August 15, 2010 ©Homer Kizer
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Commentary — From the Margins
“The Country is on Fire” —
Glenn Beck — August 12, 2010
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“I don’t know what God has in store for man’s freedom,” Beck said on his Thursday, August 12th, television broadcast … in a little more than a year and a half on Fox News’ 5:00 pm time slot, Beck has catapulted from relative obscurity to international prominence as a television personality and political commentator. He says he is not an activist, not a journalist, but a regular citizen who now expects miracles. The messages he delivers are religious in tone, subject, and nature. He has become a secular “Christian” preacher although any combination of secular and Christian creates an oxymoron; for if Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world or from this world (John 18:36), then no kingdom or nation of this world represents His kingdom, and certainly no nation based on representational democracy of the type expressed by Korah (Num chap 16) is a government of God regardless of how many theologians believe that the United States’ Constitution is a divinely inspired document.
The above is the fundamental problem deeply imbedded in everything Beck says: until the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15), every nation of this world is subject to the present prince of this world, the Adversary, Satan the devil.
Although Beck isn’t wrong in his observations, or in his understanding of history, or in what he claims is the agenda of progressive elites, his error is easily recognized: it is in the idea that somehow the United States of America is not a nation ruled by the prince of this world, that the United States’ Constitution is indeed a divinely inspired document, that the Christianity of America’s founding fathers was of God—
Before proceeding, let it be known that I am not a liberal blogger; I’m not a progressive of any flavor. And my eldest daughter is only four years younger than Beck so I’m almost old enough to be his father.
Beck derides his detractors, especially bloggers in their mothers’ basement. I am not such a person. Rather, I came of age with those who didn’t trust anyone over thirty, but I rebelled against my peers as I rebelled against the establishment, with my rebellion embodied in a tiny gunshop along the Oregon Coast where I built muzzleloading rifles before in-lines muzzleloaders were known. But all of that changed in 1972 when I was drafted into the Body of Christ and figuratively placed in cold storage for three decades. When these thirty years passed, I was called to do what I now do: I write the articles, essays, and readings (all of them) e-published by,
1. The Philadelphia Church (http://thephiladelphiachurch.org);
2. The Homer Kizer Ministries website (http://homerkizer.org);
3. The Homer Kizer website (http://homerkizer.net);
4. The Second Passover website (http://secondpassover.homerkizer.org);
5. The Key of David website (http://www.thekeyofdavid.org);
6. The Daniel and Revelation website (http://danielandrevelation.homerkizer.org/);
7. The About Prophecy website (http://www.aboutprophecy.com);
8. The Rereading Prophecy website (http://www.rereadingprophecy.com);
9. The Water & Fire website (http://waterandfire.homerkizer.org/);
10. The Repairing the Breach website (http://www.repairingthebreach.com);
I write for other publications and e-publications, and I find that I cannot keep current information on the websites—I lack the time needed to do more than I am. My only staff is my wife who serves as my proofreader; so my comments on what Beck has said and on his August 28th gathering in the Capital are not those of a blogger trying to get noticed. My comments are being made to tell him what is in store for humankind’s freedom, for I have written so many words in the past eight years that even as a serious reader, Beck would likely be intimated by the quantity of text facing him if he were to truly seek spiritual understanding … stylistically, what I write cannot be quickly read.
A problem exists with Beck’s quest for understanding: once a person “converts” to an ideology as an adult, it is rare for the person to mentally journey farther. A person reared as a Catholic can relatively easily convert to another sect of Christianity, or even convert to Judaism or Islam. But the person becomes a zealot for his or her new found faith so a second conversion becomes almost impossible. Hence, the Catholic who converts to Latter Day Saints’ ideology is not likely to become a Sabbatarian. A person reared as a Catholic can become a Sabbatarian when convinced that he or she ought to walk as Jesus walked, but the Catholic who has become a Mormon most likely will not later reject the Book of Mormon as a spurious document as he or she should: this person will not begin to believe Moses and hear the voice of Jesus and walk as Jesus walked. Rather, the person who has converted to Mormon ideology or to Jehovah Witness ideology will continue to believe what they do even after the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Likewise, the atheist who, when down and out, turned to Christ and became a Southern Baptist is just as unlikely to become a Sabbatarian. Instead, they will be the leaders of the rebellion against God on day 220 of the Affliction.
It does matter what a person believes. It isn’t okay with God that a Christian is an anomian. In the second Sinai covenant, the Lord told Moses,
Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods. (Ex 34:11–16 emphasis added)
Religious tolerance is not of God. Religious diversity isn’t of God. Christian pluralism isn’t of God.
Paul writes, “For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body … and all made to drink of one spirit” (1 Cor 12:13). The many members of whom Paul speaks form one Body—a Latter Day Saint and a Roman Catholic are not of the same body, nor are a Jehovah Witness and a Lutheran of the same body, nor are a Seventh Day Adventist and a Southern Baptist of the same body. No Arian and Trinitarian are of the same body. No Sabbatarian and anomian are of the same body. The person who sincerely believes that a devout Sabbatarian Christian and a devout Sunday-observing Christian can be joined in marriage and become one flesh is sadly mistaken: one person will have to be or become spiritually lukewarm before there is a semblance of peace in the marriage.
It is only because Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world or from this world that Christians do not exercise the same sort of intolerance toward dissent as is seen in the Muslim world—and in earlier centuries, Christians without spiritual understanding were intolerant of dissent. My ancestors, both on my mother’s and father’s side, came to America as 17th-Century religious dissenters. They fled intolerance, but they were not okay with heresy or heretics. And I’m not okay with anomian Christians. I’m not okay with Christian theologians who masquerade as ministers of righteousness but are really servants of the Adversary. They are spiritual bastards worthy of the lake of fire; they are a scourge, but a temporary one.
Again, it is only because this nation is not of God and never was of God that religious tolerance exists … the First Amendment (the anti-establishment clause) to the Constitution exists as prima facie evidence that the United States of America is not of God even though God was invoked in the writing of the Constitution. If this nation were of God, it would be ruled as ancient Israel was ruled during the time of the judges—it would have no centralized authority, no king, no elected assemblies. The Lord would “communicate” directly with the people through the giving or withholding of rain, of blessings. Enemies would be supernaturally destroyed. And even when moving the reign of the judges over Israel forward a time, times, and half a time [3.5 millennia], the nation that is of God would live by the commandments of God. The evils attributed to human nature would not exist, for human nature is really the nature of the Adversary, the present prince of the power of the air, the spirit that reigns over the mental topography of every person not born of God, the spirit that reigns [sin] in the flesh of even those Christians who have truly been born of spirit.
If the United States of America were of God, the nation would be organized around love for God, Sabbath observance, and love for neighbor that becomes honesty in one person’s dealings with another. But if the creation of the United States came about—was permitted by God—to demonstrate that democracy and representational democracy will not work then this nation as all others ruled by the Adversary will fail. In fact, as humankind’s last and best hope for men ruling over other men, the United States not only will fail but has to fail.
Beck understands that without God, apart from God, the United States’ Constitution will go the way of all good intentions: it too will pass. And what Beck understands is that the stage is set for the President to declare marshal law and take control of the country and rule as Caesar did. Any pretext will do: civil unrest, a natural disaster, but most likely a budgetary impasse with a new House and a new Senate that shuts down the Federal Government. The new House and new Senate will attempt to put America’s financial house in order, the reason why the new members will be elected in November. But when they attempt to stop the spending, the ongoing generational theft, they will butt heads with the President as happened during President Clinton’s administration. Only this time, instead of the House backing down as Newt Gingrich did, the House will force the issue—and President Obama will be forced to declare marshal law and seize power so that Social Security checks will continue to go out, and airports continue to function, and the military can fight not only in Afghanistan but in the streets of Detroit and in the hills of Utah or wherever Americans feel strongly enough about liberty & freedom to resist a dictator … you say that cannot happen in the United States. Well, it certainly can happen and this is what Beck knows and fears, the reason why he advocates non-violence. For it was the intention of my peers to take down this government in the 1960s, and nothing has changed their intentions: all that has changed is the number of people dependent upon a check from the Federal Government.
The problem with a forthcoming budgetary impasse serious enough to force President Obama to declare marshal law to save the nation is the timing of when such an impasse can happen: if a new House and a new Senate are elected in November and seated in January, about the earliest de-funding legislation can be passed is March. Such legislation would be vetoed by the President and his veto overridden in, maybe, early April. This would create a situation by, say, Passover that the President couldn’t ignore … if the Federal Government were shutdown for two or more weeks [it was down only for a day before Gingrich backed down], President Obama really would have no choice but to act with authority. And here is where serious spiritual problems can develop: if the Second Passover liberation of Israel were to occur in 2011, a likely year but not necessarily the year, this liberation will occur on the second Passover, May 19/20th. All firstborns not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God would suddenly perish, and President Obama as well as Vice-President Bidden would be numbered among the casualties. The deaths would be unmistakably the work of God—the selective slaying of only uncovered firstborns, about a third of humankind, will bring about the onset of the seven endtime years of tribulation. But too many American Christians will believe that President Obama was slain because he declared himself a dictator. They will see God as having defended the Constitution and the rule of law. And they will see Beck as the man best able to return America and the world to God.
Democracy is not ever of God—
Far lesser observers than the Most High have assaulted democracy, the rule of the majority, as mob rule, which, as H. L. Mencken quipped, “every election [being] a sort of advance sale of stolen goods” … the stolen goods are the tax dollars of grandchildren and great-grandchildren not yet born. Mencken defined democracy as “the worship of Jackals by Jackasses,” but he was perhaps too kind in his definition when it comes to politicians.
It was representational democracy that Korah sought—and what is wrong with what Korah said to Moses and Aaron:
Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” (Num 16:1–3 emphasis added)
What Korah advocated was a classic expression of representational democracy: the men with Korah were chosen from the assembly; they were representatives of the assembly. And wasn’t every Israelite equal before the Lord? What right did Moses have to tell the people what to do? Who was Moses anyway? A man of the house of Levi reared as an Egyptian, a fugitive for forty years in the land of Midian where he lived as a common shepherd.
Indeed, who was Moses? In a generation of slaves, Moses was a Levite, with both father and mother being of Levi. He would have been circumcised on the eighth day, and he should have been killed upon birth. But he was hidden by his mother until she could hide him no longer, then in an ark of bulrushes [paper] he was placed in the river in a mini-shadow of what happened in the days of Noah and what will happen at the end of the age. In Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck plays with this image and has a dead child placed in an apple crate and set adrift in a flooding ditch, apparently saying metaphorically that the Okies, the migrant fruit pickers from Oklahoma, had no savior … Steinbeck was wrong, just as Glenn Beck is today.
Why did the Lord say to Moses that Aaron “‘shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you be as God to him’” (Ex 4:16)?
Moses represented God. Typologically, Moses was to Aaron as the Father was to the Logos, who entered His creation as His only Son … Jesus said, “‘For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has Himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak’” (John 12:49). Elsewhere Jesus said to the Father, “‘I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and [the word of you] they have kept’” (John 17:6).
The word [Ò logos] of the Father is the message Jesus delivered to His disciples, not to the world but to those individuals whom the Father had given Him; the word [Ò Logos] was God [Theos] and was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning. This one [houtos] was in the beginning with the God [ton Theon] (John 1:1–2), and this one entered His creation (v. 3) as His only Son (John 3:16) where He spoke the words of the Father, with the words of the Father forming the single “word” that Jesus left with His disciples to judge the ones who did not believe Him (John 12:48)—
As Aaron spoke the words of Moses, and by doing so, was the word of Moses through being his spokesman, but as Aaron was a separate person from Moses [Aaron was Moses’ older brother], the Logos [Ò Logos] spoke the words of the Father to Moses as Aaron spoke the words of Moses to Israel … the second Sinai covenant—the eternal covenant that was not ratified by blood but by a better sacrifice, the glory that shone on Moses’ face from having entered into the presence of the Lord—was made with both Moses as one entity and with Israel as a second entity: “the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel’” (Ex 34:27).
After Israel’s rebellion against Moses and against the Lord at Sinai in the matter of the golden calf, the Lord separated Moses from Israel; for the Lord told Moses, “‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you’” (Ex 32:9–10). After Israel’s rebellion in the wilderness of Paran, the Lord told Moses, “‘How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they’” (Num 14:11–12).
On both occasions, Moses intervened on Israel’s behalf, but the Lord never changed His mind about making of Moses a nation greater and mightier than Israel. He only delayed making this nation until after a prophet like Moses was raised up (Deut 18:15) from among the people of Israel, a prophet to whom the people were to listen. And about this prophet, the Lord said, “‘I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him (vv. 18–19 emphasis added).
That prophet was Jesus of Nazareth.
And the nation made of Moses is the Christian Church, born as a Hebrew, reared as a Gentile but circumcised from birth, with this circumcision forgotten for an age [forty years for Moses], but remembered when the last Elijah initially lay over the dead Body of Christ and attempted to breathe life into this corpse as the first Elijah lay over the son of the widow of Zarephath to breathe life back into the boy. The forty years that Moses was in Midian, tending sheep for his father-in-law, are equivalent to the 69 weeks or 483 years of the prophecy given to Daniel after the required number of years had passed to fulfill Jeremiah’s seventy year decree (Dan 9:2). The last forty years of Moses’ life equate to the 70th week, the last seven endtime years. The Second Passover will liberate circumcised-of-heart Israel from bondage to sin and death, and the seven endtime years that follow equate to the forty years Moses led Israel through the wilderness. But it wasn’t the nation numbered in the census of the second year that entered into God’s rest (from Ps 95:10–11), but the children of Israel, the children of that nation. Likewise, it will not be today’s greater Christian Church that enters heaven—
It is not today’s greater Christian Church that is of Moses, but the much smaller Sabbatarian Church—and then not all of the Sabbatarian Church, but only the portion that speaks the words the Lord has put into the mouths of men, with the two witnesses functioning after the Second Passover liberation of Israel as Moses and Aaron functioned when the Lord took the fathers of Israel by the hand to lead the nation out from Egypt.
Beck said he didn’t know what God has in store for man’s freedom … what did the Lord have in store for Korah when it came to freedom? Was Korah free to offer sacrifice to the Lord?
Human beings are born as sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), bondservants to the Adversary—and they are born free to believe any lie that the Adversary tells, but they are not born free to keep the commandments of God for to keep the commandments would free the person from serfdom to the Adversary … this is a point that must be understood: using Glenn Beck as an example, every self-identified Christian who worships on Sunday is a slave to disobedience as Israel in Egypt were slaves of Pharaoh. As a Latter Day Saint Beck worships on Sunday, which is not the Sabbath even though Latter Day Saints call Sunday the Sabbath; Sunday is not the Sabbath because Scripture identifies the days of the week using the Sabbath: the Apostle John writes, concerning Jesus’ resurrection, [But the one after the Sabbath Mary ] (20:1). Luke writes, (24:1), or the same thing John writes. Mark writes, [And having passed the Sabbath Mary] (16:1). Decades later, Luke writes, [On but the one after the Sabbath] (Acts 20:7). And in every case, the first day of the week is the day after the Sabbath and is not the Sabbath. Despite European calendars making Monday the first day of the week, it isn’t. Sunday is; for no Christian argues that Jesus ascended to the Father on Monday, the first day after the Sabbath.
Let there be no doubt now or ever: Jesus was still in the heart of the earth on the Sabbath, and He did not ascend to the Father as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering until the day after the Sabbath. Therefore, the day on which Jesus ascended to the Father is not and cannot be the Sabbath that under the Moab covenant represents liberation from bondage.
Not until the Father draws a person from this world (John 6:44, 65) through giving to the person a second breath of life, thereby raising the dead inner self to life (John 5:21), can the person keep the commandments, and then only within the person’s heart and mind can the person truly obey the law until the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Hence, the Christian pastor or teacher who claims that the law cannot be kept is correct as far as the flesh goes, but correct only until the Second Passover. However, a Christian can keep the Sabbath from the day he or she has been called; for to neglect the Sabbath is to continue practicing sinning which no son of God does (1 John 3:9).
Freedom to transgress the commandments of God is not true freedom, but is servitude to sin. True freedom comes when sin no longer has dominion over the person and he or she can keep the commandments and become the slave of righteousness; for Paul writes,
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. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. (Rom 6:16–19)
Freewill exists on the day of salvation, the day [short while] when the newly called Christian decides whether he or she will obey God and obey the Adversary, his or her former master. For once the Christian decides to obey or not obey God, the Christian, as clay on a potter’s wheel, is shaped by Christ Jesus into a vessel for honorable use or a vessel of wrath intended for dishonorable usage and destruction (Rom 9:20–23). The person doesn’t get to fail if on his or her day of salvation the person chose to believe God and obey His commandments by faith; and the person doesn’t get to enter into God’s rest if he or she chose not to obey, with the Sabbath being the most readily observable tell of whether the person believes God or doesn’t.
Following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, two courses will be open to every Christian: the truly free person can return to sin and return to being the slave of sin, or this person can obey the commandments and become the slave of righteousness. … No person is truly free to believe God or disbelieve God until the person has been raised from the dead—and then, the person’s freedom lasts only until the person makes a choice.
After the golden calf incident, apart from Moses who was on the mountain with the Lord and Joshua who was halfway up the mountain waiting for Moses, no adult Israelite male that left Egypt entered into God’s rest. Caleb entered, but he was of Esau, not Jacob. Aaron didn’t enter. None of the men, except Joshua and Caleb, numbered in the census of the second year entered. Moses didn’t cross the Jordan but he entered into God’s rest when he entered into the presence of the Lord (see Ex 33:14).
While still camped around Mount Sinai, the people of Israel rebelled against the Lord and transgressed the covenant that had been ratified by blood (Ex 24:5–8) as a temporary or earthly thing (see Heb 9:23). That covenant was abolished through the shedding of blood (Ex 32:25–29) before the people of Israel broke camp at Sinai. It has been the second Sinai covenant (Ex chap 34) that has had significance for the second covenant is a heavenly thing—and again, it was made with Moses and with Israel, with greater Christendom following the Second Passover liberation of Israel representing the circumcised nation that repeatedly rebelled against the Lord.
When greater Christendom has been born of God and circumcised of heart, the two witnesses will represent Moses and Aaron—and greater Christendom will no more voluntarily yield to these two than Israel did to Moses and Aaron. And because of the greater Christian Church’s rebellion against the two witnesses, against God, it will be the third part of humankind that is not today Christian that enters into heaven, God’s rest, at the Second Advent.
Moses’ circumcision mentally as well as physically separated him from the Egyptians with whom he was reared. Unlike Daniel who would have been made a eunuch in Nebuchadnezzar’s court, Moses was reared as a son in the house of Pharaoh, but he became meek while herding sheep for his father-in-law—
The implied hubris of stating that I know what God has in store for humankind’s freedom must be placed in the context of me being called in a manner similar-to but less dramatic to how Paul was called—I was called through hearing an audible voice saying, It’s time to reread prophecy, on Thursday of the second full week in January 2002. A narrative account of this calling can be found in chapter two of A Philadelphia Apologetic 2010 (http://homerkizer.net/APA2010.pdf).
As in any case involving revelation, the reader will decide the truth of my claim to being called to reread prophecy by whether those things I say come to pass, not in centuries or even in decades, but within a short while. The essence of what I say is that a Second Passover liberation of Israel, now the nation circumcised of heart, will occur on the second Passover, and that on this Second Passover liberation of Israel, uncovered [by the blood of Christ Jesus] firstborns will be slain as firstborns in ancient Egypt were slain on the first Passover thirty-five hundred years ago. This slaughter of uncovered firstborns will amount to approximately a third of humankind around the world perishing suddenly, with firstborn heads of government such as President Obama dying unexplainably.
If this Second Passover liberation of Israel were to occur next year—2011—the death of uncovered firstborns would occur on or about May 19/20th, with the rebellion of Christendom [the apostasy or great falling away — 2 Thess 2:3] against God occurring on or about Sunday, December 25th, Christmas day 220 days later. This will have the opening of the sixth seal on the December solstice 2012 (approx 360 days later), and will have Satan and his angels being cast from heaven on October 31, 2014, Halloween, 1261 days from the day of the second Passover. And this timeline is interesting but is not a setting of dates; for the timeline is certain but the year on which it begins is not as certain. However, what is interesting for me is that the last time I was with my brother, Dr. Ken Kizer, was May 1971 … May 2011 will be forty years since I was with him, and Ken doesn’t have the speach impediment I have.
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