Homer Kizer Ministries

November 27, 2012 ©Homer Kizer

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5.

It is the synoptic problem that truly needs to be rethought, re-conceptualized; for the synoptic problem has yet to be well resolved. The multiple source solution [Four-Source Hypothesis] is no solution, but a kicking of the problem down the road as scholarship trudges a dusty path leading to death and embarrassment.

In all probability that mythical Quelle text never existed: Matthew’s Gospel is the spiritual reality that casts as its shadow Mark’s Gospel, and Luke’s Gospel is the inscription of Christian heteroglossia as many dialectical voices competed with each other in the late 1^st-Century, with Matthew’s Gospel and Mark’s Gospel having significance within the endtime Jesus Movement. Luke’s Gospel, as a snapshot of the late 1^st-Century Christian Polyphemus, reveals why the Christian Church died from loss of spiritual breath.

The Quelle text is a missing 1^st-Century text from which scholars believe the authors of Matthew’s Gospel and of Luke’s Gospel copied information (copied exact lines) that appear in these two Gospels but does not appear in Mark’s Gospel … historical scholars apparently believe that Mark’s Gospel and the Quelle text were two of the four sources used by the authors of Matthew and Luke; that Matthew and Luke were not written from their authors having first hand information about Christ Jesus (i.e., these authors were witnesses not first disciples). And this is expressly the case for Luke’s Gospel (see Luke 1:1–4).

The other two source texts have been dubbed the “M text” for information that appears only in Matthew’s Gospel, and the “L text” for information that appears only in Luke’s Gospel … Quelle is German for <source>.

But to argue that the author of Matthew’s Gospel copied from three sources is to not understand the essence of Christianity: the Author of Matthew needed only one source, an authentic account of what Jesus did and said—in this case, Mark’s Gospel.

The author of Matthew’s Gospel needed no source text other than Mark; the author of Matthew needed only an understanding of how movement from the physical to the spiritual manifested itself in a disciple, with this understanding coming from living through spiritual birth and maturation. From this understanding and Mark’s Gospel, Matthew’s Gospel could be and was written.

John’s Gospel was a “setting right” of all that was misunderstood or only partially understood within the Jesus Movement.

Today, a decade plus after I was called to reread prophecy and after I have journeyed a ways down the road to understanding the mysteries of God, I am employed at setting right all that went wrong since the 1^st-Century death of the Body of Christ, and now even before the death of the Body. As such, my writings do not read like the writings of other Christian pastors and teachers. I do not focus on bringing many to Christ; on “converting” common humanity to Christianity. I don’t ask the “Christian” still consigned to disobedience as a son of disobedience to undertake daily Scripture reading between now and, say, Christmas; for daily reading Holy Writ will only reinforce the errant beliefs this Christian already has. It would actually be better for the Christian who will not take the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14^th day of the first month of the sacred year (e.g., Tuesday evening, April 23, 2013) to be shocked into obedience by the loss of his or her firstborn than to continually mock Christ Jesus by taking communion daily, weekly, quarterly, or annually on a night other than that of the 14^th of Aviv. A hard and harsh reality? Words that would seem to be without love? But where is the greater love, to teach innocents to believe lies, to subscribe to ideologies produced from misreading Holy Writ, or to leave these “Christians” spiritually slumbering, busily engaged in making a living, in thinking about the successes and failures of NFL fantasy dream teams, in following the exploits of television action dramas in which murders are neatly resolved in sixty minutes, including allowing for commercial interruptions.

The vast majority of Christendom will rebel against God on day 220 of the Affliction, and will return to traditional Christianity just as the remnant of Israel in Egypt vowed to return to the remnant’s pagan practices (see Jer 44:16–18).

Things went better for ancient Israel when the nation was far from the Lord; yes, they did! But why should this be? Why would the Lord not honor, say, the reforms of King Josiah through building on these reforms, returning prosperity and the greatness of Israel, reduced in size to being no larger than the southern kingdom of Jerusalem? That is what Christian teachers by the scores assure congregations will happen if America turns from its lawless ways, from its murder of the unborn, from its acceptance of homosexual practices in military services. But these teachers of a truly uninformed Christian laity lie to their congregations: there is nothing America or any other nation can do to save itself. An individual Christian can, by turning to God, save him or herself once the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, but the nations of this world are doomed as is the Adversary himself, the prince of this present world. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to avoid the inevitable; for what the scores of Christian pastors and teachers fail to grasp is that all nations, all corporations, all institutions—any organization possessing a structure in which authority exists, including the Christian Church—derive their organizational basis from the authority lent to the Adversary when all of humanity was consigned to disobedience because of the transgression of the first man. This includes the patriarchal family … what is it that was said when Eve was created from the flesh of the man:

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen 2:22–24)

Adam and Eve had one breath of life, the breath breathed into the man’s nostrils by Elohim [singular in usage]. They had one glory, the breath of the man. They were truly of one bone, one flesh, the two being one, separated by the Lord making for the man a helpmate so that man should not be alone. But this helpmate was of the man and it was the man who had no say in the creation of the woman. Likewise, a Christian has no say in the Father separating the inner self of a person from the outer self by giving to the inner a separate and distinct breath of life: until the inner self is resurrected from death by receipt of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] coming to the inner self in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], with the breath of Christ entering into the dead inner self of a foreknown person in a manner analogous to the breath of God entering into the man Jesus (Mark 1:10), the human person is as Adam was outside of the Garden of God. The human person is alone in this world, with there being no bush or tree from which the person can take comfort; with there being no animal that can be a companion. But as the Lord took the man and placed him into the Garden of God where the Lord created plants of all sorts and animals of all sorts, God the Father takes the foreknown and predestined human person up the mountain of God to Eden, where the Adversary had been an anointed guardian cherub until iniquity was found in this angel that was the sum of creative perfection. There the person must do what the angels under the Adversary could not do; i.e., resist the blandishments of the Adversary and not join him in rebellion against the Most High God. And there in Eden, the Garden of God, the Father creates a companion for the man from the man’s flesh and from the man’s bone, a person like the man but who is not the man. This companion is now the outer man that shall never inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50).

The mirror image [chiral image] of Adam being created first then Eve is the creation of the outer self first (the fleshly body of the person) then the inner self, which isn’t to be the companion of the outer self but the head of the outer self, making the outer self the helpmate or companion of the inner self … the concept of the Christian Elect being one flesh that consists of two persons [two living entities] reaches back to the first Adam in the Garden of Eden, a tale that need not be “true” along the “x” axis of the event-timeline; for the Genesis creation narrative of Adam and the Garden lacks historicity and has about it mythical qualities. The language of Genesis chapters two through four suggests an origin in the northern kingdom in the 9^th-Century BCE, which could be explained by the Scroll of the Covenant having been lost in the temple at Jerusalem so that no Passover observance as commanded by Moses had occurred since the days of the Judges (see 2 Kings 23:21–23). A lost scroll was probably a damaged scroll; so it would make sense for the end of the scroll to be missing text that would need to be recovered from another scroll, perhaps one that had gone with the people of House of Israel when they were carried away captive a century earlier by the Assyrians.

Regardless of what actually happened, Genesis chapters two through four do not represent a second creation narrative as some contend, but represent the shadow and copy of what happened to Christ Jesus in the 1^st-Century CE and what has and what will happen to the Body of Christ in the 1^st and 21^st Centuries. The second creation narrative is about the second or last Adam: this second creation narrative is found in Mark’s Gospel where the physical shape of the fractal is revealed (i.e., the Head of Christ or the inner self of Christ), and in Matthew’s Gospel that is about the second Body of Christ, with the Head and Body of Christ representing one man and his helpmate.

A Christian numbered among the Elect is never alone regardless of how gloomy or how desperate the situation in which the Elect finds him or herself seems to be: the person always has within the person his or her helpmate—and is the helpmate of Christ Jesus. When the person numbered among the Elect begins to feel abandoned, begins to think thoughts of Woe is me, the person needs to realize that Jesus thought He was alone at Calvary, that the Father had turned His back to Jesus’ suffering (with Jesus’ suffering being a type of the suffering of the person’s outer fleshly body), but that this was not the case. It was merely needful that the Jesus die physically at Calvary, and that the fleshly body of a human person die physically so that the inner self shall live forever. For the death of the fleshly body of a human person—this body analogous to Eve—covers the sins of the person in a manner analogous to how Christ Jesus’ death at Calvary covered the sins of the dead inner self so that this inner self could be raised from death.

From a technical perspective, every person is humanly born with no separation between the inner and outer selves of the person: the person has one glory, one breath of life, one body, one mind. The person and his or her soul [psuche] is one entity as a man—not with his wife—is one with himself. However, once the person receives a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ, the person and his or her soul is one entity as a man and his wife are one flesh, with the wife to obey her husband as a person’s hand obeys the will of the person’s inner self.

A person doesn’t have to “tell” his or her hand to raise itself into the air when the person thinks he or she should raise his or her hand. The hand raises virtually automatically; raises because it should raise. And so it is with the disciple and Christ Jesus, who should never have to tell the disciple to keep the commandments … the disciple should keep the commandments simply because Jesus did. In bifurcated time, there is no difference between the moment when Jesus kept the commandments and when the disciple as the Body of Christ keeps the commandments. Both occur in the same heavenly moment.

Yes, there is a period known as the reaction time of an individual, the passage of time on the event-timeline between when a phenomenon occurs and when the person reacts to the phenomenon, say one-point-three seconds for the sake of argument. This very short reaction time represents the shadow and copy of when Christ Jesus lived and was crucified and when, in the same heavenly moment that spans approximately two millennia on the event-timeline, the disciple receives the spirit and the old self dies in baptism … the new self spurning common meats, feeling repulsed by the thoughts of eating what isn’t fit food for a son of God, precedes by a very small amount of time when the mouth of the disciple says, Thanks but no thanks. I don’t eat pork, too near of kin, or whatever excuse the disciple uses for not eating what is unclean without offending the person offering the common meat.

In this world, things that occur without the passage of time seeming to separate them permit the person to comprehend what it will be like in the timeless heavenly realm where all that happens occurs in one unchanging moment, with what occurs erasing what previously occurred so that only what is happening in the present exists.

Again, a disciple of Christ Jesus is to obey the model the man Jesus established for how to respond to various situations beyond simply living without sin (i.e., without transgressing the commandments), with the person to react to the model Jesus left with His disciples as the hand reacts to thoughts of the mind. This unhesitating response becomes the model for how wives are to obey their husbands and for how husbands are to love their wives; for the mind will not loudly ask the body to do any particular thing, but will silently think a thought that comes to pass through the body doing what the mind thinks. When an extremely good football placekicker such as Jason Elam lined up to kick a field goal, he didn’t scream at his body when his foot didn’t quite strike the ball where he wanted; rather, he trusted his body to do what it had done before, to respond as it should, to follow-through the kick as he intended, and he put in additional practice so that his body would respond even better next time. So how is it that husbands should treat their wives? Is it not by trusting them to do what they have done before, with the husband “willing” that a thing should happen and then trusting his wife to do the thing that has been done in practice, from running a household to putting on a dinner party? As the body usually isn’t very good at doing a thing for the first time but becomes better through repetition, so it is with any task a husband has assigned his wife, his helpmate.

Without mean-spirited words, the inner self of a person causes the fleshly body of the person to—in the case of Jason Elam—kick the ball again and again until kicking becomes a “natural act,” not that kicking wasn’t before a natural act. The difference between a kicked football going where the placekicker intended the ball to go and where the ball goes when a person off the street kicks the football comes via longtime practice … a wife as a type of the person’s outer self isn’t much of a cook without practice, isn’t much of a bookkeeper without basic training and practice, isn’t going to do much of a job running a household if her husband doesn’t permit her to truly manage the affairs of the house without bringing up how his mother ran his father’s house when she had years of practice doing so. And this is what’s seen in the Proverbs 31 wife, who is able to manage a business[es] that began with managing a household.

Now, what about the sexism imbedded in the husband being the head of his wife—remember, the husband cannot save himself, cannot bring forth a child, cannot reproduce himself. The husband needs his wife as much as the inner self of a person needs the fleshly body of the person; for without the fleshly body, the inner self is helpless, a shut-in that can neither see nor hear, speak nor move. Although many wives concluded long ago that their husbands were fairly useless, in past eras marriages remained intact because the two really had become one fleshly entity with both needing the other.

Does God need the disciple? No, not if God has no intention of reproducing Himself. But returning to the Garden of Eden: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him’” (Gen 2:18). Why was it not good that the man, equivalent to the living inner self of a human person, should be alone; for the man is in type analogous to the Lord God. Is it not good for the Most High God to be alone? This is the implication of what the Lord God told someone (not the man Adam) when the Lord God spoke. And the words of the Lord God would seem to have originated in experience.

If the anointed guardian cherub in whom iniquity was found were truly the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty (Ezek 28:12), then the Lord cannot create a living entity incapable of rebelling against the Most High God and still give to the entity wisdom (the ability to think, reason, and deduce conclusions) and beauty. Only by creating automatons lacking the ability to think for themselves and arrive at conclusions can the Most High create living entities incapable of rebelling against Him …

When Adam was created, Adam differed from all other piles of mud in significant ways. Adam was given wisdom and beauty and became the signet of perfection: from primal energy, the material of the supra-dimensional heavenly realm, the Logos began to create physically, first binding this primal energy into strings that came together to form particle matter, with clouds of matter coming together to form galaxies, suns, planets, mud, from which the Lord made a man as the pinnacle of His creation. He could go no farther. However, from man the Lord made a helpmate for man, a companion, one who would be for the man as the Logos was for the Most High God, with these two bound together in the linguistic determinative YHWH. The relationship between the Most High God and the Logos that existed at the time of the creation of all that has mass was typified by the relationship of a man with his wife, with these two being one flesh. This was a figuratively side-by-side relationship between two equals.

The man as the pinnacle of physical perfection represented more than just a man. Adam also represent the anointed guardian cherub in whom iniquity was found: “‘You were blameless in your ways / from the day you were created / till unrighteousness was found in you’” (Ezek 28:15). Adam was blameless in his ways until he ate forbidden fruit, thereby revealing by this act the unbelief or unrighteousness that was concealed in his heart. But from where had this unbelief come? It came from the serpent who spoke not to Adam, but spoke to Eve, analogous to the outer self [body] of a person.

Adam was present when the serpent spoke to Eve (Gen 3:6), but Adam didn’t speak up; Adam didn’t demand that the serpent cease speaking to his wife. Why? Because Adam was the shadow and copy of the inner self that is always with (in) the outer self but is not able to speak except through the mouth of the outer self … as the inner self of a person can speak to God in silent words and as God can speak to the living inner self in ways typified by the expression, the groaning of the spirit, the inner self has direct communication with God but not with another person, or with the Adversary. In order for the living inner self of a person numbered among the Elect to speak with any entity but God, the inner self must go through the outer self and speak in the words of the outer self; must speak as Eve spoke. So the answer to why Adam didn’t chase away the serpent is found in the living inner self of a person that is the head of the person that cannot be directly attacked or tempted by the Adversary, who must come against the outer self as the Adversary came against Christ Jesus only after He received a second breath of life, the breath of God that gave life to His inner self. The Adversary attacks the outer self, and will prevail against any person who places importance on the things of this world.

Because unrighteousness was found in the anointed guardian cherub who was the signet of spiritual perfection, Adam could not avoid eating forbidden fruit … it is only the Lord who has the ability to know both Good and Evil and only choose to do what is good. Thus, whereas the first Adam sinned when he ate forbidden fruit, there is no forbidden fruit for the last Adam, who by choice will always choose not to sample the mingled fruit of the sacred and the profane. There is nothing forbidden to the Lord who doesn’t need a prohibition to not engage in evil.

Does the above make sense? A child needs rules to learn to do what is right and to learn to spurn what is wrong. Human adults as sons of disobedience need rules to learn to do what is right and to learn to spurn evil. But Christ Jesus needed no rules, no commandments to cause Him to do good and to spurn evil. By nature, He spurned evil. And it is this level of spiritual maturity that the Apostle Paul expected saints to have. It is always choosing to do what is right and to never do what is wrong that comes to a person with spiritual maturity; that comes with the person possessing the mind of Christ.

But what is the reality of this world and of Christians in this world? Speed limit signs are posted on virtually every road, with these speed limits enforced through a system of citations that ultimately results in the habitual offender having his or her driving privileges permanently revoked. Some of these habitual offenders are self-identified Christians. Quite a few offenders in the past were ministers of the former Worldwide Church of God: it seemed that if a WCG minister didn’t have a collection of speeding tickets, the minister wasn’t doing his job, wasn’t getting to all of the places where he was to go. Yet what does a collection of speeding tickets actually signify? That the speeder has no respect for the law and is as a child who regularly needs disciplined as a transgressor. A collection of speeding tickets discloses that this person is too immature spiritually not to be under the Law.

In a little thing, a secular thing—obeying traffic laws—is seen the spiritual maturity of a person, with the person numbered among the Elect not needing an officer to enforce traffic laws for the person will commit him or herself to observing the law, thereby never knowingly speeding or exceeding a posted speed limit. The person who is of the Elect will be faithful in little things and does not need the Law as a disciplinarian [schoolmaster]. And if the person is not faithful in little things that seem not to matter such as whether the person habitually does 60 mph along roads posted 55 mph (in most states, 5 mph over the posted speed will not get a person a ticket, but is winked at by law officers thereby encouraging institutionalized lawlessness), the person will not keep the commandments because the outer self of the person has “trained” the inner self to accept an ideology of close-is-good-enough. It will be up to Christ Jesus to retrain this person, and He will; for being close to keeping, say, the Sabbath commandment really isn’t good enough. Taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14^th day of Nissan according to rabbinical Judaism’s calculated calendar in 2013 will result in the Sabbatarian Christian offering to God Cain’s sacrifice rather than righteous Abel’s; for on only one night a year will the fruit of the ground (bread and wine) represent the body and blood of the Lamb of God—and in 2013, this night will be in the northern hemisphere Tuesday, April 23^rd. Being close by taking the sacraments a month earlier won’t have Christian disciples taking the annual Passover on the night when Jesus took the Passover before He was crucified during the day portion of this one day that was the First Unleavened symbolically representing the entirety of the Christian era to the Second Passover liberation of Israel from sin.

For Christians, the First Unleavened (see Matt 26:17 in Greek without adding words) immediately precedes the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, making for Christians eight days on which no leavened bread is eaten. By adding the First Unleavened to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the harvest of firstfruits becomes analogous to the harvest of the great White Throne Judgment represented by the Last Great Day, an eighth day added to the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall of the year. Thus, Unleavened Bread and Sukkoth become mirror images of each other as the early barley harvest was a chiral type of the later main crop wheat harvest in ancient Judea.

Jews who never profess that Jesus is Lord or believe that the Father raised Jesus from death are not numbered in the First Unleavened which should be known to them but isn’t. Rather, with individual exceptions, they will appear before the Lord when common humanity does in the great White Throne Judgment that occurs after the Thousand Years of the Millennium. For these Jews who never deconstructed the Exodus account of the first Passover and never believed Moses about Israel staying in their houses until dawn (Israel here representing in type the inner self of the Christian), Moses telling the elders of Israel, “‘None of you shall go out of the door of this house [with the blood of the Passover lamb smeared on lintel and doorposts] until the morning’” (Ex 12:22) means that Israel left Egypt in the dark of the same night that the firstborn of Egypt were slain. This is not true, cannot be true, and in the reality that casts the first Passover as its shadow isn’t true. Israel left their houses at dawn, gathered their herds and flocks—an activity that would have taken some time—then spoiled the Egyptians who didn’t live in the slave camp but some distance away, and only then, hours later and well into the afternoon (there still had been no time to bake bread) did the people of Israel journey from Rameses to Succoth, hardly a journey at all but the first step on the way out of slavery.

In type, Israel on the 14^th day of the first month (the daylight portion of the day on which the firstborn of Egypt were slain) represents the Elect living in this present world that is ruled by the Adversary: Christians are “free” in the kingdom of the Adversary as Israel in Egypt was free during the day portion of the 14^th. But as Israel in Egypt was making hurried preparations for getting out of Egypt as soon as they could—the three day count would begin that evening—the Elect as the Body of Christ will disappear into common Christendom with the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Every Christian will be suddenly filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God. Every Christian will be as righteous Abel was, and will have salvation awaiting the Christian who remains faithful and is not as the first Adam was, or as the Adversary was when both were suddenly thrust into the Garden of God where the unbelief, unrighteousness concealed in the heart of each was revealed.

Following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, when every Christian is filled with spirit, all of Christendom will be delivered into the hand of the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh. Even the Elect shall be delivered to the Adversary, but delivered with instructions: as for the oil and wine, the processed fruits of the Promised Land, Sin is not to harm the Elect—Sin cannot harm the Elect who have already glorified inner selves. So the Elect have in situ protection, which doesn’t mean that they are immortal or that they cannot be killed, but means that regardless of what happens to them, they will enter the kingdom as sons of God.

Christ Jesus was not under the Law because He would never transgress the Law, not that the Law didn’t pertain to Him. Of course the Law pertained to Him … He just never transgressed the Law for He knew both good and evil but never choose to do what was evil. He only choose to do what was good. And this is the case with those who are numbered among the Elect: they will commit no intentional sin, which isn’t to say they will never transgress a commandment but is to say that they never will with foreknowledge. And until the Elect are filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God following the Second Passover, they are covered by the garment of grace, the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness.

Throughout the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, the Adversary will remain the prince of the power of the air and the prince of this world. He will hold his kingship until the single kingdom of this world is forcibly taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man, Head and Body. Thus, through the Christian era and into the Affliction, the Elect are as Moses was in Egypt: neither the leaders of Israel nor Pharaoh were happy to have Moses among them. The work of Israel was increased—the work of greater Christendom is increased with Acts being declared a Sophist novel—and the plagues were upon initially Israel and Egypt, then only upon Egyptians … following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart, there will be widespread Christian repentance, but instead of turning with heart and mind to a God greater Christendom has never known (this is correct), Christians will en masse return to the Christianity of earlier generations, mistakenly believing that the Christianity of America’s founders, or of the Roman Church following the Council of Trent, or of the bishops signing the Nicene Creed is the Christianity of Christ Jesus when nothing could be farther from the truth. Even the “Christianity” of when Luke’s Gospel was written had been corrupted by the mystery of lawlessness that was already at work mid 1^st-Century CE.

Now, looping back to a theme of earlier sections of this “Introduction,” into what genre would the Book of Exodus fall? It is not history. If it were, the Pharaoh to whom Moses spoke would be named. So what is the Book of Exodus? It is historical, but not historical like the shadow that sealed and kept secret Daniel’s visions. It is more like a vision or prophecy than it is like history despite it being historical.

Into what genre does Matthew’s Gospel fall? For it is not a Greco-Roman biography of the man Jesus the Nazarene even though that is what it seems to be.

Can the Book of Exodus be placed in the same genre as Matthew’s Gospel? Is the Genesis creation account of Adam and Eve (Genesis chapters 2 through 4) text that has similar genre expectations as Exodus or Matthew? How about the Flood narrative? What are its genre expectations? That of absolute factual accuracy? Certainly water once covered the highest mountains of North America, but did so for long enough to leave marine fossils under perpetual snowcaps. A flood of 150 days is enough to kill air-breathing life, but not enough of a flood to leave fossilized marine exoskeletons high in the Rockies or high in the Andes.

There is a history of this world told in its stones that differs substantially from how Holy Writ has traditionally been read. These two texts (the stones and what was written on tablets of stone) do not actually contradict one another, but seem-to. How can ice core samples reveal tens of thousands of winters and summers whereas traditional readings of the Genesis creation account and the genealogical descent from Adam would have the earth being six thousand years old. The two source texts contradict each other, producing in the minds of too many Christians a cobbled-together creation account that is analogous to the traditional Christmas manger scene that has shepherds, Magi, and angels admiring a baby laying on straw as if he were a physical lamb.

Christians who hold some belief in tiered evolution—in seven evolutionary epochs—are without any spiritual understanding and have done with science what traditional Christianity has done with the Matthew and Luke birth-of-Jesus accounts that on their face contradict the other and exclude the other from being true. Nevertheless, by setting aside all disbelief, even reasonable skepticism, traditional Christendom has produced in the minds of generations a hybridized birth narrative centered around a literal reading of Jesus being the Lamb of God.

The historical text written in the stones of this world doesn’t quickly change, but how this text is read does change, and does so with surprising frequency. How this text is read today will change again within a year or two. But how Scripture is read resists change because of the monoglot nature of Semitic inscription with its partially alphabetized words. Only a catastrophic event such as the Second Passover liberation of Israel will cause the majority of Christians to rethink how they have traditionally read Scripture. Until then, the Elect remain a lonely bunch, necessarily content with their own company, the outer self being the companion and helpmate for the living inner self.

The Book of Acts is rather easily identified as a Greek Sophist novel, but should Exodus also be identified as a novel on the basis of how Moses employed the space-time trope, especially in twice fasting for forty days and forty nights? Although forty (40) as a number represents the completion of a matter as in the completion of a lifetime of living—as in the completion of the generation of Israel numbered in the census of the second year, this generation except for Joshua and Caleb, perishing in the wilderness because of its unbelief (Num 14:22–23; Ps 95:10–11; Heb 3:19)—no human person will survive for forty days without water (Ex 34:28). Won’t happen today, and it wouldn’t happen in the days of Moses. For Moses to fast for forty days and forty nights, the Lord had to return life to Moses on a day-by-day basis.

Giving up an item such as chocolate cake for a specific period IS NOT an acceptable fast before the Lord; is not an affliction of the fleshly body of a man, nor of the inner self. A Christian deceives him or herself with a so-called Elijah fast, as in giving something up for Lent. To afflict oneself—what “to fast” means—is to go without food and drink for a specific period of time, with forty days being longer than a human can go without water meaning what a forty day fast represents is “death,” the completion of “life.” Moses figuratively twice “died” at Sinai, thereby giving to Moses similitude with Y^aH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who once died in leaving the heavenly realm and being born as His human Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene, and then died again when crucified at Calvary, with baptism representing in type the death of the human inner self. However, the inner self of the man Jesus was never dead as are the inner selves of all men and women descended from the first Adam; for Jesus’ Father when He was humanly born wasn’t the first Adam but was Y^aH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus was never the bondservant of the Adversary although He was tempted as other men are tempted. Because His Father was Y^aH when He was humanly born, He was always free to obey God, which He did—and which His disciples can also do for He has set them free.

Again, Jesus could have sinned at any time, but also couldn’t have sinned for it wasn’t in Him to choose evil when good and evil were placed before Him. And the preceding sentence isn’t inherently contradictory … the person who habitually drives 55 mph along a road with a posted speed limit of 55 mph does not suddenly begin driving 65 mph when no 55 mph signs are seen for miles. The person knows the speed limit is 55 mph unless otherwise posted and doesn’t need to see a speed limit sign to drive the speed limit. The nature of the person is to obey traffic laws. And the nature of Christ Jesus was to obey the commandments. Thus, even when no one was looking, Jesus did not transgress the Law. He did not get as close to a transgression as He could get without actually committing a transgression, a proclivity of rabbinical Judaism. Rather, He did what He knew was right and thereby kept the Law without having to think about the codified commandments.

Whereas all of humanity is humanly born consigned to disobedience, Jesus was not born consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) for, again, His Father wasn’t the first Adam. Jesus was never a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3). He wasn’t as Moses was, born a slave but raised as a free man in Pharaoh’s house … disciples numbered among the Elect are as Moses was, born slaves of the Adversary, but spiritually maturing as free sons of God through adoption.

Ancient Israel had no indwelling spiritual or heavenly life. The only breath of life Israel had was its physical breath, the breath breathed through nostrils by the lungs of the person. Thus, ancient Israel was itself the shadow and copy of circumcised-of-heart Israel, the nation that has two breaths of life, one that comes through nostrils, and one that comes via the indwelling of Christ Jesus. Thus, to write about circumcised-of-heart Israel is to write about the nation composed of the living inner selves of genuinely born-of-God Christians—a non-physical, non-real nation that cannot be observed or numbered except by the externalization of inner selves through those things that genuine Christians do. Even then it isn’t the inner self that is seen, but the outer self that is ruled over by a living inner self with sufficient maturity to overwrite and override the indwelling lawlessness of the crucified old self or old man. And it is because the old self is crucified but not yet dead that seemingly mature Christians occasionally do deeds not worthy of Christ, deeds for which they must repent.

Now, tell me if you can, what genre is biblical prophecy, the writing into existence of future phenomena that affect specific peoples represented by specific geographies? By its very nature, prophecy lacks historicity. Prophecy is history before it happens, but the inverse of prophecy is not history. The shadow and type of what lacks historicity (i.e., prophecy) doesn’t suddenly acquire historicity, but also lacks historicity. And without historicity, no historical text is actually “history.”

Prophecy is always conditioned on repentance; thus, prophecy represents conditional history revealed before the described phenomenon occurs. Prophecy can fail, or can be delayed in occurring as was the case for Nineveh (Jonah 3:10). Either way, because God will repent of what He has declared if a person or a people turns from wickedness, prophecy necessarily lacks the hardness of historicity even though prophecy is seemingly historical.

Consider now a text such as the Book of Exodus which is historical but lacks historicity (answering who, what, where questions) … can the inscription of the earthly shadow or copy of future events that have not yet occurred be like prophecy that is subject to repentance by the one[s] that are the object of the prophecy? There is a difference, isn’t there? Although a historical text that is the inscription of a shadow that occurs in the heavenly realm is like prophecy in that both reveal what will happen in the future, the text that is the inscription of a shadow doesn’t allow for alteration via repentance.

Daniel’s visions are like the Book of Exodus, and actually do not differ from the Book of Exodus in that all Daniel sees in vision will occur. But the Book of Revelation (John’s vision) differs from Daniel’s visions because individuals are seen, not solely nations and demons. Note,

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,

"Come out of her, my people,

lest you take part in her sins,

lest you share in her plagues; (Rev 18:4)

There is in the call for all people (all people will, when this call is made, be of God) to get away from fallen Babylon an element of uncertainty concerning who will actually separate themselves from Babylon. Whether any people will separate themselves from Babylon is not disclosed. And the shadow of what actually happens to individuals is not inscribed although it can be stated with certainty that the slain of the Lord will be many (Isa 66:16):

Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, "Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great." And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh. (Rev 19:17–21 emphasis added)

The Book of Revelation is about what will happen to the people of God, but so too is the Book of Exodus, which again lacks historicity.

All of Scripture is about two harvests of God that form one harvest of this world: the harvest of the firstfruits [the early barley harvest in the spring of the year] and the later main crop wheat harvest, together, formed the annual harvest of the Promised Land of God’s rest. These two harvests represent the earlier harvest of human persons as sons of God that occurs at the beginning of the Thousand Years and the later main crop harvest of humanity that occurs in the great White Throne Judgment after the Thousand Years. And in the harvest of firstfruits will be those who are great and those who are least (Matt 5:19), but all who are of the firstfruits will be considered great in relationship to those who come to God in the great White Throne Judgment. For all who are firstfruits will necessarily have overcome the Adversary while they lived physically whereas those in the great White Throne Judgment never escaped from the Adversary as Moses [the Son] escaped as a fugitive from Pharaoh.

Exodus can be read by Sabbatarian Christians as the shadow of a prophetic hypertext.

When Exodus is not read as “true history” (how can it be read as history when Pharaohs are not named) but as the revealing shadow for an un-inscribed hypertext, then genre expectations for an inscribed history do not apply to Exodus. The reader should not expect Pharaohs to be named. And again, the concept of genre for the texts of Scripture must be rethought, re-conceptualized.

When the inscribed shadow of an un-inscribed hypertext is canonized, there is no need to canonize the hypertext: it is “known” from its shadow. Therefore, recognizing that a canonized text lacks historicity is essential to revelation via realization; for through recognition that a seemingly historical text lacks historicity, the reader is alerted to the existence of the un-inscribed hypertext.

When a canonized text such as Matthew’s Gospel offers a fictional genealogy for Christ Jesus and a questionable journey down to Egypt, the text silently screams, No! no! no, at the reader who wants to read the text literally. Of course, this reader cannot “hear” what is being screamed, but ignorantly reads as a child reads, believing every word to be true when the word being read conflicts with the word read only moments before. The text seemingly erases itself from this reader’s mind as it is being read; thus the Son of David is the child of the holy spirit (Matt 1:1, 18). The son fathered by King David shall be the Son of the Lord (2 Sam 7:12, 14), the man Jesus the Nazarene. … What is figuratively true is true, but what is declared to be literally true is false; for the “literal” pertains to the shadow, not the reality that casts the shadow. And it isn’t the lifeless shadow that is “real.” It wasn’t the Promised Land of Canaan that was the promised Sabbath of God, represented by both the weekly Sabbath and the Millennium, but rather, it is entering into heaven as the firstborn son of God, with Christ Jesus being the First of these firstborn sons, that is the Promised Rest.

Exodus lacks historicity because it is merely the inscribed shadow of the journey every son of God makes from bondage to sin (disobedience) and death to liberation and entrance into heaven, with most sons of God beginning their journey with the Second Passover liberation of Israel—and with most perishing in the wilderness of sin because of their unbelief.

There is no recognized genre for shadow texts, those texts that through their lack of historicity reveal the existence of un-inscribed hypertexts. Perhaps there should be one.

If a reader can, with a quick reading, recognize the lack of embedded historicity in a text such as Exodus, or the Gospel of Thomas, the person should be able to read the text at a higher hierarchal level, thereby preventing the reader from saying stupid things about the text; for as a Japanese fish buyer on a flight into Dutch assured me, “The only cure for STUPID is KILL!” (The fish buyer was angry because a particular processor at Dutch couldn’t seem to pack fish to the buyer’s expectations—this was his third trip from Japan to Unalaska to correct the same problem.)

*

At the core of the synoptic problem is canonization of a Trojan text, the Book of Acts. When the writings of one author, who makes no claim for inspiration but rather claims non-inspiration—“as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished … it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account” (Luke 1:1–3)—are quarantined, and when spiritual birth is properly understood as receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], then when the Gospels are seen together [the meaning of “synoptic”], Matthew and Mark still tell the same story and often tell the story in the same words, which would be right and proper when Mark’s Gospel represents the biography of the earthly man Jesus the Nazarene and Matthew’s Gospel represents the biography of the indwelling Christ Jesus in the inner self [soul] of the foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified person.

In the earliest copies of Mark’s Gospel, the biography ends with the women telling no one that Jesus has risen from death (Mark 16:8), but Matthew’s Gospel ends with the glorified Jesus telling eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee of the nations that, “‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’” (Matt 28:18) … in event-time (chronological real time), all authority in heaven and on earth HAS NOT yet been given to the glorified Jesus. This is correct! As of autumn 2012, all authority has not been given to Christ Jesus; for the single kingdom of this world has not yet been given to the Son of Man. The glorified Christ Jesus remains the high priest of Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart. The glorified Christ continues to bear the sins of Israel. And humanity continues to trudge along the “x” axis of an event-timeline, awaiting the day when rule over the mental topography of living things is taken from the Adversary, the present prince of this world, and given to the Son of Man.

So there is absolutely no misunderstanding, yes, the Adversary remains the prince of the world, the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2), and will remain the prince of this world until the single kingdom of this world is taken from this king of Babylon and given to the Son of Man (cf. Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18). Therefore, what the glorified Jesus tells His disciples cannot be theologically true until the doubled day 1260 of the seven endtime years of tribulation. Then, when the Lamb of God leads the 144,000 from eleven of Israel’s twelve tribes (the tribe of Dan is missing, and the half tribe of Manasseh takes Dan’s place), the eleven are to make disciples of all nations, baptizing these nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit/breath/voicing that will have been poured out on all living creatures when all people become the people of God (Rev 18:4), and all only have to endure to the end to be saved, “the end” still being 1260 days away.

Eleven tribes made into twelve tribes; eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee — endtime disciples have no problem recognizing that the Book of Revelation is prophetic. Even though Revelation internally purports to be unsealed, accessible by readers, Revelation has been as sealed and secret as Daniel’s visions, sealed by two literary tropes, the first being the space-time trope (John is transported forward in vision to when the observed phenomena are soon to occur) and the second being an appearance-function trope (how things appear in Revelation is how the things function before God). Nevertheless, Revelation fits into genre expectations for a prophetic vision: it looks enough like Daniel’s visions that it was long ago declared to be prophetic despite many early congregations rejecting John’s vision.

As the little horn in Daniel chapter seven can be overlaid upon the little horn in Daniel chapter eight to unseal the visions of Daniel, the eleven true tribes in Revelation chapter seven can be laid over the eleven disciples in Matthew chapter twenty-eight to untangle New Testament texts that appear to be straightforward presentations of historical narratives. But in the appearance-function trope, how something appears—a slain Lamb (Rev 5:6)—is how the thing or entity functions in the plan of God. Christ Jesus appears as a slain lamb with seven horns (the seven churches) and seven eyes (seven spirits, the seven angels to the seven churches); whereas the glorified Jesus in Revelation chapter one appeared as a glorious man with seven stars [angels to the seven churches] in His right hand as He stood among seven lampstands [the seven churches].

For those 21^st-Century disciples who don’t butcher sheep, a lamb is hung by its head to be skinned then disemboweled; so a slain lamb would appear as a standing man.

But the genre expectations for the Gospel of Matthew are substantially different from the genre expectations for Revelation. Readers—because of their genre expectations—have not expected Matthew to be a sealed and kept secret text. It is seemingly “too accessible” to be a sealed text … have the visions of Daniel not been too open since the coming of Alexander to be “sealed and kept secret until the time of the end”? Have not both Christians and Jews corrupted the visions of Daniel by denying that they remained a sealed and secret text until the time of the end, claiming instead that Daniel can be understood through an application of historicity painted onto the visions?

The historical events that Daniel’s visions seem to describe were the means by which Daniel’s visions were sealed until the time of the end; for Daniel’s vision are not about earthly kings and kingdoms, but about demonic kings in the Adversary’s world ruling hierarchy. The sudden breaking of the great horn of the demonic king of Greece occurs at the Second Passover liberation of Israel. The four kings/horns that emerge from around his stump occur during the three days on the event-timeline following the Second Passover.

It has been genre expectations that kept Matthew’s Gospel from being reread as prophecy for 1900 years—

As I stand on the eve of a historic American presidential election (will Americans as lemmings continue forward over the fiscal cliff before us, or will Americans make a slight turn toward God, just enough of a turn for the nation and the world to have reached the theological midnight hour), I am able to look back at the Persian kings, and their defeat at the hands of the Greeks, who would reign over a kingdom stretching from India to Macedonia and down into Egypt, with Greek outposts as far away as the New World according to an old Carthaginian manuscript Plutarch translated mid 1^st-Century CE. I am able to see the rise of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires, the shadow of the two legs of the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision. I know the world was a wetter place when King David reigned and Greeks sailed the shallow waters of Belorussia wetlands, thus sailing from the Aegean Sea through the Sea of Marmara and into the Black Sea with its northwest shelf that as late as the Middle Ages still permitted Vikings to sail their ships with portages from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The blind poet Homer wrote of the midnight sun where Greeks sailed. And I understand the hydraulics of the Baltic; for Kodiak Island’s Olga Bay is its miniature. So standing on the lips of history, writing explications of biblical prophecies that do not match genre expectations, producing narrative hybrids that will not sprout and bear much fruit until the Second Passover, I find myself better positioned to address the nature of New Testament texts than most. As my blind namesake wrote of physical things that he could not see with his closed eyes, I write of spiritual things that I cannot see with open eyes but know are present.

The discrepancies between Mark’s Gospel and Matthew’s Gospel—and there are discrepancies—make the case for Mark pertaining to the earthly man Jesus, and Matthew pertaining to the indwelling Jesus that will cause the inner person to become a fractal of the earthly man, with the externalization of the indwelling Jesus seen through the things that the disciple does when no one is looking. Thus when the externalized indwelling Jesus is seen together (synoptic) with the physical man Jesus, the relationship between these two men, one of this earth and one a life-giving spirit, is that of Mark’s Gospel to Matthew’s Gospel, with Matthew’s Gospel being sealed and kept secret by Mark.

By quarantining Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts, the synoptic problem is solved. But it can never be solved for as long as Luke’s uninspired Gospel has equal standing with Matthew’s Gospel … the “Q” (Quelle) text, “M” text, and “L” text of the Four-Source Hypothesis do not and never have existed, a bold statement considering that additional ancient texts may still be discovered buried in the sands of time.

If Matthew’s Gospel is the biography of the indwelling Christ Jesus, then Matthew’s Gospel denies spiritual birth having come to anyone who doesn’t walk in this world as the man Jesus walked. The being-under-the-Law-before-Calvary-and-under-Grace-post-Calvary argument now has no merit, not that it ever had credibility … it never did have any validity, but it now can be firmly identified as a heretical teaching that will cost the majority of Christendom their spiritual lives; for once the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, all of Christendom will have 220 days to begin walking in this world as Jesus walked. The promise of entering into the kingdom of God will close for Christians when the fifth seal is removed from the Scroll (Rev 6:9–11) and the lawless one, the man of perdition, is revealed (2 Thess 2:3). The Trojan texts will have then done their work: the mystery of lawlessness and the lawless one will no longer be restrained. And martyrdom of those who walk as Jesus walked will be widespread, so widespread that only a remnant of the faithful will remain physically alive when the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man (see Rev 12:17).

The Remnant of Revelation 12:17 is not the 144,000 of Revelation 14:1–5. The Remnant is not the Eleven of Matthew 28:16, but rather, the Remnant will be the oil and the wine (the already processed fruits of the Sabbath) that Sin cannot harm.

If Matthew’s Gospel is the biography of the indwelling Christ Jesus, how does Matthew relate to the Remnant, the processed fruits of the Sabbath, and still not have the Remnant be the 144,000? And the answer lies in the appearance-function trope. For the Remnant function as the offspring (seed) of the Woman that is Israel whereas the 144,000 functions as the remnant of the Woman herself. The Remnant will not be sealed during the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, nor sealed during the Endurance, the last 1260 days before the Second Advent, but will have sheltered in place (in situ) worldwide for the entirety of the 2520 days of the seven years, keeping their heads down during the Affliction but having the power of the lesser of the two witnesses during the Endurance. And this is in contrast to the 144,000 being sealed and being as Jesus’ disciples were when they were with Him during His earthly ministry, suggesting that there is no indwelling of Jesus in the 144,000; that the Lamb of God remains outside of the 144,000 … the 144,000 will not be born of spirit during the Affliction and Endurance whereas the Remnant will be so born; for those persons numbered among the Remnant cannot be harmed by Sin but remain subject to being martyred as their 1^st-Century brothers were slain. By being sealed, the 144,000 are physically protected.

Sealing as a form of protection occurs when a people have not yet been born of God—Jesus was not inside His disciples during His earthly ministry, but outside of His disciples. But when Jesus sent the Twelve out two-by-two, He was no longer with His disciples. They were out on their own. But before He sent them forth, He had given them authority over unclean spirits and authority to heal every disease and affliction (Matt 10:1) … the person who is bodily afflicted (as in being disabled) is as the person who fasts to afflict his (or her) body: a day-by-day affliction that cripples the person is as fasting for forty days, with the forty days representing the lifetime of the person. It was for this reason that Paul’s eyes were not healed. His affliction was for him as fasting for forty days was for Moses; for in his affliction, he lived when he could do nothing to cause him to see better. In fasting, a person voluntarily chooses to do nothing to sustain his or her life, thereby causing the disciple to be as Jesus was when He did nothing to save His life when He appeared before Pilate.

In remaining in an affliction that can possibly be corrected by modern medical intervention, the person is as Jesus was when He told Pilate, “‘You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above’” (John 19:11). The person chooses not to be relieved of the affliction in a manner analogous to a person choosing to fast, to not eat or drink.

The above is not to say that an afflicted person should not desire to be healed; for a person who fasts again eats and drinks when the time of fasting comes to an end. The time of affliction will come to an end. Even Moses lived after fasting for forty days and nights. Jesus lived after voluntarily giving His life for the sins of Israel. So the soldier wounded in an IED explosion is a person who has been involuntarily afflicted, involuntarily martyred, and there will come an end to the affliction as a fasting person again eats. Exactly when this end comes is up to God if modern medicine is unable to correct the problem … modern medicine can make a substitute limb, but cannot replace the missing foot or leg or arm with another like the first. Christ can when He gives to the faithful disciple a glorious new body. And He might even do so before then if public miracles did not cause more problems for the person than relief, something I discovered when that snag fell across me and the witness to the event became fearful of even riding in a pickup with me.

The 144,000 who follow the Lamb wherever He goes will be like the eleven disciples who meet the glorified Jesus on a mountain in Galilee: Jesus remained outside of Eleven; He remains outside of the 144,000 until the Second Advent.

But the Remnant of the offspring of the Woman—all of the offspring (seed) of the Woman will be born of God, the determiner for who is the offspring of the Woman—will have the indwelling of Christ Jesus in them; thus, they will be to the 144,000 as Jesus was to His disciples during His earthly ministry. And Jesus didn’t preach to the crowds so that they could understand Him: the indwelling Christ doesn’t today, nor in the Affliction speak to unbelievers in ways that these unbelievers can understand the message.

And the entirety of the synoptic problem can be traced back to making 2^nd and 3^rd Century CE “usage” the heart of canonization; for the Body of Christ died from want of spiritual breath at the end of the 1^st-Century … as the gates of Hades could not prevail (i.e., keep dead) over the earthly body of Christ Jesus, the gates of Hades will not prevail over the spiritual Body of Christ. As the earthly body of Christ Jesus was returned to life as the glorified heavenly body of Jesus after three days, the spiritual Body of Christ will be returned to life in the resurrection of firstfruits after the third day of the “P” creation account, with the Second Passover liberation of Israel (the nation to be circumcised of heart) and the seven endtime years of tribulation preceding and denoting the transition from the Adversary’s present administration of the single kingdom of this world to the coming administration of the Son of Man over this same single kingdom of this world.

Before a reader invests time and effort in disputing my claim that the Christian Church as the Body of Christ and temple of God died at the end of the 1^st-Century, the reader needs to consider whether what Paul writes is today true about the Christian Church. Do pastors and teachers work as Paul worked?

For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (2 Cor 2:17 emphasis added)

For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things. Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! And what I do I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. (2 Cor 11:2–15 emphasis added)

The Christian pastor or teacher who works for God (Father and Son) asks God, not other men, for support. The Christian pastor or teacher commissioned by God to speak the Father’s words as Jesus during His earthly ministry spoke only the Father’s words is not employed by a congregation or a denomination who by paying wages to the pastor or teacher is the master of the pastor or teacher. Rather the person commissioned by God to speak for Him will not burden the ones he or she teaches, will not ask for tithes or offerings although the person is entitled to receive both, will not take up collections to further the ministry of the pastor or teacher, sect or denomination. The person commissioned by God to speak will not send out co-worker letters requesting support, or personal letters to other ministries asking for support, but instead, will be a wise steward of whatever the Father and the Son supplies to the pastor or teacher through employment or voluntary contributions or just causing things to work out for the pastor or teacher (how miracles occur for the Elect).

Will having things just work out for a person who has lost a leg cause the leg to regrow? How was it that the leg was lost? Traffic accident? IED in Afghanistan? Was the person keeping the Law before the leg was lost, or was the person playing games with God, professing faith but doing those things that seemed right to the person? … Let us assume the person is as the Apostle Paul was:

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:7–10)

Paul had received revelations that could have contributed to him thinking more highly of himself than he ought so he received a thorn in the flesh that functioned as fasting functions to afflict and keep humble a person … the person who has received revelations from God is always subject to thinking that somehow this person is “special” in a vainglorious way. It takes a set of circumstances unique to the person to keep this person humble before God, or in right frame of mind; for the calling of the person erased whatever the person did beforehand (no one needs to know about previous things). Only what the person has since done needs to be covered by grace. Everything else was buried with Christ.

Revelations come from the indwelling mind of Christ, and these revelations could easily cause a person to be puffed up, filled with him or herself; thus, a thorn in the flesh (the loss of one or more limbs being great thorns) prevents the person from being conceited, from thinking more highly of him or herself than the person should. This thorn is a weakness that makes perfect the vessel intended for honorable use in the temple of God. And none of the Elect will escape all thorns.

Paul would have had the Lord remove the thorn he received—he really didn’t seek it nor want it—but when he was told that the Lord’s grace, the garment of Christ’s righteousness, was sufficient for him, he accepted the thorn. He would be made perfect spiritually through his physical weakness. He would be made perfect through affliction.

Affliction comes in more ways than fasting or in the loss of a limb; affliction can be economic, with the person not eating well because food isn’t available, or not having shelter because not even a hole in the ground is available to the person. In these circumstances, when poverty is unintentional and inescapable, the person who is content in his or her state of destitution is as the person with plenty is when this person voluntarily fasts. Although Ben Franklin did not believe that the poor should be comfortable in their poverty, that the poor’s only way out of poverty was through discomfort, the impoverished person who is content in what has befallen the person (as opposed to being satisfied with poverty) will endure his or her affliction for however long as is necessarily, with a lifetime represented by Moses’ forty days of fasting. If the impoverished person has to endure for a lifetime, then permit this person the dignity of receiving help from others without begging.

The pastor or Christian teacher commissioned by God to speak for Him should be supported by those who are taught, but if this pastor or teacher doesn’t have the basic means of sustaining life even though the pastor or teacher has asked God to supply these needs, then the pastor or teacher needs to reconsider whether he or she has really been commissioned to speak. God is absolutely faithful when it comes to supplying both affliction and necessity to those whom He has commissioned to speak. And at times there seems to be many afflictions, not a few.

Yes, I know why a Christian pastor in East Africa or in India would open an orphanage, but the Christian is to count the cost of feeding additional mouths and clothing additional bodies and educating additional potential sons of God. And when the Christian can do no more with the resources the Christian has, the Christian will come to truly hate the Adversary and his administration of this world as the Christian watches those who could be saved perish physically … I watch Sabbatarian Christians perish spiritually as they swallow the poison of the Sacred Names Heresy, and I don’t like what I see but I can do little to prevent the Christian determined to commit spiritual suicide from murdering his or her inner self. And I understand Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. (Matt 23:37–39)

Over my lifetime, I have tried to save animals that had given up on living. I haven’t had much success. And I have hated watching them die, knowing that there was nothing more I could do for them. I came to hate attending funerals when still a young man for it seemed like everyone I knew died suddenly: even my roommate (Richard E. Kerr) in college was killed in a hazing beach accident. I have come to hate taking any life, but I continue to do so as needed.

Until all of surviving humankind hates death to the degree that these survivors will walk uprightly before God, spurning all transgression of the Law for a thousand years, they will have to watch those perish whom they want to save but cannot … Jesus could not then save Jerusalem, the city that kills prophets. He knew that those whose questions He answered were destined to perish: He answered dead men as if they were living.

Today, I teach without asking for support. I know it can be done, and done without having adequate resources to begin when the person has been genuinely called to—in my case—reread prophecy.

Now, plug all of the preceding into whatever Christian ministry or fellowship or denomination with which you are familiar: does the pastor or teacher work as Paul did, or is the pastor or teacher a peddler of the words of God, making receipt of knowledge (and then bad knowledge) a transaction through requests for tithes and offerings? And you should realize that when you hear the pastor or teacher speak, you are listening to a dead inner man destined to perish in the lake of fire, and there is nothing that you can do to save this person.

Understand, the one who teaches is entitled to be supported by those whom he or she teaches but is not entitled to ask for this support …

How does greater Christendom stack up? Using the standard of not-asking-for-support to measure Christian denominations and fellowships and to determine which ones are commissioned by God to speak for Him, how do the ones with which you are familiar compare to Paul? Certainly if the pastor or teacher asks for support, he or she doesn’t build on the foundation Paul laid (see 1 Cor 3:10–11), but builds as a servant of the Adversary.

The outward goodness or righteousness of a pastor or teacher is not a criterion for determining whether he or she builds on the foundation Paul laid for the temple of God in heavenly Jerusalem; for as Paul reminds us, the Adversary disguises himself as an angel of light and his servants come disguised as servants of righteousness (2 Cor 11:14–15). So, yes, those who serve the Adversary will appear in this world as good and righteous persons. Indeed, by every determinable measure of a man or woman, they will be good people—except for one measure: they transform the words of God into marketable merchandise that they are eager to sell to consumers. They sell what should be available free.

Someone will say that I, too, peddle the words of God because I have books listed with commercial book venders … everything I have written is available free on the various websites of the ministry I do. Volumes One, Two, Three, and Four of A Philadelphia Apologetic are available as free pdf files on my website. This Volume Five will join them as will future volumes. But small screen tablets that use a film of an operating system do not well handle long pdf files; thus, for the users of small screen devices, some of my writings are available from commercial e-booksellers for a small purchase price. These commercial booksellers are not interested in making works available free; that’s not why they are in business. So I either have to pay them to distribute a work or charge you a small amount for the work—and paying them for you to take a free download that is already available to you free on my website doesn’t interest me. Nor is it something I can afford. Thus, if you want to read my words on your electronic tablet, each volume of APA will cost you a couple of dollars. Or you can download the pdf file of the work for free from my website.

The concept of a New Testament canon wasn’t vocalized discourse in the 1^st-Century: Scripture was the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. But when Scripture was translated into Greek over a two or even three century period, a literary base was laid for canonization of additional writings in a fully alphabetized language. However, what wasn’t widely understood by the Christian laity was how the movement of the Law from hand to heart changed the dynamics of godly revelation that would henceforth come from within the disciple rather than from outside the disciple for those truly born of God.

With receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [breath Christou], that is typically referenced as the indwelling of Christ, what was physical and outside the disciple is relocated to inside the disciple: circumcision is now of the heart and not of the flesh. The Law is written on hearts and placed in minds instead of written on two tablets of stone, or on a scroll in a synagogue. And revelation from God the Father comes via coming to know the thing (cf. John 6:69; Matt 16:17) rather than by vision … visions will still occur, but come from the glorified Christ, not God the Father who has sent the Parakletos to those whom He has drawn from this world. It is through the groaning of this indwelling spirit of truth that the Father gives knowledge to His sons that are not the fleshly bodies of human persons, but the living inner selves (souls) that animate the fleshly body.

For the disciple genuinely born of God, miracles come from within the disciple through the indwelling of Christ rather than from outside the disciple. Miracles are things that just sort of work out for the disciple when they ought not to work out. Miracles are healings that occur before the person gets sick or injured, not after. And afflictions are permitted for they work to keep the person humble before God; for all things work for the good of the human son of God.

With receipt of the breath of God and the indwelling of Christ, the disciple has within the inner self of the person the mind of Christ, but the person is not able to access the totality of “the mind of Christ” — as a human infant can potentially think the thoughts of an adult person and know all that humans know but in reality does not think as an adult but rather thinks as a child thinks, so too can an infant son of God think the thoughts of Christ Jesus and know all that Christ knows but doesn’t think as Christ does but rather thinks as a spiritual infant thinks, something that Paul referenced:

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? (1 Cor 3:1–3)

In all things, the physical reveals and precedes the spiritual (Rom 1:20 & 1 Cor 15:46). This includes the amount of spiritual knowledge and understanding a person has. Thus, the amount of physical or carnal knowledge a person has forms the shadow and copy of the amount of spiritual knowledge that the disciple can access … again, with the indwelling of Christ, the mind of Christ is fully within the disciple. But the mind of Christ is not fully accessible to the inner self of the person. Actually, the mind of Christ is only accessible to the degree that the mind of the disciple has been developed (expanded) by physical or carnal knowledge; for the knowledge that the disciple has of earthly things forms the revealing shadow and copy of how much of the mind of Christ is available to be accessed by the person.

Moving the preceding into the practical: the person who has not received a second breath of life has no indwelling of Christ Jesus and has no indwelling of the mind of Christ and has no spiritual understanding of the mysteries of God. This includes academics practicing New Testament historical criticism: although such academics will have extensive knowledge about manuscripts and cultures of the period from the deportation of Israel to the Renaissance, none of them will have a whit of spiritual understanding as evidenced by what they teach and have taught for the past three centuries. Same goes for physicists and engineers and anyone else educated in secular universities: they have useful and valuable knowledge of physical things, but they are without spiritual understanding. When it comes to knowledge of God, they are as a dog is when it comes to knowing how to drive a vehicle with a standard transmission. Dogs see the clutch pedal, the brake pedal, the accelerator (and for those old enough to remember, the floorboard mounted starter), but dogs do not connect these pedals with making the vehicle move; so they eagerly await you, their master, to take them for a ride for they usually like going with you and seeing where they are going.

A dog will look out the window as you drive, and so it is with the majority of humanity: the human person looks at the universe as the invisible creation of sons of God is ongoing. The person not yet born of God doesn’t see the invisible things of God that are manifested through the things that are, including the externalization of living inner selves.

With few exceptions, the Father has not drawn the highly educated from the world but has left the educated with the Adversary as his bondservants; for it was the organs of the Adversary that gave to these individuals their educations. They are his pride and joy, his only hope of salvaging his concept of democratic rule. Without their help, he has no chance of making self-rule work as a theological ideal; so if the Father were to draw any significant number of the educated out from this world, the Adversary would have cause for accusing God of tampering with the demonstration presently underway, the demonstration designed to show whether self-rule can or cannot work (and right now, it isn’t working anywhere).

Those whom the Father has drawn from this world by giving to them a second breath of life are described by Paul:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." (1 Cor 1:26–31)

Not many are educated by worldly standards; thus, knowledge of the things of God as embedded in the mind of Christ has had a controlled release, a slow and cautious disclosure of things concealed by the physicality of this world—

Why wasn’t Acts recognized as a Sophist novel by, say, Herbert W. Armstrong, or by, say, Andrew N. Dugger, or by, say, Ellen G. White, or by, say, Andreas Fischer? Perhaps the better question would be, has any Sabbatarian pastor or teacher ever read an ancient Greek novel? Would any have recognized a 1^st or 2^nd Century Greek novel if the pastor or teacher had tripped over one on the floor? Did any Sabbatarian pastor or teacher ever grasp the movement of the Law from hand to heart, and of Israel from the nation outwardly circumcised to the nation circumcised of heart, and of earthly Jerusalem forming the shadow and copy of heavenly Jerusalem? Did any understand that the temple built from cedar and stone was merely a type of the temple being the fleshly bodies of born-of-God disciples? Or did any grasp that the resurrection of Christ Jesus was two-part, with indwelling life in the form of the breath of God coming to the man Jesus when He rose from baptism, this indwelling life in the bodily form of a dove entering into the man Jesus and glorifying the inner self of Jesus; with the second part—the resurrection of the fleshly body—coming after the third day that the dead body of the man Jesus lay in the heart of the earth?

Paul said,

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:3–11 emphasis added)

When was Jesus baptized into death? Not when He was crucified, but when He was baptized by John (Mark 1:9–11 et al). So when did the Father raise Jesus from death? Not when you think, but rather, when the heavens opened and the breath of God [pneuma Theou] descended in the bodily form of a dove and entered into Jesus and the Father said, You are My Son, the Beloved. It was on this day, at this moment, when the Father who has life [heavenly life] in Himself granted to the Son indwelling life (John 5:26). It was on this day that the inner self of the man Jesus the Nazarene was resurrected from death; hence in baptism we as disciples die with Christ so that we might be raised from the dead and made alive to God in Christ Jesus. Death of the flesh still awaits us as does the resurrection of the flesh, but in receiving the indwelling spirit of Christ, we understand that we are foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified as the man Jesus was once the breath of God entered into Him in the bodily form of a dove.

Jesus’ earthly ministry didn’t begin the day He was baptized. Rather, He spent forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the Adversary, with the period “forty days” being analogous to the forty years Israel was in the wilderness as that nation followed Moses to its death, and a new nation of Israel was born in the tents of the former nation. A new man, new inner self is born into the fleshly tents that are the outer bodies of disciples during the forty years that completes the death of the old person, the old man, the person who was baptized into death as Israel was baptized when that nation passed through the Sea of Reeds [the Paper Sea] (1 Cor 10:2).

The forty days the man Jesus was in the wilderness, tempted by the Adversary, symbolize the physical lifetime of the disciple, with all of this lifetime to occur before the disciple is freed from temptation … the disciple has to reject how the Adversary uses Scripture; has to reject temptations to test God; has to reject the blandishments of this world, including the extension of physical life through compromising the Law. Only then will the Adversary leave the disciple and angels will come and minister to the disciple (see Matt 4:11), with the earthly man Jesus doing in this world what the spiritual man Jesus does in the inner self of the disciple.

All of the above is known and known through accessing the indwelling mind of Christ, but again, access to the mind of Christ is dependant upon possession of physical or carnal knowledge that forms the shadow and copy of spiritual knowledge and understanding. The person who has little physical knowledge, has easy but little access to the mind of Christ. This person will easily believe that God exists, and even that Christians are to walk in this world as the man Jesus walked (hence, be fractals of Christ), but the want of an expanded knowledge base limits the person’s access to the mind of God: the person simply cannot understand the mysteries of God to the degree that the person should understand them. The person remains a spiritual infant, able only to ingest milk not solid food [meat], even when the person by time spent in the faith ought to be a teacher (Heb 5:11–14).

It is for this reason (plus others) that before the coming of the Lord, God will liberate all who profess that Jesus is Lord at a Second Passover liberation of Israel, at which time every self-identified Christ will be filled-with and empowered by the spirit/breath of God. Then, the Christian academic who today has much carnal knowledge but no spiritual knowledge will have access to the mind of Christ to the degree that he or she has carnal knowledge. And suddenly, the boundaries of Israel will expand far beyond their present boundaries, with the geographical boundaries of ancient Israel under kings Saul and David serving as the shadow and copy of circumcised-of-heart Israel’s intellectual boundaries during the Affliction and Endurance.

There is much more to be revealed than presently has been revealed.

Before the intellectual boundaries of Israel expand much beyond their present size, a third of humankind, all uncovered firstborns, biological and legal, will suddenly perish and the world will be plunged into the darkness of economic and cultural collapse. With one blow below the belt, the great horn/king of the King of Greece will be broken and the Adversary’s ruling hierarchy will be sent reeling. A second blow approximately 1260 days later will finish off this king of Babylon. The kingdom of Babylon will fall. And its dominion over living creatures will be taken from it and given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18).

Because not many wise, not many highly educated persons have been called from this world, access to the mind of Christ has been extremely limited. Little about the mysteries of God has been revealed since the days of Paul almost two millennia ago. Therefore, much of what I write will seem odd, will seem too far-out to be believed. Sobeit. When the person who reads looks back over what has been read—when the person who reads rereads my words—the person will not intellectually be the same person as the one who initially encountered my words; thus, this “new person” will have greater access to the mind of Christ and will better understand the mysteries of God. And it can be no other way. Much of my task is, therefore, to raise the overall educational knowledge level of readers so that the reader has greater access to what is already within the reader but unavailable to the person.

This isn’t about me teaching you the things of God that you already know at some level but about me teaching you earthly things so that you are able to experience revelation by realization in a manner analogous to Peter telling Jesus,

Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, "Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe." (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) and he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father." After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil." He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him. (John 6:59–71 emphasis added)

 In the Affliction, most of greater Christendom will rebel against God (2 Thess 2:3) and will come under a strong delusion that prevents them from ever entering the kingdom of God (vv. 10–12). Knowledge will do them no good; for they will not obey God by doing the small things they know to do such as to keep the Sabbath.

But some, maybe even more than “some,” will experience revelation via realization and will expand the boundaries of circumcised-of-heart Israel throughout the Affliction and Endurance. It is for these individuals that I write, reifying my unuttered words through typographical inscription.

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[This “Introduction to Volume Five” will be continued in Sections 6–7.]

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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."

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