Cause Before Symptom

In Part Fifty of our continuing examination of the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Bible alongside the 1611 King James Bible, we examine 1 and 2 Thessalonians together. These two letters contain some of Paul's most important teachings about the return of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, believers being caught up to meet Him, the Day of the Lord, coming wrath, the falling away, the man of sin, the restrainer, and strong delusion.
 
But before placing any end-times system over Paul's words, we are going to compare the texts themselves. What does the Ethiopian Bible Restoration Project translation actually say, and what does the 1611 King James actually say? Where the wording differs, does it represent a genuine difference, a different emphasis, or simply English that has changed meaning since 1611?
 
Our investigation will take us through the famous description of the Lord descending from heaven, the dead in Christ rising first, and the living being “caught up together with them.” Then we will follow Paul's language into the Day of the Lord and finally into 2 Thessalonians, where he speaks of “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” “our gathering together unto Him,” the falling away, the man of sin, the mystery of iniquity, the restrainer, and the destruction of the lawless one.
 
Only after comparing these passages will we put Paul's statements together and ask the larger question: What does Paul actually say happens before Jesus returns?
 
The purpose is not to prove a prophecy system we already believe. It is to see whether these two biblical witnesses tell the same story—and whether differences in their wording change how that story can be understood.
 
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In Part Forty Nine of our continuing examination of the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Bible alongside the King James Bible, we turn to Paul's letter to the Colossians. This time our investigation will remain centered on the purpose of this series: placing the Ethiopian translation beside the King James, rendered into modern English, and asking what the texts actually say. Where the wording agrees, we will establish that and move forward. Where it differs, we will slow down and determine whether the difference changes the meaning of the passage or how we understand God, Jesus Christ, salvation, and the Christian life.
 
Colossians gives us an especially important book for this comparison because some of the strongest statements about the identity of Jesus appear within its opening chapter. The Ethiopian text describes Christ as “the image of the invisible God” and “the firstborn over all creation.” It says everything in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, was created through Him and for Him, that He existed before all things, and that everything consists in Him. We will compare these statements directly with the King James and determine whether the two witnesses present the same picture of who Jesus is.
 
We will also examine the language surrounding redemption and the blood of Christ. The Ethiopian text of Colossians 1:14 says that in Christ “we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins,” and later says that God made peace “through the blood of His cross.” These are exactly the kinds of passages where wording matters, especially after everything we have already investigated concerning blood, sacrifice, forgiveness, reconciliation, and the cross.
 
As we move into chapter 2, the comparison becomes even more important. Paul confronts philosophy, human tradition, religious regulations, spiritual powers, ascetic practices, visions, and angels. His answer to these competing spiritual claims is the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. We will examine whether the Ethiopian and King James texts describe that sufficiency in the same way and pay particular attention to Paul's statements concerning the fullness of God dwelling in Christ and believers being complete in Him.
 
We will then examine Paul's controversial discussion of food, drink, festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths. Rather than beginning with a denominational interpretation and forcing either Bible to support it, we will compare the wording, follow Paul's argument through its surrounding verses, and allow the texts to establish what Paul is confronting. The same approach will be used when Paul discusses angels, spiritual powers, human commandments, and religious practices that appear wise but may be unable to transform the human heart.
 
Chapters 3 and 4 move the investigation from doctrine into behavior. Paul describes the old person being put away and the new person being formed. Sexual immorality, greed, anger, abusive speech, and lying are replaced by compassion, kindness, humility, patience, forgiveness, peace, gratitude, and love. We will compare how both texts describe this transformation and ask whether either witness allows grace to become an excuse for remaining unchanged.
 
By the end of the investigation, Colossians should allow us to answer two questions. First, does the Ethiopian translation preserve a meaning significantly different from the King James in any important passage of this letter? Second, after hearing both witnesses, what picture of Jesus Christ emerges?
 
That second question may ultimately be the most important. If Christ is truly the One through whom everything was created, if everything exists for Him, if He stands before everything, if the fullness of God dwells in Him, if redemption and reconciliation come through His blood, and if believers are made complete in Him, then Colossians confronts Christianity with a remarkably simple question.
 
Is Jesus Christ really enough?
 
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Did God Warn Jamie Walden About September 2026? The Prophecy I Couldn't Ignore
 
On January 23, 2026, Christian minister Jamie Walden says he was praying and meditating on Psalm 7 when he received a disturbing message: “This is the year.” What followed was an extraordinary series of words and images involving Russia, China, European and Latin American leaders, a major blow to American power in Eastern Europe, civil unrest inside the United States, terrified political leaders, death in the streets, major cities suddenly going dark, financial ruin, and finally an enormous classifier violently shaken by the hand of God. Walden says he also saw a calendar rapidly turning until a finger pointed toward the end of August and beginning of September. The vision ended with two simple words: “Now pray.”
 
I hear claims of prophecy regularly, and ordinarily I give them very little attention. Christians have heard countless predictions about wars, economic collapses, elections, disasters, dates, and the end times, only to watch many of them quietly disappear when nothing happens. Scripture does not tell Christians to blindly believe everyone who says God spoke to them, but neither does it tell us to automatically dismiss every prophetic claim. It tells us to test everything. For reasons I cannot prove, this particular account stopped me. Something about it tugged at my spirit, but that feeling cannot be the evidence. If Jamie Walden truly heard from God, the claim should withstand investigation.
 
In this episode of Cause Before Symptom, we are going to conduct that investigation. Before interpreting the prophecy, we will examine Jamie Walden himself, including his military, law-enforcement, emergency-response, missionary, and ministry background. We will also examine his history of discussing spiritual warfare, biblical prophecy, approaching judgment, and previous experiences he believes came from God. This matters because Jamie is not someone who suddenly began discussing prophecy in 2026. His worldview and previous teachings must be considered when determining whether this experience represents something genuinely extraordinary or something that could have developed naturally from ideas he was already thinking about.
 
We will then establish what can actually be proven about the prophecy's timeline. Walden says he received the message on January 23, but that is presently his claimed reception date rather than a publication date we can independently establish for the complete vision. What can be established is that the late-August and early-September timeframe was publicly circulating before September arrived. That gives us something important: a prediction that cannot simply be rewritten after the fact. We will preserve the original words, the original timeframe, and Jamie's own uncertainties so that subsequent events cannot be forced into the prophecy.
 
The audience will then hear Jamie Walden describe the experience in his own words. Instead of telling you what he said and expecting you to trust my summary, we will listen to the original testimony and distinguish between three very different things: what Jamie says God actually spoke, what Jamie says he visually saw, and what Jamie himself believes some of those images represented. Those distinctions become especially important when examining the American locations he describes, because some city names are Jamie's interpretations of geographical images rather than cities he claims God specifically named.
 
From there, we will investigate the prophecy piece by piece. Why was Jamie meditating on Psalm 7 when this happened, and does the message reflect the themes already present in that Psalm? Why were Russian representatives dressed in military uniforms while the Chinese representatives appeared in suits? Why were European and Latin American figures meeting with them? Most importantly, what could Jamie's extraordinarily specific statement about “a major blow to the US strength and power in Eastern Europe” actually mean? We will examine Ukraine, NATO's eastern flank, America's role in European security, and the possibility of geopolitical realignment without pretending that any particular scenario has already been revealed.
 
Then the vision comes home. Jamie describes chaos, smoke, violence, fear, death, political leaders trembling before television cameras, crowds confronting authorities, bodies remaining in streets, and several major American urban areas suddenly going dark. We will examine what kinds of events could realistically produce such a pattern, including war, cyberattack, infrastructure failure, financial crisis, civil disorder, or some combination of events. The prophecy never clearly tells us the mechanism, and we will not invent one simply to complete the story.
 
The financial component may provide another clue. Jamie describes an atmosphere resembling the uncertainty of COVID, except this time the fear surrounds personal finances and monetary ruin. We will examine whether America's existing financial vulnerabilities could become exposed by a larger geopolitical or domestic shock. Perhaps financial collapse causes the crisis, or perhaps the crisis reveals weaknesses that were already present. Jamie's image of a boiling pot being tipped over may become especially important here, because a pot that is boiling is already under pressure before anyone tips it.
 
But the most important image may not involve Russia, China, America, electricity, money, or war at all. Near the end of the vision, Jamie describes God holding something resembling a massive classifier or mining sieve containing multitudes of people. God gives it one enormous shake. Many fall through while others remain, frightened and clinging together. That image bears remarkable similarities to biblical passages concerning shaking and sifting, particularly the warning that things capable of being shaken will be removed so that what cannot be shaken may remain. If there is a spiritual message inside this vision, the classifier may be where we find it.
 
Finally, we will put the entire claim against Scripture. We will not put Jamie Walden on trial as a man; we will put the statement “God told me” on trial. Scripture gives Christians standards for testing those who claim to speak prophetically, and those standards must matter even when a prophecy excites us, frightens us, or agrees with something we already believe. If September passes and nothing resembling Jamie's vision occurs, we will not move the date or rewrite the prediction. If extraordinary events do occur, we will not seize one convenient headline and announce fulfillment. We will return to the original testimony and compare what happened with what was actually said.
 
I do not begin this investigation knowing that Jamie Walden heard from God. I also refuse to begin it assuming that he did not. I begin with the same position Scripture gives us: test everything and hold fast to what is good. We are not going to make the world fit Jamie Walden's prophecy. We are going to see whether Jamie Walden's prophecy fits the world. And after all the disturbing imagery of armies, darkness, humiliation, financial ruin, and shaking, perhaps the most important part of the entire message is the simplest part of all. Jamie says the final instruction was, “Now pray.”
 
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For eighteen episodes, I have followed one question through Scripture: Why did God choose blood? What began as a question about sacrifice led us somewhere much deeper. We followed blood back to life, life back to breath, sacrifice back to relationship, and finally the entire silhouette toward Jesus. Now, in Part 19, the investigation reaches its end. It is time to stop collecting evidence and deliver the verdict.
 
But one major question remains. What did the blood of Jesus actually accomplish? The New Testament gives us more than one answer. It speaks of forgiveness, cleansing, justification, reconciliation, redemption, ransom, covenant, access to God, liberation, and victory. Rather than forcing all of these into a single explanation, we will ask whether they describe different dimensions of the same saving work.
 
We will also confront one of the hardest questions in Christianity: if God forgave people before Calvary, why was the cross necessary? David was forgiven. Nineveh received mercy. Israel repeatedly experienced forgiveness. Jesus Himself forgave sins before His blood was shed. Perhaps the cross was never about convincing an unwilling God to become merciful. Scripture says that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” The question may therefore be much larger than how God could forgive. What was God doing about sin, guilt, alienation, corruption, bondage, and death itself?
 
We will investigate what Scripture means when it says Jesus gave His life as a ransom and that humanity was redeemed or bought with a price. Was someone literally paid? Or does ransom language emphasize liberation from captivity? We will also return one final time to the apparent tension between Leviticus and Hebrews. If animal blood truly made atonement, why does Hebrews say that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins? What did those sacrifices genuinely accomplish, and what remained unfinished?
 
Then we will ask perhaps the most practical question of the entire series: what actually changed after Jesus died and rose? The answer must involve more than simply saying that humanity could now be forgiven. Scripture speaks of a cleansed conscience, a new covenant, restored access to God, reconciliation, justification, the gift of the Spirit, freedom from the dominion of sin, and the hope of resurrection. The goal was not merely pardoned humanity. It was restored humanity living again in the presence of God.
 
Finally, we will confront the question beneath every other question: Why blood at all? Could God have chosen another way? Scripture may not tell us everything God theoretically could have done, so we will not pretend that it does. Instead, we will ask why Scripture says God chose this way and what blood communicated that nothing else in the biblical story communicated quite the same way.
 
Only then will we return to Leviticus 17:11: “the life of the flesh is in the blood.”
 
For eighteen episodes, that verse has followed us. Now we will determine whether it contains the thread connecting the entire investigation.
 
We began with breath. We encountered blood because life was lost. We encountered sacrifice because life was offered. We reached Jesus and discovered a faithful human life surrendered willingly in love and obedience. Then something happened that prevents death from being the final answer.
 
Jesus rose.
 
So Part 19 will not merely ask why Jesus died. It will ask why He gave His life, why God raised Him, and what became possible because He lives.
 
After nineteen episodes, there will be nowhere else to postpone the question.
 
Why did God choose blood?
 
It is time for the final verdict.
 
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For seventeen episodes, we have followed the trail of blood through Scripture, refusing to settle for the simple answer that blood matters only because “the life is in the blood.” That statement is true, but it has continually opened another question: if blood represents life, then what kind of life was God ultimately looking for? Part 18 finally places Jesus inside the silhouette we have been constructing and asks whether He is the human being the entire story has been pointing toward.
 
Paul gives us the key by placing Adam and Jesus beside one another. The first Adam is associated with disobedience and death, while Jesus is associated with obedience and life. Paul calls Jesus the “last Adam” and makes an extraordinary distinction: the first Adam became a living being, but the Last Adam became life-giving. God's answer to humanity therefore appears to involve far more than finding a perfect sacrifice to die. It involves a faithful human life that succeeds where Adam failed.
 
We follow Jesus through the wilderness, His ministry, Gethsemane, and finally Calvary and discover a remarkable pattern. Jesus is repeatedly given opportunities to satisfy Himself, prove Himself, exalt Himself, seize power, avoid suffering, or preserve His own life. Again and again, He refuses. Adam receives abundance and reaches beyond God's command. Jesus experiences hunger, rejection, suffering, and eventually death while continuing to trust the Father.
 
Gethsemane exposes the issue underneath everything: human will. Jesus does not approach death without anguish or desire. He asks whether the cup can pass from Him, yet says, “not my will, but thine, be done.” Before His blood is ever shed on the cross, His life has already been surrendered in will. Calvary does not create His surrender. It makes physical what His entire life has been expressing.
 
That changes how we understand the blood of Jesus. If “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” then Christ's blood cannot be separated from Christ Himself. Jesus says He lays down His life. He connects laying down life with love. Hebrews says He “offered himself.” The final sacrifice is therefore not merely the shedding of a particular kind of blood. It is the willing self-offering of the faithful human representative.
 
Then Part 18 takes one final unexpected turn.
 
Jesus breathes again.
 
After His resurrection, Jesus appears to His disciples, shows them His wounds, breathes upon them, and says, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” The Greek language used by John carries a striking connection to Genesis 2:7, where God breathes life into the first human. We will handle that connection carefully, but when it is placed beside Paul's description of Christ as the life-giving Last Adam, something remarkable emerges.
 
The first Adam receives life. The Last Adam gives life.
 
The pattern that began in Genesis now comes into focus: received life became misdirected life, but in Jesus it becomes surrendered life, resurrected life, and shared life.
 
Part 18 therefore brings us to the doorstep of the final answer. Blood was never God's destination. Death was never God's destination. Paul actually calls death an enemy that will be destroyed. The trail passes through blood, sacrifice, surrender, Calvary, and the tomb because the destination is life.
 
We began this investigation asking why God chose blood. After eighteen episodes, we may finally be discovering the question underneath that question.
 
Perhaps God chose blood because blood represents what He valued all along.
 
Life.
 
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For sixteen episodes, we have been building a silhouette without naming the person standing inside it. We began with breath, followed life into blood, blood into sacrifice, sacrifice into covenant, and covenant into the promise of a righteous human representative. Now, in Part 17, we finally turn on the light and ask whether Jesus of Nazareth actually fits what the Old Testament had already drawn.
 
The evidence points to something deeper than simply saying Jesus died for sin. Paul places Jesus beside Adam and describes the first Adam as a living being, but the last Adam as life-giving. Adam receives life and turns away from God, while Jesus lives in obedience, refuses to grasp for Himself, submits His will to the Father, and willingly gives His life.
 
That changes how we understand His blood. If blood represents embodied life, then Jesus' blood matters because of the life it represents. His obedience, love, righteousness, and willingness are not separate from the cross. They are what make the cross the final surrender of a life that had already been given to God.
 
Part 17 therefore follows Jesus from the wilderness to Gethsemane, from Gethsemane to the cross, and from the cross to resurrection. The same pattern keeps appearing: He refuses self-preservation, refuses shortcuts, refuses to seize power, and keeps returning His will to the Father.
 
Then something remarkable happens after the resurrection. Jesus breathes on His disciples and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit. The story that began with God breathing life into Adam appears to return to breath again.
 
The movement becomes clear: received life, misdirected life, surrendered life, resurrected life, and finally shared life.
 
Part 17 asks whether this is what God has been teaching all along. Life was never meant merely to be possessed. It was meant to be received from God, returned to God in love, and poured out toward others. Jesus did not merely show humanity how to die. He showed humanity how to live.
 
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Why did the story of blood eventually have to become the story of a human being? In Part 16, we return to the beginning and discover that blood was never actually where the story started. Breath was. Genesis says God formed Adam from dust and breathed into him the breath of life. Humanity's first moment was therefore an act of receiving. Life came from God before humanity could ever offer anything back to Him.
 
That gives us a new way to understand blood. Leviticus tells us that the life of the flesh is in the blood. If breath represents life received from God, blood represents that life embodied in flesh. Sacrifice therefore begins to look like something deeper than God demanding death. Blood represents the surrender of a life that originated with Him in the first place.
 
But humanity's problem was never merely that humans could die. Adam received God's gift of life and then used that life to choose against the One who gave it. Humanity's problem became rebellion, will, and obedience. An animal could shed blood, but an animal could never consciously return its will to God. It could die, but it could not choose faithfulness. It could surrender biological life, but it could not willingly say yes to God where humanity had said no.
 
That may explain why the prophetic silhouette eventually becomes human. The final Worker needs blood because he possesses human life, but he also needs something no animal sacrifice could possess: conscious obedience. If the first human received life and turned his will away from God, perhaps restoration requires a representative human who receives life and willingly returns it to God.
 
Part 16 therefore follows a remarkable movement from Genesis forward: God gives breath, breath becomes embodied human life, blood represents the life of the flesh, humanity misuses that life through rebellion, and the prophetic story eventually points toward a righteous human Servant capable of giving both his life and his obedience.
 
The first breath was a gift. The final breath must become a surrender. Between those two breaths stands the question that may finally explain why God chose blood.
 
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Throughout this investigation, the question has usually been what humanity must bring to God. An animal. An offering. Blood. Obedience. Repentance. But Isaiah forces us to turn the question around. What if the deeper story has always been about what God brings to us?
 
Isaiah 40–55 reveals a remarkable pattern. God comforts His people, calls them by name, carries them, gathers them, leads them, redeems them, remembers them when they believe they have been forgotten, and opens the road for their return. Even repentance appears inside God's prior movement. God says, “return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.” Humanity must respond, but God has already called.
 
Then the mysterious Servant appears, and something extraordinary happens. The work assigned to the Servant begins to resemble the work God has already said He Himself will accomplish. God saves, and the Servant carries salvation to the ends of the earth. God restores, and the Servant restores Israel. God brings His people back, and the Servant is formed to bring Jacob back to Him. God establishes covenant, and then God says He will give the Servant “for a covenant of the people.”
 
This changes the direction of the blood story. The Servant is not humanity's offering designed to convince an unwilling God to love us. God is the One who provides the Servant. The sacrifice does not begin with humanity searching for something valuable enough to give God. It begins with God seeking humanity and providing what humanity could never provide for itself.
 
Isaiah 52 brings these threads together. Redemption comes “without money.” God's salvation is revealed to the nations. His holy arm is made bare. He goes before His people and guards behind them. Then comes the announcement: “Behold, my servant.” Immediately afterward, Isaiah describes the Servant suffering, bearing the sins of others, giving his life, and becoming associated with an offering.
 
Part 15 therefore asks whether the silhouette we have been constructing reveals something even larger than the identity of the coming Worker. Perhaps it also reveals the character of the God who sends Him. From the beginning, God has been calling, carrying, pursuing, rescuing, and making a road back to Himself without destroying human freedom.
 
If that pattern holds, then the blood of the coming Servant cannot represent the moment God finally decided to love humanity. It must belong to the rescue God had already begun.
 
The road back to God keeps beginning with God.
 
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Part 13 moved the investigation from the altar into the human heart. We discovered that God promised something repeated animal sacrifice could never accomplish by itself. He would circumcise the heart, write His Law within His people, cleanse them, give them a new heart and spirit, and ultimately place His own Spirit within them. Jeremiah called this coming restoration a new covenant, and Part 14 asks why covenant and blood belong together.
 
At Sinai, God did not demand that Israel earn its rescue. He had already delivered them from Egypt and told them that He had brought them to Himself. Only afterward did He establish the covenant. This matters because covenant was more than a contract or collection of commandments. God had rescued a people and was establishing how they would live in relationship with Him.
 
Then Exodus 24 places blood directly at the center of that relationship. Moses puts part of the sacrificial blood upon the altar, reads the covenant to the people, and then places blood upon them, declaring, “Behold the blood of the covenant.” We already established that Scripture connects blood with life, so now the question becomes why life represented by blood appears when covenant relationship with God is established.
 
What happens next is remarkable. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders ascend the mountain, encounter God's presence, and eat and drink before Him. We should not force later New Testament meaning into this scene, but the sequence deserves attention. Blood, covenant, God's presence, and a meal appear together. Perhaps covenant was always about something much greater than rules. Perhaps it was about life with God.
 
Israel eventually broke that covenant, and Jeremiah announces God's answer. God promises a new covenant in which His Law will be written within His people. They will know Him, their iniquity will be forgiven, and their sin will be remembered no more. Part 13 already established the heart problem, so we do not need to prove it again. Part 14 instead asks how the new covenant answers the failure of the old one.
 
Then Isaiah gives us one of the most important pieces of the silhouette we have been building. God describes His Servant as someone He will give “for a covenant of the people.” This is extraordinary because Isaiah also describes the Servant as righteous, suffering, bearing sin, associated with the guilt offering, and pouring out his life unto death. The Servant connected with sacrifice is now also connected with covenant.
 
We are still not going to name the Worker. Instead, we are allowing the Old Testament to construct His silhouette. Someone is coming who is righteous, bears sin, gives his life, is associated with sacrifice, and is somehow connected with covenant. Meanwhile, Jeremiah promises that the coming covenant will bring forgiveness and reach the human heart.
 
Parts 12, 13, and 14 are therefore beginning to converge. Part 12 showed us the life being given through the Servant. Part 13 showed us the life God intends to restore within His people. Part 14 asks whether covenant is the bridge connecting those two realities.
 
The question is becoming larger than why God chose blood. We are beginning to ask what God intended to accomplish through the blood. If covenant is ultimately about restored relationship with the God from whom life comes, then blood, sacrifice, forgiveness, transformation, and God's presence may all be pieces of the same story.
 
The Worker has still not been named, but His silhouette is becoming difficult to miss. The blood trail is bringing sacrifice, covenant, and the mysterious Servant into the same picture, and we are getting closer to understanding how the life that is given could become the road toward the life God intends to restore.
 
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Part 12 brought this investigation to an extraordinary turning point. God had commanded sacrifice, yet the prophets revealed that blood could never become a substitute for obedience, mercy, justice, righteousness, humility, or surrender. Then Isaiah showed us something different. Instead of another person bringing another animal, the righteous servant himself became associated with the offering. The sacrifice and the obedient servant began moving toward one another. We saw the work before we named the Worker.
 
But that discovery leaves another problem. Even if the perfect sacrifice deals with the sin we have committed, what happens to the heart that produces the next sin? Humanity's problem is not only the trail of wrongdoing behind us. Something inside us continually produces rebellion, selfishness, injustice, and disobedience. If that source remains unchanged, humanity simply keeps returning to the altar.
 
Part 13 follows the Old Testament as God's solution begins moving from the altar toward the human heart. At first, God commands people to change their hearts. Deuteronomy tells Israel to circumcise the heart and stop being stiffnecked. Jeremiah repeats the command. Ezekiel even tells the people to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit. Human beings are clearly being called to respond.
 
Then something remarkable happens. Deuteronomy says that God Himself will circumcise their hearts so that they can love Him with all their heart and soul. Jeremiah promises a new covenant in which God will place His Law within His people and write it upon their hearts. Ezekiel goes even farther. God promises to cleanse them, remove the heart of stone, give them a heart of flesh, give them a new spirit, and finally place His own Spirit within them.
 
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