September 9, 2016 ©Homer Kizer

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John the Baptist was an apocalyptic preacher, and by Jesus going to John to be baptized, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus supported John’s message. Otherwise, not much is known about the man Jesus for the first thirty years of His life. Less is actually known than is presented in Luke’s and Matthew’s Gospels; for the factual reliability of these two Gospels must be challenged …

Again, when Matthew’s Gospel is read as a narrative about the indwelling of the glorified Christ Jesus in sons of God, with this Gospel’s crucifixion of Jesus occurring when, according to Paul’s treatise to the saints at Rome, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8), this Gospel’s post-resurrection narrative should—and does—take place after dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man; for this is when all authority in heaven and on earth will belong to the glorified Christ (Matt 28:18).

But Luke’s Gospel is problematic: it is, foremost, a redaction of the oral Gospel, about which Bishop Papias inquired of everyone who came to Hierapolis and about which we really know very little beyond what Eusebius of Caesarea quotes from Bishop Papias’ work, titled, Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, lost in the Middle Ages … that there was an oral Gospel in the 1^st-Century is logical; for the first disciples were illiterate men. Almost universally, women in the region were illiterate. So when “reading” a book amounted to listening to a person “read,” knowledge about who Jesus was; about what He did and what He said was most assuredly conveyed by word-of-mouth, meaning that spreading the good news of Christ was dependent upon one person taking what he or she knew of Jesus to another location and there telling whomever would listen what the person knew of the oral Gospel. And factual data is often not every interesting data. So probably, the longer the oral Gospel remained the primary means of spreading the good news of Christ, the farther the oral Gospel was from being factual.

John’s Gospel logically concludes with the end of chapter 20: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:30–31). So the author of John’s Gospel, writing late in the 1^st-Century, writes more to limit claims made about Christ—claims that would be unnecessary in serving as the foundation for faith; claims that might well not be factual and would eventually be found to be fabrications—as he writes to advance the good news upon which this author has staked his life.

John’s Gospel includes the account of Jesus walking on water (John 6:16–21). Mark’s Gospel contains an account of Jesus calming troubled seas (Mark 4:35–41). So once Jesus had indwelling eternal life [heavenly life], He had the power to command the “forces” governing the flow of energy in this world … if the infant Jesus would have been at birth fully God [He wasn’t], would Joseph and Mary have had any reason to fear Herod? If the infant Jesus would have been fully God [again, He wasn’t], could not this infant have caused the wind to blow Herod’s soldiers into the Sea of Galilee?

If Jesus as a small child—a toddler—were fully God, Herod would have indeed had reason to fear Him; for Herod couldn’t have killed Him … the born-again man Jesus tells Pilate, “‘You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin’” (John 19:11). Hence, those soldiers of Herod who, according to Matthew’s Gospel, went to kill the toddler Jesus but didn’t find Him, could not have killed Him if Joseph hadn’t gone to Egypt. The story of Joseph and Mary taking the child Jesus to Egypt is, and always has been, a fabrication to get the glorified Jesus “into” sinners whom the Father has drawn from this world and predestined to be glorified.

As mentioned in an earlier writing, Ebonite Christians [a naming definition employed by Bart Erdman for 1^st and 2^nd Century Christians that kept the Commandments and Jewish traditions] knew that Joseph and Mary had not taken Jesus to Egypt; knew there were more than three sets of fourteen generations between Abraham and Jesus; and rejected the first two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel … apparently endtime disciples have these first two chapters because those catholic Churches worthy to receive epistles sought to discredit conservative ideologies by providing too much information rather than withholding information. We have Luke’s Gospel for this reason, a subject for another writing.

No more should be known about Jesus during His first thirty years than is known about Obed, a concept that will take a little getting used-to. Apparently all that should be known about Jesus in His first thirty years was what Peter taught and what John Mark as Peter’s translator remembered in his Gospel—and Mark’s Gospel does not name Jesus’ mother in its opening chapters.

In his epistles where Peter feeds both lambs [1 Peter chapters 1 through 4] and sheep [2 Peter all], Peter “taught” converts and veterans about what Jesus said and did after His earthly ministry began, not a message about who Jesus was before His ministry began. So while John’s Gospel gives Jesus’ spiritual lineage—who Jesus’ Father was, the Logos, before the Logos “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil 2:6) and entered His creation as His unique Son—John’s Gospel, as in Mark’s Gospel, doesn’t name Jesus’ mother. And she should not be named; for the work of Jesus wasn’t about the man “Jesus,” but about the new man, born of spirit, that was the Firstborn Son of God the Father and the first of many brothers, all sons of God.

Boaz, Obed, and Jesse linked the judges to the kings. And in reading the “stump of Jesse,” David isn’t mentioned, nor is Josiah, both righteous kings that would have continued Jesse’s lineage beyond Jesse himself. Hence, the linguistic icons, stump of Jesse, might well symbolize Israel’s rejection of the Lord as its king during Jesse’s lifetime, Israel rejecting the sons of Samuel as judges and wanting a king to reign over the people like other peoples had.

The stump of Jesse is a curious expression; for Jesse was not a king. He was not of the priesthood; yet the Messiah is a root shoot that grows from the stump of Jesse, from “under” Jesse as an “unnatural” son of Obed.

In asking for a king, the people of Israel psychologically separated themselves from the Lord: they sought “commonness” and they got it. They wanted to be like other people of the region, and they were … archeological digs find little or no difference between Israelite and non-Israelite dwellings during the era of the judges and kings.

Apparently, the people of Israel believed that if they had a king, their neighbors would fear them; that they would no longer have to go to the Philistines to get their axes and scythes sharpened. Apparently the people believed the king would protect them from the wrath of the Lord—and in a way the king did stand between the Lord and the people. For the Lord didn’t see the king as a representative of Him. Instead, the king represented the people to the Lord; the king became the “face” of the people that the Lord saw. So the righteousness or lawlessness of the king became the righteousness or lawlessness of the people.

The glorified Christ is not today—despite what greater Christendom believes—King of king and Lord of lords. He is Israel’s High Priest. And as such, He bears the sins of Israel in the heavenly realm. He does this by “garmenting” Israel in His righteousness, thereby concealing from angels the lawlessness and thoughtlessness of infant sons of God. But at the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, this garment of grace (garment of Jesus’ righteousness) will be stripped from Christians and every Christian will be on his or her own, either covering sins by not committing any [this will be in the power and ability of every Christian] or embracing sin by taking sin back inside the Christian, thereby committing blasphemy against the spirit by figuratively splashing out some of the spirit that fills the Christian so that he or she can fit sin back inside the person.

The person who does not have the spirit of God cannot commit blasphemy against the spirit. Only the person filled with spirit can commit blasphemy.

The Adversary remains the spiritual king or prince of this world. He is the “face” of the people that God the Father sees. And his rebellion against God is the rebellion of the people in this present era.

Because the Father sees the Adversary when He looks at the people, He has turned His back to greater Christendom as the God of Abraham promised Israel He would do:

But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked;

you grew fat, stout, and sleek;

then he forsook God who made him

and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.

They stirred Him to jealousy with strange gods;

with abominations they provoked Him to anger.

They sacrificed to demons that were no gods,

to gods they had never known,

to new gods that had come recently,

whom your fathers had never dreaded.

You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you,

and you forgot the God who gave you birth.

The Lord saw it and spurned them,

because of the provocation of His sons and His daughters,

And He said, I will hide my face from them;

I will see what their end will be,

For they are a perverse generation,

children in whom is no faithfulness. (Deut 32:15–20)

indented lines are spiritual portions of couplets

 

2.

In the vision given to John the Revelator, John sees a great sign appear in heaven, this sign being “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet” … this sign can be read as Israel; for the nation of Israel brought forth the male child who will “rule all the nations with a rod of iron.”

In Revelation, things appear as they function in the plan of God: “appearance” isn’t appearance, but one of two tropes used to keep John’s vision a sealed and secret text despite it not being “sealed” (Rev 22:10) as Daniel’s visions were to be sealed until the time of the end; as Matthew’s Gospel was sealed until the end of the age … the other trope is that John was transported in vision forward in time to the end of the age when all that he sees will soon happen; when all things he sees are near in time. So John’s vision occurs but doesn’t occur late 1^st-Century CE; for John himself says that he was in spirit on the Lord’s Day, the Day of the Lord, that day when the kingdom is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man. He wasn’t physically in the Lord’s Day. Paul says about the vision he had that he doesn’t know if he was in spirit or in his fleshly body (2 Cor 12:2–3), but John knows that he wasn’t in his fleshly body but in spirit (Rev 1:10).

John’s body remained on Patmos when he was in spirit, but his living inner self wasn’t there. His inner self was transported to when the Kingdom of this world would be taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man.

Where I’m going with this is that Christendom, a long time ago, took the easy way out in refuting teachings that Jesus hadn’t come in the flesh, that He only appeared to be a fleshly man, or teachings that Jesus was only a fleshly man, that He wasn’t a divine, by asserting that Jesus when on earth was fully man and fully God. This is what most Christians believe today. In fact, not just “most” but nearly “all.”

But this isn’t what Paul taught; isn’t what any of the first disciples taught, despite the story of Jesus as a man walking on water … in this story, did Peter not also walk on water? Was Peter then, before the spirit was given, a divine? No, he was not. He was a man whose faith was greater than his knowledge of God.

My brother Ben used to listen to a theologian that regularly said Christians do not have to park their brains with their cars in the church parking lot. However, that is where the brains of most Christians remain, in hot interiors of vehicles parked in the sun, their brains spiritually fried by the Adversary whom John says deceives the whole world (Rev 12:9). And how does the Adversary deceive the whole world: by being the reigning prince of the power of the air—by blanket broadcasting his nature, his rebellion against God to all the world, to humanity as well as to beasts.

Where the prophet Isaiah discloses that the Messiah will be a root shoot growing from the stump of Jesse, Isaiah also writes that when the Messiah comes,

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 a 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 the Lord

as the water cover the sea. (Isa 11:6–9)

indented lines are spiritual portions of couplets

When dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man, the world will be baptized [submersed] in the spirit of God, with this baptism changing both the nature of humanity as well as the predatory natures of beasts—and if seemingly fixed animal natures are suddenly changed with baptism in spirit, then these “fixed natures” are not biologically governed, but produced by the indwelling of the Adversary’s nature in living creatures, with their seemingly fixed natures being changed when dominion over the kingdom is given to the Son.

It is today pointless to argue with Christians entrenched in deception: there is no effective way to convince greater Christendom that the infant Jesus was not fully God, but was a human infant, born to a human woman … He just has to be God if His Father was God, doesn’t He? But again, what does Paul teach?

To the Philippians, Paul writes,

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5–11 emphasis added)

The Logos, in entering His creation as His unique Son, did not make Himself fully God. Even if that would have been possible for Him to do—and it wasn’t—He would have defeated the reason for entering His creation. He couldn’t have served as humanity’s kinsman redeemer if He hadn’t overcome the Adversary by not succumbing to the Adversary’s broadcast of his nature, the means by which the Adversary has deceived the whole world.

Boaz, an elderly man, was not the first in line to serve as the kinsman redeemer of Ruth, but the one first in line to be the redeemer of Elimelech’s property in Moab, didn’t want to impair his inheritance (Ruth 4:6) by fathering children so Elimelech’s name wouldn’t “be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place” (v. 10).

It was Israel’s name that was in danger of being cut off when the Logos [’o Logos] entered His creation; for Herod as king was not an Israelite; Rome as Judah’s ruler was not God; and both the people of Israel and their leaders were very far from God. Although the idolatry of pre-Deportation Israel was no longer in evidence through the Pharisees having constructed a legal hedge around the Law [Torah], Sadducees and Pharisees sought righteousness with their hands, not their hearts (Rom 9:32). Neither sect realized that under the new covenant about which the prophet Jeremiah spoke, the Law would move from being written on tablets of stone to being written on tablets of flesh (Jer 31:31–34). And when the Law is inside Israel, sacrifices offered by hands do not satisfy its legal demands. All that will satisfy its demands is love for neighbor and brother equal to or greater than love for self.

Because even the pious of Judah, careful to offer the sacrifices Moses commanded, sacrifices added as busy work to keep hands occupied as time ground stony hearts into beach sand, didn’t understand what it meant to have the Torah written on hearts and placed in minds, the decree of destruction uttered by the Lord remained in force: “For though your people of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness” (Isa 10:22). The Apostle Paul cites this passage as it appears in the Septuagint: “‘Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out His sentence upon the earth fully and without delay’” (Rom 9:27–28).

And how does the Lord’s decree of destruction read? The prophet Isaiah writes of this decree:

Behold, the Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate,

and He will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants. …

The earth shall be utterly empty and utterly plundered;

for the Lord has spoken this word.

The earth mourns and withers;

the world languished and withers;

the highest people of the earth languish.

The earth lies defiled

under its inhabitants;

for they have transgressed the laws,

violated the statutes;

broken the everlasting covenant.

Therefore, a curse devours the earth,

and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;

therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are scorched,

and few men are left. (Isa 24:1, 3–6)

indented lines are spiritual portions of couplets

Greater Christendom teaches a gospel that has God, Father and Son, trying to save all of humanity … too often it is taught that Christ and Satan, as two school boys, wrestle for the souls of humanity, with the Adversary winning most of the time. This is just not the case. God, Father and Son, is not today trying to save humanity although God is concerned about all of humanity, not just Christians in Western Churches.

God the Father, the God of dead ones including angels before they received their “breath” of life, has concern for those “sons” He has figuratively raised from death by giving them spiritual life. An anointed guardian cherub used his position on the holy mountain of God to foster rebellion through “judging” the Most High and those things He did—and as long as those things the Most High did agreed with what His judges thought He should do, the rebellion went undiscovered. It was only when that guardian cherub attempted to ascend to the summit of the holy mountain, thereby attempting to enter a realm where he didn’t and had never had life, did this rebellion become known.

Speculation? Yes, but speculation based upon what the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel record, and as such, this speculation is reasonably reliable.

Once the rebellion of the anointed cherub became known, war erupted that linguistically destroyed heaven, thereby producing the need to “recreate” heaven, with New Jerusalem being at this new heaven’s core [heart].

Although only a third of the angels joined the anointed cherub in his rebellion, the remaining two parts of the angels, despite not joining in the Adversary’s rebellion, remain susceptible to rebelling …

If you don’t know to judge God; if the thought of judging God has never entered your mind; if you as a created entity, having no reason to judge God, do what you’re told, you haven’t chosen to obey God. You simply haven’t chosen to either obey or to rebel; for you could well be waiting to see if the Adversary is perhaps correct in resisting top-down governance.

An idea is extremely difficult to kill. Only when the idea has been thoroughly discredited is it even possible to “kill” it. And even then, as long as the idea is remembered, it is likely to resurface in some slightly modified form. So once iniquity [rebellion] was found in an anointed cherub, the Most High was faced with two major problems: what to do with the rebelling angels, and how to kill the premises undergirding the rebellion.

The dynamics of timeless, as I have written for a dozen years, do not permit the presence of life and the absence of life to co-exist in the same moment. Therefore, in the heavenly realm, angels have and always will have life in the moment in which they received “life.” In order for an angel to die, the angel has to be cast from that moment in which the angel received life and into a dimension that is collapsing through “the change of one moment into another or the next moment”: space-time.

The creation of life and the death of that life is possible inside space-time because of the decay of the moment and the birth of a new moment in which the entity that had life in the previous moment will not have life in the next moment … humanity is not simultaneously alive and dead. Rather, a human person has no existence prior to conception, then has life beginning at conception, lives and grows old as the flesh dies slowly, then doesn’t have life when the breath is lost.

Spiritual or heavenly conception occurs when the breath/spirit of God in the breath/spirit of Christ enters into the spirit of the person, with the “life” that comes when spiritually conceived originating in the moment in which and from which the Father and the Son have heavenly life, not in the moment when angels, created inside heaven, received life; not in the moment when Adam received the breath of life; not in the moment when the person drew his or her first breath. Therefore, from their conception, sons of God are “higher” in heaven than are angels, not a reality that brings joy to the Adversary—and because of their conception, sons of God have life in heaven even before they have a glorified body in which this life can dwell in heaven.

Now back to that “touchy narrative balance” introduced in the September 6^th End Note: the person foreknown and predestined to be glorified by God the Father; called, justified and glorified by Christ Jesus has life in the heavenly realm when spiritually conceived. And because this person has life in the heavenly realm, this person will receive a glorified body or outer wear in which to dwell in heaven, with the appearance of this outer garment not established until judgments are revealed—for a saint’s rewards, like glaze on pottery, will be added to this outer garment when the “vessel” is refired at Christ’s return.

Only a few—the Elect—are today predestined to be glorified ahead of time. The majority of humanity and almost all of greater Christendom will be raised from death and judged in the great White Throne Judgment; judged by those things they did while physically alive, with Paul writing,

For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law. For it is not the hearers of the Law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the Law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the Law, by nature do what the Law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the Law. They show that the work of the Law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:12–16 emphasis added)

But a tithe of this majority will be filled with spirit at the Second Passover liberation of a second nation of Israel, or filled with spirit when dominion is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man, thereby causing all living human persons to be spiritual virgins [that is, to be without sin], and as spiritual virgins, this tithe must retain their virginity until the Messiah comes.

That paragraph passes too quickly: it was said forty years ago that approximately 55 billion people have lived over time, with then a few more than 5.5 billion being alive. The world’s population hit 6 million a few years later, then a decade later 7 billion, and is apparently nearing 8 billion. Meanwhile many have died, and approximately 2.5 billion will perish in the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel. So with the approximations, there is roughly a tithe of all people who have lived alive today. The actual percentage may be greater than 10%, but we cannot come up with truly hard numbers so approximations are the best we can do.

During the seven endtime years of tribulation, all Christians alive after the Second Passover will be filled with spirit; all persons alive after the sixth Trumpet Plague will be filled with spirit when Satan is cast into space-time. And between these two fillings with spirit, approximately half of humanity alive before the Second Passover will be filled with spirit and will be spiritual virgins until they take sin back inside themselves. And as spiritual virgins, they only have to endure to the end to be saved, the endtime good news that greater Christendom has not proclaimed; hence the end of the age seems long overdue; seems delayed as if God doesn’t really exist.

Again, once the Second Passover occurs, all of Christendom in the Affliction [the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years], and all of living humanity in the Endurance [the last 1260 days] will be filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God, but not born of spirit. All will be called through being liberated from indwelling Sin and Death, but all will be able to take Sin back inside themselves—if they so choose—and if they choose to take sin back inside themselves, they will commit spiritual suicide. They will cease being spiritual virgins … the Elect cannot commit spiritual suicide. They are already born of spirit because they wouldn’t consider committing spiritual suicide, what the Father foreknew about them.

Yes, the Father foreknew the Elect, and because of what He knew/knows about them, He predestined them to be glorified even if they are today far from where they ought to spiritually reside. But the Elect will grow in grace and knowledge, thereby changing who they are inwardly: spiritual conception “changes” the thoughts and mindset of the foreknown and predestined person in ways that aren’t humanly explainable, only humanly experienced.

The person truly born of spirit doesn’t stay up at night studying the Bible, or lay awake thinking about how this person can change him or herself. The person truly born of spirit stays away from self-help, self-improvement quackery; rather, the true son of God will quietly go about living life as best he or she can, making decisions the person knows are right. And the act of daily choosing good and spurning evil again and again “grows” the good character that is pleasing to God, with this growth taking time to produce the mature Christian. This growth, however, doesn’t take outside counselors or even a Christian ministry.

Following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, Christians presently in Christian sects and denominations teaching that there is only one true Church and that sect or denomination—the sect or denomination they attend—will fit inside Matthew 24:8 through 12 as betrayers of their brothers in Christ.

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation [bad news] and put you to death [bad news], and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake [bad news]. And then many will fall away [bad news] and betray one another [bad news] and hate one another [bad news]. And many false prophets will arise [bad news] and lead many astray [bad news]. And because lawlessness will be increased [bad news], the love of many will grow cold [bad news].

These “Christians” will deliver their brothers in Christ to persecutors who will put them to death. Because of the Second Passover death of all uncovered firstborns, Christians will be hated because they are “Christians.” Many will quit Christ, betraying those who won’t quit—and those who do quit will inevitably follow false teachers, false prophets. There is nothing good going to happen to the faithful; for Cain slew righteous Abel. Christians who have committed spiritual suicide will murder those Christians who will not join them in the lake of fire. And this second nation of Israel will need a kinsman redeemer to raise up for this nation a son so that the name of Israel will not be cut off. That kinsman redeemer will be Christ Jesus as Prince of this world.

I’m going to quit this subject unless questions are asked. Over the past fourteen plus years, I have written many words that have said the same things: there will be a Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, with all uncovered [by the blood of Christ, the Passover sacraments taken on the Passover] firstborns suddenly perishing as the firstborn of men and beasts in Egypt perished at the midnight hour of the Passover night in the days of Moses. I went back to see how long ago I began writing about the factual problems of Matthew’s Gospel: 2011. So what remains to be said?

Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me [John] again, saying, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, “Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.” And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter. And I was told, “You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.” (Rev 10:8–11)

It might be that everything that has been said needs to be said again.

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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.”

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