August 31st.

Please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the LORD.

The way of the son of God is like Naaman who was raised in a foreign country and only knew the gods that were worshipped in that place. The God of Israel let them believe and worship any god He gave life to, which became how He kept them away from Him, the only living God who actually did exist. Within the entire Aramean nation of peoples God chose one man to be a representative whose story would be recorded and preserved for the sons' sake, to be a copy of the better thing, to show them what they are and what their process is like.

He and the others who lived there worshipped a god (rimmon) who wasn't alive, but the people convinced each other it was. There wasn't any proof one way or another on any generic, publicly available scale. The proof God gave was just to one man who had the disease of humanity on and in him. He was thoroughly contaminated yet God drew him away from the gods who couldn't ever save him because they didn't exist (the messengers do the work of convincing those God wants kept away from Him that what they think is real, even though it's made up by them and for them).

But Naaman went away angry and said, "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?" So he turned and went off in a rage.

He brought him to the prophet who showed him by no spectacular human pomp or observable grandstanding what a God's power could do, and what it was like. Not a showy thing that appeals to what the animal wants, but the secret, hidden power of God that is so subtle that it isn't recognized by the humans around the one it's being revealed to. Even that very one will have a difficult time in beholding it, because the way that the living God works is beyond what the humans have the capacity to rule over, for the purpose that they are so evil that if they could, they always would take what's good and try to make it for themselves—it's an integral and powerfully undeniable part of their instinctual nature to always do that, so they always do.

God is not a God of disorder but of peace.

The son of God, like Naaman, grows up into a world of contaminated humans, those who are unclean and cannot come into the presence of a holy God because of the way their nature keeps them totally subservient to themselves all the time, unpleasantly so, which cannot ever be pleasing to God.

I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

He demands something much more stringent than what any of the humans are able to give because of the nature that keeps pulling them back into themselves. The son of God must learn the way to not be ruled by that nature that rules the humans, whether they can see it or not, whether they will admit it's there ruling them or not. Because that's the tendency of the humans, to not be able to recognize it (so they can't just see and hear, and then turn and become healed—pleasing to the Father, clean so they can come near Him), and the sons are thoroughly born and raised into the culture of these unclean animals, the first thing they so thoroughly need to understand is the presence and power of the animal nature that wants to, and does, completely rule them to keep them away from the Father in a perfectly seamless way.

This observation and recognition isn't something that happens fast, automatically or overnight. It is a process that develops it inside the son so that it becomes an integral part of his nature, so by definition takes a long time in an arduous process of being able to see then seeing, and hearing what is impossible to see and hear because for everyone else it's not there. It is something we don't want to see so we do everything in our power to not see it until the time comes that we must go further in, then we have to start facing what we loathe to face, what we've been putting off by pretending it's not there, that we can continue to live in the hiding places where we feel safe, which is the animal tendency as is seen by the first recorded acts of the newly cursed humans, just after they died.

I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.

The first instinct of the nature of the humans isn't to be like a son to the Father—to know, trust and love Him so that we run to Him, but to be afraid and ashamed because of what we are, so we hide. The animal impulse is what we learned to listen to and obey; it's what makes us feel most comfortable because it's what we're familiar with, so we tend to want to listen to it as a matter of living, acting and responding in the world filled with humans.

Is this the time to take money, or to accept clothes, olive groves, vineyards, flocks, herds, or menservants and maidservants?

The way of the animal is to desire all the things the humans value and run after because they make them feel safe, like they have something to hold onto, something to look at and feel a degree of insulation from the inherent fear they can't escape from because they're born into it and take it into themselves as another part of the creation. The elements of this creation that keep sucking them into it, back to the earth, is the gravitational metaphor for the reality of them being just another integral piece of the creation that is spinning in its circles of birth and death as it was designed to do so (by that definition not a part of God's body).

When any plant or animal lives out its appointed time of existence in this creation, it doesn't have a name that God knows. It only has a generic plant or animal designation which isn't an actually name but just a temporary designation until it expires. It like the entity that carried it is gone after it's plowed into the earth to become organic matter for other plants, or eaten as food by other animals which replace it as the circles keep spinning around. It's why the earth spins around at the same speed each day, and in a circle each year, and as it spins it comes right back around to where it was before, accurately enough to devise clocks and calendars by its movement.

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

If the human philosophers ask why are they here or what is the meaning and purpose of each one's existence; the most obvious and reasonable thing is to become and integrate as part of this constantly renewing creation, which uses itself to keep propelling itself. The plant or animal springs up and exists by eating other plants and/or animals, then its existence is terminated as it becomes food for another animal or else it gets plowed into the ground and becomes food for plants, which become food for other plants and/or animals, and the process just keeps moving along as per everything else in the creation, spinning around and coming back to the place it was when it started the circle.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

If we look at it in this way, as the spinning circle that keeps coming around to where it started and doesn't stop, there is a lot of order in this creation—the plants and animals (the things that have "life") exist and then are replaced by others. There isn't a lot of complication in that, although there is a lot of randomness involved, plants and animals without names as far as God is concerned, just things existing then being replaced by other unnamed things, which by their existences provide existence for the other things so the creation can just continue along as orderly and efficiently as it was planned.

Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered by those who follow.

God's hidden purpose and intention for the creation is embedded in the beginning of the story, when He created a son for His pleasure, a creature whom He could love and who could love Him back in a reciprocal relationship of love, honor, respect, trust and faithfulness between the two beings. First He made a creation, then He made the human as part of the creation, yet separate from it in that it didn't have to have a terminating existence like all the other things in the creation—it had full access to the tree of life if that's what it wanted to choose. The intention of the first was only the beginning of what God was ultimately after—an entire family of beings who would participate with Him in this type of relationship by choosing Him instead of themselves, which is what the animals who don't have a choice are forced to do (after the curse the humans were bound to the animals' plight, and were forced to wear the same nature which keeps them away from the God who creates them).

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

However, when it chose death instead of life, when it rejected the Father's desire to have a relationship of love, honor, respect, trust and faithfulness between itself and Him, then He accommodated its request and made it a part of the creation of unnamed, impersonal creatures that die and are replaced with other things—what we can fully understand about how this creation works, has worked and will continue to work, something we can observe and rely on.

After he drove the human out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

So the creation has been going along as it was set in place, renewing itself with unnamed things that keep replenishing it as it turn in its renewing circles. However, it exists as one thing, while God exists as another. It is made up of observable matter, while God exists as another matter altogether, unobservable to the participants of the natural creation, hidden from them. No one can see God because He exists in a form that is higher, more complex than what the participants of the natural creation can see, hold touch, taste or observe in any way. Although they can observe the creation He made, they must deny Him by choosing themselves and the gods they are forced to make up because the true, living God is far away and nowhere to be grabbed as the humans think they can grab and hold Him, and control Him for their purposes as per what they do with everything else in their lives.

As the creation went along, He made certain of the humans aware of His presence, however just the tiniest fraction of the population (as the Naaman story suggests). He put His spirit in them, or on them, so He mixed what was purely natural with some of the thing He exists as—His life which is spirit, in the form of an awareness in the human that couldn't be otherwise gained unless it was specifically initiated and carried out by God, who controls everything. He kept doing this same thing with certain of the humans, all building up and pointing to something that he had planned to happen at a certain point in the creation.

I tell you the truth, many prophets, kings 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.

This was the long-awaited period of time when God would have His actual sons born to Him. They would be born a second time, from above not below—not of dying, natural matter (which they already were). These would be born of the spirit, born from above (of God, which would override their condition of being born to another human).

Do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.

The first one that would be born in this way would be the good son who would make it possible for all of the rest of the family to be born, by doing what the first humans didn't do. Without his specific work, designed and given by God, none of the others could be born to God. That work depended on this Son's desire for a reciprocal relationship of love, honor, respect, trust and faithfulness between himself and the Father. The work itself would display whether that was a true desire of his—whether he chose to do it or the other thing, to be faithful to himself as the first human had been, which cause the sons to become bound up with the dying creation.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born of spirit, from above, of God.

I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. The humans gives birth to other humans, but the spirit of God gives birth to sons of God.

You should not be surprised at my saying, `You must be born of spirit, from above, of God.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

The work retroactively gave birth to many sons of God's choice who existed before the good Son came to the creation to do the work, who were in the ground waiting to be redeemed. Certain other humans of the Father's choosing—about whom we have this record (the NT)—were born of the spirit, even while they existed as breathing creatures. After the good Son, the first to be born of spirit instead of another human, did the work, this happened to a few of the humans already existing as part of the natural creation. Unlike the unnamed plants and animals, unknown to God, all of His true sons have names, and He knows them all personally, because He chose them to become His, a part of another creation, the spirit family of sons, which is His will and desire to gather them up out of the natural creation and make them His.

Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on him my new name.

This happened for a short while, as per the predictions of those holy men of God said that it would happen. However, just as they said that it would happen, they also said that it would stop happening, by the same spirit, for whatever purpose and reason God has. That's why we have the record of so many incredible things that happened according to the predictions of the humans, in whose mouth God put His word, but now we do not see it, nor can we observe any record of it having happened since that short period of time when it did happen.

The enemy laid hands on all her treasures; she saw pagan nations enter her sanctuary—
those you had forbidden to enter your assembly.

We can observe many groups of humans who have unsuccessfully tried to make it happen according to their own will and purpose. Unsuccessful because no human or confederation of humans control God and what He desires to be; their purpose always just comes to nothing or gets changed into something else as quickly as the humans themselves change into something else (breathing, existing creature to either organic matter that is breaking down in the ground and becoming plant food, or fuel in another animal's stomach).

The creation will continue along in its cycles of renewal until God decides to change it. His hidden purpose is only known to His messengers, His sons and Himself. Everything else will just continue along in its appointed time of existing and dying as an integral part of the creation that keeps going along as it's supposed to.

Continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The spirit is the life-giving force, which gives birth to the sons of God's choosing (not the christian 'holy spirit,' which is a made up, non-existent mythical god). It is the living word in those chosen humans, whom once born, teaches them about spiritual truth—what is real in the world where God lives according to Him, not the humans who cannot know His reality because they're purposely kept far from it. He teaches them what they have been redeemed from, and what they are becoming, which is spiritual information that can only be given and heard by spirit beings—given by the Son of God and heard by the sons of God. If the spirit isn't living in a man, then he cannot understand the things of the spirit (because he is not spiritually equipped to, because the spirit doesn't live in him). Neither can the spiritual man communicate spiritual things to the natural man—only another who also has the spirit living in will be able to understand.

If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.