December 7, 2014
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Repairers
You shall be called the Repairer of the Breach (Isa 58:12)
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Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God.
“Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?”
Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and He will say, “Here I am.” If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. (Isa 58:1–10)
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1.
The one who breaks the bonds of wickedness by sharing his or her bread with the hungry or by bringing the homeless into his or her house shall spiritually accomplish the purpose of physical fasting (i.e., going without food and drink for a day or longer); for an Israelite should not fast to get his or her way with God, but to humble the self before God. Thus, the question now should be, how does feeding the hungry equate with humbling the self? Would not feeding the hungry be an elevation of the hungry, the homeless, or the naked, bringing the person who has nothing up to the level of the person who has, thereby treating the one who has nothing as if he were a brother?
Ask yourself, doesn’t sharing what one has with one who lacks bring equality between have and have-not? If it does, then this equality doesn’t come through pulling down the one who has to the level of the one who is without, but comes about through raising the one without to the level of the one who has. This is the antithesis of progressive socialism: take from the rich and give to the poor, with civil government taking a substantial percentage of what the rich has as the administrative fee for facilitating this transfer of wealth.
Elevating the poor by bringing the poor into the home of the one who has is the antithesis of the ways of this world that seek to redistribute wealth by taking from whomever has acquired much and giving a percentage of what has been stolen to the one who has not. In practicality, all redistributive schema have the unintended consequence of making the rich richer and locking the poor into generational poverty; for feeding the hungry equates to fasting, the humbling of the individual, not from going without food and drink but humbling by reminding the one who has that wealth isn’t permanent; that worldly wealth cannot be taken to heaven; that the brother who lacks is also a man, a person, like the one who has.
Fasting—going without food and drink—has little physical benefit for the healthy person, but fasting’s spiritual benefits are oriented around the one who fasts being reminded that he or she is mortal, sustained outwardly by the fruits of the ground and the water of the brook [even when it comes from an underground aquifer]; sustained by those things that the Lord created whether through galactic collisions or quietly by speaking the world into existence. Fasting permits the person to humbly come before God and thank God for the life that the person has. And to this end, feeding the hungry permits the person who has to see what genuine hunger looks like—and it doesn’t look like hunger in 21st-Century America, where the impoverished have cell-phones and wide-screen television sets. For more than enough food is daily thrown away to feed America the following day.
Progressive socialism in a wealthy society is not about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, but about the transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector, where those in the public sector use this wealth to keep themselves atop the social pyramid first built by Egyptian pharaohs.
In the most concise application of democracy found in Scripture, Moses angrily tells those who challenged his authority that he hasn’t used his authority to enrich himself:
Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, "You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?" When Moses heard it, he fell on his face, and he said to Korah and all his company, "In the morning the Lord will show who is His, and who is holy, and will bring him near to Him. The one whom He chooses He will bring near to Him. Do this: take censers, Korah and all his company; put fire in them and put incense on them before the Lord tomorrow, and the man whom the Lord chooses shall be the holy one. You have gone too far, sons of Levi!" And Moses said to Korah, "Hear now, you sons of Levi: is it too small a thing for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself, to do service in the tabernacle of the Lord and to stand before the congregation to minister to them, and that He has brought you near Him, and all your brothers the sons of Levi with you? And would you seek the priesthood also? Therefore it is against the Lord that you and all your company have gathered together. What is Aaron that you grumble against him?" And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and they said, "We will not come up. Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, that you must also make yourself a prince over us? Moreover, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up." And Moses was very angry and said to the Lord, "Do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them, and I have not harmed one of them." (Num 16:1–15, emphasis added)
The princes of this world use their authority to enrich themselves. Presidents, Senators, and Representatives of the people go to Washington D.C. as individuals of modest means and inevitably leave as the wealthy of America. Why? Because the trappings of authority easily lend themselves to the acquisition of worldly wealth which very seldom is used by the one who has acquired this wealth to personally feed the hungry or clothe the naked. No, retired politicians hang onto their wealth so that in death, their cold dead fingers have to be pried from their “gold,” used figuratively.
The clingers of America aren’t those who hang onto their guns and God as President Obama once said, but those that hang onto their wealth, doing whatever it takes to preserve what they have accumulated lawfully or otherwise.
The person who fasts physically humbles him or herself by going without food and drink—a fast isn’t giving up peanut butter for a week while continuing to fill his or her belly with caviar. A physical fast is, in reality, giving up sin and the ways of this world for some period of time, but in moving from physical to spiritual, the physical fast translates as manifested love for neighbor and brother through the humbling of the self in bringing the person who would not be considered one’s brother into the home so that he [or she] can eat and no longer feel the pangs of hunger, all the while remembering that at one time, your ancestors were sojourners who needed a helping hand.
Why did the patriarch Jacob send his sons down to Egypt to get grain? Was it not because famine gripped the land of Canaan? And after Joseph toyed with his brothers, what did he do? Did he not invite his brothers and father to come live with him, thereby sharing what he had with his brothers by birth as an example for spiritual sons of God?
The yoke of being a Christian is light …
The cost of American citizenship is small in comparison to the cost of citizenship in the remainder of the world, but there is a cost, one that unfortunately will cause most American Christians to lose their spiritual lives—and that is a price greater than the worth of American citizenship.
Few Americans fast; even fewer in the 21st-Century feed the hungry by inviting them into their homes where the hungry will eat as if a family member … an immediate objection should come to mind: in this present world, it’s unwise to invite strangers into one’s home. It’s not safe. The hungry are not necessarily honorable. It is more likely they’re criminals. So Americans have developed the practice of doing good deeds from a distance: the canned food drives; contributions to food banks. Food stamps [bridge cards] are part of the social safety net intended to insure that there is no hunger in America and as such is the most distant form of feeding hungry neighbors available to Americans, and is psychologically comparable to sending famine relief through an U.N. agency. But distance equates to detachment: feeding the hungry from a distance doesn’t serve to humble the self, and as such doesn’t serve the spiritual purpose for fasting.
But again, inviting strangers into one’s home is risky. So perhaps the hungry or homeless or naked shouldn’t remain strangers to the Christian.
2.
A person fasts to break the bonds that tether a person to this world, this concept expressed by Christ Jesus in Mark’s Gospel:
But turning and seeing His disciples, He [Jesus] rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." And calling the crowd to Him with His disciples, He said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." (Mark 8:33–38 double emphasis added)
If anyone would come after me, that is follow Christ Jesus, this “anyone” must deny himself [or herself]—
For a person to deny him or herself and to then pull up whatever tethers the person to this world [the stake that tethers, the cross representing death] and follow Christ Jesus will cause the person to be out of sync with the remainder of the world while still dwelling in it. This is the person who is truly not ashamed of Christ as he or she walks in this world as the man Jesus, an observant Jew, walked, meaning that this person will walk without intentionally transgressing the Law.
The person who walks as a Gentile while claiming to be a Christian is ashamed of Christ, giving lip-service to honoring God and Christ but at the same time being unwilling to bear the stigma of living in this world as a Judean. This person is a coward—and no coward will enter the kingdom of the heavens.
In actuality, what tethers us to this world if not death? Our physical bodies are mortal. They are of this world and they will not leave this world: “I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Cor 15:50 emphasis added). Therefore, human mortality is what tethers us to this world and is what prevents us from following Christ Jesus, who came from heaven and returned to heaven.
What would prevent a person from walking in this world as an outwardly uncircumcised [not circumcised on the eighth day] Judean? Would embarrassment, a carnal response to questioning by friends and family about why a person seeks to walk as Jesus walked, keeping the Royal Law, the dietary laws, the High Sabbaths?
Christians assume that their pastors and teachers have accurately presented to them the basic tenets of Christianity, even when the tenets taught differ substantially with how Jesus lived His life in this world. But what if this is not the case? What if Christians have been misled by pastors and teachers? What if greater Christianity was coopted by the Adversary before the end of the 1st-Century? Remember, Paul wrote to the holy ones at Thessalonica,
Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day 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. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only He who now restrains it will do so until He is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath [pneuma] of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of His coming. (2 Thess 2:3–8)
There is a line in what Paul wrote that seems to transcend time: the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, followed by, bring to nothing by the appearance of His coming … Paul expected Christ Jesus to return in his lifetime, as he wrote in his first epistle to Thessalonians:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thess 4:13–18 emphasis added)
Therefore it was reasonable for Paul to butt the mystery of lawlessness is already at work tightly next to bring to nothing by the appearance of His coming, for Paul didn’t anticipate two millennia passing between these two clauses being fulfill.
In the same way, Paul wrote to the holy ones at Corinth:
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. (1 Cor 10:1–11 emphasis added)
Was the end of the age upon 1st-Century saints in Corinth? No, it wasn’t …
The Christian pastor or teacher who is without understanding fails to grasp that in typology time can be compressed or expanded as needed—and the compression of time that has occurred will have all that happened on the first unleavened (from Matt 26:17), the preparation day for the High Sabbath (the First Day of Unleavened Bread, the 15th day of the first month), representing the entirety of the Christian era, from Calvary to the Second Passover liberation of Israel, with the seven years (2520 days) following the Second Passover represented by the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
So there is no misunderstanding, the 14th day of Aviv in typology represents the Christian era, from when Jesus breathed on ten of His first disciples and said, Receive breath holy (John 20:22) on the late afternoon of the fourth day of the Feast in the year 31 CE all the way to the Second Passover liberation of Israel on the second Passover in the 21st-Century in a year when the 15th day of the second month [Iyyar] is on a Thursday. The second decade of the 21st-Century has three such years: 2011, 2014, and 2017, with the first two having passed somewhat uneventfully.
Because the day [Thursday] to date [the 15th day] combination of the Passover in the year 31 CE (with the 14th day of Aviv in this year occurring on Wednesday, April 25th (Julian), a date that is on rabbinical Judaism’s calculated calendar when counting backwards before the existence of this calendar, the 14th day of Iyyar), it can be known with certainty that Christ will not return at any moment, as greater Christendom tends to teach. Christ will return seven years after the Second Passover liberation of Israel … the entirety of the Christian era is typologically represented by a single calendar day, the Preparation Day for the High Sabbath, the great Sabbath of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (see John 19:31 in Greek). Therefore, regardless of when a disciple is drawn from this world, Christ Jesus is crucified for the disciple while the disciple remains a sinner (Rom 5:8), even though the disciple isn’t humanly born until 1900 or more years after Calvary.
The preceding is likely to boggle carnal minds: from the perspective of the heavenly realm, all Christians truly born of spirit will have Christ Jesus dying for their sins on a single day, the Preparation Day for the Great Sabbath of the Sabbath. By this same principle, all born of spirit Christians will be glorified on the same day, regardless of when the Christian dies physically. But this will be the subject of a future Repairer.
Seven solar years equals seven prophetic years plus 35 days, with these 35 days being accounted for in the difference between beginning the count for the seven prophetic years on the second Passover and finishing the count seven years later on the 10th day of the first month, the day when the children of Israel entered the Promised Land (Josh 4:19), the day when the Passover lamb was chosen (Ex 12:2–3), and the day when Christ Jesus entered Jerusalem as the Passover Lamb of God and as the future High Priest of Israel (cf. John 12:1, 12).
John the Baptist’s ministry preceded Christ Jesus’ ministry—and as Christ’s ministry ascended in importance, John’s ministry declined. And so will it be with the work being presently done, including the work of repairers of the breach and restorers of streets. And the work that will eclipse this present work is that of the two witnesses, who are initially sent to greater Christendom, but have their greatest impact among the third part of humanity in the Endurance in Jesus, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years … the two witnesses will have been martyred and then raised from death at the end of the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years. Thus, the two witnesses will not see with physical eyes the impact of the work they do in the Endurance, impact coming from them having proclaimed in the Affliction the endtime gospel that all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22).
All shall be saved because all will have been baptized in spirit and whereby filled with spirit while at the same time being prevented from buying and selling [even bartering] and therefore having to rely upon God for their daily sustenance … faith [belief of God] will come easier when a person has to take upon him or herself the mark of death to buy or sell.
As the Lord fed Israel and the children of Israel in the wilderness with manna, bread from heaven, God will “feed” Christians in the Affliction and the third part of humanity in the Endurance with Christ Jesus, true Bread from heaven. Under the New Covenant, God will write the Law on hearts and place it inside all of Israel so that all know the Lord. All will have “eaten” knowledge, not physical food. And simultaneously, God will provide those things needed to maintain physical life for as long as this physical life is needed for the spiritual growth of the person’s inner self.
Again, in moving from physical to spiritual, physical food such as firstfruit barley or main-crop wheat doesn’t translate as quail and manna, what Israel ate in the wilderness, but as Christ Jesus [the First of the firstfruits] and His disciples [all firstfruits] and the remainder of humanity who appear in the great White Throne Judgment, the main-crop of humanity … spiritual food isn’t what can be eaten with mouths or taken in by minds, but is the indwelling of Christ Jesus in the form of His spirit [pneuma Christou].
How does a disciple “feed” the hungry when the true Bread that has come down from heaven is Christ Jesus? But before wrestling with this question, another question needs to be considered: what if one of the two witnesses is outwardly uncircumcised, a male born at home, weighed on poultry scales and not circumcised on the day of his birth or on the eighth day? What if this male was born at home because a tornado was passing through at the hour of his birth, this tornado being symbolic of the natural rage inside him, rage held in check by the trappings of civility? What if this rage is directed toward the Adversary and the false prophet throughout the Affliction? How will the world fare if such a man were one of the two witnesses?
The two witnesses do not emerge on the world scene prior to when the Adversary is dealt a below-the-belt blow that staggers spiritual Babylon, causing this single kingdom representing the present prince of this world to wobble and stumble, and to fall when hit by one more blow three years later.
The two witnesses will not be Moses and Elijah, but will be two brothers analogous to Moses and Aaron: they will be typological images of Moses and Aaron, with birth order reversed in their chirality.
What if Moses entering into the presence of the Lord so that the glory of the Lord shown from his face for the remainder of his life represents being truly born of spirit whereas Aaron not entering into the presence of God during Israel’s trek through the wilderness represents not being born of spirit even though filled with spirit? Would greater Christendom heed the words of two such natural brothers, especially before the Second Passover liberation of Israel? How were Moses and Aaron received by Israel in Egypt? Can we know?
The foremen of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they [Pharaoh’s men] said, "You shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day." They met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them, as they came out from Pharaoh; and they said to them, "The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us." Then Moses turned to [YHWH] and said, "O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all." (Ex 5:19–23 emphasis added)
Those Israelite who cooperated with the Egyptians, serving as foremen or headmen over their brothers, were made to stink in the eyes of Pharaoh and his henchmen because of what Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh in asking him to let the people of God go three days journey into the wilderness so they could serve the Lord … before the Passover liberation of Israel, Aaron came to Moses—and the Lord made Moses god to Aaron, thereby putting His words in Moses’ mouth and in Aaron’s mouth (Ex 4:16), with Moses to speak with the Lord and Aaron to speak to the people of Israel.
If one of the two witnesses were to be outwardly uncircumcised, would not it be logical for this witness to speak to the outwardly uncircumcised? Again, would it not be logical for the outwardly uncircumcised [that is, not circumcised on the eighth day] to speak to outwardly uncircumcised Israelites; whereas the other, born of spirit, would speak with the Lord as speaking to his elder brother?
The Apostle Paul laid the foundational stones for the living temple of God … the pillars of the temple stand on the foundation Paul laid, these pillars stretching from Calvary to the Second Passover, the entirety of the spiritual Preparation Day.
So now, how does a Christian feed another spiritual food—Christ Jesus—when the other refuses to eat? What “food” can be fed to the person who openly rejects Christ Jesus? And the answer is found in, what does it profit a man to have honor and acclaim in this world, over which the Adversary reigns as its prince? Does this honor and acclaim come from God or the Adversary … it comes from the Adversary, again the presently reigning prince of the power of the air. And it comes with a heavy price, spiritual death.
And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isa 58:11–14)
The seven endtime years of tribulation is about putting first greater Christendom, then the remainder of the world in the position where Christ Jesus is the only food that satisfies; for the endtime years of tribulation will humble humanity, bringing even the self-righteous to the point where all who endure to the end without marking themselves for death will be saved. They will be saved because they got past physical fasting and opened homes and hearts to the hungry, the homeless, the naked. They got past fearing strangers. They grew past their own self-interests and came to love others as much as they loved themselves. And about this “love” more will be written in forthcoming Repairers.
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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."