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 questions from readers.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of June 23, 2012
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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When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (Gen 6:1–13)
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Occasionally, a person sends in questions that when answered have a broad application. Such a letter arrived, with the nature of the questions revealing that the one who asks has been asked these questions by others … when it comes to assigning meaning to Scripture, there are principles involved that are beyond the domain of academics. Obviously, not everything that happened to Israel between Abraham and the birth of Jesus made it into Scripture. Nor everything that happened in the antediluvian world. Only those things that form the shadow and type [copy] of things that happen to the reality—circumcised of heart Israel—casting the shadow form Scripture, with the structure of Scripture representing one narrative told from differing narrative stances; i.e., one shadow cast that serves as a summation for events and with subsequent shadows cast that are of the same event but are cast form closer distances and thus with greater detail.
A shadow exists in one less dimension than the thing that casts the shadow; therefore, Israel not born of spirit casts as its shadow common humankind whereas Israel born of God (born of spirit) casts as its shadow Israel not born of spirit. By this principle, Israel filled-with and empowered by spirit casts as its shadow Israel born of spirit. But when Israel is filled with spirit, there is nothing in Israel that blocks the light; hence, there is no shadow cast. Only when born-of-God Israel still has indwelling sin will Israel cast a shadow as the outwardly circumcised nation of Israel.
Scripture isn’t about common humankind, but about the creation of sons of God—human sons of God that will replace fallen angelic sons of God virtually man for man as the children of Israel in the wilderness and numbered in the census taken on the plains of Moab (Num chap 26) replaced virtually man for man the nation of Israel that left Egypt and was numbered in the census of the second year (Num chap 1). As a result, before the spirit was given and the inner selves of Israel were made alive and Israel became the nation that was circumcised of heart, women didn’t count and were analogous to sons of God’s fleshly bodies, the physical houses in which the living inner selves dwelt until their change comes [“living inner selves” from having received a second breath of life, the breath of God in the breath of Christ]; for flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom and truly cannot enter the kingdom (1 Cor 15:50). Thus, the living inner self that is unable to rule over the fleshly body can be likened to a human person in physical slavery; whereas the living inner self when empowered by the body being filled with spirit can be likened to a human person who has been set free from physical slavery. So Israel’s slavery in Egypt is analogous to [forms the shadow of] Christians being born of spirit in bodies that remain consigned to sin and death, with this being the mystery that Paul never understood (see Rom 7:15) … until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation to be circumcised of heart, the living inner selves of Christians are analogous to outwardly circumcised Israel enslaved to Pharaoh.
Common humankind is to two sorts: Israel and not-Israel, or Gentile, with the distinction not being biological but a matter of selection. Thus, anyone can be Israel when selected by God and drawn from this world by God the Father giving to the person a second breath of life, again His breath in the from-heaven-vessel that is the breath of Christ. So from common humankind comes sons of righteousness, selected not because of their righteousness but because of their heavenly parent’s righteous, with the first time selection being made by God being in the days of Noah: Noah’s sons were all sons of righteousness, not because they were righteous but because Noah was righteous, with Noah serving as a shadow and type of Christ Jesus.
Backing up to get behind Noah we enter the realm of the mythic: the narrative perspective is distant, that is these events are so greatly removed from the present state of humankind that nothing seems real, for common human persons do not live today nearly a thousand years. However, in the Millennium, the Thousand Years beginning with Christ Jesus’ return as the Messiah, death will no longer reside within the fleshly bodies of humanity; so there will be no upper restriction on how long a person can live physically except for the end of the age, the conclusion of the Thousand Years.
There are only two periods in the course of human affairs when human persons will live a thousand years or nearly so: the antediluvian age that ended with Noah and the Millennium, the Thousand Years between the Second Advent and when Satan is released from his chains in the Abyss. Therefore, if there is a reality that casts as it shadow the antediluvian age, this reality must necessarily be the Millennium, which gives to endtime disciples a guide for assigning meaning to the mythical antediluvian age from Adam to Noah.
The Apostle Paul identifies Christ Jesus as the last Adam, a life-giving spirit (cf. 1 Cor 15:45; Rom 5:14), and endtime disciples can see how those things that happened to Adam before the Temptation Account forms the shadow and type of those things that happened to Christ Jesus after He received a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theou] in the bodily form of a dove alighting on Him and according to Mark’s Gospel entering into Him (see Mark 1:10 in Greek). For Adam was created outside of the Garden of Eden, then placed inside the Garden, with the Garden forming a shadow and copy of the temple. Adam was there alone in the garden until God created the beasts of the field that Adam named: Christ Jesus named the other inhabitants of the temple—Sadducees and especially Pharisees—by calling them serpents, vipers, hypocrites, their names to this day. Then God caused a deep sleep to come over Adam, and from a wound in his side, God took flesh and bone of Adam (flesh with life in it) and made from it woman, who did not receive indwelling life from Elohim [singular in usage] breathing into her nostrils as was done for Adam, but received life from Adam’s life being placed in her and used to construct her. And this is what happened spiritually when Jesus, resurrected from death and accepted by the Father, on this same day breathes on ten of His disciples and says, Receive the breath holy [pneuma hagion] (John 20:22). It is on this day when the spiritual Eve [Zion] is created, with this day being analogous to when God presented Eve to Adam upon wakening him from the deep sleep (analogous to death).
So today, it is fairly easy to see how the events in the antediluvian age serve as the shadow and copy of spiritual events, with Christ Jesus being the Light of Day One (2 Cor 4:6) of the “P” creation (Gen 1:1–2:3) … again, in a question I have asked many times, what portion of the creation was not created in Genesis 1:1? Everything physical, including the heavens and the earth, are filled [Heb: bara] in Genesis 1:1, including the creation of common humankind, with Adam being created on the day when “the heavens and the earth” were created (Gen 2:4).
But the dark portion of Day One is not defined by the ticks of an atomic clock, but by the absence of God the Creator from His creation; so the dark or night portion of Day One can be unknowably long. And what happens in this long spiritual night can only be known via speculation, which means that little can really be known. For Adam is created during the dark portion of Day One—and Noah was born during the dark portion of Day One—and Abraham was born during the dark portion of Day One—and John the Baptist was born during the dark portion of Day One. But with the birth and second birth of Jesus the Nazarene, light comes out from the darkness of Day One, with darkness again settling over the creation at Calvary.
Eve forms the shadow and copy of the Christian Church, created from a wound in the man Jesus’ side, with the Church having received indwelling heavenly life through possessing the breath of God in the breath of Christ that comes to the Christian when the Father draws the foreknown and predestined person from this world and gives to that person His glory, His life, His breath through the indwelling of Christ Jesus (see Rom 6:23) into whom His breath had entered when Jesus rose from being baptized. Hence, no person has indwelling eternal life (i.e., an immortal soul) except through the indwelling of Christ Jesus.
In shadow, we are still in Genesis chapter two, but about to enter chapter three.
Even though Christ dwells in every born of spirit Christian in a manner analogous to Adam standing beside Eve when the serpent approached Eve, Christ seldom intervenes to prevent the Christian from believing the Adversary, but by the time we see Adam and Eve in the Garden with the serpent, we are seeing in type the inner self [Adam] and the outer self [Eve] of Christians interacting with the Adversary [the serpent]. … The last Adam, a life-giving spirit, is in the inner self of the born of spirit Christian and is therefore represented by the inner self in relationship to the outer self.
Now, was there really a Garden of Eden and a real Adam and a real Eve? Technically, shadows exist in one less dimension than the reality that cast the shadow—and if the reality is the non-physical inner self and the physical fleshly body, then one dimension-less doesn’t require the exactness that some Christians assign to this narrative. Inscription of a myth is enough reality to form the shadow and type of the inner self of a human person.
A fleshly body would not be in one less dimension than another fleshly body. A myth would be, however. So Eve as a fleshly woman cannot be the shadow of a human woman. Eve as a fleshly woman can only be the shadow of a living inner self that is a son of God which has as its head Christ Jesus. So if Eve exists as a shadow of any living entity prior to the giving of the spirit, Eve can only be a myth. However, once the spirit was given, it is possible and it is likely that Eve was a real person.
The contention of Philadelphia is that Adam and Eve really existed, but for Philadelphia this is not doctrine that pertains to salvation; for the Temptation Account’s (Gen chap 3) importance is as a shadow that reveals knowledge of what did and what will occur to Christians and to the Christian Church, with Adam and Eve being driven from the Garden equating to the death of the Church at the end of the 1st-Century, and with Eve giving birth to Cain and Abel forming the shadow and copy of the liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death and the Church giving birth to two sons, a spiritual Abel and 220 days later, to a spiritual Cain, with the birth order reversed in the mirror image.
So far, the reality of the shadow has progressed only to the beginning of Genesis chapter four. Thus, all of Genesis chapter four as a shadow occurs during the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years—and represented by Revelation chapters four through 11:14, with the most dramatic portion of Genesis chapter four forming the reality that occurs between day 220 and day 580 of the Affliction. Hence, the mark that Cain receives is received in the shadow before the kingdom is taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man … Cain forms the shadow of those Christians that rebel against God when the lawless one is revealed (2 Thess 2:3); therefore, the mark that Cain receives is how lawless Christians are marked for death by God, with no one to kill them before the Second Advent. In practical terms, this mark prevents Christian armies from being slain by armies of other ideologies, particularly Islam. So it is reasonable to deduce that as the cross was the symbol by which the armies of Constantine allegedly prevailed, the cross will be the mark of Cain.
The infamous mark of the beast—chi xi stigma—can be read as the tattoo [stigma] of Christ’s cross [chi xi], with this marking designating who shall be killed by Christ when He returns; so it is reasonable to conclude that the armies of the Adversary in the Affliction will march under this banner and will prevail against all comers.
Was there a real Cain, and a real Abel? Probably. But their importance is as mythic representations that reveal otherwise concealed knowledge.
The nation of Israel that left Egypt consisted of (1) Moses and (2) the people of Israel, with neither Moses nor the men of Israel (except for Joshua and Caleb) numbered in the census of the second year entering the Promised Land although Moses did enter into God’s rest and presence (Ex 33:14). The children of Israel replaced the nation of Israel as Seth replaced righteous Abel (Gen 4:25). Thus, in shadow, Seth is born when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man halfway through the seven endtime years, and the spirit of God is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28) so that all become the people of God (Rev 18:4). The third part of common humankind that remains alive (from Zech 13:8–9) will, when the spirit is poured out, equate to the children of Israel in the wilderness: they will all be sons of God whereas the day before they were not sons of God. And because they were the remainder of common humanity with dead inner selves, they were figuratively daughters of men.
Christians either born of God or filled with spirit who marry non-Christians are sons of God who marry daughters of men, and from these unions will come theological giants … Timothy came from such a union.
Backing up, Adam was created “in the likeness of God” (Gen 5:1). Eve was of Adam; thus, in Adam God created man male and female, with both created in His image—the image of He who was God and who was with the God in primacy (John 1:1), thereby being the Helpmate of the God as Eve was the helpmate of Adam. So in Adam in type was both the God and His former Helpmate, God the Creator, who is now His firstborn Son, the glorified Christ Jesus.
Now, when “Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own image, after his image , and named him Seth” (Gen 5:3).
Adam was created in the image of God, and Seth was born in the image of Adam. By extension, Seth is the image of God, and as such, is the son of God; so Seth’s descendants are “sons of God” (Gen 6:2). And this referent does not refer to angelic sons of God that do not cast as their shadow living human persons.
The idea that the sons of God referenced in Genesis 6:2 are angels is of the Adversary, and should not be entertained for even a moment. The daughters of men would be in a physical reference, the daughters of Cain. Spiritually, the daughters of men are Christians and non-Christians who have not been born of God and as such are not of God: their head remains the Adversary, while their fleshly bodies regardless of gender are figuratively daughters of men.
Now, whom would Cain have married when women were not assigned personhood: “The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters” (Gen 5:4) … was a daughter born to Eve before Cain was born? We cannot know, but we can know that Eve bore daughters to Adam, as well as other sons who might well have wanted to avenge righteous Abel’s death. But these other sons and daughters are not part of the shadow that represents the image and type of the Christian Church.
All of this introduces the nature of the coats of hair with which the Lord clothed Adam and Eve when they were driven from the Garden: the Hebrew word <ôwr> lacks the precision necessary to distinguish these “coats” as leather garments as opposed to longish human hair that would have given to Adam and Eve appearances that could be likened to the appearance of Sasquatch. So when a person questions why Esau, who had longish hair as Sasquatch allegedly have, was hated before birth, the person by looking at the shadow realizes that when the Lord drove Adam and Eve from the Garden, they were wild humans, not simply common humans. Within eight generations, differing biological characteristics would have emerged; so common human beings come through Noah and his sons who carried the genes for the continuance of wild humans as evidenced by the birth of Esau. This means that in the genes of Noah and his descendants were those that would cause men to grow to the size of giants as well as be covered with longish hair. So no angel need breed with a descendant of Adam for there to be Nephilim—the genes for wild humanity were present for generations.
There is another set of questions in correspondences received, a set pertaining to the Millennium—
In type (one reality), Noah and the seven with him form the shadow and copy of the glorified Christ and the seven spirits [angels] that function as His eyes; i.e., the angels to the seven churches, the horns on the head of the Lamb of God. In this model, the Millennium is beyond Genesis chapter 9. However, in the reality that is a level above this one, Noah represents the glorified Son of Man, Body and Bride, as Adam and Eve together represents man. This reality will see a distinction made between the greatest and the least (Matt 5:19) in the resurrection of firstfruits, with the greatest ruling in heaven [day], and with the least ruling over the creation [night]. And while the least—each as a glorified son of God—will rule over the kingdoms of this world, the greatest will rule over angelic beings, with one of the first orders of business in the timeless supra-dimensional realm being to judge rebelling angels that are already condemned to death through being constrained in Tartaroo, the word used for the outer reaches of the pagan Greek underworld and perhaps the only appropriate word for the darkness of this creation with its dark energy and dark matter and black holes.
Rebelling angels are presently constrained within the creation. Where in the creation cannot really be known. But Jesus encountered many during His ministry so conjecture would have that rebelling angels are bound by the limits of the creation.
These rebelling angels are already under sentence of death, all of them. But perhaps not all of them truly warrant death. And in judging angels, this is what glorified human sons of God would review as a spiritual appellate court, qualified to be so by having lived under Satan’s administration of the world and having overcome Satan.
What a person must understand is that when iniquity was found in an anointed cherub, this iniquity had already been at work doing its damage in the timeless heavenly realm for long enough that a third of the angels joined with this anointed cherub and left their habitation of obedience. The other two parts were exposed to this damage but didn’t necessarily believe or disbelieve the anointed cherub. However, they did not then rebel by leaving their habitation of obedience. This does not mean that they will never rebel. Therefore, the Lord set up a demonstration in which He permitted the Adversary to “prove” to all angels that his way of competition, transactions, and democratic self-rule will work—and will work better than God’s way of love. The Millennium is the control against which the Adversary’s administration of the single kingdom of this world will be judged; thus humankind beginning the Millennium will not take from this present world its technology, but will begin all over again in a manner analogous to Noah beginning the world anew post-Deluge.
Once the spirit is poured out on all flesh, every person will belong to God. The person who takes judgment upon him or herself and who endures to the end of the age shall be glorified upon Christ’s return. However, the person—also filled with spirit and without indwelling sin or death—who does not take judgment upon him or herself will enter into the Millennium as a physical human being as opposed to a glorified son of God.
In the Millennium, people will bring forth generation after generation but probably as they did in the antediluvian world, with births being about a decade apart. This means that there will be young and old dwelling together under their own vines and fig trees (subsistence agriculture).
The young woman or man who is a new parent in the Endurance, the last 1260 days before Christ Jesus returns, may or may not take judgment upon themselves because of the infant’s sake. This will become a question of exactly how much the young parent loves God. If the love is greater for God than for the infant, the young parent will take judgment upon him or herself—and God … what would you do if you were God? Would you not make sure the child is cared-for? Perhaps even reared by the parents who as glorified sons would be capable of doing so and doing more? That seems reasonable. But exactly what God will do is outside the shadow.
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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."