Homer Kizer Ministries

2.

Concerning dissenting belief within a fellowship of Believers: the Adversary’s heavenly rebellion wasn’t known before the Adversary spiritually said the equivalent to, “‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High’” (Isa 14:13–14), with the prophet Ezekiel declaring in the voice of the Lord speaking to the Adversary, “‘You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you’” (Ezek 28:15). … Can a person intent upon harming a fellowship [the collective] remain in a fellowship as the Adversary continued as an anointed guardian cherub in Eden, the Garden of God, until he made his move, thereby revealing what was in his heart all along?

Yes, a person can. The marked and shunned individual, Norman Scott Edwards, roughly two decades ago wrote about starting a fellowship by subverting an existing fellowship from within, how the Adversary initiated his rebellion against God. The problem with subverting from within is the problem Edwards encountered: Christ is not easily fooled and He will not be long mocked. The one who would subvert will be discovered and pushed out of the fellowship, where this one will roam from one synagogue of Satan to another, begging contributions for his ministry, albeit a homeless shelter or an orphanage, always good causes which Christians really cannot ignore, thereby introducing dilemmas within the Christian who doesn’t want involved in any work done by the marked and shunned person, but who also knows that within the community there is a need for a homeless shelter or need for an orphanage—and there isn’t one except for the one started by the marked person.

Can a con man initiate a good work? Yes, a con artist can. So the solution to the dilemma the con artist poses to the Christian community in an area would be to start a program to care for homeless brothers in Christ and to then permit the marked person to care for homeless drug addicts and sex offenders so that, perhaps, when judgments are revealed, the spirit of the marked person might be saved—if in working with the social failures of society (each a potential son of God), the marked person sees him or herself for who he or she is. The solution isn’t to support the work of the marked and shunned person in any way … the Christian is not to even eat with a person delivered to the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you." (1 Cor 5:9–13)

But not every dissenter within a fellowship intends to harm the fellowship … in the 2^nd and 3^rd Centuries, Gnostic Christians hid in proto-orthodox congregations, these Gnostics believing they had secret knowledge not available to other Christians and not to be shared with other Christians. They attended proto-orthodox fellowships as a means of hiding their smallish assemblies in plain sight, using the praise and worship services of Christian assemblies as a mask to conceal what they truly believed. And therein is an inherent problem with Christian praise and worships assemblies: the elevation of emotion over logic, especially as logic is applied in ethos-based acts of love for neighbor and brother.

The feel-good experience of communal praise singing—for example, of Southern Gospel singing—too easily serves as a weekly or twice-weekly substitute for truly doing good, such as visiting the infirm for the true believer who has no ability to feed the hungry and can hardly feed him or herself.

It isn’t the silent dissenter within a fellowship that concerns the fellowship for again, Christ will not be long mocked. The dissenter, because he or she has about the person a different spirit, will be pushed to the margins of the fellowship, something that works for either the good of the fellowship or for the good of the individual in false fellowships.

It isn’t logical to believe that every “Christian” fellowship is genuinely of Christ Jesus when there is no Christological agreement among the fellowships, nor even agreement on what constitutes the sacred canon. And because of the myriad of endtime Christian denominations and fellowships, the self-identified Christian who swindles his or her brothers in Christ—who knows Scripture—can go from one fellowship [that doesn’t recognize the authority of other Christian fellowships] to another fellowship, saying all of the right things and appearing so very pious. And because the cause is just and the need great, the contributions flow into the pockets of the swindler, who neither pays taxes nor even Social Security on himself (because he is a Christian ministry, legally operating as a sacred purpose trust). Not does the swindler have liability insurance or even fire insurance on his homeless shelter; for if someone gets injured on the property, it is unlikely that the homeless person can afford an attorney to sue the swindler who can gather his belongings together and quickly leave the state, leaving the property owner who is almost never the swindler (certainly not in Edwards’ case) responsible for whatever judgment can be won against the homeless shelter.

As an aside, I get requests for money from many Christian ministries in Africa, with almost all of these ministries supporting an orphanage … are these requests for moneys legitimate? Probably. But why are these requests made? Is it because God has chosen not to directly support these ministries? Or not support the orphanage locally?

The Apostle Paul write,

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? I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! And what I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. (2 Cor 11:7–15)

Paul accepted support from the brothers from Macedonia, but did not ask for that support; nor did Paul ask for support from the holy ones at Corinth … why? Because Paul was called by Christ Jesus to do ministry. Paul worked for God, Father and Son. Paul was not employed by the converts he taught; so it wasn’t those whom he taught that he should ask for support. It was God that he asked for support—and God used human persons in one way or another to provide Paul the support he needed. So the ministry genuinely of God has no need to ask other men for support, but instead asks God for support, who then “communicates” with the ministry in a similar way to how the God of Abraham initially communicated with the children of Israel in the Promised Land:

And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And He will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full. Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain, and the land will yield no fruit, and you will perish quickly off the good land that the Lord is giving you. (Deut 11:13–17 emphasis added)

God, today, communicates with every so-called Christian ministry by whether He, God, supplies the needs of the ministry, using other people to actually deliver the support He provides—but without the ministry asking/begging for support. If the anger of God has been kindled against a particular ministry, God shuts off financial faucets, leaving the ministry to beg as paupers for the financial support needed to keep the ministry alive. However, if the ministry does the equivalent to the children of Israel keeping the Commandments in the Promised Land, God gives His support to the ministry as He gave rain in due season to Israel. Thus, God communicates with all ministries claiming to be of Him as He communicated with ancient Israel in the geography representing the Sabbath … by whether financial resources are or are not there to do a work, God lets the ministry know where the ministry stands with Him. If the ministry has to beg for support, the ministry is either going beyond what God wants for or from the ministry, or the ministry is simply not of God. And Christian ministries that for whatever reason refuse to keep the Commandments are as the children of Israel that did not cross the Jordan. Two and a half tribes of Israel did not cross the Jordan although their men of arms supported their brothers by following Joshua into war against the people of the land. In type [symbolically], these two and a half tribes would represent “Christians” that do not keep the Sabbath, relaxing (Matt 5:19) but not breaking the Sabbath Commandment.

When the majority of Christianity refuses to keep the Sabbath Commandment, this majority has set itself up to rebel against God (as Israel rebelled in the wilderness — Num chap 14), their collective rebellion to occur on day 220 of the Affliction, the first 1260 days following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel … picking up a concept from the first section, for what reason did ten of the twelve spies bring back to Israel an evil report about the Promised Land, a symbol of the Sabbath?

At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, "We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan." But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, "Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it." Then the men who had gone up with him said, "We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are." So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, "The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." (Num 13:25–33 emphasis added)

These ten—their spiritual counterparts probably alive today and probably having been seen on television by millions—will attempt to dissuade Christians from entering the Promised Land where spiritual giants reside … in moving from physical to spiritual, ten “important” Christian leaders will, following the Second Passover, bring to greater Christendom a bad report concerning keeping the Sabbath, saying that the Sabbath cannot be kept, not at all trusting God to run interference for the Christian (equivalent to the Lord sending hornets ahead of advancing Israel to rout entrenched enemies).

The only legitimate reason for a Christian not to keep the Sabbath is the Christian’s failure to trust God, the reason why the ten spies said that the inhabitants of Promised Land were stronger than Israel was—and the inhabitants were stronger as became evident when Israel tried to enter the Promised Land the following day … the issue is never whether a Christian can be overpowered, overcome by the world. The Christian can be and will be if the Christian tries to go it alone. But, you say, Christians don’t go it alone but have God on their side—

So German Christians during WWII had God on their side? Did American Christians during WWII have God on their side? They must have had for they prevailed over Germany and its Axis allies, which now means that German Christians didn’t have God on their side; for you say, Christians don’t go it alone but have God on their side. But now back up in history only a little, to the “Kings Crusade” (ca 1189–1192).

The Kings’ Crusade, also known as the Third Crusade, was an attempt by Christian armies to recapture the Holy Land, especially Jerusalem, from Saladin … Salāh-as-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb; dob 1137/1138, dod March 1193 CE. A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish descent in a Shia caliphate, Saladin became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria and the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty.

The Crusade was mostly successful, meaning that God must have been on the side of the Christians, correct? But these Christian crusaders were unable to retake Jerusalem, so God must also have been on the side of Saladin, who was disadvantaged by the assembled Christian armies and kingdoms:

1.   The Kingdom of Jerusalem, with the Principality of Antioch, and County of Tripoli            

2.   Kingdom of England           

3.   Kingdom of France        

·    Duchy of Normandy      

·    Duchy of Burgundy       

·    County of Blois         

4.   Holy Roman Empire           

·    Duchy of Swabia      

·    Duchy of Austria      

·    Duchy of Bohemia         

·    March of Montferrat           

·    March of Brandenburg       

·    Republic of Genoa         

·    Republic of Pisa       

5.   Knights Templar      

6.  Knights Hospitaller (w/German Hospice Brotherhood)            

7.   Order of the Holy Sepulchre          

8.  Order of Saint Lazarus        

9.  Knights of Saint Thomas          

10.Kingdom of Hungary           

If God would have been on the side of Christendom—if God would have truly been supportive of this Crusade—Saladin would have been utterly defeated, but God wasn’t involved on either side, Christian or Muslim. For all of humanity has been delivered into the hand of the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh. Only when God draws a person from the common pool of humanity and delivers the person to Christ Jesus (John 6:44) for Christ to call, justify, and glorify does the person escape being a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) so that God can have mercy on all.

Greater Christendom, Judaism, Islam—the People of the Book—fight among themselves as spoiled school children, each believing that he is the favored son when all three are mostly of the three women [yes, three] with whom the patriarch Abraham had children … the Apostle Paul in his tour-de-force allegory (Gal 4:22–31) ignored the sons of Keturah (Gen 25:1), sons that spread across the steppes, with some staying and with moving via covered wagons [carts and handcarts] east to west, but with all, beginning with the Wolf, converting to Christianity, Arian or Trinitarian, or converting to Islam.

Christ Jesus will not be long mocked by man or demonic angel … to the reality of Paul’s allegory, the sons of Keturah were not then important; for Abraham had delivered to these six sons gifts and had sent them away while he still lived (Gen 25:6), these six receiving gifts instead of a land inheritance that equated to the Sabbath. Therefore, from the perspective of God, endtime sons of God should not expect either physical or spiritual sons of Keturah to keep the Sabbath: they have no inheritance inside the Promised Land nor heredity claim to the Sabbath.

It is to the sons of Isaac through Jacob that the Promised Land (representing the Sabbath) was given. So regardless of whether Moscow truly represents the Third Rome, a mediaeval dogma revived by Stalin to get Russian peasants to fight Nazis—and presently being revisited by Russian politicians—neither the sons of Ishmael nor the sons of Keturah have a hereditary claim to the Sabbath, which in turn represents physically the Millennium [the worldwide Land Sabbath when transactional economies cease to exist] and spiritually heaven itself.

Before returning to Paul’s famous allegory, I need to return to a reality of the Adversary being the present prince of this world: it was to the God of Abraham that Jews prayed as Nazis herded them into railcars to be taken to gas chambers—bullets had become too precious and shooting too slow for Nazis execution of Jews. But this God of Abraham had entered His creation as His unique Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene, whom the natural sons of Jacob had collectively rejected. So what sort of logia would be needed to support any argument for Jews inside the gas chambers praying to God, who took neither the side of Allies or Axis nations during WWII, which is not to say that God had no involvement, but is to say that the War’s outcome was known to God before Chamberlain went to Munich; this is to say that the Holocaust was known to God—and did not surprise Him—before Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938) occurred, the streets of Nazi German cities glistening the following morning from sunlight shining through the glass shards (from smashed windows of Jewish-owned store, building, synagogues, homes) that covered streets … Hitler’s pogrom against Jews had officially begun, with Hitler, as if possessed by the Adversary himself, intent upon killing every living Jew, a goal that even superseded winning the War.

Hitler could have been possessed by the Adversary; for the man of perdition, following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel [a liberation from indwelling sin and death], with be an Arian Christian possessed by the Adversary. Yes, the lawless one who takes his seat in the temple of God, with the Church being this temple (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16), and proclaims himself God (2 Thess 2:3–4) will be an Arian Christian who sincerely believes the “angel” inside him is of God.

When the endtime temple of God is the Christian Church, and when every self-identified (through baptism, sprinkling or immersion) Christian is filled-with and empowered by God, the lawless one as a Christian possessed by a demon will be inside the temple. Therefore when this lawless one becomes emboldened and ceases to fear speaking what he believes, he will declare himself God with a good conscience and without concealed deceit.

Again, for pedagogical redundancy: once the Second Passover occurs and every person professing that Jesus is the Christ is filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] but not born of God (which requires the indwelling of the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou]), then every Christian will individually and collectively represent the spiritual temple of God. Hence, the Christian—actually any Christian—who proclaims himself God would satisfy Paul’s warning to the Thessalonians. But it would be, especially after being filled with spirit, a rare Christian who would claim to be God; it would be one preconditioned to do so, with this preconditioning involving a repudiation of the Christian’s flesh through the flesh’s former addiction to drugs, alcohol, or perhaps, sexual deviancy.

Paul prayed three times for the healings of his eyes,

I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses—though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:1–10)

The person who lives many years will realize that the fleshly body is consigned to disobedience [sin] and death for the purpose of humbling the person’s inner self; that even when liberated from indwelling Sin and Death, the flesh remains mortal and subject to death from external causes [martyrdom]. Fasting—going without food or drink for a day or more—reminds the person that he or she is still mortal.

The Christian who is suddenly filled with spirit and has the Law of God written on the Christian’s heart and placed in the Christian’s mind, thereby being taught by God (cf. Isa 54:13; Jer 31:33–34; Heb 8:10–11), will know the Lord and will not need any human teacher. Christian ministries will actually be detrimental to the Christian’s spiritual health; for not being needed will not stop Christian teachers from continuing to teach what will now be contrary to what God writes on the heart and places in the mind of every Christian—will not stop Christian ministries and Christian ministers from corrupting and attempting to corrupt this second Israel, the nation of Israel to be circumcised of heart. Rather, Christian ministers will believe it is their obligation to “correct” what all Christians have come to realize through being taught by God, with these ministers and ministries having success when it comes to keeping Christians out of heaven:

Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day [the Second Advent] will not come, unless the rebellion [the Apostasy] comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. (2 Thess 2:3–4)

The great Apostasy will occur 220 days into the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation. However, in type the Apostasy occurred when proto-orthodox believers gained control of the Jesus Movement through initiating a Creed, controlling the Canon, and ordaining their own as the Clergy, on-going efforts that began in the 1^st-Century and continued through the 5^th Century. This is why Christians, particularly Sabbatarian Christians, holding that the Apostasy is now an historical event, misread prophecy; for the shadow and type of the Apostasy was Israel in the wilderness of Paran rebelling against Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb when the spies returned from the Promised Land (Num chap 14). This rebellion of Israel occurred on a specific day in that Israel refused to enter the Promised Land (again, a representation of the Sabbath) on a specific day and attempted to enter on the following day.

Two hundred twenty days after the Second Passover liberation of Israel—220 days after the 15^th day of Iyyar of a year when this 15^th day occurs on a Thursday, thereby making the 220^th day a Sunday—the majority of greater Christendom will assemble to worship God and to attempt forcing their way into the presence of God, thereby committing blasphemy against the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] that fills them. Figuratively, they will splash out some of the spirit that fills them into order to take Sin [unbelief of God] back inside themselves.

Again, what every Christian will “realize” immediately following the Second Passover liberation of this second Israel is that he or she should be keeping the Commandments, including the Sabbath Commandment, for the Christian has become—following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, not before the Second Passover—the inheritor of heaven through being of Abraham, represented in reality by Christ Jesus.

The preceding is a heavy concept that “explains” why most Christians will not be glorified … when the Christian—every Christian—is filled with spirit and has the Law written on the Christian’s heart and placed in the Christian’s mind, the Christian (again, every Christian), will know to keep the Commandments, especially the Sabbath Commandment, the Sabbath representing the Promised Land as well as the Millennium and heaven. However, analogous to the ten spies who brought to Israel a bad report about the Promised Land, Christian leaders will bring to greater Christianity an evil report about the Sabbath and Sabbath observance—and will dissuade the majority of Christians from remaining in the Promised Land, convincing these Christians to return to the faith of their ancestors, lawlessness rooted in trying to enter into God’s presence on the day following the Sabbath. And in doing so, these Christian leaders will persuade the majority of Christians to commit blasphemy against the spirit that fills them.

The Second Passover liberation of a second Israel changes everything just as the Passover liberation of ancient Israel under Moses changed everything for Israel.

Before the Second Passover, of all Christendom only the Elect are the inheritors of heaven, and this through hearing the word of Jesus—because the Father drew the person from this world, pulling the person out of the common pool of humanity, the ransom price for the person paid by Christ Jesus at Calvary. The remainder of Christianity (as with the remainder of humanity) are described by the Apostle Paul when he writes,

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom 8:5–8 emphasis added)

Do Christians within greater Christendom today submit to God’s Law? No, they do not; for the Sabbath Commandment—the least of the Commandments—will have all who are of the Promised Land labor for six days and rest on the seventh day of a weekly seven day cycle established by the Lord giving manna to Israel in the wilderness. It is for this reason that there will be no buying and selling [transactional economies] during the Millennium; for the Millennium represents the world’s land Sabbath, the seventh millennium since recorded history began (the seventh millennium since Adam).

Pause and consider: if every person is a son of disobedience (again, Rom 11:32 & Eph 2:2–3) and thereby a slave of the Adversary, the author of disobedience, then every person is humanly born as the ideological slave of the Adversary, with Paul writing,

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Rom 6:16–18)

The Christian who willfully transgresses the Law is the willing slave of sin, which leads to death, not life. Therefore, the Christian who today transgresses the Sabbath by, say, keeping Sunday as the Sabbath remains a son of disobedience, the obedient slave of sin—Paul also wrote, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1), with John building on the concept of the Christian being Christ-like:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. Whoever says "I know Him" but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in Him, but whoever keeps His word, in Him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him: whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked. (1 John 2:1–6)

And,

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (1 John 3:1–11)

Jesus did not transgress the Law—in Him was no sin—and if we walk in this world as Jesus walked, we will not sin. However, because of the weakness of the flesh, we unwillingly and unintentionally transgress the Law … however, doing the person’s weekly shopping on the Sabbath is not an unintentional transgression, but a deliberate act of defiance, the act conveying the message that, You, God, don’t exist for the person, or that, You, God, cannot tell me when I am to come before You. But is this how Christians really think when they intentionally transgress the Sabbath Commandment? No, it isn’t. The Christian doesn’t think at all, but follows instructions from religious professionals, the trained clergy, with Christians trusting these professionals to do their thinking for them, the state of affairs Radical Reformers sought to overturn through every Christian reading Scripture for him or herself.

But if every Christian reads Scripture him or herself, every Christian becomes part of a unique reading community, with some communities being limited to two or three individuals and other communities larger. In every case, however, if the community is of God, members of the community will voluntarily keep the Commandments as perfectly as they can, with Christ Jesus being “the propitiation for our sins.”

There is a great physical difference between an Islamist shooting scantily clad Unbelievers sunbathing on a beach and a Christian buying groceries on Saturday then golfing on Sunday … as physical people, we are all quick to say there is a huge difference: no one gets hurt when weekly groceries are purchased on Sabbath. But the Christian who habitually shops on the Sabbath will, most likely, continue to do so following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel. This Christian will see nothing wrong in what he or she does; however, when the Christian is filled with spirit following the Second Passover, the Christian who transgresses the Sabbath Commandment (even once) will commit blasphemy against the spirit. Therefore, in forming the habit of conducting the Christian’s worldly business on the Sabbath, the Christian sets him or herself up to commit spiritual suicide in the Affliction, again the first 1260 days following the Second Passover; whereas the Islamist when baptized in spirit halfway through the seven endtime years will repent, becoming humble when realizing how little the Islamist truly knew about God, and will (most likely) enter into heaven as a firstfruit of God, having been made into a spiritual descendant of Abraham through Christ Jesus casting Satan and his angels into space-time when He, as the Son of Man, becomes the prince of this world.

So is it today better to be a Christian, claiming to know God, Father and Son, than to be an Unbeliever of any ilk? It certainly would be if the Christian would grow in grace and knowledge, not holding fast to fossilized dogmas from the 4^th-Century or from the 16^th or 18^th or 20^th Centuries.

The 1^st-Century Jesus Movement “died” at or near the end of the 1^st-Century (ca 100–102 CE) with the physical death of John; for it seems that the Father ceased to draw new converts from this world forty years after Calvary (71 CE), with disciples genuinely born of spirit representing the spiritual temple of God. Thus, once the physical temple was razed by Roman soldiers (70 CE), with the physical preceding and revealing the spiritual (1 Cor 15:46; Rom 1:20), the spiritual temple could be razed by Greek philosophers that hijacked the Jesus Movement from within through becoming outwardly disciples.

Paul wrote,

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only He who now restrains it will do so until He is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath [pneuma] of His mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of His coming.

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thess 2:1–12 emphasis added)

The mystery of lawlessness hovered over the 1^st-Century Jesus Movement as a great bird of prey, intent upon snatching converts not drawn from this world by God the Father and delivered to Christ Jesus to call, justify, and glorify. Thus, when the Father ceased to draw additional disciples from this world, it took the mystery of lawlessness only a generation to completely raze the living temple of God … in thirty years (71–101 CE), the embattled Jesus Movement in its death throes produced Matthew’s and John’s Gospels, while the mystery of lawlessness added Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts, a Second Sophist novel, to the spiritual canon. So by 105 CE when the doctrine of the harrowing of hell gained popularity, the spiritual Body of Christ was crucified and dead on the cross, where it would hung until “buried” by the Council of Nicea (ca 325 CE) through formal abandonment of the Passover.

Dissenting belief within a fellowship was not tolerated by the proto-orthodox Clergy; thus, those Christians who clung to the traditions taught by John the Elder were pushed to the margins of the Jesus Movement, their marginalization tolerated for as long as all of Christendom was out of political favor because “Christians” wouldn’t worship the Roman Emperor as a deity. But once Constantine used Christianity as a glue to cement his control of the people, dissent could not be tolerated.

I will resume discussion of the initial question asked about dissent in the third part of this Commentary.

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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."

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