Issued: 2/12/23

PLEASE NOTE:  All bracketed material may be authorial comments, attempts at proper syntax, or minimal rewordings of Scripture for the sake of clarity and continuity.  These emendations will not be italicized.  The “/” will be used to signify “and/or.”

   In differentiating between Yahweh of hosts [later Jesus] and Yahweh the Most High God, lower case letters have been used when discussing the former; upper case letters are reserved for the One and Only Highest God.  Since Jesus was at pains to differentiate himself from God the Father, we have followed his lead here.

   The term neo-Christians will be used to differentiate between false Christians and Jesus’ true followers.

   In this series we will go over many issues previously discussed.  Though not in any specific order, and without resorting to scholarly debates, we will examine Biblical teachings in terms of their recording.  Expect to be jumping all over the place:  The Bible is not the best example of chronological, clear-cut writing.  It is more like a stream of consciousness; and since it comes from God’s mind to ours, count on a feat of His ingenuity (Deuteronomy 29:29; Isaiah 29:14; Jeremiah 33:3↔James 1:5-6; Habakkuk 1:5; Matthew 16:17; 1Corinthians 2:10).

   Flexibility also requires imagination, meaning not inventing things to support pet theories but to view the Bible as something more than the work of men (Isaiah 55:8).  It is true that men put the Scriptures on writing material, but Peter makes it clear that they set down whatever the Holy Spirit moved them to write (2Peter 1:20-21).  Essentially this means that the Holy Spirit is the proverbial Ghostwriter of Scripture, although what He conveys is not His own wisdom but the Most High’s (John 16:13).  Because of this “every Scripture is God-breathed [see John 20:22] and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness” (2Timothy 3:16); free from the taint of human error, though not necessarily, having been translated over and over throughout the ages, from scribal inconsistencies that nonetheless do not affect vital, doctrinal truths—as for example King Ahaziah’s age (2Kings 8:26; 2Chronicles 22:2; to wit, 22 vs. 42 years old).¹

Who and How?

   As stated, the Most High God is the Author of Scripture, the Holy Spirit His publisher, and mortal men are the amanuenses—the scribes, the copiers, the secretaries.  Their only purpose is to record what they are compelled to write, not to alter God’s text or to render harsh sayings in palatable ways.  God needs no apologists, thank you: They can contribute nothing to the mix.  He is the ventriloquist; men are only required to be His dummies (Matthew 10:19-20).

   Please note that in this hierarchy, Jesus is noticeable absent.  Jesus is the Father’s Spokesman, the interactive Yahweh of hosts in the Old Testament, the Word made flesh (John 1:1,14); letting men know what Yahweh the Most High demanded of them (John 7:16, 12:49) and if deciding not to play ball, what consequences to expect.  In this sense Jesus was men’s sole spiritual guide (Matthew 23:8); but while laying down the rudiments of God’s laws [Paul’s “milk”↔Hebrews 5:13, 6:1-2)], the “solid food” was left to the Holy Spirit (John 15:26, 16:13; 1John 2:27).  A good example of this is Matthew 16:17, wherein Peter—not because he was greater than any of the other Apostles as Roman Catholicism contends—was told internally that Jesus was the Messiah.

   Pay attention to detail:  Jesus is not claiming to be the source of Peter’s wisdom but the Most High Himself via the Holy Spirit.  The Most High never ever interacts with men anywhere in the Bible:  He has remained unseen and unheard by mankind since day one (John 1:8, 5:37)—which is the gist of Scriptures like 1Kings 8:12↔meaning His invisibility (Colossians 1:15; 1Timothy 1:17; Hebrews 11:27).²   Likewise John 16:13 is Jesus’ admission that he bestows the Spirit upon worthy followers, but what information the Spirit will reveal is up to God.  We find corroboration for these dynamics in Luke 24:45↔John 20:22 and 1Corinthians 2:10.  And to the point of sounding repetitious, again detail:  Jesus was empowered to breathe the Holy Spirit into the Apostles post-resurrection, after his glorification in Heaven (John 20:22), which is the reason why Peter’s Matthew 16:17 revelation had nothing to do with pre-resurrection Jesus.

Who, When and Why?

   As discussed throughout all our series, specifically On the Divinity of Jesus, Jesus was the Most High’s only, hands-on creation.  Whatever else your religious leaders may tell you ignore them:  The Holy Spirit through Paul (Colossians 1:15) and Jesus himself (Revelation 3:14) corroborate this;³ and we know—as we will later review—that in the Bible everything confirmed by two or three witnesses stands as the incontestable truth (Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:16; John 5:31-32; 2Corinthians 13:1; 1Timothy 5:19).  Then instituted as His appointed/proxy God [mirroring the synergy between Pharaoh and Joseph in Genesis 41:40], the Most High entrusted the rest of Creation to his Son—the reason why Jesus is the world’s and mankind’s de facto Creator (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16-17).

   We come now to the first exercise of our imagination.  Being All-Knowing, the Most High God must have known that with Satan’s creation [not his proper name, unknown in the Bible except for the epithet ‘Lucifer’ (Isaiah 14:12)],⁴ there had to be a Plan B if Creation was to endure, albeit in an upgraded form (Isaiah 30:26, 51:6, 65:17; Matthew 24:35; 2Peter 3:10-13; Revelation 6:13, 21:1).⁵  From John 1:29 and 1Peter 1:19-20, we are told that Jesus’ crucifixion was a done deal before the foundation of the world; which is also suggested by Paul’s assertion, based on the substance aspect of Genesis 2:2-3, that God’s plan of redemption from conception to conclusion had been completed before the world was (Hebrews 4:3-4).

   Psalms 40:6-8↔Hebrews 10:5-7 gives us a perspective into how that plan may have been negotiated.  Insofar as Jesus is the Author of Faith (Hebrews 12:2), he must have offered himself as the Lamb whose blood would remit men’s sins (John 10:11,15,17-18; Hebrews 9:22) on the basis of faith (John 3:16, 6:39; Romans 1:17), by definition the certainty, irrespective of visible proof or confirmation (Hebrews 11:1,6), that God existed and that His word was His bond (Hebrews 6:13-18).  So that we then see the request of creating a human body for Yahweh of hosts to inhabit (Hebrews 10:5) becoming fulfilled in Luke 1:32-35; and Yahweh of hosts promise to fulfill his end of the bargain (Hebrews 10:7) in Jesus’ acceptance of his fate (Matthew 26:54).

Who, How and for What?

   In essence Plan B consisted of two parts:  Throughout the so-called “times of ignorance” (Acts 17:30), a) the Mosaic Covenant with Christian underpinnings but saddled with rites and rituals offering no lasting solutions (Ezekiel 20:25; Acts 15:10); and b) come Jesus, the Covenant of Faith, with Mosaic inessentials forthwith annulled (Galatians 3:13-14; Hebrews 9:8-10) and eternally in force.

  Jesus’ upgraded Covenant came with a proviso:  Unlike the Mosaic Covenant, priests, scribes, and interpreters of the Law were booted out of their jobs (Luke 16:16):  They could not be trusted to do as they were told (Jeremiah 5:31; Ezekiel 22:26; Zephaniah 3:4; Malachi 2:7-8).  Mind you, the idea all along had been to instruct the faithful individually and internally via the Holy Spirit (Deuteronomy 29:29; Jeremiah 33:3); but lest God be accused of not given men the opportunity to prove their bona fides, religious leaders had been given their chance to make good.  Think of thieving Judas being entrusted with Apostolic funds (Judas 12:6), which is not to be construed as a faux pas on Jesus’ part but as corroboration that the unrighteous will act according to type—the objective being to expose them before the world and hold them accountable on Judgment Day.  Jesus knew that Judas, of his own volition, would steal (John 2:24-25); yet gave Judas the choice to master his worst instincts.

   What are we to assimilate from all this?  First and paramount, to ditch any religious leaders we are beholden to:  We have been assured that, having received the Holy Spirit from Jesus, we have no need of any human teachers EVER (John 16:13; 1John 2:27)!   As was expected, following in our Jewish brothers’ footsteps, we have not chosen to believe or obey God in this respect.

   Which if once again we exercise our imagination, it all harks back to the original Babel where tongues were confused and people who had before shared one language could no longer understand each other (Genesis 11:1,6-9).  What were they doing?  Building their own enclave to challenge God’s sovereignty (Genesis 11:4)—i.e., self-determination instead of divine reliance.  Substitute values for your variables:  Tower = symbolic of God/Jesus (Proverbs 18:10; Psalm 48:3, 61:3); enclave = human domains vs. God’s kingdom; a common language devolving into confusion of tongues = Christian doctrine giving way to competing dogmas and Scriptural misunderstandings.  Which is also the reason, irrespective of scholarly controversies, that Peter calls the city of Rome Babylon (1Peter 5:13); Revelation 17:5 GPSs its religious seat [Babylon the Great] atop Rome’s seven hills (Revelation 17:9); God enjoins His people to either decamp from her or share in her comeuppance (Revelation 18:2-4); and why Satan will be rendered powerless in the Babylon [Vatican] where his throne lies (Revelation 2:13, 16:13-14↔Jeremiah 51:44; Revelation 18:2). All of which tells us that Christendom at large has become a modern Babylon.

   Secondly, we must believe such supernatural teaching methods are possible:  It all boils down to believing in God or in men; if the latter God cuts us off His loop (Ezra 8:22).  At the very least, if one’s soul is not born Christian-ready, [a notion suggested by Ezra 7:10 and Daniel 6:3], then one has to imitate Lydia and set one’s mind to understand the word of God:  He will do the rest (Psalm 37:5; Acts 16:14).  Understanding what is definitively true does not depend on our ability to quote chapter and verse:  Apollos was the preeminent example of that (Acts 18:24-26).  And despite having witnessed Jesus’ ministry for years on end, even the Apostles’ understanding had to be “opened” before they were able to assimilate everything they had been taught (Luke 24:25, 44-45; John 20:22).⁶

   So we are totally dependent on God for understanding, as long as we truly believe and obey the terms of Jesus’ Covenant (John 14:23; James 1:22-25).  We cannot depend on mortal men (Psalms 146:3) or rely on them in the assumption that they possess the Holy Spirit; for if they did, they would follow the Apostles’ lead and warn us that regurgitating the Scriptures without the guidance of the Holy Spirit leaves people exposed to human wiles (Acts 8:9-16).  When Jesus said he was the only teacher and all men were below him in that regard, he was drawing a line in the sand:  Cross it and demerits will accrue on leaders and followers (Matthew 23:8-12; Romans 6:16).

   Neither can we rely on scholars, since their priorities are on peer acclaim and academic considerations rather than bearing God out.  In point of fact, by God’s own admission, they contradict the integrity of His Scriptures (Jeremiah 8:8); for which reason He “closed” their understanding (Isaiah 29:10-14; 1Corinthians 1:20-21):  They can see and hear but are forcibly prevented from perceiving and understanding spiritual truths (Mark 4:12; 1Corinthians 2:14).  Which then leads to Jesus’ still timely conclusion:  The blind keep leading the blind into the pit (Matthew 15:14).

Why and How?

   For the objective of differentiating between the wheat from the chaff, the willing believer from the stubborn doubter, the lover of God’s Kingdom from the partaker of Satan’s earthly domain (Hebrews 2:14; James 4:4).  For this reason the Bible is essentially a trap, designed along the lines of a jigsaw puzzle imaging an overview of human history whose pieces are strewn all over the Bible’s 66 canonical books.  As the Holy Spirit admits:  “Yahweh’s word will be to them precept on precept, precept on precept; line on line, line on line; here a little, there a little; that they may go, fall backward, be broken, be snared, and be taken” (Isaiah 28:13).  It is our job to put the pieces back together again and in the right order so that we can see the whole picture.

   As seen from Mark 4:12, Jesus corroborated that objective, but also its methodology:  The use of parables and symbols.  When it comes to prophecy, very little is straightforward.  It is possible to build a chronology of sorts from the rebuilding of Jerusalem to the crucifixion of Jesus (Daniel 9:25-27); but there is absolutely no definitive way to settle the identity of Babylon the Great except for applicable, incremental snippets.  For example Ezekiel 28:2-5 fits the papacy in general to a tee, as do Daniel 7:23-25 and 8:23-25.  If Satan’s throne is in a Christian church (Revelation 2:13), it follows that his earthly prince [or priest↔Acts 23:5]⁷ sits in cathedra [i.e., on a throne] within the official seat of a diocesan bishop.  The bishop of Rome is the pope; and history corroborates the wheeling and dealing past popes engaged in with secular rulers to accumulate great wealth and power; to persecute and slay God’s holy ones; and accomplishing all of this without personal armies (Daniel 8:24)—let alone changing God’s law and times [Daniel 7:25—i.e., re-instituting idolatry; the cult of a heavenly queen; changing the Sabbath of worship; and even a calendar superseding the Hebrew one pegging prophetic chronology].⁸

   The one verse which ostensibly gives the show away, Revelation 13:18, is mired in controversy.  Vicarivs Filii Dei may have first appeared in the Donation of Constantine, a medieval manuscript believed to be a forgery; but its meaning, ‘Representative of the Son of God,’ incontrovertible applies to popes, specifically during those times of “infallibility” when popes were demigods on earth crushing the opposition.  Jesus was God’s ‘Vicar’ in the Old Testament and in the New; but all Biblical patriarchs, prophets and apostles were mouthpieces rather than stand-ins for God.  Popes presumed to be stand-ins for Jesus on earth and dictated doctrine in his stead; so it does not matter if Vicarivs Filii Dei was a medieval concoction or not:  It is in Latin, the official language of the Roman Church; it is in a language using letters for numbers; and it adds up to 666 [only letters that have numerical value; to wit, 5+1+100+1+5 + 1+50+1+1 + 500+1 = 666], fulfilling all the conditions of Revelation 13:18.  What should be significant to us is that number and title should be referenced in a book written centuries before the Roman Church became a contender on the world’s stage.

   That being said, between this explanation and accepting it, there is the matter of piercing the firewall God has erected in the minds of the unbelieving and the disobedient:  The ‘closed’ mindset that needs to be supernaturally ‘opened’ in order for His “hidden wisdom” (1Corinthians 2:7↔Deuteronomy 29:29) to be assimilated and bear fruit.  And that is a matter of human choice.  God may entreat people to sever their ties to the Vatican (Revelation 18:4); but inasmuch as some prefer to remain enslaved by its clergy (Romans 6:16; 2Peter 2:19), their fate was foreseen and is sealed (Revelation 13:8).

   One also needs help in identifying the Christian underpinnings propping up those Mosaic injunctions that were to be jettisoned following Jesus’ crucifixion.  It is rather obvious that the first-born, perfect, male Jesus fulfilled the role of all Mosaic sacrificial animals slaughtered to remit temporarily the sins of Israel (Exodus 13:2, 24:8; Leviticus 1:3,10).⁹  Please note that Moses, Jesus’ precursor as Lawgiver and Judge over Israel (Deuteronomy 18:5), “sprinkled” the sacrificial blood to sanctify God’s nation; so that when Paul interpreted the significance of this act in terms of Jesus, his choice of words [or the Holy Spirit’s through him] was the same:  “How much more will the blood of Christ [first-born↔Psalms 2:7; Colossians 1:15; Revelation 3:14], who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God (Hebrews 7:26; 1Peter 1:19), cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?… [and] whose sprinkled blood speaks better than Abel’s” (Hebrews 9:14, 12:24).

   Presumably Paul is referencing Genesis 4:10, which begs the question whether this is poetic license or if unjustly spilt, righteous blood in some audible way appeals to God.  Something similar is hinted at in Revelation 6:9-10, though here those clamoring for justice are the souls of the righteous dead under the Heavenly altar.  Yet as before, there seems to be a number of righteous to be sacrificed in order to sanctify the nation (Revelation 6:11).  Other Mosaic components have their Christian correspondences:  the “pleasing aroma” that rises up to God (Genesis 3:17; Leviticus 8:28↔2Corinthians 2:15; Ephesians 5:2; Philippians 4:8) becomes the prayer of the saints (Revelation 8:4); the salt that must be added to the sacrifice (Leviticus 2:13; Numbers 18:19) ‘flavors’ Christian preaching (Matthew 5:13; Colossians 4:6); the two olive trees feeding oil to the Temple candelabra (Zechariah 4:11-14) become the faithful witnesses in front of the Heavenly throne conveying God’s wisdom to the spirits overseeing Revelation’s seven churches (Revelation 2 and 3, with emphasis on Revelation 2:1); and the scapegoat ritual of Leviticus 16:20-22 doubtless foreshadows transferring the sins of the redeemed unto Satan at end-times—the “desert” in question being the lifeless world¹⁰ upon which he will remain chained for a thousand years (Revelation 20:2-3).

When, Why, and to What End?

   The Bible speaks of books on which the deeds of the righteous and unrighteous have been recorded; these will be opened on Judgment Day and men will be judged by them (Exodus 32:32; Psalms 69:28; Daniel 7:10; Revelation 3:5, 20:12).  Revelation 20:12 says there is a “book of life” where the names of the redeemed are inscribed; and for the sake of this discussion, let us call the record where the lost are inscribed the ‘book of doom.’ The book of life is the one that both Moses (Exodus 32:32) and David (Psalms 69:28) refer to.  Since Moses and David are dialoguing with Yahweh of hosts, we may surmise that Yahweh of hosts, the pre-existent Jesus, Judge of all Flesh (Genesis 18:22-25; John 5:22; Acts 17:31), was the recorder of those deeds.

   This information is there to tell us that before human history began, God foreknew who would be saved and who would not.  Mind you, this does not mean, as John Calvin argued, that the unrighteous were predestined to behave un-righteously, as if God had engaged in some arbitrary shenanigans.  We are only being told that despite all the chances the unrighteous had to mend their ways throughout the centuries, they persisted in transgressing; so down went their names into the database of the doomed.  We get a sense of this in John 6:39, 17:6,12:  God’s own had been bequeathed to Jesus, meaning that their ‘election’ was a fait accompli before Jesus became incarnate; and the same notion applies to end-timers (Matthew 24:22).  So if Calvin took Paul too literally (Romans 9:15-23), it was because his zealous anger overrode the nuances in Paul’s arguments.  It is true that God will dispose of souls as He wishes (Isaiah 43:13; Ezekiel 18:4); but no one soul, righteous or not, will be deprived of his/her chance to make good and escape destruction (Deuteronomy 30:11-20; Ezekiel 3:17-21).  The very composition of the Bible follows these patterns; hence end-times prophecies leading to the destruction of the world as we know it and God’s Kingdom showcasing a new creation; and those specific Old Testament narratives which foreshadowed, from deliverance to apostasy, future Christian events.

   It was upon that evidence that Jesus and the Apostles shaped their respective messages (Matthew 23:30-32; Luke 17:26-29; Romans 3:10-26; Ephesians 5:31-32; the whole of Hebrews; 1Peter 4:17↔Jeremiah 25:29; Ezekiel 9:6↔Revelation 7:3; 2Peter 2:6—to name a few).  And hence the importance of the Old Testament, for without it, God fails to do what He promised in Amos 3:7; and no New Testament argument concerning the person of Jesus would stand without the corroboration of previous testimonies in the Old.  Paul has always been accused of inventing Christianity and making Jesus into the God Jesus never claimed to be; but in presenting his incontrovertible evidence, he always relied on the Old Testament and nothing else (Acts 26:22-23).  For those of us who can follow the thread of his evidence, we can see how spot on he was.

   Which brings us, if we are going to squeeze the Bible for all it is worth, to three essential requirements:  1) if something is not in the Bible, we are to dismiss messenger and message (Isaiah 8:20); 2) everything must be corroborated by the testimony of two or three witnesses, whether Biblical writers (John 8:56-58↔Genesis 18:1,23-33; Acts 2:25-36) or living beings (2Corinthians 13:1; 1Timothy 5:19); and 3) nothing can be added to or taken from the Bible as it now stands under pain of death (Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:6; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Matthew 5:18-19; Revelation 22:18-19).

   A plethora of transgressions are easy to find; but let us concentrate on two commonplace and egregious ones:  Sunday worship and Marian worship.

   The Sabbath of the Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11) serves two purposes:  To commemorate God’s Creation, by this token acknowledging Him as Ultimate Creator, and as a sort of seal between Him and those sanctified by Him (Exodus 31:13).  Note the day is not given any specific name to account for the diversity of world tongues:  It is seventh in the course of one week; and we only need to look at worldwide calendars to see where it stands with respect to the first day on which men do their worshipping.  Who then is being worshipped on first-day Sundays?  Well, not the Father Who told Son what to write on those stone tablets (Exodus 31:18); letting alone the fact that Roman Catholicism imported pagan Rome’s customs into their liturgy, and switched the Jewish day of rest for the Sunday when pagans worshipped their sun god, your guess is as good as ours.

   Does it matter to God which day men choose to worship Him?  According to His testimony, most definitely (Isaiah 58:13-14; Ezekiel 20:12-13), for salvation is predicated on unconditional obedience to His word; so that if disobedience ranks as idolatry (1Samuel 15:23), and idolatry in all its forms is punishable by incineration at end-times (Revelation 21:8), Sunday worshippers are courting disaster.  Why does no one seem concerned?  “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their fear of Me is but rules taught by men” (Isaiah 29:13).  And since the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Holy One (Proverbs 9:10); and He favors “the humble and contrite in spirit who trembles at My word ” (Isaiah 66:2), guess where non-compliers stand?  Certainly neither Jesus nor the Apostles did away with the Jewish Sabbath (Luke 6:1,6; Acts 13:44); on this respect at least, our Jewish brothers have the upper hand on Christian Sunday worshippers.

   But like all things human, it all boils down to a matter of convenience, does it not?  At the end of the work week, TGIF and let us party after sunset.  We can make do with Sunday morning worship; then having paid lip service, hit the beach or go shopping afterwards.  Let us take care of business regardless of what God wants (Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Nehemiah 13:16-18).  Surely a Sabbath beginning at sunset on Friday and ending at sunset on Saturday (Leviticus 23:32; Luke 23:54-56; John 19:31) spoils our plans.  Why not do a switcheroo and honor God on the morning of the first day [also unnamed] of His Son’s resurrection (Luke 24:1; John 20:1)?  Which sort of makes twisted sense, does it not, since many incorrectly believe Father and Son to be the same Person?  And all of which proves the old adage:  Two wrongs do not make a right.

   Let us now focus on a graver one:  Marian worship, or the Cult of the Queen of Heaven.  Through Jeremiah, the Holy Spirit went overboard proscribing such a cult (Jeremiah 44:15-27); and as in the matter of the Sabbath, no heavenly queen—who in antiquity were a penny a dozen—was given a specific name.  Why?  Also as with the Sabbath, to encompass all the heavenly queens past, present, and future.

   Marian dogma is the concoction of Roman Catholicism: ‘Mary’ is the latest avatar of the Great Mother passed on from pagan Rome into fledgling Christianity like unwholesome, maternal blood.  Did Jesus ever exalt Mary and made her part of his ministry?  No.  Did her grief under Jesus’ cross bring about remission of sins as Roman Catholic dogma argues?  No; blood is required for that (Hebrews 9:22).  After being relegated to a surrogate son (John 19:26), she disappears from Scripture in Acts 1:14, her work done as far as Jesus was concerned.  The woman of Revelation 12 with all her symbolic paraphernalia has nothing to do with the mother of Jesus:  She is emblematic of Jesus’ Church, as Revelation 12:6,14 attest.¹¹

   Now ‘Mary’ would not enjoy the exaltation she has without visible manifestations, like apparitions and miracles which to us are red flares of some unholy power at work, since the faith that redeems us requires us to believe in things unseen (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17; Hebrews 11:1).  For this reason the Father has never been seen by mortal men (John 1:18; 1Timothy 6:16); and the Son, quite visible until his ascension (Acts 1:9), stopped being seen by men though obviously communicating with his Apostles verbally (Acts 9:5,10; 2Corinthians 12:8-9; 2Peter 1:14), through visions or dreams (Acts 9:5, 10:10-15, 16:9, 27:23-24).  Why would God allow ‘Mary’ to subvert His protocols and allow her to request places of worship in those high places He abhorred in the Old Testament (Leviticus 26:30; Numbers 33:52; Deuteronomy 12:2; 2Kings 18:4, 23:5,8; 2Chronicles 32:12; Jeremiah 17:3, 32:35)?

   We need not belabor the link between Marian worship and idolatry.  However, the dogma that the mother of Jesus was assumed bodily into Heaven lacks Biblical corroboration.  Though ultimately promulgated by Pius XII in 1950, there was incredible resistance to the dogma on the basis that nothing in Scripture supported it—as is definitively the case.  But Papa knew best and Marian worship became established fest. 

   Only three mortal men are currently in Heaven in bodily form:  Enoch (Genesis 5:24), Elijah (2Kings 2:10-11), and Moses (Zechariah 3:1-5), the last two appearing during Jesus’ transfiguration (Matthew 17:3).  There are no females amongst the heavenly court:  Heaven is a Patriarchy; hence the epithet “Son [Jesus] of Man [God, not Mary]” and assortment of male angels (Genesis 18:2; Daniel 3:25,28, 9:21, 10:13; Luke 1:26; Mark 16:3↔John 20:12;  Luke 24:4; Acts 1:10, 10:30).  To the detriment of feminists and female evangelists, Heaven is not an equal opportunity employer on the basis of sex (1Timothy 2:12).

   The mortal remains of Jesus’ mother are buried somewhere; and Mary [true Hebrew name, Mīryam] will not regain consciousness until the first resurrection.  Such is the fate of all flesh (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, 12:7), as was David’s (Acts 2:29) and Paul’s (2Timothy 1:12)—save Jesus, of course (John 20:27; Colossians 1:18).  In fact Paul laid out the resurrection protocols for us to beware against all life-after-death deceptions deployed against us:  “We tell you that we who are still alive [at end-times], who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep [died]. For the Lord himself will come down from Heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first [Ezekiel 37].  After that, we who are still alive and are left [end-timers] will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1Thessalonians 4:15-17); having had our flesh changed from mortal to immortal in the blink of an eye (1Corinthians 15:51-53) in order to fulfill the substance of Genesis 1:26: To be made wholly in God’s and Jesus’ likenesses (Psalms 17:15; 1John 3:2).

   We will wrap things up in Part II.

¹ We do not plan to become mired in needless controversies; nor will we rewrite Scripture, a grievous, soul-endangering sin (Proverbs 30:6; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Revelation 22:18) to satisfy individual preferences.  Here are some examples:

New Living, Berean, Amplified, Arameic, Brenton Septuagint, Int’l Standard Translations
   Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem one year. His mother was Athaliah, a granddaughter of King Omri.

World English, King James, Douay-Rheims, JPS Tanakh 1917, Webster’s Translations
   Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah the daughter of Omri.

   Obviously Ahaziah’s age is irrelevant to God’s plan of redemption.  But knowing that the Bible is a trap to ensnare unbelievers (Isaiah 28:13; Mark 4:12), we cannot dismiss the possibility that these ‘inconsistencies’ were allowed to creep up in order to ensnare the unwary.

² In direct opposition to the Yahweh of hosts who was seen and heard by Moses (Exodus 33:11,23).  It was this Yahweh of hosts who later became incarnate as Jesus; but the Invisible God Paul is referring to in Hebrews 11:27 is Yahweh the Most High.  Paul is arguing that Moses’ resolve was strengthened as if actually seeing God Himself.

³ Simple logic should dictate that the Holy Spirit and Jesus [then Yahweh of hosts] should be in better position to establish Jesus’ provenance, since they were two of only three beings present at his creation—the third being the Most High God (Genesis 1:2-3).

⁴ In the Bible Lucifer derives from the phrase “son of the morning star” (Isaiah 14:12), which poses the question—definitively unanswerable—that as such he was the creation of the true Morning Star, Jesus (Revelation 22:16).  This is quite possible, since Darkness, the antithesis of Light = Jesus (John 1:9, 8:12), was the second thing created after the Most High had empowered His Son to continue Creation.

   As noted before, Light, like everything else subsequently created, was deemed “good,” but no qualification was made about Darkness.  We may be pushing things too far, but the planet Venus, which shines brightly in early dawn, was personified in Roman folklore as a torch-bearing male.  From there it passed into Christianity as a name for Satan [Heb., Accuser (Zechariah 3:1; Revelation 12:10), Adversary].  In the sense, also previously discussed, that Satan clothes himself in Jesus’ attributes, the image of a heavenly body [a fallen Cherub (Ezekiel 28:14-16)] reflecting the light of the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2) establishes a correspondence between shadow and substance.

   The Islamic Qur’ān, by the way, identifies Satan as Iblīs.

⁵ Isaiah 45:18, before calling Jesus into being↔Genesis 1:1-2; whereas natural land masses were created on Day 3 (Genesis 1:9-10).  As Psalms 18:15 suggests, the foundation referred to in Genesis 1:2 may underlie our present reality (Psalms 18:15↔Revelation 6:14, 16:20)

⁶ John 20:22’s “breathing on” is thematically linked to Genesis 2:7 and 1Corinthians 15:45-49.  The breath of life is the soul, which must be made immortal before it enters the Kingdom of Heaven.  What prepares the soul for this transition is the wisdom imparted by the Holy Spirit (Job 32:8), which Jesus gives his true followers in order to “seal” the promised salvation (Ephesians 1:13). This boon can be rescinded from those who fail God (1Kings 22:24).

⁷ Note the correspondence between Paul’s epithet, “whitewashed wall” (Acts 23:3), and Jesus’ use of the same adjective leveled against the religious leaders of his time (Matthew 23:27)—without losing sight of the fact that the Holy Spirit flagged it through both Jesus and Paul.

⁸ These things are the subject of Ezekiel 28:2-5; Daniel 7:23-25, 8:23-25; Revelation 13:2-8, 17:15-17, 18:2:24↔with special emphasis on one item in her vast inventory of wealth:  the souls of men (Revelation 18:13).  We discussed them at some length in previous series.

⁹ The limitations of Mosaic Law required animal sacrifices to be performed daily in perpetuity and only at the Jerusalem Temple (Exodus 29:42; Deuteronomy 12:13-14).  These temporary constraints would end with Jesus’ crucifixion (Daniel 8:11) and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 CE.

¹⁰ In terms of human lives but not necessarily of animals.  Many Scriptures talk about animals feeding on rotting corpses as well as Satan’s bed of maggots (Isaiah 14:11; Jeremiah 25:33; Ezekiel 29:5; Revelation 19:17-18).

¹¹ The 1,260 days of verse 6 = 42 months of Revelation 13:5 [42 x 30 = 1,260 days], during which the beast waged war against the saints.  We are here using the Hebrew calendar, which pegs prophecy to lunar months of 30 days each.  The Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory XIII, but adapted from one designed by Luigi Lilio, was introduced in 1582.  It is the one in use today, which with its leap years and months of either 30 or 31 days, undermines prophetic methodology.

   As Daniel 7:23-25 evinces, the entity that changed the times is part of the ten-horned beast of Revelation 13:1, down to the fact that it was given authority to make mincemeat of the saints for a time, times, and half a time (Daniel 7:25↔Revelation 12:14). Using Ezekiel 4:6’s conversion factor of 1 day = 1 year, 1,260 prophetic days = 1,260 years.

   By not stretch of the imagination could have the human Mary lived for 1,260 years like the woman of Revelation 12.