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Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." They said to him, "We will go with you." They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, "Children, you have no fish, have you?" They answered him, "No." He said to them, "Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.
When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught." So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, "Follow me."
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This is the Gospel selection that will be read aloud by a priest on the third Sunday of Easter, Year C, according to the lectionary for the Episcopal Church. This will follow a mandatory reading from Acts, where we are told of Saul being touched by the soul of Jesus, where we read: “The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.” That will precede a singing of Psalm 30, where David wrote: “You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.” That will be followed by a reading from John’s Revelation, where his prophetic dream saw this: “many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”’
The whole of John’s twenty-first chapter is only twenty-five verses; so, this reading selection is almost a whole chapter. A whole chapter of Scripture demands a full commitment to desire to understand that read. Anything less than that is pretending to be a Christian; and, that becomes the meaning of Jesus teaching his disciples the parable of the sheep and the goats. The sheep are those who serve Yahweh totally, becoming raised from the dead as Jesus reborn. The goats are the pretenders that find out pretending finds no reward. In verbiage that John is known for, his use of the “antichrist” needs to be realized to mean what that word says: Being against (anti-) receiving the Anointment of Yahweh (“Christ”) and being reborn as His Son. Those who reject Scripture knowledge – which can only come through the divine presence of the Lamb within (seals hiding the truth of the scroll broken) – will never be led to a full commitment to Yahweh, rejecting his proposal of marriage, so the truth will not be revealed.
To even begin to understand John’s twenty-first chapter, one must realize that the last two verses of his twentieth chapter summed up his book, while saying Jesus did many signs in the presence of his disciples souls [his enclosing “autou” in brackets, in verse thirty]. He ended that chapter by writing this: “kai so that having faith in , life you may possess within this name of himself .” That importantly says Yahweh and His Son are available to possess those who seek to be saved. This means salvation comes from the faith that has personal experience of Yahweh and Jesus. With that faith, one then has eternal life (raised from the dead) through the possession of “Jesus,” whose “name” means “Yah Saves.” A soul cannot be saved without marrying Yahweh, receiving His Spirit, and having His Son’s soul resurrected within one’s own soul. Without that divine possession, one’s own soul is only capable of finding sin and reincarnation (at best).
So, with that stated in John’s chapter twenty, the first word in chapter twenty-one says “After,” from the Greek word “Meta.” That word being capitalized means a divine level of understanding must be discerned from this usage. Strong’s says “meta” translates into English as this: “(a) genitive: with, in company with, (b) accusative: (1) behind, beyond, after, of place, (2) after, of time, with nouns, neut. of adjectives.” Because the word following is in the Accusative, the usage here can be “After,” but I feel it would be better to see it as “Beyond.” This translation means this chapter of John's becomes prophecy, as a dream or vision of the distant future, well after Christianity has begun. When the word (in the Accusative) is seen to be “these” (the plural word “tauta”), the names that follow (along with everything else) become metaphor that is everlasting … always capable of being applied “Beyond” the initial presence of Jesus’ soul within the souls of his followers.
In verse one, the words “thalassēs tēs Tiberiados” are written, which translates as “sea of this of Tiberius”. In that, the capitalization of “Tiberiados” must be read as divinely elevated in meaning. In John’s first verse in his sixth chapter, he wrote of “Jesus being on the other side of the sea of Galilee,” which he then added “tēs Tiberiados,” to denote the Sea of Galilee also had a Roman emperor’s name. By his exclusion of “Galilee” here, the divine elevation forces one to see a time and place “Beyond” where “these” reborn as Jesus have moved over a “sea” (the Mediterranean) to the city of “Tiberius,” who was emperor until his death in 37 A.D. (“After” the resurrection of Jesus in his disciples – 30 A.D.). The name “Tiberius” is rooted in the name of the river that flows through Rome – the Tiber River. Thus, a river god was named “Tiberis.” This should point focus on the expansion of Christianity to Rome, where Saint Peter would be given great attention (three hundred years “Beyond”).
In the naming of “Simon Peter,” these are two, separate capitalized words, both of which needs to be read as divinely elevated in meaning. More than stating a name of a man who died long before (from the perspective of a future prophecy), which limits how anyone today could gain from reading that name, the meaning behind the name has to be seen as the main purpose of this prophecy. That meaning says, “He Who Hears” and has become a “Rock.” When this is then seen as relative to “Tiberius,” this become the veneration of Saint Peter in the Vatican, where his name is the cornerstone (the “Rock”) of that Church.
Following those two capitalized names, John wrote of “Thomas,” who was also called “Didymos.” Both names mean the same: “Twin.” The first is based on the Hebrew word “to'am,” with the other being Greek, as a reduplication of the word “duo,” meaning “double” or “two-fold.” According to Abarim Publications: “The name Didymus means Twin, but it should be noted that it wasn't commonly used as a name. The name Thomas, though later very popular, was also quite uncommon.” This means, just as “Simon” was called “Rock,” the same said about “Thomas” says that was not his real name, but a nickname. This would be because he acted like Jesus, or looked similar to Jesus, or both. The use of the Greek and Hebrew becomes a divinely elevated statement that Jews in the regions of former Greek control were where the “Duality” of Christianity spread.
In the segment that names “Nathanael,” this becomes divinely elevated as a statement that says “God Has Given.” When this is added to the name of the place “Cana,” that word means “Reeds,” with the name “Galilee” meaning “Rolling” or “Encircling.” When Christianity is seen as the focus of this “Beyond,” the use of “Reeds” for making baskets (like that baby Moses was found in, among the reeds), they become the spread of Saints that provide help to those grasping at ‘straws,’ in need of God’s help.
When the name “of Zebedee” is written, this means similar as “Nathanael,” as “Yah Has Given” or “Gift Of Yah.” This acts to confirm the “Reeds” that are “Surrounding” as the “Gift of Yahweh” that is His Son, to be resurrected within the souls of those seeking salvation.
Following all this naming of Saints, when only Thomas was named of all the disciples within the locked room, to have “He Who Hears” “Rock” tell the others he is going fishing, the capitalization of the Greek word “Hypagō” is divinely elevated to say “I” is the “Ego” or “Self-will” of the one claimed to be the first Bishop (or pope) of Rome. That Greek word is the first-person Present Indicative Active form of “I,” meaning “to lead or bring under, to lead on slowly, to depart.” This becomes an important declaration of a leader of a Church declaring, “I lead” a religion that plans on “fishing” for the souls of the lost. This personifies all good intentions from self-egos going to naught. The result of this expedition was “they caught nothing.”
When the timing of good fishing is seen as being at “night,” this symbolizes the darkness of death, when sleep symbolizes that state of being that surrounds a soul. To go fishing for souls at “night” then says oneself is dead, having not been raided to the light of truth. When one is mired in darkness, it is impossible to catch lost souls. Oneself is just as lost, because one is void of the soul of Jesus within. One has denied true Sainthood by rejecting divine union with Yahweh.
To realize that Matthew wrote in his final chapter (verse 16), “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go,” the number “eleven” says prior to Pentecost. Not knowing where the “mountain” is makes it difficult to connect a “mountain” to fishing on the “sea.” However, after having Jesus enter into each of their souls when it was still the Sunday of his discovery to be out of his tomb, it seems highly unlikely that those specific souls in human flesh would return to their former profession, as fishermen. Thus, the “boat” needs to be seen as the shape of Christian churches, where the “nave” (from the Latin “navis,” meaning “ship”) is shaped to resemble a fishing boat. The “Barque of Saint Peter” is metaphor for the Church of Rome, where the Roman Catholic Church is the “barque” (small boat).
When verse four begins with the capitalized word “Prōias,” divinely elevating “(early) Morning” to a statement of the dawning of the “Light” of truth, the darkness of “night” has brought about a vision of Jesus. For eleven disciples having each experienced epiphanies of Yahweh sending the soul of Jesus to guide them, that inner presence means none of them would see Jesus external to themselves, other than knowing Jesus also possessed other saints, just as his soul possessed theirs. To have gone fishing and caught nothing says those on that boat are “Beyond” reflections of true Christian saints, as those trying to be what they are not; and, they cannot be without Yahweh and Jesus, when in darkness.
When Jesus called to those on the boat at morning, he called them “Children,” from John writing a capitalized “Paidia.” That form is the Vocative plural for “paidion” means “a young child,” implying “a little child, an infant, or a little one.” To call grown fishermen that name says they were not yet matured as fishers of men’s souls. They were ministers or priests in a barque, whose only training for such an occupation was from being read Bible stories in “Children’s” church. This ‘pet name’ says their intent was sincere – they wanted to save soul – but none of them had a clue how to really do that. They were “infants,” versus the depths of the sea of souls.
When Jesus knew they had caught nothing, his telling them to “Cast your nets on the right side of the boat” says they were “Casting” wrongly. The capitalized “Balete,” divinely elevates “you have Cast” (in the second person plural past tense) so it says they have not done now as they had done in the past. The root word “bállō” says it can be translated to say, “you Tumbled” or “you Fell.” This divinely elevates this statement by Jesus as saying they caught nothing because they sought to catch soul in the wrong way (where the implication of having “Cast” left says the Church used sinister means, which will never catch souls properly). This says the “Children” needed to find the “right side,” in order to be successful.
John is “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” John was the “Beloved” because he was the son of Jesus, born of Mary Magdalene. John was just a boy, therefore the true “Child” on the boat; and, John was “beloved” because he never lost faith or stopped being possessed by God and Jesus. Because he was a saint, he identified who was telling them where to “Cast” their “nets, as “This Lord.” Those two capitalized words say John placed tremendous guilt within the one professing to be the “Rock” of Rome. That guilt was because he had claimed to be a saint; but he did not recognize “This” most holy soul that justified the title saint, who was not the “Lord” of Simon’s soul. Thus, "He Who Heard” John speak the truth forced Simon to rip off his holy garments that identified him as a pope or bishop, jumping into the sea of sinner souls. He did that naked, to expose the truth for all to see. Simon wanted all to know he had served as a false shepherd.
When Simon bailed out of the barque, he left the other disciples to run the Vatican. Their leader had jumped ship. Having caught “a multitude of this fish,” they could not get them out of the water. By being “not far from land,” the “land” symbolizes the solid ground of salvation. It is where Jesus can be found. The Greek word “diakosiōn” means “two hundred,” where the number “two” always means the duality of soul and body, as well as soul with Spirit. By being “two hundred cubits” away from heaven, “dragging the net of fish,” none of those on the boat were “one hundred percent” submissive to Yahweh, reborn as His Son. While they could catch fish in a net, they did not know how to save their souls. They needed to replace their bodies (which includes a brain) with the Spirit of Yahweh.
When the disciples on the boat reached land, so they were truly possessed by the Spirit of Yahweh and they became Baptized souls, they saw the same food being prepared that was served the multitude in the plain by the sea (fish and bread). When Jesus said to bring the fish in, "He Who Heard" "the Rock" personally pulled the fish and the net onto land, bringing them to the Spirit of Yahweh. The number being “one hundred fifty three” (three separate words), those fish all had their souls Baptized (“one hundred percent Baptized by Spirit). They were halfway to being saints, reborn as Jesus (fifty percent). When the soul of Jesus would be resurrected within their cleansed souls, each would be a trinity (three) – Father, Son, Spirit.
The net not being broken says the presence of Jesus’ soul marks a soul for salvation. Once marked, the soul needs to be ‘processed’ by saints. Once saved, there can be no breaking that bond.
When John then wrote of the disciples being afraid to ask this strange man on the shore who he was, knowing it was their “Lord,” this speaks loudly that the same disciples that were filled with Jesus' soul in the locked upper room would never be so unknowing once so possessed. This then speaks of those future saints, who are like those the soul of Jesus told the soul of Thomas, “Blessed are those who will come to faith without having seen Jesus of Nazareth.” The man offering them spiritual food was not someone they had ever seen before.
When John wrote, “this is the third time Jesus was revealed before his disciples,” this speaks loudly against the foolishness that preaches a “second coming.” Jesus appeared first as Jesus of Nazareth (born in Bethlehem). Jesus was revealed in those first saint-apostles on Easter, remaining with them until the eve of Pentecost. Jesus returned the second time on Pentecost Sunday; and, that rapidly spread to become the advent of Christianity. This “third time” is then Jesus being revealed to an entirely new generation of saints, none of whom had lived when Jesus lived. Thus, John wrote of this “having been raised from the dead,” which is how all saints are made. One’s soul must seek Yahweh in marriage, do the works that commit to the Covenant; and, then one’s soul must become where the soul of Jesus is resurrected. The “second coming” is at all times when a new saint is made.
In the verses that have Jesus asking “Simon of John” (barJonah) three times, Do you love me?” or literally “love you me?” The first two times, Jesus used the word “agapas,” with each time Simon answering “Yes,” but using the word “philō.” The third time Jesus asked, he used “phileis,” repeating that question with a capitalized “Phileis.” Simon answered again with “philō.” The difference is “agapas” asked Simon if his soul was in love with Yahweh, so his soul loved Jesus as a Son born to him. All times Simon answered that he loved Jesus like a brother, not like a mother to her son. That question asked if Simon was more in love with himself than with Yahweh. If he only saw Jesus as a brother, then he saw both of their souls as equals. That was explaining why someone would attempt to sail a boat to catch the souls of men and catch nothing, fishing in darkness. A fool makes the decisions necessary to be made by Yahweh, bringing failure upon himself or herself. Had that version of "He Who Hears" been in love with Yahweh and loved Jesus as a mother to her son, he would have not gone fishing for souls until he was prepared to make a catch every time.
Each time Simon failed to give the right answer to Jesus, Jesus told him a command. That says Jesus was the Lord of Simon. As his Lord, they were not equals. Jesus told Simon to “Feed these lambs of me,” where the capitalization of “Boske” means to “pasture the flock” by leading it to good pastures. Good pastures means feeding the lambs spiritual food. The second time, Jesus told Simon, “Shepherd these sheep of me.” There, the capitalization of “Poimaine” means to “Govern” the disciples, which is the meaning of an “adonay” – a “Lord, Master” or “Teacher.” The third time Jesus said, “Feed these sheep of me.” All of those “lambs” and “sheep” needed to be prepared to be sacrificed to Yahweh in marriage, which is the metaphor of being slaughtered and burnt on the altar as an offering. They would all be placed in the hands of Jesus, the High Priest. The role of Simon (and all saints) is to teach the truth, so the flock will desire to make the necessary sacrifice of self. The responses made by Simon indicated he was not prepared for such self-sacrifice. If not, then how could he properly shepherd sheep?
That led to Jesus saying (NRSV), “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” That lesson says it was told because Simon needed to know it. Simon thought he could make decisions and have those decisions backed by God and Jesus; but that was making God and Jesus be commanded by Simon. It does not work that way. When Jesus said, “take you where you do not wish to go,” that says the his ego has not yet fully submitted unto Yahweh. It still wanted to do as it wanted, not what God commands. Thus, Jesus followed with the command, “Follow me.” That says, get rid of the ego-trip and do what I say from now on; and, “Follow” is a capitalized “Akolouthei,” which means it is divinely elevated to mean, “Be me reborn.”
This reading has to be seen as a prophecy that projects the failure of Christianity to be the same as the failure of Judaism, where the common people find it much easier to let a charismatic lead them. This reading from John has to be seen as the failures that would come from the Church of Rome, by letting men run that religion as a business, rather than fish for souls and show them how to get to heaven. It says there would come a time when the leaders would not recognize the voice of Jesus calling to them. Only someone who is still a saint can Baptize seekers and pass on Yahweh's Spirit. Then, they can become the mothers of Jesus, as Christs. In a world that no longer listens to saints, because they are few and far between, the world now listens to pretenders wearing fancy clothes in a nave. The symbolism of feeding the priests spiritual food – bread and fish, Spirit and elohim – is the only way to find the souls needing to be saved and lead them to salvation properly. The only second coming is when one’s soul surrenders completely to Yahweh and gives rebirth to His Son in one’s soul.