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 there is no unmarked soul.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of February 8, 2014
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.
___________________
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Eph 5:22–33 emphasis added)
___________________
A man and his wife shall become one flesh—this mystery is profound, said the Apostle Paul, and why should this mystery be profound among Christian converts to the Jesus Movement? Answering this question unlocks all of Scripture: Moses, the Writings, the Prophets, even the New Testament. But only since 2011, has this question been answered—and even then the answer carried excess cultural baggage that had to be carved away.
The foundation of Christianity rests on two principle constructs that were unknown to either 1st-Century CE Jew or Greek: the movement of the “breath of record” goes with the giving of the spirit [pneuma or “breath”] from nostrils—the breath that sustains physical life—to the breath of God [pneuma Theou] that enters the person about where the dove entered into Jesus, the vicinity of a whale’s blowhole. This is an elementary principle, the one spiritual infants can understand. This is what must be understood and believed before spiritual birth can be understood.
The second principle is, however, also not difficult to understand: human procreation in the flesh forms the model and type of divine or spiritual procreation, with the breath of God [again, pneuma Theou] entering into the breath of Christ [pneuma Christou] as a husband enters his beloved wife. The breath/spirit of Christ then enters into the human spirit [to pneuma tou ’anthropou] that is inside the soul [psuche] of every human person, thereby giving heavenly life to the previously spiritually dead inner self, with Jesus doing what He saw the Father do. This is the mystery that Paul identifies as profound. For with the breath/spirit of God in the breath/spirit of Christ as a husband enters [penetrates] his beloved wife, the Beloved of the Father conceives sons of God for the Father through repeating the process of penetration, with the breath/spirit of Christ entering into the spirit of the person, His beloved disciple, to give birth to a new son of God, a spiritual infant that has the mind of Christ but still thinks as an infant, knowing the things of infants.
The breath/spirit of Christ in the spirit of the man [human person] is in Christian parlance, the indwelling of Christ that is also identified as being born again, or born from above, or born of spirit.
The excess cultural baggage that had to be carved away involved the pneuma tou ’anthropou being in the soul [psuche] of the person as the soul [inner self] is in the fleshly body [soma] of the person. Thus, as the fleshly body—because it is flesh and has mass—cannot enter heaven, the soul as humanly born cannot enter heaven but is to the spirit of the man [person] as the wife is to her husband. Only if the spirit of the person is penetrated by the spirit of Christ in which resides the spirit of God will the spirit of the person live and escape from the boundaries of the creation.
At the Second Passover liberation of Israel, all who identify themselves as Christians will be filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God, with the soul [psuche] of every Christian filled (as a cup is filled) with spirit/breath of God, but without the spirit of the person being penetrated by the spirit/breath of Christ, not something that will again happen until Christ returns as the all-powerful Messiah.
The preceding has not been understood: the pneuma Theou [spirit of God] that entered into [eis] the man Jesus in the bodily form of a dove could do so because the man Jesus had come from heaven and was without sin. No other person in this world could have received the indwelling of the pneuma Theou; for every other person’s father was of the first Adam, who was driven from the Garden before he could eat of the Tree of Life. The only person born of woman whose father was not the first Adam was the man Jesus, whose Father was the Creator of all things made, the God of Abraham. And this man Jesus, the Beloved of ton Theon [the God], was fathered by the God when the breath of the God descended in the bodily form of a dove and entered into the man Jesus.
Jesus’ first Father was not Joseph, husband of Mary, but was the Logos [’o Logos] who was God [Theos] and who was with/of [pros] the God [ton Theon] in primacy [arche — no definite article, and one should not be added in translation] (John 1:1) as Paul writes when he said,
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5–8)
As the Logos, the Father of Himself, Jesus was the Creator of all things (John 1:3). As the Logos, Jesus was the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of living ones, not the God of dead ones (Matt 22:32). Jesus did not raise Himself from death, but the Father, the God, the God of dead ones, raised Jesus from death—twice raised Jesus from death, once when Jesus received the spirit/breath of God in the bodily form of a dove, then again at the beginning of the fourth day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In the first resurrection from death, the Father sent “heavenly life” into the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou] to penetrate the spirit of Christ, the Beloved of the Father, as a husband penetrates his beloved during the act of procreation …
Human sexuality is not restricted to procreation, but sexual activity that occurs when procreation is intentionally prevented is problematic, with the “intent” examined: when a husband and his wife have produced as many children as they can reasonably raise and support, consideration of limiting procreation may be in order. When a husband and his wife are unintentionally infertile and procreation doesn’t occur, no wrong occurs. When a wife has been for health reasons (e.g., uterine cancer surgery) rendered infertile, no wrong occurs. However, when a man and a woman intentionally prevent procreation so they can enjoy sexual release without the possibility of pregnancy occurring, a misuse of human sexuality has occurred. Thus, adultery based on lust is always wrong. Fornication based on lust is always wrong. Rape of any kind is always wrong—and this includes rape within marriage. If a wife says, No, to her husband, no it is, but according to Paul, neither wife nor husband are to deny themselves to their spouse:
Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (1 Cor 7:1–5)
Paul’s instructions were written before the little blue pill was patented; so when Paul’s instructions were written, human sexuality wound down from the burning hormonal drive of young adulthood to an occasional act of intercourse in midlife to the seldom occurring act in old age. In this overly sexualized endtime era, pharmacists give life back to dead penises and dead wombs so that human sexual activity extends decades past when procreation occurs. Sobeit. The marriage bed remains undefiled, but only the marriage bed. And marriage can only occur between one man and one woman. All other pairing-offs may be between loving couples, but are outside of marriage and therefore cannot be condoned by Christendom. Christians, however, need not nor should not intervene in the affairs of this world.
Paul wrote,
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom 12:1–2)
And,
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler--not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you." (1 Cor 5:9–13 double emphasis added)
If the State of [you name the state] wishes to legalize gay marriages that are an abomination before God, do not intervene to prevent such marriages for the State is not of God, is not now an administrative district of the kingdom God, has nothing to do with God, but is an agent of the Adversary. So permit the Adversary to do with his own as he wills; for he will reap the consequences of what he permits. Christians are to judge the church and are to purge evildoers from among those who claim to be of Christ. And today, the Church refuses—yes, refuses—to purge out evildoers, those who are sexually immoral; those who swindle their brothers; those who are drunkards, idolaters, greedy. And if the Church collectively cannot faithfully judge itself—or won’t judge itself, marking and shunning reprobates—the Church will not faithfully as individuals judge itself when filled with spirit after the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
*
Because Christians have not, for a very long time, known God—
Jesus prayed to God,
Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God [one divine entity], and Jesus Christ [a second divine entity] whom you have sent. (John 17:1–3 double emphasis added)
—Christians have made no distinction between the spirit of God [pneuma Theou] and the spirit of Christ [pneuma Christou], but lump both of their breaths together as the holy spirit [pneuma ’agion], to which they have assigned personhood. In this greater Christendom has made a showing of not understanding Father or Son, divine procreation, or the geometry of marriage. And unfortunately, the largest neo-Arian Christian sect, in responding to Trinitarian criticism, has cuddled as close to a triune deity as it can go and still maintain its fundamental beliefs.
God, Father and Son, are “one” spirit as a husband and his wife are “one” flesh, with Christ Jesus being a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45), an Eve—the life giver—spirit … the Beloved of the Father is the last Adam, a life-giving spirit, thereby flipping human gender and sexuality on its head, something the Adversary has long known and has long used against the people of God. But it is in the relationship between the spirit of God and the spirit of Christ where profundity lies concealed, camouflaged by the physical creation of male and female …
In profundity of the mystery Paul declared, the body [soma] of the person is in relationship to the soul [psuche] as the woman is to her husband; hence Paul wrote, In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.
But why do men have undeveloped breasts whereas woman have developed breasts? What need do men have for breasts, undeveloped or otherwise, as in the case of transgender males who have undergone hormone “therapy”?
Pharmacy has come a long ways from where it was in the 1st-Century CE; so questions asked of endtime Christians were not ones asked even a century ago, questions such as how does one counsel the transgender person who desires to come to Christ? To answer this question, we must look at what Paul wrote about circumcision and remaining as the person was, the uncircumcised person not becoming circumcised and the circumcised person not seeking to remove the evidence of circumcision. For the outer self—the body—shall not ascend to heaven so the appearance of the body doesn’t matter. This includes gender, even when gender has been altered. The person who comes to Christ is to remain as he or she is. If the she was a he, or vice versa, then the person is to live as the person now is, not seeking to remove the evidence of gender alteration. However, if the person is not already married, the person should not marry for to do so would be perpetrating a deception on the person’s partner. The deception would be a worse offence than the one already committed against the person’s own body that the person hated and chose not to nourish and cherish.
What Paul wrote is correct, but not complete in itself. As Paul didn’t have the language or thought necessary to discuss protons and electrons, quarks and gluons, Paul didn’t have the language—let alone the thoughts—to discuss gender reassignment, which comes from hating the body into which the person was born and loving instead the flesh of the opposite gender as their own flesh. But this is a digression from the point at hand:
Because the pneuma tou ’anthropou within every person did not come from the Father, but is of this earth, thereby causing a man to know the things of a man (1 Cor 2:11), the pneuma tou ’anthropou within every person came from the Creator of all that is physical; came when Elohim [singular in usage] breathed life into the nostrils of the man of mud, who became a breathing creature, a nephesh (Gen 2:7). And because the pneuma tou ’anthropou within every person is not from the Father, the breath/spirit of the Father cannot penetrate to fertilize the pneuma tou ’anthropou within every person, thereby giving spiritual life to the person … the husband, even though having undeveloped breasts, cannot give birth to his own seed, his own offspring, but needs the woman (his wife) to give birth to the husband’s seed. Likewise, the Father cannot give spiritual birth to His seed without the aid of His Beloved, the last Adam, a life-giving spirit [pneuma].
Again, the inner self of the person consists of spirit [pneuma] and soul [psuche] … the Father can “fill” the soul with His divine breath [pneuma Theou] so that all know God and have the Law written on hearts and placed in minds, but the Father’s spirit will not penetrate the pneuma tou ’anthropou within every person. This is solely the prerogative of the Son, His Beloved, and it is for this reason that all judgment has been given to the Son (John 5:21–23); for when the Father raises the dead, He does so by giving them to the Son to be called, justified, and glorified, with no one able to come to the Son unless the Father draws this person from the world (John 6:44).
*
In the Genesis creation account of Adam and Eve, the Woman was of the Man, but “marked” as different, the reason for the additional <wo> in women, and <fe> in female. Thus, there is and can be no unmarked woman, which is not the case with the man. And by extension, there is no unmarked soul which is not the case with the pneuma tou ’anthropou within every person, with the soul marked either by Sabbath observance [marked as being of God] or marked by the image of the cross [the mark of Death]. This marked status of the soul is not time-linked, but is for the ages.
Is it profound that every woman is marked, but every man is not? Yet what causes the woman to be marked? The absence of headship? In the past two Sabbath Readings, Numbers chapter 30 has been cited, with the chapter concluding with these words, “These are the statutes that [YHWH] commanded Moses about a man and his wife and about a father and his daughter while she is in her youth within her father's house” (Num 30:16).
Is having no words that cannot be countermanded by husband or father profound, or is there more symbolically involved in women’s words not standing than has been understood; for the Church is the Body of Christ, with the body of a human person represented by the woman either in marriage or before marriage and with the “head” of the human person being represented by the man, whose circumcised head sheds blood on the wedding bed …
Pause for a moment: a women is to shed the blood of her broken hymen on the marriage bed as a symbol of the marriage of the Lamb, the Bridegroom, to the Church, with the spiritual mirror image of the physical shadow having Christ—the Beloved of God—shed His blood when He became a life-giving spirit, an Eve spirit.
The reality of a disciple being born of spirit (John 3:3–8) comes as the result of divine procreation: God the Father reproducing Himself in sons of God, with Christ Jesus being the First of many sons (Rom 8:29). But before the Logos [’o Logos] entered His creation as his unique Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene, He was the Beloved of God, with the relationship He had with the God [ton Theon] in which two were one being characterized by the marriage of a man and his bride, with these two being one flesh. And understanding that the Beloved subjected Himself to death so that divine procreation could occur—the reality of supra-dimensional timelessness precludes divine procreation occurring in heaven, where the absence of life cannot coexist with the presence of life—is truly profound. Because any living entity in heaven that doesn’t/didn’t have life in the same “moment” as the Father and His Beloved have life cannot have life in this moment: again, the constraints of timelessness [non-physicalness] precludes divine procreation. The Father can create angelic sons of God, but because these angelic sons of God had no life in the “moment” before they were created, they can never have life in that moment but always exist in a differing moment, one that is “marked” by angelic sons of God being created as servants. Thus, the moment in which angelic sons of God have life is a “lower” moment [farther down the mountain of God, symbolized by Mount Sinai] than the moment in which the Father and His Beloved have life.
Moses and Israel at Sinai physically signify a spiritual reality; for as the people of Israel could not step foot on Mount Sinai and live—
And [YHWH] said to Moses, "Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever." When Moses told the words of the people to [YHWH], [YHWH] said to Moses, "Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. For on the third day [YHWH] will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, 'Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot; whether beast or man, he shall not live.' When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain." (Ex 19:9–13 emphasis added)
—angels cannot ascend the mountain of God.
Moses whose name means Son, however, could ascend and descend Mount Sinai, even entering into the presence of the Lord as a type of Christ Jesus … those disciples of Christ Jesus whose pneuma tou ’anthropou within the person has been “penetrated” by the spirit of Christ, have the life of Christ within each and can therefore enter into the presence of the Most High God as Moses could enter into the presence of the God of Abraham.
Christians filled with spirit at the Second Passover liberation of Israel will be as the people of Israel were as they camped around the base of the mountain, prohibited from setting foot on the mountain. They will be “marked” by Sabbath observance, but they will not be born of spirit, this distinction permitting these Christians to perish in the lake of fire if they “erase” the mark of Sabbath observance and instead take upon themselves the mark of death, the cross.
By the time this Sabbath Reading is proofed, I will have completed a revisit to the short book, Rereading Prophecy, written in under a month in 2002. This revisit was also written in under a month although this revisit is 100,000 words long. And in this revisit, I discuss the geometry of marriage; the parameters of two being one through headship, a mystery that Paul identified as “profound.” And I suspect this mystery will be the subject of next Sabbath’s Reading because of how profound the subject is; for if a Christian doesn’t understand the concept of two being one, the Christian will quickly rebel against God in the Affliction, not waiting to rebel until the man of perdition is revealed.
*
The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.
* * * * *
"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."