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 the book of Jude.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of September 21, 2013
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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But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you." But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him." These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires; they are loud-mouthed boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, "In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions." It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. (Jude vv. 9–23)
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1.
You must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ—Jude separates himself from the apostles of Christ Jesus, identifying himself as the brother of James. He further identifies himself as a servant of Christ Jesus, who writes to the faithful in the Church, with the faithful hindered by false Christians who crept into fellowships unnoticed (Jude vv. 1, 4).
In making a distinction between himself and “the apostles of Christ,” Jude uses the “predictions” or the prophesying of the apostles as his basis for delivering a warning message anchored to the juxtaposition of fallen angels having left their first habitation [obedience to God in heaven] with endtime scoffers, following their own ungodly passions … this juxtaposition has in its initial physical presentation, the nation of Israel leaving Egypt only to be later destroyed by their unbelief [“Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe” — v. 5], and in its initial spiritual position, this juxtaposition references fallen angels [“And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day” — v. 6]. Jude then goes on to compare Sodom and Gommorah being punished by heavenly fire to fallen angels perishing in the lake of fire when this lake of fire (which for ungodly men is the second death) appears inside the creation.
The juxtaposition that Jude establishes will have scoffers—false Christians—being as fallen angels are/were, angels that left their first estate; this juxtaposition will have all of these scoffers being self-identified Christians that habitually practice ungodliness, unrighteousness, lawlessness. It is these Christians that cause divisions in the Church through being worldly people, devoid of the spirit. … The divisions became greater and more pronounced after Jude passed from the scene, with those who were false using creed, canon, and an authoritative clergy to redefine Christianity.
All authority in this world comes through God, who delivered this authority to the Adversary for a time—for long enough that the angels who did not leave their first estate can see through demonstration that self-governance does not and will not work; that perceived freedom from an autocratic government always produces an autocratic hierarchy as the basest of men seek to distinguish themselves, elevating themselves so that while all are equal, some are more-equal than others. It is the more-equal-than-others that have become the political class in the United States of America that is entrenched in a prospering Washington D.C., while the remainder of the nation struggles to live within budgets.
Jude commands those Christians strong in faith to have mercy on those who doubt, and save others by snatching them out of the fire … a serious problem exists here, nearly two millennia after Jude wrote. The scoffers, again through creed, the canon, and the clergy, laid claim to the identifier <Christian> in the 2nd-Century CE, and then condemned the faithful who either came to accept lies as the truth or who simply went away to quietly live and die in faith without passing on to the next generation those things that they knew to be true.
No person can truly save another in this endtime age; for in this present era there is no universally recognized authority within greater Christendom, no agreement as to what is good or evil, no agreement on what texts are canonical, not even any agreement as to the color of the garment Roman soldiers placed on Jesus when they mocked Him … purple for royalty or scarlet for blood? Because Mark’s Gospel has no genealogy of Jesus, the author of Mark’s Gospel needed Roman soldiers to place a garment of royal purple on Jesus to establish that Jesus represented in His person a credible but dismissed threat to the governing status quo. The author of Matthew’s Gospel, however, by using an introductory genealogy that linked Jesus to the kings of Israel through David, had already established in his narrative Jesus’ royal lineage so this author was free to address the significance of Jesus covering Believers with His blood.
If canonical texts do not agree with one another in simple matters of fact, then those who have been reading these canonical texts and preaching from them have either never understood them or have been intentionally deceiving parishioners for centuries. Which is it? No person can read the post-Calvary narrative accounts of the four Gospels and intelligently reconcile them. Each post-Calvary account has been crafted by its author for a specific purpose that has been concealed from scoffers and from an authoritative Christian clergy.
Once Christ became the Shepherd of the flock of God, there have been only fat sheep and lean sheep, with the fat sheep muscling the lean sheep out of the way so that they can reap the harvest of this world, leaving only muddied waters and trampled forage for the lean sheep. Until the resurrection of King David, there will be no other shepherd over Israel. The authoritative Christian clergy that emerged in the 2nd-Century CE and became oppressive by the 4th-Century was and remains of the Adversary, who doesn’t appear as a horror, a red dragon with a nest of friars under his tail, but as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14).
At the beginning of the 2nd-Century CE, the Body of Christ died from want of spiritual breath [pneuma ’agion] and remains dead to this day and will remain dead until the Second Passover liberation of Israel. However, beginning about 1528 CE, a very few individuals were spiritually returned to life through Christ Jesus breathing His breath into the figurative nostrils of their inner selves—and by staying close to Christ, these few individuals tasted and taste the goodness of God in the form of the indwelling of Christ Jesus, with Christ being their Head as He was for the apostles that predicted that at the end of the era, there would be scoffers, following their ungodly passions.
For Jude to make his juxtaposition between rebelling angels and rebelling Christians, Jude had to “modify” his quotation from the Book of Enoch, changing a proposition from genitive to dative case [from <of> to <to>] … the Book of Enoch, though popular reading in the 1st-Century BCE & CE, contains theologically problematic ideology presented as history: evil did NOT enter this world through angels [watchers] having sexual intercourse with the daughters of men, but through the unbelief of Adam, a story that the House of Judah—the Jews—apparently lost and had to go to Israel to get, retrieving the Temptation Account from an early scroll.
In a realm where truth has been weathered away by the ungodliness of Israel, generation after generation, it would not have been surprising that when the temple at Jerusalem lost the Book of the Covenant that was not known to be in the dilapidated temple until restoration began under King Josiah, the outer rolls of the newly-found scroll were damaged and rendered illegible by priestly neglect. To restore the text of Genesis, agents of Josiah would have needed to have found an intact copy of Book of the Covenant—and apparently found one left behind by Jeroboam: “Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, that altar with the high place he [King Josiah] pulled down and burned, reducing it to dust. He also burned the Asherah” (2 King 23:15). For the Temptation Account is written in the Hebrew of 9th-Century BCE Samaria, not in the Hebrew of the exiles that went to Babylon.
Apparently the truth of the “P” Creation Account and of the Temptation Account has been assumed by Israel since Judah was exiled to Babylon … without understanding that the “P” Creation Account (that Gen 1:1–2:3) is the abstract for all of Scripture and addresses the spiritual creation of the Father, not a six day creation of this physical earth, Scripture cannot be understood. Likewise, without understanding that the Temptation Account (extended through the story of Cain and Abel) pertains to Christ Jesus, the last Adam (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45), and to the Church, the last Eve, endtime Christians would not be able to contextually place Christianity within its limits—and would not realize that the enemies of faithful Christians will be their brothers, who are of Cain.
The author of Matthew’s Gospel has his Jesus tell disciples that in the latter days, they will be betrayed by their brothers in Christ:
For many will come in my name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.
Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. Then if anyone says to you, “Look, here is the Christ!” or “There he is!” do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. (Matt 24:5–25 emphasis added)
Throughout canonical Scripture, Israel is warned about false prophets, about lying prophets, about unfaithful brethren. Yet, today, Christians are striving to come together to resist and hopefully thwart the homosexuality of humanism as well as the intentional murder of unborn infants, both laudable goals in themselves. But the lawlessness of the greater Christian Church will be the undoing of both traditional Christendom and of the man of perdition, an Arian Christian possessed by the Adversary in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation.
Do not be deceived by Christian leaders that would have Christians of all faiths come together to resist a common enemy that they neither know nor are able to define. It is the man of perdition who would have all Christians unite (and unite under his banner) to resist humanism while initiating a war against Islamists. It is Christ Jesus who permits the Adversary to broadcast a mindset of rebellious liberty against all that is godly. It is Christ Jesus who walked in this world as a Judean, as an observant Jew. And if we are to walk in this world as Jesus walked, we will walk as outwardly uncircumcised Judeans; for the circumcision that matters is of the heart and has nothing to do with male appendages (Rom 2:25–29).
The woman who is inwardly a son of God will be circumcised of heart and will have spiritually the rights of an outwardly male son of God; for the flesh is not of particular importance to God. If it were, He would not permit the physical suffering that occurs among sons of God to occur.
As Matthew’s Gospel seems, upon initial reading, to be a historical representation of Christ Jesus’ ministry but is in reality an a-historical sermon that draws heavily on Mark’s Gospel, Jude seems to be a simple letter of exhortation to those who are called. However, in this seemingly simple letter, Jude wrote about “Christians” who practice ungodliness being among the faithful, with these Christians through having left their first habitation of faith being as rebelling angels are in that they are reserved for eternal fire (i.e., the lake of fire) and (who spurn Moses, the son who formed the shadow and copy of Christ Jesus, the unique Son of the Logos [John 1:1; 3:16] who through spiritual birth [Mark 1:10] became the firstborn Son of the Most High God, the Son of the one who raised Him from death [Rom 8:9]) .
However, the juxtaposition Jude makes—a valid comparison—cannot be directly taken from the writings of Moses, but must be hypostasized through the assumption that rebelling angels chose to disbelieve God as ungodly Christians choose not to believe Christ Jesus speaking the words of God the Father … but the Old Testament is mostly silent about what happened in heaven before iniquity was found in a guardian cherub (Ezek 28:12–16), and about what happened afterwards. Humanity is left to speculate about the rebellion when angels left their first habitation of obedience.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus says,
Jesus said to them, "The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light." When Jesus had said these things, He departed and hid Himself from them.
Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: "Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them." Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke of Him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.
And Jesus cried out and said, "Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. 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 [logos] 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 12:35–50 double emphasis added)
Rebelling angels left their first habitation of obedience, of belief, and were expelled from heaven. The authorities of Israel left their habitation of obedience, of faith, of belief of Moses so as not to be expelled from the synagogue, thereby establishing a correspondence between the synagogue and the Abyss, a correspondence that Jude develops by borrowing a quotation from the not-canonical Book of Enoch …
An on-line question was asked about the man Enoch, seventh from Adam, being transported without seeing death as other men experience death—and the traditional explanation within the Sabbatarian churches of God of what happened to Enoch has always been lame, a non-explanation presented as an explanation because, simply, those offering the explanation did not understand the plan of God or what the Apostle Paul, though Tertius (“I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord” — Rom 16:22) wrote. And it is here where next Sabbath’s reading begins.
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."