Sabbath study, iv: the universal requirement of a true prophet

Embracing the sweetness of tasting the truth fulfills only the first half of authentic prophethood’s criteria; the second half is accepting the lingering bitterness.

Prophets, many and abound—towards which to hearken, which to shun?

Easy as it would be if every self-professed prophet could be safely discredited and declared to be a preacher of duplicity and false prophet, that is alas not the ordained path for any robust truth-seeker. While it is true that the scriptures repeatedly warn against falling for the lies of deceptive prophets,¹ who indeed flourish in gargantuan numbers,² there is no assertion that all professed prophets are automatically preachers of duplicity and lies, even if most are.

So then, how in the world is anyone supposed to reliably determine with precision which self-proclaimed prophet out of various empty preachers and influencers is the needle of truth in the midst of a haystack of lies? Impossible challenge?

Albeit the task admittedly challenging, it is nonetheless far from impossible, and there is a very simple and universally applicable litmus test to determine whether an individual person claiming to be a prophet is an actual true prophet or not. The criteria is more or less the following: if that person is not choosing to endure the affliction of socially ostracized castigation and en masse societal rejection for affronting the feelings of the so-called “common people” especially from their “own” community, then they are almost (though probably not even almost, rather just absolutely guaranteed) definitely 100% not a true prophet.

What does it take to be a true prophet preaching the truthful message which heralds righteousness when heeded? The explanation here can be trifurcated:

1. internalizing with acceptation the universality and irrevocably unchanging nature of the truth as the overarching, absolute guide to one’s individual life

2. internalizing with rigidly sound and thorough understanding how the truth can be deceptively twisted and distorted by deceivers; and not only knowing how to effectively defend the truth against co-optation in the face of deception, but actively choosing to stand for objective truth even when the majority of people believe the co-opted syncretistic lie

3. choosing to stand for the truth even when it costs them all their social standing and earns them the wrath of the whole world’s inhabitants

Note that for the third point, I said “when” and not “if.” Far from merely a possibility, it is a guarantee that any true prophet who continues diligently in the walk of a true prophet will ultimately be reviled and hated by human society’s majority inhabitants. This always begins locally in one’s own hometown—a prophet must always first endure (by reason of standing for truthful righteousness) the scornful revulsion and wrath of their family, childhood friends, neighborhood, city, village, country, etc., because—as Jesus said—no prophet is accepted in his hometown.³

Biblical truth: God is sinless, mortal men are not

The Bible is very overwhelmingly clear: God is higher than man, and the ways of God are above the ways of man, because the heavens are higher than the earth.⁴ Genesis’s very beginning—the narrative of Creation Week—is very plainly straightforward: everything that exists upon the earth was created by God who dwells above, not as if those dwelling in the heavens (a.k.a. above the firmament) were created by anyone down below on the earth.⁵

Yes, the baseline truth is that simple: the immortal and eternal God is higher than mortal human beings, and all of God’s perfect judgments transcend the vainly contrived imaginations of mankind. There is no person born of a human father and mother who is capable of living a sinless life—as Jesus said:⁶

From their fruits ye shall know them; do [men] gather from thorns grapes? or from thistles figs? so every good tree doth yield good fruits, but the bad tree doth yield evil fruits. A good tree is not able to yield evil fruits, nor a bad tree to yield good fruits.

It is often assumed that the mainstream concurred doctrine of “original sin” in Christianity is not verbatim-directly substantiated in the Bible and instead constitutes a late-dated theological position invented by the post-1st-century church elders, often apparently attributed to Augustine. However, this aforementioned Matthew passage proves that the Bible already by itself plainly affirms the core foundational principle of “original sin” that sinful human beings only beget offspring who are inherently sinful: “a good tree is not able to yield evil fruits, nor a bad tree [able] to yield good fruits.”

Was Jesus providing the analogy of a tree and its fruit solely and exclusively as a figurative example about a person’s actions? While that is the commonplace assumption, there is very well a considerably “literal” application here, because a tree in prophetic symbolism represents an individual person—the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar saw a vision of a tree being cut down, interpreted under providential inspiration by the prophet Daniel that the tree represented none other than King Nebuchadnezzar himself.⁷ A single tree in biblical revelation is thereby self-defined in the scriptures as symbolically representative of an individual person—this prophetic key is absolutely necessary for instance to unlock the meaning of the visionary imagery of the trees found in Revelation.⁸

Throughout the Bible (yes, in both Testaments) children are referred to as the fruit of their mothers’ womb.⁹ In light therefore of the substantiated points:

1. individual persons are represented as trees

2. children are the fruit of their mother’s womb

3. no bad tree can bear good fruit

…it is very clear, without ambiguity or contradiction, that no sinful pair of human parents can bear sinless offspring.

Serpentine inversion: elevating the creation above the Creator

Lucifer-Satan’s tactics, at his core modus operandi, are repetitive and boring. (the devil really is not as spectacularly interesting as he’s sensationalistically attributed) He never invents or creates anything materially unique of purely his own accord, because he ever does is take the already-existing perfectness of God and invert at least one of its central structurally definitive tenets to turn a particular divinely affixed principle upside-down. For this weekly sabbath’s Bible study, the focus is of course on heaven and earth: if the truth of God teaches that the heavens are higher than the earth, then Satan’s own narrative thereby posits the exact opposite, claiming the earth and its inhabitants to be above the heavens.

Allow yourself, if you will, to consider the corollary: what does it mean for someone to regard the created human being as above the God who created them?

Scroll around on any social media platform and behold for yourself the popularized influencers, any of them boasting a gargantuan mass following and fervent adoration commanding thousands and even millions of ideological simps. All of them—whether Nazi or commie, genocidally Zionist or superficially “pro-Palestine,” left or right, Moloch or Baal, arsenic or cyanide—are defined by a functionally visceral appeal to validating whimsically impulsive human emotion and self-centered “paths” (or, to put it more succinctly, a “gate” which in the Biblical Hebrew would be “bab,” the very etymological root in the word Babel a.k.a. “bab-el” or “gate [to] God”) to liberation on the basis that human-defined righteousness must be objective righteousness simply because it represents “collective humanity.”

Yes, every single modern-day earthly mass movement is premised on this cyclically reasoned raison d’être to justify its collective machinery: it assumes that human beings can by their own purely mortal human capabilities establish perfected morality through collective human action, and that such determined utopian morality is validated because some form of an en masse “collective human consensus” asserts so.

(what? did some of you assume your fantastic “leftist” and/or mainstream gatekeeper-approved version of “pro-Palestine” internet-warrior so-called activism is uniquely righteous above every other political mass movement concurrently controlled by the genocidal Nazi-Zionist global cabal?)

Bitterness to stomach, then and now

When the prophet Jeremiah was ordained by Jehovah to preach unto the people of Judah, he at first must have been overwhelmed by the calling—his first recorded answer to God was—after all—questioning how he, initially at an age so young, could be appointed for a monumental task so great and pivotal!¹⁰ Although retaining his individual qualms in frequently recorded instances, the biblical book ascribed to his name indicates the prophet to have retained faithfulness. That is, until the priestly deputy governor Pashur—upon hearing Jeremiah’s preaching—assaulted the prophet and imprisoned him in the stocks of the upper Benjamin Gate.¹¹ After fulfilling a command by God to declare unto Pashur the unfaithful and backbiting priest’s ultimate fate,¹² Jeremiah the Prophet then lamented the tribulative calamity befalling himself for obeying God’s command to preach unto Judah, and vowed not to preach God’s name again,¹³ only to return and acknowledge His presence as a burning fire¹⁴ amidst an earthly conspiracy against him.¹⁵ Jeremiah then bears witness of the glorious God while continuing to bemoan his own standing:¹⁶

And Jehovah [is] with me, as a terrible mighty one, Therefore my persecutors stumble and prevail not, They have been exceedingly ashamed, For they have not acted wisely, Confusion age-during is not forgotten. And, O Jehovah of Hosts, trier of the righteous, Beholder of reins and heart, I do see Thy vengeance out of them, For unto Thee I have revealed my cause.

Sing ye to Jehovah, praise Jehovah, for He hath delivered the soul of the needy from the hand of evil doers!

Cursed [is] the day in which I was born, The day that my mother bare me, Let it not be blessed! Cursed [is] the man who bore tidings [to] my father, saying, ‘Born to thee hath been a child — a male,’ Making him very glad! Then hath that man been as the cities, That Jehovah overthrew, and repented not, And he hath heard a cry at morning, And a shout at time of noon. Because he hath not put me to death from the womb, And my mother is to me — my grave, And her womb a pregnancy age-during. Why [is] this? from the womb I have come out, To see labour and sorrow, Yea, consumed in shame are my days!

Just as the prophet Jeremiah did, so too the Lord, Messiah, and Savior Jesus Christ—the image of the invisible God¹⁷—experience the lamenting bitterness of sorrow because of covenantal faithfulness to the appointed mission. Jesus marveled at the unbelief of His earthly Nazareth hometown,¹⁸ upbraided in lamentation Chorazin and Bethsaida for their refusal to repent after doing “mighty works” in those cities,¹⁹ and most especially wept over the city of Jerusalem’s inhabitants, the Judean people of the very Mosaic Covenant established by none other than Himself:²⁰

‘If thou didst know, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things for thy peace; but now they were hid from thine eyes. Because days shall come upon thee, and thine enemies shall cast around thee a rampart, and compass thee round, and press thee on every side, and lay thee low, and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou didst not know the time of thy inspection.’

Also:²¹

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that art killing the prophets, and stoning those sent unto thee, how often did I will to gather thy children together, as a hen doth gather her own chickens under the wings, and ye did not will!

Lo, left desolate to you is your house, for I say to you, ye may not see me henceforth, till ye may say, “Blessed [is] he who is coming in the name of the Lord.”’

Did Jesus only magically realize after being rejected over and over and over by His people that His ministry failed to save all of the Jewish nation? Obviously not—it is stated that Jesus understood from the very start who were unbelieving and who would betray Him.²²

A true prophet’s assignment: feed the flock doomed to slaughter²³

A false prophet, if they know that someone would not listen to them and 100% will refuse to accept their message, would never think to themselves to “waste” their time trying in vain to convince someone who is absolutely unshakably refusing to be convinced. From their standpoint of human-determined “efficiency,” there is absolutely no point in expending the time reaching out and preaching specifically to persuade stubborn “rejectionists” when there are myriads of gullible audiences to brainwash and co-opt. It is IOW a mentality of, “why spend [X] number of hours, days, weeks, and months trying to win over this one stubborn recalcitrant, when I can spend all this time duping a trove of mushy-minded idiots who will easily believe whatever I tell them to the satisfaction of their bendable egos?”

Jesus’s final three-and-a-half years of His earthly life was the substantive fulfillment of Zechariah 11: the Lord and Savior all along knew that many Jews in 1st-century Judea would ultimately absolutely refuse to accept Him as the Messiah into their 70 A.D. systematic demise at the hands of the Roman army, and He still preached the word of truth to their ears for all to hear.

Why? Because the ways of God—transcending those of man—articulate the highest-possible exponentiation of intertwined justice and mercy. (I explained this previously) There is no universal mercy if God doesn’t give the ultimately-damned side of humanity a thoroughly conscious opportunity to repent, because Jehovah according to the scriptures desires “all men to be saved,”²⁴ not willing that any should perish but rather that all should come to everlasting life.²⁵ There is necessitated therefore a providentially overseen assurance that every human being—at least those who reach a certain threshold of self-conscious moral accountability—is given a chance to repent.

To put it this way: say a shepherd oversees two sheep, one of whom constantly keeps running off into danger and needs to be rescued from being eaten by wolves. One day where the shepherd just knows that the silly sheep will inevitably run off a last time to be miserably devoured no matter how much he tries to restrain it, he realizes that if he continues to feed that sheep, it’s just an ostensible waste of animal feed. Why would the shepherd bother to feed both sheep, including the one that will ultimately run off to be devoured by a pack of wolves? Only if he loves even that foolish sheep enough out of a love that transcends his own individual selfish qualms about resource usage as opposed to letting that foolish sheep starve.

Considering that Jesus said He is the chief Shepherd and His adherents are His sheep,²⁶ hopefully some clarity is insurmountably appended.

Revelation 10 overview + analysis

• a (10:1): “And I saw another strong messenger coming down out of the heaven, arrayed with a cloud, and a rainbow upon the head, and his face as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire,”—introduction of a new vision where the apostle John witnesses a “messenger” a.k.a. angel, encompassed with presumably the very cloud and rainbow promised in the Noahic Covenant,²⁷ his face shining as the sun just as Jesus is attributed in the introductory chapter of the Apocalypse²⁸

• b (10:2-3): “and he had in his hand a little scroll opened, and he did place his right foot upon the sea, and the left upon the land, and he cried with a great voice, as a lion doth roar, and when he cried, speak out did the seven thunders their voices;”—herein is introduced the “little scroll” IOW little book

• c (10:4): “and when the seven thunders spake their voices, I was about to write, and I heard a voice out of the heaven saying to me, ‘Seal the things that the seven thunders spake,’ and, ‘Thou mayest not write these things!’”—Jehovah commands His apostle John not to make a public record of what the seven thunders uttered, the exact reason left directly unspecified and sealed

• d (10:5-7): “And the messenger whom I saw standing upon the sea, and upon the land, did lift up his hand to the heaven, and did swear in Him who doth live to the ages of the ages, who did create the heaven and the things in it, and the land and the things in it, and the sea and the things in it — that there shall be no more delay! but in the days of the voice of the seventh messenger, when he may be about to sound, and the secret of God may be finished, as He did declare to His own servants, to the prophets.”—the angel swore to the God of the universe that no more halting, tarrying procrastination should be present (presumably the start date being Aug. 11, 1840—this vision after all is witnessed right after John finished receiving the vision of the sixth trumpet whose conclusion was that those who were not hurt by the 391 years + 15 days plague—which ended on Aug. 11, 1840—did not repent²⁹), but that unfolding human events in these end times will commence rapidly towards the Second Coming

• c’ (10:8): “And the voice that I heard out of the heaven is again speaking with me, and saying, ‘Go, take the little scroll that is open in the hand of the messenger who hath been standing upon the sea, and upon the land!’”—the same God of Heaven that just issued a verbal command to John to seal the utterances of the seven thunders now verbally directs him to take the scroll from the angel

• b’ (10:9-10): “and I went away unto the messenger, saying to him, ‘Give me the little scroll;’ and he saith to me, ‘Take, and eat it up, and it shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall be sweet — as honey.’ And I took the little scroll out of the hand of the messenger, and did eat it up, and it was in my mouth as honey — sweet, and when I did eat it — my belly was made bitter.”—the angel, whose role in possessing the scroll was introduced in the b branch of the pericopal chiasm a.k.a. vv. 10:2-3, now explains to the apostle and revelatory prophet that he must ingest it; because this transpired in vision and the exact literal “event” here symbolically reflects a larger fulfilled reality (in any case, it expands upon the obvious precedent recorded in Ezekiel³⁰), the implication here isn’t necessarily that John outright literally ingested a whole book/scroll (as the point here pertains to personal internalization a.k.a. acknowledgement-encompassing understanding of the knowledge contained in the book), and in any case, the important focus here is that the prophet experienced a mouthful of sweetness before his stomach was transformed into bitterness

• a’ (10:11): “and he saith to me, ‘You must prophesy again about many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.’”—this very “strong angel,” now after fulfilling his providentially appointed task of giving the little book for John the Apostle to “ingest” (a.k.a. internalize), instructs the revelator what must come to pass: the word of prophecy must again be preached to the masses (to expand on the point dissecting the previous pericopal branch segment, this does not necessarily mean that John literally in the vision preached before a whole crowd of people, rather carrying reflecting the role of God’s true messengers on the earth)

There is much bewildered confusion over exactly what this vision means due to a cryptically “sealed” nature of one of the core details. Re. the seven thunders: that is not a topic to address today—even with this chiastic nature understood to augment towards a sound understanding, I must personally admit (as of typing) that an absolutely confident and comprehensive exposition of Rev. 10 is beyond my reach in the present time. (sorry, I’m not a literal “know-it-all”—although the providentially affixed chiasm indicates that the seven thunders’ voices are connected to the larger implications of the little book’s content and ingestion a.k.a. internalization thereof, I don’t (yet?) know exactly what that is, nor for what exactly deductible reason)

With that said, the b’-a’ section of the chiasm (vv. 10:9-11) can perhaps be understood objectively with this exposited clarification: it encapsulates the journey of God’s appointed true prophets:

1. the sweetness as honey in the mouth represents the initial internalization of God’s holy truth given from Heaven—upon discovering and realizing for oneself the marvelous glory of Jehovah’s everlasting righteousness, there is a euphoria of true enlightenment and illumination in the God who lights the world and who leads men unto salvation through His appointed Messiah who atoned for sin on the cross that gives every human being a chance to repent unto eternal life, reconciled with their Creator for all eternity

2. the bitterness in the stomach represents the realization of a larger, harrowing reality on the earth: that very divine truth which leads the prophet unto eternal life will ultimately be rejected by the majority of the planet’s sinful inhabitants who are given a thorough knowledge of the truth and choose to refuse to live up to the light thereof³¹—it entails the heavy-hearted, lamenting acceptation of the fact that the ultimately-impenitent side of humanity will hear the truth which leads to salvation only to reject it and choose the way of death

3. the command to prophesy again unto multitudes of people reflects the fulfillment of the realization inculcated symbolically in the bitterness of the stomach: after knowing that the majority of humanity will refuse to heed the prophesying and choose death, God’s faithful prophets must continue on and finish that very prophesying unto the very people who are guaranteed to reject the message and rail against God’s faithful prophets, because the Apocalypse elsewhere describes very clearly how the tribes, tongues, and nations of the earth worship the beast³²

Conclusion: to be a true prophet, you must accept unequivocal rejection from humanity’s ungodly mass majority

A true prophet’s role is not to declare whatever he/she deems expedient of their own heart’s desire as if “the end justifies the means,” nor are they as the individual person the central bee’s knees to self-center in any way whatsoever. Far from it—an authentic mortal human prophet understands and lives up to the fact that they are only a medium (a.k.a. a “proxy” or “messenger boy”) delivering a message designed and ordained for preaching by someone higher than them.

The very purpose of the office of prophethood is to elevate the divinely ordained message no matter the earthly cost in the face of ungodly human wrath: this means abandoning all pretenses of earthly social popularity and accepting the fact that one will press on the journey towards the heavenly Mount Zion, a journey filled with fire, spikes, pitfall traps, savaging wolves in sheep’s clothing, and much pain, tears, and anguish along the way as one helplessly watches many of their beloved friends fall into the snares of deception unto perdition to be eternally separated from the communion of friendship and many others fall by the sword into martyrdom, all while knowing that one is doomed to a scarily dreadful fate of eliciting the wrath of the entire world to be shunned, scapegoated, and ultimately hunted down to potentially the point of martyrdom for refusing to worship its satanic idols of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood, and stone, which are unable to see, hear, talk, know, nor walk.³³

Only a person who from the bottom of their heart fears God and seeks to keep His commandments³⁴ out of love for Him³⁵ would choose such a path.

Though the fig-tree doth not flourish, And there is no produce among vines, Failed hath the work of the olive, And fields have not yielded food, Cut off from the fold hath been the flock, And there is no herd in the stalls. Yet I, in Jehovah I exult, I do joy in the God of my salvation.

Jehovah the Lord [is] my strength, And He doth make my feet like hinds, And on my high-places causeth me to tread. To the overseer with my stringed instruments!

—Habbakuk 3:17-19

1. Cf. Deut. 13:1-5.

2. Cf. Mk. 13:21-23; Matt. 24:23-35.

3. Mk. 6:4; Matt. 13:57b; Lk. 4:24; Jn. 4:43-44.

4. Isa. 55:8-9; cf. I Jn. 5:6-8.

5. Gen. 1:1-2:3.

6. Matt. 7:16-18; cf. Lk. 6:43.

7. Dan. 4:20-22.

8. Cf. Rev. 7:1-3, 8:7, 9:3-6.

9. Cf. Gen. 30:1-2; Deut. 7:12-13; 28:4, 11; Ps. 127:3; Lk. 1:41-45.

10. Jer. 1:6.

11. Jer. 20:1-2.

12. Jer. 20:3-6.

13. Jer. 20:7-9a.

14. Cf. Deut. 4:24, 9:3; Heb. 12:29.

15. Jer. 20:9b-10.

16. Jer. 20:11-18.

17. Col. 1:15.

18. Mk. 6:5-6a; Matt. 13:58;

19. Matt. 11:21-22; Lk. 10:13-14.

20. Lk. 19:41-44.

21. Matt. 23:37-39; cf. Lk. 13:34-35.

22. Jn. 6:64b.

23. Zech. 11:4-5.

24. I Tim. 2:4.

25. Jn. 3:16.

26. Jn. 10:1-18.

27. Gen. 9:12-17.

28. Rev. 1:16.

29. Rev. 9:13-21.

30. Ezek. 2:8-3:3.

31. Cf. Rom. 1:18-21.

32. Rev. 11:9, cf. 13:7b.

33. Cf. Dan. 5:22-23; Rev. 9:20-21.

34. Ecc. 12:13-14.

35. Jn. 14:15.