28 September 2016
From the Annuals of
Believers’ Baptism—
1.2
More about Chirality
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Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. (1 Cor 7:18–19)
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1.
Christianity is ultimately Paul’s Gospel, with Paul telling the holy ones at Corinth, “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:10–11).
The foundation Paul laid, that of Christ Jesus, is based upon chirality, with the mirror image of the “natural man” not being “thinking man” (Homo sapien sapien, usually written as Homo s. sapien), but being a son of God, the spiritual man. Thus, when Adam and Eve were clothed with skin [‘ôwr] and driven from the Garden of Eden, Adam would have been uncircumcised, a natural man. He was no longer “naked” before the Lord God; he had skin covering his head; he had “hide,” the word used in its sense of concealment—he, Adam, would be hidden from the Lord by his hide.
The natural state of a man is to have the head of his penis covered [hidden] by retractable skin—this is true even for a “thinking” man for he is really a “natural” man, as addressed in the country music song that says, All of the girls get prettier at closing time. No, they don’t. But as bars close; as day pushes deep into night, the natural man’s hormones take over the natural man’s thoughts, and all that the man knows becomes subject to his hormones. For man’s [any person’s] thoughts are not naturally on godliness or even on the greater good of humanity. Rather, the natural man’s thoughts are governed by the appetites of the flesh, belly and loins. So the “head” of a natural man isn’t the head that sits atop his shoulders, this head making him a “thinking man,” but is the head of his penis, with the prince of this world and his world ruling hierarchy reigning over the appetites of the flesh.
The pious will become all puffed up and insist that they are not ruled by their flesh, but they haven’t really examined themselves. For if a person doubts that humankind is ruled by the appetites of the flesh, the person needs to look no farther than America’s presidential election campaign. Of the two major candidates, which one is governed by godly thoughts; which one is not governed by greed? Which one doesn’t have skeletons in their closets … how, exactly, did Vince Foster commit suicide?
The difference between a natural man, made naked before God through circumcision, and a son of God, bypassing entirely the concept of a “thinking man” (what does this man think about; the evidence of culture is that he thinks about sex), is the difference between skin/hide [‘ôwr] and light [’ôwr], with this difference seen in Hebrew as aspiration or rough breathing taking “hide” (what’s done in darkness) to light where nothing is hidden. It was aspiration <ah> that was added to Abram’s name when the Lord God made the covenant of circumcision with him. And with circumcision, nothing was hidden: Abraham’s natural head was made visible …
Hellenist Jews, wanting to have access to Greek public baths and wanting to complete in Greek athletic events, sought to remove the evidence of their circumcision: they went to painful lengths to stretch what skin they had left over their heads. But they never could fully remove the evidence of their circumcision, regardless of how “Greek” they became.
Again, the paring away of the skin covering the head symbolically returns the man—and it is important that it is the man—to the Garden of Eden and to before Adam ate forbidden fruit; to when Adam still believed God. For the woman’s covering is her husband, with her husband being her head (1 Cor 11:3). Her only other head is on her shoulders, and her natural thoughts are no more godly than her husband’s.
The covenant of circumcision had as its precondition the demand that Abram walk with God and be blameless—
When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly." Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, "Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. … As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant." (Gen 17:1–14)
The condition that was to exist before the Lord made this covenant of circumcision with Abram/Abraham [aspiration added] required that Abram walk uprightly before God and be blameless in his ways—and this is before being circumcised, not after, with circumcision on the eighth day occurring when a human infant has not lived long enough to lose innocence, or to have transgressed commandments. An eight day old infant doesn’t “walk” but is blameless in all his ways.
Despite what is recorded in Genesis 26:5 about Abraham having kept the commandments of God, Abram/Abraham did not have the Decalogue to keep. According to Paul (Gal 3:17) and by Moses’ recording of Israel’s history, the Commandments came 430 years later; came after the Passover liberation of Israel; came after Israel became responsible for its own unbelief of God [sin]; for as long as Israel was an enslaved nation, Pharaoh was responsible for everything Israel did, good and bad.
Chirality says that if there is a left hand, there is also a right hand, even if that right hand is hidden. So if a person sees the left hand, but not the right, the person should not assume no right hand exists …
The Passover in the days of Moses serves as a left hand image of a Second Passover liberation of a second Israel, but more about the Second Passover later.
Circumcision of the flesh functions as the left hand. The right hand is circumcision of the heart; of the inner self, an unseen circumcision for “the heart” is an euphemistic expression for the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ánthropou] in the soul [psuche] of the person, with the relationship of the spirit to the soul being analogous to the relationship between a person’s inner self and the person’s fleshly body—
As a person ages, the body quits working the way it did when the person was younger. But in the person’s mind, the person doesn’t see him or herself as an old person, but often as being still in the prime of the person’s life. There becomes an ever widening gulf between the “mental person” and the person’s physical body, something ancient man recognized and sought to explain through identification of the inner self as the “soul” of the person. Of course, because this soul didn’t seem to age even as the physical body failed, the assumption was made that the soul was immortal, meaning at death this soul had to go somewhere. When Homer the blind poet wrote (7th to 8th Century BCE), this soul was still considered a “shade” that went to the underworld upon burial of the body. But by the time of Plato, the shade was a soul that either went to heaven or to Hades upon death, with the troubling problem (for Greek philosophers) that there was really no criteria for determining beforehand where the soul would find itself after death … Christianity became the solution to a roughly five centuries old problem: acceptance of Christ Jesus as the person’s savior assured the person beforehand that his or her soul would go to heaven and be with the gods. Not really, but what a thinking person believes doesn’t really have to be logical. It only has to be believed.
There is an animating force inside a person that doesn’t age at the same rate as does the person’s fleshly body. To say otherwise is to deny the inner self of the person; is to lie to one’s own self. So the conception that there is a “soul” [psuche] inside the fleshly body is seemingly verifiable by men suffering from mid-life crises where the wives of their youths are traded-in for younger models, as if wives were automobiles to driven until they begin to breakdown, then quickly traded off and the latest model purchased to replace them. The husband doesn’t see himself as also beginning to breakdown, and really not much of a trophy for his “trophy wife.”
What ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese didn’t understand is that the relationship between the soul and the fleshly body is analogous to the relationship between a man and his wife when the man is temporarily “in” his wife: the soul of a person, while not immortal, is however only temporarily in a person for the soul itself is the non-physical “housing” for the spirit of the person [to pneuma tou ánthropou]. It is this soul that will be judged when heaven and earth flee away (no more physical earth) and the dead are called forth in the great White Throne Judgment (Rev 20:11–15), with the Books opened from which these dead souls will be judged … the great White Throne Judgment will not be a judgment of physical human persons returned to life as taught by Herbert W, Armstrong during the fifty years of his mid 20th-Century ministry; for a physical person returned to life will need air to breath and soil on which to stand. Without either heaven or earth being in existence, it can only be dead souls that are raised to be judged in this resurrection that follows the Thousand Years of Christ’s reign over the single kingdom of this world.
There is really no strong textual support for a person having a soul in the Hebrew canon; persons are “souls.” However, some support exists, such as King Nebuchadnezzar having his “reason” taken from him and being given the mind of an ox for seven years; such as the first beast [a demonic king] of Daniel’s vision in Belshazzar’s first year being made to stand as a man and being given the mind of a man, meaning the mind that he had as an angelic prince was taken from him as Nebuchadnezzar’s reason was taken from him.
The prophet Isaiah, in writing about the coming of the Messiah, said,
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious. In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. (Isa 11:6–11)
If the predatory natures of wolves, leopards, lions, bears are suddenly changed in that day when the Messiah begins to rule the single kingdom of this earth, then these predatory natures are not biologically “fixed” in these predators, but given to them in a non-physical way. And this is where chirality aids endtime disciples in their understanding of even themselves.
Paul wrote to the holy ones at Corinth, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor 12:27). Elsewhere Paul wrote to these same holy ones, “I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3). Thus, the relationship between Christ and the Body of Christ is analogous to the relationship between the man Adam, created outside of the Garden and placed in the Garden, and Eve [created from Adam inside the Garden]. This same relationship exists between God the Father and Christ Jesus.
The model of marriage governs both godly and human relationships, with the “head” being able to penetrate the “body” as the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] in the bodily form of a dove entering into [eis] the man Jesus (Mark 1:10), thereby causing the spirit of God to penetrate the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou].
In this model of marriage, there is a qualitative difference between the head and the body: there is the difference between a natural man whose head is the head of his penis, and the natural woman who has no other head but her husband’s head until she is born of spirit and ceases to be a natural woman.
The model of marriage illuminates the relationship of the spirit of the man [again, to pneuma tou ánthropou] to the soul [psuche] of the person, with Paul writing,
But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him"—these things God has revealed to us through the spirit [pneumatos]. For the spirit [pneuma] searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. (1Cor 2:9–11)
In perhaps his earliest epistle, Paul tells the holy ones at Thessalonica, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit [pneuma] and soul [psuche] and body [soma] be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess 5:23) … the spirit/pneuma Paul references isn’t the spirit of God or the spirit of Christ, for which Paul would have been presumptuous if he asked for them to be kept blameless. Rather, the spirit that he desires to see blameless isn’t a holy spirit [pneuma ágion] but the spirit of the person which can be corrupted as Adam’s spirit was corrupted when he saw Eve eat and not die.
The order in which Paul presents spirit, soul, and body is the order in which they would appear if beginning inside the person and working out: the spirit of the person in the soul of the person, with the soul animating the fleshly body that is covered by skin [‘ôwr].
The Sabbatarian Churches of God [COGs] that have their origins in Herbert Armstrong’s long ministry have been so worried about any doctrine of an immortal soul sneaking into their theology that they have gone to great lengths to deny that any human person is even born of spirit prior to the Second Advent. They deny Christ while sincerely believing that they serve Christ. Thus, what must be understood by them if these COGs are to be named among the seven endtime churches is that the spirit in the soul is without indwelling eternal life until the spirit of Christ penetrates the person’s spirit, thereby bringing to life inside the soul a new creature, an indwelling son of God that is as Jonah in the whale, with Jonah’s soul in Jonah’s fleshly body being as the person’s now living spirit is in the person soul, and with Jonah’s fleshly body inside the whale being as the person’s soul is in the person’s fleshly body.
Jesus gave one sign that He was from God, the sign of Jonah, which has both a physical and a spiritual application. The physical was Him being three days in the heart of the earth as Jonah was three days and three night in the whale [great fish]; the spiritual is the receipt of His breath, His spirit in the spirit of the person, thereby bringing to life a new creature—a son of God—inside the person’s soul, which is in the person’s fleshly body.
In the chirality of the first Adam versus the last Adam, Christ Jesus, the first Adam lost his covering of belief leading to obedience, tried to cover his head with a fig leave as if he were a tree, and was then given a covering of hide [‘ôwr] as if he were a beast, this covering of hide was given him to conceal his nakedness. In his mirror image, the last Adam never lost His covering of obedience by faith [belief], therefore never needed to cover His head, and was given a covering of Light [’ôwr] as a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45) through the addition of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] to His breath [pneuma Christou].
Light cannot be seen. What blocks the light can be seen; what reflects light can be seen, but light itself cannot be. Thus, as the first Adam was garmented in hide to “hide” his nakedness, the last Adam was garmented in Light and as such, He was and remains concealed from human eyes.
But what should be of most interest and about which the least is known is the spirit of the man [to pneuma tou ánthropou] that is in every living person, the spirit that permits a person to know the things of a person; the spirit that created in King Nebuchadnezzar “his reason” (Dan 4:36), taken from him for seven years.
2.
While circumcision of the flesh makes the “head” of a man naked through the paring away of the natural skin covering of the penis, circumcision of the heart “pares away” the stubbornness of the spirit of the man, stubbornness that prevents the person from believing God or even believing the Adversary … the problem that the Adversary cannot resolve is his broadcast of rebellion; for all who sample this broadcast rebel not only against God but against all authority. This stubbornness has been turned against the Adversary’s reigning hierarchy to initiate rebellion against the Adversary as the Adversary initiated rebellion in heaven even before iniquity was found in him.
Again, symbolically, circumcision returns the man to the Garden before Adam ate forbidden fruit for, after seeing Eve eat and not die, the man no longer believed God but believed the deceiver who had told the woman, “‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” (Gen 3:4–5).
Did the deceiver lie to Eve in what he said? The Lord never told Adam that the woman would die if she touched the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen 3:3). The Lord God never told Adam not to touch the Tree. Yet, it seems obvious that the woman had been told not to even touch the Tree, meaning that Adam had to tell her not to touch the Tree. And why would he do that? Because he didn’t trust her not to eat its fruit?
Was Adam simply being overly protective of Eve when he told her not to even touch the Tree? Possible, but probably not; for he didn’t cite his own authority as her head when he told her not to touch the Tree, but he invoked the authority of God: “The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'" (Gen 3:2–3 emphasis added). Where did God say that?
In closely reading the opening lines of the Temptation Account, we find that Adam added to the words of the Lord God: “‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Gen 2:16–17). Adam added the words about “touching” the Tree—and the deceiver knew that Adam had added to the words of the Lord, and used the addition to deceive Adam.
Visualize what probably occurred: Eve, seeing that the fruit of the Tree “was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the Tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen 3:6) accidently on-purpose brushed her hand against the Tree, and she didn’t die. Of course she didn’t die. The Lord had told nothing to Adam about dying if he touched the Tree. Plus, even if (or when) she ate the fruit of the Tree, she wouldn’t die because she had a covering, her husband’s obedience, based on his belief of the Lord. So what the deceiver told her was true within a limitation: she wasn’t to desire to eat the fruit; she wasn’t to desire to be God. And the Lord wasn’t keeping anything from her that was good for her. So the deceiver appealed to her vanity—interesting, for from where did this vanity come, except from the deceiver—and laid the basis for Eve believing that God was withholding something from them that they should have.
The Adversary remains the prince of the power of the air: vanity comes from his broadcast of his nature. And vanity in the Garden would have come from him broadcasting his nature in a transmission to which Eve was receptive, meaning that if Adam didn’t trust Eve not to eat of the Tree, then the deceiver was broadcasting his nature to Adam and Eve before distrust, vanity, and unbelief entered the Garden, which would have been no more sacrosanct than was Eden, the Garden of God in heaven.
Adam’s unbelief that caused him to eat forbidden fruit is now analogous to the unbelief of rebelling angels who had come under either the Adversary’s authority or influence. And this returns us to the previous writing, 1.1.
Adam could have continued to obey the Lord God; he could have continued to believe God if he were truly a thinking man. But he didn’t think. When he saw Eve eat and not die, he assumed God had lied to him—and this assumption that God has lied to the person keeps Western medicine in business; for instead of being willing to leave the land of the physically living, Western humanity clings to life, undergoing considerable pain and financial hardship for [statistically] six additional months of life.
Six additional months of life do not seem like much when seventy years old … when I returned to the Aleutians in early June of this year, I intended to take a break from writing a few thousand words every day; from spending six, eight, ten hours a day at the keyboard. I was out of shape even though I had lost considerable weight and muscle mass. My back was, is wore out. And I was repeating myself in most everything I wrote . It was time for a break; I hadn’t had one in 14 years. I had hardly taken a day off during those fourteen years. So while there are those who wonder why I moved six thousand miles away from where I had established fruit trees, berry bushes, bees, hens, garden even though I was continually strapped financially, they shouldn’t be surprised.
On the Kenai Peninsula in the 1970s, I had a chainsaw, outboard shop. I lived either in the back of the shop or behind the shop so there were really no closed hours, and no getting away from the grease. To keep from offending potential customers on the Sabbath, I had to physically leave the property … I spent many summer Sabbath afternoons in a pizza parlor, my wife and daughters, Dave Johnson, his wife and sons. And when I returned to my shop, I would have four or five customers waiting for me—they had to have their outboards for Sunday fishing on the Kenai River, and I would work all night to make sure they could fish.
Life in a small town in rural Michigan was literally killing me because I physically wasn’t doing anything but weeding the garden and writing. I was even buying my firewood, not getting it myself. And I was experiencing a widening separation between the inner and outer selves. I had to make a radical change, as I had spring 1979, when I sold my chainsaw-outboard dealership, bought a small boat and began to fish commercially first out of Kodiak, then out of Dutch Harbor—and this was without any previous experience fishing commercially.
Paul said that some of what he wrote was foolishness as he sought to justify his ministry. The same applies now. I don’t need to explain to anyone why I suddenly moved six thousand miles from where I was, but if I don’t, someone else in the future will invent better reasons than actually exist.
For most Christians within greater Christendom, their fangs only occasionally show. Most of the time, the fangs of these wolves remained concealed by phony smiles and wimpy handshakes … in 1977, a commercial fisherman and I took a contract to log a section of land directly across the road from my shop on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. We sent one load of logs to Louisiana Pacific’s sawmill in Seward, and received so little for the load that we sought a better market for the remaining logs. The commercial fisherman had a small, circular saw sawmill, and an Evangelical pastor was seeking three-sided houselogs for a large church building he was constructing. The commercial fisherman and I committed to delivering 7,100 lineal feet of 6x8 inch houselogs on or about the 30th of April. It was then January. Well, breakup hindered getting the logs sawn so we were a little behind in delivering the last thousand feet or so, and this pastor came over to the shop angry and with carnality oozing from his every pore. He was chewing me out in rough language when one of his parishioners drove up and because of breakup, stopped on the paved road and started to walk to the shop. Apparently the pastor didn’t hear his parishioner’s stop, nor see him until his parishioner was only feet to his side. Then, almost too fast to be seen, the pastor’s countenance changed: the pastor became all sweetness and smiles. And his parishioner told him that he had just come from the jobsite and that it wasn’t possible to get a truck to the construction site until the road dried up, which was all the opening I needed to tell the pastor that the problem was his road, that when we physically could we would deliver the remaining houselogs. I never told the pastor that these logs were not yet sawn.
Only occasionally do the masks of respectability slip from where they are tightly held: that Evangelical pastor’s mask slipped when he was cursing me out. Only occasionally do Christians show their intolerance for anyone who believes differently than they do.
The fangs of both Arian and Trinitarian Christians will be blood-covered following the Second Passover: they will attack each other, slaying each other, and both will make war against those Christians who believe that the Father and the Son are both God but that the holy spirit is the breath of the Father not a personage.
The Second Passover is about revealing what has been hidden in hearts and minds for far too long; about revealing what was in that pastor’s heart who was cursing me out … when greater Christendom as endtime Israel is liberated from indwelling sin and death through the flesh being purified by the shedding of blood of uncovered, unredeemed firstborns, the contents of the heart of every Christian will be seen by what the Christian does, with persecution of 21st-Century saints linking the Christian to 1st-Century saints.
The Sabbath and the High Sabbaths of God are really memorials to the liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death: when Christ Jesus is the reality of the Sabbath and the Feast Days (Col 2:17), Christ is the memorial of liberation. To not keep these Sabbaths of God is to spurn liberation from indwelling sin and death, a denial of Christ that will cause Christ Jesus to deny the Christian before angels.
My time in Michigan needed to come to an end so that other Christians could reveal their genuineness—it’s as simple as that. Physically, I was killing myself by doing nothing but writing. Spiritually, I was tired of the phoniness of other Christians. I needed to move-on.
To maintain some semblance of technical precision in my writing, I find that I write a surplus of words, the defining characteristic of the majority of my writing; for in few words there is ambiguity, a boon to fiction writers that want auditors to take ownership of narratives by bringing to the story their own knowledge and experiences that resolves ambiguities and fills in missing details. Too much detail in a text, too much preciseness, and the auditor is unable to insert him or herself into the narrative. But without the preciseness that comes via much detail, explication of Holy Writ is too loose to be of any value to the reader.
There is authority in Holy Writ, and authority in its explication. The auditor has to determine for him or herself from where that authority to explicate comes: from God or from the Adversary. There is no other author of authority.
I write because I’m a writer; I write theology because I was called to reread prophecy. The location from which I write is of less importance than what I write, but by taking three months off, I now better know who is with me and who isn’t; who will do a work and who won’t or can’t; who will sacrifice financially to help … to those who have remained with me, thank you.
There are less that 200 people on Adak Island. The post office is open two hours a day for five days a week; the store is open two hours a day for four days a week, and three hours on Sabbath morning. A neighbor came by last evening and asked if he could get a jar of jam from us—the store didn’t have any and wouldn’t be restocked for a while. Carolyn gave him two pint jars of jam she made when we were still in Michigan. Today I have to build a 12-foot ladder so I can get on the roof and install stovepipe. I still have a 24-foot extension ladder in Michigan, but it’s not here—and to get an extension ladder flown in from Home Depot in Anchorage is $700 in just air freight charges; so I have no choice. I have to build a ladder tall enough that I can get onto the roof. And that is the greatness of living in rural Alaska: there is no choice about who builds the ladder to get all of us where we need to go. We build the ladder.
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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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