When Jesus’s two apostles James and John—the sons of Zebedee—asked (as did their mother) whether they could sit at the left and right hands of their Lord, the response of Christ was thus (loosely translated something like this): “You know not what yourselves are asking. Are you able to drink the cup I, drink I, or be baptizing [of] the baptism I am baptized [of]?”1
Jesus, out of the tender merciful gracious character of His Father and Head Jehovah—as the express body and image of Jehovah—did not harshly upbraid His two disciples for striving out of a pure heart to walk in His ways toward the hope of drawing near to Him to the fullest, however misguided their youthful, insufficiently matured impression at that time being was. For the two sons of Zebedee had not at that moment yet grasped the implicating fullness of what must be endured in the maximus of travailing pain and grief by the fleshly manifested body of God to atone for the sins of His people, that the Ultimate Prophet must be baptized through ultimate suffering.
Surely when Christ in His three-and-a-half-years of ministry spoke words of enwisening truth unto disciples who then failed to understand the end implicated conclusion of what the kingdom of His Father embodies and what it takes to reach there, there was a deeply felt pain inextricably intertwined with unfettered compassion toward His sheep out of a yearning that they would understand, that the sincerity of their dovish innocence would not be in lack of and apart from a conjunctively internalized serpentine wisdom.
For it is written of the earthly Levitical high priest who ministered in the earthly sanctuary reflecting the heavenly, “exercising forbearance [he] is able with those being ignorant and erring, because and himself is encompassed with infirmity.”2 How much more so then must Jesus, the expressly manifested image of the invisible God who cannot sin, as the antitypical substance be compassionate upon His people who fall short in ignorance and erring! Do not the ingrained marks and characteristics of a true prophet reflect that of the chief and ultimate prophet Jesus declared of by Moses, that Jehovah God’s prophets—as His servants3—travail as components of the body of Christ (the assembly) in the kenotic perforatage of being crucified with their head and example,4 partaking in one common baptism5 into the Lord?6
Thus spoken of baptism is this, that an antitype it is of the Great Flood,7 when Noah and his family were preserved in the ark that in its atoned completion represents the heavenly Zion and New Jerusalem in which Jehovah’s kenotically sanctified people shall be preserved unto everlasting life. And selfsame the Great Flood of ancient served as a type for the day of Jehovah a.k.a. the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, when impending judgment and destruction by fire shall meet the unrepentant.8
What therefore must be the meaning of baptism? It is none other than the process of putting to death the old earthly self, kenotically emptying it of its filthy, sinful baggage, to accept the resurrection unto a heavenly new self filled with the enriching goodness of Christ. By thus implication, it requires the fullness of a consciously matured understanding and accordingly lived-and-breathed verity of what it takes to overcome sin in the empowered capability granted by God, in the perfect faith of His image Jesus, who overcame the three temptations of Satan toward triumphing where Adam and Eve failed. I wrote of this a while back:
In the progression toward solid meat, the first threshold to overcome is of course unfaithfulness: one must believe the resolutely firm truth of God’s uttered oracles and trust that heavenly truth is higher than earthly vanities—this is the basic first step at more or less the “milk” stage. Secondly is the required grasp of serpentine wisdom in order to stand in firmness when faced with cynical co-optation and instrumentalizing misuse of God’s truth that bends its superficial forms and trappings to mislead astray people down a path of perdition. Most of the people INSIDE God’s assembly fail to attain this level of discernment because they can’t wean off of spiritual milk and eat the spiritual solid meat.
Now, let’s assume that you (if you actually have read this far at all) and I are both not only God-fearing individuals of a dovishly austere kenotic spirit but also possess serpentine wisdom to see through and not be misled/“Anbarized” by the cynical dialectical propaganda mechanisms of this world. Very excellent then: there is just one more threshold to painfully overcome: love of the world.
Just because you overcame the traps of conniving propaganda deception does not mean that you’re there, because remember: Jesus had to overcome three temptations in order to emerge victorious where Adam and Eve failed in the very fall that behooved Jesus to travail and suffer here on earth for the sake of redeeming His created human beings. The third and final temptation does not entail any overtly beguiling deception, but rather just shows a person how luxuriously wonderful the temporal splendors of this realm is and how much more satisfying it is to the ego than to painfully empty oneself in self-sacrificial bleeding and suffering to seek after God.
To come to exist as a true prophet of God necessitates being baptized in the internalized and veritably accepted understanding of these three phases of overcoming this world, in order to be spiritually resurrected toward the assured hope of eternal life reconciled with one’s Outcarver (yes, “Outcarver” and not “Creator,” cf. this), Jehovah of Hosts. And this is where the stomach becomes embittered; cf.
In a short and sweet highly bitter nutshell: there is no such thing in the narrow gate of true prophetic declaration as, “if we common people just all gather together and resist, we can herald a better future here on earth and overthrow all the evil plutocratic empire!” Quite literally, that’s a delusionally absurd fantasy.
The truth is this: anyone who lives piously in Christ Jesus will ultimately suffer persecution9—that’s an absolute guarantee. People who seek God out of a pure heart and live in kenotic accordance will not be “raptured” out of suffering, but ultimately must endure it in its final, most horrifying forms. It says in Revelation that the apocalypticist—John the Apostle (yes, one of the sons of Zebedee who with his brother asked to sit at the right and left hands of Jesus)—saw:10
…the souls of those who have been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus, and because of the word of God, and who did not bow before the beast, nor his image, and did not receive the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand…
You most definitely read that right! Those who stay true to God’s righteousness to the end, in the ultimate final conflict here on earth, will face mass murder by the integrated ISIS-style ecumenical death squads of the beast/False Prophet confederation. When does this take place exactly? Well, let’s check…11
And I will give to My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy days, a thousand, two hundred, sixty, arrayed with sackcloth; these are the two olive [trees], and the two lamp-stands that before the God of the earth do stand; and if any one may will to injure them, fire doth proceed out of their mouth, and doth devour their enemies, and if any one may will to injure them, thus it behoveth him to be killed. These have authority to shut the heaven, that it may not rain rain in the days of their prophecy, and authority they have over the waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the land with every plague, as often as they may will.
And when they may finish their testimony, the beast that is coming up out of the abyss shall make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them,
For context: candlesticks in prophetic symbolism represent assemblies a.k.a. “churches,”12 so here it’s almost definitely referring to God’s assembly as two witnesses of His people in both east and west.13 And the completion of the testimony of God’s two witnesses are none other than the latter rain outpouring to finish ingrafting every last person who will ultimately be saved and preserved unto eternal life, which means that right after that, the final persecution comes, for it is said:14
And after these things I saw four messengers, standing upon the four corners of the land, holding the four winds of the land, that the wind may not blow upon the land, nor upon the sea, nor upon any tree;
and I saw another messenger going up from the rising of the sun, having a seal of the living God, and he did cry with a great voice to the four messengers, to whom it was given to injure the land and the sea, saying, ‘Do not injure the land, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we may seal the servants of our God upon their foreheads.’
The fact it says “until” means that the land (a.k.a. the abode of God’s covenant people) ultimately is going to be hurt after the servants of God are sealed in their foreheads in completed, ingathered unity, which is commenced by the latter rain outpouring fulfilling the Noahic Covenant. Zechariah provides yet discomforting details:15
Lo, a day hath come to Jehovah, And divided hath been thy spoil in thy midst.
And I have gathered all the nations unto Jerusalem to battle, And captured hath been the city, And spoiled have been the houses, And the women are lain with, Gone forth hath half the city in a removal, And the remnant of the people are not cut off from the city.
So right after the latter rain outpouring wherein every last person predestined by God unto salvation is grafted in, immediately what comes next is that Jehovah will release the floodgates of the final tribulation and give up His body, the assembly of His people—just as He gave up His body Christ to be crucified—to be taken into captivity and crucified by the beast/False Prophet satanic confederation of the perditious children of this world, where women are mass-r*ped (if you think the “Islamic State” mass sexual abuse and murder of Yazidi women or the “Jewish State” mass sexual abuse and murder of Palestinians is the peak culmination of absolute evil, just wait till you check out what the final integrated beast/False Prophet “Christian State” will look like) and some very large number (I honestly have no clue whether it’s going to be a majority vis-à-vis how many ultimately survive into the Parousia to be translated without seeing death) are ultimately decapitated in droves.
Note that the wind does not blow on God’s assembly of people until after the latter rain outpouring. What this means for Jehovah’s faithful adherents right now is that one is quite literally preserved on this planet all the way until then (yes, through all the “interregnum” chaos and bloodshed that comes in between) in order to face martyrdom in that final tribulation.
Embittered stomach to experience indeed, lest you boorishly thought that prophecy was about pompously boasting how right you were to magnify your own self.
Mk. 10:38; Matt. 20:22a.
Heb. 5:2.
Rev. 10:5-7.
Gal. 2:20.
Eph. 4:5.
Gal. 3:27.
I Pet. 3:18-22.
II Pet. 3:1-10.
II Tim. 3:12.
Rev. 20:4.
Rev. 11:3-7.
Rev. 1:20b.
Cf. Zech. 8:7-8.
Rev. 7:1-3.
Zech. 14:1-2.