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Essays for A Commentary — From the Margins A _____________________________ When
I began to reread prophecy and write what I was reading in 2002, I completed
the initial draft of A Philadelphia Apologetic
(APA) in two and a half months. By the fall of 2004, I knew that APA needed to be updated, and I began to
rewrite chapters, but I did not get far before I realized that enough
information was coming from typological exegesis that I needed to add to what I
had just written. However, the demands of writing for numerous websites
prevented me from returning to APA.
Those demands remain. Thus, to satisfy both the demands for new pieces on my
home website, and to finally return to APA,
I have opted to use the Commentaries
to produce the essays that will become chapters; so the serialized edition will
remain as it presently is until enough Commentaries
have been written for a new published edition. At that time, the serialized
chapters will be replaced by the published edition. * * * * * Chapter One Drafted _______________________ EVOLUTION— what
happens if, the
child asked, when
you're baptized they
hold you under too
long? Will
you become a fish? (asked
by my then seven year old daughter, Kristel – HK) ______________________ 1. Bruce Bawer, author of A Place at the Table and Stealing Jesus, was asked by a stranger
on the subway, ‘“Are you a Christian?”’ (1.1). He uses
the occasion to begin his focus on Protestant Christianity’s theft of
“Jesus,” the linguistic icon representing the only way to
salvation. But the Jesus stolen by
Protestants, legalistic and non-legalistic, bears small resemblance to the Son
of Man, who promised to love and to manifest Himself to the disciple who has
His commandments and who keeps them (John 14:21), two attributes that form the
realistic description of someone who is “a Christian,” as well as a
definition of Judaeo-Christian legalism. “To
have His commandments”—what does this mean? Under
the second covenant—a covenant not like the one made “on the day
when [the Lord] took [Israel] by the hand to bring them out of the land of
Egypt” (Heb 8:9), but one that has the laws of God put into the single
house of Israel’s minds and written on their hearts (v. 10)—the law is not far from Israel, but in the
disciple’s mouth and heart (Rom 10:8; cf.
Deu 30:11-14; Jer. 31:31-33). So to have His commandments would be to have the
law of God written on one’s heart and placed in one’s mind. This is
the description of spiritual circumcision (Deu 30:6), first promised under the
second covenant initially mediated by Moses (Deu 29:1), the covenant that was
not ratified by blood but by a song (Deu chap 32) and the covenant to which
better promises were added when its mediator became the glorified Christ Jesus.
Better promises cannot be added to that which has been abolished, and it was
the dividing wall of hostility that Jesus abolished on the cross, the law of
commandments and ordinances made with the flesh and that would have the flesh
circumcised (Eph 2:13-16). The flesh is not a heavenly thing, and covenants
made with the flesh [a “covenant” linguistically represents the
distance between “cuttings”] are necessarily ratified by blood as
shadows and copies of heavenly things (Heb 9:22-23). Thus, the second covenant
made on the plains of “To
have His commandments” is to have all that is written in the book of
Deuteronomy (Deu 30:9-10); for Jesus said to the Pharisees who did not keep the
law Moses gave them (John 7:19) that, ‘“If you believed Moses, you
would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings,
how will you believe my words”’ (John 5:46-47). Moses wrote of
Jesus in Deuteronomy (18:15-19). And it is in Deuteronomy where Moses wrote,
‘“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but
to fear the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord
your God with all your heart and all your [mind], and to keep the commandments
and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your
good’” (Deu 10:12-13). What
was the second attribute of the disciple to whom Jesus promised to love and to
manifest Himself? Keeping His commandments, correct? The Apostle John wrote,
“And by this we know that we have come to know [Jesus], if we keep his
commandments. Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his
commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his
word, in him truly the love of God is perfected” (1 John 23-5). John then
added one more thing: “By this we may be sure that we are in [Jesus]:
whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he
walked” (vv. 5-6). The man Jesus of Nazareth was an
Observant Jew, a prophet, and the first human being born of woman whose Father
was not descended from the first Adam; thus, He was the first male child born to
the human cultivar It is
not walking as Jesus walked that divides visible Christianity—the
“Christianity of the flesh”—from the faith of Jesus’
first disciples, all outwardly Observant Jews who had been inwardly circumcised
by Spirit. The Apostle Paul wrote, “For no one is a Jew who is merely one
outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly,
and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the
letter” (Rom 2:28-29). So it is not just Jesus who has been stolen, but The
theft of both Jesus and Israel occurred so long ago that a third
theft has been likewise overlooked: the claim of Islam is that the angel
Gabriel came to Mohammad because both Christianity and Judaism had strayed from
the truth of God, but Mohammad’s visions were not written down until
after the prophet’s death. The prince of this world, the dragon that has
deceived the whole world (Rev 12:9) by being as subtle as the serpent in the
garden, stole “truth” given the prophet, a claim that will be just
as hard for a Muslim to accept as it will be for a “Christian according
to the flesh” to accept that Jesus
was stolen or for today’s Observant Jew to accept that Israel was stolen. However, the prophet
Malachi wrote, ‘“Behold, I [YHWH]
will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord
comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts
of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of
utter destruction’” (4:5-6). When His disciples asked Jesus about
the Elijah to come, Jesus said, “‘Elijah does come, and he will
restore all things’” (Matt 17:11). John the Baptist was a type of
this Elijah to come, but only a type for John does not turn children’s
hearts to their fathers nor does John restore all things. Jesus is the one who
was not recognized by His people The
endtime Elijah will do the work of restoring all things through human beings to
whom He manifests Himself, or makes Himself known. And many will come claiming
to be used by Christ to restore all things and will lead many astray. Many will
come as false prophets, false apostles, false ministers, and these many will
convince the majority of the People of the Book to worship demons and the works
of their hands under the guise that such worship is serving God and is pleasing
to God. The
People of the Book are victims of a common thief, a murderer, an anointed
cherub in whom lawlessness was found and from whose belly fire comes to utterly
consume him (Ezek 28:18-19). This thief stole meaning from the Book and left a
third of humankind believing in the Book but unable to take God’s
intended meaning from it. But then, God knew that this would happen, the reason
why the prophet Malachi wrote of an endtime Elijah who would turn the hearts of
the children of God back to the Father, and the Father’s heart back to
His children. For it is through the patriarchs that the People of the Book are
divided, with these visible divisions forming shadows and copies of schisms
that have given to each “living” patriarch (Matt 22:32) as many
spiritual sons as each had physical sons, with Abraham’s offspring being
one, not many. For
Bruce Bawer, Christianity is primarily divided between “law” and
“love,” shorthand expressions for an overly simplistic analysis of
the corpse of Christ, that spiritually lifeless Body that was buried in
disbelief and disobedience centuries ago. Jesus told Simon Peter,
“‘And I tell you, you are Peter [AXJD@H], and
on this rock [BXJD‘] I
will build my church, and the gates of [Hades] shall not prevail against it’”
(Matt 16:18). The Apostle Paul [ Those
human beings who have the law and who keep it—those whom Jesus loves and
to whom Jesus manifests Himself, and those who in turn know and love Jesus by
keeping His commandments—collectively and individually form the Body of
Christ, and there will be no division in this Body … if this Body had
continued to live from the 1st-Century CE to the 21st-Century
CE, there would also be no need to restore all things. The need to restore or
to resurrect implies loss of what will be restored. The Elijah to come will
restore all things, meaning that all things have been lost. And where can be
found the undivided Body of Christ? Where is this Body? If all
things have been lost, what hasn’t been lost, a rhetorical question with
a self-evident answer? If the Body of Jesus is the collective of disciples who
inwardly have the law and who keep it outwardly [by the inside of the cup
ruling the outside of the cup], then if all things must be restored, the Body
of Jesus will be one of those things that is restored. Thus, no collective of
disciples who have the law and who keep it exists prior to when the endtime
restoration of all things begins. Is the
previous statement true? No collective of Christians exists who have been
spiritually circumcised and who keep the commandments prior to the restoration
of all things? The Sabbath commandment is the sign between God and Depending
upon which doctoral dissertation a scholar uses for support, the collective
fellowships of converted Jews and Greeks that constituted the “Jesus
Movement” in the 1st and 2nd Centuries began
observing Sunday within the apostolic era or during the reign of Emperor
Hadrian—and with the observance of Sunday came the outward cessation of
keeping the commandments of Christ. And to break the law in one point is to break
the law (Jas 2:10); the person is a lawbreaker. Thus, in the 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd Centuries to attempt to enter God’s rest on the 8th
day rather than the 7th day made the person a willful and willing
lawbreaker. This person committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which wrote
the laws of God on the heart and in the mind of the one who was spiritually
circumcised. The sins of this person will not be forgiven. And for the saving
of the Spirit within called disciples in a like manner to what Paul commanded the
saints at Corinth to do with the man who was joined to his stepmother (1 Cor
5:5), God delivered Israel into the hand of the spiritual king of Babylon so
that Israel’s disobedience would be covered by its servitude to the
prince of this world in the same way that natural Israel’s lawlessness in
Egypt was covered by that nation’s slave status. God
consigned all of humankind to disobedience (Rom 11:32) and servitude to the
prince of this world as humankind’s covering for its lawlessness, a
natural form of grace that causes no sin to be reckoned against [counted
against] human beings where there is no law (Rom 5:13). This consignment to
disobedience comes from Adam’s transgression [original sin] and lasts
until the person is drawn from this world (John 6:44) as natural The
Church that Jesus built is the Body of Christ, a widely accepted truism of
Christianity. And this Church is without division: what one member suffers, the
entirety of the Body suffers together. Jesus’ own body was crucified. It
was raised on the cross, where it lived from “about the sixth hour
… until the ninth hour” (Luke 23:44). Noon to three p.m. Then the
body of Jesus died. Disciples are crucified with Jesus and thus united with Him
in a death like His—and if united with Christ in a death like His,
disciples will be united with Him in a resurrection like His (Rom 6:5-6). Since disciples
collectively are the Body of Christ and individually are members of this Body,
the church that Jesus built is collectively the Body of Christ. And as
disciples are individually crucified with Christ, with their old nature or self to die with Christ, disciples
collectively as the Body of Jesus were crucified with Christ and died with
Christ, a shorter form of arriving at why no collective of fellowships exists
that keep the commandments of God. The Body of Christ was raised up as Jesus
was, and the Body died as Jesus died, and the Body will be resurrected from
death as Jesus was, with the Body suffering no decay as Jesus’ earthly
body did not see corruption. The restoration of all things assures that the
resurrected Body suffers no decay. The
Body of Christ lost its divine Breath [A<,L:" U(4@<] and
spiritually died centuries ago. But as the gates of hell could not prevail
against the physical body of Christ, resurrected from death without
experiencing decay, the gates of hell will not prevail against the spiritual
Body of Christ, which will be likewise resurrected from death after a length of
time equivalent to the three days and three nights that the earthly body of
Jesus spent buried in the Garden Tomb. There
is no division in the Body of Christ; yet, today, division is the defining
characteristic of the “Christianity of the flesh.” If the Body of
Christ were to be represented as a circle in which there is no division, then
the entirety of visible Christendom would lie outside of this circle. Bruce
Bawer’s “Protestant legalism” would lie outside this circle
as would his “Protestant non-legalism.” All of 8th day
Christendom has Jesus’ commandments available to them even if not written
on their hearts and placed in the minds of these disciples, but none of 8th-day
Christendom keeps them as evidenced by the day on which this theology attempts
to enter God’s rest; thus, 8th-day Christendom is excluded
from being of the Body for this theology neither loves Jesus nor knows Him
regardless of its protestations to the contrary (cf. John 14:21; 1 John 2:3-6). This theology represents the most
radical and most severe schism to ever divide the Body, which by definition is
not divided unless, of course, it is dissected in a post mortem examination to
determine the cause of death—the living Body cannot be divided and still
remain alive. Division causes death just as surely as does the loss of breath
and the shock of being crucified. The
Body of Christ did not “evolve” throughout the 2nd, 3rd,
and 4th Centuries CE, growing gills to take spiritual breath from
the cesspool of lawlessness in which it found itself. Rather, it died on the
cross with Jesus, a radical Observant Jew who spoke not His own words during
His earthly ministry but the words [speech-acts] of the Father manifested in
this world through Jesus’ utterances and His miracles. Jesus
will love the disciple who has His commandments and by faith keeps them. This
disciple will have his or her lack of circumcision, whether by neglect or by
nature, counted as circumcision (Rom 2:26), thereby making this disciple an Israelite
inwardly, with circumcision being a matter of the heart, by Spirit and not by
the letter of the law. For the outward mangling of the flesh does not make the
person an Israelite before God: the clipped foreskin of neither a Jew nor a Muslim
nor a Christian makes this person holy to the Father. It is hearing the words
of Jesus and believing the One who sent Him (John 5:24) that causes a person to
pass from death to life without coming under judgment. This belief is
manifested in the Christian through this circumcised or uncircumcised person keeping
the precepts of the law by faith. This belief is manifested in the Observant
Jew through this circumcised person professing by faith that Jesus is Lord and
believing that the Father raised Jesus from dead (Rom 10:6-10). This belief is
manifested in the Muslim through this circumcised person professing that the
Prophet Jesus came to His people Israel as the Son of Allah, His only Son (John
1:1-2, 14; 3:16), to reveal to the called-out ones His God and His Father (John
20:17; 17:1-33, 7-8, 18, 21-26), whom the world did not previously know. The
People of the Book, physically circumcised and uncircumcised, will come to God
by one standard (the righteousness counted to Abraham) and by one gate, the man
Jesus of Nazareth, the last Adam and the living Abraham. There are not many
Bodies of Christ, each vying with the other as the “true” Church to
which was given the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matt 16:19). There is but
one indivisible Body of Christ, dead and now concealed in the grave. It is this
Body that will be resurrected to life when empowered by the Holy Spirit at the
beginning of seven endtime years of tribulation. But the
Body of Christ, when resurrected to life, will not then be immediately raptured
away to be with God. It will be as the earthly body of Jesus was in the
darkness of the first day of a new week— ·
As the selected Passover Lamb of God, a Lamb
appropriate to the size of the household of God (Exod 12:3), the man Jesus
entered Jerusalem on the 10th day of the first month (John 12:1, 12)
to be “penned” there in the city. ·
As the Passover Lamb of Israel, Jesus was
crucified and slain on the Preparation Day, the 14th of the first
month (John 19:31), dying the ninth hour when the Pharisees then reckoned when
Passover lambs were to be sacrificed between the evenings (Exod 12:5-6). ·
Jesus gave only one sign that He was of God, the
sign of Jonah, that as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of
the great fish, the Son of Man would be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth (Matt 12:39-40). ·
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took
Jesus’ body from the cross at dusk as the 15th day of the
first month was about to begin, and laid His body in a new tomb in the garden
close-by (John 19:38-42) ·
The 15th day of the first month is a
high day (John 19:31), the first High Sabbath of Unleavened Bread (Lev 23:6-7). ·
The earthly body of Jesus lay in the heart of the
earth the night and the day of the 15th, the night and the day of
the 16th, the night and the day of the 17th, the weekly
Sabbath; and the body of Jesus was gone from the tomb before dawn on the 18th,
the first day of the following calendar week (John 20:1). ·
Since the only sign Jesus gave was that of Jonah,
twelve hours or more are unaccounted for between the conclusion of the three
days and three nights and when the resurrected Jesus appears to Mary (John
20:17). ·
These twelve plus hours are equivalent to the
seven endtime years of tribulation that can be likened to the seven days of
Unleavened Bread during which leavening represents sin, and Israel lives
without sin. The Body of Christ, in the
spiritual darkness of the Tribulation, will have been resurrected to life and
will be invisible [or nearly so] to the inhabitants of this world. What will be
visible is the lawless Church [“Christians according to the flesh”]
that long ago appropriated the name of Christ: the linguistic icons /Jesus/, /Jesus Christ/, and /Christian/
were stolen before the 1st-Century CE ended, and were employed by
imaginative Greek philosophers to construct a Trojan horse by which these
Greeks could overturn the emperor-worship cult that sustained the Roman Empire.
As Odysseus and his men gained entrance inside the walls of The
Church not the representative of God, how can that be? The Body of Christ dead— If the
Body of Christ is presently dead, with the terms for inclusion into this Body
being possession of the Holy Spirit, the Divine Breath of God [again, A<,L:" U(4@<], then
by logical extension, there is not today a collection of individuals who have
received the Holy Spirit or who have been born of Spirit … does this
agree with critical observation of self-identified Christians? Concerning
divisions, is there even a sect without divisions? No, unfortunately not, and
especially not within the sects that claim to keep the commandments of God.
There are hundred of slivers that have come from the splintered Sabbatarian
Church of God. So where might a sphere of Believers be that is without inner
schisms? Within just Among
self-identified Christians in God
used the prince of this world to carry knowledge of the man Jesus to all
corners of this world. Clever, huh? If the prince of this world had not stolen Jesus and After
the Body of Christ was buried in a grave of lawlessness, the visible Christian Church that overturned the
Roman emperor-worship cult and won an empire for Greek philosophers and
theologians was the only “Christianity” known to the world, but
this “Christian faith” bore so little resemblance to the Christianity of Christ Jesus that even a
Germanic rustic with a divining rod could not have located where the glorified
Jesus had manifested Himself to a disciple. And that “making known”
remains the test for discipleship: the one who has the commandments and who
keeps them shows that he or she loves Jesus, and it is this person that the
Father and the Son loves and to whom the Son will manifest Himself. So when
Judas (not Iscariot) asked Jesus, ‘“How is it that you will
manifest yourself to us, and not to the world”’ (John 14:22), Jesus
sidestepped a direct answer, saying instead, ‘“If anyone loves me,
he will keep my word …. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.
And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent
me”’ (vv. 23-24). So the
person who has the commandments uttered by the Logos from atop The
assumption that when Jesus said the gates of Hades would not prevail against
the Church meant that His Body, the Church, would not die out is a logical and easy
conclusion to make. But as soon as the Church becomes His Body as Paul states,
the assumption should have been modified to mean that the Church would be
resurrected from death as the man Jesus was resurrected from death. Now Jesus
saying that Elijah would come and would restore all things can be placed in the
context of the Church being returned to life after having died on the cross
with Jesus. But the conclusion that the prince of this world intended for
“Christians according to the flesh” to draw from Jesus’ words
is that the Church would not fail and that the Elijah to come was only John the
Baptist. I was taught that Church would not die out, and I have read the very
bad scholarship of Sabbatarians who have attempted to prove that certain fringe
cults and sects kept the 7th-day Sabbath throughout the Dark Ages.
Their scholarship remains an embarrassment to Sabbatarian Christianity.
Nevertheless, even today there are Sabbatarian disciples who will insist that
the Waldensians observed the Sabbath, not Sunday. Same for the Cathars. But if
a Waldensian observed the Sabbath—it is doubtful that any did—he or
she kept the person’s observance a secret from the society around them.
Thus, I have been sloppy, assuming that the Body of Christ would not die out;
assuming that every person who outwardly comes to Christ has been drawn by the
Father from this world; assuming that those who would keep the commandments
have been born of Spirit. Observant Jews keep the commandments, but deny
Christ; so by extension, they have not been born of Spirit. So being born of
Spirit constitutes more than professing that Jesus is Lord and by faith keeping
the commandments. If it did not, then the Body of Christ would be alive today,
and alive without division or schism. And there is no fellowship without
schism. Even one united by name, such as the Sabbatarian “United Church
of God,” is regularly riddled by schisms. The
Body of Christ is today dead, buried in dissension and disobedience, and
awaiting resurrection when the seven endtime years of tribulation begin. Prior
to when these endtime years begin, the work of restoring the teachings of
Christ Jesus will be accomplished by the last Elijah working through a few
disciples who have been called to this task. 2. Realization that Jesus saying
the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church does not preclude the
Body of Christ from dying but only precludes the Body from remaining dead opens
to endtime disciples the question that Bruce Bawer anticipates but does not
answer in Stealing Jesus; for it
isn’t the so-called “Christian political right” that stole
the linguistic icon in the late 20th-Century, but Hellenistic
philosophers in the 1st-Century. The “mystery of lawlessness,”
already at work while the Apostle Paul lived (2 Thess 2:7), expunged all things
Jewish from “Christianity” when constructing the theological Trojan
horse used to steal an empire from If the
Body of Christ is, indeed, today dead for want of Divine Breath, who will
constitute this spiritual Body when it is resurrected through empowerment by
the Holy Spirit? The
above question has more relevance than initially perceived. If the Body of
Christ consists only of those human beings who have been born of Spirit
[literally, the “A<,L:"–Breath”
of God], and if the Body dies when it loses its Breath [again, A<,L:"], then
there is no Body to resurrect when the second Passover occurs. That constitutes
a major problem in both perception and logic. And it is here where
understanding the construction of the Church is essential: ·
The Church began as the last Eve when Jesus, in
the late afternoon of the day when He was resurrected from death and had
ascended to his Father (John 20:19), stood among His disciples, breathed on
them, and said, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit [A<,L:" U(4@<
– or Breath
Holy]’” (v.
22). ·
The Church does not begin on that day of Pentecost
following ·
The ten received the Holy Spirit and birth by
Spirit (John 3:3-8) at relatively the same narrative moment as when God
presented Eve to the first Adam, a type of Jesus (Rom 5:14), who said that Eve
was bone of his bone and flesh of his
flesh (Gen 2:23). ·
The ten when born of Spirit through receiving the
Divine Breath of Jesus became one with Jesus through possessing “the
Spirit [A<,L:"] of
Christ” (Rom 8:9) in a manner analogous to how the first Eve was made one
with the first Adam; the ten become the last Eve, the Body of Christ in
metaphoric relationship. ·
Until a “group” or division of
humankind is visible baptized by the Holy Spirit, the Divine Breath [again, A<,L:" U(4@<] must be directly passed
to another individual as in Peter and John laying hands on the Samaritans that
Philip baptized (Acts 8:17), but once a representative group is baptized by the
Holy Spirit [A<,L:" U(4@<] as
occurred on that day of Pentecost following Calvary when natural Israelites
were filled or empowered by the Holy Breath of God (Acts chap 2), and as
occurred when Peter went to the house of the Gentile Cornelius (Acts chap 10),
the Holy Spirit [A<,L:" U(4@<] no
longer requires being directly transferred. No laying on of hands occurs on
that day of Pentecost when three thousand were added to the Church, nor were
hands laid on Cornelius and his household that had visibly received the Holy
Spirit prior to baptism. ·
The third time that a visible manifestation of
empowerment by the Holy Spirit occurs when Paul went to ·
Prior to being baptized by Paul, the twelve at
Ephesus were as the Samaritans were after hearing the preaching of Philip and
being baptized by Philip (Acts 8:12-13) but before Peter and John came to lay
hands on them. The Samaritans had only been baptized in the name of the Lord
Jesus (v. 16). ·
Peter and John, however, do not rebaptize these
Samaritans, but only pray for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, and
lay hands on them for the same reason (vv.
15, 17). ·
So Paul’s rebaptism of the twelve is
scripturally a new thing, not previously done to those who had been baptized
unto repentance to believe in Jesus as Philip did the Samaritans. Prior
to On that
day of Pentecost when three thousand were added to the Body of Christ (to be
added, Acts 2:41, the Body had to already exist), the three thousand do not
speak in languages of another’s youth, nor do these three thousand
prophesy. Only the disciples, now all Galileans [Judas Iscariot was the only
non-Galilean] (v. 7), were speaking
in words heard by each of the multitude in the language of his youth—so
two men standing together if from different lands heard the Galileans speaking
in the language of his youth, not in the language of the other’s youth.
The miracle was in the hearing, not in the speaking. And when this multitude
asked, “‘Brothers, what shall we do’” (v. 37), Peter said to them,
“‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you
and for your children and for all
who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself’”
(vv. 38-39 – emphasis added).
God must call the person to Himself. The Holy Spirit is to be given to only
those whom God calls, not to everyone at this time. But this invisible division
of humankind will end when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh. Since
Jesus breathed on the ten, the waters of humanity have been divided by
spiritual birth given to those whom God calls to Himself. The separation made
in the flesh through circumcision becomes a separation made within hearts and
minds through spiritual circumcision; thus, physical circumcision becomes a
shadow and copy of spiritual circumcision. Physical circumcision can only be a
copy of a heavenly thing for blood is shed (again, Heb 9:22-23). The
Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh when the kingdom of this world is
taken from its present prince and is given to the Son of Man. It is this
transference of authority to rule the single kingdom of this world that all of
biblical prophecy is about. God is
not a respecter of persons, calling some, offering salvation to some, not
calling others, not offering salvation to those not called. Rather, there are
two harvests of God, with these harvests seen in the grain harvests of ancient All the
while barley was being harvested in ancient Judgment
is not today upon those human beings who have not been born of Spirit. Their
judgment occurs after the seven endtime years, after the Wedding Supper, after
Jesus’ 1000 year long reign, after Satan is released for a short while,
after Satan is again taken and cast into the lake of fire. Only then, in
“a sixth day” period immediately prior to the coming of a new
heaven and new earth, the mass of humankind will be resurrected and given a
second birth, a birth by Spirit, and will be judged by those things done while
they lived physically. Those who sinned without knowing the law will also
perish without being judged by the law, but by being judged by what they knew
was right and wrong from the natural law within them; whereas those who did not
have the law but who did what the law requires [the person who did good and
loved his or her neighbor] will have their consciences accuse and excuse them
and thereby receive everlasting life (Rom 2:12-16). As Satan dragged a third of
the stars down from heaven, the Son of Man will drag a third of humankind into
heaven, with the glorified firstfruits forming the Body of the Son of Man,
Christ Jesus being the Head of this Body. The
importance of the twelve at ·
Following that day of Pentecost (Acts chap 2), no
natural Israelite needed to have a direct transfer of the Holy Spirit. The Holy
Spirit would be given to whichever natural Israelite the Father drew from the
world (John 6:44, 65) prior to the Israelite’s baptism, with baptism now
becoming the inclusionary rite that brought this natural Israelite into the
household of God and under judgment. ·
Following the baptism of Cornelius and his
household, no Gentile needed to have the direct transfer of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit would be given to whichever Gentile the Father drew from the
world prior to this Gentile’s baptism [why would this Gentile come to God
if God did not make the first overture], with baptism being the inclusionary
rite that makes this Gentile part of ·
No other division of humankind exists besides ·
But if the Body of Christ dies and has to be
resurrected from death, the twelve at Ephesus are not an anomaly that differs
from the Samaritans who were not rebaptized by Peter and John, but are the
basis for the Father giving the Holy Spirit to those who have repented in a
manner consistent with the second covenant made with Israel at Moab (Deu chaps
29-32). ·
Today, and continuing on until the Holy Spirit is
poured out on all flesh halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation,
the Father draws a person from this world by giving the person His Spirit and a
second birth following the person’s repentance in a manner that would be
represented by John’s baptism, and by the terms of the Moab covenant. ·
The patriarch Abraham received use of the Holy
Spirit when his named was changed from Abram to Abraham, with the /ah/
radical linguistically representing aspirated breath or “rough
breath,” but he was not born of Spirit. The same applies to King David
and to the prophets of old. And contrary to what has been taught by the The
Body of Christ will be resurrected and will consist of those natural Israelites
and Gentiles who, while in a far land, turned to God and by faith began to obey
His voice in all that God commanded Israel in the book of Deuteronomy (Deu
30:1-2, 9-10), loving God with the person’s hearts and mind, and loving
neighbor as oneself; professing that Jesus is Lord and believing that the
Father raised Him from the dead. The resurrected Body of Christ will consist
only of those who have demonstrated their faith and belief through repentance
and obedience prior to receiving the Holy Spirit. Everyone else, regardless of
whether he or she calls him or herself a “Christian,” will appear
before God in the great White Throne Judgment when the person will be born a
second time. And this resurrected Body of Christ will be empowered by the Holy
Spirit when liberated from indwelling sin and death at the second Passover. The
Christian Church today, in all of its many sects and denominations, is a
“feel-good” association that cooperatively markets guilt and
arrogance as if human misery were milk to be churned into cheese. Collectively,
the People of the Book are today equally ignorant of what God expects from
them: Judaism would have Israelites live good lives through benevolent social
works whereas Christendom would have spiritual Israelites live good lives
through individual enlightenment and Islam would have Muslims live good lives
through the “struggle.” But when Jesus was called
“good,” He rebuked the rich young ruler, saying, “‘Why
do you call me good? No one is good except God alone’” (Luke
18:19). If Jesus, a man without sin, denied that He was good while being of
flesh, then no person is “good.” No person is truly without sin (1
John 1:8). And it isn’t goodness that God seeks, but faith and belief that
leads to child-like obedience. The
Apostle Paul wrote, citing Isaiah concerning Israel, ‘“Though the
number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them
will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully
and without delay’” (Rom 9:27-28). And why will the Lord carry out
His sentence of death? The prophet Isaiah writes elsewhere, Behold
the Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its
surface and scatter its inhabitants. … The earth shall be utterly empty
and utterly plundered; for the Lord has spoken this word. The earth mourns and
withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth
languish. The earth lies defiled under
its inhabitants; for they have transgresses the laws, violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and
its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth
are scorched, and few men are left. (Isa 24:1, 3-6 – emphasis added) The everlasting covenant is not
the Sinai [Horeb] covenant for that covenant was ratified by blood, but the Only a
remnant of Evil is
nothing more than determining for oneself what is right and what is wrong. Even
if the person decides that he or she should obey the commandments of God
because the commandments reflect the goodness of God, the person has committed
the same sin that the first Eve committed; the person has judged the law, and
by extension, has judged God. A person
is to keep the commandments because God said to. That reason alone is
sufficient. What about free will? What about God giving human
beings minds with which to reason and to make decisions? Surely God
doesn’t expect blind obedience. Surely He values informed choice. What if
He does expect blind obedience? Will endtime “Christians according to the
flesh” follow their convictions into lion dens, or into Coliseum arenas?
Christians in the 1st-Century were killed in every way imaginable.
Or will endtime Christians say, My God
wouldn’t expect that of me! My God is a God of love and peace. Well,
God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If He allowed intelligent men
and women in the 1st-Century to be slain as Jesus was, He will allow
equally intelligent men and women to be so slain in the 21st-Century.
And they will be so slain (Rev 6:9-11). Love for God will have endtime
disciples dying by faith for their beliefs. The person who places the life of
his or her flesh ahead the person’s love for God is not worthy of
following Christ Jesus. The
“decision theology” of Billy Graham and of Evangelical Christianity
places human beings in charge of their own salvation: making a decision for Christ now becomes the
responsibility and work of the person, thus placing upon every person the
obligation to choose life (Deu 30:15) on a fixed and unchanging day of
salvation And this is bad theology. If fact, it is worse than bad for it is
fatally flawed. The Father draws from this world those whom He chooses, and
ever since the Body of Christ died on the cross with Christ Jesus, the pool of
human beings from which the Father draws individuals consists only of those who
have repented after the order of John’s baptism. Whereas the Father
initially drew individuals from natural The
typical Evangelical “born again” experience is usually nothing more
than a burp of guilt. If the A
lawyer seeking to test Jesus, asked, ‘“Teacher, what must I do to
inherit eternal life’” (Luke 10:25). This lawyer understands that
he does not have eternal life, that eternal life is something to be inherited,
and he knows what the Law says about inheriting everlasting life. So Jesus
answered the lawyer by asking, “‘What is written in the Law? How do
you read it”’ (v. 26).
The lawyer answers correctly (v. 28).
The righteous requirement of the Law is to love God with heart and mind, and
love one’s neighbor as one loves him or herself. Keeping the commandments
fulfills the righteous requirements of the Law; keeping the commandments is the
manifestation of love toward God and neighbor. And the lawyer could not keep
the commandments—Jesus said none were doing so—because the lawyer
had no love for his neighbor … the lawyer had all of the correct answers,
but he lacked belief and faith, which together are counted as righteousness to
the one who loves God and neighbor. A person has no love apart from the person
keeping the commandments. If a man respects his wife and his neighbor’s
wife, loving his wife and loving his neighbor, the man will never commit
adultery. Likewise, if a man values his word and loves the one to whom he
speaks, the man will utter no lie, bear no false witness. And so it is with
every commandment when these commandments are written on hearts and placed in
minds. Love becomes the interface between the law inscribed on hearts and the
actions of the hands. Without this interface of love, the inner law remains a
thing not seen by man or angels. Thus, fulfilling the law of God requires
loving God and neighbor. The
better promises—they include (1) everlasting life rather than physical
life, (2) return to heavenly 3. How does a person know if he or
she has been born of Spirit, a question that has an answer? But its answer
opens a debate about the real Jesus and about what He taught. The Apostle Paul
wrote, For
those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the
flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things
of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on
the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile
to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. (Rom
8:5-7) If a person does not submit to
God’s law, without question the person’s mind is set on the flesh:
this person has not been born of Spirit, regardless of whether the person has
had a dozen “born again” experiences. If a fellow, because he is a
fellow, looks with lust at a provocatively attired female, the fellow’s
mind is set on the flesh. Yes, it is! He has not been born of Spirit. Wow! That
rules out most of the male half of humanity from being born of Spirit. Indeed,
it does. It truly does. And the protestations can be heard from here— The
mind that is set on the things of the Spirit really does not experience the
lustful desires, or the anger, the urge to kill that this same mind experienced
prior to being born of Spirit. How can that be? How can you say that? I say from
personal experience. For me,
the extraction of a mental thorn, somewhat like Paul’s physical thorn,
brought light from darkness. And as Paul never explained what that physical
thorn was, I have no need to relate what that mental thorn was. But unlike
Paul’s physical thorn that God did not remove, the mental thorn was
removed so that I could address, albeit somewhat vaguely, the profound mental
change that occurs when a person is truly born of Spirit. Paul
addresses the mental change that occurred in him with spiritual birth in Romans
chapter seven. And the entirety of Paul’s ministry comes about because of
this mental change. He goes from persecuting Christians and from approving the
stoning of Stephen to being the one who lays the foundation for the heavenly
house of God (1 Cor 3:10-11). This is truly a profound change, and a change
that most “Christians according to the flesh” recognize as not
having happened to them. Bruce
Bawer is gay, and according to Evangelical legalists, he cannot be a Christian
because of his sexual orientation and practices. Yes, God condemns homosexual
practices; they are abhorrent to him [sorry, Bruce, Scripture doesn’t
change because of who you want to love]. But what Bawer might understand but
what Fundamental legalists certainly do not yet understand is that his sexual
orientation is part of a received human nature that will be changed when he is born
of Spirit, and instantly changed if born of Spirit after the second Passover
occurs. When gays say that they were born the way they are, they speak from a
post-puberty perspective. They were not born oriented to having sexual
relationships with their own gender, but as their perception of self was being
formed while very young, something happened differently from what happened to
the majority of the population. And whatever happened modified the
person’s so-called human nature, which again, is a received nature from
the prince of this world, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:2 –
emphasis added). The prince of this world is a spirit being, not the
Secretary-General of the United Nations, or whichever human being conspiracy
theorists currently believe is in control of a shadowy secret world government. Chapter
four of the book of Daniel is a message from King Nebuchadnezzar to all
peoples, nations, and languages. It is his story, and it begins with him again
having a vision that Daniel interprets for him, a vision about an angel of God
directing the majestic tree seen in the vision be chopped down and its limbs
lopped off, with its stump banded and left in the ground. The angel in the
vision says, ‘“Let his mind be changed from a man’s, and let
a beast’s mind be given to him’” (Dan 4:16). And a year after
receiving this vision, the event happens: “While the words were still in
the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, ‘O King
Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you
shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling place shall be with the
beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an
ox”’ (vv. 31-32) …
how did God make the king eat grass? By changing the nature of the king, taking
from Nebuchadnezzar his human nature and giving to the king the nature of a
castrated bull, not the nature of a young calf or a breeding stud. For seven
years, the king did not realize that he was the king. Instead, he contentedly
lay in the field, wet with the dew of heaven, grazing like an ox for his
sustenance. The
human nature that was taken from Nebuchadnezzar was restored to him after seven
years—and when his human nature was restored, the king blessed and
praised and honored God (Dan 4:34-37). In
Daniel’s vision recorded in his seventh chapter, Daniel saw a beast rise
from the sea that was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. This beast was
lifted up and made to stand on two feet, “and the mind of a man was given
to it” (v. 4). This spiritual
king (v. 17) was given the nature of
a man; he has his nature/mind instantly changed from what it was before to that
of a man. Human
nature is less the product of biology than it is a gift from God. Thus, the
person whose nature is today what learned men call “human nature,”
that nature received from the prince of the power of the air when humankind was
consigned to disobedience—this person will lift up his or her eyes when
born of Spirit, and will bless and praise and honor God, for this
person’s nature will not then be what it is now. The person who is today
unwillingly gay will give great honor to God when this person is truly born of
Spirit, far greater honor than will give the person who believes that he or she
is “okay” with God. The
prophet Isaiah described the effect of being born of Spirit when the Holy
Spirit is poured out on all flesh. Writing of the Christ, Isaiah discloses, And the
Spirit of the [YHWH] shall rest upon
him, / the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, / the Spirit of counsel and
might, / the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. … The wolf
shall dwell with the lamb, / and the leopard shall lie down with the young
goat, / and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; / and a
little child shall lead them. / The cow and the bear shall graze; / their young
shall lie down together; / and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. / The
nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, / and the weaned child
shall put his and on the adder’s den. / They shall not hurt or destroy /
in all my holy mountain; / for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the
Lord / as the waters cover the sea. (Isa 11:2, 6-9) When
poured out on all flesh, the Holy Spirit will change the carnivore natures of
the great predators as well as the nature of human beings. People will receive
the mind and nature of Christ Jesus. No longer will rebellion and
greed—the nature of Satan—be evident in “human nature.”
No longer will the lusts of the flesh reign over the desires of the heart and
the thoughts of the mind; no longer will all
of the girls be prettier at closing time. Those thoughts will be weeds
pulled from the If a
person today still has the same nature he or she had when the person was a son
of disobedience, the person remains a son of disobedience. This person has NOT
been born of Spirit regardless of how much this person wants to believe that he
or she has been. Only the person whose “human nature” has been
truly been changed is born of Spirit. Being
born of Spirit means the death of the inner self with whom the person has grown
comfortable and of whom the person has grown fond. With a changed human nature comes a changed value
system, a changed mindset concerning little things like driving a few miles an
hour over the speed limit, or seeing dead animals alongside the highway, or
spending time with hobbies. The mundane loses importance. The person born of
Spirit no longer loves this world and all this world has to offer. The desires
of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of possessions (1 John
2:15-17)—all cease to have importance. And this cannot be fully grasped
by the person who has not yet been born of Spirit. Being
born of Spirit causes the person to unconsciously separate from the world and
the things of this world. Certainly no one truly born of Spirit participates in
the politics of this world—the desire to participate is no longer there.
So “born again” political candidates lie first to themselves, then
to God, and finally to voters. They steal Jesus, then co-opt what it means to
be born of Spirit, and finally commit real murder by persecuting those very few
who truly have been born of Spirit. The
“Christianity” of those who are repulsed by the act of thinking belongs
with similar belief paradigms in the flotsam of this world’s history,
that open sewer of flowing disobedience from which nauseous gases arise as wars
and humors of wars, famines and genocide, destined to reappear regularly until
the prince of this world is cast into time, where he too will perish as a man
does. 4. Whether stated or intuitively
surmised, a reason many intellectuals reject the “Christianity” of
this world is the inherent loathing felt when they realize they are laboratory
mice unable to escape observation (what omnipresence means) if any supreme
deity exists. Denial of a deity’s existence, with both acceptance and
denial based on similar levels of faith, eliminates intellectuals’
immediate problem. But a point on a two-dimensional plane would, if it could,
perceive a cylinder as a circle. None of the cylinder’s height would be
discernable by the point. Likewise, three-dimensional objects in a fourth
dimension (time, made necessary to allow for movement of living entities) will
be unable to perceive evidence of life in another inclusive dimension, say a
twelfth dimension [heaven]. Religion
is, to many intellectuals, nothing but ancient science fiction fodder for the
masses. Karl Marx’s quote about religion being the opiate of the people
is, however, too narrowly focused; for environmentalism is today the most
popular religion in the Western world, and one supported by the enthusiasm of
“intellectuals” (and the anti-intellectual icon, Albert Gore, Jr.)
in a manner similar to the Great Awakening being supported by the enthusiasm of
Calvinists. Environmentalism is an emotion-based belief paradigm that has
benefited from society’s rejection of the anti-intellectual bias of
fundamentalist Christians and the silence of the traditional Church. Cooler
winters will, to environmentalists, only mean that global warming is occurring.
Additional snowfall will, again, only mean that warming is occurring. Droughts
and floods will only means warming is already here. Nothing short of
subscription to a new belief paradigm will convince the “majority of scientists”
testifying [used in a Christian sense] about global warning that a meltdown
apocalypse is not about to happen. Because
a point on a plane perceives a cylinder as a circle doesn’t make the
cylinder any less tall. Because
a university professor perceives Moses as a composite figure doesn’t make
Moses any less challenging. All
that a point calling a cylinder a circle does is reveal the limitations that
have been placed upon the point. All that a scholar calling Genesis a
collection of myths does is reveal the limitations that have been placed on the
natural mind. Thus, intellectuals who deny the existence of an inclusive
dimension and a supreme deity reveal the limitations placed upon the thoughts
of the persons doing the denying. They reveal facets of what it means not
to be born of Spirit. It would be fruitless for two points on a
plane to argue about the nature of the cylinder that they sincerely believe to
be a circle (or perhaps only an arc if the points’ movements are
restricted). Their disputing would be meaningless. Likewise, Marx’s
quote, containing an element of truth, is equally meaningless. But
unfortunately, too many Christians never consider that their activities and
thoughts are continuously monitored. They never think deeply about the ramifications
of having living entities, albeit in another dimension, that they cannot
perceive in a room beside them. They profess belief in Christ based upon faith,
but they live in darkness, behaving as if God is unable to see what they do.
They fail to realize that if they were truly born of Spirit, they would be
lights in a long spiritual night. And the circumstantial evidence that they
have not been born of Spirit continues to mount, for everything any person does
is visible to God and to angels and often to other humans. The person whose
mind is set on the flesh, though, fails to realize that the person is under
constant observation. I
didn't set out to be part of the Body of Christ; I actually set out to be
mathematician. I didn't want to be religious. In fact, I grew up believing
church attendance was a sign of a serious character defect. But I was drafted
into the Body, drafted just as I would have been into the Army if recruiters
could have gotten me past the height-to-weight chart when I was eighteen. So I
write now from a peculiar set of circumstances that did not have me initially
repenting of anything. Dad
died when I was eleven. Massive heart attack. He is buried in I was
in fifth grade when Dad died. The oldest of five siblings, I was suddenly
thrust into the role of man of the house,
and I was imbued with a sense of responsibility that prevented me from truly
rebelling against the status quo. I did sixth, seventh, and eighth grades in
one year, started high school when twelve, and excelled at everything I did
because it was expected of me. Not until years later did I play at living life. Even then, my play was limited to a level of
professional irresponsibility that prevented me from really succeeding as a
businessman. I never drank, never partied, never took drugs, never had extramarital
affairs. I would have been, to my I
should add that lawlessness had become so ingrained in me when I reached my
majority that I would rather break a law than keep it even if greater benefits
came from keeping it. Only the intellectual ability to calculate the odds of
getting caught kept me out of jail during this period. Mom
remarried when I was thirteen, married Lyle Squier, a Seventh Day Adventist
with a tenth-grade education, really a nice fellow whom neither I nor my
siblings appreciated while we lived together. There are reasons why Dr. Laura
tells her radio callers not to marry unless values are shared. Mom and Lyle
fought over what foods would be brought into the house. Pork was suddenly
taboo. There was no more Saturday grocery shopping, or fishing or hunting, or
doing much of anything. And I set out to prove Lyle was wrong about the
Sabbath. After all, the whole world, except for the Adventists, couldn't be
wrong. I had a good mind. I could read as well as most people, could reason
intelligently, could recognize logical inconsistencies. There seemed no reason
why I couldn't prove Lyle was an uneducated hick. After studying everything I could, after reading the Bible fairly critically, I concluded that the whole world could be wrong. That was disillusioning. If a person were to believe in God (I didn’t want to), the law remained in effect. Christians were no longer under the law, for the law was now inside the person, written on hearts and minds. Murder committed with the hand had become anger or hate committed with the mind. Adultery committed with the body had become lust committed with the mind. The Sabbath wasn’t changed to another day, but went from what the body did on the seventh day to what the mind thought. What had been outside had relocated itself to inside the person. Luckily for me, or so I thought at the time, I was strong enough to resist the lure of myths and historical nonsense. So I set what I had learned on a mental backburner, and I went about my business, ignoring the Sabbath, God, and the need for personal salvation. Only now, I could figuratively shoot down arguments of anyone who claimed the Sabbath had been changed to Sunday by Christ's resurrection, and I wasn't above doing so. Despite the
fancy footwork of Protestant linguistics about the Sabbath being rest in Christ
and only a figure of what was to come, the seventh-day Sabbath has always been
a physical sign between YHWH and
Israel that the holy nation knows its Elohim
sanctifies the nation (v. 13). YHWH sanctified no nation other than No person can come to Christ (i.e., be a part of, and a party to His wedding) unless first drawn by the Father (John 6:44). When the Pharisees grumbled about Jesus saying that He was the Bread that came down from heaven, saying, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know, Jesus answered, Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, “And they will all be taught by God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—not that anyone has seen the Father except him who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. (John 6:43–47) The prophet Jeremiah writes, Behold, the days are coming, declares YHWH, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares YHWH. (Jer 31:31–32) This new covenant has the laws
of God written on hearts and minds (v.
33 & Heb 8:10), and this new covenant will be made with Israel that will
not then be two physical nations separated following Solomon’s
disobedience and death, but one spiritual nation (Ezek 37:16-26). This new
covenant will be made with “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet 2:9), who once
“were not a people, but now you [who have been drawn and chosen] are
God’s people” (v. 10).
This new covenant will be made with spiritual I was drawn (or called if a person wants to use that word) at a particular moment in 1972. I was no more asked if I wanted to be called than I was asked if I wanted to be born into this world as an infant. This is the analogy as initially given when the Body of Christ was raised up on the cross with Him: birth-from-above was then not a conscious decision made by the disciple. Birth-from-above came without asking, came because the Father drew the person by giving the person spiritual life through receipt of the Father’s Breath. Today is a [indefinite article] day of salvation, not the only day. And today was the second day of the spiritual creation week, the day when the waters of humanity are separated through birth from above. Today that was the second day of the spiritual creation week became today that is the third day. Adam did not ask to be created. Elohim [singular in usage] took red mud or clay and fashioned a corpse from these basic elements. This corpse, complete with inner organs ready to begin functioning, appeared as a human being before Elohim [again singular] breathed the breath of life in his nostrils (Gen 2:7). Human beings, now, are spiritual corpses, made in the image of, and after the likeness of Elohim (Gen 1:27). These fully functioning, in the natural realm, spiritual corpses await receipt of the Breath of God (Pneuma ’Agion). When they, we, receive the Holy Spirit, we are born anew, or born a second time. We are born spiritually as Adam was born physically. Gestation isn’t in the womb. That portion of the analogy doesn’t pertain during this age when God has consigned all of humanity to disobedience (Rom 11:32) so that He can have mercy—grant spiritual birth—upon all as either part of the early barley harvest or the later wheat harvest. But what
happens if the Body is dead? Does the above scenario apply as it did in the 1st-Century?
Or is there a gestation period during which repentance occurs, a period
comparable to the period between when the twelve at There is a
period analogous to the maturation of Cain and Abel in the womb of the last
Eve, and Esau and Jacob in the womb of Rebekah, but this period distorts the
birth metaphor in a somewhat unexpected manner. If the Body of Christ is
without spiritual breath, the definition of it being dead, then only death can occur
in the womb of this last Eve. A person drawn by the Father is born of Spirit.
But if this person were to be placed in the womb of the dead Eve, the infant
son of God would die for lack of breath. The womb of the last Eve is today a
death chamber, and not a place of spiritual nurturing. However, if this son of
God is kept isolated from the last Eve and incubated by the Father, then life could
continue. The twelve at In 1972, I
operated a small gunshop on a part-time basis while still working for
Georgia-Pacific, By mid-summer
1974, I was on In 1979, I
sold my chainsaw-outboard dealership at Kenai, bought a boat, and started
fishing commercially out of first Kodiak, then Disciples are not glorified as baby gods, a false teaching of fellowships that practice precept-upon-precept exegesis. When disciples are glorified, they will be younger siblings to Christ Jesus, like Him in body and mind. They will be fully mature sons of the Father, or they will not be glorified. The abiding characteristic of heaven is changelessness. Without time, a created dimension made necessary to allow for the movement of objects possessing apparent solidity, heaven requires that all there is must coexist with all that was and all that will be. Oneness (as in unity) is a dictate. Change is restricted to coexistence with what is. Thus, maturing in character requires initial maturity. Spiritual infancy and adolescence is spent within the physical creation where change is the abiding characteristic. An important concept that is too often overlooked: many are drawn or called, but few are chosen (Matt 22:14) to attend the wedding feast. Those chosen will be fully mature in faith and fruit. A disciple who does not grow in grace and knowledge will be a spiritual stillborn, someone who tasted spiritual life but did not like its taste. The presence of life and the absence of life cannot coexist in an entity at the same moment. Since the moment remains in the heavenly realm and doesn’t become the next moment, possession of life is everlasting. Only in the physical creation where one moment will, regardless of whether desired, become the next moment can life become death. Thus, when rebelling angels were enchained in outer darkness, they were bound in time. They are confined to the creation where they can lose life as Satan will (Ezek 28:18-19) when he is cast to the earth (Rev 12:9-10). And when cast into time, he will then know that his time is short, that he will soon have fire come out from his belly and be no more forever. He won’t be happy, but will come as a roaring lion, devouring those he can by requiring human beings (all of humanity will then be born from above through the Holy Spirit being poured out upon all flesh — Joel 2:28) to take the mark of death to buy and sell. The beast represents death, the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse. The image of this fourth beast is the cross. The mark of the beast [P>l] (Rev 13:18) is the tattoo [stigma ] of chi xi, or Xx (Christ’s cross). Spiritual life can be lost as long as it remains inside the creation. It is given through receipt of the Holy Spirit or Breath of God. A drawn and called disciple at the moment of drawing is made holy and receives life in the spiritual realm that can, however, be lost when the disciple’s judgment is revealed. Those few who are called and chosen (again Matt 22:14) will be those that are mature in faith and character before their judgments are revealed upon Christ Jesus’ return (1 Cor 4:5). The Bride will not be composed of spiritual infants, or hypocrites. Nor will the Bride consist of endtime disciples that have taken upon themselves the mark of death. A man doesn’t marry his body, but his bride. When the now deceased Body of Christ is resurrected back to life, it will be resurrected to become the Bride when glorified; so the Body had to die so that the Bride could live. After I
became convinced that if a person were to be a Christian the person would keep
the Sabbath, I didn't justify not keeping the Sabbath. As a teenager, I was
suckled on the Zeitgeist of rebellion
that nurtured Vietnam War protestors and fed free love hippies even though
neither mindset resided on the Coast until the last year or two of the decade.
Rather, the 1960s was the decade of cheap military surplus rifles, and readily
available reloading components. It was the decade of Ball C powder, a surplus
spherical powder that had sat through a winter in two open rail cars and became
extremely stable, producing some of the finest benchrest shot strings ever
seen. It was the decade of 4831, available in 50-pound kegs for not much more
than the shipping, a powder used in even inappropriate cartridges because of
its price. It was the decade of button-rifled barrels, and fibreglas bedded
rifle actions, and rollover semi-inlet stock blanks. And it was the decade that
I didn't want to keep the Sabbath, didn't want to acknowledge a supreme being
that could tell me what to do. For a dozen years, I knew about the Sabbath and
the need to keep the laws of God, but I didn’t because I remained hostile
to God, exactly the mindset the Apostle Paul describes in Romans 8:7. During
the summer of 1972, seven or eight fellows from the pulpmill were sitting
around my campfire, talking about the upcoming hunting season, about who was
shacked up with whom, about black liquor spilling into the I knew;
I would be next. The thought overwhelmed all of my senses. It was almost
tangible, almost a thing within my
mind. I heard no voice, but I knew with absolute certainty that I was next. The
presence of the thought disrupted even my objections. Truly,
I really didn't want to be religious. If I could have, I would have said the
idea of me being next was the most ridiculous notion that had ever passed
through my head, but I couldn't shake the intensity of the thought. It was like
a door being opened and me being mentally pushed through that doorway. I knew I
had no choice about the matter. I was next. And I
was. The “I’m next” thought began a course of
action that was truly unforeseen: I had started school as the biggest kid in
first grade, with the best grades. At twelve and nearly six feet and 205
pounds, I was the largest freshman in high school and at the top of my class
academically. Four years later, I graduated as valedictorian, and entered Because
it was expected of me, I traded the rifle away even though I had stocked the
.30-06 myself. Mom's
suicide didn't diminish my interest in firearms. At the time, her death didn't
seem to affect me other than producing the feeling of being unburdened. I
didn't grieve for her, which bothered me for a decade. What I felt after her
suicide was freedom. I could do what I wanted, and I did. I transferred to
Oregon Tech and became part of the gunsmithing program there. I met my first
wife while riding a bus from After
marrying, I left Oregon Tech to make enough money to support a wife. My
intention was to lay out a term, then return. But I was involved in a headon
traffic accident that left the other driver dead and me with a separated shoulder.
So I didn't make much money during that term, and I laid out a second term,
then a third term. By May 1966, I was making a thousand a month, and I had lost
my incentive for returning to Oregon Tech. Rather, I opened my own gunshop in
March 1967. And I still felt no need for God in my life. I was busy having fun,
making and spending money, shooting high power competition, killing many more
deer than I was lawfully allowed. At best, God would have been an
inconvenience, and keeping the Sabbath holy would have required revamping my
lifestyle. Oregon
Department of Fish and Game opened Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge to a
muzzleloading deer hunt in 1969. Bucks only. Three-point [western count] or
better. The opening was intended as a quality hunt, and it was the year I
participated. By
1969, I had been building rifles for long enough that I had a local reputation
for manufacturing accurate guns. Plus, my reputation for killing deer didn't
hurt orders for rifles like the one you
shoot. I was then hunting with muzzleloading rifles of my construction. The
chance to hunt Our
first daughter was born in 1968, our second daughter in 1970. Our third
daughter was born in 1972—and then came the “I’m next” thought, baptism, and relocation to
Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, where I fell timber and repaired chainsaws,
fished commercially, and began writing. I never returned to building firearms. The
“I’m next” thought
had troubled me for a couple of weeks when, with no logical progression of activities,
my wife said she wanted to start tithing our income. I grudgingly agreed,
something I wouldn’t have done before, and I said, “Send the
Adventists a check.” She said she didn’t want to send a check to
them. I said, "Forget it. You aren't sending one anywhere." But that
she had asked to send a check so soon after experiencing the “I’m next” thought was doubly
upsetting. We hadn't discussed religion since we married seven years earlier.
The only mention of religion was when I had told her to take our oldest
daughter to In
September, my wife asked if I would object to a minister visiting her. I was
taken back by the question. Of course I wouldn't object, but I didn't
understand her need to even ask. I had no fear of cross-contamination. I
remembered enough Scripture from when I was thirteen to hold my own in a
theological discussion. If anything, I was curious about who had attracted her
interest. So I said, in typical male communication, "No, go ahead." After
deer season, two ministers arrived, one a middle-aged man, one as young I was.
I went out to the shop, sold a customer a scope, and after waiting nearly an
hour, returned to the house. Bibles were hastily closed, not something that
favorably impressed me, and the older minister asked if I could stock a rifle
for him. It seems that he had broken a borrowed rifle's stock over the head of
a deer. I wanted the story, and we talked about hunting for most of another
hour before they left. We shook hands. I was impressed that the older fellow
had a firm handshake, not that oft-described wet washrag shake of too many
pastors. As soon
as the ministers were in their car, I wanted to know who they were, and whom
they represented. My wife brought out a cardboard box a little smaller than an
apple lug. In it were twelve lessons of a Bible Correspondence Course, plus
dozens of booklets, a couple of books, letters, and her study notes. I picked
up the top booklet, and in a sidebar were Matthew 24 and Revelation 6 placed
side by side. As a teenager I had listened to Adventist pastors try to
reconcile Revelation and Daniel, and I had not heard anything that seemed
logical. What I heard would have taken much more faith than reasoning to
believe so I didn't believe anything. But the juxtaposition within the sidebar
of the booklet about Revelation seemed to make sense, seemed logical, and
suddenly made the book seem understandable. I was surprised, pleasantly so. My
surprise was also frightening, not an emotion I was used to feeling. If
Revelation could be understandable, then maybe the Bible was more than myth. So
in the next two weeks I read everything in the box; then set about reading the
Bible in the following two weeks. I read supposed proofs of the Bible's
authenticity, but these proofs were less important than passage after passage
making sense. The passages were logical. They reflected a deity that wasn't
interested in torturing humanity forever; that had a plan to save all of
humanity, not just those people missionaries reached. But I wasn't completely
convinced. So when the ministers returned in a month, I had questions for them. "What
about keeping the Holy Days? God says He hates your Holy Days." The
Scriptural passages I referenced were Isaiah 1:14, and Amos 5:21. A
little timidly, the younger minister (I was rough enough looking to be
intimidating) said, "I think the key word in those verses is, your." I
understood. The festival days listed in Leviticus 23 aren't the Holy Days of
the Jews or of Acknowledging
Christ required acknowledging a spiritual world, and the existence of life
forms or energy beings of a mostly unexplainable composition (i.e., angels)
that watch me and everyone else all of the time from a dimension or dimensions
to which I had no physical access. Suddenly, I wasn't so powerful, or
important. With a rifle of my construction I could reach across 400, 500, even
600 yards to take a life. If I pushed my ability, I could reach across a half
mile. I could lift hundreds of pounds, could push full-size pickups around. I
could glance at the lean of a 200 year old tree, then fall that tree in three
or four minutes. But what I could do was nothing compared to what angels could
do, let alone to what Christ had done when He spoke the creation into
existence. The
natural inclination of human males, apparently produced by testosterone, is too
perceive themselves as invincible. Intellectually, the male might well know
that is not the case, but at a hormonal level, we are young poultry cocks,
ready to whip the world if it gets in our way. Thus, being drawn into religious
fellowship initiated a war between the laws of God and the lawlessness of the
male’s natural inclinations. This war must be won by the mind, with
spiritual maturity developing through fighting this war. The new self, when the
person is born of Spirit, is a son of God that is neither male nor female, and
this new self dwells in the same body of flesh as dwells the crucified old man
until this old man weakens and loses his or her breath. A newly called disciple
is analogous to a circumcised Israelite and his infant son living in a fabric
tent in the Wilderness of Sin. This circumcised Israelite will not, with the
exception of a Joshua and a Caleb, enter God’s rest because of unbelief
that became disobedience when he tried to enter God’ rest on the
following day (cf. Num 14:11, 35,
40–41; Ps 95:10–11; Heb 3:19 & 4:6). The disciple’s
crucified old self will not enter God’s rest, but will die in a
wilderness of sin because of unbelief that becomes disobedience. During the
seven endtime years of tribulation, spiritually circumcised disciples will
spiritually die because of unbelief that becomes disobedience when they try to
enter God’s rest on the following day. The weekly Sabbath is a type or a
diminutive form of God’s rest (Heb 4:9). Christ Jesus’ millennial
reign is a type or sample of glorification, the reality of God’s rest.
There remains for the sons of God the keeping of the type until arriving at the
reality—humanity can no more escape living through Christ’s
millennial reign than can an Israelite escape keeping the weekly Sabbath, for
the Sabbath becomes an inclusionary marker for who is known of God. The law of
God written on hearts and minds under the spiritual second covenant includes
all Ten Commandments, not most of them. Again, the commandment against murder
goes from being what the hand does to what the mind thinks (hatred) and the
heart feels (anger). The commandment against adultery goes from being what the body
does (the sexual act) to being what the mind thinks and the heart desires
(i.e., lust — it’s not okay to look but not touch). The Sabbath
commandment goes from what the hand does (work) to being what the mind thinks
and the heart desires on the seventh day. The Sabbath commandment cannot be
spiritualized away by saying, I think
about God every day, nor does it apply to another day. All a disciple can
do is break this commandment that is now written on the heart and put into the
mind, or the disciple can keep it. Until the Son of Man is revealed (Luke
17:26–30), breaking the commandment is under the covering of Grace if the
disciple is not a hypocrite, knowing to keep the commandment but choosing not
to for reasons of convenience. But when disciples as the Body of the Son of Man
are revealed or uncovered, breaking the commandment will be rebellion against
God and will result in God sending a great delusion over disciples so that
these disciples cannot repent. These disciples will then spiritually die while physically
remaining alive for a while. The
natural mind is hostile to God, and will not, indeed cannot keep the
commandments, especially the Sabbath as evidenced by all of those things that
are done on the Sabbath, the busiest shopping day of the week. For me, keeping
the Sabbath meant no more hunting on opening day of deer season. I had that
year, 1972, with a rifle of my construction killed a large mule deer buck
opening day as well as having had a chance at a possible record-book buck. I
was already making plans for the following (1973) hunting season, but the Feast
of Tabernacles would occur during the same week as Oregon’s shortened
mule deer season. For me, keeping the Sabbath changed how I lived. Keeping the
Sabbath required that I put God first in everything I did. Eventually, it meant
putting God first in everything I thought. The strength of the first of the
great commandments, to love God with all your heart and with all your mind,
lies in keeping the Sabbath in a culture that is organized around celebration
of another day. The world is the product of the natural mind, which is not
really natural, but has been acquired
from the broadcast of the prince of the power of the air. Again, human nature
as presently perceived is the nature of the Adversary. The naturalness of humanity’s nature will change once Satan is
cast from heaven and is no longer able to broadcast disobedience as the prince
of the power of the air. My nature changed—not so suddenly that I was
aware of the change, but after two years, I could clearly perceive that my
thoughts were not what they had been. Three decades later, 2002, the crucified
old man finally died, I think. In the fall of 2004, I knew he had died, for
that mental thorn was extracted. Returning
to 1972, the older minister who had broken the rifle stock over the little
buck's head brought me the gun on their second visit. Both ministers promised
to return in another month. And I set about, as best I could, to prove the
Bible true or false. What I found in that month was what others had found
before me: the Bible held up to every test I imposed upon it. I also found, as
I had before, that it didn't say what the majority of Christians says it does.
I wasn't of their reader community. I was of a very small community then identified
as part of the cultic fringe to the mainstream Christian movement. The fact
that I read the text like few other Christians did wasn't particularly
troubling. Nor is it troubling that I now read the text as even fewer “Christians”
do. An
Elijah to come (Mal 4:5) would not have to restore all things if all things
were as they ought to be. The textual evidence is that before the great day of
the Lord begins, the day on which the arrogant and the evildoer will burn as
stubble, this Elijah to come, the glorified Christ Jesus, will restore what has
been lost while Israel was in mental bondage to the king of Babylon. John the
Baptist, about whom Jesus said no greater man was born of woman, was the
physical shadow of the Elijah to come, who will be Christ Jesus working
through, principally, the two witnesses during the first half of the seven
endtime years. Christ Jesus will restore all things that have been lost by
Christianity. Just as the physically circumcised nation lost the things of God
while in Egyptian bondage, the spiritually circumcised nation has lost the
things of God while in If an
Elijah to come will have to restore all things, then Christendom today has it
wrong, what I was disillusioned to learn a dozen years before I was drafted
into the then dead and still dead Body of Christ. In
2002, on Thursday of the second full week in January, about 10:12 CST, as I was
pulling into the parking lot at Southeastern Illinois College where I was
teaching, I heard, with mind or ears I cannot say, the distinct and forceful
words, “It’s time to reread prophecy.” What I heard seemed an
alien presence in my mind. The words were ones I could not put out of my mind. After
teaching two scheduled sections of Composition, I returned home, and for really
the first time since being “drafted” in 1972, I started writing
about “religious” subject matter. Before the day ended, I realized
that what I had been taught for nearly thirty years was almost as far from what
the Bible disclosed as are the lawless teachings of the visible Church. For
five years now, I have been on a journey of discovery, not because I wanted to
make this journey but rather because I was drafted for the task. The evidence
of this claim will be in what’s written, and what’s written will be
radical and unlike anything anyone else has said. It cannot be otherwise. For
if it were otherwise then there would have been no need to draft another to
regurgitate what others have already said. Bruce
Bawer doesn’t understand how much his mind will change when he is born of
Spirit; nor can anyone else. I know I could not have anticipated how much my
mine changed. And even after being twice drafted, I would not have anticipated
the ten days in September 2004 when those things buried in the dark recesses of
my mind—things that were not of God—were extracted in a manner that
can only be described as the stripping away of filthy garments … as a
youth, I was in a few fights. As an adult I have been in tense situations. I
know the feel of adrenaline, and the feel of adrenaline dissipating when
physical action hasn’t occurred. For those ten days in September, my body
responded to what was happening as if I were about to engage in a fight.
Adrenaline ran. But nothing physical occurred or was even likely to occur. And
my muscles trembled, severely at times, because of the absence of physical
activity—the fight was entirely within my mind and in a dimension I could
not consciously enter. But afterwards, the change was profound and I finally
understood what it meant to be circumcised of heart and mind. It is only after
making the journey from spiritual I’ve
fished some of the best waters this world has to offer. I held the one-kilo,
fly-caught tippet world record for Dolly Varden char for a while. I have hunted
deer, elk, moose in The
prince of this world stole the lifeless Body of Christ late in the 1st-Century
CE, when Christianity was a radical sect of Judaism. Genuine Christianity
remains a radical sect of Judaism. * * * © 2007 by
Homer Kizer * "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." [ Current Commentary ] [ Archived Commentaries ] [ Home ] |