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 democratic ideal.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of May 23, 2009
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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The person conducting the service should read or assign to be read Numbers chapter 16.
Commentary: The question has been asked before, what does Korah say that is so wrong that the Lord creates something new to take his and his friends’ lives?
In America and in much of the Western world, democracy rules—and the ultimate biblical expression of democratic ideals is made by Korah, who said, “‘You [Moses & Aaron] have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord’” (Num 16:3).
Again, where is fault to be found with what Korah says? Wasn’t all of the assembly of the Lord holy, every one of them? Shouldn’t the assembly have had ultimate authority in deciding matters such as whether to proceed on into the wilderness or return to a devastated Egypt, where there was food and land? After all, who remained in Egypt to oppose them? They were roughly equal to the Egyptians in number before the death angel passed through the land and Pharaoh’s army was lost in the Sea of Reeds (Ex 5:5)? So what gave Moses the authority to exalt himself as if he were a god?
Doesn’t the Lord give Moses that authority when He told Moses, “‘You shall speak to him [Aaron, his brother] and put words in his mouth, and I [YHWH] will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him’” (Ex 4:15–16).
If Moses is to be as God to Aaron, his brother, then Moses is to be as God to all of Israel, his brethren. So the rebuttal of everything that Korah and his assembled friends said was in the instructions Moses received before the Passover liberation of Israel. But the question must be asked, how could Korah and his assembled friends know what the Lord had told Moses while on the mountain? They couldn’t know, could they? No one witnessed what the Lord told Moses; Israel had to take Moses’ word for what was said. And the same applies to Moses and Aaron’s interaction with Pharaoh. Therefore, it took/takes faith to believe Moses, and the writings of Moses. It would have been as easy for Korah to dismiss or devalue the words of Moses as it is for endtime disciples to ignore the writings of Moses, but Jesus told Pharisees, “‘If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words’” (John 5:46–47). And the answer is they won’t: they won’t believe Jesus’ words because they don’t believe Moses’ writings.
Jesus gave Moses’ writings His approval, and if Jesus had been merely a Greek story teller as rabbinical Judaism contends, then His approval is not worth much, but if Jesus was the only Son of the Logos [O Logos] and the firstborn Son of the Father, then His approval certifies that Moses’ writings are authentic and are to be believed.
However, Israel, prior to Jesus, had ceased believing Moses’ writings, for Moses wrote, “‘Love the sojourner’” (Deut 10:19); yet Israel had no love for Samaritans, sojourners in the land of Judea. And as Mark records Jesus telling scribes and Pharisees, “‘Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honors me with their lips, / but their heart is far from me; / in vain do they worship me, / teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” / You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men’” (7:6–8) … the commandment of God is found in the Torah, the writings of Moses.
If an Israelite circumcised in the flesh or of the heart will not believe Moses, the Israelite will not believe either the Father or the Son; will not believe God. The person, outwardly pious or otherwise, is far from God and is without knowledge or understanding.
The Christian Church prides itself in not believing the writings of Moses … why else would the Christian Church worship on Sunday and ignore the high Sabbaths of God? Pause for a moment and consider: when the New Covenant (Heb 8:8–12; 10:16–17; Jer 31:31–34) is implemented and everyone’s neighbor and brother “Knows the Lord,” the Torah [in Greek, laws of me] will be placed within every Israelite and will be written on hearts. Thus, the present practice of the Christian Church to ignore the writings of Moses, to pretend they don’t pertain to the person who is circumcised of heart by spirit (Rom 2:28–29) is both intellectually dishonest and stupid! Who does the Christian Church thinks judges whether a person’s mortal flesh will put in immortality? The assembly of the Lord? A jury of a Christian’s equally lawless peers? Korah and his friends? John’s testimony is that all judgment has been given to the Son (5:22), so that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father (v. 23). So authority in the Church doesn’t rest with an assembly of human beings such as a college of cardinals or a council of elders. Rather, authority rests with the Son, the Head of the Body and the one to whom all judgment has been given. Therefore, because the Christian Church refuses to believe the writings of Moses, the Church doesn’t hear the words of Jesus regardless of its loud protestations to the contrary, and the Church, today, is without salvation.
Jude writes the following about the Church,
Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. (vv. 5–13 emphasis added).
Jesus, who was as God to those whom the Father drew from this world, was no more believed by the Church than Moses was believed by Korah and his friends.
Backing up to the first of the quote from Jude: “I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe” (v. 5) … Jude, the brother of Jesus, identifies Jesus as the God of the Old Testament; for the only God [theos] Israel knew was the Logos [o Logos], who entered His creation (John 1:3) as His only Son (John 3:16) to be born as the man Jesus (John 1:14) — and He became the firstborn Son of the Father when He received a second breath of life, the divine breath of the Father [pneuma Theon] after He was baptized to fulfill all righteousness (Matt 3:15–17). So when He asked to have the glory that He had before the world existed returned to Him (John 17:5), He acknowledged His former divinity which Jude references.
The commandments uttered from atop Mount Sinai, and the Ten Words twice inscribed on tablets of stone are the commandments of Jesus, the words of Jesus as given before the Logos entered His creation as His only Son; thus, if a person will not believe the writings of Moses, from whom we receive these living words, then logically a person will not hear the words of Jesus or believe the One who sent Him (John 5:24). The person is without life.
The Church blasphemes all it didn’t understand, and was destroyed (given over to death) by what human beings understand instinctively—and nothing much changed between when Jude wrote and the present; for in Paul’s words, the Church had its mind set on the things of the flesh, and to set the mind on the flesh is death (Rom 8:6). The evidence that the Church had/has its mind set on the flesh is that it did not/does not submit to God’s law (v. 8).
John warned the Church not to love the world or the things in the world, that if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in the person (1 John 2:15). And what is the historic concern of the Church? Is it not the things of this world, governance and the establishment of the kingdom of God run by human beings as if the kingdom of God were a human kingdom?
Frankly, the Church, when sin no longer had dominion over drawn disciples, presented itself as the obedient servant to sin, which led to death (Rom 6:16) … when there was absolutely no reason for the Church to continue in sin, it did—and not only did it continue in sin, it walked in the ways of Cain and sought to kill its righteous brother, which it will again do.
Democracy is of the anointed cherub in whom iniquity was found; it is not of God. It never will be of God. And all who participate in democratic governance of this world worship the Adversary, the prince of this world, not exactly what seemingly well-intentioned Christians want to hear—but what they need to hear!
Participation in democratic governance of this world is an unequal yoking of the person to the present prince of this world.
Where all of this will lead is to the Rebellion of Israel against God that occurs on day 220 of the Tribulation … in the texture of Scripture, the Rebellion of Israel (the great falling away — 2 Thess 2:3) is the right hand enantiomer (from Greek, opposite and part) of Israel’s rebellion against God in the Wilderness (Num chap 14), and Moses and Aaron form the left hand enantiomer of the two witnesses. Thus, what’s seen is that very shortly after day 220, the leaders of the restored Christian Church will challenge the two witnesses as Korah and his friends challenged Moses and Aaron.
Time can be written as a mathematical function of gravity, which is dependent upon mass. Thus, time was created when the universe was created. Heaven, now, is outside of this universe; hence, heaven is timeless or without time. There is only the present; there is no past or future. There is no decay; so one moment doesn’t decay into the next moment. And everything that is in heaven will have life, for “life” is required for movement where everything functions together in a dance of oneness as if all things were one thing. What’s seen is that if an entity is not one with the Father as Jesus is and was one with the Father, then the entity will cause gridlock that brings everything to a halt.
When iniquity was found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14–15), this iniquity or lawlessness would have threatened heaven itself and had to be removed immediately … the wages of sin or iniquity is death, but in a state of timeless all things must coexist as one thing, and the presence of life and the absence of life cannot simultaneously exist within an entity. Thus, there is no death in the heavenly realm. The anointed cherub and his rebelling angels cannot die as long as they remain in heaven; therefore, their rebellion was a very serious problem that required a radical solution for the iniquity found in an anointed cherub brought rebellion into a realm where all things must be one.
The amount of difficulty caused by the discovery of iniquity in an anointed cherub cannot be truly appreciated from within time, where “change” is not only possible but mandated. A solution as innovative as iniquity itself was mandated right now when iniquity was found, and that solution was the creation of the universe with its four unfurled dimensions in the bottomless pit, formed from a rent in the fabric of heaven.
The universe was created in darkness [lifelessness]. Its “light” came/comes from stars that function as living entities in the heavenly realm; thus, angels are called both stars and sons of God.
In the restoration of the Church following the second Passover is knowledge that the angels themselves to not have: the following is quoted from the third volume of the apologetics of Philadelphia,
“The last Eve will give birth to a spiritual Cain, who would be accepted if this son of today’s Christianity continues to do well (i.e., keeps the commandments), but sin lurks at its door as sin did for the first Cain (Gen 4:7). And Sin, the third horseman, will have (devour) the nation that is born on day 220 as righteous Abel was born on day one; for it is from rebellion within righteous Abel that Cain comes as it was from rebellion within righteous angelic sons of God that the Adversary came when iniquity was found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14–15). And as the Adversary drew a third of the stars of heaven down into darkness, the Son of Man will draw a third of humankind in glory up to God.
“The birth of the first Cain and Abel form the chiral image of the Christian Church at the beginning of the Tribulation, and as Seth was born as a replacement for Abel (Gen 4:25), the third part of humankind (again Zech 13:9) will be born filled with spirit as a spiritual Seth at the beginning of the Endurance. It is this spiritual Seth that will be accepted by God through simply enduring to the end in faith. Therefore, cinematically pulling back for a wide angle view of the plan of God, in the liberation of the Christian Church from indwelling sin and death at the second Passover, a righteous Abel is created as the Most High created the angels, suddenly giving to the angels life that they previously did not have [remember, Jesus said, “‘For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise’” — John 5:19 — and the Son as o logos created everything that has been made, including man]. Therefore, the resurrection of the Christian Church to life following the second Passover is the mirror image of the Father giving life to angels outside of time. These two events are analogous to the creation of the first Adam, a man of mud, and the creation of the last Adam, a life giving spirit (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45), with the resurrection (to spiritual life) of the Church comparable to the first Adam, meaning that the Christian Church today has spiritual life to the same degree that mud has physical life. Today’s Christian Church awaits receipt of the breath of life as the man of mud—without consciousness—awaited Elohim [singular in usage] breathing life into the corpse’s nostrils (Gen 2:7); thus, today’s Christian Church is without spiritual consciousness and has no knowledge of what will soon occur; i.e., receiving life following the second Passover.
“The first Adam as a corpse constructed of mud (red clay) looked like a man before receiving the breath of life, but was without life. Likewise, today’s Christian Church constructed of physically living human beings looks like the Christian Church on the morning after receiving life via receipt of the divine breath of the Father [pneuma Theon — from Matt 3:16], but looks are deceiving. Human eyes can see the difference between mud and men, but human eyes are as mud when it comes to seeing God: they do not and cannot see God.
The Christian Church is unaware of any second Passover liberation of Israel, a liberation from sin and death of such magnitude that Israel’s exodus from Egypt will be forgotten (Jer 16:14–15; 23:7–8). And it is in this model that today’s genuine disciples get to see what the Father and the Logos did when They created the angels … if we consider the love Christ Jesus has for His friends and younger brothers, we have to be awed by the privilege we have of seeing in type (scale model) what even angels haven’t seen; for those “Christians” who will be born filled with spirit post second Passover will be like the angels, who had no life or consciousness until they were suddenly created as sons of God prior to the creation of the universe (Job 38:4–7). We as Philadelphians will get to see the sudden restoration of the Christian Church when more than a billion “Christians” are suddenly filled with spirit—and we will get to see the Rebellion or great falling away in the birth of a spiritual Cain on day 220, a rebellion like that of Israel in the wilderness (Num chap 14) and a rebellion like that of the anointed cherub and his angels in heaven. Now we may not want to see the Rebellion, for Cain will seek to kill righteous Abel, but in the fate of Korah and his friends, we see the chiral image of what will happen to Cain and what happened to the fallen Lucifer and his angels.
When the earth opened up to swallow Korah and his friends, a fissure in the earth’s crust opened that could be likened to the bottomless pit, the Abyss (Rev 20:1 et al), a rent in the fabric of heaven in which Lucifer and his angels were cast (2 Pet 2:4; Jude v. 6) so that they would not create gridlock in heaven.
In Israel’s exodus from Egypt, endtime disciples see the model or pattern for the restoration of the Church, with the plagues functioning as the successive attempts to inserted life into the Church beginning with the Reformation. But in the sudden restoration of the Church, endtime disciple see the shadow of chiral image of the sudden creation of angels; for the problem of introducing life in timelessness required a solution analogous to passing through the Sea of Reeds on dry land or passing through the split Mount of Olives (Zech 14:3–4; Rev 12:16), a passing from death to life as Jesus left the tomb before the stone was rolled away (Matt 28:1–6). And in Korah’s rebellion, endtime disciples see the model for the Rebellion of day 220 in the Tribulation, with those disciples who are of the great falling away arguing for returning to the dogmas of today’s lawless and lifeless Christian Church, and challenging the authority of the two witnesses. It is in their challenging the two witnesses that endtime disciples hear what the anointed cherub’s and his angels’ argument for democracy.
Will the thing created long strive with its creator? Will man long strive with God, or the Adversary with the Most High? At what point will the creator simply say that He has had enough and put a sudden end to the strife as the Lord did in the wilderness of Paran (Num 14:21–23) and as He did with Korah (Num 16:31–33) and as He will do with the Adversary and his angels (Rev 12:7–10; Rev 19:20; 20:10)?
Those disciples who join the Rebellion of day 220 come under a great delusion that prevents them from repenting, turning to God and being saved—this delusion functions as the bottomless pit. Rebelling “Christians” are cast into this great delusion as if this delusion were a geographical location, a revelation that discloses additional knowledge about the bottomless pit. And it is with this thought, this contemplation that we will leave Philadelphians this Sabbath before the Pentecost weekend.
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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."