Exodus 20:17
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Allow me to paraphrase the text above, in hopes of helping us gain a fuller understanding of what God is revealing to us. I ask you to view the tenth commandment in this light:
‘Whenever you regard your neighbor’s house, and his wife, and all that pertains to his household, I want your heart’s reaction to be to remember that I am God Almighty, the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I am the Creator, Provider and Sustainer of the entire universe! And just as I have supplied your neighbors, and yes, even your enemies, so too do I desire to supply and meet all of the needs of My Covenant people. Let the blessings that others enjoy remind you that I am here to shower My love upon you as well. Know that I keep you always on My mind and in My heart. I will never leave nor forsake you. I want to bless you beyond your wildest dreams. My plans for you far exceed anything you could ever imagine for yourself! Know that in My Nature, I am Perfect. My act of Creation is perfectly Comprehensive and Complete. I created you to serve as the image and likeness of My Perfection. So everything you will ever need in time and space is already present and waiting for you in Eternity. All you need now is for My Spirit to apply it to you in space and time on the Authority of My Word. I will be your Fullness and your Eternal Inheritance. I will wipe the tears from your eyes and satisfy the longings of your heart. So do not covet what others have; come to Me yourself. Present your cares, concerns, needs and requests to Me, for I am your Perfect Provider.’
The Scriptures tell us much about God’s Perfect, Eternal Nature, and the Perfect Finished Work of His Word. Here are some examples:
Mark 16:19-20
“So then, when the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He (God’s living creative Word) was received up into Heaven and SAT DOWN at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the Word by the signs that followed.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Hebrews 10:11-13
“Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.” (Emphasis added.)
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, SEATED at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the (perfect completed Fullness of the) things above, not on the (Sin-corrupted imperfections and emptiness of the) things that are on Earth. For you have died (to your original state of living death) and your (eternal, Spirit-imparted) Life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Now we know that God’s Work is Finished and Perfect and waiting to be bestowed. We can rest and rejoice in the knowledge of His Perfect Wisdom and Covenant Faithfulness. But those newly freed Israelites left their slave pens in Egypt without any Bibles or commentaries to supply them with all the revealed information we enjoy today. They didn’t have the luxury of studying the deep meanings underlying the arduous, demanding Exodus they were being forced to experience. Nor did they have the benefit of knowing by hindsight, all that we now know concerning Messiah Yeshua, God’s living Word made flesh. No, they had to experience the gut-wrenching depths and impact of the Exodus without our sophisticated levels of theological preparation. All they had were the dim, distant, very imperfect, word of mouth memories of the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that previous generations had passed on to them during their centuries of captivity.
But although they didn’t have a lot of head knowledge and organized religion to draw from, they did have the living Word of God Himself acting mightily in their midst! He wasn’t there in the flesh yet. He was invisible…But He was there, with them! And because they had Him, they had Everything! Time and again, He proved Himself to them. They saw for themselves that He was more than enough to sustain and protect them regardless of all of the dangers and hostile opposition they had to face. God revealed Himself to them, in the most rigorous training camp imaginable. He did it in Person, in living color! And so here is a very significant precedent that God repeated and reinforced. We should all take this to heart. In the Last Days, every disciple will really have to know this fact:
God, through His living Word and Holy Spirit, is always very personally involved with whatever happens to His people. He goes through everything with them in Person! Through His Word and His Spirit, He is here to lead them through whatever they must face. This revelation was written in the Torah. It was verified through the lives of Adam and Eve and Enoch and Noah and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and now, it was being carried forward through the corporate life of the entire nation of Israel! And in the Last Days, it’s vital for us to know this, for that assurance, that He is always with us, will see us through whatever we will have to face!
The revelation is: if this is the way God will be with His chosen people Israel, it is the way He intends to be with all the families of the world! The living God is a ‘hands on’ God. He promises to be personally present and involved with each and every one of us, no matter what happens! The faithfulness He is showing to Israel, is the same faithfulness He will show to everyone He creates, as soon as they believe and trust and turn to Him:
Hebrews 13:4-6
“Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,’ so that we confidently say, ‘The Lord is my Helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?”
Psalm 28:8-9
“The Lord is their Strength, and He is a saving defense to His anointed. Save Your people and bless Your inheritance; be their Shepherd also, and carry them forever.”
Ezekiel 34:11-16a
“For thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own Land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the inhabited places of the Land. I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,’ declares the Lord God. ‘I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick…’” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 11:2-6
“Now when John, while imprisoned, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to Him, ‘Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?’
“Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.’” (Emphasis added.)
God revealed His ‘Shepherd of Israel’ ways, to that first Exodus generation of Israelites. He started revealing this to them, amid the very harsh, painful, realities of their enslavement. It began when Moses told them of his encounter with God in the Wilderness and God began to give them hope. At that time, the lashes of their taskmasters were still cutting into their backs. And then, over a period of time, God revealed more of His awesome Faithfulness and Power and continual Presence through the plagues that began to shake, weaken and break the grip that the pharaoh had on their collective neck. Slowly, relentlessly, God broke that spiritually blind man’s ‘fingers’ and forced him to loosen his hold on God’s people. Israel watched as each plague scourged and afflicted their captors. But each time, they were spared! And they saw the Angel of Death strike every firstborn human and animal throughout the land of Egypt…and yet Death passed over their Blood-protected dwellings and spared the first born of Israel. Then they saw Egypt’s strength and brutality wilt and melt altogether…as pharaoh finally relented and stopped opposing their departure.
Then, through Moses and Aaron, God’s living Word led them, out of Egypt. And the children of Israel left the only home they had ever known. But they were laden with the riches of their former captors! And God led them into immediate safety…out of Egypt. But at the same time…He took them into even greater, more immediate and even deadlier dangers!
He Led Them Into The Wilderness!
That is when the next phase of their ‘Boot Camp Training’ began. That immense multitude of bewildered refugees was led further and deeper into the unknown. And then, horror of horrors! They saw the dust clouds behind them…raised by the armed horde that the ruler of Egypt had sent to tear into them and drag them back into captivity. They heard the distant rumble of the pounding hooves and chariot wheels, and of course, terror filled their slavish hearts once more. Now they were sure that their doom was at hand.
But then, suddenly, they saw the Shekinah, the Manifest Presence of Almighty God, appear to protect them. God’s Glory stood between them and their formidable enemies! The Pillar of Cloud shielded and separated them from the Egyptians all of that day. And after nightfall, the Pillar of Cloud transformed into a Pillar of Fire. And God continued to protect them throughout the night. And so all of Israel passed that night in wonder and awe, as God continued to render the Egyptian army powerless.
And the next day, they watched God move upon Moses. He raised his staff over the waters of the sea… and Israel saw the Power and Authority of Almighty God part those waters and provide safe, dry passage for them so that they could cross over to the other side. And all that time…the Shekinah of Almighty God kept the Egyptian host at bay.
Then, after the pharaoh’s forces began their pursuit through the opening in the sea, Israel watched as God removed His restraining Power from the sea. They saw the waters close back upon the soldiers and overwhelm and destroy them all. Egypt’s military power was totally eliminated, right before their eyes. And finally, Israel was truly, absolutely, free!
There is no Substitute for the Actual Presence of the Living God!
None of this came to Israel by hearsay. They didn’t read or hear about it through some kind of theoretical ‘Bible Study’ or class room lecture or sermon. They received direct, personal, eyewitness revelation experience! They saw, heard and felt the awesome Reality of God’s Presence in their midst. They felt all of the feelings and experienced all of the natural misgivings and the overwhelming dread and terror that their apparently hopeless situations and personal weakness forced their hearts to feel. And then they also felt the incredible relief and mind-bending wonder, elation and awe that overtook them as they saw their enemies destroyed. (And this is exactly what the Last Days disciples will need to know and experience for themselves! What God’s living Word did for Israel in the Wilderness, He will be present to do for them in the Last Days, as well.)
So, as what they had just seen and experienced began to settle in, something else began to rattle around in their minds and hearts. They began to experience the complete disorientation and the dread that lifelong slaves always feel when they take their first deep gulps of total freedom. To slaves, total freedom is alien and strange and very uncomfortable. It is the most ‘heady’ wine imaginable, because it introduces something utterly new… a level of personal responsibility and accountability that in all their days of slavery, the children of Israel had never been allowed to experience before.
Israel lived through all of this… in real life… in the Wilderness. God gave them living proof that the myriads of false gods that Egypt adored and worshipped so diligently, were nothing more than unreal fantasies. All of that pomp, glitter and ritualistic pseudo-magical authority proved to be as inane and lacking in substance as a puff of smoke in the wind. The world system, out of which they had recently emerged, was a cruel hoax based on the lies, false hopes and the meaningless assumptions of all of those false religions and blind leaders and false prophets. The Serpent was the one that inspired all of that deception. And the God of Abraham completely exposed, discredited and proved to His people that the Serpent is merely a deceiving liar. Israel saw with her own eyes that there is only one true God. And, for His own mysterious reasons, in faithfulness to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He chose that poor, weak, bewildered band of former slaves to know Him… and to absorb His ways… and to relay all that He was teaching them…to the rest of humanity…to a world that was still deeply, thoroughly, demon-possessed.
So the living Word of God led His people to Mt. Sinai. And once they were encamped at the base of the mountain, God instructed His Word to bring that generation into another phase of the development of His Eternal Covenant Plan. At that time, He began to teach them their national, corporate, God-given identity and the responsibilities to the rest of the world that would come with it. And He continued to reveal His Holy, Righteous Nature through His Commandments, regulations and statutes.
So…what was God actually revealing about Himself to the Israelites? And what was He revealing to them about themselves? Try to get in touch with how helpless and threatened and devoid of future prospects those people must have felt in that barren atmosphere. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but desolate, hostile, death-dealing Wilderness. Imminent Death surrounded them! And God used those conditions to show them how weak, helpless and continually dependent all the children of decapitated Adam truly are. It matters not whether we assume the role of pharaohs or generals, or elite priests or disenfranchised slaves with no land to call our own…we are all nothing more than mortal members of the first Adam’s living dead human race.
Israel was forced to see and realize that all men are just as dead, barren and helpless as the Wilderness that now surrounded them! Before the true, living Almighty God of Abraham, they were all just as weak, helpless and dependent as the pharaoh had finally been proven to be. And just as all of Egypt was stripped and exposed for what it really was, so were all the rest of the families of the earth exposed! Now Israel saw that there is no difference between any human being anywhere, regardless of location, station, color, religion, culture or nationality. All of it is… Wilderness! Egypt was Wilderness, the entire Middle Eastern region was Wilderness… and the entire world, no matter what it tries to do or how it tries to disguise itself… is nothing more than, Wilderness!
When we understand what God was revealing during Israel’s Exodus, when we consider that scene… all that barren lifeless helplessness… we see that when Eve and Adam fell into Sin, they and the entire race that came from their union fell into the clutches of Death. That helpless, bankrupt Wilderness scenario is all that remains of Eden and God’s original ‘image and likeness’ human creation. So Wilderness conditions were, are, and always will be, the perfect backdrop, the perfect display case that God uses to wake us up from our individual and corporate hypnotic trance. We will NOT be AS GOD! We are but dust. There is only one God; there can be no other!
Exodus 15:11
“Who is like You among the gods, O Lord? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders?”
Our God uses the Wilderness to show us the difference between the Kingdom of Heaven and its resources, as opposed to this fallen, Sin-corrupted, demon-possessed time and space place that we call Earth. Fallen flesh can only see this Sin-corrupted, time and space physical aspect of God’s Creation. But there’s much more to it than meets the natural eye. To the natural eyes of decapitated, radically independent ‘Egyptian’ people, the only things that are visible are the false fronts and the illusionary holograms that the powers of Darkness create to beguile mankind. Through the toil of the human slaves that the powers of Darkness dominate, they make the Wilderness appear to be highly cultured and finely crafted and glitzy and shiny, rich and luxurious. Its alluring surface adornments give false promises and raise vain hopes of ecstatic pleasure and delight and fulfillment. But the real truth that lies concealed beneath the false surfaces contains only tragedies, outrageous injustices, brutalities, terrors, loneliness, and death. Regardless of what part of the Wilderness we may regard, whether we focus on the glitzy alluring parts, or the desolate, barren, grief-filled parts, it’s all the same. It is Death and endless Frustration:
Genesis 3:17b-19
“Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
People who are detached from God’s living Word and the revelation and Heavenly abilities that only He can give, can only see this Wilderness. That’s because as long as they remain separated from God’s living Word, they remain separated from God. And so they are doomed to perpetual frustration and ultimate grief. In their decapitated blindness, they can’t perceive or sense the Presence of Israel’s invisible God, or His awesome, infinite resources or the splendor of His Heavenly hosts who are also abiding over the barrenness. Only those who repent and are restored by the covering of God’s Word are equipped with God-given spiritual faculties that enable them to be aware of the Perfect Presence of the living God of Abraham… the Holy One who is Infinite, Eternal and utterly Transcendent!
Our Marvelous, Amazing and Incomparable God
Almighty God is the ‘Totally Other.’ There is nothing in the created universe to which He can be justly and correctly compared. He abides in an entirely different dimension; He abides on the infinite, eternal side of the Infinite Chasm of Transcendence. And, on our created side of the Chasm, the time and space side, there abides our Sin-corrupted, fatally wounded, demon-possessed condition. On our side, Sin, Death and Darkness reign supreme. And that is why unrepentant fallen flesh remains blind to any signs of God’s Presence and is always deaf to the sound of His voice (living and written Word).
Nevertheless, God is always present to His Creation. And even the Wilderness abides in His Presence and is packed with His meaning. His Fullness is imminent everywhere, throughout the vast reaches and panoramas of Creation. So there is much more to Reality than what the poor, grossly limited intellects, brains and eyes of decapitated men can take in. And God intends to demonstrate this to each one of His chosen ones. But to do it in a way that is unmistakable and utterly convincing, He must lead them into the truly painful, scary portions of the Wilderness that constitute this fallen world. He leads them away from the part that contains the glitzy glittering false promises. Instead, He takes them into the part that makes no effort to conceal or disguise the desolations. And then we can see the Wilderness for what it truly is. There, we have no trouble getting in touch with our personal bankruptcy, helplessness and hopeless ineptitude. The dangers and dire life-threatening conditions and situations highlight and amplify our perpetually weak helplessness. And that drives home the meaning of what God later revealed through Moses in His Torah, specifically in Genesis 2 and 3 where it said:
Genesis 2:17
“…But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die!”
Genesis 3:6-7
“When the woman saw (was deceived into believing) that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked (spiritually dead and helpless); and they sewed fig leaves together and made (for themselves) themselves loin coverings.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
It is in the Wilderness, that we truly get in touch with our Adamic nakedness, bankruptcy and ‘living death.’ No matter how we strive to cover it up, we can’t make our naked bankruptcy go away. And when we see this, we begin to grasp the ultimate Truth and Reality with which God has to pierce our heart of hearts. He does this through His living and written Word. His Word and Spirit pierce and impregnate us with this Truth. Then He can also impregnate us with His Eternal Life! And finally, we are saved from living death and can begin to be restored:
John 15:4-5
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do NOTHING!” (Emphasis added.)
Only when men experience the depths of this Wilderness Truth will they grasp the meaning of God’s Holy, Perfect Presence and what He means to us. Apart from God’s living Word, we can’t be, have or do anything! And once that hits home, THEN we repent and call out to the one and only Real God. And THEN He regenerates our spirits and gives us the spiritual faculties we must have to be aware of Him and remain connected to Him. And THEN we begin to see through the flimsy false fronts behind which the citizens of Egypt, the fallen proprietors of the futile world system, continually hide. And THEN we become willing to follow God’s Word out of our slavery to the Egypt into which we are all born. And we learn to let go of what is known of Egypt and prepare to embrace the Unknown, knowing that it leads to real LIFE!
Surrounded by the Wilderness
It doesn’t matter where in this world we go, or what so-called garden of luxury and delight may catch our eye, or what lovely sounds beckon to our ears, urging us to taste and feel and hear the promised pleasures that this world dangles before us to lure us to ‘take the bait’ and swallow the Serpent’s lethal hooks. It doesn’t matter: The Wilderness is everywhere! You can’t escape it. No matter how beautiful and glittery and lush all the false fronts might make it appear to be, upon further investigation, when you probe beneath the finely crafted surfaces of things, the real Truth soon appears. What promised to give us Life…is actually Death. What promised to give us the Light of Divinity…is nothing but Darkness. What promised to lead us into Ultimate Truth…is nothing but a pack of devious lies.
The self-adoring world tries to mask and conceal itself behind luxurious pleasures and materialistic wealth and soulish mystical enticements. It sings siren songs full of the promise of endless delights and by dire threats tries to force us to submit to its power and be impressed by its attainments. But the blind guides of this fallen world are leading their blind followers into concealed pits. And then, when it’s too late, they realize they’re caught in the jaws of Death. What once held out such promise to their lustful hearts quickly crumbles, disintegrates and disappears. And then the poor deceived people are left with nothing. And their empty souls and broken hearts have no way of correcting course, and no way by which they can escape.
The Wilderness mercifully strips all the scales of delusion from our eyes. And we see that no matter where we go in this fallen world, regardless of the elevation or longitude or latitude or culture… regardless of the appeal of the false fronts… all along the way, it is nothing but Wilderness! Regardless of which current fantasy, fad, movement or fashion people fall for… we can see that they are being blinded, deafened, deceived and left desolate by the Father of Lies.
Ecclesiastes 3:16-22
“Furthermore, I have seen under the sun that in the place of justice there is wickedness and in the place of righteousness there is wickedness. I said to myself, ‘God will judge both the righteous man and the wicked man,’ for a time for every matter and for every deed is there. I said to myself concerning the sons of men, ‘God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts.’ For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth? I have seen that nothing is better than that man should be happy in his activities, for that is his lot. For who will bring him to see what will occur AFTER him?” (Emphasis added.)
Romans 6:22-23
“But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal Life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Emphasis added.)
When God first gave the Commandments to Israel and entrusted her with the task of obeying them and sharing them with the rest of the world, Israel was not even close to being ready to have a clear understanding of her true, desperate, hopeless, Sin-corrupted terminal situation. Like the rest of mankind, Israel invariably saw the Commandments to be a means by which sinful men can ‘improve’ and ‘fix’ and ‘justify’ themselves as if they were Almighty God. Fallen flesh refuses to admit its true state of living death. It refuses to admit that, spiritually and morally speaking, we are utterly dead, totally bankrupt and helpless to lift even a finger in the direction of ‘goodness’ or ‘purity’, or ‘righteousness.’ We think we’re still ‘pretty good,’ still ‘okay,’ still ‘salvageable.’ And so we educate ourselves, we become religious, we submit ourselves to soulish self-improvement disciplines in the hope of ‘getting there’ and ‘being somebody’ and ‘arriving’ and ‘being a success in this world.’ But it is all futility. We can’t be improved. It’s too late… we’re already dead! So only after God gives us spiritual faculties are we able to see the full picture. Then we see the Wilderness… and much more besides:
2 Kings 6:15-17
“Now the heart of the king of Aram was enraged over this thing; and he called his servants and said to them, ‘Will you tell me which of us is for the king of Israel?’ One of his servants said, ‘No, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.’ So he said, ‘Go and see where he is, that I may send and take him.’ And it was told him, saying, ‘Behold, he is in Dothan.’ He sent horses and chariots and a great army there, and they came by night and surrounded the city.
“Now when the attendant of the man of God had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city. And his servant said to him, ‘Alas, my master! What shall we do?’ So he answered, ‘Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ Then Elisha prayed and said, ‘O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.’ And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha!”
Wherever we go in this fallen world, even in places that appear to be the lap of luxury, wealth and power… the spiritual Reality is that no matter where we happen to be in this fallen world, we are always in the Wilderness! And as disciples, we must be equipped with the Holy Spirit and the Wisdom-filled mind of our Master so that we may see things as they really are. And when we are connected to God’s living Word and Holy Spirit, God becomes our ‘eyes’ and ‘ears.’ He leads us into the death-dealing Wilderness to show us the whole Truth and teach us this lesson of the All-Sufficiency of His Word’s Perfect Finished Work.
In the Wilderness, we get in touch with our total helpless dependence, which immediately becomes obvious. This helps us recognize our desperate, continuous need for Him. If we realize what our true ‘human condition’ actually is, in God’s sight, we immediately repent… and cling to His living Word… and we forsake and disown all of our false gods because we KNOW that only God is God – the one, exclusive, incomparable, True Source of all things. And then through the wisdom He imparts to us, God can begin to reach out to the people that are all around us so that He can show mercy to them as well.
Our God Meets Us in the Wilderness
In the Wilderness, this awesome invisible, utterly Transcendent God shows us how He is able to ‘cross over’ and bridge the Infinite Chasm that Sin created to separate us from Him. In the Wilderness, God’s Light descends upon the Serpent’s total Darkness and takes it over. The Eternal Life that is in God’s Word descends upon the total Death of sinners to restore them to Himself. God’s Righteousness descends upon our utterly selfish corruption in order to transform us into sanctified vessels of His Perfect Love. And God’s Truth descends upon the gross lies that are woven into the fabric of our minds and wired into our brains, to destroy and dispel forever the power they once held over us.
Decapitated people look at God’s Israel as she travels across the Wilderness. But they can only see part of the picture, the physical, tangible part. They cannot see the awesome Heavenly Dimension that descends upon them to sustain and protect them. And, very often, the great majority of the Israelites cannot see themselves for what they really are! Saul of Tarsus could not see it until God’s Word pierced and gored him to the quick. Then he saw what Israel really was. She was just as weak, helpless and dead as the rest of the world. And so he saw what God really intended for her to be…the Bride of God’s living Word who became flesh! In herself, Israel is always weak, helpless and totally dependent on her awesome omnipotent God. In spiritual terms, decapitated Jewish and non-Jewish people can see nothing of what God is actually doing to set all men free. But after God gives us spiritual eyes that reunite us with His Word, we are equipped to see the awesome new Heavenly Dimension, hovering over God’s chosen people. The people of this world cannot see it, even if they have Jacob’s DNA! But those who have received spiritual faculties can see it… God’s awesome Kingdom descending upon this Sin-murdered space and time Wilderness dimension… imparting God’s Eternal Life and Salvation and Reconciliation and Regeneration and Total Restoration to those who follow His Word out of their slave pens. They are the ones who truly escape from their bondage to this dead, barren and helpless, Serpent-bitten world of fallen Adam.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
“Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for Power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the Power of Christ (Messiah) may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s (Messiah’s) sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved, ask yourselves these questions: when YOU look into the Wilderness in Scripture, and consider the Wilderness in which the modern, materialistic, self-adoring world that is all around you is abiding, what do YOU see? Do you only see worldly created things that interact with each other? Or do you see the awesome Presence of the living God descending upon you in the Wilderness and supplying for you all that His Fullness contains? When you consider the dire threatening situations and circumstances that surround you and your household at this time, how much Reality are you able to take in? Do you see yourself as alone and abandoned? Do you see yourself as capable and self-reliant? Do you think you have what it takes to ‘make it on your own?’ Or are you helpless, besieged, surrounded and doomed? In either case, you are seeing yourself as radically independent…and in that case, you remain ‘decapitated’.
Or are you able to see yourself and your cares and concerns being covered, embraced, protected, supplied and cherished by the Perfect Presence of the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Do you realize that His awesome Kingdom is perpetually ready to descend upon you and offers you astounding treasures from the Infinite Treasury of the Word’s Perfect Finished Work? Are you aware that Almighty God is with you… to be to you everything you will ever need Him to be? Can you see the Precious redeeming Covenant Blood of His Lamb, sprinkled upon you and your household? And do you realize that the same living Word that redeemed you is the Eternal High Priest that represents you before His Father and covers you like an infinitely Authoritative Covenant Shield? If you can see that, then truly, you are a disciple…filled to overflowing with the Spirit of your Master and following Him to your new Home in His Land of Promise!
Psalm 91:14-16
“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name. He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.With a long life I will satisfy him and let him see My Salvation (Yeshua).” (Amplification added.)
Have you allowed God to cover you and your household with the protection of the Covenant Blood of God’s Eternal Passover Lamb? Are you in position to follow Yeshua, your Eternal High Priest and Covenant Representative, into any section of the Wilderness… even into the Arena (sands) of Testimony, with outrageous confidence that the secular and religious fallen world around you cannot comprehend? Are you prepared and trained to know the ‘dance steps’ of God’s revelation and commandment instructions that equip you to ‘Dance with Him’ on the sands of The Arena of Testimony? Are you equipped to delight in and rejoice over your union with Him before the gaze of all the powers of Darkness and the fallen decapitated world as they smugly sit in the bleachers and watch? This is what God’s ‘Boot Camp’ training is ready to teach and impart to you. Are you ready to begin your training?
Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow – not just Song Lyrics
When you see the blessings that your neighbors enjoy, do you know where those blessings come from? Do you know who gives that abundance to them? And do you know how infinite and eternal the Treasury is from which those blessings flow? Do you know that God has sent His living Word and Holy Spirit to descend upon you and your naked helplessness to cover you with His Personal Inheritance and His endless Bounty? Do you realize that you have no need to covet anything because your Heavenly Father has all that you could ever need or want waiting for you… more than you could ever imagine or desire?
The Tenth Commandment warns you to avoid the delusion that the Serpent foisted upon Eve! He was tempting her to covet what God had not given to her. He drew her into his own God-less paradigm and placed his demonic ‘filter’ over her eyes. It was the filter that blocks God and His All-Sufficiency out of our mental pictures. That filter only allows us to see The Wilderness alone. Thus our mental pictures remain God-less and force even many children of Israel to remain stubborn, stiff-necked, self-absorbed and self-reliant. Eve could not see Almighty God descending upon the Wilderness into which her Sin and that of her husband had deformed God’s beautiful Creation. And many religious people still blindly follow her example. So beware of the Serpent’s tactics. He made Eve unable to see or connect with God’s living Word. Is He doing the same to you?
Genesis 3:4-8
“The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the (deceived) woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” (Emphasis added.)
The first man and woman ate; and they both died. For them, the Garden of Eden and its delights disappeared. In its place there appeared the Wilderness that all of their children experience today. It covers the entire Earth! And it is into this Wilderness that God sent His beloved Son, His living Word. The Word appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Joseph and Moses… before the written Word ever came to be. And He revealed Himself and His All-Sufficient Fullness to them. And He promised to give them a beautiful Land, a Land that would flow with milk and honey. Then He appeared to Moses, and Israel and Israel’s prophets. And finally He appeared in the flesh as Israel’s Messiah. He and His New Covenant apostles continue to offer the Fulfillment of God’s Covenant Promises, first to the Jew and then to the Gentile.
This is a truly remarkable truth concerning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob:
Somehow, even without the theologies and religious structures we cling to so desperately today, those fathers of the Faith knew that God was promising much more than just a temporary claim on a piece of Sin-contaminated Middle Eastern real estate. That was not the true fulfillment of God’s Promises and, somehow, they knew it! Throughout their lifetimes they never truly possessed that Mid Eastern real estate. Nor to this day, have their descendants ever truly possessed it. But the fathers remained content in knowing that the Land God was really promising to them was not of this fallen Earth. What He had for them was going to descend upon the Wilderness of this fallen Earth from another dimension! It would come to them from Eternity, from the Kingdom of Heaven, from God’s side of the Infinite Chasm of Transcendence. The True Promised Land would be utterly Pure, Holy and Eternally Righteous. So the fathers of the Faith knew they could afford to be patient and forbearing. They knew that in God’s good time, they would have the Land He promised and all that would come with it. So they rested in Peace… in God’s living Word, the same Word that later became flesh and appeared as Israel’s Messiah:
Genesis 13:14-17
“The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you.’”
Hebrews 11:8-16
“By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the (temporary) land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the (true eternal) City which has foundations, whose architect and builder, is God. By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised. Therefore there was born even of one man, and him as good as dead at that, as many descendants as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand, which is by the seashore.
“All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed, if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a Heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
People without the God-given gift of obedient, trusting, patient faith cannot see the awesome things that God has in store for them. So, in their blindness, they settle for whatever they can scrounge for themselves in the Wilderness that is littered with the wreckage of the dreams of past generations and the many corpses of those that have joined the corpses of that first unbelieving Exodus generation.
But if we have eyes with which to see the Glory of what God causes to descend upon those who wait upon Him in the Wilderness, we can begin to see and expect things that no fallen child of Adam could ever imagine or hope for.
Revelation 21:1-7
“Then I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth; for the first Heaven and the first Earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the Tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.’
“And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new!’ And He said, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true.’ Then He said to me, ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the Water of Life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.”
Beloved, the Wilderness has nothing of eternal substance to offer! It is temporary. It is a dead, Sin-corrupted thing that is the work of the Serpent. No part of anything that Sin has touched and killed can impart Life or lasting Joy, Peace, Contentment and Fulfillment. It is empty and forlorn in itself. It is the abode of Death. BUT… the One who is the Source of all Life, sees our plight. He is aware of us and responds to whoever will call upon His Name. And when we trust His Word and place all of our expectations upon Him, His Word and Spirit descend upon His Israel in the Wilderness. God settles over us and imparts everything He knows we lack, whatever He knows we need. He will supply whatever is lacking, He will fill every gap, every crevasse. He will right every wrong and tend to every one of our concerns, cares and needs. He will wipe away every tear from the eyes of those who turn to Him and they will receive from His hand, eternal things that only He can give. What He has for us, is worth waiting for, because the True, Living God is ETERNALLY PERFECT!
This is the Secret:
Our Fulfillment is not found in a bunch of created Sin-damaged things. It is found only in the One who created us and sustains and maintains us from moment to moment. God’s living Word is our Beginning and our End. He is the Treasure, the Joy and Fulfillment that is ours. When we encounter our awesome God through His living Word and the Holy Spirit who makes the Word real, alive and fruitfully active within us., it happens… right in the midst of this dreadful, tear-filled Wilderness. When we finally see it…and we allow the Holy Spirit to break the stiff-necked, self-adoring stubbornness in us and it is reduced to ZERO! … then we will cling to the Creator of all things Himself…and suddenly, we will have EVERYTHING!
So now that God’s living Word has become flesh, and has lived the Perfect Human Life, the definitive Image and Likeness of God Life, in our midst and in our name, we know that full and Perfect Atonement has been made for us by His death on the Cross. Now we know that His Father raised Him from the dead and elevated Him back to His original eternal Glory and seated Him at His right hand. So now we, His disciples, know that we are seated with Him. And we can serve as His earthly embodiment, in the Wilderness… as God’s Word and Holy Spirit descend upon us to share with us the Glory and the Treasures of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Wilderness that we call Earth.
Through the obedient faith of His Last Days disciples, God’s living Word will serve as God’s Eternal Vine on Earth. And His disciples will serve as the Vine’s living branches. Through them, He transmits to the Earth the Fruit He has for us in Eternity. And then His disciples have the privilege of bearing His Fruit and sharing it with whoever Father intends to give it… to God’s Eternal Glory.
The Perfect Nature of Almighty God prompted His Word to perform the Perfect Eternal Act of Creation and Redemption. And now that the work is finished and Perfect, God and His beloved Word, His Perfect Image and Likeness, are seated and at Rest. And since we disciples are made to be one with Yeshua, and since we abide with Him in Heavenly places by the Holy Spirit, we can abide with our Master in Heaven, even as He abides with us here on Earth. And we can rest and rejoice with Him in the total Perfection and All-Sufficiency of God’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation…at all times…and in every situation! We’re no longer slaves to the Serpent’s lies. Now, as sons of God, and co-heirs with His living Word…we REST!
Even while our bodies still abide in space and time, our spirits are already included in the glorious Richness that continues to descend upon Earth. We are included in whatever is Good and Eternally Perfect. And since we are co-heirs with Messiah Yeshua, we can release to others and share with them all of the Treasures that God transmits to us as we make our way through the Wilderness. We need not envy or covet what others enjoy. We need not cower at their dire threats. We are not paupers or victims; we are God’s own sons and heirs! We abide with the Perfect One who is the Source of all good things. So we can afford to be patient and forbearing and, because of the Infinite, Boundless, Eternally All-Sufficient Inheritance that our Messiah shares with us, we can also afford to be very, very loving and generous.
Galatians 5:22-25
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.” (Emphasis added.)
So, instead of thinking, acting and reacting like needy empty hyper-controlling parasites and thinking of ourselves as abandoned victims and needy urchins, forever intent on surviving and prevailing in a competition-filled jungle teeming with other abandoned needy urchins that covet everything in sight…we can rest and rejoice in our God. We can perpetually fill ourselves with the Holy Spirit’s confidence that comes from God’s Fullness and which is always ours because we are able to abide in God’s Perfect Presence.
And as our God continually fills us, we can then continually overflow with His grace, just like our Master did when He walked the earth. Thus we can live in and from the eternal abundance that is an inherent part of our God-given New Covenant identity, birthright, purpose, inheritance and destiny. We can reflect and embody our God as He really and truly is. This is what the Holy Spirit works in us to cause us to be and to do.
Philippians 2:12-13
“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.”
Keep seeking the things that keep coming to us from above… the things that God is waiting to impart to us through the point of entry of our obedient faith. Don’t obsess over the way the Wilderness looks and sounds and makes you feel at first sight. Remain focused, by Biblical faith, on what is ready to descend over the Wilderness… to cover it, to water it, and to bring what is dead in it, back to Life!
If you’re going to be our Master’s disciple, you must be equipped with the eyes that enable you to see the things that decapitated people cannot see. If you have those eyes, you are equipped to resist the Serpent’s temptations and to overcome all the evil that exists in this demon-possessed Earth. With those spiritual eyes you can see through the temporary appearances of things and penetrate to the Eternal Reality. Then you can see and interact and work with all that is descending from Heaven and settling over you to deal with the neediness that is all around you in the Wilderness.
When you have the eyes of faith, you will not covet what you see in the Wilderness. You can afford to wait for the real thing… for the true, Eternal Fulfillment that is yours. Rest with your Heavenly Father and allow Him to supply you from the Perfect Treasury of His Son’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption.
Matthew 6:9-13
“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in Heaven, Hallowed be Your Name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.’]
True Disciples, Embodying Our True Messiah
This is why disciples of the Last Days must be trained to be faithful and diligent throughout each period and situation and circumstance of their lives. We must be trained to make the right Messiah-embodying responses, over and over, regardless of where we are, or what is going on, or what we are required to face, or where we may be required to give our testimony to Almighty God. The original living dead existence we start with in this world is not what matters; what our awesome God is ready to add to it – that is what matters! He adds the New, Eternal, Resurrection Life and Nature of our Master Yeshua. He is what matters! Somehow, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew that, and they saw His Day, and they rejoiced.
Once the Holy Spirit gives us a new spirit and we are born again into the Righteous Resurrection Life of the Last Adam, Messiah Yeshua, two very different natures begin to co-exist within us. Then we’re forced to choose between the two, continuously, throughout the rest of our lives on this earth! We can reject and ignore the new Life of our risen Master. And in that case, we will continue to rely on and live from the original, fallen, radically independent Wilderness lifestyle we already know so well. Or, we can choose to ‘die’ to that… continually. That is, we can consider ourselves to be dead to that old life. In that case, we have the privilege of deferring to our indwelling Lord, and allowing Him to live His Perfect Resurrected Human Life in us and through us.
Sometimes we will have to make that choice hundreds of times in one day or night, as our situations and circumstances may require. We can choose to remain dead to that original life so that we can continue to defer to this awesome New Covenant Life… the New Resurrected Perfect Humanity of Yeshua… that the Holy Spirit is now able to transmit into our regenerated spirits. And when Yeshua appears, even though our bodies still abide in and work in the Wilderness, nevertheless, all that pertains to God in His invisible eternal Kingdom can continually descend and come to rest upon us and upon our situations. By our faith in our Lord and Master, we serve as His points of entry and base of operations in the Wilderness. He then fills us and causes us to overflow with His Lovingkindness and Grace and Life-giving Abundance.
This is the Eternal Life of God’s living Word, the risen Messiah. When we make the choice to die to our original kind of living dead existence and we defer to Yeshua so that He can live His Life and ‘wear’ our flesh as He rules, reigns and operates from within us, we can fulfill our calling and commission as His disciples. When we ignore or reject the new Life of our Messiah, and revert to living our former independent lives, we put our Master back on the Cross, out of our way. Then we remain free to ‘live my life’ and try to control whatever happens in it. Thus we suit ourselves and our personal aspirations, agendas and passions. But of course, that forces us to give God the disastrously wrong answer when He asks us, “How much of My beloved Son is in you?”
Only what comes to us and operates in us and flows out of us that comes from our Messiah is acceptable to the Father who sent Him to us. What comes to us from God’s living Word and Holy Spirit comes to us from Eternity. It is part of the Perfect, Eternal, Finished Work of Creation and Redemption that Genesis 2:1-3 reveals to us. It is our ‘daily bread’ that our Master taught us to keep asking Father to give to us each day. It is the utterly Perfect and Comprehensive and totally Fulfilling Provision, Protection and carrying out of God’s Eternal Plan for us. It descends upon us and it is to be used to bless whatever and whoever He has ordained for us to touch and influence throughout our time on this earth.
Leviticus 16:31-33
“It is to be a Sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute. So the Priest who is anointed and ordained to serve as Priest in His Father’s place shall make Atonement: He shall thus put on the linen garments, the holy garments, and make Atonement for the Holy Sanctuary, and He shall make Atonement for the Tent of Meeting and for the Altar. He shall also make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.”
The It that is our Sabbath of Rest is: ‘Messiah in us… the Hope of Glory!’ This is what the apostle Paul tried to communicate to the Messianic Jewish and non-Jewish believers who heard and responded to his presentation of the Gospel, and who were struggling to make and complete their Exodus from ‘self-life’ over to ‘Messiah-Life.’
Colossians 1:24-29
“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His Body, which is the Church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions. Of this Church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God, that is, the Mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the Glory of this Mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ (the risen Messiah) IN YOU… the Hope of Glory!
“We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete IN Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which (also) mightily works within me!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
When we join our Master in His death by picking up our crosses and following Him into His Death…into the total zero point of our radically independent Sin-adoring ways…THEN we can follow Him into the Glory of His Resurrection. Then, we not only proclaim our obedient faith in His revelation, we can demonstrate it in the Holy Spirit’s Power. It is good to proclaim that we have forsaken what abides in the Wilderness, but it is another matter entirely for us to be able to demonstrate the Truth of our claims. We demonstrate it when we rely only and entirely upon what Almighty God gives to us from Heaven… from the Eternal Treasury of His beloved Son’s Finished Work. Disciples of the Last Days must be trained and prepared to remain steadfast and faithful and deeply grounded in the Truth and Reality of Almighty God’s Perfection, so that they can give the proper Witness to Him who is our Completion in the midst of all that will be taking place in the Arena of Testimony during those awesome days.
How Do We Do It?
We do it by learning to defer repeatedly to the Life of our Master which abides within our regenerated spirits. We keep choosing to set our natural self-life aside, to consider it to be dead. And we continually defer to our Master so that by the Holy Spirit’s Power, He can manifest Himself in us and through us. We do it until it becomes second nature to us and we can do it in our sleep. Then God’s living Word can obey His Father through our flesh and in our name. He will do the Perfect, Righteous acts of obedience that only He can do, in our name. We must practice doing this with Him repeatedly. We make the deliberate choice to defer to Him in every situation and each encounter or setback, or problem, or disaster, or interaction of our lives. We choose ‘in cold blood’ to crucify our fallen flesh existence… and get it out of the way of our Master, so that He can take over and live His Perfect Life in us and through us.
John 15:12-17
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.”
As part of God’s New Covenant Royal Priesthood, we must be rigorously trained to know our true identity and purpose in this fallen world. We must learn to maintain our focus and fulfill our purpose at all times, under any circumstances. We are here to serve as the faith-filled points of entry for God’s Word and Spirit to enter the time and space Wilderness dimension. And the Word and the Spirit are here to reveal God’s Glory and dispense His Grace and pronounce His Blessings upon His mortally Sin-wounded, corrupted Creation, through our focused, steady, Spirit-empowered New Covenant faith! God is here, working in us and through us… to save, redeem and restore everything! And when He works amid the physical realm, He requires a Human Body through which His Word can operate and reveal the Glory of His Resurrection. And that will be the function that Messiah Yeshua’s disciples will perform in that awesome, climactic, Last Days Arena of Testimony.
Matthew 14:15-21
“When it was evening, the disciples came to Him and said, ‘This place is desolate and the hour is already late; so send the crowds away, that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said to them, ‘They do not need to go away; YOU GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO EAT!’
“They said to Him, ‘We have here only five loaves and two fish.’ And He said, ‘Bring them here to Me.’ Ordering the people to sit down on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward Heaven, He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, and they all ate and were satisfied. They picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve full baskets. There were about five thousand men who ate, besides women and children!” (Emphasis added.)