What Must Take Place After This
The Pattern is ancient. It has been with us since the beginning, since before, when the Ancient of Days decided to make us in His image. At that moment, our course transformed from potential to actual. The Son of God would come, and He would redeem us. He would give gifts and assign posts. Each would receive according to His grace and their choices. I have written already of the reason for the Tree, but why pain, death, and suffering?
God had already created the angels. He crafted them as perfect people—pure and free to choose their own fates. They forever knew God and His glory. They had no needs beyond that which God supplied. They knew no limits except the rule of righteousness. They had no experience of pain, lack, or death; therefore, they could neither sink but so far, nor rise but so high in their appreciation for all God had given them. After countless ages and wonders, the only novelty which remained for them existed in a rejection of God’s sacred righteousness for a grander sense of self, self-worth, and pursuits of self-determinism. Some would fall. Before that fall, He prepared a place of punishment as a warning to those who considered Self above Source.
In His wisdom, God knew that only genuine suffering and sacrifices of actual worth would afford created beings an authentic appreciation for all that could and should be in a universe within the supreme loving embrace of God. The consequences, whether good or bad, would be much more immediate for a new order of beings, the peril more visceral, the pain more than existential, but God, in His wisdom, would not ask others to pay a price which He would not willingly pay Himself for that perfection. He would come, the Son, the perfect union of Heaven and Earth, Son of Man and Son of God: The Singularity in the seas of humanity, split forever, the before divided from the after, the within from the without. By whatever terms we’d use, the divisions would be of a magnitude that God alone could truly fathom.
And here we are: souls adrift on the seas of time and opportunity, surrounded by the chaos and might of primordial forces and elements. We drift, but not alone. God offers us a lifeline in Christ and wisdom in His Spirit. The former sustains and tethers us to Him, our source. The latter offers us a means to make sense of and navigate the seas of this fallen realm, its troubled waters reflecting imperfectly His perfection above. And so, we find the pattern of old. We find it by His will and His grace. Indeed, He stands with His arms out to us all day long. If only we’d hasten at His rebuke… If only we’d call to Him…
The Pattern teaches many things, but alone it will bring Jezebel and Babylon to power. The Pattern only benefits us with the further aid of His Word and His Spirit: The former to tether us, and the latter to guide us. The Pattern reveals to us much of that which will come after this: A woman suffers when she is about to give birth because her time has come, though afterward she is glad because of the birth. A woman clothed in the sun, standing upon the moon, reflecting His glory into this world, wears a crown of twelve stars upon her head, which signifies both the children of Jacob and the apostles of Christ. Whether Jew or Gentile by birth, we are all one in Christ, Children of God, co-heirs to the Promise, and fellow citizens of Israel.
Now we know the Creation groans with us in the pains of childbirth, waiting in eager expectation for the revealing of the Children of God. What we shall be, as His Children, He has not made known, but when we see Him, we shall be like Him. We will see Him as He is, knowing fully, even as we are fully known. But watch out—be wary that none deceive you. If anyone tells you, “There He is,” do not go, do not believe it. As lightning comes from the east and is seen in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. All the peoples will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. He will send his angels with a loud trumpet call; they’ll gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other. No secret snatching away for our Lord. He comes with power.
Men have said that the next thing to happen in prophecy is the return of our Lord, but it is not so. It is not according to the Pattern He reveals. Whenever the Lord visits, whether by representative or in person, the enemy is already present. When God spoke to the Woman in the Garden, the Serpent was present. When Abel came into the world, Cain already was. When Seth was born unto Adam and Eve, Cain wandered the earth. When Methuselah gave rise to Lamech, Methushael had already given rise to his Lamech. When Noah sent the dove from the ark, the raven was already flying to and fro. While Moses floated upon the Nile, Pharoah ruled over Egypt. While Christ was a babe in a manger, attended by the Ox at night, Herod and Caesar ruled as stewards of the household of their father, the Dragon. As it ever was, so shall it be.
What were the Thessalonians afraid they had missed if not the coming of our Lord? They feared the harvest was past, and they were not saved. But what does Scripture say? That day will not come, until/unless/except the rebellion/apostasy/falling away comes first, and the man of sin/lawlessness, the Son of Destruction and Perdition, be revealed. Antichrist will be here when Christ returns, and he will have been revealed to us. How? A mortal wound miraculously healed. Everyone whose name does not appear in the Lamb’s book will worship him. When they say, “Here he is,” do not believe it; do not go.
When Tamar’s time had come, the midwife found twins in her womb. One put forth his hand, upon which she tied a scarlet thread to mark him as firstborn, but the other burst forth. This one was named Perez, for he had broken forth from the womb first, as if he were a usurper. The one with the scarlet thread was named Zerah, which means “dawning” or “shining.” The line of Christ descends through Perez, for it was Zerah, the shining one, who was the usurper and sought the position of the firstborn.
In Song of Songs, we see two dream-visions. In one, the beloved woman searches all night long for the one she loves, and at last she finds him and clings to him. In the other, the woman lies sleeping, waiting for her beloved. He comes, and she hesitates, not wishing to prepare to meet him. He thrusts his hand through the latch-opening, at which moment she stirs for him, her hands dripping with myrrh. She opens too late, her beloved has left. She goes in search of him, but the watchers find, strip, and beat her.
When the Bridegroom comes, what will He find? A wise or foolish virgin in your house? Or will you not be found at all because your heart stirred when the usurper thrust his hand in at the latch and you went out to seek the shining one, the son of the morning, Lucifer, the Cherub of Dawn? See that He has warned you ahead of time. What you do with the warning is up to you.
A watchman has spoken.