September 18th.

Mary sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

We're trained to think/believe, base our life upon that so many things matter—making enough money, having a good enough name, being responsible enough, pumping out replicants, driving a nice enough car, having a respectable enough house, career, looks, manners, and a fat enough wallet (just a few of the more obvious things). There are countless others that the society of humans has established for us that keep getting reestablished and reinforced by them everywhere—in the family units they hold together, the laws they enforce, the commercials they create, the magazines they publish, etc. Most humans have no problem growing up and learning how to become a good little human who learns to obey the rules that the humans around them have created and maintain.

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

There is a secret thing that, when it's revealed, makes all these and every other thing unnecessary and foolish, because when you taste it nothing can come close to how it satisfies in a secret place, when that place has been opened up to be able to hear the secret words. I'm not talking about what the humans who claim to know the way to their gods claim to have—that is not a secret, hidden thing but something thoroughly disclosed and available for public consumption. If something is readily available, then why does it specifically need to be revealed? What was Jesus doing when he was speaking and as Mary sat listening, if not revealing the truth about the Father as per how it was being revealed to him?

No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

When the truth about the Father is being revealed to a son, the words he hears are the same kind of words that Mary heard as she sat listening to the teacher revealing the truth about the Father to her and the others who were drawn to be able to hear what he was saying. It wasn't just words coming out of Jesus' mouth, but living truth because they contained the kind of information that went past Mary's ears and brain and straight into her heart, where that thing in her lived that wanted to find out what was real and true.

The Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent.

The natural mind can only read the preserved words and synthesize them so they fit into the natural system of the things in their own reality—the natural way of looking at and perceiving the world according to what we've learned to be willing to accept because we figure we know what we're looking at. Everyone thinks they know what they're looking at and they find their proof in the fact that everyone else thinks they know, too, so they all agree and they think that their agreement makes it true.

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

To the natural, reading the words are like any academic exercise for the natural mind—reading a novel, play or the principles of free-market economics. If that's all we possess then that's all we'll get. That's not advice to "go out and get some," because we can only get if it's given to us. The earth has been made desolate of the truth that Jesus brought, since a few hundred years after he went to become One with the Father, and there is no one who has been being given that life and condition, as the first century brothers were being given it. Also, there is nothing that one can just go out and get, because it isn't there to go out and get.

Although if you want something human, there are many things you can go out and get that will cap off your dream of an existence by making you think you can go out and get some by following some particular set of made up rules, as interpreted by the humans from the words they think they understand. They look, and read, and say, "Hey, we can understand this! Let's go and make a club that's just like they had them in the first century when these letters were written, then we can get what they had."

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;" and, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

The first century sons of God were able to actually do this, the evidence about which we can read in the NT writings, esp. the gospel and epistles of John. Those who recorded the events witnessed the amazing phenomena which had been predicted by the OT prophets and holy men, the new covenant outlined and specified by Jeremiah (ch. 31) which predicted that the life and body of God in pure spirit form would come to the earth and inhabit the bodies of some of the humans who were being chosen to know Him, to be drawn to Him, to come near Him. They would be a part of His real family, that which has been being formed since the beginning, out of the lives of the prophets and holy men, and everyone who has been drawn to come close to God but couldn't because they have had a nature (unclean) that prohibits them from doing so. Nevertheless, having His own family of children to Him and brothers to each other near Him where He is, is the only thing that matters to God. That is why the obedience of the firstborn Son is so utterly important to everyone, because that choice to follow the Father instead of the animal is what saves them all.

This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.

If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Before we were chosen, our lives were all about us, now our lives become about what we can do for the family of God's sons. To promote and take care of that is the hope of Israel, because the family *is* the true Israel, what all the earthly copies ever pointed at. The lives of the writers who were witnessing this thing were caught up in it so that nothing else became important to them except taking care of that life, protecting it from what threatened it. That amounted to loving God with everything they had to give, by taking care of His sheep (their neighbor), thus fulfilling the commands Jesus declared one could inherit eternal life by fulfilling. They were truly being sons of God, but they didn't do it on their own by whatever was naturally inside them.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.

They were doing it because they were driven by the love that was put in them by the life of God and Jesus, who became One life, as the Father became satisfied and there was joy and exultation in the spiritual world. The life of God was then being poured out on the earth into the hearts of men who were carried along by its presence inside them. It lasted for a little while but then it slowly started to fizzle out, finally becoming no more once the abomination caused the desolation of that life on the earth and that desolation was made complete. There is no ability for the humans to love as the first century brothers loved each other—what is evidenced by what we can read even in the letters we have from them to their brothers—because the life which brought that ability was taken out of the earth, and that's what remains, even to today.

If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands...I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit...I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid...I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you.

But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands...I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.

The gift that was being given in the first century was given for a while as a celebration and an outpouring of good onto the humans, who are naturally evil. It was a teacher to many who were chosen to become sons for God, to instruct them how to have a clean, pure, devoted heart, how to love God with everything they had to give so that their life became as Jesus' life was—a sacrifice of love for the Father's sake.

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you.

I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. 

I am being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. 

Now that same gift is not being given as it was before, for the short time that it was being given by God to some of the humans. Since shortly after that period of time it was taken out of the natural world, so that now it is elusive and unavailable. God isn't like the humans think He must be. They cannot see that what He did in that short period of time came to an end; they assume it must be still going on just as before, as though the will of the humans and that of God was the same, as though there is any truth whatsoever in the world today.

I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for their idols.

God doesn't make Himself available to the humans like He used to because He doesn't need to. When Jesus went to become One with Him, then God had what He needed and wanted, even from the beginning in His plans for the first human who betrayed Him. With Israel, He hadn't yet received what He desired—a people who love Him with all of their heart, soul, strength and mind—so He was vulnerable to them, even though they constantly did what the first human did. They always turned away from Him instead of toward Him, deserting Him for their idols.

I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me.
To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, "Here am I, here am I."

All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people,
who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations.

All day long, again and again God held out His hands to a people who would not love Him, rejecting them and then bringing them back to Him, only to have to reject them again because they never fully turned to Him for very long. They were always carried away by the same thing—their need, craving and desire to love and serve themselves, as per the nature that always ruled them since it was put on them. That is the sinful, animal (serpent) nature that the humans were tied to when they became bound to the snake (the animal) when they trusted it instead of the Father.

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.

He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.

Finally, God's wife Israel gave Him the Son He had waited for, the one who loved and served Him perfectly, without the flaw of the animal nature being in him—without being led astray by what leads all the humans away from God and keeps them separated from Him. That is, the nature of the serpent, the beast, the animal in all the forms that it leads the humans—in the form of a woman, or wealth, or ego satisfaction. Jesus turned his face away from all of these things—what the humans are completely ruled by and which identifies them as mere animals, not sons of God—and instead had his face turned toward the Father, so that he did what pleased Him instead of his own self.

So when Jesus went to become one with his Father, God was somewhat complete and satisfied, because Jesus saved His family of sons—the real temple—and His Son was now safe with Him, made One with God. Now God didn't have to pander to the humans, holding out His hands and being vulnerable to them. Once the work was done and His family of sons was guaranteed by the one sacrifice that would/could satisfy God and His own righteousness, once His Son was with Him where He lives and one with Him, safe and never having to leave; He didn't need to keep availing Himself to the humans. That is why this long period of darkness, which was predicted by the word which lived in the hearts of some humans, has existed on the earth for so many thousands of years. The humans don't know this, so they have assumed over and over that they can do what the humans did on the earth a long time ago, what is seen in the Tower of Babel account, where the humans got together and by the power of consensus tried to build their way to God.

Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

They have so many times thought that by their own power of consensus among themselves they can build a way to God, a human way, an organization by which the humans can make their way to God. But their organizations are built on assumptions that such and such must still be true, because they haven't been given the truth about the life of God—that it is gone from the earth, as predicted. In every attempt that they have made to do it, from the Jews to the Holy Roman Church all the way throughout the humans' history of their different religious organizations (churches), or towers by which they assume they can get to God, it always turns out the same. They can not do what was done by God in the first century, and they always fall short because they think they can act on their own power of agreement to get it done—that because they agree then it must be true. To transform a mere animal into a son of God isn't a thing they could ever do. There can be an outward show on some of the humans' part, some better and more polished than others, that this has happened in them. However, under the right circumstances, the animal nature always comes out because it lives in the hearts of the humans and doesn't come out because they want or will it to come out of them. It lives in them to define them as what they truly are, and it hasn't been purged out from there, as was the case of the first century believers. And that's why they just seem like everyone else, because they are.

The devil, the serpent, the beast—the king and ruler of the animals—has been allowed to reign in the hearts of men unobstructed by God for so many thousands of years because that condition of the spirit being poured out was taken away after a certain amount of time, then the animal (nature) set itself up as god in the temple (human bodies). It was God's desire and will for it to happen this way, why He put the prophesy in the hearts and mouths of His servants. It is for His purpose, maybe a kind of spiritual purging and resting, like the land resting and enjoying its sabbaths. But now it's been God resting, not having to deal with the constant evil that is in the humans, but just being able to enjoy the Son.  That's what the Revelation of John is about, written for the NT churches about what was soon going to happen on the earth, and it did, and it has been happening all the while, no matter what the humans may think or assume. They do not know what happened, nor what has been happening in the spiritual world where God lives. All the while the earth has been desolate of the revelation of God's life in the hearts of men.

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

We think that before the Lord comes back to the earth, the same thing will also come back, that which existed in the first century, as a kind of anticipation of his coming, a sort of getting the bride ready to receive her husband. It will be a way to get a group of sons ready and waiting for him, like a true and faithful bride waits for the husband, and is there to greet him when he comes, which he deserves. True and faithful means that the life and truth that only the spirit of God can put into the humans, must abide in them as it did in the first century. As slowly as it went away from the earth, perhaps that slowly it has been developing, even and only the preparation for its implementation and existence as before, when some of the humans were able to be true and faithful, when they were transformed into sons of God, and good was in the earth.

So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.' So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.' "

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

If the sons are being chosen again to have that life living in us, if we are being given good gifts then it is our duty to listen and obey that spirit which has begun to teach us the new way—if we hear his voice. He teaches us with the intention toward going away from the old dead way, so that we are learning the new way—how to be on the path that leads to being a faithful bride for the true husband, and devoted sons for the Father. That is the proper expectation for all children. One end and reason for that transformation is to know the Husband, and the Father—not merely in concept but in a real, intimate way by being able to be listening to and interacting with the spirit which lives in us to teach us to "accept the right and reject the wrong." The process and aim of that interaction is to show and lead us in the direction of that new way, the way to the Father. The process of moving towards the new way is to first learn about the old way. When we understand where we came from, then we can go to where we are going, if we know what it is we are abandoning.

The nature of the king of the animals, the serpent, the beast, the devil, is what we begin to abandon after we first learn of its existence and total rule over us. We begin to abandon the world ruled by the humans who are ruled by the animal (the animal nature that is instinctually in them)—what Adam was bonded with when he believed and trusted it rather than the One who wanted to be a Father to him. It sets itself up against the knowledge of God, meaning knowing God in a personal, actual way—how Jesus knew the Father.

We begin gradually to consider ourselves not natural anymore, but spiritual—on our way to becoming as Paul was—as we are given the gifts of that lead to that understanding, what leads to being more like the good Son than like the snake. The natural things always pass away in this creation, and they begin to pass away from us whereas before they were the only thing that lived in our heart to guide and lead us. But God's sons have received that spiritual deposit in our hearts, which begins the process of transformation. The things of the spirit last forever, because they are the things of God, as God is the spirit and God does not end. The things of this creation always end.

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

Mary chose what God considers important—"This is my Son, whom I love, Listen to him!" Mary saw what was important, which is an example of what the sons of God begin to consider important, learn to love, and run after. Martha chose the human things to become preoccupied with, what the humans love and run after because it's all they know and cannot hear the voice of the Master speaking, whereas the sons can. Martha was doing the obvious thing, that which all the humans would have said was the "responsible" thing—preparing the food they were going to eat, which would keep them alive for another day and that's it. Mary saw the food that Jesus had, the truth that he spoke, which would satisfy in the better way.

"I have food to eat that you know nothing about. My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work."

With God there is a perfect order to how He raises a child that is born of spirit (to Him). As a natural child can only eat so much food, so it is with us. A spiritual child can only take in so much food of the spirit that can allow him to grow. However, it must be some amount all the time, so that we grow up properly. The teachings of the spirit build upon each other, so before we can go on to the deeper things we have to be obedient in the more foundational things. The natural is merely a copy of the spiritual things, and a solid house cannot be built upon a flimsy foundation (or no foundation at all). So it's a slow, steady march toward the Father, not a sprint and then we're done.

This was a concept that Paul wrote about in his letters. In them we can discover what he considered spiritual growth, that which he knew was happening in him; versus immaturity, that which he saw starting to happen within the community of Corinthian brothers. Paul likened the spiritually immature to "mere men," or worldly men, mere humans, animals without the regenerating and transforming power of the spirit. Jealousy and quarreling is what humans instinctually do, the report Paul got about the Corinthians wanting to form their own groups that were better, more distinguished, greater than the other groups. They weren't understanding the new way of love, but clinging to the old way of the animal—of survival, needing to be better and greater than the others, promoting its self at the expense of its brother, which is the opposite of what Jesus and Paul did for the sons of God, because they were driven by that love for the Father which existed for a short time, but is now gone.

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?

In the Hebrews letter the writer indicates that there were only certain concepts which were available to the young believers, but necessary because they were foundational. He speaks about the believers in terms of people who had been enlightened, who had tasted the spiritual gift, the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age; by sharing in the holy spirit, the good gifts that were being given to them. He was warning them, as people who had been given so much, about falling back into the old ways of the world, the humans, the animal, the serpent—from whence they came.

We have much to say about this (about how during the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. And that although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, and then was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek), but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn.

In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

He wanted to teach them about the reason for the OT scriptures—how the things God set up in the natural long ago were copies of the eternal, spiritual (heavenly), better things. He wanted to show them how Jesus fulfilled all the words of the law and prophets from the story of Abraham and the words of David so they didn't need to keep going back to it, like a dog back to its vomit or a pig to the mud pen. These are the things we are looking forward to, as they make up the spiritual reality. The recipients of this letter kept falling back, stunting their growth by not progressing in the new way of the spirit, but going back to the old way of the animal. This is partial evidence of even the beginnings of the abomination that would cause the desolation of the very thing he was trying to teach them.

The writer doesn't seem so overly sympathetic with these believers because he knows that they must move ahead in their new life. It is as though he were standing at the side of a crystal clear lake, urging them to come up, to make the hike up to where he was—to suffer and share in the letting go of the old way that was more comfortable for them. Instead they felt happy to wallow in the muck and mud of what they thought was better—their own filth . It is difficult to choose the right way and abandon the wrong way when it's all we know. We can be sure that God is a rewarder of the one who diligently seeks Him. That means going the hard way, against the way everyone else is going, and the nagging old animal who always wants us to do what it wants us to do.

Then (when the body of Christ has been built up and we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ) we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.