Seven Lean Years:
The End of Transactional Economies
Homer Kizer
"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."
The Demonstration—--
eyes swollen red, voice crackling
he said, it shouldn't have happened,
his son hadn't done anything wrong
it wasn't fair—
he blamed God for not caring
I listened to his accusations
I listened unsure of what to say—
too much has been said about
when bad things happen
to good people
without me adding confusion
when rebellion rattled foundations
a third believed
but others were unsure
so for them a proof was designed
lab animals were needed
to show lives of competition
lives based on transactions
will prove no life at all
but no one wants manipulated
so the mice were left unfettered
in their round cage
the rebellious were released
to plead their case for three days—
the following three days belong
to design & designer to show all
what love will do
as I watch my student drink
his possessions away, I tell him
to get help …
I'd intervene more forcefully
if professional ethics allowed—
I hurt for him
but my tongue is bound
by decisions made years ago:
I understand the dilemma
of a designer who has given
freedom from intervention
till we & others know
without his love
none of us would live
Table of Contents
___________
Chapter One: The Visions of Pharaoh
Chapter Two: Bread for Life or Death
Chapter Three:
Chapter Four:
Chapter Five:
Chapter Six:
North's Chuckwagon, Spokane, 1983—--
I hadn't seen my brother for a decade
when I returned to the Lower 48 for Fall Feast
so we got together at North's …
daughters, wife, sister & her boys,
Ben & myself,
all young enough to take advantage
of all you can eat, piled plates high—
all but Ben avoided the prawns—
he thought us legalistic as we practiced gluttony
theology was chewed more thoroughly
than the chicken & roast beef—
if we swallowed without chewing
we could keep abreast of subjects
as polished as the restaurant ware
of arguments thin as the worn forks
of explanations meager as instant potatoes
but when the sin of Satan
popped into the discussion
dessert was momentarily forgotten—
with furled brow & thirty prawns
already taking their revenge
Ben insisted we committed error
in believing we would be adopted
into the family of God. Satan,
he said, thought he would be god.
Don't remember how I answered Ben
who believes he is (& he might be)
part of the Laodicean church—
the prawns were making an argument
for clean meats—but I missed
saying, Satan wants heaven
as do all those whom he deceives.
I was too stuffed for cake & ice cream
too full to finish a last piece of chicken
so as we rounded up kids, said goodbyes
I was thankful to be here on Earth
where work needs done
so all humanity can, if they want
eat too much fried chicken.
Chapter One
The Visions of Pharaoh
____________
Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile, and behold, there came up out of the Nile seven cows attractive and plump, and they fed in the reed grass. And behold, seven other cows, ugly and thin, came up out of the Nile after them, and stood by the other cows on the bank of the Nile. And the ugly, thin cows ate up the seven attractive, plump cows. And Pharaoh awoke. And he fell asleep and dreamed a second time. And behold, seven ears of grain, plump and good, were growing on one stalk. And behold, after them sprouted seven ears, thin and blighted by the east wind. And the thin ears swallowed up the seven plump, full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and behold, it was a dream. (Gen 41:1–7)
____________
1.
When Jesus told His disciples, “‘In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. … No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:2–3, 6), He went on to say, “‘I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper [ΠΑΡΑΚΛΗΤΟΝ], to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive, because it neither sees [it — auto] nor knows [it, implied]. You know [it — auto], for [it, implied] dwells with you and will be in you’” (vv. 16–17).
According to John’s Jesus, the world cannot receive the spirit of the truth, the Parakletos, that comes from God the Father because no one can come to the Father except through Christ Jesus—and no one can come to Christ Jesus unless the Father draws the person from this world (John 6:44) … no person can “choose” to be born of spirit; can choose to be a son of God. A person can self-identify him or herself as a Christian; however, unless the Father foreknows the person and predestines the person to bear fruit of the spirit when it isn’t the season for fruit, the person cannot come to God; cannot understand spiritual matters; cannot save him or herself.
The person cannot understand the chirality of Pharaoh’s visions. The person can only force his or her interpretation of God, Father and Son, onto the God of dead ones and the God of living ones.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus said to the crowd following Him,
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. (Matt 11:11–15 emphasis added)
When is the <now> of verse 12? John the Baptist was still alive when John’s disciples came to Jesus to asked if He was truly the Messiah; so it would have made no sense for Jesus to say, From the days of John the Baptist until the days of John the Baptist … what the author of Matthew’s Gospel has his Jesus tell the crowd was written long after John the Baptist lost His head. What the author of Matthew’s Gospel has his Jesus tell the crowd wasn’t spoke by the man Jesus, but pertains to the living Jesus, the glorified Jesus that dwells in the person who has been drawn from this world by the Father and delivered to Christ Jesus for Him to call, justify, and glorify. Thus, the substance of what Matthew’s Jesus said to the crowd remains true to this day: until now the kingdom of the heavens has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force—
The author of Matthew’s Gospel put his words into the mouth of his Jesus, a reality that the author of Luke’s Gospel understood; a reality that “permitted” the author of Luke’s Gospel to craft his “Jesus” from the Christian oral tradition and from previous writings in the manner which this author says:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1–4)
Luke’s Gospel is a redaction of the oral gospel written through the lens of, principally, Mark’s Gospel as well as earlier writings no longer available to endtime disciples. The mystical “Q” [for Quell, German for “source”] text that New Testament scholars reference as the source of Luke’s additions to Mark’s Gospel and separation from Matthew’s Gospel is most likely the Christian oral gospel; for Matthew’s Gospel is not and has never been what it appears to be, a subject to be addressed later and a subject mentioned here in the context that Christians cannot understand their own holy texts unless they have been born of spirit as a son of God.
Human persons God the Father hasn’t drawn from this world and hasn’t delivered to Christ Jesus and who cannot come to the Father because they do not know Christ Jesus regardless of what they profess with mouths and claim to believe in their hearts—these persons claim to be Christians; claim a relationship with Christ; and with violence toward God, push and shove and shoulder their way into Christian congregations where they take over, their aggressiveness rooted in them continuing to be sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32), and prepared to be sacrifices at the dedication of the temple of God when Christ returns as King of kings and Lord of lords.
The chirality of Scripture has in its physical [left-hand] position the relationship between bleating lambs and the Levitical priesthood in a wood and stone temple forming the non-symmetrical mirror image of the spiritual right-hand, the inner selves of human persons (as represented by Cain or Abel) symbolizing lambs or Levites in heavenly Jerusalem, with heavenly Jerusalem being the spiritual temple of God constructed from living stones.
When the first temple was dedicated, Solomon sacrificed many clean beasts:
As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. … When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, "For He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever." Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice before the Lord. King Solomon offered as a sacrifice 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God. (2 Cor 7:1, 3–5)
The first temple was constructed of hewn [offsite] stone and timber, analogous to living stones being shaped offsite; that is, here on earth and not in heaven.
In this first temple, the Levitical priesthood offered sacrifices for the unintentional sins of Israel … a human priesthood offered animal sacrifices in a temple of wood and stone as the shadow and copy of living disciples as living stones (1 Pet 2:4–5) forming the living temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16) in which the living inner selves [souls] form “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9).
This living temple of God will be assembled in heaven from living stones hewn offsite; that is, again, from living stones sculpted and shaped not in heaven so that symbolically no sound of an iron hammer striking a chisel will be heard in heaven (so that no tears, no cries of pain will be heard in heaven). Its construction began with the shaping of Christ Jesus, both the cornerstone and the capstone, during His ministry here on earth. The construction continued with Paul laying the foundational courses of stones (1 Cor 3:10–11). The endtime Philadelphia Church forms the pillars that stand on the foundation Paul laid and reach upward to support ceiling joists and the roof, with the ceiling joists and roof being composed of those disciples coming out of the seven endtime years of tribulation. And with the setting of the capstone, the living temple will be dedicated by God as Solomon dedicated the earthly temple for which David gathered stone and timber — and as Solomon sacrificed many oxen and many more sheep in dedicating the earthly temple, Christ Jesus, to whom all judgment has been committed (John 5:22), will not glorify but will commit to the lake of fire those Christians who did not love the Father and the Son enough to walk in this world as Jesus walked. It will be these Christians that are analogous to the oxen and sheep Solomon slaughtered. And these are those Christians who, having tasted the goodness of God, figuratively preferred the common meats of Gentiles over voluntarily living in this world as Moses commanded Israel to live.
Question: why would a Christian—especially after the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart and filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God—not strive to walk as Jesus, an observant Jew, walked in this world? What goes on, went on, in the mind of the Christian who chooses, chose, to live as a Gentile? Did the Christian not believe Jesus or the apostles? And really, the only plausible answer is the Christian doesn’t, didn’t, believe Paul, who wrote,
· “I urge you, then, be imitators of me” (1 Cor 4:16);
· “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1);
· “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Eph 5:1);
· “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us” (Phil 3:17);
· “And you became imitators of us and of the Lord” (1 Thess 1:6);
· “For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea” (1 Thess 2:14);
· “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:7–8);
And the Paul of the Second Sophist novel [Acts] said,
· “‘Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I [Paul] committed any offense’” (Acts 25:8).
No Christian can walk as Jesus walked or imitate Paul as he imitated Jesus and attempt to bodily enter into God’s presence on the first day of the week—and that is what Sabbath observance represents, bodily entering into God’s rest, with God’s rest being a euphemistic expression for God’s presence. Thus, the person who attends Christian worship services on Sunday does not walk as Jesus walked, but seeks darkness rather than light regardless of what this person thinks his or her relationship with Jesus is.
The preceding cannot be said too strongly; for following the Second Passover liberation of the second Israel, greater Christendom, every person who self-identifies him or herself as a Christian will be filled with spirit and thereby liberated from indwelling sin and death. In being filled with spirit, the Christian will be as a clay cup filled with a fluid, say, water. To now return to sin—unbelief producing transgressions of the Law—the Christian will figuratively have to splash out spirit in a manner analogous to a person dropping a stone into a clay cup filled with water. And in splashing out spirit so that unbelief can be returned to the inner self, the Christian will commit blasphemy against the spirit.
Matthew’s Jesus said,
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the spirit [tou pneumatos] will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit [tou pneumatos tou ’agion] will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matt 12:30–32 emphasis added)
According to Eusebius in his Book Three, Bishop Papias said Matthew’s Gospel was written in Hebrew style, the Greek used by Papius pertaining to a rhetorical technique—that of the Hebraic thought-couplet, which has two presentations of the same concept, the first presentation being physical or of darkness and the second presentation being spiritual or of light. The Apostle Paul addresses this style of presentation when he says that the visible things of this world precede and reveal the invisible things of God (cf. Rom 1:20; 1 Cor 15:46). Thus, where a passage [a citation] is located in Matthew’s Gospel has theological significance, for the fulcrum separating physical from spiritual in Matthew’s Gospel appears in the middle of chapter fifteen, with the story of the Canaanite woman beginning the spiritual portion of the Gospel. Therefore, because what Jesus says about committing blasphemy against the spirit is in the physical portion of Matthew’s Gospel, as well as being near to where Jesus introduces the sign of Jonah as being three days and three nights in the grave, blasphemy against the spirit is not a spiritual thing but is an unforgiveable physical thing that leads to death.
Once a Christian is filled with the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] at the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, the Christian will no longer be “covered” by the garment of Christ; by His righteousness. The Christian will be spiritually naked as if returned to the Garden of Eden, well able to keep the Commandments through the Christian’s belief of God. But if the spirit-filled Christian (all being filled with spirit) returns to sin—takes back inside the Christian transgressions of the Law—the Christian will commit blasphemy against the spirit through the Christian’s unbelief of God … accidental transgressions do not matter for it will not be “transgressions” that condemn the Christian to the lake of fire. It will be Christian’s lack of faith [pisteos]; failure to believe God.
John wrote,
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. (1 John 3:1–12 emphasis added)
Elsewhere, Paul wrote,
God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:11–16 emphasis added)
And,
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and tolawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. (Rom 6:15–19)
Even after being filled with spirit at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, Christians collectively will rebel against God, thereby transforming themselves into sacrificial livestock, destined to perish in the lake of fire when judgments of the spiritual firstfruits are revealed.
Not believing God after He has caused the Law to be written on hearts and placed in minds so that all know the Lord will be senseless for consider what has just happened: a third of humanity, all firstborns, will have suddenly perished. The secular governments of this world will have collapsed. The reigning hierarchy of spiritual Babylon will have been dealt a below the belt blow, in that the great horn, the first king of the Kingdom of Greece has been suddenly slain because he was “first” (Dan 8:8) … this great horn of the bronze belly and loins of the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision would have appeared as the image’s erect penis, with the King of Greece ruling humanity through the appetites of the belly and the loins. And when human priority shifts away from the appetites of the flesh [so that sex isn’t used to sell hamburgers] and to getting right with God, it would seem reasonable that greater Christendom would want to believe and obey God. But this will not be the case. Instead, greater Christendom will rebel against God and return to the theologies of their ancestors.
The reasons for greater Christendom’s rebellion will all come down to, If God wanted Christians to keep the Commandments, God would have made sure that Christians had been keeping the Commandments all along, but Christians aren’t under the Law. They are under grace. So they don’t keep the Law. Legalism—keeping the Law—is not of Christ Jesus. Yet Jesus kept the Law, and if the man Jesus kept the Law, the indwelling spirit of Christ in the spirit of the person will cause the person to keep the Law.
Paul wrote,
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to Him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion [Apostasy] comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only He who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath [pneumati] of His mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the spirit and belief in the truth. (2 Thess 2:1–13 emphasis and double emphasis added)
The truly deceived person doesn’t know that he or she has been deceived. The deceived Christian will sincerely believe that he or she worships God in truth when the Christian walks in this world as a Gentile, a person of the nations, a person far from God, an unbeliever.
Again, John’s Jesus said, No person comes to the Father except through Him (14:6), and, No person can come to Jesus unless the Father draws the person from this world (6:44). So until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, Christianity isn’t open to whomever wants to be a Christian. Being a Christian is dependent upon invitation; is dependent upon the Father raising the inner self of the person from death through receipt of the earnest of the spirit.
Elsewhere in John’s Gospel, Jesus said, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life’” (John 5:24). And, “‘Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?’” (vv. 45–47).
The person chosen by God; the person foreknown and predestined by God the Father who then delivers this person to Christ Jesus (all before the person is aware that he or she has caught the attention of the Father) to be called, justified (that is, for Christ to die for the person while the person remains a sinner — Rom 5:8) and glorified by the indwelling of the spirit of Christ, the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] penetrating the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] as a husband penetrates his wife for the purpose of procreation—this person, not the one who makes a decision of Christ and attempts to take the kingdom of the heavens by force, is genuinely born of spirit and because of the indwelling of Christ, will strive to walk in this world as Christ Jesus walked. This person will voluntarily keep the Law. This person can keep the Law even if not perfectly, because spiritually sin moves from being a transgression of the codified Law to being unbelief of God. And when sin is unbelief [what kept the nation of Israel that left Egypt from entering the Promised Land — Heb 3:19], it isn’t what hands and bodies do that defiles the person; it isn’t meats eaten that defiles; it is what the person believes or doesn’t believe. Why? Because the person isn’t under the Law but under grace, the righteousness of Christ Jesus. And the person under grace will believe the word of Jesus; will believe the message Jesus left with His first disciples.
In believing the word Jesus left with His first disciples, endtime disciples will keep the Commandments by faith; i.e., because they hear the words, the voice of Jesus because they believe the writings of Moses. And without faith; without belief of God, no one can please God … without keeping the Commandments by faith, by belief of God, no one has indwelling spiritual life.
Under the Second Sinai Covenant—the so-called New Covenant—the Law [Torah] will be written on hearts and placed in minds so that all know the Lord, and God will be merciful, not remembering the person’s transgression of the Law because the person has heard the voice, the word of Jesus and has believed the One who sent Jesus into this world.
But the Christian who attempts to take the kingdom of the heavens by force—even to this day nearly two millennia after Calvary—does not hear the word of Jesus; does not believe the writings of Moses; and will be of spiritual Cain following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, with the Lord telling Cain, “‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it’” (Gen 4:6–7).
Sin crouches at the door of every Christian, with sin having gained entrance into the minds of every humanly born person … again, every person is humanly born as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), consigned to disobedience so that God can have mercy on all (Rom 11:32). But for God to have mercy on all, God will have to liberate every Christian who is presently a slave of the Adversary by filling every Christian with His spirit [pneuma Theou] at the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
Perhaps through seemingly excessive pedagogical redundancy some Christians will begin to walk in this world as Jesus walked. And if they start today, they will be less likely to rebel against God 220 days into the Affliction—rebel on a Sunday in December, a day of infamy, a day of shame, the Sunday 220 days after the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
But with a statistically insignificant number of exceptions, Christians will not today keep the Commandments and thereby walk in this world as Jesus walked …
The Christian who is, today, a son of disobedience (as evidenced by how the Christian lives in this world) will be “purchased” from the Adversary by the blood of uncovered firstborns shed on the Second Passover … Christians assume Jesus’ shed blood at Calvary paid the penalty for sin for all peoples at all times, but did Jesus’ blood pay for the sins of Adolf Hitler? No. Jesus’ shed blood does not pay for transgressions of those whom the Jesus of John’s Gospel identified as having done evil:
And He has given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (John 5:27–29)
If Calvary paid for the transgressions of all Israel, there would be no basis for any Israelite to come under judgment for the penalty for every transgression of the Law committed by an Israelite has been paid in full. Salvation would be universal—and salvation isn’t.
Son of man [Son of Adam], when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness …. If I cause wild beasts to pass through the land, and they ravage it, and it be made desolate, so that no one may pass through because of the beasts, even if these three men were in it, as I live, declares the Lord [YHWH], they would deliver neither sons nor daughters. They alone would be delivered, but the land would be desolate. Or if I bring a sword upon that land and say, Let a sword pass through the land, and I cut off from it man and beast, though these three men were in it, as I live … they would deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they alone would be delivered. Or if I send a pestilence into that land and pour out my wrath upon it with blood, to cut off from it man and beast, even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live … they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness. (Ezek 14:13–20)
The righteous shall live; the unrighteous shall NOT live. And this is what Jesus tells Jews seeking His life; for those who do good—who manifest love for neighbor and brother—shall be resurrected to life. Uncle Joe Stalin and Hitler and a great many more thieves and swindlers, idolaters and murders, hypocrites and those “who sanctify and purify themselves … eating pig's flesh and the abomination and mice, shall come to an end together” (Isa 66:17). They shall be resurrected to condemnation because when they had the chance to demonstrate their belief of God, they demonstrated indeed their unbelief.
Christians unwilling to believe God want “covered” by the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness—and insist that they are covered by grace, the euphemism used for the garment of Christ’s righteousness. But they aren’t. Their transgressions are “covered” by their absence of spiritual life, but only covered for as long as they remain ignorant of what the Law requires.
Paul 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” (Rom 5:12–13).
Transgressions of the Law are not counted as <sin> where there is no law, but also according to Paul, ignorance of the Law is not an acceptable spiritual excuse for wrongdoing:
He [God] will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:6 –16 double emphasis added)
The Christian who today insists that he or she is not under the Law really isn’t under the Law, but this Christian will perish without being judged by the Law if the Christian transgresses the Law … yes, the Christian convert in mainland China who worships Christ in sincerity and in secrecy [in an illegal house church] will, if this convert transgresses the Law because of the convert’s unknowing unbelief of God, fall under the rubric Paul addressed: all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law (Rom 2:12). And this doesn’t humanly seem fair …
Matthew’s Jesus addresses the nature of the unfairness:
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt 7:15–23)
The Christian convert in China who doesn’t keep the Law doesn’t do so because of the false prophets, false teachers, false pastors who brought knowledge of Christ to the convert … what is the convert to do? And how can the convert discern the spirit of the one who teaches? How can the convert test whether the one who teaches produces good or bad fruit?
In China, conditions today exist that are somewhat analogous to conditions in Asia Minor in the 2nd-Century CE.
Endtime disciples can see what went wrong seventy years into the Christian era … when the spread of Christianity is done in secrecy, “good” information is not necessarily passed along to converts hungry for any information about Christ Jesus; eager to worship Christ even when their worship is vanity. For unless God draws the person from this world, the person cannot come to Christ, nor come to the Father through Christ. The potential convert is at the mercy of spiritual coyotes that promise, for a price, to slip the person across the border into heaven.
So Calvary doesn’t cover the transgressions of the person who intentionally does what is evil, including preaching that Christians don’t have to keep the Law because Jesus kept the Law. Such a person is a worker of iniquity; a teacher of lawlessness. Spiritually, such a person is a mass murderer. And such a person will not enter heaven, but will perish when judgments are revealed.
When Christians refuse to walk in this world as Jesus walked, these Christians exclude themselves from the pool of humanity purchased from the Adversary by the already shed blood of Christ Jesus, this pool of humanity being those living persons forming the Elect of God … at Calvary, Jesus paid for every sin committed by Israel in this world—Jesus’ sacrifice represented the goat slain on the altar on Yom Kipporim as the sacrificial “covering” for the righteous of old. Plus, Jesus’ resurrection and acceptance into heaven formed the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering, which also represents Him as the Azazel, the living goat over which the sins of Israel were read before this Azazel is taken into the wilderness to be released. Thus, the Feast of Unleavened Bread and Yom Kipporim are spiritually linked though eating the bread of affliction [unleavened bread] for seven days and by afflicting the soul via fasting on Yom Kipporim, a one day fast that is to be kept by Christians who walk in this world as Jesus walked.
Jesus’ death at Calvary “covers” but does not pay the death penalty for transgressions of the Law by born of spirit disciples … in moving from physical to spiritual, sin goes from being actual transgressions of the Law (1 John 3:4) to being unbelief [pisteos] of God (Rom 14:23). And in this movement from what hands do to desires of the heart, what hands do are paid-for by Jesus’ death at Calvary. But desires of the heart are only “covered” [as a garment covers the naked body of the person] by Christ’s resurrection and ascension to heaven where the glorified Jesus serves as the spiritual Israelite’s high priest.
Calvary doesn’t cover the transgressions of those Christians not yet born of spirit; for these Christians are not the “Israel” that lived before Calvary, nor are these Christians spiritually alive in the heavenly realm and thus constituting circumcised-of-heart Israel … the Christian who lives as a son of disobedience is a son of disobedience and is not a son of God. Although this Christian will attempt to take the kingdom of the heaven by force, this Christian has no life in the heavenly realm and therefore cannot take the kingdom by violence. And it is here where spiritual understanding greater than that possessed by the Adversary in his rebellion is needful: the Adversary as a created anointed cherub did not have heavenly life in the unchanging “moment” in which God and His Beloved had/have life. Because the presence of life and the absence of life cannot exist in the same unchanging moment, the Adversary as a created angel cannot enter the unchanging moment prior to his creation just as a Christian not today born of spirit cannot enter heaven where this Christian has no life. (The Adversary has no life in the “moment” in which God and His Beloved have life.) Only the Christian who has already been born of spirit can spiritually enter the unchanging heavenly “moment” from which the spiritual life came that this Christian has. Said in other words, because human sons of God have received spiritual life through the indwelling of Christ in the form of His spirit penetrating the spirit of the person, the source of the inner glory that the son of God has is the heavenly “moment” in which the Father and His Beloved have life, not a secondary moment when angels were created. Therefore, human sons of God, when glorified will be above the angels, having life in the same moment as God has life. Their glory will be the glory of the Father and the Son.
Heaven has no mass; no passage of time; no decay of one moment into the next moment. Heaven is timeless. Thus, a heavenly “moment” functions spiritually as a geographical location functions inside of the creation where everything physical has mass. So to perceive in analogy what the Adversary didn’t understand when he initiated rebellion against the Father and His Beloved, the Father and His Beloved dwelt on top of the mountain of God; on top of Mount Sinai. Angels were as Israel was in that angels were created farther down on this mountain, with the anointed cherub in whom iniquity was discovered created partway up the mountain, about as far up as Joshua went up Mount Sinai when he waited for Moses who had ascended to the summit. Most angels were as Israel was in that they could not ascend the mountain of God at all, but would perish if they set foot on Mount Sinai … angels couldn’t go to a location where they had no life.
The Lord told Moses that He would make from Moses a great nation, this nation being the assembly of Christ Jesus who—like Moses—can enter into the presence of God atop the mountain of God through having the indwelling of Christ.
In the imagery of Israel camped around the foot of Mount Sinai, with Moses having ascended the mountain and having entered into the presence of the Lord is the entirety of the narrative of the spiritual creation of sons of God, angelic and human. One semi-static image tells the entire story of creation, with the Lord telling Moses to say to Pharaoh that Israel is His firstborn son (Ex 4:22). Hence, Israel serves as the chiral image of angelic sons of God, the firstborn sons of God, the nation that could not enter into the Promised Land [analogous to the heavenly “moment” in which God and His Beloved have life] because of this nation’s unbelief (Heb 3:19).
Moses, however, was adopted into Pharaoh’s household, and thereby separated from his brethren … in the name <Moses> are the clues needed to deconstruct Passover imagery; for when Moses asks the Lord whom shall he say sent him to Israel. And the Lord told Moses, “‘Say this to the people of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you”’” (Ex 3:14).
Hebrew as a Semitic language is inscribed without vowels; this the identifier <I AM> would be written as just <M>, with the identifier <Moses> representing the clause, <born of> or <son of> … one “M” is now superimposed over the other “M” so that the name Moses has the bearer of this name being identified as the <son of I AM>.
Moses in his personage forms the chiral image of Christ Jesus, with his name concealing as well as revealing this relationship that will now permit Moses to physically enter into the presence of the Lord … the nation of Israel, camped around the base of Mount Sinai, was however actively fomenting rebellion against Moses, even to employing Aaron in this rebellion. This nation never entered into God’s Rest, but perished in the wilderness because of its unbelief—and again, this nation of Israel forms the shadow and type of the greater Christian Church following the Second Passover liberation of this second nation of Israel.
Moses could enter into the presence of the Lord because of his belief of the God of Abraham, belief that forty years earlier had caused him to slay an Egyptian. In his presumptiveness, he got ahead of the Lord. Apparently, he understood both the meaning of his name as well as the significance of his adoption into Pharaoh’s household: he was born to liberate Israel. He was special. But he wasn’t to do the liberation. He was only the visible face of the Lord to both Israel and to Pharaoh.
Christ Jesus was the visible face of God to His disciples as well as to all Israel: “Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”?’” (John 14:8–9)
When ancient Israel saw Moses and the glory that shown from Moses’ face, Israel saw the God of Abraham. Likewise, when the Twelve saw Jesus, they saw the Father, but Judas Iscariot wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus told Philip that in seeing Him, Philip saw the Father. So even though Judas Iscariot had walked with Jesus for many miles for nearly three and a half years, Judas didn’t see Jesus as the Father. So too do Christians, allegedly having walked with Jesus, not see the Father in Jesus, an observant Jew that was unremarkable in appearance.
Greater Christendom sees God in “things”: in national military victories, in bountiful farmland producing a surplus of foodstuffs, in completed passes on football fields, with God being for America, for whatever America does; with God being for the modern nation-state of Israel. Greater Christendom doesn’t see God being for either the Islamic Republic [Iran] or the Islamic State [ISIS] … how can God be for the Islamic Republic and its oppression of women, of homosexuals, or dissenters?
My ancestors, both paternal and maternal, came to America in the 17th-Century because they were oppressed dissenters in Germany and in England, oppressed by both the Old Church and the Reformed Church. So what claim to moral superiority do Christians in America truly have; for doesn’t America’s founding document state,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (Declaration of Independence, 2nd par.)
If all men are created equal and if all have the unalienable Right to Life, does not a human infant in the womb have the same right to life as the President of the United States? So if the Most High God were to execute judgment upon Americans collectively, would He not rightly judge Americans as hypocrites, professing that all men [humankind] are created equal but not extending to all equality of Life, the first unalienable right? For is not abortion the state sanctioned murder of the most vulnerable of all of humankind. Yes, it is. And this reason alone, the Most High God would be justified in humbling America.
Did not the God of Abraham humble the ancient House of Israel by bringing Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans against Jerusalem and the cities of Judah?
Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north … and for Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation. Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity … making the land an everlasting waste. I will bring upon that land all the words that I have uttered against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations. For many nations and great kings shall make slaves even of them, and I will recompense them according to their deeds and the work of their hands. (Jer 25:8–14)
The author of Hebrews writes, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8). John writes, “In primacy [arche, no article] was the Logos, and the Logos was with [pros] the God [ton Theon], and God [Theos, no article] was the Logos … and the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14).
The Logos, the Beloved of God, created all things physical (John 1:3), then entered His creation as His unique Son (John 3:16) not to condemn the world but to save it (v. 17, also 12:47). And during the dark portion of the day He was crucified, He asked the Father to, “‘glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed’” (John 17:5).
The glorified Christ Jesus is the same today [of the same mind] as He was as the man Jesus the Nazarene and as He was as the God of Abraham, the God of living ones, not of dead ones (Matt 22:32). And this same One who brought Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans against Jerusalem and the House of Judah can bring an equally evil nation state that He raises up against greater Christendom and particularly, against the United States of America. That is His M.O.—to permit a people claiming to worship Him to figuratively hang themselves by giving to them all the rope they need to tie nooses. So never think that neither the Islamic Republic nor the Islamic State can prevail against the military might of the United States and its allies. If God is for them and against a people who profess that all men are created with the unalienable right to life but who in practice murder the unborn while permitting homosexuals to marry, then expect disaster to befall America in particular.
In the idolatry of greater Christendom, Christians worship demons and idols of gold and silver and refuse to repent of their murders and sexual immortality and thefts (paraphrased from Rev 9:20–21). But the means by which God will get the attention of greater Christendom is already in place and prophesied.
2.
When no person can come to Christ Jesus unless God the Father draws the person, and when no person can come to the Father except through Christ, no one should expect there to be many genuine Christians; that is, Christians truly born of spirit, their inner selves raised from death and glorified through the indwelling of Christ Jesus. Thus, genuine Christians today are as rare as prophets were in ancient Israel and Judah, the hair coat of the prophet and the wide leather belt symbolizing a primitive outer self, analogous to the fleshly body of the endtime Christian, with the prophet wearing the hair coat symbolizing the living inner self of the Elect and with the spirit of the Lord in the prophet symbolizing the indwelling of Christ in the spirit of the person numbered among the Elect.
John the Baptist’s hair coat was of camel’s hair, with camel being an unclean animal that defiles the person who touches it until the person bathes … every repentant Jew who was baptized by John the Baptist remained outwardly defiled through John having baptized them. And here is where this gets sticky: John baptized Jesus to fulfill all righteousness. In doing so, Jesus’ earthly ministry began, with the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry having Jesus die bearing the sins of Israel.
When did Jesus take upon Himself the sins of Israel? On the cross? How about when He was taken prisoner? What about when He entered Jerusalem on the 10th day of the first month as the reality of the selected and chosen Passover Lamb of God? This is the most logical date. But Jesus entering Jerusalem on the Sabbath, the 10th day of Abib [not on Judaism’s calculated calendar projected backwards], April 21 (Julian), 31 CE, was fulfilling all righteousness, with this fulfillment beginning with John’s baptism. So in reality, did not Jesus take upon Himself the sins of Israel when John raised Him from the waters of the Jordan?
The nation of Israel was liberated from physical slavery to a physical king in a physical land by their physical Passover exodus from Egypt, following the death of uncovered firstborns at the midnight hour of the 14th day of the first month. However, this nation of Israel took with them the idolatry of Egypt, and for this nation’s unbelief, all of this nation numbered in the census of the second year—except for Joshua and Caleb—perished in the wilderness and a new nation of Israel was raised up (see Num chap 26). It was this new nation of Israel that crossed the Jordan and entered into the Promised Land on the 10th day of the first month (Josh 4:19) as the chosen sacrificial Passover Lamb of God.
But this new nation of Israel [the children of Israel] would not forsake the idolatry of their ancestors, but brought into the Promised Land the leaven of the Pharaoh … even after this new nation of Israel was circumcised in the Promised Land and the reproach of Egypt was rolled away (Josh 5:9), the leaven of Pharaoh caused the children of Israel to be leavened bread, the baseline for Jesus declaring, “‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst’” (John 6:35).
When the children of Israel had the reproach of Egypt rolled away, they were unleavened, undefiled, but they took into the Promised Land the leaven of Pharaoh in their minds; so it was only a matter of time before the old leaven of Pharaoh “leavened” the entire lump … Israel turned away from the Lord and turned to idolatry, which was its history from Egypt to the Promised Land, but which is a more complex history than simply the children of Israel worshiping the idols of Pharaoh.
And I said to their children in the wilderness, Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor keep their rules, nor defile yourselves with their idols. I am the Lord your God; walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules, and keep my Sabbaths holy that they may be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am the [YHWH] your [Elohim]. But the children rebelled against me. They did not walk in my statutes and were not careful to obey my rules, by which, if a person does them, he shall live; they profaned my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the wilderness. But I withheld my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I had brought them out. Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they had not obeyed my rules, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers' idols. Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am the Lord. (Ezek 20:18–26)
Because the children of Israel in the wilderness rebelled against the Lord, He gave to the children of Israel statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life. He did this. The Lord caused the children of Israel to burn their firstborn:
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord [YHWH]: Will you [Israel in the Deportation] defile yourselves after the manner of your fathers and go whoring after their detestable things? When you present your gifts and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be inquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live … I will not be inquired of by you. (Ezek 20:30–31)
But the Lord gave to the children of Israel statutes that were not good because this second nation of Israel refused to keep the Commandments and profaned the Sabbaths of the Lord … Isaiah speaks of Israel profaning Sabbaths:
Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations—I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isa 1:13–18)
Evil defiles the person who practices “evil,” with evil being nothing more than unbelief of the Lord, unbelief of the sort Adam implemented when he ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, his eating coming from having seen Eve eat and not die and he, then, no longer believing the Lord about dying on the day that he ate of the Tree … Adam believed his eyes, not realizing that his obedience was Eve’s covering; that it didn’t matter if Eve ate or didn’t eat as long as he remained faithful to the Lord.
In moving from physical to spiritual, the woman equates to the outer self and the man to the inner self; therefore Eve being deceived and eating forbidden fruit was analogous to a disciple committing unintentional sin because of the weakness of the flesh, with Paul not understanding why being born of spirit wasn’t sufficient to permit the mind to rule over his fleshly body. So while Paul understood the genderless state of the soul [psuche], he didn’t anticipate a Second Passover liberation of Israel at which uncovered firstborns (a third of humanity) will perish, the divine below-the-belt blow that doubles over spiritual Babylon, leaving the single kingdom of this world staggering, wobbly, about to topple.
In a little less than three and a half years, a second blow will topple Babylon; this second blow being the sixth Trumpet Plague (Rev 9:13–21), the Second Woe.
In Matthew’s Gospel, the author’s Jesus tells His disciples, “‘You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered” (Matt 26:31) … where is this written? In Zechariah,
Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who stands next to me …
Strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered;
I will turn my hand against the little ones.
In the whole land, declares [YHWH]
two thirds shall be cut off and perish,
and one third shall be left alive.
And I will put this third into the fire,
and refine them as one refines silver,
and test them as gold is tested.
They will call upon my name,
And I will answer them.
I will say, “They are my people”;
and they will say, “The Lord is my God.”
(Zech 13:7–9 indented lines are spiritual portions of couplets)
The two parts [thirds] of the little ones that will be cut off are the third of humanity, all uncovered firstborns, that will be slain at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, and the third part of humanity slain in the Second Woe. And between the Second Passover and the Second Woe, a fourth of humanity will be slain by the fourth horseman (Rev 6:8), thereby leaving only one third of pre-Second Passover humanity still alive.
The third part of humanity that will remain alive when the Endurance of Jesus begins is not today “Christian,” but will be filled with spirit when the spirit is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28); will be filled with spirit when dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man (cf. Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18; 12:7–12). This third part of humanity will be the reality foreshadowed by the children of Israel numbered in the census of the fortieth year, and this third part of humanity will replace greater Christendom virtually man for man.
3.
Did Christ Jesus’ death at Calvary pay the spiritual death penalty for Adolf Hitler’s transgressions of the Law? No. Not in the least. Hitler’s inner self [soul] will perish in the lake of fire because of his unbelief of God … what about somebody who isn’t as evil as Hitler was? What about a basically good person who didn’t believe that it mattered to God whether the person attended church or not; for the churches were filled with hypocrites, who were nice to your face and stabbed you in the back whenever the opportunity presented itself? What do you say to someone like my father, who when fifteen, told his father that he wasn’t going to go to church? His father [my grandfather] was going to take the razor strap to him for refusing to go. Evidently the congregation had just split, and Dad asked Grandpa, Which group is right? The split was over having music in services. And Grandpa, raised an Old German Baptist, returned to the house with his razor strap in hand; for he knew that neither division was correct. Dad never again attended any religious service. So what about someone like him who neither did good nor did evil, but who fought in WWII from Tunisia to Austria by way of Sicily, Italy, Southern France; worked hard after the War and died young, probably a victim of the 1957 outbreak of Hong Kong flu, which he caught and worked through without resting or even taking a day off? Did Jesus die for this person?
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus sets a very low bar for salvation: did the person feed the hungry, give shelter to the homeless, clothe the naked, visit the infirm, give the thirsty a cup of cold water (Matt 25:31–46)? If yes, the person will be in the kingdom of the heavens. If no, the person won’t be there. Pretty simple.
There is no mention of Jesus’ death at Calvary paying for the sins of either the sheep or the goats; for the resurrection to which Matthew’s Jesus refers is the great White Throne Judgment, not the harvest of firstfruits at the Second Advent. Different resurrection; different criteria for salvation … all of the firstfruits have to be purchased from the Adversary, either by the shed blood of Christ Jesus or by the shed blood of the two thirds part of humanity, the death of uncovered firstborns paying the ransom price for greater Christendom, and the death of a random third part of humanity in the Second Woe paying the ransom price for the third part of humanity that will be refined as silver is refined [by smelting] and tested as gold is tested [against a touchstone].
Christ Jesus at Calvary paid the ransom price for the Elect, not for those whom the Father doesn’t individually draw from this world. All uncovered firstborns will pay the ransom price for the liberation of the greater Christian Church from indwelling sin and death at the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel. Then during the Second Woe, a random third part of humanity remaining alive will pay the ransom price for the third part from Zechariah 13:9, this third part being one third of pre-Second Passover humanity.
Using seven billion as the round number for the human population of earth as the pre-Second Passover reference, approximately 2.4 billion will perish in the Second Passover liberation of the greater Christian Church, enough people that social institutions worldwide will collapse, with first world countries [because of their low birth rates] suffering the greatest percentage of loss. Then over the following three and a half years, an additional one-fourth of the pre-Second Passover population will perish from having been given to Death, the demonic fourth horseman (Rev 6:8), leaving only half of the pre-Second Passover population still alive at the end of the First Woe (Rev 9:1–12), roughly thirty days before dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man, with this thirty day period cut short or no flesh would be saved alive (Matt 24:21–22). The Second Woe comes in this thirty day window, with the Third Woe occurring after the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man; after the Adversary is cast from heaven and comes claiming to be the Messiah, requiring all to take the tattoo of Christ’s cross [chi xi stigma] upon the hand to buy or sell … the tattoo of the cross will mark the person for death; for the cross represents death, not life, not the resurrection.
Again, the sudden death of a third of humanity, all biological or legal firstborns not covered by the blood of Christ as represented by the Passover Cup, will “purchase” from the Adversary all of greater Christendom not counted as an uncovered firstborn. Thus, all who have been baptized into Christ, regardless of the Christian’s theology, will be filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God on the second Passover in the year of the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
The seven endtime years of tribulation follow the Second Passover liberation of Israel, with these seven years of tribulation being analogous to the seven ugly and thin cows, and the seven blighted and thin ears of grain in Pharaoh’s visions that Joseph interpreted as seven years of famine. This will now have the seven years preceding the year of the Second Passover being years of plenty; years during which Christians should be laying aside their surpluses to cover the lean years that will surely follow the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
But instead of Christians laying aside those things the Christian will need when he or she cannot buy or sell without taking upon him or herself the mark of the beast—the tattoo of the cross, chi xi stigma—Christians want to pick a fight with the Adversary, the present prince of this world, by engaging in the political affairs of this world … that’s the wrong fight. Besides, even if the Christian prevails, all a Christian can do is replace one servant of the Adversary with another servant of the Adversary, the reason why elections really don’t matter. Go ahead, replace a RINO with a TEA Party Republican, and watch the newly elected TEA Party Republican do what the RINO did for none understand that the Adversary remains the prince of this world, and will remain the prince of this world until halfway through the seven endtime year of tribulation. Then and not before then, Michael and his angels will make war against Satan and his angels and will cast Satan and his angels from heaven (Rev 12:7–12).
Today, the Adversary reigns over living creatures, great and small. He broadcasts his nature, his mindset across the mental topography of living creatures. So the moral person, the pious person not drawn from this world by God the Father cannot keep the Law, with Paul writing,
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom 8:5–8)
The moral person can attempt to force his or her way into the Kingdom of the Heavens, but until the Father resurrects the inner self of this moral person from death, the person has no more chance of entering heaven than Israel had of entering in the Promised Land when the twelve spies returned,
Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of [YHWH] appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel. And [YHWH] said to Moses, "How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and might ier than they." …
And [YHWH] spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, "How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, 'As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.' I, the Lord, have spoken. Surely this will I do to all this wicked congregation who are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die." And the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing up a bad report about the land—the men who brought up a bad report of the land—died by plague before [YHWH]. Of those men who went to spy out the land, only Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive. When Moses told these words to all the people of Israel, the people mourned greatly. And they rose early in the morning and went up to the heights of the hill country, saying, "Here we are. We will go up to the place that the Lord has promised, for we have sinned." But Moses said, "Why now are you transgressing the command of the Lord, when that will not succeed? Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, lest you be struck down before your enemies. For there the Amalekites and the Canaanites are facing you, and you shall fall by the sword. Because you have turned back from following the Lord, the Lord will not be with you." But they presumed to go up to the heights of the hill country, although neither the ark of the covenant of [YHWH] nor Moses departed out of the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them and pursued them, even to Hormah. (Num 14:10–12, 26–45 emphasis added)
In type, the nation of Israel that left Egypt forms the chiral image of the greater Christian Church in the Affliction. And as the nation of Israel—except for Joshua and Caleb—perished in the Wilderness of Sin, so too will the greater Christian Church perish spiritually in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years. The Church will perish because of its unbelief; for no one can take the kingdom by violence. No one can knock the “door” down. No one can tell God how he or she will walk on the person’s way to the Kingdom.
No person can come to Christ unless drawn by God … however, Christians will nearly unanimously disagree; for Paul wrote,
But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim) [the citation is from Deut 30:14]; because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, "Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" But they have not all obeyed the gospel. (Rom 10:8–16 emphasis added)
Paul’s citation from the Moab covenant must be placed in its context:
And when all these things come upon you [children of Israel], the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. …
For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. (Deut 30:1–3, 11–16 emphasis added)
When a person is humanly born consigned to disobedience as a son of disobedience, the person does NOT have the choice of life and good, death and evil. The person has no choice about whether he or she is a son of disobedience and by extension, a slave of the Adversary. The person is not free to choose life. The person is as Adam was when he was expelled from the Garden of Eden … Paul wrote, “Death reigned from Adam to Moses” (Rom 5:14), not from Adam to Christ Jesus, the last Adam.
When a Christian is liberated from indwelling sin and death, the Christian will be as the children of Israel were on the plains of Moab: the Christian will have the choice of life or death. The Christian will have been given long physical life if the Christian can keep it. Or the Christian can choose to die spiritually as well as physically by transgressing the Law and thereby committing blasphemy against the spirit of God that “fills” the Christian. Both choices are before the Christian, with the Elect being as Moses was [the Elect being the great nation the Lord told Moses that He would build from him].
The Second Sinai covenant—the spiritual Sinai covenant, ratified by entering into the presence of the Lord—was made with Moses and with Israel, two covenantees, with the Lord separating Moses from Israel by the glory that shone from Moses’ face, glory that symbolically represents the inner glory of the Elect, those disciples foreknown by God the Father, predestined to be glorified while they still live physically, called by Christ Jesus, justified by Christ being crucified for them while they remain sinners, then glorified through the indwelling of the spirit of Christ in the spirit of the person … this does not mean that the fleshly bodies of Elect are glorified, but that the dead soul of the person has been raised to life.
Death reigned over humanity until Moses; death reigned until Moses entered into the presence of the Lord, even if only seeing the backside of the Lord:
Moses said, "Please show me your glory." And He said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The Lord.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But," He said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." And the Lord said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen." (Ex 33:18–23)
As a physical man, Moses could not look upon the glory of the Lord’s face and live; for Moses was not like the Lord (1 John 3:2). Moses was not born of spirit as a son of God [the spirit hadn’t been given], but because Moses entered into the presence of the Lord, even if only seeing the backside of the Lord, those who are of Moses—of the nation the Lord shall build from Moses—shall live spiritually.
Evidence that Moses had entered into the presence of the Lord, with Moses seeing the glory of the Lord, was the glory that shone from his face afterwards … again, the glory that shone from Moses’ face was the physical shadow and type of the inner glory of born-of-spirit sons of God.
But how does a Christian know if he or she has truly been born of spirit—know that the inner self [soul] of the Christian having been glorified? The outer self doesn’t change. The disciple baptized into Christ has put on Christ as if “Christ” were a garment (Gal 3:27), and in putting on Christ, the baptized person is inwardly neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither free nor slave (v.28). Yet outwardly, the baptized person remains male or female, circumcised or uncircumcised. The outward person doesn’t change, despite Paul declaring,
For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified. (Rom 8:29–30)
The inner self is not physical; is not of this world; and as such doesn’t possess mass and is therefore outside of space-time and not perishable … the Father raises the soul [psuche] of a person from death through the indwelling of Christ Jesus, with Paul writing, “Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:22–23).
God gives to those whom He foreknows and predestines indwelling eternal life in Christ Jesus—in the indwelling of the spirit of Christ in the spirit of the person, with the glory that shone from Moses’ face being the assurance of indwelling eternal life for those persons who hear the word of Jesus and believe the One who sent Him into this world and have thereby passed from death to life without coming under judgment (John 5:24).
The person, the Christian not born of spirit cannot know the spiritual things of God. However, the person who has been born of spirit through the indwelling of Christ Jesus has the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) albeit as a human infant or child has the mind of a man but doesn’t yet know the things of a man … the disciple newly born of spirit has the mind of Christ but doesn’t yet know the things of Christ.
Being born of spirit is not the same as being filled with spirit. An infant son of God can be born of spirit but not filled with spirit and therefore not liberated from indwelling sin and death, what the Apostle Paul realized:
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (Rom 7:7–23 emphasis added)
Paul could not do the good that in his mind he wanted to do … why? Because his fleshly body remained consigned to disobedience as a slave of the Adversary, a situation that would/will remain until the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
Paul didn’t understand why his mind could not rule over his fleshly body. His mind had been set free: “The law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2). But his body had not been set free—
When the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, this second nation of Israel will be set free from indwelling sin and death, meaning that while the person will not be immortal, the person will not die from any internal cause; will die only from external causes such as martyrdom or accidents. And barring mishaps, the person who lives into the Millennium will live through the Millennium; will live a thousand years if the person doesn’t take judgment upon him or herself prior to the beginning of the Millennium.
John the Revelator gives disciples the structure of the seven endtime years of tribulation: “I, John, your brother and partner in the affliction and kingdom and endurance in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Rev 1:9 in the first clause, extra words added by translators have been omitted) … the structure of the seven endtime years (the seven years preceding the Millennium) will see a 1260 day long period identified as the Affliction during which the Adversary remains the prince of this world. The Affliction forms the chiral image of the 1260 day long period John identifies as <Endurance in Jesus>. No definite article. Therefore, the Endurance borrows the definite article for the Affliction, making these two periods into one continuous period, connected by the doubled day 1260 on which dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man. Thus, the day count is from 1 to 1260 in the Affliction, then from 1260 to 1 in the Endurance, when the Son of Man reigns over the mental topology of living entities, with however many days taken from the Adversary when the Second Woe is cut short to save life on the planet added to the Endurance in Jesus.
Again, it is entrance into the presence of the Lord that forms the spiritual assurance of the Elect having received spiritual life. The spiritual assurance is not physical and isn’t of this world, but comes via the person’s love for God, neighbor, and brother. Whereas one person’s physical love for another person can be great enough that the first person will die for the second person, spiritual love comes via the first person being willing to “live” for the other, love of a sort the person didn’t previously have; love that causes the person to keep the Commandments as the person’s expression of love for God, neighbor and brother; love that causes a person to serve the other, inconveniencing him or herself, not ignoring the plight of others.
So entrance into the Promised Land brought to the children of Israel freedom to choose life or death; temporary freedom contingent upon the children of Israel choosing to obey the commandments of the Lord, thereby walking in the ways of the Lord.
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4.
The person, the Christian, not drawn from this world by God the Father cannot come to Christ Jesus and therefore cannot know the Father, who has chosen to temporarily ignore the person … this isn’t the Christianity that has been sold to the world as a family-friendly religion, but this is the Christianity of Christ Jesus who repeatedly told His disciples not to tell anyone who He was. This is the Christianity that involves God, Father and Son, in the person’s life—
Presently being aired is a television commercial by a medical company that has a woman saying her spinal surgery was the answer to prayer …
Only if her prayer was to the present prince of this world.
When God answers prayers, things happen without seeming to happen. Rare is the occasion when a public miracle occurs. And equally rare is the occasion when the prayer isn’t answered before it is asked. For Matthew’s Jesus said,
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matt 6:5–8 emphasis added)
After Fall Feast 1975, I was falling white pine in the Bitterroots, the pine averaged two thousand boardfeet a tree. I hadn’t previously fallen timber this large, so when I began I daily asked a short prayer for protection, a practice I had abandoned when I became comfortable falling pine four and five feet on diameter on the stump, with an occasional six and even seven footer. But one morning in middle November, I felt a “need” to ask for protection before I began falling, and I knelt in the dust of the road to ask for that protection.
Roughly three hours later, I tipped over a pine that the Catskinner couldn’t pull.
The gyppo for whom I was falling skidded tree-length sticks with D-6s. The sticks were taped and bucked on the landing.
The Catskinner, Ernie Flodean [phonetic spelling], asked me to put in a Russian coupling at 66 feet … the stick was still more than four feet in diameter, with about twelve feet of air under it where he wanted it cut.
I ringed the stick, then started to buck it — I cut a little too deep. The log cracked. I threw my saw to the side and the log threw me onto my saw. But the log also snapped off a red fir snag about three feet in diameter that would have fallen beside me if I had laid still. But the Catskinner hollered, Look Out! And I started struggling to get up and away from where I was.
But I couldn’t get up. I felt as if I was being held down. And I violently rolled to the side, looked up and saw the fir snag right above me and about to crush me. I put my hands up. That’s all I had time to do before the snag, three feet in diameter and 120 feet long fell across my chest, bounced up in the air somewhere from twelve to twenty feet then fell across me a second time.
Then in an arc characteristic of an underhand throw, the snag was “thrown” two hundred yards or more out over the canyon side.
I stood up. Both wrists were badly sprained, and my sawdogs had punctured my left thigh, the cut bleeding but not enough to stop me from continuing to work.
The Catskinner, his face ashen gray (a pale green-gray), said, “You’ve got somebody looking out for you.” And from this moment on, he was afraid to be around me. He didn’t even want to ride in the same pickup with me.
He was correct, I did have someone looking out for me—and I was excited, for the snag was thrown into the canyon. It didn’t bounce across the bench by itself … that snag fell across the top of me forty years ago, and in these intervening forty years it has been what caused me to ask for protection that morning that has interested me more than the protection itself; for I have had seas flattened, any number of things where harm hasn’t occurred without ever knowing I needed protection until after the fact. But on that autumn morning in 1975, communication occurred outside of all known physical channels. No vision occurred. No words were heard. I just suddenly had a strong feeling that I needed to ask for protection.
Would protection have occurred if I hadn’t asked? I don’t know, because I did respond to the “feeling” that I needed to ask. And why that morning instead of another morning? Why on the only morning when anything unusual that whole fall occurred?
Too many Christians are overly superstitious, but to deny what a person “knows” is foolishness. And I know that the Father “communicates” with His sons not through visions but through the Parakletos, the spirit of truth (with “truth” being the revealing of what has been previously concealed). I also know that I was audibly called to reread prophecy on January 17th, 2002.
I wasn’t told anything more than, It’s time to reread prophecy. I wasn’t told what I should find in biblical prophecy. I wasn’t told what I should do with what I found. All of what I have done since 2002 has come from “feelings,” some strong, some vague that have had to work their way from deep inside me into my conscious mind.
Are these feelings valid? And how would I know, other than going to Scripture to test them?
What I have found since being called to reread prophecy is a different Christianity from even the one into which I was baptized in 1972. I have found that chirality occurs between the visible physical things of this world and the invisible spiritual things of God, with the polarized light required to see the chirality between the first Adam and the last Adam; between circumcised in the flesh Israel and circumcised of heart Israel; between the Passover exodus of Israel under Moses and Aaron, and the Second Passover exodus of a second Israel under the two witnesses is the “light” of Christ Jesus, which in Greek equivocation polarizes Christians.
Early in the 4th-Century CE, greater Christendom was already divided over Christology, the nature and substance of Christ Jesus, with a few bishops following Arius, a Christian presbyter and priest in Alexandria, of the church of the Baucalis allegedly built by converts for Mark, who was (also allegedly) martyred in the area in 68 CE … Arius emphasized a distinction between the Father and the Son, with the Father having superiority over the Son. He opposed what would become Homoousian Trinitarian orthodoxy with the argument that Christ was a created being therefore could not be the divine equal of the Father who was without creator.
In the reasoning of both Arius and of the many bishops who opposed him is seen the lack of spiritual understanding that characterizes Christian orthodoxy; for the God of Abraham was not the Father, the God of dead ones, but the Logos, the God of living ones, the creator of all things physical, including the first Adam, with this God of living ones holding joint primacy with the God of dead ones as a husband and his beloved are both human persons, both needed to bring forth heirs, sons, thereby creating an undetermined godhead.
Arius’ godhead was limited to the Father to whom no person could voluntarily come (again John 14:6) except through Christ Jesus, to whom no one can come unless drawn by the Father (John 6:44).
Which of Emperor Constantine’ bishops—he had about 300 of 1800 Christian bishops ordained—had been drawn from this world by the Father and delivered by the Father to Christ Jesus, who then revealed the Father to the person drawn? Not one. For if the Father had drawn any of them from this world, they wouldn’t have been eating at the Emperor’s table. So what Constantine accomplished was to bury the dead Body of Christ by bringing to an end Christian observance of the Passover. Orthodox Christendom [right believing Christians] would henceforth [from 325 CE] cease from taking the sacraments of broken unleavened bread and drinking from the blessed cup wine on the night that Jesus was betrayed, the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month, and instead observe a new festival: Easter. With Easter to be held on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the spring equinox. The Christian Passover was observed by Jesus and is today held on the dark portion of the of the 14th day of the first month that begins with the first sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox wherever the person lives; for the Passover is always to be a spring festival that precedes the beginning of the spring barley harvest and is never to be an autumn harvest festival that follows the main crop wheat harvest.
As Jesus’ fleshly body hung on the cross for about three hours after Jesus died and before Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus placed His body in the Garden Tomb, the spiritual Body of Christ died from want of spiritual birth—from the Father ceasing to draw foreknown and predestined disciples from this world—and hung around dead until formally buried by Constantine and his bishops at the Council of Nicea (ca 325 CE).
The temple of God for which Paul laid the living foundational stones was razed by spiritual death very early in the 2nd-Century. Reconstruction of this living temple couldn’t begin until the spiritual equivalent to Jeremiah’s seventy years passed, roughly 1200 years, with the sacrament of adult baptism—as a public prayer for a good conscience through the resurrection of Christ (1 Pet 3:21)—disclosing the beginning of reconstruction, to be undertaken in three stages, the third stage being the one week period representing the seven endtime years of tribulation that are marked in their middle by dominion being taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man, Head and Body. And with dominion over this world being given to the Son of Man, the cast-into-time Adversary will be employed by the Father to end His sons’ participation in the transactional economies that the Adversary established when he was prince of this world.
In the Endurance (the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years), none of the firstfruits of humanity can engage in buying and selling; for to buy or sell, the Adversary will require the person to be marked for death through the person identifying him or herself as a voluntary dead person by taking upon the person the tattoo of the cross [chi xi stigma] (Rev 13:18).
When no person can come to Christ unless the Father first draws the person from this world, and when no person can come to the Father except through Christ, Christianity has about it an exclusivity that cannot be matched by any human institution. But as Paul wrote concerning Israel (“For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring … Rom 9:6–7), not all Christians belong to Christianity and not all who profess that Jesus is Lord are the offspring of God—
No person is born of spirit unless Christ Jesus dwells in the person, and no person in whom Christ dwells can walk in this world as a Gentile … a Gentile Christian is an oxymoron. There isn’t such a creature. Even in the Endurance of Jesus when all of remaining humanity will be filled with the spirit of God, filling each person with spirit will cause the Torah to be written on hearts and placed in minds so that all, great and small, know the Lord. Therefore, in knowing the Lord even though not “born of spirit” [represented by the indwelling of Christ], every person numbered in this third part of humanity will know to walk in this world as Jesus walked. No one will have to teach this third part to walk as Jesus walked. There will be no Christian ministry work to be done. The Remnant (from Rev 12:17) will be witnesses to the reality that a person truly can walk into the kingdom as Jesus walked.
How many transactions did Jesus make during His ministry? And who had the moneybag? Which of Jesus’ disciples? Was it not “the son of destruction” (John 17:12)? Coincidence? No, not coincidence. Those who are of the Adversary make many purchases and rely upon selling for their income, activities that are indeed permitted for as long as the Adversary remains the prince of the power of the air. But when the Adversary is cast from heaven and comes to earth claiming to be the Messiah, only those human persons who voluntarily submit to the Adversary’s rule over them shall continue to engage in transactions. For where did Jesus need to go for bread to feed the five thousand? Not to Kroger, or Safeway, or Albertsons, or to any food market, but to God Himself, with the miracle not attracting attention to itself until the leftover pieces were gathered together … this is the nature of godly miracles. Going under the surgeon’s knife for back surgery is going to the world for its cure, its miracle.
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Additional chapters will be added as they become available.