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 spiritual fire.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of September 5, 2009
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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The person conducting the service should read or assign to be read John chapter 12, verses 12 through 50.
Commentary: The unprofessed belief and unbelief of the chief men in Jerusalem anticipates the unprofessed belief and unbelief of Christian pastors and theologians in this era, shortly before the endtime years of tribulation … as all of Unleavened Bread (with unleavened bread being the bread of affliction) is “compressed” into Yom Kipporim (The Day of Atonement) so that the plan of God is fully expressed in the spring holy day calendar and again fully expressed in the fall calendar, with these two expressions focusing on their respective early and latter harvests of humanity, the Passover (the entire period from the 10th of the month to the 22nd) of the year Jesus was crucified forms a compressed copy of the seven endtime years of tribulation and the run-up to the second Passover liberation of Israel, the event that begins these years.
Jesus enters
The Lord told Moses and
Aaron in
This month shall be for
you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.
Tell all the congregation of
This first month of the year is the month of Abib (Ex 13:4), and determination of when this month of Abib begins comes via the paschal lamb being selected on the 10th day of this month and sacrificed on the 14th day at even, with few other clues as to when this day occurs. For rabbinical Judaism, Abib is not the first month of the year; so Judaism’s calculated calendar must be used with caution … if Jesus is the paschal Lamb of God, then He would have been selected and penned on the 10th day of Abib and sacrificed on the 14th day.
When some of the scribes and the Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign, He answered them,
An evil and adulterous
generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of
the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the
belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth. The men of
Jesus was greater than
Jonah … this first time Jesus says He will give only one sign, He
specifically references Jonah being in the belly of the whale (great fish) for
three days and three nights, with Jonah being spewed forth as the recognizable
spokesman of God via Jonah being visibly from Dagon the Canaanite fish god that
the men of Nineveh worshiped. These men of
In the book of Jonah, the
author writes, “And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights” (1:17
— 2:1 in Hebrew). What the author writes has Jonah being 72 hours in the
belly of the whale, during which Jonah dies: “‘The waters closed in
over me to take my life; / … I went down to the land / whose bars closed
upon me forever; / yet you brought up my life from the pit, / O Lord my
God’” (2:5, 6). Yes, Jonah dies, and is then resurrected when
“the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon dry
land” (v. 10). It is not
reasonable to expect the men of Nineveh to repent at the preaching of Jonah
unless someone saw Jonah being spewed forth from the mouth of the great fish,
with the unidentified witness[es] being like those disciples in the 1st-Century
who were witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. The men of
The word for “days” that the author of Jonah uses is יָמִים — yome, which is usually assigned the meaning “to be hot” as in the daylight portion of a day. The word for “nights” used is לֵילוֹת — layelah, which is usually assigned the meaning of “to twist” as in twisting away from the light; hence night. Thus, there is in the Book of Jonah no ambiguity about three days and three nights being two nights and a day: three days is three 12-hour periods of 24-hour days, and three nights is three 12-hour periods of 24-hour days. Therefore, when Jesus makes a direct reference to Jonah being in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, He says that the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, with the Head of the Son of Man being three 24-hour days lying dead in the heart of the earth, and with the Body of the Son of Man being resurrected from death after the third day, with “day” (i.e., the daylight portion of a day) in this latter context representing those times when the Lord appears on earth as the light of this world … Jesus said, “‘I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness’” (John 12:46) so the light of day one of the Genesis “P” creation account didn’t then “shine” everywhere, but shone in the Roman province of Judea.
If Jesus is the paschal Lamb of God, slain on the 14th of Abib, the preparation day for the high Sabbath, the great Sabbath of the spring Sabbath (John 19:31, 42), then Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus placed Jesus’ crucified body into the garden tomb at the end of the 14th day and beginning of the 15th day. This means that Jesus was in the tomb all day on the 15th of Abib, the high Sabbath, all day on the 16th of Abib, all day on the 17th of Abib, and resurrected from death on the 18th of Abib … John writes, “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb” (20:1).
The 18th of
Abib is the first day of the week, which will make the 17th the
weekly Sabbath, the 16th Friday, and the 15th Thursday.
Jesus was therefore crucified on Wednesday, midweek of the calendar week, and
resurrected on the 18th of Abib, midweek of Unleavened Bread, the
week when
And counting backwards, John writes, “Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead” (12:1), and “The next day [five days before the Passover] the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem” (v. 12) … John calls the great Sabbath of the spring Sabbath (i.e., the high day) the Passover; so one day before the Passover is Wednesday, the 14th of Abib. Two days is Tuesday, the 13th. Three days is Monday, the 12th. Four days is Sunday, the 11th. Five days is the Sabbath, the 10th of Abib.
Jesus entered Jerusalem on the 10th day of Abib, and He was “penned” in the city until He was sacrificed on the 14th day, dying when the Pharisees then reckoned that paschal lambs were to be sacrificed; i.e., halfway between one “even” (noon) and the second “even” (sunset at 6:00 pm).
Christendom’s traditional teaching that Jesus was crucified on Friday cannot be supported from Scripture, and is factually false. It is actually a denial of the sign of Jonah and of Jesus being from heaven; for if Jesus is not the paschal Lamb of God, sacrificed on the 14th of Abib, humankind has no savior. And if a Christian does not drink from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed, the dark portion of the 14th of Abib, there is no forgiveness of sins for the Christian. Thus, taking the sacraments on a fixed calendar day (as opposed to date) is an errant practice, but to hold that Jesus was resurrected 36 hours after being crucified is rejection of the sign of Jonah.
What can be known about when to begin the month of Abib will have the 15th day of the month being a Thursday in the year when Jesus was crucified.
Luke writes,
In the fifteenth year of
the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod
being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of
Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high
priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of
Zechariah in the wilderness. And he went into all the region around the
In the “fifteenth year” is not after fifteen years, but after fourteen years—and contrary to what quick reference charts disclose, the reign of Tiberius did not begin 14 CE but a little more than a year earlier … the Roman Emperor Augustus was to be succeeded by one of his two grandsons, Lucius and Gaius, when in 2 CE Lucius died, followed by Gaius being killed in 4 CE. At this time, Augustus had no choice but to turn to Tiberius, the adoptive son of Octavian, who had been on the short list of successors to Augustus since 26 BCE.
After Gaius’ death, Augustus adopted Tiberius as his full son and heir, but with the requirement that Tiberius in turn adopt Augustus’ nephew Germanicus. Following his adoption, Tiberius received “tribunician” power and a share of Augustus’ maius imperium, and in 13 CE, the power held by Tiberius were made equal to, rather than inferior to (or second to), Augustus’ power, thereby making it 13 CE when Tiberius comes to power, for Augustus began to back away from running the empire. Hence, the person who was living in the empire would say that Tiberius came to power in 13 CE, not when Augustus dies a year later. For all of Augustus’ last year of life, Tiberius was fully emperor, a co-princep with Augustus, the situation made necessary so that there would be no interregnum when Augustus died. Tiberius as emperor would continue as emperor, but ruling solely rather than jointly. And this was the case in 14 CE when Augustus died at age 75. His will confirmed Tiberius as his sole heir.
In the 1st-Century, anyone over 70 years of age would know that death was not in the distant future, but near. It was only prudent that Augustus would transfer his authority to someone whom he had personally chosen to succeed him before he died, and he waited until a year before his death to make Tiberius emperor. So the reign of Tiberius begins in 13 CE, not in 14 CE, and when 14 years (not 15) is added to 13 CE, Luke has John the Baptist’s ministry beginning at or near the Passover in 27 CE (Hebrew year 3787).
The angel Gabriel tells
Mary, “‘And behold, your relative
With Jesus’ earthly ministry being three and a half years in length, Jesus would have been crucified in 31 CE, not 33 CE as is errantly taught within much of Christendom. But the double check of the year comes from the 15th of Abib falling on a Thursday.
On rabbinical Judaism’s calculated calendar (which wasn’t in existence prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE), the 15th of Nissan [Abib] of the year 3793 occurred on Sabbath, April 2, 33 CE, but this is a month too early; thus, the 15th of Lyyar (the month that begins with the first sighted new moon crescent after the equinox) occurred on Monday, May 2, 33 CE. Neither month satisfies the “15th on Thursday” test.
Again on Judaism’s
calculated calendar, the 15th of Nissan of the year 3791 occurred on
Tuesday, March 25, 31 CE, with this month again beginning a month too early.
However, the 15th of Lyyar occurred on Thursday, April 24, 31 CE —
and there is the month that, according to the Lord, began the year for
The vernal equinox in year 3791 (31 CE) occurred on Friday, March 23, on the Julian calendar. The new moon (dark of the moon) that occurred prior to Tuesday, March 25, 31 CE occurred on March 11th; and the new moon following the equinox occurred at noon on April 10th (Julian calendar). This new moon could not have been seen earlier than the evening of April 11th and was probably not visible until the evening of April 12th (Julian calendar), or Lyyar 1st of the year 3791.
According to Judaism’s calculated calendar in use today, Jesus was crucified in the second month, which seriously calls into question whether this calculated calendar should be used by any disciples to establish the date for Passover. In fact, the following conclusions can be drawn: Judaism’s calculated calendar is not reliable when it comes to establishing the date on which endtime disciples should annually take the sacraments of bread and wine on the night that Jesus was betrayed. The month of Abib should begin with the first sighted new moon following the vernal equinox. And Jesus was crucified in the year 31 of the Common Era, on the 14th day of Abib, Wednesday, April 23rd (Gregorian calendar; April 25th on the Julian calendar).
Interestingly, according to Judaism’s calendar, the 15th of Lyyar will occur on a Thursday, May 19, 2011, with the weekly cycle for the second Passover in 2011 (year 5771) lining up day for day with the Passover of the year 31 CE, when Jesus was crucified. If the second Passover occurs in 2011, then Satan would be cast from heaven on Halloween 2014, and Christ would return on Judaism’s calendar on the 1st of Lyyar in 2018, with Judaism’s calendar beginning the month of Nissan/Abib before the equinox thereby making the 1st of Lyyar actually the 1st of Abib, the beginning of months according to the Lord. In addition, the rebellion or great falling away of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 would occur on Christmas 2011, when the fifth seal is opened; the sixth seal, the wrath of the Lamb, would open on the December solstice 2012. The seventh seal would open a year later, with the silence in heaven lasting for 105 days, plus or minus five days, thus having the first of the seven trumpets being blown at the beginning of the sacred year in 2014. And this particular juxtaposition of calendar events does not often occur.
Now returning to John,
who writes that the crowd gathered to see Jesus enter
Jesus said He would give one sign, the sign of Jonah, as evidence that He was from heaven. But in twice saying that He would give this one sign, He made this sign like a Hebrew poetic thought-couplet; i.e., the first presentation of the idea representing the natural signifier with the second presentation representing the spiritual signifier. And in the first presentation, Jesus specifically addresses Jonah being three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish. But in the second presentation, Jesus prefaces the sign of Jonah by mentioning the natural or physical sign of a red sky: in this second presentation, the sign of Jonah is in the “spiritual” position of a Hebraic thought-couplet.
Matthew records,
And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” (Matt 16:2–4)
A red sky going into darkness is a sign of fair weather whereas a red sky going into the day is a sign of stormy weather, with this “sign” being context specific or in the jargon of semiotics, the meaning of the sign comes from the system in which the sign is found. A red sky would not appear without the atmosphere filtering out the blue spectrum when light passes through the atmosphere at a long angle in the morning and at evening; thus a red sky can be assigned a natural meaning of fair or foul weather, with this meaning coming from only a partial light spectrum being seen.
When Jesus says that He will give only one sign, the sign of Jonah (the earthly body of Christ being three days and three nights in the grave as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale), He introduces an understanding of “light” that 1st-Century Greeks and Jews did not have. Again, between the 10th and 14th of Abib, Jesus said that He had come into the world as light. So the sign of a red sky takes on significantly more meaning for an endtime (21st-Century) disciple than for one of the first disciples; for a red sky, regardless of when it is seen, comes from only a partial spectrum reaching the eye of the beholder, suggesting only a partial understanding of what the light represents going into darkness and only a partial understanding going into day.
Again, in the case of the red sky the same sign has opposing meanings, with the sign’s meaning dependent upon the context (evening or dawn) in which the sign is observed; whereas in the case of Jonah, the same sign pertains to both the physical and the spiritual body/Body of Christ, with the physical body resurrected to life going into darkness and with the spiritual Body resurrected to life going to the light, thereby giving to the sign opposing meanings. Although Christianity has not, since the 1st-Century, brought tranquility to a tremulous world, the Tribulation that follows the restoration of life to the Body of Christ will be so much worse than anything seen so far that the warring of the past two millennia will seem peaceful … a red sky going into darkness is a sign of fair sailing whereas the sign of Jonah (the spiritual Body of Christ – from 1 Cor 12:27 — being resurrected after the third day) going into the light is a sign of tribulation.
When endtime disciples couple what is now commonly known about why a sky is red with the context in which the sign occurs, the sign of Jonah assumes additional meaning beyond simply resurrection after the third day: the “breath” received by the first Adam that gave him life entered him through his nostrils, but the “breath of God” that caused Jesus to fulfill all righteousness (Matt 3:15) entered the second or last Adam when it lit as a dove on the man Jesus and remained with Him. And this “breath of God” [pneuma Theon] entered Jesus not through the front of His face [i.e., His nostrils] but at His shoulders or neck, where the blowhole of a whale would be located.
The breath of the Father [pneuma Theon], appearing as a dove, was a sign that is also like a thought-couplet in that it has a visible, natural presentation (what John the Baptist saw) as well as an invisible, spiritual presentation that forms the foundation of the Christian Church.
It is traditionally taught that Jesus built His Church on the rock [petra] that was the Apostle Peter, a teaching that ignores a theological fault; for Paul said that he, not Peter, laid the foundation for the house of God, and that no one else can lay another foundation but the one he laid, this foundation being Christ Jesus (1 Cor 3:10–11). So a disciple needs to reexamine what Jesus said when, shortly after telling the Pharisees and Sadducees that He would give no sign but that of Jonah, Jesus asked His disciples who people said He was:
He [Jesus] said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 16:13–17)
There is a usually undetected problem here:
Peter was not the son of Jonah [—Barjona] (Matt 16:17), but the son of John (John 1:42). Peter was Simon of John (John 21:16).
Jesus is the one who identifies Peter as Simon of John, or Simon, son of John; so Jesus knows that Peter’s father is “John”. But the misidentification is not a mistake.
The rough breathing or aspiration on the vowel would normally be written in English as the glottal stop “h” or “ah.” The nasal consonant is transcribed into English as “n”; thus, “John” has the aspiration of deep or rough breathing preceding the nasal consonant, whereas “Jonah” has the aspiration moved behind the nasal. In spiritual parlance, natural breath comes through the nose, the front of the face, whereas the breath of God enters the inner, new creature behind the nose. Peter’s natural father was “John,” but when he became the son of Jonah (with breath moved behind the nose) when the Father gave to Peter revelation through realization. Peter was now the son of God through Jesus being the reality foreshadowed by the prophet Jonah.
Where physical “breath” enters the physical tent of flesh (through the nostrils) differs from where spiritual “breath” enters this same tent of flesh.
For Jesus to move aspiration (rough breathing) from in front of the nasal consonant to behind the nasal is directly akin to moving a person’s nose from the front of his or her face to a whale-like blowhole behind the person’s head.
What Jesus pointed to when He called Peter the son of Jonah was the prophet Jonah and all that Jonah represented, including being the spokesman from God to Nineveh [among other deities, Nineveh worshiped Dagon, the fish god]. By emerging from a great fish, probably a whale, Jonah became analogous to the new creature or new self that is spirit and has been born of spirit that emerges from a tent of flesh after death and at the resurrection. As Jonah is made alive while in the belly of the great fish, the new creature is made alive within the tent of flesh of a living human being. As Jonah is of a taxonomically higher order than any fish or whale, the new creature is of a higher order than is the tent of flesh.
A human being has no life but that which comes through the person’s nose prior to being born of spirit, but when this person is born of the breath of God, the tent of flesh becomes like the body of the whale in relationship to the new creature being like Jonah, with the breath [pneuma Theon] that sustains the life of the new creature coming through the back of the head or neck as a whale breathes through its blowhole.
Jesus said He would give one sign that He was from heaven, the sign of Jonah. And He told Peter in figurative language that on the foundation [rock] of Jonah, He would build His church.
When for a second time the Pharisees and Sadducees asked Jesus to show them a sign from heaven (Matt 12:38–40; 16:1), Jesus gave them red sky as an example of them being able to read natural signs but not the signs of God.
Again, the context in which a red sky appears changes the meaning of the one sign. When the red sky appears as darkness approaches, it means fair weather; whereas when the red sky appears in the morning, the sign indicates threatening weather. And the sign of Jonah is a similar sign: the sign of Jonah pertains to the resurrection of Jesus’ physical body and is the equivalent to the red sky appearing at evening. But when the sign of Jonah pertains to the resurrection of Jesus’ spiritual Body [i.e., the Church], it is the equivalent to the red sky appearing in the morning. The seven endtime years of tribulation are the stormy and threatening day that will begin when the dead Body of thr Church is resurrected, for the gates of Hades can no more prevail against the Body of Christ than they could against the physical body of Jesus.
Returning, now, to what Jesus told Peter, “And I tell you, you are Peter [petros], and upon this rock [petra], I will build my church [ekklesia]” (Matt 16:18), and we see that the “os” case ending on the masculine name Peter “petros—” becomes the vowel “a” when moving to the genitive case, or from Petros to petra. To verbally utter the “os” case ending of os requires puckering the lips and exhaling through the puckered lips, thereby locating the exhalation of breath to the frontmost position of the face; whereas, to verbally utter petra requires opening the mouth and breathing from the middle of the mouth—and this movement of utterance from exhalation at the front of the mouth to the middle or back of the mouth [petros to petra] is analogous to the movement of aspiration [ah] occurring before the nasal consonant [n — in Greek, to occurring after the nasal consonant.
This linguistic play is fully incorporated within the sign of Jonah, and this “play” has not previously been understood in Christendom, but this play is intuited in the partial spectrum of light that causes a red sky.
Jesus told Peter that He would build an assembly or
congregation [ekklesia] on the
movement of breath [Greek: pneuma;
Latin: spīritus] from mouth (the
“os” case ending), and from the nose to the person’s heart and mind. Jesus said
that He would construct an assembly, a church, not based upon apostolic
succession beginning with Peter, but upon
Jesus continued: “‘I will build my
church, and the gates of hell [hades—] shall not prevail against it. I will give you the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’”
(Matt 16:18–19) … returning now to the sign of the red sky,
depending upon the sign’s context one sign can have two meanings. The
sign of Jonah is such a sign, for Jesus had a physical body and He has a
spiritual Body. When the sign of Jonah is applied to Jesus’ physical
body, the earth would enter a period of spiritual darkness: as the light of
this world (John 1:4–10; 12:35–36; 2 Cor 4:6), Jesus’
crucifixion at
With Jesus’ death at
Jesus’ physical body being three days and three nights in the heart of the earth is as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish;
Plus the movement of breath from the front of the face to the back of the head or the addition of a second breath received through the back of the head, with this second breath of life being as life returning to Jonah in the great fish;
Jesus’ physical body is to the new creature, born of God [pneuma Theon] as the firstborn Son, as the great whale’s body was to Jonah—
The natural or physical application of the sign of Jonah will have Jesus’ fleshly body resurrected after three days and three nights: the 15th, 16th, and 17th of Abib … after these three days and three nights, the resurrected Jesus ascended to the Father as the Spokesman of the Father, and as the reality of Israel’s Wave Sheaf Offering, the First of the firstfruits, equating to the first handful of barley of the new harvest, the last of which would be gathered into barns by the Feast of Weeks. This equates to the red sky at evening, a sign indicating a calm sea. But if the past two millennia have been “calm,” then the turbulence of the resurrection of the Body as day dawns will be almost unimaginably violent.
Jesus’ spiritual Body was not formed until the afternoon of the Wave Sheaf Offering [as Sadducees observed the offering; Pharisees waved on the 16th of Abib] when He entered the locked room:
Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.” (John 20:19–23 emphasis added)
When Jesus breathed on the ten, He formed His spiritual Body in a manner analogous to how Elohim [singular] created the first woman from a wound in Adam’s side and presented her to the first Adam: the Church was created on the day on which the First of the firstfruits was presented to God, not on that day of Pentecost when the first disciples were baptized with spirit and with fire as the visible shadow of when the world would be baptized with spirit (Joel 2:28) and with fire (Rev 21:1) … Jesus’ spiritual Body could not die and be dead the same three days as Jesus’ earthly body died and was dead; what happened to the physical body must necessarily foreshadow what happens to the spiritual Body. Yet the sign of Jonah pertains to Jesus’ spiritual Body as it pertained to His physical body, for the sign of Jonah pertained to the Son of Man, with the Church as the Body of Christ being also the Body of the Son of Man.
As the gates of Hades could not prevail over Jesus’ physical body, the gates of Hades will not prevail over His spiritual Body, composed of disciples born of spirit, these inner new selves being invisible to the naked eye as Jonah would have been invisible for the three days and three nights that he was in the belly of the great fish. The tents of flesh in which these disciples dwell are like the great fish or whale that swallowed Jonah—and as whale watching excursions venture forth from Baja California to Alaska in hopes of seeing a spouting or broaching whale, the world has been watching Christendom throughout this long night that began with Calvary in hopes of seeing peace among men of goodwill.
The key to the kingdom of heaven that Jesus left with men is the understanding that disciples are the new creatures born of spirit that dwell in tents of flesh. They die with baptism as Jonah “died.” They receive a second life when the Father raises them from death as life was restored to Jonah while still in the belly of the great fish (Jonah chap 2), and they will be resurrected as Jonah was spewed forth from the mouth of the great fish and as Jesus was raised from the grave—and when resurrected, they will be spokesmen for God as Jesus was and is.
The Father gives life to the spiritually dead (though
physically living)—to the Jonah swallowed by the whale—and then,
not before then, the old self, the old Jonah must die (Jon 2:5–6). The
new creature lives in a tent of flesh as Jonah lived when he
“‘remembered the Lord [YHWH]’”
and to this new creature, the glorified Jesus will or will not give life (He
gives life to whom He chooses to marry). To the new creature to whom He gives
life, the perishable flesh will put on immortality, and an immortal Jonah will
be spewed forth as a spokesman for God to a nation that is to the glorified
disciple as uncircumcised
Because disciples who have been born of spirit have real life in the heavenly realm, those things that they bind or loose in this world are bound or loosed in heaven. The Father and the Son have that much respect for these younger siblings of the glorified Christ.
Therefore, Jonah, after being returned to life inside the belly of the whale, can be likened to the new self or new nature or new creature born of spirit dwelling in a tent of flesh. The new creature is not male or female, Jew or Greek (Gal 3:28), and is, therefore, not the person’s fleshly body which after baptism remains male or female. Thus, the whale’s body is to Jonah as the fleshly body of the person is to the new creature that is a son of God, and the whale spewing Jonah forth is analogous to glorification.
The Church is, then, the assembly of new selves or new creatures that have been born of spirit as sons of God, with Christ Jesus as the First of these firstborn sons of God. The shadow and type of the Church was the Congregation in the Wilderness led by Moses. As such, the Church is,
Not a building or temple;
Not an organization of men;
Not a denomination;
Not any of those things that are usually assigned as objects to the linguistic icon.
Rather, the Church is the assembly that has been circumcised of heart by spirit as the Congregation in the Wilderness was circumcised in the flesh by human hands. Therefore, the Church is wherever two or three circumcised of heart are gathered in Jesus’ name, for there He will be (Matt 18:20).
But it is what Jesus said about judging that should terrify the lawless:
If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me. (John 12:47–50 emphasis added).
The words that Jesus spoke, these words recorded in Scripture, will judge disciples.
The long angle that sunlight takes through the atmosphere at dawn and at dusk leaves only the red spectrum visible to human eyes, with this spectrum being the common color of fire: Jesus not coming to judge is the calm or fair weather of darkness, whereas dawn brings the revealing or disclosing of judgments made (1 Cor4:5) during the long spiritual night that began at Calvary, with the many perishing in the lake of fire (Matt 22:14). The words of Jesus are like the red sky, in that they represent eternal life coming from receipt of the fiery breath of Father.
The fleshly body of a person discloses crucial information about the invisible inner self: a person “breathes” on his or her own when born of water. Before then, the fetus’ breath was its mother’s breath. And following birth, the infant human being grows from utter dependency on his or her mother (sometimes father) through a series of stages that will see this human person as a small child feeding him or herself, then dressing him or herself, to being of some help to its parents and finally as an adolescent (or an older child) to being able to work on his or her own to support him or herself.
A son of God is “born of spirit [pneuma]” when a spiritually dead human being is drawn from this world by the Father (John 6:44, 65) through the Father giving to the person a second breath of life. If the person was previously a Christian as many infant sons of God claim to be prior to the person being truly born of spirit, the person was as a fetus in the womb of the last Eve. This person was not born of spirit even though many such converts will claim to have been so-born. If this person truly had a relationship with Christ Jesus (some will have had), the relationship wasn’t through the person being born of God but through the person receiving spiritual sustenance from the last Eve as a human fetus receives the oxygen its needs for cellular combustion of sugars across the placenta.
Understand, the physical life of every nephesh (breathing creature) is sustained by the cellular oxidation (burning) of simple carbohydrates, with the oxygen molecules necessary to fuel this ongoing inner fire coming through the person’s breath, with these molecules being transferred from the person’s breath to his or her blood in the lungs; thus the “life” of every nephesh is in the blood (Gen 9:4), with this life being the “breath” (the word breath is used metonymically) of the nephesh.
The life of every son of God is the breath of God [pneuma Theon], but God is not of this world and does not breathe oxygen molecules needed to fuel inner cellular fires within the flesh. Rather, the breath of God is a non-oxidizing fire … a scriptural description of a spirit being is recorded in Ezekiel 1:26–27,
And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him. (emphasis added)
The “fire” within this being that had a human appearance is the life that comes from the Father; this “fire” is pneuma hagion [breath holy], and the fleshly body of human beings are not able to hold or contain this fire. Thus, before any human being could be born of spirit the man Jesus had to be born humanly, then born of spirit when the breath of God [pneuma Theon] descended upon Him as a dove, then die humanly and be resurrected after the third day; for “the gift of God is eternal life in [en] Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). Elsewhere, Paul writes, “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ [pneuma Christos] does not belong to him. But if Christ is in [en] you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit [pneuma] is life because of righteousness” (Rom 8:9–10).
A human being is only able to “hold” indwelling eternal life that comes from the Father through Christ being “in” the person, with the spirit of Christ functioning as the only container able to contain the life/fire that has come from the Father.
Again, a person doesn’t usually think in terms of having “fire” within the person, but the cellular oxidation of simple sugars is, by definition, fire—and this inner fire serves as the chiral image of spiritual life that comes with receipt of a second breath of life. Fire in this world occurs through the oxidation and destruction of combustibles, but fire in the heavenly realm represents life. To pass through fire is to live spiritually.
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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."