September 7th.

Son of man, go now to the house of Israel and speak my words to them. You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language, but to the house of Israel—not to many peoples of obscure speech and difficult language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. But the house of Israel is not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for the whole house of Israel is hardened and obstinate.

But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious house. Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. Go now to your countrymen in exile and speak to them. Say to them, "This is what the Sovereign LORD says," whether they listen or fail to listen.

Then the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet. He spoke to me and said: "Go, shut yourself inside your house. And you, son of man, they will tie with ropes; you will be bound so that you cannot go out among the people. I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent and unable to rebuke them, though they are a rebellious house. But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says.' Whoever will listen let him listen, and whoever will refuse let him refuse; for they are a rebellious house." 

For some say, "His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing."

For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.

I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those "super-apostles." I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying.

The letter below was given to the Marinwood Brothers on the night of our meeting regarding my written request for re fellowship a few weeks before. It's a simple and honest witness of what happened in the early years, so I'll just leave it as it is, unedited. A lot has happened since one year ago. They followed a certain organizational protocol, graciously inviting me back on terms they thought would be safe: I couldn't break bread with them, although I could sit in their meeting and listen to their exhortations about how they should "open their homes to others," and how important it is to take care of God's little ones as per Matthew 25:31. What was expected of me was a hopeful restoration of me back into their fellowship, as soon as they felt I was "safe."

It didn't work out for me, so I stopped going according to what was inside me, which was guiding me away from them as much as any other group assuming to be smug enough to claim to know the way to God, claiming to have the authority on earth to judge, condemn and exile others, in the name of their gods (themselves). I have sent an email asking to have conversations about God, but they just ignore me, rather than even respond to say no thank you. The whole business-like transaction that went on they seem to feel is proper cleansing from the dirt on their hands because of us, as they properly kicked us out, and now properly ignore me just as they did before. Because they invited me back into the meeting—under their conditions of keeping me as an outsider—they feel justified in just forgetting us, pretending like we don't exist, ignoring us like we were dead, yet feeling righteous all the while as though they are the shepherds of God's people.

Actually, though, it was just an expectation for me to be like them, and for me to not expect them to live according to their many exhortations I heard about opening their homes and hearts, when they intended to keep them as tightly shut up as they always had, with the presumption of something different because they continued to do those things they think "saves" them—what makes them right with God. The truth is not in what a man says, but what  he does, because talk is cheap. Even the rationale and justification they must feel, that they're okay because I'm a deliberate sinner who won't "repent," although rational in human terms (if you hit us, we'll hit you back) is the opposite according to the teaching of the One they claim to follow, to not just love those who love you, but love your enemies even more.

That's where I have to stop and understand that those words do not come from human wisdom, nor are they assimilated by the humans. The most beguiling thing about the real Son of God is that the understanding of his words cannot be attained to by the humans. Even though millions assume to know what he said and did, that knowledge is secret and not for public consumption. They can get together and decide on what he said and did, and can agree on it amongst themselves, and agree to continue to agree and not waiver from that agreement, but that doesn't actually mean they know, they just agree. What becomes revealed to the sons of God is what their Father wants them to know.

I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world.

Human wisdom and nature is to perhaps be able to do it in theory, but never in reality, because of the force and power of the animal nature that completely and utterly dominates the humans. According to its dictates, the world has been desolate of that secret information that the Son revealed to specific men for almost two thousand years (since the abomination that caused the desolation of life of God inhabiting the bodies of certain chosen humans). The wisdom that Jesus spoke about was only attainable to those who were being chosen by God to become transformed away from the animal nature so they even could be able to do that. It happened for a little while, and then went away, which was predicted by many of God's prophets, a time of darkness that the writers of the NT knew was coming shortly. It was already at work in the Corinthian church as is witnessed in Paul's language throughout his letters to them.

There is on the one hand an understanding that love cannot come unless God specifically chooses a person, and then methodically starts to transforms him from that animal who is incapable of loving into an entirely different creature on the most fundamental levels (his heart). This is a big part of Paul's gospel (good news)—that an animal can be transformed into a son. With that should come the realization that any expectations we might have about real love or acceptance from those who claim to be Jesus' sole and only true representatives on earth should be nil, because they're in agreement that what they do gives them the self-rightness they seek and anyone who challenges that (us, by what God has done in us) should be expelled before they begin to contaminate the rest of the group. That the only thing we should expect is a human, conditional surface tolerance disguised as some kind of what they call "love," which says we will "love" you, as long as you love us—if not, then we won't.

That is perfectly acceptable behavior from an animal trying to protect its self and group from external threats. What the real Jesus told those who wanted to follow him was extraordinary because it cut right to the heart of what the humans are at their core—animals trying to protect their selves and group from external threats. What he told them is that they had to give up those identities *on every level* (not just where the other animals could see that they are doing the requisite things).

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.

The condition of truly being right with the Father cannot be attained to be consensus or agreement with the humans who confer their positions on one another by fulfilling certain requirements they uphold as necessary to gain a level of rightness with them. That's why our condition of being disfellowshipped from the christadelphians isn't a bad thing but a good thing, because that's what happens to God's sons since what's being put into them is against what's in the humans—always from the beginning, since righteous Able heard what was right and clung to that and was murdered for his devotion to what he heard, what he knew was the voice of the Father speaking to him. Cain on the other hand heard his own voice, of the animal telling him to do and get what was in him and like his parents, disregard what God told him was the right way.

Isn't that the hypocritical state of man when the groups who claim to know the exclusive way to God, to exclusively obey the teaching of His Christ; when even a most blatant violation of what the words say comes up, they just say, "Well, we're not perfect." Even while they have judged, condemned and exiled others for also not being perfect. Isn't it more like humans to not even be able to see the wrong in that, to excuse themselves while condemning others and feeling right the whole time. Yes it is, and the sons are not exempt from that tendency because they come from the same stock. The fact that they are chosen does not excuse them from that condition (the tactic of the religious humans who think that because they adhere to the correct facts it doesn't matter to their gods what they do or what they are in their heart where the humans can't see).

What the sons should see is the powerful need in them, as an active force of the animal nature still living inside them to keep them running after it, to be validated some way by the humans who are inherently evil and unable to be pleasing to God. That human idea of fairness and indignance toward those who are doing us wrong has no part in our conception of how we think we should be treated, considering those who went before us. It's easy to get all indignant about how right we feel we have been, that's manufactured by the animal as another means by which he is able to make himself feel righter and better, more successful at surviving. And that's how powerful the animal nature is to keep deceiving us even while we also have the spirit of life in us, teaching us about how to reject the wrong, which is the old way, the way of the humans that we keep trying to run after and obey.

The real victory for God's sons is not convincing someone else we're right and they're wrong, but going the other way by knowing we are right and not doing it regardless how thoroughly we know we're right. That is the message of the temptation of Jesus the Son of God, who although he knew of the severity of his position, he didn't take for himself and prove he was the One all Israel was waiting for, on purpose because that was the Father's will. The Father knew who the Son was, and the Son knew who he was, and he could have easily proved to the humans that he was the One they were waiting for in a way they could understand. But he didn't prove it, because he knew, and was willing to allow that knowledge to be his satisfaction and fulfillment to leave the proving of his identity to the Father, to give Him the pleasure of showing whomever He wanted to that the Jesus the humans killed was the very One they are waiting for. One day the humans will all know whom God has chosen to be His own sons. Until that day comes, the sons have to be satisfied with knowing, and not needing to prove it, just because they know so thoroughly, which gives them to freedom to not have to prove it, but just worry about learning what the teacher is teaching them.

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

All together, what he said and did amounts mostly, if not entirely, to "Don't be a human. Don't be led by the human instincts to kill and avenge, to indulge the lust that comes up out of your heart just because you're human, to appease the fear that lives in you, to prove how right you are all the time—and everything else that is the first thing you think of and feel welling up inside you, the first and powerful response of the self-protecting animal," especially this radical idea of loving your enemies.

For the animal it can only ever be a reluctant response of, "Oh yes, let's love our enemies, and won't that be wonderful," because the animal nature will not allow them to see past their dire need to protect themselves as its first and overwhelming response to EVERYTHING. To them it seems weak and unproductive because they haven't been made aware of the power of the animal nature to completely beguile from even being able to recognize what lives in them to completely control them while making them think they're in charge of everything. The animals who rule the world full of animals can't ever do anything about it except continue to be humans separated from God because of their condition.

Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

The sons are given eyes to see that nature and how powerful it is, and what better way to understand it than seeing how it lives in and so thoroughly makes them a slave to it, how it makes them evil and unappealing to the Father. Indeed, the sons are the only ones who need to have the fact pointed out to them that they are still being ruled by the animal nature, and that the fact that they know they are sons doesn't mean it's not there. Actually the opposite is true; only if we are sons do we need to know it's there, so in effect for those who aren't sons there's no point in them knowing about it because they'll never come out from under it unless the Father is being revealed to them—then they need to hear so they can come away from that which pollutes them, and what a long, undesirable journey that is to come away from what we love and cherish, what is our very life that we live for.

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple."

The power that God gives to His sons is not like human power, though we will think it might be for a long time because we're still human. What happened in the first century was not a human process that humans can comprehend by reading words in a book and they saying they understand. The fact that they think they can just get what the first century sons had because they want it, according to the assumption that it still exists, proves that they have no idea what it was because it wasn't a human thing that could be understood by the humans. They wrote about it, but the words are weak because words that humans understand are part of the human process and lacking.

We speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:

"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

If you can't see your enemy, there's not much you can do about him continuing to attack you and keep you enslaved to him. He gives us the power to be stripped bare, to be shameful and despised, to be humbled and broken down so we don't have any way to protect ourselves—definitely not what we would or want to choose according to what's inside us. He give us the ability to see, and then to make him who was proud with his own humanity humble, because of not just an understanding of the animal nature, but how it lives within and enslaves himself, that which continues to make him unclean before God.

The same nature is the one which makes him proud and thinking he must be the one who is right all the time, because that is the nature of the self-protecting, self-satisfying, self-promoting animal—that which is exactly opposite to how the Father wants His sons to be. This process of continuing to bring the son back to the realization that he is the one who is wrong and unclean because of that power still living in him is a sort of humiliating and shameful, yet effective way to get him to see the truth and power of the deceitfulness of that old nature, away from which the Father is trying to pull him. It's a tough road of deception we are being pulled away from, and it just keeps on hanging on. Everyone wants to be right; few know how impossible that is.

Sept. 7, 2004

Dear Brothers,
When I was 20 or so I had just become involved in some non-christadelphian "churches." I read the NT accounts of Jesus and Paul and others, but when I looked around I didn't see anyone living the lives that I read about. Everyone, including me, had rather banal, ordinary lives and nobody seemed to be very much into God with their whole being, driven by the spirit like the people I read about. The dynamic lives that the NT believers had was what I wanted, but everywhere I went it was the same. Everyone seemed to have the exact same life as any ordinary unbeliever. There didn’t seem to be any difference beyond the words coming out of their mouths.

I attended some "holy spirit" churches too, because I thought maybe they had the spirit, which seemed to be the driving force behind everything. But it was so totally phony—It didn’t take much to know that wasn't real. But there was something in me that thought it was possible anyway, and I asked God to give it to me in a real way—the way that Paul knew it. If I was going to be a “Christian” then I wanted a relationship with the Lord that those believers had, which drove them and transformed them and changed their lives. It was that power that they experienced that I wanted, which I thought would make a relationship with God real.

Nothing substantial happened over the next 20 years. I gave up the idea of being a "Christian," because I knew I wasn't ready to be 100% able to follow Jesus like I read that he demanded with the rich young ruler and others. I felt like since I couldn't give up everything to follow him then I shouldn't pretend like I was. Plus there wasn't anything I felt like I wanted to follow as far as any group, or church, etc. I looked into a few different things but it was always the same.

When I was around 40, things started to happen. All of a sudden I started to feel a pull toward God again. I started reading, went to a church or two, but still knew there was no real compelling power in any of those places.

Then I was looking on the internet and found some Christadelphian web site, emailed someone and within a couple of months I showed up at the Marinwood ecclesia wanting to know what the deal was. The things I believed about the devil were the same, and I could imagine the trinity idea being bogus too, but had nothing except that. The doctrinal statement I read sounded right, so I went.

The next day someone brought over Bible Basics and we talked a little. As I read it I knew it was for me. We got together a lot to talk, always about God. I was hungry for the truth at that time, and all we spoke about was God all the time. What I didn’t know was that God was there, His spirit was working every time we got together to speak. It was a compelling deal, a thing that felt too right to stop doing, even though it seemed a little weird that she was married and all.

I went to meeting and the Wed night study, which was good. But when we got together and started talking about God, there was something different than any other time. It was powerful, good, and true, and felt like what I always had been searching for—the real truth with real power inside me in a place I had never experienced it before, in some secret place deep inside of me.

More than just a “warm, fuzzy feeling,” I felt God very strongly—so did she, which is why we kept getting together to meet for lunch or coffee or anything. Nothing physical ever happened between us, although on the outside it may have looked like we were having an affair. We didn't care, though, because we knew it was real and from God like nothing we had experienced before, yet something both of us always desired—a power, a force that seemed unexplainable. We knew that He didn't want us to stop getting together to talk about Him because He was coming alive in us inside, way down deep in that secret place where we knew it was true.

It was scary because we knew it was real, but we started getting flack from you all and then Nate. There was a lot of threats and abuse from him—it got pretty hairy at times, and was quite unnerving. I knew, though, that stopping communication with her would be turning my back on the Lord, which I told you. What I know now is that it would have been “putting out the spirit’s fire,” which was working in us every time we spoke. We remain non-physical—it is not that kind of relationship whatsoever. It is very much another kind—spiritual, of God.

We know it is the same spirit that the NT believers experienced. It is the real thing—when we talk we know that no one else has what we have; there is just a different kind of knowing, a surety about the things of God, a unity found nowhere else. We don't know if anyone else has had this happen to them, not that we haven't speculated a lot about this and why we haven't seen it before.

Now, for me, it is about being taught by that living word Paul and Jesus talk about. It is definitely miraculous, although quiet and steady and on a different level than everything else exists on. Being born of the spirit is about being born of God instead of Adam, and then growing up learning His way instead of the way we learned up to that point that we are born of God. It is learning just like Jesus, then Paul, did—listening to the living word in them, learning to "accept the right and reject the wrong." (Isaiah 7:15)

No big thrills or circus acts, nobody is outright getting physically healed in front of our eyes—no show on the outside. Things aren’t happening the way people think it was happening in the first century, which is the way we thought it should be happening too, at first. We kept waiting for something big to happen. We know now that those occurrences were few and far between, and for a different purpose than God may have now. It is unnoticeable to the eyes and ears and mind of the natural, of the flesh man. It is also very subtle, yet the miracles are an ongoing thing—they take place every day.

It's not something we can pinpoint and say this or that day it happened. It's just been a long, slow, gradual understanding and enlightenment, learning to not do certain things specific to each of us by the word in us, which is constantly speaking to us and telling us the truth about the things of the spirit. We know that everything in the natural is a copy of the spiritual reality (a big concept introduced by Paul in Hebrews). He is talking about the tabernacle there, but we know that he’s only scratching the surface in the Hebrews letter, and that many things in the natural are copies of the spiritual reality. They are for the benefit of the children that Jesus gives birth to through the spirit like he told Nicodemus would have to happen (John 3).

God is spirit, and the only way to know God is by being born of the spirit (as Jesus was at birth—the firstborn among many brothers). If you're not then you can't know God—He can't communicate with you, or He won't, let's put it that way.

He can't inhabit unclean flesh with the filth of the world still in it, which is why we are born through the water and the spirit through the blood of the Lamb of God. Much of Christadelphian doctrine is correct. I think if one didn't understand it they could not understand the spiritual things because it all makes sense. One big thing I am learning lately is about judgment and how wrong it is for me to do. I am guilty in a few of the writings of sounding like a pretty harsh judge of the community, which I regret in one way. Although I had to learn it in a real way so it had to come out in me in a real way.

We know that we have been born of God and now we are growing up into Him. Knowing a little more now we do know that in many ways it is like a natural child that gets born and then grows. In the beginning we didn't know much although we knew it was good and from God and what we always wanted, all our lives. As we are growing in the spirit, by the spirit, we are a little less ignorant about what is happening each day. We're still only toddlers, though, so we don't have all the answers—nor are we mature like Paul; that is going to take some time.

We are 100% sure though, at this point, that it is good, and healthy and right and it follows everything we can read about in the Bible. There is nothing that contradicts it or that it contradicts. It may seem to on the outside, but it doesn't, down to the core of the message of the life of the Christ, who we follow and is our master—he went before us in the same way.

He made it possible for God to live inside us by his work of self-denial—denying that animal inside him that is also in us. He did it perfectly though, which made him the unblemished Lamb, acceptable to God for that ultimate sacrifice to make us clean enough for us to be inhabited by God, which is the ultimate goal of God—to know His children intimately via the spirit in us that is Him. God is the spirit.

I don't know why God did this for us, other than because we wanted it, and we weren't satisfied with the status quo, what everyone else was telling us was "it." Although we don't know if God created that desire in the first place inside us, in which case we did nothing but respond to what was already there. That's what Paul sort of says, "so that no one can boast in his own flesh." So no one can say he did anything good to deserve the gift of being born into the family of God. We know that it is not just some willy-nilly thing that anyone can do—that it’s just open to everyone. It is clear from the words preserved for us that God chooses those to whom He gives this blessing.

I don't know about where it's leading. I only know it happened and it is growing in us, as a seed that has been planted—the same way that Jesus said it would in the parables he told. I used to try to figure out why this and why that. Probably mostly because I wanted to know what was going to happen—how similar to the experience of those first century believers it was apt to resemble. I now know it's not good for me to know because then I'd try to control it and make things happen, etc. The old man is always there trying to set himself up against God in me, to be independent from Him, to do what I want to do, and be what I want to be.

Our experience may be inconsistent with Christadelphian beliefs, mainly regarding the natural family, but not scripture. Consider Jesus' own words about natural family verses those he knew God had chosen for him—those 12 men. It is clear that he considered these men—not his natural family—to be his actual family, and they were definitely not one in the same. They became the same in the case of James, but it wasn't a given. His own family actually considered him crazy because he was so out there and creating so much shame.

That is a important point to consider too—how strong were the natural familial units in those days. It created TONS of the worst kind of shame to do what Jesus’ disciples did, including Paul. To leave your home, your family, your father's business—just to follow some crazy guy who said he was Messiah but didn’t look anything like anyone expected, who actually looked very wrong in the natural. That was a risky and shameful thing to do. They bet everything on him and took on the shame and then he got murdered. Looking back we know, because we have the benefit of knowing that it all turned out right for them. But can we begin to imagine how scary that would have been—how much shame and doubt and reluctance they experienced?

I experience the shame in a very small way compared to them, yet substantial nonetheless, because of everything that I know God made happen. If it wasn't real shame then it would just be some token thing though. It is about losing our life and the things we love in the natural, and if they weren't things we love then it wouldn't be losing our lives. Self-respect is one component of the natural that is strong.

Lots of things happened because of our communications, but we know that we are gaining so much more. I know that the Christadelphians are big on the family thing, which is probably why God made it all happen this way. We know that God can do anything He wants to do—He is not limited to the rules that people say He never violates. He is as free as the wind to do anything He wants, and He wanted to do this thing between her and me, so He did it.

We cannot just assume we are children of God because we have correct doctrine. The scriptural thing, out of the mouth of Jesus, is that we have to be born from above, of water and spirit, of God. That doesn't just happen because we want it, or because we got baptized in water. It seems to me that it is a Christadelphian assumption that because one commits their life to Jesus, understands correct doctrine, then gets baptized in water then they are automatically baptized by the spirit too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but one would have to assume that is the case. I don't want to get into much detail now about this—I never got a chance to know many Christadelphian viewpoints because you’all kicked me out too quickly. Not complaining, just thought I would actually like to know.

We know that the spirit tells us what scripture says beyond the words. It is our counselor, teacher, comforter who leads us into all truth regarding the spiritual things, therefore regarding God, who is the spirit. It is alive in us, explaining to us the real things. I cannot explain it any differently than that on these pages. It won't make sense to your senses, because it's not a natural thing. It can't be seen with the eyes or heard with the ears or understood with the mind, because those are all natural senses and capabilities. It is true and available only in the spiritual places where God lives. It exists in a different dimension that cannot be comprehended by the natural faculties, only by the spiritual, and only by being born of the spirit. God is the spirit.

I am interested in having a dialog if that is possible. Whatever you say I will be content with. The Lord has adequately taken care of me thus far and will not abandon me now. I know for certain that the seed that was planted in me is now a healthy plant and will continue to grow. I am not certain about my involvement with you, but am open to whatever happens. I have been writing daily exhortations based loosely on the readings of that particular day since May 1. They are available to read at www.pigface.com if you are interested. They might provide more insight into what has happened in regards to all this.

Yours truly,

Pigface Piggylips