The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is the context of dissonance.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of January 1, 2011
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.”
The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands. / He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there. (John 10:22–42)
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John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man [Jesus] was true: performing miracles, doing a great work, calling fire down from heaven—none of these things compare with what John the Baptist did … the one who prepared the way for the Logos to enter His creation as His only Son did no sign, no miracles, no naturally unexplainable works except for one thing: he spoke the truth in an era when many Hellenist mystery-religions had many messiahs coming, each a god dwelling among men, with each mystery teaching that a portion of these many gods were embedded or embodied in men, thereby making men themselves gods. It was for this reason—the plethora of mystery saviors then being worshiped in Hellenist Asia Minor—that the Jews sought to kill Jesus. They heard in Jesus’ words similar claims as the mysteries about Zeus and Kronos; the Jews heard Mithra speaking; they heard what they knew was false. They did not hear anything significantly different from what was taught by Syrian Greeks and by Egyptian Greeks; they heard what the mysteries would have taught their inductees, which is interesting for only the person who is part of the particular mystery can hear the words of that mystery’s savior, suggesting that these Jews knew more about the mysteries than they knew of Moses.
Jesus said, Even though you do not believe me, believe the works (John 10:38).
If John, however, did no works but only spoke the truth and was believed by some but not by others, with the works that Jesus did confirming John’s words, then the power that facts [the works done] have to change minds is limited in a predictable manner … the Jews of the temple were like the fox in Aesop’s fable, “The Fox and the Grapes”: because the Jews of the temple expected the Messiah to come and expected the Messiah to be a man of war, the one who would defeat the enemies of all Jews, thereby liberating the people, the Jews of the temple did not understand Jesus’ words—and because they did not understand, Jesus said they were not His sheep. Thus, because these Jews could not understand Jesus and therefore could not be His sheep, to these Jews Jesus had to be of the Adversary just as the unobtainable grapes in Aesop’s fable had to be sour.
The Jews of the temple coveted the inaccessible power of God that Jesus displayed when healing the infirm and casting out demons. Because these Jews could not use that power, to these Jews Jesus wasn’t of God … if these Jews of the temple were of God and could not comprehend Jesus’ words, then Jesus simply couldn’t be of God. Their response to Jesus was predictable by cognitive dissonance theory, just as greater Christendom’s response to this present work of Philadelphia is predictable.
The concept that facts—in the above case the miracles Jesus performed—do not have the power to change minds but actually harden minds around the person’s previously held opinions is, today, better understood than ever before; for facts cannot erase misinformation, but rather, serve to reinforce misinformation, half-truths, and error. For within the human mind are defense mechanisms through which all new information is filtered before that information is accepted or rejected: as is predictable, new information, new facts must agree with what is already believed. If this new information doesn’t agree with what is already believed, regardless of whether this new information is true or false, this new information will be rejected as false. … The Jews of the temple rejected Jesus as false because what He said did not agree with what they already believed—in this case, that these Jews were of God.
The greater Christian Church, today, believes it is of God—
The Sabbatarian churches of God believe that they are of God, with most of the Sabbatarian fellowships holding that Herbert W. Armstrong was God’s essential endtime man, the last apostle, the last Elijah. Because these fellowships believe as they do, they will not accept anything that is not in line with what they already believe as factual. For these fellowships, only what they already believe is true. Everything else is false. And they cannot be confused with facts, for they are not of God just as greater Christendom is not, today, of God.
The human mind has the one-time ability to change “filters,” change from the mental paradigms through which it filtered information to another set of paradigms through which it will filter information: whatever information, true or false, that will not “fit” through the new set of paradigms will be forever rejected unless—with this unless forming a huge caveat—physically and mentally traumatic events occur to the person. … To change paradigms a second time truly requires severe trauma, with this trauma tearing holes in the paradigm set through which the person filters even knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil. The morality embedded in the person’s former mental paradigms will be lost to such an extent that women can eat their babies. Human cannibalism is no farther away from the 21st-Century world than is a few weeks of hunger in post Second Passover cities throughout North America.
Human minds protect themselves by rejecting facts that do not fit into the paradigm set that the mind has already accepted as true. This protection produces self-delusion which forms the normal thinking pattern of the individual, with the mind then unable to detect this self-delusion in itself; thus, the mind avoids cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable feeling that comes from simultaneously holding conflicting ideas, such as Christians are justified by works (Jas 2:24) and a person is not justified by works (Gal 2:16), by simply rejecting all facts that do not pass through the person’s morning coffee filter. [James 2:24 and Galatians 2:16 do not conflict when their context moves from the things of this world to the things of God.]
The Jews of the temple that saw the works Jesus performed were not sheep that followed Jesus: they could not hear His voice because of the mental filters in place that kept Hellenistic mysteries religions out of the mercantile-soiled temple. They could not see that their own ideology had also become a mysteries religion that only outwardly circumcised inductees could enter.
Sadly, in times of physical and mental trauma, the person, as if floating in a coffee cup on a dark sea, will reach out for what is familiar, tenaciously clinging to those things as if they were navigational buoys marking channels: the person who had left a Trinitarian religious denomination or sect will, following personal trauma such as a car accident, return to tenets of the person’s formerly rejected ideology, for in the mental blankness that comes from trauma, anything familiar slows the drifting. Hence, following the Second Passover liberation of Israel and the death of a third of humankind [roughly 2.3 billion people], the trauma every person will experience will cause the person to cling to what is familiar as the person mentally drifts past it, with what is most familiar for North Americans being Christmas observance, a 220 day drift past the Second Passover. Thus, even though all Christians will be filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God, with the Law written on hearts and placed in minds thus giving to every Christian the mind of Christ Jesus, the vast majority of Christians, in the mental fog that comes from ripping out one set of paradigms and inserting a new set—the Torah—will cling to the familiarity of Christmases past, thereby again mingling the sacred with the profane as Eve ate the mingled fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
On day 220 of the Affliction, Christians will rebel against God as Israel in the wilderness of Paran rebelled against God (see Num chap 14) … in 2011, Christmas occurs on Sunday, December 25th, exactly 220 days after the second Passover on the 15th of Iyyar. And the doubling of familiarity that has Christmas occurring on Sunday will be, for most Christians, as red and green channel buoys marking the way for them. They will reach behind the Second Passover liberation of Israel for the familiarity of a world they understood, or at least thought they understood; for they sincerely believe now as they will then that they are of God. And by clutching Christmas as if it were a red whistler buoy, they will condemn themselves to the lake of fire because they did not love the truth enough to fight for it even when the truth was placed within their own minds. That is truly sad, especially when the Philadelphian personally knows these rebels.
Even more sad will be Sabbatarian fellowships’ inability to accept that they will not go to a physical place of final training—
Today, before the Second Passover liberation of Israel, Philadelphians can, by examining their own lives, see in miniature the mental drifting that will affect all Christians post Second Passover. How committed is the Philadelphian to what he or she believes, committed enough to actually live as if time were short? And for every person, time is short. There is never enough time. Activities must be prioritized. Moneys must be prioritized. And the question must again be asked: does the person actually hear Jesus when He doesn’t directly answer the person … the Jews of the temple asked Jesus, “‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly’” (John 10:24). But Jesus had already told them that He was, but told them without telling them. Likewise, Jesus has told the Church when He would return without telling Christians what they expected to hear.
Each of the Hellenist mysteries had its own Christos, but the Jews of Herod’s temple looked for their own to be their Christos—
Experiences clash with expectations. Humans are predisposed to believe that their experiences will meet or exceed expectations: a man marries a woman (and vice-versa) believing that the woman will be everything for which the man hoped, but he soon awakens to the reality that the woman not only snores but has bad breath in the morning, that she doesn’t want to get out of bed, that she is not her grandmother, thus leaving the man with buyer’s remorse. In a state of dissonance, the man feels embarrassed, surprised, angry. Luckily for the human race, the man also feels an attraction to the woman that runs deeper than lust: the woman has become one with him in a way that goes beyond rational thought, which is what’s so inherently wrong with fornication for that deep attraction is diluted with each woman the man experiences. Expectations are never met in extramarital affairs, but rather are lowered until really nothing is expected so any gesture of affection meets with pleasant surprise. Thus, by having no expectations, they are met.
A husband’s sense of oneness with his first wife or even a second wife could be explained within the parameters of rationalizing the man’s decision to marry the woman, thus reducing dissonance by giving to the woman more desirable qualities than she actually possesses, but such rationalization places love inside of logical explanations … such rationalization ignores the larger context that marriage—the union of one man with one woman—plays within a social hierarchy that has a Most High God as its summit:
The Lord [YHWH] saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord [YHWH] was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord [YHWH] said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. (Gen 6:5–8)
Within the context of the first man and the first woman being one flesh (Gen 2:24) that gave birth to three sons, requiring two [Adam and Eve] to be one [adam], the Tetragrammaton YHWH is one God. Hebrews attempted to resolve the dissonance of two being one by the assignment of singular vowels to the plural noun Elohim, thereby invoking the concepts of pluralis excellentiae and pluralis majestatis. But man [adam] is not one with animals, creeping things, and birds of the heaven: it wasn’t birds that the Lord [YHWH] found only evil continually. It was human beings, man, with the icon man representing both men and women. Therefore, either the Lord [YHWH] acted capriciously in bringing a flood upon animals that do neither good nor evil, or the context for the flood is far larger than a simple deluge that drowns a great many people and animals. And in that larger context—the context that resolves the dissonance between James 2:24 and Galatians 2:16—“one God” consists of two deities, the Logos [o logos] who, in the beginning, was God [theos] and was with the God [ton Theon] (John 1:1), with this Logos functioning as the woman [Eve] functions so that the physical creation prevented man from knowing the Logos who was the beginning and the end of all things physical (cf. Eccl 3:11; Rev 22:13), and who was the one that entered His creation (John 1:3) as His only Son (John 3:16).
But as was seen in the morphing of Jesus from being the only Son of the Logos to being the second member of the Trinity by the late 5th-Centuries CE, the dissonance of one being two and of Hellenist mystery religions’ Christi being both man and God produced an unexplainable mystery that has plagued Christendom ever since—
Cognitive dissonance doesn’t permit one God to be two deities, which was what troubled Jews of the temple when Jesus said, “‘I and the Father are one’” (John 10:30) … logically, two cannot be one. Only figuratively can two be one. And on the night that He was taken, Jesus told His disciples, “‘I have said these things [about going to prepare a place for His disciples] to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father’” (John 16:25).
All that the first disciples then knew about the Father had been presented to them in metaphoric language, with the Logos [o logos] as Yah serving as a shadow and type of the Father—
Returning now to the baptism of the earth in water: the Lord regretted making man, but no regrets are expressed about making sheep or goats, deer or antelope. If it were the Lord’s intention to erase man because of his wickedness, then the Lord could have caused a virus to attack human beings only, selectively killing a single species. But as evidenced by those things that Jesus did during His earthly ministry and in the fifty days after He was resurrected from death, the intent of the Lord was to take breath away from air breathing creatures [nephesh], except for those in the Ark. The context for the Lord blotting out man wasn’t limited to the Near East, or to this physical world, but includes that portion of the heavenly realm that flowed [as water and blood flowed from the wound in Jesus’ side] into the Abyss when rebelling angels were cast into outer darkness.
Again, if it were the Lord’s intention to simply put an end to man’s wickedness, He could have done so without killing birds and bees. It is through the flood narrative that endtime disciples see Christ Jesus “baptizing” the world in spirit [hagio pneumati] and fire (Matt 3:11), with the type of the baptism of the world in spirit seen when “a sound like a mighty rushing wind … filled the entire house” (Acts 2:2) and with a type of the baptism of the world in fire seen when “divided tongues as of fire appeared to [the disciples] and rested on each of them” (v. 3).
The Lord “baptized” the world with water and into death in the days of Noah … the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah (Matt 24:37 et al). The coming of the Son of Man will see the world being baptized in spirit—the divine breath of God—and into life as the world was baptized in water and into death, but it will be Israel that is first baptized into life as it was the disciples who were first baptized in spirit: “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit [hagiou pneumatos]” (Acts 2:4). Then, when the spirit is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28), those of the nations will also be baptized in spirit as Cornelius and all of his household were baptized as the disciples were baptized in spirit (Acts 10:44–48).
The context for the flood of Noah’s day wiping out all air breathing life not in the Ark includes the spirit being poured out on all flesh, with this outpouring of the spirit changing even the “animal natures” of the great predators (Isa 11:6–9), and the context includes glorification of the firstfruits and the coming of the new heavens and new earth (Rev 21:1; Isa 66:22) … those disciples in whom no guile is found will “walk through fire” and not be burned (Isa 43:2).
In the expanded context for the Flood narrative, Noah and the seven with him represent Christ Jesus and the seven angels to the seven churches, with the seven pairs of clean animals representing the seven named Sabbatarian [because the saints keep the commandments — Rev 14:12; 12:17] churches and with the single pair of unclean animals representing the single unit of those Christians who have a different spirit about them as Caleb had a different spirit about him. Therefore, because animals, clean and unclean, represent human beings who will receive indwelling eternal life when baptized in life, animals had to perish when the world was baptized into death as it will be baptized into life. The dissonance of the Lord slaying animals because He found man to be wicked is resolved by changing the context in which the dissonance occurs.
It is in a higher context where dissonance dissipates. However, traditionally Christians have escaped cognitive dissonance through double think as George Orwell defined the concept in his 1949 novel, 1984:
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink. (Part 1, chap 3)
Christians expect Christ to return; yet they no longer expect Christ Jesus to return. Oh, they speak as if they do—at least Evangelicals do—but they don’t; for if they did, they would live as if they expected Christ to return. They would not indulge in the mental swill of this world. They wouldn’t be accepting of children’s books about witches and warlocks. They wouldn’t laugh at primetime television sitcoms. They wouldn’t conduct business on the Sabbath. They wouldn’t call evil good. Rather, they would be appalled by the current state of affairs within and without Christendom, and they would be rededicating their lives to God, praying earnestly that these present evil days would be cut out, that trauma of the seven endtime years of tribulation that comes upon this world—
Today, Christians pray for the end to come while expecting that they will escape that end: they expect to escape by either being bodily raptured to heaven, or by physically going to a place of safety, a physical place of final training where existing belief paradigms would be reinforced and not shattered—
The belief paradigms of all Christians must be jettisoned, not just the paradigms of spiritual Esau, the hated son of promise.
The phrase cognitive dissonance was introduced to the then more-consolidated Sabbatarian churches of God in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Ambassador University (AU, formerly AC) sent faculty members to secular universities to obtain terminal graduate degrees to meet accreditation standards—for decades, AC faculty members and leading evangelists for the former Worldwide Church of God and many lay members had expected Herbert W. Armstrong to live physically until Christ Jesus returned, an expectation that Armstrong didn’t discourage. Thus, Armstrong’s death in January 1986 caused true believers to manifest similar behaviors as those described by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter in their 1956 classic book, When Prophecy Fails. After Armstrong died, proselytizing increased, with four presenters handling the television responsibilities that Armstrong had previously handled by himself. More importantly, Armstrong was idolized; for if more people could be convinced that Armstrong correctly understood Scripture, especially biblical prophecy, then clearly everything Armstrong said must be correct even through none of his prophetic claims had come to pass, including ones made in the late 1940s about the destruction of the United States of America by a German-lead European Union.
Unlike the automatic writing seen by Dorothy Martin [Marian Keech in When Prophecy Fails] that would have the world ending in a great flood before dawn on December 21st, 1954, Armstrong’s prophetic declarations were couched in some form of, in a few more short years, or in four to six years. Armstrong was usually careful not to precisely date his prophetic expectations. However, in a letter written to coworkers [financial supporters and lay members], dated December 8th, 1947, Armstrong wrote:
Dear Family of Co-Workers' in God's Service:
GREETINGS! in Jesus' name: TIME is running out! This world is moving swiftly to its destruction! Yet there is still time---and just barely enough time---to finish the work of God for this present age. THERE IS NO TIME TO LOSE. But the work of God is progressing on schedule---amid handicaps, thru obstacles and trials that try our souls, our patience, and our faith to the limit---under the divine direction of God, and as a result of MIRACLES performed by him in our behalf. …
THE OUTLOOK, at the moment, is for six or seven more years of PROSPERITY here in America---(even tho it is an artificial, unsound and inflated "prosperity")---while meantime the world moves relentlessly toward WORLD WAR III and final DESTRUCTION!
YOU, dear Co-Worker, are not going to be permitted to enjoy your home, your freedom, your present privileges and pursuits, many more years. Just a few more years---perhaps six or seven---perhaps twelve or fifteen---and a re-united Fascist-Nazi Europe will STRIKE---America's great cities will be blown out of existence in one night without warning---we shall see such tremendous atomic destruction as the world has never even dreamed ---more than 40 MILLION Americans will perish in the horrifying blasts! At the same time drought and famine will strike dead another THIRD of our entire population---men, women, and children ---thru starvation and disease! And our second great commission ---our divine calling from Almighty God---is to WARN our beloved nation, and other Israelitish nations, before it is too late! Every individual who HEEDS this warning, turns to God, is WATCHING and PRAYING ALWAYS, being filled with God's Spirit, living by every Word of God, with a life consecrated to Him, will be given special divine protection---taken beforehand to a place of SAFETY--- preserved thru the final horrifying tribulation, time of plagues and human anguish soon to visit this earth!
It is hard to say that Armstrong did not set dates, especially when he had a booklet in print titled, 1975 in Prophecy. But when 1972 came and passed without Worldwide Church of God members going to any place of safety, the excuse that the church was not ready was used to explain away the prophetic failure. Plus, double think had Armstrong not setting dates, and not claiming to be a prophet; that members took things in their own hands when they sold homes in anticipation of going to Petra.
Double think allows today’s Sabbatarian churches of God to hold that Armstrong was a prophet, but not a prophet; that Armstrong was the last Elijah and died of natural causes as John the Baptist died [but John had his head cut off by Herod the tetrarch]; that Armstrong had prophecy right, that he prophesied European union, that he has prepared the way for Christ’s return, that everything will happen just as he said, when nothing has happened as he said. Double think permits Sabbatarian disciples the luxury of not preparing for the soon-coming tribulation about which Armstrong spoke; for these disciples can selectively forget about the tribulation, then remember the tribulation, then again forget about it as remembrance or amnesia suits their concept of reality.
But in an unusual set of coincides that saw the first total eclipse of the moon on the December solstice in four centuries, the Feast of Dedication [the 25th day of Kislev] occurs not on December 2nd, 2010, but on January 1st, 2011—the December 2nd date came as a result of the inherent error built into rabbinical Judaism’s calculated calendar that has the yearly advancement of the calendar occurring on the 1st of Tishri rather than on the 1st of Nisan.
New Year’s resolutions that have Christians within greater Christendom rededicating their lives to God will, this year, function as dedication of the temple … the greater Christian Church is the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16). For Christians to earnestly dedicate their lives to God, these Christian dedicate the temple of God which they form to God, with that dedication introducing anticipation that the end of the age is near, with this anticipation producing belief that causes Christians to change their lives and lifestyles, thereby reinforcing the earnestness of their prayers. The Christian Church will quickly become a praying Church, which in turn will cause Christians to form the lively shadow of Israel in Egypt immediately prior to the Passover liberation of Israel:
During those many days [that Moses dwelt with Reuel/Jethro] the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew. (Ex 2:23–24)
What did God know? That time was up? What does God know now? That time is up?
On the first day of the Festival of Dedication, Hanukkah, Jesus taught in the temple and with His words established a hard separation between His disciples and the remainder of Israel. After the first day, the Festival of Lights was held where John had been baptizing at first; i.e., where John first baptized with water for repentance. The miracle of lights followed the movement of the temple from being a lifeless structure of hewn stone and timbers to being the living body of Christ Jesus, with the light of God going from the lifeless temple to where John baptized.
Greater Christendom, today, when resolutions that are not usually kept for more than a few weeks are made, has the chance to do what the Sabbatarian churches of God are unable to do because of their employment of double think to eliminate dissonance—today, greater Christendom can elevate the context in which Christians engage Scripture. Today, Christians everywhere can, by figuratively standing on tiptoes, reach those grapes that are neither sour nor spoiled.
If time is indeed short, then Christians need to act like it is, with keeping the commandments of God being the reasonable expectation of everyone who believes God.
However, because Christians forming greater Christendom believe that they are presently of God, they will reject arguments that do not agree with what they already believe; they cannot escape the trauma of the tribulation. Perhaps, though, not being raptured to heaven or not going to a place of safety will be enough to cause some few to actually believe the writings of Moses, believe the words of Jesus, and believe the Most High God. For Moses passed through the water dry-shod; Jesus walked on the water; and the Father remained in heaven—demonstrated righteousness permits the disciple to pass from this physical life into heaven, with belief of God [faith] being counted to the person as righteousness that must be demonstrated as Abraham demonstrated his belief of God when he journeyed to the land of Moriah to sacrifice Isaac. Untested righteousness; untested belief places the person where Noah stood when he was told to build the Ark: Noah’s righteousness would have done him no good if he had not gotten about the business of falling trees, hewing timbers, and surfacing planks for time would be up on the 10th day of the second month (Gen 7:4, 11), when the lamb would be selected for the second Passover.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."