The Philadelphia Church

And He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. (Matt 4:19)"

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 Christ as Creator.

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Weekly Readings

For the Sabbath of May 19, 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.

The person conducting the services should read or assign to be read Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verses 1 through 22, noting especially verse 11.

Commentary: Under heaven, there is a time for every matter (v. 1). In heaven, time—which can be written as a function of gravity and as such is a part of the creation or “eternity” (Heb: olam – from v. 11)—does not exist. Everything happens within the same, unchanging moment; thus, “what is” must co-exist with “what will be” as all living entities must function as one unit in a way similar to how cells within a human body form one unit to function together, an analogy that the Apostle Paul began but was unable to fully utilize because of then available scientific knowledge, or lack thereof. Hence when lawlessness was found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:11-15), two divergent mindsets manifested themselves, thereby setting into conflict the problems inherent in a paradox. In order for anything to happen, something had to immediately occur. And as in the case of Korah’s rebellion against Moses, when a fissure in the earth opened to swallow the rebels (Num chap 16), a fissure or rift in the fabric of the heavenly realm opened to form a bottomless pit into which the anointed cherub and his fellow rebels were cast, with this rift providing the “space” into which the physical creation could suddenly come into existence in an apparent “instant.”

As a theory, the “Big Bang” has problems—matter is not slowing down, but continuing to fly apart at an accelerating rate—but as a descriptive occurrence, the creation did suddenly come into existence. This is the testimony of both Genesis creation accounts.

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The reader should now read Genesis chapter 1, verse 1; followed by Genesis chapter 2, verse 4.

Commentary: What part of the creation is not created on the day when the heavens and the earth were created? What remains to be done? Time exists. Stars exist, or the heavens [plural] would not have been created. The sun and moon exist, or the heavens would not have been created. Even “generations” exist on this “day” when YHWH Elohim made the heavens and the earth.

Non-believers of all form, including so-called “Christian apologists,” will use the order of creation to prove that the Bible is not the authoritative word of God, that no God exists or that God is a singular triune entity or that the Creator of all “that is” also raised Jesus from the dead. And when they do, they run head-on into Ecclesiastes 3:11, which is part of God testing what humankind will believe.

Ecclesiastes 3:18 clearly states that God tests the children of man to see what they will believe about the nature of life after death: will Israel believe the lies of Egyptian magicians that men have immortal souls that go to heaven after death? Or are men like beasts, returning to the dust of the earth after death? So it is not a tenet of Moses that men have immortal souls, but a borrowed belief that came from Egypt via Israel’s Canaanite neighbors of 1000 BCE and via Greek merchants in the 1st-Century BCE. This concept of humankind being born with immortal souls enters Christendom through Greek converts in the 1st-Century CE; so Christianity as well as Judaism has failed the test that God established to see what the children of men will believe. They will believe the lie of the spiritual serpent, the reality of the serpent that tempted Eve (Gen 3:4), before they will believe God.

But why? Why would Christendom believe the prince of this world rather than the Prince of the world to come, whom disciples profess to adore? Is it because the creation or eternity [olam] has concealed Christ Jesus, making what God has been doing from the beginning unknowable? This is the claim made in Ecclesiastes 3:11. The creation—the production of matter and of time, or eternity—prevented Israel and now Christendom from knowing “what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Does God have secrets? You know that He does; for the prophet Daniel, given the long vision of “what is inscribed in the book of truth” (Dan 10:21), was told,

At that time [when events shown would occur] shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who name is found in the book. … But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase. (Dan 12:1, 4)

But Daniel begins this long, three chapter vision by recording,

In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a word was revealed to Daniel, who was called Belteshazzar. And the word was true, and it was [about] a great conflict. And he understood the word and had understanding of the vision. (Dan 10:1)

The sealing of this vision occurred by its apparent earthly fulfillment, with the king of the North being the Seleucid king and the king of the South being the Ptolemaic king. This “sealing” has faithfully kept this vision secret until the time of the end when God would choose to “reveal” what He has been doing from the beginning to the end; for the time of the end did not begin in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th Centuries BCE. No resurrection to everlasting life occurred before Christ Jesus, the last Adam, the first man to be born of Spirit (Matt 3:16-17), was raised from death (John 5:21), and glorified as the First of the firstfruits. So any apparent fulfillment of this long vision of what is inscribed in an invisible, spiritual book (the book of truth) can only serve to conceal and keep secret a vision about events that occur in the heavenly realm, where they have been recorded in a book that is humanly unreadable.

There is a time to hide, and a time to reveal;

a time to speak as a child, a time to preach the word of God.

Unfortunately, too many spiritual children have been posing as preachers of God when they need to shut their mouths and learn what it is that God would have them know.

The juxtaposition that has foiled some of the best minds of humankind is that the visible things of this world reveal the invisible things of God, even what He has been doing from the beginning to the end. Christian theologians have been willing to take a step or two down this road which the Apostle Paul blazed, but they have consistently inserted “time” into heavenly matters, when time only pertains to those things that exist in this created universe with its apparent solidity of matter. Whereas time occurs as a continuum or as a lateral line or as the “x” axis on a simple “x/y” graph, timelessness has events stacking up upon themselves as if all of these events occur simultaneously along the “y” axis of a two-dimensional graph. Therefore, as the holy day calendar represents spiritual creation markers portrayed by the two-crop harvest of Judean hillsides, which must necessarily occur sequentially along a time continuum, the reality of these physical high days occurs fully within a creation week that began with the creation of the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45; Rom 5:14) in the manner described by the creation of the first Adam, a man of mud, in Genesis 2:7.

This is important to note: no physical life of any kind preceded the creation of the first Adam. No plant. No fish or fowl. No insect. No beast. Thus, if the second creation account is “true,” then the first creation account cannot be about the physical creation, which is complete in Genesis 1:1. Therefore, the visible appearance of the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1:2 transforms this first creation account into the abstract for the spiritual creation—for what God has done and is doing from the beginning to the end (again Eccl 3:11). And this abstract has been concealed from humankind by the creation, by eternity being an endless lateral time continuum.

No spiritual life originating within time of any kind preceded the creation of the last Adam. No Egyptian Pharaohs went to heaven. No human being was born with an immortal soul. God was testing the children of men to see what they would believe, and what He found is that they would believe almost everything except that everlasting life is the gift of God (Rom 6:23), received through the Father raising the dead and the Son giving life to whom He will (again John 5:21), meaning that not until the Logos, as Theos who was with Theon from the beginning (John 1:1-2), came as His Son (John 1:14), His only (John 3:16), was the physical creation complete, or all in place (the creation was not complete until Jesus died at Calvary as the Passover Lamb of God – John 19:30).

The man of red mud, the first Adam, was made from the elements of this earth. He had no life within him except that which YHWH Elohim breathed into his nostrils, thereby making him a breathing creature, a nephesh, like other breathing creatures [the beasts of the fields]. God has been testing the children of men to see what they will believe: will they believe that they are like other beasts of the field? Evolution teaches that humankind is like other beasts; Christendom teaches that men are born with immortal souls. Therefore, by test Evolution as a theory—even though it rejects all knowledge of God—better prepares the children of men to accept God than does lawless Christianity, which cause the children of men to worship demons, especially the prince of this world. It would be better if those who consider themselves “Christian” teachers would build on the foundation the Apostle Paul laid in heavenly Jerusalem, this foundation being Christ Jesus (1 Cor 3:10-11), whom the creation has concealed from the beginning. If those who teach build on any foundation but the one Paul laid, their work will not only be burned up but they will be denied in their resurrection (Matt 7:21-23); for inevitably, they teach disciples to break the commandments of God.

The problem that has kept Judaism separated from Christendom is that of a second deity, Christ Jesus, existing within the Tetragrammaton /YHWH/ and within the regular plural /Elohim/. From atop Mount Sinai, Israel is specifically commanded to worship none other than YHWH, its Elohim, who is one. But what Israel did not understand—and what Arian Christians, the one God’rs, don’t today understand—is that the creation concealed the beginning from physically circumcised Israel. Therefore, it was impossible for natural Israel to “know” or recognize the man Jesus as the One whom Moses and the seventy elders saw (Ex 24:9-11) atop Sinai.

Although YHWH & Elohim have been deconstructed many times in Sabbath readings, one more time will not harm anyone: /Elohim/ is the regular plural of /Eloah/, which is /El/ or God as in El Shaddai (Gen 17:1), plus /ah/, aspirated or vocalized breath. So Eloah is “God + breath.”  Elohim is now “God + breath” an undetermined number of times, with this multiple being determined by YHWH Elohim creating adam in His image, male and female (Gen 1:27); so the multiple is two.

YHWH deconstructs to /YH/ or Yah (Ps 146:1a et al) + /WH/, which now agrees in number with the two, Adam and Eve, being one flesh (Gen 2:24) when Adam “marries” Eve by his declaration that she is bone of his bone. Theos was one with Theon in the beginning (John 1:1-2) in the same way that Adam is one with Eve, and in the same way that Jesus is one with the Father and that disciples will be one with Jesus (John chap 17). Thus, the following correspondences are true:

Thus, the following correspondences are true:

·   Theos + “Pneuma of Christ” (Rom 8:9) = Yah or /YH/ = Eloah.   

·   Theon + Hagion Pneuma, or “the Pneuma of the One who raised Jesus from the dead” (Rom 8:11) = /WH/ = Eloah.   

·   [Theos + Pneuma] + [Theon + Pneuma] = YHWH, natural Israel’s Elohim.

·   But Theos entered His creation as His Son (again John 1:14; 3:16), thereby ceasing to exist as Theos but existing only as the man Jesus of Nazareth, who when glorified received a new name that no man knows (Rev 19:12).   

·   To worship God in Spirit and in Truth requires abandoning the concept that the Father was the visible God of the natural Israel. The Father, as Theon, was “married” in the heavenly realm to Theos, with these two functioning as one entity.       

·   Unless the Father created the universe, He would not have been free to “marry” Israel within this created dimension for He was already “married.” Therefore, only the Creator of the universe was free to marry within this dimension, meaning that Israel could have no life in the heavenly realm where both Theos and Theon functioned as if married to each other.      

·   In order for human beings to enter the heavenly realm a place had to be made for them, as they would never be angels or servants.     

·   Since in timelessness the absence of life cannot co-exist with the presence of Theos and Theon could not end with death as human beings understand death. Rather, this marriage ended with Theos voluntarily leaving the heavenly realm to come as His Son, His only, thereby effectively “dying” in the heavenly realm as He would have to die in this physical realm to end His marriage to natural Israel (Rom 7:1-4). 

·   The proof that Theos created the universe is in His marriage to natural Israel, and in His future marriage as the glorified Son of Theon to glorified disciples who form the Bride. This, however, means that no one of all natural Israel now has a relationship with God unless this person has been born of Spirit and is spiritually circumcised. 

Jesus did not come as the Son of Theon, but rather as the only Son of Theos. He was made or born as the Son of Theon when the Holy Spirit, hagion pneuma, descended as a dove, lit and remained on Him. To fulfill all righteousness, He was born of Spirit [again, hagion pneuma] following His baptism. This is when He became the beloved Son of the Father, words spoken after He was born of Spirit through the hagion pneuma descending upon Him as a dove.

Identifying Himself as the beginning and the end (Rev 22:13), Jesus as Theos created the eternity that concealed Him from Israel, and from almost all of Christendom, especially from the one God’rs. He did it, not the Father, nor the prince of this world. He did it so that His question about whether He would find faith among His disciples when He returned would not be a rhetorical question. It is easy to believe in many gods, or even in one God, a single deity that awaits the arrival of immortal souls who have been “good” here on earth. It is not easy to perceive one’s spouse as oneself, or to imagine two deities functioning as one, with the one who created the universe occupying the “female” position in the marital relationship. How is a glorified patriarchal cultural to accept the position of help-mate to Christ Jesus, who was in this help-mate position to Theon? Faith, however, requires believing in what cannot be seen, and includes believing that a person does not marry his or her own body, that a transformation must occur that causes the Body of Christ to become the Bride, a transformation that causes disciples to develop separateness from Christ while maintaining unity with Christ, a transformation originating with disciples being liberated from indwelling sin and death through “empowerment” by the Holy Spirit [hagion pneuma]. And as the end which Israel did not know (and which Christendom does not today understand), Jesus will marry a Bride who has prepared Herself by individual disciples choosing to keep the commandments even when this “choice” costs the person his or her physical life. Yes, the “bride-price” is the death of the flesh, which comes from the first Adam and first Eve. This flesh cannot enter heaven, for it never was of heaven. Only the life that came from heaven in the form of “birth by Spirit” can enter heaven when mortality puts on immortality, a fact that has been concealed by the ugly lie of human beings being born with immortal souls.

It is relatively easy for a person to accept that Jesus had eternal life because He came from heaven; it is much more difficult to accept that He was only flesh and blood until the divine Breath of the Father [hagion pneuma] descended as a dove, lit and remained on Him. It is difficult to perceive that prior to His ministry, Jesus was His Son only, and His Son in a manner that we can somewhat now appreciate by understanding the cloning process. In order for Him to become the Father’s Son, He had to be born of the Father’s divine Breath. Then He was dependent upon the Father to return to Him the glory He had before He entered His creation (John 17:5); He was dependent upon the Father to resurrect and glorify Him. By faith, He believed that the Father would. By faith, disciples must believe that Jesus, to whom the Father has given all judgment (John 5:21-22) so that Jesus can give life to whom He will, will cause perishable flesh to become imperishable spirit that can pass through the fire separating this physical realm from the heavenly realm. By faith, disciples must hear the words of Jesus and believe the One who sent Him into His creation (John 5:24) as the Passover Lamb of God, offered as the acceptable sacrifice for all whom the Father has raised from the dead by giving the person spiritual life, either as part of the harvest of firstfruits or later as part of the great White Throne Judgment, the latter main crop wheat harvest. Both the Father and the Son must give life to a human being before this person can enter the heavenly realm, with those to whom the Father and the Son give life in this era constituting the harvest of firstfruits.

It is not enough to be born of Spirit; for the revealing of judgments upon Christ’s return (1 Cor 4:5) will determine whether the person will be resurrected to life, or to condemnation (John 5:28-29). Judgment today is only on the household of God (1 Pet 4:17). All others wait being resurrected from death—possession of physical life does not mean that the person possesses spiritual life, a gift from God (Rom 6:23). Such an equation (that human birth equates to receipt of an immortal soul) is of the old serpent, Satan the devil, not from Christ Jesus, the Bridegroom, the “ending” that this world has concealed from Israel and from Christendom.

For those who are not familiar with passages that have Christ Jesus as the Creator of this world, the following should be read:

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The reader should read John chapter 1, verse 3; 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 6; Ephesians chapter 3, verse 9; Colossians chapter 1, verse 16; Hebrews chapter 1, verse 2.

Commentary: Paul would not brag about the man that he was in the flesh, but he would boast about “the man” who entered the third heaven, whether in vision or not, with this man “hearing things that cannot be told” (2 Cor 12:4). Paul addressed these things in passing as he laid the foundation for the spiritual temple, and one of the “givens” that forms this foundation is that Jesus created all things, and that all things were created for Him. Thus, when a one God’r denies Christ by making the Father the Creator of the olam, this would-be teacher of Israel must be rejected out-of-hand. The person who is of Philadelphia might do well to limit contact with this one God’r, for the Arian, most likely, will not be convinced of his or her error by reason or by any reading of Scripture. The “new truth” that this Arian possesses is actually an old error that quickly takes possession of the Believer, transforming a simple faith into the “B” side of a simple lie: that physically circumcised Israel somehow remains in covenant with its God. This is not true. The creation concealed from Israel and from all who were lawless “what God has done from the beginning to the end” (again Eccl 3:11). It continues to conceal what could be known if the Believer realized that two are one through marriage in both the beginning and in the end.

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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."