GETTING INSIDE THE MIND OF GOD
It is a dangerous endeavor to try to understand the mind of God. Nevertheless, we will try here to explain why God laid down the stumbling block. The way we see it, it all goes back to Israel’s years of captivity in Egypt where it observed pagan worship practices. These practices, of course, were based on beliefs in false gods and included rituals led by priests who offered various kinds of sacrifices in temples built for the purpose of worshiping the false gods.

Many times God reminds Israel that he is the one who brought them out of Egypt and that they should not worship as Egypt did. He made these exhortations with full knowledge that Israel’s tendency would be to do what it had learned to do in Egypt. But because he wanted Israel to love him and serve him with all of its heart, he could not accept any worship that would detract them from him in even the slightest way. And since worship rituals in buildings designed for worship was considered by God to be an idolatrous distraction of worshiping him with all their heart, he had to somehow purge Israel from the tendency to worship ritualistically in select locations. 

God therefore gave to Israel an extensive list of complicated laws which were often hard to understand and impossible to obey. He did this knowing that Israel would eventually follow its fleshly tendencies to legalistically observe the laws he gave to them.Setting them up for failure in this way was a stumbling block for Israel and all humans — even Christians.

God knows that fleshly, religious activities will divert people from wholehearted love for him. But he still implemented the stumbling block plan as part of a secret strategy for delivering Israel from its legalistic, fleshly worship so that it could love him and worship him with all their heart and without distraction. The secret strategy provided for a Messiah who would deliver Israel and anyone else who was stuck in legalistic worship of a foreign god so that they can worship him. Thus, everyone stumbles and everyone is deceived by False Prophets, Pharisees, Pastors, Priests, Rabbis, Shepherds, Wolves, Devils, Demons and Anti-Christs, but the messiahs delivers them from Defiled Religion and lead them into the Promised Land of Pure Religion when they give warnings about their detestable religious practices

This pattern of deception, exile and deliverance explains why God sets the stumbling block of religion before his people: They must have the experience (i.e. signs and wonders) of being delivered from religion before they can appreciate that he is the Lord. We see it most clearly in the following stories:

These and all other stories communicate the theme of death, resurrection and new life. The following are a few examples of the ways that New Covenant disciples understand the differences between death and life:

Old/First Covenant religionists cannot relate to these experience because they have not been delivered from religion so they have no memory of being delivered. They think that they are spiritually alive but they are spiritually dead. They think they have spiritual knowledge but all they have is worldly knowledge. They listen to false prophets but do not listen to true prophets or to God’s spoken voice. They look for physical miracles but have not experienced the spiritual miracle of having God give them a new heart and giving them spiritual eyes and ears.

Having a new heart and spiritual eyes and ears are the signs and wonders that show that God is at work in the hearts of his people.

Lacking these spiritual signs and wonders, Old/First Covenant religionists comfort, excite and feed themselves with religion. The form and intensity of the religious experience may vary in intensity from time to time, from religion to religion and from individual to individual, but there is always something in the religious worship ritual that satisfies those who do it. This happens because God has hard-wired all humans to experience fleshly excitement of the mind and emotions while engaged in repetitive religious activities with other people.