March 12, 2011 © Homer Kizer
To view or print Greek and Hebrew characters
End Notes
Truth Always has an Agenda
Part Two
____________
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about Him, so that He got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. And He told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”
Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And He answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:
You will indeed hear but never understand,
and you will indeed see but never perceive.
For this people's heart has grown dull,
and with their ears they can barely hear,
and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart
and turn, and I would heal them.
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. (Matt 13:–17 emphasis added)
___________
3.
—when the Church is not the ¦6680F\"—
The vulgar Church [i.e., the common Church as in the spiritually defiled Church], beginning early in the 2nd-Century CE, employed an ecclesiology holding that the Church was one organism manifested in many places, with a plurality in unity and a unity in plurality: one was many, and many were one. And this ecclesiology still exists within Orthodox Christendom, where many are not subordinate to one as in the Latin Church. Nor is one subordinate to many as in Protestant Churches … the ecclesiology of the Church of England—the ecclesiology that King James I of England directed translators to employ when making a new translation of the Holy Bible—held that the Church was an earthly institution, with its theological head receiving authority to determine theological matters via apostolic succession through Augustine and Celtic Christendom and with its earthly head being the King of England as the Roman Emperor, not the Bishop of Rome, was previously “the governing authorities … instituted by God” (Rom 13:1), with the king being the authority that “whoever resists … resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (v. 2).
Ecclesiologies holding that the Church as an institution represented the ¦6680F\" inevitably separated matters of salvation from a thing indifferent (•*4"R@D") that remained under the authority of the king and not the Church. Disputes would arise, such as over the vestments worn by the clergy, that pushed the boundary between matters of salvation and those things which were not of importance to salvation, with the king always winning these dispute by force of arms; e.g., in section 13 of Tudor England’s Act of Uniformity, the monarch had the authority "to ordeyne and publishe suche further Ceremonies or rites as maye bee most meet for the advancement of Goddes Glorye, the edifieing of his church and the due Reverance of Christes holye mistries and Sacramentes."
Truth is not true based on self-evidence, but upon the negation of what was previously concealed. A parable is a special form of a metaphor, and metaphors are never true; for one thing is not another thing as a metaphor contends. Thus, parables are never the truth … Jesus never told the crowds that followed Him the truth, a claim that will cause some consternation but a claim that is nevertheless true; for Jesus only spoke to the crowds and to His disciples prior to being crucified in figures of speech (John 16:25; Matt 13:10–11). Jesus deliberately did not reveal to the crowds what had been concealed by God, for the crowds were not born to be kings as His disciples would be heavenly so-born when He breathed on ten of them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@< — breath holy] (John 20:22).
The ¦6680F\" are born of God to be kings. The human person was not born of his or her biological mother and father to be a king, but the inner self of this human person, when resurrected from death through the Father giving to the person a second breath of life, His breath [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø], in the vessel that comes from heaven, the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø], is born of God to be a king.
So that a better understanding of what salvation represents can be reached, let it here be said that the creation can be liked to a cosmic black hole from which not even light can escape. Nothing and no one can escape the creation; for anything that has mass cannot dwell in timelessness where there is no mass. Thus, the existence of mass prevents the escape of what has mass from the creation. But the inner self of a person, unlike the physical substance of the person, has no mass—and has no life inside the creation until that life is received via the breath of the Father. This now living inner person has passed from death to life without coming under judgment, which is what Jesus said about those who hear His words and believe the Father (John 5:24). Judgment comes upon the living inner self after it is resurrected from death, which is the mirror image [the left hand enantiomer] of what occurs in the great White Throne Judgment, when all who have lived will be resurrected from death to be judged by those things that they did in the flesh. For the ¦6680F\", judgment is ongoing from the instant they receive a second breath of life, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø], but what wasn’t disclosed to the vulgar Church is that the ¦6680F\" as the Body of Christ and as future kings, judges itself informally day by day and formally when examining itself before taking the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed, with its judgment coming through whether the ¦6680F\" rightly or wrongly has judged itself. A Christian born of God is individually and collectively the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27). And when the collective no longer takes the Passover sacrament worthily—that is after rightly discerning the collective judging the collective—then what happens to the collective is seen in what happens to the individual:
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. / So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another—if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home—so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come. (1 Cor 11:27–34 emphasis added)
When an individual Christian takes the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed (i.e., on the dark portion of the 14th of Aviv) in an unworthy manner, the individual Christian is judged and disciplined by the Lord, and it is for this reason that many Christians are weak and sick and have died prematurely … a Christian should not be weak and sick. The fact that a Christian is weak and sick should cause the Christian to more closely examine him or herself, especially if this Christian takes the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed. If the Christian doesn’t take the sacraments on the dark portion of the 14th of Aviv, what’s to be said: this Christian is not today of God, and it is perhaps better for the Christian to openly flaunt the fact that he or she doesn’t believe God than to claim belief by taking the sacraments on the night Jesus was betrayed and then not rightly discern the Body of Christ.
What holds true for the individual Christian also holds true for the collective: when the ¦6680F\" as a collective doesn’t take the Passover sacraments of Bread and Wine on the dark portion of the 14th of Aviv, the collective discloses to man and God that it is not of God and does not believe God; that is has not rightly discerned the Body of Christ and it asks to be judged and disciplined by the lord, the reason it died with the death of the Apostle John at the end of the 1st-Century CE.
In the 16th-Century, when the word went out to restore and build heavenly Jerusalem, no Christian was keeping the commandments of the Lord; none were taking the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed. All Christians were in the vulgar Church; all Christians were without living inner selves. All Christians believed the lie of the Adversary that they were humanly born with immortal souls (i.e., indwelling eternal life) without receiving eternal life as the gift of God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:23). Individually and collectively, the Christian Church could not have been more dead.
But to conceal its death from itself, the vulgar Church taught a dogma of apostolic succession … if the Church were an earthly institution derived through apostolic succession from Peter unto the present age, then the Church as the last Eve, the Woman that the Lord created from a wound in the side of the last Adam, has not died and cannot die, which is what the serpent told the first Eve in the Garden of God:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. / He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Gen 3:1–7 emphasis added)
Did the woman die when she ate forbidden fruit? No, she did not; for she was clothed with her obedience to her husband, obedience rooted in belief of her husband, and she was covered by the obedience of Adam that was rooted in Adam’s belief of the Lord. Two coverings that functioned as garments; two coverings that concealed her nakedness. And what the serpent told Eve was true: she did not die when she first touched the Tree in the midst of the garden, nor did she die when she ate forbidden fruit. For the Lord had said nothing to Adam about touching the Tree:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen 2:15–17)
Adam added to what the Lord told him: in some respects, Adam translated the Lord’s command into what he thought the Lord had said, that not eating of the Tree meant they were not to even go near the Tree. Certainly, he didn’t trust the woman to not eat if the woman loitered near the Tree. And the serpent being more subtle than any other beast of the field—all of whom had been created by the Lord—upon hearing Eve say, Touch, knew how to get the man to eat forbidden fruit.
Any addition to the word of the Lord can be exploited by that old serpent, Satan the devil, to cause unbelief in sons of God, regardless of whether the addition is of God as in the case for the New Testament, or of man—and this subject of addition to Holy Writ enters into the lives of disciples when it comes to the subject of coverings, about which more will be said.
The serpent told Eve the truth, with his telling her the truth having an intentional agenda of causing the man to cease believing the Lord without the serpent ever speaking to the man … when the woman saw that the fruit of the Tree was good for food, the woman, probably accidently-on-purpose, first touched the tree then picked its fruit without dying, and the woman ceased to believe her husband. She desired to be like God in that she sought to have her eyes opened so that she could see what had been concealed, not realizing that her garment of obedience was like the emperor’s new clothes; i.e., able to cover her for only as long as she believed. And she ate and did not die: she ate with her husband beside her.
Adam saw Eve eat forbidden fruit and not die … what was Adam to think? The Lord had told Adam that in the day when he ate, not in the day when the woman ate, he would die. The Lord said nothing to the man about the woman when He placed the man in the Garden; for when the Lord placed the man in the Garden, the man was alone in this world. And about this state of being alone, the Lord said that it was not good that the man was alone, that He would make for the man a help-mate corresponding to the man (Gen 2:18). So the Lord made the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, but no help-mate was found among them that corresponded to the man thus the Lord caused a deep sleep to come upon the man and made from a wound in his side the woman that was like the man.
The woman was so much like the man that the man thought what the Lord had told him about not eating forbidden fruit also pertained to the woman … but the woman was not quite like the man, in that the woman had no reproductive head other than her husband. The significance of the woman having no reproductive head other than her husband was somehow overlooked by both the man and the woman, but not by the serpent, who understood that the woman would remain clothed by the garment of her husband’s obedience until the man eat of the Tree in the midst of the Garden.
Because the man did not realize that the woman was clothed by his obedience, that regardless of what the woman did Sin would not enter the world through the woman, the man did not know how to process what he was seeing: the woman eating forbidden fruit and not dying. Therefore when the woman offered the man fruit that he was truly forbidden to eat, the man ceased to believe the Lord—and he took the fruit and ate. “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Gen 3:7) … they could both see what had previously been concealed from them, their nakedness.
Being like God—being truly born of God—causes the human person to see what has been concealed, which is what Jesus told Pilate and what Pilate understood; for, What is not concealed, was Pilate’s response (John 18:38), and a response no one heard who wasn’t in the house with Jesus and Pilate … for John to relate this exchange between Jesus and Pilate requires that John heard Jesus tell of what happened to Him after He was taken, and after He was resurrected.
The serpent, being more crafty than the man and the woman realized, employed truth as a weapon aimed at getting the man condemned. When the serpent told the woman the truth, the serpent had an agenda—truth always has an agenda.
It is usually taught that the serpent lied to the woman in the Temptation Account, but that is not correct: the woman ate and did not die, exactly what the serpent said to Eve.
Again, metaphors are never true, for one thing is not another thing. And a metaphor conceals its untruthfulness by seeming to be true … parables are a special form of metaphors, and parables were Jesus’ preferred method of revealing knowledge of what had been hidden to His disciples but not to the people of Israel.
In every parable Jesus told is an element of falsity and an element of truth—is an element of darkness and an element of light as every 24-hour day is a mingling of darkness and light similar to poetic Hebrew thought-couplets welding what is natural to what is heavenly … evil is nothing more than unbelief, with the evidence of unbelief coming through the mingling of the sacred [Christ, light] with the profane [darkness] in an inverted order that has light preceding darkness, rather than coming from darkness. And it will take a moment for the preceding to be absorbed:
It is the glory of kings to discover the light that follows the darkness; for the Adversary, when he does tell the truth—which isn’t often—will cause darkness to seem like light. Therefore, in the metaphor that has the first Adam and the first Eve forming the left hand enantiomer of the last Adam, Christ Jesus, and the last Eve, the Christian Church, the Garden of Eden forms the shadow and type—the copy—of the temple of God, and the beasts of the field that Adam named form the copy of the Sadducees and Pharisees of the second temple. The deep sleep that the Lord brought upon Adam forms the copy of the three days and three nights that Jesus was in the heart of the earth, and the wound in Adam’s side where the Lord took the rib forms the copy of the wound in Christ Jesus’ side (John 19:34). Thus, Eve forms the copy of the ¦6680F\", which is one body and of one heavenly breath, but consists of many members (1 Cor 12:12–14). And when the ¦6680F\" believed that old serpent, Satan the devil, that the ¦6680F\" will never die—which is true but which doesn’t represent the truth—and thereby ate forbidden fruit in the assembly’s 1st-Century manifestation of unbelief, the last Adam does not ever cease believing God, nor covering the ¦6680F\" with the garment of grace. What ceases is the Father drawing human beings from this world through giving to the called person a second breath of life, His breath [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the heavenly vessel that is the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø].
The Adversary will use the truth [light] as his preferred means to bring the ¦6680F\" into darkness/death; whereas with God, light and life always comes from death and darkness. To mingle the sacred [Christ] with the profane [the day of the invincible sun; the birthday of the invincible sun] is to place life before death, thereby having death [that which is earthly and of this creation] come after a Christian has received indwelling heavenly life. This is what’s seen when Christians begin their week with their Sabbath rather than end their week with the Sabbath—the work week represents what is physical, profane, and of this world. The Sabbath represents entering into God’s rest. Therefore, when a Christian begins with life & light [worshiping God in the 1st day of the week], then proceeds to death & darkness [the work week], the Christian doesn’t believe God but believes the serpent. The order is important! The sacred follows the profane and does not preceded the profane. It is the serpent who would have the sacred preceding the profane.
The above needs to be unpacked and simplified if possible: the 1st-Century holy ones that were called out from this world—the ¦6680F\"—continue to have life in the heavenly realm even after their earthly bodies have died, often from being martyred. They do not die, exactly what that old serpent, Satan the devil, told the last Eve:
When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. (Rev 6:9–11)
Christians are not humanly born with indwelling immortal souls—that teaching is of the Adversary and is a lie; for that is a teaching that has the sacred, immortality, preceding the profane, the birth of the person’s fleshly body. Rather, Christians receive indwelling eternal life when they receive the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@<] that is the breath of the Father [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] as a second breath of life when the Father draws the adult person from this world (John 6:44, 65). In this present era, stretching from Calvary to the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the only individuals who receive the Holy Spirit are those who have been foreknown by the Father and predestined for salvation. There is no general calling of Christians, and no one can truly come to God unless the person has been drawn from this world by the Father. The general calling of Christians comes at the Second Passover, when every person who identifies him or herself as a Christian will be born of God and born filled-with and empowered by the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø]. Until then, those Christians who have truly been born of God are extremely few in number, with most of this number being born in the 1st-Century. It is their resurrected inner selves that sleep under the altar, awaiting those who will be killed in the Affliction (the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years) as they were.
The vulgar Church represents the darkness that precedes the light; the vulgar Church is represented by the work week when Christian works are required, with these works being to take the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed and to walk as Jesus walked. No works, no eating of Christ, the true Bread that has come down from heaven. For manna was not gathered on the Sabbath, the seventh day, but on the preceding six days:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” … And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’” And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted. / On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.” / On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” So the people rested on the seventh day. (Ex 16:4–5, 14–30)
The reason that Adam was not to eat of the Tree in the midst of the Garden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good [the sacred] and Evil [the profane], is found in the order of presentation, with Good preceding Evil, not following evil. The difference between the Lord and the Adversary is expressed in the order of presentation: whenever the sacred precedes the profane, even when the Adversary tells the ¦6680F\" what is true, the Adversary uses the truth to deceive the ¦6680F\".
Israel did not first rest, then gather manna for six days before resting again. Rather, Israel ate first quail—“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God. In the evening quail came up and covered the camp”’” (Ex 16:11–13)—with these quail representing the 1st-Century ¦6680F\", devoured by Israel, as the manna represents Jesus, the true Bread of Life. And in this analogy, the people of Israel represent the vulgar Church, and as the people of Israel rebelled against the Lord in the wilderness of Paran (Num chap 14), the vulgar Church, even when filled-with and empowered by the breath of God, will rebel against God in the Apostasy (2 Thess 2:3), the great falling away of day 220 of the Affliction.
The vulgar Church representing the entirety of the visible Body of Christ Jesus from the end of the 1st-Century through early in the 16th- Century had no indwelling eternal life, but had lost its life through the Father simply refusing to make from human persons any more firstborn sons until the word went out from Him to restore the temple of God according to the seventy weeks prophecy.
Again, the 1st-Century ¦6680F\" were both (1) individually and (2) collectively the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27). Until Christians began to leave the Apostle Paul (see 2 Tim 1:15; Phil 3:18), there was no separation between the individual and the collective. But once Christians rejected those things that Paul taught, separation developed as Paul acknowledges: “For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1 Cor 11:18–19). A separation within the ¦6680F\" was necessary so that those individuals, not collectives, who were genuine could be recognized, with false individuals joining together in collectives that were equally false, collectives that formed the vulgar Church, and with genuine individuals dying in faith and not being replaced by additional genuine individuals when the Father ceased drawing individuals from this world until the word went out to restore the temple and build heavenly Jerusalem.
In the shadow and type of the Temptation Account—the account that is recorded in Genesis chapter 3—Eve is tempted by the serpent, and she succumbs to the temptation and ceases to believe her head because Adam added to the word of the Lord. But in the reality of the Temptation Account—this account recorded in Matthew 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; and Luke 4:1–13, with the reality being the mirror image of its shadow—the last Adam does not succumb to the blandishments of the serpent and delivers to His disciples the words of God, adding nothing to them. Therefore, the last Eve is without excuse when she ceases to believe God and begins to believe the serpent, thereby ceasing to walk as the man Jesus walked. It is for cause that the Father ceased to give to human persons a second breath of life, the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@<], when the ¦6680F\" would not walk on a daily basis as Jesus walked, thereby necessitating their walk to martyrdom.
In Scripture, there are two temptation accounts that are mirror images of one another: in the first, the woman is tempted, believes the serpent, and no longer believed her head. In the reversed image of this first account, the man Jesus the Nazarene, the last Adam, is tempted, but does not believe the old serpent, Satan the devil, and continues to believe His Head, the God.
Let there be no doubts, the martyrdom that engulfed the 1st and early 2nd Century Church came about because these Christians refused to walk as observant Judeans; i.e., they refused walk as Jesus walked (they had no works other than martyrdom). Therefore, the best means available to the Father and Son for determining whether these Christians truly believed God to the point of death was to take them to this point and see how they responded as they were martyred. But this is not an effective means for determining faith for more than one generation. Hence, the Father simply quit giving to any human being a second breath of life until it became time to put an end to Sin and to atone for iniquity, 1200 years after the dead ¦6680F\" was concealed from sight through the Nicene Creed’s deliberate abandonment of taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the night Jesus was betrayed, that night being the dark portion of the 14th of Aviv. The only remaining evidence that Jesus ever lived was in the vulgar Church’s presence in this world. Thus, it can be truthfully said that the ¦6680F\" died at the end of the 1st-Century with the death of John (ca 100–102 CE) and was buried by the Council of Nicea (ca 325 CE) as Jesus’ earthly body died on the cross about the ninth hour (Matt 27:46) and was buried at sundown, about three hours later (John 19:42; Matt 27:57) … Jesus’ death at the ninth hour equates to the death of the ¦6680F\" about 101 CE; whereas Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus’ burial of Jesus’ earthly body about sundown equates to the Roman Emperor and 300 bishops hiding the ¦6680F\" from site in the year 325 CE, with the word going out to (1) restore and (2) build heavenly Jerusalem in 1525 CE and 1528 CE respectively, with the restoration being completed after seventy weeks (490 years) when the 1335 days[1] are completed in 2015 CE and with the building of heavenly Jerusalem completed in 2018 CE.
The vulgar Church was once a bi-fold institution formed from two collectives, one that had their minds set on earthly things, such as physical circumcision in the 1st-Century, or now in the 21st-Century, set on how to pronounce bastardized Hebrew names for the Father and the Son [the Pharisaical collective], and a second collective who valued earthly authority to rule men wherever they dwell, family relationships, or worldly wealth [the Hellenists]. But the vulgar Church has lacked indwelling heavenly life since the end of the 1st-Century, whereas the Elect of the ¦6680F\" is the assembly of the Lord that continues to live in heaven (as the “lives” asleep under the altar) and here on earth in those Christians who keep the commandments and have the testimony of Jesus, the oil and the wine that Sin cannot harm (Rev 6:6).
Yes, a schism in the Body of Christ developed at the end of the 1st-Century: the vulgar Church and the ¦6680F\" permanently parted company, with the vulgar Church remaining solely here on earth while the ¦6680F\" ceased to dwell on earth and was only in heaven. Hence until the word went out from God to restore the temple and build heavenly Jerusalem in the 16th-Century, the ¦6680F\" did not exist here on earth in any form. And until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the ¦6680F\" will exist and has existed here on earth only through the last Elijah administering figurative mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to those holy ones who keep the commandments and hold the testimony of Jesus. When these holy ones, even though they keep the commandments, turn away from Christ, they lose the Holy Spirit and they die in the heavenly realm after having tasted the goodness of God. They cannot ever again be brought back to life; for Christ Jesus will not be crucified a second time.
A Sabbatarian Christian having tasted the goodness of God who then turns his or her face away from Christ cuts him or herself off from God and will never live again in the heavenly realm; thus, it is a big deal when a Sabbatarian sets his or her mind on physical things such as how to pronounced bastardized Hebrew names for the Father and the Son and thereby denies Christ, a subject I have previously addressed.
When the word went out to restore the temple and build heavenly Jerusalem, the last Elijah figuratively administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to all of Christendom; hence from when the word went out to restore the temple until the coming of an anointed prince, the Messiah, there were seven weeks, 49 years, plus sixty-two weeks, with these sixty-nine weeks, 483 years, divided in and about 1574 to 1577 CE, the years when the Geneva Bible was published in England [it was published on the Continent in 1560 CE] and a host of other activities were dividing Christendom through two primal doctrines, the nature of the ¦6680F\", which separated the Latin Church from the Reformed Church, and Believers’ Baptism, which separated Radical Reformers from Protestant Reformers.
Publication of Holy Writ in the language of the common person in the 16th-Century was of greater significance than perceived in the 21st-Century when most of what has ever been published is available on-line; for the consumption of texts influences and to a great extent determines how the consumer thinks … thoughts are expressed in words, and particularly in the first words that pop to mind. A nuclear physicist thinks like a nuclear physicist because he or she has the language of a nuclear physicist. The farmer thinks like a farmer because he or she has the language of commercial agriculture. A writer thinks like a writer because he or she has the language of literature, which, if a writer attempts to teach college-level freshman Composition, the writer will soon discover isn’t the language of incoming traditional students who are unable to discover or discuss trickster figures, let alone deploy one in a narrative. Hence, most freshman compositions are McWriting, essays that look like essays but that are utterly lacking in substance.
Affordable publications of Scripture in the language of the people, which initially seemed to be a blessing to all of Christendom, soon became an affliction through simple over-familiarity: a verse could be memorized without being understood. The language of the translation and translator became the language of the people, shaping how the people thought … again, how a person uses language governs how the person thinks, with thoughts conforming to the shape of the common words used by the person.
The person who regularly hears the language of the King James Version of Holy Writ thinks in this archaic religious language, which for the most part is the language of William Tyndale and his 1525 CE publication of the New Testament. All of the following expressions that are inscribed in English-speaking Christians’ minds come from Tyndale:
1. lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil
2. knock and it shall be opened unto you
3. twinkling of an eye
4. a moment in time
5. fashion not yourselves to the world
6. seek and you shall find
7. ask and it shall be given you
8. judge not that you not be judged
9. the word of God which liveth and lasteth forever
10. let there be light
11. the powers that be
12. my brother's keeper
13. the salt of the earth
14. a law unto themselves
15. filthy lucre
16. it came to pass
17. gave up the ghost
18. the signs of the times
19. the spirit is willing
20. live and move and have our being
21. fight the good fight
One word coined by Tyndale that has become especially important for The Philadelphia Church is Passover. And Tyndale, in his translations, rescued <thou> from obscurity. He never used <you> as the second-person pronoun in his translations as was already the custom of his educated peers; rather, he rescued thou from the linguistic flotsam of history, giving to the word a sense of religious solemnity that conflicted with its former use as a signifier of disrespect.
Again, what initially seemed like a blessing to the ¦6680F\" became an affliction, with the greatest affliction of all being the King James Version of Holy Writ, the greatest book of all time—and the book most responsible for keeping the word of God outside of Christians and not inside where it would be written on hearts and placed in minds.
4.
—the ecclesiology of the Radical Reformers—
It doesn’t seem right that the “truth” could be used to deceive a person which the serpent did do through simply inverting the order of presentation, something most of the ¦6680F\" would never notice … liberation comes first from the king of the South [Egypt, the representation of Sin], then from the king of the North [Assyria, the representation of Death]; but English speakers tend to reverse this order, placing north before south as they place east before west. Why? Because that is how their minds process information and present what they have processed. But if that is how their minds naturally process information—and if all of humankind has been consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3)—then the natural order of processing information comes not from God, but from the Adversary; i.e., from being slaves to disobedience, with this slavery reinforced by everything the person reads as a consumer of texts.
The dead inner self of a human person could not be liberated from death through receiving a second breath of life, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø], until the second Adam defeated the old serpent, Satan the devil, so that this dead inner self was freed from Sin by Jesus “canceling the record of debt that stood against [the ¦6680F\"] with its legal demands” (Col 2:14). Only then, after Sin had been defeated so that it no longer had dominion over the inner self of the human person could the Father give to the person a second breath of life … liberation from Sin precedes liberation from Death for the inner self of a human person, as liberation of the outer self from Sin at the Second Passover precedes liberation of the outer self from Death [glorification].
With God, South precedes North, and West precedes East
Whereas the dead inner self of a human person is not under the law and therefore doesn’t now have sin counted against it (Rom 5:13), the person who sins “without the law will also perish without the law” (Rom 2:12). Any reading of Holy Writ that has Christians not being under the law and thus free to transgress the law is of the Adversary; for the ¦6680F\", though receipt of a second breath of life, have living inner selves that will come under the law if any return to Sin, thereby presenting the inner self to Sin as its obedient slave (Rom 6:16).
It doesn’t seem right that a Bible in every house could be an affliction that has enslaved modern Christendom, but when language usage governs thoughts as it does, the language of whatever translation of Scripture that the Christian reads governs the thoughts of the Christian. And when this translation has an openly declared agenda, the Christian will unwittingly buy this agenda, selling all he or she has to obtain the kingdom of God as defined by the agenda of the translators.
The vulgar Church, not knowing better, identified the ¦6680F\" as an institution, as the “church” where individual Christians went to worship God and hear Scripture read. Determining what texts composed Scripture and who had physical access to Scripture as well as how meaning was taken from Scripture became the prerogative of the vulgar Church, not of individual Christians, who could not afford lectern-size folios of Scripture, written in Latin in the Western world and in Greek in the Eastern world. Thus, by its determination of who could read the word of God, the vulgar Church exercised dictatorial power over Christendom for centuries—
For as long as the ¦6680F\" was perceived to be an institution, the Church, and not an assembly, Christians were theologically enslaved in a manner analogous to how Pharaoh physically enslaved Israel in Egypt. Thus, translation of Scripture into the common language of the people, coupled with the invention of the printing press, produced a temporary liberation of individual Christians from the vulgar Church, with this temporary liberation coinciding with the last Elijah breathing His breath—the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø]—into all of Christendom for the number of years representing a jubilee (seven periods of seven). And at the forefront of this temporary liberation of Christians from the vulgar Church was William Tyndale and Martin Luther, both of whom desired that the Christian laity possess more knowledge of Scripture that the clergy at the time, with both having considerable success through their translations of Scripture into the language of the people.
The old church had long proclaimed that the “church” represented the organizational structure of the Catholic Church, thereby making the ¦6680F\" and the Catholic Church synonymous, a dogma that translation of Scripture into the language of the people challenged through how translators rendered <¦6680F\"> into English or German or French … Martin Luther taught that the “church” was composed-of and defined by believers here on earth. Tyndale approximated this position by translating ¦6680F\" as congregation, with the congregation being here on earth. Both of these positions, however, addressed the outer self, the human person, and not the inner self born of God.
Hence, it was the Radical Reformers that posed the greatest challenge to the old church; for the Radicals—the Anabaptists—of the 16th-Century held the true church is only in heaven, that no institution here on earth merits the name Church of God and that is true. What the Radical Reformers historically saw but didn’t understand was those things that happened to Jesus’ earthly body would also happen to His spiritual Body, the Church, that is not composed of earthly [fleshly] bodies of human beings but composed from the previously enslaved (to disobedience) inner selves of human beings that were crucified with Christ and raised from death to a newness of life to walk as Jesus walked.
The above it correct: no institution here on earth, no assembly, no congregation merits the name Church of God. It is presumptuous of any human institution, assembly, or congregation here on earth to call itself the Church of God.
The Church is the assembly—the congregation—of holy ones that are not the fleshly bodies of human beings, but the inner selves of human beings that have been raised from death as Jesus was raised from death. The Church, the ¦6680F\", cannot be seen by human eyes. The entirety of the ¦6680F\" has been drawn from this world by the Father and called by Christ Jesus. Therefore, the Church is not a human institution, but rather, the Church is the firstborn son of God. The Church is Christ, and as such, the Church begins with Christ Jesus, the First of the firstfruits, the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering, and the Church incorporates every inner self that is born of the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø], received as a second breath of life. The Church is one Body, with Christ Jesus being the First of the firstborn sons of God and with the firstfruits of God represented in Scripture by the early barley harvest of Judean hillsides that began with the Wave Sheaf offering and continued until the Feast of Weeks, Pentecost … Pentecost doesn’t represent the giving of the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@<], but the conclusion of the harvest of firstfruits with the Holy Spirit being poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) with signs and wonders when the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18).
In the calendar of God, the First Unleavened [the 14th day of Aviv] (see Matt 26:17 in Greek) represents the entirety of the Christian era from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to the Second Passover liberation of the vulgar Church from indwelling Sin and Death. The seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread represent the seven endtime years of tribulation; i.e., the Affliction and Kingdom and Endurance (from John 1:9). The harvest of firstfruits concludes with the Feast of Weeks/Pentecost, which is represented during the Feast of Unleavened Bread by the High Sabbath on the last day of the Feast. Therefore, the two High Sabbaths of the Feast of Unleavened Bread represent the day on which Israel, the firstborn son of God and the nation circumcised of heart, leaves indwelling Sin through being filled-with and empowered by the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] on the Second Passover that begins the seven endtime years, and leaves Death through being glorified on the Second Advent, when the glorified Jesus comes as King of kings and Lord of lords.
As the hierarchy of Babylon is represented by the humanoid image that King Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision (Dan chap 2), the hierarchy of the Son of Man is represented by Christ, Head [the glorified Jesus] and Body [the ecclesia] that together looks like the fractal of the man Christ Jesus.
The Radical Reformers left an ecclesiology holding that the Church was an institution of divine and apostolic origin, composed of all baptized Christians, thereby giving to the institution control of theology and of the sacraments and by extension, of salvation. But if the Church were an institution whose authority derives from apostolic succession through the Bishop of Rome, a bogus claim on its surface for it is John who is the brother and partner of endtime disciples in the Affliction and Kingdom and Endurance (Rev 1:9) not Peter or Paul—it is John who figuratively passes the baton from disciples in the 1st-Century to disciples in the 21st-Century—then any rebellion against the Latin Church would be rebellion against God and treated as such.
The separation between Protestant Reformers and the Radical Reformers was rooted in the concept of a Believers’ Baptism … Zwingli correctly deduced that if there was a need to rebaptize Christians, then the Church was dead and would not live again until Christians were baptized as believing adults. This meant that for all of the centuries when the vulgar Church [the Latin and Greek Churches] sprinkled infants, the Christian Church was not a living institution, but was a corpse. This also meant that apostolic succession was a hoax. And Protestant Reformers—like Luther himself—didn’t want to destroy the old church, but wanted to reform it and get rid of its abuses. The Radical Reformers wanted to jettison the old church and return to the pre-Nicene Church. They wanted to return to the era preceding the intervention of the Roman emperor in theological manners. Therefore, when Tyndale decided that ¦6680F\" [ekklesia] was most accurately translated as congregation, Tyndale undermined from a direction different than rebaptism the structure of the old church. And Tyndale, in 1525 CE, joined himself with Anabaptists in a war that would not be won for another 490 years; for the 1335 days given to Daniel—“‘Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days’” (Dan 12:12)—will end in 2015, when the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9) will rebel against the true Antichrist in the first year of the Endurance.
The majority of the 16th-Century Reformers believed that Scripture alone was the sole source of theological authority. For them, Scripture dictated the organization and administration of the Church, and by Tyndale changing the translation of ¦6680F\" from church to congregation, Tyndale shot down all variations of episcopal governance, beginning with the old church. Tyndale’s use of congregation destroyed even the scriptural basis used by Martin Luther for institutional administration. In actuality, Tyndale returned Christendom to what the prophet Ezekiel wrote,
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them. / Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.
[the preceding shepherds are the Levitical priesthood, not Christian pastors]
“For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.
“As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet? / Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad, I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken. (Ezek 34:1–24 emphasis added)
When the Lord is the Shepherd of Israel, Christian pastors are merely fat sheep or lean sheep, with most of them being fat sheep that have stolen more than an existence from the lean sheep, the common sheep of the fold. When the Levitical priesthood ended, so too ended Israel having over it any Shepherd but the Lord.
The Latin and the Greek Church as well as the various Reform Churches—all have usurped authority not given to them by Christ Jesus in a manner analogous to the Adversary usurping the authority of Christ Jesus when the Adversary is cast into time (Rev 12:7–10) and comes claiming to be the Messiah.
Radical Reformers were correct: until the Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death, no institution of any kind on earth merits the name “Church of God,” especially an institution that admits its disciples are not born of God as the various splinters of the former Worldwide Church of God contend … for Herbert W. Armstrong until his death in January 1986, and for the various splinters of the Sabbatarian churches of God since to appropriate for themselves the name Church of God is blasphemous: to claim to be the Church of God when openly teaching that Christians are not truly born of God but merely begotten is not just presumptuous, but truly blasphemous.
Denial of indwelling spiritual life received through receipt of the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] when the Christian has received the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø] is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@<]. It would certainly be better for the Christian to truly not have received the Holy Spirit than to commit blasphemy against indwelling eternal life, and teaching that Christians are not born of God but merely begotten when they receive the Holy Spirit discloses an utter lack of spiritual understanding.
The question now arises: could any collective within the ¦6680F\" during the 400 years when the heavenly seed of Abram was to be afflicted have avoided committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? And the answer is probably, No! By Armstrong simply using the King James Version of the Holy Bible, Armstrong was enchained to the Adversary’s dogmas as had been virtually all of Christendom since 1611, when James I authorized a new translation of Holy Writ, a translation destined to be the most popular book in the world and a translation that supported the ecclesiology of the Church of England, a Catholic ecclesiology.
To repeat for pedagogical emphasis: Tyndale’s use of congregation rather than church removed the barrier of separation between the laity and the clergy that the vulgar Church had carefully crafted for a millennia, with the vulgar Church using the Levitical priesthood as its model … when the ¦6680F\" forms a congregation of holy ones, or called out ones, and when this ¦6680F\" forms a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [the Lord’s] own possession” (1 Pet 2:9), the ¦6680F\" is the clergy that is comparable to the Levitical priesthood of ancient Israel. There is no distinction between laity and clergy. And a translation of Holy Writ that would presuppose a distinction has been falsely translated.
How can a person be afflicted—enslaved—for 400 hundred years without some awareness of this enslavement? How can Scripture—the truth—be used to deceive? Indeed, it was used by the Adversary to condemn the era of change and turmoil that the 16th-Century represented. It was used to produce a moralistic absolutism that resisted change, political or theological … and the Adversary simply inverted the order of things, having light precede darkness and immortal life precede death; having entering into Christ’s rest precede the work week rather than follow the work week; having the living ¦6680F\" return to death through continiing to live as sons of disobedience …
Shortly after Elizabeth became queen of England in 1558, perceived faults were found in the Great Bible in its translation and many faults were found with the Geneva Bible, with these faults centered around the translation not confirming the ecclesiology of the Church of England nor reflecting its episcopal structure. These perceived faults stirred calls for another translation.
Because the Tyndale translation of the New Testament that formed the core of the Great Bible as well as the core of the Geneva Bible “liberated” the laity from the abuses of the clergy of the vulgar Church in England and helped fuel two generations of strife and turmoil—because a book with truth as an agenda turned the English speaking world on its head, Tyndale’s 1525 publication of the New Testament coupled with Luther’s translation of Holy Writ into German overturned princes and kings and produced a war that did more to destroy Christendom in 30 years than the papacy did in a millennium. Catholic fought Protestant until nationalism prevailed and French and Spanish fought German and Britain and Dutch, then each other for a generation, transforming religious enthusiasm into blood and misery and a desire for absolutism.
In 1568, the Church of England produced the Bishops’ Bible, a revision of the Great Bible using some of Geneva’s language usage and thereby continuing Tyndale’s liberation of the laity. The Bishops’ Bible, however, was never widely accepted; hence, from the perspective of the English Crown, it became imperative that yet another translation, one with an unconcealed agenda, be produced to compete with the Geneva Bible that seemed to promote civil disobedience and resistance to the Crown. So in 1604, James convened the Hampton Court Conference, at which a new English translation was proposed, with James including requirements intended to limit Puritan and Anabaptist influence on this new translation. The Bishop of London prohibited marginal notes. And James directed that certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in their traditional manner even when a word such as B<,Ø:"—pneuma should be translated as <breath> rather than <ghost> or <spirit> [the English word spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath, human or divine]. With the text of the Bishops’ Bible as the basis for the new translation, a translation supporting the Church of England’s beliefs about ordination of its clergy and its episcopal structure, the heavenly seed of Abram was afflicted for the next four centuries; i.e., 1611 CE to 2011 CE. The energy of the Reformation was spent. Well, not quite: after the beheading of Charles and a decade of Cromwellian rule, everyone in England was tired, and with the wilderness of the Crown’s North American colonies and an extended witch hunt absorbing whatever energy remained in Puritans, the English speaking ¦6680F\" became more interested in Church as the promenade where they could parade in the trappings of the greatness that they believed were certain to come to them.
Church was where Christians went to hear political sermons and moralist sermons and sermons that scared hell out of them, but they were no longer the Church: the heavenly seed promised to Abram was fully afflicted but didn’t realize that secular freedom meant slavery to the prince of this world.
The future is more difficult to ascertain than the past which leaves with human beings a reasonably accurate historical record of what happened. For the Christian in 135 CE, realization that the Body of Christ was dead and had been dead for more than thirty years would not have been easy; for the Christian would not be born of God and would not know what it means to receive a second breath of life. And without being born of God, no human person can comprehend the changed mindset that comes with spiritual birth. Without being born of God, the Christian remains spiritually dead but doesn’t know that he or she is. Without being born of God, the Church is dead. And only by antidote can I begin to convey what receipt of the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@< — breath holy] means.
Without being freed from the affliction that comes with church being an institution, being the promenade for displaying one’s material wealth and success, the Christian cannot comprehend what it means to have the Law written on hearts and placed in minds, thereby governing every facet of the person’s life. For the affliction that came upon the ¦6680F\" is seen by historians who speak about the secularization of religion in the late 16th-Century when Protestant fought against Catholics until eventually Protestants fought against Protestants and Catholics fought against Catholics in a struggle of French against Germans and Spanish against Englishmen, with nationalism superseding theological identity and secular kings replacing theologians as the pillars around which society spun.
When the last Elijah breathed His breath over all of Christendom through the word going out to restore and build heavenly Jerusalem, great changes occurred, but from these changes only one relatively small ministry believed the Lord to the extent that individual Christians within the ministry returned to keeping the commandments of God. Therefore, after the seven weeks, after about 1575 CE, the last Elijah didn’t continue to breathe His breath into all of Christendom but only into those Christians who kept the commandments—only these Christians (those who kept the commandments, especially the Sabbath commandment) received the testimony of Jesus that is the spirit of prophecy. All others remained members of the vulgar Church, now splintered into too many sects and administrations to number.
The ¦6680F\" will again breathe on its own here on earth because the last Adam never ceased believing the Father; therefore, the Father will fill-with and empower all self-identified Christians with His breath at the end of the 62nd week (from Dan 9:25–26), the 69th week or 483 years after the word went out to build heavenly Jerusalem. The anointed one, the Messiah, is the Son of Man, Head and Body.
5.
—imprisoned in freedom—
Again, truth always has an agenda, that being to reveal what has by nature been concealed. Scripture also has an agenda, to reveal what God has concealed. And translations of Scripture will have agendas, with the most common being to reinforce the status quo. But it is the language used by the translators that ultimately governs meaning; i.e., what and how the Christian thinks, and how the Christian applies what he or she takes from Scripture. And it is in the words that pop suddenly to mind whenever a person thinks a thought where the Christian can see his or her individual imprisonment in freedom.
Whenever the Christian thinks about going to Church, the Christian discloses how he or she is enslaved by the Adversary through truth, with its concealed agenda. The Christian is the Church. The only place the Christian needs go is into obedience to God, which is not a physical location, but a mental landscape that corresponds to ancient Judea whereas Sin corresponds to Egypt and Death corresponds to Assyria and this world corresponds to Babylon.
If a person were to realize that he or she is enslaved by the Adversary, mentally enslaved, with the person’s own thoughts expressed in the words of the Adversary preventing the person from escaping the Adversary’s clutches, the person would, what? Quit thinking? Or would the person reconsider how the person thinks, with repentance being the common word used by Christians for rethinking the person’s beliefs about God … but repentance, as a word, doesn’t well convey the concept of rethinking belief. Rather, repentance, for Christians, is about doing penance in some way; thus as in going to Church, in the word repentance is disclosure of the Christian’s enslavement by the Adversary through truth.
When the Christian doesn’t realize that in repenting, the Christian remains in affliction, enchained to the prince of this world, all the while believing that he or she is free, it is easy for Christians, who have become content to parade in their Easter finery down the long road to the fires of Gehenna, who are shackled to social parading—to their real need to have the biggest and the best, the greatest display of wealth, to having the finer things in life—is it easy for these Christians to be further enslaved by the mercantilism of this world as Israel was enslaved in Egypt. Yet, if asked, every one of these Christians would argue that they are free, that they were set free by Christ Jesus.
I have told the story before: one night when working in Georgia-Pacific’s Toledo, Oregon, pulpmill more than forty years ago, George Wyscaver, the shift’s lead boiler fireman, was troubled by something that had been said to him fifteen years earlier when he was in Japan … an old Japanese woodcarver told George that Americans were all slaves, and George had argued with him, saying that Americans were free. But the old woodcarver stuck to his point: Americans punch time clocks. They all slaves. And I think that night, George finally realized the old woodcarver was correct; for George was earning reasonable wages, had built a new home, had a modest stock portfolio, and was too far in debt to quit, or to do anything else but continue working rotating shift work, seven days of graveyard, a day off, seven days of swing, two days off, seven days of day shift, then four days off and back on graveyard with its lack of sleep, heartburn, acidic coffee, and pollution, with the rotating shifts taking their toil on his health. He was far enough in debt that he couldn’t take a day off even if he were so inclined, and he wasn’t. And he was telling me the story because he knew that I could still quit and do something else, which happened when I was drafted into the Body of Christ and began keeping the Sabbath.
Freedomis an illusion; for the Apostle Paul writes, “For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their [Israel’s] disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all” (Rom 11:30–32 emphasis added), Paul tells the Christian converts at Rome that they used to be enslaved to disobedience, but that they had been set free in Christ. These Gentile converts who were not previously under the Law but who were nevertheless sinners through being slaves to disobedience/lawlessness had received mercy that set them free to keep the commandments which they could not previously do. They were not set free from disobedience to continue in disobedience, but to become obedient. They were not free from disobedience to neglect keeping the Sabbath, but rather, they were set free to keep the commandments so that mercy might come to the natural descendants of the patriarchs, who were also enslaved by lawlessness.
On a summer night in 1972, I was set free from that time clock—my number was 5331—and from rotating shift work so that I could keep the Sabbaths of God, which is true but not the truth. By being drafted (and this is the correct word) into the Body of Christ through a calling I didn’t then understand or want, I was suddenly without a choice: freewill had no part in what would happen, for I didn’t want to be religious. I wasn’t looking for a relationship with Christ Jesus. I was satisfied living as I was living, shooting high power benchrest competition, fishing steelhead almost out of my backdoor, and actually hunting deer and bear out of my backdoor, building muzzleloading rifles in addition to working at the pulpmill where I was a shift shop steward and didn’t put up with much hassling from management. But how I lived didn’t permit me to keep the Sabbath commandment, let alone other commandments.
More than a decade earlier, in attempting to prove my Seventh Day Adventist stepfather wrong about the Sabbath, I realized that when the Law is written on hearts and placed in minds under the New Covenant (Heb 8:8–12), the commandments move inward from regulating the works of the hands to regulating the desires of the heart (Matt 5:21–22) and from regulating the actions of the body to regulating the thoughts of the mind (vv. 27–28). The Sabbath doesn’t move to the 8th day, but moves inward to regulate the desires of the heart and thoughts of the mind on the 7th day. I realized that Fall, when Eisenhower was still president and I was a 12 year old high school freshman about to turn 13, that if a person were a Christian the person had to keep the commandments. But I simply wasn’t interested in religion; for I then sincerely believed that the religious person had some mental deficiency, a belief I continued to hold until I was drafted into the Body of Christ and either had to lie to myself or begin to keep the commandments, which I knew was the right thing to do. I had no choice. There was no exercise of free will. There was no “making a decision for Christ.” There was either rebelling against God through willful disobedience, or obedience to God.
In the years between when I was 12/13 and when I was 25, I would not have considered myself a slave to disobedience, to sin. I would have insisted that I was free to do as I pleased—it just didn’t please me to worship God or to keep the commandments. What pleased me was the desires of the flesh, for I married at 18 because I wanted-to, not because I had-to. I bought a new Ford Bronco in December 1966. I lived on a 140 acre farm that butted up against a timber company’s holdings. And in 1971, I filled my steelhead tag between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, all bright summer runs from the Siletz, and most over ten pounds each. So even though I punched a time clock, how was I not free? How was I enslaved? I fished in the Kamloops district of British Columbia on summer long weekends [the break between day shift and graveyard], and went to Arizona on winter long weekends. I was as free as anyone humanly born, and I probably was as lawless; for between 1965 and 1971, I averaged more than two dozen deer a year. I didn’t party; I didn’t do drugs; I didn’t engage in free love or chase skirts; but I did poach, a leftover habit from being declared an emancipated minor when 16 [my brother says I was 17 when the court order was actually signed] and having to feed myself when I was still too young to get a job.
Just because I thought I was free didn’t make me free: I knew to keep the Sabbath, but didn’t because I didn’t want-to … from where did that refusal to do what I knew was right come? Oh, I knew—even when I didn’t want to be religious—that I should be keeping the Sabbath, which for me was like the pricks that the Apostle Paul ignored. But no light or trivial thing was going to cause me to enter any church building. I knew enough Scripture that I could hold my own in a theological discussion, and I wasn’t going to be religious. Just wasn’t. Until I was drafted against my will.
I can relate what happened, but I cannot describe the mental change that came suddenly, literally in a moment, with that change compelling me to do what I still didn’t want to do. If I had been free before, I was no longer free—but the reality is I wasn’t previously free. I was a son of disobedience, consigned to disobedience as a slave to sin, and I was only free to transgress one or more of the commandments. I was not mentally free to keep them. But until I was drafted into the Body of Christ, I didn’t realize just how imprisoned I was by disobedience … at anytime, I could have begun to keep the Sabbaths of God if I would have been willing to quit everything that was of interest to me. In a figurative sense, I would have had to kill who I was and what I had become in order to keep the commandments—and I never even entertained the notion of being anyone other than who I had become. I was enamored with hunting, fishing, shooting, firearms, four-wheeling in the back country. And working at the pulpmill supported my hobbies, supported a lifestyle that was closely tied to the rural Oregon Coast in the 1960s.
Jesus said to Jews in the temple during the Feast, “‘Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law’” (John 7:19). … How were these Jews of the second temple not keeping the law? They certainly believed they were. And perhaps more so than any other claim Jesus made, this statement that observant Jews of the second temple were not keeping the Law has prevented rabbinical Judaism from accepting Jesus as the prophet that Moses said would come to Israel (see Deut 18:15).
Rabbinical Judaism argues that the Lord would not have given to Israel laws that could not be kept, but this argument reveals just how much has been concealed from Judaism. It isn’t what the hands or the body does that truly matters to God. It is what the person believes; for the person who truly believes God will have his or her righteousness counted to the person as righteousness. And because the person truly believes God, the person will strive to do those things that are pleasing to God, with having love for God and love for neighbor forming the abstract for keeping the commandments of God. Without love for God, the person will not voluntarily keep the Sabbaths of God. Nor will the person voluntarily profess that Jesus is Lord. Hence, the Gentile convert who was a former son of disobedience will begin to keep the Sabbaths of God because of his or her love for God. Likewise, the convert from Judaism who also was a former son of disobedience will profess that Jesus is Lord and believe in his or her heart that the Father raised Jesus from the dead. Both converts will make an equally long journey of faith, arriving on the same theological turf, but coming from differing directions.
I made this journey so I know of what I speak: I truly believed that I was free when I had no love for God, no real interest in Christ Jesus. And what happened on that summer evening when a bunch of us from the pulpmill were gathered around a fire and one fellow asked, “Whatever happened to Dave Oleman?” Another fellow said, “Oh, he got religion,” as if religion were a contagious disease. Then Gary Gettman, the Assistant Superintendant [he would later become Superintendent], said, “You never know who will fall next.” And at that moment, I knew: I would be next. And I was not happy about the thought, about knowing with certainty that I would be next, which I was. What I didn’t then realize was the change within me that had been initiated through no doing of my own, a change that would cause me to love God enough to do what I had previously refused to do.
I was keeping the Sabbath and in weekly Sabbath services by December. And I was no longer working for Georgia-Pacific, but rather, I was eking out a poor living building muzzleloading rifles fulltime. However, in a little over a year, I would be on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula and in five more years I would be fishing commercially out of Kodiak and out of Dutch Harbor, something I could never have done if I had stayed working in the pulpmill. … True freedom comes with its own rewards in addition to salvation—
When I first sailed past Priest Rock, I felt as if I was home even though I had never previously been to Dutch Harbor. And every time after that when I sailed past Priest Rock, I felt I had arrived home, a feeling I haven’t experience since leaving the Aleutians. Everywhere I have been since, I have felt like a sojourner, a stranger in a strange land, and I sort of know how Abraham felt as he looked forward to the city whose foundations are of God.
The change that occurred within me in 1972 will happen to an even greater extent to every Christian when the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs. When the Christian is truly born of God, and born filled-with and empowered by the breath of God, the Christian will be forcibly expelled from disobedience through no doing on the Christian’s part. And after being forcibly expelled, all the Christian can do is rebel against God, knowingly returning to sin, or—and this second option is central to salvation—obey God, knowing that obedience is the right thing to do.
Today, rabbinical Judaism, Islam, all of greater Christendom do not realize that none are truly free to keep the commandments: freedom only comes when the Father draws a person from this world by giving to the person His breath, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø], in the indwelling breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø], with evidence of this drawing and calling manifested through the convert’s desire to keep the commandments of God while professing that Jesus is Lord. And every honest Christian knows that Sunday is not the Sabbath—even Mormons know that Sunday is not the Sabbath—thus, the Christian who worships on Sunday and neglects the Sabbath is simply not born of God. This Christian does not have the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@< — breath holy], with English translations of Holy Writ having transformed the breath of God into a non-existent deity, a nonsensical deity, thereby shackling English-speaking Christians to a unique form of pantheism that the 4th and 5th Century Church attempted to compress into a triune deity, monotheistic in definition, but pantheistic in doctrine.
Can a true slave sincerely believe that he or she is free? The answer is, Yes.
* * *
This End Note still has enough additional sections that rather than place before the reader a short book, the End Note will be continued with a Part Three.
*
"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."
* * * * *
[ Archived End Notes ] [ Home ]
[1] The count for the 1335 days begins with the Apostasy of day 220 of the Affliction (25 December 2011), and ends 295 days into the Endurance, on or about 21 August 2015.