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 Righteousness is always individual.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of June 26, 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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Let me sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
and he looked for it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem
and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard,
that I have not done in it?
When I looked for it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and briers and thorns shall grow up;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice,
but behold, bloodshed;
for righteousness,
but behold, an outcry! (Isa 5:1–7)
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The men of Judah form the left hand enantiomer [mirror image, as the left hand is the non-symmetrical mirror image of the right hand] of the Christian Church, with these men of Judah being delivered into captivity when the hedge the Lord had placed around them was broken down, with life in slavery in this physical realm equating to being physically alive but being dead spiritually [i.e., Israel in slavery to Pharaoh is the type and shadow—left hand enantiomer—of Christians who have not been born of God]. And the men of Judah were bluntly warned that the Lord expected them—and had expected them—to bring forth justice and righteousness as the reasonable fruits of the Lord’s planting of His firstborn son in the Promised Land.
But what constitutes “justice” and “righteousness”? Certainly the goodness of King Josiah was not enough to turn the Lord from His great wrath against the men of Judah because of the provocations of King Manasseh. And if Josiah in repenting [“he tore his clothes” — 2 Kings 22:11] upon hearing the just found Book of the Law read to him and in commanding the people to keep the Passover “‘as it is written in this book of the Covenant” (2 Kings 23:21) for “no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah” (v. 22) — if Josiah in putting away the mediums, the necromancers, the household gods and the idols and all the abominations seen in the land of Judah, a very religious land that strove to achieve their own righteousness, and if Josiah in establishing the words of the Law written in the Book of the Covenant could not turn the Lord away from His intention to deliver Jerusalem and the House of Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, then what constitutes justice & righteousness? Certainly being religious and giving to the Lord sacrifice isn’t enough, for the men of Judah were professing that the Lord was God while they offered their firstborns to Molech and prayed to household gods to help them find the coin they lost. They were not with their words denying that the Lord brought Israel out from slavery in Egypt. They simply were not doing what the Lord commanded them to do, and they didn’t know that they were doing what was “right” in the eyes of the Lord for the priests had neglected then finally lost the Book of the Covenant in the temple Solomon built.
A relationship that is difficult for 21st-Century Americans to understand existed between the Lord and the people of Israel after the people asked for a king: once the people of Israel rejected the Lord as their king and chose a human king over the Lord, the human king became the lord of the people. The people’s righteousness was fully incorporated in the king’s righteousness. And as the righteousness of the people of Israel was represented in the Lord’s righteousness under the judges, the righteousness of the people of Israel was represented by their king’s righteousness, with Josiah being an anomaly. But Josiah’s righteousness manifested itself during the prophesying of Jeremiah, with the earliest message Jeremiah proclaimed being about the Lord calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north to come and sack Jerusalem (Jer 1:14–15) … this message was given to Jeremiah in the 13th-year of Josiah (Jer 25:3), five years before the Book of the Covenant was found when remodeling the temple. So as the men of Israel repented in the wilderness after rebelling against the Lord (Num 14:40), Josiah, king of Judah, repented after the kings before him had rebelled against the Lord. But as the repentance of the men of Israel in the wilderness was not accepted, Josiah’s repentance was not accepted even though Josiah covered himself with his execution of justice and righteousness.
Perhaps the writer of Hebrews best addresses the subject of the Lord not accepting repentance when the writer says, “So we see that they [the men of Israel in the wilderness] were not able to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For the good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened” (Heb 3:19–4:2) … for every Israelite, natural or circumcised-of-heart, there is a day when repentance will not be accepted because of the Israelite’s unbelief; when the Israelite cannot enter into God’s rest for the door [the way] is closed. If the Israelite believed the Lord, then the Israelite would do what is right—and the expectation of the Lord is that every Israelite will earnestly strive to walk uprightly before Him. Falls, spills, trips are covered by grace. But willful disobedience rooted in unbelief is not.
Because the Lord did not find justice and righteousness as the fruit of the men of Judah, He would turn Judah into a dusty wasteland … the Lord expected the 1st-Century Church to bring forth the fruit of the spirit [love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control: one fruit of many facets — Gal 5:22–23], but 1st-Century Christians did not bring forth this fruit of the spirit. The “mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thess 2:7) was at work in the 1st-Century Church, busily turning one into many, each with a word of knowledge, each too willing to accept a gospel other than the one Paul taught, or the one Peter taught, or the one John taught, or the one James taught. There was a shortage of understanding and a surplus of misinformation as pagan Greeks became Christians without jettisoning the teachings of Plato and of Greek philosophers who saw in Christ Jesus the solution to their problem of how could these pagan Greeks know whether they were good enough to go heaven when the great Achilles was a shade among the breathless dead in Hades.
It is not enough to be religious or to profess that Jesus is Lord if this Jesus is not the same Jesus of Nazareth who said, “‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law [Torah] and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill then’” (Matt 5:17). And therein lays the great failing of the endtime Christian Church: can two walk together unless they are in agreement? Can Jesus dwell within the son of disobedience? Or can the inner self hate the law of God and still be born of God?
Can the structure or law of the mind of a Christian be against keeping the commandments of God that give voice to justice and righteousness? No, it cannot be so. The Christian who opposes keeping the commandments has simply not yet been born of God.
What is the difference between “modern social justice” and the justice that the Lord expected from the men of Israel so long ago?
The Apostle Paul lived in an age of public communication via individuals—an age very much like this present age with the Internet—and Christians left Paul, with all in Asia following others (2 Tim 1:15) for they could not accept the antifamily, antigovernment message that Paul’s Jesus of Nazareth seemed to represent. Thus, Greek philosophers cleaned up Paul’s gospel, which even Judaism rejected. And clean up they did as they laid the social constructs for endtime Christians not being men of peace and goodwill but men of war, not trusting God to deliver them but trusting in political entanglements and intrigues, technological superiority, mass production, and the free market. If it were possible, Christendom would transform the breath of God [pneuma Theon] into a commodity and list it on an index so that speculators could buy and sell eternal life as if it were nothing more than coffee, beans, or corn.
But returning to justice & righteousness, Isaiah’s construction of the Hebraic thought-couplet that introduces justice and righteousness is internally inverted: justice is what was socially expected, but bloodshed is what was socially received, with the Hebrew words for justice and bloodshed sounding alike. Righteousness was what was individually or spiritually expected, but public outcry is what was spiritually received, again with the Hebrew words for righteousness and outcry sounding alike. So the justice that the Lord expected to find among the men of Judah was “social justice”; was the application of just weights and measures, of just decisions by judges, of neighbors not moving boundary markers, of widows and orphans receiving their share of the tithe of the third year.
Righteousness is always individual … Abraham believed the Lord about his seed being like the stars of heaven and had his belief counted to him as righteousness (Gen 15:6); so if the men of Judah had believed the Lord, they too would have had their belief counted to them as righteousness. But belief must always be manifested in works. Belief without doing or applying what the person professes to believe is a lie. Thus the Christian who contends that faith/belief alone is sufficient for salvation has a bone to pick with Peter, who wrote,
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Pet 1:3–11 emphasis added)
Faith/belief is to be supplemented with virtue, the application of that faith in the person’s life. And faith supplemented with virtue is in turn to be supplemented with knowledge … let us pause here and add knowledge to faith manifested in virtue—
Philip went to a city of Samaria and preached Christ to the inhabitants. When these inhabitants heard Philip and saw the miracles he did, these inhabitants believed Philip and were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 8:16). Even Simon the Magician, whom the people of Samaria from the least to the greatest said had the power of “‘God that is called Great’” (v. 10), believed and was baptized by Philip in the name of Jesus. But Philip’s baptism in the name of Jesus didn’t give to these Samarians eternal life. Thus, “when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive pneuma hagion — breath holy [note: no definite article]” (vv. 14–15), for this holy breath had not yet fallen upon anyone of the Samarians.
Philip was one of the seven chosen to allay the complaints of Hellenist converts [Jews from the Greek-speaking regions of the Empire] concerning the disposition of goods to satisfy daily needs. The qualification for selection was that the seven be of good repute, and full of spirit and wisdom. So Philip had the spirit of God, and when Philip preached to the Ethiopian eunuch, then baptized this eunuch, the Lord’s spirit [pneuma kyriou — Acts 8:39] carried Philip away, and Philip found himself in Azotus (Acts 8:40). So certainly Philip had as much authority to preach the good news of Christ Jesus as any preacher alive today, but his baptism of the believers in Samaria in the name of Jesus did not convey to these believers a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theon]; thus Peter and John were dispatched to Samaria.
When Peter and John laid their hands on the Samarians and thereby directly transferred the breath of God [pneuma hagion] to them, Simon the Magician offered Peter and John [he brought to them] money, “saying, ‘Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive hagion pneuma [breath holy]’” (Acts 8:19). Peter sharply rebuked Simon: “‘May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God’” (vv. 20–21) … the same can be said about every (no exceptions) endtime Christian ministry that asks for money: their hearts are not right before God.
How can an endtime disciple know for certain whether his or her heart is right before God?
The Apostle John gives the answer:
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:4–10 emphasis added)
When faith is supplemented with virtue, the disciple practices righteousness and does not keep on sinning. No one whose heart is right before God practices sinning, and there are no exceptions for mega-church pastors or even for Popes. The person who makes a practice of sinning is of the devil and is the seed of the devil, regardless of the mighty works this person does in the name of Jesus; for Jesus said,
Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day [when judgments are revealed] many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt 7:21–23)
Faith/belief is enough to get a disciple to the door of the house of God as it got the Samarians Philip baptized to the door; as it got the twelve Jews Paul found at Ephesus who had been baptized with John’s baptism for repentance (Acts 19:1–7). Paul assumes that the convert at the door will enter and not return to what the convert tore down: he writes, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal 2:20).
If Christ lives in the disciple, can the disciple remain a son of disobedience, continuing to sin [i.e., transgress the law]? Which commandment can the son of God break with impunity? Which commandment did Christ Jesus break? Because He was Lord of the Sabbath, did He break the Sabbath? Or did He not deliver the words of the Father on the Sabbath, with these words manifesting themselves in physical utterance as well as in healings?
Now, go to any Christian mega-church you want to name, and look to see how many disciples are in attendance on the Sabbath? … The parking lot is mostly empty, is it not? Except for a janitorial crew working on the Sabbath, the parking lot is as deserted as a vacant lot, a brown industrial site where there was once life but which has long since gone to weeds, tares, false wheat.
Where two or more senior pastors of Christian mega-churches are gathered together in the name of Christ, Jesus isn’t among them; the Adversary is. For Christendom as the world sees and knows it is Paul’s mystery of lawlessness grown large and bloated on the tithes and offerings of the gullible … yes, Christians have a responsibility to do a work for God, with a tithe of their increase used to finance this work, but novices are not to teach, meaning that initially the novice will sow into the ministry of another as the novice learns the principles of God rather than bury the novice’s calling, with the disciple that sows into the ministry of another receiving the reward of the one into whose ministry he or she sows. Those antagonists who argue that because no temple exists there is nowhere to pay a tithe disclose within their argument their ignorance for Christians are the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16). Genuine Christians do exist although they are very few in number; hence, the premise of the antagonists is false. But it does a Christian novice no good to sow into the fields of the Adversary so it becomes the responsibility of every disciple who has not yet begun a ministry to identify where the Lord works and not bury what is given by God to the disciple.
There is a very short paragraph at the end of Philadelphia’s Bylaws that is easily overlooked. The Philadelphian not familiar with the Bylaws might want to review the paragraph, for it is how ministry is financed locally and worldwide. And the disciple whose heart is right before God never needs anything more said to the disciple concerning the financing of the collective ministries of Philadelphia.
Eternal life is not for sale and cannot be purchased; grace has no price. Nor does knowledge that comes from the Father have a price. Money can only purchase the things of this world, and eternal life is not of, or from this world. Neither is justice and righteousness, the summary of the many facets of the fruit of the spirit.
Because those things that are of God are not from this world and have no price, money (its presence or its absence) should never be an issue within the Christian Church. The disciple with knowledge will want to either immediately do a work or to support another disciple’s work—and every Christian ministry is the work of an individual within the Body of Christ. Those mega-denominations that Christians join are merely social fraternities that have come from the ministry of an individual; e.g., the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) is the continuation of the ministry of Joseph Smith, who pulled a pistol and shot at those who would lynch him. This is not “Christ-like” behavior, but a carnal response to an eminent threat to his physical life, a threat that took his life. This is not the act of a person whose heart was right before God; so when did the disciples of Joseph Smith move beyond Smith’s carnality and his carnal understanding of Christ Jesus’ ministry and begin to follow Jesus as the Apostle Paul followed Jesus? They haven’t. And the same can be said about Seventh Day Adventists and Ellen G. White, or about Lutherans and Martin Luther, or Mennonites and Menno Simons. The Roman and Greek Catholic Churches reach back further in time, but are not exceptions although the democracy of the Greek Church presents many faces collectively functioning as one face.
While the Apostle Paul yet lived, the mystery of lawlessness was at work, with this mystery of lawlessness, fattened by the tithes and offerings of hundreds of millions of Christians, now forming the bloated Corpse of Christ … too harsh a statement? No! If the Church were a living organism, Christians would all be members of one Body (1 Cor 12:12), baptized into one Body and made to drink of one spirit (v. 13), with God appointing first apostles, second prophets, third teachers (v. 28), with every workman of God being worthy of his hire, but with no workman of God placing burdens on disciples but with each waiting for God to supply the needs of His workmen, meaning, simply, that if a workman is truly of God, this workman never needs to ask for donations or for tithes and offerings or for support. To ask is to doubt God’s faithfulness in supplying the needs of His workmen; to ask is to negate the righteousness that comes from believing God.
Whereas Simon the Magician brought to Peter and John money so that he could do what the Apostles did when they directly transferred eternal life to those believers whose hearts were right before God, Christians bring to the pastors of the mega-churches and mega-denominations money so that they can go to heaven when they die. But money doesn’t grease the palms of genuine pastors of God who without exception will condemn that carnality of every Christian pastor who preaches worldly politics from pulpits … it is those who are mature in the faith that are to judge the Church and to purge from it sexual immorality, greed, idolaters, revilers, drunkards, swindlers—and every Christian pastor who uses his [or, now, her] pulpit as a platform to mingle the sacred and the profane is a bastard son of the Adversary! This pastor is an idolater, as were all of those American pastors in the late 18th-Century who preached against the social outrages of King George in their Sunday services.
Jesus told Pilate, “‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world’” (John 18:36) … if Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, why do so many American pastors contend that the United States of America was formed by Divine Providence, unless, of course, the United States has a crucial role to play in the history of Israel?
In the construction of social justice, the founding of the United States of America was a breaking of the tradition that had the righteousness of the people represented by the righteousness of the king that rules the people—an earlier breaking came when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Imperator Romanorum ("Emperor of the Romans"), thereby placing the Latin Pope over the secular head of the Empire and making the visible head of Christendom the representative of the Israel, with the righteousness of this visible head standing for the righteousness of Israel. But Leo’s subjection of secular kings to ecclesiastical authority was, for Englishmen, reversed by Henry VIII, with this reversal asserted by Parliament in the English Civil War when Charles I, a Roman Catholic, lost his head. Thus, in the person of King George III, the righteousness of Colonial Christians was evident for all to see, with the schism between king and Parliament that had existed since the Interregnum representing a double-mindedness evident in British Colonials. The American War of Independence was, in type, another fighting of the English Civil War, with the same results and with George Washington being a type of Oliver Cromwell who also wouldn’t declare himself king.
Why is any of this important? Because another Christian civil war remains to be fought, with the United States of America playing a central role in this war; so, yes, the hand of God was evident in the formation of America, for the Civil War to be fought is between Arian Christians and Trinitarian Christians, with the Arians under the man of perdition winning for the energy and human resources of Islam will enter this war as new Arian Christians. These Arians are American grown, with the office of prophet to which the false prophet comes being a product of the U.S.A.
But every “Christian” who fights in this forthcoming Christian civil war will be in rebellion to God, for both sides serve the rebelling, spiritual king of Babylon, the servant of the Lord as King Nebuchadnezzar was a servant of the Lord.
The prophet Jeremiah received a word of knowledge concerning the people of Judah:
The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim [ca 604/605 BCE] the son of Josiah, king of Judah (that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem: “For twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, to this day, the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened. You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the Lord persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets, saying, ‘Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and evil deeds, and dwell upon the land that the Lord has given to you and your fathers from of old and forever. Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, or provoke me to anger with the work of your hands. Then I will do you no harm.’ Yet you have not listened to me, declares the Lord, that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm. / Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, declares the Lord, and for Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation. Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste. I will bring upon that land all the words that I have uttered against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations. For many nations and great kings shall make slaves even of them, and I will recompense them according to their deeds and the work of their hands.” (25:1–14 emphasis added)
And Jeremiah received another word of knowledge,
In the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord. Thus the Lord said to me: “Make yourself straps and yoke-bars, and put them on your neck. Send word to the king of Edom, the king of Moab, the king of the sons of Ammon, the king of Tyre, and the king of Sidon by the hand of the envoys who have come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. Give them this charge for their masters: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: This is what you shall say to your masters: “It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth, with the men and animals that are on the earth, and I give it to whomever it seems right to me. Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I have given him also the beasts of the field to serve him. All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson, until the time of his own land comes. Then many nations and great kings shall make him their slave. / But if any nation or kingdom will not serve this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence, declares the Lord, until I have consumed it by his hand. So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your fortune-tellers, or your sorcerers, who are saying to you, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon.’ For it is a lie that they are prophesying to you, with the result that you will be removed far from your land, and I will drive you out, and you will perish. But any nation that will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on its own land, to work it and dwell there, declares the Lord.”’”
To Zedekiah king of Judah I spoke in like manner: “Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people and live. Why will you and your people die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence, as the Lord has spoken concerning any nation that will not serve the king of Babylon? Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are saying to you, ‘You shall not serve the king of Babylon,’ for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you. I have not sent them, declares the Lord, but they are prophesying falsely in my name, with the result that I will drive you out and you will perish, you and the prophets who are prophesying to you.”
Then I spoke to the priests and to all this people, saying, “Thus says the Lord: Do not listen to the words of your prophets who are prophesying to you, saying, ‘Behold, the vessels of the Lord's house will now shortly be brought back from Babylon,’ for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you. Do not listen to them; serve the king of Babylon and live. Why should this city become a desolation? If they are prophets, and if the word of the Lord is with them, then let them intercede with the Lord of hosts, that the vessels that are left in the house of the Lord, in the house of the king of Judah, and in Jerusalem may not go to Babylon. For thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the pillars, the sea, the stands, and the rest of the vessels that are left in this city, which Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon did not take away, when he took into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem—thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels that are left in the house of the Lord, in the house of the king of Judah, and in Jerusalem: They shall be carried to Babylon and remain there until the day when I visit them, declares the Lord. Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.” (chap 27 — emphasis added)
And Jeremiah writes in the letter often cited by mega-church pastors,
These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It said: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord. / For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
“Because you have said, ‘The Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon,’ thus says the Lord concerning the king who sits on the throne of David, and concerning all the people who dwell in this city, your kinsmen who did not go out with you into exile: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, I am sending on them sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like vile figs that are so rotten they cannot be eaten. I will pursue them with sword, famine, and pestilence, and will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them, because they did not pay attention to my words, declares the Lord, that I persistently sent to you by my servants the prophets, but you would not listen, declares the Lord.’ Hear the word of the Lord, all you exiles whom I sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning Ahab the son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah the son of Maaseiah, who are prophesying a lie to you in my name: Behold, I will deliver them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he shall strike them down before your eyes. Because of them this curse shall be used by all the exiles from Judah in Babylon: “The Lord make you like Zedekiah and Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire,” because they have done an outrageous thing in Israel, they have committed adultery with their neighbors' wives, and they have spoken in my name lying words that I did not command them. I am the one who knows, and I am witness, declares the Lord.’” (29:1–23 emphasis added)
Are the prophecies of Jeremiah just for circumcised-of-flesh Israel, or are these prophecies for all of Israel? They were fulfilled in type in the 6th-Century BCE, but they are spiritually applicable to the circumcised-of-heart nation of Israel that was taken captive by the spiritual king of Babylon (see Isa 14:4), that old serpent, Satan the devil.
To flesh out what was said earlier, in the move from physical to spiritual and from natural Israel [circumcised in the flesh only Israel] to circumcised-of-heart Israel (i.e., the Christian Church), natural Israel was not born of God and had only one breath of life, the breath that Elohim [singular in usage] breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam. Thus, for natural Israel to form the shadow and type of the Christian Church in this present era, when Israel should have the breath of life the first Adam received—the breath that animates the flesh—and the divine breath of the Father [pneuma Theon] that Jesus, the second Adam, received when this breath descended and lit on Him in the form of a dove (Matt 3:16), an additional affliction representing inner death must be given to the natural nation. Thus, to use one breath of life, metonymically represented by the Greek linguistic icon psuche, to represent in type both the natural breath [psuche] and the second breath [pneuma] that gives to the disciple eternal life requires that the natural Israelite live as a free person in the wilderness of Sin, or that the children of natural Israel [the children of the nation numbered in the census of the second year — see Num chap 1 and chap 14] live as free persons in the Promised Land.
Israel’s slavery to Pharaoh represents in type that the physically living Christian who has not yet received the second breath of life; Israel’s slavery to the king of Babylon represents in type that the physically living Christian has lost the spirit of God and is spiritually dead. Thus, Christians since the Body of Christ died with the Apostle John (dod ca 100–102 CE) have been as the Samarians were after Philip baptized them in the name of Jesus. Until the spirit is again given at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the spirit comes to Israel through the terms of the spiritual Moab covenant.
It is the dead inner self that has been consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32), or delivered into slavery to sin because of the unbelief of the first Adam.
The natural Israelite who has been prevented from having indwelling eternal life because of Israel’s transgressions at Mount Sinai in the matter of the gold calf can only represent [be the left hand enantiomer of] born of spirit Christians when this Israelite dwells freely in peace in the physical Promised Land. The natural Israelite in Egypt was a slave and forms in type the shadow and copy of Christians prior to the second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death, with the only born of God Christians in this present era represented by the man Moses … the Lord told Moses that because of Israel’s unbelief, the Lord intended to make of Moses a great nation (Ex 32:10; Num 14:12 et al), and the Lord has, for no one who doesn’t first believe the writings of Moses will believe the words of Jesus (John 5:47). To come to Christ Jesus, the person must believe the writings of Moses; for if the person doesn’t hear Moses and the Prophets, the person will not be convinced by one who is raised from the dead (Luke 16:31). Therefore, every person who is truly born of God in this era has come to Christ through Moses. Until the second Passover liberation of Israel, there is no other way regardless of how lawless disciples twist what Paul tells the spiritual infants at Corinth: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you” (1 Cor 15:1–2 emphasis added) … “being saved” is not “saved,” but a process that will lead to salvation.
Every disciple must cleanse his or her heart by faith; by undertaking a mental journey of faith equivalent to Abraham’s physical journey of faith from Ur of the Chaldeans [Babylon] to the land of Haran [Assyria, the representation of death], then down to the land of Canaan, where Abraham should have stayed, before the disciple’s heart can be circumcised by the soft breath of God. Being saved pertains to the person engaged in this journey of faith that cleanses hearts before hearts are actually circumcised. Thus, the Christian who is “not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation” (Rom 1:16) needs to know that the person who “practices righteousness is righteous” (again 1 John 3:7) whereas the person who makes a practice of sinning, of transgressing the law, is of the devil (v. 8).
The Christian who makes a practice of sinning is of the devil according to the Apostle John who went with Peter to lay hands on the converts in Samaria that Philip had baptized in the name of Jesus … who knows more about receiving the spirit of God [pneuma Theon — from Matt 3:16] then John does? Name the comparable pastor of a mega-church or of a mega-denomination who even knows as much? So why will these super-apostles not believe John, or Peter, or Jesus of Nazareth?
The men of Judah were condemned because they did not bring forth justice & righteousness. Christians were also condemned for the same reason in the 1st-Century, and they will be likewise condemned in the 21st-Century when they rebel against God when the lawless one (i.e., the man of perdition) is revealed 220 days after the second Passover liberation of Israel.
Today, this lawless one is not yet possessed by the Adversary, but he is beyond repenting for he sincerely believes that he is doing the will of God in restoring America’s history to a nation that lost its history for cause … Christians must purge from their minds the teachings of the Enlightenment and of the Great Awakening, when new faces were painted on Christendom’s rebellion against God, a rebellion that remains alive and well as the bloated Corpse of Christ awaits being revealed/disrobed when it is resurrected to life at the Second Passover liberation of Israel.
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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."