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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 Three Meaning
is assigned to words by the auditor. Words do not come with firmly attached
meanings. However, the assignment of meaning to words, linguistic icons, is not
arbitrary as French theoretical linguists contend, but limited by an element of
Thirdness that goes beyond being an historical trace. This element of Thirdness
incorporates, within disciples, the work of the Holy Spirit, which, again, is a
metaphoric expression for the creative power or force through which God works.
The Holy Spirit [Πνευμα
Άγιον – or Breath Holy] is not a deity, but a
property of deity as a man’s breath is the property of the man. And
through his or her breath, a person creates and causes others to create that
which he or she vocalizes. Thirdness, now, is not the linguistic icon [the
sound or inscribed image], nor is it the thing or object assigned to the icon.
Rather, it is the link that provides the stereotypical bond between the icon
and object. Thirdness, however, exists independent of the Holy Spirit. It is a
characteristic of language usage that is not dependent upon the person being
born of Spirit and hearing Jesus’ voice. It is what causes reading
communities to form, flourish, and eventually fail; for it bestows to an
otherwise dead language living properties. It is also what prevented sealed and
secret prophecies from being unsealed until the time of the end; for the
meanings [linguistic objects] assigned by Jewish and Christian reading
communities to the words flowing from Daniel’s visions were sufficient to
satisfy these reading communities from the Roman occupation of Judea forward in
history. The absence of additional or other assignment of meanings kept the
visions sealed until the generic time of
the end when expansive typological exegesis emerged within Sabbatarian
Christianity. Every literate person employs a strategy for
taking meaning from an inscribed text. Biblical students who contend that they
read the Bible literally, as if a word has an absolute meaning [words might
have had absolute meanings before God confused the language at Now, return to the visions of the prophet Daniel:
the biblical student who encounters the icon phrase /the king of the North/ doesn’t think of a demon, or a
Cross-shaped beast that represents Death, but of the object traditionally
assigned by his or her reading community. Most will think of the Seleucid king Antiochus
Epiphanes IV, the 2nd Century BCE Syrian-Greek king who ordered that
a statue of Zeus be place in the Holy of holies of the The Bible student who became a disciple of Herbert
Armstrong in the mid-20th Century will inevitably think of a future
European Union like that of the United States when encountering the icon phrase
the king of the North. He or she will
never, on the person’s own, be able to completely erase the stereotypical
image of a European Union, led by the Pope and subject to the Roman Church,
bringing an endtime crusade into the But the angel told Daniel that the visions were
for the time of the end, not for the 2nd and 3rd Centuries
BCE. The angel also told Daniel that the prince [sar] of The problem of how to assign meaning to words would
seem to have first entered Christianity when salvation was extended to
Gentiles, a differing reader community from circumcised natural Israelites, but
the problem of assigning meaning began before The problem of how to assign meaning to Scripture
became evident with the start of Jesus’ ministry … within a “reading
community,” a philosophical construction that can be taken to absurdity
by making every person a “community of one,” the assignment of
meaning to words is generally agreed upon, which doesn’t make the
assignment right or wrong but only the assignment accepted by the community.
Communication flows somewhat freely. Linguistic icons are uttered or inscribed,
and the community effortlessly assigns objects to these icons. Problems only
become apparent when an icon is used in an unfamiliar manner; such as Jesus
telling Nicodemus, Άμήν άμήν
λέγω σοι, έάν μή
τις γεννηθη
ανωθεν, ού δύναται
ίδειν τήν
βασιλείαν του
Θεου In English: ‘“Truly, truly, I say to
you, unless one is born again he cannot see the Nicodemus
understood procreation, but the icon Jesus used, γεννηθη, was unfamiliar in
the context of another birth, or a birth from above, or a return to the
beginning of life [ανωθεν], or God causing
procreation to occur. Thus, through the dynamics of dialogue, Nicodemus
attempts to deconstruct what Jesus
has just said by asking, ‘“How can a man be born when he is old?
Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be
born?”’ (John 3:4). Communication between Jesus and Nicodemus had
not occurred. Just hearing Jesus’ words was not enough for Nicodemus, who
could not assign a logical object to the icons Jesus uttered; he could not
grasp how a person could return to the beginning of life when old. Jesus’
word usage made no sense to him; hence, his question. Again, within the dynamics of dialogue where
utterance not understood can be immediately deconstructed through questioning,
Jesus patiently explained that unless one is born of the water of the womb [not
baptism], thereby acquiring the “breath” given to the first Adam,
and born of Spirit, the Breath of God [Πνευμα
Άγιον] acquired through the last Adam, a life-giving
spirit (1 Cor 15:54)—two births
are now linguistically present[1]—a
person cannot enter the kingdom of God (John 3:5). As the patient teacher,
Jesus then expounded on the concept of a second birth by saying that which is
born of flesh is flesh [being born of flesh is what being born of water
represents]; whereas, that which is born of the Breath of God is spirit [πνευμα]. Jesus then used
the type of doubling commonly seen linguistically in Hebrew but less often seen in Greek: He said,
‘“The wind [πνευμα] blows where it
wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or
where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of Spirit [Πνευμα]”’
(John 3:8). Jesus placed the focus of
a second birth on the type of doubling with which Nicodemus should have been
familiar through the community-accepted assignment of objects for the icon πνευμα. Obviously, the
multiple meanings assigned by 1st-Century Greek speakers to the icon
/πνευμα/
permitted this icon to be used as a metaphor for the creative and life-giving
power of God, which cannot be named directed by any human linguistic icon. The English icon /wind/ and the Greek icon /πνευμα/ are directly
interchangeable when these icons are assigned as their object outdoor
moving air. But the Greek icon also has the 1st-Century
assignment of deep breath [as in moving air], which was used by Jesus as a
metaphor for the out-of-this-universe creative power of God that gives life in
a manner similar to how physical breath gives life to flesh. But since the spiritual
power that gives this life is not of this dimension or of this physical realm,
the life that this power bestows is also not in this dimension. Thus, this life
received by the Breath of God grows and matures, and comes and goes unseen by
physical eyes as moving air is, itself, unseen. And Jesus makes this second
birth that of a metaphysical or supernatural life form that is born or created
within the person when he [or she] is old. The Apostle Paul adds insight to
this by identifying the fleshly body of a person as a tent of flesh. This
metaphysical life form that is an infant son of God temporarily resides in the
tent of flesh in a manner similar to how the self-aware or self-conscious old self dwelt apart from but
with the biologically driven stimuli that motivates the responses of the
flesh[2]. All of the above was too much for Nicodemus to
grasp. He asked, ‘“How can these things be?”’ (John
3:9). And the above was too much for Hellenist converts decades later to grasp.
It is, today, too much for most of Christendom to grasp. Thus, nonsensical
responses such as the pin-test
emerged to demonstrate that disciples are not today born of Spirit. But all the
pin-test proved was that the tent of
flesh in which the born of Spirit son of God temporarily dwelt bled red blood.
The spiritual life form produced by the second birth is not a physical entity,
but one that from its birth exists in the timeless heavenly realm. It is,
however, confined to the Tzimtzum
that opened when lawlessness was discovered in an anointed cherub. Again, this
rupture in the fabric of the heaven can be visually perceived in the earth
opening to swallow Korah and his fellow rebels (Num chap 16). The closing of
this Tzimtzum is referenced by the
Apostle John when he wrote, “And the world is passing away along with its
desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).
This closing is also seen in Revelation chapter 21, with the coming of a new
heaven and new earth. Those teachers of Even after Jesus patiently explained being born
anew when old, Nicodemus could not understand the metaphysical concept. So
Jesus asked, ‘“Are you the teacher of Jesus used metaphor, a specific figure of speech,
to place what receiving the Holy Spirit means in visible or earthly terms. From
the perspective of the heavenly realm, the born
again concept would be expressed differently, but in a not-comprehensible
manner by human beings confined in this physical realm. Human speech does not
well address that which cannot be seen or measured. Thus, no English linguistic
icon expresses the reality of a living entity composed only of elemental energy
although /angel/ is used to denote such living entities within our four
unfurled dimensions. In an earlier, more superstitious era, the icon /ghost/
was employed to approximate the personhood that had been errantly assigned in
the 5th-Century CE to the divine creative force for which Jesus used
the icon Pneuma [i.e., breath or
wind] as a metaphor. All of the above has bearing to the Hebraic
poetics of Genesis chapter one; for the lacunae
that exists between verses one and two represents a jump up, out of the
physical realm and into the heavenly realm where “what is” can only
be expressed in human languages through naming
icons that would seem to be mimetic representations of linguistic objects
in this world serving as metaphors for objects in the heavenly realm. The Holy
Spirit’s presence in Genesis 1:2 should “clue” auditors to
the realization the lacunae between
verses one and two denotes the conclusion of the physical creation story: what
part of the heavens [plural] and earth have not been created in the
declaration, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the
earth”? Any part? None that can be named, right? Thus, the naming
icons employed in the Genesis one creation account, the so-called
“P” account, establish relationships that can be humanly visualized
and comprehended. But when these naming
icons are used to represent linguistic objects that are different from the
objects most reader communities assign to these icons, Christian disciples
become as confused as was Nicodemus. Unfortunately, they seldom have the good
sense to keep quiet until they grasp how the language is being used. If the icon phrase /a seed-bearing tree/ doesn’t have the same assigned object as
an arborist would assign to the icon phrase, then those who teach that God
created vegetation, plants yielding seeds and trees bearing fruit, before He
created the sun and the moon teach without understanding and are as Nicodemus
was when he wondered how a man could again enter the womb. They, themselves, are
in need of a teacher, but their egos will hinder their ability to learn. They
are as so many bobble-head dolls nodding confirmation of those things they
learned from other bobble-heads. The Genesis chapter one creation accounts begins
(in English icons), “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth” (v. 1). Genesis’
second creation account, the so-called “J” account, says,
“These are the generations / of the heavens and the earth when they were
created, / in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens”
(Gen 2:4). What day is the day that the
Lord God made the earth and the heavens? Is this day not the period
referenced in Genesis 1:1? Can it be any other day? Or are both creation
accounts only myth as modern scholarship contends? In Hebraic thought, a day has two aspects, (1) the
dark portion that is represented by the concept of a twisting away or turning
away from the light, and (2) the hot portion of the day. The first day of the
“P” account will have two portions, a dark portion and a light
portion that comes out of the darkness rather than follows the darkness …
without the coming of the light from darkness, the darkness would remain. The
darkness doesn’t “end” when its time is up. It ends when
light comes. There is no period between darkness and light that is not an
attribute of “light.” Therefore, the day on which the first Adam was created doesn’t end until
there as a twisting or turning away from the light; hence the Lord walked in
the garden in the “cool of the day” (Gen 3:8), for Adam and Eve had
only shortly before “turned away” from God. Likewise, in the
“P” account, the first day doesn’t end until Jesus said,
“‘It is finished’” (John 19:30); for the last Adam had
then taken upon Himself the sins of Israel [as the reality of the Azazel goat]
as the first Adam had taken on the sin of Eve when he ate forbidden fruit. As discussed in chapter one, spiritual matters
cannot be discussed in anything but figurative language, with metaphors
representing other metaphors. Meaning cannot be assigned otherwise. Returning to reading communities assigning meaning
to words: no person can make sense of a linguistic icon if he or she is unable
to assign meaning to the sound or visual image comprising the icon. For a Roman
Catholic, the liturgy incorporates the saving grace of God; whereas for
Sabbatarian Christians, the Roman liturgy is vain repetition that rises to the level of proof necessary to
establish the falseness of the faith. Regardless of whether an auditor’s
assignment of meaning agrees or disagrees with assignments made by others, the auditor’s
assignment is based in the element of Thirdness within the person’s
reading community that doesn’t allow every object to be assigned to the
linguistic icon. Without this element of Thirdness, language would have less
stability than it presently has, and it doesn’t have much. Over a few
centuries, the meaning assigned to a word will move around like a sand bar in
Mark Twain’s A familiar scenario in which the common assignment
of meaning for English speakers disagrees with Scripture occurs when
encountering the icon /Satan/, or the
phrase /the devil/. The stereotypical
image is of a demented “being,” usually horned and red, with a tail
and holding a trident. But this image exists in direct contradiction to
Scripture: the Apostle Paul wrote, concerning false teachers who have disguised
themselves as apostles of Christ, “And no wonder, for even Satan
disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14). Ezekiel records
the words of the Lord, ‘“You were the signet of perfection, / full
of wisdom and perfect in beauty. / You were in Scholars recognize that two creation accounts
exist in the opening chapters of Genesis, but most of lay Christianity does
not. Lay literalists tend to believe that the man and woman created in Genesis
1:27 are Adam and Eve, but scholars, for all of their lack of faith in God,
are, simply, better readers of the text than lay literalists. They are not,
however, inspired readers. Nor are they particularly astute readers, for they
are themselves literalists of a different sort: they read a text [i.e.,
Scripture] that has been given in figures of speech throughout its entirety
with no spiritual awareness. They read seemingly mimetic passages such as the
history of the kings [or the return of the Ark of the Covenant] that function
as the metaphoric examples of what would and has happened to Christendom in the
heavenly realm through traditional academic assignments of objects to icons.
Scholars, virtually without exception, read by assigning meaning through
grammatico-historical exegesis. They read believing that they are reading the
writings of men—and they are—but believing that these men wrote
from their own intelligence for their own reasons. Scholars read without
knowingly acknowledging or even recognizing the unified construction of Scripture.
They do not find a unified text; they find, instead, fables and myths …
as sleeping dogs, let them lie. The truth is not in them. They can neither help
nor harm those disciples who take meaning from Scripture through typological
exegesis. Academic scholars are as decorated trees, the work of craftsmen,
fastened with traditions so that they cannot move, draped with ropes
representing much learning, topped with accolades that would make an angel in
heaven blush. They are the wise ones of the nations, but they are wood vessels
that will not endure the kiln of tribulation when the seven endtime years
begin. The problems of biblical scholarship were evident
in the 1st-Century. Rabbinical Judaism teaches that the Pharisees
were very good readers of Scripture, but Jesus said to Sadducees and Pharisees,
“‘Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the
law’” (John 7:19). What “law” did Jesus mean? The Jews
of the temple had constructed a strong hedge around the so-called Law of Moses, thereby ensuring that all
Moses wrote would be kept; yet Jesus said they were not keeping the law Moses
had given them, the law about which Paul wrote, “What shall we say, then?
That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a
righteousness that is by faith, but that When the lawyer asked Jesus,
“‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’”
(Luke 10:25), Jesus asked the lawyer, “‘What is written in the Law?
How do you read it?’” (v.
26). The lawyer answered correctly: love God and love neighbor (v. 27-28). Jesus told the lawyer to do
what he has just said, and he would have eternal life. But the lawyer wanted to
know who his neighbor was, thus revealing his lack of love for the stranger
within the land. The Law of
Moses contains both faith (Deu 30:1-2) and love (Deu 10:18-19). Any reading
of the law that does not foreground faith and love is not of God, but of the
prince of this world. And God changes not: any reading of Scripture today that
does not emphasize faith and love is to be rejected—and love toward God
and neighbor is keeping His commandments by faith. If Pharisees were as good of readers of Scripture
as rabbinical Judaism claims, then they would have realized that in this world, represented by the Hebrew icon olam
and which both conceals and reveals the things of God, faith is
the activating force that causes journeys to be undertaken, such as
Abraham’s from Ur to Haran to Canaan and Ezra’s journey from
Babylon to Jerusalem without soldiers and horsemen despite the gold and silver
that he carried (Ezra 8:22-23). This faith caused the parents of Moses to hide
him for three months, and caused Moses to lead a people out of After
Jesus had astonished the Sadducees by
saying the Theos was the God of the
living, not the dead, one of the Pharisees, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question to
test him: the lawyer asked, “‘Teacher, which is the great
commandment of the Law?’” (Matt 22:36) Jesus answered,
“‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And
a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two
commandments depend all of the Law and the Prophets’” (vv. 37-40) … the Law and the
Prophets [i.e., Moses and the Prophets] depend upon love; they are about love;
they describe love. And what was missing from the Pharisees reading of
Scripture was, first, love, then faith. Jesus established the juxtaposition that making a
man’s whole body well was spiritually analogous to circumcision making a
man’s outward appearance well (John 7:22-24). The Apostle Paul builds on
this concept by saying, Then he who is physically uncircumcised [whose
outer body is not “well”] but keeps the law will condemn you who
have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew
who is one merely outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a
Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit,
not by the letter. (Rom 2:27-29) Circumcised
hearts are first mentioned in the second covenant, the A person is inwardly “healed” or made
whole when the person, by faith, turns to God to love Him with heart and mind,
keeping His commandments and all that is written in Deuteronomy. Love and faith
and keeping the commandments—all are interlocked in Knowing the Lord. The Apostle John writes, “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, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God
is perfected” (1 John 2:3-5). The love of God being perfected in a disciple is
all about keeping the commandments by faith, not because the disciple is under
an external written law, but because the laws of God have been written on the
heart and placed in the mind. And the person who will not keep the
commandments—like the Moabite woman Orpah (Ruth 1:14-15)—will not
enter into God’s rest for lack of faith, but will die on the far side of
a spiritual river * After
Jesus answered the lawyer’s test question, saying all of the Law and the
Prophets hung on loving God and loving neighbor, while the Pharisees were still
gathered around Him, Jesus asked them a question that
they could not answer, a question that caused no one to dare ask any more
questions of Jesus: Now while the Pharisees were gathered together,
Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ?
Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He
said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord [Κύριον], saying, ‘The
Lord [Κύριος] said to my Lord [Κυριω], Sit
at my right hand, until
I put your enemies under your feet’? If
then David calls him Lord [Κύριον], how is he his
son?” (Matt 22:41-45) The Pharisees
couldn’t answer because of what had been revealed by Jesus, switching
from the Greek in which He addressed the Sadducees to Hebrew as initially seen
when He answered the question of what is the greatest commandment—Matthew,
transcribing the dialogue in Greek, renders the divine expression YHWH your Elohim (from Exod 20:2 and
elsewhere) as “Κύριον τόν
Θεόν” (Matt 22:37), for Matthew hears Jesus use Adonai as the pronunciation for the
sacred Tetragrammaton YHWH. [Adonai would have been translated as Kurion or Kurios.] Likewise, Matthew hears Jesus render the
first line of Psalm 110 as, “Said Adonai
to Adoni”; thus, Matthew
transcribed the uttered line as, “Κύριος
τω Κυριω.” Language usage
simultaneously conceals and reveals information. It will conceal from one
reading community what it reveals to another. The similarity in sound between Adonai and Adoni will cause a person transcribing the linguistic icons into
another language to use the same or a similar icon. Adonai becomes “the Lord,” in English. Adoni becomes “the Lord,” in
English. But Adonai is not used for
human lords. Its use is reserved for God, for the Tetragrammaton YHWH was considered too sacred to
pronounce until biblical illiterates made its pronunciation an article of faith
in Sacred Names assemblies. Thus, if
it were not for the irreverence of fundamentalist hill folks, YHWH would still be read as Adonai, not Yahweh—irreverence that causes these hill folks to deny the
divinity of Christ, thereby making the visible God of the Old Testament the
deity that Jesus came to reveal. Two days before
Jesus’ confrontations with the Herodians, the Sadducees, and the
Pharisees, Jesus entered Ώσανά
τω υίω Δαβίδ·
εύλογημένος ό
έρχόμενος έν
όνόματι
Κυρίου· Ώσανά
έν τοϊς
ύψίστοις That
is, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who
comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! (Matt 21:9) So
in His confrontation with the Pharisees, once the Pharisees answered
Jesus’ first question, ‘“What do you think about the Christ?
Whose son is he?”’ by saying, ‘“The son of
David’” (Matt 22:42), the Pharisees had linguistically trapped
themselves. They could squirm, but the crowd already thought that Jesus was the
blessed son of David. So all Jesus had to do to spring the trap was to quote
Psalm 110:1, which in the Septuagint seems somewhat innocuous: Αλληλουια
εζομολογη
σομαι σοι
κυριε εν ολη
καρδια μου εν
βουλη ευθειων
και συναγωγη In
Hebrew — לְדָוִד מִזְמֹור נְאֻם יְהוָה ׀ לַֽאדֹנִי שֵׁב לִֽימִינִי עַד־אָשִׁית אֹיְבֶיךָ הֲדֹם לְרַגְלֶֽיךָ׃ In
English — The Lord [YHWH]
says to my Lord [Adoni]: / “Sit
at my right hand, / until I make your enemies your footstool.” Again,
Jesus would have uttered Adonai when
He quoted the Tetragrammaton YHWH; instead
of attempting to pronounce YHWH,
Jesus would have used a word close in appearance and close in sound to what
David wrote when indicating that the Messiah would come as a man. And this is
what translation into English, especially, conceals: the Pharisees would have
realized that Jesus had pointed to the particular place in Scripture where the
Messiah is identified as a man, and as God in the form of a man. The missing
vowel that separates Adoni from Adonai is missing “breath.” What Matthew records in his gospel is not a
reading of the Septuagint translation of the Psalm, for Matthew records, Είπεν ό
Κύριος τω Κυρίω
μου, Κάθου έκ
δεξιων μου, εως
αν θω τούς
έχθρούς σου
ύποπόδιον των
ποδων σου; (Matt 22:44) Thus, with the crowd already calling Jesus the
beloved son of David, and now with Jesus pointing to where this Son of David
will be a man to whom David paid homage, the Pharisees have nothing they can
say. They are not about to pay homage to Jesus. Any accusations by them will
only incite the crowd, and they know what Jesus has just done to them; for they
were, as rabbinical Judaism contends, excellent readers of Scripture. Unfortunately, early Trinitarians used this
passage in Matthew to “prove” that Jesus was God—they were
not good readers … although rabbinical Judaism, Muslim apologists, and
Arian disciples pounce upon what Matthew records as if they were a litter of
tabby cats with a church mouse, each using the two /Κυριος/s to show a
mistranslation of Psalm 110:1, the recorded translation did take place, and did silence the Pharisees.
Today, rabbinical Judaism contends that this conversation never took place,
could not have taken place, and has to be a fiction. Again, Judaism’s
contention is that the Pharisees were excellent readers of text, that they knew
the Scripture, that they would have immediately disputed any assignment of the
same linguistic icons for both the Tetragrammaton YHWH and for Adoni; for
as a reader will note that in the Hebrew text, the first mention of deity in
the Psalm is that of YHWH, which,
again, the person quoting the Psalm from the Hebrew text would have voiced as Adonai. Thus, Judaism
“proof” that the verbal exchange did not occur is actually proof
that it did occur. If Jesus would have quoted the Psalm from the
Septuagint as He had quoted from Psalm 8 two days earlier when addressing the
chief priests and scribes, He would have used a differing icon for the second
/Lord/ than to repeat, varying only the case ending, the Greek icon Kurios. Therefore, the logical and only
assumption to be made is that Jesus quoted from Psalm 110 in Hebrew. The proper question is, then, why did Jesus change
from using Greek to the Sadducees to using Hebrew with the Pharisees—and
the answer lies in the remainder of Psalm 110, which addresses an endtime
situation when YHWH will, from Zion,
rule enemies and make clean His people; when YHWH will make Adoni [again,
a human Lord] a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, with this
elevated human Lord sitting at the right hand of YHWH and with this elevated human being shattering kings on the day
of his wrath. And Jesus, having two days earlier accepted the crowd calling Him
this son of David, now uses the one certain place where in Hebrew the Messiah
is shown to be an Adoni, a human
Lord. What are the Pharisees to say? When they answered
Jesus’ question about whose son is the Christ by saying that He is the
son of David, the Pharisees, knowing Scripture [and this is the key], had to
admit that the Christ would come as a man, as a human Lord, as Adoni. Jesus was not, when confronting these Pharisees,
then God in the flesh, fully man and fully God, as too many ignorant Christians
contend: He was a man, twice born (once of water and once of Spirit), who was
without sin and who had never been subject to sin, for His father wasn’t
the first Adam but Theos. And His physicalness concealed from the
Pharisees that He was the same entity into which the nation of * The
relationship between Adonai and Adoni aptly represented the relationship
between the world revealing the things of God and this world concealing those
same things of God. This relationship is also seen in Pneuma ’Agion.
[Πνευμα Άγιον] and deep
human breath, pneuma, with the
linguistic icon usually ascribed to deep breathing representing life received
from the creative power of God. Thus, what is revealed is that this Breath of God functions as human breath
does, but since it is not of this world,
it is not “breath” as human beings breathe but the activating life
force of living entities in the heavenly realm. The linguistic icons
representing “breath” are, at best, metaphors for this
supra-dimensional force, to which any assignment of personhood is infantile
silliness. The probability of 1st-Century CE
Pharisees grasping what Jesus revealed after He silenced the Sadducees was not
high. Even His disciples did not grasp what He had revealed prior to when they
were born of Spirit through receiving the Holy Spirit [Pneuma ’Agion] (John 20:22). The man Jesus of Nazareth came as the last Adam, a
life-giving spirit (1 Co 15:45). The first Adam was a type of the last Adam
(Rom 5:14), just as the glorified Jesus is a priest forever after the order of
Melchizidek (cf. Ps 110:4; Heb 5:6;
6:20; 7:1-22). This is what Jesus revealed to the Pharisees in advance of it
happening, and this is what the Pharisees understood but were not willing to
accept. The Logos as Theos accepted tithes from the patriarch
Abraham; for He was this Melchizidek who was “without father or mother or
genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life” (Heb 7:3).
And this Melchizidek came as His Son, His only (John 3:16); so it is right that
this Melchizidek’s presence in Scripture conceals from those who are
blinded by unbelief the perfection attained by the Cross, perfection that the
Levitical priesthood could not obtain through the blood of bulls and goats. And
in obtaining this perfection, the type vanishes as Scripture will when the void
passes away, but the reality resides and will reside at the right hand of the
Most High forever. Lofty language? All that is written on the hides
of lambs, on copper scrolls, on paper, in binary codes will pass away. Only
epistles written on the hearts of men, not with ink but with the soft Breath of
God will endure, will escape this bottomless void; only what is written in the
Book of Life will be read when fire closes the Tzimtzum opened by rebellion. These words will not survive except
as they cause human beings to repent of their lawlessness, turn to God, and by
faith mentally journey to spiritual Judea where the person will keep the
precepts of the Law, believing that Jesus is Lord and that the Father raised
Him from the dead. This journey, this profession of belief, this faith will be
counted as righteousness. This faith will cleanse the heart, permitting the
heart to be spiritually circumcised. This spiritual circumcision causes the
person to be of * * * ©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 ][ Print Article in PDF ] [1] Baptism by water is unto death, not life. The old self is put to death through baptism; for following death comes judgment (Heb 9:27). And with judgment now on the household of God (1 Pet 4:17), all who are of this household have died through baptism. [2] The concept of a second birth by Spirit when old negates the concept of human beings having immortal souls from birth. The two concepts are mutually exclusive. When the man Jesus had the divine Breath of the Father descend and light on Him in the form of a dove, He became the spiritual reality of the first Adam receiving the breath of Elohim [singular in usage] and then becoming a nephesh, a breathing creature. He fulfilled all righteousness by being “born of Spirit,” and He did not then have two spiritual lives dwelling within the tent of flesh born of the womb of Mary. As the reality of the Yom Kipporim sin offering for Israel, He had one physical life that would be lost on the Cross [the reality of the goat sacrificed on the altar] and one spiritual life received from the Father that would, according to Peter, proclaim obedience to the spirits in prison [the reality of the Azazel goat bearing the sins of Israel]. He was not born with an immortal soul, which would have been another spiritual life [there are not two Azazel goats annually led into the wilderness by the hand of a fit man]. |