The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 9 -13
No children can learn to walk without falling; no one can learn to drive a nail without hitting their thumb a few times. So how is it that the world pictures a God who, after having created man, didn’t realize that children are going to fall before they walk?
How incompetent would God have to be, not to see this coming? Is it really possible that He staked all His hopes on them simply never tripping… knowing that to trip meant death? How is it possible that He had no plan not involving death to raise Adam and Eve?
Surely any good parent is willing to give their life for their children… but they don’t have to do so every time the child talks with his mouth full! So in the Garden, there HAD to be a realistic plan to raise the children to adulthood without ANYONE having to die –Jesus included!
Naturally, if all else failed, like any good parent, Jesus was willing to die for His children; and the probability of this happening meant that God had long ago laid out a plan for redemption, just in case; He would be irresponsible not to have done so.
And yet that begs the question… what is the “all else” that must have already failed for Him to die for them? If Jesus’ death was, while foreseen, the worst-case-scenario, how had God hoped to bring Adam and Eve to adulthood without death?
And, as always, the Golden Rule gives us that answer. If your child sins against you, the only party who has been wronged is yourself; and you can, unilaterally, forgive him. There is nothing your child can do to you that you would not forgive –right? Sure, you’ll punish him for his own good… but you’ll always forgive him, right?
But if he sins against another house, against a stranger, that you cannot unilaterally forgive –because you were not the party he harmed. Still, even if he sins against the children of other houses, you would do your best to work it out, parent-to-parent, and get them to forgive him.
If your child steals from the house next door, you can replace the thing he stole, even double or quadruple what he stole (2 Samuel 12:6), make him apologize to the neighbor kids, and all is well. No one needs to die, because you can afford to make it right.
And God was fully intending to do that, no doubt frequently as they grew up… until they decided to do it for themselves. Again, the Golden Rule: You would forgive your child of every sin against you, and do your best to help him resolve the consequences of sins against other houses, even if it cost you your fortune, and your life.
Except in the case of one unforgivable sin. Or I should say, one unpardonable sin.
SAFE SPACES
No being can learn how not to sin without sinning. It’s simply not possible, and God knows this! How could He not? And so God created an environment in Eden where sins wouldn’t matter. If the idea of God creating an area specifically to allow sin shocks you, it means you still don’t really understand what a house is. Because that’s exactly what you do, with your own children!
If a child falls down, you pick them back up and kiss their boo-boo. If a child gets sick, you feed him chicken soup. If he breaks a lamp, you’ll buy a new one. You don’t kill him for his sins! Like God, it’s your job, as a parent, to clean up your children’s messes; whether that’s dirty diapers or black eyes.
If God hadn’t done that, what would that have made Him? 1 Timothy 5:8. The whole POINT of raising children is to shield them from the consequences of sin! So what could God have been doing in the Garden, if not shielding Adam and Eve from the “real world”?
If a ten-year-old child steals a candy bar, should he go to jail? No? Why not… that’s what would happen if he was thirty when he did it! It’s what the law REQUIRES! So why should the punishment be different just because he’s a child? Because he’s in your house and still doesn’t understand what he’s doing! (1 Timothy 1:13).
So you, the parent, don’t sent him to jail because he did it “ignorantly, in unbelief”; instead, you march him back to the store, make him apologize, and then you pay for the candy bar he stole out of your own pocket. You bear his sins! You take responsibility for all his actions, and you pay for his sins –and then you exact from him in turn a price for his sins that you think he can afford, explaining it in words you think he can understand.
But you don’t ask him to pay the full price the law would ask of him –not jail, not death, not a fine he can’t afford to pay out of his meager allowance; you demand of him a carefully measured price, one specifically designed to teach him the lesson without killing him –so that one day, when you are no longer there to save him, he will know not to cross this line for his own good (Romans 7:13).
There is no parent alive who doesn’t raise their children exactly this way; so how can God raise His children differently? There HAD to be a method to get past Adam’s inevitable mistakes, a way to smooth over their “sins”, and have them eventually become righteous grownups without having them bear “the sins of their youth” (Psalms 25:7). Because the sins of your youth are borne by your parents (Deuteronomy 1:39).
As always, the entire world precisely understands what was going on in the Garden of Eden, for they all do the same thing in their own homes: God was giving His children grace. Grace is a way for parents to make it easier for children to grow up. It is, in effect, a way of “discounting sin”.
Grace is a way that children can avoid the price of sin they are ill-equipped to pay, allowing them to grow up more righteous, happier, and healthier than they possibly could as a street urchin. And yet grace is only for those in your house.
You don’t make excuses for the neighbor kids; nor, after a child has left home, rejected everything you ever told him, became a thief and a lowlife, would you go bail him out of jail –at least, you shouldn’t. Because he’s an adult now, and he needs to pay for his own sins.
And yet, if we just think this through, it means that if you are to receive grace, you must also become as a little child (Mark 10:15); and that you means you must, in one way or another, have parents. Or said differently… belong to a house.
ADAM’S PLAYGROUND
The Garden of Eden was a playground for God’s children; a place for them to practice not sinning in a safe space where the prices of sin are filtered through their parents. God knew they would make mistakes, as all children would; how could they not?
But in this carefully controlled environment, which was just like every home, God knew He could clean up any messes His children made without killing them for playing ball in the house. Would you kill your children for staying up after their bedtime, torture them in hell for not eating their peas? Then why on Earth would you imagine God was going to do that?
As with any loving home, there was absolutely nothing they could do that would earn them the death penalty. As children, they COULD NOT sin so greatly that God would kill them… as long as they didn’t do ONE thing. And of course, that’s exactly the thing they did.
For the one sin that He couldn’t forgive was rebellion; the same sin that no parent can forgive. Because every parent says… “as long as you live in MY house, you’ll do it my way”, leaving the obvious alternative of being kicked out on the street.
Adam and Eve had a sandbox in the Garden in which to make mistakes without risking eternal death. They had parents who loved them, who were protecting them from harm. But they threw that away by declaring themselves emancipated and insisting on being treated as adults. And so that’s exactly what God did; put them out of His house.
Not because God was personally offended by their rebellion; not because He stopped loving them. But because the whole POINT of grace is to help a child learn from his sins and outgrow them; if that becomes impossible, then your grace would become the servant of sin (Jude 1:4, Romans 6:1-2, 13-18).
If a child refuses to listen to you, then you obviously can’t correct his sins; and if you continued to pay for his rebellious crimes anyway, you would be enabling his wickedness as so many foolish parents do today… and then you would be a minister of sin, an enabler of the wicked (Galatians 2:17-18).
And since God is not the minister of sin, He did what any good parent would do; He kicked His rebellious children out of His house to learn the true cost of sin for themselves. He could have killed them; arguably should have done so (Exodus 21:17).
But rather than kill them for this sin, He chose to die in their place (John 3:16; this is where this verse actually applies). Because once they left His house, they would commit sins against others, sins He couldn’t unilaterally forgive. And the only way to pay for those sins was with death; theirs, or His own. In symbol of this, God gave them a covering for the sin they had committed (Genesis 3:21).
He cleaned up their mess, this one last time, so they wouldn’t die for this sin. He didn’t have to do that –but He loved them, and wanted there to be a way for them to come home one day, back to His house again someday –and they couldn’t do that if they were dead (Isaiah 38:18).
A SPIRITUAL SAFE SPACE
Their external sins were totally protected in Eden; their Father would guarantee their safety, their health, their inheritance, provided only that they didn’t rebel against Him. All that changed in Genesis 3:16-19, when their arrogance got them kicked out their sandbox and into the real world.
Which is just what He told the now-adult Cain in Genesis 4:6-7; it’s difficult to translate, but I think it’s best paraphrased as “if you don’t do well, you will have to rule over your own sins and pay for them yourself”. Basically “you’re on your own”.
Cain was probably offering his first sacrifice as an adult (if he’d done it before, he would either have gotten in trouble then, or done it right this time). And his first adult act was to eat the same fruit that his parents did, by judging for himself what sacrifice was good and evil, regardless of what God actually wanted ( Genesis 4:3-5).
And this is the state that all of us, their worthy heirs, find ourselves in today. Gone is the safe space for external sins, gone is the Garden where God ensured our safety and happiness. We very much dwell in the real world, full of suffering and hardship.
And yet the irony is, that what was the “real world” for the physical creation is in fact still the sandbox for the spiritual creation. We must wrest a living from the grudging Earth, and yet, precisely because of the challenges presented by keeping ourselves alive in a world full of deception, God is able to overlook our internal sins.
See, Adam and Eve’s “safe space” protected against all sins except the internal sin of rebellion. And yet, in an eternity, sooner or later that sin, too, would always be a risk. And God could not forgive that. And so He needed a safe space for internal sins as well. And this world is that safe space.
When Adam and Eve knew God, rejecting Him was an unforgivable offense (Hebrews 6:4-8). Stealing, even killing was forgivable; but rejecting a God whom they knew wasn’t (Matthew 12:31-32). But by losing their external safe space, they were distanced from God; and rejecting a God whom we don’t know is far more forgivable (Luke 23:34).
So the external risks we take by living in the physical “real world” are a small price to pay for having almost no risk of eternal death for internal sins (Romans 8:18, 1 Corinthians 5:5). Because the world that was their external curse, has become our own “safe space” to practice being more like God.
For it was by defying their Father, that we now have the distance from Him to safely find a way back to Him. A safe distance where we are not killed for our internal sins, even rebellion; for who can truly rebel against God, when we only see Him through a glass, darkly? (1 Corinthians 13:12).
HOUSE OF LIFE
In Eden, they could have lived as physical beings forever, or for as long as it took to become perfect and become spirit (Genesis 3:22). Their physical rebellion cost them that safe space, and guaranteed that all of us would have to die at least once (Romans 5:12, Hebrews 9:27).
Yet while all today are guaranteed a physical death, that same bondage to the fear of death is the path to a future where death cannot touch us (Hebrews 2:14-15). Thus, it was Adam and Eve leaving their sandbox, which created the sandbox we live in now. For it was their exile from God’s presence which gives us all a chance to safely find and forsake both our internal and external sins… if we want to badly enough.
And that’s the real problem; we don’t want to badly enough. Some part of us does, but the other fractions are too strong. They lie to us, and our soul gullibly believes them. If we are truly on our own, as God told Cain, how can we ever find our way back to His House?
How CAN a person find his way back to the house of God… without a guide? Romans 10:14. And thus, the NC House of God serves as that “safe space”, the spiritual Garden of Eden which never truly left the Earth. Because God never changed; and He knows that we need even more grace to overcome our internal sins than our external ones… so He gave us a new Edenic house to provide it!
The NC House is a place to recreate the experiences that Adam and Eve could have had, in the safe environment they once had; a way to be guided to choose the right fruit, a place to have their fractions broken for their soul to lead, a home to give them grace for their sins. But instead of one garden… today there are thousands.
And flawed though they are, these Gardens of Eden –the houses of God –are better suited to the purpose of raising the sons of God than Eden itself was. For the challenge of the Garden was that God, personally, was their Father. So while He could forgive their external sins, they had no excuse for the sin of rebellion, since He had never given them any reason to distrust Him. They KNEW Him.
But the NC Eden solves that by making the head of the house represent the Father, but in fact be a foolish man (1 Corinthians 1:21). Thus, we can raise our spiritual children as God raised His in Eden, giving them grace, guiding them to make better choices, showing them their flaws…
With the added safety that a flawed human gave the order, so if they “rebel” against “him”, it was rebellion against a flawed symbol of Him, not Him. Thus, external and internal sins can be forgiven those in the NC Eden!
And as parents bear the sins of their children, so the NC parents bear the sins of their disciples; which they can do only because Jesus in turn gives them grace, who Himself acts as a parent which is why He bears our sins!
This is how Noah kept his children alive for centuries; something they obviously couldn’t do without him. Wasn’t that ALONE worth their obedience? Their tithes, their honoring of his name, their submission to his house?
As great as this is for children, it’s a big risk for parents; what if you have more children than you can spiritually afford? Which is why Paul cautioned Timothy not to take on too many disciples at once (1 Timothy 5:22, James 3:1).
In every house, in every authority structure, as in every tree, the generations above you all provide shade… they bear some of the blame for your sin! Because you bear the blame for anything and everything that happens in your house.
This is why God blamed the adults and not the children in Numbers 14:27-35. Not because the children hadn’t sinned! Not because the teenagers weren’t bratty and obnoxious and rebellious too! But because their parents bore the blame because it was their parents’ choice to sin, and not theirs!
The children were under their parents’ authority and had no chance to make decisions, good or bad, under that authority. That’s what authority means! Which means the Israelite children literally could not have earned the death penalty as long as they stayed under their parent’s authority!
So when the nation as a whole was given a death sentence, they escaped! Because as the lowest in authority, only they were free of the blame of sin! Likewise in the NT church, Paul cautioned Timothy not to “lay hands suddenly” on someone, until he was SURE he could trust him, lest he be “partaker of other men’s sins”.
FOLLOW NO MAN
There are many foolish people in the world who say “no MAN is going to tell ME what to do!” And that’s their right – but that’s also their wrong. For that’s exactly the sin of Adam and Eve. That attitude is pure unadulterated pride, which God hates above all things (Proverbs 6:16-17).
God teaches us through the foolishness of other men (1 Corinthians 1:21), because He knows that a person who won’t learn from another man won’t learn from God either (Luke 16:29-31). You have to SUBMIT yourselves to one another to learn (1 Peter 5:5), and God resists those who refuse to do so.
Job wanted to speak to God, but God sent Elihu in His place! (Job 33:6, 36:2-3). And he plainly told Job why: Job 33:3, 7. Job wasn’t capable of hearing God clearly; his spirit was too obsessed with justice. But what if Job had said “No, I want to talk to God in person, not some lackey God sent!”?
What if Job had said to Elihu “who do you think you are?” 1 Timothy 4:12. What if Job had said “Am I not as holy as you, Elihu?” Numbers 16:3. God was angry with Job (Job 35:15). And God’s personal attention would have been dangerous for Job (Habakkuk 1:13).
So He sent Elihu in His place, as an ambassador, as a spokesman, as a prophet (Job 33:6). Which is exactly what Paul and the apostles and prophets and all the heads of God’s houses were! (2 Corinthians 5:20). They were messengers God sent to a world He didn’t trust Himself to talk to in person! (Exodus 33:1-3).
Like all of them, Elihu “uttered knowledge clearly”, which God dare not do in person to most of us, lest we die (Deuteronomy 18:16, Matthew 13:10-12). And Elihu was not gentle with Job (Job 33:31-33, 34:33-37).
But Job did not respond to these taunts, these invitations to argue with the man in God’s stead; the man younger than he, acting as if he were Job’s father! And because of Job’s humility in taking this abuse, because of his meekness in not arguing against such wisdom, ONLY THEN did God deign to speak to Job directly (Job 38:1-3).
Whereupon Job, to his great credit, repented (Job 42:1-7), and in that moment passed from OC to NC, as you’ve already learned in Series 4. The book of Job is the story a righteous OC man who wants justice to be done. He was, in other words, a spirit-leaning OC man who didn’t understand the role of a soul.
He meant well, but according to his spirit, what God was doing was wrong (Job 13:18-28). And by the limited terms of the OC, Job was right! His friends, spirit-leaning people themselves, but far less righteous spirits, were unable to help him.
So Elihu came to BREAK Job’s spirit, a necessary prerequisite to seeing himself as he was! Which is the job of a father, or father figure, in every family. Which is why God gave them to us in His stead.
REBIRTH
This is why being chief in authority means “you are the servant of everyone” (Mark 10:44). Thinking about that, it means that only the lowest servant is truly servant to no one. Everyone else is the servant of those below them; everyone else must worry about how to keep a roof over their heads, how to keep them healthy, how to find jobs for them to do.
Only the poorest slave can show up at work in the morning free of worry for he knows someone else has solved all the problems, and he need only do his job. Just like you felt, when you woke up as a child… utterly without worry. And like you must feel again, to enter the Kingdom of God (Luke 18:17).
You were a child once, you remember what it felt like to feel good, to wake up eager to face the day. And you could do that because you knew you had a home to live in; parents to protect you from harm, and to provide you with your needs and most of your wants.
These parents provided you with correction, as needed, to rule your heart and break your spirit; with the goal, of course, of you learning how to do it by their example. And you knew that whatever mess you made, they could clean it up.
Thus, if you came from even a half-way decent home, you had very little reason for soul-stress. And if that worked once, why wouldn’t it work again? John 3:3-5. Note that Jesus didn’t contradict Nicodemus’ sarcastic retort; because Nicodemus was exactly right!
God does not deal in half-truths; if something is like birth then it is in every way like birth. And where are we born if not inside a womb? And where is that, if not a mother? And where is that today, if not in a NC House of God?
So Nicodemus’ mocking answer was, if he had just thought about it, exactly what his own scriptures already taught – see Job 1:21. To find life, we must be begotten again – with all that that entails, from conception all the way through birth… including having parents!
Obviously, in context Job was talking about dying; and yet isn’t that also necessary to be reborn? 1 Corinthians 15:35-36. So to be children again, you must first die; obviously, and yet, there are many different kinds of dying.
Surely, sooner or later we all actually die; then there is the death in the waters of baptism of Romans 6:4, which applies here, but which we will come back to in a future lesson; and yet there is also another kind, the one mentioned in Luke 15:24 which happened upon leaving his biological father’s house.
Because as far as the family tree is concerned… that son was dead, his twig cut out of the house. So to survive, it would have to either be grafted into a new house, or take root on its own in a new place; both are risky, and both require first being cut out of the wild tree.
And isn’t that exactly what Jesus asked of His own disciples? To be, in a way, the prodigal sons of their own human houses? Mark 10:28-30, Luke 9:57-62, 14:18-21, etc. Should not Elohim houses take precedence over human houses? Luke 2:43-52.
In a perfect world, a man’s children grow up looking like him and acting like him; this is, after all, what God wanted (Genesis 1:26). But while one man can be both the civil and spiritual father, in this world it’s far more common to have one man be a physical father and another be the spiritual father.
And like with any other (family) tree, you may have to be cut out of one to be grafted into another. So doesn’t Acts 5:29 apply to biological parents as well as to priesthoods or governments? We must die to one house in order to be reborn in another.
And it was, indeed, precisely for this reason that Jesus came (Matthew 10:34-40). To call people out of DEAD houses and into a LIVING house! (Proverbs 2:16-22). To call them back from the wilderness, and into Eden!
THE THIRD EDEN
The commandment of promise, though true on every level, primarily refers to parents in the spirit, not parents in the flesh… for by Paul’s own reasoning, the commandment of promise is not about the flesh, but about the spirit! (Galatians 4:28). And one does not need to have children to have children (Galatians 4:27).
All the rules of one apply to the other; you can receive approval and validation from spiritual parents just as you would from physical parents. And it’s much better quality approval than you got from your physical parents, because it is far less removed from the ultimate Father of all.
And yet there is a third layer at play here; your human parents created your body, not your soul (Psalms 139:13-15). And your spiritual parents create your new spirit, not your soul; they teach you statutes, how to live, what to do, what to think… but your soul was created by God.
Thus we all have three types of parents; biological, spiritual, and Elohim. And all your spiritual parents can do is show your soul how to walk, but it must learn to walk by itself –and learn to follow God on its own.
Their job, like all parents, is simply to create a safe environment where that is possible, and give you an example of how you can do it (1 Peter 5:1-3). But no man will ever be your soul’s father. No man will ever have the authority to command you contrary to your own conscience.
Because all houses, of every conceivable type, are just types of the house of God; if they command you contrary to it, then they are no longer His proxy. And if Matthew 18:15-17 doesn’t turn up a way to continue walking together with clear consciences, then “a brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases” (1 Corinthians 7:13-15).
Your contract with God still stands, but if they are no longer representing Him, you are free to start your own house. And whatever works you do from then on will be in your own name… for better or for worse!
…Just be sure it’s really your conscience that is offended, and not just your pride. You shouldn’t go “from house to house” until you’ve established for certain (1 Timothy 5:19) that this house is not acting as your Father would act (Luke 10:7, 1 Timothy 5:11-13).
Because at the end of the day, the approval of men, whether physical or spiritual men, is only a type of what must ultimately come from inside of you –the calm certainty of your own relationship with your soul’s Father, and His approval of you.
Which is why when your soul truly does become an adult, the “fathers” of various kinds in this world will cease to have authority over you as you will at that point be part of the greatest house of all, the Eden in heaven (Revelation 2:7).
“Paradise” came to Greek and thence to English from a Persian word meaning “Garden” –in context, certainly this means a New Eden. But you’re not there yet (Galatians 4:1-2). For now… you need to be adopted by the spiritual house of Christ (Galatians 4:3-7), which is the second Eden (Luke 23:43).
There is no way that man was going to be in heaven that day, as we proved long ago; and yet, he could join the ekklesia that same day… simply by being called by Jesus. As can all of us, by joining the House of God. For isn’t that where God cleanses your iniquities? Ezekiel 36:33-38.
NO GRACE WITHOUT AUTHORITY
When God calls an apostle or sends a prophet to do a job, if they do a bad job, then they will be held responsible for the people they failed to save. If they do a good job, then whether the people listen or not, God rewards them (2 Corinthians 2:14-16, Ezekiel 2:5).
And because God will hold the apostle responsible, it is only right that the apostle has the last say in how his house is governed; for if he does a bad job, God will blame him, not you. For if you left your oldest child to baby-sit his siblings, and return after a few hours to find the house torn apart, who will you look to for an explanation? Will it not be the one you left in charge?
Surely ALL will be punished, but who will receive the GREATEST condemnation? (James 3:1). Because the father is responsible for all of the sins that happen in his house. That’s the whole POINT of BEING the head!
Likewise, if a nation is sinful, God looks to the ruler He placed in charge. While the whole nation will be punished, the king will bear the brunt of God’s wrath. If a house is sinful, God looks to the person He placed in charge of that house for an explanation – and for punishment. He looks to the head of the house, no matter what size the “house” may be – the patriarch is the first to be blamed.
Back in Genesis 3 after eating the forbidden fruit, who did God look to first for an explanation? Genesis 3:9-11. The man he left in charge (Genesis 1:26)! And Adam passed the blame, so God went to the second-in-command to place blame (Genesis 3:12-13).
She in turn passed the blame to the devil, who was third-in-command, since Adam and Eve had no children yet. He had no one to blame, so the blame stuck on him. But notice then, God went back and handed out punishments to all three of the sinners (verses 14-19).
And it was the head of the house, the chief ruler, the man He had left in charge, who received the greatest punishment – which is as it should be. Returning once more to the baby-sitting analogy, would you leave your oldest child in charge of his siblings but not give him any authority to enforce your orders?
Would you say “if there is any trouble, I’m going to hold YOU responsible!” without ALSO giving him the authority to ENFORCE your orders? Would you not tell the other children to obey their older sibling, and that to disobey him is to disobey you? Of course you would!
So when God gives a person responsibility, He also gives them the POWER to do their job properly! And when God gives a person authority, He expects them to keep their sphere of influence righteous – or God will take justice out of THEIR hide for the sins of their people! (Ezekiel 3:18-21).
To those under authority, no scripture sums it up better than the command in Hebrews 13:17; so make their job as easy as you can, for – assuming they are doing their job correctly – “they watch for your souls as they that must give account” – they must answer to God for YOUR sins that happen under their leadership!
BEING A KID AGAIN
You should appreciate that, for where else on Earth can you find someone to bear your sins for you? What price can you put on that? You are literally asking someone to use their own righteousness, their own wisdom, their own favor in God’s eyes, and spend it on you!
They are trading on God’s love for them in the hopes that you can become someone whom God will love more. God literally likes them less just so they can cover your sins and hopefully make you better. And if they fail, this can cost them dearly (1 Timothy 5:22).
This is why you needed to know about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; why you needed to know how Noah’s sons lived so long; why you needed to know about the cloud that shielded you from God’s gaze. These things gave grace to those below, by absorbing at least some of the price of sin themselves.
Because Noah, like all parents, discounted sin for his children, and paid for their sins out of his own pocket at the higher, but still-discounted rate his own Head, Jesus, charges him. Which is why the fifth commandment says, in effect, that to live forever, you need to have parents and obey them.
You need a safe space where someone can eat the fruit for you, as Noah did; at least, until you’re old enough to do it yourself unerringly. You learned about the olive tree so that you could understand that the upper branches shade you; but also so you could learn why those same branches will need to be pruned away, when they start shading you too much. To see if you can still afford to live when the price of sin is not so cheap.
In Lesson 7-2, I talked at length about how children’s souls are awake, and how they are not stressed; how they are curious, and energetic. What I didn’t say then, was the obvious corollary: if you want to feel like that again, you need to become a child again (Matthew 18:2-6).
As I’ve said so, so, so many times… in every sense of the word. Just… think it through. Because to be a child again… you must also have PARENTS again. A father-figure to judge you with the almond branch, and a mother-figure to give you wine and forgive your sins. And a house to put a roof over your head to shade you.
Someone to break your heart and spirit for you, someone to give your soul a chance to grow up; someone to protect you from the worst results of your choices, someone to raise you as your parents raised you the first time, only… better.
Better, because last time you were being raised in a physical house; but this time, in a spiritual. Which means you have an opportunity to bear a better name, by a house who has different priorities for your education – and greater inheritances to offer.
Children have a carefree attitude that comes from not having to worry about the future. A humility and faith that comes from knowing that the problems in the world are someone else’s job to worry about. Only in that environment can a soul truly grow to term… then to be reborn as a babe in yet a new house, there to be trained all over again as a God.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The events in Genesis 3 show that Adam and Eve’s eyes were closed before eating the fruit. Which means they were blind. Which is to say, their soul couldn’t see their heart and spirit, couldn’t guard against their deceptions yet. Just like literally every child who ever lived.
And as long as they were blind, they could not sin (John 9:41). As long as they were in the Garden with their eyes closed, they could not sin. And yet that verse clearly shows that when blind people declare that “we see”… their sins can no longer be covered by grace (John 15:22). Because once they can see the law, or even think they can, their sins can no longer be ignored (Romans 5:13).
All of this was said, of course, in a single verse… if you’d only listened. For Zion is a symbol of the ekklesia… and where is Zion raised? Isaiah 51:1-3. In Eden, in the house of Abraham… by looking to Abraham and Sarah, and the Rock from which they were carved. So that their judgments can give your souls rest.
And this is all well and good, but where are these parent figures we’re supposed to follow? Sure, the civil-government-parents are easy to find. But where is the house of the Elohim today? Where are the Sons of the Prophets, the Apostles of God?
Are they the SDAs? The COGs? The JWs? No, because they and others like them are Hagar, at best. Because they are CHURCHES, and not houses. God’s houses are scattered, they aren’t one giant church. And you may not know the other 7,000 who haven’t bowed the knee to Baal, but they exist (1 Kings 19:18).
Which is why I told you about the metaphor of the narrow way long ago; for you could see your parents and your children on that path – but not necessarily all your uncles and cousins in other houses.
God puts you in the house He thinks you need to be in (Acts 2:47); not necessarily the one you would choose (Luke 10:7). So if you’re asking this question “where is the house God wants me in?”, it’s simple – just apply what you already know about your own childhood.
Your human father is the man who put a seed in your mother; so who put the seed of the NC in you? That man should be treated as you would treat a father. Because he is the one who put the seed of Truth in you; who planted you, who taught you the NC (Galatians 3:2, 1 Corinthians 3:6, etc.).
So who is that in your case? Not the person who showed you the first understanding you had about, say, the Sabbath; nor necessarily the person who knew the most. But the person who awakened your realization that the NC is inside of us, and showed you how to keep it. The one who showed you the future that could be yours.
Going to a Church, or seeking a different man to act as your father, will never fulfill you, since the seed that gave you life came from someone else. So what another man teaches you will never make sense of the seed of Truth within you now.
Sure, it’s possible to be raised by a foster-parent. But it’s never the same. So your next step is to try and get whoever that is to acknowledge you as his son, formally and officially. Impress him with your humility and meekness, convince him you will stay the course; show him fruits meet for repentance.
Because that man is your father; but that doesn’t mean you’re his son; at least, not yet. Is he in a position to draw understanding out of your heart? Proverbs 20:5. Is he in a position to correct you, day in, day out? If not, then you’re his bastard (Hebrews 12:8).
Now that’s an interesting word. Let’s make that into a lesson.