Israel in Prophecy
What Happens?
Part Fourteen
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"Ah, stubborn children," declares the LORD,
"who carry out a plan, but not mine,
and who make an alliance, but not of my spirit,
that they may add sin to sin;
who set out to go down to Egypt,
without asking for my direction,
to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh
and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!
Therefore shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame,
and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation.
For though his officials are at Zoan
and his envoys reach Hanes,
everyone comes to shame
through a people that cannot profit them,
that brings neither help nor profit,
but shame and disgrace." (Isa 30:1–5)
Indented lines are spiritual portion of couplets.
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Because so much misinformation has masqueraded as truth for so long, some literary redundancy is necessary: the third part of humanity, like the nation lead by Joshua, son of Nun, will enter God’s rest if they endure to the end. A simple message, an easy message to take to the world that today doesn’t want to hear it. But this is the message that will be proclaimed to the world as a witness to all nations before the end comes. And the irony is that those who won’t hear because they really are not interested in becoming Christian are the ones to whom this gospel message is directed. Thus, this is the message or gospel that will be delivered by the two witnesses, two human beings whom the world cannot ignore.
14.
Christians and Christian ministries invoke the name of Christ Jesus, pray to God the Father, then do whatever is in their hearts, usually ignoring in totality what God says via His Word, His Logos, thereby adding sin [unbelief] to their sin. Thus, these Christians and their ministries do mighty works in the name of Christ Jesus when they ought to sit down and shut up, being humbled by their ignorance. And about the mighty works done, Matthew’s Jesus says,
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)
Jesus will deny those Christians and Christian ministries that actually have done mighty works in His name because they were not and did not do the will of the Father. And what is the will of the Father? Is not the will of the Father expressed in the words of Jesus, the word [’o logos] that Jesus left with His disciples (John 12:48–49)? And this word will have Jesus’ disciples keeping His Commandments (John 14:15, 21; 15:10, 12), which are His Father’s and our Father’s Commandments, all of which are expressed in having love for God, neighbor, and brother to the degree that the disciple will lay down his or her life for God, for neighbor and brother.
Paul identified the spiritual Rock that followed Israel into the wilderness and from which Israel drank as Christ Jesus. Therefore it would have been that Rock that spoke the Ten Living Words from atop Mount Sinai, words Israel heard but didn’t keep; that the vast majority of Christian ministries doing mighty works in the name of Jesus do not keep. Thus, greater Christendom has taught disciples to be lawless; for to break one Commandment is to be a lawbreaker, a sinner, with all of humanity having come short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23).
“Workers of lawlessness” teach Christians that they are not under the Law … technically, they’re not. Technically, Christians will keep the Law because they believe the Father and seek to do His will—
But the many and the varied “workers of lawlessness” label any keeping of the Law as legalism; however, John tells disciples that they are to walk in this world as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6) and Paul tells disciples that they are to imitate him as he imitates Jesus (1 Cor 11:1 et al).
What the Circumcision Faction of Christendom never understood is that with the giving of the spirit, a second breath [pneuma] of life, the “Israel” of record went from being an outwardly circumcised nation commanded by Moses to keep the Commandments to being the born-again [’anagennesas], circumcised of heart nation commanded by Christ Jesus to “love one another as” Jesus loved His disciples, laying down His earthly life for them (John 15:12–13).
In the physical, keeping the Commandments was a commitment to loving the Lord, loving brother, loving neighbor with heart and mind, but in the spiritual, keeping Jesus’ Commandment fully incorporates loving God, loving neighbor and brother, but then goes beyond physical expressions of love to laying down the disciple’s life for other disciples … the Christian who isn’t willing to actually die for another born-of-spirit brother in Christ transgresses the Commandment Jesus left with His disciples. And there is no escaping the consequences of this transgression.
Bluntly put, the Christian not willing to give of him or herself whatever is required to care for another disciple doesn’t have the love of Christ inside the Christian.
Ancient Israelites were not twice-born. They could not give their lives for their brothers and still live. Yes, they could give their lives—and did—in war, but when they did so, they died and were dead, their bodies returning to being dust. They had no life that continued to live; they had no immortal soul … human persons, regardless of what they believe about themselves, are not humanly born with immortal souls; for indwelling eternal life is the gift of God given through the indwelling of Christ Jesus (Rom 6:23) in the form of the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] entering into and enlivening [quickening] the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou]. Without the indwelling of Christ Jesus, no human person has an immortal soul—and this includes Islamists overly eager to die for their god.
So back to the question: what does it mean to say the Christian has love for God, neighbor, and brother yet for the Christian to not keep the Law? How can that be? How can a Christian profess love for God and worship idols, particularly the spirit of God [pneuma Theou], the Holy Spirit [pneuma ’agion] … the idolatrous worship of the spirit or breath of God is woven into the fabric of Christendom to such a degree that regardless of whether a warp or a weft thread is pulled, the weave hangs together.
Since at least the 3rd-Century CE, Arian Christians have refused to ascribe personhood to the glory of God while simultaneously denying equality in substance between the Father and the Son, thus denying that the Son had the glory He had as the Beloved of God returned to Him:
When Jesus had spoken these words, He lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:1–5 emphasis added)
In their one-God theology, Arian Christians better understand the mysteries of God than Trinitarians, not that they truly have understanding. Arians are simply less wrong than idolatrous Trinitarians. Thus, when endtime disciples encounter neo-Arians as either Jehovah Witnesses or as Latter Day Saints, these endtime disciples—the Elect—will find that their words are more quickly rejected than if heard by Trinitarians, something that will continue past the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel (all of greater Christendom). As a result, a disproportionate percentage of spiritual “Cain” will have been Arian Christians prior to the Second Passover. And this becomes a case where a little spiritual knowledge is spiritually deadly.
In Part Thirteen, the reality was introduced that the preaching of Jesus Christ to the then known world in the 1st-Century caused “Jesus” to figuratively block His return, a counterintuitive realization but one that Paul understood, perhaps being part of what Paul couldn’t speak about after his visit to the third heaven:
I [Paul] know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. (2 Cor 12:2–4 emphasis added)
Deconstruction of literary texts is about locating lacunae and prying these gaps open so that what undergirds the text—the author’s biases, values, concealed knowledge—is exposed. And in his second epistle to the saints at Thessalonica, Paul unconsciously reveals things that cannot be told, the principle subject of Part Thirteen … all Christian ministry, especially ministry that performs mighty works, inserts the omnipresence of Christ into the culture, thereby causing members of the culture to figuratively “play” to Christ as a television news camera at a riot causes rioters to “play” to the camera.
Preaching Christ to a culture; preaching that those who profess that Jesus is Lord and believe in their hearts that the Father raised Jesus from death will be saved (Rom 10:9) causes many members of the culture to conceal what is really in their hearts and in their minds and to display public good behavior, thus leaving the hidden things they would do if there were no omnipresence of deity undone or done in darkness, the essence of Las Vegas’ advertising campaign: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
What happens in darkness, stays in darkness—and keeps the person in darkness, far from the light of God.
The preaching of Christ to the world has effectively delayed the return of Christ; for the preaching of Christ, especially a false Christ, doesn’t turns the hearts of humanity to Christ Jesus, to whom no person can come unless God the Father draws the person from this world (John 6:44). Rather, the preaching of Christ keeps the man of perdition from declaring himself “god” in the temple of God, the Christian Church. For with the preaching of Christ, the deity of Christ as the “begotten Son of God” elevates Christ Jesus to a mental status no human person can achieve; therefore, no Christian would believe the claim of a man who declares himself god … Christ stands in this man of perdition’s way, and will continue to stand in this lawless one’s way for as long as the preaching of Christ is culturally believed. So both Arian and Trinitarian ministries have kept the lawless one in a figurative closet where this crossdressing Christian bides his time.
In President Obama not giving immigration preference to Christian refugees from Syria; in President Obama announcing to the world that the United States of America is not a Christian country, the President has played the Adversary’s cards in a cosmic game of stud poker … if he wins the hand, he will have killed the last vestiges of Christianity in America, what his climate change initiatives are all about. For the essence of Christianity is that “change” is certain to happen when God, Father and Son, set about bringing the present world governance to an end. Climate change will not then matter. Carbon omissions won’t matter (they don’t now, according to Beer’s Law). All that will matter is whether the person has the works of the Law written on his or her heart.
Climate change initiatives are sacrifices to the earth goddess, Gaia. As such, climate change initiatives form a new idolatry that had not previously been practiced in America, with this idolatrous worship of Gaia having been taught in public schools for the past forty years, a symbolic length of time indicating the completeness of a matter … the youth of America are now fully indoctrinated in earth worship, with this ancient yet new idolatry displacing Christianity as the religion of not just the United States but of all the world, said with acknowledged caveats, mainly the elderly generations that continue to cling to their guns and their God.
But this is what has to be if Christ Jesus is to step aside, thereby getting out of the way so that the mystery of lawlessness may be completed and the lawless one reveals himself in the temple of God where he will declare himself god (2 Thess 2:3–10).
How all of this will play out immediately before and into the Affliction is in those who will be liberated from indwelling Sin and Death at the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel will be older, mostly forty years of age or more; whereas the youth of America and of Western Europe and of Asia—the industrialized nations of this world—will not have professed that Jesus is Lord and will not be filled with spirit at the Second Passover, and will be like the children of Israel not numbered in the census of the second year [either because they were less than twenty years of age, or not yet born].
The third part of humanity [of the little ones] from Zechariah 13:9 that will be refined as silver is refined [in fire] and tested as gold is tested [against a touchstone] and that will profess the Lord is their God are primarily the under forty years of age generations that today worship idols and the work of human hands.
For actual numbers, America remains the most overtly Christian nation in the world, with 70% of its population professing some form of Christian belief, according to Pew research conducted in May 2015, a decline of 8% in seven years … because the Federal census does not ask for religious affiliation, no official statistics exist. Pew sampling was of 35,000 Americans in 2007 and again in 2015. And in Pew’s sampling, for Americans born in 1945 or earlier, 85% self-identify as Christians; yet of Americans born since 1990, only 56% identify themselves as Christians, with this 56% being more lax in their worship than their grandparents.
Across all age groups, the number of self-identifying Christians has declined while the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has increased, but increased percentage-wise more among Millennials.
These numbers disturb America’s Christian establishment, but they shouldn’t. For American Christian ministries today continue to cause Christ Jesus to stand in the way of the man of perdition declaring himself god.
The Second Passover liberation of a second Israel will occur when humanity, worldwide, can get no farther from the light that is God, Father and Son, meaning that when even American Christendom accepts the reality that support for Christianity is waning; that televised broadcasts into the 10-40 window aren’t producing converts but simply costing these ministries money they are not recouping in tithes and offerings; that feeding the hungry in impoverished nations are producing more mouths to feed without producing corresponding increases in revenues—then the end will come. Christ Jesus will step aside so that the mystery of lawlessness can be seen for what it is: Christendom’s idolatrous worship of a false Christ.
But with Christ Jesus stepping aside (getting out of the way — 2 Thess 2:7), He will no longer bear the sins of Christians as their High Priest, and the Second Passover will be upon humanity.
Christ Jesus has stood in the way of greater Christendom for a long time … what kind words do you suppose He will have for ministers of the mystery of lawlessness? Any? Will not He declare to them, Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness? Indeed He will.
The warning for every self-identified Christian is today the same: when you, Christian, are suddenly filled with the spirit of God, you will have been set free from indwelling Sin and Death so do not return to your former ways of worshiping Christ Jesus. It matters not whether you were a Catholic, a Baptist, a Mormon, your worship of Christ Jesus was false—and if you return to your former ways, you will take Sin back inside of yourself when no sacrifice remains for Sin. For Christ will have stepped out of the way. He will no longer be in the way; He will no longer be the Christian’s High Priest. Thus, you, Christian, will commit blasphemy against the spirit if you return to your former “Christian” practices. You will kill your righteous inner self as Cain killed Abel. And the angels who will gather you as spiritual tares and chaff will show you no mercy.
In the Garden of Eden Temptation Account, Adam’s belief of the Lord covered Eve, his wife, analogous to the fleshly body of a born-of-spirit disciple [the inner self being analogous to Adam]. In the Gospels, as the last Adam Christ Jesus’ belief of God covers disciples of Christ, the Elect, who form the spiritual Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27), the analogy holding with the indwelling of the spirit of Christ in the spirit of His disciples being equivalent to the rib taken from the first Adam being used to create Eve, For with the rib and flesh taken from the first Adam came the breath of life that Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud (Gen 2:7) … in Scripture, “ribs” symbolize life and the breath of life that animates the flesh; hence, the three ribs in the mouth of the second beast, the bear (Dan 7:5), signify that this beast cannot “kill” and keep dead three persons, Christ Jesus and the two witnesses, this beast being the king of the Abyss, Apollyon (in Greek).
The resurrection of Christ Jesus and of the two witnesses frame the Christian era. The man Jesus of Nazareth represents the Wave Sheaf Offering, the first handful of ripe barley that is waved before God and accepted by God in the morrow after the Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The two witnesses represent the two loaves of bread made from barley flour beaten fine and baked with leaven, waved before God on the Feast of Weeks, Pentecost. As such, their resurrection marks the last of the harvest of firstfruits while the Adversary remains the prince of this world. But because they will not precede into heaven the firstfruits, but will follow the acceptance of the firstfruits into heaven, these two also serve as the Waved Offering for the harvest to be gathered in the great White Throne Judgment, with the third part of the little ones (from Zech 13:9) in the Endurance typifying Jesus’ 1st-Century disciples, the souls [psuchas] of whom presently sleep under the heavenly altar (Rev 6:9).
When dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man, the third part of the little ones will be filled with spirit and will be spiritual virgins, typified by the ten virgins that await the coming of the Bridegroom … all ten fall asleep before the Bridegroom comes, but when the announcement of His pending arrival is made, all trim their lamps. But the lamps of five are about to go out. They have no spare oil, and they beg their sisters for oil but their sisters have no oil to give them and counsel them to quickly go to the merchants and buy oil. This they cannot do and still enter into the bridal chamber; for in the Endurance, to buy or sell requires marking oneself for death.
The five without oil are still virgins, but they cannot enter into heaven at the Second Advent. They can only live into Christ Jesus’ millennium reign as King of kings and Lord of lords as physical persons having no indwelling Sin and Death, meaning that barring accidents, they will live for an additional thousand years.
But they will not be born of spirit, merely filled with the spirit of God. Christ Jesus will not be their High Priest. They will not be covered by His garment of righteousness. And will necessarily be legalists if they are to live physically.
Today, disciples truly born of spirit are not the temple of God, the spiritual Body of Christ, but constitute the seven named churches that appear as seven horns on the head of the slain Lamb of God (Rev 5:6). And this is an understanding that Philadelphia didn’t have a decade ago. Therefore, in reexamining the spiritual mysteries of God, we see the greater Christian Church having a living heart inside a spiritually dead body, this living heart being the Elect, functioning as already processed oil and wine, with the Elect being rejected by this world as the man Jesus was rejected.
As a heart transplant patient receives anti-rejection drugs to keep his or her body from rejecting the donor heart, greater Christendom has required strong anti-rejection dogmas from Christ to prevent Christian assemblies from rejecting Him, these dogmas coming via organic texts inspired by the Parakletos and created in the seven named Churches, and in particular, in Philadelphia, the assembly of little strength and of no worldly importance.
It is easy to ignore advice given by the person who seems unimportant; by the person who has the least right to give advice. It would have been easy for Elijah to ignore the “thin silence” that was the Lord speaking to him (1 Kings 19:12–13). And so it will be after the Second Passover occurs—and even more so now before the Second Passover occurs. It is easy to ignore words that no one else in the world speaks. After all, how could virtually all of greater Christendom have gotten their message about Christ Jesus so wrong?
The two witnesses will not come from visible Christendom; will not come as the Pope in Rome, or as the Prophet in Salt Lake City. They will not come from a Christian ministry doing outwardly great works in Jesus’ name. Rather, they will come as Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh, not to the people of Israel who had rejected Moses as their prince forty years earlier.
The two witnesses do not come to Christians: their first audience will be the rulers of this world who will dismiss them as kooks, as Pharaoh dismissed Moses and Aaron. It is only later when these two cannot be dismissed that they attract enough attenton to be heard, again not by greater Christendom but by the Adversary and his ministers, all rulers in this world.
Hear what John saw in his vision:
Then I [John] was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two month. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses and they will prophesy for 1260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them to blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that [spiritually] is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell upon those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. (Rev 11:1-13 emphasis added)
The Body of Christ consists of disciples that are the temple of God and that will be measured. They can be measured when the Son of Man is revealed because they are no longer robed by the righteousness of Christ Jesus. They will be naked before God, with their only covering being their obedience. And they will be delivered into the hand of the lawless one (Dan 7:25) for a time, times and half a time, or forty-two months, or 1260 days—all expressions for the same period of time that begins when the Son of Man is revealed. The differing expressions relate to from whose perspective the time is experienced, God’s [time, times and half a time], angels’ [forty-two months], or humankind’s [1260 days].
Both Sodom and Egypt represent sin and bondage. The Apostle Paul said that present day Jerusalem also represents sin and bondage whereas the Jerusalem above represents liberty and life. The spiritual temple of God was not built in present day Jerusalem (Gal 4:25-26), nor will it be rebuilt in present day Jerusalem. Those disciples who anxiously watch rabbinical Judaism’s efforts to reconstruct a temple in physical Jerusalem are misguided, miss-taught, and woefully carnally minded.
The task of the endtime two witnesses will be to prepare that third part of humanity to believe and fear God when they are filled with spirit through the Holy Spirit being poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28). But the two witnesses are foremost “witnesses” that Death has been defeated, this fourth horseman of the Apocalypse having his body burned in the lake of fire.
Enduring to the end will mean not taking the tattoo of the cross [chi xi stigma] when compelled to do so to buy and sell; will mean trusting God to supply the needs of the person. Living without taking the mark of the beast will be, everyday, an act of faith for the three and a half years of the Endurance in Jesus.
The principle task of The Philadelphia Church isn’t to focus inward on preparing itself to be a living sacrifice to God, but to focus on recovering as many sheep who have strayed from the flock as possible. In focusing on keeping those who have been filled with spirit from straying from the Commandments, the Elect that are of Philadelphia will do without thinking those things that prepare them to serve God.
Again, Christian ministry has prevented the glorified Christ Jesus from stepping out of the way so that the man of perdition can revealed himself and claim to be god, a claim this Arian Christian will sincerely believe because of him being possessed by the Adversary … he will believe the angel inside him is Christ Jesus, because this is what that angel will tell him. And he will believe that the greater Christian Church is in desperate need of being restored because of the third part of humanity slain at the Second Passover, which he perceives to be the wrath of the Lamb (Rev 6:16). And he will not be deterred from waging war against all who are not Christians, as well as against all of Trinitarian Christendom. Sadly, he will prevail because of the angel possessing him.
In the course of this series about Israel in Prophecy we have gotten far from Daniel’s visions. It is time to return—and this will be the focus for the remainder of the series, beginning with Part Fifteen …
(to be continued)
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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."