(Ver 1.5)  Today is Part 3 of a series of lessons on Understanding the Structure of the Hidden Spiritual Family of God.  Today I will continue the subject, but speak more directly to show you verses that describe some very specific family members in a complex spiritual riddle form.  I will be discussing a revelation that God taught me over 10 years ago.   This is an extremely advanced Bible topic and it is certainly one that you know very little about, simply because it has never been taught before.  Perhaps you did not even know that God had a spiritual family and if you did not know this you should go back and start reading the first two lessons that I taught on this subject called “Understanding God’s Spiritual Family Structure”.  I have also updated the first two lessons so even if you did read them before they contain new information that you should familiarize yourself with intimately before continuing.  I get more people searching on my site for information about God’s spiritual family structure and design than any other search topic.   I believe that people are hungry to learn about the hidden spiritual things of God and the only way to learn about this is to read God’s Word with an open mind and have a heart that craves to know the truth.  I also find that because people search for this topic so much that it is a confirmation from God that people desire to learn about Him and that is why I teach a lot of things on this subject.   In the previous lessons I taught that a natural family found on the earth consists of a husband and a wife with children and I revealed that this was a natural pattern from God’s creation that exposes God’s spiritual family.  We also know from other Bible lessons that I have done (Understanding the Trinity of God) that the one true God is a Triune Spiritual Being called God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.   If you do not believe in the Trinity of God then you have already been deceived by the spirit of Anti-Christ who also does not want to believe that God had a Son:

1Jn 5:7  For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

This is a controversial verse that is hotly debated by many deceived Christians.  Satan would like to delete this verse from the Bible and has tried to remove it from several manuscripts.  Therefore, it has been easily dismissible by people who are easily swayed.   However, I believe this verse because this information is confirmed in many other places in the Bible so it is not a solitary reference.  When the Antichrist shows up here on the earth Satan will use him to deny the existence of the Trinity and he will certainly say that God had no Son to everyone that he can persuade and he will claim to be God personally.  Have you ever considered why it is so important to Satan that the Son of God did not come to the earth and does not exist in the Bible?  Religions like Judaism and Islam teach that God had no Son.   You can clearly see a pattern being formed that it is important for Satan to get people to believe that the Son of God is an imaginary figure like Apollo.   Jesus confronted the Jewish leaders on this very subject in the book of Luke.  Perhaps you remember this question that Jesus asked them?  He asked them “Whose son is the Christ/Messiah?”  Jesus said this because they believed that the Messiah was the prophesied son of David.  Then Jesus asked them “How be it then that David wrote about Messiah in the Psalm and called him Lord”?   That was my paraphrase of Luke 20:42.   Wow, that was a loaded question for these men to answer?  After this experience with Jesus many of them never asked him anymore questions.  Jesus really has great questions if you listen to them.

As you continue to read these lessons you should begin to understand why this is so vital to Satan that God did not send His Son into the world.  You see, God accomplished several things by having a Son and one of them was the establishment of a new Spiritual Family through a Son who had never been in covenant with anyone else before.   There are also many spiritual truths that we can learn from the existence of the Trinity concerning God’s family structure.  For example, from the list of trinity members we have two direct male family members named and two implied indirect female family members not named.  Of course there is God the Father who is called the procreator of a child who is called the Son of God and then there is also God the Son who is the originator of the New Covenant.  It also means that since there is a Father and a Son, there has to be wife and a mother to the Son.  This is based upon very self-evident patterns found within creation.  A male and a female are always required to create a new life of the same kind.  If this is true in the natural realm, it has to be true about the spiritual realm and this will become clearer as we continue through these lessons.   We understand that Mary the Virgin is the physical mother of Jesus.  But, who is the spiritual mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Uh oh?  Who is the wife of God?  Finally in the first two lessons I taught you scripturally that a Son by the Hebrew definition of the word is called the “Builder of the Family Name”.   You always have a Son to keep your family name from disappearing off of the face of the planet.  This is also God’s design and plan for His spiritual family.  You might recall that I said Jesus Christ was a Son over His own house (family) (Heb 3:6).  I also showed you where Jesus said “His Father’s house was where He came from” and this implies the Son’s house is a new separate dwelling place.  These statements imply a new house that has never existed before with a new wife.  Uh Oh again?  Who is this implied new spiritual wife?  If Jesus has married a new spiritual wife; who are the spiritual parents of this new wife?  Who are all of these implied spiritual family members?  There are two or three implied spiritual women in the family of God by observing just the names of the Trinity of God titles.  I am about to explore this extremely new and potentially controversial subject in an attempt to solve these mysteries.   If you have already closed your mind to these spiritual things that I have stated in the introduction, then you will be wasting your time to continue reading the rest of these lessons.

God has written the Bible in a way that has vast amounts of hidden spiritual information and I call this “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight”.  God has written plain text words and stories about real people, places and things that all have significance and meanings on the surface, but these same words also carry some hidden spiritual information that is greater than what we thought.   If you have never read that series I would strongly suggest that you go and do so to learn some of the techniques that God uses to hide information in the Bible and this will help you to understand the complexity of what I am about to teach you today.  So evaluate your spiritual maturity and make the determination if you are ready to learn some new things from the Spirit of God.

What is a family (spiritual or natural)?  What makes up a normal family unit or a household?  We know from the Bible that God created the first natural family on the earth in Genesis chapters 1 through 4.  I personally believe that this naturally created family in Genesis was a patterned model of the design of God’s existing spiritual family in heaven and also the future configuration for His new spiritual family that was to come through His Son Jesus Christ who is called the bridegroom of the church.  If you have not understood how the Church is the Bride, then you should go read my series called “The Bride of Christ Revealed”.

DISCOVERING THE RIDDLE OF GOD’S FAMILY

What I am going to do today is to show you some seldom taught scriptures in the Bible that reveal the family of God in a spiritually encoded hidden riddle format.  These scriptures that I am about to give you represent a monumental spiritual riddle and a perplexing puzzle that is very complex.   So if you are a puzzle solver you might enjoy this Bible lesson today.   What is a riddle?  According to the dictionary a riddle is a question or a statement that requires thought to answer or understand.  This is exactly the nature of God and His Word if you did not know it.  You can clearly see when you read the Bible that God has hidden spiritual information in the Bible, or at least I can.  But there is good news about this hidden information in the book of Matthew, Jesus made this promise to us:

Mat 10:26  Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

Jesus claims that everything that was hidden in the Word of God will be made known and I personally believe that this will be accomplished before He returns.  This belief contradicts with the popular doctrine of preeminence.   Preeminence is a belief that there is nothing left to be fulfilled prophetically in order for the Lord Jesus to return.  I strongly disagree with that belief.  I can see statements like this in the Bible that indicate there are many things left to be fulfilled.   Some try to explain this away by stating we will know the whole truth when we all get to heaven, but that does me no good in the here and now.   I am a firm believer that God will reveal the truth of His word to us all before Jesus returns and if that is true we still have a lot to learn.    You may disagree with that statement, but hopefully as you continue to read you will begin to see things differently.  Today’s lesson is the continuation of God revealing His hidden spiritual family.  Here are the foundational scriptures to today’s spiritual riddle:

Mat 10:34  “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

Mat 10:35  For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Mat 10:36  And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

Jesus in the course of teaching His disciples about many spiritual subjects pulls out a hidden obscure prophecy verse from the writings of a very minor prophet of God in the Old Testament and He makes a statement that is totally off the charts of our current levels of spiritual understanding.   You should be able to see that in this revelation Jesus is describing to us that this is one of the main reasons that God has come to the earth in the flesh.  This verse is clearly not understood, because God has never revealed it to anyone before now.  I looked it up in every commentary that I could find and on the internet and no one had a clue what any of it meant.  Even Matthew Henry who always had something to say about every verse had some very weak comments on these verses that were clearly based upon his ignorance of the subjects being discussed.  So I started studying it in more depth and God begin to unfold it to me so that I could understand it and I was truly amazed at the hidden meanings.  I will therefore, attempt to teach this new information to you so that you can also see that Jesus is revealing the spiritual members in the family of God.

The first point that I need to make is to teach you a very interesting technique of how God sometimes conceals the truth in plain sight.  Here in these verses of Matthew 10:35-36, God is describing to us a seemingly random anonymous man and his family.  Nowhere in any of these verses or the context of these verses does God directly reveal to you who this family is or who each family member represents or even if they are actually fictional or real unnamed individuals.  Even if you go back and read the original prophecy you will not find a clue to who God is speaking about.  That makes it almost impossible for you to think that God is speaking about Himself or His family.   However, I will tell you that this is a repeated pattern that Jesus used in the Gospels when speaking about many of the secret things of God.  Jesus would speak to us in parables using symbolism about the Kingdom of Heaven and say “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed a grain of mustard seed in a field” (Mat 13:31).  Who is this random anonymous unnamed man who sowed this seed in his field and how does this information relate to God’s Kingdom?  This man is certainly a hidden symbol of God.  Then in Matthew 22:2 Jesus says “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king which made a marriage for his son”.  Who is this unnamed certain King and who is the son to be married in this parable?  We clearly have two unnamed males, an anonymous king and his son being described as the rulers of a kingdom.  You see these are examples of God’s family in hidden symbolic anonymous terms.  Here in this verse we are given God the Father to be the certain King and you should be able to see Jesus Christ as His Son.  We also should be able to conclude that there are at least two implied women who are also not named.  These two women are an implied mother of the son and an unnamed wife of the son.   We could also logically conclude that the son’s wife has a mother also that is not named directly and now we are arriving at a closer match to the family being described in Matthew 10:35.    I will tell you very clearly up front that God is talking about His family here in Matthew 10:35 and He is describing every spiritual member of His spiritual family household using symbolic natural family titles with amazing relationship accuracy and clarity.  Jesus who was God in the flesh is describing a major reason for Him being born here on the earth, so I have concluded that this family being described must be His family diagram given to us in complex riddle form.  Hopefully as we go through this study you will better understand this family at the end of the study, than you do right now at the beginning of the lesson.  So hang in there and keep reading.

God reveals so many things in these verses found in Matthew 10:34-36 that it is really awesome and almost overwhelming.  For example, my next point that I want to make is from Mathew 10:36 where God says “a man’s enemies are those of his own personal household or family”.  Did you know that God has enemies?  There are actually many confused Christians who do not know this.  You can read about this enemy of God in several places, but I would suggest you go read about him in another parable that Jesus taught us in Matthew 13:39.  Knowing that God has an enemy we should be able to understand that God is describing His spiritual enemy as being an internal family member of His household.  Do you get the significance of that statement?  God is basically making a play on the old saying that declares “You can choose your friends, but you can never choose your relatives”.  You probably do not understand this fully yet, but you will.  God is revealing to us that His enemy Satan is a member of His inner spiritual family.  This is one of the first revelations that you need to understand about who Satan was and is.  Satan was a key spiritual member of the family of God before the creation of man.  Satan pre-existed man and was called “Lucifer” the son of the Morning in Isaiah 14:12.  Son of the Morning is another symbolic reference containing much hidden spiritual informatoin.  The Hebrew word translated as “morning” means “early light”.  Since God is called Light in 1 John 1:5, you should be able to easily conclude that morning is just a reference to God a long time ago in the past.  Therefore, Lucifer is being called a son of God.  Not the Son of God, just a little son.  Technically Satan is actually more than that as you will learn later.  Did you know all of these facts already?

These lessons are really going to get very, very deep in this study, so please pay very close attention to every point being made.  I already revealed to you that God was speaking about His own family in these verses.  In other words Jesus is not speaking about an unknown random male’s family; He is talking about His personal family in an indirect writing or speaking style.  These verses in Matthew 10:34-36 are not allegorical, they are not an analogy, they are not symbolic and they are not a parable; they should be taken very literally in all of their interpretation.   You see Jesus never said the Kingdom of Heaven is like a family with family members like these, God is instead saying this is my family.  The only real tricky part of the verses is that God is referring to Himself in human terms as being a father who is the head of a family.  However this father is definitely not an earthly father, He is the head of the spiritual Household of God in heaven.  This is at the least one of the key factors of how God has concealed this information in these verses in Matthew from our view or spiritual understanding for thousands of years.  We have looked at them and thought only of natural things and we missed the fact that God is speaking of real spiritual things in these verses.  In order to see what Jesus is speaking of you must shift your focus from God speaking about a human man, to God is speaking of Himself in the terms of being a human man with a family.  Over 200 times in the N.T. God is called by the title “Father”.  Therefore,the father in this family is definitely the Father God and the other titles are the members within the Spiritual Family of God!  Over 200 times in the N.T. Jesus Christ is called by the title “Son”.  God is using familiar human created descriptive terms to reveal Himself and His family so that we can understand it.  Most of us understand the concepts of fathers and mothers, children and families, don’t we?   I mean think about this, God created this institution called family for a specific reason.  These family units are not here by chance or accident; they all have a designed purpose in the plan of God.  That is also why Satan is trying his best to redefine a family in the “modern” world as being between two men or two women.  You should really pay attention to what Satan does and then figure out why he is doing it and this will help you tremendously to understand the Bible.  Let’s go back and review verse 35 again:

Mat 10:35  For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

What you should see in verse 35 is the fact that this verse contains a list of very typical family members found almost anywhere in the world.  So there is nothing unique or special about the list on the surface and this is also why many people assume it to be any regular natural family.  However on closer inspection and analysis of this family, this list is more unique than it appears on the surface and it subtly describes to us a set of family members that actually does not fit very many families found here on the earth anywhere.   This is the beginning of the puzzle.  After I studied this list, I could not think of any families on the earth that this information fits exactly.  Can you think of any?  You see you can go to almost anybody’s family reunion and find people with these titles present.  First, there is a very common relationship of a man and his father and every son on the earth has a father.  Next there is another common relationship of a daughter and her mother mentioned and every daughter on the earth has a mother.  Finally it starts to get more complex and it says there is a daughter-in-law and her mother-in-law and you can find these relationships in most every common family on the earth.  What we have is a list of six potential named individuals that need a resolution or identities assigned to them.  An identity is always a name and that is what we are ultimately after.  We are looking for the names of the family members in God’s family.  Here is the list of the 6 titles from Matthew 10:35:

1. Man
2. Father
3. Daughter
4. Mother
5. Daughter-in-law
6. Mother-in-law

If you analyze this list it is very tricky how God uses His words.  Always pay very close attention to every word spoken by God and look up the definitions and this will help you to understand what is being said.  For example the son is called a man, but then his father is not called a man.  You see the Bible says very clearly that God is not a man (Num 23:19), so we know that God the Father is a Spirit.  However the Bible repeatedly calls God by the male “Father” title (James 3:9, 1 Peter 1:2-3, 2 Peter 1:17, 1 Jn 3:1, 2 Jn 1:3, 2 Jn 1:9 to name a few) and this implies a male.  The complexity of God comes in when He becomes a man in His son and the Son of God is Jesus.  Jesus is called both the “Son of Man” and the “Son of God” repeatedly in the Bible, and they are easy to find so I will not give you a list of them here.   Looking at Matthew 10:35 again, since there are only two males mentioned, this information can still fit the patterns that we found in the Trinity, where there was God the Father and His Son, but we still have all of these unknown women being described to us?  I think that I told you already that this verse in Matthew 10:35 is a direct quotation of a verse from a minor prophet, but I do not think I told you that it was the prophet Micah.  I think this would be a good time to go back to the book of Micah and see what God says there.  If you go to chapter 7 of Micah and verse 6 you will see what Jesus was quoting from and you can read the original information that was given to the prophet:

Mic 7:6  For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.

So basically we have the exact same information from Matthew using a few different descriptive terms and titles.  The man in Matthew, in this verse is clearly called a son here in Micah.  The father is still the father and the others are also still called by the same titles.  So we now have two major witnesses to this fact given to us in the Bible.  One witness is Jesus speaking in the book of Matthew and the other is a prophet of God named Micah.  If you read the context verses of Micah 7:6 you will probably be like me and scratch your head and wonder how Jesus pulled this verse out to teach us about the family of God, but He obviously knew more than we did.   Here is the list of family individuals using the titles given to us in Micah 7:6:

1. Son (the stated Man in Matthew)
2. Father
3. Daughter
4. Mother
5. Daughter-in-law
6. Mother-in-law

We have now looked at two witnesses of the same information given to us about a certain family.

Let me teach you a sound technique that I use in many of my Bible studies.  When searching for subjects in the Old Testament Hebrew Bible how can we know when God is speaking of the same exact subject in the New Testament Greek language and vice versa?  Since the New Testament was written in a completely different language than the Old Testament that presents a challenge of great significance for us to have to deal with.   Here in this Bible study is where we can learn how to overcome this challenge.  Fortunately for us Jesus was quoting an Old Testament Hebrew text.  So all we need to do is to take what Jesus said in the Greek language and match it with what the prophet said in the Hebrew language and that gives us a list of the words in each language that are a perfect match.  Let’s do that with the family members for a later lesson where this information will be used:

This list contains the Strong’s number of the Hebrew words found in Micah 7:6 that match the Greek words in Matthew.  As you can see there is only one language match that cannot be completed because Jesus chose a different Greek word in Matthew 10:35 used to describe this family son as a man.  However, I will resolve that very soon.   What we have just learned is how words from two different languages can be legally connected together as one subject.  Now from this information I will be able to search the Old Testament and the New Testament for subject references that might help us expand our understanding on what God is describing.  Remember these words because I will use them again.

We are technically no closer to finding a solution to the puzzle and in fact we are probably further away from it at this point.  We have just learned both the Greek and Hebrew words that apply to the family member titles and that will help us later.  However, there is a third witness to this information mentioned in the book of Luke, so let’s go and read these verses and see what changes:

Luk 12:53  The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

I should emphasize that these words found spoken in Luke are also in red ink in my Bible, so they are the words coming directly from the mouth of God.  To me that makes them significantly more valuable for us to learn everything that we can about them.  Whenever God speaks something directly I believe that it has a higher degree of importance.  Do not misunderstand what I am saying, every Word in the Bible is important, but I place a higher priority on the direct Words of Jesus and that is just me and how I do it.  I believe that God’s words always have power, significance, purpose and meaning and they clearly give us direction, correction, knowledge, understanding and wisdom.  These words about a family must have some very significant meanings behind them to be included these 3 times in 3 different books of the Bible.  Do you understand this?  If you read verse 53 in Luke 12 you should be able to see that God gives us the same basic information found in both Matthew and Micah but with some subtle changes being made.  God uses a little bit different terminology, but the overall concept is still the same between the 6 given family titles.  We will notice that here in Luke Jesus chose the word “son” and this word is a precise match for the Micah son reference.  Therefore the Greek word G5207 will correspond to the Hebrew word H1121.   In every verse Micah, Matthew and Luke that we have reviewed the 6 titles are always paired together in the exact same order of mention.  But, in Luke each title is stated and then repeated in reverse order and I believe that this is a tricky way of bringing in more information.  We have the father divided against his son, the mother against her daughter and a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law.   While there is really nothing greatly apparent being changed in this verse there is some very important additional commentary information given by Jesus found in the verse prior to this one.  Jesus in verse 52 gives us some very important new information which changes almost everything about how we think of this family and this is really the beginning of the riddle.   Let’s read verse 52 and see what Jesus revealed to us:

Luk 12:52  For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.

Anytime God qualifies a noun description it narrows the scope of the possible interpretations.  It also makes it very specific to only one family that fits the exact picture being described.  We see for the very first time that God is directly speaking of a single family unit and not just any random family.  God also reveals the exact number of family members in this house and it is exactly 5.  Where did Jesus get this information?  It was not in Micah 7:6 at all on the surface.  What we are observing is the extreme intelligence of God at work.  We can clearly see that Jesus in this verse is stating that there will only be 5 and not 6 members of one family household that will be divided against each other.  They will be divided 3 against 2 or 2 against 3.  To me this information is very revealing, but I know what it means and you don’t.  Obviously we can see using simple math 2 + 3 = 5 or 3 + 2 = 5 and we know that 5 family members is definitely not equal to 6 titles.   So we have a major problem and a conflict that needs immediate resolution.  We have a list of 6 titles and Jesus told us there are only 5 members in this family.  That is an enormous problem and a gigantic puzzle, a complex spiritual riddle or you could call it a huge Godly mystery being presented.  Let’s look at the list of the titles given to us again knowing this new information.

1. Father
2. Son (man)
3. Mother
4. Daughter
5. Mother-in-law
6. Daughter-in-law

I hope that you are beginning to see and understand the complexity of the riddle or puzzle being presented to us from God.  What I want you to do now, is to use some basic computer type logic to help you to decipher this multipart puzzle.   Let’s review the list of basic facts that have been given to us:

1. God is describing One Family.
2. There are 6 family titles described (Father, Son, Mother, Daughter, Daughter-in-law, Mother-in-law).
3. There are only 5 total members in this 1 family.
4. There are 2 direct males mentioned (son, father).
5. There are up to 4 direct females mentioned (daughter, mother, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law).
6. This family will be divided 3 against 2 or 2 against 3.
7. The Father will be divided against his son.
8. The mother against her daughter.
9. The mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law.

If you do not understand that this informaton represents a very complex riddle, then you are probably reading the wrong Bible Study web-site.  So let me expand this basic factual information based upon the implications given but never directly named or described.  Any time that you have a reference to a woman with the title of “daughter-in-law”, you must have the existence of a wedding and a marriage to a male husband.   Out of the list of 6 possible named titles who can be married to who?   A son does not marry his mother so that is out.  A son does not marry his mother-in-law, so that is also ruled out.  A son would never marry his daughter, so that is also out.  A Son would also never marry his daughter-in-law and that is also out.  All of these statements would also hold true for the Father.  The father would never marry his mother, his mother-in-law, his daughter or his daughter-in-law so these are clearly ruled out relationships.  Now a father can marry the mother of his son and that is very normal.  A father can also marry the mother of his daughter and that is very normal.  But, the only way for his wife to become a mother-in-law is for their child to get married and this is again more complexity since we have only 5 possible candidates and only two males in the family.  Wow, this is tough, isn’t it?  Logically speaking we must conclude that it is the son who marries the woman who is called the daughter-in-law and this is the only possible correct fit for the limited relationships and titles given to us by God.  You will learn why this is so important as we continue to study.

I think I will end this Bible lesson here for today and leave you hanging.  You may still be debating in your mind that this is describing the spiritual family of God, but that is OK for now, it will come to clearer light as we continue.  Hopefully you can see that regardless of whose family is being described, it is a very significant riddle being presented to you.  What kind of family has 5 different family members and six different titles and fit exactly the pattern that your were given?  Therefore, see if you can use your brain and your logical reasoning power to come up with the answer to this riddle, if you can do this, you will impress me to no end.  Picture the facts that have been given to you and it might help you to draw the possible family tree diagrams that might fit the facts that were given to us.   I wish I could say this was easy to come up with and to solve but, it is not and this is a brain teasing challenge for you to work on this week.  If you can solve this puzzle before I post the solution you will certainly be led by the Spirit of God and I will be very impressed at your ability to see spiritual things as well as your puzzle solving capabilities.  I will also tell you that if you have read all of my other posts on this site, you have all of the information that you need to solve this perplexing puzzle.  Until next time, God Bless You!

If you want to start reading the solution to this riddle, you may continue with “Part 4“.