About Prophecy - The Book, Serialized - Chapter Seven

About Prophecy

The Book

—serialized—

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Chapter Seven

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Left unfinished in the preceding chapter was “reading” Jonah in Nineveh: the cuneiform ideogram representing “Nineveh” means something like house of fish even though the city was not on a sea or large lake, but on the upper Tigris River, near the confluence of the Tigris and Khosr Rivers. It lay on the south side of the Tigris, across the river from the modern city of Mosul, Iraq. And it occupied a junction for trading routes going north/south and east/west: it held a central position on the great highway between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean, thus uniting East and West, its location assuring it of great wealth, with its greatest building period coming during when it served as the capital for the Neo-Assyrian Empire (ca 934–609 BCE) in the 8^th-Century BCE.

But the cuneiform ideogram representing “Nineveh” could also be read as house of Ishtar; for Nineveh was hard linked to worship of Ishtar, the goddess of love and sex, with one of the Babylonian names for the goddess being “Nina,” her father being Ninurta, Nin Ur, the god of war in the Akkadian mythology of Assyria and Babylonia … Nin Ur was a solar deity, a sun god.

Actually, the ideogram, by not distinguishing between fish and Ishtar, might well not primarily represent either, but represent Nin Ur, a sun god of war, for reasons to be discussed. The juxtaposition of Ishtar and fish might well be an irreverent linking permitted by the language but exploited by common workman.

While it isn’t current thought outside of marginalized Christian reading communities to link Ishtar to the rising sun—she is more often linked to her descent into the underworld, shedding a garment of clothing at each of the seven gates, and her return from the underworld, reclaiming the article of clothing at each gate—an unforced link of descent into darkness and the rise from darkness pertains to the setting sun and its rise, with the traditional perception of the greatness of the English language occurring in the homophone <sun/Son>, especially seen through observance of “Easter” as celebration of the Son of God’s descent into darkness and resurrection to life and glory. It was the Son of God that descended to imprisoned spirits and preached to them for the three days and three nights that He was in the grave (1 Pet 3:18–20).

In the United States, we have document “dumps” occurring late Friday afternoons, then officials representing the White House declining to talk about the documents as early as the televised Sunday morning talk shows because the documents are by then “old news” … this tactic was long ago employed by, presumably, the Adversary through inserting the significance of the tenets of Christendom into aspects of pagan ideology, such as descent into the underworld and only a god being able to return (except in the case of Homer’s Odysseus) if only for half a year, preceding Christ Jesus’ descent into death and resurrection from death, thereby causing it to appear as if Christian dogma “copied” pagan dogma when it might well have been that knowledge of God was commonly held by the Eight who were on the Ark, that only post-Flood did human persons cease worshiping the Creator and begin to worship the creation, thereby causing the Lord to give these descendants of sons of righteousness (sons of Noah, a preacher of righteousness) debased minds, with Noah’s knowledge of God functioning as a Friday after document dump, with God unwilling to discuss knowledge of Him with anyone other than His selected human cultivar, Israel. Hence, the Adversary, exploiting both the debasement of minds and what remained of commonly held knowledge about the Lord, propagated pagan religious motifs that would seem to be the basis for centuries later Christian ideology … there are a few things that can be said of the Adversary: he is subtle, he is intelligent, but he is not creative. If a tactic worked once for him, he doesn’t change tactics. If Soviet-style disinformation worked for the Kremlin in the past, the Kremlin repeats giving similar disinformation in its future efforts to reframe a person or a situation. Since Friday afternoon document dumps worked for President Clinton, President Obama uses Friday afternoon document dumps to avoid discussing Administration un-pleasantries.

The preceding becomes important for in Christian iconography, the “fish” began to be used as a symbol for Christians early on, with many hypotheses existing for the adoption of the symbol, the most common coming from the Koine Greek word for “fish,” Ichthys, being written in uncials as <ΙΧΘΥΣ>, an acronym or acrostic for <Ίησους Χριστος, Θεου Υίος, Σωτηρ> (Iēsous Chrisos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr) or in English: Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior. This is the explanation given by Augustine in City of God, in which he also notes the phrase has 27 letters, 3³, which represented power.

A 4^th-Century adaption of the symbol was as a wheel with the acronym written within the wheel, thereby causing the wheel to appear as an eight-point star, the principle symbol for Ishtar.

When teaching first-year Comp, for several semesters I used a text that used the Voltswagen Beetle as an example of a symbol that changed meaning over time, the meaning of a symbol always being context-specific … for Christians, the fish as a symbol—like the cross—is context-specific, meaning something different to differing reading communities, with ultimately God being the only community of importance.

To attempt to recover the significance of fish as a symbol for Christ Jesus will necessarily take us back to the sign of Jonah, the Jonah metaphor, with its two part structure, each part having a physical and spiritual application, with the physical application of the physical part having Jonah three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, the great fish, with Jonah going into a wet underworld and returning from this underworld that represented death. Jonah does in the Book of Jonah what Ishtar does in myth (which will cause unbelievers to say that the story of Jonah is also a myth). And the context for Jonah’s descent into death was his flight from being tasked to warn Nineveh of its impending doom: he experienced doom and reprieve from doom without structurally making the connection that in his story is Nineveh’s story.

In Nineveh’s story should be the story of Christian converts in the 1^st-Century; in Judaism’s collective response to the preaching of Jesus in the 1^st-Century is the story of the Christian Church’s collective response to the preaching of the two witnesses in the 21^st-Century. But in Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh will be the story of the collective response of the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9) to the messages of the third angels in the Endurance of Jesus that immediately follows the ministry of the two witnesses.

The context for Nineveh’s repentance is in Jonah’s prayer:

I called out to [YHWH], out of my distress, [physical, physical — couplet 1]

and He answered me; [physical, spiritual — couplet 1]

out of the belly of Sheol I cried, [spiritual, physical — couplet 2]

and you heard my voice. [spiritual, spiritual — couplet 2]

For you cast me into the deep, [physical, physical — couplet 3]

into the heart of the seas, [physical, spiritual — couplet 3]

and the flood surrounded me; [spiritual, physical — couplet 4]

all your waves, your billows passed over me. [s/p — couplet 4]

Then I said, “I am driven away from your sight; [p/p — 5]

yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.” [p/s — 5]

The waters closed in over me to take my life; [s/p — 6]

the deep surrounded me; [s/s — 6]

weeds were wrapped about my head [p/p — 7]

at the roots of the mountains. [p/s — 7]

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; [s/p — 8]

yet you brought up my life from the pit, [s/s — 8]

O [YHWH] my God. [timing or transition clause]

When my life was fainting away, [p/p — 9]

I remembered [YHWH], [p/s — 9]

and my prayer came to you, [s/p — 10]

into your holy temple. [s/s — 10]

Those who pay regard to vain idols [p/p — 11]

forsake their hope of steadfast love. [p/s — 11]

But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; [s/p — 12]

what I have vowed I will pay. [s/s — 12 emphasis added]

Salvation belongs to [YHWH]! [concluding clause] (Jonah 2:2–9)

Couplets 1 & 2 form the physical portion of a doubly expanded couplet whose spiritual portion is couplets 3 & 4. This pattern repeats in couplets 5 though 8, and the 2³ [two cubed] pattern forms the physical portion of 2²[two squared] spiritual portion that arrives at the point of repentance: doing what has been vowed … Jonah reluctantly did what he vowed he would do when in the belly of the beast, knowing all the while that the Lord, too, would repent/relent of what He planned to do if Nineveh repented of the city’s wickedness.

· In the physical, the Book of Jonah is a story of triple repentance: Jonah’s, Nineveh’s, and the Lord’s [from carrying out His threatened destruction of Nineveh].

· In the spiritual, the Jonah metaphor will be the story of triple salvation: the Elect’s, Israel’s, and the third part of humanity (again, from Zech 13:9), for the Lord will not renege when it comes to giving indwelling eternal life to those who love Him.

Within the Sabbatarian Churches of God, the Adversary’s anticipation of the plan of God has been openly discussed for the past forty years. This anticipation will have/would have the Adversary counterfeiting genuine Christian motifs in the dogmas of orthodox Christendom, with, as an example, Easter being observed in lieu of the Christian Passover, and with the Roman Church having religious holidays that somewhat match the annual holy days of God … seemingly the Russian Orthodox Church has so many holidays there are hardly any days left on which mundane work can be done.

Easter as an English linguistic icon is cognate with modern German Ostem, and derived from the Old English word, Ēastre or Ēostre, the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre, a form of the name of the Indo-European dawn goddess … Ēostre is a derivative of the Proto Germanic *Austrō, from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *h₂ewes, meaning “to shine” and thus closely linked to the reconstructed name of *h₂ewsōs, the dawn goddess, from which becomes in Greek, Eos; in Latin, Aurora; in Hindi, Ushas.

In reconstructed PIE religion, the personification of dawn as a beautiful young woman was an important deity. This shining one received many epithets, even in hybridized Puritan mythology. She as Hausōs lent her name root to the English word, East, and to the Latin word for “south,” auster, as well as to the Latin word for gold, aurum, and to the name for the spring season, which also was a return from darkness, the dawn goddess liberated from imprisonment by a god.

It is not difficult to see why major tenets of Christian theology, such as the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, could be by English speakers represented by worship of an already existing deity, Ēastre, that links Ishtar to Easter in ways not necessarily recognized in academia—where all of this becomes interesting is in Ishtar in northwestern Semitic being written as Astarte, from which was derived Astaroth who appears in Hebrew Scripture as Ashtoreth (singular) and Ashtaroth (plural) with the feminine case ending being lost in translation into English. Thus archeologically recovered inscriptions of Ashtoreth being the consort of YHWH have an inherent logic in ancient Israel’s borrowing and hybridizing of Moses with Canaanite paganism; for Ashtoreth would have been beautiful, but as the Semitic Ishtar, she would have also brutalized her lover, murdering him in some fashion.

In the Akkadian tongue, Nineveh was written in cuneiform script as Ninwe, two nasal consonants and a semi-consonant. The reader would have inserted a vowel between the consonants so each could be uttered, and a triple vowel sound following the second nasal consonant … a /w/ is a doubled /u/ that sometimes functions as a consonant, with consonants being interruptions of the vowel stream at specific places in the mouth, and with /n/ being a liquid consonant since the vowel stream isn’t stopped but rerouted to the nose. In the name “Ninwe,” there are not stoppages or interruptions of the vowel stream—of the breath of the person—but is instead, two nasal consonants that in the Jonah metaphor represent having two breaths, or two breaths of life.

The assumption has long been that the Hebrew prophet Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, a whale, puked out by the whale, then went to Nineveh where he preached repentance, warning the great city of impending divine doom. The story may be literally true even if it cannot be scientifically verified, but it need not be literally true to convey a prophetic truth, functioning as a narrative like a more straight forward, Thus says the Lord prophecy. To challenge the veracity of the Jonah narrative is akin to challenging the veracity of the creation of Adam and Eve: the “challenge” comes from missing the point of the narrative[s].

Humanity has not become too knowledgeable for its own good, possessing too much scientific knowledge to believe ancient myths. Rather, humanity has too little knowledge to divorce itself from literalism and think in metaphorical language, where as story is true because the story exists, not because the phenomena represented in the story actually occurred … by the very nature of biblical prophecy—description of events that have not yet occurred—all prophecy is fictional until the prophecy comes to pass. Only after the fact is biblical prophecy literally true. Until the prophecy is fulfilled, the prophecy is only true as a story, as an unproved narrative. Why then, do 20^th and 21^st Century Christians have their faith challenged by showing that biblical stories are not literally true? It can only be because these Christians have a little knowledge, comparable to the knowledge of fighting a military recruit will have following basic training, but not enough knowledge to even indirectly engage the Adversary and prevail.

Ninwe was a great city of 12x10³ persons that is physically inscribed as two nasal consonants plus a semi-consonant, none being “true” consonants that interrupt the vowel stream and produce silence from lost of breath for a moment. The Ishtar myth of descent into the underworld and the upper world forcing Ishtar’s return (because there was no sex, no fertility in middle earth while she was in the underworld) is metaphorically represented by a consonant, with no true consonants being found in the name Ninwe, thus with Nineveh’s god and goddess never really dying, which was why Ishtar had to be returned from the underworld.

The preceding is not difficult to understand, but requires the Christian to leave his or her comfort zone of literalness and become able to distinguish the artifice from the article, accepting the artifice as true without being troubled by questions of whether the article is true; for the Jonah metaphor involves the movement of breath from the nose, the front of the face, to entering the person about where a whale’s blowhole is located—where the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the bodily form of a dove entered into [eis] the man Jesus when raised from the watery grave by John the Baptist … in the name <John>, aspiration represented by the /h/ precedes the nasal consonant, but in the name <Jonah>, aspiration follows the nasal consonant, with Christ Jesus building His church/assembly on this movement of breath, also seen in Πετρος [Petros, the “os” case ending coming from Greek masculine gender of the name] versus ρετρα [petra, the “a” being genitive case and produced in the middle of the mouth by inhaling breath unlike the “os” case ending produced by puckering the lips and expelling breath].

Peter’s natural father was named John [Ίωανν], not Jonah [Ίωνα]; so when Matthew’s Jesus identifies Peter as Σίμον Βαρίωνα [Simon son of Jonah], Jesus doesn’t make a mistake, but tells Peter that he is a son of God (indefinite article used to distinguish between Jesus, the Son of God, and His disciples, each a son of God), with the telling seen or heard in the movement of aspiration from in front of the nasal consonant to behind the nasal consonant per the sign of Jonah.

None of this is difficult to understand once the Christian realizes that the artifice can be true with the phenomenon described in the artifice having or not having occurred. Prophetically, it doesn’t make any difference if Jonah was swallowed by a whale: the story stands as it is received in the same way that Jeremiah’s seventy year prophecy stood before it was fulfilled. And as Jeremiah had plenty of doubters, Jonah’s prophecy will have doubters. So? Leave them alone with their doubts. Don’t wake them. Permit them to slumber. God will waken them with the Second Passover liberation of Israel.

The television personality Glenn Beck says he senses something is about to happen: he prays, but he prays as a sleeping man prays for the answer to his prayer has already been given. He is not at this time, however, interested in hearing the answer—and he may never be. But he is correct in sensing that something major is about to happen.

In partially alphabetized languages such as Akkadian or Aramaic, also a language spoken at Nineveh, Ninwe would have been written with the same double consonants as Nina, or as the Aramaic word for fish, Nuna, a linguistic link that has a coarse meaning pertaining to the smell of an unwashed woman, plus the semi-consonant. Thus, the semi-consonant following the double nasals would convey a concept like house, or covering, as in double aspiration being housed in a fleshly body, an eisegesis reading of Ninwe, hence a scholarly poor reading of the name. But a scholarly poor reading can be metaphorically true, for a metaphor is always a fiction. And the same scholars who will condemn eisegesis will also label the Jonah metaphor as a myth that cannot be believed. Again, permit them to slumber. They will eventually waken.

The cult of the goddess Ishtar apparently involved sacred prostitution, with her holy city Uruk being said to be a town of sacred courtesans, and with Ishtar being the courtesan of the gods (from Felix Guirand’s article, “Assyro-Babylonian Mythology,” in the New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, translated by Aldington and Ames, London: Hamlyn, 1968, p. 58).

Sacred prostitution was not commonly practiced in the Greek or Roman worship, although Eusebius saluted Emperor Constantine for closing down temples devoted to Venus in which sacred sex was apparently still being practiced in the 4^th-Century CE. But based upon how much the practice involving males and females temple prostitutes was condemned by Moses and by later prophets, sacred sex must have been widely practiced in Mesopotamian cities and cultures in the 15^th-Century BCE and through and into the 6^th-Century BCE.

The linguistic niceties of present English language usage came principally from Victorian thought although the roots from these niceties grew out of upper class Latin language usage, which sought to hide in decorum the baseness of the culture … these niceties preclude vulgar tongue usage (common language usage) that translators have glossed in, say, Second Peter and Revelation, both books presenting theological sophistication in the language of common workmen.

Victorian linguistic nicety pushed already shamed sex and sexual intercourse into alleyways and brothels and far from the tongues of the aspiring middle class—

What had been subjects discreetly but routinely explored in Shakespearean drama (in which all of the female characters were played by male actors, thereby making double entendres from almost every line spoken by a female character) were too risqué for public discussion in contemporary Puritan speech: Puritans condemned all forms of fictional representation as lying, regardless of whether the fictional representation was in poetry, drama, or prose. Nevertheless, they accepted as true that when Roman soldiers mocked Jesus before crucifying Him, they put a scarlet [red] robe on Him (Matt 27:28) that was also a purple cloak (Mark 15:17) … red or purple, which? Maybe purplish red, no! The soldiers, in mocking a person who would be a king would have placed a purple robe on Jesus, for purple was a color that could only be worn by royalty. Matthew’s scarlet robe is a fiction, just as is Matthew’s genealogy, or Matthew having Joseph and Mary take Jesus to Egypt, or Matthew’s account of the temptation of Jesus, with Luke’s account of the temptation differing from Matthew’s, but being equally fictional. And how many women came to the Garden Tomb on the morning of Jesus’ Ascension, one (John’s Gospel), two (Mark’s Gospel), three (Matthew’s Gospel), or many (Luke’s Gospel)? And why does Mark’s Gospel in its original ending, close without the women telling anyone that Jesus was risen (closes with verse 8)?

Puritans—and Christians in general—have traditionally been very poor readers of their own sacred texts, leaving the task of reading Holy Writ to unbelieving scholars, academics, who have so little spiritual understanding that they cannot comprehend Sadducees sacrificing the Passover as Moses commanded Israel to do in Egypt, but Pharisees sacrificing the Passover as Moses commanded the children of Israel to do under the Moab Covenant that still had not been implemented when Jesus was crucified at Calvary.

So, endtime Christians should not make too much ado over the feigned nicety of sociably acceptable English usage that came from Puritan reputation of the liberality of Elizabethans, feigned nicety that scoured most sexual references from the Bible: a man “knew” his wife when having intercourse with her … didn’t he know her before? Of course he did, which might have been why they married.

The feigned nicety that bleached clean obvious sexual references caused translators to miss less obvious references … these less obvious references, however, link modern Christian practices to the paganism of antiquity; so that what Paul wrote in chapter one of his treatise to the Romans was and remains true: God was known to the ancestors of ancient peoples. Their idolatry and their unbelief is without excuse:

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. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Rom 1:18–32)

According to what Paul wrote, homosexuality comes from a debased mind, as does all manner of unrighteousness, the debased mind given to the person who in his or her ancestry chose to worship the creation rather than the Creator.

Sacred prostitution would come from debased minds, given by the Lord to those who refused to worship Him—and the 5^th-Century BCE writer Herodias had no kind words for the Chaldean abuse of women, including wives, in the temples of the cities along the Tigris and Euphrates River.

In a citation from A.D. Godley’s 1920 translation of Herodotus, Herodotus, The Histories,

The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfill the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four. (1.199)

It is difficult to refute Herodotus’ history although there are some scholars who think that Herodotus made things up. We are far enough removed that without additional witnesses from the period, Herodotus stands; for if anything, Moses would seem to confirm sexual idolatry of the region.

If worship of the creation produced debased minds, with the Lord actually making the change in the person’s mind that compels a man to lay with another man as he would a woman, or a woman to lay with another woman as she would a man, then the fleshly body of either a man or a woman becomes the foreground representation of the creation, and worship of the creation comes in the form of holy sex, a logic that most Christians will rightfully find repulsive (because they should not have debased minds). However, the niceties of the English language as used by Christians prevents frank discussion of sexual subjects; hence, Christendom has conceded discussion of sexual deviancy to secular psychologists and sex therapists who desire to help the non-straight person with his or her gender orientation problems by making the person comfortable with his or her debased mind. This ought not to be. No person ought to be comfortable with debauchery or with defiling the body through sexual activity that doesn’t belong in the marriage bed.

However, a debased mind isn’t contagious: the Christian whose love for God causes the Christian to keep the Law won’t suddenly become a homosexual if the Christian discusses sexual orientation with a person who either struggles with the person’s gender identity, or who no longer struggles with a gender identity that is contrary to the person’s biological plumbing. The person who struggles needs compassion; the person who no longer struggles has differing problems. But the point of this is that if God has given to either the ancestor of the person with a debased mind, or directly given to the person a debased mind because either the ancestor or the person intentionally worshiped the creation rather than the Creator, then God bears some responsibility for the person’s defilement, by no means sole responsibility but God could have permitted the person to continue worshiping the creation without becoming involved with the person.

A debased mind can be passed from ancestor to the person through epigenetics—

Because God could have done nothing when Noah’s descendants, all sons of righteousness, began to worship the creation rather than the Creator, the Christian need not shy away from sexual subject material as if the mention of intercourse will somehow defile the Christian. But the Christian also needs to speak without fear when declaring that all sexual activity outside of marriage is sin that defiles the person and that will eventually prevent the person from being able to repent of his or her lawlessness … when illicit sexual contact losses the cultural feeling of guilt associated with such contact, the person has seared his or her conscience and cannot truly repent of the person’s sinning ways. The person will no longer loathe him or her self after sexual gratification is achieved—and when the loathing goes, the sex therapist will declare that the person has overcome his or her sexual hangups, which unfortunately will be true.

Because the Christian mature in faith won’t consider engaging in a sexual liaison outside of the person’s marriage—there are not many mature in faith so it is best to avoid temptation to sin—the mature Christian should feel free to discus sexual motifs as they appear in secular literature and as they appear in the Bible.

Two motifs have near universal application: the first will use the sexual act as a leveling of humanity, high with low, great with small, through the horizontal position of one person laying with the other … the lord of the manor with the chamber maid elevates the chamber maid to the same position the lady of the manor holds when she conceives sons for the lord, while bringing the lord down to biological level of beasts in the field that breed when females are receptive. The leveling of high and low, great and small is democratic, and produces equality among humanity, but the Lord expresses His opinion when it comes to democracy in Numbers chapter 16.

Israel was to be special to God, which means that by God choosing Israel, God elevated Israel over other peoples (who could join themselves to Israel by baptism, circumcision, and a gift to the temple). Thus, when an Israelite has sexual relations with a person from the nations [Gentiles], Israel loses its elevation over the nations; it loses its specialness. So Israel was not to marry outside of itself. Note:

After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, "The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost." As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. (Ezra 9:1–3)

And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: "We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this. Therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the Law. Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it." Then Ezra arose and made the leading priests and Levites and all Israel take oath that they would do as had been said. So they took the oath. (Ezra 10:2–5)

The remnant of Israel that returned from Babylon understood how idolatry had overwhelmed Israel before first the House of Israel then the House of Judah was sent by the Lord into captivity: idolatry prevailed because of foreign marriages. And while Ezra expressed the concept without the benefit of two and a half millennia of literature that have since been inscribed with some of it being preserved, Ezra and the House of Judah was much closer to the example of King Solomon, whose wisdom and faith were comprised by his many foreign wives and concubines. So taking advantage of what has become realized, sexual intercourse—especially outside the marriage bed—produces the democratization of cultures, of peoples, of biological genders, lowering the lofty and bringing the special down to the level of the serpent that slithers on his belly in the dust of the earth … it is the Adversary who would have Israel lay with foreign spouses, thereby causing the specialness that is of God to be sloughed off as a snake sheds its skin.

Sex outside of marriage is idolatrous worship of the creation through the foregrounding of the human body and the euphoria of exploring strange flesh. It isn’t usually homely women or homeless men that the adulterer seeks for a tryst: it is usually the beautiful, the powerful, the wealthy that stray from home and are sought by others who have also strayed from home.

Sexual intercourse in ancient literature functions as masks do in carnivals, which is in keeping with the sex act expressing the democratization of humanity. The power initially held by the man is surrendered to the woman, who then temporarily holds power over her own body as well as his, regardless of how high and mighty the man purports to be. Thus, it is the woman that represents the flesh, the earth, the person behind the mask. In pagan theology, the man is represented by the the sun until the mask comes off. Then he can be seen in Circe’s swine.

Again, the story of democracy as told through Korah’s rebellion against Moses and Aaron discloses what the Lord thinks about metaphorical masks coming off during carnival or in backseats of Chevrolets, where fornication today doesn’t carry the same social stigmas as a half century ago—

I went to work when 18 years old in Georgia-Pacific’s Pulp and Paper Mill at Toledo, Oregon, September 1965. Most of the men with whom I worked were ten or more years older. And they couldn’t resist expressing the wisdom of the common workman: You turn them upside-down, and they all look the same. I was already married, but I couldn’t then confirm what was said, nor can I now despite instinctively knowing the truth of what was said. Such subjects, however, aren’t usually aspects of Christian apologetics that tend to focus on the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ Jesus, not realizing that the Gospel tell the love story about divine procreation, the spirit of God penetrating Christ, and the spirit of Christ penetrating the spirit of man within each disciple in a way symbolized by a man penetrating his wife for the purpose of bring forth sons.

As all women appear fundamentally the same, all human persons appear fundamentally the same as Christ Jesus appeared, with His spirit penetrating the spirit of man of His disciples, male or female.

Because Christians have spoken about human biology in coded nicety, the younger generation going back at least as far as when I was a youth have thought of Christians as either ignorant or hypocrites (or both)—and why would the younger generation listen to a hypocrite? It won’t; they won’t. And the younger generations have dumped Christ and Christianity and now tend to worship Gaia, the earth goddess who, according to Al Gore, has a temperature … permit her to die of her temperature, if she really has one and is not feigning illness to entice additional favors from her lovers.

Most Christians will, within days of when this chapter is posted on-line, observe Easter by whatever name they call the one day observance, with many going to a sunrise service where they will feel inspired by the rising sun in de facto worship of the goddess of dawn, Ēastre. Unknowingly, they will have prostituted themselves, committing holy sex with the prince of this world—and they pay him—they didn’t get paid—to commit fornication with the sun, making them analogous to ancient Israel:

But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be. You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore. And you took your embroidered garments to cover them, and set my oil and my incense before them. Also my bread that I gave you—I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey—you set before them for a pleasing aroma; and so it was, declares the Lord [YHWH]. And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter that you slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them? And in all your abominations and your whorings you did not remember the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, wallowing in your blood. And after all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! declares the Lord [YHWH]), you built yourself a vaulted chamber and made yourself a lofty place in every square. At the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring. You also played the whore with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, multiplying your whoring, to provoke me to anger. Behold, therefore, I stretched out my hand against you and diminished your allotted portion and delivered you to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your lewd behavior. You played the whore also with the Assyrians, because you were not satisfied; yes, you played the whore with them, and still you were not satisfied. You multiplied your whoring also with the trading land of Chaldea, and even with this you were not satisfied. How sick is your heart, declares the Lord [YHWH], because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute, building your vaulted chamber at the head of every street, and making your lofty place in every square. Yet you were not like a prostitute, because you scorned payment. Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different. (Ezek 16:15–35 emphasis added)

It is easy to read these words inscribed by the prophet Ezekiel as pertaining only to natural Israel, but consider what else is in this passage:

And your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. As I live, declares the Lord [YHWH], your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it. (Ezek 16:46–50 emphasis added)

Was Sodom, destroyed while Abraham watched from afar, the younger sister of Jerusalem? How can the younger sister be born to a nation still in the loins of her father for many centuries … the “Jerusalem” to which this prophecy is addressed cannot be physical Jerusalem, or the House of Judah that remained in the Promised Land after Nineveh took Samaria captive roughly a millennium after Sodom was destroyed by heavenly fire. All three, Samaria the oldest sister, Jerusalem the middle sister, and Sodom the youngest sister, are spiritual nations that have physical types (shadows).

What people of this world has pride, excess food, prosperous ease, but have not aided the poor and the needy — this becomes a riddle, for the United States of America has had pride, excess food, and prosperous ease, but the United States has also been the most generous nation, giving away its military victories, feeding the hungry, and aiding the poor. So Sodom would not seem to be a physical people, but a spiritual people that has traditionally sent Bibles and religious tracts to the hungry, leaving the secular government to send wheat and corn, milk and cheese.

Nineveh, Nin Ur, Nina, and nuna in the partially alphabetized inscription of either Akkadine or Aramaic would require the context in which the inscription appears to give meaning to the double nasal consonant cluster. Again, Nina (for Ishtar) and nuna (for fish) would appear the same, with Nin Ur having a “liquid consonant” completing its three consonant root. But liquid consonants or rhotic consonants do not function the same across languages: they are sometimes fricatives, semivowels (like “w”) or full consonant stops. In American English the double “tt” in <better> is an alveolar tap, hence a rhotic consonant like “r” in other languages. Thus, the Akkadine and Aramaic pronunciation of Nineveh and Nin Ur would have probably differed less than the two names differ in their English spellings and pronunciations; for the “v-h” would been a tremulant [an “R-like” sound] after the order of “double-u” [“w”].

The great city Nineveh would have been the city of Nin Ur, the sun god of war, whose daughter was Ishtar, Nina, the rising sun, the shining fish caught at dawn.

Hybridized Puritan mythology that led to the American Great Awakening, first (ca. 1731–1755) and second (ca. 1790–1840), linked Christ’s resurrection to the rising sun, and the goddess of dawn, Ēastre, in Easter observances. Whereas most no non-English-peaking peoples use Easter as the name by which they intend to observe the Christian Passover, using some form of Paschal [Passover] as their name for observance of the Resurrection of Christ, the mythology inherited from pre-Christian proto-English-language users gives to English speakers both the word <God> as well as <Easter>, with both words having inherent difficulties that hinder English users from walking in this world as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6), or imitating Paul as he imitated Christ Jesus (1 Cor 11:1).

God is inherently singular and as such is an appropriate translation of <El>, not <Elohim>.

America has experienced three and possibly four religious revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, with the third occurring between 1850 and 1900, this revival seeing the wider emergence of Sabbatarian Christendom. The fourth revival allegedly occurred between 1960 and 1980 and gave birth to hippies, the protest against the Vietnam War, environmentalism [the Green Movement], but more theologically significant, the fourth revival popularized Sabbatarian Christendom through the evangelism of Hebert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God.

Postmillennial theology—belief that Christ would return after the Thousand Years [the Millennium]—dominated American Protestantism through 1850; thus, according to Postmillennialists God required Christians to purge from their midst those things that were anti-God, such as slavery and worldly concern for wealth and fashion. But such purging would necessarily inconvenience the Christian, who had settled into a more passive demeanor, especially after William Miller’s calculations of when Christ would return proved to be the great disappointments of 1843, and of 1844.

Slumbering Christendom would not, however, be left to sleep in peace, not in 1850, nor in 1960, even though the hour was late, the midnight hour of the long night that began at Calvary not far in the future. In 1850, the developing Industrial Revolution was creating societal pressures that magnified the defects of laissez-faire Capitalism, defects that Karl Marx described, defects that produced the American Civil War followed by the welding together of America’s Pacific and Atlantic Coasts. But this is the subject for another time …

Chapter 21 of John’s Gospel seems to be an addition to the Gospel that ended with John 20:30–31, but when this chapter 21 appeared as an addendum cannot be known, and might well have been penned immediately after the completion of the Gospel and before any circulation occurred. Regardless, in chapter 21 is found the structural organization of Peter’s two epistles: feed lambs, tend sheep, feed sheep, with disciples Peter addressed as initially being lambs (1 Pet 1:1–4:19), becoming sheep that need tending (1 Pet 5:1–14), and in Peter’s second epistle, being sheep with faith equal to that of the apostles (2 Pet 1:1). So the writer of chapter 21, if not John (the Gospel is anonymous), has spiritual understanding and literary sophistication—and if this literary sophistication were fully employed by the author, the fish Peter and those disciples with him didn’t catch until Jesus told them to cast the net from the other side of the boat would be linked to Nineveh and to Ishtar, who would then be cooked and eaten.

The sun was rising when Jesus, from shore, asked, Children, do you have any fish:

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, "Children, do you have any fish?" They answered him, "No." He said to them, "Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. (John 21:4–6)

The story should raise suspicions that it isn’t what it pretends: fish [nuna], day breaking [Ēastre/Ishtar], switching from left, port, side to right, starboard, side of the boat … Peter’s boat would not have been set up to fish from both sides: only desperation would have caused Peter to switch sides, desperation of the sort expressed in not knowing left hand from right.

Fresh fish has no “fishy” smell: the smell comes from spoilage, the decay of the flesh. And in a culture that uses language in the manner that American GIs in World War II used language, the side of the street in liberated Naples that held fish markets smelled that same as the other side of the street that held brothels, according to my father who was one of the first GIs into Naples … because of the religious practices employed in the worship of Ishtar, the temple in Nineveh would have smelled like a fish market, with unsophisticated language users making this connection in crude puns but with sophisticated language users discreetly inserting references to “fish” wherever those references would seem to naturally occur, thereby permitting auditors to either make, or to not make the connection as auditors choose. Without the references being in place, however, the connection could not be made.

If it were known to the inhabitants of Nineveh that Jonah had been expelled from a whale, a great fish, then Jonah would have been received as a spokesman sent from Nineveh’s gods to warn the great city of impending divine destruction. He would have been believed, from the king down to the lowest common workman, which means that Jonah’s flight from Joppa was foreknown with Jonah’s calling, which if an endtime Christian contemplates the significance of Jonah’s flight being foreknown should scare the Christian who chooses to commemorate Christ Jesus’ resurrection on Easter, the day of Ishtar …

That old serpent, Satan the devil, is more subtle than all of the other beasts of the field that constitutes greater Christendom. He has deceived the whole world, including all Christians. To the extent that I do not employ the mind of Christ within me, I too am included in all Christians, which is why I am late coming to understanding why, within the Jonah metaphor, the author of John chapter 21 has Peter and six others of the first disciples—seven in all—go fishing after the glorified Christ had appeared to the ten in the late afternoon of the same day He ascended to the Father.

Going fishing links being fishers of men to not being able to catch scaly fish without the help of the glorified Christ. The glorified Jesus being onshore with a fire while the disciples were in a boat on the water, working in darkness all night long without catching any fish could be symbolically read, with being on shore with a fire representing heaven. But if Nineveh’s belief of Jonah’s preaching repentance was contingent upon Jonah fleeing his calling and being swallowed by the whale before being spewed out onto shore, then Christendom’s rejection of Christ as the Passover Lamb of God and Christendom’s substitution of Ishtar for Christ was also foreknown. It would then have been appropriate for Jesus’ disciples to not be able to catch nuna/nina during the darkness of the long spiritual night that began with Calvary. And the most literarily sophisticated of the Gospels seems to warn disciples against worshiping Ishtar/Easter.

During WWII, Field Marshall Montgomery sought to end the war by Christmas 1944, though pushing Allied forces across the Lower Rhine; thus Operation Market Garden (17–25 September 1944) was launched as the largest airborne assault to date. The assault, however, met strong German resistance and stalled when it secured the west approach to the road bridge at Arnhem. The advance Allied forces were overrun by German forces on 21 September, giving rise to the metaphor, a bridge too far, being used as a linguistic signifier for an act of overreaching …

I would expect some to say that I have taken a metaphoric reading too far in linking fish and going fishing to worship of Ishtar/Easter, that such linking is a bridge too far.

But if the linking of fish with Ishtar is taking a metaphor farther than is appropriate, explain Jonah declaring that Nineveh was a great city, three days’ journey in breadth, when the walls of Nineveh only incorporated 1,900 acres, and were seven and a half miles long. Yes, Nineveh had a population of 120,000 (from archeology, a population from 100,000 to 150,000); so when the prophet Jonah wrote, “Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days' journey in breadth” (Jonah 3:3), something suffers in translation. It probably would have taken three days of walking to explore all of its suburbs, but it would not have taken three days to cross the city. After all, Jonah only went a day’s journey into the city before he set up shop and cried out, Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown (v. 4).

Again, the preaching of Jonah would have been understood by the common people of Nineveh; for Aramaic was an official language of the city. Jonah’s preaching was certainly understood by the king (Jonah 3:6), whom Jonah doesn’t identify after the manner of Moses not identifying the Pharaoh who opposed Israel journeying three days’ distance into the wilderness to worship the Lord.

The coincidence of Jonah declaring that Nineveh’s breadth was three days’ journey, and Moses asking for permission to take Israel three days’ journey into the wilderness might well be entirely “coincidental,” but when archeological evidence seems to establish that Nineveh wasn’t three days journey in width unless the person insisted upon taking baby steps and resting often. So Jonah’s three days’ journey is probably symbolic.

Plus, the problem remains of Jonah not wanting to go to Nineveh because he knew that the Lord would relent of what He intended to do if the people of Nineveh repented—and the Lord gave to Nineveh every reason and opportunity to repent … God will give to Christians every reason and opportunity to repent through liberating all Christians from indwelling sin and death (in effect returning Christians to the Garden of Eden where they can eat of the Tree of Life), but repenting will require Christians to cease observing Easter with its garment of finery worn to mask its fishy smell before God.

Nineveh is as much a part of the Jonah metaphor as is the Garden Tomb, which will now have Jonah’s reluctance to go to Nineveh serving to disclose Jesus’ desire to not die: He didn’t want to go through with what He knew He had to do, and had known since being tasked with building the bridge between heaven and earth, a bridge that could have easily become a bridge too far.

Because one thing isn’t another thing, metaphors are never literally true. Jonah wasn’t Jesus, and Ishtar isn’t Easter. Both Jesus and Easter are larger than are Jonah and Ishtar, but the earlier represents in type the latter.

If Jonah’s Nineveh being three days’ journey across is analogous to the three days and three nights Jonah was in the whale and the three days and three nights that Jesus was in the heart of the earth, Jonah being in Nineveh a day’s journey would have left Jonah sufficient time on this same day to preach his message of repentance and for the king to clothe himself in sackcloth and sit in ashes. This would now have Jonah, on his second day, leave Nineveh, and build a booth on its east side and sit in the shade of the booth (Jonah 4:5) … Jonah, in coming from Jerusalem by way of Joppa and three days and three nights inside the whale, should have entered Nineveh on its west side through the Mashki Gate, where the Khosr River entered the city. Then for Jonah to have built a booth on the city’s east side, Jonah would have crossed the city, and probably crossed in a day, with the vine sprouting and growing in the afternoon of the same day, the second day Jonah was at Nineveh. Then the following day, again probably the third day—there’s enough ambiguity in the language and in the narrative that the chronology of events cannot be established with certainty—the worm attacks the vine and it is Jonah who hears the words of the Lord and needs to repent as the people of Nineveh had (Jonah 4:8–11).

The Book of Jonah closes without seeing Jonah’s repentance …

In 2002, when just beginning the work I presently do, a woman newly come to Sabbath observance became angry when told that lawless Christians weren’t going to fry forever in the flames of Hades, that the second death would be quick and merciful. She didn’t want a quick and easy second death for those who were openly sinners as she had been a few months earlier: she wanted them to suffer forever and forever, seared in flames not quite hot enough to devour either flesh or soul. And in her desire to see the wicked tormented, she disclosed what was still in her heart.

Where is the love of God in wanting anyone to fry in Gehenna’s flames? This will have Gehenna used metaphorically, with this Valley of Himmon (gehenna) being where ancient Israelites burned their firstborn children outside the gates of Jerusalem, and with this Valley of Himmon later becoming the garbage dump for the city because of what the people of Israel did in burning their firstborns, all of whom belonged to God.

The flames of Gehenna were ever-burning in that garbage was continually being delivered to this dump to be burned, but over the centuries, the flames went out as the garbage of Jerusalem was disposed-of by means other than an open fire.

Where was Jonah’s love for the people of Nineveh, with Jonah having a slight excuse for not loving this enemy of Israel that had dispossessed the House of Israel … Jewish tradition holds that Jonah was the son of the widow of Zarephath that Elijah raised from death. The validity of this tradition cannot be confirmed, but considering the relationship between what Jesus said about the sign of Jonah and Jesus being the last Elijah, it is certainly possible that this tradition is rooted in fact.

Unlike in the Book of Job where Job repents after the Lord speaks to him, what happens to Jonah after the Lord speaks with him is not seen in the narrative.

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