Posted on 09/27/2019 3:59:01 AM PDT by metmom
“‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life’” (John 3:16).
John 3:16 is undoubtedly the most familiar and beloved verse in all of Scripture. The first thing you notice is God’s motive for giving Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 9:15)—because He loved the evil, sinful world of fallen humanity. There was nothing in man that attracted God’s love. Rather He loved because He sovereignly determined to do so.
It is important to note that “world” is a nonspecific term for humanity in a general sense. The statement in verse 17, “that the world might be saved through Him,” proves that it does not mean everyone who has ever lived, since all will not be saved. Verse 16 cannot be teaching universal salvation, since the context promises that unbelievers will perish in eternal judgment (vv. 16–18). Our Lord is saying that for all in the world there is only one Savior (1 John 2:2), but only those who are regenerated by the Spirit and who believe in His gospel will receive salvation and eternal life through Him.
Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:19, used “world” in a similar way: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” The reason God was reconciling the world to Himself is that the world has no other reconciler. That not all will believe and be reconciled is clear from Paul’s plea in verse 20: “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
Ask Yourself
How else might you respond to someone who believes that “a loving God would not send anyone to hell” and therefore everyone will be saved in the end? What does this probably tell you about the person making this claim?
Studying God’s Word ping
Matthew 13
36 “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age.
While John 3:18 is one of the least seen on a sheet at major league games.
Well; it says right here...
Matthew 25:41
"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
...that it's just made for them other guys; not humans.
" Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Putting a dense object in a microwave is similar to hell for a sinner.
God is Love. God’s presence on earth is getting stronger. Just as perfect Love casts out fear, sinners who hold onto their sin will heat up and perish.
We are having global warming due to the increased presence of the Holy Spirit on earth. The weeds are afraid the Light and Love of the Holy Spirit will burn them.
In the OT, the three men who were thrown into the furnace did not perish as their souls were pure, even though the heat killed the guards outside.
This is so simple that it is frustrating that people can’t understand it.
I’ve done several presentations in university forums, including medical and divinity schools explaining and demonstrating the neuroscience supporting this process. It really is simple when you understand the developmental frequencies of consciousness relating to the brain and peripheral nervous system and how it communicates with our soul.
You are reading more into Scripture than is there.
Your whacked out theology is not based on Scripture, therefore is of demonic origin.
You need to base your beliefs on the Word of God, not your *experiences*.
Remember, the weeds hiding in the wheat field. That us the evil attaching to human souls just as they did to the people and then the swine.
Matthew 8 is an example of this
Jesus Restores Two Demon-Possessed Men
28 When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes,[c] two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. 29 “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
30 Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. 31 The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”
Spirit attachment is real and in this increasing period of drug use (both prescription and illegal), it is easy for them to hide.
Mark 4 applies
10 When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. 11 He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables 12 so that,
“‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”
The keys to the Kingdom - do what the list says, which is what Jesus taught.
Hosea 6:6 For I desired mercy [chesed - loving kindness], and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
Psalm 118 contains the gates of righteousness along with the stone the builders rejected, starting with
1. O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: because his mercy [chesed] endureth for ever.
Same as the ending of every verse in Psalm 136: his mercy endureth for ever.
Chesed, which is tender loving care, thoughtful care and concern, kindness, compassion, understanding... just do it. Become it. It's not complicated. It's the Kingdom of God within.
Remember that guy at the wedding feast who wasn't dressed properly? He was left speechless. It didn't occur to him that he was supposed to change into something nice.
When you quote a verse or passage, please always include with it the identification of the agency that produces it, so the reader can be informed as to the quality of the source and not have to look it up. That's not hard to do if you're just cutting and pasting.
In this instance, the interpretive "translation" of this parable is not a good one. The "weeds" are a particular contamination of a grain field called "tares" or by the agricultural specialist "darnel." A comparative description is given in Wikipedia as follows:
https://whyunlike.com/difference-between-wheat-and-tares/
When planted and growing, the darnel closely resembles the wheat stalks, but when ripened, the seeds are black. They contaminate the good wheat, and must be separated to avouid ruining the good light-colored grain. The darnel seeds are poison, and in this parable symbolize the people who profess Christianity but are not born anew in the spirit, cannot live the Spirit-controlled life that thwe profess, and poison the local church by confusing both spiritually immature spiritual babes as well as onlookers, consume the church's resources that ought to be invested on conversion work, and will never themselves be transformed by confession and repentance from sinful, damaging behavior.
The worldlings as a whole are like weeds, but the darnel are more hurtful because for a while they imitate true Christ-followers and bring the world's condemnation on the church that does not discipline and excommunicate such pretenders.
You may consider the kind of undiscriminating poor versions of the real Bible to be another variety of poisonous misleading darnel-like stories (easy-to-read but misleading) that undercuts the Scripture that saves humans from their path to Hell.
Don't use such tainted stories to displace the truth of the inspired, infallible, verbally complete and accurately translated preserved Written Words of God, please!
While your darnel story is interesting and clearly adds value to understanding "tares.", it does not change the interpretation of the parable as I presented it. I'm quoting the Revised Standard version of the Bible. What is wrong with what I have said? I have used parallel versions and compared interpretations. It still appears correct as I stated.
Read the parable again in your own version.
Then stop and pray for guidance.
We are comparing two types of seeds that are similar, but the one is poison.
Your soul is the good seed that God planted in you to form your being. Without it your physical body is dead.
We have God’s good seeds, the souls of humans. Their are also satan’s bad souls planted here in our same field around us.
Discernment is necessary to determine whether a soul (seed) is good or bad. It is virtually impossible to tell the difference between the good and bad seeds unless you grow in Christ Jesus.
Jesus often speaks of evil spirits attaching and hiding in humans. These are the weeds. They are not just “different ideas.” They are souls that are of satan and are evil. They closely resemble human souls and can merge/attach with human souls similar as husband & wife’s souls merge and become one in the eyes of God.
Except that they can’t fully merge due to the lack of Love, necessary for souls to truly merge. Thus they can only hide or appear to merge, but cannot actually merge.
They(satan’s souls) can only merge with souls that are angry or fearful. Those full of the Light and Love of God are protected as the evil souls cannot exit in this higher consciousness. They fear it will burn and destroy them.
For some reason, God gave me the ability to perceive these evil souls. They are different in that they are only half a seed and cannot grow closer to God as your soul does. The weeds know that this inability to grow will cause them to perish in these times where God’s Love is becoming brighter and stronger on earth.
It’s just as “our Father’s Prayer says, “On Earth as it is in Heaven.” The weeds know that their time on earth is limited. They are trying to hide from God’s brighter Light that is now shining upon us. Remember, Jesus gave us the parable to describe end time events.
The closest human soul to a weed is a narcissist. When I am near them, it is like being near a piece of furniture as their soul generates no light. In fact it drains the light of others. They have no empathy or compassion for others.
The narcissist tries to be near a loving caring person to generate a facade around them. This is how the bad seeds grow among the good seeds by hiding.
In the early 1990’s God gave me a vision and showed me how the weeds would divide people by creating trouble and division through anger and fear in our society. As people’s souls became emotional, it opened the door in the souls of the good seeds so that these non emotional weeds moved in to hide. This is happening now.
He then showed me specific examples of how it will be done. I watched charismatic evangelist ministers use stage hypnosis techniques to take over entire congregations and have the attendees surrender their individual soul to them rather than God. These people would swear on a Bible that they were “born again” and accepted Jesus as their savior. But their words were empty as they were fooled by the imitation process used by satan to lead people astray. There was no Light in their hearts.
These people have no Light of God in or around them. Surrender to God is an internal process done within self, not external toward another person. If you have given your soul or will (individual authority) to another human, it is not available for you to surrender to God within you.
I will not go into more detail here as this is not about me. I give you these words as a warning. Do not believe me, but read your Bible and ask God’s Helper, the Holy Spirit to come into you and guide you.
If anyone deny or reject the Light of the Holy Spirit within them, they are not good seed. This Light within you will cause your soul to sprout and grow. You too will grow to do the same things as Jesus and even more as your soul grows to become ONE with Him. (As Jesus promised in John 14)
I will say a special prayer to Our Father that if you go within yourself and ask Him in prayer while alone, He will bless you with His Holy Spirit. You will feel the change. The warmth within you is the transformation process of being born again. It is God within you.
The fear of burning in Hell is the seeds of satan being afraid of accepting God’s Light within them and experiencing this Light. This is why rejection of the Holy Spirit is the ultimate sin as it is choosing darkness over God’s Light within our soul.
I do not desire to argue as my identity does not depend upon my ability to convince you or others that I am correct. I do not seek followers. Grow within your current spiritual path using prayer and your Bible to guide you.
I always welcome others who disagree with me to please pray for me that I might gain better understanding of God’s words. I do the same prayer for others daily. Prayers are always good.
36 “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
When you quote a verse or passage, please always include with it the identification of the agency that produces it, so the reader can be informed as to the quality of the source and not have to look it up. That's not hard to do if you're just cutting and pasting.
I did state Matthew 13 and scripture line numbers. Sorry. I failed to mention that I used cut & paste from "Bible Gateway." Revised Standard version.
The original post was 100% scripture, no comments by me. The comments on later posts are my own.
God wants us to *experience* Him; Not intellectually theorize about Him.
Thus was the problem Jesus found in the Phairsees words that fell on deaf ears.
When I am around a pastor or priest that "experiences" God's Love, I feel it radiating from their heart. The warm breeze is unmistakable. This experience cannot come from the intellect. There are many more empty vessels out proclaiming than most can even imagine.
It does change things, because the nature of darnel contamination is key to the meaning od it as symbolic of the kind of damage it does, as compared to the very much less harvest-endangering weeds whose effect would be more easily noticeable would not survive cultivating or threshing, whereas the poisonous darnel grains would.
The significance was lready explained. Substituting "weed" for "darnel" which is a synonym for "tare" does not reproduce the word ζιζάνιον (zizanion, pronounced dziz-an'-ee-on), a very special word that is to be used in the doctrinal application of the parable, for use by the disciples in spiritually discerning false professors in the local assemblies they are to found.
"Weed" is too general, because that can take many forms, thus leading to a misinformed use of the parable in its application to church problems. Your Bible version's kind of interpretation is one of the reasons that those who want to grasp God's purpose exactly and faithfully do not use the RSV in their expository preaching.
When you quote someone's versionated rendering of the inspired scripture with an uninspired translation. it wants to make the use of the substituted language as precise and accurate as possible. The King Janes/Authorized Version does a better job in that the Byzantine/Majority textform of the Greek is more faithful to the preservation of the Greek inspired text than the corrupted synthetic textform cobbled together from the Alexandrian/Vatican/Sinatican disparate texts; and also because the meaning of words and grammar of the original Greek is more faithful to the underlying Greek than almost any of the versions that have emerged since the 1890s.
Regarding the close examination of the poisonous grain planted by the enemy of the sower's good grain, check this out. Using currently available NT Greek-to-English dictionaries (Strong's or Thayer's), freely available to the diligent Bible student:
String's Number G2215
ζιζάνιον
zizanion
dziz-an'-ee-on
Strong's Definition:
Of uncertain origin; darnel or false grain: - tares. Total KJV occurrences: 8
Thayer's Definition:
1) a kind of darnel, resembling wheat except the grains are black
Part of Speech: noun neuter
A Related Word by Thayer’s/Strong’s Number: of uncertain origin
========
The object here is not to flatten you or your comment by misusing scholarly authority to demean your reply, but rather to bring out the significance of relying on a better translation of the underlying better Greek, that while a bit more antiquarian language, the precise understanding of the symbolism in the parable by the KJV (or better yet by checking out word meanings) gives you and others a better and deeper grasp of how to use the story in guiding your spiritual application of it in your life.
That precision was taken from you by the translators who ought to have served you better, that's all.
By all means, keep on trying to enhance and expand the value of JMac's meditations, but it is suggested that you keep on improving you understanding by using better materials and digging a little deeper for the richness of the text.
Met mom, when I pray for you I feel the tension in your upper back. The back door to your heart is closed to receiving God’s Love. I say this as an observation, not a judgement. I find the same thing in most of the monks in monestaries.
You willingly give Love to others as you are a good caring individual, but feel you must earn God’s Love before you can open the back door to your heart and receive Love. Remember, Jesus came to “save”, not to judge. His goal was to assist us in removing the obstacles to God’s Love in our souls.
The same wall we create to protect us from accepting human love that is conditional and controlling, blocks us from receiving God’s unconditional Love.
Blessings
Thank you for your comments. They are helpful.
Reading the Bible (the operating manual for our souls) is much like reading the operating manual for an automobile. You can know and understand every word to the point you can build your own automobile. But until you get in and drive and experience driving, you do not utilize the purpose of the operating manual or the automobile.
The Bible can guide us to the experiences Jesus describes, including true communion of Him and His Love within us so we are in Him. And God that is within Him is then also within us. This is what Jesus meant when He came out of the wilderness and stated, “My Father and I are One.”
Experience it.
I'm afraid .that the parable is not about ideas or spirits in an individual. The parables in that chapter of Matthew are about the Kingdom of Heaven which,without further explanation, is about the earthly visible local church(es) and their members. In the story of the wheat and tares, the field is the local church, and the reproducing seeds are the people in it.
Some are individuals whose hearts are cleaned up by salvation in the heart-washing blood of Christ, who wil reproduce more good disciples, and some are those who are still under condemnation, with an unwashed, unsaved black heart (though externally appearing to look like the Wheaties), but who will reproduce more offspring with black hearts, yet still in the church(es) in the future.
I do not believe your application can be based on this Scripture parable, and why not? Here's why, and you say it:
In the early 1990’s God gave me a vision and showed me how the weeds would divide people by creating trouble and division through anger and fear in our society.
The story of the Bible does not support your claim. I do not believe God gave you that vision. Either your old nature did, or the Enemy did, and the reason I say that is that God's progressive revelation of inspired scripture through face-to-face confrontation of prophets, or through their sleeping or waking visions stopped not long after Jesus' resurrection. The New Testament inspired writings ceased when the Bible was completed, Beloved John laid his pen down, and further additions to it were no longer accepted. There have beennNo further additions to it for a long, long time. The Written Words of God contained in the accepted canon of the Old and the New Testaments are the good, sufficient, and complete rule of both faith (salvific) and practice (sanctification of the individual and conduct of the church, both visible and invisible). Your addition to it here cannot be of God, for it a new and different meaning than the one which Jesus explained to His disciples.
Your tale here sounds appealing, but in fact, it does not appear to be the one meaning that the passage clearly represents, as it did to the disciples who heard and applied it.
Believe what you want, but I cannot accept your version as an acceptable interpretation of any part of Matthew chapter 13.
Now, that remonstration is not going to give you a nice, warm feeling, but the true "in spite of" agape love for you is not related to how you feel. That kind of which you speak would be "phileo," a benign radiance of warm affection. The Agape love I am offering you here is a sovereign preference for the salvation and sanctification of your soul and spirit, above your own opinion of myself or others, but founded on Jesus The Living Word, and the Living Words He spoke on this matter to His disciples, which had clearly a different interpretation than you put on it. And there cannot be two. Any Scripture passage has one and only one meaning, and that is a fundamental concept for the reliability of God's revealed Will in the Written Word.
With sincere concern and admonishment.
Offered with regret. And not taking it any further.
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