Bible Qualifiers
First, we should look whether
Jesus used the Word “saint” in any context to understand what is meant by it. It
has not been recorded that Jesus ever said the word, “saint” even in any language.
One thing that so many forget is
that Jesus is God in the Flesh, and that pre-incarnate Jesus is the Word of
God. So, when Father God says things, the things are the Voice of Jesus. What
does the Word say about saints?
Daniel,
in a night vision, saw the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man together. One of
them said that “The saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess
the kingdom forever, even for ever and ever” (Dan 7:18).
The
Ancient of Days is a colloquialism that points toward the Creator God, Yahweh,
and the “Son of Man” points toward Jesus.
In his vision, Daniel saw that
Jesus and the Father came together as one. He saw the godhead as one Being. As
John explained, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God” (John 1:1). Daniel saw that the Word (Jesus) was God, and that
“Man” used the word “saint.”
But no, he did not! English would
not be spoken for thousands of years later. The Word spoke, “qadis,” the
Hebrew translated as “saints.”
The evidence suggests that an ancient
form of Hebrew was the first written words. [1] Daniel is believed to have
written the book bearing his name. He wrote what he heard spoken in his night
vision, and he identified that Being as the Word of God.
The Word said, “qadis.” It
was spoken by the mouth of God. However, it was not Hebrew! It was spoken in
Aramaic.
Jesus spoke Aramaic and
demonstrated His fluency while on the cross. That qadis is Aramaic is
evidence that Daniel heard Jesus even before he was birthed, so for all
practical purposes, Jesus said “saints” in Aramaic, and perhaps Daniel heard a
Voice from the future just as he claimed when he compared the Son of Man to the
Ancient of days.
In his dream, Daniel, in effect,
saw the past and the future become one from whom the Word came. He saw the “Alpha
and Omega” (Rev 1:18) together as One Divine Existence. He saw that the beginning
and the ending were the same Existence.
The evidence, therefore, is that
pre-incarnate Jesus said “qadis.” Therefore, in English, “saints” are
the “holy ones”
It is written in both the Old and
New Testaments, “You shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy” or words
to that effect in other places (Lev 19:2; 1 Pet 1:16). Not by coincidence, “holy”
is “qados” in that passage; it too perhaps in Aramaic. He means “sanctified”
or “consecrated” (made sacred) in the English… set apart from the world.
Of
course, the Law referred to eating things that crept on the face of the
Earth, but one passage is more general… to be sanctified requires abstention
from some thing, to wit: “You shall not make yourselves
abominable with any creeping thing that creeps, neither shall you make
yourselves unclean with them, that you should be defiled thereby” (Lev 11:43).
It seems here that we have
wandered into the realm of science fiction or even mythology, but bear with me
while I explore that specific Law.
We are getting closer to defining
a “saint.” It is staying away from creeping things. Those are things which
are representative of the “Serpent” — the first “creeping Thing.” How so?
“The Lord God said unto the Serpent,
‘Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every
beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go.” (Gen 3:14).
Now consider when the Serpent was
cast down. Remembering that Satan (the Serpent) entered Judas, (Luke 22:3), and
that Judas fell from the tree in which he had hanged himself (Mat 27:5), then soon
after, “falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels
gushed out” (Acts 1:18).
“Abomination” is doing things that
are disgusting. The disgusting thing that Judas did was to submit himself to
Satan for the love of money. Then, at the death of Judas his “bowels” gushed out.
How disgusting!
The Greek word translated “bowels”
also means his “inward affection.” Therein it seems that Satan, “the object of
his affection,” was shed (ekcheo).
That is not to say that his bowels
did not gush out, but the “creeping thing” was shed of him. Some ancient works
of art show the demon, Satan, being expelled from the side of Judas.
Figure
1: Disembowelment of Judas;
PottyPadre
Association with the creeping
thing was the sin of Judas. The love of money, literally the love of the things
of the world, was the cause and the effect that Judas became the “son of the Satan,”
as the affection for Jesus was lost due to the love of the things of the world.
“Holiness” is the love of God and
His principles: to love Him and others (Mat 22:36-40). Since “love of money is the
root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10), then love of the world, rather than affection
for God, is the root cause of disentanglement (apostasia) with God.
According to the psalm, Judas was
the “familiar friend” of Jesus. They each had affection for one another. Jesus
kept his affection for Judas, but when he sold out Jesus for money, Judas defected
(apostasia; as in Heb 6:6) from Him.
The prophets and apostles were “saints.” John the Baptist was a saint since he dismissed him self in favor of Jesus. He took up his cross (the blade of Herod) and preceded Jesus to death and was perhaps one of the “saints” that was resurrected along with Jesus:
The graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. (Mat 27:52-53)
Judas was an “Antichrist;” a holy
thing that had returned to his roots and Satan made him an awful thing
again. Some would say that he could not lose his salvation, but he did
not lose it; he had his path to salvation blocked. Judas gave up his salvation
for love of the things of the world. He valued thirty pieces of silver above
Jesus and salvation.
Just as the wage of sin is death, the unmerited wage of God is eternal life (Rom 6:23). To obtain the wage of sin requires a sinner to die and to obtain the wage of holiness requires death as well as Paul so eloquently wrote:
Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain., but if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. (Phil 1:20-22)
Did it require any miracles for Paul
to become a saint? Did he change water into wine or overcome the world? His only
credential for sainthood was magnifying Christ both in his life until his death
— he lived for Christ and that made him a “saint” in death.
Paul was not always in
Christ because he held some Christians captive to be murdered.
All
the apostles, including Judas, were in Christ as they followed Him
wherever he went. Soon, Satan tempted Judas with money, and he stole from the
treasury (John 12:6).
Judas
could have been forgiven for that, but before long he no longer followed Jesus
but the money.
That could have been Paul, but he
was elsewhere. Paul was never captivated by money but protected his God in the
only way he knew how at the time… by violence.
Anyone of the apostles could have
been the traitor who defected from Christ, but Satan got into him through the
things of the world.
Judas died a sinner. All the others died as “saints.” It did not matter what they were all their lives but what they were at the moment of their own death. Jesus implied that with a parable:
Take that yours is and go your way: I will give unto this last, even as unto you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is your eye evil, because I am good? So, the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. (Mat 20:14-16)
On the other hand, Judas became an
apostle last among the original twelve. Somehow God knew the Plan and even made
it happen with His foreknowledge. Although the eleven chose the replacement for
Judas — Matthias — Jesus chose Saul whose name he changed to Paul.
Saint Mathias disappeared from
history while Paul became the primary messenger for Christ. Mathias was chosen
by lot (chance) whereas Paul was chosen by the glorified Jesus.
Hence, Jesus chose the apostles,
and neither man nor chance, and He chooses saints as well! The Church, even the
Roman Ecclesia, could never choose apostles and could never choose saints. The
apostles became saints when they died in Christ, them not in Christ in
the beginning or for the duration, but to whom they belonged when they
died.
Judas belonged to Jesus from the
beginning, but in the ending, he belonged to Satan. Missed in the English is
that something happened inwardly to the man who once had goodwill for Jesus.
Acts
1:18 refers to Judas as “this man” (outos). Judas was no longer just a “man”
because outos means only “this.” He had lost his identity as an “anthropoid”
(Greek; anthropos) which is Greek for “man.”
Judas became the “creeping thing”
and was no longer an anthropoid, at least inwardly, because his image had
changed from lovingkindness to cunning in a long process of reconversion. He
was destined for sainthood but the “creeping thing” interfered. He became a “creeping
thing” genetically.
That
too is hidden in the English version.
The word “falling” in the death
of Judas may be actual falling, but at least the ancient artists, did not think
so. Note that Judas is depicted as still hanging in all the artwork that I have
seen as in the picture above.
Perhaps Judas did not physically
fall but, “ginomai,” according to the Greek, meaning that he was “divided”
genetically. He became like Cain of the Wicked One. In other words, once in
Christ and like Christ, Judas’s nature changed and he became like the Devil,
thus fulfilling the “creeping thing” of Levitical Law.
Indeed, that was a stretch, but
it does correspond with Levitical Law which implies to be like Christ, not like
the Serpent. At his death, Judas was like the creeping thing within him. On the
other hand, Paul was like the erect (on the Cross) Anthropoidal Man who was God
within.
Paul was in Christ; he had Christ
in him even though he fell to sin occasionally because of the weakness of his
flesh.
Jesus issued a warning for
Christians, “Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation; the spirit
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mat 26:41). Judas heard that warning.
He was a “familiar friend” of Jesus and selected to be a saint. He fell into
temptation and in falling his nature was changed; and rather than a son of God,
his “father was the devil” (John 8:44).
Paul was not a saint until he
died because that was his gain. He was glorified with sainthood, so that he was
like Christ within. He had the Image of God within in the same sense as Adam
before he died.
When Christ died, the Bible says
that some of the saints before him arose with him at the Resurrection of Jesus.
Those “saints” were dead, and surely they included not only John the Baptist
but Adam as well.
Because God had grace on Adam
with the Edenic Covenant, Adam died a saint although he lived a sinner, as the Books
of Adam and Eve reveal. [2]
Indeed, perhaps to be a “saint”
requires death for Christ. However, it does not require Christians to perform
miracles, but for God to work His miracles with us; that at death, we die in
Christ and not die with the gens of the creeping thing within us. That
is “born again” (John 3:7) — engendered from God above.
Rebirth
is the beginning, but what we are at death glorifies us to be in the
Image of God. Our gain at death is glorification and the time that we are
saints and with Christ.
That
seems complicated, so let me make it simple: You must be within like Christ
when you die to ever become a “saint.” What you were yesterday is of no
concern, salvation is always what you are now, or has Paul said it, “Now is the
accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). Your last
now is the one that counts; there is no past in God’s time.
The grace of God is that you are
not favored by what you were but what you are at death when the Angel of God
comes for you; you must have the blood of the Lamb within you on that last
night to become a saint.
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