Mystery Babylon and the Stone Kingdom, part 78—Why did Jesus need to come twice?
This is chapter number 28 in our series entitled Mystery Babylon and the Stone Kingdom. The title is Out of Babylon, Into the Stone Kingdom. I think you will find this quite relevant to the times in which we are living.
You will recall that since this series is about God’s Stone Kingdom and a kingdom implies government, that in the early lectures of this series I explained some fundamental differences between the various forms of government which man has devised.
We noted how we Americans are being constantly told about the so-called Left wing and the Right wing on the political spectrum. I showed how that commonly-accepted spectrum is both deceitful and bogus; how that any form of government which tends towards more and more government should be labeled Left wing, no matter what name it chooses to call itself.
Therefore, Communism on the far Left and Nazism on the far Right are not opposites! They are both a form of totalitarianism. They both belong at the same end of the political spectrum and by convention we will place them on the far Left. At the opposite end of total government is no government, which is anarchy and chaos.
Also along the way in this series, we have observed how some power-mad individuals and some uber-wealthy, dynastic families have used their wealth to create chaos in the streets for the very purpose of having the excuse to say that more government controls are needed, and the next thing you know, a nation finds itself with an Adolf Hitler or a Josef Stalin or a Mao Tse Tung.
I had told some people—in fact, I may have stated it in one of these lectures previously—that Occupy Wall Street and its affiliated groups around America were not going away, that they would be back in the spring.
And so it happened... that on May 1st (2012, when I initially presented this lecture) we saw the Occupy movements all over America and around the globe holding events which are essentially created for the media. If you noticed, their numbers on May 1st were very tiny. Only a hundred or so in New York, a city of some 14 million people.
Yet the harlot news media, the Babylonian Medianites (the BM) covered them on May 1st in every city no matter how small the number of occupiers. May 1st is, of course, the national holiday for world communism, but we shall not detour on that today.
Of course, there was the fact that five anarchists were arrested near Cleveland, Ohio as they tried and failed to blow up a major bridge. It turns out that they were working unwittingly with undercover law enforcement and the anarchists had been given explosive devices which could not possibly have detonated.
Well, that is good news in that no lives were lost, but what I want us to note is that the Occupy Cleveland movement tried to distance itself from these five terrorists. They tried; but it now turns out that the Occupy Cleveland movement had leased some warehouse space and the guy’s name on the lease was one of the five arrested anarchists.
The point? The point is several. First, the point is that Americans who are concerned about the direction of our nation—and that should be all Americans—should avoid becoming involved with the Occupy Movement in any fashion.
I related my own exploratory experience with the Occupy Asheville movement last fall (of 2011), but it was only to confirm to me that which I had discerned about this international movement from the very start of their appearing on the national scene.
And that is that the Occupy Movement is the latest incarnation of the old totalitarian tactic of pressure from above and pressure from below. It is also known as the Hegelian dialectic. We explained that in detail in lectures/CDs #611 & 612. In these blog posts, begin here in #26 in the MBSK series.
Another point is that although there are undoubtedly good-hearted people involved in the various Occupy Movements, they are unwittingly being used as cannon fodder; that is to say, they are expendable pawns. We are now at a stage where I believe there will be increased violence in and around these groups.
Study history! Look at what Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did in the 1930s. They encouraged and used certain groups to create the anarchy in the streets of Germany. Then, later, when the German people were calling for law and order, Hitler and his henchmen used the anarchists as an excuse to crack down and many of the pawns in those street-protesting groups were rounded up and executed. Cannon fodder.
I am glad to see that the various Tea Party organizations have now moved away from the streets and into their local and state political processes. That is the proper way to do it. I will say it again:
If Christians will not get involved in the political process to try to bring about righteousness in government, then they have no right to complain when the government is influenced and controlled by those who hate righteousness and freedom.
We here in early 21st century America are basically riding on the fumes of the liberties that God gave us through our forefathers’ wisdom as they established the United States as a republic, not a democracy. We are still much better off than most of the world, but our liberties and prosperity are now both being eroded at a rapid pace.
I do not believe we are going back to restore the Constitution. I believe we are going forward into seeing the full manifestation of God’s Stone Kingdom here in America. We are coming out of (Mystery) Babylon and going into the Kingdom!
But that begs the question: How do we get from here to there? Since our Father has ordained a spiritual organism called the Body of Christ, then I would suggest that it is going to be a group effort where various parts of the Body each contributes something to the whole.
For my part, I trust that your Father and mine will continue to enlighten me by His Spirit so that He, through me, can bring forth meat in due season for the rest of the Body. I do believe that there has emerged in this series a number of key points which will help point the way from here to the Kingdom.
One which comes to mind immediately is a concept we discovered last time in the book of Ezra. The remainder of this lecture is going to be an expansion and elaboration of that because I believe it is so very important to drive this home to us. It is that while we yet remain in this Mystery Babylonian captivity (even while we can see that it is in the process of falling) that we use this time to prepare our hearts.
We need to be ready with answers as Babylon falls. So how had Ezra prepared his heart? Listen; I will refresh your recollection.
Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD [Yahweh], and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.
As I pondered that verse, it occurred to me that while you and I can see immediately that, “Yes! This is what Christian America needs to be doing,” that at the same time, it presents two seemingly enormous obstacles.
One is that most Christians have been so biblically dumbed down that they believe “God’s law has been nailed to the cross” and done away with. So that is hurdle number one. Number two is that they do not know that they are Israel and hence they are inclined to relegate “all that Old Testament stuff to the Jews.”
So, what is the upshot of all this, given these obstacles? Well, it simply means that those of us who do understand our biblical and historical identity as Israel and who also understand that God’s commandments, statutes and judgments were never abolished, it means that we have to double down.
We must study and we must know Bible law because there will come a time when you will have the opportunity to present God’s law as the only viable solution. That could happen in your neighborhood as well as on the national level.
And I am fully aware that when you try to tell people about either of these great Bible truths, you mostly get blank stares. We understand that they are still blinded and so we must move on to sprinkle some seed elsewhere, all the time expanding our own understanding of God’s law.
Throughout many of my Bible lectures, you will find teachings on God’s law. I have never done it in a systematic and formalized manner, such that I have a series on each of the Ten Commandments. I have not done that yet, but either way, whether formally or informally, we will continue to expound God’s law.
As I am now teaching about the Stone Kingdom, let us focus our attention for a while on the concept of a kingdom. Just speaking in general, there are at least four principal aspects to any kingdom.
Number one: a kingdom implies that there is a king. Number two: a kingdom implies that there is a land or territory over which the king reigns. Number three: a kingdom implies that there are subjects or citizens who live in the territory over which the king reigns. And number four: a kingdom is not a kingdom unless it has a set of laws for the kingdom.
Therefore, as we look forward to the full manifestation of the Stone Kingdom, let us discuss each of these briefly in turn and see how that can give us a roadmap from here to there—out of Mystery Babylon and into the Stone Kingdom.
A kingdom implies that there is a king. As far as the Stone Kingdom is concerned, are there any questions? ...A slight attempt at humor there because even a baby Christian, or even a nominal Christian who has never heard of the Stone Kingdom can answer the question: who will return as King to rule the world in righteousness? Our Savior and our King, Jesus the Christ!
Turn to the gospel of John, chapter 1. Did you ever give any thought to the question about why Jesus had to come twice? I mean, all Bible-believing Christians know and accept that as gospel truth, but I am asking you why did He not just do it all at His first coming?
He could have arisen from the grave and then immediately set about restoring the kingdom to Israel, could He not? Well, yes and no. Yes, from the standpoint that He and the Father were and are one, and as God, He can do anything He wants.
But no, He had to come twice, widely separated by centuries, because of the fact that He actually had a Plan from before the foundation of the ages and He has not deviated one iota from that Plan.
That Plan included the fact that about 1,000 years before Christ, His chosen people Israel would have a king named Solomon, and that after the death of Solomon, the nation of Israel, consisting of 12 tribes would split into two nations.
The one was the Kingdom of Judah comprising two tribes and the remaining ten tribes comprised the House and Kingdom of Israel. (We are keeping things simple for the moment, and so we will not delve into the technicality of the scattering of the Levites and so forth.)
The tribe of Judah had been designated in the Plan of God to bring forth the kings for all Israel, and ultimately to bring forth the Savior, the pre-eminent King from the Tribe of Judah.
Thus, in the Plan of God, Jesus came the first time, 2,000 years ago to claim His rightful inheritance as the King from Judah who was to reign over all Israel. But the gospel of John records that ...
John 1:11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not
That refers to the fact that Jesus was officially rejected by the chief priests, the legal representatives of the nation of Judah. Therefore, He was crucified, died and was buried.
Here it would be appropriate to look at Hebrews 2:10 as another of the reasons in the Plan for why Jesus had to come a second time many centuries later. And that was to make room, so to speak, to make room (space) in the time dimension for many more persons to become sons of God.
Hebrews 2:10 For it became him, [and that means: it was fitting, or it was appropriate that Jesus] for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Granted it does not say all this in that verse, but those of you who are more familiar with the Scriptures know that I am not off base in saying that the Plan called for a delay of 2,000 more years between His first coming and His second coming so that millions more could become the sons of God!
Included among those millions—indeed, having first dibs, so to speak—were the so-called lost sheep of the House of Israel. Because within a few hundred years after the death of Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed and the ten tribes of the House of Israel were carried into captivity by the Assyrians.
They never returned to the old Promised Land. Instead, they lost their name of Israel as they migrated over the centuries into and across Europe. During those centuries they became known as Angles, Saxons, Scythians, Kimmerians, Cimmerians, Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Celts, Scots, Britons, Danites, Danes, Jutes, Vikings, Franks, Lombards—I could go on for scores more names, but you get the idea. (Coming soon: I plan to detail this in blog posts when I update an old series I presented on this subject.)
After Jesus told the apostles it was not for them to know when He would restore the kingdom to Israel, the apostles then began going across Europe and elsewhere, to carry the good news (gospel) to their brethren of the House of Israel that the long-promised King and Savior-Messiah had come. That He had redeemed them!
(To be continued.)
