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Rereading Prophecy Revisited
Chapter One
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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Rom 1:18–20)
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1.
It is usually said that a third of the Bible is prophecy, but all of the Old Testament is constructed as a Hebrew style narrative. Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels are also Hebrew style narratives, and the remainder of the New Testament completes the physically inscribed portion of a single Hebrew style narrative that will have the glorified lives of “the holy” forming the physically un-inscribed, spiritual portion of this narrative … the construction of Holy Writ—physical and spiritual portions—is seen in the annual High Sabbaths, with the High Sabbath together representing the single harvest of humanity by God, but with the spring High Sabbaths representing the harvest of firstfruits but additionally representing the entirety of the plan of God, and with the latter fall High Sabbath representing the main crop wheat harvest but also representing in themselves the entirety of the plan of God. Two grain harvests forming one harvest. The physically inscribed Bible and the spiritually inscribed Book of Life—two books that together form one Hebrew style narrative, one book, with the prevailing concept of two being one also realized in biblical prophecy.
Biblical prophecy is where politics and theology come together, two roads forming one super highway across ancient Eden, from the Nile to the Tigris. Hot button political issues that are usually off limits for theologians have prophetic implications when Christians realize that physical geography represents spiritual topography, that the geographic Promised Land for Israel forms the visible representation of Sabbath observance by Christians, that Babylon represents the Adversary’s administration over the single kingdom of this world, an administration based on transactions (buying and selling), with the world’s stock exchanges serving as thermometers by which Babylon’s health can be measured. In biblical prophecy, Egypt represents Sin; Assyria, Death. And the landscape of ancient Eden encircles human consciousness: whatever and however a person thinks is represented by a landscape somewhere within the boundaries of ancient Eden. This includes what Christians regard as deviant behavior, and what Jews regard as blasphemy against the God of Abraham, and even what Muslims struggle against.
In the thousand year long Millennium when Christ Jesus, rather than the Adversary, rules as the sar of this world, there will be no economy based on transactions: when Babylon falls, it will never be rebuilt, with this Babylon not being the ancient city or kingdom in Mesopotamia but the spiritual kingdom of the Adversary that rules today over the mental topography of living creatures, giving to the great predators their predatory natures (see Isa 11:6–9) and giving to financiers their equally predatory human natures.
Because a biblical prophecy about, say, the physical land of Moab pertains spiritually to a mental landscape near to God but hostile to God, human behavior that is either near or far from God can be described in terms of a particular people or a particular geographical landscape inside of ancient Eden, with this sentence forming a hoop that can be rolled with a stick as if it were a snake swallowing its tail.
There is one “sweet spot” within ancient Eden’s parameters—the Garden—where man briefly dwelt before disobeying God because of unbelief. In this sweet spot was the Tree of Life, a child-like explanation of what it means to be truly born of spirit and to have indwelling heavenly life … a child with the mind of man thinks like a child; a child with the mind of Christ still thinks like a child. And story books written for young children do not read like adult novels or historical texts. Scripture written for infant sons of God doesn’t read like scientific papers presented for peer review—and even when Scripture is written for infant sons of God, it seems not to be understandable by these infants unless the one reading spends time explicating the equivalent to Green Eggs and Ham. That is the essence of having been called to reread prophecy.
Does not Scripture say that no Moabite will enter the kingdom:
No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of [YHWH]. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of [YHWH] forever, because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. (Deut 23:3–4)
Yet Ruth was an uncircumcised-in-the-flesh Moabite and she entered into the assembly, and in less than ten generations, she was a mother to King David.
Being a Moabite or an Ammonite, descendants of Lot through his daughters, is a matter of attitude, of thought patterns, of mental topography, not of human biology when it comes to entering the assembly of Christ Jesus, where the barrier of physical circumcision has been broken down for the duration of this present era. For what was the reason given for preventing a Moabite from entering the congregation of Israel: they did not welcome their relatives with bread and water, but rather, hired Balaam to curse their cousins. And is that not an attitude problem? A no-love position taken against a brother? Is this not how Lutherans respond to Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons to Catholics, or how the former Worldwide Church of God treated all Sunday-keepers? They curse[d] their brothers and cousins when they themselves remain[ed] far from God.
2.
In the head citation, the Apostle Paul declares that the wrath of God is revealed—has already been revealed or made known to humanity—against ungodliness and unrighteousness. However, revealed knowledge has been suppressed by latent and active unrighteousness that (further on in his declaration) caused God to give to those who suppressed the truth debased minds. Paul goes on to list attributes of debased minds, with homosexual relationships the first that he lists. But the man who is gay will claim he was born the way he is, that he didn’t choose his sexual orientation. Usually, the man will have tried to suppress his attraction to other men. Likewise for lesbians. But this suppression smothers who the person is inwardly; so the person figuratively leaves the closet where he or she has been hiding and openly displays the debased mind the person has had all along. And yes, homosexuality is a fruit of a debased mind.
The above is a harsh indictment not of the person, but of the Adversary for having caused the person or an ancestor to worship the creature rather than the Creator; for most likely the person tells the truth when the person says that he or she was born with the person’s sexual orientation—
Human epigenetic studies have shown human attributes that could be described as “having a debased mind” are inheritable, not through changes in DNA sequencing but through DNA methylation and histone modification that effect gene expression without changing DNA sequencing. So having known God through awareness of the things that have been made [the physical world in which the fleshly body dwells] but rejecting God, worshiping the creature rather than the Creator, was sufficient reason for God to give to those who rejected Him debased minds that they, in turn, passed on to their offspring to three and four generations. But if the offspring then rejects God and worships the creature rather than the Creator, the debased mind would be passed on to the offspring’s third or fourth generation. And the cycle of debasement become unbroken, all the while those who worship a thing created are without excuse, or so Paul in his treatise to the holy ones at Rome claimed.
Yes, in Acts 17:30, the author of Acts has his Paul declare to philosophers on Mars’ Hill that God previously overlooked the ignorance of men, but this contradicts what the Apostle Paul stated in his treatise to Romans.
There is a very narrow but very deep chasm between worshiping the creature rather than worshiping the Creator. A human person can actually step across this chasm. Early English converts to Christianity appreciated the homophones <sun> and <Son> as they allegedly shifted from worshiping the sun to worshiping the Son of Man. And greater endtime Christendom stands on the wrong side of this chasm, worshiping the Son while doing obeisance to the sun by assembling on the day of the sun.
At one point, British Columbia’s mighty Skeena River flows through a chute six feet wide and over a falls: you as a Christian, imagine yourself standing on one side of this chute and professing to love one who stands on the other side. How are you going to act upon your love? Are you merely to mouth words of love that are drowned by the river’s roar? That would be the safest thing to do. You would be risking your life in any attempt to jump across the chute. So what will you do?
Greater Christendom’s feet are firmly planted on the “worshiping the creature” side of the chasm separating idolatry from righteousness; yet because greater Christendom strives to worship the Son, God has been slow to give professed Christians debased minds.
The mystery of lawlessness (2 Thess 2:7)—lawlessness itself is no mystery but is simple unbelief; is simply not believing God; is where Adam mentally stood when seeing Eve eat forbidden fruit and not die. If Adam had continued to believe God, he would never have eaten forbidden fruit regardless of what his wife did. But Adam was so certain that anyone eating forbidden fruit would die that when he saw Eve eat—she as his flesh and bone was covered by his obedience—and not die, he became disillusioned and ceased to believe God. His belief that led to obedience because unbelief that lead to disobedience … this is a children story that serves as biblical prophecy; for the last Adam is a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45). He as Son and the Beloved of God represents both Adam and Eve in one person.
Because of the lawlessness that had entered the early Church, God ceased to draw converts to Christianity forty years after Calvary. By seventy years after Calvary, the Church as the Body of Christ was spiritually dead, having died with the fleshly death of the last person truly born of spirit. The Body of Christ died as the earthly body of Christ died at Calvary. And as the gates of Hades could not prevail over the earthly body of Christ but surrendered the body that was transformed from perishable flesh to glorious spirit after the body was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, the gates of Hades will not prevail over the spiritual Body of Christ that will be raised to life through the Body being filled-with and empowered by the spirit/breath of God [pneuma Theou] and then, after seven years of tribulation, this Body will be accepted by God as the glorified Christ Jesus was accepted by God as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering.
The Body of Christ will be raised to life after the third day of the “P” creation account, this “P” account forming the abstract for Holy Writ, both its physical and spiritual portions.
Back to the head citation: because Christians as the now dead Body of Christ will be filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God at the Second Passover liberation of Israel and as such will all know the Lord, those Christians who return to worshiping the creature rather than the Creator will receive debased minds in the manner that Paul wrote:
Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only He who now restrains it will do so until He is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath [pneuma] of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thess 2:2–12 emphasis added)
For God to send a strong delusion over those who once seemed genuine but refused to love the truth; for God to send a delusion over rebelling Christians so that these rebels will believe a lie and thereby be condemned is akin to God giving to those who worship[ed] the creature rather than the Creator a reprobate mind. In both cases, repentance is impossible … to repent, a person turns from who and what the person is, thereby voluntarily killing the person’s former self, and the person becomes a new creature—and this will never happen when the person is fully convinced the person is correct or justified in what the person does. Thus, a delusion denies to a person the possibility of repentance. Possession of a reprobate mind denies to the person the possibility of repentance. And for God to deny to a person the possibility of repentance is contrary to everything greater Christendom teaches about Christ Jesus and the Father, but is what Scripture teaches.
The above is not to say that today’s Sunday-keeping Christian cannot repent: no, not at all—the Christian can repent, needs to repent, and I write to encourage the Christian to repent of his or her lawless ways; for Paul wrote, “For God shows no partiality. 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” (Rom 2:11–13).
The Christian who, today, is convinced that he or she is not under the Law will nevertheless perish without the Law if the Christian transgresses the Law because of the Christian’s unbelief. In application, the Christian who transgresses the Sabbath commandment by worshiping God on Sunday transgresses the Law even though this Christian is fully convinced he or she is not under the Law: this Christian is therefore a sinner who would seem to sin without the Law and will therefore perish without the Law for God shows no partiality, such as requiring physical descendants of Abraham to keep the Law but permitting spiritual descendants to ignore the Law. No, not at all. The reality is that the Christian who by faith believes God will keep the Law out of love for God—will jump that chasm from worship of the creature to worship of the Creator—whereas the observant Jew who loves God will profess with his or her mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe that the Father raised Jesus from death so that both Jew and Christian stand on the same theological ground. Both will acknowledge that the Father and Son are both (two entities) God, and both will keep the Commandments by faith, by belief of God.
Did a gay man, humanly born gay as he claims, do anything wrong to make himself as he is? No, not necessarily. He could truly have been born with an “unnatural” sexual orientation, unnatural in the sense that humankind was created male and female, with all of humanity having descended from the womb of Eve, the life-giver. The desire of Adam was for Eve, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. They were one flesh as the inner self [soul] and outer self [the fleshly body] of a person are one person. Thus, a homosexual relationship is analogous to one person being of two invisible inner selves or two visible outer selves, and certainly two visible outer selves joined together as one person without an animating inner self would be unnatural; would be a dead two headed monster. Likewise, two invisible inner selves joined together would be as a demon possessing a demon, not something that knowingly occurs in the spiritual realm. So the natural state of a human person is to have a dead [spiritually lifeless] inner self that animates and gives physical life to the fleshly body, the outer self, with this relationship between inner and outer selves being represented in marriage where the man is the head of his wife (1 Cor 11:3) as the inner self is the head of the outer self, with the indwelling of Christ Jesus in the form of His spirit/breath [pneuma Christou] giving life to the previously dead inner self, thereby becoming the Head of the inner self and by extension, the Head of the person, now a born-of-spirit Christian.
It is because the inner self of every person is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, that Paul wrote,
But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:25–28)
The humanly born dead inner self of a person is an unborn son of God; the living inner self of a person—living through the person having received a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [Christou]—is a son of God. And in the physical, abortion equates to the spiritual murder of unborn sons of God before they receive life from outside of space-time; hence abortion is a crime against nature and by extension, against God. To advocate for abortion (for reproductive rights of women) is to be as far from God as the person can get; for too often, the woman who aborts a child never forgives herself and as such cannot repent even when Christ dies for the woman while she is still a sinner. The damage done to the woman’s psyche is great: the Adversary effectively “aborted” an unborn son of God. Thus, the woman who resisted motherhood needs to understand that if God can forgive her, she can forgive herself even if she can never forget.
How far humanity is from God can be seen not in the number of Muslims or Buddhists in this world, but in the number of Christians who will accept sexual cohabitation outside of marriage; who will accept women’s reproductive rights as a health issue; who will accept gay marriage as a human right. At some point, humanity can get no farther from God but will, of necessity, turn and begin to move closer to God. That point will mark the midnight hour of the one long spiritual night that began at Calvary—and at this midnight hour, death angels will again pass over all the land, slaying uncovered (by the blood of Christ) firstborns in the Second Passover liberation of Israel (the nation to be circumcised of heart) from indwelling sin and death.
Placing importance on the flesh, on the visible surface of things, on nation states constitutions being physically or naturally minded—and of such mindsets, 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. For 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. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom 8:5–8 emphasis added)
Why can’t the mind set on the flesh (the carnal mind) submit to God’s Law? Because the mind set on the flesh; the mind whose focus is the surface of things, the appearance of things, is a debased mind, regardless of whether this debased mindset manifests itself in importance being placed on the physical attractiveness of self or spouse, or on the accumulation of wealth, the accumulation of the things of this world.
John wrote,
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17)
Paul also wrote,
For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their [Jews’] disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all. (Rom 11:30–32)
And,
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph 2:1–3)
God consigned all of humanity to disobedience, one way of saying that God gave all of humanity over to having a debased mind through delivering humanity into the hand of the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh, the reality from which Paul drew his instruction to the saints at Corinth:
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Cor 5:1–5)
This reality of God delivering Israel into the hand of the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh is also found in Daniel’s vision of the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon:
Thus he said: “As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all the kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after them; he shall be different from the former ones, and shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time. But the court shall sit in judgment, and his dominion shall be taken away, to be consumed and destroyed to the end. (Dan 7:23–26 emphasis added)
Over the course of this book, I shall return many times to Daniel 7:25; for the vagueness of the pronoun <they> permits the pronoun to reference both the saints and the Law as to what shall be given into the hand of the little horn, the Adversary, for the 1260 days of the Affliction. For now, I want to establish that God will give delusions and reprobate minds to human persons so that they cannot repent and turn to Him and thereby be healed of the greatest infirmary of all, death.
One more example,
And I said to their children in the wilderness, Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor keep their rules, nor defile yourselves with their idols. I am [YHWH] your God; walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules, and keep my Sabbaths holy that they may be a sign between me and you, that you may know that I am [YHWH] your God. But the children rebelled against me. They did not walk in my statutes and were not careful to obey my rules, by which, if a person does them, he shall live; they profaned my Sabbaths. "Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the wilderness. But I withheld my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I had brought them out. Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, because they had not obeyed my rules, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their fathers' idols. Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am [YHWH]. (Ezek 20:18–26)
3.
When mindsets (mental topography) cast shadows as geographical lands and peoples occupying those lands, biblical prophecy is about issues such as gay rights and abortion, income equality and universal suffrage, Sabbath observance and keeping the Commandments. Notice what the author of Hebrews wrote,
Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to Him who appointed Him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God's house. For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we are His house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. Therefore, as the holy spirit says, "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.' As I swore in my wrath, 'They shall not enter my rest.'" (Heb 3:1–11 emphasis added)
Moses testified about things to be spoken later—how can that be? Moses gave testimony about what hadn’t yet occurred? Is this not the definition of prophecy, testimony about future events, and of a prophet, one who testifies about what has not yet occurred? So is not the writings of Moses prophetic writings? They certainly are, more so than most theologians realize; for Moses spoke of a prophet like him:
[YHWH] your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—just as you desired of [YHWH] your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, 'Let me not hear again the voice of [YHWH] my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.' And [YHWH] said to me, 'They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. (Deut 18:15–19 emphasis added)
Again, in a chiral, Hebrew style narrative, the first half or physical portion of the narrative forms the dark shadow-of, or mirror image of the spiritual portion: Moses on the plains of Moab was the shadow and copy of the glorified Christ Jesus in the Endurance, when the 144,000 spiritual virgins followed the Lamb wherever He goes.
But Moses’ history doesn’t begin with crossing the Sea of Reeds and Israel’s long circular trek in the wilderness: Moses [his name meaning, the son] was born into Israel but reared in the household of Pharaoh; Christ Jesus was born into Israel, but He wasn’t reared by his human father, a carpenter. The best reading of the Gospels will have Jesus serving a fiscal apprenticeship to His uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, apparently a prosperous tin merchant, after His natural father died; for Joseph of Arimathea could not have claimed Jesus’ body if he were not a close relative, someone in the immediate family. And if Jesus served Joseph of Arimathea, He would not have been in the Galilee during His late teens and twenties: He would not be recognized as one of the locals but as one who had returned. He would have been sailing on the Mediterranean Sea and then trekking up the Rhone and crossing over to Cornwall and Wales, where he would have conducted business for Joseph of Arimathea, thereby permitting Him to see many of the kingdoms of this world. So a storm on the Sea of Tiberias might well have frightened men who had been on no larger body of water, but the worst storm on the Sea of Tiberias would not have concerned someone who had sailed on the Mediterranean … Moses’ time in Pharaoh’s household would form the shadow and copy of Jesus being engaged in His uncle’s business. And in the physical/spiritual composition of a Hebrew style narrative, there is a correspondence between physical slavery and fiscal slavery; between serfdom and engaging in transactions.
The remainder of the preceding analogy will be made where appropriate.
Moses didn’t suddenly become a prophet on the plains of Moab: in identifying with his people Israel and in the killing the Egyptian, Moses then understood that he was destined to be a judge over Israel and destined to free his people. So when he was rejected as an authority figure by Israel, with his killing of the Egyptian being known to those who would betray him, he fled—and he wasn’t about to return; for what he had thought he knew and understood hadn’t proven to be true. He actually had prophecy correct, just not when or how the prophecy would transpire. He thought in terms of physically freeing Israel with the weaponry of this world; he understood his predestination in a physical context, not as a shadow of a spiritual reality. For death reigned over humanity from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14), who entered into the presence of the Lord (Ex 33:14–23), not from Adam to Christ Jesus. It was Moses as the shadow and copy of the glorified Christ Jesus who first ascended the mountain of the Lord to be accepted into the presence of the Lord, thereby entering into the promised “rest” of God. In a spiritually comparable manner, the resurrected Christ Jesus as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering entered in the presence-of and was accepted by the Most High God on the fourth day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the year 31 CE.
As the people of Israel were assembled around the base of the mountain of God but were prohibited from climbing the mountain or even setting foot on the mountain, human persons not born of spirit through the indwelling of Christ cannot enter into the presence of God. And after Israel rebelled against God at Sinai, the physical equivalent to God sending strong delusions over those who refused to believe the truth (again 2 Thess 2:10–12) was expressed in the command to kindle no fire on the Sabbath (Ex 35:3), with fire representing life and with the Sabbath representing entering into God’s rest.
In the natural, life is sustained by the dark fire of cellular oxidation of simple carbohydrates, but in the spiritual, life is sustained by the bright fire that is the glory of God:
And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of His waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of His waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around Him. Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of [YHWH]. And when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking. (Ezek 1:26–28)
The command not to kindle a fire on the Sabbath was a proclamation of the reality that the natural descendants of Israel could not have life in God’s rest (in God’s presence) because of their rebellion while Moses was absent from the assembly: it was the outward expression of the Lord saying, “‘Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them’” (Ex 32:33–34).
Remember, God is not a respecter of persons; He shows no partiality. The person who knows not to worship an idol yet worships an idol, whether cultural or theological—with the Bible being the biggest idol Christians worship—is an idolater whose name will be blotted out of the Book of Life if inscribed there. Yes, a Christian is to read the Bible and is to know the Bible well enough that the Christian knows where discrepancies exist, and the Christian should be able to explain these discrepancies when challenged with them (they are all explainable within the context of the spiritual Book of Life), but under no circumstance should the Christian worship the Bible as the infallible Word of God … the Christian who holds a closed Bible overhead and shouts, This is my sword, my high tower, my refuge, when entering into the presence of God as the refuge of every Christian—this Christian will be sorely disappointed when judgments are revealed.
Moses [the son] had a mostly unrecorded history until he killed the Egyptian; Christ Jesus has a mostly unrecorded history until His earthly ministry began. Moses had an unrecorded “lifetime” of herding sheep for His father-in-law on the backside of nowhere before the burning bush incident; Christ Jesus has an unrecorded ministry as spiritual Israel’s high priest throughout the nearly two millennia when Christendom has been the dead Body of Christ. Moses reluctantly returned to Egypt where he began ten plagues intended to convince the Egyptian king to let the people of Israel go free so that they could serve their God: the tenth plague was the Passover slaughter of uncovered firstborns. And in the mirror image of these ten plagues, the tenth plague will appear first, with the Passover Lamb of God having been slain at Calvary and with Israel roasting this Lamb with their fiery sins for nearly two millennia, roasting this lamb until the midnight hour of the one long night that began at Calvary.
What happens next is the sudden death of a third part of humanity, all uncovered (by the blood of Christ) firstborns, biological and legal. And the death of so many [approximately 2.4 billion] in a day, with all of this many being firstborns, will convince great and small, educated and uneducated that God lives and that He will execute His wrath on humanity, with knowledge of this wrath having been suppressed by the unrighteousness of politicians and theologians … where is the Christian pastor who will tell his or her parishioners that God is a jealous God, that Christians are to keep the eternal Second Sinai Covenant, it’s ratifying sign being the glory that shone from Moses’ face from having entered into the presence of the Lord. Neither the Moab Covenant nor the Second Sinai Covenant was ratified by the shedding of blood, thereby making either a copy of heavenly covenants, but both were ratified by a better sacrifice and are therefore heavenly contracts (see Heb 9:22–23) that have no expiration date in this world.
The Moab covenant (Deut 29:1; 30:10, in reference to all of the Book of Deuteronomy) was ratified by a song Moses composed (Deut chap 32) — it is to this covenant that a better mediator was added, Christ Jesus replacing the man Moses.
The Second Sinai Covenant was ratified by Moses entering into God’s rest, His presence, as a shadow and type of the harvests of firstfruits entering into the kingdom at the beginning of the Millennium, not after the thousand years when the greater harvest of humanity will appear before the Lord in the great White Throne Judgment.
Rereading prophecy is about moving one’s focus from the physical to the spiritual, from physical things and nations and people to the invisible things of God, notably mindsets from which thoughts sprout and grow as weeds or wheat.
Even when rewriting A Philadelphia Apologetic spring 2013, I put too much material in the first chapter, made the chapter too long and too heavy. I will attempt not to succumb to my natural proclivity to just keep on truckin’; so I will here end this chapter, only to pick up the remainder of what I want to say about, especially, abortion and gay marriage, in the following chapter.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."
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