Blueprint for a Revolution: Building Upon All of the New Testament - Volume One: (What Your Church Should Be Teaching and Building)

By Reed K. Merino B.A. M. Div.

What if, for more than fifty years, you worked hard to research the New Testament without denominational filters? And then what if you were to organize that research by subject matter? Well, that is what I have done in these two volumes of “Blueprint for a Revolution: Building Upon ALL of The New Testament.”

What follows is a catechism of apostolic, true Christianity. It is a body of teaching that flows out of taking all New Testament teachings in a grammatically natural and literal sense, the way we instinctively read all serious literature. Testimony from the earliest Christians is also presented, demonstrating that what those earliest churches taught and lived out was typically identical to what you conclude when you take the New Testament doctrines, commands and promises in that same sense.

In those many years of research, I have never come upon a single church or book that provides a specific set of principles (a.k.a., “exegetical method”) by which all Biblical passages are to be interpreted, and that has then set about to consistently surrender to those principles in all the subjects that it covers. My claim, therefore, is that this is the only such catechetical work that does just that.

The importance of this book does not lie mainly in the specific conclusions of any individual chapter, and certainly not in any of my literally skills at presenting those conclusions. It lies largely in the juxtaposition of teachings that are often thought to be in conflict with each other only because the traditions that hold to the beliefs in those chapters have been in conflict with each other. It is my contention that what Jesus considered to be “my church” is what is taught within these chapters, the church that is an incarnation of His “kingdom of God”!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664229884

Reed K. Merino B.A. M. Div.

He is a fifth-generation Californian, who in 1945 at age four, got immersed into the culture shock of moving from the small farming town of Lompoc to Brooklyn at the end of World War II, spending most of the rest of his life in and around New York City and Philadelphia. With Ann, his wife since 1963, he is now retired in Tucson, Arizona, where there is no snow, and cabs do not delight in frightening pedestrians! He owes her a great debt of gratitude for typing the hundreds of pages of these volumes! In 1958, he received a Congressional appointment to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, studying Nautical Science and Marine Engineering, preparing for a career at sea. Part of their training is to spend a year at sea working onboard various ships. It was during this year that God drew Him to Himself. He started that year as a typical superficial American teenager but became plunged into a world that was suffering the effects of the absence of the spirit and teachings of God’s Son: the drunkenness and sexual promiscuity of shipboard culture, horrible poverty in Haiti, bloody and destructive revolution in the Belgian Congo (where he was almost murdered by revolutionaries), and the cultural and racial injustice of apartheid, the South African brutal form of segregation. It was then that he began to think about the effects of so many supposed “Christians” and their churches being active in, or acquiescing to, such hypocritical actions. By the end of that year, he was drawn to enter the ministry. Seminary required a liberal arts degree, so he left the Academy after three years and obtained a full scholarship to Lycoming College, where he majored in history with the equivalent of minors in literature, religion and psychology. It was during that time that his desire began to see Christians uniting, fulfill Jesus’s prayer, “that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:22). During that time at college, he became an Episcopalian, thinking that it was more representative of apostolic Christianity. After three years, he obtained his bachelor’s degree (with honors), and was accepted to attend the Episcopal Church’s Philadelphia Divinity School, where he focused upon Biblical and ancient Church history studies. He graduated first in his class, with awards in Biblical Studies and Patristics. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1968. After several years of parish ministry, he obtained a full scholarship from the Episcopal Church Foundation and was accepted into the Ph.D program at Fordham University, studying in its new “Religions of India, China and Japan” program. After three years, he finished the course work for the Ph.D, but decided to return to parish ministry. It was in 1973 that he began studying and taking notes for what would ultimately become, almost fifty years later, these two volumes of Blueprint For A Revolution: Building Upon ALL Of The New Testament. These volumes are the fulfillment of his yearning about how Christians can unite together in the restoration of the same divine Kingdom of God movement that Jesus and His apostles created on earth. May you be as blessed in reading it as He was in writing it!

Book preview

Blueprint for a Revolution: Building Upon ALL of the New Testament

(WHAT YOUR CHURCH SHOULD

BE TEACHING AND BUILDING)

Volume One:

The Faith Delivered to the Saints

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Reed K. Merino, B.A., M. Div.

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Copyright © 2021 Reed K. Merino, B.A., M. Div.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations (RSV) are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2986-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2987-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2988-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021906689

WestBow Press rev. date: 07/12/2021

CONTENTS

THE VISION

So, You Think You Believe The Bible?

1. THE SCRIPTURES

Inspiration And Its Consequences

What Should You Expect Of Writings That Are Inspired By God?

You Must Have Jesus’s Attitude Toward The Scriptures

What The Scriptures Say About Themselves

The Scriptures Are Very Carefully Constructed By God

God Must Open Our Eyes To Understand The Scriptures

We Are To Give The Scriptures Careful Attention And Obedience

Interpreting The Scriptures Properly: Biblical Literalism

Be Sure To Use All The New Testament Scriptures

Christian Use Of The Old Testament

Principles For Exegeting New Testament

Promises, Commands And Doctrines

2. THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIANS

1. God’s Initial Revelation Of Himself

God Is Personal

God Is One

God Is Transcendent, Enthroned In Glory

God Is Omnipotent

God Is Omniscient

God Is Omnipresent

God Is Eternal

The Significance Of These Attributes

2. God Reveals Himself More Fully

A Divine Plurality In The Old Testament

And Who Is This Son, The Anointed One?

The Mystery Made Clear

The Formal Doctrine Of The Trinity

3. The Character And Personality Of God

God Is Absolutely Trustworthy And Faithful

God Is Always Righteous And Just

God Is Compassionate And Merciful

God Is Patient And Long-Suffering

God Hates Evil And Is Holy

4. Knowing God

Testimony From The Early Church

Selections From Tertullian

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed

Selections From Gregory Of Nazianzus

The Creed Of Gregory The Wonder-Worker

Selections From Gregory Of Nyssa

3. GOD’S CREATION (Genesis 1-2)

Heaven: The Dimension Of Spirit

The Universe: The Dimension Of Matter

The Lord Adam: Human Nature

Male And Female: Two Persons In One Nature

The Marvelous Condition Of The Creation

The Original Destiny Of The Creation

How Long Ago Was All Of This?

Conclusion: The Importance Of All This

4. THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF EVIL

Stage 1: The Beginning Of Evil And Of The Rebellion

The Importance Of This Knowledge

Stage 2: The Fall Of Man (Genesis 3)

Some Effects Of The Fall Upon Man

Some Effects Of The Fall Upon The Natural Order

God’s Plan Continues Infallibly

Stage 3: Working Out the Consequences of the Fall

The Great Flood (Genesis 4-11; Psalm 104:5-9)

The Dispersion Of The Race At Babel (Genesis 11:1-10)

5. WHAT’S GOING ON NOW?

The Meaning Of History

Man’s Perspective

Satan’s Perspective

God’s Perspective

6. PREPARING FOR REDEMPTION - THE OLD COVENANT

God Chooses A Man Of Faith

Only Israel Knows God

The Glory Of God Comes To Earth

God Prepares Israel For His Messiah And For His Salvation

The Purpose Of The Law

7. JESUS CHRIST AND HIS REDEMPTION

Why Did Christ Come Among Us?

He Came To Persuade Men

He Came To Become A New Adam

He Came To Defeat Satan

He Came to Fulfill All The Law And The Prophets

He Came To Bring A New Covenant

He Came To Make An Atonement For Sin

He Came To Bring The Glory Of God’s Kingdom To Earth

The Works Of Christ

The Incarnation

The Hidden Years

The Baptism By John

The Receiving Of The Spirit

The Temptation By Satan

The Making Of Disciples And Of Fellowship

His Doctrine

Signs And Wonders

Patient Endurance

Bravery

The Last Supper

His Betrayal

His Crucifixion: Our Atonement

The Descent Into Hades

The Resurrection

His Ascension Into Glory

His Return

Testimony From The Early Church

The Definition Of The Council Of Chalcedon

Selection Of Christus Victor

8. THE WAY OF SALVATION

Partial Descriptions Of The Way Of Salvation

Election By God

Preparing for redemption

Believing The Gospel

Repentance

Baptism

The Effects Of Your Apostolic Baptism

Power From On High

Spiritual Gifts

Preparing For A Future Salvation

The Experiential Nature of Apostolic Christianity

Testimony From The Early Church (And Others)

Baptism

Gifts Of The Spirit

9. THE CHRISTIAN’S HOPE

The Supernatural Kingdom

The Kingdom Comes In Two Stages

Two Obvious Conclusions

The Tribulation Controversy

The Significance Of A Pretribulation Rapture Doctrine

Testimony From The Early Church

An Early Persecution

Supplemental Essays

I. FATALISM OR FAITH

Is God Good, Or Is He All-Powerful?

He Causes It All

Not Fatalism But Faith

II. CREATION AND EVOLUTION

Competing Views Of Our Morally-Mixed Universe

But Does The Earth Reveal Its Own History?

How Scientific Are Evolutionary Scientists?

Will Mathematics Come To The Aid Of Evolution?

How Did The Theory Originate?

Theistic Evolution

Can You Have Certainty That Evolution Is False, Without Knowing Any Science?

A Lesson To Learn From This: Design Means Purpose

III. GOD’S PREDESTINATION AND MAN’S FREEDOM

The Scriptures That Seem To Affirm God’s Initiative

The Scriptures That Seem To Contradict God’s Initiative

A Solution To The Apparent Dilemma

IV. SEPARATION FROM THE WORLD

The Relation Of Jesus And His Body To This World

Some Hard Sayings Of The Kingdom

Testimony From The Early Church

V. SATAN IN THE SCRIPTURES

Understanding Satan’s Role Makes Going To Hell Both Fair And Reasonable

So, Who Is In Charge Of Your Daily Life: Jesus Or Satan?

Hell In The Scriptures

Whether You Like It Or Not, You Are Going To Be Immortal!

VI. CONCERNING THE DEMONS

Demonic Affliction In The New Testament

Can A Believer Be Demonized?

VII. TONGUES: A KNOWN HUMAN LANGUAGE?

WHY THIS BLUEPRINT?

What Have We Resolved In The Blueprint?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, REED MERINO

INTRODUCTION

THE VISION

The purpose of this book is to expand your vision and to excite your passion about what God has revealed to us in and through His Son Jesus. When it comes to the teachings about Jesus (e.g., His divinity and humanity, His death and resurrection) there may well not be much here that is new to you: most orthodox Christian churches have preserved those teachings pretty well. Where so many Churches have departed from what God has revealed in Jesus is not in the teachings about Jesus, but in the teachings of Jesus (and his apostles), the teachings that pertain to such concepts as the way of salvation, turning the other cheek, the kingdom of God, discipleship, all things in common, and experiencing that filling and subsequent gifts and guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.

When you decide to consecrate yourself to the understanding and the living out of the teachings of Jesus and His holy apostles – when you decide to surrender your theology and your life to the natural, literal sense of the Spirit-inspired apostolic writings – at some point you begin to sense that something tragic must have occurred within the history of the Church, causing it to become much more comfortable in this world than God permits - a religious and secular world which put its Creator to death when He came to His own, a world about which one of His apostles announced a devastating judgment:

"You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4-5).

God’s apostle James tells us that even the wish to have the world’s approval makes you God’s enemy! I was a history major in college, had a focus upon Church history in seminary, and was trained to look at the big picture of why things are the way they are. My Ph.D. level studies at Fordham were in the History of the Religions of India, China and Japan. I was amazed when we studied about Buddha and the history of Buddhism. Buddha was actually a religious agnostic! He said he did not know whether any god or gods existed or not. But, he taught, to him it did not matter, because his noble eight-fold path was true and produced its results of Satori (Nirvana) whether or not any god or gods existed. But, as Buddhism spread throughout eastern Asia, that original Buddhism became highly polytheistic, sprouting thousands of major and minor deities. I can easily imagine that if Buddha were to return to earth today, most of such Buddhism would utterly reject him. As I studied the other eastern cultures and their religions, I noticed the same kind of religious evolution taking place, although none as extreme as what has happened within Buddhism. I wondered what could account for that tendency in their religions, and ultimately realized that it had nothing to do with the religions, per se: it had to do with its people and human nature. Whatever good, noble, virtuous or industrious qualities we humans may have within us, we are also contaminated by varying degrees of selfishness, laziness, stubbornness, fear and reluctance to change inwardly. Well, human nature in the west is no different than human nature in the east. And, sad to say, over the course of two thousand years, Christianity has also been modified by those same elements of human nature that I described above within Buddhism! The true repentance and conversion that Jesus personally taught, inspired and demanded makes demands upon human nature that human nature definitely does not want to embrace. That is why we cannot simply grow out of that human nature and our worldly values - they have to be crucified and put to death.¹ A church that does not insist upon such crucifixion of our human nature and disciple its members out of that human nature will be sucked into the quicksand of human nature. The Christianity of Christendom, alas, has spent many centuries in that quicksand!

With regard to world-induced instincts, we shall see very clearly within these two volumes that Jesus and his apostles never suggested or even implied that His specific teachings or His authority would ever be accepted by any national government or society. In God’s vocabulary, the so-called Christian Europe is merely the world and has never been anything other than the world. The America that is supposedly founded upon Judeo-Christian values is, in God’s Biblical vocabulary, the world and has never been anything other than the world. The fact that one country might show less hostility to God than some other country (e.g., the U.S.A. compared to Communist North Korea) does not make it a covenant partner of God; nor does it remove it from the status, spiritual covering and destiny of what God calls the world. The distressing end-time (eschatological) events announced by the prophets will be happening to every nation in the world, not just to those officially godless communists and other dictatorial regimes.

I was born in 1941. I grew up in the Church – Lutheran then Methodist – and when I was brought to faith in Jesus in 1960, while sent out to sea by the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, I somehow knew that I was called by God to His ministry. Ever since then, I have been on a quest to understand and to become part of whatever it was that came into being through Jesus and His apostles. In college I majored in history, became drawn to a more ancient view of Christianity, and entered the Episcopal Church, in the assumption – naïve, as it turned out to be - that it embodied that more ancient view. In seminary I concentrated in Biblical studies and early Church history, and after I was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1968, I planned to teach Church history at seminary level. I went on to finish the course work for a Ph.D. in the History of Religions at Fordham University.

Unfortunately, the liberal theology and higher criticism in Biblical studies I had learned in my [supposedly] Christian college, Christian seminary and Christian graduate schools took its toll, and I went through a three-year period of great spiritual darkness and rebellion, which helped breakup our marriage. When God mercifully brought me back to Him (and restored our marriage), I promised Him that I would never again set aside anything in His Word, no matter whether I thought it great or little. I began rethinking all that I had been taught and, started examining the Scriptures from a new perspective: "What did Jesus and His apostles actually teach, experience and practice, when you take their teachings in their grammatically natural and literal sense, the sense in which all serious communication is normally conducted. As I studied, I took notes, with no particular goal in mind at the time. This book is the result of almost fifty years of that studying, searching and note taking.

Over the years, I have developed a yearning to see those whom God calls Christians enter into that unity for which Jesus prayed in John 17: unity of consecration to Him, unity over what He taught, unity of Spirit-caused experience and unity of discipline in a love-oriented body. I have also come to see that His idea of unity can only come if the disciples of Jesus who want unity are willing to live under the discipline of that grammatically natural and literal sense of the apostolic writings. This is not a utopian dream that is beyond the reach of us mere mortals; it actually worked for some centuries. The reason that those who call themselves Christians today are not seeing God’s promises being fulfilled in the way that we see described in the New Testament and early Church is because they are not willing to pay the price that the Son of God clearly requires of us: According to your faith be it done to you. (Matthew 9:29 RSV).

So, You Think You Believe The Bible?

Even though you, as a professed Christian, may have gone page by page from Matthew 1:1 through Revelation 22:21 many times, it is likely that you have never truly read the entire New Testament even once. By reading, I mean receiving into your mind, without resistance, what the words are actually saying, using the same natural and literal sense that you are now using to read this paragraph and which you naturally use for reading any serious literature or talking to others about serious things. By reading I also mean reading with an assumption that the author thought over a choice of words and ideas and then selected the one(s) that best described the idea that was in the author’s mind, so that what he truly meant was what his words meant. It is the way that virtually everyone in the world reads anything serious. Yet it is seldom the way Christians have been taught to read their Bibles when it comes to the more costly or controversial areas in the New Testament.

I suspect that you never have truly read the New Testament even once (in that sense). And the fault is not yours. The fault lies in the fractured nature of that Christendom that has been modified by human nature, with its tragic history of unbelief, division, and the competition among the Christian fragments resulting from that division. We have been inadvertently trained to not consistently read the New Testament in that grammatically natural way, and trained by those who were themselves trained to not do so. For example, growing up in a Methodist tradition, I was taught that when Jesus said, This is my body… (Mark 14:22), what He [supposedly] really meant was that it was a symbol of his body. I was taught that those who took Him literally were rather crude.

Also, in the academic days of my young adulthood I was educated in the current higher criticism theology, in truth a form of unbelief that functionally disconnects the living God from the Scriptures. God might be infinite, and the Scriptures might be said to be inspired, so it went, but those writings had too much human input to be received simply as being authored by God and carrying His full authority in our modern and scientific age. So when, for example, we read Jesus talking about Noah’s flood as if He believed that it was a historic event (Luke 17:27), we just attributed it either to His speaking down to His pre-scientific audience or — when that liberal poison finally captured my mind — to Jesus incorrectly believing what were, in fact, fables. They forget that the God who inspired the prophets to write is the same brilliant and powerful Being who designed and engineered the semi-infinite complexity of the human body and knows what He is talking about! The Moses to whom God spoke surely did not understand anything about the structure of the human cell, but the God who was speaking to him did, since He had invented it! The god of those supposedly higher critics, who for a time also became my god, is far, far too small to be the God who designed and engineered this amazing universe and the human body!

But liberals are not the only ones caught up in this selective acceptance of the apostolic writings. In our day, virtually all Christian traditions practice a version of that same selective belief and obedience: Catholic and Orthodox traditions, mainline Protestantism, fundamental Protestantism, Pentecostals, Anabaptists (Mennonites/ Amish/ Hutterites) – all practice a version of this kind of selectivity. They just practice it on different sets of Scriptures, as we shall see in great abundance throughout these two volumes.

When I was drawn back to Christ in 1972, and was cured of my anti-supernaturalism, I promised God that I would never again play those games² with the Scriptures that we were trained to play in college, seminary and graduate school. I now trusted that the God who could design the intricacies of the physical universe and of the human body was more than intelligent, wise and powerful enough to make sure that the very words He wanted to be recorded actually did get recorded, and that the words chosen to be recorded were the best possible words to convey what He wanted recorded. I was now drawn to believe whatever the New Testament texts actually said, regardless of what church or tradition might be proven right or wrong. He who invented the universe and forms of life that can reproduce themselves is also a most excellent Communicator!

If you are a practicing conservative Christian, you may be in cheerful agreement with me at this point and believe that you share in that same commitment about the Scriptures.

Yet, as mentioned above, what do you do when you come upon these two passages: "…this is my body (Matthew 26:26, clearly and grammatically referring to the bread), Is not the bread which we break a sharing [literally, communion or koinonia] in the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16 NASB). What most Protestants actually do is refuse to believe what the text actually says, by saying that you believe it to be some sort of poetic expression, like when Jesus says, I am the door" (John 10:9 NASB). If that is the way your mind is working you are not believing what the text actually says and the original, apostolic churches clearly believed (as will be demonstrated). What you are actually believing is not the inspired text, but rather your denominational filter that has been laid on top of the text. And so, your disbelief kills the wonderful promise and experience of Christ’s supernatural presence, the promise and experience into which the original Christians entered, and into which I eventually entered by being convinced to throw away my denominational filter.

And what do you do when you come upon a passage such as this: "Now I wish³ that you all spoke in tongues, but even more that you would prophesy" (1 Corinthians 14:5 NASB)? Do you believe that God - speaking through Paul - wants you to speak in tongues, whatever Paul’s version of that phrase may turn out to mean? And do you believe that He wants even more that you should prophesy (after the fashion of 1 Corinthians 14:24-25)? I realize that just because you do start believing Paul’s passage it does not mean you can produce tongues and prophecy on your own. But if you do not start to believe that passage you can be quite sure that you will never receive God’s version of tongues and prophecy.

Yet again, what happens within you when you come upon various commands like this one: But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also (Matthew 5:39). If you play the unbelieving denominational games with these kind of passages, as I was trained to do, you will likely come up with something like: He is only talking about what happens to me as an individual, but when my country is invaded, I will go and resist the (supposedly) evil person, and destroy him before he gets a chance to destroy me. Furthermore, very few of us are actually committed to taking Him literally even at that individual level: have you in fact surrendered yourself to literally turn the other cheek when being physically (or verbally) assaulted? Does your Church insist that you do not engage in the institutionalized violence of this world?

Yet again, consider those dangerous teachings about the sharing of our possessions. Assuming that Jesus, Luke and Paul actually meant what theirs words clearly mean, what do you think that the cumulative impact of the following teachings implies?

Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back (Luke 6:30 NASB)

Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys (Luke 12:33).

So therefore, no one of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions (Luke 14:33 NASB).

43 And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. 44 And all those who had believed were together, and had all things in common;45 and they began selling their property and possessions, and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need (Acts 2:43-45).

And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them…. 34 For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales (Acts 4:32).

"13 For this is not for the ease of others and for your affliction, but by way of equality – 14 at this present time your abundance being a supply for their want, that their abundance also may become a supply for your want, that there may be equality; 15 as it is written, ‘He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little had no lack’ (2 Corinthians 8:13-15). (Paul could have easily used the word generosity, but he used equality." Why do you think he did?)

If I assume that the Jesus who created the universe and that His Spirit-inspired apostle Paul thought and taught very clearly about what they intended to communicate, and if I believe that God’s judgment about whether I am in His will include His assessment of how I have received and lived out those teachings, my wallet starts to burn my skin, so to speak. Do you still say that you are a Bible-believing Christian? Or, on the other hand, might you actually believe that Jesus did not really mean what His words mean?

And once again, what happens within your mind when you read passages like these:

"… and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul." (Acts 16:14 NASB).

"…For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, …and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified" (Romans 8:30).

More likely than not, you do what I did while growing up: when you read these texts, you do not really believe the texts - what you actually believe is a man-made denominational free-will filtered out version of them. You were likely taught that God merely predestined those whom He already knew would accept Him in the future. If so, then what you really believe is what is left over of the Scriptures after they have been filtered out; you are not believing what is actually being said. On the other hand, if you have grown up as a Calvinist, you probably read those predestination Scriptures properly, but when you read a text that says God "… desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4 NASB), or The Lord is … not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9 NASB), you play the same game, but with the other side of the equation. Like the Arminian, you refuse to believe what the text says; rather, you apply the Calvinistic filter which converts all men into some men, or perhaps all elect men." In both cases you refuse to live under the mystery of the two sets of God-created writings, waiting prayerfully until God stretches you into an understanding which grows out of taking all of them in their grammatically natural and literal sense. Instead of patiently enduring, you believe some Scriptures and functionally throw away the ones that do not make it through your filter.

And how many of you are in a fellowship that is even attempting to live out the following:

"Obey your leaders, and submit to them; for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an account" (Hebrews 13:17 NASB).

"Wives, be subject to your husbands…" (Colossians 3:18).

"For this is how the holy women who hoped in God in former times also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him ‘lord’, whose daughters you became by doing good and not being afraid of any intimidation (1 Peter 3:5-6).

We could go on and on and on, from topic to topic. That is why I say that I am rather confident that you have never really read and received all of the New Testament writings. It is natural enough that compromised denominational traditions have come into being for various historical and geographical reasons; but the fact that they continue in their compromised existence is the result of dozens and dozens of these various filters that have become enshrined within our traditions. The particular group of texts that get victimized by those filters vary from denomination to denomination (or theological tradition to tradition), but the filtering principle is the same: we just refuse to believe all the texts of the inspired literature in the same grammatically natural and literal sense. We usually have no problem reading other literature that way, but the consequences of reading the New Testament that way are too dangerous to the flesh’s existence and the flesh’s ego. Furthermore, Satan’s demons could care less whether you read a biography of George Washington or the teachings of Confucius in their grammatically natural and literal sense; but if you commit yourself to the apostolic writings in that same sense you become a mortal danger to Satan, and his Did God really say… whisperings in your ear begin to get frantic.⁴

At this point in my arguing for taking the inspired teachings more literally, some have actually tried to refute that idea by bringing up to me the passage that is sure to prove that I am simple and naïve. They have said, Jesus taught us ‘And if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, and throw it from you; for it is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell …’ (Matthew 5:29 NASB). So, you really believe that we are supposed to pluck out our eyes or cut off our hands? But do you not see that what they think proves their point actually proves what I am arguing: they are not being grammatically natural and literal enough! They were not paying attention to that all-important "if (If your right eye…"). Can you honestly believe that Jesus thought it was your eye that causes you to lust or your hand that caused you to steal? Do you really believe that Jesus thought blind men are immune from lusting? Of course not! So, the clear and obvious conclusion is that He wanted you to be so very determined not to sin that "if" you could cease sinning by plucking out your eye, you actually would do so! A grammatically natural and literal reading makes sure to take that if as literally as the rest of the passage. Literal does not imply superficial. You still have a lot of homework and prayerful meditation to do!

If we play these denominational filtering games with His Word, we do not yet trust Him or believe Him in the way taught in the New Testament and in the ancient churches, nor have we yet surrendered – without conditions or qualification – to the authority of Jesus over our lives. And in doing so we are actually hardening ourselves against the Spirit of Jesus, who continually whispers within our conscience that we are to surrender, without conditions, to the person, authority and ability of Jesus. And in doing so, we are instead listening to the demonic companions that all humans have to deal with from birth, telling us to justify our filtering games by whispering He does not mean what His words are saying (a variant of Satan’s "Indeed, has God said ... ?" [Genesis 3:1 NASB]). And, depending upon the revelation you are rejecting, you may even be separating yourself from Christ’s authority and from the separated Way of the original Christians. You can then get to the point – as I did – that you cannot believe His promises literally anymore because of what you are doing to His literal commands. Does that describe you?

But what if you were to become converted not only to the God of your tradition, but to the God who has spoken dangerously clear in the Scriptures about many, many things - commands that strengthen, promises that deeply satisfy, teachings that clarify? What if you were to read the New Testament - really read it without denominational filters - read it over and over again. And then what if you were to organize your attempts at such unfiltered reading by subject matter? Well that is what happened to me, and this is what I have attempted to do in these two volumes of Blueprint for a Revolution: Building Upon ALL Of The New Testament!

What follows is a sort of catechism of my understanding of apostolic Christianity. It is a body of teaching that flows out of taking all of the New Testament texts in a grammatically natural and literal sense: the way we instinctively read all serious literature. I also present testimony from the earliest Christians, demonstrating that what they taught and lived out was typically identical to what you get when you take the New Testament doctrines, commands and promises naturally, literally and consistently.

These two volumes are not written with professional Biblical scholars in mind, but rather pastors, seminarians, congregational leaders and serious students of the Scriptures who are not trained at a scholarly level. I have taught from this writing for years in parish ministry, and for that reason, you will notice periodic repetitions of ideas that might not sink in without such repetition.

Would you not delight in being able to find fellowship within a body of disciples who received and sought to fulfill all the New Testament promises, experiences, commands and teachings - great and small - in their natural and literal sense? Would you not sacrifice everything you possessed if you could be with disciples who had childlike confidence that Jesus and His apostles actually spoke very plainly and very clearly, and sounded so revolutionary because the Church they were creating was an incarnation of a revolutionary society called the kingdom of God? I would.

The importance of this book does not lie in the specific content of any individual chapter, and certainly not in the literally skills or depth of scholarship in any one chapter. It lies partially in the juxtaposition of chapters that are often thought to be in conflict with each other because the traditions that hold to the beliefs in those chapters have been in conflict with each other. And, partially, its importance lies in the conviction that any congregation that builds upon those chapters will be making a quantum leap in the direction of that sacred movement, that Kingdom of God, that Jesus brought to the earth!

Please read on, and feel free to contact me via e-mail ([e-mail]). May our Savior bring His people together into His promised fullness, anointing, caring and unity!

Your fellow pilgrim, Reed Merino

All of the remaining chapters and essays in these two volumes have been derived from applying the interpretive principles in Chapter One (The Scriptures), so please make sure you read that chapter first.

"I am a companion of all those who fear You,

And of those who keep Your precepts."

(Psalm 119:63)

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1

THE SCRIPTURES

As stated in the previous chapter, one of the foundational principles underlying this book is that Jesus and His Spirit-filled apostles knew how to communicate very clearly and expertly. Never, ever forget: the creation was designed and engineered by Jesus, for Jesus and through Jesus (John 1:3, Ephesians 3:9, Colossians 1:16, Hebrews 1:2, 2:10)⁵. It is the Son of God who created us! Imagine how amazingly thoughtful, creative and brilliant someone would be who could design the human body, with its many systems, organs, glands, and cells. And now imagine that person becoming a human being and opening His mouth to teach! As Creator, Jesus invented the ability to communicate using words. If there has ever been one person on the planet who knew how to transfer what was in His mind into our minds it was Jesus (and those apostles that He inspired with His same Spirit). This means that He knew how to pick with precision and skill the right words to communicate what He wanted into the minds of His disciples. And His intended audience did not consist of poets, diplomats, and theologians: people who are used to communicating in sophisticated or indirect language, where words may well not mean what they seem to be saying. His disciples were overwhelmingly the common people who, like common people today, assume that the words that come out of your mouth are what you actually mean to say. One of the hallmarks of a master communicator is that they know how to pick the right word for the right audience, to communicate what they mean: the right verbs, the right adverbs, the right nouns. That is because they want you to understand what they are saying. Therefore, the meaning of the words they use is the best way to communicate the meaning of the idea they want to communicate. That may seem like a very obvious thing to you, but somehow that insight has dropped out of the consciousness of many of those who teach the Scriptures in the churches.

Another underlying principle in this book is that, while Jesus knew how to communicate very clearly, it was to those who are willing to obey what they heard that He explained everything in language that was clear to them:

33 And with many such parables He was speaking the word to them as they were able to hear it; 34 and He did not speak to them without a parable; but He was explaining everything privately to His own disciples (Mark 4:33-34).

Back then, He made sure His disciples understood His teachings. And, if you are truly His disciple – surrendered to believe and to obey Him – He still behaves the same way, but this time He does it from heaven. The great majority of the New Testament was written in disciple’s mode, written in language that was meant to be understood by