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After Their Likeness 1. As The Apostle Paul wrote that
“the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23) … if the wages of sin is death,
two questions must be asked: (1) what is sin, and (2) what constitutes death?
In addition, if the free gift of God is eternal life the question must be
asked, what constitutes eternal life? Or is Paul to be believed?
Augustine of Hippo wrote, “This faith maintains, and it must be believed:
neither the soul nor the human body may suffer complete annihilation, but the
impious shall rise again into everlasting punishment, and the just into life
everlasting” (On Christian Doctrine.
Bk 1, XXI. Trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr.) … if the impious do not suffer
complete annihilation, then for Augustine, “death” does not mean
that a person returns to the dust of the earth as a beast does, what Solomon in
his wisdom stated (Eccl 3:18–20), but a person has an immortal soul not
received as the free gift of God but received by a man having his way with a
woman. And indeed this is Augustine’s position for he also wrote,
“A great thing is man, made in the image and likeness of God, not in that
he is encased in a mortal body, but in that he excels the beasts in the dignity
of a rational soul” (Bk. 1, XXII). Augustine presumed that man was
already made in the image and likeness of God. He presumed that the sixth day
of the Genesis chapter one creation account (the so-called “P”
account) saw the creation of Adam and Eve. But if the “P” account
is about the visible physical creation of all that is, then it is contradicted
by the account of Adam’s creation which begins: These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when
they were created, in the day that the Lord God [YHWH Elohim] made the earth and the
heavens. (Gen 2:4) In this so-called “J”
or “E” creation account, Adam is created on the same day God
created the heavens [plural] and the earth—and the “P”
account begins, “In the beginning, God created [filled] the heavens and
the earth” (Gen 1:1). What part of the plural heavens is not created in
the beginning, before light comes on day one? What portion of the earth is not
created in verse one? Are dry lands formed on which Elohim [singular in usage] can make the man Adam from red mud? Yes,
they are; for Adam is created from mud so there is dry land. Adam is created
before there is bush or shrub, or any other living creature. He is first, as
Jesus of Nazareth, the second Adam, is the First of the firstfruits of God. If the presumption that Adam and
Eve are the man [lower case adam] and the women of the sixth day is
abandoned—this presumption cannot be supported from Scripture and is
actually contrary to Scripture—then what becomes apparent is that the
first Adam and the first Eve, created from the flesh and bone of the man, are
not yet in the image and likeness of God, a life-giving Spirit
who is not composed of flesh and bone.
Adam is created on the dark portion of day one, not on the sixth day,
with Christ Jesus being the light of this day one (2 Cor 4:6). Augustine’s
assumption that man had a rational soul is premature, for the first man was
composed of the base elements of this earth. And this first man was driven from
the There is much
“creating” or filling of the earth that occurs between day one and
the sixth day when adam [humankind]
is resurrected from death to be like Elohim
in image and in kind. In the days of
“filling” between day one and the sixth day, a hierarchy of life is
created, but created after the divine Breath of God is visibly seen in verse
two—and this divine Breath of God was not seen even on that day of
Pentecost following Calvary; it was only heard[2].
The “P” creation accounts moves from describing a physical creation
to describing an invisible spiritual creation in Genesis 1:2. But this
spiritual creation can only be described metaphorically in words that are
commonly used for the things of this world. Human languages have few words that
pertain only to the invisible things of God. And where these few words are
used, they have been misused for so long that a regular plural like Elohim [the plural of Eloah] has been given linguistic
singleness[3]. Man can only be a spiritually
lifeless shadow of God, appearing as a similitude of God, until man receives
life like that of God, with this life coming from the divine Breath of God
through Christ Jesus as human life comes from the breath of the first Adam
through the person’s immediate father. Man cannot be in the likeness of
God until humankind has life in the heavenly realm. And every person who has
assumed that Genesis chapter two is a chronological continuation of chapter one
has assumed incorrectly. But this subject will be taken up more fully in later
sections. Likewise, the initial questions asked will be answered after stepping
through the open door. 2. The focus of God, of both the Father and the Son, has been
the creation of humankind in their image and after their likeness (Gen 1:26),
with this creation being an on-going work that will be completed with the
coming of the new heavens and new earth. The Logos, as Theos (from
John 1:1–3), created the earth
to be spiritually harvested; He didn’t create the earth for it to be
decorated with frosting as was taught by one former radio ministry; and He
didn’t create all that physically exists to last forever. Rather, as if a
rift opened in the supra-dimensional heavenly realm—a tear in the fabric
of heaven itself—a bottomless pit appeared, a “space” in
which shimmering strings of energy collided to create not one singularity as
posited by the Big Bang Theory, but series of singularities from which
“mass” emerges as matter in the unfurling of the four known
dimensions. And with the formation of mass comes time, its passage becoming a
property of the decay of unseen matter that can be literally written as a
mathematical function of mass. Thus, time is a unique property of this physical
creation. The supra-dimensional heavenly realm is “timeless”: the
existing moment remains forever and does not change to the next movement, a
condition requiring all that is in heaven to coexist with all that will be in a
dance of oneness that cannot be
reproduced or even well considered within the unfurled dimensions. For human
beings, time or rather space-time is as water is to fish. Our apparent solidity
requires that one moment becomes the next moment to allow mass to be relocated
to another position in space-time in a manner analogous to the buoyancy of water
which allows fish to change suspended positions in their world. Because time and its passage is a
property of all that has been made,
heaven is a timeless dimension where, before the foundations of the earth were
laid, the Father foreknew many heirs according to a plan mirrored by the
agricultural cycle of The great White Throne
Judgment—the main crop wheat harvest—is represented in the plan of
God by the creation of adam, male and
female, on the sixth day. Speculation will exist as to whom the
“helpmate” is, but Jesus told His disciples that there would be least and great in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:19), with least also being descriptive of a
commandment. But there is no commandment of lessor importance: the Ten
Commandments form one law. So least
does not adequately convey the sense of how those who relaxed a commandment
will be called in the kingdom, or of how the helpmate will be perceived for the
least might become the helpmates for
the great. The harvest of firstfruits, with
Christ Jesus being the First of the firstfruits, is analogous to ancient The strategy used by the first
disciples—and the strategy that should be used by endtime
disciples—for taking meaning from Scripture is no more difficult to
comprehend than is the strategy used for taking meaning from baseball signs:
the significant sign[s] follow the key sign. With Scripture, the
“key” is the one employed by King David as poet and psalmist. It is
the sign the Apostle Paul gave to the saints at 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. (Rom
1:18–20) So it is with the resurrection of
the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is
sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised
in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is
a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. … But it is not the spiritual
that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. (1 Cor 15:42–44,
46) The visible reveals the invisible,
and the physical precedes the spiritual. This is the structure of Hebraic
poetry, organized in repetitive couplets that feature the first presentation of
a thought representing the physical or natural world, and the second
presentation of the same thought moving inward to represent the invisible
mental or spiritual application of the same thought. The key of David unlocks
typological exegesis, which uses intertextuality
and hypertextuality to transform the
historical narrative into prophecy about events that occurred to Jesus and to
His first disciples, and about that will occur to His endtime disciples. Jesus
said He was the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega (Rev 22:13). The apparent eternity
of the physical creation concealed Jesus from natural Israel (Eccl 3:11) so
that only David, a man after God’s heart, knew that Yah was the visible, natural world manifestation of the conjoined
deity YHWH, Israel’s Elohim (see Ps 146:1, 148:1; 149:1). And
this Yah was Theos, the Logos, who
entered this world as His Son, His only (John 1:14; 3:16). Whereas ancient The reason for God’s
relationship with humanity has been a mystery for most of human history. Noah
neighbors had no understanding of why the rain began. But what could have been known about God was plain to them, because God had
shown it to them through the visible things made—and in this
relationship between invisible and visible, with the invisible revealed through
the visible, is the wisdom necessary for endtime disciples to walk through the
spiritually opened door placed before them. Noah’s neighbors were not
offered this key that unlocks the mysteries of God, especially prophecies about
the conclusion of this age. The man Jesus of Nazareth revealed
what was hidden since the foundation of the world (Matt 13:35), but He
disclosed the mysteries of God in a manner that only His disciples could
understand them (v. 11). However, His
disciples did not understand His speech or the mysteries of God when they
thought they could understand these mysteries. Jesus spoke in parables, a
special kind of metaphor, not to unseal these hidden mysteries but to keep the
mysteries secret. On the night He was betrayed, He told His disciples that He
had only spoken to them in figures of speech (John 16:25). Everything He had
told them from the beginning could not be taken literally, but was said in
figurative speech. Why? Because during His ministry He spoke only the words of
the Father, words which did not originate in this world but in heaven and words
about the things of heaven which human words do not directly address and words
“too big” to be conveyed by modulations of air; for the miracles
that Jesus performed were part of the words of the Father; were modulations of
His divine Breath. The Psalmist wrote, “When you [YHWH] send forth your Spirit [breath], they are created, / and you
renew the face of the ground” (104:30). So when Jesus heals seven times
on a Sabbath day, endtime disciples need to understand that seven times the
Father, through Jesus, delivered a sermon to Israel, with these sermons
confirming the importance to the Father of the Sabbaths as well as establishing
the difference in how the Father perceived the Sabbaths as opposed to how the
Sadducees and Pharisees perceived the Sabbaths. The person who says that he or she
takes the Bible literally first doesn’t, but more importantly, cannot,
for knowledge delivered in figurative speech cannot be received literally but
only through giving to common words [linguistic icons] uncommon or unusual meanings.
If a disciple reading the Genesis “P” creation account assigns to
“trees” created on the third day that same meaning [linguistic
object] as an arborist assigns to trees,
then the passage cannot be understood and when this disciple argues for trees
being created before the sun is created the disciple argues as an ignorant
beast—and he or she does Christendom more harm than good. However, the mysteries of God were
not to remain sealed forever. Jesus’ earthly ministry was the shadow of
His heavenly ministry: it was the visible ministry that reveals an invisible
ministry. Borrowing a phrase from Jonathon Edwards, Jesus’ earthly
ministry was the lively representation of His pre-second-Passover ministry to
spiritual The typology of 1st-Century
disciples and of 17th-Century Puritans was that of intertextuality, with Old Testament
types or figures “preaching” Christ and the heavenly things of the
Gospels to disciples removed by time from the apparent
“fulfillment” of these types or figures in Jesus Christ. To use an
earthly example of this, the holy nation of Pause and consider the previous
sentence: God used the plagues to separate, or to make a distinction between
Israelite and Egyptian, with this distinction becoming more visible with each
plague. God used the plagues to show who His firstborn son (Ex 4:22) was to
both ·
Within
the Old Testament, the following correspondence was established: 1. Firstborns of 2. Natural 3. In the wilderness at Paran, where
Ishmael dwelt, natural 4. The unbelief of 5. Keeping the Passover, now, becomes
the physical type of spiritually entering into God’s rest. This analogy is extended farther
by the writer of Hebrews, who said, “Therefore, while the promise of
entering [God’s] rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should
seem to have failed to reach it. For the good news came to us just as to them,
but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united
by faith with those who listened” (4:1–2). ·
The
Gospel was “preached” to naturally circumcised 1. Natural 2. As the shadow of a person is a
dark or “lifeless” copy of the person in one less dimension than
the person, natural 3. And as the preaching of the Gospel
to natural Israel did not benefit this holy nation of God, for a man knows the
things of a man by the breath [pneuma—B<,Ø:"] that is in him (1 Cor 2:11) but
requires having the Spirit of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] to know the things of God, disciples are cautioned to
fear not entering into God’s rest. 4. As the Gospel did not benefit
natural 5. To be united in faith with Jesus
and with Paul, disciples will take the Passover sacraments on the night that
Jesus was betrayed (1 Cor 11:23–26). But here is the kicker: a shadow
does only what that which makes the shadow does. ·
Natural
·
As
the firstborn son of God, ·
The
Church’s unbelief manifests itself through disciples not being united by
faith with those who preach that disciples
are to take the sacraments on the night Jesus was betrayed. 1. Because the Church’s
unbelief that has it taking the sacraments on every day and/or night other than
on the 14th of Abib, disciples, who individually and collectively
form the spiritual firstborn son of God, will be slain as the firstborns of 2. As the Gospel did not benefit
natural 3. Therefore, because of its unbelief
the greater Christian Church has not entered into God’s rest while the
promise of entering stands, God will doubly repay Israel for its iniquity and
its sin (Jer 16:18). 4. The wages of sin is death (Rom
6:23); so for God to doubly repay A shadow of what is invisible is
also invisible, except as it is manifest in actions such as ungodliness and
unrighteousness, both of which come from the absence of “spiritual
light,” as in the absence of God. So as a physical shadow is cast onto a
physical landscape, a shadow of what is invisible is cast onto an invisible
spiritual or mental landscape, which, in our example, is the mental topography
of living creatures. Thus, the absence of “spiritual light”
resulting from, say, fallen angelic beings standing between God and human
beings causes darkness to lay over the mental mindsets of these human beings,
with this “darkness” manifested in this world as unrighteousness in
these human beings. And because this darkness is created in the timeless
heavenly realm, the shadow of a spiritual event or entity is not time-linked to
phenomena in this world though these shadows occur sequentially. The Church would seem to be a
visible entity in this world, but the sons of God are neither male nor female,
Jew nor Greek, free nor bond, so these sons of God are not their tents of flesh
with which they are clothed. They are not visible; rather, the tents of flesh
are visible and remain male or female, but the inner new selves or new natures
that transform these tents of flesh from being sons of disobedience into being
disciples of Christ are invisible. And if the Church—the assembly [ekklesia—¦6680F\"<] of God—is composed of
these inner new selves, the Church is not a denomination or any assembly
visible to human eyes. Rather, the Church dwells “inside”
congregations that meet together in this world, with those who are the Church
known by their manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit. The Church consists of human
beings who have been born a second time, or born anew, or born again through
receipt of the divine Breath of God [pneuma
hagion—B<,Ø::" (4@<] … the visible things of
this world reveal the invisible things of God; thus, human birth and maturation
reveal invisible spiritual birth and spiritual maturation, which cannot occur
in the timeless heavenly realm because of the necessity for what is to coexist
with what will be. The type of “growth” seen in this world that
occurs between when an infant draws his or her first breath of life to when
this person reaches his or her majority reveals the type of unseen
“spiritual growth” in Grace and knowledge that occurs between when
a disciple is first born of Spirit and when the disciple is glorified when
judgments are revealed. And this type of growth can also only occur in this
physical realm where change is mandated. It is always wrong to say that human
beings will be glorified as “baby gods,” for disciples, when
glorified, will have bodies like Jesus’ though they will forever be
younger or junior siblings (Rom 8:29). They will not be babies that need to grow to maturity. They will, instead, have done
their growing in this physical world
while dwelling in texts of flesh. In the timeless heavenly realm,
all that has life has everlasting life for the moment is everlasting. The
presence of life and the absence of life cannot coexist in the same entity at
the same moment—and since in heaven the moment doesn’t change to a
next moment, and since the wages of lawlessness is death, rebelling angels had
to be cast from the heavenly realm first, because lawlessness would produce
gridlock that prevented even movement within the realm, and second, because
only within the creation could these rebelling angels die for their lawlessness. A born again disciple has life
that has come from heaven in a manner foreshadowed by the Logos coming into this world as His only Son, the man Jesus of
Nazareth. The spiritual life that the disciple has originates within the person
through receiving the Holy Spirit, the divine Breath of God, which gives to a
person drawn from this world a second (or an additional) life apart from the
life that comes to the person from his or her first father, the first Adam. The
Father of the son of God domiciled in a tent of flesh is the Most High, the God
and Father of the glorified Jesus Christ (John 20:17). Same Father, same
parentage. Hence, disciples have, when born of the water of the womb, received
life from the breath given to the first Adam, and have, when born of Spirit,
received life from the divine Breath of God the Father. And because a disciple
have spiritual life that cannot be seen in this world but only in the heavenly
realm where it comes and goes as it wills (John 3:8), disciples individually
and collectively (as spiritually circumcised Israel) cast shadows onto the
mental topography of physically circumcised Israel. Therefore, the unbelief
that prevented those who left When Christ returns, the slain of
the Lord shall be many (Isa 66:16). As the firstfruits of God, the Church has
absolutely no excuse for not covering its sins by taking the sacraments on the
night that Jesus was betrayed, and has no covering from death angels except
taking the sacraments as Jesus commanded. The unbelief of today’s
Christian Church is seen in parking lots every Sunday morning, but the extent
of this unbelief can only be fully appreciated by looking at ancient The question of whether Scripture
forms a Homeric simile or a true metaphor with the Book of Life cannot be answered until judgments are revealed. It is
enough to say that sons of God “grow” in Grace and knowledge by
putting obedience, as if flesh or muscle, onto a skeleton of faith, with these
“bones” of faith occasionally breaking as a child might break an
arm or a leg. However, when heavily muscled with obedience, bones don’t
break although obedience can be badly bruised in mishaps. It is not natural to think in
terms of obedience stemming from an invisible mindset being like muscles
developed from hard work in this physical world. But by looking into the mirror
that is the law of liberty, a person can see the growth of a son of God
dwelling in a tent of flesh: is there faith? How much faith? How tall has this
son of God grown? And is there obedience fleshing out the skeleton, or is this
son of God anorexic and near death, a walking bag of stunted bones from its
lack of obedience? In the eighth chapter of Romans,
Paul writes about being spiritually minded, saying that the natural or carnal
mind cannot understand spiritual subjects or concepts, cannot keep the commandments,
and is actually hostile to God. To change metaphors, the natural mind lacks the
base constructs necessary to build a spiritual superstructure. Only when a
person receives the Spirit of God are spiritual footers poured for the Being spiritually minded allows
comprehending the relationship between murder and anger, adultery and lust
(Matt 5:21-30), with murder, committed by the hand, being the lively
representation of invisible anger and hate, products of the heart, in the same
way that adultery, committed by the body, is the lively representation of lust,
the fruit of the mind. Murder in the physical realm equates to anger and hate
in the spiritual realm. Jesus doesn’t magnify the law. Rather, He moved
the law from the hand to the heart; He took the law from the physical realm to
the spiritual realm, an understanding necessary before any construction can begin
on the foundation laid with spiritual birth and the indwelling of Christ. As the plagues in Moving now to hypertextuality, Israel is a spiritually circumcised nation, the
Church, and the Church fellowship becomes
the equivalent of the land of Egypt, with the “Christians” who do
not take the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed being
like Egyptians, and with those of the world being like the beasts of Egypt.
Only those disciples who take the sacraments on the 14th of Abib are
the equivalent of the nation of Israel in Egypt … here is where the hypertextual example should frighten
spiritually circumcised Israelites: it is not enough to take the Passover
sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed if the disciple doesn’t
also believe God. The seven endtime years of tribulation will begin with the
second Passover liberation of But of the approximately 600,000
adult male Israelites who left A physically circumcised Israelite
kept the commandments by not murdering his neighbor, by not touching his
neighbor’s wife, by not uttering a falsehood, by not pocketing what
didn’t belong to him, by not working on the Sabbath, but he (or she)
could think about work on the Sabbath, could think about killing a neighbor,
could transgress the commandments in hearts and minds without technically
breaking the Law. But when Israel ceased being a nation circumcised in the flesh
by hands according to the Law and became a nation circumcised of heart by
Spirit (Rom 2:28–29; Col 2:11), Israel was no longer under the old
written code, but under the laws of God written on hearts and placed in
minds—the same commandments, not a different set of laws, but
commandments now written on the inside surface of the cup. Thus, thoughts about
work or the mundane activities necessary to live on the Sabbath transgress this
inner 4th Commandment; for it is on this day when the disciple
spends all day communing with God. It’s not that the disciple’s
thoughts are not on God the other six days of the week, but work must be done
to provide for those of the person’s household. It is on days one through
six when this work is done. The Sabbath is a day of entering into God’s
rest, not a person’s own rest. ·
The
laws of God written on the heart and mind of every spiritually circumcised
Israelite by the Breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] has anger and hate written everywhere the finger of YHWH wrote murder on the stone tablets Moses lugged down the mountain. ·
These
internalized laws have lust written
in flesh where adultery was incised
in stone. ·
These
internalized laws are the legal code by which disciples live their lives: a
Christian isn’t even to hate his or her enemies. ·
A
Christian isn’t to mock Christ, into whose seventh-day Sabbath rest they
will enter when glorified, by profaning the Sabbaths of God. A spiritually circumcised
Israelite satisfies keeping the commandments written on his or her heart and
mind, a euphemistic expression for the equally euphemistic expression of
receiving a circumcised heart and mind (Deut 30:6), by not hating or lusting,
by having inward love for all of humanity, love that will be outwardly
manifested in many ways. As a son of God a spiritual Israelite ceases to
inwardly identify oneself as Jew or Greek, male or female, free or slave.
Outwardly or physically, a person remains male or female. Inwardly or
spiritually, a baptized disciple is a son of God. Outwardly, a son of God will
keep the Sabbaths of God, will not murder, will not steal, will not commit
adultery just as this son of God retains penis or vulva. The new man is inside
the existing body of flesh, and hopefully governs the flesh. The Apostle Paul did not
understand why he wasn’t better able to rule himself from the inside out. The essential factor in
understanding what Paul wrote in his many epistles is grasping this
relationship of the outer physical man being ruled by the inner new man.
Disciples are no longer under the law, for the laws of God have been written on
their hearts and minds. The bodies of disciples, whether plumbed male or
female, are to be ruled by the inner new man who operates under the legal code
of love. There is no love in hate, so the inner new man doesn’t hate
which causes the flesh never to commit murder. Likewise, adultery is a specific
type of coveting run amuck. There is no love in coveting sexual gratification
outside of marriage, or in coveting revenge through a sexual liaison, or in
coveting power or wealth through the giving or withholding of sexual favors.
And in a similar manner, there is no love toward God in not outwardly keeping
His Sabbaths, of which Christ is the reality. But saying that Christ is the
reality of the Sabbaths of God produces Protestant linguistics problems: if the
Sabbaths of God are the lively representation of Christ, then disciples who do
not keep these Sabbaths have no relationship with Christ. Natural The teachers of Because many “bishops”
adopted the prince of this world as their spiritual father—not one of the
three hundred or so bishops that attended the Council of Nicea (ca 325 CE) was
brave enough to tell the Roman Emperor Constantine that he was an agent of the
prince of this world—God delivered the Church into the hand of the
spiritual king of Babylon, Satan the devil. Yes, Paul wrote to the saints at Those authorities who have been
appointed by God are of the Adversary until the kingdom of this world is
delivered into the hand of the Son of Man, who has qualified to receive it but
who will not receive it until Satan is cast from heaven and the Holy Spirit is
poured out on all flesh. Therefore, disciples are today spiritual insurgents in
the kingdom of this world, causing Satan the problems that physical insurgents
cause authorities anywhere in this world. Only these problems are in the
heavenly realm where “obedience” annihilates
“disobedience” as an IED made from a 155mm artillery shell destroys
a Hummer in this world. The many bishops who adopted Satan
as their father caused the spiritually holy nation of God [as the rulers of
natural The demonic kings who presently
makeup Satan’s ruling coalition are all rebels, and as Satan rebelled
against God, he will reap rebellion within his coalition. All sons of God are born free to
keep the commandments of God; they are not born consigned to disobedience as
the tents of flesh in which they are domiciled were. But Paul warned the saints
at Rome: “Do you not know that if you present yourself to anyone as
obedient slaves [bondservants], you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either
of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness”
(6:16). Although born of Spirit with sin
having no dominion over sons of God, most disciples have voluntarily made
themselves slaves to sin by neglecting the Law and ignoring Moses, the accuser
of every Israelite, natural and spiritual (John 5:45–47; Deut 31:25–27)
… as Alice went Through the Looking
Glass to find an alternative world, disciples go through the Open Door to
find that Christianity is not the “religion” taught by Catholic or
Orthodox or Reform theologians, most of whom are sincere men and women that have
made no journey of faith, nor even know that such a journey must be made before
the person can understand the things of God. Thus, the release of spiritually
circumcised Jesus is the paschal Lamb of God,
sacrificed at Calvary when Unrighteousness and ungodliness
represent spiritual darkness—and the story of darkness’s tussle to
overcome the light provides the context for the Bible, a narrative told by the Logos to His friends. Because meaning
must to be assigned to words, the Bible speaks as a double-lipped sword to
those individuals who hear the words of Jesus of Nazareth and who then believe
the One that sent Jesus. It is spiritually silent to those individuals whose
minds are set on the physical creation and all that is in the creation;
Scripture is meaningless to the beasts of this world and to those human beings
who have not yet been born of Spirit. If it equally meaningless to those who
have been born anew as sons of God but who have returned to lawlessness; who
have blinded themselves by presenting themselves as willing servants to sin. Although many disciples have been
called, have been born of Spirit, few will be chosen (Matt 22:14). Few will
hear the words of Jesus and believe the Father and pass from death to life
without coming under condemnation (John 5:24). These individuals are the ones
foreknown, predestined, justified, and glorified as the brothers of Christ. And
the vast majority of these individuals are not today “Christians,”
but come from the third part of humankind (Zech 13:9) that will be born of
Spirit when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh halfway though the seven
endtime years of tribulation. They represent the great endtime harvest of the
earth (Rev 14:15) that begins 1260 days before Christ returns as the Messiah.
They will make up most of the harvest of firstfruits, and to the shame of every
disciple today, they will believe God unto obedience. A disciple who keeps the
commandments of God and holds the testimony of Jesus (Rev 12:17) is as a match
struck in a cave. The disciple’s pinprick of light seems exceedingly
bright in the darkness of the bottomless pit. 3. The Open Door
permits entrance into an invisible spiritual world through the things that have
been made, with the things recorded in Scripture forming the lively
representation of what is written in the Book
of Life. The things of a man, his thoughts and desires of his heart, are
known to the man by the breath [pneuma]
of the man that gives to him life in this physical realm. The things of God,
His thoughts and His plans, are made known darkly to a son of God by the divine
Breath of God [B<,Ø:" 2,@Ø] that gives this son spiritual life in the heavenly
realm, life that cannot be seen in this world but goes as wind blows (again,
John 3:8) … where wind goes and from where wind comes is now known.
Satellites photograph clouds and Doppler radar “peers” into these
clouds as the movement of winds around low and high pressure cells make visible
what was felt but not seen in the 1st-Century. Even solar winds are
now observable: Themis (an acronym for “Time History
of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms”)
satellites, in tandem with ground instruments, have photographed three
dimensional images of the “magnetic ropes” that connect the
earth’s upper atmosphere to the sun. A magnetic rope is a twisted bundle
of magnetic fields along which solar winds flow, providing energy for magnetic
storms and auroras. So what couldn’t possibly be seen or known by earlier
generations has become common knowledge. And since the visible, physical things
of this world precede and reveal the invisible things of God, more can be said
and understood about spiritual birth than ever before. In an Alaska Daily News story dated December 26, 2007, David Sibeck of
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said the first magnetic rope was
detected by Themis satellites on May 20, “‘It was very large, about
as wide as Earth, and located approximately 40,000 miles above the
Earth’s surface in a region called the magnetpause,’ which is where
solar winds and the planet’s magnet field ‘meet and push against
one another like sumo wrestlers locked in combat.’” No one in the 20th-Century
had seen a magnetic rope. Few even knew of these magnetic fields twisted
together like hemp rope. Yet today more people have seen a photo of a magnetic
rope tying the earth to the sun than know what it means to be born of Spirit. What is known about wind today by
a farmer planting spring fields, military planners trying to anticipate the
weather for the D-Day invasion of The invisible portions of this
physical world are rapidly becoming visible as knowledge continues to increase.
And in a real world analogy, those who attempted to explain the workings of the
Spirit of God and what it means to be born of Spirit in the era when weather
forecasting was mostly limited to observing the horizon were spiritually more
“blind” than were Allied military meteorologists in 1944. Yet
forty, fifty, sixty years later, most disciples in the church of God still look
to the knowledge of that WWII era for their explanations of what it means to be
born of Spirit. This is like telephoning one’s neighbor to find out what
tomorrow’s weather will be instead of turning on the evening news: it is
a denial of knowledge. It is the ostrich syndrome bringing forth its fruit of
ignorance. One major denomination (The Latter
Day Saints) teaches that “spirit” is a form of matter requiring
“purer” eyes to see, making spirit not analogous to wind,
but a solar-like wind that requires eyes even better than those of the four
orbiting Themis satellites, or of the Hubbard Telescope to see. This teaching
does not separate heaven from this physical creation by a wall of fire, but
makes heaven part of a continuum which includes the four unfurled dimensions in
which humankind has life. This teaching does not make the burning bush Moses
saw a portal between dimensions, a portal like that of Jacob’s ladder,
but makes the physical creation the portion of a sand beach that protrudes above
the water … through intertextuality
and hypertextuality, endtime
disciples can “see” that the shadows of heavenly phenomena are cast
not directly onto the surface of the earth but into thoughts and desires of
living creatures. A barrier divides or separates heaven from earth, a barrier
that causes the conscious mind not to perceive the actions of its subconscious
mind. A barrier separates consciousness from the unconscious. Not an
impenetrable barrier, but one disclosing that no continuum exists. So “spirit”
is not a form of matter needing purer eyes to see. Rather, heaven is on one
side of a barrier of fire, and all of the other dimensions, furled and
unfurled, are on the other side. A point on a
two-dimensional plane would perceive a cylinder as a circle, for this point
would not be able to perceive any of the cylinder’s height. But, because
a point on a two-dimensional plane perceives a cylinder as a circle
doesn’t make the cylinder any less tall: calling a cylinder a circle
merely illuminates the limitations that have been placed upon the point by its
inability to grasp the existence of another dimension. So it would be fruitless
for two points on a plane to argue about the nature of the cylinder that they
sincerely believe to be a circle, but that will not stop them from going to war
with one another when consigned to disobedience. When
encountering a cylinder, our two dimensional point would be unable to directly
perceive any of the cylinder’s height unless the point observed the
shadow of the cylinder’s height cast onto the two dimensional
plane—and this determination would be made by observing where the light
was and where the light was absent (or where it was dark). If our point did not
know to attach significance to the presence and absence of “light,”
then the cylinder’s shadow that reveals the height of the cylinder would
have no meaning to this point. Our point needs a translator to convert the
presence and absence of light into usable code to which meaning can be
assigned. And in a manner similar to that of a computer’s language
translator, which attaches significance to the presence and absence of
electrical resistance in a silicon chip, if a disciple does not have the spirit
of knowledge Jesus promised to send every disciple [the parakletos—B"DV680J@H],
the disciple cannot understand the things of God that the interplay of
spiritual shadowing reveals. The parakletos
serves a disciple in a manner analogous to how a language translator functions
in a computer. If a
person could be reduced to a point on a two-dimensional plane, receiving the
Holy Spirit adds to the point vertical height as if this additional
“life” were a line vertically intersecting the plane. Since the
world cannot receive the parakletos
(John 14:17), life in the heavenly ream must be given to the person before the
person can receive this spirit of knowledge that permits significance to be
assigned to the presence and absence of light. The parakletos gives to the disciple knowledge, which adds
“thickness” to the line that now casts its shadow of the previously
unseen (to points on the two-dimensional plane) line. Without the parakletos, a disciple is no more than a
spiritual line that has neither width nor depth. With the parakletos the disciple acquires presence in the invisible dimension
that is heaven, for a line is as a point. Before
leaving our two dimensional point, if the passage of time were perceived as a
horizontal line [the “x” axis], then phenomena in the heavenly
realm would occur along a vertical line [the “y” axis]. Everything
that happens in the timeless heavenly realm occurs along the vertical line,
regardless of the distance between these phenomena: distance alone the vertical
line does not equate to the passage of time, for this vertical line does not
move in its relationship to the horizontal line. The shadow now of the
phenomena that have occurred along the vertical line will appear as sequential
events on the horizontal line, with each event separated by the passage of
time. But along the vertical line, no time passes. As
Protestants stumble over their rhetoric when they have Jesus being the reality
of the Sabbaths of God, the |