September 10th.

Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."

The new way is not of the letter, of the man, of the things that the humans can see, touch, taste, feel and observe—in short of the human consciousness, what they all aspire to grow into once they reach a certain age and pass over into adulthood. "The thoughts of many hearts being revealed," is a prophesy about how with the life of Jesus, God's only Son, He would be turning the way of becoming right with Him on its head. "The falling and rising of many in Israel" reinforces the new way, how many who are first in the observable world (the leaders—the self-serving, false shepherds) will be brought low and become last, and those who are last (the disciples who left what they had in the observable world to follow the Son who was not part of it—the poor and needy who were being left behind by the false shepherds; the widows, orphans and aliens, those whom should have been picked up and cared for by their brother Israelites, their "neighbor") will be elevated. The coming of Israel's savior means a new way of worshipping God that was only spoken about before by God's holy prophets, those whom the Son came to save from being forever forgotten in the grave (hell). All this was to happen according to Simeon's and Anna's words, not on the outside where the humans live and die, where they think everything that is important exists, but in the secret place inside a man where only its owner and the spirit can go, the place where the Father lived in the Son.

A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

Being born of God doesn't just happen, then we're all good from that point onward. First of all, it doesn't just happen because we choose it. The humans can't just go out and choose the living God like He's a pair of shoes the human thinks he can own if he pays the right price (conforming to the human rules that the experts have created, what they claim will make them right with their gods). If it does happen, it is because the living God chose to make it happen, and the one in whom it has happened will be certain of it because it's a genuine deal that cuts past all the normal human stuff so there is no question—not like those who don't know. The only question is whether that one wants what is happening, or whether he would rather not bother because it isn't an easy, instant or automatic type of deal; as the liars proclaim it to be.

The struggle to grow out of what God hates (ruled by the unclean animal nature—remaining human, what he grew up into) and into what He loves (sons who look and act like Him) is a life-long enterprise, because the animal he came from never dies, although it can grow weaker if the son doesn't allow it to rule him but denies it that right. The sons are not entirely clean until death is finally overcome in them, and they are raised in a body that can be close to the Father because it's like Him. Until then they're susceptible to being unfaithful to our Father when they embrace the animal, from whom they should be walking away.

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.

Why? Because the pharisees weren't righteous, although they appeared to be on the outside, on the level where the humans can look and observe. In the words of the Son, they were like clean vessels on the outside, but in their heart they were full of the uncleanness of man. They were rich on the outside (literally), but inside they were poverty stricken, dead to the God they assumed to represent, the self-appointed shepherds of Israel who only loved themselves and overlooked those whom they were supposed to be leading, guiding and shepherding.

I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

The process of learning to deny the animal is one which requires learning a whole new way of living and acting, even in our own mind and consciousness, our own thoughts have to become pure, which is a thoroughly impossible thing to be able to do, since we're so used to being able to hide what we are there. However, that is what the A+ son desires to do because he finally realizes that that's what the Father requires of him. After a while the time of privilege, because of the son's knowledge of his secure position, is over—and the time of going the way of the firstborn Son starts.

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

It's hard because the old nature we are being pulled away from is the nature that completely rules the humans (us), so our continued exposure to them will keep reinforcing the old way in us instead of the new and make it that much more difficult to ourselves be what the Father wants us to be. We may be citizens of another world, and have the seed of the new nature growing in us, but everywhere we turn the world is reinforcing in us what is bad because the knowledge of what is good is not in the humans who rule the world filled with animals. The only thing that's in the world is the way that the humans love, run after and reinforce in each other, the older adults more thoroughly than the younger children. A mature adult human will be much more thoroughly versed and familiar with the ways of the humans than will be a small child.

The humans don't stop being what they are just for our sake. There is no magic force field around us that the ways of the humans bounce off of us when we come near them. That's why the call to come away from them and be separate runs not just through God's words to the Israelites, but is also picked up by Paul, who understood that it applied to those who were being created into the new Israel, the better nation of the chosen people of God:

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

"I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.
Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.
I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."

Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

Men can't see what other men think, love and serve in their hearts. How a man appears to God is very different than how he appears to other men, because God sees into the secret places, which reveal the true identity of the man, what the other humans are incapable of seeing—all they see is what he is or does on the outside. A man could be the most upstanding citizen you might ever meet, do and say all the right things and be sweeter than marshmallow pie on the outside, but in his heart he could have the most grotesque identity, which is how God sees him.

We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.

He could appear to all the humans as one who loves and serves God, but his heart could be filled with love and service to the idols that turn his heart away from God (himself), and reveal his true identity in the secret places of his heart where the invisible things take place—his thoughts and secret loves.

Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

This is the place Jesus speaks about to his disciples, which he stresses is the important place, where the important things happen in a man as opposed to his body—the external reality that everyone can see—because this is how God sees what a man is like.

"Are you still so dull?" Jesus asked them. "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' "

Jesus straightforwardly says that the outside, the physical body, the things done that the other humans see don't matter to God. If he is honest on the outside, then the outside follows the inside and it's the inside that is leading. Being more like a human than like God we will be dull, because the external things are all we know. As the sons move closer to their Father and away from the humans, they're more able to actually judge with the same judgment that God has, because they increasingly see as He does, into the secret places of the heart instead of where the humans look in order to judge. When the sons are fully redeemed and death is not found in them, then they will be able to do the work of the Father by being the true judges who judge by what's inside them. Not the bias and hypocritical partiality of the humans, but the righteousness of their Father, according to how He sees things, so for His sake not theirs (the human way).

I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!

The heart is where a man is either clean or unclean as God sees him. The things that take place in a man's heart are invisible to other men. The man knows what they are but other men don't. The sons who are born of God are given new eyes to see as God sees, because He is their Father. As Jesus the good Son took over the work of the Father, the sons will also do the work of God and judge the world regarding who should live and not live. They will not have in mind the things and interests of men, but of the Father.

I will lay the dead bodies of the Israelites in front of their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. Wherever you live, the towns will be laid waste and the high places demolished, so that your altars will be laid waste and devastated, your idols smashed and ruined, your incense altars broken down, and what you have made wiped out. Your people will fall slain among you, and you will know that I am the LORD.

Before that time the sons will have to be transformed, which will be an impossible task made easier if they remove the old influences, which just makes sense. They begin more and more to understand why what the Israelites did was so detestable to God, and they can apply it to themselves by asking what the gods and idols of their hearts are—what currently leads them off the path to the Father when they follow the animal instincts that well up within them like a hungry lion wanting to be fed. They need to ask in an honest way (the heart where they live) how they might be loving and serving the things that the humans love and serve instead of going the way of their true husband who was honest and his heart was purely devoted to the Father and His purpose and plan (His true, yet hidden family of sons, which is what Israel metaphorically represents). The animal nature, God's adversary, will prompt them to always hide, to pretend that they are good and fine because they have already been chosen to become sons. The presence of the enemy of God in our heart will lead us astray, but it also serves to remove the ability to become proud, of thinking we have arrived, of thinking there is something good about us.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

God tolerates the animal nature still in these present bodies of ours for a time. He instituted the animal nature in the humans, so there is mercy for us who are beguiled by it, who continue to be led by it. However, no good father would allow his son to waste away by continually indulging himself with things that are bad for him. The way we become sons, then, is by un becoming humans—what we were before in all our glory—by not participating in the things we as humans learned to love and run after. We do that by not allowing the ways of the humans to be continually reinforced in us, and learning to not run after whatever instinct is welling up in us that is demanding to be satisfied like an unruly child. There is a power in the world, like a virus and a disease, that is impossible to defend against if we continue to give in to it. If we allow ourselves to be exposed to it then we make ourselves more vulnerable to its power over us, which WILL consume us and then spit us out when it's done with using us for its good (satisfying itself in us which is its purpose). That's why the people of God are commanded to come out from what contaminates them—the humans that are not like them who can only reinforce what they know which is bad—so they can become pure in their heart's devotion to Him; so they can learn how to be good sons.