Jesus spoke in parables and this time it was a parable of His own death. The householder employed husbandmen to run the vineyard in his absence.
The householder owned the estate, and he was the noble. It
was his to do with as he pleased and his workers to do his pleasure.
“There was a certain householder, which planted a
vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a
tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country” (Mat 21:33).
Compare that to the Garden of Eden. God was the certain
householder and without a doubt the Garden belonged to God who had planted it. The
householder of the parable would be God who planted a Garden in Eden.
In this case, the Garden was a vineyard. God planted it Himself
and then left the Garden for Adam to administer. Himself was in Adam. Adam
would be the right hand of God. He was without a name, but his kind was
Adamic. Adam’s himself was without a name. As the only one of that kind, like God,
he was called by the name of his kind.
Adam was the first ‘plant’ in the Garden, and he was one of
many varieties of live but he alone was dominant. It was Adam who was ‘elected’
to be planted rather than any of the other kinds. “The Lord God planted a
garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed” (Gen
2:8). God planted a living soul that was His Image (Gen 1:27).
‘Eastward’ in this context is not the best translation.
Since the Sun comes up in the East, the implication is that God planted the Garden
before time
The parable was about growing vines in a vineyard. Jesus
revealed the parable somewhat, when He said, “I am the true Vine, and my Father
is the Husbandman” (John 15:1). The Greek word, ampelos (vine) implies
two-from-one.
A vine is thus a binary multiplier — two from one, four from
two, sixteen from four, and so on to a multitude from the first one. As the
Vine, Jesus is the Invisible Image and the progenitor of the multitude in the gospels.
The husbandman in the parable is the vine dresser. If
you remember, the first man was assigned the role of husbandman in the Garden of
God, “The Lord God took the man (adam), and put him into the Garden of
Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Gen 2:15). That nameless man was assigned a
vocation. He would be the ‘husbandman’ in the absence of the ‘Householder,’ on
whose Estate he resided.
As the two-from-one, Jesus was the Vine and the Husbandman.
His role was like a king to Caesar in whose absence, the king or governor
became, not only the caretaker, but the Caesar. So, think of the ‘Householder’
as being a type of Caesar with both being the caretaker and the householder.
“But,” you say, “Jesus is the Vine and His Father the Husbandman!”
Are you forgetting that the Vine and the Husbandman are the two-from-one? Jesus
was both the Vine and the Husbandman, and John verified that (John 1:1-14).
Returning to the parable, the ‘vineyard’ would be the Garden
that God planted. Its ‘crop’ was not grapes at all, but the Estate of God is a
Garden of living souls that Jesus, as the Word, planted in the Garden before
time began.
Jesus said for them to hear another parable; the one which I have been commenting qbout:
There was a certain
householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it
round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it
out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: And when the time of the fruit
drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the
fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed
another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first:
and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son,
saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they
said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us
seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the
vineyard, and slew him. (Mat 21:33-39)
Not only was it the Lord’s Garden, but it was the ground (Hebrew;
adam) on which the LORD GOD planted the Image of Himself, so to speak.
It was His own Divine Seed that was planted, and since the person, Adam, was of
God and the ground, he was called the ‘Ground’ (Adam), or more precisely
the dust, or atoms, of the ground. Mankind to this day have the same
composition and in the same proportion as the elements of the ground itself.
Adam would be the ‘Vine’ because with that one man came
two. Adam was the Vine that God planted and from that one seed came two human
beings; Adam and his woman.
Consider what Paul wrote, “The first man Adam was made a
living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit” referring to Adam’s
kind and Jesus. Adam and his woman were the first man, two-from-one.
They were of one flesh, as Jesus said it; “The two shall be one flesh: so then
they are no more two, but one flesh (Mark 10:8), speaking of the first male and
female.
The male and the female were one. They were the ‘vine’ that
would multiply. That ‘crop’ failed (Gen 3) so, the LORD GOD Himself became the “Husbandman”
as well as the ‘Householder.’
Adam #1 (Jesus is the ‘Last Adam.’) [1] was planted in the Garden.
God took his soul that was made first (Gen 1) added the elements to make a
visual image, then planted the living soul in the ground to grow and multiply its
seed. Jesus was the ‘quickening spirit’ or the Miracle Grow® that worked
wonders in the Garden.
Because a deadly spirit got into the Garden, the LORD GOD fired
the first husbandmen and sent them to work another place in another realm. [2]
The Lord God became the two-from-one (the ‘Vine’ and
the ‘Husbandman’ as one), to wit: “In the beginning (before time) was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
In ancient days, the “beginning” would be said, “Eastward”
since the Sun rises in the East. It was not directional at all but before time.
Hence, the Word and the LORD GOD were One before time began. Before Jesus went
to Paradise, He made a bequest to the Father, that “they may behold My Glory,
which You have given Me: for You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John
17:24). The LORD GOD said Jesus loved Him before time began.
Exactly when did time begin? With decay — with death.
Time is the measure of living organisms and with the first sin, death ensued.
(I submit that time began with the first sin and with the establishment of a Garden
of Adam in the world.) In other words, the world was already there when time
began; no wonder it is so ancient!
Recently, I went camping… about two months ago. I had put
two slices of bread in my Tupperware® container and sealed it. The container
was sandwich shaped so consider the bread the organic ‘soul’ that was covered with
a Tupperware ‘body.’
When I finally checked my backpack, after two months time,
those two slices of bread remained fresh even after all that time. If the
vacuum had been perfect, in theory, that organic bread would have lasted forever,
if the moisture was drained off early on.
Given a perfect environment in another realm, theoretically
mankind could exist forever if they were engulfed in the quickening spirit (living
water — the Holy Spirit) to keep them robust.
Not that the heavens are a vacuum but with no contamination,
the Garden of God in Paradise, since it was perfectly good (Gen 1:31),
organisms would live forever as if in a perfect vacuum. In other words,
Paradise would have no foul air to degenerate living souls, and since souls are
not even organisms, they would endure forever in the Garden of God.
Referring again to the parable, it should be obvious that
Jesus was referring to Paradise in heaven where the Father of the Godhead is
the ‘Householder,’ and in this case the two-from-one — the Husbandman as
well with the Son having the authority of the Husbandman.
It is interesting that the parable says, “and hedged it
round about.”
Satan accused God of putting a hedge around Job, His servant
(Job 1:10; 3:23). The accusation was that Job was safe in the Garden of
God as one of His ‘plants.’ The ‘hedge’ was literally a ‘restraint”
Again, east is not directional; it is before time;
hence time began when Adam was placed into the world. Since time has no
direction nor substance, there is no such thing as time before it is experienced.
It is time that kills. That piece of bread that I enshrined in a vacuum,
experienced almost no time and it remained fresh.
There is a scientific experiment wherein an old fashion time
clock is placed in a nearly perfect vacuum. When the alarm rang there was no
sound since there was no medium for sound waves in a vacuum. It rings but does
not alarm.
An alarm comes when the set time is reached. Because it was
a mechanical clock, its mechanics indicated that time had elapsed, but if the
time had been measured by an organism, no time would have passed. Time is therefore
not the ticking of a mechanism but the decaying of an organism.
God enshrined both Adam and Eve in coats of skin (Gen 3:21) to
endure the world. No longer in Paradise, God covered them just like we would
cover plants with the last frost. It was literally covers for their exposure.
Perhaps it was not skins at all but the ‘hedge’ as if Paradise was still with
them and wherever they would go, they would be in a near Paradise wherein
decadence does not exist.
No longer in a perfect place, say a “perfect vacuum,” they
would be safe in an imperfect vacuum. They could endure the world as if they
were in the paradisical Garden, or a Paradise on Earth. Before sin, they would
have been in the realm of heaven, but God transplanted them into another ‘Garden
of the Lord’ (Gen 13:10) along the River of the Garden (Naral Ha Yarden) —
the Jordan River.
Lot saw that place as he entered Zoar, apparently where Job
had lived long before. Could it be that God had indeed put a hedge around the
earthly Garden Paradise in the same manner as Paradise in Heaven, or was Job
wearing the ‘Garment of Adam’ that the Book of Jasher indicates was
passed down from Adam to Noah and onward? Would that Garment be the ‘Whole
Armor of God” (Ephes 6:11) of which Paul wrote?
Is the apparel of the armor the full covering like the ‘hedge’
of fig leaves that Adam and Eve put only around their pudenda? Had Adam attempted
to put his own ‘hedge’ around them knowing full-well their punishment was in a
sort of prison beyond their safe-space?
Since Eve became the goddess (Gen 4:1), had the male become
the god, creating their own safe spaces — aprons of fig leaves, knowing full
well that they would be transplanted as a very different kind in God’s Garden
in the world? Was he creating their own ‘vacuum’ over their offensive genitalia
to keep themselves virile? That seems to be the idea!
The ‘winepress’ of the parable was literally digging a
drain for the juices to flow.
God dug the winepress at the crucifixion. As Jesus died the multitude
beheld the digging of the winepress when, “the veil of the temple was rent in
twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent”
(Mat 27:51). The ‘Householder’ did that! Where was the Father during the death
of His Son? Making the rocks rent for the ‘wine’ from the body of Jesus to flow
from Jesus to the ground, or if you remember, the ‘ground’ was Adam. [3]
The Householder did something unusual for a Garden. “He built
a tower.” What in the world for? Not as
a scarecrow, but a watch tower “to repel a hostile attack or to enable a
watchman to see in every direction” (ibid).
The ‘garden’ of the householder, was Israel, which was
surrounded by Eden. The land of the tribe of Dan was known before as ‘Eden’ and
the Gulf of Aden (Eden) is in the entryway to Arabia at the nation of Yemen
whose major city is Aden. Israel is the ‘midst of the Garden,’ on Earth as it
was in heaven. I am suggesting that God made parallel realms of different ‘charges’
— one positive and one negative.
Could it be the coat of skin was not a coat from any animal,
but skins like the beasts, so to dress and keep them? Could it be that the nakedness
of Adam and Eve was not flesh but them without human flesh like the beasts? The
beasts have theirs but to cover their shrewdness (ibid) — their innermost
existence or brutish nature?
The “Tower” of the vineyard was a ‘Tree’ in its midst. The ‘tower’
in the Garden of the Lord was the ‘Tree of Life.’ It was there for the safety
and longevity – life. That same ‘Tree’ is the one that Jesus hung from when He
was crucified. It stood in the middle of the Garden of God in Israel. The Cross
is the Watch Tower and on that ‘Tower’ Jesus watched as they persecuted Him,
who Himself was the ‘Tree of Life.”
Remembering that the “Vine’ is two-from-one, The Householder
put the Husbandmen in charge of the ‘vineyard.’ The Husbandman had the
authority of the Householder. The Householder’s ‘right hand’ was the Husbandman who had the same
interests as if He was the Master. In the parable, the Householder and the
Husbandman represent the two facets of God — the Father and the Son.
The householder went out into a far country, the parable
says. How far did God go? Into another realm. He left Jesus, the Husbandman, in
the near country (the world) to disperse His wine without charge; the ‘wine,’
representing the blood of Jesus (1 Cor 11:26).
While the Householder was on His Throne in heaven, the Husbandman
was on His ‘footstool’ on Earth, so says the LORD GOD: “The heaven is My
throne, and the Earth is My footstool” (Isa 66:1).
So far, the Husbandman was the Son of the Father, but before
that arrangement, there were several other husbandmen who were cruel.
The last Husbandman was the Son of the Householder. It would
be His Estate someday and He would be a fair Master, even a servant to the
bondsmen who worked the Garden. Because He was the Master’s Son, the Son was as
the Master.
In Roman times, the son was the right hand of the father,
not in position, but authority. The Son of the Householder was no other than
Jesus. He was revealing His Identity as Father God using a parable that only those
who truly knew Him would understand.
The bondsmen would have reverence for the son as if he was
the father and owner of the estate.
The son was not an ordinary husbandman. He had a stake in
the plantation. In the last days, the entire garden would belong to the son,
and as the very image of the father, he could probate the will of the father as
if the garden, the bondsmen, and the harvest were his. That is Jesus. He is the
Son, and the bondsmen fellow heirs of His. The bondsmen, if they had served
well, would inherit their parts of the Kingdom of God just as the sons and
adopted sons of Israel inherited the Garden of God — the land of Israel.
Who were the bad husbandmen? Annas and Caiphas, the High
Priests who had the dishonor of killing the Good Husbandman since the Householder
seemed to be far away, even another realm!
Jesus had told Pilate that it was not him that would kill
Him, but “He that delivered Me unto you has the greater sin” (John 19:11). “He,”
just like the ‘Vine’ is two-in-one. “He” was the High Priest Annas and his
right hand, Caiaphas, acting with the same authority that Annas had before when
he alone was the chief priest.
The several other bad householders were the five sons of Annas:
Eliazer, Jonathan, Mathias, Theophilus, and Annas the son of Annas. Caiaphas,
who was high priest was the son-in-law and adopted son of Annas. By the time of
Caiaphas, he thought that the Estate — the ‘Vineyard’ belonged to the House of
Annas, and that Annas was the ‘householder’ and Caiaphas the ‘husbandman.’
In other words, Jesus saw it coming and revealed what was
about to happen in a parable. What would have anyone thought if Jesus had
accused Annas and Caiaphas outright? That Jesus was a conspirator rather than a
Savior!
[1] The intermittent ‘Adams’
were Eve’s kind since Adam named her cunning kind after the first sin and her
beguilement.
[2] I believe that Eden was
the place in Heaven whereon the LORD GOD created a Paradise and
populated it. When the adamah were cast out of the Garden of the Lord; they
were cast out into the world, so that man could run the garden that He had made
in the world… a non-paradisical garden that Genesis chapter three aptly
describes.
[3] In my book, The Skull
of Adam, I contended that Adam was buried beneath Calvary — ‘the place of
the skull’ of Adam to cleanse his sins by the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus.
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