September 27th.

Saul died because he was unfaithful to the LORD. He did not keep the word of the LORD.  He did not inquire of the LORD (consulted a medium for guidance instead). So the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse.

Saul was unfaithful and didn't keep the word of the Lord. He didn't trust God, nor was he faithful to Him to follow His way. The consequences of what he did were set forth by the living word, to which Samuel was obedient, and Samuel made them plain to Saul. What was behind Saul's actions?

Saul remained at Gilgal, and all the troops with him were quaking with fear. He waited seven days, the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and Saul's men began to scatter. So he said, "Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings. " And Saul offered up the burnt offering. Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.

"What have you done?" asked Samuel. Saul replied, "When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, I thought, 'Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD's favor.' So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering."

"You acted foolishly," Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD's command."

In the first instance the animal reaction of fear, because of what he saw with his eyes and heard with his ears and understood with his mind. Saul didn't/couldn't transcend that animal fear and believe that God would/could deliver Him from the enemy. He was afraid and decided to take what he needed by the force of his own hand, and what was forbidden for him to do. He was overtaken and led by fear, the animal nature, the serpent, the devil; instead of able to trust God. That which was reserved for Samuel, Saul instead decided he would do, usurping God's order and control. Out of fear he disobeyed God's word when he was tested.

Moses said to the LORD,  "May the LORD, the God of the spirits of all mankind, appoint a man over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the LORD's people will not be like sheep without a shepherd."

Being the shepherd of God's people, that was a significant thing. The LORD wanted a man after his own heart to be the leader of his people, a servant who wasn't ruled by his fear and what he could see, but instead knew that God lived, and was powerful to save him from what seemed impossible.

While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, "Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely."

Why will they be punished more severely than others? Because they claimed the seat of Moses, who gave his life for the sheep. He left a life of wealth, privilege and honor to become a nomad because he heard the voice of God speaking, and the events that happened caused him to go away from the life of luxurious wealth, pomp and honor to become a servant to God, someone who was willing to do what He wanted. God didn't need Moses, He wanted him and took him to be a symbol and representation of the better thing, that which is opposite to the human tendency to want to aspire to what Moses left to become a servant of God. The teachers of the Law took the position of the seat of Moses and turned it into one that would serve their need to aspire to what he had abandoned in order to search for God. They were so blind because they made themselves that way, in order to be able to control it for their own good.

Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, "What? Are we blind too?"
Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

"I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice." Jesus used this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them.

Therefore Jesus said again, "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.

"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life--only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

Moses was the shepherd of so many sheep and he gave up his life of privilege to become that for God's sake. The self-appointed leaders whom the greater Moses confronted did just the opposite—they gave up their positions of being the true shepherds to seek out for themselves a life of privilege because of those positions by lording them over their brothers who were the poor, the widows, the orphans, the aliens and the sick, whom they were commanded by God in the Law of Moses to love as themselves. At the same time they justified themselves by the same Law of Moses by acting as its protectors, when they themselves looked past the spirit of the Law—what God had intended the Law to point them to—for their own gain.

One of the experts in the law answered him, "Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also."

Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

"Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, `I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.' Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.

"Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."

It's no small thing to claim to be a shepherd/leader of God's people. Modern religious leaders will encourage anyone who wants to take a crack at it to go ahead, as though that position were like becoming a manager at safeway. As long as they conform to their system and keep telling the same lies made up by the whore, propounded now by her *and* all her prostitute daughters, they get sanctioned by those who hold positions to which they desire to aspire, to act as a teacher and instruct others about how to be pleasing to their gods.

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.

All forms of christian belief has been reduced to the humans becoming right with the gods by adhering to correct sets of doctrine, as though any of them could presume to be able to know what they are with their dull, unenlightened minds. The only thing they can do is set up a system based on the rules they've derived from the preserved words, a system which is flawed by their bias to take one part and make it a rule and take another part and ignore it, because of what they have preconceived in their minds about what they're willing to accept in a system they will give their lives to.

John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

The faith and belief of Jesus and the first century sons of God wasn't that they believed correctly, or believed the right things about whoever they thought God was. That was more the Jewish way, the way of the old covenant, that one could be right with God by believing the right things about Him, and then conforming to the commands of that covenant. The new covenant was such that those first century believers who were under it *believed* that God's spirit was living inside their heart, even in the face of so much adverse consequences for their adherence to that belief—not a system of rules but that the impossible was actually happening inside them. It wasn't such an obviously evident thing all the time, which made their belief something valuable to God, because it was against the way that the humans at large were experiencing (not what they were). God was unseen, and even though the spirit gifts may have been evident as some proof that what they had was real and true to a certain extent, nevertheless it wasn't a big circus filled with the obviousness of the spirit's inhabitation—even to those who were being inhabited by God—that what they had been given was real and true enough to throw away everything else.

Do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

Of course Abraham loved what God had finally given to him, and it didn't make sense what God asked of him. Abraham didn't know why God wanted him to kill the boy, but He did, so he offered him up. It would have been easy for Abraham to justify not killing Isaac, even by the word that was spoken to him earlier (all nations would be blessed through him). That's why the truth that God has put into men's hearts has never been based on some arbitrary, or worse some biased interpretation of the words and what they're meant to convey, which can be easily twisted into whatever the person wants them to say to preserve what they love and want to hold on to while they say they're doing it for God.

The truth that God puts into whomever is chosen to receive it doesn't come from the outside—from the mouths of men or the reading of a book (because the reading itself is biased when what is acceptable has already been determined, and it always is)—but must come from where nothing else can, so that it is genuine and can only be known by whom is receiving it. The humans at large cannot validate it in the receiver, which will be the first thing by which the receiver will try to establish it as valid (validated by the humans around him). The truth that the living God sends is a secret mystery, just as the Son was kept hidden from the humans at large because that's the way the Father has designed it to be, just as He has been to the humans from the beginning—secret and hidden.

Samuel said to Saul, "I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.' "

Then Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, to the east of Egypt. He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs--everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.

Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: "I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions." Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night.

The second account speaks of Saul's greed, motivated again by the animal fear he allowed to rule him so that he disregarded the word spoken through Samuel from God to him as the chosen leader of His people. It's a matter of what Saul allowed himself to be led by, in order to be what God had chosen him to be—the God who had chosen him and given him that position, or the animal fear that made him want to give in to that fear to grab what he could for himself instead of devoting his life to being what God had chosen him to be. He disobeyed the word of the Lord because he saw that certain things were more valuable than others and he wanted to keep them for himself, and he had the power and ability to make that decision for his own gain, only by what God had given him. He did kill "everything that was despised and weak," but then spared the king and "the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good."

That was a move based on his natural judgment, driven by the wild animal fear he allowed to be his god. He obeyed the word of Samuel as long as it agreed with his value judgment in the capacity of what he saw with his eyes and heard with his ears and understood with his mind; but then disobeyed it when he wanted to get and keep for himself (the stuff that was good, according to the human way of value). He spared the king so that perhaps he might be spared if ever he was captured by him or his people. Self-preservation and unfaithfulness, being disobedient to the word that was given to him, thinking he could take for and protect himself, and disbelief that God would continue to keep him safe from being captured.

Saul had great miracles done for him and to him. He was chosen by God to be a shepherd of His people, and given much to be that shepherd and leader. It was purely the work of God that put him on the throne and God counted on him to obey Him, to carry out His purposes, to be a man after His heart and do His will over everything that pulled on him to do the otherwise. Instead Saul decided within himself to disobey God because of those animal instincts to get and hoard (because you're afraid of being without, of being stripped, of being killed) that were pulling on him to make him serve and be led by the serpent instead of by the God who had given him everything he had. He saw the situation with his natural eyes, was led by his natural instincts, and did not believe God would protect him. Then he saw certain things that were pleasing to his eyes, and highly valued by men, so he disregarded what God had spoken to him for his own gain in the natural, what the animal nature told him would satisfy him.

What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.

Compare what Saul did with what the first humans did:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

There were plenty of trees that were good for food and probably pleasing to the eye to, but one tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. She wanted something that God didn't want her to have. God had a reason and purpose for why He didn't want them to have a knowledge of good and evil, but she decided that she wanted it even though God had His reason and purpose for not giving it to them. It was in their best interest to not have it, and although He may not have disclosed to them the reasoning why He didn't want them to have it, nevertheless He was clear what He didn't want them to do. He wanted them to trust Him, and not the created alternative that pulled at them to take by their own hand what God hadn't offered to them, and lied to them about their being able to trust God.

"But I did obey the LORD," Saul said. "I went on the mission the LORD assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal."

But Samuel replied: "Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king."

So it was with Saul. God had told him to kill everything for His purposes, but he rationalized and then lied about why he did it. Saul was willing to take what God had given to him, but he wasn't willing to give God back what is highly valuable to Him, what He looks for in men, the only thing God cannot force a man to be—to choose Him over what is easier and more tempting, to say no to the evil cravings, urges and instinctual power inside him, pulling on the man to disobey God, to have a heart which is after wanting to please God instead of obeying the fear that lives in him to drive him to be a mere animal.

This is what Jesus was, and why God was pleased with him and loved him, because Jesus turned away from himself, from that animal nature which wanted to rule him, and he set his face instead directly toward his Father. He didn't take up his life; he laid his life down for the sake of God. He believed God over what was easier to believe, and said no to it even though he naturally wanted to embrace it, love it, and run after it. Jesus was the firstborn of many brothers, who also faced the same dilemma, the choice of whether to follow their natural instincts with all its cravings, urges, impulses, rationalizations and justifications; or the gentle whisper of the voice of the living word, which will be in the sons if they are chosen by God to be as such.

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

Jesus was not ever some god, for whom that would have been an easy thing to do. That idea is a myth created in the time just after the first century, which completely wipes out the significance of why the Father loved the Son. If Jesus was a god, then his statement that God loved him because he chose to lay down his life would be ridiculous because it would be easy for a god to do that, so the fact that he believed and obeyed God instead of the animal would mean nothing. The reason it's significant is because the Son of David didn't do what Saul did, but what David did. That is, to take up his life, be led by the animal cravings that were tempting him to do that in the temptation account, which was the animal fear wanting to rule him. I would conjecture that those two things—who Jesus actually was and was not, and what the sinful nature (the devil) is and is not—are the first things the sons of God will need to be able to comprehend, because everything about who they are, and what they must be/do, comes out of that very fundamental understanding of what God wants/needs/demands from His own sons.

"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

Saul was led by the animal nature which drove him to fulfill his own will, while David was after God's heart. David the unlikely son of Jesse with his soft, pliable heart, was a copy of the one who was coming—the righteous branch who would shoot up out from the stump that was cut down.

Go and tell this people: "Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."

Then I said, "For how long, O Lord?" And he answered: "Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the LORD has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken.

And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land."

God's intention was to completely wipe out what His people turned into—not the faithful wife but a prostitute as per the Ezekiel reading—and make the land desolate. The trees which contained the holy seed would be cut to the ground so only a stump was left.

See, the Lord, the LORD Almighty, will lop off the boughs with great power. The lofty trees will be felled, the tall ones will be brought low.

He will cut down the forest thickets with an ax; Lebanon will fall before the Mighty One.

To the human eye it would seem there was no tree left there anymore, but God kept a stump there, which was hidden to the humans, and God kept the holy seed alive for hundreds of years in it before the shoot sprang up out of it.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD—and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.

Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

This time it would not be a natural thing that God sends when He makes the shoot of righteousness spring up from the stump which contained the holy, dormant seed. What God would do would all be done in secret, hidden from the humans and revealed only to those who He was choosing to know what was true, to be able to recognize the holy seed and respond with a willing heart.

The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest.

This prediction describes the nature of the new covenant, when the righteous branch would shoot forth from the stump of Jesse (the heart of David). It is about how it would not be a natural thing, or observable to the humans, or able to be controlled by them like they thought they could control what God had created for their own gain. The reason it's about the animals is because God is saying that His new covenant would not follow the rules of this creation where the wolf, lion and leopard kill the lamb, calf and goat; and the child gets bitten by the cobra and dies. That is the creation which is ruled by the animals, which the humans became when their natures were bound together as described in Genesis 3.

That's the present creation, which has certain laws about it, where certain things are always true (like the lion killing the cow). God is declaring that the new covenant wouldn't follow those rules, where the rich and powerful control everything, exploiting the poor, the widows and the orphans. The new covenant would turn all the laws of the present creation on their head, so that those who would be chosen would not be the powerful or the rich, as everyone assumed, but the poor, the wretched and despised, the naked and needy, and the cursed.

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."

The curse of the law was that is was based on the natural order of things. There was nothing more natural than have the flesh of the man cut off to signify who he was. Jesus the bringer of the new covenant was not a leader recognized by the humans. He was the long-awaited Messiah, the righteous branch shooting up from the heart of David, a rejuvenation of David's heart—what David could only point to—yet he was hidden by God and his identity was kept secret from the humans, in line with what God said about the nature of the new covenant, that it would not be like the old one, based on the natural order of things. It wasn't that the old covenant was bad, but that it was only a copy of what was good, better, and would replace the old because of that.

No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

There are all kind of ways we think we can hide our service to the animal instead of completely following the Lord, serving him as he served the Father—without regard for his natural circumstances. It is possible by disciplining ourselves to obey the word in us instead of the old man who pulls so hard on us all the time, to try to get us to serve and be led by it. If we can't, if we don't, then we cannot think we can hide from God by anything we might do or not do in our heart. The animal in us will make us rebellious against the word in us, but God loves the humility that a man be vulnerable and exposed, then truly repent, rather than think we can hide our rebellion in our heart with rationalizations and justifications, which is the human way.

We are bound to not be able to perfectly obey what we know is right, but we can't hide from God by thinking that we can live a life in the secret places of our heart where we assume He cannot see, because we believe the lie that we can hide who we are from Him, as we hide from men, even ourselves. How can we be so foolish to think that He does not see when we lust after things in our heart, but act another way in front of men? But we do, because we want to believe the lie; we are naturally prone to believing it rather than rejecting it because what's in us is not good but evil. It's pure deception we succumb to as we believe the snake because he's so close to us—He is us, not some devil outside us. He lives in us and is part of us and doesn't want to die. We believe him because it's all we know and we love him, because he's us.

What he doesn't tell us, though—what the sons must learn—is about the love and goodness of God and how many good things we will have by chasing after His life in us, the food that Jesus ate, more than we do the things that the animal is tempting us with—wealth, ego, appetite, etc., etc., etc.

This is the work of belief—suffering by denying that hungry animal. However, if we continue to do the easy thing and feed it, then it grows and we allow it to have a bigger hold on us. It will be harder to deny because we have fed it instead of starved it. If we starve it by disciplining ourselves to obey the word in us which has already spoken to what is right and wrong, then it will get weaker.

Then I said about the one worn out by adultery, 'Now let them use her as a prostitute, for that is all she is.' And they slept with her. As men sleep with a prostitute, so they slept with those lewd women, Oholah and Oholibah. But righteous men will sentence them to the punishment of women who commit adultery and shed blood, because they are adulterous and blood is on their hands.

If we continue to love the lie then may just be given over to it, and we shouldn't be willing to risk that. That's illustrated in the Ezekiel account, where God gave His unfaithful wife, who continually loved to be unfaithful, over to the animals who ravaged her and treated her like a prostitute. Those she turned away from in disgust, He sent to rape and abuse her like the prostitute she wanted to be. Love and protection are for the faithful wife. This chapter, along with chapter 16, are the most brilliantly written, poignantly sad stories about God and His wife Israel, and how He gives them over to what they love in their hearts. It should cut us open and lay us bare with a desire to be true and faithful to what we know is real. It should make us want to become honest in our heart before the God who has taken the first step toward us by revealing Himself to us.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts...

Because of this, God gave them over...

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

The first humans had a specific set of instructions to follow of how to be faithful to God, what to do and what not to do, as did the Israelites with the Law, which was meant to give them the opportunity to show God they were faithful to Him instead of what pulled on them from the inside. The animal came to them and lied; he offered them something enticing and told them something different than what God told them. The lie was a manipulation of the situation so that they could rationalize about why they should disobey God's word, and grab for themselves. The animal will also deceive us into believing that we should keep doing what we know is wrong by all sorts of different things that allow us to rationalize why we should disobey that word in us. That's not what the religious leaders have told us is bad, what the "bad people" do, for the sake of controlling those who can give them something by believing their lies.

Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.

Our power comes from obeying the Lord, because we know that he is not flesh and blood, and life that is life, the new covenant that was established by the righteous branch shooting up from the stump of Jesse, is not about the natural, as Isaiah declared. That is why the Lord was unconcerned with having and getting the things that the humans consider valuable, what he was tempted with by the animal nature that was tempting him to take his life, to keep his life, to have his life and use the power he had to get for himself, rather than obey the living word in him, to do what was right even if he was the only one who knew what that was. He knew that the natural life of flesh and blood counted for nothing, and that things which mean so much to men are actually detestable to the man after God's heart, because they can lure him away from walking toward his true Father.

The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection.

I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Read Ezekiel 16 and Ezekiel 23 and feel the emotion of God.