Hi Mike,

I would also like to know if you can point me to an explanation of Jdg 19. I am having trouble with that one. I see that this is what happens when there is no Christ (king) in us (the land), but the meaning of the concubine being raped and her division into 12 parts is confusing. I also am not quite getting why the man who threw her out the door to save his own skin and then cuts her up is let off the hook of this story. He is supposed to love this woman, and frankly his behavior is less understandable than the crazed mob outside the door.

Abraham kind of threw Sarah under the bus in the same way when he gave her to the Pharaoh to save his own skin.

BUT I’m avoiding my real issue — I have read your unequally yoked papers and I have listened to so many of your teachings that I have a feeling I will know your response.

So my question about the unequally yoked is — What is a believer? Does a believer have to have all the truth? I left the church a very long time ago.

I am the mother of three teenage boys, but I am certainly unequally yoked with them. I came to the truth far too late to mold their beliefs although I do teach them. They are little rebellious Egyptians just like I was at their age, and I know God is the one who has to use the rod and lead them to Him, because I’ve got little control in that area. But yes, I do teach and know they listen. They are all almost men.

I very much want to be in the first resurrection. I don’t know what I’m hoping for here. I know that scripture is not ecumenical, but am confused where the line is drawn for blasphemous heresy.  After reading a lot of Jukes lately, I am still confused about what you would say about his wrong and right interpretations. I just love Types in Genesis, but I do see where he goes off the wrong way. But I could never call Jukes a blasphemous heretic and don’t think you would either.

Thanks so much for your teaching on numbers, colors and metals because you have so opened up the OT for me… but that Jdg 19 is a sticky one.

C____

Hi C___,
It is so good to hear from you! You ask me about what a believer is:

So my question about the unequally yoked is — What is a believer? Does a believer have to have all the truth.”

No one has ever had ‘all the truth.’ Believers are the ‘many called’ carnal ‘babes in Christ’, but ‘disciples indeed’ are the few chosen. God’s Word is far too deep for that to occur in a life that “appears for a moment, then vanishes away.”

Jas 4:14  Whereas ye know not what [ shall be] on the morrow. For what [ is] your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

I learn more of God’s Truth with every single Bible study. I can truly say that the more I learn, the more it appears to me is yet to be learned.

On this subject of being unequally yoked together with unbelievers we need to remember that the sum of God’s Word is truth. So first let’s look at the verse to which you are alluding:

2Co 6:14  Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
2Co 6:15  And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
2Co 6:16  And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in [ them]; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
2Co 6:17  Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean [ thing]; and I will receive you,
2Co 6:18  And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

What I am getting at is the fact that the people who killed Jesus were “Jews that believed on Him.”

Joh 8:31  Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, [ then] are ye my disciples indeed;
Joh 8:37  I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.
 
Joh 8:39  They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
Joh 8:40  But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.
Joh 8:41  Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, [ even] God.
Joh 8:42  Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
Joh 8:43  Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.
Joh 8:44  Ye are of [ your] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Do you see where Christ says “I know you are Abraham’s seed…” and then turns right around and says “If you were Abraham’s seed…?” Personally I cannot help but notice such things. What Christ is telling us is that there is a vast difference between being a disciple and a “disciple indeed.” There is a world of difference between a “carnal… babe in Christ,” and a “spiritual… son of God.”

Christ is showing us just how sharply the carnal mind contrasts with and contradicts the mind of the spirit. ‘You are Abraham’s physical children but you are not Abraham’s children spiritually.’

Because I see these things, I am accused of “believing in contradictions,” but the true contradictors are those who “do not understand my speech… Why do [ they] not understand my speech? even because you cannot understand my word.”

Any ambivalence will be burned out of anyone who is in the first resurrection. Christ knows very well whether Sandi means more to me than He does, and if she does then I will not be in that “blessed and holy first resurrection. Christ was crystal clear about what were the requirements of that resurrection:

Mat 22:37  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Rev 3:15  I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
Rev 3:16  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Pro 8:17  I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.
Jer 29:13  And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

All of that is condensed into this one verse:

Mat 10:39  He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

So it really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks but God. God knows your heart, and He will play second fiddle to no one.

I am a married man, and I have women friends. I hope that you are one of them. A Christian who not only calls Christ ‘Lord, Lord,’ but who actually does “do all of His commandments’ is the best friend anyone could ever have. Christ was Mary’s best friend in the world, and yet there was nothing wrong with that friendship at all. He was certainly a very good friend in need to the woman caught in the very act of adultery.

The way these hypocritical  Jews brought that poor woman to be stoned without the man who was caught with her “in the very act,” brings me to your second question about the concubine and her husband in Jdg 19.

Jdg 19:29 And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, [ together] with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.

Just look at the state of the whole nation of Israel in that story. The husband of that concubine was a Levite; not a priest, but a Levite. I hope you have heard the study on the temple and The Priests, The Levites, and The Camp of Israel. The Levites represent our spiritual condition in Babylon. We actually bear the things of the tabernacle, but at that point in our walk we are not allowed into the holy place where the sons of Aaron were actually allowed into God’s presence.

So we are told this man was a Levite, close to being a priest, but not a priest, and not allowed to come into God’s presence upon pain of death.
That ‘concubine’ was a ‘concubine’ simply because that is the way we treat Christ. We say we ‘keep all His commandments’ but we don’t, and therefore we aren’t quite His wife, but a concubine.

You mention Abraham giving up Sarah to save his own life, the truth is that Abraham did that twice. He was rebuked by Pharaoh and God for what he did with the Pharaoh and then he went back to Caanan and did the exact same thing again with Abimelech, the Philistine King of Gerar. And to demonstrate just how we are all guilty of throwing Christ to the Jews and cursing that we do not even know the man, we are told that Isaac also did the same thing with Rebecca and the next generation Abimelech, King of Gerar.

Several hundred years later Abraham’s decendants had taken the land and were still living under the judges. Had the kingdom  improved over all those years? No, it had not. The fact of the matter is that “wicked men and seducers had waxed worse and worse.” This story is not far from the end of the book of Judges, and I want you to see how this book ends:

This story is in the 19th chapter. There are but two more chapters in the book of Judges. Here is the last verse of the book of Judges:

Jdg 21:25  In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

“Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” That is exactly what ecumenical orthodox Christianity does. God’s Word is made to say whatever “that great city wherein our Lord was crucified” wants it to say.

When I was drafted into the Viet Nam war, my Assemblies of God minister and a Pentecostal minister, men I really looked up to at that time, gave me a very ambivalent answer when I sought their counsel. Both men gave me the same answer when I asked them if I should go and fight for my country. Their answer was “Whatever you decide, we will support you. You can be either a soldier or a conscientious objector, and we will support you.”

And that is where that concubine is today. But that concubine is just part of what this story tells us about ourselves. And that is what this is all about. The whole story is all about what is in us. We are the concubine who plays the harlot, we are a Levite who is forbidden from touching His golden doctrines or coming into His golden presence. We are like the father of the concubine, who by our own lifestyle, teach our children to party rather than become responsible grown- up children.  In our spiritually dead condition we still see ourselves as too good to mix with the pagans in Jerusalem. After all we are Levites who bear the implements of the tabernacle. We are the homosexual perverts of Gibeah of Benjamin, who are willing to rape a woman to death if we can’t satisfy our utter depravity.

And through it all we see ourselves as God’s elect. We are so very righteous that we really ought to discipline those depraved people of Gibeah, just because we are so much closer to God that we would never do such a dastardly thing as raping a man’s concubine to death. No, we are much too righteous to do such a sinful thing. We might give our wife to a pervert to save our own worthless necks but we are not that sinful woman caught in the very act of adultery. We are not that lowly Publican, prodigal son, or woman at the well with five husbands and now living with a man who is not her husband. We see ourselves as above all of that. But the fact of the matter is we are all of those sinning people at one time or another in our lives before Christ starts living in us.

Do you doubt that this entire story is talking to you and to me about what is in every one of us at our own appointed time? If you do, then please look at these two verses of God’s Word. There is but one reason any of this happened, and there is but one reason why it was written down:

1Co 10:11 And all these things as types did happen to those persons, and they were written for our admonition, to whom the end of the ages did come, (YLT)

These things happened and they were written “as types” of us and for our admonition. The overwhelming message of this story is how low we can go, all the while feeling so superior. But Christ comes to us in our exposed, wretched condition and tells us “neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.” Yet we tell ourselves that we have “never blasphemed the name of God and we will never experience His wrath.”

That is what Jdg 19 is all about. It is a story about the kingdom of Israel within each of us, the kingdom of God at that ‘lead, tin, iron and copper’ stage of His work with each of us.

It is all within simply because “the kingdom of God is within you,” and that kingdom is being prepared for its birth from Gen 1:1 to Rev 22:21. It is “every word” part of “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” If that is not so then none of these verses are true:

Eph 2:1  And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
Eph 2:2  Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
Eph 2:3  Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

“We were all, in time past, children of disobedience, and by nature children of wrath even as others.” All who say otherwise are nothing more than self- righteous Levites who see nothing wrong with throwing their own wife to the dogs.

Mat 4:4  But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Where do we live “every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God?

Luk 17:20  And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Luk 17:21  Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

God’s Is, Was and Will Be kingdom “is within you,” and only those who have that kingdom within them while yet in “this vessel of clay” will ever “rule over… the kingdoms of this world.” Only those who realize that “the kingdom of God is within you” will ever understand that “the time is at hand [ to] live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” and that every word  must be lived out in these marred vessels of clay:

Rev 1:3  Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

We must keep “every word” of “those things which are written therein: because the time is at hand.”

“This generation will not pass away until all these things shall be fulfilled” is true for “He that reads and hears the words of this prophecy” in every generation since Christ.

Mat 24:34  Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.  

But while many are called, very few are given ears to hear or eyes to see “those things which are written therein.” Rather for most, God’s entire word, including Jdg 19, is still “sealed with seven seals.”

2Co 3:14  But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.

While the whole orthodox Christian world is trying to get a handle on God’s time- line for the future, thinking that is what the book of Revelation is all about, this is what Christ Himself says about such a doctrine and such a mindset:

Mat 6:34  Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Rev 22:7  Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.

Does any of that, or any other scripture, put God’s emphasis anywhere but on the I Am, the ‘Is’ part of our Lord and His Word? Here is what the scriptures call ‘prophecy:’

1Co 14:3  But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.

You asked if I considered Andrew Juke to be a heretic. I could never call Jukes a blasphemous heretic and don’t think you would either”

I have given you all the scriptures which reveal what is required of those who will be in the first resurrection. What I did not give you is this part of God’s Word on that question:

Luk 12:47  And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not [ himself], neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.
Luk 12:48  But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

It is obvious to me that Andrew Jukes was simply not given eyes to see this verse of God’s word:

Rom 2:28  For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:

Andrew Jukes was forced out of the church of England simply because he refused to agree that the Queen of His day was the head of all things both spiritual and political, yet he always considered himself part of that church even as he declared the Catholic church to be apostate. I have many of his letters in my possession which reveal that he believed in the immortality of our spirits and several other disappointing doctrines. And yet God gave him a gift to see so much in the types and shadows of Genesis and in the laws of the offerings.

You said:

I very much want to be in the first resurrection.”

I do, too. I have prayed many times for the Lord to do with me whatever it takes to be in that “blessed and holy” resurrection. To that end I hope I have given you some “words of edification, exhortation and comfort.”

Your brother in Christ,
Mike >