Rereading Prophecy

- Removing Seals: Making Known What Has Been Secret

January 22, 2014 ©Homer Kizer
Printable File

Rereading Prophecy Revisited


Chapter Six

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Then I [John] saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, "Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come, and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water." Another angel, a second, followed, saying, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality." And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name." (Rev 14:6–11)

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1.

Before the Affliction, the endtime good news that all who endure to the end shall be saved will only be weakly proclaimed to all nations as a witness to all peoples (Matt 24:13–14). This is true: the endtime gospel is even now being proclaimed to all the world, but it is barely heard amid the din of Christian orthodoxy … it seems like most of Christendom believes that this “most” has a word of knowledge, a prophetic understanding, and has been called to be ministers of the Word. This “most” invests large amounts of money to make itself heard. But Christ doesn’t speak with many voices. He is not a puppeteer giving His voice to every dummy on stage. Rather, He speaks with one voice, a reality Paul addressed when he wrote, “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” (1 Cor 14:37–38).

Paul wrote with a boldness he apparently didn’t have in person. He probably would not have fared well in the rough and tumble world of endtime Christian theology and televangelism, where anointed believers fall backwards away from God and where too many pastors appear on stage as pimps. Paul didn’t fare well in his own day, the reality underlying his epistles to the Corinthians and to the Galatians. Yet Paul set the standard for those who produce the white noise of endtime Christendom, with its serious want of biblical understanding … parishioners want knowledge; pastors want to milk their parishioners as if wallets were udders; and I don’t want to deal with the collapse of spiritual Babylon for I know what it is like to do without, to live as if I were in a third world nation, to pack water, kindle a fire when the ice on the inside of cabin windows is a quarter inch thick, dig a new outhouse hole in frozen ground. Of course I will deal with whatever comes, but I wouldn’t be opposed to a little global warming and a lot less snow between the house and shop—and this with the long range weather forecast calling for more of the same throughout February.

For most Christian pastors, preaching the Word is a chosen vocation, one of soft hands and softer voices—unless, of course, the pastors are the four who haggled in a downtown Shakey’s Pizza Parlor over how to divvy up the City of Anchorage: they had appeared together in a televised special that Sunday morning, and at noon, they were seated behind me in a booth. And in raised voices, they fought over hapless sheep …

In 1977, I entered into a contract with a local pastor on the Kenai Peninsula to deliver 7100 lineal feet of 6x8 inch three-sided house logs at $1.75 a foot. The contract for me was a significant amount of money. I wanted to make early delivery for I needed the dollars to bring in outboards before salmon began running: I had a chainsaw-outboard dealership on Poppy Lane, off K-Beach Road and across from where the Red Diamond Shopping Mall would be built when I finished logging the quarter section.

I was working with a commercial fisherman who had to interrupt sawing logs to set anchors for his nets on the highest tides of the year. He hadn’t yet returned from Ninilchik; so I was a little behind my agreed-upon delivery schedule when the pastor came by the shop and confronted me. The pastor was angry; his behavior, ugly; his words, not fit for reproduction. I listened without saying anything. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of his parishioners, upon seeing him, stop on the road and hurry toward us. My parking lot was muddy (it was breakup) so the parishioner swung wide and the pastor caught a glimpse of him approaching. Without apparently realizing that his countenance changed, the pastor’s voice became soft, and he was all smiles when the parishioner got to where we were standing. The parishioner had come to tell the pastor that the mud on the corner before reaching the jobsite had swallowed one of their pickups, that no one could get to the jobsite. And I told the pastor that I would deliver as soon as the road dried up, that it was too muddy for me to get a truck to his jobsite, which was true but not the truth. The truth was that we needed to saw for another week before we finished the order.

No, I don’t look forward to the Second Passover liberation of Israel: I don’t want to see a third of humanity, all uncovered firstborns including my own, die in a day. But I was audibly called to do a particular task, reread prophecy. And in doing this task, I have to honestly state what I know to be true, even if this truth isn’t what I like or want to declare. And I will borrow Paul’s words: If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are the inspired assignment of meaning to words delivered long ago … all of the Remnant that cross from the Affliction into the Endurance will acknowledge what I write is true. No brag. Simply fact. And fact that I understand but am not excited about because of the rebellion of greater Christendom on day 220, when the fangs of Christian pastors will again show, revealing that they are really wolves that have boldly walked into the sheep pen to devour as many of the flock as possible. I will try to stop their slaughter of innocents, but the slaughter cannot be stopped. Preventing Christians from committing blasphemy against the spirit cannot be done on the collective level and can only be done with an individual here and one there. And this realization is inherently sad.

There is no excited anticipation of failure; of not being able to get firstborns in Israel to cover themselves with the blood of Christ; of not being able to prevent the great Apostasy of day 220 from occurring … in the physical, of all Israel numbered in the census of the second year, only Joshua and Caleb crossed the Jordan and entered into the Promised Land. In the days of Noah, only the eight on the Ark crossed from the antediluvian world into this present age. And in the spiritual, only the 144,000 that follow the Lamb plus the Remnant and the third part of humanity that follow the Remnant cross from this present age, ruled by the Adversary, into the Endurance, ruled by the Son of Man.

In the Remnant are the seven named churches (equivalent to Joshua) and the single unit from every other Christian denomination or sect (equivalent to Caleb), with these single units having in them a different spirit from their brothers who have committed blasphemy against the spirit..

Of both the 144,000 and the third part of humanity that follow the Remnant, half will not take judgment upon themselves—hence, Jesus doesn’t know them (Matt 25:12)—and though spiritual virgins in that they are without sin, these two “halves” will physically live into the Millennium and will not be part of the Bride, disciples that receive glorified outer selves upon Christ’s return, with the Millennium serving as the hybrid physical/spiritual shadow of entering into God’s Rest, heaven.

Almost without exception, Christian pastors and priests are ruthless men [and women] … what was it that was said about Cathars in Languedoc during Pope Innocent III’s crusade against them? The Cathars were pacifists, but their Catholic neighbors were not and they resisted the northern army of the French crown, employed by Pope Innocent III to eliminate dissent. And what was said about those Catholics that resisted and the Cathars: Kill them all and let God sort them out.

There is a shortage of Christian love in any such statement ever being made. There was a shortage of Christian love in four pastors dividing Anchorage up as if it were conquered territory, with boundaries drawn so approximately the same amount of wealth would be in each quadrant. There was a shortage of Christian love in a pastor who, in his business dealings, behaved as he were the son of the Adversary.

In the Endurance, mortal men will not deliver to the third part of humanity the good news this third part needs to hear. And for this third part, the standards and procedures of Christian worship in place today will be modified or abolished … no Christian will be under grace; for with the Second Passover liberation of Israel, Christ Jesus will no longer bear the sins of Israel. Instead, He will liberate every Christian from indwelling sin and death so there will be no reason for any Christian not to cover him or herself with obedience to God; with the garment of the Christian’s own righteousness.

Kill them all and let God sort them out—this is what will be said about Sabbatarian Christians and their neighbors in the Affliction … should I want this slaughter to begin in the near future? No! I harbor no animosity against neighbor or brother. It is my desire that both live, but I know in advance that this will not be the case. It cannot be the case.


2.

Because the Endurance in Jesus—when the 144,000 follow the Lamb wherever He goes—is the non-symmetrical mirror image of the Affliction, the last of the Adversary’s reign as prince of this world, those things that Christians think they know about the plan of God have to be adjusted to reflect the non-symmetricity of left to right hands. During His earthly ministry, according to John’s Gospel, Jesus said that the Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), who in turn judges no one but has left the word [’o logos] of Him with His disciples as “judge” of unbelievers (John 12:48) … this is in the physical portion of a physical/spiritual pattern, the fulcrum of which is the Kingdom, the taking from the Adversary and his angels dominion over the kingdom of this world and the giving of this dominion to the Son of Man, seen in Daniel 7:9–14 and Revelation 11:15–18. Thus, the Endurance comes about in the 1260 days following the transference of dominion as God and Christ “employ” the Adversary and his angels to do work for them, that of testing the faith of the final third part of humanity and of compelling this third part to create and construct the non-transactional foundation for the Millennium. Could the Father and the Son simply give knowledge of how to create a society that is not based on transactions to the third part? They already have.

Whereas in the Affliction the two witnesses proclaim the endtime good news that all who endure to the end shall be saved, in the Endurance angels proclaim the age-ending good news that all peoples are to worship the Father and the Son, for the hour of His judgment has come:

Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, "Fear [the] God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come, and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water." (Rev 14:6–7)

Because the hour of His judgment has come—Jesus told His disciples that all judgment had been given to Him (again, John 5:22) but that He hadn’t come to the earth to judge men, that He had left the word of Him with His disciples as the judge of unbelievers (John 12:47–48); yet in John’s vision, the angel announces—after dominion over the single kingdom of this world has been given to the Son of Man—that the hour of the God’s judgment has come … there will be, in this present age, a tendency for Christians to read Fear God and worship Him as clauses referencing the same deity, such is the aversion to acknowledging that spiritually, two are one as a man and his wife are one flesh, or as two births produce one spiritually living person, with the outer self remaining physical [male or female] and with the living inner self being spiritual [neither male nor female].

In the physical and pertaining to the fleshly outer self, Jesus’ death at Calvary paid the penalty for every transgression of the Law that Israel had committed. Paul wrote, “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:7–8) … because Calvary began one long spiritual night of which the midnight hour has not yet been reached, Christ dies for each foreknown and predestined Christian on the same night: He dies [present tense] for us while we were/are still sinners. He dies through bearing our sins. He dies because we, Israel, kill the Passover Lamb and roasted this Lamb in our fiery sins. And with His blood, evidence of His righteousness and His willingness not for a good person but for His brethren, His younger siblings, Christ garments us [clothes us] in His righteousness, the reality of grace. Hence, we who are foreknown and predestined pass from death [of the inner self] to life without coming under judgment; for in the physical, death follows life, but in the mirror image spiritual, death precedes life: every human person is humanly born with a dead inner self.

A person is humanly born physically alive but spiritually dead. In the natural, death will come to the human person and the fleshly outer self will be no more [will return to dust], but in the spiritual, death came to the person when Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden before they ate of the Tree of Life. In the spiritual, a humanly born person has no life and can have no life unless God the Father returns the person to the Garden where the person eats of the Tree of Life. Therefore, all judgment though given to the Son remains with the Father; for no person can come to the Son unless the Father metaphorically draws the person back into the Garden and there waits for the person to eat of the Tree of Life. The reality of being foreknown and predestined is this drawing of the person out from this present world and back into the Garden where the person can rethink the decision the first Adam made.

Jesus said to Nicodemus,

For [the] God so loved the world, that He gave His [unique] Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For [the] God did not send His Son into the world [that He might judge] the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. [The one believing in Him is not judged], but [the one not believing already has been judged], because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of [the] God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But [the one doing] what is true comes to the light, that may be clearly seen his works have been carried out in God. (John 3:16–21 citation has been modified to better reflect the Greek text)

People have a judge and have already been judged: if a person hears the word of Jesus and believes the One who sent Him into this world, the person passes from death to life without coming under judgment (John 5:24). It is only those who do not believe the word of Jesus or who do not believe that the God sent His Beloved into this world to save it who shall be judged. It is only those that hide from God because they know their works are evil that will be judged—and they were judged when their evil deeds were manifested. And what is the definition of <evil>?

And [YHWH] God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Gen 2:16–17)

Evil comes attached to knowledge that produces unbelief of the sort that Adam, observing Eve eat forbidden fruit and not dying [did Adam even know what death was], no longer believed God that on the day when he ate forbidden fruit he would die; for it was out of disbelief that he ate what he was commanded not to eat. And again speaking of eating, Paul wrote, “But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith [pisteos — belief] is sin” (Rom 14:23).

In seeing with his eyes Eve eat forbidden fruit and not die, Adam ate apparently without doubts but was nevertheless condemned or judged, because he ate what was not “food” for him … if an Israelite, physical or spiritual, or a Muslim eats a ham sandwich, the Israelite or Muslim eats what is not food for him [or her]. A hog is food for a person of the nations [a Gentile], but a hog is not food for a person of the Book. And the majority of Christendom have, by eating what is not physical or spiritual food for them, separated themselves from people of the Book.

Peter wrote to spiritual lambs [newly born sons of God],

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." And if you call on Him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Pet 1:14–19 double emphasis added)

If the Father has given all judgment to Jesus so that all can honor the Son as they honor the Father (John 5:22–23), then whom does the Father judge impartially according to each one’s deeds? Or is something being lost in translation? For the Son left the word [’o logos] of Him with His disciples as the judge of unbelievers, with the words that the Son left being the words that the Father gave Him to speak:

Whoever believes in me [Jesus], believes not in me but in Him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees Him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has Himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me. (John 12:44–50)

Now, back to the angel delivering the good news, “‘Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come’” (Rev 14:6) — a person, every person, who does not believe God is judged by the words of God left in this world by the Creator of all things, and if the person comes under judgment (by believing God, the person doesn’t come under judgment) the person will both condemn him or herself and justify him or herself by the things the person did while alive physically. The person who has never believed God through never having known God will nevertheless be judged by those things the person did, with this reality being Paul’s gospel:

For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:14–16)

God judges by holding up the yardstick of Christ Jesus: if the person is not a fractal image of Christ Jesus, the person shall perish. If the person is a fractal of Christ—even if the person never heard the name, Jesus the Nazarene—the person shall be glorified. And how does a person become a fractal of Christ?

When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And He will place the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'” Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” (Matt 25:31–40)

A Christian is to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, give shelter to the homeless, visit the sick and the imprisoned. But so too is the Gentile to do these same good works; for as 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 person who is a Christian but who has not previously believed the writings of Moses or heard the words, the voice of Jesus, will be given the opportunity to hear and believe during the Affliction, with the Christian who will be saved not becoming a murderer as Cain was, but a person who willingly gives his or her physical life to feed the hungry and give shelter to the homeless—becomes a person who would give shelter to an Anne Frank.

The person of the nations—the Gentile—who remains alive when dominion over the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man actually ceases to be a Gentile when the world is baptized in spirit (Joel 2:28). This person has now come under judgment, and if this person endures to the end in faith, in belief of God, this person shall be saved. This person now cannot help but take judgment upon him or herself; thus the person will not only be saved, but will be glorified as one of the firstfruits of God, a younger sibling of Christ Jesus …

From the third part of humanity in the Endurance, none of whom identified themselves as Christians in the Affliction, will come the majority of the God’s harvest of firstfruits. But from this third part will also come those human persons who physically live into the Millennium, with the separation between those who become part of the Bride and those who live physically into the Millennium being made through transactions; through figuratively having to go buy oil for their lamps when the coming of the Bridegroom is near (Matt 25:9–10).

Solomon’s sin against the Lord was his many foreign wives. The fault found in those who enter the Millennium as physical men and women will not be transgressions of the Law or even unbelief, but the holding of alien ideologies as Solomon held foreign wives. The young person who likes the technology that gives to the world cell phones and ipads will not necessarily purge this “like” from his or her mental topography during the Endurance, but will keep wanting to return to a transactional economy even when unwilling to take upon him or herself the tattoo of the cross so that the person can buy and sell in the Endurance. In other words, the person is not fully committed to living under his or her own vine and tree, and will have to learn why all transactional economies are to be spurned.

Today, Christians tend to feign love for each other, but to gleefully chortle at the prospect of their heathen neighbors frying in hell forever … most likely, it will be their heathen neighbors who, in sadness, figuratively laugh last. It is their heathen neighbors that can be likened to the day laborer hired in the last hour of the day. Note the parable Matthew’s Jesus used:

For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, “You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.” So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, “Why do you stand here idle all day?” They said to him, “Because no one has hired us.” He said to them, “You go into the vineyard too.” And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, “Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.” And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” So the last will be first, and the first last. (Matt 20: 1–16)

The third part of humanity is the last that shall be firstfruits, whereas today’s Christians, with far too few exceptions, will not enter the kingdom of the heavens but will perish in the lake of fire; for today’s Christians have Moses as the shadow and copy of Jesus, and they have Jesus but do not believe Jesus, and the majority make God’s breath His equal in a triune concept of divinity. None of these things do non-Christians have or engage-in.

In prophecy of Zechariah that Jesus cited (cf. Matt 26:31; Zech 13:7), it is neither the first third part of humanity nor the two third part of humanity that will be tested as gold is tested [pressed against a touchstone] or refined as silver is refined [smelted and the dross drawn off], but the last third part that will be accepted by God (Zech 13:9).

What does God seek from men, created as shadows of His image and likeness? Nothing physical, and nothing spiritual except for His sons to believe Him and to act upon their belief. So explain, Christian, if you can how it is that you believe God yet worship Him on the day after the Sabbath? In doing so, do you not make yourself the equal of Christ Jesus, the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering and His only Son who lived without needing forgiveness of unbelief that led to transgressing His Law? Indeed, you make yourself the equal of Christ—and you would have the Body of Christ ruling its Head. You would be ruled by women; by the grotto, a type of the Abyss. You would have Dionysus [Bacchus] as your god.

Stand, Christian, and give an account of yourself while there is still time to repent. Who is it that you really worship? An effeminate long-haired man-woman that is like the early, bearded representations of Dionysus, a white god come from the east or a black god from the south, depending upon the cult? Does not your god figuratively wear the bassaris symbolizing a new life? Does he not protect those who do not belong to conventional society? Does he not represent an overturning of the status quo? Does not his logic escape human reasoning? Is he not a dying god? Indeed, he is all of these things. So now turn to your side and embrace your young son or daughter who has been taught in the public school system to worship Gaia, mother earth, rather than Dionysus, the god of an orgiastic religion that celebrates the fertility of nature … six of one and a half-dozen of the other, and neither is of God the Father.

Since God is not a respecter of persons, the same standard of righteous is expected of an endtime Christian as was expected from a 1st-Century Christian as was expected from Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel, others. This standard is simply belief of God; belief of the words spoken by the God of Abraham, by Moses, by the prophets, by Jesus, by His disciples. If the person “believes” to the point of obedience, then the person doesn’t come under judgment. If the person doesn’t believe for whatever reason, the person comes under judgment, with those things the person has done either standing the person in good stead or condemning the person to the lake of fire; for God isn’t in the business of creating additional adversaries, sons of God that judge Him. And the person who doesn’t believe God—the person’s unbelief originating from judging God and finding that He hasn’t told the truth as far as the person is concerned—after hearing His words is an adversary.

The Christian who worships on Sunday doesn’t believe God, and is a judge of God. This Christian, however, has probably never heard the words of God even though the Christian owns and reads a copy of the Bible. Therefore, in an extraordinary display of mercy, the Christian will be filled with spirit at the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Christians will have the Law written on hearts and placed in their minds so that all know the Lord and will be without excuse: Christians will either believe God or not believe God. Their judgment will be upon them; for they will no longer be cloaked in the garment of Christ’s righteousness. They will either live or die spiritually by whether they continue without sin, continue without committing blasphemy against the spirit. And, unfortunately, most will rebel against God in the great Apostasy of day 220.

In the Affliction, when Christians are filled with spirit and have to do nothing but continue to live without taking sin [unbelief] back inside themselves, most will return to sin, the reality concealed in Moses compelling the people of Israel to continue onward toward the Promised Land when this people wanted to turn back and return to Egypt. The two witnesses—types of Moses and Aaron—in the Affliction will strive to convince liberated Christians not to return to sin, not to return to Sunday observance or Christmas and Easter observance, not to walk in feigned freedom as Gentiles walk as children of disobedience. The two witnesses will strive to convince liberated Christians to be holy as God is holy (from 1 Pet 1:15–16; Lev 11:44–45), spurning what isn’t food for Israel even though Gentiles are free to eat common meats. The two witnesses will not, however, be successful: they will not be widely believed even through God has given them His credibility through bringing the Second Passover liberation of Israel to fruition.

In the Endurance, God will judge men by whether they believe Him. If they don’t, they will be condemned. If they do, they will be tested, even to the point of death. They will be tested through not being able to buy or sell without taking upon the person the mark of Death. Their belief of God will necessarily be strong for hungry bellies are not easy to ignore the first day, or the second day, or the third day. By the fourth day, hunger weakens and becomes an enemy that can be defeated. Hence, the Adversary can make hunger work to his advantage by permitting believing disciples to eat every third or fourth day.

But how will the Adversary, cast to earth and claiming to be the returned Messiah, be in a position to permit believing disciples to eat?

What doomsday prepper will be prepared for a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh year of not buying and selling? Who will have stored before the Second Passover and defended throughout the Affliction enough food to go into the Endurance with ample reserves? No one. For once it is known in the Affliction that a cache of food exists, the person holding the cache will not have enough ammo to defend the cache. Thus, worldwide, humanity will be hungry when the Endurance begins. And the only way for a person numbered in the third part to survive is to trust God to provide for the person as Elijah trusted the Lord during the drought of Ahab’s reign.

In the Affliction, the Christian who has food will be under obligation to feed the hungry, even if doing so will bring about the death of the Christian’s fleshly body through martyrdom … could Jesus have escaped the cross? Yes, He could have. He, however, chose to die so that others could live. He chose to take upon Himself the sins of Israel. Therefore, the Elect in the Affliction will [must] choose to feed the hungry and give shelter to the homeless to the extent of their abilities to do so. No holding back. No greed. No greater concern for self than for neighbor and brother. And in the Elect’s willingness to sacrifice themselves for others, they shall live forever.

Latter Day Saints, by command of their Great Depression prophet, are to be able to provide for themselves for a year. This means not just food but toiletries and clothing, boots and laundry soap …

I lived in rural Alaska where winter groceries were secured and stored before winter began. From experience, I know that a year’s worth of groceries will be consumed in seven months because these foodstuffs are at hand. Hence, those foodstuffs that Latter Day Saints believe will last a year will be gone or mostly gone when the Apostasy of day 220 comes. But the foodstuffs that most of Christendom has on hand will be gone in less than a month. Thus, Latter Day Saints will be in the seemingly enviable position of being able to leverage food into discipleship before the great Apostasy occurs.

The two witnesses will be in the less enviable position of calling plagues and famines into existence so that larders cannot be replenished … can’t we as Christians all get along, especially in a time of universal distress? No, we cannot; for righteousness has no fellowship with unrighteousness. The Christian filled with spirit who keeps the Law through belief of God has no fellowship with the Christian, also initially filled with spirit, who takes Sin back inside him or herself, thereby committing blasphemy against the spirit. And it will be the two witnesses’ responsibility to make visible the distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness, between saints and sinner.

Even among eighth-day Christians [those who worship on Sunday] war will emerge as the ranks of Latter Day Saints [neo-Arians], swollen by conversion of hungry Muslims (Allah will provide, and He does through the local LDS Ward), successfully wage war against Trinitarian Christendom, which was no better prepared for the Affliction than Islam was. The victory of Arian Christendom over Trinitarians—foreshadowed in the war fought by the Seleucid Empire against the Ptolemaic Empire, the king of the North against the king of the South, or Death against Sin—will come shortly before the wrath of the Lamb (Rev 6:16–17) begins.

In the Affliction, the two witness—analogous to Paul judging saints (see 1 Cor 5:3–5, 12–13)—will judge liberated Christendom, with their judgment being evident in where and when they use the power and authority they have: “They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire” (Rev 11:6). And the criteria they will use to make their judgments is simple: do liberated Christians believe God, or believe their ancestors, their Christian forefathers? Will these liberated Christians keep the Commandments by faith, by their belief of God that leads to their obedience? Or will these liberated Christians take sin back inside themselves, thereby committing blasphemy against the spirit and causing Christ to send over them strong delusions so that they cannot repent, cannot return to God, but must suffer the judgment of the two witnesses, with the two witnesses using hunger as the Adversary will use hunger in the Endurance?

In the Endurance, God will judge the third part of humanity, using the same criteria as the two witnesses used in the Affliction: will this third part believe Him? And the answer is, yes, they will, with half holding no reservations and the other half, mostly younger, having some reservations, some flirting with the prevailing ideologies of this world.

If you can, place yourself in the position of a millennial: you have never known a world without the Internet, without cell phones and nearly instantaneous communication, without foreign wars, without talk of global warming, without abundant food, without flush toilets and running water, without automobiles, without GPS tracking, without school shootings, without social safety-net programs, without perceived freedom—the list can go on for farther than I want to take it. Millennials don’t understand how my Old German Baptist/Mennonite ancestors lived, and try to continue to live, with horses and cash and quiet evenings eating pie on front porches, Hence, millennials will have a much more difficult time committing to living their lives in the quiet of their vines and orchards. God will, therefore, give them a thousand years to experience and learn to appreciate what I sometimes took for granted as I anchored up in isolated coves and bights, hearing nothing but the slaps of small waves against the hull and the call of gulls as I watched cross fox and bears scour beaches … at times, I would like to return, but the reality of this world is <change>. Everything changes. Nothing remains the same. And I think that is what I dislike the most as I age and remember what life was like before my physical body changed for the worse.

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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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