The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 8 – 6
Enough has been said about the need for physical government; obviously, we can’t let murderers and thieves govern themselves. But we aren’t murderers and thieves. We are spiritual, what need do we have of government? What we need to know, God can teach us. Right?
I spent the first four lessons of this series telling you that the only true Christian is one who follows Paul’s words in Galatians 6:4-5. And yet like any scripture taken by itself, it doesn’t tell the whole story. For how do we balance that with Galatians 6:2?
This was spoken two verses prior, practically inscribed with the same stroke of the pen… yet these verses say exactly opposite things. So how are we supposed to bear one another’s burden… while also bearing our burden alone?
I’ve shown you that a true church doesn’t exist, never did exist, and should not exist… and yet we should speak often one to another (Malachi 3:16). The Bible tells us we should follow God rather than man (Acts 5:29)… and it also says to follow men who follow God (1 Corinthians 11:1-2).
You will recall that even as I was harping on the need for self-government, I also said you were not destined to, or even supposed to, walk this road alone; I said that thinking through the metaphor of the narrow road would reveal the understanding in most of the lessons in this series.
That is still true, because after you’ve escaped the sword of Hazael and outgrown the sword of Jehu, you need the correction of Elisha to become a better person. So who bears his sword today? There is no true church, but there is an ekklesia on this Earth, scattered though they may be.
And that ekklesia does bear the sword of Elisha – “…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). For contrary to what “independent Christian” sounds like, there is a place in the ekklesia for ordination, apostles, deacons, and so on. A place for more than just writing and teaching, but also for binding and loosing (Matthew 16:19), for appointing and casting out, guiding and correcting.
All of these things exist; and they all do have a place in the called-out ones, a place which exists today and is needed today. It’s just absolutely nothing like what everyone thinks it is. But honestly… what is?
YOUR UNIQUENESS
When you first contemplate the universe from your self-important perch of arrogance, you are sure of your value to God (I keep the Sabbath!! Job 35:5-8) and your uniqueness (I’m the only one who loves the truth!! 1 Kings 19:18).
And so, you inevitably think to yourself “I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do! I have the Bible, and I know what it says, and if I’m wrong God can correct me!” And that’s true… He could. If it was worth His time.
On several occasions, people have told me “when you said I was wrong, I went and prayed to God about it, asking Him to show me if I was wrong, and He didn’t say anything… so I KNOW I’m right! Because if I was wrong, God would have showed me!!” But what if God just didn’t consider them worth talking to?
Most Christians carry around an attitude that says “if God doesn’t reveal it to me Himself, it’s not worth believing!” …But if you’re simply not worth God’s time yet, are you willing to learn from someone far less important… like me?
What if Peter, personally trained by Christ for four years, had refused to listen to Paul’s drastic revision of his religion? When Paul claimed circumcision was done away, Peter’s heart must have said to him “if that were true, Jesus would have told me when He was here!”
And if Peter were deceived by his proud heart or arrogant spirit into rejecting truth, even if it came from a former murderer of his friends… then Peter would have died with the rest of the world. Because God needs to know… will this person humble themselves under the foolishness of preaching?
There is a grave risk to our salvation if God sends us “an abundance of revelation” (2 Corinthians 12:7). It makes our soul’s job of ruling our proud heart much harder (1 Corinthians 8:1). It’s much safer for us if someone else learns it, and we learn it from them.
There’s something deeply humbling about having to accept that God told someone else something, and not you. That’s why God teaches us and corrects us, more often than not, with the rod of men (2 Samuel 7:14).
Besides, when you’re little more than a beast, why should God give you personal attention? He has “people” for that (Exodus 23:20-23, Exodus 33:3-5). But He also has people for that (2 Corinthians 11:2, Luke 1:17).
So if you won’t listen to Moses, whom God already sent… why would God bother to send you Jesus? Luke 16:27-29. So men are supposed to learn from other men (Romans 10:13-15)… and humble themselves under other men (1 Peter 5:5, for example).
Authority in the ekklesia provides a simple test: do you love truth? Will you do the right thing, even if a glowing angel didn’t trumpet it to you with the sound of many waters?
Does your soul truly want to be master of your own body, at any cost to your self-esteem? Or does the idea of having to learn from some flawed man hurt your pride too much?
Because the sad fact is, you’re just not that important. You could be, but you aren’t yet. You are as important to God as an individual egg is to a hopeful mother, or a single spermatozoon is to a hopeful father.
Like them, God has millions, billions of potential children in the world. And while all those eggs and sperms are different and unique, one will get the job done just as well as another. It only takes one, any one, to create a child of God; exactly which one… isn’t that big of a deal.
…to Him, that is. Obviously, to you it matters a great deal. So if you want to be that one, it falls to you to make sure it happens by learning from whomever you can, however you can; because while other men will teach you, correct you, and maybe even lead you for a time… no one else will ever change your nature for you.
In that way, you will always be independent, bearing your own burden, working out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
EARS TO HEAR
I’ve spent most of the last 40 lessons showing you that you must rule yourself; showing you that you can rule yourself, and showing you how to rule yourself. But as you’ve doubt discovered… it’s hard.
It’s a lot to ask of someone who, in the Elohim sense, is barely an embryo. Indeed, to be precise, you may still be only an Elohim egg, not even an embryo yet. But God doesn’t expect you to rule yourself, by yourself; at least, not at first: Hebrews 13:7, 17.
What I’ve told you in all these lessons is your goal. And I’ve kept nothing back from you about how to achieve that goal. You have all you need, far more than you need, to find the Kingdom of God on your own. Far more than I had, far, far, far more than Jesus had.
And if you have ears to hear and eyes to see, that’s all you’ll ever need. But the fact is, if you really had ears to hear, you could have just read Genesis 1:26, Matthew 22:40, John 14:6, and Daniel 7:22 and figured all this out on your own. Did you?
Why not? There’s really nothing I’ve ever taught you that wasn’t contained in those verses, if you’d just thought them through. You didn’t, because you didn’t have ears to hear. You were deaf and blind. And the problem is… to a large degree you still are.
It is hard to rule and convince your fractions; hard to make the right choices, day in and day out (Romans 7:15-24). How often do you fail at this task? And worse, and far more importantly, how often do you fail… without ever noticing you’ve failed?
And so when you’re spiritually young, you need someone in authority over you to point out your flaws (Lamentations 3:27); someone to force you to sit up and listen when you’re acting like a beast. Someone to break your spirit for you so that your soul has an easier time ruling it.
And I’m not necessarily even talking about someone in the ekklesia. All authority in the world stems from God (Romans 13:1-6). Your spirit can be humbled by a Gentile king just as well as by an apostle sent from God (Leviticus 26:41).
In some ways, better –for you need to learn to be humble not just under righteous heroes but under cruel tyrants as well –if that’s where God puts you (1 Peter 2:18). So you may start out serving Pharaoh, as Moses did.
And if you do well, God will notice and may give you another worldly master to teach you new lessons. But to reach your full potential, you may eventually need the authority of someone more spiritual; for it’s hard to learn the finer points of righteousness from Ahab.
Sooner or later you’ll have to be led to Elisha; someone who can “draw counsel out of your heart” (Proverbs 20:5), so you can see exactly why it’s disobeying you, and how to convince it to trust you. Someone who will not humor your spirit’s excuses, not tolerate your soul’s sleepiness.
This does not happen, and cannot happen, in any church on Earth today, which is why God didn’t invent the idea of church. Church, remember, is where beasts go to hide from precisely this sort of correction!
No, something else, something completely different is needed.
RAISING CHILDREN
God calls us children, in both positive and negative ways, on many occasions (Luke 18:16-17, Ephesians 4:14, 1 Corinthians 14:20, 1 Corinthians 13:11, etc.). And asking a child to do the right thing for the right reason is unrealistic. That is why children need the rod of correction (Proverbs 13:24).
Yes, you want your children to grow up into mature, confident, good people who do the right things without being asked. And like a parent sitting his child down to tell him what he expects from him, the last 40 lessons have shown you what God wants and how to do it.
But no child, ever, does that without a certain amount of chastening (Hebrews 12:5-9). Exactly how much, well, that depends on the child. How close are these rules to what his soul wanted to do in the first place?
The things I’ve said in the past few lessons paint a wonderful picture of self-reliant, independent righteousness. And that is, indeed, the goal, which you should achieve during this life. But the question is, are you able to be that person right now?
Are you ready to judge righteous judgment, speak the truth in your heart, and love your enemies?
Or, at least once in awhile, do you still need spiritual government?
There’s no shame in that fact, except in that you let the situation get like this in the first place; the fact is, you’re in over your head and if you truly love the truth, you’ll gladly take all the help you can get to become a better person.
WHAT YOU DON’T SEE
To paraphrase Paul, it is not possible for a scripture or a lesson or a speech to give life; if it were, God would have written those words down for us (Galatians 3:21). But think that through; if it was impossible for the law to give life… because it was written on stones…
…is it any more possible for the Bible to give life, since it’s written on paper? It’s still just words. Inspired words, yes, but even inspired words cannot save you. Because words written on stone, even spiritual words… are no longer alive.
Spirit means “breath”. And once the wind has ceased to move after speaking, that spirit becomes “frozen”. It’s still true; it was still spiritual; but it is dead and can no longer adapt! No longer able to correct exactly what you’ve done.
For instance everyone agrees we should obey Jesus’ commandment to “love one another”… but do they? For that to truly change someone, the words must be relevant to them. They must see in those words a specific condemnation of THEIR acts, THEIR thoughts. The words must tell them how they are not loving someone today!
But no words can ever be written that see your thoughts, and correct you based on what they’ve seen you do that day. And that’s why frozen spirit cannot save you, cannot change you. That requires a LIVING spirit.
Take one of the first examples from this course; “thou shalt not muzzle an ox” was spoken by the spirit of God. And that law WAS spiritual! (Romans 7:14). But that law, as written, doesn’t apply to you, for you probably don’t own an ox… or a muzzle!
In order for you to benefit from that law, your spirit, with the guidance of your soul, must reconstruct the original intent of the law, as if it were coming from your own spirit! This is the problem with words written on stone, or on paper. They are spiritual, but they are frozen spirit.
They are not a living, breathing, seeing spirit which can adapt the words to reach you; which can cut you to the heart and show you, in a way you can’t justify or ignore, how far you are falling short of the mark.
Words can only “make you WISE unto salvation through faith” (2 Timothy 3:15). They don’t save you, they make you wise so you can save yourself through teaching your fractions faith. But if those words don’t reach your soul, they can’t do that!
Now, I’m not saying words are useless. For like with the original law, it is possible for a soul to look BEYOND the words and see the truth (2 Corinthians 3:13-17). But only by figuring out the principles that led a living spirit to breathe those dead words to a dead people two millennia ago!
All of these things are pointing towards 2 Corinthians 3:18… because the words don’t help, not even the NT words. You have to be corrected and changed by a living spirit in order to be made into God’s image.
A real voice, whether divine or human, must tell you “NO! Don’t do THAT to your neighbor! Yes, you, and yes, that, and I don’t care if he started it!” – otherwise, unless we are already ruling our heart and spirit, we’ll find a way to wriggle out of the condemnation!
This is the weakness of words, whether carved in stone, inked on vellum, typed on a computer or broadcast on YouTube. The words don’t know you. And so they can only do so much; and if you are too weak or too unskilled to do the rest… what then?
And yes, that’s exactly what the spirit of Christ in us is supposed to do… and will do… if you’re not too deaf to hear it! (Luke 8:8).
GROWING EYES
Deafness is an inability of the spirit to hear. And blindness is an inability of the soul to see. And so if we really are only an embryo of the God-kind, or worse, still an unfertilized egg… is it realistic to expect us to have eyes and ears?
Remember Genesis 1:26: God is reproducing after His kind. We are made in His image, but this is only a prototype of the body we will have. This body is merely the embryo of the Elohim body we shall have… and like any embryo, it doesn’t look much like the grown-up person it will become (1 Corinthians 15:37).
So to begin to be like our future selves, this fetus’ ears have to develop. Our eyes have to grow. We have to learn to hear and understand what God says, and see and judge what God shows us… and then enforce those judgments on our spirit and heart.
But the most important part of learning anything is correctly identifying failures. How can you do that, if you’re deaf and blind? If you can’t really hear what God is saying, how can you properly obey Him? How can you become a better person if you are blinded to your own mistakes by your heart? Ephesians 4:18.
Do you, can you, see yourself as others see you? John 5:31. And if you can’t truly see yourself, how can you ever justly judge yourself? You may have been given all the answers, but if you can’t see the questions… can you answer them?
Consider Isaiah 44:20. Your spirit lies to your soul. Your heart lies to your soul. I know it does, because mine does; that’s what we are. But it’s not what we should be (John 8:13-14)… which was possible because of John 14:6.
He, AFTER living a perfect life, had taught His spirit to be a true witness, and His soul saw Himself as He truly was (Mark 10:18). We don’t; not yet. Deep down, we still think we are good (or else, our spirit gets a perverse pleasure out of thinking we are too bad to bother fixing).
So seeing your self – the bad and the good, the objective truth about you, that’s the goal. And it is possible for you to achieve that without help – that’s what Jesus came to prove. And yet it’s unlikely you would… and more importantly, unnecessary.
I’ve established that you are a spiritual embryo… and did God intend for you to raise yourself? Proverbs 29:15. What do you need? Proverbs 23:13. Why? Proverbs 22:15. That’s why the ekklesia is supposed to… Proverbs 22:6.
If you learn something from me, as you already have, you will forever have to admit the embarrassing truth that your own arm and your own righteousness were not sufficient to save you. However much you accomplished on your own, you will always have an asterisk after your name in the record books* (he placed in the finals… but not without help!).
So learning from another person, and particularly accepting authority from another flawed man, means that you must forever admit that you were not saved by your own arm and your own righteousness (Isaiah 59:16). And frankly, that hurts.
I didn’t like it. I want to win on my own! I want to get ALL the credit for my accomplishments. But we both know that’s pride; and precisely the thing we need to get rid of by humbling ourselves under the government of God! (Proverbs 29:23).
So the question really is, would you rather have all the credit… or would you rather be a better person? Because the only reason anyone prefers the hard way is because of pride… and if that’s their reason… it will be a very hard way (James 4:6).
THE NEED FOR ELISHA
As I said before, if you can’t truly see yourself, how can you ever justly judge yourself? So if you are ever to truly measure up to the stature of the fullness of Christ, you NEED government. Someone to point out when you’re not listening to that spirit.
And so God sends people to teach things. But if you could have listened to a man who simply told you things, you would probably have already listened to God. And so God puts you in a position where you have no choice but to obey a man.
Someone who won’t just tell you what to do, but who will make you do it. Someone who won’t just tell you what you should have done, but will punish you for failing to do it. You need someone to hold up a mirror that reflects the brutal truth of what you really are until you can see it for yourself; someone with the sword of Elisha.
Compare the example of Saul; he truly believed he had obeyed God’s commandment even as the sheep he was supposed to slaughter were bleating in his ears (1 Samuel 15:13-24). It took three times for him to see that he had been deceived by the herd (verse 15), and blinded by his own heart (verse 17).
So sure was he, that it took three times for the Elisha of the day, Samuel, to cut through Saul’s spirit’s excuses and prick his heart. On his own, Saul was genuinely incapable of seeing how blatantly he had reinterpreted God’s commands. And I mean… blatantly.
Similarly, the Jews knew murder was wrong. They knew Jesus had done them no harm. And yet they didn’t seem to feel guilty at all… Not until a living, breathing man, inspired by God’s spirit, told them “that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).
Only THEN, though they had known these things their entire lives, were they cut to the heart (Acts 2:37). Only when their mistakes were thrust before them, so that even blind men could see them, were the apostles able to reach past the justifying spirits of the Jews (Luke 16:15) and reach into their hearts and change them!
BLINDED TO TRUTH
We are all guilty of doing this; that’s exactly why God chose us (Isaiah 42:16-21), to show how great His word really is… because if God can teach us, He can teach anyone (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). Take David, who, after a very obvious parable, still didn’t realize that he was the man (2 Samuel 12:5-7).
How could he not feel guilty about adultery and murder? He had justified it! (2 Samuel 11:14-25). So even David, one of the greatest men in the Bible, was blinded by lust and then fear, preventing him from seeing (and perhaps averting) his grievous sins! It took a prophet, a living person, pointing out his actual sins, before he was able to see.
David knew the scriptures, I mean, he practically wrote half of them! And yet his heart was still able to blind him to the truth. That’s why we need the ekklesia. We need others to point out our flaws, as 1 Peter 5:5 says.
Otherwise, you’ll call God “Lord”, and think you’re doing what He said, when in fact… Jeremiah 19:5. As you saw in Series 3, they honestly believed they were serving the Lord, since Baal is a Hebrew word for “Lord” (Jeremiah 2:23).
But they had been deceived by the false prophets (spirits), and were following the imaginations of their own hearts (Jeremiah 23:16-17). Why? Because they didn’t really listen to what God said in the first place! ( Jeremiah 23:18). So what was Jeremiah – the sword of Elisha – sent to do? (Jeremiah 2:35).
They thought they knew what God wanted, and they thought they were doing it; so someone bearing the sword of the word of the Lord was sent to show them, specifically, that they were not (John 15:22-24).
Likewise, the other Saul murdered and imprisoned Christians before he became Paul, living up to his blind namesake and fulfilling the prophecy of Jesus in John 16:2. He was certain he was doing the right thing (1 Timothy 1:13), because he was spiritually blind… which God later fulfilled physically (Acts 9:5-9).
Did Paul not know murder was wrong? He was “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6) – so of course he did! But he couldn’t see that this law applied here, now, in this way; he was blinded by hatred (1 John 2:10-11). So God had to show him, specifically, that he was wrong. Why did Paul feel such hatred? Galatians 1:13-14.
Paul’s church gave him power, approval, and validation; so it was easy for him to be blinded by hatred of a threat to his mother… and by fear of losing the power she gave him! True Christianity is always a threat to our church “family” and so our spirit and heart always hate it and blind our soul as much as possible to the truth!
That’s why Paul had to go to another man to have this blindness removed (Galatians 1:10-18). Because it’s hard to see and hear when you’ve been in darkness all your life, even if you honestly want to see and hear… because your ears and eyes haven’t been growing in Hagar’s womb!
That had to be humiliating for Paul… but had he insisted that he did in fact see, even after this, he would have been just another churchgoer (John 9:39-41), the sword of Elisha would have cut him down to size (Jeremiah 48:10), and delivered him back to Jehu for the destruction of the flesh.
NOT OUR PROBLEM
The goal has never changed: to create souls who govern themselves, and who can be trusted with absolute power for eternity without end. But we are not such souls – not yet, and probably not soon. And so we need government. All of us.
The swords of Gentile governments are cruel and brutal (2 Kings 8:11-13), and a constant presence in life. They have to be, for they are forcing animals not to hurt each other, and that usually requires violence and vigilance – police who cruise the streets, constantly watching for evildoers.
The swords of Moses’ law are less invasive, because teaching the spirit once a week or so is usually enough to minimize sin. Their methods involve a lot of fire and brimstone, lots of yelling about hell and sin and the devil, and that’s enough to compel conformity with the herd.
But the sword of Elisha is rarely involved in such mundane jobs, because a true Christian recognizes the futility of preventing beasts from acting selfishly. You’ll just have to do it again tomorrow, so what is the real point?
Likewise, what is the point of reminding spirits of the same old statutes every week? Yes, these jobs need done in this world, but by this world, not by us. When you truly realize what mankind is capable of when his soul is in charge, you’ll see that manhandling other beasts and spirits is a waste of your time (2 Kings 3:11-14).
So when it comes to correcting the masses, or even the spirits, the prophet often just says something cryptic and walks away (Matthew 21:23-27 comes to mind, or Matthew 22:29-33). Because his job is not to punish sin, as Hazael was meant to do; nor to teach the statutes to spirits as Jehu should have; his job is to prevent sins by teaching souls to judge themselves.
That is a job which, if properly done, will never need done again (Hebrews 9:26). You cannot “put away sin” by corralling beasts into fences. You can minimize it, but never eliminate it. That’s why Jesus died to save souls, so that those souls could change their own spirits and convince their own beasts to die for the truth.
But you cannot save souls who are uninterested in waking up. And what would be the point of doing Hazael’s job or Jehu’s job for them? Psalms 50:16-21. Fixing people like that is what the second resurrection is for, so when you perceive that, what should you do? Proverbs 14:7. After all… 1 John 5:16.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The governments and churches of the world exist to punish the worst of the sins, and their laws exist to fence off the dangerous areas where we might hurt one another; but the spiritual government of God exists to teach a few people not to need those fences.
Once Hazael and Jehu do their jobs, it falls to the ekklesia to teach the interested souls how to lead their fractions. To help them to see the flaws in their hearts and spirits (Acts 5:33), and help their souls convert their internal enemies to allies (Proverbs 20:5).
This is what I’ve been doing for all these lessons, of course; and it has no doubt helped. And yet, the job is far from finished – for I don’t know what you did today, so I can’t write a specific rebuke of it in these lessons which makes these words just as dead as all the others.
I can tell you to look for your sins, I can even tell you generally what to look for (and have spent dozens of lessons doing just that) but if you were able to see them, you already would have. Consider the problem in James 1:24.
When you look at yourself in the mirror of the Bible, you see your flaws… then you go your way, and later proudly say to God “I have performed the commandment of the Lord!!” – “I have ruled my heart as you commanded, and my spirit IS broken!”
But have you… really? Or is that just your beast talking? How can you tell? If you can’t see yourself objectively, then you need someone else who can. You need God to lead you to a man who can, with God’s guidance, wipe the scales from your eyes.
The ekklesia of God doesn’t build churches or run countries because this is not Jesus’ kingdom, and conquering the world is not why Elisha was given a sword (2 Kings 5:25-26) – “…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17) was given because it is…
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
This is that same sword Elisha bore! (2 Kings 6:8-12). A sword which we should use to DIVIDE the soul from the spirit; to help each other RECOGNIZE the thoughts and intents of his heart so that his soul can change it!
But who can help you do this? Where? How? When, and for how long?
The answer to all these questions is so, so, so much simpler than anyone imagines. So obvious, so intuitive… and so another lesson.