DEATH AND THE
PASSING OF CHRISTIANITY

CONT., page 6 

 

HOPE DEFERRED

In Proverbs 13:12 we find the following illuminating passage:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But desire fulfilled is a tree of life

For 2,000 years men have experienced the first part of this passage - hope deferred.  Starting with the first believers under the former rain Pentecost, to the present, men have hoped for and often anticipated Yahshua’s return, the setting up of His kingdom, and deliverance from sin and death.  But for 2,000 years He has delayed His coming, has left men under the curse of sickness and death, and even allowed the defilement of His kingdom.  The deferring of this hope we have of deliverance from this curse and corruption, causes men’s hearts to grow sick and weak.  For 2,000 years men have known the promise of His coming and man’s deliverance, only to experience the day to day sorrows and pains and testings of a life far far far inferior to that which is to come from above.  For 2,000 years men have not had the pure and perfect truth that is from above, but rather have received from mere men teachings that are refined and processed through their own flesh, as well as influenced by the lying deception of Satan.  

History abounds with sincere and searching men who have fervently believed that what they understood, practiced, and taught was the truth and leading of God’s word; yet with time it was shown otherwise.  Every generation has held to their customized beliefs, confident that they are right, only to be revealed in latter generations to have possessed error.  Why should this generation today be any different?  As we read in the opening of this writing, the sons of the Most High “do not know nor do they understand; they walk about in darkness.”  How great is their darkness?  Dark enough that they are not only in error; but equally destructive, they are deceived so that what they believe to be true, is in fact the word of God processed by the flesh under the influence of Satan.  Once again we make the unmitigated point - How can Christianity have the pure truth from above, when they cannot agree among themselves?  Every person, including the one reading this, believes they know the truth, they have risen above error, that others are wrong, when in fact they too do not understand Yahweh, His ways, His works, His plans, and they walk about in darkness.  The result of this general state of error is that men’s hearts are sick.

This writer has a dog, a new dog at this time.  The dog is one year old and has never lived on a farm, where this writer lives.  On a farm are all kinds of items which lie around for dogs to eat, many items which are in fact not good for the dog; nevertheless, they want to eat them.  On a farm there are various animals, other than a dog, and all of these animals make their own deposits around the farm.  When these animals first consume the feed and grass offered on this farm, it is most palatable and profitable, to all the farm animals, including the dog, if he so wished to partake of it.  But, once the farm animals process this feed and grass, the end product they produce has been altered and no longer retains the profitableness it originally possessed.  Our new farm dog has not learned this yet; so, on three occasions he has sought to ingest some of the farm droppings - first from the goats, then even his own, and then from a horse.  On each occasion, our new farm dog has come into the house only to forthright deposit onto our carpet the contents of his stomach, including the cause for his newly acquired discomfort.  He is slowly learning that previously nutritious and palatable food that has passed through the processing of one of God’s earthly creatures, is altered and laced with discomforting byproducts; the consumption thereof leading to sickness.  What, one might ask, does this story have to do with our topic?  A great deal, as we will see.

Though this may seem a bit untasteful, it is sorely relevant.  Even as our farm dog is learning that food processed by another of God’s creatures is not profitable and even nauseous, so men in the kingdom of God learn likewise.  No, men are not eating literal dung; but they do eat that which in the beginning was profitable, but once processed by the flesh becomes unprofitable.  Carnal men, men of this earth in carnal bodies, take the word of God, process it according to their own understanding and experiences, add some of Satan’s own deceptive ideas, and then feed that word to others.  In truth, men are thus eating dung - the processed and altered words of God.  Once again I ask - How can the decisively divergent and often conflicting teachings of the church, with all of its 22,000 denominations, be presenting the unprocessed and pure word of God?  Oh yes, each one of them believe they have the truth, even most confidently, passionately, and often piously believe they have the truth; but they all cannot!  And what is the source of their differences?  Digesting the word of God with the carnal flesh and feeding the resulting dung to others.  Thus comes to truth the scripture - “Hope deferred makes the heart sick;” and as our farm dog learned, one of the causes of that sickness is the diet of dung that carnal men are left to consume.

Please understand here, this is not an attempt to be unduly critical toward the church; it is simply an honest look at the woeful and most impossible and even highly deceptive limitations that exist for man in his earthly carnal state, even carnal man that has come to gain the precious kingdom of God.  The unfortunate and detrimental state of kingdom-occupying man is that he is woefully plagued with the deception and limits of this earthly flesh and Satan.  It is an impossible situation, really.  The only true hope of man is to get out of this flesh and receive a body that is not of this earth, one which, in contrast, is born from above, immortal, and imperishable.  Only then is man fully qualified and equipped to offer the true unaltered words of God to other men, void of their own self processed dung.

While bringing up this subject of food and the process of digestion, we find another creature of God whose means of digestion did in fact please Him.  This is of course the cow or the goat or the sheep that chewed the cud.  These animals that do so were called “clean.”  Do you know what chewing the cud is?  For an animal to chew the cud means that it has the ability to regularly and systematically bring its food up from its stomach, chew it, then swallow it again, all for its own good.  Our farm dog lacks that ability; and when it brings up the contents from its stomach, it does so because there is something wrong.  Our dog, according to the laws of God, would thus be considered “unclean.”

There of course was a second requirement that determined the cleanness of an animal; that being whether it also split the hoof.  As we pointed out earlier in this writing, it is the absence of the requirement of chewing the cud that disqualifies the swine from being clean.  Yes, the swine is clean on the one count of splitting the hoof; but, it lacks the second necessary quality of chewing the cud.  What can Yahweh be saying to us in these unclean swine, especially when we find that the 2,000 swine represent the 2,000 year period of the kingdom of God when its inhabitants all go the sea of death?  One can be certain that Yahweh is speaking more to us here than merely providing an account of one of Yahshua’s miracles.  This miracle is as much a living prophecy as were many, if not most, of the accounts in the Old Testament; it speaks a message as hidden and as real as any one of the many parables of Yahshua.  What is He telling us?

First, as we have noted before, a focal issue in this account concerning the swine is this matter of death - all of the 2,000 swine went into the sea of death.  But this matter of death, we find, arises in another highly enlightening and attesting way.  What, one would ask, is the significance of these two requirements for cleanness?  Surely, and most certainly, Yahweh established this Law of cleanness concerning the swine with prophetic intentions (as are all the Laws and ceremonies).  So what is the prophetic message that Yahweh has in this Law?  

We will not deal here in this writing with the prophetic significance of splitting the hoof, for which the swine qualified for cleanness.  Instead, we will limit our examination to this matter of chewing the cud.

Even as we saw with the cleansing of the healed leper, cleansing or being clean is a picture of acceptableness to Yahweh, allowing for men to be taken up to Him on the “mountain,” or heaven, where He dwells.  This quality of chewing the cud is one of those vital issues to Yahweh which causes a man to be clean before Him - ushering him into heaven to receive his immortal imperishable body that is born from above.  What is it Yahweh is telling us in this requirement of chewing the cud, the ability which the church has failed to possess, making it an unclean mix?  The answer to this is seen in the mere process involved in this physical practice.

What, we ask again, is chewing the cud?  It is the ability of an animal to take in food, to bring that food up again, and return it with positive and beneficial purposes.  The clean animal has the power to take in its food, and the power to resurrect it for positive purposes.  This, we see here in picture form, is the power of resurrection - the power of descending and ascending!

The church has not of yet had this power.  In its first 2,000 years, every man in the kingdom of God has gone to the grave, has descended, and has been held there by death.  They have lacked the power of resurrection, the power to ascend out of the grave, the power of an indestructible life, and are thus qualified as unclean.  Yahshua had that power.  He had the power to lay his life down, and the power to take it up again (John 10:18).  Yahshua had the power of rumination.  And He has been the only man to possess that power; He alone is the only man to be clean.

No man in the church has had that power of an indestructible life; therefore, Yahweh has viewed the church as unclean.  In fact, furthermore the Law considers men as unclean who even touched the dead (Leviticus 21:11, Numbers 6:6, 9:6).  The continuation of death in the kingdom for 2,000 years is an unclean act, qualifying or characterizing the possessors of the kingdom to be swine - having split the hoof, yet lacking the power of resurrection.

This unique power of an indestructible life that Yahshua possessed and man lacks, is testified to at His crucifixion.  In John 19:31-34 we read that because the day of His crucifixion was the day of the preparation of the Passover, the Jews had the legs of those being crucified broken so that they would go ahead and die.  When the soldiers arrived, they found that Yahshua was already dead, so they did not break His legs; this, as recorded, was so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled - “Not a bone of Him shall be broken.”  But this act was more than the fulfillment of prophecy; for in it we see the power inherent with Yahshua - the power to lay His life down, and the power to take it up again.

Why weren’t Yahshua’s bones broken, other than for the fulfillment of the Scriptures?  We can answer this by noting the significance of bones.  What is the purpose of bones?  Like government, they support our structure.  But also, and most essentially, they are the source of the blood that flows in our veins.  And what is the meaning of blood in the Scriptures?  In Leviticus 17:11 we read - “For the life of the flesh is in the blood.”  The bones represent the power or source of life.  Thus, since Yahshua had the power of an indestructible life, it was paramount that His bones were not broken, providing testimony to the resurrection power which He alone possesses. Yahshua defeated death, the grave could not hold Him, and He ascended to the Father - His “bones” were unbroken.

But there were two others who hung there with Him, who in pattern, we find, were like unto Moses and Elijah.  Both of these men hanging to the right and to the left of Yahshua died; but in a fashion lesser than that testified on the mount of transfiguration, we still see a similarly characterized distinction between these two men.  The former man did not understand the import of the moment; but the latter with greater understanding cried out, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!”  Yahshua responded to that man - “Truly I say to you today, you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).  Though the legs of both of these men were broken, testifying that they neither had the power of an indestructible life, the power to lay their lives down and to pick them up again, the power of rumination, the promise was still given to the latter Elijah type witness - “Truly I say to you today, you shall be with me in paradise.”

This power of an indestructible life, this power of rumination, has not resided with the church for its 2,000 year tenure; thus, this period of the church has been characterized by Yahweh as being unclean like swine - possessing a quality of cleanness on one point, but still failing to possess the power over death.  The grave still holds every Christian; though being the sons of God, nevertheless they all die; and none have had the power to ruminate or resurrect back to life.  This is the great weakness of Christianity - it cannot defeat the enemy death!

Though being gods, as the Scriptures proclaim, they nevertheless lack the power of an indestructible life which the Son of God possessed.  Thus, they go to the grave and remain there.  What must take place is that the latter witness, who has the promise of being with Him in paradise, must appear; not as a solitary man, but, like the coming Elijah, as a host who are called out under the power of the latter outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the latter rain.  It is this witness host who, like the one hanging there with Yahshua, in and of themselves are like every other person in the church - their legs are broken and they too would go to death.  But possessing the promise of the Elijah, they in their day - “today” - will instead be with Him in paradise.  This is the work of the second Remnant.

Yes, for 2,000 years man has experienced the agonies as well as the blindness of hope deferred, with the result of a sick and often pained heart.  And most surely, that which is needed and expectantly due is the tree of life, the second work in the kingdom of God that will deliver man from the curse of death and the bondage and great limitations of these earthly bodies.  The tree of life work is the work of Yahweh that finally comes following the long period of the good and evil work of the kingdom of God in which man’s hope has for 2,000 years been painfully deferred.  While one could certainly recount many good and greatly received experiences that have come from serving Yahweh, consider the agonies of the deferment of this blessed hope of deliverance from the pains of this earth.  The agonies of death, the slow or even unexpected separation from loved ones; the tragedies of divorce or disputes and conflicts; the pain and drain of sickness, both in one’s own cursed flesh, but often even more painful when in the body of one we love; the hurt of disappointments that come to us from relationships with others; the gnawing pains of hunger and war, of hatred and insult; the sorrows of sin that stalk us like a relentless beast, seeking to spring upon us at the most unsuspecting or weakest moment, waiting, waiting in darkness, ever stalking; the sorrows of passion that lead us astray, causing us to stumble and become lame; the pain of watching loved ones grow old, their loss of faculties, of sanity, of physical strength, of mental prowess, wasting away until there is only the frail shell of what used to be a strong and accomplishing individual.  Yes, hope deferred makes the heart sick; and men have experienced this sickness for 2,000 years in the kingdom of God.

Still we wait; we wait for desire fulfilled, the tree of life.  When the tree of life comes, there will be no more sorrows; all tears will be wiped away.  The pains of death will cease.  Sickness will no longer reside in our bodies.  Confusion, wars, hatred, conflict will pass as the Prince of Peace reigns upon this earth.  Yes, the fulfillment of the tree of life is most needed; and it will be fulfilled in the second Remnant who, under the latter rain, will be the Elijah, and as promised will restore all things, providing for mankind the restored garden of God.  This tree of life will be the hope-filled beginning of the transformation of all mankind, Yahweh’s creation, when “desire fulfilled” will longingly and finally come to man.

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