Goats and Sheep

Having raised both goats and sheep I may see something different in the message of the parable where Jesus talks about goats and sheep, separating them out and eventually sending the goats to some sort of everlasting torment.

Wow! So what is the difference between goats and sheep in this parable?

The main focus of this division seems to be the activities of the goats and sheep. Some he calls iniquitous and others seem to be based on love and charity.

We should not get charity and giving stuff away mixed up. Because Paul talks about giving but still not having charity.

Well it is easier to understand if we know that the word we see as charity when Paul says it is translated Love when Christ says it. Just giving is not always love.

So why goats and sheep?

Many animals like cows, goats and sheep are herd animals and have a social structure within that herd. Both goats and sheep know the shepherd and both will gather together.

Sheep will follow the shepherd and hear his voice. Range sheep will band together as one flock but even within that flock there will be small groups.

But goats while they will come together they are sometimes too independent. They know the shepherd but they will also look for greener pastures to the point that they may start deciding for themselves which way to go. They will ignore the shepherd and go off the path where he leads them.

The straying goat will go where the shepherd says not to go and they will challenge the wisdom of his staff.

If you put them in a rich lush field with green grass and water they will invariably stick their head through the fence to get to the other side.

The kingdom at hand and the righteousness of God we are to be seeking—which was preached by Christ and Paul for the living—is simple. You need to repent and you should pray to your Father in heaven for the daily bread or benefits and rewards and grace and mercy you desire or need. Not to the “fathers of the earth”. Jesus said so. Do you know who the fathers of the earth are?

We should all know why the Corban of the Pharisees made the word of God to none effect. Why did Jesus say he would take the kingdom away from the Pharisees and appoint it to a bunch of different Jews we call the apostles and then tell them at the same time not to be like "the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors."?

• "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." -- by Plutarch.

There are lots of ideas around that could cause our liberty in Christ to be spoiled And men who call themselves benefactors are often part of that problem.

Who are the men who call themselves benefactors but exercise authority one over the other? Those are men who take from your neighbor to provide you with benefits based on the authority some one gave them. It was not God who gave them that authority but men who made agreements with them that granted them power.

They are rulers who offer benefits that are paid for by exercising authority over your neighbors. At that time rulers in Judea and throughout the world offered benefits through systems of “Qorban” by exercising authority rather than by charity. Christ did not. Christians would not do that. They did it by charity alone. They would not sign up for free bread or meat or cheese or any of the give away program of Rome or Judea.

People may ask, "How do we covet our neighbor's goods?" Let us look at something simple. I have six children who could have gone to public school. That would have cost the government nearly half a million dollars. During that time I might have paid 40,000 in property tax. Doing simple math the extra $450,000 has to come from somewhere. Who is going to pay the rest of that cost?

We know the governments of the world do not pay it. The government exercises authority over my neighbors and forces them to pay it. I am not saying that the government does not have the right to force them to pay it...for they surely do. Why they do have that right is another matter but let's keep it simple. I am not saying the people do not have a right to send their children to those schools...for they surely do. What I am saying is that if anyone is to say they believe in and follow Christ and therefore seek to be a Christian it “shall not be so” with them. A Christian by policy, if they are a follower of Christ, is to be seeking and believing in what Christ told them to do and not do.

This has nothing to do with "saved by grace" or "works." It has to do with repentance. Repentance has to do with direction. If a “Christian” is a follower of Christ then they need to be going in the direction Christ said to go.

I do not understand how someone could desire benefits of men who exercise authority one over the other without coveting their neighbor's goods because that is where the benefits come from. If we all did that soon the country would be bankrupt and our children would be cursed with paying the debt to those men who call themselves benefactors.

Oh! Wait that has already happened. :-)

Not only that but they keep taking the benefits after they know that there is no money to provide those benefits. All benefits of all governments of the world are the result of borrowing money from those who will have to pay it back in the future. What they trusted in was Not So Secure.

• “Regarding Social Security, today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much ‘free’ stuff as the political system will permit them to extract.” - California State Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown.

Not only our neighbor but our neighbor's children will have to pay back this debt due to our appetite for gifts, gratuities and benefits. Are we not cursing our children with debt. We seem to want to turn a blind eye to the blood that will be shed because of our own greed.

Now we can take that simple knowledge that these benefits we seek come from men who exercise authority and not the charity or the perfect law of liberty Paul talks about and those he was writing to were standing in. Look at the myriad of benefits offered by the rulers of the world including health care, old age pensions, disability, etc. Why are we not getting these benefits through the Church like the early Christians did. Or like many Christians did just a hundred years ago?

Why? Because “...certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.” Jude 1:4 The word lasciviousness means unbridled desire for benefit. There are hundreds of references to this precept.

One is my personal favorites is Proverbs 23:1 “When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what [is] before thee: And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.” But then there is the “one purse” in Proverbs 1:10-19 which is clearly about socialism. The United States has become a more and more a socialist state. As has the rest of the world. The Church appointed by Christ does less and less of what it was told to do by Christ. Is there any wonder the world is on the brink of such disaster.

Has anyone figured out who the fathers of the earth are and why we should not be applying/praying to them for our daily bread or any other benefit provided at the expense of our neighbors through the exercising of authority.

I am sure that those who Jesus will say “depart from me” also "sincerely believed" they were believers in Christ. The problem was they were wrong about what they sincerely believed. "Sincerely believing” and a couple of bucks might get you a cup of coffee somewhere but it wont get you saved. How does one know they sincerely believe? Because they repeat it over and over.

You have to believe in the real Christ, not one you make up by picking and choosing what Christ said, nor by dividing Christ's message into one for Jews and one for gentiles. There is one God and one gospel although many parts to that gospel. Jesus was speaking to his apostles who were to take the gospel to the whole world when he said we were not to be like the governments of the gentiles who exercise authority one over the other.

No one here is suggesting that we have to be perfect or without sin. We are talking about direction and seeking the ways of Christ. It is not the ways of Christ, the prophets or God to force your neighbor to contribute to your welfare through men who exercise authority and if you are doing that as a matter of personal policy as socialists do then you are not following Christ nor believing in his way.

It is simply not loving your neighbor or the ways of God and Christ to desire to be benefited by forcing your neighbor to contribute to your welfare like they did in Babylon, Egypt, etc.

It has nothing to do with being gentile or Jew or Israel. These are the basics of love. These is the basics of charity and it is not charity to force people to give.

1 Corinthians 13:2 “And though I have [the gift of] prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.”

1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these [is] charity.” Of course when Jesus uses that word or charity they always translated it love.

And we were told not to covet what is thy neigbor's by everyone from Moses to Paul. But people who want to believe they believe will ignore that and continue in their iniquity of applying to men who exercise authority one over the other and devouring widows' houses as we see in Mark 12:40 “Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.”

How many people have lost their homes because they could not fulfill the appetite for benefits by people who went to Church but wanted more and more benefits from men who exercise authority to provide those benefits? This should be simple to understand. Wantonness or charity and love?

There are two basic words translated into “iniquity” in the Bible but they both mean unrighteousness.

That is very simple and not hard to understand. Where does it say Christ came to give us license for an unrighteous way of life? Christ did not die so the pig could return to his mire and the dog to his vomit. This is why Peter warns you in 2 Peter 2:3 "And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not."

And why we are to "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Galatians 5:1

And why Peter goes on in 2 Peter 2:20 to say "For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning."

Jude 1:11 “Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.” But according to the do-nothing gospel that has crept into the Modern Church there is no woe. As soon as you mention repentance they jump on the not-by-works bandwagon. But repentance is not about works. It is about direction. It is about the way of Christ versus some other way. Christ's way is love. The world's way is force. So do you believe in forcing your neighbor to provide you with benefits or do you believe in the love of Christ?

I know Modern Christians want to think they believe and they are following the doctrines of Christ but if they have strayed from that doctrine it is our obligation in love to point that out.

All I am doing is showing everyone how Modern Christians and many others do covet their neighbor's goods in order to get benefits at their neighbor's expense by way of men who exercise authority one over the other.

That is simple to see and you see it everywhere in all nations.

Even Paul told us not to covet. So what is the beef? And the other point is that Christians were persecuted because they would not sign up for those benefits which is clear from history and the warnings of Paul. But all this is helping write another article that exposes this false, do-nothing gospel interpretation of Paul who was actually doing what Christ said and who was writing to people who were doing what Christ said.