November 12th.

Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great,
the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired man a maniac.

There is only one prophet necessary since John the baptist, who was the last of the OT prophets of God, and the bridge between the old and new covenants. Jesus was the great prophet that Moses said would be raised up from amongst the Israelites.

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. But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death.

The irony is that although Jesus was the One Moses predicted, the human animals who were the supposed leaders and shepherds of the same Israel Moses led out of Egypt assumed that Jesus was "a prophet who presumed to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods," and therefore "must be put to death."

The prophet, along with my God, is the watchman over Ephraim,
yet snares await him on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his God.

The humans have always hated God because it is their nature to Hate anything that isn't like them, what scares them because it cannot be predicted or controlled, which is the simplest and best description of God there is. It speaks to His genuineness and the human dilemma of why it seems as though He's not ever there (because He's not just there waiting to be discovered) God hides Himself from the humans on purpose so they don't/can't find Him.

O Hope of Israel, its Savior in times of distress, why are you like a stranger in the land,
like a traveler who stays only a night?

Why are you like a man taken by surprise, like a warrior powerless to save? You are among us, O LORD,
and we bear your name; do not forsake us!

I don't know if we can say this point enough, because it goes against pretty much every grain of human religious arrogance, stemming from of course the inherent notion in the humans that they are so inherently good. If they say they're "sinners," they don't ever mean it; first because they don't know what it means, and second because their nature forces them to actually believe something very different about themselves that they cannot help because it's so solidly set into their psyche and nature that they cannot be fundamentally evil, or else there'd be no motivation to survive all the time.

This is what the LORD says about this people:

"They greatly love to wander; they do not restrain their feet. So the LORD does not accept them;
he will now remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins."

No matter what they say about what they want to do for Him in all their lofty eloquence, when He speaks about what He desires/demands from those who claim they want to come after Him, to follow Him to the place He wants them to be; they always hate Him because it doesn't agree with what is naturally in them to be able to accept. Instead of the truth, they want their version of the truth, what they have set up, maintain and worship as the way to get to Him, which also agrees with what is in them.

When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, "This man must be a murderer...but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.

Those who claim to know the way to God—that it is through their institution—base that way on what seems suitable to them, according to something they can control, which is the power they've given themselves, or are born into, over those institutions to make them conform to what they want to be able to accept. Their knowledge of God devolves into a lame superstition because they don't want Him there as He actually is. They only want the version about Him that they can continue to control so that they can live out their animal existences while maintaining the consensus that they are the cat's pajamas according to their gods.

It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain.

What was Israel anyway, as it was born and existed up until the time that the Son came, but the copy of God's true family, what He has secretly been gathering up to Himself since Abel? The idea is that Israel is a group of humans chosen by God who are genuinely separated from the rest of the non-chosen humans because of their true love, faithfulness, loyalty and devotion to the One who chose and called them. The only true and living God isn't alive to the humans at large, because He chooses to be and remain hidden from them, for the express purpose that He only wants to become found out by those to whom He intends to reveal Himself—in the tradition of something already set up, the ultimate metaphor for God's ultimate purpose with this creation—the hope of Israel.

O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water.

Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise.

They keep saying to me, "Where is the word of the LORD? Let it now be fulfilled!"

The hope of Israel is the hope of what Israel was only ever meant to represent, that God will have that family of devoted sons who do live according to God's intention for that representation and copy. There is a good and enduring reason that God created Israel and had her history recorded and preserved, but it isn't a thing the humans are ready to acknowledge because the reason and purpose isn't a human deal. It is one that originates from the God who is not human, who doesn't allow Himself to become the purpose of the humans because He is far above them, although they hardly recognize that. God's concern is for His family of chosen and called sons, and those who help them. That family is the only true thing worth hoping, waiting and living for, the family of brothers who have a genuine concern for one another, which is what the Father loves to see in His own children because by that they are doing what He wants to see from the humans, which is stated repeatedly throughout those same recorded and preserved words.

The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men
to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.

The reason that the sons are given to each other is for no other purpose than that they are able to help each other in their monumental endeavor of searching for the Father and how to be able to become pleasing to Him—all the way from their ability to be a witness for each other through their ability to keep pointing each other back to the path that leads to Him, because it's easy to fall off the path and be led astray by the fluid, alluring and available nature that constantly tempts them to remain ruled by the king of the animals. It's a long, hard struggle to find the true Father, and the Father delights to find those who are actually willing to undertake such a struggle and journey at the positively inevitable expense of what they love, but what also hinders them from going where they know they need to go via the power that can only come from their Father, that which is a battering ram against the fortress of the animal nature which otherwise has total rule and reign over them, as it does over all the humans, individually and collectively.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

A perfectly preserved testimony of the power of the animal nature to do what it loves to do, against the Father's wishes for His own children. He detests it when they allow themselves to be led by the animal nature, because that defines them as what they love and trust, and whose offspring they are choosing by it to be (like the first humans and the king of the animals). By instinct (without even thinking) that nature wants to love and protect itself, so the idea of the brothers loving the other (taking care of each other's needs as much as their own, being concerned for each other's welfare because of the spirit of the hope of Israel being put into them) is overpowered by their own selfish concentration on what they need to get and retain for themselves, in the simple manner of any wild animal.

That's what's expected and demanded from the Son, from those who would follow him to the Father. It's everything to God because it means that the sons truly know they are chosen, and can recognize the presence of the firstborn Son in each other, and that amongst everything they've ever known, that is the truest and most important thing they could know and live by. They also show by their true response that they are willing to conform to another reality than the one they naturally love, which is the most pure and honest form of sacrifice that they have to give. By their actions they show the Father whether they are willing to actually conform to His reality, or just talk about it like they don't think they actually have to, but as long as they talk about it then that's good enough. That is called the hiding, what the humans are naturally prone to because of the nature that got born into them when they first became dead to being naturally able to know and come close to the Father, in the garden sequence, as per His warning about what they would become if they trusted and followed the king of the animals.

What the NT writers termed the spirit, according to what they heard their their brothers call the same thing, was that power which essentially was the mechanism God, who is the spirit, uses to interact with the humans, those with whom He has chosen to interact. It was the vehicle of the implementation of the new covenant, under which they were convinced they were living because it gave them a kind of true guarantee in their secret parts about that for which they were chosen and being called. The life of God had power to assure them that they were under this new covenant, and instruct them who their true brothers were. They were the living hope of Israel, the fulfillment of everything the nation of Israel was meant to represent and point to as the copy of the better thing.

So I say, live by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under law.

Living by the spirit meant betraying the nature that was naturally, instinctively in all them as humans (termed the sinful nature by NT writers), which would if allowed to gain a foothold inside them cause chaos against God and the knowledge of Him as their Father. It would work against the Father's wishes for His own children, whom He was calling into a knowledge of Himself via that mechanism (the spirit) He employed to interact with them for that end and purpose. The animal nature that is naturally in them couldn't lead them to give up their lives for the sake of their brothers because it always works against that principle in favor of what can help itself.

The nature of the son of God is antagonistically opposed to the animal nature that naturally lives inside the humans across the board without exception. The animal nature is automatically born into all the humans, whereas the nature of the son of God must be purposely put into an animal that is already fully dead to God, just so the one being called to become a son of God has a mountain to climb, a way to prove that he wants the Father and rejects the animal. That is the mold cast by the struggle of the firstborn Son, as depicted in the temptation accounts between himself as the clean animal and the power that tried to sway him away from that position before the Father, to which all the other sons are called to follow after him. That is their heritage, to struggle and fight in order to learn to deny the animal that right to lead and guide them away from the Father. Its purpose for the humans is to keep them from being able to see what's true according to God, while for the sons it's to give them the opportunity to learn to act as the firstborn Son acted—giving up his animal rights to be whatever he knew he had the power to be, in order to sacrifice that valuable animal right—that which he could have had—for those whom he knew were chosen to be his true brothers, chosen by God for him to love, which in real terms was to lay down his life for them.

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.

I doubt that anyone claiming to follow any of the various forms of christianity would disagree that the Law of Moses no longer applies to those who desire to please the God who is from the beginning the Father of the Son who is said to be the fulfiller of the Law. They seem to happily accept this fact of grace and mercy, but they also seem to use it as license to not fulfill the new law, which the Son himself expressly gave. That was the simple law that he spoke to those who were chosen by the Father, by which they were commanded to live according to his own words to them. That is if they desired to follow the Christ, and find the Father who gave the Son up as a sacrifice so these specific men could do just that, they must understand and follow this new law.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

However, doing that is an impossible thing for an animal who is instinctively driven to precisely *not* be able to do that, which is on the one hand why it's so incredibly difficult to find the way to the Father for the sons who are called, and on the other how the Father keeps the hoards of unclean animals away from crowding into where He is, causing the chaos and destruction of everything He wants to see in His own sons by that very nature which keeps them away—so they don't do it.

When we see a brother as a threat to something we instinctively and subconsciously feel like we need to guard, then we want to hate, push away, even kill him so that threat goes away. When we start to want to move away from the animal nature that is still ruling us, we might begin to see a brother as one who can actually help us, because our direction has changed—from not wanting so much to guard our precious little bubbles of animal existence to wanting to actively search for and find the Father, which is the destiny to which we've been called, why so much work has already been done to reveal that destiny to us in our secret places. We have in our true brother a reliable witness to this phenomenal thing that is being revealed inside us, that which is being denied by the humans at large around us (the non-chosen). So we have the potential of tapping into a great resource for ourselves, if our intention is indeed to search for and find the Father—but not until our direction begins changing away from ourselves and to that for which we are being called. When we're actively serving our animal selves, then our brother will just be a threat to us wanting to be the one who is special, more right than the other, the one who is craving to have that powerful egotistical component of the animal be satisfied, and looking to satisfy it in the brother we are called to love. But we can't because we're being ruled by a nature that makes us only able to love our self and be concerned about our dilemma all the time, as is any wild animal by nature. Because of the curse, the humans are by nature the same as all wild animals, naturally unable to know God because they can't come near Him to ever begin to start to know Him because they can't become familiar with Him and His ways, which is 100% necessary if love is to begin to grow between the two parties called to love.

Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.

I think a valid question for anyone who wants to follow the real Jesus, who set the example for the real sons of God would be "What is love, and what does it mean to love your brother? What does it look like when it's actually practiced? Are there examples from the words preserved for us that give us that picture, or even define it further? When I say "actually practiced," I am setting up the contrast between actual and theoretical, or conceptual (mouthing the words because of a perceived obligation while the animal heart remains steadfastly unable to actually do anything of the sort). I'm asserting that we are not actually fulfilling the new commandment to love one another, and I'm also proposing the reason why we are not doing this because there's no ability to. The animal nature has its hold over us to make us do that which is the opposite. That is its consuming power, what it's meant by God to do. Satan the devil is actually a mechanism created by God to work for His own good and purpose, as is seen in the book of Job.

One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"

Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."

Taking these words literally so as to think they suggest a literal satan as renegade fallen angel is a precedent for assuming that God is a huge bird-like creature because of these words:

I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust."
Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

Perceiving satan as some fallen angel (the bad god who opposes the good jesus, father and spirit gods) just deflects the responsibility away from the individual of ever having to do anything of substance. He can just say it's all up to the gods to fight out, and he is so far away from them all he can do is just accept this "free gift," which isn't free at all because it costs more than anything else, namely what the humans are naturally unable to accept or ever give up—their precious right to live out their animal existences like all the others. Yet it is what the sons of God are commanded to do, otherwise they are not worthy to be called that.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Here is a verbal definition, from the mouth of Jesus, of what love is. He is saying that he is about to show them the pinnacle of what pleases the Father, which is what the life of Jesus represents for those who wish to know what pleases the Father. Did Jesus merely theorize about how much he loved the men God had given him? Did he say that all he expects of his followers is that they go to church every Sunday and be polite to everyone? It sounds ridiculous to ask it, but it isn't so much when you realize that that's actually what happens amongst the humans who claim to know and have "the truth," as though they possess the holy grail, what all the other institutions lack, and are therefore so pleasing to God and don't need to do anything else but maintain and protect that possession, when in fact the words are clear that love according to the real God is something they are completely unable to do.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.

There was a point in the garden when he got weak, when he didn't want to give up his life. There is great significance in him praying 3 times that the cup could be taken from him, because he kept appending to his request that he wanted more that the will of the Father be done than his own will. The third time he prayed, he received strength from an angel to do the will of God; and what was that will of God for him? To do this act that he already told the disciples was the pinnacle of the fulfillment of the new command, what would be an example for them to follow him to the Father by. That will of God was for him to give up his life, literally, for the others.

Now every Sunday we all get together and drink that cup of suffering, and we thank God very earnestly for providing His great sacrifice, His worthy Lamb. Then we all disperse to live our own lives, and truthfully couldn't care less about our brother in all reality, yet we pretend to because of some compulsion to obey the written command, or we won't get what we think is coming to us. However that is the point of the new covenant versus the old, that is was not written on the Israelites' heart but only on tablets of stone, and that wasn't good enough to teach them how to be pleasing to God. The perfect example of that is our brother Paul, who was under both covenants in extreme capacities both times.

You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

So just like the ten words were written on tablets of stone, which couldn't convince a man or allow him to be pleasing to God—as compared to what Paul knew, that the laws of God were written on his heart, and genuine—the institutional line that the word of God is what's written in books is also inferior because it's static and stagnant, just like the law that was written on tablets of stone, compared to the only thing that could ever truly convince a man, that which was present amongst the sons of God in the first century.

All the animals can do is hide from what is true, so even if they wanted to be honest about it they couldn't, because that' exactly how the animal works (the reality of all sinning, and falling short of the glory of God). They might kick out an evening during the week for a Bible study but that's pretty much the extent of it until the next Sunday when they all become earnestly thankful for the cup of suffering, and they all pretend to "love one another" (be friendly to, tolerate each other) once again (because as soon as they leave they don't have to anymore). All the while they hide behind their institution and all the rituals they faithfully perform, and why they think they're so pleasing to God—because they know a few more things that are true than the other institutions.

Did Jesus say, "Believe the correct doctrines about me, the devil and the spirit, and you will be pleasing to the Father?" They might even say with their mouth babble that it's all about how they treat each other, but when the test comes that becomes hogwash, because what they love is the power of control. That we know from our own experience, first hand, about what they truly love despite all their exhortations to the contrary.

I only went back for a few months, and in that time I heard a few unpolished sermons, handwritten and read word for word, straight from the script. I also heard a few very polished sermons by more adept public speakers who had a better talent for that than the others. Each one did his best to exhort the audience toward what Jesus commanded, that they extend love to one another, that they open their homes, that they give cold cups of water to each other. Then after it was over the audience cordially thanked the speaker and went back to being good little animals who take care of their brood (what animals are instinctively programmed to do), not ironically what we were kicked out for.

However satisfying it might feel to criticize those who kicked us out of their precious little fellowship in the name of the gods they serve (their own faithfulness to the rule they claim to live by—oops, they forgot about the validity and significance of what they do in their heart all day, the life they live where the humans can't see), I'm as guilty as anyone because I know that I cannot love anything or anyone but myself because I am fundamentally an animal with that wild animal nature. Aside from all the theoretical BS I like to entertain in order to hide (like the first humans whose first response was to hide from God), there is no possibility, by anything that is naturally within me, to love anyone the way I am able to love myself. Seeing this is the beginning of the wisdom that the son needs to possess in order to even begin to become pleasing to the Father. I only understand a little bit how much the animal controls me and pulls me in to serving it, which is my first and most original nature of how I know to be. In that reality, there's no hope of actually being concerned for others, and that is the reality I understand as the driving force of all the humans, and there is no theorizing that condition away. It is what God made it to be, and it doesn't change because of anything I am able to do. That condition makes it impossible to please Him by living under the commands of Jesus. It also means that under that condition, they're never be able to actually love their Father. The best they could ever do is hide and theorize about it.

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God,

To comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.

The changing of that condition is what the good news is about for the sons of God. The real power of the spirit for the NT sons was not to do miracles, or heal the sick, or demonstrate that the living God was on their side. The real power of the spirit for those humans, who like Paul who were making themselves subject to it, was to break apart the power of the animal, natural instincts, the very thing that prohibited them from being able to actually love their brother, and being pleasing to the Father. Why is it so impossible to do? Because it's supposed to be impossible, so the humans will not be able to be clean.

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."

The human animals are so perfectly ruled by that animal nature, what Paul terms the "sinful nature," that they cannot love anyone but themselves (their own flesh and blood are technically them, since they share the same DNA). This is how God has made their heart calloused, and their ears dull, and has shut their eyes, so that they won't be able to be pleasing to Him. That condition has beguiled and deceived the humans into thinking they are following Jesus and pleasing God merely because they know some truth about Him, and they're looking after their own families, and that's good enough; when in reality they're just acting according to the dictates that are naturally in them to be animals, just like any common animal would naturally, instinctually take care of their own brood.

It's what animals naturally do, look after their own flesh and blood, those who came from their own bodies, that which has a piece of them inside. That was okay in the OT, but Jesus creates a new situation, a new way to please God by issuing a new commandment that that wasn't good enough to please God, because it's merely what's instinctually in them already. When he commands the men to love each other, he was in fact commanding them to go against their instincts to take care of themselves.

He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

The way the humans naturally are, in desiring to love and care for that which carries their own DNA, is the copy of the better thing concerning God's spiritual DNA being in those He is choosing to become His own sons. What Jesus established about family is also new, part of the new covenant and understanding about God—that the true family is not what comes from our body, not our own flesh and blood, not what has our own physical DNA in it, but those who have been chosen by God to become His sons, who are willing to do the will of God (as Jesus did) instead of their own will, as dictated by the nature in them.

And who was he referring to when he said it, if not those 12 men that God had given him to reveal the will of God to? Not his own flesh and blood, but men he didn't even know 3 years prior—literal strangers. Strangers in the fact that they weren't his own natural family. But Jesus knew something very special about these men, that they had been chosen by the Father to become sons of His, and so they were more important than even the members of Jesus' own family. What was that will of God for them? That they do for each other what he did for them—give up their own lives for the others' sake. That is opposite what the animal does by instinct. It only takes care of itself, and itself in the offspring it has produced. But even these share the animal's DNA, so they are him, and so they don't count as strangers.

I make such a big deal about the distinction of strangers vs. natural family, because that is how the religious people (especially the ones who claim to have the truth) have turned the truth that Jesus knew into a lie. They justify themselves before God by saying that they do love, and they are loving their brothers and fulfilling the new commandment by these pitiful acts of niceties and rituals on Sunday and Wednesday night; while the majority of their life, time, effort and energy goes into raising their own flesh and blood, the natural family that Jesus himself said wasn't God's family. So they're only doing what animals naturally do, and there's nothing at all special about that. Nor is it pleasing to God when the humans act like rats, dogs and house flies, who all faithfully take care of their brood because they are compelled to. They don't have any other choice—the instincts within them control them and make them do what they do. They don't choose to do it. Same with the human animals, and another way they are defined as mere animals, and nothing very special apart from that. They live and die according to the way this creation works, just like all the other animals and plants.

Looking after themselves is tantamount to Jesus not actually doing the work and will of God, but instead doing the work of Joseph and Mary—being an honorable, respectable Jewish boy who respected and honored his father and mother and didn't make a fuss about God. It would also be the same as the disciples saying to Jesus "I believe you," but continuing to fish with their fathers, being responsible, honorable sons. Instead we know they did the shameful thing, and because they believed Jesus was the chosen One from God, they "pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him." They betrayed their natural family to follow a stranger, not a very honorable thing to do.

We have to ask the question of why they were able to do that, and why so many who heard their message were able to do similar "shameful" acts. Do we think it wasn't shameful for a man, in the eyes of his wife and children, to sell all his possessions and give it to some guys who called themselves apostles? "That was all we had, and my husband is selling it all and giving it all away?" It's hard to imagine how crazy that would have seemed, but we know from the record that it happened, so we might ask what was powerful to compel them away from acting like animals, who would never do that.

Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.

There was a time when the animal nature, the thing that makes us gather and keep for ourselves, was lifted from a few of the humans who in the first century were under the terms of the new covenant. The life of God living in them compelled them to do these very extraordinary things.  There was a power that was so strong in them that they went against what seemed logical and natural, when they were just able to let go of the things that we hold on to so dearly, things we would never let go of unless we were out of our minds.

That thing, that power that worked, is what the writers referred to as the spirit, which put love in the hearts of those who were controlled by it, so they wanted to do these things, because it was a tangible way that they could take care of their brothers, to truly love them by act and deed, not merely with mouth babble. That love which came from God enabled those human animals to act contrary to what was naturally in them. It is the comforter, the spirit of truth, the living word, the power and life of God, living in their hearts, that could free them from the chains of the animal, and change them from animal to son who knows the love of God because the life of God is actually in his heart. That is the difference between what was true in the first century, and what the religious animals claim—that it's still happening in them the same way—and why it was genuine then and fake now (because it was happening then and is not now). It is the power that can free a man from only loving himself (and his own flesh), to loving strangers. Actually, strangers just means brothers not by blood but by doing the will of God.

Then the King will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."

We can't force ourselves to love—that's what the fakers are trying to do—but only to repent from being so totally dominated by the animal nature, the requirement for the sons of God in the present generation, if they've been chosen to be that. It's not a new message, because if we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and our example of how to live, then we can agree that love is much more than we are presently able to give each other. The solution is to be honest and agree that that is actually true, that we are so involved in taking care of our selves that we can't possibly fulfill the new command to love one another as Jesus loved the disciples.

We have to want to please God first, then stop lying to ourselves that we are loving each other as Jesus loved the disciples. Then we have to see that the animal nature, which was "put on" Adam after he sinned/died (animal skins in Gen 3:21) is what hinders us from pleasing God, from fulfilling the new command of Jesus. That is the curse of Adam, the sinful nature. When we can be honest and humbly admit this before God, then we have to repent and desire to be freed from its dominance over us. That takes a long time, because it's so firmly rooted in us—it is us.

I say "we" for a very good reason, because I know how much it rules me, how hard it actually is to not fulfill what the animal nature wants me to do—to always please and take care of my self and forget about others. I know that it dominates me so that I cannot love, and I know I need freedom from the prison it makes me to be in because of its power to totally control me. I also know that only the force and power of the love that comes from God, by His intention that His life will live in me because He has chosen me to become a son, can break those chains.

The spirit of truth is just that, it allows us to see the truth instead of believing the lie of the snake. Without it we are just another pack of animals who have conspired together to tell each other lies about how we are all so pleasing to God. God loves humility and honesty, and He gives comfort to those who stand humbly before Him and admit they cannot do what He requires. Then He gives the humble the ability to do it, by that same power which ruled Jesus, then ruled the disciples after him. The spirit of the love and power of God, which gives comfort and truth to those who want it.

Therefore I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!