November 25, 2012 ©Homer Kizer
[The following is Section 4 of the “Introduction to Volume Five” of APA]
4.
The reality of Scripture is that someone (some human authority) at sometime had-to and still has to determine whether a received text is of God or of godly men, with this decision being a truly great determination. This decision establishes for others who is God and what does God have to say for Himself and about Himself. And this someone will always be without an eternalized criteria for making his or her decision. There will be no universal checklist of qualifying attributes. If there were, the Adversary could easily insert a false text; for the list would be about characteristics that manifest themselves in this world. There will always be lying or pretending texts that claim to be of “God” or of godly men when they are not. Only by “knowing” God can any sort of valid determination be made.
But Christians by the multitudes claim to know God when they do not. Christians by the multitudes claim spiritual understanding; claim to be able to “see” when they are spiritually blind, when they are as Pharisees were during Jesus’ earthly ministry.
How can I say with certainty that Christians claiming to “know the Lord” do not know God? How can all of Islam in its various flavors not know God? How can all of Buddhism not know God? How can there be just one God that almost no one in the world knows? That simply doesn’t make sense to the carnal mind, and doesn’t make much more sense to even the Elect.
Many of the highly educated of this world do not believe that any God exists; that the concept of “God” served as an explanation of natural phenomena in ages with less scientific understanding. For these many, God is a myth whose time has passed. God is understandable as a myth, as the one in oral cultures responsible for everything from dust storms to eclipses to hurricanes; as the one in former times whose favor must be sought through sacrifices and the work of hands; as the one who is ultimately responsible for national military victories, the prosperity of a people, for time and chance itself. Thus, for these many, discrepancies between Christian New Testament texts or the lack of historicity in the Torah confirm what they already believe—and because these many do not believe that God exists, they act and behave in ways that disclose their inner selves; that reveal the essence of who and what they are. Although they will attempt to hide moral failures from public discourse for reasons of expediency, they will do so through lies, deceit, shared secure e-mail files, and multiples of other creative forms of bad behavior, thereby becoming externally who they are inwardly, hiding nothing from anyone for long. These many would not use, God made me do it, as an excuse even when they do not understand their own failings. They perceive themselves as being “the adults in the room.”
God as an entity, as a concept has been defined for “the children present” as the Creator of all things; as the One who caused matter to come into existence when no matter previously existed; as the One who spoke the words of the Bible, or even of the Qur’an, words that were inscribed under inspiration, that were received in visions, that are wholly of God, who makes no mistakes, who is perfect in all His ways. Thus, “for the children,” the words of the Bible are the infallible words of God (in their original languages); the words of the Prophet are divine utterances. And “the children in the room” quarrel and fight, bullying one another, claiming this or that about God while the adults quarrel about climate change, spending on social programs for the children, equal rights for the children, all the while lusting for forbidden fruit, the insatiable desire of the heart to have sexual intercourse with others as an expression of domination or submission as one male dog or tomcat rapes another. Both “the children that just cannot get along” and “the adults supervising the social order” behave as if they are of the same mind as the beasts/animals they consume in fashionably lavish dinners. And it is from these adults and children that Sabbatarian Christians have received the oracles of God … before turning away in utter disgust, throwing one’s hands up in the air as if surrendering to the Adversary, consider the terms of the New Covenant given by the prophet Jeremiah that was not yet implemented when Hebrews was written:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,”
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more (Heb 8:10–12 emphasis added)
Only when the laws of God have been placed into the mind of a human person and written on the heart of this person will the person Know the Lord, know God. Until the person comes under the New Covenant, the person simply doesn’t know the Lord, doesn’t know God. The person is unknown to the glorified Christ (Matt 7:21–23) because the person is not foreknown by God the Father. The person is not predestined, called, justified, glorified; the person isn’t born of spirit. And without spiritual birth, the person cannot know the things of God, cannot determine whether an earlier or a contemporary text is of God or of godly men, or whether the text is a counterfeit.
For the person who regularly handles paper money, even a good counterfeit bill is easily determined—and so it is with Scripture itself … the counterfeit doesn’t “feel” right.
When someone, anyone attaches importance to the surface of things—appearance, skin color, speech, possession of things, even to events in this world (to things that have happened and to things that will happen)—the person does not know God; for God isn’t in surface appearances. The Apostle John expressed this concept slightly differently in his epistle: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:15–16).
The Most High God, the Father, isn’t a thing or an object. Nor did the Most High God create things or objects. Rather, the things of this world reveal the things of God as a shadow reveals the presence of an object blocking light, regardless of whether the object is visible or invisible. And when God is light, not an object or thing that blocks light, then things that block the light that is not of this world are also not of this world … when God is light, things that block this light are not of God. Therefore, history itself, as the record of things that have happened in this world, is not of God.
In the preceding paragraph is an important concept: history and all that history entails is a thing of this world and as such is not of the Most High God. No person can look to history to solve humankind’s problem. The solution cannot be found in history. There is no recorded history of an idyllic age when humanity was close to God, or when human persons worshiped God in truth and spirit. At no time has there been a nation of this world governed by the Most High God. Prior to the birth of the man Jesus the Nazarene, not even Israel knew of the existence of the Most High God although late in his life, the possibility exists that King David knew of the existence of the Most High. Before his death David certainly knew that the God of Abraham was the type of another like Himself, that the two together functioned as one entity as night and day form one day, or as a man and his wife form one man, with one head. However, David doesn’t seem aware of the reality that a person’s inner self and the person’s outer self form one person with the inner self being the head of the outer self. This latter concept was excluded from the ideology of Israel by the sacrifices.
Two deities that together function as night and day to form one day, both of equal length over the course of a year—it is this concept that underpins all of creation, with the physicality of this present world representing the darkness of night, and with the coming new heavens and new earth representing the light of day … a human person is born dead, born consigned to disobedience, born into darkness—and must be born a second time to be born into life, born into obedience, born into light. The so-called “adults in the room” are born dead, born blind, their eyes unable to see light. They are a pitiful lot, laboring to save what cannot be saved, tethered to their imaginations, hoping that distant space is something other than a holographic image, a computer-generated background projected over the blue screen in front of which they have been acting out their fantasies.
The Creator of all that has been made created the “darkness” of night, not the “light” of day. The Creator of all that has been made is the author of the First Covenant, the Passover covenant made with the fathers of Israel on the night (Ex 12:42 — note the timeframe) when this God took Israel by the hand to lead the nation out from Egypt, the earthly representation of sin.
The God of dead ones, the God who raises the dead and gives to the dead a second breath of life—this God rules the Light, the “day” portion of one day, and it is this God who will liberate His firstborn sons from death at the Second Passover, when the Second Covenant is implemented and all of greater Christendom will be filled-with and empowered by the breath of God. And as the God of Abraham led the children of Israel, Abraham’s grandson of promise, out from the representation of sin by night, the God of Christ Jesus will lead Christians, the children of promise, out from bondage to Sin and Death, the spiritual kings of the South and the North, by day; i.e., in the light of day. Thus, in one day, two Passover liberations of Israel occur, one by night, one by day, with a third Passover-like liberation of all humanity to occur in the First, Second, and Third Woes.
The children to whom the oracles of God were entrusted (Rom 3:2) have been unfaithful: in claiming to be able to see when they were humanly born blind, they committed much mischief, even to losing the Book of the Covenant for generations. They made up excuses for their bad behavior, going even so far as to blame the prophets of God for turning God against them, thereby justifying them murdering the prophets. They could never read the writings of Moses or understand them. At best they were like Sabbatarian Christian ministers of the former Worldwide Church of God, the fat sheep that pushed their lean brothers away from good pasture and pure water, leaving the pride of these lean sheep as merely background for a Microsoft television commercial.
When history is a thing of this world, the record of what has happened in this world, then a historical text is of two sorts: the actual record of what has happened in this world, or an accounting of future events cast onto the mental typography of living things in a past age, thereby producing a pseudo history that too often passes as history. Genre and the expectations of genre separate genuine “history” and historical texts from “pseudo history” and pseudo-historical texts, but the expectations of genre require identifying and distinguishing history from pseudo-historical texts, a separation that is apparently beyond the spiritual maturity of infant sons of God.
A historical narrative will either contain within itself the historicity of past events—names, dates, locations (who did what where and when)—or the narrative will have its historicity scrubbed from the historical accounting of who did what at an unimportant time on the “x” axis event-timeline. If the historical account is of the shadow of an event that occurs in bifurcated hyper-time, the historical account will be of “real” events that happened in this world, but the “historical account” will signal to its readers that it is not “history” through its absence of historicity. Thus, the astute reader can read about what happened in this world at a time not located on the event-timeline and shift the named referents (acting agents) to a hypertext about what has happened and will happen (there is no passage of time other than on the event-timeline) in heaven or in the Abyss where all things physical have been created. Those things that are of heaven are not physical.
When history is of this world, an additional classification of “historical” narrative is needed, a classification that separates pseudo-historical narratives from historical narratives, with pseudo-historical narratives outwardly appearing to be history but lacking historicity. Israel’s Exodus from Egypt fits into this additional genre that isn’t history, but read as if it were: Israel’s Exodus is a presumed historical event, but is not a historical account of the Most High God intervening in the affairs of His firstborn Son. The entirety of Exodus, the Book of Moses, lacks historicity. Even the name “Moses” [son] lacks historicity, which isn’t to say that Moses didn’t live and didn’t lead Israel out from Egypt but is to say that Exodus should not be confused with “history.” Exodus is the inscribed shadow of what has happened and what will happen to the firstborn Son of God the Father—of what has happened to the Head and of what will happen to the Body of this firstborn Son/son, with what has happened to the Head occurring in the 1st-Century CE and with what will happen to the Body occurring in the 1st and 21st Centuries CE. For the fourth day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the year when Jesus was crucified (31 CE) represents in type the fourth day of the Genesis “P” creation account as well as the fourth year of the seven endtime years of tribulation. Thus, one historical event that lacks historicity comes about as the shadow of events that occur in this world and not in this world, but over actually three millennia; for it will be the 31st-Century before the Thousand Years pass and the Adversary perishes in fire.
Night relates to day and is half of one day as the Passover Exodus of Israel from Egypt relates to the Second Passover and is half of one Passover exodus from the southland and from the north country on a highway from Assyria and from Egypt to Israel (Isa 11:16), with Egypt, Assyria, and Israel representing ideologies, not geographical lands.
As an aside, is there a connection between year 31 CE [Common Era] and the 31st-Century of the Common Era, when the great White Throne Judgment occurs and common humanity will be resurrected from death to appear in judgment before the King of kings, and Lord of lords? You judge; you make the determination. If there is, then each of the three years of the Endurance of Christ has significance, with the last year forming a shadow and type of the Millennium, when all who will live shall not buy or sell or transgress the Law.
When history is of this world, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of living ones is not and never was the Most High God, but was the “interface” between the creation and the Most High, an interface made necessary because of humanity’s “locked-in syndrome” status that came with Adam’s disobedience.
Was Adam clothed in glory prior to when he ate forbidden fruit and realized he and the woman were naked—this is taught within the greater Christian Church. It is taught that Adam was created externally clothed in glory, that he lost his cloak of glory and became naked and ashamed …
Can we know what glory would look like if Adam had been clothed in this garment? Consider what is said about the glory of God:
Over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of an expanse, shining like awe-inspiring crystal, spread out above their heads. And under the expanse their wings were stretched out straight, one toward another. And each creature had two wings covering its body. And when they went, I heard the sound of their wings like the sound of many waters, like the sound of the Almighty, a sound of tumult like the sound of an army. When they stood still, they let down their wings. And there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads. When they stood still, they let down their wings. And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him. Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking. (Ezek 1:22–28 emphasis and double emphasis added)
The glory of the Lord is the inner bright fire that represents indwelling eternal or heavenly life. The glory of the Lord is His life-sustaining breath. And the glory of man is the dark fire of cellular oxidation that gives life to dust through the inhalation and exhalation of the man’s breath.
Woman [Eve] is the glory of Adam; for Eve and her descendants have life through having in her the breath of Adam, the breath received when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud, thereby igniting the dark fire of cellular oxidation that gives physical life to every human person. So for a Christian pastor or teacher to say that before Adam ate forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were clothed in glory is for the pastor or teacher to reveal how poorly the person understands the mysteries of God or understands how Scripture works.
The Genesis Temptation Account is without historicity. Did it even happen? We cannot know—and it doesn’t matter, for the account reveals what happened to the Church in the 1st-Century, and what will happen to the Church in the 21st-Century when Zion brings forth a nation in a day (Isa 66:7–8), bring forth a righteous Abel at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, followed 220 days later by a spiritual Cain who shall kill his “brother.” Then halfway through the seven endtime years, a third Passover-type liberation of Israel will occur with the First, Second, and Third Woes and the kingdom of this world becoming the kingdom of the Son of Man (cf. Dan 7:9–4; Rev 11:15–18), with the spirit of God poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) and all of humanity becoming firstborn sons of God. All of humanity in the Endurance shall be a spiritual Seth, the third son born to the Second Eve, Zion.
Yes, giving the single kingdom of this world to the Son of Man represents the Third Woe; for to give the kingdom to the Son of Man, this kingdom must be taken from the spiritual king of Babylon, who will then be cast into the creation and come as a roaring lion to devour whomever he can … by this time, all of “the adults in the room” are either physically dead or are spiritual infants who must rebel against the Adversary or perish in the lake of fire. They will no longer have importance in their eyes. Such importance is reserved for the Remnant that will be pursued without mercy by the Adversary until those Sabbatarian Christians of the Remnant regard themselves as nothing. For as long as a Sabbatarian Christian believes he or she is somehow greater than the faithful who “went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated … wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (Heb 11:37–38), the Sabbatarian is not worthy of God. Only when the Sabbatarian places absolutely no importance on the things of this world will the Sabbatarian have peace in this world. And it is for this cause that the Adversary is permitted to live for another thousand years.
Without historicity, the seemingly historical or even mythological account of Adam’s creation and of Eve’s creation and of the temptation of Eve and the rebellion of Adam should NEVER be read as true history regardless of whether it is or isn’t, but should always be read as a hypertext text about Christ Jesus, the second Adam, and about the Church, the second Eve. Did humankind come into existence through the creation of a single man into whom God breath physical life, thereby kindling the dark fire of cellular oxidation, the glory of man? The story presents it as history, but history without historicity. Certainly the story can be believed or not believed without altering the reality that there was a second Adam, one who received the indwelling glory of God, the bright fire of heavenly life which John was to see, thereby confirming by twice occurring the transformation that Peter, John and James saw (cf. Rev 1:12–16; Matt 17:2 et al).
In the Garden of Eden, Adam was clothed by his obedience and as such would not have noticed that he and the woman were naked: Adam did not know “evil.” He had no carnal thoughts. He saw but didn’t see his and Eve’s nakedness. Only after he ate the fruit of the commingled Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil could Adam discern what unbelief and disobedience brought—and then there was no going back, no return to obedience, no return to innocence, no not-knowing good and evil.
The Christian pastor or teacher who on television prances around a stage, his words captured by a wireless microphone and amplified by the auditorium’s sound system, saying that Adam and Eve were covered by glory before forbidden fruit was eaten, that the answer to the problem of humanity is the second Adam and His glory, handles but mishandles “truth” and as such does more harm to the Body of Christ than good. The answer to all of humanity’s problems is for the single kingdom of this world—presently ruled by the Adversary, the reigning prince of this world—to be given to the Son of Man with the spirit of God being poured out on all flesh, baptizing the world into life. But today, before the Second Passover liberation of Israel, no person can come to Christ Jesus unless drawn by the Father. No person of him or herself can come to Christ; for all of humankind has been born consigned to disobedience as sons of disobedience, as sons of the first Adam who was driven from the Garden and delivered into the hands of the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh (e.g., 1 Cor 5:5).
The person who has been drawn from this world by the Father has also been foreknown by the Father, predestined, called, justified, and glorified, with the inner self of the person receiving indwelling eternal life in the form of the indwelling of Christ (of the breath of Christ — pneuma Christou). This person will keep the commandments of God, all of them, especially the Sabbath commandment. And without a person having been glorified—the “person” isn’t the fleshly body that cannot enter heaven—the person cannot understand the mysteries of God, nor make any sort of determination of whether a text is of God or of godly men, or whether the text is a counterfeit, an American one hundred dollar bill with the face of Abraham Lincoln on it … permit the television evangelist with his microphone to wave his Bible high in the air; for his words need to be heard for in them is his condemnation to the lake of fire. He (or she) will not be permitted to speak when being gathered by angels to be cast into the flames. Today is the only day when he (or she) can speak as this televangelist determines his (or her) fate. Perhaps by speaking, the televangelist will hear the folly being uttered and repent.
The person numbered among the Elect will speak the words of Christ Jesus, not words about Him … the person numbered among the elect will speak the message the man Jesus the Nazarene proclaimed while He lived physically; the message I have been proclaiming for over a decade and came to accept four decades ago, and this message is as follows:
1. God the Father—the deity that raised Jesus from death and the deity to whom Jesus prayed—is not the God of Abraham, the God of living ones (Matt 22:32), but is the God of dead ones; the God concealed by the things that have been created; the God concealed in the Tetragrammaton YHWH;
2. The God that created all things made; the God that Abraham worshiped; the God that Judaism worships; the God that Islam worships; the God that Unitarian (Arian) Christians worship—this God was the Logos, the deity that entered His creation as His unique Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene.
3. The Elect do not worship the Creator of all things made, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but worship the Most High God who creates/created nothing physical but creates what is spiritual, what has no substance, no mass, no surface that can be photographed—what is of the day, the light portion of one day.
Whatever can be weighed, measured, photographed is not of the Most High God, but is of the creation and of the deity that created all things physical; the deity that gave up life in the supra-dimensional heavenly realm to enter His creation. Therefore, whoever worships the Creator of all things worships a dead deity and does not know the Most High God. The utterances of this person; the writings of this person can only be as the fleshly body of a human person is to the inner self (the soul, psuche) of this same human person. And as every humanly born person enters into physical life with a dead inner self, not an immortal soul, the world began (came into existence) without life … in the mirror image (chiral image) of the physical creation, the spiritual creation of the Most High God begins with one man and continues forward to Twelve Disciples then to the nation built from the Twelve and finally to new heavens and a new earth that is not physical.
In a man is the history of the world.
No person who looks to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or who attaches importance on earthly Jerusalem or upon the outwardly circumcised nation of Israel knows the Most High God. No person who looks to history looks to God. Rather, the person who looks to history looks to the Adversary. It is helpful to know history, but it is also helpful to know about adultery without engaging in it. It is helpful to know about alcoholism without engaging in excessive drinking. For without knowing history, one of the Elect cannot truly be a help to the person who seeks to escape from the Adversary while still living in this world where the Adversary remains its prince.
The Elect live in this world, but live outside of history. If it were possible, the Elect would be invisible in this world. They would be as the man Jesus was, who as a historical figure has only four known secular references to Him in the century after Calvary, two from Romans early in the 2nd-Century and two from a Jew late in the 1st-Century. For history is the story of what has blocked the light that is God. To study history is to study humanity’s unrighteousness; is to study the bloody and sordid details of murders and murderers, adulterous affairs, graft, greed, corruption, rebellions, stealing elections … history includes the story of a dead American ambassador to Libya, the story having now turned upon itself to become a story about adultery, campaign messaging, a White House cover-up, with the dead ambassador and his story being lost in the narrative of moral corruption at the highest levels of America’s military establishment.
History is figuratively the story of who killed whom, with the woman involved not being the man’s wife. Move over Vince Foster, there’s a new President in office.
It will be the false prophet who focuses on history, and especially on the story of America’s founders. It will be the man of perdition who looks for another George Washington to come to save what he perceives as a nation conceived in the bed of divine provenance. But the United States of America, a grand experiment, a great notion, was not born as the child of an indentured servant sent to warm the bed for the Inn’s master on a cold night in hell. Rather, the United States exists so that an endtime work for the Most High God can be done in relative peace and safety. As such, there probably is an element of divine providence in the formation of America, but the nation is not of God and never was of God. If it were, Sabbath observance would be inscribed into its founding documents as Sabbath observance was inscribed in the founding document of the people of Israel before and after this people was ruled by a king.
False teachers and prophets fret over inflation, socialism, capitalism, Marxism, military strength (or lack thereof). Those who are false advocate buying gold to preserve wealth. They buy land. They buy, buy, buy, buy. They are wedded to making transactions. Yet hardly any of them keep the Sabbath, the physical type of entering into the Promised Land that is heaven … there is no “Jewish” Sabbath versus the “Christian” Sabbath, despite what one televised political pundit said when explaining why he was fundraising for an Israeli hospital on Sunday. The weekly Sabbath is the seventh day of a seven day cycle, and is a Sabbath to YHWH, the linguistic determinative representing the conjoined deities, the God of living ones [YaH] and the God of dead ones [WaiH] (Lev 23:3). Christ Jesus ascended to the Father on the day after the Sabbath (see John 20:1, 19; Matt 28:1; Mark 16:1; Luke 24:1).
The weekly “Sabbath” is always the seventh day of a weekly cycle established when manna was given, and reinforced week after week throughout the period when Israel followed Moses in the wilderness. Is the Sabbath historical? Is it history? Or is the Sabbath a “shadow” of entering the supra-dimensional heavenly realm?
Yes, the Sabbath is historical, but it also represents in type Christians following Christ Jesus into the Promised Land of heaven. The seventh day of a weekly cycle on the “x” axis event-timeline exists in bifurcated time as the period when human sons of God live without sin, without disobedience, and live by having the indwelling glory of God giving to them life outside of event-time.
Christians either will keep the Sabbath, or they will refuse to keep the Sabbath and will instead attempt to enter into God’s rest on the day after the Sabbath. Christians are either obedient or disobedient. They are never otherwise. And the Elect will become obedient for they will have no choice, no freewill permitting them to do as they please: as young sons of God, the Elect are brought into obedience through outside discipline. They are “made” to obey until they mature sufficiently that they desire to obey God. They are spiritually as human children are physically when one, two, three years old, with a human child of three being mature enough to grasp the nature of dual referents—with a spiritual son of God of equal maturity being sufficiently mature to grasp the nature of bifurcated time, and of Scripture representing the shadow and copy of the heavenly Book of Life.
If a Christian truly cannot grasp what I write, the Christian either isn’t born of God or the Christian remains an infant son of God equivalent in age to a human child less than thirty months old. What I write is not difficult to understand for the son of God of equivalent maturity to a four year old human child. Of this I am certain; for there are many who do understand, who are able to conceptually read New Testament texts metaphorically as hypertexts pertaining to the born-of-spirit inner self of a human person drawn from this world by the Father and called, justified, and glorified through the indwelling of Christ Jesus. And these many are “worn out” by the redundancy with which I write in hopes that the spiritual infant might understand what is merely quasi-solid food for the son of God. The solid food will come, but only when more infant sons of God grow spiritual teeth.
When Israel behind Joshua crossed the Jordan and entered into the physical geography representing “God’s rest,” manna ceased, and Israel entered into voluntary Sabbath observance, with the Sabbath representing resting from one’s physical labors. But entering into God’s rest did not mean resting from laboring; for crops still had to be planted and harvested, with the harvest reaching to the planting such was the land’s promised increase. Likewise, today, entering into God’s spiritual rest through the inner self of the person being glorified doesn’t mean that the outer self is free to do as it pleases, but means that it must labor continually to bring in the promised harvest of God. Inside of God’s rest, there are no vacation days, no sick days, no days when the work of God is not done. Inside of God’s rest, the inner self is obedient every day; thus when the inner self rules over the outer self, the person (inner and outer selves) will keep the commandments, all of them. The sordid affairs of the president’s men and women occur outside of God’s rest—and occur among spiritually dead sons of disobedience.
Whereas Sabbath observance was “forced” upon Israel in the wilderness by the presence or absence of manna, once Israel crossed the Jordan and was circumcised (Josh 5:2–7), it was up to the people of Israel whether they would keep the commandments, all of which are typified in the Sabbath commandment that represents entering into God’s rest; for when the people keep the Sabbaths of God (all of them, including the annual Sabbaths), the land would bear its increase—the Promise Land would deliver the promises God had made to the fathers of Israel when the nation was still in Egypt. The Promised Land of Sabbath observance will deliver many sons of God to obedience, taking them from disobedience and death to obedience and life.
When Christians fail to keep the commandments—the remainder of the world doesn’t today matter—they are spiritually dead. The Body of Christ is dead, and the people have no escape from the Adversary until the Body is resurrected to life.
Understand the preceding: those Christians who are truly born of spirit (who have glorified inner selves) will have the Law [Torah] written on their hearts and placed in their minds. As such, they will walk in this world as Christ Jesus walked during His earthly ministry (1 John 2:6). They will keep the commandments of God, perhaps not perfectly but with no intentional transgressions. They will strive to keep the Sabbaths of God, all of them. So any Christian who doesn’t strive to keep the commandments is simply not born of God. And when the entirety of the Christian Church neglects the Sabbath commandment, the Christian Church as a whole is spiritually dead; i.e., without the spirit of God. The Body of Christ is dead.
The situation exists today where virtually all of greater Christendom neglects the weekly Sabbath, and where a tiny minority of Christians keep the weekly Sabbath but not the annual Sabbaths—and where an even tinier minority keep both the weekly and annual Sabbaths but deny that they are born of spirit, a point about which they should be believed for this miniscule number of Sabbatarians are not born of spirit as evidenced by their lack of love for neighbor and brother.
A Sabbatarian Christian who is truly born of God will not long keep the annual Sabbaths of Judaism, but will keep the annual Sabbaths of God on the days established by Christ Jesus. And the difference between the annual Sabbaths of Judaism and the annual Sabbaths of God can be seen in year 2013 CE, when Judaism begins its sacred year a month too early, thereby having Judaism observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the month of Adar when the sacred year begins with the first sighted new moon crescent following the sign of the spring equinox. The 15th day of the first month of the sacred year in 2013 will be Thursday, April 25th, the day and date of the 15th day of the first month [then on the Julian calendar] in year 31 CE, the year when Christ Jesus was crucified.
So, answer if you can, whom among those not born of God is qualified to judge whether an ancient text is of God or of godly men? There is no one; nor was there any able to make this determination in the 3rd or 4th Centuries CE.
There is no possibility that a person not born of God can know the Lord, or understand the mysteries of God.
American Christians are appalled by abortion (the murder of the most helpless human persons); they are physically sickened by gay rights parades. Nevertheless, they will mock Christ Jesus by worshiping on Sunday mornings after spending the Sabbath tending their affairs in this world. Why would a Christian do that? Mock Christ, who hates being mocked. Why would a Christian think that he or she, laden with sins that must be forgiven, sins that must be covered if the person is to live spiritually, represents the first handful of ripe new barley; i.e., is the Wave Sheaf Offering? What is it about this Christian that he or she thinks the Christian has the right to spiritually trespass?
What happened to counting seven Sabbaths to when the harvest of firstfruits is complete? Do Christians not understand that they are also the firstfruits of God, firstborn sons of God that must be beaten into fine flour and baked with leaven (the representation of sin) before they are “’waved” before God to be accepted by Him on the morrow after the Sabbath (that is, on the day after counting seven Sabbaths)? Do Christians presume that the harvest of firstfruits ended at Calvary? That the Son/son of God consists of only one human individual when all of Israel in Egypt was the firstborn Son of the God of Abraham (Ex 4:22)? Can Christians really be so ignorant as to not understand that the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread represents in type the seven endtime years of tribulation, with Christ Jesus being dead and in the grave for the first three of these seven days, a period analogous to the first three years of the Affliction (the Affliction being the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years)? Do Christians really not know that Christ Jesus was resurrected from death but went unseen by His disciples for the dark portion of the fourth day, representing the last six months of Affliction, these six months being the First and the Second Woes? Do Christians really not know that the glorified Christ being seen by Mary at the beginning of the light portion of the fourth day, then being seen by ten of His first disciples late in the afternoon of the fourth day represents the first six months of the Endurance of Jesus when the Adversary is cast from heaven and comes to earth claiming to be the returning Messiah? The entirety of the fourth day represents the transitional period when this world is still ruled by falling Babylon (the time of the First and Second Woe); when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man (the Third Woe); and when this world is initially ruled by the Son of Man despite Satan and his angels being cast from heaven and into this physically world where the Adversary comes claiming to be the returned Messiah.
The Third Woe won’t be as it seems; for the Third Woe represents not being able to engage in transactions, not just for the 1260 days of the Endurance of Jesus, but for the entirety of the Millennium. There will be no Capitalists nor economic capitalism in the Millennium. Society will be organized in a manner not presently well understood, but in a manner that will be developed (that will emerge) during the Endurance when the Adversary serves as a tool of the glorified Christ to spur the development of this new social order that will not be based on transactions. As such, when the Adversary is cast into space-time from which he cannot escape and where he is certain to perish, the Adversary is involuntarily used by the Son of Man to break humanity of its habit of buying and selling whenever the chance to prostitute itself occurs.
So, do not all Christians have Bibles or have access to a Bible? Nearly all of them can read. What, then, is difficult to understand about what Paul writes (dictates): “For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law … it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom 2:12–13)?
The majority of lawless Christians are convinced that they are not under the Law … so? They are not under the Law. They will nevertheless perish without the Law if they transgress it: the one who transgresses the Law even though he or she is not under the Law shall perish without the Law. Just because a person is not under the Law and thereby presently sentenced to death as a son of disobedience, the person is still subject to death; to condemnation in the lake of fire. The person is still under obligation to do those things that the Law requires: demonstrate manifested love for God, brother, and neighbor.
You who read these words, tell me is you can what did Korah do that was worthy of the ground opening up and swallowing him and all who were of him alive (Num 16:31–32)? Did Korah say anything that was not true? Was not all of the congregation of Israel holy (cf. Num 16:3; Ex 19:6)? Were not Moses and his brother Aaron exalted above the assembly of Israel? Yet on just these words of Korah, this son of Levi was condemned to death, why? Because Korah spoke the words of the Adversary, who upon speaking words of rebellion against the Most High God fell through a rent in the fabric of heaven only to be enchained alive in the Abyss where he shall perish after the Thousand Years?
Mental rebellion against God (un-acted upon rebellion, analogous to lust: un-acted upon physical adultery) supersedes commandment-keeping … this is what Paul understood: if a person claims to be of God regardless of whether the person is actually of God through having been born of spirit, the person is under obligation to keep the commandments through manifesting the work of the Law, which aren’t sacrifices of animals but the extension of love to the person who is difficult to love. It is sometimes easy to love God, neighbor, and brother. At other times, even having love for God is not easy, especially when the person is in a life-or-death situation and not being delivered from the situation.
An acquaintance and a member of Philadelphia has stage four cancer (he just let me know). The individual is in his mid 80s. Last year, we lost a member to stage four cancer in her mid 80s—from when that woman was anointed to when she died six months later, she was virtually pain-free without taking painkillers. Will the man today who has stage four cancer find it difficult to love God? I don’t think so. The woman a year ago didn’t. But what if a young person is diagnosed with stage four cancer, a person who hasn’t lived to see grandchildren? Will this person find it difficult to love God? I suspect the trial would be greater; so yes, a person could find it difficult to have love for God when the person needs an intervention and one doesn’t necessarily come, or doesn’t come on the person’s timetable. But the greater trial is when a Christian believes that he or she has been born of God when this is not so, then needs an intervention, prays for one to occur, and nothing happens day after long day. If a medical doctor intervenes, this Christian will usually give God credit for what God didn’t do, thereby reducing God to the size of a man or woman. So the soldier on the battlefield who prays to God for victory and victory comes will sincerely believe that God is on the soldier’s side in a war in which God has little or no involvement … how can God not intervene on the side of right and goodness? How can the one who prays to God not be on the side of right and goodness? Perhaps the better question is, how can God permit His people to be rounded up and sent to gas chambers? How can God permit Islamic radicals to push the forces of “good” out of the Middle East? How can God permit children to die from cancer, or to die in traffic accidents, or to be torn from the arms of their mother and killed in a storm? Exactly how easy is it to love God when a child dies suddenly for any reason or for no reason? And by propagating the lie that God oversees this present world as its Sovereign, Christianity makes having love for God more difficult than it ought to be.
It is the Adversary who is today the acting Sovereign of this present world—and who will remain in office until halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation. Then, not before then, the single kingdom of this world will be given to the Son of Man and the world will be baptized into “life” through the spirit of God being poured out on all flesh. Then, there will no longer be indwelling death in any person who does not take upon the person the mark of death, the tattoo of the cross. No longer will anyone die from cancer (indwelling death) although many shall still be martyred (die from outside causes).
Question, would Abraham have continued to love the Lord if he had cut the throat of Isaac and the Lord hadn’t restored Isaac to life? Or would Abraham have been like other men, the commanded deed fueling a root of bitterness? We will never know; for Abraham wasn’t tested on whether he would always love God, but upon whether he would obey the Lord in every situation. Greater Christendom in the Affliction shall be tested on whether they will obey God—and most Christians will not (!) even when filled with the spirit/breath or glory of God, the three words having the same referent.
Obedience is love for God. The emotional touchy-feely concept of love too many Christians associate with the word is of this world and doesn’t pertain to God. And from this touchy-feely perception of love bitterness is conceived.
Showing love for neighbor and brother isn’t giving hugs to either or both, but feeding the hungry and giving shelter to the homeless. Love is serving the other when the one who serves has a right to be served. Love is outwardly thinking of the “other” as the person thinks of the “self.”
The person numbered among the Elect will have been born of God and as such is not free to neglect the commandments, or to neglect the hungry or the homeless. For this person, obedience is prescribed.
The person who claims to be a Christian but who hasn’t actually been born of God is not under the Law, but is still under an obligation to keep the commandments. For this person, it will either be to voluntary do what the Law requires, or to perish as an evildoer. This isn’t, however, what lawless Christian pastors teach parishioners.
Again, the Christian who is absolutely certain that he or she is not under the Law—and probably isn’t under the Law for want of spiritual birth—will, if this Christian transgresses the Law, perish without the Law … why would this be? Jesus said it was so when addressing Pharisees:
Jesus said, "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, "Are we also blind?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, 'We see,' your guilt remains.” (John 9:39–41)
Because these Pharisees—Jews who sought righteousness by strictly following the Law—were condemned by their words (by claiming to understand the mysteries of God) whereas they would have had their transgressions of the Law covered by their servitude to the Adversary if they had not been sure of their righteousness, Christians within the greater Church have a model by which they can understand Paul’s declaration that those who identify themselves as the holy ones, saints, who transgress the Law and as such are sinners will perish regardless of whether they are under or not under the Law … Paul’s treatise identified as “Romans” was expressly written to “all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints” (Rom 1:7). It was not written to the emperor or to important officials or to common men. It was written to a specific audience: the holy or the holy ones in Rome. It was written to men who two or seven or more generations later would determine which 1st-Century texts were canonical and which were not. And what was it that Paul wrote to the holy ones at Rome?
We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things [unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, etc., from chap 1]. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 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. (Rom 2:2–13 emphasis and double emphasis added)
God shows no partiality. The righteous stand on the same theological turf regardless of the path taken to reach this single location that will have Jew and Gentile professing that Jesus is Lord and believing that the Father raised Jesus (who had equality with God prior to Him entering His creation — Phil 2:5–8) from death, and will have the righteous keeping the commandments by faith or from the inside out; i.e., by the inner person, inner self, causing the outer person, outer self, to openly display love for God, neighbor, and brother, this love codified in the Law.
Paul’s treatise to the Romans was addressed to those who knew God, with Paul claiming that at one time all of humanity knew God—certainly Adam and Eve knew God as did Noah and his sons. Thus, all of humanity was without excuse for not-knowing God in the 1st-Century, with Paul applying this stripping of excuses for not-knowing God from later Christians and the Christian Church … “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18). Unrighteousness suppresses the truth.
Unrighteousness doesn’t simply suppress the truth, but permits error to pass itself off as the truth; as the word of Jesus. For once a “thing” is loosed in this world—an idea, a concept, a text—the thing cannot be erased from this world, but rather, the thing is like a microbe: the thing must run its course until it dies out of itself through mutating itself into a non-viable form. Once the unrighteous accepted a Sophist novel as the truth (i.e., the Book of Acts), “truth” was suppressed—how Christ Jesus interacted with the Elect in the 1st-Century was lost to later generations. History of the early Church was falsified, thereby leaving generations of self-identified Christians to believe a lie, lies, fictions based on stock novelistic motifs. Not until Christ Jesus again interacted with another generation of disciples could the Sophist novel be exposed for what it has been all along.
When the unrighteousness of humankind reaches a point where human extinction lies directly before humanity, all human persons will either go over the cliff and into oblivion or some will pull back and jettison unrighteousness and thereby save themselves and the species. But when all human persons are born as slaves of the Adversary, consigned to disobedience as sons of disobedience, it isn’t possible for a human person to fully turn from unrighteousness by themselves. Moses was still an Egyptian fugitive all the while he herded sheep for his father-in-law on the back side of nowhere. He was suddenly free because he had escaped from Egypt, the representation of sin. He lived as a free man, but lived looking over his shoulder, ever vigilant that representatives of “sin” didn’t suddenly overtake him. Likewise, the Christian who has escaped from slavery to unrighteousness through keeping the commandments must be ever vigilant that he or she is not again entangled in the transactional morass of this world; for the temptation to better oneself through engaging in unnecessary transactions is always present; is always breathed-in with each breath through the prince of this world being the prince of the power of the air. And when cutoff from most means of employment in this world because of Sabbath observance, there are few means of providing for the fleshly body of the person other than to work for oneself, thereby directly engaging in transactions with others, a dilemma encountered by Anabaptists who have sought to separate themselves from this present world.
As Moses was told by the Lord, “‘Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead’” (Ex 4:19), the Most High God must give permission to a human person to believe the truth; to believe the words of God as spoken by the man Jesus the Nazarene. Again, for emphasis, no person can believe the truth in this pre Second Passover era unless the Father gives the person permission to do so: this permission comes to the Elect when the Father draws a person from this world by giving to the person the earnest of the spirit. This permission is not extended to any who are not numbered among the Elect until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, said from the perspective of the 1st-Century Church dying from want of spiritual breath at the end of the 1st-Century.
The Apostle Paul probably knew but didn’t know for certain that the Body of Christ would die as the earthly body of the man Jesus the Nazarene died; thus, Paul warns those who are the holy ones at Rome that as God gave ungodly and unrighteous men (and women) over to the impurity of their lustful hearts “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:25), God will give Christians—the new creation of humanity, each descended from the second Adam—over to debased minds if these holy ones worship those visible things that reveal the invisible things of God, with this warning having the reality of his [Paul’s] gospel being that “all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law” (Rom 2:12) … there is only one standard, one criterion for salvation. There are not two paths that lead to salvation: Israel behind Joshua [in Greek, ’Iesou or Jesus] crossed into the Promised Land only at one location, not at many locations. All paths that lead to God figuratively merge on the plains of Moab before any person enters into God’s rest. It is there, on the plains of Moab, where the second covenant [the Moab Covenant — Deut 29:1] was given to circumcised and uncircumcised Israel. It is this second covenant, initially mediated by Moses, that has a new mediator, the glorified Christ Jesus. It is to this second covenant that promised long life and abundant prosperity to which better promises were added, those of everlasting life and wealth stored up in heaven.
Again, all of humanity that began with Adam knowing his Creator and was constricted at a chokepoint of righteousness in the days of Noah who again knew his Creator forms the shadow and copy (forms a visible thing of this world that reveals and precedes the invisible things of God — Rom 1:20) of all of Christendom that began with the second or last Adam, the man Jesus, knowing God the Father and then being constricted at a second chokepoint of righteousness in the days of the endtime two witnesses, who know God the Father. The modeling is as close as a shadow can come to revealing the reality it darkly represents; for Noah and the seven with him form the earthly shadow of the glorified Christ and the seven angels to the seven endtime churches that will cross into the world to come. As Noah and the seven crossed from the antediluvian world into this present world, Christ Jesus and the seven churches [represented by the seven pair of clean animals on the Ark] with their seven angels will cross from this present age into the age to come (into heaven).
A chokepoint of righteousness—this is not terminology I have used before, but this is the reality of the Remnant of the seed of the Woman being those who keep the commandments and have the testimony of Jesus [i.e., the spirit of prophecy — from Rev 19:10] (Rev 12:17). Therefore, as Noah crossed from one world/age into the following world/age, the Remnant are those who cross from this present world ruled by the Adversary, the spiritual king of Babylon, into the world that will be ruled by the glorified Christ, the Son of Man. The Remnant step bodily alive from the Affliction, the last 1260 days of the Adversary’s rule, into the Endurance, the first 1260 days of the Son of Man’s rule. Thus, there is a second checkpoint of righteousness that is analogous to getting onto the Ark in the days of Noah, with this second checkpoint having the spirit of prophecy being equivalent to the Ark made from gopher wood.
Note the movement from physical to spiritual that is characterized by the Law moving from being inscribed on stone tablets to being inscribed on the fleshly tablets of the heart and mind—note the movement from the “eight” being in a gopher wood Ark to the Eight being in an ideology of understanding the mysteries of God; i.e., being in the seven named endtime Churches that form the reality of the seven physical churches on a mail route through Asia Minor.
But of those Israelites numbered in the census of the second year (Num chap 1), only Joshua and Caleb crossed the Jordan and entered into God’s rest—and Caleb had been adopted into Israel. He was of Esau, the other son of promise born to Isaac. And for good and ill, all of greater Christendom—lawless Christendom—is represented by Esau, the son hated while he was still in the womb of his mother. Thus, of all of greater Christendom, only those individuals that have about them a different spirit shall cross into the Promised Land of heaven, with Caleb metaphorically representing all of the single pair of unclean animals that entered the Ark and crossed from the antediluvian world into this present age.
I have repeatedly written the preceding over the past decade: the understanding that the slain Lamb of God and the seven eyes that are seven spirits and the seven horns that are the seven named Churches form the reality that cast as their shadow Noah and the seven with him, plus the seven pairs of clean animals came, early into the process of recovering what had been lost when the Church died from want of spiritual breath (from loss of the holy spirit) at the end of the 1st-Century. However, realizing that the spirit of prophecy that is the testimony of Jesus and that functions as a vessel that bodily takes the righteous from this present evil world into the world to come, the world of “tomorrow,” did not come immediately after I was called to reread, to re-conceptualize prophecy. I didn’t immediately realize that what was physical (gopher wood); that what had substance, a surface that felt solid to the touch; that what could be seen, measured, weighed gave way to what was not of this world, an understanding of the mysteries of God and especially of prophecy which foremost isn’t about what physically happens in this world but about what happens in the heavenly realm where the Adversary continues to reign as the prince of this present world/age. I did not immediately understand that Paul going from saying that he was not ashamed of the gospel, the good news revealing the power of God to save everyone who believes (because by doing those things that the Law requires by belief, by faith, the person shows that the work of the Law is written on his or her heart — this is the gospel Paul taught [Rom 2:14–16]), to a catalogue of defilement that located humanity in the Greco-Roman world, Paul was warning the Church at Rome against submitting to unrighteousness and thereby suppressing the truth, for with unrighteousness and suppression of truth would come the fruit of spiritual defilement and God giving Christendom up to unholy beliefs; to delusions that would prevent them from ever believing the truth so that they would be condemned in the day when judgments were revealed (cf. 2 Thess 2:7–12; Rom 1:18–32).
Now, take all of this back to the canonization of New Testament texts: in order to preserve New Testament texts, there needed to be “value” attached to these texts that would carry them forward along the “x” axis of the event-timeline, through the period of chirographical inscription to the time of typographical inscription to when the Law would be written on hearts and placed in minds with the resurrection of the Body of Christ. When the Father quit drawing individuals from this world through giving to the drawn individual the earnest of the spirit (His breath of life [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou]), there was no one to carry His words as uttered by Christ Jesus forward along the “x” axis as one century became a second and a third until nineteen centuries passed between when the body of Christ died and when the Body of Christ lived again—actually, until forty jubilees passed, with a jubilee representing 49 years, not 50, in the same way that Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks) doesn’t introduce an 8th day into the week when Pentecost occurs. (The Jubilee year spans the 49th year of one seven weeks of years and the 1st year of the following seven weeks of years, based on when crops would be planted and again harvested, with the 50th year being six months of the 49th year and six months of the 1st year.)
No self-identified Christian of the 2nd-Century CE was born of spirit, written without allowing for exceptions, even that of Polycrap, who if he had been born of spirit would never have fellowshipped with (eaten with) the lawless Bishop of Rome … the principle error of 16th and 17th Century Anabaptist Christians was not going back to the 1st-Century for their ideology once they managed to slip behind the Council of Nicea (ca 325 CE). And because no Christian in the 2nd-Century understood the mysteries of God, those self-identified Christians of the 3rd and 4th Centuries made a host of foolish utterances and declarations that preserved New Testament texts as well as cur texts that bred in the minds of “Christians” to produce some truly strange “Christian practices” and customs, practices and customs that are by their appearances rooted in Greco-Roman paganism.
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Self-identified Christians not under the Law because they do not have the Law written on their hearts and placed in their minds nevertheless know what the Law declares. They can read; they have eyes and ears. Yet virtually without exception, the self-identified Christian not under the Law does not realize that if he or she sins (transgresses the Law), this Christian will perish without the Law … is the Christian any less dead perishing without the Law than under the Law? Is the Christian who habitually transgresses the Sabbath commandments any less dead in the lake of fire than the doctor who performs abortion after abortion, or the mass murderer who kills to feed the demon inside him or her? The only hope of the person not under the Law is for this person not to claim to be a Christian, not to claim that he or she understands the mysteries of God. If the person who willfully ignores the Law foolishly decides to identify him or herself as a Christian, as a born of spirit Christian, this person will be un-hesitantly condemned to the lake of fire.
Sabbath observance is a contract that goes back to the day that would become the second Passover (the 15th day of the second month — see Ex chap 16). Sabbath observance predates the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, and Sabbath observance is a test of Israel’s obedience:
They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, "Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." Then the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily." (Ex 16:1–5 emphasis added)
The Sabbath, the seventh day, has always been a test of obedience. It has never been anything other than a test of obedience; for it is the least of the commandments, not the greatest as too many Sabbatarians apparently believe. But as the least of the commandments, it is the easiest one to break—and the most observable one when broken.
A Christian can have other gods before God and not have his or her neighbors know this about the Christian. Likewise, the Christian can have secret graven images, can secretly take God’s name in vain, can secretly have an affair with his or her neighbor’s spouse, can secretly steal, commit murder, covet, lie, dishonor parents, but no person can secretly keep the Sabbath: neighbors know whether a person works on the Sabbath, does laundry on the Sabbath, shops on the Sabbath, or goes to services on the Sabbath even though Bibles are concealed in briefcases. A spouse knows; children know. The person who ceases to labor on the Sabbath inevitably attracts attention to him or herself; whereas failing to keep the Sabbath causes the person to be “common”; to be like lawless neighbors. Keeping the Sabbath causes self-identified Christian neighbors to be uncomfortable around the Sabbatarian even if the Sabbath keeper never says anything to neighbors about resting on the seventh day. Keeping the Sabbath causes separation from common humanity, causes the person to be perceived as being different from others.
Perhaps worst of all, the Christian who transgresses the Sabbath as oppose to keeping the Sabbath does so without guilt: unlike the Christian who conceals adultery, lust, theft, murder from neighbors, all the while feeling guilty about what the person secretly does, the Christian who transgresses the Sabbath makes no attempt to hide his or her lawlessness, but openly celebrates his or her lawlessness as if transgressing the Sabbath is somehow a badge of honor—and it is in this absence of guilt where what Paul writes to the holy ones at Rome has its greatest application: “Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Rom 1:32). Though all Christians know they are to keep the Sabbath, those who break the Sabbath not only do so without guilt, but they give their approval to others who also break the Sabbath commandment..
Entering into God’s rest (i.e., heaven) is conditioned upon obedience—and not just one occasion of obedience, but upon an inner and outer walk of daily obedience.
Israel in the Promised Land forms the shadow and copy of Israel [the nation circumcised both in the flesh and of the heart] in the Millennium. As such, Israel in the wilderness of Sin forms a type of circumcised-of-heart Israel in this present world, a wilderness of sin. And Sabbath observance beginning one month into Israel’s forty year long trek around the mountain of God became compulsory; Sabbath observance following the Second Passover liberation of Israel will become compulsory for all who obey God.
Because Christians are to inwardly and outwardly keep the Sabbath, outwardly circumcised Israel as the shadow and type of endtime saints both entered a physical Promised Land [equivalent to a Christian outwardly keeping the Sabbath] and kept the seventh-day Sabbath in the Promised Land [equivalent to having the Sabbath rule over the desires of the heart and the thoughts of the mind of a Christian on the seventh day].
Voluntary obedience can be commanded; e.g., in the United States of America, citizens “voluntarily” pay income taxes, but if a citizen doesn’t voluntarily pay, legal action is brought against the citizen by agents of the Federal Government. Thus, voluntary compliance is only “voluntary” until the person chooses not to comply. Voluntary compliance means that a person can pay his or her income taxes when these taxes are due in the year (or quarter) following when the income is earned rather than have the taxes taken from the person when moneys are earned, forcibly taken before the person is paid.
Israel in the Wilderness voluntarily kept the Sabbath prior to when the Law was given. Of course, no manna was present on the seventh day, but a person wasn’t stoned for going out looking for manna—
On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, "How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day." So the people rested on the seventh day. (Ex 16:27–30)
However, after giving the Law, a person out and about on the Sabbath was stoned: compliance ceased to be voluntary—
While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. They put him in custody, because it had not been made clear what should be done to him. And the Lord said to Moses, "The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp." And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded Moses. (Num 15:32–36)
For circumcised of heart Israel following the Second Passover, keeping the Sabbath will be “voluntary” until day 220, the day when the lawless one is revealed (2 Thess 2:3). From day 220 of the Affliction onward, the Christian who refuses to keep the Law, who refuses to keep the Sabbath will not be physically stoned, but will have a strong delusion sent over the Christian so he or she cannot believe the truth and turn to God and be saved … when the promise of entering into God’s rest stands as it had for Israel when the twelve spies returned from the Promised Land, Christians who will be numbered in the Apostasy of day 220 will rebel against God and will be condemned to death in a wilderness of sin: this world and all that it represents.
The Christian who claims today to know God and to know the will of God yet who refuses to keep the commandments (all of them, weekly and annual) is a liar and has no truth within the Christian. Some of these lying Christians are more publicly visible than others—their visibility in this world will not save them or their uncovered firstborns—but all will be condemned when the fifth seal of the Scroll is removed if they follow the man of perdition, the lawless one who will sincerely believe the angel inside him is Christ Jesus when it is the Adversary.
Understand, the theology of Latter Day Saints makes them particularly vulnerable to demonic possession; for when a person has been taught that he or she was humanly born with an angel inside the person, it is only a short step for the person to believe that the angel inside a particular person is an angel that is identifiable in Scripture. Therefore, when the man of perdition declares himself God, this human person has only to believe that the angel inside him is the angel who appeared to Moses in the burning bush (cf. Acts 7:30; Ex 3:2). This person could then declare with a clear conscious that he is God (2 Thess 2:4), especially considering the neo-Arian Christology of Latter Day Saints. Therefore, every Latter Day Saints needs to remain vigilant, ever aware that demonic possession is real, and that the man of perdition will be a human person possessed by the Adversary; a human person made bitter by the sudden death of his deeply loved adopted son, an uncovered firstborn, at the Second Passover liberation of Israel; a human person who has already wrestled with depression and overcame it through religion.
Following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, Christians have a short while to come into voluntary compliance with the Law: they have a length of time analogous to the period between when manna was given and when the Law was given to voluntarily begin to keep the commandments, all of them. When the lawless one is revealed, compliance will cease to be voluntarily but will become a matter of spiritual life (entering into heaven) or death (perishing in the lake of fire). And the Christian who today claims to know God but who advocates that attention be paid to the surface of things—this includes earthly Jerusalem as well as to inflation in the Weimar Republic—knows nothing of God, the deity that raises dead ones from the grave and gives life to the dead inner selves of human persons.
So there is no doubt, the man of perdition will be a humanly likeable fellow who became bitter when his adopted son was suddenly slain because he was an uncovered firstborn; because the “father” refused to cover his “son” by taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month. This father will bring railing accusations against God, but he has only himself to blame. He has been warned. Even in Texas, there are saints [holy ones] who take the sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month, with the first month beginning with the first sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox. Even in Texas in 2013 there will be saints taking the Passover on Tuesday evening, April 23rd … Jesus ate the Passover with His disciples on Tuesday evening, April 23rd [Julian] in the year 31 CE. He was crucified on Wednesday, April 24th; He was in the Garden Tomb by the beginning of the High Sabbath, Thursday, April 25th, the 15th day of the first month. He was in the tomb all day, Friday, the 16th day of the first month. He was in the tomb all day, Sabbath, the 17th day of the first month. And He was resurrected from death at the beginning of the first day after the Sabbath, the 18th day of the first month.
Even in Texas, this father of his adopted son can cover firstborns in his household if he would humble himself, park his ego someplace where it is not easily found, and reach out for the help he doesn’t presently believe he needs. But alas, he won’t. He just cannot bring himself to believe that all-but-one can be wrong, that everything he has come to believe since he picked himself up off the floor of a New York City apartment he couldn’t afford has been of the Adversary, who has groomed him for possession. George Soros has been a lapdog for the Adversary, but the man of perdition shall be the body of the Adversary for approximately 1,000 days, analogous to the Thousand Years when the Messiah as the Son of Man shall reign as the invisible King of kings and Lord of lords who rules the whole world. Beginning with the Endurance, the Messiah shall be to first Israel, then to the world as the Adversary has been to the world, then to Israel, with the Messiah bringing life whereas the Adversary brought death.
In this time of the end, identifying false prophets and false teachers of God has never been easier: if a person doesn’t teach Israel to keep the commandments, the teacher or prophet is false (Deut 13:3–4). If the person finds Rome or the Roman Empire in the visions of Daniel, the teacher or prophet is false. If the person asks for money, asks for support (even though the person is entitled to support), the teacher or prophet is false. If the person attaches any importance to the surface of things or people, the teacher or prophet is false. Likewise, identifying a false text, a spurious text from old has never been easier: if the author of the text would have “disciples of Christ Jesus” worshiping the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob as the Most High God, the author has written a false or spurious text. The text is not to be considered the word of God although the text may have value for other reasons. The text is the work of a man (or a woman).
The God who raised Jesus from death is not the God of Abraham, the God of humanly born, living persons.
The messaging of the New Testament is simple: two deities equal in primacy functioned as one deity, with One functioning as the spokesperson for the Other, with this One being as the fleshly body of a human person is in relationship to the inner self of the person, with only the outer self able to vocalize the thoughts and intentions of the inner self—
Is the above simple enough that anyone can understand the principle embodied in the person him or herself?
Thoughts heard as words in the mind of a person are not easily transmitted to another person by mental telepathy, but are relatively easily transmitted by the fleshly body of the person speaking these thoughts as words to be heard, or inscribing these thoughts as words to be read by another person. The inner self of a person has no ability to convey its thoughts, its desires to another person without some action being taken by the fleshly body (the outer self) of the person. And the Most High God (the Father) is as the inner self of a person: this Most High God needs and needed a spokesperson, the Logos, to vocalize His thoughts, His desires to human persons. Today, the One who speaks the words of the Father is Christ Jesus, the life-giving spirit that dwells in every person truly born of God as a son. Unless the Logos before or Christ Jesus during His earthly ministry or the indwelling Christ now speaks the words of the Father to Israel, the nation that prevails with God, the words of the Father remain unheard; remain as un-vocalize, un-inscribed thoughts in the mind of a human person. Nothing of the Most High God would be known to human persons without a human person vocalizing the words of the Most High with the person’s own mouth.
What are your thoughts? How can you express them without facial expressions, hand gestures, speaking, writing? Consider the case of Stephen Hawking, renowned theoretical physicist who suffers from a motor neuron disease related to ALS that has left him unable to speak or write or even move his head. Presently Hawking “communicates” by movement of an eye lid, but as Hawking’s facial nerves deteriorate, he undergoes the risk of acquiring “locked-in syndrome” where the brain continues to function but there is no way for the thoughts of the brain to be transmitted to the person’s surrounding world. Neuroscientists are exploring a brain-computer interface that could possibly translate Hawking’s thoughts into words.
As first the Logos, then as the unique Son of the Logos, Christ Jesus is the God-human interface that translates the Most High’s thoughts into human words. Without this interface, nothing of the Most High could be known to human persons. And nothing really was known until Jesus as the unique Son of the Logos entered His creation to reveal the Father to Jesus’ disciples, not to all of humankind.
Knowledge of the Most High is given on a need-to-know basis only for as long as the Adversary remains the prince of this world.
As the inner self of a human person is “locked-in” a fleshly body for as long as the fleshly body has life, the inner self can only communicate with its surrounding world via movement of the fleshly body … the Most High God could only communicate with natural Israel through the acts and speech of the Logos, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of living ones, not of dead ones. Thus, because human persons are born with dead inner selves, no godly communication with the inner selves of Israel or of any peoples was possible. However, as a type of what would happen, the Logos entered His creation as His unique Son and revealed the Father to those human individuals that the Father had given to Christ Jesus to be His disciples. Today, the indwelling of Christ in those human persons the Father foreknows and predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies causes these few persons to know the Father and thereby be able to speak His words [the Father’s words] as Jesus left His words with His first disciples.
Mark’s Gospel is about the earthly words the man Jesus the Nazarene spoke, words that revealed the thoughts and words of the Father. Matthew’s Gospel is about the earthly words disciples of Christ Jesus speak under inspiration of the indwelling Christ who reveals the words and thoughts of the Father.
My fingers type on a computer keyboard the words that are in my conscious mind, words that come via the indwelling of the Parakletos, words that are of God the Father, with the distance between the words of the Father and my words being the distance between heaven and earth, the distance between a subconscious thought and a conscious thought. Therefore, a human son of God must necessarily give voice to a divine utterance as the physical body of a human person must give utterance to a thought of the person’s mind.
In earlier generations this relationship between God and a son of God could be understood not only through the relationship between the inner and outer selves of a person, but though the marriage relationship, with the husband representing the inner self that is unable to reproduce itself and with the outer self representing the woman who shall be saved in childbirth. But with the breakdown of marriage as an institution, men and women cohabit with each other without the benefit of marriage; the married dissolve marriages with the ease of cohabiting couples dissolving unions; and same-sex individuals demand the legal protection of marriage without understanding what marriage is about. Thus, marriage as a symbol for the Most High God’s relationship to the spiritually dead creation no longer carries the meaning it had two millennia ago. Marriage is no longer about two individuals who each of themselves have no ability to reproduce themselves coming together, one in the other as the head of the other so that the other through childbirth shall be saved.
When the Logos entered His creation, He was separated for a while from the deity analogous to the inner self of a person, or analogous to the man in a husband-wife relationship—His separation from the Most High was analogous to a person being humanly born with a dead inner self; His entering His creation as the man Jesus the Nazarene made Him as every human person is born, physically alive but spiritually dead.
When inside His creation, the Logos as His unique Son (not as Himself, for the Logos was no more) spoke the words of the Other deity, the God of dead ones. While inside His creation, the “life” of the Other entered into the One [Christ Jesus, the unique Son of the Logos] to form the fractal for the spiritual code. Then after glory was returned to the One who had entered His creation as His unique Son and while still inside His creation became the firstborn Son of the Other, the “algorithm” for the spiritual code began its work of repeating the fractal by giving “life” to selected human persons through their receipt of a second breath of life [the breath of God in the breath of Christ] that makes the human person appear in this world (walk in this world) as Jesus the Nazarene, an observant Jew, appeared/walked. Every person born of spirit [pneuma Theou] will be a fractal of Jesus the Nazarene, with the person having physical life prior to receipt of “life” through receipt of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the bodily form represented by the indwelling of Christ Jesus.
The breath of God that in the bodily form of a dove, the required sacrifice as a sin offering for redeeming a firstborn (Lev 12:6, 8), entered into [Gr., eis — from Mark 1:10] the man Jesus the Nazarene, who at Calvary would be sacrificed as the selected Lamb of God … at baptism, Jesus in fulfilling all righteousness (Matt 3:15) established the spiritual algorithm for the creation of sons of God, each looking like Christ Jesus and collectively becoming New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, with this Bride functioning as the outer self, outer body of “Christ” and with the Father and Son functioning as the non-physical inner self [soul] of “Christ.”
The teacher of Israel who would have Christians learn the lessons of history has no understanding of what these lessons even are … history is the record of the Adversary’s many attempts to produce a viable system of self-governance apart from God. As such, history can be dismissed as the Adversary is dismissed: permit the dead to bury the dead of themselves. They need no help from the spiritually living; for every system of self-governance that is not based on absolute obedience to the commandments of God is doomed to failure. So a person cannot look to history for guidance. The person must look to the future, the Millennium, not to the past. And there shall be no transactions in the future. None shall buy and sell, with making transactions being the way of the Adversary.
In the past, there was inflation and hyperinflation, recessions and depressions, all because human history was built on a foundation of transactions, monetary exchanges for goods and services. The foundation, itself, has been the problem. The foundation hasn’t been faith in God to supply the person’s needs, such as they are. And without faith, no one can please God.
When the foundation of human history has been overlapping transactions, the histories of what has been built on this foundation is without value when it comes to understanding the ways of God and how the Millennium shall be organized. Permit the Glenn Becks of this world to buy gold and fret about hyperinflation which is certain to come to America. Of course the United States will experience hyperinflation and the collapse of civil society—it cannot be otherwise—for democracy has to fail (actually, it already has failed) and be shown as another failed self-governance scheme of the Adversary.
The U.S. Constitution is codified failure; for any system of governance that isn’t built on keeping the Commandments is doomed to failure. Did the man found gathering sticks on the Sabbath have rights granted to him by God? Was this man free to leave the camp of Israel and gather firewood? On six days of the week, yes he was. But not on the seventh day. His freedom had boundaries, which means that he really wasn’t free. Oh, he might have been freer than he was in Egypt, but what rights to live his own life as he chose did he really have? And were his rights, whatever they were, respected before he was stoned? Or did the man have no rights because he had been a slave in Egypt, human property that was “purchased” or redeemed by the God of Abraham at the cost of the firstborns of Egypt?
There might not be a more distasteful word in America than “slave”; yet every American is humanly born as a slave of the Adversary, born consigned to disobedience as a son of disobedience. And when the slave of the Adversary is redeemed by God, the person is as the man found gathering sticks on the Sabbath was. That man wasn’t free to do as he pleased. He was only free to keep the commandments whereas he hadn’t been free in Egypt to obey God. He was purchased from the prince of this world; he was still human property, only now he was the property of the Lord instead of Pharaoh.
Christians are purchased for a price … what do Christians think this means? That they are free to gather sticks on the Sabbath, or do their weekly shopping on the Sabbath, or to attend football games on the Sabbath? A Christian goes from being the bondservant of the Adversary to being a son of God who must learn to live by the rules of the household of God. And no son of God makes a practice of sinning (1 John 3:8–10); of transgressing the commandments. It is the sons of the Adversary that make a practice of sinning, such as attempting to enter into God’s presence on the day after the Sabbath.
A human father such as Glenn Beck shows his adopted son great affection and attention, but expects in return that his adopted son respect the rules of his house … would not God expect His adopted sons to show Him respect by obeying the rules of His household? What would a human father do if his adopted son ignored him and began hanging around with a drug dealers and smugglers? How long would a man such as Beck wait before intervening in the affairs of his adopted son?
God has shown remarkable patience without yet intervening in the affairs of Christians; but there will be a specific time for intervention, a time that is near but not today.
Those Christian pastors and teachers who are liars by vocation, telling Christians that they do not need to keep the commandments, are condemned already (see Matt 7:21–23). But perhaps a few adopted sons of God can still be salvaged if these sons of God can set aside history and see beyond the surface of things. The problems of humanity will not be solved by studying history; by building a better economic system based upon transactions; by educating voters … was not Korah well educated? He rose up with 250 chiefs of the congregation of Israel, and in the finest expression of democratic ideals found in Scripture, told Moses, “‘You have gone too far! For all in the congregations are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?’” (Num 16:3).
It didn’t work out so well for Korah and those who sided with him; nor will it work out well for the Glenn Becks of this world.
I’m not interested in finding out how gold tastes when the economics of this world collapse utterly, leaving those who have purchased gold to preserve wealth to feast on their precious metals that won’t be as precious as a bowl of red lentils … the fall of Babylon comes via two hard blows, the first below the belt when the great horn of the king of Greece is broken because he is an uncovered firstborn, and the second approximately 1260 days later in the sixth trumpet plague. The second blow is only needed to establish the defeat of Death; for the single kingdom of this world [Babylon] falls in a logarithmic curve into the Abyss, starting its fall slowly before toppling headlong over the precipice and into the bottomless pit.
It will be in the period immediately after the single blow below the belt—the period when people think that “civilized society” might be saved if the right person were to grasp control of the reigns of government (say, the man of perdition)—that faithful Christians will be most severely tested; for the person who believes nothing will believe anything when tormented in the fires of history.
The person who warns others to look to history for answers to present problems is a fool, the word not used lightly. It is only by looking to God can any person have hope; for all of history is how not to live.
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Marriage is only between a man and a woman—it cannot be any other way—for the man in symbolism represents the inner self or soul [psuche] of a person, and the woman who bears children (as the ultimate expression of the God of Abraham speaking the creation into existence) in symbolism represents the outer self or fleshly body of the person … the soul of a person doesn’t dwell in many bodies, but dwells in two, the first natural and the second spiritual or of heaven (1 Cor 15:44). It is for this reason that Paul commands the saints at Corinth:
To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. (1 Cor 7:12–15)
Before God draws a person from this world through giving to the person the earnest of heavenly life, the person was an unbeliever, a son of disobedience consigned to disobedience. The married man was nevertheless the head of his wife in this world even though both were unbelievers. However, once the Father gives indwelling “life” to one of the two people married to each other but not to the other, the dynamics of the relationship change. In marriage two become one flesh, one entity represented by one person, with again the two representing the inner and outer selves of one person. Thus, when one of the two is drawn from this world through the Father giving life to the man or to the woman but not to the other, either the “head” of the marriage (the man) has become a believer while his wife remains an unbeliever, or the “body” of the marriage (the woman) becomes a believer while her husband remains an unbeliever. One partner in the marriage is made a spiritual Israelite, the other remains a Gentile, a situation that ought not exist (Israel was not to marry spouses from the nations). But Paul declares that if the unbelieving spouse is willing to accept the believing spouse as his or her spiritual head, these two should not separate. But if the unbelieving spouse doesn’t want to accept the believing spouse as his or her head (as the “soul” of the one “person” represented by the marriage), these two persons are free to separate (for God dissolved the union through giving life to one but not the other) and free to remarry, but only to a believer, with the believing wife wearing on her head a second covering that can be likened to her long hair, a covering she has made with her hands, to show that she acknowledges her believing husband as her earthly “head,” the soul of the marriage, whereas the Lord is her spiritual head.
The Christian message is simple: two are one.
1. Two deities conjoined in the Tetragrammaton YHWH are one deity, the God of Israel;
2. Two people in marriage are one flesh, one person;
3. Two selves, the inner self or soul and the outer self or fleshly body, are one person;
4. Two spirits, that of God the Father in that of Christ Jesus, are one spirit, one breath of life, the spirit that gives life to the dead inner self [soul] of a human person, with “the indwelling of Christ” being the shortened form of speaking about life from God being in the life of Christ and these two breaths of life together, as one breath of life, raising the humanly-born dead inner self of a person from death and to life in the heavenly realm.
What is difficult about so simple a message as two is one? Matthew’s Gospel and Mark’s Gospel, two texts from the 1st-Century, together form one narrative in a manner analogous to how the spiritually living inner self dwells and continues to dwell in the physically living outer self of a human person.
The author of Luke’s Gospel and of Acts sought to replicate in his two texts what the authors of Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels did; but whereas two authors wrote Mark and Matthew, with the author of Mark not having more than a barely adequate command of the Greek language and the author of Matthew writing fluent Greek, the author of Luke and of Acts strove to write of Christ Jesus then write of Christ in the Church, but this author had no living inner self and wrote as an intelligent and perceptive carnal person; wrote as a well-informed unbeliever would write. The author of Luke and of Acts did not fully understand the two are one motif that forms the spiritual code for fractals of Christ Jesus, with the indwelling of Christ causing the Body of Christ [the Woman] to walk in this world as Jesus walked. However, the author of Luke and of Acts inscribed and thereby locked in place as the polyglossia and heteroglossia of the late 1st-Century CE Christian community—and from what the author of Luke and of Acts attempted to do, it can be ascertained with considerable certainty that the Christian community understood the Christian message of two being one fifty years after Calvary.
Again, some person must decide if a text is of Christ Jesus, or is of the Adversary, written by a son of disobedience who has not been given understanding of the mysteries of God.
Dr. Bart D. Ehrman of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, determined that none of the received canonical New Testament texts are of God, that all are of human composition and long-time human inscription. Although citing widespread agreement from within the academic community, Ehrman claims only to speak for himself. He claims nothing beyond an all-powerful deity’s failure to intervene to end human suffering and man’s torment of his fellow man here on earth as his authority for consigning all of Holy Writ to the imaginations of ancient writers. For Ehrman, all of the Bible is as Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion is.
The question that must now be asked, is not God able to speak for Himself?
And we return to the inner self of a human person: how is it that the inner self communicates with the conscious outer self?
While building a rifle on an unusually hot day in early May 1972 in my shop upriver from Siletz, Oregon, I was sweating profusely from the physical labor involved and decided to take a break and hike around the millpond and along the creek, climb through the large second-growth firs in back of the pond and loop around through the dark timber to come out where I had logged the maple for the fiddleback gunstock blanks I was then using. And as a manner of habit, I grabbed my hunting pouch and a .58 caliber rifle I had built a year or two earlier. The rifle was kept loaded in the shop so I had only to cap it for it to be ready to fire—and I did.
Just before I reached the top of the hill, something inside my mind said, Bear! With my eyes, I consciously saw no bear; yet the rifle was already to my shoulder and discharged.
For a moment, I felt absolute terror for I had shot at something without seeing whatever it was I shot-at. I had never seen a target nor identified that target; I had fired instinctively. And I hit the bear in the neck, second vertebrae, the soft lead ball flattening to twice its diameter and lodging against the hide on the far side of the neck … the bear was not threatening me, but was actually fleeing without being seen.
The bear is the one in the photograph used on the cover of the collection of poems, Upriver, Beyond the Bend. The ball’s entrance hole can be seen below the knuckles of my left hand. The infant is my youngest daughter. And I butchered the bear and traded it pound-for-pound for beef to neighbors who preferred young bear to old tough cow: I didn’t eat bear, or any meats that which was “common” to humanity even before I was consciously called into the Body of Christ.
The ball that killed this bear in May 1972 couldn’t have been better placed; yet I never saw that bear. Something inside me identified the target and spurred me into action that was apart or separate from my conscious mind. A pattern was seen and recognized before my conscious mind realized that the image was even seen. And I fired that .58 caliber rifle without conscious thought or intent to do so, something that truly frightened me because I didn’t know what I shot-at until I reloaded and hiked the twenty-five or so yards through waist-high sword ferns separating me from the dead bear.
How was it that communication occurred between optical nerves and nerves controlling muscles within my mind that was not of my conscious thought process?
During those years when I had a rifle in my hands most of the time; when I shot multiple rounds daily; when hobby and vocation merged into what I did every day, I didn’t take long to pull the trigger. I habitually shot when the rifle came to my shoulder; for when the rifle came to my shoulder I was looking at the target through the rifle’s sights … but what happens when the rifle involuntarily comes to the shoulder and no target is seen? When the only thing known is a word screamed inside the mind, Bear!
When I heard that single word inside my mind, the rifle had already fired: I was pulling the rifle from my shoulder to reload from horn and loading block.
My inner self overrode my outer self and my conscious mind and took direct control of my outer self on that day in 1972. Since then, the overriding of the conscious thought process has occurred a few times, but never again so dramatically. These other times I have suddenly come to know a matter just before this knowledge was needed without me knowing beforehand that it would be needed. It was as if my inner self was working from a different data base then was my conscious mind and suddenly handed to my conscious mind what the inner self knew the conscious mind would need for a task that wasn’t yet at hand but would be shortly.
Now, back to the question that must be asked: is God not able to speak for Himself, speak in words that sound like thunder to His unintended auditors, speak as He did when Jesus called out,
“Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine.” (John 12:28–30)
John the Baptist heard words spoken from heaven when the breath of the Father [pneuma Theou] bodily descended in the form of a dove, lit upon and entered into the man Jesus the Nazarene. And if God can speak for Himself to John the Baptist and to Christ Jesus, why does He not today speak for himself, telling human persons what it is that He wants done? Why rely upon human intermediaries and human inscription of the words of these intermediaries?
Is the answer to the above question found in Moses?
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, "You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die."
Moses said to the people, "Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin."
The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. And the Lord said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: 'You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. (Ex 20:18–23)
Although the people of Israel agreed to do whatever the Lord said through Moses (see Ex 24:3–8) so long as the Lord did not speak directly to the people, what actually happened?
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, "Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." So Aaron said to them, "Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" (Ex 32:1–4)
Forty days, forty nights—the number forty (40) representing completion as in a lifetime—was as long as the people of Israel could go before they condemned themselves by making for themselves gods of gold: the golden calf/calves. So speaking directly to the people of Israel did not impress the people enough for them to heed the words of the Lord. And natural Israel at Sinai represents in type greater Christendom 220 days after the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart; for on day 220 of the Affliction, the Apostasy (great falling away) will occur when the lawless one (the man of perdition) is revealed (2 Thess 2:3).
The Lord speaking to the people of Israel from atop Mount Sinai didn’t prevent the people from rebelling against the Lord; nor would God speaking from heaven today or tomorrow prevent Christians from rebelling against God, doing the very things that God commands them not to do.
Sadly, Christians more so than other peoples of this world will not heed the words of the Lord, but will reframe the Lord’s discourse in a language of rebellion against God: freedom to keep the commandments (whereas sons of disobedience are not free to keep the commandments) becomes freedom from keeping the commandments … throughout its long history, when did outwardly circumcise Israel ever keep the commandments? Jesus told Jews at Sukkoth, “‘Has not Moses given you the Law? Yet none of you keeps the Law’” (John 7:19). And how was it that Jews were failing their most basic command: Israel was to treat the stranger—the non-Israelite—as if the stranger was a native Israelite (Lev 19:34); for Moses commanded Israel, “‘If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you’” (Lev 25:35).
As a nation, Israel asked and continues to ask, Who is my brother? Who else but me is the firstborn son of God (from Ex 4:22)? With whom do I share my inheritance, my redemption, my life as the Body of Christ?
Consider what is revealed: after a third of humankind (all uncovered firstborns) are slain at the Second Passover liberation of Israel at the beginning of seven years of tribulation; after another fourth part of humankind is slain by the fourth horseman thereby leaving only half of pre Second Passover humanity still physically alive; after a third of remaining humanity is slain in the Second Woe (the sixth trumpet plague) leaving only a third of pre Second Passover humanity alive, the “rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts” (Rev 9:20–21).
For as long as human persons are born consigned to disobedience, they will not leave the Adversary, their master, and cease continuing his rebellion against God. Even after greater Christendom is liberated from indwelling sin and death, the majority of Christians will rebel against the Lord. Only by the single kingdom of this world being taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man, Head and Body, will the people of this world cease following the Adversary—and even then, many will accept the mark of the beast (the tattoo of the cross — chi xi stigma) so that they can buy and sell (make transactions) during the Endurance of Jesus, the last 1260 days before the Second Advent. They simply cannot imagine living, or even surviving without engaging in transactions; thus they will compromise what they know to be right so that they can satisfy the demands of the flesh. They will be ruled by that which has no life just as they are today ruled by what has no life:
Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: "You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you. By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries; so I brought fire out from your midst; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you. All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever." (Ezek 28:12–19 emphasis added)
We still have to deal with the Adversary, but from the perspective of the unchanging heavenly realm, the Adversary no longer exists. He is dead; for it wasn’t an earthly king who was in Eden, the Garden of God. It isn’t a human person who is a guardian cherub. Rather, it is an angel who in the abundance of his trade became filled with violence and sinned.
For as long as a human person remains a son of disobedience, consigned to disobedience as evidenced by those things the person does such as worship the person’s god on Sunday rather than on the Sabbath, the person will rebel against God even if the Lord appears to the person twice in vision as the Lord appeared to ancient King Solomon. The person simply will not believe God; for the Most High isn’t this person’s Lord. The Adversary is the lord of the person. The Adversary is the lord to those who are consigned to disobedience and remain as sons of disobedience. The Adversary is the God that greater Christendom worships, that Islam worships, that Buddhists worship, that President Obama (and before him, President Bush) serves. The Adversary is the still-reigning prince of this world, with all earthly authority having been given to him for a time. Thus, even though the Adversary is dead from the perspective of the timeless heavenly realm, he remains alive in bifurcated time and remains the prince of this world that the fleshly bodies of human persons continue to serve in some degree.
When there is no indwelling of Christ Jesus, the person has no living inner self, no living soul—and God must speak, if He does, to the person in audible sound that will be heard as thunder is heard. But when the person receives a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ, there is no reason for God to speak to the person in audible sound. If words are spoken such as I heard when called to reread prophecy, these words are heard as sound coming from inside the person. And these words have about them a mental “thinginess” that cannot really be described in words: they transform usually ephemeral thought-sound (how thoughts are heard by the inner ear) into objects that redirect thoughts and thought patterns and gradually solidify into new ways of thinking, of solving problems.
Only a person truly born of God can make any valid determination of whether an ancient text is of godly men or women, or of carnal men or women.
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[This “Introduction to Volume Five” will be continued in Sections 5
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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."