You all wish to be rewarded before God and favored by God; everyone hopes for such things when they start believing in God, for everyone is preoccupied with the pursuit of higher things, and no one wants to fall behind others. This is just how people are. Precisely for this reason, many among you are constantly trying to curry favor with the God in heaven, yet in truth, your loyalty and candor toward God are far less than your loyalty and candor to yourselves. Why do I say this? Because I do not acknowledge your loyalty to God at all and, furthermore, because I deny the existence of the God that is in your hearts. Which is to say, the God that you worship, the vague God that you admire, does not exist at all. The reason I can say this so definitively is that you are too far from the true God. The reason for your loyalty is the idol within your hearts; as for Me, meanwhile, the God whom you look upon as neither great nor small, you merely acknowledge with words. When I say you are far from God, I mean that you are distant from the true God, while the vague God seems near at hand. When I say, “not great,” it is in reference to how the God that you believe in this day appears to merely be a person without great abilities, a person who is not very lofty. Continue reading →