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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 Six As
discussed in the previous chapter, the focus of poetry is the words of the
poem: how those words sound, how they appear, their rhythm, the effect they
produce. The importance of the artifice or artifact [i.e., the poem] exceeds
the value and importance of the thing[s] for which those words serve as mimetic
representatives. The use of poetic language to convey knowledge signifies the
importance of the delivery of that knowledge, thereby making the vehicle for
the delivery and the delivery itself the focus of the auditor. Note the
preceding: poetic discourse makes the delivery of greater importance than the
knowledge being delivered. The story or thing described by the poem is only of
secondary importance; the apparent subject of the poem is not the focus of the
poem, but only the phenomenon that caused the production of the poem. Thus, for
reasons known to the poet the vehicle used for the delivery is of greater worth
than what is being delivered. An example of the above can be shown in the
following poem: SO YOUNG A swan from North in September, passing Ducks winging south in Rigid V’s. Overhead, Excited chatter Arches across the moon, forging
bonds of love on rising white wings— young foxes, snowy owls, lone wolves hunt under flaring northern lights while
we lie on
frost-nipped tundra and watch
V’s merge. The above poem has a specific audience: Andrea
Dixon, then a graduate student at University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). It is
not about requited or unrequited love although that would seem to be what words
of the poem represent. It is about writing a poem that conveys a message
through the first letters of each line: “ANDREA for you, wow.” It
was written by another student in UAF’s graduate writing program, a
student closer in age to Andrea’s mother, Jeane Dixon, than to
Andrea—and the student who also wrote the following poem: WHITE PETALS OF ROCK Jasmine, Frigid Shooting Stars, Indian Rice, Pixie Eyes, Lanquid Lady, Shy Maiden, Long-leaved Sundew, Touch-me-not— all
blossoms like you, sweetheart,
who braved record cold and
bloomed out of season— ladies’
tresses spiral with windflowers
and silverweed, artic
forget-me-nots and yarrow
in stories I write, seabeach
yarns set from Port Hope
to often
obscure, deliberately marbled
like endemic
to alpine mountain roads
chiseled in ice by
the white sun— you
read them, and earned
my respect. The
message delivered through the first letter of each line is: “JILL as always Homer,
bye.” This second poem also has a specific audience: Jill Robinson, a
promising Canadian short story writer, who was then a graduate student at UAF. Do the words of the above two poems convey a
message or convey information? Yes, they do. Can they be read as an expression
of sexual interest and an expression of mutual respect? Yes, they can be. But
in especially the case of the first, “SO YOUNG,” the poem should
not be so read, for the creation of the poem came as a puzzle that needed to a
solved, a specific request for a poem like “WHITE PETALS” following
the production of the poem for Jill Robinson. Fulfilling that request was the
motivation for the sentiments that are reflected in the words, sentiments that
would have been appropriate for someone Andrea’s age to have conveyed to
her. The poem is a fiction, similar to fictional love scenes found in novels.
However, because this scene comes to auditors as a poem, readers are much more
willing to “suspend disbelief” than if the same words were written
in a short story. And it is this suspension of disbelief that makes otherwise
intelligent men and women accept trees bearing fruit and producing seeds before
the creation of the sun and moon unchallengeable fact. If the above seems confusing, consider that in the
case of poetry where the focus is on the artifice [the assemblage of words],
the words are neither fictional nor nonfictional—they represent neither
truth nor falsity. They are merely the building blocks used to create a more
interesting (hopefully) artifice than what these same words would create is left
as randomly inscribed letters. Therefore, the use of Hebraic poetic structure
becomes a narrative device that signals the reader or auditor that the
linguistic icons employed have a meaning apart from what these icons seem to
represent. To focus on mimetic representations will cause the auditor to miss
the significance of the poetry. And as discussed in Chapter Five, Hebraic
poetry usually features thought couplets
that twice present a thought, with the first presentation representing the
natural or physical application and with the second presentation the mental or
spiritual application, with these two presentations forming one presentation in
the same way that Theos & Theon
are God. Thought couplets utilize the night/day,
darkness/light metaphor in which physical night (“the twisting
away”) becomes death or spiritual darkness as in having turned away from
God. Since meaning is an assignment
made by the auditor [again, words have no inherent meaning of their own], the
auditor who is “clued” by the linguistic icon appearing in poetic
discourse will assign to the icon a spiritual or non-physical meaning, whereas
the auditor unaware of the clues will assign to the same icon a physical or
surface meaning. An example of this is seen in the “WHITE PETALS”
poem in which the icon /Hope/ appears first word of the fourth stanza. To the
totally unclued auditor, Port Hope is
just somewhere in the North. To the partially clued auditor (the reader who prides him or herself on possessing
specific knowledge) Port Hope is a specific geographical location where a
settlement exists on The “P” creation account conveys a
message to the fully clued auditor
that is decoded through Jesus saying that He is the first and the last, the alpha ["]
and the omega [T], the first letter of the alphabet and the last
letter. Now, take this information back to the “P” account and the
fully clued auditor will find what John records at the beginning of his gospel. In a very real sense, the auditor that is spiritually minded will assign to all
icons appearing in Hebraic poetry that has been canonized spiritual meaning while
the auditor who seeks a “literal” interpretation of Scripture will
assign a physical referent to the same icons. However, in addition to an
initial assignment of a non-physical [i.e., spiritual or metaphysical] meaning
to both presentations of the thought within the couplets, the second
presentation of the thought will have moved inward from the first presentation.
So the presentation of a phenomenon in Hebraic poetry rather than in prose will
cause the clued auditor to first move
from the physical realm to the mental realm (or to move upward), then to move
from the mental realm to the spiritual (or to move inward). Whereas there is not incorporated doubling in
early Greek poetry such as Homer’s Odyssey
where the return trip home by Odysseus serves as a complex metaphor about
social behavior (Odysseus’ trip into the land of the dead is not a
mimetic representation of an actual voyage), Hebraic poetry makes a metaphor
into a second metaphor. Therefore, the apparent subject of the poetic discourse
can be easily dismissed as myth, for the subject becomes the twice removed
focus of the poem. Or for the still unclued
auditor, the scholar who is not a poet, two people actually laid on
“frost-nipped tundra” in the SO YOUNG poem … no, they
didn’t. And seed-bearing plants were not created before the sun and moon
were. Since the focus of
poetry is words, poetic discourse in any language always conveys a dual
message, the first being that which could be told in any form of mimetic
language (i.e., language that seeks to imitate phenomena), and the second
concerns the created artifice of the word selection (i.e., the poem itself).
Thus, the Genesis creation account found in chapter one becomes two accounts in
one, or better, the poetic abstract for a second creation foreshadowed by an
earlier creation that is complete in the first verse. Said another way, the
“P” creation account, by its poetic construction, is not a mimetic
account of the creation of the natural world, nor purports to be, but is,
rather, an account of a creation of the mind. The “P” account is first
about a mental creation that forms the shadow or copy of a spiritual creation.
And the required wisdom to understand Scripture asserts that the earlier
creation complete in Genesis 1:1 is partially described in the “J”
creation account that begins in Genesis 2:4. In other words, the
“J” creation account is fully contained in Genesis 1:1. The
remainder of the “P” account is about a spiritual creation
foreshadowed by a mostly undescribed (within the “P” account) physical
creation. And God used the shadow fulfillment
of the Prophet Daniel’s visions to seal and make secret endtime
revelations about a war in the heavenly realm within the Tzimtzum or rupture. That there is another dimension—two
dimensions—within the Tzimtzum
is a necessary realization to comprehend rebelling angels being cast into outer
darkness, and sons of God having actual spiritual life domiciled in tents of
flesh. Thus, God as Theos used the
revelation that in six days He had created the heaven and earth to conceal in
plain sight the abstract of salvation, which is His plan [Theos & Theon’s] for
His [Theon’s] procreation. Jesus spoke in parables [literary
tropes] to fulfill Scripture: “‘I will open my mouth in parables; /
I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the
world’” (Matt 13:35 cf.
Ps 78:2-3) … in the structure of Hebraic poetic discourse, the natural
presentation of the thought is, I will
open my mouth in parables. The spiritual presentation of the same
thought is, I will utter what has been
hidden since the foundation of the world. Parables, now, are the physical
telling of what has been hidden, the dark things of old. And because the focus
of poetry is the artifice, not what the words mimetically represent, the
explanation of the parables that Jesus gave to His disciples [and recorded in
the gospels] are the physical disclosure of a hidden spiritual thing. The
spiritual understanding of the spiritual thing would have to wait until after
Jesus spoke plainly to His disciples, this plain speech coming after His
disciples had received the Spirit of God. This plain speech is not recorded in
Scripture, but remains as knowledge to be recovered in the restoration of all
things; for the first disciples would have received this knowledge during the
forty days that Jesus was with them following His resurrection. So this
knowledge has awaited the restoration brought about by the last Elijah, the
glorified Jesus Christ, not recognized when He came (cf. John 1:11; Matt 17:12), beaten and slain by those who did not
know or recognize Him. Peter, James, and John, following
the transfiguration, questioned Jesus about why the scribes say that first,
before the resurrection, Elijah must come again (cf. Matt 17:10; Mal 4:5). They [Peter, James, John] understood that
Jesus was speaking of John the Baptist (cf.
Matt 17:13; Matt 11:14), the physical type and copy of the spiritual Elijah to
come, the “Elijah” who restores all things. From the heavenly
realm, the glorified Jesus will do an endtime work like that which John the
Baptist did prior to when Jesus’ ministry initially began. Note the
chronology: the glorified Jesus will do from the heavenly realm a work like
John the Baptist did in the wilderness—a work of baptizing into
repentance, a work of “making straight” the paths of the Body of
Christ—prior to when Jesus’ ministry began here on earth. The two
witnesses do the work that Jesus did during His earthly ministry. Thus, the
glorified Jesus will do from the heavenly realm a making straight of the paths
for the Body when this Body is resurrected to life prior to the resurrection of
the Body. Therefore, when Jesus comes to complete the second half of His
earthly ministry (Jesus comes to complete His earthly ministry during the
second half of the seven endtime years of tribulation), the work of the endtime
Elijah has been fully completed. Thus, Jesus comes to restore all things prior
to when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Father and His
Christ, and prior to the Second Passover 1260 days earlier. He comes and is
with the two witnesses, the two olive trees and two lampstands that stand
before the Lord of the earth (cf. Zech
4:11-14; Rev 11:3-4). But He restores through the physical shadow and type of
the two witnesses. And this restoration has begun. Although modern scholarship contends
that the “J” creation account seems to end with the institution of
marriage, this “J” account actually continues through the end of
chapter four. Scripture is constructed in “narrative units,” for
lack of a better word or concept that extend from one passage of genealogy to
the next passage of genealogy. These narrative units, because of their length
and subject matter, resist translation errors; thus, when studying Scripture in
narrative units, disputes over words and word nuances cease to exist. These
narrative units, therefore, are the structural components of typology. And the
unit that begins with Genesis 2:4 continues through the temptation account, the
Cain/Abel account, and the birth of Seth. This narrative unit is the shadow and
copy of the Church era, from the birth of the last Adam through the seven
endtime years of tribulation to the beginning of the millennial reign of the
Messiah, with the next narrative unit being the story of Noah and of the
baptism of the world with water and into death. But whereas the long-form
“J” accounts ends with the life of Seth, the third-born son of the
first Adam, the “P” account continues through to the coming of the
new heavens and new earth. The seven day structure of the “P”
account incorporates the latter chapters of Revelation into its last four days.
As a result, the seventh day of the “P” account will find glorified
sons of God resting in New Jerusalem, where the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb
are the temple (Rev 21:22). The “P” account, in summarizing the
creating of day five and six, reveals some knowledge about what will happen
during and immediately after Christ Jesus’ thousand year reign; so the
poetic “P” account is prophetic. Two creation accounts. Both valid.
Neither myth, but both biblical prophecy. Wow, Andrea! Can you imagine this?
Could your mother have foreseen that you would be named in the making straight
of spiritual paths? Her predictions certainly lacked credibility within the
churches of God, but suppose she knew … naa, probably not. * Two
Creations: “In the beginning, God created the heaven
and the earth” (Gen 1:1) — again, what portion of the earth is not
created? This declarative sentence is complete; the creation of the earth is
likewise complete. Verses 4 and 5 of chapter two read, “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 heavens, and every plant of the field
before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew”
(emphasis added). A single day in the beginning, in the darkness of the first
day of the “P” account—the generations of the earth, starting
with the first Adam, began before either plant or herb were in the field. When Adam
was made from red clay, no plant had yet been created. This is either true or false. If it is false,
then Scripture is not the inspired word of God, but is a collection of fables
and myth, laced with a little history and some social commentary—and this
seems to be the consensus of skeptical modern scholars, who contend that
separate authors (someone other than the Logos
inspiring Moses) wrote the differing “P” and “J”
creation accounts, the first with plants and seed-bearing trees appearing on
the third day with humankind created on the sixth day, and the latter with Adam
being created before there was any vegetation on earth. These skeptical critics
are not able to reconcile the two accounts, so they label both myths and
dismiss both with prejudice. Again, what is at stake is the credibility of the
Bible as the divine word of a creating deity. If two irreconcilable creation
accounts occur in the first two chapters of Genesis, then the skepticism of
modern scholarship is justified: ·
Either the
“J” and “P” creation accounts are reconcilable, or a
Christian’s faith has been miss-placed in the Bible being the inspired
word of a living God. ·
If the two
creation are reconcilable [the argument here is that they are], then every
exegesis strategy except typology is flawed. Before the time of the restoration of all things,
the best attempt by men to reconcile what have become known as the
“P” and “J” creation accounts is through the so-called
“gap theory,” which would have an indeterminable period of time
occurring between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The problem of evolution neatly fits
into this gap, as does the problem of a sudden creation 13.5 or more billion
years ago. But the gap theory introduces a fundamental
problem: if the present world began with a recreation of the earth’s
surface beginning with Genesis 1:3, and beginning six thousand years ago, there
remains one Adam who was created before there was vegetation, and created on
the sixth day of this recreation week, thereby retaining the irreconcilability
between the two creation accounts. Or perhaps, there were many
“adams” that survived the destruction that came upon the
earth’s surface—and the possibility of many One Adam or many? One physical creation or two?
Choice seems simple. However, any choice made retains the paradox that undoes
the gap theory: Was the Adam created
before there was vegetation the Adam
about whom the Apostle Paul said was a type of Christ Jesus (cf. Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45, 47)? Or was
the man created on the six day of a recreation of the earth the Adam with whom Paul compared Jesus?
They cannot be the same Adam
according to the gap theory. Christian racists adopted the gap theory to
explain “mud people” (people of color) and Jews, whose father,
Jesus said, was Satan. To these Christian racists, all people of color are
physically and spiritually inferior human beings over whom the “white
Aryan” sons of Adam should have perpetual dominance. These racists in
both their “civilized” congregations and in their radical, skinhead
rallies place importance on the flesh; i.e., the tents of flesh in which
born-of-Spirit sons of God temporarily dwell. These Christian racists tend to
gravitate to the Christian Identity Movement (CIM), the modern counterparts to
the errant 1st-Century Circumcision Faction, for their spiritual
understanding is confined to the flesh. A somewhat respectable concept within Christian
racism manifests itself in most denominations: Christian sexism. If a
born-from-above son of God dwells in a tent of flesh and is neither male nor
female, Jew nor Greek, free nor slave (Gal 3:28), the disciple is no more the
tent of flesh than an in-the-flesh circumcised Israelite is the house in which
he dwelt while in Egyptian slavery. Christian sexists and Christian racists are
as wrong as is the gap theory, which, unfortunately, like sexism and racism,
has also been accepted by the Sabbatarian Churches of God. The so-called gap theory does not reconcile the
two creation accounts, but requires dismissal of some portion of Genesis
chapter one. Therefore, laying skepticism aside, the irreconcilable conflict
between the “J” and the “P” creation accounts occurs
largely from the poetic naming of “what is,” and of what is
created. And here wisdom is required— ·
Poetic
conceits do not require a thing (a linguistic object or linguistic signified)
to be named with any particular sound or symbol (linguistic icon or signifier). ·
Movement
within a poetic conceit can be in any direction or directions; ·
Movement
within a lacunae will be radical, and
equivalent to a stanza break; ·
When movement
in a conceit is first vertical or heavenward (Gen 1:2), followed by horizontal
or additional upward movement, the linguistic icons or signifiers
[words] used to convey this second tier of movement must continue to be
familiar to auditors [the audience]; ·
But because
the conceit has first movement vertically, the linguistic icons or signifiers used
to show additional movement cannot have the same objects or signifieds
[meanings] within the conceit as would be commonly assigned in the natural
world. ·
Therefore,
the linguistic trace or element of
Thirdness that connects icons to objects or signifiers with signifieds
functions to conceal rather than reveal knowledge; for this trace or element of Thirdness will cause
auditors to, say, think of “trees” as trees, not as some living
entities in the heavenly realm. In fact, all “literalness” has been
removed from the poetic discourse. The relationship between water, plants, fish,
fowl, beasts, and finally humankind created in the image and likeness of God
conveys a taxonomical hierarchy of icons
that are imaginable to human beings confined within the dimensions of
space-time. These icons convey an
ordered hierarchy that concludes with the rest of God. But these icons do not represent the objects that have been historically
assigned through the cultural trace that has harnessed the poetic
“P’ account to the natural world. Thus, the reader who expects to find a six-day
creation account of the natural world in Genesis one finds this account—yes,
Andrea, they do—but they find this account only by ignoring the detail
that seed-bearing plants produce sugars through photosynthesis, an anomaly that
doesn’t trouble biblical literalists. Traditionally, Christians have not been troubled
by anomalies that disturb logic. Modern scholars are; so the skeptic who
believes that both the “J” and “P” creation accounts are
myths or folktales finds more than sufficient reasons to dismiss these accounts
because of the anomalies. As the faithful Christian literalist reader produces
ready but odd natural explanations for what cannot be “naturally”
explained, the skeptic is very seldom able to rise above his or her skepticism
to use the tools of modern scholarship to read anew these creation accounts.
Hence, the restoration awaited the last Elijah. If the six days that it took to create heaven and
earth (the Exodus 31 reference) are not the six days of Genesis one, but fully
occur in the first verse of Genesis one—and if these six days form the
natural shadow of a spiritual creation that is six spiritual days in
length—then as no life preceded Adam in the “J” account, no
spiritual life (including that of seed-bearing plants, fish and fowls, or
beasts of the field) precedes the last Adam in the “P” account.
Again, poetry used as mimetic language conveys an additional level of meaning
or a separate set of signifieds. The
rabbinical community has written about multiple accounts of creation being told
in Genesis one, with verse one covering the completed creation. What this
linguistic (and cultural) community has not understood is that these multiple
accounts are of two creations, not one. The natural or physical creation, which apparently
took six days, forms the dark shadow of the spiritual (of spirit; i.e., of
heaven) creation that has seed-bearing trees (on the third day) appearing
before the greater and lesser lights are created to rule day and night (on the
fourth day). These trees, now, “suggest” the vegetation of the
natural world, but are symbolic representations of what has been created from
the elemental elements of this second, spiritual creation. But these
seed-bearing trees are not created in the image and after the likeness of God,
but are quite low on a taxonomical hierarchy that ends with the Sabbath. They
are the meat or food of humankind, of beasts, and of fowls (Gen 1:29-30). They
are also, at the end of the age, upon what the fowls of the air will feast. ·
Any poetic
conceit that has a taxonomical hierarchy with human beings created in the image
and likeness of God completely incorporated within it must also have bridges
between water and plants, between plants and animals, and between man and God. ·
Randomness
doesn’t accommodate the taxonomical leaps necessary to significantly
increase biological complexity; nor will the mind leap these gaps in a mimetic
narrative. Interestingly,
the scholar who cannot accept the “P” account’s narrative
leaps will accept similar leaps in a biological theory, whereas the Believer
cannot accept these leaps in a biological theory but will accept them in the
“P” account … over four millennia after its initial creation,
Yah or Theos entered His creation (John 1:1-3) as His son, His only (John
3:16), the man Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14). Finally, light came from darkness
(Gen 1:3; 2 Cor 4:6). And there was the evening and the morning, the first
day—which ended at The light of the “P” account is the
Son of Man, thereby making the greater light that is to rule the day not the
sun, but the glorified Son of Man, Head and Body. The fourth day of the
“P” account is descriptive of the resurrection to glory upon Christ
Jesus’ return. The darkness will now be ruled by the lesser light,
spiritually liberated and empowered Since in the “P” creation account day and night already existed before the greater and lesser lights are
created on the fourth day to rule day and night respectively, if the greater
light were the sun as Christian Creationists teach, then what cause existed for
the presence of darkness/light cycle prior to the fourth day? The answer usually
given is God was the light. And these Creationists run counter to the Apostle
Paul, who, inspired by the Holy Spirit and properly understanding the
darkness/light metaphor, insists that the natural always precedes the spiritual
(1 Cor 15:46). The natural is spiritually lifeless, or in spiritual darkness.
Light is life. Thus, if God is the light of the darkness/light cycle that
precedes the fourth day, then God remains the light throughout the entirety of
the “P” creation narrative, and the greater light becomes the
glorification of many sons (Rom 8:30), with the lesser light being the
reflected glory of these many sons after the Holy Spirit has been poured out on
all flesh. Hence, Christ Jesus as head of the Son of Man shall rule as King of
kings, and Lord of lords (Rev 19:16). As the first Adam was created in the earthly image
of, and after the likeness of Elohim
[singular in usage], the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45-49) came as the spiritually
living image and likeness of the Most High God (John 14:9) that the world had
not known (John17:25). As the first Adam was red mud before being formed into
the corpse into whose nostrils Elohim
[singular] breathed the breath of life (Gen 2:7), the second Adam was the Logos who was with Theon and was Theos (John
1:1-2) before He descended from heaven to be born of a woman. Aligning the accounts of the natural and spiritual
creations begins by placing John 1:1-34 over Genesis 2:4-7. Matthew 3:16-17 now
sits atop the second part of the predicate clause of Genesis 2:7, and inside
John 1:32. For the first and last Adams serve as pattern notches/dots [in
sewing] or witness marks [when barreling guns] or timing marks [in engine
mechanics] that allow Scripture to be properly understood … the witness
mark—a single chisel cut made across machined parts when these parts are
properly fitted together (this mark made so that the machined parts can be
disassembled, then properly reassembled)—that aligns both creations is
the receipt of breath [B<,L:"]. The
receipt of the physical breath of life for the first Adam, and receipt of the
Holy Breath [A<,L:" U4@<] of the
Father for the last Adam sit one atop the other. This witness mark aligns
Genesis 2:7 with Matthew 3:16 with John 1:32. Now when read, a disciple can
better understand why the Gospel of John starts as it does: again, the passage
from John 1, verse 1 through verse 34 aligns the spiritual creation with that
portion of the physical creation described in Genesis 2, verse 4 through verse
7. In all of Scripture, the visible things of this
natural world reveal the invisible things of the heavenly realm (Rom 1:20). And
throughout Scripture, the physical or natural creation foreshadows or
anticipates the spiritual creation: as a time-linked shadow falls on the side
of an object farthest away from the light source, the lifeless spiritual shadow
of heavenly beings falls on the side farthest away from God. Hence, the
physical shadow of a heavenly being, whether an angel or a born-of-Spirit son
of God, always precedes in space-time the reality casting the shadow. God is no
longer at the beginning of the historical record, but awaits the glorification
of many sons in humanity’s near future. This glorification of endtime
disciples remains ahead of humanity; thus, the shadow of these collective disciples
lies lifeless behind the present era. But the shadow of that which is invisible to the
human eye is also invisible to the eye. This shadow falls on the mental
topography of humanity, for as the surface of the earth forms the base upon
which natural shadows fall, the collective mindscapes of human beings forms the
base upon which heavenly shadows fall. So asserting here what can be developed
elsewhere, the spiritually-lifeless, physically circumcised nation of Thus, the visible natural world forms a copy and
shadow of the spiritual creation of glorified sons of God, these two creations
sharing common markers as if one were folded over the other so that the first
Adam aligns with the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45). As vegetation sprang forth from
the garden of God in Eden after Adam was placed in this garden (“J”
account: Gen 2:8-9), so too does vegetation sprout from the earth in the
“P” account after the waters have been divided, with an expanse
made between the waters that are above heaven and those below heaven …
birth by Spirit causes a division to be made in the peoples or waters of the
earth. The English icon /water/ is
used prophetically to represent peoples in the visions of Daniel, and in
Revelation; so the use of /water/ in the “P” account to show
spiritual birth or birth from above is well within the linguistic logic of the
poetic conceit. A quick check of where humanity is in this
abstract of the spiritual plan of God reveals that until the single kingdom of
this world becomes the kingdom of the Father and His Christ, light will not
again return. The first day ended at In the “P” creation account, the
waters not above the heaven will be gathered, and dry land will appear (Gen
1:9-12)—that which is brought forth on the dry land is the great endtime
harvest of firstfruits [there have been no fruits before them, except the man
Jesus] that will be glorified on the fourth day. The “P” account does not
contain a record of God bringing forth vegetation on a lifeless earth. That
record is in the “J” account. Rather, from verse two on of the
“P” account, the subject of this account is of the spiritual
creation, which will have an early and a latter harvest of God, foreshadowed by
the early barley harvest and the later, maincrop wheat harvest of Judean
hillsides. It is the maincrop wheat harvest that becomes, from being the
“meat” of the man and the woman [i.e., that which feeds and
sustains them], the earthly pinnacle of the taxonomical hierarchy that begins
with the dividing of the waters, and is followed by vegetation created on the
third day. The man and the woman that Elohim
[singular] creates on the sixth day of the “P” account—their
creation deemed “very good” (Gen 1:31)—in a spiritual
hierarchy reference in the brief passage about the great White Throne Judgment,
when all of humanity that hasn’t previously been born of Spirit is
resurrected and judged. This will be the great harvest of humanity that was
foreshadowed by the earlier harvest of firstfruits, gathered into the barns of
God when Jesus came as the Messiah. And that portion of humankind which will
not be glorified is resurrected first as the breasts of the field are created
before the man and woman That
which is flesh will die and return to being dust [elemental elements] of the
ground (1 Cor 15:50), while that which is spirit will return to the heavenly
realm…one prominent religious leader of the 19th-Century
[Joseph Smith] took this principle to mean that human beings have little angels
inside them. Plato, lacking spiritual understanding, believed human beings have
immortal souls. Most of Christianity believes what one or the other of these
two men believed. Yet neither understood spiritual birth; neither understood
what Jesus told Nicodemus. And Jesus asked how Nicodemus could be a teacher of Spiritual
birth occurs when a person receives the Holy Breath [Pneuma ’Agion]
of the Father, just as “birth” for the first Adam occurred when Elohim
[singular in usage] breathed into the nostrils of the corpse He had formed from
red mud. The model for spiritual birth is that of Jesus of Nazareth, who was
first made—so that all righteousness could be fulfilled—a spiritual
corpse as a living, breathing human being before He became a quickening or
life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45). The
natural mind of human beings rejects the idea that a living, breathing human
being is a spiritual corpse in that same way that a lifeless human body is a
physical corpse…the icon /corpse/ is usually reserved for the body of a
person who has died. In the natural world, death does not precede life as it
did for the first Adam, who was not born as the infant of a woman, but was
created as a lifeless adult human being from red mud. For the first Adam, death
both preceded life, and because of his sin, followed life. And all of humanity has
since died as the first Adam died. Humanity,
unfortunately, is not physically born as the first Adam was; so human beings do
not easily comprehend the concept of death preceding life. Yet in this dark
portion of the third day—in the lacunae
between alpha and omega—humanity is spiritually born
as the last Adam was, for Jesus established the example that fulfilled all
righteousness. Every disciple was a child of disobedience, dead in trespasses
and sins, before being quickened by the Holy Breath [Pneuma ’Agion] of God (Eph 2:1-2, 5). So every disciple was a
spiritual corpse, with no more life in the heavenly realm than the first Adam
had life in the physical realm prior to Elohim
[singular] breathing into his nostrils But when born of Spirit, every disciple
became a new creature, with life in the heavenly realm that disciples can
neither see nor know from where it comes or to where it goes (John 3:8). The
pattern created that fulfilled all righteousness has a physically circumcised
Israelite, who lives by faith within the laws of God, being submersed in a
watery grave, then raised from this grave to receive life from the Breath of
God [Pneuma ’Agion]. And this
pattern of death, followed by resurrection and spiritual birth that fulfills
righteousness will be the order of events for the vast majority of humanity
(the maincrop wheat harvest) resurrected in the great White Throne Judgment.
However, when the division of humanity caused by circumcision was abolished
(Eph 2:14), this pattern of death/baptism preceding spiritual birth through
receipt of the Holy Spirit was modified: a Gentile [a person of the nations] would not leave the world
and cease being a son of disobedience unless the Father first drew the person
(John 6:44, 65) from the world by giving him or her the earnest of His Breath.
This pattern modification begins with Cornelius and his household (Acts
10:44-48). So since Cornelius was empowered by the Holy Spirit prior to his
baptism, the pattern that fulfills righteousness has a person made a spiritual
Israelite though receipt of the Holy Spirit prior to baptism, with baptism now
being the inclusionary rite that makes the infant disciple a member of the
household of God. Since Cornelius, baptism signifies that a person has taken
judgment upon him or herself (1 Pet 4:17). Spiritually, baptism equates to
physical circumcision. * * * ©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 ] |