Hey Pastor John!

The other night I finish reading God Had a Son Before Mary Did book.*  After I closed the book, I had a flood of emotions.  I didn’t expect to feel all the feelings that came.  I immediately got on my knees and just cried out to Jesus to help me take in everything I had just read.  I wanted every part of my being to take in and be completely saturated with the truth.  The feelings were so deep and so sobering!  I’ve been thinking /feeling these feelings for days. 

This morning, I watched the video that Vince posted, “The True History of Christianity”, and was overwhelmed again!  I thought, if Jesus never does anything for me again, knowing this truth is everything; it is complete and we are complete in it!

Thank you, Pastor John for teaching me the pure unaltered truth!  It has saved my life and it keeps saving me!

Michelle 

*Going to Jesus.com – God Had A Son Before Mary Did

Good morning!

I watched the link you sent us about Ephesus (https://youtu.be/CcemMtXm9Ns?is=2MD4AdAUqfnZMoJi)  and what it would have looked like.  It was interesting to see the places that Paul traveled and how things would have looked when he was there in Ephesus.  After watching the video, I wanted to read Ephesians.  So, I did. And I ended up reading the whole book.  It was so good.  And such a beautiful love letter from Paul to his precious saints in Ephesus.

When I finished, it stood out to me how Paul started his letter establishing an order.  First, his tells who God is, then he tells who the Son is, and then, he says who the body of Christ is, and then, he goes further to husbands and wives, and children. In chapter 5, Paul then says, “This is a great mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the Assembly of God.”  When I read that, this came next, “that he himself might present it [the body of Christ], with himself, as a glorious Assembly without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it might be holy and blameless.”  I felt so much love in that.  The whole letter was full of love.  And at the end, Paul asked for prayer “that something might be given to him so that he might open his mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.”  That touched me.  For Paul to write such a letter to the Ephesians meant he thought a lot of them.

Next, I looked up Ephesus and wanted to read what was said about it and Paul.  I read over the instances that were mentioned, but the last one was in Revelation 2:4 when Jesus was talking to the pastor of Ephesus.  Jesus said: “I have something against you because you have forsaken your first love.”  I read the whole message to the pastor there and it said, “I know your works, and your labor, and your patience, and that you cannot tolerate those who are evil.  And you have put to the test those who make themselves out to be apostles but are not, and you have found them liars.  And you have patience, and you endured for my name’s sake and did not grow weary.”  But, he said, “I have against you that you have left your first love.” But Jesus had something against the pastor there and told him that he was going to remove his candlestick if he didn’t return to his first love.

That stood out to me.  I wanted to see what Jesus was saying to this pastor that was going to cause him to possibly lose something God had given him. So, I looked through your writings to find where/what you have written about that.  And I found a two-part series on “Your First Love”.  I sat down and read them.  You describe this pastor there in Ephesus and what Jesus was saying.  He had done all those things: been patient, endured hardships, didn’t tolerate evil, etc., but he did not remain humble in his attitude toward others who had gone astray or had faults and would not receive correction.  He became puffed up.  Even with all the “right” things that were done, because of his attitude, Jesus was not pleased.

It was very good to read what you wrote here and be reminded of what our first love is.  It’s easy to get caught in the trap that you see something which someone else doesn’t see; it is easy for your flesh to get stuck in what you know.  That doesn’t allow for mercy.  I love the scripture you quoted in this article, “The love of God is spread abroad in our hearts by the holy Spirit that He has given us.”  If we stay full of the Spirit and let the holy Ghost lead us in our thoughts and actions, we will have so much love in our hearts, that’s the only thing that can come out from us.  You also said that it works both ways, and the Spirit gives us the power to reject error – which led me to Jesus!  Your first love is Jesus.  The feelings he gave you when he first touched your heart and the love you felt for him and feel for him now as you realize how much he has loved you in your journey with him.  That will keep the holy Ghost alive in you!

I followed the trail this morning.  I was thankful to feel and know these things.  Jesus is the point.  And the love we have for him will compel us to be a part of the body of Christ Jesus wants to present to his Father without spot or wrinkle, holy and blameless.  I attached the article.

Amy B.

Your First Love

Pastor John,

I had to watch the meeting this morning from home.

Your message today to the young people was not from this world. The experience I had let me know that it came from Jesus.  About halfway through your message, the Spirit of God in me allowed me to feel and understand that what you were saying, the Spirit you were under was 100% Jesus and 0% you.  I felt and could hear the holy Ghost in me bearing witness and weighing the words you were speaking.  I felt each word being measured and the Spirit let me feel, and told me that it was perfect.  I don’t like saying that because those words, to my ear, sound like I am saying I was judging something about you, but I wasn’t.  I was witnessing it happen.  That has never happened to me before.  My spirit from Jesus was doing it all, and I was allowed to feel and hear the Spirit’s judgment, and I was almost holding my breath as it went on.  When you spoke the last word, I felt the last word weighed, and I knew I had heard a message that was unmixed.  There was nothing you said that didn’t come from Jesus.  I know so; the Spirit told me that it was so.

I then considered what Aaron said this morning after he had finished his song, and I knew that what Aaron had described, having zero of ourselves withheld and everything in the light is how to get there.  It is the path to perfection.  What Aaron described is how one makes themselves available to Jesus to be worthy and able to deliver such a message to God’s people.  Aaron described the path to being of a single mind, a single eye as Jesus had described.

Jerry

Good morning Pastor John,

I’m up reading in the TFAS book (God Had a Son before Mary Did),* and something you wrote under “Concealing Angels” is so good to me!  You said, “If our heavenly Father were a publicity hound, He would let us know about all from which His protecting angels save us. But our Father, as Jesus demonstrated, is meek and lowly.”

This follows your explanation about the differences between the nature of God and the nature of humans, and it is so good to me!  The flesh wants to be seen and praised for doing a good job—or even just for not doing a bad one.  Whether it’s a promotion at work, a grade in school, or simply cooking a tasty meal, the flesh wants acknowledgment.  But God’s nature is the complete opposite.  It’s so opposite that He even hid His greatest creation, the Son.  It’s so opposite that we must feel our way in the darkness and wait for Him to reveal truth to our hearts.  Whew.  And when we take on His nature, we become like our Father—meek and lowly—walking around with the greatest gift, the answer for any and every problem quietly rolling through us, waiting for a sincere and hungry heart to share it with.  Telling that hungry heart it is none of us and all of God.

So, if any child of God goes through a season of being ignored, just praise God because He is making you just like Him.  I love that so much!

I’m taking this into the office today.  I have an interview for another position at work, and this is the perfect preparation.

See you soon, dear pastor.

Love,

Beth

* https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_books.html?tname=fands

Pastor John,

This latest Blog is so good!  Ben and I just finished a wonderful conversation after reading this blog and I wanted to share.  I was telling Ben what I have heard you say many times that when you receive the holy Ghost, it’s like being nailed to the cross. You’ve told us that even though you may be nailed to the cross, that flesh is not willing to give up so easily.  And there have even been some who survived the cross after they were taken down.  You have told us that we must let that flesh (our carnal mind) die!  And how many times when praying for us, have you laid hands on us and exhorted us to, “Let Him Live!”   I told Ben that we have two choices:  we can feed the flesh or we can feed the Spirit.  How do we feed the flesh?  It boils down to how we spend our free time:  What we watch, what we listen to, what we read, where we go, who we spend time around.  Are we feeding our flesh by mostly doing those things that our old carnal nature always loved, or are we feeding our Spirit by “taking time to be holy”.  We have the choice.  Are we going to feed the flesh and starve the Spirit, or will we starve the flesh and feed the Spirit?  Only by feeding our Spirit, will we be able to develop the mind of Christ and have the strength we need to overcome this world.  

It was so encouraging to read this line at the end of the blog, “But if we live according to the Spirit, even the weakest of us will overcome the world”.  That says to me that anyone with the spirit of God can overcome this world, no matter how weak he may feel.  We may be weak, but He is strong so let’s let Him live!

Hurry home, we all miss you!!

Lee Ann

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The Danger of a Carnal Mind

Immediately, while he was yet speaking, Judas appeared, who was one of the twelve, and with him a large multitude with swords and clubs sent by the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders. Now, the one who betrayed him had given them a cue, saying, “Whoever I kiss is the man.  Arrest him, and lead him away under guard.”  And when he had come, he went up at once to him, and said to him, “O Rabbi!  Rabbi!”  And he kissed him affectionately.  Then they laid their hands on him and arrested him. . . .  And then Jesus answered and said to them, “Did you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me?  I was with you every day, teaching in the temple, and you didn’t arrest me.  But this has happened so that the scriptures might be fulfilled.”  And then they all forsook him and fled. Mark 14:43–46, 48–50

    God sent His Son to the best people on earth, Israel, whom He had chosen and blessed with His law and with His prophets.  They were the best people, not because they were in themselves better than others, but because God had given them His law and His prophets to prepare them for the coming of His Son, their Messiah.  No other nation was even close to being prepared for the Son because no other nation had been given the blessings that God had given to Israel.  Had God sent His Son to any other nation on earth, the people there would have ridiculed him more viciously, abused him cruelly, and killed him much sooner than the Jews did.  Jesus survived as long as he did in Israel only because the human nature in Israelites had been tamed, to an extent, even within those who did not honor God’s law and prophets.

    Paul listed some of God’s blessings on Israel in his letter to Roman believers:

    Romans 9:

3. There have even been times I prayed to be accursed from Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh,
4. who are the Israelites, whose are the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service   of God, and the promises,
5. whose are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh, is Christ, who is above all.  God be blessed forever.  Amen.

    The Bible makes it very clear that most of the people in Israel failed to take advantage of those blessings and be prepared for the Son.  But some did; some were thankful for God’s mercy, and they obeyed His law and believed His prophets.  Jesus’ disciples were among them.  They were among the best of the best.

    At the same time, before the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the disciples were without the Spirit (Jn. 14:17) and were still carnally minded.  They still had hope for a worldly kingdom (cf. Acts 1:6), and sometimes, even during the Last Supper, they bickered over who would occupy the most exalted offices in that kingdom (Lk. 22:24).  They were still, as Paul would later say it, “in the flesh”, instead of in the Spirit.  That is why in the Garden of Gethsemane, “they all forsook him and fled.”

    The disciples had done very well to stay with Jesus until they arrested him at Gethsemane; they did the best that carnally minded men could do.  Nobody on earth could have done any better.  But they needed more power than they possessed at that time to go with Jesus all the way to the cross.  That is the point that we do not want to miss.

    The best that any of us can do as long as we have a carnal mind is to make it to the garden with Jesus; we cannot go all the way with him to the cross.  The disciples loved Jesus, but they loved their own lives more.  They feared God, but when the hardest trial came, they feared men more and forsook Jesus and fled quickly into the night.  Jesus kept his disciples from falling as long as he was with them; he said so in his prayer to the Father at the Last Supper: “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name.  Those you gave me, I watched over, and not one of them has been lost except the son of damnation so that the scripture might be fulfilled” (Jn 17:12).  But Jesus could not keep them from deserting him in the end.  They didn’t have the spiritual strength to go with him all the way, and there was nothing Jesus could do to change that except to die for them and offer himself to God as a sacrifice for their sin so that God would give them the same strength He had given to Jesus.

    David was moved by the Spirit to say that man, even in his very best state, is altogether vanity (Ps. 39:5).  The disciples proved how true that was when they forsook the Holy One they loved in order to save their own skin.  But Jesus was not surprised or disappointed.  He knew that even the best of the best people on earth could not go with him all the way to the cross and that they would desert him.  Human nature cannot go all the way with Jesus.

    In 1981, Jesus taught me that our greatest enemy is not Satan; it is our natural, carnal mind that does not and cannot know God or please Him.  The natural, carnal mind with which we were born is more than just a hindrance to us; it is deadly.  It is not just different from God’s ways and thoughts; it is contrary to them.  “The flesh [that is, our fleshly nature] desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh.  These are opposed to one another,” Paul said.

    If we who have the Spirit fail to develop the mind of Christ that is in the Spirit, if we remain carnally minded even after being given the Spirit, we may never see the face of God.   Even the best of us will come short of the glory of God if we continue to think and live according to our fleshly nature after being made new creatures in Christ, partakers of God’s divine nature.  But if we live according to the Spirit, even the weakest of us will overcome the world.

    My friend, your night with Jesus in the garden surrounded by an angry mob is coming.  Pray to escape your carnal mind, for the carnal mind will cause you to make the wrong choice, to forsake Jesus – and it will justify you for doing it – so that you, like his carnally minded disciples, flee into the darkness.  No, our greatest enemy is not Satan; it is our own carnal nature, the old us that was without hope and without God in this world.

John,

I want to share some thoughts I had while reading Matthew 5.  I enjoyed each verse, but when I came to verse 48, I paused to consider what Jesus was saying.  “Therefore, be perfect, just as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.”  I tried to imagine what the disciples may have been thinking after hearing these words: “Be perfect, just as your Father (Jehovah) … is perfect!”  “Wow! How is that possible?” 

I soon found out that I was wrong trying to use the modern day definition of “perfect” to understand what Jesus was saying.  Some modern definitions of perfect are: something that is flawless, exact, or completely suited for a specific purpose, (e.g. “a perfect score” or “perfect weather for a picnic”).

I decided to research the ancient Greek meaning of the word “perfect”. Here is what I found: Teleios (perfect) as an adjective means having attained an end or purpose, complete, full grown, whole-hearted.  Some comments I found said, “Something that has reached its intended completion or maturity, rather than merely ‘flawless’”.  And, “something is perfect when it functions exactly as its designer intended.” 

One example I saw compared a modern day definition to an ancient one using an acorn.  A modern perspective would see that an acorn is shiny, symmetrical, not cracked, and otherwise perfect.  An ancient Greek perspective may have been that the acorn is perfect (teleios) because it will become a fully grown oak tree, mature, and bearing fruit.     

I still wasn’t quite satisfied with my understanding of Jesus’ words.  So, I decided to go to your Matthew study posted on the YouTube channel, “The Spirit Is the Witness”: Matthew Study (5:31-48) – John D. Clark, Sr. (This is a wonderful video.  I highly recommend it.)   There, you explained that Jesus was not giving commandments in chapter 5.  He was describing a way of life, specifically his and his Father’s way of life.  You went on to say that in the Old Testament, God required His people to be holy because He is holy.  However, in this New Covenant, we are holy as He is holy. Jesus has made a way that we can be like him and His Father.  The verses in chapter 5 describe a way of life that was impossible for those listening to Jesus to live at that time.  However, “What is impossible for men, is possible with God.”  

Later that evening, Suzi and I continued our reading your book God Had a Son Before Mary Did.*  I still had the thought of Jesus’ words in my mind, “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Then we read the following text: “God’s children are happiest when they occupy their appointed place in the order of God and acknowledge the places occupied by others.  When you are in the place that you were created to be, you feel contentment, for your place is not an it.  Your place is a who – you!  The “place” God has for you is your life as the person God intended you to be from the foundation of the world.  Only in that place, only in being yourself in Christ, will you ever experience perfect peace and joy.  That is why envy is compared with cancer (Prov. 14:30); it eats away at a person’s gratitude for the who that God has made him.  Envy is a tacit way of grumbling about God’s order, and it stirs up strife (Rom. 13:13; Phip. 1:15).  To avoid envy and strife, we need only be thankful for who God’s order is and for where we belong in that order, for as we follow the right who into the knowledge of God, we stay content with our portion from God.” (God Had a Son Before Mary Did, pg. 446, 1^st. par., hard bound book) 

John, I believe that what you wrote in the text above describes what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 5, particularly verse 48.  Living the way that God has created for us is perfection by any standard.  It is void of the fear of making mistakes.

I am thankful for you and your work.  May we be perfect (together) as our heavenly Father is perfect.  

Tom

On a side note: I noticed that Jesus said in verse 48 to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.   He did not say be perfect as I am perfect.

However, he also said in another place, “When you see me, you see the Father.” (John 14:9)  

*Going to Jesus.com – God Had A Son Before Mary Did (Pg. 194 digital copy)

Pastor John,

I was on the mower tonight, and I was talking to Jesus.  I had the sweetest thought come.  Something I heard through the years in the Catholic Church popped into my mind.  The phrase was, “Do this in remembrance of Me.”  Then the thought came: “They say that because they do not serve the living God.”  I thought about how true that is.  If Jesus is alive, you do not have to do it in remembrance of Him, because He is still alive and well.  I thought about the video I watched this morning and how perfectly this thought went with what I feel in that video.  I love when Jesus talks back when we are out there mowing. 

Love,

Beth

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Hi Beth.

Thank you for writing.

When Jesus said, “Do THIS in remembrance of me”, he was speaking about doing what HE was doing.  And we do that all the time with one another when we break bread together.  When Christians celebrate a ritual of eating and drinking, they are not doing what Jesus was doing; they are doing what the disciples were doing.  And the disciples were delivered from rituals, such as eating and drinking in a religious form, after the holy Ghost came and gave them life.

Thank God, we have life from God, and can now worship the Father together in Spirit and truth!

Pastor John

Good morning!

I’ve been enjoying reading in the Montanus book* lately.  In the chapter, “The Spirit That Speaks by Montanus”, I love the last sentences:

As a popular saying goes, “Join the church of your choice.”  “Yet, for us,” Paul wrote, “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him, and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we exist by him” (1Cor. 8:6). Amen. 

Amen! It was like a breath of fresh air blew through when I read these lines!  Thank you for pouring your heart & time into writing these books for us and others to understand the history of Christianity versus our true history in Jesus!

Amanda

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Amen, Amanda.  If there is one God, we don’t get to choose which one we will serve.  Jesus chooses us; we do not choose him.  He said so!

John 15:16. You haven’t chosen me, but I have chosen you, and I have ordained you, that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give you.

I thank God that we do not have to choose which God and Jesus to serve!

Pastor John

* https://www.goingtojesus.com/gtj_books.html?tname=montanus