HK Ministries

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More on Matthew

Introduction


1.

Under the best of circumstances, absolute poof is elusive, a mirage that isn’t what it seems to be when finally captured, measured and weighed. In Volume Four of APA, I argued that Matthew’s Gospel isn’t the biography of the historical Jesus, but the biography of the indwelling Christ Jesus, the “vessel” in which spiritual life is held within the Elect. Thus, Matthew’s Gospel is the story of Us, the chosen ones, the Elect. It is the story of me since spiritual birth. But can I prove this claim beyond doubt?

Any discussion of Matthew’s Gospel—because of how important it is to Sabbatarian Christendom—must begin with the concept that the life of all humanity; of all physical beasts (nephesh) is sustained by the indwelling dark fire of cellular oxidation, with the combustion/oxidation of simple sugars (carbohydrates) occurring inside the living cell, which serves as the crucible for these extremely small fires inside the creature. When these fires go out, the creature is dead. And this explanation of what sustains physical life wasn’t known to anyone in the 1st-Century CE; so larger units of the body were used in analogies, such eyes, hands, feet, private parts

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. … For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? (1 Cor 12:12, 14–17)

The human body consists of multiple tens of thousands of cells, each one having inside the cell a small, dark fire, fueled by the delivery through the blood system of simple carbohydrates and oxygen molecules to the cell in which these molecules are consumed, the oxidation of the carbon molecule in the simple sugars producing carbon dioxide that is carried by the blood stream back to the lungs where red blood cells drop off their load of CO2 molecules and pickup new oxygen molecules (O2) that these red blood cells then take back to the individual cells. Hence, a person’s life is in the person’s blood: “You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Gen 9:4).

Man is made in the image and likeness of God see (1 Cor 11:7 among many passages); therefore the life-sustaining system of human persons reveals a considerable amount about the life-sustaining system of God and of angels, angelic sons of God—and we really haven’t left discussing Matthew’s Gospel, but are exploring the underlying premises behind this one Gospel that differs in when the glorified Jesus meets with His disciples from the other Gospels. For in Matthew’s Gospel, the glorified Jesus tells His disciples,

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt 28:18–20 emphasis added)

Until dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18; 12:7–12) halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation, what Jesus tells His disciples cannot be true. Therefore, what can and is true is that the glorified Jesus will meet with His disciples when they have glorified bodies and can see Him as He is (1 John 3:2); so the narrative timeline of Matthew’s Gospel begins not once, but many times, with each “beginning” producing a fractal of Christ Jesus; with each beginning producing a glorified son of God.

Matthew’s Gospel for reasons to be explained cannot be factually true: from what tall mountain can all of the kingdoms of this world and their glory be seen (Matt 4:8). Because of the curvature of the earth, a globe, there can be no such mountain. Yet, there are sincere Christians who argue that God will protect the integrity of His Word, the Bible, against contamination and false teachings, but this isn’t true because of the assumption that the Bible is the word of God. What does the author of John’s Gospel write in his introductory declaration: “In árche [“primacy,” not “beginning” because of the lack of the definite article] was the Word [ó Logos], and the Word was pros [“of” or “with”] ton Theon [“the God”], and Theos [“God”] was the Word [ó Logos]” (John 1:1) … in Greek, nouns require definite articles, with the case ending of the article agreeing with the case ending of the noun; thus in the third clause where <Theos> is without an article, <Theos> must share the article for <ó Logos>, with both nouns having the masculine singular, nominative case endings, their <os> endings. Hence, it is appropriate to say that the Word of God is God, ó Logos, who held primacy with ton Theon [objective case ending for ó Theos] and by whom all things created were created (vv. 2–3); that “this one” [outos] entered His creation as His unique Son (John 3:16), the man Jesus the Nazarene (John 1:14).

With God, a thing is established by the testimony of two or three—and the Elect have a second witness to all that is implied and stated in John’s Gospel:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5–8 emphasis added)

The Bible is not the Word of God. Since the glory He had before “before the world existed” (John 17:5) has been returned to Him, Christ Jesus is (as He was) the Word of God. Therefore, the indwelling of Christ Jesus places the Word of God inside the chosen ones, the Elect, in a manner consistent with the New Covenant, about which Jeremiah prophesied and the author of Hebrews quoted:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws [the Torah] into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, “Know the Lord” [YHWH from Jer 31:34] for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. (Heb 8:10–11)

Jesus in His prayer that the author of John’s Gospel records, said,

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:1–3 emphasis added)

To know YHWH is to know the God the Father and to know Christ Jesus; for as shown in earlier volumes of APA, the Tetragrammaton deconstructs to [YH] + [WH], with aspiration or breath being represented by the radical <H> or <ah>. And this returns us to John’s Gospel and Jesus telling those Jews seeking His life for healing the invalid of 38 years: “‘For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself’” (John 5:26).

For a human person to have “life” inside him or herself is to have the breath of life Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the nostrils of Adam (Gen 2:7) in the person; i.e., to have oxygen molecules breathed in through the nose and transferred to red blood cells in the lungs and then carried by the person’s blood to every living cell in the body. For God tells Noah (the previous citation in more of its context),

But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. (Gen 9:4–6 emphasis added)

If God made man in His image, than the dark fire of cellular oxidation serves as the “image”—shadow or type, left hand enantiomer—of the bright fire that is the glory of God, with the prophet Ezekiel having seen the glory of the Lord:

And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of His waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of His waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around Him. Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking. (Ezek 1:26–28 emphasis added)

For a person to have indwelling life, the person is alive. For God the Father to grant the Son, Christ Jesus, to have indwelling life in Himself, Christ Jesus is spiritually alive as the Father is spiritually alive—and for sons of God to know the Father and to know the Son is for these sons of God to also have indwelling life in them, life in the timeless supra-dimensional heavenly realm, hence eternal or never ending life.

Paul wrote (by the hand of Tertius),

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 6:16–23 emphasis added)

The Greek words used by Tertius have become trite and semi-meaningless in English translations: the gift of God to His sons is indwelling eternal life in Christ Jesus, not in the future but while these sons still dwell in physical bodies; for the fleshly body of a person is not and never will be a son of God. The son of God is the new creation conceived through the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] in which resides the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] penetrating [entering into] the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ánthropou], thereby bringing to life a firstborn son of God that will be a fractal of Christ Jesus through the indwelling glory of Christ giving life to this son of God through being in this younger sibling of Christ Jesus. And this younger sibling will grow spiritually to walk as Jesus walked in this world (see 1 John 2:6) through being cloaked in the righteousness of Christ Jesus, grace, by having put on Christ [Xriston évedusasthe — Christ put on] as if Jesus were a garment. Therefore, grace functions as the womb of a human infant’s mother, a statement that complicates the analogy which has four parts rather than three … a caterpillar is not a butterfly; yet a caterpillar is a butterfly that hasn’t undergone metamorphosis. Likewise, a living son of God is as a caterpillar, the larvae stage of a butterfly and the stage in which all of the growth that will occur occurs. A butterfly doesn’t grow larger as a butterfly. A glorified son of God has indwelling eternal life in a fleshly body that continues to age and deteriorate. This glorified son of God still needs a glorified body in which to dwell in heaven. But the dynamics of timelessness [heaven] will not permit “change” to occur that is not compatible with “what is”—and the sort of physical maturation seen in a human infant going from birth to physical maturity forms the left hand enantiomer of spiritual maturity, with the type of growth evident not being compatible with what was. A ten year old boy doesn’t look like nor think like a ten month old boy. Likewise, an eighteen year old boy doesn’t look like nor think like a ten year old boy. So just as the tomato hornworm grows larger as it feeds on my tomato plants, I grow larger spiritually as I feed on the experiences of this world, choosing righteousness and rejecting evil, until my physical body shuts down and I die, thereby entering into a stage of transformation that can be likened to the hornworm entering its cocoon. And when judgments are revealed at Christ’s coming, the Elect will rise from the dead in glorious bodies, emerging from death as the hornworm worm emerges from its cocoon as an attractive moth. And it is the four part maturation process of moths and butterflies that forms the better analogy of spiritual maturation, with a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis being changed beyond all recognition.

Can I prove Matthew’s Gospel is the story of me since spiritual birth? I can certainly prove that it isn’t historical, nor does Matthew’s Gospel claim to be historical. But no, I cannot be proved beyond doubt that Matthew’s Gospel is the biography of the indwelling Christ Jesus that gives “life” to all firstborn sons of God. However, I can prove the Bible isn’t the Word of God. So it isn’t empirical evidence as found in books or in archeological digs that will validate the theological claim that Matthew’s Gospel isn’t about the historical Jesus; rather, it is belief of God, termed “faith.” If a Christian doesn’t believe God, and the vast majority do not, then it doesn’t matter what can or cannot be proved. The Adversary has deceived the person and has usually done enough psychological damage to the Christian that logic has ceased to matter … the Christian knows the seventh day is the Sabbath, but the Christian will not cease worshiping on the day after the Sabbath.

Matthew’s Gospel functions more like prophecy than as a historical biography or as even my history. This particular Gospel is structured in a narrative equivalent to a Hebraic thought-couplet, but a squared couplet, with the first presentation of Jesus’ ministry [the physical presentation] occurring in Mark’s Gospel, thereby making all of Matthew’s Gospel equivalent to the spiritual presentation of the same ministry. But in the squaring of a couplet, the spirit portion has a physical part and a spiritual part, albeit at a higher plane than the physical portion of the squared couplet. And indeed, in Matthew’s Gospel there is a physical part followed by a spiritual part—the first half of Matthew’s Gospel functions as the physical part; the second half (beginning with the story of the faith of the Canaanite woman) functions as the spiritual part of the spiritual portion of a squared narrative couplet. And this physical/spiritual relationship in the spiritual portion of the squared narrative couplet is best expressed in the glorified Christ’s terminology: “‘I am the Alpha [A] and the Omega [Ω], the first and the last, the beginning and the end’” (Rev 22:13).

Usually, Christians mentally translate the concept by the two Greek letters, Α (alpha) and Ω (omega), as the first and the last, which would have Jesus saying, I am the first and the last, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, which really doesn’t make as much sense as it should. Why the repetition? And the reason why is in the appearance of the two uncials.

Alpha’s appearance suggests an enclosed beginning (as if male) and omega’s appearance suggests an open (as if female) ending … in the beginning, no one could enter the enclosed godhead, such were the conditions under which the children of Israel entered the Promised Land of milk and honey, but at the end of this age, birth by the Father in and through Christ Jesus is given to many sons of God, thereby truly authenticating what Christ Jesus says of Himself when He declares that He is both alpha and omega.

Again, the physical shape of the omega uncial has importance; for the majuscule has the visual appearance of a squatting female figure, one giving birth or able to give birth; so when Christ says in John’s vision that He is the Alpha and the Omega, the actual shape of these two Greek letters convey meaning apart from their position in the Greek alphabet. For as the deity that created all things physical, He was the God [Theos] of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God [Theos] of living ones (Matt 22:32). And This One could not offer spiritual birth to Israel, the firstborn son of the God of Abraham (Ex 4:22). He could only give to Israel what He had given to Adam, physical life—and Israel already had physical life.

Meditate on the preceding: as the majuscule <A> [alpha], the Word of the God [ó Logos pros tou Theou] had no means, no opening through which eternal life could be given to human persons. He could give long life to the living; He could give prosperity to the already living; He could give peace and safety to the already living. But He could not give “life” to the already living—they already had all of the life they could handle; He could not give eternal life to the spiritually dead.

Here is new revelation via realization: the letter <A> [alpha] has two legs and an enclosed triune shape that cannot be entered from outside the majuscule. This is, in an image, greater Christendom’s conception of God, not that greater Christendom has this much spiritual awareness. For in this image, the two legs will represent the God [ó Theos] of living ones (the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — Matt 22:32), and the God [ó Theos] of dead ones (the One who raised Jesus from death — Rom 8:11). And at the time of Adam’s creation, neither deity could give to Adam indwelling eternal life; could give to Adam the glory of God for the bright fire that the glory of God (from Ezek 1:26–28) represents would have utterly consumed the fleshly body of Adam. So it is always wrong to claim that when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into Adam’s nostrils, God gave to Adam an immortal soul. Didn’t happen. Couldn’t happen.

God the Father could not give spiritual life to the physically living for the indwelling of His glory would have completely consumed the person. The Creator of all things physical could not give to a physical human person indwelling eternal life for the same reason. These two deities, represented by the two legs of the alpha majuscule did not individually nor collectively have the ability to make another deity from the base elements of the earth. And here is where those persons who insist God can do anything encounter problems … what is written about an anointed guardian cherub placed in Eden, the Garden of God?

Son of [Adam], raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: "You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. (Ezek 28:12–15 emphasis added)

If the Adversary began his existence as the signet of perfection, suggesting that God could not create a more perfect living entity [angel], and if this signet of perfection rebelled against God, then it stands to reason that God cannot directly create another deity, meaning that God has some limitations. Only indirectly can God create another like Himself—and He could never do it with an angel in the dynamics of timelessness. Life and the absence of life cannot coexist in the same moment, meaning that what does not have life can never have life in the moment when it did not have life. The concept is simple even if my sentence is not. Because angels are created beings [entities] in the timelessness of the heavenly realm, a second (or third or more) moment [as if a location] had to be created in which angels have life; for angels cannot enter the moment before they were created, with both the moment in which they were created and the moment before they were created being unchanging moments.

Thus, the dynamics of timelessness preclude the creation of another deity by either the God of living ones or the God of dead ones, these two deities functioning as one deity in a manner analogous to a day having a dark portion and having a light portion, with the dark and the light portions forming “one” day. The two deities, the God of the living and the God of the dead, form one deity in the conjoined Tetragrammaton YHWH. And as long as these two continued as deities, their “sons” could never join them on the holy mountain of God, where angels did not have life before their creation. Satan, as that anointed guardian cherub, the signet of perfection, was in Eden, the Garden of God, and was as high as a created entity could go.

In order for the God of living ones to create one like Himself, or for the God of dead ones to create one like Himself, there needed to be a vessel, a crucible, placed inside of human persons that was capable of holding the bright fire that is the glory of God without being consumed by this bright fire. And in order for this to happen, this vessel or crucible had to come from heaven, had to come to earth but not be of the physical creation, and this vessel had to have previously held the glory of God. This vessel or crucible had to be a “tested” and proven commodity.

Again, neither the God of Abraham nor the God who raised Jesus from death could, of themselves, create another like themselves. The best they had previously done was the creation of the anointed guardian cherub who instigated a rebellion against them, with this rebellion apparently having destroyed [or heavily damaging] heaven itself.

In order to get into humanity a vessel or crucible able to hold the bright fire that is the glory of God, the life sustaining force of heavenly entities, one of the two deities would have to enter the creation—and that one could only be the God of the living, for the God of dead ones needed to stay behind to raise from death the other, His Beloved.

Christianity, both Trinitarian and Arian, have not assigned equality to the God of the living and the God of dead ones, but have spoken of these two in terms of the never begotten and the only begotten, with God the Father holding implied superiority because He was never begotten. But this isn’t how either John nor Paul structures the relationship between these two. Again, “Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil 2:5–6), and “Én arche was ó Logos” (John 1:1 first clause) — in primacy was the Word, implying that the Word was first in authority, not second or of a lesser position. And that contradicts everything Christians have been taught … if Islam could collectively forgive Sarah and Isaac for sending Hagar and Ishmael away when Ishmael, according to primogenitor tradition, should have inherited what Abraham had, they would gain a step in their race with Christendom to the “truth”; for they have Allah being the creator and being the Most High God, with Allah being Yah or ó Logos, who held primacy with the God, ton Theon. The problem is that Islam cannot accept the reality that Yah “died” when He entered His creation as the man Jesus of Nazareth. Islam does not understand spiritual birth and will not understand spiritual birth until dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man. Until then, Muslims will continue believing they are humanly born with immortal souls; they will continue to believe the first lie told by the serpent in the Garden.

In the structure of David’s later psalms, David places Yah in the physical portion of the thought-couplet and the combined Tetragrammaton YHWH in the spiritual position … if Yah as the God of Abraham were somehow inferior to the God who raised Jesus from death, then David should not have placed the conjoined deities comprising YHWH in the spiritual portion of the couplet, but should have placed WaiH in the spiritual position. However, it is the conjoined deities of the God of living ones and the God of dead ones that occupy the spiritual position in David’s later psalms:

Praise Yah!

Praise YHWH, O my soul! (Ps 146:1)

Praise Yah!

Praise YHWH from the heavens; (Ps 148:1)

Praise Yah!

Sing to YHWH a new song, (Ps 149:1)

indented lines are spiritual portions of couplets

Again, under the New Covenant, all will have the Torah written on their hearts so that “no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, 'Know YHWH,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer 31:34), and in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “‘And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’” (John 17:3).

The implication would be that the one doing the sending is superior to the one sent—and this would be the case after ó Logos entered His creation as His unique Son; for in entering His creation as a man, ó Logos divested Himself of the divinity He had and effectively “died” in the heavenly realm, a reality necessary for Him to die for us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8), when on earth. He died nearly two millennia before we were conceived … the dynamics of timelessness has the moment when He entered His creation being the same moment as when He was resurrected from death and was accepted by the Father as the reality of the waved Wave Sheaf Offering. This is also the same moment when Paul was called; the same moment when John died; the same moment when I was called to reread prophecy nineteen centuries after John died. In timelessness, the moment doesn’t change, and all activities within the moment must coexist with each other in a dance of oneness. So when iniquity was discovered in an anointed cherub, this iniquity would have produced immediate and irresolvable gridlock that would have ripped heaven apart if a rent in the fabric of heaven hadn’t opened and through it—as blood and water poured from the wound in Jesus’ side—primal energy poured into the Abyss, this energy used to create all that is physical.

The model of the earth swallowing alive Korah and his rebels (Num 16:28–33) forms the left hand enantiomer of the Adversary and his angels being flushed from heaven and swallowed by the Abyss, in which he has walked to and fro upon the earth (Job 1:7; 2:2), with again the physical creation called into existence in the Abyss.

Before spiritual birth and by extension, salvation, could be offered to a second nation of Israel, the God of living ones needed to enter His creation, not as a deity, but as a man. His “spirit” needed to be emptied of the glory (bright fire) He had as the God of Abraham; His spirit needed to serve as the vessel or crucible able to hold the spirit or glory of the God of dead ones. If His spirit still held the glory He had before the world existed (see John 17:5), there would be no “room” (for lack of a better word) for the spirit of the God of dead ones in His spirit. Therefore, being born as a human male infant, the man Jesus had no spirit in Him except the spirit of man. Thus, with receipt of the spirit of the Father, a new creature would be conceived in and from His human spirit, the new creature being the First of many firstborn sons of God, all conceived in a similar manner except that the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] needed to first penetrate the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] before the spirit of God [pneuma Theou], the bright fire that is the glory of God, could enter into the spirit of the person to conceive a new creation, a son of God, a younger sibling to Christ Jesus.

Spiritual birth and salvation were not offered to Israel in Egypt. Rather long physical life and physical prosperity in a land of milk and honey were offered to this outwardly circumcised nation (Deut 30:15–20), with long life and prosperity forming the spiritually lifeless shadow and copy of heavenly life possessed by firstborn sons of God the Father here on earth now, and in the future in heaven.

Mark’s Gospel is a reliable account of what the Apostle Peter taught converts, or so said John the Elder to Bishop Papias of Hierapolis, as recorded in Eusebius’ Third Volume. For apparently Peter taught using quotes and anecdotes without establishing a chronology for when a quote or anecdote was given by Jesus. Mark’s Gospel established a chronology for Jesus’ ministry, with this chronology used by the author of Matthew’s Gospel and more loosely used by the author of Luke’s Gospel.

I tend to write overly long introductions to long works, and I am on the verge of succumbing to that instinct again. So, what needs to be understood is without the indwelling of a vessel or crucible to hold the bright fire that is the glory of God, no human person could be born of spirit; no human could have the spirit of God in the person (for those who claim to have the spirit but also claim not to be born of spirit). A vessel from heaven—the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou]—must be placed inside the spirit of the person [again, to pneuma tou ánthropou] before a person can receive the spirit of God. So those Christians who speak casually and ignorantly about being filled with spirit speak about a subject of which they have no knowledge. But then, almost without exception they ignore Matthew’s Gospel, which has greater significance the more I grow in grace and knowledge.

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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."