Rereading Prophecy Revisited - Chapter Three

January 22, 2014 ©Homer Kizer
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Rereading Prophecy Revisited

Chapter Three

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

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A season and a time—repeating the last line of chapter two, “from God’s perspective, a time, times, and half a time can represent three and a half millennia as well as three and a half years” … because God remains outside of time and its passage, which can be written as a mathematical function of gravity, units of time even as large as galaxy rotations do not effect God and the mountain of God. The kingdom of all peoples, nations, and languages given to the Son of Man is of this physical world—one kingdom, not many—but the dominion given to the Son of Man has no physical boundaries and is outside of time, or better, space-time. The dominion and glory given to the Son of Man include the kingdom of all peoples, but extends beyond the creation of all things physical. So it is here in Daniel’s visions where “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18) being given to the Son of Man can be seen; for as long as dominion rested individually with the third beast (Dan 7:6) and collectively with the four beasts, demonic kings (v. 17), the glorified Christ Jesus could NOT receive all authority in heaven and on earth. Only when dominion is taken from the four beasts and the little horn can the glorified Lamb of God receive what Matthew’s Gospel claims Jesus already has. Hence, Matthew’s Jesus exists in a narrative perspective outside of space-time; outside of the creation. Matthew’s Gospel exists in the same narrative perspective as a season and a time, the amount of time that the three beasts [the lion, the bear, the leopard] collectively have before they lose their lives.

The preceding claim introduces a dilemma for Matthew’s Gospel seems to present an historical claim: Jesus was a descendant of Abraham through King David, Solomon, Zerubbabel, and Joseph, husband of Mary, three sets of fourteen generations. This claim is genealogically bogus. More ancestors, more generations than the author of Matthew’s Gospel lists appear in the redacted books of the judges and the kings of Israel, and as is true of all principally oral cultures, genealogical lists omit seemingly unimportant ancestors, with too few generations of Israel being named [remembered] while the nation was enslaved in Egypt and too few during the era of the judges. Thus Matthew’s historical claim isn’t “historical,” but it should not be dismissed simply because it is not factually true. The problem seems to be in how Matthew’s Gospel has been read: when all authority in heaven and on earth is give to the Son of Man can be dated to the end of the age, for Daniel didn’t initially understand his vision of Belshazzar’s first year.

The man Daniel could have received the vision about the four demonic kings while Nebuchadnezzar lived, but he didn’t … Nebuchadnezzar was—as Daniel told him—the head of gold of a single humanoid personage that represents “‘what will be in the latter days’” (Dan 2:28), not what will be between now and the latter days; for what Daniel declares to the king simply wasn’t true of Nebuchadnezzar:

You saw, O king, and behold, a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you, and its appearance was frightening. The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. This was the dream. Now we will tell the king its interpretation. You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand He has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold. Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter's clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure. (Dan 2:31–45 emphasis added)

Note: the gold, silver, bronze, iron, clay—they shall all coexist at the same moment in time, and they together shall be broken and blown away by the breath of God. The gold does not pass away when the silver kingdom appears. Dominion over all the earth is given to the bronze king/kingdom while the head of gold remains as the head of a single humanoid image that shall, collectively, be broken in the latter days …

Prophecy pundits have been far too quick to declare that the concealing shadow [the human kings of Babylon, Persia, Greece] was the substance of the thing seen when that simply is not the case. Endtime scholars use the concealing shadow as “proof” that the book of Daniel was written in the 2^nd-Century BCE; for the concealing shadow doesn’t end with the Maccabees defeating the Seleucid Empire, an end that wasn’t known to the author of the book of Daniel when scholars believe the book was written. So returning to what the still youthful Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar:

You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand He has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold. (Dan 2:37–38)

Who is the “you” to whom Daniel speaks? The you would seem to be Nebuchadnezzar, but Daniel’s visions—and Daniel knew Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, for Daniel received the same vision—were sealed until the time of the end. And what is it that the Apostle Paul wrote about saints and the Adversary: “And you [holy ones] were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph 2:1–3).

Who is the “head” of sons of disobedience? What spirit reigns over the passions of the flesh, the desires of the body and mind, before conversion? Who is this prince of the power of the air, the prince of this world, the master of all sons of disobedience? Who rules over the mental topography of living creatures in the latter days? Is it not the sar to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand He has given the children of men wherever they dwell? Indeed, it is.

Daniel speaks to the Adversary, who—because of what the prophet Isaiah recorded that Daniel would have known—was personified by King Nebuchadnezzar … momentarily place yourself in Daniel’s position: he is coming before the one who ordered him and his friends to be castrated in an unpleasant manner. According to Moses, no one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off can enter the assembly of the Lord (Deut 23:1); thus Nebuchadnezzar not only took Judah and Jerusalem captive, but Nebuchadnezzar personally prevents Daniel from entering into the assembly of the Lord. Now consider the faithfulness of Daniel and his friends in serving Nebuchadnezzar, faithfulness coming principally from belief that God had delivered Israel into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar because of Israel’s idolatry, that Nebuchadnezzar was in fact the Adversary; the personification of the Adversary. So even if Daniel knew the head of gold was the Adversary, he would have told Nebuchadnezzar that he was the head of gold; for the king had just ordered that he, Daniel, and his friends as well as all wise men in Babylon be killed because they couldn’t reveal to the king what couldn’t humanly be known.

When only one breath of life is present, enslavement of the person equates to the death of the person without the person really dying. Enslavement of Israel in Egypt forms the shadow and type of Christians with dead inner selves prior to the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Enslavement of Israel [of all that remained of Israel in the Promised Land] by Nebuchadnezzar forms the shadow and type of latter day Christians who have rebelled against God and whose inner selves have been condemned to the lake of fire while their fleshly bodies still live in the Affliction and Endurance.

But Daniel and his friends—because of what Nebuchadnezzar had done to them—were not part of the assembly of Israel then in Babylon, this separation seen when Nebuchadnezzar ordered all people to worship the gold image he set up on the plain of Dura. The assembly of Israel worshiped this image, but not the friends of Daniel: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Jews appointed over the affairs of Babylon (Dan chap 3). They, like Daniel, would have been eunuchs, and thereby excluded from the assembly. Thus, when they were thrown into the fiery furnace, they served as the representation of living inner selves of Israel, with the fiery furnace serving as the representation of the “fire” that separates the unfurled dimensions from the supra-dimensional heavenly realm. The inner self of the person who is faithful in this world, exercising responsibilities given while remaining loyal to God, shall pass through the fire as the prophet Isaiah declared in the explicated passage in RPR chapter two (see Isa 43:2).

If Daniel and his friends would not have been castrated, they may well have been as Moses was in Egypt, a little too quick to avenge wrongs done to their people. But for theological reasons, Daniel and his friends had to become without gender as the living inner self of a human person baptized into Christ is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, free nor slave (Gal 3:28). Daniel and his friends had to serve Nebuchadnezzar as inner selves of all sons of disobedience serve the Adversary, the true king of Babylon (Isa 14:4).

When called to reread prophecy, my understanding of Daniel’s visions was pretty much that of Sabbatarian Christian orthodoxy. I never considered the possibility that Daniel’s visions pertained to the inner selves [souls] of spiritual Israelites. But today, a dozen years after being called to reread what I had read before, my reader needs to realize that Daniel was excluded from the assembly of Israel. Nebuchadnezzar had made certain that Daniel could not be part of the physical assembly. My reader needs to understand in Daniel telling Nebuchadnezzar that he was the head of gold of his and Daniel’s vision, Daniel was speaking figuratively but truthfully to the Adversary, telling the Adversary what would happen in the latter days when dominion would be taken from him and delivered to the Son of Man. And this telling the Adversary what would happen to him wasn’t to be done until the time of the end, when it would too late for the Adversary to modify his governance of this world and thus prevent what is certain to occur: The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure (Dan 2:45).

In his feeding of the lambs of God, Peter wrote, “It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news [to] you [by] holy spirit having been sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look” (1 Pet 1:12 emphasis added).

Angels long to look—angels do not inherently understand the mysteries of God. They cannot read or comprehend a sealed and secret prophecy. They can only know what they have observed; for angels, created as sons of God to be servants not heirs, know the business of their master as a human employee knows the business of his or her employer; as a Wal-Mart checker knows the business of the Walton family. Thus, the Adversary as the anointed guardian cherub in whom iniquity was found doesn’t know the end of a matter from its beginning. This anointed cherub was cast from Eden, the Garden of God; was cast into the Abyss in which the universe was created. This fallen angel knows the things of the Abyss, not the intentions of God, Father and Son. But even for a rebellious son where no possibility of redemption exists, God will warn the son about what will happen to him, and God will give the son the opportunity to repent if the son were to believe God. God will also send over the rebel a delusion that causes the rebel to sincerely believe that the rebel is correct and that God is wrong, thereby preventing the rebel from repenting.

The warning must be made regardless of whether any possibility exists of it being heeded. And Daniel, speaking directly to Nebuchadnezzar but also speaking through this human king as if he were not there and therefore speaking to the Adversary, says, You are the head of gold that rules wherever living creatures dwell, and you and your angels’ dominion over the kingdom of this world shall be taken from you and given to the Son of Man, whom you tried to kill. Laugh if you want. You are doomed! forever.

Daniel doesn’t write about what happened to him and his friends:

Then the king [Nebuchadnezzar] commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king's palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego. But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. … As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. At the end of the time, when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king spoke with them, and among all of them none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Therefore they stood before the king. And in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom. And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus. (Dan 1:3–8; 17–21 emphasis added)

Why were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah placed under the care of the chief of the eunuchs? Because they were eunuchs, castrated when still youths so they didn’t develop the facial hair of a man or the muscle mass of a man. Again, they were born male but were made by other men into a genderless male—and this should never be forgotten when reading the visions of Daniel, who received these visions as the inner self of a born-of-spirit son of God receives knowledge of the mysteries of God through the Parakletos, the spirit of truth.

The visions of Daniel mark the transition between humanly received visions from God because the inner self of the person is without life, without the indwelling of Christ Jesus, and spiritually received knowledge of the truth that comes via the Parakletos, the Comforter, because the inner self of the person has been resurrected from death through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou].

For truly born-of-spirit sons of God, visions come from Christ Jesus (as in the case of John’s vision, the Book of Revelation) or they do not come at all. However, without the inner self of a person having life of its own, the Father has no way to communicate directly with the person except through visions; for the person will be unable to hear the voice of Christ, let alone the voice of the Father that at best will sound like thunder to the person. Plus, any vision from God will be twice delivered, either as the two visions Joseph received that caused family problems, or as the visions of Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer and chief baker were one vision twice delivered, or as the two visions of Pharaoh were (Gen chaps 37, 40–41). Daniel’s visions of chapters 7 and 8 are one vision selectively repeated and amplified … there are not many “little horns” showing up in Scripture: there is one who appears in two visions that again, are one vision. Thus, by laying little horn over little horn, the two visions found in Daniel 7 & 8 can be aligned; for both visions are for the time of the end, when the single kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man.

The giving of the kingdom to the son of man is twice seen, the first time in the head-quote for this chapter, and the second time in John’s vision:

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever." And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, "We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth." Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant was seen within His temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. (Rev 11:15–19)

Noah’s Ark on which Noah crossed from one world/age into the following world/age was a shadow and copy of the Ark of the Covenant on which sons of God cross from this present age to the Millennium, the age to come when there shall be no harm in all of God’s holy mountain—and when humanity shall not learn war … humanity will not learn war for Abaddon, the bear (and Sin, the four-winged leopard) will be bound in the Abyss along with the Adversary until the Thousand Years are complete. Then all three will be loosed upon unsuspecting humanity, whose human natures became the nature of Christ Jesus through receiving the mind of Christ by the world being baptized in spirit when the glorified Christ Jesus is given dominion over this world on the doubled day 1260 of the seven endtime years.

Because many threads have to be woven into one tapestry; because biblical prophecy has been poorly explicated through the centuries when the visions of Daniel were sealed and kept secret; because the unsealed vision (Rev 22:10) of John hasn’t really been unsealed for the described phenomena were not soon to occur or near in time when the vision was received—

John’s vision has been sealed by John outwardly receiving the vision in the 1^st-Century but being transported within the vision to the 21^st-Century, when the seals on the Scroll written within and without are removed. Until these seals are removed and the four horsemen appear, the Scroll remains sealed and the contents of the vision kept secret.

For all of these reasons, rereading biblical prophecy has meant rethinking my relationship to the text; to the stories of the Bible; to how I perceive the Bible as the infallible word of God.

Because a vision from God is twice given, alignment of the visions of Daniel and of John discloses a complete revelation that will have a single demonic king, the ideological firstborn of the Adversary, heading a federation of demonic kings, with this first king of the King of Greece broken because he is “first,” an uncovered firstborn. From around his stump come four kings that are the four beasts of Daniel chapter seven as well as the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, with the fourth king/beast being named Death, hence unlike the other kings:

· The lion shall become the false prophet, coming conquering and to conquer;

· The bear is Abaddon, king of the Abyss;

· The four-winged leopard is Sin, the King of the South who makes merchandise of humanity, except for the Elect;

· The fourth beast appears as a cross, his image seen in his mark: chi xi stigma [the tattoo <stigma> of Christ’s <chi> cross <xi>]. He is named Death; he is the King of the North.

Once Sin is separated from Death by the Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death, Sin will be weakened to where every Christian can defeat this demonic king, but Death retains its power to kill until the middle of the seven endtime years of tribulation … it is this fourth beast who is dealt a mortal wound when dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken the four kings and given to the Son of Man; it is this fourth beast who has his body burnt (Dan 7: 11). But the preceding remains to be seen from Scripture.

Sabbatarian Christian orthodoxy holds that the third horseman is famine, a societal state that the two witnesses will bring against orthodox believers within greater Christendom (see Rev 11:6). Yes, they will use famine as a sword against Christians who return to sin, lawlessness; for no, we cannot all just along. Righteousness has no fellowship with unrighteousness, especially when the unrighteous are determined to kill their brothers as Cain murdered righteous Abel. The two witnesses will resist and will anger greater Christendom to the point that orthodox and Arian believers both seek the lives of the two witnesses, who testify with their lives that Death has been defeated … neither Sabbatarian orthodoxy nor 8^th-day orthodoxy grasp that the three ribs in the mouth of the bear are the three witnesses that testify against the bear and the cross. These three are Christ Jesus whom the grave couldn’t hold and the two witnesses who are called forth from death … a thing is not established by the testimony of a single witness, even when this witness is Christ. It takes the testimony of two or three witnesses to establish the defeat of Death; to show that Death has lost its sting.

If Christ Jesus would have been killed with an AK47, would Christians hang miniature AK47s around their necks and from their ears? Would Christians place AK47s on fronts of pulpits or on building marquees? Or would the appearance of an AK47 grieve Christians? You know the answer; so why do Christians hang on themselves the means Romans employed to kill Christ?

Christ had to die on a cross; for the cross and Death represent the same demonic king—

But let us place quotes before us:

Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, "Come!" And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer. When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come!" And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword. When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!" When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. (Rev 6:1–8)

In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter. Daniel declared, "I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles' wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told, 'Arise, devour much flesh.' After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. (Dan 7:1–8)

In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. And I saw in the vision; and when I saw, I was in Susa the capital, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai canal. I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great. As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. Out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land. It grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. (Dan 8:1–10 emphasis added)

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, "Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?" And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. (Rev 13:1–8)

Much work needs to be done: when collective dominion over the single kingdom of this world is taken from the four kings and the little horn, their head, the body of the fourth king is burned with fire, never to be seen again except as the Adversary, once cast to earth, makes an image of the body of this demonic king and causes all, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free to worship this image. The Adversary is allowed to give breath [pneuma] to the image so that it might speak and condemn those who will not worship this image to be slain—

Now, understand, John’s unsealed vision has actually been sealed by two literary tropes, the first being that the context of the vision has not yet occurred and will not occur until the Second Passover liberation of Israel. The second trope insures that the vision will not be unsealed: the appearance of a “thing” in the vision is how the thing functions in the plan of God. This trope is perhaps most easily seen in the description of the slain Lamb: “And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth” (Rev 5:6 emphasis added).

A lamb slain and raised up to be skinned/dressed is hung by its head or neck so it appears as a man standing—

Christ Jesus spiritually functions as the sacrificed Passover Lamb of God; so in the concealing trope, He appears as a slain Lamb when this isn’t how He initially appears to John: .

Then I [John] turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around His chest. The hairs of His head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, His feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, from His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and His face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying, "Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. (Rev 1:12–20 emphasis added)

The glorified Christ, one like a Son of Man, with seven stars that are the seven angels of the seven churches in His right hand, becomes a slain Lamb with seven eyes that are identified as the seven spirits of God—the seven angels to the seven churches, thereby making the seven horns the seven churches, which is how both the seven angels function (as eyes for the glorified Christ) and how the seven churches, as horns like the horns of Daniel chapter eight in that they are kings over whom the glorified Christ will be King of kings.

After John is called up into heaven (“After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this’” — Rev 4:1), everything John sees and describes is how the entity functions in the plan of God, including the two witnesses and the red dragon, the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet and unclean spirits like frogs [that as amphibians live in two realms].

The two witnesses are clothed in sackcloth, rough clothing, mourning garb … their appearance is, again, how they function; so a witness in mourning garb would be a person who testifies about the amount of death to occur, not necessarily about the amount that occurred following the Second Passover liberation of Israel [the third of humanity that perishes as uncovered firstborns].

Throughout the Affliction, the beginning 1260-day-period of the seven endtime years, the Adversary will be the still reigning prince of this world. To worship God rather than the Adversary requires rebelling against the Adversary; requires turning the Adversary’s broadcast of rebellion against him—a Christian rebels against sin and disobedience by keeping the Commandments. However, keeping the Commandments in and among many sons of disobedience marks the person as different, thereby attracting attention to the person—unwanted attention from the Adversary, who will now pressure the person to return to his fold of disobedient sons, martyring the Christian who will not “voluntarily” return. And on day 220 of the Affliction, the man of perdition, an Arian Christian possessed by the Adversary, will take his seat in the temple [the Church] and claim to be God. The man of perdition will sincerely believe that the angel inside him is Christ Jesus.

In the Affliction, genuine disciples will be marked by Sabbath-observance, and will be hunted as if they were rabid dogs: they will be hunted as both the Roman Church and the Reformed Church hunted down my Anabaptist ancestors in the 16^th-Century. And of Sabbatarian Christendom, only a Remnant (from Rev 12:17) will remain physically alive by doubled day 1260, when dominion over the Kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man, Head and Body.

When dominion over the Kingdom of this world is taken from the Adversary, and the Adversary and his angels are cast to earth, the Adversary will come claiming to be the returning Messiah—and he shall temporarily deceive many.

Work remains to be done explicating Daniel’s visions and John’s vision. But enough territory has been covered in this chapter that it is time for a break.

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