Seven Lean Years:
The End of Transactional Economies
Chapter Two
Bread For Life Or Death
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, “And they will all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—not that anyone has seen the Father except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6:44–51 emphasis added)
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1.
On the day that would become the second Passover, Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Sinai, and the people grumbled against Moses and Aaron, “‘Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger’” (Ex 16:3). … In the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, Christians will grumble against the two witnesses who theologically have brought greater Christendom into a wilderness of ideas alien to the feel good religion of their ancestors. Temporarily, Christians will be united with the two witnesses, but at the end of 220 days, the vast majority of greater Christendom will rebel against the two witnesses, against keeping the Commandments, and will return to sin when no sacrifice remains for them. They will commit blasphemy against the spirit, and they will perish physically during the seven endtime years, and perish spiritually in the lake of fire at the end of these seven years. Thus, those who were first will not be last, but will not even enter the kingdom of the heavens; for having tasted the goodness of God, they found the taste too intense for them. They found comfort during intense turmoil by returning to the “Christianity” of grandparents and great grandparents.
My aunt—my mother’s oldest sister—came from California to visit us in Indiana when I was in first grade … we ate Oleo on toast and bread, the partially hydrogenated oil product still coming with dye packs tucked inside its wrapper to be stirred into the white grease to color the product yellow. It was the only “butter” that I knew. But my aunt ate real butter on her toast, and Mom made sure her sister had butter available. That was when I first tasted butter, and I didn’t like it. The flavor was too intense. It wasn’t until after I married that I started eating butter; it wasn’t until after I quit eating partially hydrogenated oil products [this was a little before I began milking goats]. So in a physical aspect, I understand how “tasting the goodness of God” can be too intense a flavor for Christians used to eating the Pablum served from pulpits and podiums across Western nations, food not fit for dogs without adding a lot of milk.
Greater Christendom would rather figuratively eat “balloon bread” buttered with Oleo than the unleavened bread of Christ Jesus, whose “goodness” remains a flavor too intense for the unborn; for the goodness of Christ requires and will require a person to manifest love for neighbor and brother, even to the person’s own detriment. The person has “rights,” but the goodness of God, the goodness of Christ isn’t about exercising the rights a person has but about serving another person who cannot possibly return that service until sometime in the distant future.
In the chirality of outwardly circumcised Israel symbolizing inwardly circumcised (circumcised of heart) Israel as the left hand is the non-symmetrical mirror image of the right hand, the outward bifurcation of a human person twisted inwardly represents the inner bifurcation of spirit [pneuma] and soul [psuche] as seen in a man and his wife being one flesh … neither spirit nor soul are physical (that is, of the creation). And as the circumcised-in-the-flesh nation of Israel forms the shadow and copy of circumcised of heart Israel, the woman forms the type of the man as the soul forms the type of the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou].
It is in the relationship of a man to his wife forming the shadow of the spirit of the person to the soul of the person where sexism should die an ugly death … Adam’s helpmate couldn’t be a coyote or a wolf, a sheep or a goat, a bear or a cougar, but had to be like him, and not like a beasts of the field. Eve had to be like Adam, a type of Adam although with differing internal and external characteristics. Thus, Eve was a non-symmetrical chiral image of Adam.
Can a theological concept be misapplied? Certainly. Consider what the psudepigraphical author of 1st Timothy writes about wives:
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (1 Tim 2:11–15)
The author of the Pastoral Epistles is a false “Paul” who did not understand what happened in the Genesis Temptation account …
Did the Lord tell Adam anything about “touching” the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? No, He did not. Did the Lord speak to Eve about touching the Tree? Not that is recorded; for the Lord doesn’t speak to Eve in the narrative. Nor should the Lord speak to Eve; for Adam was the head of his wife and the Lord was the Head of Adam. Adam was the one who should—and who did—instruct Eve; thus, it is Adam who added “touch” to the Lord’s words and thereby established the basis for his own unbelief.
The author of the Pastoral Epistles added words to the words of the Lord, words known to be false in the 2nd-Century CE, but words useful to proto-orthodox theologians in their battle for control of the Jesus Movement.
When the serpent asked Eve (not Adam who was alongside Eve and who could have, as her head, intervened at any time), “‘Did God actually say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden”?’” (Gen 3:1), Eve answered, “‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die”’” (vv. 2–3).
But what Eve told the serpent was false; was a mixture of truth and fiction, with the serpent capitalizing on the fiction by telling Eve what was true—“‘You shall surely not die’”—but not right, thereby using “truth” to deceive: “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” (Gen 3:4–5).
Again, because Adam added to the words of the Lord, the serpent was given an opportunity to deceive Eve: for it was absolutely true, Eve could eat forbidden fruit and not die for she was “covered” by the obedience of her husband, her head, Adam. This the Apostle Paul understood when he wrote,
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Rom 5:12–14 emphasis added)
Because the Apostle Paul understood that sin entered the world via Adam’s unbelief of the Lord blossoming and instantly bearing fruit when he saw Eve eat forbidden fruit and not die, it is extremely unlikely Paul would have said that Eve was the transgressor … it is so unlikely that when other falsities found in the Pastoral Epistles are examined closely, the only conclusion that can be draw is that the author of these epistles wasn’t the Apostle Paul and that this author didn’t understanding spiritual things, but was guilty of doing what Adam did when Adam added to the words of the Lord: the author of these epistles added to the Apostle Paul’s words while claiming to be “Paul.”
If the Pastoral Epistles were the only unauthorized additions to Scripture, they could be ignored and the remainder of Holy Writ used for instruction … note, the serpent didn’t add to the Lord God’s words. Adam did. And likewise in the 1st and 2nd Centuries: the Adversary didn’t add words, texts, to Holy Writ. The Adversary didn’t redact the writings of Moses and the history of Israel, transforming the always unpronounced linguistic determinative YHWH into a naming noun. Well-intentioned men did. The Adversary has just used these additions to deceive both Jews and Christians and even the prophet Mohammad, who was correct in realizing in the 7th-Century that both Judaism and Christianity had perverted Holy Writ. However, Mohammad and his immediate followers didn’t do any better when they created an ideological house for the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham’s firstborn son by the Egyptian woman, Hagar.
Someone will say that I add to Paul words: yes, I do. But I don’t claim to be Paul, nor do I claim infallibility. I write what I find in the Scriptures—and you are free to believe or not believe, with the Second Passover liberation of Israel either happening in the near future or not happening being the test of whether what I write is of myself or is through truly having been called by Christ to reread prophecy. For if I am correct, all other teachers of Christians are wrong. And for the preceding statement I make no apologies. I stand as either right or wrong. I make no attempt to deceive, nor to sugarcoat the realities of Holy Writ. With me, you get what you read; for in being called to reread prophecy, I wasn’t told what I should find in biblical prophecies nor told what I should say. So if a devout Christian wants to take exception to something I write, allow the Christian to take exception. The truth will be known soon enough, if it isn’t already known.
I didn’t choose myself to do the work I do … consider how much easier it would be to simply go along with existing wisdom, the existing canon, existing Christianity.
Adam didn’t choose to be created—I didn’t choose to be humanly born; I didn’t choose to be born of spirit. However, Adam did choose to add to the Lord’s words, even though his addition was for an audience of one. And it was his addition of “don’t touch” that gave an opening to the serpent who knew that if Eve touched the fruit of the Tree, she would eat and because she was covered by her husband’s obedience, she would live, and if she ate and lived, Adam would cease to believe the Lord about dying and he would eat …
That old serpent, Satan the devil, figuratively asked early Christians, Did God actually tell you that you should keep the Law? And these early Christians answered, We are to keep the Law, even the Sabbaths of the Lord, thereby making no inner distinction between Jew or Greek. And the Adversary smiled knowingly and said something like, God knows that you will enter heaven on the day after the Sabbath, Pentecost—the Feast of Weeks—just as Jesus His Son entered heaven on the day after the Sabbath. God knows that you will not die, that you have immortals souls, so it isn’t necessary that you keep the Law for Jesus kept it for you, and you are Christ’s if you believe He died for you. So you don’t have to keep the Sabbath Commandment.
Truth mixed with error: yes, the resurrection of firstfruits will occur on the day portion of the fourth day of “P” creation account; will occur on the morrow after the Sabbath that is represented by the last High Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Jesus was resurrected on the fourth day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in year 31 of the Common Era—on the day after the weekly Sabbath, His resurrection coming after He was in the grave three days and three nights [all of the 15th, the first High Sabbath, a Thursday; all of the 16th, Friday; all of the 17th, the weekly Sabbath; and He was gone from the grave before sunrise on the 18th, the first after the Sabbath]. The harvest of firstfruits of humanity began with the resurrection of Jesus, the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering, and will continue throughout the First Unleavened represented by the 14th day of the first month [the Preparation Day for the High Sabbath beginning the Feast of Unleavened Bread], and into the seven endtime years that will be represented by the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the correspondence being that leavening equates to sin and during the Feast, Israel puts bread leavening and leavened bread out of their domiciles, thereby putting sin out of their lives … God will, following the Second Passover of a second Israel, put sin and death out of all of Christendom by filling all Christians with spirit. The resurrection of firstfruits comes “with” the Second Coming of Christ and therefore at the end of the seventh year of the seven endtime years, or in a narrow sense, both “after” and “on” the last high Sabbath of Unleavened Bread.
The concept of bread, leavened and unleavened, lies at the heart of the resurrection of sons of God … manna required processing, but not beating [grinding] into fine flour. Jesus as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering did not require “processing” for He was without sin and therefore accepted by God as ripe grain. But the harvests of the Promised Land require processing after ripening, this processing occurring either before the seven endtime years begin [as will be the case for the oil and wine] or during these seven years [the grain harvests of the Promised Land].
But processing isn’t judging … Jesus “grew” as a kernel of grain grows: “And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life’” (John 12:23–25).
Jesus was that one wheat kernel that fell to the ground, then germinated in the form of His indwelling in His first disciples, these first disciples forming seedling [seminal] roots that include the primary root [radicle] while the coleoptile [the leaf-like structure incorporating primary leaves and the first true leaves] pushes through the ideological dust of Judaism. The coleoptile extends to the soil surface, ceases to grow when it emerges, and the first true leaf emerges from its tip … it could be argued that the Apostle Paul was the first true leaf, that the first disciples formed the coleoptile.
Until the first leaf begins to grow, the seedling depends on the stored energy of the kernel that fell to the earth.
Seedling growth continues, developing three of more leaves, until tillering begins above ground … in the dust of Judaism, the wheat stem during tillering develops a fibrous root system that produces plant establishment.
Tillers are lateral shoots that emerge from the axils of true leaves at the base of the main stem of the plant, and tillers are important because they have the potential of developing grain-bearing heads. Tillers are formed from auxiliary buds located on each crown node, with primary tillers forming from axils of the first four or more true leaves. If conditions are favorable, secondary tillers can develop from the base of primary tillers. And once a tiller has developed three or more leaves, it becomes nutritionally independent of the main stem and forms its own root system.
There is considerable difference between barley and wheat, with barley having shallow and weak root growth and weak stems, ripening in much less time than wheat. In the word the author of John’s Gospel used that is translated in 12:24 as <wheat>, the grain isn’t absolutely wheat but probably wheat, thereby introducing complexity into the metaphor of Jesus being a kernel of wheat through Jesus also being the reality of the first ripe handful [sheaf] of barley, with not one kernel of these seed heads falling to the ground.
In unpacking the preceding paragraphs, the bread the Lord gave to Israel in the wilderness—“bread” given for forty years—sustained the lives of Israel and of the children of Israel in the wilderness, but was not milled from any known grain. Plus, this bread was not food for Israel in the Promised Land, where the children of Israel would eat grains, oil and wine, and have grass for their herds from which they would have gotten meat and milk (Deut 11:14–15). The bread from heaven that sustained Israel and the children of Israel for the season [forty years] of transport from Egypt, a land of enslavement, to the Promised Land, representing the Sabbath, the Millennium, and heaven itself (three layers of symbolism), could not be grown from earthly soil—could not be grown from human philosophy.
Shadows are seen when something blocks light. Thus, for a spiritual shadow to be seen, something has to block the light that is God; something has to stand between the shadow and God. And the Lord, having already taken care of the particulars, placed the Adversary between Himself and His creation by making the Adversary the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air, with all authority in this world in this age coming through the Adversary regardless of the origin of the authority.
By the Adversary being the prince of the power of the air, the Adversary broadcasts his nature, his spirit across the mental topography of this world, thereby placing his nature in all living creatures. This is why the natures of the great predators are changed when dominion is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man halfway through the seven endtime years (see Isa 11:6–9).
Human nature will also be changed with all flesh being baptized in spirit (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11). Those human “things” [attributes] that are taken for granted—competition [a completive nature], the desire for freedom, for making transactions—all come from the Adversary’s broadcast of his nature in his present capacity as prince of this world. Therefore, after Matthew’s Jesus answered John the Baptist’s disciples, we find,
As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings' houses. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, "'Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.' Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds." (Matt 11:7–19 emphasis added)
In this discourse there is a time marker [<until now>] that rules out the earthly man Jesus having said these words attributed to Him: John was still living and his disciples would be reporting back to him. Therefore, it would make no sense for the <until now> insertion to have been said by Jesus when John’s disciples came to Him. The <until now> insertion only makes sense if “Jesus” spoke these words after John had been beheaded, with this insertion probably dating to when Matthew’s Gospel was written, at or after Roman soldiers sacked Jerusalem.
The author of Matthew’s Gospel consistently uses the phrase <ΤΗ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΟΥΡΑΝΟΝ>, which should translate into English as “the kingdom of the heavens” [plural], but traditionally has been mistranslated through transforming the plural ΟΥΡΑΝΩΝ into the singular “heaven,” thereby concealing from English readers the nature of the timeless heavenly realm … when wisdom is justified by deeds, to not understand attributes of timelessness prevents disciples from being wise, thereby able to be justified by their deeds.
It is lawless Christendom that takes the kingdom by force, something Jesus would not have said before the spirit was given … if all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, then the prophets and the Law lacked authority when the <until now> insertion was made—and if these two parts of Holy Writ lack authority, and if John was the Elijah to come, then John [different John] remains the Elijah to come, the one who prepares for the Second Advent, with Holy Writ producing neither wisdom nor the deeds of wisdom.
When Christians attempt to force their way into the presence of God, their success is only an illusion; for without God the Father drawing a person from this world and delivering this person to Christ Jesus to call, justify, and glory while the person lives physically, the person knows neither the Father nor the Son. For only through the Son can a person come to the Father (John 14:6) and only through the Father can a Christian come to Christ (John 6:44), one way of stating what Paul wrote when he said, “The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23), and what John wrote, his Jesus saying, “‘And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’” (John 17:3).
No human person is born with an immortal soul … the jihadist who willingly becomes a bomb-delivery-system has been deceived and is to be pitied. This person did not perish for a good cause; this person is without wisdom for the person’s deeds are evil from having eaten the bread of the Adversary, the person not realizing that God wants idolatry rooted from minds not ancient idols beaten into dust.
Ancient idols are merely stone statuary that can neither help nor harm a person. It is the worship of things—guns, tanks, artillery pieces—or of people such as Mohammad that represents modern idolatry, and fundamentalist Islam has become an idolatrous ideology for it matters little whether an Islamic Caliphate serves as the “face” of the Adversary or whether an American-style democracy serves as this face. In either case, there will be harm done to the people of the region, perhaps harm to a differing set of people but nevertheless harm when under the Messiah, “They shall not hurt or destroy in all my [God’s] holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of [YHWH] as the waters cover the sea” (Isa 11:9).
When God draws a person from this world and delivers this person to Christ Jesus to call, justify, and glory, there is no harm done to the inner self of the person. Rather, the inner self is resurrected to life in a resurrection like Jesus’ when the spirit of God descended upon Him and entered into Him in the bodily form of a dove (again, Mark 1:10), the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] now in the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] that will raise the dead soul of the human person by entering the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou], thereby giving to this person the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) in a manner analogous to a human infant having the indwelling mind of man even though the infant doesn’t yet think the thoughts of a man. The newly born of spirit Christian, even though having the mind of Christ, thinks in the bipolar imagery of infancy and is therefore unable discern true wisdom.
The preceding is an important concept for a Christian to understand and remember: infant sons of God are not able to chew or digest solid food so while these infants will “hear” it said that this present world doesn’t belong to the Father and the Son but to the Adversary who opposes God but doesn’t have the power or authority to prevent God from doing whatever God wants (there is no equality between God and the Adversary; between Christ Jesus and the Adversary), infant sons of God will not realize that they attempt to take the kingdom by force when they succumb to “sharing” the good news of Christ with friends and neighbors. Yes, this is correct. Infant sons of God—only having recently left the world—want to “convert” others when such conversion is impossible. A shared characteristic common to all infant sons of God is their desire to teach others … infant sons of God simply cannot keep their mouth shut. And inevitably, they misteach those whom they would teach—
What did Jesus tell His disciples: “Then He strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ” (Matt 16:20 et al). Why? Because if they spoke, tried to teach, they would have harmed the work being done by God, Father and Son. … They would have been as Christian converts that simply CANNOT keep their mouths shut!
When a convert—an infant son of God—tries to convert others or tries to teach another convert, nothing good ever happens; for the infant son of God has usurped authority that this son of God doesn’t have … it cannot be said too strongly, Christian converts are to keep mouths shut unless asked for the hope that lies within them. The only “talking” the convert does is through deeds of wisdom, with the highest form of wisdom being keeping silent except to answer specific questions—not about theology, but about why the Christian convert does “this” or “that” in the convert’s walk with God.
Under the New Covenant, all will be taught by God:
All your children shall be taught by [YHWH],
and great shall be the peace of your children. (Isa 54:13)
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Behold, the days are coming … when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares [YHWH]. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know [YHWH],” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer 31:31–34 emphasis added)
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For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For He finds fault with them when He says: "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." (Heb 8:7–12 emphasis added)
For a Christian convert to attempt to teach other converts or to teach Gentiles the mysteries of God without having been specifically called to teach is manifested presumptuousness of the sort that will preclude the convert from ever teaching … how much stronger must I repeat the preceding: in the Affliction, all Christians will be filled with spirit and will be taught by God so that all know the Lord. Until then (until the Second Passover liberation of greater Christendom, the second Israel), no one can come to God except through Christ Jesus and no one can come to Christ Jesus unless drawn from this world by God the Father. Christianity is a closed system; a closed ideology. And those who purport to be Christians—even those who keep the Commandments—have no love for presumed brothers in Christ when they attempt to teach without having been called to teach.
The preceding is correct: the Christian who attempts to teach others without having been specifically called to teach has no love regardless of what the Christian thinks about him or herself. For to cast pearls before swine is not to have love for swine but to flatter the person’s ego, thereby squandering [by having the gift of God—knowledge of God—wasted on the person’s ego] Christ Jesus’ sacrifice.
What is there about humility that the Christian doesn’t understand? What is there about placing the needs of others over personal needs that the Christian doesn’t understand? Where is the humility needed for the Christian to keep his or her mouth shut even when the Christian knows the answer to a question? Being a Christian is much more than being a first-grader whose hand pops up to answer a question as soon as the question is asked. What’s wrong with thinking about the question; thinking about how or whether the Christian should answer it; thinking about how the answer will be received? Is the one who asked spiritually old enough to receive the answer? Usually, the answer to this question is, No, the one who asked isn’t old enough. Thus, maturity is needed to know how much answer should be given or whether any answer should be given; whether the Christian should even acknowledge hearing the question.
Of course not to acknowledge hearing a question introduces the risk of offending the person who asked, but when all will be taught by God, the question will be answered by God when the Father and Son believe the son of God is old enough spiritually to receive the answer. It becomes self-evident to the more mature son of God when a question is asked that shouldn’t be answered directly [in a straightforward manner] or immediately, but this is not the case with those who remain spiritual infants: they never seem to know when to keep their mouths shut. They behave as first-graders wanting to impress others by how much they know when in reality they impress Christ by how immature they still are, with the author of Hebrews having written,
In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Heb 5:7–14 emphasis added)
Hebrew converts who knew the Law and who had practiced keeping the Law for decades should have been mature enough to be teachers of Israel, but they were still in need of someone to teach them the basic principles of the oracles. They were still in need of diapers, but almost certainly they thought they were solid pillars in the Church when in reality they were still in swaddling garments. They couldn’t see themselves as they spiritually were. The eyes of their hearts remained tightly closed.
But without these Hebrews being called to teach—in a calling like Paul’s—they really couldn’t be teachers. And because they weren’t called to be teachers, they didn’t need the maturity of Moses, of Jesus, of Paul, of John to fulfill the reason why they were foreknown and predestined to be glorified when it wasn’t the season for fruit … this is what many Sabbatarian Christians fail to understand: their calling is to support a ministry that is of God. Their calling isn’t to teach, or to explicate Scripture—they simply do not know enough to teach, even when they believe they are mature in the faith. And evidence that they do not know enough is the relatively rapid growth of the Sacred Names Heresy that places importance on utterance; on the physical rather than the spiritual.
Christ Jesus will give to the person in whom He dwells what the person needs to do the work for which the person was called; so if one of the Elect lacks something, beit knowledge or material possessions, what will be found is that the person doesn’t need what the person lacks for the person to do that for which the person was called. This includes children, spouse, credentials, physical abilities—any number of things about which the person prays … the Apostle Paul could have used better eyesight, but his prayers were not answered by divine healing:
So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Cor 12:7–9)
In reality, the Adversary has authority over sons of God only through the weakness of the flesh, with this weakness not limited to a physical disability or to a physical addiction, but broader, incorporating conscious mindsets such as a competitive nature or loneliness.
John wrote,
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17)
Almost everything—if not everything—a person, a Christian, thinks comes through the filter of the Adversary’s nature. Even rebellion against the Adversary comes through the filter of the Adversary’s rebellion against God, with God using the Adversary’s broadcast of rebellion to turn rebellion back upon rebellion, thereby turning the Adversary’s rebellion against him, figuratively flipping the rebellious person and turning the person into a double-agent.
Rebellion against the Adversary occurs in the form of obedience to God via faith, belief of God to the extent that the rebel wants to keep the Commandments of God, and actually strives to keep them in a world set up to prevent any person from truly keeping the Commandments.
Because Jesus told His disciples, “‘No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you’” (John 15:15), endtime disciples should be able to “see” the things of God through the shadows created by the Adversary blocking the light that is God, with the Adversary in place to block the light thereby making visible both his nature as well as the plan of God for divine procreation.
For pedagogical purposes, the previous needs to be restated: the Adversary’s rebellion against God ended with his defeat before the world was created. The rebels were sentenced to death, but the dynamics of timelessness require that the presence of live cannot coexist with the absence of life; for in timelessness, there is no decay. Therefore, rebelling angels being sentenced of death required the construction of a death chamber where one movement “decays” into the next moment so that a living entity can have “life” in this moment but when this moment decays into the next moment, the entity can have lost “life” and be dead.
But defeat of the Adversary and his angels didn’t erase from the minds of angels that didn’t rebel the ideas the Adversary advocated. Negating his ideas required that he be permitted to implement this ideas and show to angels that didn’t rebel that his ideas were as unworkable as Plato’s ideas were when implemented. For the creation of the death chamber permitted God to kill “ideas” as well as rebelling angels.
The physical creation is this death chamber, a glorious death chamber equivalent to a condemned prisoner’s last meal. And the Adversary became a tool employed by God to “kill” his own ideas by putting his ideas into practice.
There isn’t equality between the Adversary and God …
Pinocchio was a wood puppet carved by Geppetto. When Geppetto dreams that Pinocchio becomes a real boy, a second layer of fiction is added to the first (for both Pinocchio and Geppetto are fictional characters created by the Italian author Carlo Collodi for his 1883 novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio). However, Pinocchio remains a wood puppet. He only becomes a boy in Geppetto’s dream, with Geppetto himself having been dreamt into existence. Likewise, the Adversary remains a created guardian angel placed in Eden, the Garden of God, and therefore unable to ascend higher up the mountain of God, with the Adversary’s permanence being no greater than Geppetto’s.
But as the concept of Pinocchio’s nose growing longer when he tells a lie—a concept that remains in modern culture—the Adversary’s advocacy of democratic self-rule in transactional economies remains imbedded in Western culture.
Created as an anointed guardian cherub and placed in Eden, the Garden of God, the Adversary didn’t know of any preexistence prior to his own existence: for him, heaven began with him, and heaven wasn’t greater than where he could come and go. He didn’t know that he could not enter the heavenly moment when he did not have life, the analogy of Mount Sinai, when the men of Israel could not set foot on the mountain and live.
When Moses ascended Sinai, Joshua went part way up the mountain; for even Joshua, Moses’ assistant, couldn’t enter into the presence of the Lord atop Sinai … in type, Joshua represents Jesus in that the children of Israel followed Joshua into the Promised Land as the firstfruits of the harvest of humanity will follow Christ Jesus into heaven. But Moses entered into the presence of the Lord without having entered the Promised Land; without being baptized in the river Jordan, thereby establishing a distinction between Joshua and Moses that remains to this day—the distinction between the Body of Christ and the Head of that Body.
When chirality is understood, only the shadow needs to be seen to mentally “see” the spiritual reality. Hence manna, physical bread from heaven that didn’t come as a baked loaf or as a tortilla but came as hoarfrost (a fine, flake-like substance — Ex 16:14) that had to be made into something, porridge or bread, forms the shadow and copy of Christ Jesus, who transforms “whoever believes” into a son of God through what the person does; through what the person makes of him or herself. As ancient Israel in the wilderness had to do something with manna before it was eaten, thereby sustaining the Israelite’s life, the Christian has to do something with the indwelling of the spirit of Christ—and this doing something isn’t a physical thing, but a mental thing that will manifest itself in all that the person does.
When the symbolism of gender is understood, gender equates to manna in that it is added to the soul of a person to sustain life for a season; it is added in the form of an earthly body in which the genderless and lifeless soul dwells, the soul being like an angel but without having received life outside of space-time until drawn by the Father from this world and delivered to Christ Jesus to call, justify, and glorify. In other words, in the mirror image of human life that begins with conception—life that is lived then dies and is no more, the body returning to dust [the base elements of this creation]—the soul is formed dead as the first Adam was formed dead into a man made from red mud; was completely formed into a man before receiving the breath of life by Elohim [singular in usage] breathing the breath of life into the man of mud’s nostrils (Gen 2:7). And the reality of the soul being formed dead before receiving its breath of life—the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou] entering into the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou]—is comprehendible in that it would not be practical to create a living cell without that cell having a delivery system to supply it with oxygen and fuel, a convoluted clause that seems to argue against itself as a dog chasing its tail.
Created life begins with a model that necessarily has a delivery system for both fuel and an oxidizing agent that transforms a portion of that fuel into energy …
A physical cell cannot sustain itself without a supply of oxygen and fuel (simple carbohydrates); for living fleshly bodies are sustained by the dark fire of cellular oxidation. Thus, the creation story of the first Adam is interesting from the perspective of how chemical compounds could be held together for long enough to have them together when the spark of life ignites the dark fire of cellular oxidation. That is what the creation narrative of Genesis chapter two states: the Lord formed Adam from the base elements of this earth, holding these elements in place until He breathed life into the nostrils of the man of mud … this creation story better forms the shadow and copy of the story of the creation of the soul [psuche] than of the flesh [soma]; for there is a sequel to the story of the creation of the first Adam, the sequel being the story of the creation of the second or last Adam, Christ Jesus.
In the story of the first Adam, the corpse was complete in size and shape and inner complexity before Elohim breathed life into the nostrils of the man of mud. In the story of the second Adam, Christ Jesus was a living person before He came to John to be baptized. He was without sin, making Him spiritually “complete” before receiving a spiritual breath of life [the indwelling of the spirit of God] as the first Adam was physically complete before Elohim breathed into his nostrils.
In the creation story of the last Adam and the creation story of the first Adam, it is what happened immediately following being baptized where these two creation accounts align [where their witness marks matchup]; for upon being raised from the watery grave of baptism in the Jordan, the spirit/breath of God [pneuma Theou] descended in the bodily form of a dove and entered into [eis, from Mark 1:10] the man Jesus and did not depart from Jesus … no dove flew away. The breath of God did not give life to the fleshly body of Jesus, who was already alive from the breath of life Elohim had breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam, that breath of life passed to Eve in her creation from the rib and flesh of Adam, and then passed from Eve to all of humanity, according to the Genesis story—if this creation story is physically true.
The Genesis creation accounts [there are two] have placed Christian believers at odds with scientists for more than a century. Actually, the painting of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593) titled [in English] Water (1566, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria) suggests an intellectual link between sea life and human life … although the painting could be entirely whimsical (a collage of sea life that appears as a human portrait from a distance), the painting could also reflect evolutionary perception that Arcimboldo as a Mannerist tried to show as close relationships between nature and humanity as seen in his Four Seasons portraits.
But what if the Genesis creation accounts—there are two distinctly different accounts—have been misread for millennia, and not only misread but intentionally miscopied in Babylon to give to Israel antiquity rivaling that of the Chaldeans.
The Genesis creation account of Adam and Eve functions as prophecy reflected in the creation of the second or last Adam, Christ Jesus, whose inner self was raised from death when the spirit of God descended upon Him in the bodily form of a dove and entered into Him, thereby causing Him to be twice born, something that Nicodemus couldn’t understand. Jesus’ inner self would have been analogous to the fleshly body of the first Adam in the Genesis chapter two creation account: complete but not alive; complete but awaiting receipt of the breath of life.
But Jesus’ inner self could not be seen by human eyes. It could not have been weighed or measured by even modern instruments. For Jesus’ inner self—like the inner selves of His disciples—was not physical; was not of the creation, but existed apart from the creation.
Godly knowledge isn’t needed to comprehend that a single living cell divides to form two cells, with these two cells then dividing to form four cells and continuing to divide until there are many cells, either forming autonomous units or gathered together to form the living fleshly bodies of plants and animals. How a spark of life entered into the first cell isn’t well understood and remains open to discussion, with Christians generally believing that God is the source for that spark of life. But without godly knowledge, nothing could be known about what is not physical … by definition, what is not physical is outside of the scope of scientific inquiry.
Again, what is not physical is outside of human means of discovery; so knowledge of what is not physical can only come via revelation. And once the spirit was given, revelation comes via realization to those in whom the Parakletos, the spirit of truth, resides—and this is not all of Christendom, but only those whom the Father foreknew and predestined; those whom Christ called, justified, and glorified, thereby causing them to have the mind of Christ (again, 1 Cor 2:16). For without the mind of Christ, nothing spiritual can be understood.
Heavenly or eternal life begins with death as Adam was a complete but dead human person before Elohim breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. Jesus was a physically living but spiritually dead human person before the breath of God descended upon Him and entered into Him, thereby causing Him to be twice born through having the indwelling of two breaths of life, one from the Creator of all things physical and one from the God of dead ones, the Host of heaven. Jesus was not fully man and fully God during His earthly ministry. The teaching that He was is a lie used by proto-orthodox Christendom in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries to steal disciples away from Marcionite congregations …
Marcion of Sinope is believed to have been a wealthy ship owner who made a 200,000 sesterces donation to the church in Rome, but apparently the donation was made to gain theological influence, which didn’t happen. Elders of the Church at Rome excommunicated Marcion and returned his donation … about 144 CE, Marcion developed a ditheistic theology that had the Hebrew God of the Old Testament being an evil and an inferior God to Christ Jesus, who came into this world only appearing to be a man. Thus, Marcionism was similar to Gnosticism.
Marcion was an early Christian dualist, and Marcionism was denounced by proto-orthodox theologians as heresy, with Tertullian in a five volume treatise [Adversus Marcionem, ca 208 CE] arguing the faults of the ideology. And while the writings of Marcion were destroyed whenever and wherever they were found by Christian orthodoxy, what Marcion taught can be somewhat reconstructed from arguments made against the ideology.
Marcion held that the Father of Christ Jesus was the only true God, that the God of Abraham was a false God. According to his critics, Marcion’s theological teacher was Simonian Cerdo … Irenaeus would have Cerdo, from the Simonians, coming to Rome under Hyginus, and teaching that the God of Abraham was not the Father of Christ Jesus (Against Heresies, 1.27.1)—and indeed He wasn’t according to John’s Gospel as well as according to Matthew’s Gospel. According to John’s Gospel, the God of Abraham was the Beloved; the Logos; the One who was God and was with the God (John 1:1); and who asked the Father to return the glory He had before the world was created to Him (John 17:5).
Paul, in referencing the Logos, said,
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5–11)
The falseness of the Book of Acts can be seen in what its author has his “Paul” say on Mars Hill; for this false “Paul” has the God of the Old Testament being the deity that resurrects Jesus from death—and doesn’t square with either John’s Gospel or Matthew’s Gospel, in which Matthew’s Jesus tells Sadducees,
You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. (Matt 22:29–32)
The God of Abraham was the Creator of all things physical; hence the God of Abraham was the Logos (John 1:3), who entered His creation as His unique Son, but became the Son of the God of dead ones when the breath of God descended upon Him and entered into Him in the bodily form of a dove.
Proto-orthodoxy held that “evil” has no independent existence, but is the absence of “good,” a view that would be held by Moses Maimonides. But theologically, evil is unbelief of the sort that Adam displayed in the Garden when he ate forbidden fruit; of the sort that prevented Israel from entering the Promised Land (Heb 3:19); of the sort that Paul identifies as sin (Rom 14:23). Evil is then personified in the Adversary, who because of his unbelief of God permitted indwelling iniquity to be discovered, thereby instigating a rebellion against God.
Christian dualism gives character to both Good and Evil, with Ellen G. White’s teaching that Christ and Satan wrestle for the souls of men positing opposing gods, forces, principles, one higher or spiritual and the other lower, materialistic, hence evil. Likewise, Latter Day Saints’ teachings that Christ and Satan were brothers that went separate ways is a form of Christian dualism that lacks understanding the principles of timelessness … the present of life excludes the possibility of the absence of life in the same entity, and vice versa. Because angels, including the Adversary, did not have life in the unchanging moment in which God the Father and His Beloved had life, angels cannot enter this moment in timelessness; cannot ever have life in this moment. But because human sons of God receive life from the moment in which the Father and the Son have life, they have life in this moment and are therefore “higher” than are the angels, with the imagery of Israel camped around the base of Mount Sinai forming the visible shadow and type this spiritual reality.
As Israel could not set foot on Mount Sinai and live, angels cannot leave the heavenly moment in which they were created to ascend the mountain of the Lord, what the Adversary didn’t know until he “tested” the Lord by trying to elevate himself:
How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. (Isa 14:12–15)
Again, repeated for pedagogical reasons, the anointed guardian cherub (from Ezek chap 28) didn’t understand the dynamics of timelessness; didn’t understand that by having been created outside of the heavenly moment in which the Father and the Son have life, he could never enter into that moment where the Father and His Beloved have life. He isn’t able to wrestle with Christ for the souls of men; for with spiritual birth, a human son of God has life in a heavenly moment that no angel can enter. Hence, Sin, the demonic king of the South, cannot harm the Elect, the processed oil and wine of the Promised Land; for this demonic king cannot enter into the heavenly moment in which human sons of God have life through the indwelling of Christ.
The dynamics of timelessness are not difficult to understand if the Christian ceases to place importance on the surfaces of things. It was, however, the Adversary that apparently remained unable to grasp these dynamics until fire came from his belly and utterly consumed him, a reality that has already occurred in the heavenly realm but a reality that has not yet happened inside of space-time, with the passage of time meandering through a sea of dark energy.
Any argument based on dualism, on two-ism is inherently simpleminded, even when the argument is based on chirality … a human child by thirty months of age is able to understand dual referents; so a son of God able to use chirality to discover the hidden “things” of God equates to a human child less than three years old. And while a two or three year old human child has the mind of man, the child’s thinking isn’t that of an adult. Nor does the son of God equivalent to a three year old and having the mind of Christ think as Christ Jesus thinks. Rather, a child thinks as a child; thinks in a black and white spectrum; understands concepts based on two-ism; on either/or, us/them. So even in chirality, the bifurcation of the human person gives to both mirror images more than a left hand and a right hand.
The problem imbedded in any bipolar schema is the absence of the bridge that connects the two poles—is the absence of cheeks, ears, shoulders, arms at the end of which is either a left hand or a right hand, the hands becoming the poles of the schema. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, the narrator identified the head of a Right Whale hanging from the port side rigging as Locke and the head of a Sperm Whale hanging from the starboard side rigging as Kant, then says to turn both thunderheads loose, let the ship lift and sail right, with the Pequod and all that occurs aboard the ship being the bridge between the poles … it is on the bridge between the poles where complications occur in any schema based upon chirality.
But again, a glance at a person’s left hand discloses to the observer the general shape and appearance of the right hand; however, the wrinkles and calluses on the left hand don’t necessarily match those of the right hand … from playing softball as a youth, my perpetually jammed thumb of my left hand has caused the joint to be pushed in rather than protruding as the joint does on my right hand as well as the joint does on most people’s hands; so there is visible difference between my left and right hands that tends to belie their chirality. And so it is with theological chirality.
Manna as bread from heaven and Christ Jesus as bread from heaven do not appear the same even though in theological chirality, they are spiritual non-symmetrical mirror images one of the other; for both sustain life, manna in this world, Christ Jesus in heaven.
On the day that would become the second Passover, Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Sinai, and the people grumbled against Moses and Aaron, “‘Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger’” (Ex 16:3). … In the chirality of outwardly circumcised Israel symbolizing inwardly circumcised (circumcised of heart) Israel as the left hand is the non-symmetrical mirror image of the right hand, the outward bifurcation of a human person represents the inner bifurcation of spirit [pneuma] and soul [psuche], neither of which are physical (that is, of the creation). And as the circumcised-in-the-flesh nation of Israel forms the shadow and copy of circumcised of heart Israel, the woman forms the type of the man, with the relationship of a man to his wife forming the shadow of the spirit of the person to the soul of the person.
Neither the spirit of the person [to pnuema tou ’anthropou] nor the soul [psuche] are physical. Neither have gender (that is, neither are male nor female). Neither have ethnicity (that is, neither are Jew nor Greek). Neither have social status (that is, neither are bond or free). And neither have inherent life (that is, neither are alive) when the person is humanly born. And this is where carnally minded Christians go wrong, some to the left hand side, some to the right hand side … those on the left want the spirit and the soul to pass a mythical pin test, that is to not bleed physical blood when poked by a physical pin—of course they don’t bleed physical blood for they are not sustained by the dark fire of cellular oxidization, but by the bright fire that is the glory of God.
When raised from death in a resurrection to life like that of Christ Jesus when the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the visible form of a dove descended upon Him and entered into [eis, from Mark 1:10 in Greek] Him, thereby giving to Jesus a second breath of life, the breath of God the Father (with the English word <breath> being the proper translation of the Latin word <spīritus> that is a good translation of the Greek word <pneuma>), the inner self of the person numbered among the Elect is glorified while this inner self still dwells in a fleshly body … the physical flesh bleeds; the soul doesn’t.
Nicodemus couldn’t grasp being born a second time, being born again, which isn’t a religious feeling, but an actual birth [receiving of life] outside of space and time through receiving life via the Father raising the dead soul, not the fleshly or earthly dead body of the person.
The dead spirit of the person [again, to pnuema tou ’anthropou], as if a woman penetrated by her husband, is made alive through the indwelling of the spirit of Christ … being born of spirit is resurrection of the dead inner self of a person through receipt of the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou], again this spirit of Christ “penetrating” [as a husband penetrates his wife for purposes of procreation] the spirit of the person that now becomes an actual son of God, with Christ as the Head of the person as the husband is the head of his wife (1 Cor 11:3), and with God the Father—His spirit having penetrated the spirit of the man Jesus when the dove entered into [eis] the man Jesus—being the Head of Christ Jesus.
The preceding is easily understood by those persons who have been born of spirit, but cannot be understood by the carnally minded person, regardless of whether the carnally minded is to the left or to the right of the bridge between dimensions, this bridge being the living Christ Jesus.
Paul wrote, “I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Cor 15:50 emphasis added) … the fleshly body is perishable and will never inherit immortality for the perishable possesses mass and cannot enter into a timeless dimension for “time” can be written as a mathematical function of gravity. Hence, to be outside of time and the passage of time, the living entity has to be in a supra-dimensional realm—and to be in such a realm or dimension, the living entity cannot possess mass but must be pure energy in a primal form. So it isn’t the fleshly body that will receive immortality. It is the soul of the person—raised from death by the Father drawing the person from this world via giving to the person the earnest [as in “earnest money” given to secure a real estate contract] of the spirit then delivering the person to Christ Jesus to call, justify, and glorify through the indwelling of Christ.
Theological “predestination” is implemented through the Father giving to the person the earnest of the spirit. Glorification of the Elect comes via the indwelling of Christ Jesus. But there is here a clarification that needs to be made: glorification of “Christians” counted as firstfruits (typified by the early barley harvest of ancient Judea) comes when their judgments are revealed at the Second Advent whereas the already glorified Elect never come under judgment …
Because the Elect hear the word of Jesus and believe the One who sent Him into this world, they pass from death to life without coming under judgment (John 5:24), thereby forming an additional harvest for God, a harvest commingled with the harvest of firstfruits (a subject to be addressed later). The Elect form the seven churches, which are not church eras but are distinct entities that appear as the seven candlesticks in Revelation 1:20, but appear as the seven horns on the head of the Lamb in Revelation 5:6, thereby making these seven named churches not part of the Body of Christ, but part of the Head; part of Christ Himself.
However, the greater theological problem doesn’t reside with those Christians who insist no one is born of spirit until glorified living souls reside in glorified outer bodies that replaced perishable fleshly bodies in which the early [barley] harvest of humanity presently reside. The greater problem lies with those Christians [Jews or Muslims] who insist that human persons are born with immortal souls when Paul states, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23).
The Greek novelist [Second Sophist] who wrote Luke and Acts took hold of the concept that eternal life only comes via the indwelling of Christ [ΈΝ ΧΡΙΣΤΩ] and had his fictional Peter say, Let it be known that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth there is salvation, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (paraphrased, Acts 4:10–12) … although Acts is commonly cited by Christian pastors and theologians, Acts is probably the only early Greek novel Christians have read; therefore, most Christians do not recognize Acts as a fictional work.
For argumentative purposes, consider the passage that Christians holding the Sacred Names Heresy commonly cite to justify its use of bastardized Hebrew names: Peter’s utterance paraphrased above. Compare what Peter said to what Jesus said in Matthew’s Gospel:
When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And He will place the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Then He will say to those on His left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” Then He will answer them, saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matt 25:31–46)
Which one of the sheep uttered Jesus’ name in bastardized Hebrew? Is utterance of the name of Jesus even a qualifier for eternal life? No. The only qualifier is having love for neighbor and brother sufficient to cause the person to feed the hungry and give shelter to the homeless.
The only thing separating sheep from goats is manifested love for other human persons. Utterance has nothing to do with manifested love. … Does God have a name? Not one that the human tongue can utter; for all utterance is dependent upon vibration of vocal cords vibrating air molecules that are themselves physical. God is not of this creation; is not physical; is not a thing that can be shaped by the hands of men. However, the God of Christians who have swallowed the poison of the Sacred Name Heresy—of Christians who have taken a passage from a novel and applied it literally—is a deity of air, with the Adversary remaining the prince of the power of the air. Christians trapped in the Sacred Names Heresy suckle the teats of the Adversary, getting no milk from them but getting pageantry and ceremony and a one-way ticket to the lake of fire.
The Christian who studies Scripture for him or herself and who will have no one but God for a teacher will eventually rebel against God; for this person will not be taught by God … the only thing this person needs to learn is to have love for the hungry and the homeless, not the nuances of Scripture. It is only after this person has demonstrated love for neighbor and brother that the person can comprehend the subtleties of God; for why should God waste His energy teaching goats what He has hidden from humanity? He simply won’t individually teach the unteachable. Only when His spirit is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) will goats also be filled with spirit and thereby have understanding that sin [unbelief] lurks at their door, ready to devour them.
Returning to Acts chapter 2: who was the scribe that recorded Peter’s exact words? Neither Peter nor John; for according to the passage, both were illiterate [uneducated men, Acts 4:13] and couldn’t have recorded what Peter said. The temple officials didn’t record what Peter said. Luke wasn’t yet a follower of Paul, who hadn’t yet been called. So who was the scribe—and why does all speech in Acts have the same tone and cadence, something that modern fiction writers seek to avoid when fabricating speech?
As a narrative technique, using speech to deliver information is more efficient than delivering the same information as prose—and modern Christians see this in the redaction of Moses and the Prophets and the Writings undertaken by Hebrew scribes in the Babylonian Deportation; for who was the scribe present when David ate showbread?
All speech in Acts sounds the same because all speech was created from the same pen, that of a Second Sophist novelist probably in Smyrna … this novelist had access to Paul’s epistles and to Mark’s Gospel as well as to the oral gospel [oral gospel tradition] and used what he had to create a biography of Jesus that formed the shadow and copy of his history of the early church. But the “Jesus” of Luke’s Gospel is not the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel. For theological reasons, the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel doesn’t have a pre-ministry history, nor speaks when taken into custody; whereas the author of Luke’s Gospel gives Jesus a prehistory [not realizing that without sin, Jesus would cast no shadow of Himself in this world — Jesus shouldn’t appear as a human person in any historical record until He takes upon Himself the sins of Israel], then makes Jesus into a talkative fellow on His way to being crucified and even on the cross.
As an aside, the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel has a prehistory (that differs from the Jesus of Luke’s Gospel) because Matthew’s Jesus is the indwelling Jesus in disciples when they are born of spirit, a concept that the carnally minded will find difficult to grasp. But each disciple, born as a son of disobedience, has a prehistory before being born of spirit; hence, a royal prehistory for the living inner self [made alive by the indwelling of Christ] is appropriate for the indwelling Christ. It is for this reason that the author of Matthew’s Jesus has Roman soldiers mock Jesus in a scarlet robe (Matt 27:27–29) whereas in Mark’s Gospel, these Roman soldiers mock Jesus in a purple [the color of royalty] garment (Mark 15:16–20). … In John’s Gospel, Jesus is mocked in a purple garment (John 19:1–3).
Acts is a fictional recreation of early church history. It shouldn’t have been canonized, but was. Thus, endtime disciples have to deal with it—and greater Christendom already has in place in Luke and Acts their basis for rebelling against God in the Affliction; for to believe “Peter” of Acts, or “Paul” of Acts, or the post-Calvary narrative of Luke is to disbelieve God … to believe a lie, a fiction, is to disbelieve the spirit of truth. To believe that the spirit was given on Pentecost instead on the Wave Sheaf Offering is to disbelieve God. To believe Joel’s prophecy of the spirit being poured out on all flesh was fulfilled on Pentecost following Calvary is to disbelieve the spirit of prophecy (from Rev 19:10 — cf. Rev 12:17, 19:10).
When Christians have no sacrifice remaining for their unbelief—the general state of greater Christendom following the Second Passover liberation of Israel—for Christians to return to unbelief of God after being filled with spirit and having the Law written on hearts and placed in minds will be unforgiveable blasphemy against the spirit.
And greater Christendom will commit blasphemy against the spirit with wholesale rebellion against God on day 220 of the Affliction … there is nothing that will stop Christians as a collective from rebelling against God on day 220, but individual Christians will—here and there—pull the blinders off the eyes of their hearts, turn to God, and will be healed from death, which entered this world by one man and reigned over all men until Moses entered into the presence of the Lord, thereby laying the foundation for the great nation the Lord would build from Moses.
While Israel was still camped around Mount Sinai, the basis for the Christian Elect being born of spirit was laid in the form of the man Moses, who entered into the presence of the Lord, seeing the Lord in His glory even if only seeing His back side.
2.
Jesus said, “‘Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—not that anyone has seen the Father except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life’” (John 6:45–48) … in unpacking Jesus’ words, the bread the Lord gave to Israel in the wilderness—“bread” given for forty years—sustained the lives of Israel and of the children of Israel in the wilderness, but was not food for Israel in the Promised Land where the children of Israel would return to eating grains, oil and wine, and have grass for their herds from which they would have gotten meat and milk (Deut 11:14–15).
Bread from heaven came for the season [forty years] of transport from Egypt, the land representing sin, to the Promised Land, the land represented by the Sabbath, when Israel shall rest from its mundane labors. But there was no rest for Israel in the Promised Land: Israel was harried by Philistines and enticed by Amorites and Canaanites. And the Promised Land representing the Sabbath, the Millennium, heaven itself (three layers of symbolism) became a land of Israel’s enslavement to sin and idolatry, with Israel and the children of Israel having brought the leaven of Pharaoh into houses Israel did not build and into cities not of Israel’s construction.
Christ Jesus is the reality of manna given to Israel in the wilderness. Therefore, Christ becomes the bread of transport from this world to heaven, an awkward way of saying that without the indwelling of Christ—a vessel that came from heaven, and as such a vessel that can withstand the bright fire representing the glory of God—no person can possess eternal life; for indwelling eternal or heavenly life would destroy that which is physical [that which has mass] and must be held in a person in a heavenly vessel, a vessel that is not of this world.
Greater Christendom doesn’t comprehend how a person born of spirit through the indwelling of Christ has been changed by the person’s belief of God, faith, pisteos (from Rom 14:23) … this “change” isn’t voluntary but comes via the indwelling of Christ; comes via the “bread” the person eats. The person not born of spirit cannot understand what it means to be truly born of spirit as a son of God; cannot understand that every son of God wants to keep the Commandments, wants to please God. And the difference between the Christian who by faith keeps the Commandments and the Christian who insists that keeping the Commandments is legalism is the bread the person eats, the bread of life versus bread like that made from manna.
The chirality of Scripture discloses what has been concealed by the physicality of the creation (see Eccl 3:11); therefore, as the resurrection of firstfruits [the early barley harvest of the Promised Land] has a beginning resurrection—that of the man Jesus the Nazarene—and a concluding resurrection, that of all who will receive glorified outer selves at the Second Advent, the resurrection of the main crop [wheat] harvest of humanity also has a beginning resurrection and a concluding resurrection, that of the great White Throne Judgment …
In the spring Holy Day season [from when the Passover lamb is selected on the 10th day of the first month to the Feast of Weeks, seven weeks after the Wave Sheaf Offering] is the complete calendar of the Lord in type. Likewise, in the fall Holy Day season [from Trumpets to the Last Great Day] is also the complete calendar, with the two types aligned by affliction of the soul on Yom Kipporim equating to eating bread of affliction [unleavened bread] during the Feast of Unleavened Bread and differing on the first day of the year [holy versus civil] … because the Adversary is the prince of this world, and was the prince of this world when Christ Jesus, the Passover Lamb of God, was sacrificed, there will be no celebration of the first day of the first month until the single kingdom of this world has been given to the Son of Man. Thus, note what Ezekiel said about Holy Days in the Millennium,
Thus says the Lord [YHWH]: In the first month, on the first day of the month, you shall take a bull from the herd without blemish, and purify the sanctuary. The priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it on the doorposts of the temple, the four corners of the ledge of the altar, and the posts of the gate of the inner court. You shall do the same on the seventh day of the month for anyone who has sinned through error or ignorance; so you shall make atonement for the temple.
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall celebrate the Feast of the Passover, and for seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten. On that day the prince shall provide for himself and all the people of the land a young bull for a sin offering. And on the seven days of the festival he shall provide as a burnt offering to [YHWH] seven young bulls and seven rams without blemish, on each of the seven days; and a male goat daily for a sin offering. And he shall provide as a grain offering an ephah for each bull, an ephah for each ram, and a hin of oil to each ephah. In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month and for the seven days of the feast, he shall make the same provision for sin offerings, burnt offerings, and grain offerings, and for the oil. (Ezek 45:18–25 emphasis added)
In the Millennium, Christ Jesus will be the prince of this world; thus the first day of the holy year will be observed as the first day of the civil year has been since Israel as a nation was separated from the remainder of the world.
The beginning resurrection of the main crop harvest [this beginning analogous to the Wave Sheaf Offering] has been concealed from human consciousness and therefore absent from Christian theology: the relationship between Christ Jesus as the Bridegroom and the Body of Christ as the Bride of Christ creates the informing metaphor for the main crop harvest of humanity—and as there was no spiritual Body of Christ prior to when the spirit was given by the glorified Jesus breathing on ten of His first disciples (John 20:22) even though these ten were drawn from the world and delivered to Jesus then called by Jesus at the beginning of His earthly ministry, there will be no main crop harvest of humanity until the first of the wheat harvest has been waved before God and accepted as the man Jesus, again the spiritual reality of ancient Israel’s Wave Sheaf Offering (see Lev 23:10–14) was waved and accept on the morrow after the Sabbath, the calendar day 29 April (Julian) 31 CE.
The harvest of firstfruits—the early barley harvest—couldn’t begin until there was a ripe sheaf (handful, actually) of barley that could be waved before the Lord by Israel’s high priest. And this first sheaf was accepted by God with no further processing. There was no drying the grain, no thrashing the grain, no grinding the grain into fine flour, no baking the grain into bread as there was for the two loaves waved before the Lord fifty days later on the Feast of Weeks:
You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to [YHWH]. You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven, as firstfruits to [YHWH]. And you shall present with the bread seven lambs a year old without blemish, and one bull from the herd and two rams. They shall be a burnt offering to [YHWH], with their grain offering and their drink offerings, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to [YHWH]. And you shall offer one male goat for a sin offering, and two male lambs a year old as a sacrifice of peace offerings. And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits as a wave offering before [YHWH], with the two lambs. They shall be holy to [YHWH] for the priest. And you shall make a proclamation on the same day. You shall hold a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work. It is a statute forever in all your dwelling places throughout your generations. (Lev 23:15–21)
The handful of ripe barley representing the Wave Sheaf Offering was accepted by God as harvested; Christ Jesus was accepted by God as He was when resurrected. He was without sin (no leavening) and accepted without further processing—figuratively, His processing occurred before and during His ministry.
The collective Christian Church represents the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27); individual Christians in the 1st-Century represented the Body of Christ. But the Body isn’t the Head and doesn’t sit atop the Head, but is connected to the Head by the neck.
When the Christian Church represents the Body of Christ as well as the Bride of Christ—a man marries his bride, not his body, with which he is already one—the metaphor breaks down … inherent to this central Christian metaphor is the vision of John the Revelator:
I was in spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet "Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea." Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of His head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and His voice was like the roar of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, from His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and His face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying, "Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. (Rev 1:10–20)
And,
And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, "Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals." And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And He went and took the scroll from the right hand of Him who was seated on the throne. And when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth." (Rev 5:3–10 emphasis added)
Daniel’s visions were sealed and kept secret until the time of the end. However, it wouldn’t seem that John’s vision [the Book of Revelation] is sealed—but is it through two literary tropes, the first being that the vision doesn’t occur until the Lamb takes the seals from the scroll in the Lord’s Day, or Day of the Lord. The second trope is that nothing in Revelation is as it appears: appearances equate to function. Thus, what appears as a slain lamb functions as the slain Passover Lamb of God, Christ Jesus; what appears as seven eyes are seven spirits, the angels to the seven churches. Therefore the seven churches that are said to be seven lampstands become the seven horns on the Head of the Lamb. These seven churches are not part of the slain Body of Christ, but exist apart from the Body of Christ.
If the seven named churches are not part of the Body of Christ but part of the Head—through the indwelling of Christ in each member of the seven churches, causing each member to be born of spirit prior to being filled with spirit—then greater Christendom when filled with spirit following the Second Passover liberation of Israel exists apart from these seven churches; for greater Christendom will still not be born of spirit even when filled with spirit …
A scriptural subtlety exists when it comes to being born of spirit and thereby glorified in the heavenly realm while still having life in this physical realm: the glorified person has passed from death to life without coming under judgment and will never die spiritually, but will receive a glorified body for the already living “soul” when judgments of firstfruits are made at the Second Advent. There is no judgment of the Elect; there will be no judgment of the Elect. The already living soul of the person numbered among the Elect will receive a glorified body for, again, the inner self of the person is already glorified through the indwelling of Christ Jesus. This person was foreknown by the Father, predestined to be glorified as fruit borne out of season, called by Christ Jesus, justified by Christ dying for the person while the person remained a sinner (Rom 5:8), and glorified by the indwelling of Christ. This person is “Christ,” albeit not Christ Jesus. This person has the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) and can, therefore, understand spiritual things.
The person truly born of spirit is rare, suffers what all other persons suffer, but walks in this world as Christ Jesus walked through the person having put on Christ (cloaked him or herself in the garment of Christ’s righteousness). Thus the Father is in this person as Christ is in this person—inside out—and the person is in Christ and in the Father, outside in through being garmented in the righteousness of God even though the person knows that he or she comes short of this righteousness.
The person numbered among the Elect becomes more than the person is physically, but becomes “more” as part of the harvest of the great White Throne Judgment, being to those human persons who will—not in this world—appear before the throne of God after the Thousand Years as Christ Jesus was to those persons who will have their judgments revealed at the Second Advent. Therefore those persons foreknown by the Father and predestined to be inwardly glorified while the person remains physically alive will not be the pious of this world when called by Christ Jesus, but will become repentant sinners when called, willing to walk as Jesus walked because of the indwelling of the spirit of Christ.
Collectively, the endtime Elect form the seven named churches. They do not represent Church eras, but rather, the mindsets of the Elect when dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man, with these mindsets in evidence when the person numbered among the Elect was initially called, meaning that the Elect is never a monolithic assembly of God.
But the seven named churches are much more than seven mindsets: these seven represent seven works of God, two of which are not performed until after dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary; one of which is completed before the Son of Man become prince of this world.
If greater Christendom isn’t included in the seven churches—and it isn’t—then in jumping a logic step, we can state with certainty that the seven named Churches are to greater Christendom as Moses was to Israel … the seven churches become the great nation that the Lord told Moses that He would construct from Moses, the nation that keeps the terms of the second Sinai covenant, this covenant made with both Moses as well as with Israel.
A human person cannot receive a second breath of life (the breath of God [pneuma Theou]) unless the person also has an indwelling vessel that has come from heaven and therefore wouldn’t be consumed by the bright fire representing eternal life. For disciples, this vessel is the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou] that penetrates the inner spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou]. So being baptized in the spirit/breath of God figuratively immerses the person in the breath of God without glorifying the inner self of the person … a person baptized in water doesn’t suddenly acquire gills and the means to breathe underwater. Rather, at baptism, a person is briefly held under water. Likewise, during the seven endtime years, first greater Christendom then all of humanity remaining alive is immersed in the spirit of God for a “brief” period, a length of time that figuratively equates to how long a baptized person holds his or her breath when being baptized.
The seven endtime years represent a short period—a period short enough that as Israel left Egypt before its dough was leavened following the first Passover, greater Christendom can escape sin before Sin can recapture its former serfs. Hence, greater Christendom as a lump of dough, when filled with spirit, will be theologically unleavened. The length of the Affliction and of the Endurance is intended to be short enough humanity that will not become leavened by interaction with the Adversary. However, as Israel mentally never left Egypt but took the leaven of Pharaoh with them into the wilderness, greater Christendom collectively will not leave sin but will take the leavening of the Adversary with this nation of Israel into the Affliction.
The Elect will receive glorified bodies for their already glorified inner selves when judgments are revealed for the firstfruits of humanity: the living souls of the Elect who have died physically are already under the heavenly altar where they sleep as a physical person sleeps at night:
When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, "O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. (Rev 6:9–11)
The promise of John’s vision is that additional Elect shall be martyred in the 21st-Century as 1st-Century Elect were martyred, with the martyrdom of 1st-Century Elect guaranteeing that the glorified Christ would be the firstborn of many brothers (Rom 8:29). … In the physical shadow and copy of the spiritual reality of there being an early and a later harvest of humanity, the hillsides of Judea were planted in fields of wheat or in fields of barley during the late fall of the previous year, with the barley growing to maturity sooner than the wheat. Christ Jesus represents the first ripe handful [sheaf] of the barley harvest, the sheaf to be waved before the Lord and accepted before the harvest could begin. The Elect represents the first ripe sheaf of the main crop wheat harvest that is to be waved before God at the same time as the main harvest of the firstfruits is waved and accepted: two entities to be waved at the same time, the firstborn of the main crop wheat harvest as one loaf of bread baked with leaven, and the harvest of firstfruits representing the early barley harvest, with both loaves made from barley flour beaten fine and with leaven and backing up to the grain offering made for the Wave Sheaf Offering, with oil:
[You, Moses] Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. And on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the Lord. And the grain offering with it shall be two tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, a food offering to the Lord with a pleasing aroma, and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, a fourth of a hin. And you shall eat neither bread nor grain parched or fresh until this same day, until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. (Lev 23:10–14 emphasis added)
The grain offering for the Wave Sheaf Offering incorporates oil and wine; thus, this grain offering is conditionally linked to the leavened bread waved on the Feast of Weeks:
When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!" (Rev 6:5–6)
Historically, greater Christendom has identified the black horse as famine, but when the following horse and rider are identified in John’s vision as Death, it isn’t famine that is theologically linked to Death. Rather, it is Sin. Thus, the third horse and rider should be identified as Sin, separated from Death through the breaking of the first and great king of the King of Greece at the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, this liberation separating greater Christendom from indwelling sin and death while leaving the Christian still a mortal human person subject to death from outside-of-the-body causes such as martyrdom.
Sin makes merchandise of both those persons who will be harvested in the great White Throne Judgment and of those persons who will be harvested in the resurrection of firstfruits, the early barley harvest. But Sin, the demonic King of the South, is not allowed to harm those persons who are already processed as oil and wine; processed olives and grapes.
For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that He did. You shall therefore keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, and that you may live long in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey. For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. (Deut 11:7—14 emphasis and double emphasis added)
The grain of the Promised Land was both barley—ripened by the early rain—and wheat, needing the later rain. And in addition to barley and wheat, the Promised Land produced wine and oil, which when used with fine flour to make bread insured a soft leavened bread … wine mixed with flour and oil makes leavened bread.
At the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the Elect will be represented by the oil and wine that Sin cannot harm—and Sin cannot harm the Elect because the Elect already have glorified souls, having passed from death to life without coming under judgement (again John 5:24). But the Elect do not exist separate from the early barley harvest but are comingled with the barley harvest, interacting with spirit-filled but not born of spirit disciples throughout the Affliction and the Endurance.
The two loaves of leavened bread to be waved before God on the Feast of Weeks [Pentecost] aren’t baked with the leaven of Pharaoh, the leaven of idolatry, but baked with the leaven of wine, the wild yeast that forms the bloom of grapes, but this subtlety of Scripture cannot be ascertained by Christians who do not have the mind of God, nor eat the Bread of Life, Christ Jesus, represented by the grain offering for the Wave Sheaf offering—
The Christian who “refuses”—and this is the correct word—to take the Passover sacraments of broken bread and wine on the night that Jesus was betrayed [the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month] has no fellowship with Christ Jesus and most likely hasn’t been drawn from this world by the Father.
A self-identified Christian not truly born of spirit will not believe Christ Jesus today, nor in the Affliction, said knowing that exceptions will exist … do not expect greater Christendom to be talking about the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel from servitude to Sin and Death—if greater Christendom is unwilling to keep the Passover on the day of the First Unleavened (from Matt 26:17, read in Greek without added words), greater Christendom will be taken by surprise when the Second Passover occurs on the second Passover. But even a spiritually blind Christian can “see” shadows, and can see that time is short; that this present age cannot long continue; that there has to be a reset through the total collapse of a seemingly worldwide economic system of transactions.
The Amish will do well if this collapse occurs before the Second Passover, but will not do well if the collapse occurs with the coming of the Second Passover.
Either before or after, there will be a restart of human society, and during this restart, Western-style supermarkets and food stores worldwide will close down. People will have to provide for themselves. And it is here where justification for the Elect being comingled with the early barley harvest can be theologically seen.
I’ve been told by still faithful members of Herbert Armstrong’s former Worldwide Church of God that they have no intention of preparing for the Tribulation (which they sincerely believe will be only three and a half years long, and from which they believe they will be protected in a physical place of safety) … for Christians of all creeds, their physical place of safety will be the grave—and if a Christian desires to wait out the seven endtime years of tribulation in the grave, sobeit. The Christian will be judged by what the Christian has done with what the Christian has been given.
But for the Elect, the seven endtime years of tribulation will be a great opportunity to serve humanity, both their brothers in Christ as well as those who will be made into firstfruits when dominion over the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man.
There is considerable selfishness imbedded in the concept of the Church fleeing to a place of physical safety during the Tribulation, or in the concept of Christians being raptured to heaven (an Evangelical doctrine), or spending the Thousand Years in heaven (a doctrine of Seventh Day Adventists) … where is there love for neighbor and brother in a teaching that overtly states or covertly implies that somehow the Christian will be spared experiencing the turmoil of the Tribulation while his or her neighbors must live through the most difficult period the world has ever known?
Matthew’s Jesus said,
The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matt 23:2–12)
The opportunity for greatness will come to all Christians through serving neighbor and brother in the Affliction and Endurance, with this opportunity most evident to those whose prayers can feed many.
Elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus answered His disciples’ question of, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of the heavens (18:1), by saying,
Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! (Matt 18:3–7 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Can people not drawn from this world by the Father “turn and become like children”? Can they become sons of God without the Father first drawing each person from this world and delivering the person to Christ Jesus … the answer is, No, they cannot.
There would seem to be differing dynamics at work in Matthew’s Gospel. Consider,
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17–19 emphasis added)
The person who serves the most will be called the greatest in the kingdom; the person who humbles his or herself and becomes child-like will be the greatest; the person who keeps the Commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called great in the kingdom of the heavens … in Matthew’s Gospel, translators tend to ignore the plural <heavens> in favor of the singular <heaven>, but they do so out of their spiritual ignorance; for the least in the kingdom of the heavens will rule over the darkness of the creation as the moon rules the night, while the great in the kingdom will rule the light, or in heaven itself, as the sun rules the day. This will now have the greater light and the lessor light created on the fourth day of the “P” creation account representing the harvest of firstfruits that occurs at the Second Advent. For the harvest of firstfruits will include the Elect that will be great in the kingdom by having kept the Commandments (because of the indwelling of Jesus in each of them) and by teaching the firstfruits to do likewise—the seven endtime years of tribulation will be the Elect’s opportunity to spiritually shine in this world before receiving glorified bodies and ruling in heaven through being horns on the Head of the Lamb.
The ignorance and the arrogance of pastors and theologians imbedded in greater Christendom doesn’t frighten them as it should: they teach parishioners to sin (that is, to transgress the Law because of their unbelief of God). Likewise, the certainty of social meltdown—outright collapse—doesn’t frighten them for they have heard the cries of Wolf, wolf, before. And nothing has happened. Y2K proved to be nothing. The nuclear war prophesied by Herbert Armstrong in 1948, didn’t happen. Everything continues on, unchanged since the days of ancestors … but that isn’t true, and most everyone over fifty knows that things have changed for the worse since the Vietnam War; actually since WWII. Cultural deterioration has accelerated. America embraces those by whom temptations to sin come—America has no shame, no longer feels shame for doing those things Moses forbade Israel to do; for President Obama proudly announced to the world that the United States was not a Christian nation. What he said was certainly true: there is nothing Christian in legalized abortion or gay marriage or attempting to enter into God’s presence on the day after the Sabbath.
Human sexuality has become the idol America worships.
Because the Adversary remains the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the prince of the Ethernet—his cloud seeding his own demise—“it is necessary that temptations come” (Matt 18:7), but they should not come via you or me. They should not come from pulpits or podiums. If they must come, let them come in shadows and darkness; for Christians should be children of light, their deeds and their thoughts “seen” by angels who bring to God either a good report or an evil report of the person’s hidden thoughts. Therefore, I return to Matthew’s Gospel and to Matthew’s Jesus:
So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward. (Matt 10:32–42)
Who is the Christian pastor willing to declare that Jesus did not come to bring peace?
Who is the Christian willing to give one of the little ones of humanity a cup of cold water? There are some, but too few to stem the cultural deterioration that has even Christian youth living together in pretend marriages that are easily broken if things don’t work out.
American Christians have conflicting thoughts: they want to make murder of the unborn illegal, but they also want to legalize withholding support from undocumented aliens, the “strangers” within the nation, strangers analogous to Israel in Egypt. Figuratively, American Christian Conservatives would have gathered up Jacob and those with him, seventy in number, and would have returned them to the land of the Amorites, whereas American Liberals would have enslaved the seventy and used them to spur greater economic prosperity … perhaps Pharaoh was a Marxist before Marxism became common university fare, served cold in the Student Union but served hot in the Humanities Building.
The Christian who desires to escape the Tribulation doesn’t understand that the Christian is a lump of dough, presently leavened by the leavening of the Pharaoh, and that as this lump of dough, the Christian will have to be “baked” [passed through fire] before the Christ can be presented to God as an offering. The baking process will kill the yeast, wild or domesticated. And without being baked, the person as a lump of dough will continue to ferment until nothing is left of the person but dust. The Christian will have missed his or her opportunity to serve others, thereby humbling oneself in whatever forms the person’s humbling occurs, whether physically as in a broken fleshly body or socially or financially or perhaps even intellectually though the person realizing just how little the person knew about Scripture when the person had set him or herself up as a scholar, a teacher, a pastor.
The Christian leavened with the leavening of Pharisees will not leave the lake of fire; however, the Christian leavened with wine through being commingled with the Elect will pass through the fire and emerge on the other side in a glorified outer body.
Those Christians who are certain they will physically escape the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, by being whisked away to a place of safety are also certain that God will provide for them in times of social upheaval as the Lord provided for Elijah, first by having the raven bring him food, then by the flour jar and oil jug of the woman of Zarephath never being empty.
But there was a little flour in the flour jar and a little oil in the oil jug when Elijah arrived in Zarephath. There may not have been much—as there were not many loaves available when Jesus fed the five thousand and the four thousand—but there was something that could be multiplied over and over again. And it is this “something” (not enough to cause the Christian to trust in his or her cache to provide for three years or seven years, but enough to feed the person who is genuinely hungry) that will provide the seed for the Christian to serve others by feeding the hungry and giving shelter to the homeless; by serving in ways not today imagined in industrialized nations with semi-functioning safety-net social programs.
The remaining chapters of this book will focus on the how-to aspect of serving the least of the little ones. What remains to be said in these first two chapters has been said in the concept that all of humanity is presently participants in a demonstration project for the benefit of the angels that didn’t rebel when iniquity was found in an anointed cherub … once the leavening of the Adversary—analogous to the yeast used in ancient Egypt to leaven bread, a strain of yeast still in use—was introduced to angels, every angel was “infected” by this simple fungi of self-determined transactions, with civil governance becoming a transaction made between the governed and the governing. Democracy.
The problem inherent to self-governance is the transactional nature of self-rule. A person literally has to make a bargain with the devil to get anything done—
I was in Alaska when “Dick” Randolph (dob 10.04.1936) won election to Alaska’s House of Representatives in 1978 as a Libertarian … Randolph, a longtime State Farm insurance agent in Fairbanks (since 1964), had previously—1970—been elected to the Alaska House as a Republican; he was reelected in 1972, but did not stand for election in 1974, probably because of newly enacted financial reporting laws that burdened self-employed business owners. But following President Carter’s election, Randolph joined the Libertarian Party, and served Alaska as the face and voice of the Libertarian Party for the following eight years.
The Alaska House was evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats following the 1978 election, with Randolph as the lone Libertarian representing the swing vote. If either Republicans or Democrats wanted to get their legislation passed, they needed Randolph’s vote—and Randolph had a Libertarian agenda he wanted to get passed. Therefore, to get his agenda through the House, he made deals. Every bill represented a transaction that would see him being instrumental in the repeal of the State Income Tax and in saving the State Permanent Fund, the largest source of income going into rural Alaska.
In a representational democracy, legislating is deal-making in its rawest form. In any form of a democracy, legislating involves deal making; for in a system where every person is as important as every other person, nothing can get done unless many egos are messaged or palms greased. One person’s “good idea” is another person’s worst fear. And after quelling the Adversary’s rebellion, God did what the Adversary couldn’t have expected: God gave to the Adversary the chance to prove that his advocacy for transactional self-rule would produce viable governance … so far, it hasn’t, with the United States of America generally regarded as democracy’s great hope.
And because no schema the Adversary has tried has worked, we can expect a rough transition to rule by the Son of Man, a transition that will see many hungry, many homeless, many without even a cup of cold water. This is where and when the Elect can serve greater humanity, with it being advisable not to attract unwarranted attention to oneself … good works need to be done in secret as much as possible.
Additional chapters will be added as they become available.
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