Feetwashing is ignored by the churches

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Jesus introduced the practice of footwashing at the last supper. He wanted to inform Peter about a deep mystery that Peter had no chance of understanding at that stage. But Peter would learn about it later.

Paul told us about the last supper, but did not mention the footwashing as it was not an issue to Paul. At that stage he knew what it was about, and he was already implementing what it meant.

Let us see what Jesus said about footwashing.

John 13:4   He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.

:5     After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.

:6     Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?

:7   Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.

Peter did not understand. This act was not to show humility as Peter could understand humility. This act was not to wash the outside dirt off their feet. Peter could understand that idea. The dust was washed off their feet before they came into the room, in order to keep the floor clean. But here, supper was over. They had been in the room for a long time. Their feet had already been washed when they came in.

Jesus was trying to point them to a much deeper issue that He could not explain to them at that time.

But Peter would learn about it later.

What did Peter have to learn?

So what was it that Peter was so biased against?

All the Jews were waiting for Messiah. Jesus was the best candidate to be their Messiah. But Messiah’s role, in the eyes of the Jews, would be to kick all the Gentiles out of Israel so the Jews could govern themselves. Samson had killed 1000 Philistines with his supernatural strength. Gideon had crushed a massive Midianite army with only 300 men. Moses had destroyed the Egyptian super power of that day by just using a shepherd’s staff that produced ten plagues and gave him full control over the Red Sea. So the Jewish disciples were very keen to see how effectively their Messiah could smash the Gentile armies of Rome.

The Jews wanted to see the Gentile Romans destroyed, and only pure Jews living in Israel as the only nation that actually served God.

To try to explain to the Jewish disciples at that stage that they were to take the Gospel to the Gentiles would have been impossible.  The Gentiles were seen as the enemy. In their minds surely the Messiah's role would be to boot out the Romans.

Peter also could not understand the key to the Gospel, which would be the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The disciples fled when Jesus was arrested. Only John appeared at the cross. All the disciples were convinced that His death was the end of His amazing ministry.

The Gentile Romans killed Jesus. That made the Gentiles, especially the Romans, even bigger enemies.

Peter also had no clue about the Holy Ghost baptism and the power, and knowledge, and energy that the Holy Ghost would breathe into the early church. Peter had no clue how much the Holy Ghost could change the thinking of a person. How cowards hiding in an upper room could suddenly become brave and hold a massive open air evangelistic service in the streets.

But the main lesson that Peter had to learn was that God was moving away from the Jews and turning to the Gentiles.

For that lesson, God would use the Gentile Cornelius, and Jesus would ask Peter three questions after His resurrection.  We will come back to that.

John 13:8     Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.

Foot washing is thus linked to salvation and evangelism. People can't get saved unless evangelists and missionaries go out to get them converted. To be part of the Body of Jesus (the true church) you have to be saved by accepting Jesus as your personal Saviour. Then the Holy Ghost baptism enables Jesus to take control of us.

There was much that Jesus wanted to teach them. But He had to wait until they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

John 16:12   I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

:13      Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:

Only the Holy Spirit can make the Word of God understandable to us.

Ephesians 5:25   Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

:26   That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

The Word of God tells us what we should do and what we should not do. Thus the Word cleanses us as it washes away all our bad habits and opinions. Living a holy life based on Scripture keeps us clean.

John 13:9     Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.

If the Word cleanses us then Peter wanted his head (the source of his thoughts) and hands (the source of his works) to be cleansed as well. This makes sense if Peter was thinking of himself. But Jesus was not thinking of Peter’s personal wants and needs. Jesus had a much deeper vision in mind.

:10     Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.

The cleansing of the waters of the Word only applies to the feet, nowhere else.

This means that what Jesus is thinking has nothing to do with Peter as a person. If only Peter's feet are clean then the rest of his physical body will not be clean. Jesus is thinking of something far deeper.

This is confirmed by His statement, that not all the disciples are clean. He is obviously referring to Judas and his future sin of betrayal that he had already negotiated with the Jewish leaders. So the cleansing of the water does not refer to washing dirt from Peter’s feet. It is the washing away of the sins of mankind that Peter did not understand then, but Peter would introduce to the Jews on the Day of Pentecost.

Acts 2:38   Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

:39   For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

Repent of our sins. Get baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ. That way we take on the human Name of God, in just the same way that a wife takes on the name of her husband.

"to all that are afar off":  This statement, spoken under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, does not specify that this promise was only to Jews. This would include Gentiles that lived far away on earth, as well as the Gentiles who would be far off in time as the 2000 years of church history rolled by.

How was Peter to grasp that this great salvation message was to also go to the Gentiles?

After His resurrection, Jesus spoke to Peter three times. A strange repetition.

John 21:15   So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.

:16     He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

:17     He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

God sees mankind as divided into three groups. Jews, Samaritans (part Jew, part Gentile), and Gentiles.

Peter was told to feed the sheep three times. Jew and Samaritan made sense, as they were two groups that Jesus had dealt with. But why did Jesus repeat His instruction three times?

Peter would have had to recall an earlier statement that Jesus had made.

John 10:16   And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

Jesus dealt with the Jews and Samaritans when He was on earth. If there were other sheep as well, He must have been referring to Gentiles. Gentiles!  -- No decent Jew wanted to have anything to do with a Gentile. Peter would  need a lot of convincing if he was to take the Gospel to Gentiles.

So God made Cornelius, a Gentile Roman, send three men to ask Peter to come to his house in Joppa, a port on the border of  Judaea and Samaria. (Jew, Samaritan, and Gentile all met in this city).

While the men were coming, Peter got a vision, three times, about not calling any animals unclean.

Acts 10:9   On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:

:10     And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance,

:11     And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth:

:12     Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air.

:13   And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.

:14     But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.

:15     And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.

:16     This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven.

:17     Now while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made enquiry for Simon's house, and stood before the gate,

Peter went to the house of Cornelius the Gentile in Joppa, and Peter spoke to Cornelius.

Acts 10:28   And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.

Peter had learned a deep lesson. The pagan Gentiles were not to be avoided, they were to be brought to Christ.

Peter preached to the Gentile family and friends of Cornelius.

Then the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and all the Gentiles in his house.

Acts 9:31  Then had the churches rest throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.

:32   And it came to pass, as Peter passed throughout all quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lydda.

Peter passed through all Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea eventually ending in Lydda before finally going to Joppa.

Joppa was a port belonging to the tribe of Dan, on the border between Judaea and Samaria.

In Joppa, Peter  raised Dorcas, a young maiden, from the dead. She was a symbol of the New Testament church that would come alive in Christ.

Then Peter preached to Cornelius the Gentile.

So Peter had preached the Gospel like a fisherman, pulling in Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles.

Then Paul, the skilled tentmaker, took over as he so cleverly sewed together the Old and New Testaments, brilliantly joining Law and Grace together.

Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. He launched the missionary journeys that would spread the Gospel far and wide. The Gentile church had its foundation laid in that first church age.

So what did that have to do with foot washing?

Gentiles and feet

Those two ideas are linked in the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had about a Gentile image, as described in Daniel chapter 2.

• The head of gold was Babylon -- destroyed around 536 BC by the Medes and the Persians.
• The chest and arms were the Medes and Persians who were destroyed by Alexander the Great (the belly and thighs) around 330 BC.
• The legs of iron was the Roman empire that was conquered by Julius Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon river in 49 BC.
• The bits of iron in the feet refer to the rise of Roman Catholicism as the Roman empire collapsed. The Roman church picked up the power that the Roman emperor lost.

So when Peter asked for his head and hands to be washed, Jesus refused because that would imply that the old Babylonian empire and the old Babylonian and Medes & Persian empire could be converted by the Gospel. That was impossible as those people were already long since dead.

Salvation during those Old Testament times was a scarlet cord that ran outside the Gentile kingdoms as God saved only the Jews with their Temple worship, and any Gentiles who converted to the Jewish faith.

But things would change at Calvary.

Salvation would cross over from the Jews, who rejected Jesus, and go to the Gentiles.

When Jacob blessed Joseph's two sons, he crossed over his hands and the blessing went to the younger son Ephraim.

Genesis 48:13   And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought them near unto him.

:14   And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly; for Manasseh was the firstborn.

This symbolized that at the cross the blessing would leave the Jews, God's first born nation, and go to the younger group which would be the Gentile church.

Thus the scarlet cord of salvation would enter the Gentile image at the heel and run through the feet to the toes.

The heel thus represents the crucial portion of the Gentile image.

The greatest Greek fighter Achilles was killed by an arrow that hit his heel. Hence our expression of “Achilles heel”  for any point of weakness. So God Himself became a Man in order to be the heel of the Gentile image. The heel, representing Christ’s death on the cross, thus became the strength of the Gentile church instead of death being a weakness.

The very first prophecy in the Bible predicted that the head of the seed of the serpent would be bruised by the heel of the woman’s seed which was Christ. Only a man has seed, not a woman. But Jesus was given to the womb of Mary by the Holy Ghost, without any human man being involved. Thus Jesus was her seed. No man could claim Him as being his seed. The Holy Ghost was the Father of Jesus.

Matthew 1:18   Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Genesis 3:15   And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

A bruised heel is a temporary inconvenience. The person cannot walk for a few days.

So the Body of Jesus lay in a tomb until He resurrected on Sunday morning, and walked around again.

But a bruised head is fatal. Blood vessels in the head rupture and blood accumulates between the skull and the brain tissue. Then this blood reaches the brain cells, it destroys the brain cells which will eventually kill the creature.

So Satan, as represented by the serpent got his death sentence at Calvary. The analogy of a bruised head with the ruptured blood vessels means that the gap between the skull and the brain is collecting a growing pool of blood that will finally push against the brain cells and kill the brain tissue. This death may take a long time to happen, but it is inevitable. Satan is doomed.

At the heel, the supposed weakness of Christ on the cross, Satan got his mortal wound from which he cannot recover.

Finally we consider the miry clay in the feet of the Gentile image.

Metal cannot produce life. The only part of the Gentile image in which the seeds of life can grow is the clay. So the clay represents the Bride, the true church.

Miry clay is wet clay. The Bride has been washed in the waters of the Word during the 2000 years of church history.

That is partly what is represented when foot washing is done.

Miry clay is wet and weak, but can be moulded. It can sustain life.

Psalm 119:105   NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

Isaiah 52:7  How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!

Romans 10:15  And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

Ephesians 6:15   And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

Evangelists and missionaries are the feet of the church that carry the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Thus the revelation of Scripture has guided the true believers down through the changing circumstances of the seven church ages. Christians have sought through the ages to bring converts to Christ. The only enemy common to all seven church ages is the Roman Catholic church with its unscriptural denominational system. These two, the Bride and Roman Catholicism,  would not mix. Tens of millions of Christians have died opposing the Roman Catholic system.

John the Baptist

John the Baptist made a reference to the shoes of Jesus.

Acts 13:25   And as John fulfilled his course, he said, Whom think ye that I am? I am not he. But, behold, there cometh one after me, whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose.

John the Baptist said that he was not fit to take off the shoes of Jesus.

Mark 1:7   And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

John the Baptist added that he could not even undo the laces of the shoes of Jesus.

Sure. This represented his extreme humility in the presence of Jesus. But it also referred to something much deeper.

John the Baptist was prophesied to come in the spirit of the prophet Elijah.

Malachi 4:5   Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

:6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

But he had to do two ministries. Turn fathers to children and the opposite as well by turning children to fathers.

This is impossible for one person. God only turns the bad to the good, not the other way around.

So John the Baptist could only do the first half. The angel said of him

Luke 1:17   And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

John turned the Jewish fathers, who were in bondage to the Law, to the preaching of the young Man Jesus and His young disciples. The older Jewish fathers with their religious traditions had grown disobedient to God’s Word. They even hated someone being healed on a Saturday, or someone pulling wheat off a plant and eating it without washing their hands. They hated Jesus being welcomed by common people. But Jesus had the true wisdom of God’s Word  as He knew that He had to die for our sins according to the ancient prophecies. The young disciples would spread this Gospel after He ascended to Heaven.

Then the disciples matured and wrote the New Testament. In the process they became the spiritual fathers of the first church age.

Almost 2000 years would go past. The truth of the first church age would get lost in the Dark Ages. In 1520 Martin Luther in Germany brought back the idea of salvation by grace through faith, and not by works. Around 1750 John Wesley in England brought back holiness and outreach which led to the missionary age that started just before 1800. In 1904 there was a Welsh revival and in 1906 the Azusa street revival in Los Angeles, America, restored the power of the Holy Ghost baptism. Only one thing was missing, restoring us to the revelation of the mysteries that the early church once believed.

Matthew 17:11   And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.

This is future tense. "Elias truly shall first come".  John the Baptist was past tense. His ministry was over. John the Baptist did not restore anything. He introduced a brand new water baptism of repentance. He introduced the Messiah that the Jews had never had. John did not have a ministry of restoration.

John began the Gospel. He did not restore the Gospel.

Mark 1:1   The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;

:2   As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

:3     The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

:4   John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

Jesus and the disciples would develop the Gospel to its fullness in the New Testament.

This Gospel would mainly get lost in the Dark Ages. Then the Reformation of Luther and Wesley and the outpouring of the supernatural that occurred amongst the Pentecostals would start restoring us to the early church. But the revelation of the mysteries of Scripture that Saint Paul and the apostles and the early church once knew would remain hidden from the modern church.

Elijah

An Elijah was needed to restore these truths.

The seven Seals in the Book of Revelation sealed up the written mysteries of the Bible. It would take a special ministry to undo those seven mysteries.

On 28 February 1963 a supernatural cloud (with a natural cloud from a high altitude rocket explosion that was 20 miles behind it) moved from west to east over the city of Flagstaff in Arizona  at a height of 43 kilometers. This was a sign of the Son of Man in the heavens.

Matthew 24:30   And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven:

The supernatural cloud was formed by angel wings. No natural clouds form at 43 kilometers height.

Joel 2:30   And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.

The second cloud that came behind the first cloud was a scientific wonder. It was a souped up Thor missile with an extra solid state booster. It went off course soon after being launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, and was deliberately exploded at an altitude of about 43 kilometers. The fuel tanks were almost full when it exploded. In addition the solid state booster exploded so there was a huge amount of smoke that formed two pillars of smoke that formed a cloud. This cloud drifted from west to east in the high altitude winds until it was also over Flagstaff.

God was drawing attention to Arizona.

When God wanted Moses to lead the first exodus of the Jews out of Egypt, he gave a sign to attract attention that consisted of a natural bush that had a supernatural fire that never burnt up the bush.

So when God wanted someone to lead the third exodus by bringing the Scriptural Bride out of the churches he used a high altitude sign of a natural massive smoke cloud accompanied by an even bigger supernatural cloud.

Eight days later seven angels came to William Branham who was hunting near Sunset Peak about 200 miles south of Flagstaff. They commissioned him to open the seven Seals. Over a period of a week, each angel revealed the mystery of a single Seal. Armed with this understanding, brother Branham was able to teach us how to link different Scriptures together to establish basic themes and patterns that run through the Bible. For the first time since the early church, Christians were able to understand the basic mysteries of the Bible.

Revelation 10:7   But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

By taking the quotes of brother Branham back to Scripture and finding a theme that runs through the Bible, we should be able to solve the mysteries of the Bible. For example,

• Why did Jesus twice write with His finger in the ground when men wanted to stone a woman?
• Why did Matthew and Mark only mention one angel at the tomb of Jesus, when Luke and John mentioned that there were two. What were they trying to tell us?
• In Mark 8:21 Jesus expected the disciples to understand why there were seven and twelve baskets of scraps left over when He had fed the multitudes.
• Why do Matthew and Luke have different genealogies from David to Joseph when describing the blood line of Jesus. Matthew has 13 generations less than Luke.

These are a few of the many puzzles that atheists throw at Christians, and smile as the Christians retreat due to their Bible illiteracy and ignorance of these basic mysteries.

By chasing quotes, message preachers are now unable to solve these basic mysteries.

But brother Branham did reveal the seven Seals -- he revealed the seventh Seal to be a total mystery, linked to the coming of the Lord -- and these mysteries of the written Bible can thus be resolved.

As an analogy: To do footwashing you must first take off your shoe.

The foot of a person is a hidden mystery because it is enclosed in a shoe. To get the shoe off you must first undo the laces. Pentecost could not undo the laces and as they peered at the tied up laces, all they could see under the laces was the tongue of the shoe. So Pentecost majored on tongues as the evidence of the Holy Spirit. That is as far as they could see while the shoe stayed laced up.

That is why John the Baptist said he could not undo the laces of Christ’s shoes. First Paul and the apostles had to write the New Testament. The truths were then to be lost in the Dark Ages. All of this had nothing to do with John’s ministry.

Then another Elijah, William Branham, would be needed to undo the seven laces of the seven Seals. Only then could the shoe be removed from the foot and the whole history of the Gentile church from the first to the last church age would be revealed as God used His Word to guide and wash and cleanse His church in the different church ages.

There is nothing wrong with tongues as a supernatural gift. But that is not the final promise to the church.

John 16:13   Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:

If we have correctly understood what brother Branham was trying to tell us, then we would be able to use his quotes to interpret the mysteries of the Bible and thus prepare for the second coming of the Lord. We have to prove from Scripture the revelations that he preached. We have to show that what he preached was Scriptural.

If we just focus on quotes and our interpretations of those quotes, like the claims of message preachers that Hillary would win the 2016 presidential election, then we have missed why brother Branham came. Then we have just built up another denomination. There are already 45 000 different types of denomination, all Bible-illiterate in terms of understanding the basic mysteries of Scripture.

Six churches in Revelation have their natural names. Pergamos is the only exception. It is the Greek name. The natural name of the city is Pergamum. Why is there this exception? What is God trying to tell us? If you say it is not important you are merely covering up your ignorance. Then to you, the seventh angel has not yet come because you are still ignorant of the Bible mysteries. You may know of brother Branham and his quotes, but you do not know how to interpret the Bible.

John said that when Jesus walked on the water and got into the boat, that they were immediately at land.

John 6:21   Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.

But Matthew places these events in the midst of the sea. Jesus got into the boat and they still had to row to the far shore. The sea of Galilee is 21 kilometers long and 13 kilometers wide. If they were around the halfway mark, there was still a lot of rowing to do.

Matthew 14:24   But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary.

Jesus walked on the water and got into the boat.

Matthew 14:34    And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret.

Matthew says they still had to row over the other half of the sea of Galilee. So how can John say the ship was immediately there at the other shore? It looks like a complete contradiction. How do you answer a skeptic who raises this question? If you cannot answer then the mysteries have not been revealed to you. So if you claim you know all the mysteries, you are simply bluffing yourself and others.

Woman washing Jesus' feet with tears

In the house of Simon the Pharisee, a sinner woman washed the feet of Jesus with tears.

Luke 7:44   And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.

This woman was a symbol of the church. She was washing the feet of Jesus with her tears and wiping His feet with her long hair. Long hair on a woman is a symbol of her submission to her husband and to the Word of God. The Bride is submissive to her Husband Jesus, Who is the Word of God. The church, despite her sorrows and sufferings, would love Jesus and be submissive to Jesus during the seven church ages. What they suffered for Him, represented by her tears, could not be compared to their sorrow over their own sins and their gratitude towards Him for forgiving their sins.

Jesus feet represent that He would walk through the fiery furnaces of the seven church ages so as to be always with His church.

Matthew 28:20   Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Jesus alone could guide and strengthen them for the trials that lay ahead. But before that, He had to walk through the fiery furnace of hell when He died and carried our filthy sins down to the Devil so that he could dump our sins on the Devil. Our souls depend on the path that He chose to walk in order to redeem us.

Revelation 1:15   And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace;

His feet represent the seven church ages. The water of the Word washes us clean in whichever age we are in.

Simon the Pharisee, as a religious leader, had no clue what was happening. He was not involved in footwashing at all. In comparison Jesus would teach His disciple Simon Peter a deep lesson concerning foot washing.

So the pattern developed amongst church leaders who loved nicolaitanism -- which is conquering the laity. Church leaders, despite not having a clue as to what the real revelation of the Bible is all about, nevertheless keep everyone in submission to themselves. Then they dumb down their congregations by telling them that it is not necessary to know the basic mysteries of the Scripture. They regard Bible illiteracy as the key to preparing for the coming of the Lord. Unfortunately, Bible illiteracy is the key to opening the door to the great Tribulation.

Matthew 15:14   Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.