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 baptism & Anabaptism.
Printable file
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of March 24, 2007
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.
In a departure from the usual format
of reading Scripture passages followed by commentary, the essay format will be
employed to continue the discussion about adult baptism:
Anabaptists: Re-Baptizers or Adult
Baptizers
What
Daniel Liechty writes in his many works is probably a fair and accurate
analysis of what happened to Anabaptists in the 16th and 17th
Centuries when abuses by the Roman Church energized reform movements in Europe,
but as good history should be, what Liechty writes is presented without
capturing the emotional and theological enthusiasm that initially produced
separation from the “old Church” [the Roman Church] and then from
the “new Church” [the Reformed Church]. What Liechty writes is
descriptive accounts of what happened, and descriptive accounts are,
necessarily, confined to the past and do not well address the future unless
included in the account is the awareness that the past reflects the future, a
concept that works against the usual perception of the future reflecting the
past. Scripturally, death precedes life; for Jesus said that the Father
raises the dead and gives them life (John 5:21), with the “dead”
being those who hear Jesus’ words and believe the One who sent Jesus, for
it is these “dead” ones that pass from death to life (v. 24). Thus, the things of God work
against the “natural” chronology of events that has death following
life, with judgment to follow a man dying once (Heb 9:27). Baptism is unto the
death of the old man or old creature, that “personhood” which gives
self-awareness to the flesh; the personhood crucified with Christ Jesus.
Baptism is not unto life, but symbolically
represents the immersion of the world in water—the Flood of Noah’s
day—and the loss of natural life that comes with drowning, the loss of
breath [pneuma] that comes from the
lungs filling with water. For Believers, baptism becomes the
“death” that precedes judgment; for judgment is now upon the
household of God (1 Pet 4:17).
Jesus gave only one sign, the sign of the prophet
Jonah: Jesus said, ‘“For just as Jonah was three days and three
nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth’” (Matt 12:40). The sign of
Jonah is not that Nineveh was a great city three days’ journey in breadth
(Jon 3:3), or that an unrecorded solar eclipse might have occurred, but that
Jonah was cast into the sea, swallowed by a great fish, and was in the belly of
this fish for three days and three nights, an expression that lacks ambiguity
in Hebrew, where “day” is the hot portion of a twenty-four hour
period and where “night” is the twisting away or turning away from
the light. So the sign of Jonah is not, as some foolish individuals contend,
the time that Jesus was in Jerusalem
before He was crucified. It is the period, physical and spiritual, when the Son
of Man, Head and Body, would be dead from loss of breath and concealed in the
heart of the earth. And herein is what has previously been undisclosed: the
Body of Jesus is the Body of the Son of Man, and this spiritual Body will die
spiritually from loss of the Holy Spirit [Pneuma
’Agion or Breath Holy] as the physical body of Jesus died on the
cross from loss of natural breath. But as the gates of Hades would not prevail
over the physical body of Jesus, the gates of Hades will not prevail over the
spiritual Body (Matt 16:18), when after the third day (Gen 1:9-13), those
Believers who have brought forth fruit worthy of repentance will be born of
Spirit, born filled with the Spirit, born empowered by the Spirit, born
liberated from indwelling sin and death at the second Passover. The Body of
Christ will be resurrected from death through being filled with the Holy Spirit
as the natural body of Christ was resurrected from death after laying dead for
three days and three nights in the Garden Tomb.
Baptism is unto repentance for the death of the old
self, consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32). And in this era and throughout the
first three and a half years of the Tribulation, the Believer will be born of
Spirit following repentance, baptism in water, and demonstrated obedience. This
was not the sequence of events in the 1st-Century after Cornelius
was visibly baptized in Spirit prior to being baptized in water, nor will this
be the sequence of events after the Holy Spirit has been poured out on all
flesh halfway through the Tribulation, but this has been the sequence since the
spiritual Body of Christ, crucified with Christ, died and was concealed in the
heart of the earth.
Baptism has long been recognized as being
spiritually equivalent to physical circumcision, with baptism being the
inclusionary ritual for membership in the Body of Christ, but this perception
of baptism is overly simplistic and woefully inadequate. When baptism is
correctly perceived to be the “drowning” of the old self, infant
baptism makes a mockery of the rite; for the infant’s old self is neither
“old” nor fully formed.
The infant or child neither understands repentance nor understands
spiritual accountability. Therefore, the baptism of an infant is not a rite
acknowledging the repentance of the individual, but simply the wetting of the
child. It is of no value to the infant. Its only worth is in making parents “feel
better” if something untoward happens to the child.
Spiritually, however, infant baptism is of great
significance: the Body of Christ is to dwell in heavenly Jerusalem, and to dwell in this heavenly
city, a Believer must be spiritually circumcised (circumcised of heart and mind
– Deu 30:6; Rom 2:26-29). To be spiritually circumcised, the Believer, a
son of God, must first be born of Spirit in a manner analogous to how a human
infant is born of the water of the womb (John 3:3-8). A human infant is not a member
of Israel,
the firstborn natural son of God (Exod 4:22), until this infant is circumcised
on the 8th day. A born of Spirit Believer is not a member of
[spiritual] Israel until
this Believer, by faith, makes a mental journey equivalent to the physical
journey of the patriarch Abraham before he was circumcised, a journey from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran
in Assyria, then into the Promised Land of
God’s rest. If the Believer who has been born of Spirit does not make a
journey of faith, the Believer is not spiritually circumcised and does not
dwell in heavenly Jerusalem, for dwelling in
God’s rest is the precursor to dwelling in heavenly Jerusalem. Thus, the “Christian”
who does not make a mental journey from the land of the Chaldeans [Babylon] to Judea is not spiritually circumcised and as
such is not part of the Body of Christ, but is spiritually to the Body as an
uncircumcised Gentile was to Israel.
This is correct! The Believer who does not enter into God’s rest when the
promise of entering stands makes
him or herself into a spiritual Gentile, a “Christian” who
lives as a Gentile and walks as a Gentile and not as Jesus walked (1 John 2:6).
Therefore, inevitably, the “Christian” who lives and walks as a
Gentile becomes focused on the things of the flesh, the foremost of which is
the governance of this world. And this “Christian” is spiritually
dead.
Participation in the governance of this world
remains undertaking a joint venture with the prince of this world, who rules
over humankind by controlling the mental topography of humankind, not through
swords and muskets, kings and elected assemblies. As King Nebuchadnezzar ruled
the post-Flood boundaries of pre-Flood Eden through the might of his
armies—and served as an instrument that God used to chastise lawless and
idolatrous Israel—the fallen and defeated but not yet replaced prince of
this world is the spiritual king of Babylon that reigns over the mental
landscape from which thoughts sprout as weeds or wheat. God has used and still
uses this spiritual king of Babylon (Isa 14:4) as an instrument to chastise
lawless and idolatrous Israel, now not the physically circumcised nation, but a
new nation that was not before a people (1 Pet 2:9-10), a nation circumcised of
heart and mind by the Spirit and not by the law (cf. Rom 2:26-29; 2 Cor 3:3). And the god or prince of this world
was still in place when Paul wrote epistles to the saints at Corinth
(2 Cor 4:3-4) and at Ephesus
(Eph 2:1-3). This defeated prince will not be replaced until the single kingdom
of this world is given to the Son of Man (cf.
Dan 7:9-14; Rev 11:15-18) when that old dragon is cast to earth (Rev 12:9-10).
Thus, what is now seen in Scripture is what was understood darkly by those
Anabaptists who first left spiritual Babylon in a Logos-centered belief paradigm, the only means out of the mindset
of spiritual Babylon to which God had exiled the Church in a manner analogous
to God sending the physically circumcised house of Judah and all of Israel that
remained in Jerusalem into physical captivity in physical Babylon, and in a
manner analogous to Paul instructing the saints at Corinth to deliver the man
who was with his father’s wife “to Satan for the destruction of the
flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:5
ESV). But here is where what Liechty writes about Anabaptist history ends.
If a Believer is spiritually minded, the Believer
will understand that the Elijah to come, the Elijah who will restore all
things, the Elijah that turns the hearts of the sons to the Father and the
heart of the Father to His sons is the glorified Christ Jesus, not any human
being. And in the restoration of
all things, the last Elijah does and will do spiritually what the first Elijah
did physically—and the first Elijah raises the widow of Zarephath’s
son from the dead. Jewish tradition holds that this child was the prophet
Jonah. And it is at this juncture of Scripture and tradition where Jesus giving
the sign of Jonah as the sign of who He was injects complexity into the story
of His death, burial, and resurrection; for the first Elijah did not raise the
son of the widow woman in one attempt.
*
The
person conducting the service should read or assign to be read 1 Kings chapter
17, verses 17 through 24.
*
The
first Elijah took the son of the widow “from her arms and carried him up
into the upper chamber where he lodged, and laid him on his [Elijah’s]
bed. … Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to
the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, let this child’s life [breath] come into
him again’” (vv. 19, 21).
Christ Jesus, as the last Elijah, has taken His dead Body, the Church He
founded, up into the upper chamber where
he lodges in the heavenly Jerusalem,
and has twice stretched Himself upon this lifeless Body. The first time was
when Anabaptists separated themselves from the prince of this world.
The spiritually circumcised nation of Israel into
which Christ Jesus as the last Elijah breathed His breath and life in His first
“stretching Himself over the Church to resurrect His Body” as the
first Elijah resurrected the child who would (again, according to Jewish
tradition) be the prophet Jonah separated itself mentally and spiritually from
the kingdom of the prince of this world a quarter of the way through the 16th-Century.
Twelve hundred years after the Church formally entered spiritual Babylon as a spiritually
enslaved nation at the Council of Nicea (ca 325 CE) a remnant of the reformers
separated themselves from Swiss Protesters by being rebaptized as adults (ca
1525 CE). This remnant began the long trek back across the doctrines and
traditions of the lawless Church, but the descendants of this remnant, with
very few exceptions, have not yet completed the long mental trek back across
the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st Centuries to the
foundation of the house of God that Paul laid (1 Cor 3:10-11) in the heavenly
city of Jerusalem, a city that was emptied of its inhabitants through infant
baptism.
Paul writes that the visible things of this world
reveal the invisible things of God (Rom 1:20), and the physical things of this
world precede the spiritual things of God (1 Cor 15:46) in the manner that the
first Adam preceded the last Adam, the man Christ Jesus. By extension, the
visible and physical kingdom of Babylon reveals what can be known about the invisible
and spiritual kingdom of Babylon in the same way that the visible, physically
circumcised nation of Israel
reveals what can be known about the invisible, spiritually circumcised nation
of Israel.
(Paul writes that not all of the children of Abraham are his offspring, nor do
all who descended from Israel belong to Israel [Rom 9:6-7]—not all who
claim to be Christians belong to Christ, so the actual invisible spiritually
circumcised nation of Israel is “concealed” within Christendom.)
Therefore, the geography of pre-Flood Eden
reveals the mental topography over which the defeated prince of this world
still reigns. And this geography has Egypt south of the Promised Land and ruled
by the king of the South, Assyria to the north and ruled over by the king of the
North, and Babylon to the east and ruled over the spiritual king of Babylon
(Isa 14:4). This geography also has Egypt representing sin, Assyria
representing death, and Babylon representing the co-joined law of sin and death
that still dwells in the fleshly members of disciples (Rom 7:13-25, especially
21-25). Since all of humankind has been “concluded” or consigned to
disobedience (Rom 11:32), Babylon represents the kingdom over which the prince
of this world reigns—and since God consigned all of humanity to
disobedience so that He could have mercy on all, God will
“liberate” His people from indwelling sin and death as He liberated
physical Israel, His firstborn physical son (Exod 4:22) from physical bondage
to Pharaoh. The born-of-Spirit new creature is born free and is not born
consigned to disobedience; its Father is God. But the flesh of every disciple
was fathered (however times removed) by the first Adam and remains consigned to
disobedience and death. Not until the flesh puts on immortality will “life”
be given by Christ Jesus to the flesh as “life” is given by the
Father to the new creature born-of-Spirit (John 5:21). And when the flesh rules
over the infant son of God born of Spirit, the new creature that is spiritually
circumcised becomes as the physically circumcised nation was when it refused to
keep the laws of God and profaned the Sabbaths of God (see Ezek chap 20).
Anabaptists left spiritual Babylon in the 16th-Century when
they separated from governing this world. They then began a long spiritual trek
that would take them to heavenly Jerusalem, with
this invisible journey physically seen in the geography from physical Babylon to physical Jerusalem,
with two significant geographical landmarks forming spiritual markers on the
road to the heavenly city. The first of these landmarks is the plains of Moab,
where the second covenant (Deu 29:1) was made with Israel, a nation that then
consisted of the mixed circumcised and uncircumcised children of the nation
that left Egypt forty years earlier. This is the eternal covenant between God
and Israel to which better
promises were added when Christ Jesus became its mediator [better promises
cannot be added to what has been abolished, a reality check no one of Israel should
ever forget]. This covenant is ‘“not like the covenant that [God]
made with their fathers on the day when [God] took them [Israel] by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt’”
(Heb 8:9 with the citation from Jer 31:33), a covenant made in the flesh and
that was abolished at Calvary (Eph 2:13-16).
This second covenant is not made on “the day” when God lead Israel
out of Egypt, but forty years later when God was about to lead Israel into
“His rest” (cf. Ps
95:10-11; Heb 3:16-4:11). This is the covenant in which “circumcised
hearts and souls [nephesh]” are first mentioned (Deu 30:6). This is the
covenant that Paul identifies as “righteousness based on faith”
(Rom 10:6 – cf. Deu 30:11-14;
Rom 10:6-8). This covenant requires action based on faith (Deu 30:1-2), for it
takes faith in God to turn to God when in a far land and begin anew to love God
and to keep His commandments. And Israel
cannot enter heavenly Jerusalem unless this new
nation chooses life (Deu 30:15) on the plains of Moab,
a spiritual landscape that has the disciple out of Babylon but not yet into the Promised Land,
God’s rest.
No Moabite will enter the kingdom
of God; yet Ruth was of Moab. Marriage
between the men of Israel
and foreign women was prohibited; yet Ruth is in the lineage of King David and
of Jesus of Nazareth. And what it seen is that no person may remain in Moab and enter the kingdom of God.
By faith and with love for God, the one who dwells on the plains of Moab must
take up that which tethers the person to these plains, choose life (Deu 30:15),
and cross the spiritual Jordan River to dwell in this Land Beyond the River that is God’s rest. Being of foreign
birth is not the problem as the story of Ruth reveals. Remaining on the plains
of Moab, however, is the
problem, for every Believer’s kinsman-redeemer dwells in heavenly Jerusalem, not on the plains of Moab
or in the sand hills of Babylon.
Consider why Anabaptists today do not have the type
of enthusiasm and growth that was seen in the 16th and 17th
Centuries: what has happened?
What happened is that the 16th-Century rush
from the old Church stalled in the sands of western Iraq … Liechty well documents
where, when, and how the enthusiasm of Anabaptism became mired in desert sands.
And Anabaptism will remain spinning it wheels, unable to move forward, able
only to back-up and to return to Babylon (what is seen in liberal fellowships)
until another generation has the courage and faith of 16th Century
disciples to use the Logos-centered
belief paradigm to begin living as Jesus lived, walking in the same way that
Jesus walked (1 John 2:6). For whoever says that he or she knows Jesus but does
not keep His commandments is a liar (v.
4), and one of the commandments that the Logos
as the Word of God uttered was to observe and remember the Sabbath because
Israel was once a nation enslaved to disobedience (note the difference between
Deu 5:15 and Exod 20:11 – this is a difference that matters). The
arguments of Andreas Fischer in particular anticipate typological exegesis, the
means through which renewed enthusiasm will spiritually push Anabaptists of the
next generation out of the deserts sands and begin a new rush across the River
Jordan, the second landmark, and on to heavenly Jerusalem and glory. The old generation will
either die in the desert sands, or will lead as Joshua and Caleb led. But
leading requires having the faith to live as Jesus lived, knowing beforehand
that living as a spiritual Judean in this world will again cause disciples to
experience persecution similar to that which 16th Century
Anabaptists experienced. Of course, a person can always “play it safe”
by rejoining the world and making a covenant with death that will not hold (Isa
28:14-15).
The Anabaptist who, by repentance and separation
from this world, reaches the plains of Moab and stands before Moses, who
wrote of Christ Jesus (cf. John
5:46-47; Deu 18:15-19), is finally in position to enter into the second
covenant, the everlasting Moab covenant to which better promises were added
when the glorified Jesus became its mediator. If this Anabaptist shies away
from Moses, this Anabaptist also shies away from Jesus. This person is not
worthy to follow Jesus (Matt 10:38). Of course, this person will admit that he
or she is not worthy to follow Jesus and will insist that no one is worthy to
follow Jesus even though Jesus instructed His disciples to follow Him—and
this admission of not being worthy will have the person choosing death (Deu
30:15, 17-18), for this person will not pull up the “stake” that
tethers this person to the ways of this world. The foremost means by which this
person remains visibly tethered to this world is discernable is by the person
attempting to enter God’s rest (cf.
Ps 95:10-11; Heb 3:16-4:11; Num chap 14) on the 8th-day. This person
would force his or her way into the kingdom if he or she could, and this person
will, ultimately, successfully force his or her way into the lake of fire.
*
The person conducting the Sabbath service should
close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking
God’s dismissal.
* * * * *
"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."