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 chirality.

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Possible songs include the following hymns:
Holy, Holy, Holy
We Praise Thee O God, Our Redeemer
Savior Like A Shepherd Lead Us
Blest and Happy Is He
Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

Weekly Readings

For the Sabbath of July 26, 2008

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.

The person conducting the services should read or assign to be read 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

Commentary: When Paul addresses spiritual gifts, he makes the point that the Church is not divided but is one Body that is of Christ, in which are “first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administering, and various kinds of tongues” (1 Cor 12:28) … where is this Church today? Where is an apostle [one sent forth] that builds on the foundation Paul laid? The visible Christian Church seems to be built on a foundation that is the inverse of the foundation Paul laid, and the Sabbatarian Churches of God vigorously deny what Paul taught about a new self, a new creature, born of spirit as a son of God, today dwelling within a tent of flesh; so where is this one Church that is not divided?

Where is a prophet that delivers the oracles of God? Where are teachers who explicate the gospel of John, or of Matthew or Luke, or the epistles of Peter? Where are the miracles, particularly public miracles? Where are the gifts of healing, helping, administering, and where are the foreign language speakers?

Something has happened to the single Body of Christ—and that something is the same thing as what happened to the body of Christ. As the physical body of the man Jesus died at Calvary and was buried by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus after hanging dead for three hours, the spiritual Body of Christ died and is dead, buried from sight when God delivered Christendom into the hand of the prince of this world at Nicea (ca 325 CE). As Jesus’ physical body lay in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights, suffering no corruption, before being resurrected, His spiritual Body now awaits resurrection after the third day [of the “P” or Genesis chapter 1 creation account] when Zion will give birth to a nation in a moment (Isa 66:7–8). The Church will then live, suffering no corruption, no false doctrines, no vain practices; suffering none of those things that today identify the Christian Church as “Christian.” And it will from this state of being without sin that the many will fall away: the rebellion against God that Paul labels the great falling away (2 Thess 2:3) has not yet happened, but will happen after life has been restored to the single spiritual Body of Christ.

How can a disciple know that the great falling away did not occur in the 4^th-Century at the Council of Nicea, or did not occur following Herbert Armstrong’s death, or at any other particular moment in the past? How can a disciple believe that the Body of Christ is dead when so much activity occurs in this world under the umbrella of Christianity? … A disciple can because of the model or pattern or example or shadow of righteousness that Old Testament Israel forms in Scripture.

The Philadelphia Church has traditionally taken meaning from Scripture via typological exegesis—everyone uses some reading strategy to extract “meaning” from text. Christian orthodoxy uses grammatico-historical exegesis. Following in the tradition of dispensationalists, the former Worldwide Church of God used precept-upon-precept exegesis, removing a precept from its context and following this precept throughout Scripture (this reading strategy is actually condemned by the Lord [YHWH] — Isa 28:13). So it isn’t that meaning or understanding can be taken from Scripture without employing a reading strategy; it is a matter of which reading strategy a disciple will employ, for without employing any reading strategy would be akin to a dog looking at the pages of a Bible. The dog can certainly see the black marks on the white paper, but no meaning would be assigned to these letters that to a person form words that form sentences, thoughts, and understanding of God, or at least knowledge of ancient Hebrew myths in unbelievers.

The principles underlying typological exegesis are contained in the structure of Hebraic poetics and in two specific passages that the Apostle Paul wrote:

1. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by the 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. (Rom 1:18–20)

2. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. Thus, it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a live-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Cor 15:44–49)

If the things that have been made revealed the divine nature of God, then the earthly body of Christ Jesus and His spiritual Body are enantiomorphs—and chirality is a primary principle of creation … to many, the two italicized words will be unfamiliar. Both English words are borrowed directly from Greek, and they pertain to non-symmetrical mirror images as a left hand makes of a right hand. Therefore, a Philadelphian can argue that since Jesus, when resurrected, sat down at the right hand of the Father, disciples when resurrected to glory will sit down at the left hand of the Father. And in the much under-appreciated image of the wedding supper, both Christ and His Bride will face the Father; hence, glorified disciples will be on the right hand of Christ, the Bridegroom (but will still be on the left hand side of the Father), with the Father being in the position of the authority that marries the Bride to the Bridegroom. So glorified disciples will behold the face of the Father as the non-symmetrical mirror image of Moses was only able to behold the backside of Yah (Ex 33:18–23) when Moses entered into the presence of the Lord.

It has been oft stated in the writings of The Philadelphia Church that as a man doesn’t marry his body, Christ Jesus will not marry His Body … the wedding supper will not occur until there is a separation of the Head from the Body of the Lamb of God; for as the head and body, both, of a paschal lamb dies when sacrificed, both the Head and the Body of the Lamb of God must die, with the Head dying at Calvary when there was not yet a Body for this Head as there was no helpmate found among the beasts created in the Garden of God for the first Adam. Thus, the deep sleep that came over the first Adam is analogous to the three days and three nights that Jesus was in the heart of the earth. And Jesus breathing on ten of His first disciples and thereby directly transferring the Holy Spirit to them (John 20:22) is analogous to the Lord presenting Eve to the first Adam; for with receipt of the Holy Spirit, these ten became the last Eve, the Zion who will give birth to three spiritual sons during the Tribulation.

A thing is chiral if it differs from its mirror image and if its mirror image cannot be superimposed on the thing, with the primary example of chiral objects being, again, the left and right hands of a person. In the natural world, chemical molecules displaying chirality are relatively common, with perhaps the best known example being Thalidomide, a morning sickness sedative prescribed to pregnant women from 1957 until the early 1960s. Thalidomide contains both left and right handed isomers [compounds that have the same molecular formula but are structured differently] in equal amounts, with the right-handed enantimer being effective against morning sickness, but with the left handed enantiomer causing mutations in human infants through interacting with the DNA molecule in G–C regions.

When Thalidomide was marketed, the effects of the molecule appearing in right and left handed variants were either unknown, or unaccounted for—either way, the damage done by the left-handed enantiomer was horrific, but nothing compared to the damage being done by the teratogenic effects Christian orthodoxy has on the Body of Christ.

The artificial sweetener Aspartame is a hundred times sweeter than sucrose, but its mirror image is bitter—and so it is with Christianity.

DNA, proteins, amino acids, sugars are all chiral. The human DNA molecule is right-handed, and human proteins are exclusively built from L-amino acids, with the origin for this selective dissymmetry remaining unexplainable.

In Scripture there is a primary example of chirality that really cannot be appreciated by someone who has not fished commercially.

The reader should now read John chapter 21, verses 1 through 14.

Commentary: If a person were to watch the reality-documentary Deadliest Catch, on television’s Discovery Channel, the person would notice that all of the crab boats are set up to fish off the starboard side of the vessel, with the arrangement of pot hauler, King Coiler, and picking hook placed to accommodate right-handed fishermen … a long line vessel will be set up to lay gear over the stern, but to pick from the starboard side of the vessel, with the rollerman being right-handed. A seiner might be similarly setup as might a trawler that side-hauled. Commercial boats are not setup to fish off both sides of the vessel, and they were not setup to fish off both sides of the vessel in the 1^st-Century CE.

The Gospel of John would seem to close with chapter 20, verse 31, but John chose not to “close” his gospel with the close of the narrative about the conflict of faith and unbelief Jesus faced in His ministry. Instead, John adds the fishing scene and the account of the interplay between Jesus and Peter—and his reason for doing so isn’t, as many theologians hold, to include a couple of additional incidents that would otherwise be part of the things Jesus did that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written (John 21:25) if all of these things were recounted. Rather, chapter 21 seems to exist for hermeneutical reasons, for in this chapter John recounts Jesus telling Peter to, “‘Feed my lambs’” (21:15), “‘Tend my sheep’” (v. 16), and “‘Feed my sheep’” (v. 17), the subject structure of Peter’s two epistles in just this order.

Peter begins his first epistle with, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet 1:3–5) … Peter isn’t writing to mature disciples, but to babes in Christ—to lambs—who are “living stones to be built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (2:5).

The first obligation John records in chapter 21 under which Jesus put Peter was to, “‘Feed my lambs’” (John 21:15), and Peter fulfills this obligation from the opening salutation through the end of chapter three of his first epistle, and probably through the end of chapter four.

In chapter five, Peter begins to address the elders that were among the disciples: “So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the suffering of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock’” (1 Pet 5:1–3). And Peter, by his testimony of being a fellow elder and by his exhortation of the elders of the flock of God, tends Jesus’ sheep, and thereby fulfills the second of the three commissions Jesus specifically gives him.

The third obligation under which Jesus placed Peter was to, “‘Feed my sheep’”—sheep are not lambs, not infants in Christ, but “those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours” (2 Pet 1:1). And in the entirety of Peter’s second epistle, he fulfills his third commission.

Peter was not a natural writer; he was a fisherman. He was the one who led the others in going fishing (John 21:3), and this is part of what John apparently wanted to convey in his epilogue to his gospel. But concealed in what John conveys that can only be taken as instructions to Peter to feed disciples not for a generation through apostolic succession but throughout the Church era—in other words, to write his epistles—is Jesus telling those who had gone fishing, “‘Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some’” (v. 6) … were they not fishing off the right side of the boat all night? If they were, then Jesus instructing them to cast the net to the right side makes no sense. He would have told them to again cast the net and they would find fish. So for Jesus to tell those disciples to cast the net on the right side when nothing had been caught all night, Jesus employs chirality, for the act of casting the net to the right side would have been the mirror image of casting the net to the port or left side of boat where no fish had been found throughout the night.

So that a non-fisherman can better visualize the scene, fish leave deep water under the cover of darkness to feed in the shallow water near shore where due to the sunlight’s ability to penetrate these shallow waters there is more food available. So a small craft employing a net too large to be a thrown as a minnow seine is, would keep the boat to the deeper water side of where the net would be employed, thereby using the bottom to help purse the net and prevent fish from escaping. The fisherman would not fish off the deep water side of the boat that would be working parallel to the shoreline. Thus, the fishermen would, all night, work off the same side of the boat, this side being whichever side has been setup to haul the net. Therefore, it is very probable that someone on the shore would be within hailing range of the boat, and it would be very unlikely that the fishermen would want to cast the net off the deep water side of the boat. For Peter and the others to have listened to someone on the shore tell them to cast the net from the other side of the boat would indicate a desperation by the fishermen. So when a great number of large fish are caught, John realized that it was Jesus standing on the shore … it was Jesus who told His disciple to cast the net on the right hand side of the boat, not something they would have naturally done. And it is John who reaches across time to relay this message that is central to typological exegesis.

Right and left hand forms of the same molecule can have vastly different properties and can produce radically different results in human beings … Jesus telling his disciples to throw the net on the right side of the boat results in a catch of 153 large fish, a number of significance that is not yet fully understood—

Matthew records that Jesus, while walking by the Sea of Galilee, “saw two brothers casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men’” (4:18–19) … Peter and his accompanying disciples caught nothing, neither men or fish, until they heard the voice of Jesus and did as they were told and cast the net to the right side of the boat. Again, in typology shadows of heavenly events are chiral images of spiritual realities: although the same sequence of events happens to the first Adam as happens to the last Adam, the first Adam relates to the last Adam as the left hand relates to the right hand when both hands are pressed together, palm against palm. As labor pains precede human birth, labor pains will follow spiritual birth (again, Isa 66:7–8). As death follows human life, death precedes spiritual life, with baptism being a representation of death. As the world was baptized into death in the flood of Noah’s day, the world will be baptized into life when the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of the Father and His Christ (Rev 11:15), but the baptism of the flood in Noah’s day ended the period when human beings lived a thousand years so since Noah, human beings with their short life spans have been as dead men. And as the physical body of Jesus was dead and buried for third days and three nights following persecution and tribulation, the spiritual Body of Christ will be resurrected from death after the third day to undergo persecution and tribulation—what Jesus experienced on the Preparation Day is a shadow and type of what the Church will experience during the seven endtime years that immediately precede the resurrection of the saints to glory.

Understand, prior to the Flood the men of old lived lives of great length—and when human beings are liberated from indwelling sin and death during Christ’s millennial reign, human beings will again live lives of great length (i.e., all of the Millennium). The shortness of life that began after the Flood is a representation of death that has allowed humanity to continue without being exterminated. Israel’s captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and exile to Babylon is a similar representation of death that allowed Israel to continue without extermination. Likewise, Christendom’s captivity by the prince of this world through the Roman Emperor Constantine determining what sound doctrine would be is a similar representation of death that has allow Christianity to continue without extinction. In each case, separation from God represented death. And as Noah and the seven with him bridged the transition from life to death, Christ and the angels to the seven churches will bridge the transition from death to life. The Ark Noah built—as well as the Ark of the Covenant Moses built—was a type of the spiritual ark that carries the seven churches across from death to life, with the seven pair of clean animals representing the seven churches and with the single pair of every other species representing those fellowships that leave spiritual Esau to enter into God’s rest [typified by Sabbath observance].

It would be easy to teach that because Jesus’ physical body died, His spiritual Body will not die. In fact, this has been the commonly accepted teaching within the Churches of God for more than a century, but the Church represents the last Eve. And as the first Eve believed the serpent—“the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die’” (Gen 3:4)—the last Eve has believed that old serpent, Satan the devil, who said to the Church, What Jesus meant when He said that the gates of Hades will not prevail against the Church was that you, the Church, will not die if you decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong—you have a good mind, you know God, determine for yourself good and evil. And the Church ate forbidden fruit and has since experienced death and corruption whereas the first Eve was driven alive from the Garden and God’s presence. But the first Eve died outside of the Garden of God whereas the last Eve will be saved by childbirth, the birth of a spiritual Abel and a spiritual Cain in the first 220 days of the Tribulation, followed by a spiritual Seth halfway through the seven endtime years.

The birth order of Cain and Abel will be reversed so that it is Abel who is born first when the Church is liberated from indwelling sin and death at a second Passover, then Cain born second when the lawless one, the man of perdition, is revealed and the great falling away occurs 220 days later [about Christmas time].

The former Worldwide Church of God, using Dugger and Dodd’s History of the True Church as its proof text, sought to establish that there has been continuous succession of Sabbath-keeping fellowships since the 1^st-Century—and in doing so, the former Worldwide Church of God made many historical claims that just were not true, assigning seventh day observance to Sunday-observing fellowships that identified Sunday as the Sabbath. And this embarrassingly poor scholarship was never corrected: it’s easy to make a mistake when rereading Scripture. Everyone growing in grace and knowledge will have made mistakes. But the test of genuineness is whether, when a mistake is realized, a correction is made … if the ego doesn’t allow for corrections to be made the ego will prevent the person from entering the kingdom of heaven.

Dugger and Dodd’s intentions were sincere, but their scholarship was bad. Their book was/is factually wrong. They “borrowed” the dispensationalist concept of church eras, a false teaching, and the former Worldwide Church identified itself as the Philadelphia era of the true church. But—and this is a huge caveat—as the seven named churches in Revelation could send letters to each other in the 1^st-Century, their empowered enantiomorphs in the 21^st-Century will be able to telephone each other: the messages to the seven churches are to be delivered on the Lord’s day, not a day of the week, but the day when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man in the near future. And on that day, the message to Philadelphia is to continue doing what you have been doing; don’t let anyone take your crown (Rev 3:10–11) … “soon” doesn’t apply to a day two thousand years in the future (cf. Rev 1:1; 3:11; 22:6–7, 10, 12), not if the language of Scripture is to have any recoverable meaning. “Soon” applies to the near future, and in the case of Revelation, to the seven endtime years of tribulation. John was in the spirit on the Lord’s day (Rev 1:10), that day when the Son of Man is given the single kingdom of this world. John had, in vision, entered the timeless heavenly realm, and when he entered this realm, he was in the period when the four kings of Daniel chapter 7 appear and are taken, when Satan is cast from heaven and the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man.

If the teaching that the Church will not die were true—and it is not—then the Church is the deadest living organization that can be imagined for where is it today? Where are its services held? What does it teach? Where are the miracles, the healings? … Although too many Sabbatarian fellowships identify themselves as the remnant of the true Church—especially those of the MIA movement—any disciple should realize that the Church described in Scripture is far larger at the end of the age than is all of these miniscule Sabbatarian fellowships put together. So a disciple should know that the endtime Christian Church is today dead, a lifeless corpse analogous to Jesus’ lifeless physical body on the weekly Sabbath, the 17^th of Abib, two plus days after He was laid in the heart of the earth. Otherwise, there is no truth in Scripture.

Jesus’ spiritual Body is not, today, visible in this world. It is concealed in death. Yet it will soon be resurrected to life at a second Passover, a liberation of spiritually circumcised Israel from indwelling sin and death. So as a school day exercise, explain how physical circumcision [circumcision of the foreskin] and spiritual circumcision [circumcision of the heart] are enantiomorphs. Explain how Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and Satan, king of Babylon (Isa 14:4), are enantiomorphs. Explain how “Babylon,” the reigning hierarchy of the kingdom of this world, and the Son of Man, the future reigning hierarchy, are enantiomorphs. Explain how Israel under the judges and the Church today are enantiomorphs. Explain how King Saul and the man of perdition are enantiomorphs. The list can go on and keep a person occupied all week.

The Philadelphia Church began to knowingly practice typological exegesis in February 2003. It had been taking meaning from Scripture through typology earlier without realizing what it was doing. Likewise, The Philadelphia Church has been employing enantiomorphs and using chirality for some period before formal realization occurred that within typology what was being seen were non-symmetrical mirror images that were as left and right hands, with the /S/ or left hand images being the physical things of this world that reveal the invisible things of God, the /R/ reality that which has life in the heavenly realm. And John was probably conveying to endtime disciples the need to employ this hermeneutical strategy that is easily summed up in Jesus telling Peter to cast the net to the right side of the boat, a statement that has meaning to those who were once fishermen (Jer 16:16) and had set up a boat to fish off one side or the other (almost always the starboard side, the right side when standing in the stern and facing the bow).

The strategy might be easily summed up in the antidote of Jesus telling the fisherman to cast their net to the right side, but before the strategy can be employed a disciple needs to realize that all of Scripture forms the mirror image of the Book of Life, in which disciples are living epistles (2 Cor 3:3). Until then, too many disciples will remain focused on those things that pertain to the flesh, thereby verifying that they are spiritually dead and await resurrection to life at the second Passover when Cain will seek to kill Abel as Esau was angry with Jacob.

The seven endtime years of tribulation will see the Father deliver the Church into the hand of the man of perdition (cf. Zech 13:7–8; Dan 7:25) for the destruction of the flesh because of the lawlessness of the greater Christian Church in a manner analogous to Paul ordering the saints at Corinth to deliver the one who was with his father’s wife to Satan (1 Cor 5:5). This is also a period when Sin is not to harm the oil and the wine, the already processed fruits of the Promised Land. Thus, when the Church is resurrected to life through being filled with the Holy Spirit—this is not the resurrection to glory that occurs at the end of these seven years—the Church will be liberated from indwelling sin and death. The mantle of Christ’s righteousness will no longer be needed; the Son of Man will be revealed (Luke 17:30), Head and Body. And the Father will separate the Body from Christ, its Head, with this separation necessary to transform the Body into the Bride. Those disciples who love Christ enough to give their lives for Him during these years of tribulation will truly make a loving Bride for Him.

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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