The Philadelphia Church

December 27, 2014 If baptism in spirit doesn't occur to Israel until the Second Passover liberation from indwelling sin and death, and doesn't happen to the third part of humanity (from Zech 13:9) until dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man, then what sort of baptism exists prior to the Second Passover? The baptism of John, in water and for the death of the lawless old self?

December 20, 2014 The wages (as in what has been earned) of sin is death (Rom 6:23) … in order for John's baptism to be about repentance for the forgiveness of sins, John's baptism in water had to represent real death. The chiral image of John's baptism is Jesus' baptism, which isn't in water leading unto death, but in spirit leading to life and service to others, even to laying down one's life for his brother in Christ. John's baptism would have left the disciple dead even when figuratively raised from death, the theological reason why the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] had to immediately descend upon the man Jesus and enter into Him (Mark 1:10) … from death comes life. It isn't that life follows death. Rather, it's that death spawns life. Death is the necessary precursor to spiritual life. Physical life is the non-symmetrical chiral image of spiritual life, and as death ends physical life, in the chiral image death produces the corpse, the clay vessel, that can receive, hold, and be animated by spiritual life. However, this clay vessel need not return to dust before the dead inner self of a physically living human person is resurrected from death and given spiritual life.

December 13, 2014 Why is it that Philadelphia is told to continue doing what they have been doing, that they need to do no more than not to permit someone to take their crown from them? Is it not because Philadelphia read John's Book, finding in it the revelation Paul received about the movement of the Law from hand to heart? For in John's vision, the Thousand Year long reign of the Messiah is framed by the resurrection of firstfruits at its beginning and the great White Throne resurrection and judgment at its conclusion, with the resurrection of firstfruits forming the shadow and copy of the outside-of-time [space-time] great White Throne Judgment.

December 6, 2014 But very few Christians believe what Jesus said in John's Gospel. Most—nearly all—believe the Adversary and his ministers and servants, super-apostles who do mighty works in the name of Jesus, but prevent the Christian laity from walking in this world as Jesus walked. How can a super-apostle prevent a Christian from walking in this world as Jesus walked? … When do these super-apostles schedule their worship services? Not on the Sabbath, but on the day after the Sabbath. Does not the simple act of scheduling worship services on the day after the Sabbath imply that the Law—the Royal Law (from Jas 2:8)—has been abolished and no longer pertains to Christians? Now when this implication is reinforced from the pulpit by pastors declaring that Jesus fulfilled the Law so you don't have to keep it, can a soul remain healthy for long? Will not the soul become spiritually ill, weak, ready to perish?

November 29, 2014 How many can come to Christ Jesus and eat bread that has come down from heaven? Only those that the Father draws from this world. How many believe that the Father has to draw a person from this world before the person can come to Christ Jesus? Very few! Father draws men from the world and teaches them, no pastor or missionary is required.

November 22, 2014 Reality is how things actually are, exist, rather than how they appear or perhaps are imagined. And the reality for Americans of all ideologies is that enough food is thrown away every day to feed the nation … there are a few of us who have actually eaten from dumpsters, with what was in the dumpsters being offered for sale three or four hours earlier. And on that note, Philadelphians should set aside whatever they reasonably can for the promise of Scripture is that real hunger will exist in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years. Every Philadelphian will have the opportunity to feed hungry neighbors, even to where doing so taxes the limited resources of the Philadelphian as the widow's resources were tested day after long day.

November 15, 2014 Epiphenomenalism is properly dualism, the assertion that the mental state[s] of a Christian does/do not exert influence on the physical state[s], ontologically or causally irreducible. While the material world can produce sensations or ideas, these mental phenomena cause nothing to happen: they are causal blind alleys, box canyons. They are the antithesis of interactionism, which will have mental causes [faith] produce material effects, such as professing with the Christian's mouth that Jesus is Lord.

November 8, 2014 In his capacity as Peter's interpreter, Mark accurately wrote down as many things as he recalled from memory, though not in an ordered form; for he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. He wrote down later Peter's teachings which Peter gave in the form of chreiai but without intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord. Consequently, Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything. Chreia represents a useful teaching in the form of an anecdote relating a saying and/or action, with these anecdotes forming collections such as the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Peter taught using chreia because it is those things that Jesus said that is the judge of believing and unbelieving disciples, with believing disciples not coming under judgment because they believe the words of Jesus and of the one who sent Him into this world. Unbelieving disciples do not; hence, they will be judged by what they heard but didn't believe. Christianity is just this simple. For the person who walks in this world as Jesus walked also believes the writings of Moses (John 5:45–47).

November 1, 2014 What about a preexistence of the heavens and the earth before they were filled? The model for this preexistence is in aligning the First Adam with the Last Adam, with Israel coming from Abraham through Sarah, not through Hagar or Keturah, and with the last Adam coming as a root shoot of Jesse, not as a son of David (Isa 11:1) but as a another branch of Israel that has no descent from an Israelite king in His ancestry, no king separating Him from God.

October 25, 2014 A Sabbatarian Christian can only get along with this world by selling out to the Adversary. But the Sabbatarian can live in this world without trying to change it by living as Abraham did, a sojourner in the land of his inheritance, dwelling in tents, not in palaces or cities, owning no more of this world than it takes to bury the dead—for this world belongs to the dead. Permit them to rest in peace.

October 18, 2014 How is the busybody to spiritually counsel adulterers, murderers, or thieves? How is the busybody to counsel the homosexual who insists that he or she has been the way the person is since birth? What counsel is to be given to the humanly good person who has never knowingly committed a transgression of the Law? Does the one who counsels without being called to do so pick and choose his or her victims, selecting those who really have no need of counsel, thereby inserting him or herself into the victim's relationship with God instead of butting out, hearing the complaints of lonely women without saying anything, hearing without speaking as God hears without speaking? The busybody has no real understanding of God, Father or Son, and remains in need of spiritual milk.

October 11, 2014 In the days of the judges, when Israel sinned and forgot their God, the Lord brought against them enemies that when Israel repented, He defeated by sending Jerubbaal, Barak, Jephthah, and Samuel against them. The Lord was the king of Israel: He fought for Israel. Using human instruments, He defeated both wrongdoing and those whom He sent to punish Israel for its wrongdoing. When Israel asked for a king, Israel cut itself off from the Lord … He would no longer fight Israel's battles for He was no longer Israel's king, what He through Samuel promised Israel. So why would the sons of Korah complain that the Lord was no longer fighting Israel's battles? This is what Israel brought upon itself by rejecting the Lord as the nation's king. But if what is found in Deuteronomy concerning kings were true, even if Samuel never read these words of Moses, why would the Lord not fight Israel's battles? Most Sabbatarian Christians—Worldwide Church of God splinters, Seventh Day Baptists, Church of God Seventh Day, Seventh Day Adventists—hold that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, absolutely true in its original autographs. But what are its original autographs? We have no text earlier than the 4th Century CE, and certainly the Torah, entrusted to Israel, has been redacted several times since being found in the dilapidated temple in Josiah's day.

September 6, 2014 The question now is, would the Lord bring Islamic jihadists against American Christians because of the lawlessness and arrogance of these Christians, ones such as Phil Robertson? Certainly the Lord's M.O. between Moses and Christ Jesus was to bring the enemies of Israel against the nation when this nation strayed from the Lord. But with the giving of the spirit, what was physical became spiritual. Thus, instead of bringing an alien nation against the people of Israel, the Lord will bring an alien ideology against endtime Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart. What would constitute an alien ideology? Humanism? Yes, certainly. Islam? Possibly. Buddhism? My eldest daughter abandoned Christ for Buddha. Worship of Gaia, the personification of the earth? Definitely, with global climate change being a major tenet of this ideology. There are others, many others, but the preceding are enough to establish the point. It is in Islam where interest today resides; for those who worship Gaia will make electricity more expensive, and will have adult Americans drive vehicles the size of a child's peddle car, but they decapitate wallets, not living persons.

August 30, 2014 God can and will send a strong delusion over those who choose to believe what is false … He need not use a prophet to send a strong delusion over a person, but if a nation refused to love the truth and so be saved, might He use a prophet to send a strong delusion over the nation—a nation such as that descended from Ishmael, which was no nation but merely a collection of tribes fighting among themselves until formed into a nation by the prophet Muhammad?

August 23, 2014 A fundamental problem within greater Christendom, and especially within Sabbatarian Christendom is the tendency to ascribe all good that happens to Christians to God and all evil or bad things that happens to Satan, when this is simply not the case. The world of commerce tends to favor those who make astute transactions, separating winners from losers, the haves from the have-nots. This world of commerce, however, rewards ethical transactions even when God is not involved, but this world doesn't punish unethical actions—and it is here where Adam having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil can be seen … both good and evil comes to a person via the world of transactions. Plus, God causes it to rain on the just and on the unjust, making no distinction between these two in this world. It is in the world to come where the distinction is made. The Book of Remembrance doesn't distinguish between men while they live physically, but makes a separation between those who loved neighbor and brother even under the most adverse of conditions or under the best of conditions versus those who did not love the least of humanity, doing good to and for the ones who were unable to return good for good. It is the person who withholds his [or her] hand from helping another that is numbered among the wicked, not necessarily the one who does what is outwardly evil.

July 19, 2014 If human persons are held by God to be responsible for both knowing Him and believing His words that they have never heard with their ears but have only seen with their eyes through the things that have been made—and this is central here—then a very different standard of _law_ exists with God than exists in man's governance of each other, with all authority in this world presently coming through the Adversary, the prince of this present world. If a person is held responsible for unstated law that is self-evident in the things that have been made (e.g., in a mother bear protecting her cub, or in the cub imitating its mother, doing the things that she does how she does them, with an equivalent human example explored in Exodus 12:26–27), then God expects the person to _read_ nature as metaphors of heavenly things. And how can a person _read_ nature when the person is economically or socially imprisoned in a city, a construction of man not of God, and imprisoned without pets or service animals?

July 12, 2014 Knowledge obtained via a vision of Christ is spiritually inferior [though not necessarily any less accurate] to knowledge received by the Parakletos, which will have the disciple genuinely born of spirit coming to know a thing without realizing why the disciple knows whatever it is. And here is where minds are stretched: John lives in his endtime brothers in a similar way to how the 1st-Century Jesus lives in endtime disciples. Not in exactly the same way. John and his endtime brothers are joined together by the position of Thirdness being filled by the Beloved of God, the last Adam, a life-giving [Eve] spirit.

July 5, 2014 New Jerusalem will, in type, be represented by the woman in marriage, which will have heaven itself being, also in type, represented by the woman in marriage.

June 28, 2014 In Jeremiah, the New Covenant has sins being forgiven as one model of God giving mercy to human persons, but the greater model (the spiritual counterpart to forgiving sins) is not remembering sins. If God doesn't remember sins, then what John's Jesus declares in John 5:28–29 no longer pertains; for there has to be a remembrance of sin [of the deeds of the person] for those who are in tombs to hear Jesus' voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to condemnation. Without a remembrance of sin, there would be no distinction between those who have done good and those who have done evil. So salvation is dependent upon forgiving sins versus not remembering sins, with the person whose sins are not remembered able to pass from death to life without coming under judgment.

June 21, 2014 Human infants bawl when diapers need changed, when hungry, when uncomfortable—and spiritual infants pray selfish prayers. Spiritual infants pray to get things, to have needs met, to obtain what they don't have … what sort of prayers do you make: do you pray to get for yourself, or to get for someone else? Or are your prayers those of praise, with you being thankful that you have been healed from death?

June 7, 2014 However, as with prayers those things that have been long taught about fasting are so persistently planted in the minds and hearts of even the Elect—Sabbatarian disciples who should know better—that the Elect fast to get closer to God … how much closer to God can you get than to have the indwelling of the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] in the spirit of the man/person [to pneuma tou 'anthropou]? Will fasting (going without food and drink) get a person numbered among the Elect closer to God than being One with Him? Come on, read the text! Think about what you read. If you left your mind at your neighbor's, go get it. There's still time to learn.

May 31, 2014 Whether a man of God lives or dies isn't dependent upon what this man of God does physically, but dependent upon whether God backs this man up by honoring his words. If God honors this man's words as He will honor the words of the two witnesses, then no harm can come upon this man of God that God doesn't permit for whatever reason.

May 24, 2014 In a military campaign, there is tactical surprise versus a surprise attack: when troops are massed on a frontier, no surprise attack can occur across the frontier, for the presence of the troops negates total surprise. However, tactical surprise can still occur for when the attack is undertaken is not known by opposing forces, i.e., Satan.

May 17, 2014 Are not pastors who teach whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He will give it to you liars? For you asked in Christ name, and nothing happened. You can hum along with Garth Brooks, Thank God for unanswered prayers, or you an acknowledge the truth: you lack the faith to move mountains or to get your prayers answered. You simply don't have that kind of faith. So why did your pastor teach you that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He will give it to you? Did he or she not know better? Or is your pastor an agent of the Adversary, employed by the Adversary to destroy your faith? For God will answer the prayers of the person with faith sufficient to move mountains.

May 10, 2014 The Christian who would have another Christian trust God to heal the ailing person comes in his or her own name, not in the name of Christ Jesus, who either is or isn't faithfully quoted in the Gospels. If He is, then the person who will have his or her prayers answered is the person with faith sufficient to move mountains. No doubts. If He isn't, can it be determined what He did say, if He said anything about answered prayer?

May 3, 2014 The prayers of Christians are not answered because the prayers precede work[s] … the physical comes first, then the spiritual. And when the physical comes first, prayers take care of themselves. The person truly born of God has to say nothing to have his or her prayers answered: they are answered before they are asked.

April 26, 2014 Before the Father delivers a person to Christ for Him to call the person, justify the person, and glorify the inner self of the person through spiritual birth via the indwelling of Christ, the person simply cannot come to Christ. No evangelistic effort can get the person to come to Christ: the person cannot come even though the person has allegedly accepted Jesus as his or her personal savior. The evangelistic ministries of greater Christendom all originate in additions to the word of God, additions of the sort the first Adam made. In human reasoning, it isn't logical for God not to cast a broad net and catch as much of humanity as He can—The concept that God is not only allowing but is the author-of an on-going demonstration to show the failings of democracy and of all transactional economies is alien to orthodox Christendom. For God, salvation isn't a problem; isn't something that is either mysterious or magical. Salvation is receipt of heavenly life, coming in the form of the indwelling breath/spirit of God [pneuma Theou]. Thus, the Father can raise from death whomever He chooses, giving to the inner self of the person His breath of life, which for the person is a second breath of life, the spirit holy [pneuma 'agion].

April 19, 2014 Questioning authority doesn't mean outright rejection of authority. Rather, in the example of Matthew's and Mark's temptation accounts, Matthew's account shows in many ways that it cannot be read literally (e.g., fasting for forty days — going without ingesting liquids for forty days will have produced death at least a week earlier), that it can only be read figuratively. And if Matthew's Gospel can only be read figuratively, then this gospel is not a biography of a historical human individual.

April 12, 2014 And because of the veil Moses placed over his face, the veil that symbolically stood between Israel and the glory of the Lord, Israel never understood that its idol of monotheism prevented this nation collectively from coming to Christ, and today, prevents this nation from understanding the oracles of God that they did not faithfully transport across time.

April 5, 2014 If American and Russian scientists are attempting to use focused radio waves between AM and CB band widths to coax the ionosphere into giving off ultra low frequency waves as figurative heartbeats, giving to the Earth a pulse that can be measured as well as used to transmit knowledge from pole to pole, these scientists are as children playing with a loaded revolver found in their parents' bedroom nightstand: they are going to accidently kill a sibling or a friend … the two witnesses will wage weather warfare, but will do so with the intent to kill an idea, that man can rule himself. The two witnesses will be anti-democratic, anti-socialist, anti-progressive, anti all forms of self governance. And during the Affliction, real war—but not with guns and tanks—will be waged between the two witnesses and the lawless one (a human person possessed by the Adversary) and the false prophet (a demonic king, an angel, given the mind of a man). This war will be unlike any previously seen, with human survival in question.

March 29, 2014 A Christian can keep the Law and not be a prude about doing so, but this means walking the lip of the schism separating righteousness from sin. But did Jesus not eat with tax collectors, sinners? A Christian's conduct can be upright without the person opening his or her mouth except to answer questions. And what value is it to you or to a State Representative to preach repentance to this Representative when he is high on hashish. Your conduct; your decline of the shared pipe is a greater witness than anything you could possibly say. That was my witness to them.

March 22, 2014 The timing of the Passover liberation of natural/physical Israel from physical bondage to a physical king in a physical land was predetermined, but was also dependant upon the iniquity of the Amorites that occupied the land where Abram/Abraham dwelt as a sojourner … if the Amorites had mended their ways, abandoned their idolatry, and worshiped the Lord as Abraham had worshiped the Lord—as they had seen Abraham worship the Lord—then the dynamics of the Passover liberation of Israel would have been different. How different cannot be known with certainty, but the fullness of Amorite iniquity would not have occurred after four hundred years even though that is how long the Lord had allotted to the Amorites. This now suggests that the fullness of Amorite iniquity was or could have been completed prior to the ending of the four hundred years; that the Lord waited to bring Abraham's descendants out from Egypt not upon Amorite iniquity, but upon the promise He made to Abraham—waited for His name's sake. Consider the Lord waiting to liberate the enslaved descendants of Abraham so that at a particular time—at a time that He had previously declared—He could bring destruction upon Egypt as well as liberate His firstborn son (from Ex 4:22). This suggests that as was the case with Amorite iniquity, so was the case for Egyptian iniquity; that Israel's liberation was as much dependent upon Egyptian and Amorite iniquity as it was Israelite suffering.

March 15, 2014 The Sons of Korah gave God credit for Israel's military successes against the Canaanite kings, but then blamed God for their more recent defeats … if God is against us when we do those things that pertain to keeping covenant with Him, where does the fault lie? That is the question the Sons of Korah asked and answered for themselves: the fault lay with God, who was apparently sleeping.

March 8, 2014 Christianity isn't about white sugar, white flour, the appearance of material prosperity. Christianity isn't about skin color or ethnicity or biological gender. And it certainly isn't about Nicolaitans intimidating the sheep; for these same Nicolaitans are themselves merely fat sheep that put their pants on, one leg at a time.

March 1, 2014 In a way, the process of God twice giving spiritual life to human sons of God creates a doubled hulled vessel.

February 22, 2014, 2014 The spirit cannot make its words stand, its vows stand, its promises stand unless the mind of flesh either remains silent or confirms the words, vows, promises … the preceding is correct even though it will seem to be a contradiction.

February 15, 2014 Why can't the Father produce heirs by Himself? Because the spirit of man [again, to pneuma tou 'anthropou] that serves as the head of the inner self of _one_ human person (as the husband is the head of his wife) came not from God the Father, but came from the Creator of all things physical, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Father cannot directly bring to life the spirit in man, but needs His Beloved as a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45) to bring the spirit in man to life through the indwelling of Christ, who has life in the same heavenly moment as God the Father has life—the moment that existed before the world existed.

February 8, 2014 In the Genesis creation account of Adam and Eve, the Woman was of the Man, but _marked_ as different, the reason for the additional _wo_ in women, and _fe_ in female. Thus, there is and can be no unmarked woman, which is not the case with the man. And by extension, there is no unmarked soul which is not the case with the pneuma tou 'anthropou within every person, with the soul marked either by Sabbath observance [marked as being of God] or marked by the image of the cross [the mark of Death]. This marked status of the soul is not time-linked, but is for the ages. Is it profound that every woman is marked, but every man is not?

February 1, 2014 A man's word—pledge or vow—stands. No one can negate it, not even the man. Hence a man's word is as a written decree by the ancient human kings of Media and Persia. It cannot be revoked, even when the thing declared is wrongheaded.

January 25, 2014 Knowing the Lord is not enough; being known by the Lord is not enough. What is enough is believing God, Father and Son, with this belief producing obedience and trust and unshakeable loyalty.

January 18, 2014In Hebrew style narration, what is spiritual has a lifeless physical mirror image. The first Adam is the spiritually lifeless mirror image of the last or second Adam. Together, they form one Adam. Eve is made from the flesh and bone of the first Adam. The Christian Church is _made_ from the indwelling of the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou]. But there is a half-step between the creation of the second Adam and the creation of the Church as the second Eve, the Body of Christ [as a wife functions as the body of her head], with this half-step having the spirit of the Father [pneuma Theou] enter into the man Jesus to begin the divine procreation process so that Jesus is both the First of the firstborn sons of God as well as the life-giving [Eve] spirit that gives birth to many sons of God, His younger siblings (see Rom 8:29).

January 11, 2014Holy Writ is really not _holy_ until the end of the Law is written, with this _end_ being written on the hearts of sons of God so what the Preacher declared about the world being hidden in hearts will be, indeed, true … the Law doesn't end when books disappear and there is a famine of the written word. Rather, the Law will be placed within every person so all who transgress the Law will be without excuse. The transgressor shall utterly perish.

January 4, 2014All of Scripture has been constructed by mortals from the assignment of allegorical meaning to historical events. Let's be honest: the only text God wrote was the two tablets of stone that Moses received, then cast down and broke. Everything else has been written by human persons, including the Commandments on the two stone tablets that were in the Ark of the Covenant. Are these stories true? Can they be believed? These are the wrong questions to ask: do these stories reveal a spiritual reality than can not be otherwise known? And the answer is yes. These stories function, when told in Hebrew style narration—in chiral narration—as prophecy functions in that they reveal what cannot be ascertained through observation and measurement. So again, can they be believed?