19.4 Serpent Seed Sown
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. …The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No…’ (Matthew 13:24-29 - condensed).
From Jerome on, the translation of the Greek manuscripts of the letters and gospels of the apostles into other languages has been one of the most fertile fields for the enemy to plant his seed alongside the truth, right in the words of the Bible. Serpent seed inserted into the Bible must be subtle (as the serpent is subtle) and so close as to be hardly noticed.
The Parable of the Tares
Consider the implications of Jesus’ parable. Immediately after the “going to sleep” of the writers of the New Testament, the enemy, the accuser, sowed tare seed in the same field in which the wheat of Christ had been planted.
Now, Jesus did equate the serpent seed with people who appear to be Christian, but are not. Nevertheless, His parable is also fully applicable, not just to ideas about God coming out of accusation, but even to specific miss-translations of a few key words of Scripture.
One of the most terrible things uttered by Jesus is His answer to those who wanted to remove the false seed from the church: “NO!”
Uprooting the True
Jesus insinuated that false seed would fill Christian thinking all through the church age and that He would not allow that false thinking to be removed. Jesus understood the contradiction of the human mind; He also knew HIMSELF. Jesus is fully capable as Savior, as well as being, in Himself, the entirety of Salvation. The deliverance of all those whom the Father has already given to Jesus is in the hands of Jesus alone – and He is pretty good at His job.
BUT – it is the tendency of the human, when shown that some cherished belief is false, to uproot and throw out other things that are true (including Jesus Himself), right along with the false.
A Far Away Jesus
Thus I see many who embrace the understanding that the “Hell” envisioned by Nicene Christianity is not Biblical, who then go right on to throw out everything the Bible teaches about Hades – and anything else they wish to cut.
Now, ALL translators of the Bible from Jerome until now operate entirely out from the mindset of the six underlying assumptions of the Nicene Creed as outlined in Lesson 18.2. Their primary assumption is a Jesus who is tiny, isolated, and FAR AWAY from us. It is not possible to envision Jesus as confined to a limited form far away from us without also basing all reading of the Bible on a purpose of God that is not true.
A Constant Practice
If Bible verses have been interpreted and used falsely, then we seek God to know what He means by what He says. We do not throw those verses out. Thus I can quote Jesus’ words: You search the Scriptures thinking that in them you have life. But these testify of Me and you will not come to Me that you might have life. And then, in the next breath, I can see, in all reality, that the words on the pages of the Bible are Jesus Himself, and as those words come into me by the Holy Spirit through my faith, they become Jesus personal in me.
Ripping out the wheat, right along with the tares, is a constant practice, whether it be getting rid of verses or people.
The Most Devastating Seed
Now, the most devastating seed of the serpent, planted into your Bible, a seed that grows the largest and most fierce tares in the field, tares that so dominate the wheat, yet look so much like the wheat as to be the natural “truth” to which everyone bends their heads, is the translation by Jerome of the Greek word aeon into the Latin word eterne. Eternal is NOT a Biblical word; aeon means “a period of time.”
The implications of this one change of meaning are enormous. Aeon means a period of time. Thus an aeonian Hades has two critical qualities. An aeonian Hades comes to an end, and thus an aeonian Hades is filled with great purpose.
“Eternal” and “Eternity”
Now, the words “eternal” and “eternity” are a complete contradiction and all explanations of them devolve into complete nonsense. “Eternity” by definition, means forever, whereas “eternal” means all now. Eternity is an indication of time unceasing, whereas eternal is an indication of an ever present NOW. And so when great minds, such as the writers and editors of Little Kittle, the condensed study of New Testament Greek words, attempt to explain “eternity,” they try to combine both concepts and achieve nothing more than foolishness. Thus I retain the use of the word, “eternal,” not because it is Biblical, but because it is useful to us, whereas “eternity” is not.
No Purpose
But look at what the concept of “eternity,” that is, unending time, does to the conception of Hades – in contrast to how all in the early church understood that term when they heard it.
Unending changes “just consequence” to merciless punishment. Unending removes any purpose. Unending eliminates all possibility of justice. Just like a debtor’s prison eliminates all possibility of the debtor repaying debt, so unending hellfire eliminates all possibility of justice given to those who were robbed, that is, restitution.
But far worse than all those, unending alters utterly, in the minds of those who imagine, who and what God IS.
God Is Love
We must understand how Jerome’s serpent seed translates into the image of “God” as a semi-demonic being.
First, Paul, the one who said, “It’s my gospel or no gospel at all,” never mentioned Hades in his writing, not once. And the one harsh word he did use means “cessation,” even though it was translated into the serpent seed “destruction.”
Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” John said that God is love and that the atonement of Jesus covers the sins of the entire cosmos (1 John 2:1). And Paul said, “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend… — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge…” (Ephesians 3:17b-19a).
God Is “Hate?”
Contrast these words with Jonathan Edwards’ words, a godly man who loved Jesus and was anointed of the Spirit.
- The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.
And here is how Edwards envisioned us “rooted and grounded in love.”
- And when you shall be in this state of suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore that great power and majesty.
A Split-Soul “God”
The contrast is so extreme, yet it is this “image” through which almost all Christians see God. Remember, it’s not what you see, but what you see through that counts.
It is this split-soul image of God, this utter disconnect between disassociated pieces, this Satanic mind-controlled “God,” that our brethren see. And when they try to explain His love, they always find it necessary to further explain what they call His “holiness.” But this evil “holiness” is so overwhelming, that they always diminish the love of God, poo-poo it, and then place this awfulness upon the minds of believers in Jesus.
Present Now
Another important planting of serpent seed is the translation of the Greek word parousia. As Preston Eby pointed out in his important teaching, Looking for His Appearing, when the translators translated parousia as the action of someone other than Jesus, they always translated it the ONLY way anyone used that word in the middle of the first century – presence. Paul said, “I am present/parousia with you.”
But Jesus “cannot be” all here now and utterly Personal and real inside of us – thus whenever that word was used by the apostles to refer to Jesus, it could not mean “present now,” in the minds of the translators, it must mean “coming” someday.
A Seed of Anti-Christ
The word “coming” in the New Testament, when referring to Jesus, is a SEED of the serpent, a prolific seed that has brought forth innumerable tares, all looking just like the truth of Christ.
Thus a Christian who says “Jesus is coming soon” is speaking the strongest accusation against Christ that can be spoken. To say “Jesus is coming soon” is not a declaration of faith in Christ, but an accusation of supreme hostility against Christ, accusing Him of being far away, separate from His body, derelict as Savior, and with no thought of Salvation.
God says, “Jesus present now IN you.” The Christian says, “Jesus far far away,” that is, anti-Christ.
Few Seeds, Many Tares
What we find is this – if the serpent had scattered too much seed throughout the translations of the Bible, he would be found out by any reasonable person. But by subtly altering only a few words in translation, the serpent’s few seeds are so powerful that endless rows of tares have grown up all through Christian theology and thinking.
The seeds are few; the tares are many.
Anyone who defines God through demon eyes WILL alter every word they read in the Bible to fit their definition of a split-soul “God.” And no one who defines the Father in this way will ever walk as one person together with Him.