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 sending out the seventy.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of July 10, 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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After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. / Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. / The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”
The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” / Then turning to the disciples he said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” (Luke 10:1–24 emphasis added)
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Jesus sent the seventy [or seventy-two] out, two by two, into every town and place where He Himself was about to go—if the seventy went to where He was about to go, and if the seventy were to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest, where did the seventy go? Did they go to Corinth or to Rome or to Parthia? And if the harvest was plentiful [“much” in every respect], where was this harvest while Jesus lived? It certainly wasn’t in evidence at or immediately before Calvary, and it wasn’t in evidence during the forty days when the glorified Jesus was with His disciples after the Wave Sheaf Offering [i.e., His Ascension], with His disciples numbering roughly 120 persons. So any literal reading of Jesus sending out the seventy must be tempered with the reality that the seventy [seventy-two] were types or representatives of a later sending out of disciples to wherever the glorified Jesus was about to go … while it cannot be said with absolute certainty, there is considerable evidence supporting the claim that by the end of the 2nd-Century CE, the gospel of Christ had reached the heart of Asia and all of Europe and most of Africa. Certainly by the 16th-Century CE, “Jesus” was rightly or wrongly preached to every known nation and to most aboriginal peoples. By the 19th-Century, the nations of the world knew the name Jesus of Nazareth, with Christian missionaries everywhere blaspheming this name and thereby spoiling the harvest of humanity before the harvest was gathered to God. Yes, Christian missionaries blasphemed the name of Christ Jesus after Jesus initially sent out the seventy wherever He would go, and the Christian missionaries went everywhere, delivering their message about “Jesus” as if they were rain falling on ripe grain, causing the kernels of the seed heads to sprout and mildew before the grain could be harvested.
Endtime sons of God must understand that the adulterated gospel proclaimed by “converted” Greek philosophers to Greek speakers throughout North Africa, and the Near and Middle East, a message about the person Jesus of Nazareth but not the message He left with His disciples, prepares sons of God to rebel against God when the man of perdition is revealed; for this gospel is a mingled message, a message that brings together the sacred and the profane as the holiday Christmas does, when the conception of Jesus morphed into the birth of Jesus [the sacred] to be celebrated on the Day of the Invincible Sun [the profane]. The gospel of Christ that mainstream Christian Churches teach is heresy, a subject to which we will return.
The claim that Christian missionaries watered ripe, standing grain and thereby spoiled a harvest of God will cause many Christians to recoil in horror and read no farther, but those who are offended need to return to Christ Jesus and accept as authoritative the canonical words of Jesus, who said,
· “‘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 5:46–47).
· “‘And he said, “No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead”’” (Luke 16:30–31).
· “‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven’” (Matt 5:17–19)
· “‘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 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)
· “‘I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day’” (John 12:46–48 emphasis added).
The Christian who teaches other disciples that Jesus abolished the Law at Calvary hears the words of Jesus but does not keep them even when doing great works in Jesus’ name; this Christian delivers a mingled message, a mixing of the sacred and the profane, to those whom he (or she) would teach. And this Christian, whose zeal for God is only exceeded by his or her ignorance about God, spoils the harvest in teaching the ripe, standing grain of the harvest of humanity to ignore the commandments. Therefore, it would be better if the ripe grain never knew the name, Jesus of Nazareth, than to accept Jesus as the person’s Savior and to continue practicing sin (i.e., lawlessness).
The seventy [seventy-two] go to where Jesus, Himself, will go—and does Jesus go to the visible Church that bears His name and that will rebel against Him 220 days into the Affliction? What would be the point of Jesus going to endtime Christians who have heard His words and who have not kept them? Unbelieving Christians have a judge, the word or message that Jesus left with His first disciples. Christians need no additional message. They simply need to believe the words of Jesus, and there is nothing but their own teachers preventing them from believing Jesus.
If what Jesus said to the seventy [seventy-two] about the harvest being “much” was true in the 1st-Century, this harvest wasn’t gathered to God in Chorazin, or in Bethsaida, or in Capernaum. It wasn’t gathered to God in the 1st-Century CE. Rather, teachers of Israel spoiled the harvest, first forbidding the Apostles from speaking about Jesus (“So they called them [Peter and John] and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” — Acts 4:18), then as the Church grew, Christians divided into factions, following this teacher or that teacher (1 Cor 3:4), each teacher with his own message and each teaching spiritual infants to either become Jews in the flesh [e.g., Gal 5:7–12] or to practice lawlessness [e.g., 2 Thess 2:7], with these divisions between the teachers of Israel forming the shadow and type of divisions within the endtime, greater Christian Church. But Paul writes that “there must be factions among [disciples] in order that those who are genuine among [disciples] may be recognized” (1 Cor 11:19). And so it is because of retrocausality: there had to be factions in the 1st-Century Church because there will not only be factions but actual war between Christians following the Second Passover liberation of Israel. Throughout the Affliction, especially after the lawless one is revealed (see 2 Thess 2:3), Unitarian/Arian Christians will fight against Trinitarian Christians for political control of not the Mediterranean Sea as Vandals [Arians] fought and temporarily prevailed against the Roman Empire [Trinitarians] in the 5th-Century CE, but for control of first the United States of America then of the world. And these endtime Arians will temporarily prevail as the largest of the endtime Arian denominations is swollen by Islamic “converts” who will believe the prophet [i.e., the False Prophet] ensconced on the shores of America’s Dead Sea.
If the harvest of humankind was “much” in the 1st-Century, the harvest didn’t need additional watering but needed harvested. Additional watering was not “rain in due season,” but was rain delivered out of season … rain in due season as a physical expression can be read spiritually as “teachers of righteousness.”
What happens to ripe grain fields during thunderstorms, followed by days of high humidity and occasional showers? Does the potential harvest benefit? No, the standing grain is knocked down by the storms and the grain itself sours and spoils in the head. The harvest is good for nothing, and another growth cycle has to occur before there can again be ripe standing grain ready to be harvested. And if you were God, how would you protect that standing grain from being ruined by exceedingly zealous, but truly false teachers such as those about whom Peter wrote:
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them …. / For if God did not spare angels when they sinned [ultimately, all sin is unbelief], but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if He did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes He condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if He rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked … then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment …. They [false teachers] entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. / These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. (2 Pet 2:1–21 emphasis added)
Christian false teachers—those whom Peter had encountered—promised infants in Christ “freedom” … they assured newly born sons of God that they were free from the Law. They taught these spiritual infants that faith alone was sufficient for salvation when Peter wrote that those disciples who have obtained a faith of equal standing to the apostles (2 Pet 1:1) are to supplement their faith with virtue, and to supplement their faith plus virtue with knowledge (v. 5). According to Peter, the person who did not supplement faith with virtue was spiritually blind (v. 9). And according to James, the Lord’s brother, “faith apart from works is dead” (2:26).
But those false teachers who entice newly born Christians with promises of freedom from the Law echo Martin Luther’s position that James’ epistle was straw … in doing so, they identify themselves as children of the Adversary according to the Apostle John (see 1 John 3:4–10).
When Paul writes,
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—unless you believed in vain. / For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of Go d. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. (1 Cor 15:1–11)
Paul says that what is of first importance is Christ Jesus’ death and resurrection—and this agrees with what Peter wrote about “faith” that must be supplemented by virtue. Paul also writes, “Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom 6:15–16).
The gospel [good news] proclaimed by Paul was focused on making converts among Gentiles: “Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them” (Rom 11:13–14) … no Jew will be jealous of a Gentile living as a Gentile. Only when an uncircumcised person appropriates the things of God and lives as a Jew will jealousy develop. Thus, when Peter came to Antioch and taught uncircumcised Gentiles to live as Judeans—that is what Peter was teaching them to do according to Paul (read Gal 2:14 in Greek)—and then Peter separated himself from these uncircumcised converts when circumcised men from Jerusalem came, Paul rightly rebuked Peter for his hypocrisy. What Peter taught these Gentile converts was correct, but then separating himself from these converts so as not to offend the men who came from Jerusalem was wrong. The men who came from Jerusalem were supposed to be teachers of Israel, and Peter should have been instructing these men who seemed to have the authority of the Jerusalem congregation. But rather than offend them by rebuking them for their false teaching, Peter sought to get along with them—
There can never be any compromising with error.
Paul stepped up and rebuked Peter, and by extension, rebuked the men from Jerusalem … the rebuke of a friend means more than the rebuke of an enemy. By speaking directly to Peter, Paul spoke to those who came from Jerusalem as well as to endtime disciples who need to hear what Paul said.
Peter was not wrong in what he taught Gentile converts. Paul doesn’t accuse him of falsely teaching these converts when he taught them to live as Jews. Rather, Peter was wrong to place importance on the flesh so as not to offend those who also placed importance on the flesh … someone of the Circumcision Faction had gotten to the saints at Galatia and had convinced them that they needed to be outwardly circumcised in this era when saints are individually and collectively the temple of God (1 Cor 12:27). When the Messiah comes and there is again a physical sanctuary, Israel will again need to be outwardly and inwardly circumcised (Ezek 44:9); for an Israelite needs to be circumcised to enter the sanctuary. But today—and until the Messiah comes—the sanctuary is in heaven so Israelites need to be circumcised of heart to enter this sanctuary: they do not need to be outwardly circumcised, which is in type a rejection of Christ Jesus’ sacrifice. This is not to say that the circumcised person needs to remove the evidence of his circumcision as some Hellenist Jews tried to do in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes IV, but is to say that outward circumcision is of no importance unless the disciple wrongly makes it important.
It would be better spiritually for those Christians in Galatia who had circumcised themselves if they had remained enslaved to sin and had never known the way of righteousness—to repeat a previous citation, Peter wrote, For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. The last state of the saints in Galatia was worse than before they heard the name Jesus; for in hearing and believing, these Galatians tasted the goodness of God, then rejected this goodness for the vanity of becoming outwardly Israelites, thereby wearing in their circumcised foreskins the evidence of their righteousness … what were they to do, flash their badge of righteousness to other saints as if they were chickens flaring neck feathers?
The harvest of God that was in Galatia was spoiled by false teachers—
The harvest of God that was in Asia was spoiled by false teachers when all in Asia left Paul (2 Tim 1:15)—
The harvest of God in Judea was spoiled by false teachers—
Likewise, the harvest of God in Achaia was spoiled by false teachers—
Where was the harvest of God not spoiled by false Christian teachers? And where today is the harvest of God not spoiled by false Christian teachers? Certainly nowhere within Christendom.
Before Jesus sent out the seventy [seventy-two], He sent out the Twelve, with the instructions to, “‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’” (Matt 10:5–6). In the type, the Twelve returned (Luke 9:10) even though Jesus told the Twelve, “‘When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the son of Man comes’” (Matt 10:23).
Today, the greater Christian Church forms the reality of the lost sheep of the house of Israel; for Christians within the mainstream Church have presented themselves to sin [unbelief] as its willing slave as evidenced outwardly by the day of the week during which Christians attempt to enter into God’s presence. Outwardly, sin is the transgression of the law; it is lawlessness (1 John 3:4). But outward transgressions of the law come from inner unbelief … Christians within the mainstream Church simply do not believe that they are to keep the Sabbath. They do not believe that every kingdom [nation] in this present world is ruled by the Adversary and his angels, and this includes the United States of America. They do not believe that democracy is of the Adversary; they do not believe that Korah’s rebellion is a shadow and copy of the Adversary’s rebellion. They do not believe they serve the Adversary as his sons and slaves when it is obvious to outside [of mainstream Christendom] observers that they do.
Again, if you were God, how would you keep a new harvest of humankind from being spoiled by false Christian teachers? You couldn’t very well grow this harvest within the greater Christian Church. Nor could you grow this harvest to maturity within Judaism.
God’s ways are not human ways: if God wanted to grow a new harvest to maturity and He couldn’t do it inside the greater Christian Church because of imbedded false teachers, the most logical place to grow this harvest would be in another belief system, one that doesn’t know the Father and one that isn’t offered the mantle of grace [i.e., Christ Jesus’ righteousness] but seeks righteousness through works. Now, when the spirit of God is poured out on this harvest (Joel 2:28) and every person worldwide has the Torah written on the heart and placed in the mind so that all Know the Lord, this endtime harvest will only have to endure to the end to be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22). But enduring to the end will mean rebelling against the Adversary when he is cast from heaven (Rev 12:7–16) and comes claiming to be the Messiah.
The seventy [seventy-two] were sent to wherever Jesus would go, not to where He had already gone. The seventy are not sent to Israel or to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They are sent to where the Twelve were prevented from going, with Islam being foremost in those places where the Twelve couldn’t go—foremost because Islam comes along later and comes along as a “corrective” to errant Christian and Jewish doctrines and practices. What Islam didn’t and today doesn’t understand is that to be saved, every Moslem will have to accept what the person today loathes, acceptance of Israel as the firstborn son of God. And to this end, the Second Passover liberation of Israel and the Affliction [the opening of the seven seals in John’s vision] will dramatically impact Islam, and will utterly destroy the hardened core of the ideology.
It has been the hardened core of Islam that has mostly kept the ideology from being corrupted by false Christian teachers. Now, in this short while before the Second Passover liberation of Israel, let Islam be forewarned that Christ Jesus will come to Muslims everywhere, but not until Satan has been cast from heaven. The seventy [seventy-two] are sent to Islam to warn the ideology not be succumb to the blandishments of the man of perdition, an Arian Christian aligned with the western prophet … when the false prophet comes to the already existing office of prophet, many Muslims will find in this demon who has been given the mind of man (see Dan 7:4) the one for whom they have long waited. But Muslims need to wait before they embrace this false prophet. They need to sit out the 1260 days of the Affliction; for the Affliction is the time of Israel’s sorting and testing, not that of the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:7–9). Islam’s time comes in the Endurance, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years.
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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."