LIFE AND DEATH, BLESSINGS AND CURSES
Discipline is the process that God puts people through when he tests their hearts and finds evidence of Old/First Covenant religion in the practice of Defiled Religion.

God either finds people to be Old/First Covenant religionists or New Covenant disciples. When God tests a person’s heart and finds a heart that is evil (i.e. religious), he will introduce a rigorous refining process designed to bring that person to salvation from religion through repentance and rest from Old/First Covenant religious activities.

In effect, he is trying to set them free from the sin of religion which requires that they listen to false prophets. In Biblical terms, the result of this process is salvation that comes when people are willing and able to listen exclusively to the spoken word of God. The result is also called sabbath rest which is described in the Fourth Commandment.

All Old/First Covenant religionists who practice defiled religion go through this refining process before they become New Covenant disciples. It is only after they complete the process that they are fully saved from the sin of religion.

Living without religion is an improbable proposition for deeply religious people who cannot imagine life without religion, cannot imagine not having a pastor or rabbi to teach them, and cannot imagine that their religion is not what God wants for them. Thus they will reject and even persecute anyone who tries to tell them anything different. And they will try desperately to hold on to their religious life at the expense of having a spiritual life because they think that they are spiritually alive when they are actually spiritually dead.

God tests everyone, both the religious and spiritual to prove what is in their hearts. We see it modeled first in Adam and Eve who did not pass the test. Thereafter, every conflict in the Bible symbolically represents testing to show if people are listening to God’s spoken word or practicing religion.

Even Jesus was tempted by the devil after the Spirit of God led him into the wilderness. This tempting of Jesus is a repeat of the testings that the Israelites experienced when God led them into the wilderness after delivering them from Egypt. Basically the test is making a choice between Old/Covenant religion and New Covenant discipleship. This test includes these completely opposite, life/blessing and death/curse choices:

In the wilderness, Joshua and Caleb were the only Israelites who passed the test. Thus, they were qualified to enter into the Promised Land which is symbolic language for the New Covenant and for the Kingdom of God/Heaven.

Those who did not pass the test are symbolized as the ten spies and others who feared going to war with the religious giants who occupied the land of Canaan. They did not pass the test because  they did not believe that they could overcome the religious nations that occupied the land. Thus they died in the wilderness of religion instead of entering the promised land. The same conditions remain for contemporary Old/First Covenant religionists who do not recognize that religion is the enemy and are not willing to enter into warfare with the enemy.

The Bible is full of stories of testing/conflict that we can apply to our own lives. All of the religious nations that surrounded Israel after it entered the Promised Land represent opportunities for individual Israelites to backslide into the kinds of religion that they knew and participated in while in Egypt. Examples of passing the test are found when Israel successfully fought off its enemies and remained faithful to their God (i.e. they resisted becoming religious). Examples of failing the test are found when Israel was defeated by its enemies (i.e. when it mingled with them, intermarried with them and served their gods by following their religious practices).

These stories are parables from which we learn about the consequences of failing to observe commandments that are overlooked by religious people.

Whenever we fail to obey these commandments, we fail the test. And when we fail the test, we die in the wilderness of religion.