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 what does it mean to deny Jesus?
Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of December 17, 2011
Continued from the reading for December 3rd & 10th, 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 Christian who has truly been born of God in this present era has been foreknown, called and predestined to be glorified: this Christian will not return to either the lawless or the loveless teachings of denominational Christendom. But not every Christian who seems nice, who professes that Jesus is Lord, who appears prosperous and full of integrity, who begins to keep the commandments has been born of God. In fact very few Christians have been born of God in this present era. Very few Sabbatarian Christians have had love for their brothers and neighbors, and no one who makes of practice of sinning—which worshiping on Sunday is—has been born of God … no second generation Sabbatarian Christian has been born of God who hasn’t first undertaken a journey of faith equivalent to the journey Timothy made when sent by Paul to various fellowships. Being sanctified doesn’t equate to being born of God.
That preceding statement needs to be repeated: every child of believing parents and mates of a believing spouse are sanctified before God and is as natural Israel was prior to Calvary. If this sanctified person chooses [an act based on faith] to keep the commandments and to have love for neighbor and brother, this sanctified person—while not born of God—has prayers heard and has salvation near. This sanctified person will be as the lawyer was to whom Jesus said, “‘You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live’” (Luke 10:28).
What the former Worldwide Church of God never understood—and what its alphabet-soup splinters still do not understand—is that second generation Sabbatarians must also undertake a journey of faith analogous to Abraham’s journey from Ur of the Chaldeans [Babylon] to Haran where their old self, the natural self, dies [Assyria], then on to the Promised Land of Canaan before hearts can be circumcised … unless a person has been born of God, the heart of the person cannot be circumcised. This means that second generation Sabbatarians, even when they choose to do so, cannot remain in the faith of their parents and be born of God: no journey of faith is made when the child remains in the faith of the parents. The second generation Sabbatarian must journey past their parents and approach ever closer to New Jerusalem. If perchance the believing parents of the second generation Sabbatarian have all truth, an unlikely scenario, then this second generation Sabbatarian should apprentice him or herself to the apostle who understands the mysteries of God as Timothy did to Paul, serving that apostle for a while before becoming established in a fellowship as that fellowship’s teacher.
If Sabbatarian parents had all understanding of the mysteries of God, then the second generation Sabbatarian would undertake a journey of faith in a manner somewhat like that of Latter Day Saints, where usually 19 year olds undertake a two year mission into lands far from their homes, a mission that requires exercising faith … the analogy, however, is flawed because in this present era, no one can come to Christ Jesus unless the Father draws the person out from spiritual Babylon through giving to the person a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma theon]. But the sanctified child of believing parents or of a believing parent can—by this second generation Christian’s faith—prevail upon the Father to call this foreknown person (foreknown because this person is sanctified), thereby raising this person from death and giving to this person indwelling eternal life.
Today, within Sabbatarian Christendom there is an up-swell of Hebrewism that threatens to sweep these Christians into watery graves as serfs of the Adversary … the antidote to the poison pill that Christian Hebrewism represents is understanding that when something is done in the name of another person, the thing is done by the authority the other person possesses. Plus understanding that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the God of the living, not the God of the dead, has been an underdeveloped concept within Sabbatarian Christendom that defeats the Arian ideology embedded in Christian Hebrewism. So for a Sabbatarian Christian to turn to Hebrewism as spiritual growth or greater spiritual enlightenment will always cause the Sabbatarian to commit spiritual suicide through denying that the glorified Christ Jesus is the God of the living, past, present, and future.
There has been an assumption that the God of Abraham was the only God that existed, that all other gods were notha [nothing, a spurious text]. And this assumption divided Sabbatarian from Sabbatarian in the 1st-Century and throughout the 20th-Century and now divides brother from brother in the 21st-Century—
A son of disobedience (i.e., anyone who makes a practice of sinning) is spiritually dead. Christ Jesus is neither the high priest of this person, nor the Lord [Head] of this person. Simply put, the Father hasn’t yet given this person to the Son through raising this person from the dead (see John 5:21). Therefore, this person is not today of the household of the Lord, but is to Christ as not-yet-dug clay is to a potter.
If there is no God but the God of the living (i.e., no God but the God of Abraham), then whoever is not today living has no hope, no possibility of salvation—and even Abraham, who was not born of God, not born a second time even though the promise of spiritual birth was inserted by the God of the living into his name [the <ah> radical] while he lived, is without hope.
The Philadelphia Church is sometimes approached by former members of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God [WCG] who have swallowed Christian Hebrewism as if the Sacred Names Heresy were new and desirable knowledge. The former WCG pastor in Australia who insists that the Father was the God of the Old Testament is such a person: this former pastor will soon die, and will die without being truly born of God. He will then be named among the dead. And if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of the living and is the only God, this former pastor will be without hope. He will have no God, no deity to raise him from death. Unlike Christ Jesus who received a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma theon] (Matt 3:16) while He lived physically, this former pastor has no indwelling eternal life (if asked, he would insist that Christians are not today born of God but only begotten); so upon his death and because of his denial of Christ and of the Father, this former pastor can expect to be resurrected to condemnation for he is someone who claims to understand the mysteries of God when he is without understanding—who claims to see as did Pharisees who asked Jesus if they, too, were blind (John 9:40–41). Thus, this pastor is not covered by grace despite him having taken the Passover sacraments year by year. His only covering for his sins is his death. And because he denies that there is a God of the dead, a God who raises the dead to life; because he teaches against the existence of the God of the dead, he shall reap the wages of his deeds. He shall perish in his death.
The above scenario applies to all Sabbatarian Christians ensnared by the Sacred Names Heresy.
There is no joy in knowing that Sabbatarian one-godders [Arian or Unitarian Sabbatarians] are destined to condemnation in the lake of fire; there is only great sadness, for some of these Sabbatarians are longtime disciples who sincerely desire to serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
There is no joy is seeing former friends and acquaintances spiritually wash out as if they were unfit volunteers for a special warfare unit that has humanly unattainable admission qualifications—and ultimately, that is the most easily grasped scenario of what is presently occurring. As the Adversary spread for-awhile-undetected rebellion against the Most High in the mountain of God, the Father through Christ Jesus is raising from-the-dead sons whom He knows in advance will keep His commands and will have love for brothers, born and unborn. These sons are not many in number, but are few in number: they are rare in this world and can be likened to grains of salt that enhance flavor in food. And the flavor they enhance is righteousness, the flavor of the Millennium.
In this present world, righteousness is a flavorless way of life: there is no spice in life when there is no transgression of the commands of the God. There is no lust, no long-held anger, no lie that has to be continually reburied, no coveting of the things of this world, no desire to have the “finer things of this world.” In righteousness, there is no desire to get ahead in this world, no pursuit of the lifestyle seen on televised Brazilian novellas, that nation’s raunchy equivalent to American soap operas and apparently largely responsible for the declining birth rate in Brazil … in righteousness, the things of this world, the glamour of the influential and the powerful, the glitter of fashion and festivals are of no importance. In righteousness, Christian women do not publically wear bikinis that require groin areas to be waxed to remove hair; rather, righteous married Christian women cover even the hair of their heads.
Righteousness will be mocked in this world, belittled, banned, deemed old-fashioned and quaint regardless of whether practiced by Christian or non-Christian. There simply is no place in this present world for righteousness, and even less place for truly born-of-God Sabbatarian Christians that salt righteousness, enhancing the flavor of this way of life before melting away, disappearing into the flotsam of history; for that which is light casts no shadow in this world, thereby leaving little or no record of the life lived in righteousness. It is only those things that block light that cast shadows; it is the unrighteous and the lawless that cast their shadows across the annuals of history.
Again, there is no joy in knowing that the former WCG pastor in Australia who would be a teacher of Israel if he could be will perish in his present unbelief that is rebellion against both the God of the Living and the God of the Dead, the glorified Christ Jesus and His God. The prayer of all Philadelphians should be that he repents, realizes the falseness of what he believes, and reaches out for help rather than reaches out as an Arian to spread his one-God dogma.
If the Arian or Unitarian volunteer [in the war against unrighteousness] has not already been cut off from the Root of Righteousness by the Father who prunes the growth that sprouts from this Root and cuts away deadwood (John 15:2), this Christian’s only hope lays in the Second Passover occurring while he or she still lives physically. If these one-godders ever had indwelling spiritual life and are not already dead, then they will be filled with the divine breath of God at the Second Passover liberation of Israel and will be tested as Abraham was tested (Gen chap 22), only they will be asked to sacrifice themselves as the indwelling of Christ functions as Abraham functioned when he bound Isaac and raised the knife to slay his son of promise.
If Sabbatarian one-godders have not been born of spirit as is apparently the case with the former WCG pastor in Australia, then these one-godders never had indwelling spiritual life but remain dead, destined to be burned because their guilt remains with them through them claiming to understand the mysteries of God when they were without understanding … their claims of understanding might have been overlooked if they hadn’t set themselves up to be teachers of their false understandings.
In this present era, the person who would teach others needs to be specifically called by God to this responsibility: it is not enough to have a heart to serve God, or to feel inspired to advance knowledge of God, or to love people so much that the person feels compelled to save his or her family and friends. The one who teaches needs to be specifically called by the Father and the Son in a manner similar to how the Apostle Paul was called. Otherwise, the person needs to remain silent, answering questions about the hope that lies within the disciple when asked but volunteering nothing until asked, an extremely difficult thing to do for the infant son of God bursting with enthusiasm to share all that he or she knows, or thinks he or she knows with friends and family, usually alienating both.
No person, having tasted the goodness of God, can deny that the Father of fleshly Jesus was the Logos, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (the God of the living) and still live spiritually. To deny that the God who created all things physical entered His creation as His only Son, the man Jesus the Nazarene, is to deny Jesus—
What does it mean to deny Jesus?
Luke records Jesus saying, “‘And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God’” (12:8–9).
To deny Jesus before men will cause Jesus to deny that the person is a disciple before angels, thereby leaving the person open to demonic possession … to deny Jesus through denying that His earthly father was the Logos leaves the Sabbatarian Christian open to the Sacred Names Heresy, a doctrine of demons that suffocates the inner son of God just as surely as a plastic bag over the head of an infant suffocates the child; for central to the Sacred Names Heresy is denial of Jesus through rejection of even His name.
If Jesus would have been simply a good man, or a prophet like the prophets of old, then denial of Jesus would be rejection of the man; would be saying that Jesus never really lived, that His miracles are myths, that if Jesus did live He was merely a Greek storyteller, the lie of rabbinical Judaism. Denial of Jesus would be akin to denying the Holocaust.
But Jesus wasn’t a man like other men: He wasn’t a son of the first Adam. He was never a man consigned to disobedience, but who overcame disobedience to live a godly life. The claim of Scripture is that Jesus is the only Son [the Unique One] of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; therefore, denial of Jesus includes denying that Jesus was the only Son of the God of Abraham.
Arian Christendom argues in its purest form that Jesus was created/conceived in the womb of Mary, and that Jesus had no preexistence prior to His conception in the womb of the maid. But Arian Christendom is a broad ideology and also includes the abhorrent teaching that Jesus created all that has been made but did so not as God but as the angelic brother of Lucifer and Michael, that Jesus did not become God until He was raised from death by His Father and His God … the preceding dogma spawns a secondary false dogma, that of other angels entering this world as the immoral souls of human beings. These other angels will then have the possibility of improving their heavenly status through the human person living a good, moral life here on earth (the true horror of this secondary false dogma is that it will be used by the man of perdition when he, as a human being possessed by the Adversary, claims to be God — 2 Thess 2:4).
The commonality of Arian belief is that Jesus as a created entity had a beginning and as such could not be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who was without beginning, who was, is, and will be. … The inclusion of was, represented by haya in the alleged contraction that is the Tetragrammaton, is problematic. According to the writer of Hebrews, Christ Jesus is the same yesterday [was], today [is], and forever [will be] (13:8).
In translating the epistle to Hebrews into English, words in the fore-referenced passage have been rearranged; for the passage reads, Iesous Chrisots ho autos echthes kai semeron kai eis tous aionas — Jesus Christ yesterday and today the same and forever. Christ Jesus was in the past and is today the same; He will be the same in the future. And He was glorified as God when the writer of Hebrew wrote; He was no longer a human person.
How far into the past is yesterday— , an indefinite <khthes> previous period (Strong’s #G5504)?
If Christ Jesus was God in an indefinite past that is the same as today—and this an appropriate reading of the passage—and if Christ Jesus will be God in the future that is the same as today [for in heaven, there is no time, with time being an attribute of the Creation; so by extension, in heaven there is no passage of time], then there never has been a period in heaven when Christ Jesus wasn’t God, the God of the living, which now makes all that Jesus said about not coming into this world to condemn it comprehendible. He isn’t the God of the dead. It has never been His intention to deliver the living to death. Hence, He wasn’t the God of Noah’s neighbors: He was the God of Noah who lived because of his righteousness when the world was baptized by water into death.
John the Baptist said of Jesus, “‘I baptize you [Pharisees] with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit [indwelling eternal life] and with fire [immortality]’” (Matt 3:11), with the first of these two baptisms occurring for Christians at the Second Passover liberation of Israel and occurring for the remainder of humankind when the single kingdom of this world is given to the Son of Man 1260 days later. The second of the two baptisms occurs for the firstborn sons of God at the Second Advent, and occurs for the remainder of humanity a millennium later in the great White Throne Judgment when Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire.
From the beginning, it has been Christ Jesus’ intention to save whomever can be saved: as God, it has been His will that none be lost. And He lost none except Judas Iscariot during His earthly ministry (John 17:12). And as circumcised-of-heart Israel’s high priest, He will lose none who are foreknown and predestined to be glorified … these predestined and called disciples will not and cannot be lost because they have been given by the Father to Christ Jesus, who has been placed in charge of their salvation. If the individual son of God were in charge of his or her own salvation, most if not all would be lost.
In heaven where there is no passage of time, Christ Jesus has always been God even when the Logos entered His creation as His only Son, thereby effectively dying [ceasing to exist] for the period when Jesus lived as a man and not as God … a heavenly moment can be likened to an earthly geographic location: when Jesus said, “‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven’” (Luke 10:18), Jesus identified the location—the heavenly moment—in which He stands as the God of the living, and that location is in the future after the kingdom of this world has been given to the Son of Man and Satan is cast from heaven (cf. Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18; 12:7–10). The glorified Jesus as the Bridegroom awaits the Wedding Supper when He will marry His Bride, thereby again becoming one with His disciples to whom He gave life by causing the perishable flesh to put on immortality.
Pause and consider the man Jesus saying that He saw Satan fall like lightening: as the Logos, the God of the Living was already awaiting the Wedding Supper before He ever entered His creation as His only Son. A certain sense of anticipation had to exist before the Logos entered His creation, which now gives some illumination to disciples being known from the foundation of this world: the firstfruits of the harvest of the firstfruits of God were foreknown by the Father as Israel was foreknown (Rom 11:2) by the God of Abraham, and those whom the Father foreknew, He predestined to be called, justified, and glorified (Rom 8:29–30) in the reality that casts as its shadow the God of Abraham not forsaking His people, His heritage (Ps 94:14), His firstborn son (Ex 4:22), but entering His creation as one of them … as the Logos entered His creation to be with His people, thereby forsaking life in the heavenly realm, not counting equality with the God a thing to be grasped (Phil 2:6), the Father raised/raises His firstborn sons from death to bring them to where He is in heaven rather than go to where they are, with the already glorified Christ Jesus being the First of His firstfruits.
Returning to a phrase used a few years ago, a dance of oneness: because time and its passage can be written as a mathematical function of gravity, time is a thing created when the physical universe was made. Outside of this creation, there is no time so there can be nothing that possesses mass—human beings cannot bodily enter heaven because they possess mass. By necessity, all living entities in heaven are without mass (i.e., they exist as forms of energy) and they all must function as one entity. Without time, the present moment continues indefinitely, and because the moment continues living entities must coordinate with each other in a dance of oneness to prevent gridlock from occurring. But this dance of oneness causes the past to be erased and to be no more forever: there is only the present. What occurred in the past doesn’t exist; thereby, when the Logos entered His creation as His only Son, lived without sin, and was sacrificed at Calvary as the Paschal Lamb of God, then was resurrected after the third day to ascend into heaven as the glorified Son, the presence of the glorified Son in heaven in this dance of oneness removed all traces of the Logos entering His creation as His only Son. In the heavenly moment where Jesus received the glory He had before the world existed (John 17:5), Jesus as the First of the firstborn sons of God presently has life as God, not as an angel. He is not the God, but He is one with the God in this dance of oneness that occurs as movement in this heavenly moment is coordinated to prevent one living entity from blocking another.
In every moment that exists in heaven, the same conditions exist: without time and its passage, angels must function as one living entity so when iniquity was found in an anointed guardian cherub, this iniquity would have brought all movement in this moment to a standstill unless all angels possessed the same rebellious mindset; thus, that anointed cherub and his cohorts, before they became all angels, had to be expelled from that moment to permit movement to resume. And into the Abyss is where the Adversary and his co-rebels were expelled, with the universe and all that has been made physically being constructed in the Abyss as a glorious death chamber for rebels.
A human person can be killed anywhere, but nation-states choose to execute criminals in specific locations, with this model of building gallows or death chambers at specific locations revealing a rationale for the creation of this world where all that is confined in it, including rebelling angels, are subject to the vagaries of time that will inevitably result in death.
When the moment is unchanging regardless of what occurs in the moment, the Logos can leave heaven and return to heaven in the same moment: the Logos can leave as the Helpmate of the God and return as the First of the firstborn sons of the God in the same moment, with all of the firstborn sons of the God having heavenly life in this moment through receiving the breath of the God in the breath of Christ. Angels cannot have life in this moment because they did not preexist in this moment unlike the case with Christ Jesus, the only Son of the Logos and the First of the firstfruits of the God.
The absence of life cannot coexist with the presence of life in the same entity. The moment when life either is or isn’t present must give way to a succeeding moment before the other can be present. And when the moment is unchanging, the entity that did not have life in this moment cannot enter this moment … from the perspective of heaven, every living entity has life only in the moment when that entity initially received life. Hence, the Creator of angels had life in the moment when angels were created [given life] as well as in a moment unknown to angels, a moment that preceded or differed from the moment when angels received life.
Because human beings are born subject to time and its passage, humans think in terms of the past, present, and future; and to imagine the past or remember the past seems a normal activity. What is difficult for humans is the subtraction of time and its passage from the present moment; whereas for angels only the present exists, with movement in the present erasing what previously was, thereby leaving no access to what occurred prior to the moment. For angels, the forthcoming Second Passover liberation of Israel will permit them to see in a scale model their own creation, which the nature of timelessness has not permitted them to imagine—
Angels as heavenly created sons of God did not exist in one heavenly moment [location] yet did exist in another heavenly moment, and because angels did not exist in the moment when the God resolved to create them, angels cannot now enter that eternal heavenly moment where human sons of God have life through the indwelling of Christ Jesus, the God of the living, who had life in this moment as the Logos before angels were created.
The preceding concept is quite simple: again, a heavenly moment functions as a geographical location, and has the same sort of permanency as a geographical location [i.e., as a set of earthly coordinates]. The fisherman who has but one vehicle and who parks that vehicle (a random location) in front of the Elbow Room on Unalaska Island has no vehicle in Seattle, Washington. The angel who received life in the heavenly realm has life in a moment that can be likened to Unalaska Island, an Aleutian Island. This angel has no life in a differing heavenly moment, one that can be likened to Puget Sound, whereas the human son of God who receives heavenly life in the form of the breath of God [pneuma theon] in the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos] has life where the Father and the Son have life, which for the purposes of this analogy can be likened to Seattle. The separation between Unalaska Island and Puget Sound is unbridgeable. Our fisherman isn’t going to drive his or her vehicle from where in sits in front of the Elbow Room to the Space Needle or to Lake Washington. Likewise, an angel cannot receive life in one heavenly moment and then enter a differing heavenly moment in which the angel never had life … vehicles that are ferried to Unalaska Island almost never leave, but rust in peace in some out-of-the-way location when they can no longer be kept running. These vehicles can cross the bridge between Amaknak and Unalaska Islands, thereby driving to Dutch Harbor’s airport or to the UniSea Inn, but the possibility of one of these vehicles returning to Seattle is nil.
Once more, Christ Jesus is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Even though all judgment has been given to the Son (John 5:22), the Son didn’t enter into this world to judge it but to save it. He left His word with His disciples as the judge of unbelieving disciples (John 12:48). His word will do for Him what He did for the Father when He interacted with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and with the nation of Israel, but will do so with a difference: again, His disciples will have indwelling spiritual life in the form of the breath of God [pneuma theon] in—as in a vessel—the breath of Christ [pneuma Christos].
Whereas Arian Christendom openly denied/denies the divinity of the Logos who entered His creation as His only Son, Christ Jesus, Trinitarian Christendom has been very careful not to deny Jesus’ divinity before His physical birth, so careful that Trinitarians have crafted from their imaginations a triune deity that never existed … Arian [Unitarian] Christendom and Trinitarian Christendom are not compatible ideologies: they each worship a Jesus different from the other, and a Jesus that differs from the One worshiped by Philadelphia.
At one time the former Worldwide Church of God had 160,000 baptized members, but following the death of its founder, Herbert W. Armstrong, in January 1986, the number of Sabbatarians who continued to cling to Armstrong’s teachings declined to about 25,000, meaning that 135,000 baptized Sabbatarians went somewhere, with only a double handful or so continuing their journey of faith toward heavenly Jerusalem. Many/most returned to spiritual Babylon, treating their excursion into the Promised Land as an extended vacation cruise during which they sampled the goodness of God. Unfortunately, the 25,000 that cling to Armstrong’s dogma dance with the king of Babylon, one foot in, one foot out, around and around they go, trying to appear prosperous in this world without fully surrendering to Sin, the king of the South. This 25,000 try to eat from the Lord’s table as well as from the table of demons, thereby provoking the Lord to jealousy (see 1 Cor 10:21–22); yet from this 25,000 will still come a few more faithful disciples before this group is also delivered into the hand of the Adversary for the destruction of their fleshly bodies.
Armstrong’s disciples, like other Sabbatarian Christians, passed through the Promised Land on their way to Sin, to whom they gave their fleshly bodies, the spiritual equivalent to Sari, the wife and half-sister of Abram—
As Abram and Sari passed through Canaan on their way to Egypt where Abram prospered because of a half-truth that was a full lie, Armstrong’s disciples, with one foot in this world, engage in transactions, opening businesses, buying and selling not as employees but as entrepreneurs, not as serfs but as small property owners … when the old selves of Armstrong’s disciples are represented by Terah, Abram’s father, the living new selves will be represented by Abraham in the form of Christ Jesus, which is why aspiration (the <ah> radical) had to be added to Abram’s name.
The preceding is enough for this Reading.
—to be continued—
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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."