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Water & Fire 2006: Initially partially e-published as
the Sukkot 2006 Seminar Series for the Living
Metaphors “J” is to
“P” as Stone is to Spirit _______________ Chapter One The
modern hornsmith Lee Larkin, whose powder horns are seen in the movies The Patriot and The denominations and sects employing both
professors and pastors who have been educated
unto unbelief represent so-called mainstream Christianity, but the problem
of unbelief isn’t confined to the Church. The British educator and poet
Matthew Arnold wrote in “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse”
(1855), For
rigorous teachers seized my youth, And
purged its faith, and trimm’d its fire, Show’d me the high, white star of Truth, There
bade me gaze and there aspire. Even
now their whispers pierce the gloom: What dost thou in this living tomb? [stanza break] Forgive
me, masters of the mind! At
whose behest I long ago So
much unlearnt, so much resign’d— (lines
67-75) What
Theory, theories, and observations confirming
theories end where it becomes impossible to measure a position to a precision
of less than the Planck length, or to measure duration to a precision greater
than the time required for a photon traveling at the speed of light to travel a
Planck length. Therefore, by the self-imposed limit of observation empirical sciences reject revelation and become distant
cousins to Buddhism, which avoids conjecture about the origins of the universe
or the origins of life, focusing instead on more physical application of how to
become a better person, thereby saving the person from suffering by obtaining
Nirvana. But the problem of unbelief is really not a
problem for most of those who do not believe. They strive to better understand
what can be observed. Their thoughts remain focused on what can be known, not
on what cannot. Therefore, they never make a journey to any abbey at Grande
Chartreuse, where they might see the futility of this world—they have not
been born of Spirit so their thoughts are only those of this world. Any
enlightenment they may have is from this world, where all things are physical.
Only rarely will they, on a personal level, ever encounter a disciple who has
truly been born of Spirit, and then, they will most likely conclude that the
disciple simply suffers from a lack of enlightenment. Hence, they can and
usually will (and perhaps should) dismiss disciples as uneducated hicks, the
hayseeds of a failed educational system, the refuge from an overtly superstitious
age. Millenniums before the empirical sciences
discovered the Planck length, the curiosity of human beings sought answers to
how they came to be; rightly or wrongly, the minds of men sought creation
accounts. Thus, myth-makers obliged, with some accounts closely agreeing with
natural observation. For instance, in Hindu philosophy, the sequence of Avatars
generally corresponds with Darwinian evolution, with the first Avatar coming
from water; so Hindus do not seem to find a conflict between creation, the
Wheel of Time, and tiered evolution, nor do they find a paradox in God
simultaneously being within and without the universe. The Buddha did not fret over the question of
creation, but the dominant myth has matter coming from preexisting matter, with
this world coming from the debris of preexisting worlds destroyed by fire or
for other reasons. This belief in life from preexisting life lies at the heart
of most aboriginal peoples’ creation stories, leaving only a few peoples
to subscribed to an ex nihilo [out of
nothing] creation. In numerous places the Qur’am
Islam identifies Allah, for Muslims the one and only deity [the Theos of Abraham — Matt 22:32], as
the first cause of creation. Allah is the singular equivalent to Eloah. As such Allah is the same Theos of whom the Apostle John wrote,
“All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made
that was made” (John 1:3). Since Arian Christians contend that the first
two verses of John’s Gospel are mistranslated or misunderstood, most Arian
Christians and Muslims are only a handshake away from each other in their
understanding of creation. But today’s largest and most visible Arian
Christian denomination (The Latter Day Saints) does not theologically support
an ex nihilo creation, believing
instead that physical matter and energy are without an absolute origin, that
the Creator formed the present universe from existing matter, that all spirit is matter of an extremely fine or
pure composition that can only be discerned by purer eyes than present human beings have. The majority of
Trinitarian, Unitarian, and Binitarian Christian denominations, however, hold
to an ex nihilo creation, using the
Genesis chapter one creation account (the so-called “P” account) as
the controlling creation story. Jewish mysticism (Kabbala
theosophy), a late development in monotheism, introduces the concept of Tzimtzum (צמצום), which has YHWH Elohim contracting the
godhead’s infinite essence to create conceptual space in which a physical
world could come into existence, with the function of Tzimtzum being to conceal from created beings the activating force
within them, thereby producing room for freewill. The importance of the concept
of Tzimtzum is not the Kabbalistic understanding of deity, but in the
concept’s more supportable premise that the physical universe conceals
the spiritual nature of the creation. Reversing this concealment becomes the
duty of those who would be kings—and it is the development of this
concept of concealment and revelation that much of this paper addresses, for
the essence of typological exegesis
is that the visible physical creation forms the lively but lifeless shadow of
an invisible spiritual creation that is actually concealed by its shadow. The
visible creation serves as an enlivened metaphor of a dimension which human
beings cannot enter to make observations or measurements. Thus, the physical
creation reveals to those individuals who have been born of Spirit what has
been concealed by the same physical creation from the remainder of humankind.
But this revealing doesn’t come at the beginning of the lacunae into which the “Church
age” fits, but comes at the end of this age when the Elijah to come (Mal
4:5) restores all things, thereby turning the hearts of sons of God to the
Father and the heart of the Father to His sons lest He smites the earth with
utter destruction. Typological exegesis is the reading strategy that
best explains—and the only strategy to reveal—what has been
concealed by the physical creation, even to the nature of the godhead [Christology]. As such, what has been
concealed appears openly, in plain sight, observable to everyone, available for
intimate examination. What has been concealed is as observable as was the man
Jesus of Nazareth, the Theos of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the living Theos
of the living Isaac (Gal 4:21-31); the Kurios of living sons of God
confined in tents of flesh. While Judaism understands that the concept of Tzimtzum contains an inherent paradox
that requires the Most High to be simultaneously transcendent and immanent,
Binitarian Christians understand the paradox differently, and usually
understand the paradox to be better described by the Greek concept of
hypostasis, where all that can be known by observation is that which is beneath
the unobservable spiritual reality. Hence, the Apostle Paul used words and
expressions that translate into 21st-Century English as type, examples, shadow, copy and shadow, while referring to 1st-Century disciples to whom
he had written an epistle as “our letter of recommendation, written on
our [your] hearts, to be known and read by all…a letter from Christ
delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God,
not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor 3:2-3).
For the Apostle Paul, the actions and lives of disciples form epistles in the
unobservable Book of Life in a similar manner to how the actions and lives of
the kings of Israel form the text for the Writings, which along with the Law
and the Prophets forms Scripture, all of which has been breathed out by God
according to the Apostle Paul (2 Tim 3:16). The Psalmist wrote of the Lord, “When you
send forth your Spirit [exhaled Breath], they [breathing creatures] are
created, / and you renew the face of the ground” (Ps 104:30). The Spirit
or Breath of God is a renewing force—in His earthly ministry, Jesus spoke
only the words of the Father. And in speaking the Father’s words, which
sound waves alone cannot convey, Jesus performed miracles: the Father’s
words or speech-acts renewed the lives of human beings. Thus, Jesus said,
“‘If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me;
but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the
works’” (John 10:37-38). To “believe the works” is to
believe the Father, for the works are the speech-acts of the Father, the
modulations of the renewing divine Breath of God [Πνευμα
Άγιον], as audible speech
comes from the modulation of human breath to produce sound waves. The integrity of the Bible rests on that claim of
being divinely inspired. Higher criticism attacks the claim of divine
inspiration, with the frontlines of this attack occurring with the first lines
of the text. Yes, the attack made by higher criticism begins with questioning
whether Moses could have written Genesis, or whether Genesis was written by any
single author. By analyzing different sections of Genesis, Biblical scholars,
in the 19th-Century, began to think that at least three textual traditions
appear in this one book, with the passages from Genesis 2:4 through 3:3
believed to be the oldest, dating from the northern kingdom of Samaria in the
8th-Century BCE. Thus, today, biblical scholars working from a second century
of higher criticism refer to these passages as the “E” Text, or Elohist Text, because this linguistic tradition
uses Elohim as the name for the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (In this paper, they will be identified as the
“J” creation account.) A professor or pastor doesn’t need to
wrestle with the inherent paradox contained within the concept of God creating
space where free will can exist apart from His will if this professor or
pastor, using linguistic studies, the anthropomorphism of deity, and the
folkloric qualities of the text, can produce in first him or herself, then in
his or her students the disbelief necessary to assign human authorship to
Scripture. If the biblical text has been humanly authored sometime after Israel
had contact with other peoples possessing similar creation myths, then
professional disbelief triumphs: this professor or pastor will find no conflict
between empirical sciences and Scripture, for science has explained how and why
Scripture came into existence, leaving only one question to still be answered:
why do so many parishioners continue to believe? Why is there increasing
political pressure to accord Creation studies the same intellectual standing as
Darwinian evolution has been accorded? Why spend precious classroom time in
conjecture about positions smaller than a Planck length? What good can possibly
come from elevating ancient myth to the status of scientific discovery? Actually, the problem the concept of Tzimtzum sought to explain had already
been explained, with its explanation rejected because of Israel’s
transformation of monotheism into an idol very much like Molech or Marduk. On the 12th of Abib, two days after He
entered Jerusalem as Passover Lamb and High Priest of a new generation of
Israel and two days before He would be killed, Jesus answered first the Herodians concerning paying taxes (Matt 22:15-22) by
clearly separating the reign of Caesar from the reign of God—the Christ
does not, nor will not reign from Caesar’s throne (John 18:36-37). Thus,
human governance, represented by the coin bearing Caesar’s image,
conceals spiritual governance by an invisible God, with both forms of
governance simultaneously present. Until the time of Charlemagne, who was crowned
Emperor in the West, the orthodoxy of the Jesus, after silencing the Herodians,
was challenged by Sadducees, who transformed a woman into an object, and asked
whose wife the woman married to seven brothers would be in the resurrection
(Matt 22:23-28). In keeping with the duality of a visible human kingdom and an
invisible spiritual kingdom, Jesus told the Sadducees that the Theos of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was the God [Theos]
of the living, not of the dead. The Apostle Paul identifies the Church as the
living Isaac. The living Jacob will be born to the living Isaac at the
beginning of the seven endtime years of tribulation. And the Father [Theon] is the living God of the living
Abraham (with Jesus becoming the living Abraham, chosen for His faithfulness),
the living Isaac, and the living Jacob. If, when addressing the Sadducees, Jesus would
have used the Tetragrammaton YHWH to
represent the God of Abraham, Jesus would have uttered Adonai [how Jesus would have voiced or prayed YHWH], and Matthew would have transcribed Adonai as Kurion
or Kurios,
not as Theos. Therefore, a disciple
can say with certainty that Jesus addressed the Sadducees in Greek, not in
Hebrew. And if Jesus would have translated the YHWH into Greek in the same way the Septuagint had, He would have
said that Theon [neuter singular in
nominative class], not Theos
[masculine singular], was the God of Abraham. Thus, for Jesus to say that Theos was the God of Abraham, the God of
the living, Jesus uses linguistic case endings to introduce the resurrection of
“God” to the Sadducees, which implied that God can die, which Theos did do when He left the heavenly
realm to come to earth as His Son, his only (John 3:16). And since the
Sadducees denied the resurrection, it is no wonder that they marveled. So,
concealed by English translations is the implication that the Theos of Abraham was also not among the
living, for the Sadducees would have been praying, when prayers were made in
Greek, to the Theos (Θeoς) of Abraham, whom they would have
identified as Theon (Θεον), then unknown to them. Trinitarians regard Theos as a metaphor for Theon
as the Universal Church, prior to Leo III’s
hubris, regarded the Roman Emperor as a metaphor for God; and therein exists
the unbridgeable schism that separates Binitarians
from Trinitarians, for Jesus came to reveal a second deity, a previously
unknown deity to His disciples (John 17:25-26). Trinitarians accuse Binitarians of being polytheistic, and that accusation has
merit if Trinitarians ignore John 20:17, and the
implications of what Jesus told the Sadducees. If the Theos
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of the
living, and not of the dead, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must live if Theos is still among the living.
Obviously, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not, when Jesus spoke, then among the
physically living; so Jesus’ declaration could be read as Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob were with Theos in heaven,
meaning that their resurrection precedes the endtime resurrection of saints,
how those theologians that accept the Lazarus-Dives story as nonfiction
perceive the afterlife. [This would make Paul wrong in what he wrote about the
resurrection, and if Paul errs about the resurrection, then nothing he writes
can be trusted, the position of the Circumcision Faction.] Or Jesus’
declaration could be read to mean that Theos
was also not among the living. Thus, from the simple astonishment of the
Sadducees comes the theoretical grotesque that allowed early theologians to
insert the old serpent’s lie that human
beings will not die but have immortal souls into the 1st-Century
Jesus movement. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were historical figures
that have acquired mythic stature, a remarkable feat concerning that they lived
outside the governing structure of this world. Abraham held control of no more
land than that he purchased to bury Sarah—he lived the last decades of
his life under the oaks of Mamre, the Amorite, as a
squatter looking forward to the coming of the city whose designer and builder
is God (Heb 11:10). When a scribe told Jesus that he, the scribe,
would follow Jesus wherever He went, Jesus said, “‘Foxes have
holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay
his head’” (Matt 8:20; Luke 9:58). The Son of Man had/has no more
physical connections to this world than Abraham had, who purchased a field with
a cave to bury the lifeless body his wife, who with him had become one flesh.
Thus, it can be postulated that the lifeless possess this world and the things
of this world. This postulation does not negate that after the rich, young
ruler could not sell all he had and give the proceeds to the poor (Luke
18:22-23), Jesus told His disciples, “‘Truly, I say to you, there
is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for
the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this
time, and in the age to come eternal life’” (vv. 29-30) … those who count the things of this world as
nothing [the implication behind selling all that one has] did not then have
eternal or everlasting life, but would receive eternal life in the age to come,
where the things of this world and this age cannot be taken. So despite the
earthly desire to read will receive many
times more in this time as Jesus’ affirmation of disciples receiving
physical prosperity for following Him, this reading has been shown to be false:
men and women of whom the world was not worthy have been tortured, mocked,
flogged, imprisoned, stoned, sawn in two, drowned, killed by every means
possible, and have gone about clothed in animal skins, destitute, afflicted,
dwelling in deserts, in dens, in caves (Heb 11:35-38). Genuine disciples have
not received the good things of this world. In fact, being physically blessed
by the prince of this world has marked those who are false apostles, deceitful
workers, and teachers of lawlessness; while the absence of physical blessings
has distinguished those who have, while here on earth, stored up treasure in
heaven. Therefore, the better reading of what Jesus told His disciples is that
those who follow Him and who have given up the things of this world will, in
this world, acquire and accumulate much treasure in heaven that will not be
lost when the Tzimtzum passes away,
closing as the fissure that swallowed Korah closed. The relationship that becomes apparent is that the
physical patriarch Abraham formed the shadow and copy of the living Abraham;
that the physical patriarch Isaac formed the shadow and copy of the living
Isaac; that the physical patriarch Jacob formed the shadow and copy of the
living Jacob; that the visible Theos,
seen by Moses and the seventy elders (Exod 24:9-11), formed the shadow and copy
of the invisible God that Israel did not know, and whom Jesus came to reveal.
Within Trinitarian Christianity, this visible Theos is the same deity as the invisible God [Theon] whom Jesus revealed; for Jesus said, Have I been with you, and you still do not know
me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say,
“Show us the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father
and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own
authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am
in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works
themselves. (John 14:9-11) But
Trinitarians, denying the legitimacy of being born a second time when born of
Spirit, teach that birth by Spirit is
a euphemistic expression for the renewing or regeneration of immortal souls
destined to the flames of hell, and not the initial giving of everlasting life
domiciled in tents of flesh. Thus, Trinitarian Christianity is a different
religion, a different Christendom, a different belief system than is the binitarianism of the Apostle Paul, who laid the foundation
for the endtime house of God in the heavenly city of Jerusalem (1 Cor 3:10-11). Trinitarian Christianity is the most serious
threat to the Church yet devised by the prince of this world, but a house
divided will not stand—the prince of this world’s house is divided,
and God will use this division between Trinitarians and Unitarians as He used
Nebuchadnezzar’s armies against lawless The man Jesus came to His own nation [the
divorced, earthly wife of Theos] as
the only Son of Theos, who was one
with Theon in the heavenly realm as a
man is one with His wife in this physical realm. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is twice asked what
a person must do to inherit everlasting life (cf. Luke 10:25; 18:18), and by asking about what is required to inherit, the one asking knows that he or
she does not then possess eternal life. In fact, the concept of a person being
physically born with eternal life (an immortal soul is eternal life) is
contrary to Scripture. Everlasting life is the gift of God (Rom 6:23), given
when the person is born of Spirit and thus has life in the spiritual or
heavenly realm. Prior to being born of Spirit, the person only has the life
given to the first Adam, this life making the person a breathing creature, a nephesh, alike other nephesh that are the beasts of the
field. Solomon writes, I said in my heart with regard to the children of
man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but
beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts
is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and
man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place.
All are from the dust, and to dust all return. (Eccl 3:18-20). It
is vanity to believe that humankind, prior to being born of Spirit, have lives
that differ from the lives of beasts. It is also not biblical. And unless
someone wants to make the argument that the beasts of the fields go to heaven when
they die, the scriptural justification for believing that human beings are born
with immortal souls does not exist. Birth from the womb is birth by water (John
3:5-6). Receiving the Holy Spirit is birth by Spirit; for as the first Adam
became a nephesh when the Lord
breathed into his nostrils, the last Adam, of whom the first Adam was a type
(Rom 5:14), became a life-giving spirit when the man Jesus fulfilled all
righteous (Matt 3:15) by being baptized and rising from this watery grave to
have the Holy Spirit, the divine Breath of God [Πνευμα
Άγιον], descend upon Him as
a dove, light, and remain, thereby giving to Jesus a second life, one apart
from the flesh. When Jesus spoke to Philip, not one life but two were dwelling
in that tent of flesh that Philip saw. Jesus was not born with an immortal soul
that was regenerated when baptized by John; Jesus was without sin and not in
need of regeneration. So after receiving the Holy Spirit, Jesus did not have
two spiritual lives dwelling within Him. He had but one, that one coming from
receiving the divine Breath of the Father. So when Jesus spoke to Philip, He
did not have one spiritual life being that of an immortal soul Trinitarians
will believe He possessed when born of Mary, and one spiritual life coming from
the Breath of the Father, received when the Holy Spirit descended upon Him as a
dove. No, He had, instead, only one spiritual life, the one received from the
Father through the Holy Spirit. The other life He had was the life imparted by
human breath, mortal and perishable when He took the sins of others upon
Himself. Death is the penalty or wages for sin (Rom 6:23),
with sin being the transgression of the law of God (1 John 3:4); so death comes
from breaking the commandments of God. The first Adam did not believe God, and
transgressed the single commandment given him (Gen 2:16-17). As a result, this
first man was driven from the As bondservants to Pharaoh, to disobedience and
its prince, Physical liberation [i.e., liberation of the
flesh; liberation of the spiritually-lifeless natural nation] came when the
death angel passed over all of Egypt, slaying firstborns of man and beast not
covered by the blood of the Passover lamb (cf.
Exod 12:29-31; Isa 43:3). The Logos
was Theos, who was with Theon from the beginning (John 1:1-2).
Natural Yes, Jesus came as Theos’ Son, His only Son; for He could only enter His creation
once as a flesh and blood human being, commissioned to fulfill all
righteousness, part of which was being born of Spirit. The unfinished creative
work of the Logos/Theos, finished on
the Cross, was to be born of Spirit [i.e., of the Breath of the Father] and to
live without sin as the First of the firstfruits, the firstborn among many
brothers (Rom 8:29), all sons of the Father who mature spiritually while
dwelling in tents of flesh. Thus, Jesus became the Son of the Father when He
received a second life from the divine Breath of the Father, made visible in
the form of a dove. The visible reveals the invisible things of God
(Rom 1:20) as the physical precedes the spiritual things of God (1 Cor 15:46).
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 Holy Spirit [again, Pneuma ’Agion, or Breath Holy – Pneuma is the Greek work most often used to represent moving air as
in wind or deep breath] descended upon Him as a dove, thereby imparting a
second life within the same mortal tent of flesh as was born of water from the
womb of Mary. Disciples as former sons of disobedience,
consigned to disobedience from their birth by water because of the disobedience
of the first Adam, receive a second birth and a second life when they receive
the Holy Spirit, the divine Breath of the Father. This second life is invisible
in this world, for it is of the heavenly realm. In Scripture, the Holy Spirit
is only seen when it is being used to create a physical shadow and copy of a
spiritual event. Thus, the first time it is seen (when it appears as a dove)
creates the model for how humankind will be born of Spirit. The next time it is
seen (Acts chap 2), it creates the model for the empowerment and/or liberation
of Israelites, with its appearance in the house of Cornelius forming the model
for the empowerment and/or liberation of Gentiles. It is then seen when the
twelve are rebaptized by Paul (Acts 19:1-7), with
these twelve serving as the copy and shadow of the 144,000 Observant Jews
coming out of the first half of the seven endtime years that follow Jesus
wherever He leads (Rev 14:1-5). The Holy Spirit is not now seen when disciples
are born of Spirit; the Holy Spirit will not be seen when these disciples are
liberated from indwelling sin and death at the beginning of the seven endtime
years, from indwelling sin and death that has resided in the flesh (Rom
7:21-25) since the first Adam was driven from the garden of God. It will not be
seen when it is poured out upon all flesh when the kingdom of the world becomes
the kingdom of the Father and the Son (Rev 11:15; cf. Dan 7:9-14). However, because of the importance of this fall of
Babylon and giving of the kingdom to the Son of Man, which also occurs when the
Holy Spirit is poured out, heavenly signs—blood, fire, columns of smoke,
the sun becoming dark, the moon appearing as blood—will mark or denote
when the world has been baptized in Spirit, thereby causing all of humankind to
be born of Spirit. The new creature, born of Spirit, is under no
condemnation (Rom 8:1-2), and is not a bondservant of disobedience; this new
creature needs no liberation; this new creature needs no regeneration or renewing.
This new creature is not in need of a second Passover liberation, but the flesh
of the disciple remains in need of liberation if this flesh is not to die for
its lawlessness. So, since this new creature’s Father is not [however
many generation removed] the first Adam, but the Most High God, this new
creature is born free to keep the laws of God that are written on hearts and
placed into minds. However, (and this remains a mystery that Paul did not
understand – Rom 7:15) this new creature is born into a tent of flesh
that is still consigned to disobedience. And this new creature, now, is in a
fight against the desires of the flesh (1 John 2:15-17), a fight that will
produce spiritual maturity, but a fight in which rounds will be lost to sin.
Grace, the mercy of God, covers the new creature’s lost battles. The sins
of disciples will not be remembered if the disciple prevails in the end against
sin. To say that Jesus is a revealing metaphor of a
triune deity is to also say that the first Adam is a mythic metaphor that
reveals Jesus, and that physically circumcised There will be those “Christians” who
say that their God wouldn’t slay innocent firstborns, especially not to
the tune of a third of living humankind twice over—they are correct:
their God wouldn’t, but their God is not the living Theos of the living Isaac and the living Jacob. He is, instead, the
prince of this present world, and he is a murderer from the beginning for he
would slay all of humankind through disbelief if it were possible. Grace is the garment or mantle of Christ
Jesus’ righteousness that covers disciples as they grow to spiritual
maturity. It is put on daily, just as ancient Grace cannot be sold; it cannot be bartered; it
cannot be stored up. It is the reality of natural What Paul means when he writes “the mystery
of lawlessness is already at work–μυστήριον
ήδη ένεργίται
της άνομίας”
(2 Thess 2:7) is not fully explained within his letter to the Thessalonians.
Perhaps it needs not to be more fully explained than that it is; for the
mystery of lawlessness was an anomian doctrine already being taught within the 1st-Century
Jesus movement. In the “Acknowledgments” of his abridged doctrinal
dissertation, Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi gives thanks to Professor P.V. Monachino, who directed his study From Sabbath to Sunday after directing the dissertation of C.S. Mosna on the same topic—in Mosna’s
dissertation, evidence was presented showing that Sunday was being observed by
the Apostolic Church … what Mosna found was the
mystery of lawlessness that was already at work while Paul yet lived. All of
the churches in But the gates of hell would not prevail against
the Body of Christ, just as the grave did not prevail over the physical body of
Christ. The physical body was resurrected, the means of how the grave did not
prevail. Likewise, the spiritual Body is being resurrected as a remnant
[several times removed] of 16th-Century Radical Reformers, under the
tutelage of the endtime Elijah, the glorified Christ Jesus, restores all
things, including the completion of revealing the Father to His disciples. And
in revealing the Father, Jesus establishes the foundation for Binitarianism. Jesus said that the one who raised Him from the
dead was His God and His Father (John 20:17). Unitarians jump on this statement
to make the Father the God of the dead Abraham, the dead Isaac, and the dead
Jacob, but Jesus told the Sadducees that was not the case. The Logos was the God [Theos] of then dead Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but this Theos was the Theos of the living, not the dead. Again, Trinitarians perceive Jesus as the visible portion of a
metaphor that reveals the invisible God. But the language of especially Paul
and John make Jesus and the Father separate beings, both divine, both God, both
of the same substance but having separate Breaths. Thus, the Theos of the dead Abraham was also dead,
and was not the Theos of the living Abraham, living Isaac, and living Jacob. Trinitarians
contend that human beings cannot conceive the nature of the triune God that can
be simultaneously dead and alive, and by professing ignorance, they, like the
Greeks on Mars hill, set themselves up for enlightenment through arguments that
their acknowledgment of ignorance does not allow them to refute. Their
arguments have left them clinging to a triune deity through misplaced faith. Binitarians worship one God, the Father, God
of the spiritually living patriarchs and of spiritually living Remember, when the concept of a triune deity was
conceived, all of the fellowships had doctrinally left Paul. The mystery of
lawlessness had ravaged the Church, and because of the Church’s
lawlessness, God had delivered the Church into the hand of Satan for the
destruction of the flesh as Paul commanded the saints at Corinth to do to the
man who was with his father’s wife (1 Cor 5:5), and as the Lord had done
to ancient Israel when He delivered His physical holy nation into the hand of
King Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 27:4-7 et al), the king of physical Babylon. It is always a mistake to accept the doctrinal
teachings of those who practice lawlessness, especially of those deeply
committed to the mystery of lawlessness … no Israelite can enter into the
rest of God on the following day. And to ensure that those who attempt doing so
cannot, God has given the lawless Church—as He gave statutes and rules by
which lawless Israel could not live (Ezek 20:25-26)—dogmas and concepts
that will prevent lawless disciples from entering the kingdom of heaven. Yes,
the loving God will deliver sincere but lawless disciples into the lake of
fire, for when the promise of entering into God’s rest stood, these
lawless disciples did not enter into Sabbath observance. The promise today
stands for all who have been born of Spirit. Knowledge of the Sabbath is not
lost. What disciple does not know that the commandments of God are to be kept
by those who are of When first encountering what Jesus told the
Sadducees about Theos being the God
of the living and not the God of the dead, the tendency is to dismiss the
significance of the physical creation concealing the things of heaven, which
will have the Most High being the God of the living Abraham, the living Isaac,
and the living Jacob. Theos and Theon are one spirit as Adam and Eve
were one flesh—as the last Adam and the last Eve are one spirit, for a
person is not made a disciple of Christ through an action made by the fleshly
body of the person but through the indwelling Breath of God [Πνευμα Άγιον].
However, disciples are not the man Jesus; Eve was not Adam; Theos was not Theon; the dead patriarch Isaac is not the living Isaac (Gal
4:21-31). The universe is not heaven. Two are not one, but are two that
function as one, or are unified as one, even when they are brothers by blood as
in the case of Moses and Aaron, or even of one flesh as Adam and Eve. Theos and Theon are two who are two that function as one, and are united in
unity as one. Thus, the physical creation with its dead patriarchs reveals an
invisible spiritual creation that has living patriarchs that are not single
individuals, but the firstfruits of God. Likewise, the single deity of the dead
patriarchs is the living deity of the living patriarchs, and this living deity
presently has two members, the Father and the Son. The physical creation conceals an invisible
spiritual creation over which Theon
presides as the Most High. The metaphor of Jesus being the revealing nature of
the Most High God that Trinitarians have presented to Christendom offers easy
dismissal of an unwelcome construct: two deities. And existence of two deities
would seem to transform Christianity from a monotheistic religion into a
polytheistic belief, which is anticipated by Islam’s argument against a
triune deity. But the invisible spiritual creation with the Father as the Most
High is what Jesus came to reveal, and did reveal to His disciples—and
Jesus did not make Himself equal to the Father. So a hierarchical structure
exists and is taught within the invisible spiritual realm Jesus came to reveal.
It was this spiritual creation that Jesus suddenly revealed to the Sadducees,
and what they had not expected to hear and apparently did not want to hear, for
they were astonished by what He said. Jesus’ disciple John confirms the existence,
the relationship, and the nature of these two deities [Theos and Theon] that, as
if married, formed one entity, the God of physically circumcised Again, the Tzimtzum
concealed from human beings, and continues to conceal knowledge that they are
dead sons of God who must be made alive by the Father, Theon—and once they are made alive [i.e., born of Spirit], the
glorified Son who was Theos but who
now has a new name that no one knows, will give life to whom He will (John 5:21). This second giving of life is glorification,
for the Father has given all judgment of human beings to the Son (v. 22). Thus, human beings born with
mortal bodies and then born a second time by being born of Spirit will put on
immortality when the Son gives them life. Mortal bodies come from the handwork of Theos, who as potter made the first Adam
from red clay, giving life to the sculpted clay by breathing into Adam’s
nostrils, thereby transforming the dead clay into a nephesh [i.e., a breathing creature]. Therefore, Theos was, from the beginning, the God
of all living things in the Tzimtzum,
even though these living creatures, from the smallest microbes to humankind,
had no knowledge of their spiritualness. Then, still concealing the Father from
humankind, Theos walked in the garden
with Adam, the man He made, then with Adam and Eve, the woman He made from the
flesh and bone of the man. These two, as Adam declared, were one (Gen 2:24) in
a manner analogous to how Theos and Theon were one in the Tetragrammaton YHWH, where the radical /YH/ was Yah, the name by which David knew Theos. Therefore, Yah, as
Theos, the Logos, ceased to be when Theos
entered the Tzimtzum as His Son, His
only (again, Theos could enter His
creation only one time; He could not enter it again for when He entered as His
Son, He was no longer Theos). Centuries of Christological debates have produced
an unexplainable triune deity that reveals just how effectively the Tzimtzum has concealed spiritual
knowledge from created beings—has concealed from humankind the activating
force[s] within them, thereby producing a void in which there is not direct
awareness of the Father, even now. If there were awareness of the Father, why
would any Christian pray to His Breath [Pneuma
’Agion] or to the Son; they would not. Too many Trinitarian
Christians pray to the Son because they do not know the still concealed Father,
and worse, Arian disciples pray to Yah,
naming Yah as the Father, not
understanding that Yah is no more. Because Israel’s idol of monotheism replaced
the Greek pantheon for Hellenistic converts to Christianity, the humbleness of
plaster statuary of the dead Son and His mother forcefully suppressed and
concealed knowledge that the Psalmist David, a man after God’s own heart,
knew—and what David knew that Jesus used against the Pharisees still
causes problems for Christians and Jews: Jesus entered When Jesus entered και ειπον
αυτω Ακουεις
τι ουτοι
λεγουσιν
ο δε ιησους
λεγει αυτοι
Ναι ουδεποτε
οτι Εκ στοματος
νηπιων και θηλαζοτων
καθρτισω αινον (Matt 21:16) That is, And they said to him, “Do you
hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you
never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and
nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”
(21:16 ESV) The citation Jesus quotes is from Psalm 8 in the Septuagint: εκ στοματος νηπιων και
θηλαζοντων
κατηρτισω
αινον (Ps 8:3) Upon His entrance as future high priest and Lamb, Jesus
speaks Greek to chief priests and scribes, or at least He cites the Psalm in
its Greek version which differs from the Hebrew version—in Hebrew, the
passage refers back to YHWH
establishing strength rather than to preparing praise. And Jesus speaking Greek
when in the temple—or at least Jesus citing the Septuagint—becomes
important two days later, for the interplay of the two languages functions to
conceal and reveal meaning, with Jesus’ use of Theos instead of Theon
revealing a second deity, the God of the living, not of the dead (Matt 22:32). Jesus’ use of Greek instead of Hebrew when
addressing the chief priests on the 10th day, and His use again of
Greek when addressing the Sadducees two days later doesn’t result from
scribal imprecision or laziness or from Jesus being a Greek storyteller as some
modern rabbis teach, but seems to be a conscious choice on Jesus’ behalf
that is “occasion determined”; for after silencing the Sadducees,
the Pharisees gathered around Jesus to test Him (Matt 22:34-35), and He uses
Greek to answer their question about which is the greatest commandment by
closely paraphrasing the Septuagint translation of Moses: ο
δε ιησους
ειπεν αυτω
αγαφσεις κυριον τον
θεον σου
εν ολη
θ καρδια σου και
εν ολη
θ ψυχ σσυ
και εν
ολη θ διανοια
σου The Septuagint renders the phrase YHWH your Elohim as both “κυριος ο θεος” [Kurious-Theos] and as “κυριον
τον θεον”
[Kurion-Theon], depending upon context, and in
doing so, the use of Greek case endings both further conceals as well as
reveals aspects of the Tetragrammaton YHWH
and of Elohim, with both Hebrew
icons’ plural characteristics becoming evident through the two case
endings. Therefore, Jesus’ use of Greek is, itself, a revealing statement
about what the natural creation could not help concealing, and had historically
concealed through the long use of Hebrew. The structure of how words are formed in Hebrew
not only permitted, but virtually demanded an outside/inside, physical/spiritual
reading of Scripture. However, the historic assignments of meaning to these
icons by priests and scribes (a similar situation presently exists with
Christian grammatico-historical exegesis) had removed the plural quality from
icons that are only singular in the Tzimtzum.
These icons cannot be anything but singular in the Tzimtzum, which conceals the spiritual “half” of the
Tetragrammaton. Only when a person has consciousness outside of the Tzimtzum [through being born of Spirit] can
those things that are of Spirit be discerned and understood. Moses wrote that Elohim created humankind in His image, male and female He created
them (Gen 1:27), thereby requiring both the male and the female to be present
to complete the image of Elohim, an
awareness Moses may or may not have consciously possessed but certainly an
awareness that, if ever present prior to David’s latter psalms, was
subsequently lost by the kings and priests of Israel. The natural nation only
knew of the things that pertained to inside the void when the Logos as Theos came as His Son, His only, to reveal the existence of the
Father outside of the Tzimtzum to
those disciples who would be born of Spirit, thereby given life outside the Tzimtzum while still dwelling within the
void. The above sentence contains the substance of
Christianity. This cannot be overemphasized. Human languages have the usual trait of narrowing
or restricting meaning assignment to linguistic icons over time. The longer a
word is in usage, the more precise is the word’s usage. Thus, Hebrew, no
exception to traits common to all human languages, especially since The physically circumcised nation does not, today,
have life outside the void, but remains consciously inside the Tsimtsum where
this nation worships the deity that no longer exists: the Tetragrammaton YHWH that consisted of Theos (Θεος)
and Theon (Θεον),
plus their individual Breaths (cf Rom 8:9, 11). This deity became the man Jesus and the
Father when Theos entered His
creation as His only Son. This deity is now the glorified Jesus, who has a new
name that no man knows (Rev 19:12), and the Father: two deities that function
as one, with the relationship between these two going from first being that
represented by the metaphor of a husband and his wife being one flesh to being
that represented by the metaphor of a Father and His eldest Son, with the Son
coming of age to marry His Bride. Thus, the relationship between glorified disciples of Christ Jesus and the Father is represented by
the metaphor of a Father and a quiver full of sons, all younger than their
eldest Brother, Christ Jesus. The relationship between disciples and Christ
Jesus is presently represented by two metaphors: (1) the high priest of When iniquity or lawlessness was discovered in an
anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14-15), the defining timelessness of the heavenly
realm did not allow this anointed cherub to remain in this dimension, where all
activity must coexist with every other activity. Because human beings are
confined inside of time, where a parade of moments are necessary to allow
movement of seemingly solid matter with this parade of moments also allowing
for a change of status from life to death, human beings do not well grasp the
fundamental difficulties of a paradox although the solidity of matter should
make very evident the reason why lawless angels had to be immediately cast into
outer darkness when iniquity was discovered in an anointed cherub; for the
solidity of matter makes visible the impossibility of two things occupying the
same position in time and space. Thus, in the heavenly realm, two sets of laws
or values are represented in this physical realm by two objects—thought
and words have been made physical in the creation, the reality of the Logos speaking the world into existence. While human beings cannot physically leave this
created universe, they can mentally enter into other dimensions and realms,
something regularly done in higher mathematics. They can figuratively step back
and perceive this world as a large, living metaphor that can be described in
human language, thereby revealing darkly a dimension—because in a
metaphor, one “thing”
is said to be another “thing,” which it isn’t—that
cannot be entered by anything possessing mass, a twelfth dimension where the
laws of physics do not apply. A shadow makes known the presence of the object
blocking the path of light. God is light. That which casts shadows stands
between God and this world. But by the shadows cast, consider information about
what stands between God and this world can be discerned … the history of
ancient The grave could not hold Jesus, who, after three
days and three nights, was resurrected and returned to life, but resurrected in
the dark portion of the 18th of Abib, hours between Mary Magdalene
discovered that the stone had been taken away from in front of the tomb (John
20:1). Likewise, the gates of hell would not prevail over the Church, which,
after three being concealed through three hot periods and three turnings away
from God, will be resurrected to life in the dark portion of the day that the
Church will be accepted by the Father as Jesus was accepted. This resurrection
to life will occur at the second Passover, the event that will begin the seven
endtime years of tribulation. Human language remains confined within this
universe even when thoughts are of alternative universes and other dimensions.
Until a person has been born of Spirit, a person cannot think in terms of
absolute timelessness where not even strings exist. And when born of Spirit,
realization that everything expressed by “language” is only a
metaphoric representation for what words cannot express is rare as most
disciples are comfortable uttering a few trite expressions about God being love
without comprehending what “love” encompasses in timelessness,
where only one law and one set of values can exist without producing the
gridlock of a paradox. So if a disciple will not, today, by faith keep the
precepts of the law of God, this disciple will cause gridlock of a magnitude
even greater than that caused by an anointed cherub in whom lawlessness was
discovered if God allows this disciple to cross dimensions. Thus, out of love,
the disciple who will not, by faith, keep the commandments will perish in the
lake of fire—and all who teach otherwise are already condemned by Christ
Jesus (cf. Matt 7:21-23). A disciple cannot enter into God’s rest on
the following day; a disciple cannot keep the Sabbath commandment on Sunday.
And the dead Body of Christ is “dead and buried” because of the
mystery of lawlessness, but again, the gates of hell will not prevail: the Body
of Christ will be resurrected to life when disciples are liberated from
indwelling sin and death. The monotheism of spiritually lifeless natural
Israelites forms the metaphoric representation of the Binitarism
of twice born disciples of Christ Jesus, endtime
Israelites who have been spiritually circumcised. As there was a first Adam,
there was a last Adam. As Yah [/YH/] was the only deity the dead
patriarch Isaac knew, Christ Jesus has made the Father [/WH/] known to the living Isaac. As there was a physically
circumcised nation of The monotheism of natural * * * ©2007 Homer Kizer. All rights reserved. "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." [ Return to Vol 3 No 1 ] [ Home ] |