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 submission to authority.
Weekly Readings
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 marital bed (or promise of the marital bed) will spurn the advances of all men but her lawful husband.
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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 have written in the dust, or would He have simply ignored her, leaving her to the wrath of her captors?
Ancient
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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
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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 for 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.
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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."