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 who is the God of the dead?
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of December 10, 2011
Continued from the reading for December 3, 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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So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, 'You will become free'?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father." They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did." They said to him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father--even God." Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God." (John 8:31–47 emphasis added)
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The truth—that which is no longer concealed—will set disciples free … if you abide in My word implies that these former disciples of Christ Jesus had received His word [logos] and had once known what His word or message said, but when Jesus spoke again to them, these former disciples had drifted away or had fled from Jesus’ word without being initially set free from sin, a situation analogous to the state in which Christendom finds itself.
Receiving Jesus, receiving His word doesn’t set a disciple free from sin, meaning that receiving Jesus and receiving His word comes before the disciple is circumcised of heart … receiving Jesus and receiving His word is spiritually analogous to the children of Israel following Joshua [in Greek, Iesous — Jesus] across the River Jordan on the 10th day of the first month (Josh 4:19) as the chosen paschal sacrifice of the Lord, with the children of Israel to be the lamb without blemish, which didn’t occur physically until the man Jesus was born of the virgin Mary roughly a millennia and a half later.
A people—the people of Israel—was reduced to one man, Jesus the Nazarene, as the Promised Land of God’s rest was reduced in geographical size from all of the lands that King David ruled, to the lands that Solomon ruled, to the lands of the House of Judah to earthly Jerusalem and finally to the temple mount in Jerusalem before the Promised Land turned vertical to become the second temple, the body of Christ Jesus (John 2:21), destroyed and rebuilt in three days, with the Christian Church becoming the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27), the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16).
All of Israel was reduced in size to the man Jesus, circumcised in the flesh on the eighth day as the children of Israel were circumcised at Gibeath-haaraloth, and circumcised of heart when He received the divine breath of God [pneuma theon] following when He was baptized by John … the man Jesus had no predecessor in being circumcised of heart, but set the pattern in fulfilling all righteousness (Matt 3:15).
· Circumcision of the heart does not occur until after the disciple has abided in Jesus’ word/message, thereby completing the journey of faith that begins by leaving spiritual Babylon to follow Jesus, walking as Jesus walked;
· But while circumcision of the heart ends one journey of faith, it begins a second journey of faith that is analogous to Abraham’s second journey of faith to the land of Moriah (Gen chap 22).
There is an assumption within Christendom that when a person receives Jesus, the person is the disciple of Jesus, knows the truth, and has been set free from sin even though the person continues to serve sin/disobedience as its willing slave. But the disciples that left Jesus when He said that the person who would live forever had to eat His flesh and drink His blood, had received Jesus and had heard His word or message. These former disciples had heard Jesus’ voice, had seen the miracles, but had not been set free from sin for they had come to Jesus without being drawn (John 6:44) by the Father—not the Father of Israel, the deity who had identified outwardly circumcised Israel as His firstborn son (cf. Ex 4:22; Isa 64:8), but the unknown God about whom outwardly circumcised Israel had no knowledge.
If Israel in Egypt was the firstborn son of the Lord, then who is the man Jesus, the only Son—the Unique One (John 3:16)—of the God who created all that has been made physically? And why does Paul refer to Christian disciples as sons of the God (Gal 4:7) and creates the analogy that has outwardly circumcised Israel—again, the firstborn son of the Lord—being children of slavery, the collective son of Hagar, Ishmael, the wanderer whom God hears? … In Paul identifying natural Israel as the son of Hagar, the wanderer whom God hears, Paul discloses the fate of the people whom the Lord foreknew (Rom 11:2). Elsewhere, Paul writes,
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Rom 8:28–30 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Being called according to God’s purpose equates to being foreknown by God, but outwardly circumcised Israel was foreknown by the Lord; was called by the Lord through Abraham. Is, then, outwardly circumcised Israel predestined to be glorified? No, not all all; for Paul goes on to write,
Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? "Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life." But what is God's reply to him? "I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day." And David says, "Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever." So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean! Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. (Rom 11:2–21 emphasis added)
Not all who are called, who are foreknown, will be chosen; for many are called but few are chosen (Matt 22:14). Many have been foreknown by God, predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, Christ Jesus, but as unworkable clay, would not walk as Jesus walked. These many are those invited to the Wedding Feast, but who would not come when called by the King (vv. 5–6). Of outwardly circumcised Israel in the days of the prophet Elijah, the Lord had reserved for Himself seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal (1 Kings 19:18). The remainder of Israel was to perish by the sword, foreign or domestic.
In the days of John the Baptist, a type of the last Elijah, there was only a remnant of natural Israel chosen by grace (Rom 11:5) to be saved before the natural branches were broken off from the Root of Righteousness so that Gentile converts, living as outwardly uncircumcised Jews, could be grafted onto Righteousness … if the Lord did not spare natural Israel from the consequences of its unbelief, the Lord will not spare Gentile converts from the consequences of their unbelief; for a Gentile living as a Gentile will not make natural Israel jealous. Only an outwardly uncircumcised Gentile living as a Jew will cause a natural Israelite to be jealous.
Therefore, in days of the last Elijah, with the two witnesses spiritually doing what Elijah and what John the Baptist did, there will only be a Remnant of foreknown and predestined Israel, then the nation circumcised-of-heart rather than merely in the flesh, that will be saved, with this Remnant keeping the commandments and having the spirit of prophecy so that this Remnant can, during the Endurance (the last 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation), serve the Lamb of God as His voice to the third part of humankind.
The Circumcision Faction with which the Apostle Paul disputed throughout His ministry continued on long after Paul was killed, with it being historically believed that even after the Council of Nicea [ca 325 CE] and the subsequent councils at Ephesus and Chalcedon, a million converts from Judaism were killed because of their beliefs, the principle one being that God is an indivisible Unity … these converts from Judaism were Unitarians that denied the divinity of the Logos [o logos]. They held that the Father of Israel was the Father of Christians. They held that the Father of Israel was the Creator of all that has been made physically (which is true); therefore, they denied Jesus’ spiritual birth when the breath of God [pneuma theon] descended upon the man Jesus the Nazarene in the form of a dove (Matt 3:16). Instead, they insisted that Jesus was born of the Father when conceived in the womb of Mary, that receipt of the divine breath of God was not spiritual birth, that no Christian was truly born of God until glorified.
The dogmas of the Circumcision Faction disappeared from public view following Emperor Hadrian’s ideological war against Judaism beginning in 135 CE. Periodically, one or more of their dogmas would resurface only to be discredited by the Bishop of Rome and his minions, with Arian Christendom temporarily vanishing following the economic and military collapse of the Vandals … the theological dispute between Arians and Trinitarians that erupted in real war in the 5th-Century CE and resulted in yet another sacking of Rome smothered as a banked fire until the 19th-Century, when open war was declared in Missouri on Mormons, modern Arians.
But the dogmas of the 1st-Century Circumcision Faction extended beyond God being an indivisible Unity, or the necessity of Christian converts becoming physical Jews through outward circumcision and baptism before they could be saved: the dogmas of the Circumcision Faction held that Christ Jesus would return to earthly Jerusalem … Jesus told His disciples, “‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees’” (Matt 16:11), which His disciples understood to mean that they were to beware of the teachings of Pharisees and Sadducees. Today, nearly two millennia later, Sabbatarian disciples are to beware of the teachings of a new Circumcision Faction, those Christians holding Arian or Unitarian doctrines. But this does not mean that God is a triune Entity; for Trinitarian Christendom is the home of the descendants of the 1st-Century mystery of lawlessness (from 2 Thess 2:7) that was already at work while Paul lived.
Christians are not to go to Maimonides or to any Jewish scholar to learn about the Father … what does a person who has not been born of spirit know about receiving a second breath of life, the breath of the Father, thereby being inwardly born as a son of the Father, a younger sibling to the glorified Christ Jesus? Nothing! This person cannot even comprehend that the Father of Israel isn’t the Father of Christians, who are the second Israel, the nation circumcised of heart. This person will deny that Christians are Israel, that the outwardly circumcised nation of Israel forms the spiritually lifeless shadow and copy of the inner nation of Israel, the nation that will be liberated from indwelling sin and death at the Second Passover.
A few years ago, John D. Schroeder wrote a guest commentary for the website Ambassador Watch, now defunct. In his commentary, Schroeder argued that God was an indivisible Unity, that the Logos [o logos — from John 1:1] was not God despite what John wrote. Recently, a former Worldwide Church of God [WCG] pastor in Australia sent a personal e-message to Philadelphia saying that after much study he had concluded that God was an indivisible Unity, that many passages in the New Testament had been corrupted or outright fabricated long after Jesus lived. This former pastor had journeyed though the spaghetti soup splinters of the former WCG, either being put out-of, or voluntarily leaving all of the major splinters. But what this former pastor fails to understand is that what is physical is one, whereas what is spiritual is two that function as one.
There is one Root of Righteousness, not two, which would seem to belie the preceding statement, but onto this one Root of Righteous are natural branches [natural Israel] and grafted branches [Gentile converts], two nations of Israel growing from one vine, with these two nations of Israel having but one path that leads unto salvation, not two paths, one for Jews through the Law and one for Christians through grace as dispensationalists teach. Rather, this one path is the journey to righteousness and through righteousness to the Root of Righteous, a journey that will cause both Jew and Greek convert to keep the commandments of God while professing that Jesus is Lord and believing in his or her heart that the Father raised Jesus from the dead, thereby causing the Jew and the Greek convert to, by faith, practice righteousness and appear as a fractal of Christ Jesus.
What neither Maimonides nor the Jews who were Jesus’ disciples could understand was that not all of Israel was Israel, and not all of Christendom is Christian … Christians today cannot understand that neither Trinitarian Christendom nor Unitarian Christendom is of God—
The person who has not yet been born of spirit as a son of God has but one breath of life dwelling within the person’s fleshly body. This person thinks in terms of God being one; of the Tetragrammaton YHWH being the third person, masculine singular, future form of the verb <to be> as in <He will be>, a contraction of three forms of <to be>, haya, hoveh, and yiyeh as in “was,” “is,” and “will be.”
The writer of Hebrews said, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (13:8), making Jesus the present reality of—the personification of—the Hebraic third person, masculine singular, future form of the verb <to be>, thereby making o logos a naming-of, as well as a descriptive attribute of the God that created all things physical.
Neither Christians nor Jews tend to think of the name of a person as being a descriptive identifier of the person; for among both Christians and Jews, names are given at birth and given before the attributes of the child become evident. However, Native Americans have historically tended to withhold naming a child until the attributes of the child became apparent, thereby making the child’s tribal name a descriptive signifier that both describes and names. In a commonly recognized, late 20th-Century example, the signifier <Xerox> functions as the name of a company as well as the generic name given to a copy machine. In an earlier example, the Latin signifier <Caesar> both named a man as well as named the man’s successors as emperor of Rome, thus serving as both title and family name. Hence, <Kaiser/Keyser>, the Germanic form of <Caesar>, served as both title and family name. Therefore, when the title or when the family name describes the attributes of the person, the individual becomes the personification of the signifier, the word. And this is the case when John writes, En arche en ho logos kai ho logos en pros ton theon kai ho logos en theos. (John 1:1); for the Logos [logos] was both God [theos] and with the God [ton theon]. Because the Logos [o logos] shares its definite article <o> with Theos [o theos] in the third clause in the sentence, both the Logos and Theos are the same divine entity that is equal-to but not the same as the God [ton theon], which is what Paul writes elsewhere,
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 emphasis added)
The man Jesus the Nazarene was, is, and will be—the man Jesus is the personification of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob … the Father of Israel was the Father of the man Jesus the Nazarene when this human person was physically born of Mary, but the Father of Israel ceased to exist as a deity when He entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus (John 3:16; 1:14). Therefore, the Father of Israel was before He entered His creation as His only Son. The Father of Israel is today in the form of the glorified Christ Jesus, the last Adam, and the Father of Israel will be as His only Son the Bridegroom that marries the glorified Church, His Bride. Hence the man Jesus prayed, “‘And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed’” (John 17:5).
Jesus said, “‘And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God [ton theon]: “I am the God [o theos] of Abraham, and the God [o theos] of Isaac, and the God [o theos] of Jacob'? He is not God [theos] of the dead, but of the living"’” (Matt 22:31–32) … if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the God of living persons, what was the fate of the dead? Who was their God? How were the dead to be remembered or saved if the God of the patriarchs was only the God of the living?
Jesus presented to the Sadducees that denied the resurrection a dilemma that they could not easily resolve: the dead had no God if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was only the God of living persons. There could neither be a resurrection or salvation in any form without there also being a God of the dead, a God that raised the dead to life—and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not this God so there had to be another God or else humankind was doomed to obviation at death, meaning that Abraham was condemned to eternal death if there was not a God of dead Israelites …
The God of dead Israelites is the God who raises the dead and makes them alive (John 5:21), with this God not being the God of the living, the God of those who have been raised from the dead; for the Father gave to the Son all judgment (v. 22), thereby making the glorified Son the God of the spiritually living.
Without a God of the dead, the man Jesus the Nazarene could not have been resurrected from death—
The Son gives life to the living, not to the dead, with the life that the Son gives being that of the perishable flesh putting on immortality. And it is here where visible Christendom and present-day rabbinical Judaism denies the Father: every person is humanly born with a dead inner self that must be raised to life by the Father, the God of the dead (the God of the inner self, not the flesh). When Jesus said to permit the dead to bury the dead of themselves (Matt 8:22), Jesus identified the physically living as the dead, meaning that until the physically living receive a second breath of life, the breath of the Father [pneuma theon], the inner self of every person is dead, without life. Human beings are not born with immortal souls, but are born with dead inner selves that must be raised from death by the Father. To teach that a human being is born with an immortal soul denies that any God of the dead is needed to raise the dead to life; thus the Christian who teaches that human beings have immortal souls commits blasphemy against the Father through denying Him.
· The outwardly circumcised nation of Israel had no Father but Yah;
· Yah was the Logos with indwelling eternal life as represented by the signifier for aspiration, <ah, or simply, H>;
· Outwardly circumcised Israel never knew the Father, whom Jesus came to reveal to not all of Israel or to the world, but to His disciples who had been chosen by the Father and given to Jesus;
· For every person not yet born of the Father (the God of Jesus Christ — John 20:17 — and the God of every Christian whether presently born of spirit or to be born of spirit in the near future as was Mary Magdalene’s case when Jesus spoke to her), God is one, and God is the Creator of everything that has been made physically, including all of humankind, with the man Jesus the Nazarene being no exception;
· But for circumcised-of-heart Israel, the previously unknown Father is the God of Israel, with this God of Israel not being the Creator of everything that has been made physically but the God of the invisible, spiritual inner self of every human person.
The above is not new information, but a new presentation of the same information that has been a staple of Philadelphia’s core beliefs: the Father raises the inner self from death, and the Son gives life to whom He will by causing the mortal to put on immortality. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the God of the living, not the God of the dead. The fleshly bodies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived, not the inner selves of these patriarchs: the man Jesus the Nazarene could not be the second Adam, the last Adam, if the inner self of any human person would have raised from death before Christ Jesus was raised from death through receiving a second breath of life, the breath of the Father, that descended and lit in the form of a dove on Him. Therefore, the Father was not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Father is not today the God of visible Christendom that lies dead spiritually as the Corpse of Christ, and will continue to lie dead until the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the event that begins the seven endtime years of tribulation.
Christians truly born of the Father really have no fellowship with Judaism, with Arian or Trinitarian Christendom, with Islam, with pantheistic Paganism, even with Sabbatarian Christians within the Sacred Names Heresy. Prior to the Second Passover liberation of Israel, until a person has been drawn from this world by the Father the person cannot understand the things of God. And for a Christian truly born of spirit to try to teach, to convert, to persuade the not-yet-called person is an exercise in futility. It is casting one’s pearls before swine.
Within the various splinters of the former Worldwide Church of God are Sabbatarian Christians who sincerely believe that the seven endtime years of tribulation are God punishing the world for its lawlessness—and this is simply not the case. When God has consigned all of humanity to disobedience so that He can have mercy on all (Rom 11:32), God isn’t going to punish those whom He has consigned to disobedience for their disobedience. He won’t reward them for disobedience, but it would be unfair—not godly—for Him to punish those whom He has delivered into the Adversary’s hand for their disobedience: it is the Adversary that is worthy of punishment. Therefore, to teach that the Tribulation comes upon all of humankind because of humankind’s disobedience is nonsense, is blasphemous. The seven endtime years of tribulation (i.e., the Affliction and the Endurance) denote the collapse of the Adversary’s reign over living creatures and the beginning of the Son of Man’s reign, with the collapse of spiritual Babylon occurring because of internal warring between subordinate kings under the Adversary. In other words, the spiritual king of Babylon’s reign fails because of rebellion within his own ranks, with this rebellion aided by the Most High God taking the lives of all uncovered firstborn sons of God, legal and biological, angelic and human, at the Second Passover liberation of Israel, the nation that is to be circumcised of heart.
The message the Apostle Paul taught was not believed by the Circumcision Faction, or by Jewish converts who believed that God is an indivisible Unity, as the Aramaic name, Alaha, by which these converts knew Him indicated … when severe persecution of Unitarian and Arian Christians occurred in the 5th, 6th, and 7th Centuries by the Trinitarian Church, the enthusiasm of Unitarian converts temporarily dissipated only to reappear in Islam, which acknowledged Jesus as a great prophet but not as the Son of the Father of Israel. This is not to say that Arian Christians became Muslims, but is to say that the energy and zeal of early unitarian converts from Judaism didn’t continue inside of Christendom, but sprouted as ideological weeds in the visions of Mohammad.
During the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation, the war between Arians and Trinitarians for control of the ideological heart of Christendom will not only resume but will break out as open conflict (a real shooting war), with Arian Christendom buoyed by converts from Islam prevailing over Trinitarians. The Sabbatarian one-godders in the various splinters of Armstrong’s Churches of God will be elated, but not for long. With Arian ascendency will come Latter Day Saint ideology and the elimination of Sabbatarian Christians … only a remnant of Sabbatarian Christendom will remain physically alive (from Rev 12:17) when the single kingdom of this world is taken from the spiritual King of Babylon and given to the Son of Man; for Christ Jesus will not permit the third part of humankind (from Zech 13:9) to be spoiled by the theology of Armstrong’s Churches of God, or by the idolatry of Seventh Day Adventists, or by the physicality of the Sacred Names Heresy. The Sabbatarian one-godders will perish either in faith or not before the Affliction ends; i.e., before the kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man. And there is really nothing that Philadelphians can do to prevent loveless Sabbatarian Christians from perishing eternally, for these loveless Sabbatarians will not be taught by anyone, including Christ Jesus. They have been cut off from Christ by the Father (see John 15:1–4) and they can never again be restored.
It is commonly believed that every Christian has been set free from the record of debt with its legal demands that stood against the Christian (Col 2:13–14), but what Jesus said had a qualifier: “‘If you abide in [Jesus’] word’” (John 8:31) — what does it mean to abide in the word [o logos] of Jesus?
The Logos [o logos] who was God [theos] and who was with the God [ton theon] in the beginning (John 1:1) entered His creation—the creation of the Logos (v. 3)—as His only Son (John 3:16), the man Jesus the Nazarene (John 1:14), who, during His earthly ministry, spoke only the words of the God, thereby becoming in this world the voice-of, or spokesman for the God. And as the man Jesus was not God when here on earth but was the voice of the God (not the breath of the God as some few Sabbatarians contend), the word [o logos] or the message that Jesus spoke to His disciples becomes the inscribed voice of Jesus, with the word of Jesus [inscribed by His first disciples] bearing to Jesus a relationship analogous to the relationship the Logos bore to the God.
Inscription of the word [o logos] of Jesus makes tangible the ephemeral words of Jesus, thereby causing the inscribed word of Jesus that is the judge of unbelieving Christians to function as the child/son of the ephemeral word of Jesus, giving to Jesus in this world a relationship to His word analogous to the God’s relationship in heaven to the Logos [o logos] who was God [theos]. Hence when Jesus told Philip, “‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’” (John 14:9), Jesus disclosed to His still unborn disciples that He metaphorically represented the Father as Moses metaphorically represented Yah, and Aaron metaphorically represented the word of Yah [i.e., the Ten Living Words] (see Ex 4:16).
The above two paragraphs are for Christians able to ingest the meat of the word of God: in order for the Father’s words to be delivered to men or to angels, the Father’s words were spoken by His Helpmate, who was also God [theos] but who was not the God. And here is where strict monotheism encounters difficulties; for what is physical is one whereas what is spiritual [i.e., of heaven] is two that function in this world as one entity, thereby causing the plural deity Elohim to take singular verbs and preventing the always unspoken Tetragrammaton YHWH from being deconstructed into its two radicals <YH> and <WH>, with <YH> being Yah whom even King David realized was the deity that interacted with Israel as the voice of the conjoined Tetragrammaton … only now, near the end of the Christian era, have disciples of Christ Jesus again reached the level of understanding that David had three millennia ago, which is truly a sad indictment of Christendom.
When the man Jesus the Nazarene, the only Son of the Logos [the only Son of Yah], delivered the words of the God to not all of Israel but only to His disciples who had been given to Him by the God, the man Jesus’ word/message was ephemeral, spoken words, invisible, here now then gone, dissipating into thin air as light is swallowed by a black hole. Jesus’ word/message, however, lingered in the memories of His disciples, their memories being figurative event horizons where knowledge is smeared. Jesus’ disciples then inscribed [wrote down] the word/message of Jesus, thereby turning the ephemeral into the tangible, thus giving substance to what previously had no substance, which is what the Logos did in creating all that has been made (again, John 1:3). Hence, Jesus’ disciples did in miniature what the Logos did on a macro scale in speaking into existence all that has been made.
· The man Jesus was not fully God while here on earth, but was a man born of woman, a man whose Father was the Logos rather than Adam whom the Logos had created from red mud;
· The man Jesus could, in relationship to His word that He left with His disciples as the judge of unbelievers (John 12:48), be likened to the God in His relationship to the Logos, who was also God;
· The written gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John could, now, in relationship to the God, be likened to the man Jesus, who was not born consigned to disobedience as has been every other human person born of woman but was born free to keep the commands of God;
· Therefore the man Jesus, when receiving a second breath of life, the breath of the God [pneuma theon], fulfilled all righteousness in creating the pathway by which the previously dead inner self of a human person can be resurrected to life as a son of the God, with this son of the God then becoming a spokesman for the God as the regurgitated Jonah was a spokesman for the Lord to the city of Nineveh;
· However, as the man Jesus spoke only the words of the God while here on earth, a born-of-spirit son of the God will only speak the words of the God in his earthly ministry.
The ten living words of the Lord that were delivered to Moses from atop Mount Sinai—words that the nation of Israel heard, but heard in a voice that frightened the people (Ex 20:18–19)—bear to Yah a relationship analogous to the relationship that the word/message that Jesus left with His disciples as the judge of those disciples that did not believe Him (again, John 12:48) … the Law judges unbelievers, not believers who keep the Law. The Law judges those Israelites who willingly transgress the living words of the Lord; therefore, the word [o logos] that Jesus left with His disciples does not judge believing Christians, but unbelieving Christians. And what was concealed from Christians in the 1st-Century and from outwardly circumcised Israel is that believing Christians judge themselves; for when moving from hand to heart, transgressions of the commandments spoken from atop Mount Sinai [John’s definition of sin — see 1 John 3:4] becomes simple unbelief of God (Rom 14:23), the cause for all that defiles the Christian.
When transgressions of the Law are no longer remembered, the state in which all Christians will dwell after the Second Passover liberation of Israel, it isn’t acts of hands or of bodies that will defile Israel, but unbelief of the sort that prevented the men of Israel numbered in the census of the second year (except for Joshua and Caleb) from entering the Promised Land, God’s rest … after the Second Passover liberation of Israel, it won’t be what Christians do or don’t do that justifies or condemns them, but what the Christian believes or doesn’t believe, with the Christian’s inner beliefs revealed through the acts of the fleshly body of the Christian.
When Christians are filled-with and empowered by the divine breath of God, their inner selves will be made visible by their fleshly bodies becoming spiritually invisible because sin will no longer dwell in the flesh.
The word [o logos] that Jesus spoke to His disciples is analogous to the Ten Commandments, with Jesus’ first disciples being analogous to Moses, and not analogous to unbelieving Israel or to unbelieving Christendom.
Today, prior to the Second Passover, if the Christian makes a practice of sinning, of transgressing the law, the Christian has not been born of God:
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he [Jesus] appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. (1 John 3:4–10 emphasis and double emphasis added)
Again, if a Christian makes a practice of sinning, the Christian simply has not been born of God, nor has been the Christian who does not love his brother. Two things, not one. Keeping the commandments isn’t enough. Having love isn’t enough. By faith—by belief of Moses who wrote of Christ Jesus (John 5:46–47) whose voice, whose words no one hears who doesn’t believe the writings of Moses—the Christian who would be born of God or who is born of God will keep the commandments and will have discernable love for neighbor and brother.
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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."