The Downhill Flow - Part Four - Commentary From the Margins - March 28, 2016

March 28, 2016 ©Homer Kizer

Commentary — From the Margins

The Downhill Flow

Part Four

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Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, declares the LORD, and for Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation. Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. (Jer 25:8–11 emphasis added)

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In moving from physical—Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, being the servant of God that took Jerusalem and the cities of Judah into captivity—to spiritual, neither the Islamic State nor the Islamic Republic will function as Nebuchadnezzar did in bringing destruction upon the physical firstborn (Ex 4:22) son of the Lord. Rather, in the movement from physically circumcised people being the people of the Lord to a second nation of Israel being the spiritually circumcised [circumcised of heart] people of God (the people that “cast” natural Israel as its shadow), the Adversary as the spiritual king of Babylon is the servant of God that God will bring this idolatrous second nation of Israel. Therefore, while it might seem that the Islamic State, in the name of Islam, is justified in making asymmetrical war against Western nations and greater Christendom for the sake of Christian idolatry, it is not! The one who actually has been “commissioned” to make war against Christians as the servant of God is the Adversary, the king of Babylon, through all of humanity being humanly born as sons of disobedience, with today, only those persons foreknown by God and drawn from this world to be called, justified, and glorified by Christ Jesus not remaining sons of disobedience and serfs of the Adversary.

Modern Western civility doesn’t mentally entertain the possibility that God would not be seeking to save human persons yesterday, today, and for as long as the Adversary remains the prince of this world. Modern civility doesn’t consider the possibility that humanity is part of a demonstration project with angels as the demonstration’s primary audience. Modern civility cannot grasp the possibility that God would condemn a land, a people to death and destruction because of how the people worship/worshiped their deity or deities. Modern sentimentalities are theologically pluralistic, but modern sentimentalities are also not universal, but are driven [governed] by the first language of the person, meaning that the first language Semitic speaker [Arabic or Hebrew] will not have the same thought patterns, the same perspective of reality, the same sensitivities as the first language English speaker … the first language English speaker may well understand the sentimentalities of the first language Arabic speaker, but the English speaker will not think the same thoughts nor perceive reality in the same way as the Arabic speaker. Therefore, to give to a Muslim the same or a similar perspective concerning life, marriage, the worth of a person, the Muslim’s first language needs to be English, not Arabic. The Muslim doesn’t need to convert to another religion, but needs to “think” in English at the level of a native speaker. And this is a difficult concept for theologians to grasp; for language usage divides people in a way that geographical barriers cannot. Language usage divides people within their minds in ways so deep that differing language speakers do not “see” the same colors.

After the Islamic bomber in Lahore, Pakistan, murdered 72 Christians observing Easter festivities in a city park in the Punjab’s provincial capital, Pope Francis “demanded that Pakistani authorities protect religious minorities.” But with the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, can there be legitimate religious minorities?

If a land or a people in the land truly worships God, can these people permit differing worship of God? Not when only the physical realm is involved. If the United States of America’s Constitution were a divinely inspired document as many “Christians” claim, the First Amendment would not exist: there would be government involvement in religion. Sabbath observance would be the law of the land. Unclean meats would not be available [pork would not be the other white meat]. The land would be farmed six of seven years, and continuous industrial processing of raw materials and as the means of production would not exist. America would be a very different nation if its Constitution were of God, meaning that following the Second Passover liberation of the second nation of Israel, American Christians will be faced with a reality as rigid as that which undergirds radical Islam, which really isn’t all that radical, just theologically wrongheaded … the Adversary has been a murderer from the beginning. Those persons and ideologies that worship the Adversary practice murder. The person who is of God doesn’t kill other persons, but lets Christ Jesus do whatever killing is necessary. And this differs from what Moses taught, but is true when the physical becomes the spiritual—

Compare two scriptural passages:

If a man lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. (Lev 20:11)

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Cor 5:3–5)

Under Moses, the community was to kill transgressors (physically end the transgressor’s life), but under Christ Jesus—under the “spiritual Moses”—Christians are to deliver the transgressor to Satan [the Adversary] for the destruction of the flesh. In doing so, the Christian community “spiritually kills” the transgressor through marking and shunning the person, the reality of delivering the person to Satan. And all of this brings into question whether the transgressor was ever truly born of God but was merely false grain [a tare] within the fellowship.

Recently an active member here read the book, Holiness, Righteousness, and the New Covenant, that I wrote in early summer 2002. He had some questions about what I had written concerning spiritual birth; for in the past fourteen years, I also have grown in grace and knowledge and do not say exactly what I wrote more than a decade ago. And part of the “born again” problem is found in delivering a member of the assembly to the Adversary: if the person were truly born of spirit, delivering the person to the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh would result in merely the destruction of the flesh. The inner self would already be born of spirit and would be “saved” through receipt of a glorified body when judgments are revealed. If, however, the person were truly born of spirit, the person wouldn’t be a transgressor for the person would have the indwelling mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) and would know not to commit adultery or to lay with a near relative or with a step mother. Therefore, being a transgressor signifies that the person is not yet born of spirit: the inner self of the person is not yet glorified.

So why was the person in a relationship with his father’s wife assembling on the Sabbath with Believers if the person is not truly a Believer?

Salvation is and is not a process: in this present era, once the Father “foreknows” and predestines a person to be born as one of His sons, the Father delivers the person to Christ Jesus to call, justify, and glorify, three distinct acts that might or might not be separated by the passage of time … the glorified Christ can simultaneously call, justify, and glorify a person, doing these three things in seemingly one earthly moment. But this is a judgment call by Christ.

More typically, once the Father foreknows a person and delivers the person to Christ Jesus to call, the person comes under what Matthew’s Jesus declares:

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, "See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast."' But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.' And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matt 22:2–14 double emphasis added)

The foreknown person needs to have a positive response to being called by Christ—and a positive response will have the person beginning to clean up the person’s life; for if the person will not clean up the person’s life, Christ will have to intervene in the person’s life so that the person’s spirit might be saved when judgments are revealed. And it is here where the transgressor in Corinth was when Paul told the assembly to deliver the one who wouldn’t repent to the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh.

When a foreknown person is called, this foreknown person IS NOT yet justified, the linguistic expression for Christ Jesus being crucified for the person while the person remains a sinner (Rom 5:8). And this is where the theology of greater Christendom fails: until a person is foreknown by God the Father, the person can have no relationship with either the Father or the Son. The person cannot of his or her own volition come to God. This doesn’t mean that the person is spiritually lost, but that the person is to remain part of the ongoing demonstration permitted by God to show that the Adversary’s advocacy of self-governance will not work, regardless of what form of self-governance is tried.

However, when the foreknown person is called and when this person responds by turning toward God in a manner represented by the children of Israel under the Moab Covenant returning to the Lord—

When all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey His voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and He will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will take you. And the LORD your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. (Deut 30:1–6)

—then the foreknown person will keep the Commandments by faith, by belief of God, and this foreknown person will be justified and glorified through the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] entering into [penetrating as a husband penetrates his wife] the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou], thereby bringing to “birth” a new creature, a son of God.

The promised exile of the children of Israel from the Promised Land corresponds to the death of the spiritual Body of Christ with the death of John the Elder (ca 101 CE), and yes, there was a promised exile under the Moab Covenant:

Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, “I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.” This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. The LORD will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and His jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven. And the LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law. And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick—the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His anger and wrath—all the nations will say, “Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?” Then people will say, “It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, and the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.” The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deut 29:18–29 emphasis added)

The secret things still belong to the Lord, but the things that have been revealed are more today than before—and what has been revealed is that the physical precedes and reveals the spiritual: what happened to physical Israel will happen to spiritual Israel; i.e, greater Christendom …

Greater Christendom today is where Israel was when enslaved in Egypt. Greater Christendom today awaits its liberation from indwelling sin and death at the Second Passover—and then Christians, each filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God, will be as Israel was in the wilderness. And as Israel rebelled against God and refused to enter the Promised Land when entrance was possible, Christians (with the exception of a spiritual Joshua and a Caleb) will rebel against God in the Apostasy of Day 220, and will not enter into heaven, the reality of the Promised Land which the children of Israel entered behind Joshua [in Greek, ’Iesou, Jesus].

The unbelief of Israel in the wilderness will be seen again in the unbelief of Christians post Second Passover … this is what has been revealed.

But the unbelief of post Second Passover Christians doesn’t begin after Christians have been liberated from indwelling sin and death, but began in the 1^st-Century CE and was the cause of the death of the spiritual Body of Christ. Hence this unbelief has been perpetuated through the Christian dogmas I heard espoused as I drove through North Dakota and Montana.

It isn’t the prerogative of Christians to worship God however they “feel” like they ought. It is, rather, the prerogative of God to tell Christians how they are to worship Him. Therefore, when the Adversary as the spiritual king of spiritual Babylon came against the Jesus Movement a very long time ago, he was guaranteed success for he was employed as a servant of God, Father and Son.

Pope Francis, seemingly a good man, is without spiritual understanding when he tells Pakistan that the nation needs to protect religious minorities. No, that is not the case. God is perfectly capable of protecting His sons when His sons believe him and are seeking to please Him.

Who is the deity that rules over a religious majority when a minority is present in the land … in the polis of Jerusalem of Jeremiah’s day, Jeremiah was the religious minority. The prophets of the Lord—there were not many genuine prophets—constituted the religious minority. The majority of the people of Judah and Jerusalem were idolaters.

The majority of Christians in America are spiritual idolaters, having moved the outward physical idolatry of ancient Israel from groves and statuary inward to worship of a triune deity that doesn’t exist and has never existed—

Instead of worshiping the Ancient of Days [God the Father] and His Beloved, the Creator of all things physical [the God of Abraham; the God of living ones — Matt 22:32], Christians as the “second Israel” that will be liberated from bondage to indwelling sin and death at the Second Passover are spiritually today as the nation of ancient Israel was physically when enslaved by Pharaoh and made to serve him and his idols. And as ancient Israel even after their Passover liberation never ceased to serve the idols of Egypt (Ezek 20:7–9, 13–15), Christians will not cease to serve their “mental” triune ideology or monotheistic Arian ideology even after being filled with spirit. In fact, nearly all Christians will rebel against the Father and the Son when filled with spirit—all except for remnants foreshadowed by Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb.

The reality that nearly all of those persons constituting greater Christendom today will rebel against God within the first 220 days following the Second Passover of this second nation of Israel should frighten Christians, causing each to reexamine his or her relationship with God and the Word of God, Christ Jesus. But this will not happen: none are fearful. All are as Israel was when the prophet Isaiah declared the words of the Lord:

And the word of the LORD will be to them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little, that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers, who rule this people in Jerusalem! Because you have said, "We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement, when the overwhelming whip passes through it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter"; therefore thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: 'Whoever believes will not be in haste.' And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line; and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter." Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through, you will be beaten down by it. (Isa 28:13–18)

Christians have made a one-sided covenant with death, believing that by professing Jesus is their personal Savior they will go immediately to heaven upon their physical death … that is not the case. But the Christian laity is routinely told that this is the case.

Both Christian pastors and the laity are theologically spineless; they are cowards, afraid to be honest with Scripture. The Adversary has pickled them in his unbelief. He is fixing on serving them as a garnish back to God, thus making his case that God needs to take him and his angels back into heaven for their rebellion wasn’t as dastardly as that of greater Christendom. And spineless Christians, having as much fortitude as a rivulet meandering through a meadow, will take the course of least resistence as these Christians flow downhill, all the way to the lake of fire.

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Homer Kizer Ministries