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 all of us possess knowledge.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of May 29, 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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Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. (1 Cor 8:1–13 emphasis added)
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What does Paul mean when he says, we know that “all of us possess knowledge”; this “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up? To what knowledge does Paul refer? Probably not knowledge about a particular craft or trade, and probably knowledge about the worship of God; for apparently in the same letter, the saints at Corinth wrote Paul and said, “‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman’” (1 Cor 7:1), which Paul gently refutes by saying that “the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (v. 4), thereby negating the epicurean principle of focusing on self, denial of self, and self-purity to avoid pain.
Without a cursory understanding of pagan Greek philosophy and practices, what Paul writes to the saints at Corinth will not be understood by endtime disciples. Socrates valued “knowledge” and the possession of knowledge, with knowledge about human life being of the highest value and with self-knowledge being necessary for success and human goodness. Socrates believed a person must be self-aware of his or her existence, that evil is the result of ignorance for the person who knows what is right will automatically do it. Thus Socrates correlated knowledge with virtue, which the Apostle Peter separates (2 Pet 1:5). Whereas Socrates correlated knowledge with virtue and virtue with happiness (for Socrates, the truly wise would do what is right and would do good and would therefore be happy), Peter tells those saints who are mature in their faith—unlike the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote (1 Cor 3:1–3)—that their faith must be supplemented by virtue, and virtue must be supplemented by knowledge, and knowledge must be supplemented by self-control, and self-control [Epicurus’ position] with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love (2 Pet 2:5–7) in order to escape the corruption of this world because of sinful desire. … Thomas Jefferson considered himself an Epicurean. John Locke was expressing epicurean values when he wrote that people have a right to life, liberty, and property, first draft wording of the American Declaration of Independence. The edit from “property” to “happiness” was a stronger affirmation of Epicurus’ advocacy of seclusion and non-involvement in world affairs (his “garden principle”).
Aristotle held that when a person acts in accordance with his or her nature and full potential, the person will do good and be content, with unhappiness and frustration caused by unrealized potential that leads to failure and a poor life. Aristotle said, “Nature does nothing in vain,” thereby making nature godly and human nature tripart, vegetative (physical), animal (emotional), and rational (mental). Happiness was the ultimate goal, and civil life and wealth were simply means of achieving happiness, with self-realization the most certain path to happiness. Hence, the framers of America were welding Aristotle to Epicurus when they made the edit from Locke’s life, liberty, and property to the adopted wording of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Hedonism holds that foremost ethic is the maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain, with physical and/or spiritual bliss being of greatest value, a position Homer would seem to refute in The Odyssey centuries earlier. Cyreniac hedonism (founded by Aristippus of Cyrene) supported immediate gratification: Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for tomorrow we die. Cyrenaic hedonism encouraged disciples to pursue enjoyment, holding that pleasure is the only good. Thus, Cyrenaic hedonism was only a step beyond the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, and was the logical outgrowth of Aristotelian happiness … what Americans have seen in the nation’s temper and history, especially in the 20th-Century, is the social reenactment of Greek philosophy, with each Greek philosopher wearing a mask labeled Christianity.
What the saints at Corinth wrote to Paul was an advocacy of epicurean ideology, and was their version of what Korah said to Moses: “‘For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them’” (Num 16:3). What Korah wrote would have been true if all in the congregation had not broken their covenant with the Lord in the gold calf incident (Ex chap 32), then rebelled against the Lord in the wilderness of Paran (Num chap 14) where the children of Ishmael dwelt. So while Korah and the congregation regarded themselves as still under the conditional covenant about which the Lord said, “‘Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’” (Ex 19:5–6), the congregation, except for Joshua and Caleb, was actually condemned to death in the wilderness (Num 14:12, 20–22; Ps 95:10–11) because of the nation’s unbelief (Heb 3:19). And the saints at Corinth really had no knowledge of God, but were still on spiritual milk for they remained infants in Christ (1 Cor 3:1–3).
What the American founders did in the 18th-Century was wed Greek philosophy and Korah’s expression of representational democracy into a republic with a limited life-expectancy, but a republic too many Christians will attempt to save when the Second Passover occurs. These Christians will have knowledge (à la Socrates), and they will have self-realization (à la Aristotle) and they will seek to have America mind its own business (à la Epicurus), but they will have no love for genuine servants of God. Instead, they will seek to kill them, thinking that they do God a favor in eliminating all dissenting voices. To them their form of “Christianity” is true, but it won’t be. And they will war among themselves about whether God is one or whether He is three.
Paul told the saints at Corinth that the knowledge they possessed puffed up (i.e., caused the saints to be filled with sin); that the knowledge these saints possessed did not cause them to love God, or to be known by God … so again, what kind of knowledge did these saints possess? Was it not knowledge that came from pagan philosophers?
As a faithful apostle of Christ Jesus, Paul does not teach one message to the saints at Corinth and another message, a different message, to converts at Rome. Thus, for Paul to be consistent in his messages, he writes to the spiritual infants at Corinth the same wisdom, the same message he writes to the Romans about bearing the weak and not causing the weak in faith to stumble by returning to the worship of demons.
Whereas Paul’s treatise to the Romans is more encompassing and therefore more ambiguous in its wording than his letter is to the Corinthians, Paul delivers the same message in 1 Corinthian 8 as he does in Romans 14—and that message is what he wrote to Timothy in still different wording:
Now the spirit [ho pneuma] expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Tim 4:1–5 emphasis added)
Is a hog made holy by the word of God? A hog is not made holy by Scripture. So would an Israelite, a person circumcised of heart, a person who believes and who knows the truth, receive with thanksgiving a hog as food? The Israelite would not. A Gentile might, but an Israelite—a Christian—would not. However, a bull or a ram is made holy by Scripture, and would be received with thanksgiving by an Israelite, unless (and here is where what Paul writes about food pertains) the Israelite is merely circumcised in the flesh and the bull or ram has been sacrificed to an idol. The meat of such a sacrifice is no longer holy, but is profane to this outwardly circumcised Israelite. It would not be received with thanksgiving, but would be spurned for only the surface of the outwardly circumcised Israelite serves God. The commandments dictate what the hand and the body of the outwardly circumcised Israelites does, not what this Israelite thinks. Inward love is missing. So the knowledge that this outwardly circumcised Israelite has puffs the person up and the person knows nothing, but is prime “food” for demons and their ministers who would have the person believe, for example, that unless the name of Jesus is uttered in a bastardized Hebrew pronunciation, the person is condemned to the lake of fire.
The point Paul makes is that beef is beef. If it hasn’t been bled properly because USDA regulations require that the animal is killed before it is bled, a flank steak is still a flank steak; a rump roast is still a rump roast. The clean or holy animal is not necessarily made unclean because of how it is killed although an animal that has died of itself must still be viewed with suspicion. But a moose killed when it wrecked an automobile is an animal that can be salvaged [or portions of the animal can be salvaged] by the person strong in faith whereas the person weak in faith will soak the meat of a deer the person kills while hunting in salt water to remove possible blood that remained when the animal was shot with a 12 gauge slug through the lungs at fifteen yards, an actual occurrence that happened to a Philadelphian in a congregation pastured by a novice who has since left the fellowship.
It is the responsibility of those who are strong in faith to bear those who are weak and to eat the meat served when the venison was ruined by soaking it in salt water, and to eat without commenting on how the meat was handled: the person (hunter), on the advice of his long-since departed pastor, sought to please God by making sure he didn’t eat blood. The heart was right, but the knowledge the person had was what Paul strove to refute. If the hunter had field dressed the deer, taken it home, skinned it and hung it head down for the few days when the meat was aging before the meat was processed, no blood would have remained in the animal that wouldn’t have remained if the animal had been killed in a kosher manner. The person wasn’t eating blood, or blood sausage. Besides, the venison would have been made holy because it was received with thanksgiving, first as a meat that is made holy by Scripture and second by a prayer of thanks. The meat would then be eaten, entering the stomach and passing from the bowels. The person would not be defiled. The person has not lusted for a meat not given to the children of faith.
But hogs were not given to Israel as food, nor were shrimp or lobsters or catfish. Whereas an Israelite isn’t defiled by a bite of pork in his or her belly, the Israelite is defiled by lusting for what wasn’t given to Israel as food.
Going back about forty years, two American oilmen working in Saudi Arabia tired of the local men drinking their cold water, and they put a piece of bacon in the bottle of water atop the water cooler. Several days passed. When the local men (all Muslims) realized they had been drinking water defiled by pork, they sought to kill the two oilmen who were, by their employer, transferred in the middle of the night to Alaskan oilfields. The offense was a major one, for in the minds of the local men in Saudi Arabia, contact with pork permanently defiles them and would keep them out of heaven. … The point that both Paul and Jesus made is that what enters a person through the mouth is passed out through the bowels, whereas what a person says discloses what is in the person’s heart and mind. Therefore, the Christian who says it is okay for Christians to eat meats not given to Israel as food acknowledges that this “Christian” is not of God and does not believe God and does not seek to be holy as God is holy (1 Pet 1:15–16). It isn’t the meat in the mouth that defiles this Christian, but the unbelief in his or her heart.
What Paul wrote to Timothy addressed those who require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth … why (for many centuries) would a Catholic not eat a beef steak on Friday? Did liars, teaching the doctrines of demons, direct Christian converts not to eat meat created to be received with thanksgiving? That was certainly the case. Hence, French Catholics on the frontier in 18th-Century New France sought beaver for Friday meals, for to them beaver wasn’t meat but a fish since it lived in the water (eating beaver on Fridays is a classic case of having knowledge and knowing nothing).
Paul strove to teach the spiritual infants of Corinth that a bullock sacrificed to Zeus was not made unclean because of where it was killed: an idol is nothing but codified imagination. However if eating meat in an idol’s temple could cause the person weak in faith to believe that the one who was strong was worshiping the idol, the person who was strong should forego his or her liberty to eat …
For many years, the clubs in Las Vegas offered very good buffets for very little money. The food was almost free for the clubs used “food” to get people into the clubs and to keep them gambling in the particular club when the person became hungry. However, a goodly number of Nevada residents and visitors began taking advantage of the buffets, only going into the clubs to eat and not spending any money otherwise. These “free-lunchers,” many retired and living on Social Security, were doing to Las Vegas entertainment meccas, where Christians have very little business to transact, what Paul describes when he writes of the strong in faith eating meat in an idol’s temple, with any meat offered to an idol being ceremonially unclean for a Hebrew and therefore unclean for the Hebrew-imitator puffed up with a little knowledge but lacking discernment.
As in the case of a mature Christian being able to go into a gambling club and not gamble, nor hear or see the spiritual filth that too-often passes as entertainment, the Christian strong in faith, knowing that an idol was nothing but worship of imagination, could eat meat from bulls sacrificed to Zeus, meat that was unclean [common] from having been offered to an idol. For only the thigh bones were actually offered to Zeus: the remainder of the bulls was available for the worshipers to eat. The person strong in faith could philosophically eat meats offered to the gods of the pantheon and thereby devour the pantheon, as Nevadan free-lunchers were devouring the wealth of the clubs. But if eating meat in an idol’s temple could cause a brother weak in faith to stumble and return to worshipping idols, the Christian who was strong in faith, out of love for his brother, would refrain from eating any meat that might have been slain to appease the none-deities of the pantheon.
In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus returns from the land of the dead and returns to the island of Aeaea, home of the witch Circe, to perform the funeral rites for Elpenor who had fallen from her roof and who had preceded Odysseus into the land of the dead as a shade. Circe becomes aware of the men’s presence on her island and decked in rich regalia, her handmaids trailing behind her with trays of bread, meat, and wine, and Odysseus, in telling his story [double-voiced discourse], said, “And the lustrous goddess, standing in our midst, / hailed us warmly: ‘Ah my darling, reckless friends! / You who ventured down to the House of the Dead alive, / doomed to die twice over—others die just once’” (Bk 12: lines 21–24, trans by Robert Fagles) … when the Odyssey is reduced to its central metaphor, the blind poet’s audience hears an argument holding that family and being united with family is of greater worth than immortality and life in perpetual bliss. Even when knowing what death holds for a person, Odysseus chooses hardships, home and family over immortality, ease and life with a beautiful nymph.
After performing the funeral rites for Elphenor, and after eating and while lying with Circe, Odysseus is warned about what he will face on his journey home; he is warned not to harm the cattle or sheep of Helios, the sun god, on the island of Thrinacia. But when, after many hardships, he and his men arrived at the island, Odysseus’ men went ashore and were stranded by contrary winds for a month. They hungered, and they killed some of Helios’ cattle: “Surrounding them [the cattle] in a ring, they lifted prayers to the gods, / plucking fresh green leaves from a tall oak for the rite, / since white strewing-barley was long gone in the ship. / Once they’d prayed, slaughtered and skinned the cattle, / they cut the thighbones out, they wrapped them round in fat, / a double fold sliced clean and topped with strips of flesh. / And since they had no wine to anoint the glowing victims, / they made libations with water, broiling all the innards, / and once they’d burned the bones and tasted the organs— / hacked the rest into pieces, piercing them with spits” (12.383–392). And none of the crew returned home. All died en route.
The Odyssey gives an early look into Greek paganism before Plato and neo-Platonists spun the land of the dead into heaven and an ever-burning hell. But our purpose here is to glimpse how Greeks made sacrifices to Zeus: the rituals would have changed some with the passage of seven centuries, and with refinements coming from sacrifice in a temple, but the core of the ritual would have remained the same. The thigh bones were burned with the fat of the bull and some flesh, thus making a lot of meat from every sacrifice available for the people to eat. Without refrigeration, the saints living near a pagan temple would have been the beneficiaries of cheap beef, for the devout Hebrew would not have eaten any meat offered to an idol that is nothing but codified imagination.
The beef that Odysseus’ men poached from Helios bellowed from the spits and the hides began to crawl (12.426–428), and once the men left the island, they were attacked by killer squalls. The ship was hit by a lightning bolt and wrecked, and Odysseus alone survived. He was eventually cast ashore on Ogygia, Calypso’s island where he slept with the beautiful nymph and was offered immortally, but pined for his wife and his home even though leaving Calypso meant certain mortal death … few men today would choose family and home, with knowledge of what the underworld holds, over the allure of life with a beautiful goddess and immortality.
The afterlife promises made by Islam and by the principle Arian Christian fellowship vary little from what was offered to Odysseus if he had stayed on Ogygia with Calypso—plenty of food, no work, and sex with a perpetually gorgeous woman forever—but as the man of deceit, the man of twists and turns [the Trojan horse was the alleged brainchild of Odysseus] knew, eternal bliss is not enough to satisfy eternally. Pagan utopia has no more lasting appeal than Christian socialism, or fully-realized Marxism. And it is the journey home that cannot be realized by man, for Odysseus, after returning to Ithaca as a beggar-king, then slaying those young men who were courting his wife, Penelope, then bedding his wife, will be last seen with an oar over his shoulder, heading inland to where the oar is mistaken for a winnowing fan (11.139–146). He will have no rest until he dies “a gentle, painless death, far from the sea” (11.154). He will then be with all of his people. For ancient Greeks, being eternally with one’s family as a shade in the House of the Dead was more desirable than immortality and the constant struggle of personalities seen in their pantheon—the pantheon existed to make alive the failings of human nature, a nature in subjection to the Adversary. Probably without realizing the import of the message delivered, the blind poet, in the Odyssey, holds that death is preferable to life in immortal bliss even when life as a physically living slave is better than being a lord in the House of the Dead, a message that seems to conflict with itself, thereby giving birth to the dilemmas that plagued later Greek philosophers.
Odysseus rejected hedonism before it was known to later philosophers.
But paganism is paganism: there is no truth in what Odysseus said about his visit to the land of the dead … note, in double voice discourse, it isn’t the author [in this case, the blind poet Homer] speaking or even the fictionalized narrator, but a character in the story is telling a story, thereby making the events at least twice removed from the auditor. And it is the presence of a second voice in a narrative that causes most modern readers problems.
An English literature class that introduces the concept of double voiced discourse will usually use Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom as an example text, with even the title repeating itself, but the double-voiced text that has principally shaped secular history is Scripture, the Bible.
Paul, in writing to the saints, doesn’t prevent the strong in faith from eating in the temples of idols except as the strong will cause the weak to stumble … seldom does a Sabbath reading venture outside of Scripture; this reading has. But understanding the roots for why 1st-Century CE Jews rejected Jesus lies in the nature of double voiced discourse: throughout the Law [Torah] and the Prophets, the Lord spoke directly to the patriarchs and then to the people of Israel through the prophets relaying the Lord’s words with the establishing clause, Thus saith the Lord —
The prophet was the scribe of the Lord. The prophet was not writing his own words, but was writing what the Lord had told the prophet to say. But once the spirit was given (i.e., a second breath of life, the breath of God — pneuma Theon) to first the man Jesus of Nazareth (Matt 3:16), then to ten of the first disciples (John 20:22), the words of the Most High became double voiced discourse …
Jesus told Jews that sought His life,
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For 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 5:39–47 emphasis added)
Believing the words of Jesus is prefaced by believing the writings of Moses. In Greek, belief and faith can be interchanged; thus, having faith in Jesus and in the words He spoke is necessarily prefaced with believing the writings of Moses. Jesus’ words are heard as reverberations of the writings of Moses.
But Jesus spoke only the Father’s words during His ministry; thus, Jesus voiced the Father’s words, which were “too large” to be uttered in human words that describe the things of this physical world. The healings and miracles that Jesus performed during His ministry were the non-uttered portion of the Father’s words, with the writings of Moses revealing the words of the Lord that can be understood by human beings not yet born of God. Hence, unless a person believes the writings of Moses, which is to believe the physical utterance of the Lord, the person will not believe the words of Jesus which are metaphorical (John 16:25), for Jesus’ words described the things of heaven in the words of this physical world, with His miracles completing His utterance of the Father’s words.
The disciples wrote as Scripture their experiences and their opinions, with their words (with exceptions) not originating in visions in which the disciples served as scribes for the Lord, but originating as accounts of what happened as they were with Jesus and originating as their opinions reflecting what they “knew” was true and based in righteousness, with the Book of Revelation being the primary exception. … Yes, opinions of certain disciples are recognized as Scripture by endtime Christians.
Because Jesus did not tie His words to the teachings of a recognized human authority, Jesus did not do what even modern scholarship demands; i.e., build upon the work of those “experts” who have preceded the person. So it is little wonder that the Jews who sought Jesus’ life refused to come to Him: they simply couldn’t understand what Jesus said, and they certainly couldn’t believe Him, who seemed to come without schooling and come from outside of orthodoxy. And the same held true for the early disciples: Judaism’s orthodoxy couldn’t believe that the opinions of Paul, or of a tax collector, or of fishermen had the authority of God. They couldn’t imagine the existence of a divine force Jesus identified as the parakletos that would/will teach disciples “‘all things and bring to [the disciples’] remembrance all that [Jesus]’” said to them (John 14:26).
Without an understanding of spiritual birth coming through receipt of a second breath of life, a breath that comes from heaven, the breath of the Father [pneuma Theon] that will consume the person if not contained in a vessel that has also come from heaven—Christ Jesus, specially the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos]—no person, Christian, Jew, or Gentile, can understand the words of Jesus. The person without understanding will be as Nicodemus was (see John 3:10–15); the person without understanding is like the Corinthian who has knowledge that puffs up (i.e., knowledge of what Greek philosophers taught) but who knows nothing, for the person will inevitably believe that human beings are born with immortal souls, a teaching of Greek paganism that has spread as a plague throughout the people of the Book.
In the Moab covenant (Deut chaps 29–32 — see Deut 29:1 for the defining reference to this second heavenly covenant, heavenly in that it was not ratified by blood but by a song [Heb 9:23] as the second Sinai covenant was ratified by the shining of Moses’ face from entering into the presence of God [Ex 33:14; 34:29], a better sacrifice than blood), the Lord set before the children of Israel life or death. They were to choose: obey the commandments of the Lord that Moses commanded the children of Israel that day, with all of the Book of Deuteronomy apparently being given on that day (a “day” that may have been more than 24-hours long), with obedience coming by loving the Lord, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments and statutes and rules (Deut 30:15–16), or choose death, the only choice offered to sons of disobedience … prior to the giving of the spirit, pagan Greeks could not choose life: it wasn’t offered to them. They were only offered death, the absence of breath. Hence, Homer, in The Odyssey, through god-like Achilles through Odysseus speaks of the breathless dead (11.558), with Odysseus to have entered the House of the Dead as one who has “breath” and who can therefore leave to again enter the House of the Dead when he loses his breath.
Because pagan Greeks could not choose life, they chose happiness instead as their highest value for no educated Greek truly believed in the pantheon after the 5th-Century BCE. Oh, they spoke of the pantheon, and they wrote about the pantheon, but by their actions and by their advocacy of reason, they inevitably succumbed to the argument commonly but perhaps wrongly attributed to Epicurus, the trilemma: God is omnipotent, God is good, but Evil exists. The trilemma is expressed as, Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent? Is he both able and willing? Then whence comes evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? Epicurus concluded that neither good nor evil came to men from the deities of the pantheon; that they were too busy with their own affairs to be bothered by the affairs of men. And it is this absence of the Greek pantheon’s involvement in the affairs of men that most influenced the Hellenist philosopher before Christ.
For ancient Greeks, immortality meant never losing one’s breath, with the shallow or resting breath [psuche] metonymically representing all that goes with life. The Greek icon psuche is then usually translated into English as “soul,” which badly distorts what Jesus said when He sent out His disciples to the lost sheep of the house of Israel as the left-hand enantimer of the Remnant in the Endurance: “‘And do not fear those who kill the body [soma] but cannot kill the soul [psuche]. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell’” (Matt 10:28) … the spirit [pneuma Theon] had not yet been given to the Twelve when Jesus sent them out; so Jesus assigns to their physical breath qualities that pertain to the spirit that gives life. Whereas ancient Greeks held that the body could lose its life-sustaining breath, the body would continue to live in the House of the Dead as a shade, a “shadow” of the former self, doing the things that the former self did.
In telling his tale, Odysseus said, “But look, the ghost / of my mother came! My mother, dead and gone now … / … I broke into tears to see her here, but filled with pity, / even throbbing with grief, I would not let her ghost / approach the blood till I had questioned Tiresias myself. / At last he came. The shade of the famous Theban prophet, / holding a golden scepter, knew me at once and hailed me: / ‘Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, master of exploits, / man of pain, what now, what brings you here, / forsaking the light of day / to see this joyless kingdom of the dead? / Stand back from the trench—put up your sharp sword / so I can drink the blood and tell you all the truth’” (11.93–107).
If the sword of Odysseus could keep shades in the House of the Dead at bay, then these shades are breathless bodies. They are figments of a human imagination; for a sword only deters a person who can be killed. A sharp-edged sword would not deter “ghosts” or demons or life without a physical body. So the ancient Greeks’ breathless dead had died because they lost their breath, not their bodies.
What comes to endtime disciples is the translation of the Greek icon pneuma into Latin as spīritus, the usual Latin linguistic icon representing “breath” or “the breath of a god,” and the translation of the Latin icon spīritus into English as “spirit” or “ghost,” with few endtime disciples realizing that life comes from “breath,” physical life coming from the breath breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam and eternal life coming from the breath of the God which descended in the visible form of a dove on the last Adam, the man Jesus of Nazareth.
Greek paganism had a differing set of values: immortality came from pleasing a god or goddess sexually. For Greeks, immortality was a matter of works. So when Greek philosophers, the ideological priests of Greek paganism, rejected worship of the pantheon, they were ill-prepared for the anti-family message of Christianity … Jesus said,
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matt 10:34–39)
It isn’t the journey home that matters for Christians, but the journey of faith that cleanses hearts so that they can be circumcised (Deut 30:6; Rom 2:28–29; Col 2:11), thereby making the inner new creature born as a son of God a part of the house of God as physical circumcision made an ancient Hebrew male part of the house of Israel. It doesn’t necessarily follow that biological fathers or mothers or sons or daughters are also sons in the house of God. In this era, each “Christian” must be individually called by the Father and the Son, with this situation changing following the Second Passover liberation of Israel. However, until then, every Christian truly born of God—most are not born of God—was foreknown by the Father and predestined to be called and justified in this age (see Rom 8:29–30). Each becomes a fractal image of Christ Jesus, with “Christ” being the fractal of the temple [house] of God.
If a person will not keep the commandments by faith as the reasonable expectation of the house of God, the person simply has not been born of God for the person remains hostile to God (Rom 8:7). The person, regardless of how he or she identified him or herself, is spiritually as the Jews were who sought to kill Jesus because He spoke the words of the Father on the Sabbath and healed the invalid of 38 years. These Jews would accept the words of any other person, except Moses (see John 7:19), who said, “‘Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt’” (Deut 10:16–19), but they would not accept the words of Jesus for they truly didn’t believe the writings of Moses.
When the lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25)—he knew he didn’t have indwelling internal life in the form of an immortal soul—Jesus asked the lawyer how he read the Law. The lawyer answered correctly: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself’” (v. 27). And Jesus said, “‘You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live’” (v. 28) … the lawyer asked, “‘And who is my neighbor’” (v. 29).
If a person has to ask who his neighbor is, the person doesn’t have much love for anyone except those like the person. The lawyer had knowledge, godly knowledge, but no love.
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."