March 2, 2012— updated 15.9.2016
An Essay of Definition in Seven Parts
Addendum to PART FOUR
The Language of Redemption
Sons of Light
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Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. (Heb 9:22)
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3a.
Every son of Light will be a fractal of Christ Jesus, who in turn is the fractal of the kingdom of God (as one tree is a fractal of the forest). And as every son of Light will be a fractal of the kingdom, the involuntary drawing and calling of sons of Light from spiritual Babylon and to the Son of Man is analogous to the kingdom of this world being taken from its present prince and given to the Son of Man. This involuntary drawing and calling forms a type of darkness being taken from the cosmos.
As Israel’s Exodus from Egypt in the days of Moses was the shadow and type of the Second Passover liberation of a second nation of Israel, one that includes all of greater Christendom not simply the twelve tribes and a mixed multitude of peoples from Egypt—this liberation being from indwelling Sin and Death—the Second Passover will in turn form the shadow and type of the liberation of the cosmos from darkness (i.e., the liberation of dark matter and dark energy) by the coming of light in the form of the new heavens and new earth.
The preceding is outside of the scope of usual theological discussions, but the criteria that the Father has employed in choosing whom He would draw from this world as fruit borne out of season wasn’t knowable before awareness of fractals emerged in the latter half of the 20th-Century. And while the language of fractals can seem convoluted, what remains simple is that in the language of redemption, the Father remains the God of the dead ones, and the glorified Son who now has returned to Him the glory He had before the cosmos existed is again the God of the living ones. And because the Father has life in Himself, He can give life to dead ones. Likewise, the Son, because He has life in Himself, can give life to living ones through judging these living ones … it is the Son’s prerogative through rendering judgment on the living of whether to give life to the living through causing the perishable flesh to put on immortality, or not to give life to the living when the Father returns the dead to life.
Sons of Light, however, are outside of the scope of judgment because they are already clothed with light [’ôwr] as Adam and Eve were clothed with skin [‘ôwr], an interesting juxtaposition with, for the English speaker, “light” has aspiration or rough breathing as part of the word whereas “skin” carries smooth breathing as part of the word, with aspiration or added “breath” a son of Light from a son of the first Adam. Sons of Light have the breath of God inside them rather than outside of them.
Jesus told the Jews seeking to kill Him (John 5:18) that “‘an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live; for as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself’” (John 5:25–26). The “dead” who were then listening to Jesus speak were not physically dead but had dead inner selves; the dead who heard Jesus speak were physically living Israelites—and those who would hear were not all Israelites, but only those whom the Father raised from death (John 5:21) so they could hear. Thus, the Father and the Son were doing a new thing, something different from what was previously done.
When the Father gives all judgment to the Son, the First of His firstborn sons; when the Father returns to Jesus the glory He had with the Father before the world existed (John 17:5); when it is the Father who raised Lazarus from death (John 11:41–44) and who raised Jesus from death (Rom 8:11) and who raises all dead ones from spiritual death (John 5:21), it can only be the Father that is the God of the dead ones who know nothing because they are dead. So it really has never been possible for Judaism or Islam or even greater Christendom to know the Father for each theology is a cult of death and dead ones.
However, because the Father was beginning the work of species adaptation, He needed to be known by His future sons so He sent Christ Jesus into the world as Light to illuminate sons of Light … the Christ will be the God of the physically living ones that will come out of the Tribulation and live into and through the Millennium. And because the Christ can give live to whom He will (also John 5:21) through judging formerly dead ones that the Father has raised to life, when the Father raises a dead one to life and delivers this formerly dead one to the Son to be judged, the Father unveils the pattern of the Millennium, the precursor to when all of humanity will liberated from death in the great White Throne Judgment.
There are dynamics in play in judging the dead that haven’t been addressed in either the language of the oppressor or in the rhetoric of redemption: the great White Throne Judgment—initially identified in John’s vision—occurs after the Thousand Years [the Millennium] and occurs outside of time and space:
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated on it. From His presence, earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. (Rev 20:11–12)
If the earth and sky no longer exist, then physical flesh cannot exist. So in the great White Throne Judgment, the dead that are returned to life are not physically returned to life, not something previously [prior to 2012] realized. Rather, the dead are the inner selves of those persons who have previously lived; these “dead” have never had indwelling life, but they will be judged by what the fleshly body in which they dwelt did, suggesting that the conscience of every person should rule the fleshly body of the person for it is the conscience that will perish in the second death, the lake of fire, or will be given life and a glorified body in which to dwell.
The Apostle Paul hints at this when, by the hand of Tertius, he wrote, “All who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law” (Rom 2:12) … for Paul, sin is unbelief (see Rom 14:23 in Greek). So the person who doesn’t believe God will perish without ever knowing God, and that is not true. Every person knows God regardless of whether the person realizes that he or she does. And because every person knows God at some level, every person is subject to judgment for those things the fleshly body of the person did. Hence Paul adds,
For when Gentiles, who do not have the Law, by nature do what the Law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the Law. They show that the work of the Law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:14–16)
In the context of all judgment being given to Christ Jesus, Jesus said to the Jews who sought His life, “‘Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His [the Father’s] voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment’” (John 5:28–29).
The Father will call both the good and the evil forth, not returning physical life to both as He returned life to Lazarus, but giving life to dead “spirits” within the souls of human persons. There will be one resurrection for all of Israel that are in the tombs; however, once Israel has been returned to life, those who have done good will receive life and those who have done evil will be condemned, with both life and condemnation occurring outside of space-time.
The preceding cannot be said too strongly: judgment at the end of the age is not of fleshly persons, but of the previously dead inner self of a humanly born person, a person born consigned to disobedience. And this is where greater Christendom erred in the first decades of the Church: the resurrected person who shall be called forth from the grave by hearing the Father’s voice isn’t called forth as a glorified being, but is called forth as resurrected inner spirit to receive one of two fates, one life as angels have life, or to condemnation, with the fate to which the person is called forth having already been determined by the things the person did in this world while initially alive physically. Therefore, in the great White Throne Judgment, the fate of human persons will be revealed, not made (1 Cor 4:5).
Excluded from the great White Throne Judgment are those sons of God that are firstfruits—
Because Jesus during His ministry spoke only the words of the Father, He was the personified message that the Father delivered to the dead ones of this world; i.e., the message the Father delivered to the dead inner selves of human persons. And this personified message functioned as a garment of Light with which the inner selves of the physically living clothed themselves through the blood of Jesus purifying consciences.
While one death is enough to end the existence of the flesh, the second death—the lake of fire—incinerates the inner self that was consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) because of Adam’s unbelief … the inner self that never escaped from disobedience as Moses escaped from Egypt, or as Israel escaped in the Exodus, is without life through not receiving a breath of life that permits this inner self to cross the dimensional fires separating the cosmos from the portion of heaven that has sloughed off into the Abyss.
When the physical, visible things of this world reveal the invisible spiritual things of God, natural species adaptations such as crayfish living in total darkness in caves losing not just eyesight but their eyes as well as their color pigmentation will form the shadow and type of heavenly adaptations for sons of God living in spiritual darkness. This is correct: species adaptations reveal heavenly adaptations, with the spiritual equivalent to species adaptation seen in sons of God that dwell in darkness being born of spirit when it isn’t the season for spiritual birth.
Consider the preceding for a moment.
Paul’s gospel is a simple and would seem to be a second spiritual adaptation stemming from Israel dwelling in darkness [the context for Paul’s gospel] —
There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:9–16 emphasis added)
According to Paul’s gospel, the person who does what is right and good and pleasing to God regardless of whether this person is a natural firstborn son of God (Ex 4:22) or an Egyptian will be justified by being a doer of the Law, with doing what is right and good showing that the work of the Law is written on this person’s heart. According to Paul’s gospel, it doesn’t matter whether the person knows Jesus, or has ever heard the name of Jesus the Nazarene—this is also true in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 25:31–46). And again, John’s vision adds to Paul’s gospel by revealing that the great White Throne Judgment will occur after the Thousand Years (Rev 20:11–15), a judgment in which all who have lived will appear before Christ Jesus to receive good for good and evil for evil. Thus, salvation coming to the uncircumcised who have never been under the Law is equivalent to a species adaptation. Prior to Christ, salvation was only available to Israel, a people who “proved” to be idolatrous in all they did and thought. After Christ, even the men of Nineveh will have their belief of Jonah counted to them as righteousness.
The Elect, by being foreknown and predestined, constitute an even greater species adaptation in that the dead inner selves of the Elect received indwelling eternal life while the person still lives/lived physically—and received/receives indwelling eternal life without the person coming under judgment; for the person who passes from death to life without being judged is not the fleshly person, but the inner self of the fleshly person … the person passing from death to life avoids judgment following death (see Heb 9:27) through the indwelling of Christ Jesus which will cause this person to keep the commandments and do those things that are pleasing to God, with the person’s unintentional transgressions of the Law being covered by Grace, the garment that is the righteousness of Christ Jesus. And because this person practices righteousness and spurns lawlessness because of the indwelling of Christ, this person does not transgress the Law so the Law has no authority over this person. But this person is given no choice as to whether he or she will keep the commandments and have love for neighbor and brother. Free will was in play before the Father drew this person involuntarily from the world. There is no free will after the person is clothed in light.
Again as Adam and Eve had no choice about whether they would be clothed in skin [‘ôwr], the Elect have no choice about whether they will be clothed in light [’ôwr] with the difference between the ’aleph and the ‘ayin being a sound that cannot be heard or made by first-language English speakers, but can only be seen when the Hebrew letters are inscribed. This is akin to French first-language speakers not uttering aspiration as represented by the letter /h/ at the beginning of a word.
The equivalent adaptation of sons of God to blind crayfish is for a human person—circumcised or uncircumcised, male or female doesn’t matter—to be drawn from this world by the Father and involuntarily born of spirit through the Father giving to the person indwelling eternal life in the form of His breath in the breath of Christ. And as a human child in his or her mother’s womb is given no choice as to whether he or she will be humanly born, the person drawn from this world by the Father is given no choice about whether he or she will be born of God as a son.
No person by force of will can cause the Father to draw the person from this world and give to the person indwelling eternal life. Nor can any person drawn from this world prevent him or herself from being born of spirit: the person who is foreknown and predestined by the Father, then called, justified, and glorified by Christ Jesus came under scrutiny and examination and testing while still consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), thereby providing to the Father the basis for being foreknown and predestined to glory. And again, this basis involves whether the person forms a fractal of the creation’s liberation of darkness through the coming of light as the darkness of night [coming from being in the shadow of the earth] passes away through the rotation of the earth.
The inner self of the person born of God was under condemnation before receipt of a second breath of life and resurrection from death. The inner self of this person was, before being raised from death, as the angels are that have been cast into the Abyss … Peter wrote, “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [tartaroosas] and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment” (2 Pet 2:4), with Tartarus being the outer regions of the Greek concept of the dark underworld.
Tartarus as used by Peter was not a real place, but a figurative place that gave to Greek speakers a better concept of dark outer space—where dark matter and dark energy exists—than simply saying the Abyss. But it is in the Abyss where all of the creation (i.e., the cosmos) has been spoken into existence. And it is in the Abyss where rebelling angels have been restrained until their condemnation can be confirmed, with plenty of demons being found on earth when Jesus was here. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that rebelling angels have been confined inside of the creation, with the boundaries of the creation forming their imprisoning bars; for the creation is a glorious death chamber in which that which has life will lose life at some point because the cosmos will eventually cease to be (1 John 2:17), thereby ending the existence of every living entity confined within the cosmos.
To repeat, the inner self of every humanly born person is consigned to disobedience and as such is under condemnation as a son of disobedience in a manner analogous to rebelling angels being under condemnation for having left their first estate, which was obedience to God coming from belief of God. Therefore, unless judged worthy to escape condemnation by the acts and deeds of the flesh reflecting that the works of the Law are written on the heart [a euphemism for the inner self], the person will appear before Christ in the great White Throne Judgment and be found worthy of condemnation. However, if in the great White Throne Judgment, the acts and deeds of the flesh while the person lived physically disclose that the works of the Law have been written on the heart of the person, this person will be found worthy to receive indwelling eternal life and thereby escape from the cosmos that will shortly pass away.
But in the beginning, before Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden—equivalent to before the cherub that was the sum-total of perfection was anointed to be a guardian cherub in Eden, the Garden of God (Ezek 28:12)—Adam had no living inner self: Adam was never given a living inner self. He was never given indwelling eternal life; for if Adam had been given indwelling eternal life, death would not have entered the world via Adam. The man of mud would have believed the Lord God. Rather, life would have entered the world through Adam, not Christ Jesus, the last Adam.
Again, Adam had no indwelling inner life and would have continued to have no inner life until he ate of the Tree of Life, which he never did do.
Christianity in all forms has not understood the significance of man being what he eats: humankind in the form of Adam outside of the Garden and Eve inside the Garden had no living inner self, evidenced by them being naked and not realizing that they were—not realizing that they were covered by Adam’s obedience that would be sloughed away when first Eve then Adam ate forbidden fruit. They were then naked, the state in which Christianity will find itself following the Second Passover liberation of a second Israel.
Through being filled with spirit, the fleshly bodies of Christians will be rendered theologically invisible so that the inner self of the Christian can be seen as Adam and Eve saw each other’s nakedness when they took inside themselves knowledge of good and evil.
Regardless of whether the Garden of Eden was ever a “real” place—it really makes no difference—the explanation offered by the creation of the Garden with its Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, followed by the temptation account lies at the heart of understanding the inner self of human persons, either destined for condemnation or for glory. For until the fruit of the Garden of Eden was eaten, human persons were naked before God, but with no sense that there was anything wrong with being naked: Adam and Eve were as animals are, said with a caveat. After they ate forbidden fruit and their unbelief of God became known to God, the Lord God made for them skin [‘ôwr] garments, with Christians assuming that God killed [sacrificed] animals to get these “skins.” But the word used also pertains to the hide and hair of a goat, which would now have Adam and Eve receiving “hair coats” analogous to the hair that covered Esau, when Jacob put the skin of a goat on his hands and on his neck so his father Isaac would think he was Esau. Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that Adam and Eve, when driven from the Garden, appeared like wild men, like Sasquatch, with the Aleut creation myth claiming that all of humanity has descended from a large, hairy couple. And what has been more recently seen is that if a species [silver fox in Russia] are selectively bred for one characteristic—domesticity—for eight generations, physiological as well as temperament changes occur. Silver fox begin having dog-like natures and appearances. And how many generations are there between Adam and Noah? Eight. Noah is the ninth generation. So it might well be that both the size and the hair coats of Adam and Eve—these genes being recessive but still carried in Noah’s sons and their wives—were effectively “bred” from humanity before God baptized the world in water and unto death.
The concept that God the Father has undertaken a human species adaptation is almost too radical to be taken seriously, but again, The Lord God garmented the first Adam and Eve in “hide,” the English word for skin [‘ôwr]—smooth breathing—and hair, but God garmented the last Adam and the last Eve [the Church] in Light [’ôwr], which has aspiration or rough breathing added to the otherwise same word. And when garmented in Light (as the Woman is in Revelation 12:1), the person born of God cannot be seen except as somebody or something blocks the Light, and the shadow of what blocks the Light reveals the Light.
In the language of the oppressor, Adam is believed to have received an immortal soul when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed the breath of life into the man of mud’s nostrils, but this simply isn’t so. It wasn’t God the Father that breathed life into Adam’s nostrils. The singleness of the verbs disclose that it was YAH [Eloah or Allah], not the conjoined YHWH that breathed life into the man of mud’s nostrils. For plurals are used where YAH speaks to “the God” as seen in Genesis 1:26; 3:22; 11:7, and Isaiah 6:8. Plural pronouns and verbs are not used where YAH alone interacts with humankind as the Spokesman for the conjoined deity, or as the Helpmate for the God.
Possession of the Key of David comes through understanding Hebraic poetics, for which the structural unit is the thought-couplet that has the same concept or idea presented once in its physical or dark perspective then repeated in its spiritual or light perspective. Movement in Hebraic poetry is from night to day, dark to light, community to individual, the surface of the individual to the heart of the individual. Said more simply, Hebrew poetry moves from hand to heart in each thought-couplet with couplet being added to couplet until these couplets are compiled in structures of couplets that look more like March Madness NCAA basketball playoff brackets than phonetically rhymed poetry.
The Key of David is now David disclosing in his late poetry that YAH is the physical face of the conjoined spiritual YHWH, with this revelation easily seen in Psalms 146:1; 148:1; and 149:1 — English translations conceal the Key of David so that ignorant claims are made about what this key is. Therefore, read the three referenced Psalms in Hebrew. And the Key of David assures endtime disciples that it was YAH, not the Father that breathed the breath of life into the man of mud’s nostrils. Therefore, in the language of redemption, a human person is not born with an immortal soul, nor does a human person need to be a Christian to be saved. Rather, the person who will be saved does those things that the Law requires regardless of whether the person has or doesn’t have the Law. For Noah did not have the Law when his preaching was counted as righteousness. And Job did not have the Law when the Lord twice said he was perfect in all of his ways. Plus, Daniel could have never entered the temple because of what Nebuchadnezzar did to him in castrating all of the young captives that served him.
Angels that have been cast into outer darkness are presently under condemnation; yet saints shall judge angels—these angels.
If an angel is under condemnation, there is already a judgment of this angel made. Why then, will saints judge this angel, if not as an appeals board, an appellate court to either confirm the sentence of condemnation to death or to pardon the condemned?
Every human person is born consigned to disobedience and as such condemned to death. The inner self of the humanly born person doesn’t have indwelling eternal life, but has no life as the clay from which Adam was sculpted had no life before Elohim [singular in usage] breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. The learned men that entered early Christianity from Greek paganism couldn’t entertain the idea that the inner self of a person could have no life yet still animate the fleshly body of the person …
For a decade I typed on two different Panasonic word processors, both of which had dumb operating systems. Data wasn’t lost if the power went out, the reason I stayed with the word processors instead of going to a personal computer. And I couldn’t accidently mess up the word processing program … those word processors were like the inner self that is dead. Their programs did what they were designed to do, nothing more, with no changes allowed. Their operating programs were as far from that of an I-Pad as night is from day, but the operating system of an I-Pad still doesn’t compare to the living inner self that is a son of God born-of-spirit.
In the 1980s, I couldn’t imagine an I-Pad. I had no frame of reference in which I could have described a 4-G network. And I was then to computers as Greek philosophers were to the mysteries of God and to spiritual birth. Thus, the ignorance of these early Christian converts from Greek paganism can be overlooked if the Christian is able to get past their writings. However, for the Christian who chooses to stay with the paganism that has informed much Christian dogma, I have five Underwood 5 manual typewriters in a barn outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, if you would like one (I assume they are still there if the barn still stands).
The angel who stands condemned because of unbelief that led to disobedience has indwelling heavenly life even though the angel is imprisoned in the cosmos. The shadow and copy of this rebelling angel is in one hierarchal category lower than the angel as the shadow of a three-dimensional object exists in two-dimensions … the inner self that is consigned to disobedience as a son of disobedience serves as the shadow and copy of the angel consigned [concluded] to disobedience. And because this son of disobedience is lower than the angel in hierarchal order, the son of disobedience has no indwelling life in the heavenly realm: the son of disobedience does not have an immortal soul despite the claim for such a soul made by Greek paganism and borrowed from Egyptian paganism.
Greater Christendom’s understanding of Scripture is tainted by the triune perceptions of God made long after the early Church died from lack of indwelling eternal life. And whenever the Christian finds that the language of Christianity has shaped his or her understanding of the mysteries of God, the Christian needs to fight against the words that come readily to mind and strive to hear the voice of Christ Jesus rather than the voice of baptized pagan orthodoxy. For example, it is easy to say—and I have probably said this ten thousand times—that judgment is now upon the household of God (1 Pet 4;17); that those disciples who are presently born of God are under judgment, and if the righteous are scarcely saved, what will befall the ungodly and the sinner (v. 18). But I have spoken as one who let the language of Christianity, the language of our accusers, determine our words and sculpt our thoughts. For the son of God born-of-spirit is already glorified and awaits only the Son transforming the perishable flesh into immortal spirit at His coming, with spirit being His glory that He has used in constructing all that has been made when He spoke the world into existence.
The soul that passes from death to life will never be dead again: this is the reality of being born of spirit as a son of God. Thus, Hebrew 9:27 [“it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment”] pertains to the fleshly bodies of human persons who have dead inner selves; for that which was dead through being consigned to disobedience [the inner self of a humanly born person] has no life to lose. It is only the living that can lose life, but the living inner self lives through having life outside of space-time and as such has life in the timeless heavenly realm in which the presence of life and the absence of life cannot co-exist in the same unchanging moment; so all that have life have everlasting life. Therefore, it is the fleshly bodies of humanly born persons that die and come under judgment after death, with the second death—being cast into the lake of fire—coming upon the inner selves of these persons when the resurrected person is judged unworthy of entering heaven because of those things the person did while physically alive.
The second death is added to the already dead—again, through being consigned to disobedience—inner self of a human person; so the second death is death upon death and the utter extermination through incineration of the fleshly body and unborn inner self of the human person. The lake of fire is not like a rotisserie that is only hot enough to char the flesh but not utterly consume it. Even a cremation chamber will consume the flesh of a person; thus the lake of fire is heavenly fire that is able to consume the non-physical dead inner self so that it will never be and will be no more forever.
Greater Christendom’s images of hell, of gehhena, have no validity: the shadow and type of the lake of fire is Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace into which he had Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego cast (Dan chap 3). The inner self with indwelling eternal life will pass through the fire without being harmed whereas the inner self without indwelling eternal life will be as the men of Nebuchadnezzar were who perished when casting in the faithful.
Once again, human persons are not born with immortal souls that need to be regenerated although it is understandable where and why such a concept entered Christian dogma from Greek paganism. Human persons are humanly born with dead—without life—inner selves that are analogous to the sculpted mud forming the first Adam before Elohim [singular in usage] breathed the breath of life into this man of mud’s nostrils (Gen 2:7) and this man of mud became a breathing creature, a nephesh. The inner self of a humanly born person doesn’t need regenerated, but rather, needs to be given the breath of life that will give life to this inner self, with this breath of life being the breath of the Father in the breath of the Son. Therefore, it is always wrong to say that human beings are born with immortal souls; it is equally wrong to say that in their natural state the souls of men need regenerated. Does a clay sculpture of a human person need regenerated? Or does this clay sculpture need to receive a breath of life before the clay sculpture is a nephesh?
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, prior to being clothed in skin [‘ôwr], existed as angels were prior to iniquity being found in the anointed guardian cherub—and it is in this analogy, taken too far, where Latter Day Saints derive their dogma that human persons are born with indwelling angels rather than immortal souls as Trinitarians contend.
Again, human persons have no indwelling eternal life, which is the free gift to human persons from God the Father through Christ Jesus (Rom 6:23). … Sons of light are clothed with light not because of their righteousness, but because they are foreknown and predestined by the Father through them forming the close shadow and copy of the Millennium both before being glorified and afterwards. Sons of light are given indwelling eternal life for reasons other than their pre-birth righteousness or profession of faith or desire to know the Lord.
The breath of the Father gives life to the dead, inner self of a physically living person. In addition, the breath of the Father will give life to a formerly living fleshly body that has died as in the case of Lazarus:
Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me." When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." (John 11:40–44)
It was the Father through His glory, His breath that raised Lazarus from death, not Jesus; just as it was the Father that raised the dead body of Jesus from death after three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Rom 8:11).
Paul wrote, “If the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from death will also give life to your mortal bodies through His spirit in you” (Rom 8:11) … translators routinely assign masculine gender and personhood to the neuter gender noun pneuma so Greek original language substitutions are occasionally made.
When the breath of the Father gives life to the dead inner self, this inner self of the person puts on glory as a son of God, a younger sibling of Christ Jesus, the First of the firstborn sons of God—and to greater Christendom, this is blasphemy, but this is what John said when he wrote, “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).
Trinitarian Christians deeply object to human sons of God being “real sons of God”; for if a son, then this human person is also an heir, and if an heir, this person is also God. And Paul writes,
For all who are led by pneumati Theou [“spirit of God,” no definite article] are vioi Theou [sons of God]. For you did not receive pneuma [“spirit," no article] of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received pneuma [“spirit,” no article] of sonship in which] we cry, "Abba! Father!" Auto to pneuma [Itself the spirit] bears witness with to pneumatic ’emon [the spirit of us] that we are tekma Theou [children of God], and if children kai [and] heirs, kleronomoi [heirs] of God and co-heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for ton ’apokalupsin ton uion ton Theou [the unveiling of the sons of the God — definite articles in the three nouns]. (Rom 8:14–19)
Are we willing to suffer with Christ Jesus in order that we may be glorified with Him? And what does it mean to suffer with Christ? Are we willing to die for Christ as He died for us? Are we willing to give up our lives? This is what those disciples did whose inner selves [souls — psuchas] sleep under the altar until their fellow bondservants who are to be killed as they were are martyred (Rev 6:9–11). This is what sons of light will do, with the exception of the two witnesses and possibly the Remnant (from Rev 12:17), early in the Affliction.
What is foreknown is that to the souls sleep under the altar will be added the souls of their fellow bondservants who are to be killed as they were—and if this is foreknown, then those who are to be killed are foreknown by God and chosen by God to be killed as the first disciples were killed … sons of light will be killed because they are foreknown, having been glorified as Jesus was glorified while they still lived physically.
Historical records are tainted with myth, but apparently, except for John, all of the first disciples were martyred, and there was an unsuccessful attempt to kill John by casting him into a vat of boiling oil made shortly before John wrote (not by his hand) his gospel; then wrote his epistles, and the Book of Revelation. If the traditions involving John are true, then an endtime disciple can conclude that as long as a foreknown disciple has a work to complete, the disciple cannot be killed. And this is the case with the two witnesses.
A co-heir with Christ Jesus will suffer with Christ Jesus, and regardless of what a Christian in this present era thinks of his or her fate, even in the 10-40 window, the Christian really doesn’t have it that difficult, which isn’t to say that martyrdom isn’t occurring: it just isn’t occurring to the saints, those who truly keep the commandments and have the indwelling spirit of Christ. And as soon as this appears on-line, someone will bring to my attention a Sabbatarian in East Africa who was martyred for his or her observance of the Sabbath, or someone in Pakistan, or in the Philippines. But when you can name those martyred, the martyrdom that is to come isn’t yet upon the saints.
When Paul was called by Christ Jesus to do a work for God, Paul immediately got to work at the task to which he was called, thereby giving up whatever life he had before being called. And I understand giving up one’s life—giving up our pursuit of the things of this world. I understand pursuing a new life, pursuing the things of God. In my case, I didn’t like the trappings of civilization; my dead inner self was at war with my outer self, and my fleshly self “won” every skirmish when the battlefield was at the edge of civilization. Even after the inner self was resurrected to life, I liked living in rural Alaska, living in the Aleutians, where the Bering Sea and the Pacific come together to give birth to the winds of the North Pacific. … I was—I am not now—far from the Aleutians, far from the only geographic lands where I felt at home, and a part of me figuratively died when I returned to the Lower Forty-Eight in 1993. This part had pushed me to the physical edge of the continent; however, its mirror image has since pushed me to the theological edge of understanding.
Because Arian Christians deny that Christ Jesus is the equal of the Father despite Paul writing, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:5–7), Arians also deny that the Elect will be to the Father as sons are to a human father although Latter Days Saints come close to acknowledging that human sons of God are real sons of God and not sons as angels are sons, sons because they have no other parent but God. However, for Trinitarian Christendom, it continues to be outright blasphemy to declare that human sons of God are true younger siblings of Christ Jesus, who is the firstborn of many brothers (Rom 8:29).
The cosmos itself, spoken into existence by the Logos, awaits the unveiling of firstborn sons of God, the younger brothers of Christ Jesus. And either a Christian believes what Paul writes, what John writes, or the Christian doesn’t hear the voice or words of Jesus in either apostle. It can be no other way. And if the Christian doesn’t hear the voice of Jesus, the Christian is none of His.
Now, if the breath of the Father gives eternal life to the inner self of a human person, and can also return physical life to a dead person—and if the breath of the Son gives eternal life to the living (which seems an oxymoron) by causing the perishable flesh to put on immortality in a manner analogous to the Father giving immortality to the inner self of a human person, then is it the Father’s breath or the Son’s breath that fills the living with spirit so that the living flesh of a physical person becomes theologically invisible? It is the Father’s breath, pneuma Theou.
Christ Jesus’ shed blood purifies the conscience by paying the death penalty for the disobedience, the lawlessness that prevented the person’s inner self from receiving life through receipt of the breath of the Father. In other words, no person—not Noah, Daniel, or Job—could receive indwelling eternal life until Jesus died at Calvary even though Noah, Daniel, and Job are by their righteousness destined for glory (Ezek 14:14).
In the preceding is the difference between Israel as the firstborn son of God (Ex 4:22) in the Torah, and Israel as the firstborn son of God post Calvary: a person, any person, through demonstrated obedience to God, demonstrated belief of God, demonstrated righteousness will be known to God and will thereby be destined to be glorified. This person in the darkness of this present world and without eyes to see the heavenly things of God adapted to the darkness as a blind cave crayfish has adapted to the darkness in which the crayfish lives—and this person did by nature those things that are expected of all sons of God.
But the vast majority of Israel and of all humankind remains consigned to disobedience and therefore dead. It was the rare person who by “feel” found God and worshiped Him in truth. Therefore, predestination is an adaptation analogous to that made by the forty or so species of cave crayfish: when sons of God dwell in perpetual spiritual darkness, they are unable to see the things of God that are evident by the things that have been made. By God taking from the darkness individuals whom He knows will do His will before they know of His existence, and predestining these individuals to glory, God creates the adaptation necessary for sons to be born to Him when it is not the season for birth of sons.
Again, the difference between being known by God and destined for glory after demonstrated faith, belief, obedience, righteousness and being foreknown and predestined by God can truly be visualized in the difference between a sighted and a blind crayfish, the latter being an adaptation of the former, an adaptation based upon the theological darkness in which humankind finds itself. And when the darkness ends through the single kingdom of this world being given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18; 12:7–12), the adaptation also ends. … If Israel could have found God by groping in the darkness as men without light in deep caves grope toward entrances, wary of making wrong turns or of falling into unseen shafts, there would have been no need for a sightless adaptation, which is the nature of predestination.
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[To be continued in Part Five]
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."