January 22, 2016
Repairers
You shall be called the Repairer of the Breach (Isa 58:12)
[Part Five]
Again To Those not under the Law
_________________________
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)
_________________________
5.
If a person sought to establish false doctrines inside the Churches of God, what would be the best way to do so? Would it not be to insert a false passage into text generally accepted as being of every Gentile’s father in Christ, that is into an epistle of the Apostle Paul? And how would such a passage be detected when it is followed by, “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized” (1 Cor 14:37–38).
The false insertion is 1 Corinthians 14:34–35: “Women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church” (emphasis added). So, are Christians under the Law? What does Paul say,
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under Law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under Law but under grace? By no means! 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 righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Rom 6:12–18 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Christians are not under the Law, but under grace, the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness, and Christians have become slaves of righteousness, meaning that Christians are to imitate Paul as Paul imitated Christ Jesus, meaning that Christians are to keep the Law as an act of righteousness, an act of imitating Christ Jesus, but because Christians are under the Law … the outward manifestation of walking in this world as Jesus the Christ walked (1 John 2:6) and keeping the Law because the person is under the Law isn’t significantly different: the person will keep the Commandments, James’ Royal Law, but will not have (in the 1st-Century) have entered into Herod’s Temple; for the Christian is individually and collectively the Body of Christ, the temple of God in heavenly Jerusalem.
The basis for pronouncing that 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 is a false addition to Paul’s epistle, in addition to having a copy from the 4th-Century of the insertion written as a marginal note, is imbedded in the addition— as the Law also says. The Law has no authority over Christians, who again, will (because they believe God) keep the Commandments … they will keep the Commandments simply because they believe God, not because they are under the Law which would then obligate them to be outwardly circumcised, thereby preventing women from coming to the Lord. They will keep the Commandments because keeping them is the right thing to do. They will keep the Commandment because keeping them is the reasonable expectation of all who seek righteousness. They will keep the Commandment because they are slaves of righteousness. And the Christian who refuses to keep the Commandments remains a slave of disobedience, the serf of the Adversary, an impostor, a Christian impersonator who got the person’s impersonation of a genuine human son of God wrong.
But, in a time of extreme Christian cowardice, who is willing to risk not being recognized in the Churches of God to correct possible error, or even uncontroversial error? Who, really, will correct errant belief or errant text at the risk of being wrong? Is this not what Jesus did and for which He had nearly all of Judaism down on Him? So, who then is willing to not be recognized in assemblies that invite a swindler to conduct Special Music during their Sabbath services? And what if Paul really wrote what he didn’t write, what a copyist took from a marginal note and inserted into the body of the text? Who is the man willing to risk salvation to give women a voice within assemblies of God? Who is the man willing to risk salvation to return to his mother her voice, taken from her by another swindler long ago.
The Christian male concerned about his salvation will not put into jeopardy what he really doubts he possesses. So even for the sake of another Christian, a brother in Christian that dwells in a female fleshly body, the Christian with doubts simply is unwilling to risk eternal damnation for another person; he is unwilling to risk personal damnation for any reason. So he will not go beyond what has been declared from pulpits for centuries, even a millennium. Can everyone be wrong? No, of course not! And though he reads Moses’ words, Jesus’ words, John’s words, he has an excuse for his unbelief: tradition. Nearly two billion Christians worshiping on the day after the Sabbath cannot all be wrong so the doubter, a spiritual coward, worships on Sunday. Thus, for doubters, tradition trumps belief of God. And if Christian tradition supports men suppressing women within the Church, then doubters will suppress women in their worship of tradition.
Now quite a few years ago, a Norwegian wrote to this work, saying, If you are correct, then everyone else in the world is wrong—and I can’t go there. He asked to be removed from the mailing list; yet he has kept returning to the websites, at first only occasionally, then somewhat regularly, now regularly enough he ought to ask to be reinstated on the mailing list of those who receive notice of new postings when they occur.
A couple of decades ago, when living in McCammon, Idaho, I wrote an essay that was included in the collection, From the Margins (2001), the essay titled, “Smith, Logger, Fisherman, Writer.” I want to here cite the first few paragraphs of that essay:
Since the narratives of Homer, life in Western literature has been portrayed as a journey, the metaphor being that the passage of life equals distance traveled. Often the journey is a voyage, a motif present even in a story like Moby-Dick; Thoreau quietly floated the Merrimack. The downstream river trip can signify that a person can't go back in time, that an adult can't recapture his or her youth, that no fountain-of-youth exists. But Homer's Odyssey tells of a figurative upstream journey like a salmon's migration to its spawning gravel, the gravel of its birth, where it will breed and die.
A voyage into the unknown is living life itself, the unknown representing tomorrow, holding, perhaps, danger and excitement but most often the mundane. Literary heroes dared sail 20,000 leagues under the sea, or to the center of the earth, or more realistically, to trek over the Great Silk Road or mush dogs to the South Pole. A few of us humans have even walked on the moon. For more of us, though, a drift or fishing trip down Alaska's Kenai River is enough venturing into the unknown. We want to know most of what tomorrow will bring. We are not really looking for excitement, only for interesting things, those things that John Haines concedes to travel writers. The thrill-seeker is considered abnormal. We would like to have control of our lives. In literary shorthand, we want heaven when we die; we want to believe an idealized destination awaits us at the end of this voyage called life. Then the obstacles we encounter won't matter. The distance of our voyage doesn't matter. Only arriving matters. We can leave all of our problems in that metaphorical river we travel as if those problems were old tires or tin cans, oil slicks or biotoxins.
But it takes no courage to continue living shackled to the trash that the heavenbound person will leave behind at death (although nearly every religion believes humanity's ultimate destination is heaven, the focus of ancient Hebrew prophets was making the deserts here on earth bloom). It takes courage to clean up that left-behind trash, to pickup those pieces of our character that hang like plastic grocery bags on submerged tree branches … I once sailed out of Kodiak, heading for Whale Pass and Raspberry Strait. We were outbound for a week of longlining halibut. My wife was putting away boat groceries, and after rounding Buoy Four, I looked behind us to see if a following vessel had made the turn or whether its skipper was heading directly across Marmot Bay. And there behind us, one every one hundred yards or so, were floating the cardboard boxes in which we had packed our groceries aboard, each bobbing like a buoy. They were like the crumbs of Hansel & Gretel.
All of us leave a trail, but not all of us leave distinguishable footprints.
Courage is required to take that first step into an uncharted tomorrow, one in which our character is our only marker. It is there, at that first step, where most journeys end, or rather, fail to begin. Once a person is well on his or her way into the unknown, coping, adapting, learning, stretching oneself to do what wasn't before possible takes over. The momentum of the journey doesn't let a person think about not continuing. Explorer, pioneer, pilgrim--few have seen themselves as courageous. Survival is what the journey is about until the unknown becomes the familiar. Courage is about getting started.
How much courage does it take to pronounce that the Apostle Paul did not write 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, or any of the so-called Pastoral Epistles? Not much when the one who makes the pronouncement is not concerned about personal salvation, a gift from God that either has been received or hasn’t been. If it has been received, then salvation isn’t a concern. If it hasn’t yet been received, then salvation is always on the Christian’s mind … concern about salvation is foregrounded in all that this Christian does and thinks: this Christian fears the Second Death, and is therefor a coward, doing what this Christian knows is right and good as Job was perfect in all his ways not out of love for God, Father and Son, but out of fear of God. The outward acts of the person who is perfect in the person’s ways out of fear looks the same as the acts of the person who is perfect out of love for God. But God doesn’t respond to both persons in the same way: He hears the prayers of the one who acts out of love for Him.
But coming back to where this began, it isn’t giving women a voice in assemblies of God that is of importance: it is the priority of “belief of God” over the Law that is of importance for no person can honestly say that the person believes God without also keeping the Commandments because the person believes God. Not because of anything Moses commanded.
In this world, it takes courage for a Christian to begin keeping the Sabbath … a Christian coward is hesitant to buck traditions. But Christian cowards are evenly dispersed percentage-wise within and without Sabbatarian Christendom; for there are Christians fearful to not keep the Commandments, as well as Christians fearful of what friends and neighbors will think of them if they jettison the pagan conventions of greater Christendom. So very few Christians will act to address obvious problems imbedded in the faith from antiquity. Very few Christians will challenge the basis of the Christian’s belief of God. And this is especially evident in assigning meaning to biblical prophecies.
You, reader, yes, you, what do you think about Daniel’s visions? Were they for the time of the end as they claim to be, or were they fulfilled by the march of secular empires, the Babylonian Empire followed by the Medo-Persian Empire, followed by the Greek Empire followed by the Roman Empire … what about the Chinese Empire, the equal of the Roman Empire in all things? Why would it be excluded when Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that he shall rule over the children of men wherever they dwell?
Nebuchadnezzar never ruled over the children of men in Chile, Peru, Equador; never ruled over “Americans” in Central America; never ruled over the Chinese Empire. So how can Nebuchadnezzar be the head of gold of the humanoid image that both he and Daniel saw in vision? He cannot be. So Daniel speaks royal hyperbole [Daniel lies to the king] when Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar,
You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold. (Dan 2:27–38).
But Daniel doesn’t lie: rather, Daniel speaks to Nebvuchadnezzar, but speaks about a different referent for <the King of Babylon>. Daniel’s referent was a king who is not Nebuchadnezzar, but who is an invisible spiritual king that does rule today as well as in Nebuchadnezzar’s day over the mental landscape of living entities. This spiritual King of Babylon is the Adversary, who will not have his dominion over living creatures taken from him until halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation. Then, and not before then, will Babylon the Great (not Babylon the Physical) fall.
Why do Christians tend to read their sacred texts in a truly sloppy manner? Why do Christians not pay attention to the words on the page? They are, by the very nature of reading fully alphabetized texts, consciously or unconsciously assigning meanings to the words they read; so why not read all of the words with adding words as translators did in Matthew 26:17, or inverting meaning by changing word order as in Matthew 24:4.
So, Christian, how do you read Daniel’s visions? Is Nebuchadnezzar the head of gold of the human image he saw in vision? If he is, how did Nebuchadnezzar rule over the Chinese if he truly had dominion over the children of men wherever they dwelt? How did Nebuchadnezzar rule over the beasts of the field, over wild dogs or lions, over migrating eagles and hawks, pigeons and storks? Or are we not to believe the plain words of Scripture? And if Christians are not to believe Scripture, what is the basis for the Christian religion? Traditions received from 4th-Century Roman bishops? And then which traditions, those Constantine addressed at the Council of Nocea (ca 325 CE), or those of his sons, schooled by Eusebius of Nicomedia to be Arian Christians?
Again, the plain words of Daniel telling Nebuchadnezzar that he is the head of gold of the image he saw in vision either is or isn’t true. And in the same passage, the plain words of Daniel telling Nebuchadnezzar that he rules the children of men wherever they dwell either is or isn’t true … what do you, Christian, say? Answer! Did Daniel lie to Nebuchadnezzar? He didn’t tell him the literal truth. Perhaps Daniel didn’t know the truth; perhaps the Lord didn’t reveal all that was true to a youthful Daniel? How are endtime disciples to know what Daniel knew or didn’t know? And if the Lord didn’t reveal all there was to know to Daniel, how much exactly was revealed to Daniel?
Christian, did your teachers tell you that for as long as Emperor Constantine’s family held the Roman title of Augustus, the family leaned toward Arianism thanks to the work of Eusebius of Nicomedia, with Eusebius having baptized Constantine before he died … Christian, as a Trinitarian, was Constantine’s baptism valid? Answer if you can? Is your own baptism valid?
Now returning to giving women back their voices within Sabbatarian Christian fellowships: can Christians use Scripture to judge Scripture, or should they “judge” Scripture? … The problem inherent in reading Scripture is comprehending the Chronology of Salvation that Paul expressed when he wrote, by the hand of Tertius,
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Rom 1:18–25 emphasis added)
The unrighteousness of humanity—the unbelief of God of humanity—suppresses the truth; i.e., the revealing of what has been concealed [the negation of things hidden from human persons]. For the revealing of what has been concealed comes from understanding the Chronology of Salvation, which has the physical things of this world such as Israel’s enslavement in Egypt followed by Israel’s Passover liberation from physical slavery in a physical land by a physical king, revealing the spiritual things of God such as humanity’s spiritual enslavement by Sin and Death, the demonic kings of the South and the North.
So now, Christian, what do you say about your righteousness? Are you striving to imitate Christ as Paul sought to imitate Christ, or do you use a lame excuse for continuing in your unbelief such as no one is righteous …
What you, Christian, say is true but not the truth; for human righteousness is more complicated than simply not transgressing Laws, ordinances, statutes, and rules given by the Lord to ancient Israel. Righteousness is believing God to the degree that the person’s belief determines the person’s acts.
When unbelief is wed to fear, a Christian will keep the Commandments with hands and body, but not with heart and mind. For example, the Christian coward will claim that what Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar is true all the while knowing that Nebuchadnezzar really didn’t rule over the Chinese people. But this Christian coward will invent a lame excuse for why what Daniel told the king is true without being true, an excuse such as the Bible is written from the perspective of earthly Jerusalem so Nebuchadnezzar ruled the children of men everywhere they dwelt between Babylon and Jerusalem. Lands east of Babylon didn’t count for God had given these lands to Gentiles. Likewise, lands beyond the sea didn’t count, same reason. So what Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar was true for Israel, the firstborn son of the Lord (Ex 4:22), and therefore true for endtime Israel.
If the Chinese people and empire didn’t count in the days of Daniel, they do not count today—and that is wrong!
So you Christian coward, unbeliever, transgressor that you are, what is your judgment? Was Emperor Constantine’s baptism by the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia valid? Is your baptism valid? And if your baptism is valid, why do you not take the Christian Passover sacraments of broken unleavened bread and wine, representing the body and blood of the Passover Lamb of God, on the Passover, the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month? For your judgment in these matters will determine whether you live or die spiritually, either living because you believe God or dying because you do not believe God?
One more question before I let you go: do you hear the voice of Christ telling you that Daniel’s visions are not about human kings and empires, but about demonic kings and compacts made between demonic kings? If you do not, then realize that you will not stand when the Adversary and his servants, alleged ministers of God, come against you.
The Commandments of themselves are really of no spiritual importance if the person doesn’t believe God. They only assume spiritual importance as the outward manifestation of inner belief of God. And without this inner belief, keeping the Commandments is merely unprofitable legalism.
The husband who would rule his wife with a heavy hand is a Nicolaitan who practices unprofitable legalism. The person who would rule others with as heavy hand is a Nicolaitan. And the glorified Jesus says He hates the works of Nicolaitans (Rev 2:6) … if you as a pastor impose keeping the Law as a condition of assembling in a fellowship of the Church of God, you as a pastor are a Nicolaitan, your works hated by God. You have not even started to walk in the footsteps of Christ Jesus; for your father in Christ isn’t Paul, isn’t John, isn’t even Christ Jesus, but is the Adversary.
If you engage in a platonic relationship with another person without first having deep and openly manifested love for the other person; if you try to “teach” another person by withholding favors or attention, you are a Nicolaitan, a person who seeks to aggrandize the self and not the other person … you are to bestow honor on even the person who isn’t honorable so that God, Father and Son, will honor you who also isn’t honorable. And for Sabbatarian Christians, this means we are to show honor to unlovely, Sunday-keeping Christians who will try to kill us following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel.
Greater Christendom condemns the legalism of keeping the Commandments by deliberately flaunting them; for to break one Commandment is to make oneself into a lawbreaker, a transgressor, a sinner. Thus for a Christian to break the Sabbath Commandment makes this Christian an unrighteous transgressor before God.
Just as Christians collectively choose to eat ham on Easter to prove to each other that they are not Jews, Christians collectively choose to worship on Sunday to prove to themselves that they are not Jews, their anti-Semitism exceeding all logical bounds, thereby producing the basis for their spiritual enslavement as sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) so that God can have mercy on them at their Second Passover liberation from indwelling Sin and Death. But mercy alone will not keep the Christians from rebelling against God.
If God, against whom unbelieving Christians openly sin, will have mercy on sons of disobedience, how much more should Sabbatarian Christendom in this present era show love to self-righteous Trinitarians and Arians? However, collectively, Sabbatarian Christendom is without love: Sabbatarians are too busy being Nicolaitans to humble themselves before unbelieving Christians.
Following the First Passover liberation of Israel in the days of Moses, the Lord gave Israel the Law, thereby bringing Sin to life so that Sin might devour unbelieving Israelites. Likewise, following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel God the Father will fill every Christian with His spirit [pneuma Theou], thereby writing the Law on the hearts and placing the Law in the minds of every Christian—and by this means, teaching every Christian to know the Lord—so that the Law might condemn the inner selves of unbelieving Christians in a wilderness of Sin, unbelief.
What the Lord did with Israel in Egypt, God the Father will do with Christians dwelling inside of greater Christendom in this present age. For the reality of the tenth plague began with the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb of God at Calvary … spiritually, the First Unleavened (from Matt 26:17, in Greek) represents the entirety of the Christian era from Calvary to the Second Passover liberation of a second nation of Israel. And as Paul was the father of the holy ones at Corinth (1 Cor 4:15), endtime disciples also have an earthly father in Christ. But the many guides [führers] that endtime disciples have, coupled to the traditions of the past, keep endtime disciples from even considering the possibly that they have an earthly father. Perhaps this is as it should be. Perhaps the symbolism of the moment that has greater Christendom in this era corresponding to Israel in Egypt (see Ezek 20:5-8) will only work if greater Christendom in the Chronology of Salvation is where Israel was when Moses killed the Egyptian and fled into the wilderness, meaning that the Second Advent remains in the future a symbolic distance that corresponds to Moses’ forty years in Midian, and forty years leading Israel in the wilderness, with Moses’ forty years in the wilderness representing the seven endtime years of tribulation. This will have—if the symbolism is valid—the Second Passover still seven plus years in the future, the Second Advent fourteen plus years in the future.
The concept of chirality undergirds all of Scripture: the visible physical things of this world, analogous to a person’s left hand, reveal and precede the invisible spiritual things of God, analogous to a person’s right hand (e.g., Rom 1:20; 1 Cor 15:46).
The mythical key of David represents Hebraic chirality, where in poetry the first line of a thought-couplet represents what is physical and of the flesh whereas the second line of the couplet represents what is spiritual and of the divine. For Christians this is what Paul as the father in Christ of Gentile converts taught in the first decades following Calvary. This ministry teaches the same.
Now concerning Daniel’s visions, let it again be here said the historical events that “sealed” and “kept secret” Daniel’s visions until humanity arrived at the generic time of the end were physical and were analogous to Christ Jesus’ fleshly body that died at Calvary. The visions themselves are spiritual and analogous to Jesus’ living inner self that preached to imprisoned spirits for the three earthly days and nights when Jesus’ body was in the heart of the earth. And the person who remains physically minded will inevitably believe that Daniel’s visions are about the earthly events that sealed them and kept them secret for roughly 2,500 years. It is only the twice-born disciple—and then only when this disciple has spiritual maturity equivalent to the physical maturity of a human three-year-old child—that is able to comprehend that Daniel’s vision are about cosmic forces and entities interacting with humanity during the first three and a half years of seven endtime years of tribulation. Daniel’s visions are not about the course of history from the 6th-Century BCE to the end of the age.
In His fleshly body, Christ Jesus represented heaven itself.
The indwelling spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] that was in the soul [psuche] of Christ that was in the fleshly body that died at Calvary forms the metonymical representation of “heaven” and its wraps. For the nails by which Romans hung Jesus from the cross; the piercing of the side of Jesus that created the wound out of which poured water and blood; the mangling of Jesus’ flesh through scourging—none of these physical things damaged Jesus’ soul and by extension, Jesus’ spirit. Thus, with Jesus’ fleshly body [the human body] serving as a maquette of heaven, we see that the Adversary’s rebellion wounded heaven unto death, but did not harm God or His Beloved. Therefore, the creation of a new heaven is what’s presently in play, with human sons of God to replace unbelieving [thus rebelling] angelic sons of God virtually one for one as the children of Israel replaced the nation of Israel that left Egypt virtually man for man (e.g., Num chap 26; chap 1).
For the seemingly umpteenth time, with God, the physical precedes and reveals the spiritual in all things, with the physical and spiritual together forming an enantiomorph, the left hand enantiomer being physical, the right hand being spiritual. Hence, the glorified Jesus sat down in heaven at the right hand of God.
The introduction of the Azazel with the sins of Israel read over the head of this goat that is half of the sin offering for Israel signifies the beginning of when the sins of Israel are covered by the blood of Christ, by His righteousness, euphemistically called “grace.” Again, it is His life after death that “covers” spiritual transgressions. Therefore, the symbolism that Yom Kipporim represents is satisfied by Christ’s death at Calvary—by the death of His fleshly body—and by the Ascension of Christ Jesus’ inner self in a body reflecting the glory He had before the kosmos existed.
It is Christ’s inner self in a body reflecting the glory of God that is now seated at the right hand of God, where humanity presently resides in the chronology of the Holy Days and festivals of God. For Christians in this present era, Christians reside in the First Unleavened. For those who do not pretend that they know Christ, humanity symbolically resides in the four day window between Yom Kipporim and Sukkoth.
The Apostle Paul’s authority to command the holy ones at Corinth to put the man who was with his father’s wife out of the fellowship, thereby delivering this man to the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh, came from Paul being the father in Christ of these holy ones, not their pastor or fuhrer. Today, Paul remains the father in Christ of believing Gentile converts. But in this present world, fathers do not receive much respect: they are portrayed on television as bumblers that cannot seem to do or get anything right. And the Apostle Paul as the father of every endtime Christian convert is no different: greater Christendom clutches from Paul a word here and one there without seriously attempting to read what Paul wrote. They think they know what Paul said. They certainly don’t want to be troubled by having to read Paul for themselves. So they take what they have been taught by their “guide,” their fuhrer, and they crawl forward, leaving behind a silvery slime trail.
Christians are to keep the Passover because Yom Kipporim signifies Christ Jesus afflicting Himself through bearing the transgressions of Israel at Calvary; the transgressions of His younger siblings during the First Unleavened, the period that precedes the reality of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, this reality being the seven endtime years of tribulation (i.e., the Affliction, Kingdom, and Endurance in Jesus), analogous to Israel eating the Bread of Affliction for the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when Israel is to live without sin.
From where you ask did that paragraph come? Before answering, remember in the Holy Day chronology the seven High Sabbaths of God represent the two harvests of humanity, one at the beginning of the Millennium and the second harvest being a Thousand Years later. But within the spring High Sabbaths and festivals the entirety of the Holy Day chronology is represented. So too with the fall High Sabbaths and festivals. Thus the harvest of firstfruits is magnified by the spring High Sabbaths, with the harvest of firstfruits (analogous to the early barley harvest of ancient Judean hillsides) forming the shadow and type—the left hand enantiomer—of the general harvest of humanity in the great White Throne Judgment. Thus, in the spring High Sabbaths is seen the main-crop harvest of humanity that occurs at the end of the Thousand Years.
Within the present Holy Day chronology of seven High Sabbaths are representations of events that will come to pass when dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man. Therefore, in the Millennium (i.e., following the Second Advent and the resurrection of firstfruits), there will no longer be observance of the Feast of Trumpets or of Yom Kipporim.
Now, you Christian, what have you been taught by your fuhrer about the High Sabbaths of God. Anything at all? Have you been taught that the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost? If you were, from where did that teaching come? Certainly not from John’s Gospel, in which Jesus appears to His disciples, breathes on them, and says, Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22), on the same day as He was resurrected from death and had ascended to God the Father.
The Book of Acts is a Second Sophist novel, probably the only ancient Greek novel most Christians will ever read. And the author of Acts is utterly without spiritual understanding or knowledge … Acts isn’t history, but a work of fiction with stock motifs used by Second Sophist novelists, including the shipwreck.
There is much more that can be written about the cowardice of Christians, but the much more will do no good. The Christian who will not keep the Sabbath for some flimsy reason is a coward, a beaten dog that’s good for nothing. This person is worthy of death in the lake of fire, but as long as this person remains physically alive, he or she can repent; can begin over the person’s walk with Christ. Hope remains for the person, but that is all that remains—and that “hope” is fading fast.
Enough material in this writing remains for one more installment, which will not pickup here but will return to the discussion of Yom Kipporim.
* * *
"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."