May 29, 2009 ©Homer Kizer
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Commentary — From the Margins
The Endurance Part Nine
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Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. (Rev 15:1)
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9.
Seven plagues in the Endurance to complete the wrath of God (Rev 15:1); seven trumpets to complete the Tribulation (Rev 8:2); seven of ten plagues separated Israel from Egypt (Ex 8:20–12:33)—where are the seven plagues or trumpets that separate the Christian Church from this world? These seven things are not seen in Scripture except vaguely:
I [John] was told, “…And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”
These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. (Rev 11:1–6)
How often will the two witnesses desire to strike the earth with every kind of plague? Seven times, more times, perhaps?
Jesus said, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise’” (John 5:19) … what the Son sees the Father doing, He does likewise, an underappreciated statement; for the Son saw the Father cast rebelling angels into pits of gloomy darkness where they would be kept until the judgment (2 Pet 2:4) because they left their proper dwelling, not staying within their own positions of authority (Jude v. 6), giving to “authority” the qualities of “location.” Thus, in the Son doing what He saw the Father do, the Son [the only Son of Ò Logos and the First of the firstborn sons of ton Theon] created all that has been made (John 1:3), then created the man Adam from those elements that were made, placed this man in the earthly garden of God in Eden, created a helpmate for the man, then watched the serpent deceive that helpmate before covering the man and the woman with skin clothing and driving them from the garden of God. While much can be made from this analogy, too much can also be made from it; for the visible things of this world that reveal the invisible things of God (Rom 1:20) are non-symmetrical mirror images [chiral images] of heavenly things, and as a two-dimensional mirror gives the illusion of “depth,” time and its passage gives the illusion of the depth of God, meaning that as a wife and a person’s servants (employees) are helpmates to a craftsman in traditional cultures, with the wife not being a servant but one with the man through marriage, the Logos [Ò Logos] and created angels function as helpmates for the God [ton Theon], with the old serpent, Satan the devil, drawing into the pit a third of the angels but failing in his temptation of the man Jesus. And because both the Logos and created angels were helpmates, they were “one” with the God, for all things in the timelessness of heaven must function as one living entity. Hence casting a third of the angels into pits of gloomy darkness was for the God like casting part of Himself away—and this the Son will do when judgments are revealed, for a significant portion of His disciples in whom He has dwelled will be cast into the lake of fire. Jesus said not to be surprised when those who have done good are raised to life while those who have done evil are raised to condemnation (John 5:29).
As the God [ton Theon] cast out angels that did not stay within their own positions of authority but advocated for democracy as Korah and his friends did (Num chap 16) and as the greater Christian Church will do when the lawless one is revealed, the Son will send a great delusion over those disciples that do not love the truth (2 Thess 2:3, 11–12), giving to this great delusion the quality of “location” as “authority” acquired the quality of location when rebelling angels left their proper dwelling. And in comprehending Scripture, disciples need to be able to visualize the mental typography of living creatures through seeing with human eyes the physical geography of the Middle East. When disciples can with inner eyes see mental landscapes with the clarity that their eyes see hills and valleys, plains and deserts, disciples can then make the additional step to seeing into the heavenly realm and grasping what has happened, is happening, and will happen in a dimension without time, thus reading a narrative that doesn’t record itself.
But the point of more immediate concern is that the two witnesses are the two olive trees and two lampstands that stand before the Lord (Rev 11:4; Zech 4:12–14): they see what the Son does as the Son sees what the Father does, and whatever these two witnesses see the Son doing, they do likewise. And these two witnesses see the Son sending the plagues upon Egypt to make a distinction between Israel and Egypt so that Egypt can be devastated … it is in what the two witnesses do when turning water into blood and calling forth every kind of plague after the type of earthly plagues that separated physically circumcised Israel from Egypt that circumcised of heart Israel is separated from both uncircumcised Israel and the world.
Today, the Father draws a person from this world by giving to the person the earnest of His spirit [pneuma Theon]. Then before this inner son of God is “circumcised” after the pattern given to the patriarch Abraham, the person must make a journey of faith that cleanses the heart (Acts 15:9) as the head of the penis of an eight-day-old Hebrew infant was cleansed by wine or alcohol. This journey of faith will cause a Gentile convert to live as a Judean, and will cause a natural Jew to profess that Jesus is Lord. Only then is the heart circumcised by spirit, and the person is counted as part of the spiritual nation of Israel. But this person is spiritually as an eight-day-old Hebrew infant is physically.
Following the second Passover when the Christian Church is restored to life suddenly, with each Christian filled with spirit as angels were suddenly created filled with life, Christians will not be circumcised of heart because they will have made no journey of faith that cleansed hearts. Instead of receiving the earnest of the spirit, they will be filled with spirit: they will have the Law/Torah placed within each Christian as physical Israelites were circumcised on the eighth day when too young to either protest or understand what was happening to them. Christians will not be under grace, but they will have their sins forgiven and remembered no more; they will start the Tribulation with a clean slate, so to speak. But because they will not be circumcised of heart, judgment will not then—on day 1 of the Tribulation—be on them, for with judgment comes condemnation … the power of the Law, and the only power that the Law has, is its condemnation of the transgressor to death. Therefore, the person without a transgression of the law is not under the power of the Law, is not under judgment, is not under condemnation. The person who never transgresses the Law is never under judgment; for judgment follows death (Heb 9:27) and does not precede it. The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), with sin being lawlessness or transgression of the Law (1 John 3:4). So the person without sin will pass from death [lifelessness] into life without coming under judgment, the reality of Jesus’ words (John 5:24).
If grace were unmerited pardon of sin, then no disciple would ever enter into judgment—no judgments would be revealed when Christ Jesus returns. But grace is the “covering” of transgressions of the Law in the heavenly realm with the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness, and if a transgression is “covered” it is not necessarily forgiven. The death penalty for the transgression must still be paid such is the power of the Law; so a judgment must be made as to who will pay this death penalty, the transgressor (the disciple) or the Adversary who is already under sentence of death. And it will be Christ Jesus, upon His return, who discloses which disciples will live and which will die, based upon what the disciples did when they could do either good or evil without apparent consequences … the disciple who does not truly want to be “one” with Christ Jesus will not publicly walk as Jesus walked, with Sabbath observance being the most visible aspect of a convert’s walk with God. Men and angels do not see the disciple’s good intentions, but they both see upon which day the disciple’s tent of flesh rests from its mundane labors. And while the Son knows the thoughts of the person, men have a fair approximation of what those thoughts are by how the person publicly walks: if the person will not walk as Jesus walked, living as a Judean, it is very unlikely that the person inwardly walks as Jesus walked in this period when disciples await the fullness of the Gentiles coming to God.
Following the liberation of Israel every Christian will be spiritually as an eight day old Hebrew male was physically: the entirety of the spiritual growth process lies before the Christian—and most Christians will be far too immature in their understanding of Scripture to even entertain the idea that they are not spiritual giants. They will know the Lord; yes, they will. They will have the Torah written on their hearts and placed in their minds. Their sins will be forgiven. They will be under the New Covenant, for the first covenant will finally be abolished. But again, they will not be under grace; they will not be under the covering of either Christ Jesus’ righteousness or under the cover of being consigned to disobedience as bondservants of the Adversary. Rather, the Son of Man will be revealed or disrobed (Luke 17:30): each Christian will be clothed or covered by only his or her own obedience so no Christian can continue to sin and still live.
Under the New Covenant, forgiveness of sins comes not by drinking from the Cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed as it does today (Matt 26:28) but by simple repentance, what Christendom teaches today—the assumption has been for the past two millennia that Christians are under the New Covenant when the first covenant has not yet passed away (Heb 8:13), “an oversight” that kept the Church the Corpse instead of the Body of Christ throughout these centuries—so when the lawless one (i.e., the man of perdition) is revealed and the Rebellion occurs on day 220 of the Tribulation, God sends a great delusion over those who do not love the truth so that they will not and indeed cannot repent and be forgiven. If God did not send this covering of absolute darkness over these rebelling disciples, they would falsely repent when experiencing the wrath of the Lamb.
The Christian who has practiced walking uprightly before God under the cover of grace will be well able to walk uprightly before God when filled with spirit, but the Christian who has squandered his or her time, using grace as a cover for bad behavior and lawlessness as most of Christendom does and has done, will be as the nation counted in the census of the second year (Num 1:1–2) was in the wilderness of Paran (Num chap 14): the Rebellion of day 220 occurs because of unbelief, the failure of Christians to believe the writings of Moses or hear the words of Jesus (John 5:46–47). Spirit-filled Christians will, with few exceptions, return to sin because they believe the little delusion that has kept them for centuries “locked” in death.
The above cannot be said too strongly: the restored or resurrected Christian Church will be in a position analogous to angels prior to iniquity being discovered in an anointed cherub—and as “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into” Tartarus and committed them to pits of “gloomy darkness to be kept until judgment” (2 Pet 2:4), God will not spare the Christian Church but will condemn rebelling Christians to the lake of fire by causing a delusion to come upon them that doesn’t permit repentance (again, 2 Thess 2:11–12), thereby having a delusion that effects the person’s mental landscape function as a chain or pit from which the person cannot escape.
The person with the will to escape will endeavor to escape and might be successful, but the person imprisoned in an idea will not even try to escape and is truly a prisoner.
With pedagogical redundancy, it will again be said: Christians must understand that the geography of this world presents the visual representation of humanity’s mental typography, with a Christian just as imprisoned in an idea as the Apostle John was on the isle of Patmos … when the Church has been brought back to life through being empowered by or filled with the spirit of God [pneuma Theon], and when the majority of the Church rebels against God (2 Thess 2:3) as Israel did in the wilderness, God will send a delusion over these rebelling Christians from which there is no escape: He will cause them to believe that their lies are correct! God will cause these rebelling Christians to be absolutely certain that Sunday is the day upon which these rebelling Christians are to worship the Most High; that men are born with immortal souls; that grace never ends. And they will not be convinced by any argument to the contrary, by any miracle, by any plague. There will be nothing the two witnesses can do or say that will make any difference, but it will nevertheless be the responsibility of the two witnesses to separate the rebels under the delusion that God sends from obedient saints and from the third part of humanity that will constitute the great multitude coming out of the Endurance.
As the plagues in Egypt first came upon both Egypt and Israel but from the fourth plague on came only upon Egypt, the two witnesses will call plagues down upon rebelling Christians who will not form one Church but will be divided into two ideologies centered around the nature of the godhead as those who left Egypt were both Israel and a mixed multitude of other peoples (Ex 12:38) The plagues that the two witnesses call will be in the descending order of those Moses announced to Pharaoh. And in general numbers, there will be a billion rebelling Christians upon whom the two witnesses will call plagues as these two form the chiral image of Moses and Aaron pronouncing destruction upon Egypt prior to the Passover liberation of the physical nation.
The two witnesses will not call plagues down on the restored Christian Church in its first 220 days, but will call them down upon spiritual Cain, those Christians who return to the dogmas of the interregnum and who would kill their righteous brothers if they could. However, as Israel tested (tempted) God a tenth time with the nation’s rebellion in the wilderness of Paran, the restored Christian Church will test God by not believing the two witnesses before its Rebellion of day 220.
Darkness over the land of Egypt while there was light where the people of Israel lived (Ex 10:21–23) was the ninth plague—and when mental landscapes are represented by earthly geography, the delusion that God will send over those Christians composing the great falling away (again, 2 Thess 2:3) equates to, or is represented by the darkness that came over the Egyptians, with this darkness absolute as the delusion God will send will leave rebelling Christians in absolute spiritual darkness [i.e., death] … when disciples now look at the tenth plague (the first Passover and the sacrifice of the firstborns of Egypt) and understand that the second Passover will be the chiral image of the first Passover and that the delusion sent over those Christians of the Rebellion is the chiral image of the ninth plague, endtime disciples can state that the two witnesses will call down upon the rebels the remainder of the plagues that fell on Egypt in their descending order: 8th, 7th, 6th, etc. Therefore, as Cain moves to slay Abel, the two witnesses cause a separation to be made between Cain and Abel until Abel is no more (except for the Remnant — Rev 12:17), so as there was no distinction between Egypt and Israel by the first three plagues, there will be no Abel for the two witnesses to separate from Cain with their last three plagues.
Grasp the significance of the above: before the wrath of the Lamb begins (Rev 6:12–17), in the year between the Rebellion [day 220] and the opening of the sixth Seal [on or about day 585] the two witnesses will call eight plagues down upon the world, with the first five of these eight plagues making a distinction between Israel and the world and with the last three making no distinction because of how few genuine disciples remain. And in making a distinction being false and genuine, the two witnesses identify those who are genuine to those who are false, certainly cause for them to mourn but necessary in the overall scheme of salvation, for those disciples who are genuine need not suffer five additional years of trials and testing. They will prove themselves worthy of Christ after the man of perdition has been revealed; for whoever “‘loves his life loses it, and whoever hates [loves less] his life in this world will keep it for eternal life’” (John 12:25). The testing that occurs—that is the result of making a distinction between false and genuine—will see disciples choosing between temporarily keeping their lives in this world or giving up the disciple’s present life for everlasting life, a decision made on the strength of the person’s faith.
Theologically the first Passover forms the shadow and type of the second Passover as the darkness that came over Egypt forms the shadow and type of the delusion God will send over those who do not love the truth, thereby making Christians that rebel against God (spiritual Cain) a type of the Egyptians as well as a type of rebelling angels, with rebelling angels being cast into pits of gloomy darkness the equivalent to God sending a delusion over rebelling Christians. And what’s seen in type is the war fought in the heavenly realm after iniquity was discovered in an anointed cherub.
Before someone objects to what Paul wrote about God sending a great delusion over those who do not love the truth, saying that this delusion pertains to Muslims or Buddhists, that God would never send a delusion over Christians, look at what the Lord tells Ezekiel:
Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the wilderness. But I withheld my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I brought them [Israel and the children of Israel] out [of Egypt]. Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they had not obeyed my rules, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their father’s idols. Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am the Lord. (20:21–26 emphasis added)
The Lord gave to the lawless children of Israel statutes that caused them to kill their firstborn that belonged to God (Ex 13:2), their firstborn that they were not redeeming (v. 13) … He sent a delusion over ancient Israel when He gave them these statutes; He caused them to believe what was not good for them because they would not believe the truth. Thus, the Lord caused the children of Israel to seal their firstborn in death (i.e., to seal them while still uncorrupted by their parents’ idolatry) so that God would have these firstborns that belong to Him in the great White Throne Judgment.
It takes lawless human beings a moment to grasp that in love for those firstborns of Israel that belonged to Him, The Lord caused their parents to pass them through the fire as an offering to Molech as a shadow and type of endtime Christians delivering His firstborn sons that dwell within houses of flesh to the lake of fire by their habitual lawlessness to which they return in the Rebellion. The firstborn of ancient Israel will live again in the great White Throne Judgment, but those firstborn sons of God that embrace the lawlessness of the house into which they were suddenly born as angels were suddenly created will be under judgment—and in their rebellion when the lawless one is revealed, they will condemn themselves to death in the lake of fire. And once God sends His promised great delusion over them, there will be nothing they or anyone else can do to cause them to repent, turn to God, and be saved. All they can do is attempt to hide among genuine saints … the plagues will make a distinction between them and genuine saints.
No one should deceive him- or herself into believing that the God of love will not send a delusion over rebelling Christians that prevents them from returning to Him, repenting, and being saved.
Look at Christendom today. Why do so many “Christians” believe that the Law has been abolished when Jesus said, “‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets’” (Matt 5:17)? Are they not under a delusion that prevents them from repenting, turning to God, and being saved? Concerning the crowd that followed Him, Jesus told His disciples,
To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. … This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:
You will indeed hear but never understand,
and you will indeed see but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and with their ears they can barely hear,
and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart
and turn, and I would heal them. (Matt 13:11, 13–15)
Today’s Christian Church is a type of the crowd that followed Jesus from one side of the sea to the other, for this mob that is today’s Christendom neither hears the words of Jesus or understands the mystery of God—and because the crowd that followed Jesus consisted of Jews, not Gentiles, the crowd was circumcised as the Church will be spiritually circumcised when the Tribulation begins. The restored Christian Church is the spiritual reality of the crowd that followed Jesus until He spoke of the Passover sacrament of His body being the bread that has come from heaven, the bread that feeds born of spirit sons of God as manna fed the nation that left Egypt. The restored Church is the mob that rebels against God when the man of perdition is revealed, and as a lynch mob, the Church will seek to kill those who are of God.
The above discloses a portion of how and why rebelling disciples align themselves (as if they were iron filings) with either the king of the North or the king of the South; for those disciples belonging to the king of the North will remember how Joseph Smith died at the hands of a blackened-face mob, and how charges were brought against five accused leaders of this mob, and how these five were acquitted because they were judged to be carrying out the will of the people … if the demonic false prophet declares himself to be the angel Joseph Smith as Smith claimed the angel Moroni was the resurrected ancient prophet-warrior Moroni, the last to write in the golden plates, then the Trinitarian Church would be seen by Mormons and those theologically linked to Latter Day Saints as the mob that killed Smith. And it isn’t the Trinitarian Church that is prepared for the societal disruption that will follow the Second Passover liberation of Israel, but Latter Day Saints. Even Sabbatarian disciples that once prepared for the collapse of the English-speaking countries have recycled their plans to endure and now usually have only a few days’ worth of food and water on hand. But not Latter Day Saints who have plans to leverage food into discipleship; for their “Joseph” has told them to prepare for a year long siege, having on hand all that they will need, from aspirin to toilet paper to food to laundry soap, very good advice for those not truly of God.
How much food did the widow of Zarephath have on hand when the Lord sent the prophet Elijah to her? Note what she says, and note the pronoun used: “‘As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug’” (1 Kings 17:12). The Lord [YHWH] was not then her God. It was only after Elijah returned breath to her son that she said, ‘”Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth’” (v. 24), and this after “many days” when the “jar of flour was not spent,” nor “the jug of oil become empty” (v. 16). So as the daily coming of manna did not convince Israel that Moses truly spoke for God, and as feeding the crowd did not convince the mob that Jesus really spoke for God, the daily resupplying of flour to the jar and oil to the jug—like the children of Israel’s clothes not wearing out or their scandals wearing thin (Deut 29:5)—was not enough to convince the widow that Elijah spoke for the Lord. And the words of Jesus as the bread that has come from heaven will not be enough to convince the restored Church to keep His commandments. Instead, liberated Christians, even with the Torah written on their hearts, will dispute about what truly are the commandments of Christ.
Some Christians in the Tribulation will put more faith in a 1930s revelation to Latter Day Saints to set aside a year’s worth of food (or two years’ worth) than they will in God daily supplying the needs of His sons. Others will put more faith in a 5th-Century assignment of personhood to the breath of God [pneuma Theon] than in what Scripture discloses about the Father and Son. So it is no wonder that the two witnesses will employ plagues to separate Cain from Abel, for both Trinitarians and Arians will be of Cain while claiming to be of righteous Abel. It is only those who keep the commandments and thus cover themselves with the garment of obedience that will be of Abel. This means that following the second Passover restoration of the Church, any Christian who worships on Sunday rather than on the Sabbath separates him or herself from righteousness and has returned to sin as its willing slave, with this return leading to death (Rom 6:16). There will be no exceptions; for God will send a delusion over those who do not love the truth when they have been set free from sin. He, God, will send a delusion that prohibits them from repenting and thus being saved, just as the Lord gave to ancient Israel statutes and rules that caused them to burn their firstborns.
Before the children of Israel crossed the Jordan, Moses told this replacement nation of Israel:
When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this. (Deut 18:8–14 emphasis added)
By commanding the lawless children of Israel to do what He had commended them not to do (again Ezek 20:25–26), for they were bent upon idolatry, the Lord made the children of Israel an abomination to Him, and He drove the children of Israel out from His presence [i.e., His rest, the Promised Land]. He delivered them into the hand of the king of Babylon, just as the Father will deliver the Church into the hand of the present prince of this world, the spiritual king of Babylon (Isa 14:4)—and will deliver rebelling Christians into unbelief from which repentance is not possible. Yes, when God sends a strong delusion over these rebels, He does to them what He did when casting rebelling angels into outer darkness, into time, where they will perish.
There is no warning that can be uttered strongly enough to cause the vast majority of today’s Christian Church not to rebel, which is both frustrating and sad … because a little delusion was used to keep the Corpse of Christ locked in death through the first two times the last Elijah laid over this Corpse, this little delusion producing in the Church a situation analogous to ancient Israel adopting the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites they dispossessed, it is this little delusion that is like the idols of Egypt with which Israel defiled itself while still in Egypt (Ezek 20:7–8). So when liberated from bondage to indwelling sin and death at the second Passover, Israel will return to the little delusion that kept it locked in death even though this little delusion really has no power over liberated Christians. And a situation develops analogous to what Jeremiah records:
For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste. (7:30–34 emphasis added)
Jeremiah doesn’t contradict what Ezekiel writes; nor did Moses on his own introduce an idolatrous practice the Lord didn’t know about. But the practice of the children of Israel burning firstborn that belonged to Him wasn’t in His heart, had not entered His heart [“mind” would be better rendered as “heart”] — it wasn’t that the Lord hadn’t thought about the idolatrous practice of burning firstborns as English translations imply, but that the practice wasn’t of Him. It was a practice that came from Canaanite idolatry, and a practice Israel borrowed directly from Israel’s Canaanite neighbors, and a practice that became as “natural” to the children of Israel as was Israel’s worship of Egyptian idols in Egypt and as is Christianity’s worshiping God on Sunday after doing business on the Sabbath.
Why the children of Israel adopted the Canaanite practice of burning its firstborn will never be known with certainty prior to the resurrection, but between the adoption of the practice and when the Lord commanded the children of Israel to burn their firstborn was a history of idolatry, of sin, of unbelief generations long. The nation that left Egypt rebelled against the Lord ten times before He condemned that nation to death in the wilderness (Num 14:22), so the children of Israel didn’t one time burn their babies before the Lord gave to Israel the command to burn their firstborns. Likewise, the Christian Church doesn’t profane the Sabbath one time before God sends over rebelling disciples a strong delusion although one time is enough to condemn the disciple to death. But repentance from one transgression is addressed in God remembering Israel’s sin no more (Heb 8:12); repentance or even the lack of repentance from nine transgressions didn’t condemn Israel in the wilderness to death, nor will it condemn the Church to a strong delusion. But there was no eleventh time of overlooking habitual unbelief. The tenth time was it. And it is this pattern that forms the shadow and type of the Church’s rebellion in the Tribulation.
Nine strikes and Israel is in jeopardy, with these nine all occurring before day 220 when the man of perdition is revealed … when suddenly born of spirit following the second Passover sacrifice of uncovered and unredeemed firstborns that belong to God, Christendom will not keep the following Sabbath and will not probably keep the Sabbath after that one even though the nation knows-to. It will take a while for human beings to realize what has happened; it will be days or weeks before it becomes known that only firstborns lost their life when death angels again passed over all the land. Chaos will immediately following the second Passover. Civil authority will have broken down. Only the local church will function as the dead are buried and great and small strive to “get right” with God. And because the practice of the local Church has been to worship on Sunday, this practice will not immediately change even when all know that Sunday is not the Sabbath … doesn’t every Christian today know that Sunday is not the Jewish Sabbath? Sure Christians know what day the Sabbath is, but are they going to worship God on the Sabbath? They will not walk as Jesus walked, for they are not Jews. They presently proudly proclaim themselves Gentile Christians, an oxymoron, and even with the Law of God written on their hearts, they will rebel against God just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow.
The ten times that Israel was tested (with the tenth time resulting in Israel’s refusal to enter the Promised Land) forms the chiral image of the ten times the Christian Church will be tested by this spiritual nation rebelling against the Sabbaths of the Lord, with these ten tests facilitated by the two witnesses before these two send plagues upon Israel to separate genuine disciples from false.
The journey of faith that disciples in this era have made to cleanse hearts so that they can be circumcised will give way to the restored Church’s post circumcision journey of faith that is analogous to Abraham’s journey after he received the covenant of circumcision that required of him to walk uprightly and be blameless before God … Abraham’s offering up of Isaac is part of his post circumcision journey of faith, and forms a shadow and type of what will be asked of genuine disciples.
The two witnesses will ask no more of their fellow brothers than Christ Jesus asks from them or that the Father asked of Christ Jesus: each will die physically in faith, loving God more than they loved their own physical lives, but believing by faith that they will be resurrected from death. They are the ones who sow that overtake those who harvest.
God will harvest the false grain (darnel) before the firstfruits are brought into His “barns,” with the seven bowls of His wrath separating the great multitude from those who bear the mark of the beast as the plagues in Egypt and the plague called down by the two witnesses separated genuine from false. The wrath of God in the Endurance will be finished with these plagues as the salvation of those saints who were to be martyred as their 1st-Century brothers were martyred was finished with the plagues called by the two witnesses in the Tribulation. Thus, the Endurance’s timeline is the mirror image of the timeline of the Tribulation—and if this is true (the assumption here is that it is), the seventh bowl (Rev 16:17–21) is poured out on or about day 220 of the Endurance, with day 1 being the day when every eye shall see the returning Lord and Savior of human beings.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."