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 searching out secrets.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of February 25, 2012
The person conducting the Sabbath service should open services with two or three hymns, or psalms, followed by an opening prayer acknowledging that two or three (or more) are gathered together in Christ Jesus’ name, and inviting the Lord to be with them.
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I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. … Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. (Eph 4:1–3; 5:1–17 emphasis added)
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1.
Be imitators of God—to imitate God requires that the person walk as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6), imitating Paul as he imitated Jesus (1 Cor 11:1), walking in this world as a Judean who commits no offense against the Law of the Jews or against the temple (Acts 25:8). This will obligate the Christian to keep the commandments, including the Sabbath commandment. It will not be enough to say that because Jesus kept the commandments and because Jesus dwells in the Christian, the Christian is free to live and walk as a Gentile, a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) for the destruction of the flesh. Simply put, Jesus doesn’t dwell in anyone who willfully transgresses any of the commandments, especially the Sabbath which is given to Christians as a memorial of their liberation from slavery as a bondservant of the Adversary (see Deut 5:15 for the shadow and type of this memorial of liberation).
The Christian who willfully and knowingly transgresses the least of the commandments, the Sabbath, is a spiritual bastard, the word used in its intended meaning of an illegitimate offspring … the Sabbath is the least of the commandments because the Sabbath is delineated time representing entering into God’s presence as opposed to a relationship expression of love for God, neighbor, or brother. However, voluntarily keeping the Sabbath when there is no social or cultural requirement to do so is an expression of love for God. Voluntarily keeping the Sabbath in a culture dedicated to resting on the day after the Sabbath [— the first (after) the Sabbath, from Luke 24:1; John 20:1, Acts 20:7] is an act of faith and as such is pleasing to God.
The Christian—as opposed to a person of the world—who intentionally transgresses the Sabbath is an idolater, coveting for oneself time that belongs to God … an unbeliever, someone who doesn’t profess that Jesus is Lord and believe in the person’s heart that the Father raised Jesus from death (Rom 10:9), is a spiritual gentile regardless of whether this person is outwardly circumcised as a Jew or a Muslim, or uncircumcised. Yes, an orthodox Jew can be a spiritual gentile; for according to Paul, “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter” (Rom 2:28–29).
According to the prophet Jeremiah,
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh—Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart. (Jer 9:25–26 emphasis added)
A Jew—i.e., a descendant of the patriarch Abraham—comes through the Promised Seed, of which Isaac was a shadow and type, with Christ Jesus being the reality: “And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:29)
If a Jew is a person circumcised of heart, what does circumcised of heart mean? Obviously the heart sack, the pericardium, is not cut away by the soft breath of God as a male’s foreskin is clipped by an edged tool … what part of the pericardium would be cut away, the outer fibrous pericardium or the inner serous pericardium?
In Scripture, the heart is a euphemistic expression for the non-physical inner self of a person, in Greek, [the psuche or the soul], with the Apostle Paul identifying this inner self as the person’s old man prior to spiritual birth and as the person’s new man following receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma theon] in the indwelling breath of Christ [pneuma kristos]. … Spiritual birth comes when the son of disobedience’s old self or old nature is put to death (crucified with Christ Jesus) through Christ canceling the record of debt with its legal demands—its lawful claim to the person’s life—that stood against every son of disobedience. Christ Jesus canceled this record of debt through His body being nailed to the cross in lieu of the sinner’s lifeless inner self remaining dead forever.
The inner self (the soul) of a Christian doesn’t need regenerated or restored to life that it never had—no human being is born with an immortal soul—but needs raised from death as the sculpted mud that was the corpse of the first Adam needed to be raised to life through Elohim [singular in usage] breathing the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils (Gen 2:7), thereby transforming the man of mud from a lifeless corpse into a nephesh, a breathing creature … Elohim is the regular plural of Eloah, which deconstructs to <El>, the Semitic icon used for God, and the radical <ah> that reflects aspiration or “breath” as in rough breathing, with the <ah> radical generally being used to convey receipt of the breath of either the Logos [O Logos], Yah, the God [Theos] of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of the living not the dead (Matt 22:32), or the God [ton theon], the Father, the God of the dead ones—
Elohim as the plural of Eloah, or Eloah + Eloah an undetermined number of times, with the determiner of times being found in the Tetragrammaton YHWH, which deconstructs to the radicals <YH>, Yah, and <WH>, with /H/ representing aspiration of breath. So the multiple is two: Yah as the God of the living, and <WH> as the God of the dead, with these two conjoined in the Tetragrammaton as if these two were married and one spirit as Adam and Eve were one flesh.
Jesus’ teaching about marriage about which Sadducees marveled had Jesus saying,
[Concerning but the resurrection of the dead have not you read the (thing) spoken to you by the God saying], [I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; (I) am not God of dead but of living ones] (Matt 22:31–32).
The dead are not resurrected by the God of the living, the God of Abraham, but by the God whom Jesus came to reveal to His disciples (John 17:25–26), the Father, of whom the Pharisees and the Sadducees knew nothing, including His existence.
Judaism today denies divinity to Christ Jesus, as does Islam. Both contend that the Creator of everything made is the God of Abraham which is true, for everything made is of the living—until the thing dies and is dead; for the things that have been made, the things that have physical life are this world and are of this world, which is not the supra-dimensional realm of heaven, a realm on the other side of the creation of mass and of things possessing mass.
Solomon wrote some of the most quoted lines of all time;
For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted (Eccl 3:1–2)
But immediately following the poetic passage, Solomon added,
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity [o-lawm'], into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Eccl 3:9–11)
Owlam carries the sense of <everlasting> as in typological links to archetypes, with Christ Jesus identifying Himself as the Beginning and the End, the One that is Everlasting. Solomon writes in the context of what is the work of men, of kings for example—“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Proverbs 25:2). And the work of kings, of melek is to search out, to discover what has been concealed in the heart of men; to discover the archetypes representing the beginning and end, the concealed archetype of eternity. And Jesus told Pilate, “‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth [te aletheia]. Everyone who is of the truth [tes aletheias] listens to my voice’” (John 18:37–38).
Truth is the negation of what has been concealed. So when Pilate asks, “‘What is truth,’” Pilate asks, What isn’t concealed? And whereas the glory of kings [the life of kings] is to discover what God has concealed, Pilate is not a king and never will be one; for he suspects that Jesus is of God, he is not curious enough to pursue the matter into uncharted political territory.
The work of Philadelphia is to pursue and untangle the archetypes upon which this world is constructed, thereby venturing deep into uncharted waters, going where Jonah went before, crucifying the old self when raised a new man, a son of God, using the key of David to unlock the deep things of God, not looking to lifeless Judaism or to equally lifeless Christendom for easy answers that are not really answers at all—and yes, the Elect will crucify their old natures, their old selves after they have been called and justified and glorified by the God of the dead raising them from death, from consignment to disobedience by giving to them a second breath of life, His breath in the breath of Christ.
The God of the living put eternal archetypes into the hearts of men so that men would not discover what He was doing before it was time, but would discover these things when it was time—when the visions of the prophet Daniel were no longer sealed and kept secret by shadows and types.
The work of Philadelphia is the work of kings, of the King of kings, the One who holds the key of David.
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Judaism assigns singularity to the plural icon Elohim and to the always unpronounced Tetragrammaton YHWH. And within greater Christendom there are minor sects and fellowships that follow Judaism’s teachings and have equally little understanding of heavenly matters … the Christian who contributes money to the construction of a Third Temple in or near earthly Jerusalem has no spiritual understanding! For the temple of God to which the Messiah will come is already here on earth: it is the Christian Church—not the visible Christian Church which is a motley collection of unborn [of spirit] sons of God, the raw material from which expansion of the temple will come, but the invisible assembly of Christ Jesus that is constructed on the movement of breath as seen in the name John going to Jonah, where in the physical the breath of life (the breath received from the first Adam) enters the person through the nose as seen in Elohim [singular in usage] breathing breath into the nostrils of the man of mud (Gen 2:7) and in the spiritual the breath of eternal or heavenly life [the breath of God — pneuma theon] enters the heart of the person as the dove visibly representing the breath of God lit on Jesus roughly in the area where a whale’s blowhole would be.
The movement of breath from the nose (from aspiration preceding the nasal consonant /n/) to the heart (where aspiration follows the nasal consonant) is also seen in the Greek name <Petros> versus the Greek icon <petra> … to pronounce the case ending for Petros requires puckering the lips and exhaling breath as in dying whereas the case ending for petra requires opening the mouth and inhaling in or near the middle of the mouth.
Peter was not humanly born as the son of Jonah [Bariona] (Matt 16:17), but as the son of John [Ioannou — from John 1:42; also John 21:15–17] … the translators who assembled the New Kings James Version of the Bible had/have so little understanding of Holy Writ that they transpose Jonah for John in the Gospel of John, thereby creating another unreliable translation, with the very worst of the English versions of the Bible available for purchase being ones used by the Sacred Names Heresy that have render the Tetragrammaton YHWH into a word that is pronounced when the Tetragrammaton was never intended to be pronounced; for the Tetragrammaton can be likened to saying <Mr. & Mrs. John Doe>, the name of a married couple that is one flesh as YHWH was one spirit, one God.
No one would be so foolish as to say Mr. & Mrs. John Doe when addressing the wife as she hangs out the family laundry on wash day: the person might say, Mrs. Doe, if the person were not on a first name basis with the woman. The same would apply when the person addresses the husband: the person would say, Mr. Doe, if not on a first name basis with the husband. Thus, using the Tetragrammaton YHWH in inscription is as writing Mr. & Mrs. — (you fill in the name), with the Father, the God that raises the dead to life (John 5:21) so that the Son can give life to whom He will (same verse), being concealed from Israel with the possible exception of King David, who wrote:
Praise YAH!
Praise YHWH, O my soul! (Ps 146:1)
Praise YAH!
Praise YHWH from the heavens; praise him in the heights! (Ps 148:1)
Praise YAH!
Sing to YHWH a new song,
his praise in the assembly of the godly! (Ps 149:1)
The key of David is understanding the Hebraic poetic movement from outside to inside, dark to light, physical to spiritual in the construction of thought-couplets, two presentations of the same concept, the first pertaining to the hand and that which is physical and the second pertaining to the heart and that which is spiritual.
Yah as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob occupies the physical or hand portion of the thought-couplets David used in the quoted opening lines of the three psalms; whereas YHWH occupies the spiritual or heart portion of the thought-couplets. Thus, the key of David will have Philadelphia understanding the movement of breath from nose and lungs to heart and mind, and understanding that the Logos as the Creator of all things made (John 1:1, 3) was Yah, who is no longer the Helpmate to <WH> but the First of the firstborn sons of God, the primogeniture. As such YHWH no longer exists. What exists is the Father and the Son, each with their own breath that is a holy breath [pneuma hagios] (see Rom 8:9, 11).
If Mrs. Doe died suddenly, would it be insulting to approach Mr. Doe with a petition addressed to Mr. & Mrs. John Doe? When a Christian comes before the Father and the Son in prayer, would it not be blasphemous to call the Father by some pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton YHWH when Yah entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene, where He lived without sin until He took upon Himself the sins of Israel, His firstborn son (Ex 4:22), and died at Calvary and was resurrected from death by the Father, who returned to Him the glory (John 17:5), the life He had before the world existed? Would the Christian attempting to pronounce the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton YHWH not be a denial of Christ Jesus being the only Son of Yah, the Promised Seed of which Israel was to be a type, and the First of the firstborn sons of <WH>, the Father?
Is the preceding too difficult to understand? It apparently was for natural Israelites in the 1st-Century CE, and it apparently remains too difficult for the vast majority of greater Christendom. However, again, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search out and reveal the matter—and Christ Jesus as the Messiah will return as King of kings, King of the many kings who have searched out and discovered the archetypes hidden by typology.
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What Judaism and Islam refuse to admit is that Yah, the Logos, the Creator of everything that has been made physically (John 1:3) entered His creation as His only Son (John 3:16), the man Jesus the Nazarene (John 1:14) … it is understandable that Judaism and Islam deny divinity to Christ Jesus, but it less understandable for a Christian to deny Christ in the same way.
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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."