January 31, 2011 ©Homer Kizer

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End Notes

Lord of the Sabbath

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At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” (Matt 12:1–8)

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1.

Where, in the Law [the Torah], does it say that it’s not lawful to pluck a head of grain and eat it on the Sabbath? Can the place be found? Or were Pharisees adding laws to Moses, transforming what was lawful under Moses into an unlawful act? Were Pharisees doing what Adam did, adding to the word of the Lord? For the Lord told Adam, “‘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 2:16–17), but Eve, who only knew what Adam told her, 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”’” (Gen 3:2–3 emphasis added). But the Lord said nothing about touching the tree, just as Moses said nothing negative about plucking grain for immediate consumption on the Sabbath.

All texts, Scripture included, convey information through what is not recorded as well as through what is recorded: to record one thing and to not record another thing is the conscious or unconscious decision of the text’s author—and when that author is the Lord speaking through Moses or through His prophets, then the lacunae presented by a gap in the text (by something that has not been recorded) will be a conscious decision, and usually occurs when what-is-not-recorded is not the shadow of a spiritual thing; i.e., is not the mirror image of a heavenly entity or act. Therefore, for the Genesis Temptation Account to not reveal how Eve learned that she wasn’t to eat the mingled fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil either isn’t important to the spiritual harvest of firstfruits, or would be revealed knowledge that wasn’t/isn’t to be known until a certain time, as in the case of Daniel’s sealed and secret visions. Eve’s addition to what the Lord God [YHWH Elohim] led directly to sin [unbelief] entering the creation, and is, therefore, of importance to the harvest of firstfruits.

When the Lord God [YHWH Elohim] says nothing to Adam about touching the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and when Eve tells the serpent that they are not to touch that tree, the text itself reveals an addition having been made to the word of the Lord, an addition that the serpent exploits.

After Eve answered the serpent who was more subtle than any other beast, the serpent told the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:4–5) … as soon as the serpent heard Eve say, touch, the serpent knew how unbelief could be introduced into the Garden: if Eve were to touch the tree or its fruit, she would not die. To die she had to eat. She could touch to her heart’s content and never die. But she had come to believe that she could not touch without dying, and for that addition to the word of the Lord God, we can only thank Adam. There was no one else there who could have told Eve not to touch the tree, and it is reasonable to assume that to prevent even the possibility of Eve eating forbidden fruit that Adam would have told her not to touch the tree.

But consider what would happen if Eve, for whatever reason, had touched the tree after Adam told Eve that she would die if she touched it … if Eve had stumbled and had accidently reached out to grab hold of a limb of the tree to break her fall, she would have touched and would not have died. Would she then have continued to believe that she would die if she ate the fruit of the tree? If she could touch the tree and not die, then why couldn’t she eat the fruit and not die? And in adding touch to what the Lord God told Adam, the man set the woman up to fail.

But there is an additional element to this temptation account: because the man was created first and was the husband of the woman, the man was the woman’s “covering” as if the man were a garment. Thus, the woman wore the man’s obedience as the Church wears the garment of Christ (see Gal 3:27); i.e., the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness. Adam was Eve’s head, and the two were one flesh, one entity, both clothed in Adam’s obedience … regardless of whether or when the woman ate forbidden fruit, she would have been covered by Adam’s obedience to the Lord God; for Adam was the head or covering of the woman as Christ Jesus is the Head or covering of the Church. Through being created first, the man involuntarily becomes the head of the woman as Christ Jesus, because He as the last Adam received the spirit first and was raised from death and glorified first and became a life-giving spirit, is First, the First of the harvest of firstfruits—because Christ Jesus is the First of the firstborn sons of God, Christ Jesus is the Head of the Body and His righteousness in the form of grace covers the otherwise naked [through being circumcised of heart] Body of Christ. So when a disciple sins, the disciple’s sin is covered by grace. Likewise, whenever Eve ate forbidden fruit, she would be covered by Adam’s obedience. She would not die because her unbelief would be covered by Adam’s belief of God. However, when Adam saw Eve eat and not die, would he have continued to believe the Lord God? And the answer is, No, for Adam ate when he saw Eve eat and not die.

The serpent realized all of the above as soon as the serpent heard Eve say, Touch.

Simply because a man doesn’t want to be the head of his wife doesn’t make the man’s obedience to God any less of a covering for his wife; nor does a woman wanting equality with her husband take the woman out from under the covering of her husband. Thus, a husband’s disobedience makes both the man and his wife spiritually naked before God, but a wife’s disobedience does not. Rather, a wife’s disobedience makes the woman as Israel was in the days of Hosea or as greater Christendom is today. The gender inequality seen throughout Scripture reflects the relationship between God and man (and assemblies of men and women). Presently, the righteousness of Christ Jesus “covers” the lawlessness—the spiritual whoredom—of the greater Christian Church, but when the Son of Man is revealed (Luke 17:30) this covering of grace will be stripped away, and the Woman will have to cover herself with her own righteousness. If she as a wife has been practicing obedience to her husband, then when she is filled with spirit and thereby liberated from indwelling sin and death, she will find it easy to cover herself through obedience to God. Likewise, if the husband has been practicing obedience to God, he, too, will find it easy to cover himself through his continued obedience to God. But what is seen in Christendom is ongoing disobedience, a mocking of God. Christendom’s flaunting of the commandments will require the Woman to again be redeemed as Hosea has to redeem his wife:

And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days. (Hosea 3:1–5)

After Hosea would redeem his wife, an adulteress, he would be to his wife as another man, not as her husband. Likewise, after the Lord again redeems Israel, the nation circumcised of heart, the Lord will not be “Husband” to greater Christendom, but will be as another man. The Lord will not cover the Church with His righteousness: grace will end when the Son of Man is revealed at the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Rather, Christendom will have to cover itself with its righteousness. Over the past nine years, I have addressed the above from a different direction: a man doesn’t marry his body for the man is already one with his body. Thus, Christ Jesus doesn’t marry the Body of Christ, which is already one with Christ. Rather, Christ Jesus marries His Bride, the glorified Christian Church. So between when the Christian Church is the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27) and when Christ Jesus as the Bridegroom marries glorified Christians, the Body of Christ must be separated from Christ Jesus. This separation occurs when the Son of Man is revealed, and this separation is seen in Hosea having to redeem his adulterous wife, with the redemption price for adulterous Christendom being the lives of uncovered firstborns of men and angels in heaven and on earth.

Greater Christendom is metaphorically the last Eve; therefore, the first Eve forms the shadow and copy [the left hand enantiomer] of the greater Christian Church—

After the serpent told that woman [Eve] that she would not die—did she even know what death was—the woman saw that tree was good for fruit, with the fruit able to make her wise and give her insights like God (Gen 3:6), so she took of the tree’s fruit and ate, with the man right there beside her … if Adam would have been across the garden and not seen her eat and not die, the possibility exists that Adam might not have believed Eve about being able to eat forbidden fruit and not die. But as it was, he was with her, which leaves open the question of why did he let her speak to the serpent; why didn’t he answer the serpent. Obviously, the man didn’t comprehend that as her husband, he was her head. It was his responsibility to accurately convey to the woman the words of the Lord God so that she would know the things of God, but he had failed in that responsibility and he failed to protect her from the serpent, with his first failure known to the serpent as soon as Eve said, Touch.

Adam failed to convey the word of the Lord God to Eve: as the word of the Lord God, Adam was a failure. His intention to protect Even by not even letting her touch the Tree backfired; for he was never able to think-through what would happen if Eve accidently touched the tree and did not die. He lied to Eve before Eve ever ate forbidden fruit … but the Lord God had said nothing to the man about not lying.

Most likely, the woman unaccidently “accidently” touched the tree in the midst of the garden and then the fruit of the tree and did not die. And because she could touch and not die, everything Adam had told her about what the Lord said ceased being believable: unbelief would have overwhelmed the woman, and because of her unbelief, she would believe the serpent that she would not die.

Christians as the last Eve deliberately sin [transgress the commandments of the Lord] and believe that they will not die, that upon death they will go to heaven. They are spiritually blind. Their eyes have not yet been opened, for the last Adam continues to cover His Body with the garment of His obedience, His righteousness. And Christians cannot see their lawlessness until the Son of Man is revealed (again, Luke 17:30), disrobed, with the garment of grace being stripped away when Christians are filled-with and empowered by the divine breath of God at the Second Passover.

In the Adam and Eve narrative, the woman and the man realize that they are both naked before Cain, Abel, and Seth are born. The man and the woman realize they are naked before they are driven from the Garden of God, with being driven from the Garden being analogous to the Son of Man being disrobed/revealed. And the man and the woman were driven from the garden because they ceased to believe God and ate mingled fruit that represented good [the sacred] and evil [the profane]. The animals slain to make for the man and woman skin garments (Gen 3:21) to hide their nakedness become analogous to the lives of men who will be slain as ransom for Israel (Isa 43:4) at the Second Passover as the lives of Egyptians were taken as ransom for Israel in the days of Moses (v. 3).

It did not take the serpent long to identify the problem in Eve saying, Touch, although I listened to a great many sermons between 1979 and the end of 1985 in which Herbert W. Armstrong went to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and dug around its trunk in search of truffles. He knew—probably from the parakletos telling him—where the problems of the former Worldwide Church of God lay, but he could not locate or identify the cause of those problems … he was the cause of the problems, for he had added to Scripture in an unauthorized manner. In inserting Rome, the Roman Empire, and the Roman Church into the visions of Daniel, he had for fifty years based his ministry upon a lie, thereby undoing whatever good he had accomplished. He set two generations of Sabbatarian Anabaptists up to rebel against God. His legacy is one of rebellion within rebellion, with the splintered Worldwide Church of God becoming worldwide slivers and thorns, most too small to be anything but annoyances to the Body of Christ.

In Armstrong adding to Scripture, Armstrong did what the Pharisees did … much of greater Christendom claimed Armstrong throughout his half century long ministry was a modern day Pharisee, but these lawless Christians—like Armstrong himself—failed to recognize the imbedded problem in his ministry. That problem wasn’t where lawless Christians looked, for as a pioneering ad man, Armstrong fairly effectively sold repentance and obedience to God in an increasingly hedonistic world. For that he deserves credit. But he also added to Scripture, added to the words of Daniel and to Revelation, and he thereby caused a great number of disciples to disbelieve God in a manner analogous to how Adam set Eve up to rebel against God. His legacy is, again, that of fostering rebellion against God in those Christians who turned to God and tasted the goodness of God in the middle of the 20^th-Century. He mentally and emotionally and spiritually crippled his disciples in a manner analogous to how an ill-fitting pair of boots cripples the feet of a person who has to wear the boots for decades. And once crippled, these disciples will never walk uprightly before God as they should, but will hobble or limp into the kingdom if they ever get to the kingdom.

The Pharisees added to what the Lord had said through Moses and in doing so, they prepped Israel for the unbelief necessary for the nation to reject Christ Jesus, whose disciples did, indeed, gather heads of grain on the Sabbath and ate without kindling a fire, without cooking the grain, but ate in a manner compatible with what Moses had commanded Israel (see Ex 35:3). Yes, by the Pharisees adding a hedge of legal briars around the commandments in a manner similar to how Adam sought to put a hedge around the Tree of Knowledge, the Pharisees condemned Israel to unbelief and by extension, to believing the Adversary and doing his will.

In the Temptation Account is the reality of this world: if you do not believe the Lord, you will (because of your unbelief) believe the old serpent Satan the devil. And unbelief never ends well. It always ends in the person or the collective or the angel believing the Adversary; for the Adversary’s lies are not one but many.

 

2.

When the Hebrew midwives that Pharaoh had commanded to kill males Hebrew babies did not do as Pharaoh commanded, Pharaoh modified his command, “‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live’” (Ex 1:22) … drowning is death by loss of breath, with a person’s breath in his or her bloodstream representing life—

For human beings and all other forms of nephesh, life is sustained by the cellular oxidation of simple carbohydrates, with both the oxygen molecules needed for this dark fire of cellular oxidation and the sugars needed carried to the cell by blood. Hence, it is appropriately said that life is in the blood. But life didn’t come to the man of mud until Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into his nostrils (Gen 2:7), thereby kindling the inner dark fire of cellular oxidation that has been continued generation by generation by being passed on through the wombs of women. The one time act of Elohim breathing into the nostrils of the man of mud, thus kindling life in human beings, need not be repeated for as long as there are human beings.

For human sons of God and for all other sons of God, eternal life is sustained by the bright fire that is metaphorically identified as the glory of God:

And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him. Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. / Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking. (Ezek 1:26–28 emphasis added)

Then I looked, and behold, on the expanse that was over the heads of the cherubim there appeared above them something like a sapphire, in appearance like a throne. And he said to the man clothed in linen, “Go in among the whirling wheels underneath the cherubim. Fill your hands with burning coals from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city.” / And he went in before my eyes. Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the house, when the man went in, and a cloud filled the inner court. And the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub to the threshold of the house, and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was filled with the brightness of the glory of the Lord. And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard as far as the outer court, like the voice of God Almighty when he speaks. (Ezek 10:1–5 emphasis added)

Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city. And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles. Then the vision that I had seen went up from me. And I told the exiles all the things that the Lord had shown me. (Ezek 11:22–25 emphasis added)

The glory of God is both the man seated on the throne, and the bright fire in this man … the likeness of the glory of the Lord appeared as a metal man filled with fire, and this glory of the Lord went up from the midst of Jerusalem and stood on the mountain to the east of the city [i.e., Mount of Olives] and will again stand on the Mount of Olives (Zech 14:3–4) when armies surround Jerusalem halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation. In the period between these two occasions when the glory of the Lord stands on the Mount of Olives, the glory of the Lord only entered Jerusalem as His Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene, thereby making Jesus truly greater than the temple, greater than the Holy of holies, greater than the show bread that David’s men ate when they hungered, greater than the priests that served in the temple.

The Sabbath represents entering into God’s rest (Heb 3:16–4:11), a euphemistic expression for entering into His presence. Unless the Father draws a person from this world and Christ calls the person, no one can enter into God’s rest as represented by Christian Sabbath observance. Therefore, Christ Jesus indirectly and directly determines who enters into God’s presence, which will have Jesus being Lord of the Sabbath.

Jesus prayed,

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:1–5 emphasis added)

Indwelling eternal life is the glory of God that is in glorified sons of God, and that was in the Logos [Ò8`(@H] who was God [2,ÎH] and who was with the God [JÎ< 2,`<] in the beginning (John 1:1). As indwelling physical life is the dark fire that was kindled when Elohim breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud, indwelling eternal life is the physically-invisible bright fire that descended as a dove and lit-on and remained in the man Jesus the Nazarene when He emerged from baptism (Matt 3:16) to fulfill all righteousness (v. 15); for submission in water represents the death of the old self, the old man, with receipt of the spirit of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] giving life to the new inner self, the new man.

A Christian’s outer self continues to be sustained by the dark fire of cellular oxidation until the fleshly body either dies physically or is changed in the twinkling of an eye through the perishable flesh putting on immortality, meaning that a Christian will continue to breathe air and eat food until death or immortality overtakes the tent of flesh. However, before God, the person of record ceases to be the perishable tent of flesh that is animated by the dead inner self when the person receives a second breath of life, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø— spirit is the Latin derivative for breath], for the inner self that has received life that has come from heaven is the life that will enter heaven when the perishable fleshly body puts on immortality.

The concept of life within life forms the heart of the Christian message, but this life-within-life is not angelic life inside a mortal human being as Latter Day Saints claim, nor life in the form of an immortal soul received at human birth as most of Christendom, Islam, and Judaism claims—both of these concepts are unauthorized additions to the word of God. Rather, when a person is born of spirit, the person receives a second breath of life, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the indwelling breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø], the vessel able to hold the invisible bright fire that gives heavenly life to all sons of God.

As the sons of Adam have physical life generation after generation through the continuance of the dark fire that was kindled when Elohim breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud—with species extinction resulting when this dark fire is extinguished—human sons of God have indwelling eternal life through the continuance of the bright fire that was received by the last Adam when the breath of God descended and lit upon Him in the form of a dove. And as the son of the widow of Zarephath lost his life when the dark fire of physical life was extinguished (1 Kings 17:17), with rabbinical Judaism identifying this lad as Jonah, the Christian Church as the Body of Christ died spiritually when it lost the breath of God, the indwelling bright fire of eternal life, as the physical body of Christ died at Calvary when the dark fire of human life was extinguished by suffocation … the cross kills by suffocation and shock in a manner similar to drowning being death by suffocation.

Do not be deceived: the Christian Church against which the gates of Hades cannot prevail as they could not prevail against the earthly body of Christ “died” from loss of the spirit of God at the end of the 1^st-Century CE, and will be resurrected from death at the beginning of the 21^st-Century CE. However, as the first Elijah thrice laid over the son of the widow of Zarephath before breath returned to the child, the last Elijah will thrice lay over the dead Body of Christ before the breath of God returns to the Christian Church. The last Elijah—the glorified Christ Jesus—will breathe His breath [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø] into the Church in figurative mouth-to-mouth resuscitation three times, with the Church then beginning to breathe on its own the third time. The Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death equates to when the Christian Church as a metaphorical Jonah begins to live again through the indwelling of eternal life, the bright fire that is the glory of God.

The serpent—hearing in Eve saying, Touch, the means by which it could cause the man and the woman to cease believing the Lord God—serves as a shadow and copy of the old serpent, Satan the devil, who heard in Jesus telling His disciples that the gates of Hades would not prevail against the assembly He builds, the means by which he could deceive the last Eve. By having his servants, all disguised as ministers of righteousness (2 Cor 11:14–15), convince early Christians that Jesus said the Church would not die when the Church was already dead, the Adversary successfully passed off his imitation of the Body of Christ as the real deal, a feat of truly remarkable deception. For how anyone could confuse the greater Christian Church in the 4^th-Century with a 1^st-Century sect of Judaism is beyond belief; yet that is what has to happen if a Christian is to believe that greater Christendom represents the Body of Christ.

 

3.

If the Pharaoh would have long continued his command to drown male Hebrew infants, there would have been a shortage of circumcised males in Moses’ generation, with this shortage eventually producing a shortage of cheap labor available to Pharaoh for use on his massive building projects. Therefore, it is unlikely that Pharaoh’s command to drown Hebrew male babies lasted much beyond Moses’ birth; for when Israel was liberated from slavery forty years later about six hundred thousand circumcised men on foot journeyed from Rameses to Succoth (Ex 12:37).

Moses was cast into the Nile as per Pharaoh’s command, but “cast-in” in a papyrus ark, with Egyptians making their paper from papyrus reeds. So Moses’ mother and sister set him as a three month old infant adrift in a papery ark daubed with tar and pitch as if the tar were ink. Allegorically, Moses is the inner life within a contract, the covenant the Lord made with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob (Ex 2:24): “God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (v. 25) … what did God know? The Exodus narrative doesn’t answer the question, but goes on to tell of Moses keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian (Ex 3:1). The implication is that the Lord knew it was time to liberate Israel from slavery to Pharaoh; the Lord saw it was time for Moses to fulfill his destiny.

If Moses would have been cast in the Nile as Pharaoh intended, Moses would have drowned—would have lost his breath through suffocation when his lungs filled with water. But because of the papery ark, Moses lived when he should have been dead, with this life becoming analogous to Joseph and Mary taking Jesus as an infant down into Egypt to escape the sword of Herod the Great. Moses was three months old when he was set adrift in the Nile; Jesus would have been about three months old when Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt, for Herod died in the year of Jesus’ birth, not more than a year later.

The name Moses represented for Pharaoh’s daughter being drawn out of the water (Ex 2:10), with the Nile now representing sin and death, not life … life comes from being drawn out from the Nile, and by extension, from Egypt. The waters of the Nile, in the river, did not represent life; rather, the waters of the Nile when drawn from the river and poured out on the ground represented life.

Perhaps better than the other first disciples, Matthew understood the parallelism between Moses and Jesus, and he records this parallelism for endtime disciples. Apparently Herod’s order to kill all male children in Bethlehem two years old or under didn’t attract the attention of secular historians; so the order was either extremely short-lived (as was the case) or not carried out with much enthusiasm. And if Herod’s order was short-lived, Pharaoh’s command to drown Hebrew infants would also have been short-lived. But the similar commands to kill infants has a spiritual application: the Adversary as the still-reigning prince of this world is intent upon killing infant sons of God, and was fairly successful in doing so in the 1^st-Century CE.

How would the Father and the Son protect infant sons of God—

The only reasonable way for the Father and the Son to prevent the Adversary from killing spiritual infants was to do what was done with Moses, and that is to rear would-be sons of God in the household of the Adversary as Moses was reared to maturity in Pharaoh’s household. This, then, will have all sons of God being called out from Egypt [sin] as Jesus was called out from Egypt (Matt 2:15; Hosea 11:1); for Jesus in His personage did not satisfy Hosea’s lament—

When Israel was a child, I loved him,

and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more they were called,

the more they went away;

they kept sacrificing to the Baals

and burning offerings to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk;

I took them up by their arms,

but they did not know that I healed them.

I led them with cords of kindness,

with the bands of love,

and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws,

and I bent down to them and fed them.

They shall not return to the land of Egypt,

but Assyria shall be their king,

because they have refused to return to me.

The sword shall rage against their cities,

consume the bars of their gates,

and devour them because of their own counsels.

My people are bent on turning away from me,

and though they call out to the Most High,

he shall not raise them up at all. (Hosea 11:1–7 emphasis added)

All of Israel will be called out from Egypt, not just the nation that left Egypt with Moses, nor the Lord Jesus as an infant, but every Christian as a former son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3) will leave sin and shall not return to sin [the transgression of the Law –from 1 John 3:4] when their sins are remembered no more (Heb 8:12; 10:17; Jer 31:34). Rather, through Israel’s continuing disobedience and idolatry, Israel shall be taken prisoner by Death, the king of Assyria. And it will be out from Death that the Lord will bring Israel in the days that are coming (Jer 16:14–15; 23:7–8), with this exodus from Death, represented by Assyria, causing Israel to remember no more Israel’s exodus from Egypt in the days of Moses.

But before Israel, the nation circumcised-of-heart, can be called out from Egypt/Sin, the nation must first be delivered into Egypt by its “parents” as Joseph and Mary took the infant Jesus down into Egypt to save His life from the sword of Herod … the Father and the Son delivered the Christian Church into the clutches of Sin when the Father ceased to give indwelling eternal life in the form of His breath [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the breath of Christ [Ø<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø] to Christian converts—and these converts would never know that they were not born of spirit, for they would not have previously tasted the goodness of God so they wouldn’t recognize the absence of that taste when they converted to Christendom. Only in long hindsight could they possibly know that they were not born of God, with that recognition coming after they are truly born of God when resurrected from death in the great White Throne Judgment.

The Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death marks when the circumcised-of-heart nation leaves metaphorical Egypt behind the two witnesses that are to Christendom as Moses and Aaron were to the natural descendants of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Greater Christendom will be liberated from indwelling sin and death through being filled-with and empowered by the divine breath of God. Geographically, this liberation occurs everywhere in a day, the 15^th of Iyyar, the day of the second Passover.

 

4.

Not wanting to return to Egypt where his brethren had rejected him and where he was still a fugitive, Moses, before the burning bush, a portal between heaven and earth, used the best excuse he could muster as reason not to return to Egypt where he had been reared in sin:

But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” (Ex 4:10–13)

As an Egyptian (Ex 2:19) in exile, Moses was doing all right for himself in Midian: he didn’t need the problems associated with trying to get Hebrews in Egypt to believe him, or even to listen to his voice (Ex 4:1). After all, who was he to the Hebrews? He wasn’t really one of them. He had never lived as a slave, but was reared in the household of Pharaoh. He was of the oppressors.

Greater Christendom has never lived as spiritual Judeans. They have been reared in the household of the Adversary in spiritual Babylon. They have been and continue to be the oppressors of Sabbatarian Anabaptists.

But the Lord wasn’t having any of Moses’ excuses:

Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.” (Ex 4:14–17 emphasis added)

By the Lord being with Moses’ mouth, Moses becomes the word of the Lord, and Aaron who speaks for Moses, becomes the word of Moses. Hence, Moses in his person serves as God to Aaron, and by extension, to Israel. And this god-like relationship between Moses and Israel is necessary for Jesus to be a prophet like Moses, the prophet about whom Moses spoke (cf. John 5:46–47; Deut 18:15–19).

Again, the two witnesses are to greater Christendom in the Affliction [the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years] as Moses and Aaron were to Israel in Egypt and in the wilderness. The glorified Lamb of God and the Remnant (from Rev 12:17) will be to the 144,000 and to the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9) in the Endurance [the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years] as the two witnesses were to greater Christendom in the Affliction. The seven endtime years will be to Christians and to the harvest of firstfruits as the forty years between Passover and crossing the Jordan and entering into God’s rest were to Israel and to the children of Israel. These seven prophetic years that are 2520 days long stretch from the Second Passover liberation of Israel to three and a half days before the Millennium begins with the new year. These three and a half days that follow Armageddon represent the dark portion of the fourth day, the short period that precedes the Wedding Supper when glorified saints will be presented before the Most High God; these days are analogous to the three hours between dawn and then the Wave Sheaf Offering is made, and are represented in type by the hours between when Christ Jesus was resurrected from death at the end of the third day [at the end of Sabbath, the 17^th day of Aviv] and when Christ Jesus appeared before the Father where He was accepted as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering.

 

5.

Christians are accustomed to believing that Jesus’ death at Calvary paid their redemption price for all time, that never again would there need to be a redemption price paid … if this were the case, then the lives of firstborn Egyptians, of firstborns in Cush and Seba—lives given when Moses led Israel out from slavery—would have made Jesus’ sacrifice unnecessary; for Paul writes, “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses” (Rom 5:14), not from Adam to Jesus. The reign of death over humankind, begun when Adam disbelieved the Lord God and ate forbidden fruit, ended when Moses led Israel out from Egypt, and the Lord at Sinai gave life to sin through giving the Commandments to Moses and by extension, to all of Israel. Once sin is given life, it can be individually and collectively slain—and when slain, death ceases to reign over Israel and Israelites. Thus, the firstborns of Egypt perishing in a night paid the redemption price for Israel’s liberation from death, with slavery of Israel’s outer self equating to dead inner selves in Israelites.

In leaving Egypt, Israel separated itself from sin.

Once out from Egypt, sin was outside the nation of Israel. It was the wilderness through which Israel had to traverse, and as an outside force, it was brought to life when the commandments were given.

When Israel followed Moses out from Egypt, the nation’s redemption price had been paid by paschal lambs and by uncovered firstborns of man and beast in Egypt. But it wasn’t simply the heads of paschal lambs that died: both the head and the body of these lambs died … if Jesus as the chosen and selected Lamb of God was the Passover Lamb that paid the redemption price for Christians, and if Jesus is the Head of the Church, the Head of the Body of Christ, then the Church is the Body of this Paschal Lamb of God. As the Head died, so too will the Body die, even if the Body is not yet created when the Head is sacrificed.

Both the Head and the Body of the Paschal Lamb of God must die and must be resurrected from death. The earthly body of the Head died at Calvary, and three days and threes nights after the earthly body of Christ Jesus was placed in the heart of the earth, it was resurrected from death. After another half day, this resurrected body of Jesus was caught up to God as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering, the first handful of ripe barley that is waved and accepted by God (Lev 23:10–11) without being beaten and milled into fine flour and baked as bread with leavening (vv. 16–17).

But physical paschal lambs are whole animals. Likewise, the spiritual Paschal Lamb will be an unblemished offering—

Jesus was without sin. He needed no redemption price to be paid for Him before he could be sacrificed as the Head of the Paschal Lamb of God. But Israel in Egypt was not an unblemished offering (see Ezek 20:7–8). Therefore a redemption price had to be paid for Israel by Israel [the paschal lambs] and by the Lord [the lives of firstborns in Egypt]. Today, greater Christendom is not the unblemished Body of Christ, but a fouled corpse encrusted in disobedience. And a redemption price has to be paid for Israel by Israel [taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14^th of Aviv] and by God [the lives of firstborns in this world].

And after the redemption price for Israel, the nation circumcised-of-heart, is paid, then Israel as a now living, unblemished sacrifice—as the again living Body of Christ—will be sacrificed as the Head of the Paschal Lamb of God was sacrificed.

Christ, Head and Body, is the selected and chosen Paschal Lamb of God. And Christ, Head and Body, would redeem the remainder of the harvest of firstfruits [the spiritual barley harvest of humanity] except that the Apostasy of day 220 of the Affliction will be so great that there is no “Body” of Christ to sacrifice; so another third part of humankind will be randomly killed in the second woe (Rev 9:13–21) … randomly, because all of humankind will become the harvest of firstfruits when the kingdom is taken from the four kings and the little horn and given to the Son of Man on the doubled day 1260 of the Affliction and Endurance. No longer will there then be a division between circumcised-of-heart Israel and the remainder of humankind.

There is little good news in a third of humankind, all uncovered firstborns, being slain as the redemption price for the Body of Christ at the Second Passover liberation of Israel—liberation from indwelling sin and death—and then the Body of Christ being sacrificed as Jesus was sacrificed as the redemption price that must be paid for the remainder of humanity. It is little wonder that liberated Christians will want to return to sin as the obedient slaves of the Adversary as Israel in the wilderness wanted to return to Egypt. For them, God has been all that real for a very long time. God is much more of a “good idea,” an ephemeral kindly grandfather, and not as “‘a man of war’” (Ex 15:3) that is the avenger of His sons that have been slain by Christians and non-Christians alike.

Except for the Remnant (from Rev 12:17) and the 144,000 converts from Judaism, there will be no living Christians passing from the Affliction and into the Endurance. All others will have perished either physically or spiritually or both.

How large is the Remnant? How many Christians will keep the commandments and have the testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10) … a remnant is the end of a bolt of cloth that is too small to use for a garment. The Remnant has no covering, no garment that they can put on, no husband to cover them.

The transition from Christians being the Body of Christ to Christians being the Remnant that has no covering, no Husband, occurs during the Affliction, and mostly occurs between day 220 and day 580; i.e., between when the fifth seal is opened (Rev 6:9) and when the sixth seal is opened (v. 12).

 

6.

The glory that Jesus asked to have returned to Him (John 17:5) was eternal life of the outer self: in Himself, Jesus had glorified the Father (v. 4), which will now have glory and the glory of the Lord representing a duality that is both the inner eternal life received from the Father with receipt of His breath—the bright fire in the man of metal Ezekiel saw—as well as the outer self possessing eternal life, or having put on immortality. Thus, the glory of the Lord is both a spiritual entity and indwelling eternal life in that entity.

A human son of God has indwelling eternal life in a presently mortal tent of flesh, and this hybridization of life and death is a mingling of the sacred and the profane akin to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that stood in the midst of the Garden of God being a mingled tree. A human son of God is, in himself, a representation of the Tree of Knowledge, with the deeds of the human son of God being the fruit the son of God bears. … A person is what the person eats. If the human son of God [with God, there is no gender] eats the mingled fruit of himself—eats what he (or she) believes is right and good—this human son of God will be driven from the Garden of God and condemned to the wasteland beyond.

It goes against perceptions of self to think in terms of being a tree; yet the Lord used a tree to represent King Nebuchadnezzar to himself. Nebuchadnezzar said to Daniel,

O Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is too difficult for you, tell me the visions of my dream that I saw and their interpretation. The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth. Its leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the heavens lived in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it. (Dan 4:9–12)

Belteshazzar answered and said, “My lord, may the dream be for those who hate you and its interpretation for your enemies! The tree you saw, which grew and became strong, so that its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth, whose leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in which was food for all, under which beasts of the field found shade, and in whose branches the birds of the heavens lived—it is you, O king, who have grown and become strong. Your greatness has grown and reaches to heaven, and your dominion to the ends of the earth. (Dan 4:19–22)

It will seem like a theological leap to identify disciples with the Tree of Knowledge, but if the first Adam, a living being, equates with the last Adam, a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45), and if the first Eve, the mother of all living human beings, equates to the Christian Church, the mother of all sons of God through the indwelling of the spirit of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø], then the sons of Adam and Eve—Cain, Abel, and Seth—are the next spiritual generation of the Christian Church; i.e., Christians filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God after the Second Passover liberation of Israel. These Christians today remain in the womb of the last Eve. Because the Christian Church is presently spiritually dead, it is not a theological “step” above the first Eve, that step being a living inner self. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to identify Christians with the Tree of Knowledge, knowing good and evil as God knows good and evil. Because Christians claim identity as sons of God, knowing both good and evil, they are at best seedlings of the Tree of Knowledge.

When Nebuchadnezzar was at ease in his house and prospering in his palace, he saw a dream that made him afraid (Dan 4:4), a dream that none of the wise men in Babylon could interpret … spiritually, Babylon is the kingdom of this world, and the king of Babylon (from Isa 14:4) is the Adversary, the present prince of this world. The wise men of Babylon are the servants of Satan who appear in this world as ministers of righteousness (2 Cor 11:14–15): they are rabbis, Christian theologians, Muslim clerics, academic scholars. And none of these wise men could connect a tree to a man. Likewise, none of Satan’s servants that are disguised as ministers of righteousness have been able to connect the Tree of Knowledge to individual Christians, bearing the mingled fruit of good and evil.

Christians cannot leave the center of the Garden of God: they are grafted to the Root of Righteousness, and they grow where that Root is. They should be growing as the Tree of Life, but because they mingle the sacred [Christ] with the profane [the day of the invincible sun], they do not grow as the Tree of Life (from Gen 3:22) but as the Tree of Knowledge, the tree of mingled fruit, knowing good but also knowing [as in having an adulterous relationship with] evil or unbelief. For Christians believe that Jesus is Lord and so profess with their mouth, but almost without exception, Christians do not believe Jesus, who said,

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17–20 emphasis added)

The scribes and Pharisees sort-of kept the commandments, but didn’t keep them (John 7:19). They kept the commandments through additions to them and without understanding of them. And if Christian righteousness doesn’t exceed the righteousness of Pharisees, who were not born of God as sons, then Christians as sons of God will never enter heaven.

To relax the least of the commandments is not to break/transgress the commandment, but to not keep the commandment with the zeal that God expects from His sons.

The Tree of Knowledge grows from the Root of Righteous, but grows as a wild tree as wild olive scions grafted onto rootstock of domestic olives naturally grow as wild olives, bearing the fruit of wild olives … Jesus identified His disciples as fig trees:

On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. (Mark 11:12–14 emphasis added)

And when evening came they went out of the city. / As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” (vv. 19–25)

The juxtaposition of a fig bearing a spring breba crop, setting fruit even before the tree leaves out, and prayers of faith being answered has the disciple being a fig tree that is to bear fruit when it isn’t the season for fruit to be borne. Because the fruit of the common fig tree has its flower inside itself and does not need pollinated, the fig tree is analogous to disciples that have the spirit of God inside themselves and need no outside pollinator to bear the fruit of the spirit. Hence, a fig tree’s breba crop is comparable to the fruit of the spirit borne by disciples before they are filled-with and empowered by spirit, and certainly comparable with the fruit of the spirit borne before the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man.

 

7.

I believe the parakletos kept returning Herbert Armstrong to the Temptation Account and to the Tree of Knowledge because he never grasped the seriously adverse consequences of mingling the sacred with the profane, which in his ministry was the mingling of Daniel’s visions with secular history and historical texts. Armstrong added Rome to the visions of Daniel, then built a dynamic ministry on his addition to Scripture. And as the secular Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire, which was a German Empire, Armstrong looked for a rearmed and aggressive post-War Germany to head a ten nation European combine that would enter the Holy Land as an endtime peace-keeping but conquering force. And to this day, a quarter century after his death, Armstrong’s disciples still look at the Roman Church as being of the endtime Beast. These disciples will be very surprised when the man of perdition and the false prophet slay them from behind while they look at Rome and wait for Germany to the advance into the Holy Land as Armstrong prophesied.

Armstrong somewhat effectively preached repentance. He commanded Christians to keep the commandments, especially the Sabbaths of God … what is so difficult about keeping the commandments: Moses told the children of Israel on the plains of Moab that what is written in the Book of Deuteronomy “‘is not too hard for you, neither is far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it’” (Deut 30:11–14).

The commandment or law that was near to the children of Israel was the Moab covenant, about which then Moses spoke; yet this covenant becomes synonymous with the Word of the Lord for it wouldn’t be to heaven where the children of Israel would consider going to get the covenant Moses was then giving the nation. That covenant was there with them. What wouldn’t always be with them was the Word of the Lord. And the Apostle Paul understood that the righteousness of faith about which Moses spoke—the Moab covenant—was more than a simple contract with the children of Israel: this covenant was embodied in the man Jesus the Nazarene.

To be fair to the children of Israel, the Moab covenant (see Deut 29:1) that is the Apostle Paul’s righteousness based on faith (Rom 10:6) doesn’t come into play until Israel, when in a far land, by faith turns to the Lord and returns to Him by keeping all that Moses commands in the Book of Deuteronomy. And even in exile in Babylon, Israel never by faith returned to the Lord. A remnant of Israel returned from Babylon by decree of Cyrus king of Persia to build for Cyrus a house for the God of the Land Beyond the River in Jerusalem. This remnant did not return to Judea because Israel had, by faith, returned to the Lord. If Israel had returned to the Lord by faith, all of the nation would have returned, not merely a remnant; for the promise of the Moab covenant is that all would return.

It is not usual for Christians to think in terms of a covenant being represented by a man, or by the Word of the Lord—with word carrying the sense of an ephemeral utterance; of invisible sound waves, modulated moving air, that are here today and gone tomorrow—for a contract or a covenant seems binding, seems to have about it a sense of solidity, seems as solid and as tangible as any other thing in this world. If a Christian signs a contract to buy a house or to buy a vehicle, the contract hangs over the Christian’s head as a weight suspended by a thin rope, that of employment and receiving a paycheck and making the agreed-upon payments month after month or year after year when most everyone ranched or farmed. The contract doesn’t seem ephemeral even though is exists as spoken words, usually committed to paper. But these spoken words, when made with other men [or women], seem so much more solid, real, tangible than the Moab covenant, the second heavenly covenant made with Israel, with Israel today being the nation circumcised of heart; with Israel being greater Christendom when born of spirit.

But with God, the covenants made between Yah and Israel in Egypt, at Sinai, on the plains of Moab are tangible things that remain enforceable until one covenanting party dies; so a covenant can be allegorically represented as the child of the covenanting parties, analogous to the offspring or seed of a man and his wife, who have covenanted with each other, pledging their troth to each other in a solemn contract that should only be broken by death. Hence, it is not a stretch to say that as Cain, Abel, and Seth are the sons of Adam and Eve, the Passover covenant, the Sinai covenant, and the Moab covenant are the sons of Yah and Israel. And this analogy works, considering that the Sinai covenant given six weeks after Israel crossed the Sea of Reeds would occupy the position of righteous Abel, whom Cain kills, as Israel killed the initial Sinai covenant when the people demanded that Aaron make for the people a gold calf [golden calves] to go before them as their Elohim. This will now have the Moab covenant being represented by Seth, and by the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9) who only have to endure to the end to be accepted by God. This will have the Moab covenant being the replacement covenant for the Passover covenant: Eve said of Seth, “‘God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him’” (Gen 4:25). This will make the Moab covenant the shadow and type of the New Covenant made with Israel upon the Second Passover liberation of Christendom from indwelling sin and death. And it is as mediator of this Moab covenant that the glorified Jesus has presently replaced Moses as mediator.

The above can be read too quickly for its significance to be fully grasped: the Word of God is both the words spoken by the Lord and the Spokesman speaking these words. Aaron spoke the words of Moses, who in turn spoke words received from the Lord except at Sinai when the Lord spoke to Moses in a manner that could be overheard by all of Israel. Moses and Aaron functioned as the mediator for the Lord, with Moses being God to Aaron (Ex 4:16). Moses becomes the word of the Lord, speaking the words of the Lord. Aaron then becomes the word of Moses speaking the words of Moses, the role in which the Levitical priesthood continued for a while. Eventually, the Levitical priesthood—as Aaron did at Sinai—speak or enact the words of the people rather than the words of Moses, especially in the many decades when the Book of the Covenant was lost in the temple and not found until the 18^th year of King Josiah’s reign (2 Kings 22:3, 8).

Because the Levitical priesthood did not faithfully speak the words of Moses, Levities lost their authority to serve as the spokesmen or word of Moses so that when the third temple is built, only the sons of Zadok, with Zadok having “‘kept the charge of my [the Lord’s] sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me’” (Ezek 44:15), can come near to the Lord to minister to Him.

During the forty days when Moses was initially in the cloud with the Lord, Aaron represented in type the Levitical priesthood—and the forty days represented a complete unit of time, the entirety of period between Moses and Christ Jesus. Thus when Moses comes down from the mountain and casts down the two stone tablets, the Sinai covenant is broken. In type, the Levitical priesthood ends, and the sons of Levi that are henceforth ordained for the service of the Lord at the cost of having slain son and brother (Ex 32:29) become analogous to a second Israel, a nation circumcised of heart after having slain its inner old self.

There are two covenants—similar covenants but not identical covenants—made at Sinai: the first Sinai covenant is ratified by blood (Ex 24:5–8) as a temporary earthly thing (see Heb 9:22–23), but the second Sinai covenant (Ex chap 34) is not ratified by blood but by the glory that shone from Moses’ face, and this second Sinai covenant is a spiritual or heavenly covenant. These two Sinai covenants, the first written on two tablets of stone provided by the Lord and the second also written by the finger of God but on two stone tablets furnished by Moses, are analogous to Israel with its stony hearts and minds being the nation the Lord brought out from Egypt and to Israel being the nation (with equally stony hearts and minds) coming from Moses, with Moses being the word of the Lord. The people of Israel, as if they were Cain, killed the first Sinai covenant—killed that righteousness that could have come from the Law—but the people were unable to harm either Moses in the cloud with the Lord, or Joshua who was halfway up the mountain and waiting for Moses to return.

Moses by entering the cloud and by not being with the people of Israel when his spokesman, his word, cast the golden calf is analogous to Christ Jesus, the only Son of the Word [Ò8`(@H] of God who was God [2,ÎH] and who was with the God [JÎ< 2,`<] in the beginning: Moses represented in his personhood the word of the Lord. Again, Aaron and the Levitical priesthood represented in their personhood (as if a single person) the word of Moses. Therefore the following correspondences exist: Moses corresponds to Christ Jesus, and Aaron corresponds to the word [Ò 8`(@H] of Jesus that He, Jesus, left with His disciples as their judge (John 12:48). As Aaron and the Levitical priesthood offered the daily (the daily sacrifice) for the people of Israel and made sin offerings for the people, the word [Ò 8`(@H] of Jesus that He left with His disciples offers the daily for the people of Israel who are circumcised of heart, with the daily for Christians being the putting on of the garment of Christ (Gal 3:27) that grace represents.

In the personage of Christ Jesus, the two Sinai covenants are represented, one physical and one spiritual with Jesus’ glory today being the reality of the glory that shone from Moses’ face. Thus, in the personage of Christ Jesus, both Moses and Aaron (and the entirety of the Levitical priesthood) are represented, with this representation forming the basis for the Christian Church being the Body of Christ, and the word [Ò8`(@H] of Jesus that He left with His disciples now functioning as Aaron and the Levitical priesthood functioned in ancient Israel.

But Aaron never entered into God’s rest. Moses entered (Ex 33:14), for entering into God’s rest is an euphemistic expression for entering into God’s presence. The children of Israel followed Joshua [in Greek, [0F@Ø — Jesus] into God’s rest (see Ps 95:10–11); so the children of Israel entered. But on Mount Hor, at the border of the land of Edom, as commanded by the Lord Moses stripped the priestly garments from Aaron and put them on Eleazar, Aaron’s son, in the sight of the people, and Aaron died there on the top of the mountain (Num 20:22–29).

The Moab covenant is not yet made with the mixed circumcised and uncircumcised children of Israel when Aaron dies … the children of Israel that followed Joshua into God’s rest were not a monolithic assembly, but consisted of those circumcised Israelites who were still children when Israel was in Egypt, and consisted of those uncircumcised Israelites born in the wilderness—

The covenant made at Sinai is not one covenant, but two, the first a physical covenant that was intended to be replaced. The second was/is a heavenly covenant that will not end. And in an analogy that has the Sinai covenant being represented by righteous Abel, the righteousness that cried out from the ground when Cain slew Abel is manifested in a resurrected-from-death Abel, how the second Sinai covenant functions. It is a resurrection of the first Sinai covenant.

The second temple goes from being a hewn wood and sculpted stone building to being the living Body of Christ Jesus. In a similar manner, the Sinai covenant, the second covenant made between Yah and the nation of Israel, goes from being a physical thing to being a heavenly thing while Israel is still at Sinai. Israel goes from being a physically circumcised nation to being the nation circumcised of heart, a spiritual nation, in a manner analogous to how the temple goes from being a physical building to being a spiritual assembly. And both Israel and the temple go from being physical entities to being spiritual entities in the manner that the Sinai covenant goes from being an earthly covenant ratified by blood to being a heavenly covenant ratified by the glory that shone from Moses’ face. And as the second temple is “second,” and as the nation of Israel that leaves Egypt is a second nation of Israel, with the first being the nation that entered Egypt with the patriarch Israel, the Sinai covenant is the “second” covenant made between Yah and the nation of Israel, the second covenant to be mediated by Moses.

Someone will be quick to point out that the writer of Hebrews refers to all of the covenants made between Yah and Israel, from Egypt to the Jordan, as the first covenant—and that is essentially true, for the Sinai covenant was an addition to the Passover covenant made with Israel on the day—not six weeks later—when the Lord took the fathers of Israel by the hand to lead the nation out from Egypt (Heb 8:9; Jer 31:32). The writer of Hebrews doesn’t know (because it wasn’t then realized although it had been revealed) that there would be a Second Passover liberation of Israel.

Thus, the Sinai covenant functions as an allegory for righteous Abel, whom Cain slew, but who will be resurrected to life when judgments are revealed.

The Passover covenant was made with all of Israel, as the Second Passover covenant—the New Covenant—will be made with all of Christendom. Under the Passover covenant, the sins of Israel are covered by the blood of the paschal lamb. Sins are remembered but covered. Sins are not forgiven, but covered by blood in a manner analogous to Adam’s obedience “covering” Eve’s eating of forbidden fruit. Blood and righteousness are therefore linked, with blood representing life. By continuation, righteousness and life are linked. Hence, the paschal Cup about which Jesus said, “‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’” (Matt 26:27–28) represents Jesus’ righteousness, which for disciples is the covering of Grace.

Under the New Covenant, sins will not be remembered (Heb 8:12 et al); so the Second Passover covenant differs from the first Passover covenant in that no mediator is needed for the New Covenant. No blood needs shed. No paschal lamb needs to be sacrificed to cover sins. And without a covering for sins—since sins are not being remembered—Israel has no “husband,” no head, but is separated from Christ Jesus so that the Body of Christ can become the Bride of Christ.

The Moab covenant was made with the children of Israel, those present and those not present, with the children of Israel—as opposed to Israel, the nation that left Egypt—representing the third part of humanity that will come under the New Covenant when the world is baptized in spirit; i.e., when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28). As a result, the Moab covenant is a type of the New Covenant, what common Christians refer to as the Second Covenant. This Moab covenant functions as a type of Seth who was “appointed” by God to be a replacement for righteous Abel; therefore, the Moab covenant and the second Sinai covenant are linked in a similar manner to how the last high Sabbath day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is linked to the high Sabbath day that is the Feast of Weeks. Both of these high Sabbaths represent the same event: the Second Advent. But the two high Sabbaths represent the same event from different perspectives, with a window of three and a half earth days being necessary for the Second Advent to be fully completed (that is for the transition from the Endurance to the Millennium to occur). The tarrying about which Jesus spoke—

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise answered, saying, “Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.” And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, “Lord, lord, open to us.” But he answered, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.” Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. (Matt 25:1–13)

—will be the dark portion of the fourth day of the Genesis “P” creation account … when the spirit is poured out on all flesh, all who have endured to the end will be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22). All who endure in faith will be spiritual virgins. All who have endured in faith to the end are represented by the ten virgins, but only half of all who have endured will wed the Bridegroom. The other half will enter the Millennium as physical human beings in whom there is neither sin nor death. This foolish half will not be numbered among the firstfruits, but will live (baring accidental death) until the end of the Thousand Years as physical human beings, when they will then appear before the Lord in the great White Throne Judgment, at which time their judgments will be revealed.

The three and a half days [four calendar days] after the end of the Endurance and before the Millennium begins forms the shadow and copy of the three and a half days [four calendar] days between when the paschal lamb for the Second Passover is selected (on the 10^th day of Iyyar, the day when Noah entered the Ark) and when the Second Passover sacrifice of firstborns occurs at the midnight hour of the 14^th of Iyyar. Thus, there are four calendar days of significance before the Affliction begins and there will be four calendar days of significance after the Endurance ends.

 

8.

It has been a long time since I have identified the Moab covenant as the Second Covenant, the New Covenant that comes into force following the Second Passover liberation of Israel. I first wrote that the Moab covenant was the Second Covenant in the spring of 2002. It was part of the revelations I received when initially called to reread prophecy in January of that year. But because of the problems involved in arguing that the Moab covenant was the Second or New Covenant, I drifted away from regularly making that declaration although I knew that the Moab covenant as mediated by Moses formed the left hand enantiomer of the New Covenant as mediated by Christ Jesus: the New Covenant is a hierarchical step higher than the Moab covenant as the glorified Jesus is a double step higher than the man Moses, with the first step being spirit-in-fleshly-man and the second step being man-as-a-glorified-son-of-God. It was this step/double-step relationship that caused argumentative problems; for the Moab covenant is itself one hierarchical step higher than the Passover covenant made with the nation of Israel numbered in the census of the second year. The Moab covenant is made with the children of Israel, not with Israel, with these children of Israel assuming identification as Israel after they followed Joshua [in Greek, [0F@Ø — Jesus, from Acts 7:45] enter into the Promised Land, as Christendom, when circumcised of heart, becomes Israel (see Rom 2:28–29) when it follows Jesus into God’s rest, a euphemistic expression for God’s presence in heaven. The Moab covenant was not ratified by blood, but by a song [Deut chap 32]. It was never a copy of a heavenly thing, but a heavenly thing (Heb 9:23).

What I was initially unable to argue is that a covenant between man and God is a representation of the Word of God left with man, what the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John both understood: a covenant between Yah and Israel was the son of these two entities in a manner analogous to the man Jesus as the only Son of the Logos [Ò8`(@H], the Word of God who was God [2,ÎH] and who was with the God [JÎ< 2,`<] in the beginning, being the First of the firstborn sons of the Most High God. And if the preceding sentence is too difficult for an auditor to understand today, it is not written for this auditor but for the one who reads these words in the future. The text has become self-aware, with this text realizing—the text is herein personified—that it is a witness against early 21^st-Century Christendom. It is not born to inform but to convict; for the Book of Deuteronomy was to be placed beside the Ark of the Covenant as a witness against Israel (Deut 31:26). And by the testimony of two or three witnesses, a thing is established, with Moses in the Moab covenant being one witness that testifies against Israel, and with Elijah being the other witness.

John writes,

So Jesus said to them [Pharisees], “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 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. … / You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:19–24, 39–47 emphasis added)

Elsewhere, John writes,

Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” / When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“Lord, who has believed what he heard from us,

and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”

Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said,

 “He has blinded their eyes

and hardened their heart,

lest they see with their eyes,

and understand with their heart, and turn,

and I would heal them.”

Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. / And Jesus cried out and said, “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 12:27–50 emphasis added)

All judgment was given to Jesus, the only Son of the Word of God, but Jesus did not come to judge the world but to save it. However, He left the word [Ò 8`(@H] of Him with His disciples as the judge of all who do not believe Him … Jesus personified the word [again, Ò8`(@H] of Him and He left His personified word with His disciples as the judge of unbelieving Christians, thereby making His personified word the only son of Himself, the son who would execute all judgment of human beings, with the word [Ò8`(@H] of Jesus functioning as the continued presence of Jesus in this world as a covenant made between Yah and Israel functioned as the continued presence of Yah in the affairs of Israel, with too many of these affairs being adulterous, and with so many of these affairs being adulterous that to end the marriage covenant made at Sinai—the spiritual second Sinai covenant (Ex chap 34)—Yah had to die, or Israel in the nation’s entirety had to die. And Yah, out of love for Israel, chose to die so that Israel would not have-to.

When Yah entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus, Yah was no more. In entering His creation as a man, Yah ceased to be God [2,ÎH], the Word of God: the Logos [Ò 8`(@H] ceased to exist except as his only Son, who in turn left His only son with His disciples in the form of His words that collectively form the word [Ò 8`(@H] of Him.

In this world, the ephemeral nature of words as modulated breath are given permanency when placed into contracts or covenants: a man and a women pledging their troth to each other has little meaning until their pledges are placed into a marriage contract. Then legal and moral permanency is imparted to ephemeral words: words become things that are legally and ethically binding. Neither the man nor the woman is “free” to utter cooing words to another man or woman: telephone sex is not okay! but is adultery. For a Christian, telephone sex in any form is as heinous as Israel at Sinai demanding that Aaron make for them other Elohim to go before them. For intimate words spoken between a man and a women are codified—given personhood—in a marriage covenant, which then stands as a witness for or against the man and the woman. These words that are nothing more than modulated breath [B<,Ø:"] disclose what is hidden in the heart of the person, and sometimes hidden from even the person until the words are uttered.

The prophet Jeremiah records the words of the Lord,

The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately sick;

who can understand it?

I the Lord search the heart

and test the mind, 

to give every man according to his ways,

according to the fruit of his deeds. (Jer 17:9–10)

The old dragon Satan the devil deceives all of humankind (Rev 12:9), and the heart is deceitful above all things, which will have Satan using the hearts of human beings to deceive the people … this past week, photos emerged of former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his mistress, Maria Belén Chapur, an Argentine journalist, on a beach in Uruguay. Despite all of the difficulties this affair-of-the-heart has caused Sanford, his lawful wife, the people of South Carolina, and the Republican party, the couple seems happy, but that happiness will be short-lived. For Sanford will eat the fruit of his affair with the attractive journalist, and that fruit will be bitter in his stomach—will be hard to stomach.

The Lord tests the minds and searches the hearts of His disciples, with the secret things that are hidden in the hearts of disciples—those things that Satan uses, will use, or can use to slay the disciple—disclosed by the words of the disciple, words hidden in innocence, words hidden from friends and family, words couched in piety and the appearance of righteousness. For Satan, as that old serpent the devil, remains more subtle than human beings imagine. Christians can construct a hedge of righteous deeds and righteous thoughts around inner impurity or bitterness and can hide these attributes of unbelief from the person’s self for decades, but before the saint is glorified, these inner blemishes will manifest themselves in spoken words that will acquire permanency if not repented-of when uttered.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil grows in the heart of every disciple: eating its mingled fruit will cause the disciple to be cut off from the Root of Righteous that grows at the center of the Garden of God.

No one wants all of his or her words held against the person … which words should acquire permanency and which ones shouldn’t? Will Mark Sanford’s words—his lie that from 18 June to 24 June 2009, he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when in reality he was with his Argentine mistress—ever disappear into thin air as most uttered words do? No, most likely his lie will outlive him. His lie, or that of his press secretary has already acquired permanency beyond its worth, but the lie discloses the adulterous heart of the former governor. And while repentance remains possible for Mark Sanford, the likeliness of such repentance lessens with each passing day, and with each coveted kiss from the Argentine journalist.

Should a disciple’s words praising God be remembered, but the same disciple’s words condemning his or her brother in Christ be forgotten? Should a disciple’s words inscribed in the text of a contract be remembered when the same disciple makes a new contract covering the same situation, the same purchase, the piece of property, but with differing terms, terms that defraud his brothers in Christ? Of course the first contract should be binding upon the disciple and the second contract used to condemn the disciple as a thief. This is right and true. Why then will other Christians support that one who defrauds his brothers in Christ? Is fraud hidden in their hearts? It is, isn’t it? Those Christians who support the thief are thieves themselves.

If the words of a disciple acquire permanency through the disciple reading, agreeing-to, and signing a contract, then the disciple should not be surprised that before God his or her uttered words acquire permanency through their utterance. Nothing more needs to be done to give them permanency. Therefore, the person who professes with his or her mouth that Jesus is Lord is a Christian although the person is not necessarily born of God as a son. Rather, profession that Jesus is Lord causes the person to be numbered in the now-dead Body of Christ that will be resurrected to life at the Second Passover; for the person’s words have meaning, have permanency, and reveal what is hidden in the person’s heart even when the person continues to live as a lawless Gentile

If the mere utterance of words will defile a person (see Matt 15:11), then it would be reasonable for other Christians to come down hard on a brother in Christ who coos sweetly into the ear of another man’s wife; for the sweetness of those words reveal what is hidden in the disciple’s heart, and often hidden even from the disciple … oh, but the cooing is all in innocence! Sure it is. And it might well be. But the disciple who defrauded his brothers in Christ might well have sincerely believed he had to do what he did to save everything. In both case, those things hidden in the heart were made visible by words that came from the heart; for it is these words that defile the saint.

The prophets of old did not have many friends; John the Baptist had disciples, but not many friends—

And behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel. Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make offerings. And the man cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, “O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who make offerings on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’” And he gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign that the Lord has spoken: ‘Behold, the altar shall be torn down, and the ashes that are on it shall be poured out.’” And when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, “Seize him.” And his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself. The altar also was torn down, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign that the man of God had given by the word of the Lord. And the king said to the man of God, “Entreat now the favor of the Lord your God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored to me.” And the man of God entreated the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him and became as it was before. And the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me, and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.” And the man of God said to the king, “If you give me half your house, I will not go in with you. And I will not eat bread or drink water in this place, for so was it commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water nor return by the way that you came.’” So he went another way and did not return by the way that he came to Bethel. / Now an old prophet lived in Bethel. And his sons came and told him all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told to their father the words that he had spoken to the king. And their father said to them, “Which way did he go?” And his sons showed him the way that the man of God who came from Judah had gone. And he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” So they saddled the donkey for him and he mounted it. And he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak. And he said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” And he said, “I am.” Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.” And he said, “I may not return with you, or go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place, for it was said to me by the word of the Lord, ‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by the way that you came.’” And he said to him, “I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.’” But he lied to him. So he went back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water. (1 Kings 13:1–19 emphasis added)

Would Christian pastors and theologians lie to other servants of God, telling those servants who read and have read in Scripture Jesus’ words that collectively form their judge that an angel told these Christians pastors that it is okay for a Christian to live as a Gentile? Surely no pastor or theologians would do such a heinous deed? Yet what did Jesus say: “‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven’” (Matt 5:17–19 emphasis added). And what do Christian pastors and dispensationalist theologians say: The law has been abolished; Christians are under grace, not law.

Did these Christian pastors do to their parishioners what the old prophet did to the man of God who came from Judah? … Let us hear more of this matter,

And as they sat at the table, the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back. And he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord and have not kept the command that the Lord your God commanded you, but have come back and have eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which he said to you, “Eat no bread and drink no water,” your body shall not come to the tomb of your fathers.’” And after he had eaten bread and drunk, he saddled the donkey for the prophet whom he had brought back. And as he went away a lion met him on the road and killed him. And his body was thrown in the road, and the donkey stood beside it; the lion also stood beside the body. And behold, men passed by and saw the body thrown in the road and the lion standing by the body. And they came and told it in the city where the old prophet lived. (1 Kings 13:20–25 emphasis added)

Why would the man of God believe the old prophet who had not condemned Jeroboam for his idolatry? In the old prophet’s failure to condemn what should have been condemned, the old prophet disclosed the idolatry that was in his heart—so a failure to speak can defile a person as speaking can.

For me not to condemn lying Christian pastors and theologians is tantamount to condoning their lawlessness and deceitfulness, and as I will not make-nice with a thief who defrauds his brothers in Christ, I will not make-nice with lying theologians, one of whom is my nephew who supports lies about what it means to be a Christian. Because of his support for the lying words of Christian theologians—his innocent support—he is not worthy of Christ Jesus, but worthy of condemnation … in 1978, I flew down from Alaska to spend Thanksgiving with one sister and one brother, and I got to hold my sister’s newly born son who would died of SIDS shortly after I returned to Alaska. She prayed for another son and was given one, a son who has dedicated his life to Christ—a son whose words condemn him before God, and needlessly condemn him. His words, uttered in theological innocence, reveal his unwillingness to walk as Jesus walked (i.e., as an observant Jew) and walk out of spiritual Babylon, trek across economic wastelands, cross the River Jordan and enter into Sabbath observance. Perhaps the son who did not live would have joined me in Jerusalem, where Christ Jesus has left the lights on, and saints standing as pillars on the foundation Paul laid nearly two millennia ago: I will see my young nephew again in the great White Throne Judgment. Whether his mother and his brother see him will be up to them; for as of today, they are slated to rebel against God 220 days after the Second Passover liberation of Israel. If they rebel, they will perish in the lake of fire a thousand years before the great White Throne Judgment occurs.

There is a price to be paid for believing God, but an even greater price for believing lying prophets, lying pastors, lying theologians, lying disciples, the fat sheep who push around the lean sheep and lie about being shepherds when they are in reality spiritual bastards, sons of the Adversary who claim the Church as their mother. … I have no soft words for them, no cooing in their ears, no compliments, no strolls on a sand beach in Uruguay with them. The words I have, Repent! Change your ways, your thinking, what you preach, teach, and just maybe Christi Jesus will let your words of unbelief dissipate in the wind.

 

9.

When in a far land, when the curse came upon Israel and the nation was no longer a free people, when a remnant returned to Jerusalem according to the commands of Cyrus and of Artaxerxes, kings of Persia, Israel pursued righteousness under the Moab covenant by the works of their hands (Rom 9:31–32). Therefore, the hearts of the children of Israel were never circumcised according to the promise of the Moab covenant (Deut 30:6; 10:16). Hearts were not circumcised until after the spirit was given, and then they were not circumcised until the Israelite (outwardly circumcised or uncircumcised) cleansed this son of God’s heart by completing a mental journey of faith comparable to Abraham’s physical journey of faith from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran then on to Canaan.

The Pharisees, in their mingling of politics and theology, did more harm to the faith of Israel than good. Likewise, spiritual Pharisees have done more harm than good as they have added to Moses in a variety of ways … additions to Scripture have occurred since the days of Moses. But Moses laid down the test for prophets, for dreamers of dreams; for brothers, sisters, nephews; for worthless fellows of any sort—if the person does not teach Israel to serve the Lord alone, keeping His commandments and obeying His voice (Deut chap 13), the person is to be rejected, stoned, slain physically or now slain spiritually by being condemned to the lake of fire. And Jesus has given to His disciples authority to condemn a disciple through withholding forgiveness of sin (John 20:23).

The man of God from Judea should not have believed the old prophet, who told him to do the opposite of what the Lord had told the man of God to do. But it is so easy to believe someone who comes in Jesus’ name, who identifies himself as a servant of God as you, yourself, are a servant of God. It is so easy to believe a lie, to believe additions made to Scripture—or to disbelieve additions that are of God.

How can a person determine whether an addition is of God or of the Adversary? Is there a firm rule for when to disbelieve an addition?

The old prophet told the man of God from Judea that an angel had spoken to him, but no angel had, at least none from God. Today, a multitude of Christians believe additions to Scripture from the 4^th and 5^th Centuries CE, but they will not believe a new addition; nor will they believe Moses or Jesus.

The additions Paul added are of one sort: Israel is no longer the nation that is outwardly circumcised, but the nation that is circumcised of heart. Likewise, the additions of Peter, of John, of James, the brother of Jesus, but by their calling they had authority to add to Scripture those things which had been revealed to them—and they disclose in their writings the means by which the parakletos reveals knowledge to born-of-spirit sons of God, not in what they say [the text of their messages] but in the texture of their words; for knowledge given by the spirit of truth to the inner self made alive through receipt of a second breath of life is “filtered” through existing experience and belief paradigms to emerge from the mouths or the pens of these first disciples as opinions and quotations of others in their own words and in their citations of Scripture from memory, combining passages and assigning to their combinations differing meanings from how Pharisees, as a distinct reading community, read the same passages.

Scripture could not be a closed canon until the visions of Daniel were unsealed and no longer secret; until after the Torah is written on hearts and placed in minds, thereby causing Israel’s sons and daughter to prophesy, old men to dream dreams and young men to see visions (Joel 2:28). Only when the lives of all humankind are being written as epistles in the heavenly Book of Life will Scripture, as the shadow and type [the left hand enantiomer] of the Book of Life, become a closed canon, “closed” because nothing more remains to be written in it. The harvest of firstfruits will have occurred, and the millennial reign of Christ Jesus will be upon men and women. Death will have been openly defeated: the child born in the Millennium will be humanly born without indwelling sin and death and will be born with the spirit of God, and will be as angels were until iniquity was found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14–15), with the Adversary being loosed from his chains after the thousand years (Rev 20:7) equating to iniquity being found in heaven in the anointed cherub, with the Adversary being cast into the lake of fire (v. 10) forming the reality of the Adversary being cast from heaven 1007 years earlier. Whereas the Adversary had deceived humankind (Rev 12:9) for a short while—from Adam to the resurrection of the two witnesses—the Adversary will deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth and will gather them for battle as he gathered them at Armageddon a millennium earlier, but this time his defeat won’t result in him being bound for a thousand years in the Abyss but will result in him being cast into the lake of fire where he will perish and become ashes under the feet of the holy ones (Ezek 28:18–19).

With the resurrection to glory of the firstfruits, the pattern is established for the great White Throne Judgment; for the firstfruits are to human beings receiving glory in the Great White Throne Judgment as Christ Jesus, the First of the firstfruits, is to the firstfruits. The two millennia between when Christ Jesus is resurrected to glory and when the remainder of the firstfruits are resurrected forms the shadow and type of the thousand years between the resurrection of the firstfruits and the great White Throne Judgment, with doubling of the millennia giving a sense of proportional difference between the First-of-the-firstfruits and the firstfruits in relationship to the firstfruits and saints coming out from the great White Throne Judgment. … All of the firstfruits will function as the head of the saints to be resurrected to glory in the great White Throne Judgment in a manner analogous to how Christ Jesus functions as the Head of the Church, and as the glorified Jesus seldom openly intervenes in the lives of the assembly that is the Church, glorified firstfruits will seldom openly intervene in human affairs during the Millennium. This is not to say there won’t be invisible supernatural intervention as occurs today.

In saying, something greater than the temple is here, Jesus trumped the briar hedge that Pharisees had placed around the Sabbath; for what is greater than the temple? The glory of God is: as Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus—to whom all judgment has been given—determines who will enter into God’s presence. Jesus will give life through causing the perishable flesh to put on immortality to whomever He pleases, with this second giving of spiritual life occurring when judgments are revealed. That descent of the Lord from heaven during which every eye will see the Lord will not seem sudden, but will seem like the Lord is tarrying.

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"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."

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