Homer Kizer Ministries

November 25, 2007 ©Homer Kizer
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Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! / Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! / behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, / humble and mounted on a donkey, / on a colt, the foal of a donkey. / … As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, / I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. / Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; / today I declare that I will restore to you double. / For I have bent Judah as my bow; / I have made Ephraim its arrow. /I will stir up your sons, O Zion, / against your sons, O Greece, / and wield you like a warrior’s sword. /… On that day the Lord their God will save them / as the flock of his people; / for like the jewels of a crown / they shall shine on his land. (Zech 9:9, 11-13, 16)

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As the future King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus entered Jerusalem on the 10^th day of the first month, four days before He would be crucified, riding the colt of a donkey (Luke 19:30-40; Matt 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-10; John 12:12-16); He entered as the future high priest and as the Passover Lamb of God. And He fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah. Or did He? Yes, He entered as Zechariah prophesied, but Zechariah’s prophecy continues past where Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a colt.

Zechariah records, “‘I [YHWH] will cut off the chariot from Ephraim / and the war horse from Jerusalem; / and the battle bow shall be cut off, / and he [the king] shall speak peace to the nations; / his rule shall be from sea to sea, / and from the River to the ends of the earth’” (Zech 9:10). Jesus has not yet brought peace; rather, He brought a sword (Matt 10:34) that set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother (v. 35), thereby making those of a person’s household the person’s enemies (v. 36).

Although much is made each year at this holiday season about Jesus being a man of peace who brought peace to humankind, the reality of world history has been that Jesus brought no peace but many swords. The history of Christianity is a record of wars written in blood across centuries. Christendom made war against pagan hordes, with itself, with Islam, with secular humanism, and will in the near future make war against the sons of God who have been genuinely born of Spirit. In fact, few have escaped the wrath of Christendom as this belief paradigm of peace used the sword to force allegiance to the cross, and the prophesied future of Christianity will see the Messiah returning to slay many (Isa 66:16) who today profess to be His disciples.

Jesus must again enter Jerusalem on the 10^th day of the first month, riding a white horse this time (Rev 19:11). In righteousness He will judge and make war, and the blood of the slain shall be splattered on [or drip from] His robe (v. 13). His entrance will be at the cost of all who have taken the mark of beast upon themselves. But He will finally bring peace with Him.

If Jesus did not enter Jerusalem the first time to bring peace to this world but to bring a sword and bloodshed, then Christians have grossly misunderstood His message … the lacunae between Jesus’ entering Jerusalem riding the colt of a donkey and his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth forms the space into which the entirety of the “Christian era” fits: the two millennia of Christendom functions as an underscore to link the prophecies of the coming of the king. Therefore, the focus of Zechariah’s prophecy turns back toward Zion, and towards what will occur within the gap, where a war will be fought to recover prisoners of hope held captive in a waterless pit.

When Jesus told two of His disciples to go ahead of Him into Bethphage to get the donkey and her colt, His disciples did not know that He was about to fulfill a prophecy of Zechariah. Even afterwards, they did not realize what had occurred until Jesus was glorified (John 12:16). Thus, a generalization can be made from a specific even though this constitutes a logical fault: prophecies are fulfilled without those who are part of the fulfillment realizing what is happening, or has happened until sometime later. And from this generalization comes explication of Zechariah’s prophecies: God set prisoners free from the waterless pit when the Holy Spirit was given (John 20:22) the afternoon of the day when Jesus ascended to heaven as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering; as the First of the firstfruits. But once the generation set free died from the sin that continued to dwell in their flesh (Rom 7:21-25), future disciples, all prisoners of hope, were scattered as sheep in a wasteland, and these disciples will not be gathered again until they return to their stronghold, Christ Jesus, where God will restore to them double. However, those who return to their stronghold will not realize that they fulfilled prophecy until after they have returned.

How does God restore to Zion double? If God restores life to the Body of Christ, would restoring double be to give life twice to the Body; i.e., spiritual life dwelling in fleshly bodies and then these bodies putting on immortality? If restoring double were receiving twice as many physical things, what things would be received? Those things that are without meaning: gold, land, the pride of eyes, political power, sexual activity? These are the things that the lawless seek; these are what the disobedient humble themselves before God to obtain. The sons of disobedience neigh like stalled stallions as they barely constrain their lusts within the bonds of secular marriages and established churches that use the name of God as cover for transgressing the commandments. Yes, Christendom condones lawlessness through the day on which it attempts to enter into God’s rest. Thus, a purity of belief that might never have truly existed needs to be restored to bring life again to the dead Body of Christ. And to restore double, God has bent Judah as His bow, and made Ephraim its arrow: Judah and Ephraim together, as a bow and its arrow, become the means through which God will accomplish the work that has developed from Jesus entering Jerusalem as high priest and Passover Lamb of God.

The dynamics of Jesus fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy of entering Jerusalem on a colt required that Jesus have awareness of the significance of the prophecy, which His disciples then lacked. Of course, a skeptic will say, He had awareness of the prophecy’s significance. But repeatedly, Jesus seemingly went out of His way to fulfill a prophecy, and His apparent going out of His way now needs to be examined; for in restoring double, God will stir up Zion’s sons, and will wield these sons as a sword against the sons of Greece, who are not physical Greeks or Gentiles but—and here is where spiritual understanding becomes a must—visible Christendom, the belief paradigm Greek philosophers used as a Trojan horse to capture an empire.

When the king comes to Jerusalem, God “will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem” (Zech 9:10)—Israel will truly learn the ways of peace. Yet within the context of this supernaturally imposed peace, God will wield the sons of Israel against the sons of Greece. He will fight using Israel as His sword and bow. But He won’t fight using the sons of Zion as soldiers and sailors as human kings fight wars. Rather, He will have Israel obey His statutes and commandments, thereby defeating disobedience through the exercise of obedience.

By hearing the words of Jesus and believing the One who sent Him, disciples pass from death to life and do not come under judgment (John 5:24). Sin no longer has dominion over them (Rom 6:14). The prince of this world has lost control of them—they have rebelled against disobedience by turning to Moses and believing his writings (John 5:46-47).

Rebellion against sin is obedience to the laws of God. The one who rebels against Satan will embrace Moses, who led Israel out from Egypt, the representation of sin. Death reigned from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14), who brought life to Israel by mediating between God and his firstborn son (Ex 4:22). Life is the antithesis of disobedience, for the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). Life comes through obedience by faith to the commandments of God. Yes, Israel had a law that would have led to righteousness and to life if the law had been pursued by faith rather than by the works of the nation’s hands (Rom 9:31-32). The lawyer who sought to test Jesus knew of this covenant of promise, and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. He correctly answered Jesus’ question about how he read the law, and Jesus told him to do—to put into practice—what he had answered and he would live. So it isn’t that Israel had to dwell in a waterless pit, but that Israel would not fight against evil, which is nothing more than determining right and wrong for oneself.

Disciples of Christ Jesus fight against evil by, when in a far land, turning to God and loving Him with heart and mind (Deut 30:1-2), thereby keeping the commandments and all that is written in Deuteronomy (v. 10). The sons of Zion have circumcised hearts (v. 6). They are the ones who keep the law of faith (Rom 3:27) that produces the righteousness that comes by faith (cf. Rom 10:6-8; Deut 30:11-14). And they are the arrow launched from the bow that is Judah (Zech 9:13). They strike the heart of disobedience to slay unrighteousness and ungodliness.

God will stir up the sons of Zion against the sons of Greece, and that is now occurring. Zechariah’s prophecies are being fulfilled in a manner similar to how the coming of the king was fulfilled, not instantly, but beginning with Jesus’ two disciple going into Bethphage to untie the donkey and her colt.

Again, the sons of Greece are not ethnic Greeks, but are all who mentally hold the values of the king of Greece, who is not any living human king, past or present (including Alexander the Great), but a coalition of demonic spirit beings that represent the belly and thighs of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision. The angel who brings Daniel the word of knowledge—who tells Daniel what is written in the book of truth—was resisted by the prince [sar] of Persia for 21 days (Dan 10:13). The angel “‘was left there with the kings of Persia” (same verse), and must return “to fight against the prince of Persia” (v. 21), but when he leaves Daniel, “the prince of Greece will come “(same verse). This prince [sar] or king of Greece is not a human prince, but a spirit being or coalition of spirit beings as the prince of Persia is a coalition of the kings of Persia, with whom the angel was left when Michael came to his assistance. So the sons of Greece are human beings [angels are sexless and do not reproduce themselves or produce offspring with human females] who have been brought forth to believe in the principles of democracy, of equality, of individual rights—of all of those things that represent the foundational principles of the United States of America; of all those ideals that the Adversary used to deceive a third of the angels into following him.

Despite the protestations of Evangelical Christendom, America does not represent God’s government on earth. Rather, American values are Greek values, and the Evangelical Church is steeped in traditional American values that have come from the king of Greece. The Christianity of America’s founding fathers, while admirable in intent, represents rebellion against God—and those who would use the principles of rebellion to return to the values of America’s founding fathers play a deadly game with Satan, using his board and his game-pieces and letting him script their moves. They are pawns of Satan even though they might sincerely believe that they control their own destiny.

The danger of playing with Satan is that he controls both the person attracted to the glitter of this world, and the person who has ingested too many sequins: once a person realizes that he or she is a sinner and in need of being saved, the person looks around, finds a lawless Church that uses the name of Christ as a magnet to attract spiritual infants, and joins with that fellowship to try and bring others out from under bondage to Satan. But what this person doesn’t realize is that he or she has traded one form of bondage to lawlessness for another form of bondage to lawlessness. It is as if the person is a black pawn and becomes, by saying the sinner’s prayer, a white pawn. The person neither gets off Satan’s chessboard nor out from under Satan’s control. Only when the person quits the game and turns to obedience to the commandments of God does the person escape from Babylon and from bondage to the spiritual king of Babylon.

A house divided will not stand. Rebellion produces division, and Satan reigns over a hierarchy of rebels; thus, spiritual Babylon has been destined to fall from its inception. Its end has been known. And its end will come with the prince of Persia pushing against the prince of Greece, followed by the prince of Greece flying out of the west to trample and smash the prince of Persia (Dan chap 8). Satan seems unable or unwilling to stop this war that spills over into the physical realm, where armies from nations built on Greek values fight against forces having Persian values. And as it took a decade for Alexander to defeat Darius, the spiritual prince/king of Greece will defeat the prince of Persia in a relatively short while, perhaps in a decade of earth years. Soon afterwards, God delivers a below-the-belt blow to Babylon by suddenly breaking the great horn of the king of Greece because he is first—this horn grows from between the eyes of the king of Greece (Dan 8:5) as if, on the standing humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar saw, this horn were its erect penis—and the blow God delivers breaks this world’s focus on sex and all things sexual. Suddenly religion is important.

The blow God delivers at the beginning of the seven endtime years of tribulation brings the four kings or horns to power (Dan 8:8). This blow wobbles Babylon and causes Satan’s hierarchy to reel as a drunkard, staggering around and needing only one more blow to fall it as if it were a tree cut off except for the hinge.

Satan remains and will remain the prince of this world [the head of gold] until the kingdom of this world is taken from him and given to the Son of Man. Under him are the prince of Persia [the arms and chest of silver] and the prince of Greece [the belly and thighs of bronze]. And within the prince of Greece are, in addition to the great horn or first king, four kings that will appear (cf. Dan 8:8, 20-22; 11:4-5) when firstborns not covered by the blood of the Lamb are slain—and from these four, two (the king of the South and the king of the North) will become the two iron legs of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision. These four kings are the four kings of Daniel 7:17. And the ten toes of mixed iron and clay are ten secular and religious leaders who come together to bring peace to a death ravaged world. They will all claim to represent Christ Jesus, but they can be identified as false because they will not keep the commandments of God, especially not the Sabbath commandment.

Today the whetting of a warrior’s sword made from the sons of Zion has begun. The battle is about to be joined, but few of the sons of Zion who will be wielded in this battle are fully aware of what is at stake, or what is about to happen; for the fight will not be against human armies or countries, but against lawlessness, democracy, and congregationalism, especially as practiced by visible Christendom. The fight will be fought by patiently enduring all that will be brought against the person by the spiritual sons of Greece while not giving up the precepts of God. The fight will be won by keeping the commandments when doing so will, most likely, cost the person his or her physical life—if a person dies because of his or her love for God and for obedience to God, the person defeats the Adversary.

Already, at this holiday season eleven months before America’s next presidential elections, television public service announcements encourage the nation’s citizens to vote so that their voices will be heard: if a person does not vote, the person loses his or her voice in determining the affairs of the nation. Through silence that comes from not voting, the person does not partake in the governance of this nation … no person can extricate him or herself from bondage to Satan if the person continues to participate in the governance of this world. Voting for the Libertarian candidate Ron Paul is not an answer to the corruption seen in Washington D.C., but is only an act of tokenism that continues the person’s bondage to Satan.

In 1980, I had been baptized for almost eight years when I voted in Alaska’s general election: I voted for Ron Paul as the Libertarian candidate for president, and in Alaska, ex-President Carter finished third to President Reagan and to Ron Paul. My vote was a protest vote, and I was still spiritually immature although I probably did not think so at the time. I know that I did not then eschew disobedience as I would a decade later [spiritual maturity comes with a price, that of condemning lawlessness in oneself], so I write now from the perspective of having done that, having been there. And any participation in American governance through voting is participation in Satan’s administration of this world. Even a protest vote is granting to Satan authority over the person. Even a protest demonstration against abortion or against the war grants to the Adversary authority he should not have. For disciples are to sigh and cry about the abominations committed within Israel [i.e., the Church], not in the world, which God will judge. And there is plenty within Israel about which a disciple can sigh and cry.

Israel exists as an island within the sea of disobedience that constitutes the world—and when this island is devastated by a tsunami of lawlessness, the disciple does not need to curse the sea but to get to work rebuilding what has been destroyed by disobedience. It is God who will wield this island against the sea when He intervenes in the affairs of men. But before He uses disciples to defeat the Adversary, He will first use those who are genuine against those who are false: He will use those who practice obedience against those who would vote for any person to be the person’s representative.

For three centuries the Amish have avoided participation in secular politics, but they have not freed themselves from bondage to lawlessness, as evidenced by the day on which they attempt to enter into God’s rest. Nevertheless, they serve as a poor but visible model for what it means not to participate in Satan’s administration of this world.

In America, not voting because of principles seems quaint, odd, and almost unnatural. The person will be asked if he or she voted, just as the person will be expected to give Christmas greetings to all whom the person meets this time of year … there are customs that America society expects its citizens to follow. However, a disciple’s citizenship is not in a nation of this world, but in heavenly Jerusalem. And here is where the separation between the sons of Zion and the sons of Greece can be seen: the sons of Greece are tradition based and tradition bound, with their traditions carrying the weight of Scripture. They will not break a tradition to keep a scriptural command. They will not subjugate their will or their rights to blind obedience to Scripture. After all, they have been set free from the Law and are now under Grace, which allows them—or so they reason—to present their members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness (Rom 6:13) as long as they have said the sinner’s prayer. Once saved, always saved. Isn’t this the rallying cry of the sons of Liberty, who would force their way into the kingdom of God if they could?

The prophecy of Zechariah will have, with the coming of the king, the sons of Zion used as a sword against the sons of Greece: the descendants of the Radical Reformers have been silent for too long. God will bend Judah as a bow; He will launch Ephraim as an arrow—and this arrow will spiritually slay the synagogue of Satan, those who say they are Jews [Israelites] but who are not, for they will not believe what Moses wrote.

As Jesus knew what He was doing when He sent two disciples ahead into Bethphage to get the donkey and her colt, a few disciples today know—the ones who hold the testimony of Jesus—that they are being sharpened spiritually to slay spiritually the sons of Greece that constitute the synagogue of Satan. They “feel” themselves being whetted; they “feel” the power building within them as the bow is drawn; they “know” that they are about to engage those who hold democracy as the highest ideal of Christian expressionism, the theology by which America hopes to defeat fundamentalist Islam.

The prince of Greece will not attempt to force Christianity onto the Muslim world, but will insert democracy within the prince of Persia’s domain, thereby infecting the prince of Persia’s subjects with self-determination, a virus against which no immunity in this world exists. Satan’s rebellion against God was fueled by self-determination. Eve’s disobedience came from her determining for herself good and evil. Israel’s rebellion in the wilderness came from disbelief, the first cousin of self-determination. And the synagogue of Satan’s lawlessness comes from disbelief’s affair with self-determination, the fruit of this union being congregationalism and the democracy of salvation, in which all are saved who profess the name of Jesus.

The selling of cheap grace, as if this drink were moonshine, has become big business in America where consumerism added to democracy has been distilled into a frontier theology of salvation that leaves no American out of heaven, neither sinner nor atheist. Both have equality before God with the person who lives by the commandments—or so cheap grace promises the unwary drinker—and both will be saved whereas the Muslim will fry in hell, tortured forever in flames never quite hot enough to utterly consume this infidel, such is the love the synagogue of Satan has for Islam, a much tougher adversary than Communism for the prince of Greece to defeat.

The truth is, with God the Muslim will be, when born of Spirit, because of his or her conscience, accepted as a son of God whereas those who are of the synagogue of Satan will be denied when judgments are revealed. It is not the person who has never received a second birth that dies the second death, but the person who has been born again and who then voluntarily took lawlessness back inside the person. And the transgression of one commandment breaks the Law and makes the person a sinner. The person who does not repent of this sin denies Christ. Thus, the person who breaks the Sabbath commandments and continues to do so—or the person who practices murder or adultery or thievery—is an unrepentant sinner. Before God, disbelief stemming from lack of faith condemns the person, and the person who claims that he or she is a Christian yet will not walk as Christ walked is a liar and stands unrepentant and condemned.

God will wield Sabbatarian disciples against the sons of Greece, and most of these Sabbatarians will die without knowing what is occurring. They do not have the spirit of prophecy, which is the testimony of Jesus (Rev 19:10). They cannot enter into the second half of the Tribulation, but must die or rebel in the first half. But those disciples who keep the commandments and hold the testimony of Jesus will live to see today’s Muslim and Buddhist born of Spirit as a disciple of Christ Jesus when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh. They will rejoice with the angels. So the coming of the king will not find many belief paradigms vying with one another, but will see peace from sea to sea for all of humankind will share the mind of Christ.

There will be war until Christ’s return. It is not the business of disciples to engage in battles fought with rifles and mortars, but in battles fought through obedience to the commandments, battles fought with patient endurance, with doing what is right, with love toward friend and foe. These battles will cause casualties among the saints, but dying physically in faith is not a casualty in this war. Returning to disobedience causes a person to become a casualty.

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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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