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"Forever Immortal" OR Everlasting Life as
the Gift of God— WHICH IS IT? __________________________________ Preface An
unassailable tenet of post-Nicene Christianity is humanity’s possession of an
immortal soul. But unassailable tenets, especially tenets of great antiquity,
tend to become sacred cows, barren heifers and castrated bulls fattened for
slaughter. And the concept of humanity’s inherent possession of an immortal
soul is a stalled ox now fit for the Japanese meat market. It is truly prime beef,
tender, juicy, its flabby muscles ribboned and marbled with fat. So, if you are
squeamish about seeing a beast butchered—vegetarians beware—close your eyes and
cover your ears for you are about to witness considerable blood-letting. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, born as the
man Jesus of Nazareth, enjoyed the smell of fat burned on the altar, with that
sizzling fat now being the prayers of the saints. And the prayer of every saint
should be that spiritually circumcised Israelites begin to believe the Apostle
Paul that everlasting life is a gift from the Father. Jesus said, ‘“For as the
Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom
he will’” (John 5:21). Everlasting life is received no other way than for the
Father to make alive what was dead, then for the Son, to whom all judgment has
been given, to glorify [a second making alive] human beings whom the Father has
made spiritually alive. So changing lifeless clay into a son of God is the work
of the godhead that began with Elohim
[singular in usage] breathing into the nostrils of the man of mud, the first
Adam, thereby transforming clay into a nephesh
or breathing creature that was like other breathing creatures, the beasts of
the field. This is why King Solomon writes that God tests men “that they may
see that they themselves are but beasts” (Eccl 3:18), the one dying as the
other dies, both coming from the dust of the earth and both returning to dust,
that it is vanity to believe a man’s breath goes upward and a beast’s downward
at death (vv. 19-21). Prior to
Calvary, Jesus ascribed to His disciples’ physical or shallow breath [psuche] characteristics that would
belong to His disciples’ second breath [pneuma]
once His disciples received the Holy Spirit [Pneuma ’Agion]; for until His disciples were born of Spirit, they
were only flesh [soma] and physical
breath [psuche]. The wages for sin is death, not eternal life in a
rotisserie, not eternal life separated from God, not eternal life in any form.
The wages for sin is not life, but rather, death in the lake of fire which will
utterly destroy a person’s body, physical life (received from the first Adam),
and spiritual life (received from the Father through the last Adam). A person
who has been born again has received the Holy Spirit [Pneuma ‘Agion or Breath Holy] and will, if the
person remains in covenant, receive a glorified body that is not subject to
death when the person reaches his or her spiritual majority. Receipt of the
divine Breath of the Father gives spiritual life to physically living but
spiritually dead flesh, in that the person who has received the Holy Spirit now
has spiritual life dwelling in a tent of flesh; the person has been born of
Spirit, or born from above, or born again, or born anew—all expressions for an
actual unseen second birth, invisible because it occurred in the co-existing
portion of the supra-dimensional heavenly realm. And to the spiritual life
received through receipt of the divine breath of the Father must be added
spiritual life given by the Son, this life being given to the tent of flesh in
which the spiritual life given by the Father dwells. The spiritual life the
glorified Jesus gives is what the Apostle Paul called the mortal putting on immortality, and the perishable becoming imperishable. If Jesus, when a born of
Spirit disciple’s judgment is revealed, denies knowing the disciple, the
spiritual life that the disciple received from the Father will dissipate in the
lake of fire as physical breath dissipates when the fleshly body returns to
dust. The person who has been born of Spirit spends his
or her spiritual childhood in a physical body that is the image of the
spiritual. Born again disciples of Christ are as Jesus was after He received
the Breath [Pneuma] of the Father (Matt 3:16) and before He was
crucified, written with a caveat. Jesus’ three and a half year earthly ministry
is a shadow and copy of the lives to be lived by liberated and empowered saints
during the first three and half years of the seven endtime years of tribulation.
Today, born anew disciples have sin and death dwelling in their flesh (Rom
7:21-25), a condition resulting from Adam and Eve believing the serpent.
Following the first couple’s expulsion from the garden, God consigned all of
humanity to disobedience (Rom 11:32), an act that removed the responsibility
for sin from the descendants of Adam and placed that accountability onto the
prince of this world, the Adversary, Satan the devil. Thus, humankind was under
a form of natural grace, with its lawlessness not reckoned against it (Rom
5:13) even though the flesh of every person died because of indwelling sin,
with this natural grace extending to even Israel from Adam to Moses. But Jesus’
father was not the first Adam, but Theos
(John 3:16), the Logos (John 1:1-2),
who was Yah to King David. Thus,
Jesus was born without indwelling sin and death. His flesh was never consigned
to disobedience, the status of the flesh of His disciples. And without
indwelling sin and death, Jesus was from birth the acceptable sacrifice for sin
“that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in” His disciples
(Rom 8:4). Therefore, for His disciples to be as He was, His disciples need
liberated from indwelling sin and death just as physically circumcised Israel
in Egypt needed liberated from physical bondage to Pharaoh. This liberation
will occur through empowerment by the Holy Spirit on a Second Passover, the day
that will begin the seven endtime years of tribulation—this empowerment by, or
being filled with the Holy Spirit was foreshadowed by that day of Pentecost
following Calvary (Acts 2). The ten day period between when Jesus was with His
disciples and when the 120 were visibly filled with the Holy Spirit corresponds
to the long night of watching Israel spent in Egypt while the nation roasted
and ate Passover lambs and waited for the death angels to pass over the land,
and corresponds to the nearly two millennia that the Church has taken the
sacraments while waiting for Christ’s return, not realizing that death angels
must again pass over the land (Isa 43:3-4). The now glorified Jesus became the firstborn of
many heirs when the divine Breath of the Father descended upon Him like a dove,
not when He received an incorruptible body. Disciples have the word of the
Father as assurance that the man Jesus was, with the receipt of the Breath of
the Father, born anew as the beloved Son (Matt 3:17). And it is here where the
Christological debates of the 4th-Century CE must be reopened. Endtime Christians will be Unitarians, Binitarians,
or Trinitarians—and yes, all three schisms within greater Christianity will
have supporters, with the Unitarians and Trinitarians actually engaging in a
real shooting war against each other throughout the Tribulation. The man of
perdition will come as a Unitarian, and will be openly resisted by
Trinitarians. But this man of sin will have the support of the false prophet,
who will persuade the world’s largest contingent of Unitarians [Islam] to
become Arian Christians. And the world, reeling from the Second Passover
liberation of saints, will be plunged into turmoil and tribulation the likes of
which has never previously been experienced by humankind. The passages in the Gospel of John that suggest
Jesus was the Son of God prior to His human birth (John 3:16-17) are not well
translated. Theos as the Logos was with Theon in the
beginning (again John 1:1-2). Both Theos and Theon were God—and
it is here where earlier Christological debates must be joined: Elohim is the regular plural of Eloah, which is God (El) plus His Holy Breath (ah). Eloah
and Allah are directly comparable
linguistic icons. Both are singular. And whereas Judaism argues the Eloah is made into the plural Elohim for emphasis, what is in reality
revealed in the plural icon is that the physical creation has concealed from
Judaism and from most of Christianity spiritual things [the concept of Tzimtzum]; for the Tetragrammaton
written YHWH, but prayed Adonai, deconstructs to /YH/ and /WH/, with the radical /YH/
being Yah, the only deity that ancient
Israel and the Patriarchs knew, with the possible exception of King David, a
man after God’s own heart. It was Yah
whom Moses and the seventy elders of Israel saw on Mount Sinai (Exod 24:9-24),
but no one human being had ever seen the Father, the deity represented by the
radical /WH/ (John 1:18), whom Jesus
came to reveal to His disciples (John 17:6-7, 25-26). When the Seventy translated Hebraic Scripture into
Greek [the Septuagint], the translators used the Greek icons Theos and Theon, depending upon grammatical case, to represent the
Tetragrammaton. But these translators knew only the deity that Moses and the
seventy saw atop Mount Sinai. They did not know the Father. Therefore, their
use of the Greek icons is uninspired and is not to be trusted although Jesus
did quote from the Septuagint when He entered Jerusalem as future high priest
and Passover Lamb on the 10th day of the first month (Matt 21:16),
and when He confronted the Sadducees two days later (Matt 22:32). Apparently,
though, He did not quote from the Septuagint when he asked the Pharisees the
question they could not, or did not want to answer (vv. 43-45); for if He had, Matthew badly mangled the citation. If
Jesus had quoted Psalms 110:1 in Hebrew, He would have uttered the
Tetragrammaton as Adonai—and Matthew
would have transcribed both Adonai
and Adoni as Kurios, as is the case. So arguments from how the Septuagint uses the Greek
icons Theos and Theon have no merit in understanding how the Apostle John uses
these same two icons at the beginning of his gospel … all things physical were
created by Theos (John 1:3), not Theon. It was Theos who
was born as the man Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14). And when John 3:16 is read
in Greek, Theos comes as His only Son; Theos clones Himself as a
physical human being. He can only do this once, for once he leaves the heavenly
realm, He ceases to exist in that realm. From a human perspective, He is dead
even though He lives in the form of His only Son. Thus, when Jesus is born of
Mary, Jesus is not the Son of the Father, Theon,
but the Son of Theos. Literally, He
is His own Son. The man Jesus of Nazareth was part of the physical
creation, fully human, no longer Theos,
no longer Yah, no longer God, but rather, the Son of God—and to
say otherwise is to make oneself into an antichrist. Whereas Theos and Theon, like a man and his wife, had functioned as one entity in a
manner directly analogous to how Aaron had served Moses, his brother, as
spokesman, with Moses being as God to Aaron (Exod 4:16), the two (Theos and Theon) that were one in a side-by-side relationship (YHWH) concealed by the physical creation
became one in the heavenly realm (the Father) and one in the physical world
when Jesus was born of Mary. Thus, when the divine Breath of the Father
descended as a dove and lit on Jesus, spiritual life in the heavenly realm was
given to Jesus: the only Son of Theos
then became the beloved Son of Theon,
with both Son and Father having their own divine Breaths (the Pneuma of Christ [Rom 8:9] and the Pneuma of Him who raised Jesus from the
dead [Rom 8:11]). All of the physical creation, including the
physical man Jesus of Nazareth, is the construction of Theos as the Logos—and this will extend to the transformation
of the mortal bodies of disciples who put on immortality. Whereas the
Father glorified the resurrected Jesus with the glory Theos formerly had, human beings are without any former life or
glory in the heavenly realm. Their bodies will have to be created in the
ultimate transformation of what is physical becoming spiritual. Whereas the
Father initiates life, giving to spiritually lifeless human beings actual
existence in the heavenly realm, the Son transforms tents of flesh into
heavenly tents made of the glory Jesus now has so that the resurrected or
changed son of God that had formerly dwelt in flesh should not be unclothed but
further clothed (2 Cor 5). Jesus’ life forms the pattern for future disciples.
Through being born of the water of the womb, human beings live as the first
Adam lived, breathing creatures composed of breath [psuche] and flesh [soma]
until they receive the Breath [Pneuma] of the Father when He draws us
from the world (John 6:44, 65). Then [not before then] a human being becomes a
disciple of Christ Jesus; the human being becomes tripart in composition, with
actual life in the heavenly realm. Literally, the disciple has received a
second life, and has become subject to the second death. Disciples are not free
to live however they please. They have been drawn or drafted by the Father;
they have been placed in the eternal covenant. When drawn, their sins were
covered by Christ’s shed blood, and their sins since that time are borne by
Christ and given to Satan if they remain in covenant. The only way a disciple
will not be glorified is if the disciple leaves the covenant, thereby grieving
the Holy Spirit and the disciple’s life in the heavenly realm. Humanity has entered the time of the end, defined
by the visions of Daniel finally being understood, and by the good news that all
who endure to the end will be saved (Mat 24:13) being proclaimed to the
world as a witness. There isn’t time to play verbal patty-cake with Christians
who have been born of Spirit but who live out of covenant with the Father and
His Christ. This is the time for theological confrontation so that spiritual
Israelites who will listen to Christ’s voice hear His words, even if the Word
angers them. Those spiritual Israelites who won’t listen won’t heed a
"make-nice" tone, either. They are the seven of ten servants of the
nobleman who refused to be ruled by him (Luke 19:27). They will experience the
second death. 1. A
logic fault occurs when a multifaceted issue is presented in terms of
linguistic absolutes. But some states or conditions are inclusive, or
exclusive. A woman is either pregnant, or she isn’t. A person either possesses
life, or the person doesn’t. There is no arguable position for being almost
pregnant, or almost alive; or nearly pregnant, nearly alive;
or even barely pregnant, barely alive. A person is either alive, or the
person isn’t. A person has either been born of water (embryonic fluids), or the
person hasn’t been. Likewise, a person has either been born of spirit (the
Breath/Pneuma of the Father), or the person hasn’t been. There is no
transitional state or condition. It is, literally, all or nothing. Thus, a
person either possesses everlasting life (i.e., life in the heavenly realm), or
the person doesn’t—and here we encounter our first difficulty:
"everlasting" or "eternal" are modern English translators’
preferred signifiers (or linguistic icons) for the Greek signifier aionios,
which might better be rendered "age-lasting." Greek thought was of
age to age, thereby making the arrival of the Lord’s Day the conclusion of our
present age and the beginning of a new age. One age began with Adam and ended with Noah. One
age will begin with Christ’s Millennium reign and will end with the arrival of
the new heavens and the new earth. So the lake of fire which comes with Christ
[the Second Advent] concludes when the earth is renewed with fire in
preparation for the arrival of the Father. The lake of fire is, therefore,
age-lasting fire which is translated into English as everlasting fire. And everlasting
life is life in the spiritual realm, where time doesn’t exist; it is everlasting,
but it can be lost, for again, it is age-lasting. For English speakers, the signifiers everlasting
and eternal do not have that assignment of an outer limit; i.e., the end
of the age. Therefore, everlasting fire and everlasting life
produce a differing linguistic signified in the minds of English speakers than
the Greek expressions do when they are appropriately translated into English. Further, time can be written as a function of
gravity, making time part of the creation. Time doesn’t exist as humanity knows
it outside of the creation. Therefore, the concept of "eternal" in
the supra-dimensional realm usually identified as heaven equates most directly
to our concept of a continuous linguistic present tense. I AM means,
simply, that "I exist"—I exist today, tomorrow, yesterday, next week,
whenever one can imagine. By implication, I AM precludes being human, or
of the creation that exists inside the heavenly void that opened when
lawlessness was found in an anointed cherub. I AM can only be of the
spiritual realm or of that dimension. I AM cannot solely exist in the
physical creature—once Theos entered His creation as His Son, the man
Jesus of Nazareth, He ceased to exist in the heavenly realm and could only
leave the physical realm through death. Likewise, when Satan is cast from
heaven and to the earth (Rev 12:9-10), he cannot return to heaven. He can only
leave the earth through death (Ezek 28:18-19). He will be destroyed; he will
have fire come from his belly, and he will be consumed completely. He won’t be
in charge of any lake of fire; he won’t be tormenting the souls of mankind
forever; he won’t be, period. His judgment has been pronounced. It is certain.
He will die for his lawlessness and for the sins of glorified saints, sins that
Christ returned to Satan when Yom Kipporim becomes a reality, sins that Christ
bore as our high priest. If the heirs of God are to be like Christ when they
are glorified, then they also will exist outside of time, unaffected by gravity
or the laws of physics as humanly understand. Heirs of God will similarly be
able to say that they exist in an age that has no outer limit, for it has no
connection to time. However, as long as they are within the physical creation
in life and in body, they are subject to a linguistic limitation: the end of
the age. Eternal and forever means until the age ends. The
problem is, neither signifier does. Neither English signifier effectively
encapsulates the concepts of the Greek signifier. How can "forever" not mean forever?
How can my stepson look at a 1965 Ford Mustang, almost drool in desire to
possess one, then say, "That’s BAD!" He can because people
assign meaning to words. My stepson’s use of bad is 180 degrees off from
my use of the same signifier. But a similar reassignment of signifieds to
signifiers was seen in Cockney English at the close of the 19th-Century.
Communication is more than precise word usage. It is, as Baktin reminds
theorists, the entire context in which a signifier is encountered. 2. Augustine
wrote, "This faith [Christianity] maintains, and it must be believed:
neither the soul nor the human body may suffer complete annihilation, but the
impious shall rise again into everlasting punishment, and the just into life
everlasting" (On Christian Doctrine, Book One, section XXI, D.W.
Robertson’s trans.). And in the centuries since Augustine, Christianity has
rigorously maintained the theological posture that every human being receives
an immortal soul upon conception. Fornication, therefore, produces immortal
souls by Augustine’s must believe position. The wage for sin is not
death (Rom 6:23), but everlasting life in punishment, regardless of whether the
person knew God. By Augustine’s must believe polemic, neither a person’s
soul or body will die, but both will experience "punishment," or will
experience "life," making punishment rather than death
the opposing condition to the linguistic absolute life. However, Solomon writes, "For everything there
is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a
time to die" (Eccl 3:1-2). For Solomon, life is enclosed within the
quantity of space-time between its beginning and its end. Life doesn’t exist
before its beginning, and it doesn’t exist past its end. Thus, "life"
is not the converse of "punishment." Nor does "death"
equate with punishment. The absence of life (i.e., death) is the converse of
life; so Augustine’s must believe polemic creates a linguistic
impossibility, since punishment cannot be synonymous with death as an absolute.
Punishment requires life for its administration. When punishment continues past
the cessation of life, it ceases to be punishment and becomes mutilation of a
corpse. Again, punishment requires a body to possess life—and life must
exist in a body in order for the flesh to be punished, as Augustine is aware.
The disembodied essence of life (or breath of life) cannot receive punishment,
for there is nothing upon which to inflict the punishment, which is why
Augustine wants the human body not to suffer complete annihilation. However,
when a person dies, it is the person’s breath of life [psuche] that
returns to God, not the person’s body, which returns to dust. The person’s body
is completely annihilated: dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Paul, the Gospel writers, and the so-called
Catholic writers used two Greek signifiers to convey the concepts of physical
and spiritual life. Both signifiers refer to "breath": psuche,
which suggests shallow breath; and pneuma, which suggests deeper breath.
And this terraced duality of breathing signifiers is in agreement with the
concept of a physical creation being followed by a spiritual creation. There is
a first Adam, a man of flesh, and then there is the second Adam, a live-giving
spirit being. There is a first Eve, that gives life to humanity, and there is a
second Eve (i.e., the Church) that will bring forth two spiritual sons in a
day. There is a physically circumcised nation of Israel that was holy to God
(Exod 19:5-6) followed by a spiritually circumcised nation of Israel that is
now holy to God (1 Peter 2:9). Circumcision of foreskins (physical
circumcision) is followed by circumcision of hearts and minds (spiritual
circumcision). And the list goes on, such is the typology of Scripture, which
can only be understood through typological exegesis. Precept-upon-precept
exegesis causes a person to stumble, become ensnared and be taken (it is the
reading strategy of drunks in Isaiah’s day); and historical exegesis is the
teaching of the doctrines of men. So the two Greek signifiers for how deeply a
person breathes [psuche & pneuma]
correspond nicely to the concept of a physical creation followed by a spiritual
creation. Elohim [singular] breathed
the breath of life into the nostrils of the first Adam (Gen 2:7), and Adam
became a nephesh; that is, a breathing creature. God the Father’s
Breath/Pneuma descended like a dove on the second Adam, imparting to
Jesus spiritual life, just as Elohim’s
breath imparted physical life to the first Adam. And when the glorified Jesus
breathed on His disciples and said, ‘"Receive the Holy Spirit [Pneuma]’"
(John 20:22), the second Eve was created at approximately the same time that
the first Eve was created after a deep sleep fell over the first Adam. By
receiving Jesus’ directly transferred Breath, the Church was created from the
ten disciples gathered together the evening of Christ’s ascension. Without the
Breath of God, Jesus’ disciples could not have understood the spiritual
teachings He would give them for the next forty days (cf. Rom 8:7; 1 Cor 2:11). With the Breath of God, the disciples
were spiritual creations, born of Spirit. They now had real life in the
spiritual realm, not merely a promise of life … when both the lawyer asked
Jesus what must he do to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25) and the rich young ruler
asked Jesus the same question (Luke 18:18), the offer of Scripture was one of
inheriting, not immediately receiving eternal life, a distinction that has
never been understood by the Sabbatarian Churches of God. King David will inherit eternal life, as will Noah,
Daniel, Abraham, and a small number of others. While they lived, they were
never born of Spirit—if they had been, then one of them would have been the
second Adam, not Christ Jesus. Thus, they were never able to sin in the
heavenly realm, where they had no life. No sacrifice in the heavenly realm was,
when Jesus was crucified, needed to cover in that realm the sins of human
beings. All of Israel’s sins had been committed in this physical realm; so only
the death of the flesh was necessary to cover the transgressions of Israel. But
with Jesus’ disciples receiving life through the divine Breath of God, directly
transferred when the glorified Jesus breathed on His disciples, disciples could
sin in both this physical realm and in the heavenly realm, where Jesus would
not die for their transgressions but would bear those transgressions until
judgments were revealed. Then, when judgments are revealed, Jesus will give the
spiritual transgressions of His disciples either back to the disciple, meaning
that the disciple will die the second death in the lake of fire, or He will
give these transgressions to Satan, who is ultimately responsible for them. But
Satan will not die for a thousand years [not until he is loosed for a short
while following the thousand years]. Therefore, as bulls and goats stood in for
Jesus until He came to die at Calvary, spiritual bulls and goats will stand in
for Satan until he dies from fire coming out from his belly. And just as
physical bulls and goats did not take away the sins of Israel, spiritual beasts
do not take away the sins of glorified disciples but die in lieu of the reality
until the hour of renewal comes. When Elohim
[singular] took red clay and formed the man of mud, the first Adam would have
appeared like a wax museum’s exhibit of a human male until he received the
directly transferred breath of life. In the terraced nature of
physical/spiritual creations, the second Adam would have appeared like a wax
museum’s exhibit of the invisible God (John 14:8-9) until the Breath of the
Father descended upon Jesus like a dove, thereby beginning Jesus’ ministry that
has not yet concluded. As the first Adam looked like a human corpse prior to
receiving the breath of life, the second Adam had life in the physical realm
prior to receiving the Breath of the Father, but He had no life in the
spiritual realm—life in this physical realm forms the shadow and copy of life
in the heavenly realm (Rom 1:20), and precedes spiritual life (1 Cor 15:45).
Thus, the creation both conceals and reveals the heavenly realm. To those who
are spiritually blind, as has been natural Israel throughout its history, the
creation conceals the things of God in a concept Kabbalists call Tzimtzum, a rupture in the fabric of
heaven directly analogous to the fissure in the earth’s surface that opened to
swallow Korah and his fellow rebels (Num 16). But to disciples, the creation
reveals what cannot be seen with human eyes, nor heard with ears, nor measured
with hands. For disciples, typology serves as a periscope to peer out of the
void and see events in the heavenly
realm that could not otherwise be known. And typology discloses the reality of
this world passing away: as the earth’s fissure opened to swallow Korah, then
closed again, the Tzimtzum opened to
swallow rebelling angels and will close again. The light humans see in the universe is spiritually comparable to what
Korah saw as he fell into the fissure, only to see the darkness of the fissure
close around him. The rebelling angels have been cast into outer darkness—human
beings are born into this place of spiritual darkness and call it beautiful. The man Jesus was born in the same spiritual state
as every other Israelite, but without the indwelling of sin. He had no life in
the heavenly realm. To say otherwise is, again, to make oneself into an
antichrist. And it was only after receiving spiritual life through receiving
the divine Breath of the Father that Jesus confronts and defeats Satan, in a
battle for control of the mental topography of humanity, the logic for the
particular set of temptations and rebukes. The battle was fought in the
spiritual realm even though the participants were here on earth. The battle was
a type of David slaying Goliath. There will be another slaying of Philistines
when Christ returns as a type of the mature King David who slew his tens of
thousands. Life and death as absolutes acquire an advocate in
Jesus of Nazareth, who lived, died, and lives again in the supra-dimension of
heaven. Christ links death with the grave [hades] (Rev 1:18) through
possessing their keys: Yes, He died, yet lives. His use of death doesn’t
convey any sense of punishment, but rather, conveys the sense that life
had ceased to exist. Both death and the grave [hades] will be thrown
into the lake of fire at the end of Christ’s Millennium reign (Rev 20:14).
Their termination in the lake of fire is the second death (same verse). So
Christ’s use of Death and Hades addresses first physical life—the death that
Jesus experienced at Calvary—but it also addresses spiritual life: "And if
anyone’s name was not found in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of
fire" (v. 15). An assumption needs here to be addressed: this
assumption is that the lake of fire doesn’t affect spirit beings. It is based
upon an understanding of fire being an oxidizing agent, and since spirit beings
are not composed of the elements of the earth, they cannot be oxidized through
any known process. But this assumption that fire must necessarily be an
oxidizing agent is false. Moses, upon seeing the bush burning but not being
consumed, said, ‘"I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush
is not burned’" (Exod 3:3). Moses wasn’t in vision. He was really tending
the flocks of his father-in-law. He was on a real mountain. And the fire coming
from the bush was not an oxidizing agent, yet the fire appears real. So the
assumption that fire originating in the spiritual realm must be an oxidizing
agent needs to be jettisoned. Pitched out with this assumption should go
teachings that spirit beings are not affected by fire. Ezekiel prophesies in an
after-the-fact sense when he describes the judgment of Satan as the spiritual
king of Tyre. He said, quoting the Lord, "By the multitude of your
iniquities, / in the unrighteousness of your trade / you profaned your
sanctuaries; / so I brought fire out from your midst; / it consumed you, and I
turned you to ashes on the earth / in sight of all who saw you. / All who know
you among the peoples / are appalled at you; / you have come to a dreadful end
/ and shall be no more forever" (28:18-19). God brings fire out from the
belly of this king of Tyre to consume him. If this king of Tyre were human,
Christ has revealed His judgment against a man before His return (1 Cor 4:5),
which the Apostle Paul says He won’t do. But no human being has been "an
anointed guardian cherub" (v. 14). This prophecy is widely
recognized as being about Satan. And it isn’t interrupted to shift from Satan
to a man just before its conclusion as taught by one of the more controversial
religious teachers of the past century, Herbert Armstrong, who, with his son
Garner Ted Armstrong, wrote in Did God Create A Devil? that Satan cannot
be destroyed by fire (pp.18, 21, 24 — 1973 edition). But the Lord says
otherwise: Satan will be completely destroyed here on earth, where he was cast
(Rev 12:9-10) halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation. His
destruction will come at the conclusion of Christ’s Millennium long reign as
King of kings. Satan and his angels will be cast into the lake of fire (Rev
20:10) that has been prepared for them (Matt 25:41). There, in the lake of
fire, Satan will be tormented unto the aionas [age] of the aionon
[age], or until the end of the ages, when the new heaven and the new earth
appear, thereby concluding the plan of God as revealed in the abstract for
Scripture (Gen 1:1-2:3). His torment will end at the conclusion of the ages
with fire coming out from his belly and reducing him to ashes under the feet of
saints. He will not be around to enter New Jerusalem (Rev 21:27), nor will be
"the cowards, the faithless, the detestable…murderers, the sexually
immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars" (v. 8). All whose
names are not written in the book of life will experience the second death.
Their fate will be akin to Satan’s (Rev 20:15). Fire separates the dimensions, with the fiery
furnace into which Nebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being a
type of the flames through which saints will pass to cross dimensions (Isa
43:2). If a disciple’s mortal body does not put on immortality, the disciple
will die in these flames; such is the second death. Satan, at least, has a body upon which fire can
inflict torment while in the process of being consumed. A tent of flesh will
not last long in the fiery furnace into which “all causes of sin and all
law-breakers” (Matt 13:41) are cast upon Jesus’ return. Disembodied breaths of
life quickly dissipate. Jesus said, concerning spirit, that it is like wind,
coming and going where it will (John 3:8). It is, therefore, foolish to think
that a disciple’s physical breath of life [psuche], or that a disciple’s
spiritual breath of life [pneuma] can be punished without being in a
body. It would be easier for a person to enchain the wind, thereby stopping it
from blowing where it will. So unless the human body does not return to dust,
contrary to the testimony of Scripture, the lawless living and lawless dead
will utterly perish upon Jesus’ return. Jesus, like Paul in his epistle to converts at
Rome, established a relationship of opposing absolutes: ‘"Do not marvel at
this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his [the
Son of God’s] voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection
of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrect of judgment"’ (John
5:28-29). The opposing absolutes are: (1) those who have done good,
versus (2) those who have done evil — "good" and
"evil" equate to "life" and "judgment." Earlier
in this same discourse, Jesus said, ‘"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever
hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come
into judgment, but has passed from death to life’" (v. 24). So for
Jesus, death is the converse of life. Judgment now has to do with
death, not punishment. Judgment leads to death in the lake of fire. The assumption that fire must be an oxidizing agent
causes scholars to do linguistic gymnastics to keep Satan from being destroyed
as prophesied by Ezekiel—and not only Satan, but the beast and the false
prophet (cf: Dan 7:11-12; Rev 19:20;
20:10). And if Satan has fire come out from his belly, thereby reducing him to
ashes under the feet of the saints, who is in charge of an ever burning gehenna
fire? And more linguistic calisthenics become necessary to keep the concept of
an immortal soul from deflating and sailing wildly around the room as an
escaping balloon. The good/evil converse relationship that Jesus
establishes concerning resurrection exists in the Lord’s day (Rev 1:10), that
period beginning when the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of the Most
High and His Messiah (Rev 11:15): "And he [the angel] said to me [John],
‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.
Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous
still do right, and the holy still be holy’" (Rev 22:10-11). An implied
caesura between the second "filthy" and "the righteous"
divides this four-part list into contrary actions and states. What has been
translated as "evildoer" can be translated as "the
unrighteous," so the two qualities of action are unrighteousness and
righteousness. The two states are filthy or unclean as the opposite of holy, as
seen in clean and unclean animals (Acts 10:12-15, 28). So the person who isn’t
holy or a part of spiritual Israel (1 Pet 2:9) does those things that are evil
or unrighteous. The person who is holy does those things that are right or
good. This person is clean (John 15:3) as in pruned to bear much fruit, with
being holy equating to on-going actions not to an inherited condition. Since the law that divided humanity into
circumcised and uncircumcised was abolished (Eph 2:15) as Peter was told three
times in his vision concerning unclean animals; and since humanity is liberated
from bondage to sin (Rev 11:15) when Satan is cast from heaven 1260 days before
Christ returns as the Messiah (Rev 12:9); and since all of humanity is called
by God (Rev 18:4) and receives the Holy Spirit when called (Joel 2:28) and
liberated from bondage to sin; and since the good news that all who endure to
the end will be saved has been proclaimed as a witness to all nations, the only
reason for a person still to be unclean or filthy in the Lord’s day is the
person’s refusal to be ruled by Christ, as seen in the parable of the pounds: A nobleman went into a far country to receive for
himself a kingdom and then return. Calling ten of his servants, he gave them
ten minas [pounds], and said to them, "Engage in business until I
come." But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying,
"We do not want this man to reign over us." When he returned, having
received the kingdom, he ordered these servants to whom he had given the money
to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by doing
business…[only three come forward; as for the other seven, the nobleman says]
But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring
them here and slaughter them before me. (Luke 19:12-15, 27) Slaughter might be construed as punishment, but
slaughter doesn’t imply the continuation of life. Rather, slaughter sounds more
like being cast into the lake of fire when the person’s judgment is revealed at
Christ’s return. All of humanity has been made clean or holy by
virtue of Christ’s sacrifice, but not all of humanity has now been drawn by the
Father (John 6:44, 65; Acts 2:39), the reality of predestination and of some
vessels having been created for special use. However, that changes halfway
through seven years of tribulation when the kingdom of the world becomes the
kingdom of the Most High and His Messiah (Rev 11:15). All of humanity is then
called (Rev 18:4). All have the Breath of God poured out upon them (Joel 2:28;
Acts 2:17). All know the Father by virtue of receiving His Breath. And the
person who has received the Breath of God and then chooses not to be ruled by
Christ will be slaughtered upon Christ’s orders, which will happen at the
revealing of the person’s judgment (1 Cor 4:5) upon Christ’s return. And this
agrees with what Jesus said, ‘"Do not fear those who kill the body [soma]
but cannot kill the soul [psuche]. Rather fear him who can destroy both
soul and body in hell [Gehenna] (Matt 10:28). When Jesus sent his disciples out as recorded in
the tenth chapter of Matthew, his disciples had not yet received the Holy
Spirit even though demons were subject to them, and they had the power to heal.
They wouldn’t receive the Breath of God until the glorified Christ breathed on
them the evening of His ascension to the Father. However, they were sent out to
create the shadow and copy of endtime disciples who have the Breath of God
going to the cities of the lost sheep of spiritual Israel. Therefore, Jesus
assigns to the physical breath of His disciples [their psuche] the
qualities that the Apostle Paul assigns to born again disciples’ psuche
and pneuma (1 Thess 5:23). Jesus said not to fear those who can kill the
body [soma], so the body can be killed. It can cease to live. Jesus
said, rather, to fear the One who can kill both the body [soma] and the
life [psuche] in the lake of fire. Before proceeding, there is a textual inconsistency
in the use of psuche and pneuma about which scholars know: the
Apostle Paul, in his first epistle to the saints at Corinth, writes, "For
who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit [pneuma] of that person,
which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the
Spirit [Pneuma] of God" (1 Cor 2:11). The Pneuma of God is
the Breath of God, a figurative expression for the creative power of God, for
God does not live through the inhalation of oxygen molecules. Humanity lives
through the oxidation of sugars at the cellular level. Fire for us is the
oxidation of a combustible medium. A similar relationship exists between the
Breath of God and fire in the spiritual realm as exists between the breath of
humanity and fire in the physical realm. (This relationship is mirrored in the
spiritual creation of the heirs of God and the physical creation of the
children of Adam and Eve.) This is why Satan can have fire come out from his
belly, thereby reducing him to ashes, creating a situation analogous to the
combustion of a human body. The Apostle Paul’s use of a person’s pneuma
as the knowing of that person’s thoughts creates linguistic parallelism with
the things or thoughts of God being only knowable through receiving the Holy
Spirit/Pneuma. It also addresses a truism: I know my thoughts. No other
physical being does. I know my thoughts through having physical life. The dead
know nothing (Eccl 9:10); i.e., when dead, I will not know my thoughts. So
while it can be said that Paul’s use of pneuma here better matches the
physical breath of life [psuche] than how he will use pneuma
elsewhere, the old creature formerly occupying the tent of flesh is dead;
hopefully, only the new creature remains. So my thoughts are not [or should not
be] those of the old creature, but those of the born of Spirit son of God—and
this now agrees with Paul’s use pneuma. Of course, reversing how Paul intended psuche
and pneuma to be used does not affect the substance of this argument in
the least. Before being called by the Father, a person has his or her physical
breath, and physical body. Then after being born-from-above, the person is made
a disciple through receiving a puff of the Breath of God. Disciples now have
literal life in the spiritual realm. They are not begotten; they are born anew.
They become physical life and spiritual life in a physical body: psuche,
pneuma, and soma. And this is the mystery of God that has caused
so many disciples to stumble for so long. Fellowships of the splintered Churches of God use
the above quoted passage from Paul’s epistle to the saints at Corinth to prove
that humans have a different spirit or breath than have animals, that this
differing spirit causes humans to be able to reason. To make the passage work
as they desire, they insert a "by" between "except" and
"the spirit [pneuma] of that person"; thus, a person knows the
things of a person by having the spirit of man, thereby making the
spirit of man a differing spirit than the spirit beasts have received. Then in
the same context, these fellowships will cite Ecclesiastes 3:19, showing that
man and beasts have the same breath, or spirit. Their arguments are logically
inconsistent, and are rejected by the majority of the Christian Church for
cause although the point they attempt to make concerning humanity not having an
immortal soul is valid. In Christian theology, Gehenna has becomes a
location of punishment rather than a place of fire. Most scholarly articles
concerning gehenna will identify the place as Jerusalem’s garbage dump.
Located geographically just south of Jerusalem’s southwestern hill, the
valley of Hinnom or the valley of Hinnom’s sons saw the debris of
the city set fire there, the fire ever-burning in the sense that as long as the
city brought garbage to the valley, the fire burned. This valley, then, becomes
the metaphor for the spiritual location where the trash of spiritual Israel is
burned when the judgment of the people of God is revealed. The Apostle James
says of this location that though the tongue is a world of iniquity or
lawlessness, it is, in turn, set on fire by gehenna (3:6), thereby
making hell not the repository of punishment, but the causal factor leading to
lawlessness or sin. In this famous passage, James personifies gehenna,
ascribing to the location the ability to influence the wheel of life. Thus,
hell is not a location in the netherworld, but the overhead broadcast tower of
Satan as the prince of the power of the air, who deceives the whole world by
reigning, for a season, over humanity’s mental topography. In another equally cited passage concerning gehenna,
Jesus said, ‘"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother
is liable to judgment; whoever insults [says Raca to] his brother will
be liable to the council; and whoever says, "You fool!" will be
liable to the hell [gehenna] of fire’" (Matt 5:22). In this
passage, the council is a physical or civil authority [the Sanhedrin]. The
person who insults a brother is civilly liable, as would be a person who
slanders or libels another person in our court system. But the person who
pushes past slander and kills with his or her mouth has become subject to the gehenna
of fire, or the broadcast of the Accuser of humanity. The passage can be read
equally well having the person influenced by Satan as having the person subject
to fire—and if the person is subject to fire, why does anyone think that this
person is not slain by fire? Greater Christianity today holds the concept of a
resurrection at Christ’s return in tension with possession of an immortal soul.
But there is no logic for escaping to heaven at death, then returning to earth
to receive an incorruptible body at Christ’s return. This makes
"souls" disembodied life in the spirit realm, or as one major
denomination teaches, preexisting life in the spirit realm returning to heaven.
Either way, greater Christianity accepts the existence of life in the spiritual
realm that doesn't possess bodily form or substance. Of course, Origen accepted
Plato’s doctrine of nous falling from God to become psyche, but
that is what happens when one looks earthward instead of upward—the person
lacks or loses spiritual understanding. When the Pharisee Nicodemus came to Jesus wanting
to be taught, Jesus said, ‘"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born
again he cannot see the kingdom of God"’ (John 3:3), "see" used
in the context of knowing the kingdom of God. This, then, agrees with what Paul
writes, "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" (Rom 8:6-7).
So, in very spare language, Jesus tells Nicodemus that without the indwelling of
the Spirit (v. 9), a person cannot know the things of the kingdom of
God. (This is the Apostle Paul’s point [1 Cor 2:11].) The person lacks
spiritual understanding or discernment—and the teacher of spiritual Israel who
teaches that a disciple born of spirit is merely begotten makes the same
mistake that Nicodemus made about entering the womb a second time. When Nicodemus asked about entering a mother’s womb
a second time, he misunderstood what Jesus meant about being born again, or
born-from-above, as evidenced by Jesus’ rebuke: ‘"Are you a teacher of
Israel and yet you do not understand these things?…If I have told you earthly
things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly
things?’" (John 3:10, 12). The answer is that no one can without being
spiritually minded. Nicodemus couldn’t, nor could Jesus’ disciples until after
they received the Breath of God (John 20:22). Only then could the glorified
Christ teach His disciples the spiritual implications of what they had
witnessed (Acts 1:4). Only then could Nicodemus understand what it meant to be
born of spirit. And too many teachers of spiritual Israel have been as carnally
minded as Nicodemus was when he asked about entering the womb a second time. A digression is here in order: intertextuality and
hypertexuality lead to typological exegesis, in that the entirety of canonical
Scripture, when accepted literally, becomes a secession of shadows that
ultimately reveals the endtime conversion of spiritual Israel followed closely
by the harvest of humanity, for which God’s will is that none perish. The text
reveals the text, with the Acts of the Apostles forming the shadow of the
endtime conversion of the Church, composed today of spiritual juvenile
delinquents that have fled from Eden, climbing over the walls that are the laws
of God written on hearts and minds. Once the Church has been liberated at a
second Passover from its bondage to sin, it will be the harvesters of humanity.
Until then, only a remnant of the Church has returned to Eden. Even fewer have
rebuilt the walls of its capital, spiritual Jerusalem, which has theological
rather than geographical coordinates. "The
text reveals the text" forms an interesting concept that ultimately argues
not for the infallibility of Scripture, but for the inadequacy of Scripture to
reveal the thoughts of God. An
additional text must be created through hearing the voice of Christ by
spiritually minded disciples. Intertextuality synthesizes Old and New Testaments,
overlapping the new over the old to form a yet unwritten text, its shadow being
the events of the New Testament; its reality to occur in the spiritual realm
which humanity cannot bodily enter. Its reality is the hypertext Book of Life,
in which every disciple is an epistle written on cleansed hearts with Spirit
and delivered by the genuine teachers of Israel. Thus, the reason why Christ
opens the door for the Church at Philadelphia during the Lord’s day (Rev 3:7-8)
is that Philadelphians cannot see where that door is, for it is in the
spiritual realm. That is correct, like the inhabitants of Plato’s Cave, seeing
only shadows, Philadelphians will wrestle with spiritual entities that cannot
be seen except by their shadows until Satan and his demons are cast to the
earth. Then the terrain is leveled. Satan will have become another Goliath, a
large uncircumcised dog, ripe for being slain by the Son of David, who will sit
on David’s throne to reign as King of kings. Because intertextuality connects the Old and the
New Testaments in a terraced relationship, what is said concerning the
"soul" or nephesh in the Law & the Prophets must be
understood to pertain to humanity prior to receiving the Breath of God. Being born-from-above,
or being born of spirit cannot be understood as a reentering of a womb,
but as the inclusion or indwelling of the Spirit or Breath [Pneuma] of
the Father in a person who was, until then, no different from a dog (Eccl
3:18-21). Eternal, or spiritual life is the gift of God (Rom 6:23), given when
the Father draws a person from the world (cf.
John 6:44, 65; Acts 2:39). A person’s natural mind is hostile to God (Rom 8:7),
and is unable to understand spiritual things until the Father draws the person.
He or she would never leave the world if the Father didn’t insert His Breath
into the person. I was baptized by ministers of a fellowship that
used precept-upon-precept exegesis to produce logical arguments skewed toward
being 20th-Century Pharisees. Even a year ago (2002) when I wrote
about eternal life I was still unlearning doctrines that were wrong although
the doctrines had been logically presented. I had moved past my teachers, but I
was still confining my thinking to a horizontal plane. I didn’t then understand
types as functions; I perceived types as earlier and later, both physical. It took
Christ months to stretch my thinking so that I would look up rather than
out—and not look up with preconceived ideas about what I would see.
Therefore, a person can track my spiritual development through my works in
print. I wrote in Holiness, Righteousness & the New
Covenant that if a teacher of Israel cannot admit that he or she is wrong,
then the person has too much ego to be glorified. I knew that I would not be an
exception when I wrote the passage; I am not an exception … I have told my
Composition students that I’m probably the only one in the classroom who has
had a spelling error cast in bronze. I didn’t see that Solomon’s wisdom was of
this world, and still is good advice pertaining to this world. It doesn’t apply
directly, though, to the spiritual realm. And precept-upon-precept exegesis
will never produce spiritual understanding of Scripture. By the nature of its
application, it causes heavenly passages to be read from an earthly
perspective. Humanity’s claim to physical primacy (i.e., dominion
of the creation) is based upon humanity being created to look like Elohim (Gen 1:27) — yes, God has form,
appearance (cf. Rev 1:13-15; Dan 7:9;
Ezek 1:26-28; Exod 33:20, 23 & 24:9-11), and is composed of a substance
about which we know nothing since that substance is not a property of this
universe. Angels have form and appearance. So too will glorified human beings
have form and appearance. The Apostle Paul writes, concerning glorified saints,
"It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a
natural body, there is also a spiritual body.…Just as we have borne the image
of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven" (1
Cor 15:44, 49). Adam as the first man was formed of clay, and was
man-like in appearance but was lifeless until Elohim [singular] breathed the breath of life into him (Gen 2:7).
Adam then became a nephesh, or breathing creature. There is no textual
suggestion that Adam had the Holy Spirit; for he was placed in a geographical
garden in Eden, and he was expelled from this garden before he could eat of the
tree of life and live forever (3:22-23). So the first Adam exists in two
states: flesh without the breath of life, and flesh with the breath of life.
When he was flesh without the breath of life, he looked like a man just as a
wax Elvis Presley in a museum’s exhibit looks like Elvis Presley. Only when
Adam received the breath of life did Adam come alive as we know life. Receipt
of physical breath changed the non-living physical Adam into the living man
Adam. The lifeless Adam was not born through human conception, but he was born
through divine construction. And it is his birth that serves as the physical
model or shadow for spiritual birth. Every person is born of Eve through the water of
the womb. To be born of Adam now—or to be born anew, or born from above, or
born again, all English expressions for when a spiritually lifeless human being
receives the Holy Spirit—is to be individually constructed by the Father as a
one of creation through receiving His divine Breath in a spiritually dead tent
of flesh. Therefore, to be constructed in the image of Elohim, male and female [to be in the image of Elohim, the two must become one] (Gen 1:27), a person must be born
of water and of Spirit, with “breath” received through each birth. When a
spiritually lifeless but physically alive human receives the Holy Spirit [Pneuma
’Agion], this person becomes a spiritual creation. The person doesn’t yet
have a glorified body—he or she doesn’t need one to be a child of God in this
world. All the person needs is receipt of the Breath of the Father. And at this
point, the person has real life in the heavenly realm. There are no spiritual
mothers per se that ovulate. Spiritual beings are, again, all one-of
creations by God the Father. Christ as the second Adam existed in three states,
as would be appropriate for the reality of a shadow that existed in two states
(i.e., physically non-living and physically living). First, the man Jesus of
Nazareth was like Adam in that He consists of flesh [soma] and the
breath of life [psuche] prior to His baptism. When born of Mary, He had
no spiritual life inherit within Him. He couldn’t have been tempted as we are
if He had. But when He rose out of the water, the Breath/Pneuma of the
Father descended upon Him like a dove (Matt 3:16), and Jesus was
born-from-above. The Breath of the Father added spiritual life [pneuma]
to His physical life [psuche] and to His body [soma]. He became
tripart in construction, the state of disciples that the Apostle Paul addresses
(1 Thess 5:23). And following His resurrection, He receives a spiritual or
incorruptible body to go with His spiritual life, which, again, He received
when He received the Breath of the Father. So Jesus was first psuche and
soma; then psuche, pneuma, and soma; then Pneuma
and an unnamed substance which will form an actual body. Our flesh, or soma, forms the shadow of whatever this
substance is. Christ is not, today, disembodied life. Joseph Smith perhaps said
it as well as anyone, life without a body is nothing. Life requires a
body to be alive. Otherwise, life is a vapor that cannot be contained, and so
dissipates until it is no more. It is, literally, breath, physical or
spiritual. Just as the first Adam received physical breath to
become a breathing creature, a nephesh, the second Adam received
spiritual Breath to become a spiritual creation embodied in a corruptible
tabernacle. Jesus wasn’t born with a little angel inside Him. Nor did He have
eternal life before He received it as a gift of the Father—for the third time,
the person who denies that Christ came in the flesh as soma and psuche
is an antichrist. And these little antichrists come from two perspectives: (1)
they either assign spiritual life to the first Adam, or (2) they deny born-from-above
disciples have actual spiritual life. Either position reflects carnal
understanding of Scripture. The above cannot be stressed too greatly, for it
becomes a central precept in understanding all of Holy Writ. John writes,
"This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who
denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the
beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.
And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life" (1 John 2:22-25).
So a doctrine originating in the 3rd -Century that denies the
uniqueness of the Father and of the Son is an antichrist doctrine, as is a
doctrine that assigns eternal life to someone who denies the Father and the
Son—and as is a doctrine that denies that whomever has the Father and the Son
has eternal life. Thus, the concept of a triune godhead as taught by greater
Christianity is an antichrist doctrine, for this concept denies the Father and
the Son, substituting for the Father and the Son a closed triune godhead that
includes the personification and deification of the Breath of the Father and of
the Breath of the Son. Likewise, the concept of humanity inheriting eternal
life through having received an immortal soul at conception is an antichrist
doctrine, for the doctrine assigns eternal life to individuals who deny the
Father and the Son. In addition, the concept that a disciple doesn’t receive eternal
life until after judgment and resurrection to life (the position of Herbert
Armstrong) is also an antichrist doctrine, for this doctrine denies that the
person who abides in the Son and in the Father has eternal life. This doctrine
holds that the person will, in the future, receive eternal life, that eternal
life is glorification, that the saints will be glorified as baby gods [elohim], not as Christ is now. This
doctrine denies that born-from-above disciples are, in this age, the actual
children of God. This doctrine denies that disciples are actual sons of the
Father, with whom the Father would not be well pleased if Christ were not
bearing their sins. But because Christ does bear the sins of born of Spirit
disciples, we, as children of the Father while we are still in the flesh [soma
and psuche], appear today before the Father without sin. Therefore, the
liberty we have as born-from-above disciples to do anything without any sin
being imputed to us today must not be abused, but must be used to develop the
habit for always doing that which is right. The death penalty for our sins
hasn’t disappeared. If we leave the eternal covenant that has us living within
the laws of God, and if we do not return to this covenant prior to death, we,
as disciples, will have our sins reassigned to us. We will be resurrected to
condemnation. We will lose eternal life, which was given to us when we were
drawn by the Father. A little more can be said about wearing the mantle
of Christ Jesus’ righteousness: if a disciple presents his or her members to
sin to be instruments of disobedience (Rom 6:13), the disciple is not under
Grace, but remains under the Law; for only when a disciple presents his or her
members to God as instruments of righteousness does the disciple come under
Grace. Only then will sin have no dominion over the person. Sin has dominion
over the disciple who presents him or herself to disobedience to be its servant
(vv. 14-16). Therefore, the disciple
who chooses to sin makes him or herself a bondservant to sin, and chooses death
when the promise of entering into God’s rest was available to that person.
Thus, Christ Jesus makes this person into a vessel of wrath to be endured for a
season—and when a disciple chooses life or death, Christ sculpts the person into
a vessel for honored or dishonorable usage. The choice of what Christ will make
from the person is now His. The promise of entering into His rest has closed.
The person is either in His rest, or isn’t, the reality of disciples being
vessels and the workmanship of Christ Jesus. Christian liberty is a tremendous gift. Without it,
we are no match for Satan, who deceived angels and the whole world today (Rev
12:9). With it, we can choose to do that which is right, fail for any number of
reasons, choose again to do what is right, again fail, then choose again to do
what is right, until our habit becomes always choosing to do what is right
which then sets our character to choose righteousness. The death penalty
attached to each of our failures is borne by Christ and given to Satan when the
reality of Yom Kipporim occurs. Our failures to live with our choices to do
what is right slay Satan. But we are not free to reject the laws of God, for in
doing so, we reject the spiritual life that we have received as born-from-above
disciples—we have, when rejecting the laws of God, sinned against the Holy
Spirit. We are then out of covenant, and we will die eternally for our sins. We
will experience the second death, for we had a second birth and a second life
even while a physical human being. But [and this but is beautiful] for the vessel intended for honored use, a vessel
who chose life on his or her day of salvation, Jesus will not let the disciple
long reject the laws of God. He will intervene to bring this vessel He intends
for honored usage back into the covenant. He will lose no disciple who has not
chosen to be a son of destruction. Intertextuality and hypertexuality, descriptive
terms for the concept of texts relating to other texts even to the creation of
an unwritten derivative text, now allows us to look at what YHWH tells
Ezekiel: ‘"Behold, all souls [nephesh] are mine; the soul of the father as
well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.…The soul who
sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor
the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the
righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon
him’" (18:4. 20). If we use "breathing creature" for nephesh
or soul as is appropriate, we see the typology. The first Adam is a physically
breathing [psuche] creature, while the second Adam is a physically and
spiritually breathing [psuche & pneuma] creature. The
righteousness required is now in the physical and spiritual realms—and we have the Apostle Paul desiring that the
saints at Thessalonika be found blameless in the psuche, pneuma,
and soma (or body). Thus, Ezekiel’s the soul that sins shall die is
applicable as a shadow of Jesus saying not to be surprised when some saints who
have done right are resurrected to life while some saints who have done evil
are resurrected to condemnation. Same mind, same voice, but the former is the
two dimensional shadow of a three dimensional reality. The physically breathing creature cannot sin or
commit iniquity in the heavenly realm. He or she can only sin in the physical
realm, where he or she will pay the death penalty for that sin or those sins.
This penalty is the first death. No second life or second birth has occurred.
The person is spiritually as Adam was physically prior to the man of mud
receiving the breath of life. This person has been physically created in the
image of Elohim, thus looks like
Christ and the Father, but this person lacks the spiritual breath of life.
Although physically living, the person is, indeed, like a wax museum exhibit. When a person is drawn by the Father (John 6:44,
65), the person receives, right then, the Breath of the Father. The person
would not separate him or herself from the world if the person hadn’t received
the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:7). The person doesn’t need hands laid on him or her to
receive the Holy Spirit. Since first circumcised Israelites were baptized with
visible fire (Acts 2:2-4), then uncircumcised Israelites (i.e., Gentiles drawn
by the Father) were baptized by fire (Acts10:44-47), the direct transfer of the
Holy Spirit is not required. Receipt of the Holy Spirit precedes baptism in the
name of Christ Jesus. Baptism brings judgment upon disciples. And what appears
as an exception is the example of the twelve disciples in Ephesus who had not
heard of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:1-7) — this example is to be understood
typologically as the shadow of the conversion of physical Israelites (i.e.,
circumcised Israelites descended from the twelve tribes and today identifying
themselves as Jews) during the Tribulation (Rev 7:4-8) when the broken off
natural olive branches are grafted to the root of righteousness. Thus, when a person is drawn by the Father, the
person is born a second time just as Adam was born a first time through
receiving the breath of Elohim [singular]. A person doesn’t enter a womb a
second time, the mistake of Nicodemus (John 3:4) and the mistake continued by
the many fellowships of the splintered churches of God descended from the
former Radio Church of God. And since a born of Spirit disciple has actual life
in the heavenly realm, this born-again disciple can sin in the heavenly realm,
the penalty for which is the second death (i.e., the lake of fire). The man
Jesus of Nazareth’s death at Calvary paid the penalty for all of the sins of
all disciples in the physical realm. Grace is the glorified Christ bearing the
sins of disciples in the spiritual realm. But Christ will not be crucified a
second time. He will not pay the spiritual death penalty for sins committed in
the heavenly realm. Rather, He will either give those sins to Satan if the
disciple remains in covenant with the Father, or He will return those sins to
the disciple if the disciple leaves the eternal covenant into which the
disciple was placed when drawn. If He returns those sins to the disciple, the
disciple will experience the second death; i.e., resurrection to condemnation.
The disciple will pay in the heavenly realm for his or her own sins in that
realm. Satan is already under the sentence of death (Ezek 28:18-19). So the
penalty for every sin committed in the heavenly realm will be satisfied by the
death of either the out-of-covenant disciple, or of Satan, with spiritual
beasts substituting for Satan during the resurrection of firstfruits … a
spiritual beast is simply a disciple who chose death when the promise of
entering God’s rest was before him or her. The Master Potter has since formed
this disciple into a vessel for dishonorable usage, a vessel of wrath, a son of
destruction so that all Scripture would be fulfilled. And the Apostle Paul
suggests that these sons of destruction can cleanse themselves from what is
dishonorable and become vessels for honored use (2 Tim 2:21), but the reality
of experience seems to be that once a disciple chooses death by rejecting
keeping the law, the disciple is mentally unable to cleanse him or herself. The
Master Potter has truly sculpted the person into an unchanging vessel of wrath,
thereby making permanent the disciple’s choice of death over life. And these
vessels of wrath loudly sing praises to Christ Jesus as if they were bleating
goats and bellowing bulls penned near the altar, waiting being sacrificed. 3. Since
one of two fates awaits born-from-above disciples—resurrection to life or
resurrection to condemnation—then what about the remainder of humanity; i.e.,
all of those individuals who never knew Jesus or the Father? What is their
fate? Most of Christendom has assigned them to everlasting life in a
rotisserie, ever grilling, but never quite becoming done enough to be served to
an angry God. Of course, Dante had the lowest level of hell cold as a Siberian
winter, with two popes stuck in the ice. And extreme cold does burn as I
experienced when antifreeze at forty below flowed over my forearm one winter in
Fairbanks. Christendom borrowed more from Plato than from
Christ when it constructed its concepts of an afterlife. It acknowledged the
Hebraic concept of a future resurrection at the end of the age (Dan 12:2 &
John 5:28-29), but then sent the immortal souls of saints to heaven to await
resurrection, or to hell from which there would be no escape. The Apostle Paul
said that the judgment of disciples would not be revealed prior to when Christ
returned (1 Cor 4:5); so for Platonic Christianity to be correct, Paul must be
wrong about when a disciple’s judgment is revealed. But Paul isn’t wrong! Each
disciple’s judgment will be revealed when Christ returns—and no saint has gone
to heaven only to be sent to hell when his or her judgment is revealed.
Likewise, no saint has been condemned to gehenna fire only to be
glorified when his or her judgment is revealed. So the premise by which
Platonists assign the souls of disciples upwards or downwards at death is
contrary to Scripture, contrary to revelation, and contrary to the words of
both the Father and the Son. A disciple’s judgment is not revealed prior to
Christ’s return. And to teach that a person receives eternal life in the form
of an immortal soul received through fornication in the backseat of a Chevy is
mocking the Father and the Son. Does anyone really want to mock the only ones
who can give the person eternal life? Is anyone that confident that Plato was
correct about he or she having an immortal soul? Christ certainly didn’t teach
that a person has one. Rather, He taught that disciples await judgment in the
tomb (John 5:28). If you were to play chess with Christ, you would
quickly learn that you were checkmated before you moved your first piece. All
of the moves necessary to place your king in check will have been made before
you sit down to play; such is the quality of Christ’s mind. Human beings are
not in His league, and while it might sound sacrilegious to even suggest
playing chess with Christ, disciples are in effect playing chess with Him when
they wonder why Christ allowed a heresy such as humanity having an immortal
soul to creep into the doctrines of His Bride. He certainly could have
prevented the heresy’s entrance into the theological canon. Why didn’t He? The
heresy isn’t true. But the heresy really did little harm when His return was
centuries in the future. The person who believes this lie dies thinking that he
or she will go immediately to heaven; the person knows nothing in the grave.
Then the person is resurrected either to glory or to shame. If to glory, then
the person will feel rather foolish for having believed such nonsense, but the
splendor and work before the glorified saint will expunge even the feeling of
foolishness. And the person resurrected to condemnation has much more to worry
about than not having gone to heaven. However, during the Tribulation, when spiritual
Israel has been liberated from mental bondage to the king of Babylon, believing
in an immortal soul will cause a separation between saints who are genuine, and
born of Spirit disciples who will not be ruled by Christ. Then in the middle of
the Tribulation, when Satan is cast down to the earth and must recapture his
former mental slaves through physical means (the logic for requiring all to
have the mark of the beast to buy and sell), belief in an immortal soul will
become a test of who stands with Satan as the ultimate Antichrist, and who
stands with the saints living in spiritual Jerusalem. All of the moves
necessary to defeat Satan have been made. All that is left is enacting those
moves through the writing of a new text that is the terraced repetition of
existing texts. In other words, Christ has already revealed the moves to be
made. He knows the end from the beginning, and through typology, He has
revealed to His friends the end and the moves that will be made to arrive at
that end. Therefore, the heresy of humanity having an immortal soul didn’t
enter Christendom through spiritual neglect. The heresy didn’t catch Christ by
surprise. It actually seems that He set up its introduction as a 1st-Century
test that becomes crucial for saints to pass in the 21st-Century. As God gave to lawless and idolatrous natural
Israelites statutes and rules by which the nation could not live (Ezek 20:25-26),
statutes that caused Israel to burn in firstborns alive, God has given to
spiritually circumcised Israel statutes and rules by which the Christian Church
cannot live. The foremost of these statutes is Sunday or 8th-day
observance. Perhaps next in importance is the belief that human beings possess
immortal souls. So because of the Church’s lawlessness in the 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd Centuries, God, not Satan, has placed within the Church the
seeds of its destruction, the beliefs that will cause the Church to send its
newly born infants into the lake of fire. And those teachers of spiritual
Israel who have swallowed these poisonous statutes and rules are the most
venomous advocates for the Church’s continued lawlessness. But as Pharaoh ordered Hebrew midwives to kill off
Moses’ generation of Hebrew males, and as Herod ordered the male children of
Bethlehem of Jesus’ age to be killed, Satan has ordered his disguised ministers
to kill off the sons of God that are or will be the age of the two
witnesses—and his servants have done this through the Holiness Movement, a false dogma that has disciples rejecting any
attempt to keep the laws of God because doing so is legalism; and through the Sacred
Names Movement, an equally false dogma that has disciples worshiping a dead
deity. So as a born-from-above disciple, whom will you
believe? Christ as the Word of God? Or teachers of spiritual Israel
promulgating a human tradition that stretches back to the 2nd and 3rd
Centuries CE? You have a choice. And Satan as the true Antichrist will remind
you of what Augustine wrote—and Origen. Satan as the little horn possessing the
man of perdition will, during the first half of the seven endtime years,
‘"think to change the times and the law"’ (Dan 7:25). Sabbath-keeping
Christians have traditionally taught this clause means that the Antichrist will
change the Sabbath to Sunday by law. For that to be true, the greater Christian
Church will have returned to keeping the Sabbath, indicated by manna being
received immediately after the date for the second Passover (Exod 16:1, 22-30).
Spiritual Israel (i.e., the Christian Church) will be liberated from mental
bondage to the spiritual king of Babylon (i.e., Satan) at the beginning of
seven years of Tribulation; its liberation occurs on the second Passover, when
firstborns not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God are slain. Immediately
afterwards, spiritual Israel is fed spiritual food, part of which is knowledge
of the Sabbath. Thus, through typology, disciples see Sabbath observance inserted
into the practices of spiritual Israel when that holy nation is liberated from
its bondage to lawlessness. The Church is the unassembled temple of God, with
each disciple being a miniature of this temple—and the temple shall be measured
in the heavenly realm at the beginning of the Tribulation. Literally, the
measure of the temple shall be taken through empowering disciples, liberating
them from the sin and death indwelling in their fleshly members. Every disciple
who truly desires to serve God will have the power to do so. And the disciple
who returns to Sunday observance will measure himself or herself out of the
temple, leaving the disciple poised to actively rebel against God when the man
of perdition is revealed. For 220 days—from the Second Passover until about
Christmas—the temple of God will be measured in the heavenly realm, with the
measuring completed when the great falling away occurs (2 Thess 2:3). And when
the measuring is complete, the two witnesses will be alone in their
generation[s] in proclaiming Christ Jesus’ words of patient endurance. Since all of humanity will receive the Spirit of
God when Satan is cast to the earth and ceases being able to control the mental
topography of humanity, Satan cannot count on again changing the times and
seasons to lure spiritually alive humanity back into mental bondage to sin
although he will invoke the past practice of greater Christianity worshiping on
Sunday to lure many into accepting his slave mark. So what doctrine will be
available to this true Antichrist to cause empowered, born of Spirit disciples
to turn away from God and toward him, especially former Moslems? Humanity
having an immortal soul would be such a doctrine … the man Jesus is the
Shepherd who stood beside the Lord of hosts (cf. Zech 13:7; Matt 26:31). He was struck, and the sheep were
scattered. And the two parts that shall be cut off are the two sons that today
struggle in the womb of spiritual Isaac [Rebekah’s womb is Isaac’s womb] (cf. Gal 4:21-31; Rom 9:7-13; Gen
25:22-24; Isa 66:7-9), these two sons being a spiritual Esau and a spiritual
Jacob, the first hated by God before being born, the second loved as Abel was
loved. The hated son today, while still in the womb of Zion, practices
lawlessness. And when this son is born, he will, as Cain did, slay his
righteous brother, leaving that brother dead in the physical realm but alive in
the heavenly realm. For slaying his brother, this firstborn son of the last Eve
will die in the heavenly realm but live until Christ returns in this world.
Except for a remnant (Rev 12:17), Christians alive today will be either
physically or spiritually dead half way through the tribulation. Thus, when
Satan is cast into time, the last Eve will give birth to a third son, a
spiritual Seth, the third part of humanity (Zech 13:8-9). And most of this
third part of humanity will come to Christ believing that human beings are born
with immortal souls. So as Sunday observance worked to deceive today’s
Christians when they are liberated from indwelling sin at the beginning of the
Tribulation, belief in people having immortal souls will work to deceive those
who today are not Christians when this third part of humanity is liberated from
indwelling sin halfway through the Tribulation. Christ as the man Jesus of Nazareth inserted into
the end-of-the-age Tribulation the doctrinal gambit pawn that will separate the
sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tares. He did it knowingly through
telling a Cynic after-death-fortune-reversal narrative: the Lazarus and rich
man parable (Luke 16:19-31). He used the mocking Pharisees’ education against
them (v. 14); He used their education to call them Greek children. And
He gave the textual opening necessary for Platonists to insert the Greek
concept of an immortal soul into Hebraic Scripture. The Platonists pounced on the gambit pawn Jesus
played, and they have been spiritually checkmated ever since. They introduced
Satan’s lie of humanity not dying into Christianity, which, as when the first
Eve believed the serpent’s lie that she would not die, caused the second Eve
(i.e., the greater Church) to be driven out of the spiritual garden of God and
sent by God into Babylonian captivity. In order to live in heavenly Jerusalem,
a disciple must believe God. When a person begins determining for him or
herself what is good and true, the person rejects being ruled by Christ. The
person becomes one of the seven servants of the nobleman who received a pound
but sent a messenger after the nobleman saying that they would not be ruled by
him (Luke 19:14, 27). Spiritual life is the gift of the Father, and the
wages of sin is death—you will either believe this, or you will believe a lie.
And once you accept the Antichrist’s position that "you will not surely
die" (Gen 3:4), then you have mentally returned to bondage to him. You
will have accepted the mark of death in
your forehead. You might as well stick out your hand and get the tattoo of the
Cross and complete your captivity … again, Satan took the second Eve captive
with the same lie that she would not surely die that the serpent used to
cause the first Eve to fall. Satan will recycle this same lie to recapture
liberated humanity in the Tribulation. From typology and intertextuality,
disciples in The Philadelphia Church recognize three tiers of creation:
the first occurred when the physical Adam received physical breath (Gen 2:7),
this breath given by Yah. The second
occurred when the second Adam received spiritual breath (Matt 3:16), this
Breath given by the Father. The third will occur when all of humanity receives
spiritual breath (Joel 2:28), this baptism of the world by Spirit (Matt 3:11;
Joel 2:28) to occur halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation.
Satan has used the lie of human immortality to deceive both the first and the
second Eve. He will again use this lie of human immortality against all of
humanity when he is cast to earth and claims to be the messiah. Thus, today,
August 2003, the editor of Water & Fire warns all of spiritual
Israel as well as the remainder of humanity about this gambit pawn that Christ
played and Satan insists is true. Saints are in a dynamically scored chess game,
played with living players, and played against an Adversary determined to
devour as many saints as possible. Unfortunately, too few saints will heed the
above warning. Most will believe tradition rather than Christ, a reason why
many are called but few are chosen (Matt 22:14). When Satan is cast from heaven and loses the army
he borrows from the king of the North, he then goes after the rest of the
saints "who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of
Jesus" (Rev 12:17), with the testimony of Jesus being the spirit of
prophecy (Rev 19:10). These saints are assured that he will come after them
leading with a lie—his favorite lie is, again, that you shall not surely die if
you determine for yourself what is right and what is wrong. What is right
for you might not be right for someone else! If you believe his lie, you
just committed spiritual suicide. Thus, with Satan knowing his fate but apparently
believing that a stalemate is still possible, let us answer the question of
whether you are condemned if you haven’t been drawn by the Father. If life in
the heavenly realm comes with receiving the Breath of God, than not having
received the Breath of God precludes the person from having eternal life,
correct? But the writer of Hebrews says, "And just as it is appointed for
man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered
once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin
but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him" (9:27-28). If Christ
doesn’t come a second time to deal with sin (all of humanity will have received
the Holy Spirit three and a half years prior to His coming), what about the
sins of those who weren’t drawn after He came the first time and who died
before receiving the Holy Spirit at the end of the age? What about judgment
following death? Are those individuals who never knew God slated to be thrown
into the lake of fire, as a particular Texas televangelist teaches from San
Antonio? Or is that televangelist doctrinally all hat and no boots? The plan of God is even more poorly taught in the
churches of spiritual Israel than is American Civics taught in the high schools
of the nation. The plan begins in the spring of the year with the Passover,
Wave Sheaf Offering and the Days of Unleavened Bread. Christ is the true Lamb
of God, slain from the beginning so that humanity can be reconciled to the
Father, who will abide no sin. Christ is the sin offering required of every
person before the person can come to the Father. And the Wave Sheaf Offering is
the acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice by the Father. The Days of Unleavened Bread follow the Passover,
and portray Israelites living sin-free for one week, with yeast representing
sin or lawlessness. The first High Sabbath at the beginning of Unleavened Bread
is the memorial to when God intervened to bring Israel out of bondage—physical
bondage in Egypt, and mental or spiritual bondage to the king of Babylon—by
slaying the firstborns of men and beasts in Egypt at the first Passover, and by
slaying the spiritual and physical firstborns of humanity in spiritual Babylon
at the second Passover (Isa 43:3-4). Sadducees and Pharisees possessed a differing
understanding as to when to wave the first sheaf of ripe barley before God. The
Pharisees (and modern rabbinical Judaism) practiced waving the Sheaf on the
morrow after the High Sabbath, the 15th of the Abib. Thus, the Feast
of Weeks for rabbinical Judaism occurs on a fixed calendar date, not on a fixed
day of the week. But the Sadducees and the Churches of God practiced/practices
waving the first Sheaf on the morrow after the weekly Sabbath that occurs
during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, making the Wave Sheaf Offering to always
occur Sunday morning during Unleavened Bread. Jesus is the reality of the first
sheaf of barley harvested. He was accepted by the Father about the hour when
the Wave Sheaf Offering would have been made in 31 CE. And this hour was
midweek during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Thus, Jesus’ acceptance and the
liberation of humanity from indwelling sin both occur midweek, with the seven
endtime years of tribulation equating to the seven days of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread. And only with this as background can disciples properly
address what the last high Sabbath of Unleavened Bread represents. The second high Sabbath of Unleavened Bread (the 22nd
of Abib) represents the last year of the Tribulation, the year when God pours
His wrath out on all who have taken the mark of the beast, with the
resurrection of firstfruits to occur at the end of this day. The great endtime
harvest of God includes the third part of humanity that endures to the end
[without taking the mark of the beast]. This third part is the fields that are
white, with the laborers being few (the remnant who keep the commandments — Rev
12:17). Too many disciples in the first two parts of
humanity (from Zech 13:7-8) look for a place of physical or spiritual safety
from which they can “sit out” the Tribulation. Herbert Armstrong taught a
generation of Sabbatarian disciples that they would go to a physical place of
safety, perhaps Petra, Jordan’s top tourist destination. Evangelical prophets
teach that born again disciples will be bodily Raptured to heaven to escape
God’s wrath. But the only place of safety for today’s Christians during the
Tribulation is the grave. None of today’s Christians are numbered among the
magical 144,000. So brace yourself for the truth: if you are today a Christian and if you physically live
into the seven endtime years of tribulation, you will, most likely, die a
bloody death within the first three and a half years, or you will come under a
great delusion that deprives you of spiritual life. Only a remnant of today’s
Church—a remnant determined by two qualifiers, (1) keeping the commandments,
and (2) having the spirit of prophecy—a remnant akin to Joshua and Caleb, will
cross from the first half of the tribulation into the second half. The 144,000
will be Observant Jews who by faith during the Tribulation profess that Jesus
is the Christ, and believe that the Father raised Him from the dead. These
observant Jews will have no spiritual life [meaning they won’t have been born
of Spirit] until after professing faith in Christ. Then under the terms of the
second covenant mediated first by Moses, then by Christ, they will be born from
above fully empowered by the Holy Spirit. They will be spiritual virgins in
that they have no sin in the heavenly realm, none before they were born for
they had no life in the heavenly realm, and none after they are born for by
demonstrated obedience to the laws of God they received spiritual birth. And it
is only these 144,000 that escape through the split Mount of Olives halfway
through the seven endtime years. Moses’ three days journey into the wilderness and
Jesus three days in the heart of the earth bring first physical Israel and then
spiritual Israel to the Wave Sheaf Offering, Resurrection Sunday, the memorial
to when Israel escapes through the Red Sea physically, and through the split
Mount of Olives for the 144,000 disciples from the twelve tribes of Israel. The
sea swallowed the Egyptians pursuing the Israelites the first time. The earth
swallows the armies pursing spiritual Israelites the second time. After physical Israelites physically escape Egypt,
Israel enters covenant with God on the third day of the third month when this
holy nation is immersed or baptized in the spoken words of the law of God, uttered
from atop Mt. Sinai, but only Moses enters into the cloud with God on the 10th
day of the third month … God already knew that natural Israel under Aaron would
rebel against Him ten times. God told Moses that He would make from him a great
nation. Although Moses protested and God seemed to relent, nothing really
changed: God intends to make from Moses a great nation, for the man Moses was
selected on the 10th day of the third month to see God. The Passover lamb is selected and penned on the 10th
day of the first month. Natural Israel entered Judea on the 10th day
of the first month. Jesus entered Jerusalem on the 10th day of the
first month—Jesus was the Passover Lamb of God, sacrificed at Calvary. Natural
Israel is also the firstborn son of God (Exod 4:22), and is the selected
Passover lamb to be slain during the Tribulation, with Sabbath observance the
marker that identifies all Israelites, naturally as well as spiritually born.
But not all who have descended from Israel are Israel (Rom 9:6); not all who
have been born of Spirit as sons of God are of God. Only those who are selected
on the 10th day are of God. Noah entered the ark on the 10th day of
the second month. He alone of his generation was accepted by God (his sons were
not of his generation). And YHWH
said to Moses, ‘“Now on the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of
Atonement [Yom Kipporim] … And you
shall not do any work on that very day, for it is a Day of Atonement to make
atonement for you before the Lord your God. For whoever is not afflicted on
that very day shall be cut off from his people”’ (Lev 23:26-29). What will be seen when the temple of God is
measured at the beginning of the seven endtime years is the selection of who is
of Israel, physical and spiritual, on the 10th day of the seventh
month. Those Israelites who work, or who do not fast will be cut off even
though their rebellion against God will not yet be sealed through the rebels
attempting to enter God’s rest on the following day, the 8th day.
And those Israelites who are accepted on the 10th day will
spiritually live even if they physically die. It is usually taught that the Law was given on
Pentecost just as it is taught that the Holy Spirit was given on that day of
Pentecost following Calvary. The teaching is tidy, all tied up in tradition.
But as with most of what has been taught as “truth,” the teaching is riddled
with moths that fly away when touched … the Holy Spirit was given when Jesus
breathed on ten of His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22);
the Holy Spirit was given the same day that Jesus was accepted as the reality
of the Wave Sheaf Offering. The Christian Church began with the formation of
the last Eve, born of Spirit when ten disciples received the physically
transferred Breath of the Father, received through Jesus breathing on these
ten. God did not immediately consume Israel when the
nation demanded that Aaron make for the nation gods to go before the nation.
Because Moses implored God to relent of the violence He intended to do Israel,
the nation lived to rebel again against God in the Wilderness of Paran … how
many times shall God relent of the violence He intends to do to the lawless
Church before He utterly rejects this latter holy nation? How many times shall
God kill only a few spiritually circumcised Israelites before He slays the
whole nation? How great is God’s patience before He slays Israel as he would a
man? Judgment is today on baptized disciples, the household of God (1 Pet
4:17). It is not on those whom the Father has not yet made alive. They await
their second birth in the dust of the earth. They will again be made alive in
the great White Throne Judgment to receive reward or punishment for those
things done while they were first alive. They are not now subject to the second
death for they haven’t been born a second time. A particular Texas televangelist who teaches a no
love theology incorporates the great White Throne Judgment into a five-judgment
scenario, focused on Christian escapism. He is correct in that the Church is
under judgment today, but he is wrong about the world being judged. Judgment
pertains to a determination being made in the spiritual realm about the fate of
an individual, or of an angel. Therefore, a person must possess life in that
realm before a determination can be made. Dogs are not subject to judgment.
Life in the spiritual realm has never been offered to dogs, or cats, or
livestock, or even chimpanzees that share 99.4 percent of the same genes humans
have. The person who believes God unto obedience, the
person who by faith keeps the precepts of the Law, the person who loves God
with heart and mind and loves his neighbor as himself—this person passes from
death to life without experiencing judgment. Christ Jesus bears this disciple’s
sins today, and will ultimately give those sins to Satan when Yom Kipporim
becomes a reality. This disciple has no sin even imputed to him or her, so
there is no reason for this person to experience judgment because this person
entrusted his or her psuche "to a faithful Creator while doing
good" (1 Pet 4:19 – emphasis added). Again, this person believed God
unto obedience. It is those disciples "who have done good" (John
5:29) that will experience the resurrection to life. The righteous shall still
do right (Rev 22:11) until Christ’s return. Doing good is required from all
disciples; so real works are required, not the busy works of fiddling with
beads or collecting relics or mumbling repetitious prayers. Doing good and
doing what is right is more than giving to the poor, or casting out demons, or
healing the sick in the name of Jesus. It is making the decision to do what is
right in every situation the person faces until choosing to do what is right is
a habit that has determined the person’s character. At this point, there is no
reason for this person to come under judgment: the Master Potter has sculpted
the habit of doing good into a vessel intended for honored usage. This person
can be entrusted with a glorified body and all the power that goes with being
an heir of the Father, and a younger sibling of Christ. Since those individuals who were never given the
Spirit/Pneuma of God in their physical lives have never had life in the
spiritual realm--they are the main crop wheat harvest, not the early barley
harvest—there is nothing awaiting them in the resurrection of firstfruits when
Christ Jesus returns to become King of kings. Therefore, although these
individuals have experienced death, their judgments wait (they know nothing and
have no awareness of time having passed while they are in the grave — Eccl
9:10) until they are physically resurrected in the great White Throne Judgment,
where their works will be judged by Scripture. They have, with their deaths,
paid the physical penalty for their sins. But no other sacrifice remains for
them. If they choose to sin while under judgment, they will go directly into
the lake of fire. How long is this period of judgment, the great
White Throne Judgment? Scripture is mostly silent although at one time it was
taught within the churches of God that the period was a hundred years in
length. That teaching, like many others of that era, is errant. So however long
this judgment period is, any sin by a person under judgment in this period will
be permanently fatal. Little Scripture addresses the great White Throne
Judgment, for disciples today are the living antetype of what will occur during
this period of judgment. For disciples, baptism is the antetype of real
physical death. Being raised from the baptismal pool is the shadow of physical
resurrection to life. Again, judgment is upon disciples today just as judgment
will be on all who are resurrected to life during the great White Throne
Judgment. One difference now exists: disciples today are subjected to Satan’s
control of the mental topography of humanity as well as still having the
indwelling of sin in their fleshly members. Therefore, Christ bears the sins of
disciples who are in covenant with Him and the Father, and He will ultimately
return those sins to Satan, with spiritual beasts paying with their lives for
these sins when He begins His Millennium reign [the lives of these vessels of
wrath serve only as a temporary covering]. During the great White Throne
Judgment, Satan will have been destroyed. No one will be subject to his spiritual
broadcast of rebellion. No one will have a reason to sin, which is the
transgression of the laws of God (1 John 3:4). So anyone who does will go into
the lake of fire since Christ won’t be sacrificed a second time. The
resurrected individual will have received the Breath of God, so the individual
will have life in the spiritual realm just as born again disciples today have.
The resurrected individual in the great White Throne Judgment will be exactly
as a born-from-above disciple is today, but without grace, which is needed
today because Satan is still in heaven. God is not a respecter of persons.
Every individual will have the same single chance to receive salvation, but not
at the same time, the meaning of predestination. No one receives a second chance.
The great White Throne Judgment will not be a second opportunity at salvation. One point needs reinforced, since at least one
major denomination with a highly educated ministry doesn’t believe in Christ
coming as the Messiah. This denomination believes when Christ returns, the end
of the age has come and there is no more physical earth; the new heaven and the
new earth will come with Christ. They emphatically reject anything that even
contains a whiff of humanity receiving a second chance for salvation, as they
should. They are just wrong, though, about no Millennium reign of Christ as
King of kings. Because the majority of Christianity believes that
the Holy Spirit was poured out on all humanity that day of Pentecost when
Christ’s disciples were baptized with the Breath of God, thereby misreading
what Peter said and ignoring the time qualifiers of Joel’s prophecy,
Christendom has taught a doctrine of open salvation for the past two millennia.
It has conveniently ignored the words of Jesus: ‘"No man can come to me
unless the Father who sent me draws him"’ (John 6:44, 65). Likewise, they
ignore what Peter said on that day of Pentecost: ‘"[Y]ou will receive the
Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who
are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself’"
(Acts 2:38-39 – emphasis added). Even though Peter cites Joel’s prophecy, Peter
understands that God has to call the person before the person can become a
disciple. As an aside, Peter delivers his sermon citing Joel’s
prophecy so that the event becomes the shadow of the endtime conversion of
spiritual Israel, the story of which can be read through the application of
intertextuality. Peter apparently thought Joel’s prophecy pertained to that day
of Pentecost because the women present were also speaking in tongues. The story of conversion in the spiritual realm is
the reality of the creation of humankind, male and female, the afternoon of the
sixth day in the creation narrative that forms the abstract for the plan of God.
This needs repeating: the vast majority of spiritual Israelites alive today are
in bondage to sin. They have misapplied the passage that disciples are not
under the law but under grace to mean that they are free to transgress the
law, that they are free to commit iniquity. Thus, these spiritual Israelites
have fled the spiritual garden of God and are now as sheep without shepherds,
sheep wandering in dry arroyos, stalked by coyotes, prey for cougars. These
Christians unknowingly drift towards the lake of fire…a man and his son came
into my studio this past weekend. Both wore T-shirts reading "So Many
Right Wing Christians: So Few Lions." What this father and son didn’t
realize was that lions aren’t needed to slay these Christians. Their pastors
are slaying them by teaching them to ignore the fine print written on the
hearts and minds of these disciples—the Father doesn’t write His laws on the
hearts and minds of disciples when He draws them from the world for these
disciples to live outside of His laws. If the Father chooses not to call a person prior to
the person's physical death, this person never had his or her chance to receive
salvation. If a farmer chooses to send some calves to market, and to keep some
for breeding, we don’t challenge the farmer’s right to manage his or her own
property as the farmer sees fit. But we want to challenge God when He chooses
to call some disciples out of season, hiring these individuals to do a
particular job for Him, and offering to these individuals salvation if they
believe Him unto obedience. We deny that God has a sovereign claim to all life
that opens a womb; yet He reserved to Himself all firstborns to do with them
whatever He pleases. If that whatever is slaying them, He has that
right, regardless of whether we agree or even submit to Him. If the sins of
firstborns are not covered by the Blood of the Lamb of God on a second Passover
night, these firstborns will be slain. Humanity can protest, can declare God a
murderer, can do whatever it wishes, even to fighting against Christ. But when
the Father determines that the time has come for both physical and spiritual
firstborns not covered by the Passover sacrifice to die, they will die. A third
of humanity will be slain, and Christians will be hated for the sake of Christ’s
name. There is nothing humanity can do to protect itself except to get into
covenant with God. End of story. The world will drive Christians into a
societal wilderness just as Pharaoh drove the physical Israelites out of Egypt
and into the physical wilderness of Sin following the slaughter of Egyptian
firstborns. Humanity, with its self-awareness, values itself more than calves value |