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 a measure of faith.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of April 16, 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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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 12:3–21)
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Think of oneself with sober judgment, according to measure of faith that God has assigned … if God assigns a measure—a quantifiable amount—of faith to each Christian, then faith is of God and is not equally distributed to each person, but a measure of faith appropriate to the person’s calling is given by God so that the person can fulfill the position to which the person has been called in the Body of Christ. This suggests that the person who has been called to be an apostle or prophet or evangelist or pastor “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph 4:12) has been given a differing quantifiable amount of faith than the laity, with the laity receiving additional faith when the laity is fully equipped for ministry. But if a person is given a quantifiable amount of faith, then the person has no claim to personal attributes laying behind a calling to be, say, a prophet: the person who is a prophet isn’t one because of the person’s greatness but because God has called the person to that position and has given the person faith appropriate to that needed to be a prophet. All glory remains with God, not with the prophet.
Democracy is of the Adversary: all forms of democracy or representational democracy—republicanism—even to the receipt of faith is not of God. All forms of democracy are ways of this world that reflect the mind and values of the Adversary, the gold head of spiritual Babylon. And the Adversary’s enforcer is the first king of the bronze federated King of Greece, with the color of the metals even more than their strength or intrinsic value having importance through showing commonality: 14 carat gold (75% Au; 25% Cu) is the same color as common bronze (90% Cu; 10% Sn).
In a world of color, yellow is the color of democracy, of Greek ideals, of the appetites of the belly and the loins. White (silver) is the color of autocratic rule, of Persian ideals, of common Christianity, Zoroasterism, Mithraism, rabbinical Judaism, Islam. And in a battle between colors, the white metals [iron and silver] have long been in thinly veiled rebellion against the yellow metals [bronze and gold], with the white metals dominating the mental landscapes of Western Europeans throughout the Medieval period. However, the United States of America was crafted as a yellow metal republic, the epitome of the Adversary’s goal of demonstrating that self-rule is superior to any form of autocratic rule, regardless of whether the autocrat is a man or is the Most High God. And yes, the Most High is an autocrat who didn’t tolerate an anointed cherub’s rebellion but cast that cherub and his cohorts out from heaven and into the Abyss, bringing fire out from the belly of that anointed cherub to utterly consume the cherub (Ezek 28:18–19), written in past tense even though from within the perspective of time, the destruction by fire of that anointed cherub remains a little more than a thousand years in the future.
From the perspective of heaven, human sons of God have already been glorified even though the resurrection of firstfruits remains a least seven years away, with the main crop harvest of human sons of God occurring in the great White Throne Judgment that is more than 1010 years away [seven years for the Affliction and Endurance and three and a half years after the thousand years of the Millennium]. From the timeless realm of heaven, already glorified (Rom 8:30) human sons of God watch their pre-glorified selves work out their own salvation and watch without touching, without intervening, with the concept of the glorified son of God watching the not-yet-glorified son of God working out his salvation being far too difficult for Christians in the Sabbatarian churches of God to grasp. The concept is, for the Sabbatarian churches of God, too close to what Catholic and Protestant Christendom teach about the souls of the departed immediately going to heaven, which is not the case but is a doctrine of demons. The judgments of the firstfruits is not revealed until Christ returns (1 Cor 4:5). Until then, the souls that are in heaven asleep under the altar (Rev 6:9–11) are of martyred 1st-Century saints that were filled with the breath of God and had received power from on high (Luke 24:49). These saints are analogous to those holy ones that will be slain in faith following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the seven year long period when all of Christendom will be empowered from on high (i.e., the Affliction and Endurance).
Today, prior to the Second Passover liberation of Israel, no human son of God is empowered from on high, that is none are filled-with and empowered by the breath of God [pneuma Theon]. All knowingly or unknowingly await liberation from indwelling sin and death. Except for a miniscule few saints, all of Christendom is as Noah’s neighbors were when Noah entered the Ark; all of Christendom is as Lot’s neighbors were when Lot, his daughters, and his wife followed the two men of God out from the city of Sodom.
Greater Christendom will be taken by surprise when their firstborns perish in a day because greater Christendom has steadfastly refused to believe Christ Jesus, the prophets, Moses, but has instead believed lying ministers of the Adversary. Greater Christendom simply will not take the Passover sacraments of broken unleavened bread and wine on the night that Jesus was betrayed, the dark portion of the 14th of Aviv.
While professing that Jesus is Lord, greater Christendom has faithfully served the Adversary: by not believing that Jesus was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth—all of the 15th of Aviv, the high Sabbath, all of the 16th, and all of the 17th, the weekly Sabbath—greater Christendom has denied Christ, contradicting by its actions what it professes with its mouth, thereby introducing the reality that its firstborns (including any indwelling firstborn sons of God) will perish in a day, the night of the second Passover. Then those that remain of greater Christendom will be liberated from indwelling sin and death through being filled-with and empowered by the breath of God in a manner seen in type by ancient Israel’s liberation from physical slavery to a physical Pharaoh representing the spiritual king of Babylon. This liberation from indwelling sin and death is also seen in type by the first disciples being filled with spirit—“And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” (Acts 2:2)—on Pentecost, then again seen in type when the breath of God was poured out on Cornelius and his household (Acts 10:44–45), and seen a third time when Paul baptized the twelve disciples who had been baptized by John into repentance (Acts 19:6), with each of these three occasions representing the inclusion of a peoples into the circumcised-of-heart nation of Israel.
Cornelius and his household, as well as the twelve holy ones that had not yet received the spirit of God when they met with Paul at Ephesus, differ in type from the first disciples that were chosen by the Father and the Son, just as the disciples that left Jesus when He said that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood or they had no life in them (John 6:53) differed in type from the Twelve. Thus, Scripture reveals a difference between disciples, a difference that makes all the difference … the Twelve, according to Peter, had come to know—revelation via realization—that Jesus was the Holy One of God (v. 69), that there was no one else who had the words of eternal life (v. 68). Yet Jesus told Peter that knowing He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, was a revelation that had come from the Father (Matt 16:17). So the difference between those disciples—the Twelve—who remained with Jesus and the many disciples who fell away came through the Father making known to the Twelve knowledge not disclosed to the many. Making known this knowledge was an anti-democratic act of the Father; for those disciples not given this knowledge left behind, or turned their backs to eternal life.
Was Cornelius the only righteous Gentile in all of Judea? Not likely. So Cornelius was chosen to receive the words of life and indwelling eternal life when other Gentiles were not then given that opportunity. Likewise, were the twelve at Ephesus the only other disciples of John (besides the two sets of brothers) chosen to receive the receive the words of life? Or did these twelve just happen to be in the right place at the right time?
Faith would seem to originate in the individual, not with God, but this isn’t the case according to the Apostle Paul: the Father chooses who shall receive faith and in what quantity, making faith [i.e., belief of God] akin to receiving indwelling eternal life. The Christian who professes that Jesus is Lord but who is not today chosen by the Father to receive indwelling eternal life can be compared to the disciples who followed Jesus, but who left Him rather than take the Passover sacraments of bread and wine on the night He was betrayed, with these sacraments truly representing His body and His blood [His life] … how could those disciples that left have stayed when Jesus said something so nonsensical as, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you (again, John 6:53). These disciples were no cannibals. Human flesh was unclean, and no blood in any form was to be ingested. So from a literal perspective, Jesus told His disciples that they must defile themselves to have eternal life, and that simply doesn’t make sense. It is a small wonder that even the Twelve remained with Him—and they would not have remained if the Father had not given them a quantifiable measure of faith/belief, manifested through realization, sufficient to overcome the problems inherent to a literal application of Jesus’ words.
And therein is where Philadelphia finds itself today: a fellowship that has received from the Father a greater measure of faith/belief than its Christian brothers, in or out of the Sabbatarian churches of God.
This reading is short; the time is short. The Passover is at hand, and greater Christendom as well as the Sabbatarian churches of God will, on the same day, observe Christ Jesus as the resurrected reality of the Wave Sheaf Offering, thereby setting the stage for all of Christendom to be liberated from indwelling Sin and Death—the kings of the South and of the North—and thereby set free to believe the Father and the Son. Every Christian (with the exception of the two witnesses) will receive the same measure of the breath of God, a full measure, but this democracy of spirit will not lead to universal salvation for the majority of Christians will rebel against God on day 220 of the Affliction, for democracy always produces rebellion. The fruit of democracy is rebellion of the type seen in Korah and his friends (Num chap 16); for when there is true equality everyone wants to lead. Everyone sincerely believes that he or she is a chief, and everyone behaves as if the person is. Nothing gets done.
God gave a quantifiable measure of faith to disciples so that those whom He calls to do a work for Him have the ability to do the task to which He has called the human person. But eternal life is not quantifiable: a person either has eternal life or doesn’t have eternal life. There can be no almost having eternal life; a person either has eternal life or doesn’t have eternal life. Therefore, the quantifiable measure of faith/belief that the Father has given to members that do not have the same function (Rom 12:4) is proportional to the function that the member is to serve in the Body of Christ. The one whom the Father has called to shut the skies and turn waters into blood (Rev 11:6) will not be the same person who lives peaceably with all (Rom 12:18), but will be a person that spurns peace for his task is to take down this present evil world, softening up those who are hard of heart and who hate their neighbor more than they love their children … the two witnesses will not extend comfort to the enemies of God, but will smite them with plagues as often as they desire. It will be up to someone else to hold the hands of those who suffer.
Philadelphia has been given a greater measure of faith than other Sabbatarian fellowships so that Philadelphia can, with little strength, do the work of delivering the endtime good news that all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22). And that work is being done and has been done since 2002 CE.
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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."