WARNING: Look up Hosea 4:6, Matthew 10:24-25, Matt13:52, Luke 6:40, how students congregated around the prophets in the OT (like Elijah and Elisha, beginning in 1Kings19 -- compare with 2Kings 2:7, "sons" being a Hebraism for "student"). You are to get a Bible teacher, and to be a student/ disciple/ pupil under him (never 'her'). This is one of your 40+ spiritual inheritance gifts you get the moment you got saved, theme of Eph4:8-16. So: Holy Sprit matches pupil and teacher. So you have to ASK GOD who that is. For it's a soul-matching question, not a denominational question. That's why there have always been so many teachers, so many denominations. Each of us is unique, and uniquely we grow spiritually. Always was true, even in the OT. (The rabbis never had an ecclesiastical system 'running' them. Always a local shul (aka "synagogue", Greek term), and no two rabbis teach exactly the same way or believe exactly the same, either.) This webpage will go into the NT upgrade on this pupil-teacher Gifting by the Holy Spirit. Do not reject His Gift.
The second you believed in Christ you became a Royal Person requiring Royal Training. You must go to 'school' and therefore must have a teacher, as the "God's System" link at pagetop, succinctly explains. And if you refuse your Royal Training, you will be Royally spanked until you die, or until you submit. Royal Training for Royal Rule is God's Rule for your life. So: this webpage elaborates on the "pastor" requirement of God's System, Element #4. As a result, you can better understand God's System, and why it works as it does.
You need to hear these three doctrines to know how to get INTO God's spiritual-teaching System, even as an unbeliever needs to hear the Gospel to be saved. All my websites are thus dedicated to these three 'hearings', for a reader. Once you are in the System, you can be taught. But 'hearing' is about getting INTO the System God has prepared for you. You can't learn a thing, be taught a thing, without first evaluating, what 'class' to take.
However, you will not be able to hear doctrines 2) and 3), if you won't use 1); so breathe 1Jn1:9, as you read: for only the Holy Spirit can make spiritual phenomena, understood (1Cor2, John 4:23-24, Jn14-17). You'll need to really keep breathing 1Jn1:9 if you read this page, for Meaning #1 is very technical, with lots of Greek-geek stuff you'll need to see the doctrine itself , for yourself, in the Bible itself. If you survive "Meaning, #1", the rest should be easier!
Royals don't think like peasants do. The two types of thinking are antithetical. Peasant thinking is childish; royal thinking, is mature. And the Royal Whose Thinking we are to grow into, is the King of Kings, the Christ. So it will take time -- a lot of time -- to go from the peasant thinking of 'today', to the Supernatural Royal Thinking that got deposited in Christ's Humanity; each deposit, with His discrete consent. For it's not a magical smiley thing, sitting on clouds with harps, k?
Historically, 99.9% of humanity rejects this destiny. Every human born is a potential heir. Everyone who inherits salvation (via John3:16) thus becomes a potential heir of a kingdom. But again, 99.9% of even those who inherited salvation that first nanosecond they believed in Christ -- thereafter reject the kingdom inheritance. So they will be the "booty" of someone who did not reject, Isa53:12. So there will be a great deal of needed material blessing, to take care of all these people. So the king will inherit everything going with the inheritance of the people. And that king, will be a better thinker, thus Father gets the "sweet savor" to justify all those people living forever. Christ paid with His Thinking, therefore we can exist; the kings pay with their thinking (which they love doing anyway, it's no chore, lol) -- therefore their kingdoms' peoples, can exist. God loves everyone equally, but justice will not execute equally, because people have UNequally rejected Him. This Matching Principle is succinctly stated in Matt7:1-2, and you can see it 'play' all over the Bible, i.e., in the parable of the stingy servant (i.e., Matt25:14-30).
Just like God's unequal therefore synergistic system showcases His Son, so also the Bible itself has passages which are 'bigger' than others, even though all the Word is perfect. Passages like 1Cor6, 12 tell us about this unequal-therefore-synergistic structure. Passages like Eph4:11-16 in Greek (not in translation), tell us how the "pastor-teacher" subsystem, works to grow us up spiritually. So, notice: it's not at all about religion, particular denominations, wranglings over doctrines, but about God Uniting everything for the sake of preparing us to live with His Son forever, via INSTRUCTION, not works.
Frankly, I almost became one of these folks; but thanks only to God's use of the extensive training I had previously gotten under my own right pastor, I didn't stay in that horrible state of rejection very long: 1Jn1:9 can and does save one's life. So I know this phenomenon not only from Bible and its corroborating observation in real lives.. but from inner experience. It's not pretty, k?
Bible is severely mistranslated with respect to every mission-critical doctrine for your spiritual life; this particular doctrine is all over the Bible and is well-known, but the best passage on it, is mistranslated beyond recognition. Translations always render God fuzzy, to 'make' Him politically-correct. (More on the problem of Bible mistranslation follows in the "Mistranslation" subsection, below.) So you can't tell from translation, that in the Greek of Eph4:11-16, Paul recaps -- for his audience long knew -- how Isa53:10-12 gets done in Church Age (covenantal period, Eph3:21's lexeme), with emphasis on the period post-Canon's completion. You can't see it in Isaiah, either, for half of the passage is missing from translations. [Terminology in Ephesians was used in prior letters axiomatically, i.e., in Rom12:1-3, esp. v.3, Greek. See Isa53.htm and hit the end key when you load the page, to see the full translation.]
Synopsis of exegetical 'connections' in the God-breathed, original-language, Real Bible Texts: Paul uses a witty marital rhetorical structure in Eph4, to show how Ephesians 1 is implemented for the Bride: Church. Ephesians 1, in turn, is an 'answer' to the Lord's John 17 prayer for marital-intimate "oneness", quoting from Gen2:24. (Translations always fuzz over Bible's sexual vocabulary.) Gen2:24's purpose was fulfilled in Isa53:10-11, with the Lord becoming pregnant with our sins ("me amal" phrase in Heb of 53:11), so not only is the John 17 prayer answered, but Father Grows the Bride for Son by means of the very same process which 'impregnated' Him: Instructed Truth. For Truth is God's Own Attribute. Now, that Attribute is in writing so can be 'written' in our souls (Heb10:15-17 -- see Heb101517.htm). Thus Paul references all this building of marriage-and-family-intimacy in CHRIST, when he writes Ephesians 4; which chapter, is an update on his previous expositions back in Romans 8 and Corinthians. [Nerd Note: intimacy-of-soul in marriage is what makes it marriage. The coalescence of bodies between the couple, is supposed to be an expression of that coalescence of soul. By Divine Design, marital sex thus depicts the higher spiritual goal of knowing God intimately, even as He knows us; so the Lord is using that depiction as the metaphorical framework for His Prayer to Father. Eph4 is thus the YES 'answer' to His Prayer, and Paul explains how that answer 'plays' in Church.]
Paul constantly refers to that intimacy of shared plundering, in all his letters: here in Eph4 (beginning in v.3), he likens their mutual plundering, to being mutually-chained (Meaning #1 link has details). Witty idea that by means of everyone being chained within the Spirit's Love Bonds, Freedom and Happiness results. That's the theme of the chapter, and the verses explain how the chaining works, and what are its corporate results. So God's Chaining Henotes enslaves you in Word, heh. Word-by-word, line-by-line, ligament (pastor)-by-ligament, kitted and knitted together forever. All done by God, never by man.
Reinforcing this henotes meaning are very special Divine Working words of Greek-Drama origin; none of these words are properly translated. The translations all cut God's head off from the verbs, participles and nouns; then, they fuzz out the marital-intimacy overtones of the actions depicted in those verbs, participles and nouns. So in translation you get a vague, dry, boring, and above all legalistic, anthropocentric idea of what "unity" means -- all of which, completely reverse what Paul says. (Divine-Actor words are compound in nature, but always get truncated in Bible translations: it's disgusting. Thus God's 'head' gets cut off, and man's head is put atop the action of the verb, noun, etc. It's the most common MIStranslation method in Scripture, and thousands of verses are mistranslated in that manner. Man is anthropocentric due to Adam's sin, and it shows up blatantly, in rampant Bible mistranslation.]
Moreover, all translations of Isa53:10-12 are defective, because they only translate the Hebrew text. The Hebrew text is known to be defective; but the missing words, are in the LXX. Sadly, no one bothers to amalgamate the missing text from the LXX, when translating. ["LXX" means the Greek Old Testament which the Lord used, during His Time down here; and the writers of the NT, used it also. It was translated from an older original Hebrew text than we now have. They also used a Hebrew text, which is partly why both the LXX and Hebrew texts, are considered authoritative, today. The LXX's use of auton and autoi in Isa53:10-11 are dismissed as wrong by scholars, who thus refuse to translate those verses; but it's the scholars who are wrong: accusative and dative cases there are Greek-drama sophisticated, to fore-depict the most epic event in history: the Cross.]
So, you have to amalgamate the LXX and the BHS to get the full verses 10-12. The "Isa53:10-12" link at pagetop, does that: after you've loaded that page, just hit the "End" key and scroll up a little, to see the amalgamated translation. Then you can better see how Paul links to it in Eph4:11-16, since Paul's goal is to show the Isa prophecy's fulfillment mechanics. Here, fulfilled in that subset of believers called "Body of Christ".
So, you have to see Eph4:11-16's corrected translation, as well. Better still, you need to know what the Greek words are. So, in this webpage you'll find two translations made from scratch; preceding those two, will be a link to a separate webpage (Eph41216.htm), which provides a long translation, plus exegetical notes about the Greek words.
Many Bible verses tie here, but once you see the pattern from how the Greek words tie, then you can find like passages elsewhere in Bible. There are so many other verses, you could spend months tracking them all. I'm totally blown away by how ardently the words are matched, frankly; and I only discovered the Isa53 LXX passage by 'mistake' (yeah, right, no accidents in the Christian's life). This was a doctrine I long knew, because my pastor taught it repeatedly; but until writing this page I did not see it as well. And this page wouldn't exist, but for a reader query objecting to the doctrine, in the first place. So see how God matches? He matched an anonymous reader to an anonymous writer; and the writer, was already matched to a pastor who taught Bible only in the original languages; so the writer, thus could be matched to the relevant written Scripture only in the original languages (since no translation covers Isa53:10-12 adequately, heh). See the real-life, witty orchestration (epichoregia), kitting (katartizw) and knitting (sumbibazw) in the very origin of this webpage? So, then: what a blessing to be matched by GOD to one's right pastor, so to be trained to read what God says!
Quick cautionary note: because my pastor trained us so extensively in the original languages as his own modus operandi of teaching Bible, I can read the original-language texts myself, using BibleWorks 5. I also have 15,000 hours of his exegetical-cum-hermeneutics classes on tape, which often go verse-by-Bible-verse; he taught his congregation for 53 years, usually 7 hours per week. However, in this webpage and the one on Isa53:10-12, except where noted otherwise, I am not using his exegesis. Idea of independent verification. Result: even if I hadn't believed in the doctrine of "right pastor" before doing this page, I sure would now. Main reasons why, are given above. The doctrine really shocks me with its epic beauty.
It might be that in my pastor's exegesis of Isaiah, this link to Eph4:11-16 is made. I don't know. I'm just doing it myself, to learn better at the moment; being so shocked at the deliberate connection, this page and the Isaiah page had to be written. So if someone else has noted the linkage and taught about it, I also don't know. Again, this was all done fresh, just using the "BGT" and BHS original-language texts in BibleWorks 5. And neither this page nor the Isa53 discovery would even exist, had it not been for someone writing me to object to the doctrine of a "right" pastor-teacher God personally gifts each believer. See -- in God's Henotes, everything is synergized...
Whole lotta people are not in God's System; whole lotta people fancy themselves spiritual, but they play hookey, so will prove to be spiritual dolts. It's not that God is out to make a fool of you or chastise you: He knows what you will want, once you've left this dirtball and gone home to heaven. You'll then wish you'd learned Him while still down here, for you will then realize how you wasted your life. God isn't imposing this opinion on you. He foreknows how you'll then think, and would spare you the regret. God loves you; He's not into petty revenge and vindictiveness the way we humans are. So this warning comes from Love's Foreknowledge, period.
The current do-it-myself-hookey movement began about a generation ago, back when I was a freshman in college. For a few months, I was in the movement, and it was just as stupid as today's: everyone asks everyone else what he thinks a passage means. Finally, so disgusted with the poor quality of answers, I started looking for a teacher, and even daydreamed in Italian class about finding one (wrote about it in the Italian book, lol).
You don't want to know how hurt the folks who stayed in that movement, are today. Today, the movement has burgeoned, so a whole lot more people are gonna be hurting: better to be boiled in oil. There are whole sects of Christians who eschew teachers, and now they number in the millions; each one, effectively treating the learning of God's Word as some kind of communistic (=communal) thing, everyone pitching in his own two cents. Yes, we are supposed to be talking with each other about Word as often as possible, per the Greek (not mistranslated English) of Heb10:24; but no, we are not supposed to be without authority God appoints for us, per the Greek (not mistranslated English) of Heb10:25, 1Pet5:5-7.
Now think: don't you need someone to teach you that dead language? Learning a language is a systematic thing, you can't learn it piecemeal. Ok, well the Bible, is a systematic 'language' of God's Thought. So what's the biggie, then -- about being taught Bible itself in that language? Wouldn't you the more need a pastor, to learn something even higher than a dead language's words? All of which you could know, if you had systematic study under a pastor who taught you the Bible in its God-breathed Greek. So see? you can know better via the right teacher for you; and God knows who he (never she) is.
Sooo many books and other folderol sold by people passing themselves off as spiritual; so many TV programs, so many travelling circuses of folks roving all over the country for 'rallies' or 'meetings' or on cruises, as if God was the God of clowns; worse, the teaching is presented as wise, but it's pre-kindergarten, at best: very shallow, very people-oriented, but about substance on God, well.. not much! Like the Lord said in Matt7, by the 'fruits' of the teaching, you know false from true teachers. The teachers don't mean to be false, of course; they are very hard-working, very nice, very moral. But the fruit gives 'em away.
Sure, you can pick up some things from all that frenetic, Madison-Avenue presentation. But mostly all you'll get, is entertainment. Entertainment, not nourishment. So you will starve of Word, because your chef is a given pastor -- whom you're rejecting. You can't cook the Book. Stop trying. They are trying to cook the book, all these roving, get-more-money-from-you people. So all you'll end up is hungry and poorer, if you fall for their many pitches, say 1Jn2:16-19, (the Greek of) Eph4:14 and 1Pet5:8.
Clearly being under but one pastor doesn't mean you mindlessly swallow what he teaches: that's "Teacher-Guru Cult" Hookey, covered later in this section. Clearly I am under a pastor, and look -- here are these webpages, with lots of exegesis, even! Gee, where did I learn all that good stuff? So it's not demeaning, not a too-shallow learning, and not a popish thing, to be under a teacher.
It's rather a foolish thing not to be under a teacher, for the Bible is the most sophisticated book of thinking in the universe. Far harder to learn properly, than nuclear physics. Which you know is true, because it requires both God's Power and a human agent as a pastor, to properly learn this Book. God never chose to bypass a pastor, but rather gifts them, from Adam forward (think of how Abel learned to sacrifice that lamb). Must be a good reason, huh...
When you are interested in content, you just pay attention to IT, not whomever is the author. You like it, don't, argue against it, don't.. but the author, is superfluous. Message, not messenger. But an insecure person, can't do that. He has to buttress his ego by telling himself he's an expert; or, that he should only read an Important Person's writing. Because, he really can't tell the difference between wisdom and foolishness, if only going by content. Kinda like the craze among dingdongs to read the latest bestseller. See the difference between true and false interest?
So God is not at all in his mind. Only, his ego. Maybe he's in shock over how great God is, and feels insecure (and who doesn't, at times). Maybe he's hit the threshold of "spiritual adulthood" (my pastor's term), which threshold evidences a cockiness which takes some time (and spankings) to settle out. In short, people in this category aren't merely the obviously-macho types. Again, someone in this hot-air category has no ability to evaluate wisdom by its content, the words themselves; so must resort to buzzword-fluency (you know, using big words like a seminarian) or academic benchmarks, to judge what to respect. That, because he isn't in God's System, so is sinning, so cannot comprehend spiritual wisdom for itself, main theme in 1Cor2 and throughout 1Jn.
It's a normal part of spiritual growth, just as it is in psychological maturation, to go through a period of adolescence. In adolescence, the person desperately wants to be a grown-up, so apes what he considers "adult". But he only knows the trappings of adulthood, not the inner thinking that constitutes true maturity; because, he's not 'there yet', Greek word "oupw" (used in Heb12:4). Spiritual maturation, by contrast, weakens you as you age. You realize more and more how only God does everything. And you learn to ignore whatever human stuff you got, bad or good. But the do-it-yourselfer will never grow past adolescence, if he even gets that far, and will instead view Bible learning as would any ambitious luster-after-this-world. Same motivation. So he hardens in that motivation and will become more bitter with age; for all worldly pursuits only produce bitterness, in the end. Conqueror Worm.
We'd certainly not have "henotes" in both Eph4:3 and 13, plus its rubricated "haphe" and "henos" in v.16 (note the sound-play?).. if Paul weren't saying in bold font, the life-or-death importance of getting under whomever the Spirit Assigns as your own right pastor. (There's probably no stronger way to say all this in the Greek, than to link henotes in both verses. The noun henotes is by far the most important of the Greek words -- all the "virtues" in Greek society, depended on it. Try this experiment: replace "unity" in Eph4:3 and 13, with "Divine Order of things", or "Divine System" (latter is better), bearing in mind that "faith" means Bible, Christ's Thinking, not some man-made definition. For nothing man-made is ever valid in God's System (1Cor3). ) Again, it's not some specific denomination, but a matching of a person to a person: "en metroi.. merous" is a Person-Matching clause, in Eph4:16 (and elsewhere), in Bible.
Finally, if you've spent any time in my websites, you realize how badly the Bible is mistranslated. Real God-gifted experts were given the task of translation, and look how they messed up. Satan&Co. pull off the most brilliant God-mocking satire IN the very mistranslations. No translator would mock God. No committee approving these God-mocking mistranslations would approve them, if they could see the mocking. So if Satan&Co. can so fake outta-their-socks our best and brightest whom God gifted, how much more can they fake out everyone else? Like, those who reject God's Henotes? Arrogance is the reason why Satan&Co. can do their stuff: the arrogance means God must stand off and allow it. So people by the millions in this do-it-myself-hookey game, are being hooked by Satan&Co., learning nothing. What regret they will have post-death if they don't wake up, 2Tim2:26, all of Jude.
Lots of other Christians admire these people, and then think themselves inferior for being under a teacher. This is like Woodstock of the 1960's, a sick rebellion against authority, infecting millions. For your own sake, "avoid such persons as these" (2Tim3:5). Don't emulate their fake erudition.
Avoid emulating them, too. God is the God of authority, and He didn't write Bible in English: so you absolutely need Filling (hence 1Jn1:9), but He also gifts pastors. You are to learn the Word professionally, with the discipline of an academic, but under your pastor. Ideally, he will give you a full professional teaching, so that you yourself can eventually see in Scripture in the original languages, what you've been taught. For, Scripture is always self-validating. So validates the teacher, too. Note the two-sidedness: yes, professional and academic rigor is required; yes, a high-grade teacher is also required. We know that for doctors, for crying out loud; they have to go through years of schooling to be trained. So why reject that professionalism, when it comes to the Word? It's just lazy arrogance, pure and simple. Eph4 is all about how the Spirit empowers you. So you can't claim some human limitation, to pooh-pooh the Inspired Word God wrote long before English even existed, lol.
So you will be sinning against the Spirit Himself, hence not filled, if you reject getting under your right pastor.
TEACHER-GURU-CULT-HOOKEY: here, again the idea of a right teacher is accepted, but cult-like slavering acceptance of what that teacher says, is urged: either by those under him, or by the teacher (or both). Obviously, if you are given a teacher, you are to learn something about God, so slavish parroting of the teacher, etc. are not His Will. Bear also in mind, that a teacher's time is limited.
So on the one hand, you are to treat your own teacher as an expert; but on the other hand, you must think out what you're learning, else you are disrespecting him just as much, as if you rejected everything he says; moreover, he's only human, and if you swallow error when you could instead analyze under the Spirit, you are at fault, never the teacher. We Each Stand On Our Own Before God. Having a teacher facilitates learning (because he specializes), but your volition must analyze what you learn. That's why you get both 1Jn1:9 so the Spirit empowers your brain.. and, a teacher whom the Spirit gifts you as the authority conduit, to teach you.
All four of these groups therefore evidence a retarded and fragmented understanding of Bible (Heb5:11-6:6), as a consequence of not being in the Divine System. Again, for Church this System is Royal Training, for God's Plan for our lives is to make each of us, King-Priests. Hence, Royal Systemic Understanding is Royally-Mature Understanding (Christ's Level, Eph4:13); and it becomes independent -- the one grown up really can see in Bible for itself and really himself has a cohesive grasp of Bible (Eph3:15-19). But you cannot ever get that systemic understanding, apart from your right teacher (one at a time, maybe God moves you to a different one in your lifetime). It's analogous to parenting. Each set of parents has a whole system of thought, and the child needs to be under that system, to grow up. So also, here. You will never outgrow the need for a teacher, your whole life: "the student is never above his teacher", the Lord quipped in the Gospels. How wonderfully true, that is: what king lacks advisors? Heh. [My other sites, especially the "Thinking" and "DDNA" webseries, cover the Royalness of Our Role in excruciating detail.]
So, then: God's System is precise, and getting out of His System, is easy. The Divine punishment you get for violating His System is not easy, Col3:25. Basically, you are committing "adikia" if the Holy Spirit isn't teaching you (Col3:25's last word, which is also the last word in 1Jn1:9). In short, refusal to be in God's System is a sin, because you are supposed to be trained His Way. Not, your way. So if things suddenly go wrong, ask if you are out of His System. Use 1Jn1:9, then evaluate. It's an occupational hazard of spiritual growth, and we all get spanked many times! [See Heb12:5-12. Verse 12 is another command to name sins to God. Many ways that command is given, in Bible.]
Almost all the goofy ideas and disputes in Christendom arise from translated Bibles. If you spend any time in my other webpages you will constantly run into examples of translations which actually cut God's Head off, say the opposite of what the God-breathed verse says pre-translation, etc. It's incredible. Almost every verse I've compared in translation versus the God-breathed texts is mistranslated in some major way, beginning with Gen1:2! Because of that mistranslation, you have dingdongs running around for centuries claiming God made the universe in six days. That's not what Bible says. But no one bothers to read what God wrote, so.. they run around making fools of themselves. Bet you'd not care to join them, huh. So here we'll spend a little time on this problem of Bible bungling.
Most common mistranslation pattern in Scripture: If the original, God-Breathed Bible says, "the Maserati convertible sped along the Autobahn", it will be translated "the vehicle moved on the path". This is mistranslation via TRUNCATION: the original words' meanings are chopped down to generalizations in translation. So what the original text says, is now completely obscured. Note the problem: first, the translated sentence is BORING. So you will be inclined to pass over it, not pay attention, and nothing in the sentence gives you a motive to pay attention. Second, and worse, it is VAGUE. You don't know what kind of vehicle, you don't know how fast or in what manner it moves, and you don't know what it's moving on. It could be a donkey cart -- and even sounds like one, since in English "path" generally means only wide enough to walk on for a human being; and that, usually in a bucolic setting. Notice how your sense of meaning is totally opposite what the original sentence, is. Third, and worse still: you think you're reading real information -- there is nothing in the translation to alert you that it's wrong. Note the difference between the two sentences: the first one is fast, colorful, vivid. The second sounds slow, mousy, ho-hum, ok. And tells you nothing. Both sentences are cohesive, so there's nothing to warn you the translation is awry: so, you'll just gloss over the sentence, none the wiser.
This boring vagueness characterizes Bible translation, especially in the NT. Verses are fuzzy, often jarring. Body-oriented, do-oriented, narrow, soundbyte-y. As if just a political credo or culture to herd people into some 'accepted' norm of association with respect to each other, with "God" being somehow this Sugar Daddy or Petty Judge, viewing you from On High, ready to pounce. So yes, truncated translations are deliberately vague. For political motives necessarily spawn truncated translation, as will be shown in the following paragraphs. Further still, people don't "get" abstract concepts easily (most people are not good with math, for example). So, because the NT epistles are abstract in nature (God is an 'abstract', to the human mind), and because Paul (and others) use very colorful language to make it easier to remember and understand the abstractions; but because Bible colors are generally sexual/financial and other "off-colors" politically, truncation in translation is routine.
Example: Bible translations bothered me ever since I was a spiritual baby. I'd always fall asleep while reading them. It felt good to be holding and reading a book from God, but the Book never quite made sense; or, seemed to be purposelessly repeating itself with no 'advance' made in the exposition thereby. This, because the words always seemed the same. Like everyone else, I was thrilled by the narratives of the Old Testament heroes, the Exodus, etc. But for all that, I knew nothing of God; so, like everyone else, I labored under the illusion that the Christian life was some kind of morality and works. Knowing Him, being a "mystery". So knowing only that, well.. wasn't enough. So when I heard a pastor who only taught from the original languages of Scripture, I was hooked, baby. God foreknew all that: the person who introduced me to my right pastor via a taperecorder, was my college roommate. See? Henotes in operation!
Then I learned what a treasure Scripture was. Now I know what a treasure Scripture is. And frankly, everything else in life, is boorrrrrriinnngggg by comparison. "Unto the Lord" is the only enjoyable way to live. For once you really taste Him, well.. everything else is anticlimactic. And you taste Him by eating His Word, His Body of Thought. That's THE Communion of communions. One of the OT prophets wrote somewhere, "Taste the LORD, for He is good." Ps119 people agreed. You bet! We're not talking Goodie-two-shoes religion here, we're talking l'chayim!
So if a qualified pastor teaches you what Bible says, you simultaneously get the wanted explanation, and over time, become able to read Scripture directly yourself. If, on the other hand, the pastor just gives you rules and pep talks, such that you never actually learn the whole realm of Bible qua Bible, you'll just know rules and high emotions.. and the Real God will remain a mystery. Or, fantasized. Dangerous thing, that ignorance.
Truth to tell, that good ol' time Rev17 harlot infected the brains able to read the original-language texts, beginning at the time that Chapter was written, circa 96AD. And then, the harlot nicely managed to make itself so popular, it could turn off those brains so they forgot how to read those texts. For notice this historical tidbit: at the time the New Testament was written, the people who got it knew its Greek as one of their native tongues. People in those days were normally multi-lingual, which is why the "Gallilean" was despised (for only knowing Aramaic). So, since it was politically-acceptable to know those languages, you just know that if people after 90AD were still interested in Bible, they'd have kept the ability to read the Bible's original languages. But they lost that ability, by about 200AD, according to Cary and other historians of ancient Rome. The language morphed, which is normal; but no one preserved Bible Greek's teaching (you know, like every generation learns math and English) -- unlike, what was done with classical Greek, which was assiduously preserved, and every 'gentleman of means' had to know it, up until about the 1930's!
Fortunately, much of Bible IS classical Greek, or uses classical Greek concepts and grammar/syntactical nuances, to explain... God thinks of everything! So if it weren't for the extremely painstaking work of lexicographers and other (pastor, scholar) nerds (especially since the 1800's), we'd have no clue what the Bible really means. Because, we don't CARE.
But God does care, and He cared to preserve His Word. And over these centuries of vague and shallow mistranslation of Him, some few in every generation, did care to know Him. So He cared to give them that Preserved Word, which is why it is still preserved. And, over those same centuries, He preserved classical Greek and in enough quantity, koine ("common", another version of Greek in the NT). God cared. But we don't. But some few do. So God still preserves. Meanwhile the vast majority can go right on not caring, mistranslating God in their spiritual lives. Freedom to fail, freedom to succeed, freedom to change your mind. That's God's Henotes, knitting everyone up together, missing no one.
So via the mistranslations compared to the original text, you learn much more about God than you'd learn without the mistranslations. God always uses error to teach you more about Him. So these mistranslations are made treasure beyond description. Even as, Our Savior was made doo-doo on the Cross so that we would become Diamonds in Him (2Cor5:21), so also the doo-doo of the translations themselves are made diamonds of Doctrinal understanding: in HIM. And Therefore Occurring Live In You, As You Learn. Real Lab Evidence and real deposits of real treasure, the "riches of His Glory", happening live in your own soul, in God's System. Fabulous, real, tangible, treasure. DDNA via Isa53:11, in fact (see DDNA1.htm, first link section, especially its first purple-font text). Couldn't ask for more proof.
See God's Love? No translator or translating committee, no error made, gets left out of Glory. God turns around and in effect says to them (and to all of us re our own errors): Hey: if you didn't make the errors, I couldn't justify making the Glory, so now This Glory goes to you. That's how He thinks! 2Cor5:21 proves it! DDNA, baby! See, there really IS "no condemnation in Christ Jesus", Rom8:1. No Condemnation, ever. It all got converted, so it all gets converted live, right before your eyes! Forever and ever and ever...
The cutting out of God is the most common category. We just saw an example above, in James 2:22. But there are thousands of bigger examples. Divine Love word "agape" never means anything but God's Own Attribute of Love, in Bible. But do you see it ever translated as "Divine Love"? Nope. So you think it's your love, or some disembodied nature of "Love", how romantic. Sheesh. The Holy Spirit is consistently translated as a "what", instead of "who", unless His Name is right there in the same verse (in Greek, His Name is in the neuter case, so when a neuter pronoun is later used to point back to Him, it's translated "what", lol). Christ's Head is cut off all throughout 1Cor13, Paul having pointed to His Head beginning in 1Cor1:5 -- but that was cut off too, and man's head was placed atop. So when Paul points at His Head again in 1Cor12:31, using huperbole, well.. cut it off, so "love" is something emotional, lol!
The same is done with agathos, which is mistranslated "good", but should be translated only, "Divine Good." Same is done with all anarthrous nouns (lack of article in Greek denotes Divine Quality); so most "works" words in Bible are anarthrous, indicating DIVINE works. But of course the "Divine", is always cut out.
And on and on and on. The Energizer Bunny, our sin nature, does all this cutting; ostensibly, in the name of 'obeying' a rule which would get you shot if you 'obeyed' it at the UN or in a diplomatic mission: namely, that you must do a one-word-for-one-word translation. See? Man's arrogance, with a little help from Satan&Co, equals insanity we'd never 'obey' in normal life. Which you know, because this same mistranslation rule and pattern has continued for centuries. So there is a conspiracy going on. Um.. man doesn't live for centuries. So man is the pawn, but not the 'bishop' of the conspiracy. [Translations which follow this rule are easier to track versus the original text, however, so you get to the point where you can read the translation, and know what original words are used beneath it. For example, when reading the NASB or KJV, I almost always know which original-language words underly the translated ones, because the translators followed this rule relatively consistently. So my guess is that's one reason why the rule was kept. Which would be fine, if the original-language texts were always taught to people, right alongside the translations. But, they aren't. For translators all know how inaccurate the translations are. It's no secret; the movement toward the original-language texts which began back in the late 1800's has been too public, for too long. Secondly, the masses became familiar with the translations which were not taught alongside the original text, so now can't tolerate learning that the translations are in error. So, because it is destabilizing to childish faith to say some authority in the past messed up on their precious Bible, teachers and translators are loathe to admit the problem. So: note how Satan&Co. use both of these genuinely noble motives (tracking translation and preserving mass believer trust), to keep the mistranslations intact! So get this: for ourselves we keep this rule: so God keeps on being maligned, as a result! We don't intend that, but it keeps on being the result! So again Satan&Co. outsmart us; we are the pawns, via our arrogance: for we are the ones thus choosing to substitute man, over God Himself! We fool ourselves with these noble motives, trusting in them rather than trusting God to help the masses, rather than learning the original and living on that directly. Which is God's intent, obviously. So we spurn Him. Can't blame Satan&Co. for all that.]
Satan invented religion in Genesis 3. Self-promotion, making self like the Most High, that was the temptation. Which temptation, Satan succumbed to, long prior, Isa14:13-14. Satan is ascetic; he tempted the Lord to do GOOD DEEDS, in Matt4. So you should expect the conspiracy of Scripture mistranslation, to reflect his ascetic, works nature. And, it does.
Hence, Bible's original-language, graphic body and sex analogies are sanitized or euphemized in translation; as a result, you don't know that analogy is being made; as a result, You don't know that God uses such analogies to explain the mechanics of His Goal of Intimacy with you via Word Learning, which is even far closer than sexual union in [ideal] marriage! The financial analogies are de-monetized, so you don't know God stresses profit, not give-up-your-money. The 'work' analogies are DIVINE work (special verbs and nouns), so you know it's only God who is the Actor, as we just saw in Jas2:22; but in translation, instead it looks like you or another human, is the actor. Not to mention, "love" and "good" in Bible are also specialized Divine nouns and verbs (with other nouns and verbs used to connote human counterparts of inferior nature): but translations translate them all alike. So you can't tell the difference. Handy, this truncation technique: cuts God outta da picture. Which no translator means to do, of course.
Etymologically-oriented wordplay in the original languages is sooo staggeringly beautiful, you'll find yourself wishing you never needed to even eat or sleep, just so you could play more with the God-meanings. Which, you'll discover, you can do! For, can't you think Scripture while driving your car to work? While in the bathroom, while dressing? Tfellin, baby: in your forehead day and night. Heh. So you won't find much time to be upset about insipid translations, which almost always remove God's Humor.
Now think of the rationales used to do all this cutting-out of God.
Reminds one of that passage in Dostoevsky where the Grand Inquisitor explains to Christ why he arrested Him. [The Brothers Karamazov, Chapter 5.]
When you see the difference between the Bible Original Word and the translation enough times, you yourself will be able to compile a list of predictable truncations. That will be far more meaningful to your spiritual life. [So many are these verses, so vast are the truncations, you'd be better off to discover them ad hoc in your studies: a scholarly webpage or tome on them would be have to bigger than the Encyclopedia Britannica. In absence of that, get some real good detailed lexicons. I really like the comprehensiveness of BibleWorks. BibleWorks is a pastor-level set of software tools, including Bibles in the original-language texts (the major and some minor ones, but not all the original-language texts), plus maybe a hundred translations in English and other languages; plus, many major study aids pastors use. The list of materials bundled in BibleWorks is extensive: add ".com" to the name and go to that website. ' Big' Kittle is available on CD at Amazon for about $300. The popular version of Strong's which everyone indexes is abused by people. It was only meant as a memory jog for people who already knew the original languages, so is useful for its romanization and some sense of pronunciation. Else, it's practically useless, sorry. The poor guy must be screaming from heaven right now at the abuse his work is getting, from Christians. God will turn all that into glory, too.]
Look: Greeks made a big deal of their dramas to honor the gods. So their dramas were extremely witty: you got big bucks if you wrote the winning play, it was an olympian event. So frequently the stories in the dramas, are of gods begetting with women, half-gods. So obviously all their vocabulary, is phallic in origin. Which vocabulary, is the language of the Bible: LXX is the OT inspired-translation text, which we know, because it was used by Christ and the NT writers, generally; and NT was only written by them in Greek. [Most of the NT quotations of OT are of the LXX, so we can treat it as inspired; though with all the original-language texts you compare to detect copyist errors or adulterations. For every verse, there will always be at least one of the texts, which lacks error. OT was originally written in Hebrew, and its vocabulary is very clearly Bible's God in orientation: it's like learning Bible, just to see the etymologies; so of course, the Hebrew OT is inspired and magnificent, but was not commonly in use during NT times. There are some scribal errors, but because we have both OT texts, it's fairly easy, albeit time-consuming, to separate the error from the Infallible Word.]
Paul crafts the whole of Ephesians based on one of these dramas, the founding-myth of the Greek Sea Peoples. It was made into a play by Euripedes, and is cleverly named "Ion" (means "venom", a thin euphemism for semen). Paul tracks the play to tweak the myth, showing God's Superior Begetting Plan. Very very deft. Every time I think about it I laugh. Wouldn't have even known this, if it weren't for a comment my pastor made 20 years prior about how "epi" in Eph2:10 is in the Ionic dative. When I remembered that comment, I had just happened -- yeah, right -- to have recently read the play. I was working on Part IV of the Thinking series at the time, trying to figure out how to explain the building of the Body. Then, the connection between the play and the rhetorical structure of Ephesians, hit me. See? That's Henotes again, the Spirit using a pastor to grow a student, John 14:26! Changed my life, that.
Bibles unending sexual vocabulary is even more truncated in translation; never mind that God invented sex as a unique intimacy between man and wife, so it's Holy. So Paul, like most other Bible writers, constantly uses marital, body, and sexual analogies in the inspired text, to explain God's Plan of Intimate Relationship with Man, via Word. Translations always 'sanitize' what's said, to the believer's detriment: the analogies are required to convey how God makes this intimacy, happen. We'll see that, when we get to the translation of Eph4:12-16. Sanitized translations make it look like man does something. That shows Satan's hand, for he's all about substituting man for God. Which no translator means to do, of course. So let us be harsh about God's Word being covered up, so we don't fool ourselves that the translations are ok; let us also remember we are all human, so it's inevitable that political consensus will cause the vague translations. Can't be avoided. Can be fixed.
And best of all, can be PLUNDERED to see the dynamic power of how God overcomes both Satan&Co. and our own limitations, manufacturing out of all that doo-doo.. Diamonds. In Him. And therefore.. in us! To God be the Glory, and hence to us He gives His Own Glorious Son!
So what are you going to do? Spend your life learning the original-language Bible texts.. or find a pastor who does that? Not all pastors study in the original languages; not all who do study them, walk the congregation through those languages. So if you can't yet tolerate all that technical information, you still can find a pastor who spends his time studying them.. but teaches you only the results. See? This training is personalized. By God the Holy Spirit, via an individual He Sovereignly chooses just for YOU. No automatons, no big institutions, no cookie-cutter rules in God's System!
By "right" pastor, God means, right/fit for YOU. For your soul, for your needs. Everyone is unique; so who's the "right" pastor for me, won't necessarily be the "right" pastor for you. That's actually the point Paul makes in the Greek of Eph4:11-16, stressing "poimen kai didaskalos" ("pastor-teachers" in translation) as CONNECTING (haphe, Eph4:16, usu. translated with the body/building word, "joint"), each with his own flock. Not any specific denomination, but rather Personally 'joined' by God Who Makes the Body, Eph2:10, Phili1:6. LvS4b.htm's "Father's Criteria" table helps you with Eph2:10. [Nerd note: when analysing a passage, it's conventional exegetical practice to list the "vocabulary form" of an original-text Greek or Hebrew word, which is the form used in lexicons -- so it's easier to use the lexicon, I guess. So poimen kai didaskalos, which is singular, was typed above rather than the actual plural accusative, of the text in Eph4:11 where that term is used. It is a hapaxlogomena, meaning the only occurrence of that term in Bible: Paul coined it as a concatenation, in that verse. See Granville Sharp rule for Greek kai. Concatenation is a marked characteristic of Bible: YHWH, for example, is a concatenation. Always pay attention to etymology or origin behind a concatenation, when you spot one (conceptual concatenation, verse concatenation, word concatenation, etc).]
Context of Eph4:11-16 began with Eph4:3-10 in wordplay, conceptually concatenating Deut6:4 and the Lord's John 17 prayer for oneness (marital-style unity). So, how does this happy body of Christ get built? Through pastors, and only through their several, independent, local headships -- under the Spirit's Headship. Not, what the by-nature-headless sheep do (we lost our brains at salvation, all of us -- which is why we are sheep). But don't expect the politically-correct English to show this independent, local, pastoral headship. Bible translations were initially made while either the Catholic Church or state churches were operating. The Reformation therefore didn't really alter the apostate idea of some religious institution having sway over its teachers, so Bible translations reflect that idea, rather than what the Word of God says. Protestants like power, too. Religion chains you, and it chains you away from God. And of course, the mistranslations aren't fixed. So the idea of religion still chains the reader. No matter what translation he reads.
Paul begins "sun" (or "sum") prefixed words very early, and will be using them throughout v.16. As noted below, such prefixed verbs are only Divine-action words. Greek "desmos" means "chains" but more specifically, the MIDDLE-UNIFIER of opposites which could otherwise not hold together. Power greater than the things themselves, is needed to hold them together. Peter uses the term sundesmos adikia in Acts 8:23, telling Simon that he is unitedly deceived by the god of this world, very witty. (Simon's answer in v.24 is wittier still, but off-topic. Looks like he woke up to his error due to what Peter said (egregiously mistranslated -- i.e., in v.22 Peter's telling him God WILL forgive him if (ei ara) he names his sin -- aphiemi is in the indicative mood, see also 2Pet1:9 and 1Jn1:9 in Greek). Simon was a already a believer, as Acts 8 previously explained. That would account for the abrupt ending in the story. Interesting. Gotta think it over more.)
You've heard of the quest in cosmology for "unified field theory"? Well this is Unified Believer Cosmos, and it's no theory, but a reality God Created on the Cross, Isa53:11! So Paul, looking back at that verse, cleverly looks at his own chains and adds the Divine 'sun' prefix to those chains. Meaning, God UNITES by 'chaining'. Freedom through slavery, get it? Hupostasis then, via the Spirit. Hence the Henotes, the Divine Harmony System -- harmony with God, it means -- which is the sum (heh) of all the united disparate parts. As a result, those otherwise-disunited parts, are caused to be in harmony with each other. Again, by God doing it TO us. God unites us; we cannot unite ourselves, as this verse proves in spades. [Every time I think I've seen the height of arrogance in a mistranslation, I find another verse demonstrating a higher arrogance. I'm dead sure the translator was unaware of the mistranslation being such a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But Satan&Co. are sure aware of what sundesmos and henotes meant back in the 5th century BC!]
Most importantly, "sundesmos" to the Body (of Christ) means LIGAMENT -- this term ties to "haphe" in v.16, and both there and here is a term for the PASTOR. We are united by the Spirit via our pastors, in an epic play (epichoregeia, term also in Eph4:16 used of God's action on the pastor). So we are not united by anything we do ourselves: God's System, God's Work. Always. Awesome stuff.
Of course, Christ prayed for our "oneness" in that longest Bible prayer, John 17. Father made that happen when He imputed and judged our sins IN Christ, Isa53:11 being fulfilled. So now we are the Isa54:1 kiddies, being knitted together ligament-by-ligament, pastor-by-pastor, hence line-by-line, precept-by-precept, into one coherent BODY BRIDE. Harems argue. Down here, we argue. But once we're completed, baby -- we'll be the most harmonious 'wife' ever to exist!
What must Paul have been thinking as he spoke this verse. Spoke it, didn't write it. Knew what it was gonna be, before he spoke it, since he uses the term "prisoner" in 4:1! What incredible wit! Look: isagogics makes all the difference, and here the "isagogics" are about Paul's Doctrine-Depicting situation. For we are all captives, down here. Look: at that very moment he's speaking, Paul was in chains (desmos) as Agabus had warned him he would be, for going where God did not want him to go, Jerusalem. Hence Paul was 'united' back to Rome where God did want him to go, now speaking to a writer what God wanted him to say. Chained between two Praetorian guards, under house arrest, awaiting trial. Heh. All the prison epistles were given Paul under these conditions, uniting the Body's understanding in this half-blind guy with an unattractive voice, his very 'bonds' depicting how being CHAINED BEYOND your own abilities, best frees you. Very witty.
Check out every word in Eph4:3-16 in the Greek; it will take you maybe a whole workweek to do this: but oh, worth it!! Therefore a working translation of vv.12-16 passage follows here, beginning with the first of three sets of purple font, yikes! Heh: Paul packs a lot of meaning in a few verses. Heh: every Bible passage, does!
God orchestrates time, even, to Fit His Son. The Last Adam, and we are Bride. So, idea of a right 'man', Him for a right 'woman', us. Which Father makes, FOR Son (Eph2:10, Phili1:6). So that's the foundational purpose, Eph1. Intimately Filling All in All, Intimately Fitting All Together, from eternity past to eternity future for an Economy, Polity of synergistic happiness forever. The words God the Holy Spirit through the writers uses to convey Filling and Fit are Intimate Marital words which also are Precise-Architectural-Fittings, liquid Fillings (water of the Word); Fitting and Filling Upgraded for Church, but still patterned after the OT Temple, actually. Living Temple, theme of Eph2. Temple vocabulary occupies a good 30% or more of Bible. For the woman was "built" for the man, Hebrew verb "banah". Heh.
All this Intimate Marital Design, is in the Greek of Ephesians 1-2. Ephesians 3 is on individual growth in light of the Angelic Conflict, and Eph4 is quite graphic on 'uniting' process of Church Body Corporate which God Begets, Grows (relating back to Eph1-2); Eph5 thus carries that the marital analogy into applications among ourselves, by first explaining that the entire process is to reflect Christ and Church; hence, showing how we should think toward each other, esp. in intimate relationships. Eph6 (well, beginning in 6:13) is therefore about the overall impact on the Angelic Conflict (Divorce Appeal Trial, really). The orchestration of time which Church is caused to buy, is stated all over the place, so the pagetop link on Daniel 9's Time map, helps the reader clue in; Bible keywords for God's orchestration of time are many: the gigantic LvS4a.htm (which charts out how that orchestration of time has played and continues to play), and very short VERindex.htm's "Dispensation" entry, will prove helpful.
So what GOD means, is begetting. He could have zapped it all to occur in a nanosecond, and saved Himself the trouble of putting up with our negativity. But clearly He didn't want to do that, since we are down here breathing and fighting. Because what He wants, are Free Sons. Like His Son. So, He's got this Begetting Plan, which has been begotten into sterile works, in translation. So of course the 'husbandman' role of the pastor (yes, that's what the Greek phrase means, in 4:16) isn't properly translated, in Eph4:11-16. [When you look up the etymological origins for harmologew and bibazw in lexicons, you see Paul is playing with sexual connotation, for the 'joining' and 'husbanding' MOMENT is stressed in those words. Need I be more graphic? So when he uses "haphe" in v.16 for the pastor, he's simultaneously tying back to "sundesmos" in 4:3, parallelling the role the Holy Spirit makes of the pastor in v.16. So this joining 'moment' is very much in view. Hence 'husbandman' would be a great translation of 'haphe', but.. you know, ascetics couldn't take it...]
So what's getting popularly propagated? Satan's Work Ethic.. but not God's begetting Henotes. It got covered up, to make it 'decent'. Just like when Adam was ordered by Satan to make those figleaves, baby. [Gen3:11 is mistranslated. Verse should say, "Who denounced you" -- the Lord is nicely reminding Adam that the figleaves thingy was an order from Satan.]
Imagine how embarrassed pastors and their sheep will be at the Bema, to have missed this. You don't have to be embarrassed, along with them. And you can pray that God take whatever action might be needed to help those poor pastors get what they need: for all blessing to the world comes only through us believers, and we must ask, since we alone are the Priests. Priests ask. They don't do the work. They are Ambassadors (real meaning of diakonos, covered in the next section). Ambassadors talk, not do. Get it? You are Royal, so you don't do anything yourself, but learn under your right pastor and your Mentor, the Holy Spirit. Royalty has its privileges, see. Whew.
Here's where the matching itself shows how precisely the Spirit, has gifted an individual. Doesn't matter if some other pastor is more knowledgeable -- Can the 'Sheep' Hear its Own Pastor? If so, well who cares if some other pastor is 'better' -- he's not better for them who can't hear. Kinda like food you can't eat, who cares if it's better for you -- if you can't eat it, then it's not better for you than (allegedly) lower-quality food you can eat. If I'm stuck in the mountains with junk food and can't process the berries etc. in the forest, better the junk food, than the 'natural, unprocessed' food. Some people can't take all the Greek-geek stuff. They won't learn that way. Some can't learn unless they get the Greek-geek stuff (moi, for example). So the ones who can't learn via one way, get the way they can learn. We are each different, so need a Unifier, and only God can do that. Only God knows the soul...
So all the competition among humans over "Who is Apollos? Who is Paul?" is sheer arrogant waste. We could be better learning Christ, instead...
"Best Communicator" doesn't necessarily mean eloquent. It's a deeper ability of really knowing the inner needs of his flock, and speaking to those needs. For example, in my own church, lots of people needed repetition on the meaning of 1Jn1:9 (which in our church we call by the nickname, "Rebound") over and over and over until I thought I was going to upchuck. Well, that's what they needed. What I needed from that same repetition, was an exercise in empathy and patience. Which obviously, I wasn't doing. So God spanked me royally for not liking the repetition; and frankly, 1Jn1:9 has saved my life on a number of critical occasions. What a comeuppance.. in Grace!
So, 'inner needs' are what the group needs to grow, be it some hickey in understanding spiritual-kindergarten material (i.e., not "getting" the need to live on 1Jn1:9). Or, be it some major very-high-level teaching: like the 4th time my pastor said "effective present tense of martureo", during an exegesis of Heb10:15. Which took him a nanosecond to say, which he didn't explain, either; which stuck in my brain the second I heard it, and which massively changed my life when I finally understood it, an agonizing month later. [The first three times he said it, I remember thinking "what the..?" But the 4th time, bang! Then I had to shut down everything; for a month I had to go over and over the entire book of Hebrews, just so I could get WHY he said it. Shows you how the Holy Spirit precisely uses what pastor says and hearer, hears. That mere nanosecond was used to fit together all the doctrine I had ever learned. Much of what became the "Thinking Series" webpages, was born that moment. Never underestimate God's System, heh. You yourself have had doctrinal defining moments like this.]
So, see? It's not at all a works or personality or eloquence thing, this "Best Communicator" gift. It's supernatural, obviously. Supernatural, academic, thinking.. not goofy.
The Timothy letters make it quite clear what's God's procedure, even pre-Canon completion: ordination of pastors, selection of those under them. Heb1 makes it clear that no one is above the pastor, for now all things come through the SON. And what did the Son say to Peter? "Feed My sheep." Not visit hospitals, cater politically, etc.
You can't selectively choose what Bible applies, but pan-Bible, you find what IT says applies. God's procedure for pastors is God doing the selecting. Timothy's job, Paul's job, was to learn who God had selected. Then, they were to ordain them, as recognition of the one God had chosen. They weren't determining who to select, for crying out loud. On the other hand, since it was their job to recognize, they had to have litmus tests for learning. No more Urim and Thummin, no lots. Doctrine in your head will 'tell' you the answer, now. Hence the Timothy letters, the how-to-tell PRINCIPLES. But still, you are diagnosing someone God selected, not you doing the selecting. That was always true in the OT -- gift and those others who recognize (and submit) to it. So that remained true but upgraded, in the NT. God is consistent. It's always what God does, not what people do. And since now we are being trained to be kings, we don't get sticks to throw up in the air or fancy stones that light up. That was for peasants. We are to learn how to Rule, so we get Rules to learn how to Use. And we use them, to discern God's Will, always. Not, our own.
Not 'elected', lol. Even the Acts appointment of Matthias was not an 'election' (so the pope-makers can't read their Bible, either) but a drawing by lots. Here, illegal lots. "Lots" had specified uses in the OT, and was a series of stones on which everyone to be IN the lot, had written his name. You then threw them all together, and by varying methods, you picked one, not knowing who it was. Just the opposite of 'election', k? The idea was that God moved your hand (or whatever) to select who HE wanted picked.
The appointment of a replacement for Judas -- who God Hand-Picked, see John 17 -- well, the new appointment would also have to be picked by God. Not, by men. So you know right away Peter was having a bad hair day, since he called for the illegal drawing of lots (Acts 1:23-29). It's illegal for many reasons, but note one glaring reason in v.23 -- THEY picked two men -- they, not God. Notice how THEY determine who will be in the lot. That's utterly wrong. Totally out-of-line with what they knew as the lot procedure in the Law, even if this were a legal use of lots, which it wasn't. And then THEY tell God to pick, v.24. God only gets to choose.. SECOND?! So all of them are wacko that day. So Peter was engaging in sorcery, which was was punishable by death in the OT (see Joshua 13:22, 1Sam15:23). [That lie Peter repeated about Judas should tip off the reader, if nothing else will -- it's just like the counterfeit Gospels read, obviously false on its face: people don't rush headlong and spill their guts, k? By contrast, Luke has a fine sense of humor, quoting without comment. Nice to know our apostles were very human, just like we are! 20 years later, God graciously granted it to Matthew to set the record straight, in Matt27. Judas was a believer, and is happily in heaven now.]
So you never hear of Matthias again. Rather, you hear of Paul and James. Paul wasn't an apostle to the Jews, ever. God refused that, see Acts 22. [In the OT, you are only allowed to draw lots in certain circumstances: there are about 200 verses on the topic, in the OT. It was never allowed to draw lots to determine who would be a spiritual teacher, evangelist, prophet or a national leader. God did that appointing. So Peter's not filled with the Spirit, but with nervous energy or something, when he impetuously stands up and announces that they will draw lots. Who can't empathize? Pompous behavior afflicts us all, lol.]
Granted, since the local church will be paying for the expense of a pastor, it must elect for that pastor to be ITS pastor. But the gift itself, only God confers. Whether people accept what that pastor teaches, is another story. So there probably exist many who have the gift, but no congregation. I remember my pastor talking about that regularly, but can't remember more to report, now; except, God Uses Prepared people. So if you have that gift but no congregation, keep on studying. Even one good year is worth all the time it took to get there.
Notice also that the leaders of the non-pastoral side must choose who will be their pastor, the deacons, and other non-pastoral roles -- since a church is a a voluntary organization. Notice also that ordination must come from a pastor (here, Timothy). Dunno how Paul could be plainer. Do you see any talk of tongues or healings or miracles or any of the folderol which characterize much of today's church claims? Why doesn't Paul mention any of it? Because, it's not relevant. So, not relevant to spiritual growth, not the spiritual life. You can think of other questions to ask as you read the text. The foregoing was what occurred to me in the 45 minutes or so I read NASB version in BibleWorks (well, checking the sometimes-goofy translation against the MSS).
So, just as your body varies wonderously in all its LINKED parts, so also, each pastor is a LINKER for the Body Corporate. In the Greek, Paul demonstrates how this linkage works using the Greek parallelism, a frequent rhetorical style of teaching. So you have to line up what's being parallelled, to see the relationships. Paul lines up "poimen kai didaskalos" in 4:11 with the previous "sundesmos" in 4:3 -- showing that the pastor is CHAINED to this job forever -- then, with Eph4:16's "haphe", "henos" and "en metroi", in a crescendo. Further, these terms all LINK BACK to Eph4:7 (which you can't see in English), and in English Bibles are usually translated respectively, "joint" (haphe), "one" (henos, really means one PERSON), and "measure" (metron) . The word "metron" is extremely important: its root meaning is a MEASURING CUP. So it determines the CAPACITY of what Bible Doctrine/Truth is held IN the soul, since water is a metaphor for Word everywhere IN the Word. Hence the other big Bible keyword in this passage (4:5-16), "pleroma", which means TOTALLY FILLED UP. And that, links back to the INDIVIDUAL building-up of Doctrine, in Eph3:15-21. Wow: all this WEAVING. Yeah, like the extremely-thick Temple veil, now split so we can get ALL Truth: 1Cor13:8ff, Heb6:12ff.
So Eph4:16 thus is a 'bookend' for 4:11, even as 4:11 is a 'bookend' for verses 3-10; for, Paul is explaining how the spiritual gifts given out due to the Ascension (very wry wordplay in 4:5-9 on Deut30&Ps68:18 about going 'down' to the 'womb' of hell so can come up with higher gifts TO men, no longer FROM them) -- how these gifts are ALLOTTED ("measure") to the Body of Christ. So the bookends in Eph4:16 of "joint", "one", and "measure" all refer to v.11's "pastor-teachers", individually (indicated by "pros" at the beginning of v.12, for pros means FACING, essentially, and "didaskalos" means ONE teacher FACING a group of students). Thereby meaning, the actor-agent used for the entire passage, is the pastor-teacher, once Canon is completed. You can prove that's the criterion in other Bible passages where poimen is used, and then compare what's NOT mentioned: i.e., the other passages don't talk much or at all about apostles, etc. -- which were listed preceding "pastor-teachers" in Eph4:11.
Preceding, because temporary and adjunctive. Word Must Be Taught For His Head To Get Into Your Head. Everything else, is but catsup. An evangelist may precede. The gifts listed before evangelist, are all gone now. You might have to have a job in order to stay alive; that's adjunctive, too. Same idea: the purpose of living is to have a marital-style intimacy with Christ, your Husband forever. All else, is just temporary. So the pastor's gift of teaching is the gift everyone gets connected to; which gift and connection, His Success at the Cross purchased: so His Head can happily come to 'be inside', your own: Col1:25-27, causing Eph3:20-21, via Eph3:15-19, 2Pet3:18, with Eph4:12-16 as the method! No greater intimacy, than that! [As always, to get a doctrine, one needs to review pan-Bible, not just sections. So, for example, the fact that the temporary appointments of apostle and prophet were mentioned before teachers in 1Cor12:28, get seized on by people who don't look at how those gifts ended with the apostles, 1Cor15:1-10 and with Canon being completed (which also ended the 12:28-mentioned gifts listed after "teachers") in 1Cor13:8-end chapter. 1Cor14 explains that Tongues was only for warning sign of Temple's destruction, and only to unbelievers, in 1Cor14:21-24, quoting the Isa passage.]
For CHURCH, Eph4:12-16 shows how the pastor is the linker/catalyst GOD uses for purposes of:
Notice the KNITTING rhetorical structure Paul uses: very colorful verbs are 'threaded' throughout the passage, so you can see the dynamics. Living Temple Veil: Word so opaque to those who don't learn it, so thickly woven! Because, we are to be a Kingdom of King-Priests under THE King-Priest, Christ -- for all eternity. People then will be going through us to see HIM, better. Even so, down here. So, see: we need the WORD in us, not works in us, and the WORD in us is the work of the Holy Spirit; which work, HE does via equipping pastors to FEED us this WORD. For that's what people really need, to 'connect' to God.
But there's this 'veil' around the Word. It's not in our native tongue. And it's very sophisticated, which we all innately suspect, since we are sure God wrote it (well, the sane among us are sure), and that fact is intimidating. Worse, as you'll see below, it takes many many many hours to learn and analyze this Word. Someone's got to specialize in it, particularly since the translations are fuzzy, no better than seeing the President walk across the room on TV, for all the real information you can get from translation. Are you hearing the problem of distance, now? Distance, not connected, far away, not knowing, wondering, guessing, everyone-talking-to-everyone-else because no one has enough information. Whatever else we do can't make up for that distance.
Yet, our own future forever, is to be the go-between for the rest of mankind; we are the permanent priesthood, in eternity. We are the Royal Family of God. Just as people look up to royalty today, we will be looked-up-to, then. That's the Gift Eph4:3ff is about. So, we need WORD for ourselves, and for them -- so they can 'connect' better, since they will be farther away.
If Christians only understood this, they'd drop everything in order to learn Him, lest their brethren get less exposure. We are His Representatives forever. Starting, down here. Now do you see why a right pastor for you matters? Inaccurate representation is the worst thing an ambassador can do to his sovereign, tantamount to treason. You can get God's death penalty for it, 1Jn5:16. Moses wasn't allowed into Israel even though he misrepresented Him only once, at 2nd Meribah (Deut 32:51-52). DueDisclosure.htm goes through these issues, for Church. They're real important. Real important. [That's why I have a love-hate attitude about writing these webpages. Part of me doesn't want to do anything else, and the other part of me doesn't want to have anything to do with website writing -- particularly, on a topic I can never get right enough: God's Word. So: had a janitor named Jesus not found a Windows computer in the trash and insist I take that computer -- I hate Windows, so would have never bought it -- I'd never have written these pages. A fuller version of that event is in Purposeo.htm. Search on "janitor".]
See how fitting: since we will be the "haphe" then, we need to be sundesmos'd to a "haphe" now. You learn to be an authority best by being under authority. For he who would be ruler, must be the most ruled, per Peter's clever "huparchein" palindrome in 2Pet3:11. Peter "got it" about our future, making every possible configuration of hupo-prefixed words in his letters. Under. Standing under. Staying under. Staying under Your Husband. Clear analogy to the official act, the Gen2:24 davaq, proskollaw, harmologew, bibazw which in ancient times was the wedding 'ceremony', k? [Kill me now! The lexicons on davaq and proskollaw are such a stitch! They cannot admit what those words mean! Wow, if I didn't have the pastor I did, who bluntly told us the meanings of davaq and proskollaw, I'd never even be able to research past the lexicons' ascetic distastes! God invented sex, k? Why are Christians so ashamed about that, listening to Satan's denunciations? Holy matrimony, get it? Not ashamed, Gen2:25!]
And frankly, you are already married to Him, so you are judicially treated as a "haphe" now: the world desperately needs you to be so treated. Meaning #4 (link at pagetop) briefly lists what types of blessing 'connections' the world gets from God simply because you are down here -- just because, you're still breathing down here, living in God's Henotes (System). Stay under that System. Or get clobbered. For rank has its responsibilities, too.
Those who really wanted to be close, would become "diakonos", a servant of the temple; serving food, serving WORDS. They were the servants of the god for their lifetimes, generally. Sometimes they were orphans who the city gave to the temple, so grew up there. Stress was on their own lives toward that god, not so much toward people. On the other hand, you as a citizen of that city sought access to these privileged servants to get some boon from that 'god', since they had access directly to the 'god'. So, the word diakonia, is a compound word: dia, a preposition usually having a sense of CONDUIT or CONNECTION, and "konia", related to the word ikon (idol, representing a god), and COMMUNION (koinonia, 'in common', togetherness). So "konia" is a concatenated word, and hence diakonia means CONNECTEDNESS to the god as a REPRESENTATIVE, in which capacity, you serve.
So, there was almost always what we call an "Oracle"; this word-from-the-god, was really stated by a special female temple servant (e.g., Pythia) in trance: thus you got the god's 'reply' to any petitions made. There were also many festivals, usually phallic in nature, because that was deemed a way to have contact with the god. So, also many banquet holidays, since feasting was a very common way to have communion with the god, too. (The parallel to the real meaning of sacrifices since Gen3 is marked: it's real easy to see how polytheism developed. Note the key reversals of Bible. Bear in mind Bible didn't have to be in writing for centuries, given the supernatural method of communication prevailing until the Law.) Are you beginning to notice that "diakonia" as a term stresses words, representations, ambassadorship, favors, communication and communion? With 'works' only tangential? Bingo.
Nota Bene: the diakonia was to POINT TO, or EXPLAIN the god. It was always the god who did the works. So to translate the term "diakonia" as "work of service" reverses what Paul is saying. It's God's Work in you, not something you yourself can produce. People who don't know this, will be miserable, tying up their shoelaces with works; being peasants, when GOD WORKS to make us priest-kings. What a pity.
So also, here in Eph4:12, diakonia means all these things: but with reference to the Real God, not a demon. (All polytheism is really demon worship, whether known as such or not. Polytheism is not plurality, but inequality of 'god' natures. I really wish people would do their homework on what 'polytheism' really means. Monotheism is just as bad, relegating 'god' to a bundle of attributes, so 'he' would be 'diminished' if more than one in number. Bible isn't saying either of those goofy ideas: rather, Trinity, Three Gods Each Co-Equal And Infinite Quality; neither amorphous monotheism (mere elohim, an epithet Satan uses in Gen3), nor unequal-natures polytheism (which denies Indenticality of Infinite Essence). More about that conceptual problem, follows later, in "Deny Trinity" section on false teachers. See also DueDisclosure.htm, which is a very long discussion on that topic, beginning with the first purple-font text and then running passim throughout the rest of the page.)
Notice how the origin of "diakonia" is service-to-the-god, not secular. However, since it was that important, the term "diakonia" morphed into meaning the REPRESENTATIVE of a king, an envoy. So "diakonia" (through-the-idol-god, communion) came to mean FOOD service also, again as a type of REPRESENTATIVE function of the king: his household, and to have good relations with foreign dignitaries who visited. I think it was the Bauer Danker lexicon which noted how Greeks loved the wordplay of this term, one of them crafting a subplot in a play where the woman of the house sent an ENVOY (diakonos) out to chop wood, mistaking him for a kitchen servant (diakonos)!
Just as, we are Ambassadors for Christ. Bearing His Food, His Thinking, and nourished by it, 24/7, since our bodies are Living Stones in His Temple, His Body. That's how it's used here in Eph4:12, but! the "work of WORD service" being the meaning of Greek "ergon diakonias", FEEDING WORD -- is very clearly the PASTOR; so should not have been truncated in translation to, "work of service". Notice what they cut out: by Whom? For worst of all, 4:12's "eis ergon diakonias" is anarthrous, meaning Divine Agent accomplishes this work -- but do you see that in the translation? Noooo! Look: the first thing you learn in seminary is to spot when terms are anarthrous (no article fronting the noun). That tips you off to DIVINE action. But oh, did we translate it that way? oh no! See the how GOD the Holy Spirit (from v.3ff) is cut out? See how bad, the translation? And we have the chutzpah to call ourselves 'Christian'..!
It's really sad that people don't trace all the occurrences of a word in Bible before pronouncing on it. If you trace diakonia IN the Bible, after having read the lexicons, you'll notice that 99% of the time it refers to TEACHING, not giving money or food. For example, Acts 12:25 is cited in one of the lexicons as meaning giving help to the poor -- but that't not what the Bible says. Look at the verse in context, and especially the result in 12:24. If "diakonia" is not qualified by other phrases, it's not talking about body-stuff. Note the difference between Eph4:12, and the restricted use of diakonia in Acts 6:1 or 2Cor9:13. The normal, standalone meaning of "diakonia" by itself is Word-teaching, not body-feeding. Greek always adds other words to distinguish some lesser kind of "diakonia", in LXX or NT.
Bible translations are always treasonous; and really, it's impossible to truly translate God's Thinking because the original language words are each skyscrapers of meaning-layers. So it would be nice if we were interested enough in Scripture to justify God sending us more of the better teachers and translators, so that brainout pages wouldn't be needed, hint hint. On the other hand, if a pastor or translator did this kind of page, he'd be accused of being self-serving! Oh well. So I opted for the main point Paul is making in this passage, as the highlighted set of meaning layers. Since Paul is parallelling and pairing, the translation cannot be dramatically smooth like its Greek, without loss of meaning in English. Bible is SO rich in meaning you have to translate, then go do something else, to refreshen; then revisit the verse and fine-tune; then refresh again, etc. Now I know why it took my pastor sometimes days just to research one word in a verse! Now that he's retired, I hope he's getting lots of that kind of gorgeous time, after having beaten his brains out for us!
So the translation below will look very different from what you have. PREPOSITIONS TRACK RELATIONSHIPS. So pay very close attention to prepositions, in Bible. Here, they are underlined. Since prepositions have many meanings, not just one, I tried to pick English equivalents which allow multiple meanings yet highlight which meanings first are intended. You'll have no end of enjoyment playing with the prepositions, but.. lay up a food supply and turn off the telephone, for it will take you weeks! [Misidentification of the intended meaning of genitive, dative case endings when they have prepositional significance, and similar flaw with respect to preps themselves, renders a translated verse unintelligible or misleading, even if otherwise right.]
Whew. Now, let's put ALL four verses together, without any small-font notes, capitalized letters, italics or bullets. Eph4:12-16 thus reads, in corrected working (vs. completed, smoothed-out) translation:
(vv12-13) "each one provided for the thorough spiritual training of 'the saints' [believers], to result from his work of feeding Word; to result in, the building of the Body of/belonging to Christ; until we all/each would reach/walk into the Intended Objective/ Destination of Life: namely, due to the system from Doctrine, even by means of the believed knowledge of/belonging to the Son of God; into, 'Completed/Matured Hero'; into, the Measure/Allotment of Spiritual Maturity of the Fullness of/belonging to Christ;
(vv14-16) "in order that we be no longer babies, wave-tossed, even thrown about by means of every tempestuous teaching [promulgated] by means of/in the sphere of men's cheating, by means of/in the sphere of a do-anything readiness for any false-doctrine scheme; but instead teaching Truth by means of/in the sphere of Divine Love, we would grow up into Him, The Everything, Who is The Head, Christ; born from Whom all the Body, being-thoroughly-joined-like-Temple-stones-BY-Word and thoroughly-held-by-Word-instruction via each such [pastoral] 'joint' of 'Divine Finance', according to His Enabling Standard for/in the sphere of measure/allocation of/belonging to one pastor-teacher for each part [congregation], he himself causes the growth of the Body, resulting in its edification by means of/in the sphere of his own Divine Love."
"so we'd stop being spiritual babies, wave-tossed hither and yon via every tempestuous teaching within the chicanery of men; within, the keen proclivities for any false-doctrine, straying scheme; but instead teaching Truth within SPIRIT'S Love System, we would grow up into Him, The Everything, Who is The Head, Christ; born from Whom all the Body, being 'very married'-and-'embraced'-of-Word via every Divinely-Financed 'husbandman'-pastor within Spirit's Enabling Allocation: one pastor-teacher per congregation, who causes the Body's growth into edification, within Spirit's Love System upon he himself."
Can you imagine, Paul just dictated this off the top of his head to whomever was writing for him! He was under arrest at the time he wrote the cyclical letter we know as "Ephesians" (their copy). Wow. I'm totally exhausted. It took a good seven DAYS for me to do the above translation, even though I have long known what text said, yikes! And I've only skimmed its surface, main meanings! No wonder Bible's many truncated translations aren't fixed! Who could then afford to buy them! See the absolute necessity of a pastor to specialize in Word Study? It's a full-time job!
Imagine then, how long and hard God works.. do you hear the Loving, Painstaking Process in this translation? Paul is really stressing it, in the Greek. One long sentence, each clause hooked onto the next so you can actually feel the ongoingness of it. Sentence actually started in v.11, head verb being, "He gave". English shouldn't chop the sentence into shorter sentences. Eph1:1-18 is one long sentence -- in legal documents, you better 'lock' the meaning of the stated relationships if you don't end the sentence until the last item has been covered -- so Eph4:12-16 answers Eph1's purpose-of-design theme.
Conclusion:
That set of conclusions have certainly proved true for this weirdo believer. I really can't understand Scripture until I understand the exegesis. Translations are completely a waste for me, because I need to pick apart the real words. People joke that if they ask me the time, I tell them how to build a watch. And it's true, because I don't know what time it is, until I know how the watch, works. So, my pastor only taught in the original languages to his congregation; they obviously shared to some degree, my same need. But not everyone is like that; so they belong under some other pastor.
The average person next asks, well, who's better? Wrong question. It's not who's better, but who's better for YOU. Remember v.16's "each part"? You are a part; so am I; so is your next-door Christian. So there's a Divinely-chosen pastor YOU need. Tailored: "measured". For YOU.
Note that carefully, because it reveals a critical Grace Difference in the way God thinks, versus the way we do. We would account the pastor who was the more skilled in exegesis, etc., automatically the better pastor. But by that standard, Paul should have been sent to the Jews. But God refused to send Paul there, Acts 22. Instead, He gave Israel 12 apostles, and the Gentiles only 1. So it was something else about Paul matching to the Gentiles, not his erudition, which justified such a 'strange' order from God.
What might that 'matching' be? Dunno, but before settling on my own right pastor, I tried listening to others, but they all sounded like..fuzz or static from a badly-tuned-in radio station; like sociology classes in college. Words and words and words but they were so much hot air. Religion bugs me, anyway, what with all its fuzzy vocabulary and pontificating tones, see how holy i am. Blecchh. Yet when I heard the man who became my pastor, he made sense right away: the substance I was looking for, I could hear. Yet someone else will hear him and it's just so much 'hot air', again. So to the Gentiles, Paul would make sense; but to the Jews, he'd just sound like hot air. You know, of course, that the Jews tried to kill him many times. So whatever they thought they heard, it sure didn't sound 'right' to them!
Because Scripture is now available in the original languages to anyone for free (i.e., via the internet), and we know from Bible and history that God rolls out Scripture when and how volitions want it -- it's rather likely that what any believer now should do, is get under a pastor who teaches Scripture from those original languages. However, each person has to determine whether this fact applies to him.
Obviously there must be exceptions, and where exceptions, there are other pastors kitted-out by God to serve such 'parts'. We all have a place in the Body, and we are inter-dependent, as Paul so tenderly recounts in 1Cor12:19ff. So only the sin nature wants to make an issue of 'better or worse' as a putrid status thing. It's normal, kinda like an allergy you can't get rid of, take two Bible verses to calm the sin nature obsession down and call Him in the morning.. no, wait! In the evening, too! Well, how about 24/7!
So who's better among pastors is only relevant for assessing who's better for YOU. See verses like Rom14:4, 15:20, 2Cor10:16, 1Cor1:12, 1Cor3:4-4:8 (NASB is really good here). So this whole fad of people preening over knowing Greek/Hebrew words (but not meaning, lol!) is not about who's smarter (i.e., because he studies in the original languages): but as always, about learning Christ. Holy Spirit provides the smarts, anyway. You bring your volition. Out of which, only He can make anything productive. So this learning is not status, but an henotes, a System of Doctrine, Eph4:13. The Divine Order of Things. Body-of-Thought, His Thinking: One Thinking, which was the theme since Eph4:3. Parallel is 1Cor1:5 (in Greek, not English) which is about this same Oneness of Thinking, the Head's. Not man's religious ideas.
This Body of Thinking is something you're to live on (Matt4:4), not preen over. Chat channels are full of preeners, who can quote large passages and have memorized all the works of the Church Fathers. But if you ask them, "Define Righteousness of God" -- they come back with men's moralities. Righteousness is so much more than that. [See LordvSatan1.htm's "Integrity Properties" and SatStrat.htm's first section. Also, first section of Fixes.htm.] So, see? Knowledge is of no value until you know how to use it. You can't use what you don't understand; you can't use what you don't believe; you can't use what's erroneously hooked up, either. Like bad wiring, badly-hooked-up knowledge (which of course means Out of His System, 1Jn1:9 not used) will short-circuit the spiritual life. So it's not a question of how erudite you are, but can you well use what you know. However little, however much. And even there, if you are focused on how 'good' you are, you're not looking at God, so you will be no good. No matter how well you could use what you know.
OT people couldn't get this maturity level, because Christ hadn't come here yet (John 7:39, Heb5-10:17). The human connections had to be made in the ARCHEGOS (Founder) so that He could become the Foundation (1Cor3) of our own growth (Eph4:11-16, again). So we needed His Human Soul to get filled up with Divine Thinking so we could get that Thinking. We're too fragile due to sin, to just get the information binged! into us like Adam did. Angelic Trial terms likewise would have prohibited it, since man is not perfect, so it's an unfair advantage to God, if He used His Power that way. Hence, to fulfill both the need and the mechanism, Christ Himself, although God Himself, lived (what my pastor likes to call) the prototype version of what would become our spiritual life. A prototype HE invented while down here and bequeathed to us (main theme of Hebrews, Ephesians). LordvSatan3.htm discusses the features of our spiritual life as a consequence of His.
So we Church, can "now" (Bible keyword) get That One's Thinking: hence Canon is in writing, since human brains need humanly-communicated material for stable learning (thank Father, we don't get those dreams and visions: a more reliable witness -- 2Pet1:19 -- is ours). Takes a lot more spiritual provision, too. Royal, in fact.
So, think: you're being trained to rule a Gentile Kingdom in the Millenium, which will be full of similar slobs, each pontificating on every move you make. That's how a free society functions. Just as happened to Our Shepherd, so also His Sheep are treated: even while still in these puny bodies, 1Jn4:17. After that, the Eternal State (you'll have two kingdoms, not just one). Sure, people won't be rude in eternity, but.. they will be just as inquisitive. So, this business of high status is.. intrusive, to say the least. But, that's your inheritance in God's Henotes System of "Plunder" in Christ (Isa53:11, Greek=aphelein; some texts end v.10 with the word). Take it or leave it, based on your growth in Him down here.
There are big-bodied people and little-bodied people. Health risks vary, needs vary, agility varies. So the big guy, needs more calories to get through a day than the little guy. So the big guy, if he doesn't get those extra calories, will sooner sicken than the littler guy. So the big guy, is a bigger target, too. Yeah, maybe he's stronger too, but a little cold fells us all. So notice how big, little, better worse -- all depend on other facts. Change the facts a little bit, and what was 'better', suddenly becomes worse. I mean, if the terrorists were shooting at you, would you rather be a big guy they could hit more easily? I bet not.
So it is with this business of pastors. It is true that a pastor who learns Bible in the original-language texts will tend to be better than one who refuses to do that. For every pastor is kitted out to be able to do that, as part of his God-given gift. OK: but the folks designed to be under the refusing pastor, still need him "as is". No one else will 'fit' their needs, Eph4:16. So really, 'better' only applies to the target group matching their targeted pastor. Anyone else is 'gasoline' for that group. God's Spiritual Chemistry is perfect. [Notice how in chemistry, each of the elements is potentially destructive if combined in the wrong way or to certain other elements, versus the ones they 'fit'. That's chemistry's depiction of Eph4:11-16. Everything in the spiritual life has a secular counterpart.]
Frankly, since most people don't want to learn God, they will settle for Disneyland Churchinanity. So their pastors will be of the refusing group (99.9%). But God doesn't hang them out to dry, does He. No bolts of lightning are coming down on the denominations, the many false doctrine teachers, etc. Because you know what? God still LOVES them. There's always some progress being made, or some chance for progress being made, and meanwhile.. where do you 'park'? We all get in snits with God. Some of us stay in those snits, but many get out. Without this large group of masses, there'd be no contrast for the few to wake up, get curious, get under a deeper teacher, and grow up.
Mass is mass. Your body and your soul are utterly at odds with each other. What the soul needs, the body doesn't like. What the body needs, it importunes the soul to get. Over time, the soul becomes a body, shrinking. Bible in God's System changes all that. So for most, they will succumb to body-ideas of the spiritual life, growing nowhere. But God doesn't abandon them. He bands them together, so they can still grow whatever amount they are willing to grow. Your choice, where in which group, you want to be.
Notice also how those who did get out of it, can still fail big-time. And therefore their failure is bigger. Sure, small-mindedness is the characteristic of any 'mass' idea. But then the sins are smaller, too. See: better, worse, bigger, smaller -- all kinda depends on those critical other facts. So what matters is FIT, not fame. Fame is a fantasy fleetingly fulfilled, finalizing in frustration. Welcome to Satan's world.
So think of "right pastor" as a teacher of a certain school in a certain location, of a certain grade level, but not of any particular religious denomination, lol. Could be any of them. Might be none of them. It's not an institutional question, see. Rather: do YOU personally belong under THAT pastor.. or, someone else? Bible example: Paul obviously taught more accurately about the new role of Church, since God picked him to write most of the NT -- but look! the LORD forbade Paul to teach the Jews, i.e., Acts 22's speech. So Paul was not right for the Jews, but for the Gentiles. Each pastor has his own flock. Has zippo to do with denominations, everything to do with GOD's KNITTING the Body together. Paul, of Jewish 'denomination', had more in common with the Jews than with the Gentiles, and if anyone was 'right' about how the Christian life worked, it was Paul. But God said, No! And Paul fought it, too: and ended up in chains, too. That's how strident God is about matching a PERSON to a CONGREGATION, no matter the denomination, no matter how 'right' in teaching!
For ROME was to be Paul's sit-down. God wanted Paul to stop traveling, and plunk himself down in Rome, teaching people there. But Paul kept on wanting to talk to his fellow Jews, and kept making excuses to travel. After all, they knew the Law, and Paul's ability to show how the Law is Fulfilled And Updated via Christ's Legacy for Church, should have gotten a faster-growth result among the Jews. Paul wouldn't have to teach all that Law stuff, to then show the fulfillment and upgrading. The Gentiles didn't know the Law, so there was a lot of downtime first teaching it to them, then walking them through the changes. So Paul could easily account himself wrong to plunk down in Rome. It's real easy when you know God, to abuse God. Easier, than when you didn't know Him (hint hint, that's why love relationships are always so problemmatic). So when Paul is sent back to Rome in chains seven years later and writes Ephesians 4:11-16, he's sorta confessing a lesson he learned the hard way. [My pastor spent a lot of time teaching about "Paul's fall". If you're under the same pastor, that subseries is in 92 Spiritual Dynamics, classes beginning about May of 1999. By accident I happened to be in Houston on June 29-July 3, 1999 and heard part of the series then, live; got it later, too. Those four days changed my life, and the understanding evidenced in this webseries wouldn't be here, without them. Again, the Holy Spirit vastly uses your own right pastor, to bloom you.]
Remember Ps23? In KJV it runs something like, "Thy rod and thy staff, comfort me." The "rod" was for punishment, and the "staff" was a crooked branch to pull the sheep OUT of the trouble it perpetually got itself into. Sheep are the most helpless and stupid of God's creatures. They cannot exist without a shepherd. He has to do everything for them: they can't even find water on their own. So also, their panourgia (Eph4:14), a do-anything-to-wander proclivity, means they need stern handling, for their own good. Hence the pastor must have authority to check the urge to stray. If you've ever owned a pet, you understand the importance of having authority for the animal's own good. So too, in the spiritual training system, we need shepherding.
Really fabulous, to be under such authority. Because you need to grab onto something higher than yourself, when temptation hits. And that 'higher', means higher than the authority of your own volition, to counter the temptation. Bible, of course, is what you should be using, but you also need the 'higher' assurance of the pastor's Bible Understanding -- which under teaching, because you've believed it, you take as an 'order' -- since you yourself, don't understand it as well.
So his Bible understanding at once NURTURES and PROTECTS, your own lesser understanding. All this via the Spirit, never apart from Him. It's actually the Holy Spirit Who uses the pastor's authority over you, to rod and staff you this way. Not, the pastor himself. See? True Protection, 24/7. And baby, you just can't get that, outside the Divine System, outside the sheepfold wherever you personally, belong. Look: I've never even met my pastor. I live 1000 miles away from the church, and have thus been getting Bible classes on tape, since 1985. My own life has been saved sooooo many times by this internal rodding and staffing! "Lean not on thine own understanding..." I'm not ashamed to admit I'd be flat dead many times over! apart from the Holy Spirit teaching me via my own right shepherd, every day I breathe. His Rod hurts, and I need it; His Staff rescues, and I need it. And always will.
Then there's the timing question of what he says and how FIT that is for you. To explain this I have to use myself as an example, again. Since I am far away from the church, I am on tapes. The tapes are usually years prior to the day I'm listening, and since I listen sequentially, I have no real idea what will be said. So: I can't tell you how many times something I'd thought of or wondered or just learned from some disparate prior lesson, gets 'answered' later that same day, when the nightly tape goes in the machine. It's uncanny. And this timing has been going on for years, especially the last seven. So: it's going on in your life, too -- but you maybe didn't detect it. Start trying. God orchestrates each life, that's what our friend Eph4:11-16 is about. It's just a question of turning on 1Jn1:9, looking up, and learning to see with His Spiritual Brains. Over and over and over. For this is a relationship, not a religion.
Which brings up yet a different advantage of physical pastoral authority and the physical local church, which of course are needed and ordained by God. Say you're one of those who needs the 'discipline' of actually going to a church, and yeah, you need to be around those bodies; more importantly, you know in your heart, you won't be faithful to take in the Word, if on tape: then go, for crying out loud! See? We're all different. Note what matters: how do YOU learn best? God has a home for each of us, and even if we were of the same teacher, we don't learn the same, under him. God provides for all of us. Each of us. Uniquely.
We all have differing levels of comfort about Bible. Paul's many verses about conscience and not eating food sacrificed to idols if it would hurt another's conscience, tie in here. There's also something like it in James 5. With a pastor having authority, we are motivated, despite our discomforts, to comport with each other in the congregation. Teaches a lot of important things, being in a group. One gains in empathy, understanding grace, and by exposure to all those different bodies, one gets gradually aware that his own discomforts, are not in isolation. So, it becomes easier to let go of a weak conscience, and let IN the doctrine to make one's conscience, stronger. All because, we are all under our own right pastor, in a group together, and want to obey that authority. Out of respect for his teaching, we are quietly taking notes, or listening. Out of respect for his teaching, we try to practice what he's been teaching, while in that group; since, we are more-than-normally aware that our behavior matters. Lot to be said, for being physically together under a pastor's authority.
So, then: obviously God will tell you who best suits your Bible eating needs, and whether you must be physically 'there' or distant. However, you must ASK Him (use 1Jn1:9, ask Father in Son's Name). God has a very detailed will for your life: what you should think, where you should be, what you should do. You can reject that will, or choose to know it, and then act on it. Romans 12:1-3 is all about this learning and knowing, in the Greek.
And why is this relationship solely personal between God and you? Because you are your own Priest, so there are no go-betweens. Links at top of the Home Page referencing this topic are many. (Most comprehensive treatment of what your Royal Priesthood means is in LordvSatan3.htm.) Even priests have always needed teachers. So do you. Royally. Holy Spirit is your Teacher (really, Royal Advisor, of which teaching is a part) -- and HE chooses pastors, as we just saw in Meaning #1.
Hence, "right" is individually-tailored-FIT; by God, not by man. Christendom largely has missed this point. Israel had a quasi-monolithic structure (though the teachers had no supervisors but God, ever); Church is formed from all over the world, so is not even quasi-monolithic: We are not Israel, the covenant changed -- main theme of Hebrews. Instead, now you get your Royal Clothes tailored for you, not everyone-is-size-10. So because tailored to fit, everyone can be "clothed with Christ" (Gal3:27).
So, just as God has appointed for each of us 'right' parents (that's easy to see); so also He appointed (with some exceptions) a 'right' spouse to FIT; so also, a 'right' job (which might change); most importantly, To Fit You Best To His Son, He has also appointed for you a right teacher: who also might need to be changed later, depending on how you grow spiritually.
See, even if all teachers were perfect in understanding of Scripture, the personality 'connections' need to be compatible, for maximum transmission of Bible. Because, we are finite beings, so need to be fitted together, for synergistic function. Clearly, only God knows how to do that.
Of course, Satan has always tried to reverse that truth about only God making peace between us, by fostering world religion. All to make war, not peace: but in the name of peace. How clever. How petty. So now, via a claim of one right denomination, comes the siren call of the Rev17 harlot. You know, someone claims to be God's chief representative on earth. Yeah, there have been many claiming messiahship, but there is Only One Messiah, and He's Seated and Ruling, Heb1.
English translations of passages like Eph2:10, Eph4:11-16, Rom12:1-3 are SO bad, denominations for centuries have arrogated to themselves the claim that they are the "right" church. No. Only Bible is right; all else is a matter of God And God Alone Fitting-Together Each Of Us For Maximum Efficiency Of Its Communication -- as we just saw. As echoed in many other passages, 1Cor12, Rom8:28 and Jas2:22 (latter two use God-Works verb sunergew, thus dispelling all myths that man makes faith do anything).
Demonations form and fight, each thinking something wrong with the other one, justifies the fight. This polarizes people and gets everyone's eyes off God. So, while there's no need to be shy about what's not true Biblically, there's every need to just learn for yourself. Who knows by what path, God leads a person? Surely you and I both know times we were way off base, then something triggered a change...
In a free society, there will be a lot of argument. It comes from two basic sources: 1) people just disagree, and want to talk about it, and 2) some want to gain power in order to defeat that with which they disagree -- well, more often, persons or groups whom they hate. It's the 2) that Paul and the other NT writers counseled against. It's real easy for 1) to become 2). Especially, when you're playing in the spiritual sandbox, for at that tender age, a child is threatened by everything. "Boo!" Waaaaaahh, i want my mommy... "Three Gods, 2Cor13:14's Greek!" oh, heretic! That's not what Westminster Confession says!
Never mind that "mommy" should be the Bible, not some outdated creed with some brilliant observations in it -- which regarding 2Cor13:14's blatant statement of Three Co-Equal In Essence Infinite Gods, got converted by the creed into the MIStranslation of God-is-an-egg! See? That's 1), not 2). If 2), then there would be some followup vigilante, political action -- yeah, the Rev17 harlot showing a little leg. Which is exactly what happened a few hundred years back. Oh, what fighting, everyone ignoring that verse. So you can see the switch between 1) and 2), has nothing to do with the Bible, even when in the name of God. [Greek article's placement tells you Three Gods; not a hydra head, not the Hindu-like 'manifestations', etc. It's not interpretation, it's what the text says. So: if there were only two articles, then only two 'gods'; if only one article, then only one 'god'. So this verse proves the whole "oneness but manifested as Three" idea in the Westminster Confession, is wrong. Here in 2Cor13:14, Each article is "monadic", meaning only One Father, One Son, One Spirit, each One UNIQUE, yet the SAME article being severally repeated, means Same Kind, So Each One Is The Same Kind Of Nature; "Identical Essence", as theology likes to put it: namely, "Godness". Much simpler than the Trinity definitions men have haggled over for centuries. Moreover, "manifestation" is an egregious mistranslation, i.e., in 1Cor12:7. Verb phanerow means to make an official declaration, so noun phanerosis means it's Bible content of something the Spirit SAYS, DISCLOSES, MAKES KNOWN, not a sudden display of Himself as if He didn't exist before. He's all over the OT, and is the Chief Actor in Gen1:2ff: try searching on "Spirit" in the OT just to get a sample of some of the many verses. More about abuses of Trinity will be in the "Satan's Counterfeit Pastors" section below.]
Notice, then, why Satan employs world religion: you can't be individually matched to a teacher, if some world religion replaces God as the bondsman. You can't even get Bible, if some world religion holds sway: it wasn't until the late 1800's that some brave Catholics pretty much rebelled against the RCC and spirited Scripture out to the common man. Occasional breakouts of original-language texts of Bible had occurred about every 200 years prior, but never on so great a scale. It's the single important historical development since Paul was executed, this freeing-up of God's Word. And since that time, a freeing up of teachers, no longer shackled to denominations of any Rev17 hue. So notice next how there's a huge macro meaning to your getting under an individual pastor. For centuries, people had to sneak around to get that. You don't have to.
Mass is mass. Mass masses. Mass has mass values, and they are all in terms of massing. So if you don't 'mass' with the 'mass', you'll be messed with. So this fragmentation of faith is the best thing to hit the world, since the Cross. One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism means many freedoms.. from one religion by one very ticked-off Satan...
The larger "fit" of this doctrine about "right", is the interplay between what's absolutely or structurally right, compared to what's "right" based on relative compatibilities at the time. God's all about Building Compatibility, as we saw in Meaning #1 and #2. So whatever He does, He does in LOVE. So He'll never coerce volition.
Ignorance is addictive. It's so much simpler, childlike in pleasure, to paint everything in black-and-white, I am good and you are not. Since the truth is not simple, information itself is a kind of threat to the warm fuzzies of childish ignorance. So human maturation arrests, in areas where that ignorance, is too cherished. At some point a person needs to become curious enough to want to get rid of his ignorance. And then, that curiosity must keep on growing. The minute it ceases -- or, conversely, becomes an obsession, the proverbial "itching ears" -- learning stops. When learning stops, mental illness begins. For when you stop being curious about what's outside 'you', well.. you have only your own self, to look at. When enough individuals in a polity are busy being self-absorbed, that polity declines. It's not pretty.
It's a trend of history that as curiosity declines, works and religiosity, increase. They are inversely related. For works and religiosity evidence the growing mental illness in a populus which has deadened in its interest -- and hence love -- for anything outside its own appetites, be they morally or immorally expressed. Descent into animalism, ensues. This descent into animalism explains the increase in legalism, which works and religiosity, evidence. Hence a declining polity is always hallmarked by a proliferation of law, insecurity, accusations (particularly accusations against public or authority figures). The legalism is voiced as the solution to the problem of decline, by a progressively-descending-into-childish animalism, populus. It never works. Eventually the polity either implodes, or is invaded by a stronger rival.
Can't turn off curiosity about God and keep curiosity about anything else. Love depends on curiosity, so if no curiosity, then no love, either (main theme in 1Jn). Hence this #3 centers on how much you want to know God. If you want to know God, finding your right pastor is a blessing you love, not a curse you hate. And if a curse you hate (indifference being the strongest kind of hatred), that hatred will spread everywhere like mold. Again, this is the main trend of history. Mankind will eventually die of it, as its 'progress' is the outcome of Gen2:17, spiritual death.
This process is paradigmal to human maturation, except it's an entirely spiritual function. Hence the usual motivations humans have, won't sustain growth in desire for God. That's what's so important about it. The very desire for God grows supernaturally, not naturally, and is not sustained or assisted by natural means. Therefore its growth is completely problemmatic. Everything human is genetically against it. Hence sustained positive volition to God is extremely rare.
Most people are curious about God, but it doesn't take much to kill whatever curiosity exists. So their corridor narrows, rather than increases, and over time that narrowing is like a hardening of the arteries (Bible term is "hard of heart"). At some point, then, their interest dies. All during this narrowing process, a replacing hatred gradually comes to circulate where interest in God should be. Hence the hardening of thought in antagonism, bitterness, ignorance, and the consequent descent into animalism. Think of it as a negative transmutation. The soul becomes more and more dominated by the body. That's why sin is condemned: sin gradually kills the capacity for curiosity, and hence the capacity for love and happiness.
Moreover, the world is under the control of Satan&Co. They are out to destroy everyone. It's Gotterdammerung -- the real one, which is much worse than Wagner could portray. So the promulgated mindsets are essentially, violence -- but with nice deluding 'peace' initiatives and ploys to cover it all up. Religion is destructive. Man is destructive: his entire body is run by religious impulses, owing to the Fall. So man's soul can't adequately defend against these genetic impulses, and man thus routinely gives into them. Lasciviousness is just as religious as asceticism. Two sides of the same coin, always about getting something so one can preen.
Enter the believer who learns God. This acts as a check on the impulses of the sin nature. So that with enough believers learning, even those who reject God are affected; the believer values suffuse into the culture in which they live, and it seems to take about three consecutive generations of positive believers, for that cultural suffusion, to entrench. That's why prosperity ensues. You can see the pattern replay historically. So Gotterdammerung gets postponed, and the world has some peace -- or at least, less war.
Learning God is a refreshing thing. So the unbeliever is attracted to the refreshing values which result. Refreshing, to not need to grab at your neighbor to get something, since you can depend on God, instead. Refreshing, to do something for your neighbor, because you are so happy knowing God, you need an outlet for expressing that gratitude. Learning God takes time, so some are always behind in the learning -- but some are always ahead. This results in a spectrum of exposure for believers and unbelievers alike, so a kind of synergistic corporate learning, ensues. Hence the world's tendency to violence lessens.
So when the believer becomes negative, his negativity has a reverse influence on his periphery, serving to accelerate the violence, rather than to check it. So God must discipline the believers and constantly admonish them to get in and stay in God's System -- since we are made of the same horrible genetic impulses. So the unbeliever needs us to be positive for his own wellbeing, his own escape route. So we need to be warned, and the warning needs to be long, when we REJECT hearing. Now you know why the OT reads as it does.
The NT example is again, Paul. On the one hand, he would have been ideal for Jerusalem, but they wouldn't HEAR Paul; so, God took him away from the get-go. You can see that problem play out, in Acts 15. Moreover, Paul didn't always agree with God's will; even when he was in agreement, he was sent only to certain places in time "t", but not to others until time "t+1". Idea was, the "t" group was ready, but the "t+1" group wasn't yet ready. Rome had been ready, but Paul wigged out, going to Jerusalem instead. Which was fine, since Rome already had teachers to hold the fort until Paul arrived. But by the time he arrived, many in the Roman church were starting to sour, anyway. Which of course, God foreknew. So those who stuck it out, got under Paul, and then went out with him, etc. So here we see flux in pastoral matching, based on the sheep's willingness to hear. That's the focus in this #3.
Paul was executed by Nero in 68AD. The Jews had continued to reject his ministry, and were so incensed that their former pal James turned against them in favor of Paul after Paul's initial arrest back circa 62AD -- they beat James to death, and pushed him off a cliff (well, the stories vary). James was a half-brother of the Lord, so you can tell love of the Lord was utterly absent. So God then destroyed Jerusalem, 70AD. When you reject someone God sends YOU, you get clobbered.
Very many American Christians, especially in the prior two generations (of which I am a part), thought of "right" as being some church -- no matter what denomination, or within some 'respectable' range of denominations -- which was near where you lived. It mattered altogether, whether you 'got along' with the people. It mattered not at all whether you were getting true spiritual food. Oh, people make a stink about how 'scriptural' a teaching is, but that's because THEY think certain doctrines are right, so the pastor had better match up to THEIR opinions! Else, who cares.
So, you were 'expected' to go there, and 'expected' to do work in the church, and 'expected' to socialize with the Christians in that church. But learning about God? No. You listened to the sermons politely, you nodded in the right places (like when your ego was stroked because you 'knew' that verse too); you smiled and were nice, you baked and canvassed the neighborhood; and of course, you sang the hymns when 'expected'. But if you moved elsewhere, you just plunked down in some other church, and repeated the same behaviors. It didn't matter.
Notice what's missing: curiousity to know God for Himself. God is instead just this chore, see. You do and do and do and fit in with people and God is supposed to reward you for that, in the good ol' bye and bye. If God were a man and this attitude were a woman.. wouldn't her demonstrable frigidity be disheartening? How faithful is she, really? Isn't she just a user, marrying and staying married for what goodies the guy can give her?
So all our lukewarm, fake-pious, contemptuous-of-Word attitude.. is flat rejection: its very dismissiveness tells you the negativity is so total, that positive volition to God is nearly dead. Laodiceans were like this. See how the Lord upbraids them. So many an American Christian dies or gets a disaster and wonders why. This is why. Worst kind of dismissive arrogance, this. Just as He explained, in Rev3:14ff. You don't even wanna know how horrible these folks' lives become. Christ isn't kidding around, in Rev3:14ff. I've seen Him do everything He promises, there.. and He does it all, s-l-o-w-l-y. Lost many friends and family due to this, before I 'caught on' to the pattern and its cause, an unwillingness to hear. This is by far the most common cause of Christian suffering and death in the United States. Never mess with God: Col3:25+prolonged dismissiveness = 1Jn5:16.
You don't expect your phone company to reward you for paying your gas bill, do you? So why expect God to reward you for what you do to people, when you won't even LEARN His Word? Learning the Word so you can say what are right and wrong doctrines versus some other denomination or church isn't learning His Word. It's competing. Again, God is not the object of interest, but rather ego. So why should God reward that? "Truly I tell you, they have their reward", the Lord said sarcastically of the Pharisees. And 40-some years later, their reward was siege. An abomination of desolation of one kind or another has stood over that Temple Mount, ever since. Just as forecast, in Dan9:26, which was the final 'play' of Lev26 and Deut28. God keeps His Word.
For the greatest adultery and fornication and unfaithfulness, is to be cold to your husband. Doesn't matter how moral-looking, the substitute husband you choose. Here, God is substituted out, in favor of people; and God is expected to reward them? See what He says about all that in Hosea. For "prostitution" takes many forms, not just the grossly obvious one: the essence of prostitution is to dally with something/someone else. So: is there greater hatred of God than this dismissive attitude, treating God like a chore so you can say how good you are, and fit in with mere people? Is there greater unfaithfulness than this? As God reasoned in his logged pleading via Hosea, how can He just stand idly by? Hosea4:4-8 and hence 8:7 must be the response!
For about 50 years, my pastor has warned of this dismissiveness, and for decades I didn't understand what he meant, because I was naive (that's an arrogance, too). About a year before what became 9/11 happened, he warned his church about its prolonged negativity causing what he terms the "fifth cycle of Discipline" (ruination of a nation, last clauses in Lev26 and Deut28). [For example, in his 11/12/2000 Bible class, he outlined why the US was under the Fifth Cycle, choosing Hosea 4 to demonstrate the parallels of moral and immoral apostacy which that chapter so gruesomely depicts. A cycle can last for a long time; usual period would be 40 years. When that cycle really began, I can't yet tell: seems like 1990 or 1997, so far. That's when he started to notch up the warning, and historically that's when it looks like it began. But maybe it began in 2000. According to God's Accounting System for Time, that makes sense as well: see Mirroring.htm's "1050" and "1000 year" links. So I'm not yet sure when it began.]
We'd all heard him warn for so long, it was 'old hat'. So, then: imagine what we were thinking on 9/11/2001. I feel very responsible for it, as I should: only believers are responsible, Hosea4:6. God anticipated all that, several years prior, so that back in April 2000 when my pastor's warnings became much more strident (which warnings I didn't know, because I didn't hear them until Dec2004) -- back in 4/2000, I was writing the same stuff on the web, in order to better understand his previous years' warnings.
Check out the facts in your own life, for obviously the same orchestration has been and is, happening to you; for what plays corporately, is but the amalgam of many individual orchestrations: precisely because we are all knitted together in Christ. Again, God orchestrates each pastor and his flock, with a great deal of attention paid to both individual and corporate, timing. God's Grace is Total. Nothing lukewarm, in God.
So this whole business of getting Bible in God's System is about Intimate Relationship with God, not the chasing, boring, striving, deadness.. of religion. Any rejection of the System means rejection of the relationship God is offering. Just as a square peg doesn't fit into a round hole, so also no substitute mechanisms will reproduce God's DDNA in you (see DDNA.htm). You are to transmute. Only God can do that to you: hence no religion, no rituals, no taboos, no works.. work. God must be the Agent who Transmutes you, and that's what Paul is talking about in every one of his letters. Heh: the only Perpetual-Virgin writes the most about God's Begetting Plan! Surely you don't want to be what you are now forever. It's no fun, even down here, right? So this business of what you will hear determines how well you transmute. That's why it's so important. That's why you get royally spanked if you reject any of the System Elements (see GodSystem.htm).
Hence these Spirit-Transmuting functions require repeated agreement to sit under your right pastor, and stay in God's System, Eph4:12-16 as we've just seen. The internal result of this process is Eph3:15-19 (covered at length in DDNA1.htm). Eph3:19 is the culmination phase of the process, "Pleroma", which ties back to Eph4:13. So the two verses link up, and you are fully developed in your potential Kingship, so you will "inherit the kingdom" rather than be mere booty IN the kingdom (covered in DDNA1.htm). So you will own, or be owned, forever. We are all owned by Christ outright, Isa53:12, elaborated on in Hebrews Chaps 1-2, 12:2 (really, the whole book is on the switch in covenant to Church, due to the Cross).
You know what it's like to have a relationship with someone who is inferior to you: there's little to talk about, the relationship is strained, etc. Well, the bad end of the relationship won't be true in heaven but there will be limits on contact, on rapport, etc. Hence the need for Pleroma Priest-Kings to head, so that everyone can fit together in the System (aka "economy" or "administration"). Synergy will thus result despite the fact that there will be masses of Christians who perpetually refused to be transmuted, down here. They will have only basic compatibilities, and they will be happy.. but kinda like kids. Not, adults. Of course, what's a "kid" by our standards now is light years bigger in the eternal state -- but the Pleroma will be a bizillion times bigger than the "kids", then. So it's your choice how much growth you want. And if you refuse, you will be spanked. Royally.
It's hard to describe what His Thinking is, in a webpage. I keep trying. The overall content and reasoning pattern should be evidenced in the words written: but there are soooo many words! So look 'above' the words and notice how the pattern is mostly an orientation, and a focus: looking at God, not people. Trying to live on Bible, not the world's ideas of life. Most of all, thinking toward God, 24/7, since He's right there, wherever 'you' are.
But all the while, living in God's System (stop and read "God's System" link at pagetop, if you've not read it already). That's critical. You can think Bible and pray and talk to God until you are blue in the face, but if you're not in God's System, you're utterly wasting your time. Most Christians don't live in God's System, and oh how hard they work and pray and read Bible! All for nothing. Can't fit a square peg in a round hole. John Chaps 14-17, and all of 1Jn are about how you gotta abide in His System, or else you'll just puff up.
So it's much easier to describe how you get this transmutation into thinking like Him; if you do the 'how', then you will personally come to know the 'what'. The 'how', is to do the last four Elements of God's System (the First is the one-time faith in Christ). And keep doing them, every day, all day, as often as you remember. Every night, all night. As you persist in study under your right pastor, you will get information which at first seems irrelevant, confusing. But if you keep on trying to use it during the rest of the day -- and most importantly, keep a kind of running internal dialogue toward God during your day -- your spiritual advance will be rapid. Really rapid. For that's what Christ did, what David did, what all the Bible heroes did. You can tell, because they are always so FAMILIAR with God. Because, they intimately know Him, and that because they 'did' the Elements (which have always been the same, in essence). Day in, day out, 24/7.
If you look back in modern history, the big Bible-breakout periods were characterized by people LIKING to talk about God in sane terms, just like Bible people did. God is on everyone's mind, they want to talk about Him. Sure, there's a lot of goofy stuff mixed in, but there's an overall comfort level with God Himself. If you read letters written by soldiers or Robert E. Lee during the Civil War; if you read correspondence of the Adamses and others during the Revolutionary War; even if you read speeches or writing of a generation or two ago, you'll find that the comfort level about God was much higher than it is today. Today, we thump the Bible a lot, but the comfort level about God is almost zero. Because, no one knows Him very well. Because, He's not being taught today. This horrible trend in America away from teaching about God Himself began in the 1930's. Its negative trend gained momentum after WWII ended. That's why we're in such trouble, now. Now there's enthusiasm, but no knowledge, and the enthusiasm is for feely stuff and goodies.. not for God Himself.
Save yourself time, here: first ask why you want to learn Bible. Is it to fit in with your family/friends? To be smart? To feel good about yourself? To get right with God? To get rewarded for being a good boy/girl? Brutal honesty is important. It's your soul's wear and tear which will be affected. The spiritual life isn't about goodies, it's about relationship with God; most people try to make it about goodies, and they are always disappointed in the results. Look around you: how many jaded or wacko Christians do you know? So consider well and honestly, why and if you really want to do this thing.
So frankly, the only useful reason you should want to learn Bible, is to learn God Himself, personally. To have a real relationship with Him. Forget everything else. And frankly, if you've some lesser motive, you won't stick it out with any pastor, any denomination, any faith: so you'd be wasting your time to try. So first decide why you want to learn, and save yourself a lot of wear and tear.
You can sit under your right pastor until you are blue in the face -- but if your motive for doing it is too low or wrong, you are completely wasting your time. If you do it to please spouse or friends or ego, you'd be better off going out and getting drunk every night. Because you are getting drunk on the wrong motive, which is more addictive than any drug. Either want God or do not. If not, don't waste your time in His System: just make sure you've done the first element of that System (John 3:16) so you won't go to hell. Then forget everything else. However, it would behoove you to learn about God because He's very Refreshing to know. Wish I had nothing else to do with my life but study Bible: everything else is truly boring by comparison. End commercial message.
So, if the sheep is wrong about what he considers 'right' teaching, and tries to pick his pastor that way (and many do) -- then he makes a terrible mistake. What happened is that the individual really picked someone 'compatible' due to what he wants to hear, rather than someone who rightly teaches. It's a conundrum every Christian has faced, at one time or another. It's a hypocrisy test. Telling yourself that someone who flatters your ego is the 'right' person for you. Same stupid thinking has wrecked many a marriage.
In short, you can't really assess if a pastor is right or wrong for this purpose. Don't try. Every pastor is wrong on something, and every pastor is right on something, and you know what? No bolts of lightning are striking them. So we shouldn't, either. So if I make myself god to decide if some pastor's 'scriptural' or not; whether he should get the privilege of having me under him, hoo-boy -- I'm just begging for Matt7:1-2 to play against me. Not worth it.
This is a major evil among Christians. This is why I stopped going to Christian chat. Christians play god; they boost their egos if they can 'pronounce' on someone. I shudder to even do this webpage. If it weren't for the reader's need to prove the definition of 'right' pastor since I do use that term -- which means I also have to cover what's wrong, for identification -- this webpage wouldn't exist. Frankly, I want to kill this webpage every day, and I hate having to spend so much time explaining that the Bible is mistranslated. But the point of such stuff, is to see that Satan&Co. mess with our best and brightest, so we ourselves cannot survive if we spend even five minutes outside God's System. Like they teach you in West Point: men better than you made mistakes, so learn from them!
Judging is evil, and many Christians are sick because of it.
Every pastor, I don't care how 'unscriptural' he might be -- deserves our prayers, not our pettifogging, puerile pronouncements. God gifted them, so it goes against God to judge them. Anyone being unfair or judging you gets punished bigtime, because you belong to Christ. How much more, should we be Royally punished, if we judge one of our shepherds, Matt7:1-2? Shepherds have bad days and good days, and they are under a bizillion times the pressure that we are. They will make mistakes, fall, etc. And we'd do worse, were we in their place. End commercial message.
Hence the critical importance of ASKING God. God has this 'way' of making His Will clear. You like it or do not, but you know. So if you don't know -- you're probably covering up what you do know, or aren't really asking Him because you don't yet want to know. Try to go against that need. It will only get worse.
What to do? Well, God as always, rescues us. If you are picking (or picking on) a pastor arrogantly, sooner or later God will make it evident. Depends on what you need to break through. We all have our hard places, so the way to break through to them, varies. Meanwhile, God will still use the teacher you've selected, to get any accurate information in your head. (It should go without saying that the Holy Spirit is only going to transmit accurate information, no matter how little is being taught.) Speed up the discovery time by breathing 1Jn1:9, and don't fret over what might be a wrong decision. Again, no one's perfect.
It's not judging to recognize what's right or wrong; it's judging to condemn. When you do a math problem, you can say it's correct or incorrect, but you're only diagnosing, not judging. Depends on the motive, really. Example: when you find out a pastor is wrong, do you want to retaliate, spread the news, warn everyone away from that guy? Or do you pray for God to help him, because you know how you'd feel at the Bema if you were him? Chances are the latter motive indicates you're not judging, but empathizing. The former motive drives the world. It's always so insecure, it needs to judge people, to get relief.
God will know your true motive, and will let you know, count on it: Phili3:15. We humans are always a mix of motives, especially when growing up in His System. The old 'me' is passing away before His Eyes, being replaced by the DDNA of His Thinking the Holy Spirit keeps on depositing, Heb10:35-36 (blanded out in translation, lol). So Phili3:14, keep on keeping on. The old motives will keep on bleeping, and the more you grow, the more you will be disgusted at their deafness -- shouldn't I be better, by now? Nope. It's like a chrysalis, your old life. So you feel like a worm, but are being made into a butterfly.
One big reason why you don't change pastors: if you are still living under your parents' roof, and they disapprove of your finding another teacher. So long as you are under their authority, you must obey them. Doesn't mean you can't study Scripture on your own, though. Use 1Jn1:9, and study. Holy Spirit will teach you.
In sum: Full functioning Compatibility with Infinity is God's Goal for establishing His System: God wants Intimate Relationship because Infinite. Hence He wants 'sons' at His Own Level, Eph4:13! Sounds almost too good to be true, huh. But Omnipotent God can do whatever He wants -- so it's just a question of how He wants it done. God is ironic. We'd expect Him to flash His Majesty, not prostrate His Love on the Cross. But by doing that, He really does get the only Righteous result, for His Son can now be cloned in us -- again, the five infinitives of Isa53:10-11 in the LXX text, say this.
DDNA.htm covers that internal goal at the micro end, and "Thinking" series covers it at the macro end. Upshot: we needed a Cross, to be made structurally compatible with Holy God, 2Cor5:21, "far" and "near" concepts in Eph2, Rom5. So that's why Bible keeps on stressing attitude and learning and believing functions, thereafter (i.e., Rom5-8). Because, compatibility is dynamic, since volition is its impetus. Hence Romans 8, which is all about going from structure, to function. So too with Ephesians: Chaps 1-2, are structure, 3 is on function, 4 is on how structure and function are designed to interrelate. Which is why we can all be so different, some learning nothing, others learning way more -- such that God can still fit us together happily forever. Nothing is impossible, for God. However, at the personal end, where do you want to be? That's a functional question, which no one but you, can answer. Because it's not right to force you: God will never force His Will upon you.
Remember this page's re-translation of Eph4:12-16? God finances all, God does all the work. Eph2:10 says the same thing. So, what's the result? Well, the combined effect of the Structure of the individual within the Body Corporate, the fitting of the individual to his own right teacher, and the functioning of that individual within the whole, is reflected throughout God's other macro design goals. The impact couldn't be greater, for and upon, Church. This purpose is stated in the sweeping language of Eph1:1-18, the longest sentence in the NT's Greek, both on the earth during time, and in eternity. Overall principle is most succinctly expressed in Matt7:1-2, root idea of matching, fit, orchestration, which is compatible with accumulated understanding and volition.
The "Thinking" and "DDNA" webseries just mentioned cover the Results in Christ in great detail: "Thinking", from the Angelic Divorce Appeal Trial filed by Satan, which is the proximate cause for our creation; "DDNA", from the standpoint of what happens inside your soul, as a result of living in God's System. So "Thinking" is the macro-epic, and "DDNA" is the micro-epic.
In both series, the end result shown is that two eternal universes will exist: for lack of better words, we'll call them heaven and hell. So like Paul says in Romans 8:11ff (Greek), all of creation is kinda like a pregnancy waiting for the birth of this eternal state.
Those in the 'Esau' side will be living apart from God forever, loving to hate Him. So they have a synergistic rapport among themselves, too. And they will love hating each other, too. You can see the attitude play out in Satan, but the guy depicted in Torments in Luke 16:20ff kinda says it all. Manipulative, user, so focused on his own martyrdom he really can't feel the heat -- that just fuels his thrill at using his own suffering to make someone else suffer (Abraham, Lazarus in the story). Hatred has its own comforts, as anyone who's known a hatred-loving person, could explain. But wouldn't want to.
I've spent years trying to find any Bible verse which says those in hell are forced to stay there. I can't find any. The verses on hell are very precise. Never is it said that God forces them to stay there. Sent there, yes. And sent there, only because they don't ever once believe IN Christ, John 16:9. But think: God isn't served by their suffering. God would be served by their believing, especially since Christ paid for everyone (else God would be cheated), 1Jn2:2 (etc. -- other verses are in "Unlimited Atonement" entry of VERindex.htm). Moreover, you have verses like 2Pet3:9, which in Greek signify God is NEVER willing for anyone to be in hell. So: "never" means.. NEVER. Not after the eternal state begins, either. So it must be true that the only reason anyone remains in hell is because he WANTS to. When you see the guy's thinking in Luke 16:20ff, and you hear people who argue against God today, it becomes fathomable how someone could, even in Hell, prefer it there. Rapport in hatred, baby! Last link in Part V of the Thinking series (LordvSatan5.htm) explores this proposed idea, further.
The wimpy ideas of everyone getting saved, the lalalalala idea of hell being empty one day, and the happy-to-hate Christian idea of people roasting in flames for sins THEY don't like, well.. those ideas all belong in the garbage can. Scripture flatly contradicts both of those tenet categories.
For if you truly love someone, you don't want them to suffer, but you won't spare the rod if it benefits THEM. Because you do love them. Only hatred likes the idea of someone else suffering, and so many Christians are full of hate, they project onto God (in the name of 'righteousness', of course) their own petty upset that someone might be getting away with something -- so they piously come down on suffering. Well, God isn't people, thank God.
God being Omniscient, would be cheating Himself to have to watch any suffering. So the role of suffering is to BLESS, which frankly every verse on suffering in the Bible explains, i.e., in Heb12. Look beneath the stern tone of any set of warning verses in Bible; look at the weaving promise around the stern verses, to see the larger Love context. It's always a zig zag, and never wimpy or maudlin, either. So hell is a place of suffering to maximally encourage survival instinct -- as if God is saying, are you hurting enough now? Won't you finally believe in My Son? That fits God's Character, and doesn't compromise Justice one whit. Christ paid for any injustice to Holiness. No one else could do that. So suffering is "language of accommodation" for us -- not at all, something God wants or needs.
Now let's look at the potential results of you, me, any Christian. These results aren't small, either. In fact, they are staggeringly large. You will be humbled by them, cocky because of them, spanked because of them, and will MATURE because of them, ideally. Hence the advance disclosure about them, in Bible. Can't grow into a wealth without first getting the wealth so you can 'practice'. So categorically, some of these Results could be classified as follows:
Because God is Infinite, Infinite Love For Righteousness Requires That We Be Made Christ In Value, which is why 2Cor5:21 even occurs: and it occurs, that first nanosecond you believe in Christ, Rom5:1, Eph2:8-9, etc. So think: He could bypass all this trouble and just bing whatever He likes, whenever He likes. That's what Omnipotence means, for crying out loud. So think: but what He likes, is consent: because Love never coerces. It's a justice issue. And justly, you should be converted into a bizillion dollars, not a mere zero, because the One worth bizillion times bizillion dollars, PAID for that conversion, per the contract in eternity past: Isa53:10-11 (both inspired texts).
So this is a justice issue, a legal issue, a contract fulfillment. And you didn't create it. However, you can refuse it: most Christians will. In which case, more of the 'pie' goes to those few who did NOT refuse it. And you can be among those few, so long as you are still breathing, down here. Forget who you 'were' or 'seem' in your puny eyes. You are in Christ, and there's nothing puny about you anymore, theme of 2Cor5.
See, Satan's all about his ABILITIES as a creature. As if that should count for something. But even God didn't make Himself. And God can 'make' anything anytime any way He likes. So God likes to take us puny sheep, drooling and doo-dooing as we always are, and make us into better than Satan. Satan was made the highest of the angels, initially. Christ is higher than all the angels put together IN His Humanity now, says the Greek of Heb1:4 (which fact my pastor stresses, often). So that's who GOD likes to make of you. See, it's all about us and not about us at all. Simultaneously. So we need to have God's Sense of Humor about it. We doo-doo, being made into Diamonds, and He just flat likes doing it that way. Which we know, because He can do anything anytime any way He likes. Well, this is what He likes.
So Satan&Co. would have you think you can lose your salvation (not true, 2Cor5:21, John 10:28). So Satan&Co. would have you think your puny nature is either a) of value to God, so you have to huff-and-puff; or b) that you are so bad, you should.. huff-and-puff. Notice the same conclusion. The last thing they want you to know, is how rich you are. Because then you'll realize you are too rich to even have a clue what to do with it. So you'd rely on God and live in His System, since obviously this wealth will only get profitably used, if God runs the entire thing. God's doing everything. Not you. So not Satan, either. Grrrrr.. sometimes a piece of doo-doo, can do a lot of damage!
So this is an INHERITANCE contract (main theme of Hebrews). So you have inherited by the TESTAMENT of Christ (Hebrews 9 and 10), this bizillion dollars. Legally, any beneficiary can "elect against the will". So that's what faces you now: how much, if at all, do you want to get this inheritance, or elect against it. Book of Hebrews is very exacting about this, especially in the Greek. Paul in Ephesians spells it out as well. Maybe, if you're doubting this, try reading both books over and over and over. Even in translation, some of this idea should get through, if you're breathing 1Jn1:9 while you read.
You refuse, if you refuse to live in God's System. You don't live in God's System if you aren't functioning on all four remaining Elements (the First is a one-time faith in Christ for salvation, and cannot be rescinded). IF you're not in the System, just start doing whatever element you weren't doing. Until you die, you can always get closer or even win.
Welcome to the world of Christ's Wealth, the "riches" verses of the NT, Eph3:19, Col 1:27. You gotta first get wealth, to train in having wealth, so you are made a bizillionaire, that first nanosecond you believed in Christ. It's not hyperbole. Your human status is too small no matter how big -- and Satan's bigger than all of us, and he's not big enough, either. Only Christ is big enough, and we are all IN Him. So there is much to learn. God's Love is the Riches, which is His Thinking, the Truth: Infinite Truth, Infinite Love, God's Attributes are not divided -- so these Riches are depositable in us, Rom5:5. [Central thesis of my pastor is this quality of Love being the Integrity of God: see ArchiDes.htm for a synopsis, in its first section. Blows me away, how provable that is; and it's even more astonishing that for almost 2000 years of theology, no one caught on?]
So frankly, it's humiliating to know how big, God has made us puny. It's exhilirating to know how big He's made us. CHRIST Deserves It, so it's Just that He's done this. But oh boy, the sin nature in Adam can't take it. Every excuse, every bad feeling, every good feeling, every rationalization to QUIT will hit you during development. Just keep on keeping on, 1Jn1:9 and Phili3:14. You vote, God acts on the vote. That's all you ever can do. Whatever you learn, you'll mess up -- but that's okay, the Holy Spirit fixed the tohu wa bohu back in Gen1:2, so your doo-doo He'll make into His Diamonds. KOKO!
Bible has many keywords to search on, but you'll need to use the original-language texts, for English usually fuzzily-translates these terms. The ones which follow are in hundreds of verses, but they will get you started. As you search, you will undoubtedly find many more terms (Holy Spirit is real avid about pointing out other words)!
Lots of other keywords and concepts and verses tie in, but alas, I've no time to write them all down: to ease your search, check out the Greek nouns and verbs, participles in any passage about teaching. Check out the context and especially the isagogics (history of that time). What we call "student" today was an unknown concept, then. "Apprentice" is probably more the idea to remember, when looking at the Biblical standard of "student". Idea to become skilled at a thing under a master on the subject. Rhetoric was a system of thinking to learn Truth, not merely learning how to give a good speech. So, you lived with your teacher, not merely attended his classes. Until public schooling became widespread, people apprenticed, basically.
That doesn't mean you join some cult. It means you find your right teacher and stay under him. You live your life, he doesn't live it for you or dictate. The OT teachers didn't do that, either. People came to school, then went home. The more-avid disciples who wanted full-time learning, apprenticed under the teacher (kinda like going to college); but in today's world you can do that by turning over what your teacher says, in the privacy of your own home. For your Teacher with Whom You Live, is now the Holy Spirit, 24/7, and you are truly apprenticing, under Him. Just as Christ did. Since Christ is also God, and since the Holy Spirit wasn't given out during Christ's First Advent (John 7:39), of course the more-avid students lived with Him back then. But He is Risen now.
Then I spent the next 10 years mostly avoiding him, lol (very dilettantish about study). God spanked me royally for that, so I 'went back' and got serious about study under him.
Then, within (3?) months after I 'went back' to study: someone else who had only heard about my pastor from her sister immediately knew that was the pastor for her as well; for I'd had an accidental, five-minute conversation with her sister which suddenly turned to the topic of how I learned Bible. Thus the sister-of-the-sister and I met: she wanted a catalogue of his tapes from me. I offered to just plain give it to the sister, to spare any in-person-meeting hassle, but oh no. You'd not believe the look in that woman's eyes, the gratitude, when I handed her what then was a little two-page brochure. To her it was a million dollars. And, she was right. So, see? God Orchestrates. 'Never saw her again, after that. Never will forget the look on her soul, either.
Satan's genius is to play both sides of the Counterfeit Pastor 'aisle'. One 'side', respectable, will be touted as 'good'. The other side, gross and silly, will be touted as 'bad'. So that no one notices the near-white quality of true evil. So, to avoid the darker hues, the believer jumps to what's 'whiter', not realizing he's just cleaned his house, and seven more devils, have entered (i.e., Matt12:45). So one major category of counterfeit 'pastors', is a skewed definition of what 'authority' you need, in the first place. As in, none. Or, as in some flashy guy. Or, as in whatever-it-takes (panourgia, wonderful Greek word) to make you throw up the spiritual life (make you seasick), Eph4:14.
Of course you know that people don't seek to be pawns "of the devil". But, we all are, at one time or another. Sometimes it takes years before a person wakes up and realizes how he was used. So it's a dicey thing to talk about false teachers: for all we know, some of them might be coming out of a long-believed falsehood. Teachers are human, and we all are subject to this problem. Still, the believer is warned to detect false teachers, to avoid the misery of believing falsehood. So bear in mind as you read this section, it's not a cut-and-dried thing, what you do. Use 1Jn1:9, ask Father in Son's Name, what Policy He has for you in whatever circumstance. That rule of course well serves anyone, anytime. So also, here.
Since Satan rebelled against authority, Satan messes with the definition of authority, constantly, in order to get people to fight each other. So let's distinguish between spiritual adjunctive roles, and pastoral authority roles. So we who are not pastors, have ancillary roles: witnessing, ambassadorship, etc. "Ancillary" doesn't mean less-important, but only less visible: see what Paul says in Greek of 1Cor12:19ff. Never underestimate your thinking, and never mistake a small thing you do as being small. He who is faithful in little, is faithful also in much, Matt25:21ff; see especially, Luke 16:10. God doesn't think like we do!
Now, let's distinguish the role of authority. Authority has to be visible, and it has to be honored, so those under authority can get SECURITY and PROTECTION: their specialties are not big-picture, so they need a way to justify what will often seem like a meaningless task or role. Knowing that due to that authority, they fit within a whole, gives purpose and fulfillment to each member of the organization. If a 'high' person can't get a good meal, all his highness counts for nothing, for he is too hungry to think. So scratch all ideas of 'high' and 'low' status as being demeaning, in the latter category. Only arrogance thinks 'low' is demeaning. Even pee is important, don't ya notice? Just try avoiding it. Without pee, the body would be poisoned, and die. God invented pee. It didn't come into existence after the Fall, y'know...
But above all, the purpose of authority is FACILITATE GROWTH and smooth operation of the organization within its own purpose; in short, to chart and keep on, the course. If you've ever tried to get anything done by a committee, you know how horrible it is. Everyone stands on his turf, competing cliques form; coordination is thus almost impossible; and everyone is miffed if not all of his cherished opinion, isn't selected! All that waste is avoided if power is concentrated in a HEAD. Which is why we have, chains of command. Fragmented, unsystematized learning is about the worst thing you can do to yourself. You have to have a System. Bad system, good system, but a System. Your body isn't always working well, but it remains a System, and if it didn't, you'd be dead. Your body is not a democracy, either, or .. you'd die waiting for consensus: oh, we the blood don't LIKE carrying food to the gonads! Heh.
Thus it always was; but until Canon was completed, there was the added 'hickey' of needing to disseminate the developing Canon, using oral revelation; the actual Canon book itself, was later condensed to writing: usually at the end of the prophet's ministry, to leave the record of its content behind. So compare what Paul did to what Samuel did, and you will realize that even during times of apostolic authority (which ended when John died), apostles only set overall doctrine, then left the PASTOR in charge. And that apostlic authority, only lasted during their own lifetimes: no succession was given, as covered back in Meaning #1 (on Elisha). Canon wasn't completed yet, so God spoke to Samuel. Canon wasn't completed yet, so God spoke to the 1st-century apostles; some of them thus got Canon to write, as well. In short, so long as Canon was open, there were apostles, prophets, etc. But Canon is closed, so those gifts aren't needed anymore. (You have to be a Scriptural dolt not to realize that Canon is closed, sorry.) [When the sun is blazing in the sky and someone tells you it's not there, you can only smile at the speaker, and pray God help him get well. Same kind of obviousness, re Canon being closed, sorry.]
So all goes through the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Teacher; so only evangelists and pastors, now; and they don't make up anything themselves: they have the Word in writing. God speaks through His Son, and His Son's Thinking is in writing, and that writing goes through the end of time. Ending with a Book that is a Greek-play quadrilogy replete with the real Deus no-need-machina, coming down in classic Greek style, at the end. To end history. Finis, with classical Greek moral at the end (Rev22:6-21), can't be more obvious: be alert! tachú! Just as promised, since Gen3:15, Jer31:31-34, per Heb8:8-12 bookending Heb10:15-17 (effective present of martureo in v.15 being key to the interp). [The effective present tense means that the content being testified to is happening NOW. Big stress on the NOW. Took me a month to figure that out. Hope it doesn't take you that long. Big deal in my spiritual life, when I "got it" about the NOW meaning. Until then, I didn't really understand the difference between the OT spiritual life and the NT version, in terms of what knowledge they could have, versus Church. That was my obtuseness. I had been taught. I just didn't get it. Now, I do.. heh. I summarized this difference in LordvSatan2.htm's "How Covenant Properties Bless or Curse by Association" link; but even better, in the "Third Reason for Invisibility" ("Qorban" link) of LordvSatan3.htm.]
So: you yourself are in charge of some things, and under the charge of someone else. Say you go to college, or work. You have a professor, or a boss. that person, is an Authority, and you are to not only learn from him, but obey what you're told. Even if it is wrong (in your opinion) -- criminality (etc.) excepted, of course. These are the experts, too. Even if they are less competent, they are Authority for you, so you treat them as experts. The authority alone matters, for it sanctifies what gets done. The authority is blamed or credited for what he has authority over.
Alternatively, you learn from other sources a whole lot of stuff you didn't get from that authority. Ok, so you have more information. Again, you have it for your benefit. God doesn't restrict information flow to authority: but authority governs what you do. Does not govern how you think. For, what you choose to think, is your own authority, no one else's. So, that's the difference between, say, being under a pastor and reading stuff in websites or other material on topics of interest to you. So long as you are under that pastor, you comport with his teachings, especially around those in your same congregation -- for the sake of conscience, as Paul would put it. But what you believe, is between the Lord and you. What you learn and believe, is likewise private. Frankly, if there's a lot of difference between your pastor's teaching and what you believe, you've got a lot of soul-searching to do. For what it's worth, the few times I found myself disagreeing with my pastor, I turned out to be the one who was wrong!
So: in the years of research for these sites, I found out I was wrong about a lot of things. A lot of what I thought some denomination held, wasn't true, or -- more commonly, was true, but was differently true. They have their own systems of analyzing Bible, and I came to respect how they came up with their conclusions, even though I could prove the conclusions in error. Further still, a lot of what my pastor taught which I thought I understood, I didn't. But oh, do now! But I couldn't have done this much research, had I not FIRST learned systematically. When you learn systematically, you learn to THINK systematically, so you can research systematically.. and then fix what's wrong. Absent a system, you just go in circles.
So, Bible is the ultimate System. For which, you need a teacher: and if there is a true (versus imagined) conflict between Bible and the teacher, Bible is always right. But you probably don't know the Bible as well as your pastor does, k? So yikes! Use 1Jn1:9 and ask Father in Son's Name for Constant Help if you think you see a problem. That way you make honey, not trouble...
So, Bible everywhere warns the believer to stay away from false teachers, and constantly enjoins the believer to test any 'Bible' interpretation he has with the Bible. Sad fact is, people don't do that: they test with how they feel, how their best friend or other admired person feels, etc. In short, human opinion matters, but not God's. Most of the misinterpretations and mistranslations are therefore silly errors, which a few days' or even a few seconds of Bible study, could fix. So it's not God's fault, and not Satan's fault, and not a false teacher's fault. Only our fault. Vague interest begets vague teaching and vague translations; disinterest is the culprit. It's natural to not think of God -- but that doesn't mean it's right...
So what's a false teacher, versus someone who merely makes a temporary (even if for years), mistake? Well, note the mechanic of becoming an ally of falsehood, so you can tell the difference, yourself; and, so you won't be much inclined to judge the person. It's a deft deception into which, the person falls ("piptw", in Greek). Sample Mechanic: the person who reads the last part of James 5 but not Ps32:5, 66:18, 1Jn1:9 will mistakenly think that 'confession' is to another human being. If he just stops there, he'll tell everyone else that's how 'confession' works (this actually happened in a chatroom). If he's been doing that long enough, to confront him with other passages which refute his notion, garners hostility (that actually happened, too).
We've all done this for a short time (hopefully short), or long. But for however long we stay stuck in it, it's still a false teaching we're believing. And of course we don't mean to be false. So bear in mind how that essential mechanic of falsehood is believed and promulgated, as you read. For, there's zero reason to blame anyone who believes falsehood, practices falsehood, or teaches it. We all make these mistakes!
Spiritual children think so narrowly, anything of broader concept -- even with respect to something they are right about -- threatens them. If you spend much time in chatrooms, you'll see this childishness abound. It's a normal stage of growth. Same, for the real world. That's why Christ didn't say much, except in parables. People didn't understand the parables, so weren't threatened, and would remember. So privately they could turn them over, and then, without being in a crowd, understand. Children think they have to go correcting people. Can't be done. It's all internal, and if the person chooses to get information, he's 'open.' If not, even the Holy Spirit isn't getting through. So you can't, either.
Repeating: false teaching is the NORM. A pastor who really teaches the Word of God is a needle in a haystack, and you need God to show you where he is. For a true teacher is supposed to be a needle in a haystack, just studying and teaching, staying put in one place, relying on God to send him his flock. The teacher is not supposed to promote himself, advertise himself, or ever ask for money. Now you begin to see what a rare bird a true teacher must be. Now you see why you need to ask God how to find him. God's not into the world's ideas, and doesn't use the world's methods. Satan owns the world, presently. So: people can be so easily beset, Eph4:14, Heb12:1, and thus are prone to trot off on the world's stage, missing God's System -- in the very name of serving God. So condemning, judging.. no, because that plays on Satan's turf. Praying, empathizing.. yes, because that plays on God's turf. We are citizens of heaven, not this earth, Eph2:19, Phili1:27 (NLT), Phili3:20, Heb 12:23 (NJB), Rev 3:12 (NLT), other passages. [There are an astonishing number of expressions for citizenship, and the translators don't all translate them idiomatically.]
In Gospels, the Lord repeatedly explains what false teachers are like. Matt7's "by your fruits shall you know them" is talking about false teaching, not works. So anyone using that quote to talk of works, betrays his crass ignorance of Scripture. Well, what are false teachers like? Chief characteristic is that the teaching is false, as we saw up in the purple text of Eph4:14. Of course, if you yourself can't distinguish that fact, then you have other markers for identification. So the Lord explained false teachers in terms of their behavior, to His audiences. Of course, you shouldn't quickly ASSume that any behavior which you think matches what He said is the 'mark of the devil'; what you should quickly assume, is that you better check Scripture against the teaching, breathing 1Jn1:9 so that the Spirit will guide you.
This should be your first litmus test: is John 3:16 properly known as the way to be saved? If no.. run away. Any 'gospel' which has any other verb but "believe in Christ" as stated in John 3:16, is not Bible's Gospel. Bible is always consistent. Translations screw up here, but not as much as in other doctrines, so you should be able to look at almost any "believe" verse and see that it's only believe. [Romans 10:10's translation is screwed up, see Rom1010.htm. So also, someone stuck in the word "baptise" at the end of Mark's Gospel. Some other "believe" verses are mistranslated too. "Repent" verses never say anything about repenting from sin, but repenting from unbelief against Christ, see John 16:9.] Left blue boxes on the Home Page have more detail.
I use this Gospel-reading-test as litmus in deciding what 'Christian' sites to read. Sure, those who get the Gospel right can get everything else wrong, but it's likely to be at least somewhat profitable to skim what's said. Can't say that about the false-Gospel sites. And upon deeper inspection, you find so much wrong you regret having spent the time. Seems like 99% of 'Christian' websites screw up the Gospel bigtime, preceding it with the wrong verbs like repenting of sin (that's nowhere in Bible), and ending it with an "invite" (again, nowhere in Bible for salvation -- only a believer can "welcome" (mistranslation is "invite") Christ as a child does). The "believe" is in the middle, and its presentation is always muddled. So no one gets saved through those websites, unless the Holy Spirit causes the eye to only notice the "believe" verb. Which of course, He can do!
Believers demonstrate that the Gospel makes them nervous. They always have to precede it with stuff, and then smooth out afterwards. Believe in Christ or burn in hell. That's John 3, and that's the way we ought to tell it. Else the unbeliever will be confused, and therefore NOT saved!
Mistakes are normal. Communicators are human, and they make mistakes, and God even uses errors to profit everyone, as we saw earlier in this section. So it's normal and natural to misinterpret Scripture. It's normal to mess up on a doctrine. Takes time to learn Bible and ferret out all the parameters in the Truth. So of course it's normal to mistake 'how many' God is, whether Christ was divine, to mistake what the Filling of the Spirit means and to mistake spirituality as works. All that can be solved by learning in God's System, and is of itself, not conclusive reason to run away (though you should be wary of all such falsehoods).
But if the person misstates the Gospel -- run away. God Himself is warning you to run away, and He made that warning repeatedly in the Gospels and in 1Jn. 1Jn explains that these are the antichrists: it was the litmus test John passed on, knowing he was the last writer of Canon. It's impossible for a five-year old to misinterpret John 3:16 in translation, so the person misrepresenting the Gospel is evil, not merely dumb. Evil people generally don't realize they are evil, so you can't educate them about it. They have to learn the hard way. Run away. Quietly.. but run.
Other substitutes and add-ons are common, but this business of adding other verbs is the most common, particularly among the independent churches. So they are becoming 'catholic', just like their first-century cousins did. For the primary tenet in the Catholic Church (Eastern or Roman or their hybrids) is that the institution must 'bless' you for you to be saved. Baptism is usually the beginning blessing, and where 'last rites' are deemed, it's the ending 'blessing'. So the institution casts itself as Christ INSTEAD of (ANTI) Christ, get it? The independent churches are going in that same direction, and their unity on "prolife" is what Satan will use to get them there. So it's no surprise that so few of them today, can even state the Gospel correctly: instead, they all add verbs. Just ask a Christian, a pastor, listen to 'Christian' stations.. see for yourself. It's appalling. Bible's warning of antichrists within the "Body" during the first century, is current and warranted before our very eyes.. every century.
A sly variant of this adding-verbs negation of Christ, is in the blasphemous claim that you can lose your salvation. Note how coy: well, if you believed in Christ you were saved, BUT! if you commit some particular sin then you lose your salvation. Which means, Belief Was Not Enough. So negates John 3:16. Now, who do you think is more correct: the Bible -- here, a verse Christ spoke, so even the red-letter people can't deny it -- who is more correct, the Bible.. or some dingdong who loves believing that sinners he dislikes, will thus go to hell forever? God isn't cheated. If you could lose salvation, then some sin didn't get paid for. God isn't petty. What's wrong is our NATURE, and what we do comes FROM that nature, which is why even babies need salvation (and get saved, automatically). See how vile, how anti-Christ, all this emending of Holy Writ?
Really (1), in that the Gospel might be right, so real believers -- but key doctrines are wrongly taught to make us spiritual retards. (2) NOT really Christian, in that even the Gospel is mistaught, though some people might merely believe anyway and GET saved -- so all the doctrines taught are skewed in key ways. You can see this skewing in the translations. The entire satanic scheme is revealed if you plot the patterns of the mistranslations. My sites talk a lot of the mistranslations and Satan's schemes (especially SatStrat.htm), so more need not be said here. Except, you just know those mistranslating, have no intent to be Satan's pawns. But, we all are, and those who work in Bible are set upon deftly. Pray for anyone who works in Bible. Including, yourself.
It really hurts to say all this; I spent three years in chatrooms and many months watching Christian TV, even watching the so-called great teachers and evangelists; yet I could count on one hand the number of times the Gospel was properly stated by someone (only by a few Calvinists and Baptists in the chatrooms, as I remember). Now I understand why my pastor kept on nagging his congregation for decades about how the Gospel isn't being correctly stated; he spent SO much time going over the problem, I thought I would vomit. So much time going over the exegesis of mistranslated verses like Rom10:10, so we could see how folks mess up their interpretations.
You name it, I've heard or read now probably every so-called 'great' preacher or teacher over the last couple of generations, at least (I'm 52) -- enough to realize they are mostly false, because they promote the fake 'gospel' of 'invite' or 'repent' added to "believe"! So no one got saved through their decades of messages: famous faces, all around the world, using Satan's gospel, instead of God's. Now I really do want to vomit.. with grief. Now all those relentless warnings by my pastor about all this apostacy since the 1960's -- which, even as I typingly agree with it here, sounds like nagging -- well, um.. he was right to 'nag', sorry.
So how bad is it? Well, do your own investigating. I can only report what you see in these pages, and that is not enough for your own due diligence. All my webpages can only offer exposure and brainstorming aids.
Even the so-called "prophetesses" (a gift which died when Canon completed), were only specifically consulted (e.g., Huldah by Josiah); moreover you'll notice in Acts 21, that though prophetesses were present, God sent Agabus to warn Paul he was out of God's will. Rabbis were always male. Deborah was a judge in Israel, but NOT a teacher. "Shaphat" in Hebrew is NOT a teacher of Bible, but a governor-type job (little or big, depends on the scope of the "mishphat"). So she encouraged obedience to God, didn't teach it; which is a great role for a female to have. By contrast, idolatry uses female teachers and mediums: one big reason why God never chose females for His Word's Authoritative teaching. Women can teach kids, maybe other women in some below-pastor manner; secularly, women can do almost anything, depending on the accepted culture mores for her roles -- but God never grants women, pastoral authority. So never gives them pastoral gifts.
There's a gigantic movement in Christianity today to have roving groups of pastors, many of them, women; moreover, there are whole sects which advocate and even ordain women pastors, in both Christianity and Judaism. GOD IS NOT IN IT. The person learning Bible in this manner will never grow up. Doesn't mean nothing gets learned, but the learning is NOT spiritual. For, the student needs to be under someone with the gift of the pastor you saw in Meaning #2. So the inner needs of the 'student' under a woman, are NOT being systematically met, so only appetizers, not a fully-balanced meal, is eaten. So, such a 'student', starves. But will not know it. Women have other roles which are extremely important, and enhance authority. This pastoral role is NOT one of them. And you know that fact quickly: the reason why women clamor to BE pastors, is that they are offended at not having some role given a man: so it's arrogance driving the female-pastor movement. Well, God is never arrogant, so He'd not be into any arrogance-driven movements, either.
Of course, we humans being so childish about everything, truncate what God says into little black-and-whites, so some think the female has nothing to offer of spiritual value; others, go overboard in the opposite direction. We Are Equal In Christ, But Not Equal In The Transmission Of Spiritual Information. Ok: but unequal doesn't mean spiritual information is cut out from the female. Nor does it mean the female is sleighted if she can't be a pastor. Just because some people are sooo immature they feel they can't accept thought content from someone deemed 'inferior', doesn't mean mature people think that way. A mature person recognizes wisdom from any mouth. Certainly God isn't immature: He used even Balaam's donkey! So, if you're a female reading this page, please don't give into the immature temptation, to fret over 'status'. You're being trained to rule; and will, if you reach Pleroma and finish its racecourse (trephw, in Heb12:1-2), have more status forever than you could even imagine, now!
Look at the rebellion of Miriam, if you doubt only males can be teachers: she got leprosy for wanting to take over Moses' job. Timothy letters are instructive also, but you'd have to see in Greek how Paul is only talking about MALES. How anyone can be so insecure and stupid to think Paul a misogynist, I'll never know. IT'S THE WORD OF GOD, not Paul! Paul is but a conduit, k?
Watch how the male-female dynamics work: we learn from our fathers to obey what they say; we learn from our mothers WHY obedience is beneficial; we are encouraged to not be intimidated, for we see them REFLECT RESPECT for the fathers; because we hear them explain motive to obey by their behavior and words. Trouble with having authority is that the one having it must remain somewhat aloof; trouble with obeying authority is that thinking tends to cut off, in favor of 'doing' the obedience. So, the benefit of authority, of obedience is not learned: so into that vacuum, a goofy assumption that authority is about power, restriction, tyranny -- infects the mind.
That's where women come in: they are witnesses, reporters, adjunctive encouragers, so you can fill the vacuum, and learn the benefit of obedience. Learn why it's justified, good, to obey. Hence the greater intimacy accorded a woman: as a mother, as a nurturer, etc. It's a great role, not a demeaning one.
The man, gets to show the order. Thus, he sanctifies the order, so security of obedience, is sure. But the woman, gets to show WHY it's good, so VINDICATES the order -- if the man tried to do that, it would seem self-serving, further motivating infection. So, she gets to play exemplar; she explains, shows by her own obedience, the value of his order. Fantastic role, for each one. Unequal? Sure. But synergistic! Read any biography of a 'great' person in society: you will always find that his father or his mother greatly affected his development as a person. Sometimes by contrast, sometimes by likeness -- you always learn from authority, and you always learn from no-authority. That's the benefit.
The Christian needs to be secure in trusting the one teaching him; so, the pastor's authority SANCTIFIES the discipline of sitting down and learning what he teaches. Authority shows up in the CONTENT QUALITY of the teaching, thus playing a wifely role of vindicating the trust. Other believers in the congregation who are positive should thus be growing, and they too have a kind of wifely role, by just breathing: you see the success of the teaching, in their lives. When they are out among the world, a wifely role of their lifestyles -- and especially, that growing relaxed mental attitude which hallmarks the spiritual adult -- attracts people. People want whatever makes these breathing ones so .. content. So, see how a 'teaching' goes on, with nary a word even said?
See? Principle is FIT, not some way to put people down or crow. And, um, Bride is the purpose of history, now, Eph4-5, so how can that be demeaning? Calling out of the Church, upon Whose Completion, all history hinges (Heb11:39-40). All of Part IV of the "Thinking Series" (far right box at Home page top) deals with this subject in great detail. In NTKeyMore.htm there is more info on why no females are ever gifted to be pastors: search on "(male-only)". Upshot, there: the female role in imparting Bible information works differently, and is extremely valuable in its OWN way.
Hence falsehoods will be common, popular, loud, and respectable (Matt4 Temptations' structure, Matt7:13-14, John 8:44). The truth will be unpopular, and uncomfortable. Hence, a person believing falsehood will be insecure if anything presents an opposing view. Such a person cannot stay neutral; he must put down the opposition. This may take the form of withdrawal (i.e., dismissiveness, disregard), or the form of outright hostility (i.e., antagonism, maligning, attacking) -- a whole spectrum of reactions. Truth really understood, by contrast, cannot be threatened. So, doesn't need defending. Notice how the Lord always just states a thing, and then moves on. He never defends what He says, but rather explains. That's all you need to do with Truth, if even that -- for the sake of the hearer. Of course, if the hearer is not willing, you move on. Again, for the sake of the hearer (to push will only excite further, his sense of being threatened).
False-teaching Tactic (generally played ON the false teacher): Skew the doctrine just a little; leave some big part well-done, but the 'little' part all awry. Very sophisticated. The skewing tends to be categorical, so a cohesiveness of the teaching results, looking very much like 'truth', since it hangs together so well. Here are two quick examples which are very common in Christianity today:
So someday pastors in these sample categories will wonder why their congregations, remain so miserable. So then they die miserable -- for one thing a pastor needs, is to see his flock thrive. Means more to him, than his own breathing. See how horrible the outcome for the poor teacher? Oh, how cruel are Satan&Co., and how dumb we humans are!
You pray with your brain ON. So pray what you understand; don't pray by rote, by script, by someone else's nice-sounding words you yourself don't understand. God is interested in your own soul, not how impressive you sound to mere people. For prayer develops your thinking as you think/speak. So do that: make sure you are thinking. Then, follow the protocol. Your prayers will be heard. It doesn't matter at all how good or bad you are. It only matters that you are a believer, and you followed the protocol. Because, you really are Royal Family of God. Never underestimate what God accomplished in Christ on the Cross.
It's normal to be self-conscious before God. That's another good reason to pray as often as you can. Your self-conscious nervousness will diminish; your confidence will increase; your competence at thinking will increase. David and the Lord prayed very often. Think of prayer as a running dialogue with God, not just asking for stuff. Seriously. This is the fastest-track growth mechanic among the Elements; for you can't keep up a running mental dialogue with God and not be vastly learning the Bible in your head so far. Try it; see for yourself.
For NO Greek/Hebrew word can really be condensed into one English word, because English is a verbose language, requiring many words to say the same ideas. Moreover, the English culture is so vastly different, you need more words to convey the original-language meanings, even on a shallow level. But you are not allowed to do that when translating, generally. Sorry: this is a satanic rule. But, no one will change it: it's too old, so too respected. Worse, most of the foreign-language Bibles copy the English system of translation, and even just translate from the English, not from the original-language texts. It's embarrassing. If you can read in multiple languages, check out that claim for yourself. Import: a bad translation in English ends up replicating as a worse translation in the foreign-language translation, so the satanic truncation goal is even more successful. Makes you wanna cry.
Who said Satan was stupid? Not to mention our other Eph4 friend, ergon diakonias, getting the lame "work of service" mistranslation. So you have no clue what kind of "service" is meant. So what will you imagine it means? Huff and puff, of course!
Satan practiced truncation ON the Lord in the 2nd Temptation of Matt4. Cutting out just a snippet from Ps91, Satan reversed the meaning of the passage. Moreover, by truncating Bible verses to have only one shallow meaning, the others go undetected. Handy. Bible and its lessons are multi-layer in meaning, all-at-once true, each in its own 'compartment', so to speak (e.g., a time to be born, a time to die). So each verse like a hub with a bizillion 'spokes' of understanding, all flawlessly tied together. Awesome Writ. It's real clear in the original languages God wrote this Book. So falsehood is easily crafted by cutting out part of the meaning in a verse: same tactic in 2nd Temptation in Matt4. This is how denominations form and fight: they each narrowly define a few key doctrines, and the chopped meanings get deemed 'holy'. Then they trumpet those now sound-like-Bible-but-are-not meanings, to get adherents. Very effective tactic, has sucked in the human race to its Eph4:14 wiles for centuries!
If the teacher truncates meaning in teaching, then he's not teaching what he knows; on the other hand, sometimes he has to simplify for his bored congregation (we believers are notoriously UNinterested in God). On the other hand, sometimes it's an elitist mentality which spawns the truncation -- that's how the Catholic Church formed, frankly. God doesn't want us to be 'shielded' from the Word in its unadulterated form. So listen carefully to the guy, breathing 1Jn1:9 as you do. The Holy Spirit will alert you. Don't accuse, don't ASSume, but instead.. listen. You will always profit.
A great way to quickly assess is to use the Elements in GodSystem.htm as a litmus. If the pastor teaches those Elements (no matter what denomination, k) then maybe he's in your short list of right pastors. Else.. not. Few pastors do teach those Elements, which means very few Christians are growing spiritually. But in every country there will be some pastors who do teach them. God provides.
Really sad, for Righteousness is so much more than mere non-spiritual morality. Morality is never spiritual. Good for you, but not spiritual. But who teaches that? Almost no one. See, Holy God is truncated to a mere morality, so the one teaching Him that way, is sniping at Him. That's exactly how Satan likes it. Yeah, so it's not hard, if God is truncated to morality, to take all those GOD-works verbs and nouns in the original-language texts of Bible, and cut God OUT of them in translation. So the teacher only using a translation, really thinks he's teaching correctly, get it? So then it looks like human works to him, in MIStranslations of James 2:22, Phili3:12-13, Rom12:1, our friend Eph4:5-16, scads of other passages. So then easily taught in truncated fashion, too. So then the sniping infection, spreads to millions, who themselves are so DISinterested in God, they settle for the translations. Oh, too much WORK to study in the original-language texts... Yeah, right: it's the Holy Spirit's Power, dummy. You do nothing but grin...
So, the following results: right and wrong is defined in BODY terms, as if thinking didn't matter, only behavior. Or knowing Bible is truncated to flashcard knowledge, which is no knowledge at all: how-right-my-definition-of-Trinity compared to some other sect, doesn't mean you know what it is. You don't know anything until you know the WHYS. Christianity never explores the whys; it's historically 'allergic' to whys. So, from the Church Fathers onward, Christianity has stayed in doctrinal shallows, always hollering "Be good!" LOL: as if God needed from us what we need from each other. Tragic.
In short, swallowing camels, but straining at gnats. Shallow, insisting on small fetishes, and ignoring the big stuff. Like, God's Nature; how the Cross got accomplished; what role Bible really plays in making you like Christ. So, the shallow, truncated teaching casts God in caricature: Sugar Daddy or Petty Judge. With the result that you actually learn very little about Him; and what you imagine you know, makes you unhappy.
So: to popularize skewed teaching, false teachers are often genuinely attractive in some way. Most are moral, nice to hear, sincere, even loving -- by human standards, that's the trick. "Attractive" depends on what people think such a person should be, so there is no one personality or other physical-characteristics type you can use as a litmus. Nonetheless, they tend to be engaging, smart (or aw-shucks-dumb), good speakers, decent, good-looking (or very humble-looking), etc. So you can't use outers like these, to decide. But here's what you can use: do they crusade? Anyone who favors political activism is a Rev17 devotee. Wonderful to hear, but.. running after Babylon. Christian right is full of them. Christ never crusaded. So in the final analysis, compare what they advocate, to what Christ did. What did HE stress, versus what they do? Again, keep on comparing His Ministry, and you'll be better equipped to avoid Satan's counterfeits.
Because our sin nature is genetic, and because the first sin was motivated by works, we can't get rid of this cockroach of "works" until we die. So all we can do is keep fumigating it with the Word. Adam sinned by choosing the woman over God. Everyone knows that. It's even a common quip among Moslems I know. So think: people got substituted as 'god', over God. So it has been, ever since. This is the worst of wrongdoing (Greek word adikia, means specifically abuse of justice): to replace God with people. As the Lord puts it in Matt10:34-39, it's the Word, not works, not people: "machaira" is the word for "sword" in v.34. Read the text in any translation, see for yourself. That message is repeated in various ways throughout the Gospels and in the rest of the NT (i.e., the excuses like I gotta bury my father, and the sanctified sarcasm in the Greek of Heb6:11-12).
Not until we die, will we be rid of this infesting blasphemy. We don't need each other, we each need God. To the extent we don't adjust to our true Need of Him, we can't adjust to anything, period. It's all in vain. God pursues us with Love, says Jas4:5 (updating Ps23:6). But we pursue doggone near everything else. It's in the genes.
It's really hard to determine who are the bigger criminals: the ones we find engaged in gross/lewd activities, or the self-righteous ones who beat you to death with how good THEY are and how much you owe them. These latter probably drive many people to commit crime, just to have an outlet away from their do-goodism. Makes one never want to watch TV anymore, that's for sure.
The Greek is so final and strident it blows you away. Perfect participle in Heb10:10 leads that point, then Heb10:14 bookends that participle, using the indicative perfect active of teleiow, to COMPLETE -- notice when it was completed, and for all time -- ON The Cross. So what bleeping works can you do? Sheesh. Talk about spitting on the Cross, Heb5:11-6:6! Do you see what a blasphemy it is to claim spirituality by works? That's saying the Cross is not enough! But the Bible says that you are Holy For All Time -- back then, on the Cross! It's a main subtheme and warning in the Book of Hebrews (theme started in 2:1), NO WORKS. Not to get saved, and not after salvation, either. See also Romans 6, to which the writer is alluding. Man, Christians sure do not know their Bible, even in translation! God works. God works the Word in you. The Word works. There are thus no works from you. You are damaged goods, still in this body. Don't substitute works for the Word, because only the Word in you can accomplish any works. All the NT stridently advances this message, but it's clearest in translation, in Hebrews and Ephesians.
Consequently, Holy Spirit deftly interrupts the writer in Heb10:15 to testify, HIMSELF -- a rare 'appearance', and hence a rare construction, effective present tense of martureo -- to explain that as a RESULT of His Perfect Work, we can GET the Word in us to the FULL level promised, and on which the OT people will depend FOREVER: an awesome point, which closes at the end of Chapter 11 with the phrase (Heb11:40, always mistranslated): "apart from us, they will not be completed". The aorist subjunctive of teleiow means God purposes it that way. Attic kreitton, usu. translated "something better" in the verse, is the new covenant in Christ, and is also yet another threaded theme -- explaining WHY the change from OT spirituality to NT spirituality. Because they only had part of the Word in writing, they had to make do with body mnemonics. Well, the Body Hung on the Cross so we don't have that system, but Christ's Thinking is full. So they won't be fulfilled until we are, Heb11:40. Because, we are already holy. So now it's a question of developing that function.
Again: if you weren't already perfect in Christ, you couldn't even be eligible to be built in the Word. Romans 8 has the same theme, elaborates on the process more in context of Rom7 backsliding (explaining why that happens, that the process is a zig zag fight as you are learning the Word, which Paul likens to pregnancy in the last half of Rom8).
Repeating: we couldn't even GET the Word in us, if we weren't already as Righteous as God Himself. The OT people got God's Righteousness at salvation also (see Gen15:6 and like passages), which is the only reason why they could get the Word in them. This is the Central Promise of Bible, and it goes all the way back to the Fall. Because the Word became Flesh and Became the Word of the Cross, the Word of God is Alive and Powerful (Heb4:12) so can do its surgery in our souls. That's what Book of Hebrews is all about, the fulfillment of that Garden (post-fall) promise, "and He will crush his head." By His Head in our heads, the 'head' wound of sin, gets crushed forever. Trick is to get as much of that Word in our heads before we die, as possible, living on it. So to be happy, not so to be work-y. Gotta BECOME something, not do something. That's why John uses terew in 1Jn2:5, referring back to Gen3:15 (in LXX, which also uses terew). By cherishing the Word, you crush the old thinking. One Head replacing another head, thus you overcome the devil himself. Just like Christ did.
Learn Bible to learn God because you want to know Him personally. Else, forget it. All else will only produce a lot of wood, hay, stubble, and a life of frustration. The whole reason why we have a Bible is to have an increasing intimate relationship with God. So, we have his thinking in writing. It's not there for another reason, per Heb10:15-17.
It's positively incredible to me that Judaism is so blind to the prophecies and markers of Messiah, to the real meaning of the Law. But I remember when I thought just as they did. Difference was, I wanted to know God. Life didn't seem worth living if I couldn't know Him: life is otherwise too weak, too fragile, too treacherous. So my wanting to know Him didn't make me better.. but happier. So the Christian is as blind as the Jew was (any Jew who believes in Christ is just as much Christian as anyone else) -- and the only way out for him, is to Want To Know God. Because, life really isn't worth living, else. What good are all those religious things, even if you do them well? So what if people think you are a great believer; so what if they think you are not? Whoopee. That and a quarter might buy you a stale doughnut. I was lucky: by age 10 I knew human opinion was worthless, hypocritical, petty, fragile. Many people don't get to learn that until they are much older, and are soooo invested with the need for human approbation. Even so, think: what's the point of being here? We DIE, k?
See, the reason to even be saved is to be WITH God. Not to be good. Not to preen in front of a mirror. So the promise was from Gen3:15 onward, to GET the Word in your hearts and minds. So you could be with God IN your heart and mind. Every prophet looked forward to it; the Holy of Holies signified the Arrival of the Word Our Savior Whose Words would be in His Heart and Mind so they could be transferred to Our Hearts and Minds. Jeremiah promised that we'd not miss the Ark, because we'd be getting the Living Ark instead. Writer of Hebrews makes wordplay of this in Hebrews 6:15ff, then building to a crescendo with a bookended section between Heb8:8-Heb10:17. Paul makes it the theme of 1Cor (always mistranslated), starting with 1Cor1:5's witty His Word in your words. All of Ephesians is dedicated to how this Word gets built in us. 1Jn is entirely built around this theme, as well. Word Not Works. Only The Word Works.
James made that his theme, too, in Jas1:1-2:26, always mistranslated. But then, translators still scratch their heads over Jas4:5, not recognizing 1st-year-Greek-geek stuff, like
Oh: James 4:5 in corrected translation should go something like this: "Or do you think that Scripture VAINLY [very witty wordplay, jealousy is a vanity, an emptied cup] speaks against jealousy, when it says the Spirit Who Indwells us pursues us with love?" James refers to one of the best-known of those verses, Ps23:6. Idea that since the Lord's tov and chesed will pursue you all the days of your life, you don't need anything else (He's shepherding you); so you don't need to be jealous of others, either.
Because there are a bizillion passages using that 'jealous' anthropopathism in the OT, James is alluding to them too -- as a warning. For the analogy was Husband-Bride, Lord-Israel; but now, Lord-Church, since Vashti had refused Him during His First Advent. ["pursues us with love" is epipothew, and you can prove that meaning all over the OT. The phrase is how my pastor translated it, and you can see it also in Thayer's lexicon. In short, there's no excuse to mistranslate this verse. Even less than none, to leave it maligning for centuries. Everyone knows it as a "problem" verse. What's the problem, is their blindness. Due to, works. Poor guy who first mistranslated it was probably exhausted, translating by candlelight or something. Very easy to make mistakes, no problem. Yet no one wants to admit it was a mistake. Like those dippy guys caught committing online child molestation (NBC's "Dateline" sting which aired in the US on 12/16/05).. the translators make the same kind of excuses when caught molesting the Word -- they just call Jas4:5 a "problem" verse. For centuries. Yeah, blame the Word, you're the innocent ones. Sheesh: how embarrassing. We are all pawns for Satan&Co., if our Bible workers are, huh. For works leads to pride leads to coverups, and they are just as immoral -- no, more immoral -- than the worst child molester. For look how the Holy Spirit is maligned century after century!]
Of course, James 4:5 is the perfect description of what happens when works are said to be spiritual. Everyone gets jealous, and then the jealousy clauses of punishment in the OT have to play out. For God is being replaced by the works, so the first commandment works people obey, is .. idolatry.
Notice how these are always lies against the Bible: and they are spun, to justify invasion of privacy. You can't grow up spiritually, if other people have a right to stick their nose in your business, have a right to judge you. Hence the Bible Is Not About Body Stuff, But About Thinking -- which no one can see. So you have privacy. Hence, in the satanic herding spin of false teaching, more and more behaviors can be thus 'spun'; and over time the teaching takes on cult-like tyrannical characteristics. The prolife crusade is cultic in nature, and derives in fact from the mother-goddess pagan cults of ancient Greece (and elsewhere): look up "Traducianism" and "reincarnation" on the net, if you want to know the real origin of the life-in-the-womb lie. So prolifers lie against the Bible like you can't believe. Under the Banner of Heaven and similar how-did-they-go-wrong cult histories, will be perhaps helpful, to read. It's a long, slow slide downward. It doesn't happen overnight. So again, it's not the mistakes which matter but the prolonged failure to correct them. Here, for 20 centuries...
Pride motives always need gratification. Grace motives, never do. With the latter, the benefit is perceived up-front, so the 'good deed' is an expression of gratitude, a response. By contrast, pride does a thing to get something it feels it lacks, but 'deserves'. So, this pride motive will come out in a teaching which stresses works as evidence of faith, evidence of being 'righteous'; as a result, people think they earn something from God, for these things. So you'll see a lot of competition among people who think like this. For anything satanic, always leads to fights. Holy Spirit is of peace, not fighting. Satan's doctrines mimic the Spirit's 'peace', wearing it like mask: but it can't stay hidden, long. Spend just an hour inside a 'Christian' chat channel, if you doubt this.
Again, the one motivated by Word, is motivated by IT. The one motivated by works, is motivated by them. The one motivated by Word, doesn't price what he does; the one motivated by works, oh how he PRICES what he does! Love never prices anything. Hatred, always does. So the legalist bristles with pride if he thinks he did good deeds; but hatred, if he thinks he didn't get the proper credit for his good deeds. You see it all the time. So those good deeds are "dead works" (subtheme running in Hebrews).
Enter the satanic role of PUBLICITY. By publicizing a thing, it herds people into CONFORMITY. Whether they want to go along, or not. Fear, the heart of the religious motive (see Genesis 3), cuts out reason (see 1Jn4ff on fear). So you forget meanings you might normally know, and get religious. Just as it would be really hard to walk out the door naked (for fear of what people would think), it's really hard to go against any public idea. So, if it were accepted that everyone should walk out the door naked, it would be equally as hard, to walk out clothed.
So over 90% of Christians today are going along with that big, centuries-old lie that works are spiritual. No wonder the US is in trouble. No one else to blame for it, per Lev26 and Deut28, Romans 2-4, 9-12 and Galatians, Hebrews 10:18ff. But of course those NT passages are strategically mistranslated. So you can go right on fooling yourself that works are spiritual. Truncation, baby. Truncating your spiritual life into wood, hay, stubble!
It's astonishing how much crime of every kind is middle-class. It's astonishing, what empty lives people lead. Turn on the TV any time day or night, and you see pettiness and frustration on parade among families. Everyone sniping at each other. So no wonder child pornography and other heinous crimes go on, especially among the middle-class. But also the upper class. And, the lower class. It's always been like this. SPQR made fun of people who engaged in pederasty, made jokes and dramas about it, the thing was so widespread. When you are frustrated, you seek an outlet, and if your family is sniping at you -- you turn to perverse stuff. It has ever been thus. No excuse on anyone's part, but again -- if you would have the world be moral, get the Word in you by living in God's System. God can catch criminals, you know. But since no one is voting for Him, but instead for Satan's religious tyranny, well.. God must stand off.
Stress on BODY stuff is idolatry. God has no body: "God is Spirit" verse (John 4:24, see also 1Cor2). Hundreds of references to The Spirit as Instructor, especially in David and the prophets. If you aren't online with the Spirit, you're in a state of idolatry. Bible calls this "adikia" in Greek, and in the OT it was a term for a defiled TEMPLE, unclean. 1Jn1:9 uses the same term, since your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, as part of the Body of Christ. You won't see its specialized meaning in the English, which is usually translated "wrongdoing" or "unrighteousness". A better word would be "defiled", given its use in Bible. So: search the word in the LXX and the NT inspired Greek texts. The Holy Spirit filling you has never been a felt thing, but a KNOWING thing. Not even in the OT. Your emotional reaction is to the knowing. The ecstatics of Saul etc. were emotional reactions, not something the Holy Spirit ever produces. God never promotes any kind of uncontrollable urge. That's coming from your sin nature, your body being stimulated.. or from Satan&Co. Period.
So stress on feely stuff is a type of stress on BODY stuff. So, one can be trapped by a quite-genuine yearning for contact with God. However, as we saw in Meaning #1, 'contact' with God is through His Word, and specifically, through a pastor teaching His Word. So all else, is idolatry. The feely kind you see today has been going on since Gen6, and is of the same type. That's how Greek phallicism got to be popular: demons can make you feel anything, and will. They did it then, they're doing it now, and the evidence is so patently the same as the Greco-Roman type, it's a wonder how no one catches on. But it's hard to catch on, when you're feeling soooo good. This feely thingy is a satanic signature of burlesque. It has seven characteristics, and you can both Biblically and empirically today prove each one. SatStrat.htm, the "Appendix" of the "Thinking Series", goes into huge detail with examples you yourself can test. So does Caveat #3 (its link is near top of Home Page).
Any translation of Matt4 proves Trinity: Satan wouldn't tempt the Lord to use His Divinity, were He not Divine (can't tempt someone to do what he can't do); Satan wouldn't tempt the Lord to sin and thus lose the power of the Spirit, were there no Spirit; Satan wouldn't tempt the Lord to disobey Father and thus lose that way -- if there WERE no Father. Sheer logic would tell you salvation is a sham apart from THREE Persons: One to JUDGE sins, One to be the Mediator and RECEIVE Sins in His Humanity; One to EMPOWER that Humanity, so that the Humanity, is not using His Own Divinity. Juridical Independence, without which the whole Bible is just a paperweight.
God loves Righteousness and Justice, i.e., Ps89:14-15. So this issue of Juridical Independence comes from Love, not from need. We need justice, so independence is to protect from threats of misuse. But were we all perfect, we'd still want to have the same structures, as a kind of CELEBRATION of their meaning. That's how it is in God: His assiduous application of Justice to Himself is a celebration, not a restriction! We really sell the Trinity short by making them out to 'need' to be or do things, as if they had no alternatives, sheesh. God Is Omnipotent. So He's never forced to do anything. He does it, because He wants to. So you can kiss good-bye all that angst over your not being good enough for Him. If that was ever going to be a problem, you'd never have been born.
Because we always cast God too 'small' -- in our own likeness, rather than in HIS Own -- the historical definition of "Trinity" is wrong, too: see DueDisclosure.htm. Why is it that man always has to chop God down? Nearly every Trinity definition you'll see says God HAS to be "One" or He's not God. That's not true: if they could not separate from Each Other and stay God, they would not be "God", to begin with. God is by Nature, Infinitely Free and Independent. 2Cor13:14 proves all this, by its three monadic articles. They don't want to be God, apart from Each Other, as that verse also shows; but not want, isn't "can't", get it? So it's sheer blasphemy, to claim They 'can't' be God, alone and separate; not to mention, stupid. Sheesh. Sorry, but the "Trinity" creedal definition really bugged me when I first knowingly believed in Christ, my first year in college. I remember sitting for hours outside the college cafeteria with this long-haired hippy who kept on telling me "God" was three-in-one, like.. an egg. Three parts, inseparable. At first I was thrilled with the analogy, but.. then that means God is not 'whole' on His Own? I knew God was Three Persons, so just kept on going, vaguely dissatisfied. Now I know better. The Catholic and Westminster definitions of God being this Hydra-headed thing which would be 'diminished' if not "One" is daft and blasphemous. They Have The Same Identical, Infinite Nature, but that doesn't mean they are joined at the hip, k?
John 1 is written in OT style, picking OT buzzwords for God very carefully and systematically; the Greek words are sometimes chosen to sound like the Hebrew keywords for God, (i.e., using Exo3:14's "ho own" LXX moniker for God, to denote Christ). ["Ho own" sounds two-syllable breathy, like "YahWeh"; and in Greek, has the same doubling-verb structure.] So, it's deliberately written Christ was God and became flesh: that's what YHWH means (YH, always-was, WH, becomes). Hebrew concatenation of the very ancient verb "hawah" (becomes) in the last two consonants, with "hayah", IS (timeless) being the YH. Lexicons cover the two verbs enough so that anyone can see this. Not to mention, Matt4 temptations: Christ can't be tempted to use His Deity if He's not God. Then there's the verse Christ spoke "before Abraham was, I AM", the "I AM" being the most famous signature of God in the OT (again, synonymal to YHWH). Blatant stuff like that.
So anyone who claims that even for a nanosecond Christ wasn't God, isn't reading Bible. All salvation doctrines are about the Mediatorship of Christ as God-man. MEDIATOR means dual-natured -- else, there's no way to mediate, so no salvation could have been bought on the Cross. Mediator Must be Equal to Both Parties in the Mediation, or there IS no mediation: this is what Redeemer means, "Immanuel" means. Again, rather blatant. Of course, some dingdongs therefore contend that if God-Man nature, then somehow "God" paid for sins. Think, willya? The one owing payment, is mankind; so the Payor, is human. OT's matching rules on restitution and payment are so clear, the italicized claim is impossible to justify. Nature matched to nature: hand for hand, eye for eye. So Godness was unaffected. Which, one should already know, since being God, Nothing Dents His Divine Nature. Oh well.
Unfortunately, there's always been a goofy idea like Christ was not Divine, which just keeps replicating like mold, through the centuries. Read Gibbon's 1776 tome on the decline of the Roman empire: in Justinian's day (Byzantine Empire), people who all spoke Greek so could at least still read the blatant parts of Bible -- yet Circus Maximus still divided their chariot competitions over whether Christ was Divine, and then slaughtered each other when the 'wrong' team won. But worse, can you imagine -- Constantine (a Greek, ok) had to convene several Councils of religious experts (!) to figure out whether it was true?! What's to figure out? 2Cor13:14 is clear, with its THREE EQUATING yet SEPARATING monadic articles every Greek could then read! So this goofy idea of Christ somehow 'becoming' God after He paid, or 'emptying' Himself of Divinity to become human, is realllllyyyyy old. Which gives the goofiness the patina of respectability, by now.
Because we now have easy access to the original-language texts, it's much easier now to prove those old errors, as errors: unless, you don't read them. Unless, you just stick to some denominational kant, which of course, most do. Sorry: a pastor who won't read the original-language texts, either shouldn't be teaching, or should himself get under some other pastor who does read them. There's no excuse not to know Christ was always and will always, be God. Not even, from translation, frankly.
It's true that to deny His Divinity is blasphemy, but if you can't or don't read Bible, you won't understand He's Divine. The Hypostatic Union is routinely confused, though again that's only due to not reading Bible with your spiritual brains on, 1Jn1:9 breathed. Will is the essence of Personhood. So, One Person, thus One Will. But those councils back in Constantine's day, (and chatrooms now) just can't handle it. Somehow 'magically' Christ is both natures yet one Person? What's so 'magic' about it? Why do people think His will would be compromised, by two natures? Is my hand compromised by the fact I have another hand? Just because He knew He was God, didn't mean His Humanity tapped that nature to serve His Humanity (i.e., Omniscience, which is what throws people). In fact, it's like avoiding temptation (which is what Satan was trying to slip past Him) -- you don't use something you can use. I can avoid using my other hand... Oh well. If someone just reads Matt4, he'll understand what the Hypostatic Union is. Guess few ever read it, lol.
Egregious mistranslation of Greek verb "kenoo" in Phili2:7 as "emptied" is often a cause of confusion. No translation gets it right. So God is maligned -- typical satanic involvement. God is not a vase of liquid that gets poured out, ok? It's a figurative usage, clearly. But goofy Christians treat it as literal. How the blazes does God empty Himself, or stop being God? The word "God" then is not God, but some (rather stupid) supercreature. Brains are really out! Phili2:5-10 tells you how to translate kenoo, as not using something you have or are.. in that passage, like clothes you don't wear. You still have the clothing. You don't use all of what you are, but you still are all of what you are. No mystery or magic, in that. Of course, the implications are horrific -- since He did not stop being God, how could He stand to NOT use His Deity?
Look: as a human you have a bunch of knowledge available to you, but you don't use it all. In fact, what you don't want to remember, you deep-six into your subconscious (called "defense mechanism" in psychology). So: you can prevent something coming to mind you don't want to think, as well. Satan was trying to tempt Christ to look at His Deity and USE His Deity. But He'd had so much practice NOT looking, even the hunger temptation didn't work (which was aimed to bypass the will, using the biology of hunger imaging). [When very very hungry, the brain beeps with pictures of food, or imaginings of making food, smells, etc. Satan was trying to tap that via power of suggestion: so the image of MAKING bread from stones, would have bypassed His Will and TAPPED Deity directly. But the Lord was SO focused on Father, even that impossible-to-miss temptation, missed. No wonder Satan was so flummoxed, afterwards.]
So you can't hide from the world, and you can't judge others, and doggone it, you can't tell who is a false teacher, unless you yourself were a teacher yourself! So what to do? LOL, ask God where you belong, and He'll show you; every country has a few good teachers, and if you ASK HIM, you'll be lead to your own. Then, just sit under that pastor and study, not worrying about the cacaphony of popular falsehood.
