March 22, 2011 © Homer Kizer

To view or print Greek and Hebrew characters

 

 

End Notes

Truth Always has an Agenda

Part Five

____________

 

Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?” When Moses heard it, he fell on his face, and he said to Korah and all his company, “In the morning the Lord will show who is his, and who is holy, and will bring him near to him. … / Be present, you and all your company, before the Lord, you and they, and Aaron, tomorrow. And let every one of you take his censer and put incense on it, and every one of you bring before the Lord his censer, 250 censers; you also, and Aaron, each his censer.” So every man took his censer and put fire in them and laid incense on them and stood at the entrance of the tent of meeting with Moses and Aaron. Then Korah assembled all the congregation against them at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And the glory of the Lord appeared to all the congregation. / And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.” And they fell on their faces and said, “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and will you be angry with all the congregation?” And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Say to the congregation, Get away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.” / Then Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. And he spoke to the congregation, saying, “Depart, please, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest you be swept away with all their sins.” So they got away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents, together with their wives, their sons, and their little ones. And Moses said, “Hereby you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, and that it has not been of my own accord. If these men die as all men die, or if they are visited by the fate of all mankind, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord.” / And as soon as he had finished speaking all these words, the ground under them split apart. And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the people who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. And all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, “Lest the earth swallow us up!” And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men offering the incense. (Num 16:1–5, 16–35 emphasis added)

___________

 

8.

Sheol and Hades as the grave

Korah and his household fell into a schism that opened suddenly in the crust of the earth, a schism like those that opened in the Japanese earthquake and like those that opened in the city of Anchorage in Alaska’s 1964 earthquake. Death did not come to Korah and those of his household as it came to the old men of Israel in Egypt. Korah did not need to first lose his life, his breath, before he was buried in the grave, Sheol. He was buried alive by the Lord, not by other men. And from the perspective of the ancients in the Near and Middle East, the thing that determined whether a people were “humans” or whether they were beasts was whether the people buried their dead. Hence, burial after death was extremely important. Burial before death was a new thing, not something expected. But burial before death serves as a type and shadow of what burial would mean to someone with indwelling eternal life. A living entity would be trapped in the grave.

Death came to Korah in a manner analogous to how death came to Pharaoh and his army via the standing waters of the Sea of Reeds—

Moses records,

At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up;

the floods stood up in a heap;

the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.

 The enemy said, “I will pursue, I will overtake,

I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them.

I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.”

You blew with your wind; the sea covered them;

they sank like lead in the mighty waters.

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness,

awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?

You stretched out your right hand;

the earth swallowed them. (Ex 15:8–12 emphasis added)

The earth did not swallow Pharaoh and his army; the Sea of Reeds did. However, what Moses writes is prophetic and pertains to a later Pharaoh, the spiritual king of Babylon (from Isa 14:4), the Adversary who presently rules this world:

And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. … The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. (Rev 12:13, 15–16 emphasis added)

And,

Behold, a day is coming for the Lord, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal. (Zech 14:1–5 emphasis added)

And Daniel tells King Nebuchadnezzar,

You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. … And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”(Dan 2:31–35, 44–45 emphasis added)

The Mount of Olives is a granite monolith (one piece of stone), and when the Mouth of Olives is cleaved in two so that one portion moves northward and one portion moves southward, it will be a stone cut but not by human hands: it will be the stone that represents the kingdom of God that Christ Jesus sets up when dominion is taken from the four kings and the little horn and given to the Son of Man. … There will not be many stones cut not by human hands that crushes the feet of the humanoid image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision, thereby toppling this image and swallowing its armies when this stone comes back together as the Sea of Reeds swallowed Pharaoh and his armies, and as the earth swallowed Korah and the men close to him. There will only be one such stone for there is only one Son of Man, Head and Body, as there was only one Moses and Aaron when Korah rebelled, demanding democratic governance which is anathema to God; which is the root cause of the Adversary’s rebellion against God.

The above is correct: democratic governance whether in true democracies or in representative republics is of the Adversary, with what Korah told Moses being a pure expression of republican principles that will have a people’s leader subjected to the will of the people … God is not under the rule of the people. With God, all forms of democracy is rebellion against Him. And the man of perdition is the leading advocate for representational democracy in the United States and by extension, in the world. He will, when possessed by the Adversary, speak the Adversary’s words about the virtue of the United States of America’s Constitution, a document that is not of God but is the best expression of the Adversary’s governing principles the world has ever known.

There is a reason why the Radical Reformers of the 16th-Century spurned any involvement in worldly governance: they simply were not going to become partners with the Adversary in any joint-adventure. They were going to proclaim the kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God alone; yet their descendants did not continue their advancement of the Kingdom of God, but have become the quiet folk, gentle but defiled by their carnality.

The earth will metaphorically swallow the Adversary, the heavenly king of Babylon (from Isa 14:4), when Satan and his angels are cast from heaven and cast to earth (Rev 12:7–10), thereby being cast into time, the Abyss from which there is no escape. Satan and his angels will be suddenly dropped into the creation as the earth swallowed Korah, with Korah being swallowed alive by the fissure that opened under his feet.

The authorities of this world—the democracies and republics that have emerged since the death of divine-right kingdoms—are as Korah was, and all of them, without exception, with the United States of America leading the list, will be utterly smashed when heavenly Babylon falls and dominion is taken from the four demonic kings and given to the Son of Man. They will be swallowed by the earth as Korah was swallowed and as Pharaoh was swallowed by the cleaved walls of the Sea of Reeds. And this is the M.O. [modus operandi — Latin for “mode of operating”] of God: this is how He takes care of unbelief that manifests itself as rebellion.

I should no more need to say what M.O. represents than I should have to identify Shakespeare, but the people of God have been destroyed by their lack of education, and worse, by the falsity that passes as truth … again, the King James Version of Holy Writ translates Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna as “hell” which generations of preachers made into a real location, a place of eternal fiery torment, the weapon forged from fear to be used on Believers to extort from them good behavior. These pastors are and have been the servants of Satan the devil, disguised as ministers of righteousness (see 2 Cor 11:14–15), and their judgments have already been declared (Matt 7:21–23); for they are workers of iniquity that by using Jesus’ name have done great works in this world but have also worked hard to prevent any Christian from truly coming to God.

Human or physical death and burial afterwards represents falling into Sheol as Korah fell into Sheol. When this person has not yet received a second breath of life, the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(4@< breath holy], the person awaits resurrection in the great White Throne Judgment while knowing nothing, having no conscious thoughts, no awareness of the passage of time. About this person, Solomon wrote, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing” (Eccl 9:5). Hence, this person is not like the Adversary, who when cast into time, will be alive and will be given the mind of a man and will fear what is certain to befall him [and from the perspective of heaven, has befallen him]. Prior to a human person being born of God as a son, if death befalls the person this person’s next conscious thought will be when the person appears before the great White Throne to be judged for those things the person did or didn’t do while a physically living person here on earth. The person does not go to an ever burning hell, but sleeps in the dust of this earth, awaiting resurrection and an accounting for every word the person has spoken. And according to the Apostle Paul,

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:12–16 emphasis added)

When the person who has not been born of God as a son—the person without the Law—does those things that the Law requires concerning loving neighbor and brother, the person demonstrates belief in God that the person, when resurrected in the great White Throne Judgment, probably didn’t know that he or she had. This person is honorable, a vessel worthy of glory. Although this person will not be one of the firstfruits, this person will be in the kingdom of God.

But when a person has been born of God, which no one was prior to when the breath of the Father [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the form of a visible dove lit and remained on the man Jesus (Matt 3:16), and when this person dies while in rebellion against God—while not believing the Father and the Son—this person will go into the grave while spiritually alive and will be in the grave as that old dragon, Satan the devil, will be when he is cast from heaven. This person awaits resurrection—awaits death puking the person forth—with fearful anticipation; for when resurrected, this person will be cast alive into the lake of fire.

Because there is no love in allowing a son of God to writhe in the grave, consciously aware that the person is not in heaven but awaits resurrection to condemnation; because there is no love in creating fear in another, God, up until this time, has not given a second breath of life to any that He has not predestined to be conformed to the image and likeness of Christ Jesus, meaning that all who have truly been born were foreknown and justified before they were called by Christ Jesus. However, all of this changes with the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart; for at the Second Passover, God will give to every self-identified Christian His breath without measure, thereby liberating the Christian from indwelling Sin and Death as the Lord liberated outwardly circumcised Israel from physical slavery to a human king in the land of Egypt, the land representing Sin, the king of the South.

Today, there are too many Christians who claim to be born again, or claim to be born of God, or claim to have received the Holy Spirit to address individual cases: it is sufficient to say that any Christian who has not walked as Jesus walked; any Christian who willfully transgresses the commandments; any Christian who keeps on sinning [transgressing the commandments] when fault is brought to the Christian’s attention is not of God and does not have indwelling eternal life, but is of the Adversary (see 1 John 3:4–10). Most of these unbelieving Christians have never tasted the goodness of God, but the ones who have tasted will never again taste the goodness of God … to taste the goodness of God is to receive the indwelling of the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4F@Ø] when the last Elijah figuratively administers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the Christian as the first Elijah laid over the dead son of the widow of Zarephath. To taste the goodness of God does not necessarily mean to be born of the breath of God as a son of God. Yes, a son of God will have tasted the goodness of God but will have also received more than the earnest of indwelling eternal life, thus making the inner self alive. The inner self truly born of God will be alive as a predestined and called and justified son of God that only awaits being glorified when judgments are revealed so that this son of God does not precede other sons of God into glory; this son of God shall be numbered among the sons that sleep under the altar, having already been given a white robe representing the glory that this son shall receive when awakened (Rev 6:11). So from the perspective of God, this son by receiving a white robe has already been glorified, which is what Paul references in his language usage in Roman 8:29–30.

The above is of primal importance: out of love for human beings, the last Elijah, Christ Jesus, did not cause those who tasted the goodness of God to be born of God, but rather, He caused Christians to receive indwelling eternal life as a human person receives the breath of another when the other person administers mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the human person. Hence when this human person ceases to believe God, the last Elijah ceases to administer heavenly mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the human person and he or she dies spiritually to never live again. But because this Christian dies spiritually through the loss of the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] in the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø], this person goes into the grave without conscious awareness, but enters the earth in a state like that of the person who has never tasted the goodness of God. However, this Christian will be resurrected with the firstfruits, and will be resurrected to condemnation (see John 5:28–29), whereas the person who never tasted the goodness of God will be resurrected in the great White Throne Judgment.

Those human persons who received a second breath of life and were born of God as sons—when their physical bodies perish for whatever reason, their inner selves that are sons of God sleep under the altar in heaven (again, Rev 9–11) until Christ Jesus returns after the fullness of their fellow servants who are to be killed as they were is completed during the Affliction and the Endurance. And as a human person sleeps with little awareness of the passing of night, predestined and foreknown sons of God have slept under the altar since the 1st-Century CE, with some having joined them in the 16th-Century and with many to join them in the 21st-Century.

Again, because the holy ones that sleep under the altar have been given white robes, they have been glorified even if their receipt of glorified bodies will not occur until the Second Advent. With God there is no passage of time: the saint who will receive a glorified body has already received a glorified body, which is what Paul wrote:

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us [JÎ< DD"$ä<" J@ØB<,b:"J@Hthe earnest of the spirit]. (2 Cor 5:1–5)

Earnest money paid to show that a person intends to follow through with the purchase of a piece of real property is real money, but earnest money is given with strings attached, usually one that says the purchase is conditioned upon the purchaser being able to secure financing. Likewise, the earnest of the breath of God is given with the condition that the one receiving this taste of the goodness of God walks as Christ Jesus walked. If the person does, the transaction is confirmed: the person will be glorified, with receipt of white robes representing the acceptance of the person as a son of God.

Those Christians who left Paul and walked as enemies of Christ, even though they tasted the goodness of God, have their end guaranteed: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Phil 3:19). They do not receive white robes; nor do they sleep under the altar. Rather, they lost indwelling eternal life, and they sleep in the dust of the earth, awaiting resurrection to destruction when the heavenly temple of God is dedicated.

There is no love in God giving to a rebellious Christian indwelling heavenly life that will cause this rebelling son of God to wait in fearful anxiousness for the day and the hour when the rebel will be cast into the lake of fire; yet this is what has befallen rebelling angels enchained in outer darkness [imprisoned in the creation]. Concerning demons, Jesus said,

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation. (Matt 12:43–45)

And when confronted by a demon possessed man, Jesus commanded the demons to leave:

And when [He] had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” For He was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” So He gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea. (Mark 5:2–13)

Apparently demons have no rest in sleep or in death when they have been cast into the creation: they are tormented by being in darkness, alive and unable to escape. They are as stars that have been caught and trapped in cosmic black holes: they crossed an event-horizon from where there was no time into space-time which seems to be a torment for them, with time tearing them apart as gravity in a cosmic black hole tears apart everything trapped within it. For demons know there will be a day when judgment is executed, when their execution will occur … again, as a star trapped in a cosmic black hole will be torn apart as one side of it is pulled faster into the Abyss than its other side, a demon cast into the creation will be destroyed when this creation passes away as a cosmic black hole will eventually erupt in a burst of light. The demon will then be no more forever, and this the demon knows. What the demon doesn’t know is how long it has before its end comes; thus every day only delays the inevitable, adding to the demon’s anticipation of what is certain to come—unless glorified saints grant to the demon a reprieve. For there would be no point in judging angels already condemned to death unless some possibility exists for the angel to escape execution. And there is no reason to judge angels that have always believed God: there is no basis for condemnation.

Glorified saints will judge angels as an appellate court confirms or overturns the sentences of the trial court. In this case, every rebelling angel has been sentenced to death regardless of why the angel ceased to believe God. Glorified saints, having lived under the Adversary’s rule and having overcome the Adversary, will be uniquely qualified to review circumstances that led to disbelief and to determine if fruit worthy of mercy has been brought forth by the condemned angel, with what that fruit is being determined after the fact. There is no specific, codified description of fruit worthy of mercy. If there were, a discernable bar would exist … without a bar, without a benchmark other than belief of God manifested in deeds, fruit worthy of mercy becomes individual and undefined until after the fact, when judgments are made. And anything short of manifested belief of God will confirm the angel’s sentence to death; for after rebellion, it will be exceedingly difficult though not impossible to return to belief if God permits that return. Apparently He will, the reason that saints will judge angels.

God loves His human sons. How much more does He love angelic sons, each of whom He brought to life?

If a rebelling angel when not possessing a living creature passes through waterless places seeking rest but finding none, the angel is truly tormented—torn apart—by the passage of time as gravity inside a black hole tears all things apart: this is a concept difficult to initially imagine, but why doesn’t a human person live to be a thousand years of age? Is the person not torn apart by time? Is physical death not a tearing apart? And here is where prophetic understanding comes into play: Daniel writes, concerning the vision he had in the first year of Belshazzar, “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns” (7:7 emphasis added). I have made the case elsewhere so I will only assert here, this fourth king is the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse:

When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. (Rev 6:7–8)

A fair description of what happens to a star that is trapped in a cosmic black hole is to be devoured and broken in pieces with what’s left being stamped … from the death of a star comes a cosmic black hole that grows larger as it gobbles up still living stars—and we have returned to what the Lord told Abram, Your seed shall be as stars, and Abram believed the Lord and had his belief counted to him as righteousness (Gen 15:5–6).

A cosmic black hole devours living stars as the Adversary dragged down “a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth” (Rev 12:4), and as the earth opened up to swallow Korah in a death like that which the Adversary will experience when Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:14); for the lake of fire is the second death. The Adversary’s first death came when he was cast into the creation, crossing the event-horizon that separates this world from heaven.

It is at the event-horizon of a cosmic black hole where time stands still: when the velocity of light is insufficient to escape the gravity of a singularity, time stops, the means by which the visible things of this world reveals the creation of all that has been made from within the creation. But prior to the end of the age and its explosion of scientific measurements and observations, there was a means through which the passage of time could be slowed …

For Korah, when falling into the schism, time would have seemed to stand still; for human perception of the passage of time is dependant upon the stresses under which the person finds him or herself. When stress levels are low, time passes very quickly, but when stress levels are high, time passes very slowly. When in traumatic events such as automobile accidents, the passage of time seems not to occur, a subject about which I can speak: on 30 October 1984, I was involved in a head-on accident with a Peterbuilt, an 18-wheeler. I was driving a 1975 four-wheel-drive Chevy Suburban. Both vehicles were traveling about 35 mph. But the last six feet before impact seemed to take ten minutes or more to occur. My vehicle seemed to move at an agonizing slow crawl, with the distance between the vehicles steadily deceasing but so slowly that it seemed that the accident ought to be avoidable. But I couldn’t turn away from the accident. All I could do was watch as the inevitable occurred … when Korah fell into the schism, all he could do was watch as time slowed to an imperceptible crawl. Likewise, once angels were cast into the creation, all they can do is watch as the end of the age and their end comes upon them as the frontend of that Peterbuilt came upon me.

God has spared those whom He has not predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ Jesus by not bringing them to birth as His sons; for when He fills every self-professed Christian with His breath, thereby bringing to birth a nation in a day (Isa 66:7–8), every Christian will have the Law of God [the Torah] written on hearts and placed in minds so that every Christian will know the Lord, leaving the Christian only to believe what he or she knows is right to be saved. This means that once the Christian knows the Lord, the Christian is under the obligation to endure to the end; for it is the Christian who endures to the end who shall be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22). The Christian who turns away from the Lord will be as rebelling angels were, and as Israel was in the wilderness of Paran (Num chap 14). This Christian, when judgments are revealed, will be cast into Gehenna as Korah fell into the schism that opened under his feet.

Sheol is the grave as Hades is the grave that follows Death. And usually, the dead bury the dead of themselves (Matt 8:22), but with the firstborn sons of God, those who rebel against God will go into death alive as rebelling angels were cast into the creation alive. The certainty of the second death awaits them.

The grave is not one location; is not a single geographic with earthly coordinates. The grave—the Hades that follows Death—is wherever the body of the person is buried; for all of the creation serves as a glorious death chamber, with the person’s life written on the event-horizon of creation as text in a holographic Book of Life. Thus, Sheol and Hades is not one real location other than everywhere in the creation: the problem Milton faced when writing Paradise Lost (i.e., the problem of getting hell outside of the creation, the apparent reason Milton returned to Ptolemaic astronomy when he knew of Copernicus’ observations) is an unsolvable problem for as long as the Christian accepts the false dogma that Hades and Sheol represent one location rather than being the grave that follows human death.

A dog might well sit next to another dog of its pack that has died, awaiting the return of movement in the dead dog. The dog might well stay beside its companion for days or even longer. But the dog doesn’t bury its companion. That alone—burial of the dead—is a human activity. And to prevent the burial of the dead is to deny the dead person’s humanity; is to declare that the dead person is a beast, an animal of the field, with the ancient Greek play Antigone exploring what happens when burial of the dead is prohibited. Thus, when the people of all tribes and languages seek to deny the humanity of the two witnesses by preventing their dead bodies from being buried for three and a half days, God will publicly demonstrate that they are of God and not of men by having breath return to them, breath that has come from God [B<,Ø:" .T­H¦6J@Ø 2,@Øbreath of life from God] (Rev 11:11). They never enter Sheol or Hades, thereby doing what even Jesus did not do. And while Jesus was accursed by hanging on the stake, the two witnesses will be accursed by being left unburied so that all people can gaze on their dead bodies … American funeral customs would have all Christians be as the two witnesses will be, their dead bodies unburied for three and a half days and thereby unwittingly accursed by friends and neighbors. A body should be buried the day upon which death overtook the person as was the case with Christ Jesus, whose body Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus buried before the sun set. The Roman practice of leaving crucified bodies unburied for days was a political statement about the denial of personhood to a crucified criminal.

___________________

 

When this End Note began, it wasn’t my intention to write a definitive piece about Hades, Sheol, and Gehenna: my intention was to address what Abram believed that was counted to him as righteousness, with this what’s being seen in stars, with stars trapped in cosmic black holes being as sons of God, human and angelic, that are trapped by the Adversary and dragged downward. Thus, deconstruction of American funeral practices, American dress, and American politics—all of which owe their definition to the Adversary and not to God—will be left to later writings. For now, I need to complete Sabbath Readings that are received by a larger audience than are End Notes.

 

*

"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."

* * * * *

Archived End Notes ] [ Home ]