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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 Spiritual Israel and Marriage. Possible songs include the following hymns: Weekly
For the Sabbath of September 8, 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. Review
of basic principles is continually necessary as new disciples are added to The proof of the Bible is in its unity; in how it
hangs together as the visible shadow of heavenly events; in how it functions as
a metaphoric text for linguistic objects that are not of this world. The Bible
reveals a story of how two were one and will again be one, with the
relationship going from a lateral or side-by-side relationship to one that is
vertical or hypostatic, but not as is usually taught. In Scripture, common words are assigned two or more
linguistic objects/meanings. The first object pertains to this world; the
second set of objects pertains to the supra-dimensional heavenly realm. In this
visible realm, the fruit of a tree can be eaten, but in the heavenly realm the
fruit of the Spirit is desirable mental attributes. Eating forbidden or
poisoned fruit in this realm kills the flesh whereas eating forbidden fruit in
the heavenly realm kills the new creature born of Spirit that is a son of God. In this realm, The primary principle of the mystery of God is that
Scripture begins with marriage and ends with marriage. The so-called
“P” creation account of Genesis 1:1 through Gen 2:3 is the abstract
of the plan of God, not an account of the physical creation of the heavens and
earth; for what portion of the heavens and earth is not created in verse 1? In the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth (Gen 1:1 — what hasn’t been created: sun? moon?
vegetation?). In the beginning was the
Logos, and the Logos was with Theon, and the Logos was Theos. … All
things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was
made (John 1:1, 3). In the
beginning were two [1,`< & 1,ÎH] who functioned as one as if married, with both
being God, but with one being the Helpmate to the other and with this Helpmate
creating all that physically exists. This Helpmate spoke only the words of the
other both from atop Physical gender prevents easily grasping the
concept that in the beginning was a marriage that ended when the Helpmate entered
His creation as His only Son to die physically. The side-by-side relationship
between 1,`< and 1,ÎH ended when 1,ÎH entered His creation as His Son (John 3:16); the
relationship was no longer between two beings who were God and who functioned
as one entity. Rather, the relationship became hypostatic, with the Father [1,`<] who was previously unknown to The primary principle of Scripture beginning with
marriage and ending with marriage extends to include the denial of those
disciples who teach lawlessness regardless of their great works done in the
name of Christ Jesus, and extends to exclude those who have no love for their
fellow disciples; extends to exclude those who will not function as one Body
with those whom the Father has drawn and Jesus has called. Many will be drawn
and called in this era, but few will be chosen when judgments are revealed
(Matt 22:14). The false grain [tares] has crowded out the wheat, thereby
producing fields of worthless seed, shaken from the firm foundation the Apostle
Paul laid (1 Co 3:10-11) as if they were tumbleweeds blown about by every wind
of doctrine, scattering their worthless seed into the darkest hearts that
humankind has known where these worthless ones sprout disciples for the
synagogue of Satan, each sprout imprisoned from birth between strands of barbed
wire as if caught on roadside fields. How does a disciple recognize other disciples who
outwardly still appear as they did when they were sons of disobedience? What
test is applicable? If a self-identified disciple’s mind is set
on the flesh and on fleshly things and on fleshly fulfillment of biblical
prophecies, the disciple is hostile to God (Rom 8:7). The disciple mentally
remains in the flesh and remains unable to please God (v. 8) … the test of genuine discipleship is whether the mind
is set on the flesh, and on obtaining the things that pertain to the flesh, the
desires of the flesh and pride in possessions (1 John 2:16). Thus, the person
who keeps Sukkoth to learn to live as a king in the world to come (the message
taught by the splintered Churches of God) has his or her mind set on the things
of the flesh, and has missed the mark of discipleship. Likewise, the person who
looks for nation to rise up against nation, famines, earthquakes,
hurricanes—natural catastrophes of any sort—to fulfill endtime
prophecies has his or her mind set on the things of the flesh. The theologian
or prophecy pundit who causes new disciples to look at the unveiling events of
the Middle East for fulfillment of prophecies about endtime Sometimes it is easy to recognize when a person
lacks divine birth through receipt of the Holy Spirit: 1.
The person who
refuses to keep the commandments remains hostile to God and has not been born
of Spirit. 2.
The person who
says, If you sow seed in my ministry, you
will receive physical blessings, has his or her mind set on the things of
this world and is not of God. 3.
The person who
will not keep the high Sabbaths of God, insisting that they are mere shadows
that can be ignored, has no citizenship in the Jerusalem above; for this person
has not even visited that heavenly city. 4.
The person who
adds to Scripture by, especially, inserting 5.
The person who
uses deceitful business practices slanders God and is an abomination to the
Church, and should rightfully be marked and excluded from Christian fellowship. 6.
The person who
flits from fellowship to fellowship, ever learning but never able to come to
any fullness of knowledge, is a Christian
hobbyist and lacks the stability that comes through being born of Spirit. 7.
The person who
has an authority issue [either
refusal to submit to authority or the abuse of authority] will not submit to
Christ and will not be glorified. All authority comes from the Father, who has given
it to whom He pleases to do a work for Him. He has given it to the husband in a
marriage between believers; to those whom He has chosen to be apostles or
prophets in the Church; and He gave it to Christ Jesus to judge His Body and
Bride. Christ “chooses” whom He will marry. The person who is hostile to God—who refuses
to keep the commandments for any reason—does not look upward but outward
and does not see God, but rather, sees the things of this world. This person
does not believe God but other men, and this person teaches not the things of
God but the traditions of men as he or she lives not by every word that has
proceeded from the mouth of God but by his or her own determination of right
and wrong. This person is today’s visible Christian, and this person is a tare, false grain, a servant of the
prince of this world and part of the synagogue of Satan. And there is no
earthly or heavenly reason for Christ to marry this person. The pious smile and soft handshake of the pastor
who preaches love to parishioners
filling pews on Sunday morning is as the flickering tongue of a timber rattler,
sensing prey easily devoured, the prey fascinated by the twitching fork upon
which that old serpent, Satan the devil, will impale the innocence of babes,
newly born sons of God, if at the end of this era God were to give the Holy
Spirit to anyone prior to demonstrated obedience; prior to the person
demonstrating love for God and Christ by keeping the commandments by faith. At
the beginning of this era, the Holy Spirit was given to whomever the Father
drew from this world, thereby dividing the waters of humanity between those
born of Spirit and those not yet born a second time [day two of the
“P” creation account]. But at the end, the waters remaining under
the heaven must be parted by Moses and dry land formed, with disciples to bring
forth seed and fruit from Moses [day three]. The only sign Jesus gave of coming from God is that
of Jonah, who was three days and three nights [72 hours] in the belly of the
great fish. After three days—the 15th, 16th, &
17th of Abib—Jesus was resurrected from the grave. Life was
returned to His physical body. Likewise, after three days, life will return to
His spiritual Body, crucified with Him at The creation of the greater light of the fourth
day, this light set for anointed times and made to rule over the light or
“hot” portion of the day, occurs when Christ Jesus returns,
bringing with Him the judgments of the saints and glorification of those deemed
worthy to be younger siblings of Christ. It isn’t that woody trees, the
subject of arborists, bring forth seed and fruit prior to the creation of the
sun, but that disciples (who are to God in a spiritual hierarchy as trees are
to human beings in the physical hierarchy) bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
(Gal 5:22-23) prior to glorification, with this fruit grown on the dry land
that comes when Moses parts the waters … twice Yah told Moses that He intended to make of Moses a great nation.
Twice Moses protested, and God allowed greater ·
Jonah was, for
the people of ·
Jesus was, for
the people of ·
The two
witnesses will be, for the peoples of this world, spokesmen coming from the
Father and His Son to all nations, with these two witnesses possessing power
over this world as Moses and Aaron possessed power over Pharaoh and his
magicians. Note: As Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh to ask for
Israel’s release from bondage, the two witnesses will ask the prince of
this world to release all of humankind from bondage to sin and death; and as
Pharaoh denied the requests of Moses and Aaron, the prince of this world will
deny the requests of the two witnesses. Therefore, as God slew the firstborns
of Egypt not covered by a paschal lamb, from Pharaoh’s house down to the
stalls of serfs, God will again slay, or allowed to be slain by releasing the
four death angels, a third part of humankind shortly before Babylon falls,
thereby releasing all of humanity from servitude to sin when Satan is cast from
heaven and the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. But before Satan’s Babylon is no more to
never rise again halfway through the seven endtime years, the firstborns of
this world that are not covered by the blood of the Lamb of God will be slain
as spiritually circumcised Israel is released from bondage to indwelling sin
and death in a manner analogous to how physically circumcised Israel was
released from physical bondage. Therefore, a third of humankind is slain twice,
once at the beginning of the seven endtime years and again near the middle of
these seven years—and the many false prophets of Israel will incorrectly
identify the slaying of firstborns at the second Passover as the slaying of a
third of humankind in the sixth Trumpet Plague, and these many false prophets
will deceive many. 1.
The event that
immediately precedes the seven endtime years of tribulation is not a war or
even a series of natural disasters, but the slaying of firstborns not covered
by the blood of Christ, with these firstborns representing a third of the
world’s population. This massive loss of life will look like an act of
God, and will temporarily turn the world’s attention away from the things
of the flesh and to God. 2.
The
Tribulation begins when the world blames those who are identifiably of God
through their outward Sabbath observance for this massive loss of life. There
will be no shortage of blame to assign to the world’s 50 million
Sabbatarians. 3.
The majority
of spiritually circumcised “ 4.
But with the
spiritually circumcised nation’s rebellion comes the grafting of the
natural branches back to the root of righteousness by these branches’
faith and through their unwavering Sabbath observance. 5.
During the
first 1260 days of the Tribulation the loss of life within 6.
As the 144,000
will follow Christ wherever He leads during the last 1260 days, the third part
of humankind (from Zech 13:9) will follow the remnant as it leads in enduring
to the end by not taking the mark of the beast [P>lr] but trusting in God to supply those who are now
His with their physical needs. 7.
For most of The Father resurrected Jesus from the grave after
three days and three nights. He rescued Jesus from death, the darkness that the
Logos Himself had created when He brought all things into existence. Likewise,
the Father will resurrect disciples from the grave after three days, the first
three days of the “P” creation account. He will physically rescue
disciples from death, with those disciples who heard Jesus’ words and who
believed the Father not coming into judgment but passing from death to life by
Jesus causing the mortal flesh to put on immortality. Genuine disciples in this era are spokespersons for
God going outward to this world—and until the second Passover, they will
no more be believed by ·
As
spokespersons for God, disciples are the Helpmate for Christ Jesus, the Spokesman
for the Father. ·
But what sort
of a Helpmate is the one who speaks falsely about God? ·
Visible
Christendom, with its mind and focus on things of the flesh, doesn’t know
God and blasphemes God by denying the divinity of the Son prior to The claim of Scripture is that God [1,ÎH – in Roman characters, Theos] is the Creator of all that is. This claim is accepted by
faith by those who are disciples. Evidence used to prove this claim can, as
easily, be used to refute this claim. Although evidence of a sudden creation is
extent in the geological record, this evidence is also used to support the Big
Bang Theory. Three visible
religions claim to be “people of the Book” and to descend from the
patriarch Abraham, two through physical descent [Islam and Judaism] and one
through spiritual descent [Christianity]. These three have fought each other as
jealous siblings from their beginnings. So the promise made to Abraham that the
deity he worshiped would make of him one great nation (Gen 12:2) has not been
fulfilled by these visible religions
that are not one physical or spiritual nation. God [Theos]
revealed Himself to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus said that
this Theos is the God of the living,
not the dead (Matt 22:32)[1].
And “the living” is all those who have either been born of Spirit
or have the promise of inheriting eternal life. Jesus said, “‘For
as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life
to whom he will’” (John 5:21) … if the Father raises the
dead, to whom does the Son give life? Can he give life to those who are already
alive? The mystery of God is that the Father gives life to
the dead through receipt of His divine Breath, and then the Son, to whom all
judgment has been given, will give “life” to those who are alive in
a tent of flesh through the perishable flesh putting on immortality. So both
the Father and the Son must give life to a disciple before this son of God
receives a glorified body. Therefore, the Son does, indeed, give life to whom
He chooses, with those whom he chooses being determined by their judgment. So
it is not enough to be born of Spirit. A person must also put on immortality or
the person will perish in fire. The power to give life is the power of God. No
person has spiritual life until the Father gives this life to the person
through Him raising the person from the dead by a second birth by Spirit. Eternal life is the gift of God (Rom
6:23), not something inherited from the person’s human father. To say
otherwise reveals the extent to which the person believes the serpent’s
lie first told to Eve that she would not surely die. The Theos of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the Logos
who, in the beginning, was with God [Theon]
and who was God [Theos] (again, John
1:1-2). This Theos came as His Son,
His only (John 3:16), to be born as the man Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14). He
became the Son of the Father [Theon]
when the divine Breath of the Father [Pneuma
’Agion] descended upon Him as a dove (Matt 3:16-17) and gave the man
Jesus a second birth as the beloved son of the Father—again, Jesus came
as His own Son, and He became the Son of the Father when the Holy Spirit
descended upon Him as a dove. And in this model, Jesus fulfilled all
righteousness (v. 15). Note: Greek
uses grammatical gender. A masculine singular noun in nominative case takes the
/os/ case ending, whereas a neuter
singular noun takes the /on/ case
ending. Theos and Theon cannot be the same entity or
deity. The Logos [7`(@H], using the masculine singular case ending, is Theos, a noun that also uses the
masculine singular ending. But Theon
[1,`<] does not use the masculine singular ending, but
the neuter singular ending. The man Jesus of Nazareth came as Theos’ only Son to reveal the
Father [Theon] to those whom the
Father has made spiritually alive through receipt of His divine Breath after
the pattern through which Jesus fulfilled all righteousness … the world
did not know the Father before Jesus came to reveal Him, and does not know the
Father now (John 17:25). Again, Jesus revealed the Father to the firstfruits in
an age quickly drawing to a close. And to this must be added that the world
does not now know Christ Jesus, the beginning and the end (Rev 22:13) that was
concealed by the creation (Eccl 3:11). But those whom the Father has raised
from the dead—to repeat, they were spiritually dead even though they were
physically living—know the Father because the man Jesus made the Father
known to His first disciples who, by their testimonies coupled to the
testimonies of Moses and the Prophets, reveal what could not be known through
actions of the flesh. Returning to the primary mystery of God, in the
beginning were two who functioned as one as if married: “Then God said,
‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Gen 1:26);
“So God created man in his own image … male and female he created
them” (v. 27); “Therefore
a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they
shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). A visible, physical man and a woman
as one flesh, therefore, reveal the invisible, spiritual things of God, with
these invisible attributes being that in the beginning were two [Theos & Theon] who functioned as one
spirit. Thus, the assignment of singularity [as opposed to “unity”
producing one] to the two reveals that the person knows neither Christ Jesus
nor the Father. ·
The numeral one can represent either singularity,
what it most often represents in English, or it can represent unity. However,
it makes no sense to assign singularity to Jesus’ use of
“one” in His prayer to His Father (John chap 17); thus, the
assignment of unity to the numeral takes precedence in Scripture over
singularity. ·
Monotheism as
understood by Judaism becomes a problematic concept as martyred disciples in
the 1st-Century discovered; for God is “one” not in
number but in absolute unity. The problem of a paradox would otherwise cause
gridlock in the timeless heavenly realm. The two who were in the beginning are disclosed in
the Hebrew linguistic icons used for God: Elohim
and the Tetragrammaton YHWH. In
Hebrew, the word or linguistic icon for /God/ is El as in El Shaddai or
“God Almighty” (from Gen 17:1). Elohim,
now, is the regular plural [the “im” ending] of Eloah, the linguistically singular noun,
and Eloah deconstructs to /El/+ /ah/, with the /ah/
radical representing “breath,” either vocalized or aspirated. Thus,
Elohim is /El/+/ah/ + /El/+/ah/
an undetermined number of times. But the Tetragrammaton gives the multiple:
two. For YHWH deconstructs to /YH/ or Yah (see Ps 146:1a; 148:1a; 149:1a in Heb.) and /WH/, with the /H/ again linguistically representing “Breath.” So what
is grammatically seen is that the Logos
who was Theos, with His Breath or
Spirit, is Yah, whom Moses and the
seventy saw (Ex 24:9-11); for no human being has seen the Father or Theon (John 1:18) at any time. And what
the creation or eternity [Heb: olam]
has concealed (again, Eccl 3:11) is that in the beginning was a marriage that
ended with the death of Theos, the
Helpmate to Theon, when He entered His
creation as His only Son, and in the end will be the marriage of the glorified
Son to glorified disciples, who will be in the position of
“helpmate” to the One who was Theos.
With pedagogical redundancy, disciples must understand that the narrative of Scripture
begins with marriage and ends with marriage. The first disciples heard the words of the man
Jesus with their ears as did the scribes and Pharisees. These words were
controlled modulations of air: they were moving air, pneuma, the Greek linguistic icon borrowed by English speakers as a
root for common words such as “pneumatic tools” and
“pneumonia.” To a 1st-Century Greek speaker, pneuma was either deep breath or wind or
an invisible force. The Greek modifier hagios/hagion would translate as the English icon
“holy.” In Greek, an apostrophe before the first vowel if a capital
or above if lower case indicates rough breathing; thus /ha/ would be written as /V/, or as /U/. The Greek icon phrase /A<,L:" U(4@</, written in Roman characters as Pneuma ’Agion, would be neuter
singular from the on case ending, and
this ending agrees with Theon. As
such the Holy Spirit is the divine Breath of the Father and could be translated
as Breath Holy or Wind Holy or Spirit Holy. All would be valid translations.
This Breath or Wind or Spirit is not that of Theos, the Logos …
in inscription the Breath of Theos
which would be written as /A<,L:" U(4@H/, but in Scripture this Breath is only seen after
the man Jesus had His former glory returned to Him (John 17:5), and it is seen
in the icon phrase as /A<,L:" OD4FJ@L/, translated as the “Spirit of Christ”
(Rom 8:9). And this Breath of Christ has to, by context, be different from the
Breath of the Father seen in the icon phrase /A<,L:" J@L ¦(,ÆD"<J@H [0F@L< ¦6 <,6DT</, translated as the “Spirit of the (One)
raising Jesus from (the) dead” (Rom 8:11). So the Apostle Paul writes of
two Spirits or Breaths, one that belongs to Jesus (v. 9) and one that belongs to the Father, who resurrected Jesus
from the dead (v. 11). Paul
consistently addresses the Father and the Son in his epistles, while never
sending greetings to the saints from a third personage—and Paul separates
the Spirit of Christ from the Spirit of the Father, which is the Spirit by
which the Father raises the dead (again, John 5:21). So for Paul, the Holy
Spirit [Pneuma ’Agion] does not
have personhood but is a force in the heavenly realm that equates to physical
breath or wind in this physical realm. In the beginning God was two who functioned as one
as if the two were married. The creation concealed the existence of the second
entity from physically circumcised Israel even though the plural pronoun is
properly used in Genesis 1:26 [“‘Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness’”]; in Genesis 3:22 [“‘Behold, the
man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil’”]; and in
Genesis 11:7 [“‘Come, let us go down and there confuse their
language, so that they may not understand one another’s
speech’”]. But the only place where Theon is seen with clarity in the Old Testament is as the Ancient
of Days in Daniel’s vision (7:9-10). Personhood was not assigned to the divine Breath of
God until the 5th Century CE. It was an errant assignment, not made
by saints who heard the voice of Jesus but by tares pandering to the Roman
Emperor. The triune deity [the Trinity] of the visible Christian Church is a construct that sprang from the heads of men
as the Greek goddess Athena sprang from the forehead of Zeus. And Arian
Christians [Unitarians] deny the divinity of Christ by teaching that the
Father, Theon, created all that is.
So both Trinitarians and Unitarians blaspheme the Father and the Son, which
will be forgiven them if they do not also commit blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit by taking sin back into themselves after being liberated from indwelling
sin and death. ·
The visible
Christian Church has, worldwide, blasphemed the name of God as physically
circumcised ·
The name Allah is the Arabic equivalent to the
Hebrew Eloah, so followers of
Mohammad have no knowledge of the Father. Their minds remain set on the flesh
and on physical things. The most telling doctrine for determining spiritual
understanding is whether the person believes that human beings are born with
immortal souls … the person who has truly been born of Spirit knows that
humans are not born with immortal souls, for everlasting life is the gift of
God through Christ Jesus. It is only those who have not been truly born of
Spirit who believe that they have immortal souls. So the test for identifying genuine disciples has
two central aspects: (1) does the person keep the commandments and teach others
to do likewise (this includes relaxing a commandment and being called least,
but does not include deliberately breaking a commandment); and (2) does the
person acknowledge that everlasting life is the gift of God. There is one other
essential aspect: (3) does the person profess that Jesus came in the flesh,
fully man, flesh and blood, and gave up all divinity when born of Mary. If the
person insists that Jesus was fully man and fully God, the person is a fraud
and is without knowledge of God. For unless Theos
ceased to exist as God, entering His creation as only a man, He would not be
free to marry another but would remain married to Theon. And unless His flesh and blood died on the cross and was
utterly dead, He would not be free to marry another in this world but would
remain married to physically circumcised Marriages between human beings are not to be ended
for light and trivial reasons, but Theos
divorced The person who has problems with authority will
find fault with “one” primarily representing unity rather than
absolute singleness; for this person has established his or her opinions as the
test of knowledge of God. The Apostle Paul had problems with people who
questioned his authority, and he said that if anyone thinks he is a prophet or
spiritual that he should acknowledge that the things Paul wrote were commands
from the Lord (1 Co 14:37). What is seen today? The things that Paul wrote are
inverted and twisted backwards so that through Paul’s epistles lawlessness
reigns throughout visible Christendom. Yes, the lawless have twisted
Paul’s epistles into instruments of their own destruction (2 Pet
3:15-17). But the lawless do not look like disciples of
Christ Jesus: it is Sabbatarian Christians who deal deceitfully with others for
whom no good test exists to reveal their lack of spirituality prior to engaging
in business with them. Today, marking and shunning are not effective means of
excluding from fellowships these false disciples, who as wolves go out and gather
other flocks to themselves that they can devour at their leisure. So Paul gave
one further test to separate false from true: if the one who would teach asks
for tithes and offerings, the person is false (2 Co 11:7-15). A teacher can
accept an offering, and brethren have the responsibility to make sure that the
needs of those who teach are being met, but the one who teaches needs to keep
his hands in his own pockets and out of the pockets of the sheep. A teacher denies that what Paul wrote were commands
from the Lord when he or she asks for tithes to be given to him or her. By
asking for money, the teacher reveals that his or her mind is set on those
things of the flesh; that the teacher lacks faith in God—and if lacking
in faith, the teacher lacks belief and should not be teaching, a Catch-22
situation that discloses the falsity of most Sabbatarian teachers and
preachers. Again, those who learn have the responsibility to
make sure that the needs of those who teach are being met, either through the
work of the hands of those who teach or by offerings. And those who teach have
the responsibility to work with their hands or at their vocations to provide
for themselves and their households as best they can. It doesn’t take a
week to write a sermon or to visit a widow. Teaching on the Sabbath is not
laboring day and night as Paul labored for six days a week. Historically, there
have been too many lazy teachers delivering false messages within Christendom,
including among Sabbatarians. This needs to stop. Therefore, let every teacher
within the Church today acknowledge that what Paul wrote are commands from the
Lord, and that one of these commands is that teachers as well as parishioners
labor with their hands and at their vocations to support those of their households.
Let the pampered ministry of the many splinters of the Churches of God show
that they are doing the work of God through actively preaching repentance to a
lawless world. Then after doing a week of discernable work, let them accept
what offerings are voluntarily extended to them, with them never again seeking
to extort tithes from those too poor to freely give. And let those who ask for
tithes perish with their greed. Disciples are living stones built into a spiritual
house (1 Pet 2:5), its foundation laid by the Apostle Paul (1 Co 3:10-11), with
Christ Jesus being the chosen and precious cornerstone. Thus, disciples are,
today, the living Although Levities—the
priesthood—received the tithes of Israel, these same Levities returned a
tenth of the tithe (a tithe of the tithe) back to Israel so that everyone could
eat of the tithe when Israel came to Jerusalem to keep the high Sabbaths of God
(Deut 14:22-27). ·
Typologically,
the Levitical priesthood from Moses to ·
In the Millennium
when the Levitical priesthood is returned to its office, with the exception of
the sons of Zadok, God will cause the Levitical priesthood to bear the
punishment of Israel, “‘[b]ecause they ministered to [Israel]
before their idols and became a stumbling block of iniquity to the house of
Israel’” (Ezek 44:12). As the Levitical priesthood served idols during the
reign of Israel and Judah’s idolatrous kings, the visible Christian
Church has served idols and demons while teaching lawlessness to babes; thus,
those disciples who have relaxed the least of the commandments will be called
least in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:19) while those who have taught iniquity
will be denied in their resurrection and will go into the lake of fire (Matt
7:21-23). And one of those previously concealed things of God is that those
disciples who have practiced lawlessness and have taught others to be lawless
will bear the punishment of Israel as bulls and goats bore the punishment of
Israel until Calvary; those who relaxed the commandments will bear their being
called least as the Levitical
priesthood will bear the punishment of Israel by being butchers in the
Millennium. The first problem encountered when a disciple
approaches tithing—or rather, teaches about tithing—is determining
how the Levitical priesthood tithed; for one of the idols that the visible
Church has served is money/gold. The Church used its ecclesiastical authority
to divert, say, half the wealth of medieval So sufficient tests exist for disciples to
determine who is and who isn’t genuine in this era … all who place
emphasis on the flesh and the things of the flesh are false and should be
avoided. Keeping the commandments are a matter of faith for the genuine
disciple, who knows that everlasting life is the gift of God, who is not one or
three but the Father and the Son, with the narrative of Scripture being about
marriage. Enough for one Sabbath: the task of all who are
genuine in this era is to preach repentance as John the Baptist preached
repentance, with this preaching in a wilderness that emphasizes the flesh being
a preparation for Christ Jesus’ return as the Messiah. Thus, all who are
of Philadelphia are encouraged to
sally forth as if jousting with windmills, knowing beforehand that lawlessness
cannot be defeated until the prince of this world is cast down, but also
knowing that every disciple made for Christ Jesus brings to the one who
preaches repentance treasure in heaven and satisfaction in this world. * 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 rights reserved." [ Home ] [ Sabbath Readings ] |