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 Daniel’s visions.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of March 20, 2010
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 [Daniel] saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles' wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told, “Arise, devour much flesh.” After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.
As I looked,
thrones were placed,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat;
his clothing was white as snow,
and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames;
its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
and came out from before him;
a thousand thousands served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him;
the court sat in judgment,
and the books were opened.
I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking. And as I looked, the beast was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.
I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed. (Dan 7:2–14)
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Human beings do not speak great words or blasphemous words to the Ancient of Days, the Most High God. If the man Daniel trembled and fell onto his face in the presence of an angel (Dan 10:8–9), who would the man be to speak face to face with God and live? The Lord tells Moses, “‘You shall not see my face, for man shall not see me and live’” (Ex 33:20). So with certainty, it will here be stated that the little horn is not a human being; nor are the four beasts (kings) human kingdoms or human kings.
Too many Sabbatarian disciples for far too long have identified the little horn as the Pope, and the fourth king (from Dan 7:17) as Rome, making the ten horns on the head of the fourth king ten revivals of the Roman Empire. But Rome is never mentioned by Daniel for cause: Rome plays no prophetic role in Scripture. For if the head of Nebuchadnezzar’s image is the king of Babylon, and if the arms and chest of silver are the kings of Media and Persia, and if the belly and loins of bronze is the kingdom of Greece, then the fourth kingdom of iron—the legs and feet of the image—is not Rome, but comes from the Wars of the Diadochi, the rival successors of Alexander, and the two iron legs are represented in type by the Greek Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires.
Rome was not divided into an Eastern and Western empire when Rome defeated the Ptolemies and finally absorbed the western portion of the Seleucid Empire; so prophetically, Rome can never be the divided bronze thighs of the humanoid image Nebuchadnezzar saw in vision. And every biblical pundit that inserts Rome, the Roman Empire, the Roman Church, or the Roman See into prophecy is false!
The quick and dirty test of whether a person is a false prophet is if the person inserts Roman into Daniel’s visions: if the person does, the person is false. A person can be a false prophet and not insert Rome into Daniel’s visions, but because so many do insert Rome, these many can be instantly eliminated from the pool of potential prophets of God. No disciple should listen to such a person, let alone have fellowship with the person. The genuine disciple needs to immediately separate himself from anyone claiming to find Rome hiding in the Book of Daniel.
Before proceeding, it needs to be said that both Ellen G. White in the 19th-Century and Herbert W. Armstrong in the 20th-Century wrote their understandings of biblical prophecy before the visions of Daniel were unsealed in the 21st-Century. Neither understood Daniel’s visions. Yet both set themselves up as teachers of prophecy, thereby making both false prophets … both were sincere; both desired to do a work for God; both have many followers today. But unless a disciple jettisons the prophetic teachings of both, the disciple will be lost following the Second Passover liberation of Israel; for both White and Armstrong have set up their followers to worship the Adversary as Christ when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man, and the Adversary and his angels are cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–10).
Almost all of Christendom argues that the first covenant ended with Christ Jesus’ death and that Christians have been under the New Covenant (Heb 8:8–12; Jer 31:31–34) since Calvary, but this is simply not true for a quarter century after Calvary, the first covenant was “becoming obsolete and growing old” and “ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13). It remained in force, and the New Covenant had not been implemented, as evidenced by brother and neighbor not Knowing the Lord … the justification for Christian ministry is to teach the Christian’s brother and neighbor to Know the Lord, something that will not be necessary when the Torah is written on hearts and placed in minds as a contractual condition of the New Covenant. Therefore, the very existence of Christian ministries is prime facie evidence that the New Covenant has not yet been implemented.
Why the above is important has to do with the timeline revealed when Daniel’s visions were unsealed: if a disciple fails to comprehend that the first covenant isn’t the covenant made at Sinai, or even the covenant made on the plains of Moab, but the covenant made when the Lord took the fathers of Israel by the hand (Heb 8:9; Jer 31:32) to lead the nation out from Egypt—the Passover covenant—then the disciple will also fail to realize that as the first covenant was implemented by the shedding of blood when the death angel passed over Egypt (Isa 43:3), the first covenant will not end until the Lord again sheds blood when death angels pass over all the world, slaying firstborns not covered by the blood of the paschal Lamb of God. As the Lord gave the lives of men once to implement the first covenant, the Lord will again give the lives of men to end the first covenant (v. 4).
As long as Christians place themselves under the New Covenant and not under the first covenant, these Christians cannot understand spiritual birth, and cannot understand biblical prophecy. They are blind, but because they say they can see, their guilt remains for they do not cover their sins by eating the living Body of Christ on the Passover, the dark portion of the 14th of Abib (with the month of Abib beginning with the first sighted new moon crescent following the vernal equinox).
Therefore, leaving behind darkness, blindness, and ignorance, the genuine endtime disciple needs to understand that dominion is taken from the reigning four kings and given to the Son of Man one time, not many times, and this one time is also seen in John’s vision:
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying,
“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
who is and who was,
for you have taken your great power
and begun to reign.
The nations raged,
but your wrath came,
and the time for the dead to be judged,
and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints,
and those who fear your name,
both small and great,
and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. (Rev 11:15–19)
One event, two portrayals—Daniel’s vision can be aligned with John’s vision through this one-time giving of the kingdom to the Son of Man.
To understand Daniel’s visions, or John’s vision, an endtime disciple needs to be able to align these visions so that they can be hung on time markers where they can be examined, with the marker of the one-time giving of the kingdom to the Son of Man disclosing that Daniel’s visions are about the time, times, and half a time (Dan 7:25) preceding the kingdom being given to the Son of Man, while John’s vision reveals that Daniel’s time, times, and half a time has as its mirror image an equally long period of tribulation after the kingdom is given to the Son of Man.
When a time, times, and half a time represents the 1260 day period during which the two witnesses prophesy, then the mirror image of this period is a previously undisclosed 1260 day period between when the kingdom of this world is given to the son of Man and when the glorified Jesus returns as the Messiah. John calls these forty-two months or three and a half years the Endurance, or endurance in Jesus [hypomone en Iesou]. Philadelphia will be kept from the hour of the trial coming upon the people of this world because they kept the word or message [mou ton logon] of the Endurance [tes hypomones] of Jesus (Rev 3:10).
Of the seven named churches to whom John delivers letters as their brother, apparently only Philadelphia understands the significance of the Endurance of Jesus, meaning that there are six other fellowships that keep the commandments of God but will not escape the hour of trial (the time of the first and second woes) of the last seven months before the kingdom is given to the Son of Man.
But with knowledge comes responsibility: to whom much has been given, much will be expected. And because knowledge has been given to Philadelphia, the expectation is that Philadelphia will disclose this knowledge to the best of its limited strength—the open door set before Philadelphia seems to be the Internet, where a little strength is magnified by the democracy of the Net.
Philadelphia cannot receive great power and authority in this world or it too would become an agent of the Adversary, the present prince of this world. Philadelphia can only exist as a fellowship of little power in this world; of so little power that it remains out of the rulers of this world’s sight until the Second Passover and the beginning of the seven endtime years of tribulation. It can only remain alive if it does not shackle itself to governance of types seen in this world, meaning that it cannot be an organization like the churches of this world. It cannot be governed in any manner other than how Israel was governed under the judges.
Under the judges, Israel was not a great nation but a federation of tribes that did not get along with each other all that well. The people were plagued by an inherent fault: every person did what was right in his or her eyes, meaning that there was agreement on almost nothing. But for Philadelphia to escape the trap of the Adversary’s centralized authority—authority to rule sons of God in the Abyss presently rests with the spiritual king of Babylon—Philadelphia must truly be like Israel was under the judges, a “disorganization” suffering the weakness of every disciple being able to cut him or herself off from God through simply denying Jesus by doing what is right in the disciple’s eyes.
Is the above understood? Freedom is not free. Late in his life, Joshua gathered the tribes of Israel at Shechem and there said,
Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac. And to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. And I gave Esau the hill country of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. And I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in the midst of it, and afterward I brought you out. (Josh 24:2–5 emphasis added)
The above is background for the first covenant: before the first covenant was made, the fathers of Israel served other gods. After the days of Noah, Abraham was first to serve the Lord, and the Lord covenanted with Abraham. But not until the Lord brought the fathers of Israel out from Egypt was a covenant made between Israel and the Lord: this covenant was modified when Israel ceased being an outwardly circumcised nation, but this covenant remains in effect—
Joshua continued:
“Then I [the Lord] brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea. And the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. And when they cried to the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and made the sea come upon them and cover them; and your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. And you lived in the wilderness a long time. Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites, who lived on the other side of the Jordan. They fought with you, and I gave them into your hand, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you. Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel. And he sent and invited Balaam the son of Beor to curse you, but I would not listen to Balaam. Indeed, he blessed you. So I delivered you out of his hand. And you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the leaders of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And I gave them into your hand. And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow. I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.” (Josh 24:6–13)
Joshua now speaks for himself:
Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (24:14–15 emphasis added)
When disciples have the freedom to choose whom they will serve, they also have the freedom to cut themselves off from God. They have the freedom to attach themselves by faith to God, and they have the freedom to serve the gods of this world as most will continue to do up to the moment the kingdom is given to the Son of Man (Rev 9:20), meaning that if a disciple truly wants, as a younger brother of Christ Jesus, to fight a war and win a kingdom for his older brother, the disciple can make this fight as part of Philadelphia. Or the faithful disciple can experience the first two of the three woes. The unfaithful disciple can, for a while, continue in lawlessness as the seed of the Adversary. The choice remains with the disciple as it did at Shechem when Joshua laid out Israel’s options for the nation.
Disciples are to put away the “gods” of their fathers, the triune Christ that Catholics worship; the triune Jesus that Evangelicals worship, that Anabaptists worship; the Arian Joshua that Sacred Names disciples worship. They are to choose this day whom they will serve. And they are free to choose to worship demons at the cost of their salvation; for as the fathers of Abraham and as the fathers of Israel worshiped gods other than the Lord, the Christian fathers of endtime disciples also worshiped gods other than the Most High.
When the people answered Joshua, saying,
Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God. (Josh 24:16–18)
Joshua said to the people, “‘You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good’” (24:19–20).
Christians sincerely believe that the Lord will not do them harm regardless of what they do, but the One about whom Joshua spoke is Yah, the Logos, who entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus of Nazareth. And either Joshua misrepresents the Lord, or the glorified Jesus is a jealous God; for “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).
The people of Israel said to Joshua, “‘No, but we will serve the Lord’” (Josh 24:21), and Joshua said to the people, “‘You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him … put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel’” (vv. 22–23).
And the people said to Joshua, “The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone and set it up there under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, “Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us. Therefore it shall be a witness against you, lest you deal falsely with your God.” (Josh 24:24–27)
That stone has become every stone, for all the earth knows the terms of the covenant made between Israel and the Lord—all of the earth but for the people of Israel, a people who have forgotten their Lord and have returned to worshiping demons, calling them Lord.
There is nothing now that will keep the Most High from doing harm to Israel, the firstborn son of God, a nation that will not cover itself with the righteousness of Christ when this righteousness is available to every Christian. There is nothing now that will prevent the Lord from slaying the uncovered firstborns of Christians at the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Nevertheless, a war remains to be fought and a kingdom won.
In keeping the word or message of the Endurance of Jesus, Philadelphia needs understanding of the plan of God. This means that Philadelphia needs to be able to read the Scroll (Rev 5:1) before the events sealing the Scroll occur … the seven seals are seven events that suddenly happen when the end of the age is soon to occur. Only the Lamb [the glorified Jesus] is able to remove these seals, or disclose what the events are. And the Lamb has disclosed much to Philadelphia:
1. The first beast or king of Daniel chapter 7, the demon that is like a lion who had its wings plucked off and was made to stand like a man and was given the mind of a man (as Nebuchadnezzar was given the mind of a beast), is the rider of the white horse, the rider with a bow and a crown who goes forth conquering and to conquer (Rev 6:2). He is the false prophet, and his emergence from the stump of the first horn of the king of Greece is the removal of the first seal.
2. The second king of Daniel 7, the beast that is like a bear, this beast being Apollyon, is the rider of the bright red horse, the rider permitted to take peace from the earth, the rider with the great sword. At the end of the 1260 day long ministry of the two witnesses, this king will finally be permitted to kill these two. And the emergence of this king from the stump of the great horn of the king of Greece is the removal of the second seal (Rev 6:3–4).
3. The third king of Daniel 7, the four headed beast that is like a leopard and to whom dominion over men has been given, the beast called Sin, the king of the South, is the rider of the black horse. This king buys and sells men as if they were wheat (the latter harvest of God) or barley (the early harvest), for God has consigned all men to disobedience [sin] so that He can have mercy on all (Rom 11:32). And the emergence of this king from the stump of the broken first king of the king of Greece is the removal of the third seal (Rev 6:5–6).
4. The fourth king is the cross-shaped beast called Death. Until the first horn of the king of Greece is broken because he is first, this fourth king is closely linked to Sin, so closely linked that in their shadow he is called one of the king of the South’s princes (Dan 11:5). Paul speaks of Sin and Death as one unit, one law, but following the liberation of Israel at the Second Passover, Sin and Death are separated. And this fourth king, exceeding strong (for who can defeat Death), devours and tramples all living things until the beast is dealt a mortal wound by the resurrection of the two witnesses.
The sudden appearance of four kings (Dan 7:17) doesn’t occur often, especially when their appearance is “marked” by the giving of the kingdom of this world to the Son of Man after a time, times, and half a time. Then aligning “little horns” on the head of the fourth beast (Dan 7:8) and on the head of the king of the North (Dan 8:9), endtime disciples have a timeline that reaches behind the emergence of the four kings that are the four horsemen.
The sudden breaking of the first king, or great king of the king of Greece is not explained in the visions of Daniel even though this breaking is seen following the he-goat’s [king of Greece’s] trampling of the ram [the king of Persia]: “Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven” (Dan 8:8), and “Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills. And as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these” (Dan 11:3–4).
The four kings or horns that come from the stump of the broken first horn of the king of Greece emerge on the four compass points: west, east, south, north—not the order compass directions are usually given. But the false prophet, a demon with the mind of a man, geographically locates himself in the American West, not in earthly Jerusalem. And in Scripture, the king of Egypt has metaphorically represented Sin while Assyria has represented Death: Israel was first recovered from Sin in the days of Moses, and will be recovered from Death when Christ Jesus returns as the Messiah. So technically Sin was separated from Death by Moses; hence, Jesus said that if an Israelite will not believe the writings of Moses, the Israelite will not believe His words (John 5:46–47). But if a disciple will hear Jesus’ words and believe the One who sent Him, the disciple will pass from death to life without coming under judgment (v. 24), meaning that the disciple who believes the writings of Moses escapes from Sin, made alive when the Law was given at Sinai.
The Passover liberation of outwardly circumcised Israel from physical slavery to a human king forms the shadow and type of the Second Passover liberation of circumcised-of-heart Israel from bondage to disobedience [i.e., Sin & Death], servitude to the spiritual king of Babylon.
Those Christians who sincerely believe that they are under the New Covenant will be greatly surprised when the Second Passover liberation of themselves occurs; they will not know what to do. And they will, with few exceptions, end up rebelling against God.
The stones of this earth that are witnesses against the people; the Book of Deuteronomy that is a witness against the people (Deut 31:26); the prophets of old that were witnesses against the people; the endtime prophets that witness against the people—all bring one message to the Christian Church: the mystery of God shall be fulfilled when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man, Head and Body.
Delivery of the kingdom to the Son of Man is a message sweet in the prophet’s mouth, but very bitter in the stomach when the prophet grasps how many people will die suddenly and how many will die needlessly. Four times a third of humankind will be killed, twice before the kingdom is given to the Son of Man and twice afterwards. These four times are at the Second Passover liberation of Israel; in the Sixth Trumpet Plague; at Christ Jesus’ return as the Messiah, then after the thousand years when Satan is loosed for a time, times, and half a time (1260 days).
No firstborn Christian has to die at the second Passover. The person can choose to “cover” him or herself by taking the sacraments of bread and wine on the dark portion of the 14th.
No Christian has to die in the Sixth Trumpet Plague; for Jesus has promised to keep Philadelphia from this hour of trial that is coming upon the peoples of this world.
No Christian has to die when Christ Jesus returns as the Messiah—the Christian who, once liberated from indwelling sin and death, does not return to sin, and who does not take upon him or herself the mark of death will be glorified upon Christ’s return, not slain.
No Christian, after living through all or part of the thousand years, has to die when Satan is loosed from his chains. The Christian can simply believe God and trust God to permanently take care of the Adversary.
Yet, many Christians will die because of their unbelief, and sadly, this is just the way things have to be. It is no wonder that the two witnesses wear mourning garb (Rev 11:3) throughout their 1260 day long ministry.
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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."