends on them finding it. Thus, when Jesus and the twelve assembled as a family for the Passover, the one sent to search for the afikoman would have been the youngest disciple, John (a teenager at that time). When John returned with it, he would have given it to Jesus.
After receiving the afikoman, Jesus and the disciples would have finished eating the meal. Then they would have recited a short, one-line thanks to God for the bread. After this, Jesus broke the afikoman into pieces, approximately the size of an olive, about an inch wide, and distributed the pieces to all twelve disciples. And their meal was completed after consuming that little piece of the afikoman. For this piece of unleavened bread, of humility and simplicity, this bread of urgency and sacrifice, was meant to be the very last bite of food they would consume that evening, the very last morsel they would taste until they woke the next morning and walked into the future, into the rest of their lives.
Yet Jesus then said something that changed everything for the New Covenant branch of Israel, even forever. Instead of immediately reciting the lengthy thanksgiving—which reminded them about all God had done when He redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, and spoke of the promised Messiah coming to redeem Israel—Jesus unexpectedly uttered this command: “Take. Eat. This is My body.”
Next, after eating the afikoman, the custom was to pour the third cup of wine for the one reclining next to oneself at the table. So each disciple did this for the other. So someone poured wine into the cup of Jesus. “After receiving [wine in] the cup” (i.e., the phrase, λαβὼν ποτήριον. has an aorist participle), all would have held up their cups to hear Jesus recite the Passover Seder’s blessings or “grace.” And when Matthew used one aorist participle (εὐχαριστήσας) meaning, “after giving thanks” to God, we should realize that, when Jesus gave this thanksgiving, it was actually a lengthy prayer and teaching, not just the one-line thanksgiving they all would have recited before they ate their pieces of the afikoman. This thanksgiving—recited while they reclined and held, but did not drink, the third cup of wine—gave thanks for God’s works in the past and in the future. It was to remind each one about how all God’s past works still directly affected each one’s life to this day. Jesus’ “grace,” after the meal, would speak about how God will return all Israel’s exiles back to their promised land, how His praise should be continuously in their mouths, how God will destroy His enemies, how they now remain alive only through His grace and providence, how God gave them the heritage of His wise and just Law. This “grace” was a supplication, asking God to be their caring Shepherd who will keep His flock from being owned and abused by those who do not know Him, a request for God to grant them strength to maintain peace, a prayer for God to remind them of His past works and to send the Page 1739
promised Messiah to rebuild Jerusalem as His holy city. This prayer expressed their faith that God will surely reign over all the earth and all of heaven, their hope that they might see the everlasting Sabbath of the Messiah’s rule, their desire for God to glorify His name so that all might trust in the One who alone can bless the people of the earth, a declaration of love for God, the thanksgiving of their spirits for God’s preservation of their souls, keeping them from sins and lies for their salvation.
Then, after Jesus gave this lengthy thanksgiving, they would all say something like: “Blessed are You, Yahweh, our God, King of all that exists, who creates the fruit of the vine.” But, before they could drink their own cups of wine, which each was holding in his hand, Jesus stopped them. At that moment, Jesus interrupted. Instead leading the group by putting His cup to His own mouth to drink it, Jesus stretched out His arm with the cup in His hand. Matthew tells us that “He gave [it] to them”
and said something new, which is not part of the Seder. Now, since all would have been holding their own cups of wine, we know that Matthew did not say Jesus did not give them their cups of wine at that time. Rather, Jesus wanted them to put down their own cups and share His cup. When Matthew said that Jesus gave something to them at this particular moment during the Seder, the only thing Jesus could have possibly given them, at this time, during this part of the Seder, was His own cup of wine. Only this makes sense, considering the context, because Jesus then declared: “All drink from it
[singular]. For this is My blood of the [New] Covenant, which is being poured out on behalf of many, for the forgiveness of sins. I reason with you, I surely will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on, until that day when I drink this new with you in the kingdom of My Father” (Mat. 26:27b-29, ALT). So Jesus offered all His disciples one thing, which had to be His own third cup of wine.
Here Jesus used an aorist imperative form of the verb πίνω to command His twelve disciples to drink from only one cup, from His own cup. Then He proclaimed that this wine was His blood, although it could not be His blood, since He was still alive, with all His blood still in Him. So Jesus was not saying that this wine magically became His blood through some kind of pagan dark magic, like the evil Roman cults of the time did, falsely claiming to transform wine into blood. Rather, Jesus was saying this third cup of Kosher Jewish wine no longer symbolized Israel’s redemption from Egypt, as it did while they served God in their temporary conditional Old Covenant relationship with Him, under that covenant ratified by the blood of sacrificial animals. Jesus was saying that now His third cup, and only the wine that was in His own cup, symbolized the real and final redemption of God’s priesthood of Israel. The old redemption cup was gone, since the reality it once symbolized had now actually come to redeem Israel that day. This very day, when the sun shone upon their promised land, their Messiah would shed His sacrificial blood to ratify His eternal New Covenant, the covenant that God Himself would now uphold in the hearts and minds of His true Israel, through His own power and omniscience. And we can be certain Jesus was referring to the New Covenant here, since Luke’s version, from an eye-witness, even tells us that Jesus called it that: “This cup [is] the New Covenant in My blood” (Luke 22:20, from: Τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐν τῷ αἵματί μου, SBLGNT).
Thus, Jesus, our God in a body of flesh, here commanded us, all His disciples in all history, to drink of the one cup that makes us all one, so we might be of one mind and one purpose through the Holy Spirit of life who dwells in the blood of Jesus. For the spirit of life in all flesh dwells in that blood, and His Spirit of the utterly Holy God will also dwell with our human spirits in our own lifeblood.
Furthermore, when Jesus commanded, “All drink from it,” He was referring to all His disciples in all time on earth, all whom God would gather into the New Covenant relationship with Himself. For the plural substantive “all” (πάντες) referred to everyone for whom He “poured out” His blood. And, at that very moment, Jesus was already working out the process of being betrayed to death by Judas,
“on behalf of many, for the forgiveness of sins.” So here Jesus was talking about the sins of all the Page 1740
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Father’s elect children who would ever be born upon the earth in the future. And His death would even work the forgiveness of sins for all the elect who had died in the past as well. All past elect had been appointed a place in heaven, so all would receive their forgiveness through the blood of Jesus, when all repented into the truth through the teachings of Jesus on the final judgment day. This also would include all the loving, just, equitable elect who never heard the name of Jesus, nor the true Gospel, while they lived on earth, in the past, present and future. For these are like the elect of Israel who died before the day Jesus shed His blood for their redemption from sins. These will also repent into the truth on that last day, and receive forgiveness through Christ’s blood. Thus, the word “all”
includes all the elect in all history. All will drink from the redemption cup of Jesus, and become one.
So, when Jesus commanded and proclaimed these things, He was not merely commanding us to celebrate the Passover Seder in a new way. However, He did that too (see I Cor. 11:23-26), since it is good for us to remember God’s works, for our encouragement and hope. We should not forget, lest we lose hope. Nor should we trivialize this remembering, lest we steal hope from our elect siblings.
Above all, while we remember, we must never do so in a way that slanders Him, by behaving in a way that makes our loving, just, equitable Jesus look selfish and unjust. Yet here Jesus commanded the salvation of all the elect in history, through His authority and power as our God. And, whatever God commands, shall be. For none of His own creations can possibly oppose His commands with even the slightest bit of efficacy. Literally all He commands will come to pass exactly as He wills, and all who oppose His will merely end up doing His secret will instead. Therefore, what our God Jesus did is done. So all the elect who ever lived, or will live, are now redeemed, even in a way that can never be undone—whether or not they choose to celebrate the Passover as a “Last Supper,” or as some kind of man-invented Roman ritual called a “Eucharist,” or under any other name. Jesus did not obligate us to celebrate this meal. Rather, He worked our salvation according to the symbolic and biblical elements of this meal, all of which were commanded by God in His temporary Old Covenant Law. And the Passover laws spoke of Jesus, were symbols of His redemption, which He would work through His own power for us, as our omnipotent, omniscient God. Passover laws were never, even from the beginning, granted by God as a means through which His elect could earn their salvation.
Now the Haggadah (the “telling” of the Passover story and delineated order of the ceremonial meal) originally called for only three cups of wine. Then a fourth cup was added during Roman times, but probably before the days of Jesus. And that fourth cup represented the destruction of God’s enemies, who are also the enemies of His true Israel. Of course, the worst of God’s enemies, until the day God comes to rule the earth, is the evil fourth kingdom of Satan, whom Daniel prophesied about, that is, the Roman Empire. Yet Jesus did not drink the fourth cup that day. Instead, Jesus declared: “I reason with you, I surely will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on, until that day when I drink this new with you in the kingdom of My Father” (Mat. 26:29, ALT). Here Jesus used an emphatic negation, a double negative with an aorist subjunctive (οὐ μὴ πίω), which indicates the firmest of resolve, the kind only God could possess and put into effect. In the New Testament Scriptures, all such statements were only uttered by Jesus, since only He can state anything with absolute certainty.
So Jesus knew His disciples were expecting to drink the fourth cup, yet emphatically proclaimed that He would not drink it. More specifically, Jesus said He would not drink it until He drank it with us in His Father’s kingdom. And, since He referred to earthly wine, He clearly meant He would not drink such wine with His disciples until He returned to turn the earth into His Father’s redeemed kingdom.
Therefore, when Jesus made this emphatic statement, He was emphatically declaring a teaching that He wanted His disciples to remember, even all His disciples in all history. Jesus was emphatically declaring that it was not yet the appointed time to destroy His enemies, and the humanistic Roman Page 1741
Empire in particular. This first advent of Jesus was not to judge the earth, but strictly in order to give all the elect upon the earth the means and power to be saved from their slavery to lies and sin. Jesus came to teach and train their spirits until all the elect knew and began to truly fulfill His just, loving Law. For Jesus did indeed drink the third cup, the one called The Cup of Redemption. But only after the spirits of all the elect on earth were able to choose Him and His ways, after the dichotomization of all the elect and non-elect on earth had been completed, would He, the Messiah, come to judge the whole world, to cause the just annihilation of the Roman fourth kingdom and the devil’s entire world order. Then our God, dwelling in a human body, will return to restore and rule His earthly kingdom.
So, on that day long ago, Jesus forever changed the Passover Seder for His New Covenant branch of His one and only eternal priesthood of Israel, even for all the elect in the past, present and future times on the earth—since God will bring literally all the elect who ever lived, or will live the future, into His priesthood, so all will dwell in heaven’s New Jerusalem. On that day long ago, Jesus had fulfilled three symbolic and figurative Passover laws of God’s Old Covenant. But the time when He will completely fulfill the fourth cup’s symbol, and God’s fourth Passover law, will be at His second coming. For, as all the prophets testify, the temporary Old Covenant, made when God rescued Israel from Egypt, was never able to ratify and establish the eternal and unconditional covenant God made with Abraham. For His rescue from Egypt was a symbol of His true salvation, and His Old Covenant Law simply revealed the kind of righteousness He Himself would personally establish in each of them when He fulfilled His promises to Abraham through the Messiah. Only the day of this Passover feast would finally establish the Abrahamic Covenant, in an identical eternal and unconditional way.
When God said He would establish His past covenant on the day of the Passover (Ex. 6:4), He was obviously referring to His covenant with Abraham, including His promise of a land of their own. For God told them: “Therefore tell the children of Israel, ‘I am Yahweh, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments: and I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and you shall know that I am Yahweh your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it to you for a heritage: I am Yahweh’” (Ex. 6:6-8, WEB). So here we have four promises, represented by the four cups of the Passover Seder. And the Jewish Seder calls these cups (1) sanctification, since God will bring Israel out of Satan’s world order, as a people who serve Him and His purposes alone, not burdened with slavish tasks to make the wicked wealthy; (2) deliverance, since God will deliver Israel from the physical threats of the military might and weapons in Satan’s world order, which the wicked use to lay burdens upon the backs of God’s people; (3) redemption, since the Passover Lamb or Messiah would buy back their souls that Satan owned, as the appointed ruler of all sinners, then God’s judgments of plagues against Egypt and the devil’s world order throughout history would ensure that Satan acknowledged His payment in full; and (4) Israel’s acceptance of God, becoming His genuinely serving priesthood that truly worships Him in spirit and in truth, after the complete destruction of Satan’s deceiving, corrupting kingdom.
So, when Jesus ate the Passover and later died on the cross during the daylight hours of the same day (which began at the previous sunset), He ratified the New Covenant relationship between God and His true Israel, with all the Jewish and Gentile elect who ever existed on earth. Then His subsequent resurrection, ascension and gift of His Holy Spirit to the hearts of His disciples established His New Covenant for all eternity. God’s own irrevocable will and unstoppable power provided sanctification, deliverance and redemption of all whom He chose to bring into His New Covenant branch of Israel that day. And, although Jesus only brings some elect into this branch of the church while they live in Page 1742
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the flesh on earth, literally all of the elect in all history will be brought into His New Covenant relationship by the end of the last day. Yet Jesus emphatically declared that not all of the Old Covenant branch of Israel would be brought into His New Covenant at that time. Jesus refused to drink the fourth cup “until that day when I drink this new with you in the kingdom of My Father.”
Jesus told us that, from that time on (ἀπʼ ἄρτι), He definitely would not drink (οὐ μὴ πίω) that wine of that third redemption cup (ἐκ τούτου τοῦ γενήματος τῆς ἀμπέλου), that is, not until (ἕως) a future Passover day like that day (τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης) when (ὅταν) He would drink that same cup (αὐτὸ
πίνω) together with them at a new time (μεθʼ ὑμῶν καινὸν), that is, during a new Passover on earth, and that new earthly time of a Passover would be in the kingdom of His Father (ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ
πατρός μου). Also, since Jesus referred to physical “fruit of the vine” (τοῦ γενήματος τῆς ἀμπέλου) here, He could not be referring to the spiritual realm of God, not God’s eternal kingdom above, where no such wine exists. Rather, Jesus must have been referring to the earthly kingdom of His Father. Here Jesus implied that He would someday return to the earth, in a physical body, and drink all four cups of the Passover with His disciples. Jesus would complete the Passover by also drinking the cup representing all Israel’s acceptance of God as their personal Saviour, as their personal Teacher of His Law, to make them into true worshippers of God, in all matters of life and faith.
Not until then, on a Passover day on earth, after His second advent, would all the Old Covenant Jews finally enter into the New Covenant with their God, immediately after He totally destroyed Satan’s fourth kingdom and the rest of the devil’s world order. Jesus emphatically proclaimed that His first advent was to provide all that the first three cups symbolized, but not yet all that the fourth cup symbolized. Only at His second coming will the entire remnant of physical descendants of Abraham, all the surviving Jews on earth, be His people who will worship Him in their spirits and in all truth.
So Jesus forever changed the Passover Seder for His disciples on the day of His crucifixion. From then on, the New Covenant branch of the church would celebrate it with these changes: (1) the afikoman will now represent the body of the Messiah, Jesus, so all shall eat of it to remember that they are one body, the body of Jesus living on this earth; (2) the third cup will now represent His blood and the Holy Spirit of the life in Him, so all shall drink of the cup to remember that His works on earth must be done by the counsel, teaching, training and will of His Spirit, in His name; and (3) they shall not drink the fourth cup, until Jesus returns. However, He will return very soon, after the dichotomization between the elect and the non-elect, after His true New Covenant church has been separated and sanctified, and after He severely judges the whole earth for approximately 40 years. In the meantime, we may also want to set out the fifth cup, called Elijah’s cup, before an empty chair at our tables. For we wait for him to return too, but this time to announce that Jesus is coming to serve us our High King, who shall rule our spirits and all the world with loving justice, wisdom and peace.
Mat. 26:31-35,
All Fall Without Jesus
“Then Jesus said to them, ‘All of you will be made to stumble because of Me tonight, for it is written, “I will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” But after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.’ But Peter answered Him, ‘Even if all will be made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Most certainly I tell you that tonight, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.’ Peter said to Him, ‘Even if I must die with You, I will not deny You.’ All of the disciples also said likewise” (Mat. 26:31-35, WEB).
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Jesus knew that all human beings are infantile and weak. We are all stupid and need to fear our own stupidity, although some of us love, and know a few things that we can share with one another, to survive as a family. And all of our love and knowledge originates from our Creator and Father, who freely grants this to us through His agents and instruments. But He gives this to us for one purpose only, so we might equitably distribute all in a communion with Him and others. The fear of our own lack of love and ignorance, with our respect for our equal sibling in humankind and our Creator, who came to us as our oldest Brother, is the fear of God. It is the saving faith that prevents deaths in sins.
In conclusion, there are only two kinds of people, because there are only two kinds of spirits in the people. All those with non-elect spirits in their bodies are, without exception, puppets and slaves of their hellish father, although the vast majority do not know it and remain asleep, letting their minds of flesh rule their souls unopposed, governing every aspect of their lives. But those with elect spirits bear the potential to develop into loving, complex, wise, strong and free stewards in God’s kingdom, able to inwardly grow into the very image of their oldest Brother and heavenly Father. Nevertheless, not one of the elect are much better than the non-elect, since most have sleeping spirits too. In fact, even if God Himself came to them in a body of flesh, as the most perfect Teacher on earth, teaching and training them every day for three years, the spirits in most elect still would not learn enough to actually reach even a fraction of their potential. So what the elect actually need is for the very Spirit of the Holy God to enter their hearts and souls, where their spirits dwell. They need His Spirit to gently awaken their spirits, then slowly and methodically teach about all His creations, and carefully train their spirits to apply that truth. Only His wise and holy presence dwelling with their infantile elect spirits, once they let go of fleshy pride and stupid carnal impulses in a repentance of wakened spirits, can begin to regenerate and renew their spirits, and their entire lives. Only if God chooses to enter an elect life, can that reborn life begin to be the image of the almighty and wise Creator of life.
So this is what the first advent of the Messiah came to do. First, He willingly sacrificed His sinless body in death, so He might pay the price that the devil demanded for the release of all the elect from his legally allotted kingdom of sinners. Then the physical body of Jesus rose from the dead, so the bodies of His elect would be released from Satan’s world order alive, while their spirits dwelt in the flesh. After this, Jesus’ body of flesh ascended to His throne in heaven. But He transfigured His body into a spiritual body, without abandoning His body of flesh. And He had to do this so He might send His very Spirit of God, who stands outside of all time and is never subject to any limitations of time, into every elect heart and soul that He would choose to teach and train for His own purposes, so that He might do this even while those elect lived in their very limited and cumbersome bodies of flesh.
Our God Jesus created this earth, this temporary reality apart from the permanent reality of His spiritual home, as a training ground for the spirits of His elect children. And our heavenly Father required them to be born of Him with infantile spirits and suffering flesh. For, only then could their spirits be taught and trained by Him over time, in ways that developed strong bonds between Him and them, in a way they could learn to love and trust Him more than the greatest angelic creatures He ever made in heaven and for heaven. Of course, our elect spirits are never apart from Him, or the spiritual reality of our home with Him in heaven, because all spirits remain parts of spiritual reality.
Likewise, non-elect spirits are never apart from their father or the spiritual reality of hell. All spirits exist within spiritual realms, even while they live on earth. However, God ordained that all spirits of living beings on earth, both the elect and non-elect spirits on earth, must be locked into a perceived arrow of time, into this temporary reality held together solely by His power, a reality which actually has no linear time, no past or future. Each will be a part of His already completed history of His temporary material creation, until He withdraws all spirits from His transformed spiritual power and Page 1744
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all physical existence ends. For all earthly time is one time, with a beginning and an end, all within the limitations God created at one moment of His spiritual time that He created for heaven. Earth’s entire history, from its beginning to its end, is one “day”in heaven, and our spirits are waiting for another “day” just outside heaven, a day of spiritual time at the gates of the far more real heaven.
On that final day outside of heaven, at the gates of heaven, all the sleeping elect and non-elect will be gathered before the face of Jesus, with all the awake elect standing behind Him. Then our Lord’s judgment of all spiritual motives and intentions will begin. Since He has known all hearts from the beginning, it shall only take an instant to determine which souls He must cast into the darkness of their own spirits’ futile and destructive unrealities. Jesus will call His mighty angels to toss all the loveless non-elect into a place lacking any of His good creations, into the emptiness of hell, where all can cling to their ruthless imaginings of lies and delusions, where none of them will ever again be able to abuse or exploit the creations of their holy God’s loving power. Then Jesus will spend the rest of that long day, which shall be equivalent to more than a thousand earthly years, by teaching and training all His elect who ever existed throughout history, until all reach the full completion and perfection of all their attributes. This will be a day when our oldest Brother, the Human Being who walked with us in the arrow of time and suffered in the flesh with us all, will be fully known by all our elect spirits, in body and Spirit. Then all the elect, now dwelling in new spiritual bodies that are not limited by earthly times, will gain all the desires of our spirits that He made in His own image.
This is the Gospel. This is the New Covenant salvation worked entirely by God, without even one tiny aspect worked by anything that could be called a “free will.” For the wills of all elect spirits were created with attributes that our God Jesus shall nurture into utterly perfect and holy love, by the end of the last day. For the Creator did not merely call elect human beings His beloved property, like the angels and all other spiritual beings. Rather, He called us His children. And, like a good Father, He will take the time to educate His children, to prepare them for the life they will live for the rest of their lives, even for eternity. This is why there will be no judgment day for plants and animals, with elect spirits born to live in heaven. After their flesh on earth dies, their elect spirits will go straight to their homes in heaven. Only human beings, created in God’s image, with a knowledge of good and evil, will go to the gates of heaven on that last day. And only the elect children of the Father will stay there throughout that whole day, to be taught and trained, to be prepared to live throughout eternity.
But non-elect spirits, although they too possess a knowledge of good and evil, lack the inherent and innate attributes of love, and will never desire to develop such attributes, never in all eternity. For their eternal spirits were never free to choose the attributes that Satan created in their spirits. Their spirits love lies and delusions, and want to be their own gods, because their hellish father created them in his own image. And their father desires those enslaving “freedoms” because God created his spirit without love, with a desire to “free” himself from love. Thus, non-elect humans never want heaven, only hell. But they do not choose hell through anything that can possibly be defined as a
“free will,” not in any kind of theological or philosophical way espoused by the demonic religion of humanism. As for human wills of flesh, they too are controlled by emotions and by the imaginings of its forgetful, irrational, dying brain of flesh, which the eternal spirit residing in the flesh can easily overcome whenever it is awakened. Now I know the fourth kingdoms of Satan calls the feelings and imaginings of the flesh “spiritual.” And, when their awakened psychopathic non-elect spirits rule over their minds of flesh, their words from their flesh are truly spiritual, in a demonic way. But their
“spiritual” truths are all lies designed to lead us away from the spiritual and even physical realities God has created all around us. And their humanistic doctrines which focus on rituals of the flesh in their fake churches have absolutely nothing to do with God’s salvation. Nor can their continuously Page 1745
fluctuating and unstable teachings about “free wills” bring us “freedoms” and stability. In reality, humanistic concepts of “free will,” through delusions taught to minds of flesh, only ever serve to suppress, sedate, bind and imprison elect spirits, enslaving them to the dark deceptions of demons.
Christ’s Holy Spirit of God is the one and only Saviour who can truly free elect spirits into loving lives that can receive love in return. And only elect spirits are created in the image of God’s own Spirit, with a total freedom that is able to love in the same just way that God loves. So only the elect are able to learn how to use their spirits’ truly freed wills, as Jesus’ disciples, as children who are able to become like their heavenly Father. Yet God’s utterly Holy Spirit Himself binds and limits His own words and deeds, according to the restricting path of His own just love, while we dwell in flesh on earth. This is done in the same way that His attribute of just love in every elect spirit, with the same desires found in His Spirit, uses one’s spiritual will to limit and manage the desires of the flesh, so the elect life might follow a straight and narrow path of just love. And, like God, our spirits never want to escape from love, nor our utter hatred of loveless evil. But all non-elect wanna-be gods crave evil and hate God-like love, through an inherent ruthless greed, arrogance and a lust for power. Still, the minds of flesh in the elect can be deceived into desiring what the non-elect want, since our very irrational self-serving flesh can be trained to desire such things, if our elect spirits remain asleep, if our elect spirits remain lethargic, untaught and ignorant enough to allow our flesh to pursue evil. Yet, even then, our elect hearts cannot be gratified by Satan’s rewards. And when the mind of flesh in an elect soul receives what the devil’s world order caused it to pursue, those rewards keep the elect soul enslaved in lies and sins, which then disturb the sleeping elect spirit with dark nightmares and pains, from which that spirit cannot wake, until the Jesus chooses to slowly wake that spirit with His light.
So Jesus knew that the dull and drowsy spirits of His remaining eleven assistant teachers would soon let their flesh fall to deceptions, that their elect spirits would fail to firmly and wisely rule over the fears and emotions of their flesh, as soon as He took His body out from among their bodies. The very moment they saw His manipulated betrayers send a small army to seize Him, so He might willingly follow them to His torture and death, all eleven would crumble into apostasy. But Jesus did not want them to sit around feeling guilty about this. Rather, He wanted them to simply confess it, repent out of it, and move on into the rest of their abundant lives. This is why Jesus warned those disciples about their weaknesses and inabilities beforehand, so they would rise to their feet after they fell, and keep running toward the goal of their salvation. For He would soon send His Holy Spirit of God into their hearts, to counsel their spirits, to teach and train their spirits until they could wisely and firmly manage their minds and bodies of flesh, until they could effectively speak and act in ways that truly pleased their heavenly Father. Jesus warned them a few hours or so before they all would commit a sin against their beloved God Jesus, in a way none imagined he could, and then learn to rely on Him.
Before the hour of their apostasy, as they were walking up to the Mount of Olives, Jesus told them:
“All [of] you will be caused to be trapped in sin regarding Me, during this night” (Mat. 26:31a, from: Πάντες ὑμεῖς σκανδαλισθήσεσθε ἐν ἐμοὶ ἐν τῇ νυκτὶ ταύτῃ, SBLGNT). In context, the form of the adjective πᾶς was used here to indicate without exclusion. That is, Jesus was referring to literally all of the eleven disciples remaining with Him at that time, after Judas left them. Then the future passive form of σκανδαλίζω meant that all will be “caused to be brought to a downfall, caused to sin” (based on BDAG3), with a direct inference of being “trapped” (i.e., since this verb is a cognate of the noun σκάνδαλον, “a trap”). And Jesus said that being caused to be trapped in sin would be “in Me” (ἐν
ἐμοὶ), that is, “in the sphere of My existence,” or “because of what pertains to Me,” or simply
“regarding Me.” Also, all would fall into this sin trap that very night, within a few hours, when Judas Page 1746
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came to betray Him. And that night was already half spent. The Jewish officials and their thugs would have finished their own Passover Seders and were gathered with Judas, ready to seize Jesus.
So literally all eleven of these true disciples of Jesus, who had all learned to love and respect Him immensely during their last three years beside Him, would betray Him. Of course, not all eleven would actually utter betraying thoughts out loud, like the impulsive Peter did. Most would silently fear and doubt, flee and avoid confrontation with those who might accuse them of belonging to the sect led by this Man who claimed to be Israel’s Messiah and God. Only Peter would walk right into the enemy’s camp, to see what they would do to his beloved Teacher, then foolishly blurted out lying denials of his connections to the Messiah, to save himself from being punished for the truth. Yet we can be absolutely certain that what Jesus said was true. Peter was not the only one who sinned that night, and was likely not the one who sinned the most out of the eleven. For Peter only denied Jesus three times that night, and in a coerced physical way he would remember and repent from. But most of the others denied their Messiah inwardly, many times—such as when they hid behind olive trees in the garden, to avoid being seen by the angry mob; or the times they avoided eye contract with a stranger, to avoid being recognized as a disciple of Jesus; or in the way they fled to a friendly place that might hide them from Jesus’ enemies. As Jesus stated, all ten of the other disciples, as well as Peter, would be trapped in sin regarding Him, where most sinned more than three times that night.
Then Jesus uttered a paraphrase of a verse from God’s Word: “For it was effectively written, ‘I will strike the Shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered” (Mat. 26:31b, from: γέγραπται γάρ·
Πατάξω τὸν ποιμένα, καὶ διασκορπισθήσονται τὰ πρόβατα τῆς ποίμνης, SBLGNT). This was from a chapter in Zechariah, written between 480 and 470 BC. In the 13th chapter of his prophecy, he tells us about the first advent of the Messiah, then summarizes what will occur before His second advent.
In this chapter, his prophecy begins by declaring what will happen first, which refers to when Jesus came to us in the first century: “In that day there will be a spring opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness” (Zech. 13:1, WEB). The first advent of our Messiah would be a pure water rising from earth to wash away our sins and failings. Obviously, this “spring opened to the house of David” refers to His first advent, since it was “for sin and for uncleanness,” that is, to remove sin from the true Israel, as Jesus did that very day, through His death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. And, eventually, His first advent would stop the unclean worship of human gods everywhere on earth, just before His second advent. Also the people of the world would begin to reject the false prophets and their lies. Some would war against their own adult children who become false prophets. Unclean or demonic spirits would depart from places, and no longer manifest themselves. But then Zechariah’s prophecy declared what Jesus paraphrased above, that “the sheep of the flock will be scattered,” although His true sheep would never inwardly perish.
After this, God called Zechariah’s spirit to record His words about the Messiah, the Man God called the “Shepherd.” So Zechariah wrote: “‘Awake, sword, against My Shepherd, and against the Man who is close to Me,’ says Yahweh of Armies. ‘Strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; and I will turn My hand against the little ones. It shall happen that in all the land,’ says Yahweh, ‘two parts in it will be cut off and die; but the third will be left in it. I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will test them like gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will hear them. I will say, “It is My people;” and they will say, “Yahweh is my God”’”
(Zech. 13:7-9, WEB). Then the next verse talks about the Messiah’s second coming, which is often called “the day of the LORD,” or actually, “the day of Yahweh,” by the the true prophets of the Bible, because the Messiah is Yahweh God, so the day of the Messiah’s works on earth is Yahweh’s day.
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So God prophesied that He, Yahweh Himself, would call the swords of His own enemies to “awake”
and strike His Shepherd, to kill the Son of David, the Messiah, God in “the Man,” in the body of human flesh. God caused His own human body to die for the “sin” and “uncleanness” of His people.
Then God’s sheep of His pasture would be scattered. Both the Old and New Covenant members of His true church of Israel spread out over all the earth. Later in history, at the appointed time, God will turn His hand against many “little ones,” against small, ruthless, non-elect, wanna-be gods who had been bullying, exploiting and murdering His precious ones on earth, against the world order warring against their loving Creator and His just ways. God will release His unstoppable wrath upon the world during the end times, even until He destroys two thirds of the earth’s population. For He said, “It shall happen, that in all the ehrets [i.e., “earth”] ... two parts in it will be cut off and die; but the third will be left in it.” That surviving third will then be refined as in fire, during the time of the beast, who is the messiah of Satan’s fourth kingdom, struggling to make one last stand against God and against His elect. But the beast’s time will occur after the great revival of the sixth seal’s era, after God causes His church to become His true and faithful people, when each of their spirits will proclaim, “Yahweh is my God.” Therefore, God will hear them and return to the earth in His flesh.
But on that night long ago, a few hours before Jesus was seized in the darkness, the Spirit of God in Jesus knew that all eleven of His most trusted and well-taught disciples would be trapped by the fears and emotions of their flesh, caused to betray Him, their loving God. Still, when Jesus warned them about this, and stated this as a plain and indisputable fact for their own good, their emotions of their flesh, that is, their pride of their flesh abusing the love of their spirits for Jesus, overcame them.
At the time Jesus spoke these words, while they were all with Jesus in the quiet night, they all felt that it was not possible for them to betray Jesus. None of them felt they could ever be anything like those “other people” who rejected Jesus. No! They were all wise believers, teachers of the ignorant and leaders of the lost. And naturally the leader of the twelve, Peter, impulsively spoke these proud thoughts of his flesh, then responded: “If all will be caused to be trapped in sin regarding You, I myself will never be caused to be trapped in sin” (Mat. 26:33). So here Peter made a typical kind of humanistic oath, the kind Jesus condemned, a creed and “confession of faith” through the resolve of his emotions from his mind of flesh. Still, we cannot blame Peter too much, since the false churches trained him to do this, and he was simply channelling the men who had taught him to do this from birth. For, to those in the devil’s world order, this was the most honoured kind of self-worshipping promise, the most pleasing to the ruler of demons. But Jesus is God, totally honest and grounded in the realities He created and maintains. Thus, Jesus calmly corrected Peter’s carnal delusion and stated: “Assuredly I reason with you that, in this same night, before a cock crows, you will utterly deny Me three times” (Mat. 26:34, ALT). And, before a cock crowed, all the rest would utterly deny Jesus three or more times as well. For flesh has absolutely no strength in its a resolve to serve God.
Yet Peter did not yet know this truth, had not yet learned that we cannot ever truly serve our God through the will and resolve of our minds of flesh. So, still thinking like the humanistic hypocrites in the false churches, the voice of Peter’s flesh proudly told Jesus: “Even if [this oath] binds me to die together with You, I most definitely will not deny You” (Mat. 26:35a, ALT). Then Matthew told us,
“Even all the disciples said the same” (Mat. 26:35b, ALT). But, within a few hours, all would learn how right Jesus was about their weaknesses of the flesh, and how wrong they were to trust in their own wills of the flesh. Then, within another 49 days or so, at the day of the Pentecost, Jesus Christ’s own Holy Spirit would descend into their hearts. And, finally, their spirits would receive the kind of internal power that flesh and blood cannot crush, the kind that can even willingly leads the flesh into death for the glory and will of God, to build His kingdom on earth and undo the works of the devil.
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Mat. 26:31-35, All Fall Without Jesus
For, remember, when Jesus warned them about how they would all be trapped in sin that night, He also encouraged them. Jesus repeated His teaching about how He would not remain dead, and how they would live to fight in the good, spiritual war for life, against the destroyers of His just, loving kingdom. Not that they were actually listening with comprehending ears of the spirit, but Jesus also said, “Yet, after the event of Me being raised, I will go ahead of you into Galilee” (Mat. 26:32, from: μετὰ δὲ τὸ ἐγερθῆναί με προάξω ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν, SBLGNT). Here the preposition (μετά), with the aorist passive infinitive (ἐγερθῆναί), indicated that the action of the main clause would occur after the infinitive’s action was completed for the pronoun (με). So, yes, Jesus had repeatedly taught that He would die that night. But Jesus did not forget to repeatedly teach them that He also would rise from the dead. And, since His resurrected body of flesh would return to His home base in Galilee before they would also return to that place, this meant that they would surely live. All eleven did live and all returned to Galilee, where God promised to send His people a great light (Is. 9:1-2).
Therefore, if the eleven had been listening to Jesus, and truly understanding what He actually said, they would not have been so afraid when the mob came to take Jesus away for a tortuous death. For they all would have realized that God Himself, whose will cannot be opposed, had ordained that all eleven of them would live to meet with their beloved resurrected Lord, with this Teacher of their souls whom they could not live without. All eleven would soon see Him in Galilee, as He declared that night. Logically, if their lives in the flesh would see His life in the flesh on a future day, then God would not allow their flesh to be seized and killed that night. But their minds of flesh ignored what Jesus said, and used the love of their spirits as an excuse to exalt themselves in the typical humanistic way, by falsely declaring the non-existent strength of their fleshy resolve to remain faithful. And that weak and lying flesh even declared that it would die to stand firm with Him. This was all a futile carnal display of false religion. And Jesus knew it. Yet Jesus did not rebuke them at that time, since He knew the painful trauma they were about to face. So He let this sin go, just as He was also going to forgive and cleanse them all for their betrayals and faithlessness that night. For our God Jesus does not teach and train with harshness, but through loving wisdom, to make us stronger.
Mat. 26:36-46,
The Gethsemane Prayer
“Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, ‘Sit here, while I go there and pray.’ He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and severely troubled. Then He said to them, ‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here, and watch with Me.’ He went forward a little, fell on His face, and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from Me; nevertheless, not what I desire, but what You desire.’
“He came to the disciples, and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, ‘What, couldn’t you watch with Me for one hour? Watch and pray, that you don’t enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Again, a second time He went away, and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if this cup can’t pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your desire be done.’ He came again and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. He left them again, went away, and prayed a third time, saying the same words.
“Then He came to His disciples, and said to them, ‘Sleep on now, and take your rest. Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let’s be going. Behold, he who betrays Me is at hand’” (Mat. 26:36-46, WEB).
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So Jesus and the eleven remaining disciples stopped walking when they came to the place called Gethsemane, to the olive presses near the road at the foot of the Mount of Olives (i.e., the word Gethsemane seems to mean “olive press” in Aramaic). This was within the boundary of a Sabbath walk, and they could go no farther on this Sabbath Passover day. It would have been a perfect place to talk with God, quiet and abandoned in the night, especially at that time on a Passover night. But, since all the disciples had a good meal and were mildly inebriated with the sweet Kosher wine, while the Seder filled their hearts and minds with heavy memories of Israel’s endless pains and losses in history, they succumbed to asleep. They spent hours recounting the struggles between unjust empires and God, remembering how Yahweh ground down the arrogance of self-glorifying wretches, while causing His own unarmed army of a few common God-fearing Jews to keep marching in His just and loving truths. This, and the reality of another crushing blow from the false humanistic church of Israel, working together with the secular humanistic exploiters from Rome to brutally murder their loving Messiah, utterly overwhelmed their souls, until the self in each one ceased to resist the heavy burdens of those earthly loads. On this night outside the rejecting ruthless city, the fresh cool air in their lungs, with soft distant sounds in their ears, gently coaxed their flesh to sleep. The night chose to again renew and prepare them for next day. All was calm. All was right in this eternal moment.
This regenerating night commanded a healing sleep for their minds of flesh. So Jesus let them fulfill nature’s desire and sleep on the grassy roadside, all except Peter, James and John, whom He took with Him to pray. He walked up to the hillside, to the level spot where the people pressed their olives, and told those three: “My soul is thoroughly filled with grief, even to the point of causing death. Stay here and watch with Me” (Mat. 26:38, ALT). Jesus’ mind of flesh was in agony, not only because of the tortuous death He was about to experience, but also because He remembered all the human tragedies of Israel’s history, with perfect clarity and with insider information, since His Spirit of God had seen all the inner thoughts of all past spirits, human and otherwise. He saw how all the elect human souls in history had cruelly sinned and believed destroying lies, which sent their own souls into painful bondage as they abused their own siblings in humankind, even the little children whom God dearly loved. Now all the elect of the past, present and future needed truth and healing, a rescue which only His body’s death could provide. For their sins grieved His soul, far more than His body’s immanent death could. Therefore, His need to lovingly save them drove Him on toward His death. Then, through His work on the cross, elect souls would learn to watch, and their spirits in their souls would become good overseers of their own flesh. So He waited for sin’s slaves to march up the nearby road, to take His flesh as the Passover Lamb’s freeing sacrifice, to deliver us from destroyers.
Jesus asked Peter, James and John to wait nearby, and they reclined on the grass. Jesus took few more steps and stopped at a bare patch of ground. With the spirits of faithful old olive trees watching from a distance, and within hearing distance of the three, Jesus fell on His face to pray. The last words His three disciples heard their serving God utter from darkness, before their minds succumbed to the demands of their weary flesh, were these: “My Father, if this is possible, the cup from Me draws near. Nevertheless, not as I Myself will, but as You [will]” (Mat. 26:39, from: Πάτερ μου, εἰ
δυνατόν ἐστιν, παρελθάτω ἀπʼ ἐμοῦ τὸ ποτήριον τοῦτο· πλὴν οὐχ ὡς ἐγὼ θέλω ἀλλʼ ὡς σύ, SBLGNT). This “cup” was the gift of His body’s blood, which He willingly spilled in the halls of false priests and Roman psychopaths, then on a wooden beam, for our sins. His bodily death would be the only possible way to ratify His eternal New Covenant of forgiveness and restored communion between His Holy Spirit and elect sinners. Nothing but His sinless blood could bring just forgiveness of the lifetimes of deliberate sins committed by His elect siblings in the family of His Father. So now He wanted this cup, that no man could earn, to come from Him, to be completed, if God was willing.
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But this forgiveness, which could only be worked by our God’s body, could only be granted to those whom the Father Himself had named. And He named only His elect. It cannot be granted to non-elect spirits who, by nature, despised His truth, who never allowed His teachings work in them to produce repentance into that truth, who loved only their cherished lies and delusions causing sin. The cup from Jesus is only possible for the elect, who can be brought to repentance. And, by the inner attributes formed in their spirits at creation, the elect crave this truth, and long to build love upon its solid support, through repentance into that truth. Thus, Jesus was asking His heavenly Father to let His blood draw near, for the washing away of all sins by His elect, for the spirits that were able to learn to love, for all whom it was possible to save. Nevertheless, if Judas, and the millions like him, could not be saved by the cup drawing near, let the Father’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus deeply desired that all on earth might receive abundant life, by building up His just and loving kingdom on earth, for their own good and for each one’s own personal joy. But it was not possible for the Father to forgive all. God cannot forgive the non-elect, though both the Father and Jesus loved them too, and freely offered them the fruits of His earthly kingdom, as much as He had given those fruits to His own elect children. Jesus had been with Judas for three full years, night and day.
And Jesus did not deny Judas anything that He gave to the other even assistant teachers He had chosen to work beside Him. In fact, Jesus even gave Judas the money purse, holding all donations made to His ministry, knowing that Judas would steal from it for his own personal gain. So Jesus must have loved Judas, and sought good for Judas, even as that little psychopath was vengefully strutting in front of a mob that very moment, on his way to take revenge against Jesus for not being the kind of conquering, Roman-like Messiah he wanted Him to be. Consequently, although Jesus’
mind of flesh would have been willing to save even the non-elect, if it were possible, the secret will of the Father’s Spirit, who was giving life to the flesh of Jesus, had to be done, and not the will of Jesus’ flesh, even though His mind of flesh had become attached to the man now seeking to end His life in the flesh. No, the non-elect cannot be saved by Jesus, even those within our familiar families.
Jesus prayed on. But Peter, James and John did not hear all His words, since their physical ears could no longer transmit words to their sleeping and unconscious minds. Since their flesh had succumbed to slumber, Jesus returned and found them unfaithful in this duty to watch. Thus, they did not hear and write what He said. But that too was the Father’s will. Still, this was their job. So Jesus woke them, then turned to the oldest disciple, the one who should have been ensuring they all remained awake and alert. With gentle concern, He softly rebuked Peter: “How were you [disciples] not strong enough to have watched with Me one hour? Remain watchful and make prayers of supplication, so that you do not enter into corrupting trials. On the one hand, the spirit [is] ready and willing. On the other hand, the flesh [is] weak” (Mat. 26:40b-41, ALT). How true! Our flesh so frequently and easily opposes the wills of our spirits, often making us ineffectual in doing the works of God. Here Jesus also reminded them about their bold words from the emotions of their proud flesh, when they all declared they would never abandon Jesus, that they would stand by Him through thick and thin, that they would even die to guard Him, through the love their spirits possessed for Him. Yet those were mere foolish and futile oaths from their minds of flesh. Yes, their spirits truly loved Jesus, with an honest God-like love. Yet nothing good can ever be done through a poorly managed mind of flesh.
Infantile elect human spirits are always extremely poor at managing their flesh, which is unruly and cannot love, which is utterly incapable of serving God, if it is left to manage the course of its own earthly life. If an elect spirit is not taught, trained and strengthened by God’s Spirit, so it can begin to manage its mind and body of flesh, that spirit cannot serve God rightly. If flesh rules over its own life, it cannot commit to even staying awake for an hour, even if it knows that murderers are on the Page 1751
way to kill the one whom its inner spirit of life truly loves. Although the spirits of His three closest disciples were ready and willing to die for Him, those spirits were not yet mature enough to keep their own flesh awake. Before their spirits could become strong and mature enough to do this, the Holy Spirit of their oldest Brother and Father first had to come to dwell with their spirits in their hearts, to teach and train those weak little spirits for a long time, until they were useful and faithful.
Knowing that Judas and his mob of blaspheming evangelicals would soon arrive to do the work of their worshipped father from hell, Jesus then did what every loving elect soul would do in that kind of situation. He withdrew again, to pray. Once more the three heard Him repeat similar words before they fell asleep: “My Father, since it is not possible for this [cup] to draw near if I do not drink it, Your will be done” (Mat. 26:42, from: Πάτερ μου, εἰ οὐ δύναται τοῦτο παρελθεῖν ἐὰν μὴ αὐτὸ πίω, γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου. , SBLGNT). Here Jesus once more proclaimed that He is God incarnate.
For He stated that it was not possible for the cup of the New Covenant to be ratified if He did not willingly shed His body’s sinless blood. In other words, as God almighty, Jesus definitely possessed the power to stop the non-elect from murdering His flesh. Yet the Father’s will had to be done, for the salvation of all elect spirits in the past, present and future. Thus, Jesus did not use His almighty power to save Himself from the approaching torture and death. His Father’s will had to be done. The time for Him to drink in physical death was drawing near, marching to Him as He spoke. So He went on praying until the three fell asleep again. Then He came to them once more, but let them rest. Still, one woke up enough to hear Him return and withdraw again, then utter the same prayer a third time.
Finally, Jesus and the eleven heard many footsteps and voices on the road below, so loud that it woke the three as well. For those zealous murderers like to draw attention to themselves by making as much vain noise as they could, just as we see in the rallies of Nazis or KKK members or Trumpians.
So Jesus gathered His disciples and told them: “You [disciples] are remaining asleep and are resting?
Look! The hour has come and now causing its effects. The Son of mankind is even being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Be awake! We should go. Look, My betrayer has come and is seeking to hand Me over” (Mat. 26:45-46, from: Καθεύδετε τὸ λοιπὸν καὶ ἀναπαύεσθε· ἰδοὺ ἤγγικεν ἡ ὥρα καὶ
ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου παραδίδοται εἰς χεῖρας ἁμαρτωλῶν. ἐγείρεσθε ἄγωμεν· ἰδοὺ ἤγγικεν ὁ
παραδιδούς με, SBLGNT). Notice here how Jesus twice used the verb ἤγγικεν, the perfect tense of ἐγγίζω. Both times this indicated that His betrayers had already come, but with current effects upon the subject, that is, with their lust to seize and kill Him. The blinded and brain-washed mob was now standing on the road just below, angrily demanding that Jesus show Himself, raging about how He was a blasphemous traitor, since He dared to speak truths to nullify the religious lies and delusions that their human gods employed to manipulate both them and many other faithfully serving dupes.
Mat. 26:47-56,
Vengeance in a Kiss
“While He was still speaking, behold, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and clubs, from the chief priest and elders of the people. Now he who betrayed Him gave them a sign, saying, ‘Whoever I kiss, He is the one. Seize Him.’
Immediately he came to Jesus, and said, ‘Hail, Rabbi!’ and kissed Him. Jesus said to him,
‘Friend, why are you here?’ Then they came and laid hands on Jesus, and took Him.
“Behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck the servant of the high priest, and struck off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword. Or do you Page 1752
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think that I couldn’t ask My Father, and He would even now send Me more than twelve legions of angels? How then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so?’
“In that hour Jesus said to the multitudes, ‘Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs to seize Me? I sat daily in the temple teaching, and you didn’t arrest Me.
But all this has happened, that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.’ Then all the disciples left Him, and fled” (Mat. 26:47-56, WEB).
As soon as Jesus woke His disciples, while they were still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, the eleven saw their brother approach, one from the family of twelve inner disciples, one of the twelve assistant teachers chosen by Jesus, one who had shared their greatest trials and adventures of life with them every day for three wondrous years. Judas stepped off the road and walked up to them.
And Judas was leading the large crowd of bitter wretches who came to zealously defend their vested interests in their unjust, exploitative, religious system of lies and delusions received “from the authoritative priests and pastors of the people” (ἀπὸ τῶν ἀρχιερέων καὶ πρεσβυτέρων τοῦ λαοῦ). The priests and evangelical pastors of the false church had granted Judas command over them (John 18:3), for a time, until his usefulness had been spent and they could toss him out like a broken tool.
Like most servants of the devil, this crowd naturally came “with swords and wooden clubs” (μετὰ
μαχαιρῶν καὶ ξύλων), with the kinds of weapons that Satan’s world order always uses to maintain its power through the practise of terrorism, oppression and murder. For this has always been the way of Satan’s armies. Like the armies Hitler and Trump, they live by the sword. So this crowd was eagerly hoping that Jesus and His disciples, who had been exposing and undoing their evil works, would put up a fight. For this mob wanted some kind of semi-legitimate excuse to slaughter them all, right then and there, yet in a way that would be acceptable to the law and to the people. But, of course, Jesus knew that those malicious defenders of Satan’s false religion wanted them to resist. Most of His disciples also realized that this rabble wanted to slaughter them, although they were far fewer in number and not nearly as well-armed. Jesus also saw how those servants of Satan actually thought of themselves as brave defenders of the faith, while trying to commit their unjust and cowardly acts of violence. So Jesus and most of His faithful disciples did not attack. They were not foolish enough to die for the “glory” of a useless last stand—although it seems that impulsive Peter did want just that.
Now look at how Judas Iscariot planned to betray Jesus. And, before we look at what Judas did that night, we must realize that tens of thousands of people in that land had thronged to Jesus for three years prior to that night. Jesus became one of the most popular rabbis among the Jews by that time.
So every religious Jew in Israel, and most non-religious Jews, were very familiar with Jesus’ face.
Most had studied His face carefully whenever He walked by. Almost everyone could readily identify Him in any crowd. And a large crowd of extremely religious men came there that night, with Judas.
So, in that large crowd, most, if not all, would have been able to easily and instantly identify Jesus.
Thus, there was no need for Judas to identify Jesus within that small group consisting only of Jesus and His eleven faithful disciples. There was no real need for Judas to lead that crowd to the place where Jesus was staying. Yes, Judas knew that Jesus planned to spend the night within a Sabbath’s walk. That is, Judas knew Jesus would not return to Bethany after the Passover began at sunset, but would only go as far as the Mount of Olives and, more specifically, to the place called Gethsemane, since Jesus spent the nights there on other Sabbaths, and it was the place where Jesus often met up with His disciples whenever they had been separated (John 18:2). So Judas could have simply told those fake religious leaders where Jesus would stay that night, and he did not need to go with them.
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Nevertheless, Judas obviously wanted to lead the crowd, as a prominent man who was respected and chosen by the high priest and other Jewish authorities. And Judas truly wanted to help the mob seize Jesus, to prove his own courage and manliness. So those Jewish authorities appeased his inflated ego, and let him lead the mob. For there is nothing that can blind a soul more than the ego of the flesh, and those religious deceivers chose to keep Judas completely blind and compliant until they had Jesus safely chained within their walled courtyard. So Judas went to betray and kill Jesus, with the full knowledge that the mob he was leading would send Jesus to be tortured and murdered. And Judas even told the religious authorities that he wanted to be the “leader” who would signal the mob to seize Jesus. Judas intentionally identified Jesus, wanted to be the authority who told the temple police to capture Jesus. Not only this, but Judas also gave that criminal mob’s religious leaders, and the all the men in that mob, the sign He would use to betray Jesus, a sign of love and respect for a Lord, for one’s dearest Teacher of wisdom for life and faith. Judas told them all that he would first go up to Jesus and give Him an honouring kiss, the evidence that he now mocked Jesus, that he now considered Jesus to be a fake teacher of life and faith. Only then could they take Jesus to His death.
So Judas had been imagining how he would walk up to Jesus, call Him his dear Rabbi, greet Him with a mockingly “loving” kiss on the cheek, then watched Jesus being dragged away to be tortured and murdered. Judas’ vengeful spirit eagerly desired to express his utter disdain for Jesus, for this Man who claimed to be the true Messiah, but refused to make him rich and powerful, and never even tried to slaughter and enslave the Romans. In the mind of Judas, Jesus was a sham, a deceiver who betrayed him and all of his selfish ambitions. For three years, Judas trusted Jesus to become a violent despot who would rule the world with an iron fist, just as he thought a good Roman-like Messiah should be. So Judas thought Jesus had “led him on,” had only pretended to befriend him, while Jesus secretly planned to do nothing but a bunch of spiritual nonsense, and avoid a war. Yet, from the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus planned to die for the sins of elect Jews and Romans, so all might live an economically simple, peaceful coexistence with one another. And, in the mind of a selfishly ambitious psychopath like Judas, that was an utter betrayal, even a personal attack against himself, since Judas was the kind of man who made all things, even world events, about himself. So now Judas thought that “justice,” the Roman kind which demands revenge, required Jesus to be mocked and to feel his own betrayal, in the most public way possible, and in a way where his name of Judas would always be esteemed for bringing this “justice” to fruition. Furthermore, Jesus must also suffer the kind of punishment that all psychopaths reserved for all their dupes who betrayed them, that is, an extremely tortuous death. This is why Judas deliberately chose to betray Jesus with a mocking show of respect, by sneering out the words, “Be of good cheer, Rabbi,” accompanied by a big kiss.
When we look at the details of what Judas did that day, and realize the kinds of motives he would need to possess in order to do exactly what he did, it all paints a picture of a high-functioning and practised psychopath. For he was able to fool all the other disciples into thinking he was a sincere and godly man, for three years, while living with them in close quarters, although he was actually a self-promoting narcissist. And only high-functioning psychopaths have the capacity to fake friendly behaviour that well for that long. But Jesus saw the dark and bitter delusions in the black heart of that pathetic little puppet. Thus, Jesus did what every psychopath hates most. Jesus remained calm and rational. And, since Judas longed to crush and conquer a trembling Jesus who begged him for mercy, Christ’s confident courage was odious to Judas, and defeated him in his moment of victory.
We need to understand that every psychopath sees himself as a glorious and mighty god coming to take vengeance upon his weak, trembling and guilty inferiors. So he wants and expects his inferiors to cower with panicked regret, to beg for mercy before his judgmental eyes. Every obviously guilty Page 1754
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and worthless inferior must confess just how wrong one was to offend such a great god as him. So, when a “guilty” inferior does not fall before him in abject fear of his “just” judgment, but remains calm and fearless instead, it is a direct denial of his god-like status, even tantamount to declaring his
“just” and god-like judgment to be unjust and wrong. And how dare an inferior ever consider a god like himself to have made a slightly faulty judgment against anyone! That alone is worthy of death!
Then Jesus said something that proved Judas wrong, a word to deny the supposedly secret motives that Judas believed Jesus held against him. Like all good psychopaths, Judas believed Satan when that devil lied about how Jesus had never truly accepted him as a companion, when the great Accuser told him that Jesus had always been plotting against him, as a personal enemy, from the beginning.
But the father of the spirit in Judas, who was slandering Jesus in the mind of Judas, never tells the truth, not even to his children. So Jesus then looked sincerely into the eyes of Judas and, without any acknowledgement that Judas had obviously come leading an armed mob against Him, Jesus calmly and honestly asked Judas, “Companion, for whom are you here?” (Ἑταῖρε, ἐφʼ ὃ πάρει). Jesus never lied. Yet Jesus clearly indicated He had accepted and cared for the welfare of Judas, as His cherished companion. Jesus always knew Judas would someday betray Him. And Jesus also clearly knew that Judas had come to seize Him, that Judas wanted to murder Him. So now Jesus forced him to answer this question as His “companion,” as a ἑταῖρος, as one who had shared all things in common with Him and the other eleven chosen assistant teachers, as the brother who had enjoyed their company.
That word, “companion,” would have greatly disturbed a cunning, high-functioning psychopath like Judas. For he could not deny that Jesus shared everything with him. And Jesus had never confronted him for stealing from the money bag containing donations to His ministry. Jesus had even allowed Judas to take more for himself than the other disciples took for themselves. Judas also enjoyed being in the company of Jesus, since he felt good as he strutted down the road, receiving admiration and esteem for being an assistant teacher of the great Messiah. So there was no way he could counter or deny that key word, that adjective Jesus used to describe His relationship with him. That particular Greek word, ἑταῖρος, accurately described their relationship. Jesus was right and Judas was wrong.
The memories of the last three years and God’s Spirit forced Judas to admit that his judgments of Jesus’ motives were wrong. Jesus never betrayed him! Once Judas heard Jesus, who never lied, call him a companion, Judas realized he was the only betrayer standing there. Through God’s power to force memories and realities into the minds of even the non-elect, Judas was forced to face the fact that he had been believing a convenient lie, to justify his own lust for wealth and power. Now Judas knew he was actually the worthless betrayer, not Jesus. God made Judas see the reality of his own extremely ugly self. And God would not relent, would not let Judas slip back into his delusions about himself. So the truth that our God Jesus stabbed into the mind of Judas made him feel like failure.
Judas’ spirit now realized that God was actively condemning his life in the flesh, and that he could not escape God’s wrath. So his immensely inflated ego collapsed, and he was thrown into a deep and terrified state of existential angst. That one word from Jesus’ calm face held the power to shatter all the internal lies of that little psychopath. Judas fell from ecstatic thoughts of being a heroic god and leader of men into the realization that he was actually an emotionally deluded wretch who knew nothing and had accomplished nothing except his own destruction. And Judas also knew that he was incapable of repentance, since his spirit loved only his lies, and could never embrace the truths he heard from Jesus. So Judas stood there, in front of Jesus, and could not respond to those very simple words Jesus personally uttered in his soul. All Judas could think about was that all his precious lies about himself, all he was living for, all his vain ambitions and selfish dreams, fell dead on the dirt Page 1755
below his feet, and became dust mixed with dust. All was lost, through his own stupidity and self-deluding. But the deluded souls who came with him remained blind. So they gleefully seized Jesus.
At this point, Matthew then tells us: “Now look, one of those with Jesus, stretching out the hand, unsheathed his sword [i.e., a long multi-purpose knife used for everything from gardening to cutting food, as well as for self-defence] and struck the slave of the chief priest. He cut off his ear. Then Jesus reasoned with him, ‘Return your sword back into its place. For all those taking a sword will perish by a sword. Or are you thinking I am not able to call My Father near, and He will stand many dozens, legions of angels, near here with Me? But then how might the Scriptures have been fulfilled, that it is necessary
[for it] to occur in this way?” (Mat. 26:51-53, from: καὶ ἰδοὺ εἷς τῶν μετὰ Ἰησοῦ ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα
ἀπέσπασεν τὴν μάχαιραν αὐτοῦ καὶ πατάξας τὸν δοῦλον τοῦ ἀρχιερέως ἀφεῖλεν αὐτοῦ τὸ ὠτίον.
τότε λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Ἀπόστρεψον τὴν μάχαιράν σου εἰς τὸν τόπον αὐτῆς, πάντες γὰρ οἱ
λαβόντες μάχαιραν ἐν μαχαίρῃ ἀπολοῦνται· ἢ δοκεῖς ὅτι οὐ δύναμαι παρακαλέσαι τὸν πατέρα μου, καὶ παραστήσει μοι ἄρτι πλείω δώδεκα λεγιῶνας ἀγγέλων; πῶς οὖν πληρωθῶσιν αἱ γραφαὶ ὅτι
οὕτως δεῖ γενέσθαι;, SBLGNT). Mark and Luke also provided accounts of this event, and their descriptions were similar. But both missed some of the important details which the two eyewitnesses, Matthew and John, wrote down in their Gospels, including these rebukes from Jesus.
Of course, John was one of the three assistant teachers who went off with Jesus to pray, apart from other eight faithful disciples. So John would have been standing near Peter and James at this time.
These three would have walked with Jesus up to the other eight, close to where Matthew stood, but not quite in the same place. Then Jesus seems to have moved in front of the other eight disciples. So these three probably would have followed Jesus, and likely positioned themselves in front of Jesus to protect Him. So Peter, James and John were probably a little closer to the mob than Jesus and the others, likely led by Peter, to protect Jesus. Thus, Matthew and John saw the even from slightly different perspectives, and heard or did not hear different things that night. Then each recorded only what he personally saw and heard. Therefore, since John was probably standing nearer to Jesus in the dark night, John knew who pulled out the sword, but Matthew, standing further back, did not.
The one who pulled out that sword was impulsive Peter, who then charged the mob, willing to battle for Jesus to the death. But the other disciples, in the darkness of that night, were not able to identify which disciple had pulled out the sword and attacked the chief priest’s slave. Or, it is also possible that Matthew and the others did not want to embarrass Peter, by naming him. Yet John saw and was certain that the one who attacked the mob was Peter. Then John, who was acquainted with the chief priests and the members of their households (John 18:15), recognized some of the faces in the light of the torches carried by the mob (John 18:3). So John identified the man Peter attacked, as the man named Malchus. And John even saw that it was Malchus’ right ear which Peter cut off (John 18:10).
But, since John must have been standing in front of Jesus with Peter and James, while Jesus must have been standing in front of Matthew and the other eight disciples, John did not see Judas kiss Jesus nor hear what Jesus said to Judas. Matthew, standing behind Jesus, did see what Judas did and heard their conversation. Then he recorded it it. So, when Jesus “went out” (ἐξῆλθεν), walked past Peter, James and John, and spoke to the mob, that must have occurred after the conversation between Jesus and Judas. Meanwhile, Judas slunk back into the mob, still silenced by the spiritual power of our God Jesus, feeling deathly afraid of God and deeply depressed. Thus, since Jesus was now in front of John, John heard Jesus calmly and quietly ask the mob’s officers, “Whom are you people seeking?” (John 18:4, ALT). The temple police officers replied, “Jesus, the Nazarite.” Then Jesus told them, without a hint of fear, “I AM” (John 18:5, from: Ἐγώ εἰμι, SBLGNT). And those two little Page 1756
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words were actually the Greek translation of God’s name. When God told Moses His name, the Septuagint translated it as, “I AM the Being” (Ex. 3:14, ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, LXX), the existence of all.
Because those zealots from the false religion humanistic Jewish church knew that Jesus claimed to be the true Messiah, and also knew that many rabbis still believed what the Scriptures said about the Messiah (that He would be Yahweh in a body of human flesh), they were horrified by the way Jesus spoke those two simple words. Some even tripped and fell to the ground when they stepped back in fear. So none dared to seize Jesus just yet. Then Jesus repeated His question, “Whom are you people seeking?” Then the officers, likely more timidly than before, repeated, “Jesus, the Nazarite.” And Jesus responded: “I told you people that I AM. Therefore, if you are seeking Me, leave these ones alone, so they can depart” (John 18:8, from: Εἶπον ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι· εἰ οὖν ἐμὲ ζητεῖτε, ἄφετε
τούτους ὑπάγειν, SBLGNT). Although most Jews avoided this expression, ἐγώ εἰμι, Jesus did not.
So Jesus deliberately used the clause ἐγώ εἰμι to identify Himself in front of those who were seeking to murder Him, and did it twice, in spite of devout Jews holding to the custom of avoiding the use of that clause. Thus, Jesus was obviously claiming to be the biblical Messiah and God in a body of human flesh, forcing His enemies to either repent or take full responsibility for their evil deeds.
Then, in His last clause, Jesus used an imperative verb (ἄφετε), to command that mob to leave His eleven faithful disciples alone, to let them depart in safety. Jesus was not entreating them with this imperative, but giving them an order as their God, where His Spirit of God caused their spirits to fear Him and obey His command. Thus, the mob fearfully allowed the eleven to leave, unhindered, even later, when one of the eleven attacked them with a deadly weapon. And Jesus did this because He had previously declared that none of the twelve, except Judas, would be lost to lies and sin (John 6:39, 17:12). For all eleven were, at that time, far too weak to stand up to the persuasive torture that the fake religious leaders would use to force them all to curse Jesus and slander His righteous name.
So this would be the moment that Peter, who had just heard Jesus issue this command to the mob, drew out his sword. Then he lunged past Jesus and struck a blow directly towards the head of Malchus, a slave of a chief priest. Thus, Peter was obviously intended to kill him. Fortunately, Malchus turned his head to the left and bent backwards, to avoid the sword. But he was not quite quick enough, and Peter ended up cutting off his right ear. Then Jesus stepped forward and stopped Peter, likely dragging Peter back behind Him. At this time, one of the disciples, who was standing only a few feet away, and had likely moved forward when Jesus did, heard Jesus tell the mob,
“Suffer even this!” The the disciple saw Jesus heal the injured ear, to make peace with the mob. The disciple who saw the healing was interviewed by Luke, who recorded this event (Luke 22:51). While all this was happening, it seems that Matthew ran up to them and heard what Jesus said to Peter, although it was dark and Matthew may not have seen which disciple Jesus was talking to, especially if Peter was facing the other direction, glaring at the mob with frenzied battle eyes, not yet calmed.
Of course, John would have been near Jesus, and Peter too, although far more frightened by whole incident, since he was just a teenager at the time. Thus, the trauma would have reshaped some of the words of Jesus in his mind, although he would have remembered the essence of what Jesus said. So John summarized what Jesus said to Peter in this way: “Thrust the sword into the sheath. The cup which the Father gave Me, even with all these effects now occurring, it is impossible that I might not drink it” (John 18:11, from: Βάλε τὴν μάχαιραν εἰς τὴν θήκην· τὸ ποτήριον ὃ δέδωκέν μοι ὁ πατὴρ
οὐ μὴ πίω αὐτό;, SBLGNT). John may not have remembered exactly what Jesus said. But he did understand the content of what Jesus spoke. Thus, it would be Matthew’s eye-witness testimony about those words Jesus uttered to Peter that night which were likely the most precise and reliable.
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Matthew remembered our God’s teaching: “For all those taking a sword will perish by a sword.”
And this was something Peter also would never forget, since he never took up a weapon of Satan’s world order ever again. For he saw Jesus trying to reason with his enemies, even seeking to bring some to salvation, knowing some may be his elect siblings who were deceived by fake religious rhetoric, but would eventually enter the family priesthood of his heavenly Father. For God’s Law gave us a sign that all the elect will inherit their Father’s role as the Priest of His people, when His Law ordained that the Aaronic priesthood could only be inherited by Aaron’s heirs. Even when Peter and his loved ones were threatened, he never thought about raising a rebel army to war against his enemies, but instead relied on governing authorities established by God, ultimately on God Himself, knowing his Father could instantly “stand many dozens, legions of angels, near” him and his loved ones, to effectively keep them safe from any power on earth, even from hell itself. And this is what so many so-called “Christians” of the past had forgotten. If we take up a sword, if we use violence to defend Jesus and our beliefs, according to our own human wills, or worse, if we violently force others to accept Jesus and our beliefs through weapons of terrorism, our God will not stand with us.
There are ordained times to fight, but also ordained times of surrender, even of martyrdom, just as when Jesus surrendered Himself unto death. And we need to understand when these ordained times come. So remember how Jesus took up a weapon, a whip of cords, to violently drive out the money exchangers and merchants from the temple grounds, and how He even told His disciples to purchase a sword for self-defence in future times of persecution (Luke 22:36-37). But notice, on this night, Jesus predestined His death by the hands of His enemies, and He had also already caused the minds of those enemies to become afraid enough to let His eleven disciples go free. So this means that, whenever we are attacked, we must first try to negotiate with our enemies, and pray that God will intervene, that God will cause our enemies to back off and accept the terms of a peace treaty. Only if God chooses to allow our enemies to stubbornly attack us, should we defend ourselves. For look at how the money changers and merchants stubbornly refused to retreat from the temple grounds, even after many devout Jews and Jesus Himself warned them to retreat. Thus, the only remedy Jesus had left was to force them to retreat, and even attacked them several times during His earthly ministry.
When Peter attacked that mob, it was immediately after our God Jesus had commanded that mob to leave His eleven faithful disciples alone, to let His people depart in safety. And that was the will of God clearly expressed at the time, God’s will which God’s omnipotent power would surely cause to actually occur. And Peter heard our God Jesus utter this command. Thus, Peter attacked that mob in faithless rebellion against God. Peter’s violence was an act of unbelief, of refusing to trust what God ordained. What Peter did that night was not a brave act of faith, not a courageous stand for God and his beloved brothers. At that moment, Peter acted through his own human will, through the fears of his own mind of flesh, in exactly the same way everyone in that mob was acting against Jesus. Peter trusted in his sword to help him accomplish his own will, a human will, not the will of God, just as those zealots of fake religion were doing. Both Peter and the mob were acting upon their own lies to themselves, their own delusions, not upon any kind of genuine truth created and maintained by God.
Yes, God can and does sometimes call His people to take up arms, then grants them a victory against exploiters, oppressors and other criminals. In God’s will, there are times for war, times to nullify the works of Satan. But the vast majority of God’s works are strictly reserved for the building up His kingdom, for true and merciful justice through God-like love, works that bring abundant life and joy to this earth, in peace with God, in a right New Covenant relationship with Jesus. Also, in a truly just and God-strengthened land, there is less stupidity and negligence. A land of repentant sinners, who know their own weaknesses and the realities of Satan’s world order, are not so foolish as to lack in Page 1758