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 God is revealed by observing the creation.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of July 19, 2014
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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There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the spirit of [YHWH] shall rest upon Him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of [YHWH].
And His delight shall be in the fear of [YHWH].
He shall not judge by what His eyes see,
or decide disputes by what His ears hear,
but with righteousness He shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,
and with the breath of His lips He shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt of His waist,
and faithfulness the belt of His loins.
(Isa 11:1–5 indented lines are spiritual portions of couplets)
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23.
Contrary to what has been taught within Sabbatarian Christendom, the Messiah is not the son of David, but a root sprout from the stump of Jesse [“stump” implies already cut down]. The Messiah doesn’t come through David, but through a linage parallel to that of King David. Hence, the Messiah comes from Israel under the judges, when the Lord was Israel’s king. The Messiah comes as King of kings and Lord of lords, and He comes as a descendant of the God of Abraham, the King of Israel until Israel rebelled and demanded a human king like other nations. This rebellion occurred in the days of Jesse. Thus, it is logical for the Messiah to come from the king—the Lord—that Israel deposed in the days of Samuel. The Messiah comes from the king of the nation of Israel that existed before human kings received authority to rule, the nation that will again exist in the Endurance and on into the Millennium. So the Messiah cannot descend from David; for to do so would have the Messiah being a king after the order of David when this will not be the case.
So that there is no misunderstanding: the man Jesus the Nazarene is the unique Son of the God of Abraham, the Creator of all things, and is therefore entitled by primogeniture to the position of King of Israel and of all humanity. Human kings ruling over Israel comes from Israel’s rebellion: David’s kingship came from Israel’s rebellion even though the Lord chose David to be king. And human kingship over Israel was a temporary condition permitted to show that human authority in this world comes through the Adversary, even the authority invested in Israelite kings … whom was King David obeying when he saw Bathsheba and sought her? The Lord or the Adversary? David let his obedience to the Lord slip a whole lot when he engaged first in adultery, then in murder to cover up his adultery. And why was the Lord angry with David in the matter of taking a census?
In Matthew’s Gospel, Pharisees test Jesus—and Jesus tests the Pharisees by asking, “‘What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?”” (Matt 22:42). And the Pharisees answer wrongly, thereby continuing Israel’s rebellion against the Lord; for the Pharisees said the Christ was the son of David (same verse).
David was the most righteous of Israel’s kings with the possible exception of Josiah: David was a man after the Lord’s own heart for David did not neglect to praise the Lord even when things were not going well for him. Plus, overall, David was faithful … he would have done better if he had gone to war in the spring of that year when he saw Bathesheba from the rooftop.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus asks the Pharisees about Psalm 110:1, where David calls the Messiah his Lord [Adoni], and the Pharisees had no answer—
The Righteous Branch, the root of Jesse that shall stand as a signal for the people (Isa 11:10), will as Lord extend His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people from wherever they dwell (v. 11) … The Lord, the Father of the Righteous Branch, extended His hand to recover the fathers of Israel when He brought them out from Egypt: the Passover exodus of Israel. But Jesus prayed to the Most High God that the glory He had before the world was created be returned to Him (John 17:5), and with that glory returned to Him, He extends His hand a second time to recover the remnant of Israel, with this recovery from sin and death being so impressive that the people of Israel will no longer remember the Passover exodus in the days of Moses but will reference the Second Passover recovery of Israel from the north country [death] and from all the countries where Israel dwells (Jer 16:14–15 also 23:7–8).
Christ Jesus, whose Father wasn’t the first Adam but was the Logos (the Beloved of the Most High God), is the Righteous One about whom the prophet Isaiah wrote,
Behold, My Servant shall act wisely; He shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you—His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and His form beyond that of the children of mankind—so shall He sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of Him; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand. Who has believed what He has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of [YHWH] been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and [YHWH] has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth. Yet it was the will of [YHWH] to crush Him; He has put Him to grief; when His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring; He shall prolong His days; the will of [YHWH] shall prosper in His hand. Out of the anguish of His soul He shall see and be satisfied; by His knowledge shall the Righteous One, My Servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. (Isa 52:13–53:12 emphasis and double emphasis added)
The above passage is in block prose formatting rather than cited as poetry, which means that some meaning is lost. But if the passage were cited as poetry, the citation would be inappropriately long. Hence meaning is sacrificed, but the reason for the citation is not: the Righteous One that is the Servant of the Lord is Christ Jesus, the Messiah, even though there are no specific <suffering Messiah> passages in Scripture. The reader must make the connection between the suffering Righteous One being Christ Jesus, and Christ Jesus being the Messiah, the Christ, with rabbinical Judaism hindering Israel from making this connection.
Note what else Isaiah declares:
The Righteous Man perishes, and no one lays it to heart; devout men are taken away, while no one understands. For the Righteous Man is taken away from calamity; He enters into peace; they rest in their beds who walk in their uprightness. But you, draw near, sons of the sorceress, offspring of the adulterer and the loose woman. Whom are you mocking? Against whom do you open your mouth wide and stick out your tongue? Are you not children of transgression, the offspring of deceit, you who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks? Among the smooth stones of the valley is your portion; they, they, are your lot; to them you have poured out a drink offering, you have brought a grain offering. Shall I relent for these things? On a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed, and there you went up to offer sacrifice. Behind the door and the doorpost you have set up your memorial; for, deserting me, you have uncovered your bed, you have gone up to it, you have made it wide; and you have made a covenant for yourself with them, you have loved their bed, you have looked on nakedness. You journeyed to the king with oil and multiplied your perfumes; you sent your envoys far off, and sent down even to Sheol. You were wearied with the length of your way, but you did not say, "It is hopeless"; you found new life for your strength, and so you were not faint. Whom did you dread and fear, so that you lied, and did not remember me, did not lay it to heart? Have I not held my peace, even for a long time, and you do not fear me? I will declare your righteousness and your deeds, but they will not profit you. When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you! The wind will carry them off, a breath will take them away. But he who takes refuge in me shall possess the land and shall inherit my holy mountain. (Isa 57:1–13)
It is because of the Righteous One that the sins of humanly righteous men and woman do not cause these mostly righteous persons from being consumed by the second death, the lake of fire; for indeed, “all” have been consigned to disobedience as slaves of sin. All come short of the measure of Christ Jesus, but it isn’t the actual transgression of the Law that condemns the person: it is unbelief; i.e., failure to believe God.
Unbelief serves as the boundary between righteousness and unrighteousness, not any particular act of hands or body.
If the person believes God, the person will strive to please God; will strive to keep the Commandments and love God, neighbor and brother. But if the person doesn’t believe God, the person will not diligently strive to keep the Commandments, but—knowing the Law—will fudge on the righteous demands of the Law, seeking to adhere to the letter of the Law but not its spirit, with the Law standing between the unbeliever and God as the kings of ancient Israel stood between the people and the Lord.
The person who is under the Law is condemned by the Law that stands as a judge of the person, but the person not under the law will keep the Law because of the person’s belief of God—and the person’s belief of God, not the person’s law-keeping, will save the person for the person’s belief of God is counted to the person as righteousness.
Again, every person who believes God will keep the Commandments to the best of the person’s ability, and will feel guilty when the person fails him or herself; fails to measure up, that is succumbs to the weakness of his or her flesh.
Again, the Law has no authority over the person who truly believes God and thereby strives to do those things that are pleasing to God, Father and Son. But for unbelievers, this is not the case: for the unbeliever the Law is a burden, an obstacle to be skirted, a boundary marker to be moved, repositioned closer to the lip of the chasm, comparable to a cosmic black hole where knowledge is smeared on its event horizon, the person reduced to a phantom that was but is no more forever.
What excuse does a person consigned to disobedience have for not rebelling against disobedience … in the same treatise that Paul states that all have been consigned to disobedience, Paul also declares that this “all” is without excuse:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Rom 1:18–23)
If human persons are held by God to be responsible for both knowing Him and believing His words that they have never heard with their ears but have only seen with their eyes through the things that have been made—and this is central here—then a very different standard of “law” exists with God than exists in man’s governance of each other, with all authority in this world presently coming through the Adversary, the prince of this present world.
If a person is held responsible for unstated law that is self-evident in the things that have been made (e.g., in a mother bear protecting her cub, or in the cub imitating its mother, doing the things that she does how she does them, with an equivalent human example explored in Exodus 12:26–27), then God expects the person to “read” nature as metaphors of heavenly things. And how can a person “read” nature when the person is economically or socially imprisoned in a city, a construction of man not of God, and imprisoned without pets or service animals?
Where is the boundary between belief and unbelief, between righteousness and unrighteousness when the person never gets to see the nature of the Adversary except as masked by human persons who consciously choose to present themselves to others in the most favorable light possible? Without a person living with an animal that is also subject to the Adversary’s broadcast of disobedience as the person is, but with the animal wearing no mask of social expectations, the person will NEVER understand the subtlety of the Adversary’s nature that he broadcasts to his servants; for again, “evil” is nothing more than not believing God. To human eyes, evil isn’t necessarily ugly but can well appear “good”; for Satan himself appears as an angel of light:
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. (2 Cor 11:13–15 emphasis added)
Middle-English writers (ca 13th through 15th Centuries) habitually described Satan as both ugly and deformed, bestowing to the Adversary a legacy of ugliness that still afflicts the minds of endtime Christendom. Inwardly, the Adversary is ugly, but outwardly he appears as an angel of light; appears as God Himself might appear, his outward appearance concealing his inner rot. But regardless of how he appears, he remains the present prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2), the prince who broadcasts his “nature,” his mindset to all living creatures, thereby giving to predators their predatory natures—giving to housecats both their independent natures and the inclination to kill for the sake of killing, playing with their prey before finishing off the mouse or vole or songbird. Likewise, the household dog that barks at intruders and is for many people like another child reflects the Adversary’s nature and reveals why the Adversary can pass himself off as an angel of light. The dog is loyal and affectionate, not at all how the Christian would expect the Adversary to be. But the dog’s nature in this present era comes from the Adversary, the prince of this world, with all natures (including human nature) to change when dominion is taken from the Adversary and his angels and given to the Son of Man on doubled day 1260 of the seven endtime years of tribulation (see Isa 11:6–9).
For many centuries Christians have not realized how effective has been the Adversary’s deception; for the Adversary has deceived the entire world (Rev 12:9), Christians not excluded. Yet these same Christians have been without excuse; for the things of God, even the nature of the divine godhead, have been revealed from the beginning by the things that have been made. And what also has been revealed is the Adversary’s deception that comes into the person via receipt of his nature. The Adversary’s deception has always been manifested in the nature of living creatures, with household pets and service animals placing the Adversary’s nature on open display for all to see.
A person by honestly considering his or her own nature—what it means to be human in this present era—can see in themselves (can see in how they have been effected) the Adversary’s deception; for again, whom was David serving when he looked from his rooftop upon a naked women?
The clustering together of human persons in artificial constructs—cities—have separated too many persons from those things that have been created, therefore preventing the majority of humanity from seeing the enticing twitch of a serpent’s tongue that the Puritan minister Jonathon Edward’s described. But then, too many Sabbatarian Christians would not permit themselves to read the writings of Jonathon Edwards, whose theology wasn’t perfect or even close to perfect, but who understood the principles of typology in his studies of types and figures.
The Christian or Muslim who hasn’t experienced the companionship of a dog or dogs has denied to him or herself a great opportunity to study the unmasked nature of other human persons who are also subject to the broadcast of the Adversary’s nature.
After sunset one Sabbath evening when I was at University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), I went to the library to do some research and upon leaving when the library was about to close, I encountered on the steps outside the building’s south entrance a faculty member from whom I had taken a couple of classes. He was a few years older than myself, and he was drunk. He was waiting for his wife to get off work—she was a librarian—and in his intoxicated state, he let loose a rant about Feminism, Feminists, and women’s rights in general … he apparently felt that he could safely say to me, a former millworker, gunmaker, logger, commercial fisherman what he wouldn’t say to someone not from a common workman background. He let his mask of tolerance slip, revealing what he kept hidden inside the garb of social equality he publicly wore.
This faculty member wasn’t the first nor the last to confide to me things not told others, but I already knew what was behind that faculty member’s mask … for decades, from when I was an impoverished youth in Oregon to when I lived in rural Alaska, I have observed the natural world so as to take my sustenance directly from nature. People become readable—perhaps not as readable as dogs that wear no masks, but readable enough, because what the masks humans wear conceal is the Adversary’s nature.
The Adversary remains the prince of this world, the prince who then ruled over both the faculty member and Maine Coon Cat of my daughters, a neutered tom, with the cat never able to resist the allure of a rattled sack of dry food, coming to the sack when he neither wanted to come nor was hungry. He was ruled by his appetite. The faculty member was ruled by his appetites, those of belly and loins. So while he would’ve liked to have the freedom to openly express his opinion about the feminization of the Humanities, he wasn’t free to speak his mind. He needed his job and he desired his wife; so he had to keep his opinions to himself—as the actor Mel Gibson should have done when drunk, when his mask of respectability slipped quite a bit.
At the time of the faculty member’s rant, I was a midlife graduate student not because I desired to obtain a graduate degree and higher education, but because I had daughters to educate and no money, and they had enough scholarships that by living at home they would afford to go to school without incurring debt. I felt it was my responsibility to make sure they were not shackled with debts they couldn’t pay; thus, I left Kodiak for Fairbanks where I lived in university family housing, my daughters living with me so that my daughters could take advantage of the gender equality that bore fruit in the late 20th-Century.
However, when my middle daughter left Alaska to pursue her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from UC Irvine, she was openly criticized within the Worldwide Church of God for seeking a graduate degree: Why do you need a graduate degree? You’re just gonna marry, stay home, and have kids. After all, you’re baptized. … Yes, she was baptized, but what does that have to do with going to graduate school unless Sabbatarian Christians fear secular education as Amish do?
From where does gender inequality come? Not from Christ Jesus. Not from the Apostle Paul …
Gender inequality comes from those who value the surface of things more than the substance of things; gender inequality is an aspect of the flesh—an elevation of the flesh over the spirit, of the creature [the created] over the Creator. As such, continuation of the citation from Paul is appropriate:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. (Rom 1:24–26)
Paul goes on to use homosexuality as evidence against those who worship the creature rather than the Creator, claiming that homosexuality is evidence of having debased minds. But within greater Christendom the juxtaposition of homosexuality with debased minds is masked. The debased mind of a Christian is usually not so easily seen, nor expressed as openly as the homosexual expresses his or her debasement through deviant sexual relationships. Instead, debased Christian minds manifest themselves in what Christians believe, especially Sabbatarians who embrace the Sacred Names Heresy … the Christian who places value on the pronunciation of names places value on what is physical; on what is of the flesh, of the tongue and lips.
Satan appears as an angel of light but inwardly, he is a liar and murderer. He is responsible for sins committed by the sons of Adam. God wasn’t responsible for Adam eating forbidden fruit; He didn’t cause Adam to eat.
The serpent didn’t directly cause Adam to eat forbidden fruit. Eve contributed to Adam eating though having given him the fruit that she sampled. But ultimately, Adam caused Adam to eat, to transgress the only command the Lord God gave to Adam.
Adam caused Adam to eat by Adam adding to the words of the Lord, adding, Do not touch, which the serpent then used against Adam, again not directly. But in hearing Eve utter these words, the serpent knew that Adam didn’t understand that he was Eve’s covering, that Adam’s obedience covered both the man and the woman. The serpent knew what Adam did not: the serpent knew that Eve could eat and not die for she, as wife, was covered by Adam’s obedience.
So did God consign Adam to disobedience? No! Thus, what Paul wrote about the inclusiveness of “all” being consigned to disobedience didn’t initially pertain to Adam. However, by the Lord God driving Adam and Eve from the Garden, death reigned over Adam, Eve, and their three named sons—Cain, Abel, and Seth—with one son dead and another marked for death before the third was born. Outside the Garden, death reigned over “all”; inside the Garden, death did not reign over anyone; for Adam inside the Garden didn’t die when he ate forbidden fruit. Even outside the Garden, he lived 930 years.
Adam died spiritually when he was driven from the Garden.
Adam died in the day that he ate forbidden fruit, but this day was not an earth day of twenty-four hours. Rather, it was Day One of the Genesis “P” creation account, with this poetic creation account functioning as the abstract for the planned procreation of God that has Christ Jesus, the Beloved of God, being the light of Day One (2 Cor 4:6). And because each “day” of the “P” creation account symbolically represents a millennium—does NOT literally represents a thousand years—Adam could not live longer than a thousand years, with the length of time short of a thousand years being the lifespan of an end-of-the-age man.
Peter wrote,
But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Pet 3:7–9 emphasis added)
Using Peter stating that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years, a person would always be wrong to claim that the earth is six thousand earth years old, or even that the plan of God is limited to seven year thousand years. Rather, what Peter wrote is symbolic; is a literary figure of speech. For between Adam and Christ Jesus were far more years than a thousand. And between the death of the Christian Church (on or about 101 CE) and the end of this present era—all in the dark portion of the third day—have been nearly two millennia … the second day was approximately forty earth days long; the fourth day will be of even fewer earth days. However, the fifth day [the Millennium] would seem to be a thousand years, thereby establishing the symbolism for the Millennium representing the earthly Sabbath, with the sixth day [the great White Throne Judgment] occurring outside of space-time, and the seventh day representing entering heaven, or the one [after] the Sabbath.
The seven days of the Genesis “P” creation account have the dark portion of Day One (the physical creation) and four and a half days of the spiritual creation here on earth, followed by a day outside of heaven and earth, and the coming of “heaven” to a new earth, the subject that will be pursued in a near future Reading.
What Peter wrote was an admonishment to live righteously today, for a tomorrow will come when there is no physical heaven nor earth nor human persons.. Salvation is of today, of what the person does in the moment, with one moment passing into the next moment so that the person can make again his or her decisions of today, correcting bad decisions, reinforcing good decisions by again making good decisions. And repentance is all about not again making bad decisions, but being determined to reverse courses through belief of God, with belief causing the person to rebel against the present prince of this world and his unbelief.
Rebellion against God is rebellion against the ways, the laws of God; is knowing how God does whatever and choosing not to do this “whatever” when placed in a situational maquette. And disciples of Christ Jesus will be routinely placed in miniatures of situations God has encountered; hence, Paul wrote through his scribe Tertius that,
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Rom 1:18–20 emphasis added)
The divine nature of God—the mind of God—can be clearly perceived in the things that have been made and in their relationships, but only when a person opens eyes so that created things and their relationships are discernable … how would a person know that it isn’t the phenomenon that caused the Adam and Eve Temptation Account to be written that reveals God’s eternal power and divine nature, but the artifice of the Temptation Account; i.e., the story itself. Consider the odds against a story that predates Moses, that claims to predate every other story—a story not inscribed on stone steles or in cuneiform script on clay tablets—a story inscribed on the older wraps of scrolls (the portion of the scroll most subject to damage) surviving multiple millennia to come to end-of-an-era humanity. The oldest surviving story in English is a little more than a millennium old. The oldest surviving story in Greek is less than three millennia old. Yet the story of the Temptation was known and known to be old when transcribed by 9th-Century BCE Hebrew scribes, with this version of the story being the one commonly read today.
It isn’t the phenomenon of Adam eating forbidden fruit that reveals an endtime reality through being the shadow of a near-future historical event, but the “story” [the artifice] of Adam eating. It isn’t the veracity of the story that functions as prophecy, but the story/artifice that serves as prophecy.
Whether the Temptation Account as an artifice is or isn’t based on a historical phenomenon is immaterial: the Temptation Account as an artifice exists, and its existence after so many millennia serves to reveal God’s eternal power and divine nature, with this power and nature becoming apparent in the near future when it will “explode” in the form of the Second Passover liberation of circumcised-of-heart Israel from indwelling sin and death.
God isn’t physical; isn’t a thing like a stick or a stone or the metal likeness of a bull. God is spirit, that is God can be likened to a person’s breath, an ephemeral thing that does work like a story does work—like ephemeral “breath” gives substance to a story through the telling of the story, with this substance not being something that can be picked up by hands and placed on a shelf, but substance that changes the inner person that will then change the outer person. Thus, the telling of a story—but not the telling of every story—transforms what is non-physical into something that is tangible and that physically exists in the created world. Hence, it is a story, not the events that inspired the writing of the story, that serves as the shadow and copy of those things that God does and will do. It is “story” that functions as biblical prophecy rather than biblical history. However, when a Christian is spiritually blind, the Christian will be unable to see that the Genesis Temptation Account isn’t told for its historical veracity, but told for what it reveals about the future.
A Law of God—a Covenant—that regulates hands and body wasn’t inscribed for hands and body, but for the mind and heart of the person. A man doesn’t please God by ogling women, mentally undressing women so that he can have sexual intercourse with them, but never making any effort to act upon his lust, therefore never committing in his person either adultery or fornication. Rather, this man is an adulterer. He has broken the Law even though he never touched strange flesh (Matt 5:27–28). So the Law of God isn’t like a human law that can be skirted by rigorous adherence to the letter of the law—by remaining inside the exact wording of the law—but the Law of God can be likened to stories that teach, that reveal what has been hidden from humanity, that say and mean one thing for the flesh but simultaneously mean more for the inner self of the person.
The Law of God doesn’t excuse or permit bad behavior regards of whether this bad behavior is or isn’t proscribed by the Law; so the Law of God includes what is described by its parameters plus those things outside of its parameters that are not right and good—
A story is not limited by its parameters—by those things included in the story—but incorporates the reader and hearer of the story into the story; thus a story about Adam’s unbelief is also about Israel’s unbelief as well as about Christendom’s unbelief. A story about Nineveh’s belief of Jonah is also a story about the third part of humankind’s belief of God; a story about Pharisees not-believing Christ Jesus is also a story about Christendom not believing the two witnesses.
The story of Jonah need not be historically validated to serve as the revealing story of Jesus being three days and three nights in the Garden Tomb before being returned to the light. In fact, efforts to historically validate the Jonah story hinder how this story functions in the Jesus narrative that links the Genesis story of the creation of Adam and Eve to endtime Christendom …
If your desire was to conceal from humanity what would happen to humanity at the end of this present age, how would you go about doing so? Likewise, if your desire was to reveal to humankind its fate, how would you prevent this revelation from influencing human behavior that is expressed in the idiom, playing to the camera?
Ideas carried in stories are virtually impossible to squelch—and in the timeless realm of heaven, where all things happen in the same moment, there is no past tense: the things that presently exist and their relationship one to the other erase what was before so that what was before no longer exists. Thus for the Adversary and the other angels, no history preexisted their creation (receipt of life). They have, from their perspective, existed from the beginning of heaven in a manner analogous to how primitive Israel and primitive Christendom believed that the creation began with the creation of Adam:
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, [physical]
in the day that [YHWH] God made the earth and the heavens. [spiritual — note the reversed order]
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for [YHWH] God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then [YHWH] God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Gen 2:4–7)
If no man predates Adam; if the ages of Adam’s descendants until Abraham are known, then the creation can be computed and dated in earth years, with this date not agreeing with geological evidence that also suffers from ignorance; from being of primitive science, analogous to the first independent clause of Genesis 2:4 that pertains to the physical creation … science that restricts itself to being about the physical creation—to being about things that can be measured and observed—excludes God and heaven from all fields of scientific investigation; hence this form of science is analogous to primitive Christendom, the epitome of which was Paul laying the below-ground foundation for the temple of God (1 Cor 3:10–11) that was to be built at the end of the age, with the pillars of this temple standing on the foundation Paul laid and reaching up to ceiling joist and roof and capstone. Hence Christ Jesus as the cornerstone of the foundation Paul laid was the beginning, the Greek “Α” character, and Christ Jesus as the capstone that sets atop the endtime harvest of firstfruits is the end, the Greek “Ω” character, with the Church at Philadelphia standing on the foundation and supporting the endtime harvest of firstfruits.
It is the Church at Philadelphia (from Rev 3:7–13) that by its little strength slips from the Adversary’s view to do the work of preparing the way for the coming of Christ Jesus, the Second Advent, this work being the reality of the work of John the Baptist with John the Revelator (John the Elder) being the brother and partner (Rev 1:9) of endtime disciples who do this work through the indwelling of Christ Jesus in each of them. And the first task of Philadelphia is to proclaim the endtime good news that all who endure to the end shall be saved—saved because dominion over the single kingdom of this world will be taken from the Adversary and given to the Son of Man halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation.
God gave to the Adversary the opportunity to demonstrate the validity of bottom-up governance—democracy—through consigning all of humanity to unbelief of Him, God … unbelief produces disobedience that is “death” and that leads to death. God did this so that He can have mercy on all by giving to every human person the opportunity to rebel against the Adversary by turning to God and by faith keeping His Law, either through knowing the Law or by not knowing the Law and by nature doing things that are right and good, those things that represent love for neighbor and brother. And this is the essence of Paul’s Gospel, especially as inscribed in Romans 2:11–16.
If a person does what is right and good when under the rule of the Adversary, the present prince of this world, the person has overcome the Adversary without realizing why doing what is right and good seems to boomerang on the person, often harming the person who does good.
Here is where problems reside, for even Christians within greater Christendom do not trust God to do His job. Almost universally, Christians believe they have to intervene to make sure that the work of God gets done in a manner to their liking … when no person can come to Christ Jesus unless the Father draws this person from the world and gives this person to Christ (John 6:44, 65), who is so presumptuous as to preach decision theology; to preach that a person must make a decision of Christ, must walk that figurative sawdust trail to the altar where a short sinner’s prayer causes a person to be saved. That’s hokum! That’s not believing Scripture nor using a person’s intellect. This walking the sawdust trail to salvation is the production of flimflam men and women.
The pastor or traveling evangelist who preaches decision theology does the glorified Christ Jesus more harm than good, even if this pastor or evangelist is sincere in [usually] his desire to spread the word of God … does this pastor or evangelist believe that no person can come to Christ unless the Father draws this world from this world? If the pastor or evangelist does, then the pastor of evangelist is utterly condemned.
Peter’s a day is as a thousand years lays the base for the Greek use of the Hebrew idiom for the first day of the following week, used nine times in the New Testament: the one [implied, after] the Sabbath. This idiom serves as a euphemism for heaven. What is after the Sabbath? Heaven!
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation. (Gen 2:1–3 emphasis added)
Resting on the seventh day was part of the work of God, this seventh day being inside of space-time (His creation). Outside of time—in the supra-dimension that is heaven—there is no Day One, or second day or third day or fourth day or fifth day or sixth day or even seventh day. There is only the present; for time and the passage of time can be written as mathematical functions of mass, the essence of the physical creation. In heaven, there is no yesterday or tomorrow. Only inside the creation, a glorious death chamber, does the present moment decay into the next moment, then the moment after that moment a finite number of times, albeit a very large number.
The harvest of firstfruits is represented by three named sons, with all of Christendom at the beginning of the Affliction being represented by Cain and Abel—
But this is a subject for another Reading.
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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.