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. This Sabbath’s selection is hatred of Jews reveals a hatred of Christ Jesus and the ways of God.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of March 26, 2011
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 appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. / For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. / Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. / Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:1–21)
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The situation Paul addresses in his treatise to the holy ones at Rome—we, though many, are one body in Christ—no longer exists, and didn’t exist when Paul was taken as a prisoner to Rome; for Paul writes, while a prisoner, “You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me” (2 Tim 1:15), and “Aristrarchus my fellow prisoner greets you, and Mark the cousin of Barnabas (concerning whom you have received instructions—if he comes to you, welcome him), and Jesus who is called Justus. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God” (Col 4:10–11).
There were never many who received Paul despite what Christians today want to believe … Paul writes,
Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only. Even in Thessalonica you sent me help for my needs once and again. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit. I have received full payment, and more. I am well supplied, having received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Phil 4:14–19)
Earlier in this same epistle, Paul wrote,
Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (Phil 3:17–21 emphasis added)
The holy ones at Corinth questioned whether Paul was even of God—“But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court” (1 Cor 4:3)—and those who were in Jerusalem sought to kill Paul. So what Paul wrote to the holy ones at Rome before he arrived there applies in the abstract (is the ideal), but doesn’t apply to Christendom as received from either the old church or from the reformed church. For Christendom is not today one body of many members, but at least three distinct bodies—Unitarian, Binitarian, Trinitarian—each with schisms and unbridgeable rifts so that even within these greater divisions, each worshiping its own God and its own Christ Jesus, there is no unity and no means of reconciling various creeds and sects.
Unitarian Christians do not worship the same God that Trinitarian Christians do; however, rabbinical Judaism and Islam and Arian Christendom do worship the same Creator, calling the Creator of all that has been made the Most High God, not understanding that the Creator entered His creation as His only Son, Christ Jesus, who came to reveal the Most High to a world that did not know of the Most High’s existence (John 17:25). Hence, Trinitarians with their unexplainable triune deity muddy the theological pool that hides the Father from His sons and His would-be sons, the firstfruits of this earth when they cease hating one another.
Trinitarian Christendom has done more to prevent Christians from understanding the mysteries of God than they, in their arrogance, can imagine; for they repeatedly employed the power of the State to slay any Christian that might accidentally stumble across Christ Jesus as the Christian wandered through Scripture if the Christians could even find a copy of Scripture. To this day, they hide Christ in a maze of pagan sacraments, each apparently intended to keep Christians from thinking for themselves as fingers are pointed in this direction and in that direction in a bewildering array of cardinal red hubris, the fingers bloody and broken but nevertheless still strong enough to strangle infant sons of God.
For Christians today, most denying the legitimacy of the other, hatred is called love … it is fundamentalist Muslims that have the honesty to admit that they hate their neighbors, their honest hatred having about it great purity, distilled from centuries of pettiness festering in bitter waters. Whereas Christians tend to conceal their hatred, denying that it exists (until a Lutheran is confronted by a Jehovah Witness, or until a Seventh Day Adventist speaks about a Roman Catholic, or a Southern Baptist speaks about a Latter Day Saint), Muslims speak openly about hating the Jew, whom Christians also hate—for if Christians did not hate Jews, and one Jew in particular, Jesus the Nazarene whom they claim as their own so that can sculpt Him into their image and likeness, then Christians would truly walk as Jesus walked; Christians would imitate Paul, an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin (Rom 11:1), as Paul imitated Christ Jesus. If Christians truly imitated Paul, then they too could say about themselves, “‘Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense’” (Acts 25:8). But if a Christian begins to even keep the Sabbaths of God, other Christians quickly surround the one who begins to walk as Jesus walked, and the snarls of vicious dogs appear at the corners of these other Christians’ mouths. Although the words of these other Christians might sound friendly at a distance, up close the words are stones hurled to kill. And as one television political commentator and Christian advocate is fond of saying, The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, a truism that especially pertains to greater Christendom.
A poem of years ago captures the Christian application of, The enemy of my enemy is not my friend:
QUITTING CANTON
Decades and villages: British & Yankee missionaries
preached repentance to the yellow heathens, but
few Chinese accepted Christ
till Hong Xiuquau read about Jesus . . . years earlier,
he, of a royal family, stood in dream
before a great sovereign
where, scolded, he was river washed by an old woman,
given a new heart, a sword, a seal, sweet fruit.
He prayed to this foreign god,
smashed classroom idols, promised he wouldn't worship
evil spirits. Soon thousands of followers,
taught as Paul had Beroeans,
knelt before the God of Abraham and kept the Sabbath
holy. Hong banned smoking tobacco, opium;
stopped the binding of women's
feet, polygamy, the slave trade—the year was 1846,
beginning the era of civil war,
the opium wars . . .
maybe they were jealous, the missionaries, the ghosts.
Hong's Taiping movement was certainly
within orthodox Christianity
so was it merely a dispute about which day to worship
the Creator that caused Christian nations
and denominations to spurn
Hong? They sent rifles, cannon, opium to the emperor
till no one stood before ghost soldiers,
not even old women
on yellow river banks.
The Sabbatarian Christian is, unfortunately, the enemy of every Christian who worships on Sunday, the day after the Sabbath, as Christian missionaries made openly evident when they entered history on the wrong side in the mid 19th-Century. They did not then feel the need to conceal their disdain for Sabbatarians. Their anti-Semitism was evident for everyone to see. It has only been since World War Two when, burdened with guilt for not having offered safe haven to European Jewry when it was readily evident that Hitler intended to kill as many Jews as he could, that the United States and Britain have befriended any Sabbatarians. Even to this day, in the United States of America union seniority trumps Sabbath observance in labor law: the United States is not a Sabbath friendly nation as national retailers routinely schedule their greatest discount sales on the Sabbath. And even when the Law of God is written on hearts and placed in the minds of all of Christendom following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, American Christians will lead the worldwide rebellion against God; for they will not begin to keep the Sabbaths of God but rather will continue to mingle the sacred [Christ] with the profane [the day of the invincible sun].
The lawless one, the man of perdition (cf. 2 Thess 2;3; Matt 24:15; Dan 11:30–33), a human being possessed by the Adversary but not possessed until day 220 of the Affliction, will strive to turn the Second Passover liberation of Israel upside-down, claiming the death of unredeemed firstborns is the great bloodbath promised by the 12th Imam—this man of perdition, already a recognizable face in this world, will lead Christendom’s rebellion against God, rebellion that truly comes through mingling the sacred [Christ] with the profane [in particular, the birthday of the invincible sun, December 25th]. However, until the Adversary actually takes possession of the lawless one, this human being can repent and turn from what he presently believes and publicly advocates; thus, he shall not be named. Just as Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray Him (John 6:64) but did not name Judas until after Satan had entered into him, the future man of perdition is known and has been known since he gained international prominence, but until Satan as the little horn actually possesses him, this person can repent even though he won’t. But the possibility exists and must be afforded him.
The man of perdition—the lawless one—will form the shadow and type, the left hand enantiomer, of the true Antichrist, Satan the devil, when that old serpent is cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–10) and comes claiming to be the Messiah. The man of perdition, as a human man possessed by Satan, serves in the Affliction (the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years) as the shadow of Satan, when cast into time, being given the mind of a man in the Endurance, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years, with the Affliction forming the non-symmetrical mirror-image of the Endurance.
Salvation is a gift of God; salvation is indwelling eternal life in the form of the breath of God [pneuma Theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos] (Rom 6:23). No one earns salvation through the work of hands. There is no process to being saved: a human person either has received indwelling eternal life through receiving a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theon], or the person doesn’t have indwelling eternal life. No person is humanly born with an immortal soul. To teach that a human person is born of woman with indwelling immortality is to teach a lie of the Adversary.
All of Islam teaches the lie that the first Eve believed: You shall not surely die (Gen 3:4). Rabbinical Judaism teaches this lie. Trinitarian Christendom teaches this lie. Binitarian Christianity and some sects of Arian Christendom do not. Likewise, Binitarian Christianity and Arian Christianity do not assign personhood to the breath of God, but beyond this, Binitarians and Arians part company, with Arian Christendom denying the divinity of Christ Jesus prior to His human birth.
Because salvation is a gift, the person who has been given salvation—the indwelling of the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion — breath holy]—has only one choice, will or won’t this person believe God. If the person decides to believe God, the person will begin to walk as Jesus walked; for no one “born of God makes a practice of sinning,” of continuing to transgress the commandments of God (1 John 3:9). The person truly born of God will keep the commandments, including the Sabbath commandment. The person cannot long do otherwise, an important point to remember when the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs.
When every Christian is filled-with and empowered by the breath of God at the Second Passover, every Christian will truly be born of God, and no Christian born of God can make a practice of transgressing the commandments of God (1 John 3:6). Therefore, to transgress the commandments—to not keep the Sabbath, the identifying mark of God—will require the Christian to commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which will not be forgiven. … In the Affliction, it will not be the transgression of the commandments that is counted against the Christian, but the Christian’s unbelief that caused the transgression. Today’s Sunday-keeping Christian will be filled with the breath of God on the 15th day of Iyyar, and will either keep the Sabbath two days hence, or will transgress the Sabbath commandment, with the transgression not being counted against the Christian but with the transgression giving substance to the Christian’s unbelief. A second and a third transgression of the commandments, and the Christian’s unbelief grows more and more substantive. A month will pass, and the Christian who has not begun to believe God will find it increasingly difficult to begin to believe God even though the Christian is filled with the breath of God and should be speaking the words of God.
There is a work here for Philadelphia to do, the work of countering the ten witnesses—spies sent by the Adversary to destroy infant sons of God—with each passing day making that work increasingly difficult: the more times a Christian transgresses the commandments, the easier it is for the Christian to continue transgressing the commandments. The first transgression will really be the most difficult transgression, and will come seemingly accidentally; will come without the Christian realizing his or her error until afterwards. Then, if the Philadelphian has the opportunity (and is believed), the Christian can be recovered. But if the one transgression is followed by a second and a third without repentance, the Christian is well on his or her way to ten transgressions, the point at which God will send a strong delusion over the Christian so that he or she will never believe God. The rebellion of the Christian has been made complete. All that remains is Christmas observance and the appearance of the man of perdition, which comes with the opening of the fifth seal (Rev 6:9–11). And with the Apostasy (2 Thess 2:3), the focus of Philadelphia turns away from Christians and turns toward the third part of humanity (from Zech 13:9) and delivery to this third part the good news that all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22). Christendom will not have endured to the end even though Christians were filled-with and empowered by the breath of God, thereby being liberated from indwelling sin and death. Christians will have proved themselves faithless even though they will feel good about what they believe, at least for a while.
The Apostasy (the great falling away) is certain to occur. There is nothing Philadelphia can do to prevent the Apostasy from occurring. However, no particular Christian has to be lost—
From the perspective of saints before the rebellion against God on day 220—before it becomes evident who believes God—those Christians who will be justified and glorified cannot be known/identified even though God knows who will and who will not make it into the kingdom. Therefore, out of love for all sons of God, Philadelphians need to be prepared to risk their own lives to save every Christian, despite knowing in advance that most will attempt to kill the one who witnesses to them about the truth. But until the rebellion makes known who is of God, each Christian will be as Judas Iscariot was, and as the man of perdition presently is: each will have the opportunity to make it into the kingdom by enduring in faith to the end.
Philadelphians need to present themselves as living sacrifices, a phrase with multiple meanings beginning with not being concerned about the things of this world, from possessing these things that are of this world to not being alarmed by what is happening in Libya and Syria or by the certain war to engulf the modern State of Israel with the potential of nuclear weapons being used thereby being the world to its destruction. But it is as living sacrifices being willing to die for other sons of God where true worship of God exists …
The Sabbatarian Christian who has not felt a need to lay aside those things that will be necessary to live physically when there is no buying and selling most likely will not live long physically into the seven endtime years, but will give his or her life as a sacrifice for fellow sons of God: there is no reason to lay aside what will not be used or needed. Hence, it might well be that God through the indwelling of the parakletos has been “communicating” with the saint, telling the saint that he or she will die as a martyr early into the seven endtime years, with the saint’s next conscious moment being the saint’s resurrection to glory. Therefore, the Sabbatarian who feels no need to lay aside need not be concerned either by the person’s lack of preparation or by the almost certainty of early martyrdom. If the Sabbatarian dies in faith—and many will, but not enough to ransom the third part of humankind—the Sabbatarian will be resurrected to glory upon Christ Jesus’ return. The Sabbatarian will have fulfilled his or her destiny.
However, there are Sabbatarians who feel a need to prepare for what is certain to come, with these Sabbatarians fretting about not being able to do enough, not being satisfied with whatever preparations that have been made, wanting more time and more resources to do more—and it is most likely that this Sabbatarian will have the “opportunity” to endure through years when endurance doesn’t seem possible as this Sabbatarian serves as witness for Christ Jesus.
Paul wrote, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:1–2).
What the will of God is for His sons He will make known to the son at the appropriate time; so it is enough to say here that the saint who feels the need to prepare to survive when there will be no buying and selling should prepare to the best of the holy one’s ability, but the saint who does not feel this need will not have the need but will, instead, be martyred and not have to continue to endure day by day, year by year until the holy one passes into the Endurance as one of the Remnant, where the saint will do (and have the power to do) what the two witnesses did in the Affliction. Hence, the two witnesses feel the need to prepare; for they will not be martyred until day 1256/1257. However, the Remnant at this present time will be feeling the need to prepare for a longer duration, for living into the Endurance when there will be absolutely no buying and selling by the holy ones, when shoes and clothes cannot be replaced but must last until Christ returns.
Christendom is not today one body of one breath, but is many bodies without indwelling eternal life coming through the breath of God. But within the Binitarian Church are a few saints who have been born out of season to bear the fruit of the spirit when it isn’t the season to bear fruit. And through the indwelling parakletos, Christ Jesus presently tells these holy ones what will happen to them in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years—and Christ does so through whether the saint feels a strong urge to prepare for what is certain to come. The saint who feels this urge needs to obey it; whereas the saint who feels no such urge need not be concerned by the saint’s lack of preparation. For what is of utmost importance is presenting the physical body as a living sacrifice to God for as long as there is physical life in the person.
Christ Jesus will, for the one who must endure much in the Affliction and Endurance, make sure the person is prepared to endure through laying upon the holy one’s heart the need to prepare. But for the ones who much endure short but intense trials, Christ Jesus will not lay it upon their hearts to prepare to endure for years, but will instead lay it upon these saints’ hearts the need to be willing to die a martyr’s death when that is demanded of these saints.
It will be fellow Christians who martyr their brethren as Cain slew righteous Abel. The concealed hatred of Christians for God and for Christ Jesus—hatred hidden in their rejection of the commandments of God; hidden in their refusal to walk as Jesus, an observant Jew, walked—will be made evident for all to see when all Christians are filled-with and empowered by the breath of God … the blood bath and ensuing chaos following the Second Passover liberation of Israel will not herald the return of the 12th Imam, but the beginning of the ministry of the two witnesses, who will strike the earth with every sort of plague. For what must be stripped away from humankind are all vestiges of the hedonism seen in Western democracies. Whereas Islam is a theological cover crop that will be plowed under during the Affliction, freedom to worship God as Christians and Jews please will cease to exist once the kingdom of this world is taken from the spiritual king of Babylon and given to the Son of Man. The United States of America’s Constitution will be just another document of the Adversary whose time has passed—and the future man of perdition’s advocacy for Americans returning to Constitutional governance will set the stage for Israel’s sacking of a new Canaan.
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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."