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. 

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. 

Remember The Actual Intention

Do you remember how it says, “…and on earth peace, good will toward men”? Luke 2:14

Do you remember how it also says, “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end”? Jeremiah 29:11

Do you remember how it again says, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you”? Isaiah 66:13

We know or remember how the Bible says these things, but it’s kind of trippy when actually thinking about how they are to be fulfilled. Holding John 4:24 and Luke 24:39 to be true, that God is a Spirit and that a spirit does not have flesh and blood, perceiving the fulfillment of these verses becomes tricky, and also a bit "funny."

Because, how is comfort supposed to be given from what can't physically comfort? What “good will” to mankind is supposed to come from what isn't a member of mankind? What kind of peace is supposed to come from what cannot know the feeling of a natural form of peace? What kind of thoughts can something that isn't flesh and blood have for what is flesh and blood?

See, we don't think about the actual reality of what the Bible is saying, but associate its words with what we have heard or have been taught. Because, as I'm looking at these verses, should I be unfamiliar with the context of the Bible's language, I don't understand the “peace” a spirit has for me. Should I apply what I "know" to this concern, I find myself going off in thought and imagining an understanding of what "peace" or "good will" is given by a spirit. Who knows, then, where my thoughts will end up, or what belief I will generate, when forcing an ideology from what I associate with the Bible's words.

I'm bringing this up because I'd like to draw attention to a particular question: How should a spirit comfort? Having no flesh and blood, what kind of "peace," "comfort," "expectation," and "good will" can the living God give? The answer cannot be natural, or flesh-based; where is the natural or flesh-based body of God? Why should something having no natural body think to naturally comfort? Inserting general or popular traditional theology into the issue, the issue has many solutions, but when drawing only on the Bible, there is only one answer.

The answer to the question is "righteousness." Only "righteousness" solves the issue of "peace" and "comfort" coming from that Spirit. This "righteousness" is "the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man," Titus 3:4. This "kindness" is "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but...by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost," Titus 3:5.

Paul is schooling his reader on the living God's will. My blog post on November 16, 2022 quoted a passage from the book of Matthew, where the author's main character advised his hearer's faith to transcend the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. Their righteousness is found in their continued service to handwritten religious tradition, which the author's main character cites as being a false manner of devotion. I'm stepping back into that past blog post, and into what was covered, because "righteousness," as a concept within the Bible, is not what we think.

“Righteousness” appears in two forms: the first, a service to handwritten religious routine; the second, the "kindness" offered by the living God.

The first type of righteousness, according to the Bible, is false. It is false because the conversation receives its understanding from a conscience outside of its experience, becoming a slave to that outside conscience. The living God's righteousness is contrary to this position, giving to the conversation its lost liberty in thought, in feeling, in action, and in behavior. This is why it says, "To proclaim liberty to the captives,” Isaiah 61:1.

The gospel, or the good news, is not one's hope on a dying and reviving demigod to share, whether present or in the future, the same nature as that dying and reviving demigod; to the Bible this makes no sense. To the Bible, the "good news" is the living God's "good will," which "will" is a "kindness" not to the individual person, but to the individual conversation. The conversation is to be liberated from a false manner of devotion; this is the kingdom and the righteousness of God, and when hearing or learning it from the Bible, due to our institutionalized understanding, it is most definitely trippy.

I'm saying all of this so that you, my reader, can put "spirit" into perspective, and in putting "spirit" into perspective, you can then pursue the "peace," the "comfort," and the "good will" that the Bible intends. There is more to our experience than what we have been taught and what we think we know. Truth be told, there is no knowledge or understanding on Bible; religious "ology" is our natural spiritual foundation. The promised "expectation" is liberation from the shackles of "ology" to claim a devotional conversation similar to the living God's devotional character. This, when studying the Bible, should be our only concern.