The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is heart knowledge.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of January 5, 2013
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. And He said to them, "What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?" And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered Him, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?" And He said to them, "What things?" And they said to Him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But we had hoped that He was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but Him they did not see." And He said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged Him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent." So He went in to stay with them. When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him. And He vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us on the road, while He opened to us the Scriptures?" And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24:13–35 emphasis added)
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There is considerable information imbedded in the above passage that doesn’t call easy attention to what is being revealed—
In Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus opens the minds of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus—these two disciples not having eaten the Passover with Jesus and thus not knowing about the changed symbolism that addressed why many of His disciples fell away a year earlier—Jesus has not yet opened the minds of the Eleven remaining first disciples with whom He did eat the Passover … in the passage preceding the two disciples going to Emmaus, the troupe of women who had come with Jesus from Galilee (Luke 23:49, 55; 24:10) had not been believed by the Apostles when the women told them what the angels had said about Jesus having risen from the dead.
There is, at work, two things: the body of Moses [the Son] was not buried by Israel, but was buried by the Lord “in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor” (Deut 34:6) after seeing the Promised Land. Although Moses was physically healthy (“His eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated” — v. 7), he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land; for he was the shadow and copy of the Lord bringing circumcised-of-heart Israel out from enslavement to sin and death at the end of this present age. So the relationship of the women, who were not believed by the disciples (except for possibly Peter, who went to see if what the women reported was true — Luke 24:12), to the disciples is analogous to the relationship of the prophets (who were not believed) to outwardly circumcised Israel, with Peter representing those few in Israel who actually believed the prophets to see for themselves if what the prophets said was so. … A step has been skipped: Joshua is in Acts 7:45 “Jesus” [’Iesou]. Thus, circumcised-of-heart Israel is to follow Jesus into the Promised Land that is heaven: in the structure established of the Church in Acts forming the reality of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, this author will have Jesus being analogous to Moses, with the troupe of women being post-Resurrection analogous to the prophets of Israel once the children of Israel crossed the Jordan and entered the Promised Land. And to this point, except for Peter, the disciples and the Apostles are of no importance—their minds haven’t been opened to understand the Scriptures.
A technical problem exists here for Jesus was a couple of weeks to a month in coming down from Galilee: everything from the beginning of Luke chapter 14 to Jesus entering Jerusalem occurs on His last journey to Jerusalem; so He didn’t walk down in a couple of days. Plus, it was eight days from when Jesus came to Bethany before Jesus was resurrected from death so where did these women shelter during the chilly and often wet month before Passover when roads were muddy? Did they walk day after day with cold feet and wet scandals. Certainly it doesn’t take a month to walk from the Sea of Tiberias to Jerusalem so where did the women stay during this trek and why were they accompanying Jesus, who only on the journey revealed to His disciples in an indirect manner that He was to be killed in Jerusalem?
There is, however, a third thing, a second problem, of greater magnitude that involves Jesus not eating the Passover with all of His disciples, but with only the Twelve whom the Father had given to Jesus—
I [Jesus] have manifested your [the Father’s] name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. (John 17:6–12 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Judas Iscariot, the only Judean among the Twelve, was a disciple given to Jesus by the Father so that Scripture might be fulfilled. Judas was called to betray Jesus, a scary prospect when one asks if others have been called to betray the Body of Christ as Judas Iscariot was called to betray the Head. And the answer is that, yes, others have been called specifically to betray the Body.
Until Judas Iscariot actually betrayed Jesus, the others did not know that any of them would do such a dastardly deed. Judas Iscariot’s betrayal was as much of a surprise to the disciples as was Peter’s denials of Jesus a surprise to Peter. Therefore, the disciple who eats with you, who sits beside you, who has gone through thick and thin with you can still betray you and betray the Body if the disciple has been called for this purpose. The disciple, him or herself, will not realize what the disciple has been called to do until the disciple does what he or she didn’t think he or she was capable of doing. This means that the one or ones who will betray Sabbatarians after the Second Passover liberation of Israel (see Matt 24:10 et al) are probably already Sabbatarian Christians imbedded in some fellowship or fellowships.
Over the next few Sabbath Readings, it will be argued that the author of Luke’s Gospel/the Book of Acts was not born of spirit; did not understand spiritual birth; and wrote proto-Gnostic texts supporting the ideology what Theophilus [a Greek lover of God or every Greek lover of God] had been taught, an ideology contrary to what is revealed in Matthew’s Gospel and John’s Gospel. However, the author of Luke’s Gospel and of the Book of Acts was an intelligent person and subtly cunning. This author was probably male, and this author had certainly mastered his craft as a Sophist novelist. A graduate school dissertation could be written deconstructing the craftsmanship of Luke and Acts.
Although the most revealing passages in Luke’s Gospel occur near or at its conclusion, the seemingly innocent declaration that Mary, mother of Jesus, “treasured up all these things [what twelve year old Jesus said that amazed and astonished teachers of the Law] in her heart” (Luke 2:51) introduces the concept of “heart knowledge,” or knowledge not shared with others, and by extension, secret knowledge, the essence of Gnosticism, early in the two volume set (Luke & Acts). The concept of heart knowledge will permit a person, a Christian, to fellowship with others, to share meals, but not to believe the same things that others of the assembly believe; for the person with heart knowledge has superior knowledge (greater understanding) than even the person speaking from the pulpit has, or so this person believes.
If a person is a Philadelphian, a person knowing the things that have been revealed to Philadelphia, the person will if fellowshipping in another congregation, inevitably have heart knowledge, knowing things that the person beside him or her and singing the same hymn does not have. As the Philadelphian listens to the sermon, the Philadelphian will know that the speaker just doesn’t get it; i.e., doesn’t truly understand Scripture. And in those moments when the Philadelphian hears false explication of prophecy coming from the pulpit, or no understanding of spiritual birth being uttered by the speaker, this Philadelphia will be as a Gnostic was [not that the Philadelphian is a Gnostic] in the assemblies of orthodox or proto-orthodox Christians. For as long as the Philadelphian keeps his or her mouth shut, no one in the congregation of, say, a UCG fellowship will know that the Philadelphian doesn’t believe the things of UCG. And this is what Satan did prior to when iniquity was found in him. … Out of love for those who assembly together, the Philadelphian should separate him or herself from the fellowship before he or she “accidently” finds him or herself attempting to correct the errors coming from the pulpit by creating an insurrection within the fellowship, Satan’s way of solving perceived or real problems.
For all involved, it is better that a Philadelphian assemble with no other person on the Sabbath than to assemble with those who do not share the same ideology … a person who has been called by God and given a second breath of life has no business—even though both are Sabbatarians—fellowshipping with Seventh Day Adventists on the Sabbath, or fellowshipping with those who have differing understanding of prophecy and spiritual birth. If the Philadelphian wants to get together with other Sabbatarians, the appropriate setting is a Bible Study outside of organized services in a building or hall that another fellowship owns or rents. At no time should it appear that a Philadelphian participates in an insurrection in another Sabbatarian fellowship. The Philadelphian simply shouldn’t be in the fellowship of those who are of a differing mindset.
It will be said that every mother has heart knowledge concerning things her children do or have done, but the mother doesn’t share this knowledge with anyone; so how would an outside observer know the mother had heart knowledge? He wouldn’t. But this is not the case with Mary, about whom the author of Luke’s Gospel wrote. And in order for Luke to write what he did about the infant Jesus and the twelve year old Jesus, Luke would have to had received this information from Mary, mother of Jesus. Or the author of Luke fictionalized the scenarios as he did the manger birth narrative in which he needed to get the Lamb of God born where lambs are born; i.e., in mangers.
For the author of Luke’s Gospel to know what it was that Mary held in her heart required that Mary disclose what it was that she held secret, meaning again that either Luke fictionalized the account about John the Baptist’s birth and about the angel appearing to Mary and about Mary spending months with her cousin Elizabeth, or Mary either wrote one of the many narrative this author examined before writing, or Mary told this author the things he wrote, which were not common knowledge. And it is extremely unlikely that Mary told the author of Luke anything, or that they ever met.
Considering that every character that speaks in Luke’s Gospel has about the same voice and uses about the same syntax, it is probable that this author fictionalized all dialogues … I do not speak like my younger brother Ken. My speech reflects the years spent in mills, logging, commercial fishing, sans the blasphemous profanity that was in my speech before conversion in 1972 and that is still in the speech of acquaintances. I do not speak as I write; for I write words that because of an inherited speech impediment I have never uttered in my life. These are words I know and use when writing, with the written language being like a foreign language that I can read and write but do not hear in my ear. Hence, when I write fiction, I am extra careful that characters do not talk alike, with the speech I assign to the character reflecting the background of the character. So perhaps I’m a little more sensitive to how inscribed speech sounds than a non-writer, especially someone who doesn’t listen carefully to uttered speech—and the author of Luke in his own voice speaks his own words for every character to which he assigns utterance, a usual tipoff that all speech in the narrative is fictionalized, the product of the author.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ ministry is in reality a continuation of John the Baptist’s ministry; Jesus’ ministry is one of getting Israel [the Jews] to repent and turn to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and thus be saved. But this is not the ministry of Jesus in John’s Gospel or in Matthew’s Gospel … in John, Jesus’ ministry is about revealing the Father to selected and foreknown disciples, with the Father not being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of the living (Matt 22:32), but with the Father being the God of dead ones that never knew the Father for the dead know nothing (Eccl 9:5).
Marcionites in the 2nd /3rd Centuries CE used an abridged form of Luke’s Gospel to support a two-God ideology that had Jesus being of a good deity that wasn’t interested in condemning the lawless to the lake of fire; whereas the God of Abraham was a harsh, punishing God that was unforgiving. To counter Marcion’s teachings, theologians that would become the fathers of the Trinitarian Church, held that Jesus was fully man and fully God while here on earth (Marcion denied physicality to Jesus). Thus, a long form of Luke’s Gospel was canonized which didn’t well support some of Marcion’s ideology, but the ending of the Book of Acts was, perhaps literally, ripped off to prevent circulation of an ending that apparently had Paul as a representation of the entirety of the Body of Christ (see 1 Cor 12:27) being sacrificed in Rome as Jesus was sacrificed in Jerusalem, thereby moving the center of Christianity to Rome and away from Jerusalem. Of itself, this probably was not problematic. What would have been problematic is the parallelism that the author of Luke/Acts had established, parallelism that would have had Paul sacrificed in Rome, then rising the third day as the author of Luke’s Gospel has his Jesus do. For the glorified Paul would then have opened the eyes of disciples in Rome so that they could understand the Scriptures as the glorified Jesus did for His disciples in Jerusalem. And any such ending would have made Paul the successor to John the Baptist’s ministry, not Jesus, who would be reduced to a transitional figure.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus specifically prays for the Eleven whom He kept in the Father’s name. He doesn’t pray for the others who had tagged along since most if not all left Him a year earlier over the matter of Him saying that to have life, disciples were to eat His flesh and drink His blood. At that time, He ran off many of His disciples, and apparently had run off all but the Twelve (John 6:66–70), minus Judas Iscariot, about whom He prays just before He will be seized and taken to be sacrificed as the Passover Lamb of Israel.
In His prayer before He is taken, Jesus says that the Twelve had come to know (revelation via realization) in truth—with in truth [’alethos] being the negation of concealment—that Jesus had come from the Father, meaning that their minds were opened to understanding Scriptures pre-Calvary. But opened through coming to know, coming to realize how spiritual things were concealed by the things of this world (see Eccl 3:11 in Hebrew). And revelation via realization is far from supernaturally opening minds … the historical pattern seen since the 2nd and 3rd Centuries CE is that there is little outwardly-discernible supernatural revelation, that revelation has come through coming to know a matter, or revelation via realization. And if this has been the case for 1,900 years, it was most likely the reality of the seventy previous years (ca 31 CE to 101 CE), meaning that the miracles recorded in the Book of Acts never happened.
The testimony of two or three witnesses is needed to biblically establish a matter, but this principle has long been neglected when reading the Book of Acts … that neglect has proven to be criminal.
It is, however, in Jesus not praying for the two who went to Emmaus where John’s Gospel butts heads with the author of Luke’s Gospel … why would Jesus open the minds of the two going to Emmaus so that they would understand Scriptures before opening the minds of the Eleven?
Evangelical Christians place emphasis on the principle of “first mention,” which will have Jesus opening the minds of the two disciples walking to Emmaus before opening the minds of the Eleven giving to these two disciples priority, or primacy over the Eleven. By extension, “right understanding” of Scriptures now comes to disciples from Christ Jesus, not from the Apostles; thus, a clergy based upon Apostolic Succession holds no authority over disciples who have had their minds opened so that they have heart knowledge, secret knowledge that has come directly from Christ Jesus.
Luke’s Gospel can be used to support proto-Gnostic or Gnostic ideology; whereas Mark, Matthew, and John cannot be so used. In John, the Eleven Apostles are separated from other disciples in prayer and by eating a second Passover on the night that Jesus was betrayed. And it is this second Passover separation that remains to this day … disciples of Jesus not numbered among the Twelve would have eaten the Passover meal as Sadducees ate the Passover on the dark portion of the 14th day of the first month—as Moses and Israel in Egypt ate the first Passover, killing the selected and penned lamb at even at the beginning of the 14th day. Pharisees and modern rabbinical Judaism, with a different reading of Moses, would have killed the Passover sacrifice [eaten the Seder] at even at the end of the 14th day, with this 24-hour difference coming from each sect’s reading of the following:
Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. (Ex 12:21–24 emphasis and double emphasis added)
The Feast of Unleavened Bread is seven days long:
This day [the day when the Lord strikes Egypt] shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread. (Ex 12:14–20 emphasis added)
If Israel in Egypt sacrificed the Passover at even at the end of the 14th day and could not leave their houses until morning, Israel could not have left Egypt until the following day, the day after the High Sabbath; for it was after, not before the firstborn of Egypt perished, that Israel spoiled the Egyptians, gathered their flocks and departed, journeying from Rameses to Succoth (hardly a journey at all) the first day … the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins-with and celebrates the day when the Lord brought the fathers of Israel out from the land of Egypt, not the day when the Passover was killed. The assumption that Israel ate the Passover, then at midnight the death angel passed over the land of Egypt, and immediately (during the night) Israel spoiled the Egyptians and left Egypt is naïve and frankly, stupid. No Israelite was to leave their houses until dawn. The death angel would have killed the firstborn of any Israelite that left the protection of his house before dawn, with the houses of Israel in Egypt forming the physical shadow and type of the fleshly bodies of endtime circumcised-of-heart Israel and with the physical people of Israel in Egypt forming the shadow and type of the living inner selves of circumcised-of-heart Israel. And the glorified inner selves of endtime disciples do not receive a glorified body or house in which to dwell until Christ Jesus returns at the dawn of the fourth day of the Genesis “P” creation account. Jesus was not resurrected from death until the beginning of the fourth day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And Christians are to observe the First Unleavened (from Matt 26:17 when added words by translators are removed from the passage) that is actually an eighth day of unleavened bread, the day on which Moses sacrificed the Passover lamb in Egypt, the day that Pharisees of the second temple identified as the Preparation Day for the High Sabbath, the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
In the days of King Josiah, the lost Book of the Covenant was found in the dilapidated temple Solomon built that had seen previous repairs but was again in need of extensive overhaul, with the temple reflecting the state of Israel’s [of the house of Judah’s] spirituality—and after the book of Moses was found, the scribes writing the account of the kings wrote,
And the king [Josiah] commanded all the people, "Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant." For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem. (2 Kings 23:21–23)
But reforms in Jerusalem never lasted long: with Josiah’s death, his sons returned to the abominable practices of their grandfather, practices that the people supported, even after the poorest of the people, the commanders of Nebuchadnezzar’s army had left in Judea to keep wild beasts from overrunning the land fled to Egypt:
Then all the men who knew that their wives had made offerings to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah: "As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster. But since we left off making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine." And the women said, "When we made offerings to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands' approval that we made cakes for her bearing her image and poured out drink offerings to her?" (Jer 44:15–19 emphasis added)
It is from such people that the oral Torah comes; that the practices of modern rabbinical Judaism come. For the people that resented Josiah’s reforms were taken as captives to Babylon, where none ever had spiritual understanding.
Consider what it was that the escapees from Judea told Jeremiah: the men told Jeremiah that since Josiah had forced them to quit their idolatrous practices, nothing had gone well for them. They were hungry and oppressed by the sword … the Adversary as the prince of this world does not bless the Elect with peace and prosperity, but would kill them if he could. And the shadow and type [chiral image] of the Adversary not blessing righteousness is found in what the men and women of Judea, having returned to Egypt (the representation of sin), tell Jeremiah: they had prospered and had peace when they practiced the idolatry of the nations, but since leaving off the worship of the queen of heaven, they had nothing but trouble.
Note the role of the men of Judea versus the women of Judea who actually baked the cakes for the queen of heaven: the men promise to keep their vows to make offerings to the queen of heaven, who from archeological evidence was worshiped as the consort of YHWH and by extension as the mother of Jesus, a vow that has been kept ever since by many within greater Christendom.
When the men of Israel represent (as the chiral image) the living inner selves [souls] of Christians truly born of God and their wives represent the fleshly bodies in which these living souls dwell — for the Israelite man not born of spirit, his wife represents what Israel’s houses in Egypt represented before the first Passover — with the wives doing what their husbands declare as the women told Jeremiah, When we made offerings to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands' approval, an endtime disciple can see the relationship between Christ and the Church that Paul expressed when he wrote,
So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Rom 7:12–25 emphasis added)
Every person is humanly born consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), what Paul realized when he found that he couldn’t force his body [the fleshly house in which his inner self dwelt] to do the things that his mind wanted to do … husbands cannot long force their wives to do what their wives do not want to do. But Paul goes on to say,
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit [breath, or in Greek, tou pneumatos] of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. (Rom 8:1–4 emphasis added)
Being set free by the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] gives to the inner self “life” through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ, thus causing the now-living inner self of the person to be a firstborn son of God, analogous to a firstborn infant in a house of Israel in Egypt pre-Exodus. And a firstborn infant in an Israelite house in Egypt was not merely begotten, but was truly born as a living human being. So arguments that would have disciples “begotten/conceived,” but not born of God, or born from above are without merit. Plus, a fetus in the womb doesn’t drink milk (see 1 Cor 3:1–2)—and the Christian Church should never be considered a womb. If any womb exist for sons of God, that womb is “grace,” the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness.
So the role of male and female in ancient Israel forms the shadow and copy of the relationship between the inner self [the soul] and the outer self [the fleshly body] of a person born of God and hence, part of circumcised-of-heart Israel. This relationship between male as the head of his wife as the inner self is the head of the outer self was still applicable in the 1st-Century, and remains (if both spouses have been born of spirit) applicable today in the fleshly relationship of a man with his wife. However, the glorified Christ through His indwelling in the inner self of a selected and chosen person is the Head of the person’s inner self as the inner self is the head of the fleshly body. God is now in Christ through the breath of God having entered Jesus when Jesus rose from baptism—having entered (Mark 1:10) Jesus and never leaving, the reality about which John the Baptist was called to witness and affirm. Hence, the relationship begins with God, who is in Christ Jesus, with the indwelling of Christ in the soul of a person giving life to this former dead inner self as the Father gave life to Jesus when His breath descended upon Jesus in the bodily form of a dove. God is therefore the Head of Christ, who is the Head of the disciple’s inner self, with the disciple’s inner self being the head of the disciple’s fleshly body, and with the physically male fleshly body being the head of the physically female fleshly body that is his wife. It is for this reason that the wife who has been truly born of God will wear two coverings on her head, one of longish hair to acknowledge Christ as her spiritual Head, and a second covering of fabric to acknowledge that her husband is her head in this physical world.
When the woman equates to the fleshly body of a disciple, a valid reading of canonical text can be undertaken by examining the role of “maleness” versus the role of “femaleness,” especially before the spirit is given and all of Jesus’ disciples are without living inner selves that might confuse issues … how important is “maleness” versus “femaleness” post Resurrection but before the spirit is given becomes the subject at hand that sheds light on (actually, helps deconstruct) the two disciples on their way to Emmaus having their minds opened before the minds of the Eleven are opened.
The Sabbath Reading for January 12th will begin here, with a repeat of the preceding paragraph.
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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."