November 24th.

At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the Levites were sought out from where they lived and were brought to Jerusalem to celebrate joyfully the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps and lyres.

I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the holy spirit who lives in us.

By putting his life in Paul and Timothy, the Son deliberately did in them what the Father had done in himself, when he was the clean human animal, before he went to the Father to become like Him and unlike what he was before. The good deposit God put down is His very life, and good because it comes from Him, and only He is good. Everything else in all creation is bad, or evil; because it's not like God, replenishing but temporary, based on temporality and cycles of death—more like death than life. Only the life of God abides, only the Father and whomever becomes like Him is good.

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone."

Jesus knew and understood that the life of the Father is what allowed him to see and believe that he was whom he was told he was (the Son of God who would save the family of sons from the fate of being forever bound up to death. Within himself, without that life of God living in him, there was nothing good. Everything that was good about him came from that place. What came from him was the willingness to find and maintain that agrement which says that only the Father is good (life that is truly life), and every other thing is not because it comes from the earth (temporality and death disguised as life).

Jesus, as a human animal without God's life in him, was merely the same as all men—temporary and evil, the opposite of God. Without God's life we are just animals, the sons of Adam, sons of the dirt. Without that good deposit, the life that seals us and guards us, we will merely return to the dirt and stay there. What the life of the Father in Jesus meant was that he was kept clean, even though he was an animal, so that his life was valuable as a sacrifice that could be offered to offset the effects of the curse of death on the human animals whom the Father intended be in His secret family. The good deposit marks us with the name of God, which says to the resurrecting angels that we are His. The mark of His life is what instructs the angel: "This one is mine and you will pull him out of the grave (hell) and raise him up to life (heaven, spirit) because I remember him and want him to be with Me and his brothers." The accounts of all those who have sought to seek the Father and all that is true over all that is false are of the true brothers of the Lord and sons of the Father.

Only the life of God remains, because only God is eternal. Everything else is based on cycles of death—birth, existing, then death and another comes along to take its place, to live the same cycle of being born, existing then dying. Once death comes, also comes rotting and putrefaction, which also ironically provides "life" for another temporary existence, whether of plant or animal. But nothing in creation ever lives, because everything is subject to the terminating cycle that always ends with death, the destruction of what existed.

The spirit is a necessary because it's the regenerative enabling part of our having "life that is truly life," as Paul puts it. That is the only life that will remain, the life that comes from God, that piece of His unseen life in us. The fact that some groups have made a mockery of the concept of the spirit does not mean it's something that's not necessary for the conversion from animal to son. It just exists in a form that no one knows about because they are all just guessing based on human theories that they didn't even construct. Just because the liars cannot prove that they "possess the spirit gifts" means nothing regarding the validity of the life of God existing as spirit, so that the power, truth and very existence of the life of God is found there. There is no other way for God to exist, actually, because He is the spirit.

That is not to say the pentecostals have something valid to say about the spirit they made up based on the theories they created about what they know nothing about (they assume the holy spirit is another of the good gods fighting the bad gods). All kind of groups have given erroneous meaning to certain concepts, and it undoubtedly creeps in to the mind set of those desiring to respond to the call and follow the good Son to where the Father is. Just as they have made the "sinful nature" into something it isn't, they have also made the "spirit of God" into something it isn't. Reactionary theory from the community of christadelphians has made the spirit a bad thing, a "dirty word" so that other doctrines, or theories have evolved in response to the liars, to counteract the lies. It's not that the Pentecostals, or any of the groups of liars for that matter, don't feel something inside them that actually seems genuine. That is the powerful delusion God sends them to believe it. (2 Thess 2:11) It could be anything—witchcraft, crystals, mormonism, humanism—it doesn't matter as long as they are given over to whatever it is they want to believe to keep them away from the Father, who doesn't want to be all crowded up with any and every animal that had half a whim to want to get something from God.

It's hard to get a definitive line on the spirit of God from the christadelphians. Some seem to think it exists as some kind of notion, or concept—not actually, but only theoretically applying to our lives. Sort of  like, "The spirit of God allows us to know that the Bible is the word of God." Like it's there as a concept that sounds safe to say out loud, but it's not there as an active power, the same way the animal nature isn't there. They are just here to live their lives and then go to the kingdom because they had their thinking caps on when it came to the facts about the things of God. Others believe that the gifts, and therefore its power in the world, died near the end of the first century. In any case, like the life of God, it's just another concept or theory about God, from which and whom they remain alienated, waiting to be resurrected and transported "into the kingdom."

I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

We contend that not merely the spirit gifts, but everything regarding the life of God in men, which the first century believers experienced, began to die shortly after Paul and the others in the same generation died off. Within a couple hundred years the truth of the life of God living in men had been taken into captivity by the great whore of Babylon, of John's revelation. This was also being told to Paul (via the voice of Jesus existing as "the spirit"), who conveyed it to his "true" son Timothy.

The spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.

Beyond Bible Basics (Heaster, Duncan. Beyond Bible Basics. 1999. p. 502) has a discussion of the spirit, and points out the existence of the spirit apart from merely the "miraculous possession of spirit gifts." Although Heaster recognizes that the spirit must exist (because it's such a big component in the NT writings), he says he has no idea how it operates: "We should have no essential objection to the Lord granting us his spirit, in the sense of His thinking, His heart/mind. The word of God is the medium through which the spirit of God now moves; but whether this is the only method, and how God's word is used by the Father and Son to effect their purposes: of these things we cannot speak. The NT emphasizes, time and again, that after baptism, the spirit operates upon us in this sense. How it operates is another question."

Although this finds a certain mental/emotional agreement in the one who has chosen to believe this style of thinking because it makes the idea of the existence of the spirit fit nicely into a doctrinal comprehension of how the life of God must be (according to their observations about the world and their place in it), it makes the spirit sort of arbitrary and non-effectual. While it fits one way, it doesn't fit another. Like "that's okay for them, but this is how it is for us." We would argue that the spirit did not exist only in concept, but in a real way, and it must exist in order to find the way to the Father, because it is His life, the path and way to him. The only way it can be explained is in terms that have no real relavanc to the human experience, because the experiencing of it isn't for the humans, nor can they just be able to figure it out and then analyze it wo they can retain that agreement they feel they must continue to hold onto, which is that egotistical component of the animal nature, of being the one(s) who is righter and better than the others—something they all claim to hold power over for themselves (we're the ones who are right).

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

There it is, Jesus is the way, and God lived in him. He was the only animal who was clean, therefore he was righter and better than the others. Yet in all his rightness, the Father didn't want his rightness being shown by the power of his own hand to show it. The Father Himself will want to show everyone that the Son was righter and better than all of the others, because he heard the Father's voice and responded with "Here I am Father, ready to do your will, not my own." He (the way his life went, what he conformed to) was the way to the Father, so also their way must be his way if they were to go to the Father. In the same way the Father lived in the Son's body, Jesus the Son would have to live in the chosen sons who were unclean animals if they were to be able to know the way to the Father. Based upon our experience we would say that a presence of a supernatural teacher is very much real and active, guiding us in a specific direction that keeps getting defined.

When I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you.

Our possession of the spirit of sonship is not a thing of priveledge, but only as it involves the priveledge of being able to suffer the pain of having to lose what we love, which isn't a theoretical or academic exercise. It marks out a specific time in our lives when before we did not possess it, and after we did. There is nothing fuzzy about its presence in us, however it does remain a bit vague and even arbitrary so that we don't think we can just figure it out and become smug. A little of the Father's reality is revealed at a time, not too much but just enough as per our ability to be able to hear and understand, then respond with a willingness to conform to the new reality. An informal covenant is formed between the Father and Son and the son in question, which gets more complex as the son learns to conform. There is no generic "one fits all" covenant like in the old days when the Father couldn't actually dwell in the son's body—now each one is able to enter in to their own private covenant because the life living in the son's heart makes it able to be alive and changing, not stagnant with printed words that apply to everyone, which is the mystery babylon model (which both the christians and the christadelphians follow). They must because they want to grab hold of God, but the life isn't just automatically there for anyone who wants to grab hold of it (more of the new babylon model).

That is not to say that "the truth" is not necessary, but as we have said before, it takes both things. We have to actually know who Jesus is before we can know his way to the Father, which becomes our way because he is the model for all the other sons. Knowing the truth about the most fundamental and important things of God is necessary in understanding the purpose and plan of God. But without the life of God, His DNA living in us, we can only be animals who know the truth. That is why the head knowledge won't come unless the intention exists on the Father's part to make that one clean by the actual transformation, based upon that intention, the Father's choice. We can know all about the true things of God, yet find it impossible to love our brother in any sort of real way because knowing about something doesn't mean we have become that. The christadelphians can exhort each other every Sunday to open their homes and hearts to each other, but they can't do it, because they're too busy being animals, taking care of their own lives, being the good husband and father which they think makes God happy. What did the Son of God say about the natural family?

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

Either protecting our selves, or raising and protecting our brood (working for the money so we can keep them safe); we just don't have the ability to actually love according to the Father, which means after the model of the Son (even if we had the time), to be as Jesus commanded the disciples to be, as he was. Even those without children and family, who may have more time, will find it impossible to love as the Lord commanded, because of the condition of the animal consciousness making them an across the board slave to its compulsions, cravings, tendencies and urges, all cause by the instinct to stay alive in many ways. It can only love itself, and it does that very efficiently, all the time.

Only the spirit can permeate that membrane so we can break through and get on the path that leads to the Father. Then we can learn first how to not love (ourselves like an efficient little machine that works off of instinct). Only when some of the vast amount of self love that is overpowering everything else begins to diminish, can there be any room to actually begin to love. The two rule each other out; they cannot both be simultaneously alive and predominant within the same body. When the animal instinct is alive and well, the love of the self will dominate everything, especially our puerile little intentions and ideas about how much we love, when we're totally stuck in the hole of only being able to love our selves, according to the commands issued to us by the animal that lives in our heart directing us to love our own selves and take care of us, even without thinking about it.

The unseen spirit fights against the force and power of the unnoticed animal nature which is alive and well in every human, according to the terms of the curse. It is that animal nature which begins to be noticed in the son, by the son, as the thing that keeps him separated from the Father (since that's the job it's supposed to do in the humans). A full acceptance that keeps renewing itself while we conveniently forget about it regarding our actual condition is a foundational necessity in order to start becoming the same "way" that the firstborn Son was. He was able to go to the Father, so he should be our model because that's where we want to go too. There isn't anything else to do, be or attain to in this short life.

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

The spirit is not something generic, nor is it arbitrary or conceptual. It is active and useful as the hidden and not publicly disclosed (therefore not cheap or easy to come by—therefore extremely rare and valuable like treasure) force of God that contains regenerative power to transform something dead into alive, because it is the life of God. Only it can turn an already dead animal into a living son who knows the Father's love, and by it continue to be changed. Paul knew it as this kind of actual force, acting on him as part of his life. It wasn't just the notion of Jesus being the Messiah of God that drove Paul; but the very life of Jesus, living in Paul, in spirit form—as the Father had lived in Jesus. That life of God is the only thing that can guarantee we are raised up. When it makes its home in us, then it gives us the mark that we are His, the deposit and guarantee of the things to come.

Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me."

It is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.