About Prophecy - The Book, Serialized - Chapter Six

About Prophecy

The Book

—serialized—

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Chapter Six

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Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. Now [YHWH] God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?" And he said, "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die." And [YHWH] said, "You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" (Jon 4:3–11)

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The breath or pneuma [spīritus] that was restored to Jonah when he was inside the whale is analogous to the dead then living spirit of man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] inside the disciple, with life given to this spirit [pneuma] through the indwelling of Christ Jesus, His spirit [pneuma Christou] in the spirit of man. Evangelical Christianity speaks of the soul being regenerated … a return of life previously possessed could be called a regeneration of the spirit. But this would imply that Adam lost his inner life when he ate forbidden fruit, but Adam never ate from the Tree of Life. He never had a living spirit of man. He never received an immortal soul. And he was driven from the Garden (Gen 3:24) before he could eat from the Tree of Life.

Adam lived physically for 930 years without having eaten from the Tree of Life, and this after he was told that on the day when he ate forbidden fruit, he shall surely die (Gen 2:17) — that “day” couldn’t be a twenty-four hour period, or “surely die” wasn’t physical death. So the story of the creation of Adam and of the Temptation would seem to have dwelling in the Garden of Eden being analogous to possessing everlasting physical life, with this “everlasting life” coming through the absence of indwelling sin and death, the state of all human persons in the Millennium and the state of all Christians immediately following the Second Passover liberation of circumcised-of-heart Israel. Thus, the Garden of Eden functions as a symbol in Hebrew-styled Scripture that will have its beginning forming the chiral image of its conclusion, the old serpent Satan the devil being loosed from his chains and again deceiving the corners of the earth at the end of the Thousand Years. In the beginning, the serpent deceives not Adam, but Eve, with Adam’s garment of obedience clothing both him and his wife until he ate, putting an end to his obedience. In the end, the old serpent deceives not Israel, but outlying peoples that come against Israel then dwelling in peace in unwalled cities.

The element of Thirdness that connects beginning with end is the story of Israel, circumcised in the flesh and circumcised of heart. Israel now becomes analogous to the human body that stands between left and right hands.

If what the Lord God told Adam—“‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Gen 2:16–17)—didn’t pertain to physical death, then was Adam a physical creature? He was a nephesh, a breathing creature, so he should have been a physical man as human persons are physical people today. But God is not a physical deity. And if Adam and Eve were created in the likeness and image of the Lord God, they would be living spirits, at least after eating of the Tree of Life. So the creation of Adam was not completed when Adam was driven from the Garden.

The Lord God clothed Adam and Eve in hide and hair before driving them from the Garden (Gen 3:21), and He apparently did so without killing any animal in the Garden although the assumption has been that God sacrificed animals to cover Adam’s transgression and used their skins to make for Adam and Eve skin garments. That isn’t, however, what is inscribed in the Temptation Account. There is no mention of any sacrifice, or of any covering for Adam’s transgression; for death reigned from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14). If Adam’s transgression had been covered by a sacrifice, death would not have reigned from Adam. Rather, death reigned through Adam and Eve having been driven from the Garden.

Again, there is in the Temptation Account only the mention of God making skin garments, with “skin” being the same Hebrew consonant cluster as is used for the hide and hair of beasts and of persons.

It is here where the sign of Jonah offers assistance: Jonah lost his life inside the whale [great fish], but Jonah had his life, his breath, returned to him while he remained inside the whale, which is symbolic of the Logos [’o Logos] who was God [Theos] and who was with [pros] the God [ton Theon] in primacy [arche] (John 1:1) when He left behind (lost) His divine breath (the bright fire that is the glory of God — from Ezek 1:26–28) and entered His creation (John 1:3) as His unique Son (John 3:16), the man Jesus the Nazarene (John 1:14), then had returned to Him divine breath when the breath/spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the bodily form of a dove descended upon Him and entered into [eis] Him (Mark 1:10), thereby establishing the following correspondences:

· Jonah with his breath of life on the ship in troubled seas corresponds to the Logos in heaven, with heaven being troubled by the Adversary’s rebellion;

· Jonah cast overboard corresponds to the Logos entering His creation;

· Jonah being swallowed by the whale corresponds to the Logos as the son of Himself being born as the man Jesus;

· As Jonah was dead inside the whale, the man Jesus was spiritually dead—as the Logos, He couldn’t die, but as the unique Son of the Logos, Jesus the Nazarene, the Logos no longer lived: He was His Son, not Himself.

· As the breath of life was returned to Jonah while Jonah was inside the whale, divine breath was returned to the man Jesus through receipt of the breath/spirit of the Father, the God [ton Theon].

· As Jonah was spewed from the whale, being freed from imprisonment in the massive fleshly body of the whale, the fleshly body of the man Jesus died at Calvary and the glorified Jesus was resurrected from death.

· As Jonah preached repentance to Nineveh after being spewed out of the whale and returned to dry land, the glorified Christ will preach repentance to all nations and to all peoples from heaven.

If Jesus was not His fleshly body but was instead the inner self [spirit and soul] that dwelt in the fleshly body—the inner self that preached to imprisoned spirits (1 Pet 3:18–20)—and if Jesus was the second or last Adam (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45), then it is safe to conclude that the hide and hair in which the Lord God garmented Adam and Eve was like the body of the whale for Jonah and like Jesus’ fleshly body, with those disciples in which Jesus dwells forming His spiritual Body in a similar way to how the living inner self of Jesus dwelt in His physical body … the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] in the spirit of the man [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] that is the disciple of Christ is analogous to the spirit of God [again, pneuma Theou] in the spirit of Christ, causing Christ Jesus to be the First of many firstborn sons of God, with the completion of Adam coming in the acceptance by God of the glorified Jesus as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering. The completion of the descendants of Adam, now, will be acceptance by God of glorified disciples as the reality of the two loaves of bread made from new grain beaten into fine flour and baked with leavening on the reality of the Feast of Weeks (see Lev 23:9–14 for the Wave Sheaf Offering, and vv. 15–21 for the Feast of Weeks).

The Wave Sheaf Offering at the beginning of the seven weeks and the Feast of Weeks at the conclusion of the seven weeks, with both beginning and conclusion falling on the day after the weekly Sabbath, represent the entirety of the harvest of firstfruits. The general harvest of humanity occurs in the great White Throne Judgment that it represents in type by the Last Great Day, the Eighth Day, the day after the seven-day-long Feast of Tabernacles, during which Israel dwells in temporary booths or shelters, symbolic of Israel dwelling in fleshly bodies according to the Jonah metaphor.

When Adam, created outside the Garden of Eden, was placed inside the Garden, he became as Jonah was in the ship. When Adam ate forbidden fruit, the waters were troubled; a storm raged although the unperceptive reader wouldn’t realize as much. The reason for Adam and Eve making aprons of fig leaves for themselves, then hiding from the Lord God was the tremendous inner turmoil occurring after having eaten forbidden fruit and discovering that they were naked … they were physically naked before, but they were unaware of their nudity. They recognized the change inside themselves when they realized they were naked. They knew they had made a bad mistake.

If Adam and Eve were like Jonah inside the whale—this connection established through Jesus, the last Adam (twice identified as such by the Apostle Paul), declaring that the only sign He would give that He was from heaven would be the sign of Jonah—then the whale becomes analogous to the hide and hair with which the Lord God garmented Adam and Eve before driving them from the Garden, with Eden linking the earthly Garden, symbolized by the Garden Tomb, to the heavenly Eden (Ezek 28:13). And it is here where a basic knowledge of genetics becomes helpful.

Dogs are not embarrassed by their nakedness; nor are cats, cattle, chimpanzees. All have a hair coat, with their hair not always being sufficient protection from the elements; hence short haired dogs don’t live in the Arctic except in people’s houses.

It has been claimed that human persons have more diminutive hairs per square inch of hide than do dogs—and as dogs have both very long and heavy hair coats as well as very short hair coats, there is no reason for humans not to also have long or diminutive body hair.

Apparently, the fleshly bodies of the descendants of Adam and Eve have the continuation of the hide and hair with which the Lord God garmented the first man when He drove Adam and Eve from the Garden. To say that Adam and Eve were not fleshly persons would contradict Adam saying of Eve, “‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’” (Gen 2:23). So it would seem that the hair coat with which the Lord God garmented Adam and Eve was like the hair coat worn by Sasquatch, a reason why Esau, having such a hair coat, was hated before birth for Esau reminded the Lord of Adam’s unbelief.

Genetically, all dogs descend from the gray wolf; however, in Siberia, an ongoing silver fox fur breeding program, having selected foxes for only one criterion, their lack of aggression, in eight generations has produced foxes with dog-like temperaments and color pattern variations and tail characteristics. The control group remains as aggressive as ever, and continues to produce “silver fox” only offspring that are killed for their pelts. Thus, it would seem that in antiquity human selection of gray wolf pups, keeping the least aggressive to breed (so they could be handled), in eight generations produced “dogs,” from which all of today’s breeds have come … if this is true of silver foxes, it would also be true for gray wolves.

Move, now, to human persons: if Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden appearing as Sasquatch, and their offspring separated themselves by their aggression [Cain] or lack of aggression [Seth], the hair coat—the Sasquatch-type body hair—would be gone in some of Adam and Eve’s offspring by the ninth generation. With the Flood of Noah’s day, only the biological genes of the eight would be carried into this present age, with the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) going back to Eve. In these genes as recessive characteristics would be the body size and mass of Sasquatch as well as their body hair. The post-Flood giants of old such as Goliath and his brothers could have come from the foregrounding of otherwise recessive characteristics. Same for the body hair of Esau.

Enough evidence exists to support Sasquatch-types of wild men to still be living in sparsely settled regions. If DNA from one of these wild men is obtained, it should match human mtDNA. As such, the sample would be rejected as having been contaminated by human contact.

Clothing Adam and Eve in hair coats will now have these hair coats corresponding to the body of the whale that swallowed Jonah—

Elijah was cloaked in a hair coat and a wide leather belt, symbolic of Adam’s appearance when he was driven from the Garden and representative of the whale’s fleshly body; of Jesus’ fleshly body. This will now have the words delivered by Elijah—expelled from Elijah and from the prophets of ancient Israel—functioning for Israel as Jonah functioned for the city of Nineveh (with Israel undergoing much less repentance), and as the man Jesus functioned for outwardly circumcised Israel.

The Jonah metaphor is much more expansive than Jesus’ resurrection after being in the grave three days and three nights: the sign of Jonah reaches back to Adam in the Garden and reaches forward to when Satan is loosed from his chains after the Thousand Years.

Again, Jonah lost his life when he “‘went down to the land whose bars closed upon [him] forever’” (Jon 2:6); the Logos lost heavenly life when He entered His creation as His unique Son. But Adam lost everlasting physical life—not spiritual life nor physical life—when he was driven from the Garden; he lost the possibility of living forever through God driving him from the Garden, thereby introducing in him indwelling death to accompany his unbelief, with death unable to complete its work for nearly a millennium. Hence, death reigned from Adam to Moses (Rom 5:14), who entered into the presence of the glorified Lord God. Adam never had spiritual life to lose: Adam never ate from the Tree of Life.

But Moses also never had spiritual life to lose; for death was defeated by Moses’ insistence on seeing the Lord in His glory, and the Lord complying with Moses’ desire, placing Moses in a cleft in the rock, with this cleft being analogous to female genitalia, with the Hebrew word for a concubine [Hagar or Keturah] being the word for a gully, a reference to female genitalia, which will now have the darkness of the Lord placing His hand over Moses until the Lord passed by producing the darkness of a womb, with the Lord removing His hand so that Moses could see His backside being a type of spiritual birth that caused Moses’ face to shine from being exposed to the glory of God for the remainder of His life.

If the reader of Scripture does not know that Hagar was not a wife to Abraham, that after Sarah died Keturah was not a wife to Abraham even though she bore him six sons, that both Hagar and Keturah were to Abraham what too many Indian wives were to American mountain men in the early and mid 19^th-Century—squaws, not a word I want to use but a word comparable to gullies, with both words referencing female genitalia—then the reader cannot comprehend the significance of the Lord placing Moses in the cleft in the rock and covering Moses with His hand.

The mountain man Joe Meek (1810–1875) brought his Nez Perce wife, the daughter of chief Kowesota, out of the mountains and to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where Meek became sheriff, Federal Marshal, and a leading political figure. Meek’s wife, whom he called Virginia, faced considerable prejudice from the good people of the Willamette Valley, as did Meek for having married her and not abandoning her when he left the mountains As a result, the name Joe Meek serves as a metaphor for social equality, with Meek’s cousin being the wife of President Polk—his wife the daughter of a chief, his cousin the wife of the President, Joe Meek in his person served as Thirdness serves to connect peoples. But if the story of Joe Meek being born in Washington County USA [Virginia] and being buried across the continent in Washington County USA [Oregon], a juxtaposition important to him, is unfamiliar to readers, the metaphor is without meaning … Joe Meek is simply another mountain man.

The Lord gave spiritual birth [of a physical type ] to Moses as Abraham through Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, with disciples of Christ Jesus being as Isaac was, the root for Paul writing his tour-de-force allegory of natural Israel being of Hagar;

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband." Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? "Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. (Gal 4:21–31 emphasis added)

Biologically, Hagar was not Mount Sinai: she was an Egyptian. But symbolically, Moses was born of the Lord atop Mount Sinai, and temple officials, in addressing the blind man Jesus healed, said that they were disciples of Moses (John 9:28), thereby making them of Moses and by extension of Mount Sinai and of the physical type of spiritual birth that had occurred when the Lord removed His hand that had covered Moses in the cleft in the rock, the rock being symbolic of flesh as the two stone tablets were symbolic of the two tablets of flesh (the heart and the mind) upon which the Lord would write the Law under the New Covenant, which will be the Second Passover Covenant.

Paul’s allegory comes from Paul being able to read Scripture whereas those Christian converts comprising the Circumcision Faction could not, even though the Circumcision Faction was well able to read the words on the page. But reading Scripture—reading any text—requires the reader to assign meaning to the words of Scripture. Paul assigned divine meanings to the words of Scripture, but very few readers have been able to since Paul; for every few readers have been able to organize thoughts in metaphors.

Despite countless hours of Bible study, of mediation, of prayer, I don’t see that Sabbatarian Christendom is able, on its own, to read the writings of Moses. What I see is that the Sabbatarian Christian still needs a teacher to explain to the disciple the elementary principles underlying figures of speech.

But all Christians have a Teacher, and only one Teacher, God. Apparently, though, they are not listening to their Teacher—apparently Christians as students are making spit wads to be shot from rubber bands or writing notes to be passed under desks or now, texting friends. Whatever they are doing, they are not paying attention to God as their teacher; so God will return them to being under the Law, with the Law being their schoolmaster. And the Law is a stern disciplinarian.

In Adam never having indwelling heavenly life, a problem characteristic of metaphors is revealed: one thing isn’t another thing. With Christ Jesus, who had indwelling heavenly life before He as the Logos entered His creation as His unique Son, the Jonah metaphor fits fairly well, except for Jonah attempting to flee to escape the task he was given (but perhaps this too fits considering where the still-living inner self of Jesus went to preach during the three days His fleshly body was in the Garden Tomb).

But the Jonah metaphor doesn’t work quite as well for the Elect, who were not humanly born with immortal souls that needed regenerated or restored, but were born with dead inner spirits of man [again, to pneuma tou ’anthropou] that initially received heavenly life through receipt of the breath/spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou]. However, because the life received by the spirit of man within the soul [psuche] of the Elect is the “glory” that Jesus had returned to Him (from John 17:5), the Jonah metaphor is appropriately applied to the Elect, though the fit is not without a seam.

In the Jonah metaphor, Jonah’s fleshly body inside the whale is analogous to Christ Jesus’ soul, or to the disciple’s soul [psuche], and the whale’s body is analogous to Christ Jesus’ fleshly body, or to the disciple’s fleshly body. Thus, in symbolism, Jonah being puked onto shore and recognized as a spokesman of God—Nineveh worshiped Dagon, the Canaanite fish god, in addition to a host of other demigods and gods—is analogous to when Christ Jesus ascends to heaven to be accepted by God as His spokesman. Jonah’s prayer inside the whale will be analogous to those things that Jesus said turning His earthly ministry … except for the Lord, no one heard what Jonah prayed when he was inside the whale. It was after the fact that Jonah reported what happened and what he had prayed. And so it was with the glorified Jesus, who after His resurrection caused His words to be preserved.

Were the words of Jesus recorded while He lived physically? No, they were not; nor should they have been according to the Jonah metaphor. Thus, the production of the Gospels comes after the fact and bears to the phenomena that caused them to be written a similar relationship as the Book of Jonah bears to the story told within the book, with an inscribed narrative being a mimetic or metonymic or metaphoric representation of phenomena described. Thus, when Jesus—in a narrative written six decades after the fact—tells His disciples that He only spoke to them in figures of speech (John 16:25), the question should be asked, In what sort of figurative language, metonymic expressions or metaphors; for in telling His disciples that He only spoke to them in figures of speech, He ruled out having spoken to them in mimetic descriptions that faithfully, as much as language can, represent the phenomena described.

A metaphor is always a fiction, one told to reveal a truth; for one thing is not another thing, was not another thing, and will never be another thing. A man can give birth to a poem or to a painting, but not to a child, meaning that a man doesn’t really give birth to anything. For a man to give birth, birth must be used in a figurative sense as in creating or conceptualizing what didn’t previously exist. And because meaning is assigned by the auditor to the word, the auditor [hearer or reader] is able to determine figurative usage of the word from literal usage, or so one would hope …

Christians have traditionally been poor readers of figurative texts; for Christians, salvation depends—or so most believe—on words having definitive meanings. Thus, for these Christians, biblical prophecies about Moab pertain to the modern nation-state of Jordan. Biblical prophecies about Persia pertain to the modern nation-state of Iran. Biblical prophecies about Babylon pertain to Iraq. Biblical prophecies about Israel pertain to the modern nation-state of Israel, not to themselves, about whom these prophecies actually apply.

In previous writings, I have said that I regularly used Jonathan Swift’s essay, “A Modest Proposal,” when teaching Intro to Lit classes. I would have the class read the essay cold, that is without any introductory discussion, and I would then ask for comments before beginning my discussion of the essay in which Swift seems to propose marketing barrels of Irish babies as the solution to Ireland’s poverty. On its surface the proposal is preposterous, but from experience I know/knew that initially half of the class would/will accept Swift’s proposal at its face value, with students saying something akin to, Back then, they did things that we don’t do today, like eating the poor. Cannibalism? No! English landlords were guilty of abusing their Irish tenant farmers: they were figuratively treating their tenants as livestock, but they were not guilty of cannibalism. So Swift, noted for twisting the language, in irony, took as literal this figurative treatment of tenants as livestock and took the metaphor one step farther, suggesting that these tenant farmers and the impoverished nation begin to sell the only thing the English landlords permitted them to keep, their children. The essay is social and political commentary that should be instantly recognized as such. But again from experience, I know that unsophisticated readers are more believing of what they read and are much less critical than they ought to be.

Collectively, Christians are more believing of what they read and much less critical than they ought to be. They suspend disbelief and accept as literally true texts that self-identify themselves as figurative.

I have a degree in Creative Writing: I know that my apologetics are more redundant than good prose would warrant, that their structure is circular; sentences are convoluted. But I know of no other way to both push through the unbelief of academics as well as the seemingly permanent suspension of disbelief by the Christian laity than to tie up auditors in coils of yarns, using stories as lassoes and metaphors as piggin’ strings to hold auditors down long enough that additional metaphors can be used to explain metaphors.

When I tell a story that seems to have nothing to do with the subject at hand, the nothing to do with the subject at hand comes from readers not understanding why I tell the story, which will be actually germane to the issue at hand. But from experience, I know that my thoughts are not my students’ thoughts, something that the remainder of this chapter will demonstrate.

There was in 1991, I believe, a Star Trek, Next Generation episode in which the Federation could not decipher the language of the Tamarians, who spoke in metaphors. While the Federation’s universal translators could translate words and sentence structure, the referents for these words were unknowable without privileged knowledge about the Tamarians’ history and legends. Word-by-word translation had no value when attempting to communicate with the Tamarian people … of course I know the episode was fiction, but the episode typified the underlying problem persons not born of spirit have in trying to read sealed and secret prophecies.

In the episode, the language barrier of referent-assignment led to isolation of the Tamarian people, a society at least as advanced as the Federation, with the inspiration for the episode possibly coming from the difficulty Western peoples were then having in translating Chinese ideograms, where referents are image-based, not phonetic-based … in the episode, asking for “cooperation” was expressed as Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, with Tamarians commonly knowing the story of Darmok and Jalad being brought together while fighting a shared foe on an island named Tanagra—

The metaphorical expression, Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, is meaningless unless the story is known. The resurrection of Christ Jesus as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering is meaningless unless the significance of both the Wave Sheaf Offering and the harvest of firstfruits is known. The Jonah metaphor is meaningless unless the story of Jonah is familiar enough to the auditor that he or she realizes Hermann Melville in Moby-Dick has Father Mapple distort the Jonah story in a way that permits Mapple’s sermon to be mimicked by Stubb’s sermon to the sharks, as civilized and uncivilized come together as two that are one, the Pequod serving as the element of Thirdness, seen by having a Right Whale’s head hung from the port [larboard] rigging and a Sperm Whale’s head hung from the starboard rigging, with Ishmael as narrator declaring that the Right Whale head was Locke and the Sperm Whale head was Kant, that both thunder-heads needed dumped so that the Pequod could rise and sail true.

In the Star Trek episode, Deanna Troi explains the Tamarian language by the example, Juliet on her balcony … if the person doesn’t know the Shakespearean play, Romeo and Juliet, the expression is meaningless; for not only must the person know who Juliet is, but the person also must know the significance of Juliet being on her balcony before meaning can to assigned to the expression and the expression used as a metaphor for a romantic meeting.

A person will not understand what I write in this or in any other apologetic if the person cannot construct thoughts in metaphorical language—and I know this from now a dozen years of questions asked about what I write; for I hear what others say about my writings being hard to understand, circular, never going anywhere. What they don’t realize is that their universal translators, while deciphering my words and sentence structures, are not able to supply their users with sufficient knowledge of story and how narratives function for their users to think beyond the parameters of how Scripture was taught to them. Instead of going with the reality that a second Israel came into existence with the giving of the spirit, they will object, saying, That is replacement theology. Well, yes it is. It is also the theology the Apostle Paul employed:

You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. 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. His praise is not from man but from God. (Rom 2:23–29)

If Israel breaks the Law, outward circumcision is of no value to the person: outward circumcision is of no value to the Muslim, who today isn’t willing to keep the Sabbath. Outward circumcision is of no value to the Jew who doesn’t display manifested love for neighbor and brother. Outward circumcision is of no value to the Sabbatarian Christian for the fleshly body of this person will never enter heaven, regardless of the diligence with which the Law is kept … it won’t be the fleshly body that is glorified: perishable flesh doesn’t inherit imperishable glory (1 Cor 15:50, last clause). Rather, it will be the soul [psuche] of the person that receives a glorified body when favorable judgments are revealed.

If my apologies seem convoluted and needlessly difficult to read, think about, Doesn’t break like a stick, which I have just used as a translatable metaphor if you know the story.

It was my generation and the half-generation before me that began to question authority, especially the authority of speech, the authority of books, the authority invested in the military-industrial complex, the authority of the Federal government. It was my generation that said to trust no one over thirty, until my generation became thirty. Then we, they, didn’t trust anyone, which was also a mistake; for in trusting no one, we didn’t trust ourselves. We didn’t take what was good from history and reject the evil; we rejected everything until growing weary of resisting. Then, my generation accepted what had previously been rejected, believing disinformation such as human-caused global cooling [we have to save the planet; we only have ten years before we go into another ice age with mass starvation] and now, forty years later, human-caused global warming, with a host of useful idiots begging for Federal grants to find solutions to the climate change that has produced one of the coldest winters in a century, with snowfall in Detroit, Michigan pushing hard against a record set the winter of 1880–81. But there are no human solutions able to prevent the global climate from continuing to warm or to cool.

Allegedly, Lenin said he would hang the West. Someone reminded him that Russia had no rope. And he reportedly said, They will sell it to us.

For a little while, the Baby Boom generation was skeptical of what they were told. But skepticism requires effort, requires continual diligence in testing and proving all that is uttered or written. It is easier to just believe what is said, even when the person knows what’s said is a lie. It’s easier to believe a lie, any lie, than to ferret out the truth. For after a while, the body tires: the person realizes that he or she won’t make much of a difference … let someone else do the heavy lifting of changing the world. I’m comfortable. Leave me alone. I’ve done enough. No, you haven’t—

An example of how easy it is for Christians to believe lies can be seen in the month ahead, April 2014: in John’s vision, when the sixth seal on the scroll is removed, we find,

When He opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. (Rev 6:12–13)

When in high school and reluctantly attending Seventh Day Adventist services, I was told from the pulpit that the sun turning black had already occurred and on a date that I don’t remember; that the great earthquake happened in 1790 on October 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th in Spain and North Africa, and in Lisbon on November 27^th; that stars falling as breba figs shaken in a gale also happened July 24^th, 1790, in southern France when a meteor larger than the moon burst, producing a meteorite shower that crushed a cottage and killed a farmer (I think the eclipse of the sun and moon also occurred in 1790, but I wasn’t interested enough in what was being preached to pay attention to those dates). At any rate, the Adventists had the dating all worked out so that Christianity is presently awaiting the Third Angel’s message (see Rev 14:9–11) …

But nothing of what the Adventists taught about the Book of Revelation was true.

Today, more than fifty years after being presented “the truth” about the Book of Revelation from Adventist pulpits, I hear Evangelical pastors, late coming to prophecy, attach significance to the eclipse of the moon and of the sun that will occur in April of this year: on April 15^th, there will be a total eclipse of the moon, thereby turning the moon blood red as seen from most of North America (except Alaska), and western South America, but not seen worldwide.

The dynamics of orbital speeds and rotational velocities would make it impossible for a total lunar eclipse to be seen worldwide … so where in the world does the Book of Revelation not apply? Who is outside of John’s vision? And why would any reasonably well educated Christian accept a physical total lunar eclipse as a fulfilling of biblical prophecy? Permanent suspension of disbelief is most likely the reason.

There will be an annular solar eclipse on April 29^th, 2014, with the sun darkened over Australia and the southern Indian ocean, and appearing black over a small spot in Antarctica.

There will be another total lunar eclipse on October 8^th, 2014, that will have the moon appear blood red in Alaska, Eastern Siberia, and New Zealand, but nowhere in Europe … perhaps their eclipse happened long ago as I was told by an Adventist pastor also long ago.

As an aside and just so you know, the winter of 1789 was so cold in Europe that as late as May 8^th, sledges crossed the frozen Denmark Sound from Bellevue to Copenhagen; yet in the winter of 1790, one year later, there were frequent January temperatures of 70⁰F. in Pennsylvania, so much for the uniqueness of global cooling and warming. In March 2012, we had 80⁰F temperatures at the tip of Michigan’s Thumb; we were at 0⁰F on March 26^th, 2014, same location …

In the fall and early winter of 1976, I worked for Ron’s Rental in his new shop adjoining the Kenai Airport—and I paid close attention to the weather because of being next to the Airport: our temperatures in November and December on the Kenai Peninsula were as warm or warmer than temperatures in Florida’s panhandle, and I realized that there was only so much “cold” to go around. If it was warm in Alaska, it was cold in the Lower 48. If it was warm in North America, it was cold in Europe. A high pressure cell over Interior Alaska caused low pressure storm cells to track south across the Gulf of Alaska and strike the Pacific Northwest where the jet stream would carry them across the continent. Without a high pressure front over Interior Alaska, low pressure fronts came ashore, drifted north and east, seemingly getting caught between the Alaska Range and the Brooks Range which sent these storm fronts barreling south on one side or the other of the Rockies: on the west side of the Rockies, the storms struck Idaho, Utah, Colorado with fury; on the east side, these storms front became the Arctic maulers that brought severe cold and blizzards to middle America. Then this year, mid-America experienced three polar vortex storms that caused the coldest Midwest winter in forty or more years.

But the coldest winter since 1973, a year when worry was about global cooling and the coming of another ice age if humankind didn’t quickly mend its ways, hasn’t been sufficient reason for the Obama administration that needs a carbon tax to offset its overspending to abandon its green initiatives—we have been assured by the White House [used as an metonymic expression] that Climate Change is a fact … it is change you can believe in.

The Adversary, a liar from the beginning, remains the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air. It is he who is behind the disinformation of secular governments, whether the White House or the Kremlin or 10 Downing Street. It is he who is behind the disinformation of the Vatican or coming from Salt Lake City or from San Antonio. It is he who grows both watermelons and RINOs in his garden … change you can believe in amounts to sons of the Adversary using their right hands for the task assigned to their left hands, as if those in power are all people who don’t know right from left (Jonah 4:11).

John’s vision, the Book of Revelation, was sealed and kept secret with two literary tropes, the first being that John isn’t in the spirit at the end of the 1^st Century CE, but sometime in the 21^st-Century, with the seals not being removed from the Scroll until Daniel’s generic time of the end is at hand. The second trope is that how things appear in the vision is how they function in the plan of God, not how they visually appear. Thus for the moon—a symbol—to turn blood red as in a total lunar eclipse, the reality of the symbol turns bloody. And the moon as a symbol is seen in the twelfth chapter of Revelation: “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (v. 1).

Before continuing, it is routinely said that John’s vision isn’t sealed as Daniel’s visions were sealed and kept secret (Den 12:4, 9 et al), with evidence of Revelation not being a sealed book coming from the angel—inside of John’s vision—telling John, “‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy’” (Rev 22:10–11).

Did the fulfilling of John’s vision—soon to occur (near in time)—occur between the end of the 1^st-Century and the beginning of the 21^st-Century? No! No fulfilling occurred. When does fulfilling occur? When the seals come off the Scroll. And when will the seals come off the Scroll? The Lamb removes the first four seals at the same time as when Daniel sees the four demonic kings emerge from the sea in his vision of the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon.

The four horsemen of John’s vision (Rev 6:1–8) that are the four beasts (Dan 7:3–8) are also the four kings that emerge from around the stump of the broken first king of the federated King of Greece (Dan 8:8). And the first and great king of the King of Greece is broken because he is an uncovered firstborn before the four kings appear. He is broken at the Second Passover liberation of Israel.

The visions of Daniel and the vision of John can be dated by the Second Passover liberation of Israel and by taking dominion from the Adversary and giving it to the Son of Man. All other attempts to date Daniel’s visions come from lack of spiritual understanding …

From when the four demonic kings of Daniel chapter seven appear, there shall be a time, times, and half a time until the kingdom is taken from these four kings and the little horn, then delivered into the hand of the Son of Man (Dan 7:25). From the Second Passover liberation of Israel, there shall be 1260 days until the single kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Most High God and of His Christ (Rev 11:15).

Dominion over the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man only one time, not many times. And because delivery of the single kingdom of this world to the Son of Man is seen in both John’s vision (Rev 11:15–19) and in Daniel’s vision (Dan 7:9–14), John’s vision can be aligned with Daniel’s visions through when dominion is taken from the four kings and given to the Son of Man, with the ministry of the two witnesses preceding when the kingdom is given to the Son of Man and with the forty-two months of when the amalgamated kings of Greece are cast to earth and still live following when the kingdom is given to the Son of Man.

There will be seven endtime years of tribulation, 1260 days [from Rev 11:3; 12:6) or forty-two months [from Rev 11:2] or a time, times, and half a time [from Dan 7:25] that constitute the Affliction [from Rev 1:9]. Plus, there will also be another 1260 days or forty-two months [from Rev 13:5] or time, times, and half a time [from Rev 12:14] that constitute the Endurance of Jesus [also from Rev 1:9], with the doubled day 1260 being when the kingdom is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man. John references this doubled day 1260 (counted from both directions: beginning to middle, and end to middle) by the simple metaphor, “kingdom,” in Revelation 1:9.

Thus, when John the Revelator wrote, I, John, the brother of you and partner in the Affliction and Kingdom and Endurance in Jesus was in the island the [one] being called Patmos because of the word of the God and the testimony of Jesus, John unites himself with his endtime brothers who also have the testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10). And all of John’s endtime brothers will keep the Commandments even though only a Remnant will remain physically alive after the 1260 days of the Affliction (from Rev 12:17).

John’s vision doesn’t occur until approximately the time of the Second Passover liberation of Israel, Daniel’s generic time of the end. Thus, when John’s vision is seen, those things seen in his vision are soon to occur and near in time, and as such, the vision will not be sealed. In other words, until the time of the end, Revelation was a sealed and kept secret book by John’s vision not having yet occurred.

Again, unless a person can think in metaphors, constructing understanding by laying metaphor atop metaphor—all of Jesus’ parables are metaphors—as if each metaphor were a cabin log in the construction of a log cabin, the significance of word order seen through <cabin log> versus <log cabin> [this, not the homophone of sun/Son is the greatness of the English language when it come to Scripture], the person will never understand Scripture … because academics choose not to cross-pollinate ancient texts, but treat each text as a stand-alone entity, they prevent themselves from ever understanding the metaphorical language of Scripture. They turn themselves into Federation universal translators, able to read words and sentences, but not able to assign referents to words that make little sense to them.

Unless a person knows the metaphors that formed the basis for Jesus speaking in figurative language, the person cannot understand what Jesus said, the problem faced by 2^nd-Century Greek philosophers becoming converts to the Jesus Movement. Unless a person knows the metaphors I use—Doesn’t break like a stick, Joe Meek, D-2—a person cannot understand why I write what I do, inserting personal anecdotes and comments in a Christian apologetic. A person might well have no interest in the stories I tell, dismissing them as literary drivel, leaving me in the same sort of isolation as lived fictional Tamarians, but that is the person’s loss, not mine; for in late December 1973, I missed a buck that broke from cover behind me. My snapshot was three feet high—in those days, I could call my shots—yet the bullet I fired struck the buck in the head … the results of that shot would send me to Alaska, out into the Aleutians, and back into the university fifteen years later. One missed shot, one bullet that miraculously killed what I meant to hit. And so it is with what I now write.

Returning to John’s vision, the woman of chapter twelve is clothed with the sun, with light, with brightness that would blind if literally true. But as with the “Modest Proposal,” common sense will have these words meaning something other than their denotative meanings.

The woman gives birth to Christ Jesus (Rev 12:2, 5) and to offspring that keep the Commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus (v. 17), which will now seem to have the woman representing Israel, with Christendom being the offspring of Israel. But if Israel is symbolically clothed with the sun, Israel shines like the sun. All of Israel would be sons of light. And Israel has undergone a metamorphosis that causes Israel not to be a physical nation, a physical people.

Moses’ face shone—“When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Ex 34:29). Yet Moses was not a son of light as Jesus used the metaphor (see John 12:36). He was a son of light in a physical sense.

If Israel as the woman does not represent a physical people, then the moon that reflects the light of the sun is not the physical moon, but the reflection of the woman—and if we take the moon being the reflection of the woman back to Revelation chapter six, we would read, “the sun became black as sackcloth,” as the woman disappearing into the darkness of the wilderness … when the sun turns black as in a total eclipse, the sun disappears but doesn’t die. The sun will reappear after a short while. And the woman disappearing into the wilderness has the woman living in the wilderness, but not being seen outside the wilderness.

If the woman clothed in the sun can be read as Israel, with the moon visible only because of reflected sunlight, and if the woman—before the Adversary and his angels are cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–10)—is taken into the wilderness where she has a place prepared for 1260 days, when does this women return from the wilderness as the sun returns after a total eclipse? … If the woman clothed in the sun disappears into the wilderness to a place prepared for her, the sun would appear to have gone black in a manner typified by a total solar eclipse, the disappearing beginning suddenly but taking a while to fully develop.

After Satan and his angels are cast to the earth and imprisoned in time, he comes after the woman who is then taken into the wilderness a second time, also for a time, times, and half a time (Rev 12:14), the forty-two months that the amalgamated beast is allowed to exercise authority after the Adversary and his cohorts are cast down (Rev 13:5). This time, though, the woman is given the wings of an eagle, meaning that she can fly, riding the thermals, going wherever the wind [pneuma — from John 3:8] wishes.

If the woman clothed in the sun is invisible because of being taking into the wilderness for both the Affliction and the Endurance, and if the souls [psuchas] of saints sleep under the altar while they await the fullness of the saints to be martyred as they were (Rev 6:9), these souls already glorified but not yet having received glorified bodies in which to dwell, then the woman after the Adversary is cast from heaven is not here on earth but in the wilderness that exists under the altar, which is why the Adversary cannot get at her and must go after the Remnant of her offspring (Rev 12:17), with the woman’s offspring having a relationship with the woman that could be characterized by the moon’s relationship to the sun.

Such a reading is not dependent on localized physical phenomena such as solar or lunar eclipses and is in keeping with the glorified Christ Jesus, initially seen in Revelation 1:12–16, being seen as a slain lamb with seven horns and seven eyes (Rev 5:6) … the seven eyes are seven spirits of God [ta pneumata tou Theou — the spirits of the God], which coincide with seven stars that are the seven angels to the seven churches (Rev 1:20). This will now have the seven horns corresponding to the seven lampstands that are the seven churches—and a lamp on a lampstand would appear to be clothed in light.

Some refining of the reading of the blackened sun and blood red moon can now be undertaken: if the woman is Israel, then the woman doesn’t represent lawless Israel, but the Israel that will be gathered to God in the harvest of firstfruits. This Israel includes Noah, Daniel, and Job, as well as the patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, David, and others who were faithful, obeying the voice of the Lord when it would have been easier not to obey. It is this Israel that gave birth to the man-child, Christ Jesus, not the Israel of hypocrites and idolaters. It is this Israel that was sealed in death before the spirit was given, with John the Baptist being the greatest of this Israel. It is this Israel, because none were born of spirit, that is not caught up to heaven but has fled to the wilderness, this wilderness being the grave and death. This Israel will not be seen again until it is brought to life in the resurrection of firstfruits, but because this Israel has its names written in the Book of Remembrance (Mal 3:16), this Israel, like the sun during a total eclipse, is not dead.

Christian theology has an imbedded difficulty based on disinformation: if salvation only comes through Christ, giving to those who profess that Jesus is Lord an exclusive relationship with God, then what about King David and the prophet Ezekiel writing in the voice of the Lord,

Thus says the Lord [YHWH]: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land. And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am [YHWH] who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore. (Ezek 37:21–28)

Will David be resurrected physically to do for Israel what he has already done: be the nation’s king and shepherd? No, for the covenant under which he will reign over a changed Israel is an everlasting covenant that will have the Law written on the hearts of Israel. So David will reign over Israel in the Millennium, the Thousand Years when the glorified Christ is the prince of this world: the glorified David will be to the glorified Christ as presently the great horn, the first king of Greece, is to the Adversary, the king of spiritual Babylon. This means that David will be glorified in the resurrection of firstfruits, along with the Elect and those who come through the Affliction and Endurance without taking sin back inside themselves.

So the woman who gave birth to the man child caught up to heaven constitutes the righteous of natural Israel, such as King David, who today rests in the wilderness of death, not lost, but in a place prepared for them, their names written in the Book of Life, the Book of Remembrance, but their souls not in heaven under the altar as are the souls of the Elect, killed since Jesus breathed on ten of His first disciples and said, Receive breath holy, (John 20:22). And when, in John’s vision, did this woman who fled into the wilderness for 1260 days after the man child was caught up to heaven return from the wilderness? Her return is not seen.

The question needs asked, where was this woman before she fled into the wilderness? Where was King David? … Salvation was not assured, even to the righteous of ancient Israel, until Christ Jesus completed the creation of Adam by becoming the bridge between heaven and earth, the first man to make the transition from the elements of the creation to the throne of God. Thus, the Book of Life was written with erasable ink until Jesus was accepted as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering—which is why the Book of Life was called the Book of Remembrance. Only after the man child [Jesus] was caught up to heaven was the element of Thirdness in place to connect the glorious death chamber that is the creation to heaven itself.

I know that Peter in Acts chapter two addresses the issue of where David then was, but I am hesitant to cite Acts, because of it being a Sophist novel, based upon the oral gospel and upon what was commonly known about the journeys of Paul without having been along on these journeys. Compare Galatians chapters 1 and 2 with, especially, Acts chapter 15; for in Galatians Paul tells of his visit to Jerusalem that forms the basis for the Jerusalem Conference scene of Acts chapter 15, and they are not the same story. Nor is the God and Christ of Acts chapter 17 [the Mars’ hill story] the same God and Christ as is found in John’s Gospel. Nor does what Paul allegedly said on Mars Hill about God overlooking the ignorance of Gentiles agree with what Paul wrote in his treatise to the Romans—compare,

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent … (Acts 17:30)

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Rom 1:18–20)

Ignorance overlooked, or ignorance not being justification for lawlessness—which is it? The same mouth does not utter both statements. And the same mouth didn’t. The Paul of Acts is a historical fiction, a character made to fit the motifs of Second Sophist novels. The Book of Acts may well be based on fact, but it is a fiction, something I know quite a bit about …

Climate change, change you can believe in, with “climate change” being an euphemism for global warming, and with “global warming” having become a metaphor for disinformation: the demand of believability that is placed upon fiction would have prevented the Book of Acts from entering a canon of ancient literature, but when a text is identified as being factual when it isn’t, the essence of disinformation, the demand of believability is set aside as in the case for global warming. Thus, the naïveté that permits the general public to believe that global warming is actually occurring is the same naïveté that permits greater Christendom to believe that on the Pentecost following Calvary, three thousand converts were added to the Jesus Movement, all being baptized by the first disciples. If a “fact” is repeated enough times, most people will believe the fact is actually true, regardless of whether it is. Unbelievers will go to the Gulag.

How do I know that Al Gore and President Obama have lied to me about climate change—it was spitting snow this morning, Sabbath, March 29^th, 2014, something I would expect on the Kenai, but not something seen on Michigan’s Thumb for over a decade. The weather, itself, testifies against the disinformation being used to support a worldwide carbon tax, with America scheduled to pay most of this tax.

I was on the Kenai when President Carter, in addressing the need for passage of D-2 legislation, said that there were bulldozers poised to rip up all of Alaska, which was why he was required to lock up more lands than the law allowed … hyperbole? Bulldozers poised to destroy the wilderness? No, disinformation. There were not enough bulldozers in North America to rip up Alaska.

I heard President Johnson claim that if Vietnam fell, all of Indochina would fall to the Communists (the domino theory) … Vietnam fell—and today, beside me is a spinning rod made in Vietnam, its economy being merged into a global Capitalist economy.

Returning for a moment to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) passed in 1971, under Section 17, clauses (d)(1) and (d)(2), the Secretary of Interior had ninety (90) to withdraw any lands necessary “to insure that public interest in these lands is properly protected,” with the number of acres limited to 80 million and with five (5) years to finalize legislation protecting these lands. But the law might as well have been the Affordable Care Act … under section (d)(2), the total of 80 million acres became 43,585,000 acres of new national parklands, plus 53,720,000 acres added to the National Wildlife Refuge System, plus 25 wild and scenic rivers, plus 56,400,000 acres added to the Wilderness Preservation System and 3,350,000 acres to Tongass and Chugach National Forests, with none of these acres withdrawn within 90 days of the signing of ANCSA. And the total of five years given to legislatively finalize these withdrawals became the signing of the Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act (ANILCA) on November 12, 1980, nine years later.

The domino theory, give the Federal Government an inch and its will take 90% of the State, leaving only a tithe upon which it will enact a tax.

For a generation, D-2 served us in Alaska as a metaphor for bureaucratic overreach … Obamacare has since replaced D-2 as the metaphor most commonly employed to express bureaucratic overreach.

When I was in graduate school at Fairbanks, I was asked by a faculty member if I would sign up for a Puritan Literature course he wanted to teach. I wasn’t interested in taking another class from the professor, but he said that none of the graduate students that had signed up for the seminar knew anything about the Bible, that he needed someone in the class who knew Scripture well enough to discuss allusions Puritan authors used. He said that with collective loss of biblical familiarity, Puritan literature had shrunk in size: students would read over allusions, not understand the allusion or why it was being made, and take away no appreciation of the richness and complexity employed by these early American authors … I agreed to take the course, and the professor employed my two daughters who were then undergraduate students to sort and ship the literary journal he published, his way of saying, thanks.

The problem of societal loss of biblical literacy has academic overtones, but also has real world implications: a person can quite easily convert from the ideology of the person’s parents to a differing ideology, but a second conversion is almost impossible. The predominate Arian denomination has plans in place to leverage food into discipleship during a forthcoming economic crisis. Conversion from, say, worship of Gaia [earth worship] to Arian Christendom will come easily to the now two generations since my Boomer generation, but that isn’t where these younger generations need to be, especially not after the Second Passover liberation of Israel and the great Apostasy of day 220 occurs … Puritan authors used biblical stories as metaphors—and in that graduate lit class, the professor and I talked to each other about how these authors employed their metaphors. We deconstructed texts to disclose the mindsets of these Christian zealots, and the other graduate students may have taken away a little understanding of the authors and their texts, but for the most part, none of them could imagine having the Bible as the center of their lives. The class wasn’t as successful as it could have been if more of the students had actually read Scripture before taking the class.

The linguistic iconography of Christendom has been lost, perhaps for the good of the firstfruits.

After Satan and his angels are cast to earth, Satan goes after the woman who gave birth to the man child, and this woman is given the wings of a great eagle so that she might flee from the serpent; so that she might flee into the wilderness—

Same wilderness, the grave? Why wings now and not before?

I know quite a bit about wildernesses. I also know that when I was in graduate school at Fairbanks, having come from Kodiak and journeying north to the big city of approximately 35,000, some of the younger graduate students, having come from Outside, thought Fairbanks was a wilderness. I certainly didn’t, nor did my students from rural Alaska, many truly unable to cope with so large a population. The university had a Native Support Center that assisted Native students to make the transition from Bush life to life in the economic hub of the Arctic North. Caucasian students from places such as Petersburg (pop. 2,500) didn’t have a support center, and no one from Petersburg or Northway (pop. 70) thought they were living in wildernesses when at home … the wilderness was out there, where no one lived.

After a semester on UAF’s campus, quite a few rural students were ready to return home, where life wasn’t a zoo. So what qualifies as a “wilderness” is subjective.

Consider what the Lord told Moses to write about the Azazel:

Tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die. For I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. But in this way Aaron shall come into the Holy Place: with a bull from the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body, and he shall tie the linen sash around his waist, and wear the linen turban; these are the holy garments. He shall bathe his body in water and then put them on. And he shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering. Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. Then he shall take the two goats and set them before [YHWH] at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for [YHWH] and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for [YHWH] and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before [YHWH] to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel. … Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. Thus he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses. … And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness. (Lev 16:2–10, 15–16, 20–22 emphasis added)

Two goats for the sin offering of Israel, one sacrificed, one let loose in the wilderness after the sins of Israel were read over its head—

Both goats were symbols of Christ Jesus’ atoning sacrifice of His life for the sins of physical Israel [the goat sacrificed on the altar], and of Christ Jesus as the High Priest of Israel bearing the sins of circumcised-of-heart Israel in the heavenly realm … the wilderness into which the Azazel was to be released was symbolic of heaven, where Jesus went by the hand of a fit man, Himself.

Consider, also, what the author of Hebrews wrote,

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Heb 9:11–14)

For human persons, heaven is an unexplored wilderness, one which hasn’t been entered by any man except the one that came from heaven and knew the way home, with Jesus praying, “‘And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed’” (John 17:5).

In 1979, I sailed a small boat from Homer to Kodiak, then on to Dutch (Dutch Harbor). That summer I anchored in bays and bights where the wind had to blow straight down to disturb my sleep, when I quit fishing for long enough to get any sleep. I became familiar with the Pacific side of the Alaska Peninsula, and I found many places where I would have been content to spend the remainder of my life; where the nearest inhabitant was 35 miles or more away. But I already knew that having been baptized into the Body of Christ, I wouldn’t be allowed to get away from people; that the work of being a disciple was interacting with people. A couple of times I tried to go beyond Dutch and spend the winter truly off the grid, but each time I was figuratively reeled back in, ending up as a midlife graduate student in the big city of Fairbanks Fall Semester 1988.

The only wilderness to which I can now go is heaven, where the Son of Man has already gone.

The chronology of John’s vision is sequential. The woman fled to the wilderness 1260 days before the Adversary and his angels are cast from heaven—she fled in the period between when the man child was caught up to heaven and when the Adversary was cast from heaven, with heaven being a timeless supra-dimensional realm.

If the wilderness in which a place was prepared for the woman was heaven—if the woman had fled to heaven—she would have been found by the Adversary. So the wilderness to which the woman fled for 1260 days isn’t heaven and cannot be heaven. The wilderness can, however, be the grave for the period preceding the Adversary being cast to earth, as previously mentioned.

Today, the Adversary remains the prince of this world, its king, the king of spiritual Babylon. All authority in this world presently comes through the Adversary, even the authority employed by and within Christian sects and denominations. And nothing changes until dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man of the doubled day 1260, halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation. Thus, the two witnesses in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, will be to both secular and religious authorities as Elijah was to King Ahab and his priests, the relationship confrontational at best.

The two witnesses, like Jesus Himself, will do whatever it takes to get themselves killed on a particular day, meaning that they will make themselves hated by those who remain in authority after the Second Passover liberation of Israel, which if it were to occur this year would see both President Obama and Vice-President Biden dead as uncovered firstborns. However, both Speaker of the House John Boehner and Russian President Vladimir Putin are not firstborns and as such will be around after the Second Passover of Israel.

There is another American presidential election scheduled before 2017, when the 15^th day of the second month of the sacred year again falls on a Thursday. What would happen to secular authority if a third of humanity, all uncovered firstborns, were to suddenly die at the Second Passover on the second Passover in 2017 cannot be known at this time.

With Christ Jesus being the reality of the Azazel, and with heaven being the reality of the wilderness into which the Azazel is turned loose—and with Israel, as land became more populated, killing the Azazel by casting it off a cliff (in the linguistic icon <Azazel>is the concept of a precipice as a separation) became the norm-for and symbolic of Israel indirectly killing Christ Jesus, both death and heaven are symbolically wildernesses.

If the Adversary when in the Abyss seeks the woman to kill her but cannot find her, the woman is neither in heaven (because this is where the man child went) or in the Abyss, the outflow from heaven that is analogous to the blood and water that poured from the wound in Jesus’ side when He hung dead on the cross … the physical creation was brought into existence in the Abyss, why the kings of the earth can gaze on the bound Adversary during the Millennium (cf. Isa 14:16–17; Rev 20:2–3, 7–10). And if the woman were physically alive here on earth, the Adversary could find her.

In a timeless realm, all activity must coexist with all other activity in a dance of oneness, with many being one, or gridlock will exist. Iniquity runs counter to the ways of God; so when iniquity was discovered in an anointed cherub, to avoid paralyzing heaven, this rebelling cherub had to be immediately cast from heaven, which apparently resulted in a rent or rupture in the fabric of heaven, with the fabric of heaven being analogous to the garment of hide and hair with which the Lord God clothed Adam and Eve when He drove them from the Garden.

The Adversary and his cohorts were figuratively flushed from heaven in a manner analogous to making an open physical wound bleed to flush germs and dirt from the opening made in the skin of the person, but too much bleeding and the person dies from blood loss. No bleeding and the person dies from infection—

In 1967, I was helping John Schirmer of Pool Slough catch crab in Yaquina Bay. John was the age of my deceased father: he treated me as a son. He was a good gunsmith, innovator, mechanic, tinker. His parents had been Sabbatarians who were not Adventists. He had married a Seventh Day Adventist. But he wasn’t religious and he ate crab. His sister and nephews, also living on Pool Slough, ate crab. My wife ate crab. I didn’t, nor did his wife.

I went with John down to River Bend to pull crab pots for an evening feast and get-together, and while pulling pots I broke the skin on my trigger finger. A small scratch, not something I thought about. And I washed my finger off in the bay and continued pulling pots … the scratch closed immediately By the next morning my finger was black and three times its normal size; by afternoon, a pink line extended up my forearm above my wrist—and I went to see a doctor who prescribed eight pills at more than a dollar apiece, hot packs, and keeping my finger elevated.

In a couple of days the infection was gone. I could use my trigger finger. And I never again permitted a wound to scab over before I pushed enough blood out of the wound to flush clean the cut. And so it is with the rent in the fabric of heaven: the Adversary and his fellow rebels had to be flushed from heaven before healing could begin. And the substance of heaven that poured out of the rent formed the Abyss in which the Logos created the physical universe as a glorious death chamber for rebelling angels.

The physical universe as an ex nihilo creation wasn’t really created from nothing, only from nothing physical.

John wrote,

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17 emphasis added)

The rent in the fabric of heaven will heal just as cut skin heals; for heaven is alive in a different sort of way than a person lives but otherwise alive as a person is alive. The wounds in Jesus’ hands, and in His side are analogous to the tears in the fabric of heaven that served to get the Adversary out from heaven before gridlock killed heaven itself.

I suspect the Adversary knew that gridlock would kill heaven and used the threat of gridlock as a weapon against the Most High God. Obviously, such a threat didn’t work. And we find Satan wandering to and fro—

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before [YHWH], and Satan also came among them. [YHWH] said to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered [YHWH] and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." (Job 1:6–7)

Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before [YHWH], and Satan also came among them to present himself before [YHWH]. And [YHWH] said to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered [YHWH] and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." (Job 2:1–2)

That can’t be much of a life, wandering to and fro, having no home, no abode … human persons don’t see Satan wandering to and fro. Job never saw Satan causing mischief for him. Rather, Satan works through those who serve him, his serfs or his sons. For presently, Satan is not confined to the limitations of being inside of time, but he is also not free to return inside of heaven. And the assumption of greater Christendom has been, because no place was found for Satan and his angels in heaven (Rev 12:8), that Satan is thrown down from heaven when he is cast down to earth. But the substance of heaven is also in the Abyss as Jesus’ blood and bodily fluids poured from the wound in His side when pierced by a Roman spear (John 19:34), spilling onto the rocky ground in an unstructured pattern, and being absorbed by the stony earth.

The Abyss is usually translated as the “bottomless pit” … a galactic black hole would be a bottomless pit—

There is a model of what happened when iniquity was discovered in an anointed cherub, this model being the story of Korah:

Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men. And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, "You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and [YHWH] is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of [YHWH]?" When Moses heard it, he fell on his face, and he said to Korah and all his company, "In the morning [YHWH] will show who is His, and who is holy, and will bring him near to Him. The one whom He chooses He will bring near to Him. Do this: take censers, Korah and all his company; put fire in them and put incense on them before [YHWH] tomorrow, and the man whom [YHWH] chooses shall be the holy one. You have gone too far, sons of Levi!" … And [YHWH] spoke to Moses, saying, "Say to the congregation, Get away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram." Then Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. And he spoke to the congregation, saying, "Depart, please, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest you be swept away with all their sins." So they got away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents, together with their wives, their sons, and their little ones. And Moses said, "Hereby you shall know that [YHWH] has sent me to do all these works, and that it has not been of my own accord. If these men die as all men die, or if they are visited by the fate of all mankind, then [YHWH] has not sent me. But if [YHWH] creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised [YHWH]." And as soon as he had finished speaking all these words, the ground under them split apart. And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the people who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. (Num 16:1–7, 23–33 emphasis added)

So much for democracy under Moses … this Levite rebellion against Moses and Aaron forms a type of the Adversary’s rebellion against the Most High God and the Logos, with the earth opening up and swallowing Korah and friends alive forming a type of the rent in the fabric of heaven that opened up and swallowed, or better, flushed out the Adversary and his cohorts, with the Adversary going into the Abyss alive as Korah went down to Sheol [the grave] alive. And as the earth closed over the people who belonged to Korah so that they perished, the rent in the fabric of heaven will close and the earth and all that is in it as well as the Abyss and all that is in it will pass away and be no more forever.

For those who like math, think of the Abyss as dark energy inside and outside of the creation, and a calculation of how much of heaven flowed from the rent can be made.

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