The Phases of the Ages

Post 323

Now that we have a very basic comprehension of the Grand Tapestry, let’s pause to consider its progressing phases with a bit more understanding. Parallel to the previously described phases of the observable human maturation process as our Typology reference, we find suggested in the scriptures seven specific unobservable phases of humanity’s spiritual development toward that simultaneous end. Allow me to walk through these in brief for the big picture comprehension. Here is the outline as I see it:

Temporal lifespan: conception/birth - infant - juvenile - young adult - productive - resource - old age/death.
Spiritual lifespan: conception/salvation - child - slave - servant - steward - friend - bride/kingdom of heaven.

Like as with the temporal in the previous Post, let’s not here quibble over the specific order in my list of the spiritual. But unlike my temporal labels; these spiritual labels are God’s so our only discussion of question should be the specific order in which I placed them with intent, which, in our present later-stage in the list, is not that important as long as we include them all and see the proper flow of progression from beginning to end.
Every Christian can accept that the spiritual life begins and ends with these and any bible reader should be able to easily identify these seven specific labels as they relate to God’s relationship with humanity-- whether his children or not his children, via adoption-- (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:5-7 *1).
By connecting these biblical labels into a charted development process as I have done here, the Christian should suddenly get a revelation of deep understanding and be able to find new comprehension as he reads the scriptures so that we don’t have to go over the very exciting, and massive, volume of details here. The scriptural types and cycles and examples are abundant, and you should find the scriptures fresh and new as you explore what it has to say along this concept in explaining why God seems to work with different ages in different ways, though very fundamentally consistent in intent of application, and why the similarities-but-differences seem confusing when we read it all lumped into a single “one size fits all” mentality of a teenager’s rushed application to adulthood in youthful ignorance:

“God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds (165);” Hebrews 1:1-2.

worlds 165 aion; from the same as 104; properly, an age…

This full seven-staged maturation concept is very complex and hard to explain simplistically, as each explored stage also has its own similar seven-phases not to be confused with another stage in a similar phase but shifted by the maturity of its entire age, and in addition, each application-- such as temporal-- has application in Type to another application-- such as spiritual.
Picture this like trying to explain the intimate and mysterious workings of the solar system and the atom simultaneously because the solar system is made of atoms, which reflects the nature of God, who made it all in the beginning when it was fresh and maintains it all at the end when it is wearing out (Isaiah 51:6), and you begin to get the idea. So to aid a seating of this concept for you to explore in depth later on your own, let’s walk through the list in brief before we focus on our present “Woman’s World” phase of this later-age and it’s Grand Tapestry purposes.
* * *

New Beginnings:
We see in the Creation narration of Genesis 1 the specific progressive creations and separations that God made on each day: Substance from non-substance, light from dark waters, lower waters from upper waters (*2), dry land from lower waters, one kind of land flora from another kind, day and night ruled succinctly by sun and moon, creatures in the waters from creatures above the waters, and finally; the land creatures different from water creatures separated by kind, and the animal kind themselves distinct from Mankind, and mankind divided further into genders.
We note that each creation group has both a ruling (greater) and a submitting (lesser) element, this is the pattern of creation as one stage is distinct from the next but directly interacting with the others, and when all this was complete and functioning like a well-oiled machine, we read that God took his Sabbath rest, (from which is spawn the demonic doctrine of the “watchmaker” theories that suppose God now observes the earth “hands off,” as if it could run even a moment without him; as if Colossians 1:16 were segregated from v.17 (Job 37:10-13 etc.). Every lie is composed of some degree ---up to a whole lot-- of twisted truth for the purpose of misdirection, but that is for another topic).

In a pattern recognition in scripture, we see that God’s creation of mankind-- as distinct from other kinds-- is further divided into “favored people” and “not,” and each favored people-group-- I am calling an “age”-- is separated out from those that were created previously. What we end up with are seven distinct ages for God’s distilled “favored” people-group, which each first-phase was presented as a “new beginning”:

Beginning/Adam - Noah - Abraham - Moses - David - Jesus - Kingdom of Heaven/End.

Each of these studies, when investigated for its unique purpose in the Grand Tapestry, reveals amazing and surprising discoveries. As an example: when investigating the new beginning of Moses’ age as distinct from the previous, have you ever listed the foundational life-directing declared commands of God given to men in the ages from Adam until Moses-- whether good men or bad?

“Be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), Don’t eat the forbidden fruit (Genesis 2:17), Do well (Genesis 4:7), Don’t eat blood (Genesis 9:4), Don’t murder anyone (Genesis 9:5-6), Walk perfectly, before God (Genesis 17:1).”

As brief as this six-part short list is, it was not even delivered all at once but rather was dispersed through the ages as necessary. To show a single example of how this worked functionally, let’s further explore the last command in the list:

“These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God” Genesis 6:9.

Where in all the scripture before this verse, do we read the command to be perfect? We don’t. Yet Noah was. Hmmm, I wonder what motivated this perfection from him without a specific command, and at a time when nobody else on the planet was?
In the age that followed, we come to the stage of Abraham, who-- while yet Abram in his early phases of the faith as he pleased God though clearly not perfect-- was in fact finally given the command to be perfect:

“And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect” Genesis 17:1.

Noah didn’t need the specific and direct command but Abram did. Why?
I believe our answer is found in the specific instruction that reveals the key to perfection: “walk before me and you will be perfect,” not; “be perfect so you can walk before me.” Walking before God simply produces perfection as a byproduct. “If you are not perfect, you are not walking before God,” as opposed to; “I am walking with God, therefore I am perfect.” This important distinction is somehow still confusing to our later-day age, though there is now no excuse because God's motivating perfecting Spirit now dwells within us in addition to Jesus himself confirming the command (Matthew 5:48). I propose that the reason for the command to Abram but not to Noah, is because in the advancing age of maturity, while having much more information and experience to evaluate, and so, believing that we are more self-intelligent in choosing our proper walk, humanity has with this advantage a greater capacity to manipulate the interpretation of God’s command with those experiences and information and therefore alter the rules of life by the complexity of voluminous perception. New means of finding “loopholes” requires more numerous and specific rules to overcome them. And frankly my voluminous works of explanation has that same potential danger in misapplication (Proverbs 10:19), but the confused age now requires it.
As Abram was the representation of the age that needed the newly specific command in order to achieve the intended goal of walking before God; it was humanity itself that was maturing by self-evaluating the increasing knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve introduced into the human paradigm. God is simply working within man’s state of comprehension at different levels in the age process of teaching the teen to drive the family car.
A six-year-old takes out the trash when told to without a thought toward rights, a twelve-year-old is supposed to know when the trash needs to be taken out and then do it without asking but wars with his individuality in the task forced upon him, an eighteen-year-old figures; “you have no right to make me.” Each progressing phase requires greater rules both in expectation of duty and consequence for greater breach through increased knowledge.

All that goes away when he reaches adulthood, and at that point, whether he takes out the trash or not is entirely up to him with the results just being something everyone has to live with either way. There is no punishment for failure, he really does have the right to choose for himself-- if for no other reason than he has come of age. Good son or bad son, or a man who renounces his father altogether, the right is his to choose whether he will take out the trash or not and he is publicly evaluated as a no-account sloth or a dependable blessing to the family by his choice. At this point it’s not a judgment made for correction or punishment but merely an observation of fact that must be worked with as we interact with him. Miley Cyrus and her trash isn’t going away any time soon.
In like principle, the groom gets the girl he marries, not the girl he wishes her to be. The composition of her pre-marriage existence has made her who she is at the foundational level. Yet compromised Christians, composing their entire lives in the comfort of dirty grace, assume that somehow when their bodies are adapted to enter eternity (marriage to the Lamb), “who they are” will also be changed at the same instant. But in such a case, with a new body and a new soul and spirit that motivates it, how could that still be you? What would be left to call it you? You didn’t want to change your ways while on earth because "it wouldn’t be you anymore," and so we get the answer to the question; "Why does a young woman become very unhappy when her new husband doesn’t like who she is and tries to change her to whom she should be?"
Marriage is the time to reap the rewards of who you have all your life been striving to become in the hope of a happy marriage: Angry bitter and selfish, or tender loving and benevolent, the eligible girls are lined up at the dance and the suitor gets to choose what he likes. At that point it’s not his job to fix your foundation; it’s your job to present yourself desirable…not to you but to Him! We touched on this concept in Post 249 “The Cinderella Syndrome” - (http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2012/06/cinderella-syndrome.html), and while the Apostle Paul gloried in his infirmities (II Corinthians 12:9-10), today’s “infermal” glorying is not at all what he had in mind (Luke 7:21, Romans 6:1-2). And so we require still more specific instruction as we seem to go backwards not forwards in our development.

Regarding the above very short list of governing rules in the early ages, the revelation is rather startling as we realize just how much of human history those early ages covered, and we get a keen note of comparison as we consider the first 200 years of the "not quite" United States had no constitution or unified government at all, and then after those early ages, our Founders created a unifying government with a four-page Constitution to adequately govern the colletion of States under one Union for another 150 years of mid ages. Today, in her later age, that established governance now creates thousands of additional pages of law every year in the effort to sufficiently govern the now stubbornly wicked people who resent being governed at all (Ezra 9:9-15+ Isaiah 13:10-11+ Jeremiah 25:29,44:29+ I Timothy 1:9-11= I Peter 2:13-19+), yet seem to clamor for a nanny king in the foolishness of unlearned repeating cycles (I Samuel 8:7).
Boiled down to the basics, God tells us that the plethora of new laws still have the intended “Do well” command, even if those laws are now flawed themselves and have a different definition of “well” and a different surface beneficiary of the well doing (I Corinthians 7:20-22). Suffering through oppression has an amazing ability to realign the value of self-regulation long abandoned in lieu of boundless self-pleasure (I Peter 4:1-2, Hebrews 11:24-25). The actual important perspective of this is a “family matter”; it’s what is primarily good for the family, which is why our early Americans were willing to sacrifice their possessions and lives for the good of the righteous nation and the new self-focused unrighteous generation calls them fools. This gets very complex when a nation changes its family values for the global community values, and the factor that few seem to be considering becomes: “If the globe is the new family, Who gets the benefits of my labor, and then; Who is the new enemy to defend against?” The new enemy becomes the rejected Almighty head of the house himself and his people who are no longer a part of that family now globalized (Isaiah 43:9-12, Jeremiah 31:10-11, Zechariah 14:17-19, Micah 4:11-12= Matthew 25:32).
Contrary to the age of Isaiah 43:12, there is now a strange god among us. To avoid the confusion of manipulated propaganda, we need to make our evaluations on the declarations God gave before that strange god arrived with his slight-of-hand deceptions (Isaiah 48:5).

Getting back on topic regarding pre-Abram mankind, We know by conjecture that in spite of nothing written to declare that he was given such a command to be perfect, mankind must have somehow been given other “rules to live by,” as Cain and Sodom, before the law, were remarked as accountable for their sin (Genesis 4:5,7+13:13,18:20), and sin is declared to be the breach of the law (I John 3:4) whether applied or not (Romans 5:13+6:15), and so we see that the law came to the early ages with less directness but nonetheless in clarity of understanding the unspoken, (Romans 1:20,28-32+2:12-15,27, I Corinthians 11:14-15=Job 12:7-10, Psalm 19:1-4, Isaiah 45:8).
Even before the law came, Cain was suggestively reasoned with that he knew by nature to “do well,” and God similarly, in a later age, sent angels to actually evaluate if Sodom’s sin was as bad as they made it out to be (Genesis 18:21). No chastisement, no warning, no correction before they were unceremoniously snuffed out for their excessive wickedness as decreed so by nature itself, without having the written command that would be needed and provided in later ages, because, in the later mature wisdom with the intellectual comprehension of Sodom in their lineage-past, they are now prone to misinterpret the speech of nature, even if they are looking diligently for the correct answer:

“India's Supreme Court has recognised transgender people as a third gender, in a landmark ruling. 'It is the right of every human being to choose their gender,' it said in granting rights to those who identify themselves as neither male nor female. It ordered the government to provide transgender people with quotas in jobs and education in line with other minorities, as well as key amenities. According to one estimate, India has about two million transgender people” - BBCNews-India 4-15-2014 - (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-27031180).

Back at the tower of Babel-- where they defied the confirmation of the first direct command (Genesis 11:4 vs. 9:1+7)-- God simply broke up their party to keep them from doing stuff that would be globally destructive at that early stage (Genesis 11:6-8), but, in our last-days stage of intelligent technology that brings again the world into a “single-city mind” which empowers humanity with that same degree and capability which was previously foiled, we are repeating the same Type events on a global scale which God will allow this time, to bring our own destruction of a significantly harsher consequence because of what is to be expected from the now mature age.
An ignorant boy that plays with matches gets a spanking before he burns the house down, but an evil minded nation that plays with nukes on his neighbors porch… who will “spank” him? Who can is who should. But, since this is the age of self-governing maturity, a rebuke or a spanking is inappropriate before the event; now is the age for criminal prosecutions and harsher judgments that we use quotation marks to describe as like kind in maturity.

This "be perfect" comparison between ages is one example of many. It seems that the early world, even at the flood that judged them without the law, knew enough about the right way to be held accountable, and even to walk before God perfectly, yet the Maker rarely intervened dramatically in the affairs of godless men as they matured in the early stages as they so desired… but when he did, it was dramatic to say the least, as the goal at that point was not usually correction but judgment to make way for the next phase or age. This “hands off” contemplation directly speaks to the question of; “Why does God allow all the suffering in the world?” and the answer is found in the very first command/declaration of humanity’s appointed burden of responsibility:

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them… replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…” Genesis 1:28.

It’s our earth, we are supposed to be figuring out how to run it, even if only by the trial-and-error applications of our knowledge of good and evil… until we reach that repeating point of misapplication (such as the Beast Islam and the boundless Whore of Democracy we see rising today) that goes beyond correction and brings early termination for our failed attempts at reaching the seemingly undeclared but discoverable goal:

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart” Genesis 6:5-6.

“For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not” Ecclesiastes 7:20.

So God cleans things up, restarts the next generation of humanity fresh, and we begin again in the progression of phases in the next advanced age of only seven, that are supposed to collectively bring humanity’s maturity by experience and time, and wiser choices by historical past-failures learned. In all reality this is in fact human evolution as we painfully learn how to rightly handle the fruit of the forbidden tree now in our possession, and for the confused mind it can be seen as human Evolution as that fruit is used to other inglorious ends of discovery. The very real difference between the two perspectives is the direction taken and the end result: One to success the other to failure. “But what is success?”
To answer that, we need to add all the stages into the collective evaluation to find the sum, and the details of the beginning and end now become important.
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Five Interim Stages of Seven:
Let’s not presently explore the first stage of birth-- that by our existence is simply a fact-- and let’s also set aside the still questionably proven future details of the end, which leaves us with five interim stages of our human lifespan to explore couched between these bookends. For clarity sake I have comparatively listed a few of the biblically calculated keys to the ages that open that door for you. [These were a lot prettier and easier to see comparatively when columned and typed across a full sheet of paper]:

• Creation days: 1st=Beginning - 2nd=labor - 3rd=labor - 4th=labor - 5th=labor - 6th=labor*(man) - 7th=rest.
• Work Week: 1st=Sunday - 2nd=labor - 3rd=labor - 4th=labor - 5th=labor - 6th*(gather twice) - 7th=Sabbath.
• Ages: 1st - 2nd - 3rd - 4th - 5th - 6th* - 7th.
• Humanity: conception/birth - infant - child - young adult - productive - resource - old age/Death.
• Spiritual: conception/salvation - child - slave - servant - steward - friend - bride/Kingdom of Heaven.
• Favored group*: Adam - Noah - Abraham - Moses - David - Jesus*(x2) - kingdom of heaven/End.

For the more diligent explorer the following is an extended collection, though these take much more interactive investigation to figure out and so for this quick review should be passed over to avoid greater confusion. We covered these individually in more detail in other Posts on prophecy, but here the striking connection between the temporal and spiritual outline is interesting as we compare these two lists:

• Prophecy: 69 weeks of man’s rule= 1 through 6* as decades (* long surprise Gentile age) - Hebrew return as 7th decade-week/Christ's return.
• Angelic Princes: Red - Black - White - Grisled - Bay - Specled* - Rest.
• Gentile Age: gold - silver - brass - iron - iron & clay - x2* - Stone/New Beginning.
• Fesh: head - chest - belly - legs - feet - x2*(Toes are feet, but unique 8th) - stone/God.
• Post-Israel GDEs: Babylon - Persia - Greece - Rome - Islam - Islam II* - Hebrew kingdom/Eternity.
• Grand Tapestry*: adds 2 Gentile GDEs before Israel ruled and fell, making - Islam II=8th(*of 7) - ninth king/Christ.

It is a bit confusing to group these so simplistically without long explanations, which is why the scriptures isolate each in their own books and chapters to explain them individually in their settings for us to understand their individuality before we figure out how they interact. The comparative connection like this chart, reveals quite apparently that we are most surely now living in the 6th* Age of complexity in a 7 Age program.
* -- Do you remember in early Posts we touched on a principle that there is always a complexity in the 6th that comes before the 7th and final phase of success? (Post 087 “The 6th 7 Principle” - http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2010/10/preparation.html). The majority of this whole Blog seems to be a dedicated description of the “pretty big bump*” that threatens to derail this train just before it reaches the terminal, and whether or not the train derails, it will throw a lot of passengers… many from the train. Scriptural Prophecy is your seatbelt and I’m in effect the purser helping you to get it properly fastened at the last second. Five phases have passed; we are already in the bump stage, as the great bloodletting of the 20th century reveals. The significant damage/complexity is still to come, which is the seemingly insignificant “*” of the jot or tittle attached to the age. If you have to ask; “Was that the bump?” the answer is; “No.”
This is my perspective of the four “blood moons.” To suppose these natural eclipse events are the sum and meaning of the scriptural end time prophecy is to suppose the red hue of the setting sun is what turned the Exodus river of Egypt to blood in the effort to motivate the Pharaoh to let God’s people go. Don’t malign God by supposing that he thinks scientifically mature, intellectually aged, sinning humanity, will be impressed by a redish eclipse:

“And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues…” Revelation 16:8-9.

“Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound” Isaiah 30:26 (meaning, this return of Israel is clearly not that event).

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD come” Joel 2:31, confirmed in Acts 2:20, (Isaiah 13:10 may or may not be this same specific event).

When the sun actually burns out after a brief mini-nova-like period of being seven times brighter, to the point that perhaps its dying ember light can only brighten the moon to a deep red, It’s safe to go ahead and be impressed, (*3). The part of the bump that is still to come as the now-expected 6th 7 transition, is a very big bump indeed. You may want to brush up on the details some.

When God told the first-stage Adam not to eat the forbidden fruit, Adam had an actual tree standing in the middle of paradise. It was just not that hard to figure out what not to eat.
When God told the third-stage Abram to be perfect (meaning, abstain from the fruit of imperfection), it was a little bit harder to define what the forbidden fruit actually was. Same fruit, same concept; very different presentation for the advancement of a more mature age, though Abram, like Adam, was at the time, in an early phase of his stage. And like Adam, Abraham’s age ended in the eviction of his people from the Promised Land (garden), and into a land of thorns and labor and toil for their bread all the days of their life. Until the next-age of Moses came. Are you seeing the pattern of Christ's advanced age?
When God told the more-mature-stage Moses and his people, not to break the newly written perfecting Commandments, it was far more complex still. The forbidden fruit was just as plentiful as in Adam’s day, but it wasn’t hanging from a single temporal tree for obvious abstinence; nor was it clear by an uncompromised perception of life that understood the speech of nature. No, now it had to be understood in the evaluation of what was commanded in a very long collection of complex and specific temporal rules with very direct temporal punishments for error.
Today, in the sixth-stage of maturity, the garden is fenceless and overgrown, the tree has sprouted an orchard though not trees per se, the comprehension of nature is confused by complexity, and the written rules of temporal compliance have all been taken away with the temporal temple. There are virtually no boundaries or restrictions… but the unchangeable law of the universe still stands: “The forbidden fruit has consequences,” (Matthew 5:48). We really should have figured this out by now, to the point that we don’t need the rules. Do you still touch the hot stove? Go figure. Who really needs more than five lessons?

The Slow Thinkers:
Having now a basic comprehension of the distinctive and progressive ages and their phases of the Grand Tapestry and their beneficial education for a specific end that we might not yet grasp (much as we have done with the Sabbath), we need to at least discuss the groups of people who can’t seem to figure out how to keep up with the proper age, let alone the latest phase of it. We are not throwing stones or making condemnations in this discussion, but simply making necessary observations so that we can wisely interact with them in the real world as it is, and not as we would like it to be. But having said that, it is awfully hard not to mock the teenager who comes to school with his hands in bandages for the umpteenth time in a single year. I encourage you to have extended pity on variously stunted minds which we might not understand in their difficulty of comprehension (II Corinthians 3:14 and 4:3-4), because you too have your own tendencies toward stupidity in areas that should be obvious (I John 2:11, Ephesians 4:17-20, II Peter 1:8-9,3:17). Compassion and tolerance may help with the intersocial attitude, but it doesn’t help with the consequence of failure, on their part or on yours. Be perfect, walk with God (Hebrews 12:12-24…). And pray for those who don’t (Matthew 5:44), offering them more than prayer only, even as I do with you (II Timothy 2:24-26).

Skipping over the obvious state of the Jews in their “hand burnt” spiritual blindness, (because the scriptures have made that reason very clear: Romans 11:25+11:19, etc.), Let’s contemplate the other group of slow thinkers that still live in their out-of-place 7th Century phase in this present 21st Century age by the rules of a religion that was created at that time from the even older Mosaic age long past when they dug it up from the sands of time. The Muslims seem to have picked up that fragmented faith long after it was declared-- not destroyed (Matthew 5:17) but nonetheless-- obsolete without the latest updates (I Timothy 1:7-8, Hebrews 10:28-30, I Corinthians 7:39, Galatians 4:21-26). In this age of cutting-edge technology needing to be updated almost daily, this religion is only two entire ages and a few thousand years behind the times~ both temporally and spiritually. The Grand Tapestry makes that very clear, in both the big picture as well as the intimate details.
So what do you do when you have an entire house full of people that keep burning their hands? You take the stove out of the house. And in keeping with the times and the spiritually lobotomized era, God removed the temple, the law, and the sacrifices so they could no longer hurt themselves with them. Healthy adults really don’t need those anyway because they are out eating fresh herbs from the garden they tend (John 14:26+Romans 2:14-15+Romans 8:1-4). But while the Jews have no garden and no stove, the Muslims found the old stove out back and brought it into their house, believing that burnt hands are just a natural part of responsible cooking, and if your hands aren’t burnt you are neglecting your social duty.
The Christless Jewish and Muslim confusion seems to have no clear explanation until we place their disorder properly on the progressive timeline with the big picture in mind, and then it makes perfect sense. But I warn you, don’t get smug; This is the age of confusion and derailing bumps before we reach the terminal! If you are not getting frequent updates from the Spirit of God through his word, then your faith is also obsolete!
As evidence of this fact, let’s next discuss The Sixth Age.
* * * * * * *

(*1) “To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” Galatians 4:5-7.

(*2) Lower waters from upper waters: See Post 268 “The Waters of Clay” - (http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-water-of-clay.html).

(*3) “That’s It?”
I confess that while I worked diligently editing this Post waiting to see the eclipse from my office window, I was disappointed that my sky became overcast right at the wrong time and I saw the obscured event through a “lightly fogged” sky. Did I really need to see it at all? No, I already know the times, I am already prepared, I have no need for a sign-- even of such a magnificent spectacle-- to motivate me to get right with God in fear of the end. Do you? (Hebrews 10:26-27).
It seems so poetic to think that God might create such a “pre-sign” of the sun-darkening end-event to come, and then cover the sky with clouds so that the masses would miss it by ignorance while the “knowledgeable” know it is happening even without seeing it.

“Having eyes, see ye not? And having ears, hear ye not? And do ye not remember?” Mark 8:18.

It’s as if God was telling us scripturally illiterate intellectual giants that this “sign” is not about the temporal event to be watched in either awe or fear. As I visit with people in other states, God seemed to cover the event with clouds over much of the land, thereby forcing us to contemplate what we knew by information but could not bow see.

“…An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” Matthew 12:39-40.

This “blood moon” event happened on Passover; also the day of the crucifixion on which Jesus Christ likewise died to save us from our much-deserved wrath of God as the Death Angel passed over the Hebrews in Egypt protected by that blood of sacrifice. How many Christians contemplated THIS over the hype of the end of the world? …where virtually every scriptural mention of the moon turning to blood also includes the sun going black (Joel 2:31, Acts 2:20, Revelation 6:12).
If this was a sign, the masses of Christians completely missed the point. And the non-Christians had no hope of figuring it out.

As a side note: Do you realize that according to God's divine calendar, established on day-four of Creation and declared specifically designed to mark such things, We can know confidently that in spite of all the manipulations of man to mess with times and laws-- and calendars-- we should be celebrating the resurrection this year on Friday morning the 18th as God’s resurrection Sunday, as Typed by the OT “second sabbath” Holy Days (Leviticus 16:29-31, 23:27-32=Leviticus 23:37-38). How hard is that to figure out? But don’t let this bit of insightful trivia throw you from the topic and point of this Post.

Humanity gets all the life they need from the sun, and in that temporal mindframe of understanding life they reject the Son and his light that was given as hard to comprehend and unnecessarily redundant. So, like as the stove of the temple and sacrifice that was taken away to encourage them to accept the true worship and Sacrifice that they only Typed, God will likewise blot out the light of the sun and moon to allow us no alternative but to accept the true life-giving light of the true Sun:

“And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it” Revelation 21:23-24.

How amazing is that?!
The exploration of this prophecy applied functionally will have to wait for another time.
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