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 God the Father in Christ in true Christians.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of February 5, 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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I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says,
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.”
(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Eph 4:1–16 emphasis added)
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Note: one body and one spirit, one Lord and one God and Father of all, one faith and one baptism. The body isn’t the spirit, and faith isn’t baptism; therefore, one Lord isn’t one God and Father of all. Every Christian has one Father, and this Father is God the Father. And every Christian has one Lord, one Head, and this Head is Christ (1 Cor 11:3), and the Head of Christ is God (same verse). And Christ has given to the Church apostles and prophets, evangelists and teachers for the building up of the Body of Christ so that Christians should no longer be spiritual infants tossed to and fro by human cunning as is presently the case within greater Christendom. Christ has given to the Church men who are to teach babes that Christ is not the God and Father of all, that the God and Father of all is another deity, a previously unknown deity, the deity that was the Head of the Logos as Christ Jesus is the head of the Church and as the husband is the head of his wife. And if those men whom Christ has given to the Church to teach babes do not teach that the Lord, Christ, who is God but is not God the Father, is the only Son of the Logos, who was God [theos] and who was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning (cf. John 1:1–2, 14; 3:16) and if those men do not teach that the Lord is the First of the firstborns sons of the God, then Christ Jesus hasn’t made them apostles and teachers to the holy ones. If those men do not teach that the Logos as Yah was the helpmate to the God, that these two were one deity as Adam and Eve were one flesh, with their “oneness” defined by the unpronounced Tetragrammaton YHWH, then Christians will forever remain babes tossed to and fro by false winds of doctrine.
The above is correct: two are one. This is the mystery of Christendom. This is where Christianity differs from Judaism and Islam.
The unpronounced Tetragrammaton YHWH, Israel’s Elohim, names two deities that together—as if man and wife—form one deity, with Yah [/YH/] being the Logos, who created all things that have been made (John 1:3), and with Yah, having equality with the God, not counting that equality as a thing to be grasped (Phil 2:6) but giving up that equality to enter the creation not as a deity, but as the Logos’ only Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene, and men gazed upon the glory of Jesus, glory as of-an-only-one from the Father (John 1:14); for other than the Logos, the Father had no one else He could send into the creation, which the Logos had brought forth as a woman brings forth a child … when a husband (say, a farmer) does not wish to cease work but needs something from the hardware store in town, the husband sends his wife to get whatever he needs; for he trusts his wife to carry out his wishes. If the husband has a hired employee, he will need that employee to continue doing the work for which he hired the person. It is, mostly likely, his wife that he sends on special assignments to do what is not normally done. In moving from a rural to a suburban setting, it has traditionally been the wife that takes children to soccer practice, that runs errands for the small business, that can leave the business for a few minutes and still have the business continue to function. And in the modeling of a husband and a supporting wife who has given birth to sons as Eve gave birth to Cain, Abel, and Seth is seen the relationship between God the Father and the Logos, two deities that form one deity in the unpronounced and unpronounceable Tetragrammaton YHWH — unpronounceable because the God (i.e., God the Father) is not of this world, never entered the creation, never directly interacted with human beings, but remained concealed from humankind by the creation (see Eccl 3:11) until Jesus revealed Him to Jesus’ disciples. The Father has no name that can be uttered by the physical tongue; therefore, it is more than presumptuous to assign to Him a physical name. For how does an English speaker pronounce a question mark? How could a German prisoner of war in England during WWII, driving a lorry with a tire that suddenly went flat, determine what the British officer that approached the lorry meant when the officer said, Why don’t you change the tire. The question mark is not pronounced; so how was the German POW to distinguish between an inquiry about a problem with the spare tire and a command to change the tire? In German, a command isn’t given in the structural form of a question. Yet—this is a real life example, one from an Austrian professor who taught English in the university in Vienna before emigrating to the United States where he taught German after the War—the English officer commanded the German prisoner to change the tire, using the structural form of a question for his command for the sake of politeness, and when the German prisoner did not immediately get out of the lorry and begin to change the tire, the English officer yelled at him, saying, I gave you an order. The Austrian professor said that for the first time in his life, even though he had been teaching English in Vienna for some years, he truly understood the language, and understood that meaning had to be assigned to words based upon the context in which the words appear.
A question outside of the context for when a question would be asked is not a question even though the utterance comes in the structural form of a question. Likewise, the Logos outside of the context in which the Logos would appear is not God to Israel even though the man Jesus does the work of the Logos. And God-the-Father outside of the context in which the Logos appeared as God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not God to Israel even though it was by the Father that the One created all things (— Eph 3:9) … it is by the man that the woman bears children.
The Tetragrammaton YHWH only appears in an inscribed [written] form. It is not an utterance, and cannot be made to be an utterance because the Father, as half of the Tetragrammaton YHWH, is not of this world and only enters the creation in the role of “Father”: He is God but God-as-the-Father. Thus, the Tetragrammaton can be written—for half of it created this world and interacted directly with this world—as a single entity, but because it never represented a single entity, it cannot be uttered or pronounced. In that sense (because it can be written but carries no pronunciation), it is truly like a question mark. It has no pronunciation, not because it is too sacred to be pronounced, the reason given by rabbinical Judaism for not attempting to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, but because half of what is represented by the inscribed characters YHWH never left heaven, a supra-dimensional realm in which nothing has mass, that is nothing has substance in a physical form. The Tetragrammaton stands as the parents of the creation, with the Father being of crucial importance but not being the one who brought the creation—the child—into existence. As a human father leaves his sperm in a woman, God the Father left His command with the Logos, who then brought the creation into existence, with humankind in the form of Adam and Eve being part of the physical creation. Therefore, to be in the image and likeness of Elohim, humankind must be created male and female (Gen 1:27) and must become spirit beings [i.e., not physical] that are greater and lesser (see Matt 5:19; Gen 1:16) in the kingdom of the heavens, with the lesser reflecting the glory of the greater as the moon reflects the glory of the sun. Hence, the glorified Christ Jesus as the light of men becomes the glory that His disciples reflect now and in the kingdom, with His disciples dividing themselves into those who keep the commandments and teach others to do likewise and those who have relaxed [not broken] the least of the commandments and taught others to do the same.
Again, for Christians, the God and the Logos, with their respective indwelling breaths, formed the deity identified in Scripture as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Marriage represents the physical completion of man, of Adam. In marriage, a man and a woman become one flesh (Gen 2:24). Before God, marriage only represents the union of one man with one woman, with this union intended to be unbreakable outside of death. But once sin [unbelief] entered this world and hearts were hardened, divorce has been permitted; for God doesn’t really join together marriages between a man and woman with hardened hearts. God doesn’t join together marriages between corpses—and until a human being is truly born of God through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theon], the human being is a spiritual corpse. The human being is spiritually dead and is counted among the dead about whom Jesus said,— permit the dead to bury the of themselves dead (Matt 8:22). God does not enter into the marriage between two Muslims, or between Jews, or two Catholics, or between two Mormons, or between two atheists, or between any combination of the preceding regardless of what each believes that God has done. For the person who has truly been born of God will no longer be hostile to God (Rom 8:7), will no longer have a hard heart (a heart of stone), and will earnestly desire to keep the commandments of God, while believing that Jesus is Lord and that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead.
The Christian who has truly been born of God doesn’t worship the same deity that Judaism or Islam or Christians-not-born-of-spirit worship. The same name can be used, but they are not the same deity: the Jesus that Islam acknowledges as a prophet isn’t the Jesus that came to earth as the only Son of Yah and that is today the First of the firstborn sons of the Most High God. The Jesus that Catholics worship as part of a triune deity isn’t the Jesus whose breath—the breath of Christ [pneuma Christo— from Rom 8:11]—functions as the indwelling vessel of the Lord that “holds” the bright fire of eternal life in the form of the breath of God [again, pneuma Theon]; for no human being is humanly born with an immortal soul. Only when a human being is born of God as a son does the human being receive indwelling eternal life, for this bright fire of God would utterly consume the person unless it is held in a vessel that has also come from heaven … eternal life is life outside of time, or better, space-time. And as a jar in the Ark of the Covenant held the manna that had come from heaven as bread, and as Jesus represents the true Bread that has come from heaven (John 6:52–58), the Father in Jesus (John 17:21) and Jesus in His disciples so that the two [the Father in Jesus] are one and as one are in disciples “‘that they may all be one … I [Jesus] in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one’” (vv. 21, 23), represents the mystery of Christianity:
· The Father in Jesus are two that form one;
· The conjoined Father-in-Jesus are one spirit that when through the indwelling of Jesus in a disciple in the form of His breath [pneuma Christos] will again have two forming one;
The dead inner self inherited from the first Adam and first Eve, and the physically living fleshly body of a human person inherited from the person’s biological parents form one physically living but spiritually dead person. When the inner self is raised from death through the person receiving a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos], with this second breath of life representing receiving “life” from the son of God’s spiritual parents [the last Adam, with the Church as the last Eve being formed from a wound in the last Adam’s side], the spiritually living inner self with the physically living fleshly body represents the status of Christ Jesus prior to Calvary, with one major exception. Because the Logos and not the first Adam was the physical Father of the man Jesus—God the Father became the Father of Jesus when His breath descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove—the man Jesus was never consigned to disobedience as the remainder of humankind has been (see Rom 11:32). Jesus was, from His human birth, free to believe God and keep the commandments, which He did do. Therefore, the glorified Jesus has covered His disciples with the garment of His righteousness—grace—as a man “covers” his wife with his obedience to God. But a man doesn’t marry his body: before the Bridegroom marries His Bride at the Wedding Supper, the Church will be filled-with and empowered by the indwelling breath of God [pneuma Theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos]. However, this filling with spirit will see the disrobing of the Son of Man: the garment of grace will be stripped from the Christian Church, and every Christian will have to cover him or herself with his or her own obedience to God.
If those men whom Christ has given to the Church as apostles and teachers do not teach the above, they are not of God: they are not apostles and teachers, prophets and pastors, but spiritual bastards, the servants of Satan who disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). It should then be no surprise that his servants also “disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (v. 15). How else can they keep spiritual babes being tossed to and fro by the deceitfulness of the Adversary?
In the beginning were two, the Logos who was God and who was with the God and God the Father, with the French translation of the Greek handling these “two” who formed one deity better than English translations:
Au commencement était la Parole, et la Parole était avec Dieu, et la Parole était Dieu. Elle était au commencement avec Dieu. Toute choses ont été faites par elle, at rien de ce qui a été fait n’a été fait sans elle. En alle était la vie, et la vie était la lumière des homes.(John 1:1–4)
Et la parole a été faite chair, et elle a habité parmi nous, pleine de grace et de vérité; et nous avons contemplé sa gloire, une gloire comme la gloire du Fils unique venu du Père.
The Logos [o logos] that is a masculine noun in Greek is in French, based on its function [how it relates to], rendered as a feminine noun: la Parole, taking the feminine pronoun, elle. And this is appropriate. Only because Englishmen would not give up their Germanic linguistic icon, God, which carried the sense of Allfather in its connotative meanings—with Allfather referring to any supreme male deity with progenitive traits, such as Odin [Norse mythology] or the Dagda [Celtic mythology]—English translators were obligated to use the singular icon, God, to represent the Hebrew plural icon Elohim (Strong’s #H430); whereas the English icon, God, would be the proper translation for the Hebrew singular ’el (Strong’s #H410) but not for the plural Elohim.
But in the passage of time that had Israel “misplacing” the Torah for generations, losing the Book of the Covenant in the rubbish in Solomon’s temple and not finding it until the 18th-year of King Josiah, with Israel not keeping the Passover as commanded by Moses from the days of the Judges until Josiah “commanded all the people, ‘Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant’” (2 King 23:21, also vv. 22–23), the Helpmate/Head relationship embedded in the Tetragrammaton YHWH was lost: one deity—YHWH, Israel’s Elohim—that consisted to two deities (YH + WH that equates to /El + ah/ + /El + ah/, with the radical /ah/ representing “breath”) became lost knowledge … King David knew and understood (at least late in his life) that Yah was the visible face, the Spokesman, for the conjoined deity YHWH, but because of Israel’s, and later the House of Israel and the House of Judah’s lawlessness, those things that David knew were lost. The secret knowledge [the oral Torah] that was passed on was not good knowledge, but thecraftiness of deceitful schemes. Thus, it fell to the man Jesus the Nazarene to reveal God the Father to His disciples and to return to Israel knowledge that the Levitical priesthood should have revealed to the people.
And that brings us to the 21st-Century, where greater Christendom through craftiness in deceitful schemes tosses spiritual infants to and fro and keeps from these babes the knowledge necessary for them to mature to their majority.
In this world—inside the physical creation—two are not one; two are two, and one is one. And for this reason, inner selves of human beings are born “dead” and without indwelling eternal life: the Muslim fundamentalist who convinces an immature child or a silly woman that he or she has an immortal soul that will go directly to heaven where it will see the face of Allah if this person will strap on a suicide belt or vest and turn him or herself into a bomb is guilty before God of willful murder and will never enter the kingdom. The deeds of the child or of the woman can be excused just as Paul’s persecution of the saints was covered by the righteousness of Christ Jesus, but the person who would use his or her authority to convince another to commit suicide is a murderer; is of the Adversary; is without love for either man or God. This person, by the person’s loss of natural affection for brother and neighbor, cannot be saved—the hatred that fills this person comes from the Adversary, and the only cure for this hatred is the lake of fire.
The Muslim imam who advocates the death of every Jew commits his life to hatred and the destruction of his own still-dead inner self, and this person will, when born of spirit, find that what the Apostle Paul wrote is true: “For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law” (Rom 2:12), with sin being unbelief or disbelief of God the Father.
A person, every person, regardless of whether born of God or not, can love his or her neighbor. This love will not be perfect, but it will be outgoing concern for the neighbor, concern equal to the person’s concern for him or herself. And this pertains to the Muslim as well as to the Jew and to the Christian, regardless of whether the Christian has been born of God. Love knows no ideological exceptions. The unbeliever who will be saved in the great White Throne Judgment will, in this lifetime, love his neighbor as himself. The person who spews forth murder from his or her mouth will not be forgiven when the books are opened and the person appears before God. So while those men whom Christ has given to the Church to equip the laity for ministry may or may not do that task, neither the laity nor any other man or woman can utter hate from the person’s mouth and not pay for that hate when judgments are made, either now for those born of God or in the great White Throne Judgment for those not born of God before physical death overtakes the flesh.
It is a cause of sadness and concern to hear an imam speak of even nature wanting Jews killed: the imam is wholly of the Adversary and this imam condemns [judges] himself by the words he utters. It is doubly sad to know that Muslims will kill a great many Jews in the Affliction, as Christians within greater Christendom will kill Sabbatarian Christians before enough blood has been shed that the sixth seal is removed (Rev 6:12) and the wrath of Lamb is upon all of humankind (vv. 16–17). It is the martyrdom of the holy ones, each killed as their fellow servants of Christ were killed (v. 11), that must occur in the 360 day prophetic year between when the Apostasy occurs with the revealing of the man of perdition on day 220 of the Affliction, and when the sixth seal is opened and the sun becomes as black as sackcloth.
If a Christian walks in a manner worthy of his or her calling, then the Christian will have love for neighbor and brother, when that neighbor would kill you. This will become even more difficult when the Body again “breathes on its own”: there is today, among the holy ones, great sadness, for the Body of Christ died with the Apostle John, died at the end of the 1st-Century (ca 100–102 CE), and the Body of Christ will not again breathe on its own until the Second Passover liberation of Israel …
It is easy for a would-be prophet to proclaim a natural course of events, such as the rise of the German nation from the ashes of World War Two: Germany rose again after WWI and after the economic collapse of the Weimar Republic. Or it would be easy for a would-be prophet to proclaim that in the overlap—the crescent—of American and Soviet dominance, Europe would combine in a political and economic union that rivals the United States in size and economic might, a union far greater in economic might than that of the former Soviet Union. New schema, whether in art, culture, or economics, emerge from the overlaps of spheres of dominance; so to prophesy a resurgent Europe during the Cold War required no prophetic insight beyond being an observer of human nature. What is more difficult to proclaim is that all firstborns not covered by the blood of the paschal Lamb of God will perish in a day, this day forming the midnight hour of the long spiritual night that began at Calvary. When this happens, the world will know where the spirit of prophecy resides. For out of love for Christians for their ancestors’ sake, the Father and Son will do nothing without revealing the secret thing to their servants, the holy ones who have the spirit of prophecy (cf. Amos 3:7; Rev 12:17; 19:10).
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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."