Sanctuary Cities - Commentary From the Margins

September 19, 2015 ©Homer Kizer

Printable/viewable PDF format to display Greek or Hebrew characters

Commentary — From the Margins

Sanctuary Cities

____________

The cities that you give to the Levites shall be the six cities of refuge, where you shall permit the manslayer to flee … and [YHWH] spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall select cities to be cities of refuge for you, that the manslayer who kills any person without intent may flee there. The cities shall be for you a refuge from the avenger, that the manslayer may not die until he stands before the congregation for judgment. … The avenger of blood shall himself put the murderer to death; when he meets him, he shall put him to death. … But if he [the manslayer] pushed him [the man who died] suddenly without enmity, or hurled anything on him without lying in wait or used a stone that could cause death, and without seeing him dropped it on him, so that he died, though he was not his enemy and did not seek his harm, then the congregation shall judge between the manslayer and the avenger of blood, in accordance with these rules. (Num 35:6, 9–12, 19, 22–24)

____________

“Cities of refuge” translates backwards as ancient sanctuary cities: historically—before personal injury lawyers and legal codes supporting incarceration for negligence—the unintentional death of a family member, usually caused by the negligence of another person, required that the family avenge this negligence through one of its members taking the life of the negligent person. But if the negligent person immediately fled to a city of refuge, city officials there would protect the negligent person until the matter could be heard by those who had the wisdom and authority to judge the matter. And if in determining that the negligent person bore no ill will toward the one whom this person killed; if the death resulted from an accident, the city became a place of refuge for the negligent person until the death of the high priest, when the negligent person could return to the person’s own land. In essence, life in the city of refuge served as work release for the negligent person, with the length of sentence being the remaining tenure of the high priest. Therefore, a sanctuary city was an open jail, very much like life today in this world; life that has all of humanity consigned to disobedience and as a result, sentenced to death since the days of Noah when the world was baptized by water into death.

The parallel is accurate and the concept defines human life in the present ongoing demonstration of transactional economies and self-governance, a demonstration of what the Adversary advocates, but a demonstration permitted by God.

Christendom’s High Priest is the glorified Christ Jesus, but Christ will not serve as Christendom’s High Priest forever. Rather, He serves as High Priest for as long as He bears the sins of His younger sons in the heavenly realm. He will serve as High Priest until the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, the nation that will be circumcised of heart; the nation that will be filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God [pneuma Theou], thereby liberating all of greater Christendom from indwelling sin and death. Therefore the mirror image of the high priest of physical Israel dying becomes the reality of the High Priest of spiritual Israel [the glorified Christ] moving out of the High Priest’s office to become King of kings and Lord of lords when dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18) halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation. And physical exit from a city of refuge following the death of the high priest becomes glorification of the human son of God’s outer self, a reality that occurs after Christ Jesus receives dominion over the kingdom of this world.

So ancient Israel’s cities of refuge are typologically linked to both Christendom in this present age, and to glorification of sons of God at the Second Advent, when the human son of God can escape the confines of space-time.

A problem with using analogies is now seen in the preexistence of the negligent Israelite, this preexistence suggesting preexistence of souls prior to human birth and consignment of all humanity to disobedience and by extension, death; for human persons are not born with immortal souls that need regenerated, but with non-living souls that need resurrected from death through a second birth, this second birth being receipt of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], the vessel that is able to hold the glory of God in a human person. Thus, to be born of spirit is to have the indwelling of Christ in the person. And it is the quality of heavenly timelessness that permits the non-physical human soul to preexist human conception and birth and thereby approximate a negligent Israelite in the Promised Land. It is timelessness that permits God to say that He knew a person from the foundation of the kosmos; for in the heavenly realm, it is the same unchanging moment today as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow—and this is what human persons have difficulty imagining. Hence, the birth of the inner self and the glorification of the inner self occurs in the same heavenly moment. This is what early Greek philosophers converted to Christianity wrestled into “Christians being born with immortal souls,” which simply isn’t the case. These Greek converts couldn’t sustain thought outside of space-time. Their thoughts were as salmon jumping to break up roe seines as they enter spawning creeks: their thoughts were outside of time, then back in time, staying in time for a while before again jumping outside of time to quickly fall back into space-time. Simply put, they were without understanding for they never truly heard the “word” of Christ Jesus.

The present demonstration of transactional economies and self-governance that is being permitted by the Most High God is for both angelic and human sons of God to see how social organizations based on self-interests will differ from future social organizations based on love for neighbor and brother. Therefore, so as not to skew the results of this present demonstration, God has diligently kept out of human affairs to such a degree that many intelligent individuals no longer believe that any God truly exists, with Nietzsche’s formal pronouncement that the concept of deity is dead coming more than a century ago: Gott ist tot, 1882.

From God’s perspective, why set up a demonstration to prove a theorem and then fudge the demonstration by changing its parameters as the demonstration proceeds? That would make no sense to a human person, and would make even less sense to a deity. Therefore, the question of why did God let little Tommy die when God is all-powerful—the question used to support unbelief—that has perpetually troubled would-be Christians originates in misunderstanding of what God is presently doing inside the creation, a glorious death chamber in which rebelling angels will come to their end. For the possibilities presented by having a death chamber held together by the four known forces allows for creation of finite beings to show all angels what would happen if the ideas/concepts advocated by the Adversary were to be implemented in the heavenly realm … heaven itself would be destroyed.

But the finite beings used to approximate angelic sons of God in this demonstration have to be given self-awareness and mental abilities that also approximate those of angelic sons of God, created to be servants. Thus, all of humanity have been created in the phylum of servants, in the sub-phylum of human servants, in the restricted class of imprisoned human servants, meaning that human persons are not free to come and go as they please but are confined inside of space-time, with their thoughts imprisoned by physical existence … think a thought that isn’t in words, signifiers used to name the things of this kosmos. Think a thought that isn’t defined by words. How about so-called gut feelings? Are gut feelings defined by words? No, they are not, but they are also not really expressible as thoughts. They are feelings. And once these feeling are expressed in words, these feelings are defined by those words and are no longer whimsical or dire. They have been trapped inside the creation.

Christians certainly do not think of their active, vibrant “life” as being work release for the inner self that is dead and has been sentenced to death …

Generally, Christians don’t think. Oh, they believe that humanity is humanly born with an immortal soul that needs regenerated, a belief without scriptural support. Yes, there is a spirit of man that causes a human person to know the things of men, with Paul writing,

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him"—these things God has revealed to us through spirit. For the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God [that is in Him]. (1 Cor 2:1–11 emphasis added)

The last clause in the above citation has been added but is implied by the parallelism between the Paul’s use of “the spirit of man” [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] “that is in him” and “the spirit of the God” [to pneuma tou Theou] that will also be in God and that descended upon and entered into the man Jesus (Mark 1:10) in the bodily form of a dove when John raised Jesus from the waters of the Jordan.

Consider human procreation: the spirit of the man that allows a human person to know the things of humanity in narrative entered into the first Adam when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud, and <mud> became living flesh, unable by itself to reproduce itself but able to sustain life and self-awareness through the dark fire of cellular oxidation. In order for Adam to reproduce himself, Elohim caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam and took from Adam—in narrative—flesh from the side of Adam and a rib and from this living flesh [having in it the “breath” of life Elohim breathed into Adam’s nostrils], Elohim created Eve, the mother of all living persons. Now, did this actually happen … it need not have happened for the narrative functions prophetically to disclose the narrative of the man Jesus’ spiritual birth from the breath of God entering into the man Jesus (Mark 1:10), and then the creation of the Body of Christ that is the ekklesia Matthew’s Jesus said He would build (Matt 16:18) from Jesus breathing on ten of His first disciples, saying afterwards, Receive spirit holy (John 20:22). It was then, the day of the Wave Sheaf Offering as Sadducees reckoned when this offering was to be made, that the Holy Spirit was given to human sons of God fathered by the man of mud … Jesus’ Father was the Logos, Yah, the God of Abraham, before the spirit or breath of God descended upon and entered into [eis] Jesus when John raised Him from the waters of the Jordan.

The Jordan River represented the boundary of the Promised Land as this Promised Land represented God’s rest, both Sabbath observance and entering into heaven. Thus, in symbolism, for the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev [when he was Russia’s third President] to baptize himself by three times pouring water upon his head while squatting on the Kingdom of Jordan’s side of the Jordan River, never entering or crossing the Jordan, will have the Prime Minister NOT entering into God’s rest, but simply getting wet. Medvedev needed to figuratively cross the Jordan by entering into Sabbath observance; by keeping the Sabbath as a Christian convert.

Thus, for John and his disciples to baptize in the Jordan was for John to bring repentant sinners to the edge of entering into God’s rest, the spiritual Promised Land, with the baptized person then coming out of the water to walk in this world as an observant Judean … Medvedev walked to the edge of the Jordan, dipped water from this boundary stream, then returned the way he came, back into the carnality of this world.

The physical reveals the spiritual through producing a dark fractal of the living reality … in the physical type of the spiritual reality, God could not directly create human persons; for the indwelling of His breath, His glory [the bright fire of His glory] would have utterly consumed the created entity. An intermediary was needed, with the God of Abraham being this intermediary—and here is where problems enter the analogy for rabbinical Judaism, for Islam, and for most of greater Christendom, all of which believe that the God of Abraham was the most High God; believe that the Creator of all things physical was the Most High God. And this is not the case as Paul states, as John states, as the author of Matthew’s Gospel has His Jesus state. However, the author of Luke’s Gospel and of Acts has the Creator of all things physical being the one who raised Jesus from death.

Compare the following passages:

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 emptied Himself, by 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)

In arche [primacy] was the Word [’o Logos], and the Word was with the God, and the Word was God. He was in arche pros ton Theon [in primacy with God]. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from Theou, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–14 emphasis added)

Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.' Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed; and of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead." Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, "We will hear you again about this." So Paul went out from their midst. (Acts 17:22–33 emphasis added)

The author of Acts, with the book of Acts being a Second Sophist novel, has the God who created the kosmos and all that is in it being the God who raised the man Jesus from death … this is proto-Arianism, and as such this disagrees with Paul’s Gospel (Rom 2:11–16), with John’s Gospel, and it can be said with certainty that the Apostle Paul never said the words the author of Acts ascribes to him.

Acts is an historically based fiction, and as such should never be used to establish doctrine … fictional accounts—2nd-Century novels such as The Acts of Paul and Thecla—are known, novels in which the Apostle Paul would not have recognized himself. And this is the case when it comes to Acts: Paul would never have said that the God who created all things raised Himself from the dead. It was the Father whose spirit [pneuma Theou] descended upon the man Jesus when John raised Jesus from the waters of the Jordan. It was the voice of the Father that said to Jesus, You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased (Mark 1:11) …

Matthew’s Gospel has the voice of the Father speaking different words, not speaking to Jesus but speaking to John the Baptist: This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased (Matt 3:17).

The Ancient of Days—the Most High God that is the Host of the heavens—was really unknown to ancient Israel, appearing in Daniel’s vision of the first year of Belshazzar (Dan chap 7); in David’s latter psalms; and in Matthew’s Gospel when Matthew’s Jesus tells His disciples,

You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered” [from Zech 13:7]. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." (Matt 26:31–32)

Otherwise, the Father is present in the Tetragrammaton <YHWH>, and is present in the regular plural <Elohim>, but is invisible to natural Israel, and therefore unknown to Israel.

Jesus identifies Himself as the man who stands beside the Lord of hosts, the shepherd who will be struck. This identification separates the Shepherd from the Lord of hosts, thus confirming the duality of deity that exists in John’s Gospel. For it wasn’t the Host of heaven that entered His creation as His unique Son (John 3;16). Rather, it was the God of Abraham that entered His creation as the man Jesus of Nazareth.

About this unknown God, Jesus in John’s Gospel said,

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 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 they have kept your word. … 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. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:1–6, 22–26)

The world didn’t then know and does not today know the Father, whom Jesus came to reveal not to everyone but to His disciples whom the Father has drawn from this world and delivered to Christ Jesus (John 6:44). Rabbinical Judaism doesn’t know the Father. Islam doesn’t know the Father. And greater Christendom worships a distortion of the Father.

But it is the realization that the conversion or calling of the holy ones at Corinth didn’t come via preaching the good news that Jesus had/has overcome death, but came by way of these holy ones observing “demonstrations of spirit and of power”—of seeing the work of God as manifested in miracles: “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works. For in what were you less favored than the rest of the churches, except that I myself did not burden you?” (2 Cor 12:12–13 emphasis added).

I was called to reread prophecy, not to go forth as an apostle, nor as an evangelist, nor as a pastor … I wasn’t called to hold the hands of the grieving or to say smooth words, but to do the workman-like task of rereading previously sealed and kept secret prophecies, with the entirety of Scripture functioning as the shadow and copy of the heavenly Book of Life in which the lives of holy ones serve as epistles. Hence, all of Scripture is prophetic.

I was called to be the mirror-image of a prophet in that I assign meaning to divine words given long ago by the early and latter prophets. Thus, the person who receives me because the person “believes” what I write, what I proclaim—the person who receives me by supporting or having supported the work I do—receives my reward, that of a prophet (see Matt 10:41), a reality I will not deny; for I, like the holy ones at Corinth, have seen mighty works of spirit. My faith isn’t based on having heard clever rhetoric. But like the faith of the saints at Corinth, my faith is based upon seeing the evidence of a coexisting supra-dimensional realm into which flesh and blood cannot enter.

As there is a spirit of man in every human person—a spirit that animates the fleshly body and that causes a human person to know the things pertaining to humanity—there is a spirit of God [again, pneuma Theou] that causes God to know the things of God, and it is this spirit of God that descended and entered into the man Jesus, thereby giving to Jesus a second spirit, a second breath of life [used metonymically], thus permitting the man Jesus to know the things of God in addition to the things of man.

The spirit of God entered into the spirit of Jesus the man in the reality foreshadowed by a man entering his wife for purposes of procreation. Hence, human sons of God, born of spirit through the indwelling of Christ, a life-giving spirit [pneuma], have one Father: “Jesus said to [Mary Magdalene], ‘Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, “‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”’” (John 20:17 emphasis added). Jesus’ instruction to Mary Magdalene will have every human son of God having the same Father as Jesus has, thereby making every human son of God a younger brother of Christ Jesus (Rom 8:29), the life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45) that serves spiritually as Eve served humanity.

Again, spiritual birth [to be truly born of spirit] comes via the spirit of God entering into the spirit of the person. However, the “bright fire” that is the glory of God would utterly consume the human person without the spirit of God being held in a “vessel” that has also come from heaven, with this “vessel” being the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou]. Hence, a human person is born of spirit through the indwelling of the spirit of Christ in which dwells the spirit of God in a manner analogous to the breath of Elohim that God breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud (Gen 2:7) representing the breath of life that gives life to every human person … one breath given one time but passed along through Eve, the mother of the living, so that every person who has lived and who is living and who will live has the same breath of life, the breath Elohim breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud.

An African has the same breath of life that I do; a Chinese person has the same breath of life as I do; an Aborigine has the same breath; every person has the same breath, including the physical man Jesus who was the first to be born again, first to be born a second time, first to be born from above, first to be born of spirit … Jesus is the bridge between heaven and earth. It is the indwelling Christ—the spirit of Christ in which resides the spirit of God—that permits the spiritually lifeless [as in “dead”] inner selves of humanity to be born of spirit and thereby escape death; escape from space-time.

No human person is born with an immoral soul, but with a spiritually dead soul [psuche] that must be raised from death—raised to life—in a resurrection like that of Christ Jesus. Therefore, the person who has not been born of spirit isn’t merely sentenced to spiritual death, but is spiritually dead through never having had indwelling spiritual life. So the person not born of spirit can only have physical life that will come to an end in physical death; hence, the person not born of spirit can indeed be compared to a negligent person confined to a city of refuge until the death of the high priest, with Christ Jesus being Christendom’s High Priest and with Christ ending His role as High Priest at the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, the greater Christian Church.

So while Christians not yet born of spirit—a person knows whether he or she is born of spirit by whether the Law [Torah] is written on the person’s heart and placed in the person’s mind so that the person knows God and is thereby taught by God—will profess that Jesus is Lord and will believe that the Father raised Jesus from death, but this professing and believing Christian will not keep the Law as most often evidenced by the day on which the Christian attempts to enter into God’s presence.

Situations change: the body of Christ Jesus that died at Calvary becomes the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27) that died with the physical death of John (ca 100–102 CE). The nation of Israel that left Egypt was replaced virtually man for man by the nation formed by the children of Israel—and the nation of Israel represented by the children of Israel has been and will be replaced by the ekklesia of Christ Jesus, with the 1^st-Century ekklesia passing from life to death only to be resurrected back to life in the 21^st-Century as the physical nation of Israel went into captivity, conquered by Assyria [the kingdom of Samaria] and then by Babylon [the kingdom of Jerusalem], with only a remnant of Israel returning to the Land beyond the River under Cyrus’ decree … when using a nation or a people with only one indwelling breath of life to represent a twice-born ekklesia [a nation that has two breaths of life], slavery as in Egypt or captivity as in Babylon serves as representation of the dead inner self. Thus, in the dark fractal of a living reality, those times when Israel was not a free people corresponds to when the ekklesia was without life. And this becomes significant for prior to the Passover liberation of Israel from slavery in Egypt, only Moses was not a slave even though he had been born as a slave. Hence, in Moses is represented the ekklesia in this present era, with greater Christendom being represented by enslaved Israel, with the majority of Christians enslaved by sin and death and thus in need of liberation at the Second Passover.

John’s Jesus told those seeking His life that if they heard His word [logos] and believed the One who sent Him, they would pass from death to life without coming under judgment (John 5:24) … does the lawless Christian really believe the logos [the word] of Jesus that He left with His disciples (John 12:47–48)? The seemingly obvious answer is, No! But often, the answer is, yes: the Christian believes what the Christian has been taught about Jesus. The fault lays with those who teach or pastor the willing disciple. Therefore, Matthew’s Jesus says,

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt 7:21–23)

Eternal life only comes to the person in whom the spirit of Christ resides; therefore, the worker of iniquity that is denied by Christ Jesus will utterly perish in the lake of fire. So it really doesn’t matter what mighty works a disciple does if the disciple doesn’t also do the will of the Father, with the Apostle Paul writing,

For God shows no partiality. 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 2:11–16)

How is a person to escape judgment if the person doesn’t hear the word/logos of Jesus and believe the one who sent Him into this world? For according to John’s Jesus, it is the one who hears His logos and believes the One who sent Him into that world that passes from death to life without coming under judgment (again, John 5:24).

Sabbath observance is spiritually analogous to entering into God’s rest. As such, the Christian who ignores the Sabbath and worships God on the day after the Sabbath [Sunday] transgresses the Law and reveals to God and angels that he or she doesn’t know God and doesn’t have the Law written on the Christian’s heart and placed in the Christian’s mind. This Christian is as Israelites were that didn’t enter into God’s rest [the Promised Land] when the promise of entering stood.

Medvedev needs to be rebaptized, and needs this time to begin keeping the Sabbath.

This Commentary has grown long and needs to be broken here, with the second section to follow.

* * *

Homer Kizer Ministries