December 17, 2013 ©Homer Kizer
Commentary — From the Margins
An Infallible Text
[Part Eight]
8b.
The person, a self-identified Christian or otherwise, who willingly and willfully transgresses the Commandments, especially the Sabbath Commandment, is not born of spirit but remains a son of disobedience, a slave of the Adversary. This Christian does not have the mind of Christ, meaning that this person doesn’t think like Jesus thought, nor does this person strive to do (to the best of the person’s abilities) what Jesus did. With this person not having the mind of Christ, the person will inwardly not walk in this world as Jesus walked. This person will betray his or her brothers in Christ; this person is not to be trusted. And this person might well be today’s pious Christian, a person who campaign’s for Merry Christmas rather than Happy Holidays.
Jesus spoke to His disciples in figures of speech, principally in metaphoric or metonymic language … in a metonymic expression, a part of a whole represents the whole such as one-named-person standing for everyone with a similar mindset. Because of cultural visibility, a television personality can metonymically represent a certain cultural mindset—and whereas the personality might well not be whom the person represents on air, it is the on-air persona that metonymically serves as the representation of many.
Bill O’Reilly of Fox News is such a personality, but I find that because of his apparently sincere desire to embrace what is right and good, I tend to use Glenn Beck as the most appropriate metonymic stand-in for the thirty percent of America that would like to see the United States of America return to its Constitution sense in its original intent.
It is my desire that principled men such as Glenn Beck repent of their psychological resistance to learning and realize simple things such as the Sabbath is the seventh day of a calendar week set with the giving of manna for the forty years that Israel and the children of Israel wandered in the Wilderness of Sin—and no, Israel in Egypt did not keep the Sabbath. In analogy, in metaphor, Israel in Egypt represents today’s greater Christian Church, and Israel in Egypt was not free to obey the Lord, who did not ask Israel in Egypt to keep the Law (that wasn’t yet given) … Israel in Egypt was not free to keep the Sabbath. Likewise, Christians today are not mentally “free” to keep the Commandments; they are not free to keep the Sabbath. They simply don’t know, don’t realize, what they don’t know. And Beck is such a Christian.
The Adversary is that old dragon, Satan the devil, who deceives the whole world (Rev 12:9), not some of the world, not part of the world, not Muslims only, but all of the world through every human person being born as a son of disobedience, a person who is not free to believe God and by application of this belief, keep the Commandments by faith. … The Christian who remains a son of disobedience does not keep the Commandments, and does not believe that he or she needs to keep them. This Christians sincerely believes that Christians are under grace, and thereby freed from the Law: question, when was the Christian ever under the Law? How can a person be “freed” from that which never had a claim on the person? How can a Christian be liberated from sin—unbelief that causes the person to transgress the Law—and yet continue to sin, continue to serve sin [unbelief] as its willing slave? That doesn’t compute.
What does it mean not to be free to keep the Commandments, all of them not six, seven, eight, or nine of them? If you are free to keep the Commandments, yet “choose” not to do so (because you are a Christian under grace), what does that say to God about you? Haven’t you, Glenn Beck, in neglecting the Sabbath and in keeping Sunday instead as the Sabbath—because that is what your church teaches—made your church and its prophet your God? You have, really have. And as an inherently intelligent person, you should know better; for what did Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath do? … Go directly to the night that He was betrayed: in correcting the practices of the holy ones at Corinth, Paul wrote,
When you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also He took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. (1 Cor 11:20–27)
What meal is the Lord’s Supper? Is it not the Passover meal that Jesus ate on the night that He was betrayed, which was not the Passover of Pharisees (i.e., how and when Pharisees reckoned the Passover should be eaten) but the Passover of the Lord, eaten when Moses commanded Israel in Egypt to kill, roast whole with fire, and eat the Passover lamb in Egypt—the Passover of the God of Abraham that was to be sacrificed and eaten when the people of Israel were still slaves of Pharaoh, that is while the people were not free to leave Egypt, the earthly representation of Sin.
Again, are Christians—honorable men such as Glenn Beck—truly free today to keep the Commandments? They are not. They mentally remain sons of disobedience who, though, are free to eat the Lord’s Supper, the symbolic broken unleavened bread representing the body of Christ Jesus; they are free to drink from the Cup representing the blood of Christ … eating a small piece of leavened white bread and taking a sip of water weekly and proclaiming doing so to be eating the Lord’s Supper doesn’t pass the smell test. Will you, Beck, pocket your admonition to question with boldness and quietly submit to denying the Lord week after week, that little piece of bread in your mouth convicting you of denying Christ? If the Second Passover occurs in the near future (if humankind can get no farther from God than the midnight hour of the one long night that began at Calvary arrives), your denial of Christ [you are here being personally, not just metonymically warned] will cost your son his life, and your guilt in denying Christ and in losing your son will cause bitterness to arise in you of a sort that you cannot now truly imagine. You, Beck, have set yourself up to be consumed by bitterness, with that bitterness rendering you susceptible to being possessed by the Adversary. You will then lose your salvation, what you fear most.
Who am I to tell you, Beck, the truth? Perhaps the only person who will, or who can. But you are not ready to listen—and that’s sad …
It is easier for Christians to accept another testament of Christ Jesus than to read and believe the testaments they already have, testaments that do not agree with one another, that are redactions of earlier writings and inscriptions of an oral gospel tradition. Until Christians are truly under the New Covenant that will have the Law [Torah] written on hearts and placed in minds—not something that will happen until after the Second Passover liberation of Israel—with very few exceptions, Christians remain sons of disobedience, enslaved by unbelief, consigned to sin so that God can have mercy on them for their 1st-Century ancestors’ sake. But in having mercy on them, God will not make it easy for them; for they have already had it easy. It is not, today, difficult to take the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the night Jesus was betrayed, this night being the dark portion of the fourteenth day of the first month that began with the first sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox [not necessarily the vernal equinox for Passover is a spring festival even in the Southern Hemisphere]. A Christian can, as Jesus did, find a house in which the Passover can be kept: in most of the world, the Christian can safely and peacefully keep the Passover at the person’s own house as occurred in ancient Egypt. But following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the war that rages inside the Christian (the war between the desires of the flesh that are of the Adversary and the desires of the mind that would have the Christian obey God) will move from inside to outside the Christian. Friends, family, brothers in Christ will suddenly become enemies of the Christian who truly believes God and wishes to clothe him or herself in obedience t0 God.
Moses [his name meaning the son] was born as an Israelite slave in Egypt, but he wasn’t reared as a slave … human persons born as sons of disobedience are analogous to enslaved sons of Israel born in Egypt, with equivalency holding that the dead inner selves of naturally born persons is spiritually analogous to physical enslavement. Thus, equivalency holds that to escape from Egyptian slavery by whatever means is analogous to receiving a second breath of life, a breath of life that raises the dead inner self to life. Thus, Moses becomes the representation of firstborn sons of God who have been spiritually born out of season, that is before it is time for Israel to escape from slavery (that is, before it is time for dead inner selves to be raised to life through receipt of the spirit of God).
The man Jesus was not humanly born as a son of disobedience for His Father wasn’t the first Adam but was the God of Abraham who had entered His creation as His unique Son; thus, Moses being reared as a son of Pharaoh, as a son who could rule the known world, forms an apt shadow and copy of Christ Jesus who will rule the single kingdom of this world. But the only “man” Jesus figuratively killed was Himself when He willingly submitted Himself to death as the Passover Lamb of God; thus, Moses’ years tending sheep for his father-in-law on the back side of nowhere becomes analogous to the “time” the glorified Jesus has spent in heaven, bearing the sins of the spiritual Israelites constituting the Elect.
Moses was not exactly a free man in Midian, nor before he fled to Midian: there were expectations of him while he dwelt in Pharaoh’s house as a son, and there was a price on his head while he was a fugitive among the sons of Ishmael. But he was as free as a Sabbatarian Christian is in this present world, where one-day-only parking lot sales are always held on Saturdays; where commodity foods (before Food Stamps) were given out on Saturdays; where blue laws prohibited Sunday sales even into the 1960s and 1970s, historically, not that long ago.
Ask yourself, are you culturally “free” not to keep Christmas, not to shop, not to buy gifts, not to wish others a Merry Christmas, not to have carollers come to your door … the date December 25th is not even close to the date when Jesus was humanly born—when sheep were still in the field—so why were ancient winter solstice celebrations baptized in the name of Jesus and resurrected as Christ’s Mass?
Can you, in December, go to the grocery store to buy milk and eggs and not be greeted by someone wishing you “Merry Christmas”? Do you, now, mumble some form of merry Christmas back just to be civil?
Hopefully, the person wishing others a Merry Christmas is well intentioned, but the greeting is a cultural redaction of ancient winter solstice celebrations … Israel in Egypt worshiped the gods, the idols of the Egyptians as well as remembering the God of Abraham. They had to go along to get along, such is the status of a slave; such is the status of Christians within greater Christendom in this endtime era. And it isn’t the task of the Elect to “correct” the false worship practices of greater Christendom. Christ Jesus will do so with the Second Passover liberation of Israel when He fills every self-identified Christian with spirit, thereby liberating each from indwelling sin and death. So out of love for Christians who remain enslaved by the Adversary—enslaved by their lawless ways—the Elect smile when wished, Have a merry Christmas, nod and say nothing; for nothing is truly expected in return. The words are said to satisfy the one who says them.
The Elect are those Christians whom the Father foreknew and predestined to be glorified while they remain humanly alive. But it isn’t the Father who gives to human persons imperishable bodies in lieu of their fleshly bodies: it is the glorified Christ Jesus to whom all judgment has been given who turns perishable flesh into immortal spirit. But it is the Father who initially gives “life” to the inner self of a human person, with this life coming via receipt of His breath [pneuma Theou] in Christ’s breath [Pneuma Christou] … the person who is numbered among the Elect, again, all of whom are foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified, is spiritually as Moses was physically. This person is no more righteous than Moses was when placed in the ark of reeds. But this person will be spiritually reared in the household of God as a son while the person lives physically as Moses was reared in the household of Pharaoh as a son. And this person will at some point identify with other Christians (those of greater Christendom) and will do spiritually an act similar to Moses slaying the Egyptian beating a Hebrew—and for this person’s intervention, he or she will be spiritually separated from both this world and from other Christians until such time as God calls the person into active ministry.
The most common way for a Sabbatarian Christian to engage the present prince of this world [to get into a fight with the Adversary] is for the person to try to get friends or family to realize the truth, not something that is possible unless the Father brings the friend or family member to Christ Jesus, an extremely rare occurrence. But the desire to teach, to engage in ministry is present in the Elect from their spiritual birth—but would you be instructed in economics by a human infant barely able to walk? No? So why will you permit yourself to be instructed in theological matters by a spiritual infant? By someone who knows nothing of being born-again, or born-from-above? Why would you seek God through unrighteousness?
Of all Israelite males of Moses’ generation, how many were adopted as sons by a member of Pharaoh’s household? … Why only Moses? And why did Moses have no contact with his people in Egypt for decades? Did he not know that the Lord would support him, even to destroying the army of Egypt, from the day that he fled?
The preceding is an overlooked pointed: the Lord was with Moses from his birth … how many reed arks are fished out of the Nile by the daughter of Pharaoh? The incident itself has the feel of a borrowed story: John Steinbeck in Grapes of Wrath had migrant workers send forth a dead baby (a dead savior) in an apple crate on a flooding ditch, an obvious borrowing from the Moses story. But not to minimize the importance of Moses, the entirety of the rescue tale need not be true for the story to be true; for in Hebrew style narration, Moses is the physical type of Christ Jesus—and God the Father was with Jesus throughout His life. The God of Abraham would have been with Moses throughout his life; so why didn’t Moses stand up to Pharaoh. Why run?
Carnally, we understand why Moses fled: to save his life. But Moses’ life was never really in danger; for in retrospect, we know it was not since Moses [the son] was the chiral image of Christ Jesus. So we know today what Moses apparently did not know. And how can, without a divine Thus says the Lord, we know more than Moses; how can we know that Moses’ story (Moses’ life) is the first half of a frame around the Judeo-Christian narrative, with the latter half to form the reality that the first half foreshadows; with the focus of the latter half being the Second Passover liberation of Israel and the recovery of Israel from the northlands [Assyria] that represent death?
Now, the question that needs to be asked of every Christian: would you go to a human child for cancer surgery? If not, then why go to a worker of lawlessness (from Matt 7:23) for answers to questions pertaining to the Law? Even to simple questions such as whether you should eat only “clean” meats? Why not first go to Peter:
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." (1 Pet 1:14–16)
Where does the Lord say, You shall be holy for I am holy? Surely you, as a Christian, know for you are familiar with Scripture.
You [Israel] shall not make yourselves detestable with any swarming thing that swarms, and you shall not defile yourselves with them, and become unclean through them. For I am [YHWH] your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am [YHWH] who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." This is the law about beast and bird and every living creature that moves through the waters and every creature that swarms on the ground, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean and between the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature that may not be eaten. (Lev 11:43–47 double emphasis added)
Squirrel isn’t a living creature that may be eaten by Israel, nor by spiritual Israel. So the good ol’ boy who bags a limit of squirrels to cook them for dinner doesn’t walk in this world as Jesus walked …
Did Peter need to tell natural Israelites not to eat pork, or shellfish? No, he did not. He didn’t eat common meats, nor would have any other person in the churches of God in mid 1st-Century Judea. Gentiles ate common meats, which is fine. They are free to do so. No one should give them a hard time about what they desire to eat, unless cannibalism is at issue—and I used to, nearly fifty years ago, give the Freeman boys (on Yaquina River’s Pools Slough) a bad time about eating crab “butter” [crab guts]. I should have joined with John Schirmer’s wife [their aunt] and just kept quiet about what they thought was delicious. However, I had matured enough spiritually that I didn’t say anything to those who ate sea urchin gonads when I was at Dutch in 1979–80. I could not eat, nor want to eat. Nevertheless, I remained silent about those who enjoyed cracking open the shells of sea urchin and eating what is no more repulsive than oysters on the half shell for the person who walks in this world as Jesus walked.
Israel shunned even clean meats that had been improperly killed or that had been sacrificed to idols—and it was this shunning of what would have been acceptable that the Apostle Paul addressed in his treatise to the holy ones at Rome: so what if the clean beast had been sacrificed as an offering to an idol. If the blood was out of the animal, the meat was acceptable to those Christians mature enough in their faith, their belief of God not to get upset about offerings made to sticks and stones. And no Christian imitating the holy ones of the churches of God in Judea (1 Thess 2:14) will eat sea urchin gonads or squirrel brains or crab guts—or even a juicy pork chop when the person can have dry, old venison instead (an inverted reference to a Colonial reenactor’s off-record comments).
By extension, no Christian mature in his or her faith will get unreasonably upset about what a son [or another son] of disobedience does in the privacy of his or her own home, or even in the public square. If the person wants to flaunt God, mock God—display the person’s sexual desire of another person of the same sex—permit the person to do so. God is large enough that He can take being mocked, not that He likes what occurs. However, He remembers: He will require just compensation from the person, which will usually be the person’s life. And what He requires is His business, not the business of even the Elect … the error Moses made when he killed the Egyptian was in believing he had to do God’s job for Him; that God wasn’t capable of handling His own affairs on His timetable.
Most Christians, even the Elect, worship a tiny God, one who wrestles the Adversary for the souls of human persons. They need to go to sea so that they can realize how tiny they are, how insignificant they are, how helpless they are in twenty, thirty, forty foot seas that smoke as their crests are atomized … a human person requires resignification as a son of God before he or she can truly make a difference in this world; before the person is large enough to make a difference when it becomes time to act.
Every Christian knows or should know that gilded idols are nothing but sticks and stones; nevertheless, even halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation, humanity, suffering from the death of two of every three persons alive before the Second Passover liberation of Israel will not repent:
The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. (Rev 9:20–21)
Yes, God gave to common humanity all flesh as food (Gen 9:2–3), but Israel isn’t to be part of common humanity. Israel is special, set apart from the remainder of humanity through being sanctified by the Lord, with Sabbath observance the sign of this sanctification (Ex 31:13). And Israel is no longer the nation circumcised in the flesh, but the people circumcised of heart (Rom 2:25–29) through having taken a mental journey from Babylon, the kingdom of this world, to the Promised Land represented by Sabbath observance (cf. Heb 3:16–4:11; Ps 95:10–11; Num chap 14).
Today, spiritual birth comes with glorification of the inner self through physical adulthood’s receipt of the breath of God in the breath of Christ; spiritual birth brings to life the formerly dead inner self of the predestined person, thereby liberating the inner self of this person from death in a resurrection like that of the man Jesus when He was raised from a watery grave by John the Baptist at the beginning of His earthly ministry. That’s simple enough anyone should be able to understand the principle. But resistance to learning within greater Christendom doesn’t permit understanding even the simplest precepts; therefore, pastors and theologians within greater Christendom are figurative wolves in wool, their fangs showing whenever they are challenged about not keeping the Commandments.
There has always been a price to be paid for keeping the Commandments, with that price being fairly small in the United States of America. However, part of this small price is being under the scrutiny of neighbors, with family members actually posing the greatest danger to the Sabbatarian Christian. Matthew’s Jesus said, “‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household’” (Matt 10:34–36 double emphasis added).
Within the former Worldwide Church of God and within the Alaskan Church, there were two cases in which family members “conspired” with prosecutors to bring criminal cases against Sabbatarian disciples. In one case, the appellate court found thirty-seven counts of judicial misconduct and the verdict was overturned. In the other case, the person left Alaska with grandchildren who didn’t return until they reached their majority and were legally able to inherit their father’s estate. In both cases, Sabbath observance was a principle issue, but failure to keep Christmas, keeping instead the Feast of Tabernacles, ought not send a person to jail—and technically didn’t. In the first case there was alleged child abuse for which there was no evidence. In the second case, the matter at issue was who should have custody of the minor children of a murdered gold claim owner, the claim owner’s drug addicted brother or the claim owner’s parent, with the court deciding that because the parent did not celebrate Christmas but kept the weekly Sabbath, the parent/grandparent was unfit to have custody of the grandchildren. The parent left the state with the grandchildren. An arrest warrant was issued. And the parent and grandchildren “disappeared” until the grandchildren were grown.
The price for neglecting Christmas and keeping the Sabbath will become much higher following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, followed by the great Apostasy of Day 220 —
When asked by His disciples for the sign of His coming and the close of the age, Matthew’s Jesus said,
See to it not someone you deceive [literal translation]. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Matt 24:4–13 emphasis and double emphasis added)
According to Bishop Papias, Matthew’s Gospel is written in Hebrew style, which will have its first half forming the non-symmetrical mirror image of its second half—
In the first half, the left hand half, the physical half, Jesus sent His disciples forth, two-by-two, with the instructions,
Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And proclaim as you go, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. Acquire no gold nor silver nor copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics nor sandals nor a staff, for the laborer deserves his food. (Matt 10:5–10)
In analogy, Go not to Gentiles but to the lost sheep of Israel is the physical shadow and type of the spiritual instruction, See to it you deceive not anyone. Proclaiming that the kingdom of the heavens is at hand forms the shadow and type of, Many will come in my name, declaring that Jesus is the Christ, and will lead many astray. Healing the sick and raising the dead forms the chiral image of disciples being delivered into tribulation and put to death. And concerning enemies, we find Jesus saying,
Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. (Matt 10:21–23 double emphasis added)
The common link that shows in the spiritual reality and its physical mirror image is the endtime gospel that must be proclaimed to the world as a witness against all nations: the one who endures to the end will be saved (Matt 10:22; 24:13). It is through this endtime gospel [good news] that the beginning and the end of the Christian era can be aligned within Christ Jesus’ earthly and heavenly ministry.
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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."