The Second Passover

February 11, 2011 ©Homer Kizer
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The Argument: The visible things of this world reveal and precede the invisible things of God. Scripture is about visible peoples and nations, including the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who was seen by Moses and seventy elders of Israel. Hence, from the things seen on earth, the invisible things of God can be known and declared, including God the Father: meaning should be taken from Scripture via typology.

1.

Words are linguistic signs or signifiers [linguistic icons] to which meaning must be assigned: since languages were confused at the Tower of Babel, there has been no hard link between a word and its meaning. Dictionaries merely record the historical trace of a word across time, but dictionaries are not arbiters of meaning. And as a trace of black sand in a gold pan reveals that heavies are present, the historical trace of a word merely reveals how reading communities have traditionally read the word, and does not disclose either authorial intent or how a secondary narrator employed the word to do work inside the text. And meaning must be assigned to a word or the word is nonsensical and without meaning.

Every text has a narrator, the voice that tells the story, with this voice being recognizable from text to text. Hence, the narrator of Holy Writ becomes a recognizable voice and the principle means by which a text is included or excluded from Holy Writ; e.g., the Book of Mormon does not have the same voice, the same narrator as does 1^st & 2^nd Samuel, 1^st & 2^nd Kings, 1^st & 2^nd Chronicles. The Book of Mormon was written under differing inspiration, and as such is not canonical—and is not another testament of Christ Jesus, but is a testament of another Jesus, an additional Jesus to the many that began to surface while the Apostle Paul still lived:

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 11:3–4 emphasis added)

From the 1^st-Century to the 21^st-Century, there have been super apostles proclaiming their own Jesus, most of whom have not died (nor lived) to this day, thereby creating a problem that John began to address in his first epistle:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says "I know him" but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. (1 John 2:1–6 emphasis added)

Disciples know [can know] that they worship Christ Jesus the righteous if they [we] keep His commandments:

As the Father has loved me, so have I [Jesus] loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:9–13)

Jesus keeping His Father’s commandments, the so-called Royal Law (Jas 2:8), forms the shadow and type of Jesus’ disciples keeping His commandments, which will have His disciples walking in this world as He walked, having love for God and neighbor and brother, love that extends to laying down the disciple’s life for his friends.

Elsewhere Jesus said,

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:17–20)

The scribes and the Pharisees had the Law but did not keep it (John 7:19) … the Pharisees were not great law-keepers but law-hedgers, striving mightily to give the appearance of keeping the Law while systematically breaking it through their no-love applications.

To be great in the kingdom of the heavens, according to Jesus who functions as a secondary or inside-the-text narrator in the Gospels, a disciple of Christ Jesus needs to keep the commandments of the Royal Law and teach these commandments to others, a fairly easy criterion for the establishment of greatness. Unfortunately, what should be easy isn’t; for all of humankind has been consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3) and as such will not, and indeed cannot keep the commandments until the person receives a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou] … this is what it means to be born of spirit [pneuma]; for the English word spirit comes from the Latin spīritus, which is perhaps the best translation of the Greek word <pneuma>, and a word that was usually assigned the meaning of breath or the breath of a god.

No person instigates spiritual birth through saying the Sinner’s Pray, or by inviting Jesus into the person’s heart: no person can come to Jesus unless drawn by God the Father (John 6:44) through the Father raising the inner self of the person from death (John 5:21) imposed upon this inner self through the person being consigned to disobedience … spiritual birth comes suddenly upon the person as human birth comes upon a human infant, with a period of gestation preceding spiritual birth, a period when the inner self of the person remains consigned to disobedience but with this inner self experiencing an increased sense of religious awareness even to inviting Jesus into the person’s heart.

Ongoing transgression of the commandments is prime facie evidence that the person remains a son of disobedience, with the principle commandment transgressed by greater Christendom being the Sabbath commandment … during the three years that Jesus’ disciples followed Him prior to Calvary, Jesus’ disciples were not born of spirit; yet they followed Jesus, and even came to know through realization that Jesus was the Christ (John 6:68–69). At least some of them had been baptized in John’s baptism for the repentance of sin and were living as best they could without transgressing the commandments. And these first disciples form the shadow and type of endtime disciples [Christians], who with very few exceptions have not truly been born of spirit as evidenced by their continued practice of sinning. For John wrote,

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he [Jesus] appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. (1 John 3:1–14 emphasis added)

Can a Christian who keeps the commandments and his or her faith in Jesus (Rev 14:12) have love for an unborn brother, one who accuses this holy one of being a legalist because the holy one believes God and strives to keep the commandments Jesus kept? Certainly unborn brothers make it difficult for genuine sons of God to have love for those who deride the saints for being legalists, and who will in the future actually persecute and kill faithful disciples. How much love can a carnal person have for his or her enemies? Yet saints are to love their enemies, to love their unborn [of spirit] Christian brothers: Jesus died for Israel when all of Israel, including His disciples, were still unborn brothers. Should a Sabbatarian Christian not also be willing to die for lawless, unborn brothers? For Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Mormons, even Seventh Day Adventists? And it is willingness to die for what some Sabbatarians have mockingly called Churchianity that separates those Christians who have genuinely been born of spirit from those who keep the commandments in misguided attempts to save themselves from the wrath of God.

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning; no one born of God transgresses the Sabbath commandment, the least of the commandments. But unborn sons of God—Christians in whom spirituality has been awakened—are to born-of-spirit sons-of-God as my biological unborn brother, Kenneth Wayne, was to me until I was four years old … for most of those four years, he wasn’t even conceived by my father, also Homer Kizer, but was merely a potential human infant in the loins of my father as Isaac was in Abraham’s loins from before the Lord told Abraham, “‘This man [Eliezer of Damascus] shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir’” (Gen 15:4).

As the eldest son of my father, I have two brothers, both of whom were not conceived and by extension, unborn, when I was born; yet both of my brothers were figuratively in the loins of my father when I was born … was I not to have concern, interest, even love for them before they were humanly born? Certainly, small children do not have love for younger siblings as parents have love for their children, but not having parental love for an unborn brother or sister doesn’t mean that the firstborn child isn’t interested in the swelling of his or her mother’s abdomen as the unborn sibling grows larger and nears the day of his or her birth. And so it is with spiritual birth, with Christ Jesus being the First of the firstborn sons of God and the Eldest Brother of all human sons of God.

Christ Jesus is the Redeemer of all born-of-spirit sons-of-God in this present era: His death at Calvary paid the ransom price for those human persons who have been born of spirit and who will be born of spirit prior to the Second Passover liberation of Israel. However, when the Son of Man is revealed/disrobed (Luke 17:30) at the Second Passover, today’s and tomorrow’s unborn Christians will be born of spirit and born filled-with and empowered by the divine breath of God [pneuma Theou], but they will be redeemed by the lives of all uncovered firstborns of men and of angels in heaven and on the earth, lives that belong to God, with an uncovered firstborn being one not covered by the blood and body of the Lamb of God; i.e., covered by taking the Passover sacraments of Bread and Wine on the dark portion of the 14^th of Aviv, the night when Jesus was taken (1 Cor 11:23).

The Passover liberation of physical Israel from physical enslavement to a physical king/Pharaoh with the death angel taking the lives of the firstborns of Egypt, man and beast, at the midnight hour forms the spiritually lifeless shadow and type of the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation that is to be circumcised-of-heart, from indwelling sin and death [enslavement to disobedience and the Adversary], with the lives of uncovered firstborns given as ransom for spiritual Israel as the lives of firstborn Egyptians were given as ransom for physical Israel (see Isa 43:3–4), and with this Second Passover liberation of Israel occurring at a spiritual midnight hour; i.e., when humankind can get no farther away from God and must begin to return to the Light that is God. … Jesus as the only Son of the Logos [Ó logos] who was God [Theos] and who was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning (John 3:1) and who was and is the First of the firstborn sons of the Father—this Jesus dying at Calvary forms the reality that cast its shadow backward as the firstborn of Egypt dying to redeem physical Israel, the firstborn son of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex 4:22), and casts its shadow forward in time as the Father sacrificing the firstborn of unredeemed men and angels at the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Hence, Jesus’ death at Calvary paid the ransom price for whomever the Father draws from this world and gives to the Son to be born of spirit until the Second Passover liberation of Israel: these redeemed human sons of God are the oil and the wine that Sin, the third horsemen of the Apocalypse, cannot buy and sell, cannot harm (Rev 6:5–6). But the remainder of humankind will be redeemed as physical Israel was redeemed in Egypt: these other two parts of humankind are all unborn sons of God, one part to be born of God at the Second Passover and the other part to be redeemed by the Second Woe and born of God when the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man.

All truly born-of-spirit Christians in this present era [Christians who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus] will have love for their unborn brothers in Christ, the Christians of greater Christendom, who will receive spiritual birth when the Son of Man is revealed at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, with again this Second Passover liberation casting as its shadow and type the Passover liberation of Israel in the days of Moses. Greater Christendom, when born of spirit and born filled-with and empowered by spirit, will be to the two witnesses—types of Moses and Aaron—as the men of Israel numbered in the census of the second year (Num chap 1) were to Moses in the wilderness. And the two witnesses will have as many problems with greater Christendom in the Affliction (the 1260 day period immediately following the Second Passover) as Moses had with Israel over forty years.

Human gestation forms the dark shadow and type of spiritual gestation, that period before the inner self of a human person is raised from death through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ, euphemistically known as the indwelling of Christ, and after the human person professes that Jesus is Lord. Thus, in an unspecified length of time during which the human person “feels” a sense of heightened spiritual awareness but continues to make a practice of sinning, spiritual gestation occurs. This is the present state of greater Christendom. And this is the scenario in which already-born-of-spirit sons of God must manifest love for their unborn brothers.

When human gestation forms the shadow and type of spiritual gestation, the moment of spiritual conception will be as difficult to determine as is physical conception, which sometimes isn’t detected until a menstrual period or a second period is missed, but which is sometimes known the moment conception occurs.

2.

Some texts, such as the Gospels, have a secondary narrator, a narrator inside the text, a person telling a story inside a story, with these texts functioning like a human person who consists of an inner self [psuche — soul], and an outer self [soma — the fleshly body]. Such texts are said to be double-voice discourse, the 20^th and now 21^st Century expression that best equates to what the 1^st-Century writer of Hebrews called, [sword double-lipped] (Heb 4:12). An inside narrator can discern and express the thoughts and intentions of the heart, with the linguistic signifier <heart> being a euphemistic expression for the inner self, the soul of a person, or in the case of double-voice discourse, the soul of the text.

In the case of the Gospels which have as their visible narrator one of the early disciples [Matthew, Mark, Luke, John], the inside narrator is Christ Jesus, who functions as the head of the outer or visible narrator. Although in secular literature the inside narrator is sometimes at odds with the primary narrator, this is not the case in the Gospels in which the acts of the visible, outer narrators reveal the intentions of the inner narrator, thus giving to the outer narrators the perception of invisibility … when Christians of greater Christendom are filled-with and empowered by immersion in the divine breath of God [pneuma Theou] at the Second Passover libration of Israel, these Christians will no longer be subject to indwelling sin and death: whatever the desire of the heart is, the Christian can execute this desire in the flesh. If the Christian desires to keep the commandments, the Christian will be able to do so—and will need to do so. For the disrobing/revealing of the Son of Man is a euphemistic expression for stripping naked the Body of Christ by removing the garment of grace (of Christ Jesus’ righteousness) that has clothed born-of-spirit Christians since Calvary: following the Second Passover, all Christians will be filled with spirit and liberated from indwelling sin. All Christians will be clothed in their own belief/faith that leads to obedience, to their righteousness. To now sin [transgress the Law], a Christian will take death back inside the Christian and thereby commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion], with this act of unbelief being unforgivable.

Greater Christendom holds as true certain false assumptions that will prove to be the undoing of Christians once the Second Passover occurs, with the first being that because Jesus keep the Law, Christians do not have to keep the commandments but are covered by grace in perpetuity. Another like the first is that anyone can come to Jesus by simply inviting Jesus into the person’s heart. Another is that the divine breath of God, the holy spirit [pneuma Theou], has personhood with blasphemy against the spirit being denial of this personhood—and it is this assumption that will fuel the war between Arian and Trinitarian Christians that will overtake those now-unborn but then born-of-God Christians who will be martyred for their belief of God as 1^st-Century saints were martyred for the word of God and the witness they bore (Rev 6:9).

When Christians are filled with spirit, the inner self of every Christian can rule over the fleshly body in which this inner self temporarily dwells; thus, the fleshly body will assume invisibility for the fleshly body will visibly reveal what is in the heart of the Christian. Every faithful Christian will truly be a living epistle in the heavenly Book of Life (2 Cor 3:3), and no Christian will be able to conceal from public view what is in his or her heart.

Following the opening of the Fifth Seal, with the Second Passover liberation of Israel denoting when seals one through four are opened, with the four horsemen being the four demonic kings that emerged from around the stump of the broken first king, first horn, of the spiritual king of Greece (this first king broken because he was an uncovered firstborn in heaven)—following when the lives of uncovered firstborns are given as ransom for greater Christendom, Christians will divide themselves into spiritual Abel and spiritual Cain [their birth orders reversed], with Cain slaying his righteous brother, those holy ones who keep the commandments and their faith in Jesus. Of these holy ones, only a remnant will escape: those who have the spirit of prophecy (cf. Rev 12:17; 19:10). Otherwise, all Christians in greater Christendom will either rebel against God, which most will do when the man of perdition is revealed (2 Thess 2:3), or will perish at the hands of their brothers in Christ. Thus, as the men of Israel that left Egypt were replaced by their sons in the wilderness (cf. Num 1:1–45; 26:1–51), Christians in greater Christendom will be replaced by the third part of humankind (Zech 13:9) when the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18) … Christians in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, will be as the men of Israel numbered in the census of the second year were; whereas the third part of humankind in the Endurance, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years, will be as the children of Israel who followed Joshua [in Greek, Iēsous — Jesus] into the Promised Land of God’s rest were.

The Affliction, the last 1260 days of the spiritual king of Babylon’s reign over the single kingdom of this world, forms the shadow and type of the Endurance, the first 1260 days of the Son of Man’s reign over the same kingdom, with the man of perdition—a human being, an Arian Christian, possessed by the Adversary—in the Affliction forming the shadow and type of Satan the devil being cast to earth and given the mind of a man coming as the Antichrist in the Endurance. The Affliction and the Endurance (from Rev 1:9) are mirror images of each other; hence they are enantiomorphs. And meaning is to be taken from Scripture via chirality.

The Bible as Holy Writ is personified as the Word of God, with this Word assuming real personhood in the man Jesus the Nazarene. But the Bible is merely the shadow and type of the heavenly Book of Life, with the Bible being a story told within a larger story consisting of many stories—the lives of the firstborn sons of God—most of which are not yet recorded. … The earthly Bible and the heavenly Book of Life are enantiomorphs, in that they are non-symmetrical mirror images one of the other.

The stories that compose the Bible were written down for the instruction of infant sons of God (cf. 1 Cor 3:1–3; 10:6, 11), but some were left unrecorded for discovery by older sons who would then record their discoveries as thoughts are discerned and intentions of the heart are revealed. These previously unrecorded stories will form an endtime canon begun by John the Revelator to do a work for his 21^st-Century brothers and partners analogous to the work that John the Baptist did for 1^st-Century Israel in making straight the Way of the Lord, with <way> incorporating its denotative and connotative meanings in John writing [again], “Whoever says ‘I know him [Jesus]’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:4–6), and in Paul writing, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).

The Way of the Lord is how Jesus walked: it is the way of righteousness, the narrow path of transgressing no commandment through having love for God and for neighbor and brother. And no person who makes a practice of sinning, who willfully transgresses the commands of God, who commits intentional sin, who is not willing to die for his brother walks in this world as Jesus walked. And Jesus walked as an observant Jew, not as a Pharisee or a Sadducee or Herodian or a Hellenist, sects of Judaism that emerged from the political infighting of the previous three centuries. He walked in obedience to the demands of the so-called Royal Law.

A Christian is his or her brother’s keeper: no one claiming to be a Christian can openly live in the White House while his brother lives in a hut in Kenya. Such hypocrisy exceeds even the hypocrisy of the Pharisees … for the majority of Jesus’ ministry, His disciples walked where He walked, slept where He slept, ate what He ate. Jesus’ disciples served the five thousand and the four thousand and baptized additional disciples. And a Christian today is by definition a disciple of Christ Jesus, and hence a servant and not one who is served—and no one can walk how Jesus walked and still accumulate the finer things of this world; no one walking as Jesus walked has the hubris to walk on a red carpet, a long recognized [since Agamemnon] signifier for the way to death.

Yes, the preceding is correct! A red carpet is the universal signifier for the way to death—and only someone as filled with hubris as Agamemnon was when returning home from Troy without his daughter whom he sacrificed but with Cassandra as his concubine would strut on a red carpet, accepting the accolades of the little people, taxpayers and the like.

As a text, the Bible challenges the boundary between myth and history, and history and prophecy. However, the author of a biblical book or of a passage is merely the spokesperson for God, who remains outside of the text and not inside of Scripture. Ultimately, the narrator of Scripture is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of the living. And the author of Holy Writ is God the Father, whom Israel never knew and never saw.

The man Jesus the Nazarene came to reveal an unknown God to selected men [and women] of Israel, not to all of the nation or to all peoples. But there is not agreement about who the man Jesus was or why He came as the only Son of the God of the living, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt 22:32). He became the First of the firstborn sons of God the Father when the breath of God [pneuma Theos] descended upon Him in the form of a dove (Matt 3:16), with all firstborn sons of God being one man in Christ Jesus (read Gal 3:28 in Greek), one man as all human beings are one man in the first Adam.

The Apostle Paul wrote,

I [Paul] am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith [belief] for faith [belief], as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Rom 1:14–2o emphasis added)

The visible Christ Jesus, a man born to a virgin in 1^st-Century BCE Judea, forms the shadow and copy of the inner selves of Christian disciples; i.e., of invisible inner selves that have been born of God as firstborn sons. For in baptism, the fleshly body of a person doesn’t die yet the disciple is buried with Christ in a death like His. In being raised from baptism, the fleshly body isn’t resurrected from death even though submersion or immersion in water symbolically represents death—water represents death. For Moses to have the Sea of Reeds parted so that he and Israel could cross this body of water with dry feet represents a parting of death so that Israel could leave sin, represented by Egypt, and death … walking on water will now signify that death has no claim to the man Jesus or to those who keep their eyes on Christ and believe God, for “‘the righteous shall live by his faith’” (Habk 2:4) when the wicked surround heavenly Jerusalem, the mother of Christians (Gal 4:26). In his vision, John records this surrounding of Jerusalem,

Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, "Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth." (Rev 11:1–3)

The outwardly circumcised Jew is the firstborn natural son of the Lord (Ex 4:22); whereas the circumcised-of-heart convert that is either Jew or Greek, male or female, free or bond is the spiritual firstborn son of God, with again, Christ Jesus being the First of these firstborn sons—and with all firstborn sons forming one man, Christ, Head [Jesus] and Body [the Church]. For when the head of a man is Christ, and the Head of Christ is God (1 Cor 11:3), the linguistic icon <head> doesn’t pertain to the cranium.

Greeks loved equivocation and thought it clever but Romans hated it. But for equivocation to be thought clever, the sense of a matter must be expressed through differing linguistic objects being assigned to the same icon or signifier … when the head of a man is Christ and the head of the woman is her husband, then the sense of penetration and procreation encountered by the outwardly circumcised head of a man entering his wife must necessarily be incorporated in what Paul writes about the hair of the head of a Christian man being cut short whereas the hair of the head of a Christian woman should be long; for the head of an Israelite man would have been circumcised whereas the woman would have had no head, but would have borrowed the head of a man in becoming one flesh with the man (Gen 2:24). However, when the circumcision of record is of the heart [the inner self], then the outwardly circumcised head of a man has no significance. Yet the symbolism represented by circumcision remains, the symbolism of being naked before God and covered only by obedience to God seen through walking uprightly before God. Therefore, Paul moved this symbolism of a man’s head being made naked through circumcision to the cranial head of a man made naked through having short hair. Paul also used the tradition of chaste wives having long hair as a type and copy of a woman not having a head that can be outwardly circumcised. Then to the preceding, Paul adds a fabric covering to the long hair of a woman as a symbol of the woman acknowledging that her husband is her head, with this fabric covering being equivalent to the man having short hair on his cranial head:

·   The biology of a man and his wife give to these two individuals one head that can be outwardly circumcised, thereby making these two symbolically one flesh, with the man being in the woman as a human person’s inner self [soul] is in the outer self [the fleshly body] for as long as the fleshly body remains alive.

·   The English Cavalier poetic expression of dying in the breech equated ejaculation with death as a clever but carnal separation of the inner head [the man] from the outer body [the woman], for the inner self of a human person lives again in a spiritual body when the perishable flesh puts on immortality;

·   The living inner self of a Christian temporarily seems to die as in going to sleep when the fleshly body in which this inner self dwelt dies and returns to dust, but this living inner self will again live in an immortal body when judgments are revealed.

·   When the head of a Christian man is Christ, the inner self of this Christian man is to the indwelling Christ Jesus as the woman is to her husband; hence, the symbolism attached to the outwardly circumcised head of an Israelite man is relocated to Christ Jesus—the circumcised head of a man is no longer of importance.

·   The hair on a Christian’s cranial head will now suggest that the man’s or the woman’s inner self is to the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] as the woman is to the man;

·   But an Israelite man differed from a Greek man through circumcision of the man’s head; hence, a Christian man will differ from a non-Christian by the length of the man’s hair.

No Christian man should have long hair, symbolic of uncircumcision. The length of a non-Believer’s hair (male or female) is of no concern to the Christian. Permit the socially liberated woman to have closely cropped hair if she so chooses. Permit the unbelieving man to have a ponytail or a braided pigtail. But the believing man who has been truly born of God as a son through receiving a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], will have short hair of a style that pertains to a man. Likewise, the believing woman will have uncut (as much as possible) hair as a symbol that she has no head that can be circumcised; for the hair lengths of believers form the revealing shadow of circumcision of the invisible, non-physical inner self … symbols or signs take their meanings from their contexts, with the biology of a man forming a different context from the biology of a woman.

The hair length of believers says nothing about whether a married woman accepts her husband as her human head: the fabric covering with which she covers her hair, a covering not typically worn by unbelieving women, discloses her relationship with her husband.

·   The natural hair on a Christian’s head is a symbol disclosing that the believer is to Christ Jesus as Eve was to Adam; hence, all peoples can come to Christ in due time. No one is biologically excluded.

·  The short hair of a Christian man who walks as Jesus walked discloses inner circumcision, with the symbol [hair] taking its meaning from its context, a human male living as an outwardly circumcised Judean.

·   The long (uncut) hair of a Christian woman discloses her inner circumcision, with, again, the symbol taking its meaning from its context, a human woman living as a Judean.

·   The Christian wife will now cover her hair to symbolically show that she is under the covering of her human husband as Eve was under the covering of Adam’s obedience, and as Christians are presently under the covering of Christ’s righteousness: grace.

When all men have short hair and all women have long, covered hair, the symbols Paul used to reveal inner circumcision no longer mark who is and who isn’t a son of God, a scenario equivalent to greater Christendom being a people who practice transgressing the least of the commandments, the Sabbath commandment: the linguistic signifier <Christian> has been so broadly borrowed by people who refuse to walk in this world as Jesus walked that the signifier is virtually without meaning. Hence, a second signifier was added: Sabbatarian Christian. But the addition of this second signifier was not of sufficient strength that identification of who has been and who has not yet been born of God as a son could be made. Therefore, the symbolism of a Christian woman [the woman who walks in this world as Jesus walked] dressing in modest attire, covering her long hair, and adorning herself with good works serves as an outward, visible signifier of what is in her husband’s heart and what is in her heart; for the married woman equates to the outer self of a Christian.

The Christian wife, whose inner self is a son of God, reveals what is in her heart and what is in her husband’s heart through her deeds [what is in her heart] and her attire [what is in her husband’s heart]—in her deeds and appeal, she visibly reveals what is invisible. Thus, she functions in this world as the dove functioned, with the dove being the visible signifier revealing that the man Jesus had received the invisible, non-physical breath of God [pneuma Theou] (Matt 3:16). Also, she functions as the cloven tongues of fire functioned as the visible, prophetic sign that the world would be baptized in fire with the coming of the new earth and new heavens (cf. Matt 3:11; Acts 2:3; Rev 21:1). Hence, the Christian wife’s deeds and apparel reveal what is presently concealed in her and her husband’s heart, as well as what will become of her and her husband in the future.

Endtime Israel is not the outwardly circumcised nation that frets over how a clean animal has been slaughtered. Rather, an endtime Jew is a person circumcised of heart (Rom 2:28–29), a circumcision not made with hands (Col 2:11); for again, the heart of a man is a euphemistic expression for the invisible and non-physical inner self [soul] of a human person. Thus, the circumcised-of-heart convert is to outwardly circumcised Israel as day is to night, with night preceding day, the hot or light portion of a twenty-four hour period.

Elsewhere Paul wrote,

There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Cor 15:40–49 emphasis added)

Israel is sown as a natural nation, a special nation, one that is holy to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the living (Ex 19:5–6), but when raised from death through the giving of the spirit [pneuma], the divine breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou], Israel is raised a spiritual nation of which the first Israel is only a spiritually lifeless shadow and type.

When visible things reveal invisible things, and when the living Moses and the living elders of Israel saw their God (Ex 24:9–11), the God of the living, and when the dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5) and can see nothing, there will be an unseen and unknown God of the dead that was not and is not the God of Abraham, the reason Sadducees were astonished by Jesus’ teaching (Matt 22:33) — and the reason why Jesus’ teachings should continue to astonish Christians; for this God of the dead can only be known by or through the visible God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob revealing His existence. Hence the person who rejects revelation coming from the observed God of the living knows nothing of the God that raises the dead to life (see John 5:21).

But God is one! And indeed, God is one, but one is a word or signifier to which meaning must be assigned by a reader or speaker [auditor] in a reading community. A man and a woman are, in marriage, one flesh with one head capable of procreation and with the man being the head of the woman — and in the prepositional clauses <with one head capable of procreation and with the man being the head of the woman>, the linguistic icon “head” changes referents in an example of equivocation that, again, Greeks loved and thought clever but that Romans hated, for with equivocation the meaning of an utterance cannot be fixed [fastened down].

From darkness comes light, and darkness cannot overwhelm light but must yield to light so that even the tiny flame of a Bic lighter can be seen more than a mile away on a dark night, a phenomenon I witnessed along with Earl Roemer on the Middle Arm of Kodiak Island’s Uganik Bay in December 1982. Christians are metaphorically sons of light. And in the present darkness of this world, they can be seen at great distances as evidenced by the work of this ministry, a worldwide work that is but a pinprick of light. (This work and this text also have self-awareness, knowing in advance that a name mentioned will be indexed by search engines.)

A living person has no need to be bodily raised from death, and therefore has no reason to know anything about the God of the dead: the living person is to serve the God of the living. Thus, outwardly circumcised Israel as the physically living firstborn son of the Lord had no need to know anything of the God of the dead; for Israel was not offered eternal life but peace and prosperity and long physical life in a land of milk and honey in exchange for obedience, with the dead of Israel knowing nothing (again, Eccl 9:5; 3:18–22). So until Jesus identified the physically living as the dead, saying, Follow me, and allow the dead to bury the dead of themselves (Matt 8:22), not even Israel had knowledge that it was the inner self [metonymically named by the Greek signifier, psuche] of a physically living or of a physically dead person that this God of the dead raises to life. The status of the flesh makes no difference to the God who raised Jesus from death; for the flesh does not enter the supra-dimensional realm known as heaven.

Again, in Scripture, one human person consists of the fleshly body [soma] and of the inner self [psuche] (Matt 10:28), with these two being one entity as a man and his wife are one entity, with the fleshly body being likened to the woman and with the inner self [the soul] being the head of the fleshly body and likened to the man.

But ideologies derived from Greek paganism all err in assigning immortality to the inner self; for a human person is born with a dead inner self, dead from being consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3). And there is nothing a human person can do to give life to what is dead: it is the prerogative of the God of the dead to raise the dead inner self to life through giving to the human person a second breath [pneuma] of life, again the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou].

To be born of spirit doesn’t mean that a person’s fleshly body is immortal; for flesh and blood cannot inherit, cannot enter the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50). Rather, to be born of spirit means that the person’s inner self has been raised from death through receipt of a second breath of life in the form of the breath of God in the breath of Christ, which is then referenced as the indwelling of Christ. If a person denies spiritual birth—the resurrection of the inner self from death—because the fleshly body in which this inner self dwells still bleeds, the person is as Nicodemus was, and Jesus’ criticism of Nicodemus would pertain to the person:

Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? (John 3:10–12)

The first disciples wrote of what they knew; yet the vast majority of Christians refuse to receive John’s testimony that the Logos [Ō logos] who was God [Theos] and who was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning (John 1:1) and who created all things physical (v. 3) entered His creation as His only Son (John 3:16), the man Jesus the Nazarene (John 1:14) to reveal the existence of the God [ton Theon] that the world never knew (John 17:25). The Logos was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Logos was the God of the living, not of the dead (again Matt 22:32). And the Logos in leaving heaven to be born as His only Son died in heaven for His creation, which includes all of humanity, both inner selves and outer selves that will or won’t put on immortality when judgments are revealed. He died when He left heaven so that the inner selves of human beings could live. And at Calvary, His only Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene, died physically for the sins of Israel so that the perishable outer selves of Israel could put on immortality when He comes again.

Two deaths, one so that the inner self of a human person can live, and the other so that the perishable outer self can put on immortality when judgments are revealed—but the resurrected inner self that returns to sin has no more sacrifice available and will therefore perish; i.e., die the second death and thus be twice slain.

The prophet Jeremiah records,

Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when it shall no longer be said, “As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but “As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers. / Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the LORD, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes. But first I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations. (Jer 16:14–18 emphasis added)

The penalty for idolatry is death. To doubly repay Israel for idolatry, Israelites will die the second death, that is they will be cast into the lake of fire.

If I were to teach earthly things about needing to be circumcised in the flesh or that the fleshly body is not born of spirit for as long as it bleeds [the infamous pin test], my testimony would be accepted by Sabbatarian Christians, but because I teach spiritual things that require auditors to be born of spirit to understand, I am to most Sabbatarians as the man Jesus was to Pharisees; for again, every born-of-spirit son of God is one man in Christ—is individually and collectively the Body of the man Christ (1 Cor 12:27). And in this present era, circumcision of the flesh is an act of unbelief, is a rejection of Christ Jesus, as is denying spiritual birth.

3.

Between when the Logos entered His creation as the infant Jesus and Calvary, the adult man Jesus received indwelling eternal life in the form of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] (Matt 3:16), which raised His inner self to life to fulfill all righteousness even though Jesus was not born consigned to disobedience (for His Father was not the first Adam but was the Logos) and had committed no transgression of the Law. Therefore, until the man Jesus the Nazarene as the Lamb of God took unto Himself the sins of Israel, the man Jesus had no need to be raised from death through receiving a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou], for neither death nor Satan had any claim to His life. Although the man Jesus the Nazarene was mortal, He would not and could not die until He took to Himself the sins of Israel. And this juxtaposition of being mortal yet not being subject to death is difficult for pragmatic Christians to accept.

The state of being mortal but not subject to death returns with the Second Passover liberation of Israel … when Jesus began His ministry, He took unto Himself the role of being the sacrificial Lamb of God and therefore He needed to be raised from death through receipt of a second breath of life, His first breath coming from the Logos and not from a human father. Every other human person between the birth of Cain and since Jesus lived has been born of a human father and thus born consigned to disobedience as a son of disobedience.

Christians first—that is all who profess that Jesus is Lord—at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, then the third part of humankind second 1260 days later, all of humanity will be born of God when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man, and all will be filled-with and empowered by the breath of God so that they, too, will be as Jesus was during His earthly ministry. All will have the opportunity to be one man in Christ. However, because the vast majority of Christians have not redeemed their time, have not used their time to practice walking as Jesus walked (Jesus walked without sin before His ministry began, before He received the divine breath of God following His baptism), greater Christendom will be as the nation of Israel was when this ancient nation left Egypt to whine and complain and rebel against the Lord in the wilderness.

A human person bent upon righteousness will strive to live a righteous life while still consigned to disobedience. This person will not be entirely successful in walking uprightly before God. Indeed, because this person remains a son of disobedience, he or she will be unsuccessful despite his or her best efforts. But because this person strives to do what is right, when this person is born of God as a son, he or she will do what is right for this person will then have the ability to overcome the flesh, to overcome all manner of sinfulness, and to present both inner and outer self to God as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to the Lord.

The outwardly circumcised men of Israel, after crossing the Sea of Reeds with dry feet, form the spiritually lifeless shadow and type of greater Christendom, filled-with-spirit, after the Second Passover liberation of Israel; whereas greater Christendom in this present era casts as its shadow the enslaved people of Israel in Egypt, with those few who have truly been born of God being as Moses was, fugitives living in exile, having escaped spiritual Babylon to wander in the wilderness, figuratively tending sheep for others.

A woman biologically drops an ovum about a dozen times a year. This ovum holds the potential for life, but is not alive until it receives life from the man. The inner self of a human person [the soul] at one level can be compared to an ovum: the inner self of the human person holds the potential for spiritual life, but is not alive until it receives life via the breath of God. But this spiritually dead inner self does animate the fleshly body of a human person before a second breath of life is received. Thus, the physically living but spiritually dead inner self forms a shadow and copy of the fleshly outer self that cannot inherit the kingdom of God regardless of the good deeds that the fleshly body does.

Through visibly-seen human procreation is seen invisible divine procreation, with the conception and gestation of a son of God coming prior to spiritual birth and occurring when the human person professes that Jesus is Lord (Rom 10:9). However, a person who has been humanly born consigned to disobedience as a son of disobedience will not leave disobedience/sin until the Father draws this person from the world (again, John 6:44, 65)—and the Father draws this person from the world by giving to the person the earnest of His breath, thereby giving to the person a second breath of life and spiritual birth. So why would a spiritually unborn Christian determine for him or herself to profess that Jesus is Lord, a question for which there are some answers but few good answers.

The person whom the Father foreknows [the question arises, how does He foreknow this person], the Father predestinates for glorification. This person that is foreknown, the Father calls, justifies, and glorifies (Rom 8:29–30) while this person still lives physically … it is the inner self that is glorified, that receives eternal life, not the person’s fleshly body; for receipt of indwelling eternal life in the form of the breath of God in the breath of Christ glorifies the inner self.]

John records Jesus saying,

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one. (John 10:27–30 emphasis added)

When the breath of the Father [God] is in the breath of Christ, these two are one, the reality of which Jesus spoke, with God being the head of Christ (1 Cor 11:3) as the man is the head of his wife … again, the man is the head of the woman as Christ Jesus is the head of every man (1 Cor 11:3) and as God is the Head of Christ. And every Christian is a son of God as angels are sons of God; for a Christian is not male or female, Jew or Greek, free or slave, but is one man in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).

Again, every Christian—the born anew inner self of a human person that professes Jesus is Lord and believes the Father raised Jesus from death—regardless of when the Christian was humanly born is one man in Christ Jesus, and one through receiving indwelling eternal life in the form of the breath of God in the breath of Christ, and is therefore a new creation as Adam was a new creation when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed the breath of life into this man of mud’s nostrils (Gen 2:7). Every Christian is the last Adam, but not every Christian is the Head of the last Adam. Only Christ Jesus, the First of the firstborn sons of God, is the Head of the Body of Christ …

Individually and collectively Christians are the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27), each crucified with Christ and baptized into His death and resurrected from death to walk as He walked (1 John 2:6), imitating Jesus as Paul imitated Jesus (1 Cor 11:1), with Jesus walking in this world as an observant Jew. Individually and collectively, Christians are to walk in this world as circumcised-of-heart Judeans, undefiled by the thoughts of their minds and the desires of their hearts … outward circumcision of the flesh was a shadow and type of inner circumcision of the heart, with circumcision causing a man to walk naked before God, covered only by the garment of belief leading to obedience. And because the inner self raised from death still dwells in a tent of flesh presently consigned to sin and death (see Rom 7:7–25), this living inner self must be garmented in Christ Jesus’ righteousness, euphemistically known as grace, until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, at which time the fleshly body will be filled-with and empowered by the breath of God and therefore rendered spiritually invisible.

At the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the Son of man will be revealed/disrobed: the garment of grace will be stripped away for it will no longer be needed. The Christian—the living inner self—that desires to obey God will have complete power over the fleshly body in which this Christian dwells, and will be able to cover himself with righteousness, the garment of obedience coming from belief/faith. … The visible clothing that a person wears—clothing that should conceal a man’s circumcision or uncircumcision from public view—is analogous to the garment of righteousness, the garment of belief leading to obedience and life, or the garment of unbelief leading to disobedience and death.

In vision, the angel tells John, “‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy’” (Rev 22:10–11) … righteousness that comes from Jesus’ belief of God stands opposed to unrighteousness, the evildoing of the filthy and rebellious unbeliever, beginning with the anointed guardian cherub in whom iniquity was found (Ezek 28:14–15). But how is a person to divide the righteous from the unrighteous, the sheep from the goats, when both call themselves Christians and profess that Jesus is the Christ? The words of the sheep do not have the same meaning as the words of the goats even though the same words are spoken.

And we have returned to the question of how are disciples foreknown by the Father: in human conception and gestation, many more infants are conceived than are born. Many more potential sons of God are called than are chosen (Matt 22:14), with <called> being a linguistic signifier to which differing linguistic signifieds/objects are assigned. For all of outwardly circumcised Israel was called to be the firstborn son of the Lord (cf. Ex 4:22; Matt 22:3–7), but in the days of Elijah the prophet, there were but seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed their knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18) … many were called who were not predestined to be glorified—and as a result, were not chosen.

The person whom the Father foreknows is the one who figuratively refuses to bow his knee to Baal before he is born of spirit. And refusing to bow or worship the spiritual king of Babylon and all he represents equates to not bowing to Baal.

4.

The Lord tired of the violence of the sons of man [descendants of Cain] and the sons of God [descendants of Seth], and He regretted making man and was willing to end humankind’s existence. But the man Noah was righteous and not worthy of immediate death (Gen 6:9; Ezek 14:14); however, the Lord was unwilling to continually strive with man so the Lord sent a flood of water and baptized [submersed or immersed] breathing creatures into death, thereby delivering the outer selves of humankind to the grave and initially introducing the symbolism seen through the prophet Jonah. … When the Lord drove Adam and Eve out from the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:22–24) the Lord produced the separation from Himself that would lead to death, but Adam and Eve did not then die physically. Rather, their expulsion from the Garden of Eden caused their inner selves to die or figuratively die through this separation from the Lord: their return to the dust of the ground was inevitable once they were driven from the presence of the Lord.

The whale is a breathing creature, a nephesh, that did not die when the world was baptized by water into death in the days of Noah … Jesus’ fleshly body did not die when baptized by John, but was like a whale, with Jesus’ inner self being likened to Jonah who was alive before being cast into the sea, the representation of death, where Jonah died but was resurrected from death to be the spokesman for God but recognized by the men of Nineveh as a spokesman for Dagon, a Canaanite god that the people of Nineveh worshiped. When puked out onto dry land, Jonah, who was alive, then dead, then alive again for three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, returned to his task as spokesman for the Lord assigned to deliver to the enemies of Israel a message of repentance or else. Jesus as the only Son of the Logos who, again, was God and was with the God in the beginning had life in His Father in heaven before His Father entered the creation of His Father as a human person without indwelling eternal life and by extension was as Jonah was when Jonah said of himself, “‘The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O LORD my God’” (Jonah 2:5–6).

The waters of the deep—the underwater mountain ranges and rift valleys, flat plains and sandy hills—form the shadow and type of the creation in which the mountains of the earth are submerged in the low-viscous fluid that is space-time … water forms the chiral image of space-time, with this left and right hand likeness only seen through the polarizing light of God.

The glory Jesus had in His Father is the glory, the indwelling eternal life that He asked to have returned to Him (John 17:5).

Like the Ark Noah built, the fleshly bodies of whales passed through the Flood without loss of life: their air-breathing fleshly bodies dwelt in the watery grave that ended the lives of all men but for Noah and the seven with him. Whales dwelt in death and did not die. And Jonah in the belly of the whale [great fish] is analogous to Noah in the Ark—and Christ Jesus being three days and three nights in the heart of the earth before returning to the living as the spokesman for God is analogous to Jonah being three days and three nights in the belly of the whale before being vomited out on dry land, where again, he was recognized as a spokesman for Dagon, the fish god.

The root of the Jonah narrative is in the Flood story, with the link between these two narratives anchored in the inner self of a human person [the soul], regardless of whether alive or dead, being like Jonah was when in the belly of the whale.

The inner self of a person is humanly born “dead” through the inner self being consigned to disobedience as a son of disobedience. This inner self, soul, is not in need of regeneration, but in need of a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ, with the indwelling breath of Christ giving life to the inner self by freeing it from enslavement to disobedience through paying/canceling the record of debt that stands against every human person. The breath of Christ enters the inner self as its head, thereby giving life to the previously dead inner self as Jonah was returned to life while inside the whale. And the whale’s fleshy body was to Jonah what our fleshly bodies are to our once-dead but now-living inner selves.

When the inner self of a human person flees from the Lord and is unwilling to do as the Lord commands, this inner self is as Jonah was when he fled to Joppa and boarded a vessel for Tarshish. This inner self doesn’t need to be cast into the sea, representing death, for this inner self is already consigned to disobedience, and by extension, to death. Baptism by water, however, represents the symbolic throwing of Jonah overboard in a manner analogous to the Flood of Noah’s day. And the fleshly body in which this inner self temporarily dwells is analogous to the whale’s fleshly body—is analogous to heart of the earth in which the man Jesus lay buried for three days and three nights. This is correct: the fleshly body of a human person is the dust of this earth (is composed of the base elements forming the earth). However, the inner self is not a physical entity; hence the inner self is not a construction made from atoms and molecules. Rather, this inner self dwells in a construction made from dust, a construction analogous to the grave, a hole dug in the earth, with again, the whale’s body being a construction made from base elements.

·   The invisible, dead inner self [soul] dwelling in a fleshly body composed of the atoms and molecules that make up the dust of this earth can be visibly seen through the past burial of a human corpse in a grave dug from the dust of this earth, which is what makes Jesus saying, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matt 8:22) significant.

·  The disciple who asked to bury his father before following Jesus introduced the juxtaposition of the dead burying the dead and the living following the living; for to have life, the human person must have the indwelling of Christ which will, every time, cause the person to strive to walk as Jesus walked.

Noah’s sons that were on the Ark would have been sons of righteousness regardless of whether they were themselves righteous men. The deluge of Noah’s day erased all of humankind from the earth except for the righteous [Noah] and the sons of righteousness, with Noah being a type of Christ Jesus. But Christian disciples are not sons of Christ Jesus: they are sons of the Father. So there is another level to this allegory that has Noah and the seven with him on the ark being analogous to the glorified Christ Jesus and the seven angels to the seven churches, with the holy ones [disciples who keep the commandments and their faith in Jesus — Rev 14:12] being likened to the seven pair of clean animals that boarded the Ark with Noah. And this other level will have the single pair of every unclean species that boarded the Ark being analogous to single fellowships of defiled Christendom crossing from this present world to the world to come.

Because of the dramatic reduction of the world’s human population from many to eight individuals in the days of Noah, after the Deluge the people of the world spoke the same language and had the same meaning for words. About this period, the ancients recorded:

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth. (Gen 11:1–9)

The bricks that were being made were named by only one word before the Lord confused the languages … the bricks were the linguistic objects for whatever linguistic icon that was used to name them, and the bricks did not change when languages were confused. The bricks were the same bricks before the language was confused as they were after the language was confused. What occurred is that the social link between the word used to name the bricks and the bricks was broken so that many utterances now named the bricks, with the families of the people separating themselves from one another by the words/utterance used to name the bricks.

Because linguistic icons/signifiers [words] have been separated from their linguistic objects/signifieds [meanings], no person can by diligent study of Scripture determine what the heart, the soul of Holy Writ says. Rather, the person must hear the voice of Jesus in the writings of Moses and in the words of the prophets before heavenly meaning can be assigned to Scripture, with the shortened version of this seen in born-of-spirit sons-of-God having love for their brothers, born and unborn. Love, however, casts no shadow of itself.

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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."

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