Chapter Nine
Luke’s Gospel—the Uninspired Gospel
1.
When Jesus’ disciples—when Peter and Andrew, James and John (Mark 13:3)—asked Jesus when would the stones of the temple be cast down, and what would be the sign when all that Jesus said to His disciples was about to be accomplished (when the end of the age would come), Jesus answered them by saying, See that you deceive no one. Many will come in my name, saying, “I am he,” and deceive many—
Jesus, Himself, introduced the concept that there would be many Jesuses; that there would be many coming in His name either claiming to be the Christ, or claiming that Jesus was the Christ, but presenting a different Jesus from the one that was the unique Son of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But Jesus’ warning to His disciples wasn’t against them being deceived as translation into English would make His words seem to say, but against them deceiving those who would come after them: they were not to be included among the many that would acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah but in doing so deceive many.
There is a missing element in Jesus’ warning His disciples about deception; for the importance of disciples walking in this world as fractals of Christ Jesus wasn’t yet introduced. But the presentation of “Jesus” other than as He was would prevent disciples from being fractals of the unique Son of the God of living ones—and if disciples were not fractals of Jesus, they would not be the firstfruits of God.
Tension exists between doing what is right and good in this world versus walking in this world as Jesus walked; for Jesus was rejected by His people Israel, some of whom would have done what was right and good. Even John the Baptist when in prison, having heard about the deeds of Jesus, asked via his disciples, “‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’” (Matt 11:3) … although Mark’s Gospel doesn’t support John asking through his disciples if Jesus was the one to come, the question fits the pattern of doubt-before-death evident in Jesus, when crucified, calling out, “‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’” (Mark 15:34).
While a strict application of Matthew’s Gospel would pertain to the indwelling Christ Jesus, this strict application would also have the repentant fleshy body of the disciple questioning whether the indwelling Christ was truly the one to come, or should the disciple look for another Jesus, one that was outside the disciple; one that would seem to better fit Old Testament passages about the Messiah being a world ruler. Remember, in Scripture there is no “suffering Messiah.” The righteous person who suffers (see Isa 52:13–52:12) is not said to be the Messiah (see Isa 9:6–7; 11:1–16). It was 1st-Century disciples of Christ Jesus who linked Isaiah 9:1 [“in the latter time he made glorious the way of the sea … Galilee of the nations”] with Isaiah 9:6–7 and with the suffering righteous man of Isaiah chapters 52 and 53. So for the endtime disciple who when asked to show from Scripture that the Messiah must suffer goes immediately to Isaiah chapter 53, let this endtime disciple realize that Isaiah chapter 53 doesn’t make the link between the suffering righteous man and the Messiah. The link isn’t evident in Scripture even though the link is there: the link must be made through the return of the Jesus as the righteous man who has already suffered returning to earth as the promised Messiah of Israel. The link is in Isaiah chapter 9, but is made through a historical and geographical mortise-and-tenon joint.
To link the man Jesus the Nazarene to the Messiah requires that there is a second Jesus:
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. (Rev 19:11–16 emphasis added)
The Key of David is the movement from physical [darkness/death] to spiritual [light/life] found in Hebraic verse, especially those of the poet David, with the first presentation of an idea or a thing being physical and the second presentation of the same idea or thing being spiritual (i.e., of God). Thus, there has to be two Jesuses, the first being the human man born in Bethlehem to the woman Mary wife of Joseph, and the second being the glorified man that comes as the Messiah at the end of seven endtime years of tribulation. Thus the first Jesus is the suffering righteous man of the prophet Isaiah, and the second is the offspring of Jesus that shall rule the nations with a rod of iron.
There are not two or more human unique Sons of the God of living ones. There is by the word unique only one: there can be no more. Any other human Jesus is a pretender, a false Messiah. Thus, the person who presents a Jesus other than the one who suffered in near silence at Calvary, presents to the world a false Jesus, a lie.
The Church that argues for Jesus being fully man and fully God when Jesus physically lead around His first disciples presents to the world a false Jesus, one that never lived … Jesus will be fully God as the First of the firstborn sons of God when He returns as the Messiah, but when Jesus entered the physical creation as the unique Son of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he entered not as the God of Abraham, the God of living ones, but as the human Son of the God of Abraham. He “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing” (Phil 2:6–7), not a spiritually living entity, not God in any way; He made himself a dead human man of the sort about whom He would say to a follower, Permit the dead to bury the dead of themselves (Matt 8:22). He made Himself like the mud [dust] that Elohim [singular in usage] would sculpt into Adam—living thirty years without sin “sculpted” the raw material for the second or last Adam into the spiritually lifeless corpse of this last Adam. Then, as Elohim breathed the breath of physical life into the nostrils of the man sculpted from mud, Adam, the Most High God “breathed” spiritual life in the bodily form of a dove into the human man Jesus the Nazarene when He rose from being baptized by John the Baptist. It was at this moment when it became true what Jesus declared to condemning Jews: “‘For as the Father has life in Himself, so He granted the Son also to have life in Himself’” (John 5:26).
The man Jesus had no indwelling heavenly or eternal life prior to when the breath of the Father [pneuma Theou] entered into Jesus (see Mark 1:10) in the bodily form of a dove. He was the unique Son of the God of living ones, but He was no God. He wasn’t a man fathered by a son of the first Adam, but He was a man whose mother was fully a daughter of Eve. And in making Himself into nothing—physical atoms able to complete the DNA molecule of an ovum inside of Mary—the one who had equality with the Most High God ceased being God … the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ceased to exist, but became nothing. It was only the unique Son of the God of living ones that still lived. The God of living ones ceased to be; the Creator of all things physical ceased to be; the God Judaism worships, the God Islam worships, the God Arian Christians worship ceased to be. All that remained of this deity that had made Himself into nothing was the man Jesus, the raw material to be sculpted into the last Adam, the First of the firstborn sons of God, all of whom would be of the last Adam as Cain, Abel, and Seth were of the first Adam.
It is factually wrong to say that Jesus was fully man and fully God while He walked the earth … a Jesus that was fully God before He ascended to heaven as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering would be a different Jesus from the man who was the unique Son of the God of living ones. Therefore, endtime disciples do not have to look far to find a different Jesus from that man that lived being preached to Christians who steadfastly refuse to walk in this world as fractals of Christ Jesus.
In the “many” claiming to either come in Jesus’ name (authority) or come claiming to be Jesus, these “many” create confusion; for how is a person sincerely desiring to follow Jesus to know whether the Christ [Messiah] he or she follows is genuine? What standard is to be used for determining authenticity? Jesus left no physical writings. Rather, He left the word [’o logos] of Him with His disciples as the judge of unbelievers (John 12:48), thereby setting into place a non-tangible correspondence: by Jesus being the unique Son of the God of living ones and by a second birth the Son of the God of dead ones, He was the unique Son of the Logos [’o Logos] or Spokesman for the conjoined deity represented by the Tetragrammaton YHWH, with the logos or word of Him being to His disciples as He was to the Most High God—
The logos of Jesus now becomes a living entity conjoined with the living inner self of the disciple so that the living inner self delivers the messaging of the indwelling Christ … did I sail that past you?
Jesus personified the word [’o logos] of Him when He made this word-of-Him the judge of the one who hears Jesus’ words but does not keep them (John 12:47–48), and this personified word-of-Him functions spiritually as a human person functions in this world. Therefore, as a man marries a woman who accepts the man as her head by the act of marrying, the inner self of a human person that did not voluntarily receive life but was born as a son of God through the act of this son’s Father will now marry the word-of-Him, with these two becoming one spirit so that the words spoken by the mouth of the disciple come from the conjoined living inner self and the personified word-of-Him, which should cause the mouth of the disciple to speak the words of Christ Jesus and by extension, the words of God the Father.
Now, an endtime disciple prior to the Second Passover liberation of Israel will still have sin and death residing in the fleshly body of the disciple, with this indwelling sin and death causing the disciple to occasionally still speak the words of the Adversary, and to occasionally corrupt the words of Christ Jesus. But with the Second Passover liberation of Israel, sin and death will be expelled from the body of every Christian through the Christian being filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God. No longer will there be any excuse for uttering the words of the Adversary; for to utter the words of the Adversary the Christian must take sin [unbelief] back inside the disciple. No longer will the indwelling word-of-Him have to contend with a fleshly mouth that doesn’t get the messaging right.
But not all endtime disciples are called to the same task; not all are of Philadelphia, and not all of Philadelphia will be the two witnesses, a logical juxtaposition. But the fire that pours from the mouths of the two witnesses to kill whomever would harm them are the unrestrained words of the Father coming from the inner personified word-of-Him with the words of the Father representing heavenly life [His glory] that cannot be contained in a fleshly vessel but consumes any vessel not also of heaven … uttered words are conveyed by the breath of a person as the shadow and copy of the uttered words of the Father also being conveyed by His breath, His glory, the bright fire that gives to Him indwelling life in the heavenly realm. And this bright fire will utterly consume what is flesh or what is of this creation. So Abrams tanks are no protection for those who would come after the two witnesses to harm them.
The question will be asked: if every Christian is filled with the breath/spirit of God following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, why won’t every Christian directly speak the words of God as the two witnesses do? And the answer is in the shadow and copy of the two witnesses: Moses and Aaron. Once the people of Israel asked that the Lord not again speak to them (see Ex 20:18–21), the Lord only spoke with Moses—and so will it be with Christians following the Second Passover. God will test Christians before speaking only with one of the two witnesses who are brothers that together represent one entity, one ministry, delivering one message. And these two brothers will physically resemble one another so that they truly seem to be one.
Again, as the God of living ones and the God of dead ones, together, were one (two being one as in marriage between a man and a woman, or as in night and day together form “one day”), the living inner self of a disciple and the logos of Jesus, together, form the psuche of the disciple that now causes the fleshly body of the person to speak the words of Jesus and by extension, the words of the Most High God. The Adversary, however, interferes with the delivery of the messaging through imprisonment of the fleshly body in disobedience; therefore, the fleshly body needs to be liberated from indwelling sin (disobedience) and death … even though receipt of indwelling eternal life in the form of the breath/spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath/spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] entered the disciple and thereby set the disciple free “from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2), the fleshly body of the disciple was not set free from sin and death, what Paul discovered when he wrote,
But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Rom 7:6–25 emphasis added)
Through experience, the Apostle Paul understood that “the law of the spirit of life” (also Rom 8:2) that had set him free from the law of sin and death had only set his inner self free, not his fleshly body. The same will be true for all Christians until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, when the fleshly bodies of Christians will be filled-with and empowered by the breath/spirit of God.
The disciple in whom the logos or word of Jesus dwells will—without exception—serve the law of God in the disciple’s mind, delighting in keeping the commandments and doing what is right and good. The disciple will fight against the disobedience that continues to imprison the flesh and cause the flesh to do what the mind hates. Not until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart, will the fleshly body of the disciple be set free from indwelling sin and death, said with a caveat: Moses escaped from Egypt, and lived “free” as a fugitive hiding in the land of Midian. Moses as a name simply means <Son>; thus, the unique Son of the Logos, who had equality with the Most High God, is represented in and by Moses … the writings of Moses form the earthly shadow and copy of the words of Jesus. It is for this reason that the author of John’s Gospel has his Jesus tell condemning Jews,
Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? (John 5:45–47)
Believing the writings of Moses is the prerequisite to hearing Jesus’ voice and believing the words of Jesus. Thus, to hear and believe the word of Jesus requires that the disciple serve the Law of God in the disciple’s mind, which cannot be done until the law of life has set the disciple free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death that continues to dwell in the disciple’s fleshly body until the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
Now, did Jesus leave a criteria for determining the “real Jesus” from the many impostors that would come in His name, or come claiming to be Jesus? Yes, He did. Believing the writings of Moses, the Son, is the criterion that permits the disciple to hear and believe the words of Jesus; i.e., the logos or word of Jesus. When the person truly believes Moses—and rabbinical Judaism doesn’t as will be seen in when and by what means Observant Jews take the Passover in 2013 CE—the person will be as free as Moses was in Midian. And as Moses, the Son, did not want to return to Egypt to deliver his people who would have betrayed him, Sabbatarian Christians do not today truly want to deliver their brothers in Christ from the flames of the lake of fire, for these brothers in Christ will betray them, delivering them into tribulation and death.
Moving the theological into reality: if it would have been possible for me to have remained in the Aleutians minding my own business, living off the bounty of the sea, nearly invisible in this world, I would have never left the Aleutians. I liked living on Unalaska Island and fishing the local waters. I liked the looks of Beaver Inlet; of Pumicestone Bay. I caught a lot of halibut in Akutan Bay. The largest halibut I ever caught came from the Akun Island side of Akutan Bay. And I never really thought about leaving once I sailed past Priest Rock that first time: I was home, or so it seemed. So I somewhat understand why Moses was reluctant to return to Egypt.
Introducing a subject that I will address more fully later [in Volume Six], Moses didn’t have a choice about staying in the backside of nowhere in the land of Midian. He would return to Egypt, with the symbolism of Moses’ staff becoming a serpent when cast to the ground but returning to being a staff when held upright representing a reality that Moses didn’t initially recognize—and I shall permit you to ponder what I haven’t yet written. But something else to ponder: where can a person go to escape from the Adversary in this world?
From Dutch, we used to joke about from where we stood we could see tomorrow and it looked a lot like today. We also joked about being able to see the end of the world—and it was while tied to the Old Sub Dock at Dutch that I began to write, not then knowing that I would be writing about the end of the world …
Jesus, Himself, created the environment in which there would be many Jesuses, each claiming to bring the logos-of-Him to disciples; each coming with the claim that Jesus was the Messiah, but then presenting a differing message from the message that Jesus actually delivered to His first disciples, who were not learned men and who (unlike the followers of Mohammad) did not write down what they received from Jesus.
Again, Jesus didn’t need to inscribe His words for they were already inscribed by Moses, the Son, what Christians have failed to comprehend. And as inscribed words have no voice, no vocalization, until they are read by a person, the writings of Moses had no voice until they were “read” by Christ Jesus through how He lived His physical life. Thus, to hear the words of Jesus is to walk in this world as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6). To hear the words of Paul is to imitate Paul (how Paul walked in this world) as Paul imitated Jesus (1 Cor 11:1 et al). And the great sin of the author of Luke’s Gospel and of Acts is to falsely present how Paul walked in this world; how Jesus walked in this world.
The words of the author of Luke’s Gospel are—stated here before the case is made—the words of the serpent, who was more subtle, “more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made” (Gen 3:1) … how would the Adversary keep disciples out of the kingdom of God? How could he prevent spiritual birth? How could he abort sons of God? How could he do the work of a spiritual Planned Parenthood? His task was simple: all he had to do was prevent Christians from walking in this world as Jesus walked. All he had to do was prevent disciples from imitating Paul as he imitated Jesus. And doing this was accomplished by presenting a differing Paul and a differing Christ from the ones that actually lived.
Note a textual anomaly:
Then Moses answered, "But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, 'The Lord did not appear to you.'" The Lord said to him, "What is that in your hand?" He said, "A staff." And he said, "Throw it on the ground." So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, "Put out your hand and catch it by the tail"—so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand—"that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you." (Ex 4:1–5)
*
Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, "When Pharaoh says to you, 'Prove yourselves by working a miracle,' then you shall say to Aaron, 'Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent.'" So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs. (Ex 7:8–12)
It was Moses’ staff becoming a serpent that was a sign for Israel that might cause Israel to believe that the Lord had appeared to Moses, but it was Aaron’s staff becoming a serpent, and a predatory serpent, that was a sign for Pharaoh … what happened to the staffs of Pharaoh’s magicians when Aaron picked up his staff? Were they not held within Aaron’s staff that would bud, bloom, and fruit overnight (Num 17:3, 8)? Did the magicians of Egypt lose their magical art when Aaron’s staff swallowed the staffs of the Egyptians?
The sign of Moses’ staff becoming a serpent is rich in symbolism … the staff that supports the steps of Moses, the Son, is the reified serpent that deceived the Woman. If the first Adam had caught the serpent up by its tail, the serpent would have been in his hand to do with as he pleased. The temptation of Christ Jesus comes from Adam not catching up the serpent by its tail, and from Moses catching up the serpent, thereby having authority over the serpent as a witness to Israel. Hence, Christ Jesus as the reality of the Son had control over the Adversary when He quoted the words of Moses:
But he [Jesus] answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matt 4:4 — citation is from Deut 8:3)
Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'" (Matt 4:7 — citation is from Deut 6:16)
Then Jesus said to him, "Be gone, Satan! For it is written, "'You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'" (Matt 4:10 — citation is from Deut 6:13 and 1 Sam 7:3)
And the Christian Church as the representation of the Woman has been deceived because the Church didn’t quote Moses when facing temptation.
Again, the writings of Moses form the shadow and copy of the uttered words of Jesus; so an endtime disciple can know what Jesus said to His disciples by using the Key of David to unlock the writings of Moses. As the writings of Moses were inscribed on the surface of “things,” the word of Jesus is inscribed on the heart and placed in the mind of the disciple.
As has been said, the Key of David unlocks the movement of the word of God from being physical inscription by Moses, the son, to being spiritual inscription by the soft breath of God on hearts and minds of sons of God, with Christ Jesus being the First of many firstborn sons, all of whom collectively form the spiritual Head and Body of Christ. And as the fleshly body of the Apostle Paul did those things that he hated, the Body of Christ has done those things that Christ Jesus as the Head of the Body hates.
Now, because Christ Jesus is the First of many firstborn sons of God, all of whom are of the Body of Christ and by extension, are Christ, there cannot help being many who come claiming to be Christ, or claiming that Jesus is the Christ. The situation is unavoidable by the very nature of Jesus being the firstborn among many brothers:
For those whom He [God] foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He [Jesus] might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Rom 8:29–34)
All of these many brothers are sons of God who are to be fractals of Christ Jesus, but who when first born of spirit are not yet mature enough to walk uprightly before God; thus, there will be many “Christs,” with most of these many Christs not being writers or preachers or teachers of Israel and thus most of these many Christs would cause few problems for those disciples to be born of God in later generations of man. However, there will be a few of these many Christs who do cause problems, with the ones most likely to cause problems being false disciples that would intentionally deceive the Elect if that were possible.
The “problem” of neither Jesus nor His first disciples in the decade after Calvary writing down what Jesus said (His message or His logos) is understandable for they expected His imminent return as the Messiah, the promised Deliverer of Israel. Only when it became obvious that Jesus would not immediately return was there any urgency to inscribed the words Jesus spoke. But this urgency was not felt by the first disciples, but by a second or third generation of disciples that feared the Jesus Movement would be lost if they didn’t commit what they knew to writing
Linking the suffering righteous man of Israel 53 to the Messiah as the son of David took knowing Scripture better than most Greek converts did. This link, however, was of little importance to Greek lovers of God who really didn’t care what Moses had written; for Moses wasn’t the Messiah and they weren’t Jews … do you see where problems could be compounded? When the writings of Moses form the lifeless shadow and copy of Jesus’ words and by extension, the personified logos of Jesus, the Greek Christian convert looking to be saved from an afterlife as a shade in Hades had no particular interest in Moses or in Israel’s Exodus from Egypt or in the history of Israel a thousand years earlier. These Greek converts were unwilling to commit time and resources to memorizing the Septuagint or one of the other Hebrew to Greek translations of Moses’ writings. They were interested in Christ Jesus—and where a market exists, the market will be filled by entrepreneurs, in this case by writers producing biographies of Jesus, histories of the early Church, and revelations (visions) by the first Apostles, most of which didn’t survive for cause.
The first disciples did not need any text beyond the writings of Moses and the Prophets to preach that Jesus the Nazarene was the Christ, but those who came behind the first disciples—especially those from Hellenistic paganism—didn’t know Moses and the Prophets well enough to do what their theological ancestors did. They needed additional teaching aids. And they received these aids in the form of the Greco-Roman biographies of the man Jesus.
To be fair, Judaism had gotten better at blunting or debunking the arguments of disciples linking Isaiah’s righteous man to come with the Messiah: they had reinterpreted and rewritten passages first disciples used to show the link that had connected the man Jesus with the Messiah, a second Jesus, a glorious Jesus. Judaism’s late 1st-Century through mid 2nd-Century “modifications” were subtle, perhaps as subtle as was the Adversary in the Garden of God; thus there was greater need than ever for additional texts that were uniquely Christian.
When the biographies are deconstructed at even a token level, endtime disciples quickly realize that the symbolism of the reified serpent being the staff in Moses’ hand—the corruption of this image is seen in the very late addition to Mark’s Gospel:
And [Jesus] said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover." (Mark 16:15–18 emphasis added)
The message proclaimed by the Jesus of this late addition to Mark’s Gospel is contrary to the gospel Paul proclaimed in his epistles; is contrary to the gospel the author of Matthew proclaimed; is contrary to what James wrote, to what John wrote, to what Peter wrote. This late addition to Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:9–20) is an overt attempt to reconcile Matthew’s Gospel with Luke’s Gospel after the fact. And the falseness of this addition is apparent in what this Jesus says about handling snakes …
The symbolism of the Law reifying the Adversary, transforming disobedience into obedience, unbelief into belief, thus turning the Adversary, that old serpent Satan the devil, into a “staff” that can be “handled” through keeping the Law written on hearts and placed in minds of disciples was not to be taken literally. The Adversary is being used as a tool—a staff—by God for the perfection of the saints: the Adversary is handled as if he were a staff, his head bruised (Gen 3:15) because Moses picked the serpent up by its tail, when the staff is banged against the hard ground with every step taken by the disciple walking in this world as Jesus walked. However, once a disciple begins keeping the Law, the disciple cannot turn loose of the Law that reifies the Adversary who would bruise the heel of the offspring of the Woman by devouring the disciple that physically is dust, food for the serpent (v. 14).
Whoever the writer was that added to Mark’s Gospel didn’t understand the above, basic dogma of the Church of God; for when the people of Israel sinned against the Lord because Moses led the people around the land of Edom (Num 21:4) — the people again complained that Moses had brought them out into the wilderness to perish from want of food and water (the people called manna, bread from heaven and the shadow of Christ Jesus, worthless food [v. 5]) — and the Lord, not the Adversary, sent fiery serpents among the people to bite the people that many might die (v. 6), Moses was told by the Lord to make a bronze copy of the fiery serpents and set it on a pole (v. 8) that whomever was bitten might look at the reified serpent and live (v. 9). For by casting a serpent of the sort that was destroying the people of Israel in bronze, Moses took life (made solid, unmovable, lifeless; reified) from these serpents, turning them into an image of themselves and thereby taking from them their power to kill. And this reification of the fiery serpents was understood by Observant Christians, but apparently not understood by the writer who added to Mark’s Gospel apparently sometime late in the 3rd-Century. This writer who bastardized Mark’s Gospel was without spiritual understanding; for this writer didn’t grasp the difference between snake handling (what he had his Jesus reference) and handling disobedience that is from the Adversary through keeping the Law.
The Body of Christ dies spiritually about the end of the 1st-Century CE … Justin Martyr (dob ca 100 CE) claimed the Apostle John was a contemporary, which would have this apostle living seventy years or thereabouts after Calvary. If Justin Martyr’s claim is true (most of what he wrote theologically isn’t true), then the Body of Christ died with the Apostle John, with the Father not drawing additional disciples from this world after 71 CE, with the razing of the physical temple preceding and forming the shadow and copy of the razing of the spiritual temple of God. This will now have the order to rebuild the spiritual temple (return life to the Body of Christ) going out 1200 years after the dead Body of Christ was buried at the Council of Nicea (ca 325 CE), with the initial disciples undertaking reconstruction of the temple being Radical Reformers [Anabaptists], with the ministry of Andreas Fischer producing the first assembly of believers as the last Elijah would lay over the dead Body of Christ three times before this Body again breathes on its own, with the third time this last Elijah breathes life into the Body of Christ in figurative mouth-to-mouth resuscitation having begun in January 2002, 1900 years after the Body died with the death of John.
How could the entirety of the Christian Church not be “Christian” for centuries?
Let us turn this question around: how could the entirety of the Christian Church not walk in this world for centuries as Jesus (an Observant Jew) walked, or as the Apostle Paul (a Pharisee) walked when it was evident from canonized New Testament texts that it would be the disciple who kept the commandments and taught others to do likewise that would be great (Matt 5:19) in the kingdom of the heavens, plural, a movement from the kingdom of God ruling over heaven while the Adversary ruled as the prince of the power of the air over living entities here on earth and in the heavens above the earth. How could the significance of something as obvious as the movement from the referent <kingdom of God> as used by the author of Mark’s Gospel (e.g., Mark 1:15) to the referent <kingdom of the heavens> as used by the author of Matthew’s Gospel (e.g., Matt 4:17) be missed by so many Christians for so long? Were they all dunces? No, they were all without spiritual understanding that comes from genuine spiritual birth, meaning that none of them were born of spirit.
It is understandable why Christians in the former Worldwide Church of God (and now in COG fellowships such as the United Church of God) were without spiritual knowledge; for these Christians never claimed to be born of spirit and thus have indwelling eternal life in them. Rather, Christians in COG fellowships, while keeping the commandments to some degree, openly admit that they are not born of God as already living sons of God. They claim they are merely begotten by God … what does that mean? Is a living fetus begotten or fathered by a human father a son or daughter of the human father even before the child enters the outside world of bright light? If this living fetus is merely an unviable tissue mass, the position of Planned Parenthood, then what is morally wrong with abortion on demand? Do COG fellowships support abortion? No they do not. Why? Because they recognize the begotten human infant as a son or daughter of a human father and mother—but they do not apply this same intelligence to sons of God so ministers of COG fellowships make asinine declarations such as no Christian has yet been born of God. And while this might be true for themselves, it is not true for those of us who deliver the endtime good news [gospel] that all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22).
There is a phenomenon seen in the breakup of the former Worldwide Church of God: ministers needed jobs after Joe Jr. [Joseph Tkach, Jr.] killed the theological work previously undertaken by Herbert Armstrong. Faithful members needed validation that their decades of support hadn’t been wasted effort. So a multitude of former WCG ministers and lay members put the fossilized remains of Armstrong’s prophetic message back on public display through the ministries of a flotilla of COG fellowships drifting about aimlessly. None of these diminutive ministries had/have the ability to move beyond what Armstrong left them decades ago, but all of these ministries, since Armstrong’s death, have recovered and rebroadcast Armstrong’s words as if Armstrong were Christ himself. And in how long it took for these little ministries to recoup from Armstrong’s unexpected death (his death should have been expected—he was in his 90s—but it was preached from pulpits that Armstrong was the Zerubbabel who would finish the work of God he began); in how disorganized and petty these little ministries were when they again put the fossilized bones of Armstrong’s ministry on public display, endtime disciples genuinely born of God can see the problems that beset 1st-Century disciples after Calvary. … Some disciples of Armstrong even expected him to be raised from death after three days or after three years, and visited his grave in anticipation of his resurrection. These disciples were/are guilty of idolatry, and they haven’t repented.
The existence of many 1st-Century Jesuses, each claiming to deliver the logos of the Messiah, only became a serious problem when these many Jesuses presented contradictory messages. However—and this is a major caveat—this multiplicity of messages is only a serious problem for those disciples not truly born of spirit. Many Jesuses delivering contradictory messages is only a serious problem for those disciples who do not believe the writings of Moses and thereby “hear” the voice, the words of the glorified Jesus …
Many Jesuses delivering contradictory messages is not a problem for the Elect, those disciples foreknown by God, predestined, called, justified, and glorified through receiving a second breath of life that raises the inner self from death. For the Elect have within themselves the logos of Jesus that is as life itself—and I have circled back on myself as I check my backtrail to see if anyone is following what I write.
For the person wanting to follow Jesus but not drawn out of this world by the Father, the existence of many Jesuses causes all sorts of problems. And there were, indeed, many Jesuses circulating in 1st-Century fellowships, with these many Jesuses existing ever since throughout greater Christianity.
For the person not yet born of God, without Jesus having left an inscribed message there really is no criteria for establishing which of the many existing Jesuses is genuine other than actually hearing the voice of Jesus, which carries the prerequisite of believing the writings of Moses.
By the hand of Moses, the logos of Jesus was inscribed, with the key of David causing the genuine disciple to understand that night and day [that which is physical or of darkness plus that which is spiritual or of light] form “one day” in a manner analogous to how the God of living ones (the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and the God of dead ones form “one God” represented by the linguistic determinative YHWH and by the plural icon Elohim. Therefore, the disciple who truly hears the voice and words of the living Jesus has indwelling eternal life through having received a second breath of life that will cause the Law to be written on hearts and placed in minds so that this disciple will walk in this world as Jesus walked, thereby becoming a fractal of the man Jesus.
But none of the above helps the person who wants to follow Christ Jesus and thereby be a Christian but who has not yet been born of God as a son: how is this person to determine which if any of the many Jesuses out there is the unique Son of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Only one of these many Jesuses can even possibly be the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel, a source for Matthew’s Gospel and for Luke’s Gospel. And the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel was not, nor could be the Jesus of Luke’s Gospel. These two Jesuses had differing ancestries, differing personalities, and differing experiences when crucified.
Before preceding, the discrepancies between the Synoptic Gospels are real and are serious when a person understands why the discrepancies exist. So no one should wave a magic wand over the Synoptic Gospels and pronounce the existence of harmony. Any such pronouncement would be witchcraft. And a person, pastor, or theologian who would be so presumptive as to write a Harmony of the Gospels without deconstructing the Gospels and disclosing to his or her readers the existence of discrepancies practices witchcraft.
If Matthew’s Jesus could not be Luke’s Jesus—and He cannot be—and if Luke’s Jesus cannot be Mark’s Jesus, then what Paul wrote to the holy ones at Corinth was indeed true: the itinerant super apostles traveling from fellowship to fellowship proclaimed Jesuses other than the one Paul proclaimed (2 Cor 11:4) in his epistles … the Paul of Acts never existed but is a fiction, the creation of the author of Luke’s Gospel. And according to the Paul of his epistles, the sinner who is without the Law shall perish without the Law; for it is doers of the Law who shall be justified (Rom 2:12–13). But not all who keep the Law shall be justified: it is the one who is far from God and who voluntarily returns to loving God with heart and mind that shall be circumcised of heart and thereby be of Israel (cf. Rom 2:28–29; 10:6–8; Deut 30:1–14).
According to Paul of his epistles, keeping the Law as a cultural or legal obligation does the person no good, but keeping the Law as a desire of the heart (that is, by faith/belief) is the reasonable expectation of a son of God, a person who dwells in the household of God. Thus, Paul’s Jesus will keep the commandments. And Paul tells disciples to follow him as he follows Christ Jesus—the Paul of Acts proclaimed a Jesus different from the one the Paul of his epistles proclaimed, and the author of Luke’s Gospel subtly proclaims a different Jesus.
This chapter is about laying the foundation for showing that the author of Luke’s Gospel proclaimed a false Jesus, but one that was almost true.
Until closely examined, a narrative that is almost true will pass as the truth, but is from its composition inherently false and deceitful. But the narrative that is almost true can do immense harm, not so much near its date of composition but later, when it has been long accepted as the truth … the distance between “the truth” and a falsehood is initially hard to detect, but this distance becomes easier to see with the passage of time as the false narrative moves farther and farther away from the path of truth as the errant bullet of a marksman will miss its target at the far end of its range.
The Gospel of Luke is a narrative that has missed its target and no longer has the ability to kill infant sons of God unless a son of God “ducks” into its flight path …
Much time has passed (the time of the end is at hand) since the composition of Luke’s Gospel, enough time for the trail of spiritual destruction originating from this Gospel to have become evident: it is no longer difficult to see that a different Jesus exists in Luke’s Gospel than exists in Mark’s Gospel, again a source for Luke’s Gospel. But perhaps of most importance, the origins of the Mary Cult are now exposed (as a can-can dancer exposes her buttocks) as white witchery, seemingly harmless for even God needs a mother or so goes the reasoning of the Universal Church.
The harm done by Luke’s Gospel is self-evident in the Latin and Greek Churches where the worship of idols is codified in a triune deity that doesn’t exist and never existed. Ultimately, Christians themselves are responsible for engaging in false worship; for believing in a triune deity that never existed; for Mary worship. But in the immediate moment, the blame for Christians worshiping demons and the works of their hands resides with the many ministries and priesthoods that originated with the many Jesuses that came out of the 1st-Century as if they were charging bulls, their eyes closed and thus unable to see the estoque that would dispatch them.
Christians that with open eyes accept and continue to accept Luke’s Jesus as their own Jesus will perish in the lake of fire.
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[Chapter Nine of APA Volume Five will be continued in section #2]
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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."