November 14th.

We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us. But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel. Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the Law. Rise up; this matter is in your hands. We will support you, so take courage and do it.

The whole assembly responded with a loud voice: "You are right! We must do as you say. So the exiles did as was proposed...and by the first day of the first month they finished dealing with all the men who had married foreign women.

The idea of the entire community being made aware of their sin, humbling themselves by admitting their sins before God, turning toward Him and His representative Ezra (whose reforming heart represents John and Jesus); is inspiring in a different kind of emotional way, of emotions which last because they are born from an awareness of the life of the Father, as opposed to the human emotions that are based on our lives and change like the wind. The son's new emotions come not from the animal, but from the life of God that grows in him to give him a different focus away from his own dilemma of survival all the time, toward the dilemma of the Father and His desire for His own family of sons to be with Him where He is. He cannot lose, because the Son is already with Him, and most likely even all the OT sons chosen by the Father are alive with them too, as per the Son's victory over the animal:

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

But the family is still not complete until all of God's sons are with Him where He is. The sons of God are taken from the stock of the humans with their animal natures—making them in effect the same to God as any wild animal—then transformed into what they haven been chosen to become.

You have been unfaithful; you have married foreign women, adding to Israel's guilt. Now make confession to the LORD, the God of your fathers, and do his will.

Their transformation rests largely on their separation from the influences that they used to rely on to define them as who and what they were. It is a kind of formula found in the words for the benefit of the sons, to show them what must happen.

Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives.

However, the words themselves can't serve any living purpose in the sons. They are a guide, and contain a secret language that reveals God's hidden purpose, when that revelation is made in them. Like light being cast in a dark place, the ability to see and hear the secret message of God as intended for His own sons, is a condition that must be purposely given to one i.e., it is not just out there, available for anyone to grab hold of and run with like any other human knowledge. That is what God has been reduced to—some thing that anyone can study, academically or otherwise, and therefore assume to be able to know by studying words on paper. The revelation is particular and mysterious, not like any human thing.

My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

It is such a valuable treasure because it is particular and not generic, otherwise the giver of that treasure would be as lifeless and disingenuous as one so indifferent to whomever he wanted near him would seem to have to be. That treasure isn't like the treasure that is highly valued by the animals, ironically because it's about not having those kinds of treasures when the treasure that comes from the Father begins to take hold in the receiver. Letting go of what we naturally cling to is one of the fundamental requirements of coming closer to the Father. Thinking we can have and hang on to our life, which is not easily defined even to the one who is receiving a revelation about it, is the lie that the animals love to sell on Sunday for the bills that fill up the hats and the currency of ego satisfaction that the leaders lap up in the name of serving the gods.

I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

There isn't anything human about what happens to the sons. It is and remains nothing like that so they who are animals—even if they're intended to become sons of God—do not try to take the revelation and own it so they can control it for their own evil, which is their natural tendency as animals bent on survival. They could never just take the revelation and treat it as the Father would have them to. It takes years of reconditioning by living with the unseen teacher, even to begin to get close to being able to become responsible with the treasure that comes from the Father. That is an attestation of the power of the animal to completely envelop its host and keep it in the darkness while the light begins to shine as he gradually learns how to deny the animal the right to rule him.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

The revelation of the life of the Son in a human body validates what is right and true about God as it cuts through the thick wall of BS that has been constructed around the animal and the lies it uses to hide behind. The living word is that life, as it rises up to our consciousness and allows us to believe what we could not believe before. It's what slowly pulls us out of the dominion of darkness, into the kingdom of the Son, the kingdom of light.

How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?
My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.

I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim.
For I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath.

The emotions that are in us imitate God's—He is what man is loosely based on, meaning although the humans cannot see Him, He's more alive than the human can imagine, and He has feelings, which are not like a machine, but which can change. The humans whom He cares about can persuade Him to change His mind, as Moses did when He wanted to wipe out all of the Israelites and start over anew, with Moses as the new Abraham. We think that the course of history was all planned out from the beginning, and it would have all just worked out no matter what, because God's will is always accomplished. Starting over with the one man Moses, may have seemed appealing, clean and fresh without all their garbage and limitations.

The biggest thing is that they rejected Him, saying right to His face that they didn't want Him, that they wanted what they had before. They said that they didn't believe His plan of taking them somewhere good and protecting them from harm. He has feelings though, and expects reciprocation on the receiver's part—faithfulness and loyalty, because it is a relationship. The way to react when someone pushes you away is to push back in response. They said "No we hate you, we love Egypt." Because we behold God as so much bigger than us, we think He's incapable of feeling, or that He's above that—that perfection in the mind of the lowly animals usually means to them that He doesn't feel, as though feeling is a disease for such a perfect God.

He wanted to give them another chance because the one man He loved and cared about cared about them. He wanted a people who would trust Him, even though it looked like they shouldn't because of the lie, that even though they could remember all the miraculous things He did, the lie was more believable. The reason the stories about them matter to us are not to be able to prove that God is real, nor be able to find a cultural identity amongst the humans. Nor is it to be able to refine our doctrinal philosophy or prove our individual academic talent. Those are what the humans do, to use the preserved words to get for themselves what they think is valuable. The stories about Israel the copy is just that, they are a copy of what happens with God's true sons. They show us that our Father has feelings, and that He listens to those who have a pure heart, pure meaning not driven by what all the other human hearts are driven by.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

It's hard to trust what we can't see, but isn't that the whole crux of the dilemma with Israel, and what God wanted from them—that despite it being hard He nevertheless has provided numerous examples of miraculous happenings, which should make His reality extremely believable because of this ongoing revelation. But the situation is such that it's a particular way, just as it was for Israel; and because of our condition (being dead to a knowledge of the Father) there is a pull to only believe what seems tangible and observable, what happens within the world of the humans and the way life seems to be, how it is to all of those who are intricately bound to the observable creation.

Then there are the miracles which are profound and extraordinary. But the reality that they point to is scary, because I can't control it like I can the other. I have to let go of every way I know of surviving, living, being, accomplishing, sustaining, valuing, overcoming, satisfying, fulfilling, and getting for myself as any wild animal must do all those things to stay alive. It is not a matter of applying what I know about how to live/be/manipulate/work toward because of my already gained experience as a human. That is one of the most erroneous assumptions of the humans who claim to know what Jesus' message was, that once they're saved or converted, then they just apply everything they already know, according to what they learned from the world, to this new life. Even the way we reason and consider what seems logical must conform to another way that is pretty much opposite to the human way. Just another piece of the life that must be lost in order to be found in the Father's family.

The reason we have the story of Moses, the Israelites, and them both together, is to show us how it is with God, according to His reality. Moses had gained 40 years of high learning which made him what he was, what formed his identity as an advanced and learned human animal, far ahead of everyone else. Then he had to let it all go, which took another 40 years, living with God in a place in the middle, amongst nomads. The third 40 years was being the shepherd and leader of God's people, learning to perfect his care about them that started coming out near the end of the first 40 year period. His new identity as the shepherd of God's people had evolved so much that he talked God out of wiping them out and starting over.

"I have seen these people," the LORD said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation."

But Moses sought the favor of the LORD his God. "O LORD," he said, "why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, `It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: `I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.' " Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

It's never too late to make or renew our covenant with God. The animal will tell us we can't, that it's not worth it, or that we don't need to—that we have it and that's good enough. The process of transformation is one that involves our constant realization of how things are, and then our repentance from that way with the honest motivation in our heart to not be led by the animal nature, but by that which will define us as a son to God instead of an animal. That process of realization and repentance is one which after a while will make us humble before the Father, not like a stiff-necked animal who doesn't want to be turned from the way it thinks it needs/wants/craves to go—all the time for itself to get what it needs to survive.

The heart of the son before his Father must go through this process so that it can begin to become soft and pliable, broken and contrite, humble and willing to be conformed—able to be persuaded that it falls short of pleasing God, and needs to be renewed by that which can only come from "above" (from the unseen world where the Father is). The heart of the animal is supremely efficient in satisfying its own needs, telling its owner that it is good and fine and righteous before God and never needs to repent. That is its nature, which is precisely why it's no good to God, and keeps its host from knowing Him. He requires much more than what an animal is willing or able to give.

The hiding is an ongoing acting job with the humans, once they reach a certain age when they are all of a sudden "expected" to adapt the hiding posture as part of their maturity. Kids don't care about hiding as much, or they do it differently. They hide from things they're scary to them like monsters under their beds, or forms holding knives hiding in their closets. When they start to become independent, they lose those irrational fears, and take on the fears that mark all the dead animals, the first thing the first humans did once they became bound to death. They were ashamed and afraid of being found out, so they hid from God. That's what all the human animals do, once they start to die.

I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus knew what the humans were before they died, or at least what the story points to. It doesn't even matter that the stories actually happened, because their actually validity is not for anything but to teach the sons of God about their Father, once they've been given the ability to see and hear what the words mean, what their point is. The necessity to prove that the words are true about what actually happened is just what the humans naturally do because of the craving to control, hold and possess, and have control of to be able to exploit it for their own gain. Little children don't know much about the world and the way it works, and have no need to develop the elaborate systems of hiding like the adult humans develop and live in. Going back to the garden incident, the thing that the humans do that marks the curse they're under is to always hide.

I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.

This is what the humans do, what betrays their condition of dead, the difference between child and adult. They need to hide, and they spend their lives creating as elaborate systems as they can afford in order to do that. Little kids don't need to hide, because they haven't taken on that consciousness which feels the constant need to hide because of the fear that's inside it. The Genesis account in that sense is about the first act of mental illness, of responding to the fear that was all of a sudden in them and finding an excuse to do it—I was naked, that's why I did it.

We constantly get tricked by that animal because it never lets up. They way we learned to be/live/act is to hide and keep hiding, and develop ways to hide that lend us credibility so we're never found out. For instance, if we're doing and getting what the humans find valuable, it's a lot easier to hide because we get encouraged and approved by all the different levels of this culture, what collectively determines what's valuable. So if we're making money, being successful, responsible, honorable and respectable, we're always going to be being approved by all the layers of society, from those who are closest to us outward, even and especially the religious ones, those who have developed and maintain their systems to hide in.

There is the notion that because we made a commitment to follow the Christ at one point in our life and made some confession to confirm it, that we are forever safe to stray as far as we like from our search for the God who is hidden and wants to be found. We think that our actual devotion and faithfulness to God is just some automatic thing that doesn't matter because we've done the requisite thing once and that lasts forever. We use our doctrine of the goodness and mercy of God as a license to live however we want to, what gives us those cultural kudos, because it's been sanctioned by that group of experts and the others we surround ourselves with, who keep reinforcing that system. And that's one way we keep hiding.

What is devotion and faithfulness to God mean anyway, if not trusting Him in a real way, which means not hiding. It's not an accident that the religious groups don't understand the significance of that first act of the response to the first humans' response to their new condition. The systems they create are along the same lines as all the human systems of hiding, so they're not meant to be able to allow one to find the truth within them, because they're not for that reason. They are to keep up an illusion that it matters to God somehow, much the same way that a successful career does the same thing.

God's righteous judgment will be revealed when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ.

We can spurt as much mouth babble as we want about devotion, faithfulness and trust in God, but it means nothing. What means something to God is our willingness to out ourselves about the secret life we live in our heart, where we can hide from the humans. The outward stuff is just what we've developed to be able to hide, and although the humans are easily fooled, God doesn't care about it. There's no point from God's perspective in going to church every Sunday. It's just the way you're able to put on the hiding identity, to play the human game of keeping the charade alive because everyone else is doing it. That, though, is how the Israelites kept falling away from being faithful to God—it is the animal mentality, a kind of pack mentality that allows us to feel safe and believe a lie because we see a bunch of others doing the same thing.

Will they not return to Egypt and will not Assyria rule over them because they refuse to repent?

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.

The sons have to learn about the animal condition, what they are and where they came from—what the sinful nature actually is—in order to understand what true repentance is, in order to know what they are required to repent from. Only the teacher who is alive inside them, him who is genuinely from God, can teach them this. He gives the key to being able to understand, toward the end, which is being able to live in and understand their Father's love, and to participate in that relationship genuinely, equally. Love cannot be realized in any relationship though, when one of the parties is hiding who they are from the other because of the intricate system of animal fear they developed around them.

The repentance is from something that's never even identified by the religious groups, because it is the craving, impulse, urge and need to hide from God, which will keep the son from ever knowing his Father. It's not a repentance from what the "bad people" do, or the people who aren't like us, who believe the "wrong" thing about God and are therefore damned by Him. The repentance is from our own selves, what we formed around us to allow us to hide from God, to pretend we aren't hiding when we are. The reason that's bad for the sons is because it keeps them from knowing their Father because all they ever do, in all the things they ever aspire to in their existence, is hide from Him, because that's exactly its nature, proven by that first response of the humans to their new condition (dead, not naked).

God responds with grace and mercy. This is the picture of David after he committed his great sin with Bathsheba, against Uriah his faithful servant, and God who gave him everything, making him a great leader and shepherd of His people. At that point, though, he despised God and what He had done for him. He became ungrateful and used the position God had given him to satisfy the cravings of the animal within him.

David, however, did something interesting. One moment he was justified within himself, but in the next moment he reacted to the very words of God which came out of Nathan's mouth. He immediately knew that he had betrayed God, because he recognized the word of God as real and true, and valid for him and what he had done. It is the same word that validated Ezra and worked en masse on the hearts of the exiles, which made them desire to be right with God and then repent. They recognized the word of the prophet as true and genuine, coming from God, as David had, because they are a copy of the true sons of God who are pulled out of Egypt, pulled out of Babylon, pulled out of the world in order to be redeemed. And they're redeemed so that they can be with their Father, a part of His true family of sons whom He had individually been pulling out of the natural creation since it began, putting His mark of ownership, of Fatherhood on them so they can one day all be together with Him and each other.

Don't be stiff-necked if you hear the great prophet inside calling for repentance, don't merely dismiss it because it doesn't line up with your version of how things should look. Don't justify yourself before God as Saul did—who made excuses for what he did—and say you are fine before God and don't need to repent; or say that you do repent, yet in your heart continue to hang on tightly to the life you've picked for ourselves, where you've learned to hide. What is repentance anyway, if not the opposite of us just mouthing the words we think God wants to hear, while we live another life, to and for ourselves, in our hearts. Hypocrisy and lying is saying we're repenting from things that aren't important to us, while we hang on to what we love—that place to hide that keeps us safe.

No man is capable of persuading another with words—Paul knew this very well. It will take something much more powerful than that to persuade men to repent from lives that are dominated by the darkness of the animal nature, who live in the dominion of darkness. In that place, a man doesn't even know where he is, because it's dark and he can't see. Only when the light shines is a man able to see the truth about his life before God.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

The written code is for the animal, something that the animal could hear, see and understand, and therefore could live by. The new code is alive, and can penetrate the confines of the animal. It can cut through its consciousness and 'intelligence,' piercing its heart and convincing it regarding things that once seemed impossible. The great prophet, which all of God's holy prophets pointed to, now speaks via the spirit of truth; and what he once said he still says, that with man things that seem impossible are actually possible with God.

Jesus replied, "What is impossible with men is possible with God."

What Jesus actually killed on the cross is the animal for the sons' sake, so that the sons of God can come out from its power to keep them hidden in the made up reality. The reason is so they can be born into a comprehension of what is honest and truthful, and begin to understand, comprehend, realize and enjoy the Father's love for them. That cannot be had by an animal whose only response to God is to run away and hide because it doesn't want to be found out.