November 17th.

For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been useless.

What did Paul assume the Thessalonian believers would have been tempted to do? Because of the influence of the liars on our culture, the Holy Roman church and all its little prostitute babies, we think of temptation as applying to the things that the "bad people" do. Drinking, smoking, sex out of marriage, disobeying the parents, etc. Although they may be an outworking of the animal drive and instincts, we would do better to look at the record of the temptation of Jesus, what he was actually tempted to do and what was going on, to answer it.

The temptation was quite reasonable and justifiable—just to take for himself what the voice of the animal force and power (Satan) commanded him to take, what to the humans would seem to be his right to take since he was the Son of God. The animal was commanding him to not wait for the Father to give him what He wanted to give him, but instead to take the kingdom by the force of his own hand, by the power he knew was already his (to command legions of angels to do his will), and to justify that action by what was true in the natural since it was rightfully his to take (being the Son of David, the great prophet predicted by Moses, the Christ of God predicted by so many of Israel's prophets). To deny the Father and the hard way he commanded him to go, and instead do what his animal told him to do—preserve himself and what was his, the natural, human, easy way—would have given him respect, honor, validation and great wealth amongst the human animals as their long awaited king.

No one takes my life 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.

The Father commanded the Son to have respect, honor and validation in the secret places of his own heart, that are invisible to the humans. There is where the Father created and maintained the covenant with the Son, in his heart where no one else was privy to either validate or deny it. That personal, covenantal relationship is what the Father has with all of His true sons, which is why they must suffer in ways they can't choose because they aren't aware of the power that binds them, nor how it becomes loosed. One primary way is knowing what's true inside them, but not being able to have that truth validated by the humans so they have to find that validation in a way they wouldn't choose—to separate themselves from the wild animals so they can be separated unto the Father to learn His way, to conform to another image than the one that's already been formed in him as a wild animal with that nature.

Because it's the way of the humans to crave, need and acquire that validation from each other, the sons must be forced to go another way opposite to that way. The animal can't trust a God whom they can't see, so they have to go by what they can perceive on the outside, in the natural—that others are adhering to the same set of beliefs as them, which is creating or finding a consensus for one's self. Then the animal can feel a little safer if it sees that others have vested themselves in the same thing. Their belief in in whatever god they choose has to be validated by other humans in order to become valid for them. That, though, becomes un validated by God, because God is the God of the living, not the dead (everything that is an integral part of this natural creation is dead, not alive—merely a matter of just a little bit of time before each one reaches its final and permanent resting state). Only those who have been chosen to become a creature in God's world who can come near Him can become alive to Him—first the sons, then those whom the sons judge as worthy to live, as they carry on their Father's work of being the judge of the living and the dead.

For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants...Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

It wasn't the humans who assumed to be Jews who were the descendants of Abraham. Those who hear the voice of God in a world where few—or none—of the others do is who Abraham was according to the record. Not just hear, but act on the voice—do what it says to do despite the consequences. For Abraham it was to leave the place he grew up in and knew, the place he felt comfortable in because that's where civilization was. Then it was to kill the great gift he waited so long for, what he had been deprived of until he was very old, what made every man in those days feel complete. Even though everything in his natural mind would have screamed otherwise, Abraham was still willing to do the thing that would have been so terrible to his natural senses, what he didn't want to do. He heard the voice of God speaking to him, and his desire to please God was more powerful than what his natural mind told him—to retain and preserve what was rightfully his. He could have justified not doing what the voice of God told him to do in a few ways, and could easily have convinced himself that "God would never want me to do that," which was the famous line of the christadelphian leaders about us as they were kicking us out of their beloved midst. It's okay though because the Father was doing for us what we couldn't ever have done ourselves—that is, separate us from the humans so that our learning didn't come from any of the animals but only from the teacher who lives in our heart to teach us in the only effective way. The humans can only reinforce more of the wild animal nature, if that's what we subject ourselves to.

It isn't natural lineage that makes one a descendant of Abraham, but his desire to please God despite the circumstances or consequences—despite how bad it looks in the natural, and how much he naturally wouldn't want to do it. The animal part of Abraham would have dialoged with him thusly: "This is the child of promise, promised to me, the one I've been waiting for. Hang on to him and guard him with your life—don't kill him. He (Isaac) surely must not die, for God has promised that the world will be blessed through him." We can also assume this regarding Jesus' temptation about the things he thought in the dialog he had with himself in the desert: "You surely must not die, for you are God's Messiah, the promised One, the son of David, the great prophet promised by Moses. Your kingdom is at hand, so you must take hold of it."

If you make the Most High your dwelling—even the LORD, who is my refuge—
then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
"Because he loves me," says the LORD, "I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation."

Just as the voice of God has been speaking from the beginning in the mouths of His prophets and holy men, so also the voice of the animal has been speaking in the mouths & hearts of all the humans. Its voice is the unseen fabric of what man fundamentally is in his most basic definition and character—a wild animal that is afraid of dying and afraid of being found out for what he actually is (merely a wild animal that is afraid of dying and nothing more), so he must hide himself in whatever way he can find to, whatever he can wrap himself up in. The wild animal nature is like a blanket, a thick membrane that covers man and creates the animal consciousness, what it knows from a very young age to instinctively do: survive, survive, survive, and wrap that mundane little existence in whatever pomp you can afford so you can hide from the fact that you're here for a moment, then you're gone like a puff of smoke.

One very significant way in which the animals survive is in creating offspring which look and act like them, and who love and honor them, which is the height of animal purpose, to continue its own species. In this way the animal can theoretically survive even past their own mortality, because a part of them (their own DNA) actually lives in their own offspring. If their offspring love and honor them, that is the ultimate acceptance, and they are able to live on through that relationship. It was even more important in Abraham's day, who didn't have a son. Genesis 15 contains the conversation about this between God and Abraham:

Abraham to God > "Give me an heir."

God to Abraham > "I will give you an heir, a son from your own body, and you will have many earthly descendants—too many to count."

But the thing that's more important about what God wants to give him is what God told him in a vision before the conversation took place:

Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.

God says to Abraham, "Although I will give you what you think you want, what all men want, nevertheless your real reward will be Me in you, so you will be able to live forever with me and the rest of my own sons who were before you, and those who will come after you. Although your heart may be glad that you have a son to bear and carry on your name and memory on the earth, that's just a temporary deal and he will not allow you to live on past your body's demise. Only I can give you what actually allows you to live on—not by your human DNA living in Isaac, but My DNA living in you. Only I can impart to you a part of Me, My very life in you (spiritual DNA), raising you from your sleep and giving you real life that does not end, along with all your brothers who will be with you because they chose to hear and listen to me instead of the alternative. So you will be a son living in my house forever, and the entire Israel of God will be able to enjoy that. That will be your reward for listening to me over the animal instinct that wants you to trust it instead of Me."

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

This is important because it takes us back to God's real promise to Abraham—that He would be Abraham's reward. By way of a part of God's very life, His DNA "put in" Abraham (to reverse the animal nature that had been "put on" Adam), he would be raised from the dead himself, so that he could live forever with the God that he heard, loved and obeyed more than what he could comprehend and "hang onto" by his natural power. What it points to is that the earthly doesn't matter. What we can get, preserve, hold on to, control possess or know in our natural minds doesn't mean anything because it will soon be over, and then there will only be nothingness, if we are just another integral part of the natural creation. That's what the natural creation is for, to exist for a little while and then be forgotten so that it can keep renewing itself.

The sons are tempted with believing the natural reality over the voice of God that we hear and know is true only in our hearts, and not how things look on the outside, in the natural, to all the other humans all around us who don't hear the voice because it's not in them. That is what Paul was most afraid of for the Thessalonians, that they would be tempted to abandon their belief in God's Messiah because of the severe trials and suffering they encountered in their natural lives.

That is the great temptation of Jesus, the temptation to choose what he knew was rightfully his in the natural, but wrong according to God. It is what he could have grabbed for himself with the power he had been given at the time, but he would have abandoned what the voice of the Father taught him, via the living, personal covenant they shared. He knew he had the power to change the rock into food, and he knew he had the power to throw himself off the temple and call on the angels to save him. That would have given him authority and validation from man, and he could have become the son of David, the king of Israel right then and there.

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.

The temptation account is the record that shows Jesus didn't take up his life, he didn't do what his natural mind told him—to promote himself, to "get" for himself, to hang onto what he already had and what was rightly his. He did what the voice of God told him to do, despite the consequences in the natural—shame, dishonor, pain, suffering, death. He had to believe, like Abraham, that God would be his reward, even and especially because it seemed like something very much to the contrary in every other place except for what God actually lived—in his heart. And he did believe God instead of the animal, and he was rewarded with a part of God, His very life being made One with Him, the power that isn't seen, recognized or understood in the natural existence. God's power raised Jesus from the dead and he became the Son of God, made One with the Father, now truly able to live with and redeem those humans he loved in the world.

Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.