February 23, 2012 ©Homer Kizer
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Unborn Sons of God
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Here is a call for the endurance of the saints [ton hagion the holy], those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. (Rev 14:12)
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Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:1–5 emphasis added)
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Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus is accursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor 12:3 emphasis added)
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The Argument: A Second Passover liberation of Israel modeled after the Exodus of Moses’ day requires existence of a second enslaved nation of Israel, a nation chosen by God as His firstborn son, a nation representing the firstfruits of this earth, a nation that is to be circumcised-of-heart as Israel in Egypt was circumcised in the flesh, and a nation that remains until the Second Passover overcome by the prince of this world of whom Pharaoh was a type, a shadow and a copy—the Second Passover libration of Israel requires that a once-free people return to sin for the sake of bread as the patriarch Israel and his sons went down to Egypt in the days of Joseph.
An Israelite overcome by this world lives as a Gentile, and is concerned about those things that concern Gentiles: food, drink, shelter, raiment, the things of this world including buying and selling, politics, wars and rumors of wars—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions (1 John 2:16) and pride in national accomplishments. God the Father knows His sons have need for those things that sustain physical life, but what His sons need more is for Him to raise them from death through giving them a second breath of life, His breath [pneuma theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou].
Whereas the assumption has been that the Father will raise from death His sons by individually drawing each one from this world (John 6:44, 65), with such a drawing and calling being in agreement with Paul writing in his treatise to the Romans, “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He 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” (8:29–30), an individual calling of predestined and glorified sons does not satisfy Jesus saying, “‘Many are called, but few are chosen’” (Matt 22:14) … to call many but choose few requires a broad resurrection to life, a resurrection in which the individual Christian is not foreknown by the Father—and a broad resurrection to life is seen in the Second Passover liberation of Israel, when a great many presently unborn sons of God received birth by being filled with the spirit of God.
In the 1st-Century, once the spirit was given there could be no such creature as an unborn son of God: by definition, a son of God was born of God through receiving a second breath of life. It was the outwardly circumcised nation of Israel that was then the not-born-of-spirit firstborn son of God (see Ex 4:22), an oxymoron. But Paul metaphorically claimed that outwardly circumcised Israel was actually represented by Ishmael, the son of the bondwoman, not Israel, whereas Christians were of Isaac (Gal 4:21–31), with Christ Jesus corresponding to Abraham (Gal 3:29). And in a logical extension of Paul’s tour-de-force allegory, when Christendom replaced Judaism as the holy nation of God (1 Pet 2:9) a previously unrecognized category of Christians emerges that corresponds to Judaism as the not-born-of-spirit firstborn son of God: this category is unborn firstfruits, the pool of human persons from which the Elect comes as the first disciples came from Judaism.
Not all of 1st-Century Judaism was born of God while this people remained physically alive. Likewise, not all of Christendom has been born of God while these Christians remained physically alive. Therefore, Paul’s gospel (Rom 2:11–16) differs from the gospel Peter declared (Acts 4:8–12); for Paul introduces salvation in the great White Throne Judgment (see Rev 20:11–15), salvation apart from being part of Israel, the firstborn son of God.
However, in the days of Moses liberation via the Exodus came upon all of the people of Israel. In the same way, in the days of the two witnesses, liberation from sin and death via being born filled with spirit will come upon all Christendom … when an unborn Christian is counted as a firstborn son of God, the certainty of spiritual birth engulfing all of Christendom is absolute: the certainty of the Second Passover liberation of Israel is absolute. No Christian within greater Christendom can escape liberation from sin and death through being filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God at the Second Passover when the lives of uncovered firstborns, biological and legal, are given as the redemption price for all unborn Christians — escape? Yes, escape, for with spiritual birth will come judgment without the covering of grace: following the Second Passover, the Christian who returns to sin will commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and when Christians have been liberated from indwelling sin and death through being filled with spirit as a drinking glass is filled with water to its brim, any return to sin will mean a figurative splashing out of spirit and as such a rejection of the spirit.
§1.
According to John’s vision, saints are those Christians who keep the commandments and have the faith of Jesus [ten pistin Iesou], as opposed to “faith in Jesus.” The saints—the holy or the holy ones—are not all of Christianity, and this should surprise no one for most Christians within greater Christendom believe that only they are genuine; other Christians are apostates. But most of greater Christendom believes that those Christians who keep the Commandments are legalists and are not genuine; however, it is only those Christians who actually do keep the Commandments and have the faith of Jesus that will be glorified as firstfruits, if John is to be believed. And to have the faith of Jesus requires the Christian to have the indwelling of Christ Jesus in the form of His breath, the breath of God [pneuma theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou] …
A person’s breath isn’t the person, but represents the life of the person, with this life carried throughout the breathing creature [nephesh] by the bloodstream; hence, life is in the blood (Gen 9:4), or said otherwise, the oxygen molecules carried by the red blood cells of a breathing creature metonymically represents the life of the creature. Therefore, life also comes through the breath [pneuma —see Rev 11:11; 13:15; 2 Thess 2:8] … however, when Paul reasoned with the philosophers of Athens, Paul separated life [zoen] from breath [pnoen] in the manner English speakers separate flesh from blood in the expression <flesh and blood>, using two words joined by the conjunction to represent one concept: Paul used zoen kai pnoenkai ta panta [life and breath and these things all] (Acts 17:25) together to represent what it means to be a living human being.
The living have life; the dead do not. An ovum in a woman’s womb carries the potential for life but it is not alive. But once the ovum is fertilized by a spermatozoid, the union of male and female produces life independent of the mother, life that begins to cripple the woman’s immune system so that her immune system will not involuntarily kill it. Rather, once conceived, the developing independent life within the woman that will remain dependent upon the woman’s body for sustenance for the next nine months is also dependent on her good will and good humor not to kill it by deliberately aborting the infant.
A human person, humanly born as a son of disobedience (from Eph 2:2–3), holds the potential for having heavenly or spiritual life as a son of God and as such is typologically represented by an ovum. But before this human person can cease being a son of disobedience, the inner self of this human person must be raised from death by God the Father; must be born of spirit through receiving the breath/spirit of God [pneuma theon] in the breath/spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] — and being born of spirit, a real birth for the infant son of God has real life in the heavenly realm, is analogous to human conception for the developing life [embryo, fetus] inside the woman’s womb has real life in this world. But as the child—a real child—inside the woman’s womb will be born into the world where the child will draw breath that is fully independent of the woman’s breath, the son of God—again, a real son of God—that is under grace (analogous to the woman’s womb), the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness, will be separated from Christ through being filled-with and empowered by the breath/spirit of God at the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
The human infant at human birth is not able to live independent of his or her mother even though the infant now breathes on his or her own: the newly born infant must be suckled and swaddled by his or her mother. And so it is with the human son of God when filled-with and empowered by the breath of God: in a mixing of metaphors, the son of God remains under the tutelage of the Law as the tent in which the infant son of God is swaddled, with obedience by faith being the teat from which the infant son of God suckles righteousness once the Son of Man is revealed/disrobed [apokalupto], with Christians forming the Body of the Son of Man.
· Once Christians, previously born or unborn of spirit, are suddenly and for most, unexpectedly filled-with and empowered by the breath of God, the Son of Man, Head and Body, will be stripped naked and will be as Adam was in the Garden of Eden; i.e., clothed by the Christian’s individual obedience to God by faith;
· Following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the event that causes the Son of Man to be disrobed, Christians will not be clothed by Jesus’ righteous, but as small children, Christians must clothe themselves with their own righteousness that comes via belief of God through hearing the words and voice of Christ Jesus that are contained in the Law that shall be written on every Christian’s heart and placed in every Christian’s mind so that all Know the Lord.
But—the bad news—most of greater Christendom will rebel against Christ Jesus, not repenting of their present lawless and idolatrous ways … recognizing that the Second Passover death of a third of humankind, all uncovered biological or legal firstborns, was an act of God, the majority of Christians worldwide will return to the beliefs of their ancestors and will commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion or breath holy]. And there is nothing anyone can do to prevent the majority of today’s Christians from rebelling against God when the Son of Man is revealed. Yes, one here and one there can be saved, but the issue will be then what it is now and what it was in the 1st-Century:
For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for "Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world." But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says, "I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry." Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, "I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me." But of Israel he says, "All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people." (Rom 10:11–21 emphasis added)
Between the Second Passover liberation of Israel and when Christendom rebels against God on a specific day—day 220 of the Affliction, the day when the lawless one is revealed (2 Thess 2:3)—every Christian will have ample opportunity to hear the voice of Jesus, and believe His words, His word, regardless of where the Christian is and regardless what message the Christian hears with his or her ears … it will be to Christians within greater Christendom that the glorified Jesus holds out hands that will be ignored.
Today, the saints are those Christians who have indwelling heavenly life through having been born of spirit, with the saints being the Elect; whereas the vast majority of Christendom has not yet been born of God, regardless of whether the person identifies him or herself as a born-again Christian. … The Christian that makes a practice of transgressing the Commandments is a son of disobedience, consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32), and is not counted among the holy, those Christians who have truly been born of God as sons. It simply doesn’t matter that the Christian thinks he or she has been born again or born anew.
How would a person—a Christian—know if he or she has been born of God when the Christian continues to practice lawlessness? What has changed? A particular lawless practice? The Christian is no longer a drunkard, a fornicator, but is instead someone who continues to transgress the Sabbath commandment, breaking fewer of the commandments but continuing to willfully break one or more in the Christian’s zeal to worship Christ Jesus.
Again, grace doesn’t cover intentional or willful sin. As a nurturing womb, grace covers unintentional or involuntary transgressions of the Commandments.
Identifying who is and who isn’t a son of God is, however, relatively easy: John writes,
Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he [Jesus] appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:2–10 emphasis added)
Every person who has been truly born-of-spirit as a son-of-God will keep the Commandments and will have love for neighbor and brother, with keeping the commands of God being the outward demonstration of the person’s belief of God. The Christian who contends that he or she is not under the Law but under grace (from Rom 6:14) must reckon with Paul’s gospel:
For God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. (Rom 2:11–13 emphasis added)
To sin is to transgress the Commandments because of the person’s unbelief or lack of faith; hence the sinner is someone who willfully transgresses the Commandments. And according to Paul’s gospel (Rom 2:14–16), regardless of whether the sinner is under the Law or even knows what the Law says, the sinner will perish for it is the doer of the Law who will be justified when judgments are revealed.
The Christian who insists that he or she is not under the Law—not realizing what it means to be under the Law—yet who willfully transgresses the Commandments will perish, it’s as simple as that. And yes, judgment of the willful sinner can be declared now, before judgments are revealed; for the judgments that will be revealed upon Christ Jesus’ return as the Messiah are presently being made, with the criteria for making these judgments being fairly straightforward.
Once again for the sake of pedagogical redundancy: it is the inadvertent, the unintentional sin that is covered by grace, not the willful or deliberate sin—and when all of Christendom knows that the Sabbath is the seventh day, that Sunday is de Te mia ton sabbaton — the one [after] the Sabbath (from Luke 24:1; John 20:1; Acts 20:7), all of Christendom is without excuse. All know that by worshiping on Sunday, they are not worshiping on the Sabbath. So how is worship of Christ Jesus and the Father in Sunday services not a reoccurring willful transgression of the Commandments? And using as justification that the Ascension of Christ Jesus occurred on Sunday morning is not an acceptable excuse; for Moses gave to Israel the command to assemble and worship on the particular Sunday when Jesus ascended to the Father as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering (see Lev 23:9–11) …
Is ignorance an acceptable excuse? It isn’t when a person violates a traffic law. So would ignorance of what the Law requires cause the sinner to not be a sinner … the sinner will never get the chance to argue ignorance before he or she is cast into the lake of fire for tares [false grain] are gathered at harvest and burned before the wheat is gathered.
But the Christian who earnestly desires to serve God but who, through no fault of the Christian, remains a son of disobedience, consigned to disobedience, with transgression of the least of the Commandments, the Sabbath command, being about the worst thing the Christian does, and being prima facie evidence that the Christian remains a son of disobedience—this Christian will be judged by whether the works of the Law are written on his or her heart, with the works of the Law being the exercise of love for God, neighbor, and brother. … Because this Christian does not keep the Commandments, this Christian is now not numbered among the holy. This Christian has not been born of spirit. And lack of spiritual birth doesn’t excuse this Christian’s lawlessness. But it would be unfair to condemn this person to the lake of fire because of what God hasn’t done; i.e., draw this person from the world (John 6:44). Therefore, an addition to what Paul wrote, to what John wrote, to what Luke wrote in Acts is necessary, with this addition coming in the form of a category of Christians that corresponds to natural Israel in the 1st-Century. This category is unborn firstborn sons of God, a category that seems to be an oxymoron.
Christians, however, are not alone in desiring to serve God but through no fault of their own remaining sons of disobedience: all of Islam is in this category as well as much of the remainder of humankind … what separates a Christian in greater Christendom from a Muslim isn’t spiritual birth or the absence of spiritual birth at the present moment, but when spiritual birth will occur; for the Muslim or the Hindi or the Buddhist will not today profess that Jesus is Lord and believe that the Father raised Jesus from death whereas the Christian does. Therefore, spiritual birth will come first to the Christian, then to the non-Christian, with all of Christendom being filled with the spirit of God [pneuma theon] at the Second Passover, and with the remainder of humankind filled with spirit when the spirit of God is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) with the giving of the kingdom of this world to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18) 1260 days later.
All of humanity left alive when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man will be filled with spirit and will be numbered as firstfruits 1260 days before Christ Jesus returns as the Messiah, but all will have to rebel against the Adversary who will be cast to earth and come claiming to be the Messiah, with this rebellion also set to occur on a particular day 250 days into the Endurance of Christ. By then, all of humankind will have had the chance to present themselves to the Son as blameless and worthy living sacrifices. Therefore, from 295 days on into the Endurance [220 days + 1335 days], to not be glorified through the perishable fleshly body putting on immortality at the Second Advent the person will have had to have excluded him or herself from being numbered among the holy by taking sin back inside the person, thereby committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
As the vast majority of greater Christendom will rebel against God when the great falling away of 2 Thess 2:3 occurs (i.e., when the fifth seal is opened — Rev 6:9–11) on day 220 of the Affliction, the vast majority of the third part of humanity (from Zech 13:9) will rebel against the Antichrist 250 days into the Endurance, with their rebellion established as obedience to God 45 days (seven Sabbath days) later. It shall be then that John writes, “And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Blessed indeed,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!’” (Rev 14:13).
§2.
When Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most High God, the descendants of Levi that formed the Levitical priesthood were in Abraham’s loins as unborn sons (Heb chap 7). Melchizedek as Abraham’s superior blessed Abraham and by extension, blessed Levi, making the Levitical priesthood inferior to Melchizedek and an order of priests descended from Melchizedek who was without beginning or ending of days: the writer of Hebrews says, “One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him” (vv. 9–10).
If it can be said that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek through Abraham even through Levi was not even conceived, then it can be said that a Christian who professes that Jesus is Lord and believes that the Father raised Jesus from death is a son-of-God albeit an unborn son, for the Christian who continues to transgress the Commandments has not yet been born of God.
In another example, David said, “The LORD [YHWH] says to my Lord [Adoni]: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’” (Ps 110:1) … the Lord of David was the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of the living (Matt 22:32) who would not enter His creation as His only Son until a millennium in the future—the Lord of David was still in the loins of David when the Psalmist spoke, but the Lord of David counted the thing as having happened.
Plus, in God Almighty making a covenant with Abraham that required Abraham and his descendants to walk uprightly before the Lord and be blameless in all their ways (Gen 17:1–2)—this covenant ratified by the sign of circumcision performed on the 8th day of the Hebrew infant’s life—Abraham obligated his unborn sons to a course of action about which Abraham’s descendants had no say … Abraham’s descendants were to be circumcised according to the parents’ will, not the will of the one being circumcised. Therefore, it could be said that Abraham’s descendants were physically circumcised before they were conceived, let alone humanly born. And if it can be said that Abraham’s descendants according to the flesh were circumcised before they were born, then it can be said that the seed of Abraham through Christ Jesus, heirs according to the promise, are circumcised of heart before these heirs are born of God, making what is impossible for man to be a thing accomplished by the Lord.
This is NOT, however, to say that unborn sons of God are today circumcised of heart, but is to say that their circumcision will be counted to them before they are born as if that circumcision were a fait accompli.
When a thing that hasn’t happened is counted as having happened, then an unborn son-of-God can be counted as a son-of-God even though this Christian is not yet born of spirit. And if the human unborn son-of-God is to be numbered among the firstfruits, this Christian is an unborn firstborn, not exactly something that the Sabbatarian Churches of God will accept for acknowledging greater Christendom’s status as genuine unborn sons-of-God when these Christians remain sinners strains loving one’s brother, the shortcoming of the Sabbatarian Churches of God.
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It must be realized, there is an inherent contradiction in Scripture if,
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he 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. (Rom 8:28–30 emphasis added)
and, “‘For many are called, but few are chosen’” (Matt 22:14) are both true.
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In addition, there are two models for salvation if,
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:14–16)
and,
Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:8–12)
and,
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev 20:11–15)
all three are true.
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But there is no contradiction in Scripture: those disciples who are the Elect (e.g., Matt 24:22), who are the oil and the wine (Rev 6:6) as opposed to the wheat and that barley that are bought and sold as commodities—those disciples who have been born of spirit as sons of God when it is not the season for fruit are the ones who are foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified in this present era that is represented by the First Unleavened (see Matt 26:17 in Greek). Christ Jesus at Calvary paid their redemption price for He covers them with His garment of righteousness.
At the Second Passover liberation of Israel 2520 days before the Second Advent, all firstborns, biological and legal, in the Abyss and on earth who are not covered by the blood of the Passover Lamb of God will be slain as firstborns in Egypt of men and beasts were slain in the days of Moses … the lives of these uncovered firstborns—approximately a third of the world’s population—will pay the redemption price for the many who will be called through being filled with spirit at the Second Passover. And of these many who are called, only a few will be chosen, with the “few” being represented in typology by Joshua and Caleb in the wilderness, and by the seven pairs of clean animals and single pair of unclean animals in the Ark of Noah.
Of all of humanity alive immediately preceding the Second Passover liberation of Israel, one-third will be slain as uncovered firstborns, leaving two parts remaining alive. Of these two parts, one-fourth will be given over to Death during the 1260 days of the Affliction (Rev 6:8), leaving one of every two people (50%) alive who were alive prior to the Second Passover. And of this half of humankind, a third will be slain by four angels bound at the great river Euphrates (Rev 9:14–15), leaving one part (one-third) of pre-Second Passover humanity left alive when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18) on the doubled day 1260 of the seven endtime years. And this is in agreement with what the prophet Zachariah records:
Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me," declares the LORD of hosts. "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones. In the whole land, declares the LORD, two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive. And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, 'They are my people'; and they will say, 'The LORD is my God.'" (Zech 13:7–9)
At Jesus’ last Passover, He cites this passage from the prophet Zechariah: “‘You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered’” (Matt 26:31) … Jesus identified Himself as the Shepherd who would be struck; as the man who stood next to the Lord of hosts. Jesus identified his disciples as the sheep that would be scattered. And in doing so, Jesus would have the Lord of hosts cutting off two parts of the little ones and killing them—and this agrees with what Daniel records:
Then I desired to know the truth about the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet, and about the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn that came up and before which three of them fell, the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke great things, and that seemed greater than its companions. As I looked, this horn made war with the saints and prevailed over them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom. Thus he said: “As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all the kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after them; he shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time. But the court shall sit in judgment, and his dominion shall be taken away, to be consumed and destroyed to the end. And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them.” (Dan 7:19–27 emphasis and highlighting added)
The time, times, and half a time when the saints of the Most High shall be delivered into the hand of the little horn immediately precedes when the single kingdom of this world is taken from the four kings and the little horn and given to the Son of Man, Head [Christ Jesus] and Body [the saints] … the ambiguity of the referent for the pronoun <they> in verse 25, with “the saints” and/or “times and the law” being the intended referent suggests that both are the intended referent: the saints and times and the law. And who can deliver the saints into the hand of this demonic little other than the Lord of hosts? For no one can pluck a saint from God’s hand—
Jesus told Pharisees,
I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one. (John 10:25–30 emphasis added)
If no one can snatch the holy ones from Jesus’ hand, from the Father’s hand, then it is the Lord of hosts that will deliver the holy ones to the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh as Paul commanded the saints at Corinth to do with the disciple who was with his father’s wife:
For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Cor 5:3–5 emphasis added)
Today, Jesus is absent from His disciples in body, but present in spirit. And as if present in body, Jesus has pronounced judgment on Christians who continue to live as Gentiles, commanding that they be delivered to Satan—Daniel’s little horn (Satan possessing the man of perdition, an Arian Christian)—for the destruction of their flesh so that their spirit might be saved when judgments are revealed (see 1 Cor 4:5).
The Elect—the oil and the wine—are not delivered to Sin, the third horseman of the Apocalypse, for the Elect are already processed firstfruits of the Promised Land, God’s rest, in that they were foreknown, predestined, then called, justified, and glorified through receiving indwelling eternal life (John 10:28), with Jesus praying to the Father, “‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’” (John 17:1–3 emphasis added).
The Elect already have indwelling eternal life through having been born of spirit as a son of God through receiving a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou].
The barley and the wheat, the cereal grains of Promised Land as opposed to olives and grapes (Deut 11:14), are not born of God as sons prior to the Second Passover liberation of Israel. However, the olives and grapes are crushed and processed prior to the Second Passover … the wild olive scions that were grafted to the Root of Righteousness (Rom 11:17) will have borne their wild fruit, small and mostly pit, and this wild fruit will have been picked and crushed and baptized (as in submersed in water), with their meager yield of oil floated to the waters of this world—and Sin can never again harm these firstborn sons of God.
The great White Throne Judgment, when all of humanity that died without knowing Jesus and without the Law, appear before the Lord to have their judgments made as opposed to being revealed—this great White Throne Judgment was unknown by the First Disciples except for John, but it was realized by the Apostle Paul, whose gospel message extends salvation to human beings who have the works of the Law written on their hearts without knowing anything of the man Jesus the Nazarene. It will be in the great White Throne Judgment where unborn (of spirit) sons of God who have died physically prior to the Second Passover liberation of Israel will appear before the Lord, and will appear with Muslims and Buddhists and all others that constitute the great wheat harvest of God. And because those who appear in the great White Throne Judgment will be judged by what they did in relationship to what they knew to do, unborn Christians may well have a difficult time when the Books are opened.
§3.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring [seed]. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void” (Gal 3:16–17) … if Abraham’s promised seed was not Isaac, but was Christ Jesus, then Jesus was in Abraham’s loins long before Yah, as the God of the Living, entered His creation (John 1:3) as His only Son (John 3:16). And it is the God of the Living that deals with the living, not with the dead, the purview of the God of the Dead, the God that raised Jesus from death, returning life to His dead body when in the Garden Tomb.
When Jesus heard that Lazarus whom He loved was ill, Jesus delayed going to Lazarus, saying, “‘This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it’” (John 11:4) … Lazarus’ illness did lead to death, but Lazarus’ death functioned to reveal both God (i.e., the God of the dead) and the Son of God, Jesus, the God of the living, with Lazarus’ illness and death being for the purpose of showing the glory of God with which the Son of God would be glorified …
The glory of God was seen by the prophet Ezekiel:
And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him. Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking. (Ezek 1:26–28 emphasis added)
The glory of the Lord was the inner bright fire that represented indwelling eternal or heavenly life. The glory of humankind is now the inner dark fire of cellular oxidation of simple carbohydrates, with this dark fire originally given to the first Adam when Elohim [singular in usage — Elohim is the regular plural of Eloah, pronounced like Allah] breathed life into the man of mud’s nostrils. And for every human person born of Woman, the root or source for this dark fire glory comes from the person’s mother through Eve and from Adam, who received life from God; therefore, Paul wrote, “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man” (1 Cor 11:7).
Eve received her breath of life from the flesh of Adam—from the rib taken
from the cage surrounding Adam’s lungs, with ribs forming a metonymical
expression for life as in Daniel’s vision: “And behold, another beast, a second one,
like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its
teeth; and it was told, “Arise, devour much flesh” (Dan 7:5) … these three ribs
represent the three lives that this demon is not able to devour, the lives of Christ
Jesus and of the two witnesses; for upon the testimony of two or three a thing is
established, thus upon the resurrection of the two witnesses (Rev 11:11) the defeat
of Death, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse and the fourth beast of Daniel
chapter 7, is established, with this defeat seen when the fourth beast/king is dealt
a mortal wound (Dan 7:11; Rev 13:3), with the Cross representing the image and
likeness [the mark, or chi xi stigma, from Rev 13:18] of this fourth beast.
… The Antichrist—Satan cast from heaven and coming as a lamb with two horns
claiming to be the Messiah—will require all who would buy and sell during the
Endurance of Jesus, the last 1260 days before the Second Advent, to bear the
tattoo of the cross on their hand and to believe that the cross represents Jesus
and not the instrument on which Jesus was murdered. If Jesus had been killed
with an axe, would His disciples represent Him with graven images of axes? And
that is what the crucifix is, a graven image; for the mark of the beast can be read
by those with wisdom: X has long been the representation for Christ as in
Xmas or in Xians. And into the 4th-Century, the cross was inscribed in the form of
an “x” and in Latin characters, the Greek letter
But returning to Lazarus: when sufficient time passed for Lazarus to die, Jesus went to where Lazarus was. Mary came to Jesus and told Him that if He had come sooner, her brother wouldn’t have died. Jesus asked to see where they had lain Lazarus, and He told those at the tomb, a cave, to take away the stone blocking its entrance. Then,
Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." (John 11:41–44 emphasis added)
Lazarus’ death was to show to the living the glory, the life, the existence, of the God of the dead, the God who raises the dead (John 5:21) so that the Son can give life to whom He will (same verse) by causing the perishable flesh to put on immortality.
Pause and consider: could Jesus have raised Lazarus from death without having asked that of the Father? We don’t know and cannot know for certain because that is not what happened. Jesus did not overstep the bounds of His authority. What we know is that Jesus could have healed Lazarus of whatever was wrong while Lazarus still lived. We see this in Jesus restoring the high servant’s ear that Peter lopped off (cf. John 18:10; Luke 22:50–51; Matt 26:51). So permitting Lazarus to die was not necessary for Jesus’ glory to be seen. Rather permitting Lazarus to die was necessary for the Father’s glory, existence, to be seen and known by Jesus’ disciples who still did not understand what they should have.
Now, returning to what is self-evident but seems not to be understood by greater Christendom: breath is life, and life is in the living creature and is not the living creature. Breath is not personhood. However, a person’s swallow breath [resting breath] has traditionally been used to express the glory of a breathing creature, thus distinguishing the living from the dead:
· The physically living creature/person has life represented by the breath of the creature/person;
· The spiritually living son of God, human or angelic, has indwelling life represented by the breath of God.
· Every human person has life that has come to the person from the first Adam;
· Every human son of God has spiritual life that has come to the person from the last Adam, a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45);
· Prior to receipt of life coming from the first Adam through the person’s father, a person is not a person but is an ovum in the womb of the woman, with the ovum holding the potential for life—and so it is with sons of God prior to the inner self of a person being raised from death through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God.
A person consists of the visible, physical [tangible] outer self and an invisible, not-physical inner self about which science can say little; for this inner self cannot be observed, cannot be measured, cannot be isolated from the body. It is easier to deny the existence of this inner self than to speak with certainty about what it is and how it responds to stimuli … this inner self is in the domain of religion and belief without evidence rather than being a subject for scientific inquiry—
The following is from A Philadelphia Apologetic — 2012, Chapter Three, Section 1:
A point on a two-dimensional plane would (if it could) perceive a cylinder as a circle: none of the cylinder’s height (a third dimension) would be discernable. But because a point on a two-dimensional plane perceives a cylinder as a circle doesn’t make the cylinder any less tall, and if the point were to call a cylinder a circle, the point would merely illuminate the limitations that have been placed upon it. / Likewise, three-dimensional objects in a fourth dimension—space-time, a dimension necessary to allow for movement of entities possessing mass—will be unable to perceive evidence of life in another inclusive dimension; i.e., heaven. And that is what heaven is: a timeless supra-dimensional realm in which the four known forces exist as an unfurled primal force. It is the dimension that exists on the other side of a sudden creation, a dimension in which all living entities must function as one entity in a similar way to how cells in a human being function together to produce one person. Timelessness dictates that what-is must co-exist with what-was and what-will-be, and in this analogy, disobedience or lawlessness is like a cancerous tumor. Because of conflicting values, disobedience produces paradoxical gridlock in a timeless realm, and as such, must be eliminated whenever found. Thus, denying the existence of an inclusive dimension and a supreme deity reveals the limitations placed upon the thoughts of the person doing the denying. / Nietzschean antinomianism is both valid observation and a revealing of how little is culturally known about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; it can be likened to a point both describing a cylinder in two dimensions and denying the cylinder’s existence in an unperceived third dimension. / Although that point on a two dimensional plane when encountering a cylinder would not be able to perceive any of the cylinder’s height, if the cylinder cast its shadow onto the two dimensional plane, that point could determine the cylinder’s height by observing where the light was and where the light was absent (or where it was dark). However, the shadow would be meaningless unless the point knew to attach significance to the presence and absence of “light,” which would through the cylinder’s shadow reveal to the point the height of the “circle” (the point would not have a word for a “cylinder”).
If scientific inquiry precludes evil coming from a non-physical source such as the Adversary; precludes evil coming from a source that cannot be observed and measured, then scientists makes themselves like points on a two-dimensional plane trying to describe a cylinder … in the present American political season, one candidate is being chastised by the media for assigning certain actions to the devil. In the 21st-Century, to believe in the devil is, for the intelligentsia of the nation, to believe in superstitions and the tooth fairy. To believe in the devil makes the one who believes an outlier, a person who lives outside the boundaries of mainstream belief and thought. Yet not believing in the Adversary is a classical example of a two dimensional point calling a cylinder a circle.
Poverty does not produce evil, nor does poverty cause men to murder other men or men to rape women. Evil does. And evil doesn’t come from physical causes, for evil is not a physical thing: it is a mindset, a mental topography that belongs to the Adversary, and a mental landscape that is equally comfortable supporting both rich and poor. It is as a trampoline under the feet of a person: whomever bounces on this mindset bounces higher than the person walking on solid ground, and falls farther and faster than the person walking as Jesus walked.
But a mindset cannot be seen until it is manifested in deeds—and it is the deeds of a person that reveal whether the person walks in the light or in darkness. It is the deeds of the evildoer that get noticed, that courts address, that psychologists seek to correct. But without understanding that the deeds of the person sprout as weeds or wheat from the mental topography of the person, that to modified deeds the mental landscape of the person must be reshaped and resurfaced through a change of ownership, the window dressing of pop psychology or drug induced lethargy never gets to the core of the problem: the evildoer lives in the dark shadow of unbelief producing disobedience. The evildoer is the son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3) through being consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32). And evil is really nothing more than mingling the sacred with the profane as in eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The above concept is expressed in the continuation of the APA—2012 passage:
Now move to more dimensions: human beings are not points on a two dimensional plane, but rather, they are enlivened jars of clay in four dimensions. But human beings will have no more knowledge of what occurs in another dimension—heaven—than a point on a two dimensional plane has of height. Only through shadows can human beings “see” into the heavenly realm, but these shadows are not cast upon the earth’s geography … shadows made in the heavenly realm are cast upon the mental topography (mental landscape) of humankind, with this mental topography revealed though the actions or acts of fleshly human beings. Unrighteousness is, now, spiritual darkness stemming from something or someone in the heavenly realm blocking the “light” that is God. And it is the prince of this world that blocks that light. Therefore, the visible things that have been made—the left hand enantimers—reveal the invisible things of God as the physical precedes the spiritual. The first Adam, a clay corpse before the Lord breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, serves as the visible, physical shadow and copy of the last Adam, a living human being before the divine breath of the Father [pnema tou theon] descended upon Him as a dove, thereby imparting a second life, a spiritual life—as the right hand enantimer—within the same mortal tent of flesh as was born of water from the womb of Mary. The first Adam and the last Adam are enantiomorphs, with chirality being the central metaphor informing typological exegesis [of Scripture].
The visible, physical things that have been made precede and reveal the invisible, spiritual things of God (Rom 1:20; 1 Cor 15:46); hence the breath of life that Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into Adam’s nostrils forms the type and copy of the breath of God [pneuma theon] that the man Jesus the Nazarene received from the Father (Matt 3:16), thereby raising the inner self of the man Jesus the Nazarene from death. And once the breath of God descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove, the breath of God was in the man Jesus as the breath of the first Adam is in every human person.
Because the breath of God in the form of a dove lit and for John the Baptist, remained visibly with Jesus, the first disciples who received the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion or breath holy] when Jesus breathed on the ten (John 20:22) received the same breath of God [pneuma theon] that had descended in the form of the dove in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], with this pattern forming the reality of Eve receiving life from the breath of Elohim in the flesh of Adam when the rib was taken from Adam’s side [ribcage].
The preceding needs repeated for pedagogical reasons: the breath of life was only given to human beings one time, with this time being when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed life into the nostrils of the man of mud. The breath of God is only given to sons of God one time, with this one time being when the breath of God [pneuma tou theou] descended on the man Jesus in the form of the dove. As Eve received life from the wound in Adam’s side from which a rib was taken, the Christian Church received heavenly life from the wound in the side of Christ Jesus at Calvary, with this life being received when Jesus breathed on ten of His first disciples (John 20:22). When unborn Christians are born filled with spirit at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, they will receive the breath of God and indwelling eternal life in the breath of Christ. The same pertains when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man and Christ Jesus baptizes the world in spirit (Matt 3:11) through pouring out His spirit, as the spirit of the God of the living, on all flesh (Joel 2:28) … His spirit, His breath will be a holy spirit [pneuma hagion].
The breath of God [pneuma theou] was in [inside-of, or within] the life of Jesus throughout His earthly ministry, with the life of Jesus being sustained physically by the breath He breathed into and out of His lungs. The breath of God [pneuma theou] made alive the inner self [psuche, usually translated as soul] of Christ Jesus, who had life/glory with the Father in the beginning (John 17:5), and who asked to have this glory returned to Him … this glory, this initial glory will be a different glory than that Jesus received when the breath of God [pneuma tou theou] descended upon Him as a dove. The glory that He asked to have returned was the glory He had as the Logos who was God and who was with the God in the beginning (John 1:1). And when He received the glory He had before, the basis in Scripture was established for the breath of God [pneuma theou] to be in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], with these two breaths functioning as one breath of God, one life-giving spirit that raises the dead and sustains the living.
Every saint will be born of spirit, with <spirit> being the English linguistic icon used for the Greek icon [pneuma as in pneumatic tools or pneumonia], with the icon spirit entering English from the Latin icon spīritus, meaning “breath” or the “breath of a god” … in moving from Greek to Latin, spīritus is a good translation of pneuma. But in moving from Latin to English, spirit doesn’t convey the Greek meanings assigned to pneuma: the English icon breath does, though.
When the life of a breathing creature is in its blood, the medium that conveys oxygen molecules to individual cells within the creature, the life of the breathing creature is also in its breath. Thus, both blood and breath become metonymic naming icons for all that life entails within a nephesh: it is because breath is a metonymical naming icon for life that ribs can also represent life. And to have life within life is seen in Eve, the mother of all living persons—and is seen when Adam knew his wife and Eve bore a son, Cain.
The breath or life of Adam was in Eve as her breath, her life, but then Adam was additionally in Eve when the man knew his wife so Adam is doubly in the woman as her life and her reproductive head.
To understand the relationship between the Father and the Son and how it is that the Father is in the Son; to understand the relationship between the Son and the Church and how it is that the Son is in every born-of-God Christian (John 17:23), the Christian must understand the relationship that existed in the beginning between a man and a woman, the relationship that serves as the visible shadow and type of invisible [unseen] spiritual relationships—
The relationship that a man has with his wife in marriage, not outside of marriage, is based on lawful penetration … a false modesty hinders discussion of marriage, a modesty that has a man knowing his wife when the man enters his wife, but knowing doesn’t convey the sense of penetration that comes with entering, and without that sense of penetration, spiritual birth is more difficult to understand; for human birth is thought-of as an exiting, not an entering.
Marriage as a word [signifier or linguistic icon] has recently seen a shifting of linguistic objects, with marriage now being any form of a civil union sanctioned by a governing authority … before God, there can never be “marriage” between a man and a man, or between a woman and a woman; for marriage represents the godly and lawful relationship that sees the breath or life of the Father in the breath or life of the Son as the breath or life of the Son is in His disciple. Human biology precludes the consummation of any marital relationship other than by the reproductive head of a man in his wife, thereby signifying that the man is the head of his wife.
A man is not the head of another man, nor is a woman the head of another woman, nor is a man the head of any woman other than his wife—sexual intercourse between a man and a prostitute doesn’t make a marriage even though these two have been joined together as one flesh. … It is in a man laying with another man as a man lays with a woman that human governance is seen; for when Israel asked Samuel for a king, Samuel warned the people,
These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day. (1 Sam 8:11–18 emphasis and doubled emphasis added)
In rejecting the Lord as Israel’s king, the people of Israel formed an ungodly union with themselves to rule themselves through a king as a precursor to ruling themselves by popular vote three millennia later. This ungodly coupling was for the people’s harm, not for their good, with the seed of this ungodly coupling, a king, taking a tithe of all Israel had as well as the choicest of Israel’s sons and daughters. But Israel would love its king as a man loves another man until Israel hated its king as a man hates the man who has defiled him. However, the Lord refused to listen to the people of Israel, but dwelt only with the king for in the king was all of the life of Israel.
In rejecting God and choosing to be ruled by a king as other nations—all sons of disobedience—were ruled by kings, Israel reduced itself to being a man who was the property-of and subject to another man to do with as he pleased.
The people of Israel were reduced to being their capital city …
In marriage between a man and a woman, the woman becomes to the man as the fleshly body of a person is to the inner self [again, RLP¬] of the person. In marriage, the woman bears her husband’s child, doing for her husband what he cannot do for himself as a person’s hands do for the person’s inner self what the inner self cannot do for itself. In marriage, the head of the man is in the woman as the soul of a person temporarily dwells in the fleshly body, a relationship that is further expanded through realization that the life-sustaining breath that was in Eve and that has since come to every human person from Eve did not come directly from God but came directly from Adam in whose nostrils Elohim [singular in usage] had breathed the breath of life (Gen 2:7). Thus, Adam was always in Eve in the form of his breath for as long as Eve lived. Therefore, when Adam “knew” Eve (Gen 4:1), Adam was physically in Eve via his breath and temporarily in Eve through the man knowing his wife: Adam was both the life and the head of his wife, a doubled relationship that the Apostle Paul understood when he wrote to the holy ones at Corinth:
But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. (1 Cor 11:3–7)
If a wife will not cover her head, she should cut her hair short—hair is not the covering that Paul references as a simple substitution of “hair” for “covering” discloses. The Christian wife has doubled headship, with Christ Jesus being one Head (the Head of her inner self) and with her husband being her other head; i.e., the head of her outer self.
When the people of Israel rejected the Lord as their sovereign, the people of Israel placed themselves under a human sovereign, who in turn was under the prince of this world as his slave, a son of disobedience: the people of Israel were doubly enslaved by the Adversary. And the concept of doubled headship is seen in the dead [tous nekrous] burying the dead [heauton nekrous] of themselves (Matt 8:22) … if the dead can still die, then the dead have lifeless inner selves dwelling in temporarily living tents of flesh that will die and must be buried. Hence, every person is under doubled headship, with an unborn son-of-God as a son of disobedience choosing to place itself under the headship of the Lord but not being able to fully do so because of the lack of spiritual birth.
The preceding is key to understanding the Second Passover liberation of Israel: a person, any person since the barrier of circumcision has been abolished (Eph 2:14–16) can be a son of God and of the commonwealth of Israel. Any person can choose to live as a Judean, keeping the Commandments of God—but this isn’t true. Only the person whom the Father has drawn from this world (John 6:44) by giving to this person the earnest of His spirit can keep the Commandments. Paul writes,
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Rom 8:5–11 emphasis added)
The mind of the son of disobedience is set on the things of the flesh and does not and indeed cannot submit to God’s Law, or so wrote Paul. But those who are sons of God have the spirit of Christ in them and can truly keep the Commandments, which are not burdensome (1 John 5:3) for those who have been born of God.
However, because the barrier of circumcision was abolished by Christ Jesus at Calvary, any person can profess that Jesus is Lord and believe that the Father raised Jesus from death and can come near to God even though the person is not born of God. The person who approaches near to God by professing that Jesus is Lord will do the best he or she can to keep his or her mind on the things of God and not on fleshly things such as the politics of this world, or what the wealth of this world can buy the person. Yet, the person as an unborn firstborn son-of-God straddles life [the things of God] and death [the things of this world] as Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and hence sinned. The person cannot save him or herself and remains dependent upon the Father and the Son calling this person from the world—and the love of the person who has voluntarily come near to the Father and the Son without having been called will be returned to the person through the Son baptizing those who claim to be His in His breath/spirit prior to when the kingdom of this world is taken from the spiritual King of Babylon (see Isa 14:4) and given to the Son of Man, Yes, a ransom must be paid for these persons who have not been individually called through being foreknown by the Father, with this ransom being the death of uncovered firstborns (all of whom belong to the God of the living) on the Second Passover.
The dead belong to the God of the dead, the Father, but the living belong to the God of the living, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Matt 22:32). And it is the living that opens wombs, not the dead, with the first to open the womb belonging to the God of the living to do with as He desires while they live—this includes taking their lives.
The dead belong to the Father to do with as He pleases, with there being no judgment on the dead until they live or live again and come under the authority of the God of the living, Christ Jesus, to whom all judgment has been given (John 5:22). John records Jesus saying, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life’” (v. 24) … because there is no judgment upon the dead who have never received eternal life, the dead pass from death to life without condemnation. However, judgment is now upon the house of God (1 Pet 4:17) and shall not leave the house of God until all have been judged by the things they have done in the flesh, with the judgments of firstfruits revealed when Christ Jesus returns and with the judgments for the remainder of humanity made in the great White Throne Judgment.
§4.
Christ is the Head of every Christian man as well as the Head of the Christian woman’s inner self that is a living son of God—and the Christian’s hair becomes the symbol of Christ being the Head of the Christian’s inner self. Hair length now discloses difference between the son-of-God that dwells in a male tent of flesh and the son-of-God that dwells in a female tent of flesh, with the man’s short hair being symbolic of physical circumcision and with the woman’s long hair being symbolic of her lack of physical circumcision. Then to the married Christian woman’s head a separate covering is added that is symbolic of her relationship with her husband.
Because Paul understood this doubled headship that is over the woman, he continued in his epistle to the Corinthians:
For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. (1 Cor 11:8–15 emphasis added)
Yes, a woman’s hair is given to her for one covering for which she does no work to obtain though considerable work to maintain, but because the woman has doubled headship, for the sake of the angels she will wear a covering over her hair—a covering she has made with her hands—or she might as well go around with her hair shorn.
The concept of the Woman—the last Eve—having doubled headship over Her is imbedded in receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ; for the Christian Church occupies the position of the Woman, not the Man.
When Pharisees attempted to test Jesus [to trap Him] by asking if it was lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause (Matt 19:3), Jesus responded,
Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. (Matt 19:4–6)
The assumption Anabaptists make—an assumption that has marginalized them—is that every marriage made between a man and a woman is joined together by God when this is not the case … to repeat, in the beginning was the Logo who was God and who was with the God (John 1:1), with these two joined together in the Tetragrammaton YHWH as Adam was joined to Eve in marriage. But as the Pharisees noted, Moses gave Israel divorce: “They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away”” (Matt 19:7).
Moses gave Israel divorce because of hardness (Matt 19:8) that prevented the Logos from penetrating the hearts of Israel as a man would penetrate his bride … the hardness of Israel’s hearts was so great that the Creator-of-everything-that-has-been-made could not penetrate them so that He could become their Head—
And how hard were the hearts of Israel, really, beyond rejecting the Lord as their sovereign?
The word of the LORD came to me [Ezekiel]: Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother. They played the whore in Egypt; they played the whore in their youth; there their breasts were pressed and their virgin bosoms handled. Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem. / Oholah played the whore while she was mine, and she lusted after her lovers the Assyrians, warriors clothed in purple, governors and commanders, all of them desirable young men, horsemen riding on horses. She bestowed her whoring upon them, the choicest men of Assyria all of them, and she defiled herself with all the idols of everyone after whom she lusted. She did not give up her whoring that she had begun in Egypt; for in her youth men had lain with her and handled her virgin bosom and poured out their whoring lust upon her. Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, into the hands of the Assyrians, after whom she lusted. These uncovered her nakedness; they seized her sons and her daughters; and as for her, they killed her with the sword; and she became a byword among women, when judgment had been executed on her.
Her sister Oholibah saw this, and she became more corrupt than her sister in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister. (Ezek 23:1–11 emphasis added)
As filled with idolatry as Samaria was, Jerusalem was worse; for Jerusalem had ceased to circumcise its children—
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh—Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart (Jer 9:25–26 emphasis added)
—and was, instead, burning its firstborns in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom [Gehenna] (Jer 7:30–34).
Because of the hardness of the hearts of Oholah and Oholibah, the Lord told Ezekiel,
The LORD said to me: Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Declare to them their abominations. For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. With their idols they have committed adultery, and they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me. Moreover, this they have done to me: they have defiled my sanctuary on the same day and profaned my Sabbaths. For when they had slaughtered their children in sacrifice to their idols, on the same day they came into my sanctuary to profane it. And behold, this is what they did in my house. They even sent for men to come from afar, to whom a messenger was sent; and behold, they came. For them you bathed yourself, painted your eyes, and adorned yourself with ornaments. You sat on a stately couch, with a table spread before it on which you had placed my incense and my oil. The sound of a carefree multitude was with her; and with men of the common sort, drunkards were brought from the wilderness; and they put bracelets on the hands of the women, and beautiful crowns on their heads. Then I said of her who was worn out by adultery, Now they will continue to use her for a whore, even her! For they have gone in to her, as men go in to a prostitute. Thus they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, lewd women! But righteous men shall pass judgment on them with the sentence of adulteresses, and with the sentence of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is on their hands. (Ezek 23:36–45 emphasis added)
The Logos, who in the beginning was one with the God [ton theon] as Eve was one with Adam, had cause to divorce Israel, both Samaria and Jerusalem—cause that went back to Israel rejecting the Lord as its sovereign.
In double headship over Israel, the Logos had (1) given life to Adam. Then (2) the Logos separated Himself from the God [ton theon] to enter His [the Logos’] creation (John 1:3) as His only Son (John 3:16), the man Jesus the Nazarene (John 1:14), coming to His own people who would not have Him … the hardness of Israel was so great that the Creator of everything that has been made could not penetrate their hearts so that He could become their Head even when He walked among the people of Israel, with this hardness seen in the hardness of the hearts of Israelite wives, a hardness that remains to this day.
A man can conceal what is in his heart from even himself, but he cannot conceal what is in his heart from his wife with whom he is involuntarily one; for his wife will unconsciously reveal by her deeds and by her attire what is in her husband’s heart. The woman is the glory of her husband, with <glory> representing life. Hence, again, Paul wrote, “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man” (1 Cor 11:7). … A man’s life is seen in his wife.
In the Garden of Eden, the Man and the Women were garmented by the Man’s obedience, by his belief of the Lord, not by textiles or by fur (as Esau was covered by fur), with <obedience> not being a thing as a fabric garment is a thing, suggesting that this temptation account is to be read symbolically which isn’t to say that it didn’t actually occur but is to say that its literalness isn’t of foremost importance and is really a non-issue in discussions of the account. Therefore, since the Woman was covered by her Husband’s obedience, with her obedience being to her head (i.e., to her Husband), the Woman as a shadow and type of the Church was under natural grace: the Woman would not die if she ate forbidden fruit. All that would happen if the Woman ate was for her Husband to divorce her because of the hardness of her heart in refusing to obey him. But that isn’t what happened: because the Man was one with the Woman, the Man stayed with the Woman, thereby choosing the Woman over the Lord.
By the Woman believing the serpent instead of her Husband, the Woman revealed the unbelief that was in her Husband’s heart; for the Man was not deceived whereas the Woman was. The Man simply didn’t believe the Lord, with this unbelief reappearing in the nation of Israel numbered in the census of the second year (Num chap 1).
When Adam ate forbidden fruit—not when Eve ate—the garment of obedience/belief/faith was stripped away, and Adam and Eve both then knew they were naked (Gen 3:7). … Note, the serpent didn’t speak to Adam; for Adam was between opinions about whether he should believe the Lord. If the serpent would have spoken to Adam, the Man would have had to make a decision and the only “safe” decision he could have made was to believe the Lord. Adam’s unbelief still needed to be nurtured, which is what happened when he saw Eve eat and not die.
It is usually believed by scholars that the temptation account comes from 9th-Century Samaria [the northern kingdom of Israel] and not from southern sources; i.e., Judah and the remnant of Judah that returned from Babylon. This does not preclude the inscribed transmission of the temptation account reaching back to the days of Moses; for Judah and the temple at Jerusalem lost the Book of the Covenant for long enough knowledge of the Passover had been lost for generations:
And [Josiah] the king commanded all the people, "Keep the Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant." For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem. (2 Kings 23:21–23)
If something as important was the Passover wasn’t kept according to the instructions of Moses, pray tell what was being taught at the temple? Certainly not for Judah to circumcise its children: the two most important physical rituals coming from the Torah, circumcision and the Passover, were forgotten for generations by the Levites responsible for temple worship. Therefore, it is imaginable that the temptation account was only read and preserved by scribes in Samaria where outward circumcision continued amidst the idolatry of Jeroboam. And it is also imaginable that the temptation account was retained because its symbolism was comprehended; for the northern kingdom of Israel paid closer attention to details than did the House of Judah as evidenced by when their respective calendars changed years.
The symbolism of the temptation account has never been difficult to grasp: the Man covered the Woman with his obedience, his righteousness as a type of the Lord covering Israel with His righteousness as seen in the Lord making for Adam and Eve skin garments.
§5.
The world and all that is in it presently belongs to the Adversary, having been fully given to the Adversary for the forty days and forty nights when rain fell upon the earth and the foundations of deep opened and the world was baptized into death:
The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. (Gen 7:20–24 emphasis added)
Noah was a preacher of righteousness; his sons were sons of righteousness. And in Noah’s loins were unborn sons of righteousness, of whom Jonah was a type …
The concept of dual or double headship underlies both the Noah narrative and the Jonah narrative, with the wood Ark being scaled up an hierarchal magnitude to become the fleshly body of the whale, and with the seven pair of clean animals and single pair of every unclean animal actually representing human beings whereas Noah and the seven with him form the shadow and type of the glorified Jesus and the seven angels that are His eyes (Rev 5:6), the angels to the seven named churches, with the Churches appearing as His seven horns—in John’s vision, things appear as how they function. Jesus functions as the Lamb of God, a slain Lamb. The angels to the seven Churches function as His eyes, and the Churches function as His horns. In the same way, the Antichrist—Satan himself when cast from heaven and into time (Rev 12:7–10)—has two horns that causes the Adversary to appear as a lamb (Rev 13:11), with these two horns also representing churches, Arian and Trinitarian Christendom.
Because Christ and His angels and those who are His symbolically pass from one world [this present age] into the following world [the Millennium] in a vessel constructed from righteousness, with John writing, “Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God” (1 John 3:10), righteousness in the antediluvian was a rare as lumber and as difficult to obtain … righteousness would, in the antediluvian world, require an equivalent amount of work as felling trees, squaring them with axes or adzes, then sawing or splitting them into planking [Tlingits split planks from living cedars, and when I was a youth on the Oregon coast, there were still homesteads that had large barns constructed entirely from split cedar timbers, planking, and shakes], with the lumber then being used to construct the largest vessel seen until the 19th-Century. Righteousness in the days of Noah, when the world probably had higher atmospheric pressure than it presently does and saw far greater vegetative growth, enough growth to support the large herbivores we call dinosaurs—righteousness in an age when the world was filled with violence and the sons of Seth saw that the daughters of Cain were attractive and took by force as wives any they choose, setting the world to war as Helen’s bewitchment and abduction on this side of the Flood launched a thousand ships—righteousness has never been common or easily obtained: it doesn’t exist as a fruit that can be picked, but as lumber or as oil or wine, the products of civilization.
And coming off the Ark, Noah became a man of the soil, planted a vineyard, picked grapes and made wine (Gen 9:20–21), symbolizing the return of civilization to the face of the earth, with its inherent problems … Canaan was in the loins of Ham as his seed, and it was Ham’s seed Canaan whom Noah cursed when “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his [drunk] father and told his two brothers outside” (v. 22).
It is in the concept of dual headship that the explanation lies for Noah cursing Canaan when he “awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him” (Gen 9:22) … what had his youngest son done to him beyond literally seeing the nakedness of his father? What could Ham have done to have caused Noah to curse his seed?
Moses gave to Israel commands concerning nakedness: “You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness” (Lev 18:7–8).
To uncover the nakedness of Noah would have been to lie with Noah’s wife, Ham’s mother … now, consider what Paul wrote to the saints at Corinth:
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Cor 5:1–5 emphasis added)
Canaan was to be “‘a servant of servants’” (Gen 9:25) to his brothers who were themselves to be servants, either of righteousness or of the Adversary. Canaan was to have double headship over him, serving his uncles who were not themselves free men—and while Noah’s curse of Canaan has been used to support enslavement of Africans, was the man who was with his father’s wife at Corinth the slave of any other man, the man whom Paul cursed in ordering him delivered to Satan? He was and he wasn’t. He was a son of disobedience who had tasted righteousness but had found the taste not to his liking so he had remained a son of disobedience and was forcibly expelled from righteousness.
A servant of servants is to be a slave of slaves, or doubly enslaved as was the man whom Paul commanded to be delivered to Satan from the destruction of the flesh … to be doubly enslaved, the person must taste righteousness as Ham tasted the righteousness of his father Noah in crossing from one world into another on the Ark. And the “cure” for double enslavement is to be twice born of God, with circumcision of the flesh [represented in the Christian male by his short hair] and of the heart forming the shadow and type of double birth.
But when cursed as Noah cursed the seed of Ham, the one who is cursed will perish as the people of the land of Canaan perished when the Lord brought the people of Israel against them … when Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, The Lord cursed the ground from which Adam was taken (Gen 3:17), and made Adam the head of the land that was to serve him by bringing forth thorns and thistles, thereby placing double headship over the land [that of the Lord and that of Adam].
The personhood that Adam had in the Garden of Eden—the personhood that permitted obedience to be his covering—was stripped from Adam in the Lord telling Adam, By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return (Gen 3:19) … the Lord de-personified the man and made the land his servant: Adam and the land were of the same dust, with the land serving Adam in bringing forth thorns and thistles as Adam would serve the Lord, bringing forth violence and injury until it grieved the Lord that He had made man (Gen 6:5–7).
When the Lord baptized the land in water and into death as the reality of what water baptism represents [the death of the old man, a person’s old nature], the Garden of Eden ceased to exist except in the righteousness of the man Noah, this righteousness descending from Enoch walking with God, pleasing God:
When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, "Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands." (Gen 5:21–29)
Noah was to end the curse with which the Lord had pronounced upon the land when Adam was driven from the Garden: righteousness would bring to an end the thorns and thistles, that which caused hands to be pained by their toil. The double headship that was over the land in the antediluvian world would, post Flood, be raised a hierarchal order so that Noah’s grandson would serve the sons of righteousness that covered their father’s nakedness: Canaan was to serve the Lord, and serve Shem and Japheth (Gen 9:26–27), two heads, God and men, with one man to dwell in the tent of the other:
When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said,
Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.
He also said,
Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem;
and let Canaan be his servant.
May God enlarge Japheth,
and let him dwell in the tents of Shem,
and let Canaan be his servant. (Gen 9:24–27)
Canaan becomes the personification of the land of Canaan, the Promised Land of Israel, that is to serve the Lord and to serve its human occupants. The person who uses Noah’s curse of Canaan to support human slavery shall take upon the person all of the thorns and thistles with which the land was cursed when Adam was driven from the Garden of God.
Holy Writ is about mindsets and the mental topography of human thought with these mindsets being typified or even personified in the lands and the peoples of the Fertile Crescent. The peoples of China or Chile or Canada share mindsets represented by the named peoples of the Fertile Crescent; hence a prophecy about the people of Babylon or about the people of Moab is about all peoples who have the mindset of Babylon or the mindset of Moab. And within these parameters, Egypt represents Sin, the third horseman of the Apocalypse; Assyria represents Death, the fourth horseman; and Babylon represents the present prince of this world and its mercantile system of buying and selling. There is only one land that represents the mindset of Life, the land of Canaan, which like Jacob when he returned from tending the flocks of Laban, his father-in-law, has to wrestle with God and prevail.
The other sons of Ham are not typologically important; for it is in the curse that Noah pronounced on Canaan that the journey from Sin to Life, or from Death to Life, or from the mercantile system of this world to Life can be found.
Every Christian is under dual headship as Canaan was under dual headship: that of the Lord of Shem and that of Canaan’s uncles, Shem and Japheth and their seed … an unborn [of God] Christian remains the slave of the Adversary and will align him or herself with one of the two Christian ideologies that the Adversary perpetrates now and that the Adversary will bring with him when he is cast from heaven: Arian or Trinitarian Christendom. As such, this unborn Christian is under dual headship, that of Lord and that of the Adversary.
But a Christian cannot serve two masters without loving one and hating the other: the unborn Christian will either love the Lord enough to keep the Commandments by faith, or will hate the Lord and spurn doing those things that are pleasing to the Lord. It cannot be otherwise.
The unborn son of God tastes righteousness in professing that Jesus is Lord in a manner analogous to Ham tasting righteousness while working with his father Noah in constructing the Ark, a major undertaking. But having tasted righteousness, with the taste of professing that Jesus is Lord as pleasant in the mouth as will be the little scroll (Rev 10:10), the unborn Christian cannot figuratively uncover the nakedness of God the Father—and this is what the unborn Christian does when he or she professes that Jesus is Lord but refuses to walk in this world as Jesus walked; for the Logos was the Helpmate of the God, and the Logos entered His creation (John 1:3) as His only Son (John 3:16), the man Jesus the Nazarene (John 1:14) to reveal the existence of the Father to the firstborn sons of God.
When Pharisees asked Jesus about marriage,
They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?" He [Jesus] said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for porneia, and marries another, commits adultery." (Matt 19:7–9)
Porneia pertains to a marriage that should never have occurred such as a brother marrying his sister, or an Israelite marrying a non-Israelite, a Sabbatarian Christian marrying a non-Sabbatarian Christian.
Moses gave divorce to Israel because of the hardness of the hearts [the inner selves] of Israelites, hearts that refused to serve the Lord as faithful servants of righteousness.
Paul wrote,
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two will become one flesh." But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. (1 Cor 6:15–17)
&
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Rom 6:12–16 emphasis added)
In the Samaria and Jerusalem transforming themselves into prostitutes, they returned the land of Canaan to the thorns and thistles—to the unrighteousness—with which the Lord cursed the land when He drove Adam from the Garden.
Marriage is never between a man and a man: only by shifting linguistic object [signified] for the icon <marriage>, transforming the vagina into a rectum, can a man enter a man as a man enters a woman. … A man laying with a man is an abomination equally as great as uncovering the nakedness of one’s father. And when the Flood of Noah’s day is represented by the baptism of an unborn Christian, the unborn son of God who has tasted the righteousness of God needs to separate him or herself from this world that culturally condones the sacrifice of firstborn sons of God through their failure to call an abomination an abomination.
For those whose minds remain focused on the things of the flesh, including the politics and the wealth of this world, Noah in the Ark is analogous to Jonah inside the great fish [whale] and analogous to Jesus inside the Garden Tomb. In each of these three examples—Noah, Jonah, and Jesus—the wood Ark, the fleshly body of the whale, and the Garden Tomb served as a vessel that carried its occupant[s] from one world to the next world. And in the first two examples, the occupant[s] were not born of God and thus had no indwelling eternal life; whereas Jesus was born of God (see Matt 3:16) and had still-living-life inside of life-that-had-died … the ambiguity concerning whether Jonah did or didn’t die while in the sea and inside the whale is intentional and pertains to what Jesus did when in the Garden Tomb.
Peter says of Jesus,
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. (1 Pet 3:18–22 emphasis added)
Let there be understanding: time, space-time, and the passage of time can be mathematically written as functions of gravity and by extension, of mass. Thus, time was created when the creation came into existence: before the creation, there was no time. As such, heaven is a timeless supra-dimension. It is the same moment in heaven today as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow. The moment is unchanging. Therefore, from the perspective of heaven, the Flood of Noah day occurs in the same moment as Calvary and as the Resurrection of Firstfruits even though approximately four millennia will pass between Noah and the Second Advent.
The living inner self of Jesus or of a disciple was/is not bound by the constraints of time, but by righteousness, a mental landscape over which there is dual headship, that of the Father and the Son, the God of the dead and the God of the living respectively. Whether born of God or soon-to-be born of God, the Christian must strive to keep the Commandments, wrestling with the Lord as Jacob wrestled with the Lord, never quitting, but prevailing by enduring until dawn, the coming of the new day.
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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."