The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is the second Elijah.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of February 17, 2007
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
The person conducting the service should read or assign to be read 1 Kings chapter 17.
Commentary: Elijah is one of the most important figures in the Old Testament for he is a type of the one who is to come: the Messiah, the glorified Christ Jesus. This Elijah to come is not a man like John the Baptist, of whom Jesus said, ‘“This is he of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, / who will prepare your way before you’”’ (Matt 11:10). Jesus went on to say, ‘“For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear’” (vv. 13-15).
He who has ears to hear, let him hear—these words of Jesus complicate comprehending what is heard in Jesus’ declaration that John is the Elijah-to-come, for the messenger who prepares the way is now the one who turns the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers (Mal 4:5-6). And John did not turn the hearts of fathers and children to each other. John came to confront not to comfort; he came to challenge the religious leaders of his day; he came to divide a man from his father, a daughter from her mother-in-law; he came to separate the lawless from the repentant. Plus, when the leaders of the temple asked him directly if he were the Elijah, he said, ‘“I am not’” (John 1:21). So what does Jesus mean by saying that he was the Elijah to come? Certainly not what Jesus’ words would seem to mean.
John preached repentance, a turning of
Thus, the Father to whom the Elijah-to-come turns hearts is to the Most High and the children are the sons of God, born of Spirit, who did not then exist when John preached repentance. And this is what those who hear Jesus’ words hear.
A simple message: Repent and be reconciled to God
lest He strikes the earth with utter destruction. It is for the sake of the
Elect that destruction will be cut short (Matt 24:22). If this destruction is
not cut short, no flesh would be saved, such is the destruction that will come
upon the earth when the divided and warring
The first Elijah was a man; John the Baptist was a man, of whom no greater man born of woman had ever been. So an escalation within the physical realm occurs between Elijah and John the Baptist, an escalation that is the shadow and copy of a spiritual escalation that has the gloried Christ Jesus being the reality of the Elijah to come, but also has Christ casting a shadow that will have born of Spirit disciples delivering in this realm the words of Christ Jesus as the man Jesus delivered the words of the Father during His earthly ministry. The concept expressed in the previous sentence can be difficult to accept. Elijah comes as a prophet, appearing from the wilderness to return, where? Not into the supra-dimensional realm usually identified as heaven [those who teach otherwise are spiritual novices and are in need of a teacher] for no one has gone to heaven except the man who came down from heaven, but into a far wilderness, carried there by the chariot of God as a type of the two witnesses’ public resurrection halfway through the seven endtime years and them being called up into heaven after their resurrection. Thus, the two witnesses are a type of the Elijah-to-come, just as John the Baptist was a type. And the two witnesses, who function as one entity as Moses and Aaron functioned as one entity, are fully empowered [by the Holy Spirit] men who prepare the way for Christ Jesus’ return, and who in turn cast a shadow that will be two born of Spirit disciples (or more, but with the “more” functioning as two).
The two witnesses will not be Enoch and Elijah, both now dead and not in heaven, but remembered in the dust of the earth. The two witnesses will be two individuals, probably two men that are biological brothers, that together function as one entity as Moses and Aaron functioned as one, with Moses being as god to Aaron (Exod 4:16). Together, these two brothers form the shadow and type of the Logos, the reality of Aaron, delivering the words of Theon, the Father, the reality of Moses, both prior to the Logos being born as the man Jesus and then during His three and a half year long earthly ministry. So the two witnesses will be the spiritually living (but with this life still domiciled in tents of flesh) type of Aaron and Moses, and if time is short—the argument of The Philadelphia Church is that it is—then these two individuals are already in place, with the one who will be the spokesman having already established communication channels with the human kings [presidents] and princes of this world, and with the one who will be as Moses was [and as Elijah and John the Baptist were] dwelling in the wilderness doing something that is equivalent to herding sheep for his father-in-law.
Both Elijah and John the Baptist dwelt in the
wilderness—the Azazel goat, after the sins of Israel was read over it,
was annually [when Israel practiced some semblance of keeping the words of
Moses] led by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness where it was to live without
harm. So another correspondence emerges: Elijah, John, and the Azazel goat
share a common domain, the wilderness beyond the habitation of
Time or better space-time functions as a very low viscosity fluid that seems to expand through the energy released by the decay of dark matter. As such, space-time possesses a small amount of energy (three degrees Kelvin) that can be computed as an even smaller amount of mass, and is thereby affected by gravity; time can be written as a mathematical function of gravity, which makes “time” part of the created universe. And since the size and mass of space-time is not constant[1], but changes at the decay rate of dark matter, the status of any “thing” or of any “phenomenon” also changes as space-time expands, or as time seems to pass. This changing status of space-time is represented as a parade of moments; i.e., the passing of one moment into the next moment in a parade that has a definite beginning and that will have a definite ending. Thus, the changing from one moment to the next moment allows for “change” to occur in the form of movement of apparently solid matter, and for change to occur in the status of matter. Therefore, what was alive one moment can change in status between moments and be dead in the next moment. In fact, the entirety of the universe is subject to decay, the active definition of death. So the universe exists as a large death chamber in which all that is within it will decay and die and ultimately come to nothingness. The created universe is the antithesis of “life.”
The created universe came about when a rupture occurred in the fabric of heaven, a supra-dimensional realm that might be perceived as the 12th dimension. The model for this rupture appears in Scripture when the earth opened to swallow Korah and his supporters (Exod chap 16). Korah went down alive into the fissure that closed again, leaving no visible trace of him or of those who followed him. Thus, mentally transpose the image of the earth swallowing Korah, who would remain alive for some short period, to a fissure in heaven opening up to swallow rebelling angels who will remain alive for a period defined by the amount of dark matter created when a collision of energy fields occurs within this rupture—the rupture must first occur before “matter” is created by the collision. These energy fields shimmer like dancing Northern Lights; thus, where they collide is not at one point, but along an interchange in several points almost simultaneously. So within the rupture that exists as a bottomless pit is now both a portion of heaven (equivalent to the invisible air Korah breathed on his way down) and the created universe which begins suddenly from the collision (equivalent to the matter formed into Korah, his friends, families, possessions and all that was visibly physical). This bottomless pit remains without a bottom, but it isn’t a wormhole into another universe. Heaven is not another universe like ours. Rather, this bottomless pit contains the created universe into which all rebelling angels will be confined and bound. Thus, in the pattern established by the earth closing after Korah and his fellow rebels—all they wanted was a more democratic congregation in the wilderness—the rupture in the fabric of heaven will close and the universe will be no more, forever.
Time or space-time exists only inside the bottomless pit that is the outer darkness that Peter described through use of the word [linguistic icon or signifier] “tartaroō,” the deepest abyss in pagan Greeks’ hell. So the person who mockingly says that the world has gone to hell uses “hell” in a similar way to how Peter used tartaroo. The world is in hell, the bottomless abyss that opened in the fabric of heaven—without gravity, the concepts of “up,” “down,” “standing,” “floor,” even “fissure” are without meaning—and the rebelling angels will be confined within this created universe so that their present status of “living” will change to “dead” when this world passes away (1 John 2:17). They have been sentenced to death, a sentence that can only be carried out within time. In a literal sense, if Satan had not rebelled, no rupture in heaven would have occurred; no universe would have been created; no person would have been conceived; no human being would be glorified. As a species, humankind would not be here to wonder about whether the Genesis one creation account was written by Moses or by some post-Babylonia-exile scribe. Everything that humankind perceives only exists in hell, the bottomless pit into which God cast rebelling angels in the same moment that presently exists in heaven.
It is here, where time does not pass, that the imaginations of human beings fail: despite a war being fought; despite Satan and his angels being cast into a bottomless pit; despite the creation of the universe and the course of history; despite fire coming from the belly of Satan and utterly consuming him; despite human beings being born, living, being born of Spirit, dying, being resurrected and glorified as sons of God and younger siblings to Christ Jesus—no time has passed in heaven. The moment remains the same as before. All activity occurs within the same moment, for there is no “matter,” no “mass,” no gravitational or electrical fields. There is nothing but energy in an elemental form. Therefore, the person who has been glorified (an event that will not occur until the “future” in this realm) exists in the same moment that lawlessness was discovered in an anointed cherub, and in the same moment that this anointed cherub was cast into the abyss, never to come out, and in the same moment as when the Logos entered His creation as the man Jesus of Nazareth, and in the same moment as when the man Jesus received the glory He formerly had.
The tendency of human thought is to divorce events from simultaneous occurrence, perceiving these events as sequential rather than concurrent. A human being who has lost the perspective of time does not function well in this world—and the perspective of events occurring sequentially within the passage of time is the production of the human mind. This perspective can be lost. In one medical case, following a traffic accident that resulted in a head injury and misdiagnosed hip injuries, the victim was given a high level of pain medication for 10 months. During these months, events that had occurred 15 and more years earlier seemed to the victim to have just occurred. The distance between events that “time” imparts was lost. Foolish or inconsiderate behavior by the victim’s spouse 18 and 19 years earlier became reasons of immediate importance for the victim to seek a divorce. The victim genuinely believed that behavior by the victim’s then 19 year old spouse 18 years earlier had just occurred. The victim was unable to perceive that a person at 37 was no longer the person who had been 19.
And neither could the ministry of the former Radio Church of God perceive that change can only occur within time, must occur with time, and cannot help but occur; that change in the heavenly realm—which, again, is not a realm like our universe—is limited to what will co-exist with what is. Disciples will not be resurrected and glorified as “baby gods,” a teaching of Herbert Armstrong. Evangelicals pounced on this teaching, saying that Satan wanted to be God and that any doctrine which would have human beings becoming like God is heretical and of Satan. But the problem with Armstrong’s teaching existed in “baby”—the spiritual maturation of disciples occurs in this realm, and can only occur in this realm. When disciples are glorified, they will be like their elder brother, Christ Jesus. They will not be babies; they will be fully mature, meaning that if they do not achieve spiritual maturation in this world, they will not receive it and will not be glorified. So Evangelicals pounced on the wrong aspect of what Armstrong taught. They objected to the only part he had correct: glorified disciples will be sons of the Most High as Christ Jesus is the firstborn of many brethren.
It is not uncommon for an individual in traumatic situations to experience the sensation of time slowing down, and seeming to pass at a significantly different [slower] speed than time usually seems to pass. Likewise, individuals facing death have had the parade of historical events making up the individual’s life flash by at a high rate. So a human being’s perception of time and the rate at which it passes is a function of the mind, and appears to be a received attribute made necessary for spiritual maturation. The aging process by which the body [flesh] automatically kills itself will produce death without the necessity of experiencing spiritual or mental maturation. For example, a cat is a cat from its kittenhood to its death from old age 15 or more years later. It can learn to avoid vehicular traffic on a highway; it can even learn to claw the furniture late at night when no one is up; but it always seems to live in the present moment, and its acquisition of knowledge does change its perception of philosophical matters. It is still cat-like when age has caused its fangs to grow longer than its lower jaw.
Human nature, like the natures of beasts, is a received nature that can be taken from a person as it was taken from ancient King Nebuchadnezzar for seven years. Human nature is presently the product of Satan’s broadcast of disobedience, but human nature will change [yes! it will] when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh … if the natures of the great predators will change (Isa 11:6-9) so will the nature of human beings. However, until this change occurs worldwide, only the mindsets [natures] of those individuals who have been born of Spirit are liberated from servitude to disobedience.
An aspect of the nature humans presently have is a
limitation on conceptualizing timelessness. This limitation is so severe that,
literally, unless a person is genuinely born of Spirit, the person cannot
comprehend all activity occurring within the same moment, or even begin to
approximate this conception of future events happening in the present and in the
past simultaneously. Hence, when Jesus says that He saw Satan fall like
lightning, human perception requires that fall Jesus saw to occur sometime
previous to when the Logos entered
His creation as the man Jesus, but this is not the case scripturally. Satan
falls halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation. So what Jesus says
that He saw was an event to occur two millennia in the future. Likewise, the
endtime two witnesses “are the two olive trees and the two lampstands
that stand before the Lord of the earth” (Rev 11:4), ‘“the
two anointed ones [alternative reading: two sons of new oil] who stand by the
Lord of the whole earth”’ (Zech 4:14). They are the two who were
with the Lord of this earth when He visited the patriarch Abraham under the
oaks of Mamre; they are the two who entered
It is really too much for the mind not born of Spirit to comprehend: the timelessness of heaven; the last Elijah being Christ Jesus working through the two witnesses; the Zerubbabel who laid the foundation of the house of God being Christ Jesus working through the Apostle Paul (cf. Zech 4:9; 1 Cor 3:10-11).
One moment, never changing, yet abounding with activity, but with all of this activity working together in unity as one entity, thereby not incurring the limitations posed by a paradox where two “things” cannot simultaneously occupy the same time and space.
The timelessness of heaven explains why Jesus, Moses, and Elijah are together in the transfiguration, but this concept of timelessness also creates a problem for disciples taught by spiritual descendants of the former Radio Church of God. And it is here, where the “problem” of being in heaven interfaces with no one having yet gone to heaven except the One who came down from heaven that endtime disciples “see” the widow of Zarephath as a type of Israel, and her son as a type of the Body of Christ.
The wages of sin is death; a person dwells in “death” and is “dead” when consigned to disobedience [sin]. The person is one of the “dead, “ regardless of how “alive” the person thinks he or she is if the person does not keep the commandments of God, the physical expression of the inner laws of God that have been written on hearts and placed in minds. For the person who has been made alive is not in bondage to disobedience—sin has no dominion over this person—so this person can and will by faith keep the commandments. Thus, in this person all of the Law [Moses] and the Prophets [Elijah] is fulfilled through the personage of Christ Jesus, with the disciple living as Jesus lived and walking as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6) appearing to the world as an observant Israelite, holy as Jesus was holy.
Grasp this: a person cannot walk as
Jesus walked and live as a Gentile, cannot happen! Christianity as practiced by
Jesus and taught by His first disciples is a fundamentalist sect of Judaism
that has removed the Pharisees’ emphasis on the physical and relocated
this emphasis on the spiritual, with the laws and practices of Moses moving
from the hand to the heart, from the body to the mind, from the outside of the
cup to the inside. Therefore, until the Body of Christ is
resurrected from death [the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church
although they would seem to have if time were stopped right now], Christendom
is an apostate belief paradigm that ancient Greek philosophers used as a Trojan
horse to defeat and conquer the Roman Empire, thereby winning with ideas what
Greeks could not win on the battlefield or at sea. Through the use of this
second Trojan horse, Greek philosophy won an empire and reigned over
The “Christian” who takes the concept that all of the Law and the Prophets is fulfilled in the personage of Jesus, yet lives as a Gentile, is both a thief and a liar. This is a person worthy of death, and a person, if born of Spirit, who will not escape the second death when judgments are revealed. This is not, however, a person who will be mourned either now or later.
Until born of Spirit, a person has no spiritual life that can be renewed or regenerated; for everlasting life is the gift of God, given when the person receives life through the divine Breath of God [pneuma hagion] as the first Adam received life when Elohim breathed into his nostrils, thereby transforming him from a lifeless clay corpse into a nephesh, a breathing creature. God transforms spiritually lifeless human corpses into His sons that for a season dwell in tents of flesh through giving them His breath.
As an adult person can, years after the fact, view his or her physical maturation that was saved on film or video tape, thereby cheating time of its changes, a son of God can view his spiritual maturation after it occurs. Again, from the timeless heavenly realm where all change must co-exist with what was and what will be, the glorified disciple can look into “time” as if peering into a bowl of water, and can see the changes that occur within time, including his own spiritual maturation, until the rupture closes after the great White Throne Judgment.
The most important concept to restore to the Church is that of the timelessness of heaven, where Satan has already perished and is no longer remembered (for his creation was in the same moment that he perished—this is initially difficult to comprehend). In order for glorified disciples to enter the heavenly realm, their entrance must not effect a change. Under the circumstances usually described in Christian dogma, the addition of glorified disciples would be a prohibited change in the heavenly realm. The trickling in of thousands of migrants a day into heaven—that is, if a good person were to go to heaven upon death—would produce gridlock of an unimaginable magnitude. These thousands are not of one mind or of one accord. In fact, many of them don’t even like each other. What would a Shiite, a Sunni, a Mormon, a Catholic, a Baptist, and Herbert Armstrong have to talk about? The first five’s hatred of Armstrong’s religious teachings? What else? Anything?
The concept of human beings going to heaven at death was initially poorly conceived, and now remains without justification: is it seventy or seventy-two virgins that every man is to receive … what would a son of God, who is neither male nor female, do with a harem that wanted attention? What will that good Baptist woman do when she finds out that she has seventy virgins at her command? She certainly won’t send them to her husband who probably preceded her in death. He already has his hands full, and will really have his hands full when she gets hold of him.
What is usually taught about heaven would be comical if it were not taken seriously by so many people of the Book.
Again, in the heavenly realm all change must
co-exist with what is so the addition of glorified disciples must not
constitute a “change”—and this is difficult to perceive by
those born of Spirit; absolutely impossible to conceive by those not born of
Spirit. If glorified disciples are not one with Christ Jesus, who existed
before the universe existed and who was one with the Father, then they cannot
enter heaven; for their entrance would constitute a change that cannot be accommodated because of the limitations of a
paradox. Thus, disciples are allowed entrance [or from the perspective of being
inside of time, will be in the future allowed entrance] because they become “one”
with Christ Jesus, thereby producing no changed dynamic within the heavenly
realm when they enter. And this being “one” is an absolute that
cannot be violated! Therefore, since a disciple cannot live as a Gentile and be
one with Jesus, who lived as an Observant Jew, the disciple who never attempted
to live within the commandments, all of them not seven or eight or nine of
them, will not enter heaven. Cannot
happen! Absolutely will not happen! A person cannot willfully break the
commandments and be one with Christ Jesus. Put more bluntly, a person cannot
attempt to enter God’s rest on the 8th-day and be one with Christ
Jesus. A person cannot eat vermin and be holy as Christ is holy. A person
cannot embrace the sin of Jeroboam and be one with Christ. And as John the
Baptist came to confront
The Church is not only filled with sinners, but it teaches these sinners to continue in their lawlessness as if its leaders enjoy the sizzle of frying disciples in the lake of fire.
If a person has rendered fat, the person has heard the “crackling” of fat cells giving up the oil within them, leaving only the crispy cellulose structure of the cells—and this is what will be heard once the screaming ends as lawless disciples perish physically as well as spiritually when they are cast, as bundles of weeds, into the fiery furnace (Matt 13:41-42) as the harvest of God is gathered into His barns at the end of this age.
Yes! All teachers of lawlessness will also roast in the flames of hell (Matt 7:21-23); they will fry along with those to whom they taught disobedience. Their mighty works will not save them. Their mighty works will not even survive into the Millennium reign of Christ Jesus … these teachers of lawless might be pitied if not for the damage they have done to the laity of the Body, so prayers for them will not be heard. They have, in this present age, all that they will ever have. Ahead of them is physical pain and the certainty of the second death. They are the Pharisees of this age. And who is it that is able to warn them to flee from the wrath to come? Whom will they hear? Not Christ Jesus, who would have them live by every word that has proceeded from the mouth of God (Matt 4:4). Not Paul, who wrote that if an uncircumcised man keeps the precepts of the law, his uncircumcision will be counted as circumcision (Rom 2:26). Not John, who wrote that whoever says he knows Jesus but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him (1 John 2:4). Not Peter, who wrote that disciples as obedient children are not to be conformed to the passions of their former ignorance, but are to be holy as He who has called them is holy (1 Pet 1:14-16). Not James, who wrote that the person who breaks one of the commandments breaks the royal law (Jas 2:10). So just as the Pharisees of Jesus day did not heed John the Baptist’s warning to repent, the endtime teachers of lawlessness will not heed, nor even acknowledge, calls for them to repent; calls for them to turn from their lawless teachings and lead infants sons of God into the second covenant, where they and those whom they teach will keep the commandments. If they were to do this, they would be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:19), but they would be called legalists in this world.
A person can have one, but not the other. A person can be called great in this world, or a person can be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Which will it be for you? Rewards that you can see and measure? Acclaim of men? Or rewards stored in heaven which you cannot now enter to count your wealth?
Nothing John the Baptist said to the Sadducees and Pharisees is strong enough to convey the greasy stench of burning flesh as unrepentant sons of disobedience—who were liberated from sin but returned to disobedience as a dog returns to its vomit—perish first physically, then spiritually, for the physical precedes the spiritual and the visible reveals the invisible. So in imagining your flesh frying, becoming charred meat, you can see what will happen to you spiritually when you perish in the second death.
Don’t do this to God, who, because of the attribute of timelessness, cannot allow any child of His into heaven if this child isn’t one with Christ Jesus … do you doubt that God loves you, and that out of love He will have you tossed into the lake of fire if you do not repent of your lawlessness? Or do you just doubt that God will keep His word? Do you not believe Jesus when He said that many are called, but few shall be chosen (Matt 22:14)? Why would you think that Jesus is a liar? Saying one thing but doing another thing when judgments are revealed?
The Elijah-to-come will speak as John the Baptist spoke, but He won’t be a man. He will be the glorified Christ Jesus, to whom the religious leaders of His day did as they pleased (Matt 17:12). They did not recognize Him; they did not want to recognize Him. And the endtime Pharisees will not hear Jesus’ words or recognize His voice
When Elijah appears suddenly, all that is known of
him is that his ancestry is of “Tishbe,” or of the settlers …
what settlers? The Septuagint translators assigned Elijah a lineage that would
make Elijah a stranger who was outside of the genealogical pool of Israel [the
problem with using DNA evidence to determine who is or isn’t of Israel is
manifest in the children of the mixed multitude that left Egypt with Israel,
with these children being circumcised when Israel crossed the Jordan forty
years later]. He was, from what little is known, someone like Caleb, who either
himself or by his ancestry had voluntarily joined himself to
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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.
[1] Any assumption that the size and mass of space-time is constant runs foul of knowing the amount and decay rate of dark matter; i.e., heavy mass particles. If the amount of dark matter is unknown, the inclusion of energy generated by its decay is also unknown. This inclusion of energy occurs, however, when space expands and is seen in the relatively constant background temperature of all quadrants of expanded space. Temperatures do not fall as if space “thinned out” as it expanded, but temperature continue as they were, indicating that space does not become less dense as it expands; that its expansion is the result of increased energy and mass.
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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."
© 2003 The Philadelphia Church - All rights reserved. 03/24/2018