November 3, 2013 ©Homer Kizer
Commentary — From the Margins
An Infallible Text
[Part Three]
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4.
Following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, every self-identified Christian will be without sin through being filled with spirit, with their redemption price being paid by uncovered firstborns, not by Christ Jesus who will no longer bear the sins of Israel, the nation circumcised of heart.
All firstborns belong to the Lord—and because firstborns belong to the Lord, whatever the Lord does with them is His prerogative, especially if these firstborns have not been redeemed. In ancient Israel, parents were to redeem their firstborn son according to Moses (Ex 13:2, 13), but the redemption of firstborn sons as opposed to all firstborns (male or female) formed a shadow and type of the redemption of indwelling sons of God once the spirit was given, with these inner firstborn sons of God redeemed by the Passover sacrifice of Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God.
When the inner self [soul or psuche] of a human person, male or female, receives spiritual “life” via receipt of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], the last Adam, the inner self has been born-from-above in a manner analogous to how the first Eve received physical life from the first Adam, but with a caveat: the now spiritually living inner self is a son of God, part of the harvest of divine firstfruits of which Christ Jesus was First. As such, the now living inner self is a firstborn son of God, with “son” used in a gender neutral form as angels are “sons” of God because they have no parent but God.
The inner firstborn son of God is redeemed by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, but redeemed annually through taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the night that Jesus was betrayed, the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month, the month that begins with the first sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox (not with the first full moon following the equinox). Thus, the inner firstborn son of God is redeemed via one sacrifice, but with this sacrifice occurring while the person was still a sinner (Rom 5:8)—and still is a sinner (1 John 1:8), the reason for the annual renewal of the redeeming sacrifice until the Second Passover liberation of Israel when the Lamb of God shall no longer bear the sins of Israel.
Grace is the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness, a garment with which the firstborn son of God is to clothe himself until the Second Passover liberation of Israel when every self-identified Christian will be filled with spirit … being filled with spirit is not being born of spirit. The two applications of “spirit” are not synonymous: the person filled with spirit can still have a dead (spiritually lifeless) inner self even though sin and death no longer dwell within the person’s fleshly body; whereas the inner self that has been born of spirit can reside in a fleshly body in which sin and death remain, thereby producing the situation that the Apostle Paul didn’t understand but observed in himself (Rom 7:15, 20–25).
When the Christian either born of spirit or not so-born is filled with spirit at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, sin and death will no longer remain within the fleshly body of the Christian. Sin and Death will be separated; for the fleshly body will remain mortal, subject to death from outside the body (not from inside the body), but Sin [unbelief leading to transgression of the Law] will have no dwelling space within the fleshly body of the person unless the person commits blasphemy against the spirit by returning to Sin and willingly transgressing the Law after the Law has been written on hearts and placed in minds so that all Christians know the Lord …
Why would a Christian, knowing the Lord and having the Commandments written on the person’s heart, be found guilty of “unbelief” as the nation of Israel numbered in the census of the second year—why didn’t Moses take a census of Israel the first year?—was found guilty of unbelief when the spies returned from the Promised Land. In a psalm, the poet wrote,
Oh come, let us sing to [YHWH];
let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation!
Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to Him with songs of praise!
For [YHWH] is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In His hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are His also.
The sea is His, for He made it,
and His hands formed the dry land.
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before [YHWH], our Maker!
For He is our God,
and we are the people of His pasture,
and the sheep of his Hand.
Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put Me to the test
and put Me to the proof, though they had seen My work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, "They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known My ways."
Therefore I swore in My wrath,
"They shall not enter My rest." (Ps 95:1–11)
Psalm 95 is written in Hebrew style, that is in thought-couplets, with the first presentation of a thought being physical [earthly] as in, Oh come, let us sing to [YHWH], and the second presentation of the same thought being spiritual [godly] as in, let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation! And in true Hebrew style, the narration of the thought-couplets changes from being delivered by a man (vv. 1–7) to being delivered by the Lord (vv 8–11).
Bishop Papias (70–140 CE) of Hierapolis near Colossae (see Col 4:13) and a contemporary of Polycarp (69–155 CE) apparently wrote [little of his writings have survived except as quotes in the works of others] that Matthew’s Gospel was composed in Hebrew style unlike Mark’s Gospel that was (Papias quoting John the Elder) an amalgamated presentation of Peter’s sermons, with details not in order for Peter used to teach according to cheias, a type of anecdote Peter used to clarify meaning. And while controversy has arisen about what Papias meant by the expression <Hebrew style> as opposed to Hebrew language, those involved in these contentions have never recognized the Hebrew style of Hebraic poetics in which the physical and spiritual form enantiomorphs, non-symmetrical mirror images of one another as the left hand is the mirror image of the right hand.
When seen in the polarized light of God, the chirality of <In His hand are the depths of the earth> and <the heights of the mountains are His also> followed by <The sea is His, for He made it> and <His hands formed the dry land> forms doubled thought-couplets, with the first line of each couplet being reflected in the second line, and with the first couplet forming the physical type of the second couplet that borrows from the Genesis “P” creation account, the creation account that forms the abstract of the creation of God the Father.
The Hebrew style is based on chirality, which will in narratives necessitate the inclusion of motifs that pertain to the outer self followed by motifs that pertain to the inner self, with a spiritual motif that seemingly pertains only to the inner self having had an unrecorded or unknown physical shadow of the spiritual motif occurring to the outer self. This means that since the shadow of a spiritual motif has to exist, a lost or never recorded shadow can be “recreated” without the shadow having been fictionally fabricated, the essence of the modern creative non-fiction genre.
The Christian who reads Scripture literally is of a weak wit and little faith …
Eusebius thought Papias ignorant, a man of small mental capacity who mistook or misread the figurative language of apostolic traditions (probably because Papias held to the doctrine of a millennial reign of Christ here on earth), but it was Eusebius who had departed from the Lord. It was Eusebius who supported the Emperor, the shadow and copy of the spiritual king of Babylon. It was Eusebius who went along with formally abandoning Passover observance, thereby burying the dead Body of Christ (ca 325 CE). And it was Eusebius who in his writings quoted no comedy, no tragedy, no lyrical poetry, but nevertheless referenced Plato and other later philosophical works from Middle Platonists—
Apparently in his millennialism, Papias understood that the six days of creation (the “P” creation account) and the account of Adam, then of Adam and Eve in the Garden mythically pertained to Christ and the Church, His Body, an understanding that has reappeared in the 21st-Century … it took a seemingly unreasonable length of time for an understanding that Papias had—his understanding coming from him questioning followers of the Presbyters about unwritten oral sayings [logia] attributed by tradition to Christ Jesus, the Apostles, and their disciples—to resurface in the endtime Sabbatarian Church.
No matter how much we of Philadelphia think we know, we are still as children to the holy ones of the 1st-Century. We are as Samuel was when “Samuel said to all the house of Israel, ‘If you are returning to [YHWH] with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to [YHWH] and serve Him only, and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines’” (1 Sam 7:3) … “The cities that the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron to Gath, and Israel delivered their territory from the hand of the Philistines. There was peace also between Israel and the Amorites” (v.14).
As the recovery of the territory of Israel began with Samuel but was never completed although Israel expanded to its greatest size near the end of the reign of King David, the recovery of knowledge has begun but will never be completed although circumcised-of-heart Israel will expand its borders to their greatest size [have the most knowledge Israel will ever possess] at the end of the Endurance of Jesus, the last 1260 days before Christ Jesus returns as the Messiah. So there remains a long ways to go before we as endtime Christians arrive where the author of Matthew’s Gospel was when he wrote in Hebrew style, crafting shadows that then didn’t exist into narrative accounts that are neither factual nor fictional but that are necessary to produce chirality. And returning to the concept of a fallen tree encountered in a forest: because the tree lays on the ground, the tree has to have been toppled for some reason. The toppling of the tree can, therefore, be described because the toppling has to have occurred. If the description isn’t perfect, sobeit; for the description of the tree falling only gets the person to the reality of the downed tree. The person who will make lumber from the tree really doesn’t need to know exactly how the tree fell, only that the tree has fallen and is available to be sawn and made into boards that will in turn be made into a house. To focus on how the tree fell is to miss the mark … the object of the game of chess isn’t the capture of pieces, but checkmating the opponent’s king. The object of Christianity is salvation, not textual criticism. And for salvation, the person foreknown by God, predestined, called, justified, and glorified will walk in this world as Jesus, an observant Jew, walked—and will do so because of the indwelling of Christ Jesus. Therefore, textual criticism is interesting as is a knight-fork in a chess match, but that’s all textual criticism is, interesting, a roadhouse on the way to salvation, someplace to weather out a storm before moving on.
And in moving on, it must be understood that Calvary paid the ransom price for the Elect, not for filled-with-spirit Christians in the Affliction … the third part of surviving humanity that is slain in the Second Woe (Rev 9:13–21) will pay with their lives the redemption price for the third part of pre-Second Passover humanity, this third part prophetically seen in Zechariah 13:9 where after trials they will call upon the name of the Lord when Christ Jesus returns as Israel’s Messiah.
Today, the “house” in which a firstborn son of God dwells is the fleshly body of the truly born-of-spirit Christian, and this fleshly body is to annually cover the indwelling firstborn son of God through partaking of the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the night when Jesus was betrayed, the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month, with this first month beginning with the first sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox (with the resurrection of Christ Jesus on the 18th day of the first month—April 29th Julian in year 31 of the Common Era—establishing when the first month is to begin).
All “uncovered” or unredeemed firstborns can be used as collateral by the Lord to “purchase” slaves [bondservants] of the Adversary from the Adversary who remains the prince of this world and will remain so until dominion over the earth is taken from him and given to the Son of Man halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation …
Again, for pedagogical reasons, permit me to repeat myself: the sacrifice of Christ Jesus at Calvary paid the redemption price for the Elect, those Christians truly born of spirit in this present era, the figurative oil and wine that Sin, the third horseman (Rev 6:5–6), cannot harm. But the rest of humanity in the 1st-Century as well as today remains as either bondservants or ideological sons of the Adversary. They are “owned” by the Adversary through the Adversary continuing to be the prince of the power of the air: they are truly sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), with the vast majority of Christendom demonstrating that they continue as sons of disobedience through the dogmas to which they adhere.
At the midnight hour of the one long spiritual night that began with Calvary—the midnight hour when humanity can get no farther from God but must begin to return to God—death angels will against pass over all the land, slaying unredeemed firstborns, human and spiritual sons of God both here on earth and in the Abyss. These slain firstborns will pay the redemption price for all who professed that Jesus is Lord and believe that the Father raised Jesus from death, again on earth and in the Abyss. And greater Christendom shall be redeemed from indwelling sin and death through being filled with the spirit or breath of God [pneuma Theou].
Once redeemed, every Christian within greater Christendom will be without indwelling sin and will be as such an acceptable sacrifice as the man Jesus was without indwelling sin and was an acceptable sacrifice when He took upon Himself judgment through baptism.
But following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the vast majority of Christians—then under the New Covenant, with the Law written on their hearts and placed in their minds so that all know the Lord—will commit blasphemy against the spirit of God through returning to their former lawless ways; will transgress the Law by neglecting the Sabbath and attempting to enter into God’s Rest on the following day as Israel did in the Wilderness of Paran (Num chap 14).
Following the Second Passover, the Christian who worships on Sunday and keeps Christmas will mock the Lord, therefore sealing his or her condemnation. Once Christians are filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God they are without excuse and without any covering but their obedience. They will not be under grace; they will not be covered by Christ Jesus’ righteousness. If they were covered by grace or still covered by absence of the spirit, there would have been no need for the sudden slaying of unredeemed firstborns.
The prophet Isaiah wrote,
For I am [YHWH] your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you,
I give men in return for you,
peoples in exchange for your life. (Isa 43:3–4)
In reading Hebraic thought-couplets, the physical precedes the spiritual: at the first Passover the Lord gave Egypt as Israel’s ransom: Egypt, Cush, and Seba. But because Israel [now the spiritual nation, or the nation to be circumcised of heart] is precious in the eyes of the Lord, Israel’s Savior, the verb tense changes and the Lord gives or will give the lives of men in exchange for the lives of Israel …
Christians within lawless Christendom are precious to the Lord, the mirror image of what the Apostle Paul wrote concerning his people Israel (see Romans chap 11)—
Endtime Christendom and 1st-Century CE Judaism form enantiomorphs, with the remnant of Judaism about which Paul wrote being saved by grace, not works:
So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, (Rom 11:5–7 double emphasis added)
In a mirror image, grace and works are reversed: following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, a remnant of spirit-filled Christendom will be saved by their obedience, with their “obedience to God” replacing “the daily” [daily sacrifice] of ancient Israel that was superseded by grace, the garment or covering of Christ Jesus’ righteousness.
Christian pastors will jump up and down, throw temper tantrums, and insist that salvation will be by grace not works in the Affliction … they will have New Testament Scripture on their side just as the Circumcision Faction in Paul’s day had Scripture on its side—and they will be as wrong in the 21st-Century as were those of the Circumcision Faction in the 1st-Century.
Yes, indeed, if liberated Christians return to their former lawless ways post Second Passover, there will no sacrifice available for them other than their own lives, with being filled with spirit not equating to being born of spirit. They will be as Adam was in the Garden when Adam ate forbidden fruit: they will be driven from God’s presence through a great delusion coming over them because they did not love the truth.
The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thess 2:9–12 double emphasis added)
As there was a remnant of Israel in the 1st-Century that would be saved by grace, there will be a remnant of Christendom in the 21st-Century saved by keeping the commandments and having the spirit of prophesy (cf. Rev 12:17; 19:10). … Spiritually, it wasn’t the 2nd-Century that followed the 1st-Century, but the 21st-Century, with the sacking and razing of Herod’s temple in 70 CE immediately preceding the razing of the spiritual temple that is the Christian Church. Thus, forty years after Calvary [71 CE], the spirit was no longer given. Those disciples who had already been born of spirit would continue to live physically, but no more would be born because of the lawless that was already at work within the Jesus Movement, with Paul a decade earlier writing, “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only He who now restrains it will do so until He is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming” (2 Thess 2:7–8).
It has been Christ Jesus who has restrained the mystery of lawlessness through covering the Elect with His righteousness so that the Elect pass from death to life without coming into judgment. And He will continue to do so until the Passover of the year of the Second Passover liberation of Israel … the significance of the Passover preceding the Second Passover liberation of Israel (on the second Passover) is that grace ends with the coming of Unleavened Bread, with those who take the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed covering their indwelling firstborn son of God with the garment of Christ’s righteousness until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, but with those Christians born of spirit who do not take the Passover on this night neglecting to cover their sins and their living inner self.
The living inner self of those Christians who neglect taking the Passover sacraments on the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month is an uncovered firstborn in the heavenly realm—is spiritually as an uncovered firstborn in Egypt would have been physically when the death angel passed over all the land. And out of kindness and mercy for unbelievers as well as Believers, death angels will not again pass over all the land, slaying uncovered firstborns, until after the hour when the second Passover could have been eaten. In analogy, this will be like an insurance policy offering a thirty day grace period when coverage has expired but remains in effect. However, this grace period has a hard end-date, the 15th day of the second month … as the foundations of the deep erupted in “the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month” (Gen 7:11) and the windows of heaven were opened and rain fell for forty days and forty nights (v. 12), the Affliction of the Lord shall have begun, with the four beasts or demonic kings of Daniel chapter seven emerging out of the waters of humanity as the four horsemen of the Apocalypse on this day seventeen, a Sabbath day.
As the Lord in Paul’s day had concern for the people of Israel because of the faithfulness of their ancestors, the Lord will have compassion for Christians in our day because of the faithfulness of their ancestors—and of my ancestors, Mennonites and Old German Baptists. And as in the 1st-Century a remnant of natural Israel would be saved by grace, in the 21st-Century a remnant of Christendom will be saved by obedience, by belief of God, by the works that come from belief of God. And as Paul’s contemporaries [his people] disbelieved him, Christians even after the Second Passover liberation of Israel will not believe that for them, salvation will come through obedience. But they have to be warned, even if they will not believe. Sobeit!
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