Unleavened Bread study series, pt. 4/7: when the bread of life was severed from the people
Guess what that time period was called when the light of the world was banned?
Cf.:
And so, this is the pericopal chiasm of the fourth out of the seven letters to the seven angels of the seven assemblies in Revelation:1
a: ‘And to the angel of the assembly of Thyatira, write:
b: These things says the Son of God, who is having His eyes as a flame of fire, and His feet like to fine brass: I have known your works, and love, and ministration, and faith, and your endurance, and your works, and the last [are] more than the first.
c: But I have against you a few things, that you do suffer the woman Jezebel—who is calling herself a prophetess—to teach, and to lead astray my servants to commit whoredom, and idol-sacrifices to eat; and I did give to her a time that she might repent from her whoredom, and she did not repent.
d: Behold! I will cast her into a bed, and those committing adultery with her into great tribulation, if they will not repent of their works, and her children I will kill in death, and know shall all the assemblies that I am He who is searching reins and hearts, and I will give to you—to each—according to your works.
c’: And to you I say, and to the rest who are in Thyatira—as many as [have] not this teaching, and who do not know the depths of the Adversary, as they say—I will not put upon you other burden, but that which you have, hold you till I may come.
b’: And he who is overcoming, and who is keeping unto the end My works, I will give to him authority over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron—as the vessels of the potter they shall be broken—as I also have received from my Father, and I will give to him the morning star.
a’: He who is having an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies!’
And this is the account of the fourth seal opening:2
I: And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come and behold!’
II: And I saw, and behold! a pale horse, and he who is sitting upon him—his name is Death, and Hades does follow with him.
III: And there was given to them authority to kill over the fourth part of the earth with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and by the beasts of the earth.
And likewise, the record of the fourth trumpet blowing:3
I: And the fourth messenger did sound, and smitten was the third of the sun, and the third of the moon, and the third of the stars, that darkened may be the third of them, and that the day may not shine [for] the third of it, and the night in like manner.
II: And I saw, and I heard one angel flying in the mid-heaven, saying with a great voice, ‘Woe! Woe! Woe! to those dwelling upon the earth from the rest of the voices of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!’
The meanings of the symbolic-prophetic language would be such:
[epistle]
“these things says the Son of God…”: Jesus addresses Himself this way to this particular church gospel dispensation era, evidently because something went terribly wrong to the point that His title and nature became distorted in the mainstream perception of so-called “Christendom”
“you do suffer the woman Jezebel… calling herself a prophetess… to teach…”: not literal Jezebel, but rather a particular clerical entity, because a woman in prophetic imagery represents a church;4 Paul spoke in crystal-clear terms that a “woman” a.k.a. clerical/ecclesiastical body is not permitted biblically to teach or to rule over a husband5 (he states just a few sentences prior who the man/husband is: the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ6)
“lead astray my servants to commit whoredom, and idol-sacrifices to eat”: these are the same two apostatizing offenses committed by those ensnared by the particularly mentioned Balaam and Balak from the previous pt. 3/7 study,7 indicating that whoever this “Jezebel” is, its functional existence is the culmination of whatever Balaam’s agenda was
“I did give to her a time that she might repent from her whoredom, and she did not repent”: since fornication in spiritual terms is a symbol for apostasy,8 Jesus is speaking here of a particularly self-magnifying blasphemous clerical entity which continuously refused to repent of its idolatrous abominations against Jehovah, the God of Heaven
“and her children I will kill in death”: obviously this cannot be literal because the “mother” Jezebel itself here is defined as a clerico-ecclesiastical institutional body, so this can only be referential to those who carry on her teachings in apostatizing practice—note the similarity to what the prophet Isaiah spoke of Babylon’s demise: “And now, hear this, O luxurious one, who is sitting confidently, who is saying in her heart, ‘I [am], and none else, I sit not a widow, nor know bereavement.’ And come in to you do these two things, in a moment, in one day, childlessness and widowhood, according to their perfection they have come upon you, in the multitude of your sorceries, in the exceeding might of your charms.”9
“depths of the Adversary”: literally, the depths of Satan—just as the assembly in Pergamum was situated where Satan’s throne is, the assembly in Thyatira is caught in a deep quagmire where the depths of satanic gnosis (“knowledge”) permeate the high halls of principalities and powers
“rule them with a rod of iron—as the vessels of the potter they shall be broken—as I also have received from my Father…”: iron in this context is a prophetic symbol for the might and power emanating from divinity,10 whereas clay represents tje brittleness of humanity11—Jesus here promises to those caught in this particular age of spiritual darkness (or one might put it, the Dark Ages) of a satanically Nicolaitan power-grabbing cult that the true strength from above to subjugate the world is a heavenly one which God grants
“morning star”: none other than Jesus Himself12
[seal]
“pale horse”: representation of deadness13
“Death”: if the horseman itself is “Death,” then within the contextual framework of the chariots of gospel-preaching, the life of the gospel within the hearts of the human messengers—ordained to bring it forth unto the whole world—has been extinguished into desolation
“Hades”: in other words, the abode of the dead—within the biblical context that the dead know nothing and sleep in the grave until the resurrection,14 it is a symbolic reference to the fact that the dead are simply dead and unconscious, “abiding” beneath the land15
“sword”: cf. the words of Jesus to His apostle Peter, “for all who did take the sword, by the sword shall perish”16
“beasts of the earth”: the civic kingdoms of the world17
[trumpet]
“sun”: symbol of the sun of righteousness,18 a.k.a. Jesus Christ, the radiance of Jehovah’s glory19
“moon”: the lesser light20 as the complimentary counterpart to the sun, ambiguously interpreted sometimes in simplistic terms as the “wife” of the sun21—however, the moon in prophetic symbolism here cannot simply be God’s body of people, because the sanctified woman in Rev. 12 is portrayed as standing upon the moon;22 more likely (I determine not), the moon represents the Mosaic Law a.k.a. Torah, serving spiritually as a reflection of the greater light that is God23
“stars”: a.k.a. the angels,24 not necessarily exclusively heavenly angels, but encompassing earthly messengers also
“Woe! Woe! Woe!”: the earthly counterpart of pronounced woe to the heavenly “Sanctified! Sanctified! Sanctified!”25 proclamation of Jehovah of Hosts’ glory
In quick and simple summary: the focus of the fourth dispensation of the gospel herald (more so the lack thereof) is upon the theme of light and darkness, where Jesus is explicitly described in the context of being the light of the world,26 whereas His role as the spiritual bread of life was conveyed directly in the preceding third gospel dispensation period.
Considering, however, that a closer study of the church epistles reveal an intertwined continuity from the progressively incremental consolidation of apostasy in the third period to the “completed” perdition of the fourth, it is evident that variously face-value differing prophetic symbols are actually complimentary and reveal how the same concepts and themes are shown merely from different angles. And just as in the third church age, the fulfillments are not that particularly difficult to identify: obviously the fourth time period was the Dark Ages in medieval Europe, the darkness chiefly due to the deprivation of the light of the world from the common people throughout those centuries when the Bible was banned from free-reading amongst the common people in their everyday vernacular, and when the fungal spore of antichristic perdition bloomed into a poisonous mushroom out of the corpse of the very entity that hitherto restrained it.
The Jezebel spoken of therefore is none other than the Roman Papacy, the clerical priesthood from Vatican City which magnifies itself presumptuously to the prerogatives of Jesus Christ on open air, and which ordered the mass killings of God’s faithful adherents who refused her apostasies just as literal Jezebel hounded down Jehovah’s prophets in the days of Elijah the Tishbite. Jesus—the light of the world—was deprived, as God’s holy law expounded in the Torah was marginalized via Marcionite-Nicene anti-Judaic dualism, and when God’s true messengers were also suppressed from shining forth Jehovah’s light.
Remember from yesterday’s post about the emphasis of the oil and wine: only those faithful to Jehovah from the heart experience the anointing power of the Holy Spirit and joy of communion with their Creator. This is why the revelatory description of the fourth time period quotes the following Jeremiah passage:27
I Jehovah do search the heart, try the reins, even to give to each according to his way, according to the fruit of his doings.
When all the doctrinal waters of salvation are reduced to wormwood as the bread of life is taken away to the point of inducing starving death for lack of spiritual food to internalize, each person is judged in the sight of God accordingly to however much light they have to live up to. As Jesus declared:28
And that servant, who having known his lord’s will, and not having prepared, nor having gone according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes;
and he who, not having known, and having done things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few; and to every one to whom much was given, much shall be required from him; and to whom they did commit much, more abundantly they will ask of him.
Subsequent to the Dark Ages was a period of reformatory prospects toward a potential restoration of the bread of life, the light of the world—but the rest of God did not mete out to restoration in the subsequent gospel dispensation, as shall be briefly explained tomorrow.
Rev. 2:18-29.
Rev. 6:7-8.
Rev. 8:12-13.
Eph. 5:22-33.
I Tim. 2:12.
I Tim. 2:5.
Rev. 2:14.
Jas. 4:4.
Isa. 47:8-9.
Rev. 12:5.
Rom. 9:20-21.
Rev. 22:16.
Cf. Jl. 2:6; Nah. 2:10.
Job 14:12-14; cf. I Cor. 15:51-52.
Cf. Rev. 5:3.
Matt. 26:52.
Dan. 7:17, 23.
Mal. 4:2.
Heb. 1:1-4.
Cf. Gen. 1:16.
Gen. 37:5-10.
Rev. 12:1.
Cf. Jer. 31:35-36.
Rev. 1:20b.
Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8.
Jn. 8:12.
Jer. 17:10.
Lk. 12:47-48.