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 changing the text to fit the agenda.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of March 16, 2013
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 those who feared [YHWH] spoke with one another. [YHWH] paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared [YHWH] and esteemed his name. “They shall be mine, says [YHWH]of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.” (Mal 3:16–18)
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Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. (Phil 4:3)
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The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. (Rev 3:5)
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[A]ll who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. (Rev 13:8 emphasis added)
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The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come. (Rev 17:8 emphasis and double emphasis added)
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And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. … And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev 20:12, 15)
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But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Rev 21:27 emphasis added)
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The Sabbath Reading for March 9th was abbreviated, but the practical question was introduced: how long will the great White Throne Judgment last? The White Throne Judgment occurs before the coming of the new heavens and new earth; i.e., before what is physical becomes spiritual through the coming of the new heavens and new earth. And in the great White Throne Judgment, every person who has drawn breath and was not previously under judgment will be judged by what the person did while physically alive. … The great White Throne Judgment is inclusive, in that it includes everyone whose name is not written in a Hebraic Book of Remembrance, not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, a book of life for the predestined, the Elect. Thus, the great White Throne Judgment will include everyone who is not or was not a firstborn son of God through being “Israel,” natural or spiritual.
The great White Throne Judgment will include the vast majority of Christians, the dirty little secret that Christians do not want to believe.
A person’s mind is inherently resistant to believing bad things will happen to the person: a smoker doesn’t believe that he or she will die prematurely from lung cancer or a heart attack. A person engaged in any form of high risk behavior doesn’t believe that risk-statistics pertain to the person—and this denial of risk remains even when the person is made aware of the statistics so cigarette-pack warnings are rather pointless. So too is warning sinners to clean-up their acts and begin keeping the commandments. Inevitably Christians and non-Christians will mumble some form of, The Law doesn’t pertain to me.
The New Covenant will have the Law written on hearts and placed in minds so that all know the Lord and no one will teach another know the Lord—
Behold, the days are coming, declares [YHWH], when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares [YHWH]. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares [YHWH]: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know [YHWH],”for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares [YHWH]. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer 31:31–34 emphasis added)
Under the New Covenant there shall be no need for Christian ministry; so is Israel under the New Covenant today? Are Christians under the New Covenant? No, they are not. No one will be under the New Covenant until the Second Passover occurs, then for 1260 days self-identified Christians alone will be under the New Covenant. However, only a statistically few Christians will not rebel against God in the great Apostasy (2 Thess 2:3). The majority of the harvest of firstfruits will come from the remaining third part of humankind that comes under the New Covenant when the spirit/breath of God is poured out on all flesh halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation.
It is more likely that a non-firstborn person who is without religion today will be in heaven than it is that a Christian of today will be in heaven, not something that is lightly said, but a source of sadness and the principle cause for the endtime two witnesses to wear mourning garb.
Backing up, if Christians today are not under the New Covenant but under a modified first Passover Covenant that doesn’t focus on the fleshly body but on now-living inner selves [souls], then are not Christians still under the Law? Consider carefully what the Apostle Paul wrote:
God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:11–16 emphasis added)
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We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 6:9–23 emphasis added)
Christians are not to be enslaved by sin for they have become slaves of God, enslaved by righteousness, thus commandment keepers, a subject John addresses:
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. (1 John 3:1–11 emphasis and double emphasis added)
It is sad, truly sad to realize that a person’s Christian neighbors believe a lie, many lies, foremost of which is that they will go to heaven when they die, that their loved ones are in a better place … the grave is not a better place—and that is where their loved ones are. Yet, they are resistant to believing bad news: they simply will not believe that their deceased parents, grandparents, even children are not now in heaven awaiting their arrival. They will not accept the truth. And in actuality, their minds are seemingly hardwired not to accept reality.
But humankind’s inability to accept reality doesn’t come from hardwiring, but from the Adversary’s reign over the mental topography of living creatures, a reign that will continue until halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation.
There is a phrase in John’s vision that is too often overlooked: “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev 12:9) … who isn’t deceived if Satan is the deceiver of the whole world? Certainly not the third of humanity that identifies itself as Christian, nor the third that identifies itself as Islam, nor the remaining third part that ignores the Father and the Son. At best—and this is absolutely the best case scenario—a statistically insignificant number of Sabbatarian Christians who all keep the commandments by faith and who take the Passover on the night when Jesus was betrayed may not be deceived, but no one should be certain that he or she is not deceived. It can be stated with certainty that if a person believes the Bible is the infallible word of God, the person is deceived. So if there is no reliable outside guide permitting a person to escape being deceived by the Adversary, what is the person to do?
First, if you have gotten this far, odds are that the Father has drawn you from this world through giving to you the earnest of life; thus, the Father can “communicate” with you through the parakletos, the spirit of truth, this communication coming to you from you having the indwelling of Christ Jesus. What you have to now realize is the depth of the Adversary’s deception of this world: there is no aspect of how a person thinks that is unaffected by the Adversary’s rule over the mental topography of living creatures.
Backing up to where we were paragraphs ago: What facet of the Law doesn’t pertain to everyone? Honor parents? Murder? Adultery? (Surely that doesn’t pertain.) Stealing? (That one doesn’t.) Perjury? Coveting? How about having, “No other God but YHWH”? (That’s not right? What if I don’t believe in any god?) Or “Make no idols”? Or do not take the name of YHWH in vain? Or remember the Sabbath? (That’s Jewish.) And you can hear the objections that will be made by friends and neighbors, by an Ohio Senator upon learning that his son was gay: 21st-Century America, Western Europe should not be bound by a thirty-five hundred year old code of values that does not tolerate a man laying with another man as he lays with a woman, that has the husband being the head of his wife, that is based upon the principle of an eye’s-worth of recompense for an eye’s-worth of injury, summarized in declaring an aye for an eye. No, modern human culture has grown beyond where marriage was simply between a man and a woman for life, or so says those who have abandoned even the lawless Christian Church.
Today, whether Americans like the reality, they are spied upon continually; their words are intercepted, stored, and available for retrieval whenever it suits prosecuting officials. The only thing that will stop overreaching secular governments is fiscal bankruptcy. But Americans, collectively, continue to believe that nothing bad will happen to them even as they blissfully watch days of Vatican show and pomp in choosing a new Pope, watch President Obama continue to campaign for green energy technology that doesn’t yet exist, watch college basketball games that do not effect their own financial health or the health of the nation … Americans and American politicians are simply not seriously interested in what’s happening to a world that has a fever, not from global warming, but from moral decay, the festering of lost virginity before puberty occurs. Because the gold-colored Adversary remains the prince of this world, and because the bronze[gold]-colored first king of the federated King of Greece continues to execute the Adversary’s rule, and because the first king of the King of Greece rules through the appetites of the belly and loins, no aspect of human culture lacks a significant sexual or food component, with the use of sex to sell hamburgers (as in the former Burger King Junior campaign) epitomizing the rule of the first king of Greece. It will be this first king, or great king of the King of Greece that will be broken at the Second Passover liberation of Israel; broken because he is an uncovered “firstborn.”
When a person—a Christian—believes that God will accept the person into heaven just the way the person is, the person is in theological denial in a way typified by cigarette smokers continuing to smoke, ignoring the risk warnings on every pack of cigarettes. Again, people in general and Christians in particular do not believe statistical risk percentages pertain to them. People seem to believe that they can have unprotected sex without acquiring a STD; for after all, the person with whom they have sex is a “good” person. They wouldn’t be having sex with the person if he or she wasn’t trustworthy, wasn’t faithful. And the person, especially the Christian, denies the reality of what the person does. If the person were really a Christian, all sexual relationships would be within marriage between one man and one woman. Every sexual relationship outside of marriage is fornication or adultery, both of which if not repented-of will lead to damnation when judgments are revealed. God will not be mocked: a man cannot lay with another man as he does with a woman, nor a woman with another woman and not condemn the inner self while paying in the flesh a price for mocking God. Likewise, a man cannot lay with a woman as a husband lays with his wife without a price being paid in the spirit and in the flesh. To believe otherwise is to be in denial of what it means to be a Christian. To believe otherwise is to believe that heaven is full of unrepentant sinners—and that is not and never will be the case.
The majority of Christians believe that they were born with an immortal soul when that is simply not the case. This majority believes that they, personally, will go to heaven when they die regardless of how poor of a Christian they were while they lived. They simply refuse to accept the reality that to be of Christ, they must strive to walk in this world as Jesus walked. They deceive themselves when they believe that they can walk as Gentiles and still enter heaven. Won’t happen. Truly, will never happen unless they have manifested love for neighbor and brother as an ongoing way of life, doing those things that the Law requires without having knowledge of the Law. However, as Christians, they are not ignorant: they are aware of the Sabbath commandment and they are under obligation to keep the Sabbath; for by identifying oneself as a Christian, the person claims a relationship with Christ Jesus that requires the person to walk by faith as an observant Judean in this world.
For a self-identified Christian, there is no way around walking in this world as Jesus walked, which will have the Christian striving to keep the commandments, all of them.
Within greater Christendom, seven, sometimes eight, never more than nine of the commandments are believed to pertain to Christians … long ago, the Ten Commandments (the Royal Law — Jas 2:8) became the ten suggestions that were open to rereading and reassignment of meanings; for these Ten Commandments came to be taught generationally in fully alphabetized Indo-European languages where meaning is assigned to words after the word is read. Thus, for a people such as Latter Day Saints [Mormons], the Sabbath became the day after the seventh day of an unbroken weekly cycle that goes back to Moses and the giving of manna in the wilderness; became Te mia ton sabbaton (the one [after] the Sabbath — John 20:1 et al) through simple reassignment of meaning to the word <Sabbath>. However, for Trinitarian Christendom (Latter Day Saints are modern Arian Christians), Sunday became the universally recognized Christian Sabbath as a sign of the authority of the Bishop of Rome; so the Old Order Mennonite who continues to reject both the Roman Church’s and the Reform Church’s merging of Church and State nevertheless pays homage to the Roman Church through the day on which this Mennonite worships. This was the failing of Dirck Keyser, who willingly sacrificed wealth and the trappings of European culture to help create Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1683 CE. (Dirck Keyser was my paternal ancestor — Homer Kizer.)
Because endtime Christians in the Western world receive the Ten Commandments in fully alphabetized Indo-European languages, they must assign meaning to these ten living words that for them are neither alive, nor have real-world relevance. However, if the Ten Commandments were received in a partially alphabetized Semitic language such as adult Hebrew, the person receiving these commandments would need to know what they said before they could be read—and if the person knew what the commandments said before the commandments were read, the words would be “living” through being voiced when read and the words would not be open to reinterpretation. The Sabbath would remain the seventh day of the week.
The nature of partially alphabetized Semitic languages can be seen in Moses writing:
Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. So Moses said to Joshua, "Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand." So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. Then [YHWH] said to Moses, "Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven." (Ex 17:8–14)
In order for Joshua to know what Moses wrote—Moses wrote in a partially alphabetized Semitic script—Moses had to recite-to, or read for Joshua every word he had written so Joshua would know what vowel sounds to add between the consonants to transform the consonant clusters in which Moses wrote into words. And this remains true for partially alphabetized Semitic languages to this day; thus, who teaches an Arabic child to read the Qur’an determines what vowels the child will, when mature, place between consonants of consonant clusters, an issue that becomes extremely important when a change of vowel pointing can transform Islam from a religion of peace into an instrument that God can use to bring West Culture to its knees and into fervent prayer to Him—can use in a manner like He used Nebuchadnezzar to bring the ancient southern kingdom of Jerusalem (House of Judah) into captivity:
For twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day, the word of [YHWH] has come to me [Jeremiah], and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened. You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although [YHWH] persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets, saying, “Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and evil deeds, and dwell upon the land that [YHWH] has given to you and your fathers from of old and forever. Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, or provoke me to anger with the work of your hands. Then I will do you no harm.” Yet you have not listened to me, declares [YHWH], that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm. Therefore thus says [YHWH] of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, declares [YHWH], and for Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation. Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares [YHWH], making the land an everlasting waste. I will bring upon that land all the words that I have uttered against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations. For many nations and great kings shall make slaves even of them, and I will recompense them according to their deeds and the work of their hands. (Jer 25:3–14 emphasis added)
Jeremiah was not popular inside the walls of Jerusalem during the seige; nor will any American be popular when warning America and by extension the Western world that God will punish lawlessness by those who profess to know better [Christians] before the kingdom is taken from the Adversary halfway through seven endtime years of tribulation.
Realize that the difference between Islam being a religion of peace that is somewhat like greater Christianity and Islam being an instrument of worldwide destruction is in what vowel sounds are added between consonants in a few places in a text of multiple thousands of consonant clusters, with schools located in the margins of Pakistan producing the most radical assignment of vowel pointing and thus the most radical readings of the Qur’an. And the American Muslim who insists that these schools have perverted Islam has no basis for his or her argument other than what vowels he or she was taught to insert between consonants of consonant clusters.
As American teenagers of two decades ago used the word <bad> when they wanted to convey the concept that something was “really good,” thereby reversing the traditional meaning assigned to <bad>, a radical cleric can assign vowel pointing to the consonant clusters of key Qur’an passages that will justifiably support his form of Islam, and will do so without allegedly perverting the text: the Qur’an will say exactly what he says it does, but not without the vowel pointing he uses. Therefore, God can in a manner of re-vocalization transform Islam from a religion of peace to an instrument of war that is analogous to Nebuchadnezzar and his army.
God will use another people to punish and to bring to submission His people:
· When the firstborn son of God (YAH) was the outwardly circumcised nation of Israel (Ex 4:22), YAH used the Assyrians to bring captivity upon the northern kingdom of Samaria (House of Israel), then used Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans to bring captivity upon the southern kingdom of Jerusalem because of each house’s unbelief and disobedience.
· When the firstborn son of God is all of Christianity, the Father and the Son will bring spiritual liberation from indwelling sin and death to Israel, the nation circumcised of heart, rather than bringing physical captivity upon a physical nation … liberation from death forms the reality that casts as its shadow physical captivity and serfdom.
· The physically alive but spiritually dead nation of outwardly-circumcised Israel moved from obedience to God under Joshua to disobedience and unbelief under its kings;
· The once spiritually alive but now spiritually dead nation of inwardly-circumcised Israel will move from disobedience while dead to obedience when resurrected to life at the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
· But God will punish the lawlessness of Trinitarian Christendom through war with Arian Christendom, with Arian armies augmented by mass conversion of Muslims to Arian Christendom, with the false prophet in the earthly office of prophet giving to Islam the re-vocalizations needed to convert.
The world will marvel at what is simply explained, the conversion of Muslims to Arian Christianity: when NFL Hall-of-Famer Steve Young said that Muslims would be comfortable in the Mormon Church, he spoke prophetic words.
But Arian Christians like other human persons will not believe that bad things will happen to them—that they will be denied entrance into heaven—when they seem to have brought most of Islam to Christ Jesus.
The Sabbath Reading isn’t yet completed; so the subject of the great White Throne Judgment will be revisited next Sabbath.
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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."