The Keystone Pattern and the Extended Keystone

When Cometh That Thief in the Night - Directory
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In 2008, while I was deep in the study of John 13, I was suddenly granted insight into the esoteric meaning of the following verse.

The insight was received as a particularly bittersweet revelation because what this cryptic prophecy meant to me was immediately a great comfort but at the same time, disappointing - and then distinctly unsettling. You would have to know the context to understand my response. I will be sharing my testimony, but for now, it is sufficient to say that I was eager to see the promises related to the prophecy being very quickly fulfilled but that was not to be.

What I found disappointing was the awareness that there would be seven more years before what I longed to see would manifest. What was unsettling was the realization that those years would bring many difficult trials to endure. If I would have realized that there would be an even longer delay due to the addition of another component that remained hidden from me (the adjustment factor - the reset of time), I would probably have been even more deeply unsettled.

What I found comforting was the awareness that I had received a key piece of the end time chronology puzzle, the "missing link" I had been seeking for almost seventeen years! It answered the question of when the shemitah of fulfillment would arrive relative to the celestial sign of 1991.

I came to refer to this revelation insight about timing as the Keystone Pattern. We call this pattern the keystone because it compares to the wedge-shaped stone at the top of an arch. The keystone provides the essential connection between two sides, joining two components together.

The count of years is revealed through this cryptic prophecy, which, in its simplest expression, can be stated as, three things and then a fourth. This sequence pertains to the biblical shemitah cycles.

To understand the importance of the role this keystone pattern plays you have to see it as the vital connection between the celestial sign of 1991 and the shemitah of fulfillment. Without a connection, the celestial sign is isolated from what it is meant to give meaning to. There is no point having an anchor without the chain that attaches it securely to a ship. As we set forth in the study, What is "The Lord's Calendar," the Holy Day Calendar?, the customary way of identifying the appointed times on the Lord's calendar involves the counting off of units of time from a celestial sign. Additionally, there are cycling sets of seven units in number that began being counted off from the first moment that biblical time began to be accounted, which is to say, in the beginning. This count of the keystone pattern involves both conventions. The counting began at the witnessing of the designated celestial sign, and that happened to be coincident with the cycle of seven years known as the shemitah.

That special seventh year is called a shemitah but the word is also used to reference the entire seven year cycle. The commands have to do with agriculture and therefore with The Harvest Allegory and its schedule - the accounting of the Lord of the Harvest's schedule! The Yobel (Jubilee) cycle depends upon the count of shemitah, which is a prophecy about the freedom and restoration that will be joyously celebrated after the shemitah of fulfillment is complete.

Today, there is little agreement about when the shemitah cycle begins and ends. Has it been lost? To most, yes. The Lord of the Harvest conceals and reveals according to His purposes. The treasured knowledge of His schedule is well protected and stewarded! The story of how I learned that the shemitah cycle began "in the beginning" and came to have confidence in knowing the timing of the cycle is told in the study titled, The Lord's Shemitah.

The celestial sign of 1991 marked the beginning of the 857th shemitah. As I write, in March of 2021, we are in the 861st shemitah, as numbered from the beginning, and the 5th in the count from the celestial sign of 1991. So, what is the count that brings us to the shemitah of fulfillment? Let's consider the verse that the Lord used to inform me about the count.

This is a historical record and it's also a prophetic allegory. The crowing of the rooster represents the raising of the dead in Christ.

The rooster will not crow until after something happens, which is to say that whatever it is must happen before the dead in Christ will rise. That which must happen first should be recognized as a sign that may be watched for. The sign involves Peter, who is a type of the church. The prophetic message is that the church must deny the Lord like Peter had denied the Lord, and yes, this is an indictment of the church like those that are also pronounced in the gospels. Only after a sequence of three denials will the dead in Christ be raised, with the denials referencing the three shemitah that are counted off from the celestial sign of 1991. That seems pretty straightforward, and if we assume that the shemitah of fulfillment is the fourth in that sequence, it can be identified as beginning on Yom Teruah in our calendar year, 2012.

Well, here we are in the year 2021. How did that prediction work out for me? The shemitah obviously came and went without the fulfillment. So, was I wrong? Yes, and no. This isn't over yet so it is too soon to make such a call. This isn't me, trying desperately to save face. This is me, trying to understand and communicate what I understand about the chronology of the end of this age as the Lord unfolds it, in His own way and time, as He patiently brings forth the greatest harvest, to His glory.

Let's analyze the esoteric verse and get a little technical with its range of interpretation. If the Lord meant to indicate the fourth in a sequence, why didn't He just declare it simply as the fourth in sequence? If Peter had to deny the Lord three times before the rooster crowed, could he not have denied the Lord four times or more, before the rooster crowed? Technically speaking, you have to say, yes, because the Lord didn't prophesy a limit of only three times. He only said that "a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times." Technically speaking, Peter could have denied the Lord five or six times before the rooster crowed and the prophecy would still have been fulfilled, as worded. (The narrative of John 18 presents us with the account of Peter's three denials, in verses 17 and 25-27.) Logically, why would anyone infer from the way the prophecy was worded that there might be more than three denials? The obvious implication made by the Lord's carefully worded prophecy, in the allegorical interpretation where each denial represents a shemitah in the count, is that the resurrection would follow after three had passed, in the fourth.

Was the Lord being ambiguous with the wording of his prophecy? Yes! If the rooster crowing resurrection is not in the fourth, then, when? The fifth? The sixth? If it's not the fourth, then the prophecy is useless to us because it does not specify the count. If it's not useless and it does indeed specify the count, the only reasonable inference is that it will be the fourth in sequence.

So, what then? How is it the fourth, which began in 2012, when the shemitah came and went with no resurrection? Did we miss it? Did I get it wrong about the interpretation of the count of shemitah from the celestial sign? Did I get it wrong about the celestial sign of 1991 being the point from which the count was to begin? Where did I go wrong? I didn't realize that time had been skewed in a time war and that time would have to be restored before the prophesied schedule would manifest. I didn't realize that a kind of bonus season needed to be factored in. I didn't realize that time would be reset, according to a plan that the Sovereign and omniscient God set in motion from the very beginning.

This was all hidden from me, which is not to say that it's not my fault that I was deceived. It is, and I'm completely blind except for what light the Lord Himself shines to illuminate what He opens my eyes to see. If you can be honest, this will be your own profession, as well. The Lord Y'shua keeps His secrets concealed until it is the right time to reveal them, to whom He wills, in the way He wills.

I believe that time is going to be reset into the past, and the appointed schedule will be restored, such that the fourth shemitah counted off from the celestial sign of 1991 will be the shemitah of fulfillment.

Years after receiving the insight, Aaron and I were surprised to find the extent to which the keystone pattern appears in the Bible. We found more than fifty examples that are sometimes very notable in the matter of what fundamental truths are structured in this way! Yet, nowhere does it seem to appear in any way that overtly suggests why it's there or what it means. The pattern appears in two variants that can be seen, by way of the extension of the basic four to a five element set, to make sufficient provision for the adjustment factor.

The first three things in the sequence are always of the same kind. They represent an unproductive or unfruitful season where the ultimate outcome fails to manifest. Either some kind of failure is experienced or some kind of necessary preparation is being made. At the conclusion of those three things in the series the successful result manifests, either immediately as in the fourth or alternately in a fifth. Where there is a fifth we call it the extended keystone pattern. Among the examples we've discovered, several of them occur in a passage together with other examples. Some of these exhibit a fractal design, where an entire keystone pattern is nested within the fruitful season of a larger scale keystone.

Because there so many examples, we presented the collection in several videos, typically touching on them only very lightly in an effort to convey the scope of this biblical pattern. You'll find a video compilation and a listing with some valuable commentary on this supplemental page, Examples of the Keystone and Extended Keystone Patterns.

My Testimony About When and How the Insight Came

Early in this study, I stated that you would have to know the context to understand my response to receiving the insight about the keystone pattern in 2008. My testimony will provide some very relevant historical context and also bring this right up to the present day because there's a feature that involves the timing of the adjustment factor!

The day that I received the insight from John 13:38 was a special day on the Lord's calendar, an anniversary of the day that was featured in that text. I had known for many years that John 13 featured that day but I didn't choose to study it then for that reason alone. I just knew that's what I needed to be doing. What I had intended to do was to watch for the sign to the Bride, the revealing of the lawless one. I did watch, and the insight that came forth was related to that activity. I didn't see how it related to the actual day and year of the watch until only recently, after many more years.

The keystone pattern involves the count of shemitah cycles. These transition in the Fall of the year on the day known as Yom Teruah. The thirteenth day of the first month has nothing to do with counting off shemitah cycles, but there's another factor involved with the keystone pattern count that does have to do with that day. Only after the count will have run long and time will have been reset back into the past will the span that is strictly defined by the keystone pattern be fixed, solidified. It's the reset of time that involves the thirteenth day of the first month.

The next page in sequence (The Pending Reset of Time) is dedicated to explaining about the reset of time. Some explanation is necessary here because the story of receiving insight about the reset of time is part of the story of how the revelation insight about the keystone pattern developed.

I've had an interest in the linguistic structure of the biblical text since 1980, when I first explored a Companion Bible and marveled at E. W. Bullinger's detailed notes. This technical phenomenon seemed to be of interest to only the rare students of scripture who had a peculiar scholarly bent, and the vast majority of those don't seem to have taken stock of the real value of it. The matter of the value of linguistic structure became very personal to me when, very shortly after the Lord led me to discover the celestial sign of 1991, He drew me to a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2. I stalled there, stuck in a loop as He kept leading me there and I kept moving on without having learned why. It was painfully obvious that I needed to overcome some crippling errors in my thinking about the revealing of the man of lawlessness. The Lord's help came by way of His teaching me how to analyze the structure. You can read more about that in the study, The Sign for the Bride (Bride Sign Pt. 1). What I learned in that study led me to the realization that the lawless one would be revealed according to the biblical trend on an anniversary of the day that Judas was revealed as the betrayer.

By the Spring of 1994 I had learned enough to know that there was only one day of the year to expect that prophecy to be fulfilled. Although there were some very interesting things happening, it wasn't hard to see that it wasn't happening then - even without having the Internet or a TV on which to monitor news reports.

By the Spring of 2001, I had learned that there was only one year in seven that prophecy might be expected to be fulfilled, and I had been brought to have a very high level of confidence in when the shemitah cycles were transitioning. On the appointed day in that third year of the shemitah, I watched diligently to see what might be seen. What I had seen leading up to the watch day had built an eager anticipation! On the day itself I witnessed a very interesting report, and then a closely related report in the days that followed. The Lord had me see Bill Clinton in a modeling of the revealing of the lawless one. He was honored in a way that mimicked the following passage of scripture.

Bill Clinton wasn't riding a donkey but he was riding an elephant and being praised and exalted by the exuberant crowd as if he was their savior. A week or so later, I read a news report that Bill had taken Hillary out of the country for a romantic getaway, calling it, a second honeymoon. This was the sign for the Bride followed by what the sign indicates, the union of the Bride with her Bridegroom that follows shortly after the sign!

That was the watch day in the second shemitah in the count from the celestial sign of 1991. I knew a lot already but there was so much more that I didn't know. The watch day in the third shemitah in the count arrived in the Spring of 2008. I still hadn't learned the secret of how much time had to pass between the celestial sign of 1991 and the shemitah of fulfillment, but that was about to change!

Compared to the previous watch days, the events leading up to that one looked far more promising! Pope Benedict XVI (a.k.a. Joseph Ratzinger) was in the USA for a very rare Papal visit. The media gave a lot of attention to his public appearances in Washington DC and NYC. He was scheduled to end his visit on April 9, 2008, the watch day that was the thirteenth day of the first month on the Lord's calendar. Given my awareness that the Pope was a John-the-Baptizer-type of high priest who will baptize the lawless one at his revealing, and given that the appointed time in that shemitah was about to arrive, this was high drama! Bill Clinton was the other man to watch, just like he had been in 2001. He was on the campaign trail stumping for Hillary (serving the Bride-type). During the Pope's historic visit, Bill began a journey from the western states moving rapidly eastward. The trajectory was such that Bill was heading directly toward where the Pope was reported to be departing from. Bill's progress along the way was being reported in the news and his pace was such that he could very easily have met up with the Pope on the watch day. I wondered if Bill was going to meet the Pope to be baptized on the appointed day!

(In 2012, Joseph Ratzinger was the official Pope, Pope Benedict XVI. He had been baptized on the same day he was born. So far as I can tell, that day in 1927 was the thirteenth day of the first month on the Lord's calendar! It may be seen, then, that the day of his birth and baptism and every "birthday" since then celebrates the baptizing of the lawless one! He's the outstanding candidate for the False Prophet baptizer, counterfeit of John the Baptist! You may recall how it was very controversial when Pope Benedict retired in 2013 and stayed at the Vatican where he remains to this day. Next time around, after time has been reset back to what we expect will be the year 2012, I believe he will keep his office and fulfill the role of the baptizer of Antichrist in 2015 (on his 88th birthday), and that he will subsequently execute the prophesied duties involving the image of the beast.)

I had anticipated being very attentive to the watch when the day arrived in 2008, but despite what I had been seeing as the day drew near, the air of expectation was strangely subdued. I was in a somber mood. Rather than spending the day trawling the news reports and tracking the remarkable situation that had developed, I only very occasionally checked the headlines. I found myself focused on a rigorous study of John 13, which seemed to me to be a very curious undertaking given that the day of the watch had arrived with such drama. Such was the day that would become so memorable for the things that would be revealed. Not the lawless one and his Papal baptizer, of course, but insight that was needed to prepare us for when that day of revealing would arrive.

My unexpected study of John 13 turned out to be very productive. I was analyzing the linguistic structure and, for such an expansive and detailed text, it was a surprising result to be able to work through it in a single day and feel like I had come to a pretty satisfying version. (The latest version is here: John 13 - Interactive) This kind of work was something I had first been led to do around 17 years earlier in the esoteric text I mentioned previously. That breakthrough study of 2 Thessalonians 2 was what the Lord had used to correct my faulty theology and educate me about the revealing of the lawless one, how that it would be a baptism and that it would also come as a sign. That was what laid the foundation for my study of John 13 in two ways. One, because I understood the event those two prophetic texts had in common. Two, because I was led to analyze their linguistic structure to get the breakthrough. I had formerly used pencil and paper and simple word processors because that was the technology available to me. By 2008, I had become a capable enough software developer to be able to design and develop a program that helped with the analysis and presentation. I call it the Chiasmatron 2000. With that handy tool and the Lord's abundant help, the watch day project was very fruitful!

When the daylight had begun to wane, it became apparent that the watch day that had seemed to hold so much promise had passed away without the sign that I had so longed to see, that I might shortly be joined with my beloved Bridegroom Y'shua. In the study that had been the main focus of my attention, I had reached the place where I was ready to give my attention to John 13:38 and where that fit within the complex symmetry of the assortment of pairings that I had been arranging with such success. It was when I gave my full attention to that verse that the mystery of the span between the celestial sign of 1991 and the shemitah of fulfillment was revealed! What I had sought after for so many years was found! While that lightened the long shadows that had grown over my day, it really was quite bittersweet. There was comfort in having finally come to the knowledge of when the shemitah of fulfillment would arrive. But, the thought that there would be seven more years of trials that would be increasingly difficult to endure tempered the joyous relief I had enjoyed for a fleeting moment. The feeling I was left with was unmistakably that of disappointment. I recalled the troubles that had followed after the disappointment of seven years earlier, when the watched for sign had failed to manifest, and it was more than a little unsettling.

The interpretation of John 13:38 has already been addressed in this study so I don't need to repeat it here. With my understanding of what was revealed on that watch day in 2008, I believed that it was then the third and final shemitah where the church would be accounted as denying Christ like Peter had done after the Lord's arrest. That season would pass away on Yom Teruah of 2012, and the shemitah of fulfillment would begin. I looked to the Spring of 2015 for what I considered to be my personal finish line, when the lawless one would be revealed and the Bride subsequently joined with her Bridegroom.

I've written at length and made many videos detailing the expectations and signs and disappointments of that season. At the end of 2011 I relocated from Los Gatos, CA to Pittsburgh, PA. I had met and begun to work with Aaron Hermann, and we became laborers together and partners in the work as it developed in that season that had a very different character from those that had come before it. The most bewildering feature was that we we didn't see things unfolding like we expected them to but, all the while, the Lord kept affirming to us that we were not wrong about it being the shemitah of fulfillment. So, it was, but it clearly wasn't. When the watch day of the thirteenth day of the first month arrived, we reached the limit. Instead of the lawless one being revealed there were only shadows of the event to be witnessed. While the season was undeniably rich with signs, there was nothing happening in the world that came close to what I had witnessed in 2008 or even 2001, when it came to the specifics and the precision of the timing during the watch. It wasn't on the watch day itself that more insight was granted, but in the aftermath. This time, there was no study of the linguistic scripture involved, just a revelation insight. Time itself was going to be reset back into the past.

That story is told in the study, The Pending Reset of Time, and what is particularly relevant to my story here involves a trend that helps us understand the unfolding chronology better.

In 1991, the Lord led me to analyze the structure of 2 Thessalonians 2. This unlocked many secrets of the revealing of the lawless one that put me on the path to learn what day of the year it would happen.

In 2008, on that very day of the year and even in the designated year of the shemitah, the Lord led me to analyze the structure of John 13. As that study was concluding, another secret of timing was unlocked; the count of shemitah from the sign of 1991.

In 2015, in the appointed year of the shemitah and on the appointed day, Aaron and I watched yet the lawless one was not revealed. It was then that we had to accept the obvious failure of our understanding. There was no structural analysis involved, but days later, another secret of timing was revealed, that time would be reset into the past with the result that the prophesied schedule would be restored.

We knew nothing of the timing of the reset until the Lord led me to analyze the structure of more chapters of the gospel of John. The insight came after a satisfying version of the structure had been discerned. There was a very curious passage in the 18th chapter that had held our attention for several years, one that we had come to recognize as a cryptic prophecy about the reset of time. Here's where the threads that run through this story get interesting, because the structure of the text made the intersection of the esoteric themes obvious enough. The narrative of John 18 is a continuation of the narrative of John 13. In John 13:38, the cryptic prophecy of the keystone design, it was prophesied that a rooster would not crow before Peter had denied the Lord three times. This was fulfilled in John 18. In John 13, at the so-called last supper, Judas was revealed as the betrayer at the table when the bread was dipped and handed to him - yet, the disciples did not understand. In John 18, Judas betrayed Jesus, and that must be when the identity of Judas as the betrayer was finally revealed to the other disciples. All that was happening on the thirteenth day of the first month. Right in the midst of the passage that models the reset of time, woven in as tightly as it could possibly be woven in, there is the foreshadowing of the revealing of the man of lawlessness. They are connected!

When will time be reset and in what context? When the lawless one is revealed time will be reset - on the appointed day, the thirteenth day of the first month. One time only, that event will be interrupted, aborted. In the second round, it will be completely fulfilled. But in what year might we expect the revealing to be interrupted by the reset of time? This occurred to me later, as I was once more reflecting on the linguistic pattern of John 18. Why would it not be consistent with what has been learned about the event? We know both the day of the year and which year of the shemitah to expect the revealing, and so it is, then, with the pending reset of time.

I don't know how compelling you will find this story to be, but this is my testimony, and Aaron can confirm much of it. The way this has unfolded, through the analysis of the structure of those three key passages of scripture and the insight granted in connection with that effort, through the simple insight that was granted in 2015 which was very much related to the former analysis and the inspiration that resulted - we find this very compelling! What an adventure of discovery in the Lord! What a privilege to have been called into service at the end of this age!