The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary return to subjects previously discussed, but hopefully, with greater insight and depth. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection remains Jesus being the Passover Lamb of God.
Clickable hymns on this page require RealPlayer to be installed on your computer. The download is free.
Possible songs include the following hymns:
All Hail the Power of Jesus'Name
I Know Whom I Have Believed
Faith of Our Fathers
O That Men Would Praise Their God!
Thou Shepherd That Dost Israel Keep
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 first passages read
should be Revelation chapters 4 & 5.
Commentary: Peeling away the mystique
of the scene, a disciple recognizes that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, the
Lion of the tribe of Judah, appears as a Lamb standing, not on four feet, but
as slain, meaning that this Lamb stands upright like a man—for when slain, a
sheep will be hung vertically by either its head or by its spread hind hocks,
with it most often being hung by its head if it was not field-dressed prior to
being raised to be skinned.
But the glorified Jesus
doesn’t appear as a lamb.
The reader should now read
Revelation chapter 1, verses 10 through 20.
Commentary: The Living One (v. 18)
looks like a son of man—looks like a man—not a lamb. He functions as the Lamb
of God, selected from the foundation of the earth, penned in Jerusalem on the
10th day of the first month, slain between the evenings on the 14th
day of the first month, and buried in the heart of the earth by the beginning
of the 15th day, the first High Sabbath of the Days of Unleavened
Bread. Thus, how the Living One functions in the plan of God is how He appears
in Revelation, for John is not mentally on earth when he sees the throne of the
Ancient of Days, and the one like a son of man (Dan 7:9-10, 13-14).
John has crossed dimensions when he goes through the “door standing
open in heaven” (Rev 4:1). He has entered a realm where flesh and blood cannot
go, regardless of dispensationalists’
foolish claim for a bodily rapture into heaven; for the apparent solidity of
matter precludes entrance into a timeless dimension where “was,” “is,” and “is
to come” (v. 8) simultaneously exist.
The relocation of matter from one geographical spot to another requires the
passage of time. Therefore, a person can only mentally enter—as in a vision—the
heavenly realm until the person has replaced his or her perishable body with an
imperishable body (i.e., a body not of flesh and blood). A breathing creature
[a nephesh] cannot ever bodily
approach the throne of the Lord God, the Ancient of Days.
Too many false teachers of Israel would have a man [Arians, Protestants
& Sabbatarians often identify this man as a Roman Pope] being the little
horn that speaks blasphemy against the court of the Ancient of Days (Dan
7:9-10), but no human being will come before God except through prayers, the
spoken or unspoken thoughts of Believers. Therefore, the little horn speaking
great words will not be a pope—and John’s unsealed vision is sealed through the
use of a literary trope, for this vision doesn’t occur on any day prior to the
Lord’s Day (Rev 1:10). This vision happens to John near the close of the 1st-Century
while John is on the isle of Patmos, but John is mentally transported into the
timeless heavenly realm, where what was
and what is and what will be simultaneously exist, and the event John witnesses in
this timeless heavenly realm occurs on the Lord’s Day, that period inside of
time when Satan is cast from heaven and comes to earth as a roaring lion, that
day being halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation. Thus, once John
crosses dimensions, everything John describes in what he writes to the seven
churches (Rev 1:11) has appearance serving as function. Nothing looks like how
it is described—and this is a key concept to remember when reading what John
describes.
The glorified Jesus, functioning as the Passover Lamb of God, is worthy
of worship and of honor and glory and might; He is worthy to take what
functions as a sealed scroll, and reveal what will happen to His friends…the
servant of Christ Jesus doesn’t know what his or her Master is doing, and so it
is with the majority of today’s Christian Church. The vast majority of
Christians, believing that they truly serve Jesus, do so as servants, not as
friends; for friends of Jesus do as He commands them (John 15:14). Friends of
Jesus keep His commandments (1 John 2:3-4), all of them, not as ten
suggestions, or ten principles for good living, but as a schoolmaster until
these friends of Jesus can read the laws of God written on their hearts and
placed in their minds through receipt of the Holy Spirit. The physical
maturation of the disciple foreshadows as a copy and a shadow the spiritual
maturation of the disciple—and as a toddler cannot naturally read a book but
must be taught to read by a schoolmaster, so too must a spiritual son of God be
taught to read the law of God inscribed on fleshly tablets by the schoolmaster
that is the codified commandments. And when this son of God can read what is
inscribed on the heart and mind, this son will, by faith, do those things that
were written on stone by the finger of the Logos.
This son, not under any outside law, will do the works of the law because of
the inner law that rules the disciple’s heart and mind.
The Apostle Paul writes from the assumption that converts will, by
faith, live godly lives. Paul did not anticipate the Vatican’s existence, or
the Vatican being turned into a brothel, or Christianity being used to justify
murder, political intrigue, and social chicanery. He did not anticipate
denominationalism, and there not being a person able to judge a matter, thereby
requiring Christian to take Christian to court. He didn’t anticipate the
lawlessness of the Late Church—and he didn’t anticipate disciples needing a
schoolmaster to teach them to read what has been inscribed on hearts and minds,
or disciples still needing basic instruction in the oracles of God nearly two
millennia after Calvary. He didn’t anticipate the Church going into Babylonian
captivity, and never being weaned off spiritual milk. But such is the state of
the greater endtime Christian Church, which, with very few exceptions, doesn’t
take the sacraments on the night Jesus was betrayed. Rather, the endtime Church
offers to God bread and wine as the fruit of the ground, for bread and wine are
only the body and blood of the Lamb of God on the night that Jesus was
betrayed. On every other night and at every other hour, bread is flour and oil,
the processed fruits of Judean hillsides—disciples taking the sacraments at
anytime but on the night Jesus was betrayed eat themselves as their offering to
God. But as with Cain, they will be accepted if they do what is right (Gen
4:7), meaning if they walk as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6), and Jesus walked as a
Judean.
Salvation has come to the nations,
but those who are called will not mentally remain where they were. They will,
instead, mentally relocate themselves to Judea [i.e., God’s rest — from Ps
95:10-11] where they will live as spiritual Judeans. If they mentally remain in
the Wilderness of Sin, or if they mentally rebel in the Wilderness of Paran,
taking to themselves Egyptian wives, marrying lawlessness [sin], they will
never enter into the heavenly realm.
The reader
should now read Daniel chapter 2, verse 39; Daniel chapter 7, verse 6; John
chapter 14, verse 30; Romans chapter 11, verse 32; and Ephesians chapter 2,
verses 1 through 10.
Commentary: The prince of the power of
the air—the prince of disobedience—remains the present ruler of this world,
even though he has been judged and condemned to death. This prince is the
spiritual king of Babylon (Isa 14:4-23), and his hierarchy of disobedience
includes not only himself but spiritual princes [kings] of Persia (Dan 10:13)
and the bronze prince of Greece (v.
20), a federation of vassal kings that rule the world through the appetites of
the belly and loins. Thus, when the great horn or king, in the position of an
erect penis, is suddenly broken at the beginning of the seven endtime years of
tribulation, dominion over humanity is given to the four-headed king of the
South, for humanity remains consigned to disobedience until the kingdom of the
world becomes the kingdom of the Lord God and of His Christ (Rev 11:15).
Many false teachers of
Israel have assumed that the Lord God is the present prince of this world since
Jesus defeated Satan almost two millennia ago. They teach directly or
indirectly that He is ultimately responsible for the evil that is in this
world. They teach that His ways are above our ways; thus, what human beings
perceive as evil cannot be attributed to Him as being evil…they teach nonsense.
All disobedience is evil,
and disobedience begins with an anointed cherub in whom iniquity was found
(Ezek 28:14-15). However, if this anointed guardian cherub, the signet of
created perfection, could not be relied upon to remain obedient to the Lord
God, then he could be used to create another kind of creation, one that has
voluntarily chosen to be obedient in a body and in a world subject to
disobedience. This new creature, born of the divine Breath of God [Pneuma ’Agion], is a son of God. But to
be like his elder brother and like his Father, this son of God must mature into
spiritual obedience. He must, by faith, choose to be like his Father. And to
create the conditions under which this infant son of God can mature, that
fallen cherub, the chief prince of disobedience, would be given reign over a
spiritually lifeless world. His reign would be over the mental topography of
living creatures: he would not directly reign over geography, but over the
desires of the hearts and the thoughts of the mind—over the received natures of
all breathing creatures. It is his disobedience that is seen in the rebellion
of a child, and in the greed of the parent. It is his disobedience that is seen
in a cat tormenting a mouse, and in coyotes slaying sheep just for the sake of
killing them. He is a murderer. And he has been hard at work murdering infant
sons of God by having his servants, disguised as ministers of righteousness,
teach disciples that they are not under the law, that to keep the laws of God
is legalism, that ugliest of words to
an 8th-day Christian.
The kingdom of this world is
not today the kingdom of the Father and His Son, but remains the kingdom of the
prince of disobedience. It is not yet time to end this spiritual king of
Babylon’s reign, but that day and hour is near. And when it arrives, spiritual
Babylon will be dealt a below-the-beltline punch: the great horn of the king of
Greece will be suddenly broken—that erect penis will no longer be. But four
horns will immediately sprout from around its stump. These four kings are the
four horsemen, with the first being the False Prophet. It is, however, the
third beast, the four-headed king of the South, to whom dominion will be given
as humanity remains consigned to disobedience.
When the great horn of
Greece is broken, the Body of the Son of Man will be revealed—and the saints
will be delivered into the hand of the lawless one for a time, times, and half
a time (three and a half years). Again, God does the delivering…just as He
consigned all of humanity to disobedience so that He could have mercy on all,
He will deliver the saints into the hand of the lawless one for the purging of
the Body. The health of the Body of the Son of Man requires the removal of all
disobedience. And today, the Body is sick from taking the sacrament unworthily,
and in an unworthy manner. The Body is ridden with putrid lesions and cancerous
tumors that only exposure to Light will cure. The saint who seeks to save his
or her physical life will lose both physical and spiritual life, whereas the
Israelite willing to die for his or her obedience to God will be resurrected to
life. For every physical and spiritual Israelite, the choice will be just this
simple: obey, die physically, and live spiritually. Or rebel against God,
believe the lawless one and the false prophet, attempt to enter God’s rest on
the following day, slay your righteous brother, and die spiritually when
resurrected to condemnation.
Once the great horn of
Greece is broken, every Christian, every Israelite will soon have to make the
choice of whether to live or die. The choice will be simple, and will be
permanent. And most will value their physical lives more than they value
obedience to God.
Which will it be for you?
Life or death? Both have been set before you (Deu 30:15). The choice has been
there from the beginning. And only you know whether you love God more than your
life, more than that next physical breath you believe you’ll take.
Loving God means living
within the confines of God’s laws—and yes, these laws have limits and
restrictions. Rebellion is not allowed, nor is disobedience, nor is determining
for oneself good and evil. Loving God means not loving the things of this
spiritually lifeless world that is passing away, along with its desires (1 John
2:15-17)…as infant sons of God, saints want to save this world. And that desire
to set at right what is wrong with this world is a reliable indicator of still
needing spiritual milk, of the son of God still being too young for the meat of
the Word.
This subject will be continued as meat preached in due season.
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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from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway
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