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 relinquished auctoritas.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of January 22, 2011
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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When Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said to his disciples, “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”
Then the chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. But they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar among the people.”
Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table. And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.”
Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him. (Matt 26:1–16)
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Since the Middle Ages, the name Lazarus has been used as a synonym for a leper: Simon the leper was the Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead (see John 11:1–44; 12:1) … the name Lazarus can be reasonably translated as “God is my help.” As such, it carries the same meaning as Eleazar and its shortened form, Eli, with “Eleazar” being the son of Aaron and with “Eli” also serving as the shortened form of Elisha, the successor to Elijah the prophet.
As mentioned in last Sabbath’s reading, utterance in this world as in naming icons is a thing of this world that reveals the invisible things of God … in the name Lazarus, which John choose to use for Martha and Mary’s brother but which Matthew more than fifty years earlier did not choose to use, an attribute of God is indirectly conveyed—
Oral cultures employ indirection as the preferred means of conveying information whereas inscribed cultures tend to shun indirection and privilege mimetic forms of communication … metaphoric and allegorical speech relies on indirection and upon the auditor [hearer or reader] being able to assign non-mimetic linguistic objects to the icons written or uttered. Theologically, a Christian not able to employ dual referents to an inscribed utterance is spiritually younger than a human child of less than thirty months, meaning that the Christian who “reads” Scripture literally as Huldrych Zwingli (dod 1531 CE) advocated is a spiritual infant, and certainly is not someone mature enough in the faith to instruct anyone—
Life is in the blood, with that “life” representing the carrying of oxygen molecules exchanged in the lungs/gills throughout the living entity’s body. In physically living entities, the presence of life is the presence of cellular oxidation—dark fire—of simple carbohydrates, with the blood then carrying away the byproducts [ash] of this cellular oxidation.
Physical life as a thing of this world reveals what it means to have indwelling spiritual or eternal life, received via a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theon]. … Eternal life, the receipt of eternal life and maintenance of this bright fire cannot be seen by human eyes, but can only be seen darkly—in type—in observing cellular oxidation of sugars, with the number of cells in a human body that die within any given period of time being great and being analogous to the number of sons of God that “die” within a given period. In number, the sons of God, human and angelic, that die in the Abyss is great, with glorified human sons of God replacing rebelling angelic sons of God roughly one-for-one after the model of the children of Israel numbered in the census of the new generation (601, 730 — from Num 26:51) being roughly equal to the number of Israelites numbered in the census of the second year (603,550 — from Num 1:46).
If the number of cells in a human body is 50 trillion, an informed estimate, would it be unreasonable to place the number of living entities in heaven at a similar number? If that number is not unreasonable, then a tithe of a tithe (1%) of this number would still be approximately ten times the number of people who have ever drawn breath here on earth. This suggests that Satan’s rebellion against God is to the Most High less significant than previously considered and that glorified human sons of God, as heirs of the Most High, are of much more significance, for they are fewer in percentage and hence of greater importance than traditionally assumed. And if the heirs of God are statistically few in number, their worth in turn will be great enough that the sacrifice of spiritual livestock—vessels of wrath prepared for destruction (from Rom 9:22)—is justified, with the cost to God of His sacrifice [the temporary death of the Logos and the permanent death of lawless sons] emphasized to Israel through the nation consecrating its firstborns.
The preceding paragraph is based on speculation, but what isn’t speculative is that heaven and the culture of heaven is not based on buying and selling. Value has no numerical numeration; for possessions are possessed by a living entity as part of the entity in a similar manner to how a pottery vessel’s glaze becomes part of the vessel when the vessel is fired a second time … when possessions are not things owned but attributes of the living entity, then no one can “steal” these possessions, nor can they be bought and sold. Commerce isn’t conducted in things but in a permanency of character not obtained in heaven but obtained before entering heaven. Thus, Christ Jesus’ millennial reign over humankind that serves as a type of entering into God’s rest, heaven, will not be organized around buying and selling but around obtaining character attributes that are facets of love.
The Millennium will not be noteworthy for its materialism—rather, it will be notable for its lack of materialism—but will distinguish itself from this present age by the collective growth of love one person has for another …
When dominion over the single kingdom of the world is taken from Babylon [the name coming from its head, the spiritual king of Babylon — see Isa 14:4] and given to the Son of Man [its name also coming from its Head], Satan and his angels will be cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–10) and Satan will come as the true Antichrist; i.e., will come claiming to be the messiah. But when Satan is cast from heaven, the world will be baptized in spirit (Joel 2:28, Matt 3:11) so that every human being alive will be born of God, and born filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God. Every person will then have the mind of Christ, and will only have to endure to the end to be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22). But to endure to the end, the person cannot take upon him or herself the mark of the beast [tattoo of Christ's cross] which is the mark of death, or said otherwise, is to mark oneself for death when Christ Jesus returns as the King of kings and Lord of lords.
If a person with the mind of Christ in the Endurance, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years, doesn’t take upon him or herself the tattoo of the cross, the person cannot buy or sell (Rev 13:16–18) …
The saints are the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16) —
Jesus thrice cleansed the temple, driving out the livestock, the merchants, the moneychangers (John 2:13–22; Matt 21:12–19; Mark 11:12–16) —
In this present world with the Adversary as its prince, Jesus with a whip of cords drove out from the temple those who would buy and sell; whereas when the kingdom is given to the Son of Man, the Adversary as the Antichrist through the tattoo of the cross will drive out from the temple those who would buy and sell … that is correct: the Adversary will cleanse the temple of God—all who would be saved by enduring to the end without taking upon themselves the tattoo of the cross—when he tries to reestablish the economic constructs of modern society.
The Adversary will never appreciate the extent to which he is manipulated by the Lord; for in using the tattoo of the cross, the mark of death, to separate those who choose him as lord from those who will choose the Most High, the Adversary cleanses the temple of God, removing from it the spiritual livestock, the merchants, and the moneychangers.
If in the Endurance the holy ones cannot buy and sell—and considering that Jesus drove merchants from the temple—then it is reasonable to conclude that the Millennium will not be organized around buying and selling as this present world is organized, but will be organized in a manner not truly understood or understandable in this present era, but a manner developed in the Endurance, which is what gives to the Endurance its logarithmic curve that mirrors in ascendency the fall or collapse of Babylon. And in a society that is not based on buying and selling, the poor will not always be present for the earthly poor are a derivative of societies based on buying and selling.
The spiritually impoverished are also the derivative of ideologies that mingle the sacred [Christ] with the profane [the day of the invincible sun, and the birthday of the invincible sun], with Sin, the third horseman of the Apocalypse, buying and selling the spiritually impoverished.
In primitive hunter/gatherer cultures, there were those who ate a little better than others but there were no real “poor”: the concept of private property wasn’t centered on the individual but on the family or community or tribe. Thus, in the American West there were poor tribes [the Digger Amerindians] and wealthy tribes so no Utopia existed, but the disparity seen between a Kenyan in a hut in Africa and his half-brother in the White House could not exist. And it is the extreme spread in prosperity between these two sons of the same Marxist father that, perhaps, best illustrates what is wrong with the Adversary’s reign as king of Babylon, the present kingdom of this world.
Today, for all intent and purposes the geographical place of birth determines economic prosperity: if a pregnant Mexican woman can cross into the United States and give birth to her child in Arizona—conceived in Mexico but born in the United States—the child has American citizenship and “anchors” its parents in the United States regardless of how the parents arrived. And for a while longer, the economic outlook for an American citizen is better than for a Mexican national. So a line in the desert or a later-term pregnancy airplane flight to Hawaii makes all the difference in the world.
If a person will accept it, geography forms the visible shadow and copy of invisible ideology, with ancient Egypt representing for the children of Israel sin [unbelief] as ancient Assyria represents death and as ancient Babylon represents the ideological kingdom of this world. Economic prosperity now differs from location to location in Babylon, with a person removing him or herself from this prosperity treadmill by leaving Babylon through Sabbath observance … if a Jew [natural Israelite] were to actually believe the Lord, the Jew would not be in a Safeway parking lot on Sabbath morning. The Jew would, as so many observant Jews and Sabbatarian Christians have discovered, have been pushed out of worldly politics and away from most forms of economic activity. Believing God, manifested in keeping the commandments, especially the Sabbath commandment, serves as a separation between spiritual Babylon and God’s rest as the River Jordan served to separate Babylon from the Land beyond the River. It is for this reason that the writer of Hebrews uses entering into Sabbath observance as a type of entering into heaven (see Heb 3:16–4:11; Ps 95:10–11; Num chap 14).
Again, how the kingdom of this world under the Son of Man will be organized is not today known, for bartering [the readily apparent answer] remains a form of buying and selling albeit a cash-less form. What can be known is that at the end of the 1,000 years, when Satan is loosed from his chains, he will use this present era and its material accomplishments to persuade an era that has only known peace to join with him in rebellion against God … after a 1,000 years, the wars and the poor won’t seem as “real” as they are today. Rather, a tiny work delivering a message around the world at the speed of light will be of greater relevance and importance—the Adversary will use the accomplishments of Philadelphia against God. For once cast into time, the Adversary will be given the mind of a man as ancient King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was given the mind of a beast for seven years. To the mind of men, the work of Philadelphia and the accomplishments of mass communications seem miraculous, but really are nothing when social safety-net programs are bankrupting the richest nations ever known to men.
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In the days of Samuel, the people of Israel did not want Samuel’s sons to be their judges for his sons perverted justice, taking bribes and not walking in the ways of the Lord (1 Sam 8:3). However, instead of waiting for the Lord to place another judge in that office as the Lord had done when Eli’s sons perverted justice, the people asked for a king:
Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” (1 Sam 8:4–9 emphasis added)
When the people make for themselves a monarch, or when the people agitate together and take power to themselves and form a democracy or a republic, with no exceptions the people reject God as their sovereign. They rebel against God, but they will have first forsaken God and have served other gods over a long period so that God is no longer real in their collective memory. And the Lord doesn’t stop people from organizing themselves into democracies or republics or constitutional monarchies for He does not directly rule this world but has consigned all of humankind to disobedience as bondservants to the Adversary. He did, however, have Samuel warn the people of Israel about the “cost” of making for themselves a king, even a king that the Lord chose for them.
When Paul writes, “Let every person be subject to [authorities superior]. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom 13:1), Paul would have the Roman emperor receiving authority from God, who sets over kingdoms the basest of men (Dan 4:17). But Paul writes of authorities superior at a time when the visions of Daniel were sealed and secret and at a time when the vision of John [the Book of Revelation] had not yet been given. So Paul doesn’t realize that the single kingdom of this world would not become the kingdom of the Most High and of His Christ until halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation—dominion must be taken from the four kings and the little horn (Dan 7:9–14) before the single kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Most High and of His Christ (Rev 11:15–18). Paul apparently believed that the Caesars ruled in the same way that the kings of Israel, and the king of Babylon and of Media and Persia and of Greece ruled. Paul either intentionally or unintentionally neglected the authority the citizens of Rome had under the Republic, when the citizens and their representatives were the authorities superior.
What Paul wrote about being in subjection to authorities superior was used metaphorically to make the Roman emperor God’s representative here on earth, an unintentional slight of the equally powerful Chinese emperor and the equally advanced and perhaps technologically superior empire of China. Thus, imbedded in what Paul wrote is a qualifier that is not readily seen, and that qualifier is in the name Kaisar, the name meaning “hairy” the same as what Esau’s name meant: to Esau should be given the things that are Esau’s, and to God the things that are of God. Esau, in the form of the name Caesar [pronounced Kaiser], was the authorities superior appointed by God to be a terror to those who work evil (Rom 13:3), with Caleb who was the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite who was of Esau militarily serving Joshua as Eleazar, son of Aaron spiritually served Joshua, thereby making Caleb and Eleazar, together, the shadow and type of how Aaron served Moses.
In the Promised Land, Caleb and Eleazar together are analogous to the two witnesses in the Affliction, with these two—Caleb and Eleazar—representing the two sons of promise born to Isaac; for if Caleb had not had about him a different spirit, he too would have been hated from birth.
Differing from his natural brothers and from his adopted brothers by having about him a spirit that caused him to believe the Lord, Caleb said to Joshua,
Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.’ And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”
Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel. Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba. (Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim.) And the land had rest from war. (Josh 14:6–15)
Caleb took the Town of the Four giants … after the young man David slew Goliath, four stones remained in his bag, four stones that will be used to slay four giants: spiritual Caleb will take and defeat the four demonic kings that sprout from around the base of the broken first horn of the spiritual king of Greece. This spiritual son of Esau will do and finish what Lazarus began when Jesus called Lazarus forth from the grave; for this son of Esau, a man of the fields and a killer that even his super-strong brother Jacob feared, will slay death by coming forth from the grave when called before it is time for the dead to be resurrected at the Second Advent.
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When the citizens of a country make for themselves a king or a Caesar or a Führer as the crowd that Jesus fed was wont to do, the citizens are auctor, the author or originator of authorities superior.
If the people had made Jesus their king, no authority to rule in this era would have been given to Jesus by the Most High: Jesus would have ruled through the people being the author of His reign.
No authority from the Most High was given to Shimon bar Kokhba to rule over the Jewish independent state of Israel as Nasi from 132–135 CE. No authority from the Most High was given to Arminius who led an alliance of Germanic tribes in the Varian disaster [the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest] when the Germanic tribes ambushed and destroyed three Roman legions, along with their auxiliaries.
It is intellectually dishonest to say that Augustus Caesar [Octavian] was anointed by the Most High as emperor of all Roman lands when the Most High did no such thing: Augustus Caesar ruled as princeps, “first citizen.” He ruled by auctoritas principis, the moral authority of being the first citizen, the legal firstborn of the nation.
The crux of what Paul wrote about saints to be in subjection to authorities superior (i.e., to the Caesar/Kaisar) remains true: disciples are to be in subjection to authorities superior regardless of whether that auctor has been anointed by the Most High or has taken authority from the people [the demos]. The distinction, though, between being anointed by God or receiving power from the people becomes important at the end of the age when the Holy Spirit is initially poured out on all of Christendom, then three and a half years later, on all living things … when the spirit is poured out on all of Christendom, the present prince of this world will continue in power, meaning that the two witnesses will instigate a rebellion against the Adversary by reigning over the holy ones through auctoritas principis, the moral authority that comes from being first, the first among equals. The two witnesses will not reign over Christendom as its king; the two witnesses will not have been anointed to be king, but to be Christendom’s guide or führer, with tyranny suggested in the Germanic icon being evident in the rigidity of Moses’ uncompromising obedience to God.
Rebelling Christians will refer to the two witnesses as the führers—
After a half century of frequent civil wars and military campaigns against neighboring peoples, Roman citizens in the 1st-Century BCE were willing to let young Octavian rule since he wisely refrained from claiming royal and dictatorial authority as Julius Caesar had. He declined the tribune power Rome offered him, and ruled instead as princeps in the Senate: Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (Julius Caesar’s political ally and deputy), on 26 November 43 BCE—their armies lining opposite sides of the river—met on an island and formed the Second Triumvirate [Triumvirs Rei Publicae Constituendae Consukari Potestate], thereby killing the Roman Republic. Unlike the First Triumvirate of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, which was never formally constituted, the Second Triumvirate legally existed for two five year terms (43 BCE to 33 BCE).
Octavian held a collection of powers given to him by the Senate, but his “real” power came from his financial wealth obtained by holding Egypt and the Ptolemaic kingdom as his personal fiefdom, and from his construction of patronage relationships throughout the empire. He paid his soldiers and his veterans, and for that he received the respect of the people. And because his soldiers were loyal to him personally, he held an armed threat he could employ at will against the Senate or against a rival.
When Octavian militarily defeated Mark Anthony, effectively ending the Second Triumvirate, he had the wisdom to wait until Marcus Lepidus, the third member of the Second Triumvirate and Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of the College of Pontiffs [Collegium Pontificum] and the most important office in ancient Roman religion, died naturally in late 13 BCE or early 12 BCE before he declared himself chief priest, thereby politicizing the office which would become part of the Imperial title—
Nowhere in all of the offices and titles that Octavian/Augustus held was there an anointing by God. Rather, Augustus’ hold on power was authored in the will of the people, the same basis on which an American President constitutionally holds power—
The kingdom of this world would not be taken from the four beasts and given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14); would not need to become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ (Rev 11:15) if it were presently ruled by Christ Jesus. It isn’t, and it won’t be until halfway through the seven endtime years—
The above means that the Adversary remains as the prince [nasi] of this world. All authority in this world that does not come from a king being anointed by God as David was comes through the Adversary. Therefore, when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man and the stick of Ephraim is joined with the stick of Judah and all Israel becomes one stick, one house, under one covenant (Ezek 37:15–23; Jer 31:31–34), David shall be king over this one stick (Ezek 37:24) beginning even before King David is resurrected from death at the coming of the Messiah. This David that shall be the king of Israel is also the Moses that leads the 144,000 and the Joshua [Greek, Jesus] that leads the holy ones into God’s rest.
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The visions of Daniel were sealed and secret until the time of the end, when many “‘shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase’” (Dan 12:4). The vision of John [the Book of Revelation] was not given until decades after the Apostle Paul was slain in Rome. So with the visions of Daniel sealed and with the vision of John not yet given, it wasn’t possible for Paul to know that the present prince of this world would reign over humankind until—at the earliest—the fall of 2014, three and a half years from today. If the Second Passover liberation is this year on the second Passover [the 15th of Iyyar is May 19th], the present prince of this world would retain dominion over this world through October 30th, 2014. The kingdom of this world would not be given to the Son of Man until October 31st, when Satan and his angels would be cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–10), coming to this earth as the reality of the spooks and goblins even Christians in the greater Church honor on Halloween.
The Apostle Paul couldn’t know knowledge that was spiritually kept from him; so it isn’t to Paul in the 1st-Century CE or even to John in the 1st-Century that endtime disciples are to go for understanding of Daniel’s visions. It is, instead, to the one called in the 21st-Century as Paul was called in the 1st-Century that endtime disciples are to go. But as a fabric veil covered Moses’ face so that Israel and the children of Israel could not see his face, an ideological veil covers the face of the endtime Moses so that Christians in the greater Church cannot see the face of the one called to lead Israel after the Second Passover liberation of the circumcised-of-heart nation. And if ideology hides this latter-day Moses from the circumcised-of-heart nation, hardening hearts whenever the old covenant is read (from 2 Cor 3:14), then the possibility of Christians in the greater Church rebelling against God is every bit as likely as the reality of Israel rebelling against Moses in the wilderness of Paran; for the people of Israel want to see the face of the “king” they follow as they saw Jesus’ face at Passover when Jesus fed the five thousand.
Jesus concealed His face from the people of Israel when He withdrew from them and went farther up the mountains, thereby using distance as a veil that then hid His face from the people (see John 6:15).
Going up the mountain and using altitude and distance as a veil to hide His face from the crowd that wanted to make Him king, Jesus used the physical things of this world as a shadow and type [left hand enantiomer] of the dimensional barrier of Him having entered heaven to hide His face from the people so that the people, before it is time, cannot make Him their king.
Moses’ fabric veil also represents a shadow and type of the cross-dimensional veil that today hides Jesus’ face from the people of Israel; hence the ideological veil that will hide the face of the two witnesses from greater Christendom functions as Jesus’ cross-dimensional veil, meaning that entering heaven is an ideological determination. This ideological veil will also prevent the people from making the two witnesses co-princeps as Augustus and Tiberius were in 13 CE, the year when both adopted Caesars reigned over Rome.
Again, in Greek, “Caesar” is written Kaisar [pronounced, Kaiser]. In Latin, the name means “hairy”; in Hebrew, Esau’s name means “hairy.” The Apostle Paul reminded the saints at Rome of the words of Malachi, “As it is written [see Mal 1:2–3], ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau [Caesar] I hated’” (Rom 9:13). And now, Caesar’s birth by C-section and the subsequent adoption of succeeding Caesars can be better contextualized within Jesus saying, “‘From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force’” (Matt 11:12); for in Caesar is all of Esau, the other son of promise born to Isaac. In unnatural birth and adoption, the firstborn son of promise, hated by the Lord from before birth, is represented. Only when descendants of the firstborn son of promise have about them a different spirit as Caleb had about him can the descendents of Caesar enter into the kingdom.
All Christians who theologically descend from the Universal Church [Catholicism] or from the Reformed Church or even from Anabaptists are of Esau: they are men of the field, men [and women] of this world, and they strive to take the kingdom of the heavens by force. They contend that they have auctoritas principis, the supreme moral authority of being the first citizen, the firstborn son of promise—the authority of the Caesars.
Sabbatarian Christians, descended from 16th-Century Anabaptists beginning with Andreas Fischer, are not of Jacob but are of Esau/Caesar. They are unnaturally born of God through receipt of a second breath of life; they are adopted (Gal 4:5; John 14:2–3) as heirs of God; they are the lawful holders of auctoritas principis, and they alone have the right to bear the name Caesar. For Christians of the greater Church are not, today, born of God as evidenced by their minds being set [focused] on the things of the flesh, from worldly politics to biological families to the material things of this world. Thus, the authority of the Caesars in the 1st-Century is not held by the endtime greater Christian Church, but by the theological descendants of early Sabbatarian Anabaptists.
Again, by unnatural birth and through adoption, the supreme moral authority of [Kaisar] will be manifested by the two witnesses in the Affliction.
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There is “cost” attached to the United States of America being a republic, and that cost is the continued manifestation of righteousness that comes through believing God … when the people are the “author” of authorities superior to which the citizens of a nation are to be in subjection, then the righteousness of the people collectively determines the nation’s righteousness before God—
What if the people have never believed God? What if the nation was never righteous? What if the people, like the children of Israel in the Promised Land, never walked in the statutes of the Lord and continually profaned His Sabbaths?
And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.” Then the Lord said to Samuel, “Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.”
Samuel lay until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. And Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” And he said, “Here I am.” And Eli said, “What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.” So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. And he said, “It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.”
And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord. (1 Sam 3:10–21 emphasis added)
Do Christian pastors and theologians know that they have not restrained the lawlessness of their sons in Christ, the laity of wards and parishes, sects and denominations? Are not Christian pastors and priests like Eli?
Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death. (1 Sam 2:22–25)
Eli knew what his sons were doing; he rebuked them, perhaps even sternly. But he was unwilling to cut his sons off from Israel for the evil they did. He was unwilling to do what was necessary to purge evil from the land … Eli placed more importance on having his sons with him than he did on serving righteousness.
Is it not said in Christian churches that Jesus came to save sinners, not the righteous? Is this not then used as justification for not putting the sexually immoral, the greedy, the idolater, the reviler, the drunkard, the swindler out of the Church as the Apostle Paul commanded (1 Cor 5:9–13)?
Across sects and denominations, Christian pastors rebuke their sons in the Lord, sometimes even sternly. But an outside observer never sees the laity fully turn toward the Lord in sincere repentance or cease even for a Sabbath the laity’s lawless ways, but sees slightly reddened faces as anger builds against the pastor for daring to infringe upon the covering of grace that hides their unbelief, demonstrated each Sunday.
A man of God came to Eli and said,
Thus the Lord has said, “Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh? Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?” Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: “I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,” but now the Lord declares: “Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house, so that there will not be an old man in your house. Then in distress you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever. The only one of you whom I shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out to grieve his heart, and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men. And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day. And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. And everyone who is left in your house shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread and shall say, ‘Please put me in one of the priests' places, that I may eat a morsel of bread.’” (1 Sam 2:27–36 emphasis added)
That faithful priest is the glorified Christ Jesus—
In type, Philadelphia today functions as Samuel functioned, with the Sabbatarian churches of God forming a diminutive type of Eli and his sons, and with greater Christendom forming the larger type of Eli. If a person will accept it, King Saul forms the shadow and copy—left hand enantiomer—of the man of perdition, who will be an Arian Christian and who will have an evil spirit about him [that is, he will be possessed by the Adversary]. As Saul was a handsome young man, head and shoulders taller than any of the people (1 Sam 9:2), the man of perdition will be a handsome fellow; will appear as a chubby-cheeked cherub, his hands soft, his demeanor friendly, his zeal for righteousness appearing genuine until examined in the light of Scripture. And Philadelphia today dwells in that narrow window of time represented by the return of the Ark of the Covenant (1 Sam chap 6), with Saul being proclaimed king (1 Sam chap 10) representing the Apostasy of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 when the lawless one is revealed; i.e., day 220 of the Affliction.
But if Philadelphia as a Sabbatarian Anabaptist sect is of Caesar, then does not this firstborn son of promise—born of Isaac—have about the sect a different spirit as Caleb had about him? Indeed, Philadelphia does! Does not this firstborn son of Isaac hold the testimony of Jesus, the word [message] of the Endurance? And does not this son of promise prepare the way to the Lord as John the Baptist did? Yes, to all of the above rhetorical questions.
The vast majority of spiritual Esau—those Christians who do not render unto God the things that are God’s (Matt 22:21)—will not believe that they have sold their birthright and forfeited their inheritance to a deceitful younger brother, loved by God not for his deceit but for valuing obedience to God over the things of this world … Isaac loved Esau because of the game he brought home (Gen 25:27), but once when Esau came in from the field, exhausted, believing he was about to die, he traded his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of red stew, bread and lentils (vv. 29–34): Esau didn’t value his birthright as the firstborn son of promise. Nor does greater Christendom value its birthright, that of auctoritas principis, the supreme moral authority, the right of being first, the legal firstborn son. Instead, this mostly dead firstborn son—greater Christendom—has been, with the limited exception of those disciples who have about them a different spirit, cut off from God because it didn’t value its birthright enough to strive for obedience when it was just too easy and too convenient to live as a Gentile, a person of the nations, in this world.
Two sons of promise will be born to Isaac … the Apostle Paul identified 1st-Century disciples as Isaac (Gal 4:21–31), but it isn’t Isaac that enters God’s rest. The children of Israel enter, but only after Israel [Jacob] and his sons go into Egypt where they become slaves to Pharaoh, and are then set free at the Passover. According to Paul, the natural descendants of Israel are allegorically called Ishmael, whereas the first Christians are Isaac. So the two sons of promise—Esau and Jacob—are not disciples in the 1st-Century, but endtime holy ones, with Christians following the Second Passover liberation of Israel being Esau, within whom is a spiritual Cain and Abel. Observant Jews who profess that Jesus is Lord and believe that the Father raised Jesus from the dead become Jacob, with the 144,000 that follow the Lamb wherever He goes being as the children of Israel were who followed Joshua [Jesus] into God’s rest. Likewise, the third part of humankind to whom the Remnant (from Rev 12:17) witness accounts for the bulk of the spiritual children of Israel who will be glorified at the Second Advent.
Sons of God do not live as sons of the Adversary, but rather, sons of God seek righteousness through believing God, which means that sons of God will, by belief, by faith, keep the commandments (see 1 John 3:4–10)
How are Christians within the greater Church to recognize sons of God when they themselves believe that they are already sons?
The closer a person not yet born of God is to Christ Jesus—i.e., the closer Christians in the greater Church are to what they profess—the less likely (because of cognitive dissonance) the person is to repent and turn to God when actually born of spirit …
The present status of a Christian not today truly born of God will, in an inverse relationship, determine whether this Christian will ever enter heaven: the closer today the person is to what the person professes, the less likely the Christian is to repent of his or her lawlessness and the more likely this Christian is to rebel against God when the lawless one, the man of perdition, is revealed. This Christian will not admit that he or she has been worshiping demons, not God. And this Christian will find in his or her experience—in his or her motives—sufficient evidence to convince this Christian that his or her past worship of Christ was good and proper.
Left to themselves, Christians in the greater Church will never repent of their present lawlessness. They will never be born of God as sons, but because they claim to know the will of God—because they claim to see (John 9:41)—they will be condemned for their guilt remains and is neither covered by grace nor by death. Hence, to turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, repentance will have to be “forced” onto Christians in the greater Church just as leaving Egypt (with Egypt representing sin) was forced onto Israel in the days of Moses.
Unless Moses had gone to Pharaoh and asked him to let Israel worship the Lord, and unless Pharaoh, after uncovered firstborns were slain, had summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “‘Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel, and go, serve the Lord’” (Ex 12:31), Israel would have never left Egypt. And so it is with Christians in the greater Church when it comes to them leaving sin and believing God rather than demons and lawless pastors and theologians.
Until tested, faith/belief [pistos] is incomplete. To be made complete, faith will be manifested in obedience … it is not enough for a Philadelphian to say that he or she believes that time is short, that the end of the age is near, and then continue living as if there were no end to this present age. This person by his or her actions demonstrates that the person really doesn’t believe the end of the age is at hand. This is not to say that a Philadelphian should sell all that he or she has and sit on a mountainside awaiting Christ’s return—that is foolishness of the highest order. This is to say, however, that a Philadelphian should consider or have considered how he or she will supply to the person and to his or her family basic necessities such as food, water, clothing, shelter when (not if) society as presently organized collapses. Yes, God will provide what the person cannot. But God didn’t provide Noah with the Ark, nor did God miraculously slay Sihon, king of Heshbon, or Og, king of Bashan. The children of Israel had to swing swords and plunge spears in faith that the Lord would give the victory to them, which He did.
Again, to be made complete, faith/belief must be tested in obedience even when common sense would have disobedience seem the wiser choice.
Preaching repentance is really not difficult, unless the ones who hear sincerely believe they have no need to repent. Then preaching repentance is preaching sedition—
Beginning earlier than its 1956 booklet, 1975 in Prophecy, the former Worldwide Church of God [then the Radio Church of God] preached a doomsday scenario for the United States of America and Great Britain if both nations did not repent of their lawless ways, return to God, and begin keeping the commandments. The rhetoric of just that one booklet alone—1975 in Prophecy—should have frightened the lawless, but its claims, such as the following one, never came to pass: “human life will be erased from the earth in 25 years” (p. 3), that is by 1981.
There was no hydrogen bomb attack, led by Germany, made on the United States of America or on any other nation in the years between 1956 and 1981, or since. There was no severe famine in North America in 1975 or even earlier as Herbert W. Armstrong claimed there would be in the booklet, 1975 in Prophecy. Yes, in that booklet Armstrong foresaw the softening of a leisure-oriented America, but most every generation has thought that its youth were soft and seeking only pleasure. On a cuneiform tablet from ancient Mesopotamia, a father complained that all his son wanted to do was race chariots around the city square. So in Armstrong’s many calls for the English-speaking peoples of the world to repent, return to God, and seek righteousness, Armstrong did what John the Baptist did, only not well enough to get himself killed as John got himself killed.
The reason why Armstrong was unable to get himself killed by preaching repentance to America lay in the people of the United States still holding auctoritas principis, the “authority of the first citizen,” the authority that Augustus Caesar claimed for himself … when the rulers of a nation are the servants of the people, it is the people collectively that are the sovereigns of that nation. It is the people as auctor that rule either directly as in a democracy, or indirectly as in a republic. It is the people collectively that constitutes the first citizen of the nation, and theologically becomes the firstborn son of the nation, the son that is to be redeemed so as not to be slain by God. Hence, in a democracy or in a republic where the citizens of the nation hold the reins of power, the citizenry as a single “man” represents the nation before God as an ancient king of Israel, or king of Judah represented that nation before God. In a democracy and in a republic, God treats individuals as individuals only when they are His firstborn sons. All other individuals collectively form a single individual, the nation state; for these individuals jointly hold the authority of a king or emperor.
John the Baptist came baptizing with water for the death of the lawless old man or old self, which a person kills by demonstrated obedience after the model of Abraham who, by faith, “obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance” (Heb 11:8). Abraham, in obedience, “went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in a land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise” (vv. 8–9). Faith is belief manifested in obedience … Abraham obeyed by faith and had his belief that caused him to obey counted to him as righteousness; for his belief, his faith that was counted to him as righteousness was not complete until it was tested in obedience in the land of Moriah, where he was commanded to sacrifice Isaac (cf. Gen 22:1–12; Jas 2:21–24).
The above will become extremely important immediately preceding the Second Passover liberation of Israel … if a pharaoh or a Caesar does not usurp the auctoritas that constitutionally resides with the people of the United States of America prior to the Second Passover, the people collectively will be slain as “the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne” was slain (Ex 12:29) when Moses led Israel out from slavery. The struggle that lies immediately ahead of America will be between the people to hold auctoritas and the would-be pharaoh who is intent upon taking to himself the authority that resides in being the nation state’s “first citizen,” able to jet around the world on Air Force One.
Although relinquished auctoritas will never be regained by the people of the United States, if this auctoritas is not relinquished the nation’s citizenry will be utterly wiped out in a day—
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This reading has been a continuation of earlier readings, and next Sabbath’s reading will be a continuation of this reading.
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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."