God’s side of the story - as told by Christ

 God disowns liars and haters. He says liars and haters are not His children, they are Satan’s. God only has permanent children. Temporary repentance is just a mark of slavery because slaves are only in the household temporarily. God is looking for true children who permanently cease from sin. Minor relapses are disciplined just as a son or daughter is chastened. That is what Christ came to bring about. True children for God. Children who do not sin. That is the point of Christ coming. That is His ongoing work, having died for sins and risen to live forever. Christ wants it. God wants it. We need it. We need it lest we die in our sins and incur the wrath of God and the lake of fire.  

Scriptures and Bibles

 Scriptures, holy scriptures but not found in the Bible: 

* Tobit - one major early church council made it mandatory to read it in the churches 

* Enoch - Jesus referred to it as scripture, NT quotes it

* Jubilees - along with Enoch, it was widely read and regarded as scripture in the time of Jesus

Remember that at one time books such as Revelation and the epistles of John were not in the Bible and were even banned. Some other genuine Christian cultures have Bibles with many extra books. Could Western Christians actually be in error because their Bibles are too limited so they never get to read important truths?

Nature’s underpinning

A mysterious gospel teaching found in the Book of Enoch is how the name of the Son of Man was intertwined thousands of years ago by angels into the fabric of what holds Nature together, into the very basis of Nature which is called the Oath. An Oath honoured among the angels who govern Nature. Today the authority of the Son of Man’s ‘Name’, the authority of His teachings, His way of living, His noble reputation, underlies all of the natural world. In the Book of Enoch, it explains that this came about because the angels governing Nature needed to shore up, to underpin, to strengthen the way Nature is governed, for which God had made ‘the Oath’ (all most mysterious), and this strengthening was needed because there was a danger of it all being undermined by the evils resulting from angels falling and teaching worthless teachings to humans. Today we do witness Nature and the order of our planet being undermined by the knowledge of Mankind, the technologies and sciences of industrialisation and human advancement. Species are wiped out, ecological balances are disturbed. The angels needing to address this initially had to give extra power to their basis of government of Nature. They used the good teachings and reputation, the Name, of the Son of Man. Fallen angels undermined the governance work of faithful angels whose work it is to keep balance and order in the Natural World. Jesus’ reputational authority alone could bring the balance back. His teachings have the necessary authority and reputation to bring order and stability. If we were in charge of maintaining global order and Nature’s order we would need to be sure what logic to be using. For that the angels of heaven use the logic found in Jesus raised from the dead by God to assure them (and us if we believe it) that this is the primary Name to use and represents the very best reliability which God has available. I get situations in my work where bad practices are best overcome using teachings of Jesus. So I can appreciate how it would be this way, from ancient times, in heaven. This Son of Man, whose good teachings and reputation the angels use to redress the undermining of the governing of Nature which was caused by the fallen angels, this Son of Man is the one who God sent into our world for us, bringing Mankind that name, those teachings of great reliability and reputation, that name given formerly among angels. Yet this Son of Man was slain by men. Nevertheless He was resurrected from death by God to continue saving and to preside over the judgment of us all. He is coming in the clouds of heaven and all will see Him soon.

God with us

 Book of Enoch “For I and My son will be united with them for ever in the paths of uprightness in their lives; and ye shall have peace: rejoice, ye children of uprightness. Amen.” (105:2) A unity which Jesus said amounts to taking up abode with such people does not necessitate physical location (just like I can work with my colleagues remotely but still feel I am with them, together), Rev 21:3 “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’” However, ultimately there will be an onsite location unity, Rev 22:3-4 “The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” For some there is already some of this “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” 1John 1:3, as Christ promised John 14:23 “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

The feast of the Messiah

For a memory of Jesus’ sacrificial propitiating death on the cross, there is a memorial to this taught by Jesus Himself for those who keep His teachings, believing that He is. The memorial is like the Jewish Passover, extending it, but now the blood is no longer that of a Passover sacrificed lamb but the blood of Jesus Himself and wine to symbolise it and remember is drunk, not painted on door posts like the original Israelite Passover in Egypt. There is the link back to the first time. In the Passover, the lamb eaten is a link back to the lambs of the first time whose meat was eaten and their blood painted on door posts to turn aside the wrath of angels of death. In the memorial to Jesus, there is a link back to the first time. The link is the wine drunk which resembles and commorates and symbolises the blood of Jesus when He gave His body to die on the cross. He died to shed His own blood and offer His own body. There is a second link which is the bread eaten symbolising the body broken on that cross. So these symbols extend to the partakers that body and blood of Jesus the Christ, a propitiation for all. Now the whole big important crux of it all is this. The body is eaten as bread and taken into the body of each disciple of Jesus who partakes, believing that Jesus truly is, now as back then, and forever, alive again having died that death, and alive forever to help deal with sin and come close to the Father, God, holding to Jesus’ teachings with Jesus’ anointing of the Holy Spirit dwelling within. The blood is taken in too, as wine drunk in thanksgiving. And therefore the disciple is, in accordance with Jesus’ own word, the word of God His Father, part of this. Part of Jesus Christ. In Christ. A new creature with new hopeful eternal prospects given by God when God raised Jesus from the dead. What great salvation. Thanks be to God. What a great eternal living Temple to the glory of God, for the glory of the Name of God the Father. 

The Law and the Commands

 The Mosaic Law is for a society bound by that law and includes many things of social, not just individual, implication, for that special society. For example, working on Saturday is made illegal for that whole society, not just a matter of conscience and personal devotion. Straying as a society or village or town from that law becomes a capital offence punishable legally by death. God has commands for all people, not just for that special social group. God has commands for another social group too. These could be called law too, but constitute a separate system, the Kingdom of God.  There are commands of God which do not only apply to Jews. We can seek them out and apply them to ourselves. The Good Samaritan principle is one. The greatest command is love. Love God. Love those looking out for you and those needing you to look out for them. The command for the putting off of vice is essential in this Kingdom of God. It is essentially a putting off of lying and hating and a putting on of truthful speech and love. That is where to start and that is a great goal to aim for too. Immorality is to be put aside too. This is the way of truth we find in Christ Jesus.

WHY DO SOME CHRISTIANS TEACH THAT ALCOHOL AND GAMBLING ARE SINFUL?

 WHY DO SOME CHRISTIANS TEACH THAT ALCOHOL AND GAMBLING ARE SINFUL?

I don’t think we should let such Christians put us off from following Christ’s teachings. There is a historic tendency to teach that alcohol drinking and gambling are sinful, unethical. It goes back thousands of years. Maybe it was a way to discourage excesses and vice. Nowadays a drug den is something society abhors, not so much a bingo hall or public house (if you have those in your country). Jesus Christ’s teachings were to Jews familiar with the Laws given by God to Moses and it was the duty of every Jew to stick by such laws. Christ endorsed such adherence and regarded disobedience to these laws as a sin, unethical for a Jew. Today we have less clear guidance. Society has underlying alignment of laws with the Jewish Laws but much is left to discretion of politicians. Yet to keep a clear conscience is a good way to avoid slavery to politically corrupted lawmaking which lines the pockets of the rich and oppresses the poor. Gambling might be easily corrupted and serve the interests of such rich oppressors and alcohol might make us prone to such enslavement too but they do not flout any laws of God. There are commands of God which do not only apply to Jews. We can seek them out and apply them to ourselves. The Good Samaritan principle is one. The greatest command is love. Love God. Love those looking out for you and those needing you to look out for them. If putting off vice is essential for a Christian then let it be a putting off of lying and hating and a putting on of truthful speech and love. That is where to start and that is a great goal to aim for too. Immorality is to be put aside too. This is the way of truth we find in Christ Jesus. Don’t be put off by other traditions.

RESURRECTION COMING SOON

 AS GOD PREPARES BELIEVERS FOR THE MASSIVE RESURRECTION IN CHRIST LET US BE SURE TO BE LOVINGLY KEEPING THE COMMANDS OF GOD AND TEACHING THEM TO OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN

Your descendants

 A thousand years from now Satan will be globally recruiting the masses. Will your descendants be recruited or will your traditions handed down be saving them? Teach your children Christ.

The timeless spirit of the Christ

 Maybe everyone today has heard of inspiration. Inspired songs. Inspired inventions. Inspired geniuses, inspired scriptures. There is a very special kind of inspiration throughout history since most ancient times: the heavenly inspirer who is the Christ, the spirit of the Christ. In Hebrew scriptures and other holy scriptures there are several notable passages where this inspirer is evident. In Isaiah’s prophecies, Daniel’s prophecies, Enoch’s prophecies and of course, when this Christ had come in the flesh, in the Gospels and other scriptures we call the New Testament. These all are the inspiration of one person, the person named in more recent history ‘Jesus’, ‘Yeshua’, ‘Isa’ but throughout history evidently manifest by the Spirit of Christ working in events, prophets and other writers of scriptural psalms and chronicles. The Book of Enoch has some of the most striking of all such passages in the section in the middle which we call the Parables, or the Similitudes. Here the formulation of the person of the Son of Man is revealed. The same person is mentioned a lot in the New Testament scriptures. Jesus spoke about this persona, this most important being, in the third person, to better put across the concept of the existence of the Son of Man and the implications of this for all humanity. 

The One True God - the Father

 I would say to both Oneness and Trinitarian advocates that the Father alone is the One True God and that Jesus is His Son and is a human being. Given that both Jesus and Paul are recorded by scriptures as stating unequivocally that the Father is the One True God, it is odd how both Trinitarians and Oneness advocates cannot recognise this. Indeed, having grown up in a house with parents from both sides, I feel a silly voice within me, instilled by years of learning their views, when in genuine faith I acknowledge to the Father that He alone is the One True God and that the mediation by the man, the Lord Jesus, allows me to come to this One True God, the Father, that silly voice tells me erroneously ‘Jesus won’t like you saying that, it isn’t fair on Jesus’ as if it is leaving Jesus out of being God, as if He wants a share of that special glory. It is a spiritual influence which blinds people, in the past myself included, in the present trying to still blind me, to the simple truth that the Father alone is the One True God. No Jesus is NOT offended when we confess this truth. He came to proclaim it and bring humans to this realisation and peace. Shut out that imposter voice. Listen to the true Holy Spirit instead. 

Modern Living

 It is important that we live in the light. As we go about our activities, it is important that the memories of inspirational teachings and sayings which guide us are dependable and good, such that they can be called ‘light’. Various sources of light from the past surely include the Book of Enoch. It contains important information about how modern life originated in the time of the most ancient dawn of civilisation. Look at almost any aspect of the culture, tools, advertising, politics and teachings which strive to guide us and we are likely to find the origins of it, the germ of it, described in the Book of Enoch. Even apostles of Jesus Christ and very likely Jesus Christ Himself, leaned on the sayings of the Book of Enoch, which the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate was extremely popular as scripture in the time of the gospels. So the gospels reflect this influence. The gospels reflect the sayings we find in the Book of Enoch and elaborate on them and augment them. So we get a multiplication of the light source to shed light on our activities today. We find that many aspects of culture around us, on which we might have been raised and educated, have murky origins. The origins of much of our modern life were not at all endorsed by God but condemned as harmful to the wellbeing and good progress of civilisation. Yet somehow those influences have risen to great prominence today. As the saying of Jesus says, “What is highly prized among men is detestable in the sight of God”.  Armed with the Book of Enoch and the Gospels absorbed by attentive reading into our hearts we have light that can guide us away from such things and leave us more open to what is more healthy for our lives. It also shows up the strong influences of society. Much of the modern world dogma depends on ancient practices which were warned against by these teachings of the light. Various unhealthy sectarian practices have merged over centuries, some over the millennia, to produce what politicians, school teachers, parents, guardians, influencers, fashionistas, scientists and religious leaders tell us are essential for our lives today. One day these things will be brought down like humbled mountains and despised but more worthy light exalted like the valley which is raised up. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed. Until then we have these prophetic books as a light in the darkness. This light we should let come to mind in what we do to spur us on or hold us back or steer us aside to keep us from harm and from unethical pursuits. But do not expect much help from society. More likely we will lead society and rule, teaching the next generation, with God’s favour, which we can put above the favour of Society. 

Experiencing Jesus, risen from the dead

 How righteously pleasing Lord Jesus is, providing the pleasing turning aside of wrath that is needed for our sakes to turn aside the Father’s wrath and win the Father’s favour. Jesus is all of that. Experiencing this Jesus is awesome. Life-changing. Life-giving. Peace-giving. Seeing that He is coming in the clouds to judge us all, and to raise the dead. 

Modern Governments

 Governments give themselves more power to “cause these little ones to sin”. We know what Jesus said about those who “cause these little ones to sin”. It were better for him to have a millstone put around his neck and thrown into the sea.

God is Not a Trinity

 God the Father came to me in a dream at, I think, the end of 1994, then did me a tremendous favour in 1995 in showing me Jesus, sending Jesus to me albeit very briefly, and then God graciously did even more by allowing me to experience the Holy Spirit so markedly in a church service not long afterwards. All after I spent time repeatedly asking God, who I thought was a ‘Trinity’, to show Himself, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. In fact God the Father said in the dream “I am God”. NOT “I am God together with my Son and the Holy Spirit”. That struck me. Just the Father telling me “I am God” and going on to tell me more and show His loving, saving kindness towards someone I knew. I remained Trinitarian though for years afterwards, not putting it together with scripture. Only much later did it dawn on me the significance of it regarding the Father, that He alone is the only true God and that Jesus is His Son sent by Him. Someone challenged me about the scriptural descriptions of the Son of God NOT calling Him ‘God the Son’ and the penny finally dropped. So all this was God showing me knowledge by experience. It took years to turn that tacit experiential knowledge into something I could explain to others with use of scripture too. All for the purpose of building the Temple. “Build the Temple” is the command the Holy Spirit told me that started all this off earlier in the 1990s. But the details I have omitted to keep it shorter and because the details would be lost on people without knowing the background. 

Christ’s Spirit

 Jesus Christ’s spirit is able to pervade time and knows what happened in the past and influenced things in the past and influences the future. That does not mean He is not a human. It does not make Him God. The One True God is only what the Father is. Christ’s spirit authors life and stretches across time and works wonders even today, yesterday and forever but Christ is still man, the Son of Man, but Lord with it. 

The Book of Enoch and the Pyramid Texts

The historic place of the Book of Enoch, when it is considered that Enoch wrote much the Book of Enoch before the time of Noah, is centuries before the Pyramid Texts were written inside the oldest pyramids of Egypt. This is an important sequence of events because the theological progress is very logical and enlightening. First we have Enoch telling the world that there are four places where people go very soon after death, and which of the four mainly depends on the behaviour or experiences of the person during their lifetime. Then time passes, there is a Flood, after Noah and Methuselah added more to the Book of Enoch, then some more centuries pass with Noah teaching the growing population descending from a few Flood survivors in Noah’s family, and then the pyramids are built which contain texts written on internal walls. These texts, among various ceremonial sayings and depictions concerning death, provide advice to the deceased ones buried in the pyramids, on how to approach the events that happen after death. The logical sequence makes sense. If there are these several places where spirits of newly deceased people go, then it follows logically that some kind of court-like hearing would be conducted with the deceased as a kind of defendant to determine their appropriate destination. Part of the purpose of these Pyramid Texts seems to have been to give lawyer-like advice, counsel, about this process and to provide some appropriate words to use to help towards the best outcome. So the historical sequence of the development of human thinking fits with the Book of Enoch coming before these Pyramid Texts, to first establish the facts of the afterlife, then the Pyramid Texts would be building on this knowledge, potentially handed on to post-Flood families by Noah and his disciples, based on the teachings of Enoch we find in the Book of Enoch. We too can learn from Enoch and realise that on death there must be some kind of adjudication to determine our destination after death. 

For permanent deliverance from sin

 For permanent deliverance from sin: 1. Believe Jesus Christ exists. 2. Adhere to His teachings.

Humbly Confess

 The Pharisees not only refused to enter the kingdom of God but hindered others from entering. Their proud refusal to humbly confess their sins before John the Baptist meant they were not ready for Jesus Christ and they undermined Him. If we confess our sins and our need for the deliverance from sin that Jesus bought with His blood, we have each other’s fellowship and we have fellowship with those who ultimately find fellowship, companionship with Almighty God and His Son. I need this deliverance, I do indeed. God knows it. There, that is all the Pharisees needed to say an we can so easily go their way too. It is tough to admit we are the sinners needing deliverance from sin’s chains. Yes, that deliverance as costly to Jesus and the cost overflows into our lives when we join with Him in fellowship for truth. Speaking truth is costly, especially admission that we are not as worthy as people think and we should not be exalting ourselves. The power of God flows in when ego and lying pride are thrown out. It hurts but that power heals and soothes the pain. Oh for grace to be truthful and not proudly boastful. 

My Theology lesson from God

 Once upon a time I was wrong in thinking that being ‘God’ is a shared thing, shared between Father and Son and Holy Spirit. The truth is that Jesus and the Father each truthfully point out that it is just the Father who is God, while Jesus is Son of God, in other words, Jesus is Son of God the Father. This is what I now believe, and I hope the old error evaporates from my mind more and more with time.

The way of truth

 When you seek God and He lets you find Him, you may find God teaches you and gives you teachers. The teachings of God do not follow denominational doctrines but truth. Then you might find you have to go a different path, living and speaking according to truth. It happened to me. It can be lonely but in time God can give you companions in the truth. 

If you love scriptures

 If you love the scriptures, why not take your doctrines from them, instead of from church fathers? As I grew through attending church preaching it sometimes seemed to me even the best preachers got so far with scripture, building up faith, then at the last hurdle abandoning scripture in favour of church fathers doctrines such as Augustine’s. I made a great effort to read the scriptures more intently and find out why the preachers so often abandoned scripture and hung onto church father doctrines at the crucial bits. So much better to learn from the greatest teachers who wrote scriptures, even if some scriptures are mistranslated to fit with later church father doctrines. There is enough accurate scripture to enable us to be led to the Lord Jesus Christ and find the truth in Him. 

Sad but True

 If you cannot take this from me, take it from the Apostle Paul: For Paul there is one God, the Father. For Paul there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. Preaching a different Jesus incurs Paul’s curse. Even if popes, reformers or church fathers did it. Even if angels did it. Take it from Paul. 

The Pearl

 The Pearl of Great Price - having companionship with God and His Son - this is the chief benefit of the Kingdom of God

John 14:22-23 

‘Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’

Enoch 105

“In those days the Lord bade (them) to summon and testify to the children of earth concerning their wisdom: Show (it) unto them; for ye are their guides, and a recompense over the whole earth. For I and My son will be united with them for ever in the paths of uprightness in their lives; and ye shall have peace: rejoice, ye children of uprightness. Amen.”

1 John 1:3

“We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”

The benefit of having fellowship with the Father and the Son or with those who have such fellowship, through confession of sin and genuine, sincere faith and love, this benefit is counteracted by hypocrisy of those who feign true authority - those who sit in seats of authority but do not live by it.

So many will maybe say that confession of their sin is important as a virtue but shy away from doing it, hyping up their ethical standing and wellbeing, afraid of admitting shortcomings to those who have fellowship with God and with His Son. They thus undermine and obscure this way. Those Pharisees failure in this regard kept them from confessing their sins before John the Baptist and receiving baptism. They continued this refusal then with Jesus too. This meant their stance detracted from the validity of the way preached by John the Baptist and Jesus and their disciples. So even now there are many through the centuries till today whose refuse to enter and confess and believe hinders others by detracting from the vital importance of this path into such holy fellowship.