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A Message From Peter James
 


 

Sheep And Goats
 


      

This document is related to the recent document The Prison .

 

In the bible, Christ referred to Sheep and Goats.

As with many things the tendency has been to think that Christ was just using picturesque language

in order to make a point.

The reality is that like every thing which Christ said, these were deep profound statements.

 

Matthew 25:32  And before him shall be gathered all nations:

and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

Matthew 25:33  And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

 

We need to understand that sheep and goats are two distinct species,

which is defined in the book of Genesis as kinds.

 

Genesis 1:25  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind,

and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

 

The Eternal designed the barrier of species to restrict one type of animal to that specific kind.

If that were not done then there would be utter bizarre confusion, with very strange

cross breeding.

 

While sheep and goats have many similarities,

Here are some differences between sheep and goats.

 

they are two distinct species and genus.

Sheep (Ovis Aries) have 54 chromosomes,

while goats (Capra Hircus) have 60.

Fertile sheep-goat hybrids are rare.

Hybrids made in the laboratory are called chimeras.

 

A goat's tail will go up (unless the goat is frightened, sick, or in distress).

Sheep tails hang down.

 

Sheep bleat Ba Ba,

Goats bleat Ma Ma.

 

Goats are natural browsers, preferring to eat leaves, twigs, vines, and shrubs.

They are very agile and will stand on their hind legs to eat vegetation.

Sheep are grazers, preferring to eat short, tender grass and clover.

 

Most goats have hair coats that do not require shearing or combing.

Most sheep grow wool and need to be sheared annually.

 

The reason for giving this detail is to show that goats are born goats,

and they can never become sheep.

Sheep are born sheep, and they can never become goats.

They are similar but different species.

 

Goat on rock     Sheep flock          

 

          Independent                         Flock Mentality

 

Information and pictures from www.sheep101.info

 

Christ always referred to His people as sheep.

He never once referred to them as goats.

 

Christ said that he was sent to the sheep not the goats.

He also sent His disciples to the sheep.

 

Matthew 15:24  But he answered and said,

I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

 

Matthew 10:6  But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

 

Christ also referred to Himself as the good shepherd, and further more we are told

that He gave His life for the sheep but not the goats.

 

John 10:11  I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

 

We can see from these various references that there is something very wrong with goats.

We see from the following that goats are destined for the lake of fire just like

Satan, his angels, the false prophet and the anti-christ.

It does not seem as if the lake of fire was made for the sheep.

 

Matthew 25:41  Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, (The goats),

Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

 

Revelation 20:10  And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire

and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are,

and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

 

The goats were cursed because they were goats.

 

Exactly who are the goats?

The goats are the offspring of Satan.

Many people are not aware that Satan has offspring, but he has.

We see this right in the book of beginnings in the bible, Genesis.

 

Septuagint

Genesis 3:15  (3:16) And I will put enmity between thee and the woman

and between thy seed  (Satan’s Offspring) and her seed, ( Eve’s Offspring),

he shall watch against thy head,

and thou shalt watch against his heel.

 

02233 erz zera‘ zeh’- rah – seed.

 

from 02232; TWOT-582a; n m

 

1d) offspring, descendants, posterity, children.

 

Not only do we see that Satan has offspring as mentioned in Genesis,

but Christ, Himself said so.

 

John 8:44  Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.

He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth,

because there is no truth in him.

When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

 

Christ was clearly saying that some of those confronting Him were the offspring of Satan.

This is not just descriptive language, but rather a statement of fact.

 

Just like the tares and wheat, the sheep and goats grow up and live together,

and it is quite impossible to know who is a sheep and who is a goat by appearance,

just as it is impossible to separate the wheat from the poisonous similar looking tares

until harvest time.

 

Matthew 13:24  Another parable put he forth unto them, saying,

The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:

25  But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.

26  But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.

27  So the servants of the householder came and said unto him,

Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?

28  He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him,

Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?

29  But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

30  Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest

I will say to the reapers,

Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them:

but gather the wheat into my barn.

 

The big difference between the sheep and goats is that the sheep hear the voice

of their shepherd while the goats do not, because they do not belong to the shepherd.

 

John 10:27  My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

 

Who are the sheep?

I believe that the sheep are none other than the sons of God mentioned in Job 38:6

quoted below.

I believe that they were rejoicing because of the implementation of this awesome plan

of God to send them to the earth to do just what Adam was later told to do.

 

There are two situations of deafness, there are goats who do not hear the voice

of the shepherd, because they do not belong to him in the first place,

and there are rebellious sheep who refuse to hear,

and to obey the voice of their shepherd.

 

We also need to realise that sheep are sometimes also part of the problem.

They are not blameless.

Whereas the previous verses of Ezekiel addresses the unfaithful shepherds,

these verses are addressed to the sheep.

 

Ezekiel 34:19  And as for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet;

and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet.

20  Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD unto them; Behold, I, even I,

will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle.

21  Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns,

till ye have scattered them abroad;

22  Therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle

and cattle.

 

The evil shepherds, in fact act as goats, and use misguided sheep

to seriously damage and even police the flock.

The false shepherd uses sheep to control, and destroy the flock while at the same time

deceiving those firmly in his control by making them believe that they are doing God’s will,

and tell them they are in fact protecting the flock.

 

They erroneously believe and even seek the disfellowshipping of members whose eyes

have been opened and who are now speaking the truth,

thinking that this somehow protects the flock.

 

The deceived sheep fail to understand that being a part of the body of Christ

is an activity of the Eternal God, and only He can either add or remove some

one from the body. The way they act is an abuse of scripture which they manipulate

to suit their wicked purposes.

It is strictly the Eternal’s decision and His alone who comes and who goes.

Pride, arrogance and the whim of a shepherd goat cannot do this.

Threatening words and preventing people from attending meetings has no effect

in the spirit realm. Often it does a favour as the cast out one is often removed

from a corrupt church.

All it does is forces those being persecuted to ‘Come out of Babylon’,

as we are all admonished to do in Revelation 18:4.

 

As mentioned above sheep have a flocking mentality.

If a sheep has found or makes a hole through a fencing hedge,

and goes through it many of the flock will follow that sheep into another field where

they should not be.

Very recently to the horror of the watching shepherds one sheep went over a cliff,

and the rest of the flock, over a thousands strong promptly followed that sheep

over the cliff.

 

Goats are born goats and sheep are born sheep.

There is never a time when goats become sheep and sheep become goats.

Absolutely nowhere are we told that Christ died for the goats.

 

Let us look at what happened at the time the world was created.

We see Job asked some questions by the Eternal.

One of these questions gives an astounding revelation.

 

Job 38:6  Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?

or who laid the corner stone thereof;

7  When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

 

We see that at the time the earth was being created, eons before Adam and Eve,

the morning stars, which scripture shows are angels, were present.

Here is one such reference showing that stars often represent angels.

 

Revelation 1:20  The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand,

and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: a

and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.

 

We also see that there was another group, which was distinct from the angels.

These were ALL the sons of God.

The conjunction and links these two groups together.

It is my belief that these sons of God are the sheep, who were spirit beings, and not yet

come to the earth as physical people.

 

The reasons for this claim are as follows.

 

Ephesians 1:4  According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,

that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

 

The Eternal said of Jeremiah:

 

Jeremiah 1:5  Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee;

and before thou camest forth out of the womb

I sanctified thee, and

I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

 

The words used here are not the Eternal looking into the future.

We are told past tense, I knew you.

In order to know someone you have to see them and be with them.

Until you do that you cannot claim to know them, however much you might have heard

or read about them.

 

According to Paul we see that from the beginning some, I believe these to be sheep

have been chosen to salvation.

 

2 Thessalonians 2:13  But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you,

brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation

through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

 

Now we can see how in the epistle to the Romans Paul speaks about predestination.

 

Romans 8:30  Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called:

and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

 

From this it appears that these sons of God, as spirit beings agreed to come to earth

as people. Our experience tells us that all knowledge of the past has been wiped from them/us

when they/we were born on earth.

I believe that the huge difference between the fallen angels also called sons of God, which we read

about in Genesis 6 is that the Fallen angels as it were wanted to short circuit the system

and retain all their knowledge and power. This is my opinion and what I believe

for the reasons stated.

 

Goats are goats however, they arrive on the earth.

The wicked ‘goats’ are evil from birth not from when they reach the age of reason.

 

There are several possible ways in which goats can arrive on the earth and different

people have different ideas. I expect that many of them are possible.

 

We are clearly told that Cain was of the evil one.

1 John 3:12  Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.

And wherefore slew he him?

Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.

 

Weymouth translation puts it like this.

1 John 3:12  We are not to resemble Cain, who was a child of the Evil one

and killed his own brother. And why did he kill him?

Because his own actions were wicked and his brother’s actions righteous.

This raises all sorts of questions.

It can be reasoned that a wrong sexual relationship by Satan, the serpent, appearing

as a person, with Eve, brought Cain into being.

 

Cain clearly had the traits of Satan lying and murder like his father, who we were told

was a murderer and a liar from the beginning and not like Adam at all.

As was stated in John 8:44 quoted above.

 

In Genesis 3:1 we are told once that Adam knew his wife, but she brought forth

two children Cain and Abel. This something that happens from time to time

according to my research a woman can give birth to two children from different

fathers around the same time, like twins.

 

The other point is that it seems likely that there was a sin which involved sex in some

way therefore they both choose to cover their nakedness with leaves.

I do not believe that it was a simple thing like eating a wrong fruit.

It was much more serious and catastrophic than that.

The Tree of Life was Christ and the tree of death was actually Satan.

An illicit relationship which would completely destroy God’s plan before it even

got off the ground seems most probably.

 

I believe that it is also relevant that before Adam and Eve sinned they were told.

 

Genesis 2:24  Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,

and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

 

No sooner than they were told this they disobeyed their Father.

This pattern follows today.

If you see the Eternal say do or do not do something, we can be sure that we are

doing the exact opposite thing.

 

As Adam and Eve were the only people in the garden, and they were husband and wife,

there was no need for them to be ashamed and clothed.

At first they were neither clothed or ashamed.

I do believe that it is very relevant to the whole story.

 

I am simply stating that I can see this is a possibility.

 

In any case, however, the goats arrive into the world they are evil from birth.

 

Psalm 58:3  The wicked are estranged from the womb:

they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

 

This is quite a staggering statement.

We are not told that when children reach the age of reason then they become wicked,

but rather the wicked are born wicked, and they go astray from birth even to the point

of speaking lies.

 

From what we are saying, we can see that those who do not believe that there is a spirit

in man, quite apart from the breath in man, it is impossible for them to even begin

to contemplate what we are saying.

 

Job 27:3  All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils;

 

Once again we see the conjunction and joining two different things, breath and spirit.

They are two entirely different things, similar in once sense, that they are invisible,

but profoundly different.

See separate document The Spirit In Man

 

I believe that a complete system was set up for the introduction of the sheep,

sons of God to come into the world.

There was a process which had to be followed.

It was not a haphazard operation.

It included blanking out the memory of the past, therefore once on earth

these spirits now in flesh would have no idea who they were previously.

If is for this reason that the previous scriptures were quoted.

Therefore although we/they existed previously we/they actually have no knowledge of it.

 

This has absolutely nothing to do with reincarnation as our documents clearly explain.

We do not believe in reincarnation and have written documents disproving it.

We are not proposing a constant process of being reborn until we achieve some perfection.

We are simply saying what we believe to be our origin.

 

I believe that in the bible we are told of several instances when Satan and his rebellious

fallen angel followers, tried to short circuit the system.

It is more than likely that this also occurred before Adam.

They did not want to lose their previous power and status, but they wanted to be

intimate with human beings.

See our document Days of Noah.

 

We can deal with the Days of Noah as it is recorded for us.

The created sons of God went against the law governing species and had illegal

sexual relationships with the pretty human women which resulted in bastard Nephilim offspring,

or giants, as it is often translated in Genesis Chapter 6, or which is even better translated

‘fallen ones’.

 

The fallen angels always knew who they were, and they retained their powers which

were now been used against everything that God planned.

It is more than likely that at the creation of the earth, the stars, which we showed were

angels included Lucifer, and what became his angel followers before they rebelled.

 

We are told that Lucifer wanted was to become like the most high God.

He wanted to be number one.

He wanted to be a creator.

I also believe that he did create, but of course he could never overthrow the Eternal God.

After all he was only a created being.

 

I believe that all the dinosaurs and various types of creatures which evolutionists use

to promote their cause are Satan’s attempts of creation.

From even the artists impressions we can see what a terrible mess he made.

Eventually the entire lot was destroyed and the earth covered by the waters of the deep,

which we read of in,

 

Genesis 1: 2  And the earth was without form, and void;

and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

 

The destruction was so complete that the earth was not only covered in water,

but also in darkness, absolutely nothing could survive.

Therefore what we read of in the rest in Genesis chapter 1 is the recreation of the earth,

changing it from chaos and a grave, a wasteland, to a planet of beauty and order.

That is what the Hebrew words for form, void and deep mean.

 

We have seen the past history of the sheep and goats prior to their coming

into existence on the earth.

We have seen how the Sons of God distinct from the Fallen angels possibly fit in to the general plan.

We have seen the differences between the sheep and goats when they came to the earth.

We have seen the end of the goats.

 

Often the sheep do not even know they are sheep, but their shepherd knows them.

 

This is the reward of the sheep.

 

Matthew 25:34  Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come,

ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35  For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36  Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison,

and ye came unto me.

37  Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred,

and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38  When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39  Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40  And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you,

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

 

As we have explained elsewhere, I believe that the main application of this is during

the tribulation. The sheep had paid attention to the everlasting gospel which is preached

at that time.

 

Revelation 14: 6  And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven,

having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation,

and kindred, and tongue, and people,

7  Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment

is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains

of waters. 

 

The sheep were rewarded by their shepherd, and they did not even know they

were serving him. It is such a wonderful thing.

 

I know that many churches believe that we have to try to save the whole world.

I believe that we have to save the sheep.

The obvious problem for us is that as we cannot determine who are sheep and

who are goats from appearance.

Therefore we have to cast our net wide and not get upset

when we are blasphemously rejected, because those who rejected us were most

likely goats. On the other hand neither must we give up easily on people who might

be a bit stubborn and awkward. They might just be sheep who have been abused

and thoroughly deceived.

All these circumstances need wisdom and discernment, which we need to receive

from Christ.

 

We must remember that for the main part the world systems are run by goats.

See The Prison.

However, there are sheep which will be found in every area of life, in every church,

government office etc. etc.

Sometimes we will feel moved to pray for certain individuals whom we might consider

to be goats, in fact it is possible that they are actually sheep.

Therefore let us be careful and look for the lost sheep wherever they might be found.

 

One day in the not too distant future all the sheep will be gathered into one flock

with a faithful shepherd.

Under Christ we see that this faithful shepherd is King David.

 

Ezekiel 34:23  And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them,

even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.

 

Ezekiel 37:24  And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd:

they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them.

 

Let us all pray that this day comes quickly.

 

The only way out of our dilemmas is Jesus Christ.

         He is the only way of escape.

                 Praise the Lord.

          Come soon Lord Jesus.

                         Amen.

    

 

 Messages By Peter James

(Bible Explanations, Messages of Life, Hope & Encouragement)