January 19, 2016
Repairers
You shall be called the Repairer of the Breach (Isa 58:12)
[Part Two]
To Those not under the Law
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What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.
Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. (Rom 4:1–10)
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2.
Christ Jesus was the chosen Passover Lamb of God the Father …
Christ is the substance of festivals, new moons, Sabbaths (Col 2:16–17), and as such, He, at Calvary, is both the reality of all Passover lambs sacrificed by Israel as well as the reality of all goats sacrificed on the altar on Yom Kipporim. In His death, Christ unites the Passover with Yom Kipporim, and in His life following resurrection, Christ Jesus unites the Wave Sheaf Offering with the Azazel; for the Wave Sheaf Offering symbolizes the beginning of the harvest of firstfruits (the early barley harvest), with Christ being the First of the firstfruits, His resurrection and Ascension as the High Priest of a new nation of Israel covering the unintentional sins of His younger siblings, twice-born Christians that form this second nation of Israel, a nation that is circumcised of heart, not in the flesh … this second nation of Israel is an assembly of living inner selves, each a new creature born of spirit. This second nation of Israel is not physical and has about it no physicalness, and therefore cannot die physically for its unintentional transgressions (the key word here is “physically” for this second nation of Israel dwells in fleshly bodies but is not those fleshly bodies—in the second death, the lake of fire, spiritual sons of God, human as well as angelic, can die inside of space-time).
But this second nation of Israel doesn’t live unless God the Father raises the inner self of each person individually from death, gives to this inner self the earnest of His spirit and delivers this inner self to the glorified Christ Jesus to call, justify, and glorify through the indwelling of the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] in the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ’anthropou]. And before God raises the inner self of any person, He “knows” the person, and knows that the person will not rebel against Him even if the person fights Christ Jesus calling the person. In other words, God has observed the person, considered the person’s faults and strengths, considered the person’s potential as a glorified son of God, and has found what He wants in a potential son: He has found that the person is not a coward, but will stand up to pressures surrounding the person, and therefore when instilled with the mind of Christ, will do what is right even when doing so harms the person.
For the most part, Sabbatarian Christians are theological cowards, keeping the Law for the same reason Job did what was right, not keeping the Royal Law out of love for God but out of fear. Keeping the Law because Moses gave the Law to Israel so that the Law might bring sin to life inside the unbeliever and there devour the unbeliever. And as if a living demonic king, sin has devoured generation after generation of Christians. Thus, to thwart this demonic king, a few Christians turned to the Law and began to keep the least of the Commandments, the Sabbath Commandment, in hopes that they would not be devoured by Sin … they began to keep the Sabbath out of fear of God as rabbinical Judaism keeps the Law out of fear of the Lord, not out of love for God. As such, their legalism does the Sabbatarian Christian no good. Only when a Christian keeps the Commandments out of love for God does keeping the Sabbath benefit the Christian as an outward showing of love through bucking the Adversary’s administrative rule over greater Christendom.
The preceding paragraph cannot be said too strongly, especially as the Sacred Names Heresy continues to spread as a malignancy throughout the Sabbatarian Christian community: keeping the Sabbath does the spiritual coward no good, nor does anyone else any good, for keeping the Royal Law is a reasonable expectation of all sons of God as outwardly expressed love for God. If the Sabbath is not kept as a reasonable expectation of the Christian—the Christian receiving no “bonus points” for keeping the Sabbath, no reward—the Christian really has deformed love for God, the Christian’s love crippled by the Adversary.
Again, true Christians are not fleshly bodies, but living inner selves [souls — psuche] raised from death in a resurrection like that of Jesus when the spirit of God descended upon Him in the bodily form of a dove and entered into Him (Mark 1:10). Those who call themselves Christians but do not have the indwelling of Christ (thereby having the mind of Christ which will cause the person to walk in this world as Jesus walked) remain sons of disobedience, slaves of the Adversary, and unable to please God. They cannot keep the Law nor do they have any desire to keep the Law … after all, Jesus did that for them, or so their pastors and teachers tell them.
This second nation of Israel is as angels are, genderless sons of God against whom the Lord will not count transgressions—and this is important; for in moving from Psalm 32, verse one to verse two, the spiritual portion of the squared couplet, transgressions of the Law are neither forgiven nor covered, both physical means of Christ addressing transgressions. Rather, transgressions cease to exist for the Law no longer remains “alive” so that it might devour Israelites. Rather, in moving from physical to spiritual, the Lord no longer recognizes transgressions: only belief of God or unbelief matters. For if the Christian truly believes God, the Christian will do those things that are pleasing to God, which will include keeping the Law, not as an obligation but as a desire of the heart.
What converts to the Jesus Movement, beginning mid 1st-Century CE and continuing to “today,” have failed to appreciate is that no person can make a decision for Christ … if God the Father doesn’t draw the person from this world (John 6:44) through foreknowing the person and predestining the person’s inner self to be glorified while the fleshly body of the person still lives physically, the person cannot come to Christ even if that is the desire of the person. No person can, of the person’s own volition, cause the person to be born of spirit—
The preceding is not to say that a person cannot turn to God and strive to do what is right as the person knows to do right, but is to say that a person cannot cause the person’s inner dead self to be spiritually born as a son of God … there are Christians who have truly been born of God. The Apostle Paul was such a Christian, as were the ten Apostles upon whom the glorified Jesus breathed His breath (John 20:22), and as was the author of Matthew’s Gospel if not one of the Ten.
Then there is the vast majority of today’s greater Christian Church, including the Sabbatarian Church, that desires to have a relationship Christ Jesus and usually lie about being “born again” … as a Christian religious broadcaster, Herbert W. Armstrong was honest enough to acknowledge that he was not yet born again: He knew he wasn’t “born again” as a son of God, having within him the mind of Christ. But he didn’t know that a human person could be born of spirit while the fleshly body still lived. However, of most importance, Armstrong—not having the mind of Christ—never understood that the Law had been given to bring Sin to life so that, as Paul understood, Sin might devour the unbeliever.
Sin as a demonic king can be likened to the four angels bound at the river Euphrates (Rev 9:14), only Sin as a demonic king was “released” when the Law was given so that the nation of Israel that rebelled against the Lord when still in Egypt (Ezek 20:5–8) might be devoured if this nation persisted in its unbelief.
Unbelief of God is the dominant characteristic of every person not born of spirit …
In the physical which precedes and reveals the spiritual (e.g., Rom 1:20; 1 Cor 15:46), a human infant has no say in the infant’s birth. The human infant does nothing to “cause” his or her birth. The human infant doesn’t exist until conceived and therefore can have nothing to do with the acts and actions of the infant’s parents prior to conception. Nor do human sons of God have any say in the son of God’s spiritual birth, which comes via the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] having entered into the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] in the bodily form of a dove (see Mark 1:10 in Greek), thereby causing the Father to be the Head of Christ as a man is the head of his wife (1 Cor 11:3). Thus, when the Father draws a person from this world and gives the person to Christ to call, the person is not yet a son of God. But the person no longer has control of his or her fate even though the person may respond to God as a hooked fish, fighting his or her calling all the way to shore (analogous to heaven). But the called person will be “landed” through Christ Jesus dying for the person while he or she was still a sinner (Rom 5:8), and landed by the spirit of Christ penetrating the spirit of the person, hence glorifying the person’s inner self while the person’s fleshly body still lives. And when Christ dies in this world in the 1st-Century for a person in the 21st-Century while the person remains a sinner, the actual dynamics of Christ dying for the person occurs in the timelessness of heaven, not here on earth: Christ doesn’t die for the sinner’s fleshly body, but to justify the inner self. The fleshly body can do its own dying. But the spiritually “dead” inner self cannot “die” when dead, but must be raised from death through being redeemed as a firstborn of God.
No person can cause his or her own spiritual birth—and no person can resist being born of spirit; for this twice-born person prior to spiritual birth cannot and would not be foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified (Rom 8:29–30), literally purchased for a price from the Adversary, if the person were free to come to God of his or her own volition. The person was humanly born as a son of disobedience, a slave of the Adversary, and therefore had to be redeemed from the Adversary by the blood of Christ before spiritual birth could occur.
But how can a Christian know whether he or she has truly been born of God, or has only swooned from being struck by the Adversary’s glory as was the case for Joseph Smith? And the “how” is in the last sentence and clause of a preceding paragraph: if the Christian truly believes God, the Christian will do those things that are pleasing to God, which will include keeping the Law, not as an obligation but as a desire of the heart.
Do you, Christian, keep the Law not because Moses gave Israel the Law, but because you desire to please God? Or do you, Christian, not even attempt to keep the Law because “Christians are not under the Law but under grace”? Have you, Christian, not read what Paul wrote: “all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law” (Rom 2:12). Have you sinned, committed a transgression of the Law that you don’t believe you need to keep? If you have—and you have—you will perish without the Law and without realizing that you needed to repent. Your teachers have lied to you, condemned you to death during the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation.
If the Christian desires to keep the Law as a reasonable expectation of all who are in the household of God, the Christian has, most likely, been truly twice-born; for the twice-born Christian has the indwelling of the spirit of Christ, which gives to this Christian the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16) that causes the Christian to earnestly desire to walk in this world as Jesus walked … without the desire to walk as Jesus walked, all that the Christian does is vanity, a “pleasing” of the self, not a pleasing of God.
Because the Law is dead to the person against whom the Lord will not count transgressions, Sin cannot harm this person: the Law cannot do the person harm nor good; for again, keeping the Law simply becomes the reasonable expectation of everyone in the household of God. And the Lord will condemn unbelieving, unfaithful sons of God to the second death, the lake of fire for what the Lord created, He can destroy, a lesson rebelling angels will learn at the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel. For the demonic king of Greece [the firstborn, used metaphorically, of the Adversary] is the first king of the federated kings composing the King of Greece (Dan 8:5–8; 21–22). He will be an uncovered legal firstborn at the Second Passover, and he will be suddenly broken because he is the Adversary’s firstborn.
As unbelief condemned the physical firstborn son of the Lord (Ex 4:22) to death in the wilderness, unbelief of God will condemn the spiritual firstborn son of the Adversary—the first king of the demonic federation known as the “King of Greece”—to death at the Second Passover liberation of a second nation of Israel; for the Second Passover isn’t a physical event like the first Passover was in the days of Moses, but is a spiritual event the sends reverberations throughout the physical kosmos.
Presently, angels—rebelling and otherwise—have not seen another angel die, and apparently the Adversary tells rebelling angels what the serpent told Eve: “the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” Gen 3:4–5). But the Adversary will be exposed as a liar on the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel; for his first convert [his firstborn] will, because he is first, perish in the portion of the heavenly realm that is the Abyss …
The Abyss is formed of figuratively “spilled” spirit analogous to the blood and water that poured from Jesus’ side when His fleshly body was pierced by a Roman spear (John 19:34). The Abyss is unstructured primal energy/spirit, “unstructured” as a spill of red wine on a white linen tablecloth is unstructured. And inside the Abyss, the physical creation was formed through placing double locks on this primal energy that figuratively lies behind the four known forces.
Again, the kosmos was created in the Abyss from spirit [primal energy] that poured through the rent torn in the fabric of heaven when iniquity was discovered in an anointed guardian cherub, this rent producing the real need for a recreation of heaven … as Jesus’ earthly body perished at Calvary, the “heaven” to which Christian apologists would have the souls of Christians fly upon death of the fleshly body is itself spiritually dead. And as flesh and blood cannot inherit heaven (1 Cor 15:50), angelic sons of God cast into the Abyss cannot reenter a “heaven” they destroyed, the “heaven” that was an outer wrapper of an inner core.
The physical creation and human persons in the creation and Israel as the chosen firstborn son of the God of Abraham (Ex 4:22) form a symbolic set of circles inside a circle that isn’t round. And “inside” this symbolic set of circles are additional, asymmetrical circles: Moses and the Lord. And as Israel, camped around the base of Mount Sinai could not set foot on the mountain and still live, angelic sons of God [and other entities] created in the outer wrapper of heaven cannot enter the inner courts of heaven; for within the limitations of timelessness, the absence of life cannot coexist with the presence of life. Those entities that had no life in the inner courts of heaven can never enter these inner courts. Likewise, those entities that received life with the creation of the outer wrappers of heaven will always have life in these outer wrappers. They will never die for however long the outer wrapper continues to exist. But when the outer wrapper is destroyed by a rent torn in the fabric of heaven—analogous to the fleshly body of a person dying—these living entities that received life in the outer wrapper are as the souls of once-born persons: when their “home” is destroyed, they likewise perish for they only have life in the outer wrapper.
The preceding concept is rooted in matter having mass, and with mass, gravity. The passage of time can be written as a mathematical function of gravity—with gravity comes the passage of time as a measure of the decay of matter. Thus, where there is no decay, there is no mass, no passage of time. There is only pure energy and timelessness; so without decay, time stands still. What “is” remains. What “was” is what “is.” What “will be” is what “is.” The context for “life” is unchanging; the background against which all activity occurs is unchanging. And in this way, life is itself unchanging.
A newly born human infant isn’t physically or mentally the same person at twenty-one years old as the person was at birth; yet, the infant is the same person. Change has occurred, change of a sort that cannot happen where there is no decay. And remember this concept: with spiritual birth in heaven of an infant son of God, a son comes into existence, but a son of God that cannot grow spiritually. Everything the infant son is and will be exists at this son of God’s creation/birth. For only where there is decay of what “is” can a son of God grow in grace and knowledge. Only outside of heaven where decay is normal can a son of God grow beyond what the son was when born/created and yet remain the same living entity.
Angelic sons of God are created entities, having received figurative birth as Adam received life when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed life into the man of mud’s nostrils—this is the significance of the Adamic creation narrative; for as Adam received the breath of life as a fully formed, adult male, angelic sons of God received “life” from the sudden indwelling of breath/spirit [pneuma] as fully formed “angels.” They cannot “change” in heaven: they are what they are, and what they are is what they will be for as long as they remain in heaven. Only when they are cast from heaven and cast into the creation can change for them occur, with the primary change to come upon living angelic sons of God is to being dead angelic sons. But when change can occur, there is another change that can happen, the change that comes upon human sons of God, repentance from unbelief to belief of God.
Human sons of God, born of spirit through no “fault” of their own, experience repentance through the indwelling of the spirit of Christ that gives to these sons of God the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16). And the human person in whom Christ dwells will, for the sake of angels, subscribe to protocols intended to bring angelic sons of God to repentance. Thus, again, the physical precedes the spiritual and reveals the spiritual. So when the Apostle Paul writes, “That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels” (1 Cor 11:10), Paul is extrapolating an established protocol intended to bring angelic sons of God to repentance into revelation concerning spiritual birth.
Glorified sons of God will judge angels (1 Cor 6:3) … they will judge rebelling angels because repentance is possible. Whether rebelling angels are likely to repent will not be known until after the Second Passover, but regardless of their likeliness to repent, their rebellion against God wasn’t possible without having utterly destroyed the outer wraps of heaven (analogous to the fleshly body of Christ Jesus). And their repentance wasn’t possible until God cast these rebelling angels into the creation, where change is mandated. And it is inside the creation where protocols were established for angelic repentance; thus, the Christian woman who chooses—she has the choice—not to cover longish hair with a fabric covering is as a rebelling angel who will not repent.
It is to greater Christendom’s shame that many Observant Jews and almost all Muslim and Anabaptist Christian women cover their hair, but the majority of Christian women do not; for the protocol for submission of the body to the head has been in place for centuries, for millennia. And the woman’s relationship to her husband characterizes the relationship of the fleshly body to living inner self [soul — psuche] of the person. Therefore, the hardness of Israelite hearts that caused Moses to permit Israel to divorce should never have existed; for the living inner self of the person only exits the fleshly body at the death of the flesh. … Divorce is legal and valid, but is a violation of the protocol for angelic repentance. Thus, when rebelling angelic sons of God see human persons marrying and divorcing and marrying again, then divorcing again, and remarrying again without any apparent consequences, what are these angelic sons of God to think? That God’s words are without meaning? That would be a logical assumption. So why would these rebelling angelic sons believe they will die for their rebellion?
For rebelling angels, the creation will serve as a glorious death chamber; for to move from having “life” in this moment to the absence of life in the next moment cannot occur where the moment doesn’t change. Death requires the chronological moment in which life exists to be replaced by a new moment where life doesn’t exist. The movement from life to death requires decay, the collapse of the moment into a new moment. Without the collapse of the moment, what has life would always have life, and what doesn’t have life could never have life … there could be no resurrection of the dead.
The concept of human persons being humanly born with immortal souls comes from lies the Adversary has told angels that believed him: angels haven’t yet seen another angel die so when the Adversary tells them what the serpent told Eve, “‘You shall not surely die’” (Gen 3:4), they have no reason not to believe the Adversary; all after all, what did the Lord tell Adam, “‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Gen 2:16–17) … did Adam die when he ate forbidden fruit?
A simple question, with a known answer:
When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. (Gen 5:3–5)
Now there is an unknown spiritual answer to the question: Adam was created on Day One of the Genesis “P” creation account, and he died on Day One of this creation account. He died on the day when he ate forbidden fruit albeit that “day” continued from the creation to Calvary.
But from the perspective that angels would have, Adam does not die on the day he ate forbidden fruit. Rather, he is driven from the Garden of Eden, which in analogy equates to unbelieving angels being flushed from heaven and falling into the Abyss. Therefore, what reason would unbelieving angel presently have to repent and begin to believe God? The Adversary tells them that God is a liar—just look at what He told Adam—and they do not today have the evidence needed to confirm the words of the Lord.
Herein lies a “touchy” subject: there are disciples—Sabbatarian Christians—who would not have believed the prophets of old if they had been alive when their prophets spoke the words of the Lord, for these disciples will not believe anything unless they prove the “thing” is so from Scripture. They would not have believed John; for where in Moses can anything be found about the great White Throne Judgment? Where in Moses can anything be found about transgression of the Law not being counted against the person? They certainly would not have believed David when he wrote,
Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (Ps 32:2)
For by what authority does David write, Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity? Not by the authority of Moses, but by his own authority. And would Sabbatarian Christians, if transported back in time three millennia have believed Moses, or believed David … they would have believed Moses, for that is what they do today, not accepting anything unless they can “prove” the thing from Scripture without having first proved whether Scripture is from God. They assume scripture is of God. They call the Bible the word of God, but that is not how Scripture identifies the Word of God:
In [primacy] was the Word, and the Word was with [the] God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with [the] God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–5, 14)
If Christ is the Word of God, why would anyone say that the Bible was the word of God? Who is so ignorant as to say that a Greek novel [Acts] is the word of God? Who is so ignorant to say that the redactions of Moses by Imperial Hebrew scribes are the word of God? Who is this ignorant? And the answer is, Sabbatarian Christians; for in keeping the Sabbath—which every Christian should do—these Christians show that they are theological cowards and unworthy of coming before the throne of God. For they do not freely keep the Sabbath but keep the Sabbath out of fear of God; out of fear of transgressing a Commandment, not out of love for God.
Sabbatarian Christians who will not believe anything unless these Sabbatarians can prove the thing from Scripture are analogous to the Circumcision Faction with whom Paul contended throughout his ministry; for Paul pushed past what Moses delivered to Israel and brought to Israel knowledge not previously revealed.
There remains enough writing for two additional sections to this message; therefore, mid-thought, this message will end and another will pickup at this point.
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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."