Homer Kizer Ministries

October 18 2011 ©Homer Kizer
Printable, viewable format to see Greek or Hebrew characters

____________

 

Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence. It is called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year [on Yom Kipporim], and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing (which is symbolic [a parable] for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. (Heb 9:1–15 emphasis and double emphasis added)

____________

1.

The existence of the earthly temple was evidence that the way into the holy places—the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place [Holy of Holies]—was not yet open to Israel; for as long as the first section stood (it stood until 586 BCE, then until 70 CE), the temple blocked the way into the presence of God for both Israel, and for all of humankind … the preceding is a bold claim, for the Apostle Paul declared that disciples of Christ Jesus formed the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16), with the basis for this claim being that the Holy Place was a symbol or metaphor for the fleshly body of a disciple and the Most Holy Place was a metaphor for the now-living inner self—living after the disciple receives a second breath of life, the breath of the Father [pneuma Theon], thereby making the disciple a tripart living creature: pneuma (the breath of life that has come from God), psuche (the breath of life that comes from the first Adam), and soma (the fleshly body).

The flesh (again, soma) and the breath received from Adam—the breath Adam received when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into his nostrils (Gen 2:7)—together, are represented symbolically by the Holy Place where the Levitical priesthood daily performed their duties, sacrificing the daily and making sin offerings that have to be repeated for each transgression of the Law. And the visible distinction between the lifeless tent [later, temple] and the Levitical priests forms the shadow and copy of the distinction between the flesh made from the base elements of the earth and the physical inner self represented metonymically by shallow human breath [psuche]. This spiritually-dead physical inner self is most often identified in English translations of Holy Writ as the person’s soul, but the linguistic icon <soul> usually carries a connotative meaning of immortality—and this should not be. For the soul that sins shall perish in the lake of fire, not live forever in torment. According to Paul’s gospel, the person who sins without the Law (a person who is not under the Law) will perish without the Law (Rom 2:12); for it is the doers of the Law who will be justified before God (v. 13). And to perish in the lake of fire is to be no more forever; it is to cease to exist in any form.

In Paul claiming that disciples are the temple of God, the breath of God [pneuma Theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos] entering into the person’s dead inner self [psuche] resurrects the person’s inner self to life and is analogous to the Levitical high priest entering the Most Holy Place on Yom Kipporim. Thus, the person—if he or she continues in faith to walk as Jesus walked—has two breaths of life, one that activates the flesh (received from Adam) and one that activates the now-living inner self (received from the last Adam). With the indwelling of Christ Jesus in a person through the presence of the breath/spirit of Christ [again pneuma Christos], the person goes from being soma and psuche (see Matt 10:28 in Greek) as humanity was before the spirit [pneuma] was given to being tripart as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 when he desires that the holy ones are well in their pneuma, psuche, and soma.

The reason why Paul identified disciples as the temple of God was simple, but has not been well understood. For as long as the earthly temple with its Levitical priesthood stood as the shadow of copy of sons of God, the way into God’s presence was blocked … the shadow and copy had to run its course. The temple had to be razed, and the Levitical priesthood abolished before Israel could enter into the presence of God—and this is the flaw in the understanding of the first disciples. Herod’s temple wasn’t razed in 31 CE when Jesus was crucified, but almost forty years later. Therefore, either the way into God’s presence was blocked throughout these forty years, or Herod’s temple didn’t represent the temple of God and should not have been a place frequented by the Apostles.

The Apostle John said that when Jesus answered Jews in Jerusalem about why He had driven merchants and money-changers out from the temple in the first year of His ministry, Jesus declared, “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’” (John 2:19), with the temple Jesus referenced being His body, a symbol representing the Church, His Body (1 Cor 12:27).

If what the author of Hebrews writes is projected onto the Second Temple, the lifeless stone and wood building that lacked having the glory of God in its Most Holy Place—when the glory of God left Solomon’s temple, it never returned to earthly Jerusalem. It didn’t return with the remnant that came from Babylon to build for Cyrus, the Persian King of Babylon, a temple for the God of Jerusalem in Judah. The Second Temple becomes a metaphor for the Body of Christ, with the time-period between Ezra and when the glorified Jesus breathed on ten of His disciples and said, Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22) representing the Holy Place and its ministry of death, and with the time-period between when the spirit was given and when the Church died for want of the spirit seventy years later representing the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies. So disciples individually and collectively represent the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27), but as the Body of Christ, they also represent the Most Holy Place of the Second Temple. And the Second Temple had to be razed and its priesthood destroyed before construction could begin on heavenly New Jerusalem by a remnant analogous to those Jews who left earthly Babylon to build for King Cyrus a house for the God of Jerusalem.

But again, the Second Temple went from being a structure of stone and wood to being the body of Jesus and Body of Christ at Calvary. Therefore, if a person were to continue the claim of the author of Hebrews, taking the claim to its logical conclusion, the extended claim would hold as true the realization that as in the case that for as long as the earthly temple stood the way into the holy places was not open to Israel or to any peoples, the way into the Most Holy Place [the Holy of Holies] was not open to fleshly human beings for as long as the Church stood. The Christian Church blocked the way into the presence of God: humanity was prevented from entering into God’s presence by Christ Jesus, the High Priest of Israel after the order of Melchizedek, having entered this Most Holy Place but one time. No human being other than Christ Jesus could enter the heavenly Holy of Holies, and again, He entered but one time, sanctified by the shedding of His own blood at Calvary—

For as long as the Church, the Body of Christ, stood/stands no person can come into God’s presence, the reality of the Holy of Holies in the earthly temple, except Christ Jesus; hence by no other name [authority] can a person be saved (Acts 4:10–12). For flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50), cannot enter the kingdom of God, cannot look upon the face of God and live (Ex 33:20). Of humanity, only Christ Jesus—because He had come from heaven as His only Son (cf. John 1:14, 18; 3:16)—can enter into the presence of God and live. Thus, the way into the presence of God remained/remains closed to humankind until the Christian Church is utterly destroyed … but Jesus said, “‘And I tell you, you are Peter [Petros, note the position of the lips when name is uttered], and on this rock [petrah, again note the position of the lips and the movement of breath from exhalation to inhalation] I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’” (Matt 16:18).

The Church that Jesus promised to build would be based upon the movement of breath from in front of the nasal [nose] consonant as in the name <John> [You are Simon the son of John) to behind the nasal as in <Jonah> [Simon Bar-Jonah), and from exhalation (dead breath) to inhalation (living breath).

Jesus’ physical body died from loss of breath, the significance of crucifixion. His spiritual Body was built on the movement of breath from the breath that sustains physical life to receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theon] that is holy spirit [pneuma hagion], received when God the Father draws a person from this world (John 6:44, 65) and gives to the person the earnest of eternal life, the indwelling of His breath [again, pneuma Theon] in the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christos] … the English word <spirit> derives from the Latin word <spīritus>, the direct translation of the Greek word — pneuma, with spīritus meaning “breath” or the “breath of a god.” Therefore, since the Church Jesus promised to build would be constructed on receipt of the Holy Spirit, failure to give the Holy Spirit to another physical generation would result in the death of the Church when the present generation that had received the indwelling of the spirit of Christ died out physically. And who would know that the Church had died other than spirit beings? The person who never had the indwelling of the spirit of Christ wouldn’t know what he or she lacked; hence, the Church Jesus would build could die without its death being noticed by the following generation. The children of Christians who undertook no journey of faith to cleanse hearts but who continued in the practices of their parents would not be circumcised-of-heart even if they were born of spirit. Their children would then not undertake a journey of faith that led them to live as Judeans in a Roman world that despised Judaism, and the Christian Church will seem to have grown into a more perfect understanding of God when in reality, it had died spiritually and was again fully an agent of the Adversary.

But the gates of Hades didn’t prevail against Jesus’ earthly body: after three days, the Father raised Him from death. Likewise, after the third day of the “P” creation account, God will raise the spiritual Body of Christ from death by giving to this Body—the greater Christian Church—indwelling eternal life: after the third day, the Christian Church will be liberated from indwelling sin and death through being filled-with and empowered by the divine breath of God, for the gates of Hades shall not prevail against the Church Jesus built on the movement of breath from in front of the nasal to behind the nasal, from exhalation to inhalation. However, the caveat is that when the Christian Church is resurrected to life at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the Church will be utterly destroyed through the Church as the last Eve giving birth to two sons, a spiritual Abel and a spiritual Cain: the Church will cease to be, for every Christian during the next three and a half years will be of either Cain, who murders his brother, or righteous Abel, who is indeed killed by the sin that devours his brother.

The significance of what the writer of Hebrews wrote has escaped Christendom; for no Christian wants to believe that as long as the Church Jesus built stood/stands, the way to God is blocked by the Christian Church being the temple of God. No Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi—nor even a Christian—can come into God’s presence except through the indwelling of Christ Jesus, which will cause the person to be a Sabbatarian who walks as Jesus walked while He dwelt here on earth. As a result, the Christian Church that is visible in this world is a spiritually dead entity deriving from the second generation of Christians in the 1^st-Century, with the Church officially dying when the Apostle John died about the end of the century [ca 100–102 CE], seventy years after Calvary. The way was then open for non-Christians on whose hearts the works of the Law were written to come into God’s presence: Paul’s gospel was then fully implemented:

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)

All who have sinned without the Law are not under grace but will perish without the Law; for it is those who are doers of the Law that will be justified, regardless of whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, or even atheists. It is those who show love to neighbor and brother when no one is looking that will be justified before God throughout the period when the Christian Church has no indwelling life, the period between the beginning of the 2^nd-Century and early into the 16^th-Century, when the glorified Jesus as the last Elijah laid over the dead corpse of Christianity and again breathed His breath into this corpse as the first Elijah laid over the corpse of the son of the widow woman (1 Kings 17:17–24).

 

2.

The sacrifice of goats and calves made at Yom Kipporim—the Day of Atonement—covered unintentional sins, transgressions of the Law arising from ignorance or innocence, not willful transgressions … grace is the reality of the sacrifices made on Yom Kipporim; the reality that is the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness. And grace covers unintentional sins, not willful sins.

No Christian in the flesh can deliberately transgress any of the commandments and be glorified: grace covers unintentional transgressions of the commandments, transgressions that arise either from ignorance or from the weakness of the flesh. Thus, the Christian who knows that the Sabbath commandment references keeping holy the Sabbath—the seventh day of the weekly cycle—not doing the person’s work or shopping on this day, but who nonetheless conducts his or her mundane affairs on this day, deliberately transgresses the Sabbath commandment and is condemned for doing do; whereas the 11^th-Century Christian in France who had neither a Bible nor sufficient education to read Scripture but must take his instruction in Christianity from the parish priest did not and could not know that Sunday was not the Sabbath and therefore in innocence transgressed the Sabbath commandment.

With the invention of the printing press and affordable copies of Scripture, and with wider spread literacy, Christians, with few exceptions, read for themselves the commandments of God and lost their cloak of ignorance: by the 17^th-Century, most every Christian knew that the Sabbath was the seventh day, not the day-after-the-Sabbath, the day upon which the Christian consciously chose to worship God. Therefore, to prevent wholesale condemnation of Christians, the Church had to be returned to life after having been dead for more than 1200 years (closer to 1500 years). And beginning early in the 16^th-Century and as the last Elijah, Christ Jesus laid over the dead corpse of Christianity and breathed His breath into this corpse in figurative mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, pausing to rise from the corpse late in the 16^th-Century, then again late in the 20^th-Century.

What the author of Hebrews cites that’s of most significance is that the Holy Place, the front portion of the Sanctuary, the portion the priests could enter daily, formed a parable or metaphor disclosing that Israel could not enter into the presence of the Lord:

        For as long as the ministry of death stood, with its daily being the morning and evening sacrifice of a lamb, the way into the presence of the Lord was not open to the people of the Lord, and they, Israel, stood as a parable for all of humanity.

        Sabbath observance separates Israel from the remainder of humankind, thereby permitting Israel to be a separated representative that is able to be the shadow and copy of humanity;

        Therefore, the transgressions of Israel—its idolatry throughout centuries—should not surprise anyone for even after the way was opened into the Holy of Holies, the circumcised-of-heart nation of Israel [greater Christendom] rejected the way into the presence of God and chose to continue living as people of the nations far from God.

In the earthly temple was first the Holy Place, the outer portion of the Sanctuary, and second, the Most Holy Place, the Holy of Holies, with both of these two sections of the Temple forming symbols, parables, metaphors—all of these words being appropriate—for Israel prior to its Second Passover liberation:

        The period represented by the 1st day of the first month through the end of the 14^th day of the first month of the sacred year is symbolized by the earthly temple—

        The 14^th day of the first month, the Preparation Day that is the First Unleavened (from Matt 26:17), represents the entirety of the period when the way was opened into the Holy of Holies (i.e., into the presence of God) via the indwelling of the spirit of Christ;

        Thus, days 1 through 13 of the first month [Aviv] are representative of the ministry of death and its glory—the glory that the Holy Place in the temple held, with the ministry of death selecting and penning the paschal lamb on the 10^th day of the first month.

But what’s of significance is that the Holy of Holies, the second section of the earthly temple, was only entered by the high priest, and only entered one time a year … until the shadow cast by the earthly temple ends, only the high priest can enter into the presence of God. And today, Christ Jesus is Israel’s High Priest—and He has entered into the presence of God the one time that He will enter into this sacred place. Except for the high priest, none of the Levitical priesthood could enter into the Holy of Holies: likewise, except for Christ Jesus, no human son of God can enter into the presence of God until the symbol (i.e., the earthly temple and what the earthly temple and its two sections represented) is completed at the conclusion of the Preparation Day, the 14^th day.

The above will seem confusing; for Christians have been taught that they now enter into the presence of God, that Christ made it possible for them to enter into the Holy of Holies. But Christians in the 1^st-Century formed the temple of God: again, Paul identified Christians as the temple (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16) — and as has been previously explained, there are two sections to a person born of God: the fleshly body that is comparable to the Holy Place, and the living inner self comparable to the Holy of Holies, where the spirit of God [pneuma Theon] dwells in the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christos], with Christ Jesus entering this inner self one time, and one time only. And therein lies a mystery of God that has not been well understood; for the fleshly body of a Christian is analogous to ancient Israel under the ministry of death—for again, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God just as ancient Israel could not enter into the presence of God, this prohibition seen in the command not to kindle a fire on the Sabbath (Ex 35:3) and seen in the writer of Hebrews claiming that as long as the high priest of Israel made sacrifices for himself and his house and for the people of Israel, the way to God was closed to the nation.

For as long as Israel made animal sacrifices in an earthly temple on Yom Kipporim, the way into the presence of God was blocked by a curtain rent from top to bottom when Christ Jesus died. But just as surely, the way into the presence of God is blocked for the Christian by his or her earthly body—this way will remain blocked until the person is glorified upon Christ Jesus’ return from the presence of God when He comes as King of kings and Lord of lords. Until then, the Christian can only enter into the presence of God through the indwelling of Christ Jesus in the person’s living inner self. The person only has indwelling eternal life through the indwelling of the spirit of God in the spirit of Christ. If Christ Jesus were to leave the presence of God, disciples would lose indwelling eternal life.

The Christian without the indwelling of the spirit of Christ has no presence before God even though this person has professed with his or her mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believes in his or her heart that the Father raised Jesus from death—and to have the indwelling of Christ, the person must walk as Christ Jesus walked … the Christian truly born of God as a son cannot help but walk as Jesus walked. This person cannot fail to walk as Jesus walked; the person has little or no choice about walking as Jesus walked. Therefore, the Christian who doesn’t walk as an outwardly uncircumcised Judean simply has not been born of spirit.

One son of God will recognize another son of God through how the other walks, not outwardly but inwardly. Any person can keep the Sabbath, can appear to keep all of the commandments, can profess that Jesus is Lord with his or her mouth, and can fool most of humanity into believing that he or she has been born of God as a son. But these outward things, which the genuine son of God will do, only form the shadow and copy of what is in the person’s heart, which will be either deceit or love. Therefore, the wife who keeps a close friendship with a man other than her husband will be found committing adultery in her heart—if this woman were truly born of God, she could not continue the closeness of the friendship. She would sever the closeness and would keep her former friend at a distance. Likewise, the man who meddles in the affairs of others either is not born of God as is usually the case, or this man grievously hinders the maturation of the inner son of God within himself, thereby keeping the inner son a spiritual infant for far longer than should be the case. And the Christian teacher who teaches without being called by God to teach has rebellion in his or her heart, rebellion based upon the spirit of competition, a spirit that is not of God but of the Adversary. The Christian teacher who is so presumptuous as to teach without being called to do so seeks to do Christ’s job for Him and consciously or unconsciously judges Christ, determining in the person’s heart that Christ has failed in His primary responsibly of bringing many sons to glory; that without the person’s immediate assistance Christ Jesus will lose sons of God; that this person can do Christ’s job better that the glorified Jesus can do His job. This person has so little spiritual understanding that this person’s ignorance would be laughable if it were not for the spiritual damage the person does to others.

One son of God will recognize another not by whether the other keeps the commandments but by what the other does in times of stress, times of crises, times that try the souls of men; for love can be professed with the mouth and outwardly manifested in donations and support and can be false, but genuine love cannot be hidden when trials and tests strike the other person. Therefore, those Christians—Sabbatarian or otherwise—that cross to the other side of the road to avoid a person beaten by thieves or robbed by swindlers are like the priest and the Levite who passed by the half-dead fellow for whom the good Samaritan cared (Luke 10:30–36). The Christian who would permit a swindler to sit with him [or her] in a Sabbath service is a spiritual bastard, professing to be a son of God while actually being the son of the Adversary, with this analogy having relevance today within the so-called independent Churches of God in the Great Lakes region.

Returning to the analogy established by the writer of Hebrews: when idolatrous Israel made sacrifices on every high place and under every tree throughout the land, the Holy Place in the temple was neglected yet the temple stood until it was razed by the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar, the earthly king of Babylon. Then, when the temple ceased to be, the way was open for a non-Israelite earthly king to worship the Lord … “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: ‘Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah’” (Ezra 1:1–2 emphasis added).

The construction of the second temple was by command of Cyrus, the non-Israelite Persian king of Babylon (see Ezra 5:13) … Nebuchadnezzar ruled via the will of the Lord (see Dan 4:17, 32) — with the razing of Solomon’s temple, the physical way to the Lord was opened to Gentiles. Any person who did what was right and honorable before God could come to the Lord: the temple no longer hindered anyone from coming to the Lord for in Abram [Abraham] all the families of the earth were to be blessed (Gen 12:3), not just the families that had biologically descended from him.

Why was the temple razed? Because Israel had not been careful to walk in the ways of the Lord:

And I said to their children [the children of the nation that left Egypt under Moses] in the wilderness, Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor keep their rules, nor defile yourselves with their idols. I am the LORD your God; walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules, and keep my Sabbaths holy that they may be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am the LORD your God. But the children rebelled against me. They did not walk in my statutes and were not careful to obey my rules, by which, if a person does them, he shall live; they profaned my Sabbaths. "Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the wilderness. But I withheld my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I had brought them out. Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they had not obeyed my rules, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers' idols. Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am the LORD.

Therefore, son of man, speak to the house of Israel and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: In this also your fathers blasphemed me, by dealing treacherously with me. For when I had brought them into the land that I swore to give them, then wherever they saw any high hill or any leafy tree, there they offered their sacrifices and there they presented the provocation of their offering; there they sent up their pleasing aromas, and there they poured out their drink offerings. (I said to them, What is the high place to which you go? So its name is called Bamah to this day.) Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: Will you defile yourselves after the manner of your fathers and go whoring after their detestable things? When you present your gifts and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I will not be inquired of by you. (Ezek 20:18–31)

In offering sacrifices wherever Israel wished, Israel and the children of Israel made the grove[s] the equal of the temple and idols the equal of the Lord. Thus, it was only natural that Israel and its kings did what was despicable in the sight of the Lord, building and rebuilding the high places and the altars for Baal and Asherah, worshiping and serving all the host of heaven, doing more evil than the nations that Israel had driven from the land when the people of Israel had dispossessed these heaven nations that had occupied Canaan. And it was equally natural that the Lord commanded Nebuchadnezzar, His servant (Jer 25:9), to raze Jerusalem and the temple there so that the way would be open for Gentiles to worship the Lord as King Cyrus did. It was, therefore, equally natural for the Christian Church, the Body of Christ, the temple of God, to die so that the way would be open for all nations to come to the Lord.

But again, as the gates of Hades could not prevail over Jesus’ earthly body, the gates of Hades cannot prevail over His spiritual Body: the Church would be resurrected to life through the last Elijah thrice laying over and breathing His breath into the dead corpse, with these three times representing seventy weeks: seven weeks, sixty-two weeks, and one week (Dan 9:25–27) …

When the way into the presence of God again opens to Gentiles, the single kingdom of this world will have been given to the Son of Man (See Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18), and the divine breath of God will have been poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28), thereby causing the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9) to become firstborn sons of God. There will no longer be a Christian Church to block the way into the presence of God. Only the person, him or herself, can prevent the person from entering into the kingdom.

Today, Autumn 2011, the still very tiny seven named churches actually prevent Gentiles and Christians-that-live-as-Gentiles from entering into God’s presence … Sabbath observance prevents Gentiles from coming to God; professing that Jesus is Lord prevents Jews from entering into God’s presence; acknowledging that Allah/Yah died prevents Muslims from accepting the glorified Jesus as their High Priest.

Although the actual number of born-of-spirit Christians in this world is too small to have statistical significance, the existence of merely ten such Christians would be enough to prevent Gentiles and Christian-Gentiles from coming before the Lord. So until the last Eve gives birth to two sons, spiritual Abel and spiritual Cain, thus fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy—“‘Before she was in labor she gave birth; before her pain came upon her she delivered a son. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment? For as soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth her children’” (Isa 66:7–8)—the Christian Church is fully represented by the fruiting spurs that will bring forth the seven named churches of Revelation chapters 2 & 3 when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man.

*

This Commentary will be continued.

*

"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."

---