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 spiritual albatross of desiring the finer things of life.
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Weekly Readings
For the Sabbath of December 18, 2010
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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This Reading will be a continuation of last Sabbath’s Reading; for last week’s reading merely introduced the present season of the Lord’s harvest year—
The vision of Obadiah.
Thus says the Lord God concerning Edom:
We have heard a report from the Lord,
and a messenger has been sent among the nations:
“Rise up! Let us rise against her for battle!”
Behold, I will make you small among the nations;
you shall be utterly despised.
The pride of your heart has deceived you,
you who live in the clefts of the rock,
in your lofty dwelling,
who say in your heart,
“Who will bring me down to the ground?”
Though you soar aloft like the eagle,
though your nest is set among the stars,
from there I will bring you down,
declares the Lord.
If thieves came to you,
if plunderers came by night—
how you have been destroyed!—
would they not steal only enough for themselves?
If grape gatherers came to you,
would they not leave gleanings?
How Esau has been pillaged,
his treasures sought out!
All your allies have driven you to your border;
those at peace with you have deceived you;
they have prevailed against you;
your bread has set a trap beneath you—
he has no understanding.
Will I not on that day, declares the Lord,
destroy the wise men out of Edom,
and understanding out of Mount Esau?
And your mighty men shall be dismayed, O Teman,
so that every man from Mount Esau will be cut off by slaughter.
Because of the violence done to your brother Jacob,
shame shall cover you,
and you shall be cut off forever.
On the day that you stood aloof,
on the day that strangers carried off his wealth
and foreigners entered his gates
and cast lots for Jerusalem,
you were like one of them.
But do not gloat over the day of your brother
in the day of his misfortune;
do not rejoice over the people of Judah
in the day of their ruin;
do not enlarge your mouth
in the day of distress.
Do not enter the gate of my people
in the day of their calamity;
do not gloat over his disaster
in the day of his calamity;
do not loot his wealth
in the day of his calamity.
Do not stand at the crossroads
to cut off his fugitives;
do not hand over his survivors
in the day of distress.
For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations.
As you have done, it shall be done to you;
your deeds shall return on your own head.
For as you have drunk on my holy mountain,
so all the nations shall drink continually;
they shall drink and swallow,
and shall be as though they had never been.
But in Mount Zion there shall be those who escape,
and it shall be holy,
and the house of Jacob shall possess their own possessions.
The house of Jacob shall be a fire,
and the house of Joseph a flame,
and the house of Esau stubble;
they shall burn them and consume them,
and there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau,
for the Lord has spoken.
Those of the Negeb shall possess Mount Esau,
and those of the Shephelah shall possess the land of the Philistines;
they shall possess the land of Ephraim and the land of Samaria,
and Benjamin shall possess Gilead.
The exiles of this host of the people of Israel
shall possess the land of the Canaanites as far as Zarephath,
and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad
shall possess the cities of the Negeb.
Saviors shall go up to Mount Zion
to rule Mount Esau,
and the kingdom shall be the Lord's. (Obad 1–21 emphasis added)
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The author of the short prophetic book of Obadiah (— Ovadyah, or servant of Yah) is believed to be the Obadiah who served King Ahab and who hid a hundred prophets of the Lord in two caves (see 1 Kings 18:3–4). He is believed to be a convert to the Lord from Edom as Caleb before him was; thus, because he had about him a different spirit than did his kinsmen who would not permit Israel under Moses to pass through their lands, he would be the appropriate messenger to deliver endtime bad news to the hated son of promise.
The Sabbatarian churches of God have traditionally taught that the modern nation of Turkey was descended from Edom, and that Obadiah’s prophecy pertained to Turkey, a nation that had been great under the Ottoman Empire. But as with everything else that the Sabbatarian churches of God have traditionally taught about prophecy, their teaching must be rejected, with the reason for automatic rejection being the assignment of physical referents to an endtime prophecy, a theological no-no but a common practice of infant sons of God.
Jesus told His disciples that He had only spoken to them in figures of speech (John 16:25); for only metaphorical speech would allow Jesus to use human languages derived from naming systems for the things of this world to name or talk about the things of heaven. The Apostle Paul said that the visible things of this world revealed the invisible things of God (Rom 1:20), thereby making a referent in this world the shadow or copy [the left hand enantiomer] of a referent in heaven. However, the principle that the things of this world reveal and disclose the things of heaven was anticipated by Plato and even earlier Greek philosophers, thereby tainting the principle to such a degree that when reform of the old church began ca. 1525 CE, Huldrych Zwingli, perhaps the leading Swiss reformer, demanded literal readings of Scripture. Zwingli rejected even Jesus’ figurative use of language. And Zwingli’s theological rejection of figures of speech significantly contributed to latter Christendom’s prophetic readings of sealed and secret prophecies, keeping these prophecies closed to understanding until the time of the end began almost a decade ago.
Therefore, although well intentioned various Christian Sabbatarian sects—with no calling by God—presumptuously taught their explications of sealed prophecies, invoking Jesus’ name and employing usurped authority to frighten millions of saints, bilking millions of dollars from impoverished saints to deliver false messages to the spiritually hungry, messages that left Sabbatarians the laughing stock of Christendom for cause and left most of their converts without faith or belief when their teachings did not come to pass within a few generations.
If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arose from Israel’s ranks, the prophet must pass two tests: the sign or wonder about which the prophet spoke must come to pass (Deut 18:22), and the prophet must teach Israel to keep the commandments (Deut 13:2–3). The same two-test standard applies to the person who would explicate endtime prophecies: before the words of the person who would explicate prophecy are accepted as true, the explication must come to pass. However, when the explication occurs, no faith is required to believe the explication that becomes an established fact, with this issue of faith introducing a complication that will consign Christians to martyrdom … only Sabbatarian Christians that have the spirit of prophecy compose the Remnant (from Rev 12:17) that in the Endurance, the last 1260 days before Christ returns, have the power that was given to the two witnesses in the Affliction, the first 1260 days of the seven endtime years.
The two witnesses distinguish themselves through holding alone the testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10). The credibility of the two witnesses come from these two correctly explicating previously sealed biblical prophecies before the explications come to pass, which is why their ministry begins at a specific moment in time, the moment when their explications become irrefutable fact.
The person who would use the authority inherent in Christ Jesus’ name to forward the person’s explication of prophecy needs to have his or her explications shortly come to pass. If the person’s explications have not come to pass a century later, or even half a century later, or even three decades later, the person spoke presumptuously and should be ignored.
Faith enters a saint’s walk with God in the period between when an explication is made and when the explication does or doesn’t come to pass. If the saint hears Jesus’ voice in the explication before the event occurs, then the saint will heed the warning and save his or her spiritual life. The saint who holds the testimony of Jesus undertakes a second walk of faith—the walk that tests the saint’s faith as Abraham’s faith was tested when commanded to sacrifice Isaac (Gen 22:1–22)—when the saint commits support to the words of a person who would explicate prophecy. Whether that support comes in the form of advocacy, prayers, or financial contributions is between the saint and God and not the business of any other human person; for those Sabbatarian sects that encouraged their members to mortgage homes so as to make greater financial contributions had their worked tested by fire and found to be stubble. Those Sabbatarian sects would have far better served God if they had stuck to Moses and had left prophecy to the Lord, who would (and did) call whom He chose to explicate the words He gave to the prophets to record—
But the faith of saints who supported the work of a prophecy pundit for a reasonable length of time after explications were made will not be forgotten even if the pundit spoke presumptuously … there is no faith involved, however, in a second or third generation of saints supporting the failed work of a presumptuous pundit; there is only stupidity.
The prophecy pundit who would have the English-speaking peoples being annihilated by a German-led European union by the early or mid 1950s spoke presumptuously—
Again, for the words of a prophet to be saved by his peers and to be valued enough to be canonized by his successors, the prophet had to speak works that accurately pertained to the peoples mentioned in the prophecy … the primary referent for a biblical prophecy must, necessarily, be the nation or peoples named in the prophecy. Thus, the words of Obadiah, internally dated to when Judah would go into captivity, must actually reflect what happened to Edom and the descendants of Esau. Actually, Obadiah’s words came to pass earlier, and came to pass in the days of King Ahab, and in the days of Jehu the son of Nimshi, and Elisha the prophet; for the drought that Elijah called into existence—the drought of the Lord—affected all of Sidon, Syria, and Judea. This long and severe drought pushed the red men of the region south into and through Egypt, with these red men then disappearing from history in ships. Modern archaeology doesn’t provide much information about what happened to the descendants of Esau once these peoples were overrun by Assyrian and Chaldean armies, but speculation abounds, with this speculation placing red men in the Americas as well as on the steppes of Central Asia and Mongolia.
But the prophecy against Edom that is the vision of Obadiah is also time-dated to the day of the Lord being near, with this day of the Lord not occurring until dominion over the kingdoms of this world is given to the Son of Man (Dan 7:9–14; Rev 11:15–18) — the vision of Obadiah is for a time near to the present period, and this vision isn’t for the modern nation of Turkey but for the hated son of promise, hated because this son of promise is a man of the fields, a man who better loves this world and the things of this world than he loves God.
The speculation that has the red men of the Americas and the red men of the Great Steppes descending from Esau relies upon “Esau [being] a skilled hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents” (Gen 25:27), with Jacob and his descendants ending up, through trickery, with Esau’s birthright and inheritance, and with Jacob and his descendants being the Caucasian peoples of northern Europe. This speculation lies at the heart of the two-house doctrine Herbert W. Armstrong and others taught beginning early in the 20th-Century. But Armstrong’s two-house doctrine ignores what the Apostle Paul wrote:
For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God. (Rom 2:25–29 emphasis added)
Breaking the law does not cause the foreskin of a circumcised man to suddenly grow again; so the “uncircumcision” about which Paul writes is not literal. Nor will keeping the law cause an uncircumcised man to lose the foreskin that is the natural skin covering of his head.
Huldrych Zwingli’s literal readings of Scripture were wrong from their conception—and every literal reading of Scripture since Zwingli swallowed the Adversary’s poisoned bait is and has also been wrong. But Zwingli’s falseness does not result in an endorsement for Catholicism’s readings of Scripture, nor for the Greek paganism and Roman Mithraism that inform Catholic dogmas.
For the Apostle Paul, a Jew is not the biological descendant of the patriarch Jacob, but is the person who by faith keeps the commandments, thereby causing the heart to be cleansed by faith and circumcised through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [pneuma Theon]. And if a Jew is not one outwardly at the end of the age, but is instead the person who by faith keeps the commandments—and if saints are those individuals who keep the commandments and their faith in Jesus (Rev 14:12), then endtime prophecies about Israel are about the Christian Church, the assembly of individuals who by faith keep the commandments in an era when every person will profess faith in Jesus.
But the Christian Church is not today one assembly: it is instead two assemblies, one of which keeps the commandments and the other not-keeping the commandments, with both of these assemblies unable to breathe on their own, thereby relying upon figurative mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as the last Elijah lays over the dead Body of Christ to breathe His breath [pneuma Christos] into His disciples. Hence, Sabbatarian Christians that have no love for their lawless brothers as Jacob had no love for Esau smugly explicate biblical prophecies from the perspective that northern Europeans are the endtime descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, with the English peoples representing the descendants of Joseph. This perspective has Russians being the descendants of Abraham’s sons through Keturah (Gen 25:1–4), and Arab peoples being the descendants of Abraham’s son Ishmael. This perspective reasonably well accounts for world politics as events unfolded in the 20th-Century, when Stalin invoked the Doctrine of the Third Rome to motivate his troops in the Great Patriotic War. But this perspective also squeezes the emerging economic giants of China and India through the tiny prophetic window framed by the phrase, “the kings from the east” (Rev 16:12). Thus, the prophetic perspective Sabbatarians most often employed throughout the 20th-Century—the perspective that has the Pope holding the office the man of perdition will assume—is stale, its expiration date having passed a decade ago.
A multitude of prophecy pundits, Sabbatarian and otherwise, assign the modern State of Israel as the referent for endtime prophecies about the house of Judah, or about Israel, but such assignments are not of Paul, who was appointed “‘to know His [the Lord’s] will’” (Acts 22:14). And if such assignments are not of Paul, then they are not of God—
If a Jew is a circumcised or uncircumcised person—with all women necessarily being uncircumcised—who by faith keeps the commandments and professes that Jesus is Lord and believes that the Father raised Jesus from death (cf. Rom 10:9; 2:28–29), then the saints as defined in Revelation 14:12 are Jews, with the assembly of saints that forms the Church Jesus built being endtime Israel.
The greater Christian Church that Paul identifies as Isaac (see Gal 4:21–31) now includes the yet-unborn twins sons of promise, Esau and Jacob, with Jacob to be renamed Israel through wrestling with the Lord. The conception of these twin sons of promise came when the last Elijah laid over the dead Body of Christ to breathe His breath into the Church as the first Elijah laid over the dead son of the widow of Zarephath to breathe life back into the lad (1 Kings 17:17–24). The figurative mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of the Church produced the reforms of the council of Trent in the old church and the reforms of Luther and Zwingli and later, of Calvin—all of these reforms coming to the collective assembly that does not keep the commandments—and restoration of the late 1st-Century Church in the ministry of Andreas Fischer and his followers. Thus, from 1528 CE onward, two spiritual sons of promise have co-occupied the womb of Paul’s allegorical Isaac, with these two struggling against one another and not liking the other very much.
The collective lawless assembly that came from reform of the old church has been a people of the field, with that field being all of this earth. Whereas the old church ruled much of the world, reformers of the old church continued to exercise authority in this world; for these reformers remain ministers of the Adversary, who comes disguised as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14–15). Therefore, as the angel Gabriel rereads the prophecy of Malachi when he cites the words of the prophet to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, the description of Esau also needs to be reread—
· The prophet Malachi records the Lord’s words: “‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction’” (4:5–6 emphasis added).
· The angel Gabriel quotes the same words of the Lord: “‘And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared’” (Luke 1:16–17 emphasis added)
In morphing the words of this world into the words that represent the things of heaven, the hearts of children becomes the disobedient, and their fathers becomes the wisdom of the just … the Apostle Paul writes that “God has consigned all to disobedience” (Rom 11:32), and the prophet Jeremiah records the words of the Lord, “‘The heart is deceitful above all things, / and desperately sick’” (Jer 17:9). Thus, the natural state of human beings—the state into which children are born—is consigned into disobedience with deceitful hearts. Therefore, the hearts of children represent the disobedient of this world, not exactly what greater Christendom wants to hear; for received Christian culture holds that the hearts of children are pure and innocent, a perception that runs counter to the entirety of Scripture, including to Jesus telling His disciples not to prevent little children from coming to Him (Matt 19:13–15 et al). For when a humanly mature person receives the spirit/breath of the Father and is born as a son of God, the inner self is not a mature spirit being, but is a spiritual infant that must grow in a manner foreshadowed by human maturation. The children of Israel are not young biological sons and daughters of the descendants of the patriarchs, but immature sons of God; for Israel is not the nation circumcised in the flesh, but the nation of living inner selves, with hearts cleansed by faith and circumcised by the soft breath of God. Hence, with disciples in the 1st-Century being Isaac, Christians are today one of two yet-unborn sons of promise, with Esau representing those Christians who are men of the field—men and women engaged in politics; in pursuing the things of this world, needing to possess the finer things of life. Jacob now represents those Christians who are the quiet people, Anabaptists who through trials learned to keep their mouths shut and their enthusiasm contained, with their plain dress being their unspoken testimony against Esau and all that their brother represents. It is these Anabaptists that must wrestle with the Lord and prevail with Him before their name is changed to Israel.
Unfortunately, “plain dress” has come to represent the uniforms worn by Amish, Old Order Mennonites, Old German Baptists, Hutterites, Old Order Quakers, and others, recognized among themselves by the style of head coverings their women wear; whereas biblical plain dress should be a more inclusive term that represents unpretentiousness in this world. Biblical plain dress is a lifestyle that places no importance on possessing the finer things of this world, and can even go so far as to deliberately spurn the finer things that Esau pursues. For if a person must have the finer things that this world offers, the person remains a part of this world regardless of what the person thinks about him or herself. … It is either a lack of spiritual birth or great immaturity that causes a Christian to seek wealth and status, fine clothes and elegant accommodations for the flesh. If these things come in the normal course of the Christian’s walk with God, sobeit; they were not sought. If they were sought, they condemn the Christian. For the Christian is to seek righteousness, a pursuit that greatly hinders the present prince of this world from increasing the Christian with the finer things of this world.
Endtime Esau is a Christian man of this world, a Christian material girl, a Christian voter, a Christian politician, a Christian in all of the ways that the world recognizes Christians except in plain dress … under the umbrella of plain dress is all of Jacob, the other son of promise born to Isaac when Zion gives birth to her children (Isa 66:7–8). And of Jacob are twelve tribes, with Moses and Aaron being of Levi, and with the oil and the wine (from Rev 6:6), the processed fruits of the Promise Land, representing Moses and Aaron, with Moses being inclusive as Esau is inclusive.
When the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, with the use of “Israel” in the identifying phrase to mean all of Christendom, Esau will stand on two legs, one leg constructed upon Sin and including Trinitarian Christendom [i.e., the old church and her protesting daughters], and the other leg constructed upon Death and including Arian Christendom [Latter Day Saints, Jehovah Witnesses, and Sabbatarian sects who have swallowed the Sacred Names Heresy]. Publicly recognized Anabaptists will have to separate themselves from Sin, evident in their practice of Sunday worship, or they will be devoured by Death as these two legs of Esau wage war against each other until the woes begin, when Apollyon, king of the Abyss, enters the fray, thereby devouring without killing all Christians not sealed by God (Rev 9:4–5).
Apollyon rides a bright red horse, and takes peace from the earth so that men should slay one another (Rev 6:4), but he is unable to devour—kill spiritually—the three [Christ Jesus and the two witnesses] whose testimony establishes that human beings born of God can live forever.
It cannot be said strongly enough: the person who would have fields and estates in this world; the person who would have the fine things of this world; the person who is not content to dwell in whatever state he or she finds him or herself; the person who is as King Ahab was—this person shall come to nothing before God.
Esau was hated [disrespected] while still in the womb; i.e., he was hated before he was born, which seems altogether unreasonable except that Esau represents the greater Christian Church—
Today, December 18th, 2010, both Esau and Jacob as spiritual entities struggle in the womb of Isaac, also a spiritual entity as defined by the Apostle Paul in his tour de force allegory (again, Gal 4:21–31) … as natural Israelites are not literally of Hagar, the greater Christian Church is not literally of Esau. The biblical literalist can argue with Paul and can argue with this Reading, but the literalist will not prevail in his [or her] arguments. All the literalist does in making the case for a literal reading of Scripture is disclose how much of a man of the fields he is even before he is born of God at the Second Passover liberation of Israel from indwelling sin and death.
If a Christian trapped within the greater Church doesn’t understand that when the Second Passover liberation of Israel occurs, every Christian will be born of God and born filled-with and empowered by the spirit of God [pneuma Theon]: the Christian will either cover his or her birth nakedness with obedience to God, or the Christian will trust in his or her natural hair cloak that transforms this son of God into a beast of the fields, a beast to be sacrificed when the temple of God is dedicated in the heavenly realm … enough of a prophetic leap was made that additional explanation is needed:
When Rebekah’s time to give birth came, “there were twins in her womb. The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau [meaning hairy — Edom means red]” (Gen 24–25) … the vision of Obadiah concerning Edom is a prophecy about the red men, which some prophecy pundits have taken to mean a prophecy about Amerindians. This, too, like claiming the prophecy is about the modern nation of Turkey, would be assigning a physical referent to an endtime prophecy, a theological no-no.
As with the case against a saint desiring the fine things of this world, which many sincere but immature saints coming from the former Worldwide Church of God did, the case against assigning physical referents to endtime prophecies requires the saint to possess sufficient maturity to comprehend dual referents … it is from here that next Sabbath’s reading begins.
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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."