December 28, 2013 ©Homer Kizer
Commentary — From the Margins
An Infallible Text
[Part Twelve]
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But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. (Gal 3:25–29)
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12.
In a piece in 2011, I wrote that one person wasn’t in place; wasn’t where the person ought to be, thus effectively delaying what could have happened. That was then true. However, that one person has since moved closer to where the person ought to be, that is as a personification of the word [’o logos] of Him that Jesus left with His disciples. Others, however, are not yet in place, but may soon be—and it is as personifications of the word Jesus left with His disciples where Christians have to go if they are to be saved, thereby imitating Paul as he imitated Jesus, walking in this world as Jesus walked. For the essence of Christianity requires understanding that Jesus walked as Moses said, having love for God, neighbor, and brother. Jesus was holy as God is holy. Jesus chose life through garmenting Himself in obedience, not being like the first Adam who, when he saw Eve eat forbidden fruit, also ate …
Adam and Eve were one flesh (Gen 2:24) even though they were two as the outer person [the fleshly body] and the inner person [the soul or psuche] are two selves that equate to one person, with the outer person or self seeing that knowledge of good and evil is desirable food, a delight to eyes, and holds the potential to make one wise—and with the outer self partaking of knowledge that negates obedience to God. The inner self is not to go along with the outer self as Adam went along with his wife, no longer believing God. The inner self is to keep its covering of obedience, of belief, of faith, regardless of what the outer self does for eventually, the inner self will prevail over the outer self, even if this prevailing must wait until the Second Passover liberation of Christian outer selves from indwelling sin and death (see Rom 7:21–25).
What Paul said he didn’t understand—his own actions, doing those things he hated (Rom 7:15)—is now understood, with Paul having set in place the basis for understanding when he said that the invisible things of God are knowable through the visible things of this world, that the physical (visible) things of this world precede the invisible things of God (cf. Rom 1:20; 1 Cor 15:46), with this visible/invisible, physical/spiritual relationship undergirding the structure all of Hebraic poetics, both poetry and prose. Hence, Moses [the son—adopted son—of Pharaoh] leading physical Israel out from slavery to Pharaoh will form the shadow and copy of Christ Jesus, the Son of Man, leading spiritual Israel out from slavery to the Adversary, this slavery coming through the indwelling of sin and death in the outer self of every humanly born person.
Sin is the transgression of the Law (1 John 3:4) that originates in unbelief—in not believing God—that causes the person to take to him or herself knowledge of good and evil … with God, a person is the slave of the one whom the person obeys, “either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Rom 6:16). A person does not have freedom of conscious; does not have freewill. Either the person is consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), that is as a serf belonging to the land on which the serf toils, or the person is purchased by the blood of Christ Jesus and belongs to God for God to do with the person whatever pleases Him. If God so chooses, God will equip the person for Christian ministry. If God so chooses, He will not equip the person for ministry but equip the person with the means to support the one whom He called into ministry, with this latter person receiving the same reward as the one whom He called into ministry. And if God so chooses, He will call a person to betray brethren; i.e., to be as Judas Iscariot was. In all cases, the person called has no basis for objecting to whatever purpose God calls the person; for the person is truly the slave of the one who “owns” the mental topography of the person, sin leading to death or life leading to righteousness, the one being the chiral image of the other.
If God called a person to Christ Jesus for the purpose of supporting a ministry, the matter of support is between God and the person whom He purchased from the Adversary … the ministry is not to ask anyone other than God for support; for it was God who called the person into ministry: the reward of the person called to ministry isn’t the things of this world, but heavenly rewards that will become part of the person as fired glaze on pottery becomes part of the pottery. Therefore, what Paul wrote about himself continues to pertain to those whom God calls into endtime Christian ministry:
I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. (1 Cor 4:9–13)
Are the ones who are taught “strong” while their teachers are “weak”? If this is the case—and it might well be—then shame on the ones being taught: they remain as selfish babes, milk drinkers too young to dress themselves in the garment of obedience. They focus on their own needs, their own problems, and so it is with all infants, which is neither good nor bad but just “is” as the natural course of events. When the person called to support a ministry is mature enough to ingest solid food, the person will begin to extend that support even when doing so would seem to cause harm to the person; for with the maturing mind of Christ, the person truly called by God will cease thinking about the self and will desire to support the ministry for which the person was called.
If a person was called to, say, support the ministry of Herbert W. Armstrong (dod January 16, 1986), the person might well not be called to support any other ministry, especially if the person had been faithful in supporting Armstrong’s work of ending the second attempt by the Last Elijah to breath life back into the dead Corpse of Christ: yes, Armstrong was called to kill a work begun in the 17th-Century CE, a work that had lost it way and was unable to breathe on its own; a work drowned in rebaptism as 16th-Century Anabaptists were drowned by civil authorities when hunted and caught as if they were foxes. Thus, the person who had supported Armstrong’s ministry will receive the reward that Armstrong receives when his judgment is revealed. And that is as it should be.
Paul wrote,
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 11:5–15)
The end of every ministry will correspond to the deeds of that ministry: the end of Armstrong’s ministry corresponds to the deeds of his ministry. And those who supported Armstrong’s ministry—I was one—will receive the same reward that Armstrong will receive for the work he did, with him having already received while alive the bulk of his reward in the things of this world that he acquired and the acclaim he received; for it isn’t every person who can jet around the world, ride in Bentleys, eat off gold-rimmed china, and flush down their waste using gold-plated bathroom hardware. Such luxury is appropriate for a world’s king, not a teacher of righteousness who, in walking as Jesus walked (who had no place to lay His head — Matt 8:20), will follow Paul (who was poorly dressed, hungry, and homeless — 1 Cor 4:11) as Paul followed Christ (1 Cor 11:1 et al).
Were the holy ones at Corinth called to support Paul? Or were these holy ones, all milk drinkers (1 Cor 3:1–3), simply too young spiritually to realize they were called to support Paul? Or was it that they were called to support another ministry? We may never know. Regardless, today, there remain alive disciples who supported Armstrong’s ministry, and disciples who now support surrogate ministries, with these disciples to receive the reward that the ministries they support will receive. And the ministry that teaches error or falsely might well not like its reward … how do you suppose those that supported the ministry will like their reward?
There will be a Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart, and approximately a third of humanity, all uncovered firstborns (legal and biological), will suddenly perish, with many of the great and powerful of this world being uncovered firstborns. Spiritual Babylon will be dealt a below-the-belt blow that is hard enough to stagger the Adversary’s kingdom, causing it to wobble and reel, with the great horn of the King of Greece—its demonic first king—being suddenly broken because he is an uncovered firstborn (as is President Obama and Glenn Beck’s adopted son).
In one day, approximately 2.7 billion people—all uncovered firstborns—will die, an unbelievable claim but the reality of what is certain to happen. And at whom will the remaining two parts of humanity be angry? At God and those who represent God in the unorthodox manner of proclaiming words that were not specifically stated by either Moses or Christ Jesus … the lost testament of Christ isn’t another Gospel like Matthew’s Gospel, a sermon, or another Gospel like Luke’s Gospel, a redaction of many texts that have not survived, or even another Gospel like the oral Gospel tradition that has been lost but is presently being recovered. Rather, the lost testament of Christ is a hypertext that casts as its rigid shadow canonical Scripture.
I supported Armstrong’s ministry, and while doing so, I received the good things of this world as I perceived them, not as Armstrong perceived them or even as others in Alaska perceived them. I fished out of Kodiak, out of Dutch, sheltering in bays and bights not visited by tourists and seldom visited by other fishermen. I was free to go wherever weather and fuel permitted, catching enough halibut to pay bills and buy gear … there’s a reef to the outside (west side) of Priest Rock and an eddy behind that reef> I would come into Dutch loaded with fish and with ice melting, drop my gear off in that eddy, sail into Pacific Pearl’s plant, offload, then head back out and pull gear in that eddy, fill the hold and sail back into town to again offload and take on ice before heading out for another week of fishing around Akutan and Akun Islands.
When passing through Shuyak Strait, I laid gear on the east side of Red Fox Bay, laid along the side of a rock and caught large halibut in very few feet of water, and I realized that if I wanted to take a fly-caught world record halibut, I had found the location where I could … I held the 2 pound tippet IGFA world record for Dolly Varden for a couple of years—and all of this coming while supporting Armstrong’s ministry before he passed away and his ministry disintegrated into bickering splinters, all attempting to recreate the work Armstrong did, that of bringing to a close the Last Elijah’s second attempt to breathe life into the Corpse. And that’s why none of the splinters can do what Armstrong did: he accomplished the ministry to which he was called.
The ministry to which I was called—that of rereading prophecy—began the Last Elijah’s third and successful attempt to breathe life back into the Corpse of Christ, with the crux of this third attempt being the Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death through filling every self-identified Christian with spirit, the Christian being as a pottery cup: a coffee mug. And when filled with spirit, with the breath of God, the Christian will necessarily have to commit blasphemy against the spirit by figuratively splashing out some of the spirit to take sin back inside the person.
It is the Father who draws a person from this world and delivers the person to Christ Jesus for nurturing and safe keeping, with this person being numbered among the Elect, those human souls that are foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified while the “house” in which the soul dwells still lives physically. No soul can come to Christ without the Father drawing the soul from this world (John 6:44). No soul will receive “life” in the form of the person receiving a second breath of life without the indwelling of Christ Jesus, that is without the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou] “penetrating” the soul, thereby becoming its head as the husband penetrates his wife and is the head of his wife. But neither the soul nor the breath of Christ is physical; so neither can be seen by MRI brain scans or can be heard by stethoscopes. The presence of a soul, an inner self—especially of a dead soul (one not yet raised to life)—is almost impossible for even the person whose salvation relies upon the person’s soul receiving life in the form of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ entering into the person’s dead inner self to accept.
The person who killed others in his or her dreams will realize, some while after being born of spirit, that the person no longer has these dreams … the person is no longer the serf of the Adversary; is no longer a son of disobedience. The mental topography from which this person’s thoughts and dreams grow changed hands. Same mental topography. But the owner of this topography is now God, with Christ Jesus to plow and plant His mind in this mental landscape. And the Christian who truly has the mind of Christ soon realizes just how little fellowship the Christian has with sons of disobedience, even when these sons of disobedience claim to be Christians.
There are times and places where a person with the mind of Christ truly realizes just how far away from neighbors and friends, even family, the Christian is … the freedom of conscious that the First Amendment of the United States of America’s Constitution affords its citizens specifically deals with the inner self—what the citizen believes—and not the outer self that States and the Federal Government can regulate if original intent prevails in forthcoming cases against insurance mandates of the Affordable Care Act. For the issue of whether civil authorities can compel a Christian to work on the Sabbath (analogous to requiring Believing employers to cover reproductive rights) was settled long ago, with Sabbatarians from the Snow Hill fellowship being jailed because of their refusal to go along to get along with their Sunday-keeping neighbors. These Sabbatarians were held until jailers grew weary of listening to them sing. And because of their singing, they were released, not because they were legally liberated. Keeping them jailed simply became more trouble than the effort was socially worth for these Sabbatarian Anabaptists showed no inclination to modify their adherence to Sabbath observance.
The exception to the Affordable Care Act carved out for Amish should apply to all Anabaptists, including Sabbatarian Anabaptists, but most likely other Anabaptists—including myself—will have to fight to come under the exception. And fight I will, not with the weapons of this world but with heavenly power imbedded in ideas and principles that cannot be compromised.
In being called to reread prophecy, a calling that seemed to be heard by my ears, an authoritative calling, not one with which I could argue, I have come to realize that all of Scripture is the fossilized shadow of the words spoken by first the Logos, the Creator of all that has been made physically (from John 1:1–3), and then by Christ Jesus, the unique Son of the Logos, who was God [Theos — no article] and who was with [pros] the God [ton Theon] in primacy [arche — again, no definite article]. These words are those of God the Father, “the God” of John 1:1.
Jesus spoke the Father’s words during His earthly ministry: “‘I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has Himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me’” (John 12:49–50). These words constitute the word [’o logos] of Him that Jesus left with His disciples that will judge those who reject Christ Jesus, not those who accept this word that is eternal life and become personifications of this word of Him that Jesus left behind.
How much more message does any ministry need to deliver to converts? The person who follows Jesus, walking in this world as Jesus walked, walking in this world as an inward Judean (one circumcised of heart, not necessarily in the flesh), becomes the figurative personification of the word of Him that Jesus left with His disciples, with those who become personifications of this word passing from death to life without coming under judgment (John 5:24). And this is an extremely simple Gospel [good news message] to both teach and deliver—and not a Gospel subject to historical criticism.
In the sermon that the author of Matthew’s Gospel writes, Matthew’s Jesus identifies the endtime Gospel to be proclaimed to all nations as a witness to the world is, simply, all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 10:22; 24:13–14). That’s it. There’s nothing more to the endtime Gospel that is to be taken everywhere. However, in enduring to the end, the person filled with spirit will needfully keep the Law that is written on hearts and placed in minds, with Sabbath observance in the Affliction (the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation) marking those who are of God and with the tattoo of the Cross marking those who are of the Adversary in the Endurance (the last 1260 days).
In this age of mass communication and social media, it doesn’t take much expense or effort to deliver to the world knowledge that a Second Passover liberation of Israel will soon occur; nor does it take many resources to deliver the Gospel that Christians are to become personifications of the word Jesus left with His disciples, walking in this world as Jesus walked. It may take calling many disciples to get the few (Matt 22:14) needed to support the work I do, but the work will get done regardless of who involves him or herself, with me being appreciative of those who have and continue to do so. It is now for them, not myself, that I continue to proclaim a message I have proclaimed many times in the past decade. I want every person who supports this work to receive the greatest reward possible, with my reward having come when I began this work.
So, with the preceding said, it’s time to get to work.
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The Apostle Paul’s claim that being under the Law was analogous to being under a guardian; that being under grace (the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness) represented the movement from death to life (i.e., from the ministry of death to the glorious ministry of spirit — 2 Cor 3:7–8), has been used to support cheap grace for far too long … the ministry of cheap grace holds various forms of the doctrine that because Jesus kept the Law, His disciples do not have to keep the Law for the indwelling of Jesus in disciples represent souls under cheap grace keeping the Law; therefore, disciples are free to do whatever they desire for the penalty of what is done has already been paid by the indwelling Jesus at Calvary. And if disciples can do whatever they desire, assuming what they desire represents love for God, neighbor, and brother, then keeping the Sabbath does not today, nor will in the future “mark” those who are of God; whereas halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation, the Remnant that remains of today’s greater Christendom will keep the Commandments and have the testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy (cf. Rev 12:17; 19:10), or said in other words, will be outwardly marked (distinguished from the remainder of humanity) by Sabbath observance.
Cheap grace makes the indwelling Jesus a pretty ineffectual deity, one not able to compel the “house” [person] in which He dwells to walk in this world as He walked. Rather, cheap grace would, if were true, compel the indwelling Jesus to limp along while serving demons, an image that I suspect amuses the Adversary.
The reality that pertains to the indwelling Christ Jesus in the form of His breath [pneuma Christou] is that the human person, born with a dead inner self [psuche or soul], has been—because of the indwelling of Christ—resurrected to life by God the Father through drawing the person from this world and giving the person to Christ Jesus for Him to die in the person while the person remained a sinner (cf. John 6:44, 65; Rom 5:8). No person of his or her own volition can come to Jesus, a reality that is contrary to what cheap grace teaches. No person “makes a decision for Christ,” a false teaching that has packed auditoriums worldwide as well as has been advocated in numerous television specials. No person can come to the glorified Christ Jesus, nor will want to come to Christ, unless the Father draws the person from this world, figuratively buying the person who has been consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) from the present prince of this world … at Calvary, Christ Jesus paid the purchase price for all whom the Father will draw in this present Christian era, which extends from the Resurrection to the Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death. This present portion of the Christian era forms the spiritual reality of the Preparation Day, the 14th day of the first month, aka the First Unleavened (from Matt 26:17 in Greek), the first day on which unleavened bread is eaten, with leavening representing sin.
There are some Sabbatarian Christians who now observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread after the manner of the Pharisees, in that they celebrate seven days of putting leavening out of their dwellings and eating no leavened products during these seven days, while understanding that leavening represents sin. They make the connection between Egypt and sin. They understand that by Israel leaving Egypt, Israel left sin. They understand that Israel left Egypt on the dark portion of the 15th day of the first month; they even understand that Israel sacrificed their Passover lambs on the dark portion of the 14th day, then remained in their houses until dawn when Israel left their houses to spoil the Egyptians and to gather their flocks, for Pharaoh wanted Israel to go before there was nothing left of Egypt. Yet they do not understand that Christ Jesus, as the spiritual reality of the sacrificed Passover lamb, died at Calvary as Israel in Egypt killed their Passover lamb at dusk (between the evens) at the beginning of the 14th day, but that the death angel has not yet passed over all the land slaying uncovered firstborns; thus, greater Christendom remains in the six hours between dusk and midnight of the night of the 14th of the first month, with this one long night not being time-determined but determined by the entrance and exit of Christ Jesus as the six days of the creation week (the “P” creation account) are determined by the presence or absence of the light of God in the creation, what the Apostle Paul references when he wrote, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ [from Gen 1:3], has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6) … Paul makes Christ Jesus the light of Day One of the “P” creation account.
If Christ Jesus is the light of Day One, then the dark portion of the second day began when Christ Jesus, the unique son of the Creator of all things physical, died at Calvary. The light portion of the second day would have then begun when Christ was resurrected from death and appeared to His disciples, breathing on them and thereby directly transferring to ten of them His breath and by extension, the holy spirit: Receive the pneuma ’agion (John 20:22). This light portion would have been brief (days), and about the second day, the narrator of the “P” account does not say the day is good, but instead twice says the third day is good.
If a “day” is determined in the “P” creation account by the presence and absence of Christ Jesus as the unique Son of the Creator in His creation, then a representational basis for the Preparation Day and the days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread [eight days altogether] can also be the presence and/or absence of Christ Jesus in the creation, with dominion over the single kingdom of this world given to this Son of Man on the doubled day 1260, dawn of the one spiritual day representing the entirety of the harvest of firstfruits, a day that began at Calvary and extends until the resurrections of firstborn sons of God on the fourth day of the “P” creation account … the planting, ripening, and harvesting of firstfruits (of firstborn sons of God) occurs over the first three and a half days of the seven days of the “P” creation account; occurs when there is neither fish or fowl, beast or man created in the image of God yet on the face of this earth. Except for Christ Jesus, the First of the firstfruits, the planting and ripening of firstfruits occurs when there is only plants yielding seeds and fruit trees bearing fruit on the third day, with the dark portion of this third day representing this present portion of the Christian era.
Moses walked on dry land; Jesus walked on water. Thus, the division of the waters that gives to the earth dry land, also gives to the earth Moses in the form of the Law [Torah] being written on hearts and placed in minds of Israel so that all of Israel will know the Lord. This division of waters is preceded by the earth being covered with water, upon which Christ Jesus could walk; thus, necessarily, Jesus is seen walking on water in Matthew’s, Mark’s, and John’s Gospels, with the positioning of the miracle in Matthew’s Hebrew styled Gospel being in the physical or left hand enantiomer half, as is the miracle in Mark’s Gospel. But in John’s Gospel, which is not crafted as a Hebrew style narrative, the miracle also occurs after feeding the five thousand but John’s Gospel from the beginning of chapter five through the end of chapter twenty represents time-wise only the last year of Jesus’ earthly ministry; so John’s Gospel would have Jesus both feeding the five thousand and walking on water during the Passover season [all of Unleavened Bread] in the year 30 CE, one year before being crucified; whereas Matthew’s Gospel will have both events occurring in the second year of Jesus’ ministry.
Structure-wise, Jesus’ exchange with the Canaanite woman (Matt 15:21–28) lays at the beginning of the spiritual half (the right hand enantiomer half) of Matthew’s Hebrew styled Gospel, with Jesus’ exchange with the Canaanite woman functioning in Matthew’s Gospel as Jesus’ exchange with the woman of Samaria (John chap 4) functions in John’s Gospel. Both incidents denote a movement from physical to spiritual narration … Nicodemus has no spiritual understanding (John chap 3) even though he wants to believe, but the woman of Samaria, understanding that the Messiah is to come (v. 25) is directly told by Jesus that He is the Messiah: “‘I who speak to you am He”” (v. 26).
Early into the spiritual portion of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells His disciples not to tell anyone that He is the Messiah: “Then He strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ” (Matt 16:20). Yet, in the physical portion of Matthew’s Hebrew styled narrative, Jesus sent out the Twelve, charging them to proclaim as they go, The kingdom of the heavens is at hand (Matt 10:7) … how can disciples proclaim that the kingdom of the heavens is at hand if disciples are not to tell anyone that Jesus is the Christ? The Twelve would have had to have proclaimed the kingdom without mentioning Jesus’ name. Thus, evidence that the kingdom was at hand would necessarily have come through the work the disciples did in healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, thereby making it appear that they were the spiritual counterpart to Moses and Aaron confronting Pharaoh in Egypt, making then Jesus the counterpart to I AM, the deity that liberated Israel from human bondage—and making Jesus as unknown to the lost sheep of Israel as I AM was not known by Pharaoh.
As an aside, academics practicing historical criticism rely too much on modern rabbinical Judaism for their understanding of Christian references in the Gospels, and not enough on the 1st-Century practices of Sadducees … Pharisees, the theological ancestors of rabbinical Judaism, kept both the Passover and the Wave Sheaf Offering on differing days from Sadducees, who kept the Passover as Moses commanded in Exodus, not in Deuteronomy (that is, under the Second Covenant, the covenant made in addition to the covenant made at Horeb/Sinai — Deut 29:1). And the Sadducees observed the Wave Sheaf Offering on the day after the weekly Sabbath that falls within the Feast of Unleavened Bread, not on the fixed day [the 16th] that follows the first High Sabbath, the 15th day of the first month.
The Sadducees were more “political” than were Pharisees—and the Messiah is Judaism’s ultimate political figure—so it is reasonable that unknowingly to Sadducees, they and their theology better served God’s purposes than other sects of Judaism until after Calvary and the sect of the Nazarenes emerged. I suspect the disappearance of Sadducees into the flotsam of history came about from their conversion to Christianity … the Circumcision Faction (historically identified as the predecessors of Ebonite Christians) knew the Law and strived to keep the Law, even though these Christians continued to pursue righteousness through the work of hands and body, apparently never realizing that with receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ, the Law moved from regulating hands and body to regulating the desires of the heart and the thoughts of the mind.
For those who are not regular readers of what I write, Deuteronomy is the Second Law, not the second giving of the Law: when the Sabbath was given in Exodus (at Mount Sinai), the reason for keeping the Sabbath was as follows: “For in six days [YHWH] made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore [YHWH] blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex 20:11). The weekly Sabbath was to be a memorial to the creation as found in the “P” account, which is the abstract for the dual creation of the heavens and earth and the new heavens and new earth, two creations that form one creation as a man and his mirror image are one man.
Whereas in Exodus the reason for remembering the Sabbath is creation itself, in Deuteronomy the reason for keeping the weekly Sabbath changes: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and [YHWH] your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore [YHWH] your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut 5:15) … under the Second Covenant—the Moab covenant—the Sabbath as well as the annual holy days are all memorials to liberation from slavery, two liberations, one for each mediator, Moses and Christ Jesus, the first liberation [from slavery] occurring prior to Moses becoming the mediator of this Second Covenant and the second liberation [from indwelling sin and death] following when Christ Jesus became the mediator of this same Second Covenant; thus the two liberations and two mediators form mirror images of each other.
I usually use left and right hands—chirality—to represent the physical and spiritual relationship between heavens and earth and the new earth and new heavens, but the more appropriate relationship is that of a man and his holographic image, a two-dimensional image that is as knowledge smeared on the event horizon of a black hole, this image appearing as if were three dimensional as the man is but without indwelling life. The concepts informing Alice stepping through the looking glass (from Lewis Carroll’s novel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There) such as time running backwards and scrambled spatial directions produce the conclusion that life could be nothing more than a dream, a concept morphing into life being nothing more than a computer simulation in the movie Matrix; however, the biblical concept of the Creator of all-that-is-physical speaking the creation into existence will have the creation functioning as a holograph, not as a dream or computer simulation; functioning as utterance smeared on an event horizon, this utterance forming the mirror image of the supra-dimensional heavenly realm. But these concepts push spiritual infants—infant sons of God—into gumming solid food which they are not yet able to chew or digest.
The Apostle Paul wrote to milk drinkers, disciples who had not yet been weaned and were not able to handle solid spiritual food:
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. (1 Cor 3:1–3)
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About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Heb 5:11–14)
And what disciples find in Scripture is spiritual milk, not meat, not solid food, which is for disciples who have the Law written on hearts and placed in minds so that they know the Lord and have no need for Christian instruction in the basics of righteousness …
Christian instruction, whether by the Law or under grace, is for spiritual infants.
Mature Christians do not need instruction in the principles of the Law: the mature believe God and put into practice what they believe, thereby walking in this world as the man Jesus walked, living as an observant Jew regardless of whether outwardly circumcised for the flesh doesn’t matter. Sons of God are neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek; for the biology of the flesh pertains to the flesh, to the things of this world, and not to the things of God.
The son of God mature enough to dress the living inner self—alive through the indwelling of Christ Jesus—in obedience to God is not restricted to being a milk drinker. The weaned inner self or soul [psuche] has had his “powers of discernment trained by constant practice,” but what sort of constant practice? Distinguishing good from evil? the work of the Law, with good represented by love for God, neighbor, and brother, and with evil represented by lawlessness, transgression of the Commandments that produces all sorts of malfeasance, from straightforward lying [If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period] to swindling those who thought the swindler was a brother-in-Christ.
The single distinguishing character of a weaned son of God is this soul’s ability to move beyond the inscribed text that can only exist as the earthly shadow of the word [’o logos] of Christ Jesus that He left with His disciples (John 12:48). As long as a Christian limits his or her spiritual understanding to what is written in Scripture, especially to literal readings of New Testament texts, the Christian remains a milk drinker, with a Hebrew male infant nursing his mother for seven full days before being circumcised in the flesh on the eighth day, being analogous to a spiritual infant being circumcised of heart on the figurative eighth day of his life … an infant son of God will study Scripture that is spiritual milk for a considerable length of time (a human infant’s second day of life doubles the length of time that the infant has lived since being humanly born; the infant’s fourth day of life again doubles the length of time the infant has lived; this infant’s eighth day again doubles the life of the infant, with this doubling represented as 23, the linguistic field/background in a tri-part Venn diagram of a word).
From having dealt with disciples who supported Herbert Armstrong’s ministry for decades before disappearing, seemingly lost in the spindrift windrowed on the banks of the Kenai River or the smaller Ninilchik River, I know that spiritual maturity is not time-linked to physical maturity; that circumcision of the heart can be “escaped” for fifty or more years by remaining a self-centered milk drinker, one who knows Scripture but doesn’t understand the things of God. I know with absolute certainty that it is impossible for a not-yet-weaned spiritual infant to comprehend himself as an uttered word of God, personified in flesh, but that is what sons of God are, with the fleshly body forming a holographic image of the inner self. And Scripture is now merely a schoolmaster of the same sort that Paul claimed the Law to be. The question of Scripture’s fallibility or infallibility becomes a matter of asking the wrong question; for as the shadow of a person is seen but is not real (except as a shadow), Scripture is read as the word of God, but Scripture exists as the shadow of the word that Jesus left with ‘His disciples, with Jesus’ utterances themselves being shadows of the Father’s non-physical utterances.
It is one thing for a scholar whose vocation is the study of ancient texts to find that New Testament texts contradict themselves—they do—and are of human origins, but such findings should not negatively influence the beliefs of a born-of-spirit son of God who is to clothe himself in obedience to God. So what if in Matthew’s Gospel, Roman soldiers mocking Jesus cloak Him in a scarlet [red] robe whereas in Mark’s Gospel, soldiers cloak Him in a purple robe—Matthew’s Gospel is disguised as a historical account of Jesus the Nazarene, but is and has always been a sermon that spans the entirety of Israel’s history, with the glorified Jesus not to receive all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18) until dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man on the doubled day 1260 in the seven endtime years of tribulation.
But how is a spiritual milk drinker to recognize Matthew’s Gospel as a sermon … the milk drinker cannot. Just as the Christian whose mind remains set on the flesh and on earthly things [e.g., fast cars and faster women] will not submit to God’s Law and indeed cannot (Rom 8:7), the spiritual milk drinker cannot reach behind the text to grab hold of the story and draw it forth as a sermon so it can be worn as a garment.
The minds of most Christians are not set on fast cars, but nevertheless remain set on the things of the flesh such as politics, freedom and liberty, NSA spying, IRS corruption, abortion which is the deliberate murder of unborns. The Christian usually has higher motivation than acquisition of this world’s wealth and the power that goes with this wealth although Christians succumbing to the prosperity gospel remain discounted souls in the Adversary’s inventory: they can be cheaply purchased by his servants, each wearing sheepskins and disguised as ministers of righteousness.
The more honorable Christian wants to set the world straight, and will inevitably have little understanding about how Jesus walked in this world, or said in other words, the honorable Christian really isn’t interested in fast cars as much as he or she is interested in the San Diego Cross, Ten Commandments statuary on courthouse lawns, and a return to the originalism of the U.S. Constitution. This Christian knows with certainty that marriage is only between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others. And many of these Christians will know what the watchers told Nebuchadnezzar: “‘The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will and sets over it the lowliest of men’” (Dan 4:17).
Do not these words describe the present state of affairs in Washington D.C.?
It is the basest of men, the lowliest of humanity that have ruled the nations of this world, with very few exceptions—and the United States of America is not presently ruled by an exception, but rather, is governed by an uncovered firstborn.
The weaned Christian, however, has little interest in the basest of men and their minions. Until the Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death—which doesn’t give to the Christian immortality, but moves what will cause the Christian’s death from inside causes (e.g., cancer, heart disease) to outside causes, martyrdom being the most likely—the weaned Christian has the opportunity to prepare both mentally/spiritually and physically to help other Christians not return to sin when liberated from indwelling sin and death. Already, today’s dominant sect of Arian Christendom is prepared to leverage food into discipleship, and who can fault a denomination for preparing to feed the hungry that the denomination knows are sure to come when world economies collapse. I cannot fault this Arian denomination, but I can encourage all who read to be equally prepared to endure the really tough conditions that will develop after uncovered firstborns are suddenly slain in a day. I can also encourage Christians not to sell their birthright for a bowl of lentils, or for a MRE packet, its contents tasting more like cardboard than food.
Meals in a bucket should be in the form of wheat or beans, rice or corn, not foil packets to which water is added. And the Christians should have a pot large enough that unbelieving and unprepared neighbors can be fed; for the selfishness of so-called doomsday preppers is not of God, Father or Son. The Christian will share, will feed all who come, and will trust God to supply what the Christian is unable to supply even though the Christian has faithfully redeemed his or her time in preparing for a certainty sure to happen.
Liberation from indwelling sin and death doesn’t entail a physical journey through a wilderness of Sin/Zin, but a mental journey from sin and selfishness to manifesting love toward even the Christian’s enemies—and yes, enemies will abound.
Again, there is no way for a weaned Christian to convince a milk drinker that it isn’t Scripture that matters, but how the person lives his or her life as the person forms the personification of the word of Him that Jesus left with His disciples. It isn’t nuances of Greek words; it isn’t the voice of Greek words that matters. It isn’t whether a Gospel contradicts other Gospels, or even itself that matters. These are all things that fret spiritual allophyles, not things that trouble weaned sons of God who by faith walk in this world as the man Jesus the Nazarene walked—and we know how Jesus walked, for He walked as Moses commanded Israel to walk. He walked uprightly without being under a disciplinarian, a schoolmaster who schooled Him in the subtleties of keeping the Law … subtleties belong to the lawless, the person who wants to appear righteous without truly being righteous.
When I was drafted in January 2002 to do the work I am now doing, I was given no more of a command than, It’s time to reread prophecy. I had by then been a baptized member of the former Worldwide Church of God (WCG) for nearly thirty years, and I saw the politics that were played, the lack of love shown non-members and members with whom “God was working,” and I was content to dwell far from a congregation, having fellowship with other WCG members when they flew to Kodiak to work or hunt or fish. I was on the tape program out of Anchorage, receiving weekly Sabbath sermons via audio tape. And I wrote about fictional characters that were mostly composites of real people. I wrote about fishing salmon, and about storms that rattled windows and shook houses, and about dead souls that typified coastal culture. As with the novel Dead Souls (1842) by Nikolai Gogol that ends mid sentence, I left readers hanging, with more than one throwing a novel or novella across the room. But really, how can any person know the end of a matter when the person remains a dead soul, a dead serf belonging to the Adversary; for the dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5). And to even briefly awaken the dead is a work of God who through Christ Jesus administered spiritual mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to members of the former WCG.
As anyone who has administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to another knows, not all for whom the person breathes will make it. Some die. Perhaps most die. The injured is simply not able to breathe on the person’s own—and at some point, the person administering resuscitation has to walk away. Even the prophet Elijah twice rose from the lifeless body of the son of the widow of Zarephath, took a break, then returned to laying over the lad. … Again, as I previous wrote, the work of Herbert Armstrong was that of ending the spiritual Elijah’s second attempt to breathe life back into the Corpse of Christ, the dead Body of Christ.
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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."