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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 Four The
disciple practicing typological exegesis “reads” the history of
ancient Yes, the argumentative claim
being made is that the Church is today spiritually lifeless through having lost
the Holy Spirit, the divine Breath of God, in the 1st-Century when
the age of “miracles,” the speech-acts of the Father executed in
this physical realm, ceased to occur. This claim will further declare that the
spiritual Body of Christ, the Church, died while the Apostle Paul yet lived
physically (all of Asia had left him before he was killed in Rome – 2 Tim
1:15); that this spiritual corpse hung historically visible but lifeless as
Jesus’ body hung on the Cross from 3:00 pm to almost sundown; that this
spiritual corpse ceased to be visible when the mystery of lawlessness, at work
when Paul wrote his second epistle to the Thessalonians, caused disciples to quit
living and walking as Jesus lived and walked (1 John 2:3-6). When disciples
could no longer say that they knew Christ
Jesus by how they lived, a statement evident by disciples not just
practicing lawlessness but glorying in sin, the lifeless Body of Christ disappeared
into the heart of the earth as Jesus’ physical body had when placed in
the garden tomb, and as Jonah had when swallowed by the great fish.
Additionally, this claim declares that the Body of Christ will again live when
the Holy Spirit [Πνευμα
Άγιον] empowers the Church in a manner foreshadowed by
what occurred on that day of Pentecost following The claim is not that
self-identified Christians are not the Body of Christ, but that these disciples
do not today have the Holy Spirit, the divine Breath of God … how does a
“Christian” know whether he or she has been truly born of Spirit?
Does baptism into the Body of Christ mean that the person has automatically
received the Holy Spirit? It does not, does it? For baptism is into death, the
death of Christ Jesus. Through baptism, the disciple dies with Christ and
becomes part of the dead Body of Christ. The Apostle Paul wrote, Therefore, as the trespass of
one [alternate reading] led to condemnation for all men, so the act of
righteousness of one [alternate reading] leads to justification and life for
all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners,
so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the
law came in to increase the trespass[1],
but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also
might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ
our Lord. What shall we say then? Are
we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism
into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory
of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall
certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom
5:18–6:5 emphasis added) Sin reigns in the Church.
Yes, it does! Just look at which day the Church, with a few exceptions,
assembles together. Not on the Sabbath, but on the following day, when no one
can enter into the rest of God; when attempted entrance into God’s rest
is disobedience to God. Historically, the Church failed to enter into
God’s rest while the promise of entrance stood (Heb 3:16–4:11); so
as the Lord delivered to ancient The “Christian Church”
willfully transgresses the Sabbath commandment, and to break the Law in one
point is to break the Law (Jas 2:10). Thus, the Church can be likened to the
nation that left Egyptian slavery only to die in the wilderness of Sin/Zin for
its unbelief and disobedience. This nation was dead when it refused to enter
into God’s rest by faith when the spies returned (Num chap 14). Instead
of entering into God’s rest (Ps 95:10-11), this nation rebelled against
God. And in forty years that were as forty days, all of the nation counted in
the census (Num 1:1-2), except for Joshua and Caleb, perished as a man perishes
when raised up on a cross. This is correct! The cross doesn’t kill
immediately, but slowly suffocates the person raised up by taking away his or
her breath—in the forty years when neither sandals nor clothes wore out
(Deu 29:5), the men counted in the census, one by one, lost their breath and
returned to dust where they await resurrection (Ezek 37:1-6). The Church lost
its Breath, the Holy Spirit, and now awaits resurrection. How does a person know
whether he or she has the Holy Spirit? The Apostle Paul wrote, For those who live according
to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live
according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the
mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and
peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not
submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. (Rom 8:5-7) The mind set on the flesh; the mind that does
not and cannot submit to God’s law; the mind that has not been renewed
through spiritual birth—this mind remains consigned to disobedience (Rom
11:32), to lawlessness, to the prince of this world. This mind has not been set
free from bondage to disobedience. It cannot keep the commandments; it has to
break the commandments in at least one point. And again, to break the
commandments in one point is to break the Law. Thus, false apostles, deceitful
workmen, servants of Satan who has disguised himself as an angel of light [it
is no wonder then that his ministers also “disguise themselves as
servants of righteousness” – 2 Cor 11:14-15] inevitably teach
“Christians” to keep nine of the commandments, or eight of the
commandments (depending on whether these false apostles are Protestants or
Catholics), but not all of the commandments, thereby causing spiritually
lifeless “Christian converts” to confuse warm, fuzzy feelings in
their hearts with being born of Spirit … the disciple born of Spirit will
keep the commandments, and will spurn all lawlessness, including
breaking civil codes that do not conflict with the commandments of God.
Therefore, the endtime disciple who, without moral qualms, speeds down the
highway five or ten miles an hour over the speed limit willingly and willfully
transgresses the law, and needs to realize that he or she is spiritually
lifeless. At best, this disciple will be a brand plucked from the Gehenna fire when he or she turns to God
and begins to live within both God’s laws and civil laws because of an
inner compulsion to be law-abiding. The person who is born of
Spirit has been mentally set free from being a bondservant to disobedience,
whereas the person who has not been born of Spirit remains consigned to disobedience,
and remains unwilling to keep the commandments, especially the Sabbath
commandment. But keeping the Sabbath does not mean that a person has,
necessarily, been born of Spirit. Rabbinical Judaism keeps the Sabbath, but
remains spiritually lifeless because without faith, a person cannot please God.
And the faith necessary for an Observant Jew to receive a spiritually
circumcised heart (a euphemistic expression for the equally euphemistic
expression of the laws of God being written on the heart and placed in the
mind) is to profess that Jesus is Lord and to believe that the Father [whom
physically circumcised Israel never knew] raised Jesus from the dead (Rom
10:6-9). The Observant Jew must come to realize that the God [Theos] of the dead Abraham, the dead
Isaac, and the dead Jacob died when He came as His Son to die physically and
live again spiritually as the firstborn of many brethren, all sons of the
Father. Thus, the man Jesus became the living Abraham, the father of the
faithful, whose promised offspring is the living Isaac and the living Jacob.
The Father is to Him as Yah was to
the first Abraham. The test of whether a person
has been born of Spirit is whether the person will, by faith, keep the precepts
of the law, and whether this person will, by faith, love God and neighbor more
than he or she loves his or her own life. And while many will come claiming to
have faith and love, these many will not keep the Sabbath, nor will these many
reach out with all of their strength to bring others into covenant with God.
They will not serve on the same terms as Paul served (2 Cor 11:12), but will
ask for financial compensation for what they have been freely given. They are
to be avoided; for it would be better for those who sell the gospel if they had
never heard the name Jesus of Nazareth. This is doubly true for all who teach
lawlessness to, or within the Church. Joseph of Arimathea went to
Pilate to ask for Jesus’ body. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and
aloes. The two of them bore away Jesus’ dead body, bound it in linen
cloth as was the custom, and laid it in the Garden Tomb as the High Sabbath was
about to begin … while Israel roasted with fire the nation’s
Passover lambs, killed after the darkness that began with the crucifixion ended
with Jesus’ death (Matt 27:45), the Passover Lamb of God laid dead in the
heart of the earth, roasting in the fiery sins of Israel that He had taken upon
Himself. The Church, today, roasts in its fiery sins that it has taken upon
itself through its lawlessness. God will not be mocked. Repentance by the
lawless Church has become Peter crying Wolf;
for the Church continues in visible sin week after week while believing that
through Grace it has been “saved.” Saved from what? Certainly
not from bondage to disobedience; for the history of Christendom is the sorry
story of idolatry and openly manifest sin in the name of Christ Jesus. How do
the Borgias differ from the Armstrongs? In magnitude only? Before God, does
murder on the The mantle of Jesus’
righteousness, Grace, put on daily as natural That the Body died and is
lifeless does not mean, however, that
Scripture has failed; for again, not all who belong to When the Body of Christ is resurrected in the
darkness of the single long night that began at Have I then become your enemy by telling you the
truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you
out, that you may make much of them. … I wish I could be present with you
now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you. Tell me, you who desire
to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that
Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son
of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman
was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Disciples
are not under the Sinai Covenant, but under the Moab Covenant, the second
covenant mediated by Moses—it is this second covenant to which better
promises were added when its mediator became Christ Jesus. The Sinai Covenant
was abolished utterly (Eph 2:14-15) when its Grantor was slain by its Grantee.
The ordinances that physically divided peoples have no relevance to the better
covenant, initially ratified by a song, not the shedding of blood; for it is the copies of heavenly things that are
purified with blood, not the heavenly things themselves for which better
sacrifices purify, such as the rainbow (Gen 9:12-17) or the second song of
Moses (Deu 32:1-43). The Circumcision Faction consisted of those Jewish
converts, including some of the leading men at If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would
keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may
come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised
person shall eat of it. There shall be one law for the native and for the
stranger who sojourns among you. (Exod 12:48-49) Thus says the Lord God: No foreigner,
uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the
people of Before Christ, anyone who would eat of the
Passover must be physically circumcised. In the Millennium, anyone who enters
God’s sanctuary must be physically and spiritually circumcised, with the
introduction of circumcision of the heart made in the Can endtime disciples begin to see why the Holy
Spirit left the Body of Christ, and left a visible corpse hanging crucified?
Thousands of natural Israelites believed that Jesus was the Christ, and
believed that the Sinai Covenant still made them the holy nation of God (Exod 19:5-6).
Gentile converts were given the decision of the Jerusalem Council that they
needed only to abstain from the things polluted by idols, from meats that had
been strangled, from blood, from sexual immorality, with whatever else they
needed being heard when Moses was read every Sabbath (Acts 15:20-21), which for
the Greek living as a Greek would represent a journey of faith of a similar
distance and quality as the journey the patriarch Abraham took from Ur of the
Chaldeas to Haran, then from Haran to Canaan. What is wrong with the above picture of the mid-1st
But the situation with the Gentile converts was
even more appalling: only for the Greek who lived as a Greek was abstaining
from meats offered to idols, from meats strangled, from blood, from sexual
morality a journey of faith sufficient to cleanse the heart. For the Greek who
was reared in a “Christian” home, no journey of faith occurred if
this child did only what his or her parents (who had left paganism) did. No
heart was cleansed. Even though this child was “sanctified” because
of one parent’s conversion, the child was only made holy in the manner
that all of natural The above also applied to the natural Israelite
who was the child of a Jewish “Christian” convert: this child must
also make a journey of faith equivalent to the journey Abraham made. This
child’s parent made such a journey when he or she professed that Jesus is
Lord and believed that God the Father, the God this Jew did not previously
know, raised Jesus from the dead. When a generation, descended from Jewish and
Hellenist converts, journeyed no farther than its parents had mentally trekked,
the Body of Christ died even though the Jesus Movement was still visible for
the world to see. Once dead, the Body was made “sweet” smelling by
the addition of pagan doctrines and philosophies [equivalent to the myrrh and
aloes Nicodemus brought to Jesus’ natural body], teachings that were
popularly accepted by learned scholars. But the Body of Christ no longer had the
Holy Spirit. The visible Church became an organization of this world,
controlled by the prince of this world, maintained as a useful tool to control
rebellious elements within his own reigning hierarchy. The lifeless Body of
Christ was buried in the Scripture has not failed. Christ has not failed. Metaphors become entangled around ankles, tripping
disciples who, as spiritual zombies, stagger about blind and deaf, unable to
see the trail markers for a journey of faith of the duration and quality of the
journey Abraham had made while still uncircumcised. With pedantic repetition:
without making a journey of faith comparable to Abraham’s, hearts are not
cleansed, not circumcised, and the disciple is not counted as part of the
household of God upon whom judgment has come (1 Pet 4:17). And if not now under
judgment, the disciple will not have a part in the first resurrection. The disciple entangled in figures of speech
advertises that he or she is not under the law but under Grace without
understanding that this disciple has not covered him or herself with Christ
Jesus’ righteousness, but is covered only by natural grace through remaining
a bondservant to disobedience and the prince of this world. Yes, this disciple
has presented him or herself as an obedient servant to sin by attempting to
enter God’s rest on the following day, the eighth day. This disciple (and
the nation of such disciples) is directly analogous to The lawlessness of the visible Church is covered
by its continued servitude to the prince of this world, servitude that remains
uninterrupted despite the disciple being born of Spirit. This born again
disciple is, until he or she undertakes a journey by faith, as a Hebrew infant
of less than eight days of age was in ancient Israel, a potential member of the
holy nation if this infant son of God survives for a week and is taken to be
circumcised on the eighth day. The eighth day represents entering into judgment;
represents being made a party to the great White Throne Judgment after the
Thousand Years conclude. On the sacred calendar, this great White Throne
Judgment is represented by Great Last Day, the high Sabbath day following the
seven days of Sukkot; the eighth day of the main crop harvest Feast. It is not
when disciples who have been, today, born of Spirit want to enter God’s
rest. There are two harvests of God, one at
Christ’s coming for all who were spiritually circumcised on a figurative
eighth day; then a second harvest after the Thousand Years. The early harvest
is that of firstfruits, of whom Jesus was First. This harvest is represented by
The harvest of firstfruits enters or entered into
God’s rest, represented by the seventh day Sabbath, through the promise
of entrance (Heb 4:1) made to those disciples who hear Jesus’ words and
believe Him who sent Jesus (John 5:24). Hearing and believing the Son and the
Father are represented through keeping, by faith, the precepts of the law (Rom
2:26) as the outer expression of inner love toward God and neighbor. Upon this
person—the one who hears and believes; who keeps the precepts of the
law—judgment does not come, for this person has passed from death to life
through being spiritually circumcised on that eighth day. Nevertheless, the
disciple who journeys far enough to cleans his or her heart, then turns from
doing good and does what is evil will be resurrected to condemnation; for the
person has voluntarily returned to death when judgment was not upon the person. In effect, firstfruits are under ongoing judgment
without condemnation if the firstfruits remain in covenant with Christ Jesus.
Firstfruits leave the covenant through hypocrisy, through knowing good but
choosing to do evil when good could have been done; for firstfruits have been mentally
liberated from bondage to disobedience. Sin has no dominion over them. They are
free to keep the commandments of God. It is only the weakness of the flesh that
brings them into disobedience. But even as these words are being written, within
the bowels of the dead Body of Christ, a stirring to life has begun—and
spiritually circumcised disciples are aligning themselves as one of two sons by
promise, one son hated, one loved but deceitful, a usurper who will not wait
for God to breathe His divine Breath into the nostrils of the Body but steals
glory as if it were gold as this son seeks to Preach the Gospel & Prepare a People. What this usurper claims,
though, will not happen. Rather, the hated son, struggling in the womb of Grace
with his righteous brother, will bloody his righteous brother’s nose so
that his brother cannot breathe when born, but will die for lack of Breath.
Only a remnant of the loved son will see the end of his hated brother. When the Apostle Paul introduced the literary
trope that would have mid-1st Century Christians being the living
Isaac, he did not extend the trope to its logical conclusion. But the disciple
practicing typology exegesis understands that the two sons of the living Isaac
will be born empowered by the Holy Spirit in the near future, with this
empowerment constituting their “birth.” And when born empowered,
the garment of Grace that will have made both sons acceptable sacrifices to God
will be stripped away. The Son of Man will be revealed (Luke 17:30), Head and
Body. When revealed, the Son of Man will be covered only by individual
obedience. The mystery of lawlessness has, indeed, been at
work within the bowels of Christendom, causing spiritual dehydration and
diarrhea that weakened the crucified Body and left it unable to long live on
the Cross of Christ. Though presently somewhat restrained, this mystery of
lawlessness defiled the spiritual kinsmen of those early disciples who
practiced typology exegesis … Israel was a vassal nation within the Roman
Empire with control only over the geographical territory representing the
temple mount when the Logos came as
the man Jesus of Nazareth. Then in the physical nation’s rebellion
against Roman rule in 70 CE, the temple was destroyed and So
once Israel’s idolatry reached a certain level, God gave Israel statutes
by which the nation could not live, statutes that caused Israel to continue
burning the nation’s firstborns (Ezek 20:25-26), thereby transforming
Israel into a vessel of wrath, a vessel prepared for destruction in the same
way that Christ Jesus as the Master Potter forms lawless disciples into vessels
of wrath to be endured for a season, vessels prepared for destruction as Judas
Iscariot was given to Jesus as a son of destruction. The mystery of lawlessness served as a bacterial
inflection producing weakness in the Body that led to an early demise—the
Body was destined to die through loss of the Holy Spirit. This is what the
metaphor reveals. But instead of stripes, the lungs of the Body filled with
fluid as if pneumonia, the drowning in its own fluids, were the cause of its
death. Thus, as Jonah prayed from the belly of the fish, so too prays the Body
today: Out of the belly of the grave, I
cried, and you, O Lord, heard me. For you cast me into the darkness that passed
over me as waves. Then I said, “I am driven from your sight; yet I shall
again look upon your holy temple.” Death took my life, darkness
surrounded me. Metaphors were wrapped about my head until I could not longer
think straight. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet
you brought me to life again. When my breath was fading away, I remembered you,
O Lord. My prayer came to you, to your holy temple. Those who paid respect to
idols have passed into nothingness; they forsook their hope of your steadfast
love. They have returned to their vomit where they perished as dogs among
wolves. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will offer sacrifice to you. I
will hear your words. I will keep the precepts of your law. And what I have
vowed, I will pay, for salvation belongs only to you. Salvation
doesn’t belong to the Buddhist, or to the Muslim, or to the Hindi. It
doesn’t belong to the urban atheist who worships this world. It
isn’t a many-spoke wheel with many paths to heaven. Salvation belongs
only to * From
the perspective of hindsight, it is not difficult to understand what happened
to the Church in especially the 2nd and 3rd Centuries CE:
the decision made at the Jerusalem Council created the standard or benchmark of
faith/belief that cleansed hearts so that they could be spiritually circumcised.
This benchmark was the faith displayed by Abraham before he was circumcised
(Rom 4:11-12). Whereas Abraham had taken a physical journey from Ur to the
Promised Land, then had believed God that his offspring would come from his
dead loins, with this belief counted to him as righteousness (Gen 15:2), the
Jerusalem Council determined converts needed to make a mental journey of an
equivalent distance, and then needed to have belief equivalent to
Abraham’s. For a Pharisee, the mental journey and belief would be
professing that Jesus is Lord, and believing that the Father raised Jesus from
the dead (Rom 10:9), and this certainly was a difficult journey for a Pharisee to
make, for For a Gentile convert who came from polytheism,
acknowledging a second deity was not a difficult journey. However, beginning to
live as a Judean was an extremely difficult journey. For a Greek to abstain
from blood, from meats strangled (so as to retain the blood), and from meats
offered to idols; then to abstain from sexual immortality (meaning no more
visits to temple prostitutes)—well, this journey of changed lifestyle was
as long a trek for the pagan Greek to make from his former culture as
Abraham’s journey to Canaan was geographically distant from Chaldea. The same quality of mental journey was required
for both the Jew and for the Greek, with the same standard of belief through
faith for cleansing hearts (Acts 15:9) also required. But because the Jew and
the Greek didn’t start their journeys from the same mental territory,
they don’t end up in the same place even though the one has journeyed as
far as the other. It would take at least the journey of a second generation
before Gentile converts arrived at the same mental landscape as where Jewish
converts arrived in the first generation. And here is where and why the Church
left Paul: the second generation of Gentile converts was taught by immature
leaders that it needed to physically do no more than the first generation did.
The children of Greek converts were taught that all that was required of
Christians was to abstain from blood, strangled meats, idolatry, and sexual
immorality. Today, those ministers of spiritual Israel who champion sola scriptura still teach disciples
that nothing more is required of Christians than was set forth by the Jerusalem
Council. If a young person grows up in a home professing
that Jesus is Lord and believing that God raised Jesus from the dead, grows up in
a home that does not eat blood or meats strangled, grows up in a home that
doesn’t knowingly practice idolatry or sexual immorality, how far from
home does this young person journey when the young person continues in the
faith of his or her parents? Does this child of faith journey far enough to cleanse
his or her heart? No! Absolutely not! And if a person wants to know how sin and
death became so imbedded within the Christian Church, a person doesn’t
have to look any further than the Jerusalem Council: the decision of the
Council was not understood by those who received benefit of that decision.
Immature Greek converts, not understanding the secret and hidden things of God,
thought that they were mature. Thus, they all left Paul while Paul still lived
(cf. 2 Tim 1:15; Phil 3:18), taking
with them the epistles of Paul, but twisting these epistles into instruments
for their own destruction (2 Pet 3:16). Every disciple must take—baseline
requirement—a mental journey of faith [physical pilgrimages don’t
count] equivalent to the physical journey Abraham made from But the route from If a fellow in, say, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
spurns the materialistic and amoral values of 21st-Century America
and chooses to live a simple life of serving others, this fellow has, like
Anabaptists in the 16th-Century, started that long journey from
Babylon to Jerusalem. How far this fellow has to go on his journey is between
him and God. Greek converts were expected, once they quit eating blood and
frequenting prostitutes, to listen to Moses read every Sabbath. Coming before
God on the Sabbath was entering into God’s rest, something that cannot
be done on the following day. So for this fellow in Philadelphia who has
started well as a 1st-Century Greek who had quit eating meats
strangled or offered to idols would have started well, growth in grace and
knowledge remains before him through listening to Moses read every Sabbath. The
expectation of God is that the fellow will enter into God’s rest while
the promise of entering remains (Heb 4:1), for this promise ends if continued
lawlessness causes Christ Jesus to form the fellow into a vessel of wrath, a
certain reality for all who do not keep the percepts of the law. Today, the spiritual condition of the lifeless Christian
Church can be discerned by the amount of knowledge and the understanding
disciples, collectively, possess—and what is observable to all who are
spiritual is that the greater Church continues to dwell comfortably in
spiritual Babylon where it worships the Adversary’s golden idol.
Actually, spiritually circumcised Israelites almost don’t exist. The
world has absorbed those who would be of The Christian Church spiritually looks like how
physical An assertion will here be made that the return of
a remnant of The assertion that the return of physical When the prince of this world hijacked Christendom
(this capture made through the mystery of lawlessness when the Jesus Movement
was without form or structure but existed as an energetic fog of electrons
surrounding an atom’s nucleus exists), the prince of this world needed to
create a structure by which he could compel disobedience to God while not
seeming to reject or rebel against God. The first Eve rebelled against God when
she listened to the serpent, then decided for herself to determine good and
evil. The last Eve rebelled by determining for herself what is good and evil.
The woman taking upon herself the authority to determine good and evil was,
itself, evil; for the woman is to remain silent, learning from her husband. She
is not to speak words that are not her Husband’s. But the As in the story of the Philistines, the hand of
the Lord was heavy against the early Universal Church, causing many to be
martyred (including Justin Martyr) as they errantly practiced lawlessness in
the name of Christ Jesus … the martyrdom of so many saints, especially
during the reign of Nero, wasn’t because of how righteous these saints
were, but rather, occurred so that God could see if they loved their physical
lives more than Him; for these saints were unwilling to openly obey God,
unwilling to keep the commandments of God, unwilling to practice Sabbath
observance or observe the High Sabbaths of God. These saints were unwilling to
do any thing that might be perceived as “Jewish.” They derided,
ridiculed, and spurned disciples who, by faith, clung to the traditions of the
first Apostles. Therefore, because the majority of then visible Christendom was
unwilling to be openly identified with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
God brought open demonstration of faith to them in the form of mass martyrdom. Jesus said that a disciple isn’t above his
or her teacher or a servant above his (or her) master (Matt 10:24), that it is
enough for a disciple to be like the teacher. ‘“If they called the
master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his
household”’ (v. 25).
Hellenist converts rejected the teachings of Christ Jesus rather than be
maligned as Jews. And the spiritual
glory that should have been theirs returned to God when they denied Christ by
their lawless practices. The dead, wood Ark of the Covenant disappeared
when the glory of the Lord left the temple (Ezek chap 10). It never returned:
neither the Ark of the Covenant, nor the glory of God returned to the destroyed
temple. Nor did the The glory of God wasn’t in the Church once
God delivered this last Eve into the hand of Satan for the destruction of the flesh,
but God’s absence was barely noticed as the Church dealt with emperors
and despots, generals and infidels. God’s absence wasn’t noticed as
the Church sent forth crusades to capture a The Ark wasn’t returned when Cyrus, king of
Persia, brought out the vessels of the house of God that King Nebuchadnezzar
had carried away (Ezra 1:7-11). The physical Many disciples have wondered about why no
miracles; why isn’t God working in the same way now as He worked in the 1st-Century?
The answer is simple: the Body died. The glory of God left the Body, the
spiritual temple, when God delivered * * * ©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 ] [1]
Prior to the giving of the Law from atop Mount Sinai, sin or lawless was not
counted or reckoned against human beings even though all men sinned and were
under the penalty of death (Rom 5:13); thus, the giving of the law increased
the trespass, thereby making those to whom the law was given responsible for
sin. Thus, the death penalty for
sin had to be “covered” through animal sacrifices, added because of
the lawlessness of [2]
When So when
the |