My friend Rachel DiPaulo, over at her blog, Stirring the Deep, just posted a series of four videos on the subject of hell. They’re each fairly short, so you don’t need to watch them all at once if you’re crunched for time, but why not pop over there and have a look? I think she’s done a great job.

Blessings, Cindy

I was asking Abba (again) on Saturday about the beautiful gate of the Temple, also pondering why it seems that so few desire to go through that gate. Here is our conversation:

“Father, You are good and lovely in all things. There is no darkness in You, neither can anyone or anything cast a shadow on You. How can it be, then, that so few seem able to understand or to see You?”

They do not desire to look into these things, but rather, clinging to the world of their senses, they dismiss that which, without desire, they are incapable of seeing. The ones who turn back, who look back toward Sodom, are not only unfit for, but are incapable of entering the Kingdom of God. They cannot discern, see, discover, or in any way sense My Kingdom. Only you all, in your unity, can display My Kingdom in any palpable way to them. This is the only way many will ever catch the first glimpse of My face.

I came as the door of the sheep; and now you all, as My expression on the earth, have become the door by which many may enter in.

You have no idea how much importance I have placed in you all. My  very name, My revelation among the nations, is dependent on your displaying it to them. How are the lost found? They are found when and if you all, My body, My bride, find them. I cannot now physically walk the earth, but you all are My representatives, My ambassadors on the planet.

In Me, you are both physically present to the natural realm, and simultaneously in the Spirit, living by eternal life. How can you live truly, except by life that I give? Nevertheless, there is a natural and a divine life. Forsake daily the natural earthly temporal life that you may embrace the bread that I shall give to you, for the bread that I shall give brings a different kind of life than that supplied by natural food.

The more you eat of this bread, the more you will live by My life.

So, talk of Me when you walk by the way; meditate on Me as you go about your day; seek Me in the noonday and at evening; in the morning give thanks and greet Me — and I will set you on high above your enemies and they shall know My name, that it is wonderful.

In Me, you will hope in My words, for they are a light to your feet and a lamp for your path. They are bread and wine to you. So enter by the Gate — Father, Son, Spirit. I am the gate and I am the WORD — the Spirit and the truth. I am the Word made flesh, and in Me is life.

The sisters ran the meeting this week, and I took on the task of figuring out what the Beautiful Gate, the Court of the Women and the Court of the Gentiles signified. The idea of the Court of the Women irritated me — though I am also a Gentile. I was delighted to learn that in the Tabernacle, which is the earliest incarnation of the Temple, there was no court set aside to isolate the women. There was also no court of the Gentiles.

The Tabernacle of Moses

I thought it significant that the door of the Tabernacle was embroidered in blue, purple, and scarlet; that the Tabernacle was separated from the outside world by a 7 1/2 foot tall screen of white linen (symbolic of purity) which was hung on bronze pillars (signifying judgment) with fittings of silver (symbolizing purification). There was one entrance; through what later came to be called (in the Temple) the Beautiful Gate. Just as Jesus the Messiah is the only way to the Father, the beautiful gate, which prefigured Him was the only legitimate way to enter the Tabernacle courtyard. I asked God about all this, and this is what I believe I received from Him — well, part of it . . . .

It is My will and desire that My people should come right up to My side, for you are My children — My own. I did not come for you only to have you keep your distance from Me.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Tabernacle/Temple and how things were done there; only the priests (sons of Aaron) were permitted inside the ‘Holy Place,’ and only the High Priest could enter the ‘Holy of Holies,’ that only once a year, on the Day of Atonement. There were exceptions to this rule. Moses and Joshua approached God whenever they desired, and King David had, for many years, the Ark of the Covenant in a tent in his backyard (known as the Tabernacle of David) and used to go there and write music and enjoy fellowship with the Father. I think it was down to whether a person desired God above all else. All God’s kids are now welcome to approach the Holy of Holies and enter into the presence of the Highest, as Jesus has made a way where there was no way. To continue:

“Therefore were the court of the Gentiles and the court of the Women later additions.  These were added by men in their lust for power, to control and order the oracles of God. Consider how My own, My closest disciples, assumed that I did not want the children near Me, bothering Me with their foolish prattle.

It is the wise in their own eyes who prattle on foolishly, and not children. I will play their games for I love them, but how much better to come as a little child and merely trust.

Now you want to know what purpose the court of the Gentiles served? It was to keep out the unclean, the temporarily separated ones, from the things that they did not understand, and would have misunderstood.

But it has always been all My will and all My desire to include all. Here I have called you in, my bride, My dear one, My beloved. I have called you who were not My people; “My very own,” My cherished ones whom I have purchased from every people and tribe and family — special and peculiar marked-out ones whom I have chosen as My body and My very own flesh.

I called those rejected and outcast of society My friends. I called them dear ones. No more court of the Gentiles; no more court of the Women, where those deemed less worthy, unfit for the presence of God, must stand afar off. The fortunes have shifted and now those far off ones draw near and provoke to jealousy My first called-out ones.

The original Tabernacle had but one door and, open to the heavens, was yet cut off from this world by its walls of white linen, its bronze pillars and fittings of silver; judgment and redemption joined to separate from the world that which is in the world but not of it, accessible only by the door; the only way of entry, which is My own Son.

How can you carry away from this that I have in some way delimited myself from the world? I am separate in that all the impurities of this world do not enter into My sanctuary, yet all that I have made may enter through My beautiful gate; glorious with blue, purple, scarlet threads in clean and pure white linen.

To enter is to separate oneself from the world. It is both to die and to be born. f you would come in, you will no longer be out. Do not tarry, therefore, between two worlds. Those who stand within the doorway vacillate and are unsteady. These hesitate between heaven and earth. How long will My children linger, fearing the loss, yet desiring the gain? Come in through the beautiful gate; the birth of the water and the blood. Acknowledge the King of heaven and earth.

Do not fear the bronze altar, for I have gone before you. You will suffer no loss, but only be purified and refined in its fires, nourished and cleansed by My word — doubly refined and brought near by My own baptism of fire and of water. That which has been destroyed — killed in the fire — is reborn in newness of life, through the waters of burial and rebirth. Nothing shall be lost, but all shall be made new.

These things meet your eyes when you enter by way of the Door of the Sheep. Blue and red and purple; Spirit and Son and Father; Priestly King, Sacrifice and Baptizer. This is My way — the Door, through whom all may and must enter.

My Son is the only entrance.

Lazarus is a derivative of Eliezer. It’s like Rick and Ricardo. Lazarus was the Greek way to say Eliezer. And while there are a number of Eliezers in scripture, the first was Eliezer of Damascus, Abraham’s chief steward. Eliezer would have been Abraham’s heir, had Isaac not been born. Eliezer was, of course, a Gentile. That’s important.

Down the road a bit, Abraham’s grandson, Jacob/Israel, fathered twelve sons, one of whom was named Judah. Israel had two wives and two concubines, and Judah was the son of one of the wives, Leah. Leah also gave birth to five other sons; therefore, Judah had five full brothers. That’s important, too. When we read of “the Jews” in the New Testament, it typically refers to the ruling religious class although the origin of the term is from the tribe of Judah.

If you haven’t read the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in a while, check out my previous post, Raising Lazarus and read it there. You might also want to skim through the rest of the post as it may answer a few questions before you ask them.

The rich man fares sumptuously every day. I believe this rich man symbolizes “the Jews,” or specifically, those Pharisees to whom Jesus was speaking, and their ilk. It was to these proud men that Jesus told this parable. He often did this sort of thing to them. Maybe He liked seeing their faces turn red, or maybe He thought it would be good for them. Probably the latter, but who knows? Earlier in the same chapter, Luke tells us the Pharisees were “lovers of money,” and that they were scoffing at Jesus as He spoke.

They had the law of Moses and the testimony of the prophets. They had the covenant and they had Abraham as their father.The Pharisees were rich, rich, rich in so many ways.

Now here is Lazarus, lying at the gate — cut off from the blessings of Abraham and wishing to be fed by the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table, but the dogs (unclean) come and lick his sores and no one gives him anything. Remember Abraham’s Lazarus (Eliezer), though honored in his household, was an outsider; a Gentile slave.

God had charged the nation of Israel with being a light to the Gentiles, but instead they became insular and gave the Gentiles nothing of the riches God had shared with them. They regarded the Gentiles as afflicted and unclean, not even fit to eat with. Likewise the Pharisees and Priests regarded the common rabble of Israel as unfit and unclean. They complained that Jesus spent time with these worthless losers and even ate with them. So Lazarus can also stand in for these folk; the lost and abandoned of Israel.

Now Lazarus dies and is carried by the angels (messengers) to the bosom of Abraham. What’s this? Lazarus is unclean and unfit. Anyone can see he’s accursed of God; destitute, covered with sores, hungry, his only companions the unclean dogs that lick his broken crusted skin. Disgusting! And this man is in the bosom of Abraham? The Pharisees must have been shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

And to put the sesame sauce on the stir-fry, the rich man finds himself in torments! The undesirable half of the Greek Hades. Not only doesn’t he make it to the bosom of Abraham, he doesn’t even end up on the right side of town in the Gentile hell. Lazarus cannot go to him to comfort him even with a drop of water.

(I’m not sure this is pertinent, but I find it interesting that in the sufferings of the Jews in the past centuries, the Gentiles who have desired to help have often been thwarted. Most of the world didn’t even know about the Nazi death camps until millions, mostly Jews, had been murdered in them. And few people were in a position to help the Jews who were persecuted in the rise of the USSR. Of course, historically, not all that many Gentiles have desired to help the Jews, to our shame.)

Abraham tells the rich man, “nor do they from thence to us pass through.” And while some Jews follow Jesus, it is a remarkably rare occurrence. Statistically, Jewish Christians are rare even today — though they are getting a little more common.

Thwarted in his desire for personal comfort, the rich man begs Father Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers (remember — five brothers?). Abraham tells him, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.” The rich man protests that if one returns from the dead, his brothers will listen. Abraham counters that if they won’t hear Moses, they won’t listen even if one returns from the dead.

And not so long after that, Jesus raised His friend Lazarus from the dead. The Pharisee’s response? They plotted to kill Lazarus. And then Jesus Himself rose from among the dead, and still the Jewish religious leaders refused to hear.

I believe that this parable is an example of a classic story type of the day; the role-reversal parable. Jesus surprises and offends His audience of Pharisees by placing them in fiery torments in Hades and situating the poor and unclean rabble (and worse! the Gentiles) in Abraham’s bosom. God’s riches, His covenant, His blessing would now pass from their hands to the poor and destitute and to the Gentile nations that had for so long lain at their gates, receiving nothing of the good things of God.

But we shouldn’t write off Judah and his brothers. Paul tells us that in the end all Israel will be saved. God can cross that great gulf that prevented Lazarus from comforting the rich man in his torments, and from what Paul says, it appears that He plans to do just that at the right time — perhaps when the “times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”

Meanwhile, Lazarus has risen. It’s his turn to carry the torch, to be the city set on a hill, and to be salt to the earth. May God help us, and may we, in Christ, fulfill all His will.

The parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man is, like most of Jesus’ parables, deep enough to drown in, and all the more since it was spoken into a society now so foreign to us that we have a hard time hearing as Jesus’ hearers would have heard. Many people take this parable at face value. They insist that, as this is the only parable in which Jesus gives a name to a character, it must be an actual true story. Moreover, the name given, Lazarus, is confusing — as Jesus had a real-life friend, Lazarus, who was apparently a reasonably wealthy man. The reasoning is that Jesus would have chosen another name if He wanted a fictitious name, as He would have known that calling the beggar Lazarus would provoke confusion.

But what if Jesus isn’t talking on the surface? He hardly ever does, after all. Is this parable really about the after-life as it seems to be? Is Jesus giving us a peek into the layout in hell? Well, let’s look at it:

‘And — a certain man was rich, and was clothed in purple and fine linen, making merry sumptuously every day, and there was a certain poor man, by name Lazarus, who was laid at his porch, full of sores, and desiring to be filled from the crumbs that are falling from the table of the rich man; yea, also the dogs, coming, were licking his sores.

‘And it came to pass, that the poor man died, and that he was carried away by the messengers to the bosom of Abraham — and the rich man also died, and was buried; and in the hades having lifted up his eyes, being in torments, he does see Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom, and having cried, he said, Father Abraham, deal kindly with me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and may cool my tongue, because I am distressed in this flame.

‘And Abraham said, Child, remember that you did receive — you — your good things in your life, and Lazarus in like manner the evil things, and now he is comforted, and you are distressed; and besides all these things, between us and you a great chasm is fixed, so that they who are willing to go over from hence unto you are not able, nor do they from thence to us pass through.

‘And he said, I pray you, then, father, that you may send him to the house of my father, for I have five brothers, so that he may thoroughly testify to them, that they also may not come to this place of torment.

‘Abraham said to him, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them; and he said, No, father Abraham, but if any one from the dead may go unto them, they will reform. And he said to him, If Moses and the prophets they do not hear, neither if one may rise out of the dead will they be persuaded.’ (Luk 16:19-31 RYLT-NT)

Before we get down to business, it’s important to understand that Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees; lovers of money and religious experts of the day. Their financial blessings proved that God was pleased with them. They were superior to the unwashed masses. Others were listening, but it was to the Pharisees this parable was directed.

Now let’s see if the situation of the Rich Man and Lazarus in the after life agrees with what we know from scripture. In order to “go to heaven,” you must be born again. So how do you do that? Jesus said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” Had Lazarus been baptized? Did he believe on Jesus? If so, Jesus never mentions it. Funny He should leave out such an important point. What about the Rich Man? What has he done to deserve the torments section of the Greek after-life, Hades? All we’re told is that he lives sumptuously and ignores the poor man at his gate. Did he reject Jesus? We don’t know. Again, the story doesn’t say.

Not only that, but what is this man doing in a fiery hell at this point? The rest of scripture seems to teach that judgment isn’t rendered until Jesus raises the unsaved from their graves. As the Rich Man requests Lazarus be sent to warn his five brothers, this clearly hasn’t happened as of yet.

From this parable are we to assume that all poor people will “go to heaven”? That all rich people who do not take care of the poor will “go to hell”? While taking care of the poor is important, I don’t think anyone who holds the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith will agree that doing this gets you a ticket to heaven or a “get out of hell free” card, nor that all who are poor will go straight to the Kingdom of Heaven.

To me, it doesn’t look like this parable is meant to teach us about the after-life. If it is, it contradicts many of the things Jesus Himself tells us about entering the Kingdom of Heaven. Theologians differ as to what this parable means. In my next post, I’ll share my opinion on some remarkable symbolism that I believe points to the story’s true purpose.

In their commentary, Lifeway says that the view that people can find salvation through religions other than God, “… is generally called ‘universalism’ or ‘pluralism’ (though technically not the same thing, they are often used interchangeably and relate to one another). So, based on this data, Protestant pastors are overwhelmingly not pluralist/universalist.”

This statement is somewhat frustrating, because right after admitting that “universalism” and “pluralism” should not be used interchangeably, Lifeway uses them as synonyms in the very next sentence! So perhaps a bit of disambiguation is in order.

As Robin Parry and Christopher Partridge point out in the introduction to their excellent book Universal Salvation? The Current Debate, we can identify a typology of “universalisms,” at least one of which may actually be a synonym for pluralism. But Christian universalists rarely hold to such a belief. A brief summary of Parry and Partridge’s typology:

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Falling Water

The great God of the universe Who flung the stars from His fingertips, spoke the worlds into existence, and breathed life into all that moves and grows, is building Himself a house.  It is a house of surpassing magnificence; a house to cause the grandest of manses to skulk away in shame. This house is a house of gold, pearl and precious living stones, where Living Water dances and the Tree of Life grows, bearing fruit on every branch.

But the House of YHWH is more than that. In the olden days, a great family, let’s say the Tudors, might be referred to as the House of Tudor. So this house that the Father is building is not only a dwelling place in the sense of being constructed with walls and windows and rooms and roofs, but also in the sense of being a family; God’s offspring. The House of YHWH is led by the Father’s Firstborn Son, Jesus the Messiah.

God is building His house, and has been for ever so long. As anyone knows who has watched the building of a magnificent house, the site during the building process resembles nothing so much as a colossal mess. There are piles of dirt, house wrap stapled on, bits of left-over timber and wall board piled up here and there, pipes and wires and boxes of stuff. The land around the house is pocked and rutted and barren of anything lovely. Big dented, scratched trucks and machinery dwell here, and it’s hard to imagine that one day a marvelous construction will emerge from the ugly skeleton, and that it will be surrounded by green lawns and manicured shrubbery, flowering trees and plants, and stone paths that lead to wrought-iron gateways into secret garden sanctuaries.

There will be windows and balconies and outside stairs; porches and porticoes, shaded benches and garden lights, and the smell of grilling steaks mingled with laughter and words and the lilt of music. This mess will one day be a great house, the home of a great family. But it will be literally AGES in the construction. You don’t build a house like this in a couple of months. You don’t call the builder in November, hoping to have it ready to spend Christmas in. (Well, people do, actually — but that doesn’t typically work out for them.)

The Father, however counted the cost and tallied up the centuries. The Son offered Himself as the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the earth, and as the Spirit brooded over the deep, He knew what He was about to commit His power to. The price of this house came as no surprise to the the Elohim. The crucifixion wasn’t plan B. It was always in the blueprints.The Community of the Godhead covenanted together to build this house and to pay the price, though terrible, to make it their own.

God is building a house for Himself, and that house is made of the stuff He put in the Garden; gold, pearl and precious, living stones. There’s the river of Living Water and the Tree of Life. And more than anything, there are His sons and daughters, the first of whom are Adam and Eve. We see this home completed in Revelation 21 – 22; a glorious city, built of those very same materials, and filled with His beloved children; the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, the first fruits of the children of men. From the midst of the city, where His throne is, flows the River of Life, and on each side grows the Tree of Life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

This city; this garden home; is the culmination of all those millenia of pain and frustration, all the heartache and mess and blood and tears through history. This is what the march of years has led us to. The Garden of God became the Tabernacle of David, then the Temple of Solomon; the city of Jerusalem, the nation of Israel, the gathering of the saints, the adoption of the sons and daughters of God, and with their adoption, the restoration of all creation in their wake. All this to build the House of YHWH. It has cost Him dearly. For these people, through whom He is expressed and in whom He dwells,  He has bled and wept and died and risen; fought and rescued and chastened and now at last, He has matured them into the image of His Firstborn Son . . . whose own desires will be the subject of my next post.

So what’s all this about God not sharing His glory and God getting all the glory and glorifying God all the time? Aren’t we supposed to be becoming more like Him? If that’s the case, couldn’t He at least try to pretend that He’d like to appear to have the teensiest bit of modest decorum? Why all the time “Look at Me! Look at Me!”? Does God have a self-esteem problem? Does He need us to prop Him up? To help Him feel better about Himself? To tell Him He’s worthy?

Now if you know Him, you know that can’t be so. Something doesn’t fit with the whole glory thing. There’s something here we’re not seeing. What is glory anyway, and why does God seem so obsessed with making sure no one gets any but Him? And why would He even want it so much?

Yet there’s no arguing . . . scripture is chock full of commands to give God the glory, glorify Him, glory, glory, glory — gimme more glory! A few years ago, I started obsessing about glory, too, because I’ve always been taught to be modest and self-effacing (probably to a fault) and not put myself forward or insist on getting credit for good things I’d done or display any desire or regard for the praise of men. The upshot has been that I’ve had to be sneaky about it. “Oh that ol’ thang?” (fetching blush — I hope) Well yes . . . I guess I did make that . . . .

Anyway, I decided to find out what “glory” really was, in a biblical sense. In the Old Testament, the word kabod is translated glory. It means, at its foundation, heavy. It connotes splendor, copiousness, and honor. Put that way, it’s hard to begrudge these things to God. All it amounts to is telling the true story of who He is. It’s He who created us and this splendid home in which we live, the world. He’s supplied this planet copiously with all we need, and who but He should we honor for all this? When you consider how easily humankind has tended to fall into all forms of idolatry — and how disastrous that idolatry has been in terms of human suffering, it only makes sense that our loving Father should insist that we acknowledge that HE, and no one else, is God.

The New Testament word for glory is doxa. The Thayer definition for this is long, but the first couple of lines read: opinion, judgement, view . . . estimate, whether good or bad concerning someone. One of my other references, which I can’t seem to find just now, described doxa as telling the true story about someone, whether that story was good or bad. In the case of God, this story is, of course, good — providing we know Him well enough to know the true story about Him. Doxa also includes such meanings as splendor, copiousness, and honor, which are hardly incompatible with telling the true story of our wonderful Abba.

I love this definition because it makes so much sense of God’s continual demands for glory. He wishes to be accurately represented. He desires to be known on the earth. This fits. It makes sense. God had a purpose in creating. He was complete in Himself; Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Together in One, God is and has always been love. But love desires to expand itself and to share with an other. God the father had His Beloved in His Son, the Son in His Father, and both in the Holy Spirit as the Spirit loves the Father and Son — yes, they were complete in One and in one another. Yet God wanted a wider circle of love — a wider expression of Himself.

God wished to be revealed through and to the creation He intended to create. And this is glory — in a nutshell — or more accurately, in a seed.

In its Glory

The Holy Spirit has given us a number of pictures of God’s eternal purpose, and in my next post I’ll share one or two of them.

 ”You will not apply my precept,” he said, shaking his head. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” Sherlock Holmes/Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Profundity from the prince of detectives! In the guise of reason, must we abandon logic? Ultimately, believing that the Father did send Jesus as our Messiah is resolved solely via the faith which can only be given to humans through the Holy Spirit, by the will of God. That said, in this age of “reason,” it behooves the follower of Jesus to have at least the bones of a logical and reasonable defense of the centerpiece of our beliefs; the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Messiah. Perhaps it will come as a surprise that such a supernatural event has much to commend it, even to the naturalistic mind.

First, the only ones in a position, or possessing a motivation to falsify the resurrection, clearly believed in it themselves. Of Jesus’ original disciples, not one escaped great persecution for insisting Jesus rose from the tomb, and all save John were martyred. Not one became wealthy from speaking engagements or book royalties, nor were any of them interviewed on Roman Empire Today or Good Morning Greece or the Jewish Broadcasting Network. Nobody got accolades, but rather hardship, poverty and persecution wherever they went. So why? Few historians will deny that the apostles and other witnesses believed they had seen Jesus alive from the tomb, and believed  that they had seen Him ascend bodily into the heavens. None of the actions of Jesus’ followers after His death indicate that they expected or desired public acclaim, political power, or financial profit.

Mass hallucination has been suggested, or that Jesus survived the crucifixion. Such a mass hallucination would be as supernatural an event as the resurrection, and the resurrection is more believable. As for executional failure . . .  I’m sure I needn’t point out that the Romans were good at killing people. Just to make sure, they pierced Jesus’ side, and blood and water flowed out. That means He was pierced to the heart, and that his heart had been crushed by a fluid build-up in the pericardium (membrane around the heart). He was dead, and no mistake.

Second, there’s that empty tomb. Jewish historical records attest to it. All four gospel accounts insist on it. Mentions of the crucifixion itself pop up occasionally in secular records, so we can reasonably accept that He was crucified, even without the gospel writers. And where there is a crucifixion, there must be a body.

But the body went missing. The Jewish authorities had been afraid that might happen, so they asked Pilate for guards, which he granted them. They blocked the tomb with a huge rock, put a seal on it, and set a watch of Roman soldiers over it. But the soldiers came back to them with a wild tale of angels, and what could they do about that? The priests gave them the story; “Say that his disciples came and stole the body while you slept,” along with money and a promise to protect them from punishment for keeping a poor watch. Sleeping on watch is a no-no, and Roman soldiers were expendable. The only reason for them to “admit” to such a thing would be that the alternative (in this case, to tell the true story) was even worse.

So why didn’t the priests arrest the disciples for this travesty, have them tortured until they ‘fessed up and told where the body was, and then returned Jesus body to the tomb; or more likely, put it on public display? Clearly, there was no body to find. This thin story was the best they could do, and for a lot of people, it was good enough.

Third, why didn’t the disciples make up a better story? They had the women — and particularly Mary Magdalene, as the first witnesses to the resurrection. In their society women couldn’t even be counted as witnesses in a court of law. Then the disciples didn’t believe the women even though their account lined up with what Jesus had said. What’s more, the men were holed up behind locked doors while it was the ladies who had the courage to go and tend to the body of their Lord. If you’re going to make up a legend, this is not the way. You at least make yourself look good.

Fourth, there are the witnesses. Paul says that more than 500 believers watched Jesus ascend up into heaven, and that as of his writing (1 Cor 15:6), most of them were still alive. Surely the Jews could have found at least a few of these people and prevailed upon them to tell the world what they saw (or what they didn’t see) — especially if it was all a lie. But we have no mention in the Jewish writings of any attempt having been made to discredit the viral growth of “the Way” by bringing forth such witnesses.

Fifth there is James the brother of Jesus, who had not, until the resurrection, believed that his brother was the Son of God. I mean, would you? Yet he became one of the primary leaders of the early church. And let’s not forget Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul, who went from breathing fire and death to all followers of “the Way” to the most prolific written apologist of the gospel we have. He suffered stoning, shipwreck, lashes, hunger, privation, scorn, imprisonment, and more, for the sake of the Messiah who had revealed Himself as Jesus of Nazareth as Saul had traveled toward Damascus with the intent of persecuting those who believed in Him.

There’s more, and if you look for it, you will find it, but I think I’ve presented enough here to begin to persuade our friend Sherlock Holmes, or at least to start him thinking. The trick is as always, to see what is before us rather than merely what we “know to be true.”

Blessings to you all, and a Joyful Resurrection Day!

A couple of days ago, I listened to a talk given by atheist Sam Harris, linked from the Hellbound movie site. Harris doesn’t believe people have free will in anything. I’m not sure what I think about this, but the following is what I believe I heard from God on the question. I’d love to hear your take on it, particularly after you’ve asked God and listened to Him in your spirit. If you think I’m wrong, please say so, and why you think it. I’d love to hear your take on the subject.

I asked: “Father, is this true?”

He responded: No, it is not — at least not for My chosen and selected ones among the nations. We (He and His own people) are not the pawns of your neurophysiology. Unified in Me, you do have freedom, for I make you free. I came to set at liberty the captives. My mission was, and continues to be to release from bondage all those slaves to the fear of death; not to add fear onto fear onto fear, but rather to destroy both the fear and the death at one stroke; that is, to destroy the works of the enemy, which are bondage and the fear of death. I came to set at liberty those who are wounded, and to give sight to the blind eyes.

The whole world is in bondage to the evil one. I came to undo, untie, unravel and burst those bonds. I can do this because of My mastery over them, which I achieved in dying to self and to My own will. In freely choosing to forgo my own way and that which I naturally, as a man and as a human being desired to do — that is, to avoid the crucifixion of the flesh, I broke through the barrier, the veil, the gates of Hades, and I broke through not in my own human life, but with the divine life that was in Me — of the Father.

To do this, it was necessary that I conceal My true purpose from the enemy. (Yes, there is an enemy, and even if personified, no less real for that.) Had he known, the principalities and powers would never have crucified the Lord of glory. But it was necessary that I enter the realms of darkness, of chaos, as a captive — else I could not have saved those who were captivated there. I had to come into THEIR reality and I had to shatter that reality from within. I had to shatter that reality from within. From without, there was no remedy, no destruction for that which was itself no thing at all. I had to enter a place which was hidden — which did not, in a real sense, exist, and which, in its nonexistence, kept as secure and hopeless captives those imprisoned there.

But My eyes see the nether realms, and My will is to be done both in that which is and in that which is naught.

In setting you free from compulsion, I bring you out of that place where you are automatons — the prisoners of your biological programming and its interaction with circumstance. I bring you out into a high place — onto hallowed ground, into the light and into freedom to choose rationally — into a place of lucidity. All this My dear ones — all this is done to set you free.

Free from sin. Free from compulsion. Free from fear. Free from death. Free from illusion. Free from irrationality. To open your eyes and fill up your inner being with light.

You long for freedom, but freedom eludes you. This is because the real bondage is within you, and you cannot fight it with guns and wars. No, the bondage is to the animal nature, from which you must die and be reborn. In this way only can you ever be truly free. Only in this way can you become the sons and daughters of your Father. When you are like My holy One, My Son, then and only then can you truly be free.

He has shown the way, broken the trail — made the path, shattered the chains, razed the battlements and destroyed the gates. You must then walk through, children, and you do make that choice. Some are given more light, sooner than others. — to each according to his desire and readiness, and not before his time.

You are there to guide those for whom the light has begun to dawn, and this is also a part of the process of your maturation — that you be able also to teach others. In this way you show that you are My disciples. Love is manifest in this — that you do the works of My only begotten Son. And as you do them, you also grow in love and kindness and in the power to do yet greater works. If you are My disciples, this and more await your hands to do.