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 hidden in the dust.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of February 12, 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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Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
Will you even put me in the wrong?
Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?
Have you an arm like God,
and can you thunder with a voice like his?
Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity;
clothe yourself with glory and splendor.
Pour out the overflowings of your anger,
and look on everyone who is proud and abase him.
Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low
and tread down the wicked where they stand.
Hide them all in the dust together;
bind their faces in the world below.
Then will I also acknowledge to you
that your own right hand can save you.
Behold, Behemoth,
which I made as I made you;
he eats grass like an ox.
Behold, his strength in his loins,
and his power in the muscles of his belly.
He makes his tail stiff like a cedar;
the sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His bones are tubes of bronze,
his limbs like bars of iron.
He is the first of the works of God;
let him who made him bring near his sword!
For the mountains yield food for him
where all the wild beasts play.
Under the lotus plants he lies,
in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh.
For his shade the lotus trees cover him;
the willows of the brook surround him.
Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened;
he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth.
Can one take him by his eyes,
or pierce his nose with a snare? (Job 40:6–24 emphasis added)
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The man Job had challenged God. By attributing to God all that had befallen him — by saying that God was responsible for both the good things that had happened to him as well as the evil that had happened to him (“‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’” — Job 1:21) — the man Job made the Lord into the invisible image of a righteous human being like himself, thereby shrinking the gulf between man and God, bridging that gulf by human righteousness, thought, logic, and deeds. The man Job did with righteousness what his friends, his neighbors did in unrighteousness. By forging God in the image and likeness of a man, the core belief of Christendom, Job succumbed to the error of Satan who said in his heart, I will make myself like the Most High (Isa 14:14).
What Christendom believes about the Father and the Son becomes an issue at the end of the age; for the core of Christian dogma is that the Father and the Son rule over the affairs of men, controlling those things that happen to individuals and especially to Christians: the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. This was the position, the belief of Job before he realized, “‘I have uttered what I did not understand … therefore I despise myself, / and repent in dust and ashes’” (Job 42:3, 6). Greater Christendom blasphemes the Father and the Son by what Christendom teaches about God, and like the man Job, Christendom needs to repent in dust and ashes.
For Christendom, the Book of Job has been problematic: the Lord brings the man Job to Satan’s attention, waving Job before Satan as a matador waves his red cape before the bull, with the matador serving as a type of Mithras slaying the bull. In narrative, the Lord in waving Job in front of the Adversary, twirling Job around until even he is dizzy and Christians mesmerized by Job’s righteousness, thereby calling Job’s righteousness evil—the Lord in waving Job as if he were an offering, prepares the Adversary for faena, the final series of passes before the Lord deals the beast its death wound when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man and the Adversary is cast into time from which he can never escape.
Job serves as a type and copy of righteous Christians in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation.
Human beings, by the broadcast of the prince of this world, assign human thoughts, human attributes, human characteristics to the Lord, who ways are not the ways of men:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isa 55:8–11 emphasis added)
It is always a mistake to assign human thoughts, human logic, human attributes to the Lord. It is always a mistake to judge Scripture by whether it agrees with human logic, human reason. Buddha perhaps best expresses the mind of the Adversary when he allegedly said, But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it (Kalama Sutta); for subjecting the ways of the Lord to human observation, human analysis, human reason will get a Christian fast tracked into the lake of fire. For when the ways and thoughts of the Lord are as much higher than the ways and thoughts of human beings as heaven is higher than earth, humankind has no basis for observing and analyzing the ways of the Lord. Whether Christians like it, they are to obey the Lord even when they do not understand His ways or His thoughts. They are to obey as small children are to obey human parents, who cannot explain human adult ways and adult thoughts to infants, who lack both the mental maturity and the linguistic skills to understand adult things.
Do not allow spiritually worthless fellows to deceive you by having you analyze and judge the ways and thoughts of the Lord. Buddha was a man not born of God and without understanding of spiritual things. Although humanly wise, Buddha was like other men, most of whom assigned to humanly fabricated deities human attributes, with this assignment of human attributes to pagan deities perhaps most easily seen in the Greek pantheon, the construction of gods in the image of men. … Human wisdom is the wisdom of human beings. Buddha’s wisdom is the wisdom of a human being. But when Christians are filled-with and empowered by the breath of God when the Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death occurs, Christians will be given the mind of Christ. If Christians do not reject the thoughts and wisdom that come from receiving the mind of Christ, every Christian will have far greater wisdom than Buddha, or any other human being. But prophecy discloses that the majority of Christians will rebel against God, and will reject the mind of Christ, and will return to being the bondservants of the Adversary, the little horn that then possesses the man of perdition, a human being who is an Arian Christian and who outwardly appears to serve God.
Warning observant Christians to avoid the errors of greater Christendom in transforming the Creator of all that has been made into a supersize human-person, assigning to the Creator ways of thinking and acting like those of other men, will fall on ears dulled by too many years of hearing that men are created in the image and likeness of God … if men have been created in the image and likeness of God, then it logically follows that God has human ways and thoughts. But the Lord says that this is not true. So human logic and analysis will not get a Christian where he or she needs to go.
Did the Lord bring calamity upon Job, or did the Lord simply lower the protection He had placed around the man Job because of the man’s righteousness? Does the Lord place a similar protective barrier around His holy ones? He does, doesn’t He? For Sin, the third horseman of the Apocalypse, cannot harm the oil and the wine, the already processed fruits of the Promised Land; whereas Sin will make merchandise of the early barley harvest and of the main crop wheat harvest, with this buying and selling causing both to be ground down until they are fine flour.
Scripture would seem to support the assignment of idealized human attributes to the Creator, thereby justifying Job who said,
If I have rejoiced at the ruin of him who hated me,
or exulted when evil overtook him
(I have not let my mouth sin
by asking for his life with a curse),
if the men of my tent have not said,
‘Who is there that has not been filled with his meat?’
(the sojourner has not lodged in the street;
I have opened my doors to the traveler),
if I have concealed my transgressions as others do
by hiding my iniquity in my bosom,
because I stood in great fear of the multitude,
and the contempt of families terrified me,
so that I kept silence, and did not go out of doors—
Oh, that I had one to hear me!
(Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!)
Oh, that I had the indictment written by my adversary!
Surely I would carry it on my shoulder;
I would bind it on me as a crown;
I would give him an account of all my steps;
like a prince I would approach him. (Job 31:29–37 emphasis added)
By the testimony of the Lord and by Job’s own words, Job was not a man like other men: Job was not like the imam who hates Jews, asking Allah to curse them; Job was not like men and women who send the hungry on their way without feeding them; Job was not a respecter of persons; Job did not hide secret sins in his heart. Job asked a simple thing: he asked to be heard. He figuratively asked for his day in court. He asked to know the charges that the Lord had against him, charges that caused the Lord to bring upon him all that had befallen him. He lamented that it would be better if an adversary had written an indictment, for he would at least then know why what had befallen him had occurred. He could then give an accounting of all he had done, and he would come before his accuser as a prince. … Job didn’t realize he was falsely accusing the Lord of bringing upon him all that had happened; so he was doing to the Lord what he saw happening to him. And this is an important point; for in demanding that Job answer Him, the Lord will answer His own demands (Job 40:12–14), thereby showing that He has the power to not only save Himself but to save men.
In all that Job said, Job consistently assigned to the Lord responsibility for the course of human affairs—and it is here where the Book of Job needs to be examined as it relates to Christians, filled-with and empowered by spirit thereby liberated from indwelling sin and death, in the Affliction.
· If Job would have been a football player in the National Football League, he would have given credit to God for the touchdown he scored, and for his team’s victory.
· If Job had been a U.S. Special Forces sniper in Afghanistan, he would have given God credit for the kill he made at 1,700 yards, and for his unit’s successes.
· If Job would have been an American politician, he would have given God credit for American military victories over Nazi Germany, over Japan in World War Two; over the Iraqi Republican Guard a half century later.
· Job would have thanked God for the safe return of U.S. service men and woman from foreign wars.
· As an American politician he would have expanded U.S. Food Aid so that hunger would have been eliminated in this world.
Job would have done good in all he did, and he would have given thanks to God for all the good he did.
· If God was responsible for all of the good that had befallen Job, then God must also be responsible for the evil that had also befallen Job, or so Job reasoned.
In all things, Job was consistent: he assigned the good that came to the righteous to God, and he assigned the evil that befell the wicked to God, with God giving to the righteous good-things and giving to the wicked toil and torment, trials and tribulation. It never dawned on Job that God was not directly responsible for good-things happening to the righteous, or for trials and tribulation happening to the wicked. To Job, there was a one-to-one correspondence between righteousness and good, and between wickedness and evil. And Job attributed this correspondence to the actions of the Lord, the reason why Job would send and consecrate his sons and daughters, and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them after the days of their feasting had run their course (Job 1:4–5). Thus, in Job’s assumption of a one-to-one correspondence between righteousness and good, Job was Calvinistic, in that an outer accumulation of wealth and of the good things of this world corresponds to inner righteousness:
Because the United States of America has acquired, via trade and currency manipulation, the wealth of this world, the United States is, by extension, a good and righteous nation. Because the United States was blessed with good farmland and significant natural resources that has allowed the nation to accumulate great national wealth, the United States even before its formation was a good and righteous land—and this is the position held by American Christendom, with many American Christians believing that the U.S. Constitution is a document inspired by God as a result of the inner righteousness of America’s founders …
Who, as an American, wants to argue against the premise that the United States has been blessed by God, with one of its great blessings being individual liberty? But to whom has been given, much is required: before God, the United States was to use its natural blessing to nationally do what Job did: do not rejoice at the ruin of enemies, feed the hungry, house the homeless, be no respecter of persons. This is social justice. And the United States of America received the natural resources to truly do what no other nation before it could have done, and that is to nationally practice what Job did in his personal life. Yes, the United States—if it chose to pursue righteousness—was to act as if the nation were a single individual: America was to practice social justice, not as Marx would have the nation-state oppress some for the benefit of others, but as Job practiced social justice, individually acting in unison as if the nation were one man intent upon feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. There is no “justice” in compelling the rich to assist the poor; there is justice when both the poor and the rich voluntarily pursue righteousness by feeding every person and caring for every sojourner, not being a respecter of persons but assuring that all have those things necessary for life. Indeed, this is utopianism and not attainable for as long as the Adversary remains the prince of this world … Capitalism will never bring about social justice, nor will Marxism, nor will an Islamic caliphate. It is the nature of transactions, of buying and selling, that prevents social justice from occurring in this present age. Only when there are no transactions being made—as in the case when Sin cannot harm the oil and the wine—will social justice take root and bear fruit.
Much of America’s natural wealth has been squandered; much has been locked away in nationally suicidal wild lands designations. And there is little righteousness to be found today in the United States, but then, there was little righteousness to be found in America’s founding fathers in the 18th-Century. Ask the Pequot if a person doubts the unrighteousness of British Colonial Christians. Ask Red Cloud about the trustworthiness of American treaties, contracts—Red Cloud (Mapíya Lúta), the great war chief and head chief of the Oglala Lakota until his death 10 December 1909, took his victorious people from the lands seceded to them by the United States to what is now the Pine Ridge Reservation because when visiting the nation’s capital, he realized that the Native peoples could not win a long term war against the United States. In his war [Red Cloud’s War] and its concluding treaties, the Native peoples had the only victory they would ever get. And those treaties were barely worth the paper on which they were written.
Americans have traditionally been a generous people, feeding the hungry and enriching their dictators, rebuilding ravished lands while prostituting themselves in vain attempts to buy stability in a world subject to rapid change. Europeans Colonists used the natural resources bestowed upon this land to subdue and suppress Native Peoples. Yet, in the absence of a State Religion, God used the American people as the raw material from which He withdrew the core for the restored Body of Christ, with the Adversary also using American fundamentalism as the hammer with which he intends to kill the restored Church when life is against breathed into this spiritual corpse.
Reexamination of Job’s basic assumptions about the Lord was forced upon Job—and will be forced upon Christendom when the Second Passover occurs. For without Job sinning in any manner, the good that had befallen Job turned suddenly and without cause into evil. The good that Christendom believes about God and about itself will suddenly turn into evil when all firstborns not covered by the blood of Christ Jesus, taken in the form of the Passover sacraments on the dark portion of the 14th of Abib, perish in a day.
Endtime Christendom is quick to say that Job’s turn from good fortune to bad fortune was caused by Job’s self-righteousness; hence Job was really evil inside even though he believed God and had no evil thoughts … if a person has no evil thoughts and instead, believes the Lord and acts on the person’s belief of God, practicing social justice in the world, how can the person be called evil? To do so is a perversion of what evil represents. And it is this assignment of evil to the righteousness of Job that endtime Sabbatarians must reexamine, with one Sabbath reading not at all adequate for this task.
Although accepting that all of the bad things that had befallen him were from God, which again, wasn’t the case, the man Job maintained his righteousness, not sinning with his mouth, but rather saying he would come before God as a prince: he said that he wanted his words recorded, that he wanted them chiseled in stone so that they were permanent, not ephemeral utterances of breath. And his words have been record. His words remain with humankind to this day. His righteousness was brought to the prophet Ezekiel’s attention, where Job is compared with Noah and Daniel (see Ezek 14:12–23). And that comparison places him in the rarified company of men whose words and deeds have singularly affected the course of human affairs.
But in Job’s words is an accusation made against the Lord—and in the Lord’s words to Job is a challenge that Job could not answer, but that the Lord could and did … the ways of the Lord are not the ways of men, and to assign human analysis and reason to the ways of the Lord leaves the human being with egg on his or her face.
Job in both righteousness and deeds is like Noah and like Daniel, with Daniel’s visions [words] being sealed and kept secret until the time of the end when knowledge shall increase (Dan 12:4).
Job said to his so-called friends,
Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!
Why do you, like God, pursue me?
Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?
Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last He will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God (Job 19:21–26 emphasis added)
In Job’s declaration that his Redeemer lives, and that at the end of days his Redeemer will stand upon the earth, and that after his skin has been destroyed, he will be returned to life in his flesh to see God discloses that Job understood at a rudimentary level the plan of God. Actually, Job understood the mystery of God better than greater Christendom does today. Job understood that he would live again, that his present life was merely a type of the life that was to come. And if Daniel was greatly loved by the Lord (Dan 9:23; 10:11) and was found blameless (Dan 6:22), and if Noah of all men found favor in the eyes of the Lord (Gen 6:8) and was a righteous man and blameless (v. 9), then Job who was blameless in all his ways (Job 1:8; 2:3) will have a similar impact upon endtime holy ones as Daniel and Noah.
But that has not been the case: the Book of Job is where Christians go when discussing self-righteousness. Within greater Christendom, Job is not remembered for his righteousness, or for being blameless and walking uprightly before the Lord, but his self-righteousness. If anything, Christians do not strive to be like Job, but strive to be as different from Job as possible.
To greater Christendom, a righteousness that comes from believing God and placing into actions this belief is evil, is Judaizing, is salvation by works. Yet, how else can a human being express belief of God other than in doing those things that are pleasing to God—those things that Job did?
· Is the Lord pleased by someone who rejoices at the ruin of the person who hates him or her? No, a person is to love his or her enemies, and not rejoice when evil befalls the person’s enemies.
· Is the Lord pleased by the person who has cursed his neighbor, asking for his neighbor’s life? Again, no!
· Is the Lord pleased when a person doesn’t feed the hungry who have come to the person? Once again, no!
· Is the Lord pleased when a person doesn’t give shelter to the traveler?
Is not feeding the hungry and giving shelter to the traveler having love for neighbor and brother? How can a person curse his neighbor and brother and from the same mouth utter praises for Christ Jesus, for Allah, for Yah—the same deity—without being a hypocrite? Cannot be done. The person who would curse his neighbor and/or brother is without love, without natural affection, and is fully the son of the Adversary.
So in all that Job did and thought, it wasn’t his righteousness that was the problem. In fact, Job’s righteousness was comparable to the righteousness of Noah and the righteousness of Daniel.
If the Lord could use Job and his righteousness to challenge the Adversary, who apparently deceived a third part of all angelic sons of God before iniquity was found in him, then why couldn’t the Lord use Job and his righteousness to challenge endtime sons of disobedience, all bondservants to the Adversary; for Job knew that he would live again. Therefore, in the Lord’s answer to Job, who still had committed no sin with his mouth, is the Lord’s rebuke of self-righteous Christians, who walk blameless before God only because they are cloaked in the garment of Christ Jesus’ righteousness, with this cloaking of grace being analogous to the skin of Job that would be destroyed (Job 19:26a) at death, and that was mostly destroyed by boils and by scraping open those boils when he answered his so-called friends.
Skin covers the flesh of a human being, and is the largest organ of a human being. Thus, skin covered by boils is analogous to a sick heart or lungs or liver. And the heart metaphorically represents the thoughts and desires of the person; so that circumcision of the heart doesn’t pertain to a literal cutting away of the sack surrounding the heart, but a clipping of the thoughts and desires of the person so that those thoughts and desires not pleasing to God are removed and never given a place where they can again take root in the person. And because Job had no thoughts or desires that were not pleasing to the Lord—he had no inner fault the Adversary could exploit—Job’s skin became the only organ of Job which the Adversary could attack.
The above will take a moment of contemplation: skin covered Job’s flesh as the garment of grace covers the inner new self of the Christian born of God; skin covered Job’s flesh as the garment of obedience covered the first Adam until he eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Death, now, for Job (“after my skin has been thus destroyed”) equates to the first Adam being driven from the Garden of God, and to the inner self of the Christian being condemned to the lake of fire, the second death. Thus, the boils that Satan inflicted upon the skin of Job are analogous to the trials and persecution that disciples under grace experience, and are analogous to the persecution and martyrdom that Christians, once liberated from indwelling sin and death, will undergo during the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years. In the person of Job lays the bridge that links disobedience with death, and obedience with life: yet in my flesh I shall see God.
Within Sabbatarian Christendom, it is usually said that Satan didn’t recognize Job’s self-righteousness because he, himself, is self-righteous; so Satan never attacked Job where Job’s problem lay. Thus, Job suffering was justifiable; for even Sabbatarian Christendom is quick to call Job’s righteousness evil. The contention is that Job suffered to soften him up so that he would hear the words of the Lord … within the scope of prophecy, observant Christians see God using the 1260 days of the Affliction to soften Islam and the remainder of the third part of humankind up so that this third part, when filled with spirit, will believe God and reject the Adversary. But Job already believed the Lord: he didn’t need to be softened up, so the comparison doesn’t really work. Job didn’t need suffering to cause him to rethink how he worshiped the Lord. This is a need that Islam and Judaism and greater Christianity have.
Satan couldn’t get Job to curse God because no such thought existed within Job … Job’s righteousness was so much greater than that of Christianity that Christians cannot fully grasp the depth of the schism between them and Job, or between them and Noah, or between them and Daniel.
Christians are covered by the righteousness of Christ Jesus, worn as a garment, as a cloak, a mantle. They are not today spiritually covered by their own skin, their own obedience. Rather, they are in the womb of grace and are covered by Christ—
When the Son of Man is revealed (Luke 17:30), every Christian—individually and collectively the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27), the Body of the Son of Man—will be stripped naked. Grace will end. From the moment that the Son of Man is revealed or disrobed, every Christian will have to walk uprightly and be blameless before God. Every Christian will have to be as Noah, Daniel, and Job were, in that every Christian will have to cover him or herself with his or her own obedience to God.
Job’s skin allegorically represented his obedience before God, and it was without blemish before he was attacked by the Adversary. The blemishes—the boils—came as a result of the Adversary attacking his integrity:
And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.” Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.”
So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.
Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (Job 2:3–10 emphasis added)
Again, when the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, every Christian will be filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God: every Christian will be spiritually as Job was physically before the Lord brought Job to Satan’s attention. But with the Second Passover liberation of Christendom from indwelling sin and death comes the stripping away of the garment of grace: every Christian will be made naked before God, with the only covering for the Christian being his or her own obedience to God, and with the Christian’s obedience functioning spiritually as Job’s skin functioned physically when Job was delivered into the hand of Satan.
The prophet Daniel records,
Then I desired to know the truth about the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet, and about the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn that came up and before which three of them fell, the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke great things, and that seemed greater than its companions. As I looked, this horn made war with the saints and prevailed over them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom.
Thus he said: “As for the fourth beast,
there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth,
which shall be different from all the kingdoms,
and it shall devour the whole earth,
and trample it down, and break it to pieces.
As for the ten horns,
out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise,
and another shall arise after them;
he shall be different from the former ones,
and shall put down three kings.
He shall speak words against the Most High,
and shall wear out the saints of the Most High,
and shall think to change the times and the law;
and they shall be given into his hand
for a time, times, and half a time.
But the court shall sit in judgment,
and his dominion shall be taken away,
to be consumed and destroyed to the end.
And the kingdom and the dominion
and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven
shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High;
their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom,
and all dominions shall serve and obey them.”
Here is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly alarmed me, and my color changed, but I kept the matter in my heart. (Dan 7:19–28 emphasis added)
For a time, times, and half a time—for 1260 days, or for 42 months, or for three and a half years—the holy ones will be delivered into the hand of the little horn as Job was delivered into the hand of the Adversary. The holy ones’ covering of obedience to God will be attacked by the little horn (the Adversary possessing the man of perdition) as Job’s skin was attacked by Satan, and the holy ones, when their obedience to God is attacked leaving sore boils, must be as Job was in that they do not sin before God. They must maintain their righteousness. They must be as Job was in all they say and do: they must not curse their enemies; they must feed the hungry and give shelter to the traveler. But they are free to demand an indictment for why they are being persecuted—and if that indictment is that they are being persecuted because they keep the commandments, they will come before the Lord as princes.
For Christians before the Second Passover, the garment of grace—Christ Jesus’ righteousness—will be like Job’s boil-infected skin, a covering which these Christians would eagerly shed if they could, and a covering which most Christians do not have … the Christian who is today truly born of God and is covered by grace has sore trials, painful trials, trouble and turmoil, marriages that have failed or that are barely hanging together, businesses that have failed, jobs that have been lost because keeping the Sabbath was more important than keeping the job. The Christian genuinely born of God is no longer hostile to God and desires to keep the commandments, which causes this person to be out of sync with the world in which the person dwells. The writer of Hebrews, in mentioning the holy ones of old, records,
And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. / And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. (Heb 11:32–40 emphasis added)
The Christian who is truly born of God as a son has received the better thing provided for Christians by promise, and that thing is indwelling eternal life in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:23), with this indwelling eternal life coming in the form of the breath of God [pneuma Theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos].
Whereas sin, the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4), is not counted as sin where there is no law (Rom 5:13) thus causing the spiritually-lifeless-state of the dead inner self to be a form of natural grace, when a person is born of God, the person comes under the covering of grace (Rom 6:14), the righteousness of Christ Jesus; and if this person returns to sin as its obedient slave (v. 16), this person removes him or herself from the covering of grace and comes under the law, which leads to death. Again, so that there is absolutely no misunderstanding, grace will end for any Christian willingly transgressing the commandments, thereby obeying sin as its willing slave. Grace will end before it is time for grace to end for every born-again Christian who denies Christ Jesus.
For the genuinely born of God Christian, obedience to the commandments leads to righteousness, to life, but disobedience—unbelief—leads to death. Therefore, obedience after being liberated from indwelling sin and death (i.e., after the Second Passover) covers the Christian as Adam’s obedience covered him so that he did not know he was naked until he ate forbidden fruit. And obedience of the inner self before liberation keeps the Christian under grace, thereby covering the Christian with the garment of Jesus’ righteousness.
Grace is not unmerited pardon of sin: if it were, then Jesus did not have to die at Calvary for Jesus gives to his disciples the authority to forgive or withhold forgiveness of sin (John 20:23). If His disciples can forgive sin without dying physically, then Jesus could have forgiven sin without dying physically. But it was by His death at Calvary that Jesus paid the death penalty of every sin committed by Israel in this world, but not in the heavenly realm where His righteousness covers unbelief without paying the death penalty for this unbelief. In the heavenly realm, Jesus’ righteousness covers human sons of God as animal sacrifices in ancient Israel covered (but did not pay the death penalty for) the sins of outwardly circumcised Israel. If Jesus’ death at Calvary had paid the death penalty for, say, a disciple lusting after his neighbor’s spouse, then there would be no basis for resurrecting evildoers to condemnation (see John 5:28–29). Only by the remembrance of unbelief will evildoers be resurrected to condemnation; so by Jesus’ own words, He declares that there is no blanket pardon of sins for human sons of God, that grace as taught by Evangelical Christendom is a false doctrine. Grace was and remains the covering of Christ Jesus’ righteousness that will be stripped away when the Son of Man is disrobed.
When Noah and Job lived; when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived, the law had not been given. All were under the covering of natural grace; therefore, transgressions of the commandments was not counted against them. All that counted was belief of God or unbelief. And their belief of God was counted to them as righteousness (see Gen 15:6 for an example); for their belief of God caused them to walk uprightly before God, caused them to walk as honorable men.
Daniel is unique: Nebuchadnezzar castrated the young princes of the nations and poleis he captured; hence, Daniel would have been castrated. As such, Daniel could not enter the temple; nor would Daniel have been numbered among Israel. And if Daniel would no longer have been numbered as part of Israel, he would no longer have been under the law. Therefore, Daniel’s castration would have served as a covering for Daniel’s transgressions of the commandments if any occurred, and because Daniel was obliged to serve the king of Babylon in Babylon, Daniel would have transgressed the Sabbath. But Daniel’s belief of God would have been counted to Daniel as righteousness, and would have caused to Daniel to walk uprightly and without blame before God regardless of whether he kept or didn’t keep the Sabbaths of God.
Because Christians when born of God are cloaked in the garment of Christ, born-again Christians are covered by Jesus’ righteousness until such time as when these Christians willingly return to sin (i.e., the transgression of the commandments), with denial of Jesus being a transgression of the first commandment. The Christian who in innocence keeps Sunday as the Sabbath has his or her transgression of the Sabbath commandment, and by extension, of the commandments covered by grace. But innocence isn’t open-ended. If this Christian grows the least amount, the Christian will know that the Sabbath is not Sunday, but is the seventh day, the day before Sunday. Therefore, no Christian truly born of God can keep Sunday as the Sabbath for any length of time, with 220 days being the maximum period for Christians filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God.
· After a length of time appropriate to the individual Christian born of God has elapsed, with this length of time being that period when “the promise of entering His rest still stands” (Heb 4:1), transgression of the Sabbath commandment becomes denial of Jesus; for Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath (Matt 12:8).
· In a differing manner, the Christian who denies that the Logos created all that has been made (John 1:3), then entered His creation as His only Son (John 3:16), denies Jesus and thereby transgresses the first commandment, and takes him or herself out from under grace and places him or herself under the Law.
· A Christian coming under the Law after having been under grace will be devoured by sin, made alive by the Law. There is no sacrifice remaining for this person, who, now in this world as well as in the heavenly realm, manifests the Christian’s unbelief as Israel in the wilderness of Paran manifested its unbelief for the tenth time (Num 14:20–23).
Denial of Jesus is seen in the Sacred Names Heresy, a movement afoot within the Sabbatarian Christian community to use bastardized Hebrew pronunciations for the things of God.
The above is true: those Sabbatarian Christians who succumb to the Sacred Names Heresy, by the very name they use for God, deny that the Logos created all that has been made, then as God entered His creation as His only Son. And once a Christian denies Christ, the Christian is denied by Christ (Matt 10:22; 2 Tim 2:12) … when denied by Christ Jesus, the Christian will be spiritually dead even though the flesh continues to live.
To Titus, Paul wrote,
This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you … he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. / For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. … Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. (Titus 1:5–16 emphasis added)
So that you might put what remained into order—a spiritual disaster had befallen the holy ones in Crete, and apparently many had ceased following Paul as was the case throughout Asia (see 2 Tim 1:15 & Phil 3:18). Paul was giving instructions for how to salvage what could be saved. And what couldn’t be saved were Christians who profess to know God, but by their works deny Him. They had exchanged knowledge of God for Jewish myths and the commands of people who had turned away from the truth … today those who have turned away from the truth command the holy ones to use one of several variant bastardized Hebrew vocalizations for the name of Jesus the Nazarene. They are the spiritual zombies, and there is no reason to argue with these spiritually dead Christians—to argue with them would be akin to arguing with a talking corpse. Nor are faithful disciples to pray for them, for prayers for them will not be heard. All that awaits them is resurrection into the lake of fire.
Christians who profess to know God but deny Him by their works spurn social justice: they do not feed the hungry or house the homeless. They are respecters of persons, giving honor to the person who comes in Ellen G. White’s name, or in Herbert W. Armstrong’s name, or in the name of the Pope or the Archbishop or some other Christian theologian. They claim to be of the only true Church, the only true faith, the only true endtime apostle. But they have defiled their mind and their consciences, and everything they say and teach is defiled … especially in the Sacred Names Heresy, observant Christians see other Sabbatarians who found the garment of grace to be like a boil-covered skin that they work to slough as quickly as they can.
For those Sabbatarians who can’t bear the torment of years of trials, of trials after trials, of never coming out from under a trial, the garment of Christ is painful; is very much like having a rash of boils. Thus, their options were limited: either continue to bear the trials or return to open lawlessness by returning to Sunday-observance—or they can “mistake” the Sacred Names Heresy for spiritual growth, thereby denying Christ Jesus with their hearts and their tongues.
To cease keeping the commandments is never an option for the Christian truly born of God; therefore, the Sabbatarian who cannot continue in the loneliness of being out-of-sync with the world will gravitate toward Sabbatarian communities, not realizing that such communities are the haunts of Jewish myths and Christian mysticism. In initial innocence, the Sabbatarian will listen to men who say that salvation is by no other name than whatever bastardized Hebrew vocalization that is in vogue in the particular community. And within days, the Sabbatarian begins to deny Christ Jesus with his or her mouth … it never takes long for these detestable workers of iniquity to cause the Sabbatarian to deny Christ. And once these detestable ministers of Satan cause a spiritual babe to deny Christ Jesus, they work to incorporate the Sabbatarian into their conspiracy. The Sabbatarian purchases an adulterated copy of the Scriptures, and in doing so purchases his or her own death warrant. And the Sabbatarian forgets that of the righteous men that the prophet Ezekiel mentioned—Noah, Daniel, and Job—two did not have the law and the third could not enter the temple. These three, like Abraham, believed the Lord and had their belief counted to them as righteousness: their belief of the Lord was counted to them as walking uprightly and being blameless before the Lord.
Now, to Job’s challenge of God: have we, as moral men, arms like God? Can we thunder with a voice like His? Can we look on the proud, the mighty, the mightiest of all living creatures and bring them low, hiding them in the dust of the earth? If we can, then the Lord will acknowledge that we can “save” ourselves, that as a human being we can pass through the dimensional barrier between heaven and earth, transforming what is physical into primal energy that has structure but not substance.
If salvation is by no other name but that of Jesus, how will Noah, Daniel, and Job be saved? None ever uttered the name of Jesus, either in English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Greek, Hebrew, or Arabic.
Is a bastardized Hebrew vocalization like having arms like God, or thundering like God, or bringing the proud low, hiding them in the dust of the earth? Will uttering the name of Jesus in bastardized Hebrew save a person? Let the person entangled in the Sacred Names Heresy answer! Stand as a man. Answer as a man. Will an utterance of your mouth save you? Or will belief of God transformed into social justice that is akin to Job’s righteousness save you? Or will belief only open the door to the trials and persecution that the Believer will undergo while being milled into fine flour, then baked in a loaf with leavening [sin], and waved before the Lord in the Wedding Feast?
We cannot cease being physical and still live. By the very nature of mass and by the person possessing mass, no person can bodily cross dimensions and enter heaven. Plus, only God can cause the mightiest of creatures to be buried in the dust of this earth as fossils, yet still live, not proudly, but as a “low” creature, one despised but needful for human habitation.
In answering Job, God uttered a challenge that has stymied humanity ever since:
Look on Behemoth who is proud and bring him low—
Dinosaurs have traditionally been considered large, lizard-like reptiles, scaly skinned, primitive brained, cold blood herbivores or carnivores, extinct for millions of years, but beginning about three decades ago the academic community began to suggest that because of pelvic structure and how dinosaurs must necessarily have carried their weight, birds were likely the modern descendants of dinosaurs, a suggestion that met with considerable skepticism and much mocking within the Sabbatarian churches of God. Nevertheless, the suggestion had taken root within academia so in the 1990s when many “feathered” dinosaur fossils began to emerge from rural China, the evidence seemed conclusive: birds evolved from dinosaurs. Then beginning about 2003, a graduate student at Yale, in working with squid fossils, realized that color pigments for squid ink were present in the fossils. Within three years, feather coloring for one particularly well preserved dinosaur was determined: this dinosaur had a display crest, mottled feathers, and a reasonably close resemblance to a modern chicken. So the question must be posed, in answering Job, did the Lord do what He demanded of Job? Did the Lord hide Behemoth, the first of the works of God (Job 40:19), in the dust of the earth as fossils, while at the same time bringing Behemoth low and thereby further hiding him in the chicken yards of humans around the globe, with chickens giving themselves dust baths in a mocking of human wisdom and knowledge?
Behemoth, as the first of the works of God, collectively [i.e., as a genus] belongs to God who can do with Behemoth as the Lord sees fit. Behemoth is not the first to open a mammalian womb; so it is not a firstborn in the sense that a heifer’s calf is her firstborn. But as the first of the works of God, Behemoth—whether a herbivore or a carnivore—is a legal firstborn, and Behemoth would have co-existed with Job in order for the Lord’s words to make any sense to Job. Thus, in what is a fairly good description in Scripture of a dinosaur [the word itself, though, is of recent origin], the Lord brings Behemoth, the first of His works, to Job’s attention as He brought Job, a man blameless and upright, to Satan’s attention (Job 1:8; 2:3).
The Lord waves Behemoth before Job, and by extension, before humankind, as the Lord waved Job before the Adversary.
What reason did the Lord have for bringing Job to Satan attention? If Job was already blameless and upright, was the Lord mocking Satan when He asked the Adversary, “‘Have you considered my servant Job, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?’” Was the Lord doing to Satan what He would do with Job when He spoke to Job, and asked, “‘Have you an arm like God’” (Job 40:9)? The juxtaposition between the beginning of the book when the Lord spoke to Satan, and the end of the book when the Lord spoke to an upright man, with Job being proportionally lower than Satan as Behemoth was lower than Job, suggests that within Job’s righteousness was concealed sin of a similar sort as the concealed iniquity that lay in the Adversary until it was found (Ezek 28:15) —
Even beginning biblical scholars know that Job had a problem with self-righteousness, but they know nothing, really.
Job did not comprehend how wide or how deep the gulf was between the physical creation and the supra-dimensional heavenly realm; therefore, Job was unable to comprehend the difference between human righteousness and the ways of God. Nor did Job know that the Adversary was and is the present prince of this world, and will be the prince of this world until the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. Thus, it isn’t God that brings evil onto the wicked, or brings good to the wicked. It isn’t God that brings trials unto the righteous. God merely permits the Adversary to get at the righteous as has been his desire since the righteous spiritually called attention to themselves by their belief of God manifested in works.
When the Lord spoke to Job, the Lord sought to emphasize the gulf between what was of the creation—born of the Logos [o logos]—and what is born of woman; for even Job’s own children lost their lives when Satan went after Job (Job 1:18–19).
Satan believed that Job would sin if God removed the hedge that Job’s righteousness had caused the Lord to erect around the man, and he went after the things Job possessed as he attacked Job’s righteousness. But Job wasn’t the things he possessed, nor even his seed [offspring], nor even his own fleshly body. He was his inner self, that though not spiritually alive, was determined to walk uprightly before God. Again, he asked that his words be remembered:
Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever! (Job 19:23–24 emphasis added)
It wasn’t the hand of God that touched Job, but the hand of the Adversary. It wasn’t God that was pursuing Job; it was the Adversary. And out of respect for Job—and as a lesson for all who have been born since—the words of Job were inscribed in a book and written with greater permanency in that book than if they were engraved in stone. But Job didn’t ask for his words to be preserved in Scripture, but in stone. And it is there, in stone, where the first works of God have been preserved as a testimony that speaks of the righteousness of Job.
How is it that large beasts—Behemoths—not seen by modern men except as stony fossils misassembled in natural history museums should suddenly disappear allegedly millions of years ago; yet the Lord said to Job, “‘Behold, Behemoth’” (Job 40:15). If Job could behold (look at) this large dragon that could stiffen its tail and make it like a cedar log and wade the flooding Jordan without being washed away, then Behemoth lived when Job lived, thereby creating a scientific dilemma that will have the earth’s atmosphere producing more rapid encrustation—a term usually reserved for the thick layer of calcium carbonate, magnesium hydroxide, metal oxides, sand, clay, and various forms of marine animal and plant life found on underwater artifacts—in the form of desert varnish and drifted loess and hardened deposits of volcanic ash than presently observed. But this is another subject. It is enough for the Lord to have answered Job with the crowing of a rooster.
If dinosaurs have feathers and if one particular species had a red crest and black and white mottled feathers, with feathered shanks and feet like ptarmigan, then written in the rocks of this earth is evidence that the Lord could do what He demanded of Job, transform the proud into the low, then hide the low in the dust of this earth. This transformation of the first of the Lord’s works into chickens and chickadees is evidence that the Lord, by His own right hand, can save Himself and by extension, those human beings that are of the Lord (Job 40:14).
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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."