The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 8-4
I keep trying to say that churches have their place, but somehow I keep coming back to bashing them. But they really are good, and not just in a “what not to do” sort of a way; because even an OC mother is useful for a time. See, when you’re first called, a church – almost any church – is helpful.
When your soul is asleep and your own spirit cannot rule your beast, any yoke is better than none. Every road, wide or narrow, leads to you being a better person… when compared to the goat you were before. Even Moses’ church was able to fulfill this function (Luke 16:29-31).
If you won’t listen to Moses telling you not to plow with an ox and a donkey together, you won’t listen to Paul telling you not to marry an unbeliever – because these are literally the same law, just applied closer to home.
Likewise, if you won’t listen to a Baptist who says you have to get rid of your Shiva idol, you wouldn’t listen to me tell you to get rid of your cross; nor, for that matter, would you listen to one risen from the dead (Jesus) who told you the same thing.
So every church, including the pagan one, in some way is designed to enforce a set of statutes that reins in the worst of your heart’s lusts. And so to a complete beast, any of them are helpful – for awhile. That doesn’t mean they will be able to show you the Kingdom of God, but they can take you a step or two closer.
But as the newborn spiritual child begins to grow up in this OC-at-best, Babylonian-at-worst church, eventually they’re going to start asking questions about their Father. Who is He? Why doesn’t she live up to His words? Why is she cheating on Him with another spirit?
And if the child doesn’t like the answers she gives, he’ll have a choice. The mother who has fed him for these early years… or the Father to whom she is unfaithful? The mother you can see, who “isn’t that bad” or the Father whom you thought you were worshiping at her church?
At this point, again, another church can be useful; maybe this is your Father’s true bride, you hope? And this hope is useful, for it’s hard to leave Babylon with all her customs, and learn about the true laws, and keep them.
And so any church that rejects any doctrines of Babylon will help. But that doesn’t mean they can lead you to the Kingdom either; just another step closer to it. And when you find Babylon in her, and you find that she won’t change any more than the last one, you’ll have to make that choice again.
You’ll have to make it several times as God sifts you among various churches, watching you at every step to see if you love the truth, or if you must be deceived, blinded for your own protection because you prefer the lie (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12).
Will you accept a church with 90% right, and call it the best true church you can find? This is something God absolutely must know about you. If you’ll settle for 90%, then 90% is all you’ll ever find, and you’ll die with the rest of the Babylonians who have drunk of the wine of her fornication.
In the beginning, if they have 90% of the truth and you have none, then learning the 90% of the truth from them can be enormously helpful. But when you start questioning that last 10%, and they tell you that they’re the ministry of God, and how dare you question their authority… that’s the test.
How much will you compromise with Pharaoh? How much should you? Exodus 10:24-26. Not one HOOF can be given to the god of this world by way of compromise. Not one step down the false way. Because the 10% is the test. And if they have 99% right, then the 1% is the test.
One unclean thing is all it takes to be a false Christian. And a church that tolerates 10% of Tammuz’ doctrines is not a 90%-true-church, it’s a 100%-false-church. So will you say “we attend with a group we don’t completely agree with, but you will never find a perfect church”?
Will you make excuses like “maybe they’re not all true Christians, but they’re good people!”; will you seek to justify your church or God? Isaiah 5:18-24. Will you try to make God see their point of view… or demand that they see His? Mark 8:38.
Remember the parable of the sower one more time: the seeds fall by the wayside! Not a hundred miles away on a different path, clearly marked as leading to death! But right beside the way of life, so close they can touch it, good people… but not quite good enough!
I keep rephrasing this because more people have been spiritually killed by an almost-true-church close by the wayside than have been killed by all the satanic rituals ever chanted! For Satan well knows that most people will settle for a “good enough” church rather than be alone. Only a few won’t, and those are the only ones God cares about in this life.
You must love the truth more than anything (Matthew 10:37) in order to resist this process for a lifetime and remain faithful in the face of constant deception. But that’s the whole point –so God can be absolutely sure that you are worthy of His approval, worthy to hear Him say “This is my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased”.
FEEDING WITH MILK
At first, any church will provide you with a group of more-or-less decent people, a protective herd who makes it easier to obey the little they know about God. And in that role, any church protects the infants, comforts them, feeds them milk, and loves them. These are all things a newborn Christian needs.
The mother is there to feed people with simple, easy-to-digest truth – and protect the babe with comfortable rituals, friendship, snuggling, and support. None of this is wrong, of course; but there is a reason why human children reach an age where they’re “too big” to be cuddled and kissed goodnight. Because the biological human must outgrow its biological mother to be mature.
Why don’t people realize that church is the same way? Hebrews 5:12-14. It’s FINE to only digest milk when you’re a baby! But at some point, when you see a child of seven suckling his mother’s teat, you start thinking the child is retarded.
So if a person has been in church for 30 years and can’t solve his own problems, is he really a mature Christian? Because everyone is supposed to be “ready always to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15). Nursing at your mother’s teat is not a career, it is an (early) step on the path to adulthood. Somehow, every religion in the world forgot that.
The OC was supposed to provide a safe space, free of the worst sins, for souls to wake up, grow up, and become men – as Caleb, Joshua, David, and others did. The problem is that the OC church ceases to be a means to an end; church always becomes an end in itself!
It is the mother’s job – the herd’s job – to raise children up to such an age that they are capable of digesting meat; capable of taking correction directly from the Bible… and then to step back and let the Father handle their education from there!
The mother will teach them to control the beast with statutes; she’ll teach them to strengthen their spirit, which is good enough for OC righteousness… but cannot create NC righteousness. That is why the Father takes over, and teaches our souls to kill the beast, and break that same spirit! (Hebrews 12:5-11).
But that can’t happen in a church, for churches teach their children to ignore the judgment of God by saying “this is just God testing you”, “this is just Satan’s doing”; and no matter what calamity happens, no church ever suggests that it is because God is mad at them (Jeremiah 8:5-9).
Logically, at least some of the time it has to be the judgment of God! Yet not only does the church actively protect her children from God’s judgment… worse, she doesn’t even tolerate when another human judges them! She screams Matthew 7:1, but conveniently ignores Matthew 7:5.
FEEDING YOUR FLESH
Every time your Father corrects you, a little of your selfish beast dies. Put differently, God offers up a sacrifice of your red meat for a sweet savor, and since you are now more worthy of approval, your soul is fed, helping you have the nourishment you need to grow into a healthy adult.
What should the goal of all parents be? Genesis 2:24. Parents should create grownups who can leave their father and mother behind! This is what God wants for His children; but this is not what a church, any and every church, wants for her children.
Because a church, like any helicopter mom, is terrified of what will happen to her babies. Forgetting that they are God’s babies first, and that He actually can watch over them. Something Moses understood (Numbers 11:11-12).
Moses realized that he couldn’t feed them the meat they needed (Numbers 11:13-17). And the meat that they subsequently received from God was not just the physical quails… it was also the judgment of these 70 elders! (Numbers 11:16-17). It was no accident these things happened at the same time; they received this meat, and these judges, because of their lack of faith (Numbers 11:4-6).
Their souls were drying away because they couldn’t digest the bread properly! So God gave them flesh to eat; killed BEASTS for them, until they couldn’t stand it anymore! (Numbers 11:18-20). Because the killing of beasts was symbolic of killing their beast with punishment (Numbers 11:31-34). Why? Because their hearts LUSTED, like beasts do!
God uses churches to humble your heart, and teach you how to hear the truth. And depending on the church, they can do a pretty good job of that. But they can’t finish the job. Sooner or later, God must be able to teach you what you need to know without receiving it through your church.
Because, setting aside her own flaws, she can’t see your thoughts. So she can never really get at the heart of the matter and solve the real problem. God can, and He will correct you exactly as you need to be corrected (Hebrews 12:5-8). That is, He will if she doesn’t get in the way (Lamentations 2:14). Or rather, if you don’t allow her to get in the way (Isaiah 30:9-11).
DOGS AND CATS
We talked a lot about the differences between dogs and cats, and how they picture hearts and spirits, respectively, in earlier lessons. One of the complaints God used against dogs several times is their propensity to eat their own vomit (2 Peter 2:22).
Now as it happens, dogs were designed this way for a reason; when a wolf hunts, it ranges far and wide, and when it kills a deer it may be miles from home. So it eats, and eats, and eats, until it can’t hold any more. Then it runs home and vomits all over its den, and that is what the wolf cubs eat.
Dogs, by nature, are raised on the partially digested vomit of their parents. Wild cats, on the other hand, faced with the same problem, will tear off a piece of meat, perhaps a leg, and carry the undigested meat back to the kittens for them to eat.
Obviously the newborns of dogs and cats alike cannot handle meat; so they are fed on milk, which has been fully digested, food which has become a part of the mother and then broken down to the simplest possible bits. This is a good thing! (1 Corinthians 3:2).
Because it means the parent took the word of God, fully understood it, applied it, and then taught the child using their own true words, not by reciting the partially digested (understood) words of God.
As you recall, the true meat is doing the will of the parent (John 4:34), as expressed in the complete word of God. What then, would rotting, partially digested meat be? What literally every church teaches: half verses, taken out of context, misapplied, not really understood.
So then milk is my words to you; meat is God’s words. And vomit is the words of the world’s churches. This is why Paul was disappointed in the Hebrews in Hebrews 5:11-12. He was angry that he had to teach them, because they couldn’t learn from God’s words on their own Hebrews 5:13-14.
They couldn’t digest meat because they were unskillful IN THE WORD OF GOD. Now consider; when cats feed their young, they do so with the pure words of God (Job 38:39-41). But when a pack of dogs feeds their pups, they are feeding them with words that have been partially predigested by the pack, and turned into something objectively putrid and disgusting.
All churches attract “newborns” with their own words, with the milk; the fruits of whatever understanding they have, boiled down, rephrased, and offered to the young. As they should (1 Peter 3:15). But as soon as the young are old enough to process it, a true teacher will offer them the word of God and relay it without partial predigestion.
Without interpretation, and without bias, but alongside the milk of their own fully processed and digested understanding and examples. The head of this church is the lion of the tribe of Judah. Which is, of course, a cat.
Wild big cats are born blind; like infant Christians, their soul is effectively off, completely dependant on their mother for the first several weeks. It takes roughly 24 weeks to wean them, although they start eating solid undigested food alongside the milk at about 6-8 weeks.
Now compare that to wolves; also born blind, but before they are even two weeks old, when their eyes are barely even open, their parents start trying to wean them off of the milk in favor of the vomit. She’s too lazy to properly digest the meat and create milk for a day longer than she must.
So the mother dog does the bare minimum required of her, and just vomits back up the words of God to feed the cubs on, words she herself barely understands, and doesn’t obey herself… just like the Pharisees did (Matthew 23:15).
What’s more, wolf pups are fed the vomit not only of their own parents, but of the entire pack which takes turn feeding them their vomit as well; so the pup’s body is quite literally built of the traditions, superstitions, and misunderstandings not only of its own parents, but of the entire church.
To summarize, dogs and cats both survive on milk at first; but cats drink exclusively milk for months, and then switch over gradually to raw meat, and continue drinking milk along with raw meat until about 6 months of age.
Meanwhile dogs are weaned off milk as soon as possible by their pack, and live off of vomit for months while the kittens are still drinking milk. By the time the kittens eat their first solid food, pups have been completely weaned and are eating raw meat… but they learned how to digest it by starting with the bilious traditions of their pack!
So when a dog first eats the pure meat of His Father, he is already so corrupted by the vomit that he digests everything God says in light of what his pack told him God meant! Which is why God called preachers blind DOGS! (Isaiah 56:10).
Meanwhile, cats are trained to digest meat by their parents alongside the milk of their example and understanding, but not corrupted by the misunderstandings of the pack, nor trained to mis-digest food from the moment their soul awakened from blindness!
Thus cats, by feeding their young the meat from God only when they are “of full age”, and not encouraging them to swallow their half-truths and misunderstood commands, keep future generations always looking back to God as their true head (John 3:27-30), preparing them for adulthood and independence.
Meanwhile, dogs teach their young that all new meat must be predigested by the pack, vomited back up, and eaten again; thus teaching them to be forever reliant on the pack, and indebted to it for their survival – preparing them for dronehood and dependence on the herd, training them to be respectable members of their church.
Now you know why lions reign over the jungle, and why dogs are forever locked outside the Kingdom of God (Revelation 22:15). Because it is not possible for a species built out of vomit to rule over a species built on the flesh of slain beasts.
Interestingly, bees are organized into a very tight-knit church, and bees feed their young on vomit just like dogs do –it’s called honey. What do you suppose that means?
SELFISH SELFLESSNESS
Thus far in these lessons, I’ve always lumped all beasts together; yet there are different kinds of beasts, according to 1 Corinthians 15:38-39. And to extrapolate, a different kind of “flesh of insects”. Each of these are different, and their beasts’ motivations are slightly different. Still selfish, but nonetheless different.
We are the kind of beast pictured in the sacrifices – particularly, sheep, goats, and oxen: ruminants. We have some things in common with dogs and cats and other mammals. But we’re very different from birds, fish, and insects.
The heart of the ant who diligently works for the good of the colony is nothing like the grasshopper who eats for himself and doesn’t think about tomorrow. The grasshopper acts far more like mammals than ants (which may be why it was included in the clean animals in the OT (Leviticus 11:22)).
Likewise, a bee will gladly die stinging you to preserve the hive – something a cow will not do to save the herd. But is that really a selfless act? Dying to save someone else’s hive would be, but a bee only dies to save ITS OWN hive. If a mother sacrifices herself for her children, is that a selfless act?
Her children are her legacy, part of her, her source of validation. If they die, her posterity dies with them, and that’s far more important than her life to her beast. But let’s just call that self-sacrifice what it is: selfish. Just selfish on a broader scale, with a larger meaning of the word “self” to be “ish” about.
When our soul realizes that our beast will die someday, the beast concocts a plan to prevent our vanishing completely – children. A new house for some piece of our spirit to live on in. God of course programmed this precisely so that we would “be fruitful and multiply”, the only command humans ever obeyed enthusiastically (Genesis 1:28).
So a woman sacrificing herself for her children is dying for herself, not them; she’s risking her life so that she can live on through them. It is, of course, a good thing. But she is not dying for them, she is dying for her legacy, for her corporate self.
And again, that’s not wrong, obviously. Just don’t make more of it than it is – a bee stinging you for its hive. Is that so different from what Jesus did in Hebrews 2:9-13?
So while each class of beast (mammals, fish, reptiles, etc.) has a different kind of body, and thus a different kind of heart, they all are equally selfish. It’s just a question of how they define their “self”. The self of a rabbit is confined to his immediate family… and not very strongly devoted even to them. The self of an ant is expanded to everyone who serves his queen – and he values her life above his own.
And so the person in Proverbs 6 was criticized for not acting like an ant, hardworking and selfish for its colony, but rather acting like the carnal heart of a deer or a rabbit, lazy and selfish for itself. Which is natural enough, because men are beasts (Ecclesiastes 3:18).
THE POWER TO CHOOSE
And yet, ants are unclean. They live to serve the queen… mother. An ant, a bee, a wasp will gladly give its life for its church, even if she was the one who started the war. The ant makes no judgment about the quality of his colony, because it is his colony and therefore cannot be wrong; after all, it is his church’s spirit which defines right and wrong for him!
And rather than reject her… not God, but her, how many billions have died in this world? The father has nothing but a token role in the anthill… as He has only a token role in every church in the world. This is an unclean thing, and you should NOT “go to the ant” and learn this.
So clearly, ants have good traits mixed with evil traits. And our souls can pick and choose to copy the good traits from the ant, and reject the evil…. For are we not all fed, our whole lives, the milk of beasts and the honey of spirits?
And are we not meant to eat the milk (digested knowledge) of beasts and the honey (digested understanding) of bees and other spirits? Isaiah 7:15-16. And having eaten their words, to digest what we put into our mouth and ears… into our spirit? Job 34:3. Should we not study them… and learn from them? Job 12:7-10.
A SOUL can choose to make his beast act like the best parts of any of these beasts and spirits! Matthew 7:18-20. Alone of all the animals, the human soul has the power to judge right and wrong and then choose to be a different being based on that judgment.
It can pick and choose to keep the good things, and purge the rest… but only IF it is exercised by USE! Only if it tries to digest the meat of the Father’s word without the preconceptions of the herd! (Hebrews 5:14). And then retains what it judges for itself to be the best!
Alone of the entire animal kingdom, we are self-aware; meaning we can watch the actions of our heart and spirit, and those of the other animals, churches, and people in the world… and choose to make the good a part of our cells and flush the evil down the toilet.
So why are people so desperate for a herd, so eager to cast away their birthright and drown their soul in their mother’s spirit? Why envy the ant, when we alone bear the image of the Father of all spirits?
HAGAR AND SARAH
In Galatians 4:24-26 we see two contrasting mothers, an OC and a NC mother. Now if you read this to any churchgoer, they’ll tell you that their church is NC, and therefore their own church is pictured by this same Jerusalem mother. But that’s not what it says! As usual, it’s exactly the opposite of what it says!
Galatians 4:24-26 (Williams) This is spoken as an allegory. For these women are two covenants, one coming from Mount Sinai, bearing children that are to be slaves; that is, Hagar (and Hagar means Mount Sinai, in Arabia) and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for Jerusalem is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.
No human church is this spiritual mother they ALL think they are! Because EVERY church is by definition EARTHLY and therefore corresponds to HAGAR! Not Jerusalem! Because the church pictured by Sarah is heavenly Jerusalem, and only THAT church “is above” (Hebrews 12:22-24).
Instead, by being a church, they are following in the footsteps of Israel (Hebrews 12:18-21) which makes them “earthly” (John 3:31). These churches exist, the Old Covenant exists, because they “could not endure” the New Covenant God offered them at Sinai!
All earthly churches are in slavery with their children (Matthew 23:15). This was literally said to the mother at the present Jerusalem of Paul’s letter. A mother we were told to obey… but not to act like (Matthew 23:1-4). A schoolmaster, who would lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24-25); not lead us into His Kingdom, but to Him (John 1:29-37).
As I’ve said many times, none of this was hidden; God wrote it in plain sight, and only because we thought we already understood Him, did we not see the clear meaning of the words He said. Hagar was representative of the Old Covenant, and Sinai. No one who has ever read these verses missed that.
So why is it no one ever actually believed that and took it a step further? Remember: the scripture cannot be broken. Therefore, when Paul said Hagar represents OC churches, everything recorded about Hagar tells us something about OC churches. So simply reading the story of Hagar will tell us the story of the OC church!
If Hagar pictured the OC, then think it through: who is her son? Literally, it was Ishmael; figuratively, it was every devoted churchgoer who lives with her, in an OC church on this Earth, instead of with father Abraham.
All churches, without exception, encourage absolute devotion and reliance to the mother church. All insist on the prerogative to interpret the Father’s words for her children and feed them her vomit; and that is why, like Ishmael, all members of all churches on Earth are in bondage with Hagar.
Now “they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” (Galatians 3:7). Thus, Abraham is the father of all the faithful. Now who is it that the household of faith calls “Father”? Obviously, the Father. Therefore, Abraham is an allegory of God the Father.
Isaac was Abraham/The Father’s son of promise, who was offered on Mt. Moriah where the temple was later built (Genesis 22:2, 2 Chronicles 3:1). He was Abraham’s “only begotten son”, and who in a manner of speaking, was raised from the dead by his father (Hebrews 11:17-19).
Isaac is clearly a symbol of Jesus, the son of the free woman, Sarah, for He came down from Heaven, thus was a son of the heavenly Jerusalem (John 6:38-42), the one we see in Hebrews 12:22-23, not merely the mother they knew.
On the other hand, Ishmael was born in bondage, as all of us were; bondage to our hearts, bondage to our sins, but also bondage to the religion we were raised to believe in. And so Ishmael pictured the children of the OC that were in Jerusalem at that time… and all of us who’ve ever been in bondage to a church. Read John 8:33-40.
See, they were literal children of Abraham; but by rejecting the true son of Abraham (Isaac/Jesus), and mocking/laughing at Him, they made themselves the spiritual heirs of ISHMAEL, who had laughed at the OTHER Isaac!
Compare Luke 8:53, Mark 15:31, Matthew 27:29-31, etc., with Genesis 21:9-10; this was the REASON that Ishmael was cast out –just as the Pharisees will be! (Matthew 8:10-12). They were still children of Abraham, as Jesus conceded; but different children! Children of different mothers, and spiritual successors of different fathers!
NOT A FALSE CHURCH, PER SE
Yet God’s seed was in the external Mosaic law, just as it is in the internal NC law. Just as Abraham’s was in Ishmael (Genesis 21:13). But the son of bondage will always end up dying in the end. His name will not be immortalized alongside the name of the heir of promise, heirs we aspire to become (Romans 8:17). And yet… Hagar was useful to God.
In the literal sense, Hagar was the maidservant of Sarah; thus, it was her job to help prepare Sarah and her children. Likewise, the OC’s job was to prepare people for Christ (Galatians 3:24-25, Luke 1:17). The worst of the world’s churches have always had a few pieces of truth, and if people embraced the truth they offered, one would be sent to them risen from the dead (Luke 16:29-31 again).
God gave that church in the wilderness His laws (on stone tablets not unlike loaves of bread) and His statutes (written in a book and sealed with blood which, like wine, God can make out of water (Exodus 4:9, etc.)) at Sinai in Exodus 20-23.
But the things God gave Moses were, by nature, finite; there was no way for them to get more laws and more statutes, once the book was sealed by blood (Deuteronomy 5:22, Exodus 24:3-8). Likewise, in Genesis 21:14-15, Abraham gave Hagar bread and a bottle of water, and sent her into the wilderness.
He gave them a finite amount of bread and water, which Abraham knew would be used up. Because the church would reach a time when the letter of these statutes received at Sinai didn’t cover daily life (there is nothing in the law about how to use an elevator on the Sabbath, for example).
And when the water was was used up, the child would inevitably die ( Genesis 21:16). Hagar gave up on the child, leaving him for dead; an obvious, if understandable, lack of faith, which is the hallmark of Hagars everywhere. But God had heard the child’s cries; He heard, not Hagar, not the church, but the CHILD! ( Genesis 21:16-17).
And this heavenly Abraham opened her eyes (by raising up a leader, prophet, apostle, etc., to be a temporary soul) to see more water for the child (verse 17). But like any Earthly church, does she show the child the well… or just take him another finite bottle? To keep him dependent upon her, to keep him in bondage!
Who is this well? Jeremiah 2:13. That Lamb doesn’t give them water… unlike Hagar, He leads them to the water (Revelation 7:17). Because that’s what churches should do, and what the heavenly Jerusalem church DOES!
But Hagar, knowing she is just a bondservant, is naturally insecure, and jealous of the role of mediator… and her mistress is hated in her eyes (Genesis 16:3-4). So rather than relinquish the role of surrogate mother she should never have had to fill in the first place (Genesis 16:5), she jealously guards the well and instead carries a jug of it to the people (Deuteronomy 5:27 again).
Sprinkling, as the Catholics do, a few drops of holy water on the faithful who please her… but never showing them how to find their own. And that reveals the greatest problem with OC churches, even in theory; for even the best of them, EVEN MOSES, got too comfortable in his role as mediator; read Numbers 20:10-11.
Aaron and Moses shouldn’t have had to fetch water for Israel at all! This rock was supposed to freely give its water to the people directly, simply because MOSES asked it to do so! Moses forgot that, and died in the wilderness as punishment, for no one who leads a church that way is qualified to lead it into the NC Promised Land (Numbers 20:12).
JUGS OF WATER
Back in Genesis 21:17-19, notice that the angel didn’t give Ishmael any more bread, because the original two loaves of the commandments were all he would ever need, nothing would need to be added to them (Deuteronomy 5:22); but the water of the statutes would need to be updated for new situations, to keep every church relevant with its time.
But he did teach Ishmael to kill beasts (Genesis 21:20). Because that’s what God does… even as the churches try desperately to dole out the water, God kills their beasts and gives them blood instead. Blood which can wash away internal sins, not only external sins (Hebrews 9:22).
Which, not coincidentally, is why Jesus turned their water into wine (John 2:1-11). Because He came to show them that washing up to the elbow could never clean the inside of the cup (Matthew 23:25-26), and that they needed the death of a beast to cleanse their heart.
There was no conceivable set of statutes that would would be complete enough, or last long enough, to bring us into the Kingdom of God; that’s what Galatians 3:19-29 plainly tells us; the one scripture which, if you’d really thought about it… well, you know.
If there could have been a set of statutes which would bring life, God would have surely written it! But Hagar could only carry so much water at once! Because times change, and people don’t weave with cotton and wool anymore, but they do a lot of other things the law doesn’t explicitly cover. God knew that; churches don’t seem to realize it.
The laws of Moses were never contrary to the promises of God, they were simply preparatory to it. Yet incomplete and veiled though they were, there was more than enough for people who loved the truth to see what God is trying to get at (2 Corinthians 3:13, 16). If they loved the truth.
Likewise, a church is not contrary to the command of God, it is simply preparatory to the true growth of the soul. There is enough truth, even in the worst churches, to see some faint hint of God behind the curtain, and encourage the embryonic Elohims among the congregation to learn more… if they love the truth.
OC SCHOOLMASTERS
All Hagars are schoolmasters, wet nurses, surrogate mothers for the children of God. Often wrong and more often evil ones, but they are all a place to start… and a place to overcome. And under these tutors and governors, we learn a great deal (Galatians 4:7).
But it’s a small step on the road that leads to life, for these tutors cannot strengthen your soul; they can only make you a servant to their outdated statutes ( Galatians 4:8-11). And if your soul is awake, it will recognize that at some point, and start asking uncomfortable questions.
We are all children of some Hagar or another… until faith comes (Galatians 3:25). And when faith in God comes, it should replace faith in the church. And at that point, it is contrary to the promises of God if you seek to be entangled in another spirit of bondage (Galatians 5:1-7).
Because if you will surrender your conscience to a church, any church, and follow them unquestioningly, you’ll do it whether Moses leads you to God or Aaron leads you to the golden calf! (They were, after all, leaders in the same church!)
This need to have a church to call “mommy”, to have a herd to call brethren, to have a pack to help you digest your food, is what causes so many people to compromise with what the Bible so clearly says, as so many must surely have done while making the golden calf.
The Israelites knew what God had said about idols from the mountain. They all heard Him. But everyone else was doing it, including God’s chosen priest Aaron… so why make waves? That desperate need to belong to a church leads people to fellowship with anyone, rather than stand alone.
But calling people who stubbornly reject the truth “Christians” will keep you out of the first resurrection just as surely as joining a witches coven –for the Bible considers this a distinction without a difference: 1 Samuel 15:23.
God doesn’t want you to shift your unquestioning allegiance from the teachings and traditions of one church to the teachings and traditions of another church, even if that change happens to bring you closer to truth!
Because remember: it’s not about right or wrong. It’s about how well you can judge right and wrong. And when you follow a church, they demand that you surrender that right to them, demand that you cease to judge altogether.
And when you blindly follow a man or a church –even a righteous man, even the NT church in heaven –you’re not following God. Even if they happen to be walking towards Him you’re still following them, not Him.
ISAAC IS THE TEST FOR ISHMAEL
How you react to Isaac has always been a test. The name Isaac means “he laughs”; but like so many things, that means different things to different people. He made his mother laugh with joy (Genesis 21:6). Yet he made Ishmael laugh with cruelty, mocking him ( Genesis 21:9).
Likewise, Jesus makes those who weep in this world laugh (Luke 6:21), while those who laugh are made to weep (Luke 6:25) Put differently, He is the foundation of our house; but to them, the same stone is something to trip over (Isaiah 8:13-15).
Notice exactly what that said; He was a rock of offense to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. To the people who were directly symbolic of the children of Hagar (Galatians 4:25), who stumbled their way out of the inheritance by laughing at Isaac, just as they did by mocking Jesus!
Remember, the scripture cannot be broken; and Hagar was an Egyptian woman. And where had Israel just come from at Sinai? Indeed, they were barely outside the borders of Egypt when they made the OC! This woman, at that very mountain where the Father/Abraham was trying to make a covenant with her, set up altars to Egyptian gods!
And so it is no surprise that, when Ishmael grew up into the great nations that God promised to make of him, that his OC mother sought to marry him off to an Egyptian bride! (Genesis 21:21). Because that’s what Hagar, all Abrahamic churches, have done – marry their sons (the beasts/nations) to a pagan religion (woman) in God’s name.
And every Abrahamic religion… Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic… ALL of them are guilty of this, for all of them have been infected by the symbols, traditions, and deceptions of EGYPT! And yet God’s seed is indeed in those churches; they do all have some piece of the truth.
And yet in another sense of the word, God’s seed is in them for the sole purpose of seeing if it can come out of them, and touch no unclean thing on the way (Revelation 18:4). Because the children of churches will not inherit with the children of God.
If you are not able to digest your own meat, at least in small bites, after a few years of hearing the truth, it can only be because, for one reason or another, you’ve stopped trying to digest meat, and have settled into a comfortable place on one of the many nipples on your female dog of a church.
If you’re content to spend your life mindlessly carrying chunks of rotting meat back down the anthill to feed your bloated queen, then you’re not learning how to judge as God judges. You’re simply following a herd with your spirit because your beast is lonely; and that’s the last thing God needs in His Kingdom.
Because think about it: if there could have been a physical mother who could give birth to adult humans, God would have created her. And if there could have been a church that could shelter embryos in her uterus until they are wise, adult souls… God would have given us such a true church!
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Don’t get me wrong, you can and should learn from men (Romans 10:14-15). You can and should obey those who have authority over you, even spiritually, within the limits of their authority (Hebrews 13:17).
But you must never let them eclipse God in your eyes. Because Moses did not die for your sins; neither did Paul; neither did I (1 Corinthians 1:13). We may all have taught you Truth; but we do it as shepherds of another man’s flock (1 Corinthians 3:9).
Now, when you learn a great deal of truth from someone, me, for instance, you should give them the benefit of the doubt. You should “receive the word readily” from me, because I’ve demonstrated that I have a lot to offer you. But you should take everything I say and then “search the scriptures daily, whether these things are so” (Acts 17:11).
If you don’t do that, then you’ll learn my mistakes along with my truth, and you’ll never be able to sort them out. Not everything I say is true! I do my best, and when I find an error I fix it, but I’m sure that much of what I say will be proven wrong someday (Proverbs 10:19).
And that’s OK… as long as your source of truth is the Bible, and not me or these lessons. That job may take years before you can do it on your own, but if it ends in you blindly listening to me, I will have failed.
The job of a teacher is to free the soul from bondage. Our job is to open your eyes enough so that you can recognize Christ on your own (John 1:29-37). Notice that these had been John’s disciples; but he taught them to see Jesus, and they left and became Jesus’ disciples!
All teachers, good, bad, NC or OC, should feed you with milk only until you are capable of digesting your true Master’s words for yourself (John 10:27)… capable of recognizing and listening to His words, which of course… requires a broken spirit.
To break your spirit, you may need to bear the yoke of men for awhile (Lamentations 3:27). Because that’s the only job of the human ekklesia on this Earth; to break your spirit, rule your beast, awaken your soul and lead it out of prison. And then to turn it loose, bit by bit, as it is able to do those jobs by itself.
Because sooner or later, you will have to “prove your OWN work” (Galatians 6:4-5). But there is no church in the world that wants you to “have rejoicing in yourself alone, and not in another.”
No church in the world that will teach you to “bear your own burden”. The only church that does that is Jerusalem, which is still above and not on this Earth.
Any church, any leader, anyone who doesn’t do these things… is your enemy, no matter if he appears as an angel of light.