Luke chapter 13 - Reveals the Jews' mistakes

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In Luke's Gospel Jesus appears as the ideal Man walking amongst men.

Then Luke also teaches us about how we should believe, think, and behave like human beings.

Luke was very concerned with taking the Gospel to the Gentiles. So he mentions many of the mistakes that the Jews made at the First Coming of Jesus because he realizes that we Christian Gentiles will make similar mistakes at the Second Coming of Jesus. After all,  ignorance and stupidity have always been common to humans down through the ages.

So Luke writes in order to give us Christians an advance warning about our church errors by pointing out the faults that the Jews made.

Luke Chapter 13

Thirteen is the number of rebellion.

GENESIS 14:4   Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.

Revelation Chapter 13 reveals the rise to world domination of the scary but powerful Roman Catholic beast (or church-political-money power) and the dominating American beast (or Protestant church-political-scientific-military-money power) that rebel against God and His Word and bring on the mark of the beast which is to be religiously brainwashed with unscriptural beliefs.

A few simple examples of how Christians have drifted away from Scripture:  Christians are taught to believe things that are not written in the Bible such as the Big Bang and evolution. Same-sex marriage. Denominations. Canons. Diocesan. Archbishops, Cardinals, Popes. Priests not allowed to marry. Ministers wearing turned around collars. Easter eggs. Hot cross buns. Church buildings with steeples and a rooster on top. Purgatory. Lent. Making the sign of the cross. The prayer beads of the rosary.  Praying to saints. Eating fish on a Friday. Huge cathedrals and basilica (big churches).

Christians are also taught to believe a portion of Scripture but are then subtly led astray by adding in further man-made beliefs. Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem. That is true.  But the date of 25 December and a decorated Christmas tree are unscriptural. A tree had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

This is how the mark of the beast slowly infiltrates our minds. The church has cleverly manipulated our thinking into man-made ideas that sound good, and we like to have it that way. Having accepted minor unscriptural ideas as truth,  we then more easily start to believe far more serious unscriptural ideas. The mark is in our forehead. In the forehead is the brain. In the brain, we think. Our thinking has been captured and programmed by our denominational beliefs.

Staying with what the Bible says is no longer that important.

So Luke Chapter 13 opens with a reference to an unsuccessful rebellion of some Jews against the Romans.
LUKE 13:1   There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

These Jews had rebelled against the cruel Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, who was a blood-thirsty ruler.

Pilate had no qualms about unleashing the merciless swords that had made ruthless Roman soldiers feared around the world. Rome ruled with iron-like brutality against any rebellion.

LUKE 13:2   And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?

Those who were killed were no worse than other Jews. They just made the wrong decision. They made the fatal mistake of gaining popular approval by their rebellion against Rome. But they had no chance as Rome was too powerful. They were also blind to the fact that they should be waiting for Messiah. He alone would know what to do. So, too impatient to wait for Messiah, they relied on their own efforts which were futile. Pilate also learned from this episode that killing opponents was an effective way of ruling. He would again use that method against Jesus.

Philo, the famous historian from the first century said that Pilate as a man had "vindictiveness and furious temper". So rebelling against him was a death sentence.

What their rebellion did succeed in doing was to reveal the vicious nature of Pilate which helps to explain why he could later condemn an innocent Man, Jesus, to be crucified. Pilate was persuaded by the Jewish mob who were rebelling against Jesus, their true King because they had been emotionally whipped up by the exhortations of their religious leaders. Yet at the beginning of that same week, they had welcomed Jesus as King when He rode in on a donkey on Palm Sunday. So fickle is human nature. The Jews foolishly and fatally listened to their religious leaders. Few things are more deadly than the preaching of the religious leaders in defense of their religious systems. In their rebellion against truth, the Jews made sure that Jesus, the Word, was condemned.

LUKE 13:3    I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

The Jews rebelled against Jesus, then rejected and killed Him in 33 AD.

They thought that they had got away with that frightful act of unbelief.

But in 66 AD the Jews rebelled against Rome. Four years later in AD 70 the Roman general Titus, son or prince of the Roman emperor Vespasian, besieged Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, leaving the city in ruins.   1 100 000 Jews were killed or died of disease and starvation in the process.

The Jews then again rebelled against the emperor Trajan from 115 - 117 AD and were defeated and killed in many battles. In 132 AD the Jews were rebelling for the third time against Rome. The Roman emperor Hadrian finally defeated them in 135 AD and exiled the Jews from Jerusalem which he rebuilt as the new Roman city Aelia Capitolina. The Jews scattered all over the world where they endured endless persecutions and murders (pogroms) for 2 000 years. This reached a climax from 1941 - 1945 when six million Jews were killed in Hitler's awful gas chambers in Poland. Finally allowed back into Palestine in 1948 as a nation, they have survived four Arab wars and endless armed attacks by smaller groups mainly from Gaza and Lebanon, plus having thousands of rockets fired at them as well as suicide bombings. The death toll keeps mounting.

The words of Jesus have more than been fulfilled.

LUKE 13:4   Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?

:5    I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Again Jesus warns of the endless number of Jewish deaths. The eighteen who died were not the worst Jews. To us, these were random, accidental deaths and from our human viewpoint, it seems that death does by chance strike both good and bad Jews. They were not doing anything wrong, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because the Jews refused to repent and accept Jesus as their Messiah, that puts them in the wrong place spiritually, and at random times and places savage hatreds by other nations have caused the Jewish nation to pay an awful price for their rebellion against Jesus. The Jews have endured the longest time of relentless attacks and persecution of any nation in history.

LUKE 13:6   He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.

The fig tree is God's symbol for the Jewish nation. Jesus came to the Jews but they showed no spiritual fruit of faith in Him. They could not believe that He was their promised Messiah because He came in too simple a way. They rebelled against Him and demanded His death.

LUKE 13:7   Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?

Calvary was the complete rejection of Jesus by the Jews.  God was thinking of sending in the Roman army to destroy the Temple and Jerusalem.

:8   And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:

But He decided to give them another chance. So the tree of Israel was spared. Instead of destroying the Jews, God sent the apostles to preach to them so that they might be saved despite their great sin of killing Messiah.

:9   And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

Jesus preached to the Jews but they rejected Him. Their first chance was gone. Even after they killed Him, Jesus sent disciples to preach to the Jews and thus gave them another chance.

But most of the Jews rejected the Gospel. So the Jews turned down their second chance.

The greatest missionary of the New Testament was Paul. And the Jews rejected him too.
ACTS 13:46   Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.

Please note that Luke uses Chapter thirteen of the Book of Acts to tell us of the final rebellion of the Jews against the Gospel which forced Paul to turn away from the Jews to the Gentiles.

So the Jewish tree or nation which was centered on their Temple worship had to be cut down, for once again not bringing forth the fruit of faith in Jesus as the Word of God.
GALATIANS 5:22   But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

The Jews as a nation then also threw away the fruits of gentleness and peace and rebelled violently against Rome in a bitter four-year conflict that saw them brutally cut down by the Roman general Titus in AD 70 when he destroyed the Temple and much of the city of Jerusalem.

This is a warning to us too. Our last church age of Laodicea has Jesus standing outside the church door. The rejection of Scripture by the church will result in the church being cut down in the Great Tribulation. So we live in dangerous times.
REVELATION 3:14   And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write;

3:20   Behold, I stand at the door, and knock:

Our churches claim today that Christ is inside the churches. The Bible says He is standing outside, trying to get in. You must choose who is correct.

Luke next reveals an incident between Jesus and the Jews that also has a future symbolic meaning for the Gentile church. Luke wants us Gentiles to learn from the Jewish mistakes, otherwise, the Gentile church would also face massive persecutions and death in the Great Tribulation for not believing in the New Testament.

A woman symbolizes the church which is the bride of Christ.
II CORINTHIANS 11:2   For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

Jesus then healed a crippled woman (symbolic of the crippled church that needs the power of Jesus to restore it back to what it was at the beginning) on a Saturday and got accused of working on the sabbath.

LUKE 13:12   And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.

:13   And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.

:14   And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.

:15   The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering?

The religious leader objected to the woman being restored back to her original health.

Today, it is the religious leaders who object to the church being restored back to what she was in the New Testament days.

Notice, the opposition to Jesus (the Word) comes from the ruler of the congregation. Today we would call the synagogue a church. The ruler is the pastor.

Jesus, being very critical of religious leaders, gave him a blast. He accuses the religious leader of being a hypocrite. You take animals to drink water on a Saturday. Why cannot a woman partake of the healing water of Life?

LUKE 13:16   And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?

:17   And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.

The people loved Jesus but the religious system is very opposed to Him.

The religious leader opposed Jesus because He was a threat to the religious organization.

Please note, at His First Coming Jesus condemned the religious leaders of the Jews.

What will He say to the church leaders at His Second Coming?

Luke now describes a future prophecy.  The 2000 years of church history is divided into seven church ages. As the church ages unfolded, the church leaders did their best to turn the people away from Jesus Who is the Word of God. How were the church leaders able to turn people away from the written Bible so that Christians would only believe portions of the Bible and reject the rest?

Jesus, by means of two parables, relates an amazing prophecy of two of the future church ages.

There are seven parables mentioned in Matthew Chapter thirteen. (That 13 again).  Each parable refers to a church age. Luke only refers to two of these parables, numbers three and four. The third and fourth church ages represent the Dark Ages, from 312 AD to 1517 AD, when the Roman Catholic Church dominated Europe and rebelled against the Word of God and banned their people from having a Bible. The only permitted Bible was in Latin which only the priests could read. The church killed William Tyndale and dug up and burned the bones of  John Wycliff because they translated the Bible into the people's everyday language.

So Jesus now describes how this rebellion against God's Word would happen.

The Jews rebelled against Jesus as a Man. The church rebelled against Him as the Word of God.

This parable refers to the third church age which lasted from 312 AD to about 600 AD.

LUKE 13:18   Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it?

:19   It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.

A mustard seed, when properly cultivated, is a tiny seed that grows into a small shrub.

God never wanted churches to get big.

That is why people met in houses in the early church of the New Testament. No one man could then dominate a big assembly.
ROMANS 16:5   Likewise greet the church that is in their house.
PHILEMON 1:2   And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house:
COLOSSIANS 4:15   Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house.

We should take note of this fact if we are to be restored back to the early church.

Please note, the people were called the church, not the building.  The Bible never says that anyone went to church. The people were the church.

At first, Christians had to meet in small groups because the Romans wanted to kill them. From AD 64 to AD 312 the Roman emperors unleashed at least ten vicious persecutions which killed about 3 million Christians. [One of these horrific persecutions was unleashed by the emperor Aurelian who also declared 25 December to be the birthday of the sun god, Sol Invictus (the unconquerable sun). This date was first mentioned in Rome in the Philocalian Calendar in 354 AD as the birthday of both the sun god and the birthday of Christ. This sun-god ritual and celebration were copied and absorbed by the Roman Catholic church as the birthday of the Son of God which allowed them to retain the pagan Roman tradition of giving presents and the decorated pagan tree as well as the green branches and holly and ivy decorations. Do not forget that the man who began this pagan festival was a violent Christian killer.]

The early church spread by being scattered and persecuted and had to meet in small groups, usually in houses. If they gathered in a public building or "church"  the Roman soldiers would simply have arrested them and eliminated them. House meetings are how the Chinese underground church survived and still survive their brutal repression by the communists.

In 312 AD the Roman emperor Constantine stopped the persecutions and Christians began meeting in public buildings which were mistakenly called churches. The church is the body of believers, not the building they gather in. The congregations were then able to get big. At times the Christians took over the big, fancy pagan temples. But only when a mustard seed grows wild, can it become a big tree, which is unnatural. Growing wild means adopting ideas that are outside the Bible. A big congregation will take on unscriptural human leadership and a hierarchy will develop with man-made rules of so-called church order and church tradition. Human opinions and prejudices take over. Christianity was now merging with paganism and politics. Pagan temples were run by a priest, so the churches copied this idea of having a priest and much later a pastor in charge.

The Bible never said that a pastor is the head of the church. The Bible never says that a shepherd is a pastor. The word "pastor" only appears once in the New Testament. But today pastors have usurped the position of being head of the church. Then comes assistant pastors, co-pastors, Sunday school superintendents, bishops in charge of pastors, archbishops, metropolitans, cardinals, popes. Just to mention some of the hierarchy in the church organization. This system of church control was simply a duplication of the Roman system of political control.

A tree has branches at different heights. People get promoted up the church ranks, thinking that they are serving God. They are only serving the church system.

So as the church grows bigger, it gets dominated by humans with these elevated ranks and their personal opinions.

What do the fowls mean?
GENESIS 15:11   And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.

When making a covenant with God, Abraham chased away the fowls. So fowls symbolize the enemy.

But in a big religious system, there is plenty of room for "fowl" ministries to be elevated above the congregation. There they "lodge" full-time in the upper branches, feeding off the congregation. This is nicolaitanism as the religious big shots suppress the people who soon realize that their only requirement for church membership is blind obedience. God hates nicolatanism, which is the elevation of a holy man above the congregation. So the enemy now rules the big church organizations. A very neat deception.

This kind of church system was represented by the crippled woman that needed healing.

A woman is a symbol of the church. A crippled woman symbolized the spiritually crippled church of the Dark Ages. The church's power was derived from politics and pagan religious beliefs. But politics and religion combine in a macabre dance of death. Some  68 million people who opposed the Roman Catholic church were killed in the Dark Ages and the counter-Reformation that followed the Reformation of the German reformer, Martin Luther.

Look what God says to the third church in the Book of Revelation.
REVELATION 2:15    So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.

Nicolaitans. Elevate a holy man who conquers the laity or congregation. The Pope is the ultimate religious dictator. The pastors follow his example and rule according to their own ideas. The congregation, subject to this dictatorial rule, takes on the spirit of the pastor who dominates them. That is not a good space for a Christian to be in.

Human leadership imposes human traditions and doctrines and prejudices. If a pastor divorces and re-marries then many will join his church because they know that they will also have permission to divorce and re-marry. If a pastor allows drinking or smoking, the congregation will end up doing the same.
MATTHEW 15:9   But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

Christians cannot believe that their church leaders could possibly be wrong. They follow their leaders more than they follow the Bible. God hates the church system whereby elevated leaders can dominate assemblies with their artificial man-made rules, beliefs, and structures.

Especially when the pastor insists that all the tithes belong to him. Then it is clear what the main motivation of church leadership is: money and power over people. Judas also went for the money.

Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God (which is the Holy Ghost working within the hearts and minds of individuals) but human leadership produced a universal church organization with a huge hierarchy as well as elevated ministries and tribunals and councils that reversed many of the policies of Jesus in order to gain larger church membership. Thus the Old Testament priesthood that Jesus had condemned was dragged in through the back door by the Catholic church in order to ensure the future growth of the church. A dominant human leader is a very effective way of growing a church.

The next parable is the fourth parable from Matthew, representing the fourth church age which was the lowest ebb of the dark ages from about 600 AD to 1517 AD when Luther began his reformation. In this age, the Catholic church reached the maximum limits of its power over Europe. Then the Black Death of  1348 - 9  so depopulated Europe that the great landowners, the nobles, and the church, began to lose some of their wealth and power over people. A merchant class of traders began to rise and people began to object to many of the abuses of the church. But the Trinity had been established in peoples' minds for so long, that even the reformers never thought to question it. In 1553 John Calvin, the Protestant reformer, burned Protestant Michael Servetus, a Spanish doctor, at the stake for not believing the Trinity.

LUKE 13:20   And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God?

:21   It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

A woman symbolizes a church. The Roman Catholic church dominated Europe in the Dark Ages.

The fourth church age is called Thyatira, which means a "dominating woman".

In this Thyatira church age, God says
REVELATION 2:20   Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

Jezebel. The evilest woman of the Old Testament. This is symbolic of the dominant church of the Dark Ages. The Roman Catholic church is still obsessed with idols which are carved statues.

What doctrine did the church force on the world during the 900 years of the fourth church age?

She took meal that makes bread, which is a symbol of doctrine. Jesus, the Word, is the Bread of Life.  Then she took leaven and mixed it into the meal so that it was hidden and could not be clearly seen. Leaven is the yeast that works by decaying and decomposing and gives off bubbles of carbon dioxide gas that swells up the bread. This swelling up indicates the ego of the church leaders as their self-importance swells up, as well as the size of their assemblies that swell up. But the swelling up into big churches is caused by the decay and rotting of the yeast. This is not a good symbol.

Outwardly the church looks good but inwardly it is rotten with unscriptural beliefs.
LUKE 11:39   And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.

The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the Jews, just like the priests were the leaders of the Roman Catholic churches in the Dark Ages.

So what terrible doctrine did the official church teach and firmly implant in the minds of Christians during the nine long centuries of the Dark Ages when they had almost no competition that could correct them?

The yeast was hidden in three measures of meal. The church hid a Trinity Godhead in the Bible in such a subtle way that people cannot really see it clearly in any written Bible verse.

Look at the unscriptural terms that are used to explain the idea of a Trinity.

The word "Trinity" itself is unscriptural as well as "Three Persons of the Godhead". "One-in-three". "Three-in-one".  "One God in three Persons".  "Second Person of the Godhead".  "Father and Son are of the same essence". "God the Son".  "God the Holy Ghost".  Christians cannot explain why the Bible says "Son of God" but never "God the Son". The Bible says "Spirit of God" but never "God the Spirit". But 16 times the Bible says "God the Father". This is the hidden yeast or leaven. The church borrowed the Trinity idea from the pagan Babylonians and Egyptians and then used Greek philosophy (one-in-three and three-in-one) to somehow pretend that these ideas are somehow hidden in the Bible. That is why they did not want people to read the Bible.

So over the years, Christians developed the habit of just believing what the church leaders said. That habit continues to this day.

So emperor Constantine used the Council of Nicea in 325 AD to force the people into these unscriptural beliefs in order to indoctrinate them with the idea of Trinity. This was done so that both Christians and pagans could be united as Trinitarians into one Roman church. Having accepted this unscriptural belief of Trinity, the Christians in the church were now open to believing any other unscriptural belief as well, like having to be subject to the Pope of Rome if you want salvation.  Believing in indulgences whereby you could buy forgiveness of sins. Believing what is written in the Bible was no longer important.

Then God lost His Name.  Three People cannot have one Name. Ask a Christian what the Name of God is, and watch the confusion that follows. Because they picture three separate Persons, they cannot find a single Name for God. So they have been fooled into believing that three titles are the Name of God.

They keep saying "In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" but can never tell you what the Name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is.

The apostles always baptized in the Name of Jesus, because the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him.

COLOSSIANS 2:9   For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

So the human name of God is Jesus Christ and that is the Name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

In addition to losing the Name of God, the churches demote Jesus to being the Second Person of the Godhead and teach that the disciples got it wrong when they baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ. Thus the churches can never be restored to the early church of the New Testament as they believe that they must correct the mistakes that the apostles made. Thus as far as the churches are concerned, there are mistakes that need correcting in the Bible, and consequently, to them, the Bible is not the Absolute Truth. This is a recipe for future disaster. Believing that there are mistakes in the Bible is simply a rebellion against God's Word.

Luke now mentions that because of the errors that took over the Jews as well as the errors that would take over the church during the Dark Ages, not that many people will be saved.

Luke points out the mistakes that the Jews and their leaders made because these are the same mistakes that the church and their leaders would make.

Basically neither Jew nor church Gentile seems capable of just staying with Bible verses.

They all insist on drifting off into clever man-made ideas that appeal to us but are not specifically written in the Bible. We love human traditions more than we love the Bible.

Where does Santa come from? Move the "n" to the end of the word and you get "Satan".

GALATIANS 4:9   But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?

:10   Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.

:11   I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.

Christmas exactly fulfills what Paul calls bondage. He feared that this nullified his attempts to help people.

25th day.  12th month.   Christmas time.   The birthday of Jesus every year.

We were never required by the Bible to remember or celebrate the birth of Jesus.

But Gentiles love their church traditions and festivities far more than they love the Bible.

The seed of error that was sown in the Dark Ages in order to turn us away from the written Word of God has produced an amazingly abundant crop at the end time.

Christians now rebel against those few who try to be Scriptural.

LUKE 13:22   And he went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.

:23   Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them,

:24   Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.

A "strait" is a narrow channel of water. We humans, both Jew and Gentile, are no longer really interested in proving what we believe from Scripture verses. Thus we do not stay in the water of the Word.

EPHESIANS 5:26   That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

As soon as you believe something that is not written in the Bible, then you are no longer in the narrow strait of water which is the gate to Heaven.

Since being strictly Scriptural is no longer of great interest to Christians, not many will be saved from the Great Tribulation which is looming up in the future like a tidal wave that will sweep us away unless God catches away into the air those few who are restored back into the water of the Bible.

Being saved from hell is no guarantee that we will be saved from the Tribulation. They are two different issues.

LUKE 13:25   When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are:

LUKE 13:26   Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.

These are saved Christians calling out to Him.

LUKE 13:27   But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.

Iniquity is doing something wrong that we know is wrong. We know we should only believe in the Bible. God is totally unimpressed with human logic and traditions. If we believe anything that is not in the Bible, then God wants nothing to do with us as far as His Second Coming is concerned.

Accepting Christ as our personal Saviour saves us from hell. But we also need to be saved from the Tribulation by lining up with the Word of God.

Jesus only wants Bible-believing Christians for His Bride. His Bride must take on His Name. So we must be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ. There is no other way to take on His Name.

LUKE 13:28   There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.

Saved Christians will not be able to believe that they did not make it for the catching away of the Bride of Christ. They will insist that a mistake was made. Followers of the favourite Hillary Clinton could not believe that she was not the winner in the 2016 American presidential election. She actually won almost three million more popular votes than Trump. A recount was demanded, but it did not help. The outsider Trump, dismissed by all the experts, made it. This is a sign of our times if we are listening. The saved Christians who only believe the bits of the Bible that suit them will be left behind, their smug complacency shattered. Rejected Christians, outside the denominational churches, will make it. A huge shock awaits the churches in the future. They are the favourites now. They will be the losers then.

LUKE 13:29   And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.

At the resurrection of the dead, the church from all seven ages will rise up.

LUKE 13:30   And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.

The maize or wheat seed that is harvested at the end of the last church age must be identical to the seed that was planted during the first church age. So the last church age must be restored back to the teachings of the first church age. In other words, the New Testament teachings of the apostles that were believed in the first church age and lost in the Dark Ages would only be truly revived and restored in the last church age.

In order to be harvested, we have to line up at the end with the beliefs that the church had at the beginning. The Christian churches are completely unaware of this trend in God's salvation plan.

LUKE 13:31   The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee.

King Herod represented politics. Jesus basically ignored Herod and in so doing tells us that politics and religion do not mix. This is an important lesson that the church was to forget. Three million Christians were killed by Roman emperors. In AD 312 Emperor Constantine stopped this insane killing of Christians. They were so grateful to him that they accepted him, despite being a politician, as having authority over the church. He used the Nicene council of 325 AD to force the Trinity doctrine onto the Christians who now officially became known as the Roman Catholic church. For reasons that we cannot comprehend today, the official Roman Catholic church accepted this political interference, and then, within one hundred years, the Catholic church that had previously been slaughtered by the Roman emperors felt justified in pursuing a mad policy of slaughtering all those who did not agree with this Trinity doctrine.

LUKE 13:32   And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.

Jesus had no involvement with the politician Herod. A fox is a sneaky animal. That is the curse of politicians, they  become sneaky. When sent to Herod by Pilate, Jesus refused to even speak to Herod. Thus, from this example, church leaders should learn to stay out of politics.

LUKE 13:33   Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.

The Jewish political head, Herod, could not stop God's plan unfolding in the days that led up to Calvary.  Jerusalem, the holy city, was where the prophets of God were killed. Jerusalem, the holiest city. Yet that is where Jesus,the Word of God, would die.

LUKE 13:34   O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

Jerusalem, the holy city, received Jesus Who rode in on a donkey (the ultimate humility) and offered them eternal life, yet their religious leaders rejected Him and turned it into the city of death.

In the same way, the churches, where holy people gather, would reject and kill the influence of the Bible so that Christians would become happy to believe things that are not in the Bible. Worse still, they would be happy to condemn those who do believe what is in the Bible. Our real safety lies in the Bible, but churches do not want that. They prefer human tradition.

Who are the main critics of people who want to be Scriptural? The churches. People want what their church says, not what the Bible says. Churchianity (I belong to my church) has replaced Christianity (I belong to Jesus and the Bible).

LUKE 13:35   Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

The Jewish "house" was the Temple. The next time Jerusalem saw Him was when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey they cheered Him as the King coming in God's name. But soon after that they would reject and kill Him. This rejection prepared the way for Titus to destroy their Temple. Titus would leave the Temple a desolate wreck.

They had Messiah and cheered Him but then their leaders told them to reject Jesus, which they foolishly did. Then they and their leaders paid the price when their Temple and city were destroyed. Not to mention the 1100000 Jews who perished during the destruction of Jerusalem. Rejecting Jesus or rejecting what is written in the Bible brings tragic consequences.