The following Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and commentary for this week are more in line with what has become usual; for the following will most likely be familiar observations. The concept behind this Sabbath’s selection is the nature of God.

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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.

 

Some browers will not support Greek font: since considerable Greek will be used at the beginning of this reading, the pdf. version is recommended. The font is “WP Greek Century.”

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The person conducting the service should read or assign to be read John chapter 1, verses 1 through 3.

Commentary: For the purposes of this Sabbath’s reading, the Greek text needs read, remembering though that early surviving manuscripts are written in uncials without accents or aspiration or division between words. The texts leave much to interpretation. They do not eliminate ambiguity, but rather allow for it and even seem to encourage it. Therefore, the original texts would have required that 1^st-Century as well as endtime readers hear the voice of Christ Jesus before meaning is assigned to the script.

In a modern scholarly assignment of accents and aspiration and lower case letters to earliest texts, the Gospel of John begins as follows:

(In) (beginning) (was) (logos), (and) (the logos) (was) (with[1]) (the) (theon), (and) (theos) (was) (the logos). (this one, or he) (was) (in) (beginning) (with) (the theon). (all things) (through) (him) (came to be), (and) (without) (him) (came to be) (not) (one thing). En archē ēn ho logos kai ho logos ēn pros ton Theon kai ho logos ēn theos houtos ēn en archē prose ton Theon panta egeneto di' autou kai chōris autou oude hen egeneto ho gegonen. (John 1:1–3)

In the third clause of the first sentence—kai ho logos ēn theos—the nominative case ending and attached definite article of /ho logos/ would invert the sentence order and make the clause read in English, “the Logos was Theos. In Greek, nouns need definite articles, and the articles change with the case. For a noun to be without an article, or for an article to represent the noun (a fairly common occurrence) calls attention to itself. Thus, for “Theos” to be without an article but to use the article for “the Logos” removes any linguistic doubt about “was—ēn” being a transitive verb: the one who entered His creation was “God—theos” before He entered His creation. But “this one” was [ēn] with [pros] “the God—ton Theon” in the beginning. So God was with the God in the beginning, making not linguistic nonsense but making God a “house” as in what John transcribes Jesus telling His disciples, in mou tou patros tē oikia—in the house (of) the Father of me (John 14:2), a subject to which we will return; for the Father’s house, now, is God, since adopted sons are sons of God. They are sons of the house, each with a place or spot prepared for them.

There are limitations to every language, and one of the limitations of Greek is that every male deity is “Theos. Thus, Zeus was theos. Hermes was theos. Every male of the Greek pantheon was Theos (all written in uncials so visibly there would be no difference in a written text between Zeus and the Logos). Thus, Theos (masculine singular noun in nominative case) is not the name of the Logos, but a declaration about the classification or title or office or house of the entity. Saying that the Logos was Theos is to say that the Logos was “God.” Likewise, the One who was with the Logos was also Theos: “ton Theon” is the masculine singular form of the noun in accusative case. Hence, both the Logos and the One the Logos was with are Theos, or God. They are both of the same house, the Father’s house, as all of Israel was of the “house of Israel” before division occurred following Solomon’s death.

John wants to establish one point beyond doubt: the Theos who entered His creation as His only Son (John 3:16) to be born as the man Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14) was the Logos, who created everything that has been made. The Logos was with the Theon (accusative case because of the preposition “pros” ton Theon is the object of the preposition, pros. Structurally, ho logos cannot be ton Theon. The preposition pros linguistically prevents one being the other, prevents ho logos from being ton Theon.

George Bush is president of the United States, but George Bush was the president of the United States. Linguistically the present tense of the “be” verb versus the past tense prohibits the “George Bush” who is the President from being the “George Bush” who was the President except under very unusual conditions. Therefore, two individuals identified as George Bush would normally be necessary to satisfy the linguistic demands of the verb used—and as most everyone knows, George W. Bush is the son of George H. Bush, and both were elected to the highest office in the United States. Likewise, the preposition with, except under very unusual conditions, prevents the Logos from being the Theon. And the repetitive structure of verse 2 [“He was in the beginning with the God”] eliminates those unusual conditions—repetition is used for emphasis and to eliminate ambiguity.

Two entities, both “God” thereby making “God” a classification like “tiger” or “man” and not a name, were in the beginning. One of these two entities is identified as the Logos. The other is only identified as the God, a distinction that the resurrected Jesus maintained even when Mary sought to hug Him:

Jesus said to her [Mary Magdalene], “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God - anabainō pros mou ton patera kai hymōn patera kai mou theon kai hymōn theon.” (John 20:17)

The claim John makes is that the Logos was God, that He entered His creation as His only Son, that He was born of Mary as the infant Jesus, that He lived without sin, was crucified at Calvary, and rose after the third day, ascended to the Father who returned to Him the glorify He had before He entered His creation. John doesn’t claim that Jesus is the Father, or that His breath [pneuma Christou] is also a deity. Rather, John’s claim is that Jesus was God [theos] and was the Creator of the universe before He entered His creation as His only Son. John also claims that Jesus as the only Son of the Logos was with the Most High God, but was not the Most High God, before He entered His creation. And what John claims is in agreement with what King David writes in his latter psalms.

It still needs to be shown that it was the Logos who entered His creation as His only Son:

(so) (for) (loved) (the Theos) (the world), (that) (the son) (of him) (the only one) (that) (every one) (believing) (him) (not) (may perish) (but) (have) (life) (everlasting). (not) (sent) (the Theos) (the son) (of him) (into) (the world) (that) (he judge) (the world), (but) (may be saved) (the world) (through) (him) gar ho theos houtōs ēgapēsen ton kosmon hōste edōken ton tonmonognē huion hina pas ho pisteuōn eis auton mē apolētai all' echē aiōnion zōēn gar ho theos ou apesteilen ton huion eis ton kosmon hina krinē ton kosmon all' hina ho kosmos sōthē di' autou. (John 3:16–17)

The Theos, God, sent His only Son into the world so that everyone believing in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life. The claim isn’t that Theos sent His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him … if this Theos sent His only Son into the world not to judge this world, then this Theos is not the Father, who has given all judgment to the Son (John 5:22) but with this judgment to occur in an inter-dimensional realm.

· The Theos who sent His only Son into this world not to judge the world is not the Theos who has given all judgment to His beloved Son—the two positions are not compatible.

· Because John establishes in the first sentence of his gospel that the Logos was Theos and was with the Theon, thereby identifying two deities, both “Theos” or God, with separateness established not in character but in linguistic structure, and because John establishes that it was the Logos that entered His creation, the Theos who sent His only Son into the world was the Logos.

· If the Logos entered His creation as His Son, He could not enter a second time, nor could He have but one Son. Disciples as sons of God cannot be the sons of the Logos, but must be the sons of the Theon whom the Logos was with.

Jesus said, in His prayer shortly before He was taken, “‘And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God [Theon], and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’” (John 17:3), so the argument of either Trinitarians or Unitarians will be that it was the Father who sent the Logos into the world, not the Logos entering the world of His own volition. And it is here where understanding is required: Jesus speaks the Father’s words in this world, not His own. As the Logos, He spoke the Father’s words to Israel as Aaron spoke Moses’ words to Israel. Therefore, everything done is by the will of the Father even though it was done by the Logos. And this is seen in Paul writing,

He [the beloved Son] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by [by means of] him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. (Col 1:15–16)

Jesus is the image of the invisible God whom He came to reveal to His disciples, not to all of Israel at this time. All things were created through Him and for Him; yet it is the invisible God who did not leave the heavenly realm who is the Father and God of the resurrected Jesus, thereby making the following juxtaposition evident: the Logos functioned as Helpmate to the Father, carrying out and doing the work that the Father directed as a wife does those things necessary to make a household function as she carries out the wishes and words of her husband [at least this was the case until recently]. Jesus’ teachings about divorce (Matt 19:3–14) come from a man and his wife being patterned after [the chiral image of] the relationship between the Logos and the One whom the Logos was with in the beginning.

John writes, “Theon no one has seen ever” (1:18); yet on Mount Sinai, “Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God [Eloah — not the plural Elohim] of Israel … they beheld God [Elohim], and ate and drank” (Ex 24:9–11).

· Moses and the elders of Israel saw one deity, Eloah, and in seeing the one God they saw the conjoined Elohim, with the Logos being the image of the invisible God.

· No human eye has seen the Ancient of Days, except for the prophet Daniel in vision and John the Revelator in vision. Yet in seeing the Logos or in seeing the man Jesus, a person also sees the Father, a linguistic conundrum that permitted the concept of a triune deity to develop.

An understanding that Israel has not had is that an inter-dimensional realm exists between heaven and the creation, with his inter-dimensional realm seen in Scripture as the bottomless pit and typified by the Hebraic concept of Sheol. This inter-dimensional realm is where fallen angels have been confined to prevent disobedience from producing gridlock in heaven … the passage of time can be written as a mathematical function of gravity, thereby revealing that time (or better, space-time) is part of the creation. Heaven, now, would be a timeless realm or dimension: the “moment” will never become the next moment. Therefore, all that is in heaven must function as one entity; all change must be compatible with what was, what is, and what will be. Anything that is not “one” with the Most High God will form a paradox. Thus, when iniquity or lawlessness was found in an anointed cherub (Ezek 28:15), this iniquity would have to be immediately purged from heaven, hence the bottomless pit, a rent in the fabric of heaven that is typified by the chasm that opened to swallow Korah and his rebellious friends (Num chap 16)—and as the chasm that opened to swallow Korah appeared for a moment, then closed, the rent in the fabric of heaven appeared in a moment and will close, causing all that is in the bottomless pit to pass away. However, until this rent closes there is an inter-dimensional realm within the bottomless pit, a realm that the Most High will not ever enter.

Visualize the fissure that opened to swallow Korah and his rebellious friends: the land upon which Korah and his friends were standing opened suddenly and into this “gap” fell atmosphere as well as Korah and all he possessed. As many who have been in traumatic events will affirm, the passage of time slows as the stress of the moment develops; so as Korah fell alive into Sheol (Num 16:30), the passage of time for Korah would have slowed. Yet Korah was able to continue to breathe for atmosphere accompanied Korah downward (all mass falls at the same rate). From Moses’ perspective, the fissure opened, swallowed Korah, then closed, but from Korah’s perspective, time would have seemed to stand still. It would have seemed to take forever to fall as the fissure closed up on Korah. And so it is with the bottomless pit: from the perspective of being in the pit, time passes as a certain perceived rate, slowed down by stress, sped up when less stress exists, but from God’s perspective, the bottomless pit opened, the universe as a death chamber was created inside it, and the pit closes, the world [kosmos] passing away (1 John 2:17).

Yes, within the bottomless pit, the Logos created the universe and all that is in it. The Ancient of Days did not create the universe. But because of the mandate of timelessness that all entities function as “one,” the Ancient of Days and the Logos are “one” as every glorified disciple will also be “one” with the Father and the Son (John 17:20–23). No entity who is not “one” with the Father and the Son will enter the domain of the Most High God.

If no entity, including glorified sons of God, will enter the domain of the Heavenly Father unless the entity is one with the Father and the Son, then “one” means something other than numerical singleness. It means absolute unity.

Because the work of the Logos was to create the universe within the bottomless pit, the Logos was the one whom Moses and the elders of Israel saw, the one whose feet Abraham washed, the one whom Jacob wrestled, and the one who entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus of Nazareth. And “this one — houtos” (from John 1:2) was with the Most High in the conjoined Tetragrammation YHWH. It was the Logos who was the singular Eloah that spoke from atop Mount Sinai.

Elohim is the regular plural of Eloah: Elohim is not some form of a uni-plural like “family,” nor is it plural for emphasis or to denote specialness or sacredness. Elohim is, simply, the Hebrew equivalent of the English word “Gods.” Only, Elohim routinely takes singular verbs, disclosing that with the exception of King David, Israel never knew the Father, never knew of the Father’s existence, and since Jesus said that to know the only true God [Theon] is eternal life, Israel did not have eternal life, something both the lawyer and the rich young ruler knew when they asked Jesus what must they do to inherit eternal life (Luke 10:25; 18:18).

The Christian who prays to Jesus; the Christian who teaches that the Father, the Son, and their combined Breaths are one deity also doesn’t know the Father and doesn’t have eternal life. Likewise, the Christian who claims that the Father is the Creator of the universe and the God of the Old Testament doesn’t know the Father and does not have eternal life, for it was the Logos who was Creator and was the God of ancient Israel. So Judaism is joined by almost all of Christendom in not knowing the Father and not having eternal life.

Islam identifies God as Allah, the equivalent of Eloah—and because Islam linguistically fails to recognize the invisible God whom the Logos entered His creation to reveal, Islam is without life regardless of how willing Muslim seekers of truth are to die for what they do not understand.

Perhaps of foremost importance for Sabbatarian disciples is the reality that the Christian who calls the Father “Yahweh” or any uttered variation of the pronounced Tetragrammaton denies by the person’s pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton that Yah entered His creation as His only Son, and that He now has a new name no man knows (Rev 19:12). By continuing to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, the person denies that Jesus was God … the previous sentences are easy to read without comprehending what the words mean: when the Logos, the Eloah that Moses and the elders of Israel saw on Sinai, entered His creation as His only begotten Son, the Tetragrammaton YHWH ceased to exist in the heavenly realm. The side-by-side relationship between Yah and the Ancient of Days was broken by Yah entering His creation. The relationship between Yah and the Ancient of Days that had been likened to the marriage relationship between a man and his wife was no more, but was replaced by a relationship likened to that of a father and his firstborn son. The relationship went from being like two hands held together side-by-side to being like one hand atop the other.

In Hebrew, the word for God is “El” as in El Shaddai, or God Almighty (Gen 17:1). Aspirated breath is represented by the consonant “H.” Thus, Eloah is the transliteration from Hebrew into English for “El + aspirated breath (‘h’)”, and remembering that Moses and the elders saw “Eloah,” the name or title [God] is numerically singular.

Elohim is [El + h] + [El + h] an indeterminable number of times from the linguistic icon alone. It is from the Tetragrammaton YHWH that the number two is assigned to Elohim. YHWH breaks down into two radicals: YH or Yah, and WH, with the Hebrew waw [the third letter of the Tetragrammaton] written as either as a “W” or as a long “U” (the letter “W” is pronounced as “double-u” rather than as a long “U”), seen in script as a “V.”

Interestingly, “U” was written as a “V” for centuries, so a “double-u” would be written as “V” + “V” or “W”—and the Hebrew letter waw, now, discloses additional information about the Father and the Son, for  in the second radical of the Tetragrammaton is the spiritual relationship of the Father and the Son.

Occult Trinitarians in the Middle Ages inserted an extra letter [shin] in the Hebrew Tetragrammaton—the letter to represent Jesus—to produce a five consonant framework from which modern Sacred Names assemblies get the pronunciation of the name they use for Jesus: Yahshua or Yahoshua — yod-he-shin-waw-xayin. However, all early Hebrew and Aramaic sources write Jesus’ name as Yeshua [ישוע], yod-shin-waw-xayin, or as Joshua [יהושע], yod-he-waw-shin-xayin, with the letter -xayin [ע] specifically pronounced as a voiced pharyngeal consonant, a sound that cannot be easily confused with either a pronounced /h/ sound or a silent Hebrew letter he [ה].

Yahshuah is a form of the Hebrew pronunciation of Jesus’ name that comes from the occult and from mystical speculation about the triune nature of the invisible God. It is not a name for Jesus that any Christian should use.

The Tetragrammaton was not pronounced by Israel in remembered history. Jesus did not pronounce the Tetragrammaton, but used Adonai/Adoni when addressing God or man as Lord. And the Tetragrammaton should not be pronounced, for the relationship represented by the Tetragrammaton no longer exists. To attempt to pronounce the Tetragrammaton is to utter blasphemy against the Father and the Son by asserting that the relationship still exists, that the Logos did not enter His creation as His only Son.

The Apostle John was, when writing his Gospel, refuting specific individuals that had begun to claim that Jesus was not God before His birth, but became God by living a perfect life, making it possible for anyone who lives a perfect life to become God, a teaching the repudiates the necessity of Calvary. This position was rightly rejected in the 2^nd-Century (it had begun to be taught in the latter decades of the 1^st-Century), but in rejecting one errant teaching, Christendom accepted another, that God was one individual not one house, as the “house of Chanel” is one house consisting of designers, seamstresses, and perfume makers.

Because of timelessness, God is one. The Father and the Son are one. Disciples are one with the Father and the Son if they walk as the Jesus walked. But disciples are not Jesus, the First of the firstfruits, the firstborn of many brothers (Rom 8:29). Nevertheless, each disciple is one with Jesus and with the Father if the disciple looks like Jesus (is a fractal image of Jesus).

Whereas the synagogue of Satan denies that disciples can be God and teaches that it is blasphemy to say that disciples will be God, what is a son of God if not, when mature, also God. But no disciple will ever be the First of the firstfruits. No disciple will ever be the firstborn of many brothers. Nor will the Son be the Father. It is enough for every disciple to be a younger brother, a sibling.

Periodically it is necessary to go over the fundamentals of Christendom—and the most basic of all fundamentals is that the Logos entered His creation as His only Son to be born as the man Jesus of Nazareth, that He received a second life when the divine breath of the Father [pneuma theon] descended upon Him as a dove, that He was crucified at Calvary and was raised from the grave after the third day by the Father, that He is now in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, and that His disciples who hear His words and believe the Father will rise from the dead and be seated to His right hand, making them seated at the Father’s left hand and making the Son and His Bride facing the Father. But for the person who denies that the Logos entered His creation, none of what follows will occur: the person will experience the second death.

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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."

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