Questions Asked - Commentary From the Margins - June 6, 2014- Homer Kizer Ministries

June 6, 2014 ©Homer Kizer

Commentary — From the Margins

Questions Asked

____________

For many years and on numerous occasions, I have written that the Adversary is and will remain the prince of this world until dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from him and his angels and given to the Son of Man on the doubled day 1260, halfway through the seven endtime years [2520 days] that represent the Affliction and its chiral image, the Endurance in Jesus … the counting of the 1260 days of the Affliction is from 1 to 1260, whereas the counting of the Endurance is from 1260 to 1, with day #0 of the Affliction being the day of the Second Passover liberation of Israel; with day #0 of the Endurance being the day of the Second Advent, the coming of the glorified Jesus as the all-powerful Messiah; and with day 1260 of the Affliction being the last day when the Adversary and his angels will exercise dominion over the single kingdom of this world and with day 1260 of the Endurance being the first day when the Son of Man will reign over the same single kingdom. Hence in the chronology of John’s vision, the doubled day 1260 represents the kingdom that is preceded by the affliction and followed by the endurance in Jesus (from Rev 1:9), even though the kingdom is never ending.

In a somewhat literal sense, taking dominion from the Adversary and the giving of this dominion [authority to rule] to the Son of Man begins the countdown—as if to a missile launch—to the return of Jesus as the Messiah.

During the Affliction—again from John the Revelator declaring that he is the brother and partner of endtime disciples in the Affliction and Kingdom and Endurance in Jesus (Rev 1:9, the better translation of John’s declaration)—the Adversary will remain the prince of this world, the one through whom all authority on earth is routed. He will remain the prince of this world until he is deposed by Michael and his angels, again a one-time phenomenon:

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. …” (Rev 12:7–10 double emphasis added — this is a repeated citation from the first section because of its importance in understanding who rules over humanity today here on earth)

The glorified Jesus cannot receive all authority in heaven and on earth until dominion over this earth and the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and his angels. Until then, authority over others—regardless of whether civil or corporate or ecclesiastical; regardless of the origin of this authority—comes through the Adversary and his angels, with the Adversary being the reigning prince of this world when Jesus the man lived, and the still reigning prince of the power of the air when the Apostle Paul lived, and the still reigning prince of this world through the opening and duration of the first six Seals of the Book of Revelation. Thus, what the author of Matthew’s Gospel has his Jesus declare in chapter 28, verse 18, must necessarily follow dominion over the single kingdom of this world being taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man.

As a witness mark, Revelation 12:10 aligns with Matthew 28:18 as Daniel 7:9–14 aligns with Revelation 11:15–18, thereby calibrating biblical chronology, squaring Old Testament prophecies with New Testament prophecy and with John’s chronology of his vision. This alignment of Testaments precludes Luke 24:47 from being true; for according to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t send His disciples forth to make additional disciples until all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to the Christ.

Mark’s Gospel has/had an odd ending: prior to the 4^th-Century CE, Mark’s Gospel ended with Mark 16:8 — “And they [the three women] went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” … If this ending is true (it makes theological sense; for Jesus will not meet with Eleven disciples until the 144,000, from eleven not twelve, tribes follow the Lamb of God wherever He goes — Rev 14:1–5), then how does the author of Mark’s Gospel, presumably John Mark, know the women told no one? They had to tell someone, or the author of Mark’s Gospel was merely speculating about what happened, a problem that needed to be resolved and was resolved by the three-centuries-after-the-fact addition of verses 9 through 20.

Problematical texts have a way of healing themselves as they are copied over time, with their healers being scribes that just cannot bring themselves to pass on what the scribes believe is theological error.

In John’s Gospel, ten—not eleven—disciples receive the holy spirit and a second breath of life when the glorified Jesus breathes on the ten (John 20:22) on the same day on which the resurrected Jesus ascended to the Father as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering as Sadducees reckoned when the Wave Sheaf Offering was to be observed. But in John’s Gospel, the glorified Jesus does not give His disciples any command to make additional disciples. Rather, Jesus gives to His disciples authority to forgive sins and to withhold forgiveness of sins (v. 23), authority equal to that of Christ Jesus Himself, to whom all judgment has been given (John 5:22).

If Jesus gave to His disciples authority to forgive sins, manifested transgressions of the Law, was this authority only given to the ten? Did this authority not also pertain to any disciple in whom the breath of Jesus—the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou]—dwelt, thereby giving spiritual life [glory] to the inner spirit of the man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou]? But how would later disciples know if they were truly born of spirit? How would later disciples know that they were not deceived by the Adversary, who deceives the whole world, thereby believing lies about being born of spirit as sons of God?

Paul gave one conditional context:

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. (Rom 8:5–7)

John wrote,

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17)

How has the Adversary deceived the whole world? Through enslaving human persons to the appetites of the belly and the loins, and to the lust of the eyes, John’s desires of the flesh and of the eyes. And how does the Adversary keep his serfs entangled in the affairs of this world? Through his broadcast of unbelief of God by being the prince of the power of the air—

And you [holy ones] were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph 2:1–3)

Paul also wrote,

For just as you [Gentiles] were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their [Israel’s] disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all. (Rom 11:30–32 emphasis added)

The best way to keep a slave from trying to escape his or her enslavement is to convince the slave that he or she is “free”; to convince the slave that he or she is not a really enslaved, but rather, is a son of liberty, an identifying phrase that resonated in America’s war for independence and that will resonate again within greater Christianity following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart.

To prevent a misreading of this Commentary: there is a Second Passover liberation of Israel to occur at the beginning of the Affliction. There is also a Second Passover liberation of a second Israel [as the children of Israel were to the Israel that left Egypt] at the end of the Affliction, with this second Israel previously and usually being identified as the third part of humanity from Zechariah 13:9. As there was a first Passover liberation of Israel under Moses, there will be a Second Passover liberation of Israel under the two witnesses, types of Moses and Aaron. Then about three and a half years later, there will a Second Passover liberation of a second Israel under the glorified Christ and the Remnant (from Rev 12:17), also types of Moses and Aaron, with the Remnant being to the glorified Christ as Aaron was to Moses.

Now returning to the present, who is exempt from being deceived by the Adversary? Sons of Liberty? Sons of Light? Who does not carry out the desires of the body and of the mind (Eph 2:3)? Whose mind can successfully resist rebellion against authority, especially oppressive authority? Who doesn’t love the things of this world, from hot cars to chalets, from night clubs to salmon fishing in Alaska, from the Lincoln Bedroom to Blair House to Camp David? Who is opposed to jetting around the world on Air Force One? Whose mind is not set on the things of the flesh, or on the flesh of another person? There are not many, but there are statistically an insignificant few, with some of this few having the authority to forgive sin.

God is not today trying to save the world, but rather, God consigned [concluded] all to disobedience as bond servants of the Adversary for a purpose, and for a specific length of time. He did this, and He did so for a reason: the suppression of an idea loosed by the Adversary among all angels. And ideas are extremely difficult to suppress once they are loosed. Only when an idea has been repeatedly shown to be false is there any chance of the idea passing into non-existence—and that is what is in play on earth today, a demonstration initiated by God but orchestrated on a daily basis by the Adversary, who still attempts to prove that his promotion of self-rule, of democracy has merit and that his transactional economies will better serve the needs of those who rule themselves than subsistence agriculture can—and that is what every person dwelling under the person’s vine and tree amounts-to.

God has allotted a specific period of time to the Adversary for the Adversary to show that transactional economies and home-rule (governance from the bottom up) work as advertised. God will then follow up the period of time allotted to the Adversary by a Thousand Years of rule over humanity by His Christ—the demonstration will not end with casting the Adversary from heaven, or with binding the Adversary in the Abyss for the Thousand Years. The demonstration will continue, only with a limiter placed upon people: no buying or selling, no transactions throughout the Thousand Years. And from a human perspective today, it would seem that the demonstration is rigged in favor of the Adversary; for without buying and selling, there would be no industrialized agriculture or means of modern transportation or communication. There would be no Internet, no social media, virtually nothing of what first-world peoples regard as the essentials of life. But there is an X factor: human persons inside the demonstration will receive then as now the mind of the one who rules, who exercises dominion over living creatures. Today, human persons collectively have the mind of the Adversary, but during the Thousand Years, they will have the mind of the Son of Man, the mind of Christ Jesus—and that will make all the difference in the world.

For humanity today to have the mind of the Adversary is the reality of being deceived by the Adversary, the still reigning prince of the power of the air who broadcasts rebellion against God. Consider what the prophet Isaiah wrote long ago concerning the Messiah:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den.

They shall not hurt or destroy

in all my holy mountain;

for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of [YHWH]

as the waters cover the sea.

In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of Him shall the nations inquire, and His resting place shall be glorious. In that day the Lord will extend His hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of His people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. (Isa 11:6–11 — in the thought-couplets, the indented lines represent the spiritual portion of the couplets)

In what day will the predatory natures of the great predators be changed? In the day when the Lord [not the Tetragrammaton YHWH] extends His hand a second time to recovery His people Israel, His first born son (from Ex 4:22).

This day is the day when the words of the prophet Jeremiah come true:

Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares [YHWH], when it shall no longer be said, “As [YHWH] lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but “As [YHWH] 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 16:14–15)

Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares [YHWH], when they shall no longer say, “As [YHWH] lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but “As [YHWH] 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 23:7–8)

When the Lord sets His hand to recover the remnant of His people a second time as He previously recovered His people when He took the fathers of Israel by the hand to lead His people out from Egypt, Israel’s Exodus from Egypt shall no longer be remembered; for symbolically [spiritually] Egypt represents Sin and Assyria [the north country] represents Death: the second time that the Lord sets His hand to recover a remnant of Israel, He will bring Israel out from the north country, the land representing death. Israel’s recovery will be from Sin and Death, with Death being the named fourth horseman of the Apocalypse. Sin is the third horseman, the one that buys and sells the early barley harvest of the Promised Land [Christians in the Affliction and in the Endurance] and the latter main crop wheat harvest [all who have never professed that Jesus is Lord], with Sin unable to harm the already processed fruits of the Promised Land: the oil and the wine, the Elect.

Again, there shall be a Second Passover liberation of a second nation of Israel, with this Second Passover liberation of a second Israel being foreshadowed by the Passover liberation of Israel in the days of Moses and the Second Passover liberation of Israel in the days of the two witnesses …

The prophet Isaiah records,

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am [YHWH] your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom,

Cush and Seba in exchange for you.

Because you are precious in my eyes,

and honored, and I love you,

I give men in return for you,

peoples in exchange for your life.

Fear not, for I am with you;

I will bring your offspring from the east,

and from the west I will gather you.

I will say to the north, Give up,

and to the south, Do not withhold;

bring my sons from afar

and my daughters from the end of the earth,

everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory,

whom I formed and made. (Isa 43:2–7 — indented lines represent the spiritual portion of increasingly spiritual thought-couplets)

In the first Passover liberation of Israel (the Exodus in the days of Moses), the Lord gave the lives of all uncovered firstborns of man and beasts in Egypt (Ex 12:29) as ransom for Israel—we know part of the story from the writings of Moses, the part that forms the shadow and copy of the Second Passover liberation of Israel.

In the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the Lord will again give the lives of men in exchange for the lives of Israel … why should the Lord have to give any lives of men, in the near future or in the distant past, as ransom for Israel? The answer to this why question resides in all peoples having been consigned to disobedience, given to the Adversary as his serfs, his slaves, to do with as he pleases for as long as he exercises dominion over the single kingdom of this world. If the Lord wants to use a people (or a person) for His purposes, He has to figuratively “buy” the person or the people from the Adversary, with Christ Jesus’ death at Calvary paying the ransom price for all who are Christ’s in a literal sense.

Paul wrote,

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Rom 6:9–18 emphasis added)

“You who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness”—the Elect have been set free from sin to become, not “free persons,” but slaves of righteousness, keeping the Commandments because the Elect are finally free to do so—

The Elect also have no choice about whether they will or won’t keep the Commandments, for they are bought for a price. The Elect remain slaves, owned persons, but owned by the Lord to do with as He pleases. … If I truly had control of my life, I would never have left the Aleutians. But there came a time when I couldn’t stay; I had to go, and I returned to Kodiak, then went to Fairbanks to take a graduate degree and finally to Idaho to learn [realize] that both Mormons and Evangelicals are really Christians, not something I would have learned if I had remained at Dutch or continued to move west, setting the ranch at Chernofski Bay as I was invited to do in 1979. And to say that I had to learn that Christianity was larger than the Sabbatarian Church is somewhat of a sad admission; for under the New Covenant, the Law [Torah] will be written on hearts and placed in minds so that all, small and great, know the Lord (cf. Jer 31:31–34; Heb 8:8–12). And to know the Lord is to have indwelling eternal life, which according to Jesus in John’s Gospel: “‘And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’” (John 17:3). Thus,

Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. …

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" (John 5:23–24, 39–47 emphasis added)

Neither Catholics, nor Mormons, nor Evangelicals believe Moses’ writing—they wouldn’t worship on Sunday if they did—and therefore, they do not believe Jesus’ words and are actually unable to hear them, such is their deception by the Adversary. They are not just hard of hearing; they are deaf. And it would be better if they were also mutes, keeping their errant theologies to themselves.

But the demonstration wouldn’t be successful if the Adversary had not gained control of greater Christianity early on. By using a Second Sophist novel [the Book of Acts]; by using a Gospel [Luke] with a differing Jesus from the Jesus of Mark’s or John’s Gospels; by using forged pastorals epistles, the Adversary caused confusion in the early Jesus Movement, confusion that necessitated the use of ecclesiastical authority, thereby producing a Creed, a Canon, and a Clergy that cast from the Jesus Movement all who walked in this world as Jesus walked.

There is no Great Controversy occurring: Satan and Christ are not wrestling for the souls of men as if they were two school boys on a gravel playground. Rather, all of humanity has been consigned to disobedience for the Adversary to use in his demonstration of the superiority of democracy and of transactional economies. And he had to be patient, waiting until humanity culturally matured enough to forge iron tools, then steel swords, then cast rifle barrels and machine receivers, bolts, triggers, all needed to more efficiently kill other men. He had to wait until vacuum tubes served as on/off switches before humanity could move on to semi-conductors and resistance/none resistance replacing hard electrical stops. Semi-conductors figuratively work in the gray area between right and wrong, where a man steals to feed his family.

The things of this world reveal and precede the things of God; so whether we want to accept the reality, emergence of semi-conductor technology must necessarily precede the development of the spiritual maturity necessary to know whether to hold a person’s sin against the person, or forgive the sin when we are faced with the task of judging the Church:

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

A light switch or a vacuum tube functions as an immature person functions, knowing right from wrong, and judging everyone by a black/white, night versus day yardstick. For an immature person, what another person does is either right or wrong. The immature person doesn’t understand the weakness of the flesh to do right, and the power of the flesh to do wrong. Thus, the immature person is too quick to condemn others … Sunday keepers aren’t Christians; they can’t be because they don’t keep even the least of the Commandments, the weekly Sabbath. And this was something I needed to learn, and wouldn’t have learned in the isolation of rural Alaska. I had to interact with other Christians without becoming one of them, something my daughters were not able to do. Something few Sabbatarian Christians have been able to do. It is much easier to remain locked in a black versus white world, judging the surface of things and people and not the substance of either. It is much easier to remain deceived by the Adversary than it is to take oneself out of the Adversary’s world. It is much easier to switch sides, to cease being a white or black pawn and become a black or white pawn, but still a pawn in a game in which the Adversary plays both colors, pitting color against the absence of color.

In nothing that I did, I as the firstborn son of my father, also Homer Kizer, was called in 1972, this calling actually having roots back to fall 1959 when as a 12-year-old high school freshman, I sought to prove my newly acquired stepfather wrong about the Sabbath and Sabbath observance: he was a Seventh Day Adventist. I had a good mind—I thought my stepfather was an uneducated hick. But after reading the Bible and most every argument against Sabbath observance, I concluded that if a person were to be a Christian, the person had to keep the Commandments … I wasn’t interested in being a Christian. At the time, I believed that belief in God equated to a mental deficiency. Only, I could not eat pork or shellfish, and I always felt a little guilty about hunting or working on the Sabbath.

The pricks were there, but I was strong in resisting them until summer 1972, when I knew I would be the next person to get religion—I tell the story in APA Volume 1.

The Elect are those human persons who are or were foreknown by the Father and predestined to be glorified while they live physically. The Father brings the person to the glorified Christ’s attention for the glorified Christ to call as the man Jesus called His earthly disciples whom the Father gave Him. The man Jesus then dies for this person while the person remains a sinner (Rom 5:8), a reality that can only occur through the indwelling of Christ Jesus in the person, with this indwelling Jesus being the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel, not the man who lived physically, a reality disclosed by the color of the robe (cf. Matt 27:28; Mark 15:17). The indwelling Jesus is then resurrected in the foreknown person, and the person is born of spirit through the indwelling spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] being in the spirit of the man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] that is in the soul [psuche] of the person. This person is now one with Christ as Christ is one with God the Father, thus fulfilling Jesus’ prayer:

I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:15–23 emphasis added)

If the Elect are today slaves of righteousness, what will sons of Liberty be in the Affliction? Will not the prince of this world remain the Adversary? Indeed, the prince of this world will still be the Adversary following the Second Passover liberation of Israel. He will continue to be the prince of this world all the while spiritual Babylon falls, toppled by two hard blows, the first below the belt when all uncovered (by the blood of Christ) firstborns are suddenly slain to pay the ransom price for Israel’s liberation from Sin and Death through being filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God [pneuma Theou]. Approximately a third of humanity will be slain in a day, with firstborns accounting for half or a little more of the population of Western Europe and now the United States of America. Firstborns account for two thirds or more of the population of China. So the Second Passover liberation of Israel in the days of the two witnesses will wreak utter devastation upon the industrialized world, and will leave so-called third world nations struggling to feed themselves.

The blow that topples Babylon, already reeling and staggered by the first blow, will be the death of an additional third part of humanity in the Second Woe (Rev 9:13–21), which will amount to a Second Passover liberation of a second nation of Israel, all of remaining humanity when the spirit of God is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) as Christ baptizes the world in spirit (Matt 3:11) when the Adversary is cast from heaven and dominion over the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man.

The kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man only once, not many times. Thus, all of biblical prophecy can be aligned by the giving of the transference of dominion over the single kingdom of this world:

As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took His seat; His clothing was white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool; His throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came out from before Him; a thousand thousands served Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. I [Daniel] looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time. I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. … As I looked, this [little] horn made war with the saints and prevailed over them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom. Thus he [the angel] said: “As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all the kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after them; he shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time. But the court shall sit in judgment, and his dominion shall be taken away, to be consumed and destroyed to the end. And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them.” (Dan 7:9–14, 21–27 emphasis added)

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever." And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, "We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth." Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within His temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. (Rev 11:15–19)

All authority in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18) is NOT given to the glorified Christ Jesus until dominion is taken from the Adversary and his angels; so no literal reading of Matthew’s Gospel as history is appropriate as this author discloses to his readers through his genealogy of Jesus, followed by this author having Joseph and Mary take the infant Jesus to Egypt for some period of time that he is not writing history, but is erasing the natural descendants from Scripture.

Christians are not to park their brains with their cars when attending Sabbath services. Christians are not to permit someone else to “drive” their brains more so than already happens in the Adversary being the prince of the power of the air. Yet, even Sabbatarian Christians suffer deception by the Adversary … if the Adversary can get the Sabbatarian Christian to place emphasis on things physical, such as the appearance of others—skin color, attire, evidence of wealth [of God presumably blessing the person]—or on what hands do, or on the sound of a person’s utterance, then the Adversary has derailed the person and rerouted the Sabbatarian to the lake of fire.

Perhaps, though, the Adversary’s greatest feat of deception has been to get Christians to believe that God is presently in charge of this world, thereby giving God the blame for the Holocaust and for Pol Pot’s killing fields and for the election of President Obama who has a difficult time telling the truth.

It is easy for a community organizer, using Rules for Radicals as his playbook—dedicated to the Adversary, allegedly the first community organizer—to actively engage in disinformation … why not? For radicals, does not the end justify the means?

My ancestors were 16^th-Century Radical Reformers, Anabaptists, who were hunted as if they were vermin by both the Roman Church and the Reformed Church—and it was my ancestors who turned the world on its head through their early enthusiasm. It was also my ancestors who were persecuted into silence and became the silent folk … my inclination was to continue as silent folk, living quietly in the Aleutians, living a life of near self-sufficiency. But on Thursday of the second full week in January 2002 (Jan 17^th), about 10:12 CST, I was audibly called to Reread Prophecy: “It’s time to reread prophecy.” I was called to engage the enemy, a liar from the beginning.

The words I heard had a quality of thinginess about them. They remained in my mind for a long while. And for some minutes I remained too weak to get out of the truck and get to the class I was to teach.

It does but it doesn’t matter whether someone believes my words: they will withstand the test of time. So the concept I want to leave today with readers is that anyone who places importance of the surface of things or peoples, on physical appearances or utterances, errs grievously, but also reveals the degree to which the person remains deceived by the Adversary. By this yardstick, you can measure your own deception—if you are not so badly deceived that you will not admit that you are deceived.

* * *