The Reality

You’re in a car. You’re in a car that you love. You’re enjoying your drive. Your thoughts are free, you feel one with the road; every journey in this car is the hallmark of your day. But there’s an issue. The car, from under the hood, is making all kinds of violent rattling noises. The car, when it shouldn’t be driven, is driving, and you are ignoring every sign that it needs to be fixed. 

Who would do this? Why would anyone do this? Having a car that is, at any time, clearly about to break down, who would risk further damaging their car, ignoring the fact that it needs to be taken to a shop? 

We have our reasons. One reason could be that we love our car and want to, until it kicks the bucket, get every last moment with it. Another reason could be that we don’t have the money to get it fixed, and are therefore, until the car decides to stop working, forced to carry on. Yet another reason could be that we just don’t care, or that we have too much going on in our life to worry about it. 

This is how we naturally treat our devotional conversation. To us, our conversation is divine. To us, our conversation is naturally entitled. And, when you think about the belief our conversation either adopts or inherits when conceived within the religious world, this is the only condition our conversation can have. Herein a, “Thus saith the living God,” is needed:

“I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream,” Amos 5:21-24. 

Notice that what is quoted is in present tense. That means the voice and the mind that is speaking is not ultimately sectioning out a particular or a specific group of people, but is calling out every group and individual fulfilling the saying, “O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are come forth out of the waters of Judah, which swear by the name of the LORD, and make mention of the God of Israel,” Isaiah 48:1. 

The Bible isn’t a book commending worship and service. The Bible isn’t a book coddling the ego of one’s religious conversation. Once passed the lore of the scriptures and are found beneath its surface, one will understand the Bible to be a book giving counsel, correction, and advice to the personal devotional conversation.  

Our belief is birthed out of the religious world. While birthed out of the religious world, our belief is first conceived, although not by any act of self, within our self, where there is no trace of the philosophy within the religious world. Once we take what is conceived within us and bring it into the religious world, our belief becomes a violent vehicle. Because we are too lazy to either notice or care, or are too attached to what it has become within the religious world, we ignore the fact that our conversation is sick. 

The Bible is a book whose philosophy informs its careful student of the condition of their conversation. It doesn’t matter what we denominate our conversation to be, if we are saying the “God” of Israel is our “God,” then we naturally possess a damaged and a damaging conversation. Maybe we don’t know this, but the Bible is not shy to tell us. 

Why is our conversation damaged and damaging?  Religious theory keeps our spiritual thoughts flesh-based or confined to the “box” of religion and theology. We don’t know it, but this “box” of religion and of theology is the “curse” or “plague” given to the religious world. The book of Ecclesiastes, chapter three and verses ten and eleven make this quite plain, which is why it is so hard to truly hear how and why it says, “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven,” Psalm 119:89. 

The philosophy within the Bible is about our conversation’s justification. If something must be justified, or cleansed, or purified, that means its natural or original condition is filthy and broken. The sooner we accept that justification is firstly for the conversation, the sooner we can begin to correctly understand what to spiritually or philosophical revere. 

Death

It is impossible to reference the movement of the living God’s chief apostle without mentioning how it says, “If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death.”

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, written after the destruction of Jerusalem is, in one context, written from the perspective of a mind taking those events, and their then underlying philosophical and prophetic stance, into consideration. In another context, their narratives, built upon many other narrative manuscripts, are written to support the traditional belief of those former manuscripts. In yet another context, underneath all of their prevailing contexts, rests the original structure of their tale, a structure built upon philosophy.  

Historically, prior to the gospels having a narrative, no narrative existed. The story of a resurrection and an ascension, the stories of healings, the stories concerning the birth of the main character, did not exist within the writings of the movement’s original assembly. What did exist were lines of sayings, or a record of wisdom, explaining an understanding that later writers of the narrative styled, “The kingdom of God.” 

What is the “kingdom of God”? It says, “It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened,” Luke 13.21. What does this mean? It says, ”The kingdom of God is within you,” Luke 17:21. What is ‘leaven’? It says, “… he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees,” Matthew 16:12. 

Before all of the stories connected to the narrative within the gospels existed, only parables and wise sayings existed. These sayings explained the definition of the “kingdom of God.” Because a parable must be understood according to the illustration rehearsed, “leaven,” for example, according to the scriptures, is but “doctrine.” “The kingdom of God” is, in reality, an inward experience where the living God’s doctrine is rising up inside of the conversation. 

The living God’s chief apostle preached the rising up of the living God’s doctrine within the conversation. This “rising up,” or “resurrection,” is the regeneration taught by the new covenant promise. It says, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people,” Jeremiah 31:33.

Strip the narrative from the “saying” within them and we have what the man taught. The man taught a saying that, when observed, didn’t lead to “death.” What is this “death”? Because the “kingdom” is not literal, but is an experience occurring within, it is fair to conclude that the “death” referenced also isn’t literal, but is an experience occurring within. 

I’ve spent time, in past blog posts, writing about the definition of “righteousness,” because there is a righteousness that is defined as “death.” This “death” is found in the saying, “That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven,” Matthew 5:20. 

The righteousness referenced is highlighted in the saying, “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition,” Mark 7:9. The righteousness mentioned is the “death” that is referenced; the “death” referenced is traditional religion, or is traditional religious law. Said plainly, “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law,” 1 Corinthians 15:56. 

To the Bible, “sin” and “death” is defined as the philosophy of the religious law. Why is this important to know? It is important to know because it says, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,” Galatians 3:13. 

The narrative of a demigod dying and rising for the sins of humanity is, according to the Bible, a false narrative. This is not, according to Bible language and context, what the Bible teaches. What the Bible teaches is that “sin” is the traditional religious law, and that if taking confidence on the crucifixion, then the conversation takes confidence on the fact of an illustration highlighting the traditional religious law as “sin” and as “death.”

If attentive to the “kingdom of God,” the conversation will not know “death” because it will learn to refrain from it. The “saying” encouraging the conversation to refrain from “death” is the doctrine of “the kingdom of God,” which doctrine, when found within the heart of the conversation, will cause a great resurrection in devotional thought and feeling. 

The Movement

Every movement, organization, or crusade has a mission.

Without a mission, the movement is seemingly put on pause. 

The Bible discusses the movement of the living God’s chief apostle. That “crusade” is understood from how it says, “I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house,” Isaiah 42:6,7. 

The Bible says that this messenger, along with liberating prisoners and healing the blind, is to be given for a covenant of “light.” Is this true? Was the man to become, or to be transformed into a literal covenant? We find our answers by contrasting certain verses:

“Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people,” Isaiah 51:4. 

“For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life,” Proverbs 6:23. 

“…by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many,” Isaiah 53:11. 

“…he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles…the isles shall wait for his law,” Isaiah 42:1-4.

These verses allow us to understand the context behind the Bible alluding to or saying that “one” is given for a covenant. In reality, it is not the man that is to be taken for a covenant, but rather the “law,” the “knowledge,” or the “commandment” that is to come from his mouth. The living God has given no man as a covenant, but rather a specific philosophy from that man. 

The Bible makes a clear separation between that man and that man’s understanding. Our traditional religious or theological culture unlawfully and falsely combines the two, leading us to believe that the man is the understanding and that the understanding is the man. This confusion contributes to a legend that the man is more than a man, even like as it was said of Daniel, “I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in thee,” Daniel 4:9. 

Why is this present review relevant? Why is it well to separate the fact of the man’s mission from the fiction of the religious tradition emboldening his aura? Why is it important to know the man’a actual movement and to learn how to disassociate the person from the theological theory forced upon that mission? Why does this matter? 

How would you feel if, after you led an intellectual and philosophical movement, your actual cause found itself hidden by an intention given to you by history writers? How would you feel if you, after having died for a cause deeply touching your heart, had your reason for willingly sacrificing yourself turned into something grossly far and contrary from your concern? This is what happened, more than 2000 years ago, to the living God’s chief apostle. 

Mission matters. Fact matters. Reality matters. The man’s actual cause means much to our conversation’s  growth and development. It means much because our devotional experience is to mirror that man’s philosophical and devotional movement. 

This man taught the living God’s “good will.” That “good will” is a commandment or a “law” of devotional wellbeing. We owe it to our conversation’s thoughts and feelings to let it know the experience intended for it. This is why understanding the actual man’s movement matters. This is why he said, “If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death,” John 8:52.