About Prophecy - The Book, Serialized - Chapter Nine

About Prophecy

The Book

—serialized—

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Chapter Nine

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Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt I called my son." Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more." But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, "Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead." And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled: "He shall be called a Nazarene." (Matt 2:13–23)

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I introduced discussion of the author of Mathew’s Gospel slipping Jesus behind Israel as the Son of God called out of Egypt in the previous chapter … Hosea identified the son called out:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, [physical/physical — couplet 1]

and out of Egypt I called my son. [physical/spiritual — couplet 1]

The more they were called, [s/p – 2]

the more they went away; [s/s — 2]

they kept sacrificing to the Baals [p/p — 3]

and burning offerings to idols. [p/s — 3]

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; [s/p — 4]

I took them up by their arms, [s/s — 4]

but they did not know that I healed them. [p/p — 5]

I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, [p/s — 5]

and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, [s/p — 6]

and I bent down to them and fed them. [s/s — 6]

They shall not return to the land of Egypt, [p/p — 7]

but Assyria shall be their king, [p/s — 7]

because they have refused to return to me. [s/p — 8]

The sword shall rage against their cities, [s/s — 8]

consume the bars of their gates, [p/p — 9]

and devour them because of their own counsels. [p/s — 9]

My people are bent on turning away from me, [s/p — 10]

and though they call out to the Most High, He shall not raise them up at all. [s/s — 10] (Hos 11:1–7)

As before, odd numbered couplets function as the physical portion of doubled couplets of odd and even numbers, with an interesting shift occurring in the 10^th couplet, a shift that has Yah distinguishing Himself as God from the Most High God that is the Father, the <W^aiH> deity in the conjoined Tetragrammaton YHWH that morphed from being a plural linguistic determinative to being a singular naming icon in going from Moses’ proto-Hebrew inscription to Imperial Hebrew, the determinative’s plurality still seen in the pronoun used for the determinative in Genesis 1:26; 3:22; 11:7; Isa 6:8. Otherwise, Imperial scribes faithfully carried out their redaction of the determinative’s plurality, but in doing so they produce very awkward textual readings; for a linguistic determinative can best be thought-of as modern stage directions that are not read when reading a play … the stage directions are inscribed so that the reader rather than observer of a play can keep track of the action, who comes and goes and when a character comes or goes. Determinatives tell the reader who speaks, when an utterance is spoken, where an utterance is spoken, and in what language. Thus in Egyptian glyphs, the determinative was incorporated in the hieroglyph in a manner some what like grammatical case endings.

When North Germanic language users [Danes and Vikings] encountered West Germanic language users [Angles, from Angeln, and Saxons] and they tired of fighting each other, they found they could speak to each other in word roots. Inscriptions without case endings began to appear just about the time when their cousins from Normandy invaded (ca 1066 CE) and imposed Norman French on these Germanic speakers for three centuries. Of course, a common workman who was a Germanic speaker had no need to learn French, and didn’t, thereby continuing to speak “English” as a West Germanic language without many case endings. So when Henry V came close to conquering all of France in 1415 CE with his victory in the Battle of Agincourt, proud of the work of his English yeomen archers Henry V commanded that the account of this battle be written in English. And English returned to being an officially written language although two of the greatest pieces of surviving English literature come from the previous century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, so there was probably no period when English as a West Germanic language wasn’t used as a written language.

Apart from the redaction of Moses that occurred after the Book of the Covenant was found in the dilapidated temple in the days of King Josiah, a redaction still evident by the awkward structure of recreated speech appearing throughout the books of Moses, Kings, and Chronicles—

As an aside, direct speech is a more efficient means of conveying information than descriptive prose, but faithful inscription of direct speech requires that the speech be inscribed when it is uttered, not centuries later. And even inscription of speech by someone as experienced as court stenographers needs to be checked against audio recordings; so for, say, the author of Matthew’s Gospel to inscribe the words spoken to Joseph, husband of Mary mother of Jesus, in vision would require this author to have personally spoken to Joseph, who probably remembered the words he heard. But Joseph apparently died while Jesus was still young. Joseph would have probably told Mary what was said to him in vision, but Mary wasn’t around when Matthew’s Gospel was written. So how did the author of Matthew’s Gospel know what was said to Joseph, or what was said when Jesus was tempted by the Adversary? Where is that high mountain from which all kingdoms can be seen? It doesn’t exist. Physically cannot exist. So the Adversary could have only shown Jesus all kingdoms in a vision—and this will create all sorts of theological problems. So when considering that there is no evidence that Herod ever ordered the murder of male infants in Bethlehem, or that Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Egypt; when considering that the author of Luke’s Gospel has Joseph being from Nazareth before Jesus was born (Luke 2:1–4) whereas the author of Matthew’s Gospel has Joseph living in a house in Bethlehem (Matt 2:11); when considering that no decree went out from Emperor Augustus for a registration [census] and tax of Jews in the possible years of Jesus’ birth; when considering that the genealogy of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel and in Matthew’s Gospel disagree as to which son of King David was the ancestor of Joseph, who wasn’t the father of Jesus; when considering that there should be no physical history of Jesus prior to the beginning of His ministry for Jesus would have cast no shadow of Himself in this world until He took upon Himself the sins of Israel [coming via His first healing], neither Matthew’s Gospel nor Luke’s Gospel are good history. Both are fictional. However, Luke’s Gospel declares itself to be a redaction of the oral gospel as well as of other writings (Luke 1:1–4) and therefore not inspired by God. But Matthew’s Gospel makes no such claim, which requires that Matthew’s Gospel must be considered as a different sort of writing than a history. And indeed, it is: it is the story of the indwelling Jesus in each disciple truly born of spirit—and to tell this story (and to get this story past the censorship of time), the author created fictional scenes, visions, and dialogues that seem to be true to unsophisticated readers, but that have caused more sophisticated readers to stumble and lose faith.

As many of my students in first semester Lit could not recognize the irony of Jonathon Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”—their inability to recognize irony stemming not from a lack of intelligence, but their absence of mental maturity—most of Christendom’s laity don’t know that the robe Roman soldiers placed on Jesus when mocking Him for being King of the Jews was scarlet when it should have been purple, the color of royalty, and they don’t understand why the author of Matthew’s Gospel would make it scarlet/red instead of purple, not realizing that this author already established Jesus’ royal linage through his genealogy of Jesus through the kings of Israel rather than through David’s son Nathan (Luke 3:31) who probably was Joseph’s ancestor … Luke’s Gospel is useful as a redaction of the oral gospel, its historical accuracy being similar to an inscribed myth.

A generation of literary scholars used structuralism to obtain historical relevance from the myths of oral cultures, without ever understanding the myths. This is a subject I wrote about when in the university, but I didn’t seek to publish as a scholar—I was a creative writer, a fiction writer, someone who employed myths to tell more sophisticated stories. For example, the central metaphor in my novel Like Rain on Kupreanof is that of people being to God as lab animals are to human researchers, but I attempt to use this metaphor without invoking religion. This said, permit me to go to where I initially intended to begin this chapter:

As if lab mice in a round cage, humanity has been supernaturally observed from its creation, a reality I expressed in a fictional scene fifteen years ago:

One girl who has only spoken once, addressing him, asks: "Mr. Chickenof, could you tell us another one that's easier to understand?"

Jacob turns towards Anderson who nods that he should. "Okay, but I don't want you to think that all of the stories have been written down. Many have only been heard like this one."

"What," asks the girl, "do you mean by that? Do you mean that there are still stories that need to be inscribed so they won't be lost?"

Ignoring her questions, Jacob says, "See if you recognize this story, a short one. A long time ago, two brothers who lived on a real tall mountain built things. All kinds of things, large and small, they built things. They liked to build things so they built lots more things than they needed so they said, one to the other, 'We need somebody to have these things we built so we can build more things,' and they agreed, and they took driftwood and their adzes and their crooked knives and they started carving and they made little mice who could live in the things they built.

"But the mice couldn't see the two brothers because the brothers were so big compared to the mice, so the mice thought that the things the two brothers built have always been, and they claimed the things the two brother built as their own and they set about gathering and storing in their holes more and more of the things the two brothers built.

"The two brothers didn't mind because they were busy building more things so they let the mice scurry around gathering up the things the two brothers built as mice do grass seed during the summer. But the mice had babies very fast, and while the two brothers were busy on the other side of the mountain making things, the little mice grew and had more little mice and all of the mice claimed everything the two brothers had made on this side of the mountain, even things too large for them to move. And the mice began to fight over all of those things, even the ones too large for them to move.

"The two brothers heard the mice fighting over the things they had made, and they came back to this side of the mountain and they saw that many of the mice had hurt each other, but their teeth weren't sharp enough to kill each other so none of them were dead, but they were bleeding a lot, so the two brothers caught all of the mice and put them into a round ball that they had made and they hung the ball down the shaft in the center of the mountain, and they asked, one to the other, 'What should we do with them,' and the other said, 'Let us make for them knives,' and it was agreed. So the two brothers made two knives that they put into the round ball with the mice, and they watched as the mice fought over who should have the knives until they were all dead. Then the two brothers again took driftwood and their adzes and their crooked knives and they began to carve, and they carved two people, who they made bigger so the people could see the two brothers, and they put the people among the things they had built and they gave the two people a knife each and they said one to the other, 'Let us watch and see if people are like mice.' So the two brothers sat down and started to watch the people, and they watched and watched and watched. Even today, they are watching."

Once again, the classroom is absolutely silent. The only thing that can be heard is a lawnmower outside, and very faintly, the traffic noise of staff and faculty heading home.

Anderson asks the girl who wanted the second story: "Is this story easier to understand?"

"I don't know. We aren't lab mice, are we? That's what I get from this story."

Anderson turns to Jacob, and softly asks, "How old is this story?" "Old enough that your students should have heard it before." "That's what I was thinking. It's a morality story, like a Medieval morality play." Then to the class, he says, "Break into your groups, and discuss these stories among yourselves for about fifteen minutes. Then each of you, write me a couple of pages on what you think one or the other of the stories means. A graded assignment. So hand them in on your way out. We'll discuss what you have written the next time we meet."

"Is that all you're going to tell us? You're not going to tell us what the stories mean?" asks an older student in nearly the exact middle of the room. "How are we supposed to know what they mean if you don't tell us?" (from Like Rain on Kupreanof)

In 2004, an accusation was made against me: He shouldn’t be believed; he’s just a fiction writer … because the accusation was made on the Net, it is still out there for someone to find so the context in which the accusation was made can be retrieved. And if being a fiction writer is a basis for not being believed, then don’t believe what I write—

God will go to even greater lengths to get Christendom to repent of its lawless ways than the Lord went in getting Nineveh to repent, but as the prophet Ezekiel was told that the people wouldn’t believe him because they didn’t believe God, Christians collectively won’t believe me, a juxtaposition in which I would seem to compare myself to Ezekiel …

Ezekiel wasn’t sent to a people who spoke a foreign language. He wasn’t sent to the nations (Gentiles). Rather, he was sent to the house of Israel that was in Jerusalem and in captivity in Babylon. And he wasn’t believed, hasn’t been believed, but he was supernaturally given a forehead harder than flint so when it came to butting heads with those who thought they were somebody in the house of Israel, he would prevail, if not on the first day, then on another day, but prevail he would as God will prevail over those who claim to be of God but fight against Him with all of their pathetic strength.

In December 1979, while my boat was tied to the Old Sub Dock at Dutch Harbor, I began to write for the expressed reason that I believed I could tell a better story than Ken Follett had in Triple, but that expressed reason wasn’t the real reason, which had something to do with what was going on inside of me now that I had been faithfully keeping the Sabbath for seven years almost to the day, and after knowing to keep the Sabbath for twenty years, again almost to the day.

Fishing a small vessel out of Dutch, making a little money but alone on the boat—my wife and daughters had been in Anchorage since Feast of Tabernacles—I rolled a sheet of paper into the portable manual typewriter I had aboard the Guppy and I began to peck out words. I didn’t know how to type; I didn’t know the keyboard. Plus, English had been my poorest subject in high school: I had one term of Freshman Comp, and a semester of Freshman Lit to my credit. I truly didn’t know what I was doing, but as with many writers, I felt compelled to begin … I had a second semester of Freshman Comp behind me and nine years of writing fulltime and writing professionally when I entered the graduate Creative Writing program at University of Alaska Fairbanks fall 1988. I was actually invited into the program on the strength of my writing for I had no undergraduate degree, and had taken but one university-level English course beyond the three already mentioned. My first degree was my MFA in Creative Writing.

So yes, I am a fiction writer, a poet, an outdoors writer, a commercial fisherman, a wood carver, a gun maker, a certified Mercury Marine as well as OMC outboard mechanic, a chainsaw mechanic, a businessman—yet I am none of these vocations which have simply been means of putting food on the table. What I have consciously been since being called to reread prophecy in January 2002 is the mirror image of a prophet … a prophet delivers the words of the Lord, which since the Tower of Babel have been separated from their meanings: signifiers from signifieds. And because the words of the prophets came without their meanings attached to them, all sorts of meanings have been assigned to these words. I was called to assign differing meanings to these words, the meanings that have been sealed and concealed from humankind since these words were first delivered. And truthfully, I was given a hard forehead, an ego that isn’t harmed by not knowing a particular thing or things.

The Apostle Paul wrote,

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets by the spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him. (Eph 3:4–12)

The evidence of Paul’s calling was, according to Paul, his insight into the mystery of Christ, insight that could be perceived by the things Paul wrote. And this too is my evidence of having been called to reread prophecy: my insight into the mystery of Christ.

In calling Jonah to preach repentance to Nineveh, the Lord anticipated Jonah fleeing by sea to escape doing what he was called to do; in calling Moses to lead Israel from death to life, the Lord anticipated Moses identifying himself with his people and having to flee as a fugitive into the land of Midian … it is not uncommon for someone who will be called to do a work for the Lord having first fled far from where this work will be done, with me being a fiction writer also being flight from writing theological texts, a task to which I wasn’t called in 1979; a task that would have been presumptuous of me to undertake before being called to reread prophecy, hence not something I would have done.

Because I was called to reread prophecy in January 2002, I now write theological texts with confidence and boldness, not concerned about what others will say; not particularly concerned about engaging subjects pertaining to divine procreation, subjects foreshadowed by human sexuality and by dogs mounting other dogs in same-sex marriages that aren’t really marriages but are analogous to demons possessing human persons … again, the man of perdition will be an Arian Christian possessed by the Adversary on day 220 of the Affliction, with this Arian having become bitter against God because of firstborns in his household being killed at the Second Passover liberation of Israel when he thought he was doing everything right. And because he is an Arian, he will already be in the temple of God—Paul identifies disciples as the temple—when he takes his seat and proclaims himself God: he will sincerely believe the angel inside him is Jesus, and he cannot be convinced otherwise. Thus, he will not repent of those things he does, things he wouldn’t today consider doing.

This Arian has recently taken to carrying a handgun …

I quit carrying a sidearm when I came into the Church and realized I could no longer shoot to kill without hesitation; for hesitation of any duration will get the person killed when a person lives by the gun (figurative sword).

With being unwillingly drafted into the Body of Christ came an involuntary respect for human life I did not previously have—

Years later I realized I had no need to protect myself with firearms: I had a hedge around me akin to the hedge around Job that the Adversary complained about, a hedge that prevented things from happening that were not divinely preapproved.

Will I suffer loss when the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs? Yes, I will: I have a firstborn grandson, and a firstborn daughter who will not be covered by the shed blood of Christ Jesus this coming Passover and second Passover, with the shed blood of Christ represented by the Christian Passover sacrament of blessed drink taken on the dark portion of the 14^th day of the first month, the night on which Jesus was betrayed and taken.

My eldest daughter was molested by a family friend, not something I knew about at the time nor for twenty years after the fact … I wasn’t told for fear I would kill the young man, the son of another member of the Church. At the time of the molestation, I was only five years away from when I could easily kill—and while those five years had produced an inner difference that I recognized, they hadn’t changed my outward demeanor. I was still a fairly scary fellow to those who didn’t know me well, and I can’t say that I was easy to get to know.

In a story I have told before, summer 1974, I was falling what passes for timber in North Kenai. A logger who had also come up from Oregon a month after I had was falling for the same gyppo. And he asked the fellow whose Land Cruiser I had driven North if I was a nice guy. George, the fellow whose vehicle I was still driving, told Gene, the faller, that, Yeah, he’s cool, he’s a nice guy. Gene told George, or so George told me, He’s big enough he doesn’t have to be … I don’t think Gene was referencing physical size, but an aura, one suggesting that if you mess with me, I’ll kill you.

That was forty years ago. My daughter’s molestation occurred more than thirty-five years ago—and it was kept from me because of who I had been; who people had come to know before me being drafted into the Body of Christ. I would have liked to have known. Perhaps things would have been different if I had known: her molestation ultimately caused her to walk away from Sabbatarian Christendom and become, as far as I know, a Buddhist, making her an uncovered firstborn who will lose her life in the Second Passover liberation of Israel. There isn’t, now, anything I can do about the loss except trust that when judgments are made in the great White Throne Judgment, she will have demonstrated love for her neighbor and brother.

The following is an except from the essay “Shameful” in the 2001 collection titled, From the Margins, available from booksellers or in a pdf. file on my dot-org website,

There are plenty of other examples that make me fear losing my right to shoot, to own firearms, to hunt, to defend myself. But having a sense of history, knowing that despite all of our technical advances we are the same people who were Carthaginian traders or Scythes from the steppes of Russia, I get over such nonsensical thinking about a need for limited gun control by remembering why the Second Amendment was written in the first place. Governments by their very nature become tyrannical if they have no fear of those whom they govern. Our forefathers didn't want a repeat of Charles banning Protestants, or George banning Americans from owning firearms. In the case of Charles the First, Parliament debated the issue of whether only Catholics could own firearms, and Cromwell settled that debate by removing Charles' head. And as far as King George banning muskets, it was the king who was banned from American shores.

When we get close enough that I can see Kristel's Pontiac, I want to remove someone's head—

Her Pontiac is riddled with bullet holes.

Twenty-three cars and four airplanes were riddled with bullets one of the nights we were across the bay. The planes were inside the Coast Guard compound at Woman's Bay so only someone passing through Base Security could have vandalized them. Who was responsible has never been determined. A couple of Coast Guard families with teenage sons were immediately transferred to Florida. That is as much as the State Troopers knew.

Kristel's Pontiac is completely trashed. All she has for insurance is basic liability so she has no recourse but to write off the vehicle. And there have been a few times in my life when a murderous rage warred with my sense of reason. This is one of those times.

If the Pontiac were mine, losing it would not bother me as much. But it's Kristel's first car. It represents a summer's worth of work for her. And having been soaked by spray while crossing Ugak, I now literally steam as we wait for the troopers to come and tell us what they already know—they had called Kori in Fairbanks when they first found her Pontiac shot up. Kori told them that we were across Ugak. Rather than interrupt our hunt, they waited until we returned to talk to us.

The officer who comes out to tell us what happened calls Dick Waddell for me (I worked for Dick in 1988). Dick drives out the fifty miles to Pasagshak, picks us and our deer up, then loans me twelve hundred dollars so I can buy a pickup and get home. I will be forever thankful to him and his wife. Without his help, the loss of Kristel's car would have caused us real difficulties.

Our founding fathers, for whom Charles and Cromwell weren't figures in ancient history but key political players closer in time to themselves than Abraham Lincoln is to us, were never confident that they had formed a government that would endure. I believe they thought that as long as this nation remained a country of agrarian landowners, freedom was possible. But we are no longer rural, and a significant percent of our population isn't invested as property owners. And freedom cannot tolerate the irresponsible use of firearms. Just can't.

What I knew to be true when I wrote this essay in the 1990s, I also knew to be true in the 1960s and 1970s. I learned self-control from having to suppress my inner rage that I knew was dangerous to me if not contained, an inner rage I had since Dad died suddenly in January 1958, when I was eleven years old, a rage that didn’t go away with baptism but remained for another couple of years before I realized it was mostly gone, buried deep in a newness of life that has been tested often.

Spiritual growth mimics physical growth: I started high school when twelve, the largest freshman at the top of the class. I was eager to learn, but not eager to be friends with anyone. I felt peer pressure, but all peer pressure did was fuel the inner anger that as long it remained unfocused was manageable. I suspect the threat of that anger becoming focused on someone was what made me seem scary.

I want to say a little more about Dick Waddell, mentioned in the excerpt: he was, when I knew him, a non-denomination Christian who attended the Coast Guard Base Chapel, having begun attending base chapels when in Texas before he came to Alaska, with the base chapel serving both Protestant and Catholic parishioners. He was and I assume remains without hard theological dogmas, such as Sabbath observance; thus I shared little theology with him. When I worked for him, I didn’t talk to him about what I believed, nor he to me. But I knew he was not wealthy, nor destitute: he struggled financially. Yet when I needed help, he was there because his Christianity wouldn’t permit him not to assist as best he could. And that might well be his salvation, not him worshiping on Sunday or believing in the trinity. Rather, by having manifested love for someone who had worked for him two plus years previous, he passed a test that I didn’t prepare for him, but that God prepared … as God caused Jonah to be believed when he reached Nineveh by knowing in advance that Jonah would run when called to preach repentance to Nineveh; by knowing that Jonah would take a ship to the Pillars of Hercules rather than see Nineveh saved from physical destruction, God used Jonah’s hatred for Assyrians as a tool to cause Nineveh to repent in a manner analogous to God using the Chaldeans to punish Jerusalem for its rebellion against Him. In both cases, God used imperfect agents to do a work for Him, and not much has changed in the past two and a half millennia. He still uses imperfect agents as tools that He knows how to employ to accomplish His goals, the spiritual birth of firstborn sons.

The mirror image of the juxtaposition of Jonah and Jesus will have the two witnesses not being heard by greater Christendom and will have the third part of humanity (from Zech 13:9) hearing the words of the glorified Christ as delivered by the three angels.

Again,

Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, "Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come, and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water."

Another angel, a second, followed, saying, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality."

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name." (Rev 14:6–11)

An eternal gospel: Fear God and give Him glory. Why? Because the hour of His judgment has arrived. When? Immediately after the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man, Head and Body.

Today, the Adversary remains as the prince of the power of the air; the spirit who exercises dominion over all living creatures, including the fleshly bodies of those persons who have been drawn from this world by God and called by Christ Jesus. It is the Adversary continuing to exercise dominion over the flesh that Paul realized but didn’t understand (Rom chap 7); for Paul believed that once a person was called by Christ and had the mind of Christ, the person would have control of his or her fleshly body and would not do those things that the inner person hated. To his apparent surprise, Paul found that this was not true. He knew he had been changed inwardly, but he didn’t have absolute control of his fleshly body. Such control will not come until the person is liberated from indwelling sin and death at the Second Passover.

Apparently Paul wrestled with his fleshly body doing those things he knew were not right, and Paul was big enough to admit that outwardly he came short of perfection, what he desired. I’ve come short. And John wrote,

If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:6–10)

Except for Christ Jesus, all of humanity can only be imperfect messengers when called to do a work for God. And if the worst thing that can be said about me is that I am a fiction writer, then the one who would make this ad hominem attack does not know me.

The future man of perdition—an Arian who can still repent—will not significantly mend his ways; he cannot for “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law” (Rom 8:7). The future lawless one today expends his energy and his considerable resources to slow the rapidly eroding foundational constructs undergirding American liberty and democracy: he claims that the United States Constitution is a divinely inspired document when it isn’t, and this claim discloses his mind being set on the flesh and therefore hostile to God, even though this Arian prays many times a day with sincerity.

For this Arian to truly repent, God will have to grant him repentance through drawing him from this world and delivering him to Christ Jesus for Christ to give to this person a second breath of life. If this person were ever lined out correctly, he could be an asset to God; however, if he were called by Christ today, he would have similar problems when it comes to forgiving Progressives as Jonah had with Nineveh.

Jonah’s hostility toward Nineveh was justified, but not godly. The hostility that the Arian who will become the lawless one holds against political Liberals and Progressives is justified, but is not of God. For no entity—including Christian denominations—that has imbedded in it top-down authority is of God. This includes the denomination that this Arian attends.

Pre-contact, Northwest Coast Native cultures were organized around the potlatch, a feast given by a person who would be a headman, with the host of the feast giving gifts to everyone invited and with the person who received a gift coming under implied obligation to the gift-giver until the one who received could give back to the gift-giver a more valuable gift. Thus, the competition for who would be headman was one of outgiving others, giving not to receive back but to place an obligation on those who received gifts.

Within the greater Christian Church, who gives most, who serves most? Christ Jesus? Of course, for without the gift of the indwelling of Christ, no person would today be born of spirit. All persons would be spiritually dead. So in receiving the gift of indwelling spiritual life, a second breath of life, whether a person wants to admit it, the one who has been born of spirit is under obligation to Christ Jesus. And the obligation is to walk in this world as Christ Jesus walked, to mimic Him, even to laying down one’s life for friends.

Political change is coming, but before it can come, dominion must be taken from the Adversary.

Here ends what I started to write for this Ninth Chapter, but I didn’t really finish what I had begun to address in the previous chapter …

Why would a Christian place value on Matthew’s Gospel when it is factually not true—and the answer is found in Matthew 28:18, “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.’”

But what is seen in John’s vision:

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever." And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, "We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth." (Rev 11:15–18)

What is seen by Daniel:

As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came out from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened. I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time. I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. (Dan 7:9–14)

Same scene, two perspectives: dominion over the single kingdom of this world is only taken from the Adversary and his angels one time, not many times. The glorified Christ Jesus receives all authority in heaven and on earth one time, when dominion is taken from the Adversary. Therefore, what the author of Matthew’s Gospel writes about Jesus telling eleven of His disciples that all authority has been given to Him cannot be true until dominion is taken from the Adversary, again a one time occurrence. Therefore, the validity of what Matthew’s Jesus tells the Eleven is materialized halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation, on the doubled day 1260. It isn’t as if what the author of Matthew’s Gospel writes isn’t true, such as Jesus never receiving all authority. It is that what this author writes isn’t true in the 1^st-Century CE, except for the glorified Jesus having entered timeless where He is accepted as the reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering, then returning into time after dominion over the kingdom of the world is taken from the Adversary and his angels. This will now have Jesus appearing to the Eleven as John sees Jesus as the slain Lamb leading the 144,000, from eleven, not twelve, tribes of Israel (Rev 14:1–5)

Therefore Matthew 28:16–20 aligns with Revelation 14:1–5, in a similar manner to how Daniel 7:9–14 aligns with Revelation 11:15–18 and with Daniel 2:37–45, with Daniel 11:44–45 aligning with Revelation 11:19.

Daniel 7:2–8 aligns with Daniel 8:8 and with Daniel 11:4 and with Revelation 6:1–8.

Daniel 7:17–27 aligns with Daniel 11:5–43 and with Revelation 6:1–12:17.

The fictional quality of Matthew’s Gospel serves to push the more sophisticated reader out of his or her comfort zone and force the reader to “think metaphorically.”

From the first words of Matthew’s Gospel, it is as obvious to a more sophisticated reader that this gospel is not historical; for the Messiah was to come from a root sucker of Jesse, the father of David, not from David (see Isa 11:1), and a root sucker cannot become the “trunk” of the tree until the trunk is cut off—and Jesse’s lineage was from Obed by Ruth, the Moabite who proclaimed that her God was Naomi’s God, a declaration of faith that would have been analogous to the faith of Gentile converts in the 1^st-Century who chose to walk in this world as uncircumcised Judeans (Ruth would have been uncircumcised in the flesh as Gentile converts would have been uncircumcised in the flesh).

According to the commonly held genealogy of David, there were two generations between this king of Israel and Boaz, his great grandfather. But according to the prophecy of Israel, the lineage of David was “cut off” through the phrase, the stump of Jesse. Yet David shall again be the king of Israel (Ezek 37:24), but no ancestor of David after Solomon was ever king of Israel. David’s biological ancestors were kings over the House of Judah as David had been king over the tribe of Judah for seven years (2 Sam 2:11) before becoming king over the unified nation of Israel for 33 years [the six additional months that David was king over Judah only comes from the calendar difference of Judah and the house of Judah starting the calendar in the fall rather than in the spring].

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t confirm what Pharisees declare:

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." He said to them, "How is it then that David, in the spirit, calls him Lord, saying, "'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet'? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?" And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. (Matt 22:41–46)

Matthew’s Jesus doesn’t say that the Pharisees and the popular tradition of the era are correct; for again, the Christ comes from a shoot [a root sucker] growing from the stump of Jesse, not from the trunk of Jesse with its seven branches, of whom David was the youngest. Rather, Matthew’s Jesus snares these Pharisees in a trap of their own making by quoting Psalm 110:1 from the Septuagint, which translates both the Tetragrammaton YHWH and Adoni as “Lord” [κύριος and κυρίω].

Even if Matthew’s Jesus had been speaking Hebrew to these Pharisees, they were ensnared by the Tetragrammaton being an always unpronounced linguistic determinative for which Adonai was its vocalized sign, with Adonai and Adoni [for a human lord] being variations of uninspired and relatively late Masoretic [6^th and 7^th Centuries CE] vowel pointing.

The trap into which those Christians who hold the Sacred Names Heresy fall is in accepting as factual that the Christ, the Messiah, will be the biological son of David, rather than a shoot from the stump of Jesse. And these ensnared Sabbatarian Christians will believe what simply isn’t true: they will eat the leavening of the Pharisees rather than the unleavened bread of the body of Christ.

A number of times I had university students ask me after a class about the challenge to their faith that came with taking an Intro to Christianity course, in which they were learning that what they had been taught in Sunday school was more myth than fact—and each time I explained that the problem was still a lack of knowledge, a lack of literary sophistication, that if they didn’t give up on Christianity but kept their faith in God and His Christ and not in the dogmas of traditional Christendom, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Because of where and when I was asked these questions, I didn’t feel comfortable giving them more than reassurance that with their evolving spiritual maturity would come the explanations they didn’t then have. I had sufficient respect for the institution not to cross boundaries, a point I addressed in a poem written more than two decades ago:

JUST A WOMANJUST A WOMAN

She's just a woman, he wrote,

explaining why

I wouldn't be seeing

her again. She's pregnant

& alone. A one night affair.

And now she's ashamed.

I don't know this man who wrote,

She's just a woman, who took it

upon himself to explain why

my student hasn't been to class.

He identifies himself as a neighbor.

A well educated one: his English skills

are better than I expected

so far from Moscow.

She's just a woman, a phrase

archaic & patriarchal

yet one that echoes

the humanity of the person

the frailty of someone like myself

who, as we all do, comes short

of the glory of God.

She's just a woman both condemns

& protects: he doesn't condone

the affair, nor does he expect

perfection of her. He writes

from duty & friendship

as a father might

as a rabbi would--

if my Russian were better

I'd visit this neighbor.

She's just a woman as Eve was

but it was by Adam

that sin entered the world.

She's just a woman who needs forgiven

& a helping hand, but I still have

a room full of students eager to learn

hopeful of bettering themselves

& lucky so far.

And I am merely a man.

One more example:

DOUBLE VOICED—DOUBLE VOICED

What is, she asked, double voiced discourse?

I'll give an example, I told my student:

one night, driving across America, somewhere

in Wyoming, I picked up a radio preacher,

a hitchhiker of sorts whose fading signal

gave someone to argue with, someone to break

the monotony of sagebrush & moonlight.

He was telling a story: a young woman

challenged me, said the New Testament

doesn't say anything about Sabbath-keeping.

Shadows & jackrabbits caught in headlights

leaped away as I, fiddling with the dial,

drifted across the centerline, straight

before me as a degree of latitude. He said,

I told her I'll show you the Sabbath

in the New Testament if you'll observe it.

Listening with twinges of interest, I stifled

a yawn. Well, he said, she wouldn't take

my deal, but I'll make that same deal with

any of you. I knew the Scripture he would

reference: at least I thought I did so

I reached for the dial as a coyote,

lit suddenly by headlights, traveling,

ears up, tail drooped, loped diagonally

across the black asphalt. Friends, he said,

I want to offer you a booklet, gratis,

that'll make plain the Sabbath is the test

commandment. I thought I recognized his voice

so this time keeping my Maverick on my side

I found a Canadian station playing country

music—but after a song, I turned back …

he wasn't there. I picked up a little static

& ended up listening to Los Angeles traffic

reports: a stalled car in the northbound lane

at Santa Monica. I really didn't care.

All of Scripture is doubled-voiced discourse, but English translators have concealed this reality from the Christian laity. Consider what the author of Hebrews wrote in a good modern English translation:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. (Heb 4:12–13 emphasis added)

The Greek idiom for an edge is a “lip,” hence the edge of a sword is the lip of the sword. A river bank is the lip of the river. The edges of a mouth are the lips of the mouth. So the image of a two-edged sword would be expressed as a two lipped sword, which will now have the blade of the sword appearing as a stuck-out tongue, an image I have often carved in two-dimensional Formline art applied to three dimensional sculptural pieces, with the tongue forming the inner ovoid of the ovoid formed by the mouth.

But a mouth represents a voice, with a story told inside a story being double voiced narration—and a story told inside a story is what the author of Matthew’s Gospel does when he has his Jesus ask Pharisees, Whose son is David? Both the Pharisees answer and Jesus’ citation of David’s Psalm constitute a story inside of the umbrella story that is not literally true, with the narrator of the umbrella story being the fictionalized disciple named Matthew.

Note that in Mark’s Gospel, allegedly written by John Mark who accompanied Peter according to Bishop Papias,

And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, "Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" And immediately Jesus, perceiving in His spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, "Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise, take up your bed and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—he said to the paralytic—"I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home." And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We never saw anything like this!" He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and He was teaching them. And as He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow me." And he rose and followed Him. And as He reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and His disciples, for there were many who followed Him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that He was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to His disciples, "Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?" And when Jesus heard it, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to Him, "Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" (Mark 2:5–18 emphasis added)

And behold, some people brought to Him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, "Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven." And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, "This man is blaspheming." But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—he then said to the paralytic—"Rise, pick up your bed and go home." And he rose and went home. When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men. As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and He said to him, "Follow me." And he rose and followed him. And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" But when He heard it, He said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" (Matt 9:2–14 emphasis added)

In the citation from Mark’s Gospel and in the citation from Matthew’s Gospel, I have included enough of the context so that it can be seen that the same individual, Levi the son of Alphaeus in Mark and Matthew in Matthew, was a tax collector and called by Jesus after the paralyzed man was healed and before being asked by John’s disciples why His disciples did not fast. Yet when Mark named the twelve apostles, he wrote,

And He appointed twelve (whom He also named apostles) so that they might be with Him and He might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. (Mark 3:14–19)

Yet in Matthew’s Gospel, we find,

And He called to Him His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. (Matt 10:1–4)

Notice that Mark identifies John as the brother of James the son of Zebedee, but does not identify Andrew as the brother of Simon Peter; nor does Mark identify Matthew as the brother of James the son of Aphaeus.

The author of Matthew’s Gospel identifies Peter and Andrew as brothers, and identifies James and John as brothers, but says nothing about Matthew being the brother of James the son of Alphaeus. Yet it was Levi the son of Alphaeus who was the tax collector called by Jesus according to Mark’s Gospel, which would seem to have this Levi also being known by the name of James the son of Alphaeus.

Regardless of how Levi the son of Alphaeus was identified when the Apostles were named, he wasn’t present when Jesus delivered His famed Sermon on the Mount, meaning that he would not have had firsthand knowledge of what Jesus spoke and therefore could not deliver direct quotes except as recreated (fictionalized) dialogue … the author of Matthew’s Gospel was a fiction writer in a similar way as I am, but not in the same way that the author of Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts was.

Permit me to give yet another example from my fictional body of work:

Words are like the wind: they are power, and they must be used carefully, especially when shaped into stories or prayers. They were a gift to people when the world was called into existence, and he has always been careful to use them respectfully, never in anger or for greed and personal gain. Maybe that's what troubles him about John, who wrestles words into weapons to be hurled in courtrooms filled with hate.

His children heard the stories that were told to him, but they were educated by Outside school teachers, hired by officials like himself who thought students needed math and science to succeed, not stories and prayers. So numbers became more important than words, not what any of the officials intended. Nonetheless, he told the old stories, the ones with real power; and his children, after listening to these sacred stories, would say, "That's nice, Dad," then they would spread out their homework on the kitchen table and talk about sines and cosines.

Now, the first generation of village children educated by Outside teachers have control of the schoolboard, his Beth being one of them. A few of them, like Beth, have degrees earned with their knowledge of numbers; so they introduce more math and more science every year into the curriculum. The school operates a salmon hatchery on Mill Creek. It teaches Differential Calculus to Juniors, and it is proud of how it keeps the traditional lifestyle of Cook's Island Natives alive and vibrant, their words, not his, by bringing in storytellers who address school assemblies where students giggle and visit and drink Coke.

Maybe this is how Grandma Mutukin felt when he wouldn't sit still. She was the appointed storyteller for their family, and through the winters when Port Adams used to be cut off from the rest of Alaska, she would bake, usually. cookies, during the day. For him or his cousins to get any of them, they would have to sit and listen to her stories about a long time ago. Isaac was always the best listener; so while Isaac listened, he would cast his string top across the floor, being then more interested in how long he could keep it spinning than in stories of magic bidarkas. But that changed after Isaac went down in Bristol Bay. It then became his task to remember and to understand the old stories, a duty that was his from the beginning, his and his second son's.

In his knees, he feels the tide change at midnight. He has never needed a tidebook. He has always been able to feel when the ebb begins, a feeling of him being pulled south. And the wind seems to lessen. Still forty, maybe fifty knots, the winds at center of the low pressure cell pass over the island.

Lights come back on all over town. He sees harbor lights wink, then brighten. Same for street lights along Kupreanof—his house is on the uphill side of the street. And the radio begins talking, skippers checking on skippers, their words skipping around the world, but heard with most interest in Port Adams: "This is the Provider calling the Mad Dog, do you copy? Provider to Mad Dog, come in." "Mad Dog here, go to 63." "American Rose here, calling American Beauty." "This is the Silver Fox calling—" The signal breaks into static.

Numbers are needed to make radios work; so while he now waits besides the radio, knowing that at any minute J will try to raise him, he remembers why, when he was on the schoolboard, they hired a math teacher from Iowa, who didn't know that Aleuts don't have totem poles. The teacher didn't stay long (couldn't handle the rain), but while he was in Port Adams, he installed ham radio equipment in the school, equipment on which Morse code messages have been sent and received literally worldwide. Bright students and their parents were suddenly more interested in what the weather is like in Capetown or in Christchurch than in trying to puzzle through what Grandma's stories mean, if they mean anything at all.

The wind continues to lean against the house, pushing against windows, banging screen doors and broken whirligigs and the loose flower planter he was supposed to fix last August when silvers were schooling in short water and he was more interested in harvesting winter's fish. Wind whips spruce boughs and power lines and even his raingear inside his Arctic entry—it might even fly an anchor if he were to run one up the post office's flag pole, a stunt Ivan pulled twenty-five years ago, a stunt that cost Ivan six months in Juneau's jail.

Although Ivan is as experienced as anyone in the fleet and has a better feel for fish than even he does, Ivan manages to set a seine around hard luck every summer, losing whatever he made the previous winter. Mary lights candles for his brother, and he makes sure Ivan has a boat to fish. And every fall, usually, Ivan finds himself another middle-aged cannery rat to help him through the despair of winter darkness. So his brother gets by. (from chapter one of Like Rain on Kupreanof)

Until called to reread prophecy and by extension, all of the Bible, I was careful with my words, not presumptuous, preaching when not yet called to preach. Plus, it didn’t occur to me that there could be fiction in the Bible … as a matter of fact, I would have denied that any of the Bible was fictional or didn’t belong in the canon although I knew that the canon wasn’t established even by the end of the 4^th-Century CE. So I cannot fault other readers of Holy Writ for not knowing what they should have recognized long ago.

I can, however, charge Sabbatarian Christendom with hypocrisy, professing to love God and keep the Law yet being gullible enough readers of sacred text to accept Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus as being the genealogy of Joseph, while Luke’s genealogy was presumed to be the genealogy of Mary, thereby making an idol out of the Bible rather than accepting the reality that Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel do not describe the same Jesus, a situation Paul addressed:

I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. (2 Cor 11:1–4 emphasis added)

It is hypocrisy to carefully read Moses without realizing that Scripture is double-voiced discourse, that in the story of Moses is the story of Christ Jesus, and in the story of Christ Jesus is the story of the indwelling of Christ in the Elect, the essence of Matthew’s Gospel.

Most Christians shun fictional texts, with this shunning being perhaps best expressed by the Puritan preacher Stephen Gosson (1554–1624) in his, Schoole of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters and such like Caterpillars of the Commonwealth (1579) … before becoming a Puritan preacher, Gosson was apparently a moralistic playwright. Certainly, he was well schooled, but his theology was that of a milk-drinker: he was not in his lifetime able to ingest solid spiritual food, the sort that pierces “to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

It is “story” that has the ability to sever soul [psuche] from spirit [to pneuma tou ’anthropou]; it is “story” that discerns thoughts and intentions of the heart; it through “story” that divine procreation becomes known and discussed.

* * *

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