Q. A question we are often asked is the relationship between human free agency and the will of Elohim (God). Just how much free agency do we really have? How much are we predestined?

A. You ask one of the great religious and philosophical questions of the ages. Hundreds of great men have wrestled with this and related questions. What I say comes only from my own experience and is therefore only a personal opinion, but one which I nevertheless feel is consistent with Scripture.

Q. Perhaps we, then, could begin with what Elohim (God) has already revealed?

A. Yes. Firstly, the Scriptures make is clear that we do have genuine, free agency. We are not the prisoners of a merciless karma as the eastern religions teach in which we are manipulated by choices made in a supposed previous existence. On the other hand, it is certainly true that we do reap what we sow. Secondly, Yahweh's will is supreme -- it cannot be overriden by man. The question is how to reconcile these two apparantly contradictory positions.

Q. Do you think you have the answer to this paradox?

A. It is only a paradox in the mind which does not have all the facts -- in the mind which does not have the divine perspective. Because we live this life by emunah (faith), of necessity some parts of the equation of life must be missing. It is only through the exercise of emunah (faith) do we eventually obtain sure knowledge.

Q. So obtaining the answers to such questions as free agency versus divine will is dependant on more than intellectual enquiry?

A. Absolutely. True knowledge only comes through experience, through emunah (faith) that is lived out. That is why we are on this earth, to gain experience. I can lock myself in my room and study everything I can about football but not until I am on the field actually playing the game can I really understand it.

Q. So to understand the agency paradox we must experience agency for ourselves?

A. Yes. And we do that to a greater or lesser extent not only as adults but as children growing up. This is the great nightmare of parents, in fact, as they wrestle over the question on how much agency to give their children and how much they should be controlled. Indeed, being a parent is perhaps one of the greatest lessons you will ever learn on free agency.

Q. So it's as you have always said -- family life is a shadow of the relationship between Elohim (God) and mankind?

A. Such a conclusion is, in my opinion, inevitable. The nuclear family in relationship to its parents is a microcosm of the human race in its relationship to Elohim (God). The addage, 'as above, so below', certainly holds true in this regard.

Q. So what has your relationship with your family taught you about your relationship to Elohim (God)?

A. Firstly, that true happiness is the product of a balance between order and freedom of action. True happiness comes when there is a correct balance between giving a child agency and denying it. Furthermore, that this balance changes. If you want your children to grow up in a healthy and balanced way you must neither give them too much freedom nor too little. The first thing they have to learn is that a family is a fellowship of people all living closely together and that if everyone was allowed to do whatever they wanted there would just be choas. For any group of people to live happily together we must deny certain freedoms -- the 'freedom' to be nasty, to give one example, or the 'freedom' to take another child's toys, the 'freedom' to mess up communal areas like the living room. So any family, no matter whether it is religious or not, is obliged to make certain rules. Many of these rules are the collective experience of society, others are local to specific families.

Q. So Elohim (God) makes rules in exactly the same way for the happiness of society?

A. Unlike us mortals who, with or without religion, tend to live by trial and error, Yahweh's experience (if I can call it that) is perfect. From the very beginning Yahweh has laid down rules for our inter-personal relationships. When mankind has ignored them, we have suffered terribly. And why has mankind ignored them? What has been his excuse? Think about it -- the excuse to rebell against Elohim (God) has always been the claim to FREEDOM! Freedom to do whatever he has wanted to do. Freedom for each individual, maybe, but certainly not freedom for society as a whole.

Q. I see. So you're saying, in effect, that there isn't just one agency but at least two?

A. Yes, there you have a vital key. Life isn't just a single equation of factors or conditions which individuals must choose to live by but, to use a mathematical expression, life is a simultaneous equation. There are two equations which are inexorably connected. Not only is life a question of individuals but of families, tribes, nations, and society as a whole. Life is complex! Life is bigger than you or I. Life is about not just me and you, but about us.

Q. Which brings us into the realm of politics....

A. Yes, politics. And what a sad, sad story politics is. What is politics? Without exception today, all government is man-made, even though it is influenced to differing degrees by Elohim's (God's) theocratic system. Look at communism, the atheistic version of Yahweh's theocratic society. It was almost a carbon copy of Christianity but with some fundamental distortions. And its greatest distortion was in its approach to free agency. It placed the society -- the state -- above individual agency and ended up stiffling agency altogether. It was, as it always proclaimed, a dictatorship, and was a dictatorship of a few over the many.

Q. But isn't dictatorship inevitable in a fallen world?

A. I believe so. There is certainly no such thing as true democracy. There is really no such thing as 'people power' at all, as communism proved. The agency of the individual in a nation is in the hands of the rulers of that nation, whether or not they are democratically chosen, just as the agency of our children is in ours, the parents', hands.

Now consider this. If a parent tries to rule a child like a tinpot dictator, giving him no freedom of choice whatsoever, what will the result be?

Q. Misery usually, and probably stunted growth.

A. Exactly. And what happens if we give a child the freedom to do exactly as he or she wants to do, without adequate discipline? What sort of child do you get?

Q. A rebellious, precocious and selfish child as a rule.

A. Yes, and it's the same with us. True freedom, as we know, can only thrive when there is a sense of responsibility. Children in relationship to their parents, much as human beings in their relationship to Elohim (God), are irresponsible. True freedom comes only with an understanding and exercise of responsibility.

Q. So you are saying that agency can only be defined in terms of responsbility?

A. Absolutely. Yes, the equation of 'agency', if I can call it that, cannot be defined apart from responsibility. Responsibility enobles the soul. It is what gives freedom meaning. The great patriotic hymn of the American Republic sums it up beautifully -- freedom can only be won with sacrifice. What unfortunately Americans and all the rest of us sometimes fail to realise is that sacrifice is not just giving your life in war for the freedom of others but the giving of life in peace for the freedom of society.

Q. You mean by dying for others in peace time?

A. Not physically dying, no, but dying to certain personal freedoms. Everything that an indivual does affects the other individuals that touch upon his life. And those other indivuals touch the lives of those with whom they interact, until the whole human family is 'touched'. You see this is true in the way societies change. Unfortunately, modern societies don't deny nearly enough of the so-called 'freedoms' that matter. Nations want to be free to wage war. They want to be free to lead unrestricted materialistic lifestyles even if that means others in the world have to go hungry. Look what happened when communism collapsed. The West shouted and boasted about its political 'freedom' -- its so-called democracy, but then refused to help the new struggling nations with real financial help. Look at Germany. West Germany was full of noble ideas about political freedom for East Germany but when the crunch came to sacrifice certain hard-earned material freedoms, suddenly the wallets were slammed shut.

The world is full of hypocricy when it comes to freedom or agency because it basically tries to separate it from responsibility. Our society is an 'I' society -- even the war to free Kuwait from Iraqi occupation was basically an 'I' war -- to secure the West's oil supplies. Everybody knows that. It was not so much the freedom of Kuwaitis that concerned the West but the West's 'freedom' to enjoy its present materialist lifestyle without regard for others.

Q. So how is true agency to be be found?

A. You can't find it, you have to make it. Yahweh gives us agency to do exactly what we want to (but not to forego the consequences), but most important He has given us the agency to deny our own individual agency for the sake of others. But people don't do that. Because human beings are basically selfish and egotistical, they fight to preserve their individual freedom but not the freedom of the whole human family. So you have a world filled with people insisting on their own individual 'rights' but not caring twopence for the 'rights' of society as whole. People can't see beyond their own noses.

Elohim (God) has in effect said: You can do whatever you want to. If you want to be happy you have to learn what responsibility is. To be responsible you must give up many of these 'freedoms' to do whatever you want to do. You must limit yourself for the sake of others. If you don't, you will lose your individual free agency anyway because you have got to live with other people. And if you don't agree on what freedoms are permissable, and what aren't, then there will only be strife and war. These will take away far more freedom than you will have to give up than were to you voluntarily give up freedoms of your own freedom!

Q. And so we have endless cycles of wars...

A. Yes. There are periods of 'I'll do my own thing' followed by the inevitable consequences of such a lifestyle -- disharmony and conflict. The world spends most of its time standing on the edge of the abyss. Wars are ready to erupt almost everywhere. Mankind plays a perverse balancing act, insisting on his own rights and then trying to contain the resulting conflict by force. More police on the streets to combat crime. Interventionist troops in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria to stop anarchy, and so on. But he does everything but get to the root of the these problems -- like sexual immorality, disrespect for parents, an evolutionary philosophical system calculated to deny the Creator and His laws, etc.. Society tries to cure the symptoms but never really gets to the heart of the disease.

Q. And what is that disease?

A. The disease is the missing factor -- the big gap, what mathematicians call a constant -- in the equation. And that is Yahweh's Torah or Law. People remove the constants and substitute variables so the equation cannot balance.

We have seen that a happy family can only be if there are righteous rules, if there is a balance between discipline and free agency. These rules are necessary to teach us responsibility. Only when people are responsible can rules be relaxed. Infact, when mankind has learned to be responsible, then there won't be a need for any rules at all! This is the message of the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) and of the navi (prophet) Jeremiah in the Tanakh (Old Testament). If people will follow the Way of Messiah by denying certain freedoms, learn to be responsible for others, and basically allow Yahweh to write His Torah (Law) on their hearts, then there won't be any need for external rules. For Elohim (God) will be ruling in men's hearts. Elohim's (God's) will will have been done.

Q. It's a huge picture to 'take on board' but it makes sense -- there really isn't any conflict between freedom and denial at all, then?

A. Not at all. There are, really, two freedoms and we need to separate them clearly. There's the freedom to do what is right and the freedom to do what is wrong. But Elohim (God), the author of all good, must be allowed to define what right and wrong is, not man. That's the first so-called 'freedom' we must give up. We must give up our own sovereignty and accept Elohim's (God's). We don't have to -- Yahweh gives us that freedom to choose -- but wise men and women will do so because they will understand that they do not have the knowledge and wisdom for such responsibility. They can't balance the equation of life. It's too complex. And they are too finite. To give up that freedom means changing the centre of our lives from being self-seeking to being Yahweh-seeking.

The whole of life is in many ways a battle to bring the self into subjection to the interests of others. That is why Yahweh inaugurated the family. The family unit is an eternal principle for it is Elohim's (God's) greatest teaching tool to mankind. That's why we have such long periods of childhood -- I don't think people realise that childhood is as much for the parents as it is for the children.

Q. They say that childhood is parental recapitulation...

A. I think most parents would agree that you relive your childhood to some extent when children are born to you. Children are often mirrors to our own souls because they reflect our weaknesses in their 'raw states' before they are covered with a veneer of self-righteousness. They are, in a way, given to us to awaken us to ourselves, to give us a second chance to deal with unrepented sins. They also allow us to reflect on the kind of agency and freedom we had as children.

Q. Most parents simply repeat what their parents did to them, don't they?

A. Unfortunately, yes. But we, who are seekers after light and emet (truth) in Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), should only be imitating those characteristics that are consistent with the Besorah (Gospel) message. As tamlidim (disciples) endowed with great knowledge and spiritual keys, we should be desperate to reform ourselves not just for our sakes but for our children's before they imitate our bad ways. They will unconsciously teach their children the same mixture of agency or lack of agency as we taught them.

Q. Could you say a little more about the way the balance between freedom and responsibility should change as children grow up?

A. It is hard enough finding the right balance in the first place and even harder knowing how to modify that balance. By the time they are about eight years old children should have a pretty clear understanding of what is right and what is wrong, if they have been taught properly. At that age they must be given the freedom to explore more and, if necessary, make mistakes. That is particularly hard, I think, because you want to protect children from making mistakes and so spare them pain. There is, unfortunately, a tendency in us all to rebell and so long as the spirit of rebellion is strong, no amount of good teaching or upbringing will help...at least, not in the rebellious phase. But then in their rebellion, and our sorrow at watching our loved ones go their own ways -- ways that will lead them to sorrow -- we receive a revelation of the sorrow that Elohim (God) must feel for us when we rebell against Him and do things our own way. Hopefully we will be encouraged to make teshuvah (repent).

My problem, and I suspect it is the problem of most Christian/Messianic parents, is knowing when to give more freedom. The Scriptures do not specifically say when parents should release their children and give them total independence. You can never teach them enough, never prepare them enough, so you will have to let go knowing that they are not fully prepared.

I often wonder what our priorities should be in the education of our children so that when the urge to become independent first surfaces they will have the keys to exercise responsible independence. In ancient Israel children were, of course, expected to honour their parents all their lives and not just until they arrived at the age of accountability (20 for boys) or left home to start their own home. The punishment for dishonouring parents was extraordinarily strict, teaching us once again the importance of the family relationship. The law of honouring ones parents is no less strict in the New Covenant, of course, though we don't stone them to death nowadays!

Q. What kind of knowledge do you think is important for children that will enable them to become responsible agents?

A. Without a doubt, setting a good example. Being consistent in one's behaviour. Children need to see constancy. A person who changes the rules all the time will not create a stable and healthy household. Children need to see their parents as friends and not just as school teachers administering discipline and punishment. But again, drawing the boundaries is difficult. One student of mine in Oxford, who would not open up, threw back the well known saying at me, 'familiarity breeds contempt'. I'm afraid I have learned that lesson too late in my life sometimes. Familiarity and love are not necessarily the same thing. One thing I particularly disaprove of, for example, is the practice in some cultures of children calling their parents by their first names. I also disaprove of it at school. There is a difference between being a brother or a sister and a parent.

Q. In the next life aren't we all brothers and sisters?

A. Yes, in a way, but you must be careful. On earth our relationships to one other are defined by birth. In heaven they are defined by the mount of light in us. It is true, for example, that Yah'shua (Jesus) is our elder brother, since He entered flesh and became one of us. As parents we too enter into our children's 'worlds' and become one of them in order to teach them. But Yah'shua (Jesus) is more than an elder brother to us, because He is also the second member of the Elohimhead (Godhead). He is Master (Lord), Sovereign, King, and Elohim (God). There is a big difference between these and being a brother. Likewise, a parent is a 'lord' over his children.

Q. You have travelled in Eastern Europe and have been able to compare the East with the West. Do you think the East has anything to teach us here in the West?

A. Without a doubt. And the greatest lesson I believe is this: you don't need political and material freedom to be truly 'free'. It is the great illusion that has almost become an article of faith of western democracy, but it's a false one. True freedom is inside the soul and is not dependant on external circumstances. You don't need political freedom and material wealth in order to be at peace and to find fulfilment in life. Indeed, I would say that material wealth is a terrible curse sometimes. People who are sufficient in material things do not usually go searching after spiritual emet (truth). You see, that is true in evangelism in the West. Oh, there's a lot of religious activity, and churches are growing. But were you to throw the West's modern Christians into an Eastern context where there is still little real political freedom and even less material wealth, they would become so preoccupied with trying to restore their material prosperity they wouldn't have time for religion! In the East people have got used to living with little, and they have learned to make a little go a long way. But unfortunately, since the fall of communism, they have got a taste of the West and they have been seized by a frenzy to have what we have. The discerning Christians among them will thank Elohim (God) that this prosperity will probably never come to them and realise that Yahweh is saving them from a fate far worse than what they experienced in Soviet Europe.

Q. Has the West nothing to teach the East?

A. No. The West has much to teach the East. The more enlightened capitalists will teach that with freedom and wealth comes responsibility. Capitalism has had -- and does have -- an enlightened side to it. In a command economy, such as in the former Soviet Union, there is little initiative. People are so used to taking orders that they have lost a different kind of freedom -- the freedom to exercise the gifts of creativity and initiative that Elohim (God) has given them.

Q. Would you say that the ideal political conditions for Christianity to thrive in would be a kind of social democracy?

A. There are no ideal conditions so long as unredeemed men and women are in control of governments and the administration of nations. Once you have enlightened leaders, those who believe and live Christian/Messianic ethics and can influence their countries as a whole, it doesn't matter whether you have a dictatorship or a democracy. Again, this will also depend on the moral state of society as a whole.

Q. What about our day, the 1990's?

A. I think what is needed at this juncture in time where moral values are in an advanced state of disintegration and decay, is a metocracy, perhaps preceded by a brief dictatorship.

Q. A metocracy?

A. A metocracy is a half-way house between dictatorship and democracy. The former Soviet Union needs it badly because it has never experienced democracy. It needs a transition period. Russia went from a kind of feudalism straight into communist dictatorship and is not expected to leap straight into democracy. Countries like Britain and Norway gradually evolved into democracy through a process of political reform.

Q. Are you saying that a sudden change from dictatorship to democracy is impossible?

A. Not impossible, but extremely difficult if there isn't a sound moral and ethical base. The Soviet Union was corrupt in every echelon of society. The same people are now expected to run a democracy. It won't work. The same rulers who profited under communism are now exploiting capitalism to the full...at the expense of others. Once you have wealth in a capitalistic society you have power. Real power is not in the hands of the people but in the hands of the people with money. And the only way you can deprive them of that power is either to confiscate all their money or kill them as the Bolsheviks did. (20 years later, in 2017, after a brief period of unbridled capitalism during the Yeltsin period, when the Jewish oligarchs fleeced the ordinary people, we have indeed arrived at a metocracy in Putin's Russia which has been moderately successful but corruption still runs deep).

That is why a free-market capitalist democracy doesn't work. Whoever is elected to power is in the hands of the people with the money. Without the rich industrialists Hitler could never have come to to power. Sometimes it is the military that calls the tune if there are powerful Armed Forces.

Q. It's not a very hopeful picture....

A. In human terms, no, not at all. But fortunately there is an Elohim (God) who controls the destiny of the nations. He takes what is here -- the rottenness, the decadence, the moral decay, the selfishness, and He weilds it to refine the faithful and to punish the rebellious. When He wants to, He will put men and women of vision and morality into positions of power, as He did Daniel in the days of the captivity. He will turn the hearts of the leaders of the nations, as He did Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Darius and others. He's doing it today. (Vladimir Putin is very much a modern Cyrus keeping the decadent Western autocrats in check).

Q. How, then, are Christians who feel a calling to be involved in politics to respond since we in NCAY tend to disdain politics?

A. Men and women of Elohim (God) will be called into political power, of that there is no doubt. But if they think they are going to cause national reformation in the 1990's and beyond, I believe them to be in error. (The situation 20 years on has proven this to be true). The Ruach (Spirit) tells me that the time of national repentance for most countries is already past and what we must now do is painfully watch the evil of the citizens of the nations heap judgment upon themselves. The nations are ripening in iniquity. There isn't very much agency on the national level left anymore. That door, I believe, is now closed. You will see, in the years to come, much of the same thing in politics with moral values becoming further and further eroded. There will appear to be moral swings towards the good but society will swing back to the opposite extreme almost as quickly. True reformation needs time but democracy doesn't allow for that. If you elect a government which comes to power on a moral platform it is quite likely to be voted out of power after its 4-6 year period of office, however long that is. Then more corruption will come in. So long as the dirt is there -- and there isn't much that governments can do about it -- it will keep on coming back with the tide. (In 20 years we have witnessed the exponential rise of moral decadence that has verified this prediction).

I remember having a discussion with a friend from another church many years ago about government welfare programs. We were discussing the clearance of slums. He argued that governments like the USA had successfully cleared away slums and that the quality of life had generally improved in that nation compared with a century ago. I pointed out to him that whilst this was true, for every slum cleared up in the world, two more appeared somewhere else. And that the progress accomplished because of wealth was really illusiory because the wealth was not evenly distributed -- so that whilst things like slum clearance in the West improve, elsewhere in the world it will get worse. This would then be followed by population upheavals in the rest of the world and mass migration to the West, as is indeed happening now. (This is being fulfilled in our day in the 2010's to the near destruction of Western civilisation). The borders of nation-states would become porous and the character of the nations diluted and eventually destroyed. (The policy of open boders instituted in the mid 2010's has caused a flood of Third World immigrants that has forever changed the social landscape of Europe, America and the West in general).

Q. Do you think that is bad?

A. In my opinion, yes. Each nation or culture, though imperfect, is a repository of important spiritual keys. Elohim (God) ordained the world to be a planet of nation states with individual identities living together in harmony in peace. This is certainly the message of the Bible. Spirits are born into particular nations with their unique circumstances and spiritual atmosphere to help them grow and work out their salvation. When nations have become wicked they have either been destroyed by the sword or the culture erased by mass migration of foreigners. (Hence the Judgment unfolding on the West currently in 2017).

Q. Are you against emigration then?

A. Mass emigration -- as a matter of principle, yes, but not because I am a racist. I am an internationalist, if that label if helpful to you. People would not want to emigrate if there was equality on the earth. It is famine, political unrest, and other factors that cause them to move. Most emigrants today are either economical emigrants looking for a better life or are exporting religious terrorism. I myself an an 'emigrant' of sorts for I have lived in three countries in my life though my reasons for being in Scandinavia are spiritual. I may one day move to another country.

Q. Are you saying that culture plays an important rôle in the preservation of free agency?

A. I believe so. If all countries were the same, what choice would there be? What models could we copy if there was only one 'world society'? When I think of a particular country I immediately think of that nation's ideal virtues and the qualities of that national spirit that I want to imitate. When I think of Norway, I think of the cleanliness of its people. When I think of Germany, I think of its industriousness and orderliness. When I think of Japan, I think of the centrality of family and of family loyalty. When I think of the Ukraine, I think of hospitality. When I think of England, I think of honour and justice. I want to imitate something in every country.

But what if all these countries disappear? Many have disappeared over the centuries because they lost their peculiar identity. Look at Rome -- a great civilisation, so important that Yahweh caused Christianity to be established within its borders at the time of its greatness. Every culture has its own unique spiritual soil in which certain Besorah (Gospel) seeds can best be planted. When that spirit becomes corrupted, the nation cannot exist. Rome was overthrown, destroyed from within by immorality and from without by mass immigration and invasion. The Western European countries are going through a similar process as they move towards a single federal state, becoming, in effect, a mini-United States. American culture, or a lack of it, has nearly totally wiped out the Western European cultural heritage, and Eastern Europe is eager to embrace it too.

If you want to know what the nation states are going to become look at the USA. The American pop culture has infiltrated everywhere. Gone is the greatness of the American ideal which had its heyday in the 19th century and which breathed its last at the end of the Second World War. There is much I admire in the America of a century ago but little today. But we must get to understand it because it is a version of the modern American culture that will become the world culture. It is a culture without any real depth at all which gives no real agency because there is little that is worthwhile to choose from. Go into any Western country and you will have much of the same choice. Its -- the West's culture -- is epitomised in music by Rock, in art by Andy Warhole, in dress by teashirts and jeans, in entertainment by the Nintendo computer, in religion by get-rich-quick evangelists and fanatical cults, in its social welfare by millions without medical protection, and in its democracy by an underworld maffia which calls most of the shots. This what what is diluting our European culture, and the culture of the West, not to mention the noble values of the American Constitution itself -- a constitution which one inspired commentator in the last century said would one day hang by a thread.

Q. It's depressing...

A. If its world redemption through human means that you mean is depressing, then yes, I agree with you. It's worse, actually, because it's hopeless. But remember, there is a grand climax on the way -- a true and eternal redemption caused by divine intervention -- and the nations that have been deemed worthy to continue will exist in a thousand years of peace.

Q. Will some nations disappear?

A. Inevitably. Some will possibly group together such as the Scandinavian countries who have a kind of 'family togetherness consciousness'. The USA and Canada will do the same, as will Germany and Austria. Boundaries will be redrawn by God and not by politicians. Old nations may well return in the Millennium that have been extinct for centuries.

Q. What of the ex-Soviet Union?

A. I suspect many of the former Soviet republics will re-allign themselves together though how, and which ones, I don't know. (In 2017, we see the close alignment of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and one or two others). They have lived together too long to just walk off in different directions. Their's was an 'arranged marriage' to be sure, and they need time to be apart to work things out, but will probably 'remarry' in some way in the future. (A Western-fomented fascist coup d'état in Ukraine followed by civil in the mid 2010's war has upset this for now). They need each other. But whether such will be permanent, I don't know, nor do I think it is important right now. What I do believe is important is that individual nations fight to preserve their cultures, not in some blind nationalistic, religious fanaticism, but with a view to enriching humanity as a whole. If Messiah is sought, then the best will survive. But it will have to be fought for, because the forces of cultural destruction are swift. Like the aftermath of a tornado, it takes alot of time and effort to clear up afterwards. Civilisations take centuries to build up, but can be destroyed in days.

Q. And NCAY -- what is its rôle in all of this?

A. The complete vision -- the whole picture -- I don't think any of us has yet. For now, we are to be a leavening influence wherever we can be, disseminating the emet (truth) Yahweh has revealed to us. That is one function. The second is to build a counter-culture, microdots of true theocratic culture in small communities around the world, what we call 'Millennial' culture, or 'Firstborn' culture where true agency can be exercised. (See the Final Gathering). With the light of knowledge and holiness comes a different kind of agency -- infinite possibilities to become men and women truly built in the spiritual image of Elohim (God). The men and women raised in these Messianic Evangelical colonies will go out into the world sowing the seeds of a vision of a better life, as messengers going out to prepare the world for the resturn of the Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), encouraging leaders and rulers to incorporate true ideas and teachings into their political and cultural programs. In that way many will be prepared for what is to come.

Q. Are we then to only concentrate our evangelism on world leaders?

A. Not at all. The man on the street is the centre of our evangelism. We minister to whosoever will receive the Davar Emet (Word of Truth) and entrust the pearls we have passed on into Elohim's (God's) hands. The truths we disseminate will be passed on by others under Yahweh's guidance and usually without our having any knowledge of the fruits of our sowing. That is the way Yahweh has always worked. That is how He has gathered the keys of light to us by using other people who have been agents in His hands. We are light-gatherers -- synthesisers, revelators -- and messengers. We receive from others, gather it together, sift through it and pass it on. That is how the counter-culture is built. We inject our own experience and our own revelation of the divine. We are harvesters of the light which is scattered across the world and we bring it together into the storehouse of light, Yahweh's Qadosh (Holy, Set-Apart) Temple. Like the archaeologist gathering thousands of fragments of parchment, we sort through the pieces and assemble the original. Then we teach our people and they in turn pass it on as they are led by the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit).

Q. Are there other harvesters of light?

A. Yes, they have done their part and saved us much time and work. Sometimes it has not been correct but correct enough to be of use. Sometimes the wrong parts are glued together! The next generation will take over from us, adding more, purifying what we have done, until, like the once great library in Alexandria, we are in possession of all the knowledge of the Kingdom necessary for the Last Exodus and the Second Coming.

Q. It sounds like a dream...

A. It is a dream, but it's one inspired by revelation, a dream that has pushed countless men and women of the past forwards. That was their choice and their sacrifice. And it is a big sacrifice. All great works require great sacrifice. That is our calling, and Yah willing, we will fulfil it.

Last updated on 9 May 2017