July 24, 2011 ©Homer Kizer
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Commentary — From the Margins
The End of All Things …
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Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.
The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. (1 Pet 4:1–11 emphasis added)
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1.
This morning, Norwegians are having to cope with the realization that one of their own, an alleged Christian, is a mass murderer, a terrorist, a servant of the Adversary who has been a murderer and a liar from the beginning—
Norway’s homegrown terrorist, 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, has reportedly said that his actions were atrocious but necessary; so the young farmer and political conservative will answer to being a murderer—and the politically liberal world will be “shocked” by what he has to say. How can multiculturalism have produced such a monster, one comparable with Islamic fundamentalists that would return the modern world back to the 7th-Century CE if that were possible?
Fundamentalism will be blamed … someone or some ideology has to be blamed other than multiculturalism, the ideological darling of politically correct journalists and progressive social scholars. But the fundamentalist Christian that thinks in the same way that Jesus the Nazarene thought two millennia ago would never suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler, with being a meddler in the affairs of others theologically equating to being a murderer or being a thief.
There is an apparent problem in what Peter wrote: is being a meddler, someone who intervenes in the affairs of another person, truly equivalent to murdering a person? Peter makes any form of evildoing comparable with every other form of evildoing; hence Peter makes no distinction between murder and thief, or between murder and meddling. And while a clear distinction exists physically between premeditated murder and being a well-intentioned person who inserts him or herself into the affairs of another person, thereby making trouble in, say, a marital relationship while trying to help out, no such distinction exists physically. Hence, being a meddler—again, a person who inserts him or herself into the affairs of others, invited or uninvited—is as spiritually heinous as shooting in cold blood 60 teens and young adults.
Multiculturalism levels the social playing field through making no distinction between individuals based on ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, or religion … multiculturalism should not privilege one ideology over another ideology. Thus, multiculturalism is the antithesis of what Peter taught in the 1st-Century:
Rulers of the people and elders, if we [Peter and John] are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus [this one] is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:8–12)
There is no other authority by which or through which a human being can be saved from death—not the death of the physical body, but the death of the inner self that came upon all of humankind when Adam ate forbidden fruit. Therefore, Christianity doesn’t lend itself to multiculturalism; for Christianity privileges walking as the man Jesus walked over every other way of life. This, however, doesn’t mean that Christianity as received from the Roman Church or from the Greek Church or from the Russian Church or from any man other than Christ Jesus leads to salvation. This means that the Christianity and Christian way of life that Anders Behring Breivik sought to defend through murder is as worthless spiritually as is Islam or Judaism or any other “ism.”
But is the above true? Is being a Christian today the same spiritually as being a Muslim? Does God make a distinction between Christianity and Islam, or between the Christian and the Jew? Does God take sides in the multiculturalism debate, arguing through miracles and public healings that the stone rejected by Roman officialdom and by Jewish temple leaders in 31 CE (i.e., the man Jesus the Nazarene) leads to escape from inner death via salvation? Or is God silent in the multiculturalism debate?
Has God been silent for long enough that there is creditable debate over whether He even exists?
Indeed, He has been silent for a very long time … but back up to what Peter wrote in equating meddling with murder: if God intervened in the affairs of men while the Adversary remained the prince of this world, would He not be meddling in the Adversary’s affairs?
According to the Apostle Peter, meddling equates spiritually to murder, with the Adversary having meddled in the affairs of God from the beginning thereby making the Adversary a murderer from the beginning even though no angel has yet died—
Can a person be a murderer when the person’s victim still lives physically?
And how many times can a person meddle in the affairs of another before the person equates to a murderer?
The Adversary has concealed in Christendom’s concept of a triune deity—as well as in Judaism’s, Islam’s, and Arian Christendom’s teachings about a single deity—a mystery of God that pertains to meddling and murder: the God that interacted with Adam, with Noah, with Abraham, with King David was Yah, the Logos [O Logos], the Spokesman for the conjoined deity identified as by the Tetragrammaton YHWH, with the Logos having entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene (cf. John 1:3, 14; 3:16). Because the Logos created Adam from the elements of this earth after having also created the universe, the earth, and the elements comprising the earth, the Logos would not be meddling in the affairs of the Adversary when He intervened in the days of Noah to kill all air-breathing life but for that which was in the Ark Noah built. Nor would the Logos have meddled in the affairs of the Adversary to whom all of humankind was consigned following Adam eating forbidden fruit when the Logos made a covenant with Abram, later Abraham when aspirated breath [ah] was added to his name as a representation of disciples of Christ Jesus receiving the indwelling divine breath of God [pneuma Theon] when the spirit (pneuma) was given; for Abram believed God when he was with his father Terah in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram believed God when he left his father and the land of Haran and journeyed into the land of Canaan. Abram believed God when he went into the land of Egypt. Abram continued to believe God when separated from Lot. Abram believed God when he rescued Lot and paid tithes to Melchizedek, king of Salem. And Abram believed God when the Lord told him that his seed should be as the stars of heaven—and finally, Abram had his belief, his faith counted to him as righteousness (Gen 15:6).
The Logos didn’t meddle in the affairs of the Adversary, the prince of this world, when the Logos made promises to Abraham, a man who had first chosen obedience to God over servitude to the deities of this world. It was only after Abram made the first move that the Lord appeared first to Abram in vision, then finally as a person whose feet Abraham was able to wash. Again, Abram made the first move, not the Lord; for Abram could have remained in Ur of the Chaldeans. He did not have to go with his father Terah to the land they named Haran, a land located within the geographical representation of death (i.e., Assyria). And Abraham rejected possessing the glory of this world when he left Ur of the Chaldeans; for the only land that Abraham possessed was the field with the cave in which he buried Sarah (see Gen chap 27).
The dead possess this world, beginning with the Adversary who remains and will remain spiritually alive until cast into the lake of fire following the thousand years of Christ Jesus’ millennial reign. For with the pronouncement of the Adversary’s fate by the Lord—fire coming out from his belly to consume him (Ezek 28:18)—the Adversary’s fate is sealed and certain and cannot be changed even though it has not yet occurred from the perspective of being within time.
The living have no inheritance in this world.
Once the spirit of God [pneuma Theon] was given, life via a second breath-of-life was given to the inner self, the inner creature that animates the fleshly body of a person, with this life coming from heaven [i.e., coming from outside of space-time] and returning to heaven if judged worthy to do so by Christ Jesus … indwelling eternal life [i.e., life outside of space-time] is given without judgment coming upon the person, because this life is given in the vessel that is Christ Jesus. Because the Father has already given life to the man Jesus the Nazarene who came into this world as the only Son of the Logos, and because the Father from within the biological nation of Israel had chosen men to be disciples of Christ Jesus, the Father through the glorified Son could give to these disciples indwelling eternal life (see John 20:22) without meddling in the affairs of the Adversary, who had no claim to the nation of Israel prior to when the Lord delivered first the House of Israel into the hand of the Assyrians (2 Kings 17:6–18, note with emphasis v. 18), then delivered the House of Judah into the hand of the King of Babylon (Jer 25:8–14). Only after the Lord [the Logos] delivered the House of Israel and the House of Judah into the hand of the Adversary was all Israel condemned to disobedience. Prior to when the Lord delivered Israel and Judah to the Adversary, the people of Israel were responsible for their sins which they temporarily covered with the blood of bulls and goats.
When a remnant of the House of Judah returned to Jerusalem to build for King Cyrus a house dedicated to what Cyrus perceived to be “the God who is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 1:3), the remnant returned as a slave people, not as a free people able to control their own destiny. Israel was, as a nation, an agent of the Adversary. The leaders of Israel were servants of the Adversary; they were murderers, meddling in the affairs of the people, binding the people with burdens they were unwilling to carry themselves.
A meddler is always a murderer, not something Christians—and especially American Sabbatarian Christians—want to believe. For Sabbatarian Christians are notorious meddlers, inserting themselves into the pantries and refrigerators of their brothers; into the family time and activities of their brothers; into marriage relationships of their brothers when they, themselves, are without knowledge or understanding.
When God the Father, Himself, will not meddle in the affairs of the Adversary before it is time—and He doesn’t—why do so many Christians presume to meddle in the affairs of other Christians and non-Christians …
In this world, there is great condemnation for a man like Anders Behring Breivik, and there should be great condemnation. No one can justify what he did, or what Allied Bomber Command did in March 1945 when German civilians were slaughtered in carpet, fire bombings simply because they were Germans, or what Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, or Pol Pot did to their own peoples. Breivik will never be in their league. Nor will an individual Sabbatarian Christian ever meddle in the affairs of others to the degree that, say, Herbert W. Armstrong did in his self-appointed position as Pastor-General of the Worldwide Church of God.
Is it fair to Armstrong to lump him in with Stalin and Hitler, both of whom rose to power in the 1930s as Armstrong rose to power in the 1930s? Is it really fair to meddlers of all flavors to compare them to murderers, what the Apostle Peter did; for the meddler will insist that he or she is only trying to help, offering advice when advice is sought, making suggestions when advice is not sought … Breivik will say that he needed to shock cultural Marxists out of their complacency, that it is always better to kill too many than too few, that killing too many cannot be mistaken for a crime but must be treated as a political statement, an act of war around which other conservative Norwegians can rally. Breivik will insist that he was only trying to help his fellow citizens to escape the liberal malaise that has gripped all of Scandinavia since the end of World War II.
But Breivik will justly suffer as a murderer.
The Norwegian state will not kill Breivik in retaliation for the lives he has taken, but will feed and house this terrorist for as long as he lives or for 21 years, whichever comes first.
But God will kill the Christian meddler by condemning this person to the lake of fire—
This present world belongs to the Adversary, the still reigning prince of the power of the air that Christ Jesus defeated in the 1st-Century CE; so let Satan deal with his own—and again, Breivik is of the Adversary, humanly born as a bondservant of the Adversary, and now by deed having become a son of the Adversary. Thus, the prince of this world will feed and shelter his son until, if this age continues beyond 21 years from today, Breivik is returned to open society as a tired and shriveled but unbroken ideologue.
So it isn’t Norwegians’ multiculturalism guilt that I want to address [again, Satan‘s fate has already been determined, as Breivik’s fate will soon be determined], but the equally heinous crime of Christian meddling, that is of being a busybody running to and fro, counseling weak-minded Christians that have more in common with Breivik identifying himself as a Christian than with Jesus the Nazarene. And I want to shout, STOP your giving advise when you have no authority to speak! When someone comes to you, listen but don’t say anything …
A few months ago, while listening to a fellow’s idling high-mileage car engine I told the fellow that I would have to come pick him up off the side of the road when his car broke down … that was as much as I needed to say about his running to and fro. Anything beyond that, Christ could say to the fellow—
When Christ Jesus speaks to one of His disciples, a couple of things are assured: whatever Christ says will cost the person a lot of money, and usually money the person doesn’t have. And the disciple will feel like a spiritual moron whenever the person realizes that whatever he or she has had to endure was unnecessary, for a warning had been given to the person, a warning that the person ignored.
I carve wood in the Northwest Coast Tradition. I have carved for a semester on an honorarium in University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Native Arts Studio. I lived for decades in communities with a significant percent of the population being Native Americans—and I’m familiar with indirect address. I have been familiar with indirect address for a very long time, and I usually practice indirect address, with Christ Jesus having been the ultimate practitioner of indirect address. But indirect address requires that the person being addressed hear what is said to the person.
When I first started carving in the Northwest Coast Tradition more than twenty years ago, Bill Holm looked at my first three bowls, a whale, a halibut, and an otter bowl. He looked for quite a while without commenting. Then about two hours later, as we were walking together through the bowels of Rasmuson Library, Bill Holm turned to me and said, Photographs never show the bowls as round as they are. He didn’t break stride, and that was all he said, but that was enough. In indirect address, Bill Holm critiqued my bowls and told me that they needed to be bowls first and not anatomically correct sculpture that happened to be bowls.
I heard what Bill Holm didn’t say in words, but in the subject he chose to address. I could just as easily not have heard anything but that photographs don’t truly show Northwest Coast grease bowls as they are. Bill Holm wasn’t about to meddle in the art of another person: if I wanted to carve whales and otters and adorn the sides of these carving with formline narratives, I could continue doing so. But if I wanted to carve Northwest Coast grease bowls, I needed to carve bowls with anatomical features, not hollowed out whales.
It would be good if Sabbatarian Christians could hear what was told them by Christ Jesus, who will (after making sure the meddler has been warned) leave the person who runs to and fro broken down alongside a roadway, with time and chance happening to all people, especially ones driving high-mileage automobiles. But American Christians are not used to indirect address; thus, they do not hear what is said until hit between the eyes with a figurative two-by-four.
The Second Passover liberation of Christendom from sin and death is necessary simply because Christians refuses to hear and believe the words of Christ Jesus, or of Paul, Peter, John, James—
After the murderer kills his or her first victim, the person is a murderer. The number killed really doesn’t matter much after the first victim has been murdered. And this is equally true of meddlers.
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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."