|
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 Two Upon
the return of a remnant of Israel from Babylon, the physically circumcised
nation in Jerusalem transformed its former idolatrous worship of sticks and
stones [the deities of neighboring peoples] into its idolatrous worship of
monotheism, a feat that forms the shadow and copy of the Church’s
idolatrous worship of a triune deity that it cannot explain, nor comprehend by
its own admission. The claim that ancient Israel’s monotheism is idolatry warrants an
expanded linguistic discussion that grapples with whether the Christological
debates of the early Church were not the withering contortions of the dying
Body of Christ as the glory of God went out (Ezek 10:18) from the threshold of
His house, its foundation laid by the Apostle Paul in the Jerusalem above (1
Cor 3:10-11). Once concepts take root, they grow as plants in
the mental topography of the “P” creation account where there is
neither sun nor moon … the use of Greek case endings to expound upon what
was naturally apparent through the inspired plural icons for the deity of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob should have eliminated the idol of monotheism, and should
have begun construction of an intangible ladder upon which humankind can climb
from the bottomless void and into the presence of the Most High, a ladder like
the one Jacob saw in vision, a ladder of the same substance as all visions are.
Matter, because of its apparent solidity, will never leave the void formed from
a rupture in the fabric of heaven when lawlessness was found in an anointed
cherub. Rather, matter will disappear in fire when the void seems to close.
Everything that is composed of matter is, thus, subject to decay and is
presently nothingness of a kind that is not easily comprehensible by those
human beings who have not been born of Spirit. And it is here, where a gap or lacunae occurs in the fabric of
narrative that a separation exists between those many human beings who have not
yet been born of Spirit and those few human beings who truly have been born a
second time, thereby receiving life outside of time and space. The many cannot understand the things which
the few disclose. The many outwardly appear like the few, with conscious thoughts like the few, but the many remain mentally consigned to disobedience whereas the few have been liberated through that
second birth. Therefore, the mass of humanity—with whom the government of
Caesar resides—are to the few
as cattle are to children. And as a child can be easily trampled in a stampede,
so too can born-of-Spirit disciples be trampled by secular governments when
they venture beyond the safety of obscurity. Even when transcribed and reduced to icons of
recognizable shapes, human language is composed of ephemeral: words that are
made from modulated breath heard by the ear or seen by the eye. These words
last but a short while before dissipating into the surrounding air. Likewise,
the Breath of the Father [Πνευμα
Άγιον] in a clay vessel does
not long remain in the void before it returns to where it came from—and
when it returns, it must bring with it memory of the mouth professing that
Jesus is Lord and of the heart believing that the Father raised Jesus from the
dead. Without both, the Breath of the Father dissipates into the
supra-dimensional heavenly realm as words do into thin air. Thus, the Father
does not give spiritual birth to all of humankind at this time. That day of
common birth awaits the dead, which today hurries about its task of burying the
dead. Those disciples who have been born of Spirit will
not be trampled by the livestock for honoring fathers and mothers, for not
murdering, for not stealing, for not having sexual liaisons outside of
marriage, for not lying, for not coveting. They will not be trampled for loving
their neighbors as themselves, but they can easily be trampled for not
worshiping Caesar as the Κυριος
and for outwardly observing the Sabbath. So it is here, where human breath and
spiritual breath come together to activate or motivate disciples that the
conflict within the void mirrors the conflict that occurred without the void
which resulted in the Tzimtzum. By inverting the relationships, the Tzimtzum conceals what the shadow
reveals through typological exegesis, the only way a living entity within the
void can read the Book of Life that resides outside this bottomless pit in
which all of humankind presently dwells. But because Theos loved those whom He created, He revealed through Moses the
construction of the ladder by which dust can climb from nothingness into the
presence of the Most High, Theon.
However, the physical creation of humankind concealed the ladder both through
the linguistic icons used to describe the ladder and through the positioning of
the ladder. This ladder is described in the “P” creation account,
an easily remembered correspondence when “P” represents Pneuma rather than Priestly. The production of the Tzimtzum caused the Breath of God [again, a metaphor] to
spontaneously transform its “pure” energy into the four physically
known forces that seem to be bound into matter. This Tzimtzum functions as a rupture in the timeless supra-dimensional
heavenly realm; functions as a bottomless pit into which rebelling angels were
thrown and confined. In the Tzimtzum
matter and energy merely change forms, neither diminishing nor increasing nor
losing knowledge. But for a few speckles along its edges [the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle; the Lamb shift], the universe is certain and is
predictable. However, at the hard edge or lip of the Tzimtzum, everything that is physical, including human reality, abruptly terminates. The universe, then, becomes
that place of concealment where disobedience resulting from discovered
lawlessness in an anointed cherub is contained for a harvest season. Literally,
the void is a prison in which all living things wait on death row for the time
of their execution, with mercy granted once to all of humankind presently
consigned to lawlessness by their common father, the first Adam. But mercy once
granted only qualifies the person for judgment outside of the void. The dirty little secret that the Adversary has
used the Tzimtzum to conceal is that
there is nothing a person can do inside the void that will
“qualify” the person to escape death. No person can be good enough
or be pure enough or righteous enough. The judicious exercise of free-will or
the production of good deeds are to God as dirty [menstrual] rags. Escape comes
only from outside: escape comes from either the promise of inheriting
everlasting life based upon faith that is counted as righteousness, or from
being given life that must by faith take upon itself righteousness. There is
nothing “good” inside the void, including the sinless Son of Theos, born as the man Jesus of Nazareth.
Therefore, only faith of the quality that Abraham displayed before being
circumcised (Rom 4:11-12) is counted as righteousness, and it is this righteousness
that is necessary to escape death. And this faith will cause every Israelite to
keep the precepts of the law (Rom 2:26), especially the Sabbath commandment,
the one place where keeping the precepts is most evident. But doesn’t Jesus cleanse hearts, thereby
taking away the sins of men? Doesn’t faith in Jesus exempt the
“Christian” from keeping the commandments of God? Christians are
not under the law but under grace, are they not? If when called good
by the rich young ruler, Jesus rebuked the ruler and said, “‘No one
is good except God alone’” (Luke 18:19), then it isn’t
Jesus’ goodness that takes away
sins, but His faith that He would be resurrected by the Father and given again
the glory He formerly had. Grace becomes the covering of Jesus’ righteousness
that came from His faith, just as Abraham’s faith was counted to him as
righteousness (Gen 15:6). And a person is not covered by Jesus’ faith if
the person does not by this same faith keep the precepts of the law, thereby
walking as Jesus walked (1 John 2:3-6). The self-identified Christian who does
not, by faith, keep the precepts of the law remains a bondservant to
disobedience. Disobedience is not a tangible thing; therefore, that which
contains or confines disobedience is also not a tangible thing. Disobedience
only has tangible attributes or visible manifestations when sin reveals its
complete sinfulness through decay, or through the actions of the flesh that
result in death; thus, one purpose for the Tzimtzum
is make visible what cannot be otherwise observed, including death itself for
in timelessness all that have life have everlasting life. This is not so,
however, inside the bottomless void. Therefore angels that have been imprisoned
in the void will perish unless they escape through long term demonstrated
obedience. Even then, their escape will require the extension of mercy by a
glorified son of God, for all of the rebelling angels are under sentence of
death. No living entity that practices sin or lawlessness
[i.e., the breaking of the codified commandments] will be permitted outside the
void. Sin is, simply, the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). The person who
breaks the law in one point breaks the law (James 2:10), and is a sinner,
having presented him or herself as a willing or unwilling servant to sin
… before a disciple is born of Spirit, the person was consigned to sin
(Rom 11:32) as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2-3). The person had no choice, but
was condemned to disobedience because of one man, the first Adam. And it is this
concept of being consigned to disobedience that separates Western
Christendom’s understanding of free will from both Eastern
Christendom’s and Rabbinical Judaism’s. In both the Greek
Church’s and in Judaism’s understanding of sin, it seems that a
person can, through good works, prevail upon God to accept the person, thereby
making Calvary an interesting but not needful phenomenon; whereas in the Roman
Church, Calvary was absolutely necessary for the forgiveness of sin and for the
redemption of the inherently sinful nature of humankind. The The antithesis to original sin is a second birth
by Spirit, with this new creature born free, sin having no dominion over this
new creature (cf. Rom 8:1-2; Rom
6:14). The redemptive work of God is not a regeneration of immortal souls
doomed to hell, but the “renewing” of the creature through a second
birth, the creation of a new life within the tent of flesh of the old self. And
because sin no longer has dominion over these new creatures in their fleshly
tents, human beings who have been called-out of this world can be raised from
the dead as the glory of the Father raised Jesus from the dead, with this
resurrection from the dead to occur when judgments are revealed (1 Cor 4:5)
upon Christ’s return. Jesus said those who hear His words and believe
the One who sent Him do not come under judgment, but pass from death to life
(John 5:24). He also said not to be surprised when some are called forth from
death to life, and some are called to condemnation (vv. 28-29). For the new creature that returns to sin when sin has
no dominion over this new creature spurns the mercy extended by a second birth,
and thereby mocks both the Father and the Son. The person who keeps the precepts of the law by
faith cleanses his or her heart and becomes spiritually circumcised; i.e., made
a part of the household of God. To elaborate, when a person is born of Spirit,
there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom
8:1). The person has been set free from disobedience [the law of sin and
death], and can now live by the commandments of God, which before, while
consigned to disobedience, was not possible. The person was not previously able
to present his or her members to God as instruments for righteousness (Rom 6:13),
for sin had dominion over the person (v.
14). The
redemptive work of God is about setting free human beings who have been
consigned to disobedience because
their father (however many times removed) is the first Adam, but this work is
not that of human beings. No person can force the Father to draw a person from
the world and give to this person a second birth. And unless the Father draws
the person, he or she remains consigned to disobedience. There is nothing
anyone can do to extract this person from disobedience. Martin Luther made the
observation that the law seemed to exist to prove that it couldn’t be
kept—and it cannot be kept by those who remain consigned to disobedience.
They are not free to keep it. And being
redeemed from sin is all about being born of Spirit so that this liberated
person, an infant son of God, a child not to be prevented from coming to God,
can keep the commandments. The dogma of Christianity would have the born-of-Spirit
disciple free from having to keep the commandments of God, thereby making this
disciple an unwitting bondservant of sin, whereas the “law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:2) sets a person free to keep the
commandments of God. Christendom’s
prevailing dogma is the exact opposite of what the Apostle Paul taught. Disciples are not set free to transgress
the law, but set free to keep the law. Obedience equals life. Disobedience
is sin, which equals death. Disciples have been set free from sin and death so
that they can choose life, which comes through obedience by faith to God. The body of the man Jesus lay dead in the heart of
the earth three days and three nights. Likewise, the Body of the Christ lay
fully dead in the bottomless pit for twelve centuries (325 –1525 CE). The
process of resurrection of the Body by the endtime Elijah parallels the first
Elijah raising the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:17-24), which took
Elijah stretching himself out over the child three times before breath returned
to the child. As of Sukkot 2006, the divine Breath of
God has not yet returned to the lifeless Body of Christ. The person who has not been truly born of Spirit
can mistake last night’s onions for spiritual birth, but the one who has
been born of Spirit knows that he or she has within the person’s mind
different values, different desires than before; for it is through the
person’s desire to keep the laws of God that the person comprehends what
Paul means when he writes, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me,
that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the
ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not
want is what I keep on doing” (Rom 7:18-19). If a person retains his or her deceitful nature,
or if the person really has no desire to obey the commandments (all of them,
not nine or eight or five or one), the person has not been born of Spirit. The
person has merely heard a good argument and would like to save his or her
fleshly body; for the person who has been born of Spirit strongly desires to
keep the commandments of God, especially the commandment that visibly separates
disciples from the world, the Sabbath commandment. For the disciple, keeping
the Sabbath is a great joy! The redemptive work of God is simple: Jesus said,
‘“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the prophets;
I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them’” (Matt 5:17).
He came to demonstrate that when a person is not in bondage to
disobedience, the person can live by the commandments of God. And when liberated
from bondage to sin, the person is liberated from death … again, twice
born means that the person has two lives, one that animates the flesh [the
birth by water], and the other that is of Spirit. The mystery that the Apostle
Paul did not understand (Rom 7:15) is that the flesh—because the Body of
Christ is presently dead—remains in bondage to disobedience until the
Second Passover. The new creature born of Spirit and domiciled in the tent of
flesh is born liberated from disobedience, and free to keep the law of God. But
this new creature must wrestle against the tent of flesh as if fighting its way
out of a paper bag. It must strive against the indwelling law of sin and death
(Rom 7:21-25), and it must ultimately prevail. Grace covers those times when
this new creature loses battles to indwelling sin. But if this new creature
will not or does not fight against this indwelling sin, this new creature will
perish in the lake of fire. The fight into which the infant son of God is born
can be won, and has been won by Christ Jesus. A disciple gives Christ’s
victory to Satan, however, when the disciple makes him or herself a willing
servant of sin … the Church made itself a willing servant to sin when the
mystery of lawlessness caused early disciples to spurn all things Jewish, even
Sabbath observance. Keeping the Sabbath marks those who are of God in the same
way that the tattoo of the Cross [Χξ στιγμα] will mark those who
are of the Antichrist. Would a Christian willingly present him or herself
as a bondservant to sin? Probably not. Would a
Christian willingly commit adultery? Some have. How about murder? Jesus
disclosed the relationship between the old written code that regulated the
actions of the hand and the body of a natural Israelite, not born of Spirit,
and the inner written code inscribed on tablets of flesh [the heart and the
mind] of a spiritually circumcised Israelite: You have heard that it was said to those of old,
‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to
judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the
council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the Gehenna of fire.
So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your
brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and
go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come offer your gift. (Matt
5:21-24) You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall
not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman
with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (vv. 27-28) The commandments move from hand to heart, from
body to mind: the old written code that governed the actions of the hand and
the body of an Israelite moved inward to govern the desires of the heart and
the thoughts of the mind of a disciple. Same code. Not
a new set of commandments, but the same commandments inside the cup, inside the
clay pot that will be made into a vessel for honored use or into a vessel of
wrath. And when the inside of the cup is clean, the whole cup is clean. The Sabbath commandment, now, does not move to
another day, but remains the seventh day. However, under the inner written
code, the Sabbath commandment does not regulate what the hand and body does,
but the desires of the hearts and the thoughts of the mind. And if the desires
of the heart are to enter into fellowship with God—to enter into His
rest—on the seventh day, then the disciple will not do those things that
are not of God on the seventh day; for when the inside of the cup enters into
God’s rest, the whole cup enters into God’s rest. A person believes the Adversary, not the Most
High, when the person believes that he or she can live however the person
desires and still enter heaven. This person and the one who teaches such nonsense
to this person is without knowledge or understanding, but is as livestock; for
the righteousness of all who will enter the kingdom of heaven must exceed that
of the Sadducees and Pharisees (Matt 5:20), who had the laws of God but who did
not keep them (John 7:19). Although grammatico-historical exegesis inevitably
ends up as quarreling or disputing about words, the Apostle Paul wrote that the
Lord knows those who are His. And the primary doctrine of those who are
Christ’s will have all who say they are of the Lord departing from
unrighteousness and wickedness. The Apostle John wrote, “And by this we
know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says
‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:3-4).
Jesus’ commandments are the commandments He as Theos uttered from atop The angel told John the Revelator,
‘“Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy,
and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy”’ (Rev
22:11). Filthy is the state of the evildoer as holy is the state of the one who does what is right. Unrighteousness is now a property of the filthy
evildoer, the property of the one who has not departed from adilias [αδιλιας],
the property of the one who does not keep the commandments of God, the property
of the one who leads disciples into ungodliness, the property of the one who
will be denied by Jesus in the resurrection. The unrighteous are not the
Lord’s, but belong to the prince of this world. And the unrighteous twist
the epistles of Paul into justification for lawlessness (2 Pet 3:16-17); for
they assign to the linguistic icons that Paul inscribed in his epistles
negation of the laws of God. The unrighteous are ignorant and unstable, but
they are also popular. They teach what the disobedient want to hear. They teach
an easy grace, and God’s acceptance of sinners and sin. But no truth is
in them. In the three plus centuries before the New
Testament was canonized, Moses was squeezed from “Christianity,” as
if removing the Law would nullify the accuser of the brethren (John 5:45-47).
The Elijah who will restore all things would not be needed if the Church had
not gone awry and if the way of truth wasn’t in need of
restoration. But this restoration will not be accepted if new Scripture is
added to old, as the Mormons have done. Thus, that which is needed for the restoration
must already be inscribed in Scripture itself. What is needed is a differing
reading strategy for taking meaning from the text, since it is readers that
assign meaning to the icons of Holy Writ. Throughout the middle of the 20th-Century,
Herbert Armstrong alienated many disciples by claiming that the true gospel
hadn’t been preached for 1900 years: from 31 CE until 1931. His claim
represents unabashed hubris, but he correctly observed that the teachings,
practices, and traditions of the 4th-Century Church were not those
of Christ Jesus or of the first Apostles. Historically, evidence exists to show
that from the days of Roman Emperor Hadrian on, the Church exchanged
transgressing the commandments of God for a measure of physical security, but
the mystery of lawlessness began much earlier. The Church became comfortable in
its lawlessness, with this lawlessness already evident but restrained while the
Apostle Paul yet lived (2 Thess 2:7). Consider what Paul writes in his second canonized
epistle to the Thessalonians: For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work.
Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then
the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath
[pneuma] of his mouth and bring to
nothing by the appearance of his coming. (2:7-8) These
two verses cover the entire period of Christendom, from Paul’s day [already at work] to the Second Advent [the appearance of his coming]. And what
is again seen is the application of “beginning” and
“end.” For all of the period between the beginning and the end, the
mystery of lawlessness has been at work, producing millions of lawless “Christians”
who believe that they are covered by grace—but if covered by grace, they
are hated by God. Yes, hated by God as Esau was hated by God (cf. Mal 1:3; Rom 9:6-13) but loved by
his physical father Isaac (Gen 25:28). These lawless disciples are loved by
their spiritual father, the prince of this world. Those disciples who are physically minded cleave
to the lawless Church, spurning the few fellowships that have not made
themselves instruments of the prince of this world. The mystery of lawlessness is not a hidden
doctrine of some obscure sect. It is the principle teachings of today’s
visible Christian Church. Again, lawlessness is sin (1 John 3:4).
Lawlessness means, literally, being without “law.” And the person
who teaches that disciples do not have to live by the laws of God [the
commandments—the Decalogue]
teaches lawlessness, and will be denied in his or her judgment (Matt 7:21-23).
So the mystery of lawlessness begins with the doctrinal position that keeping
the commandments by faith is the “yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1)
[what’s at issue in Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is physical
circumcision]. But Christ Jesus knows His
own—and His own enter into God’s rest when the promise of entrance
stands. “His own” do not attempt to enter on the following day as
did the rejected Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, the home of Ishmael. * The
nature of scholarship denies the legitimacy of “secret knowledge,”
just as the context of Scripture denies the truthfulness of private
interpretations. However, Jesus told His disciples only hours before He was
taken, “‘I have said these things [about giving birth] to you in
figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in
figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you
will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your
behalf’” (John 16:25-26). So that
day was not the Preparation Day as His disciples then thought (v. 29); for the period when the first
disciples would ask the Father directly in Jesus’ name did not begin
until after Calvary, until after they were born of Spirit through receipt of the
divine Breath of God. So Jesus’ plain speech is not recorded in
Scripture. All that is recorded is Jesus’ use of figurative language. At the time of the Feast of Dedication, Jesus, in
the temple, was asked by the Jews, ‘“How long will you keep us in
suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly’” (John 10:24).
But Jesus did not then speak to even His own disciples plainly; He certainly
wasn’t about to speak plainly about spiritual things what could only be
uttered in metaphoric language to men who were not “spiritual.” After Jesus told the crowd that followed Him a
series of parables, Matthew records, “All these things Jesus said to the
crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was
to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet: ‘I will open my mouth in
parables; / I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the
world’” (Matt 13:34-35; cf.
Ps 78:2-3 — note Ps 78:4. The dark things of God will not be forever
hidden from However, when Jesus’ disciples asked Him why
He spoke in parables, He answered, ‘“To you it has been given to
know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them [the gathered crowd] it
has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will
have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even
what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables,
because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they
understand’” (Matt 13:11-13). Yet remember, Jesus spoke to His
disciples in figures of speech until He was with them following His
resurrection—even when His disciples were hearing Jesus’
explanation of the parables, they were hearing explanations given in figures of
speech. How does a person recognize a figure of speech
when the language used seems straightforward as in Jesus’ explanation of
His parables? Jesus told Nicodemus that being twice born (being born of water
and born of Spirit, with Spirit/Pneuma
being like wind [same Greek word]) was an earthly thing; then He asked
Nicodemus how, if Nicodemus could not understand a metaphor, could Nicodemus
understand heavenly things (John 3:12). The answer is that Nicodemus could not,
and neither could anyone in The “credentials” for hearing the
voice of Jesus do not come from letters behind one’s name, but from
simple Election. The sealed and secret visions of Daniel would be unsealed in
the generic time of the end (Dan 12:4, 9; 8:17, 26). Likewise, all things must
be restored. And someone or ones will be the voice of Jesus as He does the
endtime work of preparing a people to harvest what was planted two millennia
ago … return for a moment to the body of Christ: the Cross kills through
suffocation, through the weight of the body pinching off the lungs, thereby
preventing the one crucified from being able to breathe once the person tires
and is no longer able to push upward with the legs. Because of the terrible
scourging prior to crucifixion, Jesus was severely weakened and was unable to
live until sundown. Ordering the scourging, contrary to popular conception, was
an act of compassion on Pilate’s part, an act that also fulfilled
prophetic Scripture. Pilate ensured that Jesus’ period of suffering was
minimal for a person crucified. Nevertheless, Jesus lived three or so hours on
the Cross before He lost His physical breath. Jesus’ breath did not
return to Him until He was resurrected approximately seventy-five hours later.
Thus, the Church, after being crucified with Christ “in order that the
body of sin might be brought to nothing” (Rom 6:6), will die with Christ
individually and collectively. The individual who has died has been set free
from sin (v. 7)—sin is not to
again reign in the mortal body to make the body obey sin’s passions
rather than the commandments of God. The individual crucified with Christ
figuratively hangs on the Cross with Christ. And if this individual, when dead
to sin, presents him or herself to sin as sin’s willing bondservant, then
this individual has no more sacrifice for sin, and will die as the body of
Christ died. Therefore, collectively, when the Church, dead to sin, presented
itself to sin as sin’s willing slave (which it did do when it succumbed
to the mystery of lawlessness), then the Church as the spiritual Body of Christ
died as the physical body of Christ died. But when the Church dies, it
doesn’t lose physical breath for it is not a physical nation. Rather,
when the Church dies, it loses the Holy Spirit, the divine Breath of God. The
Church becomes an organization of pious men who are as spiritually lifeless as
ancient Many will come (and have come) claiming to have
been sent by God—the test of those who have come is threefold: (1) does
the “thing” they say come to pass; (2) do they teach Israel to obey
God, keeping His commandments; and (3) do they give freely what they have been
given, asking men for neither the tithes or offerings to which they are
entitled. If they ask for money, they are to be rejected. If they teach
lawlessness, they are disguised ministers of Satan. If what they say does not
happen, they have not heard the voice of Jesus, but speak their own words. And
if they add to Scripture, such as inserting To understand figures of speech, a few basic
concepts must be grasped. First, words do not have inherent meaning, but must
be assigned meaning by every reader. If in the assignment of meaning, a word
stands as a representation of a “real” thing or action, the word is
said to be used mimetically (from the same root as “mimic”); the
word seeks to mimic the thing or action. And this word usage is not usually
employed in figures of speech. So because Jesus only spoke to His disciples in
figures of speech, it should be understood that so-called “literal”
meanings cannot properly be assigned to Jesus’ recorded words. But those who dismiss portions of Scripture as
merely myth or folklore or as no longer
culturally applicable, fail to understand that all of Scripture is the
shadow and copy of the invisible, spiritual Book of Life … Scripture
reveals through typology what could not otherwise be known to human beings who
are unable to enter the heavenly realm to make observations or take measurements. Returning to the theme of Chapter One, the most frequent
figure of speech used in Scripture is that of a metaphor, where one thing is
said to be another thing. A thing that would not be recognized or understood is
described in words which the audience can comprehend. The essence of typology
is that this visible, physical world reveals the invisible things of God (Rom
1:20), and precede the things of God (1 Cor 15:46); thus, this creation
functions as a metaphor for, not language, but of heavenly things themselves.
And all language now that describes the things of this world becomes metaphoric
language by extension—it was this concept that Nicodemus could not
understand. To Nicodemus, being born meant exiting the womb. In Jesus’
use of the earthly example, being born equates with receiving life, not exiting
a womb. Thus, receiving spiritual life is a metaphoric expression for a
heavenly happening that can only be comprehended by human beings through a
figure of speech: “receiving spiritual life” is a figure of speech
to which no mimetic thing or action can properly be assigned except when the
first Adam received the physical breath of life (Gen 2:7). Because Jesus only spoke the Father’s words,
which were not about earthly things, Jesus could only speak to His disciples in
figures of speech. Assignment of ‘”literal meanings” is,
again, not possible; for Paul wrote that the “man” caught up to the
third heaven heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter [or
cannot utter] (2 Cor 12:4), for human languages have no words [signifiers] for
things in heaven, where flesh and blood cannot go. Words come from the modulated breath of a person.
Unless inscribed, they quickly dissipate in the air, returning to being
indistinct movements of atoms bouncing into one another. The words of God come
from the “Breath” of God, or the Holy Spirit, which both created
“what is” and renews the face of the earth (Ps 104:30). Thus, the
utterances of the Father delivered through the Holy Spirit are not limited to
the movement of air in sound waves—and Jesus, when speaking the words of
the Father, does not merely utter sound waves in figures of speech. Rather, the
words of the Father are speech-acts that cause the renewal of even the face of
the earth. These speech-acts “renew” or make whole human beings.
They are the miracles that Jesus performed … since Jesus did not speak
any of His words, but only the words and speech-acts of the Father, all that
Jesus did become the renewing speech-acts of the Father, become the sending forth
of the Breath of God. Perhaps the most difficult “truth” of
Scripture for the skeptic to understand is that the man Jesus, having entered
His creation as His son, His only (John 3:16), did not speak His words during
His earthly ministry, but spoke the words of His spiritual Father, the Most
High God, Theon, previously unknown
to Israel. Jesus’ actual Father, Theos,
was the Logos, the spokesman for the
Most High. Their relationship is represented by two metaphors, the first that YHWH Elohim made humankind in the image
of YHWH Elohim; “male and
female he created them” (Gen 1:27); so to be created in the image of YHWH Elohim, humankind is male and
female, with the “female” aspect of God contained in the Logos who came as the man Jesus …
biological gender makes comprehending that which the metaphor describes
difficult. In this case, biological gender, itself, forms the metaphor. The other metaphoric relationship is disclosed by
Moses being as God to Aaron (Exod 4:16), two brothers according to the flesh,
with Aaron delivering the words of Moses to Israel, the two functioning as one
entity in a manner analogous to how a man and his wife become one flesh through
unity even though they are two. Before now proceeding one important scriptural
passage needs referenced: Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to
the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for
you to take up your bed.” But he answered them, “The man who healed
me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” They
asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and
walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was,
for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus
found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more,
that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the
Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were
persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus
answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to
kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling
God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5:9-18) Jesus spoke only the Father’s words as Aaron
spoke only Moses’ words to Heaven, itself, is represented by both the
Millennium rest, and by the weekly Sabbath rest. Therefore, the Father’s
delivery of His speech-acts on a particular day within the created universe
causes special significance to be assigned to that day; for the Father could
have delivered His speech-acts on any day of the week or month or year. He does
all of His work within the same unchanging moment; so He made a concerted
effort to have His speech-acts delivered on a particular day if they are not to
be delivered on any changing moment within time. In plainer speech, if the
Father did not choose to figuratively deliver a sermon through Jesus on the
Sabbath, His sermon consisting of His speech-act that healed the invalid, He
would have caused the invalid to be healed on another day, or most likely,
healed without any attention being attracted by the healing, one of the many
healings not recorded by the gospel writers. By Jesus delivering the speech-acts of the Father
on the Sabbath (seven times in the Gospels), the Father does more than connect
the Sabbath to the redemptive work of God. The Father places His stamp of
approval on the Sabbath, thus transferring the holiness of YHWH Elohim resting on the seventh day to the renewing work He does
through the man Jesus, this work the on-going activity of giving life to that
which is dead. When Jesus said, ‘“My Father is
working until now, and I am working”’ (John 5:17), He meant that He
was delivering the speech-acts of the Father; thus, Jesus is the Lord of the
Sabbath, for both the Millennium and the weekly Sabbath are metaphoric
representations of entering into heaven. During the Millennium, He will be King
of kings and Lord of lords. During the Sabbath, He is King and Lord here on
earth for He delivers the words of the Father who is in heaven and who has
“instructed” New Testament * Jesus’
first disciples could no more understand spiritual things than Nicodemus could
until they were born of Spirit, which happened when the glorified Jesus
breathed on ten of His disciples and said, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit [Πνευμα
Άγιον]’” (John
20:22). It was during the forty days following His resurrection that He spoke
plainly about the Father. But not one word of what Jesus said during these
forty days (except for the accounts of what happened on the day of His resurrection)
is recorded in the Gospels. Thus, endtime disciples have only the figures of
speech that Jesus used during His earthly ministry, plus the epistles of Paul,
James, Peter, John, and Jude. Endtime disciples have the words of the Father,
metaphoric speech about living metaphors. Jesus’ plain speech must come
to endtime disciples through spiritually understanding the figures of speech
employed by Jesus, with the epistles serving to disclose the nature of these
figures of speech—Jesus’ plain speech actually comes to endtime
disciples through hearing the soft voice of Jesus (John 2-6). But when the
Church, as the Body of Christ, lost its Breath while still visible, the Church
ceased being able to hear either the Father through Jesus’ metaphoric
speech, or to hear Jesus’ voice. Therefore, the While Paul, Peter, and John were still physically
alive, other disciples, believing that they were spiritually minded, began to
assign allegorical meanings to Scripture, little realizing that their use of
allegory kept the linguistic objects of the icons in this physical world
… an allegory is a symbolic representation intended to produce lateral
movement, not vertical. A symbol is a sign
that carries another meaning. For example, the Lord sent Nathan to King David
with the story of two men, one rich with many flocks and herds, one poor with
but one ewe. The rich man took the poor man’s ewe that was dear to him
and killed it rather than kill one of his own sheep. David was outraged, and
said that the rich man deserves to die, not recognizing that he was this rich
man (2 Sam 12:1-7). Thus, the icons presented in the symbol represent a
differing set of icons, that of the deeper meaning. In an allegory, icons do
not represent multiple objects [or objects for which no other icons exist] but
represent other icons; i.e., the poor man represented Uriah the Hittite, and
the rich man represented King David. And because in allegory, icons represent
other icons, the objects assigned to these icons are of the same qualitative
type. An allegory is perhaps the least sophisticated literary device that can
be used. A one-to-one correspondence exists between icons and between objects. An allegorical reading of the parable of ten
virgins (Matt 25:1-13) would begin by ignoring the simile that the kingdom of
heaven is like these ten virgins. While the simile requires the reader to ask, How is the kingdom of heaven like ten virgins,
an allegorical reading has the reader asking, What do these ten virgins represent? In the simile, half of those
who have had no intercourse (what the icon virgin
implies) will be denied when they appear at the wedding feast; yet they are the
intended Bride. But they have been foolish. They haven’t come prepared.
So the simile makes the kingdom of heaven a domain that can only be entered
when the promise of entering stands (Heb 4:1); i.e., when the Bridegroom comes.
It cannot be entered later, an aspect of the parable anticipated by the
rejection of ancient Israel in the wilderness of Paran when the spies returned
from Canaan (Num chap 14), with this aspect of entrance only while the promise
of entering stands referenced by the writer of Hebrews in the writer’s
discussion of the Sabbath as God’s rest, represented by the geographical
landscape of Judea (cf. Ps 95:10-11;
Heb 3:16-4:12; Num 14:40-41). The allegorical reading, by asking who or what the
ten virgins represent, ignores the importance of entering when the
promise of entrance stands. Instead, the allegorical reading speculates in the
way condemned by the Apostle Paul (1 Tim 1:4): maybe the five virgins who
brought oil represent Christians saved by Grace who have bought indulgences, or
maybe the five represent Christians who — the reader can fill in the
blank. And what will be found is that in every case, the five virgins represent
some aspect of Christians in this world … so what do the other five
represent if not Christians? Nothing can be allegorically determined that
cannot also be overturned using the same logic and the same argument. The key of David—the key that unlocks what
David wrote—is grasping how David used Hebraic poetics, with David
supplying that key in his latter psalms. When David writes, “Praise Yah, / Praise YHWH” (Ps 146:1 et al),
David is not using Yah as a
contraction for YHWH, the
unpronounced Tetragrammaton. Yah is
not an alternate pronunciation for YHWH,
as some might teach. The Tetragrammaton would have been sung as Adonai, the
preferred substitute pronunciation. Rather, in written form David is presenting
a thought couplet, with the first presentation of the thought—because the
discourse is “poetic” rather than mimetic prose—of God in
this physical realm. The second presentation is of God in His spiritual realm. Thus,
Yah is the linguistic icon used by
David to represent God in this physical realm, thereby making Yah the only manifestation of the
spiritual Tetragrammaton YHWH, what
David, a man after God’s own heart, understood; for Yah is to YHWH as Aaron
is to the co-joined (by God) brothers Moses and Aaron [these two Levite
brothers functioned as one entity, with Moses being as god to Aaron —
Exod 4:16]. The golden calf incident has not usually
understood significance: when Moses and Aaron were together, Aaron only spoke
the words of Moses, who received those words from God. He spoke the truth. But when Aaron functioned by
himself, he lead Returning to David, Yah is not a metaphor for YHWH,
but is the front or visible half of the Tetragrammaton YHWH. Thus, Yah is /YH/; Yah
is the Logos, who was Theos, the one who came as His son, His
only, in the form of the man Jesus of Nazareth. Unitarians [Arian Christians]
will inevitably identify Yah as the
Father, thereby revealing both their lack of spiritual understanding and their
blasphemy of the Father and the Son, which some Unitarians go to extremes to
avoid by making the pronunciation of the name of God a salvational
issue. Their blasphemy will be forgiven them; their lack of love will not be
forgiven. Again, Jesus as the Logos, the Word, only spoke the words of the Father. He never spoke
His own words. He was never separated from the Father until He was made sin on
the Cross. He never placed Himself in the position Aaron found himself when
Aaron succumbed to the people’s wishes. And now by extension, when the
Church as the Body of the Christ began to speak words not of Christ or when the
Church goes beyond what Jesus said as in assigning personhood to the metaphoric
Breath of God, the Church leads spiritually circumcised Israel into sin in the
same way that Aaron did. Therefore, as God condemned Moses implored the Lord not to kill Israel for the
sake of His name, and for the sake of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod
32:11-13)—and the Lord relented (v.
14), thereby not bringing upon Israel the immediate disaster He had said He
would bring upon the people. But the Lord never changed His mind about making a
great nation from Moses: the Jews of Jesus’ day claimed Abraham as their
father (John 8:39), but Abraham was also the father of Ishmael, the son of
bondage, and of Esau, the hated son of promise. The Jews did not claim Moses as
their father; for it is Moses who brings accusation against Jesus telling Peter that the gates of Hades shall
not prevail against the Church that He, Jesus, will build does not mean that
this Church, as His Body, would not die, but that this Church would not stay
dead forever. Just as the grave did not prevail against His physical body, the
grave shall not prevail against His spiritual Body. As one was resurrected from
death, so shall the other be recovered from Death.
Therefore, the keys that He gave to Peter are not transferable, but remained
with Peter, who bound and loosed while the crucified Body of Christ remained
alive on the Cross. The theological justification for these “keys”
being appropriated by the Bishop of Rome requires foremost the assignment of
perpetual life to the Body of Christ, thereby making Christ a bondservant to
the prince of this world and to sin, a theological position that must certainly
amuse the Adversary. (Will anyone seriously argue that the Borgias
were of Christ?) Thus, what Peter bound and loosed are in the past tense
[alternate reading: shall have been bound
… shall have been loosed]; for it is the One who holds the key of
David, not the keys given Peter, that is able to open and no one shuts, and to
shut and no one opens (Rev 3:7). For Satan sought to take Peter from the
formation of the Church. Again, the living Theos is the God of the living Abraham, the living Isaac, and the
living Jacob (Matt 22:32), but the first Theos
(from John 1:1-2) entered His creation as His Son, His only (John 3:16), the
man Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14), thereby “dying” in the spiritual
realm by being born as His son, who then died in this physical realm at
Calvary. However, the Father’s glorification of the resurrected Jesus was
the return to Theos the glory He had before
the world existed (John 17:5). So Theos died
in both the heavenly realm and in this physical realm; yet He again lives as
the Theos of the living Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. The Body of Christ first died in the heavenly
realm when it collectively lost the Holy Spirit, then will die in this physical
realm through glorification, implying that the Body will be resurrected prior
to glorification—as Theos died
in the heavenly realm when He was born as the man Jesus, the Body of Jesus died
in the heavenly realm when it collectively lost the Holy Spirit because of its
failure to cleanse hearts through making a journey of faith equivalent to the
physical journey of faith made by the patriarch Abraham. But the gates of hell
will not prevail against this dead Body, for under the terms of the second
Covenant, upon demonstrated obedience by faith, God will again bring Israel
into the Promised Land (His rest) and will circumcise hearts (Deu 29:1;
30:1-6). This demonstrated obedience is returning to God with all one’s
heart and mind, keeping the commandments and statutes written in Deuteronomy by
faith, choosing life while the promise of entering into God’s rest still
stands. Then, the renewing Breath of the Father will return life to the Body. The Apostle Paul identified disciples as the
living Isaac (Gal 4:21-31). And in the womb of the living Isaac are two sons
[all disciples comprise “Isaac,” but all disciples also comprise
the two sons in the womb of Grace, the womb of Isaac], one son hated and one loved, both to be “born”
when the seven endtime years of tribulation begin. One son will be born as Esau
was—this will be the firstborn son of the last Adam and the last Eve;
this will be spiritual Cain, destined to be marked and banished from the
Promised Land. This firstborn son of the living Abraham will be as Ishmael was
to the first Abraham, loved but the son of bondage and not the promised heir.
Hence, this son is “hated” by God while yet in the womb. The other son will be born as Jacob was, and as
Abel was. This second son will be the living Jacob, loved by the Father because
this son, by faith and as a brand plucked from the fire, returned to obedience
and received the Holy Spirit. It is this son that understands when YHWH Elohim said, “Let us make [adam — lower case
“a”] in our image” (Gen 1:26), one deity spoke to another.
Therefore, when “in the image of
YHWH Elohim He created him; male and female He created them” (v. 27), the image of YHWH Elohim is two, not one, but only
one interacted with humankind; only one appeared to the seventy elders (Exod
24:9-11). It was this one who came as His Son to reveal the other, His God, to
human beings. With pedantic repetition, it must be understood
that natural Yes, the size of ancient Israel’s physical
expansion reflected the nation and its king’s obedience to the
commandments of God, and the geographical size of Israel under kings Saul,
David, and Solomon foreshadowed the amount of spiritual understanding Israel
would have during the first half of the seven endtime years [Saul], during the
latter half of these endtime years [David], and then during the Millennial
reign of Christ Jesus [Solomon]. Likewise, when the Philistines returned the
Ark of the Covenant to Israel in the days of Samuel, Israel put away the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and they
served the Lord only (1 Sam 7:4). The Philistines’ return of the Ark of the
Covenant is a shadow and copy of the resurrection of the Body of Christ through
receipt of the renewing Breath of God [Πνευμα
Άγιον], lost while the The territorial size of The Apostle Paul writes that there is secret and
hidden wisdom [knowledge] of God that is only available to those mature
disciples who are spiritual, or spiritually minded (1 Cor 2:6-13). The secret
things of God cannot be grasped by non-Believers, but are foolishness to them.
These secret things also cannot be grasped by lawless disciples, who are to the
Church as idolatrous Israelites were to ancient Israel—again, God
formerly used the geographical boundaries of Israel to disclose His pleasure or
displeasure with the nation; for as the nation lost knowledge of God, the
nation practiced idolatry, which then caused God to shrink national boundaries
by raising up enemies and empowering these enemies as He did the Babylonians.
And a disciple can see this process begin in 1 Kings 11, verses 9-14, 23-25,
29-35, and then can see the process play itself out with Assyria taking the ten
tribes forming the northern kingdom [that never quit participating in the sin
of Jeroboam] into captivity, and Nebuchadnezzar taking the southern kingdom
into captivity a century later. Note especially that idolatry caused the nation of
When a remnant of The Maccabean revolt by
physical “sons of light” came about to close the sealed and secret
prophetic shadow of the visions of the prophet Daniel, not because Traditional explications of the visions of Daniel
are prime examples of the spiritually illiterate assigning objects to
linguistic icons without understanding: if the visions of the prophet Daniel
were sealed and secret until the time of the end—and they were (Dan 12:4,
9; 10:13-14; 8:17, 26; 2:29, 45)—then the linguistic objects that God
intended to be assigned to the linguistic icons absolutely could not be
assigned to these icons until the time of the end, a generic period of less
than a generation. Although the Apostle Paul wrote, concerning the events that
occurred to ancient Israel, “Now these things happened to them as an
example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Cor 10:11 emphasis
added), he did not then realize that he, also, formed an example or type of
what would happen to those upon whom the end of the ages would truly come.
However, he may have anticipated the realization that he and his ministry was a
type of endtime Christianity when he wrote, You yourselves [the saints at But
perhaps only Luke, who abruptly ended the book of Acts, realized that all of
Scripture forms the shadow and copy [an example and type] of the living Book of
Life that exists only in the heavenly realm. Scripture now becomes a metaphor
for the Book of Life, a concept that would have confounded Nicodemus and today
confounds most of Christendom. The relationship between the Jesus of Scripture
and the Father and Son in the Book of Life is typified by the relationship
between Yah and YHWH. Thus, possessing the typological key of David is essential to
understanding Scripture. If disciples are epistles from Christ in the Book
of Life, then disciples as spiritual arks of the covenant become a comprehensible
subject. Every disciple is a representation of the physical Ark of the
Covenant, in that the disciple’s tent of flesh is the reality of the wood
ark. In every disciple’s tent of flesh is the Spirit of Christ Jesus (Rom
8:9), the true Bread that came down from heaven (John 6:31-35), whereas in the
physical And If the physical Ark of the Covenant is a copy and
shadow of spiritual arks of the covenant as the physical Levitical
priesthood served as a shadow and copy of the heavenly priesthood (Heb 8:5),
then the capture of the physical Ark of the Covenant forms the shadow and copy
of the capture of spiritual arks of the covenant—and the realization that
spiritual Israel was separated from Christ Jesus, from the promise of
resurrection, from the laws of God through the prince of this world taking
spiritual arks captive opens up the possibility of the return of these arks
from captivity in the same way that the Philistines returned the wood Ark when
the hand of the Lord was heavy on the Philistines for having taken it. It would have truly boggled Nicodemus’ mind
to perceive disciples as arks of the covenant. Now, how boggled are the minds
of endtime disciples when they realize that the Philistines’ physical
return of the Ark of the Covenant is the anticipation of Radical 16th-Century
Anabaptist Reformers’ rejection of the Roman Church and participation in
the politics of this world, an argumentative claim that cannot be fully
explored in this chapter, but a claim that is related to the equally
argumentative claim that King Solomon’s reign over Israel was a type and
copy of the Millennium. Thus, extending the claim without yet arguing it, the
men of Kiriath-jearim who came and took the ark and
brought it to the house of Abinadab for some twenty
years represent Anabaptist disciples who lament after the Lord (v. 2), ever praying for Christ’s
hurried return. In this analogy, the prince of this world is physically
represented by the Philistines, and spiritually represented by the * * * ©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 ] |