Seven Lean Years:

The End of Transactional Economies

Chapter Three A

Who Do You Trust?

Kizer children, 1924, Indiana

Printable File

For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." (Rom 1:11–17 emphasis added)

1.

Paul dictated his epistle to the holy ones at Rome—a fellowship composed of Gentile converts—using the hand of Tertius (Rom 16:22); for apparently, he didn’t trust his fluency in Greek, he didn’t trust his knowledge of the Greek language to adequately convey the theology of this treatise. So he used the excellent hand of Tertius to present subtleties that greater Christendom doesn’t understand to this day; e.g., his Gospel.

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He 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 2:1–16 emphasis and double emphasis added)

God’s judgment will come upon all who worship the creation rather than the Creator—and how does a person worship the creation rather than the Creator? By not manifesting love for neighbor and brother that would cause you to sacrifice your life for another; the sacrifice of your life ranging from putting aside your desires, wants, needs for the needs of another, even to the loss of your physical life. But you say, that’s too much to ask of a Christian. Really? What did Christ Jesus sacrifice for you? And if you walk in this world as Christ Jesus walked, will you not willingly sacrifice yourself for others as He did?

But what is this about keeping the Law? In this same treatise, Paul says, “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14).

Read the passage in its context, and especially note:

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. (Rom 6:15–18)

The person under grace has been set free from sin [and death] and is no longer a son of disobedience (cf, Rom 11:32; Eph 2:2–3) and is therefore finally free to keep the Law, having become a slave of righteousness—

But this isn’t what pastors and theologians of greater Christendom teach. Rather, they go to Galatians and retrieve (also out of context),

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. … For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (Gal 2:15–16, 19–21)

What is the “works of the Law,” a phrase Paul also used in its linguistically single form in Romans 2:15? Do these two uses—singular and plural—have the same meaning? Back in 1972, I had a devout Baptist tell me that the Greek word for Law is the same, but what this devout Baptist as well as most other Christians do not understand is that readers [auditors] assign meaning to words. Of themselves, words have no inherent meaning. Therefore the devout Baptist had Paul contradicting himself; for if a Christian is justified through being a doer of the Law (Rom 2:13), but no person is justified by the works of the Law (Gal 2:16), Paul is either double-minded or misunderstood. A reasonable person can come to no other conclusion.

When meaning must be assigned to words, the person without the indwelling mind of Christ will inevitably—because this person remains a son of disobedience, and thus a slave of sin—assign a differing meaning to the same words from the meaning assigned by the person with the mind of Christ. Now add to this what Peter wrote, probably by his own hand, about Paul’s words:

And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. (2 Pet 3:15–17)

According to Peter, it is the ignorant who assigns meanings to Paul’s words that tend towards lawlessness … would you trust your salvation to the ignorant and unstable practicing the error of lawless people? Most Christians have. My brother Ben has; so for me, this is personal. But I don’t have the ability to reach inside him and change his mind; change what he believes is true. Only the Father and the Son can do that, and unless the Father has predestined my brother to be born of spirit, thereby bearing the fruit of the spirit before the season for fruit is upon humanity, my brother will continue as he has been going, theologically isolated from both this world and from God, Father and Son.

Again, the vast majority of Christians trust their future to ignorant and unstable pastors and theologians who place great emphasis on Christians not being under the Law but under grace, not at all understanding what <grace> is: the righteousness of Christ Jesus that Christians are to put on as garments, thereby giving to the Christian the image and likeness of Christ Jesus through the Christian walking in this world as Christ Jesus walked, with Jesus walking as an observant Jew. This will now have every Christian not led by ignorant and unstable pastors and theologians keeping the Commandments by faith, by belief of God, and not out of legal compulsion.

How hard is the preceding to understand? The work of the Law is doing what the Law requires: having love and respect for God, neighbor and brother. And if the Christian has love for neighbor and brother, the Christian will present him or herself as a living sacrifice to God, putting the needs and comforts of neighbor and brother ahead of his or her own needs and comfort.

But the “works of the Law” under the Old Covenant that was to produce love for neighbor and brother morphed into the work of killing beasts, offering dead sacrifices to a deity that only the high priest could approach, and then only once a year, on Yom Kipporim; for this people of Israel were themselves spiritually dead.

The Apostle Paul understood the reality of what the prophet Isaiah wrote,

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;

for the Lord has spoken:

Children have I reared and brought up,

but they have rebelled against me.

The ox knows its owner,

and the donkey its master's crib,

but Israel does not know,

my people do not understand."

Ah, sinful nation,

a people laden with iniquity,

offspring of evildoers,

children who deal corruptly!

They have forsaken the Lord,

they have despised the Holy One of Israel,

they are utterly estranged.

Why will you still be struck down?

Why will you continue to rebel?

The whole head is sick,

and the whole heart faint.

From the sole of the foot even to the head,

there is no soundness in it,

but bruises and sores

and raw wounds;

they are not pressed out or bound up

or softened with oil.

Your country lies desolate;

your cities are burned with fire;

in your very presence

foreigners devour your land;

it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.

And the daughter of Zion is left

like a booth in a vineyard,

like a lodge in a cucumber field,

like a besieged city.

If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors,

we should have been like Sodom,

and become like Gomorrah.

Hear the word of the Lord,

you rulers of Sodom!

Give ear to the teaching of our God,

you people of Gomorrah!

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?…

I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams

and the fat of well-fed beasts;

I do not delight in the blood of bulls,

or of lambs, or of goats.

When you come to appear before me,

who has required of you this trampling of my courts?

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.

(Isa 1:2–17 double emphasis added — indented lines are spiritual portions of thought-couplets)

What Paul realized is that the sacrifice of a beast was of no value to God and of very little value to the person making the sacrifice; for God was interested in a person’s inner self, not in the fleshly outer self that would not and could not leave the creation: “I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Cor 15:50 emphasis added). And with God interested in the inner self, God doesn’t benefit by the sacrifice of a bull or a goat, a lamb or a turtledove. God benefits when the person sacrifices his or her stubbornness and becomes submissive to God, eager to please God as a young child is to please his or her parents, this person becoming a volunteer slave to obedience that leads to righteousness.

A Christian’s carnality shows through selfishness; i.e., the Christian wanting to live his or her life for him or herself when the Christian has the opportunity to serve others, something that will be foregrounded in the Affliction when many opportunities to serve will be available, with the one being served too often betraying the one serving … Jesus washed Judas Iscariot’s feet on the night Judas betrayed Jesus.

If Paul didn’t trust his fluency in Greek to deliver the message that every person who transgresses the Law, regardless of whether the person truly isn’t under the Law or whether the person simply doesn’t believe the person is under the Law, will perish because of the person’s transgression of the Law, then good reason exists for Paul not to have trusted his fluency in a language he didn’t usually speak … all Hebrews were primarily Aramaic speakers, with educated Hebrews also knowing Imperial Hebrew and probably Koine Greek. Paul knew Greek well enough to speak it, and well enough to write in the language. However, it is unlikely he was as fluent in Greek as he was in Aramaic and Hebrew. If he had been as fluent, he would not have employed Tertius as his scribe.

Today, many Christians teach the good news of Christ Jesus, but teach without being called to teach. Therefore, confusion reigns within greater Christendom, with Paul partially responsible for this confusion; for what did Paul dictate to Tertius? Again,

But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He 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 what does Jesus in John’s Gospel say,

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,

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

The Apostle Paul didn’t understand that the two loaves of bread made from new grain and made with leaven—the two loaves that are waved before God on the Feast of Weeks [Pentecost]—represented two harvests of God, these harvests commingled to the extent that the one harvest looks like the other harvest, but these two harvests are separated by when spiritual birth occurs, with the firstfruits of humanity represented by newly harvested barley beaten into fine flour and with the first of the general harvest of humanity [the general harvest occurring in the great White Throne Judgment] representing grain, wine and oil, with the wine and the oil incorporated in the two loaves of leavened bread waved before God on the Feast of Weeks [Pentecost].

Again, Sabbatarian Christendom has traditionally used allegorical reasoning that identified leavening as “sin,” not as the teachings of a sect of Israel; not as Matthew’s Jesus used <leavening>: “Jesus said to them, ‘Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees’” (Matt 16:6), with His disciples concluding that Jesus meant the teachings of Pharisees and Sadducees (v. 12).

When leavening equates to the “teachings” of a sect of Israel, then there is a leavening unique to the sect of the Nazarenes: Jesus’ disciples. And the leavening of the Nazarenes is analogous to the wild yeast bloom found on grapes and used to ferment grape juice, transforming juice into wine; for in John’s Gospel, Jesus says,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. (John 6:53–58)

The Sabbatarian Churches of God have longer understood that the blessed unleavened bread of Passover and the blessed Passover cup represent the body and blood of Christ Jesus … what happens when the unleavened dough for the unleavened bread of Passover is combined with the wine of the blessed cup before this lump of dough is baked? The lump of dough becomes leavened through the introduction of the wine and its dormant but not dead yeast spores. Thus when new grain—barley beaten into fine flour—is combined with oil and wine and then baked, a loaf of nearly flat but leavened and extremely tender bread emerges from the fire, the leavening killed by the heat of baking and the tender dough made firm by the fire.

On the Feast of Weeks, Pentecost, the two leavened loaves to be waved before God would represent resurrection of two assemblies that began life as sons of disobedience, these assembles having repented of their lawlessness that was covered by Christ Jesus’ sacrifice at Calvary … the preceding reasoning sort of works, but really doesn’t work. If Christ Jesus paid the death penalty for every sin of Israel committed in this world, then the sin in the disciple never gets a chance to grow and leaven the entire lump of dough if leavening represents sin. Plus, if leavening represents the teachings of Christ Jesus, the teachings of Christ Jesus would “die” in the flames of the fire: wine would boil away.

A loaf of bread is not “baked” all day, but for an hour or less, with “an hour” as a unit of time appearing in John’s vision: “‘Because you [Philadelphia] have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth’” (Rev 3:10 emphasis added).

The hour of trial that the Lamb mentions to the angel of Philadelphia comes upon the whole earth, with the exception of Philadelphia that has previously declared [kept] the word of the Endurance of Jesus, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years—the period that denotes the beginning days of the Son of Man’s reign over the single kingdom of this world. But this is a subject to which I will return in a later chapter.

If what traditional Sabbatarian teachers and pastors have argued were true—Christ Jesus bears the sins of disciples in the heavenly realm, either returning these sins to the disciple when judgments are revealed or giving these sins to the Adversary upon the person’s death—and if “leavening” represents sin, the leavening in a lump of dough isn’t killed by baking but removed from the lump upon each occurrence of the sin through being borne by Christ. The lump would never become leavened; so there would be no leavened loaf to be waved before God on the Feast of Weeks.

Only when leavening equates to teachings can there be two leavened loaves to be waved before God on Pentecost.

The fullness of what Jesus said in John’s Gospel has never been appreciated within greater Christendom: 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. The person who hears the word of Jesus, the logos of Jesus that He left with His disciples as their judge—

Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in Him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees Him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has Himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me. (John 12:44–50 emphasis added)

—has a judge that brings the person under judgment, and that judge is the disciple as a son of God himself, the disciple having the indwelling mind of Christ (again, 1 Cor 2:16). And if the disciple can rightly judge himself [sons of God are without gender], this son of God needs no one else to judge him.

The word [Ό ΛΟΓΟΣ] of Him that Jesus left with His disciples is the judge of unbelieving disciples, not believing disciples. Therefore, whomever heard His word and believes the Father has indwelling eternal life, having passed from death to life without coming under judgment, with judgment being negated through having believed the word of Jesus, with the Father having told Jesus what to speak.

The inner self, once raised from death, will be this son of God’s worst critic; for no one but Christ knows the person’s inner self as well as the spirit of the person (from 1 Cor 2:11) knows the person’s inner self.

Circumcision symbolically returns a person to being naked in the Garden of Eden, with the circumcised person [only males can be circumcised in the flesh] being represented by Adam … circumcision of the heart symbolically returns the inner self of the person [again, inner selves are without gender] to the Garden, with the spirit of the person being represented by Adam and the soul of the person represented by Eve. And what is now in play is whether the spirit of the person will figuratively eat of the Tree of Life. The first Adam didn’t. However, in hearing the word of Jesus and believing the One who sent Jesus into this world, the spirit of the person eats of the figurative Tree of Life and thereby covers through obedience via faith/belief whatever the soul does.

In the processing of grapes, the yeast bloom that is on the grapes causes the grape juice to ferment … the grape cannot easily be separated from its yeast bloom, and it certainly cannot be processed into wine if separated from its yeast bloom. Thus, the Christian represented by the wine harvest of the Promised Land is processed through crushing and fermentation, which doesn’t kill the yeast bloom that is NOT the leavening of the Sadducees and Pharisees, the leavening of Pharaoh, but becomes the leavening of Christ Jesus, the teaching of Christ Jesus as represented by His blood, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin.

If a Christian doesn’t drink from the blessed Cup on the night of the Passover [the dark portion of the 14^th day of the first month], the Christian’s sins are not forgiven. But if the Christian does drink from the blessed Cup, the Christian does so from hearing the word of Jesus and believing the One who sent Jesus into this world, telling Jesus what to say and what to speak [two similar things, related to Rev chap 10]. And in hearing the word Jesus left with His disciples and believing this word, the Christian judges him or herself righteously and no further judgment is needed: the Christian passes from death to life without coming under the condemnation of Christ Jesus.

The leaven [teachings] of Christ Jesus will be found in the blessed Cup, poured for many for the forgiveness of sin.

Wine yeast isn’t killed in the processing of grapes to wine, but lives for as long as there is any sugar left in the grape juice, then seems to go dormant until the introduction of additional sugar. Therefore when oil and wine are mixed with finely ground flour, the resulting dough is leavened by the wine—not vigorously leavened, but softly leavened, thereby making for a tender dough, a true Italian pizza-type dough. And as grain is a product of the Promised Land, so too are olives and grapes processed into oil and wine (Deut 11:14).

The contents of the blessed Cup are mixed with already baked unleavened bread in the belly of the disciple when the Christian Passover sacraments are taken on the dark portion of the 14^th day of the first month, the night when Jesus was taken … when the Christian drinks from the blessed Cup on the night of the Passover, the Christian ingresses the teachings of Christ Jesus, moving beyond the teachings of Moses but not abandoning Moses. The Christian is “leavened” by Christ, the teachings of Christ Jesus, not by manifested sin.

Now backup and consider how the teachings of Christ can be compared to “leavening” as understood allegorically, leavening representing sin: when disciples pass from death to life without coming under judgment, what happens to the sins of these disciples? Obviously, sins won’t be counted against these disciples but are “covered” by their belief of God, belief analogous to Abraham’s belief … the glorified Jesus takes these sins upon Himself; hence they are concealed by the blood of Jesus—they are under His blood, under the blessed Cup until they are given back to the Adversary. Therefore by lifting the blessed Cup to the disciple’s lips, the blotted-out sins of disciples have their blotter lifted so that additional sins can be put under the blood of Christ. These additional sins won’t be counted against the disciple, but they will be incorporated in the teaching of Christ Jesus that the blessed Cup represents His blood poured out for many for the forgiven of sin.

Therefore, those disciples representing the oil and the wine of the Promised Land are processed without these disciples coming under judgment. They are as Abraham was; as Noah, Job, and Daniel were; as Moses was. Their belief of God was/is counted to them as righteousness; hence, there was/is no basis for them to be judged. They had no unbelief in them, with “sin” being unbelief according to Paul (Rom 14:23). Hence, they were without “sin” although not without transgression of the Law. Theologically, they are direct descendants of Abraham, who lived before the Law was given … Abraham lived under the rubric, “For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no Law” (Rom 5:13).

Under the New Covenant—the Second Passover Covenant—God “will be merciful toward [Israel’s] iniquities, and [He] will remember their sins no more” … when sins are no longer remembered, John’s definition of sin (1 John 3:4) is passé. Paul’s definition takes precedence: “Whatever does not proceed from faith [pisteos — belief of God] is sin” (again, Rom 14:23).

Under the New Covenant, transgressions of the Law will not represent sin. Rather, when every Christian is filled with spirit so that all know the Lord, with the Law written on hearts and placed in minds, disbelief of God [unbelief of the sort that prevented Israel from entering the Promised Land] will cause God to reject the Christian; for in disbelief, the Christian will have committed blasphemy against the spirit.

Paul didn’t fully understand the plan of God: he says so himself,

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. (Rom 7:15–17)

Paul didn’t realize that there would be a Second Passover liberation of a second Israel from indwelling sin and death; that until this second liberation of Israel, sin [as if sin were a living entity] would continue to dwell in his fleshly members just as death dwelt in his members, with death eventually killing him from the inside out if he wasn’t first killed by an outside cause.

In the Sophist novel, Acts, Paul is to be martyred in Rome, hence dying from an outside-of-himself cause … but Paul wasn’t liberated from indwelling sin and death as Paul himself understood. Therefore, Paul didn’t have to die from an external cause. He could have died from internal causes; e.g., an organ failure such as a heart attack. Only following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel—greater Christendom—will Christians be liberated from indwelling sin and death, thereby dying physically from outside-of-themselves causes, such as martyrdom.

Death is not a state of mind, but the absence of life. Therefore, since the fleshly body cannot enter heaven, the fleshly body has no life in the heavenly realm but only has life in the darkness of this physical realm—and then only has life for a season, the human body being like a flower that grows, buds out, blooms, then withers and dies … the most beautiful of people grow old, get wrinkled, and then die, the beautiful body returning to the dust from which the person was taken. Therefore, because the fleshly body cannot enter heaven, from a spiritual or heavenly perspective the fleshly body is dead even when physically alive. The inner self that animates the fleshly body is, from a heavenly perspective, dead while the body lives physically.

The dead spirit of the person that animates the fleshly body of the person isn’t “dead” as humans understand death, but dead from the perspective of heaven … from the perspective of ancient Greek philosophers; from the perspective of Pharaoh and his magicians, the dead spirit of the person was an immortal soul, somewhat analogous to the stars of heaven. But the stars of heaven are part of the physical creation, and as such, they are physical even if an Egyptian magician believed they were living souls …

Would you trust an ancient Egyptian magician with your salvation? Probably not.

Until a human person is born a second time, with this second “birth” typified by human birth, the person has a dead inner self; for this second birth isn’t of the outer self but is of the non-physical inner self … no human person is born with an immortal soul. The jihadist who commits suicide in the name of Allah believes a lie and is willing to die for what he or she believes. Likewise, the Christian pastor who eulogizes dead parishioners—who tells the bereaved that their loved ones are in heaven with God—apparently believes the lie the pastor tells him or herself as well as tells his or her parishioners. For presently, only the Elect are born of spirit and thereby have spiritually living inner selves. All other human persons have spiritually dead inner selves that when the fleshly body dies, continue to exist as “names” written in a heavenly book of life, with the prophet Malachi declaring,

Then those who feared [YHWH] spoke with one another. [YHWH] paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before Him of those who feared [YHWH] and esteemed His name. “They shall be mine, says [YHWH] of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.” (Mal 3:16–18)

In the day when the Lord makes up His treasured possession, those whose names are written in a Book of Life will become His—not until then. Not at death. Not in the 1^st-Century [except for the Elect, whose living souls sleep under the altar — Rev 6:9]. Not in the 4^th-Century. Not in the 16^th-Century. Not in the 20^th-Century. Not today, May 2015.

No Christian can spiritually conceive him or herself … can a future human child, not yet conceived, force his or her future parents to engage in intercourse by which this child will be conceived? Of course not! In this physical realm, the possibility doesn’t exist. And no human person is more powerful than God. None can force Him to draw a person from this world. So while “the kingdom of the heavens has suffered violence and the violent [attempt] to take it by force” (Matt 11:12), no human person has yet coerced God into drawing this person from the world.

If God wants a particular sinner as a firstborn son, God will draw this person from the world by raising the inner self of the person from death through giving to the person the earnest of the spirit. This person will be foreknown and predestined to be a firstborn son of God, and the Father will deliver this person to Christ Jesus to call, justify, and glorify while the person continues to live physically. It is this person who is born of spirit, born again, born from above—and this person will be involuntarily transformed from who the person was to being a spiritual infant possessing the mind of Christ in an adult human body. So as no outside observer would expect a human infant or child to behave as a mature person, no outside observer should expect an infant son of God—in a human adult-sized package—to behave as Christ Jesus behaved. However, the outside observer should expect to see the son of God strive to walk in this world as Christ Jesus walked. This means that the son of God will keep the Law because of the son’s belief of God. Hence, the Christian who doesn’t strive to keep the Commandments either hasn’t been born of God, or is equivalent to a human infant less than eight days old.

So, will you trust with your salvation a Christian pastor who would—if you died today—preach you into heaven because the pastor believes a lie?

Will you trust a financial advisor who was a disc jockey, the premise of a commercial for an investment firm that has run on American television this spring?

Will you trust your insurance agent, your local law enforcement, your local school? Will you trust President Obama when he speaks of climate change being the greatest threat America faces? Will you trust the NSA with your telephone records? Or will you trust conspiracy theories?

The American economy is based on faith (trust) in a debt-based currency that has no worth of its own, but is backed by the full faith of the United States of America, a debtor nation that has monetized its national debt, meaning in the vernacular of the laity that an American dollar is only worth whatever someone will give the person who possesses a dollar for it. If the dollar will satisfy a storeowner as adequate exchange for a package of balloons, then a dollar is worth a package of balloons. If an Interstate convenience store wants a dollar for the air to fill a tire, then the dollar is worth a little compressed air. If you are willing to work for fifteen dollars an hour—allegedly a living wage—then four minutes of your life is worth a dollar … but you cannot buy back any four minute period of your life for a dollar. In fact, your life is priceless.

A jihadist with a suicide belt exchanges his or her life for a lie, not a transaction that should be encouraged.

An American can purchase, with a few dollars, a sack of beans: locally, the going price for a fifty pound sack of pinto beans is $80. The going price for a fifty pound sack of potatoes is $12. (unclassified potatoes run $6.). The going price for a fifty pound sack of hard red wheat is $31.50; yet the price for a fifty pound sack of white flour is less than $30. This past winter, the price for a fifty pound sack of raw peanuts was $36. Thus, for an American in the Heartland food is relatively cheap if the American is willing to buy basic foodstuffs and not packaged “convenience.”

It is the processing of basic foods that drives up costs, this processing including butchering, cutting, and wrapping meats; baking bread from the flour; cooking and canning beans. So, yes, the high price of convenience foods comes from the marketing of “convenience,” an inedible commodity manufactured by advertising agencies.

Who do you trust to provide you with healthy, nutritious foodstuffs?

The organic food movement has overrun the local foods movement to such an extent that a Michigan resident will purchase organic peaches from Georgia rather than peaches from just down the road; would rather purchase organic salad greens from Florida rather than gathering local dandelions greens or Lamb’s quarters, the word <organic> functioning as a hive tool to pry open wallets and loosen frames of reference …

Do you trust the Federal Government through a food assistance program such as Michigan’s Bridge Card to supply to you the groceries you will eat today and tomorrow? Do you trust local food stores, supermarkets, farmers’ markets to have something available to purchase with your paper dollars, or plastic debit cards …

Returning to a frightening reality, do you trust your local pastor to preach you into heaven when you die even though you know you really haven’t been much of a Christian?

I wrote the following two decades ago:

BURIAL—BURIALBURIAL

I stood beside Mom as Dad's vaulted coffin

was lowered into the winter cold grave—

a bright breeze & taps played,

the loudspeaker made my thoughts hard

to hear, but I remember having heard

Dad's soul was in heaven with God—

said in sincere words by ministers & members

of a fire department that couldn't revive Dad;

the assurance of heaven, told to comfort

five kids & a distraught widow,

snapped like the flag

that January afternoon:

since fifteen, Dad hadn't attended church

hadn't lived a particularly moral or immoral

life: he was an average guy

who put the War behind him,

worked long hours providing for a young family.

To prove a stepfather wrong about the Sabbath

I searched Scripture when I was thirteen:

I didn't want to attend church;

I wanted to hunt, fish, play ball Saturdays,

wanted to be like Dad.

Between black leather covers, on pages

still crisp, I found Commandments

I didn't want to keep—

also found we are souls, nephesh;

we don't have immortal souls.

Prove it yourself.

All but memories of Dad

remain buried in Willamette National

near the flagpole

dead to everything

that's happened these past forty years.

Among those whom God has drawn from this world, there are far more presently humbled by poverty than humbled by great wealth. But when the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel occurs, the humbling will tend toward being universal … all will be scared, hungry, desperate, with some having prepared for calamity but startled by how extensive the collapse of Western culture will be. Then, who will anyone trust? God? Unfortunately, no. Most Christians will not trust God; for they really don’t believe what they profess with their mouths.

Not here supporting the timeline used, permit me to say that 580 days following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the Sixth Seal will be removed from the Scroll:

When He [the Lamb] opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?" (Rev 6:12–17)

The person who prepared for calamity by having a year’s worth of everything the person needs on hand will be as unprepared as any other living person for the great day of the Lamb’s wrath …

From having lived in rural Alaska and buying groceries in the fall for all winter, I can declare with reasonable certainty that a year’s worth of foodstuffs will last about seven months; for with food on hand, more is eaten than anticipated, especially when there isn’t much to do—no regular job requiring the person’s daily presence. So the Latter Day Saint who has laid aside a year’s worth of everything needed will find that the Saint’s stores last only long enough for the Saint to rebel against God.

In what do you trust? Your emergency cache of foodstuffs, or God? Who do you trust? The prophet in Salt Lake City?

Who you trust is for you to decide, with most of greater Christendom trusting ignorant and unstable pastors and teachers that would have Christians walking in this world as spiritual Gentiles.

2.

INVITED TO A VEGETARIAN POTLUCK

INVITED TO A VEGETARIAN POTLUCKINVITED TO A VEGETARIAN POTLUCK

I searched cupboards for something to bring

all the while knowing we were short of everything

except meat & eggs—

on those empty shelves

in dark shadows a Mesopotamian farmer

thrashes emmer & einkorn

careful to save every winnowed kernel

while a woman shells pulses

into a pottered jar—

I remember Dad hunting rabbits

on an Indiana farm

where every corn kernel

was sold

to make payments

on an endless mortgage—

I remember Oregon after Dad died

catching trout

hunting deer

when Social Security wasn't enough

when none of us five kids

were yet old enough to work—

I've grown old

on meat & little else

but for this potluck

I take from the garden

carrots intended for stew

& from the tree nearest the hen house

I pick a few apples

for a remembered casserole

Mom once made

a day I failed to kill dinner

The assumption of the Sabbatarian Churches of God has been that they would escape experiencing the Tribulation by going to a physical place of safety where God would provide food and shelter for the chosen, but imbedded in this assumption is the concept that these Christians are so special to God He won’t cause them to experience what the remainder of humankind experiences, thereby negating Paul’s words: “For God shows no partiality” (Rom 2:11) … if the person not under the Law will perish for transgressing the Law without ever coming under the Law or even knowing what the Law declares, then the person either under the Law or not under the Law [it doesn’t matter which] will not go to a place of physical safety but will experience what every other living person experiences during the seven endtime years of tribulation, thereby negating partiality and alleged specialness.

But the preceding is only partially true: “For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved [alive]. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short” (Matt 24:21–22).

The Elect will not be in a place of safety, but will experience great tribulation—tribulation to such a degree that no person will live physically if God didn’t intervene to end this tribulation. And God intervenes because of the specialness of the Elect, which again doesn’t spare the Elect from experiencing what every other person experiences, but brings an early end to this great tribulation that denotes the end of the Adversary’s dominion over all living creatures.

If no Christian goes to any physical place of safety other than the grave during the Affliction, God will show no partiality toward any Christian … but again, this is only partially true; for the two witnesses cannot be killed until the end of the Affliction, the last three days. Thus, both the Elect and the two witnesses possess divine specialness that separates them from the remainder of Christianity and from the remainder of humanity. But this specialness for the Elect collectively versus the specialness of two witnesses individually differs; for the Elect collectively are spared physical death by having the ongoing great tribulation being cut short before all of humanity perishes. However, the two witnesses are called to defeat Death, the demonic King of the North, by dying physically but not staying dead; for a thing is established by the testimony of two or three witnesses, not a single witness. And the “thing” to be established is the defeat of Death: Christ Jesus is only one witness to the reality that death has lost its sting. The public resurrection of the two witnesses will establish the matter as fact.

The two witnesses are not spared physical death, but experience death in a different manner than Christ Jesus experienced death; for the Adversary wants to kill this two, not make martyrs of them—not turn them into two additional christs. Hence, the after-death treatment of the bodies of the two witnesses differ from that of Christ Jesus; for the Adversary will want to show all that these two men were merely men, now publicly dead and humiliated. I suspect he will be watching their bodies when Michael and his angels make war on the Adversary and his angels:

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!" (Rev 12:7–12)

When the three days are fulfilled, the Adversary will no longer be prince of this world, but will have been cast into space-time from which he will never escape. The Son of Man will be the reigning prince of this world when the two witnesses are resurrected and called forth. And the spirit of God will have been poured out on all flesh, thereby changing both animal natures and human nature: as instantly as King Nebuchadnezzar’s human nature was taken from him and he was given the nature of an ox, so too will the predatory natures of the great predators be taken from them (Isa 11:6–9). So the two witnesses in their personhoods will symbolize the age to come, the Millennium, when there shall be no transactional economies … the two witnesses will not be for sale as Sin merchandises most of humanity, including those persons that will be included in the resurrection symbolizing the early barley harvest.

The problem faced by Christianity is the future that the ideology presents: the world as humanity knows it will come to an end with the return of Christ, and a new age will be ushered in. This is the essence of the Christian message. But the transition period represented in ushering in a new age is inevitably apocalyptic, a period of turmoil and tribulation stemming from humanity’s inability to govern itself … there would never be a need for a Messiah to come and take the reins of world governance if humanity could govern itself. The premise underlying Christianity is that humankind cannot govern itself, but needs extraterrestrial governance, not something modern humanity will willingly accept.

The television series Star Trek presented to 1960s Americans a future where humankind had solved basic problems and there was no longer a thuggish Soviet Union or a hawkish United States of America. There was world peace, generated by science solving the problem of inequitable distribution of resources. Humanity was free to explore the heavens, going where no man had gone before. And this is not the future of humanity that Christendom presents to the world.

To buy into Christianity as an ideology, a person has to first distrust civil governance; for if humankind can truly govern itself, there would never be a need for the Messiah. If humanity could govern itself, there for be no need for the 12^th Iman, the Madhī, to reveal himself. Hence, the ideologies of the People of the Book [Jew, Christian, Muslim] are apocalyptic, with the Messiah being the hero for whom humanity has long waited.

The present generation of young adults—buoyed by the optimism of youth and suckled on the teats of humanism—has been unwilling to accept humanity’s inability to govern itself … sure, youth will say, there needs to be universal equality: employers need to pay a living wage. Everyone needs affordable healthcare, affordable childcare, affordable housing; everyone needs equal protection under the law, the same opportunity to marry, the same right to walk streets at night without being stopped by police because of skin color or clothing worn.

Young adults know where the problems lie, but they have played too many video games to buy into what seems to be another gamer’s fantasy.

America’s Democratic Party, having control of the White House and both branches of Congress, passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obamacare, in March 2010 without the vote of a single Republican member of Congress: the promise made by the law was that the cost-curve for healthcare would be bent downward, thereby assuring Americans that everybody would be able to afford healthcare. But even among persons insured under the ACA, many still have no access to healthcare because of outrageously high co-pays and deductibles. For America’s Democratic Party, the solution to high healthcare costs and high insurance premiums is for the poor not to get sick or injured. However, Republicans have yet to offer a better solution,

One of the hot-button issues of the 2016 American presidential race will be gay marriage, an oxymoron for marriage occurs between couples that have one “head” that can be circumcised and thereby symbolically made naked. Marriage cannot occur when couples have two heads or no heads that can be circumcised. Thus an argument—not a good one—can be made for marriage between a man and a woman made so via gender reassignment, but no argument based on logos can be made for marriage between people of the same gender. Only arguments based on pathos or ethos can possibly have inherent merit as a sexual revolution that began in the 1960s comes to maturity in pan-sexual relationships that should not be legally dignified.

Again, returning to what the Apostle Paul wrote: “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” (Rom 2:12–13) … today, the person who doesn’t believe that God exists, or doesn’t believe sex outside of marriage is a big deal, can live lives without concerns about God or about what God thinks of the person. Until the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, God doesn’t exist for the person in a relationship forbidden by Moses. God doesn’t exist for fornicators or for adulterers or for the man that lies with another man as he would with a woman—

For dogs, coyotes, wolves, God doesn’t exist. Same for mice, rabbits, muskrats … the relevance of the divine exists for humankind, and usually exists as myths prompting good behavior; exists as a late 1^st-Century Greek novel accepted as the infallible word of God; exists as the visions of a rambling merchant supported by his elderly wife. But if God be God—and He is—then God doesn’t need the support of fictional constructs promoting good behavior. He also doesn’t need to let the lab mice know what He does even though He has promised to do nothing with first declaring it by His prophets: “For the Lord [YHWH] does nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). But in revealing what He will do though His prophets or their mirror image, He doesn’t have to fly pennants around what He has revealed. It hasn’t been His M.O. to attract attention to the divine guidance He has left with humanity.

God isn’t trying to save the world at this time: it isn’t yet time to harvest either firstfruits or main crop humanity. And despite the deflation of egos that occurs when humanity is discussed as a crop being grown on this planet, humanity is analogous to the grain, oil, and wine of the Promised Land:

[Jesus] put another parable before them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' So the servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"(Matt 13:24–30)

The earth is this field and humanity is both the good seed and the false grain, growing together as one fleshly people until the time for harvesting, when two harvests occur, the first being the shadow and copy of the latter harvest—the chiral image of the latter harvest—with these two harvests analogous to the early barley harvest of ancient Judean hillsides and to the latter main crop wheat harvest, with the wheat traditionally planted before the barley was planted, but with the wheat not ripening until after the barley had ripened … taking the imagery of people being analogous to wheat or barley, grapes or olives, the promised harvests of the Promised Land, and focusing on wheat and barley, knowledge of God came to humanity in the days of the first Adam and was well ensconced in the minds of men by the days of Noah. Hence the Apostle Paul dictated,

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Rom 1:16–23 emphasis added)

A demonstration project—a research experiment—doesn’t give honest results if the lab animals know they are being observed and evaluated … the participants in the demonstration figuratively “play to the camera,” doing what they wouldn’t normally do if no camera were present, both in a positive and in a negative sense. Hence, the demonstration’s results become skewed.

As can best be determined, the Adversary’s rebellion against the Most High God pivoted around the concept of self-rule [rule from bottom up] rather than hierarchal rule from top down, with this principle informing the hierarchy of spiritual Babylon as seen by the alternation of the colors yellow over white: gold over silver, bronze over iron. At the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the hierarchy of spiritual Babylon will be dealt a below-the-belt blow that removes the silver chest and bronze belly and thighs, thereby leaving the gold head and the iron (a white metal) legs during the Affliction.

The Most High God’s defeat of the Adversary ended the rebellion, but didn’t render infertile the Adversary’s ideas about self-governance and transactional economies—and ideas are difficult to kill. Because two angels of every three didn’t join the anointed guardian cherub in rebellion against the Most High doesn’t mean that there would be no future rebellions; for all angels were infected by the self-governance virus. The incubation period is simply longer for some than for the third part that rebelled … apparently, the rebellion damaged heaven, a supra-dimensional realm that functions as a living entity, damaged heaven enough that there has to be a recreation of heaven, with New Jerusalem at its heart.

In His earthly body, Christ Jesus became the personification of heaven, with the wound in His side—matching the wound in the side of the first Adam, the wound from which a rib was taken to form the Woman—from which water and blood poured (John 19:34) forming a type of the rent in the fabric of heaven through which primal energy poured, the energy employed by the Beloved of the Most High to create space-time and a glorious death chamber for rebelling angels, with the possibilities of this death chamber holding the potential for creation of others like Himself.

Again, the dynamics of timelessness doesn’t permit the coexistence of the absence of life and the presence of life. Thus, because the Adversary and his fellow rebels have life in the heavenly moment in which they were created, as long as they remain in this moment they will continue to have life. But the rebellion was about the Adversary leaving this moment to attempt ascending to the height of the Most High, thus setting his throne on high, equal-to or higher than the Most High’s throne, not realizing that by not having life in the moment [as if a heavenly location] in which the Most High has life, he would never enter this moment—its door, its gates were permanently locked to him. But attempting to enter this moment exposed the iniquity that was in his heart, and his rebellion was “discovered.”

As an anointed cherub—a created being—placed in Eden, the Garden of God, the Adversary could not possibly enter into the moment before his creation, the moment in which the Most High and His Beloved had life and had created this anointed cherub, sans this cherub receiving the glory of heavenly life as Adam received the breath of life when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the man of mud’s nostrils …

As seen through Adam’s creation, the Adversary was a fully formed but lifeless cherub—formed from primal energy—in the moment before he received the spark that ignited in him the bright fire representing eternal [or heavenly] life. But in the timelessness of heaven, that moment before the Adversary received the spark that ignited life in him had to be transformed [the moment had to be transformed] by creation of an additional but lower moment, a figurative burial of the prior moment analogous to an earthly burial of the dead.

The structure for understanding the heavenly creation of angelic sons of God has been with humanity for three and a half millennia, but wasn’t understood until, culturally, humanity matured enough to wrestle with concepts such as dark matter and dark energy and knowledge stored in the cloud.

The author of Hebrews writes,

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you"? Or again, "I will be to him a father, and He shall be to me a son"? And again, when He brings the firstborn into the world, He says, "Let all God's angels worship him." Of the angels He says, "He makes His angels winds, and His ministers a flame of fire." But of the Son He says, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions." And, "You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end." And to which of the angels has He ever said, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet"? Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, "What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for Him? You made Him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned Him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under His feet." Now in putting everything in subjection to Him, He left nothing outside His control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him. But we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why He is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, "I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise." And again, "I will put my trust in Him." And again, "Behold, I and the children God has given me." Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that He helps, but He helps the offspring of Abraham. (Heb 1:1–2:16)

John writes, “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” (1 John 3:2).

For the majority of human history, and perhaps for the majority of living humanity, there has been no knowledge of dark energy that makes up approximately three-fourths of the creation. Even today, dark energy is not well understood and has been only indirectly measured. Yet Christians presume to understand God and the plan of God without even being able to “read” its own sacred texts.

In chirality, the visible things of this world reveal the invisible, hidden things of God; for in chirality, the visibility of the mirror image of the hidden things of God reveal both the existence of these things as well as introduce a dark image of the things themselves … Christianity is about playing with shadows, discerning what is shadow and what isn’t, with the shadows blocking the light that is God. Thus, the mindset of ancient circumcised-in-the-flesh Israel forms the shadow of the Adversary blocking the light of God, which would have the Christian believing God and thereby desiring to do those things that are pleasing to God, which begins with keeping the Commandments because doing so is the right thing to do. And if a Christian by faith keeps the Commandments, the Christian will have love for God, neighbor, and brother.

Therefore, to understand timelessness, the Christian must first understand what time is and what its passage represents … the passage of time equates to the expansion of space through the decay of the present “moment” and the instantaneous formation of the next moment from, probably, the dark energy that coexists with the present. Thus, in a somewhat parabolic shape, space-time expands, the formation of the present pushing the past farther and farther away, with the passage of time being written as a mathematical function of gravity—and with gravity being a far weaker force than it ought to be, suggesting that there is a “gravity leak” that allows gravity to slip into another dimension.

But all of this has been culturally explored and somewhat understood since Einstein’s paper on special relativity [Zur Elektrodyamik bewegter Körper, 1905], with Einstein answering the problem of orbital creep inherent to Newtonian physics.

When it comes to Christianity, what do unbelievers say: things have gone on the way they are since the days of the fathers, nothing changes; the swindler continues to swindle; extortion continues; graft continues; and political pay to play continues. Bribes are given—and accepted. And watermelons ripen on the White House lawn, grown from seed saved since Wilson was President.

And greater Christendom by its actions discloses that it is a community of unbelievers.

Meanwhile, the Adversary continues his deception of humanity through bait-and-switch Christendom.

It wasn’t possible for any Christian to understand the timelessness of heaven until first the passage of time was assigned a measurement—the “tick-tock” of a clock that could do for the moment what the passage of seasons and years did for longer units of time.

In all things physical, the physical precedes the spiritual (1 Cor 15:46), and “all things” includes human knowledge. Thus, until humanity came to know that time and the passage of time were features inherent to the created universe and to things that possessed mass, the timeless nature of heaven could not truly be appreciated. For the Beloved of the Most High created all that is physical; therefore, the Beloved as well as the Most High existed before time and its passage existed, and as such both exist outside of time and are unaffected by time and its passage. And in order for humanity to envision this concept of the Beloved and the Most High being outside of their creation, “verticality” was introduced into discussions of the divine: God in heaven [the third heaven] was above the earthly heaven, perhaps in that dark spot in the northern sky.

With the introduction of divine verticality, the Most High God was “above” the angels not simply as a corporate CEO is above shift foremen, but as the crown of a tree is above its trunk and roots; as the summit of a mountain is above its base. But the problem embedded in divine verticality is the necessity of the base, the roots; for this problem introduces the question of divine existence prior to the creation of angels. Were the Most High and His Beloved self-sufficient prior to the creation of angels as servants? If the answer is, yes, the God isn’t above angels as a summit of the mountain is above its base. Rather, divine verticality will now pertain to the location of where God dwells in relationship to the location where angels dwell and have life. And I have returned to the reality that angels have life in a location that is lower in verticality than the location in which they were formed, with location equating to an everlasting “moment” in timelessness.

All of the preceding relates directly to human sons of God that form the mirror image of angelic sons of God … because human sons of God do not begin by having indwelling heavenly life, but begin by having only physical life, the source material for the formation of human sons of God differs from the source material for the formation of angelic sons of God. For the Genesis narrative of the creation of the first Adam doesn’t intellectually work for the creation of a physical person, but does work for the creation of the last (or second) Adam, and does work for the creation of angelic sons of God. For again, time must be stopped for all of the elements [atoms] forming the inner organs of a human person to be held in place for long enough to complete the assembly of an organism as complex as a living person. And while God is certainly capable of bringing all of these atoms together and holding them in place for long enough to ignite the spark of life in them, the Genesis narrative inserts a passage of time that would preclude these atoms being held together:

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for [YHWH Elohim] had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then [YHWH Elohim] formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Gen 2:5–7)

The mechanics of linguistic narration separate <formed> from <breathed> by a moment of time, even if only by a fleeting moment: formed and breathed are not simultaneous acts and cannot be the act of creating a corpse of mud while simultaneously breathing the breath of life into the nostrils of the man of mud; for when were Adam’s nostrils formed? Before or after his spleen was formed? Before or after his liver, kidneys, heart, lungs? And the answer has to be “after”—and if after, then there was no “glue” of cellular life holding one cell to the next cell [the cells having been assigned equilibrium by their formation into a corpse] thereby preventing atomic decay [entropy] of the organs for the moment[s] between creation [formed] and receipt of the breath of life [breathed]. And indeed, these following moments would have seen decay of the inner organs to some degree; so only in timelessness can the creation of Adam have occurred as the narrative presents this creation. However, because Christ Jesus was a living person with a fully functioning delivery system for oxygen and carbohydrates to each cell prior to receipt of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] that raised Jesus’ inner self from death, the creation narrative for Adam works well for the second Adam. Again, this would not have been the case for the first Adam unless Adam was created in a gravitational vacuum [in timelessness].

So returning to the cultural lack of understanding pertaining to timelessness; to atomic equilibrium and entropy, 1^st-Century Christians would not have been able to do more than accept or reject the creation narrative for the first Adam. They really couldn’t take this narrative apart to examine it; they couldn’t deconstruct it. Likewise, until the development of computers using binary systems represented by opening and closing of gates [switches] followed by the development of the Internet and now “computing clouds” could humankind understand how the nature of a living entity could be taken from that entity (as in the case of King Nebuchadnezzar) and another nature given to the living entity … how many updates does Microsoft send forth monthly, with every computer running a Microsoft operating system and tied to the Internet receiving these updates that change the computer’s operating software? It seems too many.

The Adversary remains the prince of the power of the air: it is his “updates” that change the Zeitgeist of the age and culture.

The concept of divine verticality has so far been the cultural best expression for hierarchy of God over living creatures, but this concept is as flawed as was Ptolemaic astronomy, the geocentric understanding of the creation imbedded in the Latin Church until the modern era. For in chirality only one side of a spiritual “thing” needs to be seen for the shadow of the “thing” to be seen as its mirror image. And this one side is seen in New Jerusalem, which linguistically appears to be a recreation of heaven … if this is the case, then the verticality of the Most High is replaced by the “centralness” of the Most High and Christ Jesus:

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Rev 21:22–27)

Again, asking the question: will you trust your salvation to Sadducees and Pharisees and their understanding of the things of God? Probably not. So will you eat the leaven of Sadducees and Pharisees; will you accept their teachings? And if not—you should not—why will you accept the teachings of Christian pastors and theologians who rely upon the leaven of Sadducees and Pharisees for their understanding of Scripture?

Most of America’s educated have never really read the Bible: they will leave Bible study to the experts—and the experts cannot agree about much. Meanwhile in Texas, a Democratic pan-gender state legislator makes friends and political alliances with conservative Republicans, thereby giving a face and figure to the carnality of the human animal that will attempt to breed with any biped.

For the educated, all of this god-talk is off-putting. Some who transgress the Law without concern of consequences believe they will, upon their physical death, be accepted by God into heaven. Others don’t think about heaven; don’t believe this supra-dimensional realm has any importance in the modern world; dismiss all god-talk as the continuance of primitive myths that have no substance …

It is here where I will pick up the remainder of Chapter Three.