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 forgiving sins.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of February 19, 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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The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ / For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever. / Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.
“As for you [Jeremiah], do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven [hot cross buns?]. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke? declares the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own shame? Therefore thus says the Lord God: behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.”
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers. (Jer 7:1–26 emphasis added)
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In moving from physical to spiritual, a liberated Israelite dwelling in a skin or fabric tent in the wilderness is analogous to a Christian filled-with and empowered by spirit in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation. The forty years that Israel and the children of Israel trekked through the wilderness are analogous to the seven endtime years, with the children of Israel crossing the Jordan and entering into the Promised Land being analogous to when the third part of humanity (from Zech 13:9) is glorified.
In the wilderness of Paran, the Israelites numbered in the census of the second year that rebelled against the Lord by wanting to return to Egypt and by being willing to stone Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb so that they could choose for themselves [as an expression of democracy] new leaders to take them back to Egypt—the Israelites who, because of their unbelief on a particular day, could not enter into the Promised Land are analogous to greater Christendom in the Apostasy of day 220 of the Affliction (2 Thess 2:3), when Christendom listens to ten witnesses affirming Sunday worship and the observance of Christmas, with Christmas falling on Sunday being for them the two witnesses [signs] necessary to affirm existing Christian belief paradigms that had been badly shaken by having the Torah written on hearts and placed in minds.
Evidence must necessarily affirm or erase existing belief paradigms … the plagues of the Lord, especially the tenth plague, erased but not completely the belief paradigms of Israel in Egypt and of a great many Egyptians. The Lord had to harden Pharaoh’s heart [had to reinforced Pharaoh’s beliefs] or Pharaoh would not have refused to let Israel leave Egypt. Likewise, following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the world’s belief paradigms—with evidence of God and of His intervention in human affairs—will be erased, but for Christians as with ancient Israelites under Moses, previously held belief paradigms will be erased but not completely. Only for observant Christians who have the spirit of the truth in the spirit of prophecy dwelling within them will evidence of God affirm existing belief paradigms.
In moving from physical to spiritual, the children of Israel, circumcised and uncircumcised, who followed Joshua [in Greek,— Jesus, from Acts 7:45] into the Promised Land are analogous to the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9) that will be born of God, and born filled-will and empowered by spirit when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28). This third part only has to endure to the end to be saved; i.e., endure in faith for the 1260 days of the Endurance, the last 1260 days before Christ Jesus returns as King of kings and Lord of lords.
When the children of Israel entered the Promised Land, crossing the Jordan on the 10th day of the first month (Josh 4:19) as the selected paschal lamb of the Lord, the children of Israel became the acceptable sacrifice of the Lord, the sacrifice that would be killed by the Law if the children of Israel did not pass from death to life by boarding the Ark of the Covenant, of which Noah’s Ark was a type—
In moving from physical to spiritual, Noah’s Ark was analogous to the Ark of the Covenant, with the jar of manna in the Ark of the Covenant being analogous to the indwelling of Christ, the true bread from heaven, in a disciple, thereby establishing the metaphor that the fleshly body of a disciple is like Noah’s Ark, in that the fleshly body of a disciple carries the living inner self across death [represented by baptism] and unto life, with the disciple’s fleshly body disappearing when the mortal flesh puts on immortality as Noah’s Ark disappeared from public view.
In moving from physical to spiritual, the two tablets of stone on which the Lord wrote the ten living words (the Ten Commandments) are analogous to the two tablets of flesh—the heart and the mind—upon which the Lord will write the Torah following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation circumcised of heart, with the Passover that occurred in Egypt being the dark, physical shadow of the endtime Second Passover liberation of Israel.
In moving from physical to spiritual, slavery (the enslavement of the person) in Egypt is analogous to the state of the Christian’s living inner self when the Christian desires to do what is right and good but lacks the ability to do what is good, doing instead the very things that the Christian hates (Rom 7:15–18); therefore, when the Lord delivered first the house of Israel into the hand of the Assyrians and then the house of Judah into the hand of the Chaldeans, returning both houses of Israel to slavery, the Lord created the dark shadow and type [the left hand enantiomer] of God sending upon Christians liberated from indwelling sin and death “a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess 2:11–12).
The above is correct: for reasons similar to why the Lord delivered Israel and Judah back into slavery, God will deliver Christians into the lake of fire, the second death, with God sending over lawless Christians strong delusions so that these Christians will not repent—indeed, cannot repent—until their death sentence in the lake of fire is carried out.
Those things that the Lord told Jeremiah about what would happen to the house of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem if they did not repent and immediately turn to the Lord; those things that the Lord told Jeremiah about what would happen to Jerusalem when it became too late for the polis to repent; those things that happened to the house of Judah and to Jerusalem form the dark shadow and type of those things that will happened to lawless Christians in the Affliction and Endurance, the seven endtime years of tribulation, with the remnant that returned to Jerusalem by decree of Cyrus, king of Persia, representing how few Christians will actually begin the Millennium as living human beings.
Metaphors are never “true”; for one thing is not another thing. Ancient Israel is not the Christian Church. A shadow is not the reality casting the shadow. But when the thing casting the shadow cannot be seen—the living inner self of a Christian cannot be seen, and is not a thing in this world—then the best source of information about the thing comes from observing whatever shadow it casts, with the Light that causes the shadow being God and those things that block this light being unbelief, unrighteousness, disobedience in the sons of God, angelic and human.
In this world, unbelief is not a thing and is, therefore, not able to block the light coming from the sun—and in “unbelief” is seen the difference between this physical world and the supra-dimension realm of heaven … to visualize a dimension in which unbelief functions as a tangible thing requires attaching solidity to both thoughts and emotions. If an emotion were to possess solidity, then anger directed towards one’s brother would kill with the same quickness and effectiveness as a stab with a dagger. If a thought were to possess solidity, then lust would be concentual sex (adultery) or non-concentual sex (rape). And these are the two example commandments that Jesus addressed in Matthew 5:21–22 and 27–28. … The essence of the Christian message is found in the comparison of the commandments, with Jesus giving to His disciples this relationship by using the sixth and seventh commandments as examples, and with Moses giving to Israel this relationship with the Sabbath commandment:
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Ex 20:8–11 emphasis added)
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deut 5:12–15 emphasis added)
Christians are to remember that they were once sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), confined to disobedience (Rom 11:32) as slaves to indwelling sin and death (Rom 7:14,22–25). The Sabbath and by extension, Sabbath observance, is the reason why the Lord has commanded Israelites circumcised of heart to keep the Sabbath as a remembrance of liberation from indwelling sin and death. For when murder goes from being what an Israelite’s hand does to being the desire of his or her heart and when adultery goes from being what an Israelite’s body does to be the thoughts of his or her mind, the Sabbath moves from regulating the activities of the hand and the body on the seventh day to regulating the desires of the heart and the thoughts of the mind on the seventh day. The Sabbath doesn’t moves to a different day but moves inside the person; for God the Father isn’t the Christian’s human father but is the Father of the living inner self that is a firstborn son of God as Israel in Egypt was the firstborn son of the Lord (Ex 4:22), with Christ Jesus being the First of the firstborn sons of God.
The Moab covenant (Deut chaps 29–32) is a heavenly [eternal] covenant that serves as the shadow and type of the Second Passover covenant, the New Covenant that has the Torah written on hearts and minds so that all of Israel knows the Lord (Heb 8:10–11; Jer 31:33–34), and because all of Israel will know the Lord, all of Israel will strive to keep the commandments of God. When the Israelite believes God and strives to please God, then God will be merciful toward their iniquities and will not remember their sins.
However, the Christian, when liberated from indwelling sin and death, who chooses to return to sin as its willing slave will be condemned to the lake of fire; for this Christians has chosen the Adversary over God to be this Christian’s father (see 1 John 3:4–10).
If unbelief were to be a thing like a box, then everything contrary to God would be inside this box—and if this were true, then unbelief would be the container that held sin of very type … transgressions of the commandments would all be inside this very large box. Hence, when sins and lawless deeds will no longer be remembered because they have all been stuffed inside the box labeled unbelief, with this box delivered to its rightful owner, Satan the devil, then because the son of God believes the Father and the Son, the son of God will pass from death to life and will not come under judgment (John 5:24). However, Jesus said not to be surprised that the hour is coming when those sons of God who have done evil will be resurrected to judgment, to condemnation (v. 29), with evil, now, being a euphemistic expression for clinging to one’s unbelief.
Jeremiah is told do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you (7:16), but he is not told once but several times not to pray for Israel:
Again the Lord said to me, “A conspiracy exists among the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, who refused to hear my words. They have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant that I made with their fathers. Therefore, thus says the Lord, Behold, I am bringing disaster upon them that they cannot escape. Though they cry to me, I will not listen to them. Then the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will go and cry to the gods to whom they make offerings, but they cannot save them in the time of their trouble. For your gods have become as many as your cities, O Judah, and as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to shame, altars to make offerings to Baal. / Therefore do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble. (11:9–14 emphasis added)
And,
The Lord said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.”
Then I said: “Ah, Lord God, behold, the prophets say to them, ‘You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.’” And the Lord said to me: “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds.” (14:11–14 emphasis added)
Elders of the Hebrews who went to Babylon sat before the prophet Ezekiel:
In the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth day of the month, certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of the Lord, and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, speak to the elders of Israel, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, Is it to inquire of me that you come? As I live, declares the Lord God, I will not be inquired of by you.” (Ezek 20:1–3 emphasis added)
Before the children of Israel crossed the Jordan and entered the Promised Land, Moses warned the nation,
But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked;
you grew fat, stout, and sleek;
then he forsook God who made him
and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.
They stirred Him to jealousy with strange gods;
with abominations they provoked Him to anger.
They sacrificed to demons that were no gods,
to gods they had never known,
to new gods that had come recently,
whom your fathers had never dreaded.
You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you,
and you forgot the God who gave you birth.
The Lord saw it and spurned them,
because of the provocation of His sons and His daughters.
And He said, ‘I will hide my face from them;
I will see what their end will be,
For they are a perverse generation,
children in whom is no faithfulness.
They have made Me jealous with what is no god;
they have provoked Me to anger with their idols.
So I will make them jealous with those who are no people;
I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
For a fire is kindled by My anger,
and it burns to the depths of Sheol
devours the earth and its increase,
and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. (Deut 32:15–22 emphasis added)
But Moses knew that the children of Israel were like their parents:
Moses came and recited all the words of this song in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun. And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.” (Deut 32:44–47 emphasis added)
For the children of Israel, righteousness came via demonstrated obedience, with obedience to the Law disclosing belief of the Law; i.e., the faith to keep the Law even when in a far land. For Israel had a Law—this Law, the Moab covenant—“that would lead to righteous” (Rom 9:31) if it had been pursued by faith rather than by the works of hands. But because the children of Israel opted to make the Lord jealous with what was no god through their continued worship of sticks and stones, the Lord kept His promise to make the children of Israel jealous with a foolish nation that was no ethnically particular people. The Lord has used greater Christendom to make the children of Israel jealous, and His intention to make Israel jealous worked for as long as Christians kept the commandments while uncircumcised in the flesh; i.e., kept the commandments by faith.
Peter says of Christians,
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. / Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Pet 2:9–12)
If Christians are a royal priesthood, a people for His own possession that proclaim the excellencies of God, a people who when living as Gentiles were not a people and had not received mercy, how is a Christian to continue to live as a Gentile and proclaim anything? To continue living as a Gentile when the person has been made part of a chosen race cannot be done. If the person continues to live as a Gentile, the person remains a Gentile and is not a Jew and is utterly incapable of making a natural Jew jealous about anything.
Paul writes,
So I ask, did they [natural Israel] stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!
Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches. (Rom 11:11–16 emphasis added)
A people who were not a people were called by the Lord to be His people so as to make the natural descendants of the patriarchs jealous. They were called because the natural descendants refused to keep the covenant which they promised to keep: “‘The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant that I made with their fathers’” (Jer 11:10), and,
For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.” But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. (Jer 7:22–24)
That same command—Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you—pertains to Christians today, and will pertain to Christians after the Second Passover liberation of Israel when the stakes are higher; for when Christians are filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God, they will not be covered by Christ Jesus’ righteousness as they presently are.
Christians are to be one body of one spirit (1 Cor 12:12—13), but this is not the case today when sects and denominations are as the many in number as the pagan deities were that Israel worshiped: “‘For your gods have become as many as your cities, O Judah, and as many as the streets of Jerusalem are the altars you have set up to shame, altars to make offerings to Baal’” (Jer 11:13). For a Latter Day Saint, an Arian Christian, is not one with a Roman Catholic, a Trinitarian Christian. And while the Catholic or Southern Baptist can deny that a Mormon is a Christian, Sabbatarians deny that a Catholic is a Christian. So it really doesn’t matter whether the pot calls the kettle alone or the kettle and spider black, they are all black. They are without the indwelling of the spirit of the truth in the spirit of prophecy—and they will be born of God and born filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God at the Second Passover liberation of Israel. God will not make a distinction between them, but they will!
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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."