Water & Fire 2006: Living Metaphors - “J” is to “P” as Stone is to Spirit

Water & Fire 2006:

Initially partially e-published as the Sukkot 2006 Seminar Series for the Port Austin Bible Center—

Living Metaphors

“J” is to “P” as Stone is to Spirit

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Chapter Five

Modern scholarship noticed that the creation account of Genesis chapter 1:1 through chapter 2:3 differed in order and in focus from a second creation account that ran from Genesis chapter 2:4 through to the end of chapter two. The first creation account [the so-called “P” account] ended with the Sabbath; its focus seemed to be the seven day week cycle. The second creation account [the so-called “J” account] seemed to end with the institution of marriage; its focus seemed to be centered on the relationships human beings have with the world in which they live. And because the order of creation differed radically, with adam [lower case “a”] created last in the “P” account and with Adam [upper case “A”] created first in the “J” account, modern scholars rejected the traditionally held belief that the creation of humankind in the image of Elohim, male and female (Gen 1:27), referred to the creation of Adam and Eve (Gen 2:21-24); that the “J” account chronologically followed the “P” account. Modern scholars deduced that both creation accounts were myths; that the two accounts had separate origins; that Moses had written neither; that the “P” account was written post-Babylonian captivity; that the “J” account was older in origin and probably from the Northern Kingdom before it was taken captive by Assyria.

All of the above was quite a bit to deduce when the keel of Christianity has traditionally been the infallibility of Scripture: if the first chapters of Genesis are myths of not particularly great antiquity, then the Bible is a collection of human writings that lack the profundity of being the Word of God. Human beings can live their lives how best they see fit, with acceptance of ethnic diversity as an obtainable heaven. Death, now, becomes something to be avoided; for with death, life ends. There is no more anything. And if only these modern scholars could convince militant extremists (that would return humankind to the 7^th-Century CE if they could) of how wrong religious fundamentalism is, then humanitarianism would usher in a utopian era of peace and harmony, good vibrations and green living.

Before proceeding, what modern scholarship has been unable to ascertain or to appreciate is the unity of Scripture, which reaches across inscribed text to shadow and foreshadow living texts that have inscribed their own history and their own stories without awareness of what they were recording. The relationship disclosed between wind [B<,L:"], human breath [B<,L:"], and divine Breath [A<,L:" U(4@<] is the relationship that is seen in Scripture between the man Adam, the man Jesus, and the glorified Father and Son; and between the man Israel, the nation Israel, and glorified saints. The nation Israel begins as the physically circumcised descendants of the patriarch, becomes the spiritually circumcised descendants, and finally is the physically and spiritually circumcised descendants when Christ no longer covers Israel with His righteousness. The relationship between Yah and YHWH mimics the relationship seen between the man Israel and the spiritually circumcised nation Israel. The history of how physically circumcised Israel kept the commandments reveals the spiritual health of the visible Church while the Body of Christ was “buried” in Babylon.

One such relationship could well be coincidental. Two or three such relationships could be, likewise, coincidental although the probability for coincidence has greatly diminished. But where everything recorded in Scripture becomes a copy and type of perceivable, metaphysical phenomena, coincidence is no longer a viable explanation for why one event among many has been inscribed and another event has not been; for much more occurred to the patriarchs and to the nation of Israel than is recorded in Scripture. There are, in one place, four hundred plus missing years. Why? Because the books of the Maccabees are not of the same literary quality as Samuel, Kings, or Chronicles? No, not at all. The books of the Maccabees do not form the shadow of how the spiritual Sons of Light, lead by Christ Jesus, will break the reign of the spiritual king of the North over heavenly Jerusalem. The heavenly defeat of the king of the North is recorded beforehand by the Prophets, especially Daniel, Zechariah, and John the Revelator.

Traditionally, biblical scholars have been historians and anthropologists first, then literary readers of Scripture. They have not understood the literary complexity of Scripture. Their thoughts are not usually organized in metaphoric and metonymic representations, but in tangible objects. Therefore, they are as blind men trying to describe an elephant, with this elephant caged in literary tropes, in the recorded figurative language Jesus uttered so that the prophecy of Isaiah would continued to be fulfilled by all those who have not been born of Spirit (Matt 13:11-15).

A cop-out? Saying that only those who have been born of Spirit can understand the literary tropes used to convey knowledge of another dimension to human beings unable to enter that dimension? How can the existence of that dimension be proven? How much must be accepted on faith? Everything? Including the new clothes of the emperor? Or can a reasonable person, even if not born of Spirit, perceive the logic that makes Scripture true and the writings of other belief paradigms false? That exclusiveness is the essence of Christianity—that only Christianity, not even Judaism, possesses “the truth.” And it is this claim to the exclusive possession of truth that scholars find most troubling, for the historical trail that visible Christianity has left through the past two millennia is anything but stellar. In fact, visible Christianity has made Christianity a hissing and curse in this world. But in the exegesis paradigm of all Scripture being figurative speech, the Body of Christ has been dead and buried, lifeless and concealed from sight since sometime during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, if not before when Jerusalem was sacked. The Body has certainly been dead since the mid-1^st Century when the age of visible miracles passed quietly away. Oh, there have been a few miracles since, but they have not been used for the public advancement of the gospel of Christ Jesus.

If the Body of Christ has been dead and buried, not visible for anyone to see, what then is visible Christianity?

Christianity is the belief paradigm of the disciples of Christ Jesus, who were Observant Jews that believed Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, the son of the living God (Matt 16:16). All who are disciples of Jesus will walk in this world as their master and teacher walked (1 John 2:3-6), having love for one another and observing the commandments of God (all of them, including the Sabbath commandment) and delivering the speech-acts of their God and Father.

Can any scholar honestly say that a religious schema that does not teach its adherents to keep the commandments is of Christ Jesus? No scholar can. Instead, the scholar is forced to discuss the evolution of the belief paradigm of the “Jesus Movement” as Greek philosophers adopted “Christianity” and carried the name of Christ into the far corners of the Roman Empire.

Was this Jesus Movement a Trojan horse? The work of a brilliant strategist, a man of twists and turns, a second Odysseus, a spirit being like Odysseus, with his story told by a second Homer? What a way for the Greeks, known for their intellect and for their deceit, to “defeat” Rome. As the old adage goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. There was more than one way to defeat Rome and its emperor-worship. If Greek military prowess could not prevail against Roman legions on land, and if Greek ships could not withstand the ramming of Roman ships at sea, then Greeks could fight Rome where “Greek thought” had demonstrated superiority: engage Rome in a battle for the control of the mind, with this winner achieving control of the Empire … the Greeks, through their philosophers, defeated the Romans and won control of the Roman Empire, thereby making the Greek victory at Troy a shadow of their success against the Romans. As the Iliad established the basis for Homer’s great literary work, The Odyssey, the secular history of the Universal Church—Greek and Latin—establishes the basis for the endtime unveiling of the Body of Christ.

The metaphors of The Odyssey, including Odysseus’ journey into the underworld, serves as a transparent overlay of the dogmas of the Universal Church, an overlay that when peeled away discloses the secular success of Greek philosophers. What Ptolemaic beauty and mystery could not take from Caesar, Greek theologians won from later Caesars. Rome, like Troy before it, fell victim to its own success against the ‘“kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth’” (Dan 2:39). This bronze kingdom shall not rule by the sword, but through the appetites of the belly and the loins. And the foremost appetite of the loins is for power, sexual domination transcribed into political and military domination. Helen launched a thousand ships. Cleopatra divided an empire. But time ravishes physical beauty, turning sexual lust into love or loathing. Time, though, only enhances the seductive appeal of ideas. Through the democracy of the Cross, the bronze kingdom rules the ones wielding the sword that rules the world, even today when the Roman Empire languishes after many “holy” revivals. As such, the Greeks used visible Christendom to defeat the cult of the Emperor, and with that defeat, Rome became Christian and subject to the deity given the Empire by bishops at Alexandra and Constantinople, Ephesus and Rome itself.

Is it too much for modern scholars to grasp, the concept of war fought with ideals, where military hardware is an actual hindrance to victory? It shouldn’t be, for many of today’s scholars were Vietnam War protesters. Hanoi could not defeat Washington D.C. with rifles and tanks on the Asian battlefields, but the war was only partially fought in the jungles of Indochina. Its major battles were fought on college campuses across the United States. Ho Chi Minh fought a different war against America than did Germany, Japan, or even North Korea and China. He fought a smarter war, one that the United States, like Rome before it, was not prepared to fight—and is still not prepared to fight although American military strategists now recognize the importance of ideas in achieving battlefield dominance. Islamic fundamentalism can not be defeated without America winning the battle for ideological domination. But because the present war between Islamic fundamentalism and Western democratic ideals can be reframed into the war between Sparta and Athens, transferring what Athens did on the ground into what Western Allies must do in the mind will disclose how Islamic fundamentalism will be defeated.

When Satan and his angels are cast into time (Rev 12:9-10) halfway through the seven endtime years, the third part of humankind will be born of Spirit when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Father and His Son (Rev 11:15; Dan 7:9-14). This third part will be led by the empowered remnant of the resurrected Body of Christ as Joshua and Caleb led the children of the wilderness into the Promised Land (this remnant keeps the commandments and has the spirit of prophecy – cf. Rev 12:17; Rev 19:10). And as Joshua and Caleb led Israel to military success against the kings of Canaan, this remnant will lead the third part of humankind to victory against Satan and his angels, only the victory will be won in the minds and hearts of human beings who prevail by physically enduring to the end without taking the mark of the beast, the mark of death, the tattoo of the Cross. As Palestinian youth with rocks cannot prevail against Israeli helicopter gunships, and as Iraqi insurgents with AK-47s cannot prevail against tanks, lazar-guided munitions, daisy-cutters and carpet bombing, human beings born of Spirit cannot physically prevail against an arch-angel who has been cast from heaven. However, when cast from heaven, Satan, the king of then-fallen spiritual Babylon, will receive the mind of a man as Nebuchadnezzar, king of physical Babylon, received the mind of a beast for seven years (Satan’s seven years are the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, then the short while that he is loosed after the thousand years). The remnant will have the mind of Christ Jesus; Satan will have the mind of a man. The remnant will mentally defeat Satan in as lopsided of victory as was Joshua’s defeat of the Canaanite kings. So it is in this present era—post Vietnam and mid Iraq—where comprehending the importance of winning ideological dominance of mental landscapes needs developed. As Julius Caesar won military dominance on earthly battlefields, an endtime Caesar will achieve ideological dominance over philosophical Gaul, the mental turf of Derrida and Jean Paul Sartre, Paul de Mann and a host of doubters who ascribe little revelation to Moses and much of Genesis’ composition to post-Babylonia scribes. Today, Caesar’s Gallic Wars serves as a Latin primer for beginning foreign language students. In the future, the transcription of the endtime Caesar’s conquests in philosophical Gaul will serve as a student primer for beginning theologians.

In the past, scholars have only been able to see the surface inscriptions that comprise Holy Writ. Thus, because meaning must be assigned to words, and because these scholars deny the divinity of Scripture, Moses is discredited. Babylonian epic poetry is elevated. And otherwise intelligent men (and women) make some of the least informed observations imaginable about what they can neither “read” nor understand. Oh, to maintain their credibility among themselves, they sift through clay shards and papyrus fragments, find inscriptions that seem precursors to Moses, assign to these inscriptions very early dates, assign to the Genesis creation accounts late dates, then loudly proclaim, Ah hah! Look here, and salute their scholarship that will pass away within a generation or two even if Christ Jesus doesn’t return in the near future. They have been educated unto unbelief, and they can renew neither repentance nor faith if they ever had any. They, who should be teachers, have been mentally defeated by the Adversary, who offered them “knowledge” instead the kingdoms of this world. They accepted this “knowledge,” thereby proving that they are poor beggars who could have struck a much better deal with the devil if they had not been so quick to escape from Moses, their accuser (cf. John 5:45; Deu 31:26-29) … this is really the reason why Moses must be discredited. He wrote of Christ Jesus, to whom all judgment belongs. If the books of Moses are the works of men, then the basis for judgment also becomes the works of men. “Goodness” now equates with doing those things that bring peace and harmony to this world while it is still ruled by the prince of disobedience. Religion ceases to be about rebellion against disobedience to God, and becomes instead the acceptance of human diversity, advocacy for the fundamental equality of human beings, promotion of the democratic rights of every person, teaching that there are many paths to heaven. Faith that was for Paul a gift from God becomes the faith of a person in some power higher than him or herself, with the prince of this world the recipient of that faith. It is no wonder that even after the second Passover, then after a fourth of humankind is given over to Death, then after a third of remaining humanity is killed when the four angels are loosed—it is no wonder that the rest of humankind will not “give up worshiping demons” (Rev 9:20). The prince of this world has thoroughly discredited Moses, a man who talked with God and with whom God made a covenant (Exod 34:28) that are “the ten words,” the Decalogue. This was not a covenant for which Moses served as the mediator, but a covenant made with Moses and with Israel (v. 27), as God made covenants with Noah and with Abraham. It is by this covenant that God will make a great nation from Moses.

A Sinai covenant, a second Sinai covenant, a Moab covenant, a second Moab covenant—the Law of Moses is not a single covenant made once with Israel, but a journey into God’s rest, a journey that has the common denominator of the Ten Commandments. God did not permit Moses to enter into the Promised Land, His rest (from Ps 95:10-11); yet God gave to Moses “rest” (Exod 33:14), with this rest coming in the form of seeing the glory of God from a cleft in the rock, a glory that caused Moses to place a veil over his face except when he spoke to God or spoke to the people in the name of God (Exod 34:29-35). And “Moses assembled all the congregation of the people of Israel and said to them, ‘These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do. Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord’” (Exod 35:1-2). It is on the Sabbath when Israel enters into the glory that shown from Moses’ face. It is on the Sabbath when Israel comes before God as Moses came before God. It is on the Sabbath when the face of Israel shines as the face of Moses shone.

The writer of Hebrews grasps this correspondence between the Promised Land of Judea, the weekly Sabbath, and entering into the presence of God. But visible Christianity left Sabbath observance early in its history. When it left, the Body of Christ was concealed by that mystery of lawlessness. And Greek philosophers, sensing the means by which the Roman emperor cult could be defeated, constructed an intellectual Trojan horse which would command the worship of even the Emperor.

Troy worshiped the horse. Through the Greek gift of a larger-than-life horse, Troy took into its gates its defeat.

Rome worshiped its emperor. Through the gift of a larger-than-life emperor, the triune God, Rome took into its hearts and minds Greeks bearing the gift of “Christianity” scoured clean of its Jewish roots. Like the Trojan horse, this gift of Christianity was a masterful construction, but also like the Trojan horse, it was the ruse of deceitful workmen, the means by which Greeks could enter undetected into the gates of the city where a handful of brave men would rout an army they could not defeat in open conflict. And in the halls of the dead, praises are sung to these brave few, their names too well known to repeat here where another Homer tells of the Roman horse that was adopted by Constantine as the beast he would ride to worldly glory.

Centuries after the defeat of Troy, Homer transcribed oral narratives into a masterful poem that transcends cultures and languages. In the Iliad, Homer tells no better tale, though, than the story of the Christian Hoax that deceitful Greeks fostered into control of the Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire. These Greeks brought to Western civilization the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches, through which these ancient Greeks pandered their neo-Platonic paradigms into centuries of world domination. The first man of sorrows became the model for a latter Man of Sorrows whose return home takes not two decades but two millennia.

The “P” creation account [Gen 1:1-2:3] is written in tightly structured Hebraic poetry, and perhaps the finest poetry that has been written in Hebrew.

A generally unrecognized, at least by non-poets, attribute of all poetry—including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey—is that the focus of poetry is the word, not that which is represented by words. The mimetic meanings assigned to the words of the poem are, at best, of secondary importance.

The focus of poetry is the artifact of words (that which has been created by a construction of words) rather than what the artifact represents. Again, the focus is the “word,” not what the word mimetically represents. In Christian iconology, the expression the Word has come to represent the Logos, who entered His creation as the man Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:1-2, 14). He (1,@H) came to His own people as His Son, His only Son (John 3:16), but His people rejected Him. So while much could be made of poetry’s focus being on the word, with the repetitive structure of Hebraic poetry presenting first the object then the icon [in Peircean semiotics], doing so could miss the point that the Logos was to the Most High (1,@<) as Aaron was to Moses, the Christological relationship that has been concealed by the creation. This relationship is visible but concealed through how the Hebrew reading community has traditionally read both the Hebraic icon, Elohim, the regular plural of Eloah, and the Tetragrammaton YHWH, which deconstructs to the radical /YH/ or Yah, and /WH/, with the glottal stop [/H/] representing separate Breaths as revealed in Romans 8, verses 9 and 11. Thus, in the manner that Moses was like God to Aaron (Exod 4:16), with the natural brothers Aaron and Moses forming one entity as if they were married [i.e., in which two become one] when confronting Pharaoh and leading Israel, the Most High is God to Yah even though they are both God in the icons Elohim and YHWH, where two are one. And this relationship of two being one is what the Apostle John disclosed in his gospel, for this is what the man Jesus came to reveal to His disciples.

Semiotics as employed by linguistics of the Prague school breaks words into a tri-part structure that has “the thing” represented by the word being the object, with the visual or audio image that represents “the thing” being the icon, and with the object and icon linked by an interpretant [Thirdness]. For the word /God/, the object is the Most High, the Father, Theon, who is not in this world, nor was even known in this world prior to when Jesus revealed His existence to His disciples. In this world (i.e., the four unfurled dimensions), the object represented by the icon /God/ is the Logos (7@(@H), who entered His creation to be born as the man Jesus of Nazareth. The Thirdness that binds the icon to the object is A<,L:" U(4@<, or Breath Holy, the literal translation of what is commonly known by the metaphoric expression as the Holy Spirit, which descended as a dove to light and to remain on the man Jesus.

Trinitarian Christianity has assigned personhood to the object, to the icon, and to the interpretant, with the three “persons” composing one deity in a schema like a tri-part Venn diagram, which actually has seven positions when counting the overlaps … sounds logical? It should. Those ancient Greeks took pride in their construction of the Trojan horse.

John, however, said that the Logos was Theos (John 1:2), making both the same, but different from Theon, with this difference expressed in grammatical case endings. Thus, John established the basis for Binitarian Christianity, which argues that the linguistic object for the icon /God/ is plural, but dual not triune prior to the creation of the universe, and plural but dual not triune following the creation of the universe, and most importantly, singular not plural when Theos entered His creation as the man Jesus. Only one God then existed, with this God being the one who raised Jesus from the dead. This God was previously unknown to Israel, for this God was concealed from Israel’s awareness by the physicalness of the creation.

In the prayer Jesus made shortly before He was taken, He asked that the glory He had previous to His human birth be returned (John 17:5). He wasn’t praying to Himself, but to His God, the one He entered His creation as His Son to reveal to selected individuals, not to all of the world … the “Christianity” of Christ Jesus is not democratic even though God is not a respecter of persons, an oxymoronic contradiction that ancient Greeks ignored when constructing their Roman horse. They had the luxury of ignoring this apparent contradiction for Jesus had said that the Kingdom of God was then among them—He was, at that moment, the entirety of the Son of Man, the administrative hierarchy that would replace the prince of this world. Thus, as the shadow and copy of how the Son of Man, Head and Body, would defeat and replace spiritual Babylon during the first half of the seven endtime years, the man Jesus came to reveal the Father, overcoming Satan not with military arms but through rebutting Satan’s false application of Scripture with Scripture and with living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt 4:4). Once the Body of Christ is resurrected back to life, the Body shall engage Satan as Jesus engaged Satan. Jesus’ fasting forty days and forty nights now represents the period when the Body was dead but lived in the wilderness of sin without food or drink, with Jesus being both that living food and living water needed to sustain His Body.

Another oxymoronic contradiction? Dead but alive, living without food and drink? The grave represents that period when disciples are dead but live without consciousness, without food, without drink. They live in a manner foreshadowed by physical sleep, when the flesh rests but the mind dreams. The Body of Christ was dead as a human being is dead in sleep, or as Moses was “dead” but alive with God throughout the two periods when he fasted forty days and forty nights while on the mountain with God. Elijah, likewise, fasted forty days and nights while on the mountain with God: forty is a number of significance, the number representing death. Thus, what is seen in Scripture is that Jesus’ first disciples were with Jesus—that is they were crucified with Jesus—for forty days following Jesus breathing on these first disciples and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). They then waited ten days before they were “baptized” or immersed in the Holy Spirit [A<,L:" U(4@<] which sounded like wind [B<,L:"] but appeared like tongues of fire. John the Baptist said that he baptized in water for repentance, but the one to come would baptize in the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matt 3:11). And what is seen on that day of Pentecost following Calvary is the shadow and copy of disciples being empowered with or liberated by the Holy Spirit, then baptized in fire when glorified. Two events, two baptisms that are separated by seven years of living without sin, these seven years being as the moments between hearing a sound like that of a mighty rushing wind and seeing the divided tongues of fire resting on these first disciples (Acts 2:2-3). As Moses obtained “rest” through being in the presence of God, disciples will enter into God’s rest through baptism by fire.

But the first disciples went though a ten day period when they were without Christ Jesus.

The physical body of the man Jesus went without food or drink for forty days, a period of sufficient duration that the human body would die from dehydration if not supernaturally sustained as if resurrected; a period representing death followed by resurrection. Thus, what is seen in Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus being baptized (with baptism by water representing death), followed almost immediately by Jesus fasting forty days and forty nights, the period that represents the death of the Body of Christ. Individual death followed by collective death, with disciples to be resurrected from both.

The forty days and nights period is followed by Jesus’ earthly ministry, which forms the shadow and copy of the works of the two witnesses during the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years. These two witnesses emerge from the dead Body of Christ as Jesus emerged from the temptation of Satan—the dead Body of Christ has spiritual safety in its lack of divine Breath, for Satan cannot tempt that which is not alive. Therefore, the generations of “Christians” who comprise the lawless Church were never born of Spirit and had no life but that which came from the first Adam. Only to those who loved God and kept the commandments, all of them, was the Spirit given—and it was given under the terms of demonstrated obedience by faith, the terms of the Moab covenant as mediated by Moses even though the mediator has been Christ Jesus since He was with His first disciples for those forty days. And this is what those Greeks who constructed their Roman horse never understood: with God, there is no partiality. The faith of Abraham becomes the benchmark for the faith of disciples, with every disciple expected to make a journey of faith equivalent to the physical journey Abraham made. The meekness (as in breaking a horse and making it “meek”) of Moses becomes the benchmark for the meekness of disciples, with every disciple expected to keep covenant with God as Moses kept covenant with God—“meekness” means being transformed into a useable instrument of God, the instrument through which God will construct His people. No lawlessness, no usurpation of authority, no exultation of self is permitted. God lifts those whom He wants exulted. He then backs up those whom He has raised up with demonstrable power by having them deliver His speech-acts in this world.

Returning to assignment of linguistic objects to icons, the relationship between dual objects for the icon /God/ and the use of linguistic case endings to distinguish between Theos and Theon is a relationship akin to marriage in which two are one. In marriage, two are one, but they are still two, with one in a subordinate position to the other. Marriages between two equals do not work, as evidenced by the high divorce rate in Western culture. One must voluntarily become subordinate to the other, which does not make the subordinate one inferior. Jesus washed the feet of His first disciples, and after doing so, He said that a bondservant is not greater than his [or her] master, with the implication standing that the master does more for the bondservant than the bondservant does for the master; for the one who serves the most is greatest. This, however, takes a moment for the human imagination to grasp: there is nothing any disciple can do for God that approaches what the Father does for disciples when He gives them spiritual life through giving them His divine Breath. Disciples can use what formerly had life and what presently has life to support and to serve themselves; but disciples are not able to bestow “life” upon what is not alive and has never had life although human beings are coming close to bestowing upon lifeless silicon chips intelligence of the sort associated with living entities. Therefore, the one who bestowed physical life to non-living red mud is greater than the mud, thereby making Theos greater than anything within His creation. But when Theos entered His creation as the man Jesus, the Father [Theon] bestowed upon the living man Jesus spiritual life in the form of His divine Breath descending as a dove, thereby making the Father greater than the man Jesus, who when judgments are revealed, either will or will not bestow immortality to the perishable fleshly body of the disciples, making Jesus greater than the glorified disciple through giving a spiritual body to the spiritual life that was given by the Father. Thus, Jesus will always be greater than his glorified younger siblings, but He will also always be less that the Father who raised Him from the dead.

The above subordination of Theos to Theon was seen in the marriage relationship and in the relationship of Aaron to Moses. Both Theos & Theon are God. Either can be the object assigned to the English icon. Both are correctly assigned as objects to the icon /God/; for when Philip asked Jesus to show the disciples the Father (John 14:8), Jesus’ answer that whoever had seen Him had seen the Father disclosed a hard link between the plural objects of the icon /God/ that had one looking like the other even when one was born of flesh and was visibly subordinate to the other.

God has a face, hands, body; God looks like what Daniel saw when he saw the Ancient of Days; God looks like what John the Revelator saw when he was in vision on the Lord’s day. The Holy Spirit, however, sounds like the wind when physically audible, and looks like tongues of fire when physically visible. The Holy Spirit does not look or sound like “God.” Therefore, any assignment of personhood to this interpretant, this element of Thirdness, is not of God, either Father or Son, both of whom are God, but of the Roman horse that learned Greeks used to defeat Roman emperor-worship and thereby capture the Empire for Greece.

The Holy Spirit as divine Breath [A<,L:" U(4@<] functions to reveal the Father and the Son in a way similar to how deep human breath [B<,L:"] produces commanding utterances as in shouting instructions.

Because Scripture is presented in figurative language and because Scripture is not a straight forward presentation of thought, explication of Scripture can be neither straightforward nor presented in a standard academic format no matter how much the desire is to do so. The essence of the heavenly realm is timelessness, where all activity occurs in the same unchanging moment. Thus, when explicating this simultaneously occurring activity that has been transcribed in metaphors bumping against metaphors and metonymic expressions, the subject matter of a paper must be continually retrieved as if the subject were a duck drifting in a narrative current and the writer were a hunting dog.

Because of Hebraic poetry’s inherent structure of doubling, of presenting ideas in thought couplets with the first presentation representing darkness, the natural world, the community, the hand, and with the second presentation of the same idea representing light, the spiritual world, the individual, the heart—with both presentations being part of the one artifact whose focus is not the thing but the artifice—narrative distance and representational distance is achieved, creating a stair step relationship, with the highest tread being spiritual, a godly desire inside the heart, the words of Yah concerning salvation, or as in the latter Psalms of David, the revelation that the Tetragrammaton YHWH represented two deities, with Yah being the one the seventy elders saw atop Mount Sinai.

The above is easy to write and easy to read without grasping that the two presentations of the same thought is directly analogous to two being one as in a man and his wife, or as in Moses and Aaron, or as in Theon & Theos. Now, when it is understood that the focus of poetic discourse is not the mimetic representation of the discourse but the discourse itself, with the mimetic representation serving as the shadow of the discourse, the auditor should grasp that in Hebraic poetic discourse, the auditor encounters a two-squared situation that produces four levels of meaning, with linguistics objects assigned at each of these four levels to the icons presented in the discourse. These linguistic objects will have, between themselves, a taxonomical hierarchal relationship that can be seen in the great chain of life, with plants being below animals which are below human beings which are below God. Below plants is the dry land, and below the dry land is the sea, and below the sea is undefined nothingness. Therefore, in Hebraic poetic discourse which has four levels of representation inherently present at all times, every gap or step up in the discourse would add four additional levels of representation.

Now, since the “P” creation account is presented in perhaps the finest poetic discourse ever written in Hebrew, with this discourse structured in alphabetical order which should have pointed readers to a different focus than the words’ mimetic representations [regardless of whom the account’s author is or when it was initially written or rewritten], the obviously apparent focus of this creation account isn’t the physical creation, but the account.

Shall we rest here? Perhaps the better question is, Can the Roman horse be ridden? It is the horse and cart through which Creationist Studies threatens to enter the compromised American educational system that has, within the past century, embraced humanism, environmental studies, and cultural diversity as modern forms of urban atheism. Why not add corruption to that which has already been corrupted with other sets of myths? Giddy-up, go! The Greeks are coming, the Greeks are coming!

The same sort of questions can be asked by endtime disciples as Jesus asked of the Pharisees: if the alphabetical focus of the “P” account is the ephemeral nature of words rather than the thinginess of water, land, seed-bearing trees, fish, birds, beasts, men, then the account is not about that which is represented on the page or in the scroll, but what is represented in the mind. And if it is (and it is), then is this an account of an ex nihilo creation?

Christian Creationists will argue that the “P” account is the infallible record of an ex nihilo creation. And they, like wild cattle scenting water, will stampede the apologist who stands between them and teaching this creation account in the public school system.

Is the known universe a young universe? Yes, it is, a statement that can be substantiated by the decay of dark matter that results in the expansion of the universe with all quadrants having a background temperature of three degrees Kelvin.

Was Jesus a man, the Adoni of Psalm 110:1? Yes, He was. But does the passage from the Psalm prove that Jesus was fully God in the flesh as Trinitarian Christianity has used the passage for centuries? No! It does not. What the Psalm establishes is that the Messiah would come as a man, a human lord, who would become a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Likewise, the “P” creation account is about a young earth, but this account does not establish that the earth was created in six days; for the “P” creation account is not about and has never been about the physical creation of the world.

In English, Genesis 1:1 reads, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” What part of the heavens is not created in this first verse? What part of the earth is not created? Is any of either not created, not finished?

The “J” creation account [Gen 2:4-25] begins, in verse,

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 (2:4 emphasis added).

In the day, one day? Six days? How long did it take for YHWH Elohim to create the Tzimtzum and then to created the cosmos inside this void? Looking from inside backwards what is seen is a sudden creation, a Big Bang, a rupture or fissure in heaven that starts at one point and develops as if a living thing.

Question, is in the day an open time period that does not close until darkness returns? If so, is this day regulated by the setting of the sun? Evening doesn’t occur until after Adam and his wife eat of the Tree of Knowledge. So what is to be made of in the day?

Following the first giving of the Decalogue, the Lord, addressing the importance of Israel keeping the weekly Sabbath, told Moses, ‘“It [the Sabbath] is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed’” (Exod 31:17). This statement seems unambiguous: Genesis’ opening lines, “In the beginning,” occupy six days. And what’s seen is the physical creation concealing that which is spiritual.

The six apparent days of the “P” creation account—from the first day through the sixth day—are assumed to be the six days referenced by the Lord [YHWH] after Israel received the Law. But in the Tzimtzum, the physical universe conceals that which is spiritual, or of heaven. Thus, the existence of the world concealed a spiritual creation that departs from the physical creation. A lacunae appears between verses one and two, a gap that has swallowed the billions of words shoveled into it without belching or even seeming full. It is as if these many words were hollow, lacking substance and uttered without understanding. These words come from shallow attempts to justify unbelief; they belong to those pastors who smile when preaching repentance. They are used by all who propose a gap-theory into which they can slip Darwinian Evolution without seeming to be unbiblical.

That which is spiritual has been openly set before Israel in the form of poetry. Again, this is true with all of Hebraic poetry, which uses thought couplets consisting of natural/spiritual referents in organizational patterns that move inward from darkness to light, from public to private, from hand to heart, but this is especially true of the “P” creation account. However, the holy nation’s focus has been on the first creation account’s mimetic representations. Thus, even spiritually circumcised Israel has not understood the words of the Apostle Paul:

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God…For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 4:3-6 emphasis added)

Paul’s gospel has been concealed by the things that are from those who are perishing because of their lawlessness; for where does God say, Let light shine from darkness, with this light being Christ Jesus? Does He not say this in Genesis 1:3? Indeed, He does. Therefore, the light that comes from darkness—the light that establishes the first day—is not the afterglow of a Big Bang, but the coming of Christ Jesus as the Son of Theos. In the “P” account, the dark portion of the first day began with rebellion against God and continued until Theos entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus of Nazareth. Then when Jesus died on the Cross at Calvary, the first day ended. And the Father and Son saw that it was good, quite a statement considering that when this day ended, the body of Jesus lay dead in the Garden Tomb.

Paul’s gospel rejected? Yes, it was rejected by Pharisees, rejected by rabbinical Judaism, rejected by the constructionists building the Roman horse. It was concealed from the spiritual nation when the Body of Christ lived, for even the Body rebelled against God as Israel rebelled against the Lord under Samuel, demanding a king like other nations had—and through rebellion, through lawlessness, the Body died spiritually.

What appears to have happened is that the spiritual nation of Israel became a vassal of Caesar in the model of God sending natural Israel into Babylonian captivity, with God sending the spiritual nation into captivity in spiritual Babylon, where most of this second nation of Israel remains to this day, the bondservants of the Adversary. Israel in Babylon is dead. Only when Israel is in Jerusalem does Israel have life (the Tree of Life did not grow in a Babylon hanging garden). Thus, a remnant of Israel returning to Jerusalem after seventy years is a resurrection of Israel in a manner similar to that of Moses twice coming down from the mountains after fasting forty days. Likewise for the “Church” to return to separation from this world after 1200 years (i.e., from 325 to 1525 CE) of being a world ruling power, the “authority” crowning emperors, the largest land owner in Europe would have been a symbolic physical resurrection of the Body of Christ if this resurrection would have taken—it almost took, but unfortunately, the Radical Reformers [Anabaptists] were mostly overwhelmed by the Reformed Church, Lutherans, and the Roman Church. Where colonies of Anabaptists did survive, the leaders of these colonies, with the principle exception of the Amish, returned to being active participants in governing political entities of this world. By extension, the Radical Reform remnant returned to spiritual Babylon within a few generations where the Body of Christ lay dead in lawlessness.

The above discloses an important concept that cannot be escaped: the Body of Christ as the Body of the Son of Man is to rule with its Head, Christ Jesus, when the single kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Father and His Son (Rev 11:15; Dan 7:9-14). If any part of this Body participates in the governance of this world before time, this part usurps authority by making a covenant with the prince of this world. The Body of Christ is to remain separated from this world and its prince until the court of the Ancient of Days strips away the dominion it gave to “Babylon” to rule the single kingdom of this world. Thus, genuine disciples are to be Separatists.

The logic for disciples to be Separatists was perhaps more evident to the Radical Reformers who were closer to that extended period when Greeks ruled through the guise of the Roman horse. Since the authority of the Roman and Greek churches was given, by the prince of this world, to secular entities [i.e., kings and democratic coalitions], disciples have not as easily seen the necessity of separating themselves from civil governance just as disciples (with few exceptions) no longer see any need for women to cover. The Amish appear quaint—interesting but odd—to modern disciples, whereas the Amish, along with a few conservative Mennonite sects, are all that remain of when the last Elijah first lay over the Body of Christ to resurrect it from death (see Chapter Four for additional discussion of the resurrection of the Body).

The man Jesus of Nazareth came as the last Adam, a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 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, the type of whom the glorified Jesus now is (cf. Ps 110:4; Heb 5:6; 6:20; 7:1-22). This Melchizidek came as His Son, His only; 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 at the right hand of the Most High forever.

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 Israel, for no one is a Jew outwardly but inwardly (Rom 2:28-29). Circumcision is not a matter of mutilating the flesh, a practice that conceals through the physicalness of the flesh the activating power that comes from being born of Spirit. Rather, circumcision is the paring away of all disobedience.

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