March 21, 2011 © Homer Kizer
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End Notes
Truth Always has an Agenda
Part Four
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Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom [in Greek, the “Valley of the Son of Hinnom” is Gehenna] and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree. …
In the time of his distress he became yet more faithless to the Lord—this same King Ahaz. For he sacrificed to the gods of Damascus that had defeated him and said, “Because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.” But they were the ruin of him and of all Israel. And Ahaz gathered together the vessels of the house of God and cut in pieces the vessels of the house of God, and he shut up the doors of the house of the Lord, and he made himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem. In every city of Judah he made high places to make offerings to other gods, provoking to anger the Lord, the God of his fathers. Now the rest of his acts and all his ways, from first to last, behold, they are written in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel. And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city, in Jerusalem, for they did not bring him into the tombs of the kings of Israel. And Hezekiah his son reigned in his place. (2 Chron 28:1–4, 22–27 emphasis added)
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7.
—paving over hell—
After the thousand years of the Millennium, and after the great White throne Judgment of the main crop of humankind, Death and Hades will be thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:14), which is commonly understood to be the Gehenna referenced by Christ Jesus: e.g., Matt 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5.
But Gehenna is where Canaanites before Israel and the children of Israel afterwards sacrificed their firstborns to El [in Greek, Ò2,ÎH], the singular deity translated into English as the word <God>, itself singular. However, the Hebrew word Elohim [?????] is not ever singular although it takes singular verbs in its common usage and has traditionally been considered singular; nor is the Tetragrammaton YHWH [?????] the representation of a singular deity although it, too, takes singular verbs. For God is One, as Adam and Eve were one (Gen 2:24). El, however, is numerically singular. And translators from the paleo-Hebrew script in which Moses would have written—the script found in Egyptian archeological digs; the script found in ancient Carthage—into the Hebrew of Israel’s and Judah’s kings concealed the plurality of Elohim and of YHWH that remains in the pronoun <us> used in Genesis 1:26; 3:22; 11:7 through their selection of singular verbs for the plural nouns, a conscious decision made in an era when and just after the Book of the Law had been lost in the long neglected house of the Lord. And unfortunately, no Hebrew grammatical structures earlier than about the 9th-Century BCE were copied verbatim into the earliest copies of Hebrew Writ still in existence. No portion of Scripture predates the work of translators in the 9th-Century, and most of Scripture comes from the work of translators in 7th-Century Jerusalem, when the Book of the Law was found in the temple (see 2 Kings 22:8–20). Therefore, endtime disciples receive from Moses a physical text that is soiled yet surprisingly stable considering the numbers of times that it has been translated from generational language changes and from language to language. Hence, a primal reason for writing the Law of God [the Torah] on hearts and placing this Law within the holy ones when the nation of Israel is liberated from indwelling Sin and Death is to erase translators’ agendas, thereby returning a new nation of Israel back to the words Moses would have received from the Lord.
The above says what it seems to say: the book that a Christian holds in his or her hands that identifies itself as The Holy Bible is a translation of a translation of one or more translations, with the translators of each translation having an agenda that can usually be discerned when the received text is deconstructed. And why this is important now, spring 2011, is because the criteria for belief of God is about to change: it really didn’t matter whether the translation of Holy Writ used by a Christian truly reflected the nuances of the words Moses received when it was belief, itself, that mattered, with what the Christian received as Holy Writ being of less importance. If a word or a phrase was mistranslated in the 9th-Century BCE as a scribe updated the language of Holy Writ, translating Moses’ words of four or five centuries earlier into the language of the scribe’s day, the important attributes of Holy Writ were conveyed with sufficient accuracy that knowledge of the Lord was not lost—unless the Book of the Law, itself, was lost as actually happened … each king was given the responsibility of writing out for himself a copy of the Book of the Law so that the Book of the Covenant would not be lost or forgotten. But obviously, this did not happen. It couldn’t have happened if Shaphan, the secretary for King Josiah, had to read to the king the words of the Book of the Law that Hilkiah the high priest found in the rubbish of the house of the Lord, with this finding of the Book of the Law coming after Jeremiah that preached repentance to the house of Israel for five years. King Amon certainly hadn’t written a copy for himself, and it would seem that Josiah was illiterate or barely literate for he began to rule when eight years old (2 Kings 22:1), and who would have taught Josiah to read after he became the person’s king?
The Christian who holds that Holy Writ is a fossilized canon—is the infallible word of God in its original language—has so little understanding of God that this person is incapable of dressing him or herself in the garment of righteousness. When 1st-Century Pharisees, reasonable scholars of the text they received as Holy Writ (rabbinical Judaism claims they were excellent scholars), did not keep the Law and none did (John 7:19), perhaps the cause for their disobedience lay in the text they had received, a text that concealed God, preventing them from comprehending why their ancestors went into Babylonian captivity? If the text of Holy Writ from which 1st-Century Pharisees based their worship of God wasn’t an infallible text but a text corrupted by translators’ agendas such as the King James Version of Holy Writ is, it truly would not have been possible for Pharisees to keep the Law that Moses gave Israel. They couldn’t have kept the Law for they did not receive the words of Moses: they received the words of the Great Assembly, the words of translators who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon five centuries earlier. They received the words of scribes and scholars who wanted to make sure that Israel never again transgressed the commandments of God as their ancestors had; they received the words of scribes and translators who had a pronounced agenda, never again let Israel sin.
The Apostle Paul rhetorically asked and answered an important question:
Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar … (Rom 3:1–4 emphasis added)
If Jews were unfaithful, in what things were they unfaithful? Yes, they were entrusted with the oracles of God, but they were unfaithful: they pursued righteousness as if it were based on the works of hands rather than on belief of God (Rom 9:31–32). Why? Was their pursuit of righteousness through the works of their hands not the result of how they read the text they had preserved; for they had authority over Holy Writ. It was! Thus, they stumbled over Christ Jesus, why? Was it not because the oracles of God committed to their keeping concealed Christ from them? It is. Thus, the question must be asked, did the words Moses delivered to the children of Israel conceal from them the pillar of fire that proceeded them by night and the cloud that proceeded them by day? No! Moses’ words did not conceal the pillar of fire: the pillar of fire was there for the children of Israel to see day by day. Hence, the Lord was there for Pharisees to see long before the man Jesus was born of Mary. But the oracles that Pharisees received concealed the Lord from them, strongly suggesting that the unfaithfulness of the Jews extended to preserving the oracles of God.
I will even go farther: the advantage the Jews had through receiving the oracles of God and being entrusted to keep those oracles was the advantage given to Adam when 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 as Adam added to the words of the Lord, Jews added to the oracles of the Lord, which is why scholars reject Moses as author of the Torah for the Torah no longer faithfully represents Moses’ words but only closely approximates Moses’ words. And as the serpent used Adam’s addition to the words of the Lord to cause Eve to no longer believe Adam, that old serpent, Satan the devil, used the Jews’ addition to the words of the Lord to cause the holy ones to no longer believe the oracles of God entrusted to the Jews.
A Christian doesn’t usually think in terms of challenging the genuineness of the text presented to the Christian as the living word of God—it seems blasphemous to even think in terms of the Holy Bible being corrupted by translators, but the evidence is solid for condemning the King James Version (KJV) and its agenda of establishing the ecclesiology of the Church of England through the translators’ word selections. And if the Adversary would use a king and his translators to afflict the heavenly seed of Abram, then this same Adversary would use previous kings to afflict the physical seed of Abram through how priests and scribes translated generational changes in Hebrew, translations that enhanced the singleness of the plural Elohim to the point where Jews could not imagine nor accept that another deity existed beside Yah. And it is for this reason Zephaniah records,
Therefore wait for me, declares the Lord,
for the day when I rise up to seize the prey.
For my decision is to gather nations,
to assemble kingdoms,
to pour out upon them my indignation,
all my burning anger;
for in the fire of my jealousy
all the earth shall be consumed.
For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples
to a pure speech,
that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord
and serve him with one accord. (3:8–9 emphasis added)
When the Law of God is written on hearts and placed in minds with the implementation of the New Covenant (cf. Heb 8:10; Jer 31:33), the Lord will bring to Israel a new language, a pure language, one free from translators’ agendas, one in which “hell” is paved over; for with the coming of the New Covenant, Sin and Death will be outside the person. The mortal human person will no longer die simply because he or she is old. The aged will live to the end of the age, and will live with the law of God written on hearts and placed in minds so that no translation of Holy Writ is needed; for what is written on hearts and in minds will outlast what has been written on two tablets of stone as the desires of the heart and the thoughts of the person who believes God will outlast the creation itself.
The Jews were not simply unfaithful in implementing the text they received, they were unfaithful in keeping the oracles of God: if they had been faithful, Holy Writ would not need to be written on hearts and placed in minds where it cannot be corrupted if it had not been corrupted by translators’ agendas time and again … the Christian who argues that the Jews faithfully kept the oracles of God argues from ignorance—rabbinical Judaism has not even faithfully kept the calendar given to Moses—for Paul tells us that he knows some were unfaithful (Rom 3:3). Some? How about almost all, for King Josiah “commanded all the people, ‘Keep the Passover to the Lord your God [YHWH your Elohim], as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.’ For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Judah’” (2 Kings 23:21–22). If no Passover had been kept in Israel or in Judah as commanded by Moses between the days of the judges and Josiah’s reign in the 7th-Century BCE, what was the likelihood of Holy Writ being preserved generation after generation without corruption? There is no likelihood, which is why the Lord will write the Torah on hearts and place it in minds so that it can never again be corrupted as it has been by faithless Israel.
The Apostle Paul received as Holy Writ a text that did not agree with what Paul was appointed to know (from Acts 22:14); hence, he fought a continual war against the Circumcision Faction, which was determined to implement the text that all of Judaism had received from the post-Babylon Great Assembly, beginning with Ezra. … Adam intended no harm when he added to what the Lord told him, thus telling Eve not to even touch the Tree in the midst of the Garden. The Great Assembly intended no harm when they translated the Book of the Law into then current Hebrew. King James intended no harm when he directed translators to support the ecclesiology of the Church of England. There was never any harm intended. Motives were honorable. Adam’s motives were honorable in telling Eve not to touch the Tree. But again, whenever an addition is made to Scripture—whenever singular verbs are substituted for plural verbs; wherever vowel pointing is added to the unpronounced Tetragrammaton YHWH—the Adversary is given an opening he can exploit to deceive the holy ones. And that old serpent, Satan the devil, doesn’t let any opportunity go to waste.
The Christian who in innocence argues that the oracles of God received from unfaithful Jews in post-Babylon Hebrew is infallible remains too young to be circumcised of heart [remains spiritually younger than an eight day old Hebrew male is physically] and most likely needs his or her soiled diaper changed. Certainly, this person has fallen into the Adversary’s pit where his children await their certain fate, not because they have immortal souls but because when they said they believed God, they lied to God for they could not see God in the thoughts of their minds and in the desires of their hearts; thus their sins remain unforgiven and unforgivable.
· Any person who insists the oracles of God entrusted to the Jews have been faithfully preserved by an unfaithful people has been deceived by the Adversary;
· Any person who would trust an unfaithful people to be faithful in any thing is gullible enough that deceiving this person does not present the Adversary a challenge;
· The person who is unfaithful in a little thing will be unfaithful in a big thing, such as preserving the oracles of God.
Therefore, let it here be repeated: the physical, that which is of darkness, precedes what is of the light, with the human kings of the house of Judah (and of the house of Israel) being of darkness, their sins uncovered, their idolatry as open sewers, festering blotches in the Promised Land that metaphorically represents God’s rest (from Ps 95:10–11), as do the Sabbaths of God (Heb 3:16–4:11). Yet in what is recorded about earthly Jerusalem is detail about the Christian Church and heavenly Jerusalem that could not be otherwise understood, especially the reality of the second death in the lake of fire, Gehenna, where the firstborns of the Lord will pass through the fire that separates the creation from heaven …
The Christian who does not “see” Adam’s addition to the Lord’s words, or who does not “see” the agenda of King James in the King James Version of the Holy Bible, will also be unable to “see” the corruption that occurred to Holy Writ during the centuries when the oracles of God were entrusted to an unfaithful people, and this unfaithful people did not keep the Lord’s Passover as Moses commanded in the Book of the Covenant.
From darkness comes light: the smallest light ends the darkness. Likewise, from evil comes good, with the smallest amount of good ending evil for evil is nothing more than unbelief and good is belief of God. And that truly is what evil is: unbelief. If a person—any person—believes God, the person will obey God and will not sin, which is the transgression of the Law (1 John 3:4). Therefore, regardless of whether the flesh is weak or strong, the person who believes God cannot continue in unbelief, cannot continue to sin. Only when a person turns from unbelief, the natural state into which every person is humanly born, and begins to believe God is a person “righteous.” Thus, faith, the basis for all belief regardless of subject, is not external, but internal. Another person’s faith that has led to that person’s belief of God is of no use to the person without belief of God. Certainly another person’s faith that produced belief can function as a witness to the person but this other person’s faith/belief cannot be bought or sold and ultimately does the unbelieving person no good unless the person also chooses to believe God, thereby turning from evil to good.
Faith cannot be bought and sold as the Latin Church attempted to do for a millennium—and it isn’t the works of a person’s hands that pleases God, but simple belief of God unto death. The human being who believes God and who will not turn from this belief, even if the person doesn’t have the untainted words of the Lord, will live in the kingdom of heaven as a son of God.
The purpose of human life is to cause the person to turn from unbelief, again the person’s natural state, to belief of God, which then determines the actions of the person’s fleshly body … in saying that when the inside of the cup is clean the whole cup is clean (Matt 23:26), that Pharisees cleansed only the outside of the vessel (Luke 11:39; Matt 23:25), Jesus’ words are not literally true for if only the inside of a vessel is cleansed, only the inside is clean. The outside is as it was, clean or filthy. But when Jesus’ words are received metaphorically, the person’s fleshly body is understood to be the cup or vessel under discussion, and the inside of this vessel is the inner self, the inner man, who is cleansed through believing God by faith. When the inner self believes God, the inner self will strive to cause the person’s fleshly body to do those things that are pleasing to God. It is not enough that the inner self professes belief of God and then does nothing that would cause the inner self’s professed belief to be manifested outwardly as obedience of the Law: this inner self does not truly believe God.
The preceding can be illuminated by an example: if I say that time is short—and I do—and if I say that the Second Passover liberation of Israel is near, and if the one who hears and believes me does nothing to ready him or herself for the Second Passover, the person doesn’t truly believe me regardless of what the person says, but is as the Christian who professes belief of the Father and the Son but who then continues to worship on Sunday, while celebrating Christmas annually. The person who truly believes me will act upon his or her belief and will do whatever he or she can to get the person’s house in order to withstand the overturning of this world as we know it. For in declaring that the Second Passover liberation of Israel is near and not far, I have warned the people of God as Moses warned Israel in Egypt to select and pen each household’s paschal lamb on the 10th day of the first month, with the first month (Aviv) then being upon the people of Israel. The warning was not given a year earlier, or forty years earlier, but merely days earlier. And after the people of Israel prepared for the Passover with their paschal lambs penned because of Israel’s belief of Moses, the people of Israel had to wait all day on the 11th, all day on the 12th, the 13th, and when the 14th arrived at sunset, they sacrificed their paschal lambs, smeared its blood on doorposts and lintels, then roasted their lambs with fire.
Belief of the Lord came through the people’s belief of Moses’ words that caused the people to prepare by selecting and penning a paschal lamb for each household. The Israelite who heard Moses’ words but did not believe them—for the Lord couldn’t possibly be speaking through Moses—would have been as Egyptians were when the death angel passed through all the land, slaying the firstborn in every house at the midnight hour, the hour farthest from dusk and dawn.
Belief is not belief until it manifests itself in the actions of the person: the person who believes a prophet will receive the prophet, heeding the prophet’s words. And the person who receives any other person supports that person while that person is in his or her house; for the host or hostess who receives a guest in the person’s house doesn’t behave as an innkeeper, requiring that the one who has been received pay for his or her own keep. Hence, the holy one who receives a prophet supports the prophet as if the prophet were a guest in the person’s home, and this person will receive the prophet’s reward (Matt 10:41); for by inviting the prophet into the person’s home as the widow of Zarephath took Elijah in (1 Kings 17:8–6), the authority of the prophet rests in that home, which now makes Elijah bringing the widow’s son back from death more interesting. After the widow had given what food she had to Elijah, the jar of flour and the jug of oil did not become empty but had the same small amount in each every day. However, despite the jar and the jug not becoming empty, the widow still was not fully convinced that Elijah was a man of God—the small miracle of the jar and jug not running dry, which really wasn’t small at all, was not enough to convince her that Elijah’s words were true. Only when life was returned to her son did she truly believe: “‘Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth’” (v. 24). Only when the words of the prophet that a person has received because the person has faith that the prophet is truly a prophet—only when the words of the prophet come to pass as the prophet has said will the person truly believe that a prophet has been in Israel (Ezek 33:33). Until then, the one who has received a prophet does so by faith in a second journey of faith analogous to Abraham’s journey to the land of Moriah (Gen chap 22).
Most Christians who hear the words of a man that the Lord has called to warn His people of impending doom are as Israel was among the captives when Ezekiel’s mouth was finally opened:
The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, the inhabitants of these waste places in the land of Israel [the cities of Israel] keep saying, ‘Abraham was only one man, yet he got possession of the land; but we are many; the land is surely given us to possess.’ Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord God: You eat flesh with the blood and lift up your eyes to your idols and shed blood; shall you then possess the land? You rely on the sword, you commit abominations, and each of you defiles his neighbor's wife; shall you then possess the land? Say this to them, Thus says the Lord God: As I live, surely those who are in the waste places shall fall by the sword, and whoever is in the open field I will give to the beasts to be devoured, and those who are in strongholds and in caves shall die by pestilence. And I will make the land a desolation and a waste, and her proud might shall come to an end, and the mountains of Israel shall be so desolate that none will pass through. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I have made the land a desolation and a waste because of all their abominations that they have committed. / As for you, son of man, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each to his brother, ‘Come, and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.’ And they come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say but they will not do it; for with lustful talk in their mouths they act; their heart is set on their gain. And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it. When this comes—and come it will!—then they will know that a prophet has been among them.” (Ezek 33:23–33 emphasis added)
The patriotic nationalism of Christians is as an ancient Israelite relying on the sword; the idolatry of Christians in worshiping on Sunday is as the idolatry of ancient Israelites; the Christian who eats pork and shellfish is as the ancient Israelite who ate flesh with its blood; and Christians certainly defiled their neighbors’ wives from musical-chair marriages to Christian women not being under the authority of their husbands. So shall Christians inherit the kingdom of the heavens even though Christ Jesus is their ancestor? They shall not!
My words are for most who hear merely entertainment: with very few exceptions, those who hear my words do not believe that the Lord will bring upon this world another Passover liberation of Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart. What I write is, for them, merely entertainment, the words of another wacky Sabbatarian. If they believed they would have heeded the warning years ago, a warning that at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, life as humankind presently knows it will end. In heaven and on earth, all legal and natural firstborns not covered by their belief of God—belief great enough to cause them to take the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the night that Jesus was betrayed, the dark portion of the 14th of Aviv—will perish suddenly, and will not perish from natural causes. They will die as the uncovered firstborns of Egypt, of man and beast, died at the midnight hour of the 14th of Aviv; they will die on the second Passover in the second month, the month of Iyyar. It will then be too late to prepare for what will have happened, with the seven endtime years of tribulation beginning with the Second Passover. But all that happens to Christians will be on their own heads: a warning was given, but not heeded. Again, for most of Christendom the warning was merely entertainment, something to discuss, the last amusement.
What should concern most Christians is that when they are suddenly filled-with and empowered by the breath of God and thereby liberated from indwelling Sin and Death at the Second Passover, because these Christians do not today truly believe God, they will rebel against God. They will believe another man, one who seems to say all of the right things from a carnal perspective, a man who is today also warning them to prepare for what is certain to come (which is good advice) but a man who would have them continue to transgress the commandments, especially the Sabbath commandment. This man is not today the man of perdition: he will not become the man of perdition until he is possessed by the Adversary on day 220 of the Affliction. This man will turn against God when his son, a firstborn, is slain on the Second Passover because this man is today trying to do what he believes is right in a manner similar to Adam trying to do right what Adam believed was right when Adam told Eve not to even touch the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The man of perdition will be a human being, an Arian Christian, who is possessed by the Adversary 220 days after the Second Passover liberation of Israel—and the son he loves is not of his loins.
If the Second Passover occurs this year—and this year is a likely year—then day 220 of the Affliction will be Christmas day, Sunday, December 25th, and Christendom will mingle the Sacred [Christ] with the profane [the day of the invincible sun; the birthday of the invincible sun] that will be advertized as a double witness [two witnesses] and Christendom will rebel against God as the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran rebelled against God (Num chap 14). This rebellion will be led by the man of perdition, for whom Christmas is an exceedingly special holiday.
Except for Joshua and Caleb, none of the men of Israel numbered in the census of the second year entered into God’s rest. All perished in the wilderness. And this will be the case with Christendom: except for a heavenly Joshua [in Greek, [0F@Ø — Jesus, from Acts 7:45] and a heavenly Caleb [who was of Esau], all Christians will perish either physically or spiritually during the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years.
Why should Christians perish in Gehenna when all they have to do is believe God, with this belief manifested in Christians by the Christian outwardly keeping the commandments, especially the Sabbath commandment? Why die the second death when living forever is simply a matter of believing God unto physical death? What is it that is so important about continuing physical life certain to end when Christ Jesus returns as the Messiah that would cause the Christian to trade salvation for a bowl of lentils?
· The Valley of the Son of Hinnom—in Greek, Gehenna—is where Israel burned its firstborns as a sacrifice to the Lord.
· The lake of fire—spiritually, Gehenna—is where angels will burn the firstborn of the Lord as a sacrifice when the temple of the Lord is dedicated;
· When born of God, Christians who refuse to believe God unto obedience will be sacrificed as spiritual livestock when judgments are revealed;
· At the dedication of the first temple of God, Solomon sacrificed 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep (2 Chron 7:5) … in comparison to the size and glory of the first temple in relationship to the Bride of Christ, an equally large number of Christians will be sacrificed in Gehenna as Solomon sacrificed livestock in Jerusalem when the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house (v. 2).
Gehennais the place where firstborns of Israel are sacrificed, not as sacrifices intended by the Lord but as sacrifices demanded by the people … the people of Israel [Christians] sacrifice the firstborn son of God that is within them in Gehenna when they choose to transgress the commandments of the Lord because of their unbelief. It was never the Lord’s intent that any firstborn son of God perish in idolatrous flames, but the people “voted” for democratic governance and determined for themselves which commandments of God they would keep and which they would reject just as the people of ancient Israel determined for themselves how they would consecrate their firstborns that the Lord had commanded them to consecrate, thus sacrificing the very children the Lord identified as His own.
From the day it was built until it was razed by the Chaldeans, Jerusalem aroused the anger of the Lord because of the evil the children of Israel did in the city and at its edge, the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, where the children of Israel built high places for Baal and offered up their sons and daughters—the first to open the womb—to Molech although initially the Lord did not command them to do this abomination (Jer 32:35). But (and here is a principle central to understanding Scripture) because the children of Israel would not consecrate to the Lord all firstborn, something the Lord did command Israel to do (Ex 13:2), but instead offered their firstborns to Molech, the Lord added to what he told the children of Israel concerning their firstborn.
What the Lord initially said to Israel was,
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.” (Lev 20:1–5)
In the beginning, it was not God’s intention that any Christian be lost; it was not the Lord’s intention that the children of Israel sacrifice its firstborns to Molech. But because of the evil committed in Jerusalem from the king down, concerning the children of Israel the Lord told Ezekiel,
Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they had not obeyed my rules, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers' idols. Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am the Lord. (Ezek 20:23–26 emphasis added)
The statutes that were not good and rules by which the children of Israel could not have life were NOT the commandments of God, but were added to what the Lord initially told Israel as the sacrifices were added after Israel rebelled against the Lord in the wilderness. But those things that were added were merely shadows of the good things to come. However, in what was added there was a reminder of sin every year (Heb 10:3). And it is for this reason, because of the children of Israel’s sin of which they needed a continual reminder, that the Lord commanded Israel to burn its firstborns, thereby codifying Israel’s unbelief in an unforgettable way so that the children of Israel might know the Lord.
Again, it wasn’t the intention of the Lord that any son of God, born from receiving the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø], should be lost to the lake of fire; it wasn’t the intention of the Lord that the men of Israel numbered in the census of the second year not enter the Promised Land. But because of Israel’s unbelief that was manifested when the twelve witnesses returned from spying out the land of Canaan, an addition was made to what the Lord initially told Israel: that addition was the preclusion of the men numbered in the census, except for Joshua and Caleb (Num 14:20–24), entering into God’s rest (from Ps 95:10–11).
An earlier addition was made to the word of the Lord; for the Lord at Sinai when speaking to Moses (Ex 20:1–17) and before did not give to Israel commands about sacrificing sheep and goats beyond redeeming firstborns, with the Passover sacrifice being the ultimate expression of physical redemption. It was when the people of Israel could not bear hearing the voice of the Lord, and told Moses that he should speak to them that he was not let the Lord speak directly to them (Ex 20:19) that the sacrifice of livestock becomes the dark shadow of a heavenly reality. Through the sacrifice of livestock was how the Lord spoke indirectly to the people of Israel, with additional speech coming through giving rain or withholding rain in its due season (Deut 11;13–17). No prophets were to be needed. When the children of Israel did wrong, they would acknowledge that wrong through their sin offering, thereby speaking to the Lord through the works of their hands and the wealth they possessed. And the Lord would answer back by giving the children of Israel the rain that they needed and the peace and safety that they needed to live long lives in the land promised to Abraham.
Dialogue between the children of Israel and the Lord throughout the days of the Judges was through, on the Lord’s part, weather and peace/protection, and on the children of Israel’s part, through sacrifices; for Moses was no longer physically there to serve as Israel’s intercessor. Moses was only present through his writings, the Torah, which Israel was to believe.
In moving from the outwardly circumcised nation of Israel to the nation circumcised of heart, Israel’s rebellion against the Lord comes through mingling the sacred with the profane in that order, which will have Israel (the nation circumcised of heart) attempting to add Christ to the things/beliefs of this world as in calling the day Mithraism celebrated as the birthday of the sun the birthday of Christ Jesus … Israel cannot insert the world [the profane] into the things of God [the sacred]; for those things of the world are shadows and types of the things of God. Attempt to enter, if you are foolish enough to try, your shadow into yourself. If there is any light present, your shadow will remain outside yourself. Only in total darkness do you not cast a shadow that is outside yourself; for only light casts no shadow of itself. Therefore, a shadow cannot be mingled with what casts the shadow.
Likewise, no one can insert the things of this world into the light that is God. All anyone can do is mingle the sacred with the profane as in Sunday worship and Christmas observance, with this unbelief of God causing the Lord to send a strong delusion over rebelling Christians when the man of perdition is revealed on day 220 of the Affliction.
· What the Lord did not initially tell Israel to do—what didn’t even come into the Lord’s mind—the Lord ended up commanding Israel to do so that He might destroy the people so that they would know that He was Lord …
· To human logic, the preceding doesn’t make sense—
· It is unimaginable that the Lord would use a people’s own evil ways against the people to destroy them;
· But would a people destroyed know that the Lord is God: how would, in the midst of destruction, a people come to know the Lord?
And to answer the above question, a Christian need look no farther than Jerusalem’s kings:
· Ahaz, who did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, was the son of Jotham who did what was right (2 Chron 27:2), but the people continued their corrupt practices;
· Jotham did not enter the temple of God to burn incense has his father Uzziah had, becoming a leper on the day when he burned incense (2 Chron 26:16–21);
· Uzziah, who did right in the eyes of the Lord until he was strong (2 Chron 26:4, 15), was the son of Amaziah who did right but not with a whole heart (2 Chron 25:2) for after striking down the Edomites, he set up their gods and worshipped them (v. 14).
In the kings that initially did right in the sight of the Lord, none turned the children of Israel from their wicked ways, but Ahaz, who burned his firstborn sons in Gehenna had a son who obeyed the Lord, King Hezekiah:
Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel. For the king and his princes and all the assembly in Jerusalem had taken counsel to keep the Passover in the second month—for they could not keep it at that time because the priests had not consecrated themselves in sufficient number, nor had the people assembled in Jerusalem—and the plan seemed right to the king and all the assembly. So they decreed to make a proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, that the people should come and keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel, at Jerusalem, for they had not kept it as often as prescribed. (2 Chron 30:1–5 emphasis added)
And walk for a moment in Hezekiah’s steps: he was king because his father, Ahaz, had sacrificed in fire his older brother at infancy. What would that do to your perception of evil? Would it not make you recoil from those things that your father did … forty years ago, I saw a political carton about two hippy parents, long hair and grubby, beads and T-shirts with embossed peace symbols, both smoking joints, looking down that their son dressed in a Cub Scout uniform and saying, in caption, What is this generation coming to? And the truth embedded in the carton is obvious: in spiritual Babylon, the younger generation will rebel against the mores of its parents. The Adversary uses his broadcast of rebellion to drive succeeding generations farther and farther away from belief of God, but these rebels usually do not realize they are rebelling: they are merely seeking truth.
The king who would burn his firstborn in Gehenna will rear a son who won’t. Yet the king who obeys God will see his sons rebel against God:
Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down, and he erected altars to the Baals, and made Asherahs, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem shall my name be forever.” And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his sons as an offering in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and used fortune-telling and omens and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. And the carved image of the idol that he had made he set in the house of God, of which God said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever, and I will no more remove the foot of Israel from the land that I appointed for your fathers, if only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them, all the law, the statutes, and the rules given through Moses.” Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel. (2 Chron 33:1–9 emphasis added)
Manasseh’s story would be an unremarkable story of evil except to two things: (1) the Lord’s anger against Israel would not be turned away from the nation because of the “provocations with which Manasseh had provoked” Him (2 Kings 23:26), and (2), Manasseh repented and returned to the Lord:
The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention. Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon. And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. / Afterward he built an outer wall for the city of David west of Gihon, in the valley, and for the entrance into the Fish Gate, and carried it around Ophel, and raised it to a very great height. He also put commanders of the army in all the fortified cities in Judah. And he took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord, and all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside of the city. He also restored the altar of the Lord and offered on it sacrifices of peace offerings and of thanksgiving, and he commanded Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel. Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed at the high places, but only to the Lord their God. (2 Chron 33:10–17 emphasis added)
For Christians, the portion of the account that has been left out is perhaps the most important part of the historical record, dug from the earth by archeologists: this portion is the inscriptions found on various items being dedicated to YHWH and Asherah, His consort, the Mother of God. For in Manasseh repenting and doing what was right, Manasseh did not teach the people to worship no other God but the Lord alone, and to worship the Lord only in the house of the Lord.
Again, how would Ahaz making offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom via burning his sons as an offering cause Israel to know the Lord? That is what happened; for Hezekiah was Ahaz’s son although Hezekiah would not have been Ahaz’s firstborn son. That son via Abi would have been burned as a sacrifice to Molech in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. And this also happened in the case of Josiah, whose father Amon did all that his father Manasseh did before Manasseh was taken captive by the Assyrians, turned to God while a captive, and mended his ways:
So Manasseh slept with his fathers, and they buried him in his house, and Amon his son reigned in his place. / Amon was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years in Jerusalem. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as Manasseh his father had done. Amon sacrificed to all the images that Manasseh his father had made, and served them. And he did not humble himself before the Lord, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself, but this Amon incurred guilt more and more. And his servants conspired against him and put him to death in his house. But the people of the land struck down all those who had conspired against King Amon. And the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his place. (2 Chron 33:20–25)
The righteousness of Josiah comes from the same source as the righteousness of Hezekiah:
In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam, the secretary, to the house of the Lord, saying, “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may count the money that has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold have collected from the people. And let it be given into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord, and let them give it to the workmen who are at the house of the Lord, repairing the house. … And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord.” And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. And Shaphan the secretary came to the king, and reported to the king, “Your servants have emptied out the money that was found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord.” Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it before the king. / When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes. (2 Kings 22:3–5, 8–11)
And the king commanded all the people, “Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.” For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem. (2 Kings 23:21–23)
The above discloses a revelation concerning the Christian Church: when liberated from indwelling Sin and Death at the Second Passover, the greater Christian Church will rebel against God as Ahaz did, as Manasseh did, as Amon did, as the people of Israel did in the wilderness of Paran—and because of greater Christendom’s rebellion against God on day 220 of the Affliction, the third part of humankind (none of whom are today Christians) will believe God and will by faith keep His commandments that are written on hearts and placed within this third part so that they say, The Lord is my God (Zech 13:9). This third part will be born of God and born filled-with and empowered by the breath of God when the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@< — breath holy] is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) when the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18) on the doubled day 1260 of the seven endtime years.
From the Adversary’s broadcast of rebellion that ends when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man—from the Adversary’s broadcast of rebellion comes the rebellion of the third part of humankind against the Christianity of the man of perdition. Hence, when the Adversary is cast into time and cast down to the earth and comes claiming to be the Messiah (comes claiming to be the promised anointed one represented by the cross), the third part of humankind will be preconditioned by the Adversary to rebel against the cross, the representation of Death, the fourth horseman (Rev 6:7–8) and the fourth beast of Daniel chapter seven, the beast dealt a mortal wound and who had his body taken and burned (cf. Dan 7:11–12; Rev 13:1–4). Christ Jesus will use the Adversary’s preconditioning of the third part of humankind against the Adversary throughout the Endurance, the last 1260 days before He returns at the Second Advent.
Now, returning to Manasseh: as Egypt metaphorically represents Sin, Assyria metaphorically represents Death. Thus, Manasseh, when in the midst of his idolatry, was taken captive by the commanders of Assyria; i.e., by the metaphorical representatives of Death. And there, when a captive to death, Manasseh prayed to God, received mercy, and returned to Jerusalem to undo his worship of foreign gods and idols in the house of the Lord. Manasseh did as king what Jonah did as prophet, in that both fled from the Lord, repented while alive in death, and then returned to do the will of the Lord.
Yes, the kings that reigned in Jerusalem form the shadow and copy of those who have reigned over heavenly Jerusalem. Both the idolatrous kings of Judah and the believing kings of Judah, notably Hezekiah and Josiah, serve as metaphors for those religious leaders who have exercised dominion over the ¦6680F\". … The sons of Josiah turned their backs on the Lord as Christians have turned their backs to the Father and the Son. So the Lord, following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, will do to Christians what is seen darkly in the shadow of Christendom, the ancient people of Israel: when His people turn from righteousness as Manasseh turned from unrighteousness, the Lord will cause the Christian to burn in Gehenna the indwelling firstborn son of God. And as the sons of Ahaz perished, with righteous Hezekiah coming from the wickedness of his father, and as the sons of Manasseh perished before Manasseh repented and did what was right, and as the sons of Amon perished before Josiah was born of Jedidah and did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and as the sons of Josiah did not do what was right, an alternating of generations is seen: wickedness producing in the next generation righteousness that repentance [as seen in Manasseh] could not produce in the next generation.
It wasn’t Ahaz’s or Amon’s wickedness that provoked the wrath of the Lord to such an extent that the people were to be destroyed, but the wickedness of Manasseh who repented and turned from his wicked ways … why Manasseh and not Ahaz or Amon? And the answer is found in Manasseh’s repentance which, again, can be likened to Jonah’s repentance: when Jonah delivered the message of the Lord that had been entrusted to him, the men of Nineveh repented. But when Manasseh took away the foreign gods he had installed in the house of the Lord, and when Manasseh tore down the altars he had built in Jerusalem and threw them outside the city—when he threw them into the Valley of the Son of Hinnom—the people of Israel did not repent, but continued to sacrifice at the high places although they sacrificed at these high placed only to the Lord, an even greater abomination than that which Manasseh did before he was taken to Assyria.
Manasseh’s repentance saw a national mingling of the sacred with the profane that can be compared to the Lord’s complaint again six of the seven named endtime churches:
· To be lukewarm is to mingle hot with cold until both are tepid and spewed from the mouth of the Lord (Rev 3:15–16);
· To have a reputation for being alive when dead is to mingle life with death and thereby die (Rev 3:1–2);
· To tolerate that woman at whose table the priests who worship Asherah, the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin, ate is to mingle YHWH with Asherah as was done in the days of the ancient kings of Jerusalem (Rev 2:20–23);
· To hold the teaching of Balaam and to exercise heavy handed rule over the holy ones is to mingle the paganism of this world with the worship of God (Rev 2:14–15);
· To have no works but only tribulation and poverty and slander is to mingle idleness with the Gospel (Rev 2:9);
· To initially do a great work for God, then to abandon the work is to mingle belief with unbelief in an unholy alliance (Rev 2:4–5).
The people of God, when liberated from indwelling Sin and Death, will repent of their wicked ways as Manasseh repented only after he was taken captive by the commanders of Assyria. If the people of God would repent before they are liberated from indwelling Sin and Death they would be as Hezekiah and Josiah—and their offspring, greater Christendom after the Second Passover, would be as their successors were, meaning that the third part of humankind would rebel against the Lord in the Endurance, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years. It is only when greater Christendom is as Manasseh was that a spiritual Josiah will come from the third part of humanity in the Endurance.
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The King James Version of the Holy Bible is the only English translation that translates Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna as “hell”: most modern translations use “hell” for only Gehenna. And the Christian concept of “hell” is dependent upon whether the translators maintain the distinction in both Greek and Hebrew between Hades and Gehenna, where Hades will be thrown following the great White Throne Judgment (Rev 20:14). And again, what is seen is a translation imprisoning a people in Death itself so that the authority of the church as an institution can be maintained.
According to the lying vulgar Church, every person is born with indwelling eternal life that is doomed to burn forever in the fires of hell, a real place, where the flames are hot but not quite hot enough to consume the person’s immortal soul: RLP¬— psuche, the person’s shallow breath as opposed to B<,Ø:" — pneuma, a person’s deep breath that appears in Holy Writ as a type of the breath of God, B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø. Thus, the primary claim imbedded in the word hell is anti-logical; for a person’s shallow breath is lost at death. Immortality [indwelling eternal life] negates death, with this negation coming to a person through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the indwelling breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø] …
It is from Medieval Judaism that the Sabbatarian churches of God retrieve—as if the dogma were a long buried bone—their claim that Gehenna was the location of a burning rubbish heap south of Jerusalem that continually burned up the garbage of the city: the dogma comes from rabbi David Kimhi’s explication (ca 1200 CE) of Psalm 27:13. Kimhi held that in Gehenna were perpetual fires that reduced the rubbish of the city, including cadavers, into ashes. But this claim is not true, or at least not true according to Scripture and the best archeological evidence available. Therefore, the claim should be abandoned, and everything that the splintered Sabbatarian churches of God teach and have taught about Gehenna rethought; for it is in Gehenna—the New Testament’s lake of fire—where the firstborn of God pass through fire, with those to whom Christ Jesus has given eternal life (see John 5:21) through the fleshly body of the person having put on immortality not being touched by the flames, but being spiritually as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were physically when King Nebuchadnezzar caused them to be thrown into the furnace (Dan chap 3).
According to Jesus, Gehenna is the opposite of life—the second death is the opposite of receipt of a second breath of life. One death is adequate to end life received from one breath, that given to the first Adam and passed along through his descendants. Thus, to die in a second death requires that the person first receive a second breath of life, the breath of the last Adam.
Before disciples received a second breath of life through Jesus breathing on ten of His disciples and saying, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@< — breath holy]’” (John 20:22), Jesus assigned to His disciples only breath of life attributes of the second breath of life they were sure to receive:
What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body [Fä:"] but cannot kill the soul [RLP¬<]. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul [RLP¬<] and body [Fä:"] in hell [(,X<<® — gehenna]. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. (Matt 10:27–33 emphasis added)
What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops—again, there is the juxtaposition, dark before light, whispered before proclaimed; death before life, evil before good, RLP¬ [natural breath] before B<,Ø:" [heavenly breath]. So when Jesus sent His disciples out before they had indwelling heavenly breath—eternal life—within them, Jesus used the disciples’ natural breath as the shadow and type of heavenly breath as He used sparrows as a shadow and type of indwelling natural life, coming from the breath that the person breathes in through his or her nostrils.
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The Christian Church has long used hell as its principle tool for compelling good behavior from Christians; using hell to frighten Christians into supporting the Church as an institution able to keep the Christian out of unquenchable fiery flames to which every person through unwitting birth has been condemned. As such greater Christendom added hell to Holy Writ as Adam added, Touch, to the words he received from the Lord. But further discussion of this addition and how it has been used remains for the Fifth Part of this now long End Note, which will be continued.
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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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