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 God in Christ in us.
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of October 8, 2011
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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For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? And I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you. Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.
When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia. But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (2 Cor 2:1–17 emphasis and double emphasis added)
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1.
Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us—the Greek expression, But To the God grace the [one] always leading us in triumph in the Christ), has God being in Christ as is consistent with Jesus’ words shortly before He was taken:
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20–23 emphasis and double emphasis added)
The expression, in Christ, is used figuratively in English, but there is a certain literalness about the expression in the way Jesus used it; for the indwelling of Christ (the breath or spirit of Christ — pneuma Christos) forms the separating division of humankind between Israelite and non-Israelite that the cross abolished by ending “the law [covenant] of commandments and ordinances” (Eph 2:15) that separated physical Israelites from Gentiles. According to Paul, if anyone “does not have the Spirit of Christ [pneuma Christos]” the person “does not belong to Him [Christ]. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit [the other spirit/breath] is life because of righteousness” (Rom 8:9).
The gift of God is life given to the non-physical inner self, with this gift of life coming through receipt of a second breath of life, His breath [pneuma Theon] in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:23) … to receive indwelling eternal life (that is, to receive the breath/spirit of God), the person must receive the indwelling of Christ in the form of the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos]. Hence, the breath of the Father [again, pneuma Theon] that descended in the form of a dove (Matt 3:16) upon the man Jesus the Nazarene when He rose from being baptized by John—this breath of the Father alighting on Jesus and remaining with Him—continues on in the breath of Jesus given to disciples, the breath or spirit of Jesus forming the vessel within the disciple that holds the breath of the Father that gives to the disciple life within the same moment in heaven in which the Most High God dwells, a moment that angels cannot enter.
The model for all of this is found in the creation account of Adam and Eve; for Elohim [singular in usage] creates from the elements of the earth—from dust, or from red mud—a man that is a corpse; i.e., without the breath of life. Then Elohim [again, singular in usage] breathes into the nostrils of this corpse, and this corpse becomes a nephesh, a breathing creature (Gen 2:7) … all human life comes from the breath that Elohim breathed into the nostrils of the first Adam; for Eve’s life came from the flesh of Adam and not from a second breathing of life into her nostrils. Hence, the woman is one flesh with the man and shall become one flesh with the man (v. 24).
Regardless of what scientific evidence suggests, the narrative of Scripture that illuminates the story of Christ and Christ crucified has all of humankind being one flesh through the continuance of life initially given to Adam when Elohim breathed into the man of mud’s nostrils. There has been no second giving of physical life to humankind, no second creation of human beings. Thus, Chinese and Africans and Caucasians have one breath, one life, and are of one flesh, with this life originating when Elohim breathed into the nostrils of the man of mud, then took from this solitary man a rib [life] with which Elohim made the woman Eve.
Christ Jesus is the last Adam, and the Christian Church is the last Eve—
When Elohim made a man from the elements of the earth, He did not use all of the earth to form this one man. He used a few pounds [a few kilos] of dust/mud to form His man—and He formed His man before He breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of the man. He left most of the earth untouched. It was with only a few pounds of dust that He worked, and not all of the dust He moistened to form mud was used to make His man. Some of the moistened soil would have remained to return to being the dust of the earth.
And so it was when Jesus as one man of many humanly born into the nation of Israel, a tiny family among the families of the earth, received life from the Father … Jesus was formed into being a son of God through living without sin until He was about thirty years old: He lived these thirty years without having received indwelling eternal life, but because He lived without sin, without Death having any claim to His physical breath of life, He lived with physical immortality, which isn’t to say that He was immortal. At any time, He could have sinned and immediately become consigned to Death. It was only for as long as He lived without sin that He was physically immortal—Jesus voluntarily took upon Himself the sins of Israel when He changed the Passover symbols from a sacrificed bleating lamb to bread and wine that represented His body and His blood. Thus on the dark portion of the First Unleavened, the 14th of Aviv, in the year 31 of the Common Era, the man Jesus the Nazarene who up to this day was without sin and therefore not subject to Death, took upon Himself the sins of Israel when He voluntarily changed the Passover symbolism from a sacrificed physical lamb to Himself, thereby offering His life up to be sacrificed.
If the Passover symbols had not changed—if lambs were still sacrificed on Passover as was done in Egypt under Moses—then Jesus could not have died until He committed a transgression of the commandments: He would have then died for His own sinfulness.
But Jesus was without sin until He, out of true love for Israel, took upon Himself the sins of Israel and was sacrificed as the Passover Lamb of God.
As Elohim sculpted a man from the dust of the earth, not breathing life into the nostrils of this man of mud until the sculpture was perfect, the Most High God did not deliver His breath, the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion breath holy], to the man Jesus the Nazarene until Jesus was about thirty years of age, the age He needed to be to serve as a perfect priest of God to Israel.
It was from Jesus, on the day that He was resurrected from death and accepted by the Father as the reality of the Wave Sheaf offering, that ten of His first disciples received indwelling eternal life in the form of the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos]:
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week [oun Ouses opsias ekeine te hemera te mia sabbaton the first after Sabbath], the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion]. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld." (John 20:19–23 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Jesus breathed His breath, the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos] onto His disciples on the same day as He was resurrected from death. In doing so, Jesus does what Elohim [singular in usage] did when Elohim presented Eve, made from a rib taken from a wound in Adam’s side, to Adam: Jesus presents to Himself, the last Adam, His future Bride … actually, Jesus begins the construction of His future Bride, New Jerusalem, on this day that continues forth as one day to this present hour, this one day represented by the First Unleavened, the Preparation Day for the High Sabbath that begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Just so there is no misunderstanding: the Feast of Unleavened Bread is seven days long. It begins on the 15th day of Aviv at sunset and continues through the 22nd day of Aviv, and it symbolically represents the seven endtime years of tribulation when first Israel and then all of humanity will live without sin or perish—live without sin through being filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God. However, Passover lambs in Egypt were not sacrificed at the end of the 14th day of the first month, but at the beginning of the 14th day; for Israel was not to leave its houses until dawn on the 14th day. Israel left Egypt, the earthly representation of sin, at the beginning of the 15th day of the first month. Thus, Israel’s forty year long exodus from Egypt and trek to the Promised Land is represented by the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and spiritually by the seven endtime years of tribulation. The entirety of the Christian era, from when Jesus breathed His breath [pneuma Christos] until the Second Passover liberation of Israel is represented by the First unleavened, the 14th day of Aviv, when Israel in Egypt roasted paschal lambs with fire, and then, after dawn, spoiled the Egyptians, taking from Egyptians that things that reflected light.
There is a First Unleavened [the 14th of Aviv] that serves as the Preparation Day for the Feast of Unleavened Bread that represents the seven long years of tribulation, the Affliction and Endurance [en te thlipsei kai basileia kai hypomone — from Rev 1:9], and there is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Thus, there is an eight day period in the spring of the year when Israel does not eat leavened bread … it isn’t that the Feast of Unleavened Bread is eight days long. No, not at all. It is that there are two periods in the spring when unleavened bread is eaten just as there were/are two periods in the fall when Israel dwelt/dwells in temporary housing, the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles followed immediately by the Last Great Day, with the seven days of Tabernacles representing Christ’s millennial reign and the Last Great Day representing the great White Throne Judgment.
The eight days in the spring of the year when Israel eats the bread of affliction—again, two periods, one a single day in length and the other seven days in length—forms the mirror image of the eight days in the fall of the year when Israel dwells in temporary housing, with the eight days in the fall again consisting of two periods, one seven days long and the other a single day in length.
For Israel under the Moab covenant, the weekly Sabbath is a remembrance that Israel was a slave in the land of Egypt (Deut 5:15), not a remembrance of the creation (Ex 20:11) … the Moab covenant differs from the Sinai covenant; for the Moab covenant is Paul’s righteousness based on faith (Rom 10:6) and can only be satisfied by voluntarily coming to God through faith.
Each of the three periods when Israel is to appear before the Lord is a remembrance that Israel was a slave in Egypt and after liberation, journeyed for forty years through the wilderness before entering the Promised Land representing God’s rest, the Sabbath.
In symbolism, Adam is the dust of the earth Elohim used to form the first man—not all of the dust of the earth, but a hundred or so pounds—and is analogous to Christ, Head and Body [Jesus and all of His disciples] being that portion of humanity the Father transforms into firstborn sons of God. What separates physical human beings from the dust of the fields is possession of the breath of life, with life having been given to many differing creatures of which only human beings are destined to become sons of God. What separates Christ from humanity is possession of the breath of God in the breath of Christ, not the breath of God [pneuma Theon] along with the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos] but [in] the breath of Christ.
Unless a fleshly human body has breath in it, breath received from the first Adam through Eve and via human birth through the woman ever since, the fleshly body is a corpse, physically dead and lifeless. Unless a Christian has the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos], the last Adam, in the Christian, the Christian is a spiritual corpse awaiting resurrection from death … the Christian will not possess the Holy Spirit [pneuma hagion], the breath of God [pneuma Theon], apart from receiving it in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos]. Therefore, there is salvation in no other name but that of Jesus the Nazarene (Acts 4:10–12).
The earthly pronunciation of Jesus’ name—how a person pronounces the name of Jesus the Nazarene—has no bearing on anything. Salvation is entirely dependent upon having the breath of Jesus, the breath of Christ [again, pneuma Christos], inside the person, who need not be outwardly circumcised or to even have a penis. For without the indwelling of Christ, the human person is a spiritual corpse, analogous to the dust gathered together by Elohim [singular in usage] before He began to sculpt a man from mud.
2.
Satan has designs, plans to rescue himself from his present condemnation to death, and these plans are based upon outwitting human beings called by God to be sons—
If the Adversary can get Christians to bicker about how to pronounce the name of Jesus, the Adversary easily wins his victory, that of demonstrating to the Most High God that humanity is unworthy material from which to construct sons with life in the same heavenly moment as the Father dwells—that humanity is unfit dirt to make into a sculpture of a son.
But it isn’t thwarting the Adversary’s easy victories that Philadelphia is all about: this fellowship of little strength is about keeping Jesus’ word, His message about the Endurance, the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation … as the Hebrew language concealed the Father and His existence from Israel so that Jesus had to bring to chosen disciples knowledge of the Father, the visions of Daniel concealed the Endurance from 1st-Century Christendom so that Jesus, in coming to John in vision, had to reveal that another 1260 day period existed between when the visions of Daniel end with the kingdom being given to the Son of Man and when the Messiah comes to glorify the holy ones.
Note: a concealment made through one language is undone [made plain] through another language: Hebrew » Greek. Likewise, a concealment made through one vision (or through several visions given to one prophet) is undone [made plain] through another vision: Daniel’s visions » John’s vision.
The Adversary would have Israel, natural and spiritual, return to Hebrew language
usage. In the case of natural Israel—the natural descendants of the Patriarch Jacob—the
return to Hebrew makes only a small difference. Although Jesus and Paul both
used the Septuagint for certain citations, Hebrew remained the language of the
Natural Israel’s return to Hebrew usage in the modern state of Israel assures this nation’s isolation from Christ until the breath of God is poured out on all flesh at the beginning of the Endurance, thereby reinforcing the reality of the first shall be last: the first to know Yah shall be the last to know Christ Jesus.
Arabic is, today, the language of Islam, which recognizes Jesus as a teacher, not as the Son of God. Whereas the singularity that Hebrew assigns to the plural icon Elohim prevents the natural sons of Jacob from knowing the Father, the singularity of the icon Islam uses for God—Allah—prevents the natural sons of Ishmael from knowing the Father. Therefore, by extension it will here be tentatively said that Semitic language usage (the language family of both Hebrew and Arabic) conceals the Father from the people whereas Indo-European language usage does not; for Greek and Latin speakers had to invent a triune deity that doesn’t exist and has never existed to return singularity to the Father and the Son. Indo-European languages, of which Greek, Latin, French, German, and English are, maintain singleness for singular nouns … when a singular noun is transformed into a plural, more than one of the single entities are present. Theos is masculine singular and is here missing its definite article. In order to linguistically incorporate the Father and the Son into the noun Theos, the Father and the Son have to be the same entity whenever the linguistic icon Theos is used. And that is not how John uses the icon; not how Jesus used the icon. Thus, centuries later [long after the spiritual Body of Christ had died for want of the breath of Christ], very early Catholic theologians blurred the distinction between the Father and the Son, and welded with beads that looked like chicken dung the Father and His breath, and the Son and His breath into a triune god with which they felt comfortable. They were positively elated by their assignment of personhood of the breath of God, but, most likely, the joy they felt only amused the Adversary who understood that someday the shit would be scraped away and the Father would be the Father, and the Son would be the Son, the Firstborn of the Father and the First of the firstfruits, the Eldest of many sons of God.
Assigning deity to the breath of God is nonsensical, and would seem unimaginable without the help of the Adversary, who attempted and attempts to use Scripture against the Son of Man.
Paul wrote that we are not ignorant of the Adversary’s designs, and the matter Paul references is that of having love for a brother who has been put out of the congregation for being with his father’s wife … the Adversary has no love, and those who serve the Adversary are without love. Within Christian orthodoxy, much of the ministry fakes a showing of love—cross them, and their fangs show—whereas within Sabbatarian Christendom, few try to hide their lack of love. But Philadelphians will have love for brothers and for their elder Brother, Christ Jesus. They will fight to win again for the glorified Jesus the kingdom that He has already won, and in doing so, they will prepare the third part of humankind—the part that is not today of Israel—for spiritual birth when the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation. They will fight with words, with ideas that reveal what Christendom should have known all along: God is one, in the same way that Adam was one and the last Adam [Christ] is one. All who are of God will have the same breath/spirit that God the Father has. All will dwell in the same moment in heaven, for all will have life from the same source.
The Adversary would have Christian teachers and pastors telling their lost sheep that they cannot be God, that the sin of Satan was to want to be God, that Christians must remain with angels as their overlords; to wit, the Adversary and his ruling hierarchy. Well, the Adversary did leave his assigned habitation when he tried to ascend to the mount of assembly where he never had life and could never have life … it isn’t possible for the Adversary to enter the mount of assembly, but it is possible for glorified human beings to enter for they will be one with God as every person physically alive today is one with Adam through sharing the same breath of life.
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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."