About Prophecy, The Book - Chapter Two

About Prophecy

The Book

—serialized—

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Chapter Two

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The geographic boundaries of ancient Israel represent, in type, the quantified amount of spiritual knowledge greater Christendom had in the past, presently has, and will have in the future …

The spiritual Body of Christ forms the reality of the natural body of Christ: the earthly body of Christ Jesus serves as the mirror image [chiral image] of the spiritual Body. Thus, what happened to the earthly body must necessarily happen to the spiritual Body, with every disciple born of spirit individually and collectively forming the spiritual Body. Thus, every truly born of spirit disciple is a fractal of Christ, with the concept of fractal geometry underlying the roughness of the creation. So as the earthly body of Christ was crucified and lay dead in the heart of the earth for three days and was returned to life after the third day, the spiritual Body of Christ was/is crucified with Christ, and died/dies a death like Christ’s, and will be raised from death at the end of the third day, with the Wedding Supper of Bridegroom and Bride to occur at the hour of the Wave Sheaf Offering on the fourth day.

As endtime Christians, we assume we know what Paul meant when he wrote, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). … A sinner is an unbeliever who, through unbelief, transgresses the Law (cf. Rom 14:23; 1 John 3:4). Can a person, any person, be an unbeliever before conception? Can a person transgress the Law before conception? Does not the prophet Ezekiel record,

Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die. …

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. (Ezek 18:4, 20)

If the sinner is condemned for his [or her] sin and not the sins of ancestors, then Christ Jesus does not die for the sinner until the sinner is condemned, a delicate juxtaposition with every person being born as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), consigned to disobedience so that God can have mercy on all (Rom 11:32). And to better understand this juxtaposition, the natural needs to be examined: was every Hebrew in Egypt born as a slave of the Pharaoh? No, a time existed before “there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Ex 1:8). Hebrews born in Egypt before a new king [not one of the Shepherd Kings] came to power were born as free persons: they became slaves with the new king coming to power.

There was a time before the world was baptized into death in the days of Noah when the Adversary was not the prince of this world, but merely an opposing cosmic force that introduced unbelief and violence into the antediluvi-an world. It was during this period when the Lord was grieved that He had made humankind:

[YHWH] saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And [YHWH] was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So [YHWH] said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." (Gen 6:5–7)

But by the principle that a person is condemned for his or her own sins, not the sins of ancestors, Noah was righteous and a preacher of righteousness, and therefore was not condemned. Thus by Noah’s righteousness, humankind was saved in the eight persons who boarded the Ark, the account of Noah saved in a Hebrew structured narrative that functions as poetry functions in that the focus of the narrative isn’t the phenomena that caused the narrative to be written, but the narrative itself, meaning the veracity of the narrative cannot be legitimately challenged for in doing so the reader misses the focus of the narrative.

To challenge whether a worldwide flood occurred—enough evidence exists to support such a flood—is akin to searching for which species of whale could have swallowed Jonah … to challenge whether a flood occurred is to miss the point of the Noah narrative. And while it is internally satisfying for an unbeliever to “prove” that such a flood couldn’t have occurred—I know for when in high school, I “proved” to my Adventist stepfather that two of every species couldn’t have fit into the Ark, but a decade later I realized I had my facts wrong (when proving that the Noah story couldn’t happen, I was still thinking as a child)—what the Believer and unbeliever needs to realize that in a Hebrew styled/structured narrative, the story need not be true in the natural. Only the spiritual needs to be true. The story itself functions as biblical prophecy of a different sort than, Thus says the Lord …

In his radio broadcasts, Herbert Armstrong used to say that a full third of the Bible was prophecy. Armstrong was still thinking as a child: the Bible is a physical object, a book. As such it forms the shadow and copy of the spiritual or heavenly Book of Life. In its entirety, the Bible is the mirror image of a non-physical book; thus, the Bible in its entirety is as the Jonah narrative is in relationship to how Jesus used the sign of Jonah. The Bible is a collective book of prophecy, with the prophecies given differently depending upon who was at the time the prince of this world. So to challenge the veracity of seemingly unbelievable phenomena such as the Flood, or Moses with the burning bush is to challenge the veracity of prophecy, with the truthfulness of a prophecy undeterminable until the prophecy occurs.

To restate the preceding by using an endtime example: we cannot say for certain that all firstborn in Egypt perished in a single night—evidence doesn’t exist to absolutely resolve the issue—until the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, with failure of the Second Passover to occur in, say, 2011, not being evidence that the Second Passover will not occur. Then after the Second Passover occurs, we will not return to Israel’s exodus from Egypt as a phenomenon to be discussed:

Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares [YHWH], when it shall no longer be said, “As [YHWH] lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but “As [YHWH] lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers. (Jer 15:14–15)

Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares [YHWH], when they shall no longer say, “As [YHWH] lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but “As [YHWH] lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.” Then they shall dwell in their own land. (Jer 23:7–8)

After the Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death, humanity won’t be interested in the veracity of Israel’s exodus from Egypt: the account will be true enough for the focus of everyone will be on the future and building a society not based on transactions.

We would know nothing about circumcised of heart Israel without the mirror of natural Israel to reflect its image of circumcised of heart Israel.

But an observation: the unbeliever who has dismissed the Bible as a collection of myths, superstitions, and bad history will be more able and more willing to believe God after the Second Passover than will be the Christian who knows for certain that God created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh day. The mental imprinting of the distortions of the Adversary will permanently harm the Christian who, collectively, will rebel against God on day 220 of the Affliction; will rebel when the lawless one (the man of perdition) is revealed in the temple of God, this lawless one being an Arian Christian possessed by the Adversary.

Returning to the end of the second paragraph of this chapter: the three natural days that the earthly body of Jesus lay entombed in the heart of the earth becomes the self-similar fractal of the first three days of the Genesis “P” creation account, with the Christian era represented by the second and third days of this spiritual week … in the Genesis “P” creation account, the second day is not said to be good, but the third day is twice declared good: its dark portion on which dry land was formed is declared good as well as its light portion during which plants brought forth seed and fruit (Gen 1:10, 12).

The “P” creation account is poetry that doesn’t structurally translate—and a universal characteristic of poetry is at play with the metaphor of naming, play of the sort seen in King Nebuchadnezzar being identified as a tree (Dan chap 4), or disciples bearing the fruit of the spirit (Gal 5:22–23), or in Jesus cursing a fig tree for not bearing bear when it wasn’t the season for fruit, with the fig tree representing disciples who are to bear the fruit of the spirit when it isn’t the season for fruit because the Adversary remains the prince of this world—it will be the season for fruit when the Son of Man reigns as prince of this world.

The fourth day on which Christians as the Bride will wed the Bridegroom is the fourth day of the Genesis “P” creation account, with the fifth day of this creation account being the Millennium, and the sixth day being the great White Throne Judgment.

Day One—there is a difference in naming the days, with Day One being linguistically separated from the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh days …

The dark portion of Day One included the day on which “the heavens and the earth were created, in the day that the [YHWH] God made the earth and the heavens” (Gen 2:4) as well as the man Adam (v. 7). This night portion of Day One extended forward in time from the creation to when Christ Jesus was born, with Paul writing, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).

Where does God say, Let light shine out of darkness? In Genesis 1:3, with this light being the light of Day One—

And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Gen 1:4–5)

The light of Day One cannot be the sun if the sun is the great light of the fourth day, which it isn’t; for God made the earth and the heavens in one day (again, Gen 2:4), the same day as He made all things physical, including entering His creation as the light of Day One.

All prehistory and history until the birth of Christ Jesus occurs in the dark or night portion of Day One. The light or day portion of Day One existed for the duration of Christ Jesus’ earthly life, some 33 years. And with Christ Jesus being the light of Day One, Jesus established the parameters for night and day in the “P” [Priestly] creation account: when the Creator of all things physical is absent from His creation, there is no light in the creation and by extension, night exists. When the Creator of all things physical is inside His creation, light is present and day exists. Thus when Christ was crucified and His spirit went to preach to imprisoned spirits (1 Pet 3:18–20), He was absent from His creation, and this was the night portion of the second day. When Christ Jesus was resurrected from death and appeared to Mary Magdalene in the morning, then to ten of His disciples in the afternoon, Christ Jesus was again inside His creation, but in a different form than on Day One when He was an earthly man; hence, the linguistic separation between Day One and the remainder of this creation week, with the separation being a sign conveying meaning through its poetic context.

After being with His disciple for a limited period, the glorified Jesus returned to heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Most High God, thereby beginning the dark or night period of the third day, with this night still continuing two millennia later, and set to continue until Christ Jesus stands on the Mount of Olives while Michael and his angels cast Satan and his angels out from heaven and into the creation (Rev 12:7–10).

The Mount of Olives will be cleaved in two, a granite monolith cut without human hands:

Behold, a day is coming for [YHWH], when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then [YHWH] will go out and fight against those nations as when He fights on a day of battle. On that day His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal. And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. (Zech 14:1–5 emphasis added)

And this single stone shall come together to swallow the flood [armies] the Adversary sends after the holy ones in a manner foreshadowed by the Sea of Reeds coming together to swallow Pharaoh and his army (cf. Rev 12:15–16; Ex 15:12; Dan 9:26 — “His end,” not “Its end”). This single cleaved monolith—the Mounts of Olives—is the one that will strike the feet of the humanoid image King Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision, shattering the gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay.

The physical shadow and copy of the Mount of Olives swallowing the flood the Adversary sends after the Woman occurred at the first Passover when Pharaoh came after Moses and the people of Israel as they were trapped by the waters of the Sea of Reeds. The reality or substance of Pharaoh and his army being destroyed by water doesn’t occur three earthly days after the Passover, but a time, times, and half a time later—three and a half years later, or in the fourth year of the seven endtime years of tribulation. And the movement from three days to three years falls within the concept of self-similar divisions in fractal geometry.

Under Moses in Egypt, the fourth day of liberty began with Israel trapped and Pharaoh’s army about to strike. But on the dark portion of this fourth day, the waters separated and Israel crossed the Sea of Reeds on dry land:

Understanding the timeline of Moses is helpful; for the death angel passed over all of Egypt at the midnight hour of the 14^th day of the first month, but Israel remained in their houses until dawn on the 14^th day, with Israel spoiling the Egyptians during the day portion of the 14^th, then journeying as free persons from Rameses to Succoth, a very short journey in the late afternoon of the 14^th day. Israel then camped at Succoth the night of the 15^th day, which is today the beginning of High Sabbath and The Night to be Much Observed by Christians.

Now we know for certain that Israel sacrificed Passover lambs at the beginning of the 14^th day, not at the end of the 14^th day, even though the language of the historical account is ambiguous, because of reality or substance of this natural portion of this Hebrew structured narrative, this reality being that Jesus ate the Passover with His disciples on the dark portion of the 14^th day and was taken about the midnight hour, the hour when the death angel passed over Egypt. He was then crucified on the day portion of the 14^th day, and died at Calvary about 3:00 pm on the 14^th day, and was buried in the Garden Tomb by sunset, ending the 14^th day and beginning the 15^th day, the night when Israel as a free people were encamped at Succoth.

Without Jesus’ death at Calvary, no person could ever receive indwelling spiritual or heavenly life; for Jesus’ spirit in which the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] resides becomes the vessel from heaven that is able to hold the bright fire that is the glory of God in a human person.

Without the spirit of God—the force that sustains life in God, the force that appears as bright fire (as opposed to the dark fire of cellular oxidation that sustains physical life)—being held in a vessel that has also come from heaven, the spirit of God can fill the human soul [psuche] but would utterly consume the spirit of the person, the indwelling spirit of man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou], if this bright fire were to enter/penetrate the human spirit that needs to be protected from the intensity or brightness of the glory of God.

In the natural, the human male is unable to produce offspring by himself. The human male can deposit his seed on plants or in beasts, but no offspring will come from such deposits. The human male needs a human female to produce offspring for the male. Likewise, God the Father needs Christ Jesus, a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45), to produce sons for the Father. And this again is an example where the natural forms the mirror image of the spiritual, thereby granting to Jesus’ friends knowledge they couldn’t otherwise ascertain.

Where revelation becomes fresh is in understanding that when human infants are abandoned by parents, they die; thus in the spiritual, if a son of God is abandoned by God, Father or Son, this son of God will also perish. Presently, Christ Jesus bears the sins of those Christians truly born of God, but He will not always do so, with the destruction of the temple and the absence of a high priest in the natural disclosing a spiritual reality.

The Apostle Paul identified the Church as the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16), and for as long as the temple stands, the temple blocks the way to God:

These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this the holy spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing (which is symbolic for the present age). (Heb 9:6–9)

In order for unbelievers to come to God—not something they will do voluntarily in this present age—the temple has to be razed, and its high priest left without work to do. When this temple and high priest is heavenly, razing the temple would equate to the death of the Body of Christ. Rebuilding the temple would equate to resurrection of the Body of Christ.

When the Father ceases to draw persons from this world and deliver them to Christ Jesus (John 6:44, 65), the Body of Christ dies; when the Father again draws persons from the world, the Body lives. So whether the Body of Christ lives or dies is not dependent upon human endeavor, but dependent upon what the Father intends, with His form of birth control coming via whether He draws or doesn’t draw a person or many people from this world in any given period.

When the Body is dead, the temple of God is razed and no barrier stands between the unbeliever and God. If the unbeliever does what the Law requires, that is manifest love for neighbor and brother, the unbeliever’s prayers are heard by God and by the criterion Paul established—

For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:14–16)

—the unbeliever will be saved without ever having professed the name of Christ Jesus, or even knowing of Christ (see Matt 25:31–46). So there is an advantage to God for Him not to draw disciples from this world and deliver them to Christ Jesus to be nurtured.

As mortal human beings, we don’t consider the possibility of it being to God’s advantage to let the Body of Christ lay dead for centuries; letting the temple lay in ruins. Rather, we tend to think that if a person doesn’t come to Christ Jesus while the person lives, the person is forever lost, when this is just not so as the natural reveals … Daniel and his friends could not have entered the temple for they would have been castrated (made into eunuchs): “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of [YHWH]” (Deu 23:1). But because Solomon’s temple lay in ruins, Daniel and his friends could come to the Lord without hindrance, whereas they could not have come if the temple had been rebuilt while they lived.

Likewise, while the temple that is the Body of Christ lay in ruins for centuries—the Body of Christ being dead—the righteous person who was a Christian in name only could come to God without walking in this world as Jesus walked, a reality that Sabbatarian Christendom tends to deny. This remains the case to this day and will remain the case until the Second Passover liberation of Israel: the righteous Sunday keeper—and there are some—is not born of spirit as a son of God, but will, according to Paul’s gospel, be in the kingdom when judgments are revealed because of the person’s righteousness and because the Body of Christ is today dead; the temple is razed; and the holy place is overrun by Gentiles. But when life is returned to the Body of Christ through all Christians being filled with the spirit of God at the Second Passover, there will be no way to come to God except through Christ Jesus, meaning that the spirit-filled Christian must necessarily walk in this world as Jesus walked. To not walk as Jesus walked will be to commit blasphemy against the spirit.

The image of Christ Jesus that is seen in John’s vision is complex:

I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around His chest. The hairs of His head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and His voice was like the roar of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, from His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and His face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying, "Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. (Rev 1:12–20)

And,

And one of the elders said to me, "Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that He can open the scroll and its seven seals." And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. (Rev 5:5–6)

Same image, twice described, with the second description being of how the glorified Christ functions as the Lamb of God, with the seven eyes being how the seven angels to the seven churches function, and with seven horns being how the seven lampstands that are the seven churches function. Thus, the slain Lamb of God functions as one like a son of man, with the body of the slain Lamb being the resurrected Christian Church … the seven named churches that function as horns are the spiritual corollary to the seven mountains upon which the great Whore is seated:

This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain only a little while. (Rev 17:9–10)

The seven heads are seven mountains that are seven kings—these seven mountains hold up the Whore, the body of the Adversary who has been cast into space-time after dominion is taken from the Adversary and his angels (Rev 12:7–10) … the Lamb is seen (Rev chap 5) while the Adversary and his angels still hold dominion over living creatures, but when dominion is taken from the Adversary, the head of Babylon, and given to the Son of Man, spiritual Babylon in the form of its head [the forehead on which is written Babylon] and its body [the adulterous woman] is seen, Thus, the spiritual corollary to the seven mountains that are seven kings are the seven horns on the head of the Lamb—not seven heads that are seven kings, for the horns that are the seven named churches have one Head, the Lamb.

But as the great Whore has become the visible body of the Adversary and is not the seven heads that are seven kings, in the spiritual corollary (the chiral image) the seven horns that are the seven churches are not the Body of the Lamb—and it is here where spiritual understanding is required.

The Elect that constitute the oil and the wine that Sin cannot harm (Rev 6:6) because they are already processed fruits (processed because their inner selves have already been glorified) are not the Body of Christ that is today still dead and that will remain dead until the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel through all Christians being filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God. The Elect—those Christians who were foreknown by God, predestined, called by Christ, justified by Christ, and glorified by Christ through the indwelling of Christ that causes them to walk in this world as Christ walked—have already passed from death to life without coming under judgment (John 5:24). And while their fleshly bodies remain mortal, they have received a second breath of life, the spirit/breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath/spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] that have eternal or heavenly life of the spirit in them, the spirit of man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] that is in their soul [psuche] as a fractal of God being the Head of Christ who is, in turn, the Head of every disciple, male or female, as the husband is the head of his wife (1 Cor 11:3), the man and his wife being one flesh as the Father and His Son are one spirit, one God, that are two deities as a man and his wife are two persons that ideally work in unison, one with the other, as if they were truly one person in the pattern seen in the soul of the person and the person’s fleshly body, together, forming one person.

The geometry of marriage has the Father being the Head of Christ as a husband is the head of his wife, with Christ being the Head of the disciple as the husband is the head of his wife, with the resurrected spirit of the person being the head of the soul as the husband is the head of his wife, and with the living soul of the person being the head of the fleshly body of the person as the husband is the head of his wife—fractal geometry, where the repetition of self-similarity permits the whole to be seen in any fractal. Thus, spiritual procreation is seen in human procreation, with spiritual growth in grace and knowledge from infancy to the son of God’s majority seen in human maturation.

Whenever I write some form of the above, knowing that I was called to reread prophecy, I think of my own physical maturation: I was nine pounds, ten ounces, and twenty-five inches long at birth. I weighed thirty-two pounds at ten months. I started first grade as the largest student, and only one of three who could read. I was five foot, eight inches and 185 pounds when I started sixth grade at eleven years old—and during that school year, I completed sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, and stated high school the following fall at six feet and 205 pounds. I started at the top of my class and finished at the top of my class and entered Willamette University as a math major on an honors scholarship when sixteen … did I do anything to find myself in college at sixteen? No, I didn’t. I didn’t cause myself to physical grow rapidly; I didn’t do anything to cause myself to be intelligent. These were biological traits that came from my parents. And it could be argued that I haven’t taken advantage of what I have been biologically given as I turned the rebellion of the 1960s against itself, becoming a muzzleloading gunmaker trying to make ten dollars a day more than I spent that day, working for others running a chainstitch sewing machine, doing machine embroidery, then working at the pulpmill, and later in Alaska, working for Ron as a small engine mechanic, then at Sutliff’s in Kodiak as a small engine mechanic, but working for myself from the time I was twenty on, working for myself to this day, a little short of fifty years from having opened shop in Siletz, Oregon, in the basement of a house owned by my wife’s cousin, then the postmaster at Siletz. So if spiritual growth is foreshadowed by, or is the chiral image of spiritual growth—my argument is that this is so—then it should come as no surprise that someone like myself (there will be others equally or even better qualified) was called to reread prophecy; to assign godly meanings to the words of prophecies delivered millennia ago.

In 1965, I married and laid out of college for a term to make enough money to support a wife. I returned to college twenty-three years later as a graduate student with no undergraduate degree: my first degree is my M.F.A. in Creative Writing from University of Alaska Fairbanks—Idaho State University told me that they would not give me a doctorate as my first degree, that I had to return to Alaska and defend my dissertation for the M.F.A. There is a little more to this story that I’ll save for another occasion.

What I didn’t know before two figurative bullets in the head killed the former Worldwide Church of God was the goodness of Christians within the greater Church. I never even considered Mormons as being Christians—I had never been among them, knew very few of them, and my perspective on them was tainted by the disinformation generated by Trinitarian Christendom, disinformation of the sort Stalin’s henchmen circulated about Pope Pious XII being Hitler’s Pope when nothing could be farther from the truth.

When the former Worldwide Church of God sought to get academic accreditation for Ambassador College, they needed faculty with terminal degrees from accredited universities; so younger faculty members were sent to get graduate theology degrees—and what these younger faculty members found was a surplus of humanly good people in Trinitarian denominations. This came as a surprise to them, and what resulted was a rapid overhaul of Armstrong’s ideology and the headquarters of the former Worldwide Church of God returning to the theological errors of Evangelical Christendom. This return guaranteed the breakup of what had become a major Sabbatarian denomination, producing a splintering of the denomination into hundreds of minuscule sects and independent fellowships … a worldwide ministry became many cottage industries, with one cottage stealing members from other cottages, for with a thousand supporters, a monthly magazine could be printed; with a second thousand, a television broadcast could be supported; with a third thousand, a college campus could be built, all with fossilized understandings of Scripture.

Life was easy when I fished in the Aleutians: oh, days were long and the work was hard, but I didn’t have to answer to anyone. I didn’t have to be anywhere at any particular time. I didn’t have to deal with customers wanting their outboards fixed today—If I wanted it fixed tomorrow, I would have brought it in tomorrow, a line from Brownell’s book, Gunsmith Kinks, a book I had purchased when the book was first published, but a book that didn’t go to Alaska with me.

All I had to do when fishing out of Kodiak and Dutch was catch enough fish to buy groceries and fuel, and in 1979–1983, that wasn’t difficult.

I had found many humanly good people who were not Christians when I worked in the pulpmill and served customers, but I couldn’t then say the same for Christians, who collectively were too quick to judge and too quick to condemn, an aspect of the Christian culture that is difficult to escape, with Worldwide Church of God members being among the fastest on the draw, with Bibles falling open to pet Scriptures supporting keeping the Commandments: many Worldwide Church of God members had wide-margin Oxford editions of the King James Version that fell open to Matthew 5:17 and 1 John 3:4. It was only later, when I was in the company of Marxist professors that I began to understand that evil was nothing more than unbelief of God; that goodness was nothing more than belief of God that led to obedience; that there were a great many Christians who were outwardly good even though they didn’t believe God enough to keep the Commandments by faith [pisteos].

So the dilemma that confronted me when called to reread prophecy revolved around what was I to think about Christians being of God when they were not obedient to God. The typology of the body of Christ being the shadow and type of the Body of Christ was quickly realized; thus as the body of Christ died and was resurrected after three days, the spiritual Body of Christ [the Christian Church] also died and will be resurrected to glory after the third day. But what about me, and a few others like me that I had met in thirty years of fellowship in the Worldwide Church of God; what about an evangelical named Chuck Carlson and his father in Klamath Falls, Oregon, that I got to know in 1964; what about Elder Stambaugh, the Seventh Day Adventist pastor at Oceanlake [now, Lincoln City], Oregon? How were good people outside of Sabbatarian fellowships to be explained; how were good Sabbatarians who didn’t keep the Passover to be explained? And this was also the dilemma of the Apostle Paul, who assumed that all who came to Christ had been drawn by the Father and delivered to Christ when this was simply not so; for if they had been of Christ, they would have continued with Christ. They would not live as a Gentile. They would live as Judeans, marked in this world by Sabbath observance and their love for brother and neighbor.

It is love for brother and neighbor that are also created in the image of God where Sabbatarian Christendom has failed … love for God is expressed in obedience to God; expressed in believing God to the degree that the Christian doesn’t care what neighbors say, what employers say, what family members say, the Christian will keep the Commandments, especially the Sabbath command, the easiest Commandment to keep and the least of the Commandments—

Is it not easiest to rest from your mundane laboring on the seventh day than to not be angry with the person who has wronged you intentionally? I found when logging or commercial fishing that it was easy to rest on the Sabbath while others worked that seventh day … a long time ago, I wrote,

December Sabbath—december sabbathdecember sabbath

sunset was at two—

all day I cut

white spruce and

black; found a moose,

all but its hooves

eaten by wolves.

I worked until

the early Sabbath

stopped my saw. Now

my boots by the door,

my chair near the stove,

I eat dinner

while the red skidder

roots gritty snow

The gyppo for whom I was falling timber (if the stubby spruce of the Kenai Peninsula can be called timber) in December 1974, was a Southern Baptist. I had reminded him when I went to work on this Friday that I would be knocking off at 2:00 p.m., for the Sabbath. He said that he and the skidder operator would take their lunch then—it was barely light enough at 9:30 to see to log, so 2:00 was only half an hour later than normal for taking lunch. And at 2:00, we took a break, sitting in the gyppo’s Jeep pickup with the engine running, the gyppo and his skidder operator eating, me waiting until they finished out of politeness. The pickup parked in my driveway. And the gyppo said, That’s right, you’re under the bondage of the old law. It wasn’t the place to engage in a theological discussion, so I only said, You’re right, I am. And I excused myself and went inside our cabin where I took off pak boots and coat, two sweatshirts and padded pants that I wore over jeans and wool underwear. My wife handed me a plate of hot food, and I sat beside the stove as I listened to the gyppo return to work—he was logging a forty acre piece behind the cabin there on the corner of Ninilchik’s Oilwell and Kingsley Roads. And I wondered who was really under bondage.

Because of the exclusiveness of Christianity’s claim that Christ is the only way to salvation, Christians have engaged in a culture of disparagingly dismissing non-Christians as being condemned to the flames of hell, thereby setting up an us versus them scenario, with Christians being a chosen and loved-by-God people while everyone else is hated by God—and this is simply not true. In fact, most of the harvest of firstfruits will come from those who are not today Christian, with the last being first and with the first mostly not being there because of that latent smugness that will cause Christians, when filled with the spirit, to rebel against God.

Yet, as I began to say: there are a great many truly good Christians that presently fail to keep the Commandments because their pastors and teachers have assured them that they are not under the Law … no, they are not under the Law for they are spiritually dead, and the dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5) and are not held accountable for what they don’t know. Yet the sinner who is without the Law will also perish without the Law (Rom 2:12).

What I came to realize is that the Elect differs from the Body of Christ, with the Elect being described when Paul wrote,

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. (Rom 8:28–33)

It is the Elect who have been drawn from this world by the Father:

Jesus answered them, "Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, 'And they will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.” (John 6:43–47 emphasis added)

And,

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (John 5:24)

The juxtaposition of the Elect and the Body of Christ was not understood by Paul, who wanted to believe that everyone who came to Christ was of the Elect. But the author of Matthew’s Gospel makes a subtle distinction between the Elect and the Body:

As He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?" And Jesus answered them, "See that [you deceive no one]. For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the Elect those days will be cut short. (Matt 24:3–22 double emphasis added)

The one who endures to the end is whom? Who will be saved? Everyone who endures to the end. And it is this good news that must be proclaimed to all nations before the end comes—and why will everyone who endures to the end be saved? Because once dominion is taken from the present prince of this world and given to the Son of Man, all of the world will be baptized in the spirit of God (Joel 2:28; Matt 3:11). All people will be filled with spirit and thereby liberated from indwelling Sin and Death. All people will be free to believe God and keep the Commandments. But Christians, being in the Affliction 1260 days earlier than when dominion is given to the Son of Man and Satan and his angels are cast to earth, have rebelled against God, insisting that they are not under the Law even though the Law has been placed in their minds and written on their hearts.

In the following chapter, I will write about disinformation—the culture of lies—used by the Russians, beginning with Potemkin’s villages, and presently being employed by the White House against its own citizens. … What Christians believe about Christ comes mostly from disinformation disseminated by the Adversary during the first few centuries after Calvary, with the Adversary being the father of lies. And unfortunately, Christians believe the Adversary’s lies in the same way that too many African-Americans believe that the AIDS epidemic in Africa is part of a CIA plot against Africans, their belief rooted in evidence manufactured by Russian intelligence operatives without more than a kernel of truth. But where a kernel of truth exists, a field of falsity can be grown, its crop harvested by those who want to sow dissension within America.

The smear campaign waged against Pope Pious XII’s legacy is rooted in lies. The smear campaign against America, claiming that America is a tool of Zionist extremism, that is presently being waged in Muslim nations is rooted in disinformation. The modern hatred of Jews by Muslims can be traced back to hundreds of thousands of copies of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion that were published by Russian intelligence operatives, the manuscript being a Tsarist fabrication to bring about a nation that had one culture, one religion, and one language. The manuscript is usually called a hoax—it is far worse than a hoax: it is evil, a lie that can too easily be believed, a lie that will keep Muslims from walking in this world as Jesus, an observant Jew, walked when the Adversary and his angels are cast to earth.

I first heard of The Protocols from Ray Dick, whose father in about 1955 had given him a copy … Ray came from a long time Mennonite family, his nephew being the rock star Paul Revere Dick who spent his alternative draft service working in a psych hospital outside of Portland, Oregon—alternative service because of his Mennonite pacifist beliefs. Ray had spent his alternative service during WWII in a C.O. camp at Downy, Idaho. And Ray’s father had given him a copy of The Protocols in an attempt to head off Ray’s Sabbatarian leanings. Ray’s father believed the claims made in The Protocols, but Ray wasn’t to be deterred: he would be a senior at Armstrong’s Ambassador College in spring 1962, the importance of which I have discussed in APA Volume 1. But the point here is that even within Anabaptist Christendom, Soviet employment of disinformation in the form of The Protocols had its effect on Christians in a similar way to how disinformation employed by pagan Greek philosophers who had converted to the Jesus Movement in the 2^nd and 3^rd Centuries CE had turned Christians away from keeping the Commandments.

My ancestry was also Mennonite and Old German Baptist. And it is time to actually discuss disinformation, hence, time to begin the next chapter.

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