Questions Asked, Continued - Commentary From the Margins - June 16, 2014

June 16, 2014 ©Homer Kizer

Commentary — From the Margins

Questions Asked

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I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things. Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge? (2 Cor 11:5–7)

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At the close of the previous section of this extended Commentary, I included an excerpt from an essay in the collection, From the Margins, (2001) … I want to return to this collection for its Preface:

During the summer of 1991, on the stoop of a Fairbanks gift shop, I adzed lengths of birch into bowls shaped like halibut, all the while being recorded daily on videotape. Chips flew as I told what I knew of a Native culture that fascinated these newly arrived tourists. For many of them, seeing me carve was as close as they would come to encountering a culture and a way of life missing from middle America. They wondered if I were part of that culture: my roots on both sides include Native Americans, but they also include Dutch and English Dissenters.

Carving in the Formline tradition of the Northwest Coast is, for me, a means of staying connected to the Coast, to fishing, to those things I did for several decades while being buffeted by wind and tides. It provides enough income that I can survive the poverty of being adjunct, English department faculty. It is a visual form of story telling, and that is what I really am, a storyteller, a vocation that transcends time, that binds cultures and clans with the curious. I am part of a rural culture that has no Faulkner, no Frost. The closest any writer has come to validating this culture is Ken Kesey in Sometimes a Great Notion, and he never understood the mindset of coastal loggers. The death of JoeBen would not have happened: before the tide raised a foot there would not have been one block left of that tree large enough to split for firewood. Nor would any self-respecting logger put a baby bottle nipple over a rifle muzzle when poaching a deer. A logger who glances at the lean of a four hundred year old fir, then uses skiptooth chain to cut faster isn't worried about making a little noise. What Kesey described—using a baby bottle nipple to silence a .22 rifle—was what we as third and fourth graders talked about on the school bus. And by the time we were in fifth grade, we all had learned that the nipple's flange interfered with our sight picture while the nipple silenced nothing.

The rural culture that flourished for a season along the North Pacific coast included loggers and fishermen, sawdust savages, stump ranchers, brush pickers. It was and its remnants remain politically incorrect. But it, like the aboriginal cultures of the Peoples who developed Formline art, has been transformed by time; by tourists and carpetbaggers; by Californians who brought with them reverence for a static natural world; by young Coloradans, the children of Capitalists who, unlike their parents, were not too busy pursuing their own aspirations to notice what had happened to rivers and lakes, woods and wetlands.

I saw clearcutting evolve from producing hillsides covered with a checkerboard pattern of logged and unlogged blocks to producing naked ridgelines for as far as a person can see as if trees were an enemy against which total war had to be waged. Something happened: after being in Alaska for thirteen years, I returned to the central Oregon coast, returned to where I graduated from high school, worked, opened a gunshop, and started a family. The older clearcuts where I had hunted deer were covered with dense stands of young, healthy firs twenty, thirty, fifty feet tall. But the panoramic vistas of the Coast Range which I had taken for granted were gone. Ridges looked like the backbones of starving hounds. If there would have been a Humane Society to call, I would have been tempted. However, the earliest photos taken of the Coast Range show bare ridges in many of these same vistas. The timber I had become accustomed to seeing wasn't ancient. The earliest photos date back to the 1870s; the timber that had been logged while I was gone was 120 years old. Its history is that of Anglo-Europeans.

After somewhat recovering from the shock of seeing the denuded ridges, I looked for the businesses I would be naming in a novel. Many of the ones I had planned to use had changed names, and a Newport radio station was saluting So-&-So as the business leader of the month. So-&-So, a Newport resident for five years, was identified as a longtime resident of the coastal community. I then realized why, too often, it is impossible to return home. Nothing is static, not even when no change is discernible let alone when a mountain range has been clearcut.

Even the text of these stories will change as readers bring to them different experiences, different cultures, different realities. Hopefully, these stories will translate across these differences. Hopefully, they will entertain readers who would not otherwise know that for a little while in the middle of the 20th Century I taught daughters to hunt, fish, explore a natural world in which they have responsibility and dominion, in which their roots will forever link them to the complex web of life that ebbs and flows daily.

One evening during the summer of 1989, Kristel, my middle daughter, came to me madder than I had previously seen her. To earn money for her first car, she worked in the deli section of the Carr's grocery store in Fairbanks. She squeezed the fresh orange juice, and she sliced thin the smoked cheeses and the spiced meats, and she waited on customers. And one female tourist, in a loud voice, had, when paying for her purchases, asked Kristel if the store accepted American money. The question was asked as an honest inquiry. The woman genuinely wanted to know if she could use her American money in Alaska.

Even though Kristel was about to begin her Sophomore year of college, Kris didn't know how to answer the woman. She wanted to say that Alaska was part of America, that everyone knows it's a state, but such an obvious statement of fact stuck in her throat. All she could do was stare.

When the tourist received no answer, she asked her question again, raising her voice yet louder as if the perceived language barrier could be bridged by increasing the volume of sound she produced.

I have tried to tell these stories in as quiet a voice as possible.

For the passed twelve years, I have tried to reread prophecy as quietly as possible, not selling unsealed prophecies thereby permitting others to take ownership of the concepts based on typological exegesis through a transaction, but permitting others to take ownership via adding to what I write, making unsealed prophecies theirs by the “work” they do, have done. I have tried not to make too much out of a Second Passover liberation of Israel, and of a Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, the first liberation to come at the beginning of the 1260 days of the Affliction, the second to occur near the end of these 1260 days, with a third of humanity suddenly slain at each liberation, all uncovered biological and legal firstborns at the beginning of the Affliction; all potential firstborn sons of God in the Second Woe. I have quietly waited for others to believe—and some have. For Jesus in John’s Gospel said that no person can come to Him unless the Father draws the person from this world. And for the Father to draw many individuals from this world, the Father would destroy the integrity of the demonstration under way … He will not permit the Adversary to interfere during the Thousand Years when humanity is ruled by Christ Jesus; nor will He permit Himself to interfere in the same demonstration while humanity is ruled by the Adversary. No, the Father will not, in significant ways, intervene in the affairs of men prior to the Second Passover liberation of Israel. He seems content to permit human persons to pray to demons while believing they are praying to Him; for if He wanted to bring all persons to Christ Jesus, He could.

If God the Father has been content to draw only a few persons from this world, giving them to Christ Jesus to nurture—

Again, John’s Jesus said,

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, “And they will all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— (John 6:44–45)

—then should I not be content with whomever the Father sends my way; sends to my writings, with me being the mirror image of a prophet of old in that the prophets delivered the linguistic icons [the words] to which meaning must be assigned, thereby leaving their prophecies sealed and secret until the time of the end when godly meanings would be initially assigned to the words long ago delivered? For a prophecy about Babylon has dual referents, the physical referent being earthly Babylon and its king, Nebuchadnezzar, but the spiritual referent is the present administration of the single kingdom of this world, with its king being that old serpent, Satan the devil, a former anointed guardian cherub in the mountain [hierarchal administration] of the Lord.

The structure of Hebraic poetics [poetry and prose] is that of the thought-couplet, two presentations of the same concept or idea, the first physical as in the darkness of night and the second spiritual as in the light of day. Hence, John’s use of “light” comes from John’s awareness of this pattern that pagans mimic in their worship of the sun, which is—because of the sun’s physicality—part of the darkness of this earthly creation.

In this pattern, God is light, or of the light; for He is not of this creation. This pattern will now have a physical breath of life—life that comes from this world, or originates in this world—and a spiritual breath of life that originates outside of the creation, with the physical breath of life representing darkness and the spiritual breath of life representing light. This is seen in the physical lives of mammals being sustained by the dark fire of cellular oxidation; whereas heavenly life is sustained the bright fire that is the glory of God:

And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of His waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of His waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around Him. Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of [YHWH]. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking. (Ezek 1:26–28)

There is imbedded in the Ezekiel citation an important concept: when a human person encounters an angel of the Lord or Yah, the person falls face forward, face to the ground. Thus, when a person falls backwards in a spiritual encounter, the person falls away from God: the angel is not of God but of the Adversary.

If in this present era no one can come to Christ Jesus unless the Father draws the person; if all will be taught by God—Jesus cites Isaiah 54:13,

All your children shall be taught by [YHWH], the physical portion of the couplet

and great shall be the peace of your children. the spiritual portion

which will have everyone who has heard and learned from the Father coming to Christ, suggesting that the Father drawing the person from the world comes through learning from the Father, not from a rabbi or a Christian ministry; that the one who instructs infant sons of God is God Himself, not a representative of God.

If in this present era all are taught by God before they can come to Christ, of what value is any Christian ministry that seeks to make disciples for Christ Jesus? Of what value is any ministry that attempts to bring the unchurched to Christ? Of what value to God are televangelists with their mega-churches or their collection machines needed to support the “good work” they allegedly do?

I have quietly gone about rereading prophecy since being audibly called to do so on Thursday, January 17^th, 2002, about 10:12 a.m. CST. I haven’t attracted much attention, other than from national intelligence organizations: when the Net was smaller, my stats program would tell me from which desk a person from the Pentagon, or from German State Security, or from Italian State Security entered my site, how long the person was on my site, and how much was downloaded. But for nearly a decade I have been too busy writing and answering questions to check who reads what. Readers will take care of themselves: those who really want to know will continue to read, and those who are merely curious will go their way—and those who are tasked with the chore of keeping track of radicals learned long ago that I have sought no following, started no movement, but simply promote a narrowly held view that the physical things that have been made and the history that has occurred precedes and reveals the spiritual things of God and phenomena that will occur.

What I write can be difficult to understand—and will be difficult to accept for if I am correct, then the whole world not only can be wrong but is wrong—and I often receive responses saying some version of, I can see the relationships when you point them out, but I don’t see them otherwise …

If the typological relationship between the things that have been made [physical things] and the invisible things of God—the relationship between the man and his wife in marriage, a physical relationship, and the spirit of the man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] in the soul [psuche] of the man, a spiritual relationship—cannot be grasped, then for that person spiritually understanding Scripture and endtime biblical prophecies is NOT possible!

Yes, I raised my voice: what does it mean for Jesus to say that if the inside of the cup is clean then the whole cup is clean? Does He not imply that the outer person is a clay vessel of little importance, that it is the inside of the person that is of importance, the inside that is neither male nor female, Jew or Greek? Does He not say that when this inner person, inner self, is clean, undefiled, then the whole person—soma, psuche, and pneuma—is clean, thereby removing importance from the outer fleshly self, making gender, ethnicity, skin color of no importance at all; making the actions or deeds of the person the mirror that reveals the contents of the heart or inner self of the person?

A Sunni Caliphate is in the making in eastern Syria and western Iraq, a Caliphate with deeds that will make Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives seem like a bad dream. But what Western strategic analysts fail to understand—as well as Western Christian leaders—is that humankind has been on a long journey away from God; that the Second Passover liberation of Israel will occur when humanity collectively can get no farther away from God (the Midnight Hour), who is Light. And a Caliphate that would require women to wear modest attire and to cover their hair; a Caliphate that would kill open homosexuals would move humanity collectively a slight bit closer to the Light than continuation of Western liberality, and civil and social approval of gay marriage …

The question I cannot answer is how can humanity collectively get farther away from God than it presently is? It is possible that it cannot. It is also possible that enough residual righteousness remains in the remnant of Israel that several more years can pass before the darkness of the Midnight Hour will be upon humankind. Either way, the hour of the Second Passover liberation of Israel is near. And every Sabbatarian Christian will be forced to shelter in place, or perish physically for what the Sabbatarian believes.

In 1937, I believe, the Prophet for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints warned parishioners that they should have on hand everything they would need for an extended period, now a year. Recommendations were made, with the Inkom Ward suggesting that members should have on hand, as an example, 300# of wheat per person. But without a grain grinder, not much as be done with whole wheat berries, the form in which wheat stores best … in the Great Depression, many rural Americans had nothing but corn [maize] to eat, and pellagra, a vitamin deficiency disease [lack of niacin, tryptophan], became a problem; for these rural folks were eating cornmeal for breakfast and fried cornmeal for dinner rather than turning their corn into hominy as Native Americans had, with the boiling of the corn in a caustic [lye, lime, or wood ashes] chemically breaking down the corn so that the human body can extract vitamin B₃ from the grain:

Therefore my people go into exile

for lack of knowledge;

their honored men go hungry,

and their multitude is parched with thirst. (Isa 5:13)

Having lived in rural Alaska and living there before supermarket chains arrived to made grocery shopping simple, I know that what ought to last a year will last about seven months—

The Passover liberation of outwardly circumcised Israel in the days of Moses forms the shadow and type of the Second Passover of circumcised of heart Israel in the days of the two witnesses, types of Moses and Aaron, two brothers separated by the issue of physical slavery for most of their natural lives … again, for pedagogical emphasis, the two witnesses will be two brothers, born into the same household but for most of their natural lifetimes, separated by slavery, one spiritually free but a fugitive from the Adversary, the other a slave of the Adversary, a son of disobedience until shortly before the Second Passover liberation of Israel when he is needed by God to be the spokesperson for the other. This second brother, like the first, will have been prepared by God in advance for the task of turning the world upside-down, with this second brother’s preparation coming from the pursuit of excellence and the exercise of integrity in the world.

In the typological movement from physical to spiritual, the lives of firstborns (of man and beast) that the Lord gave in Egypt for the ransom of outwardly circumcised Israel mid 15^th-Century BCE—not mid 13^th-Century—forms the shadow and type of the lives of firstborns (of man and angels) that God will give on earth and in the Abyss for the liberation of Christians, circumcised of heart Israel, from indwelling sin and death in the 21^st-Century. Yes, the season for fruit is upon humanity, and harvest will begin shortly.

It was said about typhoons in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) when I was still in grade school that if a dozen people die in a tornado in Arkansas, it is a disaster, but if 20,000 die in a typhoon in Pakistan, it is a sanitation problem … a person’s perspective on death changes with distance and kinship. Plus, at some point, the magnitude of disaster—of disaster upon disaster—numbs minds and overwhelms consciences. Thus, the sudden death of 2.4 billion people, all biological or legal firstborns, one or more in a family (in every family) at the Second Passover liberation of Israel will overwhelm humanity. Then nearly 1260 days later, the sudden death of another 1.2 billion, randomly taken, will be too much for the mental topography of humanity to absorb. Emotions will be scrambled: those who live will wonder why they lived and neighbors, family members died. Humanity, itself, will be on the brink of extinction as the earth’s atmosphere is under attack through weather patterns having been altered to such a degree that no stability exists anywhere. There will be no normal, no expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow. And long after when it seemed like it could get no worse, the present prince of this world—the Adversary—will be cast from heaven, cast to earth, and will come claiming to be the returned Messiah; will come to force all persons to take upon themselves the sign of Christianity, the tattoo of the cross [chi xi stigma], the mark of Death.

The earth will heal, will recover from disasters that befall humanity during the Affliction and its mirror image, the Endurance of Jesus. People that survive will heal, but neither the people nor the earth will ever again be the same. There never again will be a transactional economy delivering to people the goods and services that Capitalism has supplied to many for roughly five centuries; nor will there ever again be the depravation experienced by many, also brought to them by Capitalism and unequal distribution of resources … what has benefited many, Capitalism, bringing into existence a quality of physical life that even ancient kings were unable to experience is—like irrigated agriculture—unsustainable after three, four, five centuries. The people will perish from the land. Economic systems will collapse.

Capitalism was given a hundred year extension on its natural lifespan when bankers transformed asset-based currencies into debt-based currencies early in the 20^th-Century so that, what William Jennings Bryan feared (mankind crucified on a cross of gold), would not happen; for Bryan’s bi-metal argument is bypassed when a dollar goes from being a redeemable silver or gold certificate to being a Federal Reserve Note, a loan to the Federal government.

The person who has many Federal Reserve Notes has loaned much of the person’s labor and resources to the Federal government, with these Federal Reserve Notes to be redeemed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America, a national government that has unfunded liabilities exceeding 100 trillion dollars and outstanding loans of more than 17 trillion dollars and that now must borrow more than 40% of its annual budget to keep itself afloat … it isn’t a matter of whether America’s version of Capitalism will fail, but a matter of when, with the person then holding a fistful of dollars having to absorb the defaulted loans he or she has made to the Federal government of the United States, which is one reason many are buying gold, which, unlike farmland, is transportable across national boundaries. However, gold has little food value when famine is upon the land, not something that America has experienced despite the lean years of the Great Depression.

The biblical fall of Babylon pertained in the physical to the fall of earthly Babylon to the Medes and Persians, but pertains in the spiritual to the fall of the kingdom of the Adversary, the spiritual king of Babylon (Isa 14:4), when dominion is taken from the Adversary and the Adversary and his angels are cast from heaven and into space-time:

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!" (Rev 12:7–12)

The human king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, because of his arrogance, had the mind of a man taken from him for seven years and was given instead the mind of a beast, of an ox, and then driven from within his palaces and compelled by his newly received nature to graze in the fields. In a similar manner, the spiritual king of Babylon will have his angelic nature taken from him and will be given the mind of man for a count of seven years, the three and half years of the Endurance in Jesus and the three and a half years that are the short while the Adversary will be loosed from his chains after the Thousand Years.

Today, there is a nearly universal consensus that the “nature” of a species is unique to the species, and is part of the biological construction of the species. But the separation of the nature of a species from the fleshy bodies of the species is actually observable at a macro level in the inner self of a human person not seeming to age after the person reaches his or her maturity even though the person’s body continues to deteriorate [age]. The nature of the person comes through the inner self, not the outer self. And because, arguably, human nature comes through the inner self receiving the broadcast of the prince of the power of the air, the old serpent Satan the devil who deceives the whole world, human nature is altered-by or even originates from the inner self of the person being enslaved by disobedience as a son of disobedience, this enslavement producing in humanity the spirit of competition, the need to keep up with the Jones, the herd instinct that causes peoples everywhere in the world to conform to the image of their neighbors and friends. It is not in the Adversary’s interests to craft a broadcast of deception for just one person. Rather, he crafts a broadcast of deception that ensnares many; hence in the counter-culture rebellion of the 1960s, the rebels conformed to each other in the plethora of sack dresses and Volkswagen vans on which was spray painted, Jesus saves, that sprouted up in nearly every corner of America.

Today, Americans mow lawns and hang flower baskets purchased from a lawn & garden center on porches, sit in plastic lawn furniture made from recycled pop bottles, and present to the world a nearly identical look from coast to coast. A suburban front lawn in Pennsylvania looks a lot like one in Wisconsin or one in Oregon. Purchases are made in strip malls that appear nearly identical in all regions of the country. Organic foods are believed to be healthier, and atmospheric carbon dioxide is believed to contribute to climate change, with Beer’s Law and the capping (curving over) of IR energy virtually unknown, especially by biologists and social scientists who had to take a Chemistry or Physics course before they graduated from college so that they would have an exposure to science.

The Deadliest Catch is as close to being universally watched as a television reality show will likely come … millions sit and watch and wonder what it would be like to work the deck of a boat in the Bering Sea, but only a few will actually find their way to the beach in Dutch where they can experience for themselves the transfer of energy from the wind to the mostly water body of a human person—the energy of seas in the Bering comes from the tidal pull and the transfer of energy from the wind to the surface of the water. A person, like the sea itself, absorbs energy from the wind, something that is noticeable when a person on a winter day stands at the head of Captain’s Bay.

Today, the mind of a man is not the mind of Christ Jesus, but rather, the mind of the Adversary, the mind the Adversary will have when he is cast from heaven and into space-time. The mind the Elect have is the mind of Christ, even when they are spiritual infants, thinking and reasoning as infants. They will grow in grace and knowledge (Christ will make sure they grow).

The remainder of initially Christendom (during the 1260 days of the Affliction), then of all humanity (during the 1260 days of the Endurance) will have their “human natures” contaminated [not a word usually used in this sense] through the Law of God being written on hearts and placed in minds, thereby permitting the person to know God for the first time in their lives. All persons, through being filled with the spirit of God, will be liberated from indwelling sin and death, but in the Affliction, liberated Israel will remain subject to the Adversary’s broadcast of rebellion against God, whereas in the Endurance, all will be physically subjected to the Adversary requiring all who would buy and sell to take upon themselves the mark of Death, the tattoo of the cross, meaning that the person who would be saved must believe God by rebelling against the Adversary and all that the Adversary and his servants, disguised as ministers of righteousness, have taught the person about God.

Rebellion is not easy. If it were, people would be unmanageable … the herd instinct of humanity as well as the competitive nature of humanity come from the Adversary and are not of God.

John wrote,

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17 emphasis and double emphasis added)

There is little authenticity in the person who submits to the Adversary’s broadcast and competes to appear more like “the world” than the person’s neighbors—and how does the world appear? In suburbia America, mowed front lawns, edged with flowers that cannot be eaten, perhaps with a shade tree that drops no fruit that has to be raked off the lawn in the fall. The world appears like its stereotype, meaning that in America where food is purchased, unlike 21^st-Century Switzerland, dandelions are poisoned and grass is fertilized and ice cream is kept in freezers and the populace is being conditioned to accept European energy prices as well as European socialism, the fruit of crossbreeding Marxism with Capitalism, these two having come together in a downtown, storefront brothel, with this leveling of society leaving both male and female in the despair of tomorrow.

The Second Passover liberation of Israel will come when humanity can get no farther from God. Then—and not before then—all who called themselves Christian can actually come to Christ Jesus, even if they have to crawl across a lawn that hasn’t been mowed because there is no gasoline for riding lawnmowers. At least for a short while, they will all be authentic Christians.

In Daniel we see Nebuchadnezzar:

While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, "O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will." Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles' feathers, and his nails were like birds' claws. (Dan 4:31–33 emphasis added)

What happened to Nebuchadnezzar and the physical changes that occurred to his body form the shadow and type of what will happen to the Adversary when he and his angels are cast from heaven: not only will the Adversary be given the mind of men [human nature], but he will be driven from heaven (cast from heaven) as Nebuchadnezzar was driven from among men, and he will be visually transformed … presently he is disguised as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14–15), but in the Endurance, he will pose as the returned Messiah, usurping the authority that rightfully belongs to Christ Jesus; he will be transformed into the culturally received image of Jesus, an effeminate male—

Even now, the Adversary understands the reality that Jesus is both the last Adam and the last Eve, the life-giver, with Paul identifying the glorified Jesus as a life-giving pneuma (1 Cor 15:45) … the Adversary will attempt to “interpret” Jesus in his own a-sexual body, but by having been given the mind of a man, he cannot really escape gender identification: the way is being prepared for him to be cast from heaven in the openness of homosexuality in Western cultures, with Islam physically holding the line against homosexuality. This isn’t to say that Islam is of God, but that fundamental Islam represents in type one warring faction within the Adversary’s reigning hierarchy whereas Western cultures represent the other: yellow versus white, and white versus yellow (not skin colors but the light that is reflected from ideologies, with God being Light and with both gold and bronze being yellow, and silver and iron being white, and miry clay representing not-yet-glorified or fired humanity).

As Nebuchadnezzar increasingly ceased to appear as a man when grazing in pastures—one the front lawn of his palace—the Adversary will cease appearing as an angel of light the longer he pretends to be the Messiah. The longer he seeks to imitate the Messiah, the more he will appear as, say, the Piasa Bird, the Native American dragon painted on bluffs above the Mississippi River that the Catholic priest Jacques Marquette saw in 1673 when exploring the river.

Marquette wrote,

While Skirting some rocks, which by Their height and length inspired awe, We saw upon one of them two painted monsters which at first made Us afraid, and upon Which the boldest savages dare not Long rest their eyes. They are as large As a calf; they have Horns on their heads Like those of a deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard Like a tiger's, a face somewhat like a man's, a body Covered with scales, and so Long A tail that it winds all around the Body, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a Fish's tail. Green, red, and black are the three Colors composing the Picture. Moreover, these 2 monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is their author; for good painters in France would find it difficult to reach that place Conveniently to paint them. Here is approximately The shape of these monsters, As we have faithfully Copied It. (citation is from Wiki article on the Piasa, retrieved 16.6.2014)

The paintings that Marquette saw were damaged by the habit of Natives shooting at them after having traded their bows for French fusils. It seems that whenever Natives passed the location of the Piasa Bird[s], they shot at them: by 1699, the images were badly eroded … a musket ball does more damage to even good quality limestone than do many arrows, what Natives previously shot at the paintings.

The seven endtime years of tribulation are divided by the doubled day 1260, the last day when the Adversary and his angels have dominion over the single kingdom of this world (day 1260 of the Affliction), and the first day when this dominion is given to the Son of Man, thereby beginning the countdown to the Second Advent (day 1260 of the Endurance in Jesus); thus, the Affliction forms the physical and time-linked mirror image of the Endurance as a man and his shadow are connected at the man’s feet, with the verticality of a standing man represented by the horizontalness of his shadow laying on the ground, with the vertical posture of the man representing life and the horizontal shadow representing death (the man in one less dimension).

In secular literature, “carnival” with its masks and sexual intercourse individually and collectively represents the leveling of humanity, high with low, male with female, identities hidden by masks or by the darkness of forbidden copulation. The authenticity of personhood is lost for as long as the mask stays on, and the authenticity of character ceases when high lies with low and vice-versa. The Adversary demonstrates his hatred of the ways of God through debasing the authenticity of personhood, whether through a person striving for stereotype perfection—which is wearing a mask—or through pride in possessions, or through the witchcraft of utterance (as in the Sacred Names Heresy).

Anything or any activity that places importance on the surface of things [on the sound of words, or on the color of a person’s skin] is of the Adversary and serves his purpose of destroying the authenticity of the individual, from the inside out. Thus, the African-American Sabbatarian Christian who utters the name of Christ Jesus in bastardized Hebrew does with his or her ears and mouth what the racist skinhead Sunday-keeping Christian does with his or her eyes and mouth, both offending the Body of Christ through placing importance on the surface of things rather than on the substance of Christ—and the substance of Christ is to love neighbor and brother as the Christian loves him or herself.

Years ago, I wrote an essay titled “Ligertown,” saying in the essay that Bob Fieber, whom I had known since I was seventeen and attending Oregon Tech, was the victim of optimism run amuck, thereby failing to meet the expectations of his prosperous Lava Hot Springs neighbors. Bob’s endeavor—trying to get a drive-through wildlife park started—posed some threat to his neighbors, but what could be said about Bob and his endeavor was that he was authentic. At the time, there were, I believe, eleven known crossbred lion/tigers (ligers) in existence, with Bob having five of them; for his cubs were raised together, both lion and tiger cubs sharing his couch in a camp trailer, watching the blank screen of a television set two years without electricity. These natural enemies in the wild were, in his trailer, playmates … but the world can only tolerate so much “authenticity” before it intervenes to bring a conclusion to genuine individualism.

In this present era, all of humanity remains serfs of the Adversary, subject to the expectations of prosperous neighbors. The mask can only slip a little. Only a glimpse of the person behind the mask will be tolerated by neighbors; for a glimpse is enough to convict them of being frauds, professing love for others while whetting their knives.

Following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the man of perdition (the lawless one — from 2 Thess 2:3)in the Affliction will be a human male possessed by the Adversary, whereas the Antichrist in the Endurance will be the Adversary cast into time and given the mind of a man, a juxtaposition exemplified by a standing man and his horizontal shadow.

The 1260 days of the Affliction and the 1260 days of the Endurance in Jesus (2520 days in all) represent seven endtime years of transition between this present age and the world tomorrow, which simply will not be like anything prophecy pundits have envisioned for how can a changed human nature be imagined? Can a person imagine what it would be like if all persons have the mind and nature of Christ Jesus? In what transaction did Jesus engage? What property did He own? Did not the disciple who would betray Him keep the moneybag and engage in transactions for all of the disciples? Why? Was it not to signify that engaging in transactions betrays Christ, which isn’t to say that, today, disciples are to abstain from transactions, but is to say that transactions are made for the flesh and for fleshly reasons.

Following seven years of tribulation and turmoil, humanity will emerge from the transition between ages with a new human nature, a new respect for the environment, a new respect for life of all sorts. Humanity will have been pushed to the brink of extinction, then pulled back, not to build again what has been destroyed—not to build new Wal-Marts, new Costcos, new Fred Meyers—but to build up the soil, plant trees and vines, build barns and houses, and to live abundantly by the sweat of the person’s brow. There will still be private property, but not to buy and sell. Transactions will be gone: they are of the Adversary.

Harry Calkins, a Formline carver and instructor, when a graduate math student at University of Washington attended a presentation by Bill Holm, one of two men responsible for the recovery of Formline Art. Calkins asked Bill Holm where he could buy a box drum like the one Holm’s was demonstrating. Without hesitation, Holm said, You don’t buy box drums, you carve them, you carve one for yourself, the box drum being of bent wood construction. Calkins had no tools for carving wood. You make your tools. Calkins did, and he never completed his doctorate in math. Instead he took a M.F.A. degree in Art, Northwest Coast Native Art being his specialty.

I made my tools, crooked knives from worn out files, adzes from car springs, each hafted on whatever hardwood was available: wild cherry from the Oregon Coast, mulberry from Illinois, Osage orange from Ohio, birch and blacktag alder from Alaska, canyon maple from Idaho, ash from Pennsylvania. As I demonstrated here and there, I picked up a usable crotch from a local tree until twenty years later, my handles (hafts) represent an unintentional history.

Again, the thousand year long Millennium will not be like anything prophecy pundits have advertised: again, transactions and transactional economies are of the Adversary. There simply will be no buying and selling in the Millennium, which isn’t to say that there will not be private property: if you forge a scythe blade from a discarded machine gun barrel—beating swords into plowshares—the scythe will be yours to keep and maintain as you (because there will no longer be indwelling death in your fleshly body) live decade after decade, century after century, until the Adversary is loosed from his chains for a short while to again deceive whomever he can, using your memory of what it was like under his administration of the world as proof that life under his rule was better than life under the rule of Christ Jesus.

But this proof will also carry within it its antidote: how long did people live under the Adversary’s reign as prince of this world, prince of the power of the air? Clint Eastwood recently said, Eighty is the new forty. But really, how long is eighty years, or even a hundred twenty years? How long is eighty in comparison to eight hundred, or to a thousand plus?

When I began first grade at six years old, the school year lasted “forever.” My senior year of high school—the year when I was fifteen and sixteen—lasted no time at all. And now, fifty plus years later, a summer is barely long enough to get the garden planted, and the winter doesn’t last long enough to even get out ice fishing. Years seem to fly by. And life is gone before it can really be experienced, a reality elderly fishermen expressed to each other when I was a teenager plunking for salmon alongside them under Red Bridge on Oregon’s Salmon River [Lincoln County] … I caught a lot of fish, and I heard even more stories of how things used to be when a dance could be held atop the stump of an old-growth fir, hand felled using three ten foot misery whips brazed together to reach across the stump even after springboarding up a dozen or more feet, the log then left in the woods because it had a quarter turn twist. The log being like those buckskin logs I cut for firewood with an old 797 McCullough saw and a 48-inch bar that even from both sides of the log wouldn’t reach across until I split off blocks so I could sever the heart of the fir, this cutting of logs left on landings coming in the 1960s.

Time and its perception of passing is dependant upon the amount of stress the person or culture is experiencing coupled to the actual experiences of the person or culture. Time will seem to pass more slowly for those persons encaged by siege walls than for those in front of these same walls. The perceived passing of time works against the prisoner, and works for the guard. It takes greater patience to outwait an assault than to launch a tactical surprise attack. It takes great patience to wait for the Adversary to make his move against the Sabbatarian Christian: years will often pass with nothing seeming to happen. Then when least expecting to be attacked, the battle is joined: Don Quixote’s sheep become an invading army, something Sabbatarians haven’t experienced in the heartland for in the equivocation of the fiend lies truth in fearing Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane; in fearing being surrounded by an enemy using the cover of Capitalism to infiltrate the heartland. There will not then be time to prepare a defense; to prepare to shelter in place; to prepare for the reality of not being able to buy and sell forever more.

It isn’t rising tides or global climate change that needs concern Sabbatarian Christians. It won’t be the price of electricity or the price of gasoline that needs concern Sabbatarians in the Affliction. It will be waking up tomorrow; for there will be no desire to get out of bed, no desire to live, no desire to kindle a fire or prepare a meal … the grave is the place of physical safety to which most Sabbatarian Christians will go between day 220 and day 580 of the Affliction, with the Sixth Seal to be opened on day 580, thus beginning the Wrath of the Lamb as He avenges those who have died in faith after they were filled with the spirit of God.

The question is, what will the Millennium be like? But before this question can be addressed, the stage must be arrayed in a new world order, one unlike anything imagined by conspiracy theorists; one unlike anything conspiracy theorists have feared.

Virtually without exception, doomsday preppers and survivalists lack love for neighbor and brother, and have no plans for sharing what they have stored with those who are hungry, cold, naked, because they didn’t prepare for what they couldn’t imagine would happen. And this will be a tough call to make: will you who have prepared share what you have with the one who made no effort to prepare? Or will you use your weapons to ward off the hungry and thirsty?

What did Christ do when the hungry were before Him? Did He not take what was available and feed everyone their fill? Did He hold back what He had so that He and His disciples could eat? And you know the answer to the question; so what will you do? Imitate Christ? Or protect self? With the one who would save his or her life by holding back losing life spiritually.

What will the Sabbatarian Christian do when a Christian filled with spirit rebels against God by returning to Sunday worship but is nevertheless hungry? How should 1^st Corinthians 5:11–12 be read? If Christians are to judge the Church, and if Believers are not to eat with Sinners who call themselves brothers, what is to be done with those brothers that prove by their deeds that they are not authentic?

If in the Affliction brothers prove that they are not authentic, were they ever authentic? And if they were never authentic, are they to be judged by the Church or judged by God? It is certainly likely that the brother who is not genuine will betray the Christian; so how much of a chance are genuine brothers to take with those who are false but who are hungry and naked, cold and thirsty?

Asked another way, is it right for a runaway slave to save the life of a slave catcher who is under moral and legal obligation to return the slave to his or her owner? Or was it right for the underweight Anabaptist fleeing across a lightly frozen mill pond to turn around and save the life of the well-fed constable who fell through the thin ice chasing him, even though the Anabaptist knew that when apprehended he would be drowned because he practiced the Baptism of Believer’s?

Is it right to do good to your enemies? To feed your enemies? To give shelter to your enemies? … Jesus washed the feet of Judas Iscariot on the night Judas betrayed Him.

The mind of Christ doesn’t differ just a little from the mind of the Adversary, but differs in ways that humankind cannot today imagine.

Under the present prince of the power of the air, whose broadcast of unbelief and rebellion all living creatures have been subjected thereby bringing into existence the predatory natures of the “great predators” (including man)—

Righteousness shall be the belt of His [the Messiah’s] waist,

and faithfulness the belt of His loins.

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.

They shall not hurt or destroy

in all my holy mountain;

for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of [YHWH]

as the waters cover the sea.

In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of Him shall the nations inquire, and His resting place shall be glorious. (Isa 11:5–10 indented lines represent the spiritual portion of thought-couplets)

—the natures of living creatures are of the Adversary; are aspects of his nature, which stands contrary to even the love a mother has for her offspring … seemingly, the closer in hierarchal order a living creature is to the Adversary, a created angelic son of God, the more likely the living creature mimics the Adversary, a murderer and liar from the beginning. A human mother’s love for her offspring is biologically driven, but a human’s love for her offspring is not as great as that of a sow grizzly that will defend her cub[s] with her life, fighting off every perceived threat, especially that of large boars bent upon killing her cubs so as to bring her into heat a year or more before she would otherwise again breed. A human mother is capable of voluntarily aborting her offspring; is capable of abandoning her newly born offspring; is capable of murdering her offspring. When similar behavior is seen in, say, dogs—the female eating her pups—the breeding female has nutritional problems, which isn’t the issue when human mothers voluntarily abort or abandon their offspring: this human mother has cultural issues, cultural problems, with her culture originating with the Adversary being the prince of the power of the air.

The greater intellectual potential of human persons over even their near cousins, the great apes, produces humanity’s ability to better receive and more easily succumb to the Adversary’s broadcast of unbelief and rebellion against God. Thus, when the major predators of the animal kingdom—lions, bears, wolves, leopards—have their natures changed by the change of who administers the single kingdom of this world, human nature will be changed to an even greater degree; changed to where man will no longer learn war.

It shall come to pass in the latter days

that the mountain of the house of [YHWH]

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

and shall be lifted up above the hills;

and all the nations shall flow to it,

and many peoples shall come, and say:

"Come, let us go up to the mountain of [YHWH],

to the house of the God of Jacob,

that He may teach us His ways

and that we may walk in His paths."

For out of Zion shall go the law,

and the word of [YHWH] from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

And shall decide disputes for many peoples;

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isa 2:2–4 indented lines represent spiritual portion of thought couplets)

Beating swords into plowshares is physical—the physical portion of a thought-couplet that sits in the physical position of a doubled thought-couplet—but not learning war anymore is spiritual, the spiritual portion of a thought-couplet that sits in the spiritual position of the doubled thought-couplet, with nation shall not lift up sword against nation sitting in the physical portion of the couplet that sits in the spiritual position of the doubled thought-couplet …

Again, the position of a line or passage in the thought-couplet structure tells readers what “work” the line or passage does in the poetic text. Hence, the Law is the physical (For out of Zion shall go the law) image of the spiritual, the word of [YHWH] from Jerusalem. It can now be said that the Law forms the shadow and type of the spiritual, the Word of the Lord. Therefore, when all of the world is baptized in spirit, the Law will disappear into the heart and mind of the living person filled with the spirit of God.

The Law will not be abolished, but will cease to be seen except in its personified form, the living person filled with spirit, with the Law written on this person’s heart and placed in this person’s mind.

Because English translations of Scripture, especially the King James Version, traditionally have not translated Hebraic poetry as poetry but as prose, structural “meaning” was lost: the Old Testament was theologically smaller and shallower in English than it was in Hebrew, a situation modern translators have sought to correct while continuing the practice of treating the divine determinative YHWH as a naming noun rather than as what it is and has always been, a semantic identifier used for purposes of disambiguation.

I have written in recent Commentaries that visions from God are given twice, sometimes twice to the same prophet, sometimes to two different people as Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of Daniel chapter two, which both Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel experienced. The citation from Isaiah is repeated by the prophet Micah:

It shall come to pass in the latter days

that the mountain of the house of [YHWH]

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

and it shall be lifted up above the hills;

and peoples shall flow to it,

and many nations shall come, and say:

"Come, let us go up to the mountain of [YHWH],

to the house of the God of Jacob,

that He may teach us His ways

and that we may walk in His paths."

For out of Zion shall go forth the law,

and the word of [YHWH] from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between many peoples,

and shall decide for strong nations far away;

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war anymore;

but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,

and no one shall make them afraid,

for the mouth of [YHWH] of hosts has spoken.

For all the peoples walk

each in the name of its god,

but we will walk in the name of [YHWH] our God

forever and ever. (Micah 4:1–5 again, the indented lines represent the spiritual portion of thought-couplets)

The prophet Micah adds an element that isn’t present in Isaiah’s prophecy: but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree. This sitting under vine and tree is time-dated to the latter days; to when the house of the Lord is the highest mountain, lifted up above the hills; to when the single kingdom of this world has been taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man (cf. Rev 11:15–18; Dan 7:9–14). This sitting under vine and tree forms the physical portion of a thought-couplet in a complex structure of couplets, with the spiritual portion of this couplet also being a structured couplet.

When swords are forged into plowshares, people will still follow differing gods, suggesting that swords being forged into plowshares precedes the return of Christ Jesus and occurs in the Endurance of Jesus, when dominion has been taken from the Adversary, cast into time, and given to the Son of Man, but before the Son of Man comes to defeat those who would oppose Him, with His angels binding the Adversary with chains in the Abyss for the Thousand Years God will use as His proof that His governance is the only way by which life can be maintained over the long-haul.

But before the Son of Man begins to reign, spiritual Babylon—the single kingdom of this world as administered by the Adversary and his angels—has to fall and its debris cleared away, with people believing in democracy and Capitalism being debris that must be removed:

Behold, [YHWH] will empty the earth [land] and make it desolate,

and He will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.

And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest;

as with the slave, so with his master;

as with the maid, so with her mistress;

as with the buyer, so with the seller;

as with the lender, so with the borrower;

as with the creditor, so with the debtor.

The earth [land] shall be utterly empty and utterly plundered;

for [YHWH] has spoken this word.

The earth [land] mourns and withers;

the world languishes and withers;

the highest people of the earth languish.

The earth [land] lies defiled

under its inhabitants;

for they have transgressed the laws,

violated the statutes,

broken the everlasting covenant.

Therefore a curse devours the earth [land],

and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;

therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched,

and few men are left. …

Terror and the pit and the snare

are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth!/span>

He who flees at the sound of the terror

shall fall into the pit,

and he who climbs out of the pit

shall be caught in the snare.

For the windows of heaven are opened,

and the foundations of the earth tremble.

The earth is utterly broken,

the earth is split apart,

the earth is violently shaken.

The earth staggers like a drunken man;

it sways like a hut;

its transgression lies heavy upon it,

and it falls, and will not rise again.

On that day [YHWH] will punish

the host of heaven, in heaven,

and the kings of the earth, on the earth.

They will be gathered together

as prisoners in a pit;

they will be shut up in a prison,

and after many days they will be punished.

Then the moon will be confounded

and the sun ashamed,

for [YHWH] of hosts reigns

on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem,

and His glory will be before His elders. (Isa 24:1–6, 17–23 indented lines are the spiritual portion of thought-couplets, with a pair of indented lines forming a couplet within the spiritual portion of a couplet)

The physical portion of the third couplet in verse 18—For the windows of heaven are opened—should produce an auditory echo in the minds of Christians. Compare,

At the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him, but the king of the north shall rush upon him like a whirlwind, with chariots and horsemen, and with many ships. And he shall come into countries and shall overflow and pass through. He shall come into the glorious land. And tens of thousands shall fall, but these shall be delivered out of his hand: Edom and Moab and the main part of the Ammonites. He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape. He shall become ruler of the treasures of gold and of silver, and all the precious things of Egypt, and the Libyans and the Cushites shall follow in his train. But news from the east and the north shall alarm him, and he shall go out with great fury to destroy and devote many to destruction. And he shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain. Yet he shall come to his end, with none to help him. (Dan 11:40–45 emphasis added)

“… The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth." Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant was seen within His temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. (Rev 11:18–19)

The ark of God’s covenant cannot be seen unless God’s temple in heaven is open, with the windows of heaven necessarily being open, and with God’s temple being the Church; being those souls that sleep under the altar until the martyrdom of their brothers is complete. The temple of God is not a physical building in physical Jerusalem. The man of perdition (the lawless one from 2 Thess 2:3–4) does not come to a physical temple at Jerusalem. Prophecy pundits who declare such a thing are spiritually blind; are false prophets, false teachers, deceitful workmen determined to corrupt the Body of Christ. For this lawless one is slain when or just before dominion is taken from the Adversary and his angels.

The spiritual king of the North [Death], represented in prophecy by Assyria as Egypt represents the spiritual king of the South [Sin], is in Daniel’s vision troubled by news from the east and the north, his home turf. This “news” will be what he sees more than what he hears—and what he sees is the open windows of heaven, windows through which the ark of God’s covenant can be seen. And in Revelation, sealed by two tropes, one of which is that what’s seen (how a thing appears) is how the thing functions in the plan of God, the spiritual ark of the covenant of the Son of Man, Head and Body, with the glorified Christ Jesus being the Head of the Son of Man as He is the Head of the Body of Christ. So the news from the east and the north that alarms the demonic king of the North is the Lord coming to stand on the Mount of Olives, and this granite monolith being cleaved in two “from east to west by a very wide valley” (Zech 14:4) when the Lord fights on a day [indefinite article] of battle (v. 3).

Isaiah’s prophecy of the land being emptied of people (chapter 24) can be accurately said to pertain to the time of the end, both a generic period beginning when the visions of Daniel were unsealed, and to a specific period: the First and Second Woes, the last seven months or so of the Affliction.

But Isaiah in vision used a consonant cluster that can with specific vowels [not included with the consonant cluster] represent the <earth> but which can also represent the <land>, as in the land of Israel. Therefore the position of this linguistic icon in the thought-couplet structure discloses which is the better reading of the icon, with the first uses of the icon in the structure of the discourse that is “physical” probably primarily pertaining to the land of Israel, and the latter uses pertaining to the earth in all of its roundness. Remember, the test of a prophet was whether those things he declared came to pass: if what Isaiah declared didn’t come to pass, those things he declared would not have been considered to be of God and would not have been preserved. Thus, it was important to God and to Isaiah that what Isaiah declared actually happened.

To speak quietly about a Second Passover liberation of Israel that will set in motion seven endtime years of tribulation is difficult, but if no one can come to Christ Jesus unless the Father draws the person from this world, teaching the person the basics of Christianity so that while the person remains a sinner, Christ Jesus can die for the person (Rom 5:8)—can die for me—then I can keep toned down any message I deliver; for the message doesn’t originate with me. I merely supply existing words with meaning.

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Homer Kizer Ministries