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 sealing prophecies.

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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.

The person conducting the service should read or assign to be read Daniel chapters 10.

Commentary: There is no prophecy better known than the long vision given to Daniel, a vision of a great conflict (10:1), a vision that Daniel understood, a vision “for days yet to come,” for “the latter days” (v. 14). And here is where so many prophecy pundits go wrong: the vision, like Nebuchadnezzar’s vision and Daniel’s second vision (Dan chap 8), was not for Daniel’s days or for a time near to Daniel, but was for the latter days, the time of the end, that period near to when the Messiah would come. Daniel’s visions were not about the Babylon in which he lived or the Persian kings of Babylon even though he told Nebuchadnezzar that he, Nebuchadnezzar, was the head of gold … a radical claim? Not when Daniel’s visions are sealed and secret, and not to be understood until the time of the end.

The person who argues for a literal reading of the text, of the prophecy, argues for keeping the text or prophecy sealed forever … no literary text that openly proclaims itself to be sealed and secret can ever be unsealed and read with a “literal” reading. No exceptions. A prophecy that declares itself for the latter days or the time of the end is never fulfilled by events earlier than the time of the end, even when those events seemingly satisfy the prophecy.

A text that declares itself sealed until a certain period requires being deconstructed: more meanings are necessarily present than the literal or surface meaning of the text. Likewise, a biblical prophecy that is for the latter days or the time of the end can have any number of apparent fulfillments that are not “the fulfillment” of the prophecy. All the apparent fulfillments do is keep the prophecy sealed and secret.

The above is not a difficult concept to understand. Nevertheless, Daniel’s visions have been badly read, not understood, abused by the many teachers of Israel, while remaining sealed and kept secret by the Lord.

The long vision which begins with chapter 10 would not be unsealed until the time of the end; thus, the prophecy pundit who taught three decades ago or three centuries ago could not understand the vision regardless of how badly the pundit sought understanding. Therefore every traditional teaching about this vision is not valid and must be either outright rejected or relegated to being a mere surface reading of the shadow that sealed and kept secret this vision.

The time setting for when Daniel’s long vision occurs is the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia; the geographical location is the banks of the Tigris; and Daniel has eaten no delicacies, no meat, and has drunk no wine for twenty-one days when the man (angel) clothed in linen appeared to Daniel, who alone saw this vision. The men with him felt a great trembling and fled, hiding themselves. They knew something occurred, but not what.

No strength was left in Daniel, and the prophet fell on his face, a sign that the angel was of God. Daniel was in a deep sleep, face to the ground, when a hand touched Daniel and set him on his hands and knees … Daniel doesn’t say whether he remained in a deep sleep, and mentally was set on his hands and knees, or whether he was awakened and placed on his hands and knees. Regardless, he was told to stand, and he stood trembling.

The men who hid themselves could tell us if Daniel remained on the ground asleep or whether he stood, but they are historically silent, leaving us as Paul was when he said he knew a man caught up to the third heaven, whether in or out of the body he did not know (2 Cor 12:2–3). Daniel was not caught up to the third heaven, and regardless of whether he mentally stood or actually stood, the vision occurred within his mind—Daniel was not given, Thus saith the Lord, and told to relate to Israel the actual words of the Lord. Rather, Daniel was told that the angel had stood up for Darius the Mede before being shown “‘the truth’” (Dan 11:2), which did not appear to Daniel as a panorama of events but as a story told.

To see with the eyes is to be shown. John the Revelator is shown what is soon to occur in the Lord’s day. Daniel is told a story about what would occur at the end of the age; so Daniel hears with the ears (or with the heart) what he is shown. What Daniel “sees” is the angel, then two others, “one on this bank of the stream and one on that bank of the stream” (Dan 12:5). The man in white linen was above the waters of the stream (v. 6). Hence, Daniel “sees” none of what he is shown, a distinction of significance.

Modern prophecy pundits go wrong when they fail to deconstruct a text that demands deconstruction, a text that declares hearing a narrative as seeing the truth … the angel tells Daniel, “‘The prince [sar] 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’” (10:13). Pause for a moment: if the men with Daniel felt trembling and fled to hide themselves (these men would, most likely, have been government officials) and if Daniel had no strength but fell on his face, then the prince of Persia and the kings of Persia that withstood the angel for twenty-one days and with whom the angel would have to fight after delivering the message to Daniel (v. 20) are not human beings but are other angels. They are demons. And they are powerful demons for it takes the Archangel Michael’s intervention in this fight to allow the angel bringing Daniel the message to slip away for the short while necessary to deliver the message to the prophet.

When the angel tells Daniel that he, the angel, had stood up for Darius the Mede, readers are figuratively shown the pea hiding under the walnut shell, the pea that disappears when the walnut shells are shifted around. Readers are told to guess where the pea is hiding—Now you see it, now you don’t. Place your bets—and with the aid of secular history books, endtime Israel has bet that Alexander is the mighty king of Greece (Dan 11:3), and the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires are the kingdoms of the king of the South and the king of the North, respectively. But the bets are sucker bets, for the pea is not under any of the walnut shells. It is safely stowed in the pocket of the Lord, who will produce it at the end of the age.

The scene Daniel records can be visualized: the demonic prince of Persia blocks delivery of the message in the timeless heavenly realm. No twenty-one days elapse in heaven, but rather a struggle breaks into an ongoing action within the unchanging moment. It is only in this earthly world where time passes that the twenty-one days occur. In heaven, from when the angel is given the message [i.e., told to speak to Daniel and reveal what would happen to Israel in the latter days] and the demonic prince of Persia blocks delivery, the moment remains unchanged—and in this same unchanging moment, Michael intervenes and lets the messenger slip past the demonic kings of Persia and get to Daniel. Meanwhile, the fight is still going on in the timeless heavenly realm where Michael is resisting (making war against) the kings of Persia, who will be joined by the prince [sar] of Greece when the messenger returns to rejoin the on-going struggle that will eventually erupt into all-out war with Satan and his angels defeated and cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–10).

The difference between showing and telling is the location where truth occurs: John the Revelator in called up to heaven where he “sees” Christ as the slain Lamb of God and the seven spirits to the seven churches as seven eyes and the seven churches as seven horns … John “sees” how each entity functions in the plan of God. Daniel here on earth is told how entities function, but function where? Not here on earth where men tremble and quake in the presence of an angel of the Lord, but rather, in heaven where fallen angels who remain part of Satan’s hierarchy resist angels of the Lord.

Christians assume that heaven is peaceful and filled with harmony and cooperation, love, but until the Adversary and his angels are cast from heaven, war at some level or state is ongoing. Again, in timelessness what has life has everlasting life for the presence of life and the absence of life [death] cannot exist in the same moment. Thus, angelic beings have everlasting life as long as they remain in the supra-dimensional heavenly realm, but when cast into time, or better, space-time, angelic beings can and will die as one moment decays into the next moment. Fire will [and has from the perspective of heaven] come out from the belly of the Adversary to utterly consume him (Ezek 28:18–19). He will be no more, forever. But he will resist being cast into time even though his resistance is useless … Jesus said He saw Satan fall like lightning (Luke 10:18), a statement that utilizes the juxtaposition between time and timelessness. Satan will be cast from heaven halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation; will be cast into time at the end of the second woe, at the end of the 1260 day ministry of the two witnesses. When the moment is unchanging, Satan being cast from heaven becomes an event seen as part of a continuum of events without beginning or end. Every event that occurs in this continuum happens during the same unchanging moment. But from the perspective of time, these events are perceived as a narrative that flows around a single point.

Within time, events have a beginning and an end that are or can be seen from the same unchanging moment in heaven. Thus, while one event replaces another in the heavenly realm, with each able to co-exist with both what comes before the event and what comes after the event—and with Satan already being cast from heaven before the Logos entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus of Nazareth (this is what boggles minds of those within time)—Scripture forms the shadow of the Book of Life and permits disciples to see themselves working out their own salvation from a perspective near that of glorification, meaning that those disciples who will be glorified can (from the heavenly realm) see themselves today hearing the words of Jesus and believing the One who sent Him (John 5:24) … this sentence will cause confusion that cannot be helped, for a person can really no better understand what it is to live outside of time than a fish can understand what it is to live out of water. The new creature or self that has been born of spirit as a son of God is not, however, of this world and is not of time. When this new creature matures sufficiently [remember, human maturation forms the pattern for spiritual maturation] to grasp concepts of “place” and “a spirit of place,” then this new creature can unravel the above sentence.

Jesus said He saw Satan cast into time, or fall like lightning. This is an event that only occurs once, and that once is halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man (cf. Rev 11:15–18; Dan 7:9–14). Thus, comprehending what Jesus told His disciples about Him seeing as the Logos this moment in time when Satan is cast from heaven before He stepped behind that moment of decay to enter time at an earlier moment of decay is helpful in understanding what the angel tells Daniel about a great conflict: Jesus saw the end of this great conflict before He entered the creation as the only Son of the Logos. The war was won before Jesus was born, with the last battle to be won being Jesus qualifying to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords … you as the reader should say, Whoa, how can the war be won before the last battle is fought? All of this seems like nonsense! And it will be nonsense to even the person born of spirit who remains a babe, able to ingest only spiritual milk, what Paul said he gave to the saints at Corinth even in his epistles to them.

My daughter when two years old used to go around saying, “My name is —, big girl.” She apparently claimed the accolade, Big Girl, because she thought we, as her parents, wouldn’t notice how much she had grown and how mature she was. And Christians, especially Christian pastors do this when they sign letters, In Christ’s name. They appropriate to themselves authority they really don’t have. The “girl” who is really “big” doesn’t need to tell anyone that she is a big girl. Everyone can see that she is. It is only the self-aware child that feels the necessity of telling others that she is big. Likewise, the Christian who writes or speaks in Christ’s name will never have to tell others that he or she does so: it will be self-evident that the Christian writes the words of the Christ. It is only the self-aware spiritual infant who feels the necessity to tell others that this son of God writes or speaks in Christ’s name. But as a two year old human infant has no well developed concept of the world or even of space-time, the Christian who is still so immature as to add in front or behind his or her name the tag phrase, in Christ’s name, will not be able to grasp the dance of oneness that all entities and events in heaven undergo. Hence, this person will not be able to grasp the significance of what Jesus said about seeing Satan fall like lightning; for indeed, the Logos would have participated in casting Satan from heaven before He entered His creation as His Son.

If the Logos participated in casting Satan from heaven before he entered His creation as His only Son, His entrance would necessarily create or alter an already existing historical narrative that culminates with the coming of the heavens and new earth … most everyone has seen movies such as The Terminator (1984), with Arnold Schwarzenegger, where a person leaves the physical future to alter the historical narrative. To some extent, this is why Christianity could not continue as it began, a sect of Judaism, but had to return to pagan beliefs and practices—and to the same extent this is why Sabbatarian Christianity today is culturally insignificant and politically transparent. For all practical purposes, it doesn’t exist. What have been visible are the Adversary’s agencies that have appropriated the name of Christ.

It really was not possible for Satan to tempt Christ, for what can one whom you know to be dead offer you that would cause you to worship him?

Disciples need to understand that, especially, during the first 1260 days of the tribulation when everything is going against them and God has apparently abandoned them [i.e., delivered them into the hand of the man of perdition for the destruction of the flesh], the one who seeks to destroy them is himself “dead” and no more. Obedience by faith will cause disciples to live spiritually even if they die physically. It is disobedience that comes from disbelief that causes sons of God, man or angel, to die spiritually or die the second death. So those who practice disobedience are in the heavenly realm already dead and no more whereas those who by faith believed God, with this belief manifested as obedience to God, are those who were predestined [past tense], called [past tense], justified [past tense], and glorified [past tense] … from the perspective of the heavenly realm, we are already there even though the resurrection remains in our future. Again, we are watching ourselves work out our salvation, or we’re not ever there. And if you can visualize yourself watching yourself work out your salvation, knowing who else is there and maybe remembering who isn’t, then you can understand what Jesus meant when He said He saw Satan fall like lightning.

The disciple who will not be glorified is the one who knew to do right but did not act upon what this son of God knew.

With pedagogical redundancy, from the perspective of the heavenly realm the war that sees Michael and his angels prevail over Satan and his angels, with Satan cast from heaven to end this war, was won before the Logos entered His creation as His only Son. This is (most likely) the same war in which Michael comes to the aid of the angel sent to deliver a message to the prophet Daniel; thus, it would be reasonable for the demonic kings of Persia and the demonic prince of Greece not to want Daniel to know the outcome of this war so early in Israel’s history. It would also be reasonable for God to seal and keep secret this vision until the time of the end when Satan will shortly be cast from heaven.

Until this war is lost by Satan and his angels, Satan probably doesn’t believe that he will lose. He comes as a roaring lion seeking to devour whomever he can once he is cast into time—he would have been a devouring lion, seeking to utterly destroy humankind earlier if he knew the war was lost before he is cast from heaven. Thus, because we don’t see [or we do see, you decide for yourself] Satan devouring disciples as he will once he is cast from heaven, he doesn’t today, from our human perspective, know that he will be defeated and cast into time even though Scripture assures Israel that this will be the case.

The person who sees Satan having devoured the Sabbatarian Church in the 1^st and 2^nd Centuries CE, then again in the 16^th and 20^th Centuries sees correctly, as does the person who doesn’t see Satan really coming after the Church now as he will during the second half of the Tribulation. Both are correct.

If Satan from our human perspective doesn’t know that he is already dead, then what is seen in the Book of Job where Satan comes before God can only occur before he is cast from heaven and before the war is fought about which Daniel receives knowledge. The creation of the material universe, with human beings as part of this creation [the first Adam was created “in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens” — Gen 2:4] becomes somewhere for the Lord to cast Satan and his angels: the creation is a glorious death chamber. There was no need for this death chamber before iniquity was discovered in heaven. Therefore, because the generations of Adam do not permit great antiquity to be assigned to the earth, placing the creation in the heavenly flow of events will have the universe appear between when iniquity was found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:15) and when Satan is cast from heaven. All of human history, all of the history of the universe occurs in this sliver of a moment between the cause of the war and the conclusion of this heavenly war … and how are disciples to explain what appears to be the creation’s great antiquity? The present explanations are not believable.

Satan still appears before God but is already the Adversary when Job lived. The “Behemoth” (Job 40:15) and the “Leviathan” (Job 41:1) that seem to be by their descriptions dinosaurs were apparently contemporary with Job. If they were dinosaurs, then human interpretation of the geological record serves to conceal knowledge in a way remarkably similar to how the shadow of Daniel’s prophecies kept these prophecies sealed and secret until the time of the end, meaning that the geological record will be “reread” before the end comes. For now, faith is required to believe either Scripture or what the eyes see and the ears hear. The movement from time to timelessness or vice versa is not well understood nor even well explained or explainable.

Notions about time travel and movement within time have circulated for more than a century: once space-time was perceived as a fabric in which wrinkles exist, time travel became theoretically probable. But this is time travel within the creation, whereas heaven is a dimension outside of this universe, a dimension in which mass and matter doesn’t exist. It is a co-existing primal dimension that is apparently separated from the creation by non-oxidizing fire. Heaven is a dimension in which the four known forces exist as a unified form of force or energy. And entering his dimension from any point in the space-time continuum places the entity in the same heavenly moment, an unchanging moment in which all activity occurs as a dance of oneness. Therefore, from the other direction, the Logos would be able to simultaneously see Satan cast from heaven and exit heaven to be born as His Son, the man Jesus of Nazareth two millennia before Satan is cast into time. When His glory was returned to Him, He would then return to heaven in this same moment as when He left, and He will reveal the judgments of disciples in this same moment, which from the perspective of being inside time would be two millennia later … the heavenly moment never changes so to avoid the dilemma of a paradox, all entities in heaven must function as one entity in a manner analogous to the many cells of a human body functioning as one entity, with every cell having the same DNA molecule and with the DNA molecule functioning as the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion] functions to give life to the spiritually lifeless.

The complexity of physical life coming through the oxidation of sugars is complicated by giant tube worms (Riftia pachyptila) and other deep sea life that uses heat in lieu of sunlight to fuel this oxidation process, and the complexity of spiritual life coming through receipt of the divine breath of the Father is complicated by this life being given to physically living entities inside the creation, with these human entities no more able to leave this world than a tube worm can voluntarily leave a deep sea vent. The symbiotic relationship that giant tube worms have with bacteria living inside a trophosome could be likened to an inversion of the relationship between the new creature born of spirit and the tent of flesh in which this new creature dwells. Giant tube worms have no digestive tracts, but rely on these bacteria to turn oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide molecules into organic food in a process called chemosynthesis. For the new creature born of spirit as a son of God, growth comes not from digesting physical food but from exercising obedience to the laws of God, thereby causing the tent of flesh to do those things that appear outwardly “Jewish”—no person can walk as Jesus walked and not outwardly keep the commandments. Growth comes by faith, with this faith causing the new creature to believe Christ and to live as Jesus lived.

The Sabbath readings, of which this reading is one of many, form a self-aware text that reflects growth through knowledge in a way unique within the world of religious quarterlies. The Church as the Body of Christ will not become the Bride of Christ until there is separation—no man, including Christ, marries his own body—that causes the Church to live as an entity separate from the Son. Marriage (the Wedding Supper) is the joining of the Church to Christ as a woman marries a man and the two become one. And the Tribulation is that period when the now dead Body is returned to life (for the gates of Hades will not prevail over the Church) as the physical body of Christ was returned to life after the third day, but the Church is returned to life as the Woman, made from the Body of Christ, but separated from the Body of Christ as the first Eve was made from the body of the first Adam but was a separate person from the first Adam and would be one with the first Adam through marriage.

The first Eve did not experience physical growth (she was not created as a small child), but experienced growth from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: she grew in physical knowledge as she learned to apply what she had taken unto herself and had given to her husband. The mirror image of this growth will see the Church increasing in numbers as it grows physically larger; for as the first Eve began with all of her physical size but without knowledge, the last Eve will have knowledge given by Christ to the Body, but will not have any size and must grow in mass (in headcount). What is seen in the collective Sabbath readings is the growth in knowledge that precedes the separation of the Church from Christ, something that the many false teachers will use Scripture (e.g., Rom 8:35) to argue cannot happen. But it is because of Christ’s love for these now lawless sons of God who stand condemned because of their lawlessness that God delivers Israel into the hand of the man of perdition for the destruction of the flesh. These disciples who practice sinning—every Christian who worships on Sunday practices sinning—are not today sons of God but sons of the Adversary (1 John 3:8) even though they have been born of spirit. God’s love for them, though, is so great that rather than condemning them He will fill them with the Holy Spirit, thereby empowering them so that no longer will sin and death dwell in their fleshly members. He will then send them forth to make their way in the Adversary’s world, with this world bent double by one blow below the belt (i.e., the breaking of the great horn of the king of Greece) … this one blow will leave all firstborns not covered by the blood of Christ dead.

The great conflict about which Daniel received knowledge begins with the one blow that will double the reigning hierarchy of the prince of this world.

Today, war rages between the demonic kings of Persia and Greece, a war that manifests in this world in mental attitudes, thoughts, desires. Kingdoms of this world and from this world (as opposed to kingdoms not of this world or from this world—Jesus said His kingdom was not of this world or from this world) wage war with jet fighters, artillery, assault rifles, and IEDs. These are the kingdoms of men, and Jesus said not to be alarmed by their wars or rumors of war (Matt 24:6), which doesn’t mean that disciples will not be caught up in these wars and slain as collateral damage. Rather, it means that disciples do not need knowledge from God to know that this a dangerous world in which nuclear weapons might well be used by terrorists or by rogue nations. Disciples should be well aware that Islam is a potential threat to Christendom as Christendom is a threat to genuine disciples. Disciples now know that radical Islam intends to eliminate the modern State of Israel, and that the modern State of Israel has the weaponry necessary to return its Islamic neighbors to the 7^th-Century CE. They do not need God to tell them the obvious. Rather, the knowledge they need from God is knowledge about a war among the “kings” making up the humanoid image King Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision, with the shadow of this war representing the history from Nebuchadnezzar to Antiochus Epiphanes IV, a history that sealed and kept secret the word of knowledge Daniel received until the time of the end.

The rancor of the present American political campaign, with its acrimonious personal attacks, comes from mindsets influenced by the demonic kings of Persia and of Greece: neither presidential candidate can solve the problems dissolving the financial integrity of the nation, problems that will worsen as more and more wealth disappears before the winds and rains of natural disasters, global warfare, and fiscal speculation. Neither higher taxes nor tax cuts will stop the erosion of resources as heavenly warfare spills over into this world, leaving the nation without options and with no reserves when the second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, the event that begins the seven endtime years of tribulation.

A culture of accumulation that began two centuries ago will end with a whimper when the first horn of the spiritual king of Greece is broken suddenly.

Daniel’s long vision is about war between demonic kings that will end when Michael and his angels cast Satan and his angels from heaven and into time. Daniel’s long vision is not about the wars of human kings and kingdoms—the wars of human kingdoms and kings sealed and kept secret the prophecy so that it could not be understood by the multiple scores of false prophets that have used this vision as “proof” of the accuracy of biblical prophecy.

This will be continued next week.

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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."

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