The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is “truth.”
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of February 21, 2015
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever: Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love. I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
The children of your elect sister greet you. (2 John 1:1–13 emphasis added)
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3.
The truth that abides or resides in a disciple is a spirit, not carnal knowledge that can be learned through diligent study, even diligent Bible study … Peter knew that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living-God (Matt 16:16), through the Father foreknowing Peter and the others who didn’t leave Jesus when Jesus told those following Him that His flesh was true food and His blood was true drink (John 6:55, 66–71). And the Twelve who didn’t leave Jesus included Judas Iscariot.
It’s easy to identify the truth that abides in us as a spirit of truth, like the Parakletos that Jesus told His disciples He would ask the Father to send—even an unbelieving academic can make this identification—but did Judas Iscariot have within him a spirit of the truth, and if he did, why didn’t this element of indwelling truth prevent him from betraying Jesus?
The one thing Philadelphia should know by now is that easy answers and easy identifications are probably false or incomplete at best. For in the location where, in the Elder’s formulaic greeting, he should be wishing earthly blessings and good health for the letter’s recipient, the Elect Lady and her children, he writes, “I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth” (2 John 4 emphasis added) … not all of the Elect Lady’s children walk in the truth.
If the truth that abides in us were the spirit of truth, those children [converts] that do not walk in the truth would not have any indwelling spirit of truth unless, of course, the spirit of the truth can be resisted and overcome by carnal knowledge. So either the Father didn’t send to those children who do not walk in the truth the spirit of truth, or these children that walk falsely have overcome the spirit of the truth, making this spirit a fairly weak spirit …
It would be logical to believe—considering the Elder warns the Elect Lady and her children of coming false apostles—that those children who do not walk in the truth are as the other eleven disciples were when Jesus asked all twelve whom did they think He was (Matt 16:15) and only Peter spoke up and answered correctly. The others would come to realize who Jesus was, but hadn’t then made the connection, or were hesitant to give voice to the connection.
The Elder’s letter is written post-Calvary; so if the truth that abides in us were the spirit of truth, the Parakletos, then why didn’t all of the Elect Lady’s children walk in the truth?
If the Elect are truly born of spirit through the indwelling of the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou], then the Elect will have the mind of Christ dwelling within the person as a human infant has the mind of man through having the indwelling spirit of man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] that permits human persons to know the things that pertain to people (1 Cor 2:11). And this juxtaposition becomes important in understanding why some of the Elect Lady’s children were not walking in the truth and why the Elder would send a warning about false apostles teaching an errant Christology … the mature mind of Christ, such as the Elder had argued in his self-identifying noun <’O Presbuteros>, would not succumb to an argument that Jesus was fully God when here on earth, that He only appeared like a man but really wasn’t a man like other human men are. But the infant son of God, while an adult person and usually one who mistakenly believes that he or she has greater understanding of spiritual matters than the infant son of God truly has, doesn’t have the mature mind of Christ. Therefore distinguishing between an infant son of God and a theological tare [false grain] is difficult and is really only possible by whether the disciple has genuine love for other disciples. No love, not genuine. Feigned love—this is where the problem lies; for how does a disciple distinguish between faked or genuine love for God, for Christ, for brethren, especially in the short haul? Pastors of the former Worldwide Church of God openly acknowledged that they were close to 100% wrong when it came to making this distinction.
The Parakletos as the spirit of truth is not the life-giving spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] that raises the dead spirit of the person [again, to pneuma tou ’anthropou], thereby causing a son of God to be born as a new spiritual entity in a manner analogous to a human mother giving birth to a son or daughter, thereby bringing into this world a new human person … a human infant, while having the mind of man, does not yet know the things of men but knows only the things of an infant or of a child. And as a human infant or small child is gullible and easily taken advantage-of, an infant son of God is equally gullible and easy prey for the Adversary and his ministers, all disguised as servants of righteousness.
What I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. (2 Cor 11:12–15)
Instead of taking candy away from a baby, the Adversary’s ministers would if they could take salvation from infant sons of God … the Elder warns the Elect Lady about deceitful workmen coming her way; deceitful workmen that deny Jesus came in the flesh, that He was fully man, His spirit being like the spirit of man in every person with one exception: He was not born consigned to disobedience as a slave of the Adversary for His Father wasn’t the first Adam but the Logos, the Creator of all things physical. Therefore, the man Jesus through not being consigned to disobedience wasn’t born with a dead spirit of man in Him, but was humanly born without sin and without being consigned to disobedience and by extension to death because of indwelling sin. He did not, however, prior to the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] descending upon and entering into Him in the form of a dove have indwelling eternal or heavenly life. Rather, His spirit of man was physically living as will be the spirit of man in the third part of humanity (from Zech 13:9) during the Endurance in Christ, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years.
The preceding declaration is significant—
The importance of Jesus being baptized to fulfill all righteousness (Matt 3:15) comes from the spirit of man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] in the man Jesus not being consigned to sin and death … the author of Hebrews writes,
Nor was it to offer Himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then He [Jesus] would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him. (Heb 9:25–28 emphasis added)
Without indwelling sin and death, a man will not necessarily die once but would rather, barring mishap or martyrdom, live physically to the end of the Millennium, the fleshly body renewing itself day by day through the ongoing creation of unassigned stem cells as was the case when the person was initially formed in the womb of his or her mother … when the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man on doubled day 1260, the spirit of God will be poured out on all flesh, thereby liberating the remaining third part of humanity from indwelling sin and death. From this point forward, no person will physically die from internal causes, with this third part of humanity not being baptized Christians, but having been made “perfect” by the actions of the Father and the Son. Hence, it is extremely important that this third part not mark themselves for death through taking upon themselves the mark of death, the mark of the beast, the tattoo of the cross [chi xi stigma].
Unlike greater Christendom in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, all of which will have been baptized by either sprinkling or dunking, the third part of humanity in the Endurance, when filled with spirit, will not have been baptized and will be without indwelling sin or death and as such will not ever come under judgment unless this third part symbolically takes death onto themselves through the sacrament of baptism. Likewise, Christ Jesus, without indwelling sin and death, would never have come under judgment unless He took symbolical death unto Himself through being baptized thus fulfilling all righteousness, that of being appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment.
The preceding is of much greater importance than Sabbatarian Christendom has imagined. For the third part of humanity in the Endurance in Christ, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years, liberation from indwelling sin and death will cause them to be spiritual virgins without more knowledge than was delivered by the two witnesses; hence they will all be taught by God through delivery of angelic messages:
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 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)
By living into the Endurance of Jesus, the third part of humanity will be physically judged—and in being physically judged, those things that happen to this third part will come upon them as their judgment … the judgment of Babylon will be the spiritual fall [collapse] of Babylon and its king and his angels being cast into space-time and to their eventual deaths.
When the third part of humanity is filled with spirit through spirit being poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28), a Muslim Twelver still alive in Iran will be liberated from indwelling sin and death regardless of what he or she has previously done in attempting to bring about end-of-the-age chaos. There will be no personalized judgment of this person who physically passes from being the slave of disobedience to being a free person, able to choose whether to obey God or not believe God. This person has been redeemed by the shed blood of the third part of humanity slain in the Second Woe. Then by living into the Endurance, this Twelver lives into his or her physical judgment—and must judge him or herself by not accepting the mark of death or by marking him or herself for death. The person [the Twelver] gets to choose whether he or she lives or dies. Same would pertain to the Islamic terrorist that hasn’t yet blown him or herself into a pink vapor. And in this, God will do a new thing that was foreshadowed by the Elect—those who hear the word, the voice of Jesus, and believe the One who sent Jesus into this world—for the Elect pass from death to live without coming under judgment … in the Endurance, the Third Part will pass from death to life [long physical life of the sort offered to the children of Israel on the plains of Moab — Deut 30:15–20] without being individually judged, their judgment coming in having to physically live without buying and selling until the end of their days, regardless of whether this end comes in the Endurance or at the end of the Millennium.
The judgment of God the Father is that human persons shall no longer engage in transactions if they are to live physically. If they engage in transactions, they shall die physically, with the Adversary cast into space-time to enforce the Father’s judgment, although the Adversary will not realize that he is merely a tool in the Father’s arsenal, a tool analogous to King Nebuchadnezzar being a servant of the Lord, a servant used to punish Israel for its idolatry (Jer 25:9).
A judgment of no transactions can only be a physical judgment that gets the “judged” into the Millennium, a type of heaven. If a person numbered in the third part of humanity (again, from Zech 13:9) truly believes God and wants to become part of the harvest of firstfruits, this person will—while entrance into heaven is possible, this door being open for the first 250 days of the Endurance—take personal judgment upon him or herself even though the person is without indwelling sin or death as the man Jesus was when He fulfilled all righteousness (Matt 3:15). The person will be baptized, thereby symbolically dying, not something the person would have done or even thought about doing prior to being filled with spirit but not born of spirit.
Being filled with spirit will impart to the third part of humanity truth that abides in each person without the person being truly born of spirit … the person numbered in the third part in the Endurance will know what is true; will know the truth not through receipt of the Parakletos if being born of spirit is the criterion for receiving the indwelling Parakletos …
If truth only comes to disciples through the Father sending to disciples the spirit of truth, the Parakletos, then what about revelation via realization in the same way that Peter, prior to the giving of the Holy Spirit, knew that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God (Matt 16:16), with this knowledge coming from the Father?
The previous two Sabbath Readings as well as this Reading argue that a [indefinite article] spirit of truth comes upon the person foreknown by the Father, suggesting now that sending the Parakletos to a person isn’t dependent upon spiritual birth but depends upon the will of the Father. And this would mean that a person could know the Truth without being born of spirit, which runs head-on into theological trouble; for Paul writes, in an oft-cited quotation,
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to 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. You, however, are not in the flesh but in spirit, if in fact spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. If the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His spirit that dwells in you. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by spirit of God are sons of God. (Rom 8:5–14 emphasis added)
As previously mentioned, Trinitarian translators assign personhood to the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] because truth does not abide in them. If “truth” abided in them, they would walk in the truth, thereby walking in this world as Jesus walked—and collectively, they do not so walk. Individually, none are known to Philadelphia to be walking or to have walked in truth.
Prior to when Jesus was baptized, He was without sin or death: He had not yet taken upon Himself the sins of Israel. Thus, He was “light” and He would have cast no shadow of Himself in this world. The things recorded in Scripture are shadows caused by blocking the light of God, with sin or unbelief blocking Light. Hence, few good works are recorded. Almost everything recorded is of where Israel failed to keep Commandments representing the Ten Living Words of God; of where Abraham failed through telling half-truths that were full lies; of where Adam failed.
Therefore, prior to when Jesus was baptized and took upon Himself symbolic death, He would have cast no shadow of Himself. There would not be any inscribed record of Him. There should not be any inscribed record of Him prior to baptism—and in this Mark’s Gospel is as it should be. Likewise, John’s Gospel in addressing the spiritual prehistory of the man Jesus and no physical prehistory is as it should be, leaving Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel and the Qur’an as false or falsified texts, with Matthew’s Gospel being about the inner Jesus that casts a shadow through the sinful flesh of the disciple in whom the glorified Jesus dwells.
Luke’s Gospel is a human redaction of the oral Christian tradition plus of the first writings, including Mark’s Gospel.
The Qur’an denies that Jesus was the unique Son of the Creator—God having come in the flesh as a man, and not as God—and as such is of the theological tradition about which the Elder warned the Elect Lady, but a denier who has twisted the Gnostic tradition, having wrung from this tradition both the Father and the Son, with Mohammad’s visions becoming the secret knowledge needed to get into heaven (if the person is good enough or dies in jihad) and with the God of Mohammad [Allah] having died spiritually when He entered His creation as the man Jesus the Nazarene, thereby having every Muslim worship a dead deity.
Mohammad was salt-putty in the Adversary’s hands. He was correct: both Judaism and Christianity as he knew Christianity were unfaithful ideologies, but when the Adversary remained/remains the prince of this world, all Mohammad could do in correcting problems he saw was to advance an equally errant ideology—and like Joseph Smith, that is what Mohammad did, thereby establishing the basis for the war and rumors of war that brings to an end the Adversary’s reign as the prince of the power of the air.
Before getting too far away from the reason for the baptism of Jesus it needs to be said, the Elect never come under judgment but pass from death to life not as free persons to either believe God or not believe God, but as slaves of obedience that leads to righteousness (Rom 6:16); slaves purchased with the blood of Christ Jesus.
Baptism represents a prayer for a good conscious through the death of the old self, old man—the personally known sinner [that is, known to the person that the person is him or herself a sinner].
The foreknown and predestined disciple receives little choice about whether he or she will obey God: this person will obey God because of the indwelling of Christ Jesus. This person will walk in this world as Jesus walked because of the indwelling Christ Jesus, who only walked in belief of the Father. The Elect cannot long walk in any other way for Jesus walked in no other way.
There is sufficient reason to believe that the Gospel of John as well as the three epistles of John were written by the same hand; thus, consider what this hand writes in 1st John:
No one who abides in Him [Jesus] keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:6–10 emphasis added)
The truth that abides in [resides in] the Elder, in the Elect Lady and in her Sister is the Parakletos, the spirit of truth, that Jesus told His disciples that He would ask the Father to send to His disciples:
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper [Parakleton], to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, which the world cannot receive, because it neither sees it [auto] nor knows it. You know it [auto], for it dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. … If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep the word [’o logos] of me. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper [’o Parakletos], the spirit [pneuma] the holy [to ’agion] that the Father will send in my name, that one [’ekeinos] will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. (John 14:15–20, 23–26 emphasis and double emphasis added)
And
But when the Helper [Parakletos] comes that I will send to you from the Father, the spirit of the truth that proceeds from the Father, that will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. (John 15:26–27)
Again, modern English translators have dishonestly translated the Greek neuter pronoun <auto> as “he” rather than “it” — the masculine nominative case ending /os/must necessarily be present (transforming <auto> into <autos>) for the pronoun to be translated as <he> … the argument for assigning the masculine pronoun to what is neuter comes from the <Parakletos> carrying the masculine case ending; for the Parakletos is an attribute of the Father, who rightfully carries masculine singularity. All that is of the Father will, therefore, carry linguistic masculine singularity.
But the author of John’s Gospel doesn’t assign masculine gender to the spirit of truth when this spirit exists outside of the Father, or apart from the Father; so when the Paraklete dwells in a son of God, it dwells there as a received attribute of the son of God who is a younger sibling to Christ Jesus. Thus, the spirit of truth in a son of God would always be linguistically neuter, for the spirit of truth isn’t the son or of the son so the masculine singularity of the son wouldn’t extend to a spirit from the Father—
The Paraklete would cease to be a masculine singular noun when the truth abides in us: the truth has been received in us as a gift from the Father, a gift that doesn’t have personhood but is linguistically neuter.
The Elder writes about the Parakletos, but it is by the testimony of two or three witnesses a thing is established, such as receipt of the Parakletos, with Paul having written,
For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor 2:11–16 double emphasis added)
Trinitarian translators assign personhood to the spirit of God, which would be akin to you assigning personhood to your breath for your life is in your breath that is carried by your blood to every living cell in your body. It would be a nonsensical assignment to assign personhood to your breath—and personhood wasn’t assigned to the glory of God within greater Christendom until the 5th-Century CE, and then only done by those Christians who “went ahead” and went onto new doctrines and understandings. Christological secessionists.
The assignment of personhood to the breath of God [the glory of God] was brought to life by 4th and 5th Century opponents of sound doctrine. As 1st-Century Gnostics were opponents to the truth and 2nd-Century Marcionites were opponents to the truth and 21st-Century Sacred Names Heretics are opponents to the truth, 5th-Century Trinitarians were opponents to the truth. And why do any of these heresies oppose the truth? Because those who teach them do not have the indwelling mind of Christ; they do not have the Parakletos, the spirit of Truth, abiding or residing in them. Rather, they merely have human wisdom that strains in vain—and usually in vanity—to understand spiritual things. And how can a person know this for certain? Because they do not walk in this world as Christ Jesus walked. They do not walk according to the commandment of Jesus. They do not have true love one for another.
Again, a newly born human infant doesn’t yet know the things of man; doesn’t know the way of a man with a maid, or vice versa; doesn’t know war or commerce or inscribed speech or how to solve for unknowns. But the ability to know all of these things is already in the mind of the human infant. In the same way, a newly born son of God doesn’t yet know about dual referents, or that the physical things of this world reveal the spiritual things of God; doesn’t yet know how to extract meaning from Hebraic thought-couplets, or that a story exists as a revealing narrative regardless of whether the story is true or false. But the ability to comprehend how the Logos spoke the creation into existence is already in the son of God through the indwelling of the mind of Christ, which will not permit a son of God to long walk as a Gentile, a person of the nations.
Now, how does Paul’s indwelling mind of Christ differ from the Elder’s Parakletos, the spirit of truth? Would not both reveal to those who are spiritually minded what has been concealed from carnal [natural] minds? Would not both abide in sons of God, spiritually born through the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] entering into and penetrating the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] as a husband enters into and penetrates his wife and is thereby the head of his wife as Christ is the Head of every disciple (1 Cor 11:3)?
Is the mind of Christ also the breath/spirit of Christ (from Rom 8:9)? No, it is not. … Is your breath—the breath of a man—the same as the mind of a man? If it isn’t—and it isn’t—then the spirit of Christ isn’t the mind of Christ, which only comes to those whom the Father foreknows and predestines to be glorified as fruit borne out of season.
The truth that abides in the Elect Lady and in her Elect Sister comes via receipt of the Parakletos, the spirit of truth, which in turn comes from the son of God having the mind of Christ as well as the indwelling of Christ in the form of His spirit. Two spirits, neither of which have personhood but which imparts personhood by bringing to life what was dead and what imparts to the living son of God the ability to understand the things of the living of this species.
We have in Scripture a letter from King Nebuchadnezzar that indirectly addresses the spirit in man:
King Nebuchadnezzar to all peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth: Peace be multiplied to you! It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. How great are His signs, how mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion endures from generation to generation. I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace. I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me. So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. Then the magicians, the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers came in, and I told them the dream, but they could not make known to me its interpretation. At last Daniel came in before me—he who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my god, and in whom is the spirit of the holy gods—and I told him the dream, saying, "O Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is too difficult for you, tell me the visions of my dream that I saw and their interpretation. The visions of my head as I lay in bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth. Its leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the heavens lived in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it. I saw in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and behold, a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven. He proclaimed aloud and said thus: 'Chop down the tree and lop off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beasts flee from under it and the birds from its branches. But leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, amid the tender grass of the field. Let him be wet with the dew of heaven. Let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth. Let his mind be changed from a man's, and let a beast's mind be given to him; and let seven periods of time pass over him. The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.' This dream I, King Nebuchadnezzar, saw. And you, O Belteshazzar, tell me the interpretation, because all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known to me the interpretation, but you are able, for the spirit of the holy gods is in you." (Dan 4:1–18 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Nebuchadnezzar had the mind of a man because he was humanly born with the mind of a man, received from Adam and Eve with the creation of the first “man,” not necessarily the first hominid but the first hominid that was a man. … This is not here intended to make an argument for or against pre-Adamic hominids, but to temporarily remove from discussion human evolution and continue with the usually unaccepted concept that God gives to all living creatures a non-physical element that transforms brains into minds, a concept central to angels also having been given their “natures” and with the angelic nature of both the false prophet [at the beginning of the Affliction] and of the Adversary [at the beginning of the Endurance] being taken from them and they being given the nature or mind of a man.
Nebuchadnezzar in his letter to all peoples, nations, and languages introduces what happened to him not because of his greatness—he was the tree whose crown reached to heaven—but because of his vanity in believing that by his might he had acquired the wealth and authority of this world, not at all realizing that he was merely a type of the spiritual king of Babylon, the Adversary who had tried to ascend to the throne of God. And as a type of the Adversary [the visible physical type that disclosed the invisible spiritual reality], Nebuchadnezzar tells Daniel, “The spirit of the holy gods [plural] is in you.”
Daniel is not born of spirit. If he would have been (or if David would have been), Daniel would have been the last Adam—and this is simply not the case even though Daniel was a physical eunuch as Christ Jesus was a spiritual eunuch … there was no liaison or marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene that produced a child representing the Holy Grail. This entire concept is nonsense, the scat of secessionist disciples who blindly went ahead of those in whom Truth abides, and in going ahead as blind men, these secessionists fell off a theological cliff and fell to their spiritual deaths as examples of what happens when the blind lead the blind.
There has never been any shortage of secessionist disciples, Christians who have gone ahead of orthodox believers; Christians convinced that they have stumbled upon new knowledge, new truth, and have taken their convictions and run with them, with the defining characteristic of errant belief being failure to walk in this world as Christ Jesus walked … if a Christian doesn’t walk in this world as Christ Jesus, an observant Jew, walked, the Christian isn’t of Christ and has no association with Christ at this time.
The Elder wrote,
I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth” — not all of her children, but some, meaning that in this fellowship were believers and unbelievers posturing as believers, what Paul wrote to the holy ones at Corinth: “When you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (1 Cor 11:18–19).
Factions within greater Christendom existed in mid-1st-Century Christian fellowships for the expressed purpose of exposing genuine from false disciples, with the genuine defined by the Elder:
I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. (2 John vv. 4–6)
Now, how should what John wrote be handled? If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. The command seems straightforward: if anyone comes to you [this is central to the passage] and does not bring this teaching—what teaching? And it is here where ambiguity settles as a fog over otherwise very clear words.
The Elder or “the presbyter” [’o Presbuteros] is not as an authoritarian leader of an assembly but seems to be a senior member of a sister assembly of the Elect Lady, someone able to rightly judge a matter of importance to the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27) that is in the theological role of the Woman, the outer self being subject to the inner self, the indwelling spirit of Jesus in the spirit of each disciple that is the Head of each disciple as the husband is the head of his wife.
Again, linguistic analysis of the three epistles of John and the Gospel of John suggests that all four documents were written by the same hand, meaning that they were not written by the hand of the author of Revelation. Therefore, if the Apostle John while isolated on the Isle of Patmos wrote Revelation himself—written by a first language Aramaic speaker—and if the Apostle John also “wrote” the anonymous Gospel and the three anonymous epistles identified by his name, then John used “the hand” of one of the children of the Elect Lady’s Sister to do the actual writing, a justifiable conclusion considering that apparently John was part of in the fellowship of the Sister and that the Greek used in Revelation wasn’t polished but seemingly that of a literate workman.
My brother Ben is reasonably well educated and a now-retired district ranger for the Forest Service. He is able to hold in his conscious mind complex metaphors, and use these metaphors to figuratively solve for unknowns. But he writes as a common workman, not as a professional journalist, essayist, poet. He claims not to like to write—and that is probably true for his writing doesn’t reflect the quality of his mind, at least not yet as he has begun to set in print his stories that capture “locations” in a truly transformative era … the author of Revelation seems to be a similarly self-taught writer, but the hand that wrote the Gospel of John and the three epistles of John was that of a professionally trained scribe.
As there is today a formula for writing a formal letter—texting doesn’t count and is non-inscription—there was a usually-used formula in the 1st-Century: a praescriptio or introduction that names who sent the letter and to whom the letter was sent, and includes a greeting [corresponding to verses 1 through 3], usually followed by an expression of thanksgiving or a wish for the health of the person receiving the letter [approximated by verse 4]. The end of the 1st-Century letter would often repeat the wish for health then include a farewell word [verse 13].
The body of 2nd John would be verses 5 through 12—the author’s reason for writing.
From the epistle’s greeting, Seventh Day Adventists have adopted the term <Elder> for their pastors, but the epistle’s author doesn’t write as a pastor or teacher, but more as a senior magistrate, whose implied authority isn’t confined to one fellowship but is regional although this authority isn’t sufficient to end debate about a theological matter—and in Hellenistic Asia Minor as well as in Egypt, magistrates were identified as elders.
If 2nd John were written by the Apostle John, why would not his inherited authority by having been with Jesus be sufficient to end theological debate about a matter? Apparently, John’s authority was only recognized by the Elect Lady and her Sister, not by everyone identifying himself as a teacher of Israel, with the author of Matthew’s Gospel having his Jesus say,
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt 7:21–23)
To an outside observer, the Apostle Paul would have been as one who traveled; as one who goes ahead, both theologically as well as physically … if Paul taught what lawless Christians claim Paul taught—he didn’t teach what is commonly credited to him—he would have been one about whom the Elder warned the Elect Lady; for the Elder defines <love>: “This is love: that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it” (2 John 6).
Love is keeping Jesus’ Commandments, with Jesus having only spoken the words of the Father …
According to the Elder, again presumably John the Evangelist despite Eusebius claiming otherwise (thereby establishing the basis for doubt about the genuineness of John’s Gospel and especially 1st-John), “love” is walking as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6), with Jesus having kept the Royal Law, the Ten Commandments. And if love for God and for neighbor and brother is keeping the Commandments, then everything taught in the 4th-Century by orthodox Christianity is heresy, brought forward from the 4th-Century into the 21st-Century by the Latin, Greek, Coptic, and Syrian Churches; additionally brought forward from the 16th-Century by Lutherans, the Reformed Church, and by most Radical Reformers [the fathers of today’s Anabaptists].
An idea is difficult to kill, with the reality of how difficult it is to kill a theological teaching presently being seen in civilization’s war against the Islamic State [ISIS], with President Obama not at all having the stomach for an ideological conflict intent on bringing humanity to the end of this present age …
As a closet Marxist and weak Islamic apologist; as a community organizer along the pattern of Saul D. Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), dedicated to the first community organizer, Satan the devil, President Obama lacks similar moral commitment to a theological cause that ISIS recruits have. While Obama knows well what Alinsky put forth in his Rules for Radicals, having used the book in college classes he taught, Obama apparently wants the restructuring of society to come about via the fiscal collapse of the present American society and a new society emerging out of the social turmoil national bankruptcy would bring upon not only America but the Western world … every debt-based national currency is subject to collapse when the perception develops that those who hold the debt cannot collect. A Federal Reserve Note is an instrument of debt, not an asset. A paper dollar bill that bore the identifier <Silver Certificate> (some were still in circulation when I was in high school) was an instrument representing an asset, roughly an ounce of silver. But a FRN dollar bill represents a loan by the holder of the bill to the Federal Reserve Bank, which had previously loaned the bill to the Federal Government.
ISIS radicals want to bring about the collapse of civilization through chaotic terror. Alinsky radicals also want the collapse of society, but this collapse being a means of uniting low-income communities [the “have-nots”] into an empowered political force able to challenge and to overturn entrenched agencies of oppression … President Obama by his actions discloses that he shares the same goal of societal collapse as Islamic radicals have: he apparently doesn’t share, however, their belief in the means of bringing about the collapse of hierarchal societies.
It is in the subtitle of Alinsky’s where Obama differs from ISIS terrorists: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. It isn’t realistic to think that you can prod a sleeping Cyclops with a sharp stick if you don’t first blind him. The last thing you, as a realist radical, want is to awaken Cyclops when he can still see you.
President Obama apparently wants as much of America to remain asleep as presently slumbers until the trigger of runaway inflation can be pulled, the nation then committing political suicide as it slumps to the floor, representational democracy dead from a self-inflicted wound … if ISIS can, it will pull that trigger of cocked inflation, drawing the United States back into a ground war in the Middle East, one America cannot afford to fight but one that Cyclops can win if he doesn’t get drunk and fall asleep.
The strength of all deficit-based currencies will be tested over the next couple of years, when it isn’t tanks and smart bombs that will defeat radical Islam, but de-emphasis of the surface of things and surfaces of people and emphasizing instead the inner person, either filthy from being a liar, a murderer and rapist—an Unbeliever—or being clean from desiring to keep the Commandment to love one another that Jesus left with His disciples.
Before God, President Obama has no greater claim to righteousness than ISIS murderers have; for change you can believe in won’t come from fiscally collapsing America, but will come from all Christians heeding the Elder’s warning about receiving lawless teachers and pastors. … Today, a Christian secessionist movement has developed, a movement that is political in nature but couched in the language of Scripture; a movement to return 18th-Century purity to the Christian Church in America. But then, the history of Christianity is that of secessionist disciples going on ahead of the main Body of Christ. And it is about those who have gone ahead that the Elder writes.
When the Elder wrote to the Elect Lady to warn this congregation not to receive secessionist disciples—deceivers gone out into the world who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh—Gnostics hid in otherwise orthodox congregations, these Gnostics keeping their secret knowledge mostly to themselves, only indoctrinating the vulnerable into their mysteries and then only when no one was looking, a strategy that proved successful for as long as no central authority existed in congregations. That is for as long as no one stood between the disciple and Christ Jesus, which an ordained ministry inevitably does.
The Elder wrote, all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever … the “truth” that abides or resides in the Elect is the spirit of truth, the Parakletos, that discloses “truth.” And the truth of the matter is that the person who doesn’t voluntarily or involuntarily strive to keep the Commandments doesn’t love either God or brother.
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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."