The Mission:
Delivering the Endtime Gospel of
Christ
___________
The endtime gospel that must be proclaimed to the
world as a witness to all nations is, simply, the one who endures to the end
shall be saved (Matt 24:13–14). This person who endures to the end shall
be saved by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh halfway through
seven endtime years of tribulation. Every person who has not been previously
born of Spirit will then be so born, and will be born filled with, or empowered
by the Holy Spirit so that no longer will sin and death dwell within the
fleshly member of the person. Every person will no longer be a son of
disobedience but will be free to keep the commandments. And this message that
all who endure in faith will be saved is truly good news in our present age of
lawlessness.
A message about the personhood of Jesus Christ was
delivered to the world by the first disciples. A message about the soon coming kingdom of God was delivered in the twentieth
century. But neither of these messages, both good news for humanity, was the
“sign” that Jesus gave to His disciples, the sign for which these
disciples asked (Matt 24:3).
Jesus told His disciples not to be concerned about
physical things: wars, famines, earthquakes, the rise and fall of nations.
These physical phenomena were only the beginning of Zion’s labor pains
… Zion will bring forth children in a day, and bring forth these children
before her hard labor pains come upon her (Isa 66:7–8). As the last Eve, Zion will experience the curse of pain in childbirth (Gen
3:16) when she brings forth two sons in a day, that day being the second
Passover liberation of Israel.
The seven endtime years of tribulation will be Zion’s hard labor pains, their
beginning described in Matthew 24:9–12. A spiritual Cain will murder his
righteous brother, a spiritual Abel so that halfway through the seven endtime
years, except for a remnant of Abel, Abel will be physically dead and Cain will
be spiritually marked by the cross. And as a third son was born to the first Eve
after Cain was marked, a spiritual third son will be “born” to Zion when the Holy Spirit
is poured out on all flesh as the waters of Noah’s day were poured out on
breathing creatures.
The world will be baptized in Spirit when the
kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Father and His Christ. There
will still be 42 months of tribulation, but every person who endures these 1260
days will be saved. They will then all belong to the Father; they will all have
been called by God (Rev 18:4).
The Apostle Paul
identifies the Church as the Body of Christ, with the glorified Jesus as the
Head of this Body. But Jesus is also identified as the Son of Man; thus, the
Church as the Body of Christ is also the Body of the Son of Man. So when one
like a Son of Man appears in Daniel’s visions (7:13) to receive the
kingdom of this world at the time of the end, Christ and the Church are this
one who is like a Son of Man. Christ and the Church are the equivalent and
successor to the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision. But Jesus told
Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world or from this world (John 18:36).
And since Jesus’ kingdom is the successor to the humanoid appearing
kingdom of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay, the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar
saw cannot be of this world, but must exist in the same realm or dimension as
the kingdom which Jesus receives at the time of the end. Therefore, because the
kingdom which Jesus and the Church (these two being one as a man and his body
are one) receive as the Son of Man is not received until the end of the age and
is not of this world or from this world, the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar saw
is one kingdom that reigns over living entities in and from the heavenly realm
from Nebuchadnezzar’s era until the time of the end, not a series of
succeeding human kingdoms in this world. And since God has consigned all of
humankind to disobedience so that He can have mercy upon all (Rom 11:32), the
kingdom that reigns over the sons of disobedience is a kingdom of disobedience,
its prince the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air (Eph
2:2–3). Nebuchadnezzar, now, becomes the lively representation of the
spiritual king of Babylon (Isa 14:4), and this
spiritual king of Babylon
is the Adversary. The humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar saw is the disobedient antetype to the obedient Son of Man, who receives the
single kingdom of this world (Rev 11:15) halfway through seven endtime years of
tribulation.
A third part of
humankind (Zech 13:9) will receive spiritual birth and empowerment when
spiritual Babylon falls and that single kingdom of this world is given to the
Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14). This third part is spiritual Seth, and it is the
proclamation of Seth’s birth to the world before he is born that is the
sign Jesus gave His disciples of the end of the age and of His coming. You are
presently reading that proclamation. For a longer presentation of this
announcement I suggest a person download A
Philadelphia
Apologetic (or buy the book) and start with it as a primer text. The e-file
is about a meg in length.
As light comes
from darkness (Gen 1:4), the sons of light come from sons of disobedience, and
the Son of Man comes out from spiritual Babylon
through life coming from the death of one man, Christ Jesus.
*
In 1959, as a twelve year old high school freshman,
I set about trying to prove my stepfather was wrong about the need to keep the
Sabbath. But I found that if a person were going to believe the Bible, the
person would keep the commandments, all of them, not eight or nine, and this
meant keeping the Sabbath. I didn’t, however, believe the Bible. I
believed what could be proved through measurement and observation. So I
continue hunting and fishing on the Sabbath, but I would no longer eat those
meats that were not holy, an odd mingling of obedience and disobedience.
In 1972, around a summer campfire one fellow asked,
“Whatever happened to Dave Oleman?” Another fellow said, “He
got religion,” as if becoming religious were a terminal disease akin to
cancer. The assistant pulpmill superintendent sitting next to me said,
“You never know who will fall next.” I knew. I knew who would be next, and I
wasn’t happy about that I’m
next thought which had the substance of a “thing” in my mind. I
certainly was not looking for God, nor was I seeking a relationship with
Christ. I was reasonably satisfied with life. I had a job at Georgia
Pacific’s Toledo, Oregon, paper mill, a job that paid very
well. I also had a gunshop and built muzzleloading rifles. I shot continually,
hunted much of the year. I lived on the Siletz River
and caught many steelhead winter and summer. I was, literally, too busy having
fun to think about any need or lack in my life. Nevertheless, within six months
I was attending services and was baptized within another couple of months.
For most of the next thirty years I lived in rural Alaska, on the margins
of society, and beyond easily attended Sabbath services. It was as if I were in
cold storage; for on Thursday of the second full week in January 2002, about
10:12 am CST, while turning into the parking lot for Southeastern Illinois College,
Harrisburg, I was drafted to reread prophecy in a manner a little less
spectacular that how Paul was called. With no leadup
other than a heightened sense of awareness for the ten previous miles I had
driven, I heard an authoritative voice utter the distinctive words,
“It’s time to reread prophecy.” The words had about them the
same sort of thinginess that was attached to the I’m next feeling three decades earlier. I sat in the pickup
really unable to move for some period of time afterwards, sat trying to make
sense of what I heard. I had two sessions of Composition to teach—I
barely arrived in time for the first class, such was the impact of the words.
And after teaching the two sessions, I went home and started doing the work of
which this website is a part.
Making the claim that I was drafted to reread
prophecy is not helpful in this age of conmen and skepticism. I would be better
off saying nothing, but I didn’t choose me for this job and I’m
really not concerned about temporary credibility. I know what’s buried
under the blood of Christ. A few others also know in part. And ad hominum attacks
make what I write neither more nor less true.
What I didn’t know until late spring 2002 was
that forty years earlier to the day and apparently to the minute, in the
Advanced Prophecy Seminar being taught at Pasadena’s Ambassador College,
despite what his father had said in the first seminar session, Garner Ted
Armstrong told the assembled senior evangelists whose attendance was required that
prophecy was understood, that there would be no new revelation, that his dad
was just having doubts about what he had been teaching. Garner Ted rejected
additional biblical understanding at a time when his father knew he had
prophecy wrong. And apparently because Herbert W. Armstrong allowed his
son’s rejection of revelation to stand, no additional understanding came to
the Radio Church of God and later the Worldwide Church of God until after the
work being done by the Armstrongs died and was buried in a manner similar to
how the nation that left Egypt was slain as if a man in the wilderness (Num
14:21-23). And contrary to much of what Christendom understands about Scripture
and what the senior Armstrong understood about his own work, the Worldwide
Church of God was the remnant of the Anabaptist remnant that left spiritual
Babylon in the sixteenth century, 1200 years (325 to 1525 CE) after God had
delivered the Church into the hand of the spiritual king of Babylon as He had
deliver Israel into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.
The evidence of being drafted to reread prophecy is
less in what I have written than in the fact that on a specific date, I started
addressing theological issues whereas I had not done so before, and since that
date I have not ceased addressing theological issues. So while a person can
certainly disagree with anything I write, the person who summarily dismisses
what has been revealed does so at his or her own peril. That person had better
hope I am wrong, that I have misread Scripture.
Unfortunately, I heard no voice telling me what to write, only that it was time to reread prophecy. Thus, what
I have written is a rereading of the long accepted canon using typological
exegesis. And as I know more, the rereading of Scripture has been fine tuned,
becoming increasingly sharper and more fully developed. There are, however,
older pieces of writing that are not as well developed still posted on certain
websites and still circulated in books published in 2002.
* * *