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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 this Sabbath is sighing and crying about the abominations
committed within Clickable hymns on this page require RealPlayer to be installed on your computer. The download is free. Possible songs include the following hymns: Sabbath Readings For November 17, 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 Regularly, The Philadelphia Church has requests from fellowships and
ministries for affiliation. Most of those who request affiliation, however,
cannot envision an association of truly autonomous fellowships, but believe
that in some way The Philadelphia Church — Port Austin puts up
the Sabbath readings because someone or some fellowship needs to fulfill this
task. Someone needs to weekly prime the pump, so to speak, to keep the water
following. And someone needs to set the example of what it means to sigh and
cry about the abominations committed within the sanctuary of the spiritual
house of God by those who identify themselves as Sabbatarian Christians.
Someone needs to work as John the Baptist worked to make straight the way of the Lord. The
description of Philadelphia in the
letters to the seven named churches is that of a fellowship with little
strength, but with an open door set before it—having kept Jesus’
word and having not denied His name (Rev 3:8) … what does it mean to not
deny His name? Does a person deny Christ when the person presents his or her
members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness? Yes, the person does. When
the person who was once a slave of sin/disobedience (Rom 11:32; Rom 6:17) is
set free from bondage to sin, then returns to sin as a dog returns to its
vomit, the person voluntarily remakes him or herself into a bondservant to sin:
this person denies Christ! And by denying Christ, this person will be denied
when his or her judgment is revealed. The
fellowship or ministry that will be affiliated with To keep
Jesus’ word about patient endurance is to proclaim to the world as a
witness to all nations that all who
endure to the end shall be saved, for the Holy Spirit will be poured out on
all flesh when the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of the Father and
the Son halfway through the seven endtime years of tribulation. Therefore, to
keep Jesus’ word about patient endurance requires possessing the spirit
of prophecy. And
again, to deny Christ is to return to sin once a person has been liberated from
disobedience. Thus, failure to keep the commandments is a denial of Christ. So the
remnant of the offspring of woman whom Satan goes after when he is cast to
earth is Philadelphia, but the
promise of Christ is that He will keep Philadelphia
“‘from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try
those who dwell on the earth’” (Rev 3:10). Satan can go after After
two millennia of “Christianity” teaching that Jesus came to forgive
sins, most of those who identify themselves as disciples of Christ have gotten
sloppy about what it means to be a person of faith, a person of integrity, a
person in a covenant relationship with God—or so it would seem by what is
taught about Christ and about sin both within and without the splintered
churches of God. John the Baptist came preaching repentance as he made straight
the ways of the Lord; the endtime Elijah will restore all things through
teaching repentance. For obedience to God is the only appropriate covering for
sin: Grace is the covering of Christ Jesus’ righteousness or obedience
that a disciple who presents his or her members to God as instruments for
righteousness puts on daily. The disciple who presents him or herself to sin is
a bondservant of sin: this disciple gives Jesus’ victory over sin back to
the Adversary. This person has returned to being under the dominion of sin and
the Law, and is not under Grace. Only the person who is obedient to the
Law is under Grace, which covers those failures to obey that the disciple hates
within him or herself (Rom 7:15) … if a disciple does not hate sin, even
when he or she commits it, the disciple is a bastard and is not a son of God; a
son of light. * The person conducting services should read or assign to be read Ezekiel
chapter 18; followed by Revelation chapter 21, verses 5 through 8; and chapter
22, verses 12 through 15. Commentary: The angel tells John, “‘Let the
evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still
do right, and the holy still be holy’” (Rev 22:11) … being
holy is a state of existence that is the antithesis of being filthy. Likewise,
the righteous is the antithesis of the evildoer. So between the righteous and
the evildoer a schism exists: on one side of this schism is the living, the
person who does right. On the other
side is the dead, the person who does evil. It
isn’t human beings who have not yet come under judgment that are the
filthy or the holy; rather, both the filthy and the holy identify themselves as
Christians and as disciples of Christ. But Jesus said that
many are called to be disciples; yet few are chosen to be glorified (Matt
22:14). Many are called but few are chosen—this
should frighten those whose minds are set on the things of the flesh, but
because their minds are set on the things of the flesh, those who should be
frightened believe that “they are okay with God.”… The many are too busy with the affairs of
this world to bother sighing and crying about the evil done by Christians; too busy
“‘eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and
building’” (Luke 17:28) to resist those disciples who love and practice falsehood (Rev
22:15). After all, can’t disciples
all get along!? No, they
cannot all get along: righteousness has no fellowship with unrighteousness, nor
does the holy have any fellowship with the filthy. To the
saints at The
factions of yesterday have developed into endtime denominations, leaving the
factions of today to stew in a cauldron of discord as supporters of this
ministry and supporters of that ministry—like negatively and positively
charged radicals in a chemical solution—gravitate toward this pole or
that pole, with the most active radicals clinging to each other and weaker
radicals left to hold hands as the broth simmers, bubbling and splattering as
it thickens. The most
active disciples and organizations are, however, the most reluctant to
vigorously preach repentance, for in doing so they will alienate someone whose
money they need to continue the organization’s outreach programs for
which the organization is known. They are the most reluctant to exclude from
their fellowships disciples who practice sexual immorality; thus, within their
assemblies their divorce rates are identical with that of the surrounding
world, as is the number cohabiting rather than dwelling together as man and
wife. They look, from God’s perspective, like the world, and from
God’s perspective, they are the world. Some will
ask if it is not presumptuous to pronounce what God’s perspective is on
those who seek him through praise music and political activism rather than
through obedience: No, it is not presumptuous; for God gives His views on sin
in Ezekiel chapter 18. The focus
of chapter 18 is The
person who claims to be a “Christian,” yet who will not keep the
Sabbaths [plural] of God, presumes to be what is not in evidence: the person
presumes to know God, but evidence of the person knowing God is lacking, for
sin is the transgression of the Law (1 John 3:4), and violation of the Law in
one point causes the person to be a sinner (Jas 2:10). Therefore, the person
who attempts to enter God’s rest on the following day is, merely from
observing Sunday rather than the Sabbath, a sinner who has spiritually lifted
his or her eyes up to idols (Ezek 18:6). What
does God say about the man who is righteous, the man or woman who does right?
He does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to idols, pagan
practices that were, when Ezekiel wrote, then devastating Israel—and
practices that were antecedents for modern Christendom’s Sunday
observance and praying through saints, especially Mary. The
person who does right does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a
menstruating woman. So what do “Christians” do today if not
exchange spouses in an ongoing defiling of wives through no fault divorce and single
parent families condemned to poverty? Ancient
Israel could not bring about the promised Seed [the Christ] for centuries
because of the nation’s continual defilement through its sin offerings,
the blood of which was equivalent to the menstrual flow of a woman—God
simply would not have relations with Israel because He would not defile Himself
by going near Israel when the blood of sin offerings was flowing. But a
Christian husband will, nevertheless, have relations with his wife during the
days of her impurity, for to abstain is to keep an “Old Testament”
taboo that no longer applies. Abstaining is part of the Law of Moses that
Christians are no longer under, or so too many reason, not understanding that
today, the hated son in the womb of Grace is the son who will not condemn those
things which God has condemned. When the
sons and daughters of today’s “Christians” journey by faith
into obedience, God will not hold their parents’ lawlessness against
them. They will be responsible only for their own lawlessness—and the
person who, having grown up in a Sunday fellowship, journeys by faith into
Sabbath observance will effectively sever his or her relationship with father
or mother. Yes, Jesus will have set a man against his father and a daughter
against her mother (Matt 10:35) as He promised; for if human family bonds are
stronger than the bonds a person has with God, the disciple’s spiritual
parent, then the person is not worthy of Christ. Jesus
did not come to bring peace to this earth, but a sword (Matt 10:34) that severs
the flesh, separating the disciple from the desires of the flesh, including
from a man’s desire for his wife during her time of menstruation. The word
of the Lord [YHWH] which Ezekiel delivered continues: the person who is
righteous “‘does not oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his
pledge’” (18:7) … there has recently been a case in the Port
Austin area when one man who claims to be the brother of another acknowledged
in writing that he owed the other $85,140.00. These moneys represented the
other’s life savings, but the one man would not pay the other what he
acknowledged that he owed. He sought someone’s help to mediate between
the two of them so that he would not have to do what Zacchaeus
did, offer to repay fourfold what he had taken (Luke 19:8). As a result, the
matter ended up before a civil judge, who compelled the one to repay about half
of what the man had publicly acknowledged owing the other. Was
justice served? No! But the man who acknowledged owing the other $85,140 was
not seeking to do right or to be righteous before God; rather, he was seeking
relief from having to repay what he had wrongfully taken—and as both the
Apostle Paul and John named those who had left the faith while still claiming
to be of the faith, the one who acknowledged owing the other shall be named:
Norman Scott Edwards. This is a person who has refused to repent of his
wrongdoing. He is the antithesis of Zacchaeus. And as
the names of Phygelus and Hermogenes
and Diotrephes are recorded for future generations to
remember, let now Edwards’ name be so recorded. The
angel told John to let the evildoer still
do evil … and the righteous still do right. In this world, disciples
are sojourners who do not possess good things, but rather experience trials and
hardships, including losing life savings. Through Ezekiel the Lord tells The
righteous person gives bread to the hungry and covers the nakedness of another.
He [or she] does not lend at interest (does not breed money as if money were
livestock), nor take a profit from another’s misfortunes—and just
about all of Christendom has now been excluded from being called righteous. The
righteous person does not withhold his hand from injustice, but executes true
justice between one person and another (Ezek 18:8) … the Apostle Paul
asked the saints at The
damage that has been done to disciples by those who are like Phygelus and Hermogenes and Diotrephes is enormous: the spiritual carcasses of former
baptized disciples litter the decade of the 1990s. And the dying is not yet
complete. The
righteous person walks in God’s statutes and keeps His rules by acting
faithfully (Ezek 18:9). This is the person who shall surely live. This person will
not experience the second death, but will enter into heaven. And this person
lives by a much higher standard than does either visible Christendom, or
Sabbatarian disciples who are not troubled by one who publicly acknowledged
owing another $85,140 settling this debt to another whom he calls a brother for
half that amount in civil court. Those
Sabbatarian disciples who are not troubled by behavior far below the standard
that Zacchaeus established are not today counted
among the righteous regardless of what they believe about themselves. Although
the angel tells John to let the evildoer
still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, the time setting for what
the angels says is when repentance by evildoers is no longer possible because
of the great delusion that has been sent by God over them (2 Thess 2:11-12).
Repentance is still now possible. Thus, the disciple who turns from doing evil
and begins to do what is right will be accepted by God, for what matters is how
the disciple ends life. But the
promise of entering into God’s rest does stay open forever: even though God has
not set before spiritually circumcised Schisms
with the Body of Christ are necessary to separate genuine from false disciples,
with those who are genuinely sighing and crying about the abominations
committed within the household of God. Schisms should not be, not should anyone
fail to lament sin. Yet even a cursory inspection of the household of God
reveals that few today will sigh and cry about the evil committed by those who
would be leaders and teachers of * 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 ] |