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The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary are offered as openings into dialogue about the subject or concept. And the concept behind the readings for Atonement or Yom Kipporim is the covering of righteousness. Possible songs include the following hymns: High
Sabbath
For services on Atonement, September 22,
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 services should read or
assign to be read Leviticus chapter 23, verses 26 through 32, followed by
Leviticus chapter 16, and Numbers chapter 29, verses 7 through 11. Commentary: In its rejection of the high Sabbaths of God as
“Jewish” days that New Testament Christians do not observe because
Jesus fulfilled them, the visible Christian Church reveals that it has never
understood spiritual birth or Grace— To say that the visible Church does not and has
never understood Grace is a bold statement, but one supported by funeral
services performed by ministers employed by the denominations, sects, and
fellowships comprising visible Christendom. These ministers seem determined to
preach every person into heaven, regardless of how the person actually lived
his or her life and regardless of whether the person was truly born of Spirit
and regardless of what Scripture says about the fate of the dead. Although it
is a social taboo to speak ill of the dead, these ministers could, instead, say
that judgment is not today upon those who are not of the household of God;
judgment is only upon those who have been born of Spirit and have undertaken
journeys of faith of great enough distance to cleanse hearts and so receive
circumcised hearts. Therefore, the unjudged dead
await resurrection in the grave. They are in neither heaven nor hell. They
await resurrection in the great White Throne Judgment where those who have done
by nature what the law requires will show that the work of the law was written
on their hearts, while those who have sinned without the law will perish
without the law (Rom 2:12-16). The person who has sought to do what was
“right” will not be forgotten, nor will be the person who has
sought to get away with whatever the person could. The new creature that is a son of God is not a
fleshly creature like a natural Israelite is. This new creature is born of
Spirit, an invisible substance that is not of this world, but is like wind or
moving air in this world. Thus, this new creature can only be described through
a metaphor, and in metaphoric language. This new creature is born of A<,L:" U(4@<, or in a literal translation, Breath Holy …
a word’s meaning must be assigned to the word; for words don’t come
with little backpacks containing dictionaries that give their meaning. Thus,
the Greek icon phrase /A<,L:" U(4@</has only the meaning assigned to it by a
particular reader’s reading community. If this community assigns
personhood to the icon phrase, then the phrase represents the third personage
of a triune deity. But if the person assigns a meaning of /the force or power of God/ to the icon phrase, then for that
person, the Holy Spirit is the power of God. But if the person treats the icon
/A<,L:"/ as it would be treated if found in a secular
work, then the Holy Spirit is the Breath of God—and through this Breath,
God transfers spiritual life to His sons as a mother through her human breath
transfers life across the blood of the placenta to her child. Since the new creature that is a son of God dwells
in a tent of flesh and is not this tent, the new creature is not male or
female, Jew or Greek, bond or free (Gal 3:28) — the tents of flesh are
male or female, Jew or Greek. These tents of flesh are made from the dust of
the earth [elemental compounds]; they are made of powdered stone. They have or
do not have circumcised foreskins. Those that have circumcised foreskins are
regulated by the laws of God written by the finger of God on two tablets of stone;
whereas those without circumcised foreskins remain consigned to disobedience
(Rom 11:32) as the bondservants of the prince of this world, who temporarily
covers their lawlessness by them not being free to keep the commandments of
God. Since sin entered this world through the transgression of the first Adam,
being able to keep the commandments has required that the person be set free
from bondage to disobedience. But the man Jesus did not have the first Adam as
His father. He came as the son of Theos
so He was born free! He was never the bondservant to sin for He never sinned:
He never placed Himself under the authority of Sin and Death, the active agents
of the prince of this world. Thus, for Jesus to die, He had to voluntary submit
to Death, and He did so by taking upon Himself the sins of Israel as the
reality of both goats sacrificed on this day. Again, this new creature is not of this world and
does not have physical attributes, nor does it commit transgressions of the
laws of God in this world. And it is this new creature that is garmented by the
righteousness of Christ Jesus; it is this new creature that is covered by Grace
if this new creature has presented its members to God as instruments of
righteousness (Rom 6:13-14), for the lawlessness of this new creature occurs in
the supra-dimensional heavenly realm where Jesus, as the reality of the Azazel
goat, covers (by bearing) this new creature’s sin that still requires the
loss of life. Therefore, when this new creature, alive in the heavenly realm,
presents its members to sin in this world, thereby transforming its members
into instruments of unrighteousness, sin reigns in the mortal body and no
sacrifice remains for this sin. Jesus, as the reality of the goat slain on the
altar, covered the sins of natural The visible Church has understood Grace as
unmerited pardon for sin, but this understanding is always accompanied with the
acceptance of the old serpent’s lie that the last Eve will not die (Gen
3:4) because disciples have regenerated immortal souls. Nothing could be
farther from what Jesus taught. Nothing could be farther from what Paul taught.
Nothing could be farther from what John or Peter or James taught. No human
being has or had any life but that which came from the breath the first Adam
received when Elohim [singular in
usage] breathed into the man of mud’s nostrils (Gen 2:7) until—and
this is the key—the divine Breath of the Father descended as a dove on
the baptized man Jesus of Nazareth to fulfill all righteousness (Matt 3:15-17)
thereby making Jesus the last Adam (cf.
Rom 5:14; 1 Co 15:46). To teach Israel that human beings are born with
immortal souls is blasphemy—and today, every person, no exceptions, who
teaches the spiritually circumcised nation of Israel that disciples have
regenerated immortal souls is a minister of the Adversary disguised as a
minister of righteousness (2 Co 11:13-15). * Atonement
is the day [Yom] of coverings [Kipporim — note the plural “im,” which
is proper]. Two coverings are needed, the first for sin in this world committed
by the flesh—this sin is “covered” by the goat sacrificed on
the altar. The second covering is needed for sin in that portion of the
heavenly realm within the void created when lawlessness was found in an
anointed cherub. This second covering is represented by the Azazel goat, the scapegoat, led into the
wilderness by the hand of a fit man, and this second covering is Grace, the
righteousness of Christ Jesus that disciples put on daily as a garment. When a person has been born anew, or born again, or
born of Spirit, the person has two lives or life in two realms, not one. The person
still has his or her physical life. But to this physical life has been added a
second life that begins to overwrite the “old nature” of the
person. Thus, the second life that
a person has is like the person’s human nature, the mental software
program that animates the flesh. The creation concealed the things of God from
ancient When born of the water of the womb, a person
consists of soma [soma or
flesh] and psuche [psuche
or shallow breath] (Matt 10:28). Every person who has ever lived has been born
of water, so every person possesses the commonality of being flesh and breath,
or flesh and blood [that which carries physical breath to every cell]. This is
what can be scientifically observed; this is what is true regardless of what a
person has accepted by faith or by what has been traditionally passed down from
pagan antiquity. Any other teaching is not true and is not of the Father and
the Son. Again, if a person teaches any version of human beings having immortal
souls received from the first Adam, the person is false and teaches the things
of this world, not the things of God. The person is spiritually blind. The Father raises the dead and gives them life
(John 5:21) — He raises the dead in this era by drawing the person from
the world (John 6:44, 65) through giving the person the Holy Spirit, or His
divine Breath [A<,L:" U(4@<]. Receipt of the Holy Spirit causes the person to
be “born of Spirit,” a metaphorical phrase that embodies the
truthfulness of what has occurred in the unseen heavenly realm. The person has
been born a second time; the person is born from above; the person is born anew
or born of Spirit (John 3:3-8), having received life in the heavenly realm that
invisibly goes where it will, with this spiritual life domiciled in a tent of
flesh that remains perishable (2 Co chap 5). The natural nation of There is a portion of Yes, The lioness “took another of her cubs and
made him a young lion” (Ezek 19:5), who “learned to catch prey; he
devoured men, and seized their widows … and the land was appalled and all
who were in it at the sound of his roaring” (vv. 6-7), and the nations of this world set against him, took him
captive, and brought him to the king of Babylon, and “his voice shall no
more be heard on the mountains of Israel” (v. 9) — the Christian Church was taken captive as if it were
a young lion, and it was delivered by Greek philosophers and Roman legates to
the prince of this world, who castrated this young lion with the hooked knife
of lawlessness, thereby rendering this young lion unable to do more than lap
milk from the Adversary’s saucer. Today, the Christian Church today prays to the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob while being in active rebellion against the deity
to which the Church prays—is it any wonder why so few prayers are
answered? When Israel was still in Egypt, God swore that He
would pour out His wrath on the nation and spend His anger against Israel
… understand the significance of this: the Christian Church spiritually
lives in the void [the bottomless pit] created in the heavenly realm when
lawlessness was found in an anointed cherub as natural Israel lived in Egypt.
This comparison has the geography of the earth [specially, of pre-Flood Eden]
being the physical equivalent of the mental topography of humanity in spiritual
Babylon, the spiritual territory within the void, with all of the void
constituting the “outer darkness” into which rebelling angels were
cast. The flesh of every disciple—the tent in which a son of God
dwells—remains on earth and cannot ever enter the realm of thought and
imagination, the mental topography of humanity. Thus, as God swore to pour out
His wrath on natural Israel in Egypt but didn’t for the sake of His name,
God is today refraining from pouring out His wrath on the lawless Christian
Church for the sake of His name so that it should not be further profaned in
the sight of the other peoples who have not yet been born of Spirit (Ezek 20:9). Today, the separation between spiritually
circumcised Israelite and the person who has not yet been born of Spirit [the
person who is the spiritual equivalent of an Egyptian] isn’t through
physical plagues affecting the one but not the other. Rather, the separation is
outwardly invisible, and only revealed in this world by the actions and enacted
philosophies of the spiritual Israelite as opposed to the spiritual Egyptian or
Babylonian. In the heavenly realm, the separation is immediately evident, for
one has life and the other is dead. The spiritual Israelite has life through
the earnest of the Holy Spirit—and as the person who places earnest money
down on a parcel of real estate deposits real money with a Realtor, to be held
by the Realtor until the sale is completed, the Father deposits real life in
the heavenly realm in a tent of flesh to be held by this tent of flesh until
the judgment of this tent of flesh is revealed upon Christ Jesus’ return
(1 Co 4:5). Then, as the Father made alive that which was dead through
depositing real spiritual life in a tent of flesh, the Son will give life to
whom He will (again John 5:21), giving imperishable bodies to those disciples
whom He determines worthy. * Again,
all teaching that assigns to human beings an immortal soul is of the old
serpent, Satan the devil—and all who teach that human beings are born
with immortal souls teach as ministers of the Adversary. This cannot be
emphasized strongly enough. Satan does not have physical seed as is falsely
taught by the Christian Identity Movement (CIM); for Satan is a spiritual
being. He has spiritual seed, which includes human beings teaching his message
of lawlessness and hate toward God. Both the Father and the Son must give life to a
spiritually lifeless tent of flesh before the mortal tent of flesh will put on
immortality, thereby permitting the new creature born into that particular tent
of flesh to walk through the fire (Isa 43:2) separating dimensions. These tents
of flesh will never leave this physical realm. The characteristic solidness of
matter will not permit a bodily rapture of flesh and blood disciples into
heaven. Rather, that which is perishable [human bodies] must put on
imperishability received from Christ Jesus when judgments are revealed. Being born of Spirit makes a person alive in the
heavenly realm—and this is the necessary prerequisite for
“seeing” the kingdom of God for the person who has not been born of
Spirit is hostile to God (Rom 8:7), while knowing nothing of God. The person
who has not been born of Spirit has no spiritual understanding and, in a
taxonomical hierarchy, is comparable to a beast. And as a person’s dog or
cat cannot understand why the person balances his or her checking account, the
person who has not been born of Spirit cannot understand why a Christian would
afflict the flesh by keeping the Fast. The disciple who doesn’t keep the Fast on
Atonement has written a NSF check to God. Understand this well: the Christian who chooses not
to afflict the flesh on Yom Kipporim
remains a servant of the flesh, a servant of disobedience, a voluntary son of
Satan. God could, possibly, wink at the ignorance of this person in times past,
but no longer. The disciple who serves the flesh is unworthy of Christ Jesus. Being born of Spirit must be accompanied by hearing
the words of Christ Jesus and believing the one who sent Him (John 5:24); the
one who raised Him from the dead (Rom 10:9). Merely being born of Spirit does
not get a person into heaven. As human birth comes without the infant’s
consent and advice, spiritual birth comes without the spiritual infant’s
consent, without prior consultation. A person does not “decide” to
be born of Spirit when hearing an altar call; salvation isn’t a
figurative railway switch that if thrown sends a person to heaven and if not
thrown continues the person on his or her way to hell. God is not a respecter
of persons: every person will be born a second time, born of Spirit, with most
of these births occurring in the great White Throne Judgment (Rev 20:11-15)
when the mass of humankind will be raised from the grave to receive credit or
condemnation for those things done in the flesh. Judgment is the winnowing of
the grain, the separation of the chaff from the kernels. The grinding of this
grain into fine flour occurred during the course of living a life that has
already been concluded. And this post-Millennium resurrection to judgment will
be the main harvest of humanity, and is foreshadowed by the main crop wheat
harvest of ancient Indeed, God is not a respecter of persons:
“there is no distinction between Jew and Greek” (Rom 10:12), for
“‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be
saved’” (v. 13) … is
that all there is to salvation, calling on the name of the Lord? That is what
Paul writes, and when taken out of context, the sentence makes for a wonderful
sound byte. To be saved a person merely has to call on the name of the Lord.
But the Apostle Paul continues, “But how are they to call on him in whom
they have not believed” (v.
14). ·
A person
cannot call upon the one whom he or
she has not believed and expect that one
to hear the person. The
Apostle Paul asks, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have
never heard” (Rom 10:14)? … Who today has not heard of Jesus
Christ? The world knows this name— But the world does not believe the words of Christ
when it has heard them. ·
The Father
raises the dead, but the Father does not judge the dead. All judgment has been
given to the Son. ·
If a person
only has to call on the name of the Lord to be saved, the person would escape
being judged by the Son; for— ·
This person
could live in sin, hearing the words of Jesus but not believing them, then a
moment before death call upon the name of Jesus and be saved, yes or no? Will Jesus cover the sins of the person who does
not believe His words? The Apostle Paul gives the answer: No! Grace covers only
the person who presents his or her members to God as instruments for
righteousness—it is over this person that sin has no dominion (Rom
6:13-14). The person who presents his or her members to sin as instruments for
unrighteousness remains under the law, and condemned to death by the law. To be under the law is to be condemned to
death—and every person who presents his or her members to sin
[lawlessness] is condemned by the law. It is only when a person keeps the
commandments and presents his or her members to God as instruments for
righteousness that the person comes under Grace, for every person will come
short of perfection (1 John 1:8-10), even those who have presented themselves and
their members to God to serve righteousness. Grace covers the shortcomings of
those who diligently strive to keep the commandments. Ancient Judea brought forth not one but two grain
harvests each year, with the harvest of the firstfruits [the barley harvest]
beginning at Passover with the Wave Sheaf Offering and concluding with the
Feast of Weeks, fifty days later. Disciples today are the firstfruits, the
early barley harvest. And the Father determines whom He will draw from the
world to become part of the firstfruits; i.e., part of the early barley
harvest, with the firstfruits comprising the Body of the Son of Man. Today, a physically unbridgeable schism exists
among human beings: one part of all humanity has not been born of Spirit, but
remains as the water that covers the surface of the earth. The second part of
humanity has been born of Spirit, and has its citizenship in the third heaven.
But the tents of flesh in which born of Spirit sons of God dwell were once sons
of disobedience (Eph 2:2-3), consigned to disobedience by God (Rom 11:32) so
that He could have mercy on all. The new creature was not born consigned to sin,
but born free to keep the law. ·
Tents of flesh
are not given freewill when born of water, but are consigned to sin and death. ·
The new
creature born of Spirit is not born under condemnation, but is born free to
keep the law. ·
As Moses set
before ·
Thus, it is
the born of Spirit new creature who will choose life by presenting its members
to God as instruments for righteousness, or who will choose death by presenting
its members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. The disciple who willing transgresses the law of
God—with the most common transgression being breaking the Sabbath
commandment—chooses or has chosen death. With this disciple’s
choice, God as the Master Potter will form the person into a vessel for honored
use covered by Grace, or for a vessel of dishonorable usage, a vessel of wrath
to be endured for a season, a vessel doomed for destruction. In blunt language, Christ Jesus takes the
disciple’s decision to present his or her members as instruments to God
to form this son of God into a vessel for honored usage, thereby eliminating
from the disciple the option to make a different choice. The disciple no longer
has freewill even if the disciple thinks that he or she has. Rather, the
disciple is tethered to righteousness and covered by the garment of Grace,
which doesn’t mean that the disciple cannot sin … anyone who has
attended a tethered a goat or a sheep knows how much harm the animal can still
do to itself while tethered in a “safe” area. For the part of humankind presently born of Spirit,
freewill was given—and a choice was made by every disciple, with far too
many disciples choosing lawlessness and death. During the seven endtime years of tribulation, * If
properly understood, Grace would be defined as undeserved covering for sin,
with “covering” used as in a cloak or mantle that encloses the
person, thereby protecting, sheltering, but also disguising or concealing the
person. This cloak of Grace is Christ’s righteousness, which disciples are
to put on as a garment (Gal Satan does not
cover disciples’ sins, but is ultimately responsible for them. Again, the Hebraic linguistic icon, Kipporim, that is usually translated
into English as Atonement [at-one-ment] is better translated as “coverings.”
Traditionally, Judaism has used the singular form of the icon, Kippur; hence, calendars identify this
High Sabbath as Yom Kippur. But this
Day of Coverings appears in Scripture in its plural form. Two
coverings—two goats covered the sins of What hasn’t been well understood by the
greater Church is that Jesus will give the sins that He bears either back to
the disciple or to Satan upon His return; He will not be crucified again. He
died at The disciple who hears Jesus’ words and
believes the One who sent Him passes from death to life, but disciples are not
to be surprised when some for whom Jesus has borne their sins are resurrected
to condemnation (v. 29). These
disciples will have had their sins returned to them because their righteousness
did not exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt Two coverings for sin: one natural, which returns the
flesh of every disciple to the state of bliss the first Adam experienced prior
to eating forbidden fruit; one spiritual, which causes no sin to be counted
against the disciple in the heavenly realm where disciples received life
through receipt of the divine Breath of the Father. Two births: one natural or
physical and coming from the breath Elohim
[singular in usage] breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam; one spiritual
coming from the divine Breath of the Father that descended as a dove onto the
man Jesus, the last Adam. The first covering for sin covers the natural man,
the fleshly bodies of disciples; the second covering for sin covers the son of
God dwelling within the natural man. This second covering is the righteousness
of Christ Jesus; this second covering is Grace. And the disciple who will not
afflict the natural man as Christ Jesus was afflicted at Two dimensions, two worlds, one natural, one
spiritual. And what is flesh and blood in this natural world cannot enter the
heavenly realm—the bodies or tabernacles in which born anew sons of God
presently dwell cannot enter heaven. These sons of God must receive a glorious
or incorruptible body (a body of primal energy) before they can cross
dimensions. * 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 ] |