November 7th.

I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.

Paul may have thought it would be the Jews whom he was being warned about, because he spent a lot of time refuting them and they were persistent trouble makers for him.

In every city the spirit of the Father and the Son warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.

The living word, the spirit, the new life of Jesus being One with the Father spoke to Paul, and he heard that voice which lived in him to guide him along. The voice of the teacher speaks not human words but spiritual, a different type of communication of knowing and realizing what is true. The spirit told him about the coming apostasy, which was also spoken about it in a general sort of way in different NT letters.

The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

It's crucial for the sons to understand that the spirit was the life of God living in the bodies of men, just as He had lived in Jesus' body, except for one major difference. In Jesus, it was only the Father, who couldn't live in a body inhabited by the unclean animal nature (nothing unclean can come near to God); which is why Jesus had to be pure and untainted by what the humans are cursed with—a totally clean animal. In the first century sons, it was the same life of God (God is the spirit), with the addition of Jesus as a buffer between the Father and the still unclean animals—so that God could live in the bodies of unclean animals, but only if the intention to make them clean existed in the mind of the Father. Jesus was the element that actually allowed for the transformation from unclean animal to clean, pure, consecrated son of God, because the spirit could live in that body and effect that transformation.

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: "Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

" `In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' "

That miraculous condition of God actually inhabiting the bodies of those humans in the first century was predicted by the OT prophets; it existed in the first century as the fulfillment of so many of those OT predictions. However, it was also known in the minds of those who were under it, that it would go away. There are obvious allusions to something bad on the horizon, although the details of it were not known, just that the condition they were under would become threatened.

At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.

The Son who would be bringing the new covenant, also lays out the end of it in Matthew 24, when Daniel's word about the abomination of the unclean animals being set up in the temple, which would cause the desolation of the condition of the spirit of God (the mechanism that effected the transformation from unclean animal to clean son of God) to be living in the bodies of men (the true temple as it existed in the first century).

"Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

Along with knowing how incredible and miraculous that condition was for those chosen to be under the new covenant, it's just as important to understand that even though it was a fulfillment of so much prophesy, the prophets also predicted that the condition would not last, which is what Paul's talking about in the opening verse, Jesus in Matt 24, Daniel in Babylon and the writer of the letters to Timothy. Paul, Jesus and Daniel all predicted what would happen to the truth, what did happen shortly after Paul left.

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

"Then the end will come" is not the end of the human race, but the end of what was going to be happening to them and the others who would be under the condition of the spirit inhabiting their bodies. It was the end of the movement that started with John the Baptist, who gave way to the Son whose obedience to the unseen truth which lived inside him would open up the way for the movement to explode and grow by the newly formed spirit after he went to the Father. But he's telling them right in the same passage that it isn't going to last forever. When the human animals started taking over what the spirit was creating, they would turn it into another human deal, for themselves. Why would something that was so good, what was prophesied about for thousands of years, just be allowed by God to fizzle out and become no more? Because although it was a celebration of the Son and the Father being united, nevertheless the condition of the spirit inhabiting the bodies of humans was a human thing—God interacting with the humans, which is the spirit's purpose—and human things aren't very important because like everything else that's natural (and humans are 100% natural), they all just go away and become no more. The only enduring thing that has to do what humans is the family of the Father, which is populated by former humans who have been transformed into sons for the Father's sake. The humans, in and of themselves, are not much more important than any of the other animals like they always assume to be so incredibly important.

So if anyone tells you, `There he is, out in the desert,' do not go out; or, `Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

The previous line is an important thing to understand—the coming of the Son of Man was not going to be a human type of thing like other human types of things that the humans could observe and recognize. The coming of the Son back to those he loved would not be like a human coming back to another group of humans, as he was with them before—a recognizable, touchable, holdable body amongst other human bodies on the earth. No it would not be like that at all, but more like lightening and wind—unseen, uncontrollable and barely even recognizable There in the sky one second, then gone. Why? Because the Father is not like the humans, and His family of sons are not like any ordinary group of humans. Indeed, the human existence is contrasted with that of the sons of God in the same verse by the Son of God, as that of a carcass compared to the sons who are alive.

Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.

The condition of being dead is the first thing that happened to the humans, as per the warning God gave them.

You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.

As soon as they ate, they died; and as soon as they died they became one with the animal, filled with fear and the instinct to hide from God. They became dead to the knowledge of God as their Father, so that whatever the humans may think they know about God is wrong because they are dead to a knowledge of Him, not alive. They are not ever alive unless they have been chosen to become alive by being transformed, as per the Father's intention to make them sons in His family, so that they truly are alive, instead of human (dead as per the terms of the curse). That decision to become part of God's family doesn't come by the will of any man or group of men; but by the Father whose family it is. He can choose whomever He wants to be in His family, just like He chose Noah, Abraham, the children of Israel, Moses, Samuel David, Elijah and all of the prophets. And just like He chose all of them, He also chose John's parents to be guardians to him, and He chose the Son of God, and the disciples were chosen just like all the rest of all of God's genuine sons are, according to this formula: God chooses those to whom He wants to extend salvation—becoming alive to His reality.

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. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, `My master is staying away a long time,' and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

All the Son is telling the chosen disciples here is that just because he was going away, don't just assume he would be gone for good, because he promised to come back to them, and he intended to. Not physically, but unseen as the Father is unseen, because he was going to become One with the Father, which is what would allow him to keep his promise to them and come back. This is a warning, specifically for them, to not just go back to becoming conformed again to the world from which they had been pulled, but to continue to be faithful and loyal to him, even though they wouldn't be able to see him, because he was becoming pure, unseen, invisible, totally supernatural spirit, just as the Father is. The warning is that just because they wouldn't be able to see, him, nevertheless he promised to come back, and come back he would to continue what had already been started in them. It was their job to remain faithful to the calling, even though it appeared to be a certain way (that he was dead and gone, never to return). It was a warning not to do what Peter and a few of the others actually did as recorded in John 21. The risen Jesus, however, nipped that in the bud by his confrontation with them by telling them they couldn't just go back to their lives because they movement was just about to become the most real for them. The time was soon coming when they would be as he was, a human inhabited by the spirit of God. But they had to wait and remain loyal, even though it appeared to be a certain way according to their perceived reality.

Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, `I am the Christ, ' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

It wasn't the Jews who took the new covenant into captivity, as Paul thought. It was the unclean animals, the very leaders of the NT church who took the truth and condition of God living in the bodies of His sons—another, more refined copy of the true temple—and replaced God's life with the animal nature. In effect they reversed the good that Jesus did, who killed the absolute power of the animal (the serpent) so that he could become One with the Father, and so that the life of God actually could live in the sons' hearts, once he and the Father were united.

That condition of perfection that the NT writers were under is what drove them to write the record which is the testimony of them being under the new covenant. However, the abomination that would make it decay and render the earth desolate of that perfect condition, was also predicted, and it happened as predicted. This is pretty much the crux of the problem with the religious landscape today regarding the truth of that condition being in the earth. It is the assumption and maintenance of the lie that the christians assume and teach, that the condition which existed for the NT sons never truly died—making Daniel, Jesus and Paul into liars.

The humans are constantly trying to revive that condition unsuccessfully, and their message is pitiful because the power that lived in and drove the NT sons is gone. It was replaced by the animal, as it remains today. By the third century the animals had officially turned the real Jesus and the spirit into two separate beings, and even into gods! Their doing that reflects that they didn't know him or his power, that he was the spirit and it was him who lived in men i.e., that condition of he and the Father indwelling the bodies of humans, the celebration and glorification of Jesus on the earth, was pretty much gone from the earth. What was good was being made into what it became, and now is, on the earth. What every one of the religious groups who claim the Christ have in common is that they don't understand that that condition left, is not available to just resurrect at will, because they want to. The reason they all look like BS is because they are all based on so many lies made up by mere men, and this overriding lie that the truth is still in the world.

Anyone of his people among you—may the LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.

This new Babylon, that which took the truth of that perfectly miraculous condition into captivity, must have something to do with the actual physical Babylon, which took God's people into captivity before. Ezra, which starts tomorrow, is about the return from that place and condition of captivity, to go back to the place where God intended His people to be before they went into their captivity.

In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes...I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.

I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed:

"O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands, we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.

Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame--the men of Judah and people of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you. O LORD, we and our kings, our princes and our fathers are covered with shame because we have sinned against you. The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him; we have not obeyed the LORD our God or kept the laws he gave us through his servants the prophets. All Israel has transgressed your law and turned away, refusing to obey you.

Therefore the curses and sworn judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against you. You have fulfilled the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us great disaster. Under the whole heaven nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem. Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not sought the favor of the LORD our God by turning from our sins and giving attention to your truth. The LORD did not hesitate to bring the disaster upon us, for the LORD our God is righteous in everything he does; yet we have not obeyed him.

Now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and who made for yourself a name that endures to this day, we have sinned, we have done wrong. O Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill. Our sins and the iniquities of our fathers have made Jerusalem and your people an object of scorn to all those around us.

Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name."

While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the LORD my God for his holy hill—while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. He instructed me and said to me, "Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. As soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed.

Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the holy spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.