March 29, 2009 ©Homer Kizer
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The New Covenant
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Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law [תּוֹרָה—Torah] within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer 31:31–34)
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And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute [covenant] of the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it, but every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. No foreigner or hired servant may eat of it. It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones. All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.” / All the people of Israel did just as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. And on that very day the Lord brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts. (Ex 12:43–51 emphasis added)
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1.
The covenant made with the fathers of Israel on the day when Israel left Egypt was the Passover covenant, not the Sinai Covenant—the Lord [YHWH] did not make many covenants with the fathers of Israel on the day when He brought Israel out from Egypt; He made one. And it is this one covenant that is “becoming obsolete and growing old” and “is ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13). It is this covenant that will be superseded by the New Covenant, and it is this covenant by which sins are “passed over” or forgiven (Matt 26:28). So until the New Covenant is implemented, disciples remain under the Passover covenant for what is becoming obsolete is not yet obsolete, and what is ready to vanish away has not yet vanished away.
The first Passover covenant was not yet obsolete a quarter of a century after Calvary, nor had it vanished away. And since the New Covenant was not then implemented because the first covenant had not ended, what has since changed that would cause a Christian to believe that what was becoming obsolete has been made obsolete? Anything? Nothing? Then the Passover covenant that was growing old and that was about to vanish away has not yet vanished but still remains as a binding covenant on all of Israel. It is by the terms of the Passover covenant that sins are forgiven, and a person plays pretend with the Lord when the person thinks that a shank bone or a chicken neck is an acceptable substitute for a paschal lamb, that a bone satisfies the rules of the Passover covenant … a Seder service mocks the Lord, and two Seder services doubly mocks the Lord. The sacrifice of a lamb is required, with the only acceptable lamb today being the Lamb of God.
About this Passover covenant Moses records, “And the Lord [YHWH] spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, ‘Let the people of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time. On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time; according to all its statutes and all its rules you shall keep it’” (Num 9:1–3).
The testimony of the Lord is that there are statutes and rules that pertain to the Passover, with the foremost rule being that on the 14th of Abib, the first month, at twilight, Israel shall keep the sacrifice, but to keep the Passover on the 14th at twilight requires knowing when the 14th is and knowing whether the twilight is at the end or at the beginning of the day, for a day begins with darkness, with light to follow the darkness as heavenly life follows death (Heb 9:27–28).
The 14th of Abib isn’t a set day of the week, but a set calendar date, with the establishment of the calendar coming to endtime disciples through only one example year … the Apostle Paul writes about the advantage a Jew has over a Gentile convert by saying, “To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom 3:2), and from this one line Sabbatarian Christians have largely deferred to rabbinical Judaism in calendar matters, thereby not exercising the authority given disciples; for what month was it when the Lord [YHWH] said, “‘This month shall be the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you’” (Ex 12:2)?
Few textual clues exist for the month being referenced. Endtime disciples are left with the traditions of rabbinical Judaism, with the one mentioned exception: the year that Jesus was crucified. For in the narrative of the crucifixion, disciples find a weekly timeline to lay atop the calendar dates of the sacred year, thereby giving to disciples a model for establishing the calendar.
Because the crucifixion narrative has been so badly told for centuries, clarification of when Jesus was crucified must be addressed: Jesus said he would give only one sign that He was from heaven, and this sign would be the sign of Jonah (Matt 12:38–40; 16:4), with specific reference to Jonah being in the belly of the great fish (whale) for three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17. in Hebrew, chapter 2:1).
Jesus twice mentioning the sign of Jonah causes His reference to the sign to function as a Hebraic thought-couplet, with the first presentation representing the natural or physical presentation of the idea (sign) and with the second presentation representing the mental or heavenly presentation of the same sign. It is, for purposes here, what the sign represents physically that has importance, for in Hebrew there is no linguistic ambiguity: “night” is the twisting away or turning away from the light, a word usage disclosing that ancient Hebrews understood to some degree that the earth rotated on an axis, and “day” is the hot portion of a twenty-four hour period. So three days and three nights can only be deliberately misrepresented to mean two nights and a day, how most of Christendom tells the story of the crucifixion narrative. Therefore, if Jesus is to be believed—it is the assumption of this paper that He can be believed—Jesus would be in the grave for a period of 72 hours.
In John’s gospel is a narrative time line: six days before the Passover, as the Pharisees were keeping the Passover, Jesus comes to Bethany (John 12:1) where he stays with Martha and Mary. The following day—five days before the feast (John calls the entire period of Passover and Unleavened Bread the Sabbath)—Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a colt; He enters as the Lamb of God and as the future high priest. Then on the preparation day for the great Sabbath of the Sabbath (i.e., for the first high day of Unleavened Bread) Jesus is crucified (John 19:31, 42). This preparation day is the 14th of Abib, and the great Sabbath of the Sabbath is the 15th of Abib (Lev 23:6–7).
At sunset ending the 14th of Abib and beginning the 15th, Jesus is placed into the Garden Tomb. He will now, if He fulfills the sign of Jonah, be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, or in the grave. These three days will be the 15th of Abib, the first day Sabbath of Unleavened Bread, the 16th of Abib, and the 17th of Abib. And He will leave the grave during the dark portion of the 18th, with John recording in his gospel, “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb” (20:1). So indeed, Jesus left the tomb sometime during the dark portion of the 18th of Abib, the first day of the calendar week and the middle day (fourth day) of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The evidence of Jesus’ testimony would have Him leaving the tomb nearly twelve hours before Mary arrives at the tomb, with these twelve hours analogous to the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation, but His exiting the tomb is not recorded in Scripture. All that is recorded is that He was gone while it was still dark on the first day of the week (cf. Luke 24:1–7; Matt 28:1–6; John 20:1–2). Apparently Jesus left the tomb during the night without the rock being rolled away, meaning that He was not resurrected as a physical human being but as a heavenly being who would ascend to the Father at about the third hour of the day to be accepted as the Wave Sheaf Offering, the first of the harvest of firstfruits … disciples are to celebrate the Wave Sheaf Offering at its appointed time (Lev 23:10–11).
In the timeline of the crucifixion, the 10th day of the Abib is a weekly Sabbath, the 14th day is Wednesday, the 15th is Thursday, the 17th is again the weekly Sabbath, and the 18th is Sunday. Now, taking this timeline back to the period when Jesus lived, disciples see that in looking backwards at the Hebrew year 3791, the 15th day of Lyyar is Thursday, with Lyyar starting with the first crescent moon to occur after the spring equinox, meaning that the calculated calendar places the beginning of the new year a month earlier than the year actually began in 31 CE. In this year on 31 CE, on the Julian calendar the vernal equinox occurred on March 23rd, a Friday, at 3 a.m. The first full moon after the equinox occurred on March 27th, a Tuesday, at 11 a.m., meaning that the full moon could not be seen as full until the evening of that day, or until Wednesday on the sacred calendar. And the first new moon (dark of the moon) after the equinox occurred on April 10th at noon, meaning that the new moon crescent would not be seen on the 11th, a Wednesday, but would probably have been seen on the 12th, which is according to the calculated calendar the 1st day of Lyyar of year 3791.
Conversion from the Julian calendar to the sacred calendar will have the 10th of Lyyar, the Sabbath, being the 21st of April, 31 CE; the 14th of Lyyar, a Wednesday, being the 25th of April; the 15th being Thursday; and the 18th, Sunday, being the 29th of April, 31 CE, on the Julian calendar.
But what is seen is that the calculated calendar’s month of Lyyar should actually be the first month of the year, the month of Abib or Nissan. According to the only example we have in Scripture that addresses when the first month of the year is to begin so the Passover covenant can be kept as Jesus kept the Passover, the month and the year will begin with the sighted crescent after the vernal equinox. And because the calculated sacred calendar identifies this month as Lyyar rather than Abib, the beginning of the month is free from set-asides; the month begins as it should, meaning that any argument for the month having “really” begun with the dark of the moon and the actual beginning occurring later due to set-asides is not a valid argument.
If the only example in Scripture that identifies days of the week with calendar dates for the Passover has the month beginning with the sighting of the crescent and not with the dark of the moon—and not with the first full moon after the equinox, but with the first new moon—then disciples, having the authority vested in them by Christ Jesus to forgive sin or withhold forgiveness (John 20:23), have the authority to use the only example in Scripture to jettison rabbinical Jew’s calculated calendar and establish the calendar that faithfully satisfies keeping the Passover covenant on the 14th day of Abib.
Some critics will argue that based upon what Luke writes, Jesus’ ministry could not begin in 27 CE and thus the crucifixion could not be in 31 CE. The core of their argument is Luke saying, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being the governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee … the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (3:1–3). These critics argue that Tiberius’ reign began in 14 CE, and fifteen years later is 29 CE, which will have Jesus being crucified in 33 CE. The fundamental fault of their argument is that Tiberius began to reign in 13 CE, Augustus gave his powers to Tiberius without stepping down from power, thereby making them co-princeps so that whenever he passed away governance of Rome would continue without an interruption or possible upheaval. Whereas historical texts will assign 14 CE as the “official” date when Tiberius’ reign began, in actuality Tiberius had been reigning for more than a year before his reign officially began, a reality everyone under his authority would have known (as Luke knew).
Add to Tiberius’ reign beginning in 13 CE instead of 14 CE, Luke writes “in the fifteen year” which doesn’t add fifteen years to 13 CE, but adds 14 years; thus, when 14 is added to 13 CE, the word of God comes to John in 27 CE, not in 29 CE. Since a person had to be thirty years old to enter the priesthood, the word of God would have come to John when he was around thirty as Jesus’ ministry began when He was about thirty (Luke 3:23), suggesting that John’s ministry began about Passover of 27 CE while Jesus’ ministry began about Sukkoth 27 CE. Jesus’ ministry was then three and a half years in length, making the crucifixion in 31 CE … Paul writes, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Rom 8:7), and indeed, that is the case when it comes to critics who refuse to believe that Tiberius’ reign begins more than a year before it officially begins. These same critics will believe anyone as long as that someone does not have Jesus lying three days and three nights in the heart of the earth as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale.
In addressing the principle rule concerning the Passover covenant (that of the Passover being observed on the 14th of Abib at even), the 14th day of Abib is the fourteenth day of the month that begins with the first sighted new moon crescent following the vernal equinox. There is not a scriptural citation that directly declares the beginning of months (of the year) occurs with the sighted new moon crescent, but there is an example established in Scripture that gives disciples this beginning day for the new year—and disciples have the authority to declare the matter binding, this authority coming through John 20:23 and Matthew 16:19. Therefore, let it be stated in no uncertain terms: Christendom does not nor should not use the rabbinical calculated calendar, but should establish a calendar locally (for the temple of God is wherever the disciple is), using the principle that the first day of the year begins with the day of the sighted new moon crescent following the spring equinox wherever the disciple is, meaning that spring festivals should occur in the spring of the year and fall festivals should occur in the fall of the year. This means that the equator functions for the annual calendar as the International Dateline functions for the weekly calendar. And a second witness for this principle exists in the restored sacrifices: Ezekiel records that under the third temple,
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall celebrate the Feast of the Passover, and for seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten. On that day the prince shall provide for himself and all the people of the land a young bull for a sin offering. And on the seven days of the festival he shall provide as a burnt offering to the Lord seven young bulls and seven rams without blemish, on each of the seven days; and a male goat daily for a sin offering. And he shall provide as a grain offering an ephah for each bull, an ephah for each ram, and a hin of oil to each ephah. In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month and for the seven days of the feast, he shall make the same provision for sin offerings, burnt offerings, and grain offerings, and for the oil. (45:21–25 emphasis added)
When the offerings are the same for the Sabbath of the spring and the Sabbath of the fall (“Sabbath” used as used in John 19:31), it will make no difference whether Israel celebrates Unleavened Bread or Sukkoth, for both will be celebrated in the same way. Thus, Israel in Australia will celebrate Sukkoth when Israel in Norway celebrates Unleavened Bread, and the Lord has already made provisions for the sameness of these celebrations as the harvester overtakes the one who plants.
2.
Once a disciple establishes the day on which the Passover is to be kept—the Passover isn’t kept daily or weekly or quarterly, but once a year … any more often than once a year on the 14th of Abib would be contrary to the covenant—when the Passover lamb should be killed must be clarified, since the language is vague:
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Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. … Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. (Ex 12:3, 5–6)
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Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread. (Ex 12:15–20 emphasis added)
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In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the Lord's Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. … But you shall present a food offering to the Lord for seven days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. (Lev 23:5–8)
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Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. And you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock or the herd, at the place that the Lord will choose, to make his name dwell there. You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction—for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste—that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the flesh that you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain all night until morning. You may not offer the Passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, but at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt. And you shall cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose. And in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents. For six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord your God. You shall do no work on it. (Deut 16:1–8 emphasis added)
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Is the problem apparent enough? If Israel is to eat unleavened bread for seven days, from the 14th at even until the 21st, and if the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread begin with the great Sabbath of the 15th day of Abib, then it would seem that Passover lambs should be sacrificed at the end of the 14th day at even, how 1st-Century Pharisees understood the Passover covenant.
But a problem exists: Paul writes,
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1 Cor 11:23–26)
On the night when He was betrayed will have disciples taking the sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14th of Abib as Jesus established the example … Jesus could not very well eat the Passover and be the Passover Lamb of God if He was slain before He could eat. After being slain, He could only eat the sacrifice after He was resurrected, meaning that He could only eat of the second Passover sacrifice, for He would truly have been an Israelite unclean through touching a dead body (His own) on the 15th of Abib, and He would have been an Israelite on a long journey (Num 9:10), the two reasons given for an Israelite to eat of the sacrifice in the second month.
The problem, however, is larger than Jesus simply establishing an earlier date for taking the Passover sacraments; for if He established an earlier date, then it wouldn’t be the Passover that He was taking, the argument claimed by Evangelical Christendom which does not recognize the Last Supper as the Passover despite Jesus’ disciples asking about where He intended to eat the Passover (Matt 26:17, 19 et al).
Matthew records, [on the And] [first] [unleavened] [came] … (26:17), with these words wrongly translated into English as, “Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus” (Matt 26:17). The translators apparently forgot that Moses on behalf of the Lord, under the second Sinai covenant, commanded Israel, “‘You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until morning’” (Ex 34:25) … the Passover lamb (by extension the Lamb of God) shall be eaten with unleavened bread as the first unleavened, not necessarily as the first of the Feast of Unleavened Bread but as a commemoration apart from the Feast of Unleavened Bread and before the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins … when Jesus’ disciples went into the city and met a certain man and said to him, “‘“The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples”’” (Matt 26:18), the man doesn’t say, But you’re a day early. The man apparently found nothing surprising in Jesus keeping the Passover on the dark portion of the 14th, the darkness representing the one long spiritual night that would begin at Calvary when the light of the world (John 12:35–36, 46; 1:4–5, 9) returned to the Father.
Thus, Matthew’s, “the first unleavened” isn’t the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the seven days when all of Israel is to eat the bread of affliction, but the sacrifice of the Passover lamb.
About this same first unleavened, Luke records, [came And] [the day] [of the unleavened] [when necessary] [must be killed] [the Passover] (22:7) … Luke uses the expression, the unleavened, as John uses, the Sabbath, as the naming phrase for the entire period when all of Israel’s males were to appear before the Lord. So neither the English translation of Matthew 26:17 nor the translation of Luke 22:7 conveys the sense that Jesus was going to eat the Passover on what Pharisees identified as the preparation day for their application of Deuteronomy 16:5–6, “‘You may not offer the Passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, but at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt.’”
Remember, the Book of Deuteronomy is the Second Covenant (Deut 29:1), the covenant made with the children of Israel on the plains of Moab and not with the nation that left Egypt. This Second Covenant does not go into effect until after Israel returns to the Lord when exiled in a far land—Daniel returned to the Lord while in Babylon, but most of Israel did not; for it wasn’t because of Israel returning to that Lord that Cyrus, king of Persia, commanded that a house of God be built for the Lord in Jerusalem. It was to fulfill the words of Jeremiah (Dan 9:2) … if the Lord had waited for Israel to return to Him before bringing the nation back to Judea, He would still be waiting for Paul records, “Israel who pursued a law that would have lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works” (Rom 9:31–32). Israel has yet to reach the law (i.e., Second Covenant) that has as its condition of activation the requirement that Israel when in a far land return to the Lord (Deut 30:1–2), which would be an act of faith.
Thus, contrary to what the Pharisees believed about Israel having returned to the Lord, the glory of the Lord had left Israel, a nation like the holy meat carried in the fold of a garment (Haggai 2:12–14). This glory returned to the extent that the Lord blessed Israel once the foundation of the temple was laid, for it is the temple that has significance, not Israel once the nation was delivered to the prince of this world … the promise of the Lord to visit Israel after seventy years (Jer 29:10) wasn’t fulfilled by the remnant of Israel that returned to Jerusalem after 46/47 years, but by the rebuilt temple that was dedicated 70 years after the first temple was razed in 586 BCE.
The Book of Deuteronomy presents the covenant made with the children of Israel numbered in the census of the new generation (Num chap 26), the covenant by which the children of Israel enter into God’s rest (Ps 95:10–11), not the generation that left Egypt. But these children of Israel broke covenant with the Lord as did the Israel in Egypt (Ezek chap 20). They never entered into the Second or Moab Covenant; Rather, it is the offspring of the Woman (of Rev chap 12) as the reality of the children of Israel that enter into God’s presence under the Second Covenant, and these offspring don’t enter into covenant with the Lord until after the Son of Man has been revealed; until after the second Passover; until after the New Covenant is implemented. Thus, the first unleavened will have ended and will be no more. So the passage in Deuteronomy 16 doesn’t apply to the rules for the Passover for as long as Israel (Christendom) remains in bondage to sin and death, the reality of ancient Israel being in physical bondage to a human king who has to have his heart supernaturally hardened so as to be the shadow and copy of the prince of this world.
The preceding paragraph addresses a typological reality to which this paper will return many times: the natural nation of Israel, a physically circumcised nation, forms the lifeless shadow and copy of the Christian Church, with the twelve first disciples being analogous to the twelve sons of Israel, with the Church going into sin as the twelve sons of Israel went down to Egypt where they became the favored slaves of Pharaoh—Pharaoh never gave Joseph his freedom; the Pharaoh gave Joseph only the position of being number two in Egypt as the prince of this world gave the Catholic Churches the position of being number two in this world, ruling right behind himself. This sets up the juxtaposition that the Church today is as Israel was in Egypt, not as Israel was in Judea, represented by Sabbath observance (Heb 3:16–4:11; Ps 95:10–11; Num chap 14), with only the portion of today’s Christian Church represented by Joshua and Caleb to enter into the kingdom of heaven, meaning that as a person scans the almost two billion Christians of this world, very few will enter into salvation. Why? Because of unbelief—Christendom simply doesn’t believe what Jesus says about salvation.
Since Christendom is today as Israel was in Egypt, Christians need to be released from indwelling sin and death (Rom 7:15–25) at a second Passover as Israel in Egypt needed to be released from physical bondage to a physical pharaoh. Thus, as a shadow and copy of what will happen to Christians, all of Israel’s exodus remains ahead of the Church.
Individually, some disciples have already left bondage to the prince of this world as Moses left Egypt in a hurry forty years before the Lord brought Israel as a nation out, with the mixed circumcised and uncircumcised children of Israel actually following Joshua [Gr: Iēsous], not Moses, into God’s rest as a type and shadow of Jesus [Gr: Iēsous] leading the third part of humankind (Zech 13:7–9) into the kingdom of heaven … the second Sinai covenant is made with Moses and with Israel in a manner analogous to the greater Christian Church consisting of those who are of Moses and those who are of Israel, with Moses in type having already returned to Egypt and with the Passover Lamb of God having already been sacrificed. Israel eats of this Lamb while the nation awaits the passing of death angels over all the land.
Unfortunately, because of Israel’s unbelief, Israel with few exceptions has chosen not to cover itself with the blood of the Lamb of God, but to take its chances with figurative Egyptians. Nevertheless, death will pass over the land, slaying firstborns, including the firstborn sons of God (which cannot be slain physically, only spiritually in the lake of fire), at the midnight hour of this long theological night that began at Calvary, with this midnight hour coming when the world can get no farther from God, or when the night—the twisting away from God—is as dark as it can get.
Therefore, the model for when disciples are to take the Passover isn’t the instructions recorded in Deuteronomy, instructions that pertain to the third part of humankind in the last 1260 days of the Tribulation, but the instructions given in Exodus chapter 12. Every other model for when the Christian Church should take the sacraments of bread and wine (representing the body and blood of the Lamb of God) is for Israel and the children of Israel in the Tribulation.
Those critics who would have disciples today take the sacraments on the afternoon of the 14th of Abib, or on the dark portion of the 15th are without spiritual understanding. They will, inevitably, look for a physical temple to be built in earthly Jerusalem as a sign of the end of the age, thereby missing entirely the construction of the temple that has physical stones of the first temple being a shadow and type of the living stones from which the temple will be constructed—and the physical stones of the second temple forming the shadow and type of the earthly bodies of disciples, with the temple going from being a physical structure of spiritually lifeless human beings to being a living structure of new creatures dwelling in tents of flesh.
Again, to preclude misunderstanding: disciples are to take the sacraments of bread and wine on the night Jesus was betrayed, the dark portion of the 14th of Abib, as Israel in Egypt killed the first paschal lambs on the dark portion of the 14th, then remained in their house until dawn (Ex 12:22), then gathered their herd and flocks, and spoiled the Egyptians during the daylight portion of the 14th, then left Egypt with a high hand going into the 15th of Abib, leaving Egypt under a full moon. Disciples are to now take the sacraments on the dark portion of the 14th, close to even, and are to celebrate leaving Egypt on the dark portion of the 15th, close to even. In the future (after the seven endtime years of tribulation begin; after grace ends), the sacraments of bread and wine (representing the body and blood of Jesus, and the covenant by which sins are now covered) will no longer be consumed; for as a provision of the New Covenant, which will have the Torah placed inside every Israelite, the sins of Israel will be remembered no more (will be no more), not merely covered by Jesus’ righteousness (by His blood). Hence, only the celebration of liberation—of leaving sin and death as ancient Israel left Egypt—will be observed; only the night to be much remembered will be continued as a memorial to liberation from bondage.
Typology holds that after there was pitch darkness in all of the lands of Egyptians for three days, a period in which there was “light” where the people of Israel lived (Ex 10:23) with this light forming the type and copy of the light of this world coming to His own (cf. John 12:35–36; 1:4, 11), that light representing the life of men.
Paul states that death [darkness] reigned from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14) not from Adam to Jesus, the prophet who was like Moses (Deut 18:15); so the ninth plague becomes the shadow of the historical record from Moses until the order went out spiritually to restore the temple, this order the reality foreshadowed by Cyrus’ order to rebuild the temple after seventy years (Ezra 1:1; Dan 9:2: Jer 29:10). But it was not that Jerusalem should be without Israelites for seventy years, but Jerusalem would be without the temple; for from when Nebuchadnezzar emptied the city in 586 BCE until a remnant of Israel returned in 539 BCE was less than a jubilee. However, the rebuilt temple wasn’t dedicated until 516 BCE, making the Israel which the Lord would again visit after seventy years the temple of God, a juxtaposition the Apostle Paul states without much explication (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16) and a juxtaposition Jesus uses (John 2:13–22). Jesus would, in His body, after a jubilee “liberate” the temple from being a lifeless structure of wood and stone to being a “house” built of living stones, with Christ Jesus being the cornerstone of this house (1 Pet 2:4–8).
After these three days of absolute darkness, Pharaoh tells Moses to go serve the Lord, and take Israel and the nation’s little ones with him; but Pharaoh prohibits Israel from taking its flocks and herds with them. Moses insists that the nation’s livestock has to go with Israel, and Pharaoh has had enough. He tells Moses, “‘Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.’ Moses said, ‘As you say! I will not see your face again’” (Ex 10:28) … as a firstborn, Pharaoh did not survive the night when the death angel passed over the land. The Pharaoh that rose in the night and summoned Moses and Aaron in the still-dark portion of the 14th of Abib was a different Pharaoh from the one who threatened Moses. This different Pharaoh was possibly a woman whose name has been chiseled from Egyptian monuments.
In the period between when Pharaoh threatens Moses and the 10th day of the Abib, the Lord told Moses and Aaron, “‘This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you’” (Ex 12:2) … the beginning of months brings the liberation of Israel with the next full moon, when the moon is at its brightest—
While Daniel prays, asking for the forgiveness of Israel with the completion of the seventy years, the angel Gabriel appears to Daniel and brings to him the seventy weeks prophecy as “‘insight and understanding’” (9:22), making the seventy weeks prophesy an understanding of what follows the seventy years of Jerusalem being without the temple. Now backing up to the ninth plague and to Moses being a type of Christ Jesus.
Moses enters into God’s rest/presence forty years before the children of Israel enter into God’s rest (cf. Ex 33:14; Josh 4:19), but the nation that left Egypt never enters into God’s rest (Ps 95:10–11; Heb 3:19). Likewise, Jesus was glorified forty jubilees before the children of Israel will enter into glory, but with only the exceptions represented by Joshua and Caleb, the present Christian Church will never enter the kingdom of the heavens … Christendom as it is perceived by this world is as Israel was in the wilderness of Paran (Num chap 14).
Life expressed as light comes to Israel with the giving of the Ten Living Words approximately three millennia ago (ca 1450 BCE → 1525/1528 CE), with Israel transformed from the nation that left Egypt to being the children of that nation to being the temple of God, with this temple becoming the Body of Christ (and by extension, Christ), with this temple being rebuilt according to the decreed seventy weeks that are “‘about your [Daniel’s] people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place’” (Dan 9:24). This means, simply, that the seventy weeks prophecy, with sixty-nine of these weeks usually stretched from 457 BCE to 27 CE by Sabbatarian churches of God, doesn’t primarily pertain to the physical nation of Israel and to the decrees of human Persian kings, but pertains to the living temple and decrees by the invisible spiritual kings of Persia that resisted the angel bringing Daniel knowledge of what is written in the Book of Truth (Dan chap 10). It almost means that the Passover follows the ninth plague; that the Passover when Moses led Israel out of Egypt is a shadow and type of a second Passover that will cause Israel to no longer remember the Exodus (Jer 16:14–15; 23:7–8).
If there is a second Passover that serves as the reality of the Exodus, then the statutes and rules of the Passover covenant pertain to this second Passover as they do to the Passover sacrificed on the 14th of Abib. Most of these rules are given at the beginning of the year, prior to the tenth day of the first month (Ex 12:1–20), but the Passover covenant is not made with Israel until after the firstborn of Egypt are slain and Pharaoh tells Moses to take Israel and go … yes, the Lord [YHWH] made a covenant or statute with the fathers of Israel on the night when He led the nation out of Egypt, not on the previous night.
Again, the Lord did not make two covenants with the fathers of Israel when He brought Israel out from Egypt (Heb 8:9; Jer 31:32); He made one, the Passover covenant, a covenant made following, not preceding, the death of Egyptian firstborns. And it is this one covenant that is “becoming obsolete and growing old” and “is ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13) to be superseded by the New Covenant. However, what is becoming obsolete is not obsolete, and what is ready to vanish away has not vanished away. The first Passover covenant was not yet obsolete a quarter of a century after Calvary, nor had it vanished away.
Since it is the Passover covenant that the Lord made with the fathers of the house of Israel and the house of Judah on the day when He took them by the hand, the Passover covenant remains a binding covenant on all of Israel. And since Christianity began as, and still is a sect of Judaism, the sect of the Nazarenes, what passes in this world as Christianity (which cannot be easily confused with Judaism) is a false religion; for Christianity will have disciples walk as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6) and imitate Paul as he imitated Jesus (1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; Phil 3:17), and will have the Church imitate the early 1st-Century churches of God that were in Judea (1 Thess 2:14). Christians should look Jewish to the world. And since “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8), it isn’t Christ Jesus that has changed since the 1st-Century but what the world identifies as Christianity. Therefore, it is time—long past time—to reclaim the linguistic identifier that was appropriated by adherents of a cobbled together dogma of Greek paganism and Jewish myth that has proven to be a curse to this world. It is time for “Christians” to begin to look and act like Christ Jesus; it is time to quit playing pretend with the Father and the Son; it is time to put away childish things; it is time to stand and walk uprightly before God and cease shambling along as a beast, or worse, crawling as a serpent … since the temptation account, the symbolism has been there for everyone to see: God walks uprightly as a man is to walk when imitating God, his only parent, but after tempting Eve the serpent is cursed and condemned to crawl on its belly (Gen 3:14), the position that is farthest from God and closest to death. And it is the children of that old serpent, Satan the devil, that practice sin, with sin being the transgression of the commandments. It is those who practice lawlessness and teach others to do likewise who will join their father, the Adversary, in the lake of fire—and almost all so-called Christians make a practice of sinning, thus having removed themselves from under grace and having placed themselves under condemnation as a willful transgressor of the law.
If Christ Jesus makes the first covenant obsolete, but the first covenant has not yet passed away, then the work of Christ Jesus is not yet finished. There remains more of His ministry that must be completed … the angel Gabriel came to the prophet Daniel and spoke of the decreed seventy weeks, saying that after sixty-nine weeks, “‘And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering’” (9:27). The pronoun referent for “he” is vague, but is not either the one whose end comes with a flood (v. 26), or the desolator who comes on the wings of abominations (v. 27). The one who makes a strong covenant is the Lord, and the half week when an end is put to sacrifice and offering is the last 1260 days of the Tribulation. an end is put to sacrifice because the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) thereby liberating every person from bondage to indwelling sin and death when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Father and His Christ (Rev 11:15; Dan 7:9–14). Satan is cast from heaven and can no longer deceive humankind as the prince of the power of the air. Dominion is taken from the False Prophet (the first horseman), from Apollyon (the second horseman), from Sin (the third horseman), and from Death (the fourth horseman), and this dominion is given to the Son of Man. Thus, these last 1260 days of the seven endtime years will see the 144,000 follow the Lamb wherever He goes (Rev 14:1–5) as the Lamb completes a ministry foreshadowed by Jesus’ three and a half year ministry in the 1st-Century CE, making those three and a half years in the 1st-Century the chiral image of the Lamb’s ministry during the last 1260 days, and making Jesus’ ministry both the beginning and the end of the harvest of firstfruits, with Jesus being both cornerstone and capstone of the temple of God.
But about the 9th hour of the 14th of Abib of 31 CE (the year beginning with the first new moon crescent after the equinox, not with first full moon), Jesus, “knowing that all was now finished … said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:28–29) … if Jesus’ testimony was that it is finished, what is finished if there remains more of His ministry to come?
What was finished was Jesus’ life as a human being, His ministry as a human being, and Israel being a nation of human beings; for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50). It is not human beings that will cross dimensions to enter the kingdom of the heavens, but sons of God born of the breath of life that has come down from heaven as human beings are born from the breath Adam received outside of the Garden of God (Gen 2:7).
There is a translation problem in going from Greek to English that is serious enough the problem must be addressed: in English, the word “breath” derives from the Germanic root bhreu–, used for “to brew” and metonymically used to represent the steam rising from brewing or from a simmering kettle. The connection of the linguistic icon to exhaled breath is reasonable considering that for much of the year a person can see his or her breath in Germanic lands. But a person cannot usually see his or her breath in Greece.
The English icon “spirit” comes into the language as a Norman French loan word derived from the Latin icon spīritus, usually assigned the meaning of “breath” or “the breath of a god.”
The Greek icon representing deep breath or wind or moving air is pneuma, the root for English words such as pneumonia [pertaining to the breath] or phrases such as pneumatic tools [powered by moving air].
In moving from Greek to Latin, pneuma is translated as spīritus, as both icons represent breath. The translation is valid; thus, pneuma ‘agion [breath holy] makes sense in Latin as “sacra spīritus,” which when translated into English should be rendered “holy breath” but isn’t. It is, instead, translated as “the Holy Spirit,” assigned personhood (a carry-over from Latin paganism), and made a god … what should at best be rendered as “the breath of a god” becomes a god, thereby effectively precluding most endtime disciples from understanding the mysteries of God.
Satan could not have more effectively imprisoned a people in unbelief than has occurred by assigning personhood to the breath of the Father.
Because pneuma isn’t usually translated into English as “breath” but as “spirit” the people perish for lack of knowledge: where the context demands, pneuma is translated as “wind”. e.g., John 3:8. and where heavenly beings are addressed it is sometimes translated as “breath”. e.g., Rev 13:15; 2 Thess 2:8. but in simple passages that should be easily understood the substitution of “spirit” for “breath” leads to theological disaster. For example, 1 Corinthians 2:11 is usually translated in some variation, “For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him.” By pneuma anthropos ho en autos as the spirit of a person instead of “the breath of a person,” with breath used as a metonym for life, a theological premise has developed that would have there being a human spirit in a person that is separate from human nature and separate from the old self or nature. The premise is false. There is human breath that gives life to the person through cellular transfer of oxygen molecules in a person’s blood stream, and there is the old self or nature that empowers the flesh, with this old self or nature being crucified with Christ Jesus when a new self or new nature is received via receipt of a second breath of life. There is one breath of life that supplies oxygen to the flesh to maintain physical life, and there is a second breath of life that gives life to the new creature or new nature received from God—that transforms or gives life to the “dead” old self or nature in a manner directly analogous to the second temple going from a lifeless stone building to being the living Body of Christ. There is no third breath of life. There is no spirit of man that returns to God at death. Certainly human breath returns to God in that it ceases to be at death. And the lives received via receipt of the divine breath of God sleep as souls [psuche or shallow breaths] under the altar of God (Rev 6:9) while awaiting glorification (there is no consciousness in death; physical sleep forms the shadow and copy of death for the son of God awaiting resurrection). But the lives of the righteous who died in faith prior to Christ are recorded in a book of remembrance (Mal 3:16) when their breaths are lost and their bodies return to dust. They have no human spirits that are to be pressed between the pages of this book of remembrances as if their human spirits were fallen leaves gathered when lives end.
A person knows the things of a man because the Father has instilled in human beings biological software activated by inside-the-brain puffs of nitrous oxide, with this biological software functioning very much like computer software and the nitrous oxide like off/on switches. When King Nebuchadnezzar had his human nature taken from him for seven years, this software was overwritten by the software God gives to a beast (an ox). It was returned to what it was before when the king’s reason returned to him. And it is this software that constitutes the old self or old nature that is crucified with Christ so that the disciple will be resurrected with a new nature that has come down from God as the man Jesus came down from heaven as the only Son of the Logos. this biological software is as lifeless as computer software, but the new creature or new self is actual life that has come from the Father; thus the Father has raised the person from the dead (John 5:21). And the Son will or will not cause the mortal flesh in which this new creature temporarily dwells to put on immortality when judgments are revealed. Either way, at the death of the tent of flesh in which this new creature dwells, this new creature will sleep until the revealing of judgments. And this entire scenario is not comprehensible if the disciple either believes that human beings are born with immortal souls (breaths) or if the disciple believes that there is a spirit in man apart from the life given to the man that causes a man to know the thing of men … wind [pneuma] can blow in and out of a man’s nostrils for years, but if there is no life in the man this moving air is nothing more than desert breezes stirring up dust devils. What causes a man to know the things of a man is the life that causes a man to breathe.
3.
Jesus’ death paid the penalty required to satisfy the record of debt with its legal demands that stood against every Israelite in this world. He took on the sins of Israel when He entered Jerusalem on the 10th of Abib as the selected Passover Lamb of God (cf. John 19:31; 12:1, 12); He was “penned” in the city of Jerusalem (Bethany is near enough to be considered part of the city) as Israel’s paschal lambs are penned between the 10th day and the 14th day of Abib. He was then crucified on the 14th and He died between the evens as Pharisees reckoned when paschal lambs were to be slain (the first even occurring at noon, the second even at 6:00 pm). He was rushed into a grave before the high Sabbath began at sunset (John 19:42), and He was in the heart of the earth all day on the high Sabbath, the 15th of Abib. He was in the heart of the earth all day on the 16th of Abib. He was in the heart of the earth all day on the weekly Sabbath, the 17th of Abib, and He was gone from the grave before sunrise on the first day of the week, the 18th of Abib, making the timeline agree with Jesus entering Jerusalem on the previous weekly Sabbath, the 10th of Abib.
For seven days (10th to 17th), Jesus took to Himself the sins of Israel (and by extension, of the world for eventually all will be Israel). For these seven days He represented in His body life as human beings in bondage to sin have life, with the three days and three nights that He was in the heart of the earth typifying the fate of every person if not resurrected from death … Jesus dies and enters the heart of the earth before the seven days of Unleavened Bread begin, with leavening representing sin for these seven days. Because He took on the sins of Israel, He could not enter alive into the days of Unleavened Bread. Thus, before the Feast begins, His body is dead and utterly without life and remains so throughout the first three days of Unleavened Bread as all of Israel was dead and utterly without life, making the linguistic icon “life” represent life coming from physical breath and life coming from divine breath, with Israel’s absence of divine life forming the chiral image of Jesus’ lack of physical life.
But as a naming icon, Israel assumes greater complexity than either rabbinical Judaism or Charismatic Christendom assigns to the icon; for on the fourth day, the midday of the Feast (analogous to Wednesday, the midday of the week, the day on which He was crucified), Jesus is resurrected from death, seen by Mary, ascends to the Father, returns to walk with the two disciples going to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–31), then appears to the ten disciples (Thomas was not there) in the locked room, breathes on the ten and said, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22). These ten disciples, now, form a sect of Judaism, a sect competing with the Sadducees and Pharisees … the Christian Church began as a synagogue within Judaism when Jesus breathed on the ten disciples, thereby directly transferring to them the Holy Spirit; for according to the Mishnah’s requirements, a new synagogue could be formed anywhere by ten male Jews—and the ten upon whom Jesus breathed were “with one accord … devoting themselves to prayer [proseuche]” (Acts 1:14. cf. Acts 16:13, 16), with the Greek icon used by Luke also being the word used for the regular prayer assemblies of the synagogue at Jerusalem.
When Paul was on trial before Felix at Caesarea, Tertullus accused Paul of being a ringleader for “the sect [hairesis] of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5), with the Sadducees also described as a sect [hairesis] (Acts 5:17) of Judaism, as were the Pharisees [hairesis] (Acts 15:5 – [hairesis] was used by Paul in Acts 26:5).
The Christian Church began as the sect of the Nazarenes, a sect of Judaism circumcised of heart not necessarily in the flesh, and considering that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8), the Christian Church remains as the sect of the Nazarenes, a sect of Judaism … if a “Christian” fellowship does not look or act as a sect of Judaism, then it is simply not of Christ Jesus but is the Adversary.
The Christian fellowship that doesn’t look somewhat like a sect of Judaism practices sinning. The Apostle John writes,
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. … Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. … No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:4–10)
Jesus said, “‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness”’” (Matt 7:21–23) … it is the many workers of iniquity, the many false apostles, false prophets, false teachers that demean Christian disciples who cling to the commandments and strive to walk uprightly before God, walking as Jesus walked, imitating Paul as he imitated Jesus, and outwardly looking like a sect of Judaism. It is these many workers of iniquity that today play pretend with Christ Jesus: they think as children think, believing in innocence that if they do evil good will come from it (Rom 3:8), little realizing that it is long past time when childish things are to be put away. The time for playing pretend with the Lord ended two millennia ago; yet rabbinical Judaism in its Seder services pretends that a shank bone or a chicken neck is an acceptable paschal lamb, and Evangelical Christendom pretends that it can enter into God’s presence on the 8th day. Surely the elders of both know better.
Israel as a physical nation dies on the 14th of Abib when the people shout to Pilate, “‘His blood be on us and on our children’” (Matt 27:25); Israel in its personage is represented by Jesus, the child of the woman clothed with the sun (Rev 12:5). And the natural nation of Israel has been as “dead” as Jesus physical body was dead for those three days and three nights—the natural nation will not “live” again until halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation; i.e., until shortly before day 1260, with day 1260 equating to the daylight portion of the 18th of Abib, 31 CE, when the seven years of tribulation are compared to the seven days of Unleavened Bread.
Children are hard to deceive by sleight-of-hand tricks for the attention spans of children are too short to focus on a deception for long … this shortness of attention span will save a portion of now-dead Israel, for a portion will tire of playing pretend and will look around and see itself in the mirror of the royal law and will turn to the Lord and begin to keep the precepts of the law [the just requirements of the Torah] (Rom 2:26) and thus cleanse their hearts by faith so that they can be circumcised.
Israel doesn’t die and stay dead, for again, the personage of Israel is represented by the body of Jesus so when Jesus is bodily resurrected from death, Israel lives as a born-of-spirit nation raised from death … Israel is individually and collectively crucified with Christ “in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing” (Rom 6:6). Paul writes,
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. / For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom 6:1–5)
Only by baptism representing a real death (the death of the old self) can disciples be buried with Christ so that by the glory of the Father they are raised from the dead to walk in newness of life … the Father raises the dead (John 5:21) when He gives to a human being a second breath of life; life via receipt of His divine breath [pneuma Theon]. Israel, individually and collectively, is raised from death when a people who was not before a people (1 Pet 2:10), physically circumcised and uncircumcised both, receives the Holy Spirit [pneuma Theon]; for the Uncircumcised who were “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12), “have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (v. 13). Israel is not today a physical nation, but a nation circumcised of heart. Paul writes, “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter” (Rom 2:28–29).
Understanding that endtime Israel is not the biological descendants of the patriarch Abraham but the spiritual descendants of Abraham coming through Christ Jesus. Paul writes, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:29). is central to comprehending the living metaphor that has natural Israel forming the shadow and copy of Christianity. But in this endtime era where demands exist for greater linguistic precision than employed by language users in earlier eras, disciples need to realize that both (1) Israel and (2) the children of Israel that entered the Promised Land behind Joshua individually and together form shadow and type of Christendom individually and collectively, with both Israel and the children of Israel being represented in the personage of Christ … usually no distinction is made between Israel and the children of Israel. Both are dubbed, Israel, in conversational language usage. But in introducing the New Covenant, the Lord used easily overlooked modifying phrases: the New Covenant is made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah; i.e., made with two entities generally recognized as the northern kingdom of Samaria and the southern kingdom of Judah. But the northern kingdom had already been taken into captivity by Assyria before Jeremiah records the Lord’s words. So the mention of the house of Israel suggests that this “house of Israel” was not the northern kingdom of Samaria, but was/is a differing entity. Likewise, the house of Judah would shortly be taken to Babylon: the southern kingdom would cease to exist, and would never again exist as it had previously been, for only a remnant of Judah returned from Babylon to Judea.
The New Covenant would not be a covenant like the covenant made with the fathers of the houses of Israel and Judah … what kind of a covenant was made with the fathers of Israel and Judah? What type of a covenant is the Passover covenant? Is it not a covenant ratified by the shedding of blood by both the fathers of Israel and Judah (in the sacrifice of paschal lambs) and by the Lord [YHWH] when He slew the firstborns of Egypt, Cush and Seba, making the covenant a copy of a heavenly thing or covenant (Heb 9:23)? Indeed, the Passover covenant is ratified by blood and as such is a covenant made with the flesh, an extremely important point to keep in mind.
But the New Covenant will not be a covenant like the Passover covenant: it will not be made with the flesh as the covenant made on the day when the Lord led Israel out of Egypt was a covenant made with the earthly fathers of natural Israel. Jumping forward in logic, the New Covenant will be made with the Father of spiritually circumcised Israel, a nation that was not before a nation, a nation brought into existence by the Father giving life through receipt of His breath to those human beings whom He has drawn from this world (John 6:44, 65) to be firstfruits, the firstborn spiritual son of God that is one son of God as Israel in Egypt was one son of God (Ex 4:22), with one not representing numerical singularity but unity as in Jesus saying,
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20–23)
The New Covenant will be made with the Father of spiritually circumcised Israel covenanting with Himself, the Most High God, thereby creating a truly unbreakable covenant that will have the Torah put within Israel, written on hearts cleansed by faith. The New Covenant will certainly differ from the covenant made with the human fathers of the house of Israel and the house of Judah on the day when the Lord led Israel out from physical bondage to a human king. The New Covenant will be made by the Father with Himself, and under the terms of this New Covenant, Israel will be liberated from bondage to sin and death coming from the consignment of the sons of Adam to disobedience and bondage to the present prince of this world, Satan the devil. For Israel is not today a nation made in the flesh but a nation born of spirit, with this “spirit” being the breath of life received from the Father.
As the sons of Adam receive “life” via receipt of the breath Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam (Gen 2:7), a man made from lifeless mud, the sons of God receive “life” via receipt of the breath of the Father [pneuma Theon] as the last Adam (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45) received a second breath of life when the Holy Spirit [pneuma Theon] descended as a dove to light and remain on Him (Matt 3:16). All judgment has been given to this now glorified last Adam, the firstborn Son of God and the First of the firstfruits, all of whom constitute the firstborn Son of God; so every disciple is made spiritually alive after the pattern of Jesus receiving a second breath of life following baptism by John, but alive in a mortal tent of flesh that must put on immortality through the Son also giving life to the disciple … for Gentile converts after Cornelius the pattern changes to receiving the Holy Spirit prior to baptism.
·Both the Father and the Son must give heavenly life to a human being (John 5:21) before the human being can enter heaven, for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50).
·A human being is “born of spirit” or “born again” when the Father draws the person from this world (John 6:44) and gives to the person a second breath of life, or in Christian parlance, when the person receives the Holy Spirit.
·But this second life is domiciled in a tent of flesh that must put on immortality or the life received from the Father will be lost in the lake of fire.
To the life given by the Father, the Son must also give life by causing the mortal flesh to put on immortally, thereby disclosing that as a Woman produces an ovum in her womb, the Logos breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud, giving life to Adam and causing the physically living sons of Adam to be as spiritual ova; that as the Man fertilizes the ovum in the Woman’s womb, the Father gives spiritual life to physically living but spiritually dead human beings; that as the Woman supplies the needs of the fetus in her womb so that it only has to grow, Christ Jesus nurtures and supplies the needs of His disciples, with grace functioning as a womb; that as the Woman gives birth to a child able to breath on its own, the Church as the last Zion will give “birth” to many sons of God (that are as Cain, Abel, and Seth were physically) at the beginning of the seven endtime years, and the Son will give “birth” spiritually to whom He will when judgments are revealed at the end of the seven endtime years of tribulation, thereby making spiritual birth a comprehendible process and the Father covenanting with Himself an unbreakable covenant in a manner analogous to a human father promising his unborn son that he will give to his son life … does that make sense? Until life is given, the promise of life is a promise that could be broken, not that the Father will break a promise He has made to Himself, but once life is given, the promise stands fulfilled. Thus, once the Logos [O Logos] entered His creation as His only Son (John 3:16), the man Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14), and the Father gave a second breath of life to Jesus, who was His beloved (Matt 3:17) as a woman is a man’s beloved, then Jesus only had to fulfill the taking on of the sins of Israel to complete all things even though all things were not then completed, for once the promise of inheriting heavenly life ceased to be a promise but became the actual giving of that heavenly life to the man Jesus, the promise stood fulfilled in Christ Jesus and will be fulfilled in all who are Christ’s, or said in another way, to all who are the Body of Christ and by extension, Christ … if a person is not one with Christ Jesus, the person is outside of the fulfilled promise of life, for the fulfilling of the promise comes through the man Jesus being one with the Father.
The linguistic precision that endtime disciples expect from Scripture will always be foiled by the necessity of assigning meaning [linguistic object] to words [linguistic icons]; thus, if a disciple doesn’t “hear” the voice of Jesus, inappropriate objects will be assigned to icons, or no objects will be assigned to icons. If the voice of Jesus is not heard, the preceding paragraph will read as gobbledygook.
If a man promises himself that he will go fishing next Wednesday, and if he goes fishing next Wednesday, he has kept his promise to himself—and he can fish all day Wednesday without breaking his promise.
If the Logos as the spokesman for the Most High promises Abraham to make his seed like the stars of heaven (Gen 15:5), a promise that has a physical application as in how many descendants Abraham will have and a promise with a spiritual application in that angels are called stars (Egyptians believed that Pharaohs would become stars), and if the Logos causes Sarah’s dead womb to bring forth a son through whom would come the natural descendants of Abraham, then the physical portion of the promise, the portion promised by the Logos, has been kept. But the spiritual portion, the portion coming from the Logos being the spokesman for the Most High, is not kept until the Logos enters His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus of Nazareth, and this Jesus receives a second breath of life, thereby making this Jesus [Iesous. literally, in Greek, “son of the most high God”] the single seed promised to Abraham through which his descendants would be spirit beings like angels, and would be as numerous as angels, or would be as stars in the heavens (plural).
Many endtime disciples seek to avoid using linguistic icons “contaminated” by paganism; thus they refrain from uttering the name, “Jesus,” claiming that the name pertains to Zeus but not understanding that long before Greeks proclaimed Zeus as head of its pantheon, Moses changed the name of Hoshea, son of Nun, to “Joshua” (Num 13:16), for “Hoshea” does not directly translate into Greek as Iēsous, whereas “Joshua” does (see Acts 7:45). Mary is told by the angel Gabriel to name the only Son of the Logos, “Jesus—Iesous ” (Luke 1:31), for Jesus is truly the only Son of the Theos [o Theos] who was with [pros] the Theon [ton Theon] in the beginning (John 1:1). He is also the firstborn Son of the Theon [ton Theon]; so Jesus is doubly the “Son of God/Theos,” a title and descriptive phrase that is no more contaminated by the Greek pantheon than the new self or creature born of God (and not born under condemnation. Rom 8:1–2) is contaminated by the disobedience of the tent of flesh in which this new self is born. If this new self takes on sin and becomes the bondservant to sin and to death (Rom 6:16), the new self is defiled; this new self is no longer under grace. Likewise, if the naming icon “Jesus—Iesous” comes to represent Greek paganism, especially paganism’s foremost teaching that human beings are born with immortal souls, then what the person believes (his or her religion) defiles the icon; the person commits blasphemy against Christ Jesus. And for this person, worshiping “Jesus—Iesous” is as worshiping Zeus, a juxtaposition that the Most High intended long before Moses changed Hoshea’s name. Hence, in what the naming icon “Jesus—Iesous” represents to a person, the Father and the Son invisibly separate the sons of God from the sons of the devil. This separation isn’t through the audible sound of an utterance, but by what the naming icon represents.
There is no name by which men can be saved but “Jesus Christ of Nazareth—Iesous Christos Nazoraios” (Acts 4:10, 12); so the person who will not use this name is without salvation. Fortunately, the person who will not use this naming icon is usually without spiritual life that can be lost.
The prophet Jeremiah records the Lord saying, “‘But if you do not obey these words [to do justice and practice righteousness], I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that this house [of Judah] shall become a desolation’” (22:5), and the writer of Hebrews says, “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely I will bless you and multiply you’” (6:13). Therefore, it should not be a marvel that the New Covenant is a covenant the Father has made with Himself, and that by this New Covenant, the Father will place the Torah within every person who is a descendant of Abraham through Christ Jesus, the promised seed who came to His own but was not received by the natural descendants of Abraham (John 1:11). And it should not be a marvel that as the natural descendants of Abraham did not receive Christ Jesus, the spiritual descendants of Abraham have also not received Christ Jesus but maintain their own righteousness and thus will perish as the natural descendants were cut off until the fullness of the Gentiles could come to God (Rom 11:25).
In circling back around to Israel being the shadow and copy of the children of Israel, and of Israel and the children of Israel together forming the shadow and copy of Christendom—and to linguistic precision being applied to icons that in this natural world represent a natural nation but in the mental realm where hearts have been cleansed by faith represent a spiritual nation—the nation of Israel with whom the Lord made the Passover covenant when this nation was in Egypt forms the shadow and copy of the Christian Church today, when sin and death remains dwelling in the fleshly members of disciples.
·The sins of Israel in Egypt were covered by Israel being the bondservant of Pharaoh, thus giving to Pharaoh the responsibility for Israel’s lawlessness.
·When the Passover covenant was implemented, the Lord led the fathers of the house of Israel and the house of Judah out from Egypt, thereby freeing them from bondage to Pharaoh and removing them from being under Pharaoh’s covering.
·But where there is no law, sin is not counted—for the six and a half weeks between when the Lord led Israel out from Egypt and when the Law was given at Sinai, Israel was under natural grace.
The Christian Church has two lives, received via two breaths of life, one received from the first Adam into whose nostrils Yah breathed, and one received from the Father when He drew the person from this world; whereas Israel in Egypt had only one life or breath of life. Thus, the comparison between Israel in Egypt [which for the sake of clarity will be identified as Israel1] and the Christian Church today [Israel2] has the physically circumcised human being dwelling in a physical house in Egypt being analogous to the new self, born of spirit as a son of God, circumcised of heart by the spirit and dwelling in a tent of flesh (i.e., the human body of the old self). But here complexity enters into the metaphor. The human person in Egypt was the bondservant of Pharaoh. The new self (creature) is not born under condemnation (Rom 8:1–2), but is born free to keep the commandments of God. However, the fleshy body (tent) in which this new creature dwells remains consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) and in as much need of liberation as the human person needed liberated in Egypt.
·The life that has come from heaven as a son of God is born free from condemnation, and is born free to keep the commandments of God.
·The life that comes from the first Adam and that empowers the flesh, however, remains consigned to disobedience through the indwelling of sin and death in the fleshly members of disciples (Rom 7:15–25).
·The fleshly members of disciples (i.e., the tent of flesh in which the new self dwells) needs liberation from sin as badly as Israel1 in Egypt needed liberation from Pharaoh.
This relationship between a living new self and a “dead” tent of flesh that is merely living through physical breath (the breath of life the first Adam received) is what’s seen when Jesus entered the temple at Passover (actually, on the 10th of Abib) to cleanse it—the inner new self needs to purge sin from the tent of flesh in which this son of God dwells just prior to Passover as Jesus purged sin from the temple.
Disciples need to show as much zeal for driving sin out from the tent of flesh as Jesus showed for driving out the moneychangers; for, again, the temple went from being a lifeless stone building to being the body/Body of Christ (John 2:18–22), a movement from being a dead building analogous to the dead biological software given to every human being (through receipt of physical life coming via the breath received from the first Adam) to being a building of living stone analogous to the living new self or new software that is from God, with the tent of flesh being liberated from indwelling sin and death at the second Passover.
When the New Covenant is implemented; when the Torah is placed within all of Israel, the nation will also understand that “signs” [words] can have dual referents, one in this world and one pertaining to the things of heaven. Until then, the explication of dual referents begun here will, most likely, seem like so-much doublespeak, but maybe it is through that particular icon understanding can come to a double voiced narrative.
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The comparison between Israel in Egypt [which for the sake of clarity will be identified as Israel1] and the Christian Church today [Israel2] has the physically circumcised human being dwelling in a physical house in Egypt being analogous to the new self, born of spirit as a son of God, circumcised of heart by the spirit and dwelling in a tent of flesh (i.e., the human body of the old self).
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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."