May 15, 2010 ©Homer Kizer
Printable/viewable PDF format to
display Greek or Hebrew characters
Commentary — From the Margins
The Endtime Gospel: The Good News to be Proclaimed Part V
___________________
Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” / As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?” And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. / Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this [touto] gospel [euaggelion — the good news] of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matt 24:1–14 emphasis added)
___________________
8.
If some of the Jews were not faithful even though the oracles of God were committed to them (Rom 3:2–3) — this is what Paul’s gospel claims — why would Sabbatarian Christians commit their observance of the Passover, the most important sacrament of the Church, to the descendants of these same unfaithful Jews? Surely this doesn’t make sense to anyone who has thought about the dilemma facing all of Christendom this year (Passover 2010 to Passover 2011). With common Christians (i.e., those who are of the greater Christian Church) having lost the Book of the Law while it was in their hands for keeping, and with uncommon Christians relying on unfaithful Jews for delivery of the oracles of God to them, Christendom can get no farther from God than it is this year, 2010; for common Christians have turned their backs to the temple of God (i.e., the Body of Christ), and have turned “their faces toward the east, worshiping the sun toward the east” (Ezek 8:16), while uncommon Christians claim to see when they remain spiritually blind (John 9:41). Too many uncommon Christians look for a physical temple to be built at Jerusalem, or for physical sacrifices to begin in a physical temple anywhere when their focus should be the “God’s temple” (1 Cor 3:16–17, also 2 Cor 6:16) …
Why has it been so difficult for so many Christians, common and uncommon, to accept the reality that the fleshly bodies of disciples form the temple of God that is “peopled” by born-of-spirit sons of God who form the reality of the Levitical priesthood? It isn’t the Christian’s fleshly body that is crucified with Christ “in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom 6:6); for in a mystery that Paul did not understand, sin and death continues to dwell in the Christian’s fleshly body even when the Christian’s inner being delights in law of God (Rom 7:22). It is the person’s inner self that (like a computer software program that causes the hardware to do work) is crucified with Christ and buried in baptism and raised from the dead by the glory of the Father (Rom 6:3–4). It is the inner self that has been made alive through receipt of a second breath of life that peoples the temple of God so that individually and collectively disciples form the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27), with Christ being the temple of God, the temple about which the man Jesus of Nazareth said, “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’” (John 2:19). It was then unbelieving Jews who asked, “‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’” (v. 20), and it remains unbelieving Jews and Christians who deny that with Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection from the dead by the Father, then Him breathing on ten of his disciples (John 20:22), the temple was destroyed by unbelieving Jews and was rebuilt by Jesus after three days.
Unbelieving Jews in the 1st-Century needed Romans to destroy the temple of God, but the year wasn’t 70 CE: they—all the people (Matt 27:25)—destroyed the temple when they told Pilate, “‘His blood be on us and on our children’” (same verse). And that has been the case for far too long, for the price natural Israel has paid and will pay in the near future is greater than anyone could have imagined.
It is understandable that the descendants of unbelieving Jews would continue in unbelief of the sort displayed when their ancestors wanted to return to Egypt (Num chap 14), but why do Christians simply refuse to believe Paul? Or believe the Gospels? Christians either twist Paul’s epistles into lawless instruments of their own destruction, what Peter said about them (2 Pet 3:16–17), or they reject Paul because of what the lawless say about his epistles. Either way, they do not read what Paul wrote. They do not understand spiritual birth, or know the will of God. They turn grace into a license to sin … the prophet Jeremiah faced no greater challenge than those presently faced by servants of God who would have Israel keep the Passover “‘as it is written in this Book of the covenant’” (2 Kings 23:21), with the covenant modified when the mediator of the covenant went from being Moses to being the glorified Jesus as the reality of the Moab covenant was finally implemented with the giving of the spirit. For an extremely small number of uncommon Christians covered their sins with the blood of Christ this year, with the sins of common Christians covered by their lack of spiritual life—they are as Israel was in Egypt, except they are slaves to sin and death and to the present prince of this world rather than to a human king.
The blood of Christ doesn’t cover the sins of Christians who do not take the Passover sacraments in the dark portion of the 14th of Abib, with the 1st of Abib beginning with the first sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox … how difficult is the preceding sentence to understand? There is only one example for when a Christian is to take the Passover, with that example being Christ Jesus. So why not follow Jesus? Why not do as Jesus did? Why continue in ignorance? Or continue to tag along after unbelieving Jews as if Christians were the blanket-dragging baby brother of natural Israel?
Among common Christians there is a move afoot in the United States of America to junk Marxism’s doctrine of social justice and return to the individual liberties and rights granted by God as espoused in the Great Awakening that began about 1730 CE. The clarion call of this on-going movement is return to God, with no distinction made between sects or denominations or religions—
Does the Baptist worship the same God as the Mormon or the unbelieving Jew? Should the Sabbatarian disciple respect the worship of the unbelieving Jew or of the unbelieving Christian? Should the Christian pacifist respect the worship of the Christian militant? Or is diversity the umbrella of the Adversary, who seeks to have unbelieving Christians worship him and his angels equally, making no distinction between himself or the king of Greece? What the Adversary doesn’t want is for Christians to voluntarily worship the Most High God; thus, he precludes the Christian who has not been withdrawn from this world by the Father (John 6:44, 65) from coming to God by offering so many flavors of imitation Christianity that one or another of the imitations is accepted as genuine.
Does imitation vanilla taste like real vanilla? It is certainly cheaper, as there is less cost to a Christian in an imitation faith (i.e., Catholicism) than there is to a Christian who is the real thing. And yes, Catholicism seeks to imitate the faith of Christ, and the flavor of Catholicism has been accepted for centuries as the flavor of Christendom so how is a spiritual infant to know that Catholicism is not the real thing?
As a digression, I can vaguely remember getting oleo in a paper package and having to stir in the yellow dye, but I remember well Mom buying already dyed yellow oleo, which we spread on toast as if it were butter. I also remember an aunt from California visiting us on the farm when I was in 1st -grade and Mom buying butter for her sister because my aunt would not eat oleo. I tried butter on toast and didn’t like it: the flavor was too strong. It wasn’t until I was older that I ceased eating, then, margarine and began eating only butter. My tastes were too immature in 1st-grade to accept the “real thing.” They had not been exposed to butter. And so it is with too many common Christians. They have not been exposed to real Christianity, and when first exposed, they don’t like the intensity that accompanies being out-of-sync with Satan’s world.
It is easy to be raised a Catholic and to remain a Catholic all one’s life. It is easy to be raised eating margarine and to continue eating margarine all one’s life, even though hydrogenated vegetable oils tend to plug arteries. … Margarine will not immediately kill a person. It might not ever harm the person who eats little and who works hard. But imitation Christian faiths will kill infant sons of God; for these faiths mingle the sacred with the profane thereby defiling what should be holy.
The error in abandoning Marxism’s doctrine of social justice and returning to the individual liberties espoused in the Great Awakening is the call to return to God, with no distinction made between sects or denominations or religions; for the Lord is a jealous God (Ex 34:14). He will not accept the worship of the gods of the people as worship of Him. For the people—Israel (i.e., Christians)—doesn’t worship the same God or gods, but worships demons who would have them ignore the commandments of God and practice democracy and return to the principles of America’s founders. Even after the four angels are loosed in the sixth trumpet plague and a third part of humankind is killed for a second time within 1260 days, the “rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not … give up worshiping demons” (Rev 9:20). The rest of mankind includes most of America’s Christians and all of Islam who will by then profess to be Arian Christians. This rest of mankind doesn’t exclude Pentecostals or Evangelicals or Catholics, if any Trinitarians remain alive. The only exclusion is for the Remnant, the offspring of the Woman, with this Remnant consisting of those few remaining Christians who keep the commandments and have the testimony of Jesus (Rev 12:17).
In the political movement afoot, both Christian and Jew are to return to the God of their forefathers, which will have common Christians observing Easter and Observant Jews substituting a chicken neck or a thigh bone for the Lamb of God … “Moreover Josiah [after commanding the people to keep the Passover as written in the Book of the covenant] put away mediums and the necromancers and the household gods and idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might establish the words of the law that were written in the book Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord. … Still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, by which His anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him” (2 Kings 23:24, 26).
Will common Christians returning to God and putting Christ back into Christmas this year cause the Lord to turn from His intention to liberate Israel from indwelling sin and death at a Second Passover? Or will not mingling of the sacred [Christ] with the profane [the day of the invincible sun] rather confirm the Lord’s intention to liberate Israel from indwelling sin and death?
Paul, in writing to spiritual infants able only to ingest milk, was prevented from uttering all he knew to these newly born sons of God: “And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor 12:3–4 emphasis added). Scripture as received by endtime disciples is not complete; Scripture as received by Paul was not complete. Christ Jesus reveals through John’s vision some of what Paul could not utter, but John was likewise prohibited from revealing all he saw: “And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying. ‘Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down’” (Rev 10:4); thus, more is to be revealed and will be revealed as disciples live into the age when the events John describes are chronologically near in time.
The essence of all that has come since the 1st section of this Commentary is that Paul’s gospel is the entirety of his corpus, for his epistles are about the judgment of the saints, with Israel no longer being an outwardly circumcised nation but the nation of new selves or inner beings that is circumcised of heart, with this circumcision coming after a son of disobedience receives a second breath of life and then cleanses the now-former son of disobedience’s heart by a journey of faith from Babylon to the Jerusalem above. Paul tried to tone down the intensity of his gospel so that spiritual infants able only to ingest milk would not choke on its solidity and thereby die from trying to swallow spiritual meat. So there is no need for endtime disciples to replicate the work Paul did which was to give to Christian converts spiritual milk. Rather, it is time for uncommon Christians to be teachers; yet those who ought to be teaching still need milk themselves for they remain unable to discern the physical from the spiritual.
Christians who ought to be teachers of Israel ask for someone to translate my words into watery milk so that they can understand what I write: these Christians cannot understand a concept as simple as infallibility pertains to the state in which a message is received, not delivered, for every message is delivered in linguistic icons [words] that were separated from their linguistic objects [meanings] at the Tower of Babel. … A message received from the Lord and faithfully delivered by the prophet or righteous person is a message inspired by God, but the message is delivered in words to which the auditor [reader or hearer] must assign meaning. Thus, the message is not infallible even when received in its original language, for the language is not infallible. No human language is infallible. Therefore, the spiritual infant who points to 1 Corinthians 15:1–4 as the gospel of God that is to be preached by endtime Christians soils his spiritual diaper when another disciple, perhaps one more mature in the faith, points to Paul saying that according to his gospel, it is “the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom 2:13). And Paul doesn’t contradict himself when he writes “that a person is not justified [counted righteous] by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ … because by the works of the law no one will be justified” (Gal 2:16). So it isn’t the work of the hands that causes a person to be counted as righteous, but the faith of the disciple that causes the disciple to fulfill “the righteous requirement of the law” by walking according to the spirit and not according to the flesh (Rom 8:4); for the uncircumcised person [female or Gentile] who keeps the precepts of the law will condemn those “who have the written code and circumcision but break the law” (Rom 2:27) for the uncircumcision of the person who keeps the law will be regarded as circumcision—and so it is, for the circumcision that matters is of the heart that has been cleansed by faith.
Paul delivered milk to the saints at Corinth; he was their milkman. And they were whining infants who never grew to maturity. Paul writes to these infants, “I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough” (2 Cor 11:2–4) … will the disciple mature in faith accept a different gospel from the one Paul delivered, or receive a different Jesus? Common Christians certainly have—and now they will not receive either the Jesus who lived as an observant Jew, or the good news that they too are free to live as observant Jews, justified by being doers of the law when sin has no dominion over them and will continue to have no dominion over them as long as they fulfill the righteous requirement of the law. Again, the “sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1 Cor 15:56); thus in disciples who fulfill the righteous requirement of the law, there is no sin and no death. They are not under condemnation for they are justified by being doers of the law when the only reason they do what the law requires is their desire to please God, a desire that originates in faith.
9.
When Jesus’ disciples asked what would be the sign of His coming [the Second Advent], Jesus gave first the preliminaries to the birth of Israel (i.e., of Zion giving birth to a nation in a day — Isa 66:7–8), then began a litany of what will happen once Zion gives birth and the seven endtime years of tribulation begin:
1. They will deliver you up to tribulation [bad news];
2. They will put you to death [bad news];
3. You will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake [bad news];
4. Then many will fall away [bad news];
5. Many will betray one another [bad news];
6. Many will hate one another [bad news];
7. Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray [bad news];
8. Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold [bad news].
Then after all of this bad news, there is hope:
· But the one who endures to the end shall be saved.
Is not this hope of salvation for the person who endures to the end good news? It would certainly seem to be good news. And Jesus adds, “‘and will be announced this the good news of the kingdom in all the world as a testimony to all the nations, and then will come the end’” (Matt 24:14).
So what is the sign of His coming if not the announcement of this good news that all who endure to the end shall be saved to all the world as a testimony to all nations? Within the context of Jesus answering His disciples’ question about the sign of His coming, what other good news has He given them?
Why couldn’t I have begun this Commentary with the above short paragraphs and have skipped the many words that address seemingly unrelated subjects? That was my intention. But I took a telephone call from a fellow who thought he was mature enough in the faith to be a teacher of Israel when I began this Commentary, and I realized just how monumental the problem was of trying to convince common Christians to accept another Jesus other than the one received from their lawless teachers, and to receive a different spirit from the one they received from their lawless teachers, and to accept a different gospel other than the one they received from their lawless teachers. I realized that no written words would convince the majority of common Christians to cease worshiping the Jesus they received from their immediate ancestors. No act of God would convince the majority of common Christians to turn to God and begin to walk as Jesus walked. There is nothing in heaven or on earth that will cause common Christians to believe God and not other men (or women).
All that can be done is to warn Christians that at a near second Passover, all firstborns not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God will perish physically as the firstborn of beasts perished in Egypt a time, times, and half a time ago. All firstborns of God not covered by the blood of the Lamb will perish spiritually as the firstborn of Egyptians perished in the days of Moses … the Passover exodus of Israel under Moses forms the shadow and type [the left hand enantiomer] of the Second Passover exodus of circumcised of heart Israel from sin and death under the two witnesses in the Tribulation.
The prophet Jeremiah records the Lord saying,
And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, “Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?” then you shall say to them: “Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me. Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.”
Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, “As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but “As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers. (Jer 16:10–15)
And,
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”
Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when they shall no longer say, “As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but “As the Lord lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.” Then they shall dwell in their own land. (Jer 23:5–8)
The Lord will not repent of what He intends to do to Israel, but He will bring again Israel from captivity, with Israel being the endtime nation that is circumcised of heart … no physical recovery of Israel from geographical lands will cause Israel’s exodus from Egypt to be forgotten. Rather, any physical recovery of Israel will always be compared to the Exodus. Therefore, for the Exodus to be forgotten and remembered no more, Israel’s recovery must be far greater than a return from physical lands.
Circumcised of heart Israel’s recovery will be from death, with Assyria representing “death” as Egypt represents “sin.”
As Sin was made alive with the giving of the commandments (Rom 7:8), Death will be made alive when the Son of Man is revealed and the Church is filled with and empowered by the divine breath of God. In a like manner to how one of the king of the South’s princes becomes stronger than the king and rules with great authority (Dan 11:5), at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, Death will be separated from Sin and will become stronger than Sin, something common Christians cannot today conceive.
The movement afoot that will have Americans turning to God and Muslims turning to Allah [the Arabic equivalent to El + breath] will see Death made alive when uncovered firstborns are suddenly supernaturally slain—and once alive, those Christians who represent Death will wage war against those Christians who represent Sin as the use of the appetites of the flesh (of the belly and the loins) ceases to be used to sell everything from hamburgers to cars to cable news ratings. Arian Christians will make war on Trinitarian Christians, and bolstered by Islam’s conversion to Arian Christendom, the Arians representing spiritual Assyria will prevail as both Arians and Trinitarians kill Binitarian Sabbatarians whenever they can.
When filled with spirit and liberated from indwelling sin and death, faithful Sabbatarian disciples will find that they are easy targets: as “light” and sons of light in the predawn darkness that gives way to the dawn of a new age, Sabbatarians can be seen. There will be nowhere for them to hide, and because they are “light” they convict their lawless brothers of rebellion against God without doing anything other than obeying God … Sabbatarians will cover their sin with obedience (by not committing sin), but will remain mortal and subject to death. Thus, because they sin no more, they separate Sin, the king of the South, from Death, the king of the North. Unlike their lawless brothers, they will not return to Sin because they believe the writings of Moses. And because they follow Moses and choose life, they will follow Jesus [Iēsous — from Acts 4:10] as the children of Israel followed Joshua [Iēsous — from Acts 7:45] into God’s rest even though the nation that left Egypt, the nation numbered in the census of the second year was loathed by the Lord and could not enter into His rest (Ps 95:10–11).
Lawless Christians will not be saved. While cloaked by the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness, they did not practice walking uprightly before the Lord. Rather, they used grace as a license to continue in rebellion against God—to practice rebellion against God—until they perfected their rebellion, using Christ as a screen as a hunter might use a life-size cardboard likeness of an American pronghorn to stalk within killing distance of curious and suspicious but entranced antelope on Wyoming hillsides. Their prey is infant sons of God, and they kill because their father has been a murderer from the beginning. They kill because righteousness convicts them of their sin. Therefore, if they cannot take the kingdom by force, they will do their best to prevent anyone from entering the kingdom, the Adversary’s best ploy to save his own life that actually has already been lost. If the Adversary can cause the Lord to again regret that He has made humankind, perhaps—in the Adversary’s twisted logic—he can convince the Most High to make an accommodation for him and his angels, and their practice of democratic rule.
A kingdom of equals, is that not the way of the Adversary, with the United States of America being the Adversary’s best hope of convincing faithful angels to join him in rebellion against the Most High as British Colonialists joined the rebellion against King George III … look how that rebellion turned out, and the good that it brought to the world, and how the rebels praised God and gave glory to God. Should the United States of America not be the example nation for why rebellion is good when government becomes tyrannical? Are not all sons of God endowed with equality? Are not all sons of God holy? Has not the Most High exalted Himself above the assembly of the people? And in the words of Korah, disciples can hear the great words that the little horn speaks against the Ancient of Days when his rebellion comes tumbling down, toppled by a second killing of a third part of living humankind when Death is dealt a mortal wound and this demon’s cross shaped body is taken to be burned.
Of governments by men, the United States of America stood alone for two centuries as the last best hope for the Adversary to make his reign over the kingdom of this world work — that is correct: despite scriptural references and borrowings, the founding documents of the United States of America do not create a nation that is of God, but a nation that embraces and even celebrates lawlessness in its plural forms.
I am old enough to remember Oregon’s Blue Laws that prohibited publicly conducting business on Sunday, thereby placing Sabbatarian business owners at a serious economic disadvantage. Plus, when I first engaged in business, I would not sign Fair Trade Laws that prevented me from selling merchandise I owned for whatever price I deemed reasonable and profitable; thus, distributors broke the law to sell me merchandise wholesale—I became a cash, house account at these distributors … where was freedom in Blue Laws and Fair Trade Laws? The movement afoot to return America to its roots comes with rose-colored glasses: America’s roots are in rebellion and the lawlessness of the Adversary. Paul writes, “And what I do [not ask for money] I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor 11:12–15).
The movement afoot to return America to its roots looks good from a distance, but the roots of America are rebellion, first against God by Satan’s servants, then against King George by Colonials stirred up by false apostles and deceitful workmen … how can an endtime Christian know for sure that the ministers and pastors of Colonial America were of the Adversary? How many worked as Paul worked, not asking for support and therefore placing no burden on those whom they taught? How many today work as Paul worked? How many are really beggars who use guilt to pick Christians’ checking accounts? How many are spiritual bastards, their father being the Adversary but their unwed mother being the greater Christian Church?
The descendants of six-tenths of a person have, two centuries later, few good words for the founders of the United States of America. Yes, they benefited from being born in this country, but how can men slice personhood thin enough that four-tenths can be removed and the individual remain alive? Yes, the four-tenths was a political issue that was held in tension against the six-tenths for resolution at a later time, with civil war guaranteed by the tension created. But there was no justice, no liberty for the six-tenths when the four-tenths of the person was nailed to barn doors and the floors of tobacco sheds and cotton gins.
The founding fathers of America are neither to be revered nor hated. They were men who risked their lives and their fortunes for a cause that seemed noble to them. They were more honorable than the politicians of today, but they were sons of disobedience, not sons of God. They were the willing servants of the prince of this world as this prince sought to make at least one government in this realm deliver on the promises he had made to angels who had joined with him in rebellion against the Most High. And because this experiment in self-governance was in obscure North America, the Adversary was apparently willing to let the spiritual king of Greece borrow heavily from Scripture when organizing the foundational constructs of this government of men. But the obscurity of North America could not prevent the scent of liberty from reaching the continent, where rebellion took its usual course, leaving the rebels in worse shape than they were in before and the guillotine as the prevailing symbol of enlightened liberty.
No Christian should be duped into supporting a philosophical and political return to America’s founders, but many will be. Even some six-tenths’ descendants will be. … When Jesus told Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world or from this world (John 18:36), He meant exactly what He said. And if our citizenship is in His kingdom, then we should be as Abraham was: “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:9–10). For Christians, the Promised Land is heaven, as represented weekly and annually by Sabbath observance and the tents in which we live are our fleshly bodies.
Our citizenship is in heavenly Jerusalem, our mother, and a free city that will not be inhabited by political progressives or political conservatives. For all whose focus remains on the things of this world are hostile to God and do not please God. Their good works come with rebellion against God.
*
The sixth installment will begin with section #10.
* * *
"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."