August 29th.

No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval.

That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment.

There is evidence here of a highly unnatural life going on that Paul is almost taking for granted, what we can't comprehend, although the Corinthian believers were able to understand what he was talking about because they were under the outpouring of the spirit of the new covenant. That the miracles and gifts and the growth of the life of God in the humans made for an environment that was different than what humans find or ever expect to find is the understatement of the century. That life has been so far gone from the earth for so long there is no way to even comprehend what it would have been like. What the Corinthians were trying to do was mix this new life with what they knew about being human which was why, according to Paul, they were having so many problems, why some were dying and being sick and weak. If anything, it's a testament to how real and powerful the new life was for Paul that he would say such things.

When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

It's what Paul had grown accustomed to as he tried to persuade those who had already experienced the life of God inside them to continue in that way, and not to keep going back and trying to mix the new way of God with the way of the humans, the way of the animals, driven by their animal instincts instead of the spirit, which was the new way that was overtaking them. This time when the spirit was being poured out and the life of the living God was inhabiting the humans was the very great thing promised and looked forward to by so many of God's holy prophets from the OT. It wasn't just another deal, but the new covenant, the celebration of Jesus accomplishing his great work, saving the sons of God and making their redemption possible.

Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.

Yet also, it wasn't something that lasted, for to say as the promoters of false religion say, that what happened in the first century is also happening now, amongst themselves, is the joke of the century. To bring the living God's identity down to the level of what they make Him by saying that He is in their midst is a thing that cause a righteous indignance and silent rage.

As you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

We've read the accounts so many times that it's hard to understand what an incredible thing had happened to these handfuls of people within this short time frame in the various cities of the Roman empire where and when God decided to make this fulfillment happen. We can't comprehend what was going on in the bodies of these humans who were being inhabited by God because that phenomenon has been so far removed from the earth for such a long time that nothing from the humans' experience can allow any of them to fathom it. In other words, it's just gone, and it's been gone—the life and the understanding of it is not available to the humans because it went away and the truth went into captivity, into Mystery Babylon.

You who live by many waters and are rich in treasures,
your end has come, the time for you to be cut off.

All the false religionists can have is an assumption that it must not be gone and a presumption that it must be in them because they want to get something for themselves by it, because they don't understand what happened shortly after the first century ended. What had quickly sprung up as the promise of the new covenant in the earth was allowed by God to get snuffed out. What existed for a short time—the life of God living in the bodies of humans—representing another copy of the true temple, was overrun by the animals. The true church (bodies of sons bound to the firstborn Son) became consolidated and organized into the false church, the false bride by the humans who desired human control and power, whose desire to serve God fell short of that desire to be as Paul was, a servant of his brothers. Instead they wanted to be served as the self-appointed authorities who control the "church." The humans who took over what God had set up wanted to be served, not to serve. Humans started to rule in place of the life of God what had been set up by God—a bunch of loose confederations of humans who were being ruled by the spirit of life, not by the animal nature, nor the will of humans who had some earthly, human power.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

The incredible birth of the true church made up of unsophisticated, lowly, poor, unschooled humans happened not because of their abilities, talents or standing as humans in any human community. It was the secret, hidden power of the spirit of the Son, who had been made One with the Father, and had come back to the earth in this unseen form and was inhabiting the bodies of some humans who were chosen to have this happen to them. It was the spirit of God, not seen or controlled by the humans, that did the choosing and the miraculous, supernatural work that made it all happen. And whom did God choose? Not those whom the humans would choose, not the respectable, or the powerful, or the talented, but the foolish, those who wouldn't be chosen by the humans for anything.

Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

These were the downtrodden, the orphans, the widows, the poor and the foreigners whom God knew would be overlooked and overran, exploited by the humans in power because they had the opportunity to. God came to them, not the expected ones, and they felt this power and understood that a supernatural thing was happening, recognized it and welcomed it into them. They knew it was real compared to everything else in their miserable lives which they may have thought was real before or not, but that didn't matter nor did anything else. What they knew was that what they experienced was real, and good, and was overtaking them; so they became conformed to what they heard, what the good Shepherd inside them was telling and teaching them, and being reinforced by the true shepherds of God's new people.

The apostles were the shepherds of these participants in the promised, longed for (but mistaken for something else) new covenant. They went before them and knew what was happening, because they were guided by the spirit of life, so they wanted to be useful to the Lord, and therefore the Father. They were faithful to what they heard inside them, and were guided along by the new body and voice of the Son who controlled them instead of the animal nature, which controls the humans across the board because of the curse.

This new group who were called God's people recognized that the same Jesus who was once alive, but then had been crucified, had been risen from the dead and now lived as the spirit because he had been made one with the Father. They knew he lived because they themselves were being inhabited by this new body of the Son in spirit form (unseen by and uncontrollable to the humans). The newly formed body of spirit had himself been transformed from before being only God the Father, to now being One made from two, united and transformed into a different being because of the addition of the Son, redeemed from the ground and made One with the Father. The apostles of the raised up Son taught this new group of God's people that everything else was false and this thing was happening to them because of the Son's work, that he was alive and working, which was what they experienced—he living in them.

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths (Roman and Greek mythology, the mother of christianity in its various forms—the daughters of the whore (Church of Rome) who gave birth to them all).

After the apostles were gone from the earth, other men started taking over what once for a short time was purely of God and for His purpose. Their hearts were increasingly given over to the power that was predicted by Daniel, Jesus, Paul, Peter, etc. The truth that existed in the first century became a source of political power wealth, and egotistical saturation for the humans who naturally love and are drawn to those things. They took advantage of those positions for themselves, as any animal would do in its effort to survive the best it can. They were not led by the spirit of life as Paul had been, but the spirit and nature of the animal who can only truly love and take care of itself. The self-appointed shepherds of God's people once again—as was the case so many times in Israel—had no concern for the sheep, looked out only for themselves. They couldn't as long as they were being led by the animal nature and not the spirit of life, so the will and purpose of God wasn't being done on earth, but the will of the animal, the great serpent from ancient times, the devil who completely controls the humans but is the adversary of the sons (they must be led by the nature of the Son of God, the firstborn of all God's sons).

Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.

The condition that existed for a short while, what Paul wrote in response to, faded away and became no more, as the unclean animals set themselves up as shepherds of God's people once again, in place of where God wanted to be the ruler. The unclean animal was set up in the temple of God, the bodies of first century believers, which is the abomination predicted by many righteous men. The desolation was caused by that happening, so that what existed for a short while was removed and the earth was made desolate of that condition.

The animals totally overran what was true, and over the course of a few hundred years turned the truth into the lie that it exists as now—totally devoid of anything true about Jesus, God, the devil, the spirit, etc., as those first century believers understood it because he lived in their bodies. The truth about what Jesus did and who he was, along with who and what the devil is, when it was set in place, and the purpose it serves for God, has been made into so many myths it can't be even remotely recognized. The reason this is allowed is because the earth is desolate, devoid of the truth and power of God living in the hearts of the humans. God gave them over to the lie, and they could make up any story they wanted to about Him, and they would believe it, and be able to convince others too, by the same giving over of the animals to whatever they wanted to believe.

Because the writings of some righteous men who did experience that incredible miracle for the short period of time before the abomination that caused the desolation happened were preserved, the only thing the humans could do was make all kinds of religions out of them, based on what they said, under the presumption that the things happening in the first century were and are still happening. So many earthly, religious institutions filled with animals who couldn't ever know the power of the life that the first century believers knew—because the earth has been desolate of that power and truth—have been made in the name of the Jesus whose life has been taken out of the earth. These institutions have no power or authority from God, because the life of God is gone from the earth. The religious institutions may serve some social purpose but they can't show anyone the way to the living God because that way is secret and hidden from them in general. The most they can be are just groups formed and ruled by animals, not holy men, and certainly not God, because the truth of God left long ago.

Babylon was a gold cup in the LORD's hand; she made the whole earth drunk.
The nations drank her wine; therefore they have now gone mad.

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted:

"Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons
and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.

For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries."

Then I heard another voice from heaven say:

"Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes."