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 understanding spiritual birth.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of August 14, 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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For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles—assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets [in spirit en pneumati]. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. / Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of His power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages [en to theo in the God] who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that He has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. (Eph 3:1–13 emphasis added)
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Before beginning a discussion of the mystery made known to Paul via revelation, the God who created all things was the Logos [o logos] (John 1:3) who was God [theos no definite article: the noun shares the article for o logos , disclosing that o logos was truly God and not the breath of God] and who was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning (v. 1). Translators, not understanding the mystery Paul revealed, have mistakenly assumed that the Father was the creator or all that has been made. This is not the case, according to the apostle Jesus loved. The Logos, who was Theos, created all things then entered His creation (John 3:16; 1:14) as His only Son [the Unique One]. This Logos has His own breath, the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos — Rom 8:9] which is a holy breath or spirit [pneuma hagion], but which is separate and distinct from the breath of the One who raised Jesus from the dead [to pneuma tou egeirantos ton Iesoun ek nekron v. 11]. Two deities, two breaths—in the beginning the Logos [o logos] was with the God [ton Theon], each with self-sustaining life within Himself (each with His own breath or pneuma/spirit), with the Logos [o logos] functioning as the Helpmate of the God [ton Theon] so that these two deities were One deity, one God, as Adam and Eve were one flesh (Gen 2:24). And this is a mystery that has not been understood by Christendom.
The Logos [o logos] who was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning did not, with the God [ton Theon], simply form one family as most Binitarian Christians have claimed, but were “one” with one another as seen in the Tetragrammaton YHWH, in which the Creator as Yah [YH] is joined with the God [WH] to form one deity. These two were truly one as if they were married, with Yah interacting with humanity while the God remained concealed by the creation.
A second and like point that needs to be understood is that the Church is of one breath or pneuma/spirit with Christ Jesus as Eve was of one flesh with Adam. The model of creation seen in Genesis chapter 2 is the visible shadow and type [left hand enantiomer] of the creation of the Church, made of spirit from a wound in the last Adam’s side. Where there is no breath of God in Christ Jesus dwelling within a person, there is no Church. Thus, before the spirit was given, no one had indwelling eternal life—and apart from Christ Jesus, no one has indwelling eternal life, the reason why the lawyer and the rich young ruler asked Jesus what they must do to “inherit eternal life” (Luke 10:25; 18:18). But with the giving of the spirit when Jesus breathed on ten of His disciples and said, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit [hagion pneuma]’” (John 20:22), disciples who hear Jesus’ words and believe the God who sent the Logos into His creation have eternal life (John 5:24) through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of the Father [pneuma Theon]. The inner selves of these disciples have been raised from the dead and have passed from death to life without coming under judgment. These inner selves are sons of God (Gal 4:6–7) that continue to dwell in tents of flesh, with some of these tents being female and some male, some slave and some free, some Gentile and some Jew. The son of God is not that tent of flesh that continues as it was before, male or female, Jew or Gentile (Gal 3:28).
Again, these sons of God do not constitute one family that is “God,” but are one with the Son as the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27) until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, when the greater Christian Church will be delivered into the hand of the Adversary for the destruction of the flesh after being filled-with and empowered by the breath of God so that no indwelling sin or death remains within these Christians: when the Son of Man is revealed (Luke 17:30), grace will end. Disciples will no longer be clothed in Christ Jesus’ righteousness, but must clothe themselves in their own obedience as acceptable living sacrifices. Disciples will be separated from the Son, the reason why disciples will “marry” the Son when He returns (a man doesn’t marry his own body but is already one with his body). And with marriage, disciples will again be one with the Son as Adam and Eve were one flesh. So there will not be, in a human sense, one family of deities after the Second Advent, but will be the Father and the Son, with the Father and the Son being “one” and with the Son being “one” entity that includes all glorified sons of God. There will never be any black sheep members of the house of God; never any crazy aunts or weird uncles. The House of God today includes the Father and the Son that are one, and will include the Father and the Son who are one when disciples are glorified, with Christ Jesus being the First of the firstborn sons of God and with all firstborn sons of God being one through marriage, the humanly recognized institution that makes two people into one entity.
Marriage is not, nor should it be a fifty-fifty proposition: in the beginning, the Logos spoke only the words of the God so that He was fully one with the God, and so was it intended for man and woman to be. It was because of the hardness of the hearts of Israel that Moses permitted divorce, and it is because of the hardness of Christian hearts that Christians divorce at the same rate as the world. But in the beginning the intention was that the helpmate speak only the words of her husband as the Logos, both before He entered His creation then as the firstborn Son, spoke only the words of the Father—and when voluntarily speaking no other words but those of her husband, the helpmate discloses by what comes out from her heart that she is one with her husband: the two have become one, the thing that caused Adam to eat forbidden fruit in the Garden and caused/causes Jesus to bear the sins of disciples.
There is a third point that usually escapes notice: Paul was given revelation of the mysteries of God so that spiritual rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (i.e., the reigning hierarchy of the prince of this world) might know the multi-faceted wisdom of God. These demons sought to understand why the Logos would enter His creation, and that knowledge was made known to them through the preaching of the Apostle Paul; for Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles was a ministry to the nations that went far beyond human nations and peoples. … Rebelling angels that were cast into outer darkness (i.e., cast into the Abyss and into time) delivered themselves to the Adversary and were delivered by the Father and the Son into time for their destruction. However, when in time, change is possible, even for a rebelling spirit that puts aside his unbelief and brings forth fruit worthy of repentance. Paul revealed to these spirits and spiritual rulers what is sure to happen to them if they continue as they are.
Paul’s claim to having been called by God comes from his insight into the mysteries of God. His authority rests in his understanding, a claim that The Philadelphia Church also makes: the claim of Philadelphia is that it understands, explicates, and preaches the mysteries of God that Paul was called to deliver, and did deliver although deliver as milk to spiritual infants too immature for solid food. This claim rests upon the writings of this website and on associated websites. This is not a claim that only Philadelphia will be saved. It is a claim, however, that only Philadelphia delivers the endtime gospel message that all who endure to the end shall be saved (Matt 24:13; 10:22), and that Philadelphia is able to deliver this endtime good news because of a few faithful disciples who hear Jesus’ words and choose to support this work.
There are not many who are of Philadelphia. The Truth is sometimes hard to accept, as Jesus’ disciples found when Jesus said that they must eat His body and drink His blood: “When many of His disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’ … After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him” (John 6:60, 66).
The majority of Christendom have never heard Jesus’ words, but have instead heard only the message the prince of the power of the air used to kill the 1st-Century Church through Paul’s mystery of lawlessness (2 Thess 2:7) that was at work while he still lived.
When the crowd that ate the bread and fish the previous day found Jesus on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, they asked Him how He came to the place where He was: the crowd never saw Him leave the other side of the sea just as the Church never saw Jesus leave it. Jesus said, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal’” (John 6:26–27).
The spiritual milk that Paul delivered in his epistles will never perish, but it is for infants. It was never intended to sustain saints who have grown beyond infancy. There has been, from the beginning, an unwritten portion to Scripture that can only be read by saints who are the equivalent to a three year old human child; i.e., old enough to understand dual referents, where one thing represents another thing, a hidden thing, so what whatever happens to the one thing also happens to the hidden thing. In the case of Scripture, the “one thing” is circumcised-in-the-flesh Israel. The “hidden thing” is circumcised-of-heart Israel, which is the Christian Church. Thus, Scripture is primarily the record of what happened to Israel between Moses, who wrote of Christ, and when Israel was again enslaved by the king of Babylon. But Scripture serves as the linguistic icons for the words of Christ, delivered by the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos]. The meaning or linguistic objects for the words of Christ is what happens to the Christian Church between the Second Passover and when a third part of humankind (none of whom are today Christian) enter into God’s rest. The children of Israel, not the nation that left Egypt, entered into the Promised Land, God’s rest (from Ps 95:10–11). The nation that left Egypt is the shadow and type [left hand enantiomer] of the Christian Church at the time of the Second Passover; thus, Christendom functions as the linguistic object named by the linguistic icon … for present day disciples, the element of thirdness that links icon with object is the Parakletos, but historically, this element of thirdness will be Israel during the Millennium; for Ezekiel writes,
And say to the rebellious house, to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: O house of Israel, enough of all your abominations, in admitting foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, to be in my sanctuary, profaning my temple, when you offer to me my food, the fat and the blood. You have broken my covenant, in addition to all your abominations. And you have not kept charge of my holy things, but you have set others to keep my charge for you in my sanctuary. / Thus says the Lord God: No foreigner, uncircumcised in heart and flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the people of Israel, shall enter my sanctuary. But the Levites who went far from me, going astray from me after their idols when Israel went astray, shall bear their punishment. They shall be ministers in my sanctuary, having oversight at the gates of the temple and ministering in the temple. They shall slaughter the burnt offering and the sacrifice for the people, and they shall stand before the people, to minister to them. Because they ministered to them before their idols and became a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of Israel, therefore I have sworn concerning them, declares the Lord God, and they shall bear their punishment. They shall not come near to me, to serve me as priest, nor come near any of my holy things and the things that are most holy, but they shall bear their shame and the abominations that they have committed. Yet I will appoint them to keep charge of the temple, to do all its service and all that is to be done in it. / But the Levitical priests, the sons of Zadok, who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, shall come near to me to minister to me. And they shall stand before me to offer me the fat and the blood, declares the Lord God. They shall enter my sanctuary, and they shall approach my table, to minister to me, and they shall keep my charge. (Ezek 44:6–16 emphasis added)
An Israelite needs to be physically circumcised to enter the physical temple, and the Israelite must be circumcised of heart to enter the spiritual temple: in the Millennium, the history of physical Israel is merged-with or united-with the history of the Church as linguistic icons are united with linguistic objects to form the words of the speaker, in this case the words Christ Jesus. The element of thirdness that connects icons and objects for the words of Jesus is the yet-produced history of Israel in the Millennium, a third Israel that sacrifices in the Third Temple, but an Israel that will also stray from God inwardly so that when the Adversary is loosed after the thousand years (Rev 20:7), he shall deceive the nations as he has presently deceived the Christian Church.
The Christian who looks for a physical temple to be built in earthly Jerusalem before Christ returns will be as surprised as Noah’s neighbors were when the fountains of the deep erupted.
In the days of Moses, Pharaoh ordered the midwives for the Hebrews to kill male Israelites at birth—kill them before they could be circumcised on the eighth day. And this is what has happened: the prince of this world killed infant sons of God before they could be circumcised of heart so the Father quit giving a second breath of life to Christians while the Apostle John still lived … the physical razing of the temple reveals and precedes the razing of the spiritual temple of God, but precedes the destroying of the spiritual temple by only three decades. By the time Emperor Hadrian outlaws circumcision in the Roman Empire, which some scholars argue was the main cause of Bar Kokhba’s rebellion in 132 CE, the Church had been dead for three decades; for the Church died with John (exact date of death unknown, but approximately 100–102 CE).
The Adversary killed infant sons of God by preventing them from taking a journey of faith that cleansed their hearts so that they could be circumcised by the soft breath of God: they became as female squash blossoms that are not pollinated. They look like the ripe fruit, like a miniature of the squash they will be, but they wither and die before they grow much. Likewise, Christians whose hearts are not cleansed by faith and circumcised by the breath of God look like Jesus, but they soon wither and die. They have no indwelling eternal life. And they are as the children of Israel were in the Promised Land: before long they return to being slaves of the king of Babylon.
And how can the Adversary prevent infants sons of God from making a journey of faith that cleanses their hearts—the Adversary has his servants do his work for him: you can hear them now, Jesus kept the commandments so you as a Christian don’t have to keep them; Jesus fulfilled the Law so Christians are not under the Law but under Grace … if you think you can walk as Jesus walked and not strive to keep the commandments by faith, you are a servant or a slave of the Adversary. You lack any understanding of Scripture. And you will perish as debris burned in the garbage fires for the city of Jerusalem.
The lake of fire is the spiritual reality of the physical fires that burned ancient Jerusalem’s garbage.
The Apostle Paul’s imprisonment was a necessary reality to show the loss of the spirit of God that would come upon the Church … in understanding the mysteries of God, slavery or imprisonment or banishment to the isle of Patmos has significance: Israel in Egypt was a slave nation, but Moses was not reared as a slave and did not live as a slave. Rather, Moses was reared in Pharaoh’s household and lived for forty years in that household before fleeing as a fugitive and living in exile in the land of Midian where he herded sheep for his father-in-law: Moses in the land of Midian was nearly as removed from the activities of this world, then centered in the court of Pharaoh, as John was while exiled on the isle of Patmos.
For the person not born of God, regardless of whether the person is of Israel or is of the nations, serfdom either directly as a slave or indirectly as a son of disobedience discloses what it means for a person’s inner self to be without life, or dead. Again, it is these dead inner selves that Jesus referenced when He said to permit the dead to bury the dead of themselves (Matt8:22). It is these dead inner selves that the Father raises from death (John 5:21) through giving them a second breath of life, His divine breath [pneuma Theon]. It is the inner self that hears Jesus’ word [the word of me] or message (the compilation of Jesus’ words) and believes the One who sent Jesus into His creation that has indwelling eternal life (v. 24); for without being raised from the dead through receiving the indwelling of the breath of the Father, the enslaved Israelite or the son of disobedience will not hear and believe. But the inner self that has been raised from death and now hears and believes passed from death to life without coming under judgment for this inner self, a son of God, judges himself by whether he believes the word or message of Jesus. The inner self that doesn’t believe has a judge (John 12:48): the word [logos] Jesus spoke will judge this now-living inner self as if the word [logos] was a person analogous to Jesus Himself, to whom all judgment has been given (v. 22).
The inner self represents the person, but isn’t the tent of flesh. The word [logos] Jesus left with His disciples represents Jesus, but isn’t the man Jesus nor is it the firstborn Son of the Most High nor is it the Word [o logos] that was God [theos] and was with the God [ton Theon] in the beginning. This is the mystery that was revealed to the Apostle Paul and that serves to anchor Paul’s position as an apostle called out of season. The person who doesn’t understand this mystery doesn’t understand Paul, and probably has not been born of God.
Sabbatarian Christians who don’t understand spiritual birth as a real birth after the pattern of the first Adam’s birth have no business posturing as teachers of Israel—they need to keep silent and learn for if they have been born of spirit, they are still spiritual infants in need of a teething ring rather than a pulpit. When these infants attempt to teach without having been called by Christ to be teachers, they do more harm than good, with the present Sabbatarian churches of God being prima facie evidence of the harm they do.
Today, the words of Jesus are only being heard here, in the work Philadelphia does, a claim that is as hard for Sabbatarians to accept as Jesus’ words were for the crowd that left Him at the Passover season a year before He was crucified. But the evidence to support the claim is in what has been written by this work and its associated websites … the evidence is there to accept or reject, with the disciple having responsibility for his or her own salvation.
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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."