15. Class 15 – Visions of the Kingdom Age by Jim Dillingham 2014

15. Class 15 – Visions of the Kingdom Age by Jim Dillingham

This is the 15th class in the Visions of the Kingdom age series presented for the Cranston, Rhode Island adult Sunday School.

In our previous class we considered the flesh and bone structure of the immortalised saints, as opposed to a flesh and blood structure. Additionally the spiritual flesh and bone bodies will not be subject to the previous limitations of space, time, energy and matter. Energy depletion and decay, tiredness, ageing, these limitations are not going to be features of an immortalised body.

We read in Rev 4 starting at v8. And the four beasts had each of them 6 wings about him; and they were full of eyes within; and they rest not day and night, saying holy, holy, holy; lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come. And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, rest not day and night.

Now we know these four living creatures represent the redeemed due to their testimony in Ch 5, where we read, And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song saying Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation and hast made us, unto our God, kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth.

Therefore we know these living creatures and the 24 elders that “rest not day or night,” are a representation of the immortalised saints. The immortalised saints will not need to rest. There will be no fading energies, no energy loss.

We can see more of the features of immortality in Isa 49, starting at v 8. Thus saith the Lord, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, And in a day of salvation have I helped thee: And I will preserve thee and give thee for a covenant to the people, To established the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages; That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to the that are in darkness, shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places.They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them.

The saints are invited to escape the darkness of mortality and the grave, to waken out of the darkness of sleep to the light of God’s glory, being clothed with his nature. We read in Col 1 starting at v 12. Giving thanks unto the Father, which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who has delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son.

Light without darkness is the end plan. The beginning of Rev 22 is a glimpse into the period beyond the millennial kingdom when there is no more curse at all. Not just a rest from the curse as there is during the millennial kingdom but an absolute end of the curse. We have this exclusive light and no darkness in Rev 22, picking up at v 3. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him; And they shall see his face; And his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; And they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

In addition to the elimination of any dependence on food and drink, no dehydration or malnutrition, their is no danger to sun exposure, nor possibility of skin cancer or sunburns, no need for air conditioning or sun-block. This unflagging, unfading energy, that never needs replenishment is a feature of the divine nature that is expressed by Isa in Ch 40, and beginning at v 28.

Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard? That the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth faints not, neither is weary. There is no searching of his understanding. He gives power to the faint, and to them that hath no light, he increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon Yahweh shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faith.

There will be no draining of energies. When we have been at our best, when we have felt good, energetic. When we are healthy, have had a good night’s sleep, are enthusiastic about our day. With no stress, if some of us can even remember such a time, when we know that we are loved and have the respect and support of others, it’s a wonderful feeling. Energy and health, being loved, serve as great fuel for happiness. This doesn’t even compare to the happiness that comes from an energy that never fades, never needs replenishment. A health that is never subject to disease, or pain, or tears. A love from God that is no longer shielded and subtle. Paul tells us in 1 Cor 2:9 that, Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for those who love him. Or as it reads from the original in Isa 64, starting at v 3-4, it says, For those who wait for him.

That energy drain, that energy decay we currently suffer, is a feature of our current sin-cursed nature, that righteous judgment imposed in Eden for introducing sin, into the Creators’s previously “very good” creative order. That principle of decay, inescapably defines our current natural order. Everything decays, without exception. This is one of the plainly observable features to every level of intelligent life, that completely eliminates any possibility of respecting the theory of evolution which is dependent on the opposite principle, of everything always improving over time. A premise that is contradicted without exception every day, every year, every century, every millennium in recorded history.

Within that crushing principle of decay, there is also the principle of temporary renewal, defined as rest. There is more to this principle of rest than just hope, the hope of awakening with renewed energy. This principle of rest is actually the foundational purpose for creation, hinted at in that 7th day of the creative process, but that is a large subject that we will deal with in future considerations.

The nature of immortality does not require rest or renewal as we understand rest. In fact sleep would be rather contradictory to the nature of immortality as that refreshing awakening from sleep is expressed throughout Scripture as a creational prophecy of the resurrection to mortality that precedes judgment. Death is endlessly defined as sleeping throughout Scriptural expressions, due to the temporary nature of death for those who are accountable to divine judgment. Since the immortalised saints will never need another resurrection, and certainly not reversing back to mortality and will never have the capacity to experience death again, well there can be no possibility, the immortalised saints will be projecting that death and resurrection to mortality shadow, through the process of sleep and awakening, as we do now, every night and day. That is just another confirmation of the understanding that immortal nature does not need renewal. There will be no fading or decaying energies, no rest, or sleep, and certainly no decay.

With the transition into immortality, there is a reversal of the focus of suffering due to the curse of sin and death. Isaiah prophecies of the work of the Messiah both during his initial ministry, and following his return, that planting and then harvesting, the early and then the latter rains of the word of God made flesh.

There is the language of reversal in Isa 61 starting at v1. The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh that he might be glorified.

The sorrows will end, the tears will stop. This elimination of sorrows is one of the blessings of those who will be covered with the nature of God, clothed with the tabernacles made without hands in heaven so that we will no longer be naked before our Creator. Rev Ch 7 beginning at v 16 tells us more about the immortality nature, it says, They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat, for the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

Rev 21 describes the post-millennial kingdom period when that kingdom is over, when God is all and in all, when there are no more nations, no more sin, no more death. In vv 3 and 4 we read, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. For the former things are passed away.

These are the things related to the curse, the suffering for sin. Both sin-nature and our sinful transgressions. Tears, along with everything else that issues from man’s body are unclean. What comes out of a man in our current sin-cursed nature is unacceptable and should never be taken into the body again. Tears are salt water, bodily wastes, exhaled breath which is carbon dioxide, blood, fluids from a wound, there is just nothing that can come out of a man that could be considered divinely clean, or positive. This is just another in an endless list of how the features of creation perfectly mirror divine principles.

However, I think may have noted in the past, that’s there is an exception to this rule when it comes to a woman, mother’s milk, that one exception, for the nurturing and sustaining of a new life. In the curse of the woman in Eden, there was also the seed of hope, that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent. In this sense there is an exception for the woman from the rule of unrelenting uncleanness that issues from the bodies of cursed mankind, there is a sign of hope within the physical frame-work of our condemnation.

The one thing that comes out of the body of a woman that is clean is mother’s milk, directly related to nurturing new life. Like when Paul says to Timothy about the ritual of sisters’ silence, where he concludes with this statement that, Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in child-bearing. Despite the requirement for sisters’ silence in the ecclesial environment in order to validate our Creator’s righteousness in relation to both the creative order of man before woman and then the gender judgments in Eden, that the female gender would be saved through child-bearing.

Now initially this is seen in the promise of the seed, that the seed that would crush the serpent’s head would be the seed of the woman, thereby prophesying of the virgin birth, as the Messiah would not come by man, but would come by woman. The woman is “saved in child-bearing.” Additionally we see this validation in the physical law of the female gender being the exclusive avenue for anything divinely and naturally clean issuing from a human body. Under divine law, in the 1st kingdom of God on earth, there was the law of issues, a bodily issue, such as a bleeding ulcer or an open wound. These things brought about a condition of ritual uncleanness, divine unacceptability of a physical nature that had to be addressed.

There was a procedure to follow to regain one’s positive standing before God, after a bodily issue was healed. It involved a sin offering. The negative things that issue from the mortal bodies of men are related to the curse of sin and death, not pollution, which is a highly unscientific and pathetically desperate and egotistical attempt to eliminate our Creator from our divinely imposed natural order. Tears are one of those unclean things that issue from our bodies. It is highly appropriate that the flesh and bone bodies, clothed with immortality, and no longer suffering under the curse of sin and death will no longer have tears, or any other divinely unacceptable issue coming out of those bodies.

There will be no blood. These immortal bodies will no longer take in good air and corrupt it, taking good air and convert it into something unclean. There will be no infections or open sores, or decaying or weak parts of the body. No eyes that can’t see, or poor hearing, or tired and sore limbs, no arthritis, no asthma, the effects of sin will be eliminated in these bodies as they will be covered, atoned, completely with our citizenship from heaven, those mansions prepared for us by our Messiah and brought to us upon his return as he promised in John 14. These tabernacles made in heaven without hands, with which we are clothed so that we might no longer be naked before God, Paul says in 2 Cor 5.

There will be both the divine image, and the divine likeness, it is both physical and spiritual, earth and heaven. These 2 issues are bound together harmoniously. Therefore tears, and all the currently natural but unclean expulsions of a mortal body will have to be eliminated. Isaiah 25:8, He will swallow up death in victory, and and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces.

With the elimination of sin, as well as the effects of sin, this automatically also eliminates the very capacity to contradict our Creator’s righteousness. In other words, immortality eliminates the capacity to sin. Remember, this is the comprehensive definition of sin, That all unrighteousness is sin, 1 Jn 5:17, a verse I highly recommend you put to memory. Anything that does not qualify as divinely “right” in any sense, does qualify as sin, however there are both “guilty” and “guilt-free” categories of sin. The capacity for both are eliminated in the process of immortalisation. This is an extremely significant understanding, as popular Christianity along with the paganism from which apostate Christianity was spawned, contradicts this understanding, thereby highly insulting our Heavenly Father. Now it is claimed that immortals can sin, like the Egyptian God of evil, Anubis, the Greek God, Hades, the Roman God, Pluto, India’s Kali, and on and on and on. Gods generated from the self-worshipping imagination of the sons of men. Christianity has its Satan, or Lucifer, or the devil, supposedly, a rebellious, immortal angel. The very concept of an immortal having the capacity to sin against the Creator is an incredibly insulting claim against Yahweh. It is just another result of the serpent-lie, that sin does not really result in death, that we can sin without dying. Or as the serpent told eve, You shall not truly die. Just because you do exactly what God told you not to do. We are told specifically that, The wages of sin is death. Yet immortals cannot die, I mean this is the very definition of immortality, the incapacity to die. Jesus specifically tells us that angels cannot die in Luke 20:36, when he is answering that silly question from the Sadducees. Since angels cannot die, then by the eternal truths and principles of the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who never had a beginning and will never have an end, angels, immortal angels, do not have the capacity to sin. If they could sin, then they would have to die, which they cannot do, unless we want to contradict Jesus Christ.

I realise that we have some silly English mistranslations, intentional mistranslations, in the original Greek New Testament, that claim angels do sin, like 2 Pet 2:4 where it says, God spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment. Now I will assume that we are all aware that this is referring to the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and Abiram in the wilderness, and the Greek term angelos can be translated as either, messenger, or angel, and that this is intentionally mistranslated by the Christian translators in such a way as to prop up their divinely insulting and personally glorifying doctrines. This is a basic 1st principles’ lesson we learn as teenagers in Sunday School, or CYC, or at least the early stages of learning the Truth. The word angelos is used to define the messenger status of John the Baptist and his disciples who certainly weren’t immortal angels. This is also true of the Hebrew word Malach, that can refer to angels or just messengers, as that is the last book of the Old Testament as identified by the prophet Malachi, which means “my messenger,” but can be translated, angel.

The eternal control principle of the features of reality is the righteousness of our Creator. Only what is divinely “right” is forever. Whatever contradicts that divine right-ness that divine righteousness, has to end, it has to die. Therefore physical, moral and doctrinal contradictions to our Creator’s righteousness, will have to end. There is no possible way that sin, the contradictions of our Creator’s righteousness, can be forever. An immortal life will not have the capacity to sin. Not in “image’ and not in “likeness.”

The control factor is not simply that the blind will see, and the deaf will hear, and the lame will walk, because, won’t that be nice? The primary issue is that these conditions are not “right.” Broken and inoperative was not the original creation template. Therefore they cannot stay that way forever. Broken and inoperative would not be eternally “right.” That understanding that immortal nature has the capacity to both sin and be misshapen and crippled or diseased, would also declare our Creator’s nature to be unclean due to that presumed sin-generating capacity. That presumption of immortality being just as unclean in nature as mortality, is quite insulting to Yahweh. Mortality, dying sin-nature is inherently unclean, but capable of righteousness, of demonstrating the Creator’s right-ness in our lives.

Immortality is a divinely clean nature of exclusive righteousness, completely incapable of sin. As we have always maintained, false understandings about our Heavenly Father’s truths and principles, His righteousness, will always be degrading to him and inappropriately self-glorifying to those who promote false understandings about our Creator’s righteousness.

We really need to understand that everything is about harmony, but definitely not mere unity. Our society worships diversity and encourages not simply the toleration of diversity but a great respect for diversity, as if diversity is right, and therefore truth is never absolute, but variable. That truth is in the eye of the beholder. They reverse death from being the Creator’s judgment for sin into a glorious new beginning, that death is the wonderful portal to an immediate, and a far greater life. They exalt mortality.

Even the enlightened community is seduced into pursuing mere unity as opposed to harmony, through the toleration of diversity. By presuming the social benefits of brotherhood unity among fellowships as being far more important than harmony with God and Christ. That just getting along nicely and not highlighting ungodliness in others, is actually the greatest form of righteousness. Harmony, the ultimate divine goal cannot be achieved without cutting away. The absolute proof of this is the last stage of the creation plan. At the conclusion of the millennial kingdom after that 3rd and last immortalisation, all flesh is cut away in circumcision-like fashion in that 8th divine day, after the millennial kingdom.

We only read about this period in a few places in scripture as it addresses issues that our minds have a very hard time understanding, such as the nature of infinity. However our paradigm for our entire mortal life has been finiteness, decay, maturing, beginnings and endings. We read in 1 Cor 15 starting at v 24, Then cometh the end when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power, for he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet, but when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifested he is excepted which had put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.

The last enemy is death. This is proof positive that death was not part of the original creation stage for which God declared everything to be “very good.” Death, the last enemy to be eliminated was not the creation of God but the judgment of God for mankind corrupting his creation project. Not unforeseen, of course, certainly expected, but death was a justified judgment, not part of the original creation model. That original pre-sin creation model was divinely approved with the creators declaration that everything was “very good.”

There is no possible way that last enemy to be eliminated in the plan of God, death, could have been part of what our Creator declared to be “very good.” That false presumption would be highly insulting to our Creator. Therefore any respect for evolution, or theistic evolution, is quite insulting to God as it presumes death preceded sin, and that the Creator’s declaration that everything he had commanded into existence and into place qualifying as “very good,” somehow included that last enemy to the divine plan, death. That would be completely ludicrous.

So along with death, all that is finite is cut away in that 8th day, facilitating complete harmony with the Creator, not unity based on the toleration of diversity. Unity is a fleshly goal of the human heart. Harmony is the goal of a spirit-centred mind that has circumcised its heart, rejecting the common goals of the flesh, and pursuing the unique goal of our creator. Unity and harmony are as completely separate as serpent- minded and spirit-minded.

Now these understandings of unity as opposed to harmony, and the concept of sinful-immortality these are absolutely opposite perspectives from divine truths.These are the presumptions of human nature, which is driven by the heart-generated thought process. The heart is the throne of that serpent-perspective which is why God says through Jeremiah, that the “heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it.” We should not be deceived by the exhortations of the world to listen to our heart, you’ll never go wrong, go with the first instinct and thought, and you will always be right. That is exactly the opposite of Divine testimony. The scriptural word that projects this principle of harmony is the scriptural word “peace.” The challenge in recognising this divine application of harmony with the term “peace,” is that this is not the instinctive understanding of society, which is, as usual, exactly the opposite from the divinely intended understanding of the word.

The world understands peace to be an absence. God defines “peace” as a ‘presence.’ Societies’ understanding of peace is the absence of disturbance, the absence of aggression, nothing but an absence. The nation is now at war but they are supposedly at peace. That is a false understanding from our Creator’s perspective that is not peace. Peace is not an absence, it is the presence of harmony these are exactly opposite understandings.

Let’s demonstrate this. In Eph 2 picking up at v 11. “Wherefore remember that you being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are allied the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;That at that time ye were without Christ being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances: for to make in himself of Twain one new man, so making peace.”

Two becoming one is peace. It is not two with what the courts define as having irreconcilable differences who remain married together for the sake of the children or financial advantage or whatever, that is unity, that is not peace. Peace is two becoming one, peace is the process of harmony, the divine goal of creation. Let’s not diminish divine principles and pretend that we are perfectly fine with God just because the democratic majority of the Ecclesia agrees with us. The majority is almost never a safe place to be whether inside or outside the enlightened community. There can be no polite accommodations of personal opinions. We either agree with God or we are wrong, because he is always right, 100% of the time no matter what. If is our assignment to understand that “right-ness,” that counter-intuitive “right-ness.” Embrace that righteousness and demonstrate that righteousness in our understandings our speech and our activities.

Peace is highly significant component in scripture. One of our Messiah’s titles is the Prince of Peace. The heavenly host declared to the shepherds when Jesus was born “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men,” in the Luke account. We see peace offering as one of the 6 Christ-altar offerings under the divine laws of the first kingdom age. It was only the burnt and peace offerings that were ever consumed by fire from heaven throughout scripture. The peace offering was the only offering where all 3 parties involved in an offering participated together in fellowship together. God received his portion on the altar, the officiating priest received his portion and even the offerer participated in this fellowship meal with a portion of the offering.

The peace offering was the concluding offering of the nazarite vow term. The previously uncut hair on the hair of the nazarite was shaved off and that hair was placed in the fire of the peace offering along with the bread and the wine, that drink offering and the grain offering. It was after this peace offering concluding the period of that nazarite vow that here she would drink the wine.

God tells us in Hosea that the behavioural expectation to be learned from the peace offering was exercising merciful love. He says: For I desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Now the Hebrew word for sacrifice here is the word zebach which is exclusively used to represent the peace offering and not altar sacrifices in general. The divinely intended behavioural lesson of that peace offering, that harmony offering, not the unity offering, was love. Jesus highlights the significance of this verse in Hos 6:6 by quoting it more than once to the enlightened community of his generation to whom he was commissioned to preach. Jesus wasn’t sent to the world, he was sent to the enlightened community already in a covenant relationship with his father. In other words he was sent to the Christadelphians of his generation.

In Matt 12:7 Jesus said to those who were criticising his disciples who were picking and eating grain on the sabbath. He said, If you had known what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you would not havre condemned the guiltless. He was quoting from Hos 6:6 and highlighting that peace offering and zebach is the Hebrew word specifically identifying the peace offering which can be confirmed if one is willing to look up every one of the 162 times that word is used in the OT.

I have heard some truly terrible explanations of this verse that Jesus quotes from Hos 6 from various speaking brethren in our community over the last 5 decades that I have been in the truth. One particular distortion was at a bible school when the speaking brother explained in a loud trembling voice, that this verse really meant that God wants love instead of killing. That kind kind of false commentary based on instinctive thinking without any research is divinely insulting on several levels. Clearly this brother was unwilling to do the necessary research to realise that the word “sacrifice” did not refer to all altar sacrifices but in addition he horribly minimalised the Christ offerings as nothing more than killing. That wasn’t just inappropriate, that was truly disgusting, to suggest the killing of the sacrificial animals that God had commanded was wrong. God is never wrong. Additionally that interpretation suggests that killing in and of itself is wrong. That too is divinely insulting as God is the one who imposed the death penalty in Eden for sin. It is God’s kingdom laws that imposed an execution judgment for quite a number of issues. God declared that if the priests simply didn’t wash at the laver before approaching the altar or entering the tabernacle, that they would die.

God imposed many death threats for non-compliance with his laws, truths and principles. We confirm the right-ness of our Creator’s judgment of death for sin in Eden when we are buried with out Messiah in the water-grave of baptism. The Israelites validated the right-ness of the Creator’s judgment of death for sin by personally executing each animal sacrifice at the door of the tabernacle with one hand placed on the head of the animal that they were offering.

Now I did write to this brother after that Bible School to address quite a number of mistakes that he made in his addresses, in the hopes of correcting for his own eternal benefit. Sadly no response was ever received. Now I add this note because it is our responsibility to correct an erring brother or sister. The Law of the watchman assigns the guilt of the sinner to the silent watchman, unwilling to sound the warning alarm.

Our society presumes “politeness” is ‘righteousness,’ that we should not highlight the mistakes of others as that would be rude and therefore wrong. That positive reinforcement is the exclusive avenue of maturing education. The problem with that false understanding is that Jesus Christ was often what can easily be defined as rude in his rebukes of others within the enlightened community, as was Paul and Peter and Jude. Jesus publicly declared ecclesial leaders to be hypocrites, liars, sons of the devil and false teachers. Paul defined the Christadelphians at Corinth objecting to the doctrine of the resurrection who were asking what kind of body we are going to have as “fools,” in 1 Cor 15. Peter parallels Christadelphians who turn away from the terms of our Creator’s righteousness, what we call the Truth, to dogs eating their own vomit, and formerly clean pigs, returning to the mire. Politeness does no trump defending God’s righteousness, ever.

Returning to our subject of harmony as opposed to unity being the focus of our Creator’s plan, let us consider that peace offering that Jesus emphasises as important to understand, by recognising there were 3 divisions of that peace offering, the thanksgiving offering, the vow performance offering, and the free-will offering, with a specific descending order of significance, which is determined on the basis of the lessening of restrictions of those 3 divisions. Just as God defined the behavioural response that he expected from the lesson of the peace offering to be merciful love, so there are also 3 great love commandments in scripture, also demonstrating that exact same descending order of significance.

1st is the commandment Jesus highlights as the greatest of all commandments. To love He who shall be our mighty ones with all our heart all our mind all our strength all our life. The previously 2nd great commandment of love was to love our neighbour but only to the degree of self-love. That was dropped to 3rd place by Jesus when at the last supper he added a “new” commandment, commanding that the enlightened community love each other greater than they love themselves which is more love than is required to love one’s neighbour. We see this in Jn 13 as he addresses his disciples at the last supper and he says “A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another as I have loved you. That ye also love one another.”

Let us just stop there for a moment and just make a comment. I have sometimes heard from speakers that this really wasn’t a new commandment. What in the world would possess any of us to contradict Jesus Christ and say poor Jesus was mistaken, I know better. What a horrible mistake. If Jesus says it is a brand new commandment then it is, it is just that we don’t understand how. Well, he explains how. Let us go to Jn 15, still at the last supper where Jesus repeats this command and he says in v 12, This is my commandment that you love one another. You disciples love one another as I have loved you. Greater love hath a man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.

This love for our brothers and sisters is more demanding than the love required for our neighbour which is why Jesus calls it a new commandment and his own personal commandment. He requires the placing aside, out of the way, our own lives in order to benefit our brothers and sisters in Christ. Now the apostle Paul certainly recognised how this commandment was Christ’s personal commandment because that’s how he refers to it in Gal 6:2, Paul says, Bear ye.. you Galatian brothers and sisters, You bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ. Paul also recognises the variance in dedication between the neighbour distinction and our brotherhood distinction in v10 of Gal 6, when he says, As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them that are of the household of faith. This is a feature of the new commandment from Jesus Christ, that we are supposed to love his children, his bride, our brothers and sisters in the truth, greater than we love our neighbours. This was the point of that 3rd judgment parable that Jesus presented to Peter, Andrew, James and John, on the Mt of Olives, just a short while before his death, recorded in Matt 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats and how the rejected goats, goats that we welcome at the Christ-altar, the rejected goats were oblivious to the physical needs and suffering of the least of Christ’s brethren meaning our own brothers and sisters in the truth.

That new love commandment of Jesus corresponds to that 2nd peace offering, that performance of vows. The peace offering was all about harmony, not unity. It was fulfilled in love, not a tolerated unity but harmony. Unity is a goal of the flesh. Harmony is a goal of the spirit. Our goals should never stop at the partial and pitiful stage of mere unity. Psa 34 advises us, Depart from evil, do good, seek peace and pursue it. Our goal is to be peace, which is harmony with the recognition that cutting away is the component of harmony, but not unity. Yahweh will cut away everything that challenges his harmony following the end of the 7,000 year plan.

We have noted many times that divine truths are 3-dimensional, they fit together perfectly in every direction. This is not an easy perspective, it is challenging to look left and right and up and down in front and behind whenever we come to a conclusion concerning our Heavenly Father’s expressions. So how does this observation concerning peace, not mean an absence, but a presence, blend perfectly with every other divine form of communication. As evidence of our fundamental. As evidence of our foundational understanding that divine truths are 3-dimensional and that both forms of divine communication are in perfect agreement, then we should expect to see a confirmation in that 2nd complementary avenue of divine communication, the features of creation, the spoken word of God. As we have noted many times before there are endless number of creational parallels throughout Scripture. One consistent feature of all positive parallels between divine principles and the features of creation is that these features of righteousness are demonstrated in the terms of creation as being real, a presence, and not an absence.

Let’s make some simple observations. Peace should be understood as the presence of harmony, not merely the absence of disturbance which is the far smaller goal of mere unity. Light is defined scripturally as demonstrating the principle of truth. To be enlightened is the qualifying as someone who understands the principle of the true Gospel. Light is a real feature of creation, unlike darkness which has no existence but simply defines an absence of light. Light has substance, light can be measured. Light moves. It is necessary for life. Darkness has no substance whatsoever. It is the scriptural icon of ignorance. As light is a feature of life, darkness is a feature of death and even the creational demonstration of death is sleep.

Unlike light, darkness cannot be created, one can only take away light to achieve what we refer to as darkness. Darkness cannot be measured or produced, darkness is simply an absence. Just like how society degrades the principle of peace into nothing more than an absence of disturbance. Heat is necessary for life. This is when plants grow from spring to late summer. We use heat to disinfect, cook our food, grow our gardens, temper our metals. We can create measure and harness heat. Heat is real, however cold is not real. Cold, also indicative of death, has no real existence, it serves only as a definition of the absence of heat. At the very foundational understanding for the science of refrigeration is that we cannot create cold, we can only remove heat. This how refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners work, they simply remove heat because it is impossible to create cold. Cold has no real existence, it is merely an absence.

Life is real. A husband and wife can create a new life, we measure life, we harness life, but death has no real existence, except as the removal of life. We cannot create death, we can only remove life. Peace falls into this same divine template. Peace is real, it is not simply an absence like the world presumes, the absence of war, the absence of aggression, the absence of disturbance. This highly minimalised presumption inappropriately promotes unity to be the highest goal and not harmony. Again the divine concept of peace is actually the presence of harmony. This is the divine perspective, exactly the complete opposite of the common societal perspective, the serpent mentality of peace being and absence, and this is the difference between unity and harmony. Unity is a goal of the flesh. Harmony is a goal of the Creator.

If we understand peace to be merely the absence of aggression and disturbance, we are maintaining that disturbance, aggression and war is what is real, what is eternal. That would be a complete contradiction to the Creator’s eternal truths and principles. War, aggression, disturbance are going to be cut away, thereby enabling peace, the presence of harmony. When unity on the basis of the toleration of diversity is mistaken for peace then concepts like democracy can actually be respected. However democracy from a divine perspective is evil, because the determination of what is right is always determined by a majority, but any majority of human beings will always be flesh-centred. The principle of democracy presumes that there is no such thing as absolute right-ness, that right is just a malleable presumption that can be constantly redefined according to our own preferences or conveniences or accomodations.

Democracy is a powerful tool of the serpent-perspective for the progressive decline of righteousness and the advance of sinfulness. The entire corporate perspective of mankind is that mortal nature is inherently more right than immortal nature and when looking for this perspective differential, over the last 45 years can see this distorted understanding clearly in the entertainment avenues of novels, TV shows, movies and especially comic books and when I was much much younger, I admit to being a comic book collector, I probably still have over 3500 books in stored boxes somewhere. Comic books are just another version of the human heart’s practice of creating gods in our own image and likeness. For all of the subtle consistency in that entertainment avenue as well as all the others in a dramatic disrespect for divine principles. Mortality is glorified and immortality is always exclusively presented in a negative way, exhibiting cruelty, arrogance, ambivalence, hatred, immorality and weakness.

You may be familiar God-despising idiom, “Absolute power, corrupts absolutely.” Interestingly throughout those entertainment platforms, the mortals always win in the end and the immortals always lose, in those pictorial conflicts between mortal and immortal, that virtually always end up demonstrating how the freedom that comes with mortality is the greatest demonstration of what is “right” in the universe. In fact if we go to Washington DC and take a trolley tour, we will be told about a particular building code in our nation’s capital. The Freedom statue on top of the capital building is the highest point in the city. The Law states that no structure in Washington DC will be allowed to be built that might stand above the Freedom statue because supposedly, nothing is greater than freedom. What a God-despising delusion. Truth is far, far greater than freedom. Actually, we are not truly free in the United States of America. We are not free to steal or kill, or text while driving. However we are free to lie, we are free to kill our enemies on the field of battle. We are free to not fulfil our commitments and declare bankruptcy. We are free to abandon our mother and father to the care and support of the Government in their old age. Complete freedom is nothing more than absolute anarchy. Democracy is an evil development of the serpent-enthroned heart that will be eliminated when Christ becomes King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. In fact, our entire judicial system is built on the absolute degradation of truth. For a couple of 100 years one had to swear by the Bible in a court of law that they would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That very Bible by which they swore demands that they never swear for any reason whatsoever. What incredible hypocrisy.

Additionally it doesn’t matter so much what evidence may determine the truth of a matter, as to how that evidence came to light. Absolute truth can be completely denied exposure to a jury with the guilty being freed and the principle of justice humiliated simply because a suspect was not warned at their arrest, that they didn’t have to tell the truth. Truth is absolutely despised in America and wherever democracy is applied. Democracy is just another form of self-worship, believing we have the right to change what is perceived to be right. That there is no legitimacy to an unchangeable rightness, no absolute right-ness, no absolute truth.

Transcription by Fay Berry 2018