James: Support your Brethren!

What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

James 2:14ff (Spoke 15, Cycle 3)

The Book of James bears distinctive characteristics that set it apart from all other Books in the New Testament. It is a corrective to potential abuse of the doctrines of Sola Gratia  and Sola Fide , that is, that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. His strong emphasis on the importance of actually doing good works greatly confused Luther who could not reconcile this with Paul's plain teaching that "by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." His inability to see God's purpose in James was such that he called this great Book 'an epistle of straw' . It seems to me that if James is any kind of straw, it is the straw that should break the back of any camel bearing the load of denied facts testifying to the Divine design of the Bible and its integration with the Hebrew Alphabet. It is here in James, the final Book on Spoke 15, that God reveals the ultimate spiritual significance of Samek in the plainest possible language:

For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

James 1:23ff

This is the essence of Samek: support for the Body of Christ, the living Temple of God.

Lack of Divine Support Due to Sin (HaggailinksymbolJames)

Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.

Haggai 1:5ff (Spoke 15, Cycle 2)

Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

James 4:2ff (Spoke 15, Cycle 3)

These passages form an extensive interwoven KeyLink that exemplifies our dependence on Divine support. They both present a sequence of four verbs preceded by a ye followed by the phrase have not or something similar. It is God's desire to give us His full Divine Support in all areas of our lives. Our sin is the only thing stopping us from receiving His abundant Gifts. He has given us His Promise: "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up" (James 4:10). All of this coheres with the fundamental meaning of Samek as the Symbol of Help and Suppport. This is the Divine Perfection of the Holy Word revealed in the Bible Wheel with such simplicity that all the children of God can see it and rejoice.

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