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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 Possible songs include the following hymns: Weekly
For the Sabbath of September 1, 2007
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 service
should now read or assign to be read Romans chapter 11. Commentary: The question the Apostle
Paul asked must again be asked: has God rejected His people? Only now, two
peoples called Paraphrasing the Apostle,
I acknowledge that I am a spiritually circumcised Israelite descended physically
from Cornelia Govertsz, daughter of
Tobias Govertsz, a Mennonite minister and signer of the Dordrecht Confession of
Faith, but I am spiritually descended from Andreas Fischer and the trail of
Sabbatarian Anabaptists that returned to God’s rest from spiritual The vast majority of
Anabaptists continue the tradition of the Roman and Greek Churches by working
on the Sabbath and attempting to enter God’s rest on the following day,
thereby continuing in sin, as if by sinning more, grace might abound all the
more, a false concept that the Apostle condemned (Rom 3:5-8) … God was
not in the past, and will not be in the future unrighteous in inflicting His
wrath on Anabaptists who absolutely refuse to keep the Sabbath commandment. To
break the law in one point is to break the law (Jas 2:10). Therefore, the
majority of Anabaptists literally continue in sin in the vain hope that good
will come from their lawlessness. The Apostle writes that
his people, natural Israel, stumbled that through their trespass salvation
could come to Gentiles, with salvation forming a new nation of Pause for a moment: how
will worshiping on Sunday and eating swine’s flesh make natural Today, even the goyim
that live by the commandments of God, keeping the weekly Sabbath as well as the
high Sabbaths, do not make the natural Jew jealous for these goyim have no
love, no “works,” no spiritual fruit; plus, they eat cheeseburgers.
They are spiritually dead (not because they eat cheeseburgers), collectively a
corpse that utters words without understanding. Nor do these Sabbath-observing
goyim make Anabaptist Christendom jealous, for the women of these Sabbatarians
do not cover their hair. Their women look like the world and act like the world.
They might as well be the world. Question: would a
Sabbatarian wearing an Amish cap make the Amish jealous? How about wearing an
Old German Baptist cap, or a Mennonite mesh cap? Grace is the
“covering” of Christ Jesus’ righteousness, put on daily by
prayer as if His righteousness were a garment. A woman’s attire and her
head covering are symbolic of this garment of Grace through which the sins of
the disciple are not visible to the Father or to the angels. A garment of grace
made from mesh would not hide the lawlessness of the disciple. If Christians are to be
lights to this world, what sort of lights are bare-headed Christian women to Muslim women? A light of liberation? Or a light
of rebellion against the authority of God? The concept of God is
all-knowing—and if omniscient, why did God marry The answer to the above
question lies within the concept of “faith.” Physically and
traditionally, being a faithful wife
meant that the woman was loyal, obedient, loving to her husband. Today’s
concept of a faithful wife generally
excludes obedience; hence, no head covering. Today, most wives are not in
subjection to husbands but regard themselves as equals and often as
intellectual superiors. Too many are not loyal, but seek sexual gratification
outside of the marriage bed; too many love only themselves if they love at all.
Thus, moving from physical to spiritual, today’s person of faith who
hopes to be resurrected as the Bride of Christ loves Jesus (sort of), but will
not be in subjection to Him, will not obey Him, and seeks enlightenment from
secular sources … ancient Israel’s physical adultery [lack of
faithfulness] is analogous to the Christian Church’s spiritual adultery,
which has the Church living as many assemblies of goyim. That Israel would stumble
and fall was known to God from the beginning, for ancient Israel formed the
spiritually lifeless shadow of the Christian Church—ancient
Israel’s treaties and alliances with nations of this world, as well as
her adoption of these nation’s religious practices, was considered by God
as the equivalent of a woman having sexual relationships outside of marriage.
The woman is worthy of death. Her accuser is Moses. Spiritual faithfulness
will have the disciple spurning the allure of this world as a biological woman
faithful to her martial bed (or promise of the martial bed) will spurn the
advances of all men but her lawful husband. * The reader
should now read John chapter 7, verse 53, through chapter 8, verse 11. Commentary:
Although
the earliest manuscripts do not include this passage, other early manuscripts
do, placing the passage here or elsewhere in John. Thus, we shall consider it
as part of John’s Gospel, for it makes a valuable theological point:
Jesus did not come as the accuser of Those religious leaders
who brought in the woman—every one of them—were guilty of sin about
which they knew … twice Jesus wrote in the dust. And after the second
time, those who had brought the woman slipped away, leaving the woman alone
before Jesus, who stood and asked if anyone had condemned her. Jesus did not come to condemn
A remnant of physically
circumcised But the modern State of
Israel is not the endtime nation of Jesus did not condemn the
woman but commanded her to sin no more: what would have He said if she were
again caught in the act of adultery and brought before Him? Would He has
written in the dust, or would He have simply ignored her, leaving her to the
wrath of her captors? Ancient * The readers
should now read Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 1 through 47. Commentary: The Rock [God] will look
at the provocations of His natural firstborn son (Ex 4:22), and He will hide
His face from His son (Deut 32:20) to see what His son’s end will be
without His help. The children of The nation of Israel, as
if two sisters born to an adulterous mother, fornicated with foreign women and
foreign gods, the means by which the mother, Israel under King Solomon, was
undone (1 Kings 11:1-7). Yet, despite these many witnesses, the Christian
Church climbed into bed with Roman civil authorities and made passionate love
with the prince of this world, becoming his favorite mistress for a season
… oh, what a torrid love affair the prince of this world had with the
Greek and the Latin Churches, clothing these two whores with civil authority
over nations and empires and even over the emperor of the Western world. But
alas, the Latin Church became a hag, worn out sexually, a broken down sow that
eventually offered to share authority with her daughters, the Protestant
Reformed Church and a reformed Roman Church. God used the followers of Mohammed
and the rise of humanism to strip away the garments of authority given by the prince
of this world to Christendom just as He used Nebuchadnezzar to strip away the
wealth of physically circumcised Physically circumcised * The readers
should now read 1 Corinthians chapter 14; followed by Isaiah
chapter 28, verses 11 & 12. Commentary: Within the churches of
God, chapter 14 is controversial; for this chapter is used by Pentecostals to
justify speaking in tongues, with
these tongues not being known languages but gibberish that is
“translated” by someone present … in 1980 and ’81, the
State of Alaska had many South Koreans flying into Anchorage to obtain an
Alaskan driver’s license which, when acquired, they would
“trade” in for a Korean driver’s license once they returned
to South Korea; obtaining a Korean driver’s license was otherwise
difficult and expensive. Because these Koreans could not speak English, they
were permitted by law to have a translator, and they all used one translator
who knew the answer to every question on the various versions of the written
portion of the driver’s examination. So the translator would
“translate” the question to the Korean, who would then respond, and
the translator would report what he was allegedly told. No questions were ever
answered wrong. However, once many of these Koreans got behind the wheel of the
car for the driving portion of the exam, it became readily apparent that the
person could not drive and did not know the basic rules of the road. Like the Korean
translator, the translator who translates the gibberish of those who have fallen under the spirit will be
unchallenged for no one else knows what the gibberish means; so anything can be
said while speaking in tongues in
Pentecostal services, and only the integrity of the translator stands between
chaotic utterances and prophecy. From the beliefs of the greater To see this, Paul cites a
passage from “the Law” (1 Co 14:21). This is the passage from the
prophet Isaiah, where God will, “by people of strange lips and with a
foreign language” (Isa 14:11) speak to Israel … this prophecy is
fulfilled by the New Testament, originally written in Greek, a foreign language
to Israel, and by the disciples of Jesus, Galileans whose first language would
have been Aramaic. ·
Of Jesus’ twelve chosen disciples, all but Judas
Iscariot were Galileans, a people whose speech seemed strange to the refined Hebrew
speakers that were the religious leaders of the day. ·
Koine Greek was the lingua
franca of the 1st-Century Near and ·
Greek was the predominant language of the peoples to which
the Apostle Paul took his gospel—and the saints as Corinth, especially,
were no people for Roman legions had
sacked Corinth in the East as they had sacked Carthage in the West in the 2nd-Century
BCE, rebuilding both cities and repopulating these cities with no people, but a mixture of peoples that
was sure not to rebel against Rome. In Isaiah 28, God asks to
whom will He teach knowledge, and to whom will He explain the message (v. 9) that in that day of His coming, He
will be to a remnant of His people a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty (v. 5) with this crown of glory being
“a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment” and with this
diadem of beauty being “strength to those who turn back the battle at the
gate” (v. 6) …
the battle is not now physical, but a spiritual battle to turn back the
lawlessness that by the 4th-Century CE had depopulated spiritual
Jerusalem, that heavenly city in which the Apostle Paul as a master builder
laid the foundation for the house of God (1 Co 3:10-11). To
whom will God teach knowledge? Not to infants still to be weaned—the
Apostle writes to the saints at Corinth, saying that they were infants to whom
he could only give spiritual milk (1 Co 3:1-3), and the writer of Hebrews says
that these Hebrews, who should by then have been teachers, still were in need
of milk (Heb 5:12-14). So is God to teach knowledge to these infants, the first
no people and the second a rebellious
nation? No, by His words He will not explain His message to these suckling
babes. If
God will not explain His message to small children that are weaned beyond
saying, Rest is giving rest to the weary,
that His word, taken precept upon precept, would be a snare to Israel that this
nation would fall backwards and be broken and taken, then it is not to the
elders and religious leaders of physically circumcised Israel that one looks to
knowledge and understanding, but to those who speak with strange lips and in
foreign tongues—in this case, in Greek. ·
Understanding resides in
those whom God has called who speak with strange lips and in a foreign language
[i.e., not Hebrew]. ·
The nation that has grown from the first disciples, all Galileans, and
the first converts from all peoples has become no single nation but rather many denominations that speak many
foreign (but recognizable) tongues. It is from these many denominations that
the resurrected Body of Christ will come. ·
There will not be many Bodies
of Christ; there will be only one. Thus, the many denominations present today
in the world are spiritually analogous to the twelve tribes of ·
Those disciples that
constitute the Body will keep the commandments and have faith in Jesus. Those
disciples who will not keep the commandments will not be glorified but will
perish in fire. The
Law that Paul cites in 1 Corinthians 14:21 is not the Torah, but the Prophets;
thus, for Paul the Law is the entirety of Scripture (the Law, the Prophets, and
the Writings), for Paul uses this same Law
to command women to remain in submission to their husbands (1 Co 14:34-35). A
prophet is without honor in his homeland: no endtime prophet that would come
from physically circumcised So
the prophet to whom natural Jews listen during the Tribulation will come to 21st-Century
natural The
Tribulation is necessary to get the attention of the world so that all of
humankind will hear a message about repentance; it is necessary to turn the
many peoples and nations of the world into no
people. It is too bad, though, that two of three parts of humankind have to
physically die in order for this message to be heard by those who will become no people, but the Body of God’s
firstborn Son. * The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal. * * * * * "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
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