May 20, 2009 ©Homer Kizer
Printable File
The Tribulation & the Endurance
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“I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Rev 1:9).
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1.
John claimed that he was the brother and partner of Christian disciples in (1) the Tribulation or Affliction; in (2) the Kingdom; and in (3) the patient endurance, or the Endurance, thereby giving to “endurance—hypomones” qualities suggestive of a specific period of time … if the Tribulation or Affliction [thlipsei] is for a specific length of time (a time, times, and half a time, or 1260 days), and if the never-ending Kingdom has a thousand year run here on earth before Satan is released from the bottomless pit, it is then reasonable to assume that the Endurance or patient endurance is for a length of time like that of the Tribulation (a time, times, and half a time — from Rev 12:14). And while more can be asserted about the Kingdom from John’s narrative claim, it is the chirality of the Tribulation and the Endurance that is the foremost thrust of this essay.
In the letter to the angel of the church at Philadelphia, the Holy One that is the glorified Christ wrote, “Because you kept the word [ton logon] of the endurance [tes hypomones] of me, I also you will keep from the hour of the trial” (Rev 3:10 literal trans).
“The word of the endurance” is probably better rendered, The message of (about) the Endurance, thereby introducing the juxtaposition that Philadelphia proclaiming the message about the Endurance corresponds to the Lord keeping Philadelphia from the hour (short while) of trial that will come upon all the inhabitants of this world. Although this verse has been used to support saints going to a place of physical safety to bodily escape the trials that will come upon the earth—a grievous misreading of this verse—Philadelphia, because it has stuck with a message about enduring to the end, will be kept from the coming short but severe trial that will test those who dwell on this earth, this hour of trial coming at the end of the Tribulation in the form of the second woe when a third of humanity will be randomly slain. Philadelphia will be exempted from the random selection of this third of humanity.
John stating that he is a partner with endtime saints in the Tribulation, the Kingdom, and the Endurance is thin evidence to establish the existence of a previously unidentified period of time, but when the passage is coupled with what has been identified by Philadelphia as “the second half of the Tribulation,” the period of 42 months or 1260 days following Satan and his angels being cast from heaven, this second half of the Tribulation assumes the identifying icon [signifier] of the Endurance, the name that Christ Jesus and that John use for this three and a half year period—and the name that Philadelphia will henceforth use for these three and a half years.
The structure or organizational pattern for the book of Revelation, beginning with chapter four, is thus as follows:
1. The Tribulation—the period of 1260 days that begins immediately after the second Passover and begins with the two witnesses’ ministry and extends to the end of the second woe, completed with the sixth Trumpet Plague. The Tribulation begins with the opening of the first four seals shortly after the second Passover and extends through the opening of the seventh seal.
2. The Kingdom—the period that overlaps the end of the Tribulation and the beginning of the Endurance, then appears again in John’s vision at the end of the Endurance. In the vision’s narrative structure, the Kingdom includes the woes in the last year of the Tribulation, the transition of power from Babylon to the Son of Man, followed by Satan as the true Antichrist giving breath to the image of the beast. As the second element of the vision’s narrative structure, the Kingdom will include the first year of the Endurance, when the 1335 days end.
3. The Kingdom reappears at the end of the Endurance to reach forward through the coming of a new heavens and new earth, but the Kingdom also reaches backwards to the day when the heavens and the earth were created (Gen 2:4); thus the kingdom is present from the beginning to the end.
4. The Endurance—the 1260 day period following the world being baptized in spirit, thereby giving a second breath of life to all of humankind as Israel was baptized in spirit at the beginning of the Tribulation, these two baptisms in spirit being enantiomorphs for most of Israel will rebel against God (2 Thess 2:3) whereas most of the third part of humanity will believe God and will thus be saved (Zech 13:9).
5. The kingdom of this world will have been given to Christ at the middle of the seven endtime years, but the glorified Jesus will not return as the all powerful Messiah for another 1260 days after receiving the kingdom. Thus, all of humankind that endures to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13), for it will take endurance in faith to bodily live in this world, knowing that it belongs to Christ Jesus but also knowing it is the Adversary that runs around proclaiming himself the Christ.
Although the Adversary is an archangel and is far more powerful than any human being, when this spiritual king of Babylon is cast into time (Rev 12:9–10), he will be given the mind of a man as the human king of Babylon was given the mind of a beast for seven years (Dan chap 4). The equivalent to the seven years that Nebuchadnezzar had the mind of a beast will be, for the Adversary, the Endurance and the short while after the thousand years.
The saints will, when the spirit of God is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11), have the mind of Christ Jesus throughout the same period that the Adversary has the mind of a man; thus, the saints as mortal human beings cannot physically prevail against the fallen archangel, but they can mentally prevail by patiently enduring to the end. Hence the forty-two months seen in Revelation 13:5 that are also seen as “time, times, and half a time” in Revelation 12:14 are identified within John’s vision as the Endurance.
In length, the Tribulation and the Endurance are both 1260 days long, but where the Tribulation ends, the Endurance begins so they are not the same period; rather, they are enantiomorphs.
The mystery of God was given to the prophets for them to announce it to the world (Rev 10:7), and this mystery will be complete when the kingdom is taken by the Father, the Ancient of Days, and given to the Son of Man. However, even though the message of the prophets has had as its central metaphor the liberation of humanity from indwelling sin and death—the prophet Amos records, “‘For the Lord God does nothing / without revealing his secret / to his servants the prophets’” (3:7), and His secret has been the baptism of this world in spirit into life as the world was baptized in water into death in the days of Noah—the Kingdom is synonymous with Christ Jesus; i.e., with the Logos [ho logos] as the creator of all things made (John 1:3) entering into what He had made to be born as the man Jesus (v. 14) who was and is the beginning and the end of what is made, meaning that in Himself, the Logos as the Helpmate of the Most High is “saved” [the office or position, not the entity] in childbirth. The beginning of the matter is the creation of man [humankind] and the end of the matter is man receiving glory as the man Jesus ascended to the Father; thus, the mystery of God given to the prophets to announce to the world is that man [a human being] is as an ovum in the ovaries of a woman, with the woman being “the Kingdom.” Therefore, when the birth process is completed, there will be as many kingdoms as there are firstborn sons of God, with the Son as Bridegroom being King of kings and Lord of lords over not just the kingdom of this world but over every kingdom. Glorified men shall be the Helpmate of the Son as the Logos was the Helpmate of the Most High until He entered into darkness/death to be born as His own Son, who would then receive a second breath of life when the divine breath of the Father [pneuma tou theou] descended upon Him as a dove (Matt 3:16). The birth process, once begun (i.e., when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh), is self-replicating until the number of kingdoms are as the number of cells in a human body. But unless a person hears the words of the Son and believes the One who sent Him (John 5:24), the person will not be in the Kingdom but will wash out because of the person’s unbelief, an odd word meaning simply the person will only believe what can be processed through empirical means thereby negating the message of the prophets.
The world, this world and everything in it changes when this world is baptized in spirit (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11), with everything including the predatory natures of the great predators (Isa 11:6–9). It is this kingdom change that in type represents when a person is born of spirit (i.e., has received a second breath of life) and liberated from indwelling sin and death in the person’s individual exodus from sin. Thus, in the Tribulation and Endurance the disciple repeats in type Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan, with the person’s old self or nature equating to the nation that left Egypt and to the Christian Church liberated from indwelling sin (in the body’s fleshly members) at the beginning of the Tribulation, and with the person’s new self equating to the children of Israel that entered into God’s rest and to the third part of humankind that the Lord will say of them, “‘They are my people’” (Zech 13:9).
The correspondences are as follows:
1. Physically circumcised Israel in Egypt :: old self of a called disciple :: today’s Christian Church & most of Christendom in the Tribulation;
2. Mixed circumcised & uncircumcised children of Israel in the Wilderness :: new self born of spirit :: third part of humanity in the Endurance;
3. Children of Israel following Joshua [Gr: Iesou] into the Promised Land :: new selves believing or following Jesus [Gr: Iesou] having the mortal flesh put on immortality.
Israel’s exodus from Egypt and forty year journey to the Promised Land forms the visible, physical type of Christianity’s seven year journey from Sin to Life in the Tribulation and the Endurance, with Christendom’s journey not a geographical undertaking but a spiritual or mental trek for the journey is made by the inner new selves that are firstborn sons of God. And the Adversary has effectively prevented Christians from undertaking this journey or exodus from sin prior to the second Passover by presenting to the world another gospel other than the one Paul taught, another Christianity other than the one of the first disciples, and another Christ other than the man Jesus of Nazareth—and those teachers and leaders and even members of either the gold or silver Christendom (both coming from Babylon) will vigorously condemn and ridicule anyone that dares to leave Babylon before the second Passover. They guard Sin’s frontier boundaries as Pharaoh’s armies guarded Egyptian borders when Moses fled Egypt; they guard Sin’s borders not only to keep righteousness out but to keep the bond servants of the Adversary from escaping to righteousness. They label as heresies the truth of God, but their firstborn and they themselves if they are firstborns that do not drink from the Cup on the night Jesus was betrayed as well as the firstborns of the rest of this world will perish when death angels again pass over all the land, slaying every firstborn not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God. Only then will some of them try to escape Sin, but they will return to Sin by Christmas, such is the hold the Adversary has on them.
2.
The angel tells John not to seal his vision (Rev 22:10); yet the mysterious symbolism of John’s vision has not been understood—and this symbolism could not be understood until Daniel’s visions, which were sealed and kept secret until the time of the end (Dan 12:4, 9; 8:17, 26), were unsealed by the chiral image of a prophet of God.
Chirality: it has been mentioned several times, but what is it?
The left hand of a person forms the non-symmetrical mirror image of the person’s right hand, and chirality or “handedness” (from the Greek chéri for hand) is the description of asymmetry that prevents an object or a system from being superimposed on its mirror image. A chiral object and its mirror image are enantiomorphs (Greek for “opposite forms”). A non-chiral object (i.e., an object that can be superimposed on its mirror image) is said to be amphichiral or achiral.
A shadow and the object casting the shadow are usually achiral, for the object can be superimposed on its shadow: light strikes the back of a standing person and casts a shadow that though not discernible because of the darkness of the shadow, lies on the ground with its back up; the person’s right hand is the shadow’s right hand. But Scripture presented a problem that stymied typology for a long time: a living object that blocks the light that is God in the heavenly realm will cast a cross-dimensional shadow that is also living, but physically living as opposed to spiritually living; thus when meaning is taken from Scripture through employing typological exegesis, the earthly shadow or type of a heavenly object or entity cannot be superimposed one on the other. A dimensional barrier prevents such imposition. And because of this dimensional barrier, of necessity the earthly shadow of a heavenly object is chiral, seen in the visualization of man looking up to God and God looking down at man whom He has created in His image.
The Tribulation is the last 1260 days of the Adversary’s reign over the kingdom of this world; whereas the Endurance is the first 1260 days of the Son of Man’s reign over the kingdom of this world. These two 1260 day periods are mirror images, but the reign of the Son of Man cannot be superimposed over the reign of the Adversary even though each reigns over the same kingdom of this world. Thus, the Tribulation and the Endurance are enantiomorphs.
Words do not have inherent meaning, but must have meaning assigned to them. A prophet receives the words of God and delivers these words to Israel or to another nation or people, but these words are without any meaning but that which the reader (or reading community) assigns to them. Therefore, the words of a prophecy exist as inscribed icons in search of assigned objects (meanings). Not until God reveals the meanings He intends to be assigned to His words is the prophecy complete; therefore, the delivery of a prophecy requires the initial presentation of the words of God (the signifiers or linguistic icons) in advance of the event about which the prophecy pertains, then requires that those receiving these words hear His voice so that His meanings can be assigned to the words. Again, a prophecy is not complete when the prophet delivers the words of God. These words must also be received by someone who will then assign His meanings to them.
In the case of the visions of Daniel, God delivered the visions to Daniel who described these visions in words that were sealed and kept secret until the time of the end, meaning simply that God refused to deliver His meanings for the words of Daniel’s prophecies until the end of the age. Therefore, every assignment of meaning to Daniel’s visions between when Daniel records his visions and the time of the end is of human origin and is not of God.
In order for God to unseal Daniel’s visions at the time of the end, He must call the chiral image of a prophet and give to this person the meanings He has concealed for Daniel’s words. He doesn’t give to this person additional words, but the meanings He intends for the words that have already been recorded by the prophet Daniel … to unseal Daniel’s visions, God will call a person to reread or to read again the words that Daniel recorded two and a half millennia ago, and assign to these words the meanings He has intended these words to have from the beginning. Thus, the prophet and the one who rereads prophecy are enantiomorphs, or opposite forms, with Paul recording that the visible things of this world reveal the invisible things of God (Rom 1:20) and that the physical things of this world precede the spiritual things of God (1 Cor 15:46) as in there was a first Adam, a man of mud, and there is a last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The prophet corresponds to the visible physical things of this world, and the one who rereads prophecy corresponds to the invisible spiritual things of God, thereby creating the situation that unless a person hears the voice of Jesus, the person will not hear the one who rereads prophecy.
The one who rereads prophecy by calling of God is comparable to a prophet as the left hand is comparable to the right hand. They look like each other even though they are not symmetrical and cannot be superimposed onto the other. And as the words of the prophets of God were often ignored or maligned by the kings of Israel and Judah, the words of the ones who are called to reread prophecy will be ignored or maligned by Christendom into and through the Tribulation. Therefore, no one should be under the delusion that Christianity will believe the ones called to reread prophecy; for the great falling away [the Rebellion] would not occur if the ones called were believed by “the many” deceived by false prophets (Matt 24:10–11).
After the separation of the house of Israel from the house of Judah, the prophets of God seldom had the ear of the king; their source of authority in this world was the eloquence of their words. And so it is with the one who rereads prophecy: the eloquence of the one who has been called to reread prophecy is this one’s sole source of authority prior to the completion or fulfillment of the prophecy. Hence, unless a saint hears Jesus’ voice in the words of the one who rereads, this one will not be believed but will be merely another voice in a cacophony of raucous voices, most intent on alarming saints about things which saints should have little concern.
Again, Daniel’s visions were given but not revealed; they were as utterances of a person speaking in unknown tongues. Without an interpreter, without someone to reread them, they did not build up the Church even though human explication of these visions tantalized many; they did not edify the Elect even though flawed explication of these visions became the basis of two once energetic ministries (Ellen G. White’s and Herbert W. Armstrong’s). Human explications of Daniel’s visions were dragged out whenever fundraising drives were undertaken, or whenever evangelistic crusades were used to recruit new members. A prophecy crusade was guaranteed to fill pews. But Daniel’s visions were unintelligible inscription until the time of the end—and the time of the end did not begin in the 2nd-Century BCE, or in 1st-Century CE, or in the 20th-Century. Rather, the time of the end began when the silver-colored kings of Persia stirred up the bronze-colored king of Greece (Dan 11:2; 8:7), with the visible colors of the metals disclosing demonic mindsets. And this stirring up occurred in this world in the first days and months of the 21st-Century.
Common bronze (90% copper, 10% tin) is the color of 14 carat gold-copper alloy, and polished iron is the color of silver; so the little horn on the head of Death will cause this King of the North to appear as a half model of Babylon itself, the presently reigning hierarchy of the Adversary and the name of the humanoid image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision, the name taken from its head.
As sons of light (John 12:36), genuine disciples once liberated from indwelling sin will reflect no color, no image, as Jesus had no shadow or type until He took Israel’s sins upon Himself, the theological reason why the first Adam is created as an adult outside the Garden of God, with the Garden equating to the temple. The present indwelling sin that remains in the fleshly members of disciples (Rom 7:15–25) will, however, cause the personage (i.e., the tent of flesh) of the disciple to cast a spiritually lifeless image to the BCE side of Calvary.
Because the Tribulation and the Endurance are mirror images of each other, certain claims can be asserted even when there is not much Scripture to support the claims; e.g., the wrath of the Lamb, seen when the sixth seal is removed (Rev 6:12–17), is the shadow and copy of the wrath of God when the earth is harvested (Rev 14:17–20). The ministry of the two witnesses to Israel in the Tribulation will form the shadow and copy of the ministry of the Lamb to the 144,000 (Rev 14:1–5) and of the ministry of the Remnant (Rev 12:17) to the third part of humankind (Zech 13:9) in the Endurance. But taking chirality farther, the 144,000 that follow the Lamb wherever He goes in the Endurance forms the shadow and copy of human beings, when few in number (from Isa chap 24), entering into the millennial reign of Christ Jesus in the Kingdom. Thus, the resurrection of saints when judgments are revealed at the end of the Endurance forms the shadow and copy of the Kingdom’s great White Throne Judgment that occurs after the thousand years and after Satan is loosed for a short while.
The 144,000 that follow the Lamb wherever he goes “disappear” in Scripture within the first year of the Endurance, with their disappearance occurring when their faith is complete, a subject central to the significance of the 1335 days … in the gospels, Jesus, speaking only the words of the Father, heals on seven Sabbaths, each of these Sabbaths representing an act of faith on Jesus’ behalf as He enacted the speech-acts of the Father, whose words are too big to be conveyed by utterances of the human tongue.
Once the Tribulation begins it will be no more difficult to recognize who speaks for the Lord and who speaks for the Adversary than listening to see who tells the Christian Church to keep the commandments, especially the Sabbath commandment—and this same test will also apply once the Endurance begins, only with a caveat for Satan will have borrowed Sabbath observance; thus, mental allegiance to the cross and physical marking with the tattoo of the cross will “mark” those who are of the Antichrist, making the cross [death] and the Sabbath [life] enantiomorphs as they are in this world today. To enter into Sabbath observance is to enter into God’s rest, a euphemism for His presence. And it is at day 220 of the Tribulation when rebellion against Sabbath observance gives birth to a spiritual Cain, and it will be 1290 days after this Rebellion or great falling away when “rebellion” against the Antichrist by sons of God returning to Sabbath observance will mark those who will be blessed by God, meaning that seven Sabbaths’ observance is enough to convince God that the person will keep the commandments by faith.
Why seven Sabbath observances? Because there are seven annual Sabbaths—and if a son of God will keep seven weekly Sabbaths under the hindrances imposed by the Antichrist and arrive at the Last Great Day, the seventh annual Sabbath, this son of God has completed the plan and will henceforth be blessed. If a son of God keeps one weekly Sabbath before the 1290 days elapses, then the six additional weekly Sabbaths in the 45 days between 1290 and 1335 (which will be up on or about Sukkoth of the fifth year of the seven endtime years) the seven Sabbath observances will be counted to the person as acts of faith in which the person “heals” him or herself from the permanency of death. The person, if not later martyred, will still face two and a half years of persecution, but God will have marked this person for life as the cross marks those upon whom He will bring His wrath and the seven last plagues.
Once the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man, this single kingdom is the Lord’s to do with as He pleases—and if this means killing all who have taken upon themselves the mark of death, then those who have been so marked can curse God to their hearts’ content before they are physically slain, then cast into the lake of fire to perish forever. They marked themselves for death; they will have no one to blame but themselves for their unbelief.
3.
If the disciple can comprehend the chiral relationship between the Tribulation/Kingdom and the Endurance/Kingdom, then only one of the reflected images needs to appear in Scripture for both to be known … the Book of Revelation has not been understood even though John received the vision a little more than 1,900 years ago, with the nineteen centuries between when the Apostle John died and when prophecy was reread according to the calling of God—a period that constitutes a spiritual interregnum—having significance for the few remaining Sabbatarian disciples left from the last Elijah’s[1] second attempt to “breathe” life into the Church as the first Elijah breathed life into the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:17–24). These disciples assigned significance to the 1900 years between Calvary (ca 31 CE) and when Herbert W. Armstrong’s ministry began in 1931, without realizing that Armstrong’s ministry would end this second attempt to return the Church to life; that a third and successful attempt would begin 40 years after Armstrong, through his son, rejected revelation.
The 1900 years between 100–102 CE (Hebrew years 3861–3862), the time frame for the Apostle John’s death, and January 2002 (Hebrew year 5762), when the call came to reread prophecy is 100 lunar 19 year time-cycles, with the moon having the reflected glory of the sun as the Church reflects the glory of the Son (there is no glory in lawlessness). This imagery of “glory” is seen in the great sign that appeared in heaven in John’s vision: “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1). John’s vision has the Woman being Israel, who gives birth to a male child, “one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron,” but who “was caught up to God and to his throne” (v. 5). Reading the sign will have the congregation in the wilderness functioning as the moon, and Christ’s Jesus’ righteousness as the garment of grace functioning as the sun. Israel, now, is not the ancient, physically circumcised nation, but the nation that was not before a people (1 Pet 2:9–10) that is circumcised of heart (Rom 2:28–29) with a circumcision not made by hands (Col 2:11).
The appearance of the Woman, a great sign, in John’s vision in the narrative portion John identified as the Kingdom causes the Kingdom to predate the Tribulation as the Kingdom postdates the Endurance; thus the Tribulation and the Endurance appear as interruptions in the orderly flow of the Kingdom as consonants are interruptions in a vowel stream, thereby giving to the Logos [ho logos] the qualities of speech. All that has been made has been spoken into existence as a stream of uttered speech, with interruptions tending toward silence as consonants tend toward silence [N.B., visual grafts of consonants]. Thus, the 1260-day-long Tribulation serves as the maquette for the entirety of the era between the first Adam and the fall of the kingdom of Babylon, with the baptism of the world into death at the time of Noah equating to the removal of the sixth seal on the Scroll (Rev 6:12–17); the Tribulation becomes a fractal image of Babylon.
As the visions of Daniel were sealed and not understandable until the time of the end, John’s vision has not been understandable until the time of the end; for comprehending John’s vision has required the unsealing of Daniel’s visions. Thus, explication of Revelation will seem needlessly technical when in reality, it is needfully technical. Understanding Revelation is difficult, though, only because the vision has not been previously understood, for the vision is fairly straightforward: it is the narrative account of the 1260 day long Tribulation, the beginning of the unending Kingdom, the 1260 day long Endurance, followed by when lawlessness again appears in the Kingdom and when the reality of the Kingdom comes to earth. So the narrative structure of Revelation is the Tribulation and Kingdom forming the chiral image of the Endurance and Kingdom.
For pedagogical reasons, let it be repeated: if the disciple can comprehend the chiral relationship between the Tribulation/Kingdom and the Endurance/Kingdom, then only one of the reflected images needs to appear in Scripture for both to be known; e.g., what happens on day 1260 of the Endurance is reflective of what happens on day 1260 of the Tribulation, but whereas the Tribulation begins with its day 1, the Endurance ends with its day 1, meaning that day 1260 of the Tribulation butts against day 1260 of the Endurance to form a doubled day 1260 that will see dominion taken from the four kings (Dan 7:11–12) when Michael and his angels make war in heaven on Satan and his angels (Rev 12:7); will see the armies of the man of perdition swallowed by the closing of the split Mount of Olives (Zech 14:3–4; Rev 12:16; Ex 15:12; Dan 9:26); will see Satan as the present prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2–3) cast from heaven (Rev 12:9–10) and come to earth as the Antichrist (Rev 13:11), claiming to be the Messiah; will see the world baptized in spirit (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11) as the “vacuum” formed when Satan no longer broadcasts his nature to living creatures is filled by Christ Jesus giving to living creature His mind and nature, thereby changing even the animal natures of the great predators (Isa 11:6–9); will see the kingdom of this world given to the Son of Man (Rev 12:15–18; Dan 7:9–14, 26–27; 2:44–45; 8:25); will see the three beasts whose lives were extended for a season and a time, plus the fourth beast who was dealt a mortal wound, appear on earth as the first beast of Revelation chapter 13.
With one significant exception, shadows are cast backwards in time, meaning that God (Father and Son) as light stands outside of time at the point in time where saints are glorified. The exception is when the glorified Jesus as light was with His first disciples for forty days (Acts 1:3). He cast a time-linked shadow backwards as the three and a half years He was with His disciples, but He projected forward in time the shadow of His first disciples, with this forward projection of the first disciples seen in Abel preceding Cain in birth in the Tribulation, and the calling of the third part of humankind that will be born of spirit at the beginning of the Endurance.
The above can be confusing: the relationship between hearing and seeing that is common enough in a television set requires synchronization, with “glare” seen as consonantal interruption of the vowel stream. Think of full spectrum light. A person does not see “light,” yet light gives color and visualization to those things that surround the person. Without light (i.e., in absolute darkness), the person would be blind and utterly unable to perceive objects even a few feet or meters away. And the central metaphor of Scripture is that God is light: it is God that allows a person to “see” good and evil in this world, for the light of God illuminates both the things that are good and the things that are evil (for “good” in this world is mixed with “evil” in the single fruit of the Tree of Knowledge). Hence, without the light of God; with only the reflected light that bounces off the surface of the Adversary, everything takes on an odd color, or has a “color-shift,” for the full spectrum of light/God is not present. And in Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, Daniel says the head of gold is the king of Babylon, with Nebuchadnezzar forming the chiral image of the Adversary, the king of Babylon the saints will taunt (Isa 14:4) during the Millennium; thus, everything in this world as seen with “natural” or carnal eyes has a gold cast or hue to it, thereby causing money to be a root of evil, for everything is for sale, including grace, or so the Roman Church advertised for centuries.
The mindset that everything can be purchased for a price is central to the Adversary’s reign as the present prince of this world. Carnally minded human beings cannot comprehend that there are things which cannot be bought and sold, with “faith” being at the top of this list; hence, without faith no one can please God. Therefore, those who are carnally minded with a non-Christian (i.e., non silver-colored) mindset can see where problems would enter into a community that shares everything in common, such as the early Church did and as the Plymouth Separatists did in spring 1621, but they cannot see what is wrong with democratic ideas (the ideals of Korah) and a free market where no transaction will occur unless both parties benefit; for if the mindset has about it a golden hue from having the rest of the light spectrum absorbed by the Adversary, it is “transactions” that occur between persons, with these transactions being relationships without love, thereby making buying and selling pivotal in the Adversary’s world. A person determines whether he or she is of the Adversary and of the Adversary’s mindset during the Endurance by whether human-interaction occurs in the form of transactions.
A transaction is as a consonant, for without consonants in this world there would be no words, no intelligible utterance. Therefore, it is by the arrangement of transactions that meaning is conveyed from one person to another person in this present world, something that the Beat Generation and its wannabes sensed but were unable to adequately express for that generation’s want of spiritual birth. For whenever that generation got close to the Truth, the glare reflected off silver Christendom frightened that generation away.
During the forty days when the glorified Jesus was with His disciples, no shadow is cast by Jesus. The shadow cast would be by the first disciples. About these forty days we know that Peter and others went fishing, and we know what Luke records in Acts:
In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. (1:1–9)
What disciple has been, today, baptized with spirit as Jesus’ first disciples were? None have been, a simple statement of Truth that will be vigorously denied by spiritually lifeless “Christians.”
Truly born of spirit disciples are today as the first disciples were during the fifty days between when Jesus breathed on the ten and said, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22), and when the disciples were baptized in spirit on that first day of Pentecost (Acts chap 2). Thus, the shadow of those first disciples is projected forward toward endtime disciples who await the resurrection of the Church, when the Christian Church will again be baptized in spirit—and as ten received the spirit through direct transfer by Jesus breathing on them, everyone present with Peter was baptized in spirit on Pentecost, and three thousand were added to the Church that day through the preaching of Peter.
Were these three thousand filled with spirit so that their shadow falling on someone would heal the person? They were not, were they? So were they to leave Jerusalem, or were they to remain in Jerusalem until they received power from the spirit?
As it turned out, many of the three thousand “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread [eating together] and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). But Jesus was no longer with the first disciples; He had not been with them for ten days prior to Pentecost and He won’t return until He fights on a day of battle when His feet stand on the split Mount of Olives (Zech 13:3). He is now with His disciples in the heavenly realm, a statement that does not mean what Christendom would have it mean. He is where those human beings who have received a second breath of life have spiritual “life,” not where the dead await resurrection. And from His present location in the timeless realm of heaven, endtime disciples stand between Him and the first disciples who shared everything in common, with indwelling sin within these endtime disciples manifesting itself as the complaints the Hellenists had against the Hebrews (Acts 6:1) … when Jesus goes to sit down at the right hand of the Father, He is no longer inside of time, so He no longer casts a time-linked shadow. Rather, He awaits the resurrection of the saints. He is both the beginning and the end, for both are equal distance from the Most High, a concept that is as difficult for a person confined in time to comprehend as it would be for a fish to comprehend living on dry land. Thus, it will be simply asserted that the acts and actions of endtime disciples are visibly seen in the acts and actions of 1st-Century disciples, with chirality presenting the end of the Book of Acts as the shadow and copy of endtime saints at the beginning of the Tribulation, and with the beginning of Acts forming the shadow and mirror-image copy of endtime saints when the fifth seal is removed from the Scroll. And since the 1260 day long Tribulation forms the chiral image of the 1260 day long Endurance, the images straighten themselves up so that the 40 days when the first disciples are with Christ Jesus are seen with the 144,000 following Jesus wherever He goes, and are seen in the relationship of the remnant with the third part of humanity at the end of the Endurance. Confused? The shadow and copy of disciples sharing everything in common appears early in the Tribulation and late in the Endurance; but the shadow and copy of Jesus being with the first disciples is cast forward and appears at the beginning of the Endurance with the 144,000 following the Lamb wherever He goes. The reason that the shadow and copy of the Remnant with the third part of humanity is cast backwards into the Tribulation and backwards farther as 1st-Century disciples sharing all things in common (as a double rainbow is cast from one beam of light exiting a water droplet at two or more places) is because of God’s location in relation to the resurrection; again, He awaits at the resurrection. Whereas the time-linked shadow of the glorified Christ with His first disciples is cast backwards as the Twelve following Him, a non-time-linked shadow is cast forward as the 144,000 following Him.
The person not used to thinking in abstract realities will, most likely, throw up his or her hands in despair, claim that this is gibberish, and get on with living his or her life … to a first grader, differential calculus is gibberish. But at some point, comprehending the principles is simple enough to grasp. And so it is with chirality and the cross dimensional casting of light and shadows—and with lawlessness serving as consonants that tend toward silence, or the interruption of the Kingdom that would end the Kingdom if held for too long as silence ends utterance. But as a consonant cannot be “heard” if the vowel stream is completely interrupted, lawlessness without goodness would not be seen as sin but would only be darkness as in death. Therefore, Adam and Eve ate fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, not the fruit of Evil that would have immediately produced silence and absolute darkness.
4.
The question of what happens to the saints during the Tribulation and during the Endurance is not easily resolved in Scripture; for Scripture forms the shadow and type (is the left hand enantiomer) of what is written in the heavenly Book of Life, in which the lives of disciples are epistles (2 Cor 3:3). And because disciples in whom there is no lawlessness are “light,” and because light casts no shadow (it is those things that block the light that cast shadows) what disciples who keep the commandments do during the Tribulation is not recorded in Scripture. It is, rather, what those who are of the Rebellion do that is recorded. Therefore, it is through two sources that endtime saints are seen: (1) by how others respond to the saints, and (2) by what is written to the angels of the seven churches.
There is a third source but not a source that reveals anything about genuine pre-second-Passover disciples or about those who were filled with the spirit immediately following the second Passover. This third source is Revelation chapter 7.
Because so little is truly understood about Scripture—despite nearly two millennia of commentary and explication, less is known about Christ Jesus today than the Apostle John knew in the 1st-Century CE—matters outside of John’s vision must be addressed before his vision can be discussed. The Christian Church that today broadcasts worldwide on satellite television 24/7 is a spiritually dead organization. Yes, many well intended individuals have committed their lives to Christ Jesus, but in committing their lives to Him, they have chosen by either omission or commission not to believe Him. Rather, in serving their Lord, they serve the Adversary, not what they want to hear or be told; for the Christianity that is of this world is not of God, but is a 2nd-Century heresy that has grown large through its partnering with the prince of this world.
The “Christianity” that is of Christ Jesus will have disciples walking as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6), and imitating Paul as he imitated Jesus (1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; Phil 3:17; 1 Thess 1:6), and imitating the Churches of God that were in Judea (1 Thess 2:14); thus, if the Christianity of the person who has committed his or her life to Christ doesn’t cause the person to live as Jesus (an observant Jew) lived, then the Christianity of the person is not of God and the person’s worship is vain, a mocking shadow of what it means to sincerely worship God by faith.
Paul identifies the Church as the Body of Christ, with disciples individually and collectively making up this Body (1 Cor 12:27). As such, again applying the principle of chirality, Jesus’ physical body forms the shadow and type of His spiritual Body. Paul supports this principle when he writes to the Romans: “We know that our old self [man] was crucified with him [Jesus] in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin” (6:6–7).
Earlier, Paul writes, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (vv. 3–5).
What happened to Jesus’ body in His crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection will happen to His spiritual Body, the Christian Church, both individually and collectively—and it is the application of the collective Body being crucified, dying, being buried, and then resurrected from death that has eluded disciples, for historically disciples have interpreted what Jesus said about the gates of Hades not prevailing against the Church He would build (Matt 16:18) as meaning that the Church would not die. Yet if the Church is the collective Body of Christ, then the Church has to die, has to be buried, and has to be resurrected or returned to life. It cannot be the Body of Christ unless it dies.
Even though Jesus’ physical body died and was buried and lay in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights, the gates of Hades did not prevail over His physical body for the Father raised Him from the dead after the third day—and so will it be for the collective Body of Christ, with the “third day” being the third day of the Genesis “P” creation account.
The Church of Christ Jesus was built on the receipt of the divine breath of God [pneuma theou]: it was made alive (or brought into existence) when the glorified Jesus breathed on ten of His disciples and said, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22), and it would live for as long as disciples possessed a second breath of life received from the Father through Christ Jesus. But it would also die when a generation of disciples were not born of spirit—and how would this generation know that it wasn’t born of spirit? The generation would never have had a second breath of life, so it would lose nothing and would not know what it was missing.
Disciples can historically identify when the Christian Church died as Jesus’ natural body died; for when the Church accepted the lie of the old serpent, Satan the devil, and began to believe that (1) the Church wouldn’t die, and that (2) men are born with immortal souls inherited from the first Adam, the Church was dead. Thus, when the doctrine of the harrowing of hell entered Christian dogma (ca 105 CE), the collective Church had lost the spirit of God [pneuma theou]; had collectively lost the second breath of life and was a spiritual corpse that would be resurrected by the last Elijah as the son of the widow of Zarephath was returned to life. And as it took three attempts for the first Elijah to return breath to the boy, it will be on the third attempt that “life” is returned to the Church, with the first attempt occurring at the time of the Protestant Reformation and specifically in the ministry of Andreas Fischer (dod 1540 CE), and with the second attempt beginning with the Great Awakening and ending when Herbert W. Armstrong rejected revelation in 1962. The third attempt began in 2002, forty years to the day after Armstrong’s ministry was condemned for its unbelief … as it wasn’t all of the Reformation that attempted to walk as Jesus walked but Fischer and disciples following him, and as it wasn’t all of the Great Awakening that attempted to walk as Jesus walked but Sabbatarian disciples that continued to trek closer to heavenly Jerusalem until Armstrong began to keep the high Sabbaths as well as the weekly Sabbath, it will not be all of Christendom filled with spirit at the second Passover that attempts to walk as Jesus walked. Few will be chosen (Matt 22:14), for once filled with the breath of God [pneuma theou] and after having tasted of life, most of Christendom will rebel against God when the lawless one is revealed (2 Thess 2:3). The vast majority of today’s Christianity when liberated from indwelling sin (Rom 7:15–25) at the second Passover, the event that begins the Tribulation, will return to sin (i.e., to Sunday observance) on day 220 (about Christmas) of the first year. They will, again, be like the majority of the disciples who joined the Reformation and like the majority of the disciples in the Great Awakening, only they will have been born of spirit and will be born liberated from sin. Hence, they will have squandered their only chance for salvation when they return to sin, thereby making themselves bond servants to sin that leads to death (Rom 6:16).
The Apostle John lived as long as the Church Jesus built lived: the Church lived 70 years, and has been a spiritually lifeless corpse that would be returned to life after the third day—and when returned to life, those disciples that believe Jesus will live their lives as an outwardly uncircumcised sect of Judaism and not as Gentiles. The Christian Church will be returned to life following the second Passover liberation of Israel, and this resurrected Church will hold the doctrines of the first apostles, meaning, again, that it will be a recognizable sect of Judaism, the sect of the Nazarenes.
What does John say about those disciples who today identify themselves as Christians?
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he [Jesus] appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him 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 3:4–10)
Today’s Christian who practices lawlessness or makes a practice of sinning (Rom 6:16) has not been born of spirit, regardless of protestations to the contrary—and this means, simply, that the Christian Church, because it transgresses the Sabbath commandment, is composed of disciples not born of spirit, said with acknowledging exceptions that are on their way to Sabbath observance … the Christian Church today is as Israel was in Egypt: Jesus is the prophet who was like Moses (Deut 18:15–16), a prophet who speaks directly with God. And as Israel in Egypt was in physical bondage [slavery] to a human king, the Christian Church is today in bondage to sin and to the prince of this world; for if the Christian Church were not in bondage to sin, it would not present itself as the obedient slave to sin every Sunday morning.
Paul writes,
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the 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. (Rom 8:5–7)
Is it possible for today’s Christian Church to submit to God’s law? No, it is not possible for Sunday observance defines Christianity. For the Christian Church reads the first four verses of Romans chapter 8 then skips to verse 9:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. … You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Assuring itself that it is a spirit-filled assembly, the Christian Church conceals its hostility to God from itself, but its hostility prevents it from walking as Jesus walked or imitating Paul as he imitated Jesus or imitating the churches of God that were in Judea or keeping the precepts of the law so that its uncircumcision will be counted as circumcision (Rom 2:26).
Today’s Christian Church, in all of its many denominations, is a spiritually dead corpse that awaits resurrection after the second Passover liberation of Israel; for when resurrected to life while still dwelling in mortal bodies, the Church will be truly filled with the spirit and will have no indwelling sin or death.
Before leaving the subject, let’s look at what else John writes,
My little children, I [John] am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. (1 John 2:1–6)
So we may not sin … again, when did transgressing the Sabbath quit being sin?
Coupling what John writes with what Paul writes, the Christian who does not submit to God’s law, who does not keep the commandments is a child of the devil, is now spiritually dead, and fills pews every Sunday morning around the world. Because these Christians are not now born of spirit, they have no conception of what it means to be so born. They cannot, today, imagine the change that will occur in their willingness to keep the law when they have been born of God, but willingness to keep the law and actually keeping the law by faith are different things. Whereas lawless Christians now want to label born-of-God disciples as Judaizers and heretics, they will feel great shame (as Paul felt shame for consenting to the stoning of Stephen) the morning after the second Passover. They will want to get right with God, but when the “horns” on the head of Death, the fourth king of Daniel chapter 7—each of these horns a “Christian” leader—finally recover from the second Passover enough to regain control of their means of deception, that willingness by newly born of God disciples to keep the commandments will become a desire to return the Christianity of the interregnum[2], with Christmas observance the lever used to move disciples into rebellion.
The above sentences mean what they seem to say: Zion will give birth to a “son” when disciples are liberated from indwelling sin and death. The son, a righteous Abel, does not “breathe” on his own prior to the second Passover; this son has no indwelling spiritual breath of life until the Son of Man is revealed. Rather, this son has been, and is presently being sustained by the “breath” of the last Eve—and it is not Eve that raises the dead, but the Father (John 5:21). So Eve has never been able to give a second breath of life to Christians. And the Christian Church, consisting today primarily of disciples not drawn by the Father from this world, will therefore be made alive (i.e., given a second breath of life — pneuma theou) when liberated from sin by being filled with spirit at the second Passover.
Because these Christians are not today spiritually alive and don’t know that they are not alive, which is the heinousness of teaching that human beings are born with immortal souls, there are no (said with acknowledged exceptions) indwelling sons of God within visible Christendom that must be covered by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed … the irony of what will happen is that today’s lawless Christians will be born fully empowered by spirit at the second Passover so that they are well able to keep the commandments; whereas most disciples now drawn from this world to do work for the Father and the Son (disciples carrying on Armstrong’s ministry) will not cover the inner firstborn son of God by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed if the second Passover occurs on a year like 2010. Thus, the “saved” shall be condemned and the “condemned” shall be saved, but that is not how it has to be: both those who are now born of spirit and those who will be born of spirit can join together as witnesses to testify that all who practice righteousness are righteous and will be saved. Unfortunately, the testimony of Scripture is that most Christians will rebel against the Father and the Son when the man of perdition (i.e., the lawless one — 2 Thess 2:3) is revealed—and the “saved” that rebel will be condemned because they did not love the Truth.
The testimony of Scripture is that the Father will not accept the mishmash of customs concerning taking the sacraments of bread and wine that have developed over the past two millennia … if a person has truly been born of spirit, the person had better drink from the cup on the dark portion of the 14th of Abib. But for the person who professes Christ but who has not been drawn from this world—this person having no indwelling firstborn son of God within the person’s fleshly body—whenever and however the person takes or does not take the Lord’s supper doesn’t matter. The person is spiritually lifeless, and will not receive a second breath of life until after death angels again pass over all the land, slaying uncovered firstborns as the firstborns of Egypt were slain so long ago. Therefore, taking the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed is only of concern for those disciples who have truly been born of spirit in this era of spiritual darkness.
What, now, is the benefit of having been drawn from this world prior to the second Passover liberation of Israel? The benefits are many, for we have practiced walking uprightly before God under the cover (mantle or garment) of grace so that when the Son of Man is revealed and disciples are filled with spirit, we can walk in righteousness before the Father and the Son. We have had opportunity to store up treasure in heaven, and we stand as pillars on the foundation that Paul laid in heavenly Jerusalem. The mysteries of God have been committed to us; so in many ways we benefit from having been drawn from this world prior to life being returned to the Christian Church.
We are to bear fruit in the darkness of this world so that when the glorified Christ Jesus looks for fruit He will find that which He seeks … fruit borne in darkness lacks sweetness, and so it is with those of us who explicate the mysteries of God. We don’t deliver a message that is sweet in the stomach, but a message that is bitter; for the message is that as the fathers of Israel that left Egypt perished in the wilderness because of their unbelief, today’s Christian Church will perish in the Tribulation because of unbelief. And as, in a virtual man for man replacement, the children of Israel replaced their fathers and entered into God’s rest behind Joshua [in Greek, Iesou — from Acts 7:45], the third part of humanity (Zech 13:9) that constitutes the great multitude and the 144,000 will replace the Christian Church and enter into salvation as they follow Jesus [in Greek, Iesou — from Acts 4:10] across dimensions.
Is it not bitterness to look across the greater Christian Church, steeped in lawlessness but also manifesting a certain goodness in an utterly corrupt world, and know in advance that with very few exceptions (a Joshua and a Caleb), all of the Church will perish in the lake of fire? Doesn’t looking at friends and family members who will this coming Sunday be in the services of a Christian Church and knowing that they will, most likely, rebel against God when truly born of spirit produce great bitterness in the stomach? Eating this message about salvation coming to us is sweet in the mouth, but in the stomach, there is bitterness when we realize just how many seemingly good people will be condemned to the lake of fire because of their unwillingness to believe the truth.
Those Sabbatarians disciples who are today overly concerned about what happens to the saints during the trumpet plagues, all of which occur after the seventh seal is removed, really need not worry about what happens if they do not have the spirit of prophecy; for they will be bodily dead, resting in their graves, waiting for the resurrection when judgments are revealed. Thus, those disciples who do not today take the Passover sacraments at all, or who (as Latter Day Saints do) weekly substitute taking white bread and water for the annual taking of unleavened bread and wine on the night Jesus was betrayed, or who quarterly take crackers and grape juice in a celebration of the Lord’s Supper will form the core of the great falling away—not because they did not cover a non-existent inner new self, but because they have not practiced walking uprightly before God and will quickly take sin back inside themselves, thereby committing blasphemy against the spirit. These disciples do not presently believe the truth; they will not believe the truth next year; and most of them will not believe even after they have been filled with spirit. Hence they will eagerly rebel even when they know they should keep the commandments. For them, keeping the commandments will not seem all that important.
To repeat the above, for Sabbatarian disciples who are today truly born of spirit, covering the inner firstborn son of God by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed is absolutely essential; for if these scattered disciples do not drink from the cup on one particular day of the year (the dark portion of the 14th of Abib) of the year of the second Passover, those inner firstborn sons of God will be condemned and will perish. But Sabbatarian disciples are only a minute fraction of those disciples who will be filled with spirit following death angels again passing over all the land—and since few if any of these disciples will be previously born of God, the failure of these disciples to drink from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed doesn’t cost them their salvation as it will for Sabbatarian disciples, for these lawless disciples are today the children of Satan and they have their lawlessness “covered” by being consigned to disobedience.
Exactly how much of Christendom will be born filled with the spirit immediately following the second Passover is not now known, and might not be knowable until after the fact; for love has few boundaries. Thus, the question remains, will every person who claims to be a Christian be filled with spirit? Or will only those who take some form of the sacraments be filled? Assuming the smaller number is correct (i.e., only those who eat the Lord’s Supper will be filled with spirit), approximately a billion Christians will suddenly be liberated from bondage to sin. Now what? Two-plus billion firstborns will be dead. Governmental leaders will be dead. The nation of China will be devastated; Europe will be devastated. Only the local church will have any credibility, and local fellowships will be divided, Arians against Trinitarians, with these fellowships making war against one another until the end of the Tribulation (i.e., the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years) … it will not take long for rebellion against God to occur.
The world is not prepared for mass death … caskets markers and crematoriums have very limited capacity in industrialized nations. Following the second Passover, burying the dead will overwhelm individual consciousnesses and governing agencies, leaving survivors stunned and without organized guidance except for that of local churches.
Of those approximately one billion newly born Christians, almost all of them will rebel and will seek to kill those Sabbatarian disciples who had extended the hand of fellowship to them only weeks earlier. But some (a fellowship or two from each denomination) will join with those Sabbatarians who have been, for decades, keeping the precepts of the law and having their uncircumcision counted as circumcision (Rom 2:26). And again, because none of the disciples who remain unstained by this world will casts shadows, they are not seen in Scripture so exactly what happens to them is only suggested by what the lawless do and by what Christ Jesus does.
Again, the “birth” of a spiritual Cain occurs when the lawless one is revealed (2 Thess 2:3), with the birth of Cain occurring 220 days after the second Passover. At that time or immediately following the birth of Cain, the fifth seal of the Scroll is removed (Rev 6:9–11), which will have Cain slaying his righteous brother. And following removal of the fifth seal the sixth seal is removed from the Scroll, and the world, great and small, perceives the sixth seal to be the wrath of the Lord (Rev 6:15–17) … why would His wrath suddenly be poured out with fury if newly born sons of God are not being slain wholesale by Christians who have rebelled against God?
Is the above plain enough? In the lacunae between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals, pre-Tribulation saints as well as faithful newly born saints, except for the remnant, disappear from Scripture for they are sealed in death. And what sets the remnant apart from other saints is that they hold the testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy. They know what will happen during the remainder of the Tribulation and throughout the Endurance; thus, they will be witnesses to the third part of humankind during the Endurance as the two witnesses are witnesses to Israel during the Tribulation.
The lacunae between the opening of the sixth and seventh seals denotes a new beginning, with the grafting of natural Israel to the Root of Righteousness and the sealing of the 144,000 occurring on the far side of the gap.
5.
Anchored in the lacunae between removal of the sixth and seventh seals is that intercalary chapter 7, the new beginning for the Church of Jesus Christ: the “great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9), the great multitude that the angel identifies as “‘the ones coming out of the great tribulation’” (v. 14), is the third part of humankind that calls upon the name of God and the name of the Lamb, the people about whom the Lord will say, “They are my people” (Zech 13:9).
This third part of humankind is not today “Christian,” doesn’t identify itself as “Christian,” and will not claim any association with Christianity prior to the second Passover liberation of Israel. This third part will not be born of spirit until the world is baptized in spirit when the kingdom is given to the Son of Man; thus this great multitude comes out of the Endurance. They will be those human beings who, by having endured to the end, will be saved (Matt 24:13).
Today’s Christian Church is taking in more money than ever but is shrinking as wool in hot water. People are leaving not so much because they lack faith, but to preserve the faith that they have—and the faith that they have is not of God. They neither know God although they believe otherwise; nor are they willing to submit to God. But they sense more than intellectually understand just how dead the corpse of Christ is: they can smell death whenever they step inside a “church” building; they can feel it in the limp handshake of the pastor. And they have heard enough about life when all around them is the aura of a funeral home.
For Christ Jesus’ purpose, the weakened Christian Church is good news that should be heralded with great acclaim, but the visible Christian Church will not be weakened enough by the bronze king of Greece prevailing over the silver kings of Persia that it will withstand the solicitation and bribery of the gold king of Babylon working through the man of perdition; for what argument will the saints make against, After all that has happened this year, after all the death, after all the tribulation that has occurred, we can’t deny our children Christmas. They have to have something to hang onto. The least we can do is put Christ back into Christmas and celebrate the holiday in that good old fashion way … Christ was never in Christmas. The holiday is pagan in origin and pagan in its trappings. Yet with the second Passover slaughter of uncovered firstborns just 220 day earlier, memories will have begun to heal a little and Christians will have had enough of living as Judeans—what’s really wrong with eating a pork chop if the kingdom is not of food or drink, and isn’t everything created by God good and not to be rejected if it is received by thanksgiving—and as the American fervor to get Muslim fundamentalists had begun to subside six, seven months after 9/11, Christian fervor to get right with God will have begun to subside as a few things appear as if they might return to normal with the approach of the Christmas season. Certainly the world is at war as nations and peoples fight for diminishing resources, but Christmas is the season of peace, and what the world needs right now is peace; the world needs Christmas! It needs Christmas more than ever, and the vast majority of the Christian Church will rebel against God when the lawless one (2 Thess 2:3), who comes by the workings of the Adversary, is revealed on day 220.
The last Eve will now give birth to a spiritual Cain, who would be accepted if this son of today’s Christianity continues to do well (i.e., keep the commandments), but sin lurks at its door as sin did for the first Cain (Gen 4:7). And Sin, the third horseman, will lay claim to the nation that is born on day 220 as righteous Abel was born on day one; for it is from rebellion within righteous Abel that Cain comes as it was from rebellion within righteous angelic sons of God that the Adversary came when iniquity was found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14–15). And as the Adversary drew a third of the stars of heaven down into darkness, the Son of Man will draw a third of humankind in glory up to God.
The birth of the first Cain and Abel form the chiral image of the Christian Church at the beginning of the Tribulation, and as Seth was born as a replacement for Abel (Gen 4:25), the third part of humankind (again Zech 13:9) will be born filled with spirit as a spiritual Seth at the beginning of the Endurance. It is this spiritual Seth that will be accepted by God through simply enduring to the end in faith. Therefore, cinematically pulling back for a wide angle view of the plan of God, in the liberation of the Christian Church from indwelling sin and death at the second Passover, a righteous Abel is created as the Most High created the angels, suddenly giving to the angels life that they previously did not have [remember, Jesus said, “‘For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise’” — John 5:19 — and the Son as ho logos created everything that has been made, including man]. Therefore, the resurrection of the Christian Church to life following the second Passover is the mirror image of the Father giving life to angels outside of time. These two events are analogous to the creation of the first Adam, a man of mud, and the creation of the last Adam, a life giving spirit (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45), with the resurrection (to spiritual life) of the Church comparable to the first Adam, meaning that the Christian Church today has spiritual life to the same degree that mud has physical life. Today’s Christian Church awaits receipt of the breath of life as the man of mud—without consciousness—awaited Elohim [singular in usage] breathing life into the corpse’s nostrils (Gen 2:7); thus, today’s Christian Church is without spiritual consciousness and has no knowledge of what will soon occur; i.e., receiving life following the second Passover.
The first Adam as a corpse constructed of mud (red clay) looked like a man before receiving the breath of life, but was without life. Likewise, today’s Christian Church constructed of physically living human beings looks like the Christian Church on the morning after receiving life via receipt of the divine breath of the Father [pneuma theou — from Matt 3:16], but looks are deceiving. Human eyes can see the difference between mud and men, but human eyes are as mud when it comes to seeing God: they do not and cannot see God.
(Stylistically, points are made then hit again and again as if these points were nails struck once their heads are below the surface of the board. The person who easily gets the point has to endure the repetition of blows; for more individuals don’t get the point than do—and more points are bent over than driven home, so these points are pulled, straightened, then driven in again with many taps rather than blows, all of which the person who easily got the point must endure.)
The resurrection of the Christian Church, nearly two billion strong, to life immediately following the second Passover (a type of the first Passover when Israel left Egypt) is the chiral image of the Ancient of Days initially creating the angels, which gives us much more information than we previously had about the creation of angels. The 220 days before the lawless one is revealed becomes analogous to the period (outside of time) between the creation of the angels and when iniquity was found in an anointed cherub. The Rebellion or great falling away that gives birth to a spiritual Cain becomes analogous to the Adversary’s rebellion against the Most High, seen in Isaiah 14:13–14. Whereas Christendom labels as heresy any teaching about disciples being true sons of God and one with God, claiming that it is Satan who wanted to be like God, in reality it will be those who rebel against God in the great falling away that are as Satan and his angels are. Therefore, spiritual Cain has to come from or out of his righteous brother rather than be born as a separate and independent personage; for God did not create the Adversary. He did not create evil. Rather, evil developed when an anointed cherub saw that knowledge was desirable, good for “food” and a delight to the eye. However, with knowledge came judging God. And as long as the anointed cherub agreed with the acts and actions of God, no rebellion, no iniquity was discernable, but when this cherub found fault with God, the long standing rebellion became known. Iniquity was found. Thus, unbelief is the absence of faith; for unbelief comes when God’s words are not accepted as true based on faith in God being all knowing. Questioning the words of God over even seemingly arbitrary matters is “evil”; for this unbelief will inevitably lead to rebellion.
All unbelief leads to rebellion and is, thus, rebellion.
Israel’s unbelief was sufficient reason to keep the nation that left Egypt from entering the Promised Land (Heb 3:19); for to not believe God is to despise God (Num 14:11). Jesus said that to hear His words (He spoke only the Father’s words, so to hear His words was to hear the Father) and to believe the One who sent Him gives the person eternal life. This person “‘does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life’” (John 5:24). Elsewhere, Jesus said, “‘Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice’” (John 18:37). The truth is, simply, the words of the Father as spoken by the Son. But these words have to be accepted as true by faith, and Christendom absolutely refuses to accept the words of Jesus as true … Jesus said, “‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets’” (Matt 5:17); yet Christendom universally teaches in some form that Jesus abolished the Torah and/or the Prophets.
Because spiritual Cain comes out from righteous Abel (the liberated Christian Church following the second Passover), and because Cain killed Abel and spiritual Cain will attempt to kill Abel as disclosed when the fifth seal is removed from the Scroll (Rev 6:9–11), a spiritual Seth will replace Abel man-for-man as the children of Israel replaced their fathers (cf. Num 1:46; 26:51). But in Scripture, there is no angel-for-angel replacement seen; there is no Seth to replace Abel as the third part of humanity (again Zech 13:9) replaces those disciples who were of Abel that have been killed by Cain. However, what can be seen by chirality is that the harvest of the earth functions as Seth, meaning that glorified human beings replace the angels lost to the Adversary’s rebellion. This replacement, though, isn’t of angels with angels but of angelic sons of God with firstborn sons of God, these firstborn sons of God being heirs to the kingdom and not servants in the kingdom.
6.
John dates the intercalary chapter 7 to after the sixth seal was opened (Rev 7:1); so the first six seals are opened before the 144,000 are “sealed.” And only after the 144,000 are sealed does the great multitude come into existence. As such, the 144,000 are sealed during the Tribulation and before the Endurance; they are sealed during the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years … in the construction of a timeline for the Tribulation, the Kingdom, and the Endurance, the 144,000 stand on Mount Zion with the Lamb, who comes to fight on a day of battle when nations have gathered against Jerusalem (Zech 14:2–4), both a physical city and after the thousand years, the heavenly city constructed of glorified disciples (Rev 21:2, 9–10) that constitute the Bride of Christ.
The 144,000 will flee through the split Mount of Olives to escape the flood that is sent against them (Rev 12:16), with this flood being an army similar to Pharaoh’s army that was swallowed by the Sea of Reeds. Only instead of water taking the lives of men as the Sea of Reeds took the lives of Pharaoh and his army and as the Flood in the days of Noah took the lives of men, it will be the split granite monolith known as the Mount of Olives, a stone not cut by human hands (Dan 2:45), that swallows (by closing upon the armies of the man of perdition) the lives of men (Ex 15:12), thereby bringing to his end the prince who had come to destroy the city of Jerusalem and the sanctuary (Dan 9:26).
In the days of Noah, the world was baptized into death because of its disobedience. The world was given into the hand of the spiritual king of Babylon, the old serpent, Satan the devil. Thus, when the Lord “liberated” Israel from the hand of Pharaoh, who had to have his heart supernaturally hardened so that he could serve as a type of the prince of this world, the Lord delivered Israel from death by crossing the Sea of Reeds on dry land … this is what’s meant by Paul writing that “death reigned from Adam to Moses” (Rom 5:14), for on the other side of the water Israel received the commandments of God as Adam received a single commandment (Gen 2:16–17) after being placed in the Garden of God, the shadow and type of the temple, thereby establishing the analogy that Adam in the Garden was like Jesus in the temple.
Let it here be repeated for clarity: since Adam was expelled from the Garden of God, death had reigned over all living creatures. But since the Flood, death had doubly reigned over air breathing creatures; for the Flood is the chiral image of the world being baptized in spirit into life (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11). Thus, when the Sea of Reeds parted for Moses, the death that came with Adam being expelled from the garden ended: man in the form of Israel could return to God.
If death doubly reigns over the children of men, then humankind (in the form of Israel, those who prevail with God) needs to be twice liberated form death, with each of these liberations requiring an exodus from death that was like Israel’s exodus from Egypt—and the first liberation from death comes when a person drawn from this world by the Father (John 6:44) receives a second breath of life via receipt of the divine breath of the Father [pneuma theou]. Thus begins for every disciple an inner journey like that made by Israel from Egypt to Judea. And this makes Israel’s exodus from Egypt equivalent to the physical breath [psuche] the first Adam received when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the man of mud’s nostrils, breath that the gives temporary life to mud.
For most disciples discovery that ancient Israel’s exodus from Egypt forms the shadow and type of a Christian’s inner walk with God through the wilderness of sin is enough. They have tasted spiritual meat even if the meat can be likened to liver paste. They are satisfied. They have graduated from milk to baby food, and they like the taste of baby food. They have grown enough.
But there will be a second Passover when the Christian Church is made alive through being filled with the breath of the Father—and when filled with spirit, the Christian’s walk with God will no longer be inner and personal, but will be outward and known by all. Thus, the Christian will outwardly be persecuted as what has been, since Calvary, an inner war against sin and death will be an outward war against Death; for with liberation from sin, Sin and Death will be separated as the king of the North departed from the king of the South (Dan 11:5).
For those who crossed over the water on dry land, the journey made with their feet was equivalent to the Ark that carried Noah and those with him to safety; they passed through the water without losing their breath (drowning). The symbolism of crossing over water on dry land (as opposed to walking on water) represents a returning to humankind’s pre-Flood status, with the walls of water between which Israel passed being a baptism of the nation (1 Cor 10:2) as the stone walls [the split Mount of Olives] between which the 144,000 pass will be a type of resurrection to life. Baptism by water is unto the death of the old self, but Israel and the children of Israel were not given a second breath of life. They were only offered the promise of inheriting everlasting life. Thus, their “old self” was not slain or crucified, but remained alive: it was through demonstrated obedience that the children of Israel crucified (killed) their old self and created within themselves a new self that although not spiritually alive received the promise of inheriting everlasting life. Until they passed through the “Flood” on dry land, they were consigned to disobedience and separated from God by their consignment to sin. They were not as Adamic man was, but were the slaves of the Adversary as the Hebrews were slaves to Pharaoh … Israel in Egypt was doubly enslaved so that the nation could form the left hand enantiomer of the Christian Church, which has two breaths of life and can therefore be doubly enslaved.
Not only can the Christian Church be doubly enslaved, but the Lord “‘will doubly repay’” (Jer 16:18) spiritually circumcised Israel for its sin and iniquity … if the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), and if one death is enough to end one life, then to doubly repay Israel for its sin would mean that Israel is condemned to the second death: “‘Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know my name is the Lord [YHWH]’” (Jer 16:21).
Backing up to humankind being twice consigned to death, once when Adam was driven from the Garden and a second time in the Flood: Adam remained physically alive when he was driven from the Garden even though the Lord told him that “‘in the day that you eat of it [the tree of knowledge] you shall surely die’” (Gen 2:17); his nakedness (that came with his act of unbelief) was covered by skin garments that the Lord had made for the man and woman (Gen 3:21). Animals were sacrificed by the Lord and were used to cover Adam’s disobedience as animal sacrifices covered the sins of Israel in the Promised Land. Therefore, the Lord making skin garments for Adam and Eve in the Garden forms the left hand enantiomer of Israel sacrificing animals on the altar in first the tabernacle, then on the altar in the temple. But Jesus’ death at Calvary was the reality of sacrifices. Hence, the Lord making skin garments for man in the Garden and Israel sacrificing animals on the altar in the temple are chiral images that together form the left hand enantiomer of Jesus dying on the cross at Calvary.
If two images are necessary to form the mirror image of Christ on the cross, then Jesus at Calvary is only one of two images of Christ on the cross … liver paste might be meat, but it has little texture and substance as Christendom’s iconographic image of a long-haired, effeminate Jesus hanging dead on a hilltop cross. The unseen “other” image is that of the Body of Christ being crucified as Jesus was (Rom 6:6), but the seen image is that resurrected Christian Church being killed by the Cross, the fourth horseman (Rev 6:7–8), also named Death, during the Tribulation.
As two natural or physical images are necessary to form the left hand enantiomer of Christ on the cross, two images of the Passover exodus of Israel (that are themselves enantiomorphs) are necessary to form the left hand enantiomer of Israel’s exodus or escape from death. As there is an unseen image of the Body of Christ being crucified and killing approximately seventy years after Calvary, there is an unseen exodus from death occurring at the second Passover when the Christian Church is returned to life: outwardly after the second Passover Christians will appear the same as they were before the second Passover. Thus the first visible exodus from death comes with the resurrection of the two witnesses, and the second exodus comes at the Second Advent, when Christ Jesus returns to reveal judgments.
But the resurrection of firstfruits at Christ Jesus’ return forms the shadow and type of the great White Throne Judgment, with these two large exoduses from death equating to the two grain harvests of Judea, the early barley harvest and the later main crop wheat harvest. Jesus’ exodus from death can be seen in Moses’ escape from Egypt, with His exodus forming a type of the two witnesses’ exodus, the three ribs in the mouth of Abaddon.
The promise of the Lord is that the days are coming when Israel’s exodus from Egypt would be forgotten because of the magnitude of Israel’s recovery from the North Country, Assyria, the geographical representation of death as Egypt is the geographical representation of Sin; for Israel’s exodus from death at the end of the Endurance will forever change heaven and earth—and will be as great of an event as the initial creation of the angels, who will have long awaited the resurrection to glory of the firstfruits.
7.
Paul writes “that the person who does [keeps] the commandments shall live by them” (Rom 10:5); i.e., the person has passed from death into life without coming under judgment if the person hears the words of the Lord and believes these words (John 5:24) by faith (the negative connotation translators have given to Paul’s allusion to Leviticus 18:5 is not in what Moses told Israel about keeping the commandments being the cause for life). Thus crossing the Sea of Reeds on dry land as symbolism of being liberated from death was only the beginning of a journey that would see Israel at Sinai given the living words of the Lord, given these commandments with the expectation that they would be kept; for the journey begun would see, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, the entirety of the nation numbered in the census of the second year perish in the wildernesses of Sin/Zin because of unbelief. It was the children of the nation that left Egypt that entered into God’s rest.
Today’s Christendom, with the exception of a spiritual Joshua and a spiritual Caleb, will perish eternally because of unbelief … following Moses by faith will liberate an Israelite from death by extending to the Israelite the promise of inheriting eternal life: Moses does not give to the person eternal life. Only the Father through Christ Jesus (Rom 6:23) can give eternal life to the person. Thus, the better promises added to the Moab covenant when its mediator became Christ Jesus includes the actual receipt of life, thereby inwardly liberating the disciple from death now, while death still dwells in the fleshly members of the person.
If liberated from death, the person has been made alive, with real life dwelling in a still perishable tent of flesh, meaning that the person still needs to receive life from the Son when judgments are revealed (John 5:21–23). And it is this that those human beings not born of spirit do not and cannot understand: said with acknowledged exceptions, the under forty generation wants to worship an inclusive God, a deity that respects diverse lifestyles and theologies, a deity that is kinder and gentler than the God of their fathers, a deity concerned about the environment, a deity that loves them even when they are cursing Him, a deity that understands their problems and the change in social mores that has sexual immorality as just another lifestyle choice, a deity that allows them to worship Him or Her on their terms, how and when they deem best. They want to worship themselves; they want to recreate God in their image so that He will relate to them. They don’t want to change to be one with Him; they want Him to become one with them. And the Father and the Son look at this under forty generation[s] in the same way that God looked at the fathers of today’s me-first generations; for “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8). God doesn’t change, and the Christian Church, when resurrected to life, will be raised without corruption, meaning that it will again teach the doctrines of the 1st-Century sect of the Nazarenes. It will be temporarily embarrassed by what Christendom taught for 1,900 years.
Thus, the second Passover liberation of Israel from bondage to sin and death will result in the resurrection to life of the now spiritually lifeless Christian Church, and will be analogous to, or the chiral image of the initial creation of angels as sons of God. But the juxtaposition that hasn’t been well explored is that of the 144,000 passing through the split Mount of Olives being analogous to Christ Jesus rising from the rock tomb, with passing through the cut stone symbolizing resurrection from death … unlike the remnant of the Woman’s offspring (Rev 12:17 — with the Woman’s offspring being the Sabbatarian Church) that enters the Endurance as physically living human beings, the 144,000 were not born of spirit when the Tribulation began, but were keeping the commandments by faith: prior to being “sealed” by God after the sixth seal was opened, the 144,000 were observant Jews that by faith kept the commandments in a world delivered into the hand of the man of perdition.
Paul, referencing the Moab covenant (Deut chap 29–32), writes that the observant Jew who has by faith returned to the Lord when in a far land has only to profess with the mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in the heart that the Father raised Jesus from the dead to be saved (Rom 10:6–9). The 144,000 will have so professed or they wouldn’t follow the Lamb; thus passing through the split Mount of Olives serves for the 144,000 as the visible “sign” of entering into a new life in Christ Jesus, with passing through the rock serving as baptism served for the Woman’s offspring. Instead of being baptized into water and into the death of the old self, the 144,000 will be baptized into life and into a resurrection like Christ Jesus’.
All of the world will be baptized into life when the spirit of God is poured out on every living creature (Joel 2:28), with the symbolism of this baptism into life being the 144,000 passing through the rock as Israel leaving Egypt passed through the water. Thus, the children of Israel again passing through water (the flooding Jordan River) to enter into God’s rest (from Ps 95:10–11) forms the shadow and type of the new selves that are sons of God passing through fire into glory at the end of the Endurance.
The 144,000 function for the natural descendants of the patriarch Israel as the children of Israel functioned in the wilderness as a replacement for the nation that, because of unbelief, did not enter into God’s rest—and a person needs to hold this declaration in tension with the realization that the great multitude that “‘have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’” (Rev 7:14), this great multitude being approximately half of the third part of humanity, functions for Christianity as the nearly man-for-man replacement of Israel that is seen between Numbers 1:46 and Numbers 26:51 … Israel was formerly a physically circumcised nation but is now a circumcised of heart (or spiritually circumcised) nation. Approximately a third part of the world professes to be “Christian,” or professes to be circumcised of heart, but this third part is as lawless as the nation of Israel that left Egypt was. Thus, today’s Christianity will perish during the seven endtime years as the nation that left Egypt perished during the forty years Israel wandered in the Wildernesses of Sin/Zin, and Christianity will be replaced by its children, which will be the third part of humankind, born of spirit when the world is baptized in spirit. So the 144,000 is not a replacement number of Israelites for either natural Israel or for the Christian Church, but is rather, the chiral image of those Israelites who will begin the Millennium as human beings filled with inherent “life.” For all of the world will, in the Millennium, follow the Lamb of God wherever He leads, and will learn the song of redemption, and will keep themselves undefiled by sin and the ideologies of this present world … it will be the ideologies of this present world that, like the many foreign women Solomon married, eventually enter into Millennium and cause or allow the saints to be deceived by the Adversary when he is loosed from the bottomless pit after the thousand years.
For pedagogical clarity let it be said that the 144,000 function as the shadow of those few human beings that will bodily begin the Millennium. Although the 144,000 will be natural Israelites and will serve as representatives for the biological nation descended from the patriarch, the 144,000 are not a replacement representation for natural Israel but are the chiral image of the Israel that enters into the Millennium. The vast majority of natural Israel will perish in the Tribulation when the saints are delivered into the hand of the man of perdition for the destruction of the flesh; for everyone who then keeps the Sabbath will have to do so by faith. If the natural descendants of the patriarch Israel continue to keep the commandments, especially the Sabbath commandment, by faith in the Tribulation, under the terms of the Moab covenant these natural descendants will be brought near to God and will receive the promise of inheriting eternal life in Christ Jesus. Except for the 144,000 they will be killed in a repeat of the Holocaust; so only a few will survive to bodily enter the Millennium, with the 144,000 representing the number that will bodily enter, meaning that a tribe of Israel will be missing.
When Christ Jesus returns as the Messiah, with few exceptions humankind will have taken judgment upon itself and will be slated for glorification or for condemnation in the lake of fire. Thus, the number of individuals who have been born of spirit but who haven’t taken judgment upon themselves will be those that bodily enter into the Millennium. Isaiah’s testimony is that their number will be few (Isa chap 24), and so it will be.
A person’s left hand is the non-symmetrical mirror or chiral image of the person’s right hand, but this does not mean that the person’s left hand is the same size as the person’s right hand; thus, it would be inappropriate to state that 144,000 human beings will begin the Millennium even though the prophet Isaiah records the Lord saying that He will empty the earth and men will be few in number. What can be again stated for emphasis is that after the earth has been harvested at the end of this era, with most human beings alive when the Endurance begins either glorified or condemned to the lake of fire, it will be only those human beings who have not sinned and who would have not taken judgment upon themselves that will enter into the Millennium—and this will not be a large number. Whereas the 144,000 referenced in Revelation chapter 14 will be glorified, they form the time-linked shadow of those human beings that will start civilization over again here on earth.
As the 144,000 will be “virgins” (i.e., not defiled by sin), the third part of humanity, born of spirit when the world is baptized in spirit, will also be virgins: they are the virgins about whom Jesus said that five were foolish and five were wise (Matt 25:1–12), and when coupled with numerous references to one being taken and one being left, the logic for stating that of the two-plus billion human beings that compose the third part of humankind only half will enter into the kingdom has solid footing. Hence, the great multitude that is separated by John’s narrative from those saints that must be killed as earlier saints were killed (Rev 6:9–11) is not today Christian and will not be “Christian” at any time prior to the beginning of the seven endtime years. This great multitude is not included in the two parts of the little ones against which the Lord of Hosts turns His hand (Zech 13:7–8). And this great multitude will number more than a billion people.
The remnant of the offspring of the Woman (Rev 12:17) that the Adversary pursues into the Endurance is all that remains of the “Christian” Church liberated from indwelling sin and death at the second Passover—this remnant includes both the seven named churches and the single fellowship of every other church that will cross from death to life as the seven pairs of clean animals and single pair of every unclean animal entered the Ark with Noah and crossed from one world into the next world.
As the seven named churches coexisted in the 1st-Century, their realities will coexist in the 21st-Century when the Body of Christ is resurrected from death and revealed or disrobed (Luke 17:30) by the garment of grace being stripped away from Christians. Once Christians are liberated from indwelling sin and death by being filled with spirit, they will either “cover” themselves by obedience or they will be made naked by disobedience as the first Adam was made naked. Unbelief, whether manifested in action as disobedience or held in abeyance, is sin and will keep a person out of the kingdom of the heavens. The Tribulation and the Endurance is about discovering hidden or concealed unbelief within human beings. The Adversary functions as a tool in the Most High’s hand, the tool used to open hearts so that everyone can see what is within the person.
Although John received the letters to the seven named churches near the end of the 1st-Century, these letters are not delivered to the realities of these seven churches until the beginning of the Endurance; thus, in the delivery of the letters halfway through the seven endtime years, John becomes a partner with the Remnant.
8.
The seventy weeks prophecy (Dan 9:24–27) is enantiomorphic, with the left hand enantiomer pertaining to the temple built by Zerubbabel but the right hand enantiomer pertaining to the resurrected Christian Church that returns to life through the last Elijah stretching Himself over the corpse three times as the first Elijah stretched himself over the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:21):
Although claims were made by various 20th-Century Sabbatarian authors (notably Dugger and Dodd) to show a continuous history of Sabbath observance between the 1st-Century and the 19th-Century, these authors inevitably do not separate “Sabbatarians” from Sabbatarians, thus accepting any historical sect that self-identified itself as Sabbatarian as observers of the seventh day Sabbath whereas that is not the case: when enough of a written record is preserved to grasp the doctrines of Medieval Sabbatarians what’s found is that the sect kept Sunday in a strict manner as the sect imagined 1st-Century disciples had kept the Sabbath, imaging that the 1st-Century Church had kept Sunday as the Sabbath. Therefore, claims of Sabbath observance by any sect of Christendom prior to the 16th-Century must be viewed with skepticism, but not necessarily rejected. Such claims should be quarantined until the sect is better understood, especially in the case of 15th-Century English Lollards, some of whom might well have been crypto-Sabbatarians as Michael Angelo might have been a crypto-Reformer in having Moses sitting upright before God while the pope reclined in a serpentine pose. Therefore, it isn’t to concealed Sabbatarians or Reformers that endtime disciples look for the resurrected temple of God; rather, it is the visible ministries that strived to worship the Father and the Son as the 1st-Century sect of the Nazarenes had worshiped both that represents the return of life to the Christian Church. Life is not concealed in death, but comes from death as light comes from darkness.
The first time the last Elijah stretched Himself over the dead Body of Christ occurred 1,200 years after the dead Body was delivered to the prince of this world for burial at the Council of Nicea (ca 325 CE), with life manifested visibly in the ministry of Andreas Fischer (1527/28–1540 CE), and his influence on isolated Unitarians until approximately 1600 CE.
In 1527 CE, Oswalt Glaidt met Andreas Fischer and introduced Sabbath observance to Fischer. Unfortunately, while Fischer’s ministry went forward, especially after he was hung and survived, Glaidt returned to Sunday observance when he became a disciple of Hans Hut—and from Fischer, whose teachings concerning the Trinity are obscure (deemphasized), comes a trail of visible Sabbatarian ministers and ministries that will culminate in the second Passover liberation of the Church from sin and death.
The second time the last Elijah lays prostrate over the Church slightly predates the Great Awakening and appears in this world in the form of 17th-Century Seventh Day Baptists in England and after 1671, in America, and on the continent after the 1675 publication of Spener’s Pia desideria, which gave rise to the Pietist movement from which came 18th-Century German Seventh Day Baptists in America.
The movement toward the restoration of the Christian Church has been a trek away from Babylon, the kingdom of this world ruled by the prince of this world, the present prince of the power of the air that reigns over all sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3). The Radical Reformers left Babylon, but of the Anabaptists that left early, only Fischer and for a while Glaidt crossed into God’s rest, the Promised Land. Glaidt left spiritual Judea when he returned to Sunday observance, leaving only Fischer and his followers across a spiritual Jordan River—and they could not hold the territory that was rightfully theirs. They needed spiritual reinforcements, but these reinforcements didn’t arrive in time to cause to the Body of Christ to breathe on its own; so the first attempt to return life to the Church died with the 16th-Century.
But the second attempt followed almost immediately.
It was, however, the Great Awakening that infused Spener’s six proposals for restoring life to the Church into the Corpse of Christ. These proposals were: (1) Bible study in private meetings (ecclesiolae in ecclesia); (2) universal Christian priesthood; (3) Believers must practice as a sign and sacrament what they profess to believe; (4) tolerance and kind treatment should be extended to heterodox believers and unbelievers; (5) reform of theological training in universities; and (6) a different style of preaching.
From the appearance of English Seventh Day Baptists and German Seventh Day Baptists in America at the beginning of the 18th-Century came the almost successful second attempt to bestow life in the Christian Church; for from Seventh Day Baptists came Seventh Day Adventists and the Church of God, Seventh Day, in the mid 19th Century, and from the Oregon Conference of the Church of God, Seventh Day, came Herbert W. Armstrong’s ministry that perhaps did more to promote Sabbath observance—and had more success—than any ministry since the last Elijah first stretched Himself over the Corpse.
But—and this is a big caveat—Armstrong was also responsible for the failure of the Corpse to breathe on its own: Armstrong rejected universal Christian priesthood, the ministry of the laity, even though Paul writes that Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to the Church for the purpose of equipping “the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph 4:11–12). He rejected local autonomy of fellowships and established a centralized work patterned after the Roman Church. And finally, at a time when he knew he had prophecy wrong, through his son he rejected divine revelation in January 1962.
With Armstrong’s rejection of revelation, the second attempt to restore life to the Corpse ended—and there would be no third attempt patterned after the first two. The third attempt will be patterned after Israel’s exodus from Egypt.
Liberation from indwelling sin and death comes at the second Passover, and comes through filling every disciple (as if the disciple were a vessel) with spirit [pneuma theou] so that there is no room within the disciple for lawlessness. And because the disciple will be filled with spirit, the Torah/Law will be written on hearts and placed in the minds of disciples: the first covenant, or Passover covenant made on the night that Israel left Egypt will finally have ended, and disciples will be under the long-awaited New Covenant.
However, before the New Covenant can be implemented, death angels will again pass over all the land as the death angel Passover over all of Egypt. The lives of men will again be given as the ransom price of Israel (Isa 43:3–4)
Disciples will not be liberated from indwelling sin and death until the second Passover of the year (the 14th/15th of Lyyar) so that those disciples who were spiritually defiled or who were on a long journey (i.e., not physically able to take the Passover) can cover themselves by drinking from the cup … the second Passover occurs on the second Passover because it is the second Passover, a declarative statement sure to trip some.
The filling of disciples with the spirit of God and the stripping away of grace to reveal these disciples will function as the last Eve [Zion] giving birth to a nation in a day (Isa 66:7–8), and will therefore produce a separation of disciples from the Father and the Son (although not a separation from Christ’s love); for a man doesn’t marry his body but marries his bride. A separation has to occur. And the liberation of Israel from indwelling sin means Israel will enter the Tribulation without indwelling sin, but also without the covering of grace, without being one with Christ Jesus. Disciples will enter the Tribulation being able to keep the commandments if that is what they desire, or able to return to sin if that is their desire. And if they return to sin, they will commit blasphemy against the spirit that fills them; for in a visualization of what occurs, they will have to reject or expel some of the spirit that fills them in order to take sin within themselves, with this rejection of the spirit being the blasphemy committed.
The concept of Christians no longer being under grace and being separated from the Father and Son will be too much for most to accept, and will be one reason for the Rebellion of day 220.
Within Christendom grace is perceived as unmerited pardon from sin, but this is not the case … the New Covenant and the first covenant are enantiomorphs. The terms of the New Covenant are (taken from Jeremiah):
1. New covenant will be made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, with both houses identified in the naming phrase, house of Israel (31:31, 33);
2. The Torah [the five books of Moses] will be put within every Israelite and written on the hearts of the nation (31:33);
3. The Lord [YHWH] shall be their God [Elohim], and they shall be His people (31:33; Zech 13:9);
4. No one shall teach neighbor or brother to, Know the Lord, for all shall know Him for all shall have the Torah within them (31:34);
5. The Lord shall forgive their iniquities and He shall remember their sin no more (31:34).
Now, look at the terms of the first covenant as seen in Exodus, made with Israel when the Lord took the fathers of Israel by the hand to lead the nation out of Egypt (Jer 31:32):
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. … Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. / Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. / This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever.” (Ex 12:1–17)
And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute of the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it, but every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. No foreigner or hired servant may eat of it. It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones. All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” (12:43–49)
All the people of Israel did just as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. And on that very day the Lord brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts. (12:50–51)
The Lord said to Moses, “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.” (Ex 13:1–2)
Then Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out. And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this service in this month. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days; no leavened bread shall be seen with you, and no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory. You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt. You shall therefore keep this statute at its appointed time from year to year. / When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord's. Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’ It shall be as a mark on your hand or frontlets between your eyes, for by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt.” (13:3–16 emphasis added)
Although the citation is lengthy, it is also unfamiliar to too many Christians … the covenant made on the day when the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt is not the Sinai covenant, but the Passover covenant that incorporates the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread along with the first Unleavened, eaten when the lamb is sacrificed on the dark portion of the 14th, the night on which Israel was not to leave their houses (Ex 12:22) into one Sabbath observance, of which the high Sabbath, the 15th of Abib, is called the great day of the Sabbath (see John 19:31 in Greek).
Yes, there is the first Unleavened (see Matt 26:17 in Greek — remove the extra words translators have inserted) on the dark portion of the 14th of Abib, the night when Jesus was betrayed and the night when Israel in Egypt ate their paschal lambs, and there is the seven day long Feast of Unleavened Bread that begins on the 15th of Abib when Israel actually left Egypt, with both of these times when Unleavened Bread is eaten representing one Sabbath that will actually incorporate the entire period when every Israelite male presented himself before the Lord (see Deut 16:16); thus this Sabbath reached backward to the 10th day of Abib when the high priest selected the paschal lamb for Israel.
In order for the Passover covenant and the New Covenant to be enantiomorphs, the terms of the New Covenant must be reflected in the Passover covenant:
1. The New Covenant is made with the house of Israel, and the Passover covenant is made with Israel and not with strangers or foreigners unless they have been circumcised and have become proselytes, part of Israel (Ex 12:43–44, 48).
2. Under the New Covenant, the Torah is placed within every Israelite while under the Passover covenant Israel’s exodus from Egypt was to be as a sign on every Israelite’s hand and as a memorial between their eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in every Israelite’s mouth (Ex 13:9).
3. Under the New Covenant, the Lord shall be God to Israel and Israel His people while under the Passover covenant every firstborn of man and beast belonged to the Lord (Ex 13:2) and must be redeemed, with redemption serving as a mark on the hand or frontlets between the eyes to show that the Lord brought Israel out from Egypt (Ex 13:16), for Israel is the firstborn son of the Lord (Ex 4:22).
4. Under the New Covenant, all shall Know the Lord for the Lord will put the Torah within every Israelite whereas under the Passover covenant the killing of paschal lambs and the eating of unleavened bread for seven days and redemption of firstborns was to cause each generation of Israel to know what the Lord had done for Israel.
5. Under the New Covenant sins would be forgiven and remembered no more whereas under the Passover covenant, as modified by Christ Jesus on the night that He was betrayed, drinking from the blessed Cup was for the forgiveness of sins (Matt 26:28) — so the passing of the death angel over the houses of Israel on which the blood of a paschal lamb was smeared on doorposts and lintels was a type of forgiveness of sin.
The First Covenant was “becoming obsolete and growing old” and “ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13) a quarter century after Calvary, meaning that though old and about ready to vanish away, the first covenant had not yet actually vanished but remained in effect, for the first covenant would not end until the Lord again had death angels pass over all of the land to slay firstborns (all of whom belong to Him) not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God.
The most heinous lie taught by Christendom is that the New Covenant has been implemented when the first covenant remains about “ready to vanish away,” but still in effect. And because the Passover covenant remains in effect, Israel needs to keep the Passover after the example established by Christ Jesus—and Israel doesn’t. Neither the physically circumcised nation nor the remnant of the spiritually circumcised nation left over from the last Elijah’s second attempt to restore life in the Christian Church will (said with acknowledged exceptions) keep the Passover after the example of Christ in 2010 (Hebrew year 5770). Both will be uncovered if the first covenant were to end in 2010. But the physically circumcised nation has no indwelling firstborn son of God within itself whereas the remnant of Armstrong’s ministry does, meaning that if the second Passover liberation of Israel were to occur in 2010, the remnant of Armstrong’s ministry will be spiritually condemned to the lake of fire because of unbelief, a sad reality but one about which this remnant has been warned a year in advance.
The second Passover recovery of Israel from sin and death during the seven years of the Tribulation and the Endurance is of such importance that Israel will forget about the exodus from Egypt (Jer 16:14–15; 23:7–8). Yet, today, Christendom either feigns ignorance about the second Passover, or is ignorant by neglect of what is about to happen. As such, great will be the inescapable rebellion that follows the condemnation of indwelling firstborn sons of God. And it is the realization that rebellion against God is inescapable by those disciples who, because they were unwilling to believe the truth, do not cover their sins by taking the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed that changes much of what has been previously taught about today’s Sabbatarian disciples being able to enter the kingdom if they are willing to die for what they believe during the Tribulation.
Because of the importance of the above, the long convoluted sentence is here reduced to its essential element: the sentence says that Sabbatarian disciples who are today absolutely confident in their righteousness cannot escape rebelling against God if they do not drink from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed. They will join the Rebellion because the inner firstborn son of God was not covered when death angels passed over the land, and this inner firstborn son will be condemned to the second death … failure to take the sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed will cause Sabbatarian disciples to be part of the rebellion, not victims of the rebellion. It will be these Sabbatarian disciples that will betray other Sabbatarians and will hate other Sabbatarians (Matt 24:10). They are presently without love, and between now and the beginning of the Tribulation it is unlikely that they will develop love for brethren or neighbors. So through something as minor as the calendar issue these loveless disciples will trip themselves and not take the Passover sacraments on the night Jesus was betrayed, thereby leaving the indwelling sons of God uncovered when the death angels again pass over all the land.
The two witnesses are clothed in sackcloth (mourning garb) because they know, from the moment their ministry begins, that disciples who outwardly profess to love the Lord will rebel against the Father and the Son, and cannot avoid rebelling because they do not, did not believe the truth. In many cases, the two witnesses will personally know the rebels.
The two witnesses will also know that of the billion-plus Christians given spiritual life through being filled with spirit following the second Passover, those disciples who remain loyal to God will be martyred and unbelieving disciples will be condemned to the lake of fire without repentance being possible. Their mourning will be real, and will be ongoing as the dead continue to die … today’s genuine disciples will be Sabbatarians who drink from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed and who enter the Tribulation liberated from indwelling sin and death; they will enter as acceptable sacrifices to the Lord. Sin will not be able to harm them (Rev 6:5–6), but they are also numbered among those disciples who will be killed as the saints sleeping under the altar were killed. And it is this martyring or sacrificing that these Sabbatarians are not now prepared to accept, for most of them still believe that they will be physically spared from death even though Jesus tells them that will not be the case.
If these Sabbatarians seek to save their physical lives, they will end up losing both their physical lives and their spiritual lives.
The above is, from a human perspective, extremely fatalistic … what is the benefit to keeping the commandments, especially the Sabbath, if the act of keeping them will get the person killed?
Frankly, the Tribulation is about the great multitude seeing enough death that these human beings will do whatever it takes to end death, even if that “whatever” is keeping the commandments of God when faced with the loss of their own physical life. The Endurance is about the great multitude believing that God will deliver them, whether in simply supplying their daily needs when they cannot buy or sell, or when facing the Adversary who will claim to be the messiah. … Jeremiah wasn’t excited about telling Judah and Jerusalem that the Lord was bringing the king of Babylon against them to destroy the land and to take the people captive; Jeremiah understood what the destruction of Jerusalem entailed. But he was given a job to do, and he was told by the Lord, “‘They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you’” (Jer 1:19). And so it will be during the Tribulation for all who are of Philadelphia.
Once the Tribulation begins the saints will be killed, sacrificed as Jesus was sacrificed; for the disciple is not above his teacher (Matt 10:24–25).
This is definitely not what the splintered Churches of God want to hear. They want to be told what Herbert Armstrong told them about going to Petra where the saints would live somewhat comfortably while the world suffers, or what Ellen G. White told them about going to heaven for a thousand years. They do not want to be told the truth, and they will not believe the truth when told.
It is only Philadelphia that will be kept from the hour of trial, and Philadelphia will be kept because it has done a work that other Sabbatarian disciples were unwilling to do, a work that placed this fellowship into the same grouping of madman prophets as Shamaiah of Nehelam would have placed Jeremiah of Anathoth (Jer 29:26–27). But it was Jeremiah whom the Lord vindicated.
The sacrifice or mass martyrdom of spirit-filled Sabbatarian disciples does not occur long into the Tribulation, but will begin about Christmas time of the year of the second Passover … for 220 days, the length of time that it takes for Babylon to regain its equilibrium after the second Passover slaying of uncovered firstborns, Sabbatarians (especially Philadelphians) have essentially free reins for they “called” what happened (the death of a third of humanity) before it happened. But false prophets will arise before the dead are cold, and these false prophets will emphatically state that what happened was the sixth Trumpet Plague, that they “know” where humanity is in the Tribulation, and they are to be trusted when they should not be believed about any prophecy.
The world will be eager to believe a lie, for all peoples not filled with spirit will still belong to the present prince of this world—and most of those who are filled with spirit will return to sin as Israel in the wilderness of Paran wanted to return to Egypt (Num 14:1–4).
Sabbatarian disciples are today a divided group, with every disciple doing what is right in his or her own eyes. There is no unity of message, nor even unified acceptance of a calendar. But the cure for disharmony is death: the Father and the Son will not permit disciples who do not keep the commandments and hold the testimony of Jesus to bear witness to the great multitude, but will, rather, send these disciples to the grave.
The above cannot be overly emphasized: “the testimony of Jesus” is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10). Therefore, if Sabbatarian disciples (disciples who keep the commandments) do not also possess the spirit or breath of prophecy, these disciples will die during the Tribulation and will not enter into the Endurance. They will not be allowed to confuse or mislead the great multitude.
The Lord used many signs and wonders to show that He was working through Moses, but Israel was not impressed by signs even though they feared hearing the voice of the Lord. Thus, endtime Israel enters into “life” in the middle of the on-going tenth plague, with the Passover Lamb of God already sacrificed and with Israel roasting the lamb with its fiery sins. Regardless of when the disciple is born of spirit (1st-Century through 21st-Century), the disciple is “born” after the Lamb is slain and before the death angels pass over all the land; thus the disciple finds himself (or herself) living during the first six hours of the long spiritual night that began at Calvary. The last six hours of this long night contain the opening of the seven seals of the Scroll, with the hour of trial that is to come being the sixth Trumpet Plague. The seventh Trumpet Plague of the seventh seal will see the dawn of the new day, with the Light returning to fight on a (note the indefinite article) day of battle (Zech 14:3–4).
The visible separation of Israel from Egypt that came with the first nine plagues (Ex chaps 5–11) will again be seen in the Tribulation, when the Lord makes a distinction between the three parts of the little ones (Zech 13:7–9), but no additional outward separation is presently being made. Outward separation has already been made, and is made through drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed. Israel drinks and those who are of the world, including biological Israel, do not drink from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed—and if Sabbatarian disciples, after decades of covering themselves by drinking from the cup, choose not to drink on the night that Jesus was betrayed in 2010 or in any other year, then their covering in previous years will be of no value to them. They will be as uncovered Egyptians were when the death angel passed over all the land. If they are physical firstborns, they will perish physically. And the firstborn son of God dwelling within the uncovered tent of flesh will be condemned to the second death.
The burden that God places upon the two witnesses will be to mourn for the living as well as the dead.
9.
John dates his vision: “I was in spirit in [en pneumati en] the Lord’s day” (Rev 1:10). As John uses the identifying phrase, the Lord’s day isn’t a day of the week, but the day of the Lord; i.e., when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. And the kingdom is not given to the Lamb on many different days, but given only one time on one day.
About this one day, John records,
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying,
“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power
and begun to reign.
The nations raged,
but your wrath came,
and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
and those who fear your name,
both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. (Rev 11:15–19 emphasis added)
Although the Kingdom begins with the Woman (Rev 12:1), the Kingdom’s affective beginning is when the two witnesses are raised from death (Rev 11:11); for this scene was also witnessed by the Prophet Daniel and described by him from the Lord’s perspective:
As I [Daniel] looked,
thrones were placed,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat;
his clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames;
its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
and came out from before him;
a thousand thousands served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;
the court sat in judgment,
and the books were opened.
I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.
I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed. (Dan 7:9–14)
The fourth beast is dealt a death wound when the two witnesses are raised from the dead; the timing for when the fourth king is dealt a death wound in Daniel’s vision and for when the two witnesses are resurrected is identical. Thus, the public resurrection of the two witnesses is the testimony needed to establish that Death and Hades shall not prevail over humankind as Death and Hades did not prevail over the Head of Christ two millennia earlier.
A matter is established on the testimony of two or three witnesses; thus, the public resurrection of two or three witnesses establishes that Death no longer has dominion over human beings. And if Death no longer has dominion over the fleshly bodies of men and women, then Death has lost its sting and has been dealt a mortal wound from which it cannot recover; for resurrection from death can again occur at any time thereby negating the very existence of Death … in order for a person to be dead, the person must necessarily have lost his or her breath of life. If that breath can be returned to the person, then the person is not really “dead” but merely asleep. The contention of human beings has been that the breath of life cannot be returned once it is lost; whereas the essence of Christianity has been that death is no more final than is sleep.
Fleshing out the narrative account of the one-time transfer of dominion over the kingdom of this world from the presently reigning prince of this world to the soon to be reigning Son of Man requires that the characters involved be identified—and identification will take many paragraphs.
The beast that is dealt a mortal wound and has its body destroyed by fire is the fourth beast of Daniel chapter 7. The three other beasts or kings (Dan 7:17) that, along with the fourth king, previously had dominion over the kingdom of this world—the same kingdom that is given to the Son of Man—remain alive after having been taken, their lives spared for a season and a time, with a “season” representing a fruiting season that is two years or most of two years long (a flower bud is set on the new growth of a fruiting spur in the first year, then blooms and bears fruit in the second year). Therefore, because all four kings/beasts are present when dominion is taken from them and this dominion given to the Son of Man, the kings cannot represent sequential kingdoms. Only the copy or shadow of these concurrently reigning kings can be represented by sequential reigns.
The four kings or beasts of Daniel chapter 7 are not the metal kingdoms of chapter 2; i.e., the gold, silver, bronze, and iron that are simultaneously present when broken by a stone cut from a mountain by no human hands. Even though the time-setting is the same [“‘And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people’” — Dan 2:44], the context is not the same. The metal kings, along with the miry clay, form one human-appearing image that reigns from (or before) Nebuchadnezzar’s day until the end of the age; whereas the four beasts that jointly reign do so for a time, times, and half a time (Dan 7:25) before dominion is taken from them. They do not reign sequentially, for dominion is not given to the first or second or fourth beast, but to the third beast (v. 6) … although the argument can be made that the dominion given to the third beast is the same authority to rule over the earth that is given to the bronze kingdom (2:39), the first beast (7:4) is not given the authority the head of gold is given to rule over men wherever they dwell (2:37–38). Plus, the four beasts collectively share the dominion that is given to the third beast (7:12), and have their collective dominion taken from them when the court of the Ancient of Days sits in judgment whereas the silver kingdom of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw is trampled and cast down by the king of Greece (Dan 8:7) before the first horn of the king of Greece is broken and the four horns or kings appear around the stump of the broken first horn.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all” (Rom 11:32), and “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to life” (Rom 6:16). Thus, dominion over all has been given by God to Sin (and by extension, to Death) so that He could have mercy on all, with this dominion given when Adam was driven from the Garden of God before he, Adam, could eat of the Tree of Life (Gen 3:22–24). Fire in the form of the flaming sword prevented Adam from returning to the Garden where Life hung as fruit to be picked and eaten.
Because God has given Sin dominion over humankind—that is what Paul writes—sin is not counted as sin where there is no law (Rom 5:13); for it is God who delivered humankind into the hand of the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh as Paul commanded the saints at Corinth to do with the man who was with his father’s wife (1 Cor 5:5). Therefore, before the Law comes human beings are under “natural grace,” or the covering of being bondservants to the Adversary. Paul writes, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph 2:1–3). Paul does not exclude himself from the category of being a son of disobedience even though he was a Jew, brought up in Jerusalem, and “‘educated at the feet of Gameliel according to the strict manner of the law of [Israel’s] fathers, being zealous for God’” (Acts 22:3).
Being zealous for God wasn’t enough, and is not now enough to prevent a person from being a son of disobedience, consigned to sin, and the faithful bondservant to sin. Only receiving a second breath of life (i.e., being truly born of spirit) frees a person so that sin no longer has dominion over the person (Rom 6:14); frees the person so “that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in [disciples], who walk not according to the flesh but according” to spirit (Rom 8:4) … walking according to the righteous requirements of the law is obeying the law, or the obedience that leads to life of which Paul speaks in Romans 6:16.
Because all human beings are consigned to disobedience or to sin, dominion over human beings has been given to Sin, with sin personified in the king that appears as the four-headed leopard to whom dominion over the kingdom of this world has been given. And the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), with Death personified in the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse. So Death follows Sin to break, trample, and devour all who sin, for death is exceeding strong and not easily escaped. Until the resurrection of firstfruits at the Second Advent, with Christ Jesus being the First of the firstfruits, only Jesus Himself and the two witnesses will have escaped death … these three are the three ribs in the mouth and between the teeth of the second beast (Dan 7:5) that this king of the bottomless pit (Rev 11:7) is unable to kill and keep dead. And it is by the resurrection of the two witnesses that Death is dealt a mortal wound, with his body being given over to be burned being a declaration about the fate of the two witnesses once resurrected, an oblique means of saying that the two witnesses will be resurrected to life that can cross fire.
From the head of the fourth king emerges the little horn that comes before the throne of the Ancient of Days and speaks blasphemy …
No human being will come before the throne of the Ancient of Days, for flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of God; i.e., cannot cross into the supra-dimensional heavenly realm where time does not exist, thereby prohibiting movement of matter due to its apparent solidity. Therefore, the little horn that emerges from the head of the King of the North after the first king or great king of the King of Greece is broken suddenly is not a man, is not the Pope, is not the Prophet in Salt Lake City, is not a Muslim holy man or a European statesman or an American president. The little horn is a powerful demon, and the claim will here be made that the little horn is Satan himself; for in the this earthly realm, the little horn will manifest itself in the man of perdition, who comes by the working or activity of Satan (2 Thess 2:9).
So there are no misunderstandings, Nebuchadnezzar, the human king of Babylon, sees in vision a humanoid image that has a head of gold, arms and chest of silver, belly and loins or thighs of bronze, legs of iron and toes of mixed iron and miry or soft (unfired) clay (Dan chap 2). Daniel tells the king that he is the head of gold, and that the God of heaven has given into his hand the children of men wherever they dwell, as well as the beasts of the field and the birds of the air … how is a human king to rule over vultures and eagles? He cannot. And certainly Nebuchadnezzar never ruled over men in China or Chile; so either Daniel spoke hyperbole, or Nebuchadnezzar was merely a type of the spiritual king of Babylon (Isa 14:4), the fallen day star, Satan the devil. And it is this latter claim that’s true, for when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man, even the predatory natures of lions, leopards, wolves, and bears will be changed (Isa 11:6–9) for today the spiritual king of Babylon rules over all living creatures here on earth—and rules through being the prince of the power of the air (i.e., rules the mental typography of living creatures).
The visions of Daniel were sealed and kept secret until the time of the end: they were sealed by human beings serving as the copy and shadow of heavenly or spiritual beings, with Nebuchadnezzar serving as a type of the spiritual king of Babylon. What Daniel told King Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t really true of the human king of Babylon, but is true of the spiritual king that has reigned continuously from before Daniel’s day to this present era. And what Daniel tells the king about each of the other metal kingdoms primarily pertains to spiritual beings (demons) that reign with the Adversary as part of his ruling hierarchy. Therefore, what Daniel tells the king about the silver kingdom arising after him (Dan 2:39) pertains to the shadow just as what Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar about himself being the head pertained to the shadow: the image that Nebuchadnezzar actually sees is not that of four consecutive kingdoms, but that of one human-like being that when toppled would have broken gold, silver, bronze, and iron pieces coexisting in one debris pile, this chaff-like debris pile then being blown away by the breath of God.
Is the above a reliable reading of Nebuchadnezzar’s vision?
Daniel records that the very night when he “read” the handwriting on the wall, “Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom” (5:30–31) … Daniel reads the last character of the handwriting as “PERES,” meaning that the Chaldean “kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians” (v. 28). Thus, with Darius the Mede taking the kingdom, the Medes preceded the Persians to power.
In Daniel’s vision in the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar (obviously occurring before the handwriting on the wall), Daniel sees a ram standing on the bank of the Ulai canal, and this ram had two horns, with both horns high, but the one was higher than the other and the higher horn came up second (Dan 8:1–3), so the higher horn was the Persians. The angel Gabriel tells Daniel “‘that the vision is for the time of the end’” (v. 17), not for the 4th or 5th Centuries BCE, and “‘As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia’” (v. 20). But—and here is where understanding emerges—in the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, Daniel receives another vision. And about this vision in which the angel brings Daniel knowledge of what was written in the Book of Truth Daniel records,
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 10:9–14 emphasis added)
In this passage, the prince [sar] of Persia and the kings of Persia are not human beings, but powerful demonic beings that require the intervention of the archangel Michael … no human king could stand before the angel any more than Daniel could stand; none could have withstood the angel for even a moment, let alone for 21 days. Thus, what’s recorded in the Book of Truth isn’t a story about human beings, but an accounting of what happens between angels that affects the course of human history.
Daniel’s vision of what would happen to the people of God in the latter days (10:14) was sealed and made secret (12:4, 9) until the time of the end, when understanding was given that the course of prophesied history seen in chapter 11, history that stretches from Alexander’s defeat of Darius to the defiling of the temple by the forces of Antiochus Epiphanes IV, forms the seal that has kept secret an ongoing war in the heavenly realm [i.e., in the inter-dimensional portion of the heavenly realm, the portion identified in Scripture as the bottomless pit], a war that occurs at the end of the age, a war that begins when the demonic king [sar] of Greece (10:20; 8:21) flies out of the west without touching the ground (8:5 — he doesn’t touch the ground for he is not in their world) to trample the demonic kings of Persia.
The demonic king of Greece is not one king, but a federation of kings. And it is this demonic king of Greece that forms the bronze belly and loins of the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar; it is this demonic king of Greece that would rule over all the earth (Dan 2:39). And the answer to why he rules lies in where this king is placed in the humanoid image that represents the reigning hierarchy of the Adversary.
About the king of Greece, Daniel records, “And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. … Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven” (8:5, 8). Now, take this image of the king of Greece having one conspicuous horn coming from between his eyes back to the belly and loins of the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar saw and what do you see: the single horn appears as an erect penis!
The king of Greece rules by controlling the appetites of the belly and loins; he rules through the passions of the flesh (Eph 2:3). And really, how is this world presently being ruled, especially considering that sex is used to sell hamburgers? Is this world not today being ruled by the appetites, the passions of the flesh? It is, isn’t it?
The single great horn is the first king of Greece (Dan 8:21). He is a demonic king, not Alexander, and as the first king, he is a spiritual firstborn of the king of Greece, and he will not and cannot cover himself by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed. Thus, he will be suddenly broken at the second Passover.
Babylon, the reigning hierarchy of Satan, falls when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man; dominion is taken from the four kings of Daniel chapter 7 when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. Dominion is taken from Sin through the world being baptized in spirit (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11) and given the mind of Christ after Satan is cast into time. Thus, Babylon falls when dominion is taken from the four kings or beasts—but it wasn’t the head of gold that ruled over the earth, but the bronze belly and loins … and the question sure to be asked by Christian traditionalists: how can the head of gold rule over men wherever they dwell and the bronze belly and loins rule over the world if their rule is not sequential rather than simultaneous? The answer to traditionalists is that though Christians have assigned sequential reigns to these metal kingdoms, these kings/kingdoms are all together and are all broken to pieces, with their shards commingled, when God sets up His kingdom; hence, they really cannot be sequential kingdoms.
The head of gold rules as the Head of Christ rules His Body, with His mind being placed in His disciples; and the head of gold—the color, not the metal, as reflected light indicating a mind set—rules over the bronze belly and loins, but doesn’t well rule over the silver arms and chest … Satan created his rebellion through an argument for democracy, an argument that is inherently “Greek” (Hellenistic) in substance; thus Satan as the spiritual king of Babylon (Isa 14:4) and head of gold shares a similar color of reflected light as the bronze king of Greece, whereas the kings of Persia reflect a different light spectrum as indication of a different mindset, the mindset that has empowered Christianity throughout the interregnum. Hence, “traditional” Christianity has been severely weakened as war is fought between the ram and the he-goat. This weakening of Christianity is beneficial to the Body of Christ that will be collectively resurrected at the second Passover, for the devout adherent to Christendom’s bastardized pagan theology would not, even when filled with spirit, entertain the idea of keeping the commandments of God by faith and thereby “covering” him or herself with the garment of obedience.
Remember there are now hard time markers in play:
1. The single great horn that appears as an erect penis is broken at the second Passover liberation of Israel; he is broken because he is first, and because his lawlessness or sin is not covered or coverable by the blood of the Lamb of God. He is broken at the beginning of the Tribulation.
2. The four kings or beasts have their dominion taken from them and given to the Son of Man 1260 days later when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. They have their dominion taken from them when Babylon falls and humankind is no longer consigned to disobedience.
In the 1260 day period between the beginning of the Tribulation and when the kingdom is given to the Son of Man, the four horns sprout from around the base of the broken great horn (Dan 8:8). In their shadow, Alexander is the type of the first horn, and his four generals are types of the hour horns that arise from the four compass points. Out of the north horn or said otherwise, out of king of the North comes the little horn that threw some of the host and some of the stars to the ground. And it is to this little horn after he has become great that “a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offering because of transgression” (v. 12).
There are not many little horns in Scripture: there is only one other (that is the same one) in Daniel chapter 7, and this little horn comes up on the fourth king, the king that is dealt a death wound; thus the following can be asserted:
· The fourth king of Daniel chapter 7 is the King of the North of Daniel chapter 11 and is the fourth horseman of Revelation chapter 6;
· The little horn is the power behind the lawless one (2 Thess 2:3–10), with the lawless one being the man of perdition. This power is Satan himself, and the lawless one is a human being possessed by Satan;
· The third king of chapter 7 is the King of the South of chapter 11 and is the third horseman of Revelation chapter 6. This horseman, Sin, makes merchandize of both the firstfruits of God (the early barley harvest) and the later main crop wheat harvest, but cannot harm the oil and the wine, the processed fruits of the Promised Land (i.e., God’s rest or presence).
1. Those Christians born filled with spirit following the second Passover are firstfruits, represented in the Tribulation by the early barley.
2. The great multitude (the third part of humankind) that comes out of the Endurance are also firstfruits, the early barley harvest.
3. But non-Christians that die during the Tribulation are part of the main crop wheat harvest that will be resurrected in the great White Throne Judgment: they had no spiritual life when they died and they will not receive a second breath of life until resurrected in the great White Throne Judgment.
4. Those few Christians who are born of spirit prior to the second Passover and who take the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed are the processed fruit of entering into God’s presence; these Christians are the oil and the wine that Sin cannot harm. These Christians are firstfruits, the barley harvest.
· Throughout the Tribulation, Sin will be separated from Death because of the second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin while the flesh remains mortal; hence the separation of the King of the North from the King of the South seen in Daniel 11:5.
· Because the first king of Greece is broken at the second Passover, and because disciples are liberated from Sin but remain mortal, with the first Passover forming the shadow and type of the second Passover, the short while between when the death angel passed over Egypt and when Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron (Ex 12:29–31) represents in type the period between when firstborns are slain and when Sin is separated from Death (the period described in Dan 11:4–5).
· The lawless one is revealed 220 days (2520 days minus 2300 days) after the second Passover liberation of Israel; for with liberation Israel covers itself with its obedience in lieu of the daily sacrifice, and when Israel’s obedience ends in its rebellion against God, the daily sacrifice ends.
· Therefore the four kings of Greece emerge from around the stump of the first king before day 220 of the Tribulation occurs; actually they emerge by the 17th day of Lyyar, the day when the foundations of the deep erupted (Gen 7:11), and two/three days after the second Passover.
Again, in John’s vision the four horsemen of the first four seals (Rev chap 6) emerge before the saints are martyred as their brothers were in the 1st-Century. These four horsemen are the four kings that emerge from around the stump, and the fourth horseman or king, named Death, is the King of the North—and is represented in prophecy by Assyria. The King of the South represents sin and is represented in prophecy by Egypt. The wages for sin is death (Rom 6:23), thereby Sin and Death are today linked as if they are one entity, and they function as one entity under the first horn of the king of Greece until this first king is broken.
More of Revelation’s timeline can now be declared:
1. The Tribulation begins at the second Passover, with the sacraments taken on the 14th of Lyyar according to the model for the Passover taken on the 14th of Abib.
2. The death angels pass over all the earth at the midnight hour (when humankind can get no farther from God) of the 14th of Lyyar, slaying firstborns not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God. The great horn of the king of Greece will be one of these uncovered firstborns.
3. Following the slaying of uncovered firstborns, the saints are filled with spirit and thus liberated from bondage to previously indwelling sin and death and as such, the saints are “born” as righteous Abel was born and as Jacob was born … the model for the Passover in Abib suggests that this liberation of the saints occurs on the 15th of Lyyar.
4. Four demonic kings come to power from around the stump of the first king of the king of Greece, and from the north king comes a little horn that will go after the saints as Pharaoh went after Israel when the nation crossed the Sea of Reeds.
5. The lawless one or man of perdition, an Arian Christian, will be revealed 220 days after the second Passover, and about Christmas of the calendar year in which the second Passover occurs.
6. The coming of the lawless one marks Israel’s (Christendom’s) rebellion against God [i.e., the great falling away] and the birth of a spiritual Cain, with the reversed birth order subject to the first shall be last and the last first as the physical birth of Cain forms the chiral image of the birth of spiritual Abel.
7. Because Cain will “kill” righteous Abel, except for the remnant (Rev 12:17) the saints will be early-on sealed in death; thus, the saints are not seen when the sixth seal is removed from the Scroll and humankind hides itself in the caves and among the rocks from the heavenly signs of God (Rev 6:12–17) as the wrath of the Lamb is unleashed against those who would bodily kill His Bride.
The removal of the sixth seal begins what the great and the small identify as the great day of “the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev 6:16–17) … why would great and small seek to hide from the face of God if they were not knowingly guilty of slaying the servants of God? Great and small know they have done wrong, but they will not repent. Rather, they will be as Cain was when he asked the Lord if he was his brother’s keeper (Gen 4:9), and as Cain was cursed from the ground that received his brother’s blood (v. 10), great and small will be cursed as they seek to hide themselves from God, by using the rocks of this earth as their cover. They are the living dead, entombed in caves and among the rocks of the mountains.
After the second Passover, the saints are not seen in Scripture for without indwelling sin, they are “light” and light casts no shadow. Thus, when they are slain is not seen with precision and how many remaining saints constitute the remnant cannot be known. What can be asserted is that the majority of the saints are slain early into the Tribulation, beginning on day 220. It is unlikely that many are left alive to take the Passover that will begin the second of the seven endtime years, with this Passover taken on the night portion of the 15th day of Abib instead of the 14th day, for Jesus will no longer be bearing the sins of Israel as the reality of the Azazel.
Beginning on day 220, 1290 days are counted before the effectiveness of the Adversary’s deception runs its course. This will be approximately ten months after Satan and his angels are cast from heaven, and will occur in late July of the fifth year of the seven endtime years. Thus, when the Fall Feast occurs at the end of the first full year of the Endurance, those disciples who have not taken the mark of the beast (i.e., Chi-Xi-Stigma or the tattoo of the cross) will be blessed. Although they must still endure for another two and a half years, they will by the end of the first year know that they can trust the Father and the Son to supply their needs. They only have to hang on to be individually saved as one of the firstfruits.
Following the second Passover and in the first days of the Tribulation, the world will want to “get right” with God, but the confusion of voices, all claiming to speak for God, will create the basis for the Rebellion. Thus, the two witnesses—the ones who will actually speak for the Lord throughout the Tribulation—will seem a curse to the world, and the world will feel every ill feeling that the house of Judah felt against Jeremiah and the house of Israel felt against Elijah toward the two witnesses, who are “a torment to those who dwell on the earth” (Rev 11:10).
Therefore, more can now be said about the narrative period John identifies as the Kingdom, and the foremost thing that can be said is that the first year of the Endurance is the second year of the Kingdom, with the events seen in Revelation chapter 13 occurring when dominion is taken from the four kings (Dan 7:11–12) and when they, as Satan’s angels (Rev 12:7), are cast to the earth. The four kings or beasts, collectively identified by the angel Gabriel as the king of Greece (Dan 8:21–22), constitute the first beast of Revelation chapter 13. Their dominion has been taken from them; the fourth king has been dealt a mortal wound when the two witnesses were resurrected from death and his cross-shaped body has been burned; but the lives of the first three have been spared for a season and a time.
The second beast of Revelation chapter 13 is Satan himself, and his great (elevated) authority when cast from heaven lies entirely in him coming claiming to be the messiah … the dragon’s power and throne and great authority that he gives to the first beast is usurped power and authority. The dragon comes as the true Antichrist, of whom the man of perdition in the Tribulation was a copy and shadow.
The man of perdition as the left hand enantiomer of the Antichrist is a human being, an Arian Christian, possessed by Satan the devil. He will know that he is possessed, but he will sincerely believe the spirit being within him is Christ Jesus; thus he will feel no guilt in declaring himself God. But, whereas the left hand enantiomer is a human being possesses by the devil, the right hand enantiomer is the true Antichrist, Satan the devil having been given the mind of a man when he is cast into time.
Again, the Endurance forms the chiral image of the Tribulation. As saints are marked with the sign of God (Sabbath observance — from Ex 31:13) in the Tribulation for they are aliens in the wobbling and soon to fall kingdom of Babylon, in the Endurance the seed of Satan are marked for death with the tattoo (in the mind and on the hand) of the cross for they are aliens in the kingdom of the Son of Man. As the sons of God are sealed so that they do not suffer the fifth Trumpet Plague (Rev 9:4) which occurs in the Tribulation, the seed of Satan (Rev 16:2) is sealed in destruction (i.e., they cannot escape) so that they suffer the wrath of God (Rev chap 16) that occurs in the Endurance. Thus, as the first year of the Endurance is also part of the narrative division of Revelation known as the Kingdom, the last year of the Tribulation will also be part of the Kingdom, thereby having the three woes occur during the first year of the Kingdom and the messages of the three angels delivered in the second year of the Kingdom (again, this second year also being the first year of the Endurance).
Approximately a third of humankind will be uncovered firstborns when the death angels pass over all the land at the midnight hour of the second Passover, with the death of these firstborns plunging the world into chaos and immediate concern to “get right” with God. And the death of these uncovered firstborns immediately precedes the liberation of Israel from indwelling sin through disciples being filled with spirit … the mirror image of the death of a third of humankind at the second Passover is the death of a third of humankind in the sixth Trumpet Plague, for all of remaining humanity will be firstborn sons of God when the world is baptized in spirit. Therefore, the sixth Trumpet Plague does not occur a long while before the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man, but within a period analogous to the days between the 14th of Lyyar and the 17th of Lyyar, with these three days typologically representing the three week period between the 1st of the seventh month and the 21st-day of the seventh month of the fourth year of the seven endtime years. In the pattern of the high Sabbaths of God, the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man on the 15th-day of the seventh month (the high Sabbath of Sukkoth), but Christ Jesus will not return for another three and a half years, these years forming the Endurance. This high day (the first day of Sukkoth) would fall midweek as the seven endtime years are represented by the seven days of Unleavened Bread; the high day symbolically occurs at the time and on the day when Jesus ascended to the Father to be accepted as Israel’s Wave Sheaf Offering.
The chirality between the Tribulation and the Endurance is now more evident than before:
1. As the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering (the first ripe sheaf of barley in the Promised Land, the sheaf waved by the priest on the morrow after the weekly Sabbath in Unleavened Bread — see Lev 23:9–11; 15–16), Christ Jesus ascended to the Father on the mid-week day of Unleavened Bread. The harvest of the firstfruits of God could not begin until He was waved and accepted.
2. The harvest of firstfruits began when Jesus breathed on 10 of His disciples on the same day that He had ascended to the Father (John 20:19–24), and directly transferred to them a second breath of life.
3. The Church as the Body of Christ was crucified with Christ and died as Jesus’ physical body died, and was resurrected from death after the example of Christ in the form of the two witnesses. In between Jesus and the two witnesses are the deaths of many disciples born of spirit and slain by the prince of this world. It is only the remnant of these “many disciples” that bodily enter into the Endurance.
4. But the giving of the kingdom of this world to the Son of Man mid-week in the seven endtime years is analogous to Jesus ascending to the Father mid-week of Unleavened Bread in the Hebrew year 3791.
5. Thus, the harvest of firstfruits could not truly begin until the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man … the Christianity of the Adversary (that has been a curse to this world) has seen some but few saints harvested in the past two millennia—the saints harvested are the harvesters for the harvest of firstfruits.
As many have been called but few chosen (Matt 22:14) over the past two millennia, many will be chosen from the third part of humanity that is born of spirit when the world is baptized into spirit after Babylon falls; for all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13).
10.
Because disciples have the Book of Acts as a shadow of what occurs twice during the seven endtime years in this world, and because disciples have Daniel’s long vision (chap 11) as a shadow of what occurs in the inter-dimensional portion of the heavenly realm during the Tribulation, genuine disciples “know” a lot about what will befall the saints during the Tribulation and during the Endurance. Couple now Paul’s epistles and letters to the seven endtime churches, and disciples who hold the testimony of Jesus (i.e., the spirit of prophecy — cf. Rev 12:17; 19:10) have a fair idea of what will happen to the saints during the Tribulation; for Paul’s epistles are letters to 1st-Century churches that, like Daniel’s visions, must be reread before they are used by endtime disciples. The words don’t change; only the meanings assigned to the words are revisited once the second Passover occurs.
How a person assigns meaning to Scripture comes from the “light” in which the person sees Scripture, with the glare reflected off the silver kings of Persia producing modern Christianity’s assignment of meaning, this glare vying with the golden hue of democracy to blind infant sons of God as a welding flash will temporarily blind a person … a deer blinded by a spotlight is fairly easy prey for the poacher, and a disciple blinded by the glare of the silver kings of Persia is easy prey for the Adversary, who is certain that every disciple can be bought for a price.
The Adversary bestows honor upon those Christians who covet honor, and authority upon those Christians who covet authority, and wealth upon those Christians who covet wealth, and good deeds upon those Christians who covet good deeds. And all the Christian has to do in return for what the Adversary gives the Christian is to go out and make more lawless disciples for Christ Jesus, with these lawless disciples functioning as cancerous tumors in the Body of Christ.
Once Daniel’s visions were unsealed a timeline could be constructed that serves as a roadmap for spirit-filled disciples in their trek from Sin to the Kingdom, a trek foreshadowed by Israel’s exodus from Egypt and journey to Canaan, this trek taking seven years instead of forty and this trek featuring the rebellion of Israel seen in Numbers chapter 14 coming 220 days after the second Passover liberation of Israel and the replacement of Israel man-for-man coming through the birth of a spiritual Seth when the world is baptized in spirit.
But it was the question of why will those who keep the commandments and die in faith in Jesus be blessed from “this” point onward—and the answer is that a year after Satan has been cast from heaven (i.e., 1335 days after the Rebellion), the portion of humanity that will by faith follow Christ has revealed itself by not taking the tattoo of the cross. And this portion will have demonstrated its faith at the cost of its life, which suggests that it takes a while for Satan to get his act together once he is cast into time, and that his allure has worn off at about the same time into the Endurance as Cain kills Abel in the Tribulation.
Once the Tribulation begins it will be no more difficult to recognize who speaks for the Lord and who speaks for the Adversary than listening to see who tells the Christian Church to keep the commandments, especially the Sabbath commandment. And this same test will also apply once the Endurance begins, only with a caveat for Satan will have borrowed Sabbath observance; thus, mental allegiance to the cross and physical marking with the tattoo of the cross will “mark” those who are of the Antichrist, making the cross [death] and the Sabbath [life] enantiomorphs as they are in this world today. To enter into Sabbath observance is to enter into God’s rest, a euphemism for His presence. And it is at day 220 of the Tribulation when rebellion against Sabbath observance gives birth to a spiritual Cain, and it will be 1290 days after this Rebellion or great falling away when “rebellion” against the Antichrist by sons of God returning to Sabbath observance will mark those who will be blessed by God, meaning that seven Sabbaths observance is enough to convince God that the person will keep the commandments by faith.
And to repeat: if the disciple can comprehend the chiral relationship between the Tribulation/Kingdom and the Endurance/Kingdom, then only one of the reflected images needs to appear in Scripture for both to be known; e.g., what happens on day 1260 of the Endurance is reflective of what happens on day 1260 of the Tribulation, but whereas the Tribulation begins with its day 1, the Endurance ends with its day 1, meaning that day 1260 of the Tribulation butts against day 1260 of the Endurance to form a doubled day 1260 that will see dominion taken from the four kings (Dan 7:11–12) when Michael and his angels make war in heaven on Satan and his angels (Rev 12:7); will see the armies of the man of perdition swallowed by the closing of the split Mount of Olives (Zech 14:3–4; Rev 12:16; Ex 15:12; Dan 9:26); will see Satan as the present prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2–3) cast from heaven (Rev 12:9–10) and come to earth as the Antichrist (Rev 13:11), claiming to be the Messiah; will see the world baptized in spirit (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11) as the “vacuum” formed when Satan no longer broadcasts his nature to living creatures is filled by Christ Jesus giving to living creature His mind and nature, thereby changing even the animal natures of the great predators (Isa 11:6–9); will see the kingdom of this world given to the Son of Man (Rev 12:15–18; Dan 7:9–14, 26–27; 2:44–45; 8:25); will see the three beasts whose lives are extended for a season and a time, plus the fourth beast who was dealt a mortal wound, appear on earth as the first beast of Revelation chapter 13.
Much happens on day 1260: the taking of the kingdom of this world from Satan and his angels at the end of the Tribulation and the giving of this single kingdom to the Son of Man at the beginning of the Endurance form one doubled day 1260, this day analogous to Joshua’s doubled day.
Therefore, those things that immediately precede the beginning of the Tribulation form the shadow and copy of those things that immediately precede the beginning of the Endurance, but because these things are outside of the Tribulation, they reflect an image outside of the Endurance—and what is specifically being addressed is the second Passover liberation of Israel, when a third of humankind, all firstborns who should have been redeemed, will be slain by death angels forming the shadow and copy of the sixth Trumpet Plague when a third of humankind, all designated firstborns of God, will be slain by the four death angels now bound at the river Euphrates.
The second Passover liberation of Israel occurs before the Tribulation begins; thus, this slaying of uncovered firstborns does not appear in John’s vision even though it is seen throughout Scripture. What is seen in John’s vision is the reflected image (the sixth Trumpet Plague) of this slaying of firstborns at a time when all of humankind will soon be the liberated firstborn son of God (Rev 18:4). But—and it is here where typology functions as prophecy—because the Tribulation and the Endurance are enantiomorphs, the second Passover slaying of all firstborns at the beginning of the Tribulation does not have to be seen to be seen. The right hand enantiomer discloses the shape and structure of its left hand enantiomer, so it can be said with certainty that a third part of humankind will perish when death angels again pass over all the land at the second Passover as the death angel passed over Egypt at the first Passover.
Although the second Passover is not seen in John’s vision, its importance in the fulfillment of endtime prophecies cannot be overstated … the disciple who has been truly born of spirit and who does not cover the inner firstborn son of God that dwells within the disciple’s tent of flesh by drinking from the cup [taking the Passover sacraments of bread and wine] on the night that Jesus was betrayed need not worry about the trumpet plagues or about anything else. The inner new self that is a firstborn son of God will be condemned to irrevocable death on the night of the second Passover if this son of God is not covered by the disciple drinking from the cup. Bread and wine on every other night of the year are Cain’s offering, the fruit of the ground. On one night only is blessed unleavened bread and blessed wine the symbolical body and blood of the Lamb of God, and that night is the night Jesus was betrayed, the dark portion of the 14th of Abib, with the month of Abib beginning with the first sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox.
For decades the Sabbatarian Churches of God believed that they would never be a part of the Rebellion, but that no longer seems the case … if Sabbatarian disciples do not cover (by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed) the inner firstborn son of God on the year of the second Passover liberation of Israel, the inner new self that is a son of God will be condemned to death, and because it is condemned, it will join in the Rebellion; for this “falling away” is more than simple unbelief that is seen within Christendom every Sunday morning. As a linguistic icon, “great” can be assigned the meaning of “many” as in a large number, but “great” can also be assigned the meaning of “elevated” as in the disciple who keeps the commandments and teaches them to others will be called “great” in the kingdom of the heavens (Matt 5:19). Therefore, when Paul speaks of “the rebellion—he apostacia” (2 Thess 2:3), he speaks of an elevated or spiritual rebellion, a “great” falling away. This rebellion is of inner new creatures that are sons of God rejecting the words of God and believing the Adversary as fallen angels had.
Again, the birth of Cain coming from within Abel is analogous to the rebellion of Satan and his angels when iniquity was found in the anointed cherub … to have an elevated or great rebellion, the rebellion is of the inner sons of God condemned to death because of these sons of God’s unbelief. The usual assignment of “many” as the meaning for the signifier “great” is based upon traditional understandings, but this assignment doesn’t adequately address either loveless Sabbatarian disciples (who do not drink from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed) or post second Passover’s spirit-filled Christians who return to sin after the Tribulation begins. In both cases, it is the inner new self or creature that is condemned to death while the flesh still lives; thus these Christians will not seem to have fallen away from the truth when in reality they are spiritually condemned. Of course they will deny that they are condemned; they will insist that they possess the “truth.” They will say things reminiscent of what Korah said about Moses taking too much upon himself (Num chap 16). But Paul writes, “Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess 2:11–12) … if Israel’s repentance in the wilderness of Paran was not accepted (Num 14:40–41), and if Israel (circumcised of heart) believing what is false will condemn the nation with a condemnation from which there is no repentance, then yes, loveless or lawless disciples can repent but that repentance will not be accepted for these disciples will still believe what is false, such is the delusion that will be sent over them.
Believing the truth is simple: the disciple only has to believe the words of Jesus, especially Matthew 5:17–20 and John 5:19–29.
11.
The 1900 years between 100–102 CE (Hebrew years 3861–3862), the time frame for the Apostle John’s death, and January 2002 (Hebrew year 5762), when the call came to reread prophecy “plays” with 100 lunar time-cycles, with the moon having the reflected glory of the sun as the Church reflects the glory of the Son, seen in the great sign that appeared in heaven in John’s vision: “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev 12:1). John’s vision has the Woman being Israel, who gives birth to a male child, “one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron,” but who “was caught up to God and to his throne” (v. 5). As, mentioned earlier, reading the sign will have the congregation in the wilderness functioning as the moon, and Christ’s Jesus’ righteousness being the garment of grace, seen as the sun. The appearance of this “sign” in John’s vision in the narrative portion John identified as the Kingdom causes the Kingdom to predate the Tribulation as the Kingdom postdates the Endurance.
Israel, now, is the Church or Assembly or Congregation that predates the birth of Christ Jesus, thereby giving to Israel the continuity that Paul addresses when he writes,
But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God. (Rom 2:17–29 emphasis added)
Elsewhere, Paul writes,
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. / What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened …
So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean! / Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches. / But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,
“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;
“and this will be my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”
As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. (Rom 11:1–7, 11–32)
The above citation from Paul’s treatise to the Romans is lengthy but is incorporated into this text to illustrate that the 1st-Century Christian Church understood that Israel would be brought to Christ, not through the cross, the mark of death, but through the disobedience of Gentile converts … just as the disobedience of natural Israelites caused them to be branches broken off from the Root of Righteousness so that Gentiles as wild olive scions could be grafted to Christ, the lawless wild branches would be in turn broken off so that natural Israelites could be returned to righteousness; for it is not the Jew who is disobedient or the Gentile who is disobedient that is circumcised of heart, but it is the one who keeps the precepts of the law by faith that has his or her heart cleansed so that this person can be circumcised with a circumcision not of hands (Col 2:11).
Centuries before Paul wrote the prophet Jeremiah recorded the words of the Lord:
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh—Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart. (9:25–26)
And before Jeremiah, Moses records the Lord commanding the children of Israel to, “‘Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn’” (Deut 10:16), and “‘when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will … circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live’” (Deut 30:1–3, 6).
It will take faith for Israel, in a far land, to turn to the Lord and return to the covenant, which rabbinical Judaism believes it never left, but which prophets from Moses to Jeremiah to Jesus to Paul say Israel never entered—and nothing has changed in the interregnum. But everything will change once the second Passover occurs; for the resurrected Christian Church as the Body of Christ will be delivered into the hand of the man of perdition for the destruction of the flesh as Jesus was betrayed and taken so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled.
Once the Son of Man is revealed (Luke 17:30), disciples will no longer be cloaked by the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness. As the Body of Christ disciples are also the Body of the Son of Man: they will be disrobed or unclothed when filled with spirit for they will no longer need the garment of grace. And whereas Gentiles were called to make natural Israel jealous (Rom 11:11, 14 — no Gentile living as a Gentile will make a Jew jealous; only an uncircumcised Gentile living as a Jew will make a Jew jealous), these Gentile disciples that were formerly committed to lawlessness will return to lawlessness in the Rebellion of day 220, thereby giving to Israel the chirality that will have natural Israelites grafted to Christ in the 21st-Century as Gentiles were grafted to this Root of Righteousness because of Israel’s lawlessness in the 1st-Century.
Rabbinical Judaism’s claims for its own righteousness echo the claims of 1st-Centuy Pharisees. Thus only when rabbinical Judaism abandons these claims can the nation come to Christ. And the death of its firstborns at the second Passover will cause Judaism to reexamine what it has previously taught about a Greek storyteller … reexamination is not, however, acceptance; for the grafting of the natural branches onto the Root is seen in John’s vision, beginning with the intercalary chapter 7. The “144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel” (Rev 7:4) is the same 144,000 that “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (Rev 14:4), and though this 144,000 is a symbolic number, it is also all of natural Israel that will enter alive into the Endurance, meaning simply that of today’s perhaps forty million natural Jews, their numbers greatly reduced by the Holocaust, very few will follow Christ. How many will actually be grafted unto righteousness cannot be determined, but this grafting will cost all but the 144,000 their lives.
Reviewing for a moment: the number of truly born of spirit disciples alive today might be as low as 7,000, the number the Lord gave Elijah of those who had not bowed their knee to Baal. Certainly there are not many. But when the second Passover occurs, a billion plus now lawless disciples will be born of spirit, and born filled with or empowered by the spirit. This billion plus “Christians” will not have practiced walking uprightly before God, and will not long walk uprightly. Yet when they are born of spirit, they are without indwelling sin or death; they will be righteous as Abel was righteous.
But as the first Eve gave birth to two sons, 220 days into the Tribulation the lawless one (i.e., the man of perdition) will be revealed, and the Rebellion occurs (2 Thess 2:3), with this rebellion against God giving birth to a spiritual Cain that will kill his righteous brother. The removal of the fifth seal from the Scroll addresses the spiritual Cain killing righteous Abel.
The removal of the sixth seal is humanly described as the wrath of the Lamb, and with the Rebellion and with Cain killing Abel the wrath of the Lamb should be expected.
Because spirit-filled saints are light, they cast no shadow and as such they are not seen in Scripture; so exactly how many saints do not rebel against God cannot be determined. What is known is that only a remnant will enter into the Endurance; so most saints will either rebel against God or physically perish during the first ten months or so of the Tribulation. And we have arrived at the lacunae between the removal of the sixth and seventh seals.
Some redundancy or pedagogical repetition seems appropriate: by the opening of the sixth seal, most of the genuine saints are dead, martyred as their 1st-Century brothers were martyred so at the beginning of the intercalary chapter 7, disciples find that the “144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel” (Rev 7:4) are the same 144,000 that “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (Rev 14:4)—and the “great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9), the great multitude that the angel identifies as “‘the ones coming out of the great tribulation’” (v. 14), is the third part of humankind that calls upon the name of God and the name of the Lamb, the people about whom the Lord will say, “They are my people” (Zech 13:9). And none of either listing were Christians before the Tribulation began.
Zechariah’s third part of humankind is not today “Christian,” does not identify itself as “Christian,” and will not claim any association with Christianity prior to the second Passover liberation of Israel. This third part will not be born of spirit until the world is baptized in spirit when the kingdom is given to the Son of Man; thus this great multitude comes out of the Endurance. They will be those human beings who, by having endured to the end, will be saved (Matt 24:13).
John dates the intercalary chapter 7 to after the sixth seal was opened (Rev 7:1); so the first six seals are opened before the 144,000 are “sealed.” And only after the 144,000 are sealed does the great multitude come into existence. As such, the 144,000 are sealed during the Tribulation and before the Endurance; they are sealed during the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years. And the 144,000 will flee through the split Mount of Olives to escape the flood that is sent against them (Rev 12:16), with this flood being an army similar to Pharaoh’s army that was swallowed by the Sea of Reeds. Only instead of water taking the lives of men as the Sea of Reeds took the lives of Pharaoh and his army and as the Flood in the days of Noah took the lives of men, it will be the split granite monolith known as the Mount of Olives, a stone not cut by human hands (Dan 2:45), that swallows (by closing upon the armies of the man of perdition) the lives of men (Ex 15:12), thereby bringing to his end the prince who had come to destroy the city of Jerusalem and the sanctuary (Dan 9:26).
Israel’s rebellion against God—referenced by Paul in his second epistle to the Thessalonians—is seen in John’s vision from God’s perspective in the opening of the fifth seal, and this rebellion is the shadow and copy of the rebellion that will occur when Satan, claiming to be the Messiah, requires all of humanity to take the mark of the cross (as proof of their fidelity to him). Thus, because disciples can precisely date Israel’s rebellion to day 220 of the Tribulation, disciples can likewise date when Satan makes the image of the cross-shaped beast speak so that it “might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain” (Rev 13:15). And because Daniel reveals how long Satan’s deception lasts before he is no longer believed (the 1290 days from the Rebellion of day 220), and when the saints who have endured will be blessed (1335 days after day 220), what happens in Revelation chapter 14, verses 9 through 13 can be dated as to when they occur in the Endurance, which makes the three angels’ messages the chiral image of the four horsemen, with the second horseman (the king of the bottomless pit) absent from this world as Christ Jesus is absent [present but absent], thereby establishing the relationship that the second horseman with his sword, used to slay the two witnesses, is analogous to Christ Jesus coming with sword to make war on those bearing the mark of death (Rev 19:11–15).
After the Rebellion occurs in the Tribulation on day 220 and Cain kills his righteous brother and the world experiences the wrath of the Lamb for the martyrdom of firstborn sons of God who were to be killed in the 21st-Century as their 1st-Century brothers were killed, there is (in the Tribulation) a starting over again period that sees the trumpet plagues used to separate who is or will be of God from who is of Babylon and its fractal image, Assyria, the ancient representation of Death. Although not the same in number, the shadow of the trumpet plagues were the plagues in Egypt. Both sets of plagues made a distinction between the firstborn son of God and the world: the outpouring of heavenly signs and wrath of the first four trumpet plagues makes the removal of the sixth seal barely distinguishable from these plagues—if a person hides in holes in the ground to escape the wrath of the Lamb (Rev 6:15–17), the person has willingly “buried” him or herself as the person willingly martyred righteous disciples and buried them. The dead shall indeed bury the dead; for the dead shall make war against the dead until the end.
Today, the world doesn’t care about war occurring in high places; its concerns are about why the Pharaoh spends so much money, about monetizing national debt, about a shrinking global market, about Iran developing nuclear weapons and the Taliban capturing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. But these earthly happenings have at their ideological core the war presently being fought between the demonic kings of Persia and Greece, a war that the king of Greece will win, with his victory setting the stage for the second Passover liberation of Israel, now a nation circumcised of heart … it took Alexander a decade to defeat Darius and the Persians. It is unlikely that it will take the demonic king of Greece longer to win his war against the king of Persia.
Jesus told His disciples, “‘And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet’” (Matt 24:6) … the wars and rumors of wars that occur in this endtime period must take place, but Jesus’ disciples are not to be alarmed by them for His disciples know that the war of consequence is occurring in the heavenly realm, where the king of Greece as the he-goat that flies out of the west is presently trampling the king of Persia, the silver colored ram that has given to the world the Christianity of the cross.
Today, most Christians are Trinitarians, who label non-Trinitarians as heretics when it is they who are heretics, believing a 5th-Century CE lie about the mystery of God. They are the active bondservants of Sin, the King of the South, the four-headed leopard to whom dominion has been given. And when mortal disciples are liberated from indwelling sin, Sin and Death separate, with both claiming to be “Christian,” but with each labeling the other as heretics. And so that there is no mistaking the players.
1. Sin, the third beast and third horseman, is the King of the South who today reigns over Trinitarian Christendom.
2. Death, the fourth beast and fourth horseman, is the King of the North who today reigns over Arian Christendom.
3. Trinitarians and Arians are presently connected through the cross, but following the second Passover, they will separate with Arians eventually controlling the image of the cross as the Seleucid Empire eventually defeated the Ptolemaic Empire and exercised temporary control of Jerusalem.
4. Endtime sons of light (John 12:36) will defeat [not by military means] the King of the North in a different manner than how the Maccabees defeated Antiochus Epiphanes IV, which is why the Books of the Maccabees are not canonical Scripture.
5. The endtime sons of light that defeat the King of the North at the close of the Tribulation form the shadow and type of the third part of humankind that endures to the end in faith and is thus saved (Matt 24:13) in the Endurance.
6. Therefore, based on chirality, it can be asserted that endtime sons of light defeat the King of the North by enduring whatever he sends against them.
Today, the largest Arian denomination is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [the Mormons], with this denomination holding that Jesus was a created being like Michael and Lucifer before He came into this world. The largest Trinitarian denomination is the Roman Catholic Church. And there is little good will displayed one to the other; there will be even less good will displayed once the second Passover occurs, for the Mormons have been preparing to leverage food into discipleship for three-quarters of a century. So when the false prophet (the first horseman of Revelation chapter 6 and the first beast of Daniel chapter 7) comes into this world immediately after the death angels have passed over all the land, the false prophet will come to the office of “Prophet” that has been reserved for him … if the false prophet were to come to Latter Day Saints with the claim that he is the “angel Joseph Smith” (analogous to the ancient prophet-warrior Moroni, the last to write in the golden plates, being the same person as the angel Moroni who brought the golden plates to Joseph Smith’s attention), not one Latter Day Saint, on the day after the second Passover, would doubt the demon’s claim. And as Steve Young said that Muslims would be comfortable in the Mormon Church, Muslims will not have a difficult time accepting the testimony of the false prophet that the man of perdition is the 12th Imam, the Hidden Imam, who will supernaturally appear just before the Day of Judgment. Thus, as heavenly endtime signs manifest themselves, and as the false prophet points to the man of perdition, the now largest and best prepared Arian denomination will have its ranks swollen with converts throughout the Tribulation whereas Trinitarian denominations that recognize the man of perdition as a false messiah (false because he is an Arian) will fight but will not prevail against the lawless one as the Ptolemaic Empire did not prevail against the Seleucid Empire. Yet for most of the historic period that forms the concealing shadow in Daniel’s long vision, the Ptolemaic Empire reigned over Jerusalem; thus, through most of the Tribulation, Trinitarians will “control” the cross.
From Daniel’s long prophecy’s historical shadow, disciples have a good idea about what will happen here on earth when the heavenly signs manifest themselves … the angel tells Daniel, concerning the lawless one, “‘He shall pay no attention to the gods of his fathers, or to the one beloved by women. He shall not pay attention to any other god, for he shall magnify himself above all’” (11:37), and Paul writes about the lawless one, “For that day [the day of the Lord] will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thess 2:3–4). These two are the same man of perdition, and it is about this one whom Jesus warned: “‘So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains’” (Matt 24:15).
Those who are in Judea are to flee when armies begin to surround Jerusalem; so when the lawless one proclaims himself God can be dated to the time of the woes, and more specifically to the time of the sixth Trumpet Plague when Babylon is dealt a second blow like the blow dealt at the second Passover. Once again, a third of the world’s population will be slain, but because the third part of humanity is now the firstborn son of God as Israel in Egypt was called the firstborn son of God (Ex 4:22), no distinction between man and man will be made. A random third part of the half of (pre second Passover) humanity left alive will be slain, with only Philadelphia protected from this hour of trial that comes upon the whole world.
John is told to seal up what the seven thunders said (Rev 10:4) as Daniel was told that his visions were sealed and secret until the end—and as Daniel’s visions were unsealed prior to the beginning of the Tribulation, what the seven thunders said will be unsealed prior to the beginning of the Endurance, for in prophesying again about many peoples (v. 11), the Tribulation and the Endurance’s chirality permits the disciple who hears the voice of Jesus to also hear what the seven thunders said.
So there is no doubt, the man of perdition doesn’t declare himself God early in the Tribulation, but makes this declaration as Babylon is falling. It is his last ditch effort to save Babylon and hinder God. But this Arian Christian leader cannot save a doomed hierarchy … for most of the Tribulation this man of perdition will appear as a great Christian leader, and a person who can unite religions.
The king of the bottomless pit, in killing the two witnesses in retaliation for the second-time death of a third of humanity, ensures the defeat of the four kings (horsemen or beasts); for after three days, the two witnesses are resurrected from death. The world sees or knows of their resurrection, and knows that these two were truly of God. The spiritual King of the North is dealt a mortal wound. Whereas this spiritual king that backs Arian Christendom had defeated the spiritual king of the South that backed Trinitarians, he cannot defeat God, who liberates disciples from Sin and resurrects them from Death. And thus concludes the mysteries of God. There is no more to be said.
But alas, the Endurance now lays before the third part of humanity as the Tribulation had earlier lain before the two witnesses … the great Whore that rides the Beast is not Trinitarian; is not the Roman Church in any form; but is the sun-worshiping desert city dedicated to Death.
If John’s vision would have been understood by an earlier generation of saints, less repetition would be employed, but because there has been a shortage of understanding additional review will be undertaken: John divides the narrative account of his vision into three parts, the Tribulation or Affliction, the Kingdom, and the Endurance (1:9). During the Tribulation, after the sixth seal has been removed from the Scroll, the 144,000 of Israel will be sealed (7:2, 4), with this 144,000 then passing through the split Mount of Olives (Zech 14:3–4) as ancient Israel passed through the Sea of Reeds (baptism by water — 1 Cor 10:1–2) and as Jesus passed from His tomb (resurrected to life — Rom 6:9); for once the 144,000 have been liberated from bondage to sin and begin to follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Rev 14:4), the 144,000 will never die but will be changed in the twinkling of an eye from mortal to immortal.
The 144,000 will function as the chiral image of those saints, few in number (Isa chap 24), that enter physically into the Millennium.
After the 144,000 are sealed, a great multitude will be gathered as the harvest of the firstfruits of the earth: this great multitude is the third part (Zech 13:9) of the little ones (i.e., of humanity) that are born of spirit, and born filled with spirit when the world is baptized in spirit (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11). They come out of the Endurance as spiritual virgins, and none of this great multitude was “Christian” before the Tribulation began.
Today’s true Christian Church, composed of all who have been born of spirit and thus have an indwelling firstborn son of God residing in their tent of flesh, will divide itself into those disciples who cover themselves by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed, and those disciples who do not cover themselves but are as Egyptians were when the death angel passed over all the land. Sin, the third horseman, will not be able to harm those disciples who covered themselves by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed, with these disciples now being acceptable sacrifices to the Lord and hence killed as their 1st-Century brothers were killed (Rev 6:9–11). Only a remnant of those saints that covered themselves will cross from the Tribulation into the Endurance, where they will be to the great multitude as the two witnesses were to Israel during the Tribulation.
Today’s true Christians who did not cover themselves by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed will, following the second Passover liberation of Israel, have the indwelling firstborn son of God condemned to the second death; these Christians will rebel against God 220 days into the Tribulation by taking sin inside themselves when the man of perdition (the lawless one) is revealed. Their condemnation is inescapable. And many Sabbatarian disciples will be numbered among the rebels, but no Sabbatarian should be counted as a rebel, for all really know better than to rely upon rabbinical Judaism for their salvation.
Thus, except for the remnant that has the spirit of prophecy, none of those Sabbatarian disciples who cover themselves by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed will live physically beyond the end of the Tribulation (the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years). Sometime well into the Tribulation, the 144,000 will be sealed in Jerusalem and will escape through the split Mount of Olives when Babylon falls. And from the third part of humankind, all spiritual virgins, the great multitude will “‘have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’” (Rev 7:14). This great multitude will account for the numerical majority of the harvest of firstfruits to Christendom’s shame.
John dates his vision to the Lord’s day, or the day of the Lord, a specific period in the generic time of the end, the day when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. Thus, of the narrative divisions of his vision—the Tribulation or Affliction, the Kingdom, and the Endurance—it is from the perspective of being in the Kingdom that John relates his vision (both in the third heaven as well as in the narrative Kingdom). Unlike Paul who didn’t know if he was in the spirit or still in the body when he entered the third heaven (2 Cor 12:3), John asserts that he was in the spirit when he entered into the third heaven on the Lord’s day (Rev 1:10).
Dominion is taken from the four kings of Daniel chapter 7 only once, and their dominion over the kingdom of this world is only once given to the Son of Man; thus what’s seen when the angel blows the seventh trumpet (the third woe) and the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Most High and of His Christ is the same scene that Daniel sees when the Ancient of Days sits in judgment (7:9–14).
The four kings of Daniel chapter 7 are not the four metal kings or kingdoms of chapter 2, but are the four horns that sprout from around the base of the broken first horn of the king of Greece—and the first horn is broken because he is an uncovered firstborn at the second Passover; thus he is broken on the 14th day of Lyyar when the angels of the Lord pass over heaven (i.e., the inter-dimensional portion of the heavenly realm) and earth to slay uncovered firstborns. Disciples are empowered by or filled with spirit on the 15th day of Lyyar, according to the pattern seen in Israel leaving Egypt on the night of the 15th of Abib three and a half millennia ago. The four kings receive the dominion of the first horn, and the little horn emerges from the head of the north horn on or before the 17th day of Lyyar, the day when the foundations of the deep opened to baptized the world into death (Gen 7:11).
The four kings of Daniel chapter 7 are the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, with the first king or horseman being the false prophet; the second king or horseman being the king of the bottomless pit (i.e., of the inter-dimension portion of the heavenly realm), the demon named Abaddon in Hebrew; the third king or horseman being Sin, into whose hand all of humanity has been consigned; the fourth king or horsemen being Death, the former companion of Sin … Sin and Death are separated when still-mortal disciples are liberated from indwelling sin by being filled with spirit. Sin and Death are the reality of Daniel’s kings of the South and of the North, with the separation of Death from Sin seen in Daniel 11:5; thus removal of the first four seals from the Scroll (Rev 6:1–8) occurs in the third heaven at a narrative perspective equating to the daylight portion of the 14th day of Lyyar.
The second Passover liberation of Israel begins the 1260 day ministry of the two witnesses, with these 1260 days being the length of the Tribulation—and with the Tribulation ending when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man on or about the 15th day of the seventh month of the fourth year of the seven endtime years. It is on this “day” when Satan and his angels are cast from heaven and the world is baptized in spirit, thereby causing all of humankind to be born of spirit and born filled with spirit.
The empowerment of disciples by filling these disciples with spirit is seen in Scripture as Zion giving birth to a nation in a day (Isa 66:7–8), with birth preceding the coming of her hard labor pains … the last Eve gives birth to a “son” like righteous Abel at the second Passover, then 220 days later when the rebellion occurs, those disciples of the great falling away are born as a spiritual Cain that slays his righteous brother, with the slaying of Abel by Cain being seen in the opening of the fifth seal (Rev 6:9–11), and God’s wrath on this world for the slaying of Abel is seen in the opening of the sixth seal (vv. 12–17). Therefore the “after some years” of Daniel 11:6 will have these some years equating to the 220 days between the second Passover and when the Rebellion occurs. The prophesied warring between the kings of the South and of the North—the warring that was manifested in this world by the military campaigns, victories and defeats of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires—reveals what will happen in the heavenly realm during the Tribulation, with the abomination of desolation that Jesus references (Matt 24:15) appearing in Daniel’s long vision (11:31) near the end of the vision and at the time of the woes of John’s vision (Rev 8:13).
Because genuine disciples are filled with spirit and are without indwelling sin, they are “light” and as such they do not cast shadows and are invisible in Scripture. How many genuine disciples remain bodily alive after Cain seeks to kill Abel cannot be ascertained, but a remnant of the Woman’s offspring (Rev 12:17) will remain bodily alive—and a “remnant” is the cloth left on a fabric bolt that is too small to be used for a garment. A remnant of Sabbatarian disciples that have the spirit of prophecy (Rev 12:17 coupled with 19:10) will not be able to “cover” the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:7–9), but will be witnesses to this third part in the Endurance as the two witnesses were witnesses to Israel in the Tribulation.
Thus concludes the most recent (May 17, 2009) installment of an ongoing work … it is in the color of the reflected light that a disciple, a son of light, can see how far the mindset of the world is away from God. The distance doesn’t seem all that far, but any color of reflected light is not “light” and as such is not of God. Hence the silver color of light reflected from the kings of Persia, the kings who have brought to humanity the Christianity of the interregnum, looks like “light,” dazzles and blinds, but is a reflection off an object/entity that blocks the light of God from reaching this world. Therefore, Christianity stands as an obstacle that hinders saints from coming to God; yet few disciples can casually distinguish light from glaze, and the Christianity of the interregnum is glare that blinds willingly blind Israel.
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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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[1] The last Elijah is Christ Jesus; for John the Baptist only began the work of turning the hearts of “‘the disobedient to the wisdom of the just’” (Luke 1:17).
[2] The usual assignment of meaning for the word “interregnum” is the time between kings, but chirality will invert this meaning so that a spiritual interregnum is the period between when the King, Christ Jesus, reigned over Israel and when the King will again reign over Israel; the period when Israel is dead.