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 the role of women.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of January 12, 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.
The Reading this Sabbath is a continuation of the Reading for January 5, 2013.
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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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[From the Reading for January 5th, 2013] 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 two disciples on their way to Emmaus can wait to be addressed (addressing these two has been waiting far longer than should be the case) … an overview is first needed: in all four Gospels, angels appear to women (in the case of John’s Gospel, to Mary Magdalene) to tell them that Jesus has risen from the dead and lives again. But in Matthew’s Gospel (and in John’s), the glorified Jesus Himself appears to the women to tell them that they are to take a message to His disciples—and in the case of Matthew’s Gospel in particular, a message that spans two millennia.
A person familiar with Scripture will perceive that since Moses, angels interacted with human persons in dreams and visions until the Father spoke to Jesus. It is the glorified Jesus rather than an angel that brings knowledge to John (i.e., the Book of Revelation).
Once the spirit [pneuma Theou] was given, disciples of Jesus received/receive the indwelling of the Parakletos, the spirit of truth. It was no longer necessary for a spirit being [an angel] to appear to the disciple in a dream or vision; for the Father can now communicate directly with “His sons” through the indwelling of the Parakletos, usually translated into English as the Comforter or the Advocate … although an angel is a spirit being and the Parakletos is not a “being” but is a spirit akin to the life-giving spirit/breath of God [pneuma Theou], an angel in delivering a message to a king or to a prophet as Gabriel appeared to Daniel in vision (Dan 9:21) served the same purpose for a person not born of spirit (such as Daniel) as the Parakletos does for a person truly born of spirit. And while it isn’t that angels cannot still appear to a person to bring the person divine knowledge, the need for such appearances has been greatly minimized … again, angels appearing in dreams and visions are for human persons not yet born of spirit/born of God. Those who have been born of God and whose inner selves have life in the heavenly realm do not need to be given knowledge from angels but will receive knowledge directly from God via the Parakletos.
If a genuine son of God is so spiritually immature that this son of God has little or no understanding of Scripture, then an angel might do the work of the Parakletos in a manner similar to how human infants are unable to feed themselves (because of their underdeveloped hand-eye coordination) but must be feed by parents or servants or older siblings. Hence, a newly born (of spirit) son of God that is as a human infant of a year or so of age—when most human infants first begin to walk uprightly—will still need help to spiritually feed himself … the spiritual equivalent to a human infant learning to walk uprightly is for the disciple to begin keeping the commandments of God, all of them, especially the Sabbath commandment. Therefore, when disciples first begin to keep the commandments they are really unable to feed themselves spiritually without making a mess of things [I have many pictures of my year-old-daughters in their highchair with chocolate pudding smeared all over themselves]. Unfortunately, they are also unable to truly perceive what it is that the Parakletos has disclosed to them: they need help feeding themselves the foundational principles of Christendom. And they don’t need the Adversary’s help, which he is quick to extend.
Whereas the Lord as Yah had manifested Himself as a physical entity to Abraham under the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, and had manifested Himself as a physical entity when He wrestled with Jacob, and whereas Moses saw the backside of the Lord as a spiritual entity, in the decades and centuries after Moses, the Lord’s communication with Israel came through giving blessings or withholding blessings to Israel in the Promised Land (Deut 11:13–17), or later, after Israel’s rebellion in the manner of wanting a king like other nations had, through, first, visions and dreams by the kings of Israel, then later, via prophets receiving visions and dreams.
The movement is from the Lord appearing in vision to Abram (Gen 15:1) to manifesting Himself to Abraham as an entity whose feet can be washed (Gen 18:4). After aspiration [ah] is added to Abram’s name, visions move to become visitations … in all things, the visible, physical things of this world precede and reveal the invisible spiritual things of God. The name “Abram” was the name of a physical man, tested by the Lord when commanded to leave his father and journey wherever the Lord sent him. The name Abraham is the name <Abram> with aspiration/ breath (ah) added to it, with this breath foreshadowing the indwelling of the breath/spirit of God in the reality of Abraham, Christ Jesus. When disciples are baptized into Christ, they become the promised seed of Abraham (see Gal 3:29). Hence, the man Abraham and Christ Jesus are analogous, with Abraham being one of several physical shadows and types of Christ Jesus.
Yes, Abram with aspiration added to his name [thereby being Abraham] becomes the physical shadow and type of the man Jesus the Nazarene, who received the indwelling of the breath/spirit of God when the breath of God [pneuma Theou] descended upon Him and entered into Him (see Mark 1:10 in Greek). Jesus as the reality of Adam is the last Adam. Likewise, Jesus as the reality of Abraham is the last Abraham. This will have Jesus’ disciples being the reality of Isaac, the promised seed, what Paul declares in his epistle to the Galatians (4:21–31). So the corresponding moment when Jesus rose from baptism and the breath of God in the bodily form of the dove descended upon Him and entered into Him is when the Lord appeared to Abram when Abram was 99 years old and said to Abram, “‘I am El Shaddai; walk [uprightly] before me and be blameless that I may make my covenant between me and you, and multiple you greatly. … No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations’” (Gen 17:1–2, 5).
As the twelve tribes of Israel became the multitude of the promised seed, disciples of Christ Jesus (and specifically, the seven named churches) are the reality of the twelve tribes … physically circumcised Israel is the shadow and copy of spiritually circumcised Israel as the Law written on two stone tablets forms the shadow and copy of the Law, under the New Covenant, being written on the hearts and placed in the minds of spiritually circumcised Israel.
The movement from physical (visions) to spiritual (talking man-to-man) communication continues until the Lord in darkness and appearing as a man (Gen 32:24) wrestled, grappled physically with Jacob until dawn: Jacob says, “‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered’” (v. 30). … There is a difference between talking to another person face-to-face, talking without touching, talking as in exchanging ideas and experiences versus grappling with the person in hand-to-hand combat as a test of skill and strength. And when a disciple wrestles with keeping the commandments of God in a world dedicated to disobedience, the inner self of the person has moved past face-to-face communication with God and has begun to actually apply what it is that was revealed to the person by the Son [Moses/Jesus].
The movement from visions to face-to-face dialogue continued until Moses,
The Lord said to Moses, "Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, 'To your offspring I will give it.' I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people." When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, "Say to the people of Israel, 'You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.'" Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward. Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. Moses said to the Lord, "See, you say to me, 'Bring up this people,' but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, 'I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.' Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people." And He said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." And he said to Him, "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?" And the Lord said to Moses, "This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name." Moses said, "Please show me your glory." And He said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The Lord.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But," He said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." And the Lord said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen." (Ex 33:1–23 emphasis, double emphasis, and highlighting added)
When Moses rose from whatever he was doing and went out of the camp to the tent of meeting, the people of Israel rose from whatever they were doing and went to the door of their tents within the camp. Then when the Lord in the pillar of cloud stood at the entrance of the tent of meeting and talked with Moses, the people of Israel would rise up and worship at the door of their own tent. Thus, what Moses did outside the camp, the people of Israel did inside the camp. The actions of Moses determined the actions of the people of Israel as if Moses were the head [the inner self] of Israel and the people were the body of Moses.
The direction of movement for the Lord’s communication with Israel was from a vision to speaking face-to-face to seeing the glory of the Lord, albeit His backside only—this movement from the Lord appearing in vision to the unconscious mind to the Lord talking to Moses as one man talks to another man had, again, the people of Israel at Mount Sinai functioning as the “body” of Moses, who was “God” to Aaron and by extension to Israel (Ex 4:16).
Again, when Moses entered the tent of meeting, the people of Israel as if his body returned to their own tents. When Moses in the tent of meeting met with the Lord and spoke to Him face-to-face, the people of Israel (as if the body of Moses) worshipped the Lord at their own tent door. And when Moses left the tent of meeting, Joshua [in Greek, ’Iesou — Jesus] remained in the tent of meeting (Ex 33:10–11) … Joshua/Jesus remained outside the camp of Israel.
Once the children of Israel followed Joshua into the Promised Land, the Lord spoke face-to-face with all of Israel through giving or withholding rain in its due season, or by bringing enemies against Israel, thereby causing Israel to submit to foreigners as Israel had submitted to Pharaoh in Egypt. … The giving or withholding of blessings as face-to-face communication between the Lord and outwardly circumcised Israel has not been well addressed within the greater Christian community; for this giving or withholding of blessings pertains to Israel in this world, not to circumcised-of-heart Israel—and pertained to Israel only until the nation rebelled against the Lord in the days of Samuel when the people of Israel asked for a king so Israel could be like other nations that did not have face-to-face communication with the Lord.
As a nation, the people of Israel were deaf: Israel ignored how the Lord spoke to the nation so when Israel in the Promised Land rebelled against the Lord and rejected Him as their king, the Lord began to communicate with Israel through first its kings receiving visions, then when the kings refused to heed the words of the Lord, through prophets receiving dreams and visions, the means by which communication occurred until the remnant of Israel was hauled off to Babylon as a captive people.
Communication between the Lord and His firstborn son (Ex 4:22) regressed until the Lord could no longer communicate with His people face-to-face or conscious mind to conscious mind, but returned to the Lord speaking in dreams and visions to the unconscious mind of King Solomon and finally to the unconscious (sleeping) minds of the prophets.
In Babylon, the Lord gave to King Nebuchadnezzar dreams and visions as He had to King Solomon, thereby revealing to the spiritually astute that Nebuchadnezzar was henceforth Israel’s king, with Nebuchadnezzar being the physical shadow and copy of the Adversary, the spiritual king of Babylon (see Isa 14:4) and king of all humanity wherever the sons of men dwelt/dwell. Daniel “interpreted” Nebuchadnezzar’s visions, but Daniel was a eunuch (all foreign young men serving in Nebuchadnezzar’s court were castrated) and as such Daniel could not enter into the temple of God (that no longer physically stood) just as Moses could not enter into the Promised Land, a juxtaposition that when carried forward has the temple mount being all that remained of the Promised Land (all that remained of Israel’s geography), with the temple that was rebuilt on this mount forming the physical representation of the body/Body of Christ (John 2:19) … initially the Promised Land, then later the temple mount corresponded to Eden, with the Tree of Life corresponding to the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies.
At Sinai, Moses took the tent of meeting “and pitched it outside the camp” (Ex 33:7) of Israel. All who sought the Lord “would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.” The place of meeting with the Lord was outside of Israel, not inside of Israel. When Moses went to meet with the Lord, Moses left the camp of Israel. Nevertheless, the people of Israel inside the camp did what Moses did as a person’s body does what the mind desires: when Moses went out to the tent of meeting, the people of Israel went to their own tents. When Moses went into the tent of meeting to meet with the Lord, the people of Israel worshipped the Lord at their own tent door. But as the Apostle Paul said of his own body, the people of Israel did not do what the head (the mind of Paul, or in analogy, Moses) desired, but did the things that the mind hated (Rom 7:7–25).
In the above analogy, the Temple of God can be compared to a human body, with the Holy of Holies (Most High Place) being the inner self of this body …
The Garden in Eden will also correspond to the Holy of Holies inside the sanctuary, with the Holy of Holies being off limits to Israel except for the high priest on Yom Kipporim (the Day of Coverings) … on one day a year, the high priest as the representative of Israel could enter into the presence of the Lord in the Holy of Holies. On every other day of the year and for all of the remainder of Israel, the existence of the temple and its Holy Place and Most Holy Place prevented Israel from approaching the Lord:
Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence. It is called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place, having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron's staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this the holy spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing (which is symbolic for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. (Heb 9:1–12 emphasis and double emphasis added)
When the temple is analogous to the fleshly body of a disciple (of all disciples, individually and collectively), the mere existence of the fleshly body prevents the living inner self from entering heaven, the abode of God the Father; for flesh and blood cannot inherit heaven (1 Cor 15:50) …
The existence of the physical temple—first the tabernacle of Moses, then Solomon’s temple, then Zerubbabel’s temple, then Herod’s temple—indicated that the way into God’s presence was not open to Israel or to anyone else: for as long as a physical sanctuary stood, separation existed between man and God, with this separation still in place when the Epistle to the Hebrews was written.
Today, with no physical temple standing, the Church is fully the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16), with the fleshly bodies of disciples functioning for God as the lifeless timber and stone building constructed by Solomon’s workmen functioned for the Lord after Israel’s rebellion in rejecting the Lord as Israel’s king. And here is where the preceding analogy gets tricky: not all who claim to be “Christians” are of Christ (i.e., have been born of God through the indwelling of Christ Jesus) just as not all of the biological descendants of Abraham were his seed:
For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: "About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son." And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." (Rom 9:6–13)
The Elect are those Christians who were/are foreknown by God, predestined, called, justified, and glorified while the fleshly body in which the now-living inner self dwells still lives physically. The Elect are not fleshly bodies; for flesh and blood will not enter heaven and cannot be glorified or transformed into spirit for as long as the fleshly body, analogous to the wood and stone temple, still stands. It is the formerly dead inner self that is glorified by God the Father raising this dead soul to life through giving to it His breath [pneuma Theou], thereby giving to the person a second breath of life … the breath of life received from Adam through Eve onward generation after generation until the mother of the person gives life to the fleshly body of the person, life that is condemned to die because of the first Adam’s unbelief—this breath of life is the physical shadow and copy of the second breath of life that disciples receive when born of spirit/breath.
The breath of life received from God through the second Adam, Christ Jesus, gives life to the inner self or soul of the human person, with this soul being dead from human birth through having been consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3).
Human persons are NOT humanly born with immortal souls. To say otherwise is to speak a lie. To teach otherwise is to teach falsely. And to convince a gullible young person to commit suicide by being the delivery system for a bomb so that this young person’s soul can gaze on the face of God is heinous, an act worthy of condemning the teacher to the lake of fire even without this teacher ever having been born of God as a son.
Receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of Christ Jesus (that is, the spirit of Christ — pneuma Christou) gives to a human person a vessel able to hold and contain the breath of God that gives indwelling eternal life … without being contained in a vessel, the bright fire that represents the breath of God (the glory of God — Ezek 1:26–28) would utterly consume the fleshly body of a human person. The life that comes to a disciple from heaven, from God—that is, eternal life—requires a vessel that also comes from heaven to “hold” this indwelling life. And this is the reality of what Paul writes, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23).
The preceding is correct: the indwelling of Christ (Christian terminology for receipt of pneuma Christou) includes the indwelling of the spirit/breath of God [pneuma Theou]. Thus, Christ functions as the carrier and deliverer of spiritual life as Eve [all women] functioned for the physical body as its carrier and deliverer of life when the person received life in the womb of the person’s mother.
To clarify the preceding: the gift of God is eternal life via receipt of His breath, a second breath of life. However, the nature of heavenly life as unquenchable fire [human life is sustained by the dark fire of cellular oxidation, quenchable fire, why human persons die physically], the bright fire seen in the glorified Christ (Rev 1:12–16) would literally consume flesh and blood and must therefore be contained in a vessel compatible with human life and able to withstand the indwelling of heavenly life. This is the role of Christ Jesus in the transformation of human sons of God into spiritual beings with life coming from God. Because as the unique son of the Logos, He came from heaven and He returned to heaven where He received the glory He had before (John 17:5) the world existed. However, because the Logos entered His creation as His unique Son, born of Mary wife of Joseph, the man Jesus forms the bridge between life in the heavenly realm and life in this physical realm. When Jesus lived physically, He was fully man; He was not fully God. So say that He was fully God is to deny Him, His sacrifice, and salvation itself.
Like Jesus, I was humanly born fully man, only my father was of the first Adam, not the Logos. Thus, I was born consigned to disobedience, and I participated in the disobedience and unbelief of this world: Jesus did not! And I was then born of God, receiving a second breath of life summer of 1972, but to this day I do not have a glorified body and am not fully God. Likewise, Jesus, unlike any other human person before Him, was born of God the Father when the breath of God descended upon Him and entered into Him in the autumn of 27 CE. And throughout His earthly ministry, He was not fully God but was a man born of God as Adam was dust/mud given life through receiving the indwelling breath of Elohim [singular in usage] … Adam was unlike every other mud pie because of the indwelling of the breath of life. And according to the Genesis creation account of Adam (Gen 2:4–7), the indwelling of the breath of life in Adam preceded the indwelling of a breath of life in any other creature—according to the Genesis creation account of Adam, evolution did not occur: there was no tiered evolution, with man being the pinnacle of biological evolution and man being responsible for the evolution of machines that are poised to surpass man in intelligence and creativity, with some design engineers believing that within the forthcoming decade, machines/computers will actually pull ahead of human beings.
When the physical precedes and reveals the spiritual, the essence of Scripture, the evolution of machines from a stone as a hammer to today’s three-dimensional printers that are able to “print” what cannot be milled while humankind’s evolution has remained somewhat static—man changes not from yesterday to today—would seem to suggest that in analogy, man is like God and machines are like men. But this analogy doesn’t work because of man changing not. What changes is the sophistication of knowledge within the mind of man, with knowledge not being a tangible “thing” until it is crafted into existence. So if machine evolution can be “read” as a revealing model, it must be read spiritually with dogs and cats, living entities, not advancing their creativity whereas man, made in the image and likeness of God, has steadily advanced to where humankind’s creations will shortly threaten humankind’s existence in ways unlike the threat posed by nuclear warfare.
When still a spiritual civilian (that is, prior to January 17th, 2002), I wrote other types of texts, one being the novel Like Rain on Kupreanof, from which the following passage was taken (the character Jacob is an Alaskan Native commercial fisherman and story teller, and he is addressing a college class):
Jacob listens without speaking, not as much surprised by what he hears as he is disappointed. He wishes he could remember more of what John said about his class at Washington.
One girl who has only spoken once, addressing him, asks: "Mr. Chickenof, could you tell us another one that's easier to understand?"
Jacob turns towards Anderson who nods that he should. "Okay, but I don't want you to think that all of the stories have been written down. Many have only been heard like this one."
"What," asks the girl, "do you mean by that? Do you mean that there are still stories that need to be inscribed so they won't be lost?"
Ignoring her questions, Jacob says, "See if you recognize this story, a short one. A long time ago, two brothers who lived on a real tall mountain built things. All kinds of things, large and small, they built things. They liked to build things so they built lots more things than they needed so they said, one to the other, 'We need somebody to have these things we built so we can build more things,' and they agreed, and they took driftwood and their adzes and their crooked knives and they started carving and they made little mice who could live in the things they built.
"But the mice couldn't see the two brothers because the brothers were so big compared to the mice, so the mice thought that the things the two brothers built have always been, and they claimed the things the two brother built as their own and they set about gathering and storing in their holes more and more of the things the two brothers built.
"The two brothers didn't mind because they were busy building more things so they let the mice scurry around gathering up the things the two brothers built as mice do grass seed during the summer. But the mice had babies very fast, and while the two brothers were busy on the other side of the mountain making things, the little mice grew and had more little mice and all of the mice claimed everything the two brothers had made on this side of the mountain, even things too large for them to move. And the mice began to fight over all of those things, even the ones too large for them to move.
"The two brothers heard the mice fighting over the things they had made, and they came back to this side of the mountain and they saw that many of the mice had hurt each other, but their teeth weren't sharp enough to kill each other so none of them were dead, but they were bleeding a lot, so the two brothers caught all of the mice and put them into a round ball that they had made and they hung the ball down the shaft in the center of the mountain, and they asked, one to the other, 'What should we do with them,' and the other said, 'Let us make for them knives,' and it was agreed. So the two brothers made two knives that they put into the round ball with the mice, and they watched as the mice fought over who should have the knives until they were all dead. Then the two brothers again took driftwood and their adzes and their crooked knives and they began to carve, and they carved two people, who they made bigger so the people could see the two brothers, and they put the people among the things they had built and they gave the two people a knife each and they said one to the other, 'Let us watch and see if people are like mice.' So the two brothers sat down and started to watch the people, and they watched and watched and watched. Even today, they are watching."
Once again, the classroom is absolutely silent. The only thing that can be heard is a lawnmower outside, and very faintly, the traffic noise of staff and faculty heading home.
Humankind has biologically remained static for the past five thousand years, but its engineering has become miniaturized, going from pyramids to computer chips. And as we marvel at the pyramids, wondering how a people so long ago could pile stones so high and with such precision, people at the end of the Millennium will wonder how we could lay one molecule upon another molecule in such precision so as to cause a machine to think and to replicate itself. We have nearly reached the point where nothing is impossible, except humankind’s ability to rule itself. Self-governance is not possible, the reality of the Adversary.
The soul of a person is invisible to the eye: it is not physical, and it is not living until the person has received a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou]. Then as Elohim [singular in usage] breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of the man of mud [Adam — Gen 2:7] then placed the man in the Garden of Eden before He caused a deep sleep to come over the man and took from the lung area of the man a rib to make Eve, the man’s helpmate, not breathing the breath of life into Eve’s nostrils but taking the man’s flesh with his breath in it and taking his bone to make Eve. Physically, Elohim breathed the breath of life one time into man and by extension, in all of humankind: every human person has or has had life via receipt of the same breath of life breathed into Adam’s nostrils. Likewise, God the Father gave to the man Jesus a second breath of life in the form of His breath descending upon and entering into Jesus (Mark 1:10) when Jesus was raised from the watery grave of baptism, and every son of God since then has received this second breath of life through the indwelling of Christ Jesus in the form of His breath, His life, with this second breath of life giving “life” to the soul consigned to disobedience because of the unbelief of the first man.
Jesus’ death and resurrection (not His birth or baptism) represents the spiritual reality of the creation of Eve; thus, in the glorified Jesus alone is Adam (who received life when Elohim breathed into his nostrils) and Eve (who received life from Adam’s breath) … the breath of God in the bodily form of a dove did not again descend and again enter into Jesus a second time when Jesus was raised from death: the same spiritual life Jesus had before He was crucified He had throughout the three days when He was in the heart of the earth—note what Peter wrote:
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. (1 Pet 3:18–22 emphasis added)
Baptism corresponds to the flood of Noah’s day, when all the world was baptized into death. Baptism by water is never for life, but for the death of the old self that was consigned to death/disobedience in the days of Noah. Thus, in baptism the person symbolically returns to the days of Noah and the Flood, and emerges from the water as Noah emerged from the Ark when the land dried, with this drying of the land seen in type when Israel under Moses crossed the Sea of Reeds dry shod, and when the children of Israel under Joshua [’Iesou — Jesus] crossed the Jordan dry shod. In baptism, the disciple returns to when all of surviving humankind were sons of righteousness; the baptized disciple is a son of righteousness, garmented in the righteousness of Christ Jesus.
When Jesus was crucified and his physical body, born of Mary, His mother, died on the cross at Calvary, His inner self that was born of God through receipt of the breath of God [pneuma Theou] when Jesus rose from John’s baptism did not die for the life His inner self had was not of the first Adam, not of this world, but had come from heaven and as such could not be killed in this world. It is for this reason that the souls [psuches] of the holy ones sleep under the altar in heaven (Rev 6:9) until the fullness of the Elect who are to be killed as they were have been killed.
The living inner self of a disciple does not perish with the death of the fleshly body, but must go somewhere until this soul receives a glorified body in which to dwell. According to Peter, the living inner self of Christ did not go to heaven but went and preached to imprisoned angels that left their habitation of obedience; for the inner self of Christ could not precede into heaven the glorified Christ as the Wave Sheaf offering for Israel. Jesus’ glorified inner self was without a body but was as spirits are until He received a glorified body after His physical body was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. And the preceding sentence will be the subject of a forthcoming Sabbath Reading.
Because the glorified Christ (inner self and outer self glorified) was accepted by the Father as Israel’s Wave Sheaf Offering, the living inner selves of Jesus’ disciples (men and women who received a second breath of life through the indwelling of Christ), “rest” as if sleeping when the physical body in which these inner selves dwell die—rest in heaven and under the altar until they receive a glorified house in which to dwell.
As the ancestry of every human person can be traced through mitochondrial DNA received from the person’s mother, the ancestry of every human son of God can be traced directly to Christ Jesus, who functions as the mother of the disciple … God the Father has fathered (begotten) the son of God, not Christ Jesus. And the Church should never be identified as the mother of disciples; for the Church has no ability to give life to the dead inner self of a human person. Only the Father can, and then only through the Son: it is the glorified Christ that gives heavenly life (received from God) to the disciple. Thus, spiritually, Christ Jesus serves as the Woman, represented physically by women, not by men who function in marriage as God the Father functions in heaven.
What must be understood is that as Yah, the Logos [’o Logos], the God who created all that has been made physically (John 1:3), also functioned in the role of Helpmate to the God [ton Theon — John 1:1–2]. This Logos functioned as a wife functions. The role of this Logos is fulfilled by women.
Again, the Logos was the Helpmate of the Father, the God Israel did not know. And it is this understanding that separates the Elect from the remainder of Christendom.
With God, there is no male or female: there is the role of Head and of Helpmate, with the Father being the head of Christ as the husband is the head of his wife (1 Cor 11:3). However, Christ is the Head of the Church as the husband is the head of his wife; so the biologically male disciple whose inner self is a son of God will “marry” Christ as His Bride when glorified, thereby turning gender roles upside-down. And it is in this gender confusion that angels first appear to the women to tell them that Jesus has risen from the dead.
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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."