Upside down Kingdom

Upside down Kingdom (1)

April 24, 2016

Let's get into the word today. Today we're going to do a kind of in depth study, if you brought your Bibles, this is the time to use them. So let's get to Matthew 18. This is an interesting chapter.

Boy, we did a lot in Matthew 13 last week, didn't we do a lot? We maybe covered too many parables last week; everybody got overloaded with parables last week! Let's go to Matthew 18 today. And let's look at this upside down kingdom. Let's start at verse 1 and we're going to go to verse 9. Two different pages, so you can see a little better.

"1 At the same time, came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, 3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. 6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

Let us continue on

"7 Woe unto the world because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! 8 Wherefore if thy hand or they foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands, or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. 9 And if thine eye offends thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire."

So let's get into this a little bit, and let's focus in on this parable because I think this is an important one, because it says, Jesus is asked, "who is the greatest in the kingdom?" In the kingdom of God, who is the greatest? And Jesus calls a little child to him, that's important, he calls this child unto him. Notice that he calls the child and what does the child do? Does the child just sit there or run away? The child comes. The child is obedient to Christ, right? Now look, he sets him in the midst of them, he sets them in the midst, the child stays in the midst, he is not only obedient to Christ, he is surrendered to Christ. He surrendered to Christ. There is a reason why, in the preamble, and in the beginning of the Cheon Il Guk Constitution there is reference and there is acknowledgment made of God, right? There is acknowledgment made of God's plan, husband and wife, man being subject, woman being object. There is reference in God's plan, even in the constitution, of "thanks be to the Lord of the Second Advent." You see? So there are references to those things, and from this root is where we get this kind of freedom and prosperity that comes to the Kingdom.

In other words, when we are under the Cheon Il Guk Constitution, we are surrendering to God because it's from God that we receive all these protections. We receive the human rights which are protected by law. We receive the laws that put prohibitions on government, which is also what? A protection for the citizens. That all comes because of God's love, life and lineage. God's lineage. It's a kingship there that has been established by the seed of God and the millennial reign of Christ will ensue. So Jesus is calling this child and the child does come to Him, and the child stays within His midst. The child is surrendered to Him. He says, "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child…." Look at that, He focuses on who shall humble himself, like this little child. But this little child is humble too; a lot of people confuse just acting humble and being humble to God.

Sometimes when you are humble to God, you have to be mean to Satan. Do you understand? Does that make sense? Sometimes when you are obedient to God, you have to be very mean to Satan, to predators, to people trying to destroy you. Demonic, oppressed people who are trying to destroy your family. Predators trying to tear your children apart, your marriage apart. You have to be dangerous towards those forces, does that make sense? But we always interpret this in a relativist way, or a "self-help philosophical" way.

For example, where being humble just means "oh, just being super nice to everybody." No! You can't be super nice to a person who is trying to rape you! You've got to bash his face, you've got to poke his eyes out, you've got to gouge him out, you've got to grab those balls and twist them fifty times till Sunday! [laughter] You understand, you've got to choke him out, if you know jujitsu, you've gotta do whatever you've gotta do. To protect yourself, and to protect your temple. Does that make sense? You're not going to speak nicely to somebody who is trying to destroy you. Okay?

So we cannot mistake this. This child is not only just humble in general. This child is humbled to Christ. That's the real key. So citizens of Cheon Il Guk, there's religious freedom there. But the whole system of law and governance is held together by a clear, clear affirmation of God and the freedom and the gifts which God has given us, which results in this. These are all the results of His gift, His love, His grace. This free and prosperous land that we can live in and be sovereigns in, this is a gift of God's grace, Christ, who returned and set up His kingship and set up His millennial Kingdom. It's the gift of God and grace; do you see what I mean? It's tied together by that. "And whosoever shall offend…." This is very interesting. Then Jesus goes on to go into all these offences. Look at this word, "But whosoever shall offend one of these little children which believeth….." Again, which believe in me, not just any old child. There are some nasty children, right! [laughter] Right? They'll bite your finger off! They need some martial arts training, you know, under a pretty tough master!

So we have "one of these children which believe in me." That's very important, so that the children of God in Cheon Il Guk who are blessed, are surrendered to God; they love God; they have a healthy respect for God; they know where they come from; and they believe in Him.

Now let's look at this word "offence," because this whole thing is very hard to understand if you don't understand this word "offence." Because Jesus goes on to the whole discussion of "woe unto the world because of offences." And "woe to the man who commits offence." Who does offences, right? And then he says, the translations say, "And then if you're foot offends you or your hand offends you, cut it off." "If your eye offends you, cut if off" right? Pluck it out. So many times we are just interpreting this on a personal level, does that make sense? Personal.

So, if I did something wrong, my hand, maybe Jesus is not saying cut it off literally, but he's saying that you really need to guard against the temptations of your hands, or your eyes, or things like this. But let's look at this word, "offence." This is very interesting. This word "offence" is the ancient Greek word "skandalizo." Now this interesting, because this word "skandalizo," look down here [referring to a slide] properly means "to set a snare." That's quite different from the word we mean by offence. If you offend this child, it's better to have a millstone tied around your neck and be thrown into the depth of the sea. 

Well, in the modern language, when you say "offence," liberals are offended by everything! They're offended by the word "mother" and "father," you can't even say mother and father anymore, you have to say partner, partner one, or partner two, right? I'm not joking! So it's not a matter of how you feel about something, or political correctness, you can be offended by anything. Right? What are they telling children? They're telling children, "children, male and female, these are all sociological constructs, and we're all going to all talk to you as purple penguins, some schools are doing this, can you believe this? It's insane. It is literally "Romper Room," "Loony Tunes," "Twilight Zone," insanity.

Because there are quotes saying that male and femaleness, this gender identity is socially constructed, should be deconstructed, etc. etc. When all the studies show that, you put a group of boys together, they make stores and they fight, if you put a group of girls together they tend to make dolls. Every major sociological study about young children. It doesn't matter if you dress them in pink or blue, sociologically, boys tend to like fighting better when their young! That's how they interact with each other.

So they don't want to acknowledge any of the differences between boys and girls, not bad, not good, just differences. Right? But this word here, "skandalizo" means "to cause to stumble" or "to hinder, to set a snare." Now this is very important. So every time we see the word "offence" here, it really means "setting snares." Doesn't that make sense? Setting snares. So we're not going to get mixed up by our modern interpretation of the word "offend." Now look at this. "Whoso therefore shall offend [set snares for] one of these children…." Does that make more sense? If you put "offence," it's kind of ridiculous, it's all subjective. "Skandalizo" -- it means "set snares." Set to destroy these children.

Now when we look at this in the context of the Cheon Il Guk Constitution, the millennial Kingdom, and the coming Kingdom on earth as it in Heaven, on earth, we can see, of course, that Jesus was talking about the greatest in the Kingdom is like these children, he's talking about the children of God, the people, the citizenry, the people of the Kingdom. Because He's talking about the Kingdom of Heaven right here. Okay? In the context of the Kingdom now, "whoso shall set snares for the little ones, or the citizens which believe in me, it would be better for him to have a millstone around his neck, and be thrown into the ocean." Now we know who sets snares for nations. We're not only talking on the personal level now, we're now talking on the meta-level, or the national level. We know who sets snares to take control of nations.

We talked about it last week, remember? The archangel and mammon trap, setting snares. Jesus said you cannot worship God and mammon. You can't do it. You can't worship God, the one true God, Yahweh, Jesus -- which is the combination of Yahweh and Hosanna, Yeshua, which means salvation, Yahweh brings salvation or Yahweh saves.

You cannot worship Yahweh and you cannot worship the god of money. The god of money, worshipping money. So we know that institutions that control money have great power in this world. Great power. We saw the collusion between large financial institutions, centralized institutions like big banks, major privately held conglomerates which then, of course, support every form of socialism. Every form of communism, every form of oligarchy. They don't care, as long as that system is pushing towards an oligarchy or form thereof, they'll support it. So even, for example, modern feminism, when you look at its political purposes, it pushes towards what? Bigger state, bigger state. It's just a simple mechanism.

It's a shroud; the illusion of women empowerment is a simple shroud for communism and socialism, that's all it is. So whether it's feminism, whether it's direct socialism, Marxism, communism, oligarchy --- even whether it's forms of religion like Sharia law, which support dictatorships, sultans, oligarchies support it. Get their aim, because those kinds of systems will support big governments, they will grow big governments, which then become the main client to the big banks. Right? We've talked about this, and this is the real way the world works. This is the real way the world works. 

Big private syndicates help to grow big governments, support ideologies that grow big governments, which then of course create and support large conglomerate companies, big media, etc. All those things which are, of course, then connected. They are like the propaganda wings or partner wings, or front groups of big banks. So it just comes around in big circles. And this is, of course, how they trap innocent children, innocent people of nations. Innocent people who really don't care about this stuff, but just want to live a good life, and want to help people and raise a beautiful family, and want to get married and raise children, and just live a simple life --- free from entanglements, etc., things like that, right? This is how they're trapped, populations are trapped.

So when we look in the context of Cheon Il Guk, we see that the socialist systems ensnare the children. They ensnare children, they ensnare young minds, notice how always those ideologies that support big government are pushed on young children. That's why they love centralized education, right? Because they can force you to learn it, learn what? A form of socialism, of communism. Young kids are so brain dead now, they just call it, "ooh, it's democratic socialism." "Oh, ok, yeah, that's different from socialism." [laughter] This is how brain dead they have made young people. You have a presidential candidate on the Democratic side who openly says he's a democratic socialist. And you have all these young people saying, "Yeaaaah. Yeah, that's democracy, baby!" But this is how dumbed down the Western children have become.

So, taking offence, this is setting snares to take over the truly free. Now look at this, the child that Jesus had in his midst --- what would Jesus want from that child? Would Jesus want that child to be put in a snare, put in a yoke and be a slave to big, big institutions? Is that the purpose for that child's life from the position of God? Is it His purpose for that child to be a slave to some kind of archangelic figure? No, of course not. His purpose for that child is for that child to, of course, bring joy to Him, bring glory to Him, but also to manifest all the different gifts Jesus gave to him. Right? To manifest all the different gifts, blessings, creativity, innovations, you know, things that will help people. Living for the sake of others, serving others, these kinds of things to be actualized. To become somebody who protects other people, who protects the innocent and the young. Somebody who becomes responsible, who can have a powerful marriage, and the covenant of marriage with God. 

Who can raise wonderful and strong kids who are not slaves, but a new generation that is empowered to be free and responsible. If you were the Creator, which one would you prefer? Making your creation to be yoked slaves to archangels, or people with just huge private cartels, or for that child to be empowered, to be strong, to learn how to become independent and interdependent, to be able to benefit other peoples' lives, to be able to benefit society, to be able to contribute with powerful marriages, raising the next generation in those stable four position foundation homes, where love and respect reside? If you were the Creator, which one would you prefer? Obviously, any loving God would prefer the empowerment of those children.

So "woe unto the world because of offences." Woe unto the world because of what? Of setting snares. Does that make sense? The world is God's kingdom right now, or is it Satan's kingdom right now? So Jesus says, curse the world, the world is Satan's kingdom, it's full of snares. Isn't that what he said? Society in general, populations, if they are not aware of freedom and responsibility, and they do not protect their freedom and responsibility, guess what's going to happen folks? You get put in a snare. You will get snared, if you do what, any of those forms of socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it, it can be called "women empowerment," whatever you want to call it, it's just you have to be able to see what is the political agenda of your movement. Don't get sucked into movements because they seem trendy or cool. That's stupid; you have to be able to see what is your objective as a movement? And you can see every single one of those lead to socialism or communism. Those are snares to destroy civilization. To put that country into this system. Into that system of being under the foot of private cartels.

Now, "wherefore if thy hand or foot offends thee, cut them off." Now that's interesting because it seems like Jesus is changing subjects now, now it's "if your hand or your foot offends you, you've got to cut it off." That seems like a very personal thing now. Isn't that interesting? But this is one thing we have to understand about the Kingdom and the dynamic of a Kingdom, which is a nation that has politics, it has economics, it has civilization, it has poetry, art, it has all those things, but it’s a real place. Right? Jesus said, pray every day. Who's praying every day? Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done. Who prays that every day? Jesus said pray it every day; he said you should pray every day for His Kingdom to come, on earth as it is in Heaven, every day. Pray for the Kingdom every day.

Now it says, "Wherefore if thy hand offend thee, cut it off." So we usually think, ok, if my hand causes me to sin, many times the translation is "trespasses," or cause the sin, now look at the actual word, it says "set snares." Right? So if your hand causes you to set snares, get rid of it! If your eye causes you to set snares, pluck it out. Because why? You will be cast into fire, you will be cast into hell by it, you will be separated from God. Now look at this in terms of real political ideology, which is freedom and responsibility or socialism, communism, oligarchy etc. Same mobs, same gangs over here, okay? Same philosophy. It's the same gangbangers on this side, okay? Whatever you want to call them, socialism, oligarchy, what is it? Communism. Same gangbangers are on that side. Same mafia, okay?

"If your hand or your foot cause you…." Now look, when we are young, we are pummeled, pummeled by society. Pummeled in every direction, by constant propaganda. You can watch TV for just a short bit and you'll see how much propaganda is there, constantly supporting how great the President is, or how great centralized government is, or how great education is, how great the education system is and educators are really respectable people when many of them are five times more likely to be atheist. Many, many more times likely to be socialist or communist in universities than the regular population. So the people who are the quote, educators of American youth, they are not representative of actual Americans. They have a much higher percentage of being communist and a much higher percentage of being atheist! Isn't that interesting? So if we are influenced by those things and those things cause us to set traps, right? Because when we spew, when we are foolish and dumb and get brainwashed by those things and start spewing those things, we don't understand that we will start influencing others to what? To go to Satan's side.

We will start setting traps for them when we are thinking we are educated or we think we are enlightened because we learned under this "educator" "I'm so smart, I'm special, I'm an elite." Right? Then what happens? We start setting snares for people, we start looking at them as debased, people that we need to control, not release to be free and responsible, but to control, right? If we become those types of people, if our bodies and our mechanisms and our eyes and our minds and our hands and feet become those things, we have to separate. Jesus said it's better for you to separate from them, separate from that because that path is going to lead you and others to hell.

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