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 Daniel's visions.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of March 13, 2010
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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No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. … And in the days of those kings [the gold, silver, bronze, iron, & clay] the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. (Dan 2:27–28, 44–45 emphasis added)
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When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it. And behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. And I heard a man's voice between the banks of the Ulai, and it called, “Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.” So he came near where I stood. And when he came, I was frightened and fell on my face. But he said to me, “Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end.”
And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. He said, “Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end. As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king. As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise. His power shall be great—but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. Without warning he shall destroy many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken—but by no human hand. The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.” (Dan 8:15–26 emphasis added)
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Daniel doesn’t write about what will happen to Israel earlier than the generic time of the end. Contrary to what has been popularly believed since the days of the second physical temple (516 BCE through 70 CE), Daniel’s vision were not made understandable with Darius the Mede killing Belshazzar the Chaldean (Dan 5:30–31), or with Alexander the Great defeating Darius, or with Wars of the Diadochi and the emergence of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires. Rather Daniel’s visions were “sealed” by these historical events apparently happening as Daniel prophesied. Any other reading of Daniel’s visions was either ignored or neglected to such a degree that modern scholarship dates the composition of the Book of Daniel to the 2nd-Century BCE because of the recorded cause for the Maccabean war between Israel and the Seleucids.
But biblical punditry’s readings of Daniel’s visions ignore the angel telling Daniel, “‘But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end’” (12:4), and “‘Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end’” (12:9). Daniel’s visions were supernaturally sealed and kept secret until the time of the end; until meaning would again be taken from Scripture via typology … typological exegesis is the scholarly term that encapsulates the totality of a metaphoric reading of Scripture.
Shortly before He was taken to be crucified, Jesus said, “‘I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father’” (John 16:25) … the reality of human language is that the words of this world are used to describe or name the things of this world, not the things of heaven. As discussed in last Sabbath’s reading, the words of this world can only figuratively represent the things of heaven. In the unsealed narrative record of his vision, John chose to use human words that named “function” as the primary attribute of heavenly things. However, Daniel, writing approximately six hundred years earlier and recording what he alone saw, used color to reflect mindsets and Babylon as the representation of governance: when God is light (which casts no shadow), things that block light are not of God. Things that reflect light and show “color” have absorbed a portion of the spectrum and therefore cast shadows; they are not of God.
The metals of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw reflect light and do not emit light; thus, shortcutting a couple of logical steps, it will here be stated that these metals represent governance that is not directly from God … concerning Nebuchadnezzar, the king recalls a vision:
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.” (Dan 4:13–17 emphasis added)
If the Most High rules over the kingdom of men (a single kingdom), and if the Most High sets over it the basest of men, the lowest of the low, then Nebuchadnezzar would be named among the basest of men. But the king does not own his inner self—that which made Nebuchadnezzar a “human being” could be taken from the king at any time.
When the king’s human nature could be taken from him and the nature of a beast given to him, a different sort of dynamic is at work in the relationship between man and God than usually considered: prior to receipt of a second breath of life [pneuma Theon], a human being consists of two parts, not three. A person is his or her fleshly body [soma] and the spiritually lifeless inner self metonymically represented by the person’s breath [psuche]. But when the person is born of God, a second breath of life is received, a breath of life that makes the inner self alive in a manner analogous to how human breath gives life to the flesh. The person is now pneuma, psuche, and soma (1 Thess 5:23).
The Most High has set over the kingdom of this world—men and women who are flesh and natural breath—the basest of men as their rulers, but in doing so, the Most High makes known to the endtime disciple who is the inner self [psuche soul, used metaphorically] that has been made alive through receipt of the divine breath of God that the Most High has set over His sons dwelling in the Abyss, human and angelic, the worst of the angels, the Adversary, the present prince of this world.
The above sentence is correct, but will be difficult for some to understand: an outwardly circumcised Israelite breathing air and dwelling in a house in Egypt as a slave to Pharaoh forms the spiritually lifeless shadow of a circumcised-of-heart inner new self, made alive by the breath of God, dwelling in a tent of flesh in this world as a slave to disobedience, a slave to the prince of this world. As the first Adam was a fully mature but physically lifeless human corpse prior to when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into his nostrils (Gen 2:7) and Adam became a nephesh or breathing creature, the inner self (or Paul’s old man) is spiritually lifeless and analogous to the corpse that was Adam prior to Elohim breathing into the man of mud’s nostrils. This invisible inner self is made known through the visible things that have been made, in this case the fleshly body of the person. And it is this invisible inner self that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from him for seven years, this inner self replaced by an ox so that the king didn’t even realize what had happened to him until afterwards.
A person knows the things of a person because of the inner self of the person, this inner self given by God to the person. And it is this inner self that is made alive as a son of God through receipt of the breath of God [pneuma Theon] as the first Adam was made alive when Elohim breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud. Thus, it is the inner son of God that knows the things of God … a person wouldn’t seek the opinion of an ox when dealing with human theoretical concepts; nor will the son of God seek the opinion of human scholars and pundits when dealing with theological concepts. It would not have made any sense to ask Nebuchadnezzar about affairs of state during the seven years when he ate grass like an ox. What type of an answer would the person have received from Nebuchadnezzar, Moo? And so it is when confronting Christian scholars who would have the composition of Daniel’s visions occurring in the 2nd-Century BCE: they have not been born of God so they do not comprehend the things of God even though they can read ancient languages and can speak about ancient traditions.
The Adversary reigns over the sons of God in the Abyss (the universe was created in the Abyss) as Nebuchadnezzar, the human king of Babylon, reigned over men in Daniel’s world.
When God is light, everything that has color has absorbed some of that light, meaning that there is an element of God in every living creature in the Abyss. The use of color to indicate that life has been received from God also permits a discussion about an entity’s relative distance from God: gold absorbs more of the spectrum than silver so gold as a color would be farther from God than silver is as a color. Black would represent the absence of light or the complete absorption of spectrum, and as such would be the greatest distance away from light; so when light represents life (John 1:4), black would represent lifelessness or the complete lack of life as seen in a person’s shadow that mimics the person.
No one has difficulty understanding that his or her shadow is without life; yet most of Christendom refuses to accept the reality that human beings can function as spiritually lifeless shadows of heavenly beings that block the light of God.
The Adversary is the present prince of this world—
When the governance of Daniel’s world is fully represented by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire, then “Babylon” becomes the appropriate metaphoric naming phrase for the single kingdom of this world that is ruled by the present prince of this world … the problem that even Paul faced about how to reconcile no human authority existing except that instituted by God (Rom 13:1) and the prince of the power of the air ruling over the sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3) requires understanding that the basest of men ruling over sons of disobedience, with both rulers and their subjects being slaves to the Adversary because of the first Adam’s disobedience, visibly makes evident the Adversary ruling over sons of God in whom there is any darkness in the Abyss. And as the reigns of emperors give way to rule by We the People and the expression of democratic ideals in this world, the Adversary’s reign as the spiritual king of Babylon in the Abyss has faced and faces challenges from the kings of Persia, and receives support from the first king of Greece, with “color” disclosing mindsets and alliances.
Common bronze (90% copper; 10% tin) is the same color as 14 carat gold, a gold-copper alloy. Silver is a white metal as is iron. Thus, as bronze is the color of dull gold, iron is the color of dull silver.
· In color, bronze is to gold as iron is to silver;
· In strength, bronze is to gold as iron is to silver.
The bi-colored humanoid image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision links the bronze belly and thighs with the head of gold, and links the silver arms and chest with the iron legs and feet.
When gold represents the king of Babylon, and when Cyrus king of Persia orders a house for the Lord to be built for him in Jerusalem, silver represents movement closer to God and gold represents movement away from God. Silver does not, however, represent God or light, but rather a mingling of the sacred and the profane that gives the appearance of being of God. Therefore, when the sons of God in the Abyss are ruled by the silver kings of Persia, Christianity as the world knows it flourishes—and becomes mistaken for the genuine article, sons of God ruled by the Most High.
The rulers of this world are all sons of disobedience, and the lowest of these sons of disobedience: to represent the Adversary, a rebelling angelic son of God, the anointed cherub who was in the garden of God (Ezek 28:12–15), the principle rulers of this world must be as debased in their thinking as the Adversary is in his. And about the Adversary, Paul wrote, “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor 11:14–15). Therefore endtime disciples find that human emperors, kings, and presidents appear as servants of God but are really agents of the Adversary.
When the Adversary rules as a disguised angel of light, a disciple needs to check for “color” as a means to identify who is of God and who isn’t; for sons of light are “light” and cast no shadows in this world. If it were not for the darkness, they as little “lights” would be invisible in this world.
The Adversary will block the light of God as a piece of gold blocks sunlight; therefore the Adversary will cast a shadow in this world. The Lord through Daniel identifies this shadow as Nebuchadnezzar, the head of gold of the humanoid image the king sees in vision. But the image Nebuchadnezzar saw was that of a ruling hierarchy at the end of the age … Nebuchadnezzar’s vision is dated to when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man, uncovered Head and covered Body. This is the scene when the stone cut by no human hands crushes “‘all of these kingdoms and bring them to an end’” (Dan 2:44). These kingdoms are not successive kingdoms as humankind thinks of successive kingdoms, but these kingdoms co-exist so that the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold are simultaneously broken and blown away by the breath of God as chaff.
Because the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar sees has legs, feet, and toes, with these legs not emerging until the first king of the king of Greece is broken (because he is first), Nebuchadnezzar’s vision is dated to the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, with it being broken in pieces occurring on day 1260 of the seven endtime years of tribulation—but this is getting ahead of ourselves.
Endtime disciple have to scour from their minds a couple of culturally imbedded assumptions: because Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that he is the head of gold (Dan 2:38), prophecy pundits have assigned the historical narrative of Western Civilization to the image Nebuchadnezzar sees, thereby burdening this fragile figure with calcifying hyperbole while insulting the great nation of China. Daniel tells the king:
You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.
This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold. Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. (2:31–43 emphasis added)
When Daniel addresses Nebuchadnezzar, who has just ordered all of the wise men in Babylon to be slain and who has not yet rescinded his order, he uses diplomatic hyperbole as a normal greeting, but in truth, Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t rule the children of men wherever they dwell. He doesn’t rule anyone in Chile or in China, and he certainly doesn’t rule the beasts in the fields or the birds in heaven. However, the spiritual king of Babylon (see Isa 14:4) does rule men wherever they dwell as well as birds and beasts. This spiritual king of Babylon is the prince of the power of the air, the prince of disobedience; He is the Adversary, the present prince of this world, and his dominion is over the mental typography of living things. Hence, when Michael and his angels make war on Satan and his angels and Satan is cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–10), the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox (Isa 11:6–7).
The predatory natures of beasts of prey will be changed, for these predatory natures come from the Adversary. They disclose his mind: he who was a murderer from the beginning will devour men (and women) as a cat devours mice.
Nebuchadnezzar as the great human king of Babylon served as a copy and type of the spiritual king of Babylon—
The concept of angelic sons of God, invisible to human eyes and temporarily still living outside of time, casting shadows as spiritually-lifeless human kings is well established in Scripture although the concept taxes the comprehension of most disciples. The disciple who does not grasp that the Church is the temple of God; the disciple who looks for a new temple to be constructed in earthly Jerusalem before Christ returns; the disciple who doesn’t understand that Christ, Head and Body, is the rebuilt temple—this disciple remains focused on the things of this world, and remains incapable of understanding endtime biblical prophecy. But when the disciple realizes that the things of heaven can only be described in metaphoric language—again, the words of this world represent the things of this world, not the things of heaven so they can only be used as metaphors for the things of heaven—the disciple will understand that Nebuchadnezzar, the physical king of Babylon, makes visible the invisible attributes of the spiritual king of Babylon, the old serpent, Satan the devil.
Daniel records,
In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks. On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river (that is, the Tigris) I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a man clothed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude. And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, for the men who were with me did not see the vision, but a great trembling fell upon them, and they fled to hide themselves. So I was left alone and saw this great vision, and no strength was left in me. My radiant appearance was fearfully changed, and I retained no strength. Then I heard the sound of his words, and as I heard the sound of his words, I fell on my face in deep sleep with my face to the ground.
And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. And he said to me, “O Daniel, man greatly loved, understand the words that I speak to you, and stand upright, for now I have been sent to you.” And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling. Then he said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come.” (Dan 10:2–14 emphasis added)
No human prince or king of Persia would withstand this angel for 21 days. Every human being would react to the presence of this angel as Daniel reacted: the person’s countenance would change, knees would get weaken, and the person would fall to the ground as Daniel fell face-first to the ground.
It is silliness to think that the kings of Persia with whom the angel was left are human beings, or that the prince [sar] of Greece that will come (Dan 10:20) is a human prince or king. They are not. But the angel tells Daniel,
And as for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him.
And now I will show you the truth. Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them. And when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece. Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills. And as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these. (Dan 11:1–4)
The angel stood up for Darius the Mede to strengthen him, but Darius the Mede (needing strengthened by the angel) would not have been able to withstand the angel for 21 days, meaning simply that the kings of Persia are demonic kings. The first king of Greece is a demonic king, and the king of Greece is a federation of rebelling angelic sons of God.
Returning to Daniel’s vision of the third year of the reign of Belshazzar, if the kings of Media and Persia are angelic sons of God, and if the king of Greece is also a rebelling federation of angels, with the great horn (or first horn) of this federation being broken at the Second Passover because he is first, then the four horns that sprout from around the stump of the first horn will be demons whose mindsets are disclosed by their color. The third and the fourth of these horns become the king of the South and the king of the North, with this king of the South casting his shadow as the Greek Ptolemaic Empire and with this king of the North casting his shadow as the Greek Seleucid Empire.
By color endtime disciples know what will and what is happening in the Abyss: when things begin going poorly for the king of Babylon, his reign collapsing because of internal rebellion that Christ Jesus has instigated [this is Christ doing to Satan what Satan did to the Most High], the kings of Persia move to thwart this rebellion by compromising it by adopting so-called Christian values (the silver color). But adopting Christian values causes the king of Greece to aggressive move against the princes of Persia and move to return rule to so-called Greek values that are truly hostile to Christendom … when humankind can get no farther from God than it is; when the king of Greece tramples over all that seems Christian in this world, the Second Passover will happen, and the first king of the federation that is the king of Greece will be suddenly broken. Only then will the four kings emerge on the four points of the compass, with the little horn sprouting from the head of the king of the North.
Merging Daniel’s visions and John’s vision will be the subject of next Sabbath’s reading.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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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."