The Philadelphia Church

And He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men. (Matt 4:19)"

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 how far can you get from God.

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Weekly Readings

For the Sabbath of October 5, 2013

(A continuation of the Reading for September 21st & 28th)

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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Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. (Phil 1:1–20)

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For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened--not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. (2 Cor 5:1–9)

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The first habitation for all human persons is the body [soma], our earthly home, that forms a covering for the unborn inner self that has not yet been given life by God the Father … the life that a humanly born person has comes from the Creator of all things physical, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of living ones (Matt 22:32). The Apostle Paul in addressing the holy ones at Philippi went on to write,

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:5–11)

Have this mind among yourselves—the mind of Christ—in one another; have the same love for one another as Christ Jesus has for you. “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil 2:3–4).

Christians cannot do other and have the indwelling of Christ Jesus, who will impart to the person the mind of Christ. A person cannot hold a spiritual brother in contempt and seriously claim to have the mind of Christ. A Christian cannot exalt oneself by either ethnicity or intelligence and have the mind of Christ. Before God, there is no distinction between the Believer that is biologically male or female, black or white, mentally gifted or mentally challenged—for a Christian to believe and hold otherwise is the manifestation of a debased mind that, unfortunately, most likely has already condemned the person to the lake of fire.

Disciples of Christ Jesus have to—absolutely have to—love one another with the mind of Christ, who covers all who are truly born of spirit with His righteousness. This is the first habitation, the first covering of the infant son of God. And to leave this habitation of being under Christ’s righteousness is akin to rebelling angels leaving obedience to God and being cast into the Abyss under individual death sentences.

There should be no need to write a second or a third time that the person truly born of spirit will love those of the person’s fellowship with the same love Christ Jesus has for the person; yet, within every fellowship there are serious failings of love, failings that will cause the person to experience trials and tests that need not happen if the person would have reined-in his or her ego.

What is it about the flesh that causes a person to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ—and a lack of love for another Christian brother is an expression of being ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

Who would proclaim Christ out of envy … consider for a moment the person who “chooses” the clergy as a vocation: if the person is of the same mind as the Apostle Paul was, the person will freely preach Christ without placing a burden on those whom the person teaches, for Paul wrote,

Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way. (2 Cor 11:7–9)

When Paul was with the holy ones at Corinth and was in need, he didn’t ask for support from the Corinthians—Paul did not receive a salary, nor did Paul pass a collection plate when he was in need. He did not send out co-worker letters requesting brethren send into headquarters a special offering, or request brethren sell their houses and send him the proceeds from the sale. No, Paul did nothing of the kind. The mind that was in Paul had Paul suffer ongoing need that caused Paul to write,

I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. (1 Cor 4:9–13)

The Apostle Paul was not exalted by those whom he taught. Rather, he was reviled, persecuted, slandered—and his needs were ignored by the holy ones at Corinth when he was there. He hungered, was poorly dressed, homeless … is this what a person expects when choosing the Christian clergy as a vocation; plus, the concept of the person choosing the ministry as a vocation is inherently problematic, for it is the Father who chooses the person who can even come to Christ (John 6:44, 65), let alone serve as a teacher.

The Christian pastor or teacher who would have the audacity to mail out a letter requesting the letter’s readers send his ministry a special offering because his “work,” allegedly the work of God, is in financial trouble has/had no love for those whom he taught, and has/had so little spiritual understanding that it becomes questionable if his ministry is/was even of God, unless his ministry was truly one of killing a work of God. And that is what an absence of love for those whom are being taught does: this lack of love kills would-be sons of God through the ministry’s unintended message that love for others really doesn’t matter.

No Christian ministry is the shepherd of another’s salvation. In Christendom, there is presently only one Shepherd, Christ Jesus, the high priest of every Christian. The Pope is not a shepherd. A denomination’s Pastor General is not a shepherd. A fellowship’s pastor is not a shepherd. There are, within Christendom, only fat sheep and lean sheep, with all Popes and Pastor Generals and most pastors being fat sheep:

As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord [YHWH]: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet? Therefore, thus says the Lord [YHWH] to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad, I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. (Ezek 34:17–23)

The resurrected David shall be king over Israel in the Millennium, with David’s earthly kingdom being represented by the glorified Christ Jesus in the Endurance, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation. And it will be the glorified Christ that judges between sheep and sheep, with the fat sheep receiving in this world whatever reward they might have received if they had true love for the lean sheep, serving and not asking to be served, tolerating and encouraging the weak, the mentally challenged, the person not as intellectually gifted as yourself.

True Christian love is having the mind of Christ and treating others as Christ treats you, covering your sins with His righteousness; erecting fortified walls around you so that the Adversary cannot utterly destroy you. Christian love is never self-centered. When Paul preached hungry and homeless, he did not choose to do so because he was thinking of himself or his physical needs or his own intellect. He did so because those whom he taught were of more importance to him than he was to himself. And it is here where traditional Christendom as well as Sabbatarian Christendom comes up short; for who serves as a good soldier at their own expense. That is an unreasonable burden for a person to place on him or herself. Therefore, if God the Father—who knows that the one who teaches has needs—doesn’t choose to supply those needs, whether through the contributions of others or through employment opportunities, then the one who would teach needs to cease teaching for God isn’t supporting the person.

Even when imprisoned, Paul still had to feed himself (that is, supply his own food), meaning the brethren had to supply Paul with the means for Paul to eat, to clothe himself—

Every person who would teach others works for God, not for those who are being taught. Thus, the person who teaches asks God for his or her sustenance, for his or her wages, not the ones being taught. And when the one teaching doesn’t work for the congregation, the congregation has little or no influence in what is being taught—and without a hierarchal clergy separating the one who teaches from God as is the case in recognized Christian denominations, the person who teaches is responsive to God through whether God delivers to the person basic support, that is the means to sustain life. Likewise, as the Lord delivered rain in its season to ancient Israel when this firstborn son (from Ex 4:22) first entered the Promised Land and Israel did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight but withheld rain when Israel left the Lord and adopted the ways of dispossessed Canaanites, God is able to directly communicate with the one who teaches through giving support and withholding support. God is also able to hasten or slow the delivery of knowledge to His sons by aiding or hindering the one who teaches.

Returning now to what the Apostle Paul wrote concerning humanity being without excuse for its unbelief —

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. (Rom 1:18–22)

Neither Israel nor Gentiles have any excuse for not worshiping God; for at one time, all knew God. But when did all knew God? When did anyone know any other God but the Creator whom they chose not to worship? And it is here where problems even today enter into Christendom.

The God of living ones (Matt 22:32) who was the God of Abraham is the Creator of all things physical. He made everything that has mass. But He was not, is not the Father, the God of dead ones who gave spiritual life to the man Jesus the Nazarene when His breath [pneuma Theou] in the bodily form of a dove entered into Jesus (Mark 1:10) at about where the blowhole of a whale is located, thereby creating an analogy that has the now-living inner self of Jesus being likened to the prophet Jonah, with Jesus’ earthly body throughout His ministry being likened to the whale or great fish that swallowed Jonah … limiting the only sign that Jesus gave that He was from heaven, the sign of Jonah, to Jesus being three days and three nights in the heart of the earth as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale is too narrow of a reading of this sign; for Jonah’s story continues after he was puked out by the whale. His preaching was believed by the men of Nineveh, who worshiped in their collection of deities, Dagon, the fish-god. And Jonah, apparently observed when puked out by the whale, was recognized as a spokesman for Dagon: the men of Nineveh believed that Jonah had come from a god they worshiped to deliver a message of destruction coming upon the city. And the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah, which greatly upset Jonah, who wanted to see Nineveh, the enemy of Israel, destroyed.

Do Christians want to see other Christians destroyed? Yes, they do. For Trinitarian Christendom is barely tolerant of Arian Christendom, and will go to war with Arians once the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs. Only strong secular governments presently maintain “peace” between Arians and Trinitarians—and once these secular governments collapse (they all will at, or just after the Second Passover liberation of Israel), there will be no force strong enough to prevent theological war between Christian and Christian, between Islamist and Christian. The world will be ripe for the man of perdition to appear and refocus warring ideologies, with this man of perdition being to Christendom as ancient king Saul was to Israel … this man of perdition will be a human person who has about him an evil spirit in that he will be possessed by Satan the devil. His deep bitterness against God (because of what happened at the Second Passover) will cause him to oppose God while sincerely believing that the angel inside him is of God [to wit, Christ Jesus]. Thus, he will have no qualms about declaring himself God and uniting with the False Prophet to compel Trinitarian Christians, Islamists, Buddhists, atheists to become Arian Christians: first the nudge, then the shove, then the barrel of the gun. This man of perdition will be responsible for the murder and martyrdom of so many spirit-filled Christians that 580 days after the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the Sixth Seal will be removed from the Scroll and the wrath of the Lamb shall begin. And Christendom shall be as a tree that has dropped its winter fruit because of gale-force winds, originating with the man of perdition and the false prophet.

Since neither Israel nor Gentiles, today, have an excuse for not worshiping the Creator, who entered His creation as His unique Son only to then be twice born (that is, born of God the Father, the God Israel never knew), the question that haunts humanity is, when did humanity know the Creator? When did humanity exchange the truth about God for a lie? When did God give to humanity debased minds? And when did such debasement cease, if it has ceased?

When Paul, in his dictated treatise to the holy ones at Rome, speaks of the wrath of God being revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of human persons, Paul doesn’t speak of fire pouring from heaven to consume the unrighteous as happened to Sodom and surrounding cities, but speaks of the wrath of God coming upon humanity in the form of debased minds. Thus, the person who is gay, a homosexual, experiences in his personhood the wrath of God—and often, the profits of this present world—regardless of whether living with the wrath of God is openly evident. In other words, the still closeted gay person or bi-sexual person or transgender person undergoes daily the wrath of God and the favor of the Adversary. And while this person with a debased mind cannot escape the wrath of God that doesn’t come as fire from heaven but as aging flesh that sees with human eyes its own death coming upon itself, a death the flesh cannot escape, a death that the flesh will deny for as long as possible, the wrath of God in the form of a debased mind will preclude the inner self of this person from having the solace of believing that anything exists beyond death; the solace of believing that an afterlife is even possible. The gay person inevitably expects nothing more beyond death than what mighty (but then dead) Achilles told Odysseus, “‘No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! / By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man— / some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive— / than rule down here [Hades] over all the breathless dead’” (The Odyssey. Book 11. lines 555–8). With loss of breath, the person with a debased mind has no more life, nor any hope of life, which is why such persons spend so much to extend “life” even when quality has been lost … even self-identified born-again Christians delay their assumed journey to heaven for as long as possible.

A sound mind in a sound body while living in this present world is humanity’s first estate—and the person who experiences the wrath of God through receiving a debased mind left the person’s first estate. Godless men (Jude 4) are human persons who, like rebelling angels, left their first estate …

Jude, the brother of James and possibly the human half-brother of Jesus, mingles the heavenly with the natural; for Jesus would have naturally been to the Greeks a demigod, half God, half man, which is why the early proto-orthodox Christian theology insisted that Jesus was fully God and fully man. It wouldn’t do for Jesus to be either a righteous man, the human son of Joseph and Mary as Ebonite Christians contended, or for Jesus to be a spirit that was never a man as various Gnostic Christians apparently believed. Nor would it do for Jesus to be a demigod as Hercules was. Thus, the illogical position was assumed by proto-orthodox Christians that at all times, the human man Jesus the Nazarene was God.

The easy answer as to when all of humanity knew the Lord is that in the antediluvian world—when “man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, [and] the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose” (Gen 6:1–2)—human persons knew God and chose not to worship the Creator-of-all-things-physical as God, but chose to worship the creation instead. And this answer is true, but woefully incomplete …

When “[YHWH] saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And [YHWH] was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (vv. 5–6]), YHWH was certainly disappointed enough with humanity to abandon the descendants of Adam [man] and start over again, but what sort of creature could be given life and freewill, while having the intellect to form the shadow and type of angels? What sort of creature would demonstrate that governance of the people and by the people (or in the case then immediately at hand, of angels and by angels and for angels) will ultimately fail every time; that the Adversary’s rebellion against the Most High was based upon an workable premise—

The founders of the United States of America knew that a pure democracy (an Athenian democracy) would not work in a nation as large and diverse as the thirteen colonies. These founders knew that in any form of governance that permits the majority to rule, the majority will oppress all minorities—they had before them the example of enslaved people of color [Native Americans as well as imported Africans]. They knew that in a pure democracy, urban centers would oppress rural farmers. Therefore, on their second attempt to draft a workable Constitution or Articles of Federation, the founders of America moved farther away from pure democracy than initially undertaken, and a representational democracy was crafted that was based on citizens being invested in their governance through being property owners and tax payers. It was understood from the beginning that when the citizenry ceased being property owners, there would, most likely, be a need to start over again from scratch.

Many of the founders did not expect the form of governance they framed to last fifty years—and it really didn’t, for Andrew Jackson reworked Federal authority and exercised this authority in appalling ways, especially in the manner of displaying and relocating Native peoples to west of the Mississippi River, peoples that were as “civilized” as their Colonial neighbors.

The Civil War resulted in another reworking of Federal authority, one that involuntarily produced the social mess in which America presently finds itself. But again, it was understood from the formation of the United States of America that when the citizenry ceased being invested in its own governance through no longer holding actual ownership (being property owners and tax payers), the illusion of personal liberty and freedom would disappear as dew evaporating under the mid-morning sun.

The White House, the metonymic representation of America, recently held its bi-sexual visibility day, with no farther movement away from God being possible … though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them (Rom 1:32). It is time for God to intervene in the affairs of America and of the world but not in the way that the “Glenn Becks” of this world imagine, but in the manner of the first Passover, with God liberating Christians from indwelling sin and death through filling all who profess to be Christians with His spirit, His breath, so that all who self-identify themselves as Christians will Know the Lord through having the law written on hearts and placed in minds. Then, when all who claimed to be Christians have the Law within them through being filled with spirit, the Christian who transgresses the Commandments will commit blasphemy against the spirit and will perish in the lake of fire, the long and the short of what it means to be a Christian following the Second Passover liberation of Israel, with the Second Passover initiating the seven endtime years of tribulation that Christians will not escape but will fully experience if not martyred or murdered before Christ returns.

Returning to when humanity knew its Creator, humanity knew God through Adam and Eve having firsthand knowledge of their Creator; Noah knew God through having firsthand interaction and instruction from the Lord; Abraham knew God through firsthand interaction; Moses knew God from having entered into His presence; David knew God through answered prayers and through the writings of Moses; and ever since King David, Israel knew God through the writings of Moses, the psalms of David, the words of the prophets, major and minor. But the God that each of these living men and nations knew was the Creator, Yah, the God of living ones, the God of Abraham, not the God of dead ones, the God that Jesus the Nazarene came to reveal to His disciples.

To identify the God of Abraham—the deity whose backside Moses saw—as the Most High God comes from humanity being given a debased mind when Adam and his wife were driven from the Garden of Eden, a debased mind that transformed a linguistic determinative into an unpronounced proper name, the name of the sky God whose consort was (according to ancient Israelites) the queen of heaven.

Is the preceding understandable: the invisible God of Abraham was transformed by Israelite peoples into the invisible sky God that ruled heavens and earth through local deities represented by sticks and stones and more recently by plaster statuary of virgin and child, with prayers made to and through this queen of heaven and mother of god … it takes a debased mind to worship the Creator through the creation, especially when prayers are repetitious and not of the truth.

Ancient Israel would, in times of national turmoil, return to the beliefs of ancestors, repent and practice some type of reform which inevitably included the sacrifice of firstborns who were holy to God, thereby sealing in death these firstborns without these firstborns being corrupted (contaminated) by the beliefs and practices of their parents. In an inverted form of logic, God protected those Israelites who were His—the first to open wombs (“[YHWH] said to Moses, ‘Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine’" [Ex 13:1–2])—from the idolatry of their parents by having their parents burn their firstborn sons and daughters as offerings to the god they worshiped. And a similar logic is presently occurring within the greater Christian Church: when I was a youth, roughly a third of the children of “Christians” continued in the faith of their parents. Today, only a single digit percentage of Christian offspring continue in the faith of parents.

Most Christian children know the expectations of God—know the Commandments—but simply do not believe that God exists or that God will hold them accountable for what they know …

As the first Adam knew what the Lord said about eating from the Tree of Knowledge but ceased to believe the Lord when Eve ate and didn’t die (Adam did not realize that what was spoken to him pertained to him, not to his wife who was not yet created; Adam didn’t realize that as head of his wife, his obedience covered his wife as it garmented him), the offspring of Christians generationally know what the Lord spoke to Moses but simply do not believe that what Moses recorded pertains to them.

Generation after generation of Christians have practiced and still continue to practice their errant belief of God, but their hypocrisy drove and drives their offspring away from traditional Christendom. These children of traditional Christians wander as lost souls throughout the world, where they experience delight and despair, desperation and medically-controlled depression. They are not-yet ripe for conversion: they are as green apples on an unsprayed tree. But the harvest season is far advanced. The picking will soon begin, and the sorting and grading of fruit in the figurative packing shed of the Tribulation will cause the majority of Christian parents to be discarded but will see some of their now wayward offspring repent and temporarily walk in this world as outwardly uncircumcised Judeans before they are martyred—and those who will be saved, almost without exception, will be martyred in the Tribulation; martyred for walking in this world as Jesus walked.

Yes, Christians and non-Christians alike have debased minds: when Paul spoke to the holy ones at Rome about judging one another, he addressed then living persons … Paul said that some presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, but have not yet come to repentance; therefore, Paul went on to say,

He [God, the Creator] will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Rom 2:6–16 emphasis and double emphasis added)

Those who practice things condemned by the Commandments of God have debased minds: regardless of whether a person knows the Commandments or knows the Lord, the person who transgresses the Commandments will perish, whether by the Law or without the Law—God shows no partiality—for it is the doer of the Law who shall be justified …

No faithful Christian would have been in that Kenyan shopping mall on the Sabbath, nor should any Jew have been in that shopping mall. However, because the mall was open and because of the unbelief of most Christians and many Jews, many were shopping, their minds far from God until forcibly reoriented by Islamic terrorists. Once the terrorist attack began, the wayward Christian who should have been keeping the Sabbath, walking in this world as Jesus walked, had his or her thoughts returned to God through the reality of immediate death, especially if they didn’t know the name of Mohammad’s mother.

Today, with few exceptions, Christians have debased minds, with the prosperity and ease of 21st-Century life in, say, America leading to bi-sexual visibility day in the White House, bringing America officially to where were placed the Romans, again, they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. It is difficult to imagine how America can get farther from God than the nation presently is.

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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."