Greetings. Hebrews 13:2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. God’s words are His messengers or angels, welcome them into your thinking. This verse was once strange to me, not that I never read it before, it was strange because God had not made known it’s spiritual interpretation to me. I thought it had something to do with physical peoples, I thought wrong as usual about the Bible. Our ways are strange to God and His ways are strange to us. Proverbs 21:8The way of man is froward and strange: but as for the pure, his work is right. It’s nothing wrong with being froward in our thinking if it lines up to the way God sees His words. 2 Corinthians 9:2for I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago; and your zeal hath provoked very many. You can meet million of people who have a zeal about the Bible, yet without spiritual understanding the zeal is useless. The pure in Proverbs 21:8 is the pure in heart; the Holy Ghost instructs us how these scriptures march in rank as an army against the carnal mind of men.  An example of this is found in: Matthew 5:8Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Since most so-call Christians never read the Bible, God can never assemble His word to come against the way we want to interpret them.  Joel 2:7They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks.  We have built a spiritual wall of deceit against God’s words; but His army can climb a spiritual wall and reveal that we are not rich toward Him. Psalm 18:29 For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall. Strange thing that God would call those high-minded evil thoughts a wall to be leaped over and you would have spiritual feet.  Psalm 18:33He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet. Notice the above verse Joel 2:7 it says like men of war: it isn’t talking physical; God’s words are a spiritual army. When we read the Bible, a war is being fought against God’s thinking because we want to see it our own way: our way is sin, yet we wrongly imagine we are being made spiritually rich. Proverbs 18:11 The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit. A soap commercial when I was a kid claimed their product was 99% pure; and back then, there were only a few bars of brand name soaps, now there are hundreds of them. Yet men cannot seem to clean up his act spiritually or physically. Spiritually to see God words my heart must be made pure, thus it needed to be washed because its filthy. Nobody is born with a good heart and anybody who thinks so has deceived themselves and are lying to you. Jeremiah 17:9The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? People do not want to be told their heart is not right with God, yet what comes out of the mouth is from the heart that proves otherwise. Colossians 3:8But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. The filthy things coming out of our mouths has nothing to do with speaking our favorite four-letter words but claiming our wisdom or interpretation of the Bible is from God. 1 Peter 2:1 Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings. We have thought that we could only envy other physical people, yet we unknowing we envy God’s word and refuse to suffer to know it as He sees it. Matthew 27:18For he knew that for envy they had delivered him. And out of spiritual envy our own thoughts will deliver Jesus up to the death of the carnal mind. If we were ordered to move to a strange new country, and by faith we went being told we would receive an inheritance, could we leave what we thought we had? Genesis 12:1Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee. The Bible is symbolized by a land, or the promise land and you spiritually enter it by reading it. John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. Glory to God! I just had something new and strange revealed unto me: for in them ye think, that’s our problem how we think. As long as I am doing the thinking, the scriptures cannot give eternal life only spiritual death; thinking our thoughts has to do with trying to judge Spiritual things. And since our hearts are hard, we receive God’s words in a stony place until God overthrow our judgement.  Psalm 141:6 When their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall hear my words; for they are sweet. Our hearts symbolize the ground and when it stony nothing spiritual can take root there. I recall back when I was a kid removing the rocks from the soil with my father as we prepare to plant seed in the garden. The Bible promises the reader or hearer eternal life if one can spiritually hear God’s sweet voice in the scriptures.  Hebrews 11:8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.   The inheritance we would receive would be God making His words known unto us because we do not spiritually know them. Abram did not argue with God or try to take all the thoughts he fathered into the land God would show him. When we read the Bible, we want to bring our own thoughts or wisdom as to what the scriptures are saying: we can never receive the God inheritance thinking this way. This next verse is very strange indeed as Moses asks God a question and has a spiritual answer for us. Numbers 11:12 Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers? Yes! We have conceived all our wicked thoughts against God’s word, and we carry them in our spiritual bosom. Our thoughts cry out more for the fleshly carnal interpretation of the Bible and we give in unto them. Numbers 11:13  Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat. God’s words are in instructions in righteousness and are not some kinds of pleasant Sunday school lesson to entertain us. 1 Corinthians 10:6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. It's strange that we lust after the very things[words] that kills us spiritually: our own evil carnal wisdom about the Bible. The world will find a true Christian strange because their priorities have changed into seeking of God's word which grants internal life. We all love our own witness or ways as to how we see the Bible, and nobody is innocent of this error. Our way of seeing the Bible is called: spiritually walking after the flesh and we cherish our own carnal thoughts and make them the Church in our minds. Ephesians 5:29For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.  Our flesh is not the Church no matter how big we build it.  Michael Rudolph Hodges 8/9/2022

STRANGE LAND