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 the word Zephaniah received.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of April 10, 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 will utterly sweep away everything
from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord.
“I will sweep away man and beast;
I will sweep away the birds of the heavens
and the fish of the sea,
and the rubble with the wicked.
I will cut off mankind
from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord.
“I will stretch out my hand against Judah
and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem;
and I will cut off from this place the remnant of Baal
and the name of the idolatrous priests along with the priests,
those who bow down on the roofs
to the host of the heavens,
those who bow down and swear to the Lord
and yet swear by Milcom,
those who have turned back from following the Lord,
who do not seek the Lord or inquire of him.”
Be silent before the Lord God!
For the day of the Lord is near;
the Lord has prepared a sacrifice
and consecrated his guests.
And on the day of the Lord's sacrifice— (Zeph 1:2–6)
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The word of the Lord came to Zephaniah in the days of Josiah, king of Judah, who, when the Book of Law was found in the temple—this Book of the Law having been lost and neglected for generations (2 Kings 22:8)—repented before the Lord, but could not affect what would happen to Israel as decreed by the Lord. Scripture records that even after Josiah commanded the people to keep the Passover as written in the Book of the Covenant, that “no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges” (2 Kings 23:22), “the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him” (v. 26). Zephaniah gives voice to that wrath as does Isaiah chapter 24.
Although what the Lord says through Zephaniah has a “near” application, what Zephaniah says also has a time qualifier: “Be silent before the Lord God! / For the day of the Lord is near” (Zeph 1:7) … recognition as a prophet of the Lord requires that what the person claims will come to pass actually comes to pass, and that the person teaches Israel to keep the commandments and walk in the way of the Lord. Thus, for Zephaniah to have been recognized as a prophet required, the things Zephaniah said would happen to Judah and to Jerusalem needs to have occurred in such as way that history fulfills Zephaniah’s claims.
But the day of the Lord is a one time occurrence, and what happened when Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and razed the temple was only a shadow and type of when the spiritual king of Babylon (see Isa 14:4) “sacks” and “razes” the Christian Church (circumcised-of-heart Israel) with this spiritual king of Babylon serving as an agent of the Lord as Nebuchadnezzar served as an agent of the Lord for the destruction of earthly Jerusalem (Jer 25:8–9). Before the kingdom of this world is delivered to the Son of Man, the Most High God will deliver the Christian Church into the hand of the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh so that the inner new selves might be saved when judgments are revealed; for the greater Christian Church is today as Israel and Judah were in the 7th and 8th Centuries BCE.
In the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years, those Christians who strive to save their physical lives will lose both their physical lives and their inner spiritual lives at Christ’s coming. It is the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9), none of whom is today Christian, that will be to the greater Christian Church as the children of Israel were to the nation of Israel numbered in the census of the second year (Num chap 1); it is this third part of humanity that will enter into God’s rest. And it is about this third part that the Lord said, “‘For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples / to a pure speech, / that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord / and serve him with one accord’” (Zeph 3:9).
Christians, especially Evangelicals, will not today accept the reality that God will deliver them into the hand of the Adversary as the Lord delivered Jerusalem into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, and as Paul commanded the saints at Corinth to deliver the man who was with his father’s wife to Satan (1 Cor 5:5)—and as the Lord at Sinai made sin alive by delivering to Israel the commandments so that sin could kill the nation that would not listen to Him when still in Egypt (Ezek 20:8). These Christians hold that God is love, and that He is, but there is no love in enabling a person to continue to transgress the commandments of God, the outward expression of the work of the law. There is no love in continued co-dependency that has pastors telling congregations that God will accept them just as they are. God will call a person just as the person is, but He will not accept the person who continues in sin, in transgressing the law; for as John wrote, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for His 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” (1 John 3:9–10). It is the seed of the devil that continues in sin once born of spirit, not the sons of God. And there is absolutely no love in enabling a person to continue to transgress the commandments—sin is the transgression of the law, or lawlessness (v. 4)—when the reasonable expectation of the household of God is that all of His sons believe Him and strive to keep the commandments by faith.
It is because enablers in the form of Christian pastors and teachers have harmed the Body of Christ that the Father will remove from Christendom “‘your proudly exultant ones’” (Zeph 3:11), the ones who will say to Christ Jesus, “‘“Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name”’” (Matt 7:22) when their judgments are revealed and they are cast into the lake of fire because they have been teachers of lawlessness.
For some reason that Christians cannot adequately explain, the greater Christian Church thinks more highly of itself than it ought; thinks that its adherents can ignore God, neglect the commandments, lose the Law in the rubble of the temple, and still somehow be favored in God’s eyes so that only good befalls them. The greater Christian Church is truly as Israel was in the days of Manasseh, when in one “name” Judah and Israel were united in rebellion against the Lord.
But where, they will ask, is “love” in sweeping away everything from the face of the earth (Zeph 1:2)? Where is love in cutting off humankind from the face of the earth (v. 3)? Again, is not God love? What had the house of Israel done that was so terrible? What justified the nation’s destruction?
Christian scholars will argue that what happened to the northern kingdom of Samaria and to the southern kingdom of Jerusalem was merely part of the normal course of world affairs as power accumulates in one king and kingdom for a while, then in another king and kingdom. Wasn’t that what happened to Jerusalem, a tiny polis gobbled up by a world-ruling empire? Wasn’t what happened to the house of Judah simply what happens to any tiny kingdom with limited natural resources? Similar devouring of small kingdoms occurred in China and in Mesoamerica; so how can any modern scholar, historical or theological, believe that God had anything to do with the sacking of Jerusalem? That would be akin to claiming that the hurricane that appeared out of nowhere and drenched the burning Washington D.C. on 25 August 1814 and the tornado of less than a day later that killed more British soldiers than the Americans had in defending the Capital were acts of God, as they were thought to be at the time.
When is an act of God truly an act of God, and when is what claimed to be an act of God simply happenstance or coincidence?
Can God not “speak” directly to those who profess to serve Him through weather, such as giving rain in due season or withholding rain when it is the season for rain? But how would a person know that a drought is not the result of regional deforestation or alleged global warming? Would not any weather pattern have an origin that stems from a “natural” cause? When is a natural cause not all that natural? When is humankind overly superstitious, and when are human beings deaf as stones, unable to hear God speaking to the person, to a nation, to all of humankind?
The answer to the above questions is in the giving of a second breath of life: when the children of Israel first entered the Promised Land, the Lord spoke to this nation through Moses and through the giving or withholding of the early and the latter rains, while using outside enemies to chastise Israel when the nation would not listen.
As a nation, the children of Israel matured from being equivalent to an eight-day-old Hebrew infant when first circumcised at Gilgal to being a toddler able to understand the words of the parent. And when Israel matured enough that the nation no longer paid attention to clouds in the sky but traded precious metals for foodstuffs when the rains didn’t come, the Lord gave to Israel the prophets, to whom Israel did not listen as an indulged human child will not listen to a babysitter. What was the Lord to do, considering that outwardly circumcised Israel formed the shadow and type of the greater Christian Church? Whatever He did would also be a shadow and type of what would be done to the Christian Church—the Lord’s rebuking became more severe, with finally all of Israel going back into slavery from which the outwardly circumcised nation never returned … when Jesus told Jews who had believed Him that if they would abide in His word, they would know the truth and the truth would set them free (John 8:31–32), these Jews objected, saying that they were the offspring of Abraham and had never been enslaved (v. 33). But Jesus said that “‘everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin’” (v. 34). Once the Lord delivered the commandments to Israel and by extension to the children of Israel, sin was made alive and sin enslaved the nation so that it would never be a free people until this nation received a second breath of life, the breath of the Father [pneuma Theon].
Paul writes,
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? (Rom 6:12–16)
Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin according to Jesus and according to Paul; so why do “Christian” pastors everywhere cause Christians to transgress the Sabbath commandment and thereby commit sin?
For very slight and usually illogical reasons, Christians embrace sin when sin has no dominion over them—
As the Lord gave to the children of Israel rules and statutes by which Israel could not have life, rules that had Israel burning their firstborns in fire [not because this was His idea — Jer 32:35 — but because Israel adopted the customs of the people the nation dispossessed] (Ezek 20:25–26), the Lord gave to the people at Sinai a command that precluded Israel from having indwelling eternal life that would free the nation from slavery to sin:
Moses assembled all the congregation of the people of Israel and said to them, “These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do. Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.” (Ex 35:1–3)
Life is sustained via fire, the dark fire of cellular oxidation and the bright fire of the glory of God. When the people were prohibited from kindling a fire on the Sabbath, with the Sabbath serving as the representation of God’s rest, the people were prohibited from having any new “life,” or from receiving life in God’s presence. When sin slew Israel at Sinai, the Lord prevented Israel from receiving indwelling eternal life prior to the coming of Christ Jesus. And without a person receiving “life” that has come down from heaven, life over which sin has no dominion (for this would be life that did not come from the first Adam), the person remains a son of disobedience (Eph 2:2–3), consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32); the person remains a bondservant of the Adversary.
Whereas outward circumcision has no bearing on whether a person is circumcised-of-heart, not kindling a fire or kindling a fire on the Sabbath does affect the inner new self.
Unless a Christian is circumcised to avoid causing offense so that Christ does not become a stumbling block, as was the case when Paul had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3), a Christian male would not seek to be outwardly circumcised in this era; for to seek to be outwardly circumcised is a denial of Christ Jesus’ righteousness. Likewise, unless a Christian does not kindle a fire on the Sabbath to avoid offense when in the presence of someone weak in faith, a Christian would not hesitate to kindle a fire on the Sabbath, for the inner new self is already alive in the presence of God.
There are times when a Christian does not exercise the liberty the Christian has, with those enabling pastors and teachers twisting what Paul wrote to converts at Rome into license to continue to live as Gentiles under the guise of love and faith. The Christian who abstains from eating meat when in the presence of someone weak in faith would not “be conformed to the passions of [his or her] former ignorance” (1 Pet 1:14) when called to be holy in all the person’s conduct (v. 15), “since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (v. 16) … where is it written, You shall be holy, for I am holy? Does not Moses, quoting the Lord about what meats Israel should eat, quote the Lord saying,
You shall not make yourselves detestable with any swarming thing that swarms, and you shall not defile yourselves with them, and become unclean through them. For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. (Lev 11:43–45)
Beef from a bull sacrificed to Zeus would have been unclean to a Hebrew, but to a Christian, Zeus is nothing, and a bull sacrificed to Zeus is as a bull slaughtered for sale in the shambles. Its meat is acceptable food. But a boar is not meat that would be received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:3). To be holy as God is holy, a Christian would not make him or herself detestable by eating what the Lord identifies as “common” meats reserved for the commonality of humankind. A Christian is special; is of “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy name, a people for [God’s] own possession (1 Pet 2:9). And if the Christian doesn’t choose to be special, choose to be holy as God is holy, the person will live as a pagan while falsely bearing the name of Christ.
The giving of the commandments made sin alive (see Rom 7:7–14 for a comparable text) at Sinai. And at the time of the Second Passover, the filling of Christians with the breath of God will liberate Israel from indwelling sin and death so that Sin, the third horseman, now an outside force, the demonic king of the South, can make merchandise of both the early barley harvest and the latter wheat harvest of disciples. Sin will again take captive most of the greater Christian Church on day 220 of the Affliction. And God will condemn these rebelling human sons of God as He condemned rebelling angels that left their habitation of obedience. God will condemn these human rebels by sending over them a great delusion so that they will believe a lie because they never loved the truth (2 Thess 2:10–12).
The above has been said before, and said many times. What hasn’t been as frequently addressed is just how difficult the Affliction will be for rebelling sons of God.
Zephaniah records those things that pertain to the end of the age from the perspective of the shadow those things cast into his world: the Book of Zephaniah is short and here should be read in its entirety.
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The task for disciples is moving from physical to spiritual without dismissing as irrelevant those things that don’t seem to fit today’s world … today’s world affectively ends with the second Passover, doubly ends when the sixth seal is opened, and does end when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. So what doesn’t fit today when moving from physical to spiritual will fit in the near future: humankind will be greatly reduced in number so that it will seem that mankind has been cut off from the face of the earth, the point the prophet Isaiah made in chapter 24.
Zephaniah records, “The great day of the Lord is near, / near and hastening fast; / the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter” (1:14) —
Jesus said, “‘As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the son of Man’” (Matt 24:37) … what kind of days were the days of Noah? What kind of day was the 1st day of Noah’s second month? A late spring day, sunny, sky a little hazy, flowers in bloom, bees working their blossoms, weddings getting ready to take place—Jesus continued, “‘For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark’” (v. 38).
Noah entered the Ark on the 10th day of the second month. The flood didn’t come for a week.
With what degree of precision did Jesus speak? Were Noah’s neighbors concerned about what was happening for the week that Noah was aboard but no rain came; were they mocking Noah? That was probably the case. Imagine how much would be said if that were to occur today?
What happened with the Millerites in 1843 and 1844? Were they not Christians who expected the Lord to return on a specific date? Were they not prepared to leave behind this world? And were they not mocked when nothing happened? Were they not like Noah and his sons for the week before the Flood came?
From the 10th day of Noah’s second month to the 16th day, Noah and his sons sat in the Ark waiting for something to happen. By faith, Noah and his sons had fell timber, hewn timbers, and built an Ark that was probably larger than any boat ever seen. Then Noah and the animals boarded, and nothing happened … Millerites sold all they possessed in this world to wait for Christ’s return.
William Miller was a prosperous Baptist farmer who, through his study of the prophecies of Daniel, became convinced the date of Christ’s Second Coming was revealed in prophecy—this was at a time when Christendom did not place emphasis on Christ’s return, for the common theology held that Christ’s kingdom was already here on earth, and it is this common belief that the kingdom was among men that influenced the utilitarianism of America’s founders as they strove to create a more perfect union by which men would rule themselves with rights ordained by God.
In 1822, Miller wrote a 22-point treatise that he kept to himself and should have continued to keep to himself; for when he finally made his treatise public, it was initially dismissed as an idle tale as it turned out to be. However, sometime in the early 1830s (conflicting dates exist), Miller began to publicly lecture about Christ’s return. He published a series of articles about prophecy beginning in May 1832, and finally, he began to receive more favorable responses to his scholarship. By 1834, he could not personally respond to all who were writing to him so he published a 64 page tract that he sent forth as if it were schoolboys hired to paint quiz on every flat surface in London, an allusion that will, most likely, be as confusing as his tract.
As Miller’s scholarship spread geographically, so too did acceptance of Miller’s prophetic timeline and his basic year-for-a-day prophetic principle, the primary prophetic principle employed within Evangelical Christendom [but not a principle that should be used] even today. By 1840, Miller had become a nationally known figure, with wide recognition of his prophetic understandings standing as a testament to the power of periodical literature in mid-19th-Century America.
Miller’s teachings were attacked from the beginning, and much ink was spilled in defending Miller’s ideas prior to 1845 … the great expectation became the great disappointment when nothing happened in April 1843, or in April 1844. A copout dogma entered Advent theology, that of the tarrying time, a period of waiting until Christ would finally return; i.e., until Advent theology could finally get prophecy right.
What began with one man and his misreading of prophecy—because the visions of Daniel were still sealed and secret in 1822, as they still were in 1986—set the theological stage for disciples focusing on Christ’s return instead of upon trying to make the governance of this world, of We the People reflect the values of God.
Because of the great disappointment, sects within Advent theology began to form, with one schism holding that according to the “parable of the ten virgins” Christ as the Bridegroom was tarrying, delaying showing up, while another schism held that the sanctuary to be cleansed was not on earth but in heaven thus the 22 October 1844 dated marked not the Second Advent but rather a heavenly event.
Miller’s importance to endtime disciples wasn’t his reading of Daniel’s visions and certainly not his day-for-a-year principle, but was rather the emphasis he restored to Christ’s return, the Second Advent. What Miller could not know is that he did not live in the time of the end when knowledge would be greatly increased (Dan 12:4). Miller could not, nor could any of his contemporaries have unsealed the supernaturally sealed and kept secret visions. But he was a cog in the long line of biblical teachers working to restore knowledge to the dead Body of Christ; for he recovered a long neglected aspect of the endtime gospel message that all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13–14). Plus, Miller and the Millerites provide a model for disciples are not to do when the end is upon disciples but has not yet gotten here.
Christians need to prepare for a cataclysmic disaster such as the one about which Zephaniah writes, but they need to exercise wisdom in their preparations for not everyone needs to know what the Christian is doing … Latter Day Saints now call their food caches “family preparedness,” and this is perhaps the best available phrase to describe what every Christian needs.
Earthquake preparedness guides suggest a family should have on hand everything the family needs for three days: a Christian preparedness guide would have the family able to sustain life without outside assistance indefinitely. This is not a call for large stocks of foodstuffs, but a called to arm oneself with faith supplemented by knowledge about basic crafts, skills, and available resources so the family can provide the necessities for life when these necessities cannot be easily purchased or when money cannot be earned … faith in God is the primary need. Without believing God, with this belief being manifested in keeping the commandments, every other thing the person does to extend life will prove futile.
For the same reason that Noah prepared timbers, built the Ark and stocked it with food (Gen 6:21–22), Christians should “build” within themselves the Ark of the Covenant and stock it with faith, for disaster is about to befall humankind. The Lord forewarned His human sons more than 2600 years ago that He would bring disaster upon them because—moving from physical to spiritual—Christian officials are roaring lions; her prophets are fickle, treacherous men; her priests profane what is holy and do violence to the law. Indeed, this is the case although Christians form a nation of Israel that is in denial of these truths. Don’t any Philadelphian fall prey to the error of Noah’s neighbors.
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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."