The Philadelphia Church

The following suggested or possible grouping of Scripture passages are offered to aid beginning fellowships. The readings and limited commentary are, hopefully, obviously thematically related. And the concept behind this High Sabbath’s selection is the coming of the Messiah…it is suggested that fellowships have morning and afternoon services on the High Days, but a reading for the morning service will here be included. The person overseeing the services should use the afternoon service as he or she sees fit.

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The person conducting services 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.

 

The first passage read should be Leviticus chapter 23, verses 1 and 2, then verses 9 through 14.

Commentary: Within the Churches of God, the last high day of Unleavened Bread has always been a Sabbath in search of a meaning. Of course, various understandings have been attached to this high Sabbath day, but cutting straight to the heart of the mysteries of God, the seven days of Unleavened Bread represent the seven “years” that endtime disciples will live without sin, with these years (in their long form) beginning with the spiritual night that began at Calvary, but with relevance to today’s endtime disciples, with these years (their short form) being the seven years of the Tribulation. And at the end of these seven years, Christ Jesus will return as the long-expected Messiah. Disciples will be resurrected from death and glorified. The last high Sabbath of Unleavened Bread commemorates the Second Advent and the Wedding of the Bridegroom; commemorates in advance all that will happen when Christ begins His millennial reign; commemorates His millennial reign, when all of humankind will live without sin or indwelling death. Thus, in its long form, the seven days of Unleavened Bread represent the entire period when Israel lives without sin being reckoned to the nation, with this period beginning when Jesus breathes on ten of His disciples and says, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22) and continuing until Satan is loosed after the thousand years.

Christ Jesus covered/covers His disciples with the garment of His righteousness throughout the first six “hours” (the word used metaphorically to represent a period of time in this world that corresponds to event-relationships in the timeless heavenly realm1) of the long spiritual night that began at Calvary, with the death angels to again pass over all the world at the midnight hour of this long night. Because Jesus covers or cloaks His disciples with His righteousness, no sin is reckoned to these disciples: since Calvary, Israel (now a nation circumcised of heart) has lived without sin being reckoned to it even though this nation actively practices sinning. Instead of using the mantle of Christ Jesus’ righteousness to practice walking uprightly before God, Christianity has abused Christ, has mocked Christ, has trampled on His righteousness, all the while continuing to slither around on its belly as the seed of Satan (1 John 3:10). The Father and the Son are fully justified in rejecting Christianity and condemning it to death, but because of the love the Son has for disciples, He will fill or empower disciples with His spirit thereby liberating them from indwelling sin and death before the Father delivers Israel to the man of perdition for the destruction of the flesh … the Son will make sure that every disciple has the ability to cover himself with obedience before the Son of Man is revealed or disrobed (Luke 17:30).

On the high Sabbaths, meat is to be preached in its due season: the seven days of Unleavened Bread are about living without sin, with yeast representing sin … for a generation reared with the conveniences of 21^st-Century America, a disciple needs to understand that to leaven a lump of dough nothing needs to be done but to set the dough on a kitchen counter and wait. The air is filled with wild yeast spores in a manner analogous to Satan, as the prince of this world, broadcasting disobedience by being the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2–3). The lump of dough, without the deliberate addition of any leavening agent, will gather and feed enough wild yeast spores that within a few days it will be “sourdough,” leavened naturally. Likewise, the natural state of human beings consigned to disobedience (Rom 11:32) is to be filled with sin. Even those individuals who are, by this world’s standards, considered “good” people are filled with disobedience toward God. Therefore, yeast as a living leavening agent forms a very good visible metaphor for sin. So to live without sin, without collecting and nurturing wild yeast spores, the person needs to be placed in a protective bubble, which is what grace is all about: placing a bubble in the form of the mantle of Christ Jesus’ righteousness over the person so that he or she can practice walking uprightly before God (i.e., practice keeping the commandments) without collecting additional sin as a lump of dough collects yeast spores is the reality of grace.

It is always wrong to think of grace as unmerited pardon; for if sins were pardoned by Jesus as Jesus gave authority to His disciples to pardon sin (John 20:23), there would have been no need for Jesus to have died at Calvary. Rather, Jesus died at Calvary to pay the required death penalty for the sins of Israel in this world; His death on the cross is analogous to the goat sacrificed on the altar on Yom Kipporim (Lev 16:5, 7–9, 15). But He is also the reality of the Azazel goat, in that as Israel’s high priest He bears the sins of Israel committed in the inter-dimensional portion of the heavenly realm. He will not be crucified a second time; so He will not die for the sins that He presently bears. He will either return these sins to the disciple when judgments are revealed (such is the case in John 5:29 for those who have done evil), or He will give these sins to Satan who will die for them after the thousand years.

If sins were pardoned, no one would pay the death penalty for these sins. Jesus would not have died at Calvary. But because sins are not pardoned, lives will be lost because of Israel’s transgressions … whereas bulls and goats stood in for Christ Jesus, covering the sins of natural Israel but not paying the death penalty for these sins, until He came to die for these sins, the glorified Jesus “covers” the sins of disciples by bearing these sins. But He will not bear these sins as King of kings and Lord of lords: once judgments are revealed at His return, those disciples who have done evil (in that they have not strived to walk uprightly before God) will receive their sins back and will perish in the lake of fire. However, those disciples who have done good by striving to walk as Jesus walked will also have sinned, but will have those sins covered by broken vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction (Rom 9:22–23). These vessels of wrath—disciples born of spirit who chose death when life or death was placed before them (Deut 30:15–20) under the terms of the second covenant—are the equivalent to the bulls and goats sacrificed by ancient Israel. Their deaths do not pay the death penalty in the heavenly realm for the sins of disciples who will be glorified, but temporarily covers these sins until Satan, after the thousand years, pays the required death penalty.

Peter writes,

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And

“If the righteous is scarcely saved,

what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” (1 Pet 4:17–18)

Because those disciples who have done good and will be glorified have nevertheless sinned and are not appreciably different from those disciples who have done evil, the righteous is scarcely saved. It is the desire of the righteous to walk as Jesus walked; to forsake the things of this world for the things of God; to use the cover of grace to practice walking uprightly that separates the disciple who is resurrected to life from the disciple who is resurrected to condemnation.

John writes,

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he 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)

The disciple who will be resurrected to life cannot keep on sinning whereas the disciple who is Satan’s seed has no qualms about continuing in sin … the Sabbath commandment visibly makes the above apparent: the disciple born of God cannot keep transgressing the Sabbath commandments but must, eventually, begin to keep the Sabbath; whereas the Christian who is a child of the devil will, without pangs of conscience, continue to transgress the Sabbath commandment by attempting to enter into God’s presence on the 8^th-day. And the same applies for the drunkard, the adulterer, the liar, the swindler. It isn’t that sons of God do not sin—they do sin and sometimes grievously—but it is that they cannot continue in sin. They cannot forever ignore the pricks, or it might be that they are pricked by guilt whereas the child of the devil is not.

Returning to sin being like yeast, if a person is familiar with rabbinical Judaism’s traditions, unleavened bread (matzos) must be baked within 18 minutes of being made (when the flour is first wetted), or before the dough can give life to wild yeast spores, and this concept of quickly baking the dough has an analogous relationship to one of the hardest mysteries of God to understand: when ancient Israel adopted the religious practices of the nation’s pagan neighbors and began to “pass” their firstborn through fire, a euphemistic expression for the heinous practice of burning alive the child that opened the womb, the Lord was not pleased and eventually commanded Israel to continue in this abomination. “‘Moreover, I [YHWH] gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am the Lord’” (Ezek 20:25–26). By commanding Israel to kill its firstborns that belonged to the Lord (Ex 13:1–2, 11–16), these firstborns were not “contaminated” by the sins of their parents, and will be resurrected to life in the great White Throne Judgment where they will have no sin counted against them. They are, in essence, “baked” within 18 minutes; for with God, the loss of human life is not a matter of concern. The Lord can return the breath of life to a person whenever He chooses.

The above serves to illuminate how humans can accept corruption of their thoughts in the practice of “religion” … most people would consider it terrible (more “terrible” than can be assigned to the word) that a human parent would deliberately kill his or her firstborn child. In Western civilizations, we wonder how can a parent kill a child for far too often a mentally disturbed parent will kill his or her children, and we as a society blame the incident on the social-economic situation that caused the parent to snap. Yet before us we have an example of how religion can cause a parent to do what is for us the unthinkable: in fundamentalist Islamic jihad, parents send children to their deaths with the promise made to the child that he or she will see the face of Allah. The promise is a lie! But the child believes what parents have taught. And so it was in ancient Israel: instead of believing the deity that spoke through Moses, ancient Israelites believed the myths and superstitions of their Canaanite neighbors. And today we wonder how they could have been so gullible as we read about another suicide bomber killing thirty Sunis or Shi’as in a mosque. We read about, we experience the application of a heinous theology that is every bit as evil as what ancient Israelite practiced in offering their children to Molech, but Western civilization is reluctant to condemn fundamentalist Islam in our culturally soured tolerance of diversity.

Multiculturalism doesn’t permit identifying competing theologies as evil. We need to be tolerant of others, or so we are taught in a new theology of “tolerance” that is undergirded by social constructs equally heinous to God as what ancient Israel accepted; for evil is evil no matter where it occurs — and if we cannot condemn evil when we encounter it, if we are so insecure in our perception of evil that we cannot raise our voices against it, then we are not the people of God. Yes, God will tolerate evil for a while as a human parent will tolerate bad behavior in a child for a short while become coming down hard on the child. The seven endtime years of tribulation are about God coming down hard on humankind for its long time practice and tolerance of evil. And when God comes down hard, two thirds of humankind will die. The remaining third will then hate death to such an extent that this third part of humanity will be eager to obey God.

Why does it have to come down to this? Why will two of every three human beings have to perish before those individuals remaining alive want to obey commandments about loving neighbors as they love themselves? That is what will happen. And there really isn’t anything that can be done to prevent this reality. All people can do, all that they will do is deny that it will happen until the dead start piling up around them.

Christ Jesus will return at the end of these seven years of tribulation, and He will not come to deal with the problem of sin: the problem of sin is presently being addressed so when Christ Jesus appears a second time, He will not contend with sin but will save those who eagerly await His return (Heb 9:28) … the problem of sin is being addressed on two fronts, the first being that Jesus paid the penalty for every sin committed in this world at Calvary and He bears the sins of His disciples in the heavenly realm (i.e., in the inter-dimensional portion of the heavenly realm). The problem of sin is also being addressed on a second front that is more difficult to comprehend: within the traditions of rabbinical Judaism is the answer to why so many lives have been lost over so long a period, why pogroms, why the Holocaust, why God has permitted a chosen people to suffer so much. All that opens a womb, including the womb of the last Eve, must be redeemed or killed. Israel was commanded to redeem the firstborn of men, with firstborn males to be His to do with as  He chooses; so who is to fault Him if He kills His firstborn son (Ex 4:22) that will not redeem its firstborns? The Lord is not a respecter of persons. Even Moses was not exempt from the requirements of the Lord: “Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, ‘Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me’” (Ex 4:25).

How, you ask, is the problem of sin being addressed in introducing the concept of redeeming firstborns? Those firstborns are the Lord’s to do with as He pleases, including the firstborns of Islam, or Buddhists, of atheists in China and in France. They are His to kill without any fault being assigned to Him, for the Lord stated His claim to them three and a half millennia ago, a time, times, and half a time ago, with in this case a thousand years being assigned as the linguistic object to the icon “time.”

Israel, natural and circumcised of heart (two peoples), should never have thought of itself as exempt from the requirements of the Lord; yet Christians do not cover themselves with the blood of Christ Jesus, their Redeemer, by drinking from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed, and when was the last time anyone in Judaism redeemed a firstborn? Not since the temple at Jerusalem was razed?

A shank bone or a chicken neck is not a scriptural substitute for a paschal lamb … why would anyone be so silly as to think that a shank bone was a lamb? Certainly neither the Father nor the Son will accept a bone for a commanded offering: a Seder service is a fraudulent attempt to circumvent obedience to the Lord.

You ask how can a human being speak for the Lord? Does not Moses speak for the Lord? Was not Moses a human being? And did not Korah challenge Moses? Are you like Korah? … Answer if you can, what did Korah say that was wrong (Num 16:3)? Was not all of the congregation in the wilderness holy? Was not the Lord among them? Was Moses not elevated above the congregation? Are you not now challenging Moses and Jesus and Paul? Did Paul not lay the foundation for the house of God (1 Cor 3:10–11), with this foundation being Christ Jesus? Was Paul not elevated above the assembly of God? And did not all in Asia leave Paul (2 Tim 1:15) because they wouldn’t follow a man near to them in time. If asked, Korah would have said that he would follow the Lord, but he had followed Moses far enough; likewise, those in Asia would have said that they would follow Jesus, but they had followed Paul far enough. And today disciples say that they’d follow Paul, but they will follow no man living today.

Is anyone asking disciples to follow a man other than Christ Jesus? Did Moses ask Israel to follow him? Was Moses a cultmeister? Or would Moses have liked nothing better than to be rid of Israel?

Moses interceded on Israel’s behalf because that was the job he was given when the Lord said to him, “‘Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt’” (Ex 3:10). Moses tried every way he could to get out of doing this task. If Korah would have been there, Moses would have tried to have the Lord send Korah to Pharaoh. But the Lord chose Moses for this task; He chose one man who didn’t live as a slave but as a free man. Likewise, the Lord chose Paul “‘to know his will, to see the Righteous One and to hear as voice from his mouth’” (Acts 22:14); for Paul wasn’t a Galilean but a Pharisee with Roman citizenship by birth, something none of Jesus’ first disciples had. He had enough education that after recounting his conversion, Festus said with a loud voice, “‘Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind’” (Acts 26:24) … the Lord didn’t choose Phygelus or Hermogenes or any of the other converts to the Jesus Movement to speak for Him, but He chose Paul as He had chosen Moses, who was reared in the household of Pharaoh as a son. And today He chooses whom He will, and most endtime disciples are like Korah and his friends—and like all in Asia and in Achaea and in Judea—in that they insist upon their democratic rights to speak for the Lord as equals to the one who has been sent. Yes, there are many Korahs babbling about things about which they know nothing.

The Tribulation is about redemption: the firstborn males of animals were to be sacrificed, and firstborn sons were to be redeemed by the blood of a lamb—and this is not a call to return to animal sacrifices (that will happen, though, in the Millennium), for Christ Jesus is Israel’s redeemer. He is the only Redeemer. And unless a son of God, a physical son (natural Israel) or a spiritual son, covers himself with the blood of the Lamb of God, the redemption price is not paid. The Israelite will be killed—and this son of God will be slain as the firstborns of ancient Israel were slain by command of God, only spiritual firstborn sons of God will be slain with the second death from which there is no resurrection.

Pause for a moment: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine’” (Ex 13:1–2), and “‘Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem’” (v. 13). But what if Israel will not redeem firstborn sons, either from ignorance or from neglect? Will Israel not be held accountable for its failure to redeem?

The first 1260 days of the seven endtime years of tribulation are about the redemption of Israel, with this redemption usually addressed in the Apostle Paul’s analogy of grafting the natural branches of Israel back onto the Root of Righteousness (Rom 11:24) … until Israel is redeemed, Israel remains separated from the Lord. Both natural Israel and Christendom are separated from the Lord because of unbelief manifested in the double collective failure to redeem firstborns.

The last 1260 days of the Tribulation are about the redemption of the third part of humankind, with this third part’s redemption price paid in the Sixth Trumpet Plague.

But can anyone, today, convince Israel, natural or circumcised of heart (again, two nations), that the unimaginable number of deaths (approximately 2.3 billion people, all firstborns) to occur in the second Passover liberation of Israel are about the Lord claiming what is His own, sifting redeemed firstborns from unredeemed by whether the person drinks from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed?

Unbelief kept the nation that left Egypt from entering into God’s rest (Heb 3:19; Ps 95:10–11; Num 14:11), and unbelief will keep Christendom from entering heaven. Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb pleaded with Israel to believe the Lord and to go forward to claim the Promised Land, but Israel wanted to stone them (Num 14:10). And so will it be once the Tribulation begins: Christendom will rebel against God 220 days after the Tribulation begins, and would kill genuine disciples if it could. But the two witnesses will be as Moses and Aaron were, and the power to speak that these two witnesses have will be like the glory of the Lord appearing at the tent of meeting; for these two witnesses will have the power to kill with the breath of their mouth … the glory of the Lord appeared as a pillar of fire at night, and would have appeared as fire “that night” (Num 14:1) when the people of Israel wanted to stone Moses. Likewise, the breath of the two witnesses appears as fire (Rev 11:5).

The prophet Isaiah records,

But now thus says the Lord,

he who created you, O Jacob,

he who formed you, O Israel:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I give Egypt as your ransom,

Cush and Seba in exchange for you.

Because you are precious in my eyes,

and honored, and I love you,

I give men in return for you,

peoples in exchange for your life.

“Redeemed” is to “called you by name” as “Jacob” is to “Israel” [redeemed :: called by name :::: Jacob :: Israel] … redeemed is the “natural” state of the beloved son of promise, and this natural state precedes being called by God to be His; therefore in this world, Israel must be redeemed before being called, with Israel first redeemed when the Lord gave Egypt as ransom for Israel. But, alas, that nation died in the wilderness and its children ceased redeeming firstborns a long time ago.

In order for “redeemed” to be the natural state of Israel, someone or some being has to do the redeeming. A firstborn son doesn’t redeem himself. Rather, it is the father of the child that does the redeeming. And the “father” of natural Israel isn’t the patriarch Isaac but the Lord, specially, Yah.

Christ is the firstborn son of the Father, with disciples forming the Body of Christ—and here is where Philadelphia parts with Evangelical Christianity: Christ Jesus is the redeemer of born-of-spirit sons-of-God, but these sons of God are not the fleshly tabernacles in which they dwell. It is these fleshly tabernacles (or tents of flesh) that are not redeemed within Christendom, and just as Zipporah’s firstborn son had to be circumcised before Moses could bring Israel out of Egypt, the fleshly tabernacles of disciples must be redeemed before these tabernacles can be liberated from indwelling sin and death.

That is, the fleshly tabernacles (bodies) of disciples have never been redeemed if these disciples do not drink from the cup on the night that Jesus was betrayed … the inner new self or creature was redeemed at Calvary, where Jesus’ death paid the penalty in this world for the sins of Israel so that this new self could be born under no condemnation. Because of the indwelling of Christ through His breath (Rom 8:9) in this new self, this inner new self is “born” redeemed and needs no additional redemption price to be paid. But the tent of flesh was not born redeemed but must be redeemed—and is redeemed on a year by year basis when this tent of flesh drinks from the cup, thereby covering through forgiveness the sins of the person.

Redemption is ultimately about forgiveness of sin.

Natural Israel was redeemed when the Lord gave the firstborns of Egypt as Israel’s ransom price, but again, that nation died in the wilderness and natural Israel ceased having the ability to redeem when the temple was destroyed. Thus, both natural Israel and the majority of spiritually circumcised Israel remain to be redeemed, and the promise of Scripture is that God will give the lives of men wherever they dwell (these lives being the firstborn of men) in exchange for the lives of the fleshly bodies in which born-of-spirit sons-of-God dwell … because spiritually circumcised Israel possesses two breaths of life, one from the first Adam and one from the last Adam, spiritually circumcised Israel must be twice redeemed, with Jesus’ death being the redemption price for the new creature or new self born of spirit. What remains to be paid is the price for the flesh that either will or won’t put on immortality when judgments are revealed. This price could be paid by drinking from the cup on the night Jesus was betrayed, but very few so drink. Thus, what remains to be paid is the redemption price for the fleshly tabernacles of all Israel, natural and circumcised-of-heart.

Again, because few in the Church are natural Israelites; because the majority of the Church consists of Gentiles, with this age not ending until the fullness of the Gentiles come to God (Rom 11:25), the fleshly bodies of Israel have not been redeemed, a situation that will be corrected at the second Passover when death angels will again pass over all the land (all the world this time) as the death angel passed over all of Egypt approximately three and a half millennia ago.

The Father and the Son will address the problem of sin when they redeem the fleshly tabernacles of Israel, but getting Israel into covenant doesn’t end the problem of sin for getting Israel into covenant will cost Israel its physical live with two exceptions, the 144,000 and the remnant of the Woman’s offspring. The kingdom of the world will be given to the Son of Man halfway through these seven endtime years, and all of the world will then be the people of God. Hence, what occurred in the first 1260 days of the Tribulation will be repeated in the last 1260 days as a chiral image of getting Israel into covenant.

Just as receiving a birth name is “natural” being redeemed is natural. What parent neglects to name a child: although some cultures waited to name a child until the child “revealed” who he or she was, no culture raised their children as nameless livestock. The rite of naming is part of being human, and the ritual of redeeming should have been just as much a part of being human, but it hasn’t been, has it? So by our neglect to redeem all that opened the womb, we present our children to God as if they were nameless livestock, herds slated for slaughter … after all, God has redeemed His firstborn sons. He hasn’t neglected what we have neglected. So will we fault God when he uses our children to address the problem of sin by slaying them to the point were we, as human beings, utterly hate death and will do whatever it takes to escape death?

We will, won’t we? We will collectively turn against the Father and the Son and falsely accuse them of being evil. We won’t condemn evil when we see it in this world, but we’ll be quick to accuse God of being evil. Yes, collectively, we will curse God (Rev 16:21) before Christ returns … the two witnesses are not loved by all the world, but hated (Rev 11:10).

The task Philadelphia has before it as we begin this year 5769 on the Hebrew calendar is to deliver the endtime gospel that all who endure to the end will be saved (Matt 24:13) in a more effective means than we have in the past — and that means messages will be stronger if possible as more disciples take this endtime gospel to the world. There’s work to do, so let’s get to work (after lunch and the afternoon message).

If there is one message that we can take to all Christians it is that they need to take the Passover sacraments on the night that Jesus was betrayed.

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The person conducting the Sabbath service should close services with two hymns, or psalms, followed by a prayer asking God’s dismissal.

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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."

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